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Long neglected by scholars, medieval and Renaissance Bologna is now recognized as a center of economic, political-constitutional, legal, and intellectual innovation, as the city that served as the cultural crossroads of Italy. The city’s distinctive achievements and its transition from medieval commune to second largest city of the Renaissance Papal State is illuminated by essays that present the work of current historians, many made available in English for the first time, from the broadest possible perspective: from the material city with its porticoes, the conflicts that brought bloodshed and turmoil to its streets, the disputations of masters and students, and to the masterpieces of artists who laid the foundations for Baroque art. See inside the book.
Healers in the Making investigates medical instruction at the University of Bologna using the lens of practical medicine, focusing on both anatomical and surgical instruction and showing that teaching medicine between the late thirteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries was a consciously constructed and vigorous project that required ongoing local political and cultural negotiations beyond books and curriculum. Using municipal, institutional, and medical texts, Kira Robison examines the outward structures of academic and civic power involved in the formation of medical authority and illuminates the innovations in practical medical pedagogy that occurred during this era. In this way, Robison re-examines academic medicine, the professors, and students, returning them to the context of the medical marketplace within a dynamic and flourishing urban landscape. See inside the book.
This lively overview of the papal justice system reaches a transatlantic readership and makes available the fruit of Fosi's decades-long research in unpublished archives in Rome and the Vatican.
This 1994 book is a close examination of the papal police in the city and province of Bologna before Italian unification.
This in-depth analysis of homicide patterns in seventeenth-century Italy explores the social contexts behind a sharp rise in interpersonal violence.
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.
This book explores and traces the progressive activism and radical ideas of several elite women in Italy beginning in the early 20th century. It discusses the shared political culture that shaped the thinking and the activity of these women, mainly oriented towards political philanthropy and work, seen as the cornerstone of a comprehensive redefinition of gender relations. It also discusses the connections linking them to an international network of women involved in similar political actions and economic initiatives addressing women’s' interests, as well as their legacy for the next generations. With essays from a range of scholars, this book provides an interdisciplinary framework for understanding these activists and deals with methodological and historiographical issues in reconstructing women’s contribution to history.
Since the publication of Philippe Ariès' book, 'Centuries of Childhood', there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. The essays in this text explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the 18th century.
In April 1644, two nuns fled Bologna's convent for reformed prostitutes. An investigation went nowhere, and the nuns were forgotten. By June of the next year, however, an overwhelming stench drew a woman to the wine cellar of her Bolognese townhouse, reopened after a two-year absence, where to her horror she discovered the eerily intact, garroted corpses of the two missing women. Drawing on primary sources, Monson reconstructs the history of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Italy.
A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal is the first comprehensive overview of its subject in English or any language. Cardinals are best known as the pope’s electors, but in the centuries from 1400 to 1800 they were so much more: pastors, inquisitors, diplomats, bureaucrats, statesmen, saints; entrepreneurs and investors; patrons of the arts, of music, literature, and science. Thirty-five essays explain their social background, positions and roles in Rome and beyond, and what they meant for wider society. This volume shows the impact which those men who took up the purple had in their respective fields and how their tenure of office shaped the entangled histories of Rome and the Catholic Church from a European and global perspective.