Aubigne, Theodore d’Agrippa d’
(1551-1630) French poet, soldier, polemicist, and historian of his own times
After a studious youth at several European universities, Aubigne, an ardent Protestant, joined the Huguenot forces and served throughout the French religious wars, latterly as master of horse to Henry of Navarre. After Henry’s accession (1589) as henry iv and conversion to Catholicism, Aubigne withdrew to his estates in Poitou, where he did much of his writing and became gradually estranged from his fellow Protestants. Haunted perhaps by his king’s abjuration, he frequently depicts in his work the conflict between truth and outward show and celebrates the justice of an avenging deity, as in his epic poem, Les Tragiques (1616). His most interesting work is probably his Histoire universelle (1616-20), which deals with the years 1553-1602 and contains many lively eyewitness accounts of the events in which he played a part. Publication of the final volume of the history caused Aubigne to be proscribed, after which he lived in Geneva until his death.
Augsburg
A south German city on the junction of the Wertach and Lech rivers. Founded as a Roman colony (15 bce), Augsburg became the seat of a bishopric (759), an imperial free city (1276), and a member of the Swabian League (1331). Close to rich silver mines and situated on the principal trade route from the Mediterranean to northern and western Europe, Augsburg developed as a major banking and commercial center in the 15th and 16th centuries. The fugger family, its leading merchants, became Europe’s greatest bankers and lent large sums to the haps-burgs and other princes. Augsburg was one of the first important centers of Renaissance arts and scholarship outside Italy. It was a center for humanist scholars and the artists Hans holbein, Elder and Younger, were natives of the city. The oldest European settlement for the poor, the Fuggerei, was built in Augsburg in 1519. Notable buildings from the Renaissance period include the Gothic additions (1331-1432) to the 11th-century cathedral, the church of SS. Ulrich and Afra (1474-1604), and the town hall (1615-20).
Augsburg, Confession of The classic statement of Lutheran doctrine submitted to the Diet of Augsburg on June 25, 1530, and originally called the Articles of Schwabach. The diet had been called by charles v in his search for German unity at a time when the empire was threatened by Turkish invasion. The confession was compiled by melanchthon and approved by luther prior to its presentation to the diet. It was divided into two parts, the first comprising 21 articles conciliatory and comparatively inoffensive to the Roman Church. The second part, however, consisted of seven articles attacking what the Lutherans considered its main abuses; these included aspects of Roman ceremony, certain clerical vows, and the secular authority exercised by its bishops. In response the Roman Catholics drew up the Confutatio presented in August 1530, rejecting any settlement based on the confession.
Augsburg, Interim of
(1548) A peacetime agreement drawn up under the direction of Emperor charles v, designed to satisfy Lutherans without greatly offending Catholics. It admitted the universality and indivisibility of the Church, the seven sacraments, and the doctrine of transubstantiation, while allowing to the Protestant side the legality of clerical marriages and, to some extent, the doctrine of justification by faith.
Augsburg, Peace of
The treaty concluded on September 25, 1555 that ended the religious wars in Germany during the Reformation period. It was the product of the Diet of Augsburg, held between February and September that year. For the first time in the Christian West two confessions, Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, were accorded equal legal recognition. This and the freedom it gave individual princes to choose their own and their subjects’ religion marked the ultimate defeat of charles v’s endeavors to create a unified Germany. In addition, Lutheran or Roman Catholic dissenters were to be allowed freedom to emigrate, Lutheran knights and towns within
Roman Catholic states were to be allowed to maintain their form of worship, and all ecclesiastical lands secularized by the Lutherans before the treaty of Passau (1552) were to remain Lutheran. Although the exclusion of any concessions to other sects, most importantly the Calvin-ists, was to have serious repercussions, the Peace of Augsburg lasted for 63 years.
Aulic Council (German Reichshofrat)
The court council of the Holy Roman Empire from 1498 until the empire’s dissolution in 1806. Attempting to make his government more effective, Emperor maximilian i established the council as his supreme executive and judicial body with responsibility for everything except finance and drafting documents. He appointed and paid the members who followed his court until settling permanently in Vienna. In 1559 Ferdinand I strengthened the council, especially in the exercise of the emperor’s judicial powers. During the 18th century the Aulic Council grew stronger as its rival body, the Reichskammergericht, declined.
Aurispa, Giovanni (Giovanni Pichumerio)
(c. 13701459) Sicilian-born teacher of Greek and collector of manuscripts
He made two trips to the East (1405-13, 1421-23), principally to look for texts of Greek authors but also to take Greek lessons from Manuel chrysoloras. Aurispa recovered over 300 manuscripts, including the Venetian manuscript of the Iliad (MS. Venetus A), the Laurentian manuscript of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Apollonius of Rhodes, and manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns and the Greek Anthology. In 1438 Aurispa was made a papal secretary by Eugenius IV He died at Ferrara. Aurispa produced few works; he translated the commentary of Hierocles on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras (1474) and may have translated the works of Archimedes. His main importance lies in his efforts to copy and encourage the copying of Greek texts and to distribute them. He also drew attention in his teaching while professor of Greek at Florence to literary rather than philosophical values in Greek literature.
Autobiography
The narrative re-creation of the writer’s own life, which only emerged as a distinct literary genre in the Renaissance. There are very occasional examples of autobiography in antiquity and in the Middle Ages; the Confessions (c. 400) of St. Augustine of Hippo contains a celebrated account of his early life and spiritual quest, but no one else was to approach its degree of introspection for over a thousand years. dante’s Vita nuova (c. 1292-1300) and petrarch’s Secretum (1342-43) are autobiographical without being in the strict sense autobiographies. Rather, for the beginnings of secular autobiography, it is necessary to look to the personal records kept by Italian merchants from the late 13th century onwards. Some are merely accounts of business negotiations, but others, like the Zibal-done quaresimale (1457-85) of the Florentine Giovanni Rucellai, also contain passages of self-questioning. The first full-scale autobiography is arguably the Commentarii (1458-64) of Aenea Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope pius ii. While focusing on external events, and on the characters and politics of the period, it does contain an implicit portrait of the man himself. Perhaps the two most interesting and revealing Renaissance autobiographies, however, are the famous Life (or Autobiography) of Ben-venuto cellini and De vita propria liber (The Book of My Life) of Girolamo cardano. Remarkable for its profound self-scrutiny, Cardano’s document was written in his old age and not published until 1643. To find such an essay in the genre in England it is necessary to wait until the early 17th century and the Life of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648), which traces his adventures from birth to 1624, and is a splendidly unabashed account of the author’s own abundant virtues.
Auto sacramental
(Spanish, "sacramental act") A dramatic genre in Spain that reached its height in the 17 th century with the autos of Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-81). The auto was a one-act allegorical play in verse, originally dealing with an aspect of the Holy Eucharist; it derived from the tableaux, which had traditionally been part of the procession accompanying the Eucharist as it was carried through the streets during the festival of Corpus Christi. These tableaux had developed into a dramatic form similar to that of the miracle and mystery plays in England and the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, and, like them, were mounted on carts and performed out-of-doors. The autos began to appear in Spain in the 16th century and were transformed by Calderon from a simple form of pious entertainment into a significant new dramatic form. He exploited the allegorical elements of the auto and extended its range in the process, but after his death, it degenerated into farce until performances were finally prohibited by royal decree in 1765.
Avignon, papacy at
The period of papal exile from Rome when Avignon was the seat of seven popes (1309-78) and also of four who claimed the title during the Great Schism (1378-c. 1430). Following the bankruptcy of the papacy, the Frenchman Clement V (pope 1305-14) chose Avignon as his residence in 1309. During this socalled babylonian captivity, all seven Avignon popes were0French, as were most of the cardinals they appointed. All except Clement VI (pope 1342-52) were university trained and demonstrated considerable skill in handling papal business. The Avignon popes, particularly John XXII (pope 1316-34), were highly effective in reorganizing their finances, exploiting every possible means of extracting money from religious foundations and their subjects. These included the introduction of the annate (payment of a newly appointed bishop’s first year’s income) and the payment to the papacy of all incomes derived from vacant sees. Most importantly they helped prepare the way for luther’s conflict with Johann Tetzel by their increased reliance on the sale of indulgences. Using such methods the Avignon popes eventually succeeded in collecting an income three times greater than that of the king of France.
In 1348 Clement VI bought the city of Avignon from Queen Joanna I of Naples. The papal palace (built 131670) and fortified walls remain there as witness to the popes’ presence. Several Italian artists were attracted to Avignon to work on the papal palace; they include Simone martini and Matteo Giovanetti, who was responsible for the beautiful frescoes in the Chambre du Cerf and Grande Audience.
The new tradition of an Avignon-based papal seat was fundamental to the development of the Great Schism following the departure of Gregory XI (pope 1370-78) for Rome (1377) to restore order in the Italian Papal States. After the election of Urban VI (pope 1378-89) to the Roman seat in April 1378, the majority of Frenchmen among the cardinals (11 out of 16), all chose to share in the election of the antipope, Clement VII, at Avignon in August of the same year. Although the schism was effectively ended by the abdication of the Avignon candidate, Benedict XIII, in 1417, Avignon continued to put up rival claimants until about 1430.
Babylonian Captivity
The phrase adopted to describe the period 1305-78 when the papal seat was at Avignon instead of Rome. The allusion is to the biblical captivity of the Jews in Babylon that lasted for 70 years. The Babylonian Captivity followed the bankruptcy of the papacy and comprised seven pontificates before the return to Rome and the ensuing Great Schism.
Bacchus
The Roman god of wine, identified with the Greek god Dionysus, many of whose attributes he adopted. In classical mythology Dionysus was the son of Zeus (Roman Jupiter) and Semele, who was brought up by nymphs after his mother was destroyed by his father’s thunderbolts. As the god associated with the intoxicating power of wine, he is accompanied by a train of creatures under its influence: the ecstatic women known as bacchantes or maenads, sileni, satyrs, and centaurs. The god himself often rides upon a panther or leopard. It is a train like this that comes upon Ariadne (whom, the legend says, Theseus abandoned on the island of Naxos) in the painting by titian (National Gallery, London), and other artists too were drawn to the pictorial qualities of the Bacchic entourage. The love of Bacchus and the mortal Ariadne, too, was susceptible to allegorical interpretation as the union of the soul with the divine being.
Michelangelo’s statue of the drunken Bacchus with vine leaves in his hair and accompanied by a young satyr (Bargello, Florence) epitomizes the Renaissance impulse to imitate pagan antiquity—in this case so successfully that many contemporaries looked on it as a genuine classical piece, as Francisco da Hollanda records in his treatise on painting.
Bachelier, Nicolas
(c. 1500-1556) French architect and sculptor
Bachelier was a native of Toulouse, the scene of his principal works. He was primarily influenced by serlio. Among the buildings ascribed to Bachelier is the elegant Hotel d’Assezat (1555) in Toulouse, to which he also contributed the sculptural embellishments.
Backstaffs
Navigational instruments, also known as Davis’s quadrants, for measuring the altitude of a celestial body. The ancestor of the backstaff, the cross-staff or Jacob’s staff, was reputedly invented by a Jew from the Languedoc, Levi ben Gerson (1288-1324). It consisted of no more than a graduated staff and movable cross-piece(s) or transom(s). If the staff was pointed towards a celestial object and the transom suitably adjusted, the object’s altitude above the horizon could be read off the staff. The instrument was used by surveyors and navigators, but it suffered from the disadvantage that the operator had to face the sun’s glare whenever a measurement of solar altitude was required. The obvious solution was introduced by the English seaman John davis in his Seamans Secrets (1594). His backstaff allowed the observer to stand with his back towards the sun and gain his reading by noting the position of the sun’s shadow. The backstaff was the lineal ancestor of the sextant, which appeared in the late 18th century.
Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans
(1561-1626) English philosopher, lawyer, and politician
Bacon was born in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and the nephew of Lord Burghley, both political advisers to Elizabeth I. After studying law at Cambridge Bacon began his own political career by entering parliament in 1584. His career flourished under james i, whom he served successively as solicitor-general, attorney-general, and, after 1618, lord chancellor. It ended abruptly in 1621 when, found guilty of corruption, he was fined £40,000 and imprisoned briefly in the Tower of London.
Bacon had earlier, in his Advancement of Learning (1605), begun the ambitious program of working out the methodology of and laying the foundations for the newly emerging science of his day. Dismissive of traditional Aristotelian procedures (see aristotelianism, renaissance), he sought to develop new inductive methods, the exercise of which would lead more readily to scientific discovery. His Instauratio magna (The Great Renewal), an encyclopedic survey of all knowledge, was to have been his crowning achievement, but only a fragment, the Novum organum (1620), was completed before his death. Following his banishment from court in 1621, Bacon did, however, manage to revise much of his earlier work in his De augmentis scientiarum (1623). In a further work, published posthumously as The New Atlantis (1626), Bacon described a utopian society which contained an institution called Solomon’s House, charged with the organized study of nature. The suggestion was partially realized later in the century by the foundation of the Royal Society
Bacon is also known as a polished and epigrammatic essayist. Ten essays were published in 1597 while the third edition of the Essays (1625) contained an additional 48 pieces. He died from a chill contracted while attempting to see "why [chicken] flesh might not be preserved in snow, as in salt," leaving debts of £22,000.
Badius Ascensius, Jodocus (Josse Bade)
(1462-1535) Flemish scholar and printer
Badius was born at Aasche, near Ghent, and after studying in Louvain and Bologna settled in Lyons (1492), where he taught classics. There he married the daughter of the printer Jean (Johann) Trechsel (died 1498) and became his editor, responsible for the first Lyons book printed in roman type ("Italian types"), a 1492 edition of the orations of Philippus Beroaldus. His illustrated edition of Terence, first published in 1493, was reprinted many times. In 1499 he moved to Paris, working there in association with Jean Petit before starting on his own in 1503. In the next 30 years he produced about 800 books, among them erasmus’s early works. The designs of Badius’s books sometimes used title-page borders modeled on manuscript borders, for example his 1511 Cicero. His Thucydides translation of 1528 was printed with type bought from froben of Basle.
Badius was succeeded by his son-in-law, Robert esti-enne, and a subsequent dynasty of scholar-printers.
Baena, Juan Alfonso de
(early 15th century) Spanish poet
A minor converso poet, Baena is remembered as the compiler of the Cancionero de Baena, a collection of 612 poems by 54 poets which was prepared for King John II of Castile in 1445. The anthology contains canciones (lyrics) and decires (narratives, satires, and panegyrics) dating from the reign of John I (1379-90) and extending into the 15th century. The lyrics are in octosyllabic lines, often varied with half-lines (pie quebrado); the narratives and satires are written either in octosyllabic lines or in 12-syllable arte mayor. Linguistically, the anthology shows the change from the Gallego-Portuguese (or Galician-Portuguese) dialect used by Castilian poets in the 13th and 14th centuries to the Castilian Spanish adopted towards the end of the 14th century. lopez de ayala is the earliest poet represented. Baena gives highest praise to the trovador Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino (c. 1345-c. 1425). The collection as a whole reflects the Provencal and Galician troubadour tradition of courtly poetry.
Baffin, William
(c. 1584-1622) English explorer, who attempted to solve some of the major navigational challenges of his day Little is known of Baffin’s early life, which was probably passed in learning his trade as a seaman. In 1612 he explored the west coast of Greenland, and the following two years led expeditions engaging in whaling to Spitzbergen and Greenland under the sponsorship of the muscovy company. In 1615 and 1616 he took up the quest for the northwest passage, on the latter voyage discovering and exploring much of Baffin Bay. Ironically, although Baffin became convinced that a northwest passage did not exist, he did in fact discover the opening leading to it at the entrance to Lancaster Sound. Two later voyages (1617-19, 1620-22) took him to the East under the auspices of the east india company. He died while joining the Persian army in an attack on the Portuguese-held town of Kishm.
His accounts of four of his Arctic voyages (1612, 1613, 1615, 1616) were published by Samuel purchas. They are remarkable for the scientific observations they contain, including Baffin’s attempts to find a means of calculating longitude and to deal with the problem of the sun’s refraction.
Baglioni family
A powerful and wealthy Umbrian family, notorious in the Renaissance for its crimes. The Baglioni gained their wealth from employment as condottieri in the 13th century and political power from Malatesta Baglioni (1389-1427), who was awarded territories by Pope Martin V and who virtually ruled Perugia. From 1488, after massacring or exiling their rivals, the Baglioni ruled Perugia through a council of 10 family members. Giampaolo Baglioni (1470-1520) seized power after the murder of several leading Baglioni (1500) in family disputes. He tried to murder Pope julius ii (1506) and was himself murdered on Pope leo x’s orders. Ridolfo Baglioni (1518-54) was exiled by Pope paul iii after the salt war of 1540 brought an end to Perugia’s privileges as an autonomous city.
Baianism
The doctrine of Michel de Bay (1514-89), a Louvain theologian more generally known as Baius. His writings on free will, righteousness, and justification (1563-64) were openly condemned by Pope Pius V in his bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus (1567) as false and heretical. Baianism, inspired by Augustinian doctrine, insisted upon man’s total depravity and moral incapacity. In so doing it rejected the doctrine recognized at the Council of trent (1551) that rested upon the concept of man’s preternatural innocence. Baius launched the first attack on man’s freedom of will and denied the possibility of achieving spiritual and moral perfection in this life. His arguments were offensive to the Jesuits and were countered by their spokesman robert bellarmine. The conflict between Bai-anism and the Jesuits during the 16th century anticipated that of the Jansenists and Jesuits during the 17th.
Baif, Jean-Antoine de
(1532-1589) French poet and most learned member of the Pleiade
Born in Venice, the natural son of the humanist Lazare de Baif (c. 1496-1547), he received a classical education. He studied in Paris (1547) with ronsard under Jean daurat, and together with Joachim du bellay, they formulated plans to transform French poetry by employing classical and neoclassical models (see pleiade). Baif produced two collections of poetry, Les Amours de Meline (1552) and LAmour de Francine (1555), in accordance with the principles they had laid down, followed by Le Brave in 1567, adapted from Plautus’ Miles gloriosus. But his poetic gifts were inferior to his great learning, which is best displayed in his Mimes (1581) and in his many translations, including Terence’s Eunuchus and Sophocles’ Antigone. His interest in Platonic theories of the relation between music and poetry led him to set up (1567) a short-lived academy of the two arts with the musician Thibault de Courville.
Baif is also remembered as an innovator in matters of language and versification, inventing a system of phonetic spelling and a new metrical form, the 15-syllable vers baifin. His theories are expounded in Etrenes de poesie francoeze en vers mezures (1574). Having received various marks of favor from Charles IX and Henry III during his last years, he died peacefully in Paris.
Bakfark, Valentine
(c. 1507-1576) Hungarian composer Bakfark was one of the most famous and celebrated lutenists of his time but very little is known about his life. He traveled throughout Europe, particularly Italy, France, and Germany and he served (1549-66) at the court of the Polish king, Sigismund II Augustus. His surviving works, some of which are featured in the Thesaurus musicus (1574) of the Netherlandish publisher Pierre Phalese, include a small number of highly elaborate fantasias and some transcriptions of vocal music. However, Bakfark destroyed much of his work before dying of the plague in Padua, Italy.
Balassi, Balint (Balint Balassa)
(1554-1594) Hungarian poet
Balassi was born into an aristocratic family and educated by his mother, the ardently Protestant Anna Sulyok, and the religious reformer Peter Bornemissza. He is widely regarded as Hungary’s first great vernacular poet. After joining the army he served at the fortress of Eger, defending the border lands against the Turks. Here he fell in love with Anna Losonczi, the heroine of his cycle of "Julia Poems." Balassi’s poetry consists of patriotic and martial songs, erotic poems, and adaptations from Latin and German verse. He led a troubled, litigious and often itinerant life and was expelled from Hungary (1589) after divorcing his wife, Krisztina Dobo, and converting to Catholicism. He returned to Hungary to fight in the Turkish war (1594) and died at the siege of Esztergom that year. Balassi also invented a verse form, the nine-line "Balassi stanza," with the rhyme scheme aabccbddb. His best works, his erotic poems, were known in manuscript form but not published until 1874.
Balbi, Gerolamo
(c. 1450-1535) Italian bishop and humanist
Little is known of Balbi’s early life although it is likely that he studied in Rome. By 1485 he was in Paris where he obtained a university chair (1489). Faced with accusations of sodomy and heresy he took refuge first in England (1491) and then Vienna (1493), after which he moved on to the court of King Ladislas of Bohemia in Prague. Following new allegations of sodomy he fled to Hungary, where he was ordained to the priesthood and became bishop of Gurk (1523). Balbi’s main achievement was the dissemination of humanism in eastern Europe, and his poetry, philosophical writing, and letters reveal a man of great learning. He was acquainted with many leading international humanists including Pomponio leto (his teacher), Konrad celtis, and King matthias corvinus. However, Balbi was a controversial figure, which is witnessed by his authorship of Opusculum epigrammatum (1494), a collection of inflammatory epigrams.
Balboa, Vasco Nunes de
(c. 1475-1517) Spanish explorer
Balboa was born into a good Estremaduran family and went to the West Indies in 1501. In 1510 he assumed command of an expedition to Darien, and, making friends with the native peoples, he heard rumors about the great ocean beyond the mountains west of the gulf of Darien. While at Darien Balboa heard that his enemies had complained of him to King Ferdinand II, so, endeavoring to recover the king’s favor, he set out on an expedition over the mountains, from which he caught his first sight of the Pacific Ocean (September 1513). A few days later he took possession of the new sea for the Spanish crown. He returned to Darien with considerable booty and when news of his exploits reached Spain the king rewarded him with the title of admiral. Nonetheless his enemies managed to frustrate his intended search for the gold of Peru and finally managed to have him executed for alleged treason at Acla, near Darien.
