Italy Archive
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From Tempests and Hydraulic Machines to the Arno Diversion: the Historical Significance of da Vinci’s Study of Water
Posted on January 21, 2015 | No CommentsReemergence of classical thought and the importance of water in society led da Vinci to pursue multiple projects regarding his study of water – culminating in the project to divert the Arno River. -
Move over Milan! Late Medieval and Renaissance Fashion in Venice
Posted on January 3, 2015 | No CommentsMilan may be Italy's current fashion capital, but Venice had an important role to play in the development of the Italian fashion and textile industry since the late middle ages and renaissance period. -
The Importance of Being Good: Moral Philosophy in the Italian Universities, 1300–1600
Posted on January 1, 2015 | No CommentsThis paper therefore explores how important moral philosophy was, during the Italian Renaissance, as an independent university subject, and whether its status had a direct relationship with that of rhetorical studies -
Shaping a Saint’s Identity: The Imagery of Thomas Becket in Medieval Italy
Posted on December 29, 2014 | No CommentsThis article sets out to trace the visual responses to the sainthood of Thomas of Canterbury outside of his original cultural context, namely in Italy, where his cult was readily received, integrated and modified. -
Medieval Books for Christmas
Posted on December 15, 2014 | No CommentsIt's that time of year again - the mad scramble for the perfect Christmas gift for the historian, nerd, avid reader on your list. Here are a few suggestions for you - new releases for December and January! -
Plague Remedies from Renaissance Italy
Posted on December 11, 2014 | No Comments'Rue tops, one clove of garlic, a walnut, a grain of salt, and eat on an empty stomach everyday for up to a month, and you must be cheerful, and this recipe, it's good against vermin and it's perfect. -
The Morality of Misogyny: The Case of Rustico Filippi, Vituperator of Women
Posted on November 30, 2014 | No CommentsAt the outset of his influential study on Rabelais, Mikhail Bakhtin makes an interesting observation. The scholar dedicates several pages to detail how the French author’s critical reception changed over time. Bakhtin illustrates how the attempt to comprehend an author can frequently be stymied by the cultural changes that occur across the centuries. -
The Sincere Body: The Performance of Weeping and Emotion in Late Medieval Italian Sermons
Posted on November 30, 2014 | No CommentsIn 1493 the well-known and controversial Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Feltre gave a series of Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. On March 11 he dedicated an entire sermon to the necessity of contrition—or perfect sorrow over sin—in the rite of confession. -
CONFERENCES: The Stellinga, the Saxon Elite, and Carolingian Politics
Posted on November 26, 2014 | No CommentsThis is my summary of a paper presented at the Institute of Historical Research on the causes of the Stellinga uprising in the Carolingian period. -
Flee the loathsome shadow: Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and the Medici in Florence
Posted on November 9, 2014 | No CommentsThis article examines the changing political landscape of Medicean Florence, from Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), through the letters of the celebrated neo-Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). -
Constructing social identity in Renaissance Florence: Botticelli’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’
Posted on November 6, 2014 | No CommentsThis study scrutinizes a work within a neglected portion of Botticelli's oeuvre, examining the ways in which its modest, and somewhat ambiguous, visual cues also construct its sitter's elevated social identity, while simultaneously protecting it. -
Women’s monasticism in late medieval Bologna, 1200-1500
Posted on November 4, 2014 | No CommentsThis dissertation explores the fluid relationship between monastic women and religious orders. I examine the roles of popes and their representatives, governing bodies of religious orders, and the nunneries themselves in outlining the contours of those relationships. -
Petrus Hispanus (circa 1215-1277) and ‘The Treasury of the Poor’
Posted on October 24, 2014 | No CommentsThe identity of Petrus Hispanus is a matter of some controversy. Part of the problem is centred on the fact that 'Hispanus' covers the general region of the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in medieval times as 'las Españas' (the Spains), incorporating both present day Spain and Portgual. -
10 Terrifying Reads for Halloween!
Posted on October 23, 2014 | No CommentsHere are some spooky medieval books for you to celebrate with over Halloween! -
The drawings that Michelangelo did not want you to see
Posted on October 21, 2014 | No CommentsThere are about 600 drawings by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo that have survived to the present day - many of them stunningly beautiful - but he would probably have been 'absolutely horrified' that the general public can now see them. -
Does a Reformation End?: Rethinking Religious Simulation in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Posted on October 21, 2014 | No CommentsA paper examining the Italian Reformation. -
Profile of a Plant: The Olive in Early Medieval Italy, 400-900 CE
Posted on October 14, 2014 | No CommentsThe essay illuminates some of the ways that early medieval Italian communities engaged their environmental inheritance, how they recast the stolid olive to fit local contingencies. -
10 Medieval and Renaissance Things to See at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Posted on October 9, 2014 | No CommentsMy latest visit to the Victoria and Albert Musuem: 10 Medieval and Renaissance Things to See at the Victoria and Albert Museum. -
Domestic Slavery in Renaissance Italy
Posted on October 5, 2014 | No CommentsThe ways merchants in Italy differentiated along ethnic and religious lines among the slaves they dealt in sheds light more on how the people of Italy made distinctions among themselves than on the origins and religion of their captives. -
The Fashion Police in 16th-century Italy
Posted on October 2, 2014 | No CommentsPatrolling the streets and squares of the bustling city as arbiters of the level of ostentation that was deemed appropriate, the sumptuary magistrates were quite simply the Fashion Police. -
The Floating State: Trade Embargoes and the Rise of a New Venetian State
Posted on October 1, 2014 | No CommentsThis paper was given by Georg Christ and examined embargoes and state formation in the late medieval and early modern period in Venice. -
Latin Patrons, Greek Fathers: St Bartholomew of Simeri and Byzantine Monastic Reform in Norman Italy, 11th-12th Centuries
Posted on September 29, 2014 | No CommentsSt Bartholomew of Simeri (ca. 1050-1130), a Greek monastic founder and reformer from Calabria, saw the effective end of Byzantine imperial power in southern Italy in 1071, the conquest of Muslim Palermo by Robert Guiscard the following year, and the rise of the Norman kingdom of Roger II at the end of his life. -
A Medieval Scholasticus and Renaissance Choirmaster: A Portrait of John Hothby at Lucca
Posted on September 24, 2014 | No CommentsJohn Hothby’s career as cathedral choirmaster at Lucca is one of the longest, best documented, and most exceptional of any Northern musician active in fifteenth-century Italy. -
Justinian’s Reconquest: Notions of Return in Procopius’ Gothic Wars
Posted on September 6, 2014 | No CommentsThough the native Italians play a relatively minor role in the Gothic Wars, the essay will suggest, that in Procopius’ mind, the Western Romans’ ‘decision’ to forego their martial roles for less martial forms of male self-fashioning in the fifth century had led, not only to the rise of the ‘barbarian’ Vandals and the Goths, but had separated the Italians from an essential component of Romanitas—masculine martial virtues. -
BOOK REVIEW: Plague Land by SD Sykes
Posted on September 4, 2014 | No CommentsMy review of SD Sykes brilliant medieval thriller, Plague Land.
