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- All Subjects: Renaissance
- All Subjects: Judaism
- Creators: Bjork, Robert
- Creators: Egmond, Warren
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
DescriptionA look into the historical significance of clothing and clothing construction to self-fashioning.
ContributorsLee, Elizabeth Kristina (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / TerBeek, Kendra (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Judaism had always been treated as a religio licita in the Roman Empire. With the rise of Christianity, the law curtailed the proselytism of Judaism, but Jews retained their citizenship and were permitted to practice their religion with certain restrictions. The Visigothic Kingdom in Spain and Gaul inherited this legal framework, but following the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism in 589, Jews faced the first state-sanctioned forced conversion around 615. Resistance to conversion led to a series of different policies that addressed the problem of apostacy, insincere conversion, and secret adherence to Judaism. The two main drivers behind this shift in policy were, on the one hand, an attempt by the crown to compensate its lack of sufficient forces to enforce its will throughout the country, which led to attempts to use other "softer" kinds of power, including an attempt to unite the kingdom around a Catholic-Gothic identity that necessarily excluded Jews. On the other hand, a focus by the Spanish Church at creating a Christian unity in anticipation of the Second Coming, organized around the thought of Isidore of Seville, which included the conversion of Jews as part of its program. The forced conversion policy was not successful, with only limited enforcement available. Jews engaged in several strategies to evade conversion, including voluntary exile and deception of the authorities. They sometimes enlisted the help of their Christian neighbors successfully. Following a relaxation of the conversion policy in the 620s, a significant class of Jewish apostates and outwardly Christian "prevaricators" (so-called by the Church) emerged. In a series of Church councils in the 620s and 630s, this problem was addressed head-on, with a variety of strategies taken, including legal and social pressure on converts, taking away the children of Jews to be raised as Christians, the use of an oath or placitum, and a second forced conversion in 637-638 which offered practicing Jews the option of baptism or exile. Conversion of the Jews and the problem of how to handle prevaricators continued to vex the Visigothic rulers down to the end of the kingdom in 711. Evidence does suggest that despite the pressure, Jews continued to live in Spain as Jews throughout the period. However, the laws created in this time, both secular and canonical, exerted a great deal of influence throughout the medieval period. Moreover, these events laid the foundations of later anti-Jewish rioting and expulsions from Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
ContributorsGuth, Geoffrey J. (Author) / Samuelson, Hava Tirosh (Thesis director) / Bjork, Robert (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
De Plantis Aegypti is a medical botany text from 1592, written by Prospero Alpini in Latin. In this text, Alpini details a variety of plants native and grown in Egypt, how they are grown, how they are processed, what they look like, and what if any edible and medical uses are documented. This project focused on transcribing and editing the Latin text, translating the Latin text into English, and comparing the medical claims to the modern scientific literature. This is the first translation of this text into English or any other language. Alpini also wrote two other books, which also have never been translated. The intended goal was to demonstrate that renaissance scholars understood medicine well, if not the mechanisms through which those medicines worked. After analyzing the modern scientific literature on the plants mentioned within the text, it was found that every medical use referenced in the text was either directly supported, indirectly supported, or there was no data from the literature. In other words, none of the medical uses were found to be disproved. On the other hand, quite a few of the plants actually had similar efficacies as modern pharmaceuticals. In addition to the notes on the modern science, there are also quite a few notes based on the grammar and the orthography of the text. This project is but a sampling of the plants mentioned De Plantis Aegypti, there are dozens more, which I plan on translating and doing a similar analysis on at a later date.
ContributorsPlamondon, Ian Lee (Author) / Poudrier, Almira (Thesis director) / Bjork, Robert (Committee member) / Egmond, Warren (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05