You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome is an investigation of Renaissance diplomacy in practice. Presenting the first book-length study of this subject for sixty years, Catherine Fletcher substantially enhances our understanding of the envoy's role during this pivotal period for the development of diplomacy. Uniting rich but hitherto unexploited archival sources with recent insights from social and cultural history, Fletcher argues for the centrality of the papal court - and the city of Rome - in the formation of the modern European diplomatic system. The book addresses topics such as the political context from the return of the popes to Rome, the 1454 Peace of Lodi and after 1494 the Italian Wars; the assimilation of ambassadors into the ceremonial world; the prescriptive literature; trends in the personnel of diplomacy; an exploration of travel and communication practices; the city of Rome as a space for diplomacy; and the world of gift-giving.
Winner of the 2002 Nauchman Sokol-Mollie Halberstadt Prize in Biblical/Rabbinic Scholarship presented by the Canadian Jewish Book Awards Finalist, 2002 Scholarship Morris J. and Betty Kaplun Award presented by the National Jewish Book Council Financier and courtier to the kings of Portugal, Spain, and Italy and Spanish Jewry's foremost representative at court at the time of its 1492 expulsion, Isaac Abarbanel was also Judaism's leading scholar at the turn of the sixteenth century. His work has had a profound influence on both his contemporaries and later thinkers, Jewish and Christian. Isaac Abarbanel's Stance Toward Tradition is the first full-length study of Abarbanel in half a century. Th...
An important aspect of the Italian Renaissance was church reform. This book examines the nature of that reform - especially in Venice, Florence and Rome - as viewed through the unpublished manuscripts of a Venetian nobleman who became a Camaldolese hermit: Vincenzo Querini (1478-1514). This book sets Querini's personal journey to reform in the context of Venetian society, as well as against the backdrop of political crisis, cultural revival, and monastic renaissance in Italy generally. Querini's attempt to reform himself, the Roman Catholic Church, and the whole of Christendom are of interest to historians seeking to revise the chronology of early modern church reform since he employed a range of scriptural, humanist, conciliar, monastic, and mystical methods that had medieval antecedents but were also imitated by reformers after the Reformation.
Political exiles were a prominent feature of political life in Renaissance Italy, often a source of intense concern to the states from which they were banished, and a ready instrument for governments wishing to intervene in the affairs of their rivals and enemies. This book, first published in 2000, provides a systematic analysis of the role of exiles in the political life of fifteenth-century Italy. The main focus is on the experiences and reactions of the exiles, and on how Italian states dealt with their own exiles and those of other powers. Siena, notorious in the 1480s for the numbers of her citizens in exile, is used as the model with which other cities are compared. Such a detailed study of the phenomenon of exile also provides alternative perspectives on the nature and power of governments in fifteenth-century Italy, and on ideas about the legitimacy of political authority and political action.
Contextualizing Michelangelo’s poetry and spirituality within the framework of the religious Zeitgeist of his era, this study investigates his poetic production to shed new light on the artist’s religious beliefs and unique language of art. Author Ambra Moroncini looks first and foremost at Michelangelo the poet and proposes a thought-provoking reading of Michelangelo’s most controversial artistic production between 1536 and c.1550: The Last Judgment, his devotional drawings made for Vittoria Colonna, and his last frescoes for the Pauline Chapel. Using theological and literary analyses which draw upon reformist and Protestant scriptural writings, as well as on Michelangelo’s own rime spirituali and Vittoria Colonna’s spiritual lyrics, Moroncini proposes a compelling argument for the impact that the Reformation had on one of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance. It brings to light how, in the second quarter of the sixteenth century in Italy, Michelangelo’s poetry and aesthetic conception were strongly inspired by the revived theologia crucis of evangelical spirituality, rather than by the theologia gloriae of Catholic teaching.
While inquiries into early encounters between East Asia and the West have traditionally focused on successful interactions, this collection inquires into the many forms of failure, experienced on all sides, in the period before 1850. Countering a tendency in scholarship to overlook unsuccessful encounters, it starts from the assumption that failures can prove highly illuminating and provide valuable insights into both the specific shapes and limitations of East Asian and Western imaginations of the Other, as well as of the nature of East-West interaction. Interdisciplinary in outlook, this collection brings together the perspectives of sinology, Japanese and Korean studies, historical studie...
Curated by two of the leading experts in medieval military history, the readings in Medieval Warfare tell a story of terrors and tragedies, triumphs and technologies in the Middle Ages.
This volume aims to assess the longstanding debate over the role played by the Italian Renaissance in the history of European intellectual culture. The authors engage in an interpretative conversation with thinkers such as Jacob Burckardt, Ernst Cassirer, Eugenio Garin, Paul Oskar Kristeller, whose works have influenced critical discourse on modernity and Renaissance Humanism over the last one hundred and fifty years. The studies presented in this collection contribute to this discussion from a variety of perspectives: scientific, theological, political, and literary. The result is a multifaceted illumination of the intellectual history of the Italian Renaissance.
The essays gathered in this volume are devoted to different aspects of the reception of Humanism and the Renaissance in Slavic countries. They mark the beginning of a dialogue among scholars of different Slavic languages and literatures, in search of the ways in which the entire Slavic world – albeit to varying degrees – has participated from the very beginning in European cultural transformations, and not simply by sharing some characteristics of the new currents, but by building a new identity in harmony with the changes of the time. By overcoming the dominant paradigm, which sees all cultural manifestations as part of a separate ‘national’ linguistic, literary and artistic canon, this volume is intended to be the first step in outlining some ideas and suggestions in view of the creation, in the future, of an atlas that maps the relevance of Humanism and the Renaissance in the Slavic world.