Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies - CRRS

Texts in texts, but what texts? 👀
Today we wanted to highlight this gem from our collection. While the printed text is a 1541 edition of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, you’ll notice that there are other texts lurking beneath the covers! The boards of this binding are reinforced with manuscript waste containing fragments of Justinian's Digest 39.4, but the boards themselves are made up of manuscript sheets containing an unknown text. Are you able to help us identify this text?

The detailed manicules and drawing of an animal also stood out to us. Our best guess for the animal is a pheasant—what do you think?

📖: PA6304 .T6 1541

🪡📖 Do you recognize this technique? For today's rare book post, we wanted to highlight this instance of "pricking and pouncing," a technique that uses the pinpricks of needles to trace an image. First, you prick the design on the paper. Second, you dust a powder called "pounce" through the pricked holes onto the material beneath. It appears that this page has been used to prick the design of foliage in a vase! This technique was often used by early modern women who would prick designs from illustrations in a text to transfer the image to linen for embroidery projects. Do you think that was the case here?

📖: PA3851 .A2 1532

Announcing our newest publication: 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘢𝘴 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘺, 1200–1800: 𝘌𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺, 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘒𝘶𝘦𝘩𝘯, an innovative collection that redefines the possibilities of socio-legal history in medieval and early modern Italy. Recommend the book to a librarian or pick up your own copy at https://pubs.crrs.ca/products/es62!

Exploring topics including gender, agency, inheritance, property, political conflict, and material culture, 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘢𝘴 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘺 illuminates how legal categories and assumptions shaped life across six centuries. The studies in this volume draw on an array of sources, from juristic consilia and statutes to testaments and household inventories, revealing the importance of law as a medium through which people conceived and negotiated their most meaningful social relationships. Together, the essays extend the groundbreaking methods pioneered by Thomas Kuehn, whose scholarship has transformed how historians understand the entanglement of law, family, and society in the premodern world.

CONTENTS:

Introduction
William Caferro and Robert Fredona

Thomas Kuehn Bibliography

1. Standing in the Market Place: The Pomaiole of Late Medieval Cortona
Daniel Bornstein

2. (Im)possible Choices? The Maternal Tutela of Sienese Widows over Orphans
Elena Brizio

3. “Voluit, iussit, et mandavit testatrix”: Agnola Baroncelli’s Testaments, 1414–1430
Lawrin Armstrong

4. Practices of Women’s Literacy and Patrimonial Agency in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Florence
Isabelle Chabot

5. Between Family and Succession: Women in the Consilia of Giasone del Maino
Maria Gigliola di Renzo Villata

6. Private Lives and a Seventeenth-Century Supreme Court in Early Modern Tuscany
Giovanna Benadusi

7. Jurists and Politics in Late Thirteenth-Century Bologna: Consilia on the Property of Banniti
Massimo Vallerani

8. Jurists in the Shadow of the Black Death: Bartolo of Sassoferrato and Francesco Tigrini of Pisa
Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner

9. Castle Lords of Southern Lazio
Edward English and Carol Lansing

10. Legislation and Popular Organization in Early Renaissance Florence
Joseph Figliulo-Rosswurm

11. Reading and Interpreting Household Inventories from Mediterranean Europe
Daniel Lord Smail

12. How to Argue Against Evil: Cesare Beccaria Confronts Doubting Readers in On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
Caroline Castiglione

🎂🎈 Happy Birthday to Isabella d’Este, one of the most important cultural and political figures of the Italian Renaissance!

Born on 17 May 1474, Isabella received a formidable education at Ferrara before her marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga made her co-regent of Mantua. A successful diplomat and political operator, Isabella was also an influential art collector, a fashion trendsetter, an accomplished musician, and a patron of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian, as well as writers including Ariosto, Bandello, and Castiglione. She was also a prolific writer herself, with over 15,000 of her letters surviving today that document her astonishing life.

To learn more, read Deanna Shemek’s 𝘐𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: 𝘐𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘥’𝘌𝘴𝘵𝘦’𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴, available now at https://pubs.crrs.ca/products/es46! Recommend this book to a librarian or use promo code HAPPYBDAY for 20% off!

“Deanna Shemek is, without a doubt, the world’s leading scholar on Isabella d’Este. […] The knowledge and theoretical expertise that Shemek exhibits in this volume are matched, in my mind, by the profound humanity that all her chapters display, making it invaluable to its readers.” — Maria Galli Stampino, University of Miami

“Deanna Shemek’s marvelous study of Isabella’s correspondence, the product of many years working with this immense archive, gives us a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most fascinating and important figures in Renaissance Italy.” — Paula Findlen, Stanford University

“Deanna Shemek’s insightful and authoritative study of Isabella d’Este makes a major contribution to our understanding of this multi-faceted figure. Shemek’s deft analysis of her extensive correspondence illuminates how skillfully Isabella used the epistolary art to craft and manage her persona and her relationships.” — Meredith Ray, University of Delaware

📚✨ Thank you to everyone who joined us for Canada Milton Seminar XIX! 📚✨

Organized by Prof. John Rogers, the Canada Milton Seminar is an annual gathering of scholars working on early modern literature and culture, with a special focus on the works of John Milton.

This year's conference included dazzling lectures by Prof. Julie Crawford (Columbia University), Prof. Thomas Fulton (Rutgers University), Prof. Colby Gordon (Bryn Mawr College), Prof. David Loewenstein (Penn State University Park), and Prof. Deanne Williams (York University); an exciting panel of presentations by emerging scholars Chloe Holmquist, Theo Northcraft, Shaurya Oberoi, and Lucas Simpson; and a beautiful concert of 17th-century songs presented by the Musicians in Ordinary, led by John Edwards.

Thank you to all of the presenters, session chairs, performers, and attendees who made this year's event such a success! We look forward to seeing you again in 2027!

🪱🔍 Help us solve this seventeenth-century medical recipe!

On the flyleaf of a Greek grammar book from our collection, someone has inscribed the following:

A plaister for ye wormes
Take a quantity of wormwood
of Rue, of maidleeke, and
featherfold, and boyle the
same after you haue cut it
in a quantity of meat oyle, and
put the same to the childs
belly as hot as may be suffered

A plaster is a type of sticky paste applied to the skin and topped with a bandage, and the "wormes" in question are parasitic worms, which were known to infect the digestive tract. But what are "maidleeke" and "featherfold"? Let us know in the comments if you have any insights or theories!

📖: PA442 .M37 1630 (Rare Book)
Matthias Martini. Graecae linguae fundamenta. Bremen: 1630.

🐈🐁 Today's eye-cat-ching detail is this printer's device featuring a cat and mouse. This device belongs to the Sessa family and we can note a progression in the device as different family members take over the printshop. The Sessa family began printing in 1489, spearheaded by Giovanna Battista Sessa, with his son, Melchiorre Sessa taking over the shop in 1506. By the 1530s, the motto "Dissimilium infida societas" [treacherous the company of the dissimilar] was added. In the 1540s, we see a variation of the device that now features the cat nursing her young, perhaps alluding to the involvement of the new generation to the printshop. By the 1570s, a new motto is added: "Imparibus dissidii satis" [for the unequal separation/discord suffices]. Variations of this printer's device can be found in editions spanning more than a hundred years! Feline curious to learn more? Come check these books out!

📖: PA2084 .F32 1588

📖: PA6654 I8 1523

📖: PC1103 F67 1538

📖: PA6801 A5 1575 Large

The Canada Milton Seminar isn’t exactly a “seminar.” It’s now a small international conference. But it keeps its name as the Canada Milton Seminar, because it continues to be a friendly and informal gathering of really smart people interested in seventeenth-century literature and culture, with a special but by no means exclusive focus on John Milton.

All attendees of the CMS are participants. Ample time is devoted to Q&A after each speaker’s presentation. Enlightening conversations unfold over lunch and the many coffee breaks, and all of the CMS participants have multiple opportunities to chat with each other, and with any or all of the scholars delivering papers. Despite its status as a small conference, the CMS punches above its weight, and has been for 20 years now a significant driver of knowledge and intellectual provocation in the fields of seventeenth-century literature, culture, and politics. That fact has become even more true now that the Canada Milton Seminar features a special panel of Ph.D. students from Canada and the U.S. discussing the dissertations they are writing on Milton and the seventeenth century

This year's speakers are: Thomas Fulton (Rutgers University), Colby Gordon (Bryn Mawr College), Deanne Williams (York University), David Loewenstein (Penn State – University Park) and Julie Crawford (Columbia University).

This year's graduate presenters are: Lucas Simpson (U of T), Chloe Holmquist (U of T) and Shaurya Oberoi (Rutgers).

Visit the link below to register now!
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/canada-milton-seminar-xix-2026-tickets-1968922454062?aff=oddtdtcreator

Final CRRS Workshop of the year is a hybrid event!
Followed by the CRRS Year-End Party (in person)

Zoom Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/5CGYDE_VR6yjjKY3J3IlvQ

Join us in a toast to the end of the school year!
(Entrance facing the Vic Quad, west side of Burwash Hall)