Books by Aaron Vanides
Book Reviews by Aaron Vanides
Speculum, 2020
The catalogue entries themselves follow more or less the same format as Kidd's volume, and are pr... more The catalogue entries themselves follow more or less the same format as Kidd's volume, and are prepared with comparable skill and scholarly rigor. The manuscripts described are from the College Library, Christ Church Archives, and Allestree Library. Hanna and Rundle have created a fantastic volume, bringing to the fore an important collection. The utmost level of detail is observed in all aspects of codicology and paleography, which are often of the highest interest for readers of manuscript catalogues. The authors should be commended on their consistency of terms and method in both of these fields, especially paleography. The paleographical descriptions follow closely the terminology and methods of M. B. Parkes, which, despite their lack of objectivity and pan-European context for script (areas in which the systems of G. I. Lieftinck, Albert Derolez, and J. P. Gumbert excel), still allow the reader to have a clear mental picture of the scripts mentioned. The profusion of color figures and plates is astounding and extremely helpful, especially if the reader does not use Parkes's paleographical terms. For example, the script of MS 138 (300) is described as "secretary," a script that essentially does not exist outside of the Parkesian terminology (see Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books [2003], 161-62). An objective paleographical classification, based on the plate on p. 301, would term the same script as "cursiva," but note the occasional appearance of Angiclana r and s. In fact, the Flemish and French influences are particularly visible in the final spiky round s (in which the second stroke resembles a 3) used throughout (e.g., col. a, line 10, "uniuersitas," and line 30, "uolentes") which displace the round Anglicana s at the end of the word (e.g., col. a, line 26, "seminantes"). Each entry includes its own color plate, allowing for the comparison of object and paleographical description (an upgrade from the black-and-white of Kidd's volume). Manuscripts of note are numerous, but to mention a few favorites of the reviewer (due to their rarity, subject matter, and artifactual interest): an Epistolary of Cardinal Wolsey (MS 101), a copy of the Aeneid dated Ferrara 1456, (MS 113) and a likely companion volume of the Eclogues and Georgics (MS 114), a Wycliffite Bible (MS 145), Gower's Confessio amantis (MS 148), Chaucer's Canterbury Tales bound with Lydgate's poems (MS 152), and, among the Italian manuscripts, a copy of Ovid's Heroides (MS 507) that belonged to S. G. Owen (editor of the Tristia, Ibis, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Halieutica fragmenta, OCT, 1915), and a Tristia of Sir Thomas Phillipps (MS 508) with dense glossing. Hanna and Rundle have produced a remarkable catalogue founded on strong, authoritative, and reliable scholarship. Every library should own a copy.
Mediävistik, 2021
In this thought-provoking study, Alexandra Kaar assembles an impressive dossier of diplomatic and... more In this thought-provoking study, Alexandra Kaar assembles an impressive dossier of diplomatic and other archival sources mentioning economic activity between Hussites and non-Hussites (referred to throughout as Catholics) to understand better the political and cultural dynamics of trade restrictions in the later Middle Ages. Not a work of economic history in a traditional sense, her story spans some sixteen years, beginning in 1420 with Pope Martin V's call to crusade against the Bohemian dissidents and ending around 1436, when the compacts were reached in the Moravian city of Jihlava. Kaar's main argument is that the embargo practices of the papacy and the empire against the Hussites took many different forms. These corresponded in turn to a vast array of strategic ends, not all of which necessarily had anything to do with moveable goods. To be sure, wares of all types feature heavily in the sources. But those wares, the author argues, are better understood as part of a larger cultural and political discourse that drew on the language of economics and trade. To what degree and in what form could one interact with those identified as Hussites, and who was responsible for articulating and regulating those strictures? Undergirding the story of trade relations with the Hussites is a great deal of complicated legal history. Kaar shows how certain aspects of civil law in late antiquity were transformed in the canon law of the high Middle Ages, when popes and legal commentators began asking what the consequences of keeping the company of the heterodox should be. Here, Kaar draws on Stefan Stantchev's important work on the development of the papal embargo as a novel legal discourse extending beyond consumable goods to include, and even primarily be concerned with, pastoral care and salvation. This is followed by a substantial, nearly one-hundred-page overview of the history of research on the Hussite wars and the political economy of Bohemia in the fifteenth century, followed by a discussion of how the transmission of textual sources in the archives around Bohemia can, when used with great care, help us see regional conflicts and stories as part of a broader cultural phenomenon. The core of this study, however, consists of three thematic blocks. In the first, Kaar focuses on trade restrictions and the regulation of commerce as a strategy of warfare in and around the Kingdom of Bohemia. Specific 'things' seem to have been targeted by non-Hussites as products of concern. Salt, wine, and other consumable goods can be found throughout the diplomatic correspondence from the registers of King Sigismund, for example, where the items are often mentioned in connection with the regulation of transportation routes-that is, with street traffic. But there were also items of relative luxury, like textiles that seem to have caught the attention of non-Hussites, as did ironware, horses, and other strategic military objects. The extent to which these regulations were actually regulated is unclear, but the lack of judicial records concerning these blockades suggests that, as in the logic of the papal embargo, the mechanism of punishment would most likely play out in the economy of the soul. Kaar dedicates a second thematic strand to symbolic communication, a conceptual apparatus that has reached the status of canon among German-speaking scholars of the premodern. Various figures involved in the Hussite conflict not only invoked trade res
Papers by Aaron Vanides
Lexikon der Raumphilosophie, 2012
Lexikon der Raumphilosophie, 2012
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Books by Aaron Vanides
Book Reviews by Aaron Vanides
Papers by Aaron Vanides