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"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Renaissance Astrology. In Act I Scene II of King Lear, the ne'er do well Edmund steps forward and rails at the weakness and cynicism of his fellow men: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, - often the surfeit of our own behaviour, - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity. The focus of his attack is astrology and the credulity of those who fall for its charms. But the idea that earthly life was ordained in the heavens was essential to the Renaissance understanding of the world. The movements of the heavens influenced many things from the practice of medicine to major political decisions. Every renaissance court had its astrologer including Elizabeth Ist and the mysterious Dr. John Dee who chose the most propitious date for her coronation. But astrologers also worked in the universities and on the streets, reading horoscopes, predicting crop failures and rivalling priests and doctors as pillars of the local community. But why did astrological ideas flourish in the period, how did astrologers interpret and influence the course of events and what new ideas eventually brought the astrological edifice tumbling down? With Peter Forshaw, Lecturer in Renaissance Philosophies at Birkbeck, University of London; Lauren Kassell, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge; and Jonathan Sawday, Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde."

"The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy. March 2, 2010-May 23, 2010. Medieval Sculpture Hall. The renovation of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon provides an opportunity for the unprecedented loan of the alabaster mourner figures from the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. Each of the statuettes is approximately sixteen inches high. They were carved by Jean de La Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier between 1443-1456 for the ducal tomb originally in the church of Champmol, and they follow the precedent of the mourner figures carved by Claus Sluter and colleagues for the tomb of Duke Philip the Bold (1342-1404). The tombs are celebrated as among the most sumptuous and innovative of the late Middle Ages. The primary innovation was the space given to the figures of the grieving mourners on the base of the tomb, who seem to pass through the real arcades of a cloister."

„In August 1617 a small group of Saxon nobles gathered in Castle Hornstein near Weimar to establish a type of institution previously unknown on German soil ‚the learned society'. It was based on the Italian model of the previous century and specifically on the Academia della Crusca of Florence, to whose ranks one of its founding members, Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen, had been elected in 1600. Ludwig was the chief benefactor and the head of this new German society until his death in 1650, and he and its other founding members sought inspiration in their pursuit of learning from the many Italian literary societies which had contributed so much to the purification and normalization of Italian letters in the sixteenth century. The new German society was called the ‚Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft', the Fruitbearing Society, and its motto was „Alles zum Nutzen" - ‚Everything for a purpose'".

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque. What do the music of Bach, the Colonnades of St Peter's, the paintings of Caravaggio and the rebuilding of Prague have in common? The answer is the Baroque - a term used to describe a vast array of painting, music, architecture and sculpture from the 17th and 18th centuries. Baroque derives from the word for a misshapen pearl and denotes an art of effusion, drama, grandeur and powerful emotion. Strongly religious it became the aesthetic of choice of absolute monarchs. But the more we examine the Baroque, the more subtle and mysterious it becomes. It is impossible to discuss 17th century Europe without it, yet it is increasingly hard to say what it is. It was coined as a term of abuse, denounced by thinkers of the rational Enlightenment and by Protestant cultures which read into Baroque the excess, decadence and corruption they saw in the Catholic Church. With Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge; Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester and Helen Hills, Professor of Art History at the University of York."

"The first major exhibition in forty-five years devoted to the Burgundian Netherlandish artist Jan Gossart (ca. 1478-1532) brings together Gossart's paintings, drawings, and prints and places them in the context of the art and artists that influenced his transformation from Late Gothic Mannerism to the new Renaissance mode. Gossart was among the first northern artists to travel to Rome to make copies after antique sculpture and introduce historical and mythological subjects with erotic nude figures into the mainstream of northern painting. Most often credited with successfully assimilating Italian Renaissance style into northern European art of the early sixteenth century, he is the pivotal Old Master who changed the course of Flemish art from the Medieval craft tradition of its founder, Jan van Eyck (ca. 1380/90-1441), and charted new territory that eventually led to the great age of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). "

"Engravings are objects of exquisite beauty and incomparable intricacy whose visual language is composed entirely of lines. From 1480 to 1650 Renaissance and Baroque (Early Modern) engravers made dramatic and rapid visual changes to the technique of engraving as they responded to the demands of reproducing artworks. ‚The Brilliant Line' follows these visual transformations and offers new insight intothe special inventiveness and technical virtuosity of Early Modern engravers."

"Perhaps a native of the Vermandois region of Picardy, he was a singer at Milan Cathedral in 1459, remaining there until December 1472. By July 1474 he was one of the 'cantori di capella' in the chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Between 1476 and 1504 he passed into the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, whom he probably accompanied in Rome in 1484. His name first appears among the papal chapel choir in 1486 and recurs sporadically; he had left the choir by 1501. In this Italian period Josquin reached artistic maturity. He then went to France (he may also have done so while at the papal chapel) and probably served Louis XII's court. Although he may have had connections with the Ferrara court (through the Sforzas) in the 1480s and 1490s, no formal relationship with the court is known before 1503 when, for a year, he was maestro di cappella there and the highest-paid singer in the chapel's history. There he probably wrote primarily masses and motets. An outbreak of plague in 1503 forced the court to leave Ferrara (Josquin's place was taken by Obrecht, who fell victim in 1505). He was in the north again, at Notre Dame at Condé, in 1504; he may have been connected with Margaret of Austria's court, 1508-11. He died in 1521. Several portraits survive, one attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Josquin's works gradually became known throughout western Europe and were regarded as models by many composers and theorists. Petrucci's three books of his masses (1502-14) reflect contemporary esteem, as does Attaingnant's collection of his chansons (1550). Several laments were written on his death (including Gombert's elegy Musae Jovis), and as late as 1554 Jacquet of Mantua paid him tribute in a motet. He was praised by 16th-century literary figures (including Castiglione and Rabelais) and was Martin Luther's favourite composer. Josquin was the greatest composer of the high Renaissance, the most varied in invention and the most profound in expression. Much of his music cannot be dated.

Digiberichte.de aims to advance research on late medieval and early modern European travel accounts. This project provides digitized editions and research literature on approx. 375 different travels and pilgrimages through Europe in historical times. The bibliographical database allows quick reference for the travel accounts. Due to copy right restrictions only literature from the 19th century and earlier is provided in full text. The majority of the material provided here is based on the so called "analytical bibliographies" of medieval travel accounts that have been edited under the direction of Prof. Werner Paravicini and published by Peter Lang. Initially only bibliographies on German, French and Dutch travel-accounts have been published, but there was always the idea of collecting material for the other European countries (especially Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia and East-Europe) als well. Digiberichte.de therefore collects information also for travellers from these countries that left accounts of their journey.

I'm Sharon Howard, and since summer 2006 I've been working at the University of Sheffield as Project Manager for two digital primary source projects: the Proceedings of the Old Bailey/Central Criminal Court and London Lives and the Making of Modern London 1690-1800. I'm now working on Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900, a federated search facility for a wide range of distributed electronic resources relating to early modern and nineteenth-century British History. I've been running an early modern resources website in one form or another since about 2000 and started this blog in June 2004.

"Welcome to the new website of Shakespeare's Words, the online version of the best-selling glossary and language companion.The site integrates the full text of the plays and poems with the entire Glossary database, allowing you to search for any word or phrase in Shakespeare's works, and in particular to find all instances of all words that can pose a difficulty to the modern reader."

"Loyset Compère (c. 1445 - 16 August 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italianate Renaissance style to France."

"Aside from information about the history, the objectives and the workings of our organisation, this site offers a comprehensive overview of the research projects and activities carried out since the start of the Alamire Foundation in 1991. Short summaries and practical information concerning the scientific publications are provided. If you want to stay informed of our oncoming activities, please take a look at the calendar."

A fair maid sits at the foot of the tower and weeps and sighs and grieves full sore. Her father asks her: 'What is it, daughter? Do you want a husband, or do you want a lord?' 'I do not want a husband, I do not want a lord, I want my true love who pines in the tower!' 'By God, dear daugther, he will not be yours, for tomorrow he will be hung at dawn!' 'Father, if they hang him, bury me underneath, and people will say: '"This is true love!" (transl. Micrologus2, youtube) "Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397? - November 27, 1474 in Cambrai) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century. From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels. He was the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt." Also cp.: http://www.hoasm.org/IIID/IIIDNetherlanderstoOckegh.html

"Renaissance Forum is an interdisciplinary refereed journal. It specialises in early-modern English literary and historical scholarship and in the critical methodologies of these fields. The journal is published biannually by an editorial board based in the Departments of English and History at the University of Hull."

"Francesco Petrarca was born on July 20, 1304. Commemorations of the 700th anniversary of his birth are taking place this year (2004), primarily in Italy but also around the world and in the United States. At Yale University, the celebration includes an international conference on Petrarch, September 23 - 25, and an exhibition at the Beinecke Library, as well as this web exhibition. The Beinecke Library is the leading institution in the United States in collecting Petrarch manuscripts (codices or fragments that contain works by or about Francesco Petrarca), from popular copies of the Canzoniere and Trionfi to the lesser-known De remediis utruisque fortune and Nota de Laura, as well as the memoirs and drawings of the English clergyman and literary editor John Mitford (1781-1859). "

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"But it is now the quadricentennial of Milton's birth in 1608, and it is startling that this work, once central to the literary and religious experience of the English-speaking world, is so much a curiosity, sentenced to the margins by its preoccupations with biblical interpretation, condemned by the density of its prosody, which does not instantly seduce but, instead, commands the reader to give way before it, persisting until no resistance is possible. So perhaps the most we can expect is the library's modest, one-room exhibition "John Milton at 400: A Life Beyond Life."

"Created in Utrecht, The Netherlands, around 1440, the manuscript was taken apart sometime before 1856. Its leaves were shuffled and then rebound into two volumes to make each look more or less complete."