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This book investigates the actions of marriage tribunals by analyzing the richest source of marriage suits extant in Italy, those of the Venetian ecclesiastical tribunal, between 1420 and the opening of the Council of Trent. It offers a strongly representative overview of the changes the Council introduced to centuries-old marriage practices, relegating it to the realm of marginality and deviance and nearly erasing the memory of it altogether. From the eleventh century onward, the Church assured itself of a jurisdictional monopoly over the matter of marriage, operating both in concert and in conflict with secular authorities by virtue of marriage’s civil consequences, the first of which re...
In this witty, scholarly book edited by his two sons, Professor Rudolph Altrocchi introduces some of the worlds most skillful and humorous authors whose purpose was to enrich our lives through smiles and laughter, guided by a playful spirit, the key ingredient of high quality humor. Altrocchi, an American citizen born and brought up in Italy, graduated from Harvard, earned his Ph.D. at Harvard and taught at Harvard, Columbia, Chicago and Brown before becoming Chairman of the Dept. of Italian at Berkeley from 1928 to 1949, creating the largest and best Italian Department in the country. Professor Altrocchis captivatingly humorous analysis focuses not only on humor in Italian culture and literature but also on basic elements of humor in the human species.
After two introductory chapters on the humanist and scholastic Aristotelian traditions, the author devotes thirteen chapters to the positions taken by various influential participants in the debates on Humanism versus Scholasticism. Included in this close analysis are: Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salutati, Politian, and others.
This study seeks to define the medieval literary conventions governing allusions to certain Ovidian and Virgilian tales of love in the works of Boccaccio, Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer. Using evidence from the Latin mythographers, it addresses several much-debated critical issues in medieval scholarship: questions of narrative voice, thematic unity, and purpose. Its principal contribution is to the discussion and evaluation of the French and Italian poems of love to which Chaucer was most heavily indebted. The author suggests that the love poems of Boccaccio, Machaut, and Froissart, rather than being ponderous didactic productions designed to instruct medieval audiences in the art of love, are true progeny of the Roman de la Rose,complex jeux d'esprit much closer in spirit and intention to the works of Chaucer than has been supposed.
The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in Europe, the only one to have existed continuously for over 2,000 years. This detailed study of the Jewish banking community in Italy is therefore of special value and interest. Poliakov’s classic account of the rise and fall of the Jewish bankers is at the same time the story of medieval finance in general, its decline, and the birth of ‘modern’ finance. The author traces the economic and theological implication of each stage in the ambiguous relationship that developed between the Jewish money trade and the Holy See. He shows that the protection enjoyed by the Jews from the Holy See had not only theological, but also economic roots. The study ends with an account of the introduction of modern, ‘capitalist’ techniques and of the consequent inevitable decline of the Jewish money trade.
The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in Europe, the only one to have existed continuously for over 2,000 years. This detailed study of the Jewish banking community in Italy is therefore of special value and interest. Poliakov’s classic account of the rise and fall of the Jewish bankers is at the same time the story of medieval finance in general, its decline, and the birth of ‘modern’ finance. The author traces the economic and theological implication of each stage in the ambiguous relationship that developed between the Jewish money trade and the Holy See. He shows that the protection enjoyed by the Jews from the Holy See had not only theological, but also economic roots. The study ends with an account of the introduction of modern, ‘capitalist’ techniques and of the consequent inevitable decline of the Jewish money trade.
With this volume, Jane Chance concludes her monumental study of the history of mythography in medieval literature. Her focus here is the advent of hybrid mythography, the transformation of mythological commentary by blending the scholarly with the courtly and the personal. No other work examines the mythographic interrelationships among these poets and their unique and personal approaches to mythological commentary.
The gods of Olympus died with the advent of Christianity--or so we have been taught to believe. But how are we to account for their tremendous popularity during the Renaissance? This illustrated book, now reprinted in a new, larger paperback format, offers the general reader first a discussion of mythology in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and then a multifaceted look at the far-reaching role played by mythology in Renaissance intellectual and emotional life.
This is a paperback edition of a collection of ten papers by different authors on the cult of saints, first published in hard covers in 1983. Six have been translated from French including a pioneering study by Robert Hertz, one of Durkheim's most eminent pupils. The editor provides a wide-ranging general and historical introduction, and a 100- page annotated bibliography covering material on the subject in all disciplines and in four main languages.