Italy Archive
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The Use of Mercury against Pediculosis in the Renaissance: The Case of Ferdinand II of Aragon, King of Naples, 1467–96
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe hair samples of Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467–1496), King of Naples, whose mummy is preserved in the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, showed a high content of mercury, with a value of 827ppm. -
The Prince, the Park, and the Prey: Hunting in and around Milan in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Posted on May 15, 2012 | No CommentsCristina Arrigoni-Martelli of York University examines the efforts made by the Dukes of Milan during the later Middle Ages to take part in one of the most popular activities of European aristocrats - hunting. -
Research uncovers new details about John Cabot’s voyage to North America
Posted on May 9, 2012 | No CommentsEvidence that a Florentine merchant house financed the earliest English voyages to North America, has been published on-line in the academic journal Historical Research. -
The Originality of Machiavelli
Posted on May 3, 2012 | No CommentsThere is evidently something peculiarly disturbing about what Machiavelli said or implied, something that has caused profound and lasting uneasiness. -
Exhibition reveals the genius of Leonardo’s anatomical work
Posted on May 2, 2012 | No CommentsLeonardo da Vinci’s ground-breaking studies of the human body are to go on display in the largest-ever exhibition of his anatomical work. -
Marsilio Ficino: Magnus of the Renaissance, Shaper of Leaders
Posted on May 1, 2012 | No CommentsThis article describes the life and work of Marsilio Ficino, a philosopher and leader of 15th century Florence who helped spark the Renaissance and the relevance of his ideas for the challenges we face today. -
A Renaissance Instrument to Support Nonprofits: The Sale of Private Chapels in Florentine Churches
Posted on April 30, 2012 | No CommentsMost visitors to Florence today assume that the extraordinary examples of religious art and architecture were commissioned by the local church, and that each church was largely controlled by the Vatican. In fact, most church art was privately commissioned and privately owned, and the local churches had a large degree of local autonomy. -
‘The inordinate excess in apparel’: Sumptuary Legislation in Tudor England
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No CommentsSumptuary legislation can be defined as a set of regulations, passed down by legislators through statutory law and parliamentary proclamations, that sought to regulate society by dictating what contemporaries could own or wear based on their position within society. -
“Women Make All Things Lose Their Power”: Women’s Knowledge, Men’s Fear in the Decameron and the Corbaccio
Posted on April 26, 2012 | No Comments“Women Make All Things Lose Their Power”: Women’s Knowledge, Men’s Fear in the Decameron and the Corbaccio By Regina Psaki Heliotropia, Vol.1:1 (2003) Introduction: Boccaccio’s literary corpus offers a broad... -
Medieval Sicilian lyric poetry : poets at the courts of Roger II and Frederick II
Posted on April 23, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the twelfth century, a group of poets at the Norman court in Sicily composed traditional Arabic panegyrics in praise of the kingdoms Christian monarchs. Less than a century later, at the court of Frederick II, Sicilian poets wrote the first lyric love poetry in an Italian vernacular. -
Why Dante damned Francesca da Rimini
Posted on April 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe vast majority of Dante's readers have found Francesca da Rimini an acutely sympathetic figure-a tragic heroine. Yet Dante damned her, pronouncing a stern and challenging moral judgment. -
Curses and laughter: The ethics of political invective in the comic poetry of high and late medieval Italy
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsModern criticism tends to treat medieval invective as a playfully subversive but marginal poetic game with minimal ethical weight. Instead, I aim to restore these poetic productions to their original context: the history, law, and custom of Tuscan cities -
Foundation of the Renaissance: The Civic Culture of Early Italian Humanism
Posted on April 3, 2012 | No CommentsThat Francesco Petrarch was the first Renaissance humanist, that he was the first modern man, and that he ushered in a new period of European history known as the Renaissance is the boilerplate of general survey courses as they move from the middle ages to the modern world. -
The Roman elite and the power of the past: continuity and change in Ostrogothic Italy
Posted on March 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the changes forced upon the Roman elite in the evolving political climate of Ostrogothic Italy. -
The concept of quarantine in history: from plague to SARS
Posted on March 25, 2012 | No CommentsThe concept of ‘quarantine’ is radically embedded in local and global health practices and culture, attracting heightened interest during episodes of perceived or actual epidemics. The term, however, evokes a variety of emotions, such as fear, resentment, acceptance, curiosity and perplexity, reactions often to be associated with a lack of knowledge about the origins, meaning, and rel- evance of quarantine itself.
