Armillary spheres
Astronomical instruments consisting of linked adjustable rings (the name derives from Latin armilla: bracelet) representing the circles of the celestial sphere such as the ecliptic and equator. A sphere in the center represents the earth. Used by Hipparchus (second century bce) they were described by Ptolemy in his Almagest (see ptolemaic system) and later became an indispensable tool of Renaissance astronomers. Fitted with sights (alidades), they could be used to make quite precise measurements. One of the most accurate of such instruments, with a diameter of nearly nine feet, was built by Tycho brahe at his Uraniborg observatory.
Arminianism
A moderate reformed theology named after the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560-1609). With its insistence upon free will and the denial of the concepts of predestination and irresistible grace, Armini-anism was anti-Calvinistic and in Holland found expression in the sect of remonstrants, whose doctrines were set out in the Remonstrance of 1610. Suspected of pro-Spanish sympathies, the Dutch Arminians suffered bitter persecution after the Calvinists’ triumph at the Synod of dort (1618-19).
"Arminianism" was also the name used by English Puritans to describe the doctrines of William Laud who, like the Dutch Arminians, adopted an explicitly anti-Calvinistic policy. As bishop of London (1628-33) and, from 1633, archbishop of Canterbury, Laud dominated religious affairs in England throughout Charles I’s reign. "Laudianism," as it is more accurately described, emphasized the importance of vestments, ceremony, and decoration in church, and ruled that the communion table should be transferred to the east end; it also enhanced the authority of the clergy over the laity.
Armor
Body protection for soldiers in the 14th century saw a general trend away from the use of mail and towards the use of plate. In Scandinavia and eastern Europe lamellar armor composed of small plates laced or riveted together became widespread; it was worn under a leather jerkin. Elsewhere soldiers increasingly wore pieces of solid plate strapped onto their mail hauberks or attached to the inside of a leather jerkin to protect vulnerable joints and limbs. For mounted soldiers, whose legs were an easy target for foot soldiers, plate leg protection was evolved, comprising sabaton (foot), greave (shin), poleyn (knee), and cuisse (thigh) sections. By the end of the century armorers were attaching the pieces of limb protection to each other by metal strips known as lames, rather than to another garment. Leather straps and loose riveting provided the necessary flexibility. Armorers also began to demonstrate their skill in designing surfaces curved in such a way as to deflect an enemy’s weapon point away from vulnerable body areas.
Two distinct styles in western European armor emerged during the 15th century—the Italian and the German. Italian armor is characterized by smoothness and roundness in the modeling of the individual pieces. Milan was an important center of manufacture (see missaglia family). The German style, more angular and spiky, is often referred to as "Gothic"; its main centers of manufacture were Innsbruck, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. These differences are exemplified in two common forms of head protection: the smooth cylindrical shape of the Italian bar-but, based on ancient Greek helmet designs, and the prominent projections of the German sallet with its pointed neck guard. However, as both countries exported armor and armorers (henry viii employed first Italians and then, from 1515, Germans in his Greenwich workshops) elements from both soon blended in European armor.
In Germany in the early 16th century the armorers’ craft received strong encouragement from the informed patronage of Emperor maximilian i. Among the famous makers who worked for Maximilian and his successors were the seusenhofer family of Innsbruck and the helm-schmied family of Augsburg. Maximilian’s name is associated with the type of ridged plate that represented the most advanced scientific design attained in European armor, combining strength and flexibility to a marked extent. A curious vagary in this period was the attempt to re- produce in metal the puffed and slashed garments of contemporary civilian fashion, even down to simulation of the stitching. From the mid-16th century changes in military strategy and increasing deployment of firearms made mobility more desirable than all-over body protection; plainer suits, often without the lower leg protection, became more common for practical purposes, while the parade or ceremonial armor of princes became increasingly ornate. The use of etching (in northern Europe) or embossing (predominantly an Italian fashion) for decoration naturally negated one of the primary functions of plate armor—to present a smooth surface off which a weapon point would glance.
Armor This late 15th-century suit of Italian plate armor covers the entire body. During the late 15th century and the early 16th century the art of the armorer reached its peak.
Besides suits of armor for the battlefield, armorers also evolved specialist equipment to meet the rather different demands of the tournament. Heavily reinforced pieces protected the knight’s left shoulder and arm, as the side that would take the brunt of his opponent’s attack. A premium was placed on helmet design that protected the wearer against an opponent’s lance; the English great helm and German frog-mouth helm are examples of this specialist type. For foot combat this kind of helmet restricted visibility to an impractical degree, so a helmet with a visor was used instead. The need to adapt armor for different purposes led to the evolution of the garniture, in which the basic suit of armor is provided with additional matching pieces for special applications, such as a tournament or a parade. Garnitures such as those made for Henry VIII of England and Emperor Charles V and preserved in such collections as the Tower of London or the Armeri’a Real, Madrid, exhibit the armorers’ ingenuity in the design and decoration of these sets, which of course only the rich and powerful could afford or needed. Sometimes matching sets of horse armor were provided as well; one such set was the ceremonial armor made for Eric XIV of Sweden in 1563.
Arrabbiati (Italian, the "Enraged")
The Florentine faction most hostile to savonarola. Its leaders were men of wealth, who, while they did not hanker after Medici rule, detested Savonarola’s property tax and other measures against luxury and inequality.
Ars nova (Latin, "new art")
A movement in French and Italian music named after Ars nova musicae (c. 1320), a treatise by Philippe de vitry. It marked a sharp break with the older music, the ars antiqua, which had practically ignored rhythm and from which the ars nova is distinguished by its rhythmical and contrapuntal innovations. Musical parts became more independent, and a greater use was made of instruments (the rebec, shawm, recorder, viol, lute, and portative organ). Originating in France, the ars nova was soon taken up in Florence, Bologna, Pisa, and elsewhere in northern Italy. Building upon the tradition of the troubadours and trouveres, the new art took a more casual approach to musical composition. More secular texts were set, and the Italian madrigal was born, and the French ballade and chace—and the related Italian ballata and caccia—flourished. The Church was initially hostile to the ars nova; in 1324/25 Pope John XXII condemned the "lascivious wantonness" of de Vitry and others who practiced the new art. Nevertheless, it entered the church in the form of the isorhythmic motet, in which the plain-chant basis of liturgical compositions was broken into sections, each having the same set of internal time values. The leading exponents of the ars nova, besides de Vitry, were Guillaume de machaut and Francesco landini. In the later stages of the movement, the work of ciconia, a Walloon resident in Italy, is notable. His music foreshadows that of dufay and the Burgundian school of composers.
Arte mayor
In Iberian poetry, a verse line usually of 11 or 12 syllables with a strong caesura dividing the line into half-lines, each having two major stresses, giving an anapaestic rhythm. Towards the end of the 14th century, this metre gradually superseded the earlier cuaderna via ("fourfold way"), a narrative stanza used by clerical poets (a 14-syllable line with strong caesura, arranged in four-line stanzas having a single rhyme, aaaa, bbbb, …). Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino (c. 1345-c. 1425) was especially influential in establishing arte mayor verse, and it was popularized by humanists like Juan de mena. The beginning of the Siglo de Oro is dated from a further metrical reform, inspired by Italian verse, introduced in the works (1543) of Juan boscan and garcilaso de la vega. However, arte mayor continued to be used in some courtly verse until the 18th century.
Arthur, legend of
The cycle of stories, also known as "the matter of Britain", surrounding King Arthur and the Round Table. It grew from a tiny germ in medieval chronicles concerning a fifth- or sixth-century British general or chieftain who defied the Saxon invaders, was embroidered in the 12th century, and then expanded into prose and verse romances by English, French, and German authors. The English writer Sir Malory (c. 1400-71) stands at the intersection of medieval and Renaissance treatments of Arthurian legend with his prose Morte Darthur, written in the mid-15th century, when the age of chivalry (if it had ever existed) was long past. It kept alive the ideals of love and war as the twin poles of a world populated almost exclusively by knights and ladies.
Perception of Arthur as a national hero was fueled by the story that, like charlemagne, he would one day return and lead his people to great victories; 12th-century writers had reported that on his tomb in Glastonbury were the words "Rex quondam et rexque futurus" (the once and future king). The quasi historical aspect of Arthurian legend was first exploited by the Tudors. Henry VII had his genealogy traced back to Arthur and christened his firstborn son Arthur (1486-1502) in his honor. The Round Table in Winchester castle predates the Tudors but was repainted by Henry VIII with the Tudor rose for the visit of Emperor Charles V in 1522, and the names and motifs of Arthurian legend provided a framework for the neo-medieval tournaments laid on by Elizabeth I. As late as 1610 James I’s eldest son Henry (1594-1612) was presented by "King Arthur" with a sword to restore chivalry in an entertainment scripted by Ben jonson.
By enrolling Arthur as one of the Nine Worthies of the World (preface to Morte Darthur, 1485), the printer Cax-ton guaranteed his place in innumerable pageants, but on a more serious literary level it was felt that Arthur ought to be the subject of a British national epic. Edmund Spenser’s plan for the faerie queene, set out in the letter to raleigh appended to the first edition (1590), seems to take this into account, but the completed part of the poem does not place Arthur in the center of the action as might have been expected. Nonetheless, as the embodiment of the peculiarly Renaissance virtue of "Magnificence," he makes significant interventions in the affairs of the poem. As late as the 1640s John Milton was still planning an Arthuriad, a national epic with Arthur as its hero.
Artillery
In the medieval period, any missile-throwing device, including the javelin-launching ballista and stone-hurling trebuchet. Introduced first by Greek and Roman engineers, their effectiveness against the increasingly massive castles of the late medieval period had become much reduced. Conditions changed in the 14th century with the introduction of the cannon. Although the first certain reference to the cannon dates from 1326, it took time before the early primitive models could be adapted to the demands of field artillery officers. To begin with, gunpowder needed to be improved. Made from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, and ground into a fine powder known as serpentine, early samples tended to separate when trans ported over rough European roads, with unpredictable results. The solution came with the invention (c. 1425) of corned powder, in which the ingredients were first mixed into a wet paste before being allowed to dry.
Further problems arose over the question of mobility. Although never really solved, the introduction in the late 1300s of light two-wheeled carts known as ribauldequins gave artillery officers greater access to the battlefield. Such factors, together with improved cannon design, began to shift the balance of military power. Even the mighty fortress of Constantinople was unable to withstand such pressure and fell in 1453 to the artillery of Mehmet II (ironically, the technology was imported from the West). The power of artillery was again demonstrated when charles viii of France invaded Italy in 1494 and managed without undue difficulty to destroy any town offering resistance.
It took longer, however, to adapt artillery to naval use. Although known to have been in use as early as 1338, guns were at first mounted only on the upper decks and it was not until the early 16th century that ports were cut in ships’ hulls enabling cannon to be sited on the main deck. Thereafter the fire-power of ships continued to grow and, as at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, would henceforth be decisive in determining naval supremacy.
Ascham, Roger
(c. 1515-1568) English humanist and writer
He was born near York and educated at Cambridge where he became a fellow of St. John’s (1534) and a reader in Greek. He attracted henry vlll’s attention with his Tox-ophilus (1545), a treatise on archery, written (unusually for the time) in English. Between 1548 and 1550 he was tutor to the future elizabeth i, and then served Sir Richard Moryson, England’s ambassador to charles v, for several years, during which he traveled widely on the Continent. A noted penman, he was appointed Latin secretary (1553) to mary i, which post he subsequently also held under Elizabeth. One of the leading English humanists of his day, Ascham strove to make the vernacular a vehicle of true eloquence; to facilitate this, he urged the adoption of Senecan and Ciceronian models, while abhorring excessive pedantry and affectation (see cicero; seneca). He himself wrote simple, lively, lucid prose, often enhanced by vivid and humane observations. His best-known book, The Scholemaster (1570), was a landmark in educational theory, concerned not only with the teaching of Latin prose composition, but also with the nature and proper scope of education.
Askew, Anne (Anne Kyme)
(1520-1546) English Protestant writer and martyr
Daughter of a wealthy Lincolnshire landowner, she was well educated in the Scriptures and interested in theological debate. She was forced into an unhappy marriage to a Catholic landowner, Kyme, but became alienated from him as she embraced Protestantism. In about 1544 he renounced her as a heretic. Now the mother of two children, Askew tried and failed to obtain a divorce. She moved to London, associating with Protestants in the circle of Queen Catherine parr. In 1545 she was arrested, examined for heresy, and released. Arrested again (June 1546), she was crippled by torture on the rack (unprecedented in view of her status as a gentlewoman), possibly in an attempt to obtain incriminating evidence of the queen’s reformist activities. During her incarceration in the Tower of London Askew wrote The First Examynacyon of Anne Askew (1546) and The Lattre Examynacyon of Anne Askew (1547). In July 1546 she was burned at the stake at Smithfield. The autobiographical Examynacyons, one of the first such examples of women’s writing, featured in John foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563).
Aspertini, Amico
(c. 1475-1552) Italian painter and sculptor
A native of Bologna, Aspertini was a pupil of ercole de’ roberti of Ferrara and assistant to both costa and fran-cia, with whom he worked on the frescoes of the oratory of Sta. Cecilia in San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna (1506). Aspertini also visited Rome and Florence and absorbed features of the styles of such painters as signorelli, pin-turicchio, raphael, and Filippino lippi, whose works he studied in detail. Notable works include a series of rere-doses and a cycle of frescoes (1508-09) in the church of San Frediano, Lucca. Other paintings are remarkable for their elements of fantasy. As a sculptor he collaborated on the portals of San Petronio, Bologna. His sketchbook in the British Museum shows his interest in antique models.
Astrolabes
Astronomical instruments formerly used to determine time, latitude, and the altitude of various celestial bodies above the horizon. The name means literally "a star-taking" (Greek astrolabos). An astrolabe consists of a flat circular plate (mater), usually made of brass, on which is engraved a stereographic projection of the heavens. Centered on one of the celestial poles, this normally shows the tropics, celestial equator, ecliptic, and the observer’s zenith and horizon. Subsidiary plates which can be placed over the mater are often provided for use in different latitudes. Over the mater is fixed an adjustable rete, or fretted plate, showing the positions of the brightest stars. A sighting arm (alidade) is also attached. A simplified version of the instrument, known as the mariner’s astrolabe, was available for use at sea. There was also a rare spherical form.
Although the planispheric astrolabe described above is not mentioned by Ptolemy (see ptolemaic system), the principles behind its design were familiar to him, and through the influence of Islamic astronomers, particularly Masha’allah (eighth century ce), knowledge of the instrument passed to the West. Among early works on the subject to draw upon Masha’allah is Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391-92). Renaissance refinements of the astrolabe include two forms of the socalled "universal" astrolabe, suitable for use in any latitude: the astrolabium catholicum of gemma frisius and the Rojas astrolabe, based on an orthographic projection first described by the Frisian Hugo Helt in Juan de Rojas’s Commentarii (1550).
Astrology
The study of movements of stars and planets, traditionally divided into two distinct types: natural astrology, which simply predicted the motions of heavenly bodies and is now part of astronomy, and judicial astrology, which foretold future terrestrial events on the basis of celestial signs. The most significant branch of judicial astrology, genethliacal astrology, purported to throw light on human destiny by constructing natal horoscopes (i.e. horoscopes based on the aspect of the heavens at the exact time and place of the subject’s birth).
Although the origins of astrology can be traced to Babylonian times, with the earliest known horoscopes dating back to 409 bce, the fullest exposition of astrology in antiquity occurs in the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy (fl. 127-48 ce), a work from which much of Renaissance, and indeed modern, astrology ultimately derives (see ptolemaic system). This, in turn, was based largely on the prevailing assumptions of Hellenistic science. It was, at that time, reasonable to suppose that celestial events influenced human affairs; if ignorant sailors, Ptolemy argued, could predict the weather from the sky, how much more capable would learned scholars be to foresee its influence on man. The precise links between the heavens and earth were forged in terms of the traditional four elements. Planets were assigned properties on the basis of their supposed composition with, for example, the moon being classed as hot and moist, and saturn as cold and dry. As a moist heat was deemed beneficial, and a cold dryness damaging, it followed that the moon exercised a benign influence on man and Saturn a harmful one. Greater complexity was introduced by allowing celestial influences to be modified by a planet’s position, both along the eclipic (zodiac) and relative to other planets (aspects). The rules derived from these assumptions proved sufficiently comprehensive to allow astrologers to deal with almost any situation.
Opposition to astrology first arose within the Church; both St. Augustine and St. Aquinas set their great authority against it. Something of an astrological revival nonetheless occurred in the 13th century, through the writings of such figures as Arnold of Villanova, Pietro d’Abano, and, more significantly, Guido Bonatti whose
Liber astronomicus served as the leading textbook of the early Renaissance. It was in fact Bonatti who was chosen by dante to represent astrology in the eighth circle of the Inferno, where he was depicted with his head on backwards and no ability to see ahead.
Interest in astrology continued to grow and was well served by the newly developed printing press. Almanacs had appeared before gutenberg but after he issued the first printed copy in 1448 they emerged with much greater frequency, variety, and number. However, they often provoked the hostility of an officialdom prone to suspect partisan motives behind political predictions. For this reason Pope Sixtus V issued a bull in 1586 condemning judicial astrology. In England the lucrative trade of almanac publishing was made the monopoly of the Stationers’ Company, through which the state was able to exercise control over the content of the publications.
Scientific opinion appeared divided: such early Renaissance scholars as Nicholas cusanus and pico della mirandola were critical, but astronomers of the standing of rheticus, kepler, and brahe openly practiced as astrologers. It may have been, however, that in some cases their intellectual commitment was less urgent than their need to subsidize their astronomical researches. Astrology as a scientific discipline barely outlived the Renaissance. By the time of Isaac Newton, at the end of the 17th century, astronomers had begun already to rewrite their history and to dismiss much of their past, although Newton himself had an interest in the occult, including astrology.
Astronomy
The scientific study of celestial bodies (compare astrology). At the beginning of the Renaissance, scholars accepted unquestioningly the cosmology of Aristotle and the astronomy of Ptolemy (see ptolemaic system). These views formed the background to dante’s Divine Comedy and, more prosaically, were found expressed in the numerous editions of the popular 13th-century text, the De sphaera of Sacrobosco.
The first tasks facing the astronomers of the Renaissance were to acquaint themselves with the details of ancient astronomy and to develop new mathematical techniques to describe better the complexities of planetary motion. To this end such scholars as peurbach, re-giomontanus, and rheticus sought to establish accurate texts of Ptolemy’s Almagest and related works, and to master and deploy the new language of trigonometry, to astronomical observations. There followed developments which, by the time of the death of galileo (1642), had completely transformed man’s view of the heavens. The traditional view that they were immutable and incorruptible was called into question by the discovery in 1572 by Tycho brahe of a new star. Even more damaging were the observations in 1610 by Galileo of the formerly unsuspected satellites of Jupiter, and the presence of mountains and craters on the moon. Further evidence of celestial corruptibility came in 1611 with Christoph scheiner’s observations of sunspots. Additional difficulties were presented by the comet of 1577. Careful observation by Brahe revealed it to be a genuine feature of the heavens and not, as Aristotle had supposed, a transitory atmospheric phenomenon.
Behind much of this success there lay an enormous improvement in the instruments available to astronomers. Brahe at his Uraniborg observatory developed such traditional instruments as armillary spheres and quadrants to the limits inherent in naked-eye observation. The greatest advance, however, came with the invention of the telescope early in the 17th century. First applied to the heavens in 1610 by Galileo, it rapidly became the most fundamental tool of astronomy. Equally significant was the increasing accuracy of astronomical observations. Early Renaissance astronomers had relied upon the Alfon-sine Tables (1252). When copernicus came to apply them in 1504 to an expected conjunction of Mars and Saturn he found the tables to be as much as 10 days adrift. They continued in use, however, until 1551 when they were replaced by the Prutenic Tables compiled by Erasmus reinhold, the first tables to be based on the Copernican hypothesis. These, in turn, were superseded by the Rudolfine Tables (1627) which were prepared by Brahe and kepler and were to remain in use for the rest of the 17th century.
The period also saw an advance in the system of stellar nomenclature. Copernicus and his colleagues had, in the manner of Ptolemy, referred to stars as being located in the head, tail, or foot of a particular constellation. The modern system of identifying stars alphabetically by their brightness was introduced by Johann bayer in Uranome-tria (1603) and found quick support.
Equally significant were the more theoretical innovations associated with Copernicus and his successors. Since antiquity planetary orbits were taken as unquestionably circular, with the planets themselves, and all other heavenly bodies, moving with a pleasingly simple uniform motion around a central, stationary earth. In 1543 Copernicus initiated the first great astronomical revolution of modern science by replacing the central earth of antiquity with an equally stationary sun. The resulting heliocentric system remained dependent upon the traditional circular orbits of antiquity. Nor were they questioned by Brahe or Galileo. The break eventually came with Kepler. After spending several years trying to establish the orbit of Mars he finally saw that by assuming planets to move in elliptical orbits he would finally be able to make sense of the available data. He went on to propose in 1609 his first law: planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun occupying one focus. Two other laws were formulated by Kepler. The second law tackled the problem of why planets move around the sun with varying speed by declaring that a radius vector joining the sun and planet would sweep out equal areas in equal times. In his third law Kepler noted the basic relationship between a planet’s distance from the sun and its orbital period by noting that the square of the period varied as the cube of the distance. The harmonic law, as it became known, would later prove to be the key with which astronomers would work out the scale of the solar system. Kepler’s laws also posed the problem of what held the system together, and why there seemed to be such a close relationship between the orbit and velocity of a planet and the sun. Kepler himself could do little more than talk unconvincingly of a magnetic attraction emanating from the sun. It remained for Isaac Newton, later in the century, to provide a firm dynamical basis for Kepler’s laws with his introduction into astronomy of universal gravitation.
