No doubt the York Police were trained at SUNY-Albany

by KARL STEEL

Particularly few Italian merchants were found inland [in fourteenth-century England]. The old familiarity with Italians inland was disappearing, as suspicion of aliens due to the Hundred Years War was growing. In Salisbury in 1379 Mark Lumbard of Venice was arrested as a spy and had to be bailed out by four London Italians, Peter Mark of Florence, Bartholomew Bosan of Lucca, Nicholas of Venice, and Peter Bragadyn of Venice; and earlier in 1360 two Italians found wandering in York had been imprisoned because no one 'understood their idiom.'

Wendy Childs, "Anglo-Italian Contacts in the Fourteenth Century," 67, in Piero Boitani, Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge UP, 1983), citing the Calendar of Close Rolls, 1354-60, p. 608 [by the way, I have no access to this subscription-only service. If you do, please could you do me a favor and leave the appropriate entry in the comments?]

You've already heard what's happening to the classics, French, Italian, Russian, and theater programs SUNY-Albany? If not (from Inside Higher Ed):

The State University of New York at Albany's motto is "the world within reach." But language faculty members are questioning the university's commitment to such a vision after being told Friday that the university was ending all admissions to programs in French, Italian, Russian and classics, leaving only Spanish left in the language department once current students graduate. The theater department is also being eliminated.

For further context, see the New APPS blog: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science, here and here, where you will learn that SUNY Albany passed its re-accreditation just before announcing these cuts. How conveniently timed! Also, you'll read this observation by a SUNY Albany professor: "UAlbany is going to be a laughingstock. The President set the tone for this at the recent meeting when he announced this decision. For a couple of years, the school's motto has been 'The World Within Reach.' When it was pointed out to him that he was consigning us to reaching only the English-speaking world, he told us that what the slogan *actually* meant was that the 'world of opportunity was within reach.' The double-speak has begun."

Meanwhile, coincidentally, SUNY Executives seem to be doing rather well for themselves.

Here's the necessary contact information for protesting, also from the New APPS blog:

George Philip, President: presmail@uamail.albany.edu
Catherine Herman, Vice-President: cherman@uamail.albany.edu
Susan Phillips, Provost: provost@uamail.albany.edu
Edelgard Wulfert, Dean of Arts & Sciences: cwulfert@uamail.albany.edu

For paper mail:

Office of the President (or Vice-President, or Provost)
University Administration Building
State University of New York
Albany, NY 12222

(detail from Austin, University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, HRC 047, f. 1; for a modern edition of the poem, also unreadable in the wild center of my state, see here)