This dissertation studies the diplomatic and political communication between Florence, the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires in the fifteenth century (1439-1481). The first chapter is introductory to the thesis and reconstructs the contacts between Florence and Byzantium. The second chapter and the third chapter examine the privileges granted by John VIII to Florence; the chapters present the contents and contextualise the privileges within the humanist environment. The fourth chapter studies the Florentine-Byzantine contacts after the Council (1439-1453), focusing on why Florence abandoned Byzantium. The fifth chapter analyses the beginning of Florentine-Ottoman relations and reconstructs the commercial privileges given by the sultan to Florence. The sixth and seventh chapters investigate Florence’s diplomacy during the Ottoman-Venetian war (1463-1479) and Otranto (1480-1481) until Mehmet II’s death. The thesis is accompanied by three appendices including a number of unpublished documents, a prosopography of the Florentines involved in the Levant, and selected Byzantine charters used for the analysis in chapter two. I aim to demonstrate that the relations between the eastern and the western part of the Mediterranean in the fifteenth century were determined by political and economic considerations rather than faith. These considerations guided Florence’s diplomacy to achieve commercial superiority in Constantinople.

This work seeks to explore the progress of rural settlement and colonization in the county of Worcestershire in the period prior to the Black Death of 1349 . The study is organised into three sections, each of which is based upon particular forms of evidence. Thus, the first part utilises archaeological, place name and charter evidence to establish settlement patterns in the pre-conquest period. The second part makes a detailed study of the Domesday evidence for the county, utilising simple statistical techniques to establish relationships within the data and to identify local Domesday economies. The final part uses a wide range of manorial, Exchequer and Taxation documents to chart the post-conquest progress of colonization, settlement initiation and woodland clearance. The impact of these developments upon selected local Domesday economies, identified in part two, is achieved by the study of manorial documentation relating to the manors of the Bishop and Priory of Worcester and those of Guy de Beauchamp. Each section of the work contains three chapters in which an assessment is made of the evidence available for a study of settlement and colonization before proceeding to its analysis. Continuity between the sections is maintained by the production of a series of 'clearance' maps which chart the progress of settlement at the expense of woodland at the end of each of the main historical periods. The development of settlement patterns is framed within the evolution of territorial units of organisation, which allows an assessment to be made of the impact of seigniorial control as well as the influences stemming from the physical geography of the county.

This thesis looks at the role and function of the dragon in the saint's encounter with the monster in hagiographic texts, written primarily in the vernacular, between 1200 and 1500. Those connotations accrued by the dragon which are relevant to this thesis are traced from their earliest beginnings. Although by the middle ages the multi-valency of the dragon is reduced to one primary symbolic valency, that of evil and significantly, the evil of paganism, the dragon never loses completely its ancient associations and they help to colour its function within the narrative. The symbolic use of the dragon in vernacular saints' lives is generally consistent, although allowing for different didactic emphases. However, the two legends on which this thesis concentrates are those of St George from Caxton's Golden Legend and St Margaret from the Katherine Group. Each reveals tensions within the text when the dragon's role departs from the familiar hagiographic topos. Firstly, the role of the hagiographic dragon is identified by a comparison with that of the dragon in romance. Allowing for cross-fertilization, this thesis focuses on the significance of the hero's dragon-fight and the saint's dragon encounter to differentiate between the ethos of the romance and hagiographic genres respectively. Tensions are created in the hagiographic text when the romance topos of the dragon-fight is used in conjunction with the hagiographic dragon encounter, as in the legend of St George. Finally, in the legend of St Margaret, the dragon's appearance unbalances and unsettles the perspective of the narrative when its role and function are deployed in the promulgation of virginity.

The development of unenclosed common waste, parks, hamlets, moated sites and isolated individual settlements in Sutton Chase is traced, using archaeological, documentary and environmental evidence. The value of employing a combination of different methods and sources in the study of landscape development is shown, provided their potential and limitations are critically assessed. The largest waste areas were probably heathland by Roman times, and they were conserved through the Middle Ages as part of the hunting reserve of Sutton Chase, but following the demise of Sutton Chase in 1528, settlement and cultivation of waste areas was encouraged. Deer parks were created in parts of the study area between the 12th and 14th centuries. In the later Middle ages some of these were extended and new parks were created. Most of the hamlets and individual settlements were shown to have been in existence by the Middle Ages, but few of them were on the same sites as Roman settlements. The relative influence of the physical environment, population fluctuations and human policy in the development of the landscape is discussed, and possible future work suggested by the results of the study is outlined.

The study researches the origins and evolution of Herefordshire’s medieval landscape from the standpoint of its late Anglo-Saxon territorial organization, both secular and ecclesiastical. It contributes to the genre of topographical studies, adopting a methodology of regression mapping. It identifies and explores the chronology for the development of middle Anglo-Saxon land-units within the Mercian provincia of the Magonsaete, proposing a reassessment of the timescale by when the latter people became the dominant group within the provincia. It argues for the existence of fourteen early-to-mid Anglo-Saxon old minster territories, at least three of which reveal British Church origins, and proposes a model for the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon see at Hereford. It suggests a ninth-century chronology for the incorporation into Mercia of the northern and eastern districts of the kingdom of Ergyng and a tenth-century terminus ante quem for the shire’s creation. It argues that aspects of the shire’s infrastructure are British in origin. It concludes by positing the existence within Herefordshire of two relict British tribal districts which once belonged to a sixth-century kingdom of Powys of similar size to those found in Ergyng.

This thesis examines the politics of privacy and the public drama of the English Renaissance commercial stage. It intervenes in the study of publics and the early modern public sphere, contending that a wider examination of the corpus of public drama in the English Renaissance can illuminate the politics of privacy as well as the nature of dramatic practice. The thesis is split into two parts. The first examines external evidence – the ways in which the language of privacy is applied to the commercial theatre – and contains a single chapter on the emergence of the so-called ‘private’, indoor playhouses. It is divided into three main sections that explore the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods and a short epilogue which considers the period of theatre closure. The second part examines internal evidence: how the plays of the period configure political privacy. It falls into two chapters, each of which contemplates four different forms of movement across public/private boundaries. The second chapter addresses depictions of private people participating in public affairs; analysing representations of private passivity, active resistance, promotion, and favouritism. The third chapter investigates the reverse phenomenon – public people becoming private – and discusses portrayals of corruption, privation, surveillance, and withdrawal.

Previous historiography on propaganda has focused on particular themes or time periods; this thesis provides a comprehensive and inclusive analysis drawing on a multidisciplinary approach to encompass the period c.1377-1485. The main conclusion is that propaganda was more prevalent and involved a larger proportion of the polity than previously thought. A conceptual framework based upon certain criteria used in Jacques Ellul’s, Propaganda the Formation of Men’s Attitudes, has been adopted to help define and identify propaganda. One of the dominant themes is the prerequisite of communication to enable the propagandist to reach his audience and the opportunities available to do so. An examination of the various methods available, from official sources to rebel manifestoes, together with the physical communication network required demonstrates that there existed a nationwide environment where this was possible. The literary media used for propaganda include proclamations, poetry, letters, and bills. The political audience was broad in terms of understanding of literary and visual forms of communication and their ability to use the available mechanisms to convey their opinions. Whether it was a disgruntled magnate, merchant or yeoman farmer, there was a method of communication suited to their circumstances. Visual propaganda was particularly important in politically influencing an audience, particularly for a largely illiterate population. This is an area that is often overlooked in terms of political influence until the Tudor period. The use of the human body will be a particular focus along with the more traditional aspects of art, such as heraldry. The thesis considers the relationship between kings’ personality, policy and propaganda. What emerges is that the personality of the monarch was essentially more influential than the use of propaganda. Finally, incorporating the analysis of the previous chapters, the North, is examined as a regional example of the presence and impact of propaganda. The North was a subject of propaganda itself and there was a two-way flow of communication and propaganda between the North and Westminster revealing the political consciousness of the region and its role as an audience. The overall argument of the thesis is that communication within the late medieval polity was essential and extensive. Propaganda was frequently used through a variety of media that could reach the whole polity, whether literate or not and not only in times of crisis.

Recent studies of early Islamic Palestine have stressed the minimal impact of the Arab conquest on the Christian communities of the region. None, however, have sought to trace the trajectories of these communities beyond the eighth century. This thesis provides the first long-term study of the impact of the Arab conquest on monasticism and pilgrimage between 614 and 950. The study explores the changes to the physical landscape of monasteries and Christian cult sites, in terms of site abandonment and continuity, and situates these processes in the broader political and economic context of the Palestinian region between the seventh and tenth centuries. This thesis offers a systematic critique of current theories which view Palestinian monasticism and Christian pilgrimage as social entities dependent upon patronage from Byzantium and the early medieval west. Rather, it stresses the need for a more nuanced recognition of monastic communities and Christian cult sites as places closely interlinked with localised developments and the high degree of variation between communities in terms of patron economies and social transactions. This study demonstrates that these variances often provide the key to understanding the highly varied response of Palestinian monastic communities and Christian cult sites to early Muslim rule.

The thesis is introduced with a brief review of why industrialization and urbanization should be examined together and how this may best be done in the Scottish context. There is then a critical examination of the available sources, archaeological and documentary (including technical treatises), and a consideration of their integrated use. It is accepted that in examining a topic as diverse as this that not all the sources and topics avilable can be fully explored. Emphasis has been given to the physical implications of manufacturing from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. As a result documentary sources for the sixteenth century have not been dealt with in detail and the political and social history of craft incorporations have not been discussed.

Diagrams and schemas included in medieval medical manuscripts are understudied within art historical scholarship. This thesis discusses the multivalence of meanings — medical, social and theological — generated within schemas included in sixteen different medical codices, produced in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through text-image analysis, by considering the diagrams in relationship to the texts that immediately surround them and the other texts included within the same codex, the following chapters show that diagrams, through different means, emphasised or legitimized the surrounding texts and medical practices. Additional analysis is interpictorial: the visual motifs are considered in relationship to similar and related pictorial subjects, familiar from other manuscripts and artistic contexts. Through consideration of the intervisual references to devotional art and other scientific schemas, the multiple meanings of the medical diagrams are further elucidated. Another feature of the codices that is studied is their status as physical objects, how they were held, used, leafed through and transported. Lastly, by situating the codices and their diagrams within a late medieval English social, ideological and religious milieu, a deeper understanding of their function is achieved. This thesis shows that rather than being simple tools used in medical practice or representations of medical theories, diagrams included in medical manuscripts functioned in multiple, prescriptive and descriptive, ways to define theological, civic and gendered ideas around social order.