Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Medieval World: Culture & Conflict picks up where its sister magazines – Ancient Warfare and Ancient History – leave off. The publication features the rich history and material culture of the Middle Ages – broadly conceived geographically and temporally – expanding on the contents of the popular Medieval Warfare magazine. Through well-researched and lavishly illustrated articles, this accessible publication brings to light cultural activities in local and global contexts, historical figures and events, as well as political, religious, economic, and artistic facets of the Middle Ages..

Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Editorial

MARGINALIA

RUINED HERITAGE • During the Middle Ages, the Shirgj Church, also known as the monastery of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Shirgj, was an important commercial and economic center for north- ern Albania. Shirgji was a strategic port and served as a connection point with the Adriatic Sea. The monastery and its main church were designed in the Romanesque-Gothic style and belonged to the Benedictine Order.

CHIVALRIC LITERATURE • Chivalric culture was very much a literate one. Knights and ladies listened to, read, and even wrote stories and poetry. There were also books on how to be chivalric, and on the etiquette of various chivalric pastimes.

CONQUISTADORS AND ASIAN VIKINGS • The large collection of islands of what would later be known as the Phil- ippines sat at the crossroads of great commercial and cultural exchange in Southeast Asia. This archipelago dispatched and entertained trade vessels from China, Japan, and its Southeast Asian neighbors for several hundred years before the arrival of Europeans. That event changed everything.

A LASTING IMPACT • The Medici family had a profound and lasting impact on the political, economic, religious, and cultural spheres of Florence and late medieval Europe.

THE RISE OF THE MEDICI • What lay at the heart of the success of the Medici, one of the wealthiest non-aristocratic families before the rise of the Fuggers, Rotschilds, and Rockefellers? The Medici were a family that built its reputation on a strong network of business partners, kinship, political allies, and patronage. This article revisits some key aspects of the rise of the Medici family, its business agglomerate, and its political faction up to 1434.

KNOW YOUR MEDICIS • Here are some of the Medici men and women that have had a lasting impact on the political, cultural, and reli- gious spheres of Florence, Tuscany, and broader Europe from the fourteenth through the early sixteenth century.

CAMARADERIE AND ANIMOSITY • The 1478 assassination attempt against Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici – the infamous Pazzi Conspiracy – has often been construed as the result of long-standing enmities and festering wounds between two of Florence's wealthiest and most powerful families. However, a re-ex- amination of the history of the Medici and the Pazzi before the Conspiracy reveals not animosity, but camaraderie: business partner- ships, shared interests, marriages, and more.

The hanging of Bernardo Baroncelli

THE MEDICI AS PATRONS • The Medici are probably the most famous pa- trons of the arts in history, forever associated with artists such as Donatello, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, and commonly perceived as the ‘Godfathers of the Renaissance’. While the truth is a little more nuanced, their role in helping to establish Florence as a centre of artistic excel- lence in the fifteenth century is indisputable.

The Birth of Venus

Portrait medal of Cosimo ‘the Elder’ de' Medici

GRUNWALD • On 15 July 1410, the heavy cavalry of the Teutonic Order was crushed by Polish-Lithuanian horsemen on the Grunwald (or Tannenberg) plain. The bat- tle ended Germanic expansion in Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, and...