Renaissance Centre » Research Blog

Report on Internship at the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, by Gloria Moorman (CSR PhD candidate)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:52:00 GMT

Valorization between Early Atlases and Island Books: October at the Biblioteca Correr, Venice. The conceptual links between two atlas projects, those of Joan Blaeu (1598/99-1673), active as cartographer in Amsterdam and official mapmaker to the Dutch East India Company (1638-73), and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718), Franciscan Friar and official cosmographer to the Republic of Venice, have formed a recurring and stimulating thread throughout the month I spent in Venice as an intern at the library of the Museo Correr.

Report on the International Medieval Congress 2017 at the University of Leeds, by Lawrence Green (CSR Honorary Research Fellow)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:50:06 GMT

As I had received my first degree at the University of Leeds in 1965 it was with some feelings of nostalgia that I returned during the summer – over half a century later – to deliver a paper at the University’s 24^th International Medieval Congress (IMC). Established in 1994 and organised and administered by the Institute for Medieval Studies (IMS), the Congress has established itself as an annual event and is the largest conference of its kind in Europe. The University hosted 2,444 delegates from 56 countries, bringing together researchers from Chile to China, the US, Russia and Algeria. The academic programme, too, swelled to include just under 2,000 individual papers given in 627 academic sessions, spanning the full range of disciplines in medieval studies: topics included medieval Ethiopia, religious conversion narratives, Byzantine architecture, palace cities in Japan, Europe and the Middle East, and Old English riddles – and many more.

Remembering the Reformation, by Stephen Bates (CSR Honorary Research Fellow)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:47:00 GMT

We are entering a great phase of remembrance: the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation or, to be more precise, of Martin Luther’s Thesenanschlag – his nailing up of the Ninety-five Theses on the door of Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche or Castle Church. This event almost certainly never happened, but owes its popularity to Philipp Melanchthon’s Vita Lutheri, published following Luther’s death in 1546. Luther did write the Ninety-five Theses on 31 October 1517, but he put them in a letter to his primate, Albrecht, Archbishop of Magdeburg. Writing a letter is not nearly as dramatic a symbol as hammering a nail into a door. The physicality of the anschlag (the attack) gave the moment enormous potency; Luther might have been hammering a nail into the coffin of the medieval papacy. Yet, in truth, the Ninety-five Theses reveal Brother Martin circa 1517 as a loyal critic of the Church. From his covering letter to Albrecht it is clear that Luther assumed that the Archbishop would join him in denouncing the vulgar salesmanship and exaggerated theological claims of Johann Tetzel’s campaign to sell indulgences across Saxony. He was in for an unpleasant surprise.

Renaissance Editing Workshop, organised by Liam Lewis and Paloma Perez Galvan

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:46:07 GMT

The Renaissance Editing Workshop was a half-day event on 26 May 2017 in the Wolfson Research Exchange designed to act as both an introduction to different styles of editing, as well as a focused group to discuss Renaissance editing practices. Three presentations by Prof. Ingrid De Smet (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, ��TV), Dr. Dario Brancato (Concordia University, Montreal), and Dr. Giacomo Comiati (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, ��TV) provided introductions to some of the questions and theoretical issues raised by editing practices for Renaissance texts. Topics included: the ways that commentaries in critical editions might be constructed, with a focus on an edition of Jacques Auguste de Thou's didactic poem on falconry; the various audience of critical editions of texts including Giovanni Della Casa's Latin poems; and how we as scholars can distinguish the authorial intention from editorial intentions, specifically in the case of Cosimo de’ Medici and Baccio Baldini’s ‘edition’ of Benedetto Varchi’s Storia Fiorentina. The second-half of the workshop focused on precise case-studies, and the participants engaged with their chosen topics in more depth. Group discussion raised the issues of how each of the speakers would edit certain portions of the original text. In this part of the workshop participants could envisage how difficult it can be to make a critical edition of a Renaissance text. Workshop members and speakers enjoyed engaging with the topic and were very active in discussion sessions. The speakers themselves also provided positive feedback about the workshop, noting that it was an interesting and stimulating seminar and that the event encouraged fruitful discussion.

Shakespeare, Memory and the Iconography of Death by Dr Lawrence Green (CSR Honorary Research Fellow)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:44:56 GMT

When the skeleton unearthed in a car park in the City of Leicester in September 2012 was confirmed in February the following year to be that of King Richard III there was almost universal rejoicing. The Guardian reported that “there were cheers” when the identity was verified “beyond reasonable doubt” and announced at a Press Conference; the Express – with a characteristic pun – cordially declared: ‘Hunch pays off…’.

MLA (Modern Language Association) Annual Conference 2016, by Dr Elizabeth Goldring (CSR Honorary Reader)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:43:04 GMT

A whirlwind trip to the USA for the 131^st annual MLA conference – held this year in Austin, Texas – in the course of which I was presented with the MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition for my work as General Editor of John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources (Oxford University Press, 2014).

The Charity of the Poor in Late Renaissance Venice by Dr Ioanna Iordanou (CSR Honorary Research Fellow)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:39:28 GMT

The Venetian popolani were a social group distinct from the higher levels of Venetian society, namely the patricians – the Venetian ruling class – and the cittadini – the Venetian citizens. They comprised the mass of Venetian residents who enjoyed no legal status and were divided into two categories, the popolo minuto – the city’s workers – and the popolo grande – ‘the well-to-do commoners’, those who owned workshops, employed workers, and possessed property. Concerned with how the popolani contributed to the Venetian economy through their labour, a great deal of scholarly attention has been placed on their professional services.

Reconstructing Medieval Construction by Dr Jenny Alexander (History of Art Department)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:37:47 GMT

We have just published our work on the early phases of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the site of the shrine of St James and the end of the camino, the pilgrimage route across northern Spain from the Pyrenees. I was co-investigator on the project, funded by the regional government of Galicia, and was responsible for a stone by stone survey of the masonry of the area around the cathedral’s high altar. Other members of the project studied the sculpted capitals, and the project’s brief was to gain a better understanding of the progress of construction of its earliest parts.

The Medieval Werewolf by Amanda Hopkins (Departments of English & French)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:35:00 GMT

Following our recent blog theme of dark wintry nights/supernatural horror/history/myth, Amanda Hopkins's piece throws a different light on the Medieval Werewolf myth. She explains that, the medieval werewolf is not a horror story, perhaps because of the Church's strict attempts to stamp out non-divine supernatural manifestations and other superstitions in narratives. Werewolf stories were frowned upon, and there is more than one Church edict insisting that werewolves are not real and that people should not believe in them. If many of the people who were writing stories down were clerics, there is a potential conflict, and indeed they would often add a Christian spin to the stories. The ‘typical’ Medieval werewolf story involves a hero-knight being locked (usually magically) into wolf form by his wife, and plays down the bestiality entirely in order to play up his obvious humanity. Completely the opposite of the modern werewolf, which (for cinematographic reasons?) depicts the humanity physically (bipedality, for instance, or demonstrations of higher intelligence) and emphasises the bestial ferocity.

Ghosts, Monsters and Scary Creatures by Ingrid De Smet, Beat Kümin, Alexander Russell and Stephen Bates

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:32:22 GMT

With the shortening days and the prospect of Halloween and Guy Fawkes night, we asked some members of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance about their favourite ghosts, monsters and scary creatures.