Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 18 - 2025 i Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

The Medici family is one of the most well-known and celebrated families in late medieval Italy. But what do we really know about their rise to power or their impact on Florence and Europe during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries? In this issue, we look at how the Medici family ruled Florence and established strategic alliances, innovated in banking and commercial activities across Europe, aligned their interests with the papacy, and strengthened their authority through their patronage and connections. Like any powerful family, the Medicis had their opponents. Local political struggles and revolts led to their exile from Florence on several occasions. They were also at the center various conspiracies — including assassination attempts by members of the Pazzi family in 1478. At times celebrated for their patronage,…

From a very early stage in the development of chivalry, the martial elite liked to hear stories about chivalric heroes. Heroes and villains Epic Literature told the tales of men like Roland, his friend Oliver, or William of Orange. All set in the land of Charlemagne, these were quasi-historical figures, and the stories woven around them often centred on questions of lordship, fealty, and honour. By the end of the twelfth century, a new form of literature had been introduced from the aristocratic courts of southern France (in particular that of Eleanor of Aquitaine): the romance. Again, the central protagonists were knightly heroes (indeed, some were the same heroes as in the epics), but this time the main focus was on King Arthur and his knights. Their stories wove in…

Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli (1420–1479) was a protagonist in the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and is said to have delivered the first stab wound to Giuliano. Following the asssassination attept, he fled and was eventually captured in Constantinople (now Istanbul). Upon his return to Florence, he was publicly hung from a window of the Palazzo del Capitano on 29 December 1479. Leonardo da Vinci captured the fate of this merchant in a pen and ink sketch – an eye-witness account – showing Baroncelli lifeless, with his arms ties behind his back, and still garbed in his Turkish robes. Leonardo's accompanying text reads: “A tan-coloured small cap, a doublet of black serge, a black jerkin lined a blue coat lined, with fur of foxes' breasts, and the collar of the jerkin covered…

Like other members of the Medici family during the fifteenth century, Cosimo ‘the Elder’ was not the official ruler of Florence, but he did achieve an unrivalled level of authority and influence during his lifetime. After his death in 1464, he was commemorated in a bronze portrait medal, which labels him as Pater Patriae (‘Father of the Nation’), an ancient Roman moniker bestowed on him by the Florentine government. The celebration of an individual in this way closely aligns Cosimo with the state and recalls imperial portraits on Roman coins. The imagery on the reverse of the medal conjures a ruler dedicated to the public good, with a personification of ‘Florentia’ accompanied by a motto alluding to the peace and liberty that come with beneficent governance.…

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469, the same year Lorenzo de' Medici (il Magnifico) came to power. First male child after two daughters, Niccolò would grow up very close to his father, Bernardo, an ex- lawyer, mostly unemployed, with good contacts but no significant wealth or influence. Florence One says of Lorenzo il Magnifico that he ‘came to power’, but officially Florence was a republic and since Lorenzo was only twenty years old in 1469 he was far too young to hold elected office; an explanation is required. When, in the thirteenth century, the Florentines had thrown out the noble families who used to run the town, they introduced a republican constitution of exemplary idealism. A government of eight priori led by one gonfaloniere, or prime minister, would…

In fact, the very concept of “life expectancy” itself is a textbook example of what some have called the “meaningless mean.” This occurs when an average (or mean) is calculated in a way that lacks significance. For instance, if you take a group of 100 people, with one half dying before reaching one year old and the other half living to 70, the average lifespan would be 35. However, in this scenario, no one actually dies at 35. This is what happened with medieval life expectancy: a remarkably high rate of infant mortality coexisted with a significant number of elderly people. Medieval philosophers and scholars traditionally divided human life into several stages, much like we do today. The number of stages varied across authors and ranged from four to seven.…

The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 By Raymond de Roover Harvard University Press, 1963 ISBN: 978-1893122321 April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici By Lauro Martines London: Pimlico, 2004 ISBN: 978-0195176094 The Medici By Mary Hollingsworth Head of Zeus, 2017 ISBN: 978-1786691521 A Short History of Florence and the Florentine Republic By Brian Jeffrey Maxson Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023 ISBN:978-1788314893 Cosimo De' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance By Dale Kent Yale University Press, 2000 ISBN: 978-0300081282 The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494) By Nicolai Rubinstein Oxford University Press, 1997 ISBN: 978-0198174189 Lorenzo de' Medici and the Art of Magnificence By Francis William Kent Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004 ISBN: 978-0801878688 The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence By Natalie…

By the time Ferdinand Magellan stepped foot on the island of Mactan in 1521, he found himself at the very heart of an archipelago populated by diverse groups nestled on the eastern end of the great maritime Silk Road. This flourishing Indian Ocean trade network, which existed for several centuries before Magellan's arrival, stretched from as far as East Africa all the way to China. The Philippines was at the intersection of Malay-speaking Southeast Asian trade and imported “porcelain, finished silk, musk, stoneware, incense, artillery, and tin. Brass, steel blades, and woven mats were brought in from Borneo, batik from Java, and precious stones from countries such as Burma” (Francia, 30). The Philippine islands on the global stage By the fourteenth century, the Philippine islands received as many as five…

The Military Order of the Teutonic Knights was born in the Holy Land in the late twelfth century as an order of monk-knights in the likeness of the famous Templars and Hospitallers. As its name suggests, the Teutonic Order was composed mainly of German knights. Having serious competitors in the Levant, the Order had to expand into other European territories. After a brief intervention in Transylvania, the knights were finally summoned to Prussia by the Polish Duke Conrad of Mazovia, who requested their help in subduing the pagan tribes on the Baltic coasts east of the mouth of the Vistula in 1222. After obtaining lands in Prussia as a reward for their help, the Order continued its expansion in the border area of present-day Poland, Russia, and Lithuania, incorporating in…

The ruins of the Saints Sergius and Bacchus were found on the left bank of the Buna River near Shkodër. The church was first built in the sixth century and then rebuilt in 1290 by Helen of Anjou, who was the queen of Serbia, Dioclea, Albania, Hilma, Dalmatia, and the coastal areas. Surviving inscriptions Few textual sources related to the monument have survived. The earliest document mentioning the church dates to 1100. It reads: “Me, the Abbot of the monastery, the sanctuary of the martyrs Sergji and Bacchus, by the order of our Lord the king, I wrote in the presence of archbishop Peter and other nobles.” The second document dates to 19 August 1166 and describes the participation of the Abbot of the monastery in the consecration of the…

But their relationship with their native city has not been without moments of controversy. The Medici were exiled from Florence on several occasions, most notably in 1433–1434, 1494–1512, and 1527– 1530, due to political struggles and popular revolts. During these conflicts, some perceived the Medici as tyrants and often criticized their economic and foreign policy decisions. Some of these perceptions linger today, despite the Medici's many contributions to the city and beyond. Politics and banking Especially during the fifteenth century, the Medici stabilized the political, economic, and cultural structures of Florence by serving as de facto rulers, expanding their banking activities, forging political alliances, and using art to promote their image and advance their agendas. The Medici revolutionized banking by establishing an international network of banks with branches in major…

The Medici and the Pazzi both had a long history in Florence that could be traced back hundreds of years. The Medici were ‘gente nuova’ – newcomers, merchants from the Mugello region north of the city who had arrived in Florence around the thirteenth century. Although their lineage and activity can be traced over several generations, it was not until the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries that they rose to prominence. Early history The Pazzi, meanwhile, were a noble family of ancient stock. They claimed illustrious ancient Roman origins and maintained that their ancestor, Pazzino de' Pazzi, had been the first knight over the wall of Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099. Due to their involvement in the violent Guelph-Ghibelline conflict in the thirteenth century, however, the Pazzi…

As usual, chronicles give implausible figures for the combatants in battle. Some historians have estimated roughly 27,000 Germans and 39,000 Slavs. However, such figures do not hold up. Others have estimated the Germans at 3,850 knights, 3,000 squires, and 4,000 mounted archers and crossbowmen, compared to 16,500 Polish-Lithuanians. These numbers still seem excessive. From feudal service records, we know that the Order theoretically numbered 426 knights, 3,200 servants, 5,872 sergeants, 1,963 militia from six cities, and 1,500 more from the abbeys, totaling 13,000 fighters between 1398 and 1408. However, England had 6,000 knights in its Doomesday Book, but no more than 15% or 30% of them were finally called for campaign, as was the case with the 19,000 warriors in the lists of the Kingdom of Sicily, of whom only…

Tostig's father was the renowned Earl Godwin, a man whose appetite for power, wealth, and land was prodigious. Born in the county of Sussex to a lesser English thegn (nobleman) Earl Godwin married Gyrtha, the daughter of a Danish warlord. Earl Godwin and his family By the 1040s, Earl Godwin established himself as the English King Edward's most powerful supporter. Godwin had become the second largest landowner in England and Earl of Wessex. He had six sons and four daughters. Four of those sons would die bloodily within a few weeks of each other in 1066. King Edward had no children of his own and for his religious piety he was later known as “The Confessor.” Harold was the second son and Tostig a younger son, with about five years…

Birth of the Red Dragon: Wales and the Wars of the Roses By Stephen David ISBN: 978-1398112711 Amberly Press, 2024 £22.99 (hardback) www.amberley-books.com This well-constructed book succeeds in making the hugely complicated and confused history of the struggle between the Houses of Lancaster and York comprehensible for the general reader, as well as the student of the Welsh contribution to the game of thrones that decided who was King of England for thirty years between the 1450s and the 1480s. Both factions descended from two sons of Edward III: the Lancastrians through John of Gaunt; the Yorks through the Duke of York. When Henry V died in 1422, his young son Henry, aged only ten months, succeeded to the throne and was assisted in his childhood reign by regents.…