Author Description

Professor Holmes delivered his inaugural lecture before the University of Oxford on 8 November 1989. He argues that 1300-1500 was the period in which independent cities had a distinctive culture which marked them off from the seignorial and monarchical world. This independece had great importance in the 15th century for two quite separate population fall in the period 1350-1460 released energies for industrial commercial life and reduced the importance of food production while, contemporaneously, political accidents crippled the Valois and Luxemburg families and the Papacy. The result of this was the efflorescence of city life in the first half of the 15th century which substantially shifted the direction of Western culture as a whole. Among the manifestations of this change were perspective space, the revival of Ptolemaic geography, printing, the idea of continuous historical evolution, the concept of the artists. The development of independent city culture died away with the revival of monarchical and seignorial control around 1500 but it had already changed the character of European civilization fundamentally.