Tomb of Lovato dei Lovati, Padua. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
The Florentine painter and illuminator Pacino di Bonaguida (fl. before 1303-c. 1330s) became a leading exponent of what Offner (1923, 1987) described as a "miniaturist tendency" in Florentine painting of the early Trecento. This tendency was prevalent in small-scale panel painting rather than monumental mural art and is characterized by a spirited approach to narrative, keenly observed anecdotal detail, and a shift toward decorative abstraction. To judge from the number of works attributable to Pacino, he commanded a successful workshop, which by 1330 appears to have been the busiest and the most significant center for the execution of manuscript illumination in the city, especially for copies of the works of Dante Alighieri. Pacino's only surviving signed painting is the San Firenze Polyptych (c. 1315-1330; Florence, Accademia), which has been crucial in establishing his artistic personality as well as for building up the not inconsiderable corpus of work linked to him or his bottega. Pacino is first mentioned in 1303 in connection with the painter Tambo di Serraglio, with whom he dissolved a partnership established in the preceding year; he is documented for the last time c. 1330, when he enrolled in a Florentine guild, the Arte dei Medici e Speziali.
Among Pacino's earliest works is thought to be the Tree of Life (c. 1302-1315; Florence, Accademia), originally from the Convent at Monticelli and closely based on Saint Bonaventure's text Lignum vitae. While the solemn air of the crisply defined crucified Christ owes something to the artistic traditions of the Duecento, the episodes in the forty-eight roundels exhibit lucid narrative designs that suggest some awareness of the contemporary art of Giotto. Change is evident in Pacino's later work, however, as the style of the San Firenze Polyptych, which comprises a central Crucifixion with flanking saints, testifies. This altarpiece combines a Giottesque naturalism, conveyed in the convincing plasticity of the forms, with a sense of grace and elegance, especially in the poses and suggested movement of the figures, which are close in temperament to the art of the Saint Cecilia Master.
See also Florence; Giotto di Bondone; Saint Cecilia Master
FLAVIO BOGGI
Boskovits, Miklós. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century—The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. Florence: Giunti Barbèra with Istituto di Storia dell'Arte of the University of Florence, 1984.
Frosinini, Valeria. "I corali del Museo Civico di Montepulciano provenienti dalla chiesa fiórentina di Santo Stefano al Ponte." Rivista di Storia delta Miniatura, 5, 2000, pp. 81-95.
Lazzi, Giovanna. "Ancora sulla bottega di Pacino: Un 'messale' miniato della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze." Antichità Viva, 33(4), 1994, pp. 5-8.
Offner, Richard. "Pacino di Bonaguida: A Contemporary of Giotto." Art in America, 11, 1923, pp. 3-27.
—. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, Sec. 3(2), Elder Contemporaries of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. Florence: Giunti Barbèra with Istituto di Storia dell'Arte of the University of Florence, 1987. (New edition with additional material, notes, and bibliography by Miklos Boskovits.)
Offner, Richard, and Klara Steinweg. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sec. 3(2), The Fourteenth Century. New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University, 1930. (Distributed by Augustin.)
Padua (Latin Patavium, Paduensis, Padua; Italian Padova) is a city of the Veneto, situated about 22 miles (35 kilometers) west of Venice on the floodplain between the Bacchiglione and Brenta rivers. The Roman historian Livy, a native of nearby Abano, maintained that Padua was founded by the Trojan hero Antenor. On the basis of the legend, thirteenth-century Paduan chroniclers attributed Trojan ancestry to the local nobility and claimed for their city a preeminence comparable to that of Rome. In 1284, in a gesture of civic pride, the Paduan commune erected in the Piazza Antenore a sarcophagus containing the alleged relics of Antenor. The city, however, was probably founded by the Veneti, a tribe of uncertain origins who settled in the region in the tenth century B.C. Padua was an ally of Rome by the third century B.C. and a subject city from the early second century onward. It obtained Latin rights in 89 B.C. and full Roman citizenship in 49 B.C.
Tomb of Lovato dei Lovati, Padua. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Ancient Padua flourished as a trade nexus and a center for the manufacture of woolen textiles. By the time of Augustus it ranked second only to Rome in wealth, but from the fourth century after Christ it experienced a decline, accelerated by the Germanic migrations. It was sacked by the Huns under Attila in 452, and it passed to the Ostrogoths in 476. The city was captured by Justinian's armies during the Gothic wars and remained under Byzantine control until the Lombards occupied the region at the end of the sixth century. An unsuccessful rising against the Lombard king Agilulf in 601 resulted in a long siege and the virtual destruction of the city. Until the ninth century, the center of municipal activity in the Padovano (the province of Padua) moved to Monselice, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the southwest. As part of the Lombard duchy of Friuli, the region passed to the Franks in 774, when Charlemagne annexed the kingdom of Italy.
Duomo and baptistery, Padua. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
During this period, a measure of continuity was provided by the church. According to legend, the first bishop of Padua was Prosdocimus, reputedly a disciple of the apostle Peter, and an early cult of Saint Prosdocimus is attested to by a sixth-century Italo-Byzantine shrine preserved under the present basilica of Santa Giustina. The first historical evidence of a bishop in Padua dates from the mid-fourth century. The see survived the Germanic migrations, but the bishops of the seventh century suffered exile and a loss of territorial jurisdiction through their adherence to the Nestorian doctrine of the "Three Chapters," which had been condemned as heretical by Rome. To this period belongs the foundation of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Giustina. Generously endowed with rural estates and tithes, the monastery became the richest religious corporation in medieval Padua. The Carolingians restored some of Padua's former importance as an ecclesiastical and administrative center. The ninth century saw the construction of the church of Santa Sophia, a cathedral, and new walls enclosing the Roman city. Little survives of the original cathedral, which was renovated in the twelfth century and entirely rebuilt in the Renaissance after designs by Michelangelo. Santa Sophia, the oldest extant church in Padua, was reconstructed in the twelfth century in a Lombard Romanesque style but retains its original apse, modeled on the Byzantine churches of the Ravenna exarchate. With the disintegration of the Carolingian empire, accumulated feudal and jurisdictional privileges, which after 897 included comital powers, left the bishop virtually the sole public authority in the city and the immediate district. In the tenth century, Bishop Peter (r. 897-904) defended Padua against the Hungarians; early in the eleventh century, Ursus (r. 992-1015) sponsored an extensive reconstruction of the city. Later, Uldericus (r. 1064-1083), a partisan of Pope Gregory VII in a region that was generally pro-imperial, played a role in the investiture controversy as an intermediary between the pope and Emperor Henry IV.
For administrative purposes, the Carolingians divided the Lombard duchy of Friuli into four counties, one of which was centered at Padua. At the end of the tenth century, the Ottonian emperors renewed the jurisdiction of the counts of Padua, with the exception of the city, where the bishop retained comital privileges. But within a century, the Germanic custom of partible inheritance had caused the title of count and the powers associated with it to become dispersed among several branches of the Conti family, some of which merged into the urban citizen body. Other lines, such as the Da Carturo, the Schinelli, and the Maltraversi, remained powerful feudal landowners, with estates in the northwestern Padovano and palazzi in Padua; but by the mid-twelfth century they were overshadowed by the Estensi, the Da Romano, and the Camposanpiero. Descended from noble clans that came to Italy with the Ottonians in the tenth century, these families exploited their wealth and grants of imperial privileges to divide the Padovano among themselves. The Camposanpiero and Da Romano possessed extensive estates and castles northeast of Padua; the Estensi, the leading aristocratic family, took their title from the castle of Este in the southern Padovano. The Estensi acquired the title of marchesi (margraves) of Ancona from Pope Innocent III in 1208 and a permanent urban base as signori (lords) of Ferrara in 1264. Padua shared in the demographic and economic growth of Italy between 1100 and 1300. Although the statistics are necessarily conjectural, it appears that the population of the city more than doubled in this period, from about 15,000 in the late twelfth century to at least 35,000 at the beginning of the fourteenth, putting it in the middle rank of contemporary Italian cities, comparable to Verona, Perugia, and Pavia. In contrast to its neighbor Venice, Padua did not greatly benefit from long-distance trade, with the result that unlike Venice, Genoa, and Florence, it never developed a substantial merchant-banker class. Instead, the wealth of medieval Padua derived from the shrewd exploitation of the contado, its rural hinterland and subject territories, an area of about 260,000 hectares (640,000 acres) that corresponded roughly to the modern civil province of Padua. The rich volcanic soils of the Pedevenda, the Euganean hill country southwest of the city, were intensively cultivated for wine and olive oil; and the plain, once drained, was devoted mainly to arable land and pasturage. Linked to the contado and to export markets in Venice and Chioggia by a system of canals built between 1189 and 1212, Padua served as a market and conduit for the distribution of the region's produce. By the thirteenth century, the city's monopoly of regional trade and the lucrative duties it generated were guaranteed by its political control of the contado and by statutes forbidding competition against the Paduan market.
The nature of the Paduan economy dictated the structure of urban society. Victualers (butchers, taverners, bakers, salt merchants, greengrocers), transport workers (wagoners, bargees), and leather workers (tanners, cobblers, saddlers, shoemakers), all of whom dealt directly in the produce of the contend, made up a majority of the guilds recognized in the statute of 1287. In contrast to the situation in the ancient city, linen workers and merchants dominated the textile sector: the production of woolen textiles did not become a significant factor in the Paduan economy until the fourteenth century. Millers and their sponsors, both private and public, benefited from the water power provided by the Bacchiglione, and Paduan grain and fulling mills attracted business from the surrounding district and from as far away as Venice. The dependence of the city on the resources of the contado created a vigorous market in land, since most Paduans who made their fortunes in trade, usury, or the professions invested their profits in the purchase or leasing of land in the contado. The land market also encouraged the development of a large class of notaries—some 500 by the late thirteenth century—who monopolized the business of drafting and authenticating legal acts; and judges, who dominated the administration of the city and the subject communities of the contado.
Economic growth and feeble imperial control in northern Italy allowed Padua to make the transition to communal government before the mid-twelfth century. The origins of the commune are obscure, but documentary evidence indicates that by 1138 the city was governed by seventeen consuls. In 1164, the commune formed an alliance with Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, and Venice to resist an attempt by Frederick I Barbarossa to enforce imperial judicial and fiscal rights. Three years later, an expanded coalition including Brescia, Mantua, Cremona, and Milan became the first Lombard League, which inflicted a humiliating defeat on Frederick in 1176. Under the peace of Constance (1183), the emperor was forced to recognize the effective autonomy of the communes in matters of internal government, lawmaking, and control of their contadi. Padua joined a revival of the Lombard League in 1226 in opposition to Frederick II's renewal of imperial claims, and a coalition against Frederick II's son Conradin in 1267.
As in other cities where communes evolved, Padua was dominated by established landowning families with a small admixture of the richer urban elements that had begun to emerge by the twelfth century. The appointment of a podestà (chief magistrate) in 1174 may reflect tensions and conflicts within the original ruling class. As a foreigner invested for a limited term with executive and judicial authority, the podestà was supposed to transcend local factions. Nevertheless, according to the chronicler Rolandino, by the end of the twelfth century the city and the region were split by feuds that pitted the Da Romano against the Camposanpiero and the Estensi, and the rural nobility against the urban bourgeoisie. During the first half of the thirteenth century, these rivalries were translated into a struggle for domination of Padua itself. Briefly under the control of Azzo VII d'Este, the city was captured in 1237 and held for twenty years by Ezzelino III Da Romano in the name of Frederick II. The turbulence of the period was reflected in the reconstruction of the old walls enclosing the administrative center of the city (1195-1210)—of which the Porta Altinate and the Porta di Ponte Molino survive—and a castle (La Torlonga) built by Ezzelino in 1237. Opposition to Ezzelino's increasingly arbitrary regime united the rural nobility and the urban communal classes, particularly in the confusion that followed the death of the emperor in 1250. In 1256, a crusade of political exiles sponsored by Pope Alexander IV and led by the Estensi toppled the Da Romano and restored the independence of the commune. Until the death of the free commune in 1318, Padua would usually align itself with the Guelf cause in its relations with other cities.
In Padua, the society of the popolo (the people) was called the comunanza. It originated as a coalition of rich urban citizens and guildsmen who lacked a rural power base and were consequently excluded from the commune. Members organized militia units based on the city's four quarters and bound themselves by an annual oath to defend their common interests, by force if necessary, against the nobles who dominated the commune. Although the early history of the comunanza is obscure, it appears to have been the leading political force in the city by the time Ezzelino seized power, and probably as early as 1200. It returned to a position of control soon after the expulsion of the Da Romano in 1256. The victorious comunanza refrained from abolishing the commune: as the statutory code compiled between 1276 and 1285 shows, the comunanza subordinated the commune by making adherence to the popular coalition a condition of participation in government. The consiglio maggiore ("great council"), the communal legislative assembly, was retained and even expanded in 1277 from 400 to 1,000 members, but participation was restricted to members of the comunanza. The podestà, along with his judicial and administrative staff, continued to be recruited from foreign cities at fixed intervals, but the comunanza ensured its monopoly of power through an armed force of cavalry and infantry and a twelve-man council of anziani (elders). Selected every two months by an assembly of the comunanza, the anziani represented the administrative quarters of the city and eight of the thirty-six guilds recognized by the city statutes. Electors chosen by lot designated the district anziani, and councillors nominated by the outgoing magistrates determined which guilds would elect anziani to speak for the guildsmen. Once appointed, the anziani exercised considerable powers: they reviewed ail decisions of the podestà, controlled the agenda of the council, and reserved the authority to appoint a capitano del popolo ("captain of the people") to defend their interests in a crisis.
Although the regime of late thirteenth-century Padua represented a widening of the political class in response to pressure from below, as much as 90 percent of the urban population, and virtually all of the rural population, was denied access to government. Minimum property qualifications barred wageworkers, peasants, and many minor guildsmen from participation in the council and officeholding. At the other end of the social scale, about twenty noble families were formally disenfranchised by communal statute. The wealth, prestige, and potentially signorial ambitions of such magnati (magnates) were viewed as a threat to the stability of the commune. The few thousand Paduans who enjoyed political privileges represented two distinct classes: guildsmen and nonguildsmen. Despite the preponderance of guildsmen on the board of anziani, the non-guildsmen—mainly judges and representatives of nonmagnate noble families—seem to have exercised leadership by virtue of their social status and administrative expertise. The hegemony of this hybrid ruling class remained largely unchallenged until the early fourteenth century; its internal coherence may be ascribed to a community of interest between the guild and non guild elements, both of which were created and sustained by the economic exploitation of the contado.
The period from 1256 to 1318 was the golden age of medieval Padua. In the absence of external threats to its security and the internal dissensions that led to upheavals and signorial rule in most other Lombard cities, the commune consolidated its hold on the contado and even extended its influence through the annexation of Vicenza in 1266 and Rovigo in 1306. Stability and prosperity found expression in ambitious building programs and a vital cultural life. To this period belong several of the most notable churches and civic monuments of Padua, the refoundation of the university, and the flowering of a civic literary tradition.
The focus of public life was the Palazzo Comunale, or Palazzo della Ragione, which stands in the city's central market square between the Piazza delle Erbe and the Piazza delle Frutta. Originally built in 1216, it was extensively reconstructed in 1306 by the native architect Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani (fl. 1295-1320), who added the vast upper hall with its ribbed timber roof inspired by Venetian ship design. Measuring about 260 feet long by 89 feet wide by 89 feet high (79 by 27 by 27 meters), the salone (chamber) is the largest and most impressive of extant medieval Italian halls. The fresco cycles illustrating the calendar, the liberal arts, and the religious history of Padua date from the fifteenth century; they replaced earlier frescoes destroyed by fire in 1420 and said to have been painted by Giotto under the direction of the scientist Pietro d'Abano (c. 1250—c. 1316). Also preserved in the hall is the pietra del vituperio ("stone of shame") where bankrupts were publicly humiliated before expulsion from the city. In the communal period, the Palazzo Comunale housed the offices of the podestà and the law courts, while the covered arcades on the ground level served as market stalls. West of the Palazzo Comunale stood the palace of the guilds; and to the east, on the site of the present municipio, there was a complex of buildings constructed or refurbished between 1281 and 1285—of which only a tower remains—that housed the residence of the podestà, the Palazzo degli Anziani, and the Palazzo del Consiglio.
The most conspicuous monument of thirteenth-century Padua is the great pilgrimage basilica of Sant'Antonio, popularly known as the Santo. The basilica was begun in the 1230s to house the remains of the famous Franciscan preacher and theologian, who spent his last years in the vicinity of Padua; it took almost a century to complete. The external arrangement of six domes complemented by a central cupola and two campaniles blends Romanesque, Gothic, and Byzantine elements in a style that is reminiscent of San Marco in Venice. The impressive interior, measuring nearly 380 by 108 feet (115 by 32.5 meters), reflects a similar mixture of influences. The basic plan of a Latin cross with an ambulatory and radiating chapels at the east end is Gothic in inspiration, while the details of the central aisle and choir are Romanesque. With a few exceptions, however, the sculpture and decoration, including the shrine of Sant'Antonio, date from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The Eremitani, the church of the Augustinian friars in the northern Ponte Altinate quarter, was built between 1276 and 1306, and the facade was added in 1360. This church was virtually destroyed by bombing in 1944 but has been restored, though most of the medieval decoration is lost, except for fragments of apse frescoes and sculptures. The nearby Cappella degli Scrovegni, or Arena Chapel, contains Giotto's most famous frescoes. The chapel was erected in 1303 in the ruins of a first century amphitheater adjacent to the palace of the Scrovegni, who were among the richest of the "new families" that flourished under the comunanza regime. The donor, Enrico Scrovegni, inherited a fortune from his father, Renaldo, a notorious usurer whom Dante consigned to hell (Inferno, 17.64-75), and the commission was probably intended as a gesture of expiation. If, as some argue, the chapel itself was designed by Giotto, it is the only intact example of a building both planned and decorated by him. The brick structure comprises a simple barrel-vault nave of about 69 by 28 feet (20.8 by 8.5 meters) terminating in a small Gothic sanctuary containing Scrovegni's tomb. Painted between 1304 and 1313, the fresco cycle tells the story of human redemption and final judgement in a series of forty wall panels framed by painted moldings and architectural details. The upper registers on the south and north walls recount the life of Mary; the middle registers recount the life of Christ; and the bottom recounts the history of the passion, the resurrection, and Pentecost. The whole scheme surmounts a painted marble wainscoting broken by monochrome allegorical figures of the seven virtues and vices. The theme of the east wall is the Annunciation, and the choir arch is dominated by a panel of God the father dispatching the angel Gabriel to Mary. The west wall depicts the Last Judgment; among the blessed, Giotto included a portrait of Enrico Scrovegni presenting the chapel to Mary. The frescoes are complemented by statues of the Virgin and two acolytes executed for the altar by the sculptor Giovanni Pisano (d. 1320).
Although there were schools of law and grammar associated with the cathedral in the twelfth century, the studium (university) of Padua traced its history to 1222, when a group of students and masters seceded from Bologna and established schools in the Rudena district in the eastern suburbs of the city. Suppressed or restricted in its activities under Ezzelino, the studium revived with the commune, and its development into an important academic center was actively fostered by the new regime. By 1264, when Pope Urban IV confirmed the statutes of the studium, universities of canon and civil law, a university of arts and medicine, and colleges of doctors of law and arts had been created or refounded. As in Bologna, the universities properly speaking were student corporations that elected their own rectors and teachers. The colleges represented doctors and professors, and controlled admission to degrees. As chancellor, the bishop of Padua exercised formal jurisdiction and conferred degrees, but in practice the university was closely regulated by the commune. In 1262, the commune assumed responsibility for paying the salaries of law professors, and by 1331 it was appointing professors directly, subject only to formal ratification by the student universities. As early as 1261, communal statutes prescribed curricular texts; and the codification of 1285 defined the legal privileges of students and guaranteed them exemptions and protection with respect to lodging, taxation, and loans.
Although Padua was later famous for its medical schools, the medieval university was dominated by law. Medicine was taught along with grammar, rhetoric, logic, and natural science in the arts university, which remained formally subordinate to the jurists' university until the mid-fourteenth century. By 1321, the commune was supporting four professors of medicine and one professor each in surgery, philosophy, logic, and grammar. The foremost arts professor in this period was the physician and astrologer Pietro d'Abano. A native of Padua, Pietro studied in Constantinople and lectured in Paris, where he came into contact with the prevailing Averroist interpretation of Aristotle. He returned to Padua in 1306 to teach medicine and philosophy. His extant writings include several influential translations of Greek medical texts and specialized treatises on poison and physiognomy. Astrology is the central topic of Pietro's two major works, a commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems and Conciliator, an attempt to reconcile medicine and philosophy. These, along with a series of astronomical treatises by Pietro, testify to the existence of a flourishing school of astrology in early fourteenth-century Padua.
With the overthrow of Ezzelino, a school of distinctly 'civic writing emerged first in the ambience of the university and then among the judges and notaries of the administrative class. Rolandino, the first figure in this tradition, was born in 1200, the son of a notary, and was trained in Bologna, where he was a pupil of the Florentine rhetorician Buoncompagno da Signa. Rolandino appears to have combined a notarial practice in Padua with teaching in the arts university from 1221 until his death in 1276. Cronica, his only surviving work, was read before the university and approved by the masters and doctors of arts in 1262. Inspired by a local tradition of civic annals and the example of Buoncompagno, who had written on Frederick I's siege of Ancona, Rolandino related the history of the Da Romano tyranny from which the city had just been liberated. Tightly written in the rhetorical style of the schools and varied by speeches and diatribes, the Rolandina, as the chronicle came to be known, is a powerful indictment of tyranny and a celebration of communal ideals; it achieved virtually canonical status as an expression of the popular regime's ideology. Despite its popularity, however, Rolandino's chronicle had no imitators: later chroniclers reverted to the spare annalistic style that had prevailed before Rolandino. An exception was the judge Giovanni da Nono, who turned to different models altogether. His Visio Egidii (Vision of Egidius, a legendary king of Padua), written between 1314 and 1318, was inspired by popular pilgrim guides to Rome and is notable as the only topographical description of Padua by a medieval writer. His De generatione aliquorum civium urbis Padue (On the Ancestry of Some Citizens of Padua) drew on noble genealogies and popular legends to construct an unconventional portrait of the city seen through the histories of more than 100 of its most prominent families, ranked according to their status.
The circle of Latinists that appeared in the last decades of the thirteenth century was significant because it anticipated several characteristics of Petrarchan humanism. As lawyers and notaries, the Paduan "prehumanists" shared the social and professional background of the chroniclers. What distinguished them was their effort to reproduce the vocabulary, style, and cadences of classical Latin in their own writing. Lovato Lovati, the leading figure in the group, was born c. 1240 into a family of notaries, was a communal judge by 1267, was knighted in 1291, and died in 1309 after a successful judicial and administrative career. His literary reputation rests on a series of metrical letters that display a new awareness of classical prosody. The source of Lovato's interests is unclear, but echoes and allusions in his poetry suggest that he was familiar with manuscripts of Tibullus, Martial, Horace, Valerius Flaccus, and Seneca preserved in the libraries of Verona, Pomposa, and Bobbio. Perhaps his most significant accomplishment was deciphering the meter of Seneca's Tragedies, which he explained in a commentary written in the 1290s for the benefit of his circle.
Lovato's disciples and imitators displayed a similar dedication to the classics. Rolando da Piazzola (fl. 1300), Lovato's nephew, was among the first medieval intellectuals to take an interest in recording classical inscriptions. Geremia da Montagnone (c. 1255-1321), whose knowledge of ancient Latin writers rivaled that of Lovato himself, compiled a popular florilegium of classical tags, including extensive quotations from the newly recovered Verona Catullus. However, Lovato's most accomplished disciple, and the writer in whom the Paduan tradition culminated, was Albertino Mussato (1262-1329). The son of a court messenger, Mussato made a meager living as a copyist of university texts until 1282, when he became a notary. By 1296, he had obtained a knighthood and married the daughter of Guglielmo Lemici, one of the richest moneylenders in Padua. The Lemici connection opened the way to politics, and Mussato emerged as a leading figure in communal affairs and diplomacy between 1310 and 1325. Under the influence of Lovato, Mussato explored the contemporary potential of Senecan tragedy and immersed himself in the historical writings of Livy, Sallust, and Caesar. In his tragedy Ecerinis (1314), he resurrected the legend of Ezzelino da Romano to alert his fellow citizens to the threat posed by the territorial ambitions of the signore of Verona, Cangrande della Scala. Although the Senecan meter of Ecerinis made it virtually incomprehensible to its intended audience, the play nevertheless earned Mussato popular acclaim and the distinction of a laurel crown from the university in 1315. The gesture, with its classical overtones, created a sensation in literary circles and inspired Dante, exiled in Verona, to long (in vain) for a similar honor in Florence. Inspired by Livy and Sallust, Mussato's Historia Augusta (Imperial History) and Degestis Italicorum (On the Deeds of the Italians) attempt to explain the contemporary history of Padua by reference to the larger geopolitical realities of Italy: the theme of the Historia Augusta is Henry of Luxembourg's Italian expedition of 1310-1314; and the unfinished De gestis draws a parallel between the decline of the Roman republic and the death of the Paduan commune.
Paduan prehumanism inspired similar movements in Vicenza, Verona, and Venice, but as an indigenous school it perished with the commune. A postscript, however, was provided by Marsiglio Mainardini. Marsiglio was born between 1275 and 1280 and studied in Padua and then in Paris, where he was rector in 1312-1313. He probably studied medicine under Pietro d'Abano after returning to Padua and was associated with Mussato, who wrote a dialogue on Senecan meter at Marsiglio's request and addressed to him a verse letter on the relative merits of medicine and law. Marsiglio left Padua at the time of the first Carrara takeover (1318), but his renowned treatise on government, Defensor pacis (Defender of Peace), which he completed in 1324, reflects the republican ideals of the Paduan circle. Marsiglio was condemned as a heretic for his radical critique, in Defensor, of the temporal power of the pope; he sought refuge in 1327 with Lewis of Bavaria, whom he served as an adviser and court physician until his death in 1342.
Henry VII's expedition initiated a prolonged crisis in Paduan affairs that ended with the abolition of the commune and the establishment of a permanent signoria by the Carrara family in 1328. Before this, however, rifts had begun to appear in the ruling coalition. In 1293, internal divisions caused by the commune's decision to go to war against its traditional allies, the Estensi, provoked fears of a coup by the magnates. Guildsmen reacted by creating an armed "union of the guilds" to protect their interests, and when peace was restored, the union continued to represent a powerful bloc within the comunanza. Under pressure from the union and the council of guild provosts, the board of anziani was expanded to eighteen in order to strengthen the influence of guildsmen in government. The new guild leadership exhibited less deference to Padua's traditional alignments: conflicts with Este Ferrara, in which Padua was supported by the della Scala of Verona, and a war in 1304 against traditionally friendly Venice undermined the old network of Guelf alliances that had favored the independence of the commune.
It was against this background of unsettled regional politics that the emperor, Henry VII, arrived in Italy. Padua felt the effects of his intervention almost immediately when an insurrection erupted in the subject city of Vicenza. In 1311, Vicen tines—backed by Veronese and imperial troops—expelled the Paduan garrison and confiscated Paduan property in the Vicentine contado. When the commune's friendly overtures to Henry failed to prevent his appointment of Cangrande della Scala as imperial governor of Vicenza, Padua joined Florence and other Guelf cities in rebellion. An internal power struggle resulted in the replacement of the anziani and guilds by a twelve-man emergency commission controlled by rich nonguildsmen and professionals led by Albertino Mussato, who immediately set about repairing the commune's links with its former allies. But the early defection of magnate families, combined with the regime's Ghibelline witch-hunts and the failure of its campaign against Cangrande, provoked an uprising in 1314 and a return to the prewar forms of government.
The reestablished commune faced a powerful rival in the Carrara family, which had emerged from the upheavals of 1311-1314 at the head of an influential party in favor of peace. One of the old magnate clans of the southern Padovano, the Carraresi, had declined during the thirteenth century as the family estates were dispersed through inheritance. By the early decades of the fourteenth century, however, the main branch of the family, headed by Giacomo da Carrara, had recouped some of its fortune and influence, which were now deployed to achieve control of the city. In September 1314, Giacomo successfully negotiated a treaty with Cangrande that held until 1317, when the commune made an unsuccessful bid to retake Vicenza. In the ensuing war, Padua was badly defeated, and the terms of a second peace arranged by Giacomo ensured his election as signore in July 1318. His triumph, however, proved ephemeral: undermined by Cangrande, who was determined to incorporate Padua into his own regional empire, Giacomo was forced to barter his signoria to the imperial claimant, Frederick of Austria, in exchange for help against Verona. Submission to the empire bought Padua a brief respite from Veronese aggression, but domestic politics degenerated into bloody factional clashes in the city and magnate revolts in the contado. The death of Giacomo in 1324 unleashed new levels of violence. On the order of Giacomo's nephew Marsiglio, opponents of the Carraresi were murdered or, like Mussato, forced into exile. Unable to secure further German troops, Marsiglio reached an accommodation with Verona. In September 1328, an intimidated consiglio maggiore elected Cangrande della Scala imperial vicar and nominated Marsiglio da Carrara "captain, protector, and general defender" of Padua.
The Carraresi ruled Padua for severity-five years. After 1337, when Florence and Venice helped Marsiglio shake off the della Scala, they governed alone. Francesco I "il Vecchio" stabilized the new order. Elected to the signoria in 1350 following the assassination of his father, Giacomo II, Francesco shared power with his uncle Giacomino until the latter's deposition in 1355, after which he ruled as sole signore until 1388. Granted broad authority by the statute of election, Francesco formalized the concentration of power in the hands of the signore. Under revised statutes of 1362, the podestà became an appointee of the Carraresi, while the anziani and the consiglio maggiore, the latter now stripped of its legislative powers, were reduced to confirming the election of new signori. The guilds lost their independence through subordination to the podestà, who was put in charge of regulating economic activity. The communal administrative apparatus was left intact, but the status of the notaries and judges who had dominated government in the thirteenth century was drastically diminished. Magnate relatives and supporters of the Carraresi monopolized the most lucrative posts, advised the signore, and commanded the new military formations that replaced the communal militia. The Carrara household, which was now the real locus of power, recruited its officials, jurists, and diplomatic secretaries from the upper strata of the citizen class. Through gifts of land and tax exemptions, this privileged group of bourgeois families merged with the old nobility to produce a new, distinctly signorial ruling class.
The Carraresi maintained public sponsorship of the university. Francesco patronized legal studies by endowing a college for destitute law students and importing distinguished law professors, such as the Florentine canonist Lapo da Castiglionchio (d. 1381) in 1379, and Baldus de Ubaldis (c. 1327-1400), who lectured on civil law between 1376 and 1379. The growing distinction of the arts university fueled a dispute with the law component that led to the effective separation of arts and law under Francesco in 1360. Three years later, Pope Urban V completed the evolution of the medieval university when he sanctioned the creation of a faculty of theology from a union of the existing studia of the Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian friars.
The patronage of the Carrara attracted several humanists to Padua, of whom the most famous was Petrarch (1304-1374). Petrarch was presented with a benefice by Francesco in 1349; and in 1370, near the end of his life, he settled permanently at Arqua in the Euganean hills, where he devoted himself to editing his poetry, his letters, and his incomplete epic on Scipio Africanus. A year before his death he composed, at Francesco's request, an epistolary tract on the duties of a ruler, which is included in his Letters of Old Age. Drawing on classical and patristic sources, Petrarch represented the ideal prince as a benevolent, paternal figure who stood above factional interests and surrounded himself with just advisers. Petrarch sketched an ambitious program of public works, low taxes, and cultural largesse as an alternative to the petty wars that plagued the region, many of which were instigated by his patron. Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna (1343-1408), an admirer of Petrarchan humanism, entered the service of the Carraresi in the 1380s. Under Francesco Novello, he became a professor of rhetoric in 1392 and later chancellor of the university. Conversino's commitment to the Ciceronian ideal of virtus strongly influenced his pupils, among them the founders of the first humanist schools, Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) and Guarino da Verona (1370-1460). Similar interests were expressed by Pier Paolo Vergerio (1370-1444), the first theorist of humanist pedagogy. Vergerio was born in Istria and studied in Padua and later in Florence. In 1399, he returned to Padua to lecture on logic in the university. His De ingenuis moribus (On Noble Customs) was written in 1402 or 1403 and addressed to the third son of Francesco il Vecchio, Ubertino, whom Vergerio had probably tutored. The tract departed from medieval precedents by emphasizing the value of the studia humanitatis—particularly history, rhetoric, and moral philosophy—as a preparation for public life. An anticipation of the educational ideals of the humanist schools that soon proliferated in northern Italian princely courts, Vergerio's treatise remained influential throughout the fifteenth century.
A local school of painters inspired by Giotto flourished under the Carraresi. Guariento di Arpo (died c. 1368) and his younger contemporaries, the Veronese Altichiero di Zevio (d. 1395) and the Florentine Giusto de' Menabuoi (d. 1393), were responsible for the most important surviving examples of late medieval painting in Padua. Guariento's earliest extant work is a series of twenty-nine ceiling panels in the former Cappella del Capitano of the Loggia Carrarese, depicting Old Testament themes and the angelic hierarchies. Frescoes of saints Philip, James, and Augustine painted in 1338 are unfortunately all that survive of his cycle in the apse of the Eremitani. On Petrarch's advice, Francesco il Vecchio commissioned portraits of famous Romans for the Sala dei Giganti, part of the original Carrara palazzo incorporated into the sixteenth-century Palazzo del Capitanio. A fragment of the original series portraying Petrarch in his study at Arquà has recently been attributed to Altichiero. In 1379, Altichiero decorated the chapel of San Felice in the south transept of the basilica of SantAntonio with frescoes of the crucifixion. The neighboring Oratorio di San Giorgio, built by the Lupi family between 1377 and 1384, contains the painter's important cycle of the lives of saints George, Lucy, and Catherine. Though much damaged, Giusto's contemporary paintings in the Belludi Chapel of the Santo illustrating episodes from the lives of the apostles Philip and James are, apart from their stylistic importance, vivid evocations of the busy street life of medieval Padua. Giusto was also commissioned by Fina, the wife of Francesco il Vecchio, to decorate the baptistery, which had been constructed in 1171 and renovated in 1260. The cycle is among the most ambitious and complex of medieval Italian fresco programs. Executed between 1376 and 1378, it depicts the Genesis narrative, episodes from the lives of John the Baptist and Christ, and the Apocalypse.
The autonomy of the Carrara lords of Padua was compromised by their early dependence on Venice and by the constant threat of neighboring Verona and Milan. From the beginning of his signoria, however, Francesco il Vecchio pursued an aggressive policy of territorial conquest, financed by heavy taxation, compulsory loans, and arbitrary confiscations, which increasingly alienated his subjects. War with the duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, resulted in a Milanese occupation of Padua in 1388 and the imprisonment of Francesco, who died five years later. Returned to power with Venetian support in 1390, Francesco's heir, Francesco Novello, resumed his father's policy; and when Gian Galeazzo's death in 1402 removed the Milanese threat, Francesco Novello's territorial ambitions brought him into direct conflict with Venice. Deserted by the population of the contado, which had been exhausted and impoverished by decades of conflict, Francesco and his supporters were reduced to maintaining a precarious hold on Padua itself. After a siege of eighteen months, the city fell to the Venetians in November 1405. Francesco was taken to Venice, tried, and later strangled in prison. Other members of the Carrara family were banned from Paduan territory, and their supporters were exiled. The "Golden Bull" of 30 January 1406 formally deprived Padua of its independence and incorporated it into the mainland empire of Venice, of which it would remain a province until 1797.
See also Albertino Mussato; Ezzelino III da Romano; Giotto di Bondone; Lovato dei Lovati; Marsilio of Padua; Petrarca, Francesco; Pietro Abano; Rolandino of Padua; Scrovegni Family; Scrovegni Family Chapel; Universities
LAWRIN ARMSTRONG
Mainardini, Marsiglio. Defensor Pacis, ed. Richard Scholz. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges 7. Hannover: Hahnsche, 1932-1933.
Mussato, Albertino, Ecerinis, ed. Luigi Padrin, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan. Munich: W. Fink, 1975.
Rolandino. Cranial in factis et circa facta Marcbiae Trivixane, ed. A. Bonardi. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 8(1). Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1906.
Statuti del comune di Padova dal secolo XII all'anno 1285, ed. Andrea Gloria. Padua, 1873.
Mainardini, Marsiglio. Defensor pacts, trans. Alan Gewirth. New York: Harper and Row, 1967. (Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy of America, 1980.)
Petrarch. How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State, trans. Benjamin G. Kohl. In The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978, pp. 23-78.
Bettini, Sergio, and Lionello Puppi. La chiesa degli Eremitani di Padova. Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1970.
Billanovitch, Guido. "Il preumanesimo padovano." In Storia della Cultura Veneta, Vol. 2, Il Trecento. Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1976, pp. 19-110.
D'Arcais, Francesca. Giotto. New York, London, and Paris: Abbeville, 1995.
Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Hyde, John Kenneth. Padua in the Age of Dante. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1966.
—. Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1000-1350. London: Macmillan, 1973.
Jones, Philip. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Kohl, Benjamin G. "Government and Society in Renaissance Padua." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2, 1972, pp. 210-222.
—. Padua under the Carrara, 1318-1405. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Lorenzoni, Giovanni. L'edificio del Santo di Padova. Fonti e Studi per la Storia del Santo a Padova, 7. Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1981.
Mommsen, Theodor E. "Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Ulustrium in Padua." In Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Eugene F. Rice. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1959, pp. 130-174.
Mor, Carlo Guido, et al. Il Palazzo della Ragione di Padova. Padua: N. Pozza, 1964.
Semenzato, Camillo, ed. Le Pittura del Santo di Padova. Padua: N. Pozza, 1984.
Simioni, Attilio. Storia di Padova dalle origini alla fine del secolo 18. Padua: G. and P. Randi, 1968.
Siraisi, Nancy G. Arts and Sciences at Padua: The "Studium" of Padua before 1350. Studies and Texts, 25. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973.
Stubblebine, James H., ed. The Arena Chapel Frescoes. New York: Norton, 1969.
Waley, Daniel. The Italian City-Republics, 3rd ed. London and New York: Longman, 1988.
Weiss, Roberto. The Dawn of Humanism. London, 1947.
—. "Lovato Lovati." Italian Studies, 6, 1951, pp. 3-28.
—. The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. New York: Humanities, 1969.
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. Life of Petrarch. Chicago, Ill., and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Witt, Ronald G. "Medieval Italian Culture and the Origins of Humanism as a Stylistic Ideal." In Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, Vol. 1, Humanism in Italy, ed. Albert Rabil. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, pp. 29-70.
Paganino da Serezano is an unknown poet of the Duecento; only one of his poems has survived—the canzone Contra lo meo volere. From the place he occupies in the Vatican Codex 3793, between Arrigo Testa and Pier della Vigna, we may infer that he belonged to the oldest generation of the poets of the Sicilian school, and he imitates a practice of Giacomo da Lentini by naming himself in his poem. His exact geographical extraction remains a mystery. The locality is given in the Vatican Codex as Serezano, but MS Rediano 9 (Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence) proposes Serzana. The identification of a township bearing a name of this configuration is quite difficult. Among the many suggestions are Sarzana in the Lunigiana, Serezano in the Tortonese, and Serezzano in the Versilia region.
See also Giacomo da Lentini; Scuola Poetica Siciliana
FREDE JENSEN
Bertoni, Giulio. Il Duecento. Milan: Vallardi, 1947, pp. 146-147.
Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 1, pp. 115-118.
Lazzeri, Gerolamo. Antologia del pritni secoli della letteratura italiana. Milan: Hoepli, 1954, pp. 563-567.
Monaci, Ernesto. Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli, new ed., ed. Felice Arese. Rome: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1955, pp. 98-100.
Torraca, Francesco. Studi sulla lirica italiana del Duecento. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1902, pp. 140-141.
Neri di Landoccio Pagliaresi (c. 1350-1406) was one of Catherine of Siena's secretaries and a poet who composed religious lattde, an encomiastic poem about Saint Catherine, and two cantari about spiritual conversion. Neri was born into an aristocratic family of Siena and was a prominent public figure, serving two terms in the general council in 1371 and 1375. It was during these years that he underwent a spiritual conversion and became a devout follower of Catherine. In an undated letter that was probably written in 1371 (Dupreá-Theseider 1940, 7-99) Catherine welcomes Neri to her famiglia. Along with Stefano di Corrado Maconi and Barduccio di Piero Canigiani, Neri became a leading member of Catherine's group, and he quite likely collaborated with her on Libro delta divina dottrina (Fawtier 1921-1930, 1:349). According to several letters and documents, he often accompanied Catherine on important diplomatic missions, such as a mission to Lucca in 1376, when she attempted to dissuade the Lucchesi from joining the antipapal league. As Catherine's ambassador, Neri traveled to Avignon to consult with the pope and was active in the peace negotiations between Rome and Florence in 1378. He learned of Catherine's death while he was on an embassy to the Neapolitan court of Giovanna (Joanna) II in 1380. Neri spent the remaining years of his life in Siena, where he collected Catherine's letters and translated Raimondo di Capua's Legenda maior.
According to Gardner (1907, 85), Neri is a high-strung and sensitive poet, whose laude and cantari are among the best religious poems of the trecento. The Leggenda di Santo Giosafà is a cantare in ottava rima that recounts an Indian prince's conversion to Christianity. It is based on an Iranian tale about Barlaam and josaphat, two names for Buddha. Again using the ottava form, Neri also composed the Istoria di Santa Eufrosina, which narrates the life and death of a virtuous maiden. Conversion is the climactic moment of hagiographical narratives, and it often causes distress among the convert's loved ones. In his poetry, Neri represents the psychological and social conflict caused by spiritual commitment. Because it uses a popular tone and language, his poetry is at once personal and social, as can be seen in the eulogy to Catherine, Spento eà il lume che per certo accese, and in the fifteen laude.
See also Catherine of Siena, Saint
DARIO DEL PUPPO
Dupreá-Theseider, E., ed. Epistolario di Santa Caterina da Siena, Vol. 1. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1940.
Fawtier, R. ed. Sainte Catherine de Sienne (Essais de critique des sources), 2 vols. Paris: De Boccard, 1921-1930.
Gardner, E. G. Saint Catherine of Siena. London and New York: Dent/Dutton, 1907.
Tartaro, Achille. Il Trecento: Dalla crisi dell'età comunale all'umanesimo. Bari: Laterza, 1972, pp. 496-499.
Varanini, Giorgio, ed. Cantari religiosi senesi del Trecento. Bari: Laterza, 1965.
—, ed. Rime sacre di Neri Pagliaresi. Florence: Le Monnier, 1970.
The term "fresco," derived from the Italian for "fresh," is used to denote a variety of techniques for painting wall surfaces, practiced extensively from Roman antiquity through the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. Though fresco is found all over Europe, this mode of mural painting was best suited to the dry climate of the Mediterranean countries, and its great flourishing occurred in medieval and Renaissance Italy, where from the thirteenth century onward a tremendous proliferation of frescoed images is found.
Two varieties of fresco technique were in widespread use in medieval Italy: buon fresco and fresco secco. Buon fresco, or "true fresco," is a process in which powdered pigments, suspended in water, are applied to a wet, freshly spread lime plaster surface. The damp plaster absorbs the brushed-on pigment like a sponge, and, as it dries, the lime of the plaster forms a chemical bond that fixes the pigment in a crystalline film of calcium carbonate, insoluble in water. The resulting image is one of the most durable paint surfaces known, as the pigment is embedded in the wall itself rather than forming a superficial coating. Fresco secco, or "dry fresco," also uses a plaster ground, but in this case the plaster is allowed to dry before the pigment is applied to the surface through a tempera, oil, or lime-water binder. This technique is necessitated by some pigments, such as lapis lazuli, and it is much easier to execute; but the result is much less durable, tending to flake off over a period of weathering or abrasion.
Both techniques were apparently known since antiquity; the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius describes a method of true fresco that is close to the technique spelled out in Il libro dell'arte (The Craftsman's Handbook), a late fourteenth-century shop manual set down by Cennino Cennini, a Florentine pupil of Agnolo Gaddi; and many fresco secco murals survive from Roman antiquity. It seems that fresco secco was practiced continuously from antiquity through the Middle Ages, as all painted wall decorations before the thirteenth century appear to have been executed in the dry manner. True fresco, on the other hand, is not found in Italy before the latter half of the 1200s. This surprising lapse in the use of true fresco has prompted some speculation that the proliferation of buon fresco during the thirteenth century was an independent discovery developed from the craft of mosaic; the technique of mosaic is more closely related to buon fresco than to fresco secco. A number of important mosaic cycles, such as those sponsored by King Roger in Sicily and the doges in Venice, were indeed being executed in the late twelfth century. The quicker, more economical buon fresco technique that appeared immediately following a major period of mosaic activity in Italy may be seen as an innovation spurred on by the economic incentive of making the expensive mosaic technique available to a less wealthy clientele wishing to follow the example of the elite.
The rise in popularity of fresco coincided with the great building boom of the thirteenth century, brought about by a tremendous influx of people seeking employment and security in the cities, and the throngs of worshipers attracted to the church by the popular appeal of the mendicant orders. Before this time few comprehensive mural schemes are found in Italy, with the exception of the few lavish mosaic decorations mentioned above, limited to the most exclusive levels of aristocratic patronage. But the construction of basilicas, cathedrals, town halls, hospices, and oratories in every town along the Italian peninsula occasioned a need for economical, quickly executed, yet durable programs of decoration for which the fresco technique was ideally suited. No cheaper or more effective way existed to raise civic pride through a commemoration of great heroes or events, or to communicate sacred narratives on a scale and level of drama that would thoroughly surround and captivate the viewer.
Much of this decoration was sponsored by the coffers of the church or the state, but a very large proportion was also commissioned by the newly rich and powerful merchant and banking classes, which sought to garner their share of fame and splendor by following the practices of the great ruling houses. Hence, in a form suited to their more modest means, they sought to advertise their place in local society through the commission of privately owned but highly visible chapel or oratory decorations. Entire buildings, such as the Arena Chapel in Padua and the oratory of Or San Michele in Florence, appear to have been designed expressly with mural decoration in mind. The development of large cycles of decoration seems to have received a further boost from a renewed interest, during the late thirteenth century, in the early Christian decorations surviving in many Roman basilicas. In the 1280s and 1290s, for example, the Roman painter Pietro Cavallini was called on to repaint ruined early Christian frescoes in San Paolo Fuori le Mura and old Saint Peter's in Rome; and his own frescoes in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere closely follow early Christian models. Other cycles in the tradition of early Christian models appeared in San Piero a Grado (near Pisa) and the mosaic cycle in the dome of the Baptistery in Florence.
Though buon fresco was rapidly executed, economical, and durable, the actual technique involved was one of the most difficult for a medieval artisan to master and required the mobilization of an entire workshop, if not the hiring of additional help. The first step in the execution of a fresco was the preparation of the wall surface to be painted. Scaffolds large enough to support the team of apprentices and the painting equipment were erected before the bare stone or brick masonry of the structure. Often between 20 and 60 feet (6 to 18 meters) from the ground, the wooden platforms were dismantled and rebuilt from section to section until the entire wall space to be covered was completed. A number of artists are known to have died in accidents associated with these scaffolds. Any pronounced surface irregularities in the masonry were smoothed out to provide an even surface for the fresco, and precautions were taken to ensure that the wall to be painted was protected from moisture and salts, because water seepage into a wall will eventualy crumble the plaster coating.
A layer of rough, gritty plaster, called the arricio, was next laid directly on the masonry, to further smooth out irregularities in the wall surface such as gaps between the stone or brickwork, and to provide a toothy surface which could support the next layer of plaster. Horizontal and vertical plumb lines were snapped onto this layer of arriccio by means of a level and compass. In addition, as was learned from the damage to numerous fresco cycles incurred during World War II and during the flood of the Arno River in Florence in 1966, full-scale sketches of the compositions to be painted were blocked in on the arriccio. Medieval craftsmen may have used small preparatory drawings on paper or parchment to work out a composition, but it seems that most of the designing of frescoes made before the Quattrocento took place in situ, directly on the wall to be painted. The master of the shop would first map out the position, size, and relative placement of the objects to be depicted with very rough charcoal drawings. Once the key compositional relationships were established, the charcoal marks were reinforced with a brush dipped in a solution of red ocher in water, yielding a red drawing called a sinopia, named after Sinope, a city in Asia Minor renowned for its red earth. The provisional charcoal marks were brushed off after the sinopia dried, leaving only the red outline to serve as a compositional guide. Sinopie were never meant to be seen by the general public, but they were one of the most essential steps in the preparation of a fresco, for through them the master was able to estimate and gather together the necessary amount of materials (such as the quantities of colors to be used), prevent architectural settings from being drawn out of plumb, work out the sequence for laying in the final layer of plaster, apportion out various sections to the workshop for execution, and have something to show to the patrons for approval before executing the design.
After completion of the sinopia, another, smoother, much finer layer of plaster, the intonaco, was applied to the arriccio. Before the revival of true fresco painting in the thirteenth century, the intonaco was laid down in very large patches corresponding to the height and length, which could be covered by the artisans working on the scaffold, or ponte; hence these long wide bands of intonaco are called pontate. Only after the pontate were completely dry was the pigment applied with some binder, following the fresco secco technique. In buon fresco, however, in a manner similar to mosaic technique, the fine layer of intonaco is laid in much smaller patches than are used for fresco secco. In true fresco, the pigment bonds solely with wet plaster, thus a medieval craftsman would lay down only as much intonaco over the arriccio as could be painted in a single day's work, before the plaster was dry. Each day's worth of work—called a giornata from the Italian giorno, "day"—would be quickly brushed with pigment before the eight or so hours it took for the plaster patch to dry. The general procedure was to work from the top of a wall down to the bottom, so that dripping or running pigment would not ruin finished work below it. The sizes of giornate vary. Some patches could be quite large, since a relatively open stretch of the composition with few details such as a simple backdrop or a rocky hillside could easily be plastered and painted in a day. Other, more detailed sections tended to be small; a single head with all its features and variations of color could represent an entire day's painting.
The successful coordination of all the giornate into a single coherent image was a difficult task. The pigments available for fresco painting were limited to natural earth colors, such as red and yellow ochre or green terra verde, which would dissolve in lime. Pigments applied to the wet plaster looked different from their final appearance when dry, and the value of color changed depending on how damp the plaster was when the paint was brushed on. Any color that ran across more than one patch had to be applied to the different giornate when they were at the same degree of dampness, but this was difficult to gauge because the time it took for the plaster to dry varied with humidity, temperature, ventilation, and other environmental factors that changed from day to day and season to season. The seams of the giornate were visible in the final image; to mitigate this effect, the workshop tried to hide the borders along the contours of figures or buildings. Furthermore, the plaster patch covered the sinopia of the very section the artist was about to paint, so new drawings, sometimes cut in with a stylus, were made on the intonaco as it was laid down. As time was of the essence in the completion of each giornata, pigments were generally applied with large brushes, and compositions were deliberately designed to be simple and uncluttered to avoid time-consuming detail. If a mistake was made in buon fresco, the area could not be painted over but had to be chipped away and redone. All these considerations demanded an assuredness of hand and a high degree of familiarity with the idiosyncracies of the medium and the pigments used with it. These skills could be gained only from long experience, making the fresco technique one of the most challenging modes of creation ever faced by an artist. It is also a medium which could be realized only by a cooperative, collaborative process of art production, such as that found in the medieval workshops of Italy.
Some evidence indicates that cartoons or full-sized drawings were used during the Trecento to transfer a composition to the wall, although this practice is more typically associated with Renaissance fresco painting. The repeated ornamental border design frescoed in the 1360s by Orcagna's workshop on the entrance arch over the main chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence shows patterns of colored dots tracing the outlines of the geometric decoration. These dots were made by holding a cartoon of the design with holes punched in it against the intonaco while charcoal dust was pounced through the holes of the cartoon. Each of the repetitions of the design was made using the same punched cartoon (called a spolvero). Once the cartoon was lifted away, the painter used the pattern of dots as a guide to fill in the colors. Simone Martini's Montefiore Chapel in the lower basilica of San Francesco in Assisi shows a similar utilization of stencils for repeated patterns; and incision marks on certain frescoes such as the Lamentation of Christ in the nave of the upper basilica possibly result from an instrument tracing along the lines of a cartoon held against the damp intonaco.
Very few murals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were executed solely in buon fresco. The limited range of the palette and the inhibition of detail in true fresco led to the addition of much a secco work. For example, the blue pigments known to medieval painters, such as azurite and lapis lazuli, are too coarse in grain to be absorbed by fresh plaster, so no true blue pigment was possible in buon fresco. The large expanses of sky and the many depictions of Mary's blue mantle in Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua all had to be painted on with size (glutinous material) after the plaster dried. More than half of Simone Martini's Investiture of Saint Martin in the Montefiore Chapel in Assisi was painted in tempera over fresco; as a consequence, much of this highly detailed work has flaked away over the centuries. In truth, some medieval frescoes are a composite of all the painting techniques used in the medieval workshop. For example, the closely studied fresco of the Madonna del Cucito (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale) by Vitale da Bologna is a complex combination of buon fresco with tempera and oil glazes overlaid by layers of varnish. Simone Martini, in such frescoes as his Maestà for the Palazzo Pubblico and his Guidoriccio da Fogliano, applied sheets of tin to the intonaco, which he then stamped with punch marks and glazed with transparent veils of color, treating the fresco like a sumptuous panel painting rendered on a monumental scale.
Fresco is unsurpassed in medieval art for its epic sweep of color and form, which graces whole interiors from floor to ceiling; and the technique of fresco painting fostered a boldness of execution and breadth of form that had much to do with the conquest of space and volume in painting by artists in the ensuing Italian Renaissance.
See also Giotto di Bondone; Painting: Panel
GUSTAV MEDICUS
Borsook, Eve. The Mural Painters of Tuscany, from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento. Milan: Electa, 1986.
Cennini, Cennino d'Andrea. The Craftsman's Handbook, trans. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. New York: Dover, 1954.
Cole, Bruce. The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
The Great Age of Fresco: Giotto to Pontormo. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968. (Exhibit catalog.)
Meiss, Millard. The Great Age of Fresco: Discoveries, Recoveries, and Survivals. New York: George Braziller, 1970.
Procacci, Ugo. Sinopie e affreschi. Milan: Electa, 1961.
Thompson, Daniel V„ Jr. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. New York: Dover, 1956.
Vasari, Giorgio. Vasari on Technique, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose. New York: Dover, 1960.
In Italy painting in manuscripts has a history that reaches back to antiquity (Weitzmann 1977). During the early Middle Ages this medium, referred to as manuscript illumination or miniature painting, was transformed by the requirements of the Christian liturgy and the shift from the roll to the codex in late antiquity, just as it was transformed by the introduction of the printed book at the end of the Middle Ages. Yet it is certainly valid to speak of "Italian" medieval miniature painting. Despite Italy's religious and political connections to the rest of Europe, the evolution of its manuscript painting follows a distinctive pattern determined in part by its location between northern Europe and the Byzantine empire. Significant, too, from the twelfth century on was the increasing understanding of the human figure and of space, fostered in part by the connections between manuscript illuminators and panel and wall painters (Alexander 1994, 121-122). These and other consistencies crossed political boundaries within a peninsula divided among different rulers, including the Lombards, the Byzantine empire, the papacy, and the Norman kings of Sicily; individual city-states such as Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Siena, Venice, Bologna, and Arezzo; and local rulers and powerful families.
These, in fact, as intersections of economic prowess and individual or group ambition, whether political or religious, were the sites of major manuscript production—for manuscript illumination was an expensive undertaking. Indeed, along with the analysis of palaeography and codicology and the identification and localization of decoration styles, the study of Italian manuscript illumination raises numerous contextual problems. For example, scholars have investigated the motivation behind the production of manuscripts. In the early Middle Ages, the primary producers of manuscripts were monasteries and court ateliers, and while some of the texts were classical and secular, the vast majority were liturgical texts and Bibles. Later, the development of cities, the emergence of the universities, and changes in the liturgy meant that new texts—such as the Missal, the one-volume Bible, and the Decretals of Gratian—were produced and new types of patrons emerged. The style of an individual painter or atelier, or even a region, might be affected by the agendas of patrons, and their political, religious, or familial alliances. And there are other questions. Who were the artists (Alexander 1994, 4-34)? Were they also the scribes? Were they monks? Were they professional artists, working alone or in highly organized ateliers? On which projects did artists copy from valued exemplars? For which did they invent new programs of illustrations based on motifs book and written instructions (Alexander 1994, 52-71, 121-149)? Were court painters and ateliers common or rare? How far did artists travel? Some painters working in Italy appear to have been from England or from Byzantium, and documents in Naples in the thirteenth century refer to Mainardo Teutonico, who might have been German (Daneu Lattanzi 1978, 150; Evans and Wixom 1997, 479-481, 486). What does it mean when Italian artists appear to imitate aspects of the style of manuscripts produced in other political centers, such as Byzantium or Paris (Toubert 1980)? The following episodes from the history of Italian medieval manuscript illumination address these issues and others.
Although it is clear that manuscripts with narrative sequences were produced in Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries, as Backhouse has noted, "comparatively few miniatures of high quality survive from Italy" in the early Middle Ages (1979, 22). Certainly, the likelihood that the Codex Grandior—a huge one volume Bible—was among the books Benedict Biscop purchased in Rome and brought back to England in the seventh century indicates that Italian manuscript production was important during this period (De Hamel 1994, 17-21). A manuscript that does remain to us is the so-called Gospel of Saint Augustine or Cambridge Gospel (Corpus Christi College, MS 286), apparently one of the many codices sent by Gregory the Great to Saint Augustine to aid in bringing Christianity to the English in 596 (De Hamel 1994, 17). And an illustrated medical anthology attributed to Monte Cassino or southern Italy (Florence, Laurentian Library MS Plut. 73,41) survives from the early ninth century (Belting 1968, 122-132; Robb 1973, 163-164).
Despite these indications that Italy played an important role in the emergence of medieval manuscript ornamentation and illustration, it is in the tenth and eleventh centuries that we begin to see impressive and distinctive groups of illuminated manuscripts there. Three of the most prominent groups are the Beneventan school, best-known for the production of exultet rolls, the manuscripts of Monte Cassino, and the so-called Atlantic Bibles usually associated with Rome. One characteristic they share is a relationship to northern European manuscript illumination, especially in their ornamented initials.
Among the earliest Italian illuminated manuscripts are some of the approximately thirty-three remaining exultet rolls produced in southern Italy, which date from the tenth century to the fourteenth (Avery 1936; Belting 1968, 144-183, 234-255; Cavallo 1973 and 1994; Evans and Wixom 1997, 469-472; Speciale 1991). These are unique Italian liturgical manuscripts which include the text of the hymn for the Easter vigil, Exultet iam angelica turba coelorum. Among the oldest are three that were originally attributed to a scriptorium at San Vincenzo al Volturno, but have more recently been attributed (Belting 1968, 154) to Benevento itself, between 985 and 987. Because of the history of the region, these manuscripts include varying degrees of Byzantine content in a figure style that is recognizably southern Italian. Some of these manuscripts are far more Byzantine in figure style and also have more elaborate ornamental repertoires, for example an exultet roll (Bari, Cathedral Archives, Exul tet 1) and a benedictional (Bari, Cathedral Archives) made in eleventh-century Bari, which was the administrative capital of a Byzantine province in Italy beginning in 969 (Belting 1974, 14-19; Mayo 1987, 386-387).
Shortly after the production of the manuscripts at Bari, another group of southern Italian manuscripts was executed at Monte Cassino, where Abbot Desiderius's new basilica was dedicated in 1071. The scriptorium produced manuscripts that combined the now familiar southern Italian or Beneventan palaeographic and ornamental styles with an increasing absorption of iconographic and stylistic elements from Byzantine painting (Cavallo 1989). These Monte Cassino manuscripts include two homiliaries (Monte Cassino 98 and 99), as well as a lectionary (Vat. Lat. 1202) in the Vatican (Adacher and Orofino 1989; Newton 1979). Their southern Italian initial and ornamental style contains foliate trellises and an interlace inhabited by birds and canines. Scholars have noted that this ornamental style must have been affected by the presence of Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts in Italy, sent as gifts by emperors, including the Vatican's Gospel of Henry II (MS Ottob. Lat. 74), which was given to Monte Cassino by Henry c. 1022 (Ayres 1994b, 134; Robb 1973, 171).
Another cluster of important manuscripts was the so-called Atlantic Bibles, generally localized to Rome, which take their name from their colossal size (Ayres 1994a, b). These manuscripts, which have been associated with wall painting, are especially noted for their full-page Creation cycles, perhaps best seen in the twelfth-century Pantheon Bible (Vat. Lat. 12958) in the Vatican Library (Garrison 1953, 1.1, 83-89; 1955, 2.1, 21-44; 1961, 4.2, 117-178). The study of these codices involves considering Old Testament iconography, sorting attributions and localizations, and analyzing the relationships between Italian manuscripts and both transalpine and Byzantine painting (Ayres 1982 and 1994a, b). Other Roman manuscripts such as the Saint Cecilia Evangeliary (Florence, Laurentian Library, Cod. 17, 27), have been discussed by Garrison (1955, 2.1, 36-38).
A twelfth-century Umbro-Tuscan style that combined some of the elements discussed above has been studied extensively by both Garrison and Berg, who described its initials as "geometrical," a type they traced to eleventh-century Rome (Berg 1968, 19; Garrison 1953, 1.1, 19-32 and 1954, 1.4, 159-175; La pittura in Italia 1985, 2:549). Consisting of ornamented shafts derived from northern European painting, the initials combine repeated rosettes and tight foliage in their interstices. They are embellished with gold leaf and, most significantly, with white vine foliage with half leaves, a form of decoration that became a permanent element of Italian manuscript illumination. A superb group produced at Pisa includes the brilliant Calci Bible (Certosa di Calci Cod. 1). In its decoration are figures copied closely from Byzantine manuscripts (Berg 1968, 146—168, 224—227; Garrison 1955, 2.2, 97-111).
In twelfth-century Sicily, a striking group of manuscripts was produced partly in response to the patronage of a powerful churchman whose political interests promoted a combination of Byzantine and Italian painting. Many are now in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, but on the basis of their provenance and litanies, these manuscripts are usually attributed to Messina, during the archbishopric of the Englishman Richard Palmer in the second half of the twelfth century (Andaloro 1995, 357—378; Buchthal 1955; Daneu Lattanzi 1968, 15-33; Owens 1977). Among the most spectacular of these codices is a sacramentary, Madrid MS 52 (Evans and Wixom 1997, 479-481; Pace 1977). The ornamental style of twelfth-century Sicilian initials combines the Italian geometrical initial with elements of Byzantine ornamental repertoire and figure style (Buchthal 1955 and 1956).
By she thirteenth century, the expansion of the cities, the population, the economy, and the development of new religious orders—especially the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Servites, and Carmelites—led to vast building programs and calls for new manuscripts (Corrie 1993). Among the centers for manuscript production, one of the most thoroughly studied is that at Arezzo (Lazzi 1990, 22-46; Passalacqua 1980). A distinctive style developed there, based in part on the geometrical style of twelfth-century Tuscany and Umbria, with white vine decoration as well as elements of figure painting that may have come from the powerful and dominant manuscript ateliers at Bologna. Indeed, throughout Umbria, at Perugia, Cortona, Assisi, and elsewhere, a variety of local styles arose, based on this combination, often showing the work and influence of painters of the maniera greca who executed local wall and panel painting (Lazzi 1990, 46-52; Marques 1987, 128-179; Morello and Kanter 1999, 140-147; La pittura in Italia 1985, 595).
Major issues in manuscript illumination can be articulated through the study of significant manuscripts produced in southern Italy in the thirteenth century. Some of these belong to the first half of the thirteenth century and are associated with Frederick II, but with a few exceptions even those with texts that were composed during Frederick's reign were actually copied and painted after his death (Mütherich 1974). The most important among these is the Art of Hunting with Birds, a text written by Frederick of which the earliest copy (Pal. Lat. 1071 in the Vatican Library) was made for his son King Manfred before 1268 (Willemsen 1969). This manuscript typifies an important group of illuminated manuscripts that includes medical anthologies and other scientific manuscripts (Kauffrnann 1959; Petrus de Ebulo 1962). These manuscripts clearly belong to the mid-thirteenth century in the south; but in general, scholars are still not certain for whom they were made or where the ateliers were located. Moreover, these codices demonstrate how complex the meanings of such manuscripts can be. While they are secular in subject matter and indicate an interest in science, they are in part a means of elite self-identification and, as with the Art of Hunting with Birds, may be based on familiarity with luxurious manuscripts from the Arab world (Mariani and Cassano 1995, 155-159, 492-493). And as in the case of Cod. 93 in the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, a medical anthology, they demonstrate an interest in simulating aspects of both Byzantine and northern European painting (Grape-Albers 1977, 105-130, 151-164). Among the most important codices from Manfred's reign are elaborately decorated one-volume Bibles, a new type recently developed at Paris (Ayres 1994a, 361-374). Of these, the so-called Manfred Bible (Vat. Lat. 36) is the most spectacular, with a figure style that combines elements of French and English illumination with some Byzantine figure types, and a distinctive ornamental style based on a combination of English foliage and French details from the first half of the thirteenth century (Andaloro 1995, 393-412; Daneau Lattanzi 1968, 49-58; Toubert 1977 and 1980) Federico II e' l'Italia 1996, 258-262. Who were these painters? While many of the clients may have been members of Manfred's court, it seems likely that the painters were lay artists who worked in metropolitan centers such as Naples, which had its own university. The same difficulties can be found in the analysis of the slightly later manuscripts associated with the Conradin Bible, now MS 156 in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore (Corrie 1993 and 1994; Daneu Lattanzi 1968, 58-64; Toubert 1979). Although there has been some controversy over the localization of these manuscripts, this group too seems to be from southern Italy, possibly Naples (Federico II e' I'ltalia 1996, 262-267). Other manuscripts seem to have been produced in Naples after the end of the Hohenstaufen rule in 1268 when the Angevin dynasty arrived (Daneu Lattanzi 1978; Degenhart and Schmitt 1977; Leone de Castris 1986, 103-108; Orofino 1994, 375-389). How political upheaval changes the history of manuscript illumination can been seen in Angevin documents, which indicate that there was a shortage of painters in Naples c. 1282 (Coulter 1944). And the Angevin takeover seems to have caused a shift in the types of manuscripts produced in southern Italy; there are more courtly and secular topics among the extant manuscripts. Southern Italy continued to produce manuscripts in numerous languages in addition to Latin, including Greek, French, and Hebrew, throughout the Middle Ages (Andaloro 1995, 349-356; Bologna 1974; Cavallo 1986, 497-612; Martini 1994, 351-59; Ševenko 1984).
While virtually every major city in thirteenth-century Italy produced some manuscripts, often with distinctive styles of illumination, without question the most important center for the production of illuminated manuscripts was Bologna (Conti 1981; La pittura in Italia 1985, 2:595, 602, 614, 640). Over a period of two centuries, the styles that developed there altered the evolution of manuscript production throughout Italy (Mariani and Cassano 1993, 132; La pittura in Italia 1985, 2:583, 598, 602, 611). Generally scholars have divided painting at Bologna into two styles (Norris 1993, 1-25). The "first style" of the 1260s and 1270s includes ornamentation based on knotted vines and lush half-leaf forms as well as marginal decoration including motifs taken from French illumination (Conti 1981, 21-22; Norris 1993, 1). Here the figures tend to be small and lively, similar to what can be found in the panel painting of the maniera greca. The "second" style, originally contemporary with the first, became more common c. 1280 and is associated with the so-called Gerona Bible Master (Luaces 1994, 415-427; Norris 1993, 2-4). These painters extended the ornamental repertoire found in the first style, and they developed a figure style remarkably close to that of the Palaeologan period in Byzantine painting (Jacoff 1979, 165-169).
Because Bologna was a university city, its manuscript illuminators decorated codices with a broad array of subjects (De Hamel 1994, 138-139; De Winter 1983). The Bolognese painters illuminated hundreds of one-volume Bibles, probably for use by university students, but also for the Dominican and Franciscan orders (Norris 1993, 26-98). And major manuscript illuminators, such as the Gerona Bible Master, provided sets of antiph onaries and graduals for the religious orders, including the Franciscans and the Servites (Conti 1981, figs. 86, 92, 93; Luaces 1994, 26-98). Because the university at Bologna was an important center for the study of law, numerous illuminated copies of the Decretals of Gratian were produced during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, among other texts (Melnikas 1975).
The ongoing study of Bolognese manuscript painting highlights crucial issues in the history of illumination, including the organization of ateliers, the sorting of hands and ateliers, and a continuing discussion of the identities of Oderisi da Gubbio and Franco Bolognese, mentioned by Dante in Canto 11 of the Purgatorio (Conti 1981, 7-8; De Winter 1983, 314-315; Norris 1993). Finally, a major issue is the relationship between painting in the Bologna region and painting outside Italy. A typical discussion has involved the origins of the style of the Padua Epistolary written at Padua by Giovanni Gaibana and dated 1259, which has been compared with both Armenian and Byzantine manuscripts (Bellinati and Bettini 1968; Grape 1973; Hänsel-Hacker 1952). Eventually this atelier had an impact on painting in Austria and in Bohemia, as did subsequent Bolognese illuminators (Corrie 1987; De Hamel 1994, 218, 227).
By the fifteenth century, the shifts in the production of manuscript illumination had transformed the medium. As in earlier centuries, liturgical manuscripts were produced as texts were revised and wealthy patrons emerged (Alexander 1994, 11-20). But the desire of patrons to express their wealth and learning in private collections also directed the efforts of painters to illuminating classical texts, legal tracts, and new literature, such as the writings of Dante (De Hamel 1994, 232-286; Kanter 1994, 198-210). And although thirteenth-century manuscript illuminators can be found working on frescoes and altarpieces, we now find illustrious painters working in several media more often, including Pacino da Bonaguida, Simone Martini, Fra Angelico, Michelino da Besozzo, Perugino, and Pinturicchio (Alexander 1994, 230; De Hamel 1994, 232-286; Kanter et al. 1994, 25-83). Despite the dramatic changes in painting, especially the illusionism in the treatment of figures and landscape, quattrocento luxury manuscripts remain recognizably Italian, with an ornamentation that combines antique motifs with the white vine decoration that had dominated central Italian illumination in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as well as the lush foliage of Bolognese illumination (Alexander 1994, 143, figs. 68, 121; De Hamel 1994, 244—253).
See also Bookmaking and Book Production
REBECCA W. CORRIE
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Alexander, Jonathan J. G., and Albinia Catherine de la Mare, eds. Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey. London: Faber, 1969.
Andaloro, Maria, ed. Federico e la Sicilia dalla terra alia corona: Arte figurative e arti sumtuane, Paler-mo, Real Albergo dei Povert, 16 dicembre 1994-30 maggio 1995. Palermo: Ediprint Srl, 1995.
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La pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, Vol. 2. Milan: Edizione Electa, 1985.
Robb, David M. The Art of the Illuminated Manuscript. Cranbury, N.J.: Barnes, 1973.
Rotili, Mario. La miniatura gotica in Italia, Vol. 1. Naples: Libreria Scientifica Editrice, 1968.
—. La miniatura nella Badia di Cava, Vol. 1, Lo scrittorio, i corali miniati per l'abbazia. Naples: Di Mauro, 1976.
Salmi, Mario. Italian Miniatures. New York: Abrams, 1954.
—. La miniatura italiana. Venice: Electa Editrice, 1972.
Sesti, Emanuela, ed. La miniatura italiana tra gotica e Rinascimento: Atti del II congresso di storta della miniatura italiana, Cortona, 24-26 settembre 1982, 2 vols. Florence: Olschki, 1985.
Ševcenko, Ihor. "The Madrid Manuscript of the Chronicle of Skylitzes in the Light of Its New Dating." In Byzanz und der Westen: Studien zur Kunst des europäischen Mittelalters, ed. Irmgard Hutter. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984.
Speciale, Lucinia. Montecassino e la Riforma Gregoriana: L'Exultet Vat. Barb. Lat. 592. Rome: Viella, 1991.
Toesca, Pietro. La pittura e la miniatura nella Lombardia. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1912.
Toubert, Hélène. "Trois nouvelles Bibles du maître de la Bible de Manfred et de son atelier." Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome, 89, 1977, pp. 777-810.
—. "Autour de la Bible de Conradin: Trois nouveaux manuscrits enluminés." Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome, 91, 1979, pp. 729-784.
—. "Influences gothiques sur l'art fredéricien: Le Maître de la Bible de Manfred et son atelier." In Federico II e l'art del Duecento italiano, ed. Angiola M. Romanini. Galatina: Congedo Editore, 1980, pp. 59-83.
Vailati Schoenburg Waidenburg, Grazia, ed. La miniatura italiana in età romanica e gotica: Atti del I congresso di storia della miniatura italiana, Cortona 26-28 maggio 1978. Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1979.
Weitzmann, Kurt. Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination. New York: George Braziller, 1977.
Willemsen, Carl. Fredericus II. De Arte venandi cum avibus: Ms. Pal. lat. 1071. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2 vols. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Velangsanstalt, 1969.
The art, and technique, of painting on a prepared wood surface is one of the oldest art forms known. The mummy cases of the pharaohs of Egypt are among the earliest surviving examples of using a wooden base covered with cloth and some sort of sealant as the surface for painting. We have testimony that the Greeks practiced this art, although no known examples have survived. Adjoining the Propylea Gate to the Athenian Acropolis was a structure called the pinakoteka (picture gallery) that was used at one time for displaying paintings on wood, although it is not certain that the structure was originally made for this purpose. The Romans practiced the art of panel painting along with fresco and other forms. A panel in the Etruscan museum in the Tuscan hill town of Cortona, painted in encaustic (i.e., pigments applied with soft wax) representing the muse Polimnia is claimed to come from the first or second century after Christ, although there is some doubt as to its authenticity. The mummy portraits that have been found in the Faiyum region of Egypt are in encaustic on wood and date to the first centuries of the Christian era. These panel portraits are Egypto-Roman paintings of undoubted authenticity. At least two paintings of the Madonna and Child in Rome—the Madonna of Santa Maria Nuova, in the church of Santa Francesca Romana; and the Salus Populi Romani, in the Lateran basilica—may date from as early as the fifth century and would be the oldest surviving Christian paintings on panel. From that date onward, the number of surviving panel paintings gradually increases.
Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance, painting on panel was one of the principal art forms practiced in Italy. This medium was not replaced by canvas as the major carrier of painting until the sixteenth century. Titian's Assumption of the Virgin in the church of the Frari in Venice in 1515 is one of the last major works on wood. Its tremendous scale, some 16 feet (nearly 5 meters) high, indicates the impracticality of using panel as paintings of monumental size became the vogue. Through the fifteenth century, however, wood was used for all manner of painting, from fine altarpieces to mundane objects of daily use. Related to panel painting for high art are types of decoration executed in similar technique for less lofty purposes such as the decoration of furniture and some forms of domestic ornamentation. The same techniques were applied to temporary works such as theatrical props. Even some types of book covers were a form of panel painting.
The most complete description of the technique of panel painting as it was practiced in medieval Italy is in a text written at the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth by a minor artist named Cennino Cennini, Il libro d'arte (literally The Book of Art, but the English translation is called The Craftsman's Handbook). Cennini tells us that he was a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, who in turn was the son and pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, who in turn was the godson and principal pupil of the artist considered the father of Renaissance painting, Giotto. Cennini thus establishes his bona fides as an authority on the best methods of painting. The book is a kind of shop manual that spells out everything an artist should do to produce the best kind of art. It is from Cennini that we get much of what we know about the practices of artists in medieval Italy. The fifteenth-century Florentine Leon Battista Alberti wrote a treatise on the art of painting published in both Latin and Italian (Depictura, Deliapittura; 1436); it deals more with the theoretical elements of the art and such considerations as the use of color, linear perspective, and composition, based on classical aesthetics. In our own time, the examination of actual paintings in the course of restoration and conservation has contributed significantly to our knowledge of the technique and materials used by artists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The production of a panel painting began with the carpenter who created the form, on the instructions of the artist or the patron. The most common wood used was poplar—a soft, open-grained, porous material. This is in contrast with the common practice of northern Europe, where various hardwoods were more frequently used. The planks were cut along the length of the log, following the grain of the wood in the same manner as our modern lumber. Except for the smallest paintings, which could be executed on a single width of wood (usually no more than 8 to 10 inches, or 20 to 25 centimeters), several pieces of lumber were needed. The planks were joined together with casein, a glue made from cheese, and size, a sort of gelatin obtained from boiling animal skins. Better-quality carpentry also used dowels, blocks, or butterfly wedges to reinforce the joints and horizontal battens that were attached to the backs for reinforcement. This was necessary because poplar is prone to warping. The planks were ordinarily used vertically except for such parts as a predella (the horizontal step or base on which an altarpiece rests), whose low, horizontal profile naturally indicated horizontal planking. The carving of the frame was considered a part of the panel preparation and might be carried out by the same carpenter who produced the panel, although a master carver might be employed if a particularly intricate design was called for. All this carpentry could be very complex, and it is not uncommon to find in surviving documents that the patron paid more for the carpentry than for the painting.
Once the carpentry was completed, the panel would be prepared for painting, usually by the artist (or his workshop assistants). The wood would be sealed with several coats of glue size prepared by boiling animal skins. The best size was made from the trimmings left from shaping sheets of parchment (prepared sheepskin) for manuscripts. Rabbit and other animal skins were used, but the size produced was not considered as fine. Included in the process of building up several layers of size was the attachment of strips of linen or parchment to the flat surfaces (but not usually to the carved portions). This provided an additional layer of insulation from the potential dampness of the wood and also created a riding or floating layer that separated the layers of paint from the wood, which was susceptible to expansion and contraction with changes of temperature and humidity. The paint layer would thus "float" on the surface. The cracks that can today be seen in many panel paintings, where the joints of the panels have separated and pulled the painted image apart, are evidence of what could happen when this layer of cloth or parchment was omitted.
Gesso was then applied to the entire panel—frame as well as flat surfaces. Gesso grosso (coarse gesso) is a mixture of lime or chalk and size. The lime is ground to a fine powder and mixed with the size. Cennini suggests that at least eight layers of this substance should be applied. When each successive layer of the gesso was thoroughly dry, it would be smoothed with a scraper before the next layer was applied. When this process was complete, several layers of gesso sottile (fine gesso) were applied. This was a smoother form of gesso made by soaking the lime in water for about a month, stirring it daily and making sure it was kept too wet to set. After that time, the sediment would be kneaded to a fine texture. The gesso could then be allowed to dry like plaster if it was not to be used immediately. When needed, the gesso sottile would be mixed with water to a thin consistency and applied to the surface with a brush in very thin layers. After each layer was completely dry, the surface would again be scraped smooth before the next coat was applied. A well-prepared panel would be absolutely smooth, although not all panels received this meticulous attention.
The artist would then begin the process of creating the image. The drawing would be done directly on the panel. Until paper became readily available, in the fifteenth century, preparatory drawings were seldom used, although earlier paintings might be used as models. Pattern books that provided models for various types of images were also commonly used. This practice accounts for the similarity of so many images during this period and helps scholars discern relationships among various paintings and the artists who made them. The artist would draw with charcoal on the panel, "erasing" errors or making alterations with a feather. Once he was satisfied, he would brush off most of the drawing, again using a feather, leaving only a faint outline. He would then trace out the lines with a fine brush and ink. In a few surviving examples in which the gesso and paint layers have become separated from the underlying panel, this preliminary drawing is visible where it has bled through the gesso onto the wood, giving us a glimpse into the artist's practice. Once the composition was complete, the panel was ready for gilding (the application of gold leaf), which was the common treatment for backgrounds and details such as halos. In a large workshop, the gilding might be done on the premises, but more commonly it would be sent out to a specialist.
The gold leaf was prepared by hammering a gold coin between sheets of leather, folding it over and continuing the process, much the way layered pastry dough is prepared. A gold florin, which is about the size of a U.S. dime, would ultimately render 100 sheets of gold leaf, each about 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) square. The sheets were so thin, virtually molecular, that they could be handled only with a brush and are translucent when held up to light. The size and number of sheets that could be produced from a given weight of gold were regulated by statute so as to guarantee the quality of the gilding. Since most devotional paintings were commissioned as acts of piety, the patron was frequently concerned that a given amount of precious material be expended in the production, as a sign of respect for the subject. It was therefore important that such quality control be exercised.
The gold leaf would be applied to all areas of the panel that were not to be painted. To start, a layer of bole would be applied. This was a type of red clay thinned with water that, when wet, acted like a glue to bond the thin sheets of gold leaf to the prepared panel. It had the additional property of providing an undercoat that enhanced the richness of the gold. The deep red color would show through the translucent sheets of gold leaf and would enhance the appearance, creating a more metallic-looking surface than a white underlayer could have produced. When the bole-leaf layer was dry, the gold would be burnished, polished to a high finish with a piece of agate or ivory. When burnished, the thin coat of leaf took on the appearance of solid gold.
The panel could then be tooled for additional richness. Gesso remains malleable virtually forever. A stylus could be used to impress an incised design into the surface, providing both pattern and texture. This would usually be done to halos, costumes, borders, and whatever other parts would be appropriately ornamented. A compass could be used to create circular halos of concentric rings. Early in the fourteenth century, the use of punches became common. A design would be carved into the end of a cylinder of bone or ivory. This would then be pressed against the surface of the panel and struck with a mallet, leaving the impression of the design embossed on the panel surface. This allowed for a more regular and more intricate type of ornament than could be attained freehand. Punched designs and freehand incising were often combined. The incising and punching could be done either before or after the painting was completed, and evidence suggests that both practices were followed.
Because the punches were hand-carved, they generally had slight irregularities that allow their marks to be identified individually, much like fingerprints. This makes it possible to attribute various paintings to the same artist or workshop when it can be demonstrated that the same tool was used. Likewise, it can sometimes be shown that different artists were somehow related when they used the same tool. Such tools must have been considered valuable and were sold or traded among different artists and workshops.
After the gilding process was completed, the painting of the image could begin. Colors were obtained from mineral and organic materials. Naturally occurring minerals such as colored earths and hard stones would be ground to a fine powder to be used as pigments. Even precious and semiprecious stones were used. Lapis lazuli was frequently used for painting the Virgin Mary's mantle, because, like the gold leaf, it was expensive and thus demonstrated the devotion of the patron in his willingness to bear the expense. Flowers, fruits, and other vegetable materials would be boiled to extract the color. The infusion could then be evaporated, leaving only the colored residue. Insects were crushed to acquire clear reds and some other colors. Chemicals not readily available in a natural state would be manufactured. For instance, lead white was obtained by exposing strips of lead to vinegar vapor.
The most common medium for painting was egg tempera. Egg yolk would be mixed with the pigment and diluted with water to achieve the proper consistency. It would be applied with a small brush and tiny strokes. The yolk would dry to a very hard finish, as anyone who has left the breakfast dishes unwashed will know. Many layers of this paint would be painstakingly applied to build up the form. Cennini specifies that the painter should divide his paint into three portions, leaving one portion pure, darkening one portion with black, and lightening the third with white, to create high, medium, and deep tones. Working from the middle tone, darkening the shadows and lightening the highlights, the painter would then build up the form of his image.
Certain pigments could not be used with egg yolk, so for these, other media would have to be used. For example, certain copper salts that were used for blue pigments would react to the sulfur in egg yolk and turn green. In such cases, the pigment might be mixed with glair, derived from the white of the egg. The egg white would be whipped to a stiff meringue and then allowed to settle. The clear residue that collected at the bottom would act as a suitable and nonreactive carrier. Because egg yolk produces an opaque appearance, glair was useful when transparent effects were desired, as in gems in a crown or on the decorative borders of garments.
Oil was used for some colors, especially when a similar transparent effect was desired. It could be used like glair for pigments that reacted with egg yolk. However, the opaque quality of tempera was generally preferred. The use of oil paint as the principal medium was not common until the sixteenth century and coincides with the introduction of canvas as a carrier, replacing panel. There are some examples of oil painting on panel, such as Botticelli's Primavera, but they are the exception.
Occasionally, objects were attached to the panel surface, although this practice is seldom found after the early fourteenth century. Actual gems might be glued to the surface, and holy relics in small containers could be inserted into prepared holes. Relief might be built up on the surface by gluing on small wood carvings and covering them with gesso or by building up gesso and then carving it into the desired form. This latter process would be done at the time of the gesso coating of the panel, before the gilding. This became a popular form of ornamentation in the international style of the fifteenth century and can be seen in such paintings as Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi (Strozzi Altarpiece), in which many details such as the horses' trappings, the spurs of the Magi, and the talons of a hawk were produced in this way.
The majority of panel paintings were produced for religious purposes, either public or private. Those meant for public display were most commonly intended for churches, although guildhalls and town halls might also have paintings of either a religious or a secular nature. The most common form was the altarpiece, although just what constituted an altarpiece embraces a broad spectrum of descriptions. The term has been applied to a wide variety of types and forms that were used on or near an altar. Devotional panels might also be found apart from an altar, such as the panels that decorated the piers in the cathedral of Florence.
Altarpieces took a variety of forms, which seem to have been popular at various times. A single panel, usually rectangular with a triangular pediment or arch at the top, was quite common in the thirteenth century. Later, the polyptych, a joining of several panels into a single unit, became more popular. A piece made up of three panels is called a triptych and was a common type. The central panel of a polyptych is generally larger than the others and honors the central theme of the altarpiece. In some early polyptychs, the panels diminish in size as they move outward, but in later examples the tendency was to make all side panels the same size. By the fifteenth century, the single-panel alterpiece with a horizontal format came into vogue.
Some triptychs had side panels or wings which were hinged so that they could be folded over to cover the central panel. In such cases, the shape of the wings would be that of the central panel split in two. Since the exterior of the wings would be visible when they were closed, the back sides would also be painted. In most instances, this painting would be only an ornamental motif, such as faux marbling, but in other cases more elaborate ornament might be used, such as a coat of arms or even additional figures. Such hinged triptychs are often referred to as tabernacles. A tabernacle might contain a sculptural image on the interior rather than a painting with only the wings painted. Alternatively, the wings might cover a receptacle for the eucharist, holy oils, or relics.
Some altarpieces that were placed on freestanding altars that could be seen from both back and front were painted on both sides. In this case, the two faces were often differentiated in various ways. Duccio's Maestà altarpiece for the high altar of the cathedral in Siena has a devotional image on the front, the Virgin enthroned with saints and angels; and a narrative on the back, scenes from the passion of Christ. Giotto's Stefaneschi Altarpiece for Saint Peter's basilica in Rome shows Christ enthroned with saints on the front, while the back shows Saint Peter enthroned receiving the altarpiece itself from the hands of the donor, Cardinal Stefaneschi.
Panels were differently shaped for special circumstances. The most common type of shaped panel was the cutout cross. The cross would be formed with terminals at the ends of the arms. The central part of the cross might also be widened with an apron, so as to include the images of Mary and John or for scenes of Christ's passion. Although somewhat rare, there were also panels that were cut to the shape of the image painted on them, so that there was no background. This was, perhaps, a way of making the image seem more realistic or sculptural. In a few surviving panels, additions were attached to the panel surface. Some cutout crosses have the face of Christ painted on a circular panel that served as the halo. The circle of wood, flattened on the bottom, was attached at the neck, and the face was painted on it, so that Christ's head appeared to tilt forward. The same device was used in some images of the Madonna. In a few surviving examples, a carved face was attached so that the Madonna's head was actually three-dimensional.
Panels for private devotion were similar to those for public use but tended to be smaller in scale. The most popular form of private devotional panel was the hinged triptych. It could be closed when not in use so that the holy image would not have to witness the other activities that went on in the home, but it could be opened for devotions. Such tabernacles were also suitable for travel.
While the majority of surviving panel paintings were made for religious purposes, there is a sampling of secular works. The bulk of these are portraits. Portraiture was generally reserved for the wealthiest and most important patrons. The dominant portrait type was the profile, probably in imitation of classical coins and medallions. Portraits on panel were made for private homes and for public venues. Furniture was often painted in the same manner as panel painting, although surviving examples suggest that the preparation was not as elaborate. Chests known as cassoni for the storage of clothing and other household goods were decorated with paintings on the fronts, sides, and lids. Chair backs, bedsteads, and other household furnishings were frequently painted.
Another type of panel painting, which is not well understood, is a circular panel known as a desco di parto (plural, deschi di parto) or birth salver. Such a panel takes the form of a circular tray, usually painted with a religious subject on the main side—often a subject of birth, such as the birth of Christ, the birth of Mary, or the birth of John the Baptist. The reverse side was generally decorated with coats of arms or emblems. Since deschi were often known to be given as wedding gifts, it is thought that they were intended as talismans for the fertility of the marriage and may have been used to bring ceremonial refreshment to a new mother. The desco di parto may be the origin of the circular panel called a tondo (plural, tondi) that became especially popular in the fifteenth century, when we find numerous examples of such circular panels which, owing to their size and weight, could never have been used in such a ritual manner.
Book covers for civic registers were sometimes painted much in the manner of panel paintings. Like furniture, these did not always get the more elaborate preparation accorded to the best altarpieces. Small chests, probably used to keep treasure, were sometimes decorated in the same way.
Because of the fragility of panels, relatively few of them have survived, and even fewer are in good condition. From comparisons between workshop records that indicate how many works were produced and the actual number that have come down to us, it has been estimated that less than 5 percent of fourteenth-century panels survive; the percentage becomes even smaller for earlier works. Panels are subject to a variety of hazards. The wood itself—poplar—is quite frail, unlike the oak and other hardwoods used in northern European panel painting. It is subject to woodworms, dry rot, and other types of natural damage. Changes in temperature and humidity can adversely affect the condition of the wood. Since so many panel paintings were placed on altars with lighted candles, fire was another hazard that claimed many.
For centuries, the conservation of panels, if done at all, consisted of cleaning the surface with abrasives, which in time removed layers of paint, often down to the preliminary underpaint. This explains the green tint seen in so many faces. Terra verde (green earth) was the common pigment used as the base color for flesh, although it would have been hidden beneath the many layers of other pigments. Excessive cleaning over time has removed these upper layers of paint, revealing the underlayer.
In trying to conserve panels today, museum laboratories have to contend with all these conditions. Woodworms can be controlled fairly easily by fumigation. The other problems are less easily treated.
Warping of the wood is generally irreversible, and the concern is prevention of further deformation. This can be achieved to some degree through environmental control, maintaining constant conditions of temperature and humidity. Continual change in the environment is more damaging than a hostile but consistent environment. In severe cases, it may be necessary to cradle the panel. This consists of attaching to the back side an interlocking series of horizontal and vertical struts, the inner side of which is shaped to fit the back of the panel. This reienforcement serves to keep the panel from warping any further.
Deterioration of the wood is another serious problem. Chemical treatment of the wood fiber can stop further deterioration, and if the problem has not advanced too far, injection of material into the wood can stabilize it. If the problem has advanced too far, however, it may be necessary to remount the painting. This is a very delicate operation and is undertaken in only the most severe cases. A sheet of material is glued to the surface of the painting, to stabilize it during the procedure. The painting is laid facedown, and the wood is carefully carved away until nothing but the gesso preparation is left. Then a new piece of wood, usually something like masonite, is glued to the painting. The stabilizing cover can then be removed from the picture surface.
Other problems that afflict panel paintings are chipping, flaking, and splitting of the surface. When the paint layers begin to separate from the panel, usually as a result of environmental conditions, they can be reattached by injecting glue beneath the surface and applying pressure to fuse them together. Likewise, if the paint has become completely detached, it can be glued back in place if it is found. However, when paint is lost, present-day practice is to stabilize the area as much as possible and then to inpaint only to the point of avoiding any jarring hole in the picture. Modern conservators do not try to return a damaged work to pristine condition, so that the viewer will know what is and what is not genuine. When the wood has split and taken the paint layer with it, there is little that can be done. Cradling can help prevent further damage, but the appearance of the painting can be helped only by filling the crack and, if it is deemed best, inpainting the area.
A related art form is the polychromed sculpture found in medieval and Renaissance Italy. In one sense, polychromed sculpture is three-dimensional panel painting. The sculpture would be carved from wood, often the same poplar that was used for panel painting. The surface would then be prepared with gesso and linen strips and painted with the same egg tempera as a panel. Gilding, the insertion of gems and other objects, and other modes of ornament would be the same as those used by panel painters.
See also Cassoni
JAMES G. CZARNECKI
Bomford, David, Jill Dunkerton, Dillian Gordon, Ashok Roy, et al. Italian Painting before 1400: National Gallery, London, 29 November 1989-28 February 1990. Art in the Making. London: National Gallery Publications, 1989.
Cennini, Cennino. The Craftsman's Handbook/Il Libra dell'Arte, trans. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1954.)
Cole, Bruce. The Renaissance Artist at Work: From I'isano to Titian. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.
Thompson, Daniel V., Jr. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1936a. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1956.)
—. The Practice of Tempera Painting. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1936b. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1962.)
The Pala d'Oro is a Gothic altarpiece, combining Byzantine enamel work with Venetian decorations, in the basilica of San Marco (Saint Mark) in Venice. The altarpiece was created in the workshop of the Venetian Paolo Bonensegna c. 1349. Set within a heavy gold and silver frame (10 feet 4 inches by 6 feet 10 inches, or about 3 by 2 meters) are more than 250 enamels and thousands of jewels and pearls. Stylistically, the enamels appear to have been made in Constantinople during the tenth and twelfth centuries, and they may have come to Venice among the booty of the Fourth Crusade. Paolo Veneziano's famous cycle, the Miracle of Saint Mark, was painted on the feriale (wooden case) built to enclose the altarpiece.
The Pala d'Oro has two framed segments. The top, the part that folded down, has a central medallion of the archangel Michael flanked by six large gold enamels, representing six of the twelve important feasts identified by Byzantine iconography. These are surrounded by numerous smaller enamels, placed among decorative motifs and floral mountings for gems and pearls, all on a gold background. The heavy frame of chased gold incorporates more miniature enamels.
Archangel Michael, detail from the Pala d'Oro. Enamel, gold, and precious stones. Byzantine, eleventh century. San Marco, Venice. Photo: © Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, N.Y.
The larger bottom segment divides into three verticle sections. The middle section focuses on a large medallion of Christ enthroned. Around this are representations of the four writers of the Gospels. In a lower register, images of Empress Irene and Doge Ordelafo Falier and two inscriptions surround an orans Virgin. In the upper register, angels and cherubim flank a representation of the second coming—a throne supporting the Bible and cross. The two side sections both have three registers which each contain six figures. On both, the top register contains named archangels, the middle register contains apostles, and the bottom register contains prophets. Between the frame and the enamels on the sides and top are an additional twenty-seven small pictures—made at an unknown date, possibly for a European patron—showing the story of Saint Mark, more scenes from the life of Christ, and six deacons. The frame and regions between enamels are done in the same fashion as the top segment.
See also Venice
ELEANOR A. CONGDON
Bettini, Sergio. "Venice, the Pala d'Oro, and Constantinople." In The Treasury of San Marco Venice. Milan: Olivetti, 1984.
Da Villa Urbani, Maria. Saint Mark's Basilica. Milan: Kina Italia Archives, n.d.
Hahnloser, H. R. Il tesoro di San Marco. Vol. 1, La pala d'oro. Florence: Sansoni, 1965.
Lorenzoni, Giovanni. La Pala d'Oro di San Marco. Florence: Sadea/Sansoni, 1965.
Luigi-Pomorisac, Jasminka de. Les émaux byzantins de la Pala d'Oro de l'église de Saint Marc à Venise. Zurich: Keller, 1966.
The Palatine Chapel or Cappella Palatina in Palermo was built as the chapel of the royal palace there under the Norman kings of Sicily in the twelfth century. Although there may have been an earlier building on site that served the same purpose, the present edifice was begun under Roger II (r. 1130-1154), the first of the Normans to rule the island as king, who was substantially responsible for its architectural form and decoration. Additions and changes were executed under William I (r. 1154—1166) and William II (r. 1166-1189); however, almost every culture that occupied the island thereafter also left its mark on the chapel in one way or another.
Although it is convenient to think of the Palatine Chapel as an autonomous edifice, it was in fact constructed as an integral part of the palace—as a room or set of rooms. It is in this context that certain aspects of the building, such as the main entry from the south and the royal loge once in the northern transept arm, can be explained. The main interior space of the chapel consists of a nave flanked by aisles to the west and a domed sanctuary with three apses to the east. The chapel is richly outfitted with decorations and furnishings almost all of which date from the twelfth century.
In an interior as narrow as that of the Palatine Chapel, the degree to which ceilings and vaults are the focus of attention is remarkable. After one enters the chapel from the narthex, one's gaze is almost inevitably drawn to the wooden ceiling of the nave, painted and gilded with figures, ornaments, and inscriptions, and executed in part in the muqarnas (stalactite) technique. The nave ceiling finds its closest analogues in the Islamic world (Fustat, Fez), from which the inspiration for it must have come. With its images of drinkers, dancers, and musicians, and its inscriptions in Arabic, it casts a decidedly unecclesiastical spell over the chapel space, especially in contrast to the decoration of the nave and aisle walls with scenes of the Old Testament and the lives of saints Peter and Paul in mosaic. These scenes were not added until later, probably under William I, and may not have been part of the original plan for the decoration of the western portion of the chapel. In fact, in its original version under Roger II, the nave of the Palatine Chapel may convey more of the impression of a secular audience hall, with tapestry-lined walls that framed a place at the west for the king, a throne platform, which was then rebuilt under William II. It was also under William II that the image of Christ flanked by Peter and Paul was added to the west wall above the place where the king presumably stood, recalling a similar arrangement in the great palace of the Byzantine emperors at Constantinople. The pulpit and paschal candelabrum in the south aisle were also added to the chapel during the reign of William II.
The liturgy was staged at the eastern end of the chapel, in a space resembling a Byzantine church. This space is dominated by a high dome into which was inserted, during the reign of Roger II, a great image of the Pantocrator at the summit, and then—in descending stages outward and downward from the summit—angels, prophets, evangelists, and scenes from the life of Christ. This arrangement follows Byzantine convention up to a point. The most interesting departures from Byzantine norms occur in the two transept arms, and these idiosyncracies have been explained in terms of a royal point of view embodied in the king as he stood on a balcony in the northern transept arm. A trace of this balcony is still to be seen in the chapel.
Palatine Chapel, Palermo, mosaics in the apse and dome. Byzantine, twelfth century. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
The Palatine Chapel represents twelfth-century art patronage of the highest order; it is an extraordinary ensemble of materials, techniques, and styles. The pavement and wall revetments make extensive use of porphyry, serpentine breccia, and other colored stones in a variety of intricate ornamental patterns. The iconic and narrative mosaics that cover the upper walls of the entire chapel and the vaults of the eastern end are executed on a scintillating gold ground. The painted wooden ceiling of the nave, too, is resplendent with gold, though this has been beclouded with the grime of years and by numerous, often clumsy restorations. In addition, the chapel is outfitted with a set of bronze doors to the west, and many elements of carved marble (capitals; pulpit and paschal candelabrum). These decorations, embellishments, and furnishings, which were executed by artists and artisans with different cultural roots and affiliations—Byzantine, Islamic, and western—stand as testimony to the power of Norman patronage and the richness of the visual culture of Sicily in the twelfth century.
See also Mosaic; Normans; Palermo; Roger II; William I; William II
WILLIAM TRONZO
Kitzinger, Ernst. I mosaici del periodo nomianno in Sicilia, Vol. 1, La Cappella Palatina di Palermo: I mosaici del Presbiterio, Vol. 2, La Cappella Palatina di Palermo: I mosaici delle navate. Monumenti/Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 5-6. Palermo: Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere, e Arti di Palermo, 1992-1993.
Tronzo, William. The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Thus writing, which is primarily but the humble medium for recording the deeds, thoughts, and interests of an age, by dint of being itself an art, becomes at once an expression and a register of the spirit which informs that age. Herein lies the peculiar interest that writing has for the student of culture in general
(Lowe, 1914).
Paleography, strictly speaking, is the study of old handwriting. A paleographer looks at the script—the handwriting of the volume or leaf before him or her—in order to determine where and when it was written, and for what purpose. A large, well-spaced capital-letter script, with few abbreviations, is easy to read but would be slow and expensive to produce, since the scribe worked letter by letter. Such scripts are appropriate for liturgical books and works of reference. A small, cursive script, in which letters are linked together so that the scribe writes word by word, can be written more rapidly, but—especially when abbreviations are used—can be more difficult to decipher. It is more likely to be used for documents or for private reading. Both kinds of script existed from antiquity, in forms that developed and changed over time, sometimes slowly and sometimes with startling suddenness. The trained paleographer looks at the forms of individual letters, the ligatures that link one letter to another, the abbreviations that are used, and the ductus, or duct, which is the look of the hand on the page. The writing may be upright, or slanted as in italic scripts, or splayed out as in Gothic text hands. Letters may be well-spaced or compressed. Strokes may be evenly weighted, as they are in most modern typefaces, or they may alternate between thick and thin lines of the pen. All these features make up the duct of a script.
Only a few of the surviving manuscripts tell us explicitly where and when they were written. The ancillary study of codicology—the physical aspects of the book or codex—can frequently help to date and locate a volume. Codicology includes factors such as decoration and illumination, binding, the general layout of the page, including prickings and ruling and the relative proportions of margins and written space, the presence of quire signatures or catchwords, and the kind of parchment or paper on which the manuscript is written. Modern manuscript scholars are rarely simply paleographers, but script remains the key element in their research and is the central focus of this article.
Most scholars differentiate between paleography, which concerns the writing found in books or parts of books, and diplomatics, or the writing of documents. But the same scribes frequently wrote both, and book scripts borrow abbreviations and cursive features from documents. Epigraphy, or writing carved in stone, is a third category, which influences and is influenced by the more formal book hands. As both inscriptions and documents are dated more frequently than book manuscripts, they provide useful points of comparison and will sometimes be mentioned here.
In the classical period, literary texts as well as documents were written on rolls of papyrus, with the writing in columns parallel to the short side of the roll, horizontally across the fibers. The reader would unroll the manuscript from left to right. The few surviving examples are in Roman square or rustic capitals. Square capitals are so called because the letters are of equal size, and as broad as they are high. Straight lines are either upright, as in I and the first stroke of M or N, or at a 45-degree angle, as in the second and third strokes of M. The letter A forms an isoceles triangle; O is a perfect circle; C is a semicircle. These classical forms survive in the uppercase letters of most modern typefaces: ABC. This was the standard script for inscriptions in the classical period, and a few surviving manuscripts use it.
By the fifth century, however, a more compressed and irregular display script called rustic capitals was in use for both inscriptions and manuscripts. In this script both N and M are noticeably wider than other letters, whereas L, I, and T are narrower and frequently a little taller as well. The letters O and Q are elliptical rather than round; A is slanted, often losing its crossbar; and V has been replaced by a more rounded U. Materials had also changed by this time. The surviving manuscripts are on vellum. (Etymologically, vellum comes from calves and parchment from sheep; but the better-stripped and finished the skin was before writing, the harder it is to identify the original animal, and in English the two words are usually interchangeable. The Italian term for any animal skin, whether sheep, cow, or goat, is la membrana.) Also by the fifth century, the codex, or bound book, was replacing the roll. A codex was heavier but sturdier; and when it was used for luxurious volumes, the illustrations survived better. Two illustrated fifth-century manuscripts of Virgil in rustic capitals—the Vatican Vergil (Vatican Library Cod. Lat. 3876) and the Vergilius Romanus (Vatican Library Cod. Lat. 3225)—are well reproduced in Weitzmann (1977).
Letter-forms such as widened and heightened M and N come from the more rapidly written hands used in business and military documents, and for note-taking on wax tablets. Cursive inscriptions have been known from the walls at Pompeii and from papyri of Roman Egypt for more than a century. In 1973, a large cache with more than 100 tablets was uncovered at the Roman-British fort of Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall. Written either on wax tablets or directly on thin wood, between A.D. 95 and 105, they use the same kind of cursive found in Egypt and Pompeii, Forms that are the antecedents of our lowercase letters include a, b (which resembles a modern d), and p; they mark the appearance of the minuscule cursive script that is frequently called younger cursive, to distinguish it from an older cursive retaining majuscule forms. Majuscule scripts like Roman capitals can be written between two lines; minuscule scripts are four-line scripts, with ascenders on letters like b and descenders on p and q.
These are the scripts that developed into the formal and informal book hands of the Italian Middle Ages. The first distinctive Italian majuscule script is traditionally called uncial, from its inch-high letters. Lowe (1914) pointed out that the most distinctive of these are rounded forms of a; d with a rounded, not upright, back; e like the modern lowercase form; and a rounded m, in which the first and last strokes are not upright but curve inward at the base. Hence, it is known as the "adem" script. The most famous example is the sixth-century Codex Amiatinus, now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. It is a copy of a lost Bible manuscript made for Cassiodorus (479-576) in his scriptorium at Vivarium, the earliest Italian monastic scriptorium. The Amiatinus itself was intended for, and may indeed have been copied at, the Anglo-Saxon monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria. Other uncial Gospel books survive at Vercelli and at Fulda, the monastery of the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface. From Italy, books in uncial script spread across Europe with the spread of Christianity. Of more than 400 extant uncial manuscripts written between the fourth and the eighth centuries, Ullman has noted that only twenty-four contain classical texts. There are a few legal and technical writers, but the bulk of the uncial manuscripts are those of biblical, liturgical, or Christian writers such as Augustine and Jerome.
"Half-uncial" is the traditional term for a mixed uncial and cursive script that also appeared in the fifth to eighth centuries; the characteristic letter-forms are its single-compartment a, g shaped like the numeral 3, upright d and m, and b in the modern form. The capital form of N was usually retained. Ligature, like the linking of e and t (which survives in the modern ampersand, &), appears, as does a quicker form of the æ ligature, with the a reduced to a cedilla under the e. Though half-uncial remained more formal than cursive, it was faster to write than uncial and was often used in less luxurious copies.
All the scripts discussed so far show little, if any, local variation. We know that the cathedral library of Verona possessed a rich library of uncial and half-uncial manuscripts because they have remained there, not because we can identify specifically Veronese features of the scripts. But when we come to the cursive hands that preceded the reforms of the Carolingian empire, local characteristics do emerge. The traditional explanation for the Irish small compressed minuscule hands—heavily abbreviated, but with clear word division—is the relative scarcity of sheep and cows, though sheer delight in intricate design has also been suggested. In any case, Irish minuscule entered Italy when the Irish monk Columbanus arrived at Bobbio in the valley of Trebbia in 612. By the tenth century, the monastery of Bobbio had a collection of more than 700 volumes, including twenty-five surviving volumes dating from before the seventh century. Parchment may also have been scarce in northern Italy, for the fourth-century rustic capitals manuscript of Lucan was scraped down and covered with writings of Jerome in minuscule of the eighth century. The resulting palimpsest is now in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Naples (MS Lat. 2).
At Bobbio, minuscule hands retained a strong Irish influence throughout the eighth century. Manuscripts in localizable minuscule scripts also survive from Lucca, Vercelli, Novara, and Verona. However, by c. 800, Charlemagne's political power brought the new approved script of the empire, Caroline minuscule, to northern Italy.
South of Rome, however, the imperial influence was not present. The pointed letter-forms of the script of Luxeuil were the basis for the style that developed at Benedict's foundation of Monte Cassino. There is a careful alternation of thick and thin strokes of the pen, and the writing slants to the right. Instead of making the standard minim stroke—used in i, u, m, and n—as a single straight line, the scribe pivoted his pen, producing three strokes, the top and bottom ones thick and angled downward and the middle stroke thin and upright. These are known as broken strokes, and they are the dominant characteristic of Beneventan script. Ascenders and descenders are finished off with thick, slanted, horizontal, broken strokes. A long i descending below the level of most letterforms is used in ligature. A broken-backed form of e, developed for ligatures with other letters, became the normal form for all e's. The letters o and c were no longer rounded but lozenges, with the top and bottom strokes thick and the side strokes thin. Where possible, letters were linked along the top horizontal line of the body of the letterform: m could be linked to the crossbar of t or the top of p, or the tongue of e. Beneventan scribes also used abbreviations wherever possible; flat strokes over vowels indicated a missing m or n, and special marks indicated -us, -or, or other common syllables. The result is a script that is visually arresting but difficult to read. Despite the difficulty, it persisted in the region of the medieval duchy of Benevento, of which Monte Cassino is the center, from the tenth century to the early fourteenth.
In the same area, exultet rolls gave the liturgical text of the exultet psalm recited in the Easter liturgy. The earliest examples are of the late eighth or early ninth century, and the latest are of the twelfth or thirteenth century. The script is almost always Beneventan. The vellum rolls are written to be unrolled over the pulpit as the priest recited the verses; illustrations are included in most surviving examples, upside down in relation to the text, so the people in church could see them.
North of Rome, however, Charlemagne's reforms of handwriting, favoring legibility over art, prevailed. As Ullman (1932) tartly noted, "The term Carolingian, or Caroline, rests on the belief that the script sprang full-grown from the brain of Charlemagne, with Alcuin standing by as mid-wife." In fact, Alcuin's monastery at Tours was an important center of dissemination of the new script, but it spread rapidly. It is a clear, rounded script, most of whose letter-forms are half-uncial. Ligatures are few, being limited to ct and et, and abbreviations are also infrequent.
Gradually the 3-shaped g gave way to g shaped like an 8, with both upper and lower compartments closed. Early Caroline minuscule borrowed from the Visigothic script of Spain an a shaped rather like an italic u, open at the top and slanted to the right. Both round-backed uncial d and the upright form appear. Ascenders and descenders are finished with a twist of the pen that produces a club or wedge shape at the end of the ascender shaft, and a small curve to the upper right on the descenders of minim strokes in i, m, and n.
Carolingian scribes could write in more than one style, and Carolingian manuscripts frequently show a clear hierarchy of scripts, with square and rustic capitals used for headings and explicits, and uncial and half-uncial for first lines, prefaces, or bits of text that needed highlighting. The resulting manuscript was impressive to look at and easy to read, and the style persisted, like Romanesque architecture, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. These carefully designed Caroline codices inspired the scribes of the Renaissance to introduce yet another reform at the close of the fourteenth century.
But between Caroline minuscule and the Renaissance lay another set of developments in script, as in architecture. Elsewhere in Europe, the term "Gothic" applied to a book script implies broken strokes and a pointed, angular appearance, resulting in the sort of script found in books of hours. But in Italy, the normal scrittura gotica remained a rounder script, characterized by curves rather than sharp angles, and with fewer decorative hairline strokes at the end of letters. Sometimes, as in Boccaccio's hand, ascenders of b, h, and I had faint hairline finials across the top. This style is often called gotica rotunda. The descent of the standard Italian book hand of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from Caroline minuscule is easy to see. The headed form of a, sometimes closing up into a two-compartment form, remained the norm, as did the 8-shaped g. Fourteenth-century Italian book hands were rounded, with short ascenders and descenders and closely linked letters. Round-backed d was often used. Whereas the 7-shaped abbreviation for the word et (or e in Italian} was usually crossed elsewhere in Europe, in Italy it remained uncrossed. Red ornamental capitals were often flourished (decorated) in purple, rather than the blue favored elsewhere, and the decorative flourishing lines were long and thin. Miniatures were often placed at the bottom of the page, rather than in the text blocks.
This kind of handwriting continued to be used for literary and scientific texts. When well spaced, it remains easy to read. But compression saves space, and space saves parchment or paper. Letters were linked across the top, and joined onto each other, so that letters like do would appear to share the middle rounded stroke, a device often called biting.
In the legal manuscripts that emanated from the University of Bologna, a central block of text is flanked by glosses, in a smaller, more abbreviated version of the same hand. This scrittura bolognese makes extensive use of bitings and leaves little space between lines or between words. The scribes who produced it were professionals, working on the pecia system—i.e., paid by the piece—and their standard remained reasonably high, but their work is still difficult to read for long stretches.
Along with formal book scripts, cursive handwriting, called cursiva or notula (nottula in Italian), continued to develop, not just for use in documents but for glosses and books produced by individuals who wanted fast, cheap copies of texts. Groups of letters, or even entire words, were clearly faster to write. Letters were linked to the following letter with hairline strokes; d acquired a looped back for the purpose. Following the models set in the papal chancery, such scripts have long ascenders and descenders, including forms of f and long s that descended below the line. When carefully written, such hands remain easy to read. And individual scribes would develop hands that combined some of the rapidity of notula with letter-forms from book hands; the result is usually called bastarda. Many scribes wrote different styles of hands for different occasions. Petrarch, for instance, wrote a textura for fair copies and a bastarda and notula for less formal use.
The humanist book script that is probably the best-known of all Italian types emerges as a reform, a return to the high standards of Caroline minuscule, just at the end of our period, a little before 1400, in Florence, Both the upright variety and the slanted italic script spread across Europe, and their influence is clear in modern printed typefaces.
See also Bookmaking and Book Production
JEANNE KROCHALIS
The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri, is an ongoing collection of microfilms of manuscripts from the Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome. The library also publishes the journal Manuscripta, Manuscripts from the Ambrosiana Library in Milan may be consulted on microfilm at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
Alexander, J, J. G., and A. C. De La Mare. The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey. London: Faber, 1969.
Archivio Paleografico Italiano. Rome: Istituto di Paleografia dell'Università di Roma, 1882-.
Avery, Myrtilla. The Exultet Rolls of South Italy, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1936.
Battelli, Giulio. Lezioni di paleografia, 4th ed. Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999.
Bologna, Giulia. Illuminated Manuscripts: The Book before Gutenberg. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. (Translation of Manoscritti e miniature: Il libro prima di Gutenberg. Milan: Mondadori, 1988. For a a list of important manuscript libraries including many Italian collections, see pp. 162-183; for a list of illuminators, see pp. 184-192.)
Bowman, Alan K. The Roman Writing Tablets from Vindolanda. London: British Museum, 1983.
Boyle, Leonard. Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. (For Italian manuscripts in various volumes of Codices Latini Antiquiores, see p. 162.)
Braswell, Laurel. Western Manuscripts from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance: A Handbook. New York: Garland, 1981.
Brieger, Peter, Millard Meiss, and Charles S. Singleton. Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Brown, Michelle. A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600. London: British Library, 1990. (See pp. 116-135 for manuscripts written in Italy.)
Brown, Virginia. "A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts, 1." Mediaeval Studies, 40, 1978, pp. 239-289.
Cappelli, Adriano. Lexicon Abbreviaturarurn: Dizionano de Abbreviature Latine ed Italiane, 6th ed. Milan: Hoepli, 1961. (Standard guide to abbreviations, by letter. See also introduction, trans. David Heimann and Richard Kay. The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography. Lawrence: University of Kansas Libraries, 1982.)
Cavallo, Guglielmo. Rotoli di exultet dell'Italia Meridionale. Bari: Adriatica, 1973.
Cheney, Christopher R. The Study of the Medieval Papal Chancery. Glasgow: Jackson, 1966.
Chiarelli, Renzo. I codici miniati del Museo di San Marco a Firenze. Florence: Bonechi, 1968.
Codici e incunaboli miniati della Biblioteca Civica di Bergamo. Bergamo: Credit Bergamo, 1989.
I codici liturgici in Puglia. Bari: Edizioni Levante, 1986.
de Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Boston: David Godine, 1986. (See the last chapter, "Books for Collectors," for an introduction to Italian humanist manuscripts.)
De la Mare, Albinia C. The Handwriting of Italian Humanists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Destrez, Jean. La pecia dans les manuscripts universitaires du XII et du XIV siècles, Paris: J. Vautrain, 1935.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Latin Manuscript Books before 1600: A List of the Printed Catalogues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections, 3rd ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 1965.
—. Iter Italicum: A Ending List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, Vol. 2. London: Warburg Institute, 1967.
Lowe, Elias Avery. The Beneventan Script: A History of the South Italian Minuscule. Oxford: Clarendon, 1914. (See also 2nd ed., prepared and enlarged by Virginia Brown. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1980.)
—. Scriptura Beneventana: Facsimiles of South Italian and Dalmatian Manuscripts from the Sixth to the Fourteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1929.
—. Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, Vols. 1-13. Oxford: Clarendon, 1934-. (See Vol. 4 for Italian libraries.)
Mallon, Jean. Paléographie romaine. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto Antonio de Nebrija de Filología, 1952.
Melnikas, Anthony. The Corpus of the Miniatures in the Manuscripts of Decretum Gratiani, 3 vols. Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1975.
Poole, Reginald Lane. Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery Down to the Time of Innocent III. Cambridge: University Press, 1915.
Richardson, L. "The Libraries of Pompeii." Archaeology, 30, 1977, pp. 394-402.
Segre Montel, Costanza. I manoscritti miniati della Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino, Vol. 1, I manoscritti latini dal VII alla metà del XIII secolo. Turin: G. Molfese, 1980.
Thomson, S. Harrison. Latin Book Hands of the Middle Ages 1100-1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Turrini, Giuseppe. Millenium Scriptoris Veronensis dal IV al XV secolo: Pagine scelte da codici della Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona. Verona: Edizioni Veldonega, 1967.
Ullman, Berthold. Ancient Writing and Its Influence. New York: Longmans, Green, 1932. (Basic introduction, with transcripts of the plates; concentrates on early and humanistic scripts. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.)
—. The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960.
Wardrop, James. The Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script, 1460-1560. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.
Weitzmann, Kurt. Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination. New York: George Braziller, 1977.
Palermo, known in antiquity as Panormus, was originally a major city of the Phoenicians. It came under the increasing influence of the Greeks following their defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 B.C. In the course of the Punic wars, Palermo came under Roman control and developed as a major port city of the republic and the empire. With the collapse of Roman power, it was seized at various times by the Vandals of Gaiseric and the Ostrogoths of Theodoric. In 535 Justinian's general Belisarius brought it under Byzantine rule, which continued until the Saracens seized it in 831 and made it the capital of the powerful emirate they established in Sicily.
Under the Saracens, Palermo became one of the great cities of the Mediterranean world, the equal of Cordoba and Cairo in commerce and in culture. Not until two centuries later were Palermo's Arab glories superseded by the beginnings of the Norman era. In 1072 Count Roger I of Hauteville, younger brother of Robert Guiscard, seized the city and made it the capital of the new Norman regime. Roger's son, Roger II, expanding power on the mainland at the expense of his cousins, had himself formally crowned with the title of king on Christmas day 1130 in the cathedral in Palermo. The city continued as one of the capitals of Norman southern Italy and the capital of Sicily itself through the ensuing Norman and Hohenstaufen era.
Dazzled by the richly diverse Arab, Greek, and Latin culture flourishing in Sicily, the new Norman masters created and enjoyed a multicultural assimilation, as the monuments of their artistic and intellectual patronage testify. Palermo's vivid cultural life was further expanded by Frederick II, who made his court there a center for poets, philosophers, scientists, and other scholars. The Italian literary tradition began at this court with the lyrics of such poets as Giacomo da Lentini, Piero delle Vigne, and Guido delle Colonne. The defeat of the Hohenstaufen and the introduction of French rule under Charles of Anjou inaugurated a period during which Sicily became a center of international contention. According to tradition, the incident of 31 March 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers occurred in the church of the Santo Spirito on the outskirts of Palermo, leading to the expulsion of the Angevins and the introduction of Aragonese rule in Sicily. Under Peter III and his successors, Sicily enjoyed general prosperity and peace, even though its Aragonese rulers were intermittently drawn into conflict with the Angevin dynasts on the mainland.
Almost nothing survives of Phoenician and Roman Panormus; and except for a few fragments, everything that had been constructed during the two centuries of Arab rule was obliterated, deliberately and all but completely, in the era of intolerant Spanish rule. Something of the splendor of Sicily's Islamic culture was, however, brilliantly assimilated into the city's medieval Christian culture, thanks to the multicultural tastes of the Norman rulers, partially extended under the Hohenstaufen.
The earliest Norman structure in Palermo—indeed, one of the earliest of all surviving Norman churches in Italy—is the church of San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi, built (according to tradition) c. 1070 by Roger I, but possibly refurbished by Roger II, who attached to it an asylum for lepers. It is built on a strict basilican plan, topped by a cupola colored red on the outside in characteristic Norman-Sicilian style. From the time of Roger II himself survive the charming remains of the church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, built 1132-1148 and incorporating earlier structures, apparently from an Arab mosque. Attached to this church is a romantically ruined cloister, and the whole ensemble is now preserved within a picturesque garden complex.
Church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, Palermo. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Not far away is the massive Norman palace, built on Saracen foundations, much expanded and modified later in the era of Spanish rule, and now the seat of Sicily's parliament. Much of its Norman core still survives, including parts of the Norman royal apartments. Most interesting of these is called the Sala di Re Ruggero; its walls are sheathed in marble and its ceiling is decorated with twelfth-century mosaic scenes of nature and hunting.
Apse of duomo, Palermo. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
The most important feature of the palace, and perhaps the jewel of Norman art in Sicily, is the Palatine Chapel (Cappella Palatina), begun by Roger II in 1142, the foundation charter having been issued in 1140. In its vestibule is an inscription of 1143 celebrating Roger's building of a water clock; the multilingual text (Latin, Greek, Arabic) testifies to the multicultural character of Sicily, which was cherished by the Norman rulers. The church is laid out on a small basilican plan: according to some interpretations it began as two separate rooms—a small chapel in Byzantine style adjoining the royal apartments, and an audience hall in Saracen style—that were then combined into one. The high arcade of the nave is supported by ten reused Roman columns, and the top of both the nave and the side aisles is covered with an elaborate wooden ceiling decorated richly with Arab secular paintings. The lower walls are covered with marble, topped with abstract Arabic designs; the floor is decorated with rich marble geometric patterns. Before the raised choir, on the south side, is an elaborate pulpit and a stone paschal candelabrum, in the finest Norman Romanesque style. Parts of the choir have been heavily altered, but the conch of the central apse preserves the earliest of the great Byzantine-Norman mosaics of Christ as Pantocrator. The walls, vaults, and dome of the church are covered with dazzling mosaics; the initial cycles were executed by Byzantine artists during the 1140s, following essentially traditional Byzantine iconography and disposition. The medallion of Christ Pantocrator is set in the cupola, surrounded by archangels, above figures from the Old and New Testaments. Scenes from the life of Christ adorn the presbytery walls. The mosaics of the nave date from the period of William II. Along the upper walls of the nave and above the arcades are bands of scenes from the Old Testament, beginning with the creation and ending with the story of Jacob. Along the side aisles other mosaics represent episodes from the Book of Acts, primarily concerning saints Peter and Paul. These two saints also appear in a fifteenth-century mosaic, on either side of the enthroned Christ, symbolically placed over the much-revised royal throne as the chapel's west wall.
Two other examples of Norman palaces survive in Palermo, though much transformed. In royal parks on the fringe of the medieval city, the twelfth-century monarchs built summer palaces in explicitly Arab style. The gardens, with their cooling fountains, are long gone, and the surviving buildings have been dreadfully mutilated over time. One of them, the Cuba (from the Arabic kubeh, "dome"), built by William II and mentioned by Boccaccio in the Decameron, is dilapidated and inaccessible amid a modern military installation. The other, William I's Zisa (Arabic el aziz, "the magnificent"), has, however, been restored after postmedieval remodeling, modern decay, and even partial collapse, and has now been developed as a museum of Arabic culture in Sicily. It is a marvel of Islamic Mediterranean design, with beveled interior arches and hydraulic systems cunningly contrived to circulate air, with a remarkable cooling effect. Its top floor was originally open to the sky, and at its ground-floor facade a water outlet is decorated richly in Norman mosaic.
Close to the Cappella Palatina in date (perhaps slightly earlier) and parallel in its original decoration is the church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, now popularly known as the Martorana, begun in 1143 by Roger II's powerful admiral George of Antioch. In 1433 the church was given to a convent founded by one Eloisa Martorana, from whom it has taken its popular name. The western part of the church was greatly expanded and rebuilt in 1588, incorporating it into a twelfth-century campanile. Of its revised interior, the original eastern part of the church, in the form of a Greek cross, is richly decorated in mosaics executed by Byzantine artists. Its dome contains the Pantocrator medallion with conventional accompanying figures; major mosaic panels show scenes from Christ's life, with portraits of saints Anna and Joachim. The pavement of polychrome marble is very fine. Relocated to the sides of the rebuilt atrium are a pair of mosaic panels: the panel on the north side shows George of Antioch prostrate before the Virgin; the panel on the south side shows a famous and politically potent image of Roger II, garbed as a Byzantine emperor, being crowned by Christ.
La Zisa, Palermo. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
Immediately adjacent to the Martorana is another interesting church produced by private Norman patronage. This is the chapel of San Cataldo, built by William I's chancellor, Maione di Bari, whose premature death in 1160 prevented the internal decoration from being carried out. The bareness of the chapel, however, allows close study of the masonry construction, especially that of its three domes on squinches. Rescued from degeneration and restored, it is now the headquarters of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. One other testimonial to twelfth-century private benevolence brings us back to George of Antioch: the Ponte d'Ammiraglio, built in 1113 at the southern end of the city, originally over the Oreto River. The river was later diverted, and the bridge is now lovingly preserved in a park enclave. This bridge was the scene of an important skirmish between the forces of Garibaldi and Bourbon troops on 27 May 1860, during Garibaldi's seizure of Palermo.
Palermo's massive cathedral is a hodgepodge of styles. Its predecessor was used as an Arab mosque, of which tiny fragments may be traced. The present structure was first begun in 1185 by the powerful archbishop Walter of the Mill (known accordingly by the locals as Gualtiero Offamiglio), and some of its original stonework may still be seen in the exterior decoration of the apses, with typical Norman-Sicilian interlaced arches. Its later Gothic remodeling includes the sumptuous south portico (1453), in Catalan-Aragonese style. The interior was completely transformed in the Baroque style during the eighteenth century. Crammed into a double chapel at the southwest corner are the relocated tombs of the Norman and Hohenstaufen dynasts: the massive sarcophagi contain Roger II (d. 1154); the German emperor Henry VI (d. 1197); Henry's wife (Roger II's daughter), Constance d'Hauteville (d. 1198); Henry and Constance's famous son Frederick II (d. 1250); one of Frederick's wives, Empress Constance of Aragon (d. 1222); and other family members. The treasury of the cathedral contains, among other things, objects taken from Empress Constance's tomb, including her elegant crown. In the crypt are a number of episcopal and other tombs, including that of Walter of the Mill himself.
The formidable Walter's hand may be found again, south of the city's center, in the church of Santo Spirito, built by him in 1173-1178. Though it has no important interior decoration, its exterior stonework is very handsome. As noted above, its site, which was originally on the fringe of the city, is famous for the incident that initiated the Sicilian Vespers. The church is now surrounded by one of Palermo's major cemeteries, itself a fascinating cultural spectacle.
See also Arabs in Italy; Charles I of Anjou; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Giacomo da Lentini; Guido delle Colonne; Normans; Palatine Chapel; Peter III of Aragon; Philagathus of Cerami; Pier delle Vigne; Roger I; Roger II; Sicilian Vespers; Sicily; William I; William II
JOHN w. BARKER
Borsook, Eve. Messages in Mosaic: The Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily, 1130-1187. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
Deér, József. The Dynastic Porphyry Tombs of the Norman Period in Sicily, trans. G. A. Gillhoff. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 5. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959.
Demus, Otto. The Mosaics of Norman Sicily. London: Routledge and Paul, 1950.
Kitzinger, Ernst. "The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo: An Essay on the Choice and Arrangements of Subjects." Art Bulletin, 31, 1949, pp. 269-292. (Reprinted in Ernst Kitzinger. The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies, ed. W. E. Kleinbauer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, pp. 290-319.)
—. "Mosaic Decoration in Sicily under Roger II and the Classical Byzantine System of Church Decoration." In Italian Church Decoration of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, ed. William Tronzo. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1989, pp. 147-165.
—. The Mosaics of Saint Mary's of the Admiral in Palermo. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1991. (With a chapter on the architecture by Slobodan Čurčić. Originally published as I mosaici di Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio a Palermo. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1990.)
—. I mosaici del periodo normanno in Sicilia, 6 vols. Palermo: Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere, e Arti di Palermo, 1992-.
Tronzo, William. The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Palestrina, the ancient Latin city of Praeneste, is located in Latium. The original colony was attributed to Telegonus, son of Ulysses; but the historic emergence of the city can be dated to the eighth century B.C. In 499 B.C. it became an ally of Rome; but its relationship with Rome was a shifting one, and not until the first century B.C. did it became firmly defined as a Roman municipality. Because of its alliance with Marius during the civil wars, the city was punished by Sulla, who for a while made it a military colony; however, it regained its full municipal status under Tiberius.
In antiquity the city became most celebrated for its sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, which crowned the peak of the hilltop site. The sanctuary had originated during the city's earliest era as a modest shrine but was rebuilt on a grand scale in the years following Sulla's devastation of the city. The spectacular vastness of the temple's complex as it developed in the early imperial period can still be imagined from the remains to be found on the modern site. Although Christianity arrived by the late third century, the city remained essentially pagan for many generations, and the famous shrine was used by Emperor Julian as one of his centers for a pagan revival. The final suppression of Praeneste's pagan cult by Theodosius the Great led to the abandonment of the sanctuary and its rapid decay. The much-reduced medieval city was built into the sanctuary's ruins.
During the early centuries of the medieval period Palestrina was reduced to a fortress guarding the fringes of the papal states under the immediate rule of local feudal lords, the first of whom were the counts of Tusculum. In the early twelfth century the Colonna family made it one of their particular strongholds. In 1297, with the counsel of Guido da Montefeltro, Pope Boniface VIII, during his campaign against the Colonna, besieged and devastated the city, except for the cathedral. He rebuilt the town at the foot of the hill, giving it the name Civitas Papalis, but this city was destroyed by a fire in 1300. In 1307, when the papacy was absent in Avignon, Stefano Colonna reclaimed Palestrina and made it a fortress for his struggle with Cola di Rienzo. In 1436 Cardinal Vitelleschi, legate of Pope Eugenius IV, captured and destroyed Palestrina. In 1448 the Colonna rebuilt the city, which was eventually sold, in 1630, to Carlo Barberini, the brother of Pope Urban VIII.
See also Boniface VIII, Pope; Colonna Family; Guido da Montefeltro; Rome
JOHN W. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Cecconi, Leonardo. Storia di Palestrina città del prisco lazio. Ascoli: N. Ricci, 1756.
Fasolo, Furio, and Giorgio Gullini. Il santuario della Fortuna primigenia a Palestrina. Rome: Istituto di Archeologia, Università di Roma, 1953.
Gatti, Sandra, and Nadia Agnoli. Palestrina: Santuario della Fortuna primigenia, Museo archeologico prenestino. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 2001.
Magoffin, Ralph Van Deman. A Study of the Topography and Municipal History of Praeneste. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1908.
Pandulf I (Pandulph Ironhead, d. 981) became prince of Capua-Benevento in 961, succeeding his father, Landuif II. Pandulf came to the favorable notice of the newly crowned Roman emperor Otto I by giving asylum to Otto's pope, John XIII, when John was driven from Rome by the populace. As a result, Otto I made Pandulf marquis of Spoleto and Camerino (967) and in return Pandulf became Otto's vassal for Capua-Benevento. Pandulf was expected to have an important part in Otto's plans for attaching all of southern Italy to the northern part of the Italian kingdom, but these plans were effectively blocked by the Byzantines' resistance. However, when Gisulf I of Salerno was overthrown by a revolt in,974, Pandulf reinstated him and in return was given the succession in Salerno for himself and his son. The addition of Salerno to Pandulf's other holdings in Capua-Benevento and Spoleto-Camerino meant that for the period 974-981 Pandulf ruled Italy from Ancona to the edge of Calabria. As much the strongest of the Italian territorial divisions, Pandulf's holdings formed an effective buffer between German and Byzantine interests. For a brief time, Pandulf's prestige was quite dazzling; he played a significant role, after Liudprand of Cremona's failure, in the diplomatic negotiations that brought about marriage between the Byzantine princess Theophano and the future Otto II.
After the death of Pandulf, his territories were split up. Spoleto reverted to northern rulers; Salerno was temporarily occupied by Amalfi; Capua and Benevento were again split apart and divided between Pandulf's sons and a nephew. The south was not to be united to the north.
See also Benevento; Capua; Salerno; Theophano
KATHERINE FISCHER DREW
Cilento, Nicola. Italia meridionale Longobarda, 2nd ed. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1971.
Kreutz, Barbara M. Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Pochettino, Giuseppe. I Langobardi nell'Italia meridionale (570-1080). Naples: A. Guida, 1930.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.
The name Pantaleo, which recurs often among the males, is applied as a surname to all the members of a large, long-lived, and successful lineage of Amalfitan merchants active from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. Since the name Pantaleone seems to have been common in southern Campania during the Middle Ages, scholars are wary of presuming relationships among Pantaleones whose association with the mercantile family is not explicitly stated in the sources. Although the Life of Saint Elias of Enna mentions a bishop Pantaleone in North Africa in 862, and although very numerous tenth-century charters record the transactions of other Pantaleones in Amalfi and its environs, the family's most reliably documented period falls in the eleventh century. During that period the dynasty produced two of the earliest cosmopolitan merchant-magnates in western history.
Maurus "the Count" (died c. 1071), who called himself consul and lord in inscriptions, was the most notable member of what he called "an illustrious house of Amalfi." Like others in his family, he made and administered a fortune trading luxury goods (and perhaps agricultural products) among Byzantium, the Islamic states, and Italy. In Constantinople, where he lived, he was the leader of the flourishing Amalfitan community. Describing himself as "black with sin" (a play on the Latin meaning of his name), he chose in old age to found and endow Christian charitable institutions in Antioch and Jerusalem (with the caliph's assent), and to make pious donations elsewhere. He became a monk at Monte Cassino in 1071, after donating Byzantine bronze doors to the abbey.
Of Maurus's six sons, Pantaleo likewise became a prominent merchant in Constantinople and the donor of bronze doors to several churches: the cathedral in Amalfi, Saint Paul's in Rome, and Saint Michael's on the Gargano. Pantaleo's career as a pan-Mediterranean diplomat representing Amalfitan and family interests suggests the wealth and connections of the Pantaleones. He sought first to free Amalfi from the yoke of the prince of Salerno (1052) and then to rid the region of the Normans. In pursuit of this latter objective he dealt with Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors, southern Italian princes, Apulian cities, and popes, coordinating unstable anti-Norman leagues. Pantaleo was a force in city affairs long after the Normans took Amalfi (1073): in 1087 he outfitted the Amalfitan contingent for the Italian expedition against Tunisia. His descendants were active in Levantine trade and, increasingly, Campanian landholding for three centuries thereafter.
The Pantaleones avoided political office but never honorary titles, concentrating on commerce throughout their documented existence. Their passionate attachment to homeland and family, even when they resided far from Amalfi, was typical of medieval Italian traders.
See also Amain; Monte Cassino, Monastery
PAOLO SQUATRITI
Amatus of Montecassino. Storia de' Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. Vincenzo De Bardiolomaeis. Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1935.
Benzo of Alba. Ad Henricum IV Libri, ed. K. Pertz. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, 11. Hannover: Hahn, 1854.
Marsicanus, Leo. Chronica monasterii Cassinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, 34. Hannover: Hahn, 1980.
Bloch, Herbert. Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, Vol. 1(2). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Citareila, Armand. "Patterns of Medieval Trade." Journal of Economic History, 28, 1968, pp. 531-555.
Del Treppo, Mario, and Alfonso Leone. Amalfi medioevale. Naples: Giannini, 1977.
Gies, Joseph, and Frances Gies. Merchants and Moneymen: The Commercial Revolution, 1000-1500. New York: Crowell, 1972, ch. 1.
Hofmeister, A. "Der Übersetzer Johannes und das Geschlecht Comitis Mauronis in Amalfi." Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 27, 1932, pp. 225-284, 493-508, 831-833. (Keystone for all successive research; see p. 508 for a family tree.)
Kreutz, Barbara M. Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Michel, Anton. Amalfi und Jerusalem im griechischen Kirchenstreit (1054-1090): Kardinal Humbert, Laycus von Amalfi, Niketas Stethatos, Symeon II. von Jerusalem, und Bruno von Segni über die Azymen. Rome: Pont. Instituturn Orientalium Studiorum, 1939.
Renouard, Yves. Les hommes d'affaires italiens du moyen ate. Paris: A. Colin, 1968.
Schwarz, Ulrich. Amalfi im frühen Mittelalter (9.—11. Jh.): Unters. zur Amalfitaner Überlieferung. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1978.
The poet Panuccio del Bagno (c. 1230-no later than 1276) was born to a wealthy Ghihelline merchant family of Pisa. His extant works, which survive in only two manuscripts, include a total of twenty-two poems, perhaps the beginning of a small canzoniere. He was the most talented of the thirteenth-century Pisan poets and was evidently quite influential among his contemporaries. His literary models were found largely in the poetry of the Provencals and the Sicilian school, and there is no doubt that he was much impressed by Guittone (as is clear in Amor sa il meo volere miso dt sovra and Sovmpiagente mia gioia gioiosa). Panuccio, like Guittone, is concerned with the emotional struggles of the individual and the power of love, but he consistently underscores the moral as well as the psychological dimensions of his own personal struggle (as in Raprezentando a chanoscensa vostra). In this sense he is considered by some scholars to be one of the forerunners of the stil novo and essential to the introspective verses of Cavalcanti. Panuccio's style is marked by frequent use of hyperbaton (a figure of speech in which the logical order of words or phrases is inverted) and internal rhyme as well as a preference for difficult, almost scholastic, syntax.
See also Cavalcanti, Guido; Dolce Stil Nuovo; Guittone d'Arezzo
MICHAEL PAPIO
Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol, 1, pp. 299-313.
The Poetry of Panuccio del Bagno, ed. Mark Musa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965.
Le rime di Panuccio del Bagno, ed. Franca Brambilla Ageno. Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1977.
The composer Paolo da Firenze (Tenorista, Magister Dominus Paulus Abbas de Florentia; d. September 1419) was born sometime in the latter half of the fourteenth century and became a Camaldolese monk; he died in the order's monastery of San Viti (Arezzo). He was a member of the final generation of Italian Trecento composers and is a connecting figure between Francesco Landini of the earlier generation and Andrea da Firenze of his own, both of whom he seems to have known well. Paolo is supposed to have accompanied one patron, Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli, to Rome c. 1404; and one of his madrigals, Godi, Firençe (with a text from Dante's Commedia: Inferno, 26), was clearly composed to celebrate Florence's conquest of Pisa in 1406.
Paolo was not only an active and admired composer but a learned and distinguished music theorist. Though the issue is hotly contested, some scholars have argued that he played a crucial role in assembling the famous Squarcialupi Codex. If so, it is ironic that, although his supposed portrait appears in the codex, the place reserved for his own musical works was left as seventeen blank folios; his surviving works are preserved in other Tuscan manuscripts.
These works comprise, beyond two scant Latin liturgical pieces, a sizable body of Italian vocal music. Attributed with relative certainty are twenty-two ballate, variously for two or three voices; and eleven madrigals, all for two voices. There are also two more ballate that survive as fragments; and thirteen other ballate, variously for two or three voices, which are preserved in one manuscript where the attributions of his name have been erased, leaving us uncertain as to their authenticity.
On the one hand, Paolo impresses for his conservatism. He is unusual in clinging to the madrigal, an older form bypassed by most musicians of his generation. In both of his vocal forms, Paolo generally seems to continue the traditions of his older colleague, Landini. On the other hand, Paolo's writing clearly shows an assimilation not only of more progressive Italian styles but also of some influence from French styles of the late ars nova. Though his vocal lines are simple and clearly Italianate in tradition, he attempts to go beyond earlier flexibility and construct compositions with an overall logic of motivic development. His two liturgical works also show him combining Italianate vocal lines with cantus firmus material after the French polyphonic manner. He seems to have known something of Johannes Ciconia and Ciconia's work. Paolo belongs to a trend that envisioned a fusion of French and Italian elements at the dawn of the Qiiattrocento.
See also Andrea da Firenze; Ars Nova; Ciconia, Johannes; Landing Francesco; Squarcialupi Codex
JOHN w. BARKER
Becherini, Bianca. "Antonio Squarcialupi e il codice Mediceo Palatino 87." In L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento: Primo convegno internazionale 23-26 luglio 1959, ed. Bianca Becherini. Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, 1962, pp. 140-180.
Corsi, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1970.
Fischer, Kurt von. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Bern: P. Haupt, 1956.
—. "Paolo da Firenze und der Squarcialupi-Kodex (I-Fl 87)." Quadrivium, 9, 1968, pp. 5-29.
Fischer, Kurt von, and F. Alberto Gallo, eds. Italian Sacred Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 12. Monaco: Éditions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1976.
Königsglow, Annamarie von. Die italienischen Madrigalisten des Trecento. Würzburg: Triltsch, 1940.
Li Gotti, Ettore, and Nino Pirrotta. "Paolo Tenorista fiorentino extra moenia." In Estudios dedicados a Mendénez Pidal, Vol. 3. Madrid, 1952, pp. 577-606.
Marrocco, William Thomas, ed. Italian Secular Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 9. Monaco: Éditions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1975.
Pirrotta, Nino. "Paolo da Firenze in un nuovo frammento dell'Ars Nova." Musica Disciplina, 10, 1956, pp. 61-66.
—, ed. Paolo Tenorista in a New Fragment of the Italian Ars Nova. Palm Springs, Calif.: Gottlieb, 1961.
Pirrotta, Nino, and Ursula Gunther, eds. The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, Vol. 6. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 8(6). Rome: American Institute of Musicology, n.d.
Seay, Albert. "Paolo da Firenze: A Trecento Theorist." In L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento: Primo convegno internazionale 23-26 luglio 1959, ed. Bianca Becherini. Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, 1962, pp. 118-140.
Wolf, Johannes. "Florenz in der Musikgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts." Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3, 1901-1902, 599-646. (Leipzig.)
Paolo da Perugia (d. 1348), a man of letters, was born in Perugia (as his name indicates), came to Naples as an adult, and spent the rest of his life there. By 1324 he had been admitted to the Angevin court, where he was employed by King Robert as a secretaries and notary in the chancery, and as a lay cleric for the royal chapel. Whatever his official titles, it appears that he was also in charge of the richly endowed royal library in the Castel Nuovo ("new castle"). Evidence suggests that he was married, had many children, and died in poverty (of the plague) while working on a commentary on Justinian's codification of Roman law.
Paolo's most important work was a compendium of ancient myths, Collectiones, which does not survive. An abbreviated version of this collection suggests that its basic organizing principle was genealogical, and this may have influenced his young acquaintance at Robert's court, Giovanni Boccaccio, in the design for his own work on mythology, Genealogie deorum gentilium (Genealogies of the Pagan Gods). The short outline version of Paolo's Collectiones is preserved in manuscript Magliabechiano 122, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Hortis 1879), perhaps thanks to Boccaccio, who drew on it for his work. Indeed, in Genealogie (15.6) Boccaccio speaks of Paolo's wonderful intellectual talents and laments his lost masterpiece, relating the story of how Paolo's less than generous widow, Biella, destroyed not only this major book but many others.
Two of Paolo's works have survived intact: one commentary on Horace's An poetica and another on Persius's Satires. In the latter work Paolo presents the life of Persius, discusses the genre of satire in general, and then undertakes a systematic and detailed analysis of the text. It is possible to discern certain prehumanistic attitudes and characteristics that were present in the Angevin court in Naples—in particular, the consideration of classical texts on their own merits, largely independent of any reconciliation with Christian doctrine, and a more refined critical and historical sensitivity toward classical material. It was the wide range of important texts (in both Greek and Latin) readily available in the royal library that made these investigations possible. The Neapolitan court was also frequented by the Calabrian monk Barlaam, who no doubt had a decisive impact on Paolo's knowledge of Greek mythological sources and compilations. Moreover, Barlaam met Boccaccio in Naples and later met Petrarch at the papal court in Avignon, and both authors began their study of Greek with Barlaam.
See also Andalò di Negro; Barlaam; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Naples; Petrarca, Francesco; Robert of Anjou
CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Boccaccio on Poetry, trans. Charles G. Osgood. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1930. (Reprint, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955.)
Ghisalberti, Fausto. "Paolo da Perugia, commentatore di Persio." Rendiconti del Reale Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, 62, 1929, pp. 535-598.
Hortis, Attilio. Studj suite opere latine del Boccaccio. Trieste: J. Dase, 1879, pp. 494-498, 525-536.
Sabatini, Francesco. Napoli angioina: cultura e società. Naples. Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1975.
Torraca, Francesco. "Giovanni Boccaccio a Napoli." Archivio Storico Napoletano, 39, 1914, pp. 229-267. (Reprinted in Rassegna Critica della Letteratura Italiana, 20, 1915; and 21, 1916.)
The title pope (Latin papa, "father") for the bishop of Rome is found occasionally from the mid-fourth century on. Beginning in the mid-fifth century, it became familiar in the west, having spread there from the east, where it was customarily used for abbots, bishops, and patriarchs. In Roman Catholic doctrine the preeminence or primacy of the pope over the church on earth rests on a particular understanding of several passages in the New Testament. The popes are the direct, legal (Leo I) successors of the apostle Peter, who had obtained primacy among the apostles from Christ himself. The most famous of the Petrine passages is "You are Peter and on this rock (petram) I shall build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. And I shall give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you shall bind upon earth will also be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth will also be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:18-19). However, even this passage was not free of ambiguity, especially in contrast with other New Testament passages that indicate equality among the apostles, or variations in the understanding of the term "rock." For the historical development of the papacy and thus of papal primacy (implied in the western understanding), therefore, tradition precedes doctrine in importance.
At least since the end of the first century, the Christian community in Rome assumed as common knowledge that both Peter and Paul lived and were martyred there. Although the oldest extant lists of Roman bishops from the late second century did not include the name of Peter as first bishop of the city, he was commemorated from about this period at the site of the Vatican. Recent excavations under the Confessio in Saint Peter's basilica seem to indicate that one tomb was especially venerated since the mid-second century. It served as focus for other tombs that surrounded it. The preeminence of the bishop of Rome both as claimed by the papacy and as recognized by the church at large developed ever more rapidly from then on, but by no means in a straight line. Irenaeus, c. 180, takes the church of Rome as an authoritative touchstone of Christian tradition. Pope Calixtus I (r. 217—222) based his legalization of marriages between noblewomen and Christian slaves on the authority of the cathedra (teaching chair) of the Roman church which he occupied, thus adumbrating the theory of apostolic succession. Canon 6 from the Council of Nicaea (325) could still speak of Rome as just one of the patriarchal sees, but by the time of Pope Damasus I (r. 366-384) the African bishop Optatus of Mileve in his writings against the Donatists recognized the special dignity of Rome, and Emperor Gratian supported the papal claim to authority over the bishops of Latin Christendom.
Largely because Emperor Constantine I had moved the capital to Constantinople, the patriarch of Constantinople soon asserted rival claims (Council of Constantinople, 381; Council of Chalcedon, 451). The popes, however, began to fill the vacuum that the decline of imperial authority had left in the west. Particularly significant were the reigns of popes Leo I (440-461) and Gelasius I (492-496). Leo, supported by Emperor Valentinian III, assumed authority over the church of Gaul; took the title pontifex maximus, which the emperors had abandoned; and claimed unique authority as heir of the apostle Peter. In 494, Gelasius I wrote a famous letter to Emperor Anastasius describing the division of authority in this world—"There are two things, august emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority of bishops and the royal power"—asserting that in matters spiritual (e.g., Christological definitions) kings were subject to the bishops, just as bishops owed obedience to the emperors in temporal affairs. This letter received differing interpretations, last but not least by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085), who used excerpts from it to document the inferiority of the monarchy to the priesthood. However, Gelasius appears to have asserted merely ecclesiastical independence, outlining the dual theory of authority, so characteristic of the west until the eleventh-century reform. The legislation of Emperor Justinian, the novels (new supplementary constitutions) of his collection later known as Corpus iuris civilis (533), includes as novel 6 a text emphasizing the responsibilities of the priesthood for eternal salvation and of the emperors for civil peace, principles clearly recalling Gelasius's statement. However, in contrast to the papacy, the statement implied for Justinian a supreme imperial obligation to preserve the Christian faith and ecclesiastical discipline. Novel 131, for example, decreed the equal rank of the first four ecumenical councils with the four gospels; novel 132 placed the responsibility for the elimination of heresies and heretics squarely on the imperial government. The imperial responsibility for the well-being of the church and the civil duties of the clergy, especially important in the west, meant that nominations to bishoprics were of vital interest to and consequently influenced by the emperors. This applied especially to Rome and to Constantinople.
The barbarian invasions and the establishment of barbarian kingdoms in the western Roman empire diminished Byzantine influence in Italian affairs, although Constantinople continued to control the papacy as far as possible. The late seventh century and the first half of the eighth century are known as the age of the Greek popes. This does not mean, however, that the Latin or Italian popes of the period were less dependent on Constantinople than popes of eastern origin (like Syrians or Palestinians) were. Greek influence predominated in shaping the papacy of the period as well as the city of Rome. Examples are the liturgy and the organization of the landed property of the church. By the sixth century, the papacy had become at least nominally the largest landowner in Italy. Pope Gregory I the Great (r. 590-604), sometimes described as the first ot the medieval popes, is an outstanding example of the role of the papacy; his writings deeply influenced medieval Europe, and, apart from Augustine of Hippo, he is the only Latin church father. Gregory was a descendant of the Roman senatorial aristocracy, and he followed the cursus honorum of a Roman administrator, becoming prefect of the city and serving as papal envoy to Constantinople. He withdrew to lead a monastic life on his estates but was elected to the papacy in 590. From then until his death in 604, he once again served Rome, combining in effect both secular and spiritual leadership. Because the Byzantines were unable to defend Italy or Rome against the Lombards, Gregory himself negotiated with the invaders, tried to maintain the defenses of the city, and reorganized the administration of the vast estates of the church so as to provide foodstuffs for the starving population as well as for the church. His decision in 594 to send a group of monastic missionaries under Augustine to Anglo-Saxon England was very influential in establishing close links between England and Rome, or rather between England and Saint Peter. The special reverence for Peter among Englishmen is illustrated as early as the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History (735) and again by Anglo-Saxon missionaries such as Willibrord and in particular Boniface (martyred 754 in Frisia), who had obtained the backing of the papacy for his missions among the eastern Franks, I huringians, and Frisians. The personal and individualized holiness of the Scottish (i.e., Irish-Celtic) missionaries of an earlier period was now overlaid by Roman patterns of episcopal and monastic organization. The influence of Gregory I, therefore, can hardly be exaggerated. Gregory is also responsible for coining the title "servant of the servants of God," which to this day conveys a strong spiritual message: "Its sublime humility made a striking contrast with the proud title of 'ecumenical patriarch' which the bishops of New Rome had adopted" (Kuttner 1981). Gregory was horrified by the use of the terms "ecumenical," "imperial," and "universal," because he looked to a universal church whose only head was Christ, and he emphasized that no pope had ever taken the headship. Gregory had found a balance between personal humility and the great dignity of his office that was not to last into the high Middle Ages or even into the seventh century, when several popes accepted the title "universal" bestowed on them by the councils or in letters of the emperors. During the eleventh-century reform, Pope Leo IX (r. 1049-1054) would still preserve the heritage of Gregory I, rejecting the title "universal patriarch" for himself and reprimanding the patriarch of Constantinople for using it. Not much later, though, Pope Gregory VII would formulate in his Dictatus papae the proposition "The Roman pontiff alone is by right called universal." Whatever the nature of this document in the official register may have been, it does express the thought as well as the practice of the seventh Gregory and heralds the papal monarchy.
The centuries separating Gregory I and Gregory VII brought important changes to the papacy. The consequences of these changes were the problems characteristic of the medieval papacy: its dependence on the Roman nobility, its relationship with Prankish or German rulers, and the creation and defense of the papal states. Increased tension between Constantinople and Rome led gradually to Rome's separation from the Byzantine empire. In the eighth century, two crucial issues divided them: taxation and the cult of images. In 717-718, Emperor Leo III had successfully defeated the Muslims' attack on Constantinople. His reorganization of army and administration in order to reconquer Asia Minor required an increase in taxes, which were to be levied also from ecclesiastical property, including the papal lands in Italy. Pope Gregory II (r. 715-731) refused to go along, and imperial agents sent to arrest him failed in face of resistance in Rome and throughout Byzantine Italy. The question of the veneration of images, finally prohibited by Leo's son Constantine V at the council of Heracleia of 754, caused additional uprisings. The papacy objected to Iconoclasm and as one result lost its jurisdiction over the Byzantine vicariates of Saloniki as well as Sicily and southern Italy. Leo III transferred the areas to the patriarch of Constantinople, in effect largely restricting landownership by the papacy and restricting its corresponding influence to central and northern Italy. Somewhat ironically, this was to lead to a pronounced intensification of the influence of the papacy on Italy, and in fact to the creation of the "republic of Saint Peter," for a time still nominally under the sovereignty of the emperor but practically controlled by the pope and the Roman nobility. It was, therefore, also the papacy that had to confront the continued expansion of the Lombards in Italy at the expense of Rome. The Lombard king Aistulf had conquered the remnant of the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna, forced independent Lombard dukes in southern Italy to submit to his rule, and then threatened the city of Rome. Negotiations between Pope Stephen II (r. 752-757) and Aistulf failed. Stephen was the first pope to travel to the Frankish empire in search of aid; in 754, at Ponthion, he concluded a treaty with King Pepin, who promised Saint Peter and his vicar parts of Italy that supplemented the patrimony of Saint Peter and became the foundation of what was called later the Papal States. When Aistulf nevertheless continued his conquests in 756, the Franks undertook a successful military campaign, forcing Aistulf to deliver part of the exarchate with Ravenna into the hands of the representative of Saint Peter, the pope. Pepin's emissary, Abbot Fulrad of Saint-Denis, deposited the keys of the respective cities at the tomb of Saint Peter. Charlemagne (r. 768-814) was forced to undertake another campaign against the Lombards. On its successful completion in 774, he expanded his father's promise in Rome, Both Pepin and Charles I were given the patrician dignity of Rome, patricius Romanorum. The title was used by the papacy to justify the Franks' interventions in Italy, although King Pepin referred exclusively to his promise to Saint Peter. The veneration of Saint Peter, however, did not prevent Pepin, Charlemagne, or their later successors—including the Ottonian and Salian rulers of Germany—from maintaining a certain degree of sovereignty over the territories that they had granted to Saint Peter and conquered for him. The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor by Pope Leo III (r. 795-816) tended to reinforce such tendencies, although the papacy very likely saw the coronation of the emperors at their hand in Rome as a means of controlling the western emperor. Some claims made by the papacy are embodied in the Donation of Constantine, a forgery probably dating from the second half of the eighth century and originating presumably in papal circles. The Donation is based on the legend of Sylvester I and his purported baptism of Emperor Constantine I, who in gratitude conveyed the imperial sovereignty and all imperial properties in the western Roman empire to the papacy. It is unknown whether the document was actually familiar to the popes, let alone used by them before the tenth century; the forgery exerted its chief influence from the Gregorian reform on. Nevertheless, it is a significant indication of perceptions in Rome.
The decline of Carolingian power provided greater independence for the papacy, but at the same time the popes found themselves defenseless in the face of Saracen and Norman invasions. Even Pope Nicholas I (r. 858-867) could not realize the claims to superiority over the western and eastern emperors or assert his authority over some of the powerful archbishops whose policies he opposed. It is in the reign of Nicholas that the first traces of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals can be detected. This canonical collection—possibly compiled in the archdiocese of Reims as a mosaic of authentic, forged, and falsified texts, chiefly papal letters—whittled away the power of the archbishops in favor of the bishops who could appeal directly to Rome. After Nicholas, the prestige of the papacy quickly reached a low point. For much of the later ninth century, the tenth century, and the early eleventh century, the papacy was in the hands of various factions of the Roman nobility. In 1012, the predominant Crescentians gave way to the Tusculans. Despite the renewal of the imperial power with the coronation of Otto I (r. 936-973) in February 962 by Pope John XII (r. 955-963), it was not until the intervention of Henry III at the synods of Sutri and Rome in 1046 that the papacy could once again pursue a policy independent of the local interests of the Roman nobility. As Roman patrician, Emperor Henry III also determined the following papal elections up to the pontificate of Victor II (1055-1057).
The most prominent among the "German" reform popes is Leo IX (r. 1049-1054). With his pontificate, the papacy took over the leadership of the eleventh-century church reform. Until that time, this reform had been chiefly represented by reformed monasteries (Cluny, Gorze, Pomposa) and individual bishops, princes, and emperors. With the support of Henry III and of his collaborators—with the important exception of Hildebrand (later Pope Gregory VII) and Peter Damian, they were all from north of the Alps—Leo transformed the papacy once again into an international institution with a universal claim to leadership. He did this personally through his many councils and travels as well as through legates and initial steps toward the creation of the college of cardinals. Until then, the suburbicarian (a term designating the dioceses around Rome) cardinal bishops and the Roman cardinal priests and cardinal deacons had largely liturgical functions. Beginning with Leo IX, they became the foremost political advisers to the popes. The Lateran synod held by Pope Nicholas II in 1059 passed, in addition to reform legislation, a decree to regulate future papal elections. The elections were in the first instance entrusted to the cardinal bishops, but by the early twelfth century this influential right was shared by all ranks of cardinals, although the clergy and people of Rome were still excluded. The alliance with the Italian Normans under Pope Nicholas II (Leo IX had pursued the earlier anti-Norman policy of the papacy) and fiscal reforms at the incipient curia further enabled the popes to push their demands for reforms. When Hildebrand was elected to the papacy as Gregory VII in 1073, the demands for moral reforms among the clergy and laity, expressed through legislation against simony and a married clergy (nicolaitism), were overshadowed by a more radical demand for the "liberty" of the church. This call for ecclesiastical freedom could be found earlier, in the writings of Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (d. 1062), but it did not become official papal policy until Gregory's pontificate. Gregory's general prohibition of investiture of future bishops and abbots with ring and staff by King Henry IV (c. 1075) initiated a struggle between church and monarchy for the right order in the world that would not end until the agreements of Worms in 1122-1223. The deposition and excommunication of Henry by the pope seriously weakened the German monarchy. Henry's submission at Canossa was a recognition of the papacy's insistence on obedience from all Christians, including the kings of Europe. In the course of the twelfth century, the theory of the two swords was elaborated, and papal claims that the popes held both the spiritual and the temporal sword (i.e., secular government) were affirmed. The temporal sword was to be held at the behest of the papacy for the defense of the church. The papal monarchy as it evolved in the twelfth and thirteenth century would be unthinkable without Gregory VII, a religious genius inspired by his conviction of the exalted rank of the pope as representative and embodiment of Saint Peter.
These ideas on the part of the papacy necessarily influenced the internal organization of the church as well and are responsible for a pronounced and successful move toward hierarchical organization and toward, for example, the adoption throughout the Latin church of Roman liturgical practices. The new rank of the papacy is evident also in papal leadership in the crusade movement, particularly under Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099), who could, however, look to earlier precedents. For centuries, the papacy in particular was under the influence of the crusading ideal, eventually transposing the ideal of the liberation of Jerusalem—a concept not to be found in Urban's call for the first crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095—to a defense against Turkish attacks. The politically more prominent role of the papacy in the High Middle Ages, supported by the new scientific jurisprudence associated with the growing universities and influenced by developments in Roman law, was not without its dangers, however. In his treatise On Consideration, Bernard of Clairvaux called on Pope Eugene III (r. 1145 -1153), a Cistercian monk, to retain his monastic focus on contemplation, and not to allow secular and especially judicial concerns to dominate his lifestyle or reign.
The pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216) saw the papacy at the zenith of its influence. Indicative of his standing is his intervention both in England and in the Holy Roman Empire. Innocent had studied theology at Paris until 1187 and had continued his studies at Bologna, the citadel of jurisprudence. Therefore, it has long been assumed that at Bologna, Innocent was a student of Huguccio of Pisa (Uguccione da Pisa), one of the most important canon lawyers of the late twelfth century, and that the great skill which Innocent was to show in deciding cases brought before him was due to this legal training. More recently, this assumption has become doubtful; the legal learning displayed so brilliantly in Innocent's decretals may in part reflect the studies of officials of the curia. It can still be said, however, that Innocent III perfectly adapted current canonistic teaching to his needs. He was the first pope to ask a canonist, Peter of Benevento, to compile texts published by Innocent himself into a decretal collection, Collectio tertia, which was officially published in 1210, an excellent means to make papal law the effective law recognized at schools of law and universities, as well as in the courts. In 1226, Honorius III followed in Innocent's footsteps with the publication of Compilatio quinta. Both collections—like other, unofficial private compilations of papal decretal letters—were supplanted by the Liber extra (vagantium) of Pope Gregory IX in 1234.
With the defeat of the last Hohenstaulen heirs of Frederick II and the installation of the house of Anjou in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily by 1268, the papacy had secured political success. But the beginning growth of European nationalism was accompanied by increasing criticism of the condition of the church and disapproval of the use of spiritual means—such as excommunication and marriage—for secular, political ends. The election of the hermit Peter of Morrone to the papacy as Celestine V (the "angel pope") in 1294 was partly a response to a longing for a more spiritual church. But Celestine resigned almost immediately and was succeeded by Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303), who was one of the most imperial figures in the history of the papacy and is the first pope to be represented wearing the papal tiara. Boniface, though, was unable to enforce his claims as expressed in the bull Unam sanctam. Philip the Fair of France emerged as victor in the struggle. The pontificate of Boniface illustrates the power of the French monarchy during the later Middle Ages. The years 1309-1377 were the period of the "Babylonian captivity," when the papacy resided at Avignon, an independent territory until it was acquired by the papacy in 1348, but nonetheless under strong French influence; France began just beyond the Pont d Avignon. With rising fiscal needs—last but not least caused by the attempt to keep control over the papal states from a distance and the obligation to maintain the numerous cardinals (all of whom by now had their own court and clientele)—the curia developed new financial instruments such as papal provisions, the older annates, and the servitium commune (general support fee, amounting to one-third of the first year's income from an office or benefice). The various fees were paid by successful candidates for both bishoprics and abbeys, or clergy-granted benefices. But not only army, cardinalate, and curia had to be maintained. Beginning with Benedict XII (r. 1334-1342), the popes enlarged the former episcopal residence of Avignon into an impressive papal palace, which is still imposing today despite being damaged in the French Revolution.
Increasing fiscal control over the church, however, was accompanied by a growing loss of religious and political influence in the evolving nation-states of Europe. Pluralism and nepotism were rampant in the church. Fiscal exactions became oppressive. The Great Schism of 1378, with rival popes at Avignon and Rome, created yet another emergency, since it was impossible to decide the question of legitimacy. Conciliarist theories, anchored in the older canon law, provided a way out by suggesting that the general council—as representative of the universal church—stood above the pope, and under specific circumstances could judge and depose a pope as well as initiate the reform of the church in head and members. The councils of Pisa (1409) and Constance (1414-1418) acted accordingly, ending the schism through the election of Martin V (r. 1417—1431). With Nicholas V (r. 1447-1455), who obtained the abdication of the last medieval antipope (Felix V), the papacy began its close connection with the great humanists and artists of the Renaissance—a connection that was to bring the papacy new luster and determine to this day the image of Rome. But neither patronage of the arts nor the reforms that were beginning to change the church and the papacy could prevent the Protestant Reformation. It was to reduce papal influence in northern Europe to a considerable extent.
See also Boniface VIII, Pope; Byzantine Empire; Celestine V, Pope; Charlemagne; Donation of Constantine; Geiasius, Pope; Gregory I, Pope; Gregory VII, Pope; Gregory IX, Pope; Honorius III, Pope; Iconoclasm; Innocent III, Pope; Justinian I; Leo I, Pope; Leo IX, Pope; Lombards; Nicolaism; Papal States; Pepin; Rome; Urban II, Pope
UTA-RENATE BLUMENTHAL
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Bernard of Clairvaux. Five Books on Consideration: Advice to a Pope, trans. John D. Anderson and Elizabeth T. Kennan. Cistercian Fathers Series, 37. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1976.
Brentano, Robert. Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. (Originally published 1974.)
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The term "papal states" normally describes a multifarious collection of economic, juridical, and political rights that the popes held and attempted to enforce in central Italy during much of the Middle Ages. The plural form, peculiar to the English language, reflects the diversity of the states' component parts; it also helps to surmount unease over the application of the idea of a "state" to a medieval government, especially one whose authority in the field was negligible and often disregarded by its supposed subjects. Originally, the territories in Etruria, the Sabine hills, the Roman Campagna, and the Pontine plain up to the Liri River and Terracina which the popes began ruling in the eighth century were called the lands of Saint Peter; after the twelfth century the name Patrimony of Saint Peter became standard. Scholars consider the major overhaul of papal administration under Innocent III (r. 1198-1216) sufficient justification for the "promotion" of these territories to the rank of statehood, so that "papal states" is the universally accepted term for the area subordinate to papal temporal rule only after the thirteenth century. Yet throughout the medieval period, even after Innocent III's reorganization, the papacy proved incapable of controlling its central Italian domains regardless of what they were called. Indeed, a major theme in the long and diverse history of the medieval papal states is the relentless struggle between the forces of papal centralization and the recalcitrance of many regions unwilling to forgo their autonomy. Only after the Great Schism in the fifteenth century, with Italy clear of the Holy Roman emperor's rival claim for sovereignty, did the popes subdue local centrifugal forces (comuni, feudal lords) and solidly establish the papal states, so that they weathered several shocks during the Renaissance (1494, 1527) and lasted until the bersaglieri stormed Rome in 1870.
The roots of the papal states lie in the landed property (with attendant administrative responsibilities) the popes accumulated long before they established a sovereign state during the eighth century, and in the pastoral duties of the Roman bishops. Like all episcopal sees, the church of Rome benefited from the generosity of the faithful in the waning years of the Roman empire. By the mid-fifth century, the pope himself, rather than the various churches in Rome, held landed property inferior in quantity only to that of the richest Roman aristocrats. The process of accumulation of landed wealth which made the popes politically important in Italy received a significant boost from the Gothic wars (535-555) and their Byzantine aftermath. Much land was bequeathed to the Holy See, which may also have benefited from the confiscations of Arian estates after 555. Although the Lombards' invasion of Italy (568) deprived Rome of access to many patrimonies (as the regional subdivisions of papal estates were called) in northern Italy, by the early seventh century the popes owned land enough in Sicily, Campania, and the environs of Rome itself to put them among the peninsula's greatest landlords.
Administration of the patrimonies occupied the popes from an early date. In 481, a synod forbade their alienation and, in deference to canon law, required that revenue accruing from these sources should be destined for the maintenance of the pope and the Roman clergy, church restoration, and charity. This fourfold division of income persisted in the papal history of the early Middle Ages. The famous letters of Pope Gregory I (r. 590-604) provide the earliest substantial description of the patrimonies and their management. Through a system of papally appointed regional supervisors with moral and judicial responsibility (rectors) over scattered farms (condumae) and by short term leases designed to forestall hereditability, Gregory cultivated the patrimonies and developed a trained bureaucracy. This land and the administration it generated ultimately kept Rome's buildings repaired and its citizens fed and heated, because as civil administration decayed, bishops had increasingly become their communities' leaders and providers. The popes' pastoral responsibility for the welfare of their diocesan flock thus was an important factor in the creation of a sovereign papal state.
The hostile rule of the Lombards in Italy bottled the Holy See into a situation of political and military dependence on the Byzantine empire throughout the seventh century. During this "Byzantine captivity," the popes acted more or less as loyal subjects of Constantinople, to whose officials in Ravenna they deferred even after the Lombard monarchs became orthodox Christians. Occasional doctrinal differences between Rome and Byzantium could lead to acrimonious disputes with the emperor and his Italian representatives, and even to violence. But the popes did not conceive of a new order deprived of Byzantine authority in the duchy of Rome (the Byzantine province in which they lived), nor did they seek to establish an independent state. Rather, they sought a stronger, more effective Byzantine administration and military presence in central Italy, able to repulse Lombard kings and dukes. Yet they sought this protection just when the Byzantine empire, whose resources were committed along the eastern frontier, was least able to provide it. As the seventh-century popes shouldered ever greater administrative burdens in their diocese, took over Rome's welfare programs, repaired its aqueducts (after 625), and restored the city walls (after 708), the Byzantines came to terms with the Lombards and recognized their usurpations in a treaty (c. 680) that presumably left the Holy See disillusioned with Byzantium.
After the 680s, theological disputes, at the root of most estrangements of the papacy from Byzantium, proved too thorny to settle. In 692, when Emperor Justinian II attempted to punish Pope Sergius I for rejecting the canons of the imperially sponsored council "in Trullo" (or "Quinisext," a reference to the Trullan Synod), as his predecessors had punished the hapless antimonothelite Pope Martin in 653, he discovered that the central Italian population, even the people of Ravenna, were ready and able to spring to the defense of the pope. Justinian II had to desist. Soon relations between the papacy and the empire returned to placid normality, but the incident showed that the popes commanded the loyalty of the flock for which they provided, and that the inhabitants of Byzantine Italy no longer identified their interests with those of Byzantium.
After barely surviving the great Arab siege of Constantinople (717-738), the Byzantine emperor Leo III ("the Isaurian") resolved to reform Byzantine civil and military administration. His novel taxes, and his removal of icons from churches and public places (where he thought they had offended God and allowed Islam to triumph), were policies applicable to Byzantine Italy, the westernmost limb of the empire. Iconoclasm was pointless and heretical to most Italians, but the new tastes were at least as repugnant. These novelties came in the 720s, just as the Lombard king Liutprand launched a campaign to establish his lordship over all of the Italian peninsula, including the duchy of Rome, His success was considerable in the region of Ravenna, and he subdued the traditionally independent Lombard dukes in central Italy. In doing so, Liutprand became a direct menace to Rome. In 729, the king "donated" Sutri, a strategic papal patrimony in Etruria that he had occupied, to the popes, but this gesture failed to end the papacy's fears. In 732-733, Leo III, angered by the Romans' tax evasion and iconophilia, had removed Sicily, Calabria, and Illyricum from Rome's ecclesiastical jurisdiction and confiscated the patrimonies there, thus making the estates closest to Rome in central Italy the papacy's staff of life (into the late Middle Ages, popes considered these the "garden of delights of the church"). The Lombards' sieges of Rome (739, 741) pinched the popes further and exposed the utter inadequacy of Rome's defenses and the Byzantines' protection. Pope Gregory III, in desperation, even asked the faraway Franks for help (739), but he was rebuffed.
Against this backdrop of the Lombards' intensified military pressure and the Byzantine's diminished reliability regarding doctrine and military aid, the popes—weighted down with considerable moral and administrative responsibility in central Italy—made their first moves as independent agents on the Italian stage. The founding fathers of the papal states were Gregory II (d. 731), who staved off a Lombard occupation by tireless diplomacy; and Zachary I (d. 752), who opened friendly relations with Francia, while reorganizing papal farms as domus cultae to facilitate Rome's supplies. No longer acting only as estate managers, Byzantine ambassadors, or solicitous pastors, these popes considered the former duchy of Rome a sovereign state over whose interests they presided. The government of the new state fell to the Lateran bureaucracy, which had long been administering finances and justice in the patrimonies.
Zachary resolved to come to terms with Liutprand, and in negotiations at Terni (742) he obtained the return of frontier posts on the duchy's northern rim (Amelia, Orte, Bomarzo, and Blera, plus Cesena) to the popes. The pope was an acknowledged head of state; his prestige was such that Liutprand acquiesced to Zachary's demand that recently annexed Ravennan territory be returned to Ravenna. A grateful Byzantine emperor donated lands at Ninfa and Norma (south of Rome) to the pope for his intervention, expanding the territorial base of the Holy See. Yet the situation was far from tranquil: the Lombards were notoriously fickle, and papal sources present them as downright treacherous. Thus, when a coy query reached Rome from the Frankish court about the appropriateness of deposing worthless kings (749), Pope Zachary seized the chance to form an alliance with the potentate who had asked, and to sanction his putsch. The potentate, Pepin III, was duly crowned king of the Franks. When the pope, now Stephen II, came to Francia (753) expressly to seek military aid, Pepin espoused the cause of the Roman church against renewed Lombard incursions. In 755 and 756, he campaigned victoriously in Italy. Before his last return to Francia, Pepin made a lavish "donation" of twenty-two cities and territories in Byzantine Italy to "Saint Peter." Frankish envoys deposited the keys to these cities on Saint Peter's tomb in Rome. The "Donation of Pepin" is often considered the constitutive act of the papal states and of the temporal power of the papacy.
Actual control of the territories did not, however, follow from the diplomatic settlement. The Lombard king, Desiderius, was a skilled and dangerous antagonist of the papacy who manipulated a strong faction in Rome and prevented the popes from effectively ruling their state. By most estimates, it was in this context that the forgery called the Donation of Constantine was produced in papal circles (c. 760). The Donation, which presumably accorded the papacy sovereignty over the entire western Roman empire, is seldom mentioned in papal documents until the thirteenth century and may be a sign of the unease felt in the Lateran after the alliance between the popes and the Franks had failed to end Lombards' harassment of the papal state. The Donation certainly reflects the ideological underpinnings that men in the Lateran saw for papal Italy's emancipation from Byzantium. Desiderius, like everyone else before the mid-ninth century, ignored it. Taking advantage of the disorderly political situation north of the Alps, and in Rome itself after 767, he occupied many papal areas and, when he thought it safe, even marched on Rome. The embattled Pope Hadrian I asked Charlemagne to rush to the rescue (773). Before capturing the Lombard capital, Pavia, the Frankish king spent Easter 774 in Rome. There, according to official papal records, he promised to hand over (promissio donationis) to Saint Peter all of Italy south of an imagined line running between Luni, on the Ligurian coast, and Monselice, near Venice, along with Istria and Venetia. The latter regions never formed part of the papal states and seldom were included in the papacy's claims. Otherwise, the promissio donationis became the ambition all popes tried, vainly, to realize. Charlemagne himself, much to Hadrian's chagrin, never lived up to his promise, because he considered it to have been superseded by events later in the year; he did, however, ensure that his father Pepin's concessions to the papacy were honored. During Hadrian's pontificate most of Byzantine central Italy, from Ravenna across the Apennines via Perugia to Rome, together with Lombard Tuscany and some towns south of Rome, entered the papal states.
Relations between the papacy and the Franks were cordial even while Hadrian protested to his good friend Charlemagne against what he initially regarded as the halfhearted fulfillment of the king's promise. In the course of the 780s, the pope and the king worked out an understanding. The borders of the papal states were firmly and, from a Carolingian standpoint, generously defined, although Spoleto and Benevento fell outside these boundaries. The papal states enjoyed the Franks' protection and were part of the Frankish commonwealth according to the often-renewed terms of special treaties between the kings and popes (the earliest surviving treaty, the "Ludovicianum" of 817, is thought to mirror earlier ones). These treaties carefully guarded the sovereignty of the papal states; even the riots of 799, which left Pope Leo III (d. 816) maimed and brought Charlemagne to Rome to investigate, did not alter this "constitutional" arrangement. Charlemagne left the city as emperor, but he continued to respect the independence of the popes' enclave.
The independence and stability of the papal states were undermined by intense competition for status, wealth, and power among Rome's ruling classes. This competition, which first emerged in 767, when Duke Toto attempted a coup in Rome, could degenerate into brawls like that of 799. It focused on control of the papal office, the states, and the lands of the Roman church. Initially the threat of the Franks' might kept the competition within bounds and kept the papal states from anarchy. In 815, for instance, Louis the Pious delegated to King Bernard the duty of repressing a nasty Roman revolt and reestablishing Pope Leo's authority. But with the decline of the Franks' power in the 800s, the Roman aristocracy had more leeway. In a treaty of 824 between the papacy and the Franks, the aristocracy obtained considerable control over papal elections; simultaneously, direct intervention by the Franks in papal government was sanctioned. This meant that, as Frankish authority in Italy collapsed after the death of Louis II in 875, the local aristocracies would exercise power in Rome and in outlying regions of the papal states, although forays by Carolingian rulers or other Italian potentates also affected the evolution of affairs, as did repeated raids by the Muslims before 915 (the papacy's defense against the "Saracens" proved ineffective; only locally organized efforts worked). Thus, as of the later ninth century, papal government in central Italy was increasingly challenged by local forces. Regional elites grasped for autonomy and originated the dichotomy between the theory, or grand claims, and practice, or weakness, of papal temporal power which persisted to the end of the Middle Ages.
The regional aristocracies sought and obtained grants of land and jurisdiction from the popes. As papal counts and vicars, local potentates pursued their own ends. Valiant efforts by popes such as John VIII (d. 882) could not stem the tide of gifts, usurpations, and titles that dismembered the papal states. In Rome, the descendants of the nobleman Theophylact manipulated the Holy See, procuring major concessions for themselves that included a feudal grant of the strategic county of Terracina. In 1001, Emperor Otto III (d. 1003) complained that irresponsible alienations by weak, nepotistic popes had reduced the papal states to nothing and had left the see impoverished. Even the ring of papal model farms (dornus cultae) around Rome had devolved into private hands. Otto III and other German emperors endeavored to correct this situation with ulterior grants (the most important was that of Otto I to John XII in 962), confirmations of previous grants, advantageous treaties (most importantly that of Henry II for Benedict VII in 1020), and armed intervention against the more restive Roman magnates. The emperors did this to tighten their own hold on the Holy See, but their efforts were too episodic to be successful. Without central direction the papal states sprang apart, while local forces took over military and administrative responsibilities, a process prevalent throughout the Italian peninsula before the eleventh century. Only the dynasty from Frascati (Tusculani), which controlled the Roman see between 1012 and 1046, made slight advances in reasserting papal control over formerly held territories.
The eleventh-century reform movement was aimed at setting up a morally righteous, politically and economically independent papacy as a means of improving Christendom. The reformers strove to liberate the papacy and its territories from the influence of the emperors and the control of the central Italian magnates. Before the debacle of 1084, some notable successes were achieved against the region's centrifugal tides. Benevento entered the papal states (1050, confirmed 1052), the hold of powerful families on church land in the Sabine hills and south of Rome was loosened, and a valuable alliance was forged with the rising Norman rulers of southern Italy. In 1059, Pope Leo IX invested the Normans with tenure of the territories they conquered. This implied that the papacy held a title over those southern regions, which was translated into a series of levies and privileges called the regalia of Saint Peter. Although the Holy See had to tolerate the Normans' raids across its southern borders, and allowed the Norman conquest of the Abruzzi (which was, in any case, cut off from the papal states by the Simbruini mountains and hence was too difficult to manage from Rome), it obtained a strong ally against the empire and the old Roman families. The Holy See appeared to be well placed to turn over a new leaf and end the embarrassing independence of so many of its temporal subjects. But in the end, the reformed popes were scarcely better able than their predecessors to subject the states to their rule. Often they contented themselves with renewing their legal title to a given area and then ceding its tenure to the old local masters. When Countess Matilda left her vast holdings in northern Italy to the popes (1115), the situation did not improve, because the emperors disputed the papacy's claims and hampered the papacy's management of the Matildine lands until 1133. The Matildine inheritance did, however, extend papal claims into the Po valley.
The German emperors were the formal antagonists of the papal states in the High Middle Ages. They resisted the papacy's pretensions to rule portions of central Italy (Emilia, Ravenna, and the Pentapolis) and expected to enforce their feudal rights within the papal states, whose protectors they proclaimed themselves to be on several occasions in the 1100s. Frederick I Barba rossa, despite his momentous defeat at Legnano (1176), managed to elude recognition of the papacy's demands for sovereignty over Italy as they had been formulated in the eighth century. The popes, too, refused offers of cash payments in exchange for renunciation of temporal power; they feared becoming dependent on imperial largesse. If the confrontation with the emperors, rival claimants to sovereignty over much of central Italy, was not enough, schisms within the papacy (1130-1138, 1159-1177) and especially the rise of the city-states (comuni) debilitated papal government within the states. Many comuni extorted immunities and privileges from the popes in exchange for promises of loyalty. When, in 1143, a senatorial "renovation" created an antipapal comune in Rome, the popes had to buy off the threat (a competing government in their own city). However, under popes Eugenius III (d. 1153) and Hadrian IV (d. 1159), sizable revenues were collected from the papal states by trusty apostolic chamberlains (papal butlers), indicating that in the right conditions temporal rule was a viable system.
A favorable conjuncture, the imperial crisis of 1197-1202 and the youthfulness of Emperor Frederick II, enabled Pope Innocent III to wrest from the beleaguered emperors recognition of the complete independence and sovereignty of the papal states. Innocent, fortified by fresh support from the Roman comune and by the consequent submission of many Umbrian cities, gained Spoleto for the papacy (realizing Hadrian Fs dream) and asserted papal rule in Emilia, the Marches of Ancona, and Tuscany. Throughout, Innocent spoke of ending "imperial oppression," or reestablishing ancient papal rights. Innocent redesigned the administration, too. His structure, a centralized state divided into provinces ruled by a rector sent from Rome, did not come unglued even during the Hohenstaufen wars, and later popes built on it. A teetering emperor-elect, Rudolf of Hapsburg, was compelled to concede that Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara belonged to the papacy (1278). Along with territorial gains, the later thirteenth century witnessed further rationalization of papal administration: more regular taxation (the property tax census, the military service impost), part of which the college of cardinals enjoyed; and more stable institutions (mints, appellate courts, quasi-regular provincial parliaments to discuss policy) were imposed. Nevertheless, behind these achievements lurked the old realities. Local forces—communal forces in the north and feudal forces in the rural south of the papal states—counted for much more than papal legates or rectors. The papal states remained an assemblage of regional authorities; each had its own special understanding with the papal administration as to its actual rights ("liberties") and obligations.
After 1266, the Angevin dynasty rooted itself firmly in the southern Italian peninsula. This was the last great achievement of the Guelf association that battled imperial influence in Italy during the first portion of the thirteenth century. The Holy See came to rely heavily on the Angevins' political and military clout, though Pope Nicholas III Orsini (d. 1280) attempted to secure Rome's grasp on the states by appointing other Orsini to all strategic administrative posts. The Sicilian Vespers (1282) was a severe blow to the prestige and power of the house of Anjou, and it pushed the popes into greater reliance on the Colonna family for control of the heartlands of the papal states (1280s and 1290s) around Rome. Weakened as it was, the Angevin influence in the papal states remained strong enough for the papacy to be criticized by contemporaries for excessive Francophilia. Nevertheless, the new situation of close alliance with the French dynasty did not strengthen papal authority over the pugnacious comuni in the Romagnol, Tuscan, Etrurian, and Umbrian regions of the papal states. Nor did the emergence of one man rule (signoria) in many comuni as the thirteenth century waned contribute to the ability of the papacy to exert its temporal power (some comuni may have welcomed papal influence as an antidote to the signori, however). Just before the Avignonese exile of the popes, therefore, the papal states remained a fissile, weak collection of territories, though not by any means poor or, when compared with contemporary European monarchies, poorly run. The renowned pontificate of Boniface VIII Caetani (1294-1303) saw no consolidation or pacification of the states; on the contrary, the pope's efforts to aggrandize his own family incensed many of the older Roman dynasties, such as the powerful Colonna, and his antimonarchical fiscal policies shook the long-standing alliance between the papacy and the French. A combined, brutal punitive expedition by the French and the Colonna trapped the pope at Anagni (1303) and easily toppled Boniface from power. The events revealed the fragility of the pope's power base in central Italy and the endurance of autonomy in its outlying regions. Ironically, in Provencal Avignon, far from their central Italian dominions, the popes were to find the tranquillity and independence that the papal states theoretically guaranteed.
With the popes and the curia absent, the papal states were exposed to aggression from outside the borders and to the creation of more extensive autonomy within. Almost immediately after the popes had settled at Avignon, Venice snatched Ferrara and held it in the face of the papacy's fulminations (1308-1313). Viscontian Milan lost no occasion to stir up trouble in fat Emilia (Bologna, which finally submitted to papal rule in 1327, was the big prize there). Florence, too, tried to occupy papal territory. Assorted signori extorted papal recognition of their independence in the form of grandiloquent titles (apostolic vicar). Periodic invasions from across the Alps by emperors or kings (1310-1313, 1327-1330) aroused the Ghibelline enthusiasm of Dante but served to destabilize central Italy even more. The Angevins, who should have been the protectors of papal interests, patronized noble clans seeking to carve out autonomous statelets for themselves, and pursued independent diplomatic goals often at odds with those of the Holy See. In this chaotic political climate the messianic leader of the Roman populace, Cola di Rienzo, was actually able to institute a dictatorship in Rome (1347) and wrest the capital of the papal states from the pope's control. While Cola attempted to inspire a new "holy Italy" of allied cities led from Rome (he was eventually murdered in 1354), the authority of the papal government both inside and outside Rome fell to a nadir. From Avignon, the papacy attempted a reaction. The administration of the papal states, which grew increasingly French and clerical (laymen had been common enough in the thirteenth-century bureaucracy) during the Avignonese decades, was made answerable to specially appointed papal legates. Two of these—Bertrand du Poujet and the former archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Albornoz (d. 1367)—had some success in bringing central Italy back to allegiance to the papacy. Albornoz campaigned relentlessly; built castles; and negotiated with comuni, signori, and the Italian powers in his effort to render the papal states governable. In 1357, he promulgated the Constitutions of the Holy Mother Church (also called Constitutiones aegidianae), a public law code that remained in effect in the papal states until the Napoleonic wars. These Constitutions, crafted out of provincial law and earlier legates' redactions, regulated relations between the papacy and the commune and fixed the role of the papal courts, which always competed with other jurisdiction within the papal states. They were Albornoz's most statesmanlike achievement.
Despite his tireless labors, Albornoz was not able to reduce the papal states to obedience. Revolts by the peasants, depredations by the mercenaries, and the enmity of the Visconti impoverished the states and inhibited papal government. Only after long campaigns and a treaty with the Visconti did peace return. When it did, Florence promptly organized a widespread insurrection against clerical "rapacity," known as the "war of the eight saints" (1375). Of the papal states, a small portion around Rome alone had been pacified when Pope Gregory XI (d. 1378) returned to Rome in January 1376. On the verge of the Great Schism (1378-1417), which entailed ulterior dissolution of its temporal power, the Holy See had very tenuous control over its patrimony. This situation had proved chronic since the early eighth century, for the regional, local, and centrifugal forces in the Italian peninsula were at least as vigorous as the popes and the papal administrators who sought to build and govern their central Italian monarchy.
The prolonged struggle of the successors of Saint Peter and their emissaries to bring tracts of central Italy under their temporal control was an important part of medieval papal history. Few popes became so embroiled in central Italian politics and warfare that they lost sight of the governance of the Christian community which the bishop of Rome exercised. The desire to rule the Italian territories collectively called the papal states was born in the 700s of the popes' pastoral mission and the ensuing administrative responsibilities; it developed also because the Lateran grew uneasy about other powers' dominance over Italy. Temporal rule by the successors of Saint Peter, carried out however falteringly in central Italy, was a fact of life after the early 700s. Having virtually lost control of the papal states in the tenth century, the Holy See launched new policies of direct government over its dominions that culminated in the pontificate of Innocent III. In practice, however, the popes were never able to uproot from within their borders aristocratic particularism and the autonomy of the city-states. However, at no time was there sustained criticism in Italy of the idea of papal temporal authority (Arnold of Brescia was an eloquent exception). Many people theorized, on the contrary, that an independent territorial base for the papacy was a prerequisite if vigorous, morally upright leadership was to prevail in the church.
See also Albornoz, Gil Alvarez Cabrillo de; Angevin Dynasty; Avignonese Papacy; Boniface VIII, Pope; Byzantine Empire; Cola di Rienzo; Colonna Family; Desiderius; Donation of Constantine; Eugenius III, Pope; Frankish Kingdom; Fred- erick I Barbarossa; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Gregory I, Pope; Hadrian IV, Pope; Innocent III, Pope; Leo III, Emperor; Leo III, Pope; Leo IX, Pope; Liutprand; Louis I the Pious; Papacy; Rome; Visconti Family; Zachiarias, Pope
PAOLO SQUATRITI
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Dupré-Theseider, Eugenio. Roma dal comune di popolo alla signoria pontificia, 1252-1377. Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1952.
Führmann, H. "Das frühmittelalterliche Papsttum und die Konstantinische Schenkung." Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 20, 1973, pp. 257-292.
Herrmann, Klaus J. Das Tuskidanerpapsttum (1012-1046): Benedikt VIII, Johannes XIX, Benedikt IX. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1973.
Jones, P. J. The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State: A Political History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Jordan, Édouard. Les origines de la domination angevine en Italie. Paris: A. Picard Fils, 1909. (Reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1960.)
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Parlantino (who lived at about the same time as Dante) was the author of a political sonnet on the invasion of Italy by German troops under Henry VII of Luxembourg (1310). The poem, Com crederete voi che si punisca, follows the tradition of hurling invectives against a political faction, a city, or a nation by poets such as Guittone d'Arezzo, Dante Alighieri, and several comic poets. Parlantino is himself customarily anthologized as a comic poet because of the popularity of the political theme among Rustico Filippi, Folgòre da San Gimignano, Pietro dei Faitinelli, and others. However, there is nothing humorous about his sonnet. In it, he depicts the Germans as merciless punishers of arrogant and proud Lombards and Tuscans, recalling the language of Guittone's political canzone Ahi lasso, or è stagion de doler tanto and the political canti of the Divine Comedy.
JOAN H. LEVIN
Marti. Mario. Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante. Milan: Rizzoli, 1956, pp. 349-351.
Massèra, Aldo Francesco. Sonetti burleschi e realistici dei primi due secoli. Bari: Laterza, 1920. (Rev. ed., ed. Luigi Russo, 1940, Vol. 1, p. 155.)
Vitale, Maurizio. Rimatori comico-realistici. Turin: UTET, 1956, pp 561-566. (Reprint, 1976.)
Parma is situated in the Po valley, at the intersection of the Via Emilia and the ancient roads leading inland from the Mediterranean coast and port cities. The crossing of two streams—the Parma, which flows into the Po; and the Barganza—also explains the location of the city. The site was originally settled in the Bronze Age; it eventually became a Roman military outpost, and the urban center developed in the second century B.C. The Roman city square is still discernible today in Piazza Nuova, and ruins of a Roman theater and amphitheater have also been preserved. Roman citizenship was extended to eligible inhabitants of Parma in A.D 49. Under the Roman administration, much of the swampland surrounding the city was reclaimed for agriculture. Rome also maintained rivers and streams for navigation and built roads such as the Via Emilia, which permitted overland travel by administrators and wealthy merchants throughout the Italian peninsula. Like most Roman cities, Parma was essentially an administrative center, supported by the collection of taxes for the benefit of landed aristocrats; but because of its location at the intersection of the Via Emilia and coastal roads, commercial activity flourished there.
Italy is a land of cities, as Hegel noted, and throughout the 500 years that separated the collapse of the Roman empire in late fifth century and the nascent communes, Italian urban life endured. However, compared with Milan, Pavia, Verona, and Ravenna, Parma was a backwater. The city was already in decline by the fourth century, losing arable lands to swampland and forest. Even the church, a fundamental institution in Italian urban life from the third century on, barely survived, despite the fact that Parma was an episcopal seat.
The Ostrogoth Theodoric established rule in Italy in 489. An able administrator, he endeavored to rebuild the Roman infrastructure. Because Parma had a strategic position on the road leading from the Alpine Cisa Pass to central Italy and Rome, it played a key role in the Theodoric's territorial ambitions. Under the Ostrogoths, a canal was constructed connecting Parma to the lifeline of the Po River system. The Byzantine emperor Justinian (r. 527-565) enlarged the city. Byzantine rule was contested by the Lombards, whose conquest of most of the Italian peninsula began in 568. During the 200 years when the Lombards were dominant, a decentralization of power precluded large-scale projects like the drainage of the Po valley or the maintenance of navigable waterways, and trade declined. Militarily, Parma was a spearhead of the Lombards' resistance against the Byzantines, and the city's walls may actually have been enlarged during this period, although little archaeological or archival evidence has survived.
Ecclesiastical archival material from the Carolingian era offers a better record of institutional, social, political, and economic development. Charlemagne was invited into Italy by Pope Hadrian I to defend Rome from the Lombards' aggression. Under Carolingian rule, which began in 774, Parma became an essential strategic point in the defense of papal territory in central Italy. Jurisdiction over and protection of the city and surrounding territory, including the vitally important approach to the Cisa Pass, were entrusted to a count, who in turn granted hereditary lands with limited jurisdictional autonomy, known as patrimonial jurisdictions, to lesser nobles, a practice that led to the erosion of the count's authority. The first count of whom we have any record is Adalgis, in 835, who was a member of the powerful Supponide family that had extensive holdings throughout northern Italy. By the eleventh century, the church dominated in Parma both politically and economically. Carloman, the great-grandson of Charlemagne, had granted the city of Parma—the most important patrimonial jurisdiction of the county—to Bishop Wilbode in 879; Emperor Conrad II granted the entire county to the bishop of Parma in 1036, reinforcing the close ties between the imperial party and the church of Parma. The counts and bishops were charged with the responsibility of defending the Cisa Pass for the emperor. The church's agricultural interests, numerous edifices, and market made it an employer and landlord of a significant proportion of the population. It consolidated its power in the city and throughout the county by supporting the younger sons of local nobles with ecclesiastical benefices. Rapid demographic growth in the eleventh century accelerated the subdivision of jurisdictions by the ruling oligarchy of nobles and clerics, increasing the tax burden on those excluded from power. In 1037, when Emperor Conrad II was in residence at the episcopal palace, a group that apparently included artisans, merchants, and other citizens (referred to in the chronicles as cives, urbani, and Parmenses) staged an unsuccessful revolt against the ecclesiastical and imperial overlords. Parma was burned, and its walls were leveled.
Intramural ecclesiastical reform promised significant economic, political, and social change in the second half of the eleventh century. This reform challenged the legitimacy of churches closely allied with royal or imperial power, including the church in Parma. The objective of the reform was twofold: to extend the power of the papacy over local bishops and to root out corrupt and worldly practices among the clergy, such as simony and cohabitation with concubines. The bishop of Parma, Cadalus, came from a powerful Veronese family, and he spearheaded the resistance to reform in northern Italy. In 1061, Cada lus was elected as the antipope Honorius II by the antireformist bishops of the region; he led an army against Rome in 1062, and then again two years later, but both incursions were repulsed. Popes Alexander II (r. 1061-1073) and Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085), champions of church renewal, succeeded in isolating the church of Parma by strengthening the Roman position in surrounding cities and the pro-reform nobility within the city. Parma finally capitulated to the reformist camp in 1094 when the schismatic Bishop Vido died, and the papal legate Bernard degli Ubertini was invited to become the bishop there. The cathedral, begun in 1059, reflects the political fortune of the city's bishops: its apse, which is the oldest section that survives, reaffirms architectural ideals associated with Cadalus's imperial church, while the sculptured saints' lives that animate the interior of the cathedral and its facade resonate with the spirituality of Cluny and the reformed church. In 1106, Pope Paschal II presided over a ceremony in which the cathedral was consecrated and the reformist Bernard was invested as bishop.
The reform of the church promoted the formation of the commune because it disrupted traditional political authority and allowed local groups to manipulate the powerful adversaries to their own advantage. Cadalus made jurisdictional concessions to the citizenry to bolster support for his schismatic position, and the construction of a new episcopal palace initiated in 1055 outside the city walls signified this redistribution of power. When Parma joined the Roman camp, Bishop Bernard made the citizens protectors of the church, and then he granted military and juridical authority to the citizenry in 1119-1120, when the city came under attack by its pro-imperial neighbor, Cremona.
The term "commune" first appears in a document dating from 1149; in the same year, "consul" is used in a peace treaty to denote the eight officers entrusted to act in the name of the people and the church of Parma. However, reconciliation or concordia between the various factions of citizens, at the heart of the commune ideal, remained elusive in Parma. In Parma, the concept of civic lordship implied a fragile dominion of urban over rustic aristocrats. In fact, the independence of the aristocratic holdings beyond the walls of the city and the inability of the communal or urban government to extend its rule to the surrounding territory presented a perennial and intractable problem. When the aristocratic families were ousted from power, they simply retreated to their holdings outside the city to plot their return. The commune was, for most of its history, controlled by an oligarchy of ancient and emerging aristocratic families, and the church remained a powerful player. The citizens were divided into civis minores and cives maiores, according to documents: the minores were the artisan class that was gradually assuming a civic role alongside the hereditary landholders, the maiores. There was also a growing population of urban dwellers who were not citizens, as Parma (like other Italian cities) emancipated serfs under its jurisdiction, motivated by Christian brotherhood and a need for industrial workers. Local statutes favored the production and merchandising of wool, the principal product of the region, which had been noted since antiquity for its high quality. The location of the city fostered commerce, and Parmesan merchants bartered throughout Italy and with transalpine tradesmen in Parma and abroad.
Baptistery, Parma. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
Civic and religious construction continued with edifices such as the elegant octagonal baptistery, begun c. 1197, which is regarded as the masterwork of the architect and sculptor Benedetto Antelami. Very little is known about the life of this innovative artist: he is thought to have been born c. 1150, perhaps in the region of Lombardy known as Antelamo, and he left Parma in 1216, when the baptistery was still unfinished. Although Parma is a city of art, no distinct style emerges until the late fifteenth century and the sixteenth century. In the monuments surviving from the Middle Ages, indigenous Lombard architectural ideals blend with structural and decorative elements from France and elsewhere.
Throughout the twelfth century, intermittent warfare ravaged the Po valley. Conflicts during the first half of the century between Parma and its powerful neighbor Cremona—which dominated the middle Po valley, with its port and markets—first erupted in 1120. Although Parma was historically a pro-imperial city, relations between it and the Holy Roman Empire became hostile in the twelfth century. Frederick I Barbarossa was crowned emperor in 1152, after a century of decline in imperial authority. In the interim, the communes in northern Italy had proclaimed their independence (libertas) and had appropriated judicial, legislative, and financial authority. Frederick Barbarossa tried to reassert imperial sovereignty in Lombardy, but the cities of the region, including Parma, formed a league and thwarted his ambition by achieving a military victory at Legnano in 1176. The existence of an interurban alliance did not prevent warfare among the cities: in the same period Parma joined Pavia, Lodi, and Cremona in the destruction of Milan,
Parma engaged in a series of deadly encounters with me armies of the emperor Frederick II between 1247 and 1250. The imperial party had established jurisdiction in the city and had then lost it in 1247, when the brother-in-law of Pope Innocent IV, Bernard Orlando Rossi, and the papal legate, Gregory of Montelongo, captured the city with a small host of exiles and killed its imperial overlord. Frederick II determined to recapture it. In the autumn of 1247, he established a siege city outside Parma's walls, optimistically called Victoria, where he set up court, complete with his menagerie of exotic animals and his harem. Although Piacenza, Milan, and the Estensi supported Parma, Frederick and his agents, Ezzelino da Romano and Oberto Pallavicino, were able to organize an effective land and water blockade of the city. The starving citizens, led by Gregory of Montelongo, resisted heroically. Whereas Frederick relied on mercenary soldiers, Gregory had at his command citizen-soldiers who were deeply concerned with their independence and, perhaps even more urgently, with the need to protect the city from the well-known savagery of the emperor. On 18 February 1248, the citizens of Parma liberated themselves from the imperial siege and in the process wreaked havoc on the imperial camp. While Frederick was out hunting, the Parmesans tricked the only military commander left in Victoria into pursuing a small band of soldiers. The citizens then attacked the siege city, killing or putting to flight the defending forces. They razed and burned Victoria and executed Thaddeus of Suessa, one of the emperor's most trusted officials. Prisoners, livestock, and the imperial treasure—including the crown and seal—were taken. Despite this resounding defeat and humiliation, Frederick and his allies rallied and prevailed in the military encounters with Parma that took place over the next three years. Dante observes of the people of Parma: "They may have had their victory over Victoria, but they certainly had many pains for their pains afterwards" (Epis- tola, 6.19; Molthenius 1968, 42). In 1253, Parma signed a peace accord that concluded the conflict. It is easy to let the dramatic events of history obscure the day-to-day reality: throughout this entire episode, as the chronicler and Franciscan friar Salimbene de Adam notes, many merchants, artisans, and other nonpartisans quietly went about their business (Jones 1997, 601).
The second half of the thirteenth century in Parma is characterized by economic prosperity, demographic growth, and political turmoil. The aggregate population of the teeming cities of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Bologna, located at 15-mile (24-kilometer) intervals along the Via Emilia, has been estimated by Hyde (1973, 154) at 100,000—rivaling Milan, Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Paris. Political instability plagued Parma because its institutions were insufficiently robust to control or mediate between the factions that vied for power. Ordinances restricting the participation of powerful families in government were passed in Parma, as elsewhere in Italy, but they never proved to be enforceable. If vestiges of the commune survived longer in Parma than in some other northern Italian cities where podestà were invited to establish order, it is because in the thirteenth century, as in the previous century, an oligarchy of families competed for ascendancy, and none was strong enough to permanently subdue the others. The Pailavicino family, which had lost ground in the defeat of its ally Frederick II, continued to be a factor in the region, and it struggled against the Da Correggio, Da Cornazzano, Rossi, Sanvitale, Da Palu, and Lupi clans. The instability of the situation was aggravated by the proximity of the Scaligeri of Verona and the Visconti of Milan; both of these powerful families sought to control the wealthy and strategically located city of Parma as well as its contado (countryside). The aristocratic families of Parma sought alliances with the Scaligeri and the Visconti through marriage: Ghilberto da Correggio's daughter married Cangrande della Scala's brother, and two future lords of Parma—Alberto and Mastino della Scala—were children of that union.
The years between 1253 and 1303 are described as a golden period for the communal ideal in Parma. The support of the cives minores and maiores was solicited by Ghilberto da Gente, who was elected to lead the commune for a five-year term and was then granted a hereditary position, only to be thrown out of power by a popular uprising several years later. If the despotic Ghilberto da Gente is difficult to reconcile with the ideals of civic lordship, at least he oversaw a period of relative peace and stability in Parma. Like other politicians in Lombardy, Ghilberto enacted statutes that institutionalized the power of the Guelf party and the pro-Angevin Society of the Cross with the support of the industrial, merchant, jurist, and notary guilds.
The Society of the Cross was the major political faction in Parma, and membership in it ensured the political rights of citizens until the Guelf party split into two warring parts when Ghilberto da Correggio became podestà in 1303. Ghilberto da Correggio was a Guelf but ruled with the support of the imperialist Ghibellines. Rival aristocratic families, in this case the Rossi and the Sanvitale clans, retreated to the countryside to await a propitious moment to overturn Ghilberto. In 1316, Gianquirico Sanvitale enlisted the support of the guilds and briefly restored the commune. The Rossi, closely allied to the church, seized power in 1322, and Rolando de' Rossi was named signore of Parma in 1328. By 1334, at a time of crisis in the financial situation of the city, Rolando was compelled to create a new ruling council of eight "wise men" to assist him. The chronicles cynically record that the eight were chosen from the special friends of the Rossi clan. Sensing the weakness of the Rossi, Ghilberto da Correggio's sons, allied with the Scaligeri, waged war in the territory surrounding the city, aggravating the economic situation in Parma by interrupting commerce and creating a need for new taxes to support the defense of the city. Civil breakdown resulted from the economic chaos, and Rolando finally capitulated to the Scaligeri in exchange for guarantees for the safety of the Rossi family and its holdings within the city.
The new podestà—Alberto della Scala, grandson of Ghilberto da Correggio—was greeted as a savior by the desperate citizens of Parma. His arrival on 21 June 1335 essentially marks the end of the commune ideal in Parma. It was celebrated with pomp and ceremony: accompanied by 3,000 cavalry and a large troop of infantry, Alberto received the venerable citizens of the commune and corporations of Parma and was hailed by all the citizens. The episcopal palace served as his residence. Hundreds of carts of food, wine, and other goods were offered for sale in the streets of Parma at affordable prices. Banners floated throughout the city celebrating the arrival of the Scaligeri, their insignia coupled with those of Emperor Lewis IV (Lewis of Bavaria, Louis, Ludwig) and the da Correggio family, which would reinstate itself in Parma within a few months. Alberto's brother, Mastino, arrived in Parma on 12 October 1335, and his arrival was announced with a similar show of abundance and a celebration of unity and well-being. Alberto and Mastino then retired to Verona, leaving the rule of the city to Azzo and Guido da Correggio.
Although the new regime made a conspicuous effort to reinvigorate the institutions of the city, Parma's financial situation continued to deteriorate. The intervention of Alberto and Mastino della Scala had made Parma a de facto colony of Verona, which levied heavy taxes that inhibited the recovery of Parma's commercial activity. Although both the city and the contado were refortified during this period, civil order was not restored and much of the population fled. The winter of 1336-1337 brought famine. Eventually the Scaligeri abandoned any pretext of defending the city, and Azzo da Correggio turned to Milan for military support to wrest Parma from them. He succeeded in 1341, but even with the backing of the Milanese Visconti, he proved unable to resolve the crisis in Parma. In 1344, Mastino della Scala took the opportunity to avenge his loss of Parma to Azzo by pawning the city to the Estensi for 70,000 florins—a move supported by the Rossi, Sanvitale, and Lupi clans. Obizzo III d'Este sold the city back to Luchino Visconti in 1346. Parma enjoyed economic growth under the rule of Luchino and his brothers, who were able, to some extent, to contain the dangerous feuding of the aristocratic families. New canals reunited the city with the Po, commercial restrictions were liberalized, and the urban center was renovated. Yet the difficult medieval ideals of communal concordia and libertas, the hope that somehow the lions and the lambs of the city would mediate their differences and achieve an independent peaceful society, was sacrificed as Parma passed from the Scaligeri to the Estensi and finally into the domain of the Visconti in the fourteenth century.
See also Antelami, Benedetto; Cremona; Delia Scala Family; Frederick I Barbarossa; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Legnano, Battle of; Lombard Leagues; Milan; Verona; Visconti Family
LAURIE SHEPARD
Fumagalli, Vito. Terra e società dell'Italia padana: I secoli IX e X. Turin: Einaudi, 1976.
Greci, Roberto. Parma medievale: Economia e società nel Parmense dal Tre al Quattrocento. Parma: Battei, 1992.
Hyde, J. K. Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1300-1350. New York: St. Martin's, 1973.
Jones, Philip. The Italian City-State from Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Nolthenius, Hélène. Duecento: The Late Middle Ages in Italy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.
Racine, Pierre. "Città e contadi in Emilia e Lombardia nel secolo XI." In L'evoluzione delle città italiane nell'XI secolo, ed. Renato Bordone and Jörg Jarnut. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988, pp. 99-136.
Schumann, Reinhold. Authority and the Commune. Parma, 833-1133. Parma: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province Parmensi, 1973.
Viscardi, Antonio, and Gianluigi Barni. L'Italia nell'età comunale. Turin: UTET, 1966.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Pope Paschal I (saint; d. 824, r. 24 January 817-11 February 824) was a Roman by birch. He had a long record of service to his predecessors when he was chosen pope. Anxious to renew Rome's good standing with the Carolingian monarchy, Paschal negotiated with Louis the Pious a confirmation of the Franks' protection of the papal patrimonies, but on terms that granted the popes new elements of autonomy. Paschal's cultivation of the Franks was extended when Louis's son and successor as emperor, Lothair (Lothar)I, visited Italy in 823. Paschal arranged for Lothair's formal investiture in Rome on Easter Sunday, thereby consolidating the tradition that imperial coronation should be by the pope and in Rome. However, Lothair's high-handed behavior generated strong resentment and reflected discredit on Paschal. When Paschal's political enemies attempted to exploit the pope's unpopularity, he lashed out savagely against them and was eventually forced to purge himself of guilt before a church synod. Meanwhile, a revival of Iconoclasm by the Byzantine government obliged Paschal to issue new condemnations of that policy and made him a protector of Greek monks driven into exile.
Paschal was devoted to his native city and was unusually active as a builder, contributing such churches as Santa Prassede, Santa Maria della Navicella, and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, in all three of which he was memorialized in mosaic portraits. Despite such patronage, he was hated for his arrogance and oppressiveness, with the result that when he died, popular riots made it necessary for his burial to be transferred from Saint Peter's to Santa Prassede.
See also Frankish Kingdom; Iconoclasm; Leo III, Pope; Lothar I; Louis I the Pious; Rome
JOHN w. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Kelly, J. N. D. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 109-134.
Pope Paschal II (Rainerius; d. 1118, r. 13 August 1099—21 January 1118) was born of a noble family at Bieda, south of Faenza in central Italy; his parents were Crescentius and Alfatia. While still a young boy, he was put into a Benedictine monastery. A general belief that he entered the monastery at Cluny was dismissed by Odericus, who confirmed that the monastery was Vallombrosa, between Florence and Arezzo. Rainerius was highly esteemed by his superiors and at age twenty was sent to Rome, where he gained the trust and favor of Pope Gregory VII, who made him cardinal priest of San Clemente. Under Urban II, Rainerius served as legate to Spain. He later became abbot of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. His intellectual and spiritual qualities made him an excellent candidate for the papacy and helped secure his election to succeed Pope Urban II. He was highly educated, a promoter of learning and culture; he was also pious, merciful, and forgiving. It was reported that during the conclave, when he realized that the consensus was turning toward him, he attempted to avoid being elected by fleeing, deeming himself unworthy of such an important position.
His pontificate as Paschal II was to prove very difficult because of the struggle between church and the state over the right of investiture for major church offices, but it also saw the initial signs of emancipation of the church from the state, which Gregory VII had worked so hard to achieve. Throughout his reign, Paschal had to fight on many fronts: against the antipopes, the German kings, and the Roman nobles. Paschal also strenuously fostered the crusade movement.
During Paschal's reign, settlements were made between Saint Anselm and Henry I of England and with Philip I of France; but there was a constant struggle with the German king Henry IV, who persistently encouraged and supported the elections of antipopes, in order to undermine the authority of the legitimately elected pope. There was a whole succession of antipopes. At the death of the antipope Guibert of Ravenna (Clement III) in 1100, Theoderic became antipope after a mock election in Saint Peter's (1101-1102); then came the antipopes Albert (1102) and Sylvester IV (1105—1111). Henry IV was excommunicated by Paschal in 1302 but restored himself to the pope's favor by promising to lead a crusade, although he never fulfilled this promise. In 1104, Henry IV's young son, Henry V, spurred on by disappointed princes, rebelled against his father. Weary of the constant struggle with the king, Paschal made an agreement with his rebellious son. The elder Henry resigned his power at Ingelheim on 31 December 1105, and his son was solemnly crowned emperor at Mainz on 1 February 1106. While the dethroned monarch was getting ready to fight back, he fell ill and died in August 1106.
The struggle between papacy and empire found no resolution with Henry V. From the beginning of his reign, the younger Henry proved just as determined as his father not to give up the right of investiture. Paschal II and Henry V met at Sutri in 1110. Initially, Henry showed willingness to renounce the right to investiture, while the pope committed himself to giving back all lands and rights received from the German crown by the church. However, these conditions were rejected by the German bishops, who considered that they were being deprived of all temporal power. Henry V fled Rome and took the pope with him as a prisoner, until Paschal conceded the right of investiture to the king. Despite the strong opposition of the Roman curia, Paschal crowned Henry V emperor in Saint Peter's on 13 April 1111, as part of their agreement. In September 1112, the emperor was excommunicated by the French bishops because of his capture of the pope and his extortion of the concession regarding investiture. Paschal subsequently confirmed the emperor's excommunication.
While struggling to achieve peace with the empire, Paschal had to fend off revolts in Rome itself. The Corsi family supported the third antipope, and Paschal retaliated by destroying their stronghold on the Capitoline hill.
Soon after his election to the papacy, Paschal, following the lead of his predecessors, congratulated the crusaders for their successes in Palestine and then urged bishops and soldiers to hasten to their help.
Although the relationship between papacy and empire was exceedingly tumultuous during his reign, Paschal's diplomatic accomplishments were instrumental in bringing a conclusion to the investiture controversy; his pontificate opened the way to the concordat that Pope Calixtus II concluded at Worms in 1122.
See also Calixtus II, Pope; Gregory VII, Pope; Henry IV, Emperor; Henry V, Emperor; Investiture Controversy; Urban II, Pope
ALESSANDRO VETTORI
Cantarella, Glauco Maria. Pasquale II e il suo tempo. Naples: Liguori, 1997.
Enciclopedia Cattolica. Florence: Sansoni, 1950.
Mann, Horace K. The Lives of the Popes in the Middle Ages. London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; Saint Louis, Mo.: Herder, 1925.
Morrison, Karl F. Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300-1140. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. Detroit, Mich.: Thomson-Gale, 2003.
Strayer, Joseph R., ed. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner, 1983.
Jacopo Passavanti (1302-1357) was born in Florence. He had a distinguished career in the Dominican order, which he entered as a novice in 1317. He began his studies at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, continued them during a stay of three years in Paris (1330-1333), and subsequently taught philosophy at Pisa and theology at Siena and Rome. He also held administrative office in his order: after having been in charge of inspecting Dominican houses in Lombardy in the 1330s, he became prior of the community at Pistoia in 1341, and from 1345 until his death he was prior at Santa Maria Novella, where he had returned as preacher in 1340. He was vicar-general of the diocese of Florence between 1350 and 1352. As prior of Santa Maria Novella, he presided over the completion of the community's imposing buildings and reorganized the extensive holdings of its library; but his chief claim to fame is his activity as a preacher—according to the community's official obituary, he was praedicator facundus et fervidus, "an eloquent and fervent preacher." His Specchio di vera penitenza (Mirror of True Penitence) is a treatise based on a series of sermons he gave at Santa Maria Novella in 1354, during Lent. (Some minor works—volgarizzamenti of a sermon by Origen and oratorical exercises taken from Livy—were also attributed to him in the mid-nineteenth century by Polidori, whose edition is still valuable.)
Jacopo Passavanti, Lo specchio della vera penitenzia. Milan: Società Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, 1808. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
The Specchio is divided into five chapters (distinzioni), centered, respectively, on pride, humility, vainglory, knowledge, and dreams. Like his Dominican predecessor Cavalca in nearby Pisa, Passavanti brings to his material a masterly narrative technique and a skillful deployment of the contemporary vernacular, especially in the development of moral and spiritual exempla. Petroc chi (1965) describes the Specchio as l'opera più ricca e varia della letteratura religiosa del Trecento, anche se non la più alta, "the richest and most varied work of religious literature in the Trecento, though not the loftiest." A Latin redaction of the Specchio was prepared but has not survived.
See also Cavalca, Domenico; Italian Literature: Religious
STEVEN N. BOTTERILL
Lo specchio della vera penitenza di Iacopo Passavanti [coi volgarizzamenti da Origene e da Tito Livio], ed. F.-L. Polidori. Florence: Le Monnier, 1856.
Lo specchio di vera penitenzia, ed. Maria Lenardon. Florence: Fiorentina, 1925.
Aurigemma, Marcello. Saggio sul Passavanti. Florence: Le Monnier, 1957.
Getto, Giovanni. Umanità e stile di Jacopo Passavanti. Milan: Leonardo, 1943.
Petrocchi, Giorgio. "lacopo Passavanti." In Storia della letteratura italiana, Vol. 2, Trecento, ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno. Milan: Garzanti, 1965, pp. 652-656.
Pataria was a religious and political movement originating in Milan during the second half of the eleventh century. Later the term "Patarene" came to mean a rebel against ecclesiastical authority or a heretic.
Milan's Patarenes were organized in 1057, soon after the deacon Arialdo da Varese began to preach against clerical concubinage and simony. Milan was then dominated by its archbishop, Guido da Velate, who maintained a powerful alliance of the higher clergy, feudal nobility, and wealthier citizens by astutely manipulating the sale of the city's ecclesiastical offices. To criticize simony or the unchastity of Milan's clergy was to attack the archbishop's unpopular regime, and so Arialdo soon found himself with many supporters. Chief among them were Landolfo Cotta, a notary of Milan's cathedral; and Landolfo's brother Erlembald, a knight. Arialdo's party, now called Pataria (the derivation of the term is uncertain), bound themselves by an oath similar to that of contemporary communal movements and rejected the legitimacy of the simoniacal clergy. Patarenes boycotted the sermons of unworthy clergy, refused their sacraments, and drove the laity from their services. Later they ejected simoniacs from churches and plundered their houses.
Each side accused the other of heresy, and each eventually appealed to the papacy. Papal legates sent to Milan recognized the legitimacy of Patarene ideals but were disturbed by the violent methods of the group. Pope Nicholas II finally approved the Patarenes' boycotts of unworthy clergy in 1059; meanwhile, he tried to draw Archbishop Guido to the side of the reformers. Guido and his clergy did forswear simony and incontinence before papal legates later in 1059, but by the early 1060s they had resumed their old practices, as well as their persecution of the Pataria. This led the next pope, Alexander II, to support the Pataria openly. In 1066 Alexander excommunicated Guido for recognizing the antipope Cadalus of Parma; Guido's supporters responded with a wave of violence; Arialdo was among their victims. In 1070 Guido was finally forced to resign, but almost immediately the Pataria faced a new challenge. The German emperor Henry IV refused to recognize the bishop whom the Pataria elected to succeed Guido, and Henry attempted to force Milan to accept an imperial appointee. Again the papacy strongly supported the Pataria, but the death of Arialdo's successor Erlembald during rioting in 1075 effectively ended the political power of the Patarenes in Milan.
However the Patarene movement meanwhile spread to other cities in northern Italy, including Piacenza, Lodi, Cremona, and Brescia. In Florence a similar movement led by the Vallombrosan monks of Giovanni Gualberto ejected the city's simoniacal archbishop in 1068 and even sent clergy to assist the struggle in Milan,
The Patarenes' activity declined after the 1090s, when Pope Urban II's conciliatory policies toward the bishops of northern Italy produced many of the reforms the Pataria had sought. In the 1140s the term "Pataria" was used to refer to Milanese laymen in rebellion against clerical authority, but this time the clergy were supported by the papacy. "Patarene" and "Pataria" now came to have a pejorative connotation. The Third Lateran Council in 1179 identified Patarenes as heretics; at about the same time, the name was adopted by Cathars in northern Italy. During the next century "Patarene" was sometimes used as a general term for a heretic.
See also Giovanni Gualberto, Saint; Henry IV, Emperor; Heresy and Religious Dissent; Milan; Nicholas II, Pope; Urban II, Pope
THOMAS TURLEY
Boesch-Gajano, Sofia. "Storia e tradizione Vallombrosane." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 76, 1964, pp. 99-215.
Cowdrey, Hubert E. J. "The Papacy, the Patarenes, and the Church of Milan." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Series 5(18), 1968, pp. 25-48.
Cracco, Giorgio. "Pataria: Opus e nomen (tra verità e autorità)." Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 28, 1974, pp. 357-387.
Keller, Hagen. "Die soziale und politische Verfassung Mailands in den Anfängen des kommunalen Lebens: Zu einem neuen Buch über die Entstehung der lombardischen Stadtkomrnune." Historische Zeitschrift, 211, 1970, pp. 34-64.
Moore, Robert Ian. The Origins of European Dissent. London: Allen Lane, 1977, pp. 55-62, 266-268.
Teunis, Henry. "The Failure of the Patarine Movement." Journal of Medieval History, 5, 1979, pp. 177-184.
Thouzellier, Christine. Hérésie et hérétiques: Vaudois, cathares, patarins, albigeois. Storia e Letteratura, 116. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969, pp. 204-221.
Violame, Cinzio. La Pataria mihinese e la riforma ecclesiastica, Vol. 1, Le premesse (1045-1057). Studi Storici, 11. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1955.
—. "Hérésies urbaines et hérésies rurales en Italie du 1 le au 13e siècle." In Hérésies et sociétes dans l'Europe pré-industrielle, 11e—18e siècles, ed. Jacques Le Goff. Civilizations et Sociétés, 10. Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1968a, pp. 171-198.
—. "I laici nel movimento patarino." In I laid nella "societas christiana " dei secoli XI e XII. Atti delta terza Settimana internazionale di Studio, Mendola, 21-27 agosto 1965. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1968b, pp. 597-697.
Zerbi, Piero. Tra Milano e Cluny: Movimenti di vita e cultura ecclesiastica nel secolo XII, 2nd ed. Rome: Herder, 1991.
See Gerardo Pateg
Paul the Deacon (Pauius Diaconis, c. 720-c. 799) was the son of Warnefrid and was probably born at Cividale in Friuli. Paul was educated by the grammarian Flavianus, joined the royal court at Pavia, and became tutor to Adelperga, a daughter of the last independent Lombard king, Desiderius (r. 756-774). When Adelperga's husband, Arichis, was made duke of Benevento in 758, Paul became a part of the literary circle that developed at Benevento. There, in 763, Paul wrote his first poetic work (dedicated to Adelperga), followed by a prose continuation (also dedicated to Adelperga) of Eutropius's Historia Romanum.
After Charlemagne's defeat of the Lombards and his assumption of the Lombard crown in 774, Paul retired to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, where he remained until 783. He then left to seek the court of Charlemagne, ostensibly to plead on behalf of a brother, Arichis, who had been taken prisoner after participating in an unsuccessful revolt in northern Italy in 776. Paul remained at Charlemagne's court for two or three years before returning to Monte Cassino, where he continued to live and write until his death.
Paul is an important figure both in Italian letters and in the early Carolingian renaissance. He wrote in verse and in prose on secular and religious subjects. While he was at Aachen, in addition to a number of literary efforts that were primarily liturgical and homiletic, he composed in honor of the Carolingians a History of the Bishops of Metz (Historia episcoporum Metensium); after returning to Monte Cassino he produced a number of other works including his last and most important, History of the Lombards (Historia Langobardorum). This last work, which was never finished, covers the story of the Lombards from their semilegendary beginnings through the reign of King Liutprand (712-744). Paul's history is a typical eighth-century product, relying heavily on the materials available to him: Pliny; Isidore; Gregory of Tours; a work on the Lombards (now lost) by Secundus of Nun from Trent, who was a member of the court circle of King Agilulf (r. 590—616); Bede; and several much shorter and less reliable Lombard chronicles—an interesting commentary on the literary materials available at Monte Cassino in the late eighth century.
Paul the Deacon. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 166v.
See also Arichis; Charlemagne; Chronicles; Desiderius; Lombards; Monte Cassino, Monastery; Pavia
KATHERINE FISCHER DREW
Belting, Hans. "Studien zum beneventanischen Hof im 8. Jahrhundert." Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 16, 1962.
Bethmann, L., and G. Waitz, eds. Pauli Historia Langobardorum. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum, Saec. VI-IX. Hannover: Hahn, 1878.
Goffart, Walter. Narrators of Barbarian History: Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Paul the Deacon. History of the Lombards, trans. William Dudley Foulke. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974.
The city of Pavia (Roman Ticinum, medieval Papia) was founded by the Romans after 89 B.C., probably on the site of some earlier Ligurian or Gallic settlement. The city was built as an oppidum, or garrison town, on the characteristic rectilinear Roman street plan. It is situated on high ground sloping down to the left bank of the Ticino River, approximately 3.6 miles (6 kilometers) from its confluence with the Po River. The streets and an extensive sewer system were laid out with careful attention to the configuration of the land and the requirements of drainage. Both the city plan and the sewers (flushed by a continual flow of groundwater) survived throughout the Middle Ages and continued to be important elements in shaping the city's physical structure.
In the fourth century, when Milan became a frequent imperial residence, Pavia served as a subordinate center for the army and its bureaucracy. Although the city lay off the main lines of communication, which during this period ran between Milan and Aquileia, it was nevertheless close to Milan, and its position on the Po-Ticino river system allowed for easy movement of supplies into and out of the city. Like other river towns in northern Italy, Pavia had an imperial arms manufactory, which specialized in making bows. Although Pavia was a small town, it had urban amenities such as baths and an amphitheater which were prized by the army. The small amount of evidence dealing directly with Pavia in this period suggests that the city was relatively prosperous and secure.
Little is known about the origins of the city's Christian community. It is first mentioned in Sulpicius Severus's Life of Saint Martin in a passage referring to the 320s, a reference suggesting that a group of Christians had already been established. Pavia's first bishop, San Siro, probably lived c. mid-fourth century, although the third bishop, Inventius (fl. 380s and 390s), is the first to be firmly datable.
Pavia's role in regional affairs changed in the early fifth century, when current events in northern Italy, and especially in the western Po valley, become crucial for the security of the empire. The transfer of the imperial residence from Milan to Ravenna increased the importance of communications and travel along the Po River, and hence the importance of Pavia, which was now directly connected to the capital by water. Sidonius Apollinaris's description of his trip from Lyon to Ravenna in 467 suggests that travel by water from Pavia to Ravenna was the normal route. The city's continued importance as a military center is indicated by events in the later part of Stilicho's career as magister militum: in 405 he defeated an incursion of the Goths with an army stationed at Pavia, and the mutiny in 408 that led to his downfall was centered in Pavia among soldiers at the military hospital.
Pavia was sacked twice in the later fifth century: in 452 by the Huns under Attila and in 476 by Odovacar (Odoacer) during his revolt against the general Orestes and the young emperor Romulus Augustulus. The deposition of the last western Roman emperor may have passed virtually unnoticed, but the events had immediate implications for Pavia: Orestes chose to defend himself in Pavia, and as a consequence the city was captured and burned.
Odovacar's ten years of rule seem to have been relatively peaceful, but when the Ostrogoths entered Italy under Theodoric in 489 they were welcomed into both Pavia and Milan. Milan was soon reconquered by Odovacar's forces, however, and Theodoric retreated to the smaller and more defensible Pavia. The three-year siege that followed was notable for the reasonably peaceful cohabitation of Goths and Romans, thanks to the mediation of Pavia's bishop, Saint Epiphanius. Our knowledge of this period derives in large part from Epiphanius's life, written by Ennodius, one of his immediate successors as bishop of Pavia. The life emphasizes Epiphanius's efforts to negotiate ways of peaceful cohabitation between the local population and the various Germanic conquerors; he was particularly remembered for a series of successful embassies to the Germanic rulers. Modern scholars have understood Epiphanius's prominent role in regional affairs to indicate not only his personal abilities but also the relative importance of Pavia among the cities of the province of Liguria.
Covered bridge, Pavia. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Pavia was one of the few cities of northern Italy where public building continued into the fifth century, owing to the Ostrogoths' royal patronage. Although Theodoric chose Ravenna for his capital, he made Pavia, like Verona, a subsidiary capital, building a palace (palatium) there as a residence and administrative center and restoring the city's walls, amphitheater, and baths. Pavia's river port was busy in this period and was surrounded by warehouses storing supplies for the army.
Pavia's importance seems to have declined somewhat under the rule of Theodoric's daughter Amalasuntha, who preferred Milan, with its links to the Roman imperial past. After Ravenna fell to the Byzantine army in 540, however, the headquarters of the Gothic army was moved to Pavia, and the last Gothic kings were elected there before the Byzantine reconquest in the 550s.
When the Lombards invaded northern Italy in 569, the Byzantine forces holding Pavia resisted them for three years. The Lombards eventually seized the city, and it remained an important garrison against Byzantine and Frankish attacks from the west, although there is no evidence that Pavia functioned as a capital in the early period of the Lombard kingdom. Verona was a frequent residence of the early kings, and Agilulf and Theodelinda resided in Milan and Monza. At least in part as a reaction to the Romanizing tendencies of these rulers, however, subsequent kings gave more attention to Pavia. It was in Pavia that Rothari (r. 636-652) issued his code of Lombard law in 643, and there that he chose to be buried. After Rothari eliminated the Byzantine presence in the province of Liguria, Pavia became still more important as a node of communications between the Po valley and Tuscany, on which the Lombard kingdom was increasingly focused. The Ostrogothic palace continued to serve as a center for the administration of the Lombard royal fisc and the chancery.
When the Lombards first arrived in Pavia in the late sixth century, they seem to have settled in the northeastern corner of the city near the palace, where the Arian cathedral was also located. Catholic worship was probably centered in the extramural basilicas of Sand Gervasio e Protasio (where the relics of the first bishop, San Siro, were located) and Santi Nazario e Celso to the northwest of the city.
The second half of the seventh century saw a wave of new church building in Pavia. Especially after the official conversion of the Lombards from Arianism under Perctarit (661-662, 672-688) and Cunipert (679-700), many of these churches were royal foundations which served as burial sites for the kings. The most famous of Pavia's monasteries, San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, was founded or reendowed by King Luitprand c. 723, when he brought the relics of Saint Augustine from Sardinia to be housed there with the body of Severinus Boethius, who had been executed in Pavia under Theodoric in 525; Luitprand was subsequently buried in the church.
The transfer of the cathedral to its present site near the center of the city may also date from this period: it may have been moved under Bishop Damianus (r. 680-711) in the context of the official conversion of the Lombards, although some scholars have argued that Pavia already had an intramural cathedral on that site in the fifth century. The church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which was later connected to Santo Stefano as half of the "double cathedral," was built or enlarged by a private individual during the reign of Liutprand (712-744).
Some evidence indicates that in Lombard Pavia, as in other cities during this period, settlement became less dense, as more land within the city was given over to agriculture. In Pavia, however, this ruralization of the urban space was accompanied by an increase in the extent of the built-up area, as streets immediately within the walls were gradually used as building sites. The two trends may have offset each other, and consequently the general picture of a sharp decline in population in the Italian towns in this period may not be applicable to Pavia. Likewise, the survival of the Roman street plan and the sewer system suggests that some maintenance was carried out, and that the idea af public rights-of-way and urban amenities was not lost. Indeed, most of the buildings in Pavia which do cut across public streets are royal foundations, suggesting that the rights over roadways remained in royal control.
The fall of the Lombard kingdom to Charlemagne has been seen as the end of the period of Pavia's greatest importance as a capital city. Recently, however, it has been suggested that Pavia's influence may have been greatest in the later ninth century and the early tenth century. That Charlemagne's reign in Italy was dated from his entry into Pavia in 774 indicates the importance the city had acquired as the capital of the Lombard kingdom. The early Carolingian kings of Italy, however, favored Milan as a residence, as the location of their principal mint, and as a burial place. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think that Pavia lost the status of a capital. Lothair I (Lothar, 817-855) and Louis II (r. 844-875) enhanced Pavia's prestige, and both kings resided there frequently during certain periods of their reigns. The translation—which may have taken place at this period—of the relics of Pavia's first bishop, San Siro, from the extramural church of Santi Gervasio e Protasio to the cathedral church of Santo Stefano in the center of the city has also been explained is part of a "revalorization" of the city's status as capital. A capitulary issued by Lothair in 825 required students from a Large area of northern Italy to attend the school at Pavia: the area included most of modern Lombardy and Piedmont as well as Genoa. The presence of Dungal—an Irish monk and teacher—in Pavia during these years also enhanced the city's reputation for scholarship.
The fifty years after Louis II's death saw intense competition for the kingdom of Italy, and possession of the kingdom turned largely on the occupation of Pavia and especially of the palace. Indeed, some scholars describe the later part of this period as a series of "races for the capital" by weak kings seeking the political legitimacy that Pavia alone could give them.
The disorder of these times reached its height in 924, when the city was burned by the Magyars, who may have begun their siege on the orders of Berengar I. Most of the early medieval descriptions of the city were written to lament its destruction. Liudprand of Cremona, for example, spoke of molten rivers of precious metals running into the sewers. The magnitude of destruction is suggested by the fact that only one of Pavia's monasteries preserves any documents from before the fire. The city seems, however, to have recovered rapidly: Rudolf of Burgundy was able to stay in Pavia in August 924, and the royal mint continued to function. Hugh of Provence (r. 926-947) rebuilt the palace, confirmed the goods and privileges of several monasteries, and attracted to his court men of religion and learning like Odo of Cluny.
For a time after the death of Hugh's son Lothar (d. 950), power alternated between Berengar II and Otto I, who had made his first claim to rule the kingdom of Italy in 951. After 967, Otto consolidated his power in Italy and began to hold imperial assemblies at Ravenna: he divided his time in Italy between Ravenna and Pavia, and the connection between the two cities along the Po once again became of primary importance. Pavia has been described as the "capital of the queens" in the period following Otto's death in 983, since both Otto I's widow Adelaide and Otto II's wife Theophano often resided in the city and took considerable interest in the financial functions of the palace. Adelaide, in particular, was also active in reforming Pavia's monasteries in conjunction with the abbots of Cluny Maiolus and Odilo.
Politically, Pavia's importance in the ninth and tenth centuries was centered in the palace; it, and not the city, was the true capital of the kingdom of Italy. The palace served as the royal residence, the center of the administration of justice, the seat of the chancery, the center of the financial organization of the kingdom, and the site of warehouses and workshops. Nevertheless, the palace and the city were closely connected as regards economic activity, especially since the number of people associated with the palace must have made Pavia an unusually large center of consumption. For example, Honorantie civitatis Papie, a text that describes the financial workings of the palace probably in the later tenth century, gives the size of Pavia's fishing fleet (excluding the king's own fishermen) as sixty ships. From at least the tenth century, there were many water mills. Finally, it has been calculated that the mint would have produced about 23,000 denarii a year in the tenth and eleventh centuries; thanks to its consistently high quality, Pavia's money was used throughout the peninsula until the twelfth century.
In addition to being an important local and regional market, Pavia was also a major market for luxury goods. Its river port was extensive and busy, and the city lay on the main road between France and Rome. Traders from Venice, Amalfi, and Salerno brought fine eastern fabrics, spices, cosmetics, worked ivory, and precious stones, while Anglo-Saxons brought northern European products—dogs, lances and swords, skins, slaves, and horses.
Of Pavia's citizenry in this period we know relatively little. The most visible group are the judges and notaries who worked out of the palace and whose culture and wealth seem to have been substantial. Two judges, for example, led a failed revolt against Hugh of Provence c. 927; and in the early eleventh century, Cunibert, also a judge, became the count of the palace. Cunibert's son was later able to combine the office with the comital offices of Pavia and Lomello, and all three offices became hereditary in the family. The influence of this group is also suggested by the fact that of the many new churches founded in the Ottonian period, at least two were endowed by judges.
The bishops of Pavia were exempt from the control of the archbishop of Milan and enjoyed the right of consecration by the pope, privileges which may date back to the seventh century and the conversion of Pavia's last Arian bishop. Despite these prerogatives, they found it difficult to expand their influence in the city or the diocese because of the frequent presence of the king, the number and power of local exempt monasteries, and the proximity of the archbishopric of Milan. Even Bishop Peter III (r. 966-983), whose service as archchancellor of Italy under Otto II led him eventually to become Pope John XIV, was largely unsuccessful in increasing his influence over the royal monasteries.
Pavia remained a small city (the Roman wall contained only about 20-25 hectares, or 55 acres), although suburbs began to develop during the later tenth century. The city was characterized by a relatively high proportion of ecclesiastical buildings, since many bishoprics and important monasteries maintained properties there, probably for convenience in attending imperial assemblies and to participate in the city's economic life. The early eleventh century saw the first of the private towers that would become characteristic of the later city; also dating from this period is the oldest part of the Torre Civica, which stood beside the cathedral as a symbol of civic identity until its collapse in 1989.
After Otto III's death in 1002, the succession in the kingdom of Italy was again contested, and Pavia saw two coronations in the church of San Micheie Maggiore—that of Arduin in 1002 and that of Henry II in 1004. Henry's coronation was followed by a revolt of the Pavians, the causes and aims of which are obscure. In 1024, news of Henry's death reached Pavia: the citizens then systematically destroyed the palace, obliterating it so thoroughly that its exact location remains a matter for scholarly debate. The meaning of the action does not seem to have been anti-imperial; it was perhaps aimed rather at removing or loosening the economic control that the palace officials exercised over the city. Thus, Pavian ambassadors were sent in the usual way to the new king Conrad II, although two years of war followed, before peace could be made between the city and the emperor.
The events of the year 1024 represent a largely symbolic break in the history of Pavia. Although the palace was never rebuilt, little seems to have changed in either the economic life or the local government of the city. By 1024, the counts of the palace had already transferred their center to the nearby town of Lomello, yet they seem to have continued to govern Pavia; they retained a residence (domus) in the city until the mid-twelfth century. There is some evidence that the officials of the royal palace continued to exercise their functions, and the continued strength of Pavia's coinage suggests continued royal oversight. Some of the functions of the palace may have been relocated to San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro: placita (judicial assemblies) were held there, and the monastery had a school which may have continued the palace school. The emperors may have used the monastery as a residence, although, with the exception of Henry IV, they stayed in Pavia less and less often. The power of Pavia's bishops during this period is difficult to assess: unlike other contemporary bishops, they never controlled the city, but they have been described as an important "reference point" in urban affairs; they may have served, for example, as presidents of the placita.
Pavia's greatest importance in this period lay in the legal activity of its judges and teachers. Lanfranc of Bee (later archbishop of Canterbury) probably received his early training in the liberal arts and law in Pavia before his departure for France c. 1030. Especially in the last third of the eleventh century, there is evidence of a flourishing legal culture in Pavia, although whether there was an actual school that specialized in teaching law is debated.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Pavia's generally pro-imperial stance affected its history in important ways. Frederick I Barbarossa received the crown of the Lombard kingdom in the church of San Michele Maggiore in 1155. In a diploma of 1164, he granted Pavia extensive rights of self-government, including the free election of the city's consuls. This diploma sanctioned the city's existing laws and customs, gave the city control over a large territory, and removed the city entirely from the jurisdiction of the count palatine. Thus, Pavia gained through its alliance with the empire a degree of freedom from imperial control which the other Lombard cities would not obtain until the aftermath of the peace of Constance twenty years later.
During this period, Pavia was governed by consuls and by a council of 150 members. A podestà appears first in 1179 and had replaced the consuls by the early thirteenth century. In 1198, the consuls took over the domus of the count palatine in the episcopal palace and rebuilt it as the town hall (broletto).
The twelfth century also saw a wave of rebuilding of the city's churches. San Michele Maggiore (the church in which Frederick I and many previous kings of the Italian kingdom had been crowned) was rebuilt in Lombard Romanesque style, with a characteristic flat, screenlike facade. San Michele was probably influenced by Sant'Ambrogio in Milan and in turn became a model for other Pavian churches rebuilt during this period, including San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro and the twin cathedral churches of Santo Stefano and Santa Maria del Popolo.
Pavia maintained its pro-imperial stance into the thirteenth century, and in 1219 the commune's privileges were confirmed by Frederick II. Attitudes toward the empire also affected Pavia's internal politics. From the later twelfth century, the popolo had played an increasing role in the city's government; by the later thirteenth century, separate organizations of the popolo, the nobles, and the notaries had formed, each with its own podestà. The popolo and the notaries were closely associated, and when the nobles split in the 1260s over Conradin's attempt to claim the imperial succession, the pro-imperial faction associated itself with these two groups. It has been argued, however, that these divisions did not result in the political dominance of the popolo and its associated organizations; instead, the commune continued to be ruled by the podestà, the council of credendarii, and (in the later part of the century) a smaller council of sapientes. The powers of the podestà of the individual organizations, although potentially extensive, continued to be delegated to them by the communal council.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries also saw some important changes in the economic life of the city. Pavia's coinage declined into a purely communal currency, perhaps reflecting the decline of imperial control over the mint. At the same time, Genoa began to replace Venice as the city's major trading partner; to ensure tighter control of trade, Pavia developed its own road across the Apennines to Genoa in the thirteenth century. Trade between Genoa and Milan also increased, since Milan relied on Genoa for raw materials for its thriving cloth industry. This economic rivalry between Pavia and Milan may have been one reason for Milan's continued attempts to bring Pavia under its domination in the fourteenth century.
In the later thirteenth century and the early fourteenth century, regional alliances—loosely organized around pro-imperial sentiments on the one hand, and pro-papal, pro-Angevin sentiments on the other—also shaped Pavia's political life. In 1254, Pavia joined a number of other Lombard cities under the signory of Ubertus Pellavicino, In the 1270s, the marquis of Monferrato became "defender" of Pavia, again bringing Pavia into a larger regional grouping of cities over which he exercised various degrees of authority. Both of these experiments kept Pavia in the sphere of pro-imperial alliances. In the early fourteenth century, however, Pavia was ruled by Count Filippone de Langosco, an important figure in the pro-papal politics of the region. This change in Pavia's political orientation was a further cause for enmity with the generally pro-imperial Visconti family of Milan.
In 1315, Pavia was attacked and captured by its own exiles in conjunction with Galeazzo Visconti. Luchino Visconti served as podestà for four years; subsequently we know little about the precise relationship between Pavia and the Visconti. Opicino de Canistris, author of a description of Pavia that is a major source for this period, speaks of a "lord" (dominus generalis) placed over the older communal institutions. Chroniclers from other cities describe some type of alliance between Pavia and the Visconti or mention Pavia as a tributary, but the information is scarce and contradictory. Pavia seems to have used the descent of Emperor Lewis (Louis, Ludwig) of Bavaria into Italy in 1329 to move away from any direct control by the Visconti, and the city later maintained close connections with the marquis of Monferrato.
In the years between the capture of Pavia in 1315 and its final fall to the Visconti in 1359, Opicino's vivid description of the city shows us that it was prosperous, though small (modern estimates place the population at 20,000 in the mid-thirteenth century). In this work, which Opicino wrote in exile in Avignon during the last years of the commune's independent existence, the city is structured physically by its three concentric rings of walls, and from a distance the private towers form an impressive skyline. The citizens' lives center on the piazza in front of the cathedral, where business is transacted; the city's small size allows the citizens to meet one another daily.
A war between Milan and Monferrato led the Visconti to besiege Pavia in 1356; following a peace in 1358, the war was renewed, and Pavia fell definitively to Galeazzo II in 1359. Jacopo Bussolaro, an Augustinian friar who was probably a native of Pavia, led the defense of the city. His preaching called for the moral reform of the citizens and for liberty from the tyranny of the Beccaria family that ruled Pavia. Invoking antique models, Bussolaro rallied the Pavians to expel the Beccaria, and then to resist the Visconti; he became, for the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, the model of the power of eloquence to overcome the mighty.
The takeover by the Visconti in 1359 brought significant changes in government. Galeazzo Visconti now selected the major officials, including a vicar-general, a podestà, a referendary to oversee financial matters, and a magistrate for water rights and roads. At the civic level, a consiglio di provvisione with twelve members effectively governed the city, and a consiglio generate with 200 members met when summoned by the prince to discuss matters of general concern to the commune. Both councils were composed equally of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Under the Visconti, Pavia became an important cultural center. Galeazzo obtained imperial authority to establish a university there in 1361 and ordered that it serve as the place of higher learning for all residents of the Visconti domains. He resided frequently at the castello, and he invited Petrarch to Pavia in 1363. Petrarch lived in Pavia on and off between 1363 and 1369; he described the city in a letter to Boccaccio in 1365, discussing its history and praising its location and climate.
The Visconti signory also brought about important changes in the physical structure of the city. A large piazza was opened up near the center of the city, cutting across the main east-west artery, the ancient Roman decumanus, and closed at the south end by the broletto. This pulled the city's center away from the cathedral, back toward the central crossing of the two main streets, lessening the importance of the piazza in front of the cathedral, which had been for Opicino the main gathering place of the citizens. The north-south street that ran to the river (the Roman cardo) was widened and straightened; it joined the covered bridge over the Ticino, which had been rebuilt in 13511355, to Galeazzo's magnificent new castello on the northern edge of the city. In contrast to Opicino's early fourteenth-century description of Pavia as a set of concentric circles, a fresco painted in the early sixteenth century depicts a densely inhabited rectangular space: the tall family towers blend into the background; and the image is dominated by the river, the bridge, and the castello, joined along a central axis by a sharply delineated roadway, the strada nuova, cutting through the city's center.
See also Adelaide; Amalasuntha; Arduin of Ivrea; Berengar II; Boethius; Conrad II; Frederick I Barbarossa; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Henry II, Saint and Emperor; Hugh of Aries; Liutprand; Lombards; Lothar I; Louis II, Emperor; Milan; Opicino de Canistris; Ostrogoths; Otto I; Otto II; Petrarca, Francesco; Ravenna; Rothari; Rudolf II of Burgundy; Theodoric; Visconti Family
VICTORIA M. MORSE
Anonymus Ticinensis (Opicino de Canistris). Liber de laudibus civitatis ticinensis, ed. Rodolfo Maiocchi and Ferruccio Quintavalle, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 11(1). Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1903.
Barbieri, Ezio, Carla Maria Cantù, and Ettore Cau, eds. Le carte di San Pietro in del d'Oro di Pavia: Il Fondo Cittadella (1200-1250). Fonti Storico-Giuridiche, Documenti, 2. Pavia and Milan: Fontes, 1988.
Barbieri, Ezio, Maria Antonietta Casagrande Mazzoli, and Ettore Cau, eds. Le carte del monastero di San Pietro in del d'Oro. Fonti Storico-Giuridiche, Documenti, 1. Pavia: Fontes, 1984.
Brühl, Carlrichard, and Cinzio Violante, eds. Die "Honorantie Civitatis Papie": Transkription, Edition, Kommentar. Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1983.
Crotti Pasi, Renata, and Carla Maria Cantù, eds. Breve mercadantie mercatorum papie: La più antica legislazione mercantile pavese—1295. Pavia: Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato e Agricoltura di Pavia, 1995.
Ennodius. Vita Epifani. In Opera, ed. Friederich Vogel. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 7. Berlin: Weidmann, 1885.
Liudprand of Cremona. Die Werke Liudprands von Cremona, ed. Joseph Becker. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, 41. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1915. (Reprint, 1977.)
Paul the Deacon. Historia Langobardorum, ed. Georg Waitz and Ludwig Bethmann. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1878. (Reprint, 1988.)
Ennodius. The Life of Saint Epiphanius, trans. Genevieve Marv Cook. Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, 14. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1942.
Honorantie civitatis Papie. In Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, trans, and ed. Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955, pp. 56-60, (Extracts. Reprint, 1990.)
Liudprand of Cremona. Antapodosis. In The Embassy to Constantinople and Other Writings, ed. John Julius Norwich, trans. F. A. Wright. London: Dent, 1993.
Paul the Deacon. History of the Langobards, trans. William Dudley Foulke. Philadelphia: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1907.
Petrarch, Francis. Letters of Old Age: Rerum seniliurn libri I—XVIII, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo et al., 2 vols. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. (See Letter 5.1, Vol. 2, pp. 152-156.)
Archeologia medievale, 5, 1978. (Contains several reports on the excavations in Pavia's Torre Civica.)
Barbieri, Ezio. Notariato e documento notarile a Pavia (secoli XI-XIV). Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università di Pavia, 58. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1990.
Bullough, D. A. "Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia." Papers of the British School in Rome, 34, 1966, pp. 82-131.
Caprioli, Adriano, Antonio Rimoldi, and Luciano Vaccaro, eds. La diocesi di Pavia. Storia Religiosa della Lombardia, 11. Brescia: La Scuola, 1995.
Cau, Ettore, and Aldo A. Settia, eds. "Speciales fideles imperii": Pavia nell'età di Frederico II. Pavia: Edizioni Antares, 1995.
Krautheimer, Richard. "The Twin Cathedral at Pavia." In Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art. New York: New York University Press, 1969, pp. 161-180.
Lane, Steven G. "The Territorial Expansion of a Political Community: Pavia 1100-1300." Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995.
Massetto, Gian Paolo. "Gli studi di diritto nella Lombardia del secolo XI." In Lanfranco di Pavia e l'Europa del secolo XI nel centenario della morte (1089-1989): Atti del Convegno Intemazionale di Studi (Pavia, 21—24 settembre 1989), ed. Giulio d'Onofrio. Italia Sacra, 51. Rome: Herder, 1993, pp. 61-116.
Orselli, Alba M. "La città altomedievale e il suo santo patrono: (Ancora una volta) il 'campione' pavese." Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 32(1), 1978, pp. 1-69.
Pavia capitale del regno: Atti del 4o Congresso internazionale di studi sull'alto medioevo (Pavia-Scaldasole-Monza-Bobbio, 10—14 settembre 1967). Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1969. (See especially articles by Ovidio Capitani, Girolamo Arnaldi, Ugo Gaulazzini, and Beniamino Pagnin.)
Peroni, Adriano. Pavia: Musei civici del Castello Visconteo. Bologna: Calderini, 1975.
Radding, Charles M. The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna 850-1150. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988.
Romanini, Angiola Maria. L'architettura gotica in Lombardia, 2 vols. Architetture delle Regioni d'Italia, 2. Milan: Ceschina, 1964.
—. "La rielaborazione trecentesca di Pavia romana." In Atti del Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia (4-5 luglio 1964). Pavia: n.p., 1968.
Società Pavese di Storia Patria. Storia di Pavia, 3 vols. Pavia: Banca del Monte di Lombardia, 1984-1992. (See especially Vol. 1, L'età antica: P. Tozzi, G. Clemente, L. Cracco Ruggini, V. Lanzani. Vol. 2, L'alto medioevo: S. Gasparri, A. A. Settia, A. Padoa Schioppa, P. Hudson, V. Lanzani. Vol. 3, Dal libero comune alia fine del principato indipendente 1024—1535, part 1, Società, istituzioni, religione nelle età del Comune e della Signoria: A. A. Settia, P. Vaccari, E. Roveda, G. Forzatti Golia, A. Zambarbieri, E, Dezza, A. Cerri. Vol. 3, part 2, La battaglia di Pavia del 24 febbraio 1525 nella storia, nella letteratura, e nell'arte, università e cultura: P. Tozzi, L. Musselli. Individual articles include bibliographies and illustrations.)
Tozzi, Pierluigi. Opicino e Pavia. Pavia: Libreria d'Arte Cardano, 1990.
Vaccari, Pietro. Proftlo storico di Pavia. Pavia: Tipografia Ticinese, 1950.
Ward-Perkins, Bryan. From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy A.D. 300-850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Westhues, Peter Lütke. "Besteuerung als Gegenstand statutarischer Rechtsetzung: Die Steuerstatuten Pavias (1270) und Vogheras (1275-1282)." In Statutencodices des 13. Jahrhunderts als Zeugen Pragmatischer Schriftlichkeit: Die Handschriften von Como, Lodi, Novara, Pavia und Voghera, eds. Hagen Keller and Jörg W. Busch. Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften, 64. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1991, pp. 143-166.
White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993.
There were two unrelated Pazzi lineages in the city and countryside (contado) of Florence: the Pazzi of the Arno valley between Florence and Arezzo (Pazzi del Valdarno) and the urban Pazzi. The former were among the most powerful Ghibelline nobles of the Florentine countryside. Emperors Henry VI and Frederick I had both identified them as vassals of the Guidi counts. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Pazzi del Valdarno and the Ubertini resisted Florence's political and military expansion into the Arno valley. Their castles became refuges for Florentine exiles, and they often allied with the Aretines against Florence. In the Florentine ordinances of justice of 1293, they appeared among the magnates of the contado excluded from participation in the highest political offices. In 1296, the Florentines established two new settlements—San Giovanni Valdarno and Castelfranco di Sopra—to protect the city from the Pazzi del Valdarno, the Ubertini, and the Aretines. Like other Ghibelline lineages, the Pazzi were allies of the White Guelfs of Florence.
Like the Cavalcanti, Donati, Tosinghi, Adimari, and Buondelmonti, the Pazzi of the city were originally members of the traditional Guelf aristocracy. In the first half of the thirteenth century, they formed a consorteria with another Guelf lineage, the Donati. Along with the Visdomini and Tosinghi, these Pazzi sided with the Donati in their feud with the Adimari and their allies at the end of the thirteenth century. Several Pazzi were inscribed in the money changers' guild (cambio) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Pazzino dei Pazzi and his relatives originally sided with Corso Donati and the Blacks against the Cerchi in the opening stages of the conflict between the Blacks and Whites in 1300. However, in 1303 Pazzino, Rosso della Tosa, and Geri Spini eventually broke with Corso over the distribution of offices and favors within the city.
See also Florence; Ghibelline; Guelfs; Ordinances of Justice
GEORGE DAMERON
Compagni, Dino. Dino Compagni's Chronicle of Florence, trans. Daniel Bornstein. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
Villani, Giovanni. Cronica di Giovanni Villani, ed. Ignazio Moutier. Florence: Magheri, 1823, Vol. 5(39), Vol. 8(39).
Brucker, Gene Adam. Florence: The Golden Age, 1138-1737. New York: Abbeville, 1984.
DAddario, Arnaldo. "Pazzi." In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol. 4. Rome: Istituto della Eneielopedia Italiana, 1970, pp. 353-354.
Dameron, George. Episcopal Power and Florentine Society, 1000-1320. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze, 8 vols., trans. Giovanni Battista Klein. Florence: Sansoni, 1960-1978.
Fiumi, Enrico. "Fioritura e decadenza dell'economia fiorentina." Archivio Storico Italiano, 115, 1957, pp. 412-413, 428.
Holmes, George. Florence, Rome, and the Origins of the Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
Lansing, Carol. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Larner, John. Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216-1380. London and New York: Longman, 1980.
Ottokar, Nicola. Il comune di Firenze alla fine del Dugento. Turin: Einaudi, 1962.
Raveggi, Sergio, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia Parenti. Ghibellini, Guelfi, e popolo grasso: I detentori del potere politico a Firenze nella seconda metà del Dugento. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978, pp. 119-121.
Toynbee, Paget. A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, rev. ed., ed. Charles S. Singleton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968. (See "Pazzi.")
In a medieval European context, peasants are the people without history. At best, most texts caricature them as the humble laboratores, as in the classic tripartite model of "those who pray, those who fight, and those who work." As a result, little real understanding of peasants' beliefs and cultural customs can now be had. Sympathy and even recognition are therefore difficult, particularly because Latin writers used an array of other names for peasants: rusticus, paganus, illiteratus, colonus, servus, and aldius could all mean "peasant" in one context and some other social type in another. And since there is no reason to assume that the meanings of words remained at all constant during the medieval period, any attempt to trace peasant history over a millennium is likely to be difficult and unavoidably impressionistic. Take, for example, the word colonus, which historians have found tricky: although it could clearly mean peasant in late Roman and medieval documents, it is also equated with servus (normally slave or serf) in an edict of Theodoric the Ostrogoth and appears as coloni liberi and coloni servi in some eighth-century charters. So a study of words alone will not get us very far toward even a simple definition of the medieval Italian peasant. For the purposes of this entry, we can accept Crone's definition of peasants as "rural cultivators whose surplus was forcibly transferred to a dominant group of rulers" (1989). However, even an ostensibly simple statement such as this is problematic, immediately raising issues about the crucial importance of subsistence rather than surplus to peasants, degrees of freedom and unfreedom within the rural population, and the supposed existence of the "free peasant farmer." What follows concentrates on those areas of medieval Italian society where historians have explicitly discovered peasants (contadini in Italian): essentially the structures of agricultural production and rural life, the development of communities of peasants, and the forms of oppression suffered by the rural population.
Between c. A.D. 200 and 600, the classic estates of the Roman countryside based on large gangs of slaves for their workforce disappeared as, by some process which is little understood, slaves were "freed" to become serfs or peasants. It may be that the plagues and wars of the sixth and seventh centuries made this change to a different type of rural economy possible. The devastations of the countryside must have encouraged a move to more subsistence production based on smaller estates or even single peasant households. Certainly, as the long-distance trading networks that had supplied the great Roman cities broke down, there was less need for intensive cash-crop production of the sort suited to slave labor. The emergence of the "peasant household" has preoccupied many historians and requires specific discussion, as it remained the basic unit of rural production throughout the Middle Ages in Italy.
Little is known about the material character of peasant dwellings in Italy, because archaeological investigation into them is just beginning. Most work has concentrated on the ninth and tenth centuries; and, predictably, where there is information, it shows peasant homes as materially impoverished. Galetti (1983) has shown that the typical pattern across the Po valley was a house, courtyard, kitchen garden, and associated land. Sizes varied but tended to be small. Households all over Italy usually had a mean size of four or five persons; i.e., it can be assumed that most consisted of a single nuclear family. Some were larger, as brothers and their families sometimes lived together or widows lived with their children. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, "polyptychs"—inventories of landed properties carried out by great monastic houses in the ninth and tenth centuries—provide the most explicit evidence about peasant family structure. In Italy, the most useful polyptychs are those of San Colombano at Bobbio, Santa Giulia at Brescia, and San Salvatore at Farfa. Ring (1972) has found that at Farfa most peasant families practiced partible inheritance: the family property was passed from father to all children, especially the males. Occasionally brothers and other kinsmen held land jointly. However, even these are at best very partial records covering simply the monastic estates, and we usually have little way of telling if the settlement and social patterns found there had wider currency. These compact households seem to have been well-suited to subsistence production, but in fact their role within the rural economy was rather more complicated than that.
The first complication concerns their occurrence across the rural landscape as a whole: that is, were they gathered into nucleated settlements or more dispersed over the land? In general, nucleated settlement was the norm in the medieval Italian countryside. Peasant households were grouped into hamlets or villages, often focused on a church or castle. In central Italy, many such settlements were on fortified hilltops, particularly after the deliberate transference of settlements from the plains to the hills—a process essentially of the late ninth and tenth centuries known by the shorthand term incastellamento. Nucleation could result in cooperation among peasants in communal activities, but also in easy domination of the peasant community by the local lord. Dispersed settlement was more common in mountain areas, for straightforward topographical reasons; thus these areas tended to be less amenable to practical lordly domination.
The second complication concerns the relationship between these supposedly self-sufficient peasant households and the networks of estates that we also find in the documents. How did the peasant casa fit within the lord's Curtis? Here we arrive at the crux of peasant life in the medieval period. There appear to have been very few societies indeed where peasants were truly free of institutionalized obligations to the powerful, such as periodic labor service on estates (corvées), the provision of rents in kind or cash, and the return of tithe. The success with which lords dominated their peasants is a key to understanding the Italian Middle Ages, for on this the survival of a complex society rested. In particular, the extraction of surplus from the peasantry formed the basic income of lords and, to an extent, determined the status of slave, serf, and "free" peasant. Most of this surplus went unrecorded, but we can assume that it was common. We do know, from the records of the great monasteries, that wide-ranging demands were made on peasants; these demands were sometimes written down (especially in the later Middle Ages) but often remained simply customary. It is in these obligations that the differing social positions of "peasants" are most visible. Labor service obligations varied widely. In general they were fairly light in Italy, confined to a few days of work for the lord each year, usually at harvest time. Peasants could be involved in cultivation (planting, weeding, pruning), harvesting (especially threshing), or transportation. However, in some parts of the Po valley such obligations were more intense, especially on the great monastic estates of Nonantola and Bobbio. Transport obligations especially could involve travel over considerable distances and were often the subject of libellus records (written agricultural contracts) in monastic archives. For example, in a charter of 897, the monastery of Sant'Ambrogio at Milan demanded that one of its tenants living in Bozzolo (in the Modenese) take his annual food render all the way to the village of Cavenago, where the monastery had a dispentium, some 60 miles (100 kilometers) away to the west. Therefore, transport obligations were at times resisted; indeed, they seem to have occasioned complaints that this was the work of slaves (servi). In some places, obligations may have been institutionalized on a regular, even weekly basis; for example, Andreolli (1983) has noticed this in the 760s at Pistoia and Monza. The reason, of course, may have had to do not with agriculture as such but rather with ensuring effective political domination.
If the peasant was able to produce a surplus, there was a chance that some would be left over for the peasant himself to dispose of outside of the estate system: i.e., at a local market. Whether peasants made use of local markets is most problematic in the early Middle Ages, when the evidence for markets themselves is hardly common. The vitality of smallholders' initiatives, such as land clearance, has been stressed by Davies (1988) and Dockès (1984) with reference to French examples as early as the mid-ninth century. But Duby (1974) has taken the concept of "peasant gains" as most characteristic of the period after 1000. It seems fairly certain that around the end of the tenth century, many peasants began to escape from the confines of the great manors. In the great leases of that period, we begin to read of vacant plots, labor shortages, and the flight of dependents to the flourishing towns—not everywhere, of course, but mostly in the north and especially near Pavia and Milan. The reason for these developments is unclear. Partly, it was a need to find money rents, which were increasingly demanded by lords instead of rents in kind. Possibly, some peasant families managed to profit from such transactions, move into the city, and thus escape peasant status. But for those left behind, the pressures exerted by lords were greater.
Simple exploitation of peasants by lords was one impetus for change. Another was the conflict between peasant and lord on which Marx placed such weight. This becomes most visible in the later Middle Ages in Italy in the form of the rural communes and rebellions, which were essentially caused by this conflict. To understand this properly, we have to go back to the beginning of the Middle Ages. At that time, most peasants did not live in isolation: as has been seen, they tended to live in communities, where some communal agricultural activities were practiced. In many areas, at some point in the early medieval period there is some reference to communal fields or pasture, fields belonging to the village. But it is unclear if these were actually owned in common by the villagers. Bognetti (1978) and others believed strongly in the existence of the community of the village, constituted socially and legally as well as agriculturally from before the Roman period, a notion which recent scholars have attacked as anachronistic. Not until the ninth century can we sometimes see the local community in action against outsiders, notably when it was under threat from lordly demands perceived as unreasonable. The classic conflict of lord and peasant is illustrated by two instances of complaints by peasants living on estates owned by the monasteries of San Vincenzo al Volturno and Sant'Ambrogio at Milan. In both cases, labor services were at issue, and it is clear that both monasteries were trying to impose increased demands, which were resisted by the peasants (referred to as servi) on the grounds of customary practice. Between 779 and 872, there were a series of court cases between the monastery of San Vincenzo and the inhabitants of the village of Carapelle (Valle Trita in the Abruzzi). Wickham (1981, 1982, 1984, 1989) has concluded that as a result of the prolonged resistance of the locals to monastic aggression, feudal control was imposed over previously free peasants. In the case of Sant'Ambrogio, the peasants of Limonta (an estate near Lake Como) had a long dispute with the monastery which resulted in the production of a written charter recording their precise, increased obligations. After this we never hear of the Limonta peasants in such a context again.
Such events probably paved the way for the emergence of rural communes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, periods for which there is much better evidence. Communes helped to define the collective rights of the peasant community and to run the village in a basically consensual fashion (although the richer peasants took the lead). The result was often fierce conflict with local lords who refused to give up political control over the rural population. The peasant rising near Parma in 1385 was the beginning of numerous rebellions in the fifteenth century, directed against unjust taxation and lordly misgovernment.
In she period before 1000, political power over peasants had been very much the concern of the highest lords of all: kings. Peasants were all too often caught between the demands of the state and their immediate lords. The Carolingian capitularies are preoccupied with the public obligations of free men, the arimanni. The arimannus would not have been a typical peasant—only the richest would have been able to afford the armor required in the laws—but the monarchs' concern came about because local lords were in general deemed to be oppressing the poor. With the collapse of royal power c. 1000, there was little to protect the weak from the castle-owning domini; as a result, feudal powers (of command) came increasingly to be exercised over the peasantry. Peasants' access to public courts declined, and increasingly they were subject to judicial oppression by local gentry. This marked the start of the decline of the peasantry, which can be observed all over Italy in the later Middle Ages.
For some peasants, the thirteenth century saw the start of a better life: real land ownership, different work (such as dock labor), and of course the consolidation of collective rights. But others lost out, becoming leaseholders or simply traveling wage laborers (as is well evidenced in the south from the twelfth century on). Divisive hierarchies began to develop within peasant society, and the downtrodden became the butt of refined literature. In some ways the "golden age" for the Italian peasants was the period between the end of the Roman empire and the ninth century, when they had few centralized taxes to pay and more surplus to keep and were subjected only to as yet underdeveloped powers of local justice. Afterward, "the normal life of grinding extortion for the peasant classes" (Wickham 1984) returned.
See also Agriculture; Revenues
ROSS BALZARETTI
Andreolli, Bruno. "Contratti agrari e patti colonici nella Lucchesia dei secoli VIII-IX." Studi Medievali, Series 3(19), 1978, pp. 69-158.
—. "L'evoluzione dei patti colonici nella Toscana dei secoli VIII-X." Quaderni Medievali, 16, 1983, pp. 29-52.
Bognetti, Gian Piero. Studi suite origini del comune rurale. Milan: Università Cattolica, 1978. (Originally published 1926.)
Castagnetti, Andrea. "Dominico e massaricio a Limonta nei secoli 9 e 10." Rivista di Storia dell'Agricoltura, 7, 1968, pp. 3-20.
Cherubini, Giorgio. L'Italia rurale del basso medioevo. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1985.
Crone, Patricia. Pre-Industrial Societies. Oxford: Blackweli, 1989.
Davies, Wendy. Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany. London: Duckworth, 1988.
Dockes, Pierre. Medieval Slavery and Liberation. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Drew, Katherine Fischer. Law and Society in Early Medieval Europe. London: Variorum, 1988.
Duby, Georges. The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, trans. Howard B. Clarke. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Fumagalli, Vito. Terra e società nell'Italia padana: I secoli IX e X. Turin: Einaudi, 1976.
—. Città e campagna nell'Italia rnedievale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985.
—, ed. Le prestazione d'opera nelle campagne italiane del Medioevo. Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice, 1987.
Fumagalli, Vito, and Gabriella Rossetti, eds. Medioevo rurale: Sulle tracce della civiltà contadina. Bologna: il Mulino, 1980.
Galetti, Paola. "La casa contadina nell'Italia padana dei secoli VIII-X." Quaderni Medievali, 16, 1983, pp. 6-28.
Genicot, Leopold. Rural Communities in the Medieval West. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Hilton, Rodney. "Warriors and Peasants." New Left Review, 83, 1974, pp. 83-96.
Hodges, Richard. Primitive and Peasant Markets. Oxford: Blackweli, 1988.
—. "Archaeology and the Class Struggle in the First Millennium A.D." In The Birth of Europe, ed. Klavs Randsorg. Rome: Bretschneider, 1989.
—. "Re-Writing the Rural History of Early Medieval Italy: Twenty-Five Years of Medieval Archaeology Reviewed." Rural History, 1, 1990, pp. 17-36.
Jones, Philip. "Medieval Agrarian Society in Its Prime: Italy." In Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Postan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966, Vol. 1, pp. 340-431.
Kristensen, A. K. G. "Free Peasants in the Early Middle Ages: Freeholders, Freedmen, or What?" Medieval Scandinavia, 12, 1988, pp. 76-106.
Luzzatto, Gino. "Changes in Italian Agrarian Economy (from the Fall of the Carolingians to the Beginning of the Eleventh Century)." In Early Medieval Society, ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967, pp. 206-218.
Montanari, Massimo. Alimentazione e cultura nel Medioevo, 2nd ed. Rome: Laterza, 1989.
Ring, Richard R. "The Lands of Farfa: Studies in Lombard and Carolingian Italy." Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1972.
—. "Early Medieval Peasant Households in Central Italy." Journal of Family History, 4, 1979, pp. 2-25.
Toubert, Pierre. "L'Italie rurale aux VIII-IX siècles: Essai de typologie domainiale." Settimane di Spoleto, Centro Italiano di Studi sull'alto Medioevo, 13, 1973, pp. 95-132.
—. Études sur l'Italie médiévale. London: Variorum, 1976.
—. Histoire du Haul Moyen Age et de l'Italie médiévale. London: Variorum, 1987.
Vasina Augusto, ed. Ricerche e studi sul "Breviarium Ecclesiae Ravennatis" (Codice bavaro). Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1985.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000. London: Macmillan, 1981.
—. Studi sulla società degli Appennini nell'alto Medioevo: Contadini, signori, e insedimento nel territorio di Valva (Sulmona). Bologna: Clueb, 1982.
—. "The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to Feudalism." Past and Present, 103, 1984, pp. 3-36.
—. "Italy and the Early Middle Ages." In The Birth of Europe, ed. Klavs Randsborg. Rome: Bretschneider, 1989.
Il pecorone (The Big Sheep, The Big Booby) was written in the latter half of the fourteenth century by ser Giovanni Fiorentino, about whom we know very little. The preface dates the beginning of the work to 1378, but events referred to in the stories occurred as late as 1385; thus the book was probably compiled over a number of years. A poem at the beginning, possibly also by ser Giovanni, claims that the author knows nothing about writing books; and indeed the style is plain.
The framing narrative concerns a beautiful, honest nun of Forlì and a young man from a good family who becomes chaplain to the convent in order to be near her. Although these two are in love with each other, they chastely spend their time together telling each other a story apiece for twenty-five days. The monk's name, Auretto, may be an anagram for auttore, "author," especially as the author claims at the end to have been present on many of the occasions. As in Boccaccio's Decameron, each day ends with a song (ballata); the freshness and charm of these twenty-five songs have generally won more praise than the prose.
The tales combine stories of love and fantasy (of which the best-known became a source for The Merchant of Venice) with episodes of Roman and Florentine history. More than thirty tales toward the end of the book are taken directly from Giovanni Villani's chronicles of Florence. The final tale is a bawdy parody of the frame story, which is left unresolved.
The collection was recopied during the fifteenth century and was first printed in Milan in 1558. It has been reprinted a few times during every century since then.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Italian Prose; Novella
JANET LEVARIE SMARR
Il pecorone, ed. Enzo Esposito. Ravenna: Longo, 1974.
The Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, trans. W. G. Waters. London: Society of Bibliophiles, 1897.
Di Francia, Letterio. Novellistica. Milan: F. Vallardi, 1924, pp. 202-223.
Hinton, J. "Walter Map and Ser Giovanni." Modern Philology, 15, 1917, pp. 203-209. (On tale 1.1.)
Muscetta, Carlo. Il pecorone e la novellistica del Quattrocento. Catania: F. Castorina, 1966.
Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti (born c. 1280s) was a Florentine factor for the great Bardi banking house in the first half of the fourteenth century, until its failure in 1347. His name appears in 1310 in the firm's payroll for the branch in Florence, at a rate which suggests that he already had considerable experience. His work was rewarded with promotions to positions of greater importance. In 1315, he negotiated trade rights for Florentines in Antwerp. From 1318 to 1321, as director of the firm's English office, he had duties that included financial transactions to help finance the English king, private business, and transferral of the tithes collected in England to the papal curia. Pegolotti next moved to Cyprus, where he remained until 1329; again, his job involved diplomacy, handling papal monies, and handling monies for individual merchants. He returned to Florence in order to hold civic office but then moved back to the east by 1335. In 1340, he returned again to Florence, for the last time. The last known mention of him is in 1347, when he was one of the civic officials overseeing the liquidation of the assets of the bankrupt Bardi firm.
Pegolotti is best known not for his service to the Bardi but for the compilation of his observations on trade now known as La practica della mercatura. The oldest known manuscript, from 1472, is a copy made by Filippo di Niccolaio Frescobaldi in the Riccardian Library in Florence. The manuscript has evident inaccuracies, which can be attributed to the copyist; these include misreadings that arose when the copyist was trying to expand the original abbreviations, and chapters that are out of place. Internal evidence, such as the mention of current kings, helps to show that the material in the Practica was collected throughout Pegolotti's career with the Bardi, and also that it was not written down all at one time.
The Practica is one of a "genre" of documents called merchant manuals. It is by far the best-known because historians have used Pegolotti's discussion of the route to Cathay as proof that Europeans had knowledge of and easy access to the Silk Road. The data come from Pegolotti's experience and from documents he collected that had something to do with his work—such as a list of brokerage fees charged in Pisa, quoted from the Breve dell' Ordine del Mare of 1323. The section on Cathay is almost certainly based on information Pegolotti collected rather than on personal experience. The manual contains information on conversions for weights, measures, and currencies between various places, as well as discussions of other topics such as the steps involved in producing the most important commodities of a particular region and the expenses involved in producing coins. The Practica is among the earliest known merchant manuals, but it is possible that Pegolotti borrowed some of his material from still earlier manuals, just as later manuals would borrow from his. This type of book probably functioned as an exemplar to teach apprentices how international trade worked, not as a reference for absolute values or information,
See also Banks and Banking; Bardi Family
ELEANOR A. CONGDON
Borlandi, Antonia, ed. Il manuale di mercatura di Saminiato de' Ricci. Genoa: Di Stefano, 1963.
Borlandi, Franco, ed. El libro di mercatantie et usanze de' paesi. Turin: S. Lartes, 1936.
Cessi, Roberto, and Antonio Orlandini, eds. Tarifa zoè noticia dy pexi e mesure di luoghi e tere che s 'adovra mercadantia per el mondo. Venice, 1925.
Ciano, Cesare, ed. La pratica di mercatura datiniana. Milan: Giuffrè, 1964.
Dotson, John, trans, and ed. Merchant Culture in Fourteenth-Centmy Venice: The Zibaldone da Canal, Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1994.
Pagnini del Ventura, Giovanni Francesco. Delia decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal comune di Firenze: Della moneta e della mercatura de'fiorentini fino al secolo XVI, Vol. 3, La pratica della mercatura (by Balducci Pegolotti); Vol. 4, La pratica della mercatura (by Giovanni di Antonio da Uzzano). Lisbon, 1765-1766. (Reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1967.)
Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci. La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allen Evans. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1936.
Stussi, Alfredo, ed. Zibaldone da Canal: Manoscritto mercantile del sec. XIV. Venice: Comitato per la Pubblicazione delle Fonti Relative alla Storia di Venezia, 1967.
In the late fourth century, Christianity was no longer the religion of a persecuted minority; it was the religion of the empire. One of the main issues that faced the church was to agree on the correct way to believe and practice the Christian faith. A pious reformer, Pelagius (c. 354-after 418), precipitated a theological crisis when he tried to reform Christian behavior.
Pelagius was born in Britain. Around 380, he went to Rome, where he tried to improve the conduct of complacent Christians, urging them to lead more virtuous lives. Pelagius acquired a reputation for asceticism and a large following. In Rome, he became acquainted with two men—Celestius and Rufinus the Syrian—who joined him in his belief that Christians had the capacity, and thus the obligation, to avoid sin.
At the same time, Augustine was arguing that fallen humanity was incapable of virtue without continuing help from God in the form of divine grace. Between 402 and 405, Pelagius disagreed with this view of grace, as expressed in Book 10 of Augustine's Confessions, and wrote several tracts (On the Trinity, Extracts, and Commentary on the Pauline Epistles) opposing it. Pelagius's works (seven complete tracts and letters survive) established a controversy which was to engage Augustine for the rest of his life and which involved Jerome, two popes, an emperor, and the Roman people.
The core of the debate was how to achieve salvation: Pelagius stressed free will, claiming that people had the absolute freedom to choose good or evil. According to Pelagius, God's grace had been expressed historically: by his creation; by his revelation in the scriptures, which taught people to choose good; and by his promise of redemption—forgiveness of sins—through the crucifixion of Jesus. For Pelagius, God had done as much as was necessary; it remained for humanity to choose salvation. Augustine, on the other hand, believed that Adam's initial free choice had condemned all future generations to sinfulness. Adam's original sin was passed down physically from parent to child, and this inherited sinfulness had robbed humanity of its free choice. People were powerless to be virtuous and so were condemned to sin. Salvation lay only in God's power to grant grace to individuals to keep them from sin. Augustine saw grace as an ongoing gift that was necessary for the salvation of fallen humanity.
This profound difference between Augustine and Pelagius led to other disputes. Pelagians denied original sin, whereas Augustinians considered original sin central to the human experience. They also differed on the efficacy of infant baptism. Augus tinians believed that baptism was crucial, to cleanse the infant from the inherited sin of Adam. Pelagius himself was noncommital on this question, but other Pelagians, such as Celestius, denied the efficacy of infant baptism, since infants were not yet capable of exerting their free will to choose the good.
The debate was conducted by an exchange of treatises during the early fifth century, and ecclesiastical and public opinion wavered between the two positions. In 416, Pelagius and Celestius were condemned by North African councils, and Pope Innocent I upheld these decisions by threatening to excommunicate the Pelagians unless they renounced their opinions. Innocent's successor Zosimus reversed the decision and remained ambivalent for a while.
In 418, Roman supporters of Pelagianism took matters into their own hands and rioted, attacking a retired official. This unrest brought Emperor Honorius into the conflict. He condemned the Pelagians and ordered Pelagius and Celestius to be banished from Rome. The Council of Carthage followed up with a series of canons against Pelagianism, and Pope Zosimus finally bowed to pressure and excommunicated Pelagius. Pelagius probably went to Egypt and soon afterward died there.
Eighteen Italian bishops, led by Julian of Eclanum, continued the Pelagian cause. They had been deposed for refusing to renounce their support of Pelagianism. Julian engaged in a vehement dialogue with the aging Augustine until Augustine's death in 430. In 431, the Council of Ephesus condemned the Pelagian position once again and confirmed the deposition of Julian and the other dissenting Italian bishops. Julian died in Sicily between 443 and 445.
Pelagius. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 135r.
The fifth-century councils established the Augustinian position as orthodoxy. However, the Pelagian issue of the relationship between free will and grace continued to engage theologians through the Reformation and into the twentieth century.
See also Augustine, Saint
JOYCE E. SALISBURY
Epistula ad Celantiam. In Patrologia Latina, 22, cols. 1204-1229; 61, cols. 723-736.
Epistula ad Claudiam de virginitate. In Patrologia Latina, 18, cols. 77-90; 20, cols. 227-242; 30, cols. 163-175; 56, cols. 329-356; 103, cols. 671-684.
Epistula ad sacram Christi Virginem Demetriadem. In Patrologia Latina, 30, cols. 15-45; 33, cols. 1099-1120.
Epistula ad Thesiphontem de Scientia Divinae Legis. In Patrologia Latina, 30, cols. 105-116.
Expositiones XIII Epistularum Pauli Apostoli. In Patrologia Latina Supplementum, 1, cols. 1110-1374.
Libellus fidei ad Innocentium Papam. In Patrologia Latina, 45, cols. 1716-1718; 48, cols. 488-491.
Liber de Vita Christiana. In Patrologia Latina, 40, cols. 1031-1046; 50, cols. 383-402.
Patrologia Latina Supplementum, 1, cols. 1101-1109. (Full listing of Pelagius's works.)
Brown, Peter R. L. Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
—. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. (New edition with epilogue.)
Evans, Robert F. Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals. New York: Seabury, 1968.
Ferguson, John. Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study. Cambridge: Heffer, 1956.
Rees, B. R. Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1988.
—. Pelagius: Life and Letters. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 1998.
Pepin (777-810), son of Charlemagne, was an important figure in the integration of northern Italy into the Frankish kingdom. He was named Carloman at birth but was renamed Pepin on the occasion of his baptism in 781 by Pope Hadrian I. At this same time, at his father's behest, Pepin was anointed and crowned by the pope as king of the Lombards, ruling over an Italian subkingdom.
Pepin's kingship was marked by some signs of autonomy. He presided over his own court; he summoned assemblies of magnates to deliberate on affairs of state; his officials carried out administrative functions, including the administration of justice under Lombard law; and he issued capitularies dealing with problems unique to his kingdom. Perhaps this appearance of autonomy was calculated to assuage the feeling of ethnic identity existing among the recently conquered Lombards. In reality, during Pepin's reign the main course of events in Italy was controlled by Charlemagne in the interests of pacifying his Italian subjects, extending his Italian holdings, and exercising his protectorship over the papacy and the papal state. Charlemagne controlled Italy through a variety of techniques, including especially the assignment of trusted agents to supervise Pepin's court, the appointment of Frankish magnates as counts and bishops in Italy, and the granting of landed benefices in Italy to Franks willing to settle there as royal vassals. To all of this Pepin acceded, apparently anxious to play a part in promoting the interests of the Carolingian dynasty. He figured most prominently in serving his father's cause as the leader of the military forces raised in his kingdom to join in the Frankish wars of expansion. Troops under his command were involved in campaigns against the Bavarians, the Avars, the Beneventans, and the Byzantines.
The existence of Italy as a quasi-independent entity within the larger Frankish empire was clearly recognized in the provisions made by Charlemagne in 806 to provide an inheritance for each of his three sons. This divisio provided that Pepin would inherit the kingdom of Italy, to which would be added Bavaria and southern Alemannia. Pepin did not live to enjoy his father's inheritance, but in 813 his own son, Bernard, was installed as king of the Italian subkingdom.
See also Charlemagne; Frankish Kingdom; Lombard Law
RICHARD E. SULLIVAN
Capitularia regum francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, 2 vols. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges, 2(1-2). Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1883-1897, Vol. 1, pp. 187-212, 221-260.
Fumagalli, Vito. Storia d'Italia, Vol. 2, Il regno Italico, ed. Giuseppe Galasso. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1978, pp. 3-168.
Hartmann, Ludo Moritz. Geschichte Italiens im Mittelalter, Vol, 3(1), Italien und des fränkische Herrschaft. Gotha: Friedrich Andres Perthes Aktiengesellschaft, 1908, pp. 1-90. (Reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969.)
Pepin III (714-768), called "the Short" by later historians, played a key role in establishing the Carolingian family as the predominant force in the west. In 741 Pepin and his brother Carloman succeeded their father, Charles Martel, as joint holders of the office of mayor of the palace, an office that had been successfully exploited by Charles Martel (in 714-741) and his father, Pepin II of Herstal (in 687-714), to the point where they exercised real power at the expense of the Merovingian kings of the Franks whom they supposedly served. From 741 to 747 Pepin III and Carloman acted jointly to withstand threats to their position, especially from the dukes of Bavaria, Aquitaine, and Alemannia who were seeking to escape Frankish overlordship. They strengthened their ties with the church by supporting the missionary and reforming efforts of the Anglo-Saxon monk Boniface, acting in Francia under papal auspices.
In 747 Carloman withdrew from his office to become a monk. Pepin assumed sole power and soon decided to assume the royal office. To legitimatize this bold act against the claims of the Merovingian dynasty, he sought and received the approval of Pope Zacharias I (r. 741-752). In 751 Pepin deposed the last Merovingian king and had himself elected king by the Frankish magnates and anointed by a bishop, an innovation in Frankish history that gave a sacramental character to the royal office.
Pepin's accession to the royal office soon led to his involvement in Italian affairs. By the mid-eighth century a crisis had developed in Italy as a result of the decline of Byzantine power. The papacy, which had established control over the territory around Rome, was challenged by the Lombards, who in 751 seized Byzantine territories around Ravenna (called the Exarchate) and threatened Rome. Pope Stephen II (r. 752-757) turned to Pepin for protection and in late 753 traveled to Francia to negotiate with him. The result was a promise by Pepin to protect the pope and his Roman subjects and to restore to the papacy territories that Stephen claimed the Lombard had illegally seized. In return, Stephen reanointed Pepin and his sons and invested them with the title patricius Romanorum, which implied a role as protector of the Romans. Pepin made good his promise by conducting successful military campaigns against the Lombards in 755 and 756. He forced the Lombards to surrender to the papacy considerable territories legally belonging to the Byzantine empire. This "Donation of Pepin," coupled with the territory around Rome that the papacy already controlled, formed the basis of an independent papal state stretching across the Italian peninsula from Rome to Ravenna. During the remainder of his reign Pepin honored his role as protector of the papacy and the "republic of Rome" by using diplomatic means to restrain the Lombards.
As king of the Franks, Pepin was mainly concerned with solidifying and expanding the power and prestige of the royal office. He effectively used force to increase the Franks' control over Bavaria and Aquitaine and to ward off attacks by the pagan Saxons. He took the lead in promoting reform of the church, a role that gave substance to his claim to rule as an agent of God promoting the true faith. The expanding influence of the Franks in Italy and southern Gaul led to diplomatic exchanges with the Byzantine empire and the Abbasid caliphs of the Muslim world. By the end of his reign, the first Carolingian king of the Franks had expanded the position of his people to the status of a major power.
See also Byzantine Empire; Frankish Kingdom; Lombards; Papacy; Papal States; Stephen II, Pope
RICHARD E. SULLIVAN
Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges, 2(1-2). Hannover: Hansche Buchhandlung, 1883-1897, Vol. 1, pp. 24-43.
Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard's Histories, trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970, pp. 37-47.
Codex Carolinus, ed. Wilhelm Gundlach. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini, 1. Berlin: Weidemann, 1892, pp. 469-558, 649-653.
Concilia aevi karolini, ed. Albert Wermingboff. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia, 2(1-2). Hannover and Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1896-1898, pp. 1-73.
The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar; with its Continuation, trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill. Medieval Classics. London and New York: Nelson, 1960, pp. 96-122. (Latin text with English translation.)
Die Urkunden der Karolinger, Vol. 1, Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlomanns und Karls des Grossen, ed. Engelbert Mühlbacher. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomatum Karolinorum, 1. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1906, pp. 1-60.
Affeldt, Werner. "Untersuchungen zur Königshebung Pippins." Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 14, 1980, pp. 95-187.
Hahn, Heinrich. Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reiches, 741-752. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1863.
Halphen, Louis. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, trans. Giselle de Nie. Europe in the Middle Ages, 3. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1977, pp. 3-39.
Kempf, Friedrich, et al. Handbook of Church History, Vol. 3, The Church in the Age of Feudalism, ed. Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, trans. Anselm Biggs. New York: Herder and Herder; London: Burns and Oates, 1969, pp. 3-25.
Noble, Thomas F. X. The Republic of Saint Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825. The Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 1-122.
Oelsner, Ludwig. Jahrbúcher des fränkischen Reiches unter König Pippin. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1871.
Riché, Pierre. Les carolingiens: Une famille qui fit l'Europe. Paris: Hachette, 1983, pp. 71 — 103.
The poet Percivalle Doria (d. 1264), called messer Prezivalle Dore in Vatican Codex 3793, was descended from the illustrious Doria family of Genoa. Between 1228 and 1243, he held the position of podestà in Asti, Aries, Avignon, Parma, and Pavia, and in 1258 he was Manfred's official representative in the dukedom of Spoleto, the March of Ancona, and the Romagna province. Percivalle died during an attempt to cross the Nera River.
Chronologically, Percivalle is the last poet of the Sicilian school, and he is its northernmost exponent. He may also lay claim to being its only bilingual practitioner, as the author of two canzoni (Come to giorno quand'è dal maitino and Amor m'à priso) in the Sicilian medium and a serventese in Provençal.
See also Doria Family; Genoa; Scuola Poetica Siciliana
FREDE JENSEN
Bertoni, Giulio. Il Duecento. Milan: Vallardi, 1947, pp. 105-106.
Conrini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 1, pp. 161-163.
Lazzeri, Gerolamo. Antologia dei primi secoli della letteratura italiana. Milan: Hoepli, 1954, pp. 584-588.
Monaci, Ernesto. Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli, new ed., ed. Felice Arese. Rome: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1955, pp. 112-113.
Pasquini, Emilio, and Antonio Enzo Quaglio. Il Duecento dalle origini a Dante. Bari: Laterza, 1970, pp. 231-233.
Torraca, Francesco. Studi sulla lirica italiana del Duecento. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1902, pp. 129-138.
Perugia is situated on a high hill overlooking the valley of the Tiber River. It was an ancient Umbrian settlement which became, with Cortona and Arezzo, one of the leading Etruscan cities, one of the twelve lucumoniae. Perugia became involved with the Romans in the late fourth century B.C., and although it joined forces with other Italian cities against Rome, it was gradually drawn into Roman alliance. In particular, Perugia remained loyal to Rome during the war with Hannibal; and after the defeat of the Roman army by Hannibal at Lake Trasimene (21 July 217 B.C.), Perugia became a municipium. The massive ancient walls of the city, large sections of which are still visible, were constructed in the second century B.C. In the conflict between Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) and Mark Antony, Perugia was destroyed, but it was subsequently rebuilt by its conqueror, Augustus, and renamed Augusta Perusia; thus Perugia entered into a period of prosperity in the Roman imperial age.
During the Ostrogothic wars of Justinian's reconquest, Perugia changed hands several times. According to legend, it was besieged and taken by Totila in 547, after heroic resistance by its bishop, Saint Ercolano, who encouraged his fellow townspeople to valiant acts. Ercolano was martyred (decapitated) by the Ostrogoths, and his remains are kept in the altar of an eponymous octagonal church constructed on the site of his martyrdom.
With the coming of the Lombards, Perugia was made the seat of a duchy (592), but it was overshadowed by that of Spoleto. Perugia's Lombard identity was challenged by the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna and the papal states. By the eleventh century, Perugia played a balancing role in the struggles among local cities, while maintaining good relations with both sides during the investiture controversy and even escaping the devastation visited on other cities of the area by the German forces under Frederick I Barbarossa in 1174.
In 1139, the first references to a municipal government under consuls appear, and there are further indications through the twelfth century of the development of Perugia's commune, whose rights were formally recognized in 1186 by Emperor Henry VI. In the last years of the twelfth century, Perugia subjugated numerous surrounding towns, including Città di Castello (1180), Gubbio (1183), and Assisi (1205). In a bull of 1198, Pope Innocent III confirmed the rights granted by the emperor and consolidated Perugia's strong ties to the papacy. On 16 July 1216, Innocent III died in Perugia, where the conclave to elect his successor, Honorius III, was held. Another conclave, with a decidedly different outcome, took place in 1305 after the death of Pope Benedict XI (7 July 1304). On this occasion, Bertrand de Got—the archbishop of Bordeaux from Gascony—was elected Pope Clement V (5 June 1305), and it was he who moved the papacy to Avignon.
In the early years of the thirteenth century, internal politics were torn by family rivalries and divided between loyalty to the papacy and affiliation with the city's guilds. In 1223, the papal legate Giovanni Colonna was sent by Honorius III to suppress internal unrest. With the election of Pope Gregory IX, the political situation in Perugia improved, and the city became a frequent place of refuge for popes (indeed, Gregory stayed there for two years, 1228-1230), even while continuing to cultivate good relations with the Holy Roman emperor.
With regard to civic government, Perugia was ruled by consuls (who were members of the nobility) from 1139 until 1214, when a foreign podestà was elected who displaced them. In 1255, the office of capitano delpopolo (captain of the people) was established, and the person who held this office was in effect the financial controller of the commune, sharing power with the podestà. The late thirteenth century was characterized by a series of power struggles between magnate families and the popolani (common citizens), resulting in new laws that were generally against the magnates, and in the political exile of certain families. These changes in political institutions led to a transformation of the commune into a republic governed by trade guilds. In the late thirteenth century, Perugia was governed by a council of five men, the consoli delle arti ("consuls of the arts"), who were members of the trade guilds; this institution lasted from 1266 to 1303. In 1303, there was a serious division in the city between the major merchant guild (popolo grasso) and the smaller artisans (popolo minuto). Two families emerged as leaders of the two factions: the Baglioni for the popolo minuto and the degli Oddi for the popolo grasso. The body known as the "consuls of the arts" was replaced in 1303 with a priorate—ten priors, two per district of the city, with the majority coming from the minor guilds. A new office, the gonfaloniere del popolo e delle arti ("standard-bearer of the people and the guilds"), was established, and this person was in charge of the city. This form of government endured until the mid-sixteenth century.
By the mid-fourteenth century, Perugia had reached a high point in terms of population (35,000), wealth, and dominance in Umbria, and it continued to wage war with neighboring towns and extend its hegemony. These conflicts came to a climax at the battle of Torrita (1358), when the forces of Perugia defeated those of Siena. In the latter half of the fourteenth century, Perugia found itself caught between the expansionist policies of the Visconti and the efforts of the papacy, which had returned to Rome from Avignon, to reassert regional control. In 1376, the city rebelled against the oppressive policies of the papal vicar, Gerardo Dupuis, abbot of Monmaggiore, thereby participating in a more general series of insurrections in cities and towns throughout central Italy, known as the guerra degli otto santi ("war of the eight saints"), which had its origin in Florence. Perugia's reconciliation with the papacy in 1378 ushered in a period of troubled independence under a series of signorial regimes. A brief period of rule by Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1400-1402) was followed by continued periods of internal factionalism leading to the emergence of the Baglioni family as a recurrently dominating force, in constant conflict with efforts by the papacy to reassert control. Not until the mid-sixteenth century (1540) under Paul III was papal government definitively established.
Church of Sant'Angelo, Perugia. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
There are impressive reminders of Perugia's ancient past in surviving Etruscan and Roman relics, of which the most famous are the massive city walls of travertine marble and the great Etruscan-Roman portal known as the Arch of Augustus. The earliest medieval church is SantAngelo, dedicated to Saint Michael Archangel; it was built in the fifth century on a circular plan with sixteen ancient Roman columns supporting the drum of the rotunda. In the latter tenth century (964), the basilica of San Pietro was built on the site of the first cathedral; it was commissioned by a Perugian monk of noble origin, Pietro Vincioli, who became its first abbot (San Pietro Abate). The basilica retains the architectonic features of its original construction, but it has undergone many changes in subsequent eras; indeed, its former convent now houses the faculty of agriculture of the University of Perugia (the original studium was founded in 1266 and was located in the present-day Piazza Matteotti). The nearby Romanesque church of San Costanzo is named for the first bishop of the city, who died a martyr and was buried there. The present church was rebuilt in 1205 and has a lovely portal with sculptures in the architrave depicting a blessing Christ and the four evangelists. The church of San Domenico, begun in the early fourteenth century (1304—1305), contains the impressive Gothic funereal monument of Pope Benedict XI (who died in Perugia); this monument (1324-1325) is attributed to Giovanni Pisano but is more likely the work of a follower of Arnolfo di Cambio. The cathedral, in characteristic Gothic style and dedicated to Saint Lawrence, was begun in the mid-fourteenth century (1345) but was not completed until the fifteenth century.
Among the civic buildings, the most notable is the Palazzo dei Priori (or Palazzo Comunale), a formidable structure in Gothic style by the architects Giacomo di Servadio and Giovannello di Benvenuto. Its earliest elements date from the late thirteenth century (1293), but major additions were made over the next two centuries. In the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century, certain prominent guilds established their offices in a new wing of the Palazzo dei Priori: the Collegio della Mercanzia (merchants' guild, 1390) and the Collegio del Cambio (money changers' guild, 1457). The offices of the money changers' guild were decorated with frescoes by Perugino. In 1317, the commune entrusted Ambrogio Maitani (Lorenzo's brother) with the job of enlarging the Palazzo dei Priori over a period of twenty-nine years, to 1346. Under his direction, the main portal of the palazzo, on its longest side, that on Corso Vannucci, was constructed. Indeed, Ambrogio may have carved the figures of the three patron saints of Perugia—Lawrence, Costanzo, and Ercolano—in the lunette over the doorway, which also is richly decorated with allegorical figures and crests: these reliefs were perhaps executed by Gano da Siena (1340) or by Florentine followers of Andrea Pisano. Above the portal on the main facade opposite the cathedral and at the top of the ceremonial staircase are displayed trophies taken following the victory over Siena at Torrita (1358). These trophies—the chains and bars of the city gates of Siena—are mounted between the civic symbols of Perugia: the bronze figures (1274) of the griffin (for the city of Perugia) and the lion (for the Guelf party) that were cast by the cire-perdue process. This doorway leads into the magnificent and spacious Saia dei Notari ("room of the notaries"), formerly known as the Sala del Popolo ("room of the people"), which is used for popular assemblies; in this sala, the walls and vaulting (eight massive arches) are decorated with the crests of the various podestà (from 1297 to 1424) and with scenes from legends, fables, and the Old and New Testaments. The decoration of the spandrels has been attributed to Pietro Cavallini and his followers.
In the square between the Palazzo dei Priori and the cathedral is Perugia's most famous monument, the Fontana Grande ("great fountain"). The general plan for the fountain was conceived by Fra Bevignate da Perugia, and the technical assistance for the water supply, brought via a new aboveground aqueduct, was provided by the hydraulic engineer Boninsegna from Venice. The specific design of the fountain is credited to Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni. The fountain has two polygonal marble basins: the lower basin has twenty-five double relief panels; the upper basin, which is twelve-sided, has twenty-four statuettes. An inscription provides the names of the four artisans and the date of completion, 1278. The relief panels on the lower basin represent the "labors of the months" (with the respective signs of the zodiac), the liberal arts, scenes from the Bible, legends of Rome, and fables. The statuettes on the upper basin depict Old Testament figures, personifications of cities, saints, and contemporary historical figures. On a single support rising from the upper basin of the fountain is a small bronze basin containing a group of three female figures (caryatids), also in bronze cast by the cire-perdue process.
The rich artistic atmosphere that prevailed in Perugia from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries is not matched in the literary arena, where we find relatively few talented writers. Nevertheless, we do find in the early to mid-fourteenth century a small group of poets generally referred to as the poeti perugini—chief among them Marino Ceccoli, Cecco Nuccoli, and Neri Moscoli—who composed a goodly number of sonnets and a few canzoni. These compositions, while individually distinct, are related stylistically and thematically and generally belong to the popular comic genre. Most of this poetry treats elements of daily life and presents parodies of the more elevated courtly poetry of the dolce stil nuovo, but some of it does take up serious issues: religion, politics, and homosexual love. Thus, although Perugia was not a major center of literary production, it did have several noteworthy poets. One final literary note: in 1293 Bonifacio da Verona was commissioned to compose an epic poem, Eulistea (named for the legendary founder of the city, Euliste), to celebrate the municipal history and glories of the city of Perugia. This practice was fairly common in medieval Italian cities.
See also Cecco Nuccoii; Clement V, Pope; Gregory IX, Pope; Honorius III, Pope; Innocent III, Pope; Lombards; Marino Ceccoli; Moscoli, Neri; Pisano, Giovanni; Pisano, Nicola; Totila
JOHN w. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Baldelli, Ignazio. "Lingua e letteratura di un centro trecentesco: Perugia." Rassegna della Letteratura Indiana, 66, 1962, pp. 3-21,
Belelli, Giovanni. L'istituto del podestà in Perugia nel secolo XIII. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1939.
Blanshei, Sarah Rubin. Perugia, 1260-1340: Conflict and Change in a Medieval Italian Urban Society. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 66(2). Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
Bonazzi, Luigi. Storia di Perugia dalle origini al 1860, Vol. 1, Dalle origini al 1494, new ed., ed. Giuliano Innamorato. Città di Castello: Unione Aiti Grafiche, 1959.
"Cronache e storie inedite della città di Perugia dal MCL al MDLXIII, Part la, Bonifacii Veronensis 'De rebus a perusinis gestis: Eulistea,' Brevi annali della città di Perugia dal 1194 al 1352 da uno della famiglia Oddi, Cronaca della città di Perugia dal 1309 al 1491 nota col nome di 'Diario del Graziani,'" ed. Francesco Bonaini, Ariodante Fabretti, and Filippo-Luigi Polidori. Archivio Storico Italiano, 16(1), 1850.
Cuccini, Gustavo. Il grifo e il leone: Bronzei di Peruvia. Perugia: Guerra, 1994.
Galletti, Anna Imelde. "Considerazioni per una interpretazione dell'Eulistea." Archivio Storico Italiano, 128, 1970, pp. 305-334.
Gigliarelli, Raniero. Perugia antica e Perugia moderna: Indicazioni storico-topografiche. Perugia: Unione Tipografica Cooperativa, Editrice Gennaio, 1907.
Giorgetti, Vittorio. Podestà, capitani del popolo, e loro ufficiali a Perugia (1195-1500). Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sul'Alto Medioevo, 1993.
Grundman, John P. The Popolo at Perugia, 1139-1309. Fonti per la Storia dell'Umbria, 20. Perugia: Deputazione di Storia Patria per l'Umbria, 1992.
Hoffmann-Curtis, Kathrin. Das Programm der Fontana Maggiore in Perugia. Düsseldorf: Rheinland-Verlag, 1968.
Marti, Mario. "Dante e i poeti perugini del Trecento." In Con Dante fra i poeti del suo tempo. Lecce: Milella, 1972, pp. 125-253.
Nicco Fasola, Giusta. La Fontana di Perugia. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1951.
Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante, ed. Mario Marti. Milan: Rizzoli, 1956.
Poeti perugini del Trecento, 2 vols., ed. Franco Mancini. Perugia: Guerra, 1996-1997.
Pope-Hennessy, John. An Introduction to Italian Sculpture, Part 1, Italian Gothic Sculpture, 2nd ed. New York: Phaidon, 1970.
Tartaro, Achille. Forme poetiche del Trecento. Bari: Laterza, 1971.
White, John. "The Reconstruction of Nicola Pisano's Perugia Fountain." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33, 1970, pp. 70-83.
The Peruzzi lineage, perhaps originally known as the Delia Pera, was one of the most powerful and prominent houses in the Florentine ruling class during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Like the Cerchi, the Alberti del Giudice, and the Gherardini, the Peruzzi were originally rural landlords who had moved into the city before the early thirteenth century. In the twelfth century, Ubaldino di Peruzzo, originally from Ruota in the Arno valley, had apparently been the founder of a consorteria. Traditionally Guelfs, the Peruzzi were residents of the sesto (one of six administrative divisions of the city of Florence) of San Pier Scheraggio.
Their fortune came primarily from moneylending and from the international trade in finished cloth, and they used their wealth to acquire extensive landed properties in both city and countryside (contado). The earliest surviving administrative documents of the Peruzzi company date from 1292, but the company itself seems to have existed at least from 1274. The first account books date from 1308. In 1302, several Peruzzi opened an exchange bank in Naples, establishing close relations with the Angevin regime. However, there is evidence that a small branch had existed in Naples from the 1270s. Like the Bardi, the Peruzzi extended large loans to the Angevin royal house and financed the importation of grain from Apulia and the Abruzzi to Florence in the early fourteenth century. The most prominent branch of the company was founded in 1310 and led by Tommaso, Arnoldo, and Giotto dei Peruzzi. At its height it included twenty-one partners, ten of whom were members of the lineage. They established financial ties throughout the western Mediterranean basin, creating a financial empire that lasted for two centuries. Enriched by international trade (Florentine finished cloth) and their connections to Naples and England, several of the Peruzzi commissioned the artist Giotto to decorate the walls of their chapel (the Peruzzi Chapel) in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce with scenes from the life of Saint Francis. Giotto probably completed the frescos by 1328.
In October 1343, the Peruzzi bank failed; scholars have long argued that this failure occurred because Edward III defaulted on the loans made to him to finance his wars against the king of France. The Bardi company failed in 1346. More recent scholarship has revealed that the failure of both banks resulted primarily from political and economic factors in Florence rather than from loan defaults in England.
At the end of the thirteenth century, the Peruzzi came to assume major positions of political influence in the Guelf regime, commensurate with their economic power. Like a few Portinari and Strozzi, several Peruzzi seem to have formed Ghibelline allegiances before 1266. After that date, however, the Peruzzi became loyal Guelfs. Three members of the house served as priors between 1282 and 1292. The lineage was heavily represented in the money changers' guild (Arte del Cambio), but there were also several members in the guild of the wool finishers (Calimala) and that of the physicians and apothecaries (Medici e Speziali). Unlike the Bardi, the Peruzzi were not among the magnate lineages stigmatized by the Florentine Ordinances ofjustice of 1293. Allied with the Medici and Giugni, most Peruzzi had become strongly aligned with the Black Guelfs by 1302. Along with the Bardi, they supported the failed dictatorship of Walter of Brienne in 1343. Relying primarily on their landed income after 1343, the Peruzzi continued to be a wealthy and influential lineage for the remainder of the fourteenth century.
See also Bardi Family; Florence; Giotto di Bondone
GEORGE DAMERON
Sapori, Armando, ed. I libri di commercio dei Peruzzi. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1934.
Brucker, Gene Adam. Florence: The Golden Age, 1138-1737. New York: Abbeville, 1984.
D'Addario, Arnaldo. "Pera, delia (Peruzzi)." In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol. 4. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970, pp. 395-396.
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze, 8 vols., trans. Giovanni Battista Klein. Florence: Sansoni, 1960-1978.
Fiumi, Enrico. "Fioritura e decadenza dell'economia fiorentina." Archivio Storico Italiano, 115, 1957, p. 434.
Holmes, George. Florence, Rome, and the Origins of the Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
Hunt, Edwin S. "A New Look at the Dealings of the Bardi and Peruzzi with Edward III." Journal of Economic History, 50(1), 1990, pp. 149-162.
—. The Medieval Super-Companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company in Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Lansing, Carol. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Larner, John. Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216-1380. London and New York: Longman, 1980.
Ottokar, Nicola. Il comune di Firenze alla fine del Dugento. Turin: Einaudi, 1962.
Raveggi, Sergio, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia Parenti. Ghibellini, Guelfi, e popolo grasso: I detentori del potere politico a Firenze nella seconda metà del Dugento. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978.
Sapori, Armando. La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1926.
—. Studi di storia economica medievale, 2nd ed. Florence: Sansoni, 1946.
—. The Italian Merchant in the Middle Ages, trans. Patricia Ann Kennen. New York: Norton, 1970.
Peter III of Aragon (Peter II of Catalonia; 1239-1285, r. 1276-1285) was the eldest surviving son of King James I of Aragon and Catalonia, Peter was the figure who brought a Catalan political presence to Italy with the conquest of Sicily in 1282.
In 1262, Peter's father had decided to divide his inheritance among his two legitimate sons, Peter and James; and Peter's reluctance to recognize James's claim to an independent kingdom comprising Majorca, Roussillon, and Montpellier was a sign of his uncompromising position whenever his rights or those of his family were challenged. Within three years of his succession, he had forced James of Majorca to become his vassal (1279). His father assured the papacy that a marriage between Peter and Constance—who was the daugher of its enemy Manfred of Hohenstaufen, king of Sicily—had no implications for Aragonese polirical interests in the Mediterranean. However, this assurance was shown to be wishful thinking; Peter was not prepared to accept the claims of the house of Anjou to southern Italy and Sicily, as he made plain at a conference with the French and Majorcan kings in Toulouse in December 1280. The meeting was attended by Charles of Salerno, the heir of Charles I of Anjou, to whom Peter acted in a way that the French and Majorcan kings considered unpardonably rude. On the other hand, Peter and Philip III of France did agree that they were so closely bound by marriage ties that war between them was unthinkable.
Peter may or may not have been intimately involved in planning a rebellion in Sicily, but in any case acted as host to Sicilian and southern Italian exiles such as Giovanni da Procida, who later became his chancellor. In 1282, he announced that he planned to go on a crusade to Collo (Alcoll) in North Africa, but the papacy suspected that he was really hoping to launch an attack on Sicily as soon as its master, Charles of Anjou, who was busily planning a crusade against the Greeks, actually became tied up in the venture. Revolt broke out unexpectedly in Palermo; Peter took advantage of the revolt of the Vespers (in March 1282) to land in Trapani (in August 1282) with a sizable army. With the assent of the nobles and townsmen of Sicily, who had issued an urgent invitation, he laid claim to the entire kingdom of Sicily, both the islands and the mainland territories. Brilliant naval victories by his admiral Roger de Lauria ensured the Catalans' domination of the seas around Sicily, but the invasion of the mainland was slower work than the takeover in Sicily had been. In 1283, Peter had to return home to face a French invasion of Catalonia, in support of his Angevin foes.
Peter never went back to Sicily; he died in Spain in 1285. In his will, he assigned Sicily to his second son, James, aware that the Sicilians sought a king of their own descended from Frederick II.
See also Angevin Dynasty; Charles I of Anjou; Palermo; Sicilian Vespers; Sicily
DAVID ABULAFIA
Abulaha, David. The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200-1500. London: Longman, 1997,
Desclot, Bernac. Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III of Aragon, 2 vols., trans. F. L. Critchlow. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1928-1934.
Runciman, Steven. The Sicilian Vespers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Wieruszowski, Hélène. Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971.
Peter Lombard (c. 1095 or 1100-1160)—a theologian, biblical exegete, and bishop of Paris—was one of the most influential thinkers of the twelfth century. He was born in the region of Novara in Italy and was drawn to study in the schools of northern France, first in the cathedral school at Reims and then in the schools at Paris. In 1136 he arrived in Paris with a letter of introduction from Bernard of Clairvaux to Gilduin, abbot of the well-known community of regular canons at the abbey of Saint-Victor, which was then one of the leading intellectual centers in France. In his writings, Peter shows great familiarity with the work of Hugh of Saint-Victor (d. 1141), the abbey's most prominent thinker. Peter became a master in the Parisian schools by 1143 or 1144. In 1145 he was made a canon of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, a rare honor for one not associated with the royal house and not a relative of the local aristocracy or royal officials. At the Council of Reims (1146), Peter joined Bernard of Clairvaux in opposing the Christology of Gilbert of Poitiers. By 1156, perhaps earlier, Peter was archdeacon of Paris; in 1159, the year before he died, he became bishop of the city.
Peter's most enduring contribution to medieval thought was a systematic investigation of a whole range of questions arising under the topic now designated as theology. His Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Four Books of Sentences) became one of the most famous works of medieval theology. The four books, or divisions, are: (1) the Trinity; (2) creation, human nature, and sin; (3) Christology, the virtues; (4) the sacraments, last things. The Sententiae formed the basis of theological education for almost four centuries. Generations of scholars, including Thomas Aquinas, wrote commentaries on it as part of their theological education and teaching. The Sententiae has often been presented in modern scholarship as simply a collection of the opinions of earlier authorities on theological topics, but it is now recognized as a sophisticated work that resolves major (and minor) theological issues with skill and insight. Peter applied new methods of twelfth-century theological inquiry and debate in order to resolve currently disputed questions (such as the essential elements of the sacrament of marriage) and conflicts between authorities. Peter's book appeared in final form in 1155-1157 and incorporated references to the works of John of Damascus, which had first become available in 1154 in a Latin translation from the Greek. Although the Sententiae was criticized vehemently for some of its conclusions, it was judged orthodox at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Peter made important clarifications in the theology of the sacraments and was among the first to distinguish seven sacraments. The Sententiae is notable for its comprehensiveness, for the skill and clarity with which the topics are arranged and presented, and for objectivity which Peter brings to the resolution of difficult matters such as the definition of marriage, the nature of the sacraments, and issues in Christology.
Peter contributed significantly to biblical interpretation with his commentaries on the Psalms and on the letters of Paul. His commentary on the Psalms, completed before 1138, circulated widely, although Herbert of Bosham (one of Peter's students, who edited a deluxe version of the commentary) reports that it was intended for Peter's private use. The commentary on Paul's letters, Collectanea in omnes b. Pauli epistolas, was first composed in 1139-1341 and was revised in 1155-1158. Both commentaries were immensely popular. Peter built on the work of earlier eleventh- and twelfth-century exegetes but presented his own work as a continuous commentary on the text rather than as a collection of comments written in the margin or between the lines of the biblical text, as in the contemporary Glossa ordinaria. Peter followed the compilers of the Glossa by citing texts from patristic authors in full; he followed the example of Gilbert of Poitier's commentary on the Psalms by adopting the literary form of the accessus ad auctores to introduce the book and individual Psalms, and by using a system of marginal marks and symbols to cross-reference passages, themes, and citations. These commentaries incorporated Peter's analysis of theological questions and themes as well as commentary on the verses of each text.
Twenty-four of Peter's sermons are printed under the name of Hildebert of Lavardin in Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, and four more have been discovered, relatively recently, in manuscript.
See also Glossa Ordinaria: Bible; Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Peter Lombard, Sentences. Magistri Sententiarum libri quatuor. Venice: Camillo and Francesco Franceschini, 1566. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
GROVER A. ZINN
Peter Lombard. Opera. In Patrologia Latina, 191-192.
—. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. Ignatius Brady. Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 4-5. Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1971-1981.
—. Sermons. In Patrologia Latina, 171.
Stegmüller, Friedrich, ed. Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, 2 vols. Würzburg: F. Schöning, 1947.
Colish, Marcia L. Peter Lombard, 2 vols. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 42. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
Delhaye, Philippe. Pierre Lombard: Sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa morale. Montreal: Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1961.
Ghellinck, Joseph de. Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle, 2nd ed. Museum Lessianum, Section Historique, 10. Bruges: Éditions De Tempel, 1948
Gibson, Margaret. The Bible in the Medieval West. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993, pp. 52—55, 60—61.
Southern, R. W. Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, Vol. 1, Foundations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Peter of Eboli (Petrus de Ebulo, d. 1219 or 1220) was the author of two Latin poems notable for their content and also for their historically and artistically significant medieval illustrations.
The first poem, in three books consisting now (there has been some loss of text) of 833 elegiac distichs plus an eight-line "insert" in dactylic hexameters, is known both as Liber ad honorem Augusti, or Book in Honor of the Emperor, and as De rebus (or motibus) Siculis carmen, or Song on the Affairs (or Rebellions) of Sicily. This poem treats, partly from the perspective of an eyewitness, political matters in the kingdom of Sicily from the death of William II (November 1189) to shortly before the death of Henry VI (September 1197)—that is, the transition from the Norman to the Swabian monarchy. Unremitting hostility to William's immediate successor Tancred of Lecce and a strong dose of pro-Swabian panegyric diminish its reliability as a historical source but increase its literary interest. The poem is preserved in a single richly illuminated and codicologically complex manuscript (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 120 II), seemingly prepared as a presentation copy for Henry. It is no longer believed that Peter was a scribe of this manuscript or that any of the illustrations is his own.
The second poem, in perhaps 237 elegiac distichs (some thirty-nine sections of mostly twelve lines each; a critical edition is lacking), describes the famous thermal baths in and near the Phlegrean Fields west of Naples. It is variously known as De balneis Puteolanis (On the Baths of Pozzuoli) or De balneis Terre Laboris (On the Baths of the Terra di Lavoro), and as Nomina et virtutes balneorum (Names and Virtues of Baths). This account is of interest for the history of medieval medicine and of the region and its tourist industry. The poem, transmitted anonymously and not assigned to Peter until the nineteenth century, could be addressed either to Henry VI or to Henry's son Frederick II; the preponderance of scholarly opinion favors the second alternative. Some twenty-five manuscripts survive, many of which are copiously illuminated. There are also fourteenth-century verse translations in the Neapolitan dialect of Italian and in French, as well as fourteenth-century prose adaptations in Latin and in Italian.
In the dedicatory section of De balneis Puteolanis, Peter mentions a mira Frederici gesta ("marvelous deeds of Frederick"); this has been thought to refer to Book 3 of Liber ad honorem Augusti but is more likely to have been a separate poem, now lost. In that case the Frederick in question would in all probability have been Frederick I Barbarossa.
We know little of Peter apart from the evidence of these two poems. In a prose subscription to Liber ad honorem Augusti he identifies himself as the emperor's servant and fidelis (a technical term for someone at least occasionally entrusted with official missions); two of the book's illustrations show him in ecclesiastical tonsure. For Peter's services Henry gave him life tenure of a mill at Eboli. The identification of Peter with a Petrus Ansolinus of that town, proposed in the early twentieth century, is unconvincing.
See also Hohenstaufen Dynasty; Normans; Sicily
JOHN B. DILLON
Petrus Ansolinus de Ebulo. De rebus Siculis carmen, ed. Ettore Rota. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, n.s., 31(1). Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1904-1910. (Scholarly edition with important front matter and with black-and-white photo reproductions of the illuminated pages.)
Petrus de Ebulo. Liber ad honorem Augusti stve de rebus Siculis. Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothẹk Bern: Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. Theo Kölzer and Marlis Stähli. Textrevision und Übersetzung von Gereon Becht-Jördens. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1994. (Full-color facsimile of the manuscript including text and German translation.)
Pietro da Eboli. Liber ad honorem Augusti, 2 vols., ed. G. B. Siragusa. Fonti per la Storia d'Italia Pubblicate dall' Istituto Storico Italiano, Scrittori, Secolo XII, 39. Rome: Nella Sede delPIstituto, Forzani, 1905-1906. (Introduction and edition; plates.)
Pietro da Eboli. Liber ad honorem Augusti, ed. and trans. Francesco De Rosa. Collana di Studi Storici Medioevali, 7. Cassino: Francesco Ciolfi, 2000. (Includes full-color facsimile of the manuscript.)
D'Amato, Jean Marie. "Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Illustrated Medieval Poem 'De balneis Terre Laboris' by Peter of Eboli (Petrus de Ebulo)." Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1975. (See also summary in Dissertation Abstracts International, Sec. A, Vol. 36.11, May 1976, p. 7397. Includes a text of the poem.)
Delcorno, Giovanna. "Il volgarizzamento antico-francese del De balneis puteolanis di Eudes Richart de Normandie." In Lingua, rima, codici: Per una nuova edizione della poesia della Scuola sictliana—Atti della Giornata di Studio, Bologna, 24 giugno 1997; Con altri contributi di Filologia romanza. Quaderni di Filologia Romanza della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università di Bologna, 12-13. Bologna: Pàtron, 1999, pp. 183-287. (Includes a text of the poem.)
Petrus de Ebulo. Nomina et virtutes balneorum seu De balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum (Codice Angelico 1474), 2 vols., ed. Angela Daneu-Lattanzi. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1962. (Introduction; facsimile. Scholarly, full-color reproduction of the oldest surviving manuscript.)
Pietro da Eboli. De virtutibus balneorum: Sen, De balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum. New York: Editions Medicina Rara, n.d. (Possibly 1976; facsimile of the Biblioteca Angelica manuscript.)
Barbati, Silvana, and Artuto Lando, eds. Le Terme Puteolane e Salerno nei codici miniati di Pietro da Eboli. Naples: Fausto Fiorentino, 1995.
Kauffmann, C. M. The Baths of Pozzuoli: A Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli's Poem. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1959.
Stähli, Marlis. "Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis—Die Bilderchronik des Petrus de Ebulo, Cod. 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern, als Spiegel der Unio regni ad imperium." In Die Staufer im Süden: Sizilien und das Reich, ed. Theo Kölzer. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1996, pp. 213-220.
Cardini, Franco. "Nota sul De balneis Puteolanis di Pietro da Eboli." In La città termale e il suo territorio, ed. Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, Galatina: Congedo, 1986, pp. 39-47. (Reprinted in Franco Cardini, Dal medioevo alia medievistica. Genoa: ECIG, 1989, pp. 165-175.)
Hanly, Michael. "An Edition of Richart Eudes's French Translation of Pietro da Eboli's De balneis puteolanis." Traditio, 51, 1996, pp. 225-255.
Petrucci, Livio. "Per una nuova edizione dei Bagni di Pozzuoli." Studi Mediolatini e Volgari, 21, 1973, pp. 215-260.
Studi su Pietro da Eboli. Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi Storici, Fasc. 103-105. Rome: Nella Sede dell'Istituto, 1978.
It is a critical commonplace to refer to Dante Alighieri as the "last medieval man" and to Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 20 July 1304-19 July 1374) as the "first modern man," but this tends to obscure the many distinctly "medieval" aspects of Petrarch's works. To be sure, Petrarch does anticipate certain characteristics that are central to our (modern) understanding of the changeover in attitudes in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance: the emphasis on the individual and on secular matters; the minute investigation of the human psyche; the imitation of classical literary forms, style, and language; the understanding of discrete periods in history; and the interest in travel undertaken to see and experience the world. While all these characteristics suggest Petrarch's desire to escape the narrow frame of the religiously and morally proper medieval world, he repeatedly and simultaneously gives evidence of his longing to embrace that same world and its precepts. This constant state of tension is what defines Petarch's so-called modern sensitivity and allows us, his readers, to identify with him and his seemingly contradictory aspirations; and this sentiment is aptly presented, over and over, in the Canzoniere. We find it in the poems themselves, as in the final verses of canzone 264 (I' vo pensando): ché co la morte a lato/cerco del viver mio novo consiglio,/e veggio 'l meglio et al peggior m'appiglio (verses 136-136), of which the final verse is a direct and sympathetic translation from Ovid (Metamorphoses, 7.20-21). Or we note how Petrarch has ordered the poetic universe of the Canzoniere by juxtaposing poems that praise, alternately, his love of earthly things and his profound repentance for such an attitude, as, for example, in the positioning of the two sonnets Benedetto sia 'l giorno, e 'l mese, e l'anno (61) and Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni (62).
In all of Petrarch's works, we recognize the acute eye of the intellectual who carefully observes himself and the world around him and attempts to make some sense of the fragile human condition and its immediate and ultimate purpose within the great order of the cosmos. It is in this unprecedented focus on his own personal situation that we may observe Petrarch's genius and the human drama played out on a small yet universal stage.
While most of his works are ultimately about himself and are thus full of interesting though stylized and carefully crafted bits of autobiographical information, Petrarch did write, late in his life, a Letter to Posterity (the Latin title is Ad posteros or Posteritati), to future generations who might be curious to learn more about him and his life. This fragmentary epistle was first composed in 1367 and was revised in 1370-1371, yet the latest event recounted is from 1351. In the letter, Petrarch intends to speak about himself, his interests, his outlook—in short, about his personality. What strikes the modern reader is the egotism that pervades the letter, the dramatic departure from the more humble attitude generally adopted by medieval authors who were less likely to put themselves and their accomplishments on display in such a self-centered and self-serving way. Although idealized, conventional portraits are common in works of medieval literature and although the vidas of the troubadours and Dante's Vita nuova present so-called personal data as historical facts, the authorial "I" and the empirical "I" remain distinctly separate persons. With Petrarch, however, we see a dramatic change in the attitude toward autobiography, such that we know more about this fourteenth-century author than about virtually any other person of his age, precisely because the author himself decided that this would be the case. To make sure that we would know about him, Petrarch compiled large collections of letters, made copious annotations on his manuscripts, and left us other pieces of evidence that allow us see and understand his life as he wanted it to be recorded and remembered. Thus, in the Letter to Posterity, Petrarch fashions his own identity, creates his own historical persona, and delineates his role in the events of his time. From other, independent documents we are able to judge the accuracy of the Letter to Posterity, and we may conclude that he was a master of self-promotion, acutely aware of his particular place in history. For this reason, we may view him as a precursor of humanistic attitudes on the individual that would emerge in the next centuries.
In the Letter to Posterity, Petrarch describes himself as modest and even tempered, as one who prefers sacred literature to vernacular poetry, who is acutely aware of the greatness of antiquity to the impoverished state of his own age, who yearns for the tranquil life of the country and disparages the hectic pace of urban society. While he notes that in his youth he had been overwhelmed by a powerful love, he declares that this is a thing of the past. Despite his voluminous literary production in both Latin and Italian, Petrarch refers only to his works in Latin—his epic poem Africa, his treatise on the solitary life (De vita solitaria), and his pastoral poems (Bucolicum carmen)—for they are the reason for his coronation as poet laureate in Rome atop the Capitoline Hill. As Petrarch tells the story, on the same day (1 September 1340), he received invitations for coronations from the chancellor of the University of Paris and from the Roman senate; to have chosen Paris would have been to give precedence to scholastic culture, and thus his choice of Rome was intended to help restore the ancient glory of that city.
In the Letter to Posterity, Petrarch also speaks about his family and friends, his personal habits, his travels, the cities where he lived, and the benefits—for work and mind—of his "transalpine solitude." The last few sentences of the letter speak of Petrarch's affection for Jacopo da Carrara the Younger, ruler of Padua; and while Petrarch would have liked to reside permanently in Padua, Jacopo's untimely death in December 1350 made that impossible. Petrarch notes: "I could stay no longer [in Padua], and I returned to France, not so much from a desire to see again what I had already seen a thousand times as, like a sick man, to be rid of distress by shifting position." This sentence represents perfectly Petrarch's carefully constructed persona: he is the restless traveler, the seeker of old manuscripts, the frequenter of ancient sites in an attempt to recapture something of their past glory. The image of the sick man who tries to assuage his pain by shifting position recalls Saint Augustine's image of the sick woman, who, in allegorical terms, represents the unquiet human soul that will find its peace only in God (Confessions, 6.16); however, here Petrarch's frame of reference is limited to earthly life. In this passage, we also observe the drama of his own internal conflict as one caught between earthly attractions and spiritual aspirations, one who, profoundly discontent with his own age, but powerless to change it, dreams of a past grandeur and of a better future time. His confessional work, the Secretum, in which Augustine is one of the interlocutors, is concerned with this same conflict.
Petrarch's house, Arquà. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Petrarch was born in Arezzo to Pietro di Parenzo and Eletta Canigiani. His father, usually called Ser Petracco, was a notary who had migrated to Florence from his hometown of Incisa in the Arno River valley. During the tumultuous early years of the fourteenth century, he made some political enemies in Florence and was exiled on false charges of corruption in public office in October 1302—some nine months after the expulsion of Dante Alighieri on similar grounds. Early in 1305, Petrarch and his mother moved to Incisa, where his brother Gherardo was born in 1307. After six years in Incisa, the family moved to Pisa (1311), where Francesco may have seen Dante among a group of fellow Florentine exiles. In 1312, Ser Petracco resettled his family in Carpentras in southern France, where he was associated with the papal court of Clement V in Avignon. In Carpentras, Francesco began his study of grammar and rhetoric with Convenevole da Prato and became friends with Guido Sette, a boy his own age whose family had moved to France from Genoa. In 1316, Ser Petracco decided that Petrarch should become a lawyer and sent him to the University of Montpellier. During this period his mother died, and to commemorate the sorrowful occasion Petrarch composed his earliest surviving work, an elegiac poem in thirty-eight Latin hexameters. In 1320, Francesco went, together with his brother and Guido Sette, to Bologna to continue his legal studies, and although he excelled academically, he came to realize that the legal profession was not for him. Nevertheless, the years in Bologna were important in his literary and cultural development, for he befriended a number of other students and became familiar with the Italian lyric tradition. On the death of his father in April 1326, he returned to Avignon.
On Good Friday, 6 April 1327, in the Church of Saint Clare in Avignon, Petrarch first saw and immediately fell in love with the woman whom he would call Laura. This passion would provide inspiration for his poetic imagination for his entire life. Many poems contained in the evolving collection known as the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta or Canzoniere celebrate his love for her, as well as her symbolic meaning. Her name, Laura—like that of Dante's Beatrice ("one who gives blessedness or salvation")—was significant in that it suggested the evergreen laurel tree, sacred to Apollo, and thus the laurel crown of poetic glory. Throughout the Canzoniere, Petrarch engages in elaborate wordplay based on "Laura," using such puns as l'aura ("the breeze") and aureo/a ("golden") to reiterate her importance.
In 1330, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo had almost dissipated their inheritance. Refusing to follow law or medicine as a profession, Petrarch had to find other employment. Fortunately, he had befriended the bishop of Lombez, Giacomo Colonna, who recommended Petrarch to his brother Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, who in turn offered Petrarch a position as personal chaplain in his household. At Giacomo Colonna's residence in the summer of 1330, Petrarch met and became friends with two other young men: Lello di Pietro Stefano dei Tosetti from Rome (whom Petrarch nicknamed "Lelius") and Ludwig van Kempen ("Socrates") from Flanders, who served as chanter in Cardinal Colonna's chapel. These and other close friends would be very important to Petrarch throughout the course of his life.
Tomb of Petrarch, Arquà. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
As a member of the cardinal's staff, Petrarch was able to travel and meet many people. In 1333, he traveled to Paris and, from there, to Ghent, Liege, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, and Lyon. During these travels he began his lifelong pursuit of manuscripts containing works by classical authors, discovering at Liege, for example, some of Cicero's orations (Pro Archia). Also in 1333, in Avignon, Petrarch met the Augustinian monk Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro, who introduced him to the works of early Christian writers, especially Saint Augustine, and who gave Petrarch his copy of the Confessions. In a letter to Dionigi (Familiares, 4.1, dated 26 April 1336), Petrarch gives an account of his and his brother Gherardo's ascent of Mont Ventoux. In it he relates, in thinly veiled allegorical language, how rapidly Gherardo arrives at the summit (signifying the benefits of his monastic vocation) but how difficult his own climb is (signifying the attraction of earthly things). Finally, arriving at the summit and overwhelmed by the majesty of the view, Petrarch opens his copy of Augustine's Confessions and reads the following morally oriented monitory sentence: "And men go about wondering at mountain heights and the mighty waves of the sea and broad flowing streams and the circuit of the sea and the wheeling of the stars: and to themselves they give no heed" (10.8.15). The relevance of these words to Petrarch's own situation and their call to introspection are obvious: it is always more difficult to ascend the steep path to the good than it is to wander around in the valleys looking for an easy route to happiness. This intensely Augustinian moment demonstrates the great influence that the saint had on Petrarch, not only in literature but also in life.
Petrarch, Opera. Basilea: Sebastiano Henricpetri. 1581. Reproduced from original held by the Department of Special Collections of University Libraries of Notre Dame.
In January 1335, thanks to a recommendation by Cardinal Colonna, Petrarch was named by Pope Benedict XII to a canonry in the cathedral of Lombez, an appointment that supported him financially but did not require his residence. Sometime before this appointment, Petrarch had written a long letter in Latin verse to Pope Benedict XII encouraging Benedict to return to Rome. This is the first indication we have of Petrarch's firm belief in the preeminence of Rome as the rightful seat of both the papacy and the empire. Petrarch first journeyed to Rome, as a guest of the Colonna family, late in 1336, and that visit determined his attitude toward the classical past. In a letter to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, dated 15 March 1337 (Familiares, 2.14), he recounts his first impressions of Rome: "No doubt I have accumulated a lot of matter to write about later, but at present I am so overwhelmed and stunned by the abundant marvels that I shouldn't dare to begin. . . . Rome was greater than I thought, and so are its remains. Now I wonder not that the world was ruled by this city but that the rule came so late." Petrarch's enthusiasm for Rome is complemented by his patriotism for Italy in general; for example, in canzone 128 of the Canzoniere, Italia mia, benché 'l parlar sia indarno, he laments Italy's abject, strife-torn condition; issues a call to arms (verses 93-96); and concludes with an urgent plea for peace, i' vo gridando: Pace, pace, pace (verse 122).
Shortly after his return to Avignon in 1337, Petrarch purchased property and a house in Vaucluse along the Sorgue River, and this became his resort of peace and solitude: transalpina solitudo mea jocundissima ("My most delightful transalpine solitary refuge"). In this locus amoenus he found the time to read, meditate, write, and entertain close friends. Vaucluse represented for Petrarch the Ciceronian ideal of otium, the leisure to pursue one's interests without having to attend to the concerns of everyday life. A new acquaintance of his in Vaucluse was Philippe de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavillon, to whom Petrarch would later dedicate his Latin treatise De vita solitaria (On the Solitary Life).
During this period of medicative leisure, Petrarch began several of his works, some of classical inspiration: the treatise on the lives of famous men, De viris illustribus; his epic poem on the deeds of Scipio Africanus, Africa; his collection of Italian poems, the Canzoniere or Rerum vulgarium fragments, and the Triumph of Love, the first of the Trionfi—six allegorical poems in terza rima, based on the descriptions of ancient triumphal pageants. Petrarch would continue to revise most of these works for the rest of his life. The evolution of the Canzoniere can be traced through extant manuscripts, some in Petrarch's own hand, that disclose the successive forms of the collection; this would culminate in the version in the Vatican Library, Codex Lat. 3195. Although he divided his time at Vaucluse between Latin and Italian works, Petrarch clearly indicated his preference for the former. On 1 September 1340 he received two invitations to be crowned poet laureate: one letter came from the chancellor of the University of Paris and the other from the Roman senate. Because we know that Petrarch carefully planned the sequence of events leading to these invitations, we can appreciate the coyness with which he reports his careful weighing of these offers, his asking advice from Cardinal Colonna, and his eventual (but foregone) decision to accept the invitation from Rome. Petrarch was familiar with the coronation of poets in antiquity and with a recent revival of that tradition (the coronation of Albertino Mussato in Padua in 1315). This signal honor would, he thought, ensure his fame for posterity and, just as important, reestablish Rome as the locus for culture in the world. To ascertain his worthiness for this honor, he voluntarily underwent a rigorous examination by his sponsor, King Robert of Anjou of Naples. On 8 April 1341, in the palace of the senate on the Capitoline, Petrarch was crowned poet laureate and delivered an oration, in which he spoke of the poet's responsibility and rewards as well as the nature of the poet's profession. The Coronation Oration is a wonderful combination of medieval homily and classical rhetoric; in it Petrarch begins with a citation from Virgil's Georgics (3.291-292), interrupts it with a recitation of the Ave Maria, and then immediately returns to the Virgilian passage. The remainder of the oration contains numerous citations from Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, and other classical authors. The fame that Petrarch achieved in this single event was immeasurable; indeed, he was now a celebrity, one who was in demand as an honored guest in cities throughout Europe and was cheered wherever he went. This was, in many ways, the beginning of what we might call the cult of personality that Petrarch cultivated and shaped for himself. After leaving Rome, Petrarch spent time in Parma as a guest of the Correggio family and finished a draft of his Africa. When he returned to Provence, he began to study Greek with the Calabrian monk Barlaam, but without mastering much beyond a very elementary level.
The year 1343 was important for Petrarch. At the papal court in Avignon, he met Cola di Rienzo, who would later become the Roman "tribune of the people." In February, Robert of Anjou died. In April, Petrarch's brother Gherardo became a Carthusian monk, and this led Petrarch to reexamine his own life and goals. In 1343, his illegitimate daughter, Francesca, was born. From these troubling events emerged his soul-searching imaginary dialogue with (Saint) Augustine—the Secretum—as well as his Seven Penitential Psalms and his treatise on the cardinal virtues, the Rerum memorandarum Libri. In form and content, the Secretum is based on classical and early Christian models, especially Augustine's Confessions. Whereas in his work the saint achieves a relative peace, Petrarch is constantly tormented by the unresolved conflict between spiritual aspirations and worldly concerns. Despite the sound Christian advice imparted by the character Augustinus to Franciscus and the insistent call to meditate on death in order to prepare one's soul for the afterlife, Franciscus cannot easily abandon his earthly pursuits, nor does he really wish to. The lack of resolution at the end of the three-day dialogue suggests not so much Petrarch's lack of faith as his very human reluctance to abandon immediate worldly pursuits in favor of distant eternal rewards.
The Triumph of Love. Li Sonetti Canzone e Trivmphi del Petrarca. . . . Venice: Bernardino Stagnino, 1513. Reproduced by courtesy of Department of Special Collections, General Library System, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
During the next few years, Petrarch traveled frequently: to Naples (in 1343), Parma (1344-1345), and Verona (1345). In the Capitular Library in Verona, he found and transcribed the manuscript of Cicero's letters to Atticus, a discovery that encouraged him to begin his own series of letters addressed to classical authors. After returning to Vaucluse in 1346, Petrarch began work on his treatise on the solitary life, De vita solitaria, which he subsequently dedicated to Philippe de Cabassoles. In 1347, Petrarch was happy to receive news of a revolution in Rome and the nomination of Cola di Rienzo to the position of tribune (essentially, dictator), for in these events he saw some signs of the old Roman grandeur. In letters to Cola and the Roman people, Petrarch encouraged them in their battle for liberty. However, Cola's excesses and megalomania would gradually undermine his position and destroy Petrarch's faith in him. After imprisonment in Avignon on charges of heresy, Cola returned to Rome as a senator, only to meet his death at the hands of the Roman people in 1354.
In 1347-1348, the time of the black death, Petrarch was in Verona and in Parma, where news of Laura's death (6 April 1348) came to him in a letter from his old friend "Socrates." The date of Laura's death and that of his first meeting with her, exactly twenty-one years before in 1327, would provide the basic chronological structure for a series of "anniversary" poems in the Canzoniere. The disastrous effects of the plague, which resulted in the deaths of several friends (e.g., Cardinal Colonna and Franceschino degli Albizzi), led Petrarch to write the Triumph of Death (Triumphus mortis).
His discovery of Cicero's letters in Verona in 1345 gave Petrarch the idea of collecting his own letters, and by 1350 he was actively engaged in this project, which would lead to the formation of the Familiares (twenty-four books), Seniles (seventeen books), Sine nomine (nineteen letters), and Epistolae metricae (three books). For the jubilee year of 1350, Petrarch traveled to Rome, stopping on the way in Florence, where he met Giovanni Boccaccio for the first time. Among Petrarch's many admirers in Florence were Boccaccio, Zanobi da Strada, Francesco Nelli, and Lapo da Castiglionchio. Always searching for manuscripts, Petrarch found in Lapo's library a copy of Quintilian's Institutes and some of Cicero's orations. After his Roman pilgrimage, Petrarch spent time in Parma and Padua. The Florentine republic offered him a teaching post at the university there, and the pope summoned him to return to Avignon. In 1351-1352, Petrarch was once again working in Vaucluse on De viris illustribus and the Canzoniere. In 1353, during his last months in Vaucluse, Petrarch was involved in an extended and intense debate with one of the pope's doctors over the relative merits of medicine and poetry, and this discussion resulted in the Invective contra medicum, in which Petrarch defends the supremacy of the liberal arts over the lower mechanical arts and praises poetry as the highest form of wisdom.
During 1353-1361, Petrarch lived for the most part in Milan, as a guest of the Visconti family and with the special support of Archbishop Giovanni Visconti. Despite the criticism he received from his friends for living under a despot, Petrarch was pleased with his circumstances, for he was able to do virtually anything he wanted. One project he began there became his longest work, De remediis utriusque fortune, a moral treatise in two books, the first dealing with the perils of good fortune and the second with the dangers of its opposite, adverse fortune. The form of De remediis is a series of dialogues between personified qualities; for example, in Book I, Joy and Hope—the children of Prosperity—argue against Reason; and in Book II, Reason's opponents are Sorrow and Fear, the offspring of Adversity. It was in Milan that Petrarch met Emperor Charles IV, whom he encouraged to reestablish the empire with Rome as its capital. These dealings with Charles, undertaken on behalf of the Visconti, allowed Petrarch to travel to Basel and Prague. In 1361, the Visconti sent him to Paris, where he delivered an oration, in Latin, in the presence of King John of France and John's court. Petrarch's eight years in Milan marked the longest nearly continuous residency of his life. Moreover, they were productive years, allowing him to complete De remediis and to make great progress in his compilation of the Canzoniere and the Familiares.
After his move to Padua in the summer of 1361, Petrarch received the sad news of the deaths of his illegitimate son Giovanni (who died in the plague in Milan) and of his old friends "Socrates" and Philippe de Vitry. However, he enjoyed frequent correspondence and encounters with Boccaccio, who often supplied him with copies of rare manuscripts (e.g., Augustine's Expositions on the Psalms, Varro's De lingua latina, the life of Peter Damian). In May 1362, Petrarch had an opportunity to advise Boccaccio, who had been terrified by a visit from a fanatical monk representing the late Pietro Petroni of Siena. Informed that he did not have long to live and that he should renounce the study of poetry, Boccaccio thought first to dispose of all his books, but Petrarch dissuaded him and encouraged him to continue his studies. However, Petrarch said that he would gladly buy Boccaccio's books if Boccaccio had a change of heart. Petrarch's love of books, and his zeal in collecting them, enabled him to amass what was at the time perhaps the largest private library in Europe. Recognizing the value of his collection, Petrarch reached a formal agreement with the maggior consiglio of Venice whereby he would give his library to Venice in exchange for a suitable house there and the assurance that his books would not be dispersed. Petrarch's collection thus formed the basis for the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. In Venice, Petrarch enjoyed visits from Boccaccio and numerous other friends; he also was gladdened by the birth of his grandchildren (Eletta and Francesco) and saddened by the death of his friends "Laelius" and Francesco Nelli.
Around 1366, Petrarch employed Giovanni Malpaghini as a scribe for the tedious task of copying the Familiares and the Canzoniere. In 1367, during a journey to Pavia by canal barge, Petrarch was able to respond to accusations lodged against him a year previously by four Aristotelian philosophers (Leonardo Dandolo, Tommaso Talenti, Zaccaria Contarini, and Guido da Bagnolo) who claimed that he was "a good man, but uneducated." In his response, the invective De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia (On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others), Petrarch gives clear evidence of the changeover from the outmoded ideas of scholastic philosophy to the new humanism; in particular, he argues that the source of knowledge lies not in pseudoscientific syllogistic arguments but rather in a profound intuitive awareness of the self.
In 1368, Petrarch, having been given some land near Arquà (some 10 miles, or about 16 kilometers, southwest of Padua)—initiated the construction of a house, which was finished in 1370. Among his possessions were a lute and a painting of the Madonna by Giotto, both of which have disappeared. Failing health prevented him from undertaking some highly desired trips to Rome and Avignon. His last works include a translation into Latin of Boccaccio's story of Griselda (Decameron, 10.10) and the Invective against the Man Who Maligned Italy (Invectiva contra eum qui maledixit Italie). The motivation for the Invective was an anonymous letter written by a Frenchman (Jean de Hesdin) that praised the French and spoke ill of Italy. As for the tale of patient Griselda, Petrarch was so taken by its value as a moral example that he wanted to make it available to readers who did not know Italian, and his translation was Chaucer's model for the Clerk's Tale in the Canterbury Tales. In his last years, Petrarch went on several diplomatic missions for Francesco da Carrara; he wrote letters and continued to work on the definitive versions of the Canzoniere, Trionfi, and De viris illustribus as well as on the compilations of his letters. During the night between 18 and 19 July 1374, Petrarch died. He was buried on 24 July in a marble tomb in the parish church at Arquà.
Although the Letter to Posterity says virtually nothing about his Italian works, Petrarch obviously considered them of great importance, for he was continuously revising them up to the very end of his life. If what he says in the Letter to Posterity is truly indicative of the way he wanted to be remembered, then it is a great irony, for his fame today rests primarily on his Italian poetry, which proved so influential during the Renaissance, particularly in France, Spain, and England. The composition of the Canzoniere was attended to with great care: its 366 poems are divided into two major sections—Ln vita di madonna Laura and In morte di madonna Laura—beginning with the secular sonnet Voi ch 'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono ("You who hear the sound in scattered rhymes") and ending with the religious ode to the Virgin Vergina bella, che di sol vestita ("Beautiful Virgin, clothed with the sun"). A large variety of subjects and themes—amorous, political, artistic, moral, and religious—are treated; nevertheless, the truly remarkable feature of the collection is Petrarch's obsessive attention to the presentation of his own poetic persona. Many poems in the Canzoniere are characterized by stylized, conventional attitudes toward love and by the presentation of a pensive, introspective lover, and these features were imitated widely in the Renaissance. This combination of psychological and poetic conceits would come to constitute what we generally refer to today as Petrarchism. Although Petrarch was not the inventor of the sonnet, he brought it to such perfection that this fourteen-line metrical form has become known as the Petrarchan sonnet. The six allegorical Triumphs (Trionfi), which relate the progress of the soul in relation to love, chastity, death, fame, time, and eternity, had a major impact on Renaissance literature, art, and pageantry.
Petrarch's literary production in Latin encompasses a number of major themes that highlight his crucial place in the history of western civilization. On the one hand, his treatises on fortune (De remediis utriusque fortune) and on the monastic life (De otio religioso) are distinctly medieval in flavor and conception. On the other hand, there is a definite, forward-looking "Renaissance" cast to many of the Latin works. Petrarch consciously attempted to revive classical genres and patterns in the epic poem Africa and in the series of famous lives (De viris illustribus) and events (Rerum memorandarum libri). His treatise on the solitary life, De vita solitaria, is a well-reasoned defense of the Ciceronian ideal of studious leisure (otium), which he tried to follow in his own life. He took the cue from classical examples in his collections of letters, in his invectives, in his pastoral poems (Bucolicum carmen), and in his dialogue with Augustine (Secretum).
See also Augustine, Saint; Avignonese Papacy; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Cola di Rienzo; Colonna Family; Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro; Italian Poetry: Lyric; Italian Prosody; Milan; Nelli, Francesco; Padua; Robert of Anjou; Sette, Guido; Visconti Family
CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Il Bucolicum carmen e i suoi commenti inediti. ed. Antonio Avena. Padua: Società Cooperativa Tipografica, 1906. (Reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1969.)
Canzoniere, ed. Gianfranco Contini. Turin: Einaudi, 1968.
Canzoniere, 2 vols, ed. Ugo Dotti. Rome: Donzelli, 1996.
Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata. Milan: Mondadori, 1996.
Il "De otio religioso," ed. Giuseppe Rotondi. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1958.
De viris illustribus, ed. Guido Martellotti. Florence: Sansoni, 1964.
De vita solitaria, Buch 1: Kritische Textausgabe und Ideengeschichtlicher Kommentar, ed. K. A. E. Enenkel. Leiden: Brill, 1990.
Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et varie, 3 vols, ed. G. Fracassetti. Florence: Le Monnier, 1859.
Invective contra medicum, ed. P. G. Ricci. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950.
Letters from Petrarch, trans. Morris Bishop. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966.
Letters of Old Age: Renim Senilium Libri XVIII, 2 vols., trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarum libri) I-XVI, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarum libri) XVII-XXIV, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
The Life of Solitude, trans. Jacob Zeitlin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924.
Lord Morley's "Tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke": The First English Translation of the "Trionfi," ed. D. D. Carnicelli. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Petrarch: The Canzoniere or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, trans. Mark Musa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Petrarch's Africa, trans. Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977.
Petrarch's Book without a Name: A Translation of the Liber Sine Nomine, trans. Norman P. Zacour. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973.
Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen, trans. Thomas G. Bergin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974.
Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors, trans. Mario Cosenza. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1910.
Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The "Rime Sparse" and Other Lyrics, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, 5 vols., trans. Conrad H. Rawski. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Petrarch's "Secretum" with Introduction, Notes, and Critical Anthology, trans. Davy A. Carozza and H. James Shey. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Petrarch's "Songbook," "Rerum vulgarium fragmenta": A Verse Translation, trans. James Wyatt Cook. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995.
Prose, ed. G. Martellotti, P. G. Ricci, E. Carrara, and E. Bianchi. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1955.
The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1948. (Contains the following translations: A Self-Portrait; The Ascent of Mont Ventoux; On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others; A Disapproval of an Unreasonable Use of the Discipline of Dialectic; An Averroist Visits Petrarca. Petrarca's Aversion to Arab Science; A Request to Take Up the Fight against A verroes.)
Rerum familiarium: Lihri I-VIII, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975.
Rerum memorandarum libri, ed. Giuseppe Billanovich. Florence, 1945.
Rime disperse, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Barber. New York: Garland, 1991.
Rime disperse, ed. Angelo Solerti. Florence: Sansoni, 1909.
Rime, Trionfi, e Poesie Latine, ed. F. Neri, G. Martellotti, E. Bianchi, and N. Sapegno. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1951.
Salmi penitenziali, ed. Roberto Gigliucci. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1997.
Secretum, ed, Ugo Dotti. Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 1993.
Sine nomine: Lettere polemiche e politiche. Bari: Laterza, 1974.
Trionfi, Rime estravaganti, Codice degli abbozzi, ed. Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino. Milan: Mondadori, 1996.
The Triumphs of Petrarch, trans. Ernest Hatch Wilkins. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Amaturo, Raffaele. Petrarca. Bari: Lacerza, 1971.
Baron, Hans. Petrarch's "Secretum": Its Making and Its Meaning, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Bernardo, Aldo S. Petrarch, Scipio, and the "Africa The Birth of Humanism's Dream. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962.
—. Petrarch, Laura, and the Triumphs. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974.
Bishop, Morris. Petrarch and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
Bosco, Umberto. Francesco Petrarca. Bari: Laterza, 1961.
Cosenza, Mario Emilio. Francesco Petrarca and the Revolution of Cola di Rienzo, 2nd ed. New York: Italica, 1986. (With new introduction and bibliography by Ronald G. Musto. Originally published 1913.)
Dotti, Uao. Vita di Petrarca. Bari: Laterza, 1987.
Forster, Leonard. The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Foster, Kenelm. Petrarch: Poet and Humanist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984.
Francesco Petrarca, Citizen of the World, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo. Padua and Albany: Antenore and State University of New York Press, 1980.
Francis Petrarch, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium, ed. Aldo Scaglione. Chapel Hill and Chicago, Ill.: University of North Carolina and Newberry Library, 1975.
Hainsworth, Peter. Petrarch the Poet: An Introduction to the Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. New York and London: Routledge, 1988.
Jones, Frederic J. The Structure of Petrarch's "Canzoniere": A Chronological, Psychological, and Stylistic Analysis. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.
Kennedy, William J. Authorizing Petrarch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Mann, Nicholas. Petrarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. The Worlds of Petrarch. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993.
Nolhac, Pierre de. Petrarqiu et l'humanisme, 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1907.
Petrarch's "Triumphs": Allegory and Spectacle, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. Iannucci. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1990.
Rico, Francisco. Vida u obra de Petrarca. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974.
Shapiro, Marianne. Hieroglyph of Time: The Petrarchan Sestina. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
Sturm-Maddox, Sara. Petrarch's Metamorphoses. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985.
—. Petrarch's Laurels. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
Trinkaus, Charles. The Poet as Philosopher: Petrarch and the Formation of Renaissance Consciousness. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.
Whitfield, J. H. Petrarch and the Renascence. Oxford: Blackwell, 1943.
Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. The Making of the Canzoniere and Other Petrarchan Studies. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1951.
—. Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1955.
—. Petrarch's Eight Years in Milan. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1958.
—. Petrarch's Later Years. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1959.
—. Life of Petrarch. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
—. Studies on Petrarch and Boccaccio. Padua: Antenore, 1978.
The Phaedrus is generally placed among the dialogues written in Plato's middle period, perhaps toward its later phase c. 370 B.C., when Plato was sixty. It is, in any case, the product of a man at the peak of his philosophic and literary powers. Since Socrates is ordinarily to be found in the busy streets of Athens, the unusual nature of what follows is suggested by the setting: a warm summer day in the countryside outside the city walls. He has met Phaedrus, a younger friend who is infatuated with fashionable rhetoric and is carrying a copy of a new speech by Lysias. After the two find a pleasant place in the shade, Phaedrus reads aloud Lysias's contention that a youth ought to have an affair with a man who professes not to love him, since lovers are notoriously irrational. Socrates, who is not really impressed, under the influence of local spirits, offers a technically improved version of the same theme; then, becoming more inspired, he delivers a second speech defending the opposite view—that erotic madness may be a great blessing. With these three examples of oratory in view, the second part of the dialogue is devoted to a sober analysis of true and false rhetoric.
The two parts, though quite different in mood and subject, are held together by the notion of "persuasion," a familiar goal in rhetoric and here also bearing a narrower erotic meaning of "seduction" embodied in the subject of the speeches as well as in the efforts of Socrates and Lysias to influence Phaedrus. In the second half of the dialogue, Plato modifies his earlier hostility to rhetoric (e.g., Gorgias) because of its indifference to truth. He is now prepared to concede that persuasion is useful so long as philosophy provides direction by furnishing genuine knowledge. The foregoing speeches have illustrated in the person of Socrates what an honest philosophic rhetorician can do by way of dealing with the nonrational aspects of human nature, which in fact play an important role in life.
A major part of the philosophic content of the dialogue is in Socrates's second speech. The fact of its inspiration represents limits to what can be achieved by analytic reason alone. The astonishing paradox that irrationality may be a divine blessing is defensible because reason—symbolized in its vulgar form by the trivially clever Lysias—does not exhaust reality. Socrates's spectacularly poetic style of speaking, moreover, highlights the unusually explicit portrayal of pederastic sexual feeling. Plato's aim is to show that even the overly physical aspects of attachments in contemporary Greece can be interpreted as initial stages in the emergence of philosophic passion, much as rhetoric can be put to philosophic uses. Sexual response to physical beauty is (ultimately) a response to beauty itself. Balancing this emphasis on the powerful emotional component of philosophy is a carefully worked-out formal proof of the soul's immortality based on the principle of self-motion. Analytic reason reemerges again in a definition of dialectic synthesis and analysis in the cooler second portion of the dialogue.
The eloquent description in the Phaedrus of divinely inspired love and of the soul's winged flight from the body to higher spheres attracted attention from the later Neoplatonists and again during the Renaissance, when Ficino, in particular, elaborated its religious-mystical aspects.
The Jowett translation is often eloquent, though dated. The Loeb edition of Plato conveniently combines Greek text with translations but is uneven. Penguin translations are relatively recent and readily available.
See also Neoplatonism; Plato
PAUL PLASS
Plato. Phaedrus, ed., trans., and commentary C. J. Rowe, 2nd ed. Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris and Phillips, 1988.
—. Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1902. (Reprint, 1984.)
Allen, Michael. The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
L'Année Philologique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. (For a complete yearly bibliography, see under "Plato.")
Brisson, Luc. "Platon 1958-1975." Lustrum 20, 1977, pp. 5-304. (This article and the two below are bibliographic surveys.)
—. "Platon 1975-1980." Lustrum, 25, 1983, pp. 31-320.
—. "Platon 1980-1985." Lustrum, 30, 1988, pp. 11-294.
Cherniss, Harold. "Plato 1950-1957." Lustrum, 4, 1959, pp. 5-308; 5, 1960, pp. 323-648. (Bibliographic survey.)
Griswold, Charles. Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986.
Vries, Gerrit J. de. A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1969.
Greek prose in medieval Italy reaches a high point with the sermons of the twelfth-century Siculo-Calabrian monk Philagathus (d. 1154 or later). He is conventionally called "of Cerami," although it is not clear whether the designation Keramítes refers to Cerami in Sicily or to some other place, or is instead a classicizing version of the demotic surname Kerameús ("Potter"). Until fairly recently, he was known as Theophanes Cerameus, thanks to a misattribution in one branch of a later Byzantine redaction that converted his sermon collection into a homiliary organized according to the liturgical calendar, and his work was at times presented as that of a ninth- or eleventh-century writer into which more recent material had been inserted. In his Italo-Greek manuscripts he is styled "the philosopher" (and therefore is sometimes so identified in library catalogs) and is also often called Philippus (perhaps his baptismal name) rather than Philagathus. Of his approximately ninety surviving sermons, only thirty-eight have a modern critical edition; the remainder either must be read in texts descended from the very defective editio princeps of Francesco Scorso (1644) or are still unpublished. Even so, these cultured and rhetorically accomplished productions have earned a considerable reputation for artistic excellence.
To the extent that they can be localized with certainty, Philagathus's early associations are Calabrian. After entering religion at an unidentified church of Saint Andrew, he trained at the Nea Hodegetria monastery near Rossano, later known as the Patír or the Patirion, for whose founder, Bartholomew of Simeri (d. 1130), he gave a commemorative sermon. Philagathus preached in Rossano proper; in Reggio; and in Sicily, at Messina, Taormina, Troina, and especially Palermo, where at least one of his sermons was delivered before King Roger II in the predecessor of today's cathedral. His sermon in Roger's Palatine Chapel (seemingly after 1140 but sometimes assigned to the chapel's consecration in 1140) contains the earliest extended description of this renowned monument.
Although Philagathus has been called a court preacher, it might be more accurate to call him a preacher whose distinction led to appearances at court. The venues of most of his sermons are not fully known. He was still active during the reign of William I (1154-1166). An allegorical commentary on the Aethiopica of Heliodorus (an ancient Greek novel used by Philagathus in at least one sermon), recently thought to be his, has now been shown to be much older. The attributions to him of the anonymous Life of Bartholomew of Simeri, of a grammatical textbook now lost, and of a verse introduction to the fables of Symeon Seth (one form of the Greek "mirror of princes" Stephamtes and Ichnelates) are all very dubious.
See also Greek Language and Literature
JOHN B. DILLON
Caruso, Stefano, ed. "Le tre omilie inedite 'Per la domenica delle palme' di Filagato da Cerami." Epeterìs Hetaireías Byzantinôn Spoudôn, 41, 1974, pp. 109-127.
Patrologia Graeca, 132, cols. 9-1078. (Scorso's edition and Latin translation of sixty-two sermons.)
Rossi Taibbi, Giuseppe, ed. Filagato da Cerami: Omilie per i vangeli domenicali e le feste di tutto l'anno, Vol. 1, Omelie per le feste fisse, Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neoellenici. Testi, 11. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1969.
Gaşpar, Cristian-Nicolae. "Praising the Stylite in Southern Italy: Philagathos of Cerami on Saint Symeon the Stylite." Annuario dell'Istituto Rorneno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica, 4, 2002, pp. 93-108.
Lavagnini, Bruno. Profilo di Filagato da Cerami: Con traduzione della Omelia XXVII pronunziata dal pulpito della Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Palermo: Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere, e Arti già del Buongusto, 1992. (Reprinted in Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, n.s., 44, 1990, pp. 231-244, issued in 1993.)
Rossi Taibbi, Giuseppe. Sulla tradizione manoscritta dell'omiliario di Filagato da Cerami. Isticuto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Quaderni, 1. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1965.
Acconcia Longo, Augusta. "Filippo il filosofo a Costantinopoli." Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, n.s., 28, 1991, pp. 3-21.
Foti, Maria Bianca. "Cultura e scrittura nelle chiese e nei monasteri italo-greci." In Civiltà del Mezzogiorno d'Italia: Libro, scrittura, documento in età normanno-sveva—Atti del convegno dell'Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti (Napoli-Badia di Cava dei Tirreni, 14-18 ottobre 1991), ed. Filippo D'Oria. Cultura Scritta e Memoria Storica, 1. Salerno: Carlone, 1994, pp. 41-76. (See especially pp. 65-67.)
Garzya, Antonio. "Per la cultura politica nella Sicilia greconormanna." In Percorsi e tramiti di cultura. Naples: M. D'Auria, 1997, pp. 241-247.
Houben, Hubert. "La predicazione." In Strumenti, tempi, e luoghi di communicazione nel Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo: Atti delle undecime Giornate normanno-sveve, Bari, 26—29 ottobre 1993, ed. Giosuè Musca and Vito Sivo. Bari: Dedalo, 1995, pp. 253-273.
Kitzinger, Ernst. "The Date of Philagathos' Homily for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul." In Byzantino-Sicula, Vol. 2, Miscellanea di scritti in memoria di Giuseppe Rossi Taibbi. Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Quaderni, 8. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1975, pp. 301-306.
Luca, Santo. "I Normanni e la 'rinascita' del sec. XII." Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, 60, 1993, pp. 1-91. (See especially pp. 69-79, 86-87.)
Perria, Lidia. "La clausola ritmica nella prosa di Filagato da Cerami." Jahrbucb der österreichiscben Byzantinistik, 32 (Akten des XVI. Internationalen Byzantinistenkongress, Wien, 4.-9. Oktober 1981), part 3, 1982, pp. 365-373.
The Byzantine emperor Phocas (d. 610, r. 602—610), a minor officer of obscure origins, was propelled into the leadership of a mutiny against the unpopular emperor Maurice. As Constantinople dissolved in factional chaos and Maurice fled, Phocas found himself elevated to the throne. The fleeing Maurice and his sons were captured and executed, but Phocas's position remained insecure, and this led him to devote his energies to purging enemies, hunting down conspiracies, and imposing a general reign of terror. Thus preoccupied, and resisted locally throughout the empire, he was unable to deal with perilous conditions on the frontiers, as the Avars and Slavs renewed their devastation of the Balkans while the king of Persia mounted a relentless campaign of conquest against the empire's eastern territories. Eventually, a rebellion launched from Carthage under the son of its exarch, Heraclius, made its way eastward and reached Constantinople in October 610, whereupon Phocas was deposed and executed.
Only in distant Italy was Phocas regarded positively. Pope Gregory I, who had been on bad terms with Maurice, hailed the usurper's accession in fulsome letters of rejoicing. In response, Phocas showered Gregory and his successors with honors (among them, the award of Rome's Pantheon to the church). In 608, the exarch of Ravenna, Smaragdus, had a column erected in Phocas's honor in the Roman Forum; it was the last public monument to rise in that decaying locale. The column is still to be seen in the Forum, although Phocas's name was subsequently expunged from the dedicatory inscription.
See also Gregory I, Pope; Maurice, Emperor; Ravenna; Rome
JOHN W. BARKER
Bury, J. B. A History of the Later Roman Empire: From Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.), 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1889.
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. 5, The Lombard Invasions, 553-600; Vol. 6, The Lombard Kingdom, 600-744. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892-1896.
Stratos, Andreas N. Byzantium in the Seventh Century, Vol. 1, 602-626, trans. Marc Ogilvie-Grant. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1968.
The Photian schism of 863-880 was a controversy between the patriarchs of Constantinople and the popes. In this case, the schism was a split caused by organizational differences, not basic disagreements in belief, but it was the most serious to date between what would become the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. The papacy's claim to some sort of authority over Constantinople was present in the background, but the immediate causes were a personality conflict and a struggle for religious control of southeastern Europe.
Nicholas I became the pope in Rome and Photius became the patriarch of Constantinople in the same year, 858. Nicholas involved himself in a dispute over irregularities in Photius's appointment by sending a fact-finding delegation to Constantinople in 861, Although the accounts are contradictory, it is known that the investigators ruled in favor of Photius. Nicholas, however, eventually repudiated their decision. Other matters also entered the conflict. The Byzantines had deprived the papacy of control over the Balkans during the Iconoclastic period. Reviving old claims, Nicholas claimed jurisdiction over Bulgaria, which converted to Christianity at this time.
Before the 1950s, most scholars believed that Photius, backed by the Byzantine government, allied himself with Nicholas's enemies in Italy, including the western emperor Louis II and John, archbishop of Ravenna. Since 1950, many historians—citing newly discovered evidence—have minimized Photius's role in Italy; they believe that Nicholas's problems there were due purely to western politics. In any case, Photius's attempts to undermine Nicholas culminated in a council, held at Constantinople in 867, which deposed the pope. Nicholas died before the news of this deposition reached Rome; and ironically, Photius—having lost political support—was himself deposed that same year.
Tension continued after 867. Photius's replacement proved just as stubborn with regard to Bulgaria. In 877, Photius again became patriarch. Pope John VIII (r. 872-882) was more flexible than the uncompromising Nicholas. At Constantinople in 879-880, papal legates confirmed Photius as patriarch in return for a face-saving agreement on Bulgaria that gave Rome nominal jurisdiction while leaving actual ecclesiastical control to Constantinople. Accounts of a second Photian schism in older histories have now been discredited by scholars.
See also John VIII, Pope; Louis II, Emperor; Nicholas I, Pope
MARTIN ARBAGI
Anastasius Bibliotecarius (Anastasius the Librarian). Vita Nicolai Papae I (Life of Pope Nicholas I). In Le liber pontiflcalis, ed. Louis Duchesne. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1955. (Reprint.)
George the Monk. Cbronicon, ed. Carl de Boor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1904.
Mansi, Giovanni Domenico. Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1960-1961. (See Vol. 16 for Nicetas of Paphlagonia's Vita Sancti Ignatii, or Life of the Holy Ignatius, a biography of Photius's principal rival within the Byzantine church.)
Nicholas I Papa. Epistolae. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae, 6. (Pope Nicholas's official correspondence.)
Theophanes Continuatus, ed. Immanuel Bekker. Bonn: E. Weber, 1838. (A continuation of the famous chronicle of Theophanes.)
Dvornik, Francis. The Photian Schism: History and Legend. Cambridge: University Press 1948. (Reprint, 1970.)
Gay, Jules. L'Italie méridionale et l'empire byzantin depuis l'avènement de Basil Ier jusqu 'à la prise de Bari par les Normands. Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1904. (See the last few pages of Book 1 and chs. 1 and 2 of Book 2.)
Hergenröther, Joseph. Photius, Patriarch von Constantinopel: Seine Leben, seine Schrifien, und das griechische Schisma, 3 vols. Regensburg: G. J. Manz, 1867-1869.
Kreutz, Barbara. Italy before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Treadgold, Warren. The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1980.
Wieczynski, Joseph L. "The Anti-Papal Conspiracy of the Patriarch Photius in 867." Byzantine Studies/Études Byzantines, 1(2), 1974, pp. 180-189.
Physiologus was the early medieval foundation for all later bestiaries. Except for the Bible, it was the most often translated and most widespread book in the medieval world, known in Greek, Latin, Syrian, Ethiopian, German, Arabic, Armenian, Anglo-Saxon, and other languages. Physioiogus, actually a nickname for the unknown Greek author, came to be widely used as the tide of the work, which was written sometime between the second century and the fifth century after Christ, probably at Alexandria. The work was first translated into Latin in the period between the fourth and the sixth centuries. A number of modern translations have been made from manuscripts of Physiologus found throughout European collections; and the text has been attributed to several figures, including Epiphanius (c. 315-403), bishop of Salamis, who composed a treatise on gems (De gemmis).
Like other well-known authors of antiquity, including Aristotle, Aelian, and Solinus, Physiologus was a naturalist, and his sources were often these other naturalists. His words in the hands of many copyists during the Middle Ages came to be conflated with numerous variations including infusions from local traditions, some descriptive of actual animals, others utterly fantastic.
The rich imagery of Physiologus served as a literary resource for animals and fantastic beasts in literature, sermons, sculpture, and painting throughout the late Middle Ages. More importantly, Physiologus became the literary foundation for all later encyclopedic summaries of naturalia and (as noted above) for the specialized texts on animals known as bestiaries. In addition to collecting stories about various animals, Physiologus attached symbolic significance to all creatures. Following scriptural advice (Job 12:7) and models provided by the ancient literary traditions of Aesop's Fables and Ovid's Metamorphoses, the author of Physiologus found in each animal a moralizing metaphorical image. According to an apocryphal story, Pope Gelasius I was given a copy c. 496, disagreed with its moralizing content, and put it on a list of banned books. Nevertheless, Physiologus increasingly became a vehicle not only for teaching moral behavior but sometimes for imparting medical advice. For example, eating certain fowl or other animals at specific seasons or for a variety of ailments was considered advisable. Sometimes these remedies were based on inappropriate and inaccurate verbal analogies, such as urica (canker-worm) whose bite burns (urit), causing one to "make water." Physiologus provided much information for Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. As White observed, Physiologus was written in a time when "people believed that the Universe was governed by a controlling mind and was capable of a rational explanation. They believed that everything meant something. . . . Every possible article in the world, and its name also, concealed a hidden message for the eye of faith" (The Bestiary 1960, 244). Therefore, to know those disguised messages was to master the hidden solutions to the mysteries of spiritual and physical ailments and healing.
Among the versions of Physiologus that have a common Roman origin are those of Philippe de Thaun, Pierre le Picard, and Guillaume le Clerc of Normandy; the Millstater and Waldensian Physiologus; the Provençal excerpts; and the Spanish Physiologus. Although there are few references to or acknowledgments of Physiologus in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century bestiaries and books on animals, their core content is based on the passages found in this early text.
See also Aristotle and Aristotelianism; Bestiaries; Isidore of Seville
DARRELL D. DAVISSON
The Old English Physiologus, ed. Albert Stanburrough Cook, trans. James Hall Pitman. Yale Studies in English. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1921.
Physiologus (Saint Epiphanius). In Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. Migne, cols. 517-534.
Physiologus, ed. Francesco Sbordone. Milan: Societa Dante Alighieri-Albrighi, Segati, 1936.
Physiobgus Bernensis. Voll-Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Bongarsianus 318 der Burgerbibliothek Bern, ed. Christoph von Steiger and Otto Homburger. Basel: Alkuin-Verlag, 1964.
Physiologus: Naturkunde in frühchristlicher Deutung, ed. and trans. Ursula Treu. Hanau: W. Dausian, 1981.
Theohaldi Physiologus, ed. and trans. P. T. Eden. Leiden: Brill, 1972.
The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, trans. T. H. White. Capricorn Books. New York: Putnam, 1960.
Physiologus, trans. Michael J. Curley. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979.
Physiologus, a Metrical Bestiary of Twelve Chapters by Bishop Theobald, Printed in Cologne 1492, trans. Alan Wood Rendell. London: Bumpus, 1928.
Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Campbell, T. P. "Thematic Unity in the Old English Physiologus." Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 215, 1978, pp. 73-79.
Carmody, Francis J., ed. Physiologus latinus: Editions préliminaires, Versio B. Paris: Librarie Droz, 1939.
Demus, Otto. "Bemerkungen zum Physiologus von Smyrna." Jahrbuch der Österreichen Byzantinistik, 25, 1976, pp. 235-257.
Diekstra, F. N. M. "The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and Medieval Animal Lore." Neophilologus, 69(1), 1985, pp. 142—155.
Forbes, Thomas R. "Medical Lore in the Bestiaries." Medical History, 12, 1968, pp. 245-253.
Gerlach, Peter. "Physiologus." In Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann. Rome: Herder, 1971, Vol. 3, pp. 432-436.
Guillaume le Clerc de Normandie. Le bestiare: Das Thierbuch des normannischen Dichters Guillaume le Clerc, zum ersten Male vollständig nach den Handscriften von London, Paris und Berlin, ed. Robert Reinsch. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1892. (Reprint, New York: AMS, 1973.)
Mann, Max Friedrich. "Der Bestiare divin des Guillaume le Clerc." Französichen Studien, 6(2), 1888, pp. 1-106.
McCulloch, Florence. Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries. Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 33. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962.
Der Physiologus: Tiere und ihre Symbolik, ed. Otto Seel. Zurich: Artemis, 1960. (Reprint, 1983.)
Wittkower, Rudolf. "Miraculous Birds: (1) 'Physiologus' in Beatus Manuscripts; (2) 'Roc': An Eastern Prodigy in a Dutch Engraving." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1, 1938, pp. 253-257.
Woodruff, Helen. "The Physiologus of Bern." Art Bulletin, 12(3), 1930, pp. 226-253.
Piacenza, an ancient city in the Po River valley in the westernmost part of Emilia, was settled as a Roman colony in 218 B.C. during the second Punic war. It was reorganized in 187 B.C. in connection with the establishment of military units whose name—placentia—eventually was transferred to the city itself. As a Roman city, Piacenza grew in prosperity. During the period of Roman decline, it was ruled in turn by the Goths, Byzantines, and Lombards. In the late ninth century and the early tenth it was held by various local lords, such as Berengar of Friuli, Lambert, and Hugh of Aries, with at least two disruptions by the Magyars. In the later tenth century, the city was incorporated into the Ottonian feudal regime of northern Italy. Immediate control of the city had long been vested in the bishops, but their power was increasingly shared with and challenged by the emergence of a growing secular population.
Early urban leadership was dominated by aristocratic families, one of whose members, Count Bishop Dionysius, held the city in defiance of Pope Gregory VII. The aristocratic elements that dominated the city supported imperial rule and the dissenting movement called the Pataria. Growing support of the papal reform program prompted the lower classes of the city to initiate a period of internal strife, which resulted in the expulsion of the nobility and cooperation with Milan and other northern cities in their struggle against the German emperor Henry IV during the ongoing investiture controversy. In 1095, Pope Urban II acknowledged Piacenza's allegiance by making it the site of an important synod directed at church reform and the supporters of Henry IV; this synod brought the first hints of what would soon become Urban's call for the First Crusade. By 1126, a commune had taken shape under the leadership of elected consuls (five in number); it rejected both feudal and episcopal traditions of power and expanded its control over the neighboring countryside. Despite threats and impositions by Frederick I Barbarossa, Piacenza persisted in loyalty to the Lombard League, and its soldiers participated in the emperor's defeat at the battle of Legnano (1176). By the peace of Constance (1183), Piacenza regained its municipal autonomy, and in the ensuing decades it refined its governmental institutions and continued its program of territorial expansion in conflict with its neighbors. Piacenza participated in the Second Lombard League against Emperor Frederick II and suffered punishment after the emperor's victory at Cortenuova (1237). By 1250, however, Piacenza's communal vigor was renewed, with popular risings that led to the creation of the office of capitano delpopolo and were followed by further movement toward the creation of a signoria.
Palazzo del Comune, Piacenza. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Leadership in the city was exercised for some years by the Pallavicino and Landi families. However, after the defeat of Manfred by Charles of Anjou in 1266, Piacenza submitted to his rule, electing him protector of the city and accepting his designee as podestà. After ten years of Angevin rule, Ubertino Landi reestablished his control of the city. In 1290, Alberto Scotti was chosen "captain and lord" of the city, an office that became hereditary in 1303, enabling the Scotti family to consolidate its power. The Scotti were able to repel the Ghibellines' efforts—supported by Henry VII of Luxembourg—until 1313, when Galeazzo Visconti seized power and was proclaimed lord (signore) in a Ghibelline coup. This coup was reversed in 1322, when forces loyal to the Landi conquered Piacenza, making it a new center of Guelf sentiment. In 1335, Francesco Scotti, attempting to reestablish control of the city with the assistance of the Visconti of Milano, brought about the ultimate introduction of Visconti rule in the person of Azzone Visconti, who was followed in power by Luchino and Giovanni. The succession in 1378 of Gian Galeazzo Visconti initiated a new period of institutional reform and brought a brief relocation of the University of Pavia at Piacenza (1398-1402). Republican rule in the city was reestablished in 1447, on the death of the last Visconti, Filippo Maria; but this movement was quickly suppressed by Francesco Sforza, who was proclaimed lord in 1448.
Among significant medieval monuments in Piacenza is the cathedral, built between 1122 and 1233, though it was extensively restored in the nineteenth century. Its facade was augmented in 1350 by Pietro Vago's atrium, popularly known as Paradiso. Another church of the period is Sant'Antonino, the original cathedral (fourth-eleventh centuries); it was rebuilt in 1014, on a Greek-cross plan, with subsequent additions. The church of Sant'Eufemia, built in the eleventh century, has been restored to something of its medieval character and has an interesting twelfth-century facade. The twelfth-century church of Santa Brigida, though much rebuilt later, preserves Gothic elements, including a fine portal. Here, in 1185, the commune ratified the treaty of Constance. The church of San Francesco, begun in 1278, is a fine Lombard-Gothic building, with a handsome facade portal and a well-preserved Gothic interior, with ambulatory and radiating chapels.
The Palazzo Comunale, begun in 1281, is regarded as a masterpiece of civic architecture in the Lombard-Gothic style. The Visconti fortress (rocca) was begun by Galeazzo in 1315 and completed fifty years later, but it was heavily altered in the sixteenth century to incorporate it into the massive new Palazzo Farnese—now the civic museum, whose holdings include a famous Etruscan divination tool, the Fegato di Bronzo ("bronze liver").
Although Alessio Tramello's masterpiece, the church of La Madonna di Campagna, dates from 1522-1528, it highlights the Piazzale delle Crociate, the site where, according to tradition, Pope Urban II in 1095 preached a preliminary call for the First Crusade at the end of his council in Piacenza.
See also Berengar I of Friuli; Constance, Peace of; Cortenuova, Battle of; Investiture Controversy; Legnano, Battle of; Lombard Leagues; Urban II, Pope; Visconti Family
JOHN w. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Canetti, Luigi. Gloriosa civitas: Culto dei santi e società cittadina a PiacenzM nel medioevo. Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1993.
Fiorentini, Ersilio Fausto. Le chiese di Piacenza, 2nd ed. Piacenza: Edizioni TEP, 1985.
Pagliani, Maria Luigia. Piacenza: Forma e urbanistica. Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1991.
Piccinini, Giuseppina. Il palazzo gotico: Le vicende del Palazzo Pubblico di Piacenza dal 1281. Piacenza: Tip. Le. Co., 1998.
Storia di Piacenza, 6 vols. Piacenza: Cassa di Risparmio di Piacenza, 1984.
Pier della Vigna (Petrus de Vinea, c. 1190-1249) was born in Capua of obscure parentage and became a senior bureaucrat and officer of state under Emperor Frederick II. Pier had broad and enduring influence as a master of Latin documentary composition and Latin prose stylistics more generally.
Pier's education included the study of law and rhetoric, the former probably at the University of Bologna, and the latter probably at a notarial school in Capua or Bologna, since Bologna and Capua were centers for this sort of instruction. He entered Frederick's court chancery in the early 1220s, became a high-ranking judge, had major financial responsibilities, and wrote private letters for Frederick that did not go through the chancery. It is thought that his superior skill as a stylist and advocate was immediately recognized and that from the beginning of his lifelong employment in this milieu it fell to him to compose the most important and stylistically taxing documents. By 1243, he was protonotary of the imperial court and logothete—a high official with the functions of chancellor—of the kingdom of Sicily. In 1244, he and his colleague (and fellow Campanian) Thaddeus of Sessa were authorized to decide on all petitions presented to the emperor. Pier was a trusted counselor to Frederick, and Frederick's spokesman in many of the emperor's troubled dealings with the papacy and with the communes of northern Italy. Throughout Frederick's long dispute with Pope Gregory IX, Pier represented the emperor at the papal court and at the courts of foreign princes; shortly before Pope Innocent IV deposed the emperor in 1245, Pier attempted to intervene on his sovereign's behalf.
That Pier used his position to enrich himself and to advance his family is not surprising. But in this regard he does appear to have been excessively grasping and thus to have made many enemies. For reasons that are unclear, Frederick had him arrested in Cremona early in 1249, and blinded a few months later, probably in the fortress of San Miniato near Pisa. Pier's death not long afterward was believed in some quarters to have been a suicide, a view shared by Dante. Pier is one of the most memorable souls in the Divine Comedy, though he is identified only as "the man who held the double key to Frederick's heart" (Inferno, 13.58-59). It seems likely, as Stephany (1982) has argued, that the portrayal and punishment of Pier in the Divine Comedy were provoked by Dante's literal reading of Pier's widely admired Eulogy of Frederick, a composition that may have struck Dante as blasphemous and idolatrous.
One of a pair of busts of bearded males from Fredericks monumental gate at Capua (the gate was demolished in 1557 and the bust is now in the Museo Provinciale Campano) is sometimes considered a portrait of Pier. But it seems unlikely that the Hohenstaufen regime would have knowingly permitted this showpiece of imperial iconography to retain, in close proximity to the image of Frederick himself, the likeness of a man stigmatized in official documents of the early 1250s as Petrus proditor ("Pier the traitor"). Pier has also been identified as one of the figures in a portrait (now lost) at the emperor's palace at Naples, which supposedly showed him dispensing justice in Frederick's presence; but this too seems dubious.
Pier was famous in his lifetime as a person of high culture and as an artist in Latin prose. His production as a writer falls into several different categories. His early official letters match the style of the Roman curia at the time, a style characterized by elaborate patterns of verbal, phonic, and rhythmic ornaments and laden with biblical citations, all intended to convey honor and respect for the addressee and a solemn celebration of the status quo. The same verbal musicality and allusive citations of well-known biblical and classical texts are evident in letters of consolation, as well as occasional pieces such as the famous Eulogy, in which messianic proclamations about Frederick are amplified with biblical language. After 1225, when the emperor abandoned his posture of gratitude toward the papacy and began to focus on what he perceived as conflicts of interest between papacy and empire, the rhetoric of Pier's letters shifts, in certain cases, from persuasion rooted in praise and affection for the addressee to persuasion based on the points of contention between the parties. The historical circumstances of controversial events become an integral part of the persuasive strategy. For nearly thirty years, Pier would wage a polemical campaign in defense of Frederick II in an attempt to win the support of prelates and princes throughout Latin Europe. Ultimately, his choice of rhetorical approaches would always depend on his perception of the intended public and the subject matter discussed in the letter.
Although the extent of his personal contribution remains controversial, Pier was at least partly responsible for the drafting of Liber Augustalis (1231), the Latin version of Frederick's Constitutions of Melfi, a massive law code asserting the absolute authority of the prince in his kingdom. The language of its Proemiurn is richly ornamented and cadenced. Just as the Eulogy appropriates biblical language to glorify the emperor and his court, the Proemium invokes biblical, patristic, and Aristotelian phrases, as well as classical Roman legal phrases, to suggest the universality of imperial rule.
Collections of Pier's documents, to which were added some of his personal letters and various writings of his correspondents and others, began to be made as early as the 1270s and came to be known as the Epistole (Letters), Dictamina (Formal Communications), or Summa (Treatise) of Pier della Vigna. Circulating in several different redactions, they served into the fifteenth century and beyond as models in rhetorical instruction and were used pragmatically in many chanceries. At least 230 manuscripts are known; their quantity and quality attest to the importance that contemporaries and successive generations attached to these writings. The Florentine Guelf Brunetto Latini, writing several decades after Pier's death, commemorates this imperial official as an exemplary orator, and as such, master of Frederick and of the empire.
Pier's other surviving works and possible works include two Latin poems in rhythmical quatrains whose attribution to Pier, though early, is not certain: one on the months of the year and their properties, the other a satire on the mendicants. Most of Pier's Latin writings and the Latin texts associated with him still lack modern critical editions.
Pier is also a minor figure in early Italian literature. He was one of the court poets of the Sicilian school and is named in the manuscripts as the author of at least eight pieces. Two canzoni and a sonnet (the latter is part of a tenzone with Jacopo Mostacci and Giacomo da Lentini) are securely attributed to Pier; a third canzone (Poi tanta caunoscenza) is less certainly his. The modern editor of the Sicilian school corpus, Panvini (19621964, 1994), rejects, on a variety of grounds, Pier's authorship of the remainder.
See also Ars Dictaminis; Constitutions of Melfi; Dante Alighieri; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Scuola Poetica Siciliana
LAURIE SHEPARD AND JOHN B. DILLON
Böhmer, Johann Friedrich, ed. "Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Philipp, Otco IV, Friedrich II, Heinrich (VII), Conrad IV, Heinrich Raspe, Wilhelm und Richard, 1198-1272." In Regesta imperii, Vol. 5, ed. Julius Ficker and Eduard Winkelmann. Innsbruck: Wagner, 1881-1901. (Reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1971.)
Castets, Louis. "Prose larine attribuée à Pierre de la Vigne." Revue des Langues Romanes, 32, 1888, pp. 430-452. (Critical edition of the satire against the mendicants.)
Conrad, Hermann, Thea von der Lieck-Buycken, and Wolfgang Wagner, eds. Die Konstitutionen Friedrichs II. von Hobenstaufen für sein Königreich Sizilien. Studien und Quellen zur Welt Kaiser Friedrichs II, 2. Cologne: Böhlau, 1973. (Edition and German translation of Liber Augustalis.)
Holder-Egger, O. "Bericht über eine Reise nach Italien im Jahre 1891." Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde, 17, 1892, pp. 461-524. (Poem on the months of the year, pp. 501-503.)
Huillard-Bréholles, J.-L.-A., ed. Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi, 6 vols. Paris: Plon, 1852-1861. (Reprint, Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1963. Official documents in chronological order.)
—, ed. Vie et correspondance de Pierre de la Vigne, ministre de l'Empereur Frédéric II. Paris: Plon, 1865. (Reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1966. See Latin personal correspondence, pp. 289-404; and Eulogy of Frederick, pp. 425-426.)
Macciocca, Gabriella, ed. Poesie volgari di Pier della Vigna. Tesi di Dottorato di Ricerca, Dip. di Studi Romanzi, Università degli Studi di Roma. Rome: La Sapienza, 1996.
Panvini, Bruno, ed. Le rime della scuola siciliana. Biblioteca dell' Archivum Romanicum, Series 1(65 and 72). Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1962-1964, Vol. 1, pp. xliii-xlix, 125-130, 412-414, 647.
—. ed. Poeti italiani della corte di Federico II, rev. ed. Naples: Liguori, 1994, pp. 185-192, 259.
Schaller, Hans Martin, with Bernhard Vogel. Handschriftenverzeichnis zur Briefsammlung des Petrus de Vinea. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel, 18. Hannover: Hahn, 2002.
Cassell, Anthony K. "Pier della Vigna's Metamorphosis: Iconography and History." In Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 22. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983, pp. 31-76.
Delle Donne, Fulvio. "Lo stile della cancelleria di Federico II ed i presunti influssi arabi." In Atti dell'Accademia Pontaniana, n.s., 41, 1992, pp. 153-164.
—. "Le 'Consolationes' del IV libro del epistolario di Pier della Vigna." Vichiana, 4, 1993, pp. 268-290.
—. "Una perduta raffigurazione federiciana descritta da Francesco Pipino e la sede della cancelleria imperiale." Studi Medievali, Series 3, 38, 1997, pp. 737-749. (Reprinted in Fulvio Delle Donne. Politica e letteratura nel Mezzogiorno medievak: La cronachistica dei secoli XII-XV. Immagini del Medioevo, 4. Salerno: Carlone, 2001, pp. 111-126.)
Di Capua, Francesco. "Lo stile della Curia romana e il 'cursus' nelle epistole di Pier della Vigna e nei documenti della Cancelleria sveva." Giornale Italiano di Filologia, 2, 1949, pp. 97-166. (Reprinted in Francesco Di Capua. Scritti minori, Vol 1. New York: Desclée, 1958, pp. 500-523.)
Dilcher, Hermann. Die sizilianische Gesetzgebung Kaiser Friedrichs II: Quellen der Constitutionen von Melfi und ihrer Novellen. Studien und Quellen zur Welt Kaiser Friedrichs II, 3. Cologne: Böhlau, 1975. (See especially pp. 21-22, 26-27.)
Haskins, Charles Homer. "Latin Literature under Frederick II." In Studies in Mediaeval Culture. Oxford: Clarendon, 1929, pp. 124-147. (Reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958.)
Kantorowicz, Ernst. Frederick the Second, 1194-1250, trans. E. O. Lorimer. London: Constable; New York: Smith, 1931. (Reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957. See especially pp. 293-307, 663-667.)
Martin, Janet. "Classicism and Style in Latin Literature." In Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable, and Carol D. Lanham. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 537-568.
Meredith, Jill. "The Arch at Capua: The Strategic Use of Spolia and References to the Antique." In Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen, ed. William Tronzo. Studies in the History of Art, 44. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1994, pp. 108-126.
Oldoni, Massimo. "Pier della Vigna e Federico." In Federico II e le nuove culture: Atti del XXXI Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 9-12 ottobre 1994. Atti dei Convegni del Centro Italiano di Studi sul Basso Medioevo-Accademia Tudertina e del Centro di Studi suila Spiritualità Medievale, n.s., 8. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1995, pp. 347-362.
Paratore, Ettore. "Alcuni Caratteri dello stile della cancelleria federiciana." In Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Federiciani, 10-18 December, 1950: VII Centenario della morte di Federico II, Imperatore e re di Sicilia. Palermo: A. Renna, 1952, pp. 283-313.
Schaller, Hans Martin. "Zur Entstehung der sogenannten Briefsammlung des Petrus de Vinea." Deutsches Archiv für die Erforschung des Mittelalters, 12, 1956, pp. 114-159.
—. "Die Kanzlei Kaiser Friedrichs II.: Ihr Personal und Sprachstil." Archiv für Diplomatik, 3, 1957, pp. 207-286; 4, 1958, pp. 264-327.
—. "L'epistolario di Pier delle Vigne." In Politica e cultura nell'Italia di Federico II, ed. Sergio Gensini. Collana di Studi e Ricerche, Centro di Studi sulla Civiltà del Tardo Medioevo, San Miniato, 1. Pisa: Pacini, 1986, pp. 95-111.
—. "Della Vigna, Pietro." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 37. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989, pp. 776-784.
—. Stauferzeit: Ausgewählte Aufsätze. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, 38. Hannover: Hahn, 1993. (See especially pp. 197-223, 225-270, 463-478.)
Shepard, Laurie. Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics in the Early Thirteenth Century. New York: Garland, 1999.
Stephany, William A. "Pier della Vigna's Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The Eulogy of Frederick II and Inferno 13." Traditio, 38, 1982, pp. 193-212.
Wieruszowski, Helene. Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy. Storia e Letteratura, 121. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971. (See especially pp. 432-435, 605-610.)
See Tedaldi, Pieraccio
In the course of the twelfth century, as aristocrats in Latium became more conscious of lineage and family names became more common, a Roman family began to be called Pierleoni, after its most powerful representative, Peter of Leo (Petrus Leonis, d. 1128). The family had existed for at least a century before Peter of Leo's time; its earliest recorded member was the Jewish merchant (laudabilis negotiator) Baruch, who translated his name as Benedict when he converted to Christianity c. 1040 (he will be referred to here as Baruch-Benedict). The power of the Pierleoni in Rome peaked between 1060 and 1140, but the family received prestigious papal appointments as late as the Quattrocento.
Baruch-Benedict married a Roman aristocrat, thanks to the status his riches gave him. The wealth of the Pierleoni was always proverbial, though they were not major landowners like the "old" Roman families. Trade and presumably money-lending (including lending to the popes) created the family fortune. Because of their traditional association with the papacy, the Pierleoni expanded their fortune through lucrative posts and donations from grateful popes. The Pierleoni were also firm allies of the Norman kings of Sicily, from the days of Pope Gregory VII (d. 1085); Roger II paid lavish sums to the family in exchange for a military alliance, further augmenting its wealth.
Baruch-Benedict inaugurated the Pierleoni policy of close cooperation with the papacy, specifically the reform-minded papacy of Leo IX and Leo's successors. Owing to their association with what emerged as the winning party in the Lateran, the Pierleoni rose to preeminence among Roman families. Alongside the Frangipane, with whom they shared the honors and favors bestowed by the reformed popes (some of whom, like Gregory VI, were possibly Pierleoni themselves), the Pierleoni represented the "new" aristocracy of Rome, which replaced the "old" feudal families (the Crescentii, the Tusculani) as the style of papal government changed. The "new" families did not control the popes or dictate their conduct; rather, they adopted Gregorian ideology and loyally executed the will of the reform-minded popes.
Money and military assistance from the Pierleoni enabled several popes to rule Rome despite local hostility. The original Pierleoni strongholds were in Trastevere, the Jewish and commercial neighborhood which remained marginal in Roman history until after 1000. In the second half of the eleventh century, the Pierleoni extended their control over the Tiber island onto the left bank of the river, where they held the theater of Marcellus (and the nearby church of Saint Nicholas). Having secured this crucial southern crossing of the Tiber in Rome, the Pierleoni wielded great influence in the city. Popes who were denied access to Saint Peter's could reach the basilica by crossing the Tiber at the island and proceeding through Trastevere to the "Leonine city" under the protection of the Pierleoni. By the later eleventh century, the family also controlled Castel Sant'Angelo. All popes until Callistus II (d. 1124) relied on this web of castles cast throughout Rome.
The downfall of the Pierleoni began with the death (in November 1128) of Peter of Leo. He had guided the house successfully for half a century, and he died "peerless" for wealth and progeny (as his epitaph in the cloister of Saint Paul's Outside the Walls declares). His children became involved in a debilitating struggle with the Frangipane family, who had imposed their own candidate as pope in late 1124 and had thus offended the Pierleoni. Seeking to recover prestige and influence with the next pontificate, the Pierleoni had one of their own family—a respected, upstanding cardinal—elected as Anacletus II in February 1130, just as the Frangipane elevated another pope, Innocent II. The Pierleoni seem to have stood for the die-hard Gregorian reformers' party, whereas Innocent II received support from northern Europe and the new monastic orders of the period.
This Anacletan schism of 1130-1138 proved the Pierleoni capable of dominating Rome in the face of the enmity of all Europe, but it ended with the victory of Innocent II and his supporters. The antipope Anacletus, eloquently vilified by the best writers of his day, was the last Pierleoni to have great authority in Rome. Thereafter, the Pierleoni rarely played significant roles in Roman affairs. They remained aloof during the Roman revolt of 1143-1155; and they were soon eclipsed by another generation of "new" lineages (the Orsini, the Savelli).
Like most aristocratic Roman families of medieval origin, the Pierleoni claimed to have origins in antiquity (the Anicii were said to be relatives). Renaissance genealogists also invented a relationship with the Hapsburgs.
See also Anacletus II, Antipope; Frangipane Family; Gregory VI, Pope; Gregory VII, Pope; Papacy; Roger II; Rome
PAOLO SQUATRITI
Anacletus II. Epistulae. In Patrologta Latina, 179, ed. J. Migne. Paris, 1855, cols. 689-732.
Annates Romani 1044-1187, ed. G. Pertz. Monuments Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 5. Hannover: Hahn, 1844, pp. 464-480. (Also in Liber pontificalis, 3.)
Arnulf of Séez. Tractatus de Schismate Orto Post Honorii Pupae Decessum. In Patrologia Latina, 201. ed. J. Migne. Paris, 1855, cols. 173-194.
Carte del monastero dei santi Cosma e Damiano in Mica aurea, Vol. 56, ed. Pietro Fedele. Rome: Società Romana di Storia Patria, 1981, pp. 152-153. (With references to Baruch's occupation.)
Chronicon Mauriniacense, ed. G. Waitz. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 26. Hannover: Hahn, 1882, pp. 38-45. (For the Anacletan schism.)
Innocent II. Epistulae. In Patrologia Latina, 179, ed. J. Migne. Paris, 1855, cols. 53-680.
Kefir, P., ed. "Diploma purpureo di Re Ruggero II per la casa Pierleoni." Archivio delta Real Società Romana di Storia Patria, 24, 1901, pp. 258-259.
Le Liber pontificalis, Vol. 2, ed. Louis Duchesne. Paris: E. Thorin, 1892. (See also important additions in Vol. 3, Paris: E. de Boccard, 1957.)
Udalrici Babenbergensis Codex. In Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, Vol. 5, Monumenta bambergensis, ed. Philipp Jaffé. Berlin: Weidmann, 1869, pp. 17-469.
Brentano, Robert. Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
Brezzi, Paolo. Roma e l'impero medioevale, 774-1252. Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1947, parts 3-5.
Carocci, Sandro. Baroni di Roma: Dominazioni signorili e lignaggi aristocratici nel Duecento e nel primo Trecento. Rome: École Française de Rome, Istituco Palazzo Borromini, 1993.
Fedele, Pietro. "Le famiglie di Anacleto II e Gelasio II." Archivio della Real Società Romana di Storia Patria, 27, 1904, pp. 399-440.
—. "Pierleoni e Frangipane nella storia medioevale di Roma." Roma, 15, 1938, pp. 1-12.
Gregorovius, Ferdinand. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Vol. 4, part 2; Vol. 5, part 1, trans. Annie Hamilton. London: G. Bell, 1896. (See Book 8, chs. 2-4, 6; Book 9, ch. 1.)
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome, Portrait of a City. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Palumbo, P. Lo scisma del MCXXX. Rome, 1942, pp. 141-179. (With Anacletus's register.)
Robinson, I. S. The Papacy 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, chs. 1-2.
Schimmelpfennig, Bernhard. The Papacy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, ch. 7.
Servatius, Carlo. Paschalis II. (1099-1118): Studien zu seiner Person und seiner Politik. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1979.
Stroll, Mary. The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130. Leiden: Brill, 1987.
Toubert, Pierre. Les structures du Latium médiéval: Le Latiurn meridional et la Sabine du IXe siècle à la fin da XIIe siècle. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1973.
Waagenaar, Sam. The Pope's Jews. London: Alcove, 1974.
White, H. "Pontius of Cluny, the Curia Romana, and the End of Gregorianism in Rome." Church History, 27, 1958, pp. 195-219.
Zema, D. "The Houses of Tuscany and of Pierleone in the Crisis of Rome in the Eleventh Century." Traditio, 2, 1944, pp. 155-175.
Piero da Firenze (Maestro Piero, first half of the fourteenth century), despite the surname conventionally given to him, does not seem to have come from Florence; rather, he may be identical with a Magister Petrus Andreutii who originated in Assisi and is documented in 1335 in Perugia as a singing teacher hired by its commune. Although Piero was a major figure in the first generation of Trecento musicians of the Italian an nova, we know almost nothing of his life. However, it is clear that he died just after 1350; and from allusions in his works, it is understood that he was present at the Visconti court of Milan and the Delia Scala court of Verona during the 1340s and was apparently in contact (if not also in friendly competition) with such contemporary masters as Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna. He must have been their senior, though, and a surviving document of his time seems to illustrate him as an old man with a white beard and a monastic tonsure.
Presumably because Piero was not from Florence, his music was not included in the great Squarcialupi Codex. It survives scantily in contemporary manuscripts and consists of only eight secular Italian works: six madrigals, mostly for two voices; and two cacce, for three voices, to which might be added two more cacce of doubtful attribution. His two authenticated cacce—Con brachi assai and Con dolce brama—are delicious exploitations of double entendres, based respectively on evocations of hunting and sailing. Piero's few extant works are enough to indicate his importance as a trailblazer. He seems to have been particularly partial to canonic writing, and his madrigals and cacce are the earliest examples of these forms in which canonic part-writing is developed. In that sense, he was the pioneer in establishing the main musical point of the caccia: its imitative "chasing" of voice parts. It is clear that these techniques strongly influenced Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Cascia, and that they served to create a stylistic momentum which would be carried forward through the continuing Italian Trecento tradition.
See also Ars Nova; Giovanni da Cascia; Jacopo da Bologna; Squarcialupi Codex
JOHN w. BARKER
Corsi, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1970.
Fischer, Kurt von. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Bern: P. Haupt, 1956.
Königsglow, Annamarie. Die italienischen Madrigalisten des Trecento. Würzburg: Triltsch, 1940.
Li Gotti, Ettore. La poesia musicale italiana del secolo XIV. Palermo: Palumbo, 1944.
Marrocco, William Thomas, ed. Italian Secular Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 6 and 7. Monaco: Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 1967 and 1972.
Martinez-Göllner, Marie Louise. Die Musik des frühen Trecento. Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1963.
Pirrotta, Nino. "Per l'origine e la storia della caccia e del madrigale trecentesco." Rivista Musicale Italiana, 48, 1946, pp. 305-323; 49, 1947, pp. 121-142.
—, ed. The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, Vol. 2. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 8(2). Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1960.
—. "Piero e l'impressionismo musicale del secolo XIV." In L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento; Primo convegno internazionale 23—26 luglio 1959, ed. Bianca Becherini. Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, 1962, pp. 57-74.
Reese, Gustav. Music in the Middle Ages. New York: Norton, 1940.
Wolf, Johannes. "Florenz in der Musikgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts." Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3, 1901-1902, pp. 599-646.
Pietro Abano (Pietro d'Abano, d. 1316) was die most important medical teacher in early fourteenth-century Padua. He was a Lombard by birth, but little is known of his life. In spite of his fame, and the fame he brought his university, he seems never to have accumulated the wealth of such successful teachers and practitioners as Taddeo Alderotti. Pietro's most famous book, Conciliator of the Differences of the Philosophers and Especially the Physicians, remained in use in universities well into the early modern period.
Pietro received his medical training at the University of Paris, where he would have been indoctrinated into the highest levels of scholarly debate surrounding the natural philosophy of Aristotle and Aristotle's interpreters. He returned to Italy from Paris c. 1306 to teach medicine, philosophy, and astrology at Padua. The Conciliator, which was completed sometime after 1310, shows his Parisian training. The book presents more than 200 disputed questions on the subject of medical philosophy and attempts to reconcile conflicts between the physiological teachings of Aristotle and the medical teachings of Galen. Pietro apparently was deeply impressed by similar attempts by Averroës and Avicenna, who adopted the Neoplatonic scheme of the ultimate reconciliation of conflicting philosophical viewpoints.
Pietro also distinguished himself as one of the early translators of Galen's works from the original Greek into Latin. Much of his writing examines the importance of medical astrology. This interest in astrology, as well as his devotion to Averroist teaching, marred his reputation in some circles.
See also Averroës and Averroism; Universities
FAYE MARIE GETZ
Olivieri, Luigi. Pietro d'Abano e il pensiero neolatino: Filosofia, scienza, e ricerca dell'Aristotele greco tra i secoli XIII e XIV. Padua: Antenore, 1988.
Paschetto, Eugenia. Pietro d'Abano, medico e filosofo. Florence: Vallecchi, 1984.
Siraisi, Nancy G. Arts and Sciences at Padua. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973.
—. Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Pietro Alfonsi (Petrus Alfonsi, twelfth century) was a learned Andalusian Jew, originally named Moses, who converted to Christianity. He was baptized in Huesca, in the kingdom of Aragon, on the feast day of Saint Peter in 1106 with Alfonso I serving as his godfather—hence his new name, Pietro Alfonsi.
Little is known of Alfonsi's life. He may have served in the Aragonese court before his baptism. He had an Arabic education in letters, philosophy, and science, and he demonstrates in his writings a fundamental knowledge of the Talmud and the Bible. Between 1106 and 1116, Alfonsi emigrated to England, where he taught astronomy and served Henry I, perhaps as his physician. During that period, he produced a rather inaccurate Latin translation of Arabic astronomical tables. Through his residence abroad and writings, he passed on an intimate knowledge of Arabic culture and learning to Europeans.
Around 1108 or 1110, Alfonsi composed the Dialogi contra Iudaeosy the most important anti-Jewish polemic of the Middle Ages. His widely circulated Disciplina clericalis (of uncertain date) had an important influence on the development of the European narrative tale; echoes are apparent in Petrarch and Boccaccio.
The remarkable Disciplina fused scatological stories with didactic form and context. Its generic models were Oriental books of wisdom and the European "mirror of princes." Alfonsi recounts thirty-four aphoristic stories in the form of short teacher pupil or father-son interchanges intended as a manual of moral education for the cleric. He used a complex tradition of non-Christian sources, drawn, in part, from philosophy and including Arabic proverbs, animal fables, verses, and exempla, to illustrate universal truths. The Disciplina is general enough to avoid doctrinal pronouncements: it could as easily have been written by a Muslim or Jew as by a Christian. The more scandalous stories serve to entertain but do not detract from the book's didactic purpose. Major themes include moderation; good counsel; the attributes of kings; and injunctions against alcohol, women's wiles, and the vanity of earthly things. Some stories debunk superstitions and belief in magic.
The text's extensive tradition of seventy-six extant manuscripts demonstrates its popularity and its appeal to medieval readers in different cultural contexts. There were numerous translations into the vernacular, including Italian. Thirteenth-and fourteenth-century mendicants mined the Disciplina for material to use in sermons, adding Christian morals to the stories. Compilers of later exempla collections often included Alfonsi's tales, verbatim or modified. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century redactions diminished the didacticism, emphasizing instead the entertaining aspects of the narratives.
In Italy, the thirteenth-century compiler of Il novellino included Alfonsi's Fables 6 and 12a. Disciplina is the best-known Arabic source for Boccaccio's Decameron, a strain of influence that awaits thorough study. Boccaccio could have learned these tales from the original Latin, from Italian or French translations, or possibly from an exempla collection. He transformed them into modern fiction; he enriched Fable 14 with distinctive personalities for the characters and a more sympathetic portrayal of a wife (Decameron, 7.4). Menocal (1987, 140) has suggested a possible pattern in the Decameron: the ninth story of each day relates to the Arabic world.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Novella; Novellino, II
GLORIA ALLAIRE
Menocal, María Rosa. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.
Petrus Alfonsi. Disciplina clericalis I: Lateinischer Text, ed. Alfons Hilka and Werner Söderhjelm. Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, 38(4). Helsinki: Drukerei der Finnischen Litteraturgesellschaft, 1911.
—. The Scholar's Guide: A Translation of the Twelfth-Century Disciplina Clericalis of Pedro Alfonso, trans. Joseph Ramon Jones and John Esten Keller. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1969.
Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993.
The didactic poet Pietro da Barsegapé (fl. second half of the thirteenth century) was from Lombardy. The name Barsegape derives from de Basilica Petri, now Bescapé, a suburb of Milan. Barsegapé wrote a long religious poem referred to in the text as sermón or dito, digio (the last to be pronounced as Spanish dicho). Sermone is its modern title; its German editor, Keller (1896), called it a Reimpredigt. The work has been preserved only in a richly illuminated manuscript from the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth (iMilan, Brera, or Braidense Library, AD XIII 48) and consists of no fewer than 2,440 lines of different meters—mostly alexandrines and approximate novenaries (the Old Italian rendering of Provençal octosyllables), which are rhymed (occasionally only assonated) in pairs.
In the colophon of the last lines (2431-2440), where Barsegapé declares his name and the date when he finished his poem (1 June 1274), he calls himself a fantón ("soldier"), thus lending support to scholars inclined to identify him with the Milanese chieftain to whom (i.e., nobili et probo vivo domino Petro de Bezacape) Iacopino Randone, at that time the podestà of Florence, addressed a Latin letter on military affairs (31 March 1260).
The thematic range of the Sermone stretches from the creation of Adam to the resurrection of Christ, with the customary view to doomsday as a supplement. Barsegapé faithfully follows the narrative of Genesis and the Gospels, opening occasional excursuses—predicatory in tone but not totally deprived of colorful remarks—on the corruption of human society and the greediness of his fellow men. A difficult question is raised by several passages that are closely echoed in the works of earlier or contemporary poets of the same region, as in Pateg's Splanamento and especially in Uguccione's Libro, whose verses 2180-2201 are also to be read in Barsegapé's Sermone (verses 1713-1734). Plagiarism on the part of the author or contaminatio on the part of the scribe (particularly in the latter case) may be taken into account, without excluding the possibility of a common vernacular source not available to us.
Barsegapé rarely sounds original or dramatic; hence Contini chose not to include him in the Lombard section of his paradigmatic anthology (Poeti del Duecento, 1960, Vol. 1). Nevertheless, because of the linguistic interest aroused by such a long and detailed text in Old Lombard, and because it is the work of a layman rather than a cleric or a grammarian, Barsegapé's Sermone remains a notable document of the literary culture of his time.
See also Bonvesin da la Riva; Gerardo Pateg; Giacomino da Verona; Uguccione da Lodi
RUGGERO STEFANINI
De Sanctis, Francesco, and Gerolamo Lazzeri, eds. Storia della letteratura italiana dai primi secoli agli albori del trecento. Milan: Hoepli, 1950, pp. 130-132 and 192-210.
Dionisotti, Carlo, and Cecil Grayson. Early Italian Texts, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965, pp. 162-166. (Originally published 1949.)
Keller, Emil. Die Sprache der Reimpredigt des Pietro de Barsegape. Frauenfeld: Huber, 1896. (First critical edition; see also 2nd ed., 1935.)
Ragni. E. "Barsegapé, Pietro da." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 6. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1964, pp. 537-539.
Rossi, Aldo. "Poesia didattica e poesia popolare del Nord." In Storia della letteratura italiana, Vol. 1, Le origini e il Duecento, ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno. Milan: Garzanti, 1965, pp. 461-465.
Salvioni, Carlo. "Il sermone di Pietro da Barsegapé." Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 15, 1891, pp. 429-488. (Diplomatic edition.)
Pietro dei Faitinelli (c. 1310 or 1320-1349) was born into a noble Guelf family of Lucca. He married Becchina di Coluccio della Volpe in 1313, and in 1314 he went into exile as a result of political events. After seventeen years of exile he returned to Lucca, where he worked as a notary until his death.
Pietro wrote seventeen sonnets and one canzone on political, moral, and comic themes during the first quarter of the fourteenth century. His nine political sonnets are among the most mordant and powerful of his time. Of particular note are those in which he castigates the Guelf army for lacking bravery and conviction on the battlefield: Poi rotti sète a scoglio presso a riva, Già per minacce guerra non se vénze, and Voi gite molto arditi a far la mostra. Some of his works are of interest for their metrical innovations: a political tenzone (Muggbiando va il leon per la foresta and Amico, guarda non sia mal di testa) in which the proposal sonnet, sixteen lines in length, ends with a rhymed couplet and the response per le rime ends with a second coda; and a "triple sonnet" of thirty lines (Io non vo' dir ch'i' non viva turbato).
See also Italian Poetry: Comic; Tenzone
JOAN H. LEVIN
Marti, Mario. Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante. Milan: Rizzoli, 1956, pp. 415-440.
Massèra, Aldo Francesco. Sonetti burleschi e realistici dei primi due secoli. Bari: Laterza, 1920. (See also rev. ed., ed. Luigi Russo, 1940, Vol. 1, pp. 183-193.)
Sapegno, Natalino. Poeti minori del Trecento. Milan: Ricciardi, 1952, pp. 307-316.
Tusiani, Joseph, trans. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry. New York: Baroque, 1974, pp. 218-219.
Vitale, Maurizio. Rimatori comico-realistici. Turin: UTET, 1956, pp. 645-681. (Reprint, 1976.)
Kleinhenz, Christopher. The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220-1321). Lecce: Mildla, 1986, pp. 197-199.
Marti, Mario. "Pietro dei Faitinelli e le rime politiche dei poeti giocosi." In Cultura e stile nei poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1953, pp. 153-169.
Petrocchi, Giorgio. "I poeti realisti." In Storia della letteratura italiana, Vol. 1, Le origini e il Duecento. Milan: Garzanti, 1965, pp. 575-607. (Reprint, 1979.)
See Celestine V, Pope
The city of Pisa was one of Italy's most important economic, religious, and artistic centers in the Middle Ages. Situated on the Tyrrhenian coast, Pisa was protected by the sea, about 6 miles (about 10 kilometers) from the city's western edge. To the south were the Livorno hills, to the north the Alpi Apuane, and to the northeast the Monti Pisani, Together with the forests that immediately surrounded the city and its contado, these mountain ranges insulated Pisa from its adversarial neighbors, especially Lucca. On its eastern side, however, Pisa was more exposed. The Arno connected it to the Valdarno and to the communes further inland. Florence lay only 50 miles (80 kilometers) across this valley, leaving Pisa open to unwanted aggression. Despite this vulnerability, the sea and forests guarded Pisa well. They also offered the commune's economy unbounded resources throughout the Middle Ages.
We know relatively little of ancient and early medieval Pisa. The city was founded by the Romans as an outpost in the imperial period. As a major port, Pisa took in tribute from Rome's subject territories and sent it on to the capital. The city's connection to Rome was further strengthened by two roads: the Via Aurelia, built c. 241 B.C., linked Pisa to Rome; and the Via Emilia, built later, in 109 B.C., as an extension of Via Aurelia, wound its way through Liguria and even farther north. Situated on Rome's principal route to Gaul, Pisa was thus a significant city during the Roman period, as its archaeological remains indicate. Traces of a Roman bath and an amphitheater, a broad collection of sarcophagi, and the rudiments of a road system, all found north of the Arno, suggest that the colony there was well developed and densely settled.
How long the Romans stayed is uncertain. But when the Lombards arrived in Italy in A.D. 568, and afterward made Pavia their capital, Pisa declined in importance. The Lombards came to and dominated Pisa, inhabiting roughly the same area covered by their predecessors. Like the Romans, however, they left little evidence of the duration of their stay. By the ninth century Pisa was free from Lombard rule and accommodated a Christian population. In 814, a baptismal church, a pieve, could be found at some distance from the former Roman city. Also in the early ninth century, the Pisans began to form a fleet for defense and for maritime conquests. This strategy paid off: their first naval success against the Saracens in 823 gave the Pisans control of the African coast. Thus the early Middle Ages saw Pisa emerge as a Christian center, prepared to flex its muscle in order to expand its territory and bring in much-coveted booty. Yet in spite of these early advances, Pisa and its environs remained relatively uncultivated until c. 1000.
In antiquity and in the early Middle Ages, Pisa had been important for its proximity to the sea, but beginning in the eleventh century, it soared as an economic, commercial, and political power. Easy access to the Mediterranean gave Pisan merchants and military forces a lead in their enterprises in the Tyrrhenian Sea and in the east, stimulating precocious and intense economic growth that lasted until the thirteenth century. This growth gave Pisa primacy in Tuscany and prominence among other port cities on the peninsula. Only Genoa and Venice attempted, and eventually managed, to displace Pisa from this position in the later Middle Ages. In addition, natural resources from the Pisan hinterland furnished its merchants and artists with a variety of agricultural products and raw materials, and thereby helped to promote commercial and creative activities during the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. This period of economic prosperity was also important for Pisa's political and ecclesiastical history. The commune gained autonomy from imperial domination, and the church and diocese grew in both size and prestige. All together, these aspects of the city's institutional and economic expansion changed the shape and appearance of the city, as its infrastructure and artistic traditions testify. In the mid-thirteenth century, however, various factors caused all this growth to slow. Changes in the prevailing political and social order, seen most markedly in the rise of the popolo, transformed the city. One result of this transformation was a series of struggles between social and familial groups, which in turn opened the commune and church to meddling outsiders. The contest between the Guelfs and Ghibellines also divided the city. Moreover, the very sources of Pisa's economic success turned out to be at least a partial source of its demise. Challenged by other seafaring communes, as well as by those further inland, Pisa found itself constantly under attack in these later years. War and natural disasters also continually depleted Pisa of its human resources. By the end of the fourteenth century, Pisa had entered a long and irreversible economic and political decline.
Duomo, Pisa. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Pisa's political institutions emerge clearly from the sources beginning in the eleventh century. The government first took the form of a consulate c. 1085, the earliest of any Italian city. The consulate consisted of twelve members of the city's most successful maritime families, and it ruled the city throughout the twelfth century. It is mentioned for the last time in 1217. How the consuls were appointed remains unclear, but we do know that their election was subject to the acclamation of a general assembly of citizens. Once formed, the consulate relied on various subgroups to assist it in administering the commune. An elected group of senators—who were, however, not firmly organized into a senate until the late twelfth century—acted with the consuls to steer the commune through war and to decide on methods of taxation. As early as 1164, these senators worked with six representatives from each of the city's newly named quartieri (jurisdictional divisions), totaling twenty-four in all, to form an advisory council to the consuls. To be elected to one of these positions, a citizen had to belong to one of the major guilds in the city. Viscomites, acting as judges, and gastaldi, who for some time headed the city courts, also filled important roles in the consular government. Together, they presided over the city's legal affairs, which were dealt with directly by imperial judges and a court system dominated by the curia legis and curia usus, both of which addressed civil cases.
The responsibilities of the consuls and their aides fluctuated with the commune's diplomatic and economic needs. In almost all matters, and especially in directing war, the consuls had to follow the advice of the senators and their council. The council thus checked the decisions made by the consuls, and it did so by vote. In fact, to establish any rules, whether or not these rules were of immediate concern to the consulate, the council had to have the assent of a quorum. Ad hoc commissions were also formed in times of crisis to buttress the support already provided by the viscomites and the senators. It appears that the coordination among these groups was intended to maintain some balance of power within the city; their presence did not, however, obviate the need for a podestà (podesta, or city magistrate). Pisa's first podestà came c. 1190, and podestas continued to hold an important position within Pisan politics until the mid-thirteenth century, that is, for as long as the consulate was in power.
This gradual crystallization of Pisa's internal government in the eleventh and twelfth centuries occurred as the city achieved autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire, which had long exerted its hold over the commune. In 1081, just four years before we see the consulate acting as an independent power, Pisa received the first of three charters liberating it from imperial power. At this time, Emperor Henry IV granted the commune political freedom by relinquishing his jurisdiction over the city and by promising to name no new marquis in Tuscany without the Pisans' consent. The second charter, issued in 1132 by Emperor Lothair II, confirmed the Pisans' possession of lands in the contado (countryside). Thirty years later, Frederick I Barbarossa delimited the territories that the commune controlled, exempted the commune from imperial taxation, and confirmed its right to self-government. Such privileges not only ensured Pisa's political autonomy but also enabled economic growth—for with these, the commune could exact tribute from its suburban territories and could impose both direct and indirect taxes on them as it saw fit.
In the eleventh century, however, it was neither the consuls nor their viscomites but the archbishop who enjoyed the fullest fiscal rights. Frederick I granted financial privileges to the opera del duomo, which in turn made numerous loans to the commune for public works. These privileges put the archbishop at the center of Pisan political life. As the city expanded in size, absorbing feudatories from the contado, consular and archiepiscopal interests came together. These new possessions not only became part of the commune but also belonged to the Pisan diocese, so that inhabitants of newly acquired lands had to swear fidelity to both the consuls and the archbishop. Surprisingly, these overlapping interests resulted in relatively little conflict. The archbishop and consuls combined their strength against external forces and together acquired a mass of new territories to the northeast and to the south of Pisa. By the twelfth century, though, the archbishop virtually disappeared from these acts of submission, indicating that the lines between commune and diocese had become much more distinct.
Foreign relations naturally constituted another critical part of early Pisan political history. In the same years that the commune acquired greater territory, political freedoms, and economic rights, Pisa established itself as a sea power. Its desire to control Sardinia and Corsica, along with other territories, brought the commune into conflict with Muslim and Italian forces throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1063, for example, the Pisans cooperated with Norman forces to send a fleet to western Sicily in order to defeat the Muslims in a raid at Palermo. The raid was a success for the Italian forces, and in Pisa the victory was celebrated with the foundation of the cathedral. However, the momentum of this victory was soon countered by local contests with the Genoese over coastal territories. The Pisans and Genoese temporarily overcame their rivalry to make a truce in the 1080s and to join other Italian forces to attack the Muslims in northern Africa. Again, the Pisans and their allies won this battle and divided the territories among themselves. Such attacks on the Muslims were crucial to the Pisans' expansion.
Baptistery, Pisa. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Interest in the east continued throughout the twelfth century, but not without consequences at home. The absence of so many Pisans in Tuscany left the commune open to attack by their neighbors. Genoa frequently took advantage of the Pisans' dispersal by instigating maritime disputes over trade routes and island territories. Another rival, Lucca, also began a series of attacks on Pisa at the end of the eleventh century, striking most forcefully in 1141. The main items of contention between these neighboring communes were control of the Via Francigena (the coastal road connecting France and Rome) and the port of Viareggio. Though tension abated occasionally, Pisa engaged in war with both Genoa and Lucca intermittently throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Intracommunal conflict was also generated by the growing conflict between the papacy and the empire. By the mid-twelfth century, Pisa had come to depend on the German emperor's military assistance, and therefore its most vocal inhabitants proclaimed their adherence to the Ghibelline party. This loyalty set Pisa in opposition to nearby Guelf communes, Lucca and Florence foremost among them, involving the Pisans in numerous local wars.
Despite this strife, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were, in general, a time of rapid political and territorial growth for Pisa. This growth, moreover, facilitated a broadening of Pisa's commercial enterprises, for its maritime conquests often led to domination of lucrative trade routes. Throughout the eleventh century and the early twelfth century, Pisans used their military victories to establish colonies in Spain, southern France, Sardinia, and northern Africa. Traders followed suit. By 1177, for instance, the Pisans had a center at Montpellier in France. In addition, the crusades pulled the Pisans eastward, introducing them to trading networks in the Holy Land and along the coasts of Syria, Turkey, and Greece. The Pisans' presence in Egypt came to be especially strong as they set up warehouses in Alexandria and Cairo. They brought to these trading ventures a variety of natural resources, such as timber, iron, leather, wool, and marble; and in return they imported spices, silks, and raw materials. By the mid-twelfth century, then, Pisa had established itself as a major sea power, and through military conquests and commercial exchange had made its presence known throughout the Mediterranean.
During the next century, however, the Pisans shifted the focus of their attention and their resources, and as a result this rapid pace of growth could not be sustained. Indeed, Pisan politics and economic activity underwent a significant shift during the thirteenth century. Whereas the early commune followed an expansionist policy and prospered because of it, the later commune had diplomatic and commercial interests closer to home and concentrated on restructuring the government.
Santa Maria della Spina, Pisa. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
In the thirteenth century, the most significant political development was the rise of the popolo. This transformed Pisan social life as well as its political and economic institutions. The popolo was a collectivity of geographically based armed companies, much of its membership consisting of Pisa's mercantile families and immigrants from other cities and the countryside. Though members of the popolo had asserted themselves in government for some time, it was not until 1254 that they successfully established themselves as a political entity. In that year, they took hold of the signoria, elected a captain of the people, and created a governing board called the anziani. In 1259, they drafted the Breve pisani popoli as their constitution. Although the power of the popolo was challenged repeatedly by former consuls, it stabilized and maintained its rule until the mid-fourteenth century, when a series of signorial governments took over. One sign of the dominance of the popolo was its financial domination of archiepiscopal jurisdictions and the cathedral chapter. Those jurisdictions had formerly been controlled by Pisa's aristocracy, but by 1276 they were managed by the popolo. New guilds were also granted political recognition. In the early 1200s, Pisa had two major guilds (ordines) and four minor guilds (artes); by the close of the century, the number of major guilds had risen to six. Now headed by guild representatives, anziani, and a captain, Pisan government in the late thirteenth century looked very different from its earlier consular counterpart.
The administration of this government relied on an expanded bureaucracy and on a fresh set of law codes. Officials depended on the codes that had been redacted during the consular government in the 1190s but added to them a series of documents drafted in the mid-thirteenth century, including their own constitution. An entirely new set of laws was then compiled in 1287 by the despots Nino Visconti and Ugolino della Gherardesca. The statutes they produced amounted to an up-to-date and comprehensive set of laws that regulated all aspects of life within the commune, from prostitution to public works to rules about citizenship.
Citizenship was indeed among the most important issues included in the code. Requirements for citizenship included paying taxes and making loans to the commune based on a yearly citywide assessment. In addition to financial obligations, there was a residence requirement, although this changed throughout the medieval era. The period of residence was normally twenty-five years but was later reduced to ten, and by 1319 it had fallen to merely three years. Furthermore, during any year one needed to stay in the city for only nine months, as the summer months were considered too humid to require anyone to remain. Once accepted, a citizen enjoyed numerous benefits. Perhaps most significant, one could hold political office; and given the number of civic positions that existed in this period, the chances of obtaining such an office were great. As early as 1162, the "oath of the consuls" specified more than ninety official positions in the commune, ranging from measurers and assayers of currency to chamberlains and custodians of streets and bridges. These kinds of civic employment multiplied as the municipal government grew more complex in the thirteenth century. To be sure, some public offices were more coveted than others. The highest-ranking positions in government, especially those in the anziani, were the most desirable. Members of Pisa's leading families from both feudal and mercantile traditions, such as the Lanfranchi, Upezzinghi, Roncioni, Visconti, and Rau, traditionally held these posts. The same families also pushed their members into prestigious positions in the church. In spite of this informal monopoly on public positions, members of lesser families could also contribute to the public life of the commune by assuming one of the numerous civic roles outlined in the communal laws.
Moreover, the security of many of Pisa's prominent families was often put at risk by their involvement in the ongoing struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines. Though Pisa was predominantly Ghibelline, its population was split rather evenly over this issue, so that when the Tuscan Guelfs were defeated at the battle of Montaperti in 1260, half of Pisa was invigorated and the other half deflated. Likewise, when Charles of Anjou descended into Italy in 1266 and stabilized the Guelf position in Tuscany, reactions within the city were mixed. And although representatives of both parties inhabited the city, the Ghibellines were nonetheless the most successful in asserting their interests, which kept the commune at odds with the pope. Pisa was put under interdict several times throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In 1241, for example, Gregory IX excommunicated the Pisans for attacking a team of papal legates en route to a meeting with the emperor. That censure was lifted in 1257, but the Pisans again drew the ire of the papacy by inviting Frederick II's grandson, Conradin, to Italy just as Charles of Anjou was coming there. As a consequence, the Pisans were again excommunicated in 1268, though they were pardoned in 1273.
Camposanto, Pisa. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
The effects of this cycle of censure were exacerbated by protracted personal struggles among Pisa's parties and its consorterie (family groups). Dissension and factional violence disrupted communal life continually in the late thirteenth century, ultimately splintering the popular regime and leaving the city vulnerable to intervention by despots. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, signorial governments began to assume control of the city, though usually only for a brief period. Examples of short-lived signorie are those of Nino Visconti and Ugolino della Gherardesca (1287-1288), Guy of Montefeltro (1289-1292), and Uguccione della Faggiuola (1314-1316). The year 1316 marked the onset of stronger, longer-lasting signorie, as the Donoratico family assumed power and dominated Pisan political life until 1347. Other such governments continued to rule the city, and indeed the signoria was the common form of political rule from 1365 to 1402. Pisa lost its independence to Florence in 1406.
In the thirteenth century, we also see a diminution of Pisan sea power. As the popular regime came to political power and stabilized in the mid-thirteenth century, the scope of Pisa's trading narrowed. Pisans were slowly squeezed out of important eastern centers by their stronger rivals, Genoa and Venice, so that by the late thirteenth century the seat of Pisan commercial exchange was directed almost exclusively toward the west. Pisans went regularly to France and Catalonia, attending, for example, the fairs in Champagne. To add to the pressures from other communes that sought to expand their own commercial networks, military losses also forced the Pisans to retreat inland. The battle of Meloria against Genoa in 1284, a battle in which Pisa suffered a devastating defeat, was decisive in this regard. Other, later events were Pisa's loss of Corisca to the Genoese in 1299, and the Aragonese conquest of Sardinia in 1324. This is not to say that Pisa's colonies or commercial ventures at sea were shut down. Because of their proximity to Sardinia and northern Africa, Pisans continued to engage in long-lasting activities with these areas; and until the mid-fourteenth century, Pisa's presence was still felt in Sicily and in the east. But its role was of much less importance, and Pisan merchants had to look elsewhere for sources of capital.
This contraction of Pisa's trading connections over the course of the thirteenth century forced the popular commune to devise new ways of raising revenue. In the late thirteenth century, the government created new forms of taxation that were based on a rudimentary preexisting system. This earlier system was called into being whenever the city needed financial assistance—that is, essentially in times of war. Fragments of the law code from 1162 indicate that this was essentially a hearth tax. With the exception of the knightly class (whose members were seen as already contributing to the cause) and church lands, all residents were asked for donations, the amount for each household being calculated according to the number of its inhabitants. Though somewhat successful, this estimo, or assessment of wealth, had to be expanded in the late twelfth century. The commune and podestà continued to rely on citywide support of Pisa's army, but now those with the most wealth were made more responsible for the largest contributions. In spite of this change, the costs of war, urban maintenance, and a more complicated bureaucracy had by the mid-thirteenth century rendered even the expanded system of taxation inadequate. Officials therefore had to invent a more regularized means of direct and indirect taxation. Building on the earlier use of the estimo, officials came up with the libra to judge who should be subject to the heaviest tax burden. The libra taxed urban property according to its esrimated value, rather than on the basis of its size or the number of people it supported. This assessment was kept as part of permanent record, so that when the commune needed money, it tallied the amount of money needed and then taxed accordingly.
In addition to the libra, the commune also reformed its means of collecting indirect taxes. Up to this point, the commune had permitted its feudal families to oversee such transactions. The Upezzinghi and Donoratico families, for instance, collected tolls over roads and bridges. Under the popolo, however, new societies, much like modern customs houses, were established so that tariffs could be used for the commune's benefit. An attempt was also made to expropriate all tolls and tariffs in the Pisan contado, and to strip the Pisan archbishop and cathedral chapter of their jurisdictions. The church eventually reversed these measures, but the implementation of both the libra and indirect taxation greatly helped to support the costs of maintaining and protecting the commune. Both modes of taxation were kept in place throughout the fourteenth century.
The shape and structures of medieval Pisa—and indeed modern Pisa—were largely determined by the demographic, economic, and political developments that occurred in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Roman and early medieval civitas formed a rectangle that extended north of the Arno. But as the city began to prosper in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it consistently attracted waves of settlers. By 1150, for example, Pisa's inhabitants totaled between 11,000 and 15,000. These numbers could not be accommodated by the early medieval city. Pisa's population now spilled out into the contado, and especially into the area that would become the city's southern half, Kinsica. Thus in 1156 the consuls decided to enlarge the city by constructing a new wall to include Kinsica and areas to the east and west of the earlier city. When it was finally finished in the early fourteenth century, the new wall followed a path that enclosed 185 hectares (nearly 460 acres)—approximately six times the size of the early medieval city. It not only relieved overcrowding by absorbing Kinsica's population and incorporating new territory into the city but also, in so doing, amplified Pisa's tax base: by integrating this fast-growing population into the city, Pisa's consuls increased the number of taxpayers. Related to this was the consuls' decision to redefine the juridical organization of Pisa's population in 1164, shortly after the wall was begun. Previously classified by their relationship to the gates of the city, Pisa's inhabitants were now slotted into four new areas of jurisdiction, called quartieri. These quartieri—Kinsica, Foriporta, Mezzo, and Ponte—still serve as the city's organizational base.
Perhaps because of Pisa's prosperity, these new zones filled quickly, and with the new population the face of the city changed. Throughout the twelfth century and the early thirteenth, lay and ecclesiastical groups initiated a spate of building projects. Kinsica in particular saw a boom in the foundation of ecclesiastical and secular establishments, such as churches, canonries, and hospitals. These institutions responded to the needs of the increasing population and at the same time attracted further settlement. At the end of the thirteenth century, the city had about 2.5 times the population it had a century before—that is, about 35,000-40,000 people. This increase in the number of inhabitants and institutions did not occur evenly, however. Space on both sides of the Arno and along the city's older thoroughfares was by far the most popular. In fact, the congestion around these areas soon came to be considered a public hazard. In their thirteenth-century statutes, municipal officials demanded that the streets running parallel to the river's banks be kept clear at all times.
Heavy traffic through the city also necessitated the construction of additional bridges across the Arno. The city's oldest bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, originally built of wood, was rebuilt in stone in 1046 and remained the principal mode of crossing the Arno until it was destroyed in 1328. The bridge was maintained by a pontonarius, and it was covered by shops, as is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Pisa's second bridge, the Ponte Nuovo, was built by a consortium of four families in 1183. In 1262, construction on Pisa's third bridge, the Ponte della Spina, began.
As with the expansion of the city itself, the multiplication of the city's bridges reflected the demands of a growing population. Furthermore, the maintenance of these bridges and other public works required a vast number of officials. Yet during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the functioning of so many offices seems to have fragmented the administration of public works and made it less efficient. In the second half of the thirteenth century, Pisa, like many other communes, decided to join its offices of public works into one centralized bureau. This process was not completed, however, until the mid-1300s.
The history of the Pisan church and of Pisan religious life follows a pattern similar to that of the commune's political and economic institutions. In the late eleventh century and the twelfth century, as Pisan political institutions became stronger and the commune's economic base expanded, the Pisan church also rose in importance. In the thirteenth century, when the status of Pisa's government and economy changed and the stability of each was uncertain, the church weathered a series of challenges and controversies that forced it to redefine itself.
As the commune gained increasing autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire with the bestowal of imperial privileges in the late eleventh century and the twelfth, the Pisan church also gained greater power. Most important, in 1092, Pope Urban II elevated the Pisan church to an archbishopric, its archbishop, Daimbert, having won the favor of the papacy. With this distinction came an expansion of the Pisan diocese. It was given metropolitan jurisdiction over Corsica, an honor extended in the twelfth century to include Sardinia. Also in the 1090s, the role of the Pisan church within the city changed. New religious orders entered the city and came to challenge the hold that the archbishop and cathedral canons had on the pastoral care of urban dwellers. This partitioning of the cura animarum ("cure of souls") first began in 1090, when the Camaldolesi entered the city. Soon after their arrival, other newcomers followed, so that by the mid-twelfth century various centers of pastoral care had formed: the Camaldolesi were found in San Michele in Borgo, San Erediano, and San Zeno, all located on the north side of the city; the Vallambrosans at San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno in Kinsica; and the Augustinian canons at San Martino, also in Kinsica. For the cathedral and its canons, this meant a gradual diminution of their influence. Though the cathedral was reassured of its exclusive right to baptize and to administer extreme unction, its right to burial was eventually cut back and confined to its original domain, that is, the area of the early medieval civitas.
This reconfiguration of pastoral administration resulted in ongoing struggles between the new and older institutions. As a result, when more newcomers tried to insert themselves into the institutional framework of the church during the 1200s, neither the cathedral canons nor the relatively new members of the city's pastoral system welcomed them. The most important of these newcomers were the mendicant orders. The Dominicans first arrived in the city in the 1220s, with the Franciscans trailing close behind. As was common in many Italian cities, both sets of friars were met with suspicion by the Pisan archbishop and clergy. The cathedral canons in particular resisted the attempt by the Dominican order to establish its convent as a center of pastoral care, principally because the Dominicans' church was so close to the cathedral.
By contrast, later archbishops encouraged the activities of the mendicants. Archbishop Federigo Visconti (r. 1254—1277) saw the friars as allies in his larger effort to unite his people and to reform his church. He sponsored their work, helped to refurbish their churches, and urged his lay listeners to do the same, Visconti's support of the friars' activities and his sympathy toward their spirituality ensured their enduring presence in the city; and with the continued reinforcement of Visconti's successors, the friars permanently shaped the nature of Pisan spirituality. The legacy of this environment included two fourteenth-century preachers, Giordano da Pisa and Domenico Cavalca, both of whom spent time in the urban Dominican convent of Santa Caterina. At the close of the thirteenth century, then, the activities and members of the Pisan church were much more diverse than they had been in the 1100s.
As important as this diversification was, the Pisan church should not be understood solely in terms of spirituality and pastoral care. As one of Pisa's wealthiest landowners, the church continually defended, leased out, and attempted to consolidate its patrimony, which was spread throughout the city and province. One archbishop, Ruggieri Ubaldini (r. 1279-1295) made the church's holdings his special concern. The church was also deeply involved in the politics of the day, and in particular acted as an intermediary between the notoriously Ghibelline commune and the papal see. Archbishop Visconti himself tried to restore peace to this troubled relationship, although with limited success, as the commune was put under interdict three times during his career alone. His successors faced similar challenges, and some failed miserably to uphold the name of the institution. Oddone de Sala (1313-1323) had a singularly shaky career, which included a period of exile. The precariousness of de Sala's career rendered all of Pisa vulnerable to the aggression of Lewis of Bavaria, who seized and ruled Pisa from 1327 to 1329. But once he was ousted, the Pisan church was restored to order under Archbishop Simone Saltarelli, who governed until 1342.
Although church leaders were embroiled in the commune's political troubles, the inhabitants of Pisa nonetheless had a vital spiritual life through a variety of religious institutions. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an increase in the number of religious foundations such as hospitals and confraternities. These foundations not only provided an outlet for new developments in lay religious life but in so doing further diversified the Pisan religious landscape. Pisa's local saints and the cult of the Virgin also became important popular civic institutions. There was considerable enthusiasm throughout Pisa for the city's patron saint, Ranierus (d. 1160), and his compatriots, Bona, Ubaldesca, and Domenico Vernagalli, all of whom, according to their vitae, took on the plight of the poor as their central concern. Somewhat later, the beate Gherardesca (b. 1230) and Chiara Gambacorta (b. 1362) practiced a less socially oriented asceticism, choosing to lead more solitary lives. It was not so much these local figures, however, as the Virgin who served as the focal point of Pisan religion. The Pisans dedicated the cathedral to her as their protectress, after a military victory in 1063, and they put her effigy above each of the city's gates. In addition, to celebrate the feast of her Assumption the commune prepared for weeks beforehand. These festivities included ceremonies honoring the Virgin and convoluted processions through the city that incorporated residents of both Pisa and the contado, thereby unifying two parts of the Pisan commune and diocese.
Few Italian piazze attract the attention commanded by Pisa's Piazza del Duomo, now also called the Campo dei Miracoli. The cathedral complex, in the northwest corner of the walled city, occupies the original site of the early medieval pieve. Three of its monuments—the cathedral, baptistery, and campanile—are all models of a unique style of architecture, Pisan Romanesque, which became one of the most influential architectural styles in Italy during the medieval period. With the exception of its cemetery, the Camposanto, the monuments in this complex were begun during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at the height of Pisa's military and economic strength.
The duomo of Pisa (as noted above) was founded in 1063 in celebration of a victory at sea against the Muslims, and it was consecrated by Gelasius II in 1118. The cruciform basilica was designed by the architect Buschetto. The nave, 312 feet (about 95 meters) in length, is framed by double aisles and ends in a wide transept and apsidal choir. The polychromatic marble exterior is of great importance for both its coloring and its composition—particularly for its use of arches and arcades, which came to serve as a model adopted by craftsmen all over Italy The facade has three stories, and on the ground level there are three bronze doors carved by Bonanno. Classical inscriptions also decorate the facade, but more important than their decorative effect is that these allusions underscore the idea of Pisa as a new Rome, a strong current in Pisan literary and religious circles in the twelfth century.
To the east and west of the cathedral, respectively, stand the campanile and the baptistery. Both monuments embody the Pisan style, as they make use of arcades and thin columns to lighten the appearance of their marble surfaces. The circular baptistery was begun in 1153. Construction was interrupted several times, and the baptistery was not completed until the early fourteenth century; however, the core of the baptistery must have been essentially finished by 1246, for it was then that the font was installed. On the other side of the cathedral is the campanile, a cylindrical clock tower (this is the famous "leaning tower"). It was begun in 1173 and, like the cathedral, was founded to mark a sea victory; and as with the rest of the monuments in the piazza, its construction was slow, continuing intermittently throughout the following two centuries. In its various phases, the construction was overseen by Giovanni di Simone, the main architect of the Camposanto (c. 1275); and by Tommaso di Pisano (active there in 1350-1372).
The fourth element of she cathedral complex is the Camposanto, the enclosed burial ground north of the cathedral and baptistery. The Camposanto was begun id 1277 by archbishop Visconti and became a popular site for members of Pisa's elite families. Its name (meaning "holy field") derives from a story that it holds earth brought back from the Holy Land in 1203. The design and decoration of the cemetery were the work of Giovanni di Simone. Protected by walls of solid white marble, the interior of the Camposanto is filled with Roman sepulchres that were reused by Pisan families and leaders. Frescoes, although now for the most part lost, also covered the walls of the interior. Their subjects include the Triumph of Death, Legends of the Anchorites, Last Judgment, and Life of Saint Ranierus. Though these murals were badly damaged by bombing during World War II, the preliminary sketches (sinopie) still exist. The attribution of the frescoes has been widely debated, but many, which date from mid-fourteenth century, are now commonly ascribed to Buffalmacco.
The visual power of this piazza has often been said to derive from the stylistic uniformity of the monuments and their spatial relationship. The duomo, baptistery, and campanile all share the features that came to be characteristic of the Pisan Romanesque: gray-and-white striped revetment, arcades on the ground level, slender columns, upper galleries, and classicizing architectural details. Even the Camposanto, despite its relative simplicity and its later inception, fits into this group. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the monuments appears to have been carefully orchestrated from the outset. Yet contrary to what this harmonious effect might lead us to believe, the present appearance of the piazza was not achieved until the sixteenth century; during the medieval period, other edifices filled the piazza. On the north side stands the bishop's palace, and on the south side is the Spedale Nuovo, a redbrick hospital founded in 1257. There were also hospices for men and women, private residences, a house for lay brothers and for the operarius of the cathedral, and olive and peach trees. Finally, before the Camposanto was built, Roman sarcophagi were dispersed around the church; and Pisans often chose this area as a burial place. Thus in the Middle Ages the piazza functioned not just as a stage for religious ceremonies but as a home for pilgrims and the sick, and as a final resting place for the Pisan dead.
As monumentally important as this square was, it did not monopolize artistic activity in Pisa during these centuries. Other churches throughout the city and contado are also noteworthy. The oratory of Santa Maria della Spina, built in 1323, is most akin stylistically to the monuments at the Piazza del Duomo. Its single space is encased in walls of white-and-gray marble which are decorated with sculptures and jewel-like details similar to those seen on the baptistery. The small church got its name because it supposedly housed a thorn (spina) from Christ's crown. Originally the church sat on the bank of the Arno, but it was moved to its present position—just above the river—in 1871 for fear of flooding.
Another important church, San Piero a Grado, is a few miles outside the city. According to its foundation legend, when Saint Peter came to Italy he first set foot in Grado, and he erected an altar on the site. The church was built around that altar. In the Middle Ages, its fame attracted scores of pilgrims from Pisa and from much farther away. Inside, the basilica has a double apse and is decorated by frescoes of the lives of saints Peter and Paul dating from the late thirteenth century.
The interiors of many of Pisa's churches were embellished by Pisan and Tuscan sculptors and painters, among them Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. The Pisanos executed two pulpits in Pisa: one for the baptistery, the other for the cathedral. Nicola Pisano crafted his pulpit for the baptistery c. 1260. This hexagonal pulpit is decorated with scenes from the life of Christ that are characterized by classical forms; like the inscriptions on the face of the cathedral, these forms connect the work to the popular theme of Pisa as a new Rome. In this project, Nicola had two assistants—Arnolfo di Cambio and Fra Guglielmo da Pisa—who went on to fulfill commissions of their own in Orvieto, Viterbo, Rome, and Pistoia, spreading his influence as they went. Later, from 1302 to 1310, Nicola's son Giovanni made the pulpit for the cathedral. In form, Giovanni's pulpit is circular, and as a result it seems less vertical than the earlier piece. It is richly detailed and is the largest of the four pulpits done by this father-son team. Like his father's, Giovanni's pulpit also depended on a large team of assistants for its completion. Perhaps most important among them was Giovanni di Simone, who, as we have noted, became the chief architect of the Camposanto. Before working on the pulpit, the younger Pisano busied himself with another pulpit in Pistoia and other pieces for Pisan churches. For example, he completed an ivory Madonna and Child for a tabernacle inside the duomo c. 1299.
Andrea Pisano, originally from the Pisan village of Pontedera, and his son, Nino, further strengthened the association between Pisa and the plastic arts. Andrea served as capomaestro at Orvieto until 1349, but he is better known for the set of bronze doors that he carved for the baptistery in Florence. These doors occupied him from 1330 to 1336. Covered with scenes of the life of John the Baptist, they show the influence of Bonnano's doors for the cathedral of Pisa, in that Andrea adopted Bonnano's use of rectangular fields. Despite Andrea's provenance, the sculptural style of the reliefs takes little from his predecessors, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. Andrea's son Nino, on the other hand, carried on Andrea's work directly, albeit briefly—Nino died by 1368. Nino was an active silversmith in Pisa c. 1358-1359 and carved various pieces for the interiors of Pisa's churches.
Pisan painters, though overshadowed by Pisan sculptors, did produce important works in their own right. In the first half of the thirteenth century, Giunta Pisano painted several crucifixes that seem to have influenced Cimabue. Another native, Francesco Traini, who was active as early as 1320, came to be an important fresco painter in Tuscany.
The history of Pisan secular art and architecture is less prominent, because far fewer examples survive. The central civic buildings of the medieval commune—a signoria and a praetor's pal ace—were razed and replaced by Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth century when he remodeled the Piazza dei Cavalieri. A few civic constructions do remain, however, to attest to the growth and success of Pisa's government and its mercantile families. For instance, in the Piazza dei Cavalieri, a pair of thirteenth-century towers, one of which held the imprisoned Ugolino (made famous by Dante for his treachery during the battle of Meloria in 1284), still stand in the main piazza beside newer structures. Along the edges of the Arno, and along the city's main thoroughfares, especially Via Santa Maria and Via del Giglio, the facades of private palaces provide excellent examples of Gothic domestic architecture.
In the latter half of the fourteenth century, an impoverished economy and, as a result, a decline in commissions brought Pisan artistic and architectural production to an abrupt end. Chaos within the Pisan church, the principal patron of the artists, made Pisa no place to live, let alone work. Indeed the political and economic decline that began in the thirteenth century, together with the problems suffered by the church, brought the efforts of public builders and local artists to a definitive end in the early fifteenth century. Pisa was taken by the Florentines in 1406, and in spite of a few short-lived periods of independence brought about by the Pisans' rebellion, the commune lost its autonomy permanently in 1509. Annexed to the Florentine republic, Pisa attracted some architectural and cultural innovation during the first half of the sixteenth century. But nothing could restore the energy and prosperity that had characterized Pisa during the height of its power in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries.
See also Florence; Genoa; Lucca; Pisano, Giovanni; Pisano, Nicola
ELIZABETH P. ROTHRAUFF
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Sanpaolesi, Piero. Il duomo di Pisa e l'architettura romanica toscana delle origini. Pisa: Nistri, 1975.
Andrea Pisano (Andrea di Ugolino di Nino da Pontedera, c. 1295-c. 1348 or 1349) is recorded as a sculptor, goldsmith, and capomaestro (master of works) of the cathedrals of Florence and Orvieto. Andrea was the son of a notary and is presumed to have been born in Pontedera, near Pisa. His reputation rests principally on his designs for the doors of the Baptistery in Florence (signed and dated 1330), which are considered among the greatest achievements of Tuscan Trecento sculpture. In this project, Andrea demonstrated that the direct narrative style and effective compositional principles of Giotto's painting could be successfully translated into the art of relief sculpture.
Though nothing is known for certain about Andrea's formative years, it is thought that he trained as a goldsmith, since the reliefs for the bronze doors, his earliest securely documented commission, exhibit attention to miniature detail and ornament as well as a high degree of competence in working with metal. Given the characteristics of his securely identifiable oeuvre, it comes as no surprise that Andrea was referred to as orefice (goldsmith) in 1335.
In 1322, the Arte di Calimala (guild of importers and exporters of cloth) of Florence, the institution in charge of the decorative program of the Baptistery, had made plans for wooden doors covered with gilded metal. By 1329, the project had been revised, and the officials of the Calimala favored a more costly and technically more challenging option: doors in solid bronze. Andrea is first recorded in connection with this project in 1330, but his appointment almost certainly dates from 1329, when the Calimala sent a Florentine goldsmith to Pisa and Venice, which had a tradition of bronze casting, to examine examples of bronze doors. Though Andrea's reliefs carry the date 1330, his work did not end until late 1335: in 1330-1331 he worked on the wax models, which were cast in bronze by Venetian craftsmen in the cire perdu method; in 1333 the left door valve was installed; and the right wing was not completed until late 1335, owing to problems in the casting. The doors were dedicated on the feast of John the Baptist (the patron saint of the building and of Florence) in 1336; they originally adorned the east portal but were subsequently removed to the south portal to make way for Lorenzo Ghiberti's work.
Each wing comprises ten reliefs on the life of John the Baptist and four reliefs of virtues; all are set in quatrefoil frames that are, in turn, contained in rectangular fields. The general configuration of Andrea's doors was inspired by the Romanesque scheme of Bonanno's Porta San Ranieri at the cathedral in Pisa and, possibly, the Porta Regia (now destroyed) from the same building. The remarkable unity of Andrea's design, however, depends on a variety of decorative motifs, which include lions' heads that are placed at the corners of each panel, bands of studs and rosettes that unite the lions' heads, and dentiled moldings that frame each of the quatrefoils.
The iconographic program of the figural reliefs is closely related to the mosaic scenes of the life of John the Baptist in the interior of the Baptistery and to frescoes on the same theme by Giotto in the Peruzzi Chapel in Santa Croce (also in Florence). Giotto's influence is also reflected in the harmonious balance of the compositions, in which reliefs are carefully structured into planes; and in the classical economy of the narratives, which rely on the purposeful movements of concentrated groups of figures. The technique of applying figures to a plain background, a feature of Sienese metalwork of the early Trecento, adds to the solemnity of the compositions. Concessions were, however, made for the occasional motif of a doorway, curtain, or canopy; and in five reliefs from the left door valve, landscape is incorporated into the designs with great subtlety. The influence of Giotto's measured style in Andrea's work is tempered by a debt to French and Sienese artistic traditions: activated, spirited drapery forms, which envelope the bodies of Andrea's dignified figures, introduce a note of grace and elegance to the otherwise restrained reliefs.
Andrea Pisano, Virtue of Hope (Spes). Detail of south door of Baptistery, Florence. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
That Andrea was at the height of his creative powers when he worked on the doors is clear from the precision of rhe finely chased details of the fire-gilt surfaces. The Calimala had, evidently, awarded this difficult commission to a mature and proficient artist, and his work would remain a benchmark for artistic excellence into the Quattrocento. In fact, when the Calimala set up a competition in 1400-1401, the aim was to attract an artist who could work on a second set of bronze doors that would follow Andrea's model and maintain his high standards.
Andrea's contribution to the decoration of the campanile in Florence probably dates from before Giotto's death in 1337. Thereafter, Andrea succeeded Giotto as capomaestro, supervising work on the tower until 1341. He proceeded according to his great predecessor's plans for the lower part of the structure, which included two rows of reliefs: the lower group, within hexagonal frames, shows scenes from Genesis and practitioners of the arts, sciences, and works of man; the upper set shows the seven sacraments, the seven planets, the seven virtues, and the seven liberal arts in rhomboid frames. However, Andrea departed from Giotto's scheme in adding niches designed to include statuary above these relief cycles. Though the precise nature of Andrea's contribution is still a matter of scholarly debate, one work generally attributed to him is the marble relief Sculpture, which, like the style of the bronze reliefs, is characterized by plastic form, harmonious composition, and attention to detail.
Around 1341, Andrea returned to Pisa, where he maintained a workshop even after 1347, the year he was appointed capomaestro at the cathedral of Orvieto. By 1349, however, Andrea had been replaced, and it is frequently assumed either that he died of the plague in 1348 or 1349 or, less probably, that he moved to Florence. The family tradition was carried on by Andrea's sons Nino (fl. 1334—1360s) and Tommaso (fl. 1363-1372), especially Nino, who succeeded his father at Orvieto. Andrea's sons were less interested in the classicizing aspects of his work, and both of them evolved a mainly Gothic formal vocabulary. In the early Quattrocento the suave, lyrical style of their sculpture was still a force to reckon with, as the early work of Jacopo della Quercia demonstrates.
See also Florence; Giotto di Bondone; Pisano, Nino
FLAVIO BOGGI
Burresi, Mariagiulia, ed. Andrea, Nino, e Tommaso scultori pisani. Milan: Electa, 1983.
Castelnuovo, Enrico. "Andrea Pisano scultore in legno." In Sucre passioni: Scultura lignea a Pisa dal XII al XV secolo, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi. Milan: Motta, 2000, pp. 152-163.
Clark, Kenneth, and David Finn. The Florentine Baptistery Doors. Kampala: Uganda Publishing and Advertising Services, 1980.
Garzelli, Annarosa. "Andrea Pisano a Firenze e una 'Madonna con il cardellino.'" Antichità Viva, 36(5-6), 1997, pp. 49-62.
Kreytenberg, Gert. "Andrea Pisano's Earliest Works in Marble." Burlington Magazine, 122, 1980, pp. 3-8.
—. Andrea Pisano und die toskanische Skulptur des 14. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Bruckmann, 1984.
—. "Eine unbekannte Verkündigungsmadonna als 'Maria gravida' von Andrea Pisano." In Opere e giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel, ed. Klaus Bergdolt and Giorgio Bonsanti. Venice: Marsilio, 2001, pp. 147-154.
Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer. The Sculpture of Andrea and Nino Pisano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
—. Italian Gothic Sculpture, c. 1250—c. 1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Paolucci, Antonio. Le parte del Battistero di Firenze alle origini del Rinascimento. Modena: Panini, 1996.
Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Gothic Sculpture, 4th ed. London: Phaidon, 1996
Giovanni Pisano (d. by 1319) was the son of Nicola Pisano. Nicola executed the pulpits in the baptistery of Pisa and the cathedral of Siena, and Giovanni is first documented as an assistant to his father in the contract of 1265 for the pulpit in Siena; Giovanni received periodic payments until October 1268, when the pulpit was completed (Bacci 1926; Carli 1943; Milanesi 1854). Nothing certain is known of Giovanni's activities between 1268 and 1278, when his name appears together with Nicola's on the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia. From c. 1285 to c. 1297, Giovanni was at work in Siena, where he is mentioned as capomaestro of the project for the cathedral facade in 1290. His name is recorded in Siena in 1314, but in 1319 he is referred to as having died. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the attribution of his early work or supposed early work on the pulpit in Siena, and elsewhere; passages that convey a greater degree of "spiritual tension" have tended to be ascribed to him, whereas those characterized by greater emotional restraint have suggested the hand of Nicola. One image on the Fontana Maggiore is almost certainly by Giovanni; a pair of eagles with enormous claws, powerful breasts, and twisting bodies that seem to anticipate the griffin on the central support of the pulpit in Pistoia.
The facade of the cathedral in Siena was left incomplete on Giovanni's departure c. 1297, and scholars disagree as to whether the present facade reflects his original plan (Kosegarten 1984) or the upper section is a much later design, c. 1370 (Carii 1977; Keller 1937). The program in Siena (unlike the encyclopedic programs of French Gothic cathedrals) is strictly Mariological, and the coherence of its iconography is strong argument for assigning the conception of the entire facade to a single initial project. From early sources we know that a (lost) Madonna and Child stood in the lunette of the central portal flanked by a representative of the commune swearing an oath of allegiance on behalf of Siena, and by a personification of Siena holding up a model of the cathedral. Scenes from the lives of Joachim and Anna and from Mary's childhood adorned the lintel of the central portal; the side lunettes and the gable fields contained mosaics representing further events from Mary's life. On platforms projecting from the towers and between the lunettes of the lower facade were placed prophets and kings of the Old Testament and sibyls and pagan philosophers, i.e., those who in remote times had foreseen the miraculous birth of the savior. Spread out along the upper facade were evangelists and apostles, whose teachings are confirmed by the prophets. Though these were executed in the fourteenth century, they too were probably part of the original plan, which envisioned the prophets standing like foundations for the New Testament figures above. Around the rose window appeared a seated Madonna and Child flanked by half figures representing the genealogy of Christ; scenes from the life of David, an ancestor of Christ, appeared on one of the tendril columns that originally flanked the portals. The pictorial program of the facade thus revealed the place of Siena within the total redemptive plan of Christian theology. The initial visual impact of the facade comes from an interplay of its chromatic, plastic, and structural effects: the contrasts of color, light, and shadow created by the deep jambs, gables, and gallery; the rich tactile plasticity and rhythmic flow of concave-convex movements across the lower horizontal band of portals and lunettes; and the stepping back of the upper facade behind the gables. The fourteen prophets and sibyls (the originals are in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo) are dynamic, plastic forms whose gestures and movements embody the excitement of their special enlightenment. The dramatic effect of these figures communicating across real space has no medieval or antique precedent. However, the facade abounds in classicizing motifs such as bead and reel patterns, dentils, masks, acanthus foliage, and all'antica "peopled columns" originally flanking the main portal (Seidel 1968-1969, 1975; Venturi 1927). The traceried bifore and trifore and aspects of the figure style are influenced by French precedents, whereas the alternation of dark and light marble revetment belongs to the Tuscan Romanesque tradition. The facade, then, shows a creative synthesis of antique traditions, local traditions, and northern Gothic influences—the last of these seen also in the undermining of solid surface in favor of perforated mass.
Giovanni Pisano (1248-C.1314), pulpit, Sant'Andrea, Pistoia. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
Perhaps as a result of professional difficulties, Giovanni left Siena c. 1297, when the facade was still incomplete (Ayrton 1969). Around this time, or possibly earlier, he executed a number of sculptures for the exterior of the baptistery in Pisa. The remaining fragments (installed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Pisa) are badly weathered, but these swelling, twisting figures burst with inner energy.
Around 1297, Giovanni received his first commission for a pulpit, from the parish of Sant'Andrea in Pistoia. Pistoia was unusually rich in Romanesque monumental sculptured pulpits, and the proposal for Sant'Andrea insisted that it must not be inferior to one made for San Giovanni Fuorcivitas by Guglielmo, a student of Nicola Pisano; this suggests that there was a strong sense of rivalry among churches. Giovanni's pulpit is signed and dated 1301 and has an inscription that boasts of a "mastery greater than any seen before" (Pope-Hennessy 1972). This richly carved and elegant structure—its parapet poised on Gothic trefoil arches above slender columns with alternating animal and figural supports—reveals Giovanni's debt to Nicola's two earlier pulpits, but it also reveals that Giovanni was completely independent in terms of technique, composition, and expressiveness. Like Nicola's pulpit in the baptistery in Pisa, Giovanni's pulpit in Pistoia is hexagonal and has great structural clarity. But here Giovanni adopts an invention from his father's pulpit in Siena: the narrative reliefs are flanked by figures. All the forms—capitals, figures, narratives—are more energetic than the corresponding elements in Nicola's pulpits. In particular, the lion, griffin, and eagle of the central support are dynamic opposing forces, revolving around the column as hub. Traces of polychromy on the figures as well as remains of the glazed colored background tesserae give a hint of the original chromatic effect. The most stunning aspect of this pulpit, however, is the heightened emotional content of the narratives. In the Annunciation, for instance, the awesome message simultaneously thrusts the Virgin away from Gabriel and magnetically draws the figures together. Expressiveness combines with naturalism to bring the sacred figures down to earth: the Christ child in the Nativity is neither the miniature adult of medieval tradition nor the Herculean child rendered by Nicola but is arguably the first realistic newborn infant in the history of art (Moskowitz 2001). Giovanni's compositional and expressive powers are nowhere more evident than in the Massacre of the Innocents. At first the composition appears chaotic, but closer examination reveals that the violent movements, deep pockets of shadow, and flashing highlights cohere as a series of zigzag vertical and horizontal rhythms generated by the forward motion and gesture of King Herod. In a cinematic sequence, every moment of response is portrayed: to the left of Herod, three women plead before the brutal slaughter; immediately below and at the lower left, several mothers clutch their infants in terror, shielding the babies with their own bodies; at the base, three grieving mothers bend over their dead children. Finally, bringing the eye upward toward Herod again, mother and murderer—like an angel and devil fighting for a soul in the Last Judgment—battle over the body of a screaming infant who has already received the death blow.
A quieter, more intimate side of Giovanni's artistic personality is revealed in a series of depictions of the Madonna and child executed throughout his career. In Giovanni's hands, the image is transformed from austerity and rigidity to an expression of intimacy, as can be seen in a half-length Madonna from a tympanum of the duomo in Pisa of the mid-1270s (Keller 1942, 13). In several later Madonnas, the child leans toward his mother, resting his arm on her shoulder. Finally, in the Prato Madonna, universally attributed to Giovanni (c. 1312), the relationship intensifies, as Mary, smiling, bends her head down to direct her gaze at her son. In contrast to the regular, planar features of Giovanni's figure on the tympanum in Pisa, the Prato Madonna is characterized by refined features and delicate transitions in the soft planes and contours.
Giovanni's mastery extended to wood and ivory. He executed a beautiful ivory Madonna and child (Ragghianti 1954; Seidel 1972, 1991) and a series of wood and ivory crucifixes—none documented or dated—which are so compellingly close to his images on the pulpits that the attributions seem valid (Seidel 1971). These, too, mark a turning point in the history of the theme in Italy: the relative quietude of Nicola's representations is now often replaced by an aching pathos reminiscent of some transalpine examples.
In 1302, Giovanni was commissioned to execute a pulpit for the grand Tuscan Romanesque cathedral of Pisa. Because of its location within the vast space of the duomo—beneath the cupola, near the south transept—it had to be much larger than the pulpit in Pistoia. Like Nicola's pulpit in Siena, it is octagonal rather than hexagonal. Since each parapet of the bridge leading from stairway to balustrade contains a narrative, there are nine relief fields (an unprecedented number), with the first and last narratives (those on the bridge) on flat panels and the rest on curved slabs. This expanded sequence includes scenes from the life of John the Baptist: the first relief shows the Annunciation to Mary, Mary and Elizabeth in the Visitation, and the Nativity of John the Baptist. Parallels and intersections between the life of Christ and that of John, his precursor, were emphasized in the popular apocryphal literature of this period; and here they are made eloquently clear because the two Nativity scenes are at an angle to each other and thus can be seen simultaneously.
An inscription on the pulpit alludes, in a surprisingly self-conscious way, to difficulties: "The more I have achieved the more hostile injuries have I experienced" (Pope-Hennessy 1972). Further along, there is a reference to the "envy" of others and the "sorrow" of the sculptor who lacks adequate "recognition." Vasari was quite critical of this pulpit, and later in the sixteenth century, when an excuse presented itself, the monument was dismantled (Bacci 1926; Moore et al. 1993). After various proposals for reconstruction in the late nineteenth century, the present version was executed by Peleo Bacci in 1926. Responses continue to be mixed. Documents record the names of dozens of individuals engaged on this pulpit, and certainly the quality of the carving is not as uniform as that on the pulpit in Pistoia. Nevertheless, there are passages of unsurpassed emotional power and inventiveness, such as a saint dragging a resurrected soul toward Christ; moreover, many of the reliefs reveal a continuing engagement with issues of spatial illusionism and naturalism in the treatment of figures and landscape.
Giovanni Pisano, pulpit, Nativity and Annunciation of the Shepherds. Duomo, Pisa. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
Both artist and patron must have felt the challenge posed by the three earlier pulpits and must have sought to surpass them in size, iconographic and sculptural complexity, and decorative richness. The pulpit in Pisa is, then, a recapitulation, synthesis, and amplification not only of the three others but also of the major innovations in almost all the earlier monuments by Giovanni and his father. In addition to the animals and figures supporting the columns—a feature of the earlier pulpits—here there are unusually complex figural supports: in the center the three theological virtues, supported by personifications of the eight liberal arts; Ecclesia supported by the cardinal virtues; statue columns of Saint Michael and Hercules (or Samson); and finally a statue column of Christ supported by the evangelists. Not only do the curved narrative panels boldly flout visual expectations; below the parapet, where in earlier works we would see roundheaded or pointed trefoil arcades, we now find, supporting the spandrel reliefs, exuberant classical volutes that seem to anticipate the Baroque and are impossible to enclose within the regular geometric contours of architectural norms. Here, as in the convex reliefs above, Giovanni must have relished his radical departure from the expected. In its sheer inventiveness of form, and in the range of emotions and the effectiveness of gestures in the narratives, the pulpit in Pisa represents a tremendous intellectual and artistic achievement.
The last major work by Giovanni is the tomb of Margaret of Luxembourg, wife of Emperor Henry VII. After her death in 1310, a cult grew up around her remains; and reports of miracles led to her beatification in 1313, when the tomb was probably commissioned (Seidel 1987). Much of the original complex is lost, but a major element is extant: an exceptionally fine carving of the empress being raised heavenward by two angels. There is scholarly debate as to whether the group represents the elevatio animae, the soul elevated to heaven, fervently desired in the prayers for the dead; or the bodily resurrection, which should occur only at the last judgment but might be granted earlier to a saint. The visual evidence suggests a bodily resurrection, since Margaret is sufficiently weighty to require the physical exertion of the two angels. Also disputed is whether the tomb was a wall monument or, like many later saints' shrines, freestanding (Pope-Hennessy 1987; Seidel 1987).
See also Perugia; Pisa; Pisano, Nicola; Pistoia; Siena
ANITA F. MOSKOWITZ
Ayrton, Michael. Giovanni Pisano: Sculptor. London: Thames and Hudson, 1969.
Bacci, Peleo. La ricostruzione del pergamo di Giovanni Pisano nel Duomo di Pisa. Milan and Rome: Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1926.
Beani, Gaetano. La pieve di Sant' Andrea. Pistoia, 1907, p. 28
Carli, Enzo. Il pulpito di Siena. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1943, pp. 41ff.
—. Giovanni Pisano. Pisa: Pacini, 1977.
Jászai, Géza. Die Pisaner Domkanzel: Neuer Versuch zur Wiederherstellung ihres ursprünglichen Zustandes. Munich, 1968.
—. "Giovanni Pisano." In Enciclopedia dell'arte medievale, Vol. 6. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1995, pp. 740-754.
Keller, Harald. "Die Bauplastik des Sienese Doms." Kunstgesch. Jahrbuch der Biblioth. Hertziana, 1, 1937.
—. Giovanni Pisano, mit 152 Bildern. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1942, p. 66.
Kosegarten, Antje. "Die Skulpturen der Pisani am Baptisterium von Pisa." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 10, 1969, pp. 36-100.
Kosegarten, Antje Middeldorf. Sienesiscbe Bildhauer am Duomo Vecchio. Munich, 1984.
Milanesi, Gaetano. Documenti per la storia dell'arte senese, Vol. 1, Secoli XIII e XIV. Siena: O. Porri, 1854.
Moore, Henry, Gert Kreytenberg, and Crispino Valenziano. L'ambone del duomo di Pisa. Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1993.
Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer. Italian Gothic Sculpture c. 1250—c. 1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Gothic Sculpture. London: Phaidon, 1972.
—. "Giovanni Pisano s Tomb of Empress Margaret: A Critical Reconstruction." Apollo, September 1987, p. 223.
Ragghianti, Carlo Lodovico. "La Madonna eburnea di Giovanni Pisano." Critica d'Arte, n.s., 1, 1954, pp. 385-396.
Scultura dipinta—Maestri di legname e pittori a Siena, 1250-1450: Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, 16 luglio—31 dicembre 1987. Firenze: Centro Di, 1987.
Seidel, Max. "Die Rankensäulen der sieneser Domfassade." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 11, 1968-1969, pp. 80-160.
—. La scultura litnea di Giovanni Pisano. Florence: Edam, 1971.
—. "Die Elfenbeinmadonna im Domschatz zu Pisa: Studien zur Herkunft und Umbildung Franzöischer Formen im Werk Giovanni Pisanos in der Epoche der Pistoieser Kanzel." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16, 1972, pp. 1-50.
—. "Studien zur Antikenrezeptionrezeption Nicola Pisanos." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 19, 1975, pp. 303-392.
—, ed. Giovanni Pisano a Genova. Genoa: SAGEP, 1987.
—. "Un 'Crocifisso' di Giovanni Pisano a Massa Marittima." Prospettiva, 62, 1991, pp. 67-77.
Venturi, Adolfo. Giovanni Pisano: Sein Leben und sein Werk. Florence: Pantheon, 1927.
Nicola Pisano (c. 1220-1278 or 1284) is generally assumed to have come from southern Italy and thus from the cultural milieu of Emperor Frederick II von Hohenstaufen. Nicola may have arrived in Tuscany as early as c. 1245; a series of carvings in the upper reaches of the cathedral of Siena have been plausibly attributed to him (Bagnoli 1981).
In 1260, Nicola signed and dated the pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa. This pulpit has an unprecedented form; it is a hexagonal freestanding structure whose shape was eminently suited to the centralized plan of the baptistery and echoed Guido da Como's octagonal font occupying the center of the interior space. Its parapet and platform are sustained by seven columns; the central column is surrounded by crouching figures and animals, and the six outer columns alternately rest on lions and on the ground. The columns support trilobed archivolts flanked by representations of the virtues and John the Baptist. Above these rises a balustrade with historiated relief fields separated by triple colonettes. When the pulpit was in its original state, the creamy marble reliefs framed by reddish colonettes and moldings, the speckled and patterned supporting columns, the relief backgrounds filled with colored glazed tesserae (some of which remain), and the polychromy accenting some parts of the figures produced a richly chromatic effect.
The reliefs embellish five of the six sides (the sixth is the entrance to the platform) with scenes from the life of Christ. In a continuous narrative, the first panel shows the Annunciation, Nativity, Bathing of the Christ Child, and Annunciation to the Shepherds. This is followed by panels illustrating the Adoration of the Magi, Presentation in the Temple, Crucifixion, and Last Judgment. The figures are powerfully plastic and expressive and reveal the sculptor's study of ancient art and northern Gothic art, enabling him to combine the serene majesty of the former with the deeply felt human experience of the latter. Nicola was not content to present symbolic narratives of transcendental events; his goal was, rather, to tell a human story in a credible and empathic manner. The work is enriched by naturalistic details; the figures convey a sense of bulk and weight, and gestures and movements are rendered with convincing naturalism. This new mode of sculpture was the visual counterpart of the widely diffused apocryphal literature, in which the sparse accounts of the Gospels were enriched with domestic incidents, making the sacred figures human.
In 1265, Nicola signed a contract for a second pulpit, in this case for the cathedral of Siena. Several assistants, including Amolfo di Cambio and Nicola's son Giovanni, are named in the contract. This pulpit, completed in 1268 and placed within the enormous space of the duomo, is octagonal and is larger and more complex than the one in the baptistery in Pisa. Here, the narrative program began at the stairway bridge leading to the pulpit casket, with a figure of Gabriel (now in Berlin) corresponding to Mary of the Annunciation seen at the left edge of the first relief (Seidel 1970). As at Pisa, there are three tiers—supporting columns, arcade, and parapet. The central support includes figures representing, for the first time, the liberal arts. The narratives now include the emotionally wrenching Massacre of the Innocents and a Last Judgment that spreads over two fields, with a full-length figure of Christ the judge between the reliefs. Furthermore, instead of column clusters (as at Pisa), there are corner figures framing the reliefs, resulting in a continuous visual and narrative flow. The classicizing forms of the earlier pulpit give way to more elegantly proportioned figures with softer draperies and refined features—an ideal influenced by French Gothic art. In the narratives, the figures are smaller and more densely packed, and the compositions are organized to suggest movement into depth. Furthermore, Nicola has greatly enlarged his emotional range. The crucified Christ in Siena, for instance, conveys a pathos lacking in the earlier relief: hanging with arms stretched in two great diagonals, shoulders dislocated, abdomen sunken by the weight of the upper torso, and head bent into the chest, the figure conveys human pain and tragedy, intensifying the meaning of the crucifixion.
In 1267, Nicola completed the Area di San Domenico (tomb of Saint Dominic) in the church of San Domenico in Bologna. The form and structure of the area became the prototype for an entire class of tombs through the fifteenth century (Moskowitz 1994). Many changes have been made to this tomb, but originally it consisted of a freestanding sarcophagus resting atop a series of supporting statue columns representing friars, archangels, and virtues. The sarcophagus, the only part of the original monument that is still in San Domenico, is embellished on all sides with an extensive cycle of biographical reliefs rather than the traditional biblical or symbolic themes. The relief backgrounds show patterns of red and gold verre églomisé (much of it restored). The narrative fields are separated by full-length figures projecting in high relief, including the Madonna and child on one long side, the Redeemer on the other long side, and the four church fathers—Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory—at the corners of the sarcophagus. The corner figures, both on and supporting the sarcophagus, project out diagonally, encouraging the observer to move around the ensemble.
The bold and original design of the area has sources as disparate as pulpits, bishops' thrones, holy water fonts, and ancient sarcophagi and was conceived as addressing both laypeople and the Dominican hierarchy. "When the tomb was in its original location between the presbytery and south aisle, Dominic's most public and most spectacular miracles were on the side facing the lay congregation, thus serving to promote the cult; and the scenes of the founding and expansion of the Dominican order, which were of greater interest to the clergy, were on the side facing the choir area.
Nicola Pisano (c. 1220-1287), pulpit. Baptistery, Pisa. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
The last major work securely associated with Nicola's name is the Fontana Maggiore ("great fountain") in Perugia, completed in 1278. This is a remarkable secular and civic monument, as original in form and conception among fountains as Nicola's pulpits and the area are, respectively, among pulpits and tombs. The Fontana Maggiore is polygonal and embellished with sculptures; it stands in Perugia's main civic and religious square, and it began not as an artistic project but rather as an engineering and hydraulic problem: it was intended to bring an adequate water supply to Perugia, a town poor in freshwater springs (Nicco Fasola 1951). Precedents for some elements of the fountain's formal structure are found in two- and three-basin liturgical furnishings, such as baptismal and cloister fonts; and also in illustrations of the fons vitae, copies of the Holy Tomb, pulpits, and altar ciboria (Hoffmann-Curtis 1968; Schulze 1994). However, there is no close prototype for the scale, the complexity of design, or the richness of the program of this indispensably functional urban monument. The sculpture on the basins is uniquely expansive, including scenes from Genesis, prophets, saints, "labors of the months," the liberal arts, various fables, allegorical figures, and even contemporary civic personages. A ring of steps serves as a foundation; on this rests a twenty-five-sided basin with low reliefs separated by colonettes. Above this rises a smaller basin of twelve plain concave sides with figures at the angles and at the center of each face. From here a thick bronze column emerges supporting a third, still smaller basin, also of bronze, which in turn contains three graceful bronze female caryatids. The facets of the superimposed lower basins do not line up, resulting in a syncopated rhythm that impels the viewer to move around the structure. Simultaneously, the vertical elements, together with the diminishing sizes of the basins and the increasing plasticity of the sculpture, draw the eye upward. The effect is of a spiral movement that culminates in, and is resolved by, the caryatid group. The fountain was designed to be seen not only from the ground but also from the balcony of the communal palace (altered at a later date), which was used for announcements to the piazza below and as an entrance to the audience hall within for government officials and citizens. Even today, the view from above has its own special effect, as the play of descending water contrasts with the ascending concentric superimposed basins.
Nicola Pisano, Nativity. Pulpit, baptistery, Pisa. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
Nicola's sculpture provided the source and impetus for the development of his two major assistants. His son Giovanni took up the emotional current of Nicola's style, transforming it into a very personal and highly charged idiom. Arnolfo di Cambio's temperament led him instead toward a starkly monumental and classicizing mode. Nicola's art profoundly influenced not only his immediate successors but also the painting of Giotto and, indeed, the entire naturalistic and classicizing tradition of the art of the following centuries.
See also Arnolfo di Cambio; Bologna; Dominic, Saint; Perugia; Pisa; Pisano, Giovanni; Siena
ANITA F. MOSKOWITZ
Bagnoli, Alessandro. "Novità su Nicola Pisano scultore nel Duomo di Siena." Prospettiva, 27, October 1981, pp. 27-46.
Caleca, Antonino. La dotta mano: Il battistero di Pisa. Bergamo: Bolis, 1991.
Carli, Enzo. Il duomo di Siena. Genoa: SAGEP, 1979.
Cristiani Testi, Maria Laura. Nicola Pisano: Architetto scultore. Pisa: Pacini, 1987.
Gnudi, Cesare. Nicola, Arnolfo, Lapo: L'area di San Domenico in Bologna. Florence: Edizioni U, 1948.
Hoffmann-Curtis, Kathrin. Das Programm der Fontana Maggiore in Perugia. Düsseldorf: Rheinland-Verlag, 1968.
Kosegarten, Antje Middeldorf. "Die Skulpturen der Pisani am Bapdsterium von Pisa." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 10, 1968, pp. 14-100.
Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer. Nicola Pisano's Area di San Domenico and Its Legacy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
—. Italian Gothic Sculpture c. 1250—c. 1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Nicco Fasola, Giusta. Nicola Pisano: Orientamenti sulla formazione del gusto italiano. Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1941.
—. La fontana di Perugia. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1951.
Schulze, Ulrich. Brunnen im Mittelalter: Politische Ikonographie der Kommunen in Italien. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1994.
Seidel, Max. "Die Verkündigungsgruppe der Siena Domkanzel." Münchener Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, 21, 1970, pp. 18-72.
The Tuscan sculptor Nino Pisano (c. 1315-1368) remains an elusive figure for art historians, despite the wide recognition of his importance in the second half of the fourteenth century. He signed only three marble sculptures: in Florence, the Madonna and Child at Santa Maria Novella; in Venice, the Cornaro Madonna and Child at Santi Giovanni e Paolo; and in Sardinia, the Bishop Saint at San Francesco in Oristano. Archival documents record other projects, including a position as capomaestro of the cathedral at Orvieto in 1349; contracts for work as a goldsmith; and contracts for tomb monuments, such as those for Archbishop Giovanni Scherlatti of Pisa and for the merchant Giovanni dell'Agnello—his last documented work (1368). The first edition of Giorgio Vasari's biographies of artists, in 1550, mentions only Nino's completion of the Madonna in Santa Maria Novella; but in his edition of 1568, Vasari added three more works from Pisa: the Madonna and Child at Santa Maria della Spina, the Madonna del Latte (Museum of San Matteo), and an Annunciation group at Santa Caterina. The Santa Maria Novella Madonna and Child, in Carrara marble, demonstrates why Nino's sensitive work enthralled contemporary and later sculptors. The elegantly draped Madonna supports a large, animated Christ child on her left hip and smiles kindly as he reaches, open-mouthed, toward a bird that she grasps in her right hand. Nino signed this piece and identified himself as the son of Master Andrea of Pisa. (Andrea created the first bronze doors for the baptistery in Florence and major marble sculpture for the cathedral bell tower.)
Modern scholars have struggled to identify other work by Nino, a task made particularly problematic by his close association with his father; by his independent interest in increasingly expressive Sienese and French Gothic styles; and by the fact that he had his own workshop, which included both his brother Tommaso and his son Andrea di Nino. The attribution of several works—primarily the famous Madonna del Latte, an unusual half-length nursing figure—has been particularly vexing. Although Vasari considered the Madonna del Latte a work by Nino, scholars now generally attribute it to Andrea; even Pope-Hennessy (1994) finally came to this conclusion. Another attribution by Vasari has been equally disputed: the marble Annunciation at Santa Caterina. In this sculpture, the archangel Gabriel and the Madonna may have been moved from their original location, and the inscription with the date 1370 may have been added later. Moskowitz (1986) does not consider the Annunciation Nino's work; but other scholars accept Vasari's claim and have used this sculpture pair as a basis for attributing to Nino the famous Madonna and Child in Santissima Annunziata in Trapani, Sicily.
Moskowitz (1986) has argued for a limited group of sculptures by Nino whereas Kreytenberg (1984, 2000, 2002) has expanded the corpus and has included wooden sculptures. One of the most interesting works is a rare wooden tabernacle, presumably by Sienese carvers, with a small polychromed wooden Christ crucified that Kreytenberg believes is Nino's and a painted representation of the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, and two angels by the Sienese artist Luca di Tommè. Kreytenberg compares this Christ crucified with another work he attributes to Nino, a marble Christ crucified (c. 1355—1360) in Pisa at San Michele in Borgo.
Almost the entire literature on Nino Pisano focuses on questions of connoisseurship rather than the context of his work, which often seems to have been within the orbit of the mendicant orders. The lively interest in this late medieval sculptor, however, has brought increased attention to a very active area of art commissions, often ignored until recently.
See also Pisano, Andrea
GAIL L. GEIGER
Andrea, Nino, e Tommaso scultori pisani, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi. Milan: Electa, 1983.
Kreytenberg, Gert. Andrea Pisano und die toskanische Skulptur des 14. Jahrhunderts. Italienische Forschungen, 3(14). Munich: Bruckmann, 1984.
—. "Ein Tabernakel mit Kruzifix von Nino Pisano und Luca di Tomme." Pantheon, 58, 2000, pp. 9-12.
—. "Tabernacle with Crucifix and Mary and John the Evangelist." In Italian Sculpture from the Gothic to the Baroque, ed. Andrew Butterfield and Anthony Radcliffe. New York: Salander-O'Reilly, 2002, pp. 32-39. (With essays by Charles Avery.)
Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer. The Sculpture of Andrea and Nino Pisano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Pope-Hennessy, John. Italian Gothic Sculpture, 4th ed. London: Phaidon, 1994. (Vol. 1 of An Introduction to Italian Sculpture.)
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, 8 vols., ed. G. Milanesi. Florence, 1878-1885.
—. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, Vol. 2, ed. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi. Testo. Florence, 1967, Vol. 2. (Editions of 1550 and 1568.)
Pistoia is a Tuscan city, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) from Florence and 10 miles (13 kilometers) from Prato. It is situated on the Ombrone River, in a basin circled by the Apennines to the north and the Tuscan hills to the south. The province of which Pistoia is the capital extends into the mountains and out to the plain toward Prato. At its farthest extent, medieval Pistoia covered a territory of which almost half was very mountainous and only about a fifth consisted of arable plains and low hills. The city at the center of this region, Pistoia, supplied agricultural products and other trade goods to the mountainous Apennine settlements, which could grow some grains but was better able to grow chestnuts, acorns, and other nuts. People living at the highest elevations, more than about 2,000 feet (600 meters) above sea level, had to buy or trade for wine and oil. Thus Pistoia was important as an agricultural center.
Though horses and cattle wintered in the mountains, sheep herding was possible in the mountain regions only through transhumance, moving the animals from summer to winter quarters at lower altitudes, either near the city of Pistoia itself or across the Arno into the Sienese Maremma. The mountains were also rich in lumber, stone, and iron, which the city used in building. Though the pistol that gave Pistoia its name is beyond the dates of this work, ironworks of all kinds were a documented specialty of Pistoia from the twelfth century on. Monte Albano sloped more gently, and subsistence farming of grain, olives, and grapes was possible there. Enough wine was produced for export, not just to Pistoia but also to Prato and Florence.
By the twelfth century, Pistoia was a walled city, a regional trade and ecclesiastical center with six major roads leading out of it, and a hub for numerous monasteries. Three routes went over the Apennines: one northwest to Modena and two to Bologna. The first of the two to Bologna went straight north through Sambucca; the other went northeast along the River Bisenzio. The older of two routes heading south over Monte Albano led to Pescia and Lucca, along the Roman Via Cassia; the newer one went to Pisa. The sixth road led east to Prato and then southeast to Florence. In addition, the Via Francigena, the pilgrim route from France through Lombardy to Rome, skirted Pistoia. So long as land travel remained the chief method of transporting goods, Pistoia flourished. However, the Arno was not navigable for large ships much inland from Pisa. As the sea became more important than roads for international trade in the later Middle Ages, Pistoia's importance lessened.
There are traces of Etruscan settlement in the vicinity, but the first written reference to the city's classical Latin name, Pistoria, is in Plautus, who speaks of its bakers, pistorienses, c. 200 B.C. According to Livy (Historiae 39.1), it was the supply base for Roman legions fighting in the vicinity from 279 to 174 B.C. It also saw fighting under the Republic. Catiline's forces were destroyed, and he himself was slain near Pistoria in 62 B.C.
Much of our knowledge of Pistoia in the early Middle Ages is ecclesiastical. Tradition, perhaps unreliable, ascribes its conversion to Saint Romulus, bishop of Fiesole. Tradition also ascribes the dedication of the cathedral to Saint Zeno, patron and bishop of Florence, who saved Pistoia from a flood c. 500. The earliest firm evidence of a bishopric is a mention in a letter of Pope Gelasius I in 496; the first bishop whose name has come down to us is Johannes, c. 700. In the seventh century, the city, including its cathedral, was destroyed by the Lombards, but the Lombard king Desiderius fortified Pistoia again in 772. The boundaries and possessions are listed in a charter of Emperor Otto III in 998 and were confirmed and further defined by various twelfth-century popes. In 1067, Bishop Leo of Pistoia figured prominently in the investiture controversy between Emperor Henry IV and the church.
Pistoia was the first city to establish its independence after the death of Countess Matilda of Tuscany (in 1115), and the twelfth century witnessed the ascendancy of a commune. There are mentions of statutes as early as 1107, and there are surviving statutes from 1175, which define its powers. But the landowning and property-owning families did not always work peacefully together.
Duomo, Pistoia. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Baptistery, Pistoia. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Pistoia was officially Ghibelline, supporting Emperor Frederick II. But c. 1300 the Guelf Cancellieri and Ghibelline Pancia tichi families began to struggle with each other for supremacy. In May 1301, the Ghibelline faction appealed to Florence for help. The combined Ghibelline and Florentine force was victorious, and the Pistoian Guelfs took refuge in Florence. In November, however, the Pistoian and Florentine Guelfs, under Charles of Valois, captured the city. Between 1302 and 1306, the city was besieged. From 1306 to 1310, the city was ruled by Lucca and Florence and was heavily taxed. The Cancellieri triumphed but then became divided into Black and White factions; the divided town fell to Castruccio Castracane of Lucca, who was its effectual ruler from 1320 to 1328. In 1325, the city appealed to Florence for help, which came at the price of Florentine rule. Under this rule a consular government was established, headed by officials who were first called consuls and then gonfalonieri; it lasted from 1329 to 1821.
The church. The bishopric had been the central force in Pistoia during the early Middle Ages. But in 1048, the cathedral suffered a disastrous fire. Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, contributed to its rebuilding; however, a document of 1114, in which Count Guido and Countess Emilia gave orders to construct a water channel for the building works, indicates that it was not finished until the early twelfth century. By then, the political power of the church in Pistoia was weakening, and its property was being sold to the commune, which was becoming more influential. There are records of regional groups of landowners from the late tenth century. A free commune of lay landholders is first mentioned in Pistoia in 1105. By the statutes of 1107—the oldest in Tuscany—the commune ruled the city and the land for 4 miles (about 6 kilometers) around it. Though the bishopric continued to hold land in much of the countryside beyond that, neither Bishop Hildebrand (c. 1107) nor his successor Jacobus (r. 1118—1141) was sufficiently forceful to combat the growing organized lay power.
Bishop Atto (r. 1135-1153) succeeded in restoring the church to something of its former importance and regained some of its property. Through a Pistoian cleric called Rainerius, who had become the schoolmaster at Santiago da Compostela, the cathedral negotiated successfully with the archbishop and canons of Compostela for a relic of Saint James, which arrived c. 1140. By 1145, there was an altar to James in the cathedral, and miracles began to be reported. Aided by an indulgence from Pope Eugenius III, Pistoia became a place of regional pilgrimage. The Opera di San Jacopo, which collected and distributed alms and organized the celebration for the feast of Saint James (25 July), had its ownpalazzo in the cathedral square. Some ol the miracles reported in Pistoia were included in the widely circulated Legenda aurea (Golden Legend, c. 1265) of Jacobus da Voragine, bishop of Genoa, spreading the renown of the city. Bishop Atto was also regarded locally as a saint (though he was not formally canonized until the sixteenth century), and miracles reported at his shrine enhanced Pistoia as a spiritual force. One of Atto's successors, Giovanni Vivenzi (c. 1370), was spiritually remarkable enough to be raised to the rank of venerable, but by the end of the twelfth century the bishopric was no longer a political force to be reckoned with.
Commune. From the mid-twelfth century on, the basis of political power was increasingly centered in the commune. By the late 1170s, the commune controlled not only the city but three hospitals guarding the two mountain passes over the Apennines and the pass over Monte Albano to Pisa. By 1200, it also controlled the lowland route to Bologna. This gave it power over most of the trade coming in and out of Pistoia, and over the landholders along those routes, who were taxed in money and services for the maintenance of the roads.
Church and state shared the Piazza del Duomo in the city center, where the episcopal palace was first built in the eleventh century; this palace now houses the archaeological and diocesan museum. The Palazzo del Commune was built in 1294 on the east side of the square; it now houses the Museo Civico. The Palazzo Pretorio was built in 1367, when the city was under the domination of Florence; the arms of the city magnates still adorn the walls of the courtyard.
The trade routes running through Pistoia ensured its prosperity during the early medieval period. What we know of its social and economic life is scattered before the early thirteenth century but suggests an expanding rural population, capable of supporting monasteries and hospitals. The Liber focorum (Book of Hearths), which surveyed the rural households of the 124 communes, indicates a prosperous and stable country population, served by thirty-two parish churches (pievi) in the province c. 1244. But a decline was setting in: only 108 communes were reported in 1255. The decline seems to have continued through the fourteenth century. The black death hit the region in 1348, and the rural population suffered further losses.
Herlihy (1967, 73) estimates the urban population at about 11,000 in 1219. It remained steady until the political upheavals of the early fourteenth century, when unstable conditions and high taxes drove many people away. There was a plague in 1340; and then, in 1348 (as noted above), came the black death, cutting the population nearly in half. The result was a lack of tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers in the city at mid-century. But recovery followed; there was more church building in the second half of the fourteenth century than there had been since the twelfth century, the population grew to about 8,000 by 1400, and there were steady increases in wages for both rural and urban workers. The population also expanded outside the city walls.
The chief industries in rhe city were ironwork and wool, which continued to prosper. Political subjugation to Florence had economic advantages. As early as 1209, Pistoian bankers were present at the fairs in Champagne. Following land routes or using ships from Pisa, merchants also traveled to Marseilles and beyond. They formed merchant companies, of which the five most prominent were the Ammanati, Chiarenti, Panciatichi, Reali, and Visconti. By the late thirteenth century, the Ammanati had regular establishments in Bologna, Genoa, England, Orléans, Paris, Montpellier, and Acre in the Levant. Their English office unfortunately lent money to Edward I of England, whose failure to pay led to their bankruptcy early in the fourteenth century, but the others survived as economic and political leaders.
The statutes of 1330 list dealers in spices, gold, silks, and girdles; and money changers, cloth and iron workers, furriers, masons, vintners, innkeepers, butchers, shoemakers, painters, and barbers. In the twelfth century, Pistoia had done little to finish the wool it collected, but by 1330 the city had weavers, finishers, tailors, and stocking and doublet makers. There were also manufacturers of silk. The ironworkers made arms and sent them to Florence and elsewhere.
The cathedral continued to be an important force in the social life of the city; pilgrims came to the shrine of Saint James in the cathedral, and as we have seen, the Opera di San Jacopo, which saw to its maintenance and adornment, had a palazzo in the main square. This was run by a city official. Records that survive from the mid-fourteenth century on indicate that the Opera di San Jacopo sponsored increasingly lavish feasts. It also gave alms to the deserving poor of the city and the region. It survived until 1777. By the sixteenth century, a Confraternity of Saint James was organizing processions; we do not know when it was founded.
Other churches also had processions. In ceremonies similar to chose at Florence, the Benedictine nunnery of San Piero Maggiore presided over the mystic marriage of its abbess with each new bishop, with feasting and processions, until the seventeenth century. The Cavallieri di Santo Stefano had their celebrations at the church of San Bartolomeo.
Miracles were a part of the social life of any medieval shrine, and in addition to the relic of Saint James the city had a miraculous fourteenth-century painted bed in the church of the Madonna del Letto. The twelfth-century bishop, Atto, was translated to a new shrine in 1337; by 1357, seven miracles had been recorded to be presented in the documents for his canonization.
The oldest city hospital, the Ospedale del Ceppo, has provided care for the sick and permanently infirm since its foundation c. 1277; the present building is remarkable for a series of polychrome rerra-cotta tondi by Giovanni della Robbia (early sixteenth century), representing the cardinal virtues, the theological virtues, and the seven works of mercy. With the hospital of San Gregorio, which cared for the insane as well as the sick and permanently infirm, the Ospedale del Ceppo also distributed alms and food to the poor during specified feasts.
There are manuscripts of Bibles, sermons, commentaries of Augustine, and the decretals of Burchard dating from the eleventh century and the early twelfth century still in the cathedral library and city archives of Pistoia, suggesting that the city must have had both a school and a scriptorium.
The earliest named author associated with Pistoia is Bishop Atto. According to a tradition at Vallombrosa, where he was abbot, he was a Spaniard, born in the Portugese border town of Badajoz. At Vallombrosa, he wrote lives of two Vallombrosan monks—Saint John Gualbert (d. 1133) and Bernard, who became bishop of Parma. All that survives of Atto's literary endeavors at Pistoia is his correspondence with Rainerius and Archbishop Diego Gelmirez of Compostela about the relic of Saint James.
The lively account of the consecration of the first chapel to Saint James in the cathedral in 1145 is the work of Cantarinus of Pisa, who was active as a scribe in Pistoia in the 1140s. Authors of subsequent Jacobean miracles and liturgies are anonymous, but (as mentioned above) two Pistoian miracles were included by Jacobus de Voragine in his widespread collection of saints' lives, Legenda aurea. Miracles of Atto himself were collected after the discovery and reinterment of his body in the cathedral in 1337. Later in the twelfth century, Bishop Bonus wrote a treatise, De cohabitatione clericorum et mulierum (c. 1189).
Apart from these traces, we know little of the intellectual and literary life of the city. The cathedral must have had a school, but no distinguished scholars are identified with it. We know of independent grammar masters lodging in the city in the late thirteenth century. The city's own historians who left contemporary accounts all fall outside our period: Sozomeno (d. 1458); Manetti; and Francesco Ricciardi, who wrote a city chronicle from 1494 to 1500.
Zaccagnini (1907) collected tbe work of a number of Pistoian poets—e.g., Paolo Lanfranchi, Meo Abbracciavacca, and Lemmo Orlandi—from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but the only one of major importance is Cino da Pistoia. Cino, the son of ser Francesco dei Sinibalde (Sighibuldi, Sinibuldi), was a canon lawyer as well as poet of the dolce stil nuovo and was a friend and contemporary of Dante, who refers to him in De vulgari eloquentia. Though Cino served as the judge of civil cases in Pistoia in 1317, he spent most of his career elsewhere. He held teaching positions in Siena (1321-1326), Perugia, and Naples and also lectured in Florence and Bologna. His poems include exchanges with several Bolognese notables, as well as poems to Dante, the best-known of which is on the death of Beatrice. Cino's own ladylove, Selvaggia Vergiolesi, came from a Pistoian magnate family. Cino's Latin legal works—the only ones mentioned in his epitaph in the cathedral—include commentaries on the first nine books of the code of Justinian, and some quaestiones, consilia, and additiones. Cino bought property in Pistoia the year before he died, and a cenotaph was erected in the cathedral, near the altar of his uncle the bishop; Cino's nephew inherited the castellum and torre.
Zelone Zeloni was also a doctor of law, but c. 1374 he wrote a Latin epic, Pia fons. Tancredi Vergiolesi corresponded with Coluccio Salutati. Buonaccorso da Montemagno wrote canzoni to the lady Lauretta; his nephew and namesake lectured on law and wrote a treatise on nobility.
The visitor to Pistoia is first impressed by its circuit of walls, dating from c. 1240 and still complete. Within the city, traces can be found of the first circuit with four gates, built under the Lombard king Desiderius c. 772; and the second circuit, of c. 1150. The magnificent tower of the fortress of Saint Barbara is a sixteenth-century addition. Within the walls are numerous churches, as well as the medieval houses where the builders of the baptistery lived, on Via Stracceria between the baptistry and Piazza della Sala. Piazza del Duomo contains the cathedral, with campanile and baptistery, and several medieval palaces. Palazzo Pretorio dates from 1368 and still has carved or painted crests of podestà, capitani, and magistrates on the walls and vaulting of the entrance foyer. The Palazzo del Comune was built between 1295 and 1353 for the anziani. In the central square, Pistoia still has the feel of a well-built medieval city.
Since Pistoia had few native architects of the first rank, it imported architects from Florence, Pisa, or Siena for major projects. These outsiders, however, had local helpers and assistants, and some of their names have come down to us. We know a bit more about the decorative artists associated with buildings. A group of Pistoians—including Vincino, Leonardo, Enrico, and Giacomino da Pistoia; and Jacopo di Mazzeo—worked in Pisa on the Camposanto under Giovanni Pisano, son of Nicola Pisano, during the last years of the thirteenth century. They also worked in Pistoia. Enrico was probably responsible for the capitals on the main door of Sant'Andrea. In the church of San Paolo, Jacopo di Mazzeo made the statue of the saint above the architrave. Vincino may be the same as the Vincino who worked on the figure of the Madonna in an apse mosaic at the duomo of Pisa. Antonio Vite worked in Pisa in 1403, under Stamina, on the passion of Christ, and later assisted with the frescoes in the chapel of Saint Anthony Abbot in Pistoia.
We know little more than the names of most of the members of the artists' guild. Giovanni Cristiani is an exception. He is mentioned first in 1374 and again in 1382. According to Vasari, he had studied with Cavallini; he worked in the cathedral in 1394 and 1396 and wrote manuscripts. His three sons, Bartolo-meo, Jacopo, and Giovanni, were also painters.
The first cathedral was dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours in the fifth century, but it was rededicated in 595 to saints Zeno, Felix, Rufinus, and Proculus. The final rededication in 1453 was to saints Zeno and James. Pistoia suffered the usual vicissitudes of medieval cathedrals. There was a disastrous fire in 1108. Two years later, Countess Matilda of Tuscany gave money for a new cathedral. The massive columns in the nave survived the fire of 1202 and can still be seen. In 1240, Nicola Pisano rebuilt a three-aisle church. In 1298, the nave collapsed in an earthquake; its replacement was restored in 1660. In 1311, the portico was constructed with black-and-white marble from Monte Ferrato in the territory of Prato and from Valdibrana. Although the choir and Romanesque apse were destroyed in 1599 to make way for the present Baroque apse, the cathedral remains substantially a thirteenth- and fourteenth-century building.
The elaborate silver and gilded altar of Saint James in the chapel in the south aisle was a lengthy project. The oldest part is the base, with New Testament scenes and apostles, which was worked in silver by Andrea d'Ognabene in 1316. The right-wing panel, with silver reliefs of other Old and New Testament subjects, was done by the Florentines Francesco di Niccolo and Leonardo di Ser Giovanni in 1361 — 1364. The left wing with scenes from the life of Saint James was completed by Leonardo in 1367-1371. Gilio Pisano did the silver seated statue of Saint James, surrounded by the other apostles, in 1353. Giovanni Cristiani designed the Christ in the mandorla above the apostles in 1394, and this was executed by the goldsmith Nofri di Buto and Atto di Piero Braccini. Pietro dArrigo (1386) did many of the figures of the four doctors and four evangelists, and Pace di Valentino executed many of the figures in the niches surrounding Saint James on the throne. In all, there are 628 figures on the altarpiece. The result of all this industry is nearly overpowering, but Gilio Pisano's Saint James preserves a compelling serene dignity.
Political turmoil did not disrupt the creative life of Pistoia. The duomo received further adornment in the fourteenth century, and the octagonal baptistery was begun in 1338 by Celiino di Nese. Jacopo di Mazzeo fashioned the marble statue of Saint James (1366) on the top right-hand side of the facade. The monument to Cino da Pistoia (1337), designed by Celiino di Nese, shows Cino flanked by four of his pupils. The main altar was redone in 1337 and again in 1606. In 1379-1383, Filippo di Andrea fashioned a reliquary of the Holy Cross weighing 28 pounds (about 13 kilograms) and requiring 6 ounces (168 grams) of silver gilt.
Across the piazza from the duomo is the baptistery, in green-and-white marble with a lead-covered cupola. It was begun in 1338 by Cellino di Nese, working from a design by Andrea Pisano, and was finished in 1359. Statuettes and bas-reliefs are by Andrea's sons Nino and Tommaso. The exterior of the baptismal font is decorated with panels from the choir of the duomo. In the interior of the font, an early basin (1266) in polychrome marble by Lanfranco da Como has been discovered.
The fortified tower of the poaestà, dating from c. 1200, became the campanile for the duomo in 1301, with the addition of three orders of columns in the Pisan style of dark-green and white marble, designed either by Giovanni Pisano or by his assistant Fra Guglielmo di Pistoia. It is 22 feet (67 meters) high—the approximate elevation of Pistoia above sea level.
The oldest surviving church in Pistoia is Sant'Andrea, built in the first half of the twelfth century. The relief sculpture of the Adoration of the Magi above the doorway was done by Magister Gruamonte and his brother Adeodatus in 1166. The pulpit in the nave is an imitation of Nicola Pisano's pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa, by his son Giovanni. Also from the twelfth century (1159) is San Bartolomeo in Pantano, with a relief of Christ and the apostles (from 1167) on the facade.
San Giovanni Fuorcivitas—which, as its name implies, is located outside the twelfth-century city walls—has one long side adorned with dark-green and white arcades in the Pisan style, and relief sculptures on the architrave by Gruamonte (c. 1162). Inside are a pulpit by Fra Guglielmo da Pisa (a follower of Nicola Pisano) and a font by Giovanni Pisano, both of which date from c. 1270. The altar is composed of intarsia panels from the duomo, and to its left is a polyptych by Taddeo Gaddi (1353-1355).
Though it is an old foundation, the church of San Pietro Maggiore dates from the late thirteenth century. The architrave over the main portal is divided into niches containing white marble statuettes of Christ, Mary, and the apostles; these have been ascribed to Bono Fiorentino, who also worked on Sant'-Andrea. The church of San Francesco, begun in 1294, has frescoes on Franciscan themes by followers of Giotto. In the chap terhouse off the cloister in the church of San Domenico, also begun toward the end of the thirteenth century, are collected various frescoes by artists such as Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani and some members of the Sienese school.
See also Cino da Pistoia; Dante Alighieri; Florence; Lanfranchi da Pistoia, Paolo; Orlandi da Pistoia, Lemmo; Pisa; Pisano, Giovanni; Pisano, Nicola; Prato
JEANNE KROCHALIS
Beani, Gaetano. La chiesa pistoiese dalla sua origine ai tempi nostri. Pistoia: Bracali, 1883.
—. La cattedrale pistoiese, l'altare di San Jacopo, e la Sacrestia de' belli Arredi. Pistoia, 1903.
Bowsky, William. "A New Consilium of Cino da Pistoia (1324)." Speculum, 42, 1967, pp. 431-447.
Bullettino Storico Pistoiese, 1899-1858; n.s., 1959-1965; Series 3, 1966—.
Buscione, Cristina. "Pistoia Piazza del Duomo." In Monumenti d'Italia: Le piazze, ed. Franco Borsi and Geno Pampaloni. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1975, pp. 222-227.
Cappelletti, Giuseppe. Le chiese d'Italia: Dalla loro origine sino ai nostri giorni, Vol. 17. Venice: G. Antonelli, 1862, pp. 73-103.
Chiti, Alfredo. Gli archivi della storia d'Italia, Vol. 2, Pistoia, ed. Giuseppe Mazzatinti. Rocca San Casciano: Capelli, 1903.
—. Pistoia: Guida storica artistica. Pistoia: Niccolai, 1956.
Cino da Pistoia. Le rime di Cino da Pistoia, ed. Guido Zaccagnini. Geneva: Olschki, 1925.
Cino da Pistoia nel VI centenario della morte, ed. Comitato Pistoiese per le Onoranze. Pistoia: Cav. Alberto Pacinotti, 1937.
Gai, Lucia, Rosalia Manno Tolu, and Giancarlo Savino. L'apostolo San Jacopo in documenti dell'Archivio di Stato di Pistoia. Pistoia: Archivio di Stato di Pistoia, 1984.
Herlihy, David. Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200-1430. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967.
Jones, J. W. "Cino da Pistoia." In Interpretations of Modern Legal Philosophies: Essays in Honor of Roscoe Pound, ed. Paul Sayre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. (Reprint, Littleton, Colo: F. B. Rothman, 1981.)
Marconi, Paolo, Francesco Paolo Fiore, Giorgio Muratore, and Enrico Valeriani, eds. I castelli: Architettura e difesa del territorio tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Monumenti d'Italia. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1978, pp. 260-265.
Rauty, Natale. Storia di Pistoia, Vol. 1, Dall'altomedioevo all'età precomunale, 406-1105. Florence: Le Monnier, 1988.
Stones, Alison, and Jeanne Krochalis. The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago, Vol. 2, Manuscripts and Readers. London: Harvey Miller, 1998.
Tigri, Giuseppe. Pistoia e il suo territorio: Pescia e i suoi dintorni. Pistoia: Tipografia Cino, 1854. (Reprint, Bologna: Atesa, 1990.)
Tolomei, Francesco. Guida di Pistoia per gli amanti delle belle arti, con notizie degli architetti, scultori, e pittori pistoiesi. Pistoia: Bracali, 1821. (Reprint, Bologna: A. Forni, 1975.)
Zaccagnini, Guido, ed. I rimatori pistoiesi del secoli XIII e XIV: Meo Abbracciavacca, Si. Gui da Pistoia, Lemrno Orlandi, Paolo Lanfranchi, Meo di Bugno, Mula de' Mull, Guelfo Taviani, Zampa Ricciardi. Pistoia: Sinibuldiani, 1907.
—. Cino da Pistoia: Studio biografico. Pistoia: D. Pagnini, 1918a.
—. "I banchieri pistoiesi a Bologna e altrove nel sec. XIII: Contribute alia storia del commercio nel medio evo." Bulletino Storico Pistoiese, o.s., 20, 1918b, pp. 26-55, 133-144, 188-204; 21, 1919, pp. 35-46, 106-108, 117-130.
See Texts, Early Italian: Placiti Cassinesi
Plato (427-348 B.C.) was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. As a young man, perhaps in part owing to Socrates's influence, he refused to become involved in violent opposition to a democracy led by a relative. But when the democracy itself later executed Socrates, Plato decisively rejected Athenian politics for a life of philosophy. He subsequently founded the Academy, a loose group of intellectuals devoted to philosophy, especially mathematics. Though he did not take part in domestic politics, he made several visits to Sicily, at some personal risk, in connection with plans for political reform. Most of his own philosophizing in the Academy was carried on through live discussions. What he wrote appeared in the format of dialogues in which Socrates usually played the principal role.
During the fifth century B.C., traditional Greek values had been challenged by the so-called Sophists, who subjected every aspect of life to criticism based on experience and on reason free from the inhibitions of convention. Socrates and Plato, too, insisted on the autonomy of reason, but at the same time they recognized that awareness of its own limitations is a primary requirement for fully rational thought. Many traditional values could then be rigorously criticized with no danger of relativism or nihilism. From the conviction that reason is the key to human nature but that mankind has powerful irrational impulses as well, Plato concluded that human beings are complex creatures and that philosophy, accordingly, is concerned with difficult choices between conflicting moral values. Goodness centers on our true self (reason and soul), evil on our lower self (passion and body). Rational choice is possible only if reason has something objective and binding to work with. Socrates and the Pythagoreans had already viewed philosophy in these terms, and Plato's thought borrows elements from both to support a full-scale justification—epistemological as well as ontological—for the conviction that philosophy is an entire way of life founded on what is absolutely true.
The dialogues are commonly divided into three main groups. The earliest group portrays Socrates attempting, unsuccessfully, to define key ethical terms. The middle group introduces a more positive, ambitious metaphysical basis for knowledge. The last group explores technical questions, especially in epistemology, reflecting current discussions in the Academy. The first group seems to represent Plato's initial grappling with issues raised by the critical questioning through which Socrates showed the need for a firm standard of value without fully providing one of his own. The elaboration of metaphysical tools—the theory of forms—in the middle period is Plato's own proposal (influenced by Pythagorean mathematics and Parmenides's theory of reality) concerning an objective foundation for knowledge and reality. Its central thesis is that only what is fully real can be fully known. The last group of dialogues, some of which reopen fundamental issues, is an ongoing critical examination that marks the imperfection of human knowledge and is an abiding Socratic heritage. Plato thus has not so much a system as a basic orientation for which he is convinced good reasons can be advanced.
The tneory of forms (this term, like others in Platonic philosophy, is often capitalized) is an ontological counterpart to and a basis for the distinctions between truth and error, good and evil, mind and body. Because material objects are subject to change and are inherently imperfect, they are not fully knowable. Yet relativism and skepticism are not inevitable, since we do in fact encounter something that is unchanging, perfect, and therefore an object of true knowledge. This is notably the case in mathematical knowledge of, say, the circle, which as studied by the mathematician is not material at all but a changeless, wholly objective reality. We have access to such objects only through the mind, and so there is a domain made up of perfect entities which serve as exemplars for the countless imperfect things we deal with physically (e.g., circular things). These fully real forms, or ideas, thus represent an alternative "world" opened to us by philosophy; that is why our true self lies in our power to reason abstractly. In addition to mathematical objects (which Plato may have regarded as somewhat different from other forms), forms include perfect patterns of various virtues and of structures in the material universe (e.g., living things), though he remains vague about many aspects of the theoiy.
We also live in bodies—hence the perennial tension in Platonism between the physical and intellectual dimensions of human life. In several dialogues on love (Symposium, Phaedrus) Plato gives both sides their due by embracing the paradox that true knowledge—e.g., of the form of beauty—is attained also through nonrational inspiration and passionate response to bodies. On a larger scale, though the universe is material, it is genuinely beautiful and rational in so far as it, too, is shaped by soul and mind at work through body (Timaeus).
Plato often uses terms taken from the religious mysteries in speaking of the encounter with true being or with the supreme idea of the good (Republic) as a "vision." Such language is natural, given the limits to analytic reason, and several dialogues include elaborate myths dealing with the soul's life outside an earthly body. As something nonmaterial and akin to the forms, soul is immortal and subject to rewards or punishments for the embodied life it led in the course of cycles of reincarnation. Much of this is vaguely Pythagorean or Orphic; and though it is not intended to be taken literally in detail, it is meant quite seriously in so far as life is not explicable in purely immanent, material terms. Plato, however, leaves many questions unanswered about exactly what the world of pure being and pure thought is. He may have had in mind no more than another way of understanding the familiar material world. It often seems, though, to be another, higher world in a richer sense, the real home of true selves. This view, along with his ascetic insistence on the priority of soul over body, made his thought in its Neoplatonic version attractive to later Christian theologians.
The Jowett translation of Plato is often eloquent, though dated. The Loeb edition conveniently combines Greek text with translations but is uneven. Penguin translations are relatively recent and readily available.
See also Neoplatonism
PAUL PLASS
Brisson, Luc. "Platon 1958-1975." Lustrum, 20, 1977, pp. 5-304. (This and the two entries below are bibliographic surveys.)
—. "Platon 1975-1980." Lustrum, 25, 1983, pp. 31-320.
—. "Platon 1980-1985." Lustrum, 30, 1988, pp. 11-294.
Cherniss, Harold. "Plato 1950-1957." Lustrum, 4, 1959, pp. 5-308; 5, 1960, pp. 323-648. (Bibliographic survey.)
Crombie, I. M. An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, 2 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962-1963.
Gurthie, William K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vols. 4 and 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 and 1978.
Moline, Jon. Plato's Theory of Understanding. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
"Plato." In L'Annéee Philologique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, annually. (Complete yearly bibliography.)
Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1902. (Reprint, 1984.)
Teloh, Henry. The Development of Plato's Metaphysics. University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1981.
White, Nicholas P. Plato on Knowledge and Reality. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976.
Podestà—in English, podesta—is derived from the Latin potestas, "power," and refers to an office with special authority in the city-states of communal Italy. The term was sometimes applied to leaders of bodies such as the popolo and usually denoted the commune's highest officer. The podestas were at first often, and later always, foreigners, chosen for their lack of local connections or interests and for their presumed impartiality in the face of inveterate civic strife.
Frederick I Barbarossa, after the Diet of Roncaglia (1158), imposed the first podestà to replace or supercede citizen-consuls as chief judicial and executive officials in cities under his control. By 1175, Bergamo, Lodi, Padua, and Parma, and in the 1180s Cremona, Milan, and Piacenza, had all chosen their own podestas, without reference to the emperor. After the peace of Constance (1183), powerful cities began establishing the office in subject towns; in 1276 Siena appointed twenty-seven podestas.
The position could be lucrative (the podestà of Forlì received 70 lire, and the podestà of Milan received 2,000 lire); but it could also be dangerous: some podestas were beaten, mutilated, or even killed (in Bologna in 1193 and 1194 and in Modena in 1213). The podestas served for nonrenewable terms lasting only one or two years, and later only six months; thus the demand for good podestas was always strong. "Professionals'' developed a regular clientele: the Milanese Gugliermo Pusterla, for example, was appointed seventeen times. A special civic commission generally elected a candidate to be approved by the legislative council. Those chosen were usually men of arms or law with a background of respectable public service. They had to provide their own judges, notaries, clerks, and bodyguard. The podestà took an oath of office, promising to obey and execute the laws, dispense justice, be accessible to the public, and avoid private meetings or entanglements. He presided over communal council meetings, led the army in wartime, kept the peace, and oversaw both criminal and civil judicial cases. He was paid every two or three months, and at the end of his term his performance was scrutinized very formally and carefully (a process known as "syndication").
The office of podestà flourished between 1220 and 1270; but with the rise of signori, who often usurped power from their positions as podestas, the power and authority of the podesteria faded.
See also Frederick I Barbarossa; Popolo; Urban Development
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Artifoni, Enrico. "I podestà professionals e ia fondazione retorica della politica comunale nel secolo XIII." Quaderni Storici, 63, 1986, pp. 687-719.
Belelli, Giovanni. L'istituto del podestà in Perugia nel secolo XIII. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1939.
Crouzet Pavan, Elisabeth. "Venise et le monde communal: Recherches sur les podestas vénetiens 1200-1350." Journal des Savants, 2, 1992, pp. 277-315.
Franchini, Vittorio. Saggio di ricerche sull'istituto del podestà nei comuni medievali. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1912.
Giorgetti, Vittorio. Podestà, capitani del popolo, e loro ufficiali a Perugia (1195—1500). Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1993.
Hertter, Fritz. Die Podestàliteratur italiens im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Teubner, 1910. (Reprint, Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1973.)
Hyde, J. K. Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civil Life, 1000-1350. London: Macmillan, 1973.
Piovanelli, Giancarlo. I podestà del libero comune di Brescia, 1184-1316. Montichiari: Zanetti, 1996.
Waley, Daniel. The Italian City-Republics, 3rd ed. London: Longman, 1988.
Zolli, Paolo. Podestà di Torcello, Domenico Viglari, 1290-1291. Venice: Il Comitato Editore, 1966.
What we know of Marco Polo (1254-1324) is based largely on his Divisament dou monde, later known as Libro delle meraviglie del mondo, or simply as Il Milione (after the name Emilione, which Marco Polo and his relatives used to distinguish themselves from the many other Polos in Venice). Tradition has it that Marco dictated this work to Rustichello da Pisa while the two were held in a Genoese prison. Rustichello, a writer of Arthurian romances, transcribed Marco's account into Old French (the preeminent vernacular of the romance genre), and embellished it with narrative and stylistic features typical of a medieval romance. Since people in the Middle Ages regarded Il Milione as a book of marvels, it took a long time before cartographers and explorers (including Christopher Columbus) became aware of its importance as a work of geography.
Marco Polo's work is more than a medieval romance or a book of marvels; it was probably meant to be a straightforward account of two journeys to China: the first by his father Niccolò Polo and his uncle Matteo Polo, and the second by all three Polos. There are numerous discrepancies among the manuscripts and early editions of Il Milione which probably do not reflect Marco's original account or Rustichello's lost rendition of it. There is, however, sufficient information in the most important manuscripts to enable scholars to reconstruct the Polos' two expeditions to China.
In 1260, the two Venetian brothers departed from Constantinople, where they had done business for six years, and arrived in Bukhara (in the Uzbek republic). They were forced to stay there for three years because local wars had cut off the roads leading back to the west. During that time they accepted an invitation to join an envoy from Hulaku Khan to Kublai Khan (grandson of the Mongul conqueror Genghis Khan); and in 1266 they arrived at Kublai Khan's summer palace in Shangtu (near Tolun on the Shan-den Ho, or Luan River, about 150 miles—240 kilometers—north of Beijing). The brothers stayed at Shangtu for several months before returning to Italy with a message for Pope Clement IV from Kublai Khan.
Not long after their return to Venice in 1269, the brothers decided to bring Marco with them on their second expedition to China. They left Venice in 1271, accompanied by two Dominican monks who were supposed to travel with them to Shangtu but who soon withdrew from the expedition. When the Polos arrived in Acre (Akko) on the Syrian coast, they received letters from the newly elected Pope Gregory X for Kublai Khan. From Acre they went to Ayas (Cilicia) on the southeastern coast of Turkey and presumably took the caravan route to the Turkish cities of Kayseri, Sivas, Erzincan, and Erzurum before arriving at Lake Van. From there the Polos passed through eastern Armenia, where Marco describes Mount Ararat (the traditional site of Noah's landing after the flood), and then south to the Persian cities of Tabriz, Yazd, and Kerman before reaching the ancient Persian port of Hormuz (Bandar Abbas). When they realized that it was unsafe to go to China by ship, the Polos retraced their steps back to Kerman and went north to Mashhad, in northeastern Iran. It is at this point in the narrative that Marco recounts the tale of the "Old Man of the Mountain," one of the best-known episodes in Il Milione. From there the Polos went to Balkh (in northern Afghanistan), where, according to Marco, Alexander the Great married the daughter of Darius, and then to the castle of Taican (present Talikan), known for its nearby salt mountains. They spent a year in the province of Badakhshan while Marco recovered from an illness.
On Marco's recovery, the Polos presumably followed the Oxus (Amu-Darya) and Vakhsh rivers, crossed the Pamirs (known to Marco as the "roof of the world"), and reached the old silk route. The Polos followed the silk route through eastern Turkestan to the Chinese cities of Kashgar (K'a-shih), Yarkand (Soch'e), Khotan (Hotien), Keriya (Yiitien), and Cherchen (Ch'iehmo) before arriving in the ancient city of Lop (either Charkhliq or Milan), where they made preparations to cross the desert and the salt-encrusted bed of dry Lop Nor. After thirty days of travel through the desert, they arrived at Sha-Chou (Tun Huang), the first Chinese city under the khan's rule. From there they went to Kan Chou (Zhangye or Chang-yeh) in Kansu province, where they spent a year waiting, presumably, for the khan to send them an escort. They resumed their journey by going south to Lanchou and then north along the Yellow River (and perhaps along the Great Wall) in the direction of Beijing, and arrived at Shangtu in 1275.
Marco spent the next seventeen years serving Kublai Khan on several diplomatic missions to the southern regions of the khan's vast empire, including Yunnan province, Burma (as far as the Irrawaddy River), Cochin China (Vietnam), and even parts of Tibet. Although Marco was impressed by most of these places, his greatest praise and most detailed descriptions are reserved for Hangchou in Chechiang province, the largest and most important city in China at this time. As scholars have pointed out, it was probably Marco's ability to describe in detail the people, customs, and geography of all these places (most of which the khan himself had never seen) that enabled him to remain in the emperor's good graces for seventeen years. Marco, in fact, claims that Kublai Khan rewarded him for his services by making him "governor" of the city of Yangchou, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Nanking (Nanching). Scholars, however, find it hard to believe that a foreigner could have held such an important position: it is more likely that Marco held a minor post, such as that of inspector.
Marco Polo's house and courtyard, Venice. Photograph courtesy of Gail L. Geiger.
In 1292, the Polos found an opportunity to return to Venice by joining an envoy escorting the princess Cocacin to her groom, Arghun Khan of Persia, the grandnephew of Kublai Khan. The envoy departed from the port of Zaiton (Chuanchou or Chinchiang in Fuchien province on the Formosa Strait) and sailed along the coasts of China and Vietnam to Sumatra, Ceylon, and the Malabar Coast of India before reaching Hormuz almost two years later. In Hormuz, the Polos learned of Arghun's death and delivered Cocacin to Arghun's brother Kaikhatu. They spent the next nine months in Tabriz before going to Trebizond (the Turkish town of Trabzon on the Black Sea). From there they sailed to Constantinople and Negroponte (a Venetian colony on the Greek island of Euboea) before finally arriving in Venice in 1295. Not long after his return to Venice, Marco was taken prisoner by the Genoese while sailing a galley (possibly in 1296). He remained in prison until 1299, during which time he dictated to Rustichello his adventures in the far east.
The Polos' two journeys to China were the farthest any European had traveled to the Orient since the time of Justinian. In 1246, Giovanni di Piano Carpini, who was a Franciscan emissary of Pope Innocent IV and the author of a history on the Mongols (Historia mongolorum), went as far as Karakorum (the ancient Mongolian capital, about 250 miles—400 kilometers—west of Ulaan Baatar). In 1253, William of Rubruck, also a Franciscan friar, went to Karakorum as an envoy of King Louis IX of France. Although both friars left written accounts of their trips to Mongolia, neither account captured the imagination of so many people for so many centuries as Marco's Il Milione.
See also Giovanni di Piano Carpini; Venice
STEVEN GROSSVOGEL
Benedetto, Luigi Foscolo. Il libro di Messer Marco Polo cittadino di Venezia detto Milione si raccontano le Meraviglie del mondo. Milan and Rome: Trèves, Treccani, Tumminelli, 1932.
Marco Polo. Il libro di Marco Polo detto Milione nella versione trecentesca dell'Ottimo, ed. Daniele Ponchiroli with an introduction by Sergio Solmi. Turin: Einaudi, 1974.
—. Il Milione, ed. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto. Florence: Leo Olschki, 1928.
—. Il Milione, ed. Ranieri Allulli. Classici Mondadori. Milan and Verona: Mondadori, 1954.
—. Milione, ed. Lucia Battaglia Ricci. Firenze: Sansoni, 2001.
—. Milione: Le divisament dou monde; il Milione nelle redazioni toscana e franco italiana, ed. Gabriella Ronchi, intro. Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1982.
—. Il Milione: Introduzione, edizione del testo toscano ("Ottimo"), ed. Ruggero M. Ruggieri. Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, Series 1(200). Florence: Olschki, 1986.
—. Il "Milione" veneto: Ms. CM 211 della Biblioteca Civica di Padova, ed. Alvaro Barbieri and Alvise Andreose. Venice: Marsilio, 1999.
—. Milione: Versione toscana del trecento, ed. Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso. Milan: Adelphi, 1975. (With index and glossary by Giorgio R. Cardona.)
Marco Polo: Milione; Giovanni da Pian del Carpine: Viaggi a' Tartari. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1982. (Includes an Italian translation of Historia mongolorum.)
Bellonci, Maria. The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Teresa Waugh. New York: Facts on File, 1984.
The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans, and ed. Henry Yule. New York: Scribner, 1929. (3rd ed., "revised throughout in the light of recent discoveries," but not based on Benedetto's critical edition.)
Marco Polo. The Description of the World, trans. A. C. Pelliot and P. Pelliot. London: Routledge, 1938.
—. The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Ronald Latham. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958.
Barozzi, Pietro. Appunti per la lettura del Milione. Genoa: Fratelli Bozzi, 1971.
Bellonci, Maria. Marco Polo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1989.
Benedetto, Luigi Foscolo. La tradizione manoscritta del Milione di Marco Polo. Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1982.
Brunello, Franco. Marco Polo e le merci dell'Oriente. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986.
Capusso, Maria Grazia. La lingua del Divisament dou monde di Marco Polo. Pisa: Pacini, 1980.
Hart, Henry Hersh. Marco Polo: Venetian Adventurer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.
Komroff, Manuel. Contemporaries of Marco Polo: Consisting of the Travel Records to the Eastern Parts of the World ofWilliatn of Rubruck. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1928.
Marco Polo, Venezia, e l'oriente, ed. Alvise Zorzi. Milan: Electa, 1982.
Olschki, Leonardo. L'Asia di Marco Polo: Introduzione alla lettura e allo studio del Milione. Florence: Civelli, 1957.
—. Marco Polo's Asia: An Introduction to His "Description of the World" Called Il Milione, trans. John A Scott. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960.
Pelliot, Paul. Notes on Marco Polo, 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1959.
Ross, E. Denison. Marco Polo and His Book. Annual Italian Lectures of the British Academy: 1934. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934.
Segre, Cesare, Gabriella Ronchi, and Marisa Milanesi. Avventure del Milione. Parma: Zara, 1986.
Watanabe, Hiroshi. Marco Polo Bibliography: 1477—1983. Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 1986.
Zorzi, Alvise. Vita di Marco Polo Veneziano. Milan: Rusconi, 1982.
The Benedictine abbey at Pomposa in the region of Emilia, 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Ferrara, was founded in 523. It remained a flourishing cultural center until the thirteenth century, when it declined because the marshy land it was built on had become malarial. Pomposa is the best surviving example in Italy of a free abbey—an abbey which was an independent state with territorial rights. Through the favor of the German emperors, it won independent status, and in 1045 it oversaw the rule of a large territory bordered by the Po and Gauro rivers and the Adriatic Sea. In addition, it also ruled states outside this territory. Although the cloister no longer exists, the surviving remains of the complex include the chapterhouse, the refectory, some of the dorter (dormitory), the campanile, and a distinguished Palazzo della Ragione. All the buildings except for the Palazzo della Ragione stand along two sides of an open courtyard that the cloister once occupied. The restored remains of the Palazzo della Ragione, where the abbot dispensed justice, are situated to the west of the complex.
The church, Santa Maria, was built between 751 and 874, and its design follows the style of many other Romanesque churches of the time, which were characterized by heavy walls, small windows, and a semicircular apse at one end of the sanctuary. The basilican form of the church must have been inspired by similar models at Ravenna. The simple interior has planar stone walls that lack moldings, and three aisles that are nine bays long. In addition, there are three apses; the median apse, decorated with pilaster strips, is circular on the inside and polygonal on the outside. The wall division of the nave is reminiscent of Sant'Angelo in Formis. The lack of structural accents in the church's interior, with the noticeable exception of the raised apse, however, serves to provide an appropriate backdrop for the elaborately frescoed walls.
Pomposa Abbey. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Abbot Guido of Ravenna built the atrium and campanile in the eleventh century. The campanile is constructed in the typical Lombard style of the time: its nine stages are marked with pilaster strips, applied shafting, and arched corbel tables. The Romanesque terra-cotta insets that decorate the campanile appear to have been inspired by similar ornaments at Ravenna. Although the church's exterior decorations do not have an overall iconographic program, the Ravennate design of Pomposa's ornamental terra-cottas, created by molding the clay by hand and then baking it, provides a magnificent decorative complement to the church's facade. The abbey also has two rose windows, a unique Romanesque or medieval invention, which can be dated to the eleventh century. Pomposa's rose windows, consisting of decorated frames and pierced motifs, resemble a lace design worked into marble. The abbey's floors consist of opus sectile pavements alternating with mosaics, which are inspired by an eastern design and feature fantastic creatures contained within circular bands.
The decoration in the church at Pomposa, possibly executed by various Bolognese masters c. 1351, covers the entire nave, the apse, and the entrance wall and presents the viewer with an impressive array of the most complete collection of monumental painting still in existence. Much scholarly debate remains over the identification of the artists who created the extensive decorations, depicting the entire story of the Bible in great detail. The frescoes in the refectory at the abbey are in early Romagnol monumental style, which can trace its influences to Giotto and Cavallini. One of the most distinctive scenes, the Last Supper, boldly executed in cool, light colors, shows Christ and the disciples seated at a round table. Although the Last Supper has been considered the work of either Pietro da Rimini or Giovanni Baronzio, no positive identification of either artist's hand is possible.
Another artist, who specialized in light, warm colors with soft impasto, is Vitale da Bologna, an exceptional Bolognese master. He is thought to have created the scenes of Saint Eustace in the abbey c, 1351, with the help of some assistants. In addition, the frescoes in the nave of the abbey church are ascribed to Vitale and his pupils. The magnificent Christ in Majesty and the large Last Judgment, which dominate the nave of the abbey church, are executed in the style of Vitale, even if they are not the work of Vitale himself. The novel composition and iconography of the frescoes, combined with certain naturalistic touches, give new vitality and intensity to the biblical themes. For example, the Entry into Jerusalem shows, in addition to the traditional elements of the scene, one young boy reaching down from the top of a tree to assist another boy. The archaizing style of the scenes from the apse wall and the depiction of the Last Judgment on the west wall imply that the work was meant to reestablish an earlier design plan. The frescoes were restored in the 1960s by the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro.
See also Benedictine Order; Ravenna; Vitale da Bologna
JENNIFER A. REA
Brauntels, Wolfgang. Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders, trans. Alastair Lang. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972.
Conant, Kenneth John. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture: 800 to 1200, 4th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993.
Gnudi, Cesare. Vitale da Bologna and Bolognese Painting in the Fourteenth Century, trans. Olga Ragusa. New York: Abrams, 1968.
Hammett, Ralph, and George Edgell. The Romanesque Architecture of Western Europe. New York: Architectural, 1927.
Kidder-Smith, George. Looking at Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1990.
Oertel, Robert. Early Italian Painting to 1400. New York: Praeger, 1968.
Porter, Arthur. Medieval Architecture: Its Origins and Development. New York: Baker and Taylor, 1909.
Ricci, Corrado. Romanesque Architecture in Italy. London: William Heinemann, 1925.
Salmi, Mario. L'abbazia di Pomposa, 2nd ed. Milan: A. Pizzi, 1966.
Smart, Alastair. The Dawn of Italian Painting: 1250-1400. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978.
The term popolo (from the Latin populus, "people") once indicated the non-Roman—i.e., Germanic—elements of early medieval Italian society. By the later eleventh century, in urban northern Italy, popolo referred to the population of towns, sometimes represented in documents by their lay or ecclesiastical lords. As communal governments developed, gaining autonomy for the citizenry from lordship, the popolo were increasingly identified as a middle class between the urban feudal nobility and unskilled or part-time workers, the poor, and recent immigrants. With armed and landed nobles generally dominating communal regimes, the skilled workers, artisans, merchants, and professionals, whose wealth and economic power were driving urban progress, began to demand representation and political power.
Popolani understood organization as it applied to guilds, parishes, and even urban militias, and they used these, and the emerging commune itself, as models for their own societas populi. These became states within states, with their own oaths, elected leaders (captains, podestà, and standard-bearers), councils (priori and anziani), courts, treasuries, and palazzi (e.g., the Bargello in Florence). Although they confronted the urban nobility as their rivals for power, and often battled nobles in the streets, they needed and welcomed disaffected nobles, who had military and leadership skills. In the early thirteenth century, popolani gained guaranteed representation on civic councils: one-third of the seats in Cremona (1210) and Vicenza (1215 and 1222), and half the seats in Milan (1212) and Piacenza (1222). By the 1280s, they controlled the councils, which even passed laws that specifically disadvantaged nobles (or "magnates"), and this marked the high point of the popolo s power.
But success brought division, as poor (the popolo minuto: artisans, shopkeepers) opposed rich (the popolo grasso: bankers, international merchants), and the rich gravitated toward the nobility, weakening the solidarity of the popolo. Popular regimes drifted, by the early Trecento, into oligarchies or signorie, led at times by former captains of the popolo. In the ciompi revolt of the 1370s in Florence, we glimpse a brief resurgence of the popolo minuto, but their potential had long been spent.
See also Ciompi; Urban Development
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Artifoni, Enrico. "Corporazioni e società di 'popolo': Un problema della politica comunale nel secolo XIII." Quaderni Storici, 74, 1990," pp. 387-404.
Burman, Edward. "The Rise of die 'Popoli' and 'Commune': Cremona." In Emperor to Emperor: Italy before the Renaissance. London: Constable, 1991.
Cristiani, Emilio. Nobiltà e popolo nel comune di Pisa dalle origini del podestariato alia signoria dei Donoratico. Naples: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici in Napoli, 1962.
Larner, John. Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216-1380. London: Longman, 1980.
Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Rutenburg, Viktor I. Popolo e movimenti popolari nell'Italia del '300 e '400, trans. Giampietro Borghini. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971.
Tabacco, Giovanni. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule, trans. Rosalind Brown Jensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Waley, Daniel. The Italian City-Republics, 3rd ed. London: Longman, 1990.
Scholars, especially those who are not Italian, have used the term "pornocracy" (from the Greek pornos, "prostitute") since the nineteenth century to describe the "rule of the prostitutes," a period when female members of the papal entourage enjoyed great authority in Rome and over the church.
The evidence for the notorious promiscuity and immorality of the papacy during the early tenth century comes mostly from Liudprand of Cremona's writings. During the Counter-Reformation, as Catholic historians became sensitive about prelates' lifestyles, Cardinal Baronius uncritically adopted Liudprand's scorn for the tenth-century popes. Thereafter, Catholic and Protestant authors perpetuated the stereotype of dissolute popes in that period, so that by the eighteenth century it was common to refer to the "regime of the whores" (Hürenregiment). Voltaire, always polemical, was virtually alone in his dissent; he claimed that several popes of the "iron century" had been worthy clerics. Indeed, though it is convenient and clever, the term "pornocracy" is too facile a characterization of the complex workings of Roman history in the early 900s.
Popes Sergius III (r. 904-911) and John XII (r. 955-964) are generally identified as the first and last representatives of the pornocracy. During the sixty-year period that they bracketed, the popes are said to have fathered other popes (in at least one case by a fifteen-year-old girl), and to have attained the Roman pontificate because of their sexual appeal to influential matrons or even to the whole population of Roman women. But within the pornocratic period, behavior was not uniformly scandalous. Alberic's rule at Rome (932-954) marked a hiatus in the pornocracy, as he patronized ecclesiastical reform. By contrast, both Liudprand and the chronicler Benedict of Sant'Andrea mentioned the years when a woman, Marozia, headed the house of Theophylact (924-932) as particularly debauched.
Contemporary ecclesiastical writers felt a venomous hostility for the popes of this period. This is only partly explained by the chroniclers' indignation at a situation which they considered perverse (and which they compared to infamous Old Testament precedents). Aversion to the clan of Theophylact, which monopolized political authority in the competitive atmosphere of tenth century Rome, and ideological opposition to a Romanocentric, anti-imperial series of popes likewise contributed to forming the dark opinions of the chroniclers.
Any evaluation of the pornocracy depends on how much reliance is placed on the partisan accounts of the tenth-century chroniclers. Liudprand and Benedict of Sant'Andrea were not exact contemporaries of the early pornocrats, whose careers they interpreted as a backdrop to that of John XII. The collated evidence indicates that several popes of the period were licentious and applied moral standards unacceptable to other clerics; still, it is questionable whether sexual excess was the salient, defining characteristic of this period in the history of the papacy. Recent historiography is moving toward a rehabilitation of the pornocracy and its protagonists, and away from interpretations of the tenth-century papacy as a decadent institution populated by spineless debauchees, waiting to be swept aside by various reform movements. However, this effort is hampered by a lack of evidence generated by those directly involved in papal or Roman affairs in the first half of the tenth century.
See also Liudprand of Cremona; Papacy; Papal States; Rome
PAOLO SQUATRITI
Auxilius und Vulgaris: Quellen una Forschungen zur Geschichte des Papstthums im Anfange des zehnten Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1866, pp. 59-161.
Benedict of Sant' Andrea. Il Chronicon di Benedetto, monaco di Sant' Andrea del Soratte e il Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, ed. Giuseppe Zucchetti. Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1920, pp. 152-182.
Flodard. De Christi triumphis apud Italiam, Vol. 12(7), ed. J. Migne. In Patrologia Latina, 135. Paris, 1853a, col. 831.
—. Historia Remensis, Vol. 4(24), ed. J. Migne. In Patrologia Latina, 135. Paris, 1853b, col. 297.
Liber pontificalis, Vol. 2, ed. Louis Duchesne. Paris, 1892.
Liudprand of Cremona. Antapodosis, ed. Ernst Dümmler. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum. Hannover, 1877a, pp. 44-46, 73-75. (See especially 2.47-48, 3.43-45.)
—. Historia Ottonis, ed. Ernst Dummler. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum. Hannover, 1877b, pp. 124-136.
—. The Works of Liudprand of Cremona, trans. F. A. Wright. London: Routledge, 1930.
Reginus of Prüm. Chronicon (Continuatio) 960-965, ed. F. Kurze. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum. Hannover, 1890, pp. 170—175.
Baronius, C. Annates ecclesiastici, Vol. 15. Lucca, 1747. (Covers A.D. 897-912.)
Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Brezzi, Paolo. Roma e l'impero medioevale, 774-1252. Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1947, parts 2-3.
Duchesne, Louis. The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes, A.D. 754-1073, trans. Arnold Harris Mathew. London: Kegan Paul, 1908.
Falco, Giorgio. The Holy Roman Republic: A Historic Profile of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., trans. K. V. Kent. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964, ch. 8.
Fedele, P. "Ricerche per la storia di Roma e del papato nel secolo X." Archivio della Real Società Romana di Storia Patria, 33, 1910, pp. 177-247; 34, 1911, pp. 75-115, 393-423.
Gregorovius, Ferdinand. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3, trans. Mrs. Gustavus W. Hamilton. London: G. Bell, 1903, Book 5, chs. 1-3.
Herrmann, Klaus J. Das Tuskulanerpapsttum (1012-1046): Benedikt VIII, Johannes XIX, Benedikt IX. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1973.
Hubert, Etienne. Espace urbain et habitat à Rome du Xe siècle à la fin du XIIIe siècle. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1990.
Knowles, David, and Dimitri Obolensky. The Middle Ages. The Christian Centuries, 2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, part 1, ch. 5.
Llewellyn, Peter. Rome in the Dark Ages. London: Faber. 1971.
Schimmelpfennig, Bernhard. The Papacy, trans. James Sievert. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, ch. 5.
Tellenbach, Gerd. Die westliche Kirche vom 10. bis zurn frühen 12. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988, ch. 2.4.
Toubert, Pierre. Les structures du Latium médiéval: Le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe siècle à la fin du XIIe siècle. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1973.
Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen, 1972.
Voltaire. Essai sur l'histoire générale, et stir les moeurs et l'ésprit des nations. Paris, 1757.
Like the dal Borgo, Pulci, Strozzi, del Rosso, dell'Antella, and Saltarelli, die upwardly mobile Portinari were members of the Florentine mercantile elite. They were also intensely involved in the political life of Florence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They came originally from Fiesole, and the first documented member of the lineage in Florence was Torrosiano dei Portinari (1201). Though most Portinari were supporters of the popolo, several had been Ghibelline sympathizers during the period of Ghibelline control of the city (1260-1266). Segna di Assalto Portinari served in communal councils under the Ghibelline regime, and Doccia and Giano dei Portinari are also said to have served in that government. Several members of the lineage were inscribed in the wool finishers' guild (Arte di Calimala) and served in the government as priors. The Portinari were also important creditors. Like the Pucci and Alberti companies, a Portinari company had established a permanent office in Naples in the early fourteenth century.
Folco di Ricovero dei Portinari (d. 1289) had at least two daughters, Ravignana and Beatrice (the supposed beloved of Dante). His son, Manetto, was apparently a close friend of Dante. Folco, a banker, was closely associated with the Cerchi and was also a very influential public figure in the late thirteenth century. He served as consul of the wool finishers' guild in 1280 and 1288 and was prior on at least three occasions (1282, 1285, and 1287). In 1286, he founded the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, equipped initially with at least twelve beds. He also appeared as a principal patron of the religious community of Santa Maria dei Serviti (Servites) in the north of the city. He died in 1289.
Beatrice dei Portinari, the daughter of Folco, married Simone di Messer Jacopo dei Bardi. According to Boccaccio, she was the inspiration for Dante's Beatrice. Dante probably first met her in 1274. She appeared in three of his major works: La vita nuova, Il convivio, and the Divina Commedia. Scholars know very little about her life. She apparently died in 1290 at the age of twenty-four, shortly after the death of her father.
See also Dante Alighieri; Florence
GEORGE DAMERON
D'Addario, Arnaldo. "Portinari." In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol. 4. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italians, 1970, pp. 607-609.
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze, 8 vols., trans. Giovanni Battista Klein. Florence: Sansoni, 1960-1978.
Del Lungo, Isidoro. Beatrice nella vita e nella poesia del secolo XIII. Milan: Hoepli, 1891.
Holmes, George. Florence, Rome, and the Origins of the Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
"Portinari." In A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, rev. ed„ ed. Paget Toynbee and Charles S. Singleton. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968, pp. 83ff.
Raveggi, Sergio, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia Parenti. Ghibellini, Guelfi, e popolo grasso: I detentori del potere politico a Firenze nella seconda metà del Dugento. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978.
The first "pragmatic sanction" was an edict issued by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in August 554. This was two years after his general Narses had defeated the last two Ostrogothic kings and effectively shattered the Gothic regime in Italy, and just following the emperor's humiliation of the Roman pope, Vigilius. The edict provided the basis for the reestablishment of imperial government in the peninsula.
The twenty-seven articles of the edict were designed in full awareness of the ruin and devastation that Italy had suffered during some two decades of the Gothic wars, and of the sensitive issues of conflicting property claims resulting from the Ostrogothic occupation. The starting point was therefore a confirmation of the acts of the previous Gothic rulers, excepting only the "tyrant" Totila, and a validation of all contracts undertaken during the upheavals. Provisions were made for restoration of property lost during the hostilities, for the repair or renewal of public works, and for traditional food doles to the urban populace. Taxes, which were to be paid largely in produce, would be carefully regulated (with new provisions for weights and measures) to avoid earlier abuses by venal imperial officials. The judiciary system was restored, and care was taken to guarantee civil due process to all Roman citizens. However, special privileges and exemptions were reserved to great landowners.
The edict preserved the earlier administrative structure essentially intact, except that Italy was now defined solely as the main land—the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were assigned to other jurisdictions. Of particular interest was a change in the method of selecting local governors; their previous appointment through the central regime had allowed too much fiscal abuse, and they were now to be chosen honestly by the bishops and magnates of each locality. Although this arrangement undoubtedly curbed some corruption, it strengthened the local landowners, while also confirming the increased role of the church hierarchy in civil government.
The edict was entitled Pragmatica sanctio pro petitione Vigilii and was included among Justinian's Novellae ("new laws"). It was the first major promulgation to bear the designation "pragmatic sanction," which would be applied in later centuries to instruments of agreement between individual governments and the Roman church.
See also Gothic Wars; Justinian I; Narses; Totila; Vigilius, Pope
JOHN W. BARKER
Barker, John W. Justinian and the Later Roman Empire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.
Bury, J. B. A History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395—565), Vol. 2. London: Macmillan, 1923. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1958.)
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. 5, The Lombard Invasions, 553-600. Oxford: Clarendon, 1889. (Reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1967.)
Jones, A. H. M. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, Vol. 1. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964.
Justinian. Novellae, ed. R. Schöll and G. Kroll. In Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. 3. Berlin: Weidmann, 1912-1928. (See Appendix 7, p. 799, for the surviving original text of the document.)
The Tuscan city of Prato lies in the broad valley of the Bisenzio River, flanked by the long, low hills of the Monte Calvana and Monte Albana, about midway between Florence and Pistoia. Modern Prato is a bustling center of textile production at the crossroads of the Autostrada del Sole (Milan-Rome) and the Autostrada del Mare (Florence-Pisa-Genoa). In the early 1990s, Prato was Tuscany's third largest city (with a population of about 160,000), and, in 1992, it became the capital of a new province. Its wealth is based on cloth, and has been for 800 years. Several thousand—mostly small—factories continue to absorb immigration to the sprawling suburbs of the walled medieval town.
The site of Prato may have been occupied by the Etruscans and was certainly occupied by a Roman town, probably housing a garrison. Little remains from the Roman period apart from a few fragments and inscriptions, and possible topographical remnants. The town was situated near the Via Cassia and was very likely little more than a stopping-off point and a center for local agricultural production. Evidence of Christianity in Prato goes back no earlier than the third century and tells no coherent story. Pagan remains disappear after the late fourth century. The archaeological record indicates a very low level of activity on the site from the mid-third century until the time of Charlemagne. In fact, the entire Val di Bisenzio was declining in population and economic activity long before the great Germanic invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries. The 21 miles (34 kilometers) between Florence and Pistoia were marshy and heavily wooded, had no fortified center, and thus fell prey to marching or marauding Goths, "Greeks," Lombards, and Franks. The Lombards tended to be especially destructive, but they also settled in small groups in the area, leaving place-names that echo their presence. The earliest evidence of Pratese law and legal practice embodies elements of Lombard custom, such as the replacement of Roman testamentary practice with "donation" and the use of the Morgengabe ("morning gift") in marriage arrangements. Some of these elements remained in use until the late thirteenth century.
In the absence of effective secular authority, the institutions of the early medieval church imposed at least rudimentary jurisdictional order on the Val di Bisenzio. Monasteries carved out holdings. The river itself formed a rough boundary for the diocese of Pistoia, under whose bishop Prato remained throughout the Middle Ages. (Prato would gain its own bishop in 1653, and full episcopal autonomy in 1954.) By the end of the eighth century, Catholic religious life was well established in monasteries and around chapels and churches that dotted the hillside and plain. Villages grew up around some of these, and those with walls or a tower for protection were called borghi.
During the early ninth century, the bishop of Pistoia exercised even greater power than the local Frankish count. With the treaty of Verdun (843), however, Adalbert I became the first powerful count-duke. This treaty was a royal attempt to unify much of the administration of Tuscany, and it included jurisdiction over Pistoia and the Val di Bisenzio. The kings also interfered in ecclesiastical matters, appointing courtiers or family members to bishoprics. In the early tenth century, the Frankish kings reinstated the heads of powerful Lombard families as local counts in northern Italy, and thus the Alberti clan came to control and protect the area that would become Prato.
Palazzo Pretorio, Prato. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
The stronghold, or curtis, of Ildebrandino di Alberti on the Bisenzio River attracted settlers, and the Borgo di Prato was born. Prato means "meadow," and the name probably distinguished this Alberti settlement from others in the hills. Nearby, from at least 994, stood the pieve of Santo Stefano. This was the region's principal church, which housed the baptismal font and eventually a chapter of canons. In the midst of private churches and chapels, it served as the diocese's outpost in the central valley. Around the pieve evolved another quickly growing population center, Borgo di Cornio. During the eleventh century, the Alberti counts merged these two settlements—one with its church, the other with its castle—and kept the name Borgo di Prato (sometimes referred to as Pezzanese).
By 1150, the process of amalgamation was complete, and large numbers of people immigrated from the countryside to the security and new occupations offered by the Borgo. Indeed, many smaller villages vanished from the records. In part, the attraction of Prato had to do with broader issues of eleventh-century ecclesiastical reform. Santo Stefano was a reformed "Gregorian" church removed from direct lay control and the abuses that often accompanied such control. Many of the local churches and chapels remained in lay hands, and some of these were abandoned by the faithful, who sought orthodoxy and better service from the pieve. This issue of reform often pitted landed nobles, ecclesiastical authorities, and the common people against one another, and it served as a basis for the development of both communes and popoli. Artisans, local merchants, moneylenders, and landowners built up the town in the eleventh century; and shops, houses, hospices, churches, and chapels sprang up within the walls to meet new civic needs
In 1107, Prato and the Alberti defied Matilda of Canossa, countess of Tuscany. Her army of Lucchesi, Florentines, and Pistoiesi destroyed Prato after a three-month siege. The Pratesi rebuilt their town, and it flourished without interference from its Alberti lords. In fact, the Alberti encouraged Prato's autonomy and civic growth, and they grew rich along with the town. Thus, the development of the commune in the twelfth century was not the typical reaction against meddling by local feudal lords. On the contrary, opposition to the ecclesiastical control of Pistoia united the Pratese lords and populace; and this opposition grew fiercer in the twelfth century as Prato made unsuccessful bids for its own bishop and fought to control the incomes of the churches in its jurisdiction (1138-1142).
The earliest mention of the consuls of the commune dates from 1142, but some organization no doubt long preceded that. Although commune and lord normally enjoyed good relations, the people joined with Florence in 1154, and with Florence and Lucca in 1184, to defeat the feudal ambitions of the Alberti in the area. By 1186, the Alberti clan had ceded its jurisdiction over Prato to the emperor and had turned its attention southward, to Semifonte. By 1193, an imperial podestà had been established, and in 1195 a viscount arrived to exercise supreme local authority.
The lines of communal development remain unclear, but a document of 1212 mentions seven councilors. In 1246, the ruling body included representatives from all of the town's eight sections, as well as fifteen guild rectors, and consuls of the knights and of the merchants. The popolo, an independent organization in the town's power structure that excluded nobles and magnates, was also fully developed by 1252. It was led by a foreign captain, four anziani (elders), twenty-four councilors, and a larger council of forty. Given its natural Guelf leanings (in opposition to the generally Ghibelline nobility), its history and evolution are closely bound up with events in Florence, which was the arch-Guelf center. As elsewhere in Tuscany, the reaction of the Pratese Ghibellines following the debacle at Montaperti was swik and strong. From 1260 to 1266, many prominent Guelf popolani were exiled or imprisoned.
After 1266 the popolo again dominated Pratese politics, but in 1271, a resurgent parte Guelfa, led by four captains (of whom two had been exiled and two imprisoned), effectively ruled Prato. In 1279 an oligarchic reaction set in, and the government was reorganized. Twelve popolani councilors (modeled on Pisa's twelve anziani) were to aid the captain of the commune, and three citizens from each of Prato's sectors formed the "council of twenty-four." In 1285 a further reaction added sixteen members to the council of twenty-four and a new body, "the eight" (otto), as counselors to the captain. In official documents, to the title comune was added "and popolo": comune et populus. The otto became extremely powerful and strictly limited admission to its own ranks.
In 1292, Prato adopted the Ordinamenti sacrati et sacratissimi, a law code similar to the Florentine ordinances of justice but directly imitative of codes in Pistoia and Bologna; it included statutory revisions typical of the period. Many of these new laws were aimed directly against the noble or magnate class, which was widely seen as too powerful, arrogant, rich, and Ghibelline despite its traditional economic, administrative, and military leadership. The popolo and Guelf oligarchy formally excluded from participation in government even magnates who were duly enrolled in guilds. For those identified as magnates, fines were much higher, guilt for crimes against popolani was simpler to prove, and expulsion from the city was easier to obtain. From 1293 on, the otto were no longer "counselors of the captain" but "defenders of the popolo." In addition, the office of "standard-bearer (gonfaloniere) of justice," traditionally held by the leader of the popolo, was also co-opted by the otto: the standard-bearer had to have been a member of the otto, had a voice in their proceedings, and had to live in their quarters during his term.
By the early Trecento, the vehement antimagnate stance of the regime had softened, in fact if not in law. In part, this was because defections by magnates to the popolo class (by official declaration), interclass marriages, and aspirations of the bourgeois to nobility made extreme measures against the magnates less and less tenable. The shift may also reflect the declining demographic and economic conditions in the Val di Bisenzio (as elsewhere in Tuscany in the same period). Around 1290, Prato had claimed some 4,000 hearths; but in 1339—which was well before the black death (1347-1348)—there were only 2,762. By 1429, the number had plummeted to 951 (representing about 3,517 people).
The influence of Florence in Prato continued into the Trecento as Black Guelfs became prevalent in both cities (1301). Prato experimented with Florentine voting procedures that included eligibility lists for offices and the drawing of names from a bag for candidacy or election (1305, 1310-1311, and 1314). Political and economic ties drew Prato closer into Florence's orbit, and soon come si fa a Firenze ("as it is done in Florence") became common shorthand for all manner of procedures.
The descent of Emperor Henry VII into Italy for coronation (1310) was opposed by all good Tuscan Guelfs, and Florence lent generous (and calculated) aid to the Pratesi, including a Florentine garrison for the castello, built by Frederick II in the mid-thirteenth century. In 1313, Prato, threatened by Henry's reentry into Tuscany, offered its allegiance and fealty—which still belonged properly to the emperor—to Robert of Anjou, king of Naples, who was a champion of the Guelfs. In the 1320s, the campaigns of Castruccio Castracane of Lucca threatened Florence and its allies, and again Florence insinuated itself more and more into its neighbor's affairs. In 1326, Charles of Calabria received Prato's fealty, and he sent Florentine vicars to oversee the town.
On 23 February 1351, all pretense to autonomy in Prato fell away as Queen Giovanna (Joanna) of Naples, who had inherited control of the town, presented that control to Florence in return for 17,500 gold florins. Not surprisingly, the arrangement had been engineered by a Florentine, Niccolo Acciaiuoli, seneschal of Naples. Thenceforth, Prato received a podestà from Florence. Prato's councils could still pass laws for the town, under the eye of the podestà, but Florence had the right to veto them if it saw fit. Florentine taxes were levied, but most civic organizations, including the guilds, were only minimally affected: decades of Florentine influence had removed the need for radical changes after 1351. In the later fourteenth century, the Florentine government tightened its control over its dominions, entailing a further reduction in Prato's self-government.
Throughout the early Middle Ages, agriculture dominated the economy of the Val di Bisenzio. In the early period, this was small in scale and was hampered by the marshy floor of the valley. Woods and wetland covered much of the territory well into the twelfth century, but canalization, probably begun by monastic houses, revolutionized the use of the land. Lay and ecclesiastical feudal lords, including the bishop of Pistoia and monastic houses in Florence and Pistoia, controlled most of the land, but even in the eleventh century there were at one point 217 freehold parcels in the region of Prato.
Further drainage made more fertile land available, and at least by the end of the tenth century a market had developed in Borgo di Cornio. In the twelfth century a full range of crops were being grown to feed the expanding town population. Typically, cereals headed the list: wheat, spelt, barley, oats, millet, and rye all found their way to Pratese mills and bakers. Pears, apples, figs, plums, chestnuts, and almonds grew in small orchards, and vineyards provided grapes for wine. Peasants and monks cultivated olives, flax for linen, and woad, a popular dyestuff.
Canalization of the Bisenzio was also vital for the development of mills. Monks and feudal lords had provided mills for grinding grain, and by the very early twelfth century the tamed waters were turning the wheels of cloth-fulling mills (the earliest recorded is from 1107). Nearby was a good source of the soil that was necessary for the fulling process, and new channels off the river's main course invited the further development of this new industry. By the later thirteenth century there were thirty fulling mills and forty-four flour mills in the valley. In the late twelfth century one of Prato's earliest guilds developed, that of the padroni (bosses) of the mills. The padroni had many interests in common, not least of which were the continued free flow of the river, the regulation of further channeling, and the restriction of entry into the market.
Sheep were not plentiful in the vicinity, and early on the ancillary enterprise of wool importation was added to that of actual cloth production. Local artisans in both town and countryside took up weaving the cloth. Dyeing was carried out in town on a larger scale, since huge vats and drying racks were required. At first, local woad probably sufficed, but over time imported dyestuffs added greatly to the value of the merchandise. Importation of the raw materials, production of the cloth, and exportation of the finished product fed an expanding commercial network both in the town and beyond. The wool guild, or Arte di Lana, emerged from familial and monastic origins to regulate those who participated in this burgeoning industry, and to protect the industry's interests in the commune. The Lana was the most powerful of Prato's guilds.
The purchase of raw materials and the maintenance of the mills required capital, and local landlords readily invested in the cloth enterprises, often shifting resources away from less lucrative agricultural uses. In the long run, these connections helped ease the tension between nobles and popolani in Prato, and clearly delineated the relationship between the countryside and the town.
The division of labor chat accompanied wool cloth production and trade further advanced economic organization in Prato, especially during the thirteenth century. The money changers and moneylenders guild of the Cambiatori flourished from mid-century on; and the guild of notaries buried 432 of its members between c. 1250 and 1332—a figure that suggests how many notaries there were. In a commercial atmosphere like that of Prato, notaries had ample work drafting and recording all manner of private documents, including contracts, partnership agreements, and surety arrangements, and more personal instruments such as wills, dowry agreements, and donations to religious houses. One notary was Scrigno, father of Convenevole, the tutor of Petrarch. During the thirteenth century, along with the development of the commune and popolo, the guild system flourished. The number of guilds representing merchants, crafts, or professions increased from fifteen to twenty-six, and without a division into major and minor arti such as occurred in Florence.
Prato's most famous entrepreneur was Francesco Datini (1335-1410), whose palazzo today houses his own archives—including some 500 account books and 140,000 letters—and the city's. Datini was the son of a local taverner; he lost both parents in the black death of 1348, made a small fortune as a merchant in Avignon, and spent his last thirty years in Prato directing a set of commercial companies that had main branches in Avignon, Barcelona, Florence, Genoa, Majorca, and Valencia. His trading network stretched from England to the Black Sea, and across the Mediterranean. He dealt in almost anything that could be exchanged, but especially in wool and cloth, in good Pratese fashion. Datini's records are uniquely comprehensive and illustrate that despite poor economic conditions, a healthy profit could come to a well managed and innovative business. His activity certainly spurred the ailing Pratese economy, as his network brought wool from the best sources in Europe and distributed cloth across the Christian world. Important as he was, Dat ini was no Cosimo de' Medici; he chose to play no political role in Prato, nor was he much of a patron of the arts. In his will, though, he established a foundation to support abandoned children in Prato, to which he gave virtually all of his vast fortune. It is said that Prato is still using funds which originated with Datini. His innovations in business practices and his contributions to the local economy earned him a statue (1896) that stands today in the Piazza del Comune.
The medieval walled town formed a rough hexagon with one side running along the Bisenzio. It bristled with family towers, of which a few stumps remain today. The present-day cathedral, originally pieve, of Santo Stefano was begun in 1211; its green-and-white facade was added between 1385 and 1457. The nave is flanked by green marble columns and a striped green-and-white arcade. The cathedral is notable for its exterior pulpit by Donatello and Michelozzo (1434-1438), which was created to display the town's greatest relic, the cintola (cincture or girdle) of the Virgin Mary. This object was brought to Prato in 1141 by the crusader Michele Dagomari and is said to be the cord handed to "doubting" Thomas, the apostle, by Mary from heaven after her assumption. The cintola is displayed on certain feast days and has its own chapel immediately inside the cathedral. This chapel contains a Madonna and Child carved by Giovanni Pisano (1317) and is covered with frescoes by Agnolo Gaddi (1390s) of the life of Mary and the history of the relic.
Prato's mendicant churches are relatively Small but notable. The Franciscans traveled through Prato in their earliest days, and they established a church in Prato in 1228. The current church of San Francesco was built between 1275 and 1295 with a trussed roof and a green-and-white striped facade. Its interior was frescoed under Datini's patronage in the 1390s, and his tomb lies prominently at the foot of the altar, according to his last wishes. The chapterhouse (Cappella Migliorati) contains well-preserved frescoes, painted at the end of the fourteenth century by Niccolò Gerini. Radical restoration took place in modern times.
The Dominican church of San Domenico was founded in 1283 and was completed by 1322 under the direction of Giovanni Pisano. Little of the original medieval decoration remains. The Augustinians, too, had a convent and church in Prato. Nestled against the northern wall, the complex was built in 1271 but has been greatly altered in the years since. Its oratory of San Michele and chapterhouse contain late medieval work by Gerim and others.
The Palazzo Pretorio, seat of government in medieval Prato, is a tall structure with a Gothic facade; its height is exaggerated by its second-story entrance. The palazzo incorporates two buildings: one of brick from the thirteenth century, and one of limestone from the early fourteenth. Battlements were added in the sixteenth century. Today it houses the Galleria Comunale and the Museo Civico.
In his effort to control his dominions in Italy, Emperor Frederick II built many castles, including the castello in Prato, probably dating from 1237-1248, Although it resembles Frederick's southern Italian castles, it is unique in the north. It remains an imposing edifice, although the restored curtain walls are only an empty shell.
See also Agriculture; Castruccio Castracani; Datini, Francesco di Marco; Florence; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Fustians; Ghibelline; Guelfs; Henry VII of Luxembourg; Lombards; Matilda, Countess of Tuscany; Ordinances of Justice; Pisano, Giovanni; Pistoia; Popolo; Urban Development; Wool Industry in Italy
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Bisori, Guido. Origins and Development of the Prato Wool Trade. Florence: Stabilimento Tipografico STIAV, 1963.
Caggese, Romolo. Un comune libero alle porte di Firenze nel secolo XIII (Prato in Toscana): Studi e ricerche. Florence: B. Seeber, 1905.
Carlesi, Ferdinando. Origini delta città e del comune di Prato. Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1984. (Originally published 1904.)
Fiumi, Enrico. Demografta, movimento urbanistico, e classi sociali in Prato dall'eta comunale ai tempi moderni. Florence: Olschki, 1968.
Giani, Giulio. Prato e la sua fortezza del secolo XI sine ai giorni nostri. Prato, 1908. (Reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1976.)
Herlihy, David. Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200-1430. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967.
Herlihy, David, and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.
Luzzati, Michele. Firenze e la Toscana nel Medioevo: Seicento anni per la costruzione di uno stato. Turin: UTET, 1986.
Marchini, Giuseppe. Il duomo di Prato. Milan: Electa, 1957.
—. La cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di Prato. Prato: Azienda Autonoma di Turismo di Prato, 1975.
Melis, Federigo. Aspetti della vita econornica medievale (Studi nell'Archivio Datini di Prato). Siena: Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 1962.
Nigro, Giampiero. Il tempo liberato: Festa e svago nella città di Francesco Datini. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Econornica F. Datini, 1994.
Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335-1410. New York: Knopf, 1957.
Penga, M. "Le origini di Prato e della sua industria laniera." Archivio Storico Pratese, 36, 1960, pp. 3-48.
Sivieri, G. "Il comune di Prato dalla fine del Duecento alla metà del Trecento." Archivio Storico Pratese, 47, 1971, pp. 3-57.
Storia di Prato, 3 vols. Prato: Edizioni Cassa di Risparmio e Depositi, 1980.
The study of preaching in medieval Italy has expanded greatly in recent decades as more and more scholars have become aware of the prominent role played by preachers in all sectors of Italian society throughout the period. At the same time, we have discovered the abundance of insight and information furnished by sermon texts on surprisingly numerous topics of research, even far beyond the realm of theology and spirituality. No portrait of medieval Italian society, no reconstruction of the "mentality" of the period, can be complete without taking into consideration the peninsula's many preachers and the traces, written or other, they left behind.
In studying preaching, one may distinguish between popular (destined for the large masses in cities, towns, and countryside) and elite (destined for smaller, specialized audiences such as those in monasteries and universities). Much more attention has been focused on popular preaching, probably and above all because it opens a window onto the daily life of a far larger segment of the population. The great season of popular preaching in Italy that begins with the rise of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the first quarter of the thirteenth century (and does not end, in fact, until the seventeenth) is also the best documented and thus the most studied and understood. Our image of the state of preaching in preceding centuries is at times shadowy and fragmentary, owing to the paucity of surviving documentation and scholarly research. However, certain observations may be made with reasonable certainty.
Like every other aspect of life in western society, with the onset of the "dark ages," preaching—public instruction in faith and morals—suffered a tremendous decline in quality and frequency. In the long stretch of time between the death of the last great Latin father of the church—Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604)—and the rise of the mendicants in the thirteenth century, the state of preaching in Italy appears to have been universally dismal. To be sure, there were exceptions to this rule: those very few, privileged places, such as the monasteries, with their higher level of domestic literacy and spiritual striving; and the occasional diocese or parish lucky enough—temporarily—to have that rarest of early medieval personages, a well-instructed, spiritually enlightened, and pastorally conscientious bishop or pastor. When preaching in this long period did occur—above all, within the context of the mass on Sundays and holy days—it often took the form of mere superficially adapted vernacular translations of the homilies of the fathers of the church—especially saints Ambrose (d. 397), Jerome (d. 420), Augustine (d. 430), and the aforementioned Gregory. Even as late as the second decade of the thirteenth century, we find Pope Innocent III, an accomplished preacher in his own right, attempting to set an example for his fellow preachers by simply translating one of Gregory's sermons word for word in a public liturgy on the feast of Mary Magdalene. ( The story is related by the Dominican master general Humbert of Romans, in his De eruditione praedicatorum, one of the most widely disseminated scholastic artes praedicandi of the late medieval period.)
The church's intermittent calls during these centuries for more and better preaching went unheeded, mostly because of a severe lack of trained personnel. The Carolingian reforms directed at the clergy reached Italy in, at best, only attenuated form; and the later Gregorian reform, although successful in its main objectives, had little effect on the quality of preaching. A more urgent impetus for reform in preaching finally came, beginning in the second half of the twelfth century, with the challenge to the clerical monopoly on preaching raised by the many new lay "apostolic" groups—some heretical, such as the Cathars and Peter Waldo's Poor of Lyon; but others not, such as the Umiliati of Lombardy. (Documentation of the preaching of these groups—as well as, we might add, that of the Jews of medieval Italy—has all but disappeared.) In response to this threat, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 passed legislation (constitution 10) whose goal was to ensure a proper supply of adequately trained preachers and confessors.
The council's goal, however, would have probably gone unfulfilled had it not been for the simultaneous rise of two prodigiously successful and influential brotherhoods of late medieval Italy: the Order of Friars Minor (O.F.M.), or Franciscans, founded by the charismatic Francis of Assisi (d. 1226); and the Order of Preachers (O. P.), or Dominicans, founded by the learned Castilian Dominic Guzman (d. 1221). Both of these so-called mendicant orders made competent, ubiquitous preaching—to both popular and elite audiences—one of their most urgent priorities. Their success in this endeavor was such that they soon effectively eclipsed all other categories of preachers—most notably, the secular clergy—and continued to do so for centuries. The most important preachers of late medieval (and, indeed, early modern) Italy were almost all mendicants. Notable examples are, among the Franciscans, Anthony of Padua (d. 1231), Bonaventure of Bagnorea (d. 1274), Servassanto of Faenza (active second half of the thirteenth century), and Matteo dAcquasparta (d. 1302); and among the Dominicans, Peter Martyr of Verona (d. 1252), Jacopo da Voragine (d. 1298), Jacopo Passavanti (d. 1357), and Giovanni Dominici (d. 1419). Two Augustinians must also be mentioned: Alberto of Padua (d. 1328) and Simone Fidati da Cascia (d. 1348). In terms of both sheer abundance and engaging vivacity of extant sermon texts, however, none can rival the Dominican Giordano of Pisa (d. 1311) or the phenomenal Franciscan Bernardino of Siena (d. 1444).
Saint Bernardino of Siena. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 248r.
Along with the rise of the mendicant orders came the emergence of the sermo modernus, or thematic sermon. Its predecessor, the sermo antiquus, took essentially the form of the patristic homily, a loosely structured verse-by-verse exposition of a Gospel passage, interpreted in a simple spiritual and devotional key. Although the patristic-style homily never disappeared (especially in preaching to less educated audiences), the thematic sermon became the standard after the first quarter of the thirteenth century and reigned supreme for at least two more centuries. (At no point did the church ever mandate a specific form of preaching, so preachers were at all times free to follow whatever form they desired.) A product of the scholastic mentality, with its love of minutely articulated order and meticulous logical analysis, the thematic sermon was a complex, pedagogical structure that had as its foundation the thema, a scriptural verse usually chosen from the mass of the day, whose moral and doctrinal content was explained, step by step, in the dilatatio, through a series of divisions and subdivisions (distinctiones) of the original biblical "proposition."
Summoned to this at times laborious instructional-persuasive task were traditional allegorical interpretations, corroborating quotations from the church fathers and doctors (auctoritates), etymologies, data and observations from the natural sciences, and narrative examples (exempla)—often lengthy and comically entertaining—from history, hagiography, and the everyday life of the audience. These homiletic. tools were all available, prepackaged, in many dictionaries and handbooks, and the numerous artes praedicandi supplied the preacher with the necessary theoretical and structural foundations. Exceptionally busy or under-educated preachers also had recourse to ready-made sermons anthologized in the many sermonari of the period. The language of all popular preaching was the vernacular, although most secondhand sermon transcriptions (reportationes) and actual published texts from the preachers themselves are usually in Latin.
Although the primary context for preaching was the mass on Sunday and holy days, the ecclesiastical and civic calendar offered endless occasions for preaching. Indeed, as the medieval period progressed, preaching became increasingly separate from the liturgy, just as it moved from the confines of the church building to the public square in the case of exceptionally popular preachers. Since the moral instruction imparted by the preachers was deemed invaluable for the collective and individual wellbeing of the citizenry, it was often the secular, not ecclesiastical, authorities who arranged and paid for the services of the preacher. There was at times lively competition among the towns for booking an exceptionally good preacher, especially during Lent, the premier preaching season.
What we know of the logistics of Bernardino of Siena's preaching missions during Lent and Advent was probably usual for the period: each day at the crack of dawn, men and women, young and old, from all walks of life, from both the town and its countryside, would gather to listen to the preacher, who, for two to three hours, would attempt to stir them emotionally to contrition for their sins, while instructing them, in at times detailed fashion, in the essential elements of their duty as both Christians and citizens. (Sano di Pietro's famous panels of Bernardino preaching to the Sienese are, however, idealizations, depicting the faithful in excessively orderly ranks and as highly reverential in demeanor.) Since literacy was low, books were rare, and free public instruction and respectable entertainment—especially for women—were always welcome, it was probably not too difficult for preachers to capture the attention of the populace and to persuade them to change their behavior, at least temporarily. However, ensuring their true, lasting conversion was another, more challenging and elusive matter.
See also Dominican Order; Franciscan Order
FRANCO MORMANDO
Bataillon, L. J. "Approaches to the Study of Medieval Sermons." Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 11, 1980, pp. 19-35.
D'Avray, David. The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
Delcorno, Carlo. La predicazione nell'età comunale. Florence: Sansoni, 1974.
—. Giordano da Pisa e l'antica predicazione volgare. Florence: Olschki, 1975.
Lesnick, Daniel. Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
Mormando, Franco. The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Murphy, James J. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
O'Carroll, Mary E. A Thirteenth-Century Preacher's Handbook. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997.
Rusconi, Roberto. Predicazione e vita religiosa nella società italiana da Carlo Magno alia Controriforma. Turin: Loescher, 1981.
Sodi, Manlio, and Achille M. Triacca. Dizionario di omiletica. Leumann (Turin): Editrice Elle Di Ci, 1998.
Worcester, Thomas W. "Catholic Sermons." In Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor. Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 3-33.
The Latin grammarian and poet Priscian (Priscianus, fl. 485-526) was born in Caesarea (Algeria) but studied and taught in Constantinople. For patrons in Rome, which was then under Ostrogothic rule, he composed manuals on Latin rhetoric, metrics, and metrology that stressed Greek antecedents; among other minor works, he freely translated Dionysius's Description of the World. Priscian's greatest and most influential work was the Grammatical Institutions, a massive advanced grammar of the Latin language (974 printed pages), abundantly illustrated with more than 10,000 lines of quotations from a host of authors, notably Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. The first sixteen books, later known as Priscianus maior, dealt with the parts of speech; the last two books, Priscianus minor, dealt with syntax. Both maior and minor applied Greek linguistic theory to Latin. During the Carolingian Renaissance, this work became the standard textbook for upper-level instruction in Latin, and it retained its preeminence throughout the Middle Ages, so much so that "Priscian" came to be synonymous with the science of Latin grammar. Its obscurities were explained in Carolingian written commentaries and, as part of the university arts course, in oral lectures. The full work survives in hundreds of manuscripts and in more than 1,000 abridgements. Dante placed Priscian among the "violent against nature" (Inferno, 15.109), but it is unclear whether the intended offense was sexual sodomy; a condemnation of Priscian's theoretical, Greek-derived approach to language seems more likely.
Priscian, Grammatici caesariensis libri omnes. Venice: Aldus, 1527. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
RICHARD KAY
Brugnoli, Giorgio. "Priscian." In Enciclopedia dantesca. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973, Vol. 4, pp. 679-680.
Contreni, John. "Priscian." In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer. New York: Scribner, 1989, Vol. 10, pp. 128-129.
Kay, Richard. "Natural Grammar and Priscian's Perversity." In Dante's Swift and Strong. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978, ch. 2.
Law, Vivien A. "Grammar." In Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F. A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996, pp. 288-295.
Lexikon des Mittelalters. Munich: Artemis-Verlag, 1994, Vol. 7, pp. 218-219. (Extensive bibliography.)
Poetae Latini minores, rev. ed., ed. Emil Baehrens and Friedrich Vollmer. Leipzig: Teubner, 1935, Vol. 5, pp. 264-312. (For Priscian's poetic works.)
Priscian. Institutionum grammaticarum libri XVIII, ed. M. Hertz. Leipzig: Teubner, 1855-1859. (Reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1961. See also Priscian's other grammatical works in Grammatici latini, ed. Heinrich Keil, vols. 2 and 3.)
Procopius (c. 500-C.561) was born and classically educated in Palestine. In 527 he became a legal adviser and secretary to the rising young general Belisarius, and he served with Belisarius in campaigns against the Persians, the Vandals in North Africa, and the Ostrogoths in Italy. After returning to Constantinople in 540, Procopius held several civil offices and began writing a series of historical works in Greek that have won him recognition as the last of the great historians in the classical tradition. Little is known of his final years, but he is understood to have died before his sovereign, Emperor Justinian.
The historical work of Procopius is in ten parts. The first eight "books" are collectively known as History of the Wars, in turn subdivided by military theater. Books 1 and 2 are known as The Persian Wars and cover events in the east into the 550s. Books 3 and 4, The Vandalic Wars, describe Belisarius's lightning campaign in North Africa (533-534) and extend to the subsequent pacification program there into the late 540s. Books 5-8 treat the Gothic wars against the Ostrogoths in Italy. In this group, Book 7 carries the narrative to 550, and, along with its predecessors, was circulated in 551; Book 8, a supplement covering events on several fronts through 552 (notably the final defeat of the Ostrogoths under Narses), was completed and circulated in the years that followed. The author's style throughout is in the grand manner of military, diplomatic, and political history; the work is superbly written and authoritatively detailed, reflecting either the author's personal participation or his access to the best contemporary information. Occasionally there is mild criticism of Justinian, but the general tone is that of an official history.
The other two works by Procopius are less securely dated and more problematic in character. Anecdota (Unpublished Sections), known as The Secret History, was intended for limited circulation, if not for the author's desk drawer only. Sensational and often hysterical in tone, the work is a vindictive diatribe aimed at Belisarius, Theodora, and Justinian himself. The Secret History, which was once thought spurious, offers important information and perspectives if used critically. The other work is a panegyric, On the Buildings, a survey of Justinian's far-flung architectural program. It was intended to cover the entire empire but, apparently incomplete in its final form, omits Italy. Its tone of slavish adulation for Justinian is repugnant, but it contains much information of value. The Secret History has been thought to represent the bitter disillusionment of Procopius's last years, whereas On the Buildings was written to ingratiate the author with the court after some loss of favor; but it has also been argued that these two "supplemental" works were joined with the rest in a coherent grand design.
See also Belisarius; Gothic Wars; Justinian I; Narses; Ostrogoths
JOHN w. BARKER
Cameron, Averil, Procopius and the Sixth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Evans, J. A. S. Procopius. New York: Twayne, 1972.
Procopius of Caesarea. History of the Wars, Secret History, and Buildings, 7 vols., trans. H. B. Dewing. Loeb Classical Library Series. London and Cambridge, Mass.: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1914-1940. (With reprints.)
—. Secret History, trans. G. A. Williamson. London: Penguin, 1966.
—. History of the Wars, Secret History, and Buildings, trans., ed., abridged, and intro. Averil Cameron. New York: Twayne, 1967.
Rubin, Berthold. Prokopios von Kaisareia. Stuttgart: Druckenmüller, 1954. (Reprinted in Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumwissenschaft, 1957.)
Ure, Percy N. Justinian and His Age. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951. (Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979.)
Simone Prodenzani (c. 1360-c. 1440) was born in Prodo and died in Orvieto. He was the author of Liber saporecti (Il saporetto) and Liber solatii (Il sollazzo), both composed between 1400 and 1422. Il saporetto is a poem consisting of 186 sonnets and is divided into four parts or mondi. In the first two parts—Mundus placitus and Mundus blandus—the poet gives a detailed description of banquets, dances, concerts, and other ludic activities of the bourgeoisie and of the nobility in the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century. Parts 3 and 4—Mundus tranquillus and Mundus meritorius—are a discussion of moral, religious, and philosophical issues based on traditional sources: Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Boethius, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. Less interesting than the festive mondi, they nevertheless demonstrate that Prodenzani was a cultivated individual whose middlebrow philosophy reflected the concerns and attitudes of a broad audience of Orvietani. The Mundus placitus and the Mundus blandus are another matter. Here, as a prominent figure in city politics between 1387 and the time of his death, Prodenzani documents the customs of the privileged class. For modern scholars, the first two mondi are an indispensable store of linguistic and cultural information about the period.
At the outset of the narrative, Buonare (Proaenzani) dreams that he has sent his son, Sollazzo (a talented entertainer whose name means "jester"), to a nobleman, Pierbaldo, lord of the fictional land of Buongoverno. Buonare's son participates in the Christmas festivities at Pierbaldo's court. The mountebank becomes the life of the party when he recites Il sollazzo, a collection of eighteen novellas in ballata form, similar to the French fabliaux. According to Debenedetti (1913, 96), Il sollazzo was the first collection of novellas in Italian literature to be set to poetry. The novellas are exempla of moral retribution, many of which feature women as sinful antagonists. Although the tales are taken primarily from the oral tradition, two of them are adapted from Boccaccio's Decameron. The ninth novella of Il sollazzo, dealing with the theme of hypocrisy, is similar to the tale of the promiscuous abbess (Decameron, 9.2); the eleventh, which is about vanity, recalls the novella of Andreuccio da Perugia (2.5). Il sollazzo is a showcase for Prodenzani's wit and ability to create unique characters and comic situations that are similar to those of Antonio Pucci and Franco Sacchetti (Andrioli Nemola 1979, 108).
Scholars have examined the relationship between these poems. Because the very popular Sollazzo is the high point of the Saporetto, the latter has been seen as the frame of the jester's narrative. According to Debenedetti (p. 33), Prodenzani selected eighteen tales written in his youth and integrated them into the structure of Il saporetto, which was probably composed after Il sollazzo. Debenedetti also believes that the poet added the moralizing Mundus tranquillus and Mundus meritorius in order to give his work aesthetic and moral unity. However, Il sollazzo is transcribed before Il saporetto in the most authoritative manuscript of the poems, manuscript 286 of the Biblioteca Palatina of Parma. Given the documentary evidence, Andrioli Nemola (p. 222) considers Il sollazzo and Il saporetto autonomous works that are connected by important figurative elements, such as the protagonist-narrator Sollazzo, and by Prodenzani's ideological perspective.
Besides Il saporetto and Il sollazzo, Prodenzani also composed twenty-one rime.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni
DARIO DEL PUPPO
Debenedetti, Santorre, ed. "Il Sollazzo e il Saporetto, con altre rime di Simone Prodenzani." Giomale Storica della Letteratura Italiana, Supplement 15, 1913.
Andrioli Nemola, Paola. Trittico per Simone Prodenzani. Lecce: Milella, 1979.
Debenedetti, Santorre. Il "Sollazzo": Contributi alla storia della novella, della poesia musicale, e del costume del Trecento. Turin: Fratelli Bocca Editori, 1922.
Sapegno, Natalino. "Simone Prudenzani." In Il Trecento. Milan: Vallardi, 1973, pp. 419-423.
Tartaro, Achille. "Rime per musica e letteratura d'evasione." In Il Trecento: Dalla crisi dell'età comunale all'umanesimo, Vol. 2(2). Bari: Laterza, 1972, pp. 552-555.
Prosdocimus de Beldemandis (Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi, d. 1428), was the author of treatises on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. After studying in Bologna, he took a doctorate in arts at Padua on 15 May 1409 and received a license in medicine there on 15 April 1411. He was a professor of arts and medicine at Padua from 1422, at the latest, until his death.
Prosdocimus wrote on all four of the quadrivial arts; the following treatises have survived. On arithmetic: Canon in quo docetur modus componendi et operandi tabulam quandam (Padua, 1409 or 1419) and Algorismus de integris sive pratica arismetrice de integris (Padua, 1410). On geometry: De parallelogramo. On astronomy: Brevis tractatulus de electionibus secundum situm lune in suis 28 mansionibus (Montagnana, 1413); Scriptum super tractatu de spera Johannis de Sacrobosco (Padua, 1418); Canones de motibus corporum supercelestium (Padua, 1424); Tabule mediorum motuum, equationum, stationum et latitudinurnplanetarum, elevationis signorum, diversitatis aspectus lune, mediarum coniunctionum et oppositionum lunarium, feriarum, latitudinurn climatum, longitudinum et latitudinurn civitatum; Stelle fixe veriftcate tempore Alphonsi; Canon ad inveniendum tempus introitus solis in quodcumque 12 signorum in zodiaco; Canon ad inveniendum introitum lune in quodlibet signorum in zodiaco; Compositio astrolabii; and Astrolabium. On music: Expositiones tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis Johannis de Muris (Padua, possibly 1404); Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis (1408); Brevis summula pro-portionum quantum ad musicam pertinet (1409); Contrapunctus (Montagnana, 1412); Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis ad modum Ytalicorum (Montagnana, 1412); Tractatus plane musice (Montagnana, 1412); Parvus tractatulus de modo monacordum dividendi (Padua, 1413); and Tractatus musice speculative (1425).
Prosdocimus based his Algorismus de integris on a similarly titled work of the thirteenth-century polymath Johannes de Sacrobosco; his Scriptum super tractatu de spera Johannis de Sacrobosco is based on the same author's textbook of Ptolemaic astronomy, one of the most widely disseminated medieval astronomical works.
Prosdocimus's musical treatises represent an attempt to survey the entire discipline; no earlier music theorist had attempted such a comprehensive project through separate treatises on the subdisciplines, and Prosdocimus's musical writings are of great importance because of their scope and clarity. In Parvus tractatulus de modo monacordum dividendi, he described a scale that preserved the standard medieval "Pythagorean" tuning (i.e., with pure perfect fifths, slightly wider than those of present-day equal temperament) but with seventeen notes to the octave (seven naturals, five flats, and five sharps not quite in tune with the flats); this expanded scale may have been an important step toward the tempered tunings of the later fifteenth century. In Contrapunctus, he confirmed that medieval scribes did not write all the accidentals they necessarily expected to be performed, and he gave rules that clarify where accidentals are appropriate, even if unwritten. He surveyed the theory of rhythmic mensuration in three treatises, Expositiones tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis Johannis de Muris (a commentary on the Libellus cantus mensurabilis, the most widely disseminated medieval treatise on mensuration, which laid the foundation for French fourteenth-century rhythmic notation); Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis, his own account of fourteenth-century French mensuration; and Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis ad rnodum Ytalicorum, an exposition of contemporaneous Italian mensuration (this is the most comprehensive treatment of Italian mensuration in its mature stage). Tractatus musice speculative is an attack on the division of the tone into fifths described a century earlier by Marchetto da Padova, based on what Prosdocimus saw as the earlier theorist's abandonment of "Pythagorean" tuning and his faulty logic.
The manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Ashburnham 206, written by Prosdocimus in 1409, is an anthology of the curriculum of the Paduan college of arts and medicine at the time. It includes the Algorismus de integris of Johannes de Sacrobosco, the Algorismus de integris of Johannes de Lineriis, the Canones supra tabulas Alphonsi and the Scriptum super Alkabicium of Johannes de Saxonia, the De septem planetis of Messahala, the Tractatus quadrantis novi and the Canones de almanack perpetuum of Profatius Judaeus, and the De prognosticatione mortis et vite secundum motum lune of Pseudo-Hippocrates, among shorter works on arithmetic, astronomy, and astrology and several compilations of medical prescriptions.
JAN HERLINGER
Algorismus de integris magistri Prosdocimi Debeldamandis Patavi simul cum Algorismo de de [sic] minutiis seu fractionibus magistri Ioannis de Lineriis. Venice, 1540.
Algorismus Prosdocimi de Beldamandis una cum minuciis Johannes de Lineriis. Padua, 1483.
Coussemaker, Edmond de, ed. Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, Vol. 3. Paris: Durand, 1869. (Reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1963. Includes Tractatus de contrapuncto, pp. 193-199; Tractatus practice de musica mensurabili, pp. 200-228; Tractatus practice de musica mensurabili ad modum Italicorum, pp. 228-248; Libellus monocordi, pp. 248-258; Brevis summula proportionum, pp. 258-261.)
Gallo, F. Alberto, ed. Prosdocimi de Beldemandis "Expositiones tractatus practice cantus mensurabilis magistri Johannis de Muris." Prosdocimi de Beldemandis Opera, 1. Bologna: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1966.
Herlinger, Jan, ed. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi: Contrapunctus. Greek and Latin Music Theory 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
—, ed. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi: Brevis summula proportionum quantum ad musicam pertinet and Parvus tractatulus de modo monacordum dividendi. Greek and Latin Music Theory 4. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
—, ed. Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi: Tractatus plane musice and Tractatus musice speculative. (Forthcoming.)
Huff, Jay A., trans. Prosdocimus de Beldemandis: A Treatise on the Practice of Mensural Music in the Italian Manner. Musicological Studies and Documents, 29. American Institute of Musicology, 1972.
Spherae tractatus Ioannis de Sacro Busto Anglici . . ., Prosdocimi de beldomando patavini super tractatu sphaerico commentaria. . . . Venice, 1531.
Baralli, D. Raffaello, and Luigi Torri. "Il Trattato di Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi contro il Lucidario di Marchetto da Padova per la prima volta trascritto e illustrato." Rivista Musicale Italiana, 20, 1913, pp. 707—762. (Includes Tractatus musice speculative, pp. 731-762.)
Berger, Karol. Musica Ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Favaro, Antonio. "Intorno alla vita ed alle opere di Prosdocimo de Beldomandi matematico padovano del secolo XV." Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche, 12, 1979, pp. 1-74, 115-251. (Includes Canon in quo docetur modus componendi et operandi tabulam quandam, pp. 143-145; and De parallelogrammo, p. 170.)
—. "Appendice agli studi intorno alla vita ed alle opere di Prosdocimo de Beldomandi matematico padovano del secolo XV." Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche, 18, 1985, pp. 405-423.
Gallo, F. Alberto. "La tradizione dei trattati musicali di Prosdocimo de Beldemandis." Quadrivium, 6, 1964, pp. 57-84.
Herlinger, Jan. "What Trecento Music Theory Tells Us." In Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Essays in Honor of Leonard B. Meyer, ed. Eugene Narmour and Ruth A. Solie. Festschrift Series, 7. Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon, 1988, pp. 177-197.
Lindley, Mark. "Pythagorean Intonation and the Rise of the Triad." Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 16, 1980, pp. 4-61.
Sartori, Claudio. La notazione italiana del Trecento in una redazione inedita del "Tractatus practice cantus mensurabilis ad modum ytalicorum" di Prosdocimo de Beldemandis. Florence: Olschki, 1938. (Includes Tractatus pratice cantus mensurabilis ad modum Ytalicorum, pp. 35-71.)
See Italian Prosody
See Sexuality
See Occitan Language in Italy
The word proverbi in medieval Italy has three connotations: (1) references to the Book ol Solomon, a collection of wise aphorisms probably assembled between the fourth and eighth centuries after Christ; (2) short, witty sayings of popular origin; and (3) pithy observations created by a single, identifiable author after the manner of folk proverbs.
The Cremonese notary Girard Pateg (fl. 1228) left a somewhat dry poem in alexandrine rhymes, Splanamento de li Proverbi di Salamone (Explanation of the Proverbs of Solomon). The author explicitly states that this gloss was written for the edification of the masses. Topics include the tongue (speech), pride, anger, humility, the choice of a good wife, friendship, and riches versus poverty. Dante also referred to li Proverbi di Salomone in his Convivio (3.11.12).
The second connotation of "proverb" is most common: a folkloric source of knowledge that parallels written forms produced by cultural institutions such as the church and the university. All cultures produce their own proverbs, terse distillations of experience that address natural, social, psychological, and even political situations. The production of proverbs in Italy was particularly rich, owing to its multiple and enduring dialects. Relatively recently, there has been an explosion of regional scholarship on proverbs, studies too numerous to list here.
Italian proverbs can be documented in the thirteenth century, and their production continued throughout the Middle Ages. A noteworthy rhymed text by Garzo (c. 1225), perhaps an ancestor of Petrarch, contains 240 proverbs, in alphabetical groups of twelve. One early fourteenth-century codex in Piedmontese dialect conserves allegorical and moralizing proverbs about nature, flora, and fauna. The use of proverbial expressions in a written text indicates a popular audience or readership. Learned authors may also use proverbs ironically, in humorous shifts to a lower register, or in an insulting manner to characterize a person as villano, of the lower classes.
Proverbs appear in a wide range of texts and genres, in verse and prose. Early poets such as Guido Guinizzelli, Monte Andrea, Chiaro Davanzati, Cecco Angiolieri, and Fazio degli Uberti mention or cite proverbs. Giovanni Boccaccio, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, and Franco Sacchetti include proverbs in the respective novelle of the Decameron, Il pecorone, and Il trecentonovelle. Popular religious authors such as Fra Giordano, Domenico Cavalca, and pseudo-Bonaventura refer to the potentially harmful nature of these often sharp-tongued sayings and look askance at their sometimes negative moral content. The fifteenth-century Tuscans Andrea da Barberino and Luigi Pulci explicitly cited proverbs in their long chivalric narratives.
See also Pateg, Gerardo
GLORIA ALLAIRE
Bertoluzza, Aldo. Dizionario dell'antico dialetto trentino: 4.000 voci dialettali, proverbi, scioglilingua, indovinelli, filastrocche, cantilene. Trento: L'Adige, 1997.
"Garzo." In Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols., ed. Gianfranco Contini. Milan: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 2, pp. 295-313.
"Girardo Patecchio." In Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols., ed. Gianfranco Contini. Milan: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 1, pp. 557-583.
Giusti, Giuseppe. Raccolta di proverbi toscani. Florence: Le Monnier, 1971. (Originally published 1853.)
Gotti, Aurelio. Aggiunta ai proverbi toscani di Giuseppe Giusti. Siena: R. Istituto, 1854.
Pittaluga, Stefano. "Proverbi e facezie di Antonio Cornazzano." Studi Umanistici Piceni, 6, 1986, pp. 231-239.
Sansone, Giuseppe E. "Garzo e Guidotto nell'alfabeto paremiografico deH'Alessiano." In Dal medioevo al Petrarca: Miscellanea di studi in onore di Vittore Branca, Vol. 1. Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, Series 1(178). Florence: Olschki, 1983, pp. 47-56.
Spano, Giovanni. Proverbi sardi: Trasportati in lingua italiana e confrontati con quelli degli antichi popoli, ed. Giulio Angioini. Nuoro: Ilisso, 1997.
Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, 348-after 404) was born a Christian, was classically educated, became a Roman lawyer and government magistrate, and then abandoned his administrative career to dedicate himself to poetry. His work combines classical form and Christian spirit, making him, for many medieval readers, the archetypal Christian Latin poet.
Prudentius produced a large body of work including hymns, short lyrics, and long poems in hexameter. His better-known works include the following: Peristephanon (Crowns of Martyrdom), fourteen hymns honoring Christian martyrs in a variety of meters; Cathemerinon (Hymns for the Day or The Daily Round), twelve hymns to be sung throughout the day and on Christian holidays; Hamartigenia (The Origin of Sin), which examines, in hexameter, man's responsibility for his sinfulness; Contra Symmachum, two books of hexameter presenting a polemic against paganism; and Psychomachia, which depicts the struggle between virtue and vice in an innovative combination of allegory and epic style.
The hymns enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages and were used for centuries in church liturgy. Although they borrow meters found in Horace's Odes, they never waver from their firmly Christian perspective. Contra Symmachum, too, proved influential, particularly for its vision of classical culture as a vehicle for, rather than a rival of, Christianity. Medieval readers responded to Prudentius's contention that the Christian God willed Rome's conquests in order to enable the diffusion of Christianity through a politically unified empire.
Psychomachia, however, was Prudentius's greatest success. In this hexametric poem, personifications of the virtues and vices struggle for control over man's soul. The virtues and vices behave like epic heroes, performing extraordinary acts of strength and violence. Faith strangles Idolatry, Humility beheads Arrogance, Chastity slaughters Lust. Prudentius crafts battle scenes which read like passages from Homer or Virgil, but he raises the stakes of the conflict: the outcome of the strife will be the salvation or damnation of man's soul. He infuses classical epic with the gravity of Christian belief and thus provides a place for pagan poetics in the literary life of Christianity.
The Psychomachia served as a forceful stimulus to the development of allegorical poetry. The nearly iconographic portraits of the allegorized virtues and vices also made their presence felt in the visual arts, where representations of these abstractions became popular subjects in the Middle Ages.
See also Allegory
JESSICA LEVENSTEIN
Prudentius. Carmina, ed. Johan Bergman. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 61. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1926.
—. Oeuvres, 4 vols., ed. Maurice Lavarenne. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1943-1951.
—. Carmina, ed. Maurice P. Cunningham. Corpus Christianorum, Series Larina, 126. Turnholt: Brepols, 1966.
Hymns of Prudentius: The Cathemerinon or The Daily Round, trans. David R. Slavitt. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Prudentius, 2 vols., trans. H. J. Thomson. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949-1953.
Psychomachia: Text and Commentary by Rosemary Burton. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College, 1989.
Lavarenne, Maurice. Étude sur la langue du poète Prudence. Paris: Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1933.
Nugent, S. Georgia. Allegory and Poetics: The Structure and Imagery of Prudentius's Psychomachia. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1985.
Raby, Frederic J. E. A History of Christian-Latin Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1953.
Smith, Macklin. Prudentius's Psychomachia: A Reexamination. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976,
Ptolemy Fiadoni of Lucca (Tolomeo, Tholomeo, Ptolomeo, Bartolomeo; c. 1236-1327) was a member of a family that belonged to the Lucchese commercial elite, though not the aristocracy. He entered the Dominican convent of San Romano at Lucca at an unknown date, but obviously before he accompanied Thomas Aquinas on a journey from Rome to Naples in 1272. He remained in Rome with Aquinas until 1274, probably helping him set up a stadium of theology in the Neapolitan convent of San Domenico. Ptolemy included a long account of Aquinas's life and works in his Historia ecclesiastica nova. Ptolemy may also have visited or lived in Rome during the time of Pope Nicholas III (r. 1278-1280), since his Historia ecclesiastica contains interesting descriptions of Nicholas's building projects. Libellus de iurisdictione imperii et auctoritate summi pontificis (usually called Determinatio compendiosa), written at about this period, seems to breathe the spirit of Nicholas's pontificate. In 1283-1285 Ptolemy visited Provence. In 1285 he was made prior of San Romano in Lucca. In 1288 he was named preacher-general of his order and attended its general chapter in Lucca; he was a diffinitor at the general chapters of 1300 at Marseilles and of 1302 at Cologne. During the years 1287-1307 there are frequent documentary references to his presence in the Lucchese convent, often as prior; he was also (from 1300 to 1302) prior of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. During this period he made other trips outside Lucca; for example, Ptolemy witnessed the election of Celestine V at Perugia and his crowning at Aquila and was in Naples during his pontificate in 1294. Ptolemy was in Avignon by 1309 and spent most of the next two decades there, serving at least two cardinals. He was named bishop of Torceilo in 1318. Because of a quarrel with the patriarch of Grado, Ptolemy's episcopate was stormy, and he even suffered excommunication and imprisonment. Pope John XXII restored Ptolemy to his see in 1323, probably while the pope was in Avignon attending the festivities for Aquinas's canonization. Ptolemy died in Torceilo.
Though he wrote one "scientific" work, De operibus sex dierum, published under the title Exaerneron, Ptolemy's achievements as a historian and political thinker far outweighed those in philosophy or theology. Besides his Historia ecclesiastica nova, which is based not only on Martin ofTroppau and other chroniclers but also on numerous canonistic texts, Ptolemy wrote Gesta Tuscorum, a volume of annals extending from 1061 to 1303 in which Tuscany and particularly Lucca figured prominently. Ptolemy refers also to a third historical work, Historia tripartita, of which no manuscript is known. His desire to exalt the temporal jurisdiction of the papacy found expression in his Libellas de lurisdictione imperii et auctoritate summi pontificis, published as Determinatio compendiosa de iurisdictione imperii; and Tractatus de iurisdictione ecclesie super regnum Apulie et Sicilie. Krammer, who edited Determinatio compendiosa (1909), also edited De origine ac translatione et statu romani imperii as a work probably by Ptolemy, but its authorship is uncertain. In about 1302 Ptolemy wrote his continuation of Aquinas's De regno; this composite work has usually been referred to as De regimine principum and attributed solely to Aquinas. In Ptolemy's continuation, another dimension of his political thought came to the fore: his republicanism. He arranged governments under two main headings, political and despotic, classifying aristocracies and popular governments as political and all forms of absolute rule, including kingship, as despotic. Ptolemy depended heavily on Aristotle's Politics, but Artistotle had drawn a sharp distinction between despotic and royal government—a distinction of which Ptolemy shows himself to be well aware in his De operibus. Ptolemy's preference for political government was revealed in his claim that this was the regime best suited for inhabitants of Eden, northern Italy, and Rome. In De operibus he said that in the state of innocence government would have been, as it was today among the angels, not despotic but political, a prelacy based on service, not a dominion involving subjection—subjection having come about only as a result of the fall of man. In De regimine principum he said that this was also true of northern Italy and Rome, whose inhabitants took pride in their own rationality, though it was not true of the majority of other postlapsarian men, who usually profited more from royal rule. Ptolemy tried to reconcile this view with the frequency of despotism in contemporary Italy by saying that northern Italians could be subjected only by coercion. As for the Roman empire, not it but the church was the legitimate heir of the Roman republic. The virtues of the heroes of the Roman republic, to which Ptolemy also alluded in Determinatio compendiosa, recalled, in fact, the pristine state of human nature before the fall of man. Ptolemy's attempt to justify and harmonize republican and hierocratic theories makes him one of the most original political thinkers of the Middle Ages.
See also Nicholas III, Pope; Thomas Aquinas, Saint
CHARLES T. DAVIS
De operibus sex dierum, ed. P. T. Masetti (as Exaemeron). Siena, 1880.
De regimine principum, ed. Joseph Mathis, 2nd ed. Turin: Marietti, 1948.
De regno sive de regimine principum. In Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula omnia, Vol. 1, Opuscula philosophica, ed. Johannes Perrier. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1949, pp. 220-426.
Gesta Tuscorum, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler (as Die Annalen des Tholomeus von Lucca). Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, New Series 8. Berlin: Weidmann, 1930.
Historia ecclesiastica nova, ed. L. A. Muratori. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 11. Milan, 1727, pp. 740-1203.
Libellus de iurisdictione imperii et auctoritate summi pontificis, ed. Mario Krammer (as Determinatio compendiosa de iurisdictione imperii). Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui. Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1909.
Tractatus de iurisdictione ecclesiae super regnum Apuliae et Siciliae, ed. Etienne Baluze and Domenico Mansi. In Miscellanea, Vol. 1, Monumenta historica tum sacra turn profane. Lucca: Riccomini, 1761, pp. 468-473.
Ptolemy of Lucca. On the Government of Rulers: De regimine principum—Ptolemy of Lucca with portions attributed to Thomas Aquinas, trans. James M. Blythe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Blythe, James M. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Davis, Charles. "Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 118, 1974, pp. 30-50. (Reprinted in Charles Davis. Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 254-289.)
—. "Roman Patriotism and Republican Propaganda: Ptolemy of Lucca and Pope Nicholas III." Speculum, 50, 1975, pp. 411-33. (Reprinted in Charles Davis, Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 224-253.)
Dondaine, Antoine. "Les 'Opuscula fratris Thomae' chez Ptolemée de Lucques." Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 31, 1961, pp. 142-203.
Grabmann, Martin. "La scuola tomistica italiana nel sec. XIII e principio del XIV sec." Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica, 5, 1923, pp. 120-127.
Laurenti, Maria Cristina. "Tommaso e Tolomeo da Lucca 'commentatori' di Aristotele." Sandalton, 8-9, 1985-1986, pp. 343-371.
Panella, Emilio. "Priori di Santa Maria Novella di Firenze 1221-1325." Memorie Domenicane, 17, 1986, pp. 256-266.
—. "Livio in Tolomeo da Lucca." Studi Petrarcheschi, 6, 1989, pp. 43-52.
—. "Rilettura del De operibus sex dierum di Tolomeo dei Fiadoni da Lucca." Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 63, 1993, pp. 51-111.
Rubenstein, Nicolai. "Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of His Time." In Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. L. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield, and B. Smalley. London: Faber and Faber, 1965, pp. 44-75.
Schmeidler, Bernhard. "Studien zu Tholomeus von Lucca, 1, Die Annalen oder Gesta Tuscorum des Tholomeus." Neues Archiv, 33, 1908a, pp. 287-308.
—. "Studien zu Tholomeus von Lucca, 2, Gesta Lucanorum des Tholomeus." Neues Archiv, 33, 1908b, pp. 308-343.
—. "Studien zu Tholomeus von Lucca, 3, Zur Wiederherstellung der Gesta Florentinorum des Tholomeus." Neues Archiv, 34, 1909, pp. 725-756.
Schmugge, Ludwig. "Zur Überlieferung der Historia Ecclesiastica nova des Tholomeus von Lucca." Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32, 1976, pp. 495-545.
—. "Kanonistik. und Geschichtsschreibung." Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgcschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 99, 1982, pp. 219-276.
—. "Fiadoni, Bartholomeo." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 47. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997, pp. 317-320.
Taurisano, Innocenzo M. I domenicani in Lucca. Lucca: Baroni, 1914, pp. 59-76.
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