Phaeton’s Flight, Adonis’s Trial, and Minerva in the House of Envy: 
Lodovico Dolce between Ovid and Ariosto

Contributor(s): Andrea Torre

Introducing Thyeste: Tragedia da Seneca (1547), the Venetian writer Lodovico Dolce (1508–68) defines the art of translating a book as an experience that lives in the “perspective of the becoming [...] because in order to translate, it is necessary for us to take another language or (if possible)...

Dialogic Construction and Interaction in Lodovico Domenichi’s La nobiltà delle donne

Contributor(s): Laura Prelipcean

Lodovico Domenichi (1515–64), one of the major polymaths of sixteenth-century Italy, is currently enjoying a marked revival in the critical literature. Although he has been studied in the context of his contemporary printing and publishing activities, the dissemination of works in the vernacular,...

Michael Servetus’s Britain: Anatomy of a Renaissance Geographer’s Writing

Contributor(s): Peter Hughes

Michael Servetus was a theologian, physician, astrologer, and editor. In the latter capacity he edited two editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia, to which he added some apparatus and several articles that described European countries and peoples. Following in the footsteps of medieval and Renaissance...

Erudite Cultural Mediators and the Making
 of the Renaissance Polymath: The Case of Giorgio Fondulo and Janello Torriani

Contributor(s): Cristiano Zanetti

Janello Torriani, also known by his Spanish name Juanelo Turriano (Cremona ca. 1500–Toledo 1585), was a blacksmith, locksmith, constructor of scientific instruments, famous inventor of mechanical devices, automata-maker, clockmaker to Emperor Charles V, hydraulic engineer, mathematician,...

The Inaudible Music of the Renaissance: From Marsilio Ficino to Robert Fludd

Contributor(s): Roseen H. Giles

This article revaluates the significance of musical treatises written by the Ficinian physician Robert Fludd (1574–1637). By reconsidering the implications of Fludd’s interpretation of Marsilio Ficino’s musical philosophy, I propose that his “reconstruction” of the Renaissance outlook in the...

Marguerite de Navarre, a Nicodemite? Adiaphora and Intention in Heptaméron 30, 65, and 72

Contributor(s): Scott Francis

This article situates Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron within the reformist debate over adiaphora, or theologically indifferent matters made righteous or sinful by the believer’s intentions and conscience. It discusses how adiaphora and their implications for Christian liberty and Catholic...

“Encores me frissonne et tremble le coeur dedans sa capsule”: Rabelais’s Anatomy of Emotion and the Soul

Contributor(s): Emmanuelle Lacore-Martin

This article examines the role of anatomical references in the representation of emotion and argues that they constitute textual markers of the Rabelaisian view of the relationship between the body and the soul, and the nature of the soul itself. By analyzing the ancient models of natural...

Aristotle and the People: Vernacular Philosophy in Renaissance Italy

Contributor(s): Marco Sgarbi

The essay focuses on vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy, which began to gain currency in the 1540s, just as the vernacular was beginning to establish itself as a language of culture and the Counter-Reformation was getting underway. With over three hundred printed and manuscript...

Gangrene or Cancer? Sixteenth-Century Medical Texts and the Decay of the Body of the Church in Jean Calvin’s Exegesis of 2 Timothy 2:17

Contributor(s): Lindsay J. Starkey

In 2 Timothy 2:17, Paul compared the effects of false teachings on the Church to a disease. Rejecting previous translations that identified this disease as cancer, Jean Calvin (1509–64) insisted that it must be gangrene in his 1548 commentary on this epistle, citing and discussing medical texts...

Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War

Contributor(s): Peter Thaler

This article examines the prelude to the Thirty Years’ War in Austria. It places the country’s estate system in an international context and evaluates the implications of the religious schism for the relationship between monarchs and nobles. Thwarted in their efforts to enforce confessional...

Enquêtes sur les livres d’Heures conservés au Québec : Introduction

Contributor(s): Brenda Dunn-Lardeau

Enquête sur la provenance et les pérégrinations de deux livres d’Heures enluminés du XVe siècle conservés aux Archives des jésuites au Canada

Contributor(s): Johanne Biron

Les Relations et le Journal des jésuites attestèrent la présence de livres d’Heures en Nouvelle-France au XVIIe siècle. À la même époque, les hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Québec réclamaient des livres d’Heures auprès de leurs bienfaiteurs européens, perpétuant certaines pratiques de dévotion...

Exemplars: Medieval Manuscripts in Montreal and the McGill University Library Collection of Books of Hours

Contributor(s): Richard Virr

The Books of Hours held by the McGill University Library were mostly acquired as exemplars of medieval books for the Library Museum begun by the university librarian, Dr. Gerhard R. Lomer, in 1920. This study documents their acquisitions in the context of the acquisition of other materials for...

Les complexités hagiographiques, liturgiques et iconographiques d'un livre d'Heures régional (McGill, MS 156)

Contributor(s): Helena Kogen

Le livre d’Heures McGill, MS 156 n’a jamais fait objet d’une étude scientifique exhaustive, hormis quelques notices plaçant son élaboration en Franche-Comté ou en Bourgogne après 1450. En effet, ce manuscrit offre plusieurs difficultés d’identification et d’interprétation. Ainsi, le caractère...

Le livre de raison de Guillaume Tabourot et Jeanne Bernard, notables bourguignons (Heures à l’usage de Rome, Université McGill, MS 154)

Contributor(s): Ariane Bergeron-Foote

Ouvrages précieux pour leurs propriétaires successifs, les livres d’Heures sont parfois riches en renseignements sur les premières familles qui les ont conservés. Certains livres d’Heures sont ainsi augmentés d’un livre de raison, offrant mémoires, évènements marquants et chronologie des temps...

Les reliures des livres d’Heures manuscrits de l’Université McGill et la reliure gothique d’origine du McGill, MS 101

Contributor(s): Geneviève Samson

Une reliure sert avant tout à protéger l’ouvrage qu’elle recouvre. Elle doit aussi être considérée comme un élément autonome qui a son esthétique, ses techniques et son histoire propres. Cet article présentera d’abord, de manière générale, les reliures des neuf livres d’Heures manuscrits...

Les Horae à l’usage d’Autun imprimées pour Simon Vostre (v. 1507) : examen de l’exemplaire conservé à McGill

Contributor(s): Sarah Cameron-Pesant

L’étude des livres d’Heures imprimés destinés à un usage liturgique régional est d’un grand intérêt, puisque, dans le contexte de leur standardisation progressive, l’usage régional dans les Heures imprimées se fait de plus en plus rare à la Renaissance. L’objet de cet article est un livre...

The Musical Encart of the Royal Printers Le Roy & Ballard in the 1583 Hours of Jamet Mettayer Held in the Musée de l’Amérique francophone in Quebec City

Contributor(s): Geneviève B. Bazinet

The Heures de Nostre Dame, a l’usage de Rome: selon la Reformation de Nostre S. Pere pape Pie VI pour la Congregation roiale des penitens de l’Annonciation de Nostre Dame, printed at the request of King Henri III by Royal Printer Jamet Mettayer (Paris, 1583) and held at the Musée de l’Amérique...

Comedy, Satire, Paradox, and the Plurality of Discourses in Cinquecento Italy: Introduction

Contributor(s): Stefano Jossa, Ambra Moroncini

Sex and Marriage in Machiavelli’s Mandragola: A Close(t) Reading

Contributor(s): Konrad Eisenbichler

This article carries out a close reading of Niccolò Machiavelli’s play Mandragola (The mandrake root) from the perspective of sex and gender studies. In so doing, it takes into consideration what the play says or suggests about sexual desire, sexual practices, and conjugal life. This somewhat...