A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

way turned into a hereditary aristocracy. Accepting this fact constituted the compromise of the lower classes. Its counterpart b ...

Map 8.5: Western Europe, c.1450 REVOLTS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY ...

While power at the top consolidated, discontent seethed from below. Throughout the fourteenth century popular uprisings across E ...

murder some royal councilors and take control of Paris. But the presence of some Free Company troops in Paris led to disorder th ...

briefly in taking over the Florentine government and permitting some new guilds to form there. But the movement soon splintered, ...

There was one unfortunate exception: the fourteenth century saw the burgeoning of the slave trade in southern Europe. Girls, mai ...

Urban’s successor, Boniface IX (1389–1404), reconquered the papal states and set up governors (many of them his family members) ...

Then [Margery] went forth with our Lady [i.e. Mary] and with Joseph [Mary’s husband], bearing with her a vessel of sweetened and ...

the laity could disobey clerics who were more interested in pomp than the salvation of souls. Hus translated parts of the Bible ...

The Jews suffered a similar fate even earlier—in fact, right after the 1492 conquest of Granada. Their persecution had deep root ...

found Jason’s Argonauticon, written by C. Valerius Flaccus in verse that is both splendid and dignified and not far removed from ...

books as “must” reading for an eager and literate elite; and it promoted old, sometimes crumbling, and formerly little-appreciat ...

Plate 8.2: Donatello, Judith and Holofernes (c.1420–1430). The dense symbolism of this sculpture allows it to be used for many p ...

Plate 8.3: Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Cupid, and Mars (c.1495–1505). For Florentines steeped in Neo-Platonic ideas, Venus and Mars ...

Plate 8.4: Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence Cathedral Dome (1418–1436). It was a major engineering feat to span the 42-meter (46-y ...

The Renaissance flourished in many Italian cities besides Florence, among them Rome, Urbino, Mantua, Venice, Milan, and Perugia. ...

Plate 8.5: Raphael, Entombment of Christ (1507). Not so much about Christ’s entombment as it is about carrying Christ, this cent ...

1519) numerous commissions, including painting The Last Supper (see Plate 8.6 on pp. 312–13) on one of the walls of the dining h ...

friendship, and many verses testifying to this are recited.”^14 No doubt many humanists in Ludovico’s employ were kept busy writ ...

Plate 8.7: Gentile Bellini, Portrait of Mehmed II (1479). Mehmed, like other Renaissance princes, hired Renaissance artists to g ...