The Vandals were one of several Arlan tribes forced to enter the Roman Empire by the Huns. After Gaiseric, the son of King Godegiselus and a slave woman, succeeded his half brother, Gunderic, in 428 or 429, the Vandals moved on and settled in southern Spain. The struggle for power among rivals in the Roman government soon provided new opportunities for the tribe. The rebellious Roman governor of North Africa was under attack by forces of Emperor Valentinian III (r. 425-455). When the governor’s defeat was imminent, he was accused of inviting the Vandals to Africa in 429 to counter the Romans.
Gaiseric was one of the most successful of the barbarian leaders, skillful in war and diplomacy. As soon as he entered Africa, he sacked and burned large sections of Roman territory. His hostility toward the Roman Empire was heightened by his adherence to the heresy of Arian-ism, and he tried to eradicate orthodox Catholic influence in North Africa through his long reign.
CONQUEST OF NORTH AFRICA
Gaiseric in 431 took Hippo, the city where Augustine was bishop and was dying. In 435 the Romans made a treaty with Gaiseric, granting him and the Vandals control over much of North Africa. This peace did not last, however, and in 439 he captured Carthage, the last principal city of Roman Africa. In 442, he was recognized as king by Valentinian III.
Through his military success in North Africa, Gais-eric had gained control of the major granary of Rome. Furthermore, a Vandal fleet now took to the sea and plundered the commerce of the Mediterranean as far east as Greece. The Vandals would later arrive by sea to capture and sack Rome in June 455. As the enmity between the Goths and Vandals increased, Gaiseric urged Attila to attack the Goths. His son, Hunneric (r. 477-84), married Eudokia, daughter of the emperor Valentinian III, who had been captured in Rome in 455.
Meanwhile the rulers of the eastern part of the empire were determined to recover North Africa. In 460 Emperor Majorian (r. 457-461) failed to defeat Gaiseric and was forced into a new treaty in 462. In 468 another massive expedition was launched but suffered a disastrous defeat. Gaiseric concluded peace with the East Romans in 468 and with the West Romans in 471. With these treaties he secured a more permanent acceptance of the Vandalic kingdom. After his death on January 25, 477, the kingdom continued under his descendants until it was conquered by Belisarius in 533-534.
Further reading: Isidore of Seville, History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, trans. Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford, Jr., 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1970); Poultney Bigelow, Genseric, King of the Vandals and First Prussian Kaiser (New York: G. p. putnam’s sons, 1918); Frank M. Clover, The Late Roman West and the Vandals (Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1993); Malcolm Todd, Everyday Life of the Barbarians: Goths, Franks and Vandals (London: Batsford, 1972).
Galahad Galahad was the Grail knight par excellence of Arthurian literature, the shining example of knighthood in the service of God as in the Quest for the Holy Grail, written between 1215 and 1235. The Grail was introduced into the Arthurian cycle by Chretien de Troyes, who had made his hero Perceval, the first of
Arthur’s knights to see the Grail. In the Quest the author made Galahad the hero. Galahad was the perfect knight, who outdid Perceval in chastity, piety, and achievement.
Galahad was the offspring of Lancelot’s extramarital relations with the daughter of the Grail king Pelles. On his mother’s side he was descended from Joseph of Ari-MATHEA and the biblical King David. Even at his conception a great future was predicted for him. Galahad was to be the chosen one who would take up the quest for the Grail, which was in a ship built by King solomon on a special bed made from the wood of the Tree of Life that had grown in Eden. Religious ideas, especially those of the Cistercians, influenced the text. He was probably a model of behavior for a noble, knightly audience. As the bearer of such an ideal, the character of Galahad in the Quest was seemingly infallible. He was the virgin Christian knight, the perfect one who effortlessly succeeded through his predestined adventures. Full of self-confidence, he relied on God to direct him to the Grail castle and to sarras. He was without doubt or fear, and was therefore perhaps less interesting as a human or literary character.
See also Malory, Thomas.
Further reading: The Quest for the Holy Grail, trans. P M. Matarasso (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969); Arthur Edward Waite, The Holy Grail: The Galahad Quest in the Arthurian Literature (New Hyde Park, N. Y.: University Books, 1961).
Galicia in the Iberian Peninsula Late antique and medieval Galicia was a province in northwestern spain that from 411 to 585 was an independent kingdom ruled by the Suevi, a tribe converted to Christianity by Martin of Braga (ca. 520-ca. 580) in the sixth century. As a Visig-othic province from 585, it was ruled from Braga and Lugo. It was temporarily occupied by Muslims in the early eighth century but entered the Christian kingdom of Oviedo in the 750s. The tomb of the apostle James was discovered at Compostela between 820 and 830. He was quickly proclaimed the patron of the monarchy of Oviedo-Leon. This created prosperity in the region through the lucrative pilgrim trade.
Rural Galicia in the ninth to the 11th centuries was divided into smaller districts made up of villas or villages belonging to lords or to the peasants themselves. Bishops and counts could not prevent devastations by Vikings and al-MANSUR in the late 10th century By 1065-70, Galicia was an independent kingdom, but it was soon permanently incorporated into the Crown of Castile-Leon. In 1139, the territory south of the Mino River was entrusted by King Alfonso VI (r. 1065-1109) to his son-in-law, Henry of Burgundy (d. 1112). It eventually became the core of a new state when Henry’s son, Alfonso I (r. 1128-85), was later proclaimed king of the new kingdom of Portugal in 1139.
An increasingly prosperous agriculture and the lucrative pilgrimage trade to visit Saint James led in the 12th century to the development of a network of towns and fishing ports. They eventually gained urban liberties in the later 12th century after rebellions against their ecclesiastical and lay lords. However, during the 14th century with the decline of the pilgrimage trade, disorderly nobility, who had even turned to kidnapping and demanding ransoms for pilgrims, and plagues led to economic and demographic decline. Insecurity continued to intensify and in 1467-69 there was a general uprising against the lords who had been terrorizing the local population despite the integration into the kingdom of Castile, unable as yet to provide security until after the ascent of Isabel I.
See also Santiago de Compostela.
Further reading: Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000 (London: Macmillan Press, 1983); Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977); Marilyn Jane Stokstad, Santiago de Compostela in the Age of the Great Pilgrimages (Norman: University of oklahoma Press, 1978).
Galicia in Ukraine and Poland (Halychyna, Red Ruthenia) Galicia was the historically fertile province in southwestern Ukraine consisting of regions of Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk. From 981 the future Galicia was part of Kievan RuS under Vladimir I the Great. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries, it consisted of the principalities of Zvenyhorod, Terebovlia, and Peremyshl and was ruled by the grandsons of Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev In 1141, under the reign of Yaroslav Osmomysl (r. 1153-87), the principality enjoyed a period of economic and cultural expansion.
Galicia’s most celebrated and successful rulers were Daniel of Halych (r. 1238-64) and Yuri I (r. 1301-8). After the assassination of the last prince, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland tried to divide Galicia among themselves. It was finally incorporated into the Jagiel-lian kingdom of Poland in 1387 under Casimir III the Great; it remained under Polish rule until 1772. Lviv was the political and economic capital of the Polish province of Galicia. Polish law replaced Ruthenian law in the administration of the province. The mostly German towns were governed according to German law The rural population of Galicia remained mostly Ukrainian, while in the towns, with Ukrainians, were large numbers of Poles, Germans, and Jews.
Further reading: laroslov Isaievych, “Galicia
(Ukraine),” EMA, 1.585-586; Paul R. Magocsi, Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian studies and Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute by University of Toronto Press, 1983).
Galla Placidia (ca. 390/392-450) daughter of Theodosios I, sister of Emperor Honorius, mother of Emperor Valentinian III
Galla Placidia was born about 390/392. She received a classical education. The Visigoths took her as a hostage to Gaul after they sacked Rome in 410. There, in 414, she married Athaulf (r. 410-415), the successor to Alaric, and bore him a son, christened Theodosios, who died shortly after birth. When Athaulf was murdered soon thereafter, Galla Placidia returned to the emperor Honorius, who married her off in 417 to a patrician, Constan-tius (d. 421), against her wishes. She was crowned augusta or empress, and the son born to them was the future emperor Valentinian III (r. 425-455). After Con-stantius’s death in 421, she quarreled with Honorius, who accused her of treason. She and her son fled to the court of Theodosios II (r. 408-450) in Constantinople. When Honorius died in 423 she returned to the west and was regent for young Valentinian III. An ardent proponent of Orthodoxy, she ruled effectively for the first 12 years of his reign. She died as a devout Christian in Rome on November 27, 450, and was probably buried later in a chapel or mausoleum in Ravenna, the town she had already blessed with several churches.
See also Leo I the Great, Pope.
Further reading: Stewart Irvin Oost, Galla Placidia Augusta: A Biographical Essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
Gama, Vasco da See Vasco da Gama.
Games, toys, pastimes, and gambling A wide range of games were played during the Middle Ages, including activities such as theater and dance, in categories that ranged from childhood diversions to adult gambling with dice. The games and pastimes of the Middle Ages were not well documented. Some were inherited from the classical world. Also inherited from antiquity were numerous games of chance and gambling. Playing dice was likely
A representation of a couple playing chess from 15th-century stained glass and now in the Musee National Thermes & Hotel de Cluny du Moyen Age in Paris (Courtesy Edward English)
The most common and popular adult medieval game. Other games were imported during the Middle Ages. Chess was introduced from Asia to Europe around the year 1000. Card games developed in the later 14th century, as well as team games linked to feast days such as “Shrove Tuesday football,” which was a cross between rugby and soccer and was popular in Italy. The rules of these games can sometimes be surmised from the scant surviving evidence.
Most adult games were played for stakes, from a few coins to enormous sums. The nobility played them as an element of prestige and distinction. Displays of wealth played primary roles in their popularity and practice. In courtly literature playing chess was often an attribute of a noble life.
Games could become social problems that drained the wealth and ruined the reputation of unsuccessful players. Faced with this social problem, the authorities did not respond clearly or consistently in their regulation. Anxious to maintain order, civil powers tried to prohibit certain ludic activities. Eventually they gave up and chose to profit from them by regulating their conduct and taxing games. The church confined its prohibitions to clerics alone, tempering its prohibitions, and authorized athletic games, tolerated intellectual ones, and forbade games of chance or fortune.
Further reading: John Marshall Carter, Sports and Pastimes of the Middle Ages (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988); John Marshall Carter, Medieval Games: Sports and Recreations in Feudal Society (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992); Sally Wilkins, Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002).
Gardens (Rauda) Real and imaginary gardens played essential roles in medieval literature, religious thought, and iconography. There were two aspects of the visions of gardens in the Middle Ages: an earthly Paradise and enclosed garden described in the Song of Songs, often used to symbolize the chastity of the Virgin MARY. The earthly Paradise and hortus conclusus (the enclosed garden) were often confused in medieval iconography, both shown as fortified gardens. The gardens of the Islamic world shared the late classical Roman ideal of a place graced with water to provide a space for meditation and serenity. They were presented as such in the HEAVEN or PARADISE of the Quran. The gardens of Islamic Spain became influential in evolving ideas of gardens in the rest of Europe.
Gardens were commonly portrayed in literature, especially in courtly prose and poetry. The most famous, scandalous, and controversial of all literary gardens was that in the ROMANCE of the Rose. It involved the sexual symbolism of an enclosed garden or space linked with profane love.
Gardens were important in the lives of monastic establishments as spiritual areas of retreat and contemplation. The plans of the abbeys usually provided for three types of gardens, a kitchen vegetable garden, a medicinal herb garden, and a fruit orchard also doubling as the abbey’s cemetery. These medieval monastic and aristocratic gardens, just like those described in literature or portrayed in art, often had a geometrical pattern of flower beds and mixtures of vegetables, aromatic plants, and flowers. They might include fortified enclosures, elaborate fountains, trees, trick hydraulic devices to spray the unwary, and places intended for pleasure and relaxation. Market gardens cultivated by citizens abounded outside towns in the later Middle Ages and played important roles in supplying food and industrial plants, producing flax, hemp, dye plants, or saffron.
See also Alhambra; Granada; al-Madina al Zahira.
Further reading: David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); John Harvey, Medieval Gardens (Beaverton, Ore.: Timber, 1981); Elisabeth B. MacDougall and Richard Ettinghausen, eds., The Islamic Garden (Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, 1976); Attilio Petruccioli, ed., Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997); D. Fairchild Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Norah M. Titley and Frances Wood, Oriental Gardens: An Illustrated History (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992).
Gascony (Wasconia) See Aquitaine.
Gawain and the Gawain romances According to Arthurian literature and myth, Gawain was the eldest son of King Lot of Orkney, King Arthur’s nephew. With Lancelot he was one of the most important knights of the Round Table. He also appeared in medieval literature with several names: Yvain, Gauvain, Gawein, Gawan, Walwanus, Walewein, and Gwalchmai.
The poets initially saw Gawain as a hero without parallel for courtesy and valor. In Old French Arthurian literature, the character of Gawain was progressively devalued and made more human. He was surpassed by Lancelot. However, nowhere in the romance tradition was any doubt cast on Gawain’s virtuous qualities.
See also Chretien de Troyes; Malory, Thomas; Perceval; Wolffram von Eschenbach.
Further reading: J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V Gordon, eds., revised by Norman Davis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Ross Gilbert Arthur, Medieval Sign Theory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1987); Robert J. Blanch, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Reference Guide (Troy, N. Y.: Whitston, 1983); J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966); Meg Stainsby, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Annotated Bibliography, 1978-1989 (New York: Garland, 1992).
Gaza, Theodore (Gazes) (ca. 1408-ca. 1475) translator, Greek humanist
Gaza’s family was from Thessaloniki, but he was educated in Constantinople. He arrived in Italy in 1440, immediately after the Greek and Orthodox Church had agreed to a union with the Western Church at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Employed for a short time as a Greek scribe for Francesco Filelfo in Milan, he then became a teacher at Vittorino da Feltre’s school in Mantua. By 1446 he was teaching Greek and studying medicine at the University of Ferrara. In late 1449 he accepted an appointment in Rome obtained through the patronage of the Greek cardinal Bessarion. There he worked for Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447-55), translating classical Greek literature into Latin. Gaza was a translator of scientific texts in the Aristotelian tradition and of zoological writings. Nicholas V’s death in 1455 ended that arrangement, and he had to move to the court of King Alfonso the Magnanimous in Naples, where he worked on Aelian’s military manual and the sermons of John Chrysostom. After King Alfonso’s death in 1458, Gaza returned to Rome around 1463. There he regained the support of Cardinal Bessarion and finished a Greek grammar. He was disappointed that he did not gain the patronage of the new pope, Sixtus IV (1471-84), and left Rome in 1474; he spent the last year of his life living on his ecclesiastical benefice in salerno and died in 1475.
Something of a cultural hero to younger italian humanists for his fluid style, he had a strict classical vocabulary, using paraphrase and glosses while explaining his textual inventions. Although he had rendered these most difficult texts with elegance and clarity, his fellow Greek emigre and competitor, George of Trebizond, employed harsh invective to assert that he had distorted Aristotle’s thought, and undermined the foundational texts of the medieval and Scholastic Aristotelian tradition.
Further reading: John Monfasani, Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal Bessarion and Other Emigres: Selected Essays (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995).
Genghis Khan See Jenghiz Khan.
Genoa Genoa was and is an important commercial and trading city on the northwestern coast in Liguria in Italy. Backed by the arid slopes of the Apennines, Genoa made its fortune by the sea. The site, occupied from the fifth century b. c.e., has retained few traces of Romanization. A
Christian community was established in the third century under the leadership of its bishops. The town passed to the control of Goths in the early sixth century, the Byzantines in 537, the Lombards about 640, and the Franks in 774. In 958 Genoa began to aspire to independence, which it gained in the 11th century under the leadership of bishops and prominent families. The city carried out successful struggles against the Muslim fleets in the Tyrrhenian sea in 1016, in Tunisia in 1087, and in Spain in 1092 and 1093. From these it procured wealth and opportunities for commerce with its fleet playing a prominent role in transport in the Crusades.
CONFLICT AND PROGRESS
These urban conditions, economic factors, and the city’s collective commercial interests converged in the founding of the commune. In exchange for its help to the crusading barons of Syria and Palestine, the merchants and rulers of Genoa obtained customs privileges that stimulated its commercial activities in Palestine, Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, Sicily, the al-Maghrib, and the Iberian Peninsula. From 12th century, the new commune of Genoa commanded the direct routes between the fairs of Champagne and the markets of the Levant. In the course of these territorial and economic expansions, it defeated Pisa at the Battle of Meloria in 1284. For the rest of the Middle Ages Genoa fought long and frequent wars with Venice, but with little decisive result.
The fierce individuality of its successful and aggressive merchant class gave the city little political stability. Genoa’s great families fought with each other in continual factional political struggles and even confrontations on the sheets. Genoa finally attained some institutional continuity and stability in a regime called “the Perpetual Doges” between 1339 and 1528. The 14th century saw the greatest dominance of the Genoese in Mediterranean commerce. They held Caffa on the Black Sea, Pera in the suburbs of Constantinople, Chios, and Mytilene in the Aegean Sea and had important trading centers at Cadiz, Seville, Lisbon, Bruges, Antwerp, London, and southampton in western and northern Europe. Through this network Genoese traded Mediterranean products and local produce in a system of Europewide trade.
The Genoese were also bankers, ship-owners, and exploratory navigators, from the Vivaldi brothers in 1291 to Christopher Columbus, who was born a Genoese but traveled for spain in 1492. in the 15th century, the rise of Ottoman power led to the gradual loss of Genoese colonies and business privileges in the East. This weakened the city’s political and economic power and even political and financial structures. The republic was unable to resist French influence, if not rule, in 1396-1409. its independent path suffered during the short lordship of the Visconti of Milan between 1421 and 1436, but the city remained an autonomous republic until well after 1500.
Further reading: Gerald W Day, Genoa’s Response to Byzantium, 1155-1204: Commercial Expansion and Factionalism in a Medieval City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
Gentile da Fabriano (Gentile di Niccolo di Giovanni de Massio) (ca. 1370-1427) Italian painter Gentile da Fabriano was born about 1370 in Fabriano in the Marches in north-central Italy. According to tradition, his family was of old lineage and moderately prosperous. His father was said to have been a scholar, mathematician, and astrologer but became an Olivetan monk in Fabriano in 1397. Gentile’s brother, Ludovico, was a monk of the same order in Fabriano. Gentile himself was living in the Olivetan monastery of Santa Maria Nuova in Rome at the time of his death. A document of October 14, 1427, speaks of him as dead.
Gentile’s style and output suggest that he was trained in Lombardy, perhaps in Milan. He worked in the then popular International Gothic style, to which he added his personal, decorative, and exotic qualities. His earliest works displayed the decorative drapery patterns linked with the International Gothic masters; Gentile tempered these practices and somewhat abandoned them after his formative contact with Florentine art.
In a document of 1408, Gentile was mentioned as being in Venice, where he completed a painting for the doge’s palace. Gentile was commissioned to decorate a chapel in Brescia in 1414. The artist was last recorded in Brescia on September 18, 1419, when he departed for Rome to answer a summons from Pope Martin V (r. 1417-31). Gentile’s name first appeared on the roll of painters in Florence in 1421. He was Siena in 1420 and 1424-25 and in Orvieto late in 1425. From 1426 working in Saint John Lateran until the time of his death in 1427, he was in Rome.
The altarpiece Adoration of the Magi, signed and dated 1423, was Gentile’s most famous work in Florence. It showed Gentile’s International Gothic manner tempered by his contact with the austere art of Florence. His rich uses of gold leaf and brilliant color were his personal and typical International Gothic traits. With his usual elegant and courtly style, the paintings interest in perspective and foreshortening reflected also influences from the Florentines.
Further reading: Keith Christiansen, Gentile da Fabriano (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982).
Geoffrey of Monmouth (ca. 1100-ca. 1154) English writer
Geoffrey was born in or near Monmouth, Wales, about 1100. By 1129 he was residing in Oxford, probably as a member of a secular ecclesiastical community. He stayed at oxford at least until 1151 and during this period wrote his two extant works, History of the Kings of Britain and The Life of Merlin. Geoffrey was a keen observer of contemporary trends in historical writing and combined his observations with a fertile imagination and a consistent, if not profound, philosophical and respectful outlook about the Britons, a Celtic people who inhabited the island of Britain before they were conquered by the Anglo-Saxons.
In composing his legendary history, Geoffrey utilized material from British legend and folklore. He also borrowed from earlier Latin accounts of the Britons. He treated all his sources with great imaginative freedom. The climax of this literary work are Geoffrey’s invention of a glorious reign of King Arthur and his description of Arthur’s victories over invading Saxons and a hostile Roman Empire. The main themes of the History were that history was cyclic, that civil strife created national disaster, and that the goals of the individual and those of society often clashed. In The Life of Merlin, a 1,500-line Latin poem written in 1148, Geoffrey told the story of Merlin, a legendary Welsh prophet and prince, whose prophecies formed part of his History.
In 1151 Geoffrey was designated bishop of Saint Asaph on the border of England and Wales, where he died about 1154. In the years following his death, his History became widely accepted as factual. It influenced literature and the serious historians of the Britons and the English for centuries.
See also Arthur, King, and Arthurian Literature; Brut; Gildas, Saint.
Further reading: Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. with an introduction by Lewis Thorpe (London: Folio Society, 1969); Geoffrey of Monmouth, Life of Merlin, ed. Basil Clarke (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973); Michael J. Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994); Robert W Hanning, Vision of History in Early Britain from Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
Geography and cartography Medieval geography grew from the achievements of the Hellenistic Greek school in Egypt. However, the analytical methods of Ptolemaic geographical research were lost, and it became merely descriptive. In the early Middle Ages geographical data were primarily compilations and summaries of classical works consistently interpreted in terms of Christianity Some important philosophers and theologians, such as St. Augustine, were uncomfortable with the idea of the Antipodes and influenced a lack of interest in geographical knowledge and the understanding of people outside Christendom.
The great encyclopedic work of Isidore of Seville in the seventh century, the Ethymologiae, contained two entries on cosmography and geography, roughly summing up the classical achievements and interpretations. Major accomplishments of the Ethymologiae were both the dissemination of geographical knowledge throughout the Middle Ages and the model style of geographical study and knowledge that prevailed in the West until the 13th century Christian geographers of the Middle Ages had a concept of the Earth as a plate with an axis running through the Mediterranean with a central point at Jerusalem. These ideas persisted, as the medieval perspective of the world was compatible with faith.
A ptolemaic tradition was preserved among eastern Christians living in Iran and Syria. These scholars divided the world into seven climatic regions, developing climatology as part of geography. Their conclusions also led to the development of a popular theory that led to the concept of a north-south axis of a spherical Earth. Such ideas about geography were inherited by Islam and the Arabs. Caliph al-Mamun (r. 813-833) tried to have astronomical tables and geographical maps with accurate measurements drawn. Arabic and Persian geography developed further on the basis of accurate and careful travelers’ descriptions loaded with physical and demographic data. At the same time contemporary Christian travelers were only interested in describing holy places and religious sanctuaries, perhaps in an attempt to make the biblical past and places more real. in this context there was little reflection about the changes that had intervened between biblical times and their own.
Besides this descriptive geography, the Muslims developed an astronomical geography Al-Idrisi was in the employ of King Roger II of Sicily and was a pioneer in this kind of study with work appearing from 1154. Under the impact of the translated works of al-Idrisi, geography gradually became more of a science in Christendom from the end of the 12th century that included ideas about a global form for the Earth. A systematic study of astronomy and nature resulted from the impact of scholasticism and the revival of Aristotelianism. Roger Bacon and others defended the idea of a global Earth. By the end of the 13th century, perspectives gleaned from astronomic geography provided the basics for drawing maps that analyzed the various components of the Earth. its achievements were of prime importance for navigation and prepared the tools for geographical discoveries.
See also antipodes; gog and magog; Henry “The Navigator”; navigation.
Further reading: S. M. Ziauddin Alavi, Geography in the Middle Ages (Delhi: Sterling, 1966); Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997); Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, trans. David Fausett (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Geometry See seven liberal arts.
George of Trebizond (Georgios Trapezountios) (1395-ca. 1475) humanist, translator of Greek texts into Latin George’s parents were from Trebizond, but he was born at Candia in Crete in 1395. He converted to Western Catholicism and migrated in 1415 to Venice, where he taught Greek and learned Latin. Employed by Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447-55), he became part of a papal and philological academy, headed by Cardinal Bessarion, which specialized in translating Greek works into Latin. George translated some 11 major Greek texts, most never translated, and texts from authors, such as Ptolemy; Aris totle; Plato, of whom he disapproved strongly; and the Greek fathers of the church. He authored a treatise on logic and one on rhetoric, that became a standard for italian humanists. He asserted the superiority of the ideas of Aristotle over those of Plato, criticizing in particular Bessarion, Plethon (ca. 1360-1452), and Theodore Gaza. He supported the papacy and views of the Western Churches at the Council of Ferrara-Florence and was an ambassador of Pope Paul II (r. 1464-71) to Sultan Mehmed II. He died between 1475 and 1486.
See also Filelfo, Francesco.
Further reading: George of Trebizond, Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond, ed. John Monfasani (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in Conjunction with the Renaissance Society of America, 1984).
Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis, the Welshman, Gerald de Barri) (1146-1223) bishop, writer Born in 1146 the son of an English lord and a Welsh noblewoman, Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, went to school at Gloucester Abbey and then the University of Paris, where he was a pupil of Peter Comestor (d. 1179). A master of arts, he also studied canon law in Paris. He served as a royal clerk from 1183 to 1208 and the archdeacon of Saint David’s between 1175 and 1203 As a canon of Hereford, he was twice elected bishop of Saint David’s, in 1176 and 1199, but was never consecrated. He wished to obtain the see and turn it into a Welsh metropolitan archbishopric, but the English clergy blocked his appointment with opposition to his elevation at the papal curia. Besides preaching the Crusade and writing one of the first medieval autobiographies, he left important descriptive, moralizing, and topographical descriptions of Ireland and Wales, several saints’ lives, a handbook of conduct for the Welsh clergy, treatises on ecclesiastical institutions, letters and sermons, and a handbook for the guidance of princes. He died in 1223.
Further reading: Gerald of Wales, The Journey through Wales/The Description of Wales, trans. Lewis Thorpe (New York: Penguin Books, 1978); Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John J. O’Meara (New York: Penguin Books, 1951); Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); Brynley F Roberts, Gerald of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982).
Gerard of Cremona (ca. 1114-1187) translator of Greek scientific texts from Arabic into Latin Gerard was born in Cremona in Lombardy in about 1114. His achievements in science and translation were important in the intellectual renewal of the 12th century. Gerard of Cremona’s translations from Arabic to Latin allowed university teaching of several important texts over the following centuries. He completed nearly 80 works in Latin, in several disciplines: philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, alchemy, and divination. He brought to the West important authors of Greek antiquity who had already been translated into Arabic, such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Euclid, and Galen, and the philosophers or scientists of the eastern and western Muslim world, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Farabi, and al-Kindi.
In about 1145 Gerard moved to Toledo, where he remained the rest of his life. There was still a large number of Arabic manuscripts there, even 70 years after the Christian Reconquest, as well as scholars with different backgrounds. All this laid the basis for the important translating accomplished there, almost unique in medieval culture. He died in 1187 in Toledo in Castile.
Further reading: Euclides, The Latin Translation of the Arabic Version of Euclid’s Elements Commonly Ascribed to Gerard of Cremona, ed. H. L. L. Busard (Leiden: Brill, 1984); Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927).
Gerbert of Aurillac See Sylvester II, Pope.
Germanus of Auxerre, Saint (Germain) (378-ca. 446/448) lawyer, bishop of Auxerre
Prosper of Aquitaine (ca. 390-after 455) recorded that Pope Celestine i (r. 422-432) sent the Gallo-Roman Ger-manus to confront Pelagianism, then a grave heresy in Britain, at the request of saint Palladius (ca. 365-425). in general we must depend for details of his life on a biography written by a Constantius of Lyon between about 460 and 490. Constantius described Germanus’s training as a lawyer, promotion to provincial governor, his acclamation as bishop of Auxerre in 418, his two visits to Britain to combat Pelagianism, and his final journey to Ravenna, where he died traditionally on July 31, 446/448. His body was returned to Auxerre for a magnificent funeral and burial. His tomb became an important site of pilgrimage.
Constantius portrayed Germanus as an ascetic bishop, much respected, who intervened with secular authorities. Little is known about Germanus’s visits to Britain apart from reports of miracle stories. Germanus also might have had links with Palladius’s mission to Ireland.
Further reading: Raymond van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Germany The name Deutschland or Germany did not appear until after 1500. A collective feeling of identity and language was doubtless apparent before the 12th century, but regional loyalties tended to prevail throughout the Middle Ages. An elective imperial monarchy, with no fixed capital, included a succession of several dynasties, from the Ottonians of the 10th century to the Habsburgs of the 15th century Never, in fact, were the kings able to amass sufficient resources to assert fully their authority. Their finances were limited and fleeting, and their army was usually at the mercy of the unstable allegiance of vassals.
There was usually a strong military and political drive toward great expansion to the East and in particular in the 13th century. The churches of the kingdom of Germany were distinguished by the strong and disruptive political role they played in political life. German animosity to the PAPACY was consistent throughout the Middle Ages. The oppressiveness of papal taxation was berated by prelates and clerics, then repeated by chroniclers. it became one of the foundations of German nationalism by the second half of the 15th century
Occupying a vast territory, the kingdom of Germany was able to attain political unity only fictitiously or for short periods under the various dynasties and even more rarely after the central Middle Ages. Despite these vicissitudes, the economy, religious feeling, and culture developed. As a political unit, its history is best followed by those of its ruling dynasties enriched by its most important towns and ecclesiastical institutions. The Carolin-gians, the Saxon dynasty even under the able Otto I, the Salian Dynasty, the Hohenstaufen, or Habsburgs were able to maintain more than a temporary political control or effective state. The church had considerable temporal power and possessions and cooperated with the secular rulers only on its own terms and sometimes according to the political needs of the Papacy. Princes always followed a similar policy. There clearly was a culture and considerable linguistic unity, but throughout the Middle Ages Germany as a political unit was a mere expression and a battlefield among the emperors, the princes, and the church.
See also Charlemagne; Golden Bulls; Hanseatic League; Holy Roman Empire; Otto I the Great; Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor; Salian dynasty; Teutonic knights and order; Verdun, Treaty of.
Further reading: Benjamin Arnold, Medieval Germany, 500-1300: A Political Interpretation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); F R. H. Du Boulay, Germany in the Later Middle Ages (London: The Athlone Press, 1983); Horst Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986); Alfred Haverkamp, Medieval Germany, 1056-1273, 2d ed., trans. Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer (1984; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Gershom ben Judah, Rabbi (Rabbenu Gershom, Light of the Exile) (ca. 960-1028/33) German rabbi, scholar, religious poet
Born about 960, Gershom Ben Judah had a great influence on Jewish social institutions. He was also known as Meor Ha-Golah, “Light of the Exile.” The places of the birth and death of Gershom Ben Judah are unclear; he spent most of his adult life at Mainz, Germany. Ger-shom’s major achievements were his teaching career and rabbinical authority. This period was not long after the extinction of the rabbinical centers in Babylonia. With the consolidation of the Muslim empire, Babylonian Jewish scholars drifted to Europe, taking their manuscripts, their scribal traditions, their teaching, and their authority The Palestinian centers had long been closed. As a result, central Europe, and for a time Spain, became the heartland for the evolution of Jewish life, culture, and religion.
INFLUENCE ON TEACHING AND DAILY LIFE
Gershom was one of the first and most successful rabbis to transplant and establish Talmudic learning from Babylonia to Europe. He was an excellent rabbinical scholar, learned in all the ancient traditions, a natural teacher, and an organizer of studies. He became famous for his wise judgments in deciding moral and ethical questions on ordinary life. Gershom’s magisterial work was his treatment of the Talmud text the Takkanat. He established correct readings, provided commentaries, drew up rules of exegesis, and taught useful and precise methods of interpretation. From being merely a personal center for rabbinical students from all over Europe, his school became the guide and judge for Jewish communities all over France, Germany, and the Low Countries. Even participating in meetings of community leaders, he influenced social and cooperative institutions by defining and clarifying local laws and customs.
FOUNDATIONAL INFLUENCE
Gershom’s influence was profound and lasted far beyond his own time. Not only an educator of rabbis who then went back to their home communities, he also expressed ideas that were fundamental in enduring legislation. His opinions influenced the prohibition of polygamy, the limitation of the husband’s right to divorce, the treatment of apostates returning to Judaism, the privacy of personal letters, and the principle of majority rule in local communities. According to his view, violation of these laws might be punished by excommunication from the community of Israel. He authored many formal responses or responsa to knotty legal questions about conflicts relevant to everyday life between law and commandment. The formation of community cohesion and the strengthening of the community’s self-awareness were fundamental for the establishment of the Talmud and the subsequent history of European Jewish community. Gershom wrote penitential prayers and the traditional method of reading, pronouncing, and interpreting the Bible. There is some question of whether all the important works attributed to him were actually by him. He died between 1030 and 1033 in Mainz.
See also Ashkenaz and Ashkenazim; Rashi.
Further reading: Gershom ben Judah, The Responsa of Rabbenu Gershom Meor Hagolah, ed. by Shlomo Eidel-berg (New York: Yeshiva University, 1955).
Gerson, John (Jean le Charlier de Gerson) (13631429) French clerical leader
John Gerson was born Jean Charlier at Gerson on December 13/14, 1363. As a member of the College de Navarre at the University of Paris, he earned a doctorate in theology and was protege and close friend of Pierre d’AiLLY. When d’Ailly resigned the chancellorship, Ger-son became the chancellor of the university of Paris in 1395. Gerson’s earlier career at the university was not unusual, characterized by little controversy and the promotion of a strong, doctrinal orthodoxy In 1387 he had demanded the condemnation of a Dominican friar who had denied the Immaculate Conception or conception without sin of the Virgin Mary, while warning students of the evils of “immoral” popular and anticlerical literature; in this process, Jean became one of the most famous theologians of his day
Moving to Bruges, Gerson became an ardent reformer only when the university of Paris took a leading role in trying to end the Great Schism. Beginning in 1378 the divided church had been supposedly governed by two rival popes, one at Rome and another in Avignon. By 1409 Conciliarists, favoring the power of church councils over that of the pope, began to take the initiative in ending the embarrassment. In their views and that of Gerson, a general council of the church had the right to choose a new pope. This they accomplished at the Council of PiSA in 1409, but the Roman and Avignonese popes refused to surrender their offices. During these events the University of Paris had become a strong base for the Conciliarists. Gerson gradually joined the movement and finally worked zealously for the calling of the Council of Con stance (1414-18). There he led the successful drive to end the schism, with the council deposing the rival popes and electing Martin V (r. 1417-31). He also favored the execution of John Hus. At the same time he alienated much of the council by his persistent justification of the rights of the Gallican or French National Church and his demand for the condemnation of Jean Petit (1360-1411). Petit had written a tract asserting that the assassination of the duc d’Orleans by the partisans of the duke of Burgundy was justifiable tyrannicide. The council did not condemn Jean Petit. Threatened by the duke of Burgundy, Gerson fled to Vienna, where he wrote his Consolation of Theology in the tradition of Boethius. Eventually permitted to return to France, he spent his last days at Lyon teaching children and writing devotional works and hymns. He died there on July 12, 1429.
ACHIEVEMENTS
John Gerson was an outstanding advocate of conciliar theories, writing that the authority of the universal church represented by a general council was greater than that of the pope; therefore, a legitimate general council could depose and elect popes. A proponent of Gallicanism or the power of the French Crown over the clergy, he supported a strong monarchy with great influence on the church in France. An Ockhamist in philos ophy and theology, he gave great attention to the pastoral care of women and the education of children. He wrote a tract attempting to save Joan of Arc. He was attracted by pseudo-Dionysian spirituality and the mys ticism of the Devotio Moderna, while following the late medieval trend against an overly rational investigation of the faith.
See also William of Ockham.
Further reading: Jean Gerson, Jean Gerson: Early Works, trans. and ed. Brian Patrick McGuire (New York: Paulist Press, 1998); D. Catherine Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (New York: Cambridge university Press, 1987); G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity: His Church Politics and Ecclesiology, trans. J. C. Grayson (Leiden: Brill,
1999); John B. Morrall, Gerson and the Great Schism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960); Louis Pascoe, Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform (Leiden: Brill, 1973).
Gersonides, Levi ben Gershom (Ralbag, Master Leo
Of Bagnols) (1288-1344) Jewish exegete, philosopher, Talmudist, mathematician, astronomer, scholar Levi Ben Gershom was born in 1288. He lived in southern France in Provence, mainly at Orange and Avi gnon, where he was in touch with the papal court. In the field of philosophy, Gersonides’s contribution was remarkable. His important Book of the Wars of the Lord was a systematic attempt to analyze several fundamental themes in theology, such as the immortality of the soul, prophecy, providence, and creation, using the conceptual tools provided by Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and Ibn RUSHD (Averroes). His thought can be viewed as more rigorous and more creative than that of Mai-monides. A part of the Book of the Wars of the Lord was a treatise on astronomy, often to be copied separately and eventually translated into Latin. His astronomical work also included a treatise, dedicated to Pope Clement VI, on a scientific instrument invented by him to determine the angular distance between stars. We also owe to him a treatise on Aristotle’s logic and a set of commentaries on the commentaries of Ibn Rushd. His biblical commentaries on Job, the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ruth, the Pentateuch, the historical books, Daniel, and Proverbs were classics of Jewish exegesis and were incorporated into the annotated Bibles. His ideas on the eternity and creation of the world, God’s foreknowledge, and free will were attacked by later rabbinic authorities. He died in 1344.
Further reading: Levi ben Gershom, Gersonides’ The Wars of the Lord, Treatise Three: On God’s Knowledge, trans. Norbert Max Samuelson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval studies, 1977); J. David Bleich, Providence in the Philosophy of Gersonides (New York: Yeshiva University Press, Department of Special Publications, 1973); Bernard R. Goldstein, The Astronomical Tables of Levi ben Gerson (Hamden: Archon Books, 1974); Jacob J. Staub, The Creation of the World according to Gersonides (Chico: scholars Press, 1982).
Ghana Ghana formed an empire in black Africa in the basin of the Niger River. in the third century tribes near the medieval and modern city of Timbuktu were united under the rule of the Ghana clan, whose members could travel in caravans, passing through sudan and the sahara all the way to the Roman Empire. Ghana gradually developed as this ruling dynasty imposed its rule on the tribes of western sudan in the valley of the Senegal River. Little is known of its history. Archaeological evidence has shown that the empire achieved a high degree of civilization in the eighth century. The Arab conquest of North Africa, however, pushed Berber tribes to migrate southward. in the ninth and 10th centuries, they threatened Ghana. its rulers organized a fierce defense and the resulting clashes were successful and they began to expand northward, conquering some Berber regions. in 990 the empire reached the zenith of its expansion with the conquest of the Berber principality of Mauritania. The entire western Sudan fell under Ghanian rule, marking the victory of settled over nomadic peoples.
According to the secondhand testimony of an Arab traveler, agriculture was highly developed in the 11th century. There was a rich trade in gold, elephants, and slaves, all initially sold and traded through Islamic countries. Commerce brought Ghana closer relations with the Muslim world and introduced Islam. In the middle of the 11th century, the empire was attacked from the north by the Almoravids, who captured the capital city, Koumbi Saleh in 1076, this ended Ghana’s existence as a state; and it was incorporated into Mali.
Further reading: Kenny Mann, Ghana, Mali, Song-hay: The Western Sudan (Parsippany, N. J.: Dillon Press,
1996); Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa (New York: H. Holt, 1994).
Ghassanids (Ghassan) They were Arab allies or foederati of Rome and then Byzantium, who defended the frontier of Syria in the sixth century. Their greatest prince was al-Harith or Arethas (d. 569). Justinian I awarded him the title of Phylarch in the wars with Persia, and with their Arab allies, the Lakhmids. The Ghassanids followed monophysitism. Justinian I tolerated this and his empress, Theodora, supported it. The Ghassanids continued to serve Byzantium. In 577 al-Mundhir, the son of Arethas, destroyed Hira, the capital of the Lakhmids, their rivals and allies of the Persians. Reduced to a shadowy existence after that, the Ghassanids fought valiantly at the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, after which, defeated, they were resettled in Anatolia.
Further reading: Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Al-Ghazali (Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al Ghazali, Algazel) (1058-1111) Persian jurist, theologian, mystic
Al-Ghazali was born at Tus, near Meshhed in Iran, in 1058. He was a turbulent scholar, often ill, who traveled throughout the Middle East. Called the “proof of Islam,” he was little known in the west except through a misunderstanding of one aspect of his work: his questioning of Arab philosophy, inspired by Hellenic doctrines. Al-Ghazali’s work was a search for synthesis in that he tried to fuse with Sunni orthodoxy many of the intellectual and spiritual ideas of his contemporary Muslim world. He excluded only that which seemed to him absolutely irreconcilable with Islam.
Among the ideas of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), he pointed out three problems in logic, physics, and metaphysics. Metaphysics seemed to him especially heretical; it could lead to a denial of creation, providence, miracles, the resurrection of the body, Paradise, and hell. In addition he believed it was unable to establish the incorporeality of God or the immortality of the soul. He died on December 18, 1111.
Further reading: W Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1963); W Montgomery Watt, Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghazali (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963).
Ghaznawids (Ghaznavids) The Ghaznawids were a dynasty of former slaves of Turkish origin who ruled eastern Iran and present-day Afghanistan from 977 to 1187. They were founded by Sebuktigin (r. 977-997), a former general and governor for the Samanids. Their capital was Ghazni, from which they took their name. It was an important commercial center that enjoyed two centuries of prosperity and a brilliant intellectual life under their rule. al-Biruni worked there as well as Firdawsi (932-1020), who composed the Book of Kings, an epic about ancient Persia and is one of the masterpieces of Persian literature. The palaces and mosques the Ghaznawids built there, as well as at Lashkar-i Bazar, were recognized as impressive. The Ghaznavids became more prominent with the conquest of non-Islamic northern India, carried out by Mahmud (r. 999-1030). Eventually they encountered the growing power of the Seljuk Turks, to whom they lost Iran after a military defeat in 1040. Another group, the Ghurids, sacked Ghazni in 1150 and took possession of all of the Ghaznawid territories by 1187.
Further reading: Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The Islamic Dynasties (Edinburgh: Edinburgh university
Press, 1967), 181-183; Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994—1040 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1963); Bertold Spuler and J. Sourdel-Thomine, “Ghaznawids,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2.1050-1055.
Ghent (Gent, Gand) In the Middle Ages Ghent was a commercial city in Flanders and the seat of its duke. Ghent had developed from the seventh century at the confluence of the Scheldt and the Lys Rivers; its name meant “confluence.” The town initially grew up around two centers of monastic settlement in the first half of the seventh century, the abbeys of saint-Bavon and saint-Pierre. After having been destroyed by the Vikings, the town was re-created around the castle built by Count Baldwin II the Bald (r. 879-918) in the late ninth century The security fostered by the castle and the presence of the ducal government promoted enough security to establish a local prosperous market. From the early 11th century, the merchants of Ghent invested in grain, flax, and the production and selling of cloth. By 1127-28, the town was important enough to intervene strongly in the succession of the count of Flanders, gaining even more liberties and concessions.
With the lucrative development of the cloth industry and trade, Ghent was at the center of extensive commercial networks among the Hanseatic League; England, the source of its main raw material, wool; and most of the rest of western Europe, especially the Mediterranean with its luxury products. By the 13th century, Ghent was among the richest cities in Europe. In the 13th and 14th centuries the city government and its rich merchants erected prestigious buildings, graphic proof of their industrial and commercial power.
In the meantime the government of the town was controlled by a group of powerful patrician families. By the 14th century, social tensions between these patricians and their allies, the rich tradesmen, on one side and the large number of weavers and fullers involved in the production and trade of cloth, but excluded from the regime, on the other side, reached a crisis, leading to a long series of regime changes and revolution. This process was accentuated by the economic and military crises of the Hundred Years’ War. Ghent fell into depression and agitation in the 14th century In 1336, a patrician, Jacob van Artevelde, expelled the count with the support of the English. Ghent was then temporarily at the head of all the Flemish cities. In 1383, Philip the Bold (r. 1363-1404), duke of Burgundy, made it part of the duchy of Burgundy. The next 70 years was prosperous for the town, but by the second half of the 15th century, Ghent experienced a deep depression because it had been replaced by other production and trading centers.
See also Brabant; Bruges; clothing and costume;
TEXTILES.
Further reading: Hilda Johnstone, trans., Annales Gandenses: Annals of Ghent (1951; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); Johan Decavele, ed., Ghent: In Defense of a Rebellious City: History, Art, Culture (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1989); David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City: Women, Children, and the Family in Fourteenth-Century Ghent (Lincoln: university of Nebraska Press, 1985); Henri Pirenne, Early Democracies in the Low Countries: Urban Society and Political Conflict in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, trans. J. V Saunders (1915; reprint New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
Ghent Altarpiece The Ghent Altarpiece of the Lamb was a masterpiece of 15th-century Flemish painting. This huge polyptych consisted of 20 panels in three parts painted on both sides. It was begun by Hubert van Eyck about 1425/26. After his death, it was completed by his brother, Jan van Eyck, in 1432. It was commissioned by a local merchant. When opened, the altarpiece displayed a panorama around an adoration of the lamb or christ by some 300 saints in heaven or Paradise. In a lower zone were depicted representations of Christ with the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist in a center panel with angels, singing and playing instruments, and Adam and
Eve. The two panels on wings opening outward on the exterior depicted the donor and his wife kneeling before John the Baptist and John the Evangelist below and the Annunciation above. Though an amalgamation, the various panels indicate the full range of the developing styles of the van Eycks, all executed with meticulous and exquisite detail.
See also altars and altarpieces; Ghent; painting.
Further reading: Lotte Brand Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1971); Peter Schmidt, The Ghent Altarpiece (Bruges: Ludion, 2001).
Ghibellines See Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Ghiberti, Lorenzo (1378-1455) Florentine sculptor, caster of bronze, goldsmith, architect, painter, writer Lorenzo Ghiberti was born in or near Florence between 1378 and 1381. He learned the goldsmith’s trade from his stepfather, Bartoluccio de Michele; though many small sculptural pieces have been attribu
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