Jacob Ruff's Adam und Heva, written in 1550 by the Zurich town surgeon with the dual purpose of entertaining and instructing Zurich's citizens in the new Protestant faith, is important for the way in which Ruff, a follower of the Swiss reformer, Zwingli, was intent on using images from the Old Testament to dramatise the Reformation tenets of sola scriptura, sola fide and sola gratia on the open-air stage of the Miinsterhof in Zurich. The original Froschauer print of 1550, of which there are four copies still extant in libraries in Zurich, St. Gallen, Munich and Berlin, has, until more recent years, been neglected by scholarship, and the last major study of the drama, which takes place over two days and involves a cast of one hundred and six, was the 1848 edition by the German literary historian, Hermann Marcus Kottinger. In the present study, I provide a critical edition which seeks to make the Adam und Heva more accessible to the modern reader, and also a commentary, in which I undertake a detailed analysis of the way in which Ruff pursues a more medieval syncretism by fusing various dramatic elements of the Middle Ages with what is nevertheless a Reformation theology, thereby incoporporating medieval and contemporary thought in a medieval and modern framework, and creating some of the most innovative scenes in the long tradition of medieval creation literature. In addition, by comparing the Adam una Heva to the works of contemporaries of Ruff, namely the Swiss Reformation dramatists Hans von Rote and Jos Murer, and the Germans, Valten Voith and Hans Sachs, I study how elements of the drama of the Middle Ages could exist alongside the external and contemporary influences of the Swiss and German literary traditions, and how Swiss drama, largely neglected by the literary historian, may be placed firmly within the German evangelical dramatic tradition.

This thesis explores mood selection in Old Italian, describing the use of the subjunctive and indicative in complement clauses in non-literary Tuscan of the Quattrocento (1375-1499). Using Wandruszka’s (1991) model of the subjunctive, and a Tuscan corpus of merchant letters and ricordi, sermons and other religious writing, based on Tavoni’s (1992) hierarchy of non-literary Quattrocento writings, I quantitatively assess the factors that influence mood selection in complement clauses. I restrict my analysis to complement clauses so as to compare the findings with those of Stefinlongo’s (1977) and Vegnaduzzo’s (2000) similar corpus-based studies of mood selection in thirteenth-century Italian, where possible, in order to suggest any trends in the use of the subjunctive. While I find that the semantics of the governing lexical element still has the predominant influence on the mood of the complement clause in fifteenth-century Italian, I also find that other factors, such as clause type, person and number, and tense and aspect, have a significant role in the modal outcome of complement clauses. However, the influence of these other factors is neither categorical nor equal, and it may be collective in the case of co-present factors. By conducting a quantitative comparison of mood selection in a variety of text types, my study also investigates Stefinlongo’s hypothesis that subjunctive use is not influenced solely by semantic or syntactic factors but also by features at the level of text type. However, I find the modal influence of text type to be largely indirect, influencing the relative incidence of different semantic contexts which in turn influences the incidence of subjunctive and indicative in a text. The findings of this study serve to inform our understanding of the evolution of the subjunctive in Italian.

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2003

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1914. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 6).

Tesis doctoral--Historia--Universidad de Santiago, 1990. / Contient une annexe documentaire en galicien. Notes bibliogr. Bibliogr. p.31-44.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1914. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 6).

Although International Relations scholars make frequent reference to the Middle Ages, most of our ideas about the period are not based on extensive empirical studies. Instead, they rely on a common imaginary of Medieval Europe as an unspecified and idealised system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalties. This thesis recovers a historical understanding of the late-medieval international order by focusing on the fundamental conceptions of the organization of the social held by medieval international practitioners. In particular, it examines a specific community of practice: lawyers of the ius commune from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In doing so, this thesis makes three contributions to the IR literature. From a theoretical point of view, it adds to both English School and constructivist studies of historical international order by focusing on the process of differentiation through representation, as well as on contestation within it. In doing so, it argues for a move from a static understanding of order to the more dynamic notion of ordering. Secondly, it contributes methodologically to the historical study of ideas by proposing a methodological emphasis on communities of practitioners as a middle-ground between abstract constructivism and narrow Skinnerian analysis that facilitates the historically grounded consideration of the ordering role of language and ideas. Finally, empirically, this thesis demonstrates the analytical leverage gained from these theoretical moves by providing a detailed account of the international order from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, focusing not only on stability, but also on the contentious process of ordering. As a result, this thesis provides a new understanding of late-medieval notions of political authority, community, polity, and identity, while simultaneously highlighting the politics of representation behind them.

Tesis

Cardinal Bessarion came from his native Byzantium and settled in Rome in the mid fifteenth century. He was a Basilian monk and, at the time, a Greek Archbishop. His cultural background was in the rationalist tradition of Greek theology. As the Byzantine Empire succumbed to the invading Turks he made it his mission to preserve as much of Greek cultural heritage as possible. Part of this mission was to set out for the Italians (or Latins as he called them) the teachings of Plato of which they had only scanty knowledge. His work in Calumniatorem Platonis was intended as a defence of Plato's teachings against the criticisms of the militant Aristotelian George of Trebizond. This thesis examines Bessarion's exposition of Plato's teachings in that work on a range of philosophical questions that were litmus tests of theological orthodoxy at the time. It argues that Bessarion's exposition of Plato is heavily interpreted through a prism of later commentaries and thinkers particularly the Neo-Platonists. It shows how these interpretations and Bessarion's use of his sources is determined by his aim of showing that Plato's philosophy was closer to Christian orthodoxy than Aristotle's and, therefore, provided a firmer philosophical base than the prevailing Aristotelianism.

The subject of this thesis is the theology of the late 13th- early 14th century churchman 'Abdisho' bar Brikha. Better known by modern scholars for his poetry and canon law, he is far less recognised as a religious controversialist who composed works in Arabic as well as Syriac to answer Muslim criticisms. My overall argument contends that 'Abdisho''s hitherto neglected theological works are critical to our understanding of how anti-Muslim apologetics had by his time become central to his Church's articulation of a distinct Christian identity in a largely non-Christian environment. 'Abdisho' wrote his apologetic theology at a time when Christians experienced increasing hardship under the rule of the Mongol Ilkhans, who had officially converted to Islam in 1295. While the gradual hardening of attitudes towards Christians may well have informed 'Abdisho''s defensive stance, this thesis also demonstrates that his theology is built on a genre of apologetics that emerged as early as the mid-8th century. Our author compiles and systematises earlier debates and authorities from this tradition while updating them for a current authorship. In doing so, he contributes to the formation of a theological canon that would remain authoritative for centuries to come. My analysis of 'Abdisho''s oeuvre extends to three doctrinal themes: the Trinity, the Incarnation, and devotional practices (viz. the veneration of the Cross and the striking of the church clapper). I situate his discussion of these topics in a period when Syriac Christian scholarship was marked by a familiarity with Arabo-Islamic theological and philosophical models. While our author does not engage with these models as closely as his better-known Syriac Christian contemporary Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286), he nevertheless appeals to a literary and theological idiom common to both Muslims and Christians in order to convince his coreligionists of their faith's reasonableness against centuries-long polemical attacks.