For their first year module, Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts, 1400-1750, UoP history students are asked to do a practical activity and then write a report about it, reflecting reflecting critically about how it relates to the themes explored in the module. This, the first of two posts, looks at what students learned from trying to reconstruct early modern cosmetics. The tutors on this module were Dr Maria Cannon and Dr Fiona McCall. Rosie Wells chose to adapt the recipe for Rose Lip Balm from Italian doctor Giovanni Marinelli’s Gli ornamenti delle donne (The Ornament of Ladies) (1562) a manual on female beauty containing recipes at first purporting to be taken […]
Tag Archives | trade
Venice’s shifting relationship with their Ottoman Neighbours: between religious crusades and economic détente
Third-year UoP history student Elliott Thomas examines the surprisingly pragmatic relationship between Catholic Venice and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which caused the Venetians first to fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in defence of Cyprus, and then, motivated by economic considerations, to betray their Catholic allies in signing a peace treaty with the Turks resulting in three-quarters of a century of détente. One of the most consequential events of the end of the medieval period was the fourth crusade (1202-1204), where crusaders were ferried by the Venetians to sack the city of Constantinople.[1] This sacking would cause the collapse of the Byzantine Empire into a series of […]