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Considers recent arguments about the choirbook Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms. dccxli , and a convent in the city where it resides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this contribution is the manuscript Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, Pal. gr. 334, witness of the Orthodoxae Fidei Expositio by John Damascenus, fully written by Demetrius Zenus (Zakynthos, ca. 1503/1504 - Venezia, 1540?), and used as Druckvorlage for the corresponding printed edition of 1531, published by the Nicolini da Sabbio in Verona. The goal is twofold: 1) contextualising the edition published by Bernardinus Donatus and Demetrius Zenus in the context of the cultural project promoted in Verona by bishop Matteo Giberti; 2) carrying out a palaeographic analysis on Pal. gr. 334, with particular attention to its marginalia and to the typographical indications used to prepare the printed edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 16th century, since the sovereignty of the Venetian Republic over Verona relegated the local aristocracy to merely administrative duties, these same patricians endeavoured to assert their identity - which they claimed to be distinguished by virtue, wealth and power - in a realm secluded from the theatre of politics. That realm was the Accademia Filarmonica, established in 1543. In compliance with the elevated function ascribed to music in the behaviour manuals for the improvement of the gentleman, the Academy stimulated its fellows to engage in singing and playing and, to that end, also provided itself with a rich music library and an extraordinary collection of musical instruments. The Academy also promoted public musical events, recruited skilled musical personnel and protected the composers by accepting the dedications of their works. These forms of sponsorship subjected the musicians to patron-client ties that were connoted by the social gap between masters and servants, the heterogeneity of the services provided by subordinates, the longevity of the relationships, and the extensibility of the obligations and benefits to the relatives of the two parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augustine's City of God has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular translation on women readers has not been considered. This essay presents an Italian codex copied by nun scribe Veronica in 1472 in the Benedictine convent Santo Spirito, Verona. It examines the convent's social history, literary and devotional culture known through a library inventory dating c.1475, extant manuscripts and early printed books. The content and appeal of the library for elementary and advanced readers is analyzed. The active scribal culture is seen through nun scribe Scholastica Maffei who had strong humanist connections and Domicilla Bernabuzi da Faenza who translated a religious treatise for presentation to a mentor, a reflection of humanist practices. Veronica's City of God, follows no known iconographic model and has unique pen and ink miniatures that express tension, emotional conflict, an understanding of Augustine's philosophy, and her role in mediating the text with allegorical imagery for her community. This is the first study of a vernacular copy produced by a nun and shows how women religious read and reacted to Augustine's popular text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Verona, Northern Italy, a music group is revalorizing a local dialetto ('dialect') by putting it to music. By both reviving hundred-year old songs and writing their own music and lyrics, they are widening the cultural reach that this language has and they are finding contemporary ways for people to engage with it. Unlike political groups and their related language activists in the region of Veneto, this music group does not have secessionist ideals or a pan-Veneto rallying cry behind their lyrics. Instead, they are decidedly apolitical and are focused on the hyperlocal dimension of language and musical tradition: like the Slow Food movement and the Km 0 movement, the music group Contrada Lorì makes music with local resources (such as their local dialetto) and local knowledge for a local crowd. This article considers the role of dialetto in the band's musical portrayal of place and personhood, and considers the language ideological underpinnings of the group's quest to balance hyperlocal linguistic authenticity and cosmopolitan innovation through music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores evidence for polyphonic music in Italian convents during the first half of the 16th century. It presents a summary of documentary evidence relating to conventual music in the pre-Tridentine era, alongside practical evidence from contemporary treatises regarding methods by which convent choirs could develop a polyphonic repertory from existing music. It revisits claims for mandatory downwards transposition of music written in high clefs, and considers two manuscripts--Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms.761 and Brussels Bibliothêque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, Ms.27766-in the light of this investigation. The article aims to open up a conversation regarding the status of convent polyphony in the early 16th century, shedding new light on its importance and advocating a fresh approach to the possibility of female performance for the Franco-Flemish repertory of the great papal and ducal chapels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper arises from a broader research on the punctuation of private documents in northern Italy in the 8th and 9th centuries and is focused on the chartae produced in Verona, much different in their script from those originated in other areas of the Regnum Italiae. It shows that the evolution beginning in the 8th century and continuing in the 9th came to completion also as a result of the changes affecting the documentation during the 10th century. The paper provides an analysis of the punctuation marks in relation to the formulary and to the script, showing on the one hand a normalization in the use of punctuation, defined by the requirements of the writing and affecting the gradation of the pause. As the script does not usually leave much space between words or groups of words, the different degrees of the pause are mostly expressed by punctuation marks with a very simple morphology. On the other hand, this paper highlights a progressive standardization in the morphology of punctuation marks as a result of which some pauses, such as separations between the protocol and the text, and between the text and the eschatocol, are almost always expressed by an exclusive sign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Ruskin, on significant public occasions in his later life, affirmed the healthiness of the human imagination that found in nature not divine truths, but human histories. He celebrated as a sign of a community's well being, the capacity of the eye to look at landscape with awareness of its (imagined) history. Perceiving the environment in this way was to enter imaginatively into association with one's own society's past and ancestral heritage, and to recognize a meaningful and personally relevant continuum between the present and history. But when writing his own life history, Ruskin realized with regret that he could not fully memorialise his ancestors because he had been 'profanely' indifferent to their history. Aware of the value of a memorial landscape but importantly detached from his own history, Ruskin sensed himself adrift. But the uneasy dislocation he felt here was more than personal: it was culturally suggestive as a pre-echo of the more dramatically deracinated self, detached from history and community, which characterized modernity's notion of selfhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]