Medieval Italy

A quite established mainstream narrative in economic history has focused on long-distance trade and its main logistical, financial and exchange hubs. Furthermore, from a theoretical standpoint, the institutionalist approach to economic history emphasized the importance of the reduction of transaction costs as a pre-condition for economic development. Late-medieval Friuli, a region strategically situated between Venice and the German-speaking lands, proves to be a fruitful case study to test such assumptions. With this contribution I will try to demonstrate that transaction costs (especially customs and regional/state fiscality), rather than eliminated, could also be avoided, and exploited and might have even been a stimulus to economic integration on an interregional level.

Le cycle 2023-24 des Actualités de la recherche sur l'Italie médiévale (C. Caby; G. Milani) reprendra le 4 octobre 2023: François Bougard (IRHT) présentera ses travaux sur Le royaume d’Italie d’un Empire à l’autre (850-962): autour d’un livre.

This paper analyses one of the most representative monuments of Byzantine painting in Calabria. It is the church in the town of Stilo, known as Cattolica. It is believed to date from the last quarter of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century. After a brief historiographical and architectural analysis of the building, the author considers the chronological and stratigraphical problems of the frescoes preserved inside the church. In this process, he pays particular attention to the Byzantine layers of fresco painting that were done from the end of the tenth to the end of the thirteenth century. An in-depth analysis of the frescoes from the first phase of decoration from the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century has produced valuable results that could lead to collecting fresh data about possible artistic contacts and the routes along which the models traveled between southern Italy and the countries of the Byzantine cultural circle.

This paper aims to fill a gap in the scant literature on accounting practices in non-Anglo-Saxon countries in under- researched periods by exploring the Monte di Pietà of Ravenna, an Italian non-profit institution. The research draws upon original 18th and 19th century documents found in the Monte di Pietà of Ravenna and offers an internal perspective of the development of accounting technology before and after an ‘intacco’ episode, thus attempting to shed light on the significance of accounting in that context. The originality of the Ravenna episode, compared to other similar ones experienced by Monti, consists in its extension over time and in its recurrence by three generations of administrators linked by kinship bonds, who systematically damaged the Monte between 1797 and 1837. The new form of control of the Monte’s activities after the “intacco” based on accounting technologies, and realised a new relation between power and knowledge ...

Le séminaire, coordonné par C. Caby et G. Milani, se poursuivra en 2023-24, tous les premiers mercredis du mois (sauf exceptions, voir détails du calendrier).
Il a pour objectif de créer un lieu commun de présentation et de discussion à propos des nouveautés de la recherche et des projets en cours sur l’Italie médiévale. On espère ainsi susciter des rencontres entre chercheurs et chercheuses débutants et confirmés et provenant d’horizons historiographiques divers

In 1130, Rome was shaken by the elections of two popes: Innocent II and Anacletus II. The double election resulted in a schism on a European scale that lasted until the death of Anacletus in 1138. The abbey of Montecassino initially placed itself among the Anacletians but changed sides in 1137. This article analyses the Altercatio pro cenobio Casinensi, a work written by Peter the Deacon, a Cassinese monk, describing the negotiations eventually leading to Montecassino's support for Innocent. The Altercatio will prove to be an attack on Roman primacy and a defence of the libertas and autonomy of Montecassino, stressing its link with the emperor and developing an ecclesiology rivalling that produced in Rome.

Come è dimostrato ormai da diversi studi, a partire dall’XI secolo la pratica di inserire monete nelle tombe dei santi era ormai diventata un’usanza comune in tutta l’Italia. In questo lavoro, studiando i ritrovamenti monetali nelle tombe dei santi dell’Emilia-Romagna, si cercherà di illustrare l’utilità dell’analisi di questo tipo di manufatti per ricostruire la circolazione monetaria di quel luogo ma soprattutto si cercherà di analizzare e studiare il rito dell’inserimento delle monete nelle tombe dei santi per capire se questo fosse un atto devozionale, se servisse come azione di riconoscimento della tomba o se fossero monete deposte.

As demonstrated by several studies, starting from the 11th century the practice of leaving coins in the tombs of saints became a common custom throughout Italy. In this paper, analysing the numismatic finds in the tombs of the saints of Emilia-Romagna, we will seek to reconstruct medieval monetary circulation in this area. Furthermore, we will try to analyse and study the ritual of placing coins in the tombs of saints, in order to understand if this was a devotional act, if it served as an act of recognition of the tomb, and if the coins were left in the tomb as alms or as ex-voto by devotees.

The seminar will examine and discuss how information could circulate between Scandinavia and Italy in the first half of the 14th century. The starting point will be the recent discovery, made by Prof. Paolo Chiesa, of a reference to a north-western land called Marckalada/Marchalanda in the Cronica universalis (ca. 1340) by the Milanese Dominican friar Galvaneus Flamma. Behind this name, Chiesa reasonably recognized the Markland ("Forest land"), mentioned by the thirteenth-century Norse sagas as one of the North American lands discovered by the Norsemen (perhaps today's Labrador), and argued that Galvaneus got this information in Genoa. At that time, however, there were also other Italian merchants who frequented the ports of northern Europe and had closer relations with Scandinavia than the Genoese. This presentation therefore explores the possibility that, around 1340, Florentine and Milanese merchants could have acted as an intermediary between Scandinavia and Milan, bringing to Lombardy news of distant lands in the north-western Atlantic.

This paper highlights an on-going study that produces soluble-powdered natural dye extracts from Sebangki barks (Neesia spp., Bomb.; Tristaniopsis spp., Myrt.), Engkerabai Paya leaves (Psychotria viridiflora Zoll. ex. Miq.) and Engkudu roots (Morinda citrifolia L.). These three natural colourants are typically used by the native Iban community in Sarawak to dye silk threads for Pua Kumbu weaving. The two primary objectives of this study are to convert natural dye extracts into soluble powder using solvent extraction and to formulate textile dyeing recipes with good colourfastness and lightfastness using powdered natural dyes extracts. The successful experiments show that distilled water and ethanol can be used as solvents to extract natural dyes from Neesia spp., Bomb.; Tristaniopsis spp., Myrt. barks, Morinda citrifolia L. roots, Psychotria viridiflora Zoll. ex. Miq. leaves. In addition, it is proven that the method of freeze drying is capable of converting liquid dye extracts into...

Italy cannot be studied in isolation from the wider late Roman Imperial world. This chapter briefly sketches the inter-regional context of its history during the second quarter of the first millennium. It also considers its position in the wider debate on studies of Late Antiquity. The late Fergus Millar once claimed that ‘Italy has no history under the empire’. With that he meant that it had no narrative history, at least for the period he examined from Augustus to Constantine I. This volume will show that there are countless histories still to be told, from rustic to ruler, woven
against the tableau of the late Roman Italian peninsula and its islands.

This chapter gives a brief survey of the period 455–93, with a special focus on the final western emperors and Odoacer. It does not aim to cover every aspect of these men’s background or government, but rather to focus on their relationship with the Italian field army and the impact their interaction had on Italy. It advances two theses: firstly, that the murders of Aëtius and Valentinian III did not necessarily mean the terminal haemorrhage of imperial power in the West, as eastern sources like to portray, and as has often been regurgitated in modern scholarship. The majority of Valentinian’s successors fought tooth and nail to restore the position of western emperor as leader of government. Yet this very ambition often clashed with that of the senior commanders of the Italian field army. This turned out to be the major determinant directing the dissolution of the western imperial office. The second thesis flowing out of this is that the actual end of western emperorship in 480 meant the salvation of Italy. Paradoxically, nothing demonstrates this better than Odoacer’s war with Theoderic, which despite its viciousness also serves as a testament to the recovery and resilience of late Roman Italy, on the eve of its transformation into a regnum.

prime bozze, pp. 321-332
 
1. Le guerre d'talia (pp. 422-3321.1 Luigi XII, 1.2 Venezia, gli Sforza, Francesco I di Valois
                                  1.3 Firenze,  1.4 Giulio II: il caso di Bologna 1506 e 1512, 1.5 Carlo V:
                                          L'Aquila
2. Eccezioni alla regola (pp. 332-342 )

This contribution aims to offer a picture of the "exceptores" and their transformations between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (fifth-eighth centuries). After some general considerations concerning not only Italy, but also Gaul and Egypt, the discussion focuses then on Ravenna. The core of the investigation consists of a complete re-examination of the so-called 'Ravenna papyri". Such documents – and the "editiones gestorum" in particular – are here used to illustrate social profiles, institutional links as well as cultural and professional skills of the "exceptores". From there, the article tries at the end to reflect on the possible contribution that the documentary practices of the "exceptores" can offer to a better understanding of the "Collectio Avellana".

Economic inequality together with the so-called conjucture du 1300 – when European society was at the tipping point between its economic and demographic zenith and its impeding decline – have been at the core of historians’ research agenda in the last decade. This seminar aims to gather and discuss the outcomes and the perspectives of these research fields to study a precise chronological, geographical and cultural space: Central-Northern Italy and Western Europe in 1270-1330. The objective is threefold: 1) to understand how and to what extent medieval society before the Great Plague of 1348 was unequal by focusing on specific case-studies or comparisons between cities, regions, economic sectors and social groups. This is pivotal 2) to explore and discuss the causal mechanisms of the socio-economic inequalities found, in particular, their relation with the economic growth and the transformation experienced by medieval society in those years. Finally, 3) the study of how socio-economic inequalities were perceived and conceptualized as well as addressed by contemporary medieval European societies is believed critical for the understanding of this phenomenon. All these themes will be addressed in two specific online sessions in June and October by gathering established scholars and young researchers, medievalists, archaeologists and economic historians.

Alluvioni, piene, disastri idrici hanno, da sempre, condizionato non solo il paesaggio fluviale, ma anche le relazioni fra gli attori che insistevano su un dato territorio. Con questo testo si intende offrire, senza ambizione di completezza, un esempio circa le pratiche giuridiche, le reazioni locali, le soluzioni prospettate fra le parti in un punto sensibile dell’asta del Po durante la prima età moderna: quello fra le province di Cremona e di Parma, tradizionalmente interessate dalle modificazioni morfologiche dovute al fiume. L’attenzione si soffermerà in particolare su una lite scatenatasi nel 1546 a ridosso del corso d’acqua e dei territori ghiaiosi causati dalle piene fra la località di Sommo, nel Cremonese, e alcuni beni dei Rangone, sudditi del neonato ducato di Parma e Piacenza. Alcune considerazioni inziali e conclusive andranno a evidenziare i tratti paradigmatici della vicenda, inerente non solo il problema della gestione del Po, ma pure la determinazione dei confini pol...

Negli ultimi tre secoli del Medioevo, la comunit\ue0 di Gemona era uno dei maggiori centri abitati friulani e rappresentava, nel panorama regionale, una delle pi\uf9 importanti esperienze insediative riconducibili allo stretto rapporto che lo Stato patriarchino aveva con il territorio e gli ambienti ultramontani. Nei pressi di Gemona si intersecavano alcune tra le pi\uf9 importanti strade provenienti dalla pianura friulana e dirette verso le terre tedesche, per cui i mercanti provenienti da Oltralpe e quelli italiani diretti al nord, grazie a servizi e assistenza qualitativamente elevati si incontravano abitualmente nell\u2019abitato e pernottavano in citt\ue0 prima di riprendere il viaggio, scambiandosi informazioni, facendo affari e stringendo accordi commerciali. Ci\uf2 favor\uec lo sviluppo nell\u2019abitato delle professioni artigiane e delle attivit\ue0 manifatturiere portando gli artigiani ad assumere un ruolo centrale nelle istituzioni comunali gemonesi e nella direzioni deg...

Space matters. It situates our history, structures our daily lives, and often determines what we can and cannot do. Borders are central to this reality. Tools and symbols of separation, power, and identity, they bring people together as much as they set them apart. This book explores how borders were understood, made, and encountered at the end of the Middle Ages, and what they can tell us about the spatial fabric of society at the threshold of modernity. It shows that pre-modern borders were nothing like the fuzzy lines they are typically made out to be, that border-making was rarely a top-down process and should instead be studied as an interactive endeavour, and that space was shaped by communities far more than states in this period.

At its core, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy is the account of a frontier which would mark the Italian peninsula for centuries, that between the territories of the Duchy of Milan and those of the Republic of Venice. But it is also a study of how rulers and subjects alike defined spaces they could call their own. Luca Zenobi combines methods from several disciplines and applies them to a range of evidence from twenty different libraries and archives, including theoretical treatises and pragmatic records, written chronicles and cartographic visualisations, private documents and official correspondence. The cast of characters is equally eclectic, featuring influential thinkers and pragmatic statesmen, zealous factions and clumsy bureaucrats, hopeless beggars and ambitious princes. On the border, their stories intersect and reveal their part in a shared history.

Trattare di clima, carestie ed epidemie relativamente a un territorio e alla sua popolazione su un lungo periodo significa cercare di delineare il rapporto di quella stessa popolazione con l'ambiente, con le sue risorse e con le sue espressioni più problematiche. Significa occuparsi della storia della vita quotidiana come pure degli eventi eccezionali ma non per questo unici o rari. Individuare, ove possibile, i meccanismi delle ciclicità, dei mutamenti e delle loro fasi. Significa ipotizzare e tratteggiare una relazione; e che fra clima, ambiente, disponibilità alimentari e malattie una relazione ci sia è indubbio, anche se spesso è impresa ardua stabilirne, in generale o epoca per epoca, le modalità, le caratteristiche e il peso. Con una meticolosa ricognizione fra innumerevoli fonti, Eraldo Baldini e Aurora Bedeschi ricostruiscono questo quadro per la Romagna, relativo agli oltre milleduecento anni che vanno dall'alba del Medioevo all'ultima epidemia di peste che interessò l'Italia settentrionale, nella seconda metà del Seicento. E lo fanno ricorrendo non solo agli studi più specialistici e aggiornati, ma anche alle varie cronache locali di ogni epoca. Perché lo scopo è quello di delineare sia la storia del clima, delle carestie e delle epidemie in un territorio, sia quella della loro «narrazione», cioè del loro impatto emotivo, del modo in cui vennero vissute e ne venne tramandata la memoria. L'affresco che ne esce è di estremo interesse e ricco di implicazioni che, lungi dal limitarsi a una fotografia del mondo di ieri, getta luce sui problemi e sulle emergenze dell'oggi, nel momento in cui il deterioramento climatico e ambientale, la pandemia e le difficoltà relative a importanti risorse, a partire dall'acqua, incidono sulle nostre vite.

A privileged element of contemporary law, confession as a means of proof in criminal proceedings is the object of analysis in this research. Based on a bibliographic review, the study will seek to decompose and reorganize the object on two fronts, constructing a theoretical hypothesis that proposes to observe confession as an inquisitorial practice of an institution, but which also has a traceable genealogical depth in the modulations of subjectivation techniques. The notion of the care of the self that Michel Foucault referred to unfolds in Christian ethics and asceticism, reorganizing the sense of care of the self and slowly, as Christian philosophy developed and the influence of the Catholic Church in the state grew, loaded the act of confession with an institutional-subjective double, elements that allow Zaffaroni to observe the apparent neutrality of contemporary justice as a facade for an authoritarian state, adept at inquisitorial practices, especially in matters of criminal justice.

” Role of Spanish Cardinal Albornoz in the restoration of the Papal possessions in Italy”
(1353-1357)
Abstract:
    This research sheds light on the struggle of the Spanish Cardinal Albornoz to restore the Papal States in Italy from the hands of tyrants who took advantage of the absence of the papacy from Rome and put their hands on it, and these tyrants are: John Fico, the Malatesta family, the Visconti family, and Francesco Ordellafi, and the research ended with as a result, Cardinal Albornoz was able during that period to recover a large part of the Papal States from them and to draft legal constitutions for them known as “Agidean constitutions “.which remained in effect within the Papal States until the Eighteenth Century.
Keywords: Restoration; Papal States; Cardinal Albornoz; Italy.

Nel corso dei secoli le guerre, le epidemie e i grandi rivolgimenti sociali, politici e religiosi hanno segnato altrettante cesure, punti di non ritorno che hanno condizionato a lungo e indelebilmente la storia successiva. L’apocalisse, o meglio le apocalissi, in quanto eventi definitivi e catastrofici, sono pure etimologicamente legate alla dimensione del disvelamento.

L’Occidente medievale offre molte prospettive per analizzare la reazione di singoli e istituzioni di fronte a questi shock, che di volta in volta hanno messo alla prova le società, svelandone appunto le caratteristiche essenziali. Occorre allora osservare gli strumenti messi in campo per la gestione delle fasi successive agli shock, sia sul versante politico-civile sia su quello della galassia delle istituzioni religiose dei secoli X-XIV. Nel volume storici di fama internazionale e giovani ricercatori considerano questa problematica alla luce di alcuni indicatori significativi: lo shock come acceleratore di innovazione, le ristrutturazioni degli apparati istituzionali, chiusure oligarchiche o allargamento degli attori istituzionali, la mobilità sociale prima e dopo lo shock, rappresentare lo shock per progettare il futuro, farne memoria, ripensare e risemantizzare lo spazio, dare un senso allo shock per ricominciare. E ancora: la ritualizzazione del superamento dello shock, emozioni e stati d’animo individuali e collettivi durante e dopo gli shock, spiegare la crisi per legittimare il cambiamento, gli strumenti per superare lo shock e la crisi come opportunità.

Le Settimane internazionali della Mendola. Nuova Serie hanno avuto origine nel 2007, ponendosi in continuità con la fondamentale tradizione scientifica delle sedici precedenti Settimane ideate da Cinzio Violante, che costituiscono un luogo necessario della medievistica europea. L’Editrice Vita e Pensiero, pubblicando gli atti di questa Nuova Serie, vuole aprire il campo a ricerche di grande attualità, che si ritengono di particolare interesse per una più approfondita conoscenza dei secoli centrali del Medioevo europeo.

In premodern Europe, prophecy was both an incisive weapon in the struggle for power and a medium to convey information. In this article, I examine the circulation in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Florence of a prophetic dispatch: the so-called Toledo Letter, an old prophecy updated several times in late medieval Europe.The five different versions of the letter I have located in Florence are an ideal case study in the reception of prophecies as texts which frame the ongoing natural and political disasters in a broader religious narrative, place them in a temporality in which past and future overlap, and encourage the readers to believe in what is announced.

Medieval literature has deeply shaped modern literature through many different channels. Sometimes entire works were translated or paraphrased into modern languages, sometimes medieval motifs, themes, figures, or concepts impacted modern texts. This article examines one remarkable example, Werner Bergengruen’s highly popular novella “Die drei Falken” (1928) the source of inspiration of which was loosely Boccaccio’s story told on Day V, no. 9 in his Decameron (ca. 1350). Throughout time, the falcon has regularly symbolized courtly love, nobility, and the desire for individual freedom. After a discussion of Boccaccio’s text and a selection of medieval examples where the same motive appears, this article examines how Bergengruen transformed the symbol of the falcon into an expression of human nobility and deeply felt desire for personal freedom.