Viator

This study assesses the corpus of late medieval pilgrim badges (chiefly from the Low Countries) that feature “pseudo-text” inscriptions. Such inscriptions either have sequences of well-formed letters that cannot be construed or sequences of unreadable letter-like characters. Rather than suggesting that such texts are cryptic or magical, this study argues that pilgrim badge “pseudo-texts” functioned iconographically as signs of text. The conclusion that “textual communities” (as per Brian Stock) functioned around such inscriptions follows directly, and thus this study suggests that we can understand these inscriptions as revealing attitudes about (and ideologies of) literacy, even in contexts where the skills of literacy were not being used. As such, these brief pilgrim badge texts offer a new perspective on thinking about the nature, distribution, and functioning of late medieval literacy.

The scandal surrounding the downfall of Eleanor Cobham, second wife of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester—especially as represented in the anonymous Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester—forms an important historical precedent for several features of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid otherwise unaccounted for in previous scholarship. In charting the relationship between these two late medieval poems, the author examines the network of literary and political interactions between Scotland and England in the fifteenth century and identifies the larger cultural field in which both poems participate as “historical” complaint narratives. Finally, the author uncover traces left by the intersection of the Lament and the Testament in Renaissance poetry, especially the flowering of poems in the Mirror for Magistrates tradition. Recognizing this new source of Henryson’s poem allows us to situate the Testament in a political milieu, and illuminates the complicated generic contexts of the Testament and the methods behind Henryson’s imaginative use of source material.

Michelangelo’s prestigious commission of April 1503 for twelve over-life-sized marble Apostle statues for the Cathedral of Florence is often overlooked, almost certainly because this project barely got off the ground, as it was interrupted by three major commissions allotted to the artist by Pope Julius II. We do have one statue, namely the St. Matthew begun no earlier than April 1506, which was left two-thirds unfinished. This sculpture must form the point of departure for the assembly of drawings preparatory for the Apostle statues, a task no one has previously attempted. This is remarkable, considering that only the St. Matthew and the preparatory drawings for the statues can shed light upon Michelangelo’s changing intentions for the cycle. Several drawings that are undoubtedly related to this commission have received considerable scholarly attention. Three sheets never previously connected to the project are tentatively introduced here as potential Apostle studies.

For over a millennium, the relics of James the Apostle (Santiago) were widely believed to lie in Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. A closely related legend was that James had traveled to Spain and preached the Gospel there in the first century. Both beliefs, firmly established by the ninth century, are usually thought to have prevailed until the critiques of the Counter-Reformation historians Bellarmine and Baronius in the later sixteenth century. The present study shows, however, that medieval Spanish historians did not consider Santiago the founder of the Spanish Church. While most historians writing between 1100 and 1450 upheld the tradition of the translation of the apostle’s relics to Compostela, they did not consistently maintain that he had come to Spain during his lifetime. The tradition of “the coming of the apostle” only become a central part of national historiography in the Renaissance, when humanist historians began to seek apostolic origins for Spanish Catholicism. The tradition was further consolidated during the Counter-Reformation, as part of a defensive response to Protestant challenges to the cult of the saints.

Demosthenes has been renowned since antiquity as one of the major Athenian orators of the fourth century B.C. His speeches were effectively forgotten in the Latin-speaking west after the fall of the Roman Empire, though they continued to be studied in the Byzantine east. Those speeches were among the first Greek texts to be brought to Italy during the Renaissance, and significant humanists translated some of them into Latin. This essay considers the growth and development of these early humanist studies. Humanists were interested in Demosthenes because of his ancient fame, and because they considered that he could help them improve their own oratory, but overall his place in their range of interests was fairly restricted. Renaissance studies of Demosthenes are significant, however, because they inspired and in some ways influenced later work.