The King Embodies the Word: Robert d'Anjou and the Politics of Preaching

The King Embodies the Word: Robert d'Anjou and the Politics of Preaching
Author: Pryds
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 900447482X

Robert d’Anjou was King of Naples from 1309-1343 and preached throughout his reign. As a lay preacher, albeit a particularly privileged one, Robert adopted the oratorical form generally reserved to clerics in order to announce his piety and erudition, but most importantly, he preached in order to express and extend his royal office. This book studies the sermons that Robert preached at universities, diplomatic ceremonies, and royal visitations at religious houses, including his sojourn at the papal court. This work explores an important case study in the history of medieval lay preaching. It shows the flexibility of preaching as a form of political and personal oratory and marks an important step in the author's interest to map out the range of licit lay preching in Medieval Europe.

The Clement Bible at the Medieval Courts of Naples and Avignon

The Clement Bible at the Medieval Courts of Naples and Avignon
Author: CathleenA. Fleck
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351545523

As a 'biography' of the fourteenth-century illustrated Bible of Clement VII, an opposition pope in Avignon from 1378-94, this social history traces the Bible's production in Naples (c. 1330) through its changing ownership and meaning in Avignon (c. 1340-1405) to its presentation as a gift to Alfonso, King of Aragon (c. 1424). The author's novel approach, based on solid art historical and anthropological methodologies, allows her to assess the object's evolving significance and the use of such a Bible to enhance the power and prestige of its princely and papal owners. Through archival sources, the author pinpoints the physical location and privileged treatment of the Clement Bible over a century. The author considers how the Bible's contexts in the collection of a bishop, several popes, and a king demonstrate the value of the Bible as an exchange commodity. The Bible was undoubtedly valued for the aesthetic quality of its 200+ luxurious images. Additionally, the author argues that its iconography, especially Jerusalem and visionary scenes, augments its worth as a reflection of contemporary political and religious issues. Its images offered biblical precedents, its style represented associations with certain artists and regions in Italy, and its past provided links to important collections. Fleck's examination of the art production around the Bible in Naples and Avignon further illuminates the manuscript's role as a reflection of the court cultures in those cities. Adding to recent art historical scholarship focusing on the taste and signature styles in late medieval and Renaissance courts, this study provides new information about workshop practices and techniques. In these two court cities, the author analyzes styles associated with different artists, different patrons, and even with different rooms of the rulers' palaces, offering new findings relevant to current scholarship, not only in art history but also in court and collection studies.

Reimagining Jerusalem’s Architectural Identities in the Later Middle Ages

Reimagining Jerusalem’s Architectural Identities in the Later Middle Ages
Author: Cathleen A. Fleck
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2022-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004525890

This book explores several fascinating medieval Christian and Islamic artworks that represent and reimagine Jerusalem’s architecture as religious and political instruments to express power, entice visitors, console the devoted, offer spiritual guidance, and convey the city’s mythical history.

Kingship and Propaganda

Kingship and Propaganda
Author: Suzanne F. Cawsey
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2002-07-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191554790

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Crown of Aragon was a rapidly expanding and powerful political unit with an original form of representative government. Throughout this period a series of energetic and talented rulers sought to maintain royal authority and govern their realms effectively. Their persuasive rhetoric, and that of their advisers, is preserved in the archives of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, which provide a rich and under-exploited vein of source material for historians. There are long letters to their subjects, historical works, and the proceedings of the cortes, where the kings and queens perusaded their reluctant subjects to grant taxes and to support their decisions. Suzanne F. Cawsey examines the tradition of royal eloquence, thereby illuminating the nature of political discourse and persuasion in medieval Aragon and exploring the key ideas shared by the king and the political classes of the kingdom.

The new Solomon [electronic resource]

The new Solomon [electronic resource]
Author: Samantha Kelly
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789004129450

This study of kingship and the court in fourteenth-century Italy connects the style of rule of Robert of Naples to the changing issues of the fourteenth century and charts its legacy among other late-medieval rulers and Renaissance commentators.

The Secret of Secrets

The Secret of Secrets
Author: Steven J. Williams
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472113088

A compelling study of a "best-seller" from the Middle Ages

The Cult of St Clare of Assisi in Early Modern Italy

The Cult of St Clare of Assisi in Early Modern Italy
Author: NiritBen-Aryeh Debby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 135154523X

Notwithstanding the wealth of material published about St Clare of Assisi (1193-1253) in the context of medieval scholarship, and the wealth of visual material regarding her, there is a dearth of published scholarship concerning her cult in the early modern period. This work examines the representations of St Clare in the Italian visual tradition from the thirteenth century on, but especially between the fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, in the context of mendicant activity. Through an examination of such diverse visual images as prints, drawings, panels, sculptures, minor arts, and frescoes in relation to sermons of Franciscan preachers, starting in the thirteenth century but focusing primarily on the later tradition of early modernity, the book highlights the cult of women saints and its role in the reform movements of the Osservanza and the Catholic Reformation and in the face of Muslim-Christian encounter of the early modern era. Debby?s analyses of the preaching of the times and iconographic examination of neglected artistic sources makes the book a significant contribution to research in art history, sermon studies, gender studies, and theology.

The Imagery and Politics of Sexual Violence in Early Renaissance Italy

The Imagery and Politics of Sexual Violence in Early Renaissance Italy
Author: Péter Bokody
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2022-12-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1009302302

This book is the first comprehensive study of images of rape in Italian painting at the dawn of the Renaissance. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Péter Bokody examines depictions of sexual violence in religion, law, medicine, literature, politics, and history writing produced in kingdoms (Sicily and Naples) and city-republics (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna and Padua). Whilst misogynistic endorsement characterized many of these visual discourses, some urban communities condemned rape in their propaganda against tyranny. Such representations of rape often link gender and aggression to war, abduction, sodomy, prostitution, pregnancy, and suicide. Bokody also traces how the new naturalism in painting, introduced by Giotto, increased verisimilitude, but also fostered imagery that coupled eroticism and violation. Exploring images and texts that have long been overlooked, Bokody's study provides new insights at the intersection of gender, policy, and visual culture, with evident relevance to our contemporary condition.

An Introduction to the Medieval Bible

An Introduction to the Medieval Bible
Author: Frans van Liere
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1107728983

The Middle Ages spanned the period between two watersheds in the history of the biblical text: Jerome's Latin translation c.405 and Gutenberg's first printed version in 1455. The Bible was arguably the most influential book during this time, affecting spiritual and intellectual life, popular devotion, theology, political structures, art, and architecture. In an account that is sensitive to the religiously diverse world of the Middle Ages, Frans van Liere offers here an accessible introduction to the study of the Bible in this period. Discussion of the material evidence - the Bible as book - complements an in-depth examination of concepts such as lay literacy and book culture. This introduction includes a thorough treatment of the principles of medieval hermeneutics, and a discussion of the formation of the Latin bible text and its canon. It will be a useful starting point for all those engaged in medieval and biblical studies.

The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius

The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius
Author: W. J. Van Asselt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789004119987

This book is a provocative study of an aspect of Reformed Theology that has not been treated before: a new interpretation of the Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius. It traces the pneumatological profile of Cocceian theology. In this way it makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of seventeenth-century developments in theology and philosophy.