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Networking in Late Medieval Central Europe
Exploring the formation of networks across late medieval Central Europe, this book examines the complex interaction of merchants, students, artists, and diplomats in a web of connections that linked the region. These individuals were friends in business ventures, occasionally families, and not infrequently foes. No single activity linked them, but rather their interconnectivity through matrices based in diverse modalities was key. Partnerships were not always friendship networks, art was sometimes passed between enemies, and families were created for financial gain. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the chapters focus on inclusion and exclusion within intercultural networks, both interpersonal and artistic, using a wide spectrum of source materials and methodological approaches.
The concept of friends is considered broadly, not only as connections of mutual affection but also simply through business relationships. Families are considered in terms of how they helped or hindered local integration for foreigners and the matrimonial strategies they pursued. Networks were also deeply impacted by rivalry and hostility.
Beata Mozejko (University of Gdansk) is Professor of History specializing in medieval history and the auxiliary sciences of history; the author of other 150 papers, articles, and monographs, including “Peter von Danzig, The story of Great Caravel 1462-1475” (Brill 2020); member of the Bureau of Committee on Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2020-2023); and member of the Committee of Gdansk Encyklopedia (Gedanopedia).
Anna Paulina Ortowska studied history and history of arts at the University of Warsaw and Christian-Albrecht-University in Kiel. In Kiel, she worked on her PhD on an account book from Gdansk written in the first half of the fifteenth century. After defending her thesis in 2015, she went to the Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Now she works at the Institute for Comparative Urban History in Minster, Germany, where she develops the Historical Town Atlasses based on the said ontology.
Leslie Carr-Riegel received her doctorate in Medieval Studies from the Central European University in 2021. She has historically focused on waste management, medieval trade relations between Poland and Italy, and legal history, but is mostly dedicated to teaching the next generation of scholars. She has worked as a fellow with the Medici Archive Project, the Princeton Global History Project, and the Kate Hamburger Kolleg at the University of Minster.
Contributors
Mer. Pfemysl Bar, PhD, works at the Department of Auxiliary Historical Sciences and Archive Studies, Masaryk University, Brno. His research focuses on Teutonic Order, Bohemia, diplomacy, and propaganda in the Middle Ages.
Agnieszka Bartoszewicz is Professor of Medieval History at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on the history of social communication in the Middle Ages. In 2017, she published the book Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 39, Turnhout 2017). Recently, she was scientific editor of the publication of Warsaw bench books, which include the minutes of the office and document life of Old Warsaw inhabitants at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern Period (Ksiegi tawnicze Stare} Warszawy z lat 1453-1535, Warszawa 2020).
Leslie Carr-Riegel received her doctorate in Medieval Studies from the Central European University in 2021. She has historically focused on waste management, medieval trade relations between Poland and Italy, and legal history, but is mostly dedicated to teaching the next generation of scholars. She has worked as a fellow with the Medici Archive Project, the Princeton Global History Project, and the Kate Hamburger Kolleg at the University of Minster.
Anna Horeczy received her PhD in history in 2018 from the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and since 2019 works there as an adjunct. Her research interests focus on the reception of the Italian culture in late medieval and early modern Poland and the presence of the Polish students at the Italian universities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Zrinka Nikolié Jakus defended her PhD on the formation of Dalmatian urban nobility in 2004. Her current position is Associate Professor at the Department of History (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) at the University of Zagreb. She published a monograph Rodaci i bliznji: dalmatinsko gradsko plemstvo u ranom srednjem vijeku (Kith and kin: Dalmatian urban nobility in the Early Middle Ages) (Zagreb, 2003) and various articles.
Marija Karbié defended her M.Phil. dissertation (Family in the Urban Settlements of Medieval Slavonia, thirteenth to sixteenth centuries) in 2001 and her doctoral thesis (The Noble Kindred of Borié ban. An Example of a Noble Kindred from Pozega County) in 2005, both at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
Sabina Madgearu is a graduate of the University of Bucharest (BA, 1998; PhD, 2020) and of the Central European University (MA, 2003). Working both as a teacher of English (tenure) and as an independent researcher in the field of castles and fortifications, illuminated manuscripts, and medieval literature, she has taken part in national and international conferences and published two books: Jnter-texting English (2018) and Visions of Medieval Castles in Fourteenth and Fifteenth- Century Illuminations Produced in France (2022).
Anu Mand (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of History, Archaeology and Art History of Tallinn University. Her main research interests are in the social and cultural history of medieval and early modern Estonia and Latvia. She is the author of Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350-1550 (Brepols, 2005), Medieval Altars and Altarpieces (2019, in Estonian), and several other books.
Beata MozZejko (University of Gdansk) is Professor of History specializing in medieval history and the auxiliary sciences of history; the author of other 150 papers, articles, and monographs, including “Peter von Danzig, The story of Great Caravel 1462-1475” (Brill 2020); member of the Bureau of Committee on Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2020-2023); and member of the Committee of Gdansk Encyklopedia (Gedanopedia).
Anna Paulina Orlowska studied history and history of arts at the University of Warsaw and Christian-Albrecht-University in Kiel. In Kiel, she worked on her PhD on an account book from Gdansk written in the first half of the fifteenth century. After defending her thesis in 2015, she went to the Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Now she works at the Institute for Comparative Urban History in Minster, Germany, where she develops the Historical Town Atlasses based on the said ontology.
Beata Purc-Stepniak graduated from the Faculty of Humanities of the Catholic University of Lublin. Since 2002, he has been an assistant professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Gdansk. In addition, he works as a certified curator at the National Museum in Gdansk, running the European Painting Studio.
Aleksandra Stanek is a PhD student at the Institute of Art History, Faculty of History at the University of Gdansk. She is currently preparing a dissertation on the creation of art collections by women in the environment of the court of the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon in the fifteenth century and in the United Kingdom of Spain in the sixteenth century.
Tomasz Torbus is art historian, photographer, and travel journalist (1980— 1997); studied art history at the Universities of Warsaw and Hamburg (also social anthropology and pre-Columbian archaeology; PhD: Die Konventsburgen im Deutschordensland PreuBen, Mitinchen 1998). From 2000 to 2011, he worked at the Leibniz-Institut (GWZO) in Leipzig, where he worked on the Renaissance royal residences of the Jagiellonians. Since 2010, he was a professor at the University of Gdansk, and from 2012 to 2016, he was its director.
Andrzej Wozinski, Habil. Dr., was professor in the University of Gdansk and art historian. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. From 2001, he worked in the Institute of History of Art of the University of Gdansk. In 2013, he completed his habilitation with the book Jn Starlight. Art and Astrology in Gdansk in 1450-1550. He investigates late medieval and early modern sculpture and painting in Gdansk, Prussia and on the Baltic coast and astrological iconography as well.
Introduction
Beata Mozejko, Anna Paulina Ortowska and Leslie Carr-Riegel
This book stems from the Medieval Central Europe Research Network (MECERN) project, set up in 2014 by the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. The project is defined as “a semi-formal interdisciplinary network of scholars, students and interested others, fostering research, and spreading knowledge of medieval Central Europe”! One of the things that MECERN does is to hold biannual conferences. The first of these, titled A Forgotten Region? East Central Europe in the Global Middle Ages, was put on in Budapest in 2014 by the CEU. The discussions at that time, which looked at this region in the context of the “global Middle Ages”, delving into its cultural, political, religious, and economic ties, inspired the publication of two extensive volumes.” The next two conferences were held in 2016 in Olomouc? and in 2018 in Zagreb.4 The fourth MECERN conference was organized by the University of Gdansk (Faculty of History and Faculty of Law and Administration), taking place on 7-9 April 2021 in an online format due to Covid pandemic restrictions. The working title of the conference was Networks — Cooperation — Rivalry.
Geographically, this book is not limited to Central Europe, but the region acts as a topographical starting point. Contacts that were inside and outside the region are a central focus of this volume, which comprises a wide variety of cross-regional, cross-cultural, and intercultural networks in a set of comparative studies. Organized into a series of case studies, each chapter uses qualitative analysis to approach network formation from a different perspective. The timeframe encompasses the Late Middle Ages, ranging from the fourteenth-to the early sixteenth-century. The concept of friends is considered broadly, as friends who were connected by mutual affection but also simply through business relationships. Families, meanwhile, are considered in terms of how they helped or hindered local integration for foreigners and the matrimonial strategies they pursued. Networks were also deeply impacted by rivalry and here foes come to the fore. Hostility could stem from religions, politics, and economics and these frequently interrelated themes are explored.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the chapters in this volume focus on inclusion and exclusion within intercultural networks, both interpersonal and artistic, using a wide spectrum of source materials and methodological approaches. The first part is dedicated to the networks built by immigrants. It starts with the analysis of student networks in Italy, focusing on students coming from Poland. With the next chapter analysing the presence of Italians in Poland, the spotlight shifts to economic-driven immigration. The following chapters, examining different geographical regions, answer the following questions: What were the reasons of merchants coming to foreign cities, and how did they organize their lives there? What made them decide to settle in these cities and how did they build their businesses? How much did it affect their family life? Was there any matrimonial policy? Further chapters move beyond the economic sphere and explore how intellectual relationships were built, how important diplomatic players interacted and manipulated situations, and finally focuses on the field of art and artistic transfer. Delved into are questions about whether networks affected artistic relations in art. What role did artists play in all of this? Did the patterns of shaping art permeate through the relationships of artists? Where did similarities come from and where did the differences in artistic expression come from?
This book encompasses 12 unique studies dealing with different types of networks which spanned Central-Eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages? In Chapter 1, Anna Horeczy’s work delves into the network of Polish students who travelled to Italy to attend University between 1370 and 1470. During that period, she has identified 90 Polish individuals who made the journey to the peninsula, half choosing to study at the great Alma Mater in Bologna, with the rest dedicating their studies in Padua, Rome, Ferrara, Perugia, and Siena. Her findings show that those who travelled to Italy had frequently studied previously in Crakow, Prague, or another German University but chose to complete their work on the peninsula under famous masters. Rather than the universities themselves, Polish students were attracted to the prestigious professors who taught in Italy, studying primarily Canon law, Roman law, and medicine. Once matriculated, numerous Poles became rectors and vice-rectors at Italian universities and there appears to be a strong correlation between their earlier studies in Central Europe and success abroad. They also appear to have been well-integrated into the local student life, witnessing at the exams of not only other Polish students, but also Hungarians, Czechs, Germans, and Italians. Horeczy clearly tracks the importance of personal contacts between these students and former graduates in their success in entering University and in their later careers. Friendships and connections made during schooling frequently enabled Polish graduates to garner high ecclesiastical office both in Poland and within the Roman Curia. Others, meanwhile, went on to teach or entered the royal administration. University networks, thus, extended from Italy to Poland, engendering success for those who completed their studies abroad.
Also looking at Italian connections to Poland, in Chapter 2, Leslie CarrRiegel relays the life and times of Pietro Bicherano, a Venetian merchant who migrated to Poland in the early fifteenth-century. By accessing primary documents from Venice, Florence, Poland, and Germany, she traces the path of this enterprising individual. During his life, Pietro played many roles: warrior, clerk, merchant, absentee husband, royal ambassador, doting uncle, debtor, and wealthy entrepreneur. Through his trade and ambassadorial activities, he connected Venice with Nuremburg, Wroclaw, and Krakow. He worked as an agent for the famous Kress and Rummel companies of Nuremberg and had extensive dealings with the Medici Bank. While he traded in dye, cloth, and silver, his primary occupation in Poland was the management of the Krakow salt mines. He was also called upon to act as ambassador to the king of Poland by both the Florentine Republic and the Venetian Senate. Yet, for all his success, Pietro’s life holds a number of oddities. After voyaging abroad, he appears to have never returned home, leaving behind forever his wife and four children. He lived the last 20 years of his life in Krakow yet resided always in rented rooms, never took up burgher citizen status, remaining in documents always only and ever, Venetian. Pietro Bicherano was assuredly an exceptional individual, yet his life shows the growing connections between East Central Europe and Italy at the turn of the fifteenth-century.
Chapter 3 then moves from the biography of an individual to a sideways approach that explores the lives of others through the traces left behind by a single person. Anna Paulina Ortowska delves into the story of merchants who established themselves in fifteenth-century Gdansk by examining the town registers from both Torun and Gdansk and more notably by reading between the lines of the account book left by the merchant Johan Pyre. This unique source, which chronicles Pyre’s 35-year career as a prosperous longdistance trader based in Gdansk between 1421 and 1455, reveals much under Ortowska’s careful analysis. By looking into Pyre’s interactions with the broad assortment of merchants he trafficked with, she identifies the varied strategies different groups used when seeking to establish business networks within the city. Merchants from Riga, as fellow members of the Hanseatic League, had a significant advantage and tended to favour a more traditional method of integration. A son of a wealthy family would start a company of an established merchant and after securing his position, would, in time, hand over the business to a younger brother and return to Riga to take his place amongst the city’s governing elite or transfer permanently by marrying into a prosperous local family in Gdansk. Dutch merchants, who were also frequently coming from Hanse towns, were fewer in number in Pyre’s records and were linked to him through silent partnerships or one-off trades so it is difficult to say much for certain as to their methods. Meanwhile, Englishmen who came from beyond the Hanse network were frequently mentioned and records show that they supported each other mightily. They regularly vouched for each other’s creditworthiness, made contacts through the same landlords, and loaned out foreign currencies when establishing themselves but rarely married locals. Merchants from Vilnius, although smaller in number, followed many of the same patterns as the English but were frequently charged higher rates. Traders from Nuremburg, on the other hand, were unique in that while few in number they specialized in long-distance banking transfers, primarily to Rome. A newcomer’s success in Gdansk depended upon many factors: local contacts, language fluency, financial wherewithal, and the helpful mediation of one’s compatriots.
Chapter 4 remains centred on urban integration but carries the story south, as Marija Karbi¢ and Zrinka Nikolié Jakus together compare how marriage ties affected the power structure of urban communities between the Drava River and the Adriatic Sea from the thirteenth to the sixteenthcentury. While many ties bound urban units together, marriage was one of the most common ways for individuals and families entering a new community to integrate into existing social networks. By comparing this region, which rested at the juncture of two cultural zones — the Mediterranean and Central European — Karbié and Nikoli¢ demonstrate the varying ways in which intermarriage promoted immigration and urban development. Individuals who were successful in marrying into established urban families were guaranteed, if not for themselves, then at least for their progeny, an important place in local administration. The sources show a distinct pattern of increasingly common marriages taking place between Dalmatian families who had dominated the region since Late Antiquity and newer Slavic arrivals. Thus, the local Croatian nobility of the surrounding hinterland sought to marry, for example, the daughters of the Zaratian urban elite. Ambitious new arrivals, many coming from the Italian peninsula, who sought business opportunities in the region, also married into local families and quickly climbed the ranks of the urban magistrates. These connections were at times so valuable to the success of the newcomer that husbands would take their wife’s family name. Both daughters and, in particular, widows played a crucial role in solidifying the social status of a newcomer and women were frequently central in arranging marriage alliances. Immigrants, thus, leveraged the social standing and economic status of their new spouse and their family to promote themselves and their children to success by integrating themselves into their new community.
Chapter 5 of this work takes a literary turn. Agnieszka Bartoszewicz’s article deconstructs the language used in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century town books of the city of Old Warsaw to uncover the perceptions and interactions between various ethnic and religious groups at the time. By analysing the personal denominations used in the city’s bench court registers and municipal council registers, she explores how various groups fit into the mental framing of the scribes who recorded documents and the participants in events. The sources used present a wide range of social classes and ethnoreligious affiliations, including: Poles, Jews, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, and Germans. Bartoszewicz points out that while oral proceedings were held in Polish and German, the city’s written records were kept primarily in Latin until the 1570s—1580s. The language of power was, thus, separated from that of the everyday but the two shared a mutual influence. Bartoszewicz takes special note therefore of the moments when vernacular sneaks through as indicative of the surrounding linguistic and cultural milieu. Ethnic and religious affiliations were confirmed in the records primarily through the addition of “nicknames” to individuals, marking them variously as: Judeus, Almanus, Ruthenus, Lithwanus, Bohemus, Armenius, or Italus. She discusses how a change in the status of Jews, in particular, can be noted over the 100-year period, by the increased use of terms such as infidelis, perfidus, or simply “a Jew”. These changes occurring just as other documents demonstrate relations with the Christian population were deteriorating. She counsels caution, however, when interpreting such titles as Almanus, Ruthenus, or Litwanus, as she demonstrates that they can represent not only origin or linguistic capacity, but also religious affiliation or family lineage.
Moving from the urban milieu to a royal one, in Chapter 6, Piemysl Bar takes a deep look into the canny diplomacy of Sigismund of Luxembourg as he navigated a path between Poland-Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights. Bar adds a new facet to the debate regarding Sigismund’s political cunning, approaching the question of whether he pursued a comprehensive strategy or simply responded to events. By looking at the case study of his arbitration between Poland and Lithuania, the Teutonic Knights that ran from 1412 to 1420, Bar analyses Sigismund’s diplomatic acumen. Bar describes in detail Sigismund’s relationship with the two polities and his more personal interactions with its leaders, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order on one side and King Wtadystaw Jagielto of Poland and Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania on the other. Bar concludes that Sigismund never truly believed the conflict could be successfully reconciled and so sought constantly to put himself in the best possible position between the two polities. When Sigismund faced opposition in Bohemia, he leaned towards the Teutonic Knights who could best aid him, but their defeat in 1410 at the battle of Grunwald maybe an alliance with Poland-Lithuania more enticing. Bar demonstrates that overall, Sigismund showed in his diplomatic language, greater partiality and respect for King Wtadystaw Jagielto, addressing him as a royal equal and meeting with him personally several times. Yet, he remained equally willing to ally himself with the Teutonic Knights if it suited his purposes of the moment. Indeed, Sigismund sought to ally himself with both on various occasions with the final aim of creating a broad Central-Eastern European alliance against the encroaching Ottomans.
Chapter 7 continues in the vein of royal politics as Aleksandra Stanek explores the place of the Jagiellonian Dynasty at the Nineteenth Assembly of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The assembly, held in Barcelona in 1519, brought together some of the most illustrious knights of the period, and stood as a staging ground for the election of the soon to be Holy Roman Emperor Charles I Habsburg. As part of the festivities, the coats of arms of knights of the Order were emblazoned on the backrests of the choir of the Cathedral of Barcelona, where they remain in situ to this day. The arms displayed included multiple members of the Jagiellonian dynasty, a move which, when placed within the larger social and political context of this event, achieves historical significance. Founded in Burgundy in 1430, the Order of the Golden Fleece had become, by the sixteenth-century, one of the most premiant knightly honours in Europe, and a powerful tool of international politics. King Louis II was the first Jagiellonian to be inducted into the Order in 1515. Four years later, for the XIX assembly, the highly elaborated Jagiellonian coat of arms of Louis II was placed in a point of honour between that of the Francis I, the King of France, and Jaques de Luxemburg, the Count of Gavere. This, Stanek argues, signalled Charles I Habsburg’s attempt to curry favour in his bid for election to the Imperial throne which would take place in 1520. In a last-minute addition, Sigismund I Jagiellon’s arms were also added to the choir upon his surprise nomination to the Order. This again, Stanek suggests, demonstrates Charles I’s attempt at an alignment with the Jagiellonians. Thus, while neither Louis II nor Sigismund I attended the assembly in person, their political weight was capitalized upon in absentia through this elaborate armorial display. This was perhaps successful, as Charles I was indeed elected Emperor the following year.
Chapter 8 brings religious officials to the fore as Anu Mand investigates from an art-historical perspective, the histories of fourteenth-sixteenthcentury Livonian bishops, uncovering more about these individuals through works commissioned by them or erected in their memory. Her exploration includes not only works from Livonia itself, but also others found in Germany, Scandinavia, and Rome. Given that Livonian bishops frequently resided outside of their sees, many of their tombs were located abroad, including in the Franciscan St. Catherine’s Church in Liibeck, the Basilica of our Lady in Trastevere and Santa Maria dell’ Anima in Rome. Apart from tombs, she traces two doorside stones (Ger. Beischlagsteine) gracing the main building of the University of Rostock in Germany, and a bell in the tower of Vekso Church in Denmark, associated with Livonian bishops. By tracing the visual motifs, heraldry, and inscriptions used in these works, Mand demonstrates the bishop’s broad network of connections to the papal court, monastic orders, and secular authorities. The final work discussed is a cope from Fogd6 Church in Sweden, which originally belonged to John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was later owned and embellished by Bishop Johannes Miinchhausen of Osel-Wiek and Courland. These works demonstrate the often-complicated object biography such visual sources present, which through careful analysis can reveal connections that are otherwise absent from written sources.
Chapter 9 follows the unconventional life of a work of art as Beata PurcStepniak uncovers the multilayered connections between the Last Judgment altarpiece painted by Hans Memling, Renaissance Humanists, Italian high financiers, and artistic currents stretching from Naples to Krakow to Bruges. She traces the altar’s initial commission for the Badia di Fiesole near Florence from the Florentine artist Rogier van der Weyden by members of the Medici Bank based in Bruges to its eventual completion by Memling. Using a careful art-historical approach, Purc-Stepniak demonstrates the importance of the region encompassing today’s Switzerland and Northern Italy in the transmission of ars nuovo. She identifies the many theological themes presented in the altarpiece, which were heavily influenced by philosophical discussions current in the humanist circles travelled in by both the commissioners and artists involved with the work. In particular, she argues that the thoughts of Nicholas Cusa which sought to express theological concepts through geometry and mathematical expressions impacted the work. She further connects the altarpiece to the vibrant humanist discussions and new artistic patterns which were promoted by the mixing of learned individuals at the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence-Rome (1431-1445). Finally, she traces how the work influenced others who came after, as trade routes pushed humanist ideas and artistic expression across the continent, including the works of Martin Schongauer, Zanetto Bugatto, and Albrecht Diirer.
Keeping the focus on art history, in Chapter 10, Andrzej Wozinski explores the artistic exchange that occurred across the narrow northern strip of Prussia between Gdansk and K6nigsberg, during the late fifteenth-and early sixteenth-centuries. Using an art-historical lens, he tracks the flow of artists and their works between KGnigsberg, the capital of the Teutonic Order after their loss of the 13-year war, and the cities newly incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland — Gdansk, Elblag, and Braunsberg. Gdansk was, by far, the largest exporter of art and artists in the region, primarily moving towards the West, but in a few cases also traceable as far as Lithuania and Finland. Despite the political divide, artists from Gdansk, most notably the painter Stephano and the sculptor Master Pawel, found work in K6nigsberg. Archival records indicate that goldsmiths from these two cities attended each other’s fairs and the movement of these and other types of artisans between the two was likely common place. Elblag too generated numerous artists and works that were commissioned for K6nigsberg and smaller centres in the vicinity of Braunsberg. Between KGnigsberg and Braunsberg directly, there is less evidence of exchange but records turn up at least one sculptor named Hans who plied his trade in Braunsberg during the years 1508-1510. In general, it appears likely given the fact that most of the artworks discussed were destroyed or disappeared after 1944, that far greater evidence of artistic exchange in this region would have been traceable had WWII not proven so destructive.
Widening the debate over artistic exchange, in Chapter 11, Tomasz Torbus dives deep into the long debated historical connection between Prussian Crusader architectural forms and the Islamic and Byzantine Cultures in the Middle East. Seeking to move beyond the usual two-dimensional East-West orientalist approach, he acknowledges the many different cultural and religious traditions that inhabited these two traditional spheres. He offers numerous examples of specific types of defensive architecture, including machicolations and so-called Tali, whose genesis can be traced to Arab models. He then complicates the orientalist historiographic narrative that dominated the nineteenth-and twentieth-centuries in both Germany and Poland regarding Teutonic architecture by examining three aspects commonly cited as having been adopted from the “East”. First, the regular square plan castrum-type castle-monastery of the Teutonic Knights; second, latrine towers, called Danzk; and third, motifs and wall decoration techniques with glazed or clinkered bricks. He argues that the square castle plan was influenced by a number of factors but can be nowhere pinned to a single origin. Rather, the ubiquity of the Teutonic square castle plan for the Order is a true innovation. The dansker or toilet tower which was connected to the main castle by a parcham — a porch arcade — he argues was likely influenced in some measure by forms seen by Crusaders in the East, but only further research and more secure dating will allow for concrete conclusions. Finally, the use of colourful geometric patterns in the glazed bricks of Teutonic castles may, indeed, have been in some small measure influenced by eastern models of Byzantine and Islamic art but the technique itself arrived in Prussia via Denmark or Northern Germany. Torbus admits that the final question that continues to plague theories of an Oriental origin for techniques, technologies, and styles is that of transmission, which remains an open inquiry that more research will hopefully close.
The book closes with the final twelfth chapter as Sabina Madgearu uses an art-historical approach to identify a network of castles/walled towns spread across Late Medieval Europe and the Middle East by analysing illuminations contained in a corpus of fifteenth-century French chronicles and travel accounts. Examining the source base from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective, she investigates the evidence of two religious networks through the representation of key event points in the chosen narratives and Christian iconography. The identified western network was embodied by: Lisieux, Bayeux, Evreux, Rouen in Normandy, plus Paris and Vézelay; the eastern network was incorporated by: Jerusalem, Constantinople, Acre, Antioch, Damietta, Nicaea, Tunis, Ascalon, Jaffa, Tyre, Springs of Cresson, and Fonts Marets; and an offshoot to the southeast was represented by Crete, Rhodes, Nicopolis, Nissa/Nish, and Belgrade. Madgearu argues that the emergence of these sites represented the traces of pilgrim paths in both the west and the east taken by travellers across Europe. Statistically, most of the places which appeared to be represented in the sources were bishoprics or archbishoprics while others, such as Nazareth, Acre (in the Near East), Lisieux, and Soissons, stood as obvious sites defending the network of faith. The illuminations studied show a combination of thematic elements depicting miracles and departures on crusade or ornamentation such as crosses, cathedrals, or holy individuals, marking sites in the network of faith and representing an interlocking of temporal and religious authority.
This volume mirrors the unique character of MECERN as an opportunity for researchers from different disciplines to meet and reflect on the problems specific to Central Europe. The twelve papers that make up this volume constitute a multifaceted perspective combining a wide variety of methodological approaches while remaining in constant discourse due to the systematic focus on the research topic. They present the strategies for developing networks not only through positive factors such as connections between friends, partners, and family members but also through negative factors such as rivalry, enmity, and hostility.
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