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Accounts of public justice in the Italian communes emphasize mediation of urban conflicts, overlooking interactions between rural communities and civic tribunals. Foregrounding the countryside reveals how nonelites responded to public courts and procedures such as anonymous denunciation and ex officio inquisition. This article argues that a Florentine court's outcomes resulted from the intersection of institutional structures, local power relations, and rural inhabitants' in-court behavior. It uses procedural records in conjunction with notarial cartularies and public documentation to explicate the local dynamics shaping testimony. Claiming ignorance was rural peoples' tactical response to elite malefactors' enmeshment with the commune as rural proxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents research relating to the will of Silvestro di Tano Pantaleoni, a Florentine merchant operating in Verona. His testament, dated April 11, 1342, recently resurfaced briefly on the antiquities market. The document is of interest to scholars because it cites the judge Pietro Alighieri, and provides a profile of the Pantaleoni family, which was involved in the failure of the Florentine Nerli company and shared common experiences with Dante Alighieri, moving in the same circle of acquaintances in Florence and Verona. The article retraces the document’s history, and presents biographical data uncovered around the main figures mentioned in the will. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article has two main aims. First, it assesses recent developments in Dante scholarship and calls into question the validity of some of the critical, historical, and methodological premises that these trends have fostered. Second, it proposes ways in which the study of the poet ought to be historically and methodologically more sensitive to the nuances and specificities of medieval culture than is generally the norm in Dante studies. To illustrate how such an approach might be articulated, the article focuses on the poet’s intellectual formation in Florence, especially around 1295, paying particular attention to Dante’s self-presentation inConvivioII. xii, to the nature of his possible relationship to the institutions of the mendicant orders, to his ties to Brunetto Latini, and to his knowledge of the Boethian and Aristotelian traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Leonardo Bruni’s well-known oration, the Laudatio Florentinae urbis, has long stood at the center of discussions on the emergence of the modern republican state. Recent historiographical trends have emphasized the degree to which Bruni’s oration represents a propagandistic attempt both to portray Florence as a territorial power of Northern Italy keen to impose its sovereign authority on neighboring polities and as a republic intent on fashioning an image of itself as a popular sovereignty. It is in this second element of Bruni’s oration that we can discover his rhetorical purposes: he needed to give a distorted image of Florence as enjoying “popular” rule precisely because Florence was in fact moving in the opposite direction towards a more oligarchic concentration of political authority. The essay investigates the changes contemplated in revisions to Florence’s juridical codes at precisely the time of the oration’s composition, suggesting that when these two sources are juxtaposed, Bruni’s oration appears as a strongly ideological literary work the rhetorical gestures of which camouflage the actual historical and legal developments of Florence’s political life in the early fifteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the nineteenth century, Dante studies have been dominated by variations on a contextualizing philological and historicist critical method. The article examines the implications, and especially several of the shortcomings and blind spots, of this approach. It focuses on two closely inter-related areas of investigation that hold positions of prominence in modern-day dantismo: the study of Dante's literary and doctrinal sources and of his intellectual formation. Rather than a rebuttal of historicist scholarship, the article proposes ways in which this might be refined, in particular by paying greater attention to the practical realities of medieval (Florentine) culture, including education and scholastic institutions, the circulation of manuscripts and modes of reading, and contacts between clerici and laici. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the historical antecedent of Cardinal Latino’s specific interdiction against women’s clothing that exhibited frontal exposure as evoked by Forese Donati in Purgatorio 23, situating this interdiction within the history of sumptuary counsel and legislation. This gendered aspect of Dante’s history of Florence is informed by the political discourse of sumptuary excess amongst Florentine elite families and the tensions amongst such families, both those which had true claims to nobility (such as the Donati), and the upwardly mobile mercantile elite (such as the Cerchi). Dante’s choice of Forese Donati as the speaker of this invective carries implications for Dante’s political thought, as it reflects the concerns of the popolo more than those of elite families. This essay relates the intersection of political critique, concupiscence, and virility to the insufficient covering of Nella in the tenzone between Dante and Forese Donati and elsewhere in the Purgatorio, reading the exposed female body as a signifier of civic decadence and church corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1285 a group of giullari presented the city government of Florence with a petition. The petition, the contents of which are unknown, was rejected by the Special Council of the Commune. This article examines this record for what it reveals about the social position of entertainers in late medieval Florence. Consideration of the 1285 petition in light of corporate bodies formed by minstrels elsewhere in Europe, statutes regarding minstrels in other Italian cities, and evidence of ad hoc associations of Tuscan entertainers, sheds light on how the labour of giullari was viewed both by the performers themselves and by their fellow Florentines. Given the power dynamics unleashed by the adoption of guild-based structures of governance during Florence's Secondo Popolo, the 1285 petition of the Florentine minstrels may well constitute the earliest evidence of an assertion of guild-like corporate identity by minstrels in medieval Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on materials excavated from a number of Italian archives, this article traces the early development of women's prison wards in late medieval Europe and analyzes the female prison experience from an original perspective. In doing so, it addresses key questions in the criminology and penology of women, especially concerning the relations between female deviants' numeric marginality and their perceived neglect by officialdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Dante's use of political invective - and, in particular, of invective against Florence - in both his vernacular and his Latin works. It explores the terminology used by the poet to describe his corrupt city, and suggests connections between the metaphors used in Dantean invective and the poetic genre of satire. The direct and uncompromising language of invective is shown to have much in common with satire, which was defined as attributing blame with corrective intent. In Dante's Monarchia and political letters, the 'correction' which is intended can only happen politically through the advent of a universal monarch and linguistically through the medium of Latin. In contrast, in the Comedy, the corrective aim takes on a universal (ethical and salvific) aspect, which depends not only on the Empire, but also on a fundamental change in human behaviour which can only be adequately conveyed in the poem's plurilingual vernacular style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study casts light on both the vexed question of women's vernacular literacy as well as women's wider participation in literary culture during the Italian quattrocento. For decades now, scholars have puzzled over the phrase dealing with women's literacy in Giovanni Villani's Chronicle, where he states that in Florence between “eight thousand to ten thousand boys and girls are learning to read.” Feminist scholars in the 1980s in particular took an extraordinarily pessimistic stance on women's literacy in quattrocento Florence. Women's ability not only to read but also to write was called into question. “A girl who could read, and especially, write, was cause for amazement,” wrote Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Luisa Miglio considered women's writing in the quattrocento to have been both extremely rare and to have constituted a kind of “transgression.” “I do not know,” wrote Miglio, “if Margherita Datini or Alessandra Macinghi or other lesser known women who took a pen in hand were aware that theirs was an act of transgression, if they were truly able to measure the significance of that action, almost a theft or at least the appropriation of an instrument reserved to the male universe by the society in which they lived.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The claim that the Gough map was originally produced in or about the 1370s, then overwritten and re-inked about fifty years later, is unconvincing. The ‘earlier’ hand seen north of Hadrian's Wall cannot be dated accurately, but is as likely to be from after 1400 as before. Outside one small area of the map, I find almost nothing to indicate rewriting of names or other text, and even in that area the rewriting proves little about date. Nor do I find evidence for the reworking or re-inking of town signs or other pictorial elements. The claimed extensive erasure of earlier writing in the area of the map which is said to be revised is not evident to me. The serious but uneven and erratic fading of the ink on the map, which is not surprising, accounts for most of the anomalies and variations that we see. Dr Solopova's claim, based on her theory of revision, that the map displays contrasting political or ‘ideological’ emphases from two different periods seems unrelated to the actual content of the map. The known history of the development of chorography in medieval Europe indicates that the appearance of a map as advanced as the Gough map in northern Europe before 1400 is almost unimaginable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between the literary works of Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). The role of both writers in humanism is explored. Boccaccio's poems "Ytalie iam certus honos," "Vita Petrarchi," and "Vita patris Petri Damiani" are discussed. The meaning of Boccaccio's use of the characters Silvanus and Francesco Nelli, his political involvement in Florence, Italy, and Petrarch's use of allegory are also analyzed.

With his Descriptio insulae Cretae and Liber insularum Arcipelagi, Cristoforo Buondelmonti initiated the isolario tradition in the early fifteenth century. Both works were inspired by his urge to recover Greek and Roman antiquity through the "restoration" of ancient geography and the study of ancient material remains. The article aims to contextualize Buondelmonti's antiquarian surveys and erudite compilation methods, as expressions of the efforts of early fifteenth-century Florentine Humanism to reassess the ancient heritage of Crete and the Greek islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the way cities were governed during the Middle Ages in Europe, focusing especially on the governmental practices in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance cultural movement. Several topics are discussed, including how historians have believed that Florence was governed by the political participation of citizens in a consensus government, how analyzing the criminal justice administration during that time reveals that the city was actually ruled by the use of "emergency powers" given to certain judiciaries, as well as how the medieval laws that were in place at the time were suspended in favor of these emergency powers order to stifle political dissent. Also mentioned is how this use of emergency power became an institution in Florence over time.

In June 1300, a procession in honour of Florence's patron saint, San Giovanni, was assaulted by a group of eminent Florentines. For Dino Compagni, the attack was an attempted coup organized by Cardinal Matteo d'Acquasparta, papal legate and former general of the Franciscans, and the Black Guelfs. Compagni, however, is the only chronicler to mention it. Nevertheless, his account of the conflict in 1300 shares in common with Giovanni Villani's Nuova cronica a fight that had broken out between the leading families of the factions during a festa on May Day 1300 and some connection with the Guelf victory at Campaldino in 1289. These events and their retellings provide windows into the manipulation of urban space and concepts of political legitimacy through narrative and ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the discovery of two unedited notarial instruments preserved among Westminster abbey muniments and compiled by Petracco di ser Parenzo dell’Incisa, father of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. The two documents are dated February and April 1310 and prove that Petracco was working at Avignon earlier than it has been thought until now and in contrast with the claims of his son Francesco, who states that his family moved to Avignon between 1311 and 1312. The documents also highlight the connections between Petracco and the merchant company of the Frescobaldi, who traded at the papal curia in the early fourteenth century. The company employed a number of exiled Florentine Bianchi, who were interested in humanist ideas and classical texts, forming the first humanist circle at Avignon under the patronage of Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, who also became one of the patrons of Francesco Petrarca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses political debate and decision-making in Florence, Italy, between about 1280 and 1300, the period during which the city's medieval and Renaissance constitution took shape. Emphasizing the independence, impartiality, and responsiveness of the decision-makers to public opinion as foundational principles of collective decision-making, the article addresses how the Florentine political elite and the guilds sought to resolve conflicts of interests issuing from tensions between these foundational principles themselves.

Se presenta una crítica literaria de la "Divina Commedia" de Dante Alighieri y su representación del discurso profético-político. El autor hace referencia a la crisis política en Florencia, Italia, en el siglo 14 y considera cómo Dante reproduce la problemática de su religioso-política de su contexto.

The mid-fourteenth-century design of the Ponte Vecchio continues to be mischaracterized as an irrational example of late medieval Florentine architecture. Rather, as evidence presented in this essay will demonstrate, the superstructure of the Ponte Vecchio was based on a highly rational plan organized according to a sophisticated geometric proportional system. According to medieval aesthetic theory, such harmonious order was required for a design to be considered beautiful, a quality prescribed in the document that records the commission of the bridge. Once construction of the Ponte Vecchio was complete, regulations passed by the Florentine government forbade any modification that would detract from the bridge's appearance, indicating that its rational design was to be maintained. The Ponte Vecchio provides evidence to support recent theories that rational order and its maintenance were, in fact, the desired goals of late medieval Florentine urban planning and the legislation that regulated it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In A History of Florence, Machiavelli recounts revolts, especially of the Ciompi of 1378, which display the repeated surfacings of the desire for freedom navigating ceaselessly between the desire to abolish freedom through the recourse to absolute power and moments when virtue triumphs over fortuna and achieves an order that, while fragile, makes the antagonisms fit in such a way that instead of fights they become debates. For Machiavelli, the speeches made in these situations serve to both analyze the circumstances within which the struggles take on meaning and to display the desire for freedom carving out its path using the energy deployed via the negativity of the desire not to be dominated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction of the Cathedral or Duomo of S. Maria del Fiore began in Florence in 1293/94, reached the stage of rising masonry by 1296, and had progressed so well by 1300 that the Florentine city council authorized a lifetime tax exemption for its founding architect, Arnolfo di Camhio. But at some moment after this auspicious start ill-fortune intervened: by 1310 Arhollo was dead and work on his project suspended. Refounded as a new project in a series of committee decisions in the years 1357-1368, Florence Cathedral is generally regarded as anonymous or collective in authorship. Its fame rests not on Arnolfo's abandoned and unrecorded project but on the prodigious cupola erected by Filippo Brunelleschi from 1420 to 1436, Europe's first major dome since antiquity and chief harbinger of the Italian Renaissance. In 1978 the author presented excavation results that questioned the Brunelleschi-centered tradition and reinforced instead a persistent counter-tradition which attributes the basic features of the 1368 plan and of Brunelleschi's cupola to Arnolfo's original project of ca. 1293-1296. That preliminary hypothesis in favor of Arnolfo as conceptual author of Florence Cathedral is now strengthened by the results of a second Duomo excavation in 1980. The new findings, together with a reappraisal of the documentary evidence and a set of reconstruction drawings, are submitted here as a second and longer look at the project that changed the course of European architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of Italian philosopher and scholar Brunetto Latini and explores how his life in 13th century Florence, Italy can be used to illustrate the changes the city was undergoing during this time. The author examines how Latini was written about by the historian Giovanni Villani, the poet Dante Alighieri and humanist Leonardo Bruni. Latini pursued several different fields of work and scholarship and is seen as representative of the thought and knowledge that converged in Florence in the years following his life.