The chapter surveys crimes against humanity and genocide in the conflict. The authors provide a legal conceptual analysis of the two different international crimes – which share common features distinguishing them from ordinary crimes and yet are also legally distinguished from each other. Moodrick-Even Khen and Siman focus on specific conduct that form two of the most documented crimes in the Syrian conflict: the crimes against humanity of torture and extermination of prisoners in detention facilities of the Syrian government; and the genocide of the Yazidis committed by ISIS. The legal analysis is used to explain who, among the various parties to the conflict in Syria, is responsible for each crime and the justifications for the allegations against each party.

This special edition of Fifteenth-Century Studies expands upon previous anthologies concentrating on violence in late-medieval and early renaissance Europe in that it includes an unprecedented array of studies, each of which is the product of a distinct discipline and methodology. Unlike Violence and Civil Order in Italian Cities 1200–1500 (ed. Lauro Martines [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972]), a collection of twelve closely-related articles by historians of pre-modern Italy, the present publication provides scholars with seventeen essays which examine the fundamental nature of violence, present its various manifestations, and explore wide-ranging perceptions of this brutal phenomenon in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Most articles appear in English, but some are in German and one in French; whereas the majority address late-medieval phenomena, a few focus primarily on early renaissance issues. The essays offer diverse glimpses into subjects which have gone unexplored hitherto and therefore remained little-known: this compilation of articles widens, adjusts, and clarifies our view of the period, representing also the pluralistic character of today's scholarship. In so doing, the contributions build upon such monographs as Robert Muchembled's La Violence au village: sociabilité et comportements populaires en Artois du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), Christiane Raynaud's La Violence au moyen âge XIIIe–XVe siècle, d’après les livres d’histoire en français (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1990), David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), Jody Enders's The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), and Michael Papio's Keen and Violent Remedies: Social Satire and the Grotesque in Masuccio Salernitano's “Novellino” (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).

While the most researched society and culture in the present anthology seems to be that of late-medieval France, the articles discussing violence within this region introduce a broad spectrum spanning royal and public justice, historical culture, religious and secular literature, royal and courtly illuminations, theater and music. These essays addressing France examine not only such texts as the Mystères de la Passion and the Passion Isabeau, but also the earliest extant version of Valentin et Orson, and La fille du comte de Pontieu, and such images as Jean Fouquet's Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia, miniatures from the Chroniques de Froissart commissioned by Louis de Gruuthuse, from Les Fleurs des Chroniques, and the Grandes Chroniques de France.

For Feiga

Images of female violence, like those of female valor, are extremely rare in early renaissance Italian culture. Virtually no trecento or quattrocento portrayals of women can compare with those featuring Greco-Roman youths who either fatally wound wild beasts or decimate monstrous creatures. Nor are there representations of Christian maidens who are shown mercilessly subduing dragons, as those depicting the triumphs of Saints George (figs. 1– 2) and Michael, respectively. In a culture abounding with statues, paintings, statuettes, and prints of mythological heroes, protagonists who perform courageous but injurious acts are presented primarily as male. These protagonists occasionally appear as coming to the aid of various biblical and Homeric “damsels in distress,” perceived as incapable of fending for themselves (fig. 2). To be sure, in the fifteenth century the notion that a female protagonist could play the role not of passive victim but of active combatant in any given battle was inconceivable. Likewise, the idea that heroines were capable of fearlessly confronting and physically triumphing over a dangerous adversary was not only preposterous but also thought repugnant. Leon Battista Alberti's statement in Libri della famiglia (1441) that “it [does] not befit a woman … to carry a sword” is a revealing reflection of these gender-biased sentiments; so is the comment by Francesco di Lorenzo Filarete, who, in criticizing Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (1457–57, Piazza della Signoria, Florence) in 1504, avers that “it [is] not befitting that a woman should kill a man.”

Among the surviving exceptions to this phenomenon of gender-biased attitudes are a few allegorical statues and paintings of Fortitude, who is personified, at times, as a ferocious armed maiden. The least mentioned but perhaps most interesting variations on the theme—two quasi-mirror images outside and inside the cathedral of San Marco in Venice—date from circa 1230 and are, thus, late-medieval. They feature the Christian virtue under discussion as a young woman who is not only fighting a lion without any assistance (or any kind of protective gear), but who is also prying open its jaws with her own bare hands. As anomalous as both representations are, they are designated for public display: one forms part of the central inner portal of the west facade (fig. 3) and one—apparently the earliest of the two—is a mosaic detail on the interior of the central dome (in one of the sixteen spaces between the windows of the drum—fig. 4).

The earliest representations of sexual violence in Florentine high art date from the middle and late Quattrocento. Their emergence seems to have been spurred on by the use of secular subjects and of Greco-Roman themes in particular. Most extant portrayals of sexually motivated pursuits and assaults (male to female, primarily) display such mythological tales of unbridled lust as those penned by Ovid and Plutarch and such historical accounts of brutal rapes and enforced marriages as those written by Cicero and Livy. Often conceived by art historians as images which pay tribute to male heroism, these portrayals have not formed an iconographical category of their own; nor have they been studied from the perspective of the victimized female figures that they feature. The misogynistic episodes that these depictions glorify appear to have been promoted (in this period still indirectly) by the writings of highly regarded humanists. Thus, like other privileged depictions of istoria, these texts reflect the growing currency which classical ideas must have gained among members of the intellectual and social elite. In addition, the portrayals differ from their Northern European counterparts which, even before the early Renaissance, derive not only from Athenian and Roman cultures but also—and especially—from Biblical stories of female victimization.

One of the themes of sexual violence to appear in quattrocento Florentine as well as Italian high art is Nessus's abduction of Deianira. Mythological in origin, this subject must have been singled out because of its association with Hercules, Deianira's husband, and, more significantly, the most adored and portrayed hero in Tuscany; moreover, introducing a centaur as the would-be rapist, Nessus's abduction of Deianira attests to the immense popularity that the representation of sexually aggressive beastly creatures have in Greek art and literature (fig. 1). Among the extant early renaissance images of the theme, the most famous today is Antonio Pollaiuolo's painting of circa 1465–70 (fig. 2) which exhibits both Nessus's attack on Deianira (on the left) and Hercules's swift and courageous reaction (on the right). Following some of the Florentine artist's other surviving mythological depictions—Hercules and Antaeus as well as Hercules and the Hydra (fig. 3)—the picture's primary purpose is to retell the story of one of the hero's victorious exploits visually. On the other hand, rather than focusing on Hercules, the illustration allows the figures of Nessus and Deianira to acquire equal prominence.