Tobias Capwell continues his history of jousting through surviving artefacts at the Royal Armouries. He reveals how the jousts and tournaments of the Renaissance transported knightly combat into a performance art, with demonstrations of aristocratic skill, superhuman strength and cutting-edge equipment.
Explores the sociogenesis and development of the French royal mistress, examining the careers of nine of the most significant holders of that title between 1444 and the final years of the ancien regime.
The Royal Armouries is Britain's oldest museum, still partly housed in its original buildings in the Tower of London. The core of the collection is the medieval arsenal that was restocked by Henry VIII and on show to privileged visitors as early as the reign of Elizabeth I. After 1660, the general public was admitted and a series of spectacular ......
Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520-1541
The conquest of Guatemala was brutal, prolonged and complex, fraught with intrigue and deception, and not at all clear-cut. Yet views persist of it as an armed confrontation whose stakes were evident and whose outcomes were decisive, especially in favor of the Spaniards. A critical reappraisal is long overdue, one that calls for us to reconsider ......
Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge-multilingual and transregional ......
Two of the world's leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagun's monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagun's Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished ......
Two of the world's leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagun's monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagun's Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished ......
For the ancient and modern Maya, the landscape is ruled by powerful entities in the form of geographic features like caves, mountains, springs, and abandoned cities - spirits who must be entreated, through visits and rituals, for permission to plant, harvest, build, or travel their territories. Consequently, such places have served as points of ......
