Italy Archive
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CRISIS OF CONTRACTS FOR MERCHANTS IN CRISIS: INSTITUTIONS, CORPORATE FINANCE AND GROWTH IN GENOA (11TH -17TH C.)
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsMy paper focuses these “merchant princes” from Genoa before the “industrial revolution”. The rise and fall of Genoa provides indeed a striking case about the success and failure of what, in the same vein than Bagehot, Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction”, and the role financial markets in that process. -
The Morosinis in Hungary under King Andrew III and the two versions of the death of the Queen of Hungary Tommasina
Posted on January 9, 2013 | No CommentsIn reality, Charles Robert’s predecessor, the last Arpád, Andrew III, called the Vene- tian, was already a foreigner on the throne of Hungary. -
Transvestites, Saints, Wives, and Martyrs: The Lives of female saints as read by fifteenth-century Florentine women
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsAn examination of the lives of female saints taken from the highly popular vernacular Vite dei santi padri written by Domenico Cavalca (c.1270-1342) and the ways women in quattrocento Florence may have been reading them. -
Handspinners of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe Handspinners of Paris, France: In 1270, a royal judge, Etienne Boileau, compiled “Le Livre de Metiers” (The Book of Trades) which contained the ordinances of 100 Parisian craft guilds. By consulting the surviving tax rolls of 1292, 1300, and 1313, it is possible to determine the extent to which these crafts were practiced. -
The Dominican Convents in Medieval Norway
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Norway was larger than it is today, where the former Norwegian districts of Jämtland and Bohus are now parts of Sweden. In 1380, the Norwegian throne was inherited by the Danish king, and for the rest of the Middle Ages, Danish monarchs ruled Norway, but even though the kings often made use of Danes in the administration, the Norwegian kingdom did in fact remain as an independent part of a so-called double monarchy. -
Charlemagne’s Jihad
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsIn 782, after almost two years with no clashes in the Saxon front, Charlemagne led his army into Saxony once again. This time, the main purpose was to subdue the Saxons who rebelled under the leadership of Widukind. It was a brutal campaign, during which, our sources relate, more than 4,500 Saxon rebels were beheaded in one day at the order of Charlemagne. -
The Mystery of the Marble Man and his Hat: A Reconsideration of the Bari Episcopal Throne
Posted on December 31, 2012 | No CommentsUntil the twentieth century, the throne was universally held to have been sculpted in or immediately before 1098 for Elias, the abbot of San Nicola and archbishop of Bari and Canosa. -
Aspects of the English royal succession, 1066-1199: the death of the king
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe death of any ruler in the twelfth century, even if it were expected, caused a considerable amount of shock and disquiet amongst those who were left behind. -
Reading Health in the Stars: Politics and Medical Astrology in Renaissance Milan
Posted on December 27, 2012 | No CommentsHorary astrology was skillfully exploited in political circles and suggests that, far from being irrelevant to our understanding of Renaissance Italy, astrology played an important role in shaping its history. -
Origins of the Medieval Theory That Sensation Is an Immaterial Reception of a Form
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsLet me begin my own discussion of Aquinas by saying that it seems to me that Cohen adequately proved that it was a mistake to view the sensible form as existing in the soul rather than the organ, and that Aquinas is not denying to the sensible form as received by the sensor a place in the physical world, or indeed physical existence, when he says it exists immaterially or spiritually. -
Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsIt is a commonplace that our modern, tidy distinction between astronomy and astrology does not apply to the Middle Ages. -
Shakespeare’s Richard II: Machiavelli for the Good of England
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe name Machiavelli has negative connotations, and this way of thinking is not new. Throughout Europe, in Shakespeare’s time and earlier, Machiavellianism was associated with unscrupulous abuse of power, and Machiavellian methods were seen as immoral and evil. -
Jacopo da Firenze and the beginning of Italian vernacular algebra
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsWhatever the reason, nobody seems to have taken an interest in the treatise before Warren Van Egmond inspected it in the mid-seventies during the preparation of his global survey of Italian Renaissance manuscripts concerned with practical mathematics. -
A Moorish Sheet of Playing Cards
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsExamining medieval playing cards from Spain and Italy. -
The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332
Posted on December 7, 2012 | No CommentsOne Monday in early Spring 1332 a galley commanded by two Genoese ran aground on the tiny island of Brescou in the Mediterranean, a mile or so off shore of the episcopal city of Agde. -
The Invisible Wall of St John. On Mental Centrality in Early Medieval Italy
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe spatial categories of this society provided the basis for the view of certain places as being associated with a sacral materiality which is foreign to modern conceptualizations. It is the aim of this study to elucidate some of these early medieval notions of space. -
The Duomo: The Touchstone of Florence
Posted on December 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe Duomo, 'cathedral' in Italian, is the touchstone of Florence’s architectural achievements and was built to serve forever as a symbol of Florence’s power and prosperity to the surrounding Tuscan communities. -
Origins and Consequences of Canossa: the Evolution of Imperial-Papal Relations through the 11th century
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe relationship between the German monarchs and the Roman papacy in the Middle Ages was an accepted partnership of mutual interests. The theme and scope of this essay is to explore the historical processes that fashioned such interdependence. -
Transylvanian Identities in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIdentity has become a subject of historical exploration as it is also one of the themes examined from the perspectives of various disciplines belonging to the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology. -
A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe wider study of an ostensibly menial activity that, with certain notable exceptions, offered insecure and poorly paid employment to illiterate women of low status is certainly beset with problems. -
A Private Chapel as Burial Space : Filippo Strozzi with Filippino Lippi and Benedetto da Maiano in Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsChapel decoration as burial space in Renaissance Florence had two distinct tendencies, apparently opposing but not necessarily mutually exclusive. -
Furor Teutonicus: The View of the ‘Germans’ in Italy during the Reign of Emperor Frederick I, ‘Barbarossa’ (1152-90)
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No Comments“Medieval Europe did not love the Germans. The Italians hated them, the French admitted their courage, but detested their manners, the English were jealous of them, the Slavs both feared and hated them, while the Germans despised and contemned the Slavs.”16 But it is the Italian side I would like to concentrate on in this paper. Further, I do not wish to examine the reasons for the conflicts between 'Germans' and 'Italians' in this era, nor the events surrounding them. I will try to focus strictly on the views that were expressed about Germans in mediaeval Italy in general and during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa in particular. -
Gargano Comes to Rome: A Revision of Castel Sant’Angelo’s Historical Origins
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsThis article explores the early medieval transformation of a pagan Roman monument, Hadrian’s tomb, into a Christian fortress consecrated to St Michael. -
‘In the Beginning’: The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis is a summary of the The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference by Rachel Scott. The conference was held on November 2nd at King's College London. -
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Posted on November 12, 2012 | No CommentsSpecifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
