Although our knowledge about the methods used to design and proportion large-scale works of art during the Trecento and early Quattrocento is gradually expanding, it still remains fragmentary. Paul Frankl was one of the earliest scholars to speculate on the subject. Based on his assumption that the masons in Europe from the late thirteenth through the early sixteenth century constituted an essentially homogeneous group, Frankl argued that the design and proportional methods of medieval Italian masons must be similar, if not identical, to the ‘secrets’ of the German masons published by men such as Matthäus Roriczer, Hans Schmuttermeyer, and Lorenz Lechler in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Indeed, the so-called Roriczer method, which utilizes irrational but geometrically related lengths generated by a series of inscribed or circumscribed squares, has remained a favored means of explaining Italian medieval and early Renaissance design and proportional procedures since Frankl's time.

The literary evidence describing the revelation of the strange Christian prophet Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio in the communities of Italy and France at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century has been treated with considerable interest by a number of scholars. W. B. McDaniel was the first to publish the existing evidence on this unusual figure, together with the text of a hermetic plague tract attributed to him with an English translation. These sources portray a divinely inspired prophet, together with his wife, five children, and his disciples, making his way as a mendicant through Italy and France. Mercurio sees as his task the reprobation of all the sins of the Catholic Church and Christian peoples. He is empowered with the magical gift of the Supreme Being to prepare an antidote against the horrendous plague.

Students of Renaissance thought and letters have long recognized the importance of Marsilio Ficino's Commentarium in Convivium Phtonis De Amore. Thanks to the edition of M. l'Abbé Raymond Marcel, we also know for certain the date and the manner of its origin, and, in outline, the history of the manuscript tradition. The purpose of this note is to summarize and confirm Marcel's account and to add to it some details which have recently come to light.

To begin with, Marcel has laid to rest forever the thesis of A. della Torre that Ficino composed two versions of the De Amore but for religious reasons allowed only one to survive. There was only one Commentarium, occasioned, at least, by the conversation at a real banquet which Ficino and his friends held at Careggi on November 7, 1468, to celebrate the birthday of Plato.

Machiavelli, like Christ, came into history only in his thirties. His youth is virtually unknown to us, until today. We find only a few facts in his father's Ricordi, which covers the period 1474-87; there we learn that at the age of seven Niccolò studied the ‘donatello’ (the short edition of the late-classical grammar of Donatus), first with Master Matteo, near S. Trinità bridge, then, from March 1477, with Battista di Filippo da Poppi, who taught in the church of St. Benedict. At ten, he went to live with Master Piero Maria, to study the Abacus (a short arithmetical treatise) and ‘librettine,’ the elementary calculating system. Lastly, in November 1481, Niccolò began to study Latin, under Pagolo da Ronciglione's direction. And that is all.

The sixteenth-century biography of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini which is attributed to Giovanni Della Casa was only written in part by the author of the Galateo. He did not finish the work, which was completed by his friend and editor, the Florentine philologist Pier Vettori. The biography itself appeared for the first time in the editio princeps of Della Casa's Latin works in 1564 in Florence with the characters of the printing shop of the sons of Bernardo Giunti. The edition, which Vettori prepared, contained also the treatise De officiis inter tenuiores et superiores amicos, Cardinal Pietro Bembo's biography, the Latin poems, and translations of Thucydides’ orations.

The period between 1499 and 1516 witnessed an important revival of the doctrines of Ramón Lull at Paris, one that was to have important consequences for the history of European thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This revival was primarily the work of three men, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, his pupil and friend Charles de Bovelles, and the Catalan theologian Bernardo de Lavinheta. Each man cultivated a different aspect of Lull's thought in his work. Lefèvre appreciated the mystical side of Lull, Bovelles his metaphysics and rational theology, and de Lavinheta his encyclopedism. Through the writings of each Lullism traveled the road from mysticism to metaphysics and encyclopedism and thus handed on to later generations an important foundation upon which to build.

The manuscript diary of the patrician Girolamo Priuli reveals the hidden background of one of the decisive events in the contest between Venice and the great European coalition of Cambrai. The defeat of Agnadello in May 1509 shattered the armies of the republic and threatened the metropolis itself with conquest. One after another the towns of the Veneto voluntarily opened their gates to the invaders, and finally, early in June, Padua fell to the Austrian emperor. Only five weeks after this culminating disaster, however, the Venetians recaptured the city by a sudden coup and so changed the course of the war. When the allies of Cambrai failed to regain Padua by a prolonged siege, the League broke up, and Venice could deal with each of its enemies in turn. By 1515, the republic was able to make peace with its dominions nearly intact.

To anyone with an interest in the general question of Russian relations with the West during the pre-Petrine period of Russian history the so-called heresy of the Judaizers merits special attention. Although our sources for the study of the Judaizing movement are limited, extant materials do provide a unique opportunity to observe Russian society of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at a crucial moment of interaction with foreign elements that criticized, if not denied, traditional Russian beliefs and institutions. At a time of European history when criticism of the established order was rife, when traditions, attitudes, and creeds felt the sharp thrust of reasoned inquiry, Russia was not aloof from the ferment that threatened all dogmatism and rigorism of belief.

The purpose of the present article is to record a decisive period in Charles Tessier's career as a professional lutenist: his residence in England which led to the publication of his first collection of court airs. Tessier's journey to England is no novelty, but whereas information so far was limited to the London publication of his court airs, three unedited letters he addressed to Anthony Bacon now make it possible to project his visit and his publication against their social background. The paper accordingly is a contribution to the as yet unknown biography of Charles Tessier.

Anthony Bacon appears to hold the key to explaining Tessier's visit to England. Their acquaintance may go back to some time between 1579 and 1592 when Bacon was residing in France, studying continental politics and gathering intelligence with a view to putting his experience at the disposal of the English government.

During the Tudor period, Protestant Reformers tended to rely heavily on the Scriptures as a weapon against their Catholic opponents, since they believed that the Scriptures were the ultimate authority for Christian doctrine and conduct. The work of the most important of these, William Tyndale, has already been treated, and it is therefore the intention of this paper to examine the contribution made by one of Tyndale's contemporaries, George Joye.

Joye fled to the continent toward the end of 1527 and between 1529 and 1549 produced a large number of polemical works, among them biblical translations and commentary. It is on this latter aspect of Joye's achievement that the present study intends to focus, specifically on his The exposicion of Daniel the Prophete (1545).

Giovanni Caldiera (ca. 1400 - ca. 1474) was well known in his day as a secondary figure of the Venetian humanist circle. An examination of his three moral philosophical works—the De virtutibus moralibus et theologicis, the De iconomia veneta, and the De praestantia venetae politiae—will provide, it is hoped, an understanding of the fundamental nature of his intellectual activity. Committed as much to the scholastic and Aristotelian as to the humanist traditions, Caldiera draws on each of these to affirm the values of the Venetian patriciate he served as self-appointed spokesman. He merits attention, therefore, not only as a creative thinker, but also as a resourceful apologist for the ideals and objectives of a governing élite seeking to maintain its power at home and to extend it on land and sea abroad.

Historians have overlooked a significant aspect of Ferdinand and Isabella's Santa Hermandad. The canon of historical knowledge has long included the part played by the Hermandad army in royal efforts to establish control over Castile and to conquer Granada. However, the use made of these troops was equally important in the period after the victory over the Moors. After 1492 the record of the Hermandad army clearly demonstrates the continuing process of growing royal power and in so doing indicates the basic patterns of the reign. The key is found in the hitherto unappreciated participation of the Hermandad army in the Italian campaigns of 1495-98.

The Wars of Religion in France greatly stimulated the use of printing for partisan purposes. Books and pamphlets proliferated as France's internal divisions deepened. Several generations of historians have studied the content and tried to assess the impact of the propaganda issuing from the pens of royalist, Huguenot, and Leaguer polemicists. But another use of the press, the promotion of a royal minister's career and policy, has received little attention. In a recent study of Richelieu, William F. Church remarks: ‘For several generations, French statesmen had been aware of the power of the press to influence public opinion, but Richelieu was one of the first to use it systematically and effectively for promoting his views and himself.’ Church is referring to Richelieu's use of the writings of François Langlois de Fancan to promote his views and to secure his appointment as first minister to Louis XIII in 1624.

When we speak of ‘revenge tragedy,’ we are often unaware of the extent to which our approach to these important Renaissance plays has been conditioned by the name we have given them. Elizabethans themselves recognized no distinct dramatic type called revenge play. The term is a modern one, made current at the turn of the century by A. H. Thorndike, and first defined at length by Fredson Bowers more than thirty years ago. As a critical term, it depends upon the modern meaning of revenge, and it simultaneously reflects and shapes both modern assumptions about the subject matter of the plays and modern prejudices about the ethical principles upon which they are assumed to be predicated.

Jonson himself began the practice of identifying passages in his work which were virtually translations from the classics. In the margins of the quarto edition of Sejanus (1605), for instance, there appeared an elaborate apparatus intended to enlighten the reader who might not recognize the way in which Jonson had employed material from Tacitus, Persius, Juvenal, Seneca, et al. Furthermore, Jonson sought to explain his reason for including such apparatus in his ‘Note to to the Readers’ of Sejanus: ‘Least in some nice nostrill, the Quotations might savour affected, I doe let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and have onely done it to shew my integrity in the Story.’ Although his purpose has in large part been ignored, his practice has not. Commentators and annotators since Jonson's time have striven to augment his efforts, whether, like John Upton in 1749, to show that Jonson was merely piecing together those writings he was pleased to call ‘Poems,’ or for reasons more benign.

Writing in 1466, in his biography of Bartolommeo Valori, an eminent Florentine statesman of the early fifteenth century, Luca della Robbia was moved to remark of his native city that ‘come ch'ella sempre fiorisse, ciò fu massimamente dall'anno 1390 fino all'anno 1433,’ and that this was less ‘per lo favore di buona fortuna, come per consiglio de’ buoni cittadini allora preposti al reggimento; la cui virtù si scoperse oltre a modo maravigliosa, e tale che essi non dovriano dirsi inferiori a quei più savi Romani così celebrati dall'antichità’; certainly anyone considering their deeds and achievements ‘gli conterà agevolmente fra i primi uomini del mondo’.

On September 27, 1540, Paul III issued the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, formally recognizing the foundation of the Society of Jesus. The following May participants in the Regensburg Colloquy, a final effort at confessional reunion sponsored by Charles V, acknowledged their failure to agree on the definition of the Eucharist, and the compromises previously reached on other doctrinal issues were quickly disavowed in Rome, Wittenberg, and elsewhere. Six weeks later, in mid-July 1541, Juan de Valdés, the expatriate Spanish master of semimystical spirituality, died in Naples. On May 22, 1542, Initio nostri huius pontificatus, the bull convoking an ecumenical council at Trent, was read in the papal consistory. The reconstitution of the Roman Inquisition was officially announced in the promulgation of Licet ah initio on July 21 in the same year.