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Fourteenth Century (fourteenth + century)

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Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Kinds of Fourteenth Century

  • early fourteenth century
    		•

    Selected Abstracts

    Land Administration in Medieval Japan: Ito no shô in Chikuzen Province, 1131,1336

    HISTORY, Issue 289 2003
    Judith Fröhlich
    The topic of land administration is central in historical studies of medieval Japan, since it provides insight into the social and economic development during the medieval period and highlights the lives of various social groups, courtiers, clerics, warriors and peasants. Based on the case of Ito no shô, an estate in northern Kyushu, this article analyses the establishment of a wide system of land administration under courtiers and central religious institutions during the twelfth century and its decline during the thirteenth century. The concurrent rise of local land managers and their social and economic activities during the thirteenth century are also explored. Finally, an assessment is made of the impact of the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281 on economic and social development during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, in particular the loss of influence of central authorities in regions remote from the capital and the formation of rural communities under the leadership of local warriors. [source]

    Genoa and Livorno: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Commercial Rivalry as a Stimulus to Policy Development

    HISTORY, Issue 281 2001
    Thomas Kirk
    During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, while Genoa was at the height of its colonial expansion, Livorno was little more than a fishing village. The Genoese had assembled a territorial state in Liguria, taken the island of Corsica and, as early as 1277, were sending ships directly to England and Flanders. All the while Livorno was merely a malaria-infested appendix of Porto Pisano. Over the course of the sixteenth century, however, Livorno grew by leaps and bounds and by the end of the century concerns over the Tuscan city's growing importance as a commercial port had become a conditioningfactor in the establishment of Genoese maritime policy. The concern was well founded. An ever-greater portion of trade in the western Mediterranean was to gravitate to Livorno during the seventeenth century, threatening to transform Genoa into a commercial satellite. The Republic of Genoa did not hesitate to react, and the subsequent rivalry between the two ports provided the principal stimulus in the experimentation of innovative fiscal policies in both cities and to the development of the modern free port. Indeed, the free port as it is known today, namely a specific port or area within a port where goods may transit duty free, emerged as the policies of the two cities slowly converged, formulating a single response to differing historical contingencies. [source]

    RE-READING INSCRIPTIONS IN CHINESE SCROLL PAINTING: THE ELEVENTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

    ART HISTORY, Issue 5 2005
    ZHANG HONGXING
    Art historians often regard Chinese art as the classic example of the unity between word and image. Such a view is predicated on the uncritical acceptance of canonical Chinese art theory and on mistaken notions about a changeless China and ideographic Chinese writing. Those misconceptions have prevented an understanding of the historical specificity of the relationship between the two graphic systems. In applying Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of the three fundamental types of sign (icon, index, symbol) to Chinese writing, scholars tend to conclude that it is not a symbolic-indexic system, but primarily an iconic one. Taking as the point of departure an antinomy between word and image, I demonstrate that the introduction of inscriptions into Chinese scroll painting was a long and uneven process. Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, inscriptions initially entered pictorial space timidly; gradually growing in size and type, they eventually became separated from the pictorial elements, bringing about a fundamental change to the relations between word and image. In the age of the advent of codex and the invention of printing, inscriptions, through their intrusions into and encounters with painting, served to rescue the scroll from oblivion and to transform it into the major bearer of pictorial culture. [source]

    Taxation, warfare, and the early fourteenth century ,crisis' in the north: Cumberland lay subsidies, 1332,13481

    ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 4 2005
    CHRIS BRIGGS
    Recent research into the impact of Anglo-Scottish conflict on northern England's economy has become increasingly sophisticated, using local estate accounts to enhance understanding of the role of war in the 'crisis' of the early fourteenth century. Yet taxation data also remains an important source on these issues, not least because of its wide geographical coverage. Using a rich series of lay subsidy documents for Cumberland, this article concludes that the direct impact of Scottish raids was only one of several determinants of economic fortunes. More significantly, reconstructing the process of taxation shows that non-violent resistance to state levies was as responsible as war damage for a decline in revenue from the county. [source]

    Spanish merino wools and the nouvelles draperies: an industrial transformation in the late medieval Low Countries1

    ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2005
    JOHN MUNRO
    From the seventeenth century, the world's finest wools have been those produced by descendants of the Spanish merino. During the middle ages, however, England produced Europe's finest wools. Not until the fourteenth century does a distinct merino breed appear in Spain; and, before then, 'Spanish' wools were amongst the very worst in Europe, used in the production of only the very cheapest fabrics. By the late fourteenth century, some merino wools were being used in some Italian draperies; but, in the north, long-held historic prejudices against 'Spanish' wools hindered their introduction, especially into the Low Countries' draperies, which, because of structural changes in international trade, had become re-oriented to manufacturing luxury woollens, most woven from the finest English wools. From the 1420s, however, disastrous changes in England's fiscal policies so increased the cost of these exported wools that many of the younger Flemish draperies, the so-called nouvelles draperies, producing imitations of the finer woollens from the older established draperies, decided to switch to Spanish merino wools (often mixed with English wools). By the mid-fifteenth century, the merinos had indeed improved enough in quality to rival at least the mid-range English wools. Most of the traditional draperies, however, did not adopt merino wools until much too late, and thus, by the early sixteenth century found themselves displaced by the nouvelle draperies as the leading cloth manufacturers in the Low Countries. [source]

    Progress, decline, growth: product and productivity in Italian agriculture, 1000,2000

    ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
    GIOVANNI FEDERICO
    This article estimates agricultural production and output per worker in Italy, from about the year 1000 to the present. The millennium may be divided neatly into three periods. Output per worker increased until the fourteenth century, declined, with some fluctuations, until the end of the nineteenth century, and then recovered, booming in the past 50 years. [source]

    The expansion of the south-western fisheries in late medieval England

    ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2000
    Maryanne Kowaleski
    This article argues that the expansion of marine fishing in south-western England from the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth was part of the maritime sector's critical, but unappreciated, contribution to the rising prosperity of the region. Revenues from fishing represented a substantial supplement to the income of the fisher-farmers who dominated the industry; promoted employment in ancillary industries such as fish curing; improved the seasonal distribution of maritime work; and stimulated capital investment in ships, nets, and other equipment because of the share system that characterized the division of profits within fishing enterprises. In offering what was probably the chief source of employment within the maritime sector, fishing also provided the ,nursery of seamen' so prized by the Tudor navy, and built the navigational experience that underpinned later voyages of exploration. [source]

    The ,Babylonian captivity' of Petracco di ser Parenzo dell'Incisa, father of Francesco Petrarca

    HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 221 2010
    Barbara Bombi
    This article focuses on the discovery of two unedited notarial instruments preserved among Westminster abbey muniments and compiled by Petracco di ser Parenzo dell'Incisa, father of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. The two documents are dated February and April 1310 and prove that Petracco was working at Avignon earlier than it has been thought until now and in contrast with the claims of his son Francesco, who states that his family moved to Avignon between 1311 and 1312. The documents also highlight the connections between Petracco and the merchant company of the Frescobaldi, who traded at the papal curia in the early fourteenth century. The company employed a number of exiled Florentine Bianchi, who were interested in humanist ideas and classical texts, forming the first humanist circle at Avignon under the patronage of Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, who also became one of the patrons of Francesco Petrarca. [source]

    New light on the life and manuscripts of a political pamphleteer: Thomas Fovent,

    HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 219 2010
    Clementine Oliver
    This article offers new information regarding a little-known manuscript of the Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti by Thomas Fovent, found in a private collection in New York, and presents a more complete portrait of the author's life. Fovent's Historia is a lively account of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 and has long been known to scholars from May McKisack's 1926 edition published in the Camden Miscellany, based on the only known manuscript in the Bodleian Library. The recent digitization of Thomas Fovent's will by The National Archives provides readily available definitive proof that Fovent lived and worked as part of London's bureaucratic milieu in the later fourteenth century. [source]

    A parliament full of rats?

    HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 203 2006
    Piers Plowman, the Good Parliament of 137
    This article reconsiders the relationship between the Middle English poem Piers Plowman and the political events of the later fourteenth century. Its contention is that Piers Plowman articulates a profound sense of disappointment in the inability of the late medieval English parliament to rectify the woes of the kingdom. This disillusionment was generated not only by the reversal of the measures taken against the court in the Good Parliament of 1376, but also by a much broader context of failure by the crown to address the petitions presented in parliament by the political community. Ultimately, it was parliament's failure to deliver institutional remedies to these longstanding problems that set the conditions for the ,direct action' of the rebels in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. [source]

    The ostrich in Egypt: past and present

    JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY, Issue 8 2001
    Nicolas Manlius
    Aim This article tracks the evolution of the distribution of ostrich populations, Struthio camelus L., 1758, in Egypt from the Late Pleistocene up to present times with a view to establishing a series of distribution maps for the historical period. An attempt is then made to describe and interpret these maps. Location The country considered is Egypt. Methods We compiled all the information about the presence of the ostrich in Egypt collected from the study of fossil remains, archaeological materials and from the narrative of travellers since the fourteenth century. From the accounts of these travellers, three maps showing the location of this birds in this country are established: from the end of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century; from the beginning of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century; and lastly, for the twentieth century. Results The ostrich was abundant and broadly distributed in Egypt in the past. However, it has been constantly in decline. It disappeared from the north of the country and lived only in the southeast up to the end of the nineteenth century. The birds reappeared in the latter region at the beginning of the 1960s up to 1991 before disappearing from the country. Main conclusions The principal reasons for the decline of the ostrich in Egypt are the aridification caused by climatic changes and intensive hunting by humans. It is possible that this bird was not sighted in the country between the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1960s, not because it had disappeared, but most probably because it was sufficiently discrete to be noticed. But Retracer l'évolution de la distribution des populations d'autruches, Struthio camelus L., 1758, en Egypte depuis le Pléistocène final jusqu'à nos jours en vue d'établir une série de cartes de distribution pour l'époque historique. Décrire et interpréter ensuite ces cartes. Localisation Le pays considéré est l'Egypte. Méthodes Nous avons compilé toutes les informations portant sur la présence de l'autruche en Egypte, recueillies à partir de l'étude de fossiles des matériaux archéologiques, ou encore des écrits des voyageurs depuis le XIVe siècle. A partir des témoignages de ces voyageurs, trois cartes montrant la localisation de cet animal en Egypte seront établies: depuis la fin du XIVe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIIe siècle; depuis le début du XVIIIeà la fin du XIXe siècle; et enfin pour le XXe siècle. Résultats Dans le passé, les populations d'autruches étaient abondantes et largement répandues en Egypte. Cependant, elles n'ont pas cessé de régresser. Elles ont d'abord disparues du nord du pays pour ne plus survivre que dans le sud-est, et ce jusqu'à la fin du XIXe siècle. L'animal est reparut dans cette dernière région au début des années 1960 jusqu'en 1991, avant de disparaître du pays. Conclusions principales Les principales raisons pour lesquelles la population d'autruches a régressé en Egypte tiennent d'une aridification due à des changements climatiques ainsi qu'à une chasse outrancière par l'homme. Il est possible que cet oiseau n'aie pour ainsi dire plus été signalé dans le pays entre le début du XXe siècle et les années 1960, non parce qu'il en aurait disparu mais plutôt parce qu'il aurait su se faire suffisamment discret pour ne pas être repéré. [source]

    The murder of Buondelmonte: contesting place in early fourteenth-century Florentine chronicles

    RENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 4 2006
    N. P. J. Gordon
    In 1215 a young nobleman was murdered in a vendetta at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio. The tale captured the Florentine imagination and the place of his death was immortalised. In the first half of the fourteenth century, however, the tale undergoes a number of subtle changes in the chronicles of Pseudo-Latini, Dino Compagni, and Giovanni Villani. These changes altered the meanings of the story and, consequently, affected the values tied to the place where the story was set. In this respect, each version can be read as an attempt to attack or legitimize a civic identity associated with Buondelmonte and the entry to the old city where he was murdered. [source]

    Dowries in fourteenth-century Venice

    RENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 4 2002
    Linda Guzzetti
    This paper presents an analysis of two registers kept by a Venetian notary, Marino of S. Trovaso, for the years 1366,91. They preserve 1,284 records drawn up at the termination of marriages, when a court, usually the curia de proprio, returned the dowries in most cases to the widows, or otherwise to the legal heirs of the deceased wives. These records are valuable in making it possible to calculate the average value of dowries of women from all social groups, except the very poor, and the development of their values in the second half of the fourteenth century. Since the records studied constitute a relatively long series, they can be used to calculate how long marriages lasted and which spouse predeceased the other. In order to recover their dowries, Venetian widows had to prove their claims; for this purpose written evidence was preferred, but in the absence of written evidence it was possible to present witnesses to court. It is notable that almost half of these witnesses were women. [source]

    THE RISE OF THE COURT ARTIST: CAVALLINI AND GIOTTO IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY NAPLES

    ART HISTORY, Issue 4 2008
    CATHLEEN A. FLECK
    This article explores the ways in which the Roman artist Pietro Cavallini and the Florentine artist Giotto were received in Naples and subsequently influenced Neapolitan art. Using documents and monuments, it analyses their contribution to the artistic and political image of the Neapolitan court. A number of scholars have based their assessment of the oeuvres of Cavallini and Giotto on the writings of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari, circa one hundred and two hundred and fifty years, respectively, after the artists lived. This article considers the stylistic, aesthetic, technological and political reasons for the appointment of Cavallini and Giotto to the Angevin court, and the subsequent spread of their style in Naples. As Martin Warnke has discussed in The Court Artist (first published in German in 1985), the late medieval court gave dignities to an artist that affected his reputation. The evidence of this article indicates that the court of Naples in the fourteenth century recognized each artist's individual identity and influence, thus affirming his image and thereby promoting its own. [source]

    ,For Our Devotion and Pleasure': The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry

    ART HISTORY, Issue 2 2001
    Michael Camille
    Jean, Duc de Berry (1340,1416), often seen as the first great ,collector' in Western art, is also described by some historians as a ,homosexual'. This article examines the relationship between these two terms and the problematic historical evidence for the latter claim, exploring the duke's desire for things, images and bodies in less categorical terms. The main argument is that we can best understand Jean's sexual tastes from the artworks he commissioned and in which we know from contemporary accounts he took great personal delight. Reinterpretations are provided of some well-known images, such as the January page of the unfinished Trés Riches Heures (1416), where the patron is pictured at the centre of a ,homosocial' feast for the eyes. This manuscript, along with the marginal decoration of his Grandes Heures, suggests his enjoyment of beautiful youthful bodies in general and of androgyny in particular. However, this has to be viewed within the very different gender system of the late fourteenth century in which women, youths and children were literally objects of male control. Only in this sense can we begin to understand how the duke's love of things intersected with his political position and power more generally. Rather than see his collecting in all its polymorphous perversity as a symptom of personal trauma, I want to view it as a socially creative and recuperative act that was part of the performance of a ruthless man of power. [source]