The 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
October 2, 2014 By
Patrolling 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
October 1, 2014 By
This 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
September 29, 2014 By
St 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
September 24, 2014 By
John 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
September 6, 2014 By
Though 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
September 4, 2014 By
My review of SD Sykes brilliant medieval thriller, Plague Land.
Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages
September 1, 2014 By
For a proper understanding of the actions of men in the past it is necessary to have some idea of how they conceived the world and their place in it, yet for the medieval period there is a serious inbalance in the sources.
Pedlars and Alchemists in Friuli History of itinerant sellers in an alpine reality
August 25, 2014 By
This short review discusses about itinerant sellers in Friuli, who are Cramaro called (XI-XIX centuries). Attention is focused, in particular, on the question if some of theme were alchemists.
Conversion on the Scaffold: Italian Practices in European Context
August 23, 2014 By
11 January 1581 was a fine day in Rome. That morning, Michel de Montaigne, recently arrived in the city, had gone out on horseback when he encountered a procession accompanying a condemned man to execution. Montaigne stopped to watch the sight.
Quiz: Which Renaissance Artist Created this Masterpiece?
August 19, 2014 By
Here are ten close-up images of famous art works created by Italian Renaissance artists. Can you name the artist?
Michelangelo, Copernicus and the Sistine Chapel
August 8, 2014 By
A detailed examination of the themes, motifs and secrets held with Michelagelo’s masterpiece.
Venetian Trading Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean
August 6, 2014 By
To understand the system of business relations within the commercial network of the Republic of Venice, this article adopts a network analysis that differs from a standard narrative based on a privileged subset of actors or relations. It allows us to examine the socially mixed group of entrepreneurs, brokers, and shippers at the heart of Venice’s economic system.
Did Purchasing Power Parity Hold in Medieval Europe?
August 4, 2014 By
This paper employs a unique, hand-collected dataset of exchange rates for five major currencies (the lira of Barcelona, the pound sterling of England, the pond groot of Flanders, the florin of Florence and the livre tournois of France) to consider whether the law of one price and purchasing power parity held in Europe during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
England’s First Attempt to Break the Commercial Monopoly of the Hanseatic League, 1377-1380
July 27, 2014 By
During the second half of the fourteenth century English traders first seriously threatened the Hanseatic League’s commercial monopoly in the Baltic. The League, attempting to defendits monopoly, treated the English unjustly,where upon in 1377 the English Parliament rescinded the charter that granted the League important concessions and privileges in its English trade.
Foreign dangers: Activities, responsibilities and the problem of women abroad
July 18, 2014 By
I consider a very important issue in dealing with the subject of Empires: the problematic position of women, and their contradictory witnesses not only in representations in early medieval sources but also those deriving from their gendered roles as they have been imagined
Goths, Lombards, Romans, and Greeks: Creating Identity in Early Medieval Italy
July 16, 2014 By
This essay explores how two different non-Roman historians represented the past to their peoples: the Gothic historian Jordanes’ sixth-century work, the Getica, and the eighth-century Lombard historian Paul the Deacons’ History of the Lombards.
Researchers discover genome of Brucellosis from 700-year-old skeleton
July 15, 2014 By
A 700-year-old skeleton from a medieval village in Sardinia has given researchers new insights into a chronic disease that causes profuse sweating and muscle and joint pain.
Mosaic from Venice
July 7, 2014 By
This mosaic was made in the first half of the twelfth century as part of a decoration at the west dome in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.
The transition between late antiquity and the early medieval period in north Etruria (400-900 AD)
July 2, 2014 By
Traditionally, the idea that the Roman empire ‘declined and fell’ was considered a historical fact, not a matter for debate. The beginning of the ‘decline’ was usually dated to the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The Medieval Life of the Colosseum
June 30, 2014 By
Archaeologist working on Rome’s Colosseum have discovered that the ancient landmark continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages, but not as a gladiatorial arena. Instead, it was used homes, workshops and even stables.
Claude, Duke of Guise and the Battle of Marignano, 1515
June 26, 2014 By
The Guise brothers, Claude, Antony and Ferry had become separated during the action. Antony frantically searched for his brothers.
The Influence of Humanist Culture on Sephardi Scholars Active in Medieval Italy
June 17, 2014 By
This talk will set the context by introducing three generations of the Iberian Shohams, a late 14th-mid-15th century Sephardic family moving from Sicily to Apulia and Calabria.
Tomb of Vlad the Impaler may have been found in Italy
June 16, 2014 By
Researchers from Estonia believe that the remains of Vlad III, better known as Vlad the Impaler, are buried in a church in Naples, Italy.
Florentine politics and the ruling class, 1382-1407
June 10, 2014 By
Although outwardly the regime respected the institutions of communal Florence and republican formalities, real power in the state supposedly resided in the hands of a narrow group of families.
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