Courtly and Satellite Courtly Culture: Folger MS V.a.89

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-59
Author(s):  
Arthur F. Marotti
Keyword(s):  
Courtly Culture

The Changing Perception of the Five Senses

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Sara Benninga
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Peter Paul Rubens ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Senses

This article examines the changing approach towards the representation of the senses in 17th-century Flemish painting. These changes are related to the cultural politics and courtly culture of the Spanish sovereigns of the Southern Netherlands, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella. The 1617–18 painting-series of the Five Senses by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens as well as the pendant paintings on the subject are analyzed in relation to the iconography of the five senses, and in regard to Flemish genre themes. In this context, the excess of objects, paintings, scientific instruments, animals, and plants in the Five Senses are read as an expansion of the iconography of the senses as well as a reference to the courtly material culture of the Archdukes. Framing the senses as part of a cultural web of artifacts, Brueghel and Rubens refer both to elite lived experience and traditional iconography. The article examines the continuity between the iconography of the senses from 1600 onwards, as developed by Georg Pencz, Frans Floris, and Maerten de Vos, and the representation of the senses in the series. In addition, the article shows how certain elements in the paintings are influenced by genre paintings of the courtly company and collector’s cabinet, by Frans Francken, Lucas van Valckenborch and Louis de Caullery. Through the synthesis of these two traditions the subject of the five senses is reinvented in a courtly context

Christograms as Signs of Authority in the Late Roman Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
Diachronic Change ◽  
Late Roman

The first section tests the main interpretations of Lactantius’ passage on Constantine’s victorious sign in 312 against existing graphic evidence from the 310s and early 320s, and consequently supports the interpretation of Lactantius’ description as a rhetorical device invented or modified by the Christian narrator. The next two sections support the argument that the perception of the chi-rho as Constantine’s triumphant sign became entrenched in courtly culture and public mentalities from the mid-320s onwards, and trace the diachronic change of the chi-rho from its paramount importance as an imperial sign of authority under the Constantinian dynasty to its hierarchic usage alongside the tau-rho and cross in the Theodosian period. The final section presents a contextualized discussion of the encolpion of Empress Maria and mosaics from several early baptisteries, illustrating the paradigmatic importance the chi-rho and tau-rho for early Christian graphicacy around the turn of the fifth century.

Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
To Come

This chapter examines tournaments. The origins of tournaments in Western Europe can be traced back to classical sources and to a sparse number of references to events that looked like tournaments in the Central Middle Ages. While these early mentions provide interesting glimpses of the genealogy of fictitious combat, it was the twelfth century that truly saw the formal beginnings of these traditions of artificial warfare that would hold such a powerful grip on the European imagination for many centuries to come. Closely tied to courtly culture and in a symbiotic relationship with the great outburst of courtly literature that took place in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the tournament sank deep roots in England, France, the Low Countries, and parts of Germany during the twelfth century, and then developed elaborate rules of engagement and pageantry in succeeding centuries.

Royal, Aristocratic, and Ecclesiastical Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sverre Bagge
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Scandinavian Society ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines four themes that raise the question of the connection between cultural development and social change in the Scandinavian kingdoms: religious versus secular literature, the social importance of Christianity, the writing of history, and the formation of a courtly culture from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. In particular, it considers the extent to which cultural and literary expressions of these social changes were actively used to promote the interests of the monarchy, the Church, and the aristocracy. The chapter first discusses the role of the Church as the main institution of learning in Scandinavia and in the rest of Europe before assessing the extent to which Christianity penetrated Scandinavian society at levels below the clerical elite. It then turns to a charismatic figure, St. Birgitta of Vadstena in Sweden, and historical writing as a literary genre in medieval Scandinavia. Finally, it provides an overview of courtly culture in Scandinavia.

On the road: The novice munshi’s view of inter-imperial North India

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-501
Author(s):  
Naveena Naqvi
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
North India ◽  
The Road ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Scholarly Networks ◽  
On The Road

This article analyses the diary entries made by a Persographic secretary (munshī), Aḥmad ʿAlī, who was employed by a retiring East India Company official to write an account of the journey they made together in 1780 across North India from Lucknow to the Mughal imperial capital in Delhi and back. Much of the landscape that they traversed—including a cluster of qasbahs, river passes, forests and fields—was formerly governed by a confederacy of Rohilla Afghans from 1737 to 1774. By 1780, however, this region was marked by the absence of well-defined, enduring state structures and witnessed an abundance of overlapping political claims. Under such conditions, Aḥmad ʿAlī, a novice secretary from this region who lacked access to major scholarly networks or courtly circles, found himself uniquely placed to observe and document the micro-level political and historical changes that he had lived through. Unlike his courtly counterparts, he witnessed transformations at a remove from both imperial politics and the regional courts that had developed through the eighteenth century. Rather than to a state or a single political project, his locus of service was aligned with the world of independent military entrepreneurs and their households, which were strewn across a region that he knew well. Questioning the view that secretaries were primarily cyphers of courtly culture or bureaucratic imperatives, the following pages demonstrate that while Aḥmad ʿAlī served his individual employer, he could imagine politics and history outside the constraints that came with corporate political affiliations, as a figure who was new to the work of secretarial penmanship and a seasoned bearer of textured regional knowledge.

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