The Late Medieval Age
of Crisis and Renewal,
1300–1500:
A Biographical Dictionary
Clayton J. Drees
Editor
GREENWOOD PRESS
The Late Medieval Age
of
Crisis and Renewal,
1300–1500
Recent Titles in
The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World
Renaissance and Reformation, 1500–1620: A Biographical Dictionary
Jo Eldridge Carney, editor
The Late Medieval Age
of
Crisis and Renewal,
1300–1500
A Biographical Dictionary
Edited by
CLAYTON J. DREES
The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World
Ronald H. Fritze, Series Adviser
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The late medieval age of crisis and renewal, 1300–1500 : a biographical dictionary /
edited by Clayton J. Drees.
p. cm.—(The great cultural eras of the Western world)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–313–30588–9 (alk. paper)
1. Civilization, Medieval—Dictionaries. 2. Europe—History—476–1492—Biography—
Dictionaries. 3. Europe—History—1492–1517—Biography—Dictionaries. 4. Europe—
Social conditions—To 1492—Dictionaries. I. Drees, Clayton J. II. Series.
CB353.L38 2001
940.1—dc21
00–022335
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 2001 by Clayton J. Drees
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–022335
ISBN: 0–313–30588–9
First published in 2001
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Contents
Introduction
The Dictionary
vii
1
Appendix I: Figures by Geographical Region
513
Appendix II: Figures by Occupation
519
Selected Bibliography
527
Index
533
Contributors
545
Introduction
This volume features biographical vignettes of important figures who lived in
Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As such, it encompasses a
period that witnessed a great deal of both crisis and renewal. As Europe emerged
from the late Middle Ages, social, demographic, and economic calamities—
some of them devastating in their scope and consequences—changed the way
Europeans viewed their universe and their place in it. Old notions of community,
spirituality, prosperity, and creativity were swept away in the successive crises
of war, religious contention, and plague that seemed to dominate the fourteenthcentury experience. Yet these disruptive changes allowed a fresh breeze of cultural renewal to blow over Europe to build upon, and in some ways to replace,
the exhausted intellectual energies of the passing medieval age. Germinating at
the very climax of crisis in the fourteenth century, this seed of renewal sprouted
first in Italy and then, over time, spread through the Continent and was carried
forth to the world in the vessels and minds of bold explorers. Thus in apparent
disaster was born cultural refreshment. In loss Europeans discovered opportunity, and in crisis they found renewal, a rebirth of interest in ancient wisdom
and human achievement that we have come to call the Renaissance.
The medieval world that was visited by crisis in the fourteenth century had
evolved only very slowly from the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire
in the fifth century A.D. Late medieval Europe was still an overwhelmingly
agrarian society, based upon the feudal relationship between protective landlord
and serving or rent-paying peasant, and was still defined by the agricultural
season cycle and by a “great chain of being” social order that assigned each
individual his or her position in a collective Christian universe. Some medieval
men and women, however, also lived in towns by the fourteenth century. There
master craftsmen plied their trades as members of powerful guilds, while others
traveled to regional fairs and even across Europe to more distant markets to sell
goods for profit as merchants. One unifying element in this social and economic
viii
Introduction
milieu was the Roman church, to which the vast majority of western Europeans
belonged and in whose teachings they unequivocally believed. The church, directed from Rome by the pope through regional bishops and local parish priests,
provided Christians with a rich ceremonial culture, a strict moral code, and the
means (sacraments, pilgrimages, and good works) by which they might attain
everlasting life in heaven after death. The influence of the church in the daily
lives of late medieval believers was all-pervasive and extended not only to the
organization of time (liturgical calendar) and the economy (landownership), but
also to the intellectual enterprises of the age. Great universities had appeared all
over western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These institutions were largely staffed by Franciscan and Dominican professors who, though
they spent some time teaching the seven liberal arts to their students, otherwise
considered and debated the truths of universals and theology through the Scholastic reconciliation of faith and reason achieved by the thirteenth-century
thinker Thomas Aquinas.
The church also played an active role in the ordering and management of
kingdoms. By the fourteenth century rulers of emerging feudal states such as
France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Castile, Aragon, Burgundy
and others sought to fulfill their God-given “priestly” duty to protect Christian
society from the threats of religious heresy and Muslim encroachment. Such
rulers often employed educated prelates as royal advisors, in this way allowing
some of Christendom’s most able and ambitious intellects to rise to positions
of great power in the service of both the Crown and the church. Late medieval
Europe was, therefore, a largely agrarian, commercially and intellectually active,
Christian and hierarchical world that had remained relatively insulated and had
changed only very gradually during the preceding millennium. Yet, unknown to
these people who lived out their lives in the cyclical certainty of an invariable
Christian universe, cataclysmic changes were at hand.
Unexpected as crisis may have been, when it came, it struck with vehemence
at the very heart of the European experience. One of the most difficult ordeals
of the late medieval age began innocently enough in 1305 when the newly
elected French pope, *Clement V, decided to remain in southern France rather
than return to the traditional seat of papal authority in Rome. (In this volume,
an asterisk indicates a cross-reference to another entry.) This was not unusual
at a time when pontiffs were often away from the Eternal City for long periods
of time, but Pope Clement’s decision soon became a precedent as successive
popes at first remained and then established their permanent residence in the
Provençal town of Avignon. So began what critics called the Babylonian Captivity of the papacy, a seventy-three-year span during which the bishops of
Rome, and with them directive power over the entire church, remained absent
from the See of St. Peter. This crisis of papal residence and dominion violently
shook the foundations of Christendom as educated and simple believers alike
questioned pontifical authority and the very truth of church doctrines themselves.
Then between 1376 and 1378, when Pope Gregory XI finally did restore the
Introduction
ix
papacy to Rome, a group of French cardinals elected their own pope in Avignon,
and so began the great Papal Schism. This proved to be a second and far more
serious crisis for the church as two and sometimes three rival popes excommunicated one another in attempts to attract papal tax revenues and the support
of European monarchs. The schism took several church councils and nearly forty
years to heal, but doubts sown among the Christian faithful during this divisive
time never really faded and were exacerbated later in the fifteenth century when
a series of particularly corrupt popes in Rome further alienated an already-wary
populace.
Another crisis of the late Middle Ages primarily involved France, and to a
lesser extent England, when these two kingdoms clashed in the so-called Hundred Years’ War. Actually a series of battles and skirmishes during the period
1337–1453, this struggle sorely tested the French people since most of the fighting occurred on their soil. It was also a particularly destructive war in that both
armies were largely composed of mercenary troops who plundered freely and
lived off the land rather than carry their own supplies. The war also saw the
first use in Europe of firearms, which, although they were primitive and often
more dangerous to the gunners than to the target, nevertheless opened the door
to the use of more sophisticated and accurate guns as the conflict dragged on.
The Hundred Years’ War was in some respects the first “modern” war in its
ravaging effects on civilians and the countryside, in the sheer size of the war
effort on the part of the combatants, and in the more “national” character of a
conflict that loomed larger than the dynastic and feudal clashes of old.
Easily the most catastrophic event of the fourteenth century, and perhaps in
the entire history of Europe, was the epidemic known as the Black Death, which
initially swept through the Continent between 1347 and 1351 and returned intermittently during the next few centuries. We now know that the Black Death
was a combination of bubonic plague, carried by fleas that jumped from rats to
human hosts, and pneumonia, which struck Europeans already weakened by a
shortage of food due to overpopulation and a series of poor harvests. After fleainfested rats arrived in Italy late in 1347 aboard trading vessels from the Levant,
the lethal disease spread quickly until, in a few years’ time, it had claimed the
lives of some 40 percent of Europe’s total population. Very few regions were
spared, and no social class or religious order escaped its deadly hand. Europeans
were stunned and confused by the onslaught of the plague. Many thought that
the disease was airborne and so quarantined themselves or sought to cover their
mouths and noses; others believed that God was punishing Christians for their
sins in anticipation of the dreaded Apocalypse. Whatever their opinions, the
Black Death certainly caused many believers to doubt a church that God had
apparently forsaken, and although men and women would continue through
succeeding centuries to follow Christianity, it is evident that the unflinching
devotion of the Middle Ages was tempered by skepticism and indifference in
the wake of this great demographic disaster. Economically, the Black Death
most profoundly decreased the supply of labor both on feudal manors and in
x
Introduction
the towns. Landlords thus relaxed demands on their remaining peasants to keep
them from running off, and sometimes converted arable lands to pasture to
reduce their dependence on peasant workers. Meanwhile, towns were hardest
hit by the plague, mainly because townsfolk lived in close quarters and filthy
conditions; many towns were simply abandoned by craftsmen and merchants
who no longer had buyers for their goods. The Black Death shocked and terrified
as it killed off millions of people, but it also solved—for those who survived
it—a number of serious economic and social problems such as overpopulation
and scarcity of foodstuffs. In the religious disquiet it caused, the plague also
helped release Christians from their preoccupation with the formal and ritualistic
practice of their faith. In effect, it freed them to begin to think for themselves,
to discover previously forgotten or forbidden worlds, and to renew their search
for knowledge in directions left unexplored for a millennium and more.
The crises of divided church, war, and plague did much violence to late
medieval society, it is true, but these traumas also cleared the social and cultural
air, so to speak, in turn allowing those who survived to rebuild their world with
new vigor and creativity. Italy, an urbanized land that had suffered much from
the Black Death, was one of the first regions of Europe to recover. Indeed, parts
of Italy were already beginning the process of intellectual and political renovatio
even before the arrival of the awful disease in the middle of the fourteenth
century. Northern Italians had freed themselves from the authority of the Holy
Roman Emperor as early as the twelfth century and had established a patchwork
of independent city-states across the Po valley and down through Tuscany and
the Romagna. Many of these states created communal forms of government—
actually, oligarchies of prominent citizens—that styled themselves “republics”
and rotated important offices and assembly seats among members of the most
influential families in town. Eventually some of the communal governments
proved unable to control the various family factions competing for power in the
city-states and so gave way first to invited podestà judges from other cities and
then to signoria governments run by a single individual or family. Thus by the
middle of the fifteenth century Milan was under the control first of the Visconti
and then the Sforza dukes, Florence was ruled by the Medici, and various
smaller towns such as Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino were governed by the Este,
Gonzaga, and Montefeltro families, respectively. These city-states interacted
with one another commercially and diplomatically, and it was in this early microcosm of the modern United Nations that the art of diplomatic correspondence,
negotiation, and representation was born. These cities also fought small wars,
but since condottieri (mercenaries) were usually hired for this purpose, the wars
were seldom destructive and few soldiers were killed—mercenaries always
hoped to survive to fight another day. Above all, the northern Italian city-states
enjoyed great commercial prosperity as their textile and banking houses served
the needs of all Europe, and their merchants became wealthy middlemen in the
luxury import/export business between the Levant and northern Europe. The
Milanese, Florentines, and Venetians were doing so well by the turn of the
Introduction
xi
fifteenth century, in fact, that many successful entrepreneurs in these cities began
to turn their attention and their considerable fortunes to the support of learned
and artistic pursuits. It was this patronage, or the ability to pay the expenses of
artists and writers so that they might be free to create, that in many significant
ways fueled the cultural renewal of the Renaissance.
The dominant intellectual trend of the great European renewal was humanism,
a reawakening of interest in the art, literature, history, and philosophy of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. Such studies were called humanistic because they
celebrated the achievements of human beings, an attitude that diverged from the
medieval emphasis on the divine and was perhaps a result of religious insecurity
following the Black Death. Humanistic scholarship also required a mastery of
the ancient Greek and Latin languages so that original ideas could be read and
digested in their original form without distortion from imperfect translations.
Humanism first took root in Italy, naturally enough, because Italians were surrounded by, and drew inspiration from, the architectural monuments of their
great Roman past. Soon the governments of fourteenth-century Italian city-states
were fashioning themselves after the ancient republic of Rome. Newly aware of
a forgotten corpus of ancient wisdom that crusading contact with the Islamic
world had revealed, Italian scholars gradually rediscovered the ideas of preChristian thinkers whose works had languished in neglected corners of monastic
libraries for centuries.
*Francesco Petrarch was among the first to appreciate the moral and political
lessons offered by the ancients, and he undertook a quest—or sent forth his
students in his later years—to bring their “lost” works to light once more. Petrarch was followed by other scholars such as *Leonardo Bruni and *Leon
Battista Alberti, both of whom believed that a humanistic education was best
employed in the service of the city-state. Indeed, Alberti preached that accumulation of wealth and ambition for political power were laudable aspects of
the human condition because only with these tools could men serve their states
most effectively. It was also Alberti who promoted himself as the archetypical
Renaissance man, an individual with humanistic learning who commanded several languages, who was a great soldier and athlete, and who was witty and
urbane enough in polite company to attract the all-important patronage of great
civic leaders. As the focus of scholarly activity in quattrocento (1400s) Italy,
humanism broke with the old Christian values of poverty, humility, and contemplative simplicity and instead substituted an image of virtù, or cleverness, courage, boldness, style, and classical learning, as the new ideal. In humanism
Italians found release from conformity to the collective Christian chain of being,
they found freedom to develop their own human talents as individuals, and they
found an opportunity to renew themselves and their culture in the previously
ignored or prohibited ideas of ancient teachers.
If humanism provided the initial spark of European intellectual renewal, then
other forms of human creativity soon found expression in its wake. The fourteenth century, devastated by crisis as it may have been, was also an age of
xii
Introduction
great achievement in the literary arts. This was the time in Italy of *Dante and
*Giovanni Boccaccio, two Florentines who consciously chose to write in their
native Tuscan vernacular, and who thus diverged from the medieval focus on
works of theology, penned in Latin and intended for a narrow clerical audience.
These innovators brought entertaining poetry and tales to lay readers and listeners through the vernacular and, at the same time, so popularized their Tuscan
dialect that it became the basis of modern written Italian. England also enjoyed
a heady literary moment around the turn of the fifteenth century when *Geoffrey
Chaucer, *William Langland, and others produced masterworks in varying dialects of what was then “Middle” English. Popular literature in vernacular languages such as these, coupled with the development of the movable-type
printing press in Germany in the mid-fifteenth century, did much to encourage
literacy across Europe. Laypersons now possessed not only the desire to learn
to read works that interested them, but also the financial means to buy cheaper
and more plentiful printed books.
The plastic arts, too, experienced a creative resurgence under the brushes and
chisels of men newly freed from the artistic conventions of old. Inspired by the
realism they observed in Greco-Roman statues and mosaics all around them,
Italian artists became “humanists” themselves as they experimented with perspective and shadow to achieve depth in their work, just as the ancients had
once done. The symbolic, static, two-dimensional creations of the Middle Ages
now gave way to vibrant, colorful, and, above all, realistic portrayals of human
figures in their urban and natural settings. As with literature, this artistic revival
did not occur exclusively in Italy but spread beyond the Alps to the urbanized
regions of Flanders and the Rhine valley in Germany, and to France and Spain
in the west. Although religious themes remained popular in Renaissance art,
bold painters and sculptors also flirted with secular and even pagan subjects
from the mythology and history of the Greeks and Romans. They were encouraged in this by wealthy patrons who were so captivated by the humanistic lessons of the ancients that they were willing to support the creative genius that
brought these lessons to life on plaster, stone, and canvas in their chapels and
villas. Indeed, the church itself was often the most willing and generous patron
of both sacred and secular art. Popes such as *Nicholas V and *Pius II, former
humanist scholars who had as younger men produced classical translations and
even bawdy poetry, now commissioned writers, painters, and sculptors to help
transform Rome into an unrivaled center of learning and beauty. Yet as many
churchmen shared in the exuberance of the Renaissance spirit, some also neglected their clerical duties to live more completely in the secular world.
The fifteenth century was not a healthy time for the institutional Roman
church. Crises such as the Black Death, the Avignon “captivity” and the great
Papal Schism had caused large numbers of the faithful to doubt their confused
and seemingly inept clergy. Many believers now turned their attention from
saving their immortal souls to building their financial and political fortunes in
this world, and, to a certain extent, some churchmen could not resist the temp-
Introduction
xiii
tation to follow their lead. If the middle of the fifteenth century produced
worldly popes more devoted to humanism and art than to their pastoral cares,
then the end of the century gave Christendom a series of popes far less worthy
of the title “vicar of Christ” than their predecessors. *Innocent VIII is thought
to have sired as many as sixteen illegitimate children, while *Alexander VI was
a grand manipulator of Italian geopolitics through the agency of his notorious
offspring Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. With degenerate pontifical leadership
such as this, it is small wonder that some Christians fell away from formal
church obedience and either embraced the “heretical” teachings of reformers or
else wandered off to seek a more personal, intense, and satisfying spirituality
on their own. Born in the absurdity of the Papal Schism, heresiarchs *John
Wyclif of England and *Jan Hus of Bohemia denounced church corruption while
attracting followers with messages of apostolic simplicity and scriptural authority. The movements they generated were subsequently attacked by a threatened
church and its secular allies, but not before these reformers were able to show
Europeans an alternate and often more appealing religious path. Other alienated
believers fled the ritualized Roman church to establish small spiritual communities of their own or undertook ascetic and contemplative exercises that sometimes led to mystical experiences of the divine. This new piety was known as
the devotio moderna; it was not heretical in that the church never officially
condemned its practices or adherents, but like heresy, it offered sustenance to
the spiritually starved. Mystics such as *Walter Hilton and *Juliana of Norwich
in England, and adherents of the Brethren of the Common Life such as *Gerhard
Groote and *Thomas à Kempis in the Rhine valley, discovered by themselves
a more individual and profound religious truth than anything the institutional
church could offer. It was a blend of these forces—the corruption and worldliness of Rome and the spiritual innovations of reformers—that would spark the
Protestant and Tridentine renewal of Christianity during the sixteenth century.
The final phase of cultural renewal in the early modern period occurred when
the creative genius of Italy began to spread to northern and western Europe at
the end of the fifteenth century. Scholars from Germany, England, France, and
Spain traveled to Italy to study classical art and imbibe the lessons of humanism,
and they returned to their homelands with this “new learning” to share with
their countrymen. Northerners, however, used their newfound humanistic skills
not only to grasp the wisdom of ancient pagan thinkers, but to translate more
accurately and to clarify their understanding of ancient Christian sources as well.
Although many of the great Christian humanists of the early modern age belong
to the sixteenth century, and thus to the next volume in this series, important
early practitioners included England’s *John Colet, Germany’s *Regiomontanus,
and Spain’s *Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. These and other scholars helped
inaugurate a period of theological, literary, and artistic brilliance in northern and
western Europe that was fueled, as the Italian renewal had once been, by the
political stability of emerging centralized states and by the prosperity of contact
with a rich new world.
xiv
Introduction
By the late fifteenth century the tiny city-states of Italy were dwarfed economically and militarily by the much larger kingdoms of France, Spain, England, and the Holy Roman Empire. A French invasion in 1494 overwhelmed
the independent and contentious little world of Italy, clearly demonstrating that
the center of power had now shifted to the North Sea and the Atlantic seaboard.
This was partly due to the ability of these larger kingdoms to command enormous tax revenues and armies, but it was also partly due to a new source of
wealth that was beginning to trickle in from places previously unknown or
inaccessible to Europeans. Thanks to significant advances in navigational technology learned from crusading and commercial contacts with the Muslim world,
European explorers ventured forth first along the coast of Africa and then out
into the open Atlantic. They went in search of a route to the East Indies, where
the luxury goods Italians had once purchased from Muslim middlemen in the
Levant could be acquired, it was hoped, at cut-rate prices from the original
suppliers themselves. What these intrepid explorers encountered, however, was
an entirely new and unimagined world that, within a decade of its “discovery,”
they were scrambling to exploit and settle for profit. By the turn of the sixteenth
century Europeans had indeed undertaken the renewal of their old world from
within, but they had also achieved its complete redefinition from without by
sailing forth to find their place in a new global universe.
The following figures were men and women who made important contributions to European culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the “age of
crisis and renewal” that is the theme of this volume. They are included here
because they were great thinkers, saints, artists, patrons, rebels, poets, scientists,
theologians, historians, and linguists. Others have deliberately been omitted because their accomplishments were primarily political or military and so do not
properly belong in this volume. It can be said that any era exceeds the sum total
of the lives and achievements of those individuals who shaped it, set its tone,
and helped create its singular character in history, and the late medieval and
early modern period is no exception. Though every era is necessarily the result
of that which preceded it, and is in turn the foundation of that which is to come,
the arbitrary division of time that we call the Renaissance still holds unique
lessons for those who would appreciate the richness of the human experience.
The Late Medieval Age
of
Crisis and Renewal,
1300–1500
A
Abravanel, Isaac ben-Judah (1437–1508), was born in Lisbon to an important Jewish family known for its learning and especially for its public service
to the royal families of Spain and Portugal. Although Isaac’s grandfather was
forced to convert to Christianity in the Spanish riots of 1391, he fled to Lisbon
by 1397 and there reembraced Judaism. Both Isaac and his father served the
royal family of Portugal, his father working for the infante Ferdinand, while
Isaac acted as the treasurer for King *Alfonso V, “the African,” However, Alfonso’s successor, *João II, accused Isaac of plotting against him in 1481, forcing the family to flee to Spain. There Abravanel became a scholar, writing
biblical commentaries while serving as an important financier and diplomat for
*Ferdinand and *Isabel and becoming very wealthy himself. Nevertheless, in
the family’s third exile, the Abravanels were thrown out of Spain along with
all other Jews in 1492. Although, as he later put it, Abravanel had pleaded until
his throat was sore with King Ferdinand not to evict the Jews, who would give
all they possessed for their country, all such arguments failed. The Abravanels
found refuge in Naples, where Isaac worked as court treasurer for King *Ferrante I and later for Ferrante’s son Alfonso II, while also composing a commentary on the Book of Kings. The French invasion of Naples in 1494 forced
Abravanel, along with the Neapolitan royal family, to flee to Messina, returning
in 1496. Abravanel’s son Samuel and daughter-in-law Bienvenida later led the
Neapolitan Jewish community until it suffered yet another expulsion in 1541.
Abravanel’s final move was to Venice in 1503, where he wrote most of his
major works and served as a diplomat, negotiating an important treaty with
Portugal. He died in Venice in 1508.
Abravanel was an important scholar whose works reflected his wide-ranging
education, both secular (including classical literature) and religious (Jewish and
Christian theology). He has been called the last of the great medieval Spanish
Jewish philosophers and the first of the Renaissance humanists, for his work
4
Afonso V, “the African,” King of Portugal
encompassed both perspectives. He contributed original insights into biblical
commentary and acted as an inspired commentator for and mediator of Maimonides’ thought. Abravanel’s work met that of Maimonides especially on the
three subjects of the creation of the world, the prophecies, and the principles of
Judaism. Arguing against *Levi Gersonides, Abravanel claimed that the creation
of the world ex nihilo was the only religiously acceptable explanation. His commentary on The Guide to the Perplexed is considered his masterpiece.
Abravanel was also an important thinker in the fields of politics and history,
where his perspective is considered to have been more Renaissance than medieval. Given his and his family’s history of service to the kings of Spain,
Portugal, and Naples, his attitude toward government is particularly interesting.
Abravanel preferred the governments of such Italian city-states as Venice, Florence, and Genoa to absolute monarchies, though he did argue that where kings
exist, they must be obeyed. He interpreted the Torah and the biblical tradition
of chosen judges as a pattern for government, arguing that the history of Israel
demonstrated that the collective will of many people represented by a judge was
better than the absolute will of one man. The Messiah, he said will be a judge
and a prophet, not a king. These writings were influential in the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Jewish messianic movements. His other writings included
commentaries on the Torah and the prophets and on the Passover Haggadah;
three messianic works called Migdal Yeshu’ot (Tower of salvation); two works
on the creation of the world, Shamayim hadashim and Mifalot Elohim; works
concerning Jewish dogma; and a short work on The Form of Elements. His
biblical commentary influenced Christian biblical commentators in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At least two other works on philosophy and
divine justice have been lost.
Bibliography: Solomon Gaon, The Influence of the Catholic Theologian Alfonso Tostado
on the Pentateuch Commentary of Isaac Abravanel, 1993; Ben-Zion Netanyahu, Don
Isaac Abravanel, 1982.
Deborah S. Ellis
Afonso V, “the African,” King of Portugal. See Alfonso V, “the African,”
King of Portugal.
D’Agnolo, Donato. See Bramante, Donato d’Agnolo Lazzari.
Agricola, Alexander (c. 1446–1506), was an early Renaissance musician
of the Franco-Flemish school. He was one of the leading polyphonic composers
of his generation, succeeding Johannes Ockeghem, and sang at the courts of
*Charles VIII of France, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and Philip the Fair of Burgundy, the future *Philip I of Spain.
Alexander Agricola was born in Ghent, probably around 1446. He was the
son of Heinric Ackerman and Lijsbette Naps; his brother, Jan, appears to have
Agricola, Rudolf
5
been active as a singer-composer at a church in ’s Hertogenbosch during the
last two decades of the fifteenth century. Following a practice common in humanistic circles, Alexander Latinized his paternal name. Little is known of his
early formative years. Married to a Florentine in 1470, he gained employment
at the court chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Milan and remained there from
approximately 1471 to 1474. By 1476 he had returned north, acquiring a position
as chanter at the Cathedral of Cambrai. His whereabouts during the period 1477–
91 remain a matter of speculation. However, in the summer of 1491, when he
embarked on a new trip to Italy, he held an appointment as a chapel singer for
Charles VIII of France. For the next few years he was seen visiting the courts
at Mantua, Florence, and Naples. *Ferrante I of Naples tried, without success,
to retain him as a singer at a generous annual salary of 300 ducats. By 6 August
1500 Agricola was a chaplain and singer for Philip the Fair, duke of Burgundy.
In his employment at the Brussels court chapel, he had ample opportunity to
interact with Pierre de La Rue, whose musical style was similar to his own.
Agricola accompanied the duke on trips to Spain in 1501–3 and 1505–6. He is
reported to have been sixty years old when he died near Valladolid in midAugust 1506.
Agricola’s music gained wide diffusion in contemporary manuscript and print.
In addition to eight complete masses, various credos, hymns, motets, magnificats, and lamentations, his extant work includes a significant corpus of secular
music, popular songs in French, Italian, Latin, and Dutch. His six-part version
of Fortuna desperata, an Italian canzona, shows him at the height of contrapuntal intricacy. The Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci included a sample of
Agricola’s music in Harmonice musices odhecaton (1501), the first printed volume of polyphonic music produced with movable type, and subsequently published five of the musician’s masses in Missae Alexandri Agricolae (1504). Like
Ockeghem, Agricola frequently used a borrowed cantus firmus melody as a
structural device to organize his compositions. His mass In myne Zyn was unique
inasmuch as he patterned it after one of his own secular chansons. His music,
generally elaborate, rhythmically complex, often florid, maintained an unbroken
melodic flow by avoiding simultaneous cadencing in all voices.
Bibliography: Rob C. Wegman, “Agricola, Bordon, and Obrecht at Ghent: Discoveries
and Revisions,” Revue Belge de Musicologie 51 (1997): 23–62.
Jan Pendergrass
Agricola, Rudolf (1444–85), a northern humanist who was praised by Erasmus as “another Virgil” for his eloquence in Latin, authored a handbook on
rhetorical dialectics. Rudolf Agricola (Latin for Roelof Huysman) was born in
Baflo near Groningen in the Netherlands, where his father, Hendrik Vries, was
parish priest. On the day Rudolf was born, Hendrik was made abbot of the
influential Benedictine monastery at nearby Selwerd, thus allowing him to boast
of “becoming a father twice on the same day.” Agricola received his early
6
Agricola, Rudolf
education at St. Martin’s School at Groningen, where he showed himself a
precocious student. In 1456, at the age of twelve, he matriculated at the University of Erfurt, receiving his bachelor’s degree two years later. He continued
his study in Cologne and Louvain, where he received his master of arts degree
in 1465. His interest in classical authors probably prompted him, like many
other northern humanists, to travel to Italy in 1468. In Pavia he initially studied
law, but soon abandoned this to pursue his interest in the liberal arts. To refine
his knowledge of Greek, he transferred to the University of Ferrara in 1474,
where a strong liberal arts curriculum had been established under the patronage
of the Este dukes. His fame as a speaker was such that he was asked to deliver
the annual inaugural speech at the university in 1476. Agricola, who was not
only versed in the liberal arts but was also an accomplished musician, supported
himself by playing the organ at the court of Duke *Ercole l d’Este.
While Agricola was in Ferrara, he started his main work, De inventione dialectica, which he completed during a stay at Dillingen in 1479 on his journey
back to the Netherlands. The book offered a practical course in argumentation
and became widespread as a handbook of rhetorical dialectics at major universities, replacing texts such as Quintillan’s Institutio oratoria, Cicero’s De inventione, and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium. Echoing Cicero’s
dictum that every speech is to “teach, move, and delight,” Agricola’s De inventione dialectica provided an original rhetorical layout that treated topics, analyzed the form and function of dialectics, and finally offered practical guidelines
for the art of argumentation, persuasion, and composition.
On his return to the Netherlands in 1480, Agricola was offered the position
of town secretary in the city of Groningen. During his stay in Groningen he
was a frequent visitor at the nearby Cistercian Abbey of Aduard, which in his
time was “more an academy than a monastery,” as one of his contemporaries
put it. With a circle of prominent humanists such as Wessel Gansfort, *Alexander Hegius, Rudolf von Langen, Antoon Vrije, and Wilhelmus Frederici regularly visiting, the abbey grew into a prominent center of humanist learning.
Although Agricola frequently complained about his position at Groningen, he
declined several other job offers, one as a secretary and educator at the court
of Emperor *Maximilian I, another as principal of the city school in Antwerp.
He feared that these positions would restrict him academically. As a consolation
for not accepting the position in Antwerp, he later wrote a letter, De formando
studio, to Antwerp’s school principal, Jacques Barbireau. The letter has frequently been considered a program for humanist education. Agricola considered
two questions: first, the student’s choice of study (philosophy was the worthiest
field), and second, the key to success in study. The latter lay in the student’s
ability to understand and memorize, as well as in the creative application of the
material.
In 1484 Agricola moved to Heidelberg at the invitation of his friend Johann
von Dalberg to become professor at the university there. One of his main intentions, to learn Hebrew, was never fulfilled, however. Illness cut his profes-
Ailly, Pierre d’
7
sorship at Heidelberg short. On the way back from a trip to Rome to congratulate
Pope *Innocent VIII on his election, he fell ill and died of fever on 27 October
1485.
Agricola’s corpus is small; his fame with his contemporaries rested more on
his inspiring personality than on the abundance of his writings. Apart from the
works already mentioned, occasional orations, translations of Greek classics, and
several letters have survived. Among the addressees of his letters were his old
study friend from Pavia, Johann von Dalberg, the brothers Johann and Dietrich
von Plieningen (both Agricola’s students), and *Johann Reuchlin. Dietrich von
Plieningen wrote an interesting and detailed biography of Agricola between
1494 and 1499. Agricola’s Latin poetry consisted mainly of poems for special
occasions, as well as a religious poem, Anna mater, composed shortly before
his move to Heidelberg in 1484. Agricola’s influence on later humanists, such
as Desiderius Erasmus (who met Agricola in Deventer at the age of twelve) and
Philip Melanchthon, was considerable.
Bibliography: Fokke Akkerman and Arjo Vanderjagt, eds., Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius,
Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 6, 1988; Eckhard Bernstein, German Humanism,
1983; Lewis W. Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists, 1963.
Frans A. van Liere
Ailly, Pierre d’ (1351–1420). Arguably the single most important player in
ending the Great Schism, Pierre d’Ailly was one of the key proponents of the
conciliarist solution that resulted in the election of Pope Martin V in 1417. An
able administrator, d’Ailly completed his career as a cardinal of the church; he
was a learned and prolific scholar whose thought shows the influence of the
humanistic and nominalist tendencies of the College of Navarre. D’Ailly produced treatises on ecclesiology and ecclesiastical reform, logic, astrology, and
geography and argued the case for the Immaculate Conception before Pope
Clement VII.
Pierre d’Ailly was born on 14 March 1351 in Compiègne, a short distance
from Paris, in a home adjoining the walls of the local Franciscan house. His
family was a prosperous burgher clan that still owned property in its native
Picardy. Around 1364 d’Ailly was sent to Paris to study at the progressive and
prestigious College of Navarre. He began lecturing in the arts in 1368, was
chosen procurator of the French kingdom in 1372, and received his degree in
theology in 1381, four years younger than was usual. The Great Schism had
begun in 1378 with the election of *Urban VI and subsequently of Clement VII.
At the time, d’Ailly remained silent, but by 1381 he wrote a short treatise in
the form of an ironic fictional letter from hell, the Epistola Diaboli Leviathan,
arguing in favor of a general council. He made the close acquaintance in these
years of his pupil and protégé *Jean Gerson, as well as two close advisors to
King Charles V: the bishop, later cardinal, Jean de La Grange, and the crusader
knight Philippe de Mézières.
8
Ailly, Pierre d’
In 1384 d’Ailly was appointed rector of the College of Navarre at the University of Paris and found himself embroiled in complicated political disputes
between the university, the pope, and King *Charles VI and his regent uncles.
In 1387 d’Ailly made a name for himself by persuading Clement VII to affirm
the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Shortly thereafter, late in 1389,
he was appointed chaplain to the king and, a few months later, chancellor of
the university, as both pope and king maneuvered for favorable relations with
each other and the university.
In 1394 d’Ailly and Gilles des Champs made a recommendation on ending
the schism based on a general referendum of the university. Composed in its
final form by Nicholas of Clamanges, the document outlines three ways to end
the schism: the via cessionis, in which both popes resigned, allowing a new
election; the via compromissi, in which both popes submitted to the judgment
of a third party; and the via concilii, the calling of a general council. Most,
including d’Ailly himself, hoped that both popes would resign. Indeed, d’Ailly
was persuaded of the good will of Clement’s successor, *Benedict XIII, and
inclined away from the via concilii, believing that Benedict would be willing to
abdicate. In 1395 Benedict appointed d’Ailly to his first bishopric, in Le Puy,
and two years later moved him to Cambrai. This last appointment was a testament to Benedict’s faith in d’Ailly’s courage and political skill, as it required
him to confront a hostile duke of Burgundy, *Philip the Bold, in a diocese split
between adherents to Urban and to Benedict. It also cost d’Ailly support in Paris
among those who saw him as a papal partisan and believed him susceptible to
what amounted to bribery because he backed away from calls for a council to
end the schism. While d’Ailly was in Cambrai, and partly in response to a letter
from Jean de Montreuil in praise of the Roman de la Rose, in 1401 he composed
Le jardin amoureux de l’âme dévote, in which he rewrote the Roman missal as
a religious allegory along the lines of the mystical interpretation of the Song of
Songs.
Back in Paris in 1402, d’Ailly wrote his Tractatus de materia concilli generalis, in which he agreed to a general council, but as a council of the Avignon
church and only with the reinstatement of obedience to Benedict XIII, from
whom it had been withdrawn by France in 1398. In 1403 obedience was indeed
restored to Benedict, but this seemed to quiet d’Ailly, who declined the opportunity to admonish the pope. With the assassination of the duke of Orléans in
1407, Paris became a hostile place for supporters of the pope, among whom
d’Ailly was counted, so again he retreated to Cambrai. During this time he wrote
a life for his Celestine friends of the founder of their order, Pope Celestine V,
who had abdicated his throne in 1294.
D’Ailly attended the conciliarist Council of Pisa (1409) with high hopes, but
the resultant election of Alexander V only complicated matters further, as both
Gregory XII and Benedict XIII further dug in their heels. Following the disappointing conclusion of the council, d’Ailly again undertook a short period of
Albarno, Montréal d’
9
rest. Among the works produced during this time was his Imago mundi (1410),
a compendium of ancient and earlier medieval sources on geography and astrology that was later read and annotated by *Christopher Columbus.
In 1411 d’Ailly was appointed cardinal by John XXIII, and in 1413, papal
legate in Germany, which posts he held at the time of the Council of Constance
(1414–18). D’Ailly exerted considerable influence during the council, participating prominently in most of its defining moments, including the condemnations of John XXIII and *Jan Hus. In 1416 he presented to the council his
Tractatus de reformatione ecclesiae. At the end, d’Ailly played a pivotal role
in resolving a dispute between the English and French, resulting in the election
of Martin V on 11 November 1417, which ended the schism. After the council,
d’Ailly was appointed papal legate to Avignon and died there on 9 August 1420,
at the age of sixty-nine.
Bibliography: Alan E. Bernstein, Pierre d’Ailly and the Blanchard Affair: University
and Chancellor of Paris at the Beginning of the Great Schism, 1978; Francis Oakley,
The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition, 1964; Laura Ackerman Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly,
1350–1420, 1994.
Jeffrey Fisher
Albarno, Montréal d’ (d. 1354), known to the Italians as Fra Moriale, was
a French mercenary and leader of the condottieri Great Company in Italy in the
early 1350s. A former Knight of St. John, this Provençal soldier was elected
leader of the Great Company of condottieri after the resignation of Duke Werner
of Urslingen in 1351. When Montréal joined the Great Company, it was fighting
for the Hungarians against the city-state of Naples. After the defeat of the Neapolitans and Werner’s resignation, the Great Company remained in Italy under
Montréal’s direction. From 1353 to 1354 this company of 7,000 men-at-arms
and 2,000 crossbowmen, with approximately 20,000 camp followers, operated
in central Italy. A skilled leader, Montréal was able to use his force to extort
protection money from a number of Tuscan and Umbrian cities, including Florence, Pisa, Siena, and Rimini.
In 1354, before beginning a campaign against the archbishop of Milan on
behalf of Padua, Ferrara, and Mantua, he left the company in Lombardy under
the command of Conrad of Landau while he made a brief trip to Rome. Montréal’s object for this trip was to collect money owed to him by the papacy for
past service. On his arrival in Rome, however, he was seized at the command
of the demagogue *Cola di Rienzo. Rienzo, attempting to regain his former
political power in Rome, tried and executed Montréal as a brigand and murderer.
Rienzo himself died several weeks later at the hands of a Roman mob. Conrad
of Landau assumed the leadership of the Great Company, which in the years to
come became closely associated with another band of condottieri led by the
German Bongarten.