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In the early 1980s, Duccio Balestracci discovered in a Sienese archive two account books kept from 1450 to 1502 by a Tuscan peasant named Benedetto del Massarizia. Benedetto knew how to read but not how to write. Infected by the urban habit of detailed personal record keeping, he asked various of his literate acquaintances to put into writing the details of his daily affairs. The resulting account books offer an unparalleled glimpse into the economic and social world of late medieval peasants. In Renaissance in the Fields, Balestracci uses these account books and a host of supporting archival records to explore the lives of Benedetto and his family over the course of the fifteenth century. In Benedetto we see how country people could organize land and capital and protect themselves, at least a little, from rapacious landlords and urban administrators. By capturing the changing realities of life in the countryside, Renaissance in the Fields offers the best introduction to how the peasant economy really worked, and to how most people actually lived during the Italian Renaissance.
In the early 1980s, Duccio Balestracci discovered in a Sienese archive two account books kept from 1450 to 1502 by a Tuscan peasant named Benedetto del Massarizia. Benedetto knew how to read but not how to write. Infected by the urban habit of detailed personal record keeping, he asked various of his literate acquaintances to put into writing the details of his daily affairs. The resulting account books offer an unparalleled glimpse into the economic and social world of late medieval peasants. In Renaissance in the Fields, Balestracci uses these account books and a host of supporting archival records to explore the lives of Benedetto and his family over the course of the fifteenth century. In Benedetto we see how country people could organize land and capital and protect themselves, at least a little, from rapacious landlords and urban administrators. By capturing the changing realities of life in the countryside, Renaissance in the Fields offers the best introduction to how the peasant economy really worked, and to how most people actually lived during the Italian Renaissance.
Through a close study of local demographies and topographies, this study considers patterns of piety, charity and patronage, and by extension, the development of art and architecture in Siena's southern contado during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Garrisoning the Borderlands of Medieval Siena describes Sant'Angelo in Colle as a designated 'castello di frontiera' under the Sienese Government of the Nine (1287-1355), against the background of Siena's military and economic buoyancy during the early fourteenth century. At the same time, mining thoroughly the Tax Record of 1320 and the Boundary Registration of 1318 and presenting a large number of individual records that have not been ...
This volume explores twelve house museums, created over more than two centuries, and founded across the globe. What motivates collectors to establish independent house museums instead of donating their collections to preexisting institutions? How have collectors’ original intentions manifested themselves in their museums? Have founder mandates aided the survival or caused the demise of their institutions? How have house museums’ collections or buildings evolved over time? Must museums reinterpret their collections to remain relevant to contemporary and diverse audiences? In seeking to answer these questions, the volume’s authors share the unique stories behind the creation and evolution of these fascinating institutions, and the intriguing stories of the exceptional individuals who founded them. Contributors: Aistė Bimbirytė, Eliza Butler, Chih-En Chen, Enrico Colle, Allegra Davis, Marissa Hershon, Mia Laufer, Ulrike Müller, Nadine Nour el Din, Inge Reist, Anne Nellis Richter, and Georgina S. Walker.
First full analysis of John Mirk's Festial, of particular importance for the evidence it offers for the debate over medieval heresy and orthodoxy. `Marvellously perceptive and insightful'. FIONA SOMERSET, Duke University.Written with largely uneducated rural congregations in mind, John Mirk's Festial became the most popular vernacular sermon collection of late-medieval England, yet until relatively recently it has been neglected by scholars -- despite the fact that the question of popular access to the Bible, undoubtedly regarded as the preserve of learned culture, along with the related issue of the relative authority of written text and tradition, is at the heart of both late-medieval here...
Investigating water resource law in the statutory legislation codified by commune, oligarchic and seigneurial governments in Northern and Central Italy from the 13th-14th centuries, this book explores the relationship between water management norms and the local environment, and the protection of inhabited areas from the danger of flooding.
Argues the case for the individual as autonomous moral agent in the later Middle Ages.
Pre-modern critical interactions of nature and society can best be studied during the so-called "Crisis of the 14th Century". While historiography has long ignored the environmental framing of historcial processes and scientists have over-emphasized nature's impact on the course of human history, this volume tries to describe the at times complex modes of the late-medieval relationship of man and nature. The idea of 'teleconnection', borrowed from the geosciences, describes the influence of atmospheric circulation patterns often over long distances. It seems that there were 'teleconnections' in society, too. So this volumes aims to examine man-environment interactions mainly in the 14th cent...
Joanna Cannon's scholarship and teaching have helped shape the historical study of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian art; this essay collection by her former students is a tribute to her work.
"Tafuri studies the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture, offering new and compelling readings of its various social, intellectual, and cultural contexts while providing a broad understanding of uses of representation that shaped the entire era. He synthesizes the history of architectural ideas and projects through discussions of the great centers of architectural innovation in Italy (Florence, Rome, and Venice), key patrons from the middle of the fifteenth century (Pope Nicholas V) to the early sixteenth century (Pope Leo X), and crucial figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo de'Medici, Raphael, Baldassare Castiglione, and Giulio Romano. Interpreting the Renaissance is an essential book for anyone interested in the architecture and culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy."--BOOK JACKET.