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.
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 ......
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.
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 ......
Martin Luther's relationship to music has been largely downplayed, yet music played a vital role in Luther's life -- and he in turn had a deep and lasting effect on Christian hymnody. In Luther's Liturgical Music Robin Leaver comprehensively explores these connections.
Havana in the 1550s was a small coastal village with a very limited population that was vulnerable to attack. By 1610, however, under Spanish rule it had become one of the best-fortified port cities in the world and an Atlantic center of shipping, commerce, and shipbuilding. Using all available local Cuban sources, including parish registries and ......
Teach a conquistador's writings about his journeys in the Americas In 1527 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca journeyed from Spain to Florida with the ill-fated Panfilo de Narvaez expedition-and ended up wandering by land for years with a small band of survivors before reaching Spanish outposts in modern-day Mexico. He later traveled to South America as ......
