A few years ago archaeologists made a breath-taking find: a 1300-year old ski with the binding intact. Last year the skis were reconstructed. Now they have been tested and the ancient way of skiing has been reconstructed
Category: Medieval Cultural History
Gloves and Mittens From the Past
Mittens, gloves and gauntlets represent a number of different types of protective gear for the hands. Their history has recently been told in a new Dutch book.
Knitted Mittens from the 13th century
Estonia is known for its very old tradition for using knitted mittens for prestigious gifts. The oldest fragment is from the 13 th century.
Fashion in Renaissance Nürnberg
In Nürnberg they have an amazing collection of costumes, which is usually hidden away. Now for the first time in decades they are put on show.
Catherine of Aragon and Lace Making
Tanner’s Day – also known as St. Andrew’s Day – falls on the 30. November. It used to be a holiday celebrated by the lace makers in Bedfordshire. The tradition might go back to Catherine of Aragon.
Living with the Dead
In the Middle Ages Polish priests and theologians fought to eradicate old and traditional ways of cohabiting with the dead. It does not seem af if they have succeeded yet.
Seals and Status 800–1700
Three-day international conference aims to foster a discussion about seals and status 800 -1700
Sigillvm
SIGILLVM is an international and interdisciplinary network in the first instance for all those interested in medieval European seals and sealing practices.
Hides and the Tribal Hidage
The Tribal Hidage is an enigmatic list of thirty-four Anglo-Saxon tribes and the size of the land controlled by each as measured in ‘hides’ or ‘households’.
Medieval Hair Colours
Richard III has changed his look three times in the last three years. In the latest version he is sporting unkempt mouse-coloured hair. Is that plausible?
Newly found life of St. Francis published
A small notebook of obvious Franciscan origin was recently shown to contain a hitherto unknown Vita of St. Francis, written by Thomas di Celano. It has now been edited
The Garden of St. Francis
St. Francis is known for his devotion to nature and generally recognised at the patron saint for the environment. But was he also a gardener?
Catholicism and Medieval Nature Conservation
Medieval ‘Sacred Sites’ were primarily located in the natural wilderness. With the Reformation this changed. Perhaps time has come to return to practices of medieval nature conservation
The Voynich Manuscript Digitized
The Voynich Manuscript is perhaps the largest medieval enigma of them all. New digitized edition might help scholars along
Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany
These studies explore the history of the Jewish minority of Ashkenaz (northern France and the German Empire) during the High Middle Ages
Animals and Early Modern Identity
Animals were everywhere in premodern times. From mighty horses to humble sparrows princes as well as paupers were obliged to live with and interact with animals of all sorts. A new book explores these intimate interrelations between persons and animals.
Animals and Early Modern Identity
By Pia F. Cuneo (Ed.)
Ashgate 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4094-5743-5
ISBN Short: 9781409457435
ABSTRACT:
Animals were everywhere in the early modern period and they impacted, at least in some way, the lives of every kind of early modern person, from the humblest peasant to the greatest prince. Artists made careers based on depicting them. English gentry impoverished themselves spending money on them. Humanists exercised their scholarship writing about them. Pastors saved souls delivering sermons on them. Nobles forged alliances competing with them. Foreigners and indigenes negotiated with one another through trading them.
The nexus between animal-human relationships and early modern identity is illuminated in this volume by the latest research of international scholars working on the history of art, literature, and of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany, France, England, Spain, and South Africa. Collectively, these essays investigate how animals – horses, dogs, pigs, hogs, fish, cattle, sheep, birds, rhinoceroses, even sea-monsters and other creatures – served people in Europe, England, the Americas, and Africa to defend, contest or transcend the boundaries of early modern identities.
Developments in the methodologies employed by scholars to interrogate the past have opened up an intellectual and discursive space for – and a concomitant recognition of – the study of animals as a topic that significantly elucidates past and present histories. Relevant to a considerable array of disciplines, the study of animals also provides a means to surmount traditional disciplinary boundaries through processes of dynamic interchange and cross-fertilization.
CONTENTS:
- Introduction, Pia F. Cuneo.
- Man’s best friend? Dogs and pigs in early modern Germany, Alison G. Stewart
- Every living beast: collecting animals and art in early modern Munich, Susan Maxwell
- Where the sun don’t shine: animals and animality in Louis XIV’s royal labyrinth of Versailles (1668-74), Peter Sahlins
- ‘For amusement, merry-making and good company’: horse racing at a German princely court, Miriam Hall Kirch
- Breeding nobility: raising horses at early modern German courts, Magdalena Bayreuther
- Horses and elite identity in early modern England: the case of Sir Richard Newdigate II of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire (1644-1710), Peter Edwards.
- Horses as love-objects: shaping social and moral identities in Hans Baldung Griens’ Bewitched Groom (circa 1544) and in 16th-century hippology, Pia F. Cuneo
- On the bit: Prince Maurits, Simon Stevin, and the Spanish warhorse, Ingrid Cartwright
- The tusked hog: Richard III’s boarish identity, Karen Raber; Who are the animals in the Geese Book?, Corine Schleif
- Settler stock: animals and power in the mid-17th-century contact at the Cape, circa 1652-62, Sandra Swart.
- Individuality and the understanding of animals in the early modern Spanish empire, Abel A. Alves
- World of wonders: exotic animals in European imagery, 1515-1650, Larry Silver
- French early modern sea-monsters and modern identities, via Bruno Latour, Louisa Mackenzie
- Ways of being, ways of knowing: fish, fishing, and forms of identity in 17th-century English culture, Elspeth Graham
- Pedagogy and the art of dressage in the Italian Renaissance, Juliana Schiesari
- Index.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Pia F. Cuneo is Professor of Art History at the University of Arizona, USA. Her current work focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century hippology, and she competes locally in dressage.