Although the Este family had traditionally supported numerous monastic foundations, Borso d'Este's patronage of the Carthusian order is notable in that it introduced a new religious community into Ferrara. The history of the establishment, development, and decoration of the Charterhouse of Ferrara is indicative of the taste, artistic and religious views, and political exigencies which shaped the religious patronage of Borso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio. At the same time, the specific examples of Borso's monastic patronage are illustrative of the fundamental assumptions underlying fifteenth-century aristocratic support of religious foundations.

On April 23,1452, Borso d'Este laid the cornerstone for the Certosa on a site not far from the Este villa of Belfiore and the Dominican Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. By spring 1461, the Monastery was habitable, though not yet complete.

Five recently discovered documents reveal for the first time that eyeglasses with concave lenses for myopes were manufactured in Florence from at least the middle of the fifteenth century, about one hundred years before they were thought to be in use. This new evidence throws additional light on the development and early use of spectacles and on the early history of optical instruments and glass technology in general. These documents also reveal for the first time that Florence was the leading manufacturing center of high-quality eyeglasses and that spectacles had already become a prestigious item of personal adornment at least at the court of the dukes of Milan. This information should be of interest to historians of art and costume as well.

The Julius exclusus has generated a good deal of attention on the part of twentieth-century scholarship, especially since the publication of Wallace K. Ferguson's critical edition in 1933. Primary interest has centered on the debate concerning the authorship of the dialogue, with the prevailing scholarly opinion assigning the work unequivocally to Erasmus. According to the present consensus, Erasmus composed the Julius at some point between the death of Pope Julius II in February 1513 and his departure from England for Basel in July 1514. The work was known to members of Erasmus’ circle by August 1516 and was first published in 1517. With the issue of authorship and dating settled to their general satisfaction, Erasmian scholars have recently begun to direct their attention to the substance of the Julius, particularly its ecclesiology. On the other hand, the investigation of Erasmus’ possible sources for die work has received comparatively sketchy treatment.

Too much discussion of George Gascoigne's ‘Adventures of Master F.J.’ has bogged down in the question of whether the story is fiction or autobiography. While it is impossible now to be sure to what degree the young Master F.J. is an autobiographical portrait of the younger Gascoigne, it is not only possible but inevitable to find Gascoigne the writer in the figure of G.T.

‘The Adventures’ as it first appears in the Hundreth Sundrie Flowres of 1573 is an older man's account of the misadventures of a younger man in love. The raconteur, one G.T., reports what happened to his young friend, Master F.J. Following much negative reaction, the story is transformed in the revised Posies of 1575 into ‘The Pleasant Fable of Ferdinando Jeronimi and Leonora de Valesco, translated out of the Italian riding tales of Bartello.’ This pseudo-translation becomes an anonymous omniscient narrator's account of the misadventures of a young man in love. The loss of G.T. as narrator entails with it the loss of a multitude of subtleties of attitude and tone.

In a recent issue of this Quarterly, Gustav Ungerer called attention to several hitherto unnoticed documents concerning the English sojourn of the French lutenist and composer Charles Tessier and on the basis of this evidence concluded that the musician was for a time admitted to the ‘Essex Circle.’ The conclusion should rather be a conjecture, I believe.

The documents published by Ungerer include three letters written by Tessier to Anthony Bacon, the brother of Francis, in the spring of 1597. In the first, Tessier asks to be taken into Bacon's service or, failing this, to be recommended to another gentleman for service. In the second, written some weeks later, he describes some newly composed airs which he intends to present to Bacon, but illness has prevented his doing so, and he begs for money.