Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

Duchess Anna Amalia (1739-1807) was a central figure in the duchies of Weimar and Eisenach for over fifty years – as wife of the reigning duke, then as custodial regent and finally as mother of the reigning duke. The article comes to the conclusion that the duchess could barely affect the emergence of the configuration that has been referred to in…[Read more]

The article examines regulations for »order« at the princely courts in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century and asks how these prescriptive documents sought to establish “good order” at court. Special attention is paid to the theological justifications of order as well as the confessionality and the confessional character of court orders. T…[Read more]

After the Seven Years War German petty courts increasingly felt obliged to justify their very existence. Therefor members of the reigning dynasties developped strategies to represent themselves as ›enlightened‹ rulers. Especially for non-reigning princesses, practice and patronage of the fine arts – theatre, music, landscape gardening, liter…[Read more]

Freemasonry has traditionally been seen as a key influence in the rise of the Bourgeoisie, since it allegedly subdued social boundaries and behavioural norms of the Ancien Régime. This paper, however, argues that the masonic lodges at least in the smaller German court towns, adopted various elements of court society – organizational structures, my…[Read more]

Notas tomadas en la Jornada de la Obra Social de IberCaja en colaboración con el Instituto Francés, “Darwin: Del Big Bang al Hombre (2013); organizadas simultáneamente en la sede de IberCaja en Zaragoza, y en el ayuntamiento de Brive (Francia). Las ponencias de la primera parte de la jornada versan sobre el contexto histórico y científico de Char…[Read more]

Im Jahr 2002 kam die fast verzweifelte Suche nach Beethovens verschollenem Oboenkonzert zu einem vorläufigen Ende, weil die Forschung an dieser Stelle nicht weiterkam. Jetzt habe ich neue Hinweise auf das autographe Dokument gefunden – und auch auf Mozarts verschollenes Oboenkonzert sowie auf eine unbekannte Oper von Joseph Haydn. Es ist kein Zu…[Read more]

In 2002 the research for Beethoven’s lost oboe concerto came to a temporary end. Now I’ve found new leads to the autograph manuscript – and to Mozart’s lost oboe concerto, too, and to a lost opera of Joseph Haydn. It is no coincidence that all autograph manuscripts are missing at the same time: They were together and possibly are, played in a c…[Read more]

Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). It offers a perspective into the historical imaginary of the late-medieval Portuguese aristocracy; an imaginary that underlay the argumentation of members of this social class in defence of their…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Un comentario sobre algunas de las implicaciones de un llamativo “escándalo silencioso” en la vida pública española, el llamado “Expediente Royuela”. Se trata de una marea de crimen, corrupción y asesinato que implica a muchas de las instituciones judiciales y políticas españolas, y muy especialmente al Partido Socialista que a…[Read more]

Die Quellensammlung zum Waldrapp (Geronticus eremita – Northern Bald Ibis) versammelt Knochenfunde (ab dem Miozän), Bildquellen aus dem Mittleren Osten, dem Alten Ägypten, der Antike, dem Mittelalter und bis ins 17. Jahrhundert und Textquellen, die bis in die Antike zurückreichen und einen eindeutigen Höhepunkt im 16. Jahrhundert (Conrad Ges…[Read more]

Das Stadtbuch der niederösterreichischen Stadt Waidhofen an der Thaya aus der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts beginnt mit einer bemerkenswerten Initiale. Diese kombiniert Motive, die aus Notarssigneten stammen mit einem Vogel, der seit 1971 mit dem Waldrapp (Geronticus eremita) identifiziert wurde.

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]

Results of automatic language identification in Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Aleandro’s diaries, and a 1512 letter from Aleandro to Erasmus

This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

La presencia de la sífilis en La Lozana andaluza, esencial para la comprensión de la obra y de predominante protagonismo en sus tramas, se suele explicar recurriendo no solo a la consciencia individual de su autor, Francisco Delicado1, como representante de otros muchos que al igual que él padecieron el mal francés en la Roma del Quinientos, sin…[Read more]

This dissertation develops a methodology for understanding tonality and tonal structures in Renaissance polyphony by exploring the ways that the modern-day analyst and listener experience tonal phenomena in this music through a historically-informed lens. Regarded as one of the most important composers of the late-sixteenth century, Tomás Luis de…[Read more]