"When the city was filled with these bonfires, he then combed the city, and whenever he received notice of some public sodomite, he had him immediately seized and thrown into the nearest bonfire at hand and had him burned immediately." This story, of an anonymous individual who sought to cleanse medieval Paris, was part of a sermon delivered in Siena, Italy, in 1427. The speaker, the friar Bernardino (1380-1444), was one of the most important public figures of the time, and he spent forty years combing the towns of Italy, instructing, admonishing, and entertaining the crowds that gathered in...
"When the city was filled with these bonfires, he then combed the city, and whenever he received notice of some public sodomite, he had him immediatel...
Plague was one of the enduring facts of everyday life on the European continent, from earliest antiquity through the first decades of the eighteenth century. It represents one of the most important influences on the development of Europe's society and culture. In order to understand the changing circumstances of the political, economic, ecclesiastical, artistic, and social history of that continent, it is important to understand epidemic disease and society's response to it. To date, the largest portion of scholarship about plague has focused on its political, economic, demographic, and...
Plague was one of the enduring facts of everyday life on the European continent, from earliest antiquity through the first decades of the eighteenth c...
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), sculptor, architect, painter, and playwright, was the most influential artist of seventeenth-century Rome and, indeed, one of the leading creative forces in European art for most of that century. He is universally recognized as one of the creators of the vastly popular Roman Baroque style, which was quickly disseminated throughout all of Europe. His influence lasted well beyond his death, and the popularity of his numerous works--fountains, statues, churches, and public squares--is today as great as it was during his own lifetime, if not more so. Domenico...
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), sculptor, architect, painter, and playwright, was the most influential artist of seventeenth-century Rome and, in...
