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41796 results in Collections

Page 1835 of 2090

  • (a) - France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420–1461)

  • from 19 - France
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 392-407

  • Summary

    In 1521, Francis I of France visited Dijon, where he was shown the skull of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Oaths were taken by the greatest French princes, such as Burgundy and Brittany, to pledge their allegiance to a Lancastrian succession to the throne of France after the death of Charles VI. Hatred of the Burgundians and their allies was as powerful an incentive to resist the Lancastrian war effort as any sense of nascent French nationalism. The creation of the standing army had been preceded by a period in which positive gains were made by Charles VII's forces, especially in the southern territories of the Lancastrians. Although there were apprehensions about a further revival of English war aims the disturbed political condition of Lancastrian and Yorkist England militated against a concerted policy of intervention in France. The strength of regionalism had led to a widespread devolution of royal authority: poor communications militated against effective government from the centre.

  • 25 - The Swiss Confederation

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 645-670

  • Summary

    The system of alliances among imperial provinces and cities known as the Swiss Confederation, emerged as a distinct political unit within the German Empire. About 1370, the small states of the Confederation, whose territorial expansion had scarcely begun, were no more than isolated dots on the multi-coloured political map of what is now Switzerland. The rise of the Confederation at the fifteenth century was influenced very significantly, though not exclusively, by events in the Austro-Habsburg sphere of influence. The events in the Aargau underline the importance of relations with the Empire for the ambitions of the political elite within the Confederation. The transformation and decline of the political order built up by the Austrian dynasty and nobility were counterbalanced by the decisive progress in the constitution of urban territorial rule. The drive towards political independence and territorial expansion in the cities and rural cantons of the Confederation advanced alongside the beginnings of an institutional inner consolidation of the state.

  • (b) - The Recovery of France, 1450– 1520

  • from 19 - France
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 408-430

  • Summary

    France witnessed both the recovery of lost territory and a crucial advance towards territorial cohesion and monarchical absolutism. The position of the great nobility is now better understood, while the recovery of France after the war against England is no longer seen as an inevitable royal victory but rather the story of how a fragile monarchy overcame the power of the princely polyarchy. Charles VII had managed to maintain the precarious balance between royal sovereignty and princely polyarchy which had been struck after the defeat of the Praguerie in 1440. The bedrock of the state, however, was not military might but the upholding of justice by which 'kings rule, while kingdoms, principalities and monarchies are maintained'. The royal fiscal system had been reconstructed after the recapture of Paris in 1436. The rural lordship, 'the unique legal and stable framework of the recovery', took full advantage of the favourable economic situation.

  • 31 - The Latin East

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 796-811

  • Summary

    The Latin communities in the east were composed predominantly of minority groups of westerners settled, permanently or temporarily, in the eastern Mediterranean, largely in consequence of earlier movements of Latin expansion. The cosmopolitan world of scattered Levantine ports and islands was united by its seas, by its shipping and by the extensive trade which the Latins moved across them. Latin Levantine outposts and activities depended for their survival upon an overall naval superiority which Ottoman or Mamluk fleets could seldom match. The southern Levant trade was not a Venetian monopoly but Venice increasingly assumed the predominant role in it after about 1410, while the hitherto considerable presence of Genoese, Catalans and other westerners diminished. The Latins on Cyprus reserved political power and fiscal advantages to themselves, maintaining a social distance from the Greeks which was rooted in religion and culture. In the Levant the Turks normally expelled Latin settlers while reaching accommodations with the Greeks.

  • 7 - Commerce and Trade

  • from PART II - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 145-160

  • Summary

    The fifteenth century is seen as one of economic contraction until the late 1460s and then of expansion, although within it many short-term fluctuations took place. Trade took place at local, regional and international levels. Besides major routes, many minor land, river and coastal routes existed, appropriate to regional and local trade. Luxury goods circulating on international routes were only the tip of the commercial iceberg. Merchants matched commodities to their markets: Italians bought English cloth differently for Tunis or Egypt, and Toulouse merchants ordered specific English reds for their customers. Transport, already well organised, regular and dependent on professional carriers, was steadily improved. Mercantile organisation was sophisticated enough to cope with geographically extended businesses of widely varying sizes, and, like shipowning, must be reckoned a capitalist activity. The English Staple Company illustrates a different sort of trade organisation. Regular trade, backed by political stability, allowed commercial specialisation. The specialisation of commodities was an integral part of the European economy.

  • 20 - Burgundy

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 431-456

  • Summary

    On 27 April 1404, Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, died in the town of Hal, south of Brussels. The late duke's matrimonial policy had, in effect, led to the marriage of three Burgundian princesses to princes of the Empire. Heir to an important group of principalities, the new duke of Burgundy also took charge of the administrative and judicial institutions upon which ducal government relied. In the fourteenth century the position of the duke of Burgundy was such that, whether political, military or diplomatic, had repercussions across the length and breadth of Europe. The court of Burgundy was both an organ of government and a manifestation of prestige. The dynamism of the Burgundian territories, at the western Europe and the importance of their economic activities combined to give contemporaries an incomparable prosperity. Margaret of York and Mary of Burgundy saw that the way of rescuing survived of the Burgundian inheritance lay through an alliance with the house of Habsburg.

  • 3 - Popes and Councils

  • from PART I - GOVERNMENT
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 65-86

  • Summary

    Supporters of the conciliar way wanted the council to undertake a reform of the Church, especially of papal taxation and papal appointments to senior benefices. On 26 June Peter Philarge, cardinal-archbishop of Milan, was elected pope and took the name Alexander V. The ensuing military and political events had a decisive impact on church history. The project of reunion through a council had been attracting strong support among the universities, especially Paris, and the numerous clerics, including senior prelates, who had been educated there. The defeat of the Council of Basle proved decisive for the western Church, for western Christendom and for European civilisation. Public opinion, amongst intellectuals and in court circles, seems to have favoured the more moderate view that a council was the emergency superior of the pope in cases of heresy, schism and the urgent need for reform. A look at popes and councils shows that the politics and ideology had an effect in shaping European culture.

  • 6 - Urban Europe

  • from PART II - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 121-144

  • Summary

    The vagaries of record survival still make it impossible, and perhaps pointless, to try to estimate the total number of urban communities in late medieval Europe as a whole. Several fifteenth-century towns were sufficiently large and self-possessed to create an urban society capable of articulating its own communal values in religious, ceremonial, literary and artistic form. As the civic councillors of Florence, Venice, Bruges and Barcelona were alike aware, both urban self-expression and urban political power were always dependent on a local economy prosperous enough to generate exceptional wealth, albeit always unequally, among their citizens. The limitations of German urban political and military power, even when towns associated themselves with one another in so-called leagues, were already becoming obvious by the end of the century. The Italian humanists who began by creating the most explosive new urban ideology in European history eventually helped to destroy the community of tastes and interests upon which a common civic mentality must ultimately rest.

  • 16 - Music

  • from PART III - SPIRITUAL, CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC LIFE
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 319-334

  • Summary

    Music permeated every walk of fifteenth-century life, from popular and aristocratic entertainment to religious and civic ritual. Music was sung or performed on instruments, executed by individuals or groups, played by ear, improvised or read from notation. During the 1430s and 1440s, the traditionally rather learned and esoteric isorhythmic motet was eclipsed as most prestigious genre by the so-called cyclic Mass, grouped settings of texts from the Ordinary of the Mass. The smaller-scale music also tended to be composed rather differently, with simpler vocal parts conceived together rather than as successively superimposed layers. Range of musical style is also surprisingly wide, despite a general tendency towards a tuneful, semi-popular manner, there are also a number of far more refined and sophisticated pieces, especially among the more austere devotional carols of the later years of the century. The basis for academic study of music and the ultimate source for most of the speculative treatises was Boethius' treatise De institutione musica.

  • 13 - Manuscripts and Books

  • from PART III - SPIRITUAL, CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC LIFE
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 278-286

  • Summary

    The production of books and manuscripts in the fifteenth century saw the culmination of tendencies which had begun during the latter part of the thirteenth century. It is important to distinguish between 'mere books' and illuminated manuscripts, produced on the finest sheepskin or goatskin parchment. The use of paper in book production was evident from the late fourteenth century onwards. Parchment provided a better medium for manuscript painters, and was far better suited to the production of de luxe editions for affluent patrons and clients. The fifteenth century also saw an unprecedented demand for illustrated books at social levels. The manufacture and sale of books was only loosely controlled by guilds and corporations. The tendency towards the establishment of publishing houses, was especially marked in the Low Countries and at Florence. The important development in the style and format of illuminated books stemmed from the emergence of a closer relationship between manuscript painting and the art of the panel painter.

  • (a) - Aragon

  • from 24 - The Iberian peninsula
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 588-605

  • Summary

    The death of King Martí led to a crisis within the states of the crown of Aragon. Martí's death brought to an end the dynasty founded with the marriage of the infanta Petronilla of Aragon to Ramon Berenguer, count of Barcelona, which had reigned uninterruptedly since 1137. The Compromise of Caspe cannot be reduced to a mere matter of the rights of succession limited, to the kingdom of Aragon. The kingdom is perhaps better described as the 'crown of Aragon', a term already in current use long before Jerónimo Zurita first introduced it into historiography. The victor of Caspe, Fernando de Antequera, made clear his intention of continuing the Mediterranean policy of his Catalan predecessors. The war had strengthened Joan II in his conviction that the future of Aragon lay in Castile, potentially much stronger than Aragon-Catalonia. Castile, however, was exhausted by decades of internecine fighting between opposing noble factions, a festering sore in the side of the Trastámaran dynasty.

  • 29 - Russia

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 748-770

  • Summary

    Russia' is the state descended from the grand principality that coalesced around Moscow in the fourteenth century and began the historical continuum that extended to the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and modern Russia. Powerful rivals included the city republics of Novgorod and Pskov, not forgetting the grand duchy of Lithuania. The dynamics of geopolitics in this century were structured by Moscow's rivalry with the grand duchy of Lithuania. Archbishop Evfimii also evoked Novgorod's past in architecture, rebuilding several churches according to their original twelfth-century designs. Architecture joined literature and icons in embellishing Moscow. The Cathedral of the Dormition, became a repository of Moscow's past and future pretensions. The Cathedral of the Dormition symbolically depicted God's blessing on Moscow, its antiquity and eminence and its ties to Constantinople, Kiev and Vladimir. Moscow reached even beyond Kiev to classical Antiquity to assert its status, a step paralleling Renaissance-era historiography throughout Europe.

  • 9 - Exploration and Discovery

  • from PART II - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 175-202

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the term 'exploration' for the identification, investigation and recording of practical routes. The story of exploration in the fifteenth century is very largely of the crossing of the Atlantic with routes that linked its shores and led to other oceans. This story should be understood against the background of the internal exploration of Latin Christendom in the late Middle Ages. The discovery of new sources of gold and slaves meant that the direct economic effects of west African exploration were potentially revolutionary. Exploration was a means whereby the civilisation of Latin Christendom established access to and, in the longer run, command of a disproportionate share of the resources of the world. Explorers made a major contribution to the reversal of fortunes on a global scale. Previous civilisations derived their images of the world from dogmas of cosmology, from inductive reasoning, from revelation, from inherited tradition or from the elaboration of theory.

  • 4 - The European Nobility

  • from PART II - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 87-105

  • Summary

    The nobility of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages needs and deserves to be studied from a standpoint that is not merely socio-economic, but political and cultural, too. Europe is deemed synonymous with Latin Christendom. The Castilian nobility was distinctly divided into three categories: the titulos, the caballeros and later the hidalgos and the escuderos. Nobles from different parts of western Christendom could also meet at the court. The Prussian Reise, that cross-roads of western nobility, was more characteristic of the fourteenth than of the fifteenth century. Texts, in some cases translations, spread far from their place of origin identical concepts of nobility and chivalry, and stimulated commentaries upon them. The existence of noble classes of varying importance within different European societies is explained, first and foremost, by the long-term history of these societies, and, vitally, by its outcome.

  • 17 - Germany and the Empire

  • from PART IV - THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN STATES
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 335-366

  • Summary

    Thomas Murner derided as naive the contention of Jakob Wimpfeling that Alsace had always been both geographically and politically 'German' since the days of the Roman Empire. Throughout the fifteenth century the 'German tongue' stamp a linguistic community set apart from foreign speakers. The campaigns against the Hussites were launched as European crusades with papal sanction, but their military organisations and financial burden drew members of the Empire into closer and more frequent consultation. The dualism of the Empire is reflected in the two issues which remained running sores throughout the century. They are the need for the kings to establish a dynastic power base strong enough to enable them to rule effectively as emperors; and the concern of members of the Reich to establish public order and the rule of law within Germany. In the consolidation of the greater secular principalities fifteenth-century Germany displayed the constitutional and political features which elsewhere in Europe marked the emergence of nation-states.

  • (c) - Portugal

  • from 24 - The Iberian peninsula
  • Edited by Christopher Allmand, University of Liverpool
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 June 1998, pp 627-644

  • Summary

    Portugal comprises distinct geographical zones, a mountainous in the north, a lowland in the south, the dividing line being the river Tagus. The principal urban centres, Coimbra, Lisbon, Oporto and Silves, were riverside communities, as were many lesser settlements with a history of fishing, shipbuilding and maritime enterprise. The consciousness of Portuguese nationalism, portuguesismo, awoke with war: the battle of Aljubarrota, elaborately reported by chroniclers and further exalted by myth, marked its birth. Of all the elements forming Portuguese political structures, the royal office was the most important. Joäo I secured for the crown in 1402, when all cities came to be recognised as belonging to the crown; only Braga, seat of the primate of Portugal, eventually had its former independence restored, reverting to archiepiscopal control. The two reigns of Joäo I and Duarte reveal coherent continuity, a result of the fact that Duarte was associated with his father's rule in the last third of the latter's very long reign.

Page 1835 of 2090