Posts Tagged ‘Italy’

The Lombard connection: northern influences in the Basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito in Florence

The Lombard connection: northern influences in the Basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito in Florence

By Matthew A. Cohen

Annali di architettura n.21 (2009)

Introduction: This account of the enthusiastic public reception of Filippo Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy as it reached completion in the late 1420s, even if it perhaps embellished by Brunelleschi’s admiring biographer to enhance the architect’s reputation, is a remarkable record of the novelty and aesthetic appeal of Brunelleschi’s early Renaissance style according to one later fifteenth-century resident of Florence. Indeed, the account is not hard to believe, for the sacristy continues to be filled with admiring visitors today. The universal appeal of Brunelleschi’s unique style has inspired many scholars to explore its formal origins. What precedents did Brunelleschi assemble as inspirational raw materials, and how did he meld them into such an artistically expressive and influential form of architecture?

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4 Mar 2010
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Marino Sanudo Torsello, Byzantium and the Turks: The Background to the Anti-Turkish League of 1332-1334

Marino Sanudo Torsello, Byzantium and the Turks: The Background to the Anti-Turkish League of 1332-1334

By Angeliki Laiou

Speculum, Vol. 45, No. 3, (1970)

Introduction: Marino Sanudo Torello (ca.1270-1343) stands out among the many crusading propagandist of the early fourteenth century. He shared with all of them the desire to recover the Holy Lands, and with some of them the belief that this task could only be accomplished by an attack on Egypt; but he was unique in his knowledge of the political and economic forces at work, in the practicability of many of his suggestions, and in the influence his ideas had on political developments. Perhaps the single fact that best explains Marino Sanudo’s work as a crusading propagandist is his nationality: he was a Venetian, son of a member of the Senate, born around 1270. He was a relative of the Sanudi who governed Naxos and Andro, and spent a considerable portion of his life in the “Romania,” that is, the Byzantine Empire and those parts of Greece which were under Latin rule. He acquired a profound knowledge of the the affairs of these area, of the temper of the inhabitants, of the dangers presented by the advances of Turks and Mongols; in other words, Sanudo was an expert on the affairs of the East, and was treated as such by his country as well as by the Popes and other European potentates with whom he corresponded. His nationality also greatly influenced his thought. Although he wrote, “I am not in the service of any man or commune,” and he may have believed it, his crusading projects always took into account Venice’s political and economic interests; and in the latter part of his life he probably acted as an official or unofficial Venetian envoy to the King of Naples, the Pope, the King of France.

Marino Sanudo’s work as a propagandist of the crusade has been discussed by Magnocavallo, and by Atiya among others. This article in concerned with a particular aspect of his work, that is attitude toward and his relations with Byzantium. This subject has never been treated in any detail, and yet it had ramifications of great importance. Insofar as Sanudo reflected official Venetian policy, his attitude toward the Byzantines, which developed concomitantly with his rising concern about the Turks, clarified the policy of Venice in the Levant. Marino Sanudo’s work reflected the increasing fear of the Turks that spurred Venice, the Pope, and the Byzantines to gloss over their mistrust of one another, and to form, in 1332-1334, the first European alliance against the Turks. Because they complemented and explained each other, the changes in Venetian policy and in Marino Sanudo’s attitude will be discussed together.

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4 Mar 2010
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From Dubrovnik (Ragusa) to Florence: Observations on the Recruiting of Domestic Servants in the Fifteenth Century

From Dubrovnik (Ragusa) to Florence: Observations on the Recruiting of Domestic Servants in the Fifteenth Century

By Paola Pinelli

Dubrovnik Annals, Vol. 12 (2008)

Abstract: As confirmed by fifteenth-century documentation, Giuliano Marcovaldi, a merchant from Prato established in Ragusa, along with some Florentine merchants, were involved in the trade of slaves, a special segment of the commerce relations between the Italian peninsula, Ragusa and the Balkan hinterland. The persons sold were mostly young women, many of Patarine or Orthodox faith, who were to become domestic servants. They were exported from the Balkans by Ragusan merchants, and sold to Italian traders in exchange for woollen cloth and food stuffs, especially wheat.

Introduction: In the course of his 1970s studies of medieval slave trade from the Balkans within economic relations between the two Adriatic coasts, Charles Verlinden pointed to the lack of systematic studies on this subject by the Slavs. A few years later, historians tended to shift the focus of their attention to this theme, especially Bariπa Krekic, who published some articles on Ragusa as an intermediary market for this type of trade.

In 1988 Sergio Anselmi promoted a book which contained essays on the migration of Slavs and Albanians to the West from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and, in 1989, the same subject was dealt within a volume with several articles published in Belgrade. These studies are based on the documents found in the archives of Dubrovnik, Venice and other cities on the east coast of Italy.

Actually, as I have attempted to demonstrate earlier, the cities of Tuscany were also involved in the trade which, through Ragusa, connected the Slavic hinterland with the Italian peninsula. Copious fifteenth-century documentation of Giuliano Marcovaldi, a merchant from Prato established in Ragusa, confirms this and, among other things, contains much information which questions the assumption that in Tuscany there are only a few minor traces of the recruiting of domestic servants in the Balkans.

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23 Feb 2010
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The Chronology of Leonardo Bruni’s Later Works (1437-1443)

The Chronology of Leonardo Bruni’s Later Works (1437-1443)

By James Haskins

Studi medievali e umanistici, Vol. 6 (2007)

Introduction: In the preface to Leonardo Bruni’s Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII, written probably in 1416, Bruni gives an account of his motivations in beginning so arduous a task as writing the history of his adopted city. Among other motives, he mentions the duty of scholars to celebrate the deeds of their own time in a Latin prose whose clarity and elegance will guarantee their survival into later times.

Atque utinam superioris aetatis homines, utcumque eruditi atque diserti, scribere potius sui quisque temporis facta quam praeterire taciti maluissent. Erat enim doctorum, ni fallor, vel praecipuum munus ut suam quisque aetatem celebrando oblivioni et fato praeripere ac immortalitati consecrare niterentur. Sed puto alia aliis tacendi causa fuit; quosdam enim labore deterritos, quosdam facultate destitutos, ad alia potius scribendi genera quam ad historiam animum appulisse. Nam libellum quidem aut epistolam, si paulo coneris, faciliter transigas. Historiam vero, in qua tot simul rerum longa et continuata ratio sit habenda causaeque factorum omnium singulatim explicandae et de quacumque re iudicium in medio proferendum, eam quidem velut infinita mole calamum obruente tam profiteri periculosum est quam praestare difficile. Ita, dum quisque vel quieti suae indulget vel existimationi consulit, publica utilitas neglecta est et praestantissimorum virorum rerumque maximarum memoria paene obliterata.

Bruni goes on to remark that he has decided to investigate ‘non aetatis meae solum, verum etiam supra, quantum haberi memoria potest, repetitam huius civitatis historiam’. But the emphasis in the preface is clearly on contemporary events. Bruni indeed begins his preface by stating that his original inspiration for undertaking the history was the greatness of the actions the Florentine People had performed, first its internal and regional struggles in remote time, but much more its recent struggles as a great power in its own right against Giangaleazzo of Milan (1390-1402) and Ladislas of Naples (1406-1414). Even beyond Italy the People caused kings and vast armies to cross the Alps from France and Germany (1390, 1401). But Florence’s greatest achievement was her conquest of Pisa (1406), which Bruni compared to Rome’s defeat of Carthage. We know in fact from a letter that Bruni wrote to Niccolò Niccoli in 1406 that it was the conquest of Pisa that gave Bruni the idea that his Laudatio Florentine urbis of 1403/4 might be turned into a history.

Over two decades later, Bruni turned to writing his Memoirs (De temporibus suis) and once again he laid emphasis on the duty of learned men to record the events of their own times and complained that previous generations had neglected this duty. Thus he was going to try ‘to produce for future generations what I have required of others, so that if perchance there are those who want to read it, knowledge of our times will not be lacking.’

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22 Feb 2010
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Saints and sinners: coins in medieval Italian graves

Saints and sinners: coins in medieval Italian graves

By Lucia Travaini

Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 164 (2004)

Introduction: When discussing coin finds in Italian graves it is best to study the phenomenon across the entire medieval period, from the sixth to the fifteenth century. Only by comparing poorly documented periods with those for which the written evidence is more plentiful is it possible to appreciate continuities and disjunctures over time. It is also helpful to consider coins in graves in the wider context of the ritual use of coins. Few coins are found in ancient and early medieval graves compared to other artefacts. In the later middle ages, when graves did not normally contain gravegoods, an occasional coin is the only object that may have caused that grave to be recorded.

This paper will discuss grave finds of coins from different periods, but will make no attempt to give a full inventory of coins found in graves in medieval Italy. It will simply examine a number of cases and offer some tentative interpretations and also refer to non-Italian examples. Coins in graves are considered as “normal” by most archaeologists and numismatists, both for the middle ages and later periods. Folk-stories tell us about “dead man’s treasures” and these are indeed found ecclesiastical and social historians have not yet taken these matters sufficiently into account.

There is also the question of the relationship between coins in graves and Christianity . From the beginning of the period under examination Christianity, albeit in a form perhaps best described as “immature”, was already established in Italy, so what links can be made between religious belief and a coin in a grave? Coins in medieval graves have often been explained as a more or less conscious continuation of “Charon’s obol”: the traditional fee for the ferryman Charon who carried the souls of the dead across the river Styx. Even in Greek and Roman contexts, however, the term has been too loosely applied. It is only when one coin is found in the mouth that we are entitled to refer to it as a Charon’s obol. It is therefore best to abandon this idea and consider coins in medieval graves within a wider framework. Coins in graves have been interpreted as offerings of the dead to the gods, offerings of the living to the dead, as a gift to the deceased to use in the afterlife, as symbolic dowries constituting “a pars pro toto which transferred the belongings of the dead to the bereaved without having to offer a large number of graves gifts” and also as a means to avoid haunting.

Most of the literature on the topic deals with early medieval graves, due to the greater interest of archaeologists in the documentary value of grave-goods, as against the virtual lack of grave-goods in later periods. Later medieval graves need more attention. The study of the late Italian middle ages is either blessed or cursed, depending on one’s view, by the quantity of written records. Because of the wealth of documentary evidence, historians of the period have tended to neglect non-literary evidence and the often different story it has to tell. Coins in saints’ graves, for example, are by no means rare but they have hardly been noticed by modern church historians5. Later medieval graves have sometimes only been recorded because one or two coins were found with the remains. This superficiality precludes statistical analyses. Although it was often not even noted whether the body was that of a man or a woman, the issue of gender may be important. In early medieval graves coins are more often associated with women and children, and this has also been noted in antiquity in some areas.Does the presence of these coins show women as more superstitious than men? Did they invoke magic more? This is certainly suggested by St John Chrysostom’s specific condemnation of women’s use of magic in the fourth century.

There are five main questions that need to be addressed in connection with coins in medieval Italian graves:

1. Why were coins deposited with ordinary people?

2. Why were coins deposited with saints and with other important people?

3. Why were coins not deposited in many or most graves?

4. Was there a difference between early medieval and later medieval graves? If so, why?

5. How were the coins deposited in graves selected? Were they currently circulating coins or not? If not how far removed in time and place?

In discussing these questions, I will focus on two main hypotheses:

1) coins offered as tokens of memory;

2) coins as a sin or as a possible danger for the soul.

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20 Feb 2010
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The Muslims of Sicily under Christian Rule

The Muslims of Sicily under Christian Rule

By Alex Metcalfe

The Society of Norman Italy,  edited by Graham Loud and Alex Metcalfe (Brill, 2002)

Introduction: The Norman invasion of Sicily was neither an invasion, nor was the kingdom that eventually resulted from it particularly ‘Norman’ in character. At the height of its power in the mid-twelfth century, the kingdom of Sicily included most of the southern Italian peninsula as well as Malta, and colonies along the North African coast. However, it was the island of Sicily that was undoubtedly the gravitational centre of the kingdom’s cultural and political life, and its capital of Palermo was probably Europe’s wealthiest and most populous city. The island was also home to most of the kingdom’s large, Arabic-speaking Muslim communities. Indeed, these formed the majority of the island’s population for most of the kingdom’s short, but spectacular, existence.

In 1061, almost seventy years before the kingdom was proclaimed, a modest military force under the leadership of Robert Guiscard and Roger of Hauteville, but in the pay of a Sicilian amīr, Ibn al-Thumna, arrived to assist in a civil war which had already lasted a generation, and had seen the political and administrative disintegration of the island into petty principalities. The advent of these two leaders and those who were to follow them would introduce fundamental and irreversible changes to the demographic, religious and linguistic base of the island over the next 250 years.

In the Islamic period, the view that the Muslims who hailed mainly from Ifrīqiya (roughly the area covered by modern Tunisia) had repopulated the island is matched by an assimilation theory that ‘most of its population became Muslim’. In the ninth and tenth centuries, many towns of strategic importance were indeed repopulated after their capture, and appear to have assumed an Arab-Islamic character around the entire island. However, change in rural areas seems to have been of a much slower, assimilative type. Even in these more conservative and less carefully monitored environments, most Christian enclaves of Greek or Italo-Greek speakers that had remained are likely to have converted to Islam and/or adopted Arabic as a second language within the space of a few generations. This was probably the scenario in the south-western Val di Mazara, where Arab-Islamic influence had first been established and for most of the Val di Noto in the south-east too. However, it is fair to assume that across and around the many, ragged religious and socio-linguistic frontiers that this created, different communities experienced different degrees of acculturation at varying rates.

For example, in 973, Ibn Ḥawqal, a hostile visitor to Sicily, described how large numbers in rural areas were imperfectly embracing Arab-Islamic norms. In such, communities, he claimed, ‘marriage to Christians is [allowed] provided that their male child follows the father by being a bastardised Muslim (mushaʿmidh), and that a female becomes a Christian like her mother’. He also added that they spoke unintelligibly, like ‘deaf mutes’. Although the idea that there may have existed degrees of Christianity in Sicily makes for an intriguing, if not entirely unattractive, thesis, it also seems from Ibn Ḥawqal’s description of Palermo that it had barely a remaining trace of Christian culture.

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16 Feb 2010
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Competing Models of Marriage in Quattrocento Florence

Competing Models of Marriage in Quattrocento Florence

By Genevieve Landis

Istoria: An Online Graduate History Journal, Vol.1:1 (2008)

Introduction: On August 24, 1447, Alessandra Strozzi wrote to her son about his sister’s new husband, Marco Parenti. “He is a young man of good birth and abilities and an only son, rich and twenty-five years of age, and he has a silk manufacturing business.” Although the union was a step down for a Strozzi woman, Alessandra stressed Marco’s wealth and social status as an only son, and also mentioned that the Parenti “take a small part in the government.” She quickly moved on to discuss the dowry, “because he who marries is looking for cash.” Alessandra’s outlook toward her daughter’s marriage focused on status and money, very different concerns from those promoted by the Catholic Church’s view of marriage.

In the early fifteenth-century, two models of marriage dominated Florence. The first was religious, consolidated by the Catholic Church in the twelfth-century and widely recognized throughout Europe by the fifteenth. This formulation stressed marriage as a sacrament, and relied on both male and female consent to determine validity. The second model, the socioeconomic, was especially influential among Florentine elites. Unlike the religious view, the socioeconomic model saw marriage as necessary for building alliances between families and highlighted the social and economic benefits of the union, including social status and the dowry.

The civic humanists of the early fifteenth-century proposed a third model, which sought both to correct perceived problems in the earlier models and to fashion a definition of marriage that would strengthen the patriarchy. Critically, the humanist model sought to strengthen the republican government by stressing female dependence on males and further removing women from the public sphere. In doing so humanists aimed to reinforce their republican government, which depended on the bonds between men. Whereas in a monarchy women had a more clearly defined role as the mothers of princes, female power was often limited to the royal family. In a republic, each wife could claim authority as mother to the next generation of citizens, potentially creating a large class of powerful women. It was in republics, then, that civic humanists were most concerned to define women’s roles as completely separate from the public sphere. In order to examine the new model promoted by early fifteenth-century humanists, this article will first describe the religious and socioeconomic views of marriage before discussing the humanist model. The final section will then demonstrate both how the humanist model differed and why the humanists believed Florentines needed a new model for marriage.

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13 Feb 2010
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Procopius on Roman, Persian and Gothic Strategy near Dara and Rome

Procopius on Roman, Persian and Gothic Strategy near Dara and Rome

By Christopher Lillington-Martin

Lampeter Working Papers in Classics (2008)

Abstract: This paper reinterprets Procopius’ descriptions of opposing Roman, Persian and Gothic strategies near Dara in AD 530 and Rome in AD 537-8 by reconsidering evidence pertaining to the location of temporary army camp sites. The method consists of reconciling his text with the landscapes of the areas concerned by supplementing the analysis with information gained from satellite imagery, cartography and field visits. This is evaluated, with secondary sources in mind, to analyse the landscapes and associated events described by Procopius. The satellite images are available via Google Earth and date from September and October 2004. By reconsidering Procopius’ account, after visiting the landscapes he described, we gain additional insights and can therefore reinterpret strategy and events.

Introduction: Analyzing the landscape and reconciling it with the literary description provided by this eyewitness is particularly appropriate as Procopius himself, with Homer in mind, offered reconciliation between landscape and literature:

“…Taracina; and very near that place is Mt. Circaeum, where they say Odysseus met Circe, though the story seems to me untrustworthy, for Homer declares that the habitation of Circe was on an island. I am able to say… Mt. Circaeum, extending … far into the sea, … has every appearance of being an island… for this reason Homer perhaps called the place an island.” Wars, V.xi.

This paper is concerned with reconsidering the strategies which culminated in three conflicts: one of AD 530 on a site 20-24 km West-Northwest of Nisibis (modern Nusaybin, Turkey), just East of the Roman–Persian frontier in Northern Mesopotamia and two of AD 537-538 on a site 3.5 km North of the Aurelian Walls at Rome. The first conflict was connected to Justinian’s policy arguably intended to generate conditions for the initiation of the re-conquest of the West led, initially, by Belisarius in which in the latter two conflicts took place. Military fortifications were related to all three conflicts because Belisarius occupied such strategic sites as bases from which to direct field armies to oppose Persian and Gothic manoeuvres. The first conflict took place near Dara (modern Oğuz, Mardin, Turkey). Analysis of Procopius’ text will discuss measurements of distances and relative positions of temporary field fortifications linked to Dara and Ammodios (modern Amuda, Syria) 8 km to the south. The interrelated strategies, and those of central Italy, as related to the two conflicts near Rome will be re-evaluated.

Satellite imagery and field visit evidence will be discussed in relation to landscape features which probably related to the historical conflicts. The relationship between textual and material evidence can be problematical when using a source such as Procopius in a relatively literal way and comparing it to aerial photography or using satellite imagery. However, Poidebard used Procopius to identify at least one tower mentioned by him and analysis of satellite imagery has convincingly located a Roman fort 30 km east of Nisibis. Before discussing the reinterpretations of strategies, it is pertinent to offer some background and summarise how this methodology has already been deployed by me to argue for a more precise location of the battlefield of Dara, A.D. 530, which Procopius described as having had temporary fortifications constructed across it.

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12 Feb 2010
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Between Form and Representation: The Frick St Francis

Between Form and Representation: The Frick St Francis

By Emanuele Lugli

Art History, Vol.32:1 (2010)

Abstract: The subject of Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis, currently housed at the Frick Collection in New York, has perplexed viewers for more than five centuries. Scholars have suggested several possible texts, but none of these has been proven unequivocally to be Bellini’s reference. Instead of proposing a new written source, this paper focuses on the formal aspects of the painting. It will thus appear that Bellini bent the representational conventions of his time to produce a work of pictorial intelligence. The formal quality of the Frick St Francis is assessed through an analysis of the laurel tree in the left of the painting. Overlooked by many, the tree is the key element of the Frick panel. It is the tree that justifies the variety of exegetical readings, exemplifying as it does a conflation of forms and an experienced handling of visual effects.

Introduction: Discussion of the Frick St Francis tends to focus on its subject matter. Scholars do not agree on what it represents. The problem, which has become an impasse, with scholars either avoiding the issue or naively suggesting new titles, is not a recent one, as it is not caused by the application of different methods of interpretation. Instead, the conditions of the problem appeared with the painting’s very first steps into art-historical existence.

The discussion can be distilled to one central disagreement between two opposing ways of interpreting the painting. The first was fully expressed in 1525, when the Venetian patrician Marc’Antonio Michiel wrote the earliest record of the painting: ‘The oil painting of St Francis in the desert was made by Zuan Bellino. It was undertaken by him for M. Zuan Michiel and features an admirably polished and detailed landscape.’ According to Michiel, St Francis is not doing anything in this painting; he simply is in the desert.

Within Quattrocento Italian painting, not doing anything but simply ‘being’ occurs in specific types of pictures. Among others, these include half-bust portraits, standing saints and allegories. Several times Michiel’s inventory, like other contemporary accounts, registers the paintings not as supports for represented figures, but as the figures themselves. Records such as ‘la tela del Christo che laua li piedi alli discipuli‘ (‘the canvas depicting Christ washing his apostles’ feet’) alternate with notes such as ‘el Christo morto sopra el sepolcro’ (‘the dead Christ on the sepulchre’), where mention of the support is suppressed. These descriptions reveal an approach to pictures in which real presence and virtual presence are not completely distinct categories. Of course the matter is more complex than simply considering a picture to be the equivalent of the figure it represents, but such descriptions nonetheless speak to the success of these paintings as mimetic reproductions. Furthermore, they record only the name of the figures, and overlook every other element of the image. Considered non-essential, these elements are relegated to the rank of attributes, mere accessories to the main figure. Even gestures may fall victim to this interpretive regime, and actions such as reading a letter or holding a child are interpreted as no more than standard means of characterizing learnedness or motherhood.

In the fifteenth century this approach to painting acquired a nuance significant to the present argument. Detailed, varied, settings began to emerge behind the figures, in contrast to the traditional plain backgrounds, and this demanded attention. These pictures were not recorded as simply depicting being, but as depicting being somewhere. Interpretive emphasis – the perceived reason for the painting – remained, however, on the figure. Versions of St Jerome in the Desert, St Augustine in his Study, and, according to Michiel, our St Francis in the Wilderness, are all examples of this shifting attitude.

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11 Feb 2010
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Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308): the life of the soul is the love of God

Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308): the life of the soul is the love of God

By Margaret E. Klotz

PhD Dissertaton, University of Toronto, 2002

Abstract: this dissertation introduces St. Clare of Montefalco, a medieval mystic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to the English-speaking world. The thesis examines aspects of her theology emphasized in her spirituality as well as presenting her life in the context of her culture.

The background material contains the social, cultural, ecclesiastical, religious, and political background of the times in which she lived. Since there are no extant writings of Clare of Montefalco, the chief sources used in the thesis are ‘ Il Processo di Chiara da Montefalco‘, which was held in 1318 and the ‘ Vita S Clarae de Cruce‘, which was written before 1320.

The sources studied provide information about Clare and her relationship to her family, her culture, and her Church. They also provide information about Clare’s life as a religious and a mystic. The thesis is heavily dependent on non-autobiographical material. Therefore, conscious of the use of hagiography, the dissertation discusses what hagiography is and how Berengario, her initial biographer and the bishop who invoked the apostolic process of canonization, makes use of this particular genre.

The dissertation presents Clare as an alternative theology resource of the Middle Ages different from that provided by the scholastic and monastic teachers of the period. Using the expertise of Bernard McGinn and Jean LeClercq, the thesis presents a comparison among the three types of theology; namely, scholastic, monastic and vernacular.

Clare crosses the boundaries between the categories of vernacular and monastic theologian. Having developed a method for claiming Clare as a theologian, and using the words and deeds of Clare, as seen and heard by the people who lived with her or whom she encountered, the thesis gives a portrait of the relationship of Clare to God and Jesus Christ. Integrating her theology of God and Jesus Christ to how she lived her life in ‘imitatio Christi’ completes the presentation of Clare of Montefalco as theologian, teacher, contemplative, and mystic.

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9 Feb 2010
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