Nel corso del Tre e Quattrocento i domini sabaudi si estesero a buona parte del Piemonte, andando sempre più frequentemente a includere e a sovrapporsi a dominazioni signorili locali preesistenti. L’intervento indaga l’influenza di questi differenti rapporti di fedeltà politica fra signori e sudditi sulle scelte onomastiche degli individui, mettendo a confronto due territori in prospettiva diacronica. Da un lato, la città di Torino, al centro dei domini sabaudi dalla fine del secolo XIII, le cui fonti consentono un’analisi approfondita dei nomi prevalenti fra abitanti di vario livello economico, ceto sociale e provenienza; dall’altro, la Valchiusella, una vallata delle Alpi Graie saldamente controllata dai conti di Castellamonte e conti di San Martino almeno dal secolo XII. L’intento della ricerca è valutare l’incidenza dei rapporti di fedeltà nello stock onomastico locale, ma anche l’emergere di altre influenze (religiose, culturali, comunitarie) nella scelta dei nomi personali.
Stéphane Lecouteux, Laurianne Robinet, Lucie Arberet
et al.
The first two phases of the Material Study of the Ancient Manuscripts of Mont Saint-Michel project (projet Étude matérielle des manuscrits anciens du Mont Saint-Michel, 2018-2024) made possible to analyze the materials – parchments, inks and coloring materials – used in the composition of nearly seventy manuscripts produced by the scriptorium of Mont Saint-Michel between 980 and 1100. The practices of the copyists and artists active during this period were thus characterized and their evolutions were followed over approximately 120 years. This article focuses more specifically on the case of the animal species used to make the parchment supports. The choice by copyists and artists of quality parchments (mostly calfskin; exceptionally goatskin) to receive the richest decorations of the manuscripts produced between 1040 and 1080 betrays a workshop practice that was then well established: it corresponds very exactly to the first artistic peak of the Mont Saint-Michel scriptorium, where Romanesque art was strongly influenced by the Anglo-Saxon style of Winchester. This use of calfskin provides valuable informations to reconstruct the textual and iconographic gaps due to the loss of leaves at the head of codicological units, which is most often explained by the looting of decorations by collectors of medieval illuminations.
Optical Music Recognition (OMR) is a cornerstone of music digitization initiatives in cultural heritage, yet it remains limited by the scarcity of annotated data and the complexity of historical manuscripts. In this paper, we present a preliminary study of Active Learning (AL) and Sequential Learning (SL) tailored for object detection and layout recognition in an old medieval music manuscript. Leveraging YOLOv8, our system selects samples with the highest uncertainty (lowest prediction confidence) for iterative labeling and retraining. Our approach starts with a single annotated image and successfully boosts performance while minimizing manual labeling. Experimental results indicate that comparable accuracy to fully supervised training can be achieved with significantly fewer labeled examples. We test the methodology as a preliminary investigation on a novel dataset offered to the community by the Anonymous project, which studies laude, a poetical-musical genre spread across Italy during the 12th-16th Century. We show that in the manuscript at-hand, uncertainty-based AL is not effective and advocates for more usable methods in data-scarcity scenarios.
Valter Di Cecco, Aurelio Manzi, Camillo Zulli
et al.
Studying the evolution of seed morphology and, in turn, the evolution of cultivars across time and space is of fundamental importance to agriculture and archaeology. The identification of ancient and modern grapevine (<i>Vitis vinifera</i> L.) cultivars is essential for understanding the historical evolution of grape cultivation. Grape seed morphology provides valuable information to explore the evolution of grape cultivars over time and space. The main aim of our study was to build a comprehensive regional database of grape seed morphological traits from modern and archaeological wine cultivars and wild grape species. We aimed to identify which seeds of modern grape cultivars exhibited morphological similarities to archaeological cultivars. This study focused on fifteen distinct modern types of seeds and two archaeological samples from the Byzantine-to-Early Medieval period. We acquired digital images of seeds using a flatbed scanner. For each sample, 100 seeds were randomly selected, and morphometric data on each seed were gathered using ImageJ. Differences among the seed cultivars were investigated using linear discriminant analysis. Archaeological seeds were found to be more similar to cultivated <i>V. vinifera</i> cultivars rather than <i>V. sylvestris</i> populations. Among the cultivated cultivars, Sangiovese and Tosta antica resulted to be cultivars most similar cultivars to the archaeological ones. The morphometric analysis of grape seeds proved to be a valuable resource for investigating the evolution of vine cultivars throughout history. Combining image analysis techniques with genetic data will open new perspectives for studying the origins of and variations in grape cultivars, contributing to the conservation and enhancement of viticultural heritage.
The way the topic of black-body radiation is presented in standard textbooks (i.e. from Rayleigh-Jeans to Max Planck) does not follow the actual historical timeline of the understanding of the black-body radiation problem. Authors believe that a presentation which follows an actual timeline of the ideas (although not a logical presentation of the field) would be of interest not only from the history of science perspective but also from a pedagogical perspective. Therefore, we attempt a concise history of this very interesting field of science.
Instabilities of the monsoon climate system, along with alternating periods of severe dryness and wetness, are known to have punctuated and disrupted the lives of peoples and institutions across Asia during medieval times. As far as India is concerned, the topic has attracted little attention from historians and archaeologists. Did climatic variations play a determining role in societal changes in medieval times? The aim of this article is not to answer, but to raise and refine this question by calling for new interdisciplinary initiatives which would enrich our reading and understanding of the past and contribute different threads to the narratives of medieval history and archaeology. While doing so, it highlights two lingering ‘lacks’ underlying the well-established historiography: the lack of attention to nature, and thus to climate; and the lack of archaeology. Attention is then focused on recent advances in palaeoclimatology and in research linking climate and society, in which India is yet to find a substantial place. Finally, the article outlines prospects and openings for the study of the medieval past as it relates to the climate-water-society nexus, by presenting an ongoing project called MANDU exploring histories and archaeologies of the land-waterscapes of Mandu in Central India.
This article responds to a critical research challenge in Medieval philosophy scholarship regarding the internal periodisation of the register. By arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349–1464, the era between the deaths of William of Ockham and Nicholas of Cusa), defined as ‘the transformation of high scholasticism on the basis of a selective departure thereof’, the article specifies a predisposition in the majority of introductions to and commentaries in Medieval philosophy to proceed straight from 1349 to 1464, understating 115 years of pertinent Medieval philosophical discourse. It is argued that in the modern account of Medieval philosophy, this understatement is manifested in either a predating of Renaissance philosophy to close the gap between 1349 and 1464 as far as possible or in proceeding straight from 1349 to Renaissance philosophy. The article presents five unique philosophical themes from this delicate period, indicating that ‘post-scholasticism’ was indeed a productive period in late Medieval philosophy, which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy. The period 1349–1464 should accordingly be appreciated for its idiosyncratic contributions to the history of ideas in the late-14th and early-15th centuries, with reference to the political intensification of the via moderna, the pivotal separation of philosophy and theology and the resulting independence of the natural sciences, in res critique of institutions, transforming pragmatics and the rise of philosophical materialism.
Contribution: This article contributes to methodological development in Medieval philosophy by responding to a critical research challenge regarding the internal periodisation of the later Middle Ages. Arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349 to 1464 in Medieval philosophy, the article presents unique philosophical themes from the period, indicating that it was a productive stage in late Medieval philosophy which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy.
Il saggio propone una rilettura della storia politica dell’Aquila da metà Trecento a fine Quattrocento, per attribuire il giusto peso a tre attori politici: signori, sovrani, mercanti. Attraverso l’analisi di forme e procedure istituzionali, gruppi e articolazioni sociali e fazioni si rimarca la centralità dei mercanti nel delineare gli assetti politici e la rappresentanza, si illustrano le con- vergenze e le divergenze fra partes e gruppo dirigente, e la sinergia fra quest’ultimo e i signori cittadini. Tale sinergia fu essenziale per il controllo del contado – di cui si esamina il ruolo politico – e per la negoziazione con la monarchia, che permette di considerare quest’ultima come una risorsa per gli aquilani. In conclusione, si riprendono gli aspetti trattati per mettere in luce alcuni elementi della cultura politica aquilana.
One of the variants for systematizing the activities of the historian of mathematics is proposed, as well as a scheme for organizing research and search work in the preparation of scientific articles and reports on the history of science.
La vida del trobador Guillem de Berguedà és una de les més avalades per la documentació de la literatura occitana medieval. L’únic punt una mica obscur el constitueix la seva mort. Aquest article proposa una resposta a la vaga frase que la narra.
Pieter Judson gives us something we have desperately needed: a new history of the Habsburg Empire. At least in the English-speaking world, general knowledge of the Habsburg Empire has been reliant on older studies, studies which have adhered to a few narrative tropes of Habsburg despotism, economic backwardness, national renaissance, and the idea that the monarchy was a prison of the peoples from which the peoples were able to eventually break free. One of the few histories of the Habsburg Empire that is still in print is A. J. P. Taylor’s 1948 volume which viewed the monarchy as a medieval holdover, a monstrosity unfit to survive in the modern era.1 C. A. Macartney began his magnum opus, published in the late 1960s, with the death of Joseph II. At that point, the Habsburg Empire entered a long, steady decline that culminated in the suicide committed in the First World War.2 Other volumes followed, offering a deeper experience for tourists, for people who want to learn a little more about the names that grace the statutes from Vienna to Trieste. But they also have convinced generations of students and scholars that the Habsburg Empire was always behind the times and generally not worth studying. This has been the case even as Europe underwent a massive integration project which now has brought almost all the former territories of the empire under one European roof. For years, then, the general histories of the monarchy have been dominated by these old stories, written either directly after the fall of the monarchy or, more likely, during the Cold War. The Iron Curtain cut off the former lands of the Habsburg Empire from each other, but the cold war histories lumped the Habsburg Empire into the prehistory of the East and therefore used the monarchy to explain how the East became backward and undemocratic. We know now that the discourses which split Europe between a progressive west and a backward east have themselves a long history, one that stretches into the mind of the Enlightenment.3 But there has been no general history of the monarchy that faces up to the old narratives of doom and gloom, long decline, or as Gary Cohen pithily labelled it, ‘Absolutism and Anarchy’.4 Judson has recently laid down the editorship of the Austrian History Yearbook after ten years at the helm. The result of his service to the academic community is a volume that deftly synthesizes new work and research on the monarchy and is able then to offer a fundamentally new and revised interpretation of Habsburg history. Judson’s book aims to disrupt and destroy those narratives of absolutism and anarchy that have characterized the Habsburg Empire for so long, while also offering a work of historical reorientation that actually integrates this great land empire more into a wider history of Europe. This book is therefore not a textbook and not a general history — though it can be read that way. Judson’s ‘new history’ defies genres as it deftly moves between narrative and analytical sections
The article presents the sampling study of the images of holy men and women in the hagiographical literature of Byzantium (7th – 12th centuries) on the basis of the three types of sanctity (celibate monastic saint, the former spouse in the monastery, lay sanctity). The images of male and female saints had common features. The particular properties of the male and female saints’ images connected with gender stereotypes of Byzantine society had been evaluated. The image of female saint associated with emotionality, female skills, contraposition of female weakness and male virtues. The image of saint laywomen was related with virtues of good wife. The image of male saint was characterized by such virtues as wisdom, literacy, successfulness in the social field. The saint layman often turned away from domestic troubles.
John Alexander Arredondo García, Camilo Ramírez Maluendas
In this paper, we chronologically recount several situations that have contributed to the development and formalization of the objects known as imaginary or complex numbers. We will begin by introducing the earliest documented knowing for calculating the square root of a negative quantity, attributed to the Greek mathematician Heron of Alexandria. From there, we will progress through history to explore the formal concept of complex numbers given by William Rowan Hamilton.
La aparición de un testimonio desconocido con versiones medievales de romances trovadorescos supone una importante contribución a la historia del romancero antiguo. El manuscrito fragmentario de principios del siglo XVI contiene 5 romances cortesanos, uno de ellos desconocido en la tradición antigua, El Infante cautivo, que ha sobrevivido en la tradición oral moderna judeo española de oriente.