Hispanic Lyrics in the Late 1400s

The late fifteenth century is considered the beginning of the Modern period due to various events that changed the course of history: the invention of the movabletype printing press by Gutenberg in 1440, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, and the discovery of America in 1492. In what is now Spanish territory, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united in 1469 through the marriage of Isabel i and Fernando ii, the respective monarchs of each kingdom. During those final decades of the century, the literary landscape also experienced closures, transitions, and innovations, with poetry being no exception.

At that time, the population of the Iberian Peninsula could mainly be divided into two classes: on one hand, the upper class, led by the aristocracy and nobility, who were literate and were the only ones who had libraries with valuable manuscript books in their palaces. The religious guild also belonged to this class; they were avid readers, and one of their tasks was precisely to make manuscript copies of primarily devotional books. During that period, urban centres were few and mainly comprised the capitals of the kingdoms, with no significant population.

The other part of the population was the rural majority, consisting of peasants, farmers, shepherds, artisans, blacksmiths, and so on. They lacked formal education and were unable to read or write, resulting in their limited access to written culture. Nonetheless, they maintained a rich oral tradition encompassing legends, ballads, tales, songs, and riddles, which they would perform through singing and dancing during festivities or leisurely occasions. Within this repertoire, narrative ballads found widespread favor, in part because of their timely and relevant theme.

Introduction

Cuban crime fiction has often been considered a derivative subproduct that replicates foreign models. According to that traditional view, the history of the genre started with Edgar Allan Poe, continued with the English classics, and then arrived in the United States, where the hard-boiled developed; at some point, the genre reached Cuba, where the English or the American model were duplicated. As Allan et al argue, this approach is highly problematic as it ‘privileges and reproduces an Anglo-American perspective’ and fixes ‘crime fiction as one thing’, instead of perceiving it as ‘mutable, fluid, and transgressive’.

In the following chapter I aim to demonstrate that Cuban crime fiction has always strived to find a personal voice, that it cannot be considered a mere by-product, and that it has reinvented itself through various reincarnations in which tradition and innovation constantly interplay. I first discuss an embryonic phase in which the collective novel Fantoches (Puppets) and Lino Novas Calvo’s short stories are briefly considered. The chapter focuses then on the policial revolucionario (pro-revolutionary crime fiction), which in the 1970s and 1980S received extraordinarily generous support from cultural officials and the MININT (Ministerio del Interior, or Home Office) and the neopolicial, which flourished in the 1990s in line with similar genre developments in other parts of Latin America. The chapter concludes with a review of the recent tendency towards hybridisation.

The previous chapters have each, in various ways, explored attitudes, expectations, and concepts related to legates, insignia, and the adventus. What is uncovered therein is a complicated, contradictory, and everchanging picture. On the one hand, papal legates a latere were not merely among the most powerful lords within Latin Christendom; they were extensions of papal authority. Even kings sometimes felt that curial legates were meddling in their affairs. On the other hand, cardinal-legates were usually far away from their primary bases and central networks. They were dependent on their subjects to a greater degree than most other rulers, not being part of the local structures of power. The reception of a papal legate held both opportunities and dangers.

In the ensuing four chapters, I will explore how different authors viewed and represented the adventus of cardinal-legates a latere. This exploration necessitates a comprehensive study of each author, encompassing their life, experiences, and viewpoints. It is also essential to study the specific circumstances surrounding each legate and his mission, as these influenced the opinions of the commentators. Such an analysis will illustrate the remarkable diversity with which the commentators interpreted and presented the legatine adventus. While none of the commentators were immune to the authority radiating out from papal Rome, they reinterpreted the curial image within their own unique frameworks. The result is four different perspectives.

Many studies have been published on the development of maritime courts. Maritime courts (including admiralty jurisdiction) and their existence as part of an international network of common legal ground have been traced back in time through the ages. Some researchers trace this common European legal practice through the codifications of the Consulato de Mare, the Black Book of the Admiralty, Rhodian sea law, to the Tabular Amalphitana, the Rôles d’Oléron, Jerusalem or the Baltic and Hanseatic states. Other experts emphasise that merchant and consular courts had been prevalent previously. Merchant courts reflect how commercial communities found measures to ensure their interests in maritime trade. Such measures were gradually taken over by the state. Consular courts show a different approach to issues of the marine, not focusing on commercial business as a common denominator, but instead highlighting the international character of maritime trade interactions. Consular courts reduced the possibility of individuals later claiming to have been wronged as foreigners and gave leeway to different legal practices as enacted in different countries, regions or cities. Both merchant and consular courts would be replaced by admiralty courts in the long term, with the consular prevailing significantly longer. Consular courts continued to be used regularly as alternatives to prize courts well into the eighteenth century, mainly due to the practicalities of international jurisdiction. Whatever their origins, the demand for maritime courts was a direct result of international trade and its expansion. Admiralty jurisdiction was to solve this demand by addressing maritime law in a more standardised, regulated and clear fashion.

The early years of the sixteenth century saw some elements of uncertainty as to the Isle of Man's position resolved. Despite the disgrace of Alexander, son of James II of Scotland, Alexander's son John returned as regent during James V's minority; but, after leaving the country in 1523, he died in 1536 leaving no heir, and his honours, including his claim to the Isle of Man, became extinct. There were now no ‘live’ claimants to the Island among the Scottish nobility. There was also considerable change due to the Reformation and to the further consolidation of Stanley lordship which might have produced a more straightforward set of constitutional, political, religious, social and economic relationships governing the island's development, dominated by the axis between the English monarchy and Man. Yet this chapter will set these developments alongside the evidence for continuing complexity in the status of the Island.

The dissolution opened the possibilities associated with royal landownership in the Island for the first time. It did so, however, in the face of possible alternative local solutions, and ones which ultimately were predominant. The dissolution of Furness Abbey in April 1537 provided an opportunity to become involved in Manx issues which the English Crown appears to have attempted to take. The Island is specifically referred to in the valuation of the house in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, and in the surrender documentation.

Readers of skaldic poetry will frequently have encountered kennings such as sverð-Freyr ‘sword-Freyr’ and Baldr skjaldar ‘Baldr of the shield’. Both of these kennings have the referent warrior or, more generally, man, and they reflect the general kenning type ‘god of weapon’. A comparable kenning model is used to refer to women in skaldic poetry, but here the determinant typically refers to some kind of valuable object, such as jewelry or gold, a piece of clothing worn by women, or something offered by women, usually drink. The underlying kenning models are thus ‘goddess of valuables’, ‘goddess of flax’ etc. As examples, one may mention steina Gná ‘the Gná of [precious] stones’ and lín-Gefn ‘flax-Gefn [Freyja]’, both woman. This remarkable usage of theonyms as basewords in kennings with the referent human, which will be referred to as theophoric kennings, may be seen as elevating humans and their activities out of the ordinary sphere and placing them within a grand cosmological framework. One particularly striking example of this is found in st. 14 of Einarr skálaglamm's Vellekla:

For many Londoners, the American Revolution had been a conflict far away, to be observed, not actively participated in. But for James Marriott (1730–1803) it was a matter of personal and professional importance. Sir James Marriott was the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty in London from 1778 until his resignation in 1798. The son of a London attorney, he was admitted to the College of Advocates in November 1757 and fulfilled the position of King's Advocate for four years from 1764 to 1768. He resided over the court throughout the course of four different wars, often struggling with the amount of work created by them.

Marriott was or certainly styled himself a zealous patriot and ardent anti- Americanist, both in the field of politics and in international law; for example, describing Britain as a “Nation […] too dazzling not to be seen by some of the Maritime Powers with Malevolence”. According to him, the civilian united the characteristics of “the scholar, the gentleman and friend of their country”. This patriotic flair can also be found in his judgments, such as in one case before the High Court of Admiralty, where he went so far as to say:

That this [British] nation (now fighting for its domestic preservation, as well as empire) had its cruelest enemies within its own bowels [America]; that he [Marriott] would be bound by the act in regard to costs. The American prohibitory act regulated, like other prize acts, the modes of proceeding, but did not take away the general powers of the Court; that the act required bail for double costs from the claimants [Americans]; but there were other costs beside those upon bail.