This essay studies the Venetian patriciate’s enforcement of its exclusiveness and superior status by focusing on the purity and social standing on the women of the class.
Movie Review: Dangerous Beauty
August 28, 2015 By
Late 16th century Venice, where a woman can be a nun, a wife or a courtesan. For Veronica Franco, the free spirited girl scorned by because of her lack of wealth, the choice is an obvious one…
Genoa: The cog in the new medieval economy
August 18, 2015 By
Journalist and author Nicholas Walton writes about medieval Genoa’s economy, trade and role in the Black Death. Walton recently published a book on Genoese history entitled, “Genoa: La Superba”
Veronica Franco and the ‘Cortigiane Oneste’: Attaining Power through Prostitution in Sixteenth-Century Venice
August 12, 2015 By
Franco was a published author, a poet, and counted the King of France among her lovers.
BOOK REVIEW: Genoa ‘La Superba’: The Rise and Fall of a Merchant Pirate Superpower by Nicholas Walton
August 9, 2015 By
While most books about Italy have been dedicated to tourist hubs like Milan, Florence, Rome, Sicily and Venice, Genoa with its rich history, rugged landscape, and tenacious residents, has been given only a passing mention.
How I Built an Information Time Machine
July 15, 2015 By
Frederic Kaplan shows off the Venice Time Machine, a project to digitize 80 kilometers of books to create a historical and geographical simulation of Venice across 1000 years
International trade and institutional change: Medieval Venice’s response to globalization
July 14, 2015 By
Venice has always presented two faces. As a great medieval trading centre its wealth was used to build not only beautiful architecture, but also remarkably modern institutions.
Dyes, Diets and Deodorants: Venetian Beauty Secrets Revealed
June 8, 2015 By
If you think it’s hard to keep up a beauty regime now, wait until you see what lengths the Venetians went to in order to be beautiful!
The Secret Attack on Gallipoli in 1473
May 10, 2015 By
During the Venetian-Ottoman wars, a group of seven men attempted a secret attack on the Ottoman base at Gallipoli. The attack did not go completely as planned…
Move over Milan! Late Medieval and Renaissance Fashion in Venice
January 3, 2015 By
Milan 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 Foxes of Venice
December 13, 2014 By
This paper will focus on the process that led to the professionalization of ambassadorial relations and dispatches as a means to display the shift in the Venetian Senate’s political priorities, as it necessitated and enforced a constant and regular influx of foreign knowledge.
Renaissance Contacts Between Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and the Kingdom of Hungary
November 23, 2014 By
During the rule of the Angevin dynasty (1308-82) in Hungary, towns and cities increasingly assumed greater political influence. The first treaty between the King of Hungary and Dubrovnik (in those days Ragusa) was signed in 1358, during the reign of Louis (Lajos) the Great.
What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade
November 23, 2014 By
After the fall of Constantinople to the Latin Crusaders in 1204 hundreds of relics were carried into the West as diplomatic gifts, memorabilia and tokens of victory. Yet many relics were alsosent privately between male crusaders and their spouses and female kin.
What can fourteenth century Venice teach us about Ebola?
November 21, 2014 By
Venice’s response to the plague an “example of resilience management,’ say experts
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.
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.
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.
Big Love in the Middle Ages: Adjudicating Jewish Bigamy in Venetian Crete’s Secular Court
July 2, 2014 By
What happened when Catholic doctrine, secular law, and minority religious difference met in that crucible of cultural decision making: the courtroom?
Catharism and Heresy in Milan
May 13, 2014 By
Evidence suggests that heresy in Lombardy proliferated during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period of upheaval in the structure and form of politics and society, especially in itscapital city. From 1117 Milan operated as a commune, securing independent jurisdiction at thePeace of Constance (1183).
Printing with gold in the fifteenth century
January 17, 2014 By
Gold printing in the fifteenth century is very rare. There are only two printers who are known to have applied this technique. One of them was Erhard Ratdolt who first used gold for printing a gloriously spectacular full page of dedication in a number of copies of his editio princeps of Euclid.
The Quadriga – War Booty in Venice’s Piazza San Marco
December 30, 2013 By
In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, Western European armies sacked Constantinople, bringing about the fall of the Byzantine Empire. As a result of the conquest, the Republic of Venice acquired a number of war spoils, many of which were incorporated into the design of the Piazza San Marco.
Power and Institutional Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Female Convents of S. M. delle Vergini and S. Zaccaria
October 3, 2013 By
Even though inmates of convents were the most regulated group in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe, canonesses and nuns at these two convents were able to generate and harness multiple sorts of power in a variety of ways.
Venice – obstacle for the Crusades?
September 17, 2013 By
At first sight, the topic’s title sounds somewhat intriguing. It certainly raises the question: is it possible for the Venetians to regard themselves as an obstacle for such a noble initiative as crusades had been?
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