CRRS

October 2008

1 October, 4:15 PM (tea 4:00) – Co-sponsored TRRC and CRRS Lecture

Hervé Drévillon, “How to be a Hero in Seventeenth Century France”

Location: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

Professor Hervé Drévillon is the Department of History’s 2008-9 Visiting Professor in French History, a program made possibly with the generous support of the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World and the Munk Centre’s Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. Professor Drévillon is Professeur of early modern French history at the Université de Poitiers. His interests range widely across cultural and social history: he has published on topics as varied as the cultural history of astrology in early modern France (notably in a study of the famed 16th century French astrologer, Nostradamus), noble violence as a social and cultural phenomenon, and the history of the duel. His work on the cultural history of violence has contributed significantly to opening up new perspectives in the social and cultural history of early modern elites and renewing the ways in which scholars study military history.

 

2-4 October – Non-CRRS Event

Société d’analyse de la topique romanesque, “Geographiae imaginariae : dresser le cadastre des mondes inconnus dans la fiction narrative de l’Ancien Régime”

Location: York University

XXIIe Colloque international de la SATOR

 

7 October, 5 PM Non-CRRS event

Dr. Maria Cristina Chiusa, Parma, Italy, “Correggio’s Heavens: The Painted Domes of Parma”

Location: Grad Room (Ground Floor) – 60 Harbord Street, Graduate House

 

16 October, 4 PM – 44th Annual Erasmus Lecture

Stuart Clark (University of Wales at Swansea), “The Temptation of Saint Anthony and the Art of Discernment”

Location: Alumni Hall 112, Victoria College

Free and open to the general public.

 

17-18 October – CRRS Co-Sponsored Conference

The Devil in Society in the Pre-Modern World

Location: Victoria College, University of Toronto

The Devil in Society in the Pre-Modern World is an international, interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, the Pennsylvania State University and University of Prince Edward Island. Keynote speakers include: Richard Kickhefer and Audrey L. Meaney.

 

20 October, 5 PM – Non-CRRS Event

Alexandra Guerson, “Jews, conversos, and royal policy in the Crown of Aragon before the mass conversions of 1391″

Location: Sidney Smith, Room 2098

The Pre-Modern Discussion Group.
All are welcome to come along listen, join in the discussion and come with us for a social drink afterwards.

 

24 October, 3:30-5 PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Bert Roest, “Aspects of (humanist) cultural expression among the late medieval Poor Clares”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

25 October, 8 PM

The Musicians in Ordinary, “Guard my cows: Spanish and Mexican music of the 17th century”

Location: Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)

Jorge Torres, Baroque guitarist will be performing on a concert of music from Baroque Spain and Mexico. Also featuring Hallie Fishel, Soprano and John Edwards playing various plucked strings.

Single tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors. For more information click here for email or call 416 535 9956.

 

28 October, 4:15 PM (tea 4 PM) – TRRC

Germaine Warkentin (University of Toronto), “Aristotle in New France: Louis Nicolas, Jesuit Science, and the Making of the Codex Canadensis”

Location: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

A lecture sponsored by the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (TRRC) and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS).

Tea & coffee will be served at 4:00 p.m.; the talk will begin at 4:15 p.m

 

November 2008

7 November, 2008 – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Virginia Strain (University of Toronto), “The Progress of the Suitor: Donne, Egerton, and the Reform of Commonplace Practices”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

7-8 November – Non-CRRS Event

44th Conference on Editorial Problems 2008, “Editing New France / Éditer la Nouvelle France”

Location: Victoria College, University of Toronto

Literature of contact, i.e. texts on the discovery and encounter with foreign cultures, present specific challenges not only for their authors and readers but also their editors. This conference will focus, principally but not exclusively, on the dynamic period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries and on texts relating to New France and the Americas. Inscribed in political or economic agendas, influenced by religious ideology, and distributed throughout Europe, these text cross political, confessional, linguistic, and disciplinary borders raising challenges difficult to address yet of crucial importance for Canadian history and identity. The conférence will be conducted in French and English.

 

11 November, 12-2 PM – Special Events

Prof. Lorna Hutson, University of St. Andrews School of English, “‘Tis Probable and Palpable to Thinking’: Law and Likelihood in Shakespeare”

Location: Solarium (Rm.FA2), 84 Queen’s Park

Co-sponsored by the York University Dept. of English and the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies

 

17 November, 5 PM – Non-CRRS Event

Janine Rivière (Department of History), “Dreams and death in early modern England”

Location: Sidney Smith, Room 2098

The Pre-Modern Discussion Group.
All are welcome to come along listen, join in the discussion and come with us for a social drink afterwards.

 

28 November, 4:15 (tea 4:00) – TRRC

Mary Watt (University of Florida), “Cosmopoiesis: A Dantean Foundation for Columbus’s New World”

Location: Alumni Hall, Victoria College

A lecture sponsored by the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (TRRC) and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS).

Tea & coffee will be served at 4:00 p.m.; the talk will begin at 4:15 p.m

“Cosmopoiesis: A Dantean Foundation for Columbus’s New World” examines the role that two Italian epics, one medieval, the other baroque, played in shaping both Christopher Columbus’ perception of his 1492 voyage and the Italian cultural interpretation of its ontological significance.

 

December 2008

5 December – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Benito Rial, “Liturgical Books and Diocesan Printing Projects in Galizia Before The Council of Trent”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

Benito Rial received an MA in Spanish Philology from the University Complutense of Madrid and a PhD from the University of Santiago de Compostela. He is currently engaged in research and writing on the production and trade of books in the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth-century.

He has recently published Book Production and Trade in Santiago de Compostela (Madrid, 2007), and presented the papers “The Breviarium Compostellanum of 1484. A Reconsideration” (XI Congress of the Spanish Bibliographical Society, Madrid, 2007) and “The Life of Books in Santiago de Compostela, 1501-1553: A Case Study of European Networks” (Book History Discussion Group, Queen’s University, 2008).

 

January 2009

1 January, 2 PM

The Musicians in Ordinary, “A New Year’s Day Concert: Viennese Baroque Music”

Location: Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)

Cantatas and sonatas by Vivaldi (who died in Venice), Conti (who played theorbo at the Imperial court) and Caldara. With guests Christopher Verrette, Baroque violin, and Sara Anne Churchill, harpsichord. Hallie Fishel sings and John Edwards plays theorbo and archlute.

Single tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors. For more information call 416 535 9956.

 

9 January, 3:30-5:30 PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

John Edwards, “Looking for Elizabeth in Essexian Song – Song Texts in the voice of Robert Devereaux as Self Fashioned Love Story”

Location: New: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

 

16 January, 3:30-5:00 PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Mairi Cowan (CRRS Fellow), “Catholic Reform in Sixteenth-Century Scotland? signs of a pre-Reformation Reformation and an earlier early modern period”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

In many books and articles on Scottish history, and especially in those focusing on religion, “medieval” Scotland is presumed to extend right to the Protestant Reformation of 1560. Mairi Cowan argues that this periodization conceals significant developments in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when a combination of lay-led initiatives and elite-driven repressions brought the beginnings of Catholic Reform to urban Scotland before the advent of the Protestant Reformation and perhaps also a shift from a “medieval” to a more characteristically “early modern” form of society.

 

23 January, 3:30-5:00 PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Mark Jurdjevic, “Machiavelli and Savonarola Reconsidered”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

26 January, 5PM – Pre-Modern Discussion Group

Christian Knudsen, “Ordinamus, statuimus, et stabilimus: Fifteenth-century English monastic reform and censure in the diocese of Lincoln

Location: Sidney Smith, Room 2098

 

28 January, 4:15 (tea at 4:00) – TRRC

Alan Durston (York University), “Luis Jerónimo de Oré, OFM, and the Politics of Translation in Early Colonial Peru”

Location: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

A lecture sponsored by the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (TRRC) and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS).

Tea & coffee will be served at 4:00 p.m.; the talk will begin at 4:15 p.m

 

30 January, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Eleonora Canepari, “How to become illustre? Municipal nobility and neighborhoods in Renaissance Rome”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

February 2009

6 February, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

John Gagné (Concordia University), “Collecting Women in the Italian Wars: Portraits, Pornography, and Politics, 1494-1525″

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

John Gagné is an historian of Early Modern Europe and a post-doctoral fellow with the “Making Publics” working group at Concordia. He received his BA and MA from the University of Toronto (2000, 2001) and his PhD in History from Harvard University (2008). In 2006, John was graduate fellow at the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and has spent time in the libraries and archives of Milan and Paris. His dissertation, “French Milan: Citizens, Occupiers, and the Italian Wars, 1499-1529″ examined the social and cultural impact of war and occupation in northern Italy during the Renaissance. His project with Making Publics, “Swords, Books, and Silkworms: Nodes of Knowledge and Localism in Renaissance Lombardy” investigates the connections between local culture and global trade in the sixteenth century with particular focus on objects and people as carriers of cultural meaning. John also works on the history of popular print, and has a chapter forthcoming in an edited collection on saints, manuscript, and print. Among his other interests are the connections between art and war, and the histories of consumerism and gastronomy.

 

13 February, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Dylan Reid (University of Toronto), “The handsome usher: How Jacques Sireulde built a literary career through the literary societies of sixteenth-century Rouen”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

20 February, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Mark Crane (Nipissing University), “Defending scholastic learning: Jerome de Hangest takes on Agrippa’s ‘De incertitudine’ (1532)”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

Mark Crane, a former CRRS graduate fellow (2002-2004), teaches history and Latin at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. He is currently working on a project exploring the uses of printing by Paris theologians during the first two decades of the Reformation to promote their vision of orthodoxy. The workshop will discuss the polemical style of Jerome de Hangest, one of the Paris faculty of theology’s most prolific polemicists, in a little-known work challenging Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim’s De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum.

 

26 February, 4:15 PM (tea 4:00) – TRRC

Jean-Claude Margolin, “Le sage et la sagesse dans les lettres de Charles de Bovelles”

A lecture sponsored by the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (TRRC) and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS).

Tea & coffee will be served at 4:00 p.m.; the talk will begin at 4:15 p.m

 

27 February, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Hyun-Ah Kim (CRRS), “Erasmus on Sacred Music”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

Dr Hyun-Ah Kim received a PhD in Historical Musicology at Durham University, England. She has been a Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) and her current project is ‘Sacred Rhetoric: Music in the Reformation’. As an Adjunct Faculty of the Toronto School of Theology, Dr Kim teaches a course, ‘Theology of Music’, at Trinity College in the U. of T. Her recent publications include ‘Humanism
and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the Orator and ‘The Booke of Common Praier Noted’ (1550)’. St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

 

28 February, 8 PM

Musicians in Ordinary, “Fair, Cruel Nymph: Song and Dialogues from 17th century England”

Location: Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)

Pastoral poems set to music by the Lawes brothers, Lanier and Ferrabosco with guest Darryl Edwards, tenor. Hallie Fishel sings and John Edwards plays theorbo and lute.

Single tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors. For more information call 416 535 9956.

 

March 2009

6 March, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Filomena Calabrese (University of Toronto), “To Laugh is to be Human: Poggio’s Liber facetiarum and Leonardo’s Facezie”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

Filomena Calabrese is a PhD candidate in the Department of Italian Studies and a graduate fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Her dissertation, “Leonardo’s Literary Writings and Currents in Renaissance Thought,” is a study of the historical and philosophical context of Leonardo da Vinci’s literary writings.

Calabrese’s talk will explore the facetia genre through the facetia collections of Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo da Vinci, arguing that this literary genre is an expression of an Italian Renaissance sensitivity and spirit which acknowledges and accepts all human qualities, including flaws, as a natural part of being human.

 

7 March, 9AM-5PM – CRRS-Sponsored Conference

Bernini Double-Take

A symposium on the occasion of the exhibition Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture – organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and now on view at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa until March 8, 2009.

Speakers include Rudolf Preimesberger, Philipp Zitzlsperger, Maarten Delbeke, Sebastian Schuetze, Evonne Levy, and Carolina Mangone.

Organized by Evonne Levy in collaboration with Sebastian Schuetze. Click here for further information.

This symposium is funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Emilio Goggio Chair in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto, the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies at the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto Mississauga and Queens University.

 

13 March, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Sandro Landi (Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux), “Rethinking Reality. Machiavelli’s experience of doxa”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

Professor Sandro Landi is a historian of early modern Italian political culture (16th
-18th century) specializing in censorship, public opinion and political discourse. After
receiving his doctorate from the European University Institute (Florence) in 1995, he was
made associate professor at the University Michel de Montaigne of Bordeaux and researcher
at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Marseille. In 2005 he
obtained his “Habilitation à diriger des recherches” (HDR) from the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and was appointed professor of modern history at the
University of Bordeaux (department of Italian Studies).

His dissertation and subsequent book (/Il governo delle opinioni. Censura e formazione del consenso nella Toscana del Settecento/, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2000), opposes Habermasian’s paradigm of the public sphere in dealing with the constitutive role of censorship in the formation of public opinion in eighteenth century Tuscany, under Lorraine rule. More recently Landi has studied the emergence of public opinion in the Italian political discourse between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, with particular emphasis on Machiavelli’s analysis of the concept of ‘/doxa’/ (/Naissance de l’opinion publique dans l’Italie moderne. Sagesse de peuple et savoir de gouvernement de Machiavel aux Lumières/, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). In
collaboration with Jean Boutier and Olivier Rouchon Landi has edited a political history of early modern Tuscany (/Florence et la Toscane XIVe-XIXe siècles. Dynamiques d’un Etat italien/, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004). More recently he has published a political biography of Machiavelli (Paris, Ellipses, 2008).

 

16 March, 4PM – Non-CRRS Event

Book Launch: The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy. Nicholas Terpstra – Editor

Location: PIMS Common Room, 59 Queen’s Park East

In Renaissance Italy a good execution was both public and peaceful- at least in the eyes of authorities. In a feature unique to Italy, the people who prepared a condemned man or woman spiritually and psychologically for execution were not priests or friars, but laymen. This volume includes some of the songs, stories, poems, and images that they used, together with first-person accounts and ballads describing particular executions. Leading scholars from Canada, Italy, and the United States expand on these accounts with articles explaining particular aspects of the theater, psychology, and politics of execution.

Three of the contributors are part of the CRRS community: Associate Director Nicholas Terpstra edited the volume, while the comforters’ manual was translated by CRRS Fellow Dr. Sheila Das of Vanier College (Montreal). Another CRRS Fellow, Pamela Gravestock (University of Toronto) contributed one of the essays to the collection.

 

20 March, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Philippa Sheppard (University of Toronto), “‘The Readiness is All’: Theories About the Shakespeare Renaissance in Film Since 1989″

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

24 March, 4:15PM (tea 4:00) – TRRC

Franco Pierno (University of Toronto), “Les ‘bibles’ italiennes au XVIe siècle: au croisement de la langue et de la théologie”

Location: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

A lecture sponsored by the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (TRRC) and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS).

Tea & coffee will be served at 4:00 p.m.; the talk will begin at 4:15 p.m

 

25 March, 2 PM – Non-CRRS Event

Prof. Konrad Eisenbichler (Renaissance Studies), “Marriage Rituals in Renaissance Italy: The Patterns, the Pomp, and the Problems” (Illustrated)

Sponsored by The Victoria Women’s Association. Everyone welcome!

 

27 March, 3:30-5:00 – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

Vera Keller (McGill University), “An Age of Enthusiasm: the Liefhebber in Early Modern Europe”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

 

31 March, 4PM – DVS

Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews), “The Book World of Renaissance Europe”

Location: Old Victoria College, Alumni Hall

The CRRS’s 2008 Distinguished Visiting Scholar. Professor Andrew Pettegree is the head of School, School of History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and the Founding Director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. His research interests are focused on the Reformation as well as the history of the book in the early modern period, and he has been involved with the ambitious St. Andrews French Vernacular Book project (completed the summer of 2007). His most recent publications include Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Blackwell, 2002), and The Reformation World (Routledge 2000). He is also the series editor of St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.

 

April 2009

2 April, 4PM – DVS

Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews), “Calvin and International Calvinism. Reflections in an Anniversary Year”

Location: Old Victoria College, Alumni Hall

The CRRS’s 2008 Distinguished Visiting Scholar. Professor Andrew Pettegree is the head of School, School of History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and the Founding Director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. His research interests are focused on the Reformation as well as the history of the book in the early modern period, and he has been involved with the ambitious St. Andrews French Vernacular Book project (completed the summer of 2007). His most recent publications include Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Blackwell, 2002), and The Reformation World (Routledge 2000). He is also the series editor of St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.

 

3 April, 3:30-5:00PM – CRRS Friday Workshop Series

John McQuillen (University of Toronto), “What Monks Read: A Fifteenth-century Library in Bavaria”

Location: Room 205, Northrop Frye Hall

John will explore the effect that the advent of print had on the library of Scheyern Abbey and on the reading practices of the monks there.

 

3 April, 4:15PM – Non-CRRS Event

Professor James Hankins (Harvard University), Marsilio Ficino and the Religion of the Philosophers

Location: Room 400, Alumni Hall, 121 St Joseph Street, St Michael’s College

2009 Leonard E. Boyle Lecture
Sponsored by the Friends of the Library, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University. The author of a seminal study, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (1990), and editor of the Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (2007), his most recent book is The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide, with Ada Palmer (2008).

 

7 April, 4PM – Special Events

Dennis Hüe (Department of French Literature, University of Rennes), “Virgin and Politics: from Ephesus to Rouen”

Location: Victoria College, room 115

Co-sponsored by the CRRS and the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies

 

18 April, 9AM-6PM – Special Events

An Invitational Workshop: “THE EARLY MODERN “RELATION”: Family Tree and Hermeneutics”

Sponsored by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (Victoria), York University, and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, with support from the Faculty of Arts and Department of History at York, and at Toronto, Victoria University, the Goggio Chair in Italian Studies, and the Department of English.

Featured speaker: Filippo de Vivo, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London This invitational workshop aims at gaining insight into, and exchanging information about, the early modern “relation” or “relazione.” The eye-witness report or “relation” as it was called in English and the Romance languages (it had other names in Germanic tongues, and perhaps elsewhere) was a staple of early modern written culture. Very little is known about the rules and practices of the “relation,”, so we are gathering together a number of friends whom we know are interested to consider, in an intensive one-day workshop, the shape of the genre, the devices of its creators, and the expectations of its readers.

For more information, contact Tom Cohen or Germaine Warkentin. Space is limited.

 

25 April – CRRS Sponsored Conference

The Fifth Annual Canada Milton Seminar

Location: Victoria College, University of Toronto

With keynote speakers Sharon Achinstein (St Edmund Hall, Oxford), Colin Burrow (All Souls College, Oxford), and Elizabeth Sauer (Brock University, Ontario). Other speakers include Sylvia Brown (Alberta), Phillip Donnelly (Baylor), Daniel Shore (Harvard), and Anthony Welch (Tennessee)

 

 

30 April – 2 May – Non-CRRS Event

Pacific Northwest Renaissance Conference 2009: “Performance of Place / Place of Performance”

Location: Bozeman, Montana and Montana State University

Themes explored in this interdisciplinary conference might include stage venues, textual locales, cartographic sites, travel narratives, social positions, religious rituals, and performed identities. Keynote speakers: Anthony B. Dawson (University of British Columbia) and Richard Dutton, Humanities Distinguished Professor (Ohio State University).

 

May 2009

2 May, 8PM

The Musicians in Ordinary, “The Infinity of Love: Music of the Courtesans of 15th and 16th century Italy”

Location: Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)

Italian courtesans were cultured ladies who wrote poetry and sang it to their own accompaniment or that of a lackey. Hallie Fishel plays lira da braccio and sings, John Edwards plays lute.

Single tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors. For more information call 416 535 9956.

 

19-28 May, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10AM-12PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Alexandra Johnston, Abigail Young and Arleane Ralph (Records of Early English Drama), Paleography Seminar: “Reading Early English Hands”

Location: Pratt Library, RM 304

The fee for the class is $100.

 

21 May, 4PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Prof. Konrad Eisenbichler (University of Toronto, Renaissance & Italian Studies), “Not Quite Straight Off the Rack: The Women Poets of Siena at the End of the Republic (1540-60)”

Location: Victoria College, Northrop Frye 006

In the mid sixteenth century, as the ancient republic of Siena was coming to an end, a group of women suddenly appeared on the city’s cultural landscape and began to compose poetry that attracted attention both locally and across the Italian peninsula. What is fascinating about these women is not so much that they composed poetry in the Petrarchan style that was the rage at the time, but that some of them engaged with Petrarch’s poetic legacy in ways that were significantly different from those of more traditional and better known Italian women poets in that brilliant century. Free and open to the public.

 

26 May, 12-1PM, Renaissance Spring Festival

Tallis Choir, Peter Mahon conductor, “Renaissance Treasures: Missa Papae Marcelli”

Location: Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre – COC Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

This mass for six voices is likely the best known of all Palestrina’s masses. Oddly enough, it was written in honour of a Pope who only reigned for three weeks in the year 1555, Pope Marcellus II. Over the years a mythology grew around this work. By composing this mass, Palestrina was credited with “saving polyphony” from the fate of being banned from performance in church. By the time of the Council of Trent, Church officials were determined to do away with what they saw as abuses in the mass of music that was overly long and repetitive to the point that the words were unintelligible. Missa Papae Marcelli is in fact, much less repetitive and more homophonic than other Renaissance masses written up to that time and the words are more easily understood. However, the story of saving polyphony is untrue even if it is a great composition. In this concert, the Tallis Choir performs the entire mass combined with Gregorian Chant and a selection of motets and anthems of the period.

Free and open to the public.

 

26 May, 8 PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

The Toronto Continuo Collective, “Amanti a giocare!” Music from Seventeenth-Century Rome

Location: Vic College Chapel

Annual concert of Renaissance music in honour of former director William R. Bowen, under whose directorship the CRRS expanded in many new directions.

Featuring a staged performance of Luigi Rossi’s cantata Noi siam tre Donzellette. Admission Free (Donations to the Bowen Fund welcome)

 

June 2009

1-5 June, 10AM-12PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Professor Konrad Eisenbichler (Renaissance Studies and Italian Studies, University of Toronto), Paleography Seminar: “Reading Early-Modern Italian Hands”

The fee for the five two-hour class is $100 and includes materials.

 

3 June, 5:30-6:30PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Toronto Chamber Choir, Mark Vuorinen, conductor, Caelum et Terra!

Location: Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre – COC Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

The Toronto Chamber Choir will explore the eternal duality of heaven and earth in this programme of a cappella repertoire. Drawing from the choir’s extensive repertoire of music by the Renaissance masters, the singers will juxtapose sacred motets with earthly modern part-songs by Benjamin Britten and Irving Fine. Now entering its fifth decade, the Toronto Chamber Choir holds a place of prominence in Toronto’s early music scene. The choir distinguishes itself by its concentration on the Renaissance and Baroque repertoire and by its production of large-scale, often little-known choral works performed in period style.

Free and open to the public.

 

8 June – 4 September – Non-CRRS Event

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library Exhibition: Calvin by the Book: A Rare Book Exhibition

Commemorating of the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of John Calvin.

This exhibition, on view at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library from 8 June – 4 September 2009, tells the story of Calvin’s life and influence through books – the ones that formed him, the many that he wrote, those that his followers penned to shape his legacy, and the ones his opponents published to counter the movement that bears his name. From medieval manuscripts to contemporary authors, this exhibition offers a different way to approach and examine John Calvin, reformer, theologian and author. For further information please visit their website.

 

8 June, 4PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Prof. Kenneth Bartlett (University of Toronto, Renaissance Studies and History), “Renaissance Mantua: The Style of Princely Patronage”

Location: Victoria College, Northrop Frye 006

Mantua is a jewel of the Renaissance. Located at the intersection of the territories of much stronger states, such as Milan and Venice, it maintained its independence through its geographical advantages, diplomacy and the reputation of its Gonzaga rulers as mercenary captains (condottieri). These princes sought legitimacy and fame through the patronage of art as well as the practice of arms; indeed, patronage was to most of them warfare by other means.

This talk will discuss how Mantua was enriched by the brilliant commissions pursued by the marquises and dukes of Mantua. Andrea Mantegna, Leon Battista Alberti and Giulio Romano were among the Renaissance artists attracted to this Lombard city. And, the dynastic marriage of the marquis Francesco Gonzaga to Isbella d’Este, (la prima donna del mondo) and the complex relationship between Isabella and her son, Federico, resulted in not only some of the greatest art on the peninsula but a story of love, intrigue and patronage within a fascinatingly dysfunctional Renaissance family. Free and open to the public.

 

10 June, 4-6PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Jane Couchman (Glendon College, York University, French, Humanities and Women’s Studies), “Deborah’s Sisters: Women Participating in Calvin’s Reform (1530s-1560s: Idelette de Bure, Marie Dentière, Renée de Ferrare, Jeanne d’Albret)”

Location: Senior Common Room, Burwash Hall

John Calvin agreed with his contemporaries that women should normally be submissive to men, be patient, dress modestly and keep silent. However, Calvin willingly worked with women whom God, in his infinite wisdom, had chosen to play unusual roles, as He had done with Deborah, judge and leader of the people of Israel. We will look at a few of the women who worked with Calvin and his colleagues, in a variety of ways, to establish the Reformed Church in its early years. Free and open to the public.

 

16 June, 7:30PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

Emily Winerock, Renaissance Dance Workshop

Location: Emmanuel College, room 119

Dance historian and reconstructor Emily Winerock will be offering a dance workshop in conjunction with the Renaissance Spring Festival. This year’s dances will feature a mix of the sweet and the sexy, from the social mixer, Ballo del Fiore, to the notorious and scandalous La Volta. Emily and Micahel Atlin will give a short performance and then teach several court and country dances. Emilie Brancato will provide musical accompaniment on the violin. Absolutely no prior dance experience is necessary for the workshop, although being able to distinguish left and right is helpful. All are welcome.

Free and open to the public.

 

17 June, 12-1PM – Renaissance Spring Festival

The Toronto Consort, David Fallis, conductor, The Da Vinci Collection

Location: Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre – COC Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

We all know that Leonardo da Vinci was a famous painter, an ingenious inventor, and a profound thinker, but few people know that in his own lifetime he was just as famous as a musician. Da Vinci was a virtuoso player of stringed instruments, renowned for his incredible skill in improvisation. He designed several musical instruments, and made scientific studies of acoustics and the human voice. He also had occasion to play with and for some of the most important musicians and musical patrons of his time, including the Medici in Florence, and Francis I of France. The Toronto Consort’s program “The Da Vinci Collection” explores the musical riches of the early Renaissance, in a program built around the remarkable life and achievements of Leonardo da Vinci. The program includes some of the greatest music of the period, with frottole, fantasias, lute songs and dances, by Marco Cara, Bartolomeo Tromboncino, Juan Dalza and Pierre Sermisy.

Free and open to the public.

 

18-21 June – CRRS Sponsored Conference

Instituting Calvin: Society, Culture and Diaspora

Location: Victoria College, University of Toronto

This interdisciplinary conference marking the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth will examine Calvin’s own historical context and explore Calvinism’s subsequent impact around the globe. It will explore a range of topics from the intellectual achievement of the Institutes of the Christian Religion to the dynamics of instituting a Calvinist movement. Plenary speakers include Alister McGrath, Serene Jones, and Marilynne Robinson