Search

The wealth of source material produced by Roman notaries has long been neglected. Only in recent decades has it been systematically evaluated by researchers. Given the fragmentary source situation in general, these atti notarili add considerable detail to our knowledge of everyday life. They provide insights not only into the Rome of the popes, which has received considerable attention, but above all into the Rome of the Roman people, much less studied. This paper focuses not on another notary, but on the question of the potential contribution of this genre of sources to the history of late medieval Rome. We see how clients belonging to different social groups approach different notaries. We understand the typical concerns and problems of Roman society, ranging from the debtor imprisoned in a dungeon to the Colonna family in their palazzo. We find confident Florentines with their business dealings, German bakers and their partnership contracts, impoverished monasteries with their growing debts. We see the building boom of the Renaissance and how Piazza Navona is transformed from a campus into a platea, as well as rural Rome within the walls and its countless vineyards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys cover versions of Italian hits in Spanish and German. Using autoethnographic methods, it offers a retrospective examination of the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America and Germany, reflecting on the influence of Italian artists on the Latin American and German Schlager music scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Peace of Venice (1177), which ended the nearly twenty-year-long schism between Pope Alexander III and his opponents supported by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, has long been the subject of controversy among scholars, who focused initially on the concrete provisions of the treaty and more recently on the symbolic acts that affirmed it. This paper uses Alexandrian sources to concentrate on peace itself as the pope's most important political goal: the biography of Alexander written by his cardinal Boso, the frescoes in the Lateran Palace painted after the victory, and other statements made by the pope himself and his supporters reveal his primary goal to be the restoration of unity and peace. This thinking may have been rooted in the Christian ethic of peace as well as in the enduring ideal of cooperation between pope and emperor. It offers an explanation for the pope's willingness to compromise in Venice, often viewed with astonishment today, expressed through the choice of location, the staging, as well as personnel and material decisions. Alexander did not aim to supercede the emperor, nor to achieve victory on specific issues in detail; instead, his goal throughout the schism seems to have been a return to peace and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an overview of the musicological research project „Towards a global history of music", which was carried out between 2013 and 2017 on the basis of a Balzan Prize for Musicology (2012), with the assistance of international music research institutes and their specialists. A main outcome of the project are three collective volumes of papers, published in 2018, 2019 and 2021, respectively. The project has viewed the variety of musical experiences around the world as a historical unfolding, to be explored via a „long path" through both geography and history. It has queried the enlightenment idea of a fundamental unity of all music (universalism), and the often fragile status of musical-cultural identities on the regional or national levels. It has sought to join methodologies of ethnomusicology and historical research, and has observed that the concepts of music and historiography themselves are less than universal. To the discourses of globalisation and modernisation, the project has added the alternative of transculturality, allowing for more neutral or participatory interpretations of cultural encounter. Summarising this research, tensions between nation and migration, regionalism and adaptation, ‚radial' and ‚imposed' globality are shown. The paper proposes to expand such studies into non-scientific practice and to find new institutional bases, which would benefit further global understanding and sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops out of a specific event. In 2020, the town of Münsingen in the Swabian Alps commissioned its authors to write a historical report on the Italian Fascist Monterosa Division, focusing on its function and role in the German occupation of Italy from 1944 to 1945. The issue to be clarified was the extent to which the division was involved in war crimes during this period. The background to the request was a monument erected in 1986 in the Ehrenhain, Münsingen's „grove of honour", by the division's veterans' association (Associazione degli appartenenti alla divisione Monterosa). This monument has since led to repeated controversy and heated debate over its Fascist symbolism and the division's involvement in anti-partisan warfare in Italy. Our paper focuses on the experience of officers in the Fascist regime, the division's operations against partisans and at the front, its crimes, and the attempts of the veterans' association in the post-war period to gain official recognition in both Germany and Italy. The Monterosa Mountain Division was created in 1943/1944 by Benito Mussolini's Repubblica sociale italiana (RSI) as one of four military divisions to join front-line combat with the German Army in Italy. Largely composed of young conscripts from Northern Italy, its older non-commissioned officers had extensive war experience from the Italian occupation of Greece and the Balkans, and from the Eastern Front. Its commander, General Mario Carloni, was a hardliner, an energetic, ruthless, and politicised Fascist officer who after the collapse of the Italian state in 1943 chose to continue fighting for Mussolini's side and to support the German occupation of Italy. German instructors trained the Monterosa Division in Münsingen. In late August 1944, it was sent to Italy and assigned to coastal defense duties on the east coast of Liguria, an area almost completely controlled by partisans. The division thus became involved in anti-partisan actions and began to take hostages, shoot civilians and prisoners of war, and destroy village houses. In 1951, a division association was founded, with former General Carloni as its honorary president. Until 2001, it tried in vain to gain recognition from the Associazione Nazionale Alpini (ANA), the most important veterans' and reservists' association of Italian mountain troops. In Germany, on the other hand, the former Monterosa soldiers found faster access to veterans' associations. The first visit by former division members to Münsingen took place as early as 1952. In the 1970s, these visits became increasingly regular and were given official sanction. During the 1980s, the division association's connections further expanded and ultimately resulted in the erection of a memorial to the fallen. In Germany, of all places, the RSI veterans received the recognition that was so difficult for them to obtain in their home country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue is devoted to the influence of Italian culture on the Antitrinitarian movements that spread through Europe during the early modern period. One of the objectives is to go back to the period preceding the activities of Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, and to consider the influences of various trends in the Italian thought of the 15th and 16th centuries that made a crucial contribution to shaping Antitrinitarian ideas about Biblical exegesis, spirituality, baptism and the Trinity. Some papers also cover the phase following the international establishment of Socinianism. While for the first half of the sixteenth century there is a tendency to underestimate the Italian contribution to European Antitrinitarianism, the exact opposite is true for the period between the end of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The perception of Antitrinitarianism changes completely and, following the international affirmation of the Sozzini, is often mistakenly identified with Socinianism, taking the part for the whole (as is still often the case today on a historiographical level). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genealogies of peoples and families developed in Europe during the modern period are prevalently studied by scholars from the perspective of the political history of ideas, with the aim of explaining the practical utility of genealogical works. These analyses do not foreground the aspect that is the focus of this paper: the fact that genealogical reconstructions are full of absurdities. They mix factual information, or information that may seem credible, with fabulous details, often false, sometimes ridiculous, in a word "incredible". This is all the more interesting since these texts were composed during the centuries in which scientific methods applied to historical research were developed. Using tools borrowed from cultural anthropology, this paper suggests an epistemological approach that takes into consideration the meaning and credibility of the genealogical materials in the still authoritative framework of the Historia Salutis, the unitary vision of human history as a fusion of the classical legacy and Biblical tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relations between the public Notariat in the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg and the Papal Curia in Rome on three levels: that of the notarial certificates send from the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg to Rome and vice versa; the personal files overseen by various notaries from Salzburg at the Curia; the notaries from the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg who personally travelled to Rome. In this context we consider on the one hand the documents dispatched on a regional level, on the other the corresponding entries in the „Repertorium Germanicum“. It emerges that public notaries, by issuing proxies and mandates, made a fundamental contribution to the functioning of the procedures delegated. In Rome itself, it was possible to obtain authorization to work as a Papal or Imperial notary, and this path was also chosen by clerics from the Salzburg region. The notaries who managed to extend their imperial mandate with a Papal one in Rome sometimes added two decussate keys to their monograms, a motif frequently employed by the notaries authorized by the Pope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, research has shown an increasing interest in early modern Catholic missions in Asia as test-beds of cultural contact. This shift from a Eurocentric, expansionist view of missions to one that highlights non-European agents and the cultural particularities of non-European Christianities has also resulted in a specialization of scholarly discussions. A conference on Catholic missionaries in early modern Asia recently held in Rome brought together leading experts on different areas to encourage transregional dialogue on the entrenchment of missionaries in local societies. The author is one of the co-organizers of this conference. In this paper, she situates the conference within the field, recapitulates its principal results and suggests areas ripe for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That of Ferdinand Gregorovius is one of the most important correspondences of the 19th century. Despite the author's efforts to keep this part of his papers outside the public purview, several thousands of letters have survived and, like his other works, are also of extraordinary importance from a literary point of view. The letters are indispensable for reconstructing the genesis of his works, for understanding their nature in the dialectics between literature and science, and for identifying his anonymous writings. As a whole, his correspondences with scholars, aristocrats, politicians, writers, artists and publishers form a unique record of the political, social, cultural and scientific history of the 19th century and give us a concrete idea of his vast networks of transnational contacts, epistolary and personal, and on the working conditions of a historian who carried out his studies freely and independently. His correspondences, covering a period of several decades, also shed light on the rapid developments that in their interactions marked Italian and German history in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces some of the fundamental stages in the development of the Italian welfare state during the years of Fascism, contextualizing them both within the most recent historiographical debate and in the light of some national and international issues. As such, the national insurance and welfare policies of the Fascists are examined both within the more general context of the expansion of social policy during the 1930s (in Europe and elsewhere) and with reference to the principal Italian institutions (above all INFPS, the Istituto nazionale fascista di previdenza sociale - Fascist National Institute for Social Welfare). Above all, the text aims to highlight the central importance of the Fascist experience with respect to the historical consolidation of the Italian welfare system, whose original structure dates back to the period when the regime was established. The Fascist period laid the foundations for the so-called „individualistic-clientelist" system later developed and intensified during the post-war period and that represents, according to various historiographical voices, the most distinctive feature of the Italian experience. The conclusive facts that emerge are first that, compared to the European average, Italy succeeded in catching up in quantitative terms, increasing expenditure on social welfare and the extent of insurance coverage. However, the imprint conferred on the national social security system by the regime influenced its later development, demonstrating the central role of Fascism in determining its characteristics (and dimensions). Second, the reorganization under Fascism of the national insurance and welfare system - extending forms of coverage, increasing the number of people covered and above all systematizing it - mainly concerned management aspects. The policy of differentiating between degrees of entitlement remained unchanged or more accurately was accentuated and exploited by the regime as a form of social control. Fascism multiplied the number of diverse and differentiated forms and regimes of insurance in terms of their extent, quality and duration. The reconstruction of the history of Italian welfare during the inter-war period thus belongs to a broader context, both geographical (European and North American) and economic, political and social. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

„Not without merit“. This is how Theodor Mommsen described the most important historical work by Ferdinand Gregorovius, the „History of Rome in the Middle Ages“ before going on to add critically „but he has too much imagination“. This paper reflects on the historian Gregorovius’s openly declared relationship with the imagination, the close affinity between history and poetry. It describes the peculiar role, which we could perhaps describe as that of an outsider, of an author forced to write his books as an independent scholar, funding them mainly with his work as a journalist. Using Gregorovius‘s direct experience of the enchanted gardens at Ninfa, which attracted him as an author of lyric poetry and as an explorer of the historical landscape, we examine some case studies of the genesis of the narrative form that he developed and discuss it as a challenge to historicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a motif present throughout the Middle Ages in a broad variety of texts: the refusal to ascend to the papal throne after election. Gregory the Great dealt with this issue on a theoretical level in his Regula pastoralis: driven by humilitas, the Pope elect should shrink from taking on the office assigned to him, but should not insist excessively in his refusal. Despite the Biblical motivations claimed by Gregory and others, this motif is already documented in the pre-Christian era, for example in the philosophical tradition (Plato, Cicero) and among the Roman emperors starting from Tiberius. From the 8th century onwards it was no longer a literary topos, but a ritual practiced with evident regularity: the Pope elect attempted to avoid his coronation by hiding, but was soon tracked down and taken „by force“ to the Lateran Palace in solemn procession. Popes often also argued that they had not desired to be elected, especially when attempting to demonstrate that they had not arrived at the Papal throne legitimately but, for example, through simony. Gregory VII is a striking example: he presented his entire career as an imposition from the outside. In the early and late Middle Ages this ritual was definitively institutionalized; the highly formalized announcements of the Pope’s election always stressed the new Pope’s initial refusal to accept; indeed, the very blessings imparted during ordinations expressly mentioned the imposition to which he had been subjected. Benedict XVI is currently the last Pope to have ascended to the Papal throne „against his wishes“. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to describe and discuss the principal contents of the files kept in the Secret Vatican Archives - both in the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs - concerning Catholic Jews and the 'would be'converted immediately after the promulgation of the Fascist racial laws (1938). The study is based on previously unpublished documents and research on this topic is still ongoing. My research is based on two main types of sources. First, the 'subjective documentation': letters and pleas written during the 'year of the Race' and sent to the Holy See. The authors of these documents were referred to as 'Jews by race, Catholic by faith' or 'Christian Jews' or 'converted Jews' or 'baptized Jews' or - more frequently - 'Catholic Jews'. Second, the contrasting nature of the documentation produced by the Church body in response to these letters. The Holy See's Secretary, Eugenio Pacelli, and the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Domenico Tardini, answered these pleas in an official and diplomatic way, seeking a way to protect Catholic Jews without provoking a clash with the Fascist regime and its laws. These documents give us a more in-depth understanding of both the political and religious procedures adopted by the Church authorities regarding the Jewish persecution and in particular this specific aspect of the anti-Jewish laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Beitrag legt erste Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts 'Audienzen bei Mussolini' vor. Im Anschluss an eine Beschreibung der benutzten Quellen, die sich im Archivio Centrale dello Stato und im Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Aff ari Esteri befi nden, wird die aus dem Projekt hervorgegangene Datenbank kurz vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus wird Mussolinis Arbeitsweise in ihrem Entwicklungsverlauf skizziert. The text presents the initial results of the research project 'Mussolini's audiences'. The paper contains an analysis of the sources used, from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato and the Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Aff ari Esteri, as well as a short description of the database produced after this research. There are also some brief remarks on Mussolini's working method in its historical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]