New Scenarios, Old Questions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Regional State ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
City States ◽  
The Many

This chapter, beginning Part II, takes as its theme the advent of the regional states—new and broader political formations that replaced city-states from the middle of the fourteenth century. It looks briefly at the causes of a transformation that profoundly altered the balance of late medieval Italy and which ended with the introduction of other, different political cultures. Far from simplifying the political picture, the regional state absorbed but did not dissolve the many existing territorial bodies, resulting in a stratification of languages and ideas and a configuration of extreme tensions. The Milan Duchy is employed as a case study in order to investigate these phenomena analytically.

Suing in a local jurisdictional court in late medieval Catalonia. The case of Caldes de Malavella (1328–1369)

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-81
Author(s):  
LLUÍS SALES I FAVÀ
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Court System ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
Late Medieval

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of the effectiveness of court litigation over private contracts. Through a case study of fourteenth-century Caldes de Malavella, in northeastern Catalonia, it provides an instructive example of contract registration and enforcement. A large peasant clientele made use of the institutional framework provided by a compact jurisdictional estate. We also explore the ways in which the court system within this barony was affected by the demands of external jurisdictions. The article concludes that the whole system was efficient in prosecuting breach of contract, in serving broader mercantile strategies, and even in softening tensions among parties.

Metaphor and mental language in late-medieval nominalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 136-166
Author(s):  
Magali Roques
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
And Function ◽  
The University

Abstract In this paper, I intend to examine the conception of metaphor developed by fourteenth-century nominalist philosophers, in particular William of Ockham and John Buridan, but also the Ockhamist philosophers who were condemned by the 1340 statute of the faculty of arts of the University of Paris. According to these philosophers, metaphor is a transfer of meaning from one word to another. This transfer is based on some similarity, and is intentionally produced by a speaker. My aim is to study whether this view on metaphor is related to a specific view on the relation between thought, language, and communication. With this case study, I intend to argue that the view on the nature of thought one holds does not necessarily determine what the nature and function of metaphor are. I will show that the three philosophical doctrines under study diverge in their understanding of the mechanisms of a metaphor, while they share the same view on the nature of thought, namely that thought is a mental language.

Communes and Despots: The City State In Late-Medieval Italy

1965 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 71-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
City States ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

It is a commonplace of political history that in the later Middle Ages the city states of north and central Italy were the scene of a conflict in the theory and practice of government between two contrasted systems: republican and despotic (or in contemporary terminology, government ‘a comune’, ‘in liberta’ etc., and government ‘a tiranno’, signoria or principato). The conflict began about the mid-thirteenth century, and in most places, sooner or later, was settled in favour of despotism.

scholarly journals LIVING LIKE THE LAITY? THE NEGOTIATION OF RELIGIOUS STATUS IN THE CITIES OF LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 27-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Important Object

ABSTRACTFramed by consideration of images of treasurers on the books of the treasury in thirteenth-century Siena, this article uses evidence for the employment of men of religion in city offices in central and northern Italy to show how religious status (treated as a subset of ‘clerical culture’) could become an important object of negotiation between city and churchmen, a tool in the repertoire of power relations. It focuses on the employment of men of religion as urban treasurers and takes Florence in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries as a principal case study, but also touches on the other tasks assigned to men of religion and, very briefly, on evidence from other cities (Bologna, Brescia, Como, Milan, Padua, Perugia and Siena). It outlines some of the possible arguments deployed for this use of men of religion in order to demonstrate that religious status was, like gender, more contingent and fluid than the norm-based models often relied on as a shorthand by historians. Despite the powerful rhetoric of lay–clerical separation in this period, the engagement of men of religion in paid, term-bound urban offices inevitably brought them closer to living like the laity.

scholarly journals A Cell of Their Own: The Incarceration of Women in Late Medieval Italy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Geltner
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Female Inmates ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
A Cell

This article examines the earliest evidence from Florence's municipal prison (Le Stinche) in the fourteenth century concerning female inmates, who were locked in their own ward. Alongside sketching a social profile of this rather diverse group, it stresses that their undifferentiated treatment was both demeaning and yet ostensibly inconsequential.

scholarly journals Marsilius of Padua and Isaac Abravanel on Kingship: The Medieval Precedents of Republicanism Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-225
Author(s):  
Vasileios Syros
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Investigation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Modern Republicanism

Abstract This article offers a comparative investigation of Marsilius of Padua’s and Isaac Abravanel’s ideas on kingship. It looks at how these thinkers transform the “canonical” sources of their respective traditions of political theorizing, i.e., Aristotle’s Politics and the Bible, to articulate the notion that ultimate authority rests with the citizens/people. It also examines how these two writers’ positions on kingship relate to the political realities that prevailed in late medieval Italy. Finally, it illuminates the medieval precedents of modern republicanism in the Christian and Jewish political traditions.

A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarization in Late Medieval Italy

PMLA ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Cornish
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Italian Poetry

Classical texts were extensively translated into the vernacular in Italy during the period when Italian poetry began, and the “mentality” of translation is traceable in this early verse. Vernacularization is gendered female, especially in the conventions of lyric poetry. As exemplified in some thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poems and their prose commentaries, “vulgarization” is often presented as a discourse to women, who are conceived as a superior rather than an inferior audience. Instead of demeaning the Latin original, this kind of vulgarization paradoxically ennobles both the learned or scientific content and the young language in which it is written. This peculiar moment of Italian literary history contrasts with concurrent translation in France, with the subsequent abandonment of vulgarization under the influence of Petrarch, and with modern notions of the politics of translation.

The Thirteenth–Sixteenth-centuryKastroof Kephalos: A Contribution to the Archaeological Study of Medieval Paros and the Cyclades

2006 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 459-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios K. Vionis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Agricultural Produce

The thirteenth-to-sixteenth-century (“Venetian”) defended settlement of Kephalos on the island of Paros was surveyed by the Cyclades Research Project (CY.RE.P.). This article offers an archaeological case-study of thekastroby examining and interpreting its medieval material remains (defensive walls, chapels, cisterns, domestic structures and surface potsherds). Moreover, on the basis of combined information from written sources and comparable building projects in late medieval Italy and the Latin-dominated Levant, more light can be shed on aspects of daily life in the Aegean. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first phase of Kephalos could be placed in the later thirteenth century but it was extended with the addition of an outer defensive wall in the late fourteenth century and was inhabited until the legendary besiege of the corsair Barbarossa in 1537. Domestic remains within thekastrosuggest that the site must have been densely built, housing a large number of peasants in single-roomed two-storey houses. Architectural remains and ceramic finds on the highest point of the site testify to the existence of a strong Catholic/upper class element on the most prominent portion of thekastro, reserved for the Latin lords and their agricultural produce. Extensive survey (by CY.RE.P.) in the valley below Kephalos has shown that a number of contemporary satellite settlements existed and functioned around thekastro, suggesting an agriculturally intensified use of the rural landscape. Additionally, the study and interpretation of the surface ceramic finds offer a window to late medieval living standards and food preferences in the Aegean

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