Eleni Sakellariou, Southern Italy in the Late Middle Ages: Demographic, Institutional and Economic Change in the Kingdom of Naples, c.1440–c.1530. (Medieval Mediterranean 94.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. 574. $237. ISBN: 978-900-422-4063.

The aim of this paper is to reassess the history of the Sanseverino family, princes of Bisignano in Calabria in the Late Middle Ages; by focusing on a specific and unpublished source: the so-called “reintegre or platee” as written in the first half of the 16th century. These are public sources mostly enlisting properties and benefits; they serve the purpose of re-possessing the privileges taken from the princes themselves over the previous century. The paper will therefore focus not only on the management and character of the seigneurial landholdings but also on the reconstruction of both the local networks of power exerted on the population and the local political system. It will shed new light on the still debated historiographical issue centered on the seigneurial authority in southern Italy by assessing its local rooting and pervasiveness since the 14th century.

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Early Medieval Wales and Calabria

10.1093/oso/9780198777601.003.0032 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Patricia Skinner

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Southern Italy ◽

Economic Change ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Local Elites ◽

South Wales ◽

Barriers To Access

In 2011 Chris Wickham highlighted the comparative potential in the post-Roman histories of Wales and southern Italy, commenting that ‘the changing societies in each were the result of indigenous developments alone.’ This chapter takes up the implicit challenge in that statement and discusses South Wales and Calabria utilizing three frames: topographical, economic, and literary. Topographically, the mountainous interiors demand attention not only as barriers to access, but also as places of refuge and retreat. Both areas were open to the sea, and potentially to hostile waterborne raiders. Economically, the two regions were unpromising for agriculture, but ideal for pastoralism, and also offered specific resources that were in demand by local elites. From a literary viewpoint, both regions generated stories that emphasized and used the landscape and followed their protagonists on journeys through and beyond the region. Whilst their development in the early Middle Ages may well have been identifiably indigenous, it did not occur in isolation from wider social and economic change.

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The Late Middle Ages, 1350–1530

10.1093/oso/9780192894892.003.0006 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 231-273

Author(s):

Stephen Mileson ◽

Stuart Brookes

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Social Space ◽

Economic Change ◽

Black Death ◽

Geographical Mobility ◽

Late Middle Ages ◽

Shared Stories ◽

Great Divergence ◽

Local Traditions

The period after the Black Death saw a dramatic demographic reversal and significant structural economic change, including the withdrawal of lords from direct farming. Vale and Chilterns remained distinctive, but in some links were strengthened and experiential differences were reduced. This chapter examines how perceptions of village space were affected by a steepening of village hierarchy and by increased geographical mobility. Great divergence between settlements is revealed in terms of forms and possibly strength of engagement and attachment. The character of social space in villages is examined in part through an innovative study of the reach of church bells, based on fieldwork carried out during the project. Field names are used to uncover shared stories and local traditions, which may have been cultivated and used especially by senior tenants.

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Jews in the Piazza: Jewish Self-government in the Fifteenth-century Kingdom of Naples

European Journal of Jewish Studies ◽

10.1163/1872471x-12341301 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 24-44

Author(s):

Vincenzo Selleri

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Political Action ◽

Political Life ◽

Jewish Communities ◽

Late Middle Ages ◽

Ruling Elites ◽

Kingdom Of Naples

This study intends to make a contribution to the literature on Jewish autonomy in the Late Middle Ages by analyzing Jewish political life in the Kingdom of Naples in the fifteenth century. Contrary to Italian and European scholarship which has interpreted Jewry policy in the Kingdom of Naples in the fifteenth century as a direct emanation of the ‘good heart’ of the Aragonese kings, I argue that Jewish charters must be considered the product of Jewish agency. I suggest that the Jewish ruling elites, not the king nor the municipal governmets sought the administrative and juridical separation of the iudece (Jewish Communities) from the municipal governement of southern cities. Considering that Jewish political action, and the administration of the iudeca mirrored that of cities, I argue that Jewish Communities fit perfectly into the Aragonese administrative puzzle.

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