Saint Nicholas and Miracles, relief on east wall of the church of San Nicola, Bari. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
See Giovanni Balbi da Genova
A ballata is a poetic arid musical form. This brief lyric consists of an initial stanza with a unique meter and rhyme scheme, called the ripresa or ritornello (refrain), followed by one or more stanzas with a common meter and rhyme scheme. These stanzas are divided into two parts: a fronte and a sirima; the sirima concludes with one or more verses that borrow meter and rhyme from the ripresa. The ripresa establishes the theme of the composition. In performance, the stanzas are associated with a solo voice and the ripresa is associated with a chorus.
The structure of the ballata (plural, ballate) resembles Provencal dance compositions of a metrical type that reached its mature form at the court of Charles of Anjou in Provence. The genre was diffused in Tuscany in the mid-thirteenth century, and the first Italian ballate were composed by the Siculo-Tuscan school of that period. In the early fourteenth century, Dante reaffirmed the link between the ballata form and dance (De vulgari eloquentia, II.3.5).
The recurring pattern of rhyme and theme in a ballata is reminiscent of the ancient rhetoric of praise, Jacopone da Todi (c. 1230-1306) established an enduring tradition of Christian hymns of praise, or laude, in the ballata form, with compositions such as O iubelo del core. The master of the secular ballata was Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255—1300), whose extant corpus includes eleven ballate but only two canzoni. De Robertis (1961) has shown that Cavalcanti's fluid, natural amplification of ideas within the stanzas of hendecasyllabic ballate distinguishes them from contemporary canzoni, in which there is a more rigorous marshaling of arguments. This was a major contribution to the dolce stil nuovo, and an essential lesson that Dante learned from Cavalcanti, who was one of his earliest friends. Cavalcanti's most celebrated ballata, Perch'io no spero di tornar giammai, is composed in hendecasyllables and heptasyllables. The rhyme form of the ripresa is Wxxyyz and that of the stanzas is ABAB Bccddz (hendecasyllables are represented by capital letters). Cavalcanti expands the expressive potential of the recurring rhyme, engaging it in conversation with the stanzas, as Ugo Foscolo pointed out in the early nineteenth century.
The ballata form was explored by exponents of the dolce stil nuovo, including Dante and Cino da Pistoia, but Dante considered it inferior to the canzone, though superior to the sonnet. Francesco Petrarca, who included only seven mono- or distanzaic ballatas in his Canzoniere, diminished the prestige of the genre relative to the canzone and the sonnet. Boccaccio, in the Decameron, describes the singing of ballate and accompanying dances as part of each evening's entertainment, and other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century novellieri like Sacchetti and Bandello followed his lead, interpolating ballate into their prose and thus widening the breach between the ballata and more "elevated" lyric genres.
See also Ars Nova; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Canzone; Cavaicanti, Guido; Dante Alighieri; Dolce Stil Nuovo; Italian Poetry: Lyric; Italian Prosody; Jacopone da Todi; Petrarca, Francesco; Sonnet
LAURIE SHEPARD
Asperti, Stefano. Carlo d'Angiò e i trovatori. Ravenna: Longo, 1995.
Boyde, Patrick. Dante's Style in His Lyric Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Cavalcanti, Guido. Rime: Con le rime di Iacopo Cavalcanti, ed, Domenico De Robertis. Turin: Einaudi, 1986.
Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960.
Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. Padua: Antenore, 1968.
De Robertis, Domenico. Il libra della vita nuova. Florence: Sansoni, 1961.
Gorni, Guglielmo. Metrica e analisi letteraria. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993.
Banking in the modern sense, like much of modern business practice, has its roots not in the ancient world but in the economic revival of Mediterranean Europe that began in the tenth century. Nonetheless, to the extent that medieval banking practices were influenced by legal norms codified in Justinian's Digest, Roman concepts survived. Banking institutions in the western Roman empire existed to provide safekeeping for valuables, to make large- and small-scale credit available, and to perform exchange operations. As the western empire broke up, its economy regressed in comparison with the surviving eastern empire or, after the seventh century, the Islamic world. There was no longer any necessity for the more sophisticated mercantile functions of banking. Demands for credit were almost exclusively for consumption loans, to buy either luxuries for the well-to-do or essentials for those in dire straits.
The localization of minting and the consequent proliferation of coins in a bewildering variety of types, designs, fineness, and weights virtually ensured that money changers were a part of any sizable medieval community. Although evidence is scanty and often ambiguous before the thirteenth century, the great banks which appeared in Italy during that century are generally believed to have evolved from money-changing operations. In Florence, bankers in the great age of the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and the Medici were members of the Arte del Cambio, the money changers' guild. The earliest documents recording the activities of money changers are found among the twelfth-century notarial chartularies of Genoa. The term bancherius—derived from the carpet-covered table or bench (banchus) over which the exchanges were made—was already in use in the mid-twelfth century as a synonym for cambitor, although despite this terminology the money changer was not yet a "banker." By the last quarter of the twelfth century Genoese bancherii were accepting deposits and making loans, so the transition to banking had begun. Moreover, the priority of Genoa in the record may reflect simply the preservation of documents rather than any precocious development of banking there.
The nature of their business required money changers to have considerable sums on hand in coin. It would have required only a small extension of the concept of exchange for the money changer to advance a sum in anticipation of receiving coins to complete an exchange at a later date. In both Roman law and canon law a mutuum was a consumption loan that required the borrower to return only the equivalent value of what had been lent. In Roman law any agreement for a return of more than was lent had to be promised in an additional stipulatio that was not legally a part of the mutuum contract. In later Roman law, the amount of interest that could be charged was limited. Canon law, heavily influenced by the corpus iuris civilis, prohibited such interest agreements altogether. Since the mutuum was a consumption loan, the prevailing image in the agrarian society of the early Middle Ages was of someone who needed food or seed grain borrowing under the threat of destitution. To impose an additional charge in such a situation would have been contrary to the requirements of Christian charity. An advance in an exchange operation, however, might not have been conceived of as a loan at all, and any charges involved could have been thought of as having been levied on the exchange operation rather than as a return on a loan.
Furthermore, money changers must have had strong rooms, or at least strongboxes, to keep their coins safe from thieves. It is only natural, then, that anyone who had coins or other valuables might leave them with a money changer for safekeeping. Again, Roman law provided a legal framework for depositurm: one person's giving some thing (res) into the custody of another. In the simplest form of the depositum, the custodian was expected to return the same res to the depositor exactly as it had been left with him. One can imagine a sealed bag of coins, marked by a depositor, being returned exactly as it had been left. But money—unlike a horse or an heirloom—is fungible (res fungibilis): i.e., the exact equivalent value of certain things, such as coins, grain, oil, and wine, can be restored to a depositor without returning exactly the same thing that was deposited. Thus Roman law also recognized the depositum irregulare, which required returning something of equivalent value, but not necessarily the res ipsum (the very thing, the thing itself). In a contract involving depositum the custodian was obliged to return the res and any increase that might have occurred. For example, if a pregnant mare gave birth to a foal while on depositum, the custodian had to restore both mare and foal to the depositor, though the custodian had the right to recover any expenses incurred in keeping the res—in this example, the cost of feeding the mare and foal. Furthermore, the custodian had an obligation to exercise due diligence in caring for the res; and having done so, he was not liable for theft or damage outside his control. In a depositum irregulare, the ownership (dominium) of the res was transferred. After a specified period of time the custodian was required to return an equivalent value to the depositor. The custodian was responsible for any losses, even accidental losses, but was not obliged to return any increase or profit he made from the use of the res. The depositum irregulare was not considered a mutuum, because it was a contract undertaken primarily for the benefit of the depositor, even though the custodian had the right to make use of the res during the specified period. Also, in Roman law, interest could be paid, and it should be paid if the custodian was late in restoring the deposit to the depositor.
These concepts of mutuum and depositum, rooted in Roman law, continued to influence the development of banking in the Middle Ages. Canon law, which took most of its structure from Roman law, had an enormous effect. The church's teachings on usury shaped the way medieval banks did business, and the influence of Roman law ensured that the church's consideration of the matter would be in legal terms. The payment of interest, both on deposits and on loans, is at the heart of the business of banking. Yet in both civil and canon law such payment was dubious and very much dependent on circumstances. The mutuum, a loan in its simplest form, did not oblige the borrower to return anything beyond the principal. Canon law was clear on this: any return at all beyond the principal was usury, condemned in law and in the confessional. The church, however, recognized that in some circumstances the lender might suffer damages or incur expenses as a result of making a loan, and such an instance it was licit to receive compensation. It was also acceptable to receive a penalty payment if a loan was not repaid at maturity. There were loopholes, then, in the prohibition of usury, and canon lawyers and scholastics debated the fine points at length. Loans at interest were made—both overtly and covertly—but they incurred the condemnation of the church and the opprobrium of the community. Large-scale merchant bankers preferred to avoid these consequences, but in this area of economic activity the church's teaching and the community's attitudes were ambiguous.
Only if there was a mutuum could there be usury. Other kinds of transactions did not entail being condemned as usurious. Many kinds of contracts involved transferring capital temporarily from one party to another and were not considered loans, though to the modern eye the distinction might seem finespun. One of the most common contracts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the commenda, in which one party in a single venture commited capital to the other party, who traveled to carry out the active role; both parties shared in the profits and losses of the venture. There were also various kinds of partnerships and other investments that accomplished similar purposes. However, necessity and the church's doctrine on usury combined to make the exchange contract—the cambium—the central business feature of medieval and early modern banking.
Manual exchange, that is, the physical exchange of coins of one kind for coins of another kind across a carpet-covered bench, remained the province of the local money changer. But by the early thirteenth century, the letter of exchange was a favorite means of transferring capital for a period of time at a profit. A charge for foreign exchange was not considered interest on a loan, because it involved cambium rather than mutuum. Exchange carried out by means of a bill of exchange involved payment in one kind of coin in one place, and collection—usually in another kind of coin—in another place. The time that elapsed was merely due to distance and so did not make the cambium a loan, though the effect could be much the same. In the end, while lawyers and scholastics debated the technical aspects of usury, laymen came to the widespread conclusion that only a guaranteed return on a loan constituted usury; an uncertain return avoided this taint, A return on a depositum irregulare could be justified as a gift or as a share of profits realized by the banker through use of deposited funds. The commenda, various partnerships, and other contracts did not guarantee a specific rate of return, or indeed any return at all, and some of these arrangments entailed a risk of loss. Exchange rates could vary between the issuance of a bill of exchange and its presentation. The doctrine concerning usury, then, did not prevent bankers from using their depositors' capital for profit; but to the extent that it discouraged consumption loans, it might have channeled capital into business investment, thus benefiting the medieval economy. It certainly pushed medieval banking in the direction of exchange banking.
By the late twelfth century, bankers were using funds deposited with them to make investments in commercial enterprises and to make credit available to third parties. In 1200, a Genoese banker promised a woman who had deposited fifty lire genovese in his bank that he would "employ them in trade in Genoa so long as it shall be your pleasure; and I promise to give you the profit according to what seems to me ought to come to you."
Such arrangements required relatively sophisticated record-keeping. Accounting, and ultimately double-entry bookkeeping, developed as banking operations became larger and more complex. Even at a relatively rudimentary level, these records made it possible for bankers to make book transfers from one client's account to another. By the early thirteenth century, merchants would routinely call at the bench where their banker did business to give an oral order for payment by debiting the payer's account and crediting the payee's. Almost as quickly, it became possible for clients of different bankers to settle debts by means of transfers between banks, because in most Italian cities the bankers commonly carried on their business in the same location, facilitating quick oral communication among them. In Genoa, the benches were set up in the Piazza Banchi near the port. In Venice, bankers gathered at the Rialto. Bankers in Lucca congregated in the Piazza San Martino in front of the cathedral. Bankers in Florence, perhaps because there were so many of them, formed several centers: the Mercato Nuovo, Mercato Vecchio, and Or San Michele were the most important. Perhaps because their activity was so dispersed, the Florentine bankers seem to have led in the development of the check, a written rather than oral order to a banker to transfer funds from one account to another.
Though banking had its origins in money changing, the largest banks of medieval Italy were merchant banking houses. Italian merchants were prominent at the fairs of Champagne and other wholesale markets in northern Europe. Records show definitely that merchants from Siena were active there in 1216, and there is evidence from the 1220s that they were engaged in both mercantile and banking activities. Italian companies engaging in trade beyond the Alps would have needed to make frequent large exchanges between the currency of their home city and that of the foreign areas where they did business. It must have been very inconvenient to transport large amounts in specie for that purpose, so large firms with a great deal of capital soon arranged to achieve the same result by making transfers in their account books. Very large companies could offer these exchange services to third parties. The bill of exchange (lettera di cambio) was developed to meet this need. A bill of exchange was initiated when one party, the deliverer or remitter (datore, remittente) in, say, Siena, gave money or something else of value to the taker (prenditore, pigliatore) in return for a bill of exchange. The remitter then sent the bill of exchange to a payee, who was usually his correspondent in a foreign city—London, for example. That payee would then complete the transaction by presenting the bill at maturity to the payer (pagatore) for collection. The original remitter finally realized his return on the transaction with a second bill of exchange from the foreign place to his home city for which he became the payee. At least two bills were involved in a complete exchange cycle for a banker, and three were not uncommon. Most bills of exchange were payable at usance (a usanza, "according to custom"), that is, after a period related to the usual time required for a journey between the city where the bill was issued and the place where it was to be presented. Thus, if exchange was used in place of a loan, the period could be determined by the distance between the cities involved. This might vary from ninety days between Florence or Venice and London to five days between Florence and Venice. Of course, it was possible to draw up a bill of exchange and reexchange that guaranteed a certain rate of return to the remitter, or even obviated any exchange by including a clause that gave the taker (for all practical purposes, the borrower) the option of repaying in local currency. This so-called "dry exchange" was, quite simply, a disguised loan at interest. It was recognized as such and condemned by the church as usurious. Still, it was a common practice.
The greatest single client for banking services of all kinds was the papacy, along with other prelates. General taxation of the clergy by the papacy began under Innocent III (1198-1216). Papal taxation in itself required the transfer and exchange of large sums from all over western Europe to Rome. Sienese merchant banking companies were well placed to fill this need. They had the necessary capital; the technical means had been worked out; and of all the burgeoning northern Italian cities, Siena was closest to Rome. Financing the papacy became a very large part of the banking business of the Tuscan companies in Florence and Lucca as well as Siena. In the second half of the thirteenth century, by serving as bankers to the popes, the Gran Tavola dei Bonsignori became the greatest of the Sienese companies. Almost as large was the Ricciardi bank of Lucca. Both were heavily involved in providing financial services to the church. The conflict between Innocent IV (1243-1254) and Emperor Frederick II rapidly increased the fiscal needs of the papacy. Although Siena's active support of the Staufen cause must have created problems for the Bonsignori, the firm successfully managed them and continued to grow for the next generation or more. By the 1290s, however, the Bonsignori began to experience difficulties. In 1298 it collapsed, and in the following decades several more Sienese banks failed. During this period, and especially during the pontificate of Boniface VIII, the papacy began to transfer much of its business to banks in Florence, a city that was firmly Guelf.
The fourteenth century was the great age of Florentine banking. The Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli were the great international banking houses of the first half of the century. There were also many smaller companies, some of which operated internationally, others only locally. Like their thirteenth-century predecessors, these were merchant banking companies, engaged in trade and manufacture as well as in finance, but the larger firms tended to lean more toward the financial side. The dominance of Florentine companies is graphically illustrated by the success of the florin, a gold coin first minted in 1252. The florin circulated widely throughout western Europe and the Mediterranean. It became the standard of international trade and banking to such an extent that debts which might be paid in other coins, or even in kind, were often quoted in florins. The far-flung span of the Florentine banking and trading houses is illustrated by a handbook written c. 1340 by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, a branch manager of the Bardi company. Francesco had represented the Bardi in London and Cyprus and had accumulated a wide knowledge of trade and finance; he opens his handbook with a famous description of the "journey to Cathay" and goes on to discuss weights, measures, and business conditions from Constantinople to London.
Unfortunately, the Italian banks found that finance at the highest levels, dealing with popes and kings, could be dangerous as well as profitable. The final blow to Siena's dominance of European banking came when the French king Philip IV (1285-1314) confiscated the property of Sienese merchants in France in compensation for money that he claimed he was owed by the Bonsignori. This action, coming as it did at the same time that Boniface VIII was withdrawing papal business from Siena, sealed the fate of the Sienese bank. Florentine bankers also found Philip a dangerous client, but it was in England that the great Florentine houses became most entrapped by involvement in royal finance. Since the late thirteenth century, these houses had often made large loans to English monarchs and had, in return, received favored treatment in the lucrative wool trade. The debts, secured by future tax receipts, seemed safe enough so long as relations with the king continued to be amicable—but the English kings were perpetually in need of money, and their amity was maintained only at the price of further loans. The Florentine banks thus became more and more deeply involved with royal debt. In 1336, King Edward III decided to pursue his claim to the French throne, and he expected the Bardi and Peruzzi companies to finance this war. It is a measure of their wealth that they did so for almost a decade. When Edward ultimately defaulted on his enormous debt to the banks (estimated by the contemporary Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani as more than 1.3 million florins), the English branch of the Bardi was bankrupted. This bankruptcy set off a run on the banks in Florence that dragged down the home offices of the Bardi and Peruzzi, starting a wave of business failures in Florence in the mid-1340s. The economic disaster was soon followed by a demographic disaster: the black death of 1348. The Florentine financial sector reeled from this double blow.
Not until the last decade of the fourteenth century did another great banking house arise in Florence and assume international prominence, that of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, in the fifteenth century, the Medici bank would become the leading bank, with branches all over Europe. Under Giovanni and his son Cosimo, the finances of the papacy continued to be the largest single element in the growth of the Medici bank. But because of the economic contraction during this period, only one such bank could exist where before there had been many, and by any measure—capitalization, number of employees, or number of branches—that bank was smaller than the Bardi and Peruzzi houses of the early fourteenth century.
See also Bardi Family; Bookkeeping, Double-Entry; Coins and Mints; Florence; Peruzzi Family
JOHN E. DOTSON
Banchi pubblici, banchi privati, e monti di pietà nell'Europa preindustriale: Amministrazione, tecniche operative, e ruoli economici—Aatti del convegno, Genova, 1-6 ottobre 1990. Atti della Società Ligure di Scoria Patria, n.s., Vol. 31, fasc. 1-2. Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1991.
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. The Dawn of Modern Banking. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.
De Roover, Raymond A. L'évolution de la lettre de change, XIVe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris: A. Colin, 1953
—. Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Julius Kirshner. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Goldthwaite, Richard A. Banks, Palaces, and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1995.
Lane, Frederic C. "Investment and Usury." Explorations in Economic History, 2, 2nd ser., 1964. (Reprinted in Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.)
Melis, Federigo. La banca pisana e le origini della banca moderna, ed. Marco Spallanzani. Florence, 1987.
Mueller, Reinhold C. The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1400. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Noonan, John. The Scholastic Analysis of Usury. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957
Renouard, Yves. Les relations des papes dAvignon et des compagnies commerciales et bancaires de 1316 à 1378. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1941.
Sapori, Armando. La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi. Florence: Oischki, 1926.
Usher, Abbot P. The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1943. (Reprint, New York, 1967.)
See Flags and Banners
Barbato (c. 1300-1363) is known primarily for his friendship with some of the leading intellectuals of the Trecento. He was born in Sulmona (the exact date is not recorded), and Barbato was his Christian name—not his surname, as was erroneously supposed for many years. He qualified as a notary on 4 January 1325 and then began working at the Angevin court in Naples. In the course of his life he met many notable scholars, of whom the most famous were Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Barbato and Petrarch first met when Petrarch visited Naples in the spring of 1341, and much of their correspondence has been preserved. Twenty-two of Petrarch's letters to Barbato are extant, and attached to one of them is a rare surviving example of Barbato's own writing, Romana res publica urbi Rome, probably composed in 1347. In addition, we have three letters from Barbato to Petrarch, and a fourth which was written by Barbato to Petrarch on behalf of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Napoleone, and Nicola Orsini. Barbato also wrote a learned commentary on Petrarch's letter to Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Iantandem (Familiarum rerum libri epistole, XII.2). Barbato was instrumental in the manuscript tradition of Petrarch's writings, collecting them and diffusing them among the Neapolitan intellectual community, and Petrarch dedicated his Epistolae metricae to Barbato, perhaps in recognition of this.
Barbara's friendship with Boccaccio began in Naples in 1344. Three letters from 1362—one by Boccaccio and two by Barbara—are all that remains of their correspondence, but they demonstrate Barbara's lifelong devotion to Petrarch and are evidence of his search for further examples of Petrarch's writing. Boccacio, in his letter, promises Barbara a copy of Petrarch's Bucolicum carmen.
Barbato died of the plague during the autumn of 1363.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Petrarca, Francesco
GUYDA ARMSTRONG
Campana, A. "Barbato da Sulmona." Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 6, 130-134.
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Familiarum rerum libri epistole, ed. Ugo Dotti. Turin: UTET, 1978, pp. 43-543.
Vattasso, Marco. Del Petrarca e di alcuni suoi amki. Rome, 1904, pp. 7-33.
Weiss, R. "Some New Correspondence of Petrarca and Barbato da Sulmona." Modern Language Review, 43, 1948, pp. 60-66.
A euchologium is a liturgical book containing the eucharistic formulas, sacramental rites, and other public prayers of the Greek church. For the Byzantine rite—representing the majority of that church—the oldest surviving example is the Barberini Euchologium in the Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codex Barberinianus Graecus 336, folios 1-263), written in southern Italy in the second half of the eighth century. The Barberini Euchologium predates by many centuries the eventual definitive form of the rite, from which it differs in important respects. It is also the oldest document of the Italo-Greek liturgy celebrated in various forms throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period; thus it occupies a special place among the manuscript remains of Greek culture in medieval Italy. The Barberini Euchologium has long been known to scholars but has only recently received a modern critical edition.
See also Greek Language and Literature; Greek Orthodoxy in Italy
JOHN B. DILLON
Parenti, Stefano, and Elena Velkovska, eds. L'eucologio Barberini gr, 336 (ff. 1-263), 2nd rev. ed. Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae, Subsidia, 80. Rome: C.L.V.-Edizioni Liturgiche, 2000. (With Italian translation.)
Cacciotti, Alvaro, ed. "L'eucologio Barberini gr. 336: Il più antico testo liturgico delle chiese bizantine." Antonianum, 71, 1996, pp. 590-604.
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992.
The Bardi, a Florentine family, ran one of the premier European banking houses in the late Middle Ages. In the twelfth century, members of the family moved from the vicinity of Antella to Florence and established houses near the Arno River along what is now Via dei Bardi. They were vigorous traders in wool and leaders in the Florentine Calimala guild, and they had an office in England perhaps as early as 1183. After 1234, their fortunes soared, and in 1263 four brothers, the sons of Buonaguida Bardi, established the family bank sn Florence. Two years later they were lending to the pope.
The Bardi family was large, with many branches, and several members became prominent in politics during the thirteenth century. For example, Bartolo di messer Iacopo served in Florence's first priorate in 1282 and subsequently in 1283, 1285, 1286, and 1290. The Bardi's fortunes dipped after King Edward I of England sequestered their English wool stocks in 1290. However, in the 1290s, the Bardi established branches of their bank in Naples, Friuli, Udine, Cividale, Cremona, and Aquileia. They were declared magnates under the Florentine ordinances of justice (1293), and they feuded with a rival banking family, the Mozzi (1290-1295). Beginning in 1303, they served as mercanti di camera for the pope.
During the first third of the fourteenth century, the Bardi continually expanded their commercial and banking interests. In 1299, six brothers, sons of Iacopo di Riccio, and five other Bardi controlled the enterprises; and in 1310 there were fifteen partners, ten from the same family. In a good year, interest and dividends for investors would reach 13 percent. Along with their giant contemporaries the Acciaiuoli, the Frescobaldi, and the Peruzzi, the Bardi supplanted earlier families as bankers to the monarchs of Europe. The rulers needed cash, and in exchange for it they would often grant monopoly rights to state export revenues. The Bardi controlled many such monopoly revenues—for example, wheat in Naples—and, along with the Peruzzi, they had a virtual lock on English wool exports under Edward III. Nonetheless, kings could be troublesome clients, and disaster struck in May 1339. Edward III had borrowed nearly 1,365,000 gold florins to finance a war against France, and he owed payments on 800,000 florins to the bankers. When the fortunes of war forced him to suspend payments, other debts were called in, there was a run on all the Florentine bankers, and the economy of Florence nearly collapsed. The banks were ruined, but thanks to state-imposed moratoriums and its own diverse resources the Bardi bank survived until its creditors seized its assets in 1346.
In November 1340, in the immediate aftermath of this disaster, the Bardi led other magnates in a rebellion against the popular government. They were defeated, and sixteen members of the Bardi family were banished from Florence. Because they gave support to Walter of Brienne, they were able to return to the city two years later; but when Walter refused to abrogate the Ordinances of Justice, the Bardi participated first in his overthrow and then in the oligarchical "fourteen" who ruled in his wake.
The Bardi had been the strongest political and economic force in Florence in the 1330s, and they retained much of their power even after the bankruptcy. In 1364, they numbered fifty-two households, and in 1377 they were denounced as a "great and arrogant family." Members of the Bardi family continued to serve in political and diplomatic offices, and several were professional podestas. Others—-such as Roberto, a theologian at Paris (d. 1349); and Bartolomeo, bishop of Spoleto (from 1320)—served the church. The family also patronized several Florentine churches; the famous Bardi Chapel in Santa Croce was decorated by Giotto.
See also Banks and Banking; Florence; Guilds; Walter of Brienne
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Becker, Marvin. Florence in Transition, 2 vols. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967.
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze, 8 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1956-1968.
Holmes, George. Florence, Rome, and the Origins of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Long, Jane Collins. "Bardi Patronage at Santa Croce, 1320-1339." Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1988.
Prestwich, M. "Italian Merchants in Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century England." In The Dawn of Modern Banking. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.
Russell, Ephraim. "The Societies of the Bardi and the Peruzzi and Their Dealings with Edward III, 1327-1345." In Finance and Trade under Edward III, ed. George Unwin. London: Cass, 1962, pp. 93-135. (Reprint of 1918 ed.)
Sapori, Armando. La crisi della compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi. Florence: Olschki, 1926.
Bari is today the second largest city of southern Italy, the major city of modern Puglia (Apulia), and the most important port on Italy's Adriatic coast. Its origins have been traced back to the Bronze Age, and its foundation has been attributed to Illyrian settlers. It was inhabited by a people called the Peucezi, who occupied the Adriatic coastal regions of Apulia by the time the Greeks penetrated the area. It came into Roman hands during the third century B.C., and because it was situated at a junction of major roads, it became an important municipality and commercial center during the Roman era, though it was subordinate to Brindisi as a port and as a focus for shipping directed to the eastern Mediterranean. Christianity was well established in Bari by 347, when the first mention is made of its bishop.
With the disruption of Roman rule in the fifth century, Bari became first a part of the realm of the Ostrogoths and then, after Justinian's reconquest, part of the Roman-Byzantine regime. The Lombards under Authari seized Bari, but it was still strongly contested by the Byzantines, and it was sacked by Emperor Constans II in 669. Duke Romuald of Benevento (d. 687) held it briefly, only to lose it again to the Byzantines. Their rule over Bari was soon shaken, however. The Baresi opposed the new Iconoclastic policies of Emperor Leo III (c. 680-741) and rebelled against him; they then maintained their independence under a series of leaders (Theodore, Angelbert, and others). At this time Bari became the seat of the primate of Apulia, surpassing its rivals Brindisi and Taranto as an urban and ecclesiastical center. In early ninth century it was under the rule of its own duke, Pandone, who recognized a loose Byzantine suzerainty but then fell under the control of Duke Radelchis of Benevento. In the course of local struggles, African Saracens were drawn into the region, and in 847 Bari was stormed and was made the capital of an emirate—the only Islamic regime ever established on the Italian mainland, and a hint of what could have become a larger Saracen, or Arab, conquest.
In fact, however, the Saracen emirate, and whatever prospects it represented, lasted barely twenty-five years: in 871 it was besieged and taken by the Frankish emperor Louis II. When Louis died in 875, Bari again submitted itself to Constantinople, becoming the center of the restored Byzantine rule in southern Italy as the residence (from 893) of the strategos of the theme (military district) of Langobardia. During the Ottonian penetration of southern Italy, Bari was briefly taken by Otto I; but in view of the weakness of his son, Otto II, Bari was returned to Byzantine rule by 982, and it became the seat of a still higher official, the katepano, who commanded an enlarged complex of Byzantine territories (including Apulia and Calabria). At the same time, the Saracens continued to threaten Bari, and in 1002 a Sicilian force under Safi besieged the city, which resisted heroically. Relief came when the Venetian fleet, led by Doge Pietro Orseolo II, appeared at the request of the Byzantines and dispersed the attackers.
During these phases of Byzantine rule, Bari became a large and prosperous metropolis with a polyglot population and a cultural life enriched by Byzantine culture, and its maritime and mercantile elements benefited from their connections with the markets of Constantinople. Nevertheless, with regard to religious loyalties, Bari's population remained staunchly western Catholic; and periodically, restless elements in and around the city made it a hotbed of resistance to the Byzantine government, which was considered oppressive. A climax came with a series of rebellions organized by the Lombard Melo, who was supported by local Lombard princes and by the German emperor Henry II. Melo's first venture (1009) failed. For his second attempt (1016), he called on Norman adventurers who were then appearing in Italy as mercenaries; bur he was decisively defeated at Cannae (1018) by the energetic new Byzantine katepano Basil Boioannes, went into exile, and died in Germany.
Under Boioannes, Byzantine control was revitalized, though at the cost of recurrent wars with the Lombards of Benevento and with Saracen raiders. Bari was again a powerful urban center as seat of the katepanate, but the local populace remained resentful. After Boioannes died, this resentment was exploited by Melo's son Argyrus, who escaped captivity in Constantinople and fomented new rebellions in Italy. Argyrus, like his father, was aided by Norman mercenaries, and he was able to enter Bari, where he was acclaimed its duke. He was held in check during the harsh regimes (1037-1040, 1042) of the Byzantine commander George Maniakes. When Maniakes departed, in an abortive attempt to usurp the throne in Constantinople, Argyrus resumed his rebellion, but he now found himself pushed aside by his Norman allies, who were seizing territories for themselves. Argyrus soon crossed over to the Byzantine side, and in 1045 he went to Constantinople, where he became active at the court. Having gained the emperor's confidence, Argyrus was sent back to Italy as Byzantine governor and duke of Bari. He and his successors held the city in the name of Constantinople as the Normans proceeded to conquer more and more of southern Italy. Eventually, Bari was left as the Byzantines' last toehold and was besieged for four years by the paramount Norman leader, Robert Guiscard. Starved into submission, it surrendered in 1071, completing the extinction of Byzantine rule in Italy. Guiscard ruled Bari through a deputy, and upon his death (1085) the city became part of the inheritance of his eldest son, Bohemond, although Bohemond's rule was challenged for a while by another son, Roger.
In 1087, some Barese sailors succeeded in stealing the relics of Saint Nicholas of Myra from the church in Asia Minor where the saint had been buried, and carrying them off to Bari. The relics were entrusted to Abbot Elia of the Benedictine monastery and, after some dispute over where to place them, Elia (by then a bishop), with the patronage and support of Roger, began the construction of a new church dedicated to Nicholas, who was proclaimed the patron saint of Bari. At this time, the cult of Saint Nicholas was becoming ever more popular in the Christian west, and Bari became one of the most important shrines and pilgrimage sites in western Europe. (To this day, Bari has a huge annual festival celebrating this saint.) In 1098, in the newly completed crypt of the church of Saint Nicholas, Pope Urban II, who had recently preached the First Crusade (then still in progress), held a council aimed at reconciling the Latin and Greek churches. Saint Anseim of Canterbury was among the participants.
In addition to the pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Nicholas, pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land in the wake of the crusades also passed through Bari, making it a major center of east-west transportation and a highly prosperous port. But the Baresi found the Normans' rule oppressive, and in the years following Bohemond's death (1109), the city again became a center of unrest and struggle. One of Bohemond's successors, Duke Grimoald of Bari, attempted to fend off the new Norman king, Roger II. In 1136, at the behest of the pope, the German emperor Lothair II took advantage of the confusion, seized the city, and occupied it briefly. Thereafter Bari went, tumultuously, through one form or another of Norman lordship until 1155. That year, in accordance with the will of the people, the city was handed over to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I, who was making a fumbling attempt to recover power in Italy. In 1156, in retaliation, the Norman king William I, "the Bad," besieged the city, stormed it, and razed it to the ground, sparing only the church and shrine of Saint Nicholas. A decade passed before the population regathered; the city was then rebuilt under William II, "the Good," and the upper part of the basilica of Saint Nicholas was consecrated by a papal legate.
Saint Nicholas and Miracles, relief on east wall of the church of San Nicola, Bari. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
From then on Bari recovered steadily as it passed from the rule of the Normans to that of the Swabian Hohenstaufen and entered a more stable period. However, its former turbulent autonomy was decisively reduced. Frederick II, doubtful about the city's loyalty but determined to ensure its strategic importance, rebuilt and expanded its commanding fortress and also built a new port. He also granted the city certain selected privileges, confirmed its episcopal status in the region, and instituted at Bari one of seven annual fairs that were to be held in his kingdom.
Bari's revival, and its new prosperity, dissolved with the coming of Angevin rule. The Angevin sovereigns, selfish, quarrelsome, decadent, and exploitative, cared little for the interests of the city and sought only to extract from it what revenues they could. Commercial privileges were callously sold to wealthy merchants, and arrogant noble families flaunted their power with impunity. Worse still, the city became a pawn in conflicts between branches of the Angevin dynasty. Bari supported Queen Joanna I of Naples against Louis of Hungary, and as a result the city was besieged by an army of Hungarians and Germans and was forced to surrender (1349). After the war, Joanna ceded the city in turn to Robert of Anjou, prince of Taranto, and then (in 1364) to his brother Philip. It next fell under the rule of the rebellious Iacopo del Balzo, who was followed by Joanna's fourth husband, Ottone. In the ensuing struggle between two branches of the dynasty—Naples and Durazzo—Bari unwisely and futilely sided with the Neapolitans Louis I and Louis II and then suffered the vengeance of the victorious Durazzan faction. Under King Ladislas and even under Joanna II, Bari was granted some new rights and immunities, but these were abridged when, in 1430, Joanna again awarded the city in feudal grants in turn to Iacopo Caldora and his son Antonio. After a brief and unhappy period of Aragonese rule, Bari passed in 1464 into the hands of members of the Milanese Sforza family, including the widowed Isabella of Aragon. Under Isabella's reign (1500-1524) the city enjoyed one last, short period of revival, refurbishing, and cultural florescence.
As a consequence of its stormy history, virtually no traces of Bari's early medieval and Byzantine monuments survive in the modern city; there are only a few putative fragments of the palace complex of the Byzantine governor, adjacent to the church of Saint Nicholas, or San Nicola. But that church and the cathedral have made Bari a glorious, and influential, example of the Romanesque architecture of southern Italy.
The church of San Nicola is one of the four palatine basilicas of Puglia, It was the first great Norman church erected in southern Italy, and it became the model for Romanesque design in the region. It was begun by Bishop Elia, under the patronage of Duke Roger, on the site of the palace of the Byzantine katepano, and apparently it incorporates some Byzantine fragments, especially in one or both of its facade towers. Elia built the crypt, which contains the saint's extensive burial shrine. This much was consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1089; in it, Peter the Hermit preached a sermon urging what became the First Crusade (1095), and (as noted above) Urban came here in 1098 to preside over a council. The initial phase of construction ended in 1108, three years after Elia's death. The barely finished church was spared devastation in 1156, and the upper church proper was completed in 1197, when the church was consecrated. Its exterior is severe in design but is graced on three sides by handsome portals decorated with sculptures of lions on the north side and bulls on the south side and the western facade. Inside, the church's treasures include a superb ciborium (c.1150), the oldest preserved in Puglia; and an episcopal throne that is said to date from Urban II's council in 1098. The crypt, with the saint's elaborate tomb (from which miraculous unguent or manna is still believed to flow), is decorated as befits an important pilgrimage site. The shrine includes a fine Byzantine icon, given in 1319 by the king of Serbia. At the altar complex, provision is made for the celebration of the Byzantine rite, in partnership with the Latin rite; Bari is one of the few places in Italy where this is allowed.
The cathedral, dedicated to San Sabino, is modeled closely on San Nicola but is on a grander scale; it is a noteworthy example of Apulian Romanesque design. It replaced a series of earlier episcopal churches dating from early Christian times to the Byzantine era. Its immediate predecessor had been given its own definitive form by Bishop Bisanzio in the years 1035-1064, but that structure was all but totally destroyed in 1156 by William I. The present cathedral was constructed on its ruins in 1170-1178 but was not formally consecrated until 1292. Like San Nicola, the cathedral is a basilica in plan, though it is surmounted by a large cupola within an octagonal drum. On the exterior of the east wall, outside the altar, is a magnificently sculptured apsidal window. The austere interior is graced by a reconstructed ciborium of 1233. At the end of the north wall is a cylindrical structure called La Trulla, which is now used as a sacristy but was originally the baptistery of the eleventh-century church. Modern excavations have revealed extensive survivals of early mosaic pavement, dating from the eighth and ninth centuries. The cathedral archives preserve some important liturgical manuscripts, including the famous Exultet roll, a Byzantine paschal scroll of the early eleventh century.
Adjacent to San Nicola is the city's third important medieval church, San Gregorio, which is small but handsome. It was originally built in the early eleventh century, was probably gutted in 1156, and was rebuilt to some extent between the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century, in Romanesque style.
Another important monument in Bari is the massive Hohenstaufen castle, at the western corner of the medieval walls. The castle, which incorporates earlier Byzantine and Norman elements (eleventh-twelfth centuries), was essentially built by Frederick II, with amplifications by Isabella of Aragon. Here, according to tradition, Frederick received a visit from Saint Francis of Assisi. The castle is now used as a museum and exhibition center. Adjacent to it is Bari's centra storico (historic center). In general, although the centro has lost most of its actual fortification walls, it still preserves its medieval configuration—a warren of narrow, twisting streets that are said to have been made so complex deliberately, in order to baffle and frustrate attackers.
See also Authari; Bohemond of Taranto; Constants II; Francis of Assist; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Henry II, Saint and Emperor; Joanna I of Naples; Justinian I; Leo III, Emperor; Louis II, Emperor; Maniakes, George; Normans; Ostrogoths; Otto I; Otto II; Robert Guiscard; Roger II; Urban II, Pope; William I; William II
JOHN W. BARKER
Falkenhausen, Vera von. La dominazione bizantina nell'Italia meridionale dal IX all'XI secolo. Bari, 1978.
—. "Bari bizantina." In Spazio, società, potere nell'Italia dei Comuni, ed. G. Rossetti. Naples, 1986, pp. 195-227.
Guillou, André. Studies on Byzantine Italy. London: Variorum, 1970,
—. Il Mezzogiorno dai Bizantini a Frederico II. Turin, 1983.
Kreutz, Barbara. Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Schettini, F. La basilica di San Nicola di Bari. Bari, 1967.
Barlaam the Calabrian (Bernardo Massari, c. 1290-1348 or c. 1350) was born at Seminara in Reggio Calabria and was probably educated at one of the Greek Orthodox monasteries in the region, which were important centers of Greco-Latin studies. Having entered the priesthood, he left for Constantinople sometime around 1326 or 1327. From 1331-1332 on, Barlaam also seems to have lived intermittently at Thessaloniki.
Barlaam's lectures on mathematics (he wrote on arithmetic, astronomy, acoustics, and music) and philosophy (a treatise by him on Stoic ethics is preserved) soon made him very successful in the Greek capital. Apparently, his success aroused the envy of Niceforus Gregoras, who was then the prime representative of Byzantine humanism. Barlaam's training in Latin scholastic theology proved to be an important asset in 1333: he was chosen to defend the Greek position in discussions related to a reconciliation with Rome, which was desired by Pope John XXII. Bar laam's agnostic-nominalist position, however, drew criticism, both from the nominalist papal representatives and from several Greek colleagues such as the Hesychastic monk Gregory Palamas. Barlaam later disputed with Gregory on the value of the contemplative techniques practiced by the Hesychasts, and in 1338 this dispute developed into a discussion of the value of scholastic theology versus mystical contemplation. In 1341, the debate culminated in a general council at Constantinople, where Barlaam was forced to refrain from any further attacks on Hesychasm or Palamite theology.
In July 1341, after the death of Emperor Andronicus III, Barlaam chose to return to Italy and France. Earlier, at the beginning of 1339, Andronicus III had sent Barlaam on a mission to Naples, Paris, and Avignon to seek support for a crusade against the Turks. Thus when Barlaam came back to the west, he had a circle of patrons and friends eager to extend him hospitality. It was at Avignon that Barlaam first made the acquaintance of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), to whom he began teaching Greek in 1342. With the help of this pupil, Barlaam acquired the Calabrian bishopric of Gerasa. In 1346, he was charged with an ecumenical mission to Constantinople, but owing to the influence of Palamas, the mission failed. Barlaam returned to the papal court at Avignon, where he remained until his death on 1 June 1348.
See also Byzantine Empire; Petrarca, Francesco
STEVEN VANDEN BROECKE
Akindynos, Gregorios. Gregorii Acindyni Refutations duae operis Gregorii Palamae cui titulus Dialogus inter orthodoxum et Barlaamitam, ed. Juan Nadal Canellas. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: University Press, 1995.
Barlaam Calabro. Epistole greche: I primordi episodici e dottinari delle lotte esicaste—Studio introduttivo e testi, ed. Giuseppe Schiró. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, 1954.
—. Epistole a Palamas, ed. A. Fyrigos. Rome, 1975.
Giannelli, C. "Un progetto di Barlaam Calabro per l'unione delle chiese." In Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, Vol. 3. Vatican City, 1946, pp. 157-208.
Migne, Jacques-Paul. Patrologia Graeca, 151, pp. 1243-1364. (Reproduces texts of several older Latin and Greek editions of theological writings.)
Barlaam Calabro, per l'Unione delle Chiese, ed, F. Mosino. Chiaravalle Centrale, 1983.
Cassiano, Domenico. Barlaam Calabro: L'umana avventura di un greco d'Occidente. Lungro: San Marco, 1994.
Fyrigos, A. "Barlaam Calabro tra l'aristotelismo scolastico e il neoplatonismo bizantino," Il Veltro, 27, 1983, pp. 185-195.
Impellizzeri, S. "Barlaam." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 6. Rome, 1964, pp. 392-397.
Leone, P. L. M. "Barlaam in Occidente." Annali dell'Università di Lecce-Facoltà di lettere e filosofia, 11, 1981, 427-446.
Sinkewicz, R. E. "The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God in the Early Writings of Barlaam the Calabrian." Medieval Studies, 44, 1982, pp. 181-242.
Barna (Berna da Siena, fl. c. 1330-1350) was a Sienese painter active in Tuscany during the second quarter of the Trecento. On the basis of the style and quality of the art currently associated with him, he was among the most accomplished of Simone Martini's followers and colleagues. Barna's artistic reputation traditionally rests on his contribution to the great fresco cycle Episodes from the Infancy and Passion of Christ in the Collegiata of San Gimignano, painted in the late 1330s or 1340s by a team of three or four masters. His precise historical identity is controversial, however, since current critical opinion is that his name is fictitious. A painter called Barna Bertini was recorded in Siena in 1340, but he is not thought to be the same artist who participated in creating the cycle in San Gimignano.
Barna was first mentioned by Lorenzo Ghiberti in I commentarii (c. 1447-1455) in connection with a series of mural paintings on Old Testament subjects to be found in an unspecified church in San Gimignano; today these paintings are identified as the Old Testament cycle on the left aisle of the Collegiata. However, those frescoes were executed by Bartolo di Fredi Cini by 1367, and it has been suggested that "Barna" is simply Ghiberti's misreading of "Bartolo." Despite his Florentine background, Ghiberti was particularly sensitive to the achievements of Sienese painting, and he praised the artist he knew as Barna, who he claimed had also been active in Florence and Cortona.
Giorgio Vasari included Ghiberti's observations in his first edition of Vite (1550), but by the second edition (1568), "Berna," as Vasari refers to him, is said to have painted New Testament rather than Old Testament narratives in the pieve of San Gimignano—where, as Vasari goes on to relate, the painter's career came to an abrupt end in 1381, when he was killed in a fall from some scaffolding. Vasari increased the painter's corpus, of which nothing survives today except the frescoes in San Gimignano, and extended his sphere of activity to Arezzo and Siena. Some scholars have suggested that Vasari, while preparing his later edition of Vite, became aware of that Bartolo had created the Old Testament frescoes and therefore associated Ghiberti's Barna with the only other great fresco cycle in the church, the New Testament scenes on the opposite wall or right aisle of the Collegiata. In the process, Vasari, influenced by Ghiberti's incorrect testimony, would have unknowingly invented the name of a painter. If this was indeed the case, then the late date of 1381 that has traditionally been associated with the execution of the frescoes can be ignored, since the chronology is not only untenable on stylistic grounds but is also contradicted by the known circumstantial evidence, which indicates that the authorities of San Gimignano were starting to organize the decoration of the church in 1333.
Among the frescoes that fill the six bays of the right aisle of the Collegiata are the deeply expressive narratives that are for, convenience, still linked to Barna. The narrative is subdivided into three registers—the early life of Christ at the top, his ministry in the middle, and his passion below—and unfolds in a horizontal sequence from bay to bay. Equally important, however, is the vertical linkage (e.g., the first arrival of Christ in the Annunciation was planned above Christ's second arrival in the Entry into Jerusalem), which expands the overall meaning of the frescoes. Building on the example of the passion cycle from Duccio's Maestà for the cathedral in Siena, Barna also exploited changing rhythms within the narrative pace by increasing the scale of a scene, as in the monumental Crucifixion that fills two registers of a whole bay, or by allocating two compartments to a single event, as in the Entry into Jerusalem.
Problems with authorship and collaboration notwithstanding, the style of many of these scenes is characterized by elongated figures with dramatic facial expressions and agitated movements. Often sacrificing descriptive naturalism for general expressive effect, Barna's compelling works echo the art of Simone Martini, whose designs of elegant human forms punctuated with a refined sense of color were reinterpreted by Barna with an altogether sharper emotive force.
See also Duccio di Buoninsegna; Martini, Simone
FLAVIO BOGGI
Bacci, Peleo. "Il Barna o Berna, pittore della Collegiata di San Girnignano, è mai esistito?" La Balzana, 1, 1927, pp. 249-253.
Brandi, Cesare. "Barna e Giovanni d'Asciano." La Balzana, 2, 1928, p. 20.
Delogu Ventroni, S. Barna da Siena. Pisa, 1972.
Ghiberti, Lorenzo. I commentarii, ed. Lorenzo Bartoli. Florence: Giunti, 1998, p. 89.
Hofmann, Franz. Der Freskenzyklus des Neuen Testaments in der Colkgiata von San Gimignano: Ein herausragendes Beispiel italienischer Wandmalerei zur Mitte des Trecento. Munich: Scaneg, 1996.
Maginnis, Hayden B. J. Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, pp. 129-130.
Martindale, Andrew. Simone Martini: Complete Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 55-59.
Moran, Gordon. "Is the Name of Barna an Incorrect Transcription of the Name Bartolo?" Paragone, 27 (311), 1976, pp. 76-80.
Nygren, Olga, A. Barna da Siena. Helsinki, 1963.
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de' più eccetlenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi. Florence: G. C. Sanson!, 1878-1885, Vol. 1, pp. 647-651.
The composer Bartolino da Padova (fl. c. 1400) was a member of the final generation of Trecento musicians. He was born in the later fourteenth century and died in the early fifteenth. We know little of his life beyond the fact that he was a Carmelite monk, and he has sometimes been identified with one or another of the Paduan Carmelites called Bartolomeo. There are clues that he served the Cararra family of Padua at some points between 1365 and 1405, and it has been asserted that he may have spent some time (1388-1390, or after 1405) in Florence. Some of his works are said to reflect the Florentines' antagonism toward the Visconti.
Thirty-eight works, all with Italian texts, survive as Bartohni's accepted legacy. They are preserved in the famous Squarcialupi Codex, which includes his portrait. There are twenty-seven ballate and eleven madrigals, mostly in two vocal parts. Bartolini's music represents a relatively conservative continuation of the earlier Trecento tradition, with particular links to the work of Jacopo da Bologna.
See also Jacopo da Bologna; Squarcialupi Codex
JOHN W. BARKER
Goldine, Nicole. "Fra Bartolino da Padova, musicien de court." Acta Musicologica, 34, 1962, pp. 142ff.
Marrocco, William Thomas, ed. Italian Secular Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 9. Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1974.
Petrobelli, Pierluigi. "Some Dates for Bartolino da Padova." In Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 85-112
Reese, Gustav. Music in the Middle Ages. New York: Norton, 1940.
Wolf, Johannes, ed. Der Squarcialupi-Codex, Pal. 87 der Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana zu Florenz. Lippstadt: Kistner and Siegel, 1955.
Bartolo ch Fredi (fl. 1353; d. Siena, 1410) was one or the most active Sienese painters of the second half of the fourteenth century. He produced numerous altarpieces for the churches of Siena and the surrounding territory, as well as major altarpieces and fresco cycles in the neighboring towns of San Gimignano, Montalcino, and Volterra. Like other Sienese artists of his time, Bartolo is known to have participated actively in Siena's political life. He not only executed major commissions for the Sienese commune—for instance, a view of Montalcino (now lost) painted in 1361 for the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico—but also served in civic office. In 1380, he was a member of the Opera del Duomo, the civic authority in charge of the decoration for the cathedral of Siena.
Much of the recent literature on Bartolo di Fredi has been devoted to the reconstruction of his altarpieces. As Freuler (1994) has shown, Bartolo was a painter who adapted creatively to the circumstances of his commissions, producing innovative structural and iconographic solutions. His style, which he also adapted to fit the circumstances, is generally situated between, on the one hand, the lyrical naturalism of Simone Martini and Martini's followers and, on the other hand, the highly abstracted lyricism of such great fifteenth-century Sienese painters as Giovanni di Paolo. Bartolo's narrative manner developed in close contact with the painters of Simone Martini's circle, including Lippo Memmi, who were working at San Gimignano just before the mid-fourteenth century. The Old Testament cycle that Bartolo painted in 1367 for north wall of San Gimignano's Collegiata—facing a New Testament cycle that has been variously attributed to Barna da Siena and Lippo Memmi—is remarkable for its decorative animation. In mature works like the Adoration of the Magi painted in the late 1380s for the Tolomei chapel in the cathedral of Siena, subtle harmonies of color and line are balanced with vivid characterizations to produce a highly abstracted but compelling narrative.
See also Barna da Siena; Memmi, Lippo; San Gimignano; Siena
C. JEAN CAMPBELL
Faison, Samson Lane. "Barna and Bartolo di Fredi." Art Bulletin, 14, 1932, pp. 285-315.
Freuler, Gaudenz. Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts. Disentis: Desertina, 1994.
Harpring, Patricia. The Sienese Trecento Painter Bartolo di Fredi. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1993.
Knapp-Fengler, Christie. "Bartolo di Fredi's Old Testament Frescoes in San Gimignano." Art Bulletin, 63, 1981, pp. 374-384.
Traldi, Rossana. "Gli affreschi di Bartolo di Fredi a Volterra e un raro combattimento apocalittico." Prospettiva, 22, 1980, pp. 67-72.
Van Os, Henk W. "Tradition and Innovation in Some Akarpieces by Bartolo di Fredi." Art Bulletin, 67, 1985, pp. 50-66.
Bartolomeo (d. 1258) studied canon and civil law in Bologna; his masters were Tancredi da Bologna in the former and Ugolino de' Presbiteri in the latter. He himself remained active in Bolognese legal circles until he was slain in Ezzolino da Romano's sack of the city.
Bartolomeo wrote several works. The earliest (c. 1234) was Brocarda, updating Damasus's expositions of legal rules with references to the Decretals of Gregory IX. He later wrote Casus (paraphrases) and Historiae (notes on biblical and historical references) for the Decretum of Gratian, as a guide to readers; and a work on legal procedure updating that of Tancredi. Bartolomeo also left two collections of legal questions. He is best-known for his revisions of Johannes Teutonicus's Ordinary Gloss on the Decretum, the version that was most often transmitted with the text well into modern times. He added references to the Gregorian Decretals and other papal decrees that were then recent, and occasionally contradicted Teutonicus.
THOMAS IZBICKI
Brundage, James. Medieval Canon Law. London: Longman, 1995.
Bartolomeo (d. 1328) studied at the University of Naples, where he received his doctorate in 1278 and taught until 1289. His father, a jurist, had served both the Hohenstaufen and the Angevins; Bartolomeo served Charles I of Anjou and his son, Charles II. The latter made Bartolomeo a leading judicial official and an envoy to popes and princes. Bartolomeo defended the right of Robert of Anjou, the son of Charles II, to succeed his father and died in Robert's service. Bartolomeo's legal works include glosses on the laws of the kingdom of Naples, some of which he had drafted, and comments on civil law.
THOMAS IZBICKI
Walter, I., and M. Piccialuti. "Bartolomeo da Capua. In Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 50 vols. Rome, 1960-, Vol. 6, pp. 697-704.
The learned Dominican Bartolomeo (1264-1347) was born in San Concordio, near Pisa; studied law and theology in Bologna and Paris; and returned to Italy to teach in the schools of the Dominican order in Rome, Florence, Arezzo, and Pistoia. Around 1312, he settled in Pisa, where he was assigned to the studium of Saint Catherine; he became its director in 1335. Bartolomeo was much admired by his contemporaries for his erudition and his prodigious memory and is most interesting to modern scholars for his prehumanistic interests and his translations.
Bartolomeo wrote or is said to have written various minor works (not all are of certain attribution): Compendium moralis philosophiae, De mernoria, De arte metrica; and comments on Virgil and Seneca. He was also the author of an interesting work called Documenta antiquorum. Its essentially pedagogic moral tone and construction are based on teachings by Thomas Aquinas, Jerome, Boethius, Isidore, and Gregory; besides these figures, there are a great number of classical Latin authors (Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Terence, etc.) who may constitute the artistic center of the work.
Around 1305, Bartolomeo himself translated his work into the Florentine vernacular: Ammaestramenti degli antichi (Teachings of the Ancients) was one of the most popular volgarizzamenti (vernacular translations) of the early fourteenth century because of its moderate and balanced treatment of sins, virtues, and fortune. The Italian of this translation is elegant and effective, and it prepared the the way for the two translations for which Bartolomeo is justly famous today: Sallust's Catilinario and Giugurtino, both completed by 1313. Sallust, a historian and moralist of civil life, offered themes that were appropriate for the comuni (communes), but his complex Latin had made him inaccessible to many readers before Bartolomeo's translation. Barto lomeo was fully aware of the challenge of translation (the mature prologue is proof of his preoccupation with style), and he imitated the tightness of the Latin prose successfully (and uncommonly, for medieval Tuscan tended to be verbose). At the same time, he was not afraid to take liberties when his expressive vein called for them. Thus these translations, aside from their inherent beauty and interest, provided a useful and important model for later prose works and contributed to the spread of knowledge of Rome and the classical world. During the Middle Ages, however, Bartolomeo was best known for Summa de casis conscientiae, which remained the most important confession manual for more than a century.
Bartolomeo died in Pisa.
See also Italian Prose
DAVID P. BÉNÉTEAU
Maggini, Francesco. I primi volgarizzamenti dai classici latini. Florence: Le Monnier, 1952, pp. 41-53.
Segre, Cesare. "Bartolomeo da San Concordio." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome: Istituto della Encidopedia Italiana, 1960, 6:768-770.
—, ed. Volgarizzamenti del Due e Trecento. Turin: UTET, 1953, pp. 401-445.
Bartolus (1313 or 1314-1357) was the most influential expert on civil law in Italy during the Trecento. He was born near Sassoferrato in the territory of Ancona to a prosperous rural family, was tutored by Fra Pietro d'Assisi, and entered the University of Perugia c. 1328. He studied civil law under Cino da Pistoia, absorbing both the French critical methods of legal exegesis developed at Orleans and the Bolognese forensic dialectic methods. At Bologna, Bartolus studied under Iacopo Butriga rio, Oldrado da Ponte, and Raniero Arsendi da Forli; he earned his baccalaureate degree in 1334 and his doctorate in law in 1335. Between 1336 and 1339, Bartolus served as a legal assessor for several communities, including Todi, Cagli, Macerata, and finally Pisa, where he was also appointed to the law faculty of the university in late 1339 at an annual salary of 150 gold florins. In 1343, he returned to Perugia, where he taught at the university until his death. He was made an honorary citizen of Perugia in 1348, partly in recognition of his contributions to the city and also partly in the hope that he would remain there despite lucrative offers from elsewhere. His work helped the law school at Perugia rise to rival Bologna itself as a center of legal education.
Bartolus brought to his work as a civil jurist an enormous knowledge of customary, feudal, civic, canon, and civil law; clarity, practicality, and realism in the application of legal principles; and an unflagging dedication to displaying and disseminating his scholarship—though modern scholars still dispute the authorship of several works attributed to him. He wrote commentaries on all parts of the corpus juris civilis (which fill nine of ten volumes in the 1590 edition of his works), 405 legal opinions on specific cases, and a wide range of treatises on private, public, criminal, and civil law. Through his teaching and scholarship he sought to bring the legal systems of his time into line with the code of Justinian, and to adapt that code to contemporary problems and conditions, a task begun by Cino da Pistoia. In public law especially, Bartolus endeavored to shift the field of debate and development from philosophy (or theology) to Roman law and the realities of the fourteenth century. He shared those goals with his contemporaries, the "postglossators" or "commentators." However, these other commentators tended to rely heavily on the authority of earlier glosses of civil law, weighing conflicting arguments in search of a just solution, whereas Bartolus usually began at that point but then went beyond it, often arguing with earlier interpretations and relying on other authorities.
These tendencies appear most clearly in Bartolus's treatises. In On the Government of a City he depended in part on an essentially Aristotelian analytical framework (from Politics), adding his own comments on the seventh form of government: the "monstrosity" that was contemporary Rome. In On Rivers he relied heavily on Euclid and incorporated diagrams and geometric figures to present his reasoning, a method he himself considered novel. In An Action between the Devil and the Virgin Mary Bartolus explored the procedural problems of having a female—let alone the mother of Christ the judge—serve as advocate for the plaintiff, mankind, in a suit for possession brought by the devil: an example of a teacher's whimsy highlighting serious juridical matters.
Much of Bartolus's practical legal work also involved canon law, as this system governed the political relationships of the papal states and any interactions of the church with the broader society.
The treatise On Tyranny clearly demonstrates Bartolus's concern for contemporary Italian politics as well as political theory; in this work he draws tacitly from current events in a way that anticipates the method of Machiavelli's Prince. Here Bartolus formulated the first "theory of popular sovereignty to accommodate the political reality of independent city-republics." The populus liber (free people) of the city need not recognize the higher authority of an imperial or feudal lord, having unto itself the same authority in its jurisdiction that the emperor has in his: an extension of the idea that a king is emperor in his kingdom (civitas sibi princeps). This freedom could be obtained either de iure from the emperor or de facto through usurpation and declaration. Bartolus, equating lordship with tyranny, disdained the signore and the town that accepted a signore.
Bartolus combined profound legal and jurisprudential understanding with clarity in the application of this wisdom to the problems of his own era—a combination which ensured that he would leave deep and long-lasting impression. Through his writings and his students, such as Baldus de Ubaldis, his opinions and commentaries became authoritative and remained so for more than a century, despite attacks from humanists who favored a more purely historical approach to Roman law. In the law schools of Pisa, Naples, and Padua, Bartolismo continued to shape legal science into the seventeenth century.
See also Cino da Pistoia; Giossa Ordinaria: Roman Law; Law: Roman; Perugia
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Bartolus of Sassoferrato. Bartolus on the Conflict of Laws, trans. Joseph Henry Beale. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914; Westport, Conn.: Hyperion, 1979.
—. Tractatus de fluminibus, seu Tyberiadis, ed. Guido Astuti. Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1964.
Canning, Joseph. The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Cavallar, Osvaldo, et al., eds. A Grammar of Signs: Bartolo de Sassoferrato's Tract on Insignia and Coats of Arms. Berkeley: University of California, 1994.
Codices operum Bartoli a Saxoferrato recensiti. Florence: Olschki, 1971-.
Emerton, Ephraim. Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925; Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964.
Miceli, Augusto P. "Bartolus of Sassoferrato." Louisiana Law Review, 37, 1977, pp. 1027-1036.
Quaglioni, Diego. Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano: il "De tyranno" di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314-1357), con l'edizione critica dei trattati "De Guelphis et Gebellinis." "'De regiminis civitatis," e "De tyranno. " Florence: Olschki, 1983.
Segoloni, Danilo, ed. Bartolo da Sassoferrato: Studi e documenti per il VI centenario. Milan: Giuffrè, 1962.
Sheedy, Anna Toole. Bartolus on Social Conditions in the Fourteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942; New York: AMS, 1967.
Woolf, Cecil N. S. Bartolus of Sassoferrato: His Position in the History of Medieval Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913.
See specific place-names
See Prosdocimus de Beldemandis
Belisarius (c. 505-565), one of history's greatest generals, was born in the Balkans, but otherwise his origins are unknown. He first attracted attention while serving in the bodyguard of Emperor Justinian I and was advanced to a high command while still in his mid-twenties. He demonstrated his capacities with some brilliant successes against the Persians on the Mesopotamian frontiers, and then earned the emperor's further esteem by helping to suppress the bloody "Nika riots" that threatened Justinian's regime in 532. By this time, Belisarius was married to Antonina, a friend of Empress Theodora; Antonina's conduct was often a trial to him, but her influence at court became vital. When Justinian began an ambitious attempt to recover Roman imperial territories from barbarian regimes in the west, first by attacking the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, Belisarius was the logical choice to command the expedition. Leading a small force and displaying the bold resourcefulness for which he became famous, Belarius destroyed the Vandal forces in two lightning victories and conquered the North African realm within a few months (533-534).
Justinian next turned toward Ostrogothic Italy, and in 535 Belisarius was sent to begin recovering it. In the ensuing Gothic wars, he quickly seized Sicily and moved northward on the mainland to suppress resistance in Naples; not until he occupied Rome did he face a serious counter-effort under the new Gothic king, Witigis. In Rome, Belisarius effected the deposition of Pope Silverius, who had been elected through the influence of the Goths, replacing Silverius with Theodora's candidate, Vigilius; Belisarius also brilliantly fended off the Ostrogoths' siege of the city (537-538). For a while, his progress further north was delayed by dissension among his subordinates, but by 540 he had bottled up Witigis in the latter's capital, Ravenna. Pretending to entertain their suggestion that he become emperor in his own name, Belisarius won the surrender of the Ostrogoth leaders, but in the process he incurred Justinian's suspicion. As a result, Belisarius was recalled in disgrace to Constantinople. He was saved by his wife's influence and was returned to hard duty on the Persian frontier.
Meanwhile, the incompetence of Belarius's successors in Italy and the smoldering resentment of the remaining Ostrogoth leaders resulted in a furious renewal of war in the peninsula. Justinian then dispatched Belisarius back to Italy to resume command and conduct the war, but without forces and resources sufficient to the task. Belarius did his best, applying his old resourcefulness, and briefly recovered Rome; but he could not achieve any lasting results against the energetic Ostrogothic king, Totila. The death of Theodora in 548 deprived Belarius of his last support at court, and so, at his own request, he was recalled to Constantinople to enjoy his accumulated wealth in retirement, leaving the final reduction of Ostrogothic Italy to his eventual replacement, the general Narses.
Eleven years later, when raiding Huns threatened the capital, Belisarius was called out of retirement to drive them off—which he did, as much by strategem as by force. Justinian, who was still suspicious, accused Belisarius of participating in a plot against him. The emperor stripped Belarius of his wealth but did not (as later legends recounted) blind him and send him, an aged beggar, into the streets where once he had ridden in triumph. Belisarius died in March 565, only months before his ungrateful sovereign.
See also Gothic Wars; Justinian I; Naples; Narses; Ravenna; Rome; Theodora; Totila; Vigilius, Pope; Witigis
JOHN W. BARKER
Bury, J. B. A History of the Later Roman Empire, from Arcadius to Irene (A.D. 395 to 800). London and New York: Macmillan, 1889.
Chassin, L. M. Bélisaire, généralissime byzantin (504-565). Paris: Payot, 1957.
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. 4, The Imperial Restoration, 535-553. Oxford: Clarendon, 1889.
Procopius of Caesarea. History of the Wars, and Secret History, 6 vols., trans. H. B. Dewing. London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1914-1931.
The Florentine notary Zucchero Bencivenni (fl. 1300-1313) is an interesting intermediary in the transmission of Latin scientific texts from French into Italian. The medical books of the Persian physician and philosopher Rhazes (Razi, c. 865-923 or 925) had been translated into Latin by Gherardo da Cremona, but Bencivenni probably translated them into Italian from a French version. Around 1310, he translated Aidobrandino da Siena's popular Regime du corps; this translation is known under various titles, one of which is Ammaestramenti a conservare la sanità del corpo (Teaching on Preserving the Health of the Body). A whole succession of scientific and pseudo-Aristotelian works are attributed—many surely falsely—to Bencivenni; they include a series on physiognomy, astronomy, and lapidary. His most popular work was a translation of Brother Laurent's Somme le roi, a long and noteworthy work of moral philosophy; the translation, Trattatello delle virtù (Little Treatise on Virtue), was certainly familiar to many medieval readers. Bencivenni's texts are written in a gallicized Florentine that testifies to the influence of French culture and styles, typical of the late thirteenth century; it is also evidence for the author's presumed residence in France after his ascertained presence in Avignon in 1310.
See also Italian Prose
DAVID P. BÉNÉTEAU
Schiaffini, Alfredo. Testi fiorentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento. Florence: Sansoni, 1926, pp. 185-201.
Segre, Cesare. "Bencivenni, Zucchero." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome: Istituto della Encidopedia Italiana, 1960, Vol. 8, pp. 218-219.
Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547) was a monk and abbot, and the author of a rule for cenobitic monks; he was venerated as the patriarch of western monasticism from the eighth century on and was declared patron of Europe by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) wrote an account of Benedict's life and miracles, probably within fifty years after Benedict had died; Gregory dedicated the whole of Book 2 of his Dialogues to the saint and identified as his sources four abbots who had access to traditions concerning Benedict and who may have been Benedict's disciples. Although Gregory wrote primarily as a hagiographer, the text is thought to contain reliable biographical information.
Benedict was born near Spoleto in the Apennine village of Nursia. He was sent to Rome for his education but was scandalized by the immorality of the city and fled to a cave near Subiaco, in the hills east of Rome, to live as a hermit. There he underwent the trials and tribulations that prepared him to teach others the way to God. After a failed attempt to institute his ideas at Vicovaro (where the monks attempted to poison him), Benedict returned to Subiaco; there, he succeeded in founding a large community of cenobitic monks, divided into twelve small colonies, all under his direction.
Eventually Benedict left Subiaco for Monte Cassino, halfway between Rome and Naples, where he remained until his death. Here he established a cenobitic community, evangelized the surrounding countryside, and wrote the monastic rule for which he is renowned. In Gregory's Dialogues, Benedict is depicted at this time as a man of God at the height of his powers; through a series of accounts of miracles, Gregory emphasizes the saint's power as a prophet and wonder-worker. Benedict died at Monte Cassino and was buried in the same tomb as his sister Scholastica, a consecrated virgin. Before his death, Benedict predicted the destruction of Monte Cassino, though without loss of life.
In Book 2 of the Dialogues, Gregory declares that Benedict wrote a monastic rule "remarkable for its discernment and its clarity of language." Regula Sancti Benedicti (hereafter, RB) is generally accepted as the rule to which Gregory was referring and as having been written by the Benedict he celebrated. To be appreciated properly, RB must be understood in the context of some thirty Latin cenobitic rules written in the west or translated and introduced to the west between the years 400 and 700. Almost all of them draw their directives for asceticism and the common life from the same biblical texts and interpret these texts in the same way. The important virtues treated in the cenobitic rules include humility, obedience, charity, and patience; the essential observances are fasts and vigils, common ownership, work, silence, lectio divina, and frequent if not continual prayer.
Saint Benedict. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 144r.
RB, written between 530 and 560, is divided into three parts: a spiritual directory (Prologue and chs. 1-7); an institutional and disciplinary section (chs. 8-67); and an appendix treating fraternal relations, concluding with an epilogue (chs. 68-73). Most, though not all, scholars assume that RB was dependent on a long anonymous Regula magistri dated to 500-530 (hereafter, RM). Of the three parts of RB, only the third (the last) is unique; the spiritual part of RB is found almost word for word in the first ten chapters of RM, and in the institutional and disciplinary part RB and RM follow parallel paths.
In the spiritual directory of his rule, Benedict identifies the abbot as the spiritual father and chief teacher of the monk; the abbot's role is to guide the monks to God by inculcating the three basic monastic virtues: obedience, silence, and humility. The abbot leads his monks to replace self-will with the will of God, and to supplant fear with love. The rule then applies these principles to the practical aspects of the communal life: prayer together and in private, disciplinary measures, food and drink, sleep, clothing, ownership of property, care of the sick and the young, work, and the formation of novices. The final chapters are concerned with relations among the members of the community, emphasizing horizontal (or lateral) relationships rather than the vertical relationship that is the focus of the spiritual directory.
The great merit of RB is that it offers, for those seeking God through the monastic way of life, a quite faithful and complete image of the cenobitic tradition. However, it does not appear to have met with any great early success in Italy. It makes its first appearance not in Rome, where the monks fled after the destruction of Monte Cassino c. 570, but elsewhere, and considerably later: in southern Gaul c. 620-630 and in England c, 660. In the seventh and eighth centuries, RB was used alongside the rule of Columban and was propagated through a network of Columbanian foundations in northern and eastern Gaul. As part of Charlemagne's program for the unification of his realm and the continuation of this ideal by his son Louis the Pious, RB was imposed on all religious communities that aspired to be called monastic; in this way, RB became the standard for much of Europe. RB does not reappear in Italy until the tenth century, when it was brought to the monasteries of Rome through the reforming activities of Odo of Cluny.
Evidence for a cult of Saint Benedict dates from the eighth century both in Italy and in France. Benedict was venerated at Monte Cassino after its restoration in 720; his tomb there became a place of pilgrimage, and his feast was kept on 21 March, the traditional date of his death. According to another tradition from the eighth century, his relics were removed shortly before 700 to the abbey of Fleury in France, where his feast was kept on 11 July to commemorate this translation.
See also Benedictine Order; Monasticism; Monte Cassino, Monastery
THOMAS SULLIVAN, OSB
Benedict of Nursia. Benedicti regula, ed. Rupert Hanslik. Corpus Scriptorum Ecdesiastiorum Latinorum, 75. Vienna: Geroldi, 1960. (2nd ed. 1977.)
—. La règie de saint Benoît, ed. and trans. J. Neufville and Adalbert de Vogüé. Sources Chrétiennes, 181-186. Paris: Cerf, 1971-1972.
—. The Rule of Saint Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. and trans. Timothy Fry et al. Collegeville: Liturgical, 1981.
—. Benedict's Rule: A Translation and Commentary, trans, and commentary Terrence G. Kardong. Collegeville: Liturgical, 1996.
Chapman, John. Saint Benedict and the Sixth Century. London: Sheed and Ward, 1929.
Cusack, Pearse. An Interpretation of the Second Dialogue of Gregory the Great: Hagiography and Saint Benedict. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, 31. Lewiston: Mellen, 1993.
Gregory I the Great. Dialogues, trans. Odo Zimmerman. Fathers of the Church, 39. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1959.
—. Grégoire le Grand: Dialogues, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé, trans. Paul Antin. Sources Chrétiennes, 251, 260, 265. Paris: Cerf, 1978-1980.
Vogüé, Adalbert de. Saint Benoît, homme de Dieu. Paris: Atelier, 1993.
Von Matt, Leonard, and Stephan Hilpisch. Saint Benedict. Chicago, Ill.: Regnery, 1961.
Niccolò Boccasini (1240—1304) reigned as Pope Benedict XI from 22 October 1303 to 7 July 1304. He was born in Treviso, the son of a notary, and joined the Dominicans in 1254. After studying theology in Venice and Milan, he was appointed a lector for the order in 1268. From 1282 to 1296, he was provincial of Lombardy; in May 1296 he was elected master-general.
Niccolò was a strong supporter of Pope Boniface VIII, who rewarded him by making him a cardinal in 1298. He continued to support Boniface throughout the pope's struggle with King Philip the Fair of France and was one of only two cardinals who remained with Boniface when a French army stormed the papal palace at Anagni in 1303. On his election as Boniface's successor, Benedict XI immediately excommunicated Pierre Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, the leaders of the attack at Anagni. However, Benedict soon sought peace with the French. He temporized with regard to the assertions Boniface had made in the bull Clericis laicos (1296), obtained Philip the Fair's submission, and removed the censures Boniface had imposed on the king.
Benedict XI died suddenly while considering the case of Nogaret and Colonna, a circumstance that aroused suspicions of foul play. During his lifetime he had a reputation for holiness, and soon after his death a cult developed. He was beatified in 1736.
See also Anagni; Boniface VIII, Pope
THOMAS TURLEY
Ferrero, Angelo M. Benedetto XI, papa domenicano (1240-1304). Rome: Alba, 1934.
Funke, Paul. Papst Benedikt XI. Münster-in-Westfalen: Schöningh, 1891.
Grandjean, Charles, ed. Le registre de Benoît XI. Paris: Fontemoing, 1905.
When Pope John XXII died in Avignon in 1334, Jacques Fournier (1285-1342), a Cistercian and a former inquisitor, was elected pope: he reigned as Benedict XII from 1334 to 1342. The new pope inherited John's quarrels with Louis of Bavaria and with dissident Franciscans. He quickly put an end to the controversy surrounding his predecessor's unacceptable opinions about the doctrine of the beatific vision, and he focused his own energy on reform. He curtailed abuses in the curia, causing dissatisfaction in Avignon; and he pressed religious orders, including the Dominican friars, to reform themselves. The Benedictines, once just a scattered family, were led to centralize their communities as an order. Benedict condemned the Spiritual Franciscans and the Fraticelli, but he tried—though in vain—to make peace with Louis. Benedict's policy in Italy was pacific: he conciliated the Visconti of Milan and the Delia Scala of Verona. The peace-loving and parsimonious Benedict had less success dealing with the tyrants who dominated portions of the papal states, especially Romagna and the March of Ancona. His successor, Clement VI, would resort to costly wars instead, but with equally little success. Unkind comments by unhappy curialists have damaged Benedict's reputation; and William of Ockham (or Occam), the leading theologian among the dissident Franciscans, who had been hostile to John XXII, was equally hostile to Benedict.
See also Avignonese Papacy
THOMAS IZBICKI
Mollatt, Guillaume. The Popes at Avignon, trans. Janet Love. London: Nelson, 1963.
Renouard, Yves. The Avignon Papacy 1305-1403, trans. Denis Bethell. Hamden: Archon, 1970.
When Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-c. 550) wrote his Regula monachorum and founded the monasteries of Subiaco and Monte Cassino in the second and third quarters of the sixth century, he did not intend to found an order as we understand it now. Indeed, there is no record that Benedict's rule was followed anywhere else aside from these monasteries, except perhaps at the foundation Benedict made in Terracina, as Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) says in his Dialogues. But because this rule was a quite faithful and complete image of the cenobitic monastic tradition, emphasizing fraternal communion in love and the withdrawal of the legislator in favor of the living authority of the abbot, it was to have a preponderant influence on Latin cenobitism. Beginning in the seventh century, together with the rules of Columban (d. 615), it was imposed on numerous monasteries in the Frankish territories. At the end of the eighth century it became, at least in theory, the exclusive norm for all monks in the Carolingian empire.
In Italy, however, Benedict's monasteries and the observance of his rule barely survived him. Monte Cassino was destroyed sometime during the Lombard invasion, possibly c. 580, and tradition has it that the monks fled to Rome, taking the rule with them. If the tradition is correct, this copy of Regula monachorum was probably the same one that was still in Rome c. 750 and was sent by Pope Zachary (r. 741-752) to the recently revived Monte Cassino; and it may have been the copy that was sent to Charlemagne (c. 742-814) to serve as the fundamental document for implementing his program of uniformity of monastic observance. The "Roman rule" could best serve the Carolingians' design for an empire based on the Roman-German axis.
Although the monastic reforms of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious (778-840), and Benedict of Aniane (c. 750-821) were never extended to Italy, the Italian monasteries of Monte Cassino, Farfa, and San Vincenzo al Volturno had already begun a renaissance of their own. About 717, Petronax of Brescia restored Monte Cassino, making it the model monastery of Europe and a center for the diffusion of Benedict's Regula monachorum beyond the Alps. Willibald of Wessex lived at Monte Cassino from 729 to 739 before becoming bishop of Eichstat; and Sturmi, the first abbot of Fulda, was trained at Monte Cassino in the observance of the rule. Carloman, brother of Pepin the Short, retired to Monte Cassino after his abdication in 747, to be joined by the Lombard king Ratchis in 749. Farfa was destroyed by the Lombards in the sixth century but was restored by Thomas of Farfa in 690. Under Frankish abbots it was fortified; it was endowed by dukes, kings, and emperors; and its domains stretched from Latium to the Marches. Charlemagne made it an imperial abbey. San Vincenzo al Volturno, founded in 703, grew rapidly in importance, extending its rule over an extensive territory and becoming a virtual monastic duchy. Later, however, the Saracens destroyed Monte Cassino (in 884) and Farfa (in 882) and occupied San Vincenzo al Volturno (in 891).
Odo of Cluny (c. 879-942), who was called to Italy by Alberic in 936 to reform all the monasteries under his jurisdiction, brought Benedict's Regula monachorum to the monasteries of Rome (Sancta Agnes foris Muros, Santa Maria in Aventino, Sanctus Laurentius foris Muros, and Sanctus Paulus), to Monte Cassino, and to Subiaco. Odo also brought the Cluniac ideal, which was characterized by centralization and uniformity of observance, the development of ritual, a monastic culture based on study of the scripture and of the church fathers, extensive almsgiving and relief of the poor, and a flourishing of the arts, especially those of the scriptorium.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, new ascetic movements came into being; their adherents expressed discontent with the traditional Benedictine way of life, with the Benedictines' corporate wealth and involvement in worldly affairs, and with Benedictine community life, which was burdened by vocal prayer and ritual. The new ascetics, seeking disengagement, solitude, poverty, and simplicity, turned to the eremitic life of the desert fathers as their model. They included Romuald (c. 950-1027) at Sant' Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna, Peter Damian (1007-1072) at Fonte Avellana, and John Gualbert (d. 1073) at San Miniato in Florence.
It must be emphasized, though, that however strong the pull of the desert may have been for individuals in northern and central Italy, many of the established monasteries also reached their apogee during this period and in the twelfth century; and much of Italian monasticism, especially in the north and in the south, experienced a renewal under the influence of transalpine monastic reforms. The order of Cluny controlled some forty monasteries in Lombardy, most notably San Maiolo in Pavia, San Giacomo of Pontida (1076), and San Benedetto of Polirone (1077). The abbey of La Chaise-Dieu possessed twelve monasteries in the north. The reform of William of Dijon spread from his foundation at Fruttaria in the early twelfth century to Sant' Ambrogio in Milan and Sant' Apoliinare Nuovo in Ravenna. In the south, the congregation of Cava, following the Cluniac observance, was begun with the support of Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085). By c. 1025, this congregation numbered forty abbeys, thirty-five priories, and sixty-five churches; eventually, it would grow to seventy-seven abbeys, 100 priories, and 400 churches.
Abbey of Monte Cassino. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 144r.
Many of the great houses flourished as never before. Monte Cassino reached the peak of its prosperity under abbots Desiderius (who was abbot from 1058 to 1087 and later became Pope Victor III) and Oderisius I (from 1087 to 1105); during this period its church was consecrated (in 1071) and the fame of its scriptorium was established. During his abbacy (997 or 998—1038), Hugh introduced the Cluniac reform to Farfa and made the abbey a spiritual, intellectual, and economic center. The monastery of Subiaco flourished from 1050 to 1150, especially under abbots Humbert (1050-1069) and John V (Gloriosissimus abbas, 1069-1121).
Italian monasticism in the central Middle Ages was characterized by an astonishingly rich variety of forms and observances, equaling or even surpassing French monasticism. All the nuances of monasticism existed in Italy—local monasteries, reformed or unreformed; Cluniac priories; pure Benedictine observances, such as those of Monte Cassino and Vallombrosa; Cluniac adaptations in the houses of the congregation of Cava; and the Cal maldolese eremitic life.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, many houses of Benedictine monks had difficulty meeting the challenges of a changing society that was experiencing plague, warfare, and economic decline, and of a church that was weakened by internal schism and external controversy. At the same time, valiant efforts at reform were being made, and new forms of Benedictine monastic life were being created. The most strenuous attempts were those made by the papacy to revitalize monastic life. However, the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which imposed triennial general chapters based on national or regional groupings, and the efforts of popes Honorius III (r. 1216-1227) and Gregory IX (r. 1227-1241) and a former Cistercian, Pope Benedict XII (1334-1342), were largely unsuccessful, since they came from outside rather than from within the houses of the order or from within the hearts of the monks.
During the later Middle Ages, the most successful attempts to revitalize monasticism took place in Italy, Sylvester Gozzolini (d. 1267) founded Monte Fano near Fabriano, from which the Sylvestrine Congregation grew. The hermit Peter Marrone (c. 1209 or 1215-1296, later Pope Celestine V) organized his disciples into the abbey of Monte Majella in central Italy, which grew into the Celestine order. A century later, Bernard Tolomei (d. 1348), after living in solitude near Siena, gave the Benedictine rule to his followers and founded the Olivetan branch of the Benedictine order.
The fifteenth century saw many reform movements. Their prototype was the reform of Santa Giustina in Padua and of the subsequent congregation, undertaken by Ludovico Barbo (1382-1443). After restoring poverty, stability, and the common life to his own house, he extended his reform to several neighboring houses. His reform was shaped by a need, perceived in all monastic quarters, to combat the commendam system—the practice of granting monasteries to secular clerics or even to laymen to enjoy their revenues. To this end, Barbo suppressed the autonomy of the individual houses and radically altered the role of abbots in the monasteries. Monks now made their vows to the congregation, and authority rested in the general chapter, which appointed superiors and could move monks and abbots from one monastery to another at will.
Benedictine monasticism in medieval Italy was both creative and receptive, offering a life marked by rich and fruitful diversity. In the sixth century, Italy provided Christian Europe with a model of monasticism, the Regula monachorum, that would govern and influence monastic life for centuries to come. Italian monasticism was open to reform movements from the north, especially France, and itself offered the north reforms that would also bear fruit through the coming centuries.
See also Benedict of Nursia, Saint; Gregory I, Pope; Monasticism; Monte Cassino, Monastery
THOMAS SULLIVAN, OSB
Cowdrey, H. E. J. The Age of Abbot Desiderius: Montecassino, the Papacy, and the Normans in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
Fattorini, F. The Saints of the Benedictine Order of Montefano. Clifton, N.J.: Holy Face Monastery, 1972.
Ferrari, Guy. Early Roman Monasteries: Notes for the History of the Monasteries and Convents at Rome from the V through the X Century. Studi di Antichità Cristiana, 23. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1957.
Hodges, Richard. Light in the Dark Ages: The Rise and Fall of San Vincenzo al Voltumo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Osheim, Duane A. A Tuscan Monastery and Its Social World: San Michele of Guamo (1156-1348). Rome: Herder, 1989.
Penco, Gregorio. Medioevo monastico. Scudia Anselmiana, 96. Rome: Edizioni Abbazia S. Paolo, 1988.
White, Lynn Townsend. Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily. Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1938.
Beneventan chant was the music of the liturgy practiced in southern Italy before the adoption there of the standardized Gregorian chant of the Roman church. When the Lombards invaded from the north during the sixth century, they brought a wave of destruction and paganism but also planted on southern soil the seeds of a culture which was to endure for centuries and which developed its own characteristic Beneventan script and its own liturgy and music. The political capital of this area was the city of Benevento, and the liturgy and music developed there were in many respects independent of parallel developments in the Roman church. This rite spread throughout the south from Benevento and was practiced from the seventh century until its suppression in the course of the eleventh.
The southern Italian scribes who wrote this chant called it "Ambrosian"; and although Beneventan chant is not the same as the Ambrosian chant of Milan, there is enough kinship to suggest that the Lombards, northern and southern, once shared similar liturgies and music which then gradually grew apart, particularly after the fall of the Lombard kingdom of Pavia to Charlemagne in 774. Saint Ambrose is thus said to be the ancestor and protector of both rites.
The Beneventan liturgy was practiced at Benevento, Monte Cassino, Bari, and Salerno; in Dalmatia; and in other places almost as far north as Rome. The surviving sources of Beneventan chant, numbering almost a hundred manuscripts and fragments, describe a geographical area in which the so-called Bene ventan script was practiced and which matches the range of the Lombards' domination in the south. The principal sources, from the Biblioteca Capitolare in Benevento (MSS 38 and 40), are Gregorian graduals that include Beneventan masses as appendixes to major feasts. Most other surviving sources are fragmentary or palimpsest, suggesting the deliberate suppression of the local chant during the eleventh century. Among the sources, the magnificent illustrated Exultet rolls of southern Italy should be mentioned; these were used in major monasteries and cathedrals for the blessing of the paschal candle on the vigil of Easter. Such rolls, when they contain the special Beneventan text of the Exultet, or the Beneventan melody which persisted long after most churches had converted to the imported Franco-Roman text, give further evidence of the extent and influence of the Beneventan ritual.
The shape and function of the Beneventan liturgy must remain to some extent uncertain, as there is no surviving sacramentary, missal, lectionary, or antiphoner. To judge from the surviving materials, the shape of the Beneventan calendar and the place of music in the mass and office were much like the practices of the Roman church.
Beneventan chants have a high proportion of nonbiblical texts and texts that rearrange biblical phrases and ideas. There is considerable flexibility in the assignment of liturgical items to specific feasts; it appears that the Beneventan liturgy never had the fixity which we associate with the Roman mass.
The old Beneventan chant has a uniform style. Although there are a few simple pieces, and a few melismas, the music generally proceeds at a regular, rather ornate pace, using mostly stepwise intervals. Scattered throughout are repetitions of melodic formulas, small invariable turns of phrase that are repeated far more often than their counterparts in other chant dialects.
In the Beneventan repertoire—unlike Gregorian chant—few stylistic distinctions can be made on the basis of liturgical function or modal category. There are no clear distinctions between music for the choir and music for the cantor. Even though the surviving repertoire is small, we have several pieces preserved in multiple sources, and in such cases the sources agree, with only the smallest discrepancies.
The archaic features of Beneventan chant include a restricted tonal range. There is no evidence that Beneventan chant was ever subjected to the systematizing effects of the eight-mode system imposed on much other music. There is a remarkable economy of means in this music: the same few cadences and melodic formulas, a very limited range, and a tendency toward immediate repetition both at short range and for extended musical periods. These may be characteristics of music that has been transmitted orally for a long time.
Beneventan chant was written down substantially later than the Gregorian repertoire among the Franks; and it is certainly true that the other repertoires written rather late—the Old Roman and the Ambrosian—share a surface prolixity and some of the musical characteristics that are often called archaic but are perhaps simply typical of oral tradition.
See also Ambrosian Chant; Benevento; Liturgy
THOMAS FORREST KELLY
Kelly, Thomas Forrest. The Beneventan Chant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
—. The Exultet in Southern Italy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Paleographie musicale: Les principaux manuscrits de chant grégorien, ambrosien, mozarabe, gallican, publiés en facsimiles phototypiques par les moines de Solesmes, ed. (sucessively) André Mocquereau, Joseph Gajard, and Jean Claire. Solesmes and elsewhere, 1899-
See Vol. 21, Les témoins manuscrits du chant bénéventain, ed. Thomas Forrest Kelly. Solesmes: Abbaye Saint-Pierre, 1992.
Benevento can be traced to an ancient Samnite city on the Calore River that was founded, according to legend, by Diomedes. Apparently, an early form of the name was Malventum (evil wind), and this was changed to Beneventum (good wind) by the Romans sometime after their victory over Pyrrhus in 275 B.C. During the third and second centuries B.C., because of its geographic location, Benevento was an important point in the development of the Appian Way, which eventually connected it to Brindisi. The city prospered throughout the Roman era, for both military and commercial reasons, and was a focus of recurrent patronage and development. Its importance as a Roman city is still attested to by numerous remains from the period, most notably the superbly preserved Arch of Trajan.
Benevento continued to be a major city in the Middle Ages. During the Gothic wars of the sixth century the Byzantine and Ostrogothic forces continually contended for it; in the course of these wars the city and its fortifications were razed by Totila. When the Lombards were overrunning northern and central Italy, a breakaway force under the leadership of Zotto seized Benevento in 571, rebuilt it, and made it the center of an independent principality or duchy. Under Zotto's successors Arichis I and Aio, the territories of the duchy were consolidated and the hereditary rights of its rulers were recognized. One of its most important rulers was Grimoald {r. 647-662), who was able to succeed to the Lombard crown itself in 662. He left his son Romoald to rule in Benevento, which was still recognized as a regime distinct from the Lombard realm of the north. In 663, shortly after this arrangement had been made, Emperor Constans II, seeking to reassert Byzantine authority in southern Italy, besieged Benevento; the attack was beaten off when Grimoald came to his son's relief. Under the successive dukes of this dynasty Benevento was caught in continually shifting relationships with and between the Roman papacy and the Lombard crown. During the time when the Franks absorbed the Lombard kingdom, Arichis II (r. 758-788), a son-in-law of the last king of the Lombards, Desiderius, succeeded in preserving the duchy of Benevento as an independent state; it would remain a major force in southern Italy under his descendants. Recurrently during the ninth and tenth centuries, Benevento was in conflict with neighboring powers and was involved in a rivalry with the restored Byzantine powers in southern Italy. It was occupied twice by Byzantine forces (in 891 and 895) and was briefly annexed by the marquis of Spoleto, but it was fully reconstituted as a separate Lombard principality in 897. Under the Lombards' rule, Benevento flourished as a center of commercial and cultural activities, with extensive patronage of architecture and letters.
By the early eleventh century, a communal movement had developed in the city, and this movement flourished as threats by the Normans mounted. In 1051, the citizens of Benevento accepted the lordship of the Roman church; Pope Leo IX received confirmation of this acceptance from the German emperor Henry II, and it was on the basis of the Beneventans' recognition of papal overlordship that the reestablishment of princely rule was allowed in 1055. The arrangement was confirmed by Gregory VII in 1073, but four years later the death of the last Lombard prince brought the dynasty to an end. From then until 1815, Benevento was generally governed by papal deputies of one title or another—but with recurrent interruptions, as other rulers coveted it. It was occupied briefly by Frederick II (1241-1250) and then by Manfred (1258-1266), who was defeated and killed in Benevento on 26 February 1266 by Guelf supporters of Charles of Anjou. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Benevento was briefly held by Angevin, Ara gonese, and Hapsburg rulers. The Bourbons of Naples committed further depredations.
Benevento's Lombard era is commemorated by various remains, above all the church of Santa Sofia, consecrated in 760 and designed on Byzantine models. Its cloister, dating from the early twelfth century, has decoration that shows rich interactions of Muslim and local Christian styles. The cathedral, built in the early thirteenth century, was based on Apulian types and received subsequent decoration. Its bronze doors (also from the early thirteenth century), by an unknown master, are particularly impressive. The medieval castle, begun by the Lombards, received additions in later periods.
See also Arichis; Constans II; Desiderius; Grimoald of Benevento, King; Lombards
JOHN W. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Hirsch, F., and M. Schipa. La Longobardia meridionale (570-1077): Il ducato di Benevento—Il principato di Salerno, ed. Nicola Acocella. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1968.
Intorcia, Gaetana. La comunità beneventana nei secoli XII-XVIII: Aspetti istituzionali, controversie giurisdizionali. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1996.
Rotili, Mario. L'arco di Traiano a Benevento. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1972.
Vergineo, Gianni. Storia di Benevento e dintorni, 2nd ed., 4 vols. Benevento: G. Ricolo, 1985-1989.
Benvenuto (late 1330s-1387 or 1388) was one of the most imporant commentators on Dante's Divine Comedy during the Trecento. He was born in Imola to a family of notaries and judges. In 1365, he represented Imola on an embassy to Pope Urban V in Avignon. From 1367 to 1376, Benvenuto taught grammar at Bologna, and in 1375 he gave public lectures on the Divine Comedy. From 1376, until his death he lived under the protection of the d'Este ruler in Ferrara, where he continued teaching and issuing publications on the Comedy and maintained a lively correspondence with Coluccio Salutati.
Even before Benvenuto began his teaching career at Bologna, he had written a treatment of Roman history, Romuleon, for Gomez Albornoz, the nephew of Cardinal Albornoz. In Ferrara, he would complete his survey of Roman history by writing Liber Augustalis, about the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Wenceslas. These historical efforts doubtless explain why Benzo d'Alessandria's Chronicon was mistakenly attributed to Benvenuto.
In both Bologna and Ferrara, Benvenuto contributed mightily to the recovery of humanistic learning in the Romagna region. Among his many commentaries are those devoted to Lucan's Pharsalia, Seneca's tragedies, Valerius Maximus, Virgil's Bucolics and Georgics, and Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen.
Benvenuto heard Boccaccio lecture on the Divine Comedy and supplied Salutati with copies of the works of Roman poets such as Propertius and Catullus. His most abiding contribution to learning is his massive commentary on the Comedy, in which he states his firm conviction that Dante was the greatest of all the world's poets.
See also Benzo d'Alessandria; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Chronicles; Dante Alighieri; Dante Commentaries
JOSEPH R. BERRIGAN
Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola. Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi, ed. L. A. Muratori, Vol. 1. Milan, 1738, pp. 1027-1298. (Historical writings.)
—. Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, 5 vols., ed. J. P. Lacaita. Florence: Barbera, 1887.
—. Readings on the Inferno of Dante, Based upon the Commentary of Benvenuto da Imola and Other Authorities, 2 vols., trans. William Warren Vernon. London, Methuen, [1906].
Benvenuto da Imola: Lettore degli antichi e dei moderni—Atti del convegno internazionale, Imola, 26 e 27 maggio 1989, ed. Pantaleo Palmieri and Carlo Paolazzi. Ravenna: Longo 1991.
La Favia, Louis Marcello. Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola: Dantista. Madrid: Ediciones José Porrúa Turanzas, 1977.
Mazzoni, Francesco. "Benvenuto da Imola." In Enciclopedia dantesca. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1980, Vol. 1, pp. 593-596.
Paoletti, L. "Benvenuto da Imola." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966, Vol. 8, pp. 691-694.
Benzo (fl. 1311-1329) is remembered today as the author of the Chronicon. He was born in the Lombard city of Alessandria sometime in the latter thirteenth century and began his career as a notary. We have documents that demonstrate his presence in Milan as an imperial secretary in 1311 and in Como as an agent of its bishop in 1317. He then went into the service of Cangrande della Scala; we have two documents which he prepared for the rulers of Verona in 1329. That is the last we hear of him.
The Chronicon, mentioned by Guglielmo da Pastrengo and Galvano Flamma (or Fiamma), exists as Codex B 24 Inf. of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. It is a volume of 285 parchment leaves in folio, written in a round Italian Gothic hand. From Benzo's own testimony in Book 14, we know that he composed some of it in Como during his seven years there in the bishop's service. From the same source, we learn that he also worked in the Capitular Library of Verona. The text was written by someone other than Benzo and passed through the hands of Azzo Visconti and the Dominican church of Sant' Eustorgio in Milan before coming to the Ambrosiana in the early seventeenth century. On the basis of Benzo's own comments and those of Guglielmo da Pastrengo, it appears likely that—as Remigio Sabbadini believed—the Ambrosiana codex does not contain the entirety of the Chronicon.
The Chronicon, as we possess it today, consists of twenty-four books that can be divided into sections. First, Books 1—10 comprise a treatment of sacred history from the creation to the capture of Jerusalem by Titus; the dominant influence on this section is Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and Judeo-Roman War. Books 11—14 of the Chronicon form a geographical interlude; no author is as prominent here as Josephus is in the first section, but Isidore, Solinus, and Orosius are frequently cited. Books 15—19 deal with Macedonia, Alexander, and Alexander's successors in Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria. In Book 15, the most significant authorities are Jerome, Justinus, and Solinus; the whole of Book 16 and large chunks of the next three books are derived from the Speculum historiale of the French Dominican Vincent of Beauvais. We can note here that the entire conception of the Chronicon and its elaboration reflect Vincent's influence. Books 20-24 deal with Greek history. Book 20 takes up the history of Argos and Athens through the Peloponnesian War; Justinus, Jerome, and Valerius Maximus are the principal sources. The next three books are essentially Benzo's rehandling of other works: Book 21 is a prose version of Statius's Achilleid; Book 22, on the Trojan War, relies primarily upon Dictys, with supplemental information from Dares and Servius; Book 23 is another prose version of a much longer poem by Statius, the Thebaid. Book 24 once again depends heavily on Vincent of Beauvais, especially in the chapters on the philosophers, e.g., Plato and Aristotle. This book as a whole is a presentation of the facta et dicta of the most famous Greek heroes, both mythological and historical; in its prologue, Benzo declares that the virtues and achievements of these pagans should inspire contemporary Christians to emulate them.
The most original section of the Chronicon, and the one which has attracted the most scholarly attention, is Book 25, on the cities of the world. Within the larger compass of this book, Benzo is at his most creative in his presentation of the cities of northern Italy, especially Milan. He demonstrates a familiarity with some quite obscure sources, such as Ausonius's Ordo urbium nobilium, which he discovered in the Capitular Library of Verona. Benzo is also at home with the medieval chroniclers, Arnulph and the two Landulphs.
The only chapter on an urban subject that rivals the one on Milan is Benzo's presentation of Rome, chapter 132, He begins by describing Rome as provinciarum regina et urbium domina ac gentium princeps orbisque caput ("queen of provinces, mistress of cities, and prime head of peoples and the world"). Just before the end of the chapter, he once again cites Ausonius: prima inter urbes, deorum domus, aurea ("first among cities, golden Rome of the gods"). He concludes with a medieval line: Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi ("Rome, head of the world, holds the reins of the globe"). He draws the substance of the chapter from Mirabilia, Graphia, and Martinus Polonus. There are also references to Josephus, Livy, Virgil, Augustine, and Orosius. Benzo also finds room for a prose rendering of some lines on Rome from Claudian.
See also Cangrande della Scala; Chronicles
JOSEPH R. BERRIGAN
Berrigan, Joseph R. "The Trojan War in the Chronicon of Benzo d'Alessandria." Classical Journal, 61, 1966, pp. 219-222.
—. "Benzo d'Alessandria and the Cities of Northern Italy." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 4, 1967a, pp. 127-192.
—. "Mythology in Benzo d'Alessandria." Classical World, 60, 1967b, pp. 366-367.
—. "The Prehumanism of Benzo d'Alessandria." Traditio, 25, 1969, pp. 249-263.
—. "The Achilleid of Statius in the Chronicon of Benzo d'Alessandria." Manuscripta, 16, 1972, pp. 177-184.
—. "Benzo d'Alessandria as Historian: I." Manuscripta, 27, 1983, pp. 108-119.
—. "Benzo d'Alessandria as Historian: II." Manuscripta, 29, 1985, pp. 12-23.
Billanovich, Giuseppe. I primi umanisti e le tradizioni dei classici latini. Fribourg: Edizioni Universitarie, 1953.
Cosenza, Mario Emilio. Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists and of the World of Classical Scholarship in Italy, 1300-1800, 2nd ed. Boston, Mass.: Hall, 1962-1967, Vol. 1, p. 519; Vol. 5, p. 250.
Davis, Charles T. Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965.
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 8, pp. 723-726.
Ferrai, L. A. "Bentii Alexandrini de Mediolano civitate opusculum ex chronico eiusdem excerptum." Bulletino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano, 9, 1890, pp. 15-36.
Sabbadini, Remigio. Le scoperti dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV, 2 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1905-1914, Vol. 2, pp. 28-150.
Weiss, Roberto. The Dawn of Humanism in Italy. London: Lewis, 1947.
Berengar I (d. 924 or 928), marquis of the northeastern border march of Friuli, was a Carolingian on his mother's side. He was elected king of Italy in 888 following the overthrow of Charles the Fat, the last of the male line of Carolingians, in 887. Until 905, Berengar's position was challenged by a series of rival kings associated with Spoleto and Provence who usually had support from the French: Guy of Spoleto (889-894), Lambert (891-898), and Louis III of Provence (900-905). Berengar was also temporarily challenged by his own ally Arnulf of Carinthia (894-897), but Arnulf became ill and returned to Germany.
In addition to the numerous civil wars caused by these challengers, Berengar's reign was troubled by the first raids by Hungarians from the east and Arabs from the west. Although his rivals for the kingship had sought and obtained the imperial crown, Berengar himself did not achieve the title of emperor until 915. His reign was characterized by a marked decline in the authority of the central state, a decline hastened by Berengar's own numerous grants of land and legal rights from the royal fisc.
See also Arnulf of Carinthia; Frankish Kingdom; Holy Roman Empire
KATHERINE FISCHER DREW
Fasoli, Gina. I re d'Italia (888-962). Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1949.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.
Berengar II (c. 900-966), marquess of Ivrea, had some claim to the Italian throne through his mother, a daughter of Berengar I. Furthermore, his strong position in a border march in northwestern Italy threatened Emperor Hugh, Because Hugh evidently planned to have him eliminated, Berengar took refuge with the duke of Swabia in 941. But Hugh's position became increasingly insecure, and in 944-945 Berengar led a group of followers over the Brenner Pass into Italy, He gathered sufficient strength to force the abdication of Hugh in 947; Hugh died in 948.
The overthrow of Hugh left Hugh's young son, Lothar II, as king of Italy, and Berengar became the most influential of his counselors. The death of Lothar II in 950 gave Berengar himself an opportunity to be elected (with his son Adalbert) king of Italy.
Berengar II was never crowned emperor, and his reign was not a strong one. He was challenged in 951 by Otto I of Germany. Although Otto was generally successful, the situation in Italy at that time did not allow him to obtain the emperorship, and Berengar II continued to rule (in those parts of the Italian kingdom not held by Otto) until Otto returned at the pope's request in 961. Berengar II and his queen, Wilia, held out at the castle of Saint Leo in the Apennines until 963, when they were captured and sent to Germany, where Berengar died.
See also Lothar II; Otto I
KATHERINE FISCHER DREW
Fasoli, Gina. I re d'Italia (888-962). Florence: G, C. Sansoni, 1949.
Previté-Orcon, C. W. "Italy in the Tenth Century." In Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 3. Cambridge: University Press, 1922.
The canonist Bérengar Frédol (d. 1323) was born to a noble house in the diocese of Maguelonne. He served Boniface VIII as a chaplain, and he was a compiler of Liber sextus decretalium (1298), Frédol became bishop of Béziers, and Pope Clement V made him a cardinal in 1305. Clement employed Frédol on diplomatic business, and Frédol took part in judicial inquires concerning Boniface VIII and the Templars. He also tried, though in vain, to reconcile the Spiritual and Conventual Franciscans. Both Frédol and his nephew—who was also a cardinal and was named for his uncle—were candidates to succeed Clement. Several legal tracts written by Frédol survive.
THOMAS IZBICKI
Menache, Sophia. Clement V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Bergamo is the chief city in a province that runs a geographical gamut from the fertile plain of the Po Valley to foothills at the beginning of the Alps. The city is more or less at the center of the province in an east-west direction, and it is situated on the first slopes of the "pre-Alps," looking out over the plain of the southern part of the province, with the mountainous hinterland rising up behind it to the north. During the Middle Ages the boundaries of the province were the Adda River on the west, separating Bergamo from the area of Lombardy under Milanese control; the Oglio River, dividing Bergamo from Brescian territory to the east; a shifting line to the south separating Bergamo's territory from that controlled by Cremona; and the true Alps to the north. The area of the province—the medieval diocese and comitatus—comprises about 3,500 square kilometers.
The city of Bergamo lies at the mouth of two important alpine valleys: the Brembana and the Seriana. A third valley, the Cavallina, opened into the Po plain a few kilometers east of the city. Val Cavallina provided a shortcut to Milan for those corning into Italy over the Brenner Pass. In order to guard these valleys and passes, the Romans took the site of an old Celtic city in 197 B.C. and established a fortified garrison on a hilltop just where the plain began to rise toward the mountains. This was a large camp, with about 2½ kilometers of walls. By 49 B.C. Bergamo was important enough to be designated a civitas. Later, during the medieval period, its Roman walls served as the foundations for a rebuilding of the civic fortifications, and they marked the urban boundaries until the Venetians enlarged the town with a new set of walls in the sixteenth century.
Because sources are lacking, it is difficult to learn a great deal about early medieval Bergamo. Bergamo became an episcopal city in the mid-fourth century. It was sacked twice in the fifth century: first in 408 by the Visigoths under Alaric, and again in 452 by Attila and the Huns. Soon after the death of Theodoric, the city was described as well defended, and one can assume that it still possessed its Roman walls and fortified gates. According to local legends, when the city came under Byzantine control in 556 its fortifications were repaired by the new rulers; but there is no physical evidence and no evidence in the surviving sources that these legends are true.
Little is known of politics in Bergamo during Langobard times. From 575 on, Bergamo was an important duchy, extending as far as the eastern shore of Lake Como, and it had close ties with the Isola Comacina. Its territory also grew in other directions. When Cremona was destroyed in 603, its lands were split between Bergamo and Brescia. The Langobards used the city's location to full defensive advantage in their battles against the Franks, but Langobard Bergamo disappeared in 774 after Charlemagne took Pavia and destroyed the Italian kingdom. The Langobard rulers of Bergamo were replaced by Frankish counts in 774 or 775, and the mountainous territories of the comitatus were given to two of the most important Frankish monasteries: Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Denis, near Paris. By the time of Charles the Bald (823-877), the politics of Bergamo, such as they were, were completely imperial.
In the later ninth century and the tenth century, Bergamo remained an important center for the Italian kings, though it was never a docile subject. In 904, King Berengar I conceded the rights of fortification of the city to its bishop Adalbert and its leading citizens (concives), making the bishop the de facto military lord of the city. Berengar seems to have made this concession from a position of weakness. The Hungarians' invasion of 902 had wrecked the city's walls and gates, and the king was in no position to rebuild its fortifications. Whatever the precise circumstances may have been, this is one of the earliest known instances when a northern Italian city gained control of these rights. It also marks the beginning of the ascendancy of episcopal power in the town and the eclipse of the secular power of the counts, which had been so important during the Carolingian era. That this was the intention of the bishops is proved by a pair of documentary forgeries. One, dated 968, purporting to be from Otto II, gave the bishop control over all lands up to three miles (about 5 kilometers) from the city. A second, dated 1041 and supposedly signed by Henry III, gave the bishop control over the whole comitatus.
The later tenth century in Bergamo was a period of growing sympathy toward the imperial powers, and the Ottonian emperors were directly involved in episcopal elections in the city from the 970s into the early eleventh century. The most notable of the eleventh-century bishops, Arnolfo, who was elected in 1077, was firmly on the imperial side. By the end of the eleventh century, the secular counts too, weakened as they were, had been tied to the empire for many years. In 1092, Bergamo did enter briefly into an anti-imperial league with Milan, Cremona, Lodi, and Piacenza, but it remained something of an outsider and was significantly less developed, economically and socially, than the other members of the league.
What is most important at this period of Bergamo's history is not so much the external sympathies of the ruling classes as the internal manifestations of significant power. The church, and particularly monastic bodies, owned a great deal of valuable land in the comitatus. It has been estimated that religious foundations—episcopal and monastic—owned about one-third of all the improved land (that is, land with buildings on it) in the province. By the end of the eleventh century the bishop was popularly viewed as the real lord of the comitatus. This was paticularly true among the many people (called semiliberi) who accepted ecclesiastical control but were not economically dependent on the church. The close relationship between the borders of the diocese and the early medieval comitatus and the similarity of both to the borders of the old Roman civitas are strong evidence that there was an essential continuity of administrative structure throughout the early medieval period, whether the actual ruler was a Langobard king, a Carolingian count, or an imperial bishop. Nevertheless, the first clear separation since antiquity of the city from its surrounding contado (countryside) occurred under episcopal rule. Beginning with Adalbert's rebuilding of the city walls and gates in the early tenth century, the city of Bergamo came to be seen as more and more distinctly separated, both socially and juridically, from its rural hinterlands.
The ecclesiastical history of Bergamo is interesting but convoluted. External control was a continuous part of the religious presence in the surrounding contado. The Frankish monastic influence in the contado was replaced by that of several Cluniac houses established in the late eleventh century. In the city, under episcopal control, things were not so simple.
By the late eighth century there were already four important basilicas in Bergamo: the cathedral of Sant' Alessandro (Saint Alexander), located outside the walls to the west of the city; and the churches of San Pietro, Santa Maria, and San Vincenzo. San Vincenzo had been built near the center of the walled city by the Langobard kings as the Arian cathedral, and its construction marked the beginning of double cathedrals in Bergamo. When Charlemagne took the city in 774, he venerated its most important relic, the body of Saint Alexander, and granted donations to the saint's church. The Carolingians' veneration of the saint lasted through ninth century. When Charles the Fat visited the city in 883, he also took time to visit Alexander's relics. At least since the middle of the tenth century there had been a hostel for pilgrims at the cathedral of Sant' Alessandro. From 879 on, a weekly market, under the control of the bishop, was held near the church, outside the walls of the city. But in 908 the bishop transferred the rights for this market to the canons of San Vincenzo. This concession is further evidence that ecclesiastical power was moving within the walls of Bergamo. About 90 percent of the Bergamasque clergy lived inside the city, and from at least 897 on, the urban cathedral of San Vincenzo was referred to as a domus, a term signifying its primacy over the other churches, particularly Sant' Alessandro. Beginning in the eleventh century, squabbles between the bishop and the canons of San Vincenzo over control of the market became more frequent, despite a tradition, by then firmly established, that the canons of San Vincenzo alone, without any voice from the canons of Sant' Alessandro, elected the bishop.
The twelfth century saw the culmination of the struggle for primacy between the chapters of the two cathedrals. This conflict began in the early 1130s and came to a head in 1146, when the bishop was murdered. The eventual results were a lawsuit, which was won by the canons of San Vincenzo, and a decline in the importance of the cathedral of Sant' Alessandro—which ultimately disappeared altogether.
This sordid ecclesiastical history can in many ways be seen as paralleling the political situation in Bergamo at the beginning of the communal period. Storti Storchi (1984) interprets the two cathedrals as representing the pro- and anti-imperial factions in Bergamo. Sant' Alessandro, the church outside the city walls, was the center of anticommunal and pro-imperial sentiment, and it was the church of the local counts and representatives of rural power. San Vincenzo, on the other hand, was staunchly episcopal; this meant that it was the cathedral of the commune, since there were few apparent problems between the bishops and the citizens of Bergamo in the twelfth century.
The disappearance of the church of Sant' Alessandro as a center of power did not, however, mean that the long-entrenched imperial sympathies of Bergamo vanished. The province and the city remained supporters of the emperor and his policies until after the mid-thirteenth century and the collapse of the Hohenstaufen designs on the peninsula. In 1235, following a war with Milan, the Bergamasque church was placed under a papal interdict that would last more than twenty years. In 1236, the commune responded to this exercise of Roman authority by renewing its allegiance to Frederick II. In the 1240s, Bergamo supported Frederick's son Enzo in his war against Brescia; and that decade also saw the revival of imperial podestà in the city.
The persecution of heretics in the Bergamasque contado in the later thirteenth century and the early fourteenth can be seen at least partly as a result of these lingering sympathies toward imperial power. In the 1260s, the bishop, Erbardo, began to have difficulties with the commune because he felt that the civic statutes impeded his attempts to eradicate heresy. The subsequent additions to the statutes made in 1267 included antiheretical laws drawn from imperial as well as papal souces. But the intensity of the persecution in this region was not simply a result of paranoia among the orthodox. The mountainous alpine hinterland was a popular place for outlaws of all sorts. In the early fourteenth century the infamous Fra Dolcino hid out in the upper reaches of the Bergamasque valleys, and many of his supporters were from the region.
The relations between church and commune in medieval Bergamo involved the city's two most important and powerful organizations. Like many other Lombard cities, Bergamo developed a communal organization early in the twelfth century. The establishment of the commune is usually dated from 1117, but careful readings of the documents have established that consuls are first mentioned in the city in 1108; thus it can be assumed that a consular form of civic government dates from the very early years of the twelfth century. Structurally, the earliest civic government at Bergamo has been characterized as an "aristocratic commune." Jarnut (1980) discovered that before 1100 the city had almost no merchant class of negotiatores; this finding corroborates his observation that in the early medieval period the city's social structure reflected a firm concentration of power in an aristocratic urban elite. Although Bergamo had many of the prerequisites for a prosperous mercantile economy in the tenth and eleventh century—its own fair, a weekly market, and good roads to other important economic centers and ports—it did not become one of the economically important cities of Lombardy.
One of the most fascinating sources concerning life in Bergamo during the early communal period also supports the idea that the commune was an aristocratic establishment. Mosè del Brolo's civic encomium Liber Pergaminus, written about 1120, contrasts the dives and the pauper (the rich and the poor) as two different types of citizens, bound together in a pact of peace.
The imperial leanings of Bergamo lasted well into the twelfth century. In 1158, Bergamo, along with other traditional enemies of Milan, supported Barbarossa's siege of that city; in 1162 Bergamasque troops helped in the partial destruction of Milan. But only a few years later, in 1165, the political situation had changed so dramatically that Bergamo joined with Verona and Padua in an anti-imperial organization, the Veronensis Societas. In April 1167, Bergamo was one of the founding members of the Lombard League, which was established at the monastery at Pontida, in Bergamasque territory. Bergamo then helped with the rebuilding of the walls and gates of Milan, a project which began only three weeks after the foundation of the Lombard League. Another indication of Bergamo's political about-face also came soon after the meeting at Pontida: Bergamo's bishop, Gerard, whose sympathies were staunchly imperial, was deposed by the papal legate, with the support of the citizens. The new bishop, Guala, who was consecrated in 1168, was thoroughly anti-imperial in his outlook and actions. One imperial legacy that was not tossed out, however, was the office of podestà, which had first been introduced at Bergamo in 1163 as an imperial administrative post. During the late twelfth century and the early thirteenth the commune alternated between consular rule and rule by podestà.
After the peace of Constance, concluded between the cities of the Lombard League and Barbarossa in 1183, Bergamo continued to develop along lines that can be considered largely normal for Lombard communes in the late twelfth century. Consuls of justice (consules iustitiae) are first noted in documents in 1186. There is a mention of a liber statutorum (book of statutes) in 1198. A communal palace was erected in the center of the city; this palace is first noted in the documents in 1198, but in all probability it was already built in 1195. These are the most obvious innovations in the communal structure after the defeat of the emperor, and all of them had to do with an attempt to establish the rule of law—the chief characteristic of the communal period after the peace of Constance.
The consuls were the most typical feature of the early communal period in Bergamo. The establishment of the commune in 1108 is identified by the first appearance of consuls in the documents, and the consular council was the chief instrument of government until the imperially appointed podestà appeared in the 1160s.
There seem to have been three separate consular assemblies in the early commune. (1) The largest was the arengo, a popular assembly of all citizens. It did not meet regularly, and its chief purpose was to approve or disapprove (by acclamation) business brought before it by the smaller councils. (2) Next in size was the general council, the main deliberative body of the commune. This was still a large group: though its membership fluctuated noticeably, it generally consisted of several hundred leading citizens who were representatives of the various sections of the city, the vicinie. Storti Storchi (1984) points out that in the Middle Ages Bergamo had an extremely well-developed vicinal organization. The number of vicinie varied, but there were generally about twenty throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Storti Storchi claims that the communal organization of the early twelfth century was mainly a centralized imitation of these more localized administrations. (3) The smallest but most important council was the consiglio di credenza, which met regularly and frequently and served as the executive arm of the communal government. It controlled the activities of all the other social organizations in the city.
One of the most substantive changes in communal organization that resulted from the peace of Constance was a transfer of judicial authority from the bishops to the communes themselves. These communal councils, as the only legitimate expression of power and deliberation in the communes, retained exclusive control over, and exercise of, the law and punishment. This fact explains the appearance of the judicial consuls in 1186, and the increasing preoccupation with legal matters and procedures in communal life during the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century.
Since the law was the fulcrum of the new communal life, a crucial requirement was that laws had to be created and preserved in a form which made them accessible, at least in theory, to all citizens. This form was the book of civic statutes, the liber statutorum. In Bergamo, such statutes are mentioned from 1198 on, and it is reasonable to assume that they existed in some form before then. Mosè del Brolo, in his Liber Pergaminus, speaks of twelve citizen magistrates whose job was "to examine the holy laws night and day" (sanctas leges scrutantes nocte dieque).
The oldest surviving communal statute book, called the statutum vetus (old statute), dates from 1248 but includes statutes from earlier in the thirteenth century and survivals from before 1200. Earlier statutes from a private civic organization, the Società del Popolo, were incorporated into the communal statutes in 1230. There are also some surviving fragments of statutes, dated 1237. Additions were made to the statutes in 1253, and in 1267 a completely new redaction was made that included both imperial and papal proscriptions against heresy. In the fourteenth century the statutes were revised continually, beginning in 1307. Surviving compilations date from 1331, 1333, 1353, 1374, 1391, and finally 1422.
The statute book was kept in the communal palace, where it was to be available to any citizen who wanted to consult it. There was also another public book, called Bos, that was kept with the statutes. This second book contained all the bans, public edicts, and proclamations of the commune, as well as the fines established for misdemeanors. It thus served as a sort of running set of minutes of communal deliberations.
The communal palace—now called the Palazzo della Ragione—was a new addition to the civic fabric in Bergamo after the peace of Constance. The commune obtained property in the center of the city (by purchase and, apparently, by the exercise of eminent domain) in order to construct a palace that would suitably house the two most characteristic public communal activities: consular gatherings and judicial proceedings. The palace faced south toward the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and, as was to be typical for such communal structures in Lombardy, was very large but architecturally straightforward. It was rectangular and consisted of a large single salone over an arcaded ground floor. The ground floor is now open on three sides, allowing passage beneath the palace from one piazza to another, but it was originally open on only two sides—the south and the west. The Palazzo della Ragione is the first building in the city that shows any awareness of the developing Gothic style of northern Europe. Its Gothic quality is hesitant but is most clearly noticeable in the pointed arches of the arcade, and the adoption of the new architectural style for what was fundamentally a new kind of building seems to have been a conscious choice.
Although the commune is the classic—and most important—example of the tendency of northern Italian city dwellers of the later Middle Ages to organize themselves into associations, it was by no means the only form of association existing in the city. In the late twelfth century, popular new religious societies were already being formed; chief among these was the Humiliati, which first appeared in Bergamo in 1171. A general characteristic of the communal period was the formation of secular or quasi-religious societies that were essentially civic in nature. According to Belotti (1959), there was a rudimentary popular Società delle Armi as early as 1179; it was reorganized in 1206 and again c. 1230. Storti Storchi is not so definite about the beginnings of the Società delle Armi, dating it only from sometime before 1226. It is certain, however, that the statutes of this organization were incorporated into the communal statutes in 1230. Some surviving additions made to the statutes in 1257 mention societates, and on the basis of these Storti Storchi argues for the existence of other popular societies during the first half of the thirteenth century. A Societatis Sanctae Mariae Majoris was in existence before 1289, and there was also a Societatis Sanctae Salvatoris in the late thirteenth century.
By the early fourteenth century, public life begins to take on a certain hysterical tone, which is reflected in the formation of still more popular societies. In 1307, a Società delle Armi del Popolo was established with a membership of 500, soon increased to 800. Storti Storchi holds that this society was established "as an extreme act of faithfulness towards the institutional forms of the commune." A new society founded in 1316, again reflecting the ideals of the commune, was the Societas Iustitiae Populi Pergami. As the institutions of the communal period collapsed and were replaced by early tyrannies, these civic societies assumed more overtly religious forms. In 1326, a new organization appeared, the Societatis Manus Christi et Populi, which was not as large as the earlier societies but nevertheless had 400 or more members.
These societies should not be seen simply as expressions of individual or corporate piety or civic-mindedness. They were important attempts by the citizens of Bergamo to prevent the city's aristocracy from twisting communal structures to serve its own purposes. The aristocratic families—the most important were the Suardi, Colleoni, Rivola, and Bonghi—were held in check to a certain extent by the commune. However, these families were restrained mostly because power was so evenly balanced among them: no single family could exert control over the city for any length of time without suffering a counterattack from the others.
Most of the civil discord from the late twelfth century until well into the fourteenth was a result of, or was at least exacerbated by, the attempts of these aristocratic families to dominate the city. There are reports of civic disruptions as early as 1179, though little is known of the exact circumstances or the protagonists. In 1206, a serious intramural war occurred, with the Suardi fighting the Rivola. This was also a war of the urban nobility against the commune, embodied by the podestà. The second half of the 1220s was a period of more or less continual civil war, with the Colleoni and the Suardi pitted against the Rivola, and all the noble families fighting the Società del Popolo.
Despite these internal conflicts, most of the wars Bergamo was involved in from 1230 until the end of the thirteenth century were external. The city consistently took the imperial side. In 1296, though, the most serious intramural conflict of the communal period occurred, initiating a period of civic instability that lasted until 1307. What began as a battle between supporters of the Suardi and those of the Colleoni escalated into an all-out civil war. The Suardi were driven out of the city, only to return immediately with support from the Milanese; the Suardi in turn exiled the Colleoni and their allies.
The Suardi were able to maintain control of Bergamo only with continuous assistance from outside. In 1301, they had to ask Matteo Visconti for help. In 1310, the Holy Roman emperor Henry VII declared the Suardi the hereditary lords of the city, but he neglected to support them beyond this, and two years later they were driven out of Bergamo by the Colleoni. In 1328, the Suardi again gained control of the city, again with the help of the Visconti; from then until the early fifteenth century, except for brief periods, the Suardi maintained nominal control, though essentially acting as creatures of the Visconti.
The end of the commune in Bergamo marks the end of its medieval history. The decline of communal insititutions is a sad story, though not unusual in early fourteenth-century Lombardy. Beginning with the civil war of 1296, urban stability became the exception, not the rule. The revisions of the statutes in 1307 and the formation of new citizens' societies were symptoms of the distressed condition of civic institutions. By the early fourteenth century the bureaucratic structures of the commune had become so complicated and rigid that they no longer functioned effectively, and the commune could no longer fend off attempts by the urban aristocracy to gain control of the city.
Henry VII's entry into Italy in 1310 provided an impetus for the Ghibelline Suardi to set themselves up as the first hereditary lords of the city. This lordship did not survive the reaction of the other powerful families in Bergamo, but it foreshadowed things to come.
In 1315, Matteo Visconti became signore of Bergamo, and two years later the city was officially made a subject of Milan. This subjection was short-lived; by the end of 1317 the Visconti's authority in the city had ended, at least temporarily. Over the next few years, it becomes difficult to be precise about events in Bergamo.
Local control apparently did not prove up to the task of governing the city after domination by Milan was rejected. In the early 1320s, Federico della Scala was effectively in control of Bergamo, maintaining what was essentially an unofficial signoria which lasted until 1324. At this time the people of Bergamo attempted once again to govern themselves, but without notable success; and in 1327 Louis the Bavarian, who had recently crossed the Alps, was proclaimed signore. This new signoria was pro forma rather than indicative of any real political change, and in 1328, the Suardi—the most pro-imperial of Bergamo's families—were able to reestablish control of Bergamo. The Suardi may have been able to dominate the other aristocratic families of the city, and the tattered remnants of the Popolo, but they were ineffective against external threats, and in 1329 the Visconti again took power in Bergamo, though this time with a Suardi as putative "protector."
The double burden of control by the Suardi and the Visconti was too much for the citizens of the city, and in early 1331, Bergamo, along with many other Lombard cities, enthusiastically placed itself under the protection of the northern emperor John of Bohemia. Though destined to last no more than a few months, John's reign in Bergamo was a watershed in the city's institutional history. This was the first true signoria, legally speaking. It is ironic that what had been intended by the city as a last desperate attempt to revive the old communal forms ended with the legalizing of disdain for the law on the part of those in authority. When Azzone Visconti became signore in Bergamo in 1332, he was legally exempted from obedience to the laws of the city. In this form, domination by the Visconti continued through the rest of the fourteenth century and into the fifteenth, until the Milanese were replaced by the Venetians as lords of the city in 1428.
Physically, Bergamo remains, as the guidebooks say, molto suggestiva—very evocative. The upper city especially gives a good idea of what a Lombard mountain town was like at the end of the Middle Ages. The present walls and gates are Venetian constructions of the sixteenth century, and there is much in the city that is Renaissance or pseudo-Renaissance; but if one looks past the Palladian windows, evidence of the fourteenth, the thirteenth, and even the twelfth century begins to appear.
The most famous medieval building in Bergamo is the Romanesque church of Santa Maria Maggiore, whose towers and cupola crown the upper city. It was begun in 1137, and according to an old tradition it was built as an ex-voto for the deliverance of the city from drought and famine in 1135. Equally correctly, however, Santa Maria Maggiore can be seen as a sort of informal communal cathedral, built to serve civic as well as religious functions. This new church was built at exactly the time when the two official cathedrals—Sant' Alessandro and San Vincenzo—were embroiled in a dispute over ecclesiastical primacy in the city. Neither of the two older buildings was really satisfactory as the chief church of a city as important city as Bergamo: Sant' Alessandro was outside the walls and was dominated by the conservative rural nobility of the contado; San Vincenzo was too small and too plain to reflect the dignity of communal Bergamo. Once Santa Maria Maggiore was completed, it was made officially a part of San Vincenzo and hence a "cathedral" of the city.
Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest church in the city. It is near the center of town, just a few feet away from the cathedral of San Vincenzo, and it looks out over the modern lower city and the Po plain stretching off to the south. It has a curious shape for a Romanesque church, with a truncated nave of only two bays. The reason for this abrupt termination is that the bishop's palace stands just to the west of the church and could not be encroached on. This also explains why the church has no western entrance; instead, its entrances are in the south and north transept facades.
The exterior of the church is largely unchanged from its twelfth-century form. There is a fine series of carved capitals spread around the east end of the basilica. The most noticeable additions to the outside of the church are three fourteenth-century Gothic portals, the work of Giovanni da Campione. The most magnificent of the three faces a small square to the north of the church and is dated 1350-1353. The second, a minor portal which opened into the old sacristy (1364-1367), faces the southwest corner of San Vincenzo. The third is a porch, dated 1360, added to the south transept doorway. Above it is a tabernacle by the German artist Hans von Fernach, which was added in 1401-1403.
The twelfth century is also represented in Bergamo by a few towers, the last survivors of forty or so that have been located in the city. Mosè del Brolo had described Bergamo as a city with not many towers (and thus an internally peaceful city, since house-towers were symbols of the powerful families). If there were forty towers in Bergamo, however, its twelfth-century skyline must have been spiky indeed. One of the surviving towers, at the northwest corner of the Piazza Vecchia, came to be used as the communal tower and is still used as a public clock tower; it was a house-tower of the Suardi until it was taken over by the commune in the late twelfth century. Another tower is the Torre Gombito, on Via Gombito, just down the hill to the east of the Piazza Vecchia. The Torre Gombito gives a very good idea of what these towers originally looked like, since, unlike the communal tower, it has been modified scarcely at all.
After the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the most important twelfth-century structure in the city is the communal palace, the Palazzo della Ragione, just north of Santa Maria Maggiore and facing that church across the present-day Piazza del Duomo (in the communal period the Platea Parva Sancti Vincentii). The palazzo was built c. 1195 and is the oldest substantially intact communal palace in Lombardy. Its northern ground-floor arcade, which allows one to pass underneath the palace from the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza Vecchia, is a result of a building program during the mid-fourteenth century. That program also produced the present Piazza Vecchia, and a reorientation of the communal palace away from the ecclesiastical Piazza del Duomo toward the secular Platea Nova (now the Piazza Vecchia). The reorientation involved constructing a new stairway at the northeast corner of the palace and a new ceremonial facade on the north face. It is often said that the Palazzo della Ragione was completely rebuilt in the mid-sixteenth century, following a fire in 1513, but this is not true; the form and most of the details of the palace are clearly medieval. The most obvious Renaissance additions are the two windows on the south side and the vaults under the ground-floor portico.
Little else survives from the thirteenth century in Bergamo. An extensive set of frescoes, usually dated to the end of that century, was uncovered in 1937 in the hall connecting Santa Maria Maggiore to the bishop's palace. The frescoes depict the Annunciation, the Last Supper, and an extended cycle of episodes in the Apocalypse. Their style can most kindly be characterized as "provincial," but they are nonetheless interesting because they are so complete.
At the eastern edge of the hill on which the città alta (upper city) is built, just inside the Venetian Porta Sant' Agostino but outside the medieval walls of the city, is the former church of Sant' Agostino. The convent was founded in 1290, and the church was consecrated in 1347. Although some rebuilding was done in the fifteenth century, the church, particularly its facade, is a good example of late thirteenth-century Lombard monastic architecture. There are close connections between the traceried windows of the facade and the windows of the north side of the communal palace, which were rebuilt when the Piazza Vecchia was constructed in the first half of the fourteenth century.
The Piazza Vecchia itself, the traditional heart of the upper city, is an important remnant of medieval Bergamo. Though its paving is modern and the handsome fountain in its center is from the eighteenth century, the square as a whole is a fine example of late medieval urban design. It was one of the first purely secular piazzas in northern Italy, focused not on a chuch but on the Palazzo della Ragione, at the southern edge. It is ironic that this piazza was created with the communal palace as a backdrop just at the time when the commune was collapsing.
The western side of the Piazza del Duomo, south of the communal palace, is now closed by a gem of fourteenth-century Bergamasque architecture: the baptistery. This was the first of the works done in the city by Giovanni da Campione, and when it was built in 1340 it was located inside the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. By the mid-fourteenth century any distinction that had ever existed between the cathedral of San Vincenzo and the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore had become blurred, and for all intents and purposes the two churches acted as a double cathedral—San Vincenzo as the summer cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore as the winter church. Nevertheless, it is extremely rare to find a completely separate baptismal structure built inside an already existing church. The statues of the Virtues, at the angles of the upper part of the exterior, are among the best examples of fourteenth-century sculpture in the city.
The finest medieval tomb sculpture surviving in Bergamo is on the sepulchre of Cardinal Guglielmo Longhi, who died in Avignon in 1319. The tomb, by Ugo da Campione, was originally in the Franciscan church; in the nineteenth century, when San Francesco was destroyed, the tomb was brought to Santa Maria Maggiore, where it now stands in the southern aisle.
Santa Maria Maggiore also contains fragments of two large fourteenth-century frescoes on the end walls of the transepts: in the north transept are a Last Supper and various miscellaneous scenes; in the south transept is a very large Tree of Life, painted in 1347.
The dominant secular aspect of life in the later Middle Ages is represented in Bergamo by two fortresses: the Rocca at the eastern end of the city and the Cittadella toward the west. The Rocca, built on the eastern height (on the remains, some believe, of the capitolium of the old Roman camp), was begun by John of Luxemburg in 1331, during his short-lived domination of the city, and was later extended by the Visconti. It served a military purpose until the nineteenth century, when it was used by the Austrians. The very large Cittadella, at the western end of the upper city, was originally the hospitium magnum of the Firma Fides, but it was taken over and fortified by Bernabo Visconti beginning in 1355. It too remained in use for military or quasi-miiitary purposes until the mid-nineteenth century. Restorations carried out in the 1950s have brought back some of the medieval characteristics of the fortress, especially the long portico on the north side of the square.
But it is a mistake to look for medieval Bergamo primarily in a few isolated buildings, fragmentary frescoes, or tombs. The whole upper city remains, to a remarkable extent, medieval in flavor. The layout of the town, and especially its pattern of streets and squares, has not changed noticeably since the end of the Middle Ages, and there are many stretches where one may encounter the twelfth century as easily as the twenty-first.
See also Frankish Kingdom; Lombards; Milan; Visconti Family
ROBERT RUSSELL
Belotti, Bortolo. Storia di Bergamo e dei Bergamascbi, 6 vols. Bergamo, 1959.
Bergamo e il suo territorio nei documenti altomedievali: Atti del convegno—Bergamo, 7-8 aprile 1989, ed. Mariarosa Cortesi. Bergamo: Provincia di Bergamo, Assessorato ai Servizi Sociali e Culturali, Centra Documentazione Beni Culturali, 1991.
Haskins, Charles Homer. "Moyses of Bergamo." Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 23, 1914, pp. 133-142.
Jarnut, Jörg, Bergamo 568-1098: Storia istituzionale sociale ed economica di una città lombarda nell'alto medioevo. Bergamo, 1980.
Little, Lester. Liberty, Charity, Fraternity: Lay Religious Confraternities in Bergamo in the Age of the Commune. Bergamo, 1988.
Storti Storchi, Claudia. Diretto e istituzioni a Bergamo dal commune alia signoria. Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1984.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Bernard de Fontaines, 1090-1153) was born into a noble family near Dijon in Burgundy. As a young man, he was attracted by the devotion and austerity of the nascent Cistercian order, and in 1112 he entered the recently founded abbey of Citeaux. Three years later, at the request of Abbot Stephen Harding, he founded his own abbey at Clairvaux. Bernard's extraordinary energy and eloquence soon propelled him to the forefront of ecclesiastical and political activity in twelfth-century Europe. While never less than conscientious in the administration of his abbey, he traveled widely to preach, often to huge crowds, and to advise his fellow Cistercians; he was a valued counselor to several princes and eventually to a pope, Eugenius III, who had been his disciple at Clairvaux; and he was involved in all the major institutional and theological controversies of the time, notably the election of the schismatic "pope" Anacletus in 1130 and the debate surrounding the radical ideas of Peter Abelard in the 1140s. Bernard s output of writing was also prodigious: it included many volumes of sermons (including a famous set of eighty-six on the Song of Songs), moral and theological treatises, devotional works, a biography of the Irish Cistercian Saint Malachy, essays on monastic discipline, a manual of advice for Pope Eugenius (De consideratione), a rule for the order of Knights Templar, and hundreds of letters. Bernard was canonized in 1174.
Bernard's influence in Italy was considerable. The Cistercian Order arrived in Liguria in 1120, and its ideals—and Bernard's reputation—spread widely in Italian culture through the numerous Cistercian abbeys founded subsequently and through Bernard's own travels in northern Italy in the 1130s. Apart from the widespread dissemination of his own works and of iconography portraying him, there are many references to his writings in the enormously popular Meditazioni della vita di Cristo, a volgarizzamento (vernacular translation) of Meditationes vitae Christi (c. 1256-1263) attributed to Giovanni de' Cauli; also, Dante famously chose Bernard as sponsor of the final vision of Beatrice, Mary, and the godhead in the closing cantos of Paradiso. Bernard also had an immense influence, either directly or through intermediaries such as Joachim of Fiore, on the Spiritual Franciscans, especially because of his advocacy of personal and ecclesiastical poverty: Ubertino da Casale in particular drew significantly on Bernard's works.
See also Dante Alighieri; Monasticism
STEVEN N. BOTTERILL
Bernard of Clairvaux. Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. Jean Leclercq, H. Rochais, and C. Talbot. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957-.
—. The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux. Spencer, Mass., and Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1970-.
Botterill, Steven. Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the "Commedia." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Bredero, Adriaan H. Bernard of Clairvaux: Between Cult and History. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996.
San Bernardo e l'Italia, ed. Pietro Zerbi. Milan: Scriptorium Claravallense, 1993.
Vaccari, Alberto. "Le Meditazioni della vita in Cristo in volgare." In Scritti di erudizione e di filologia, Vol. 1. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1952, pp. 341-378.
Bernardo (d. 1213) was provost of Pavia when he compiled his Breviarium extravagantium (c. 1190), an early collection of papal decretals ordered in books and titles, like Justinian's Corpus juris civilis. Bernardo's collection also included, alongside letters of popes such as Alexander III, patristic texts omitted from Gratian's Decretum. Later collections of decretals would follow its division into five books, treating judges, procedure, the clergy, marriage, and punishments. By the time his collection was published, Bernardo, a pupil of Giovanni da Faenza, had taught canon law at Bologna for more than a decade. Bernardo served as bishop of Faenza from 1191 to 1198. In that period he composed Summa decretalium, an exposition of canon law following the order of his collection. Bernardo was transferred to the see of Pavia, where he remained until his death. While at Pavia, he composed his Casus decretalium, summaries of individual canons.
THOMAS IZBICKI
Clarence Smith, J. A. Medieval Law Teachers and Writers Civilian and Canonist. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1975.
Friedberg, Emil, ed. Quinque compilationes antiquae. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1882.
See Daddi, Bernardo
Historically, very little is known of the Provencal poet Bernart de Ventadorn (Bernard de Ventadour, died c. 1195), but he was long considered the most distinguished of the troubadours and is still so regarded by many critics. Since no document mentions him, he must have been of humble origins. Very likely, as an Old Occitan vida, or biography, of the thirteenth century suggests, he was born in the Correze in the castle of the viscount of Ventadorn, Eble II (1106-1147), who was himself a troubadour. Bernart must have stayed at the court of Raimon V of Toulouse (1148-1194), whom he mentions in several poems. According to the vida, Bernart—like Bertran de Born—died in the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Dalon in Perigord. Bernart's literary production seems to fall into the period 1140-1170. The vida romanticizes his life to a great degree, reporting, for instance, that Bernart fell in love with the viscountess of Venta dorn, had to leave the castle, and fled to a woman who is described as a duchess of Normandy—actually Alieanor (Eleanor) of Aquitaine, who soon afterward married Henry II of England.
Bernart composed at least forty-one poems, eighteen of which are preserved with the melody; all but two belong to a genre called canso that exclusively celebrates the traditional topoi of courtly love: descriptions of spring, the emotional state of a lover meeting the beloved, condemnation of slanderers and the jealous, and so on. He composed according to the strictest rules of the trobar leu, in which clarity and simplicity of expression are combined with great sincerity, and he believed that authentic love inspires equally authentic poetry. For him, love and poetic inspiration are united.
Bernart's poems were extremely popular in Italy: they are found nearly complete in the chansonniers composed there. The famous verses Can vei la lauzeta mover/de joi sas alas contra•l rai/que s'oblid' es laissa chazer/per la doussor c'al cor li vai ("When I see the lark move its wings with joy toward the sun's rays until, forgetting itself, it lets itself fall for the sweetness that goes to its heart") reappear in Dante's Divina Commedia (Paradiso, 20:73-75): Quale allodetta che 'n aere si spazia/Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta/De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia ("As the lark that soars in the sky, at first in song and then silent, content with the last sweet note that satisfies it").
See also Dante Alighieri
HANS-ERICH KELLER
Appel, Carl, ed. Bernart von Ventadorn: Seine Lieder, mit Einleitung und Glossar. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1915.
Battaglia, Salvatore. Jaufre Rudel e Bernardo di Ventadorn: Canzoni. Naples: Morano, 1949.
de Riquer, Martín Los trovadores: Historia literaria y textos. Barcelona: Planeta, 1975, Vol. 1, pp. 342-417.
Lazar, Moshe, ed. Bernart de Ventadour, troubadour du XIIe siècle: Chansons d'amour—Édition critique avec traduction. Paris: C. Kiincksieck, 1966.
Mancini, Mario. "Il principe e il 'joi': Sul canzoniere di Bernart de Ventadorn." In La gaia scienza dei trovatori. Parma: Pratiche, 1984, pp. 33-58.
Van der Werf, Hendrik, and Gerald A. Bond, eds. The Extant Troubadour Melodies. Rochester, N.Y.: Van der Werf, 1984, pp. 30-71.
Bernhard (Bernard, c. 797—817 or 818) was nominally uie king of Italy from 812 or 813 to 817. He was the son of Pepin, who in 781 had been named king of Italy by his father, Charlemagne. This kingship was of a subordinate nature; real authority was in the hands of the Frankish ruler (Roman emperor after 800).
When in 817 Louis the Pious (Bernard's uncle, and successor to Charlemagne) provided for a division of territory among his own sons, Italy was included in the realm of the eldest son, Lothair. What significance this actually had for Bernhard's position was not made clear, but Bernhard and his advisers rebelled against Louis. Their rebellion was put down, and the leaders were taken to Francia. Bernhard was blinded, as a punishment, and died. Louis the Pious later did penance for this act.
See also Frankish Kingdom; Louis I the Pious; Pepin
KATHERINE FISCHER DREW
Godman, Peter, and Roger Collins, eds. Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.
The troubadour Bertran de Born (c. 1140-before 1215) belonged to a seignorial family whose domains formed the border between Limousin and Périgord; he inherited the castle of Hautefort in northern Perigord. He was a vassal of the dukes of Aquitaine (i.e., of the Plantagenets), and his possessions were adjacent to those of the king of France—an unfavorable position, because his lands were continually devastated by one lord or another. This situation explains Bertran's involvement in contemporary politics and military adventures. He sided first with young Henry, oldest son of Henry II of England, against young Henry's brother Richard, who was favored by their father. An Old Occitan vida (biography) reports that Bertran "constantly wanted the father, the son, and the brother to go to war against each other." Young Henry, who was a close friend, inspired Bertrans's most famous sirventes, or poem of blame, as well as his masterwork, a planh (lament) on Henry's death in 1183. The successor to the "young king" (as young Henry was called; he had been crowned while his father was still living, to ensure the succession, but as it happened his father outlived him), Richard Coeur de Lion, seized Hautefort; thereupon Bertran switched sides, supporting the cause of King Henry and Richard, who returned the castle to him. In a moving poem Bertran would later issue a call to arms for Richard's crusade; in another poem he laments Richard's captivity. Around 1194, Bertran retired to the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Dalon in Périgord and stopped all his poetic activity. His son Bertran de Born the Younger was also a troubadour.
For later generations, Bertran's image rested especially on his contentious disposition: No·m tengatzper acusador/si·us voill c'uns rics l'autre azir,/car meill s'en poiran valvasor/et castellan de lor jausir ("Don't consider me quarrelsome if I want the mighty to hate each other, for the vassals and the castellans will be able to profit from them"). Dante, in De vulgari eloquentia (2.ii.9), makes Bertran the representative in Occitan of the poetry of arms, one of the three subjects worthy of the volgare illustre (noble vernacular). An episode in Divina Commedia (Inferno, 28.118-142) is particularly famous. Among the instigators of fights and wars, Dante meets Bertran de Born carrying his head like a lantern, an appropriate punishment for a criminal who pitted son against father: Di sè facea a sè stesso lucerna,/Ed eran due in uno, e uno in due (verses 124-125, "Out of itself it made itself a lamp,/and they were two in one and one in two").
See also Dante Alighieri
HANS-ERICH KELLER
Gouiran, Gérard, ed. L'amour et la guerre: L'oeuvre de Bertran de Born. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1985.
Paden, William D„ Tilde Sankovich, and Patricia H. Stäblein, eds. The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.
Van der Werf, Hendrik, and Gerald A. Bond, eds. The Extant Troubadour Melodies. Rochester, N.Y.: Van der Werf, 1984, pp. 72-74.
Barolini, Teodolinda. "Bertran de Born and Sordello: The Poetry of Politics in Dante's Comedy." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 94, 1979, pp. 395-405.
Paden, William D. "Bertran de Born in Italy." In Italian Literature: Roots and Branches—Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1976, pp. 39-66.
Picone, Michelangelo. "I trovatori di Dante: Bertran de Born." Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale, 19, 1979, pp. 71-94.
The primary source for all bestiaries is the scriptures—mostly the Old Testament, which has numerous references to animals of all types. The early church fathers, following the Roman legal tradition, used such biblical references in their sermons partly to establish a precedent, in the form of ancient testimony, for the use of animals as symbols. In the Homilies of Saint Basil the Great (sermons 7—9) and in Ambrose's Hexameron (9, Books 5-6), animals serve as metaphors for theological lessons. A second reason for turning to the Old Testament was the premise that the Judaic traditions contained hidden prophecies foretelling the events of the Christian era. This concept appears in the earliest bestiary, Physiologus, which may date from the second century. Encyclopedic texts such as the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (seventh century) and the Carolingian De universe of Hrabanus Maurus, and late medieval writings of Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum naturale), Honorius Augustodunensis (Imago mundis), Hugh of Saint Victor (De bestiis), Albertus Magnus, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, provide extensive lists of definitions, descriptions, and moralizing comments about creatures of the land and sea. These late medieval authors are contemporaneous with the first specialized, mostly anonymous, texts on animals, known as bestiaries, which became popular in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Some bestiaries are attributed directly to Albertus Magnus; and Hugh of Fouilloy wrote the first aviary, an offshoot of bestiary compendiums. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we can note that some authors attain a new level of objectivity in the collection and presentation of information; for example, in Albertus we see a growing detachment from the more fantastic elements of the bestiaries and even a desire to measure legends against the actual behavior of animals. Nevertheless, certain moralistic portrayals of animals' behavior—i.e, those based on the writings of the church fathers—were accorded great authority, and they continued, through the fourteenth century, to prevail over the naturalistic presentations found in other bestiaries.
An artistic companion to bestiaries begin to emerge during the Gothic period in the form of drolleries in the marginalia of manuscripts and bas-de-page illuminations depicting fantastic beasts and other creatures. However, although such fantastic creatures occupied the pages of many manuscripts, they rarely appeared in the encyclopedias or later bestiaries. In the fourteenth century fantastic tales continued to be conveyed in another type of popular text: travel narratives such as those of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo. By the end of the Middle Ages, or more precisely after the 1420s, bestiaries ceased to be produced.
See also Allegory; Aviary; Physiologus
DARRELL D. DAVISSON
Aelian. De natura animalium: On we Characteristics of Animals, 3 vols., trans. A. F. Scholfield. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958-1959.
Albertus Magnus. Ltbellus de natura animalium: A Fifteenth-Century Bestiary, intro. J. I. Davis. London: Dawson's of Pall Mall, 1958. (Facsimile of 1508 ed.)
—. Von Falken, Hunden, und Pferden, 2 vols., ed. Kurt Lindner. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962.
—. Man and the Beasts: De animalibus (Books 22-26), trans. James J. Scarilan. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987.
Aristotle. Historia animalium, 3 vols., trans. A. L. Peck. London: Heinemann and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Bartolomaeus Anglicus. De rerum proprietatibus. Frankfurt am Main: W. Richter, 1601. (Reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964.)
—. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum—A Critical Text, 3 vols., ed. M. C. Seymour et al. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975-1988.
The Bestiary. A Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, ed. Theodore H, White. New York: Putnam, 1960.
Isidore of Seville. Etymologiarum sive originum libri, 2 vols., ed. W. M. Lindsay. Oxford: Clarendon, 1911.
McKenzie, K., and M. S. Carver. Il bestiario toscano, secondo la lezione dei codici di Parigi e di Roma, Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1912.
Vincent of Beauvais. Speculum Quadruplex, Vol. 1, Speculum naturale. Douai: B. Bellerie, 1624. (Reprint, Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlanganstalt, 1964-1965.)
Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Nona C. Flores. New York: Garland, 1996.
Animals and the Symbolic in Medieval Art and Literature, ed. L. A. J. R. Houwen, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997.
Armengaud, F., and D. Poiron. "Bestiaires." Encyclopaedia universalis. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France, 1968, Vol. 3, pp. 214-223.
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.
Benton, Janetta Rebold. The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages. New York: Abbeville, 1992.
Bianciotto, Gabriel, ed. Bestiaires du moyen age. Paris, Stock, 1980.
Charbonneau-Lassay, Louis. Le bestiaire du Christ: La mystérieuse emblématique de Jésus-Christ. Milan: L. J. Toth Reprint, 1974. (Originally published 1940.)
Cledat, Jean-Paul. Bestiaire fabuleux. Paris: A. Michel, 1971.
De Clerq, Charles. "La nature et le sens du De avibus d'Hugues de Fouilloy." In Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, ed. Albert Zimmerman. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970, pp. 279-302.
Friedmann, Herbert. A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980.
Garver, Milton Stahl. "Sources of the Beast Similes in the Italian Lyric of the Thirteenth Century." Romanische Forschungen, 21, 1908, pp. 276-320.
Hassig, Debra. Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
—, ed. The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature. New York: Garland, 1999.
Helsinger, Howard. "Images on the Beatus Page of Some Medieval Psalters." Art Bulletin, 53, 1971, pp. 161-176.
Klingender, Francis D. Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. Evelyn Antal and John Harthan. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971.
McCulloch, Florence. Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962.
A Medieval Book of Beasts: Pierre de Beauvais's Bestiary, trans. Guy Mermier. Lewiston: Mellen, 1992.
The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays, ed. Joyce E. Salisbury. New York: Garland, 1993.
Muratova, Xenia. "Adam donne leur noms aux animaux: L'iconographie de la scène dans l'art du moyen âge et ses traits particuliers dans les manuscrits des bestiaires." Nuovi Studi Medievali, 18, 1977, pp. 367-394.
—. "L'arte longobarda e il Physiologus." In Atti del 6. Congresso internazionale di studi sull'alto medioevo Milan, 1978. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1980, pp. 547-558.
Pächt, Otto. "Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13, 1950, pp. 13-47.
Salisbury, Joyce. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Sauer, Ekkart. "Tier in der christlichen Kunst." In Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche. Freiburg: Herder, 1965, Vol. 10, pp. 190-191.
Seymour, M. C., et al. Bartholomaeus Anglicus and His Encyclopedia. Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum and Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1992.
Walberg, Emmanuel, Le bestiaire de Philippe de Thaün. Lund: H. Moller, 1900.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1100. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.
Bevagna, a town in Umbria along the ancient Roman Via Flaminia, was damaged during the barbarian invasions, came under the control of the duchy of Spoleto, and later was an object of special attacks by both Frederick I Barbarossa (1152) and Frederick II (1249). By the fourteenth century, it was under the rule of Perugia. Its primary claim to fame is that, according to tradition, Saint Francis of Assisi gave his famous sermon to the birds along a road that leads from Assisi to Bevagna (Saint Bonaventure, Legenda maior, 12.3).
See also Francis of Assisi
JOHN W. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
The anonymous Florentine painter identified as the Biadaiolo Illuminator (fl. c. 1325-c. 1335) is so named after Domenico Lenzi's Biadaiolo fiorentino, for which he provided nine illuminations c. 1335 (Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Laurenziano-Tempiano 3). Like others of what has been called the "miniaturist tendency," he traced his artistic roots to the Master of Saint Cecilia by way of Pacino di Bonaguida; and, like the Master of the Cappella Medici Polyptych and the Master of the Dominican Effigies, he responded to the siren song of Bernardo Daddi. Although his small oeuvre includes a few panels, he was essentially a manuscript illuminator in practice as well as in temperament, and in this field he excelled. His illuminations for Biadaiolo fiorentino are among the finest ever painted in Florence, combining carefully described details with wry observation and an infectious zest for life. Boldly designed vignettes of places and people jostle and jumble and fairly jump off the pages. A splendid but far from pedantically accurate view of the enemy, Siena, where the poor are being driven out, is juxtaposed with a view of Florence, where the poor are charitably fed but kept safely outside the walls. The biadaiolo (corn merchant) himself appears in the midst of a transaction, surrounded by barrels of grain, winnowing baskets, an open account book, and money. On market day, huge, continually replenished barrels are ranged across a square (and almost off the page), and a discriminating Florentine matron and two companions inspect, handle, and sniff the merchandise before deciding whether to heed a vendor's urgings to buy. Observing these negotiations, another man can only scratch his beard.
Such piquant observations and such spirited transcriptions of the doings of humanity are hardly encountered in the few other works attributed to this master. Nevertheless, despite the distinction of the Biadaiolo illuminations, it is possible—indeed likely—that the works attributed to the Biadaiolo Illuminator actually form part of the output of the prolific but otherwise more tempered Master of the Dominican Effigies.
See also Master of the Dominican Effigies; Pacino di Bonaguida; Painting: Miniature; Saint Cecilia Master
Domenico Lenzi (fourteenth century), distribution of grain in Or San Michele during the famine of 1335. Manuscript illumination from Il biadaiolo (The Grain Merchant). Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
ANDREW LADIS
Boskovits, Miklós, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. New York: Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1957, Sec. 3, Vol. 7, pp. iii-v and 1-26.
—. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1984, Sec. 3, Vol. 9, pp. 55-56.
Miglio, L. "Per una datazione del Biadaiolo fiorentino." Bibliofilia, 77, 1975, pp. 1-36.
Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University, 1930, Sec. 3, Vol. 2, Part 1, pp. 43-48; Part 2, pp. 18-19, 245-270.
White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy: 1250-1400, 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987, pp. 411-413. (1st ed. 1966.)
See Florence; Guelfs
Bianco (c. 1345 or 1350-c. 1412) was born in the small Tuscan community of Anciolina and was taken at an early age to Siena, where he was employed as a wool carder. Most of what we know about his life comes from the writings of Feo Belcari (1410-1484), a Florentine poet and playwright who appears to have reconstructed Bianco's biography from information contained in his poetry. In 1367, Bianco joined the Gesuati, a lay order founded by Giovanni Colombini, and lived for a number of years in a monastery of the order in Citta di Castello. He spent the last years of his life in Venice.
Bianco wrote more than a hundred laude, which may be divided thematically into two main groups: doctrinal and mystical. Inspired by intense religious zeal, his poetry has its mystical roots in that of Jacopone da Todi, particularly in regard to the theme of divine madness. The immediacy of Bianco's language and the unadorned simplicity of his statements enhanced the popular appeal of his poetry. A hymn of praise to the Virgin (340 lines in terza rima)—Benedetta sia tu, che nella mente ("Blessed are you, who in the mind")—recounts her life in fresh, fervent verses. Some poems focus and play on specific words, phrases, and concepts, creating a mesmerizing effect that aptly reflects their mystical fervor: for example, Luce divina, luce isplendiente ("Divine light, radiant light") and Amor amor amor, ardimi il core ("Love love love, burn my heart"). In another lauda Bianco describes the ecstasy of mystical love: Distruggesi 'l mio core ("My heart is destroyed"). In still another he presents the lament of a soul bereft of divine grace: Dolcissimo Amore/quando ti parti, mi lasci inprigione ("Most sweet Love, when you leave, you leave me in prison"). Such themes are reminiscent of Jacopone.
See also Colombini, Giovanni; Jacopone da Todi; Lauda
CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Ageno, Franca. Il Bianco da Siena: Notizie e testi inediti. Genoa: Società Anonima Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1939.
Bianco da Siena. Laude mistiche, ed. G. M. Monti. Lanciano: Carabba, 1923.
Bini, Telesforo, ed. Laude spirituali del Bianco da Siena, povero gesuato del sec. XIV. Lucca: Giusti, 1851.
Sapegno, Natalino, ed. Poeti minori del Trecento. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1952, pp. 1115-1134.
Not surprisingly, the Bible—considered the word of God—was the most studied book in the Middle Ages. Nor was its centrality limited to schools, to other writings, or to the relatively few people who understood Latin: as the sacred text of the church, the Bible was the primary source of all authoritative proclamations. Furthermore, it constituted a complex symbolic network that extended far beyond the reach of words. The "people's Bible" was known through ritual, pageant, and drama; in the iconographic programs of church facades and stained glass; in hymn and song; and, most important of all, in the liturgy of the church. The Bible was seen and heard far more than it was read.
For the learned, however, a particular kind of biblical culture stood at the core of the medieval curriculum and informed all three aspects of the traditional clerical education: lectio, the reading of scripture with commentary; disputatio, the discussion of questions rising out of problematic texts; and praedicatio, the preaching of scripture. Such study was based on certain assumptions: that the Bible was divinely inspired; that there was a typological relationship between what was "figured" in the Old Testament and "fulfilled" in the New Testament; and that the interpretation of scripture was fourfold, with the literal text regarded not only as true in itself but as concealing a set of spiritual mysteries. These assumptions were ancient, having roots in the New Testament's reading of the Old. But in the thirteenth century there were also new developments in biblical study to reckon with. Particularly in university circles, scripture was abstracted in a summa, or dissected into a multitude of component parts (called divisiones per membra varia), or taken entirely out of its original context and used as an illustrative text or as proof. The practice of amassing parallel passages and chains of citations served to reinforce the notion of the Bible as a source that could be divided and reassembled according to a theologian's needs. This notion was reinforced by the development of an increasing number of research tools to help the scholar and the preacher make more efficient use of biblical texts. There was also the "glossed" text of the scripture itself. For a long time, it had been common practice to insert between lines of the Bible a brief definition or explanation of their meaning. Scribes also added lengthier material taken from the Glossa ordinaria, the standard compendium of (largely patristic) commentary on the Bible; this material would be placed in the margins or at the top and bottom of a page.
A discussion of scriptural interpretation raises the question of what the medieval Bible actually was. The answer is complicated, because there were many versions of Saint Jerome's Latin (Vulgate) Bible. If one had had access to the renowned cathedral library in Verona, for instance, the Bibles one found there would most likely have been multivolume editions, usually of monumental size and lavishly decorated. By contrast, however, there was the exemplar Parisiensis, developed in Paris in the early thirteenth century to meet the needs of both the student in a university classroom and the Mendicant preacher on a mission. Its innovative compact one-volume edition continued to influence how the Bible would be presented, even in our own time. These texts, small in size and written on thin parchment, standardized the order of the sacred books and, thanks to Stephen Langton (d. 1228), made chapter divisions that are virtually the same as those used today.
Such material transformations suggest changes in the way scripture was read, and by whom. Whereas stable religious communities continued to favor the large volumes in monastic libraries, the new, more portable texts became the Bibles of the traveling Mendicant orders. Many were indeed small enough to be carried among an itinerant preacher's personal effects. The wide proliferation of these "Paris Bibles" also indicates a growing number of individual (rather than communal) readers—an educated lay elite who gravitated to the universities and the Mendicants' schools, filled administrative positions in church and state alike, and actively used their Bibles in what Vauchez (1993) has called a "diffusion of the evangelical word."
We have evidence that in various parts of Italy during the thirteenth century the Bible was being translated into regional dialects. There were early collections of passages that were read at the mass and in the sacred offices of the church; there were also translations of single books, of which Gerardo Patecchio's Li proverbi di Salamone may well be the earliest. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one can identify a gradual formation of a Bibbia volgare (though not yet a complete translation of the Vulgate). The Florentine Antonio Brucioli produced a fresh vernacular translation of the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures in 1532, two years before Luther's German translation. Others followed suit.
Throughout the Middle Ages, moreover, there were vernacular verse translations of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible. These were read and sung in public, not unlike the secular courtly romances (romanzi cavallereschi). The podestà (podesta) of Padova, for instance, made a verse harmonization of the four gospels at the end of the fourteenth century; some fifty years later a Florentine monk achieved a similar feat in Dante's own terza rima.
No doubt the most remarkable Italian commentary on the Bible is Dante's Commedia, finished shortly before Dante died in 1321. When Dante's writings are considered as a whole, the Christian scriptures turn out to be the source of more references and allusions than any other work: by one count, there are 575 citations of the Bible, compared with 395 to Aristotle and 192 to Virgil. Moreover, calculations of this sort cannot begin to suggest the extraordinary degree to which Dante absorbed the world of scripture. This is most notable in the Commedia, where the Old and New Testaments, both in Latin and in vernacular translation, so permeate Dante's language as almost to become one with it. Sometimes Dante will quote the Bible openly or draw specific attention to its relevance; far more often, however, he allows its presence to go unannounced, relying on the reader to catch the biblical reference and make something of it.
How could Dante, a Florentine layman, attain such a degree of biblical knowledge around the year 1300—and develop such facility in the personal appropriation of scripture? To some extent, Dante was a beneficiary of the Fourth Lateran Council in the early thirteenth century, which attempted to counteract heretical movements and turn the disaffected Catholic laity into people of "right favor and good actions." The newly formed Franciscan and Dominican orders undertook precisely this mission, setting out not only to bring the gospel into streets and public squares but also to offer it in the vernacular. A result of this evangelizing zeal was the formation of a new kind of Christian, the laicus religiosus. In Dante's Florence, where both literacy and interest in religion were uncommonly high among the laity, such people might choose to join one of the laudesi, or devotional groups, that publicly sang the praises of the Virgin Mary and the other saints. Or they might seek out a charitable organization—a misericordia—or join one of the many penitential confraternities affiliated with but structurally independent of the Mendicants. Also, the Franciscans and the Dominicans had "tertiary," or third, orders that offered an even closer connection to the spiritual life of their communities and attracted both men and women. In such circles women and men could find a more intense Christian life than was possible in the ordinary parish church. Preaching was at the center of this experience; laypeople gathered in the new piazzas built in front of churches to accommodate large numbers, or met together in the more intimate setting of confraternities.
Biblia sacra, cum glossa ordinaria. . . . Exodus, columns 475-476. Lyon, 1589. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
Thirteenth-century manuals on artes praedicandi—preachers' manuals—emphasized that a sermon should be aimed at a particular audience and should reach out to this audience at an appropriate level. Preaching was to be a kind of song, and the preacher was to be as agreeable as a jester and as sharp as a merchant. Apparently, some the Mendicants actually met these high expectations, although the transcriptions that have come down to us largely omit the amusing stories and asides which made their preaching so popular. A case in point is Giordano da Pisa: more than 700 of his sermons survive; all of them were preached in the vernacular at the beginning of the fourteenth century; and all were taken down by anonymous laypeople who wanted to preserve at least the serious essence what would otherwise have been just a passing moment.
By Dante's own account, we know that he had firsthand familiarity with Mendicant "schools of the religious" (Convivio 2.12.7). These were most certainly the studia generate of the Mendicant orders, in particular the Franciscans at the church of Santa Croce and the Dominicans at Santa Maria Novella. By the end of the thirteenth century, these two houses of worship were among the most important places of learning in their respective communities, ranked second only to the studia princi palia at Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. Established to train clerics, both schools drew teachers as well as students from all over Europe; and as we know from Dante, they were also open to laypeople.
See also Allegory; Biblical Exegesis; Dante Alighieri; Dominican Order; Franciscan Order; Glossa Ordinaria: Bible; Liturgy; Preachers and Preaching
PETER S. HAWKINS
"Bibbia, versioni italiane." Enciclopedia italiana. Milan: Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 1930, Vol. 6, pp. 899-905.
La Bibbia nel medio evo, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli and Claudio Leonardi. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1996.
Hawkins, Peter S. Dante's Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Swanson, R. N. Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Vauchez, André. The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. D. E. Bornstein, trans. M. J. Schneider. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993.
At least since Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed the official tolerance of Christianity within the Roman empire, the collection of writings known as the Bible has occupied a central place in western history and culture. In medieval Italy, the Bible penetrated every aspect of culture and thought; indeed, it is difficult for us to imagine how thorough this penetration was. The Bible provided the subject matter for most visual art, poetry, philosophy, and political science and was the authoritative source of religious doctrine and practice.
The Bible itself was a collection of writings produced in widely separate regions over widely separated periods of time, in cultures and languages largely lost to medieval Europe. Thus, as a text, it presented formidable challenges to the interpreter; it became an object of intense scrutiny which attracted the greatest thinkers and required all their hermeneutic acumen. A huge body of both the theory and the practice of biblical exegesis resulted; and it is impossible to approach the place of the Bible in the Middle Ages without considering how the interpretive tradition shaped the way men and women read this book of books.
The theoretical and methodological basis of medieval biblical interpretation was established by the church fathers, whose scriptural interpretations still provided the most common glosses on the Bible during the Middle Ages. For a medieval thinker, truth was not something discovered through independent investigation; rather, it was something confirmed through textual authority. Thus medieval exegetes looked to the church fathers as the sanctioned interpreters of biblical texts. Saints Augustine, Gregory, and Jerome exerted perhaps the most profound and longest lasting patristic influence. Jerome, a historically minded exegete, is best known for his translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek texts into Latin; this Vulgate text became the standard Latin Bible in the Middle Ages. For Jerome as well as the other church fathers, biblical interpretation was far more than an academic exercise; it was crucial precisely because it influenced their daily lives. Saint Augustine responded to the hermeneutic chaos of the early church with an attempt to develop an "orthodox" hermeneutics, a theory of interpretation which would ensure that all readings of the biblical text accorded with the mainstream of the church. Augustine therefore rejected the overuse of the Greek method of interpretation known as allegory, which was exemplified in the writings of the Jewish interpreter Philo of Alexandria and the Christian interpreter Origen; instead, he considered the historical sense of the Bible the basis of a proper understanding. Augustine (like Gregory after him) based his own writings on a principle of scriptural interpretation pronounced by Jesus. Noting that the first two commandments of the law were the love of God and the love of one's neighbor, Jesus stated that "on these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:40). For Saint Augustine, therefore, all scripture must have a charitable meaning: passages are to be read literally when they accord with this meaning, and only when an exegete is unable to read a scripture "charitably" should he turn to allegory.
Allegorical readings were justified because of the divine authorship of scripture. Since the Holy Spirit had inspired the authors of the Bible, later interpreters could see in a text a divinely ordained meaning that was unknown to the original human author. In addition, the deeds recounted in scripture were foreseen by God, who had, in his providence, brought them about so as to signify spiritually. That is, in the Bible res (a "thing" or "deed") becomes signum (a "sign"); mortal, corporeal events take on incorporeal, spiritual meanings and become "types" of later events in the life of Christ or the history of the church. Saint Gregory, strongly influenced by Origen, bequeathed to the Middle Ages this emphasis on allegorical and typological meaning, and it became the hallmark of most early medieval exegesis. Often, the literal sense of a scripture was neglected in order to concentrate on spiritual truths revealed through allegory.
Early on, different kinds of "spiritual" meaning were distinguished, and exegetes proposed anywhere from two to seven different "senses," or forms of meaning. Eventually, the division of biblical meaning into four different senses became most common; this convention was expressed in a succinct mnemonic Latin couplet attributed to Augustine of Dacia:
Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria;
Moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia.
Thar is, the literal sense (littera) teaches us the "deeds," or emphasizes the historical events recounted in scripture; the allegori
Biblia sacra, cum glossa orainaria . . ., Vol. 5: Gospel of John, columns 1015-1016. Lyon, 1589. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
cal sense shows us what we should believe, or the spiritual doctrines revealed through a figurative understanding of the literal sense; the moral (or "tropological") sense informs us of how we should act; the anagogical sense teaches us, literally, about where we "tend" (or aim or are directed) and thus concerns both the eschatological future of human history and our reward in heaven after this life. Of course, in practice medieval biblical exegesis was rarely if ever so neatly schematized, and interpreters tended to emphasize the various spiritual senses according to their audience and the context of the scripture.
Indeed, the intended audience of a scriptural study had a decisive impact on what kind of interpretation an exegete would pursue. During the early Middle Ages, for example, much of the biblical study took place in monasteries and formed an integral part of the monastic goal of devoting one's life to God. For a monk, the study of the Bible was a lectio divina, in which the scriptures were studied and meditated on in such a way that they would be learned and would become an indelible part of the his life: this meditative study would change the monk's heart and mind. Thus the monastic exegete Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his Sermons on the Song of Songs by remarking that his audience of fellow monks demands a message different from one that might be delivered to people outside the monastery; the message for Bernard's fellows must be suited to those who spend their lives in contemplation of celestial realities. The "contemplative" study of the Bible was a crucial component of biblical exegesis throughout the Middle Ages, even when different methods of scriptural interpretation were advanced and gained prominence in other centers of biblical interpretation, most notably the schools.
It was in the schools, particularly the cathedral schools of France, that the Bible began to be studied more systematically and became an object of learning as well as of contemplation. In the French cathedral town of Laon, for example, a need was felt for a summary of existing knowledge about the Bible's meaning. Accordingly, Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), his brother Radalphus (Ralph, d. 1133), and Anselm's student Gilbert Porreta (the Universal, d. 1154) began to summarize the exegetical history of the books of the Bible. The result was Glossa ordinaria, an "edition" of the Bible that contained a compendium of patristic and medieval interpretations surrounding the biblical text. This summary of biblical knowledge became important in the developing schools where systematic study of the Bible was undertaken.
The movement known as scholasticism—because it existed primarily in the schools—approached biblical exegesis with the help of some important Jewish exegetes such as Moses Maimonides, and especially with the aid of the new tools of Aristotelian logic and dialectic that had become available when Aristotle was reintroduced into western Europe. Instrumental in this development was Peter Lombard (who came, as his name indicates, from northern Italy but taught in Paris). Peter's Sentences, a theological textbook, made extensive use of dialectic; it took on an importance second only to that of the Bible, and its dialectical method influenced how the Bible was taught and read in the schools. Just as Aristotelian thought accorded greater weight to the physical world, this new method of study looked more closely at literal sense so as to make biblical exegesis accord with the new learning.
Thus the greatest of the scholastic theologians, Saint Thomas Aquinas (who came from the Italian town of Aquino but like Peter Lombard spent most of his career in Paris) recognized four principal senses of scriptural meaning (including the three spiritual senses described above) but also held that all theological arguments must be based on literal sense alone. For Aquinas, though, "literal sense" comprised a greater sense of the text's meaning than it comprises for us. "Literal sense" as Aquinas applied it is best understood as the meaning intended by the author, and the figurative meaning of words that were intended to be read figuratively (as in the case of Jesus's parables) formed part of the literal sense.
The "literal sense" was emphasized in a fascinating but ultimately very different way by Saint Francis of Assisi and his order. Francis had set out to imitate Christ as "literally"—that is, as concretely—as possible, and he therefore eschewed any allegorical study of scripture, preferring to dwell on the "humble" literal meaning revealed to the poor and the simple. Franciscan preachers shared this emphasis on the immediate message of the scriptures, although, notably, they stressed the moral weight of the historical examples presented in the Bible, particularly the example of Christ.
One of the most important developments in scriptural exegesis in medieval Italy primarily concerned the final book of scripture: John's Apocalypse. It derived from the writings and preaching of a Calabrian abbot, Joachim of Fiore (c. 1130 or 1135-1201 or 1202), who had a vision revealing the meaning of the Apocalypse. The tradirional Christian view of the Apocalypse was based on Saint Augustine's spiritual reading; Joachim's writings changed the view to a much more "historical" approach, in which the book was studied as a literal guide to the world's unfolding history. Joachim predicted the literal coming of the Antichrist and the beginning of a "third age" in history. His apocalyptic concepts had a profound influence throughout Europe, even though they proved controversial (his doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215). They were particularly important to the Spiritual Franciscans in Italy and elsewhere.
During the fourteenth century, biblical exegesis was displaced from the center of intellectual life, as science became the focus of study in the universities. Laypeople, however, still wrote vernacular devotional literature heavily influenced by the Bible; Dante's Comedy is the most famous if least typical example. With the rise of humanism, attention was again deflected away from the Bible to focus on the classics of Rome and Greece. Not until the rise of Christian humanism and the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century did biblical study began to resume something like its former position in European culture.
See also Allegory; Augustine, Saint; Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint; Dante Alighieri; Dante Commentaries; Francis of Assist; Glossa Ordinaria; Jerome, Saint; Joachim of Fiore; Peter Lombard; Scholasticism; Thomas Aquinas, Saint
V. S. BENFELL
Evans, G. R. The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Lampe, G. W. H., ed. The West from the Fathers to the Reformation. Vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963-1970.
Leclercq, Dom Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1961.
Lubac, Henri de. Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l'écriture, 2 vols. Paris: Aubier, 1959-1964.
McNally, Robert E. The Bible in the Early Middle Ages. Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1959.
Minnis, A. J., and A. B. Scott, eds. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-1375: The Commentary Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.
Riché, Pierre, and Guy Lobrichon, eds. Le moyen âge et la Bible. Paris: Beauchesne, 1984.
Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1964.
The Sienese poet Bindo (c. 1260-1338) was most probably a merchant by profession and was extremely active throughout his life in civic affairs. Between 1309 and 1318, he was elected one of Siena's nine governors on at least two occasions. However, after his participation in the construction of the Duomo in 1322, he turned his energies away from municipal posts and toward the church; he became a lay brother of Santa Maria della Misericordia in 1327.
Although Bindo was a contemporary of the stil novo poets, his literary production owes a great deal more to the school of Guittone dArezzo. Among Bindo's extant compositions are moral and satiric poems developed in gnomic style; his love poetry, mentioned in canzone 18 of Bilancioni's edition, has unfortunately been entirely lost. Bindo consistently gives attention to the practical aspects of daily life. His didactic poetry is informed more by mercantile common sense than by profound erudition, and his poems include a far greater number of homespun proverbs than literary allusions. Bindo was relatively well received by nineteenth-century scholars, but his reputation has not endured.
MICHAEL PAPIO
Bindo Bonichi. Rime edite e inedite, ed. Pietro Bilancioni. Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1867.
Borgognoni, Adolfo. "Bindo Bonichi e alcuni rimatori senesi." In Studi d'erudizione e d'arte. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1877, pp. 1-119.
Poeti minori del Trecento, ed. Natalino Sapegno. Milan: Ricciardi, 1952, pp. 289-301.
Sanesi, Ireneo. "Bindo Bonichi da Siena e le sue rime." Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 18, 1891, 1-75.
See Church Organization and Functions
"Black death" is the name given by historians to a European pandemic of the late 1340s. Mortality rates varied from place to place, but in general the disease is believed to have killed about one-third of the population of Europe. This plague returned from time to time for the next 400 years; it was especially severe during the seventeenth century and did not disappear from Europe until the early eighteenth century.
The people of the Middle Ages had no scientific framework in which to place such a sudden and terrible disease, the like of which they had never seen before. Many resorted to religious explanations taken from the Bible, asserting that the "day of the Lord"—the heroic return of Christ to rule earth for a thousand years—was at hand. Kings, princes, and church officials also sought explanations from physicians, who posited natural causes but also turned to astrology. In the Italian city-states, municipal authorities, in consultation with university-educated physicians, instituted public health measures, including quarantine, hospitals, and burial grounds. Church authorities arranged processions of relics and other religious observances. After the plague disappeared, as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun, chroniclers wrote about the terrible misfortune, and it is from these chronicles that historians have gathered most of their information.
According to the chronicle of Gabriel de Musis (d. 1356), a notary from Piacenza, plague came to western Europe from Asia Minor. Gabriel relates that in 1346 there was a street fight between Tartar soldiers and Genoese merchants, and the Genoese retreated behind the walls of their trading outpost—Caffa, on the Black Sea—which the Tartars then beseiged. At some point the Tartars developed what Gabriel calls a "disease both sudden and unexplainable," and so they abandoned the siege; but they catapulted the bodies of the dead over the walls of Caffa in the hope of spreading the disease among their enemies. The Genoese fled the city by sea, and by October of 1347 they had carried the plague to Messina in Sicily. By January of 1348 it had been spread to Marseilles. Later, in 1348, the plague reached England, and by 1349 it had entered the Low Countries, Vienna, Germany, and Scandinavia.
Boccaccio, in his Decameron, describes the plague in Florence in 1348. The disease:
. . . began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. ... In a short space of time these swellings spread ... all over the body. Soon after this the symptoms changed and black or purple spots appeared on the arms or thighs. . . . Very few recovered; most people died within about three days of the appearance of the swellings.
Boccaccio's description and similar accounts led medical historians to diagnose the black death as bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which was first identified in 1894. However, the modern bubonic plague requires transmission from rodents (usually black rats) via fleas to humans, and the medieval accounts do not mention dead rats; thus the retrospective diagnosis of bubonic plague is difficult to maintain. The true nature of the black death is, therefore, an unsettled question, and most historians now confine themselves to its social and cultural consequences.
Many learned treatises on the causes of the plague appeared throughout the late Middle Ages, The most famous of these, known to historians as the Paris Consilium, was written by forty-nine medical masters at the University of Paris in October 1348, at the request of King Philip VI of France. The masters in Paris began by saying that the ultimate cause of the plague would never be known—it was beyond human grasp—but, as natural philosophers, they could look back on recent terrestrial and celestial signs to determine why the plague had attacked when it did. They concluded that it had two causes: one distant and celestial, the other proximate and terrestrial. The celestial cause came from a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, under the moist sign of Aquarius, that had taken place in 1345, following solar and lunar eclipses. According to Aristotle, they said, the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter brings disaster; and according to Albert the Great, a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars would bring plague. Jupiter, the sanguine planet, was hot and moist, two qualities that led to rotting or putrefaction; and putrefaction in turn led to the plague, which was considered a kind of fever. The terrestrial or proximate cause was poisoned air from noxious gases released during earthquakes. Evil constellations encouraged thunder, rain, and moist south winds, spreading poisonous vapors emitted from rotting carcasses in swamps. The poisoned air entered the body and went to the heart, which was, according to medieval thinking, an organ of respiration naturally containing air. This air contaminated the body's vital spirit and causes the organs to rot. Plague did not kill everyone, however, because only certain individuals were predisposed to it by their bodily constitution.
Perhaps the most profound and troubling social consequence of the plague was a reawakening of anti-Semitism in some parts of Europe. Many people, citing the Book of Revelation, asserted that the Jews had caused the plague by poisoning wells; and despite the efforts of the papacy, with the aid of the surgeon Guy de Chauliac of Montpellier, to discourage this belief, Jews were slaughtered by the thousand. There also seems to have been an increase in the frequency and vehemence of predictions of the Last Judgment. However, recent historians have argued that the effect of the plague on Italian city life was not profound or long-lasting. Municipal documents such as records of births, deaths, and marriages indicate that the disruptions caused by the catastrophe might last a few weeks and then would be followed by a stoic return to normality. The effect of plague on the development of charitable institutions such as hospitals is more difficult to determine; this has been the subject of numerous historical studies.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Medicine
FAYE M. GETZ
Brucker, Gene A. "Florence and the Black Death." In Boccaccio: Secoli di vita—Atti del Congresso Internazionale: Boccaccio 1975. Università di California, Los Angeles, 17-19 Ottobre, 1975, ed. Marga Cottino-Jones and Edward F. Tuttle. Ravenna: Longo, 1977, pp. 21-30.
Carmichael, Ann G. Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Getz, Faye Marie. "Black Death and the Silver Lining: Meaning, Continuity, and Revolutionary Change in Histories of Medieval Plague." Journal of the History of Biology, 24, 1991, pp. 265-289.
Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.
Palmer, Richard. "The Church, Leprosy, and Plague in Medieval and Early Modern Europe." In The Church and Healing, ed. W. J. Sheils. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982, pp. 79-99.
Park, Katherine. Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.
The Lombard monastery of Bobbio became one of the great centers of culture and learning in the early Middle Ages. It was founded in 613 by the Irish monk Columbanus, who had earlier established three flourishing monastic centers in Gaul—Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines—but had been expelled from the Frankish kingdom in 610 because of his criticism of the clergy and the court. Columbanus had then fled to Lombardy, where he won the favor of the recently converted king, Agilulf. He took up residence in the ruins of an oratory near Piacenza and soon attracted many followers. By the time Columbanus died, in 615, a monastery of considerable size had grown up around the oratory. A nearby stream, the Bobi, gave the community its name. Columbanus brought to this new monastery the same high standards of ascetic discipline and learning that he had established at his Frankish monasteries. The rule he wrote remained the norm of life at Bobbio until the early tenth century (with some alterations made in 643 to accommodate Benedictine practice).
Columbanus's immediate successors pursued his ideals with great energy. Attala (from 614 to 627), Bertulf (627-640), and Boboleno (641—654) rigorously maintained the monastery's piety and learning and focused the monks' attention on converting the Lombards from Arianism. The acceptance of Catholicism by the Lombard king and court in 653 led to a significant increase in royal patronage, Bertulf and Boboleno also ensured the stability and independence of the monastery by obtaining from the monarchy an affirmation of the original donation of land made to Columbanus, and obtaining from the papacy an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction.
Over time, Bobbio developed into a major seat of: learning. Its formative cultural influences came from Ireland and Gaul, not only because most of its early monks were northerners but also because the monastery became a place of pilgrimage for Irish and Gallic monks who wanted to visit the tomb of Columbanus. Pilgrims to Rome also used it as a stopover. This northern influence helped make Bob bio—unlike most other Italian monasteries of the time—an important intellectual center.
Bobbio's original library was modest and was stocked only with theological and exegetical works, but it grew steadily, especially under Boboleno. There is no evidence that Bobbio acquired manuscripts from other libraries, as is sometimes maintained. Most additions seem to have been the work of Bobbio's industrious scriptorium. The Irish dominated this early writing school, although Spanish and Gallic influences were also strong. Toward the end of the seventh century profane as well as ecclesiastical works began to be copied, especially glossaries, treatises on grammar and meter, and extracts from philologists and historians. This was due in part to the influence of the Gallic, British, and Irish monks who constantly visited the monastery, and in part to a revival of arts and letters in the schools of Pavia, the nearby Lombard capital. From this point on the library's holdings continued to grow; by the late tenth century there were nearly 700 volumes.
Between the Carolingian Renaissance and the twelfth century Bobbio was arguably the dominant cultural center in Italy, primarily because of its library. It also gained considerable wealth. In 1014, the German emperor Henry II persuaded Pope Benedict VIII to make Bobbio an episcopal see. The ensuing jurisdictional disputes between bishops and monks are sometimes blamed for a gradual decline in spiritual observances and intellectual pursuits at Bobbio. In 1449, the monastery was annexed by the Benedictine congregation of Santa Giustina in Padua. The library suffered serious losses in the seventeenth century and was dispersed by the French in 1795. Some of its manuscripts can now be found in the Vatican Library, the Ambrosian Library in Milan, and the National Library in Turin.
See also Monasticism
THOMAS TURLEY
Jonas of Susa. Vita Columbani, ed. Bruno Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Histories: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1905, pp. 1-294.
Attolini, Alberto. Il monastero di San Colombano in Bobbio. Modena; Mucchi, 2001.
Bobbio e la Val Trebbia: Studi raccolti in occasione del 2. Convegno storico tenuto a Bobbio. Piacenza: Bibiioteca Storica Piacentina, 1962.
Bruseghini, Mariano, L'Eremo de San Colombano. Rovereto: Longo, 1987.
Collura, Paolo. Studi paleografici: La precarolina e la Carolina a Bobbio. Fontes Ambrosiani, 22. Milan: Hoepli, 1943. (Reprint, Florence: Olschki, 1965.)
Destefanis, Eleonora. Il monastero di Bobbio in età altomedievale. Florence: All'Insegna del Giglio, 2002.
Engelbert, P. "Zur Frühgeschichte des Bobbiesen Skriptoriums." Revue Bénédictine, 78, 1968, pp. 220-260.
Lapidge, Michael, ed. Columbanus: Studies on the Latin Writings. Studies in Celtic History, 17. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1997, pp. 1-28.
Polonio, Valeria. Il monasterio di San Colombano di Bobbio dalla fondazione all'epoca carolingia. Fonti e Studi dí Storia Ecclesiastica, 2. Genoa: n.p., 1962.
Riché, Pierre. Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, trans. John J. Contreni. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1976.
Stancliffe, Clare. "Jonas's Life of Columbanus and His Disciples." In Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars, ed. John Carey, Máire Herbert, and Pádraig Ó'Riain. Dublin: Four Courts, 2001, pp. 189-220.
van den Hout, Michiel. "Gothic Palimpsests of Bobbio." Scriptorium, 6, 1952, pp. 91-93.
The Abati of thirteenth-century Florence were Ghibelline nobles involved, inter alia, in money lending, and were routinely knights of the Golden Spur. According to the will of his son, Schiatta, Bocca (d. before 1300) was the son of Rainieri Rustici.
After Florence expelied its leading Ghibellines in 1258, Bocca remained behind with other disaffected noblemen, and he rode with the Guelf force against Siena in August 1260 at the Battle of Montaperti. At this point Bocca entered history and local infamy. According to Florentine tradition, represented here by the historian Giovanni Villani (c. 1275-1348):
As the troop of Germans violently clashed with the troop of Florentine knights, whose standard-bearer was messer Iacopo del Nacca of the house of Pazzi of Florence, a man of great valor, the traitor messer Bocca degli Abati, who was very close [to Iacopo] in his troop, with his sword struck the said IacoDO and cut off the hand with which he carried the banner.
(Cronica, Book 6)
The Florentine cavalry wavered and then fled, leaving the infantry to be slaughtered. For this deed Dante placed Bocca in the company of traitors in the lowest circle of hell, Antenora (Inferno, 32.73-123). Frozen up to his neck, Bocca is accidentally kicked in the face by the poet. The actual Bocca apparently escaped from the battlefield; he appears in Florentine documents dated 1268 and 1280.
See also Dante Alighieri; Florence; Ghibelline; Guelfs; Montaperti, Battle of
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Davidsohn, Robert. Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz, Vol. 4. Berlin: Mittler, 1908, p. 153.
Schevill, Ferdinand. Medieval and Renaissance Florence, Vol. 1. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963.
Boccaccio (1313-1375) is now best known as the author of the Decameron; but he wrote many works very different in kind, and in the century following his death he was most famous as a humanist and a herald of the Renaissance. He was the illegitimate son of a businessman, Boccaccino di Chelino, and a mother whose name is unknown to us, and he spent his earliest years in or near Florence. Boccaccino encouraged his son's education, but not along the lines of Boccaccio's own interests. In Genealo- gie deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan Gods), Boccaccio says:
Even in my boyhood [my father] directed all my endeavors towards business. As a mere child, he put me in the charge of a great business man for instruction in arithmetic. For six years I did nothing but waste irrevocable time. Then, as there seemed to be some indication that I was more disposed to literary pursuits, this same father decided that I should study for holy orders, as a good way to get rich. My teacher was famous, but I wasted under him almost as much time as before.... I turned out neither a business man, nor a canon-lawyer, and missed being a good poet besides. (Boccaccio on Poetry, trans. Osgood, 1930, 131-132).
Around 1327, when Boccaccio was fourteen, he moved to Naples, where his father worked as an agent of the Bardi bank at the royal court. The French court and the busy port of Naples offered Boccaccio a wide new range of educational experiences to complement the hours he spent in unwanted studies. Cino da Pistoia, who taught him law, may well have encouraged Boccaccio's interest in poetry, showing him writings by Dante and other recent poets. (One of Cino's lyrics appears as a song in Boccaccio's Filostrato.) Boccaccio was also befriended by a circle of Petrarch's acquaintances, including Barbato, Giovanni Barrili, and the Augustinian father Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro. Paolo da Perugia, the king's librarian, contributed a more classical education; Paolo, with the help of Barlaam's knowledge of Greek, was collecting materials on ancient mythology that later became the basis for Boccaccio's Genealogie.
Boccaccio began to try his hand at literature while still pursuing other studies. His apprenticeship in the classics is shown in his earliest endeavors, preserved in his notebooks: Elegia di Costanza (in verse), paraphrasing a classical epitaph; and Allegan a mitologica (Mythological Allegory, in prose), a briefand highly artificial string of mythical references from Ovid used to prefigure Christian history. He turned to Dante's sirventese as the model for Caccia di Diana (1334?)—an ambiguous title which can mean either Diana's hunt or the chasing away of Diana. Here, the verses describe a hunt for various beasts by fifty-nine beautiful women of Naples and their leader, Diana; the women then transfer their allegiance to Venus, who turns the beasts into men. The problem of how to understand Boccaccio's work begins with the start of his career: Caccia has been read as an elegant compliment, as Christian allegory, and as ironic satire.
Il Filocolo (1335-1336?), a long, ambitious romance about separated lovers, reveals that many influences were working on Boccaccio. It is filled with idyllic descriptions of Neapolitan gatherings and with plots popular at the French court, but he also includes classical gods, metamorphoses, significant Greek names, and numerous echoes of Dante. Boccaccio presents Filocolo as a written version of an oral tale, and cantari on Florio's search for Biancifiore do exist; however, Boccaccio frames that story in a broader history of the conversion of Florio, and Europe, to Christianity. The most famous scene is a debate on questions of love in a Neapolitan garden (4.14-72); two of the questions reappear in the Decameron as tales 4 and 5 of the tenth day.
Il Filostrato seems to have been written at about the same time as Il Filocolo, perhaps in 1335; however, the language of Filostrato is much more fluent and humorous than the artificially elaborate prose of Filocolo, and one scholar has therefore suggested a later date. Filostrato became the model for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Its nine books of ottava rima stanzas tell of the Trojan prince Troiolo's love for Criseida; the seduction, aided by her uncle, Pandaro; her betrayal of Troiolo for the Greek Diomedes; and Troiolo's despairing death. Boccaccio seems to have associated the number nine with tragedy: he also uses nine books in Elegia di madonna Fiammetta and in De casibus virorum illustrorum (Fall of Illustrious Men).
Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filocolo. Venice: Lucio Spineda, 1612. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
For Teseida delle nozze di Emilia (1340-1341), twelve-book romance-epic, Boccaccio again drew on classical history, this time continuing Statius's Thebaid. He described Teseida as the first martial poem in Italian. It begins with Theseus's conquest of the Amazons and tells of two Theban knights' rivalry for the love of the Amazon Emilia, whom they first see from their prison window. Theseus arranges a tournament to decide which one is to marry her. Boccaccio appended notes to educate his readers about Greek myths and customs, and he tried to base his description of the games and the arena on classical accounts. His famous glosses to the temples of Venus and Mars in Book 7 suggest that the work may be read allegorically, since these two deities represent concupiscence and irascibility. The work became a basis for Chaucer's "Knight's Tale."
By the time he finished Teseida, Boccaccio had been forced by business troubles to return with his father to Florence (1341). The move back to Florence is described in depressing terms at the end of Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs, 1341—1342); Boccaccio remained nostalgic for the cultural brilliance of Naples, and he tried several times to return there to live, but disappointing circumstances repeatedly forced him to abandon this aim. However, the return to Florence did not interrupt his writing. Within a year he had produced two pastoral works. One, a pair of Latin eclogues, would become the first two poems of Buccolicum carmen, written over many years and completed shortly before his death. The other was Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine. In this allegory, the shepherd Ameto overhears seven nymphs (virtues) tell, each in turn, how they won over their lovers (vices). Then Ameto is stripped of his animal skins and baptized, and he realizes that the nymphs he lusted for are even more desirable as moral virtues. Venus descends, announcing herself as the triune god, while the nymphs sing, in veiled terms, of the mysteries of Christian belief. The title and plot of Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, the use of terza rima, and the usual borrowings of phrases show Boccaccio's indebtedness to Dante. Yet Boccaccio's work is radically new in kind, and it was to be a major influence on the uses of the pastoral mode during the Renaissance. Its alternation of prose narrative with verse provided a model for Sannazaro's Arcadia.
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and the Roman de la Rose as well as Dante were the major sources for Amorosa visione (Amorous Vision, 1342). In this dream vision, the narrator must choose between a narrow flight of ascending stairs and a broad doorway into a palace. A heavenly guide follows the narrator into the palace, commenting on the murals he sees painted there—triumphs of wisdom, glory, wealth, love, and fortune. The notion of a series of triumphs and the catalogs of figures in them inspired Petrarch's Trionfi and many Renaissance paintings. In Amorosa visione three poems run as an acrostic down the entire length of the work, spelled out by the first letter of each tercet; Boccaccio's own name appears in the acrostic at the point where he sees his beloved painted in love's triumph. Boccaccio circulated a manuscript into which he had copied Caccia di Diana, the lyric Contento quasi, and Amorosa visione, all in terza rima.
Meanwhile Petrarch, recently made the laureate at Naples (1341), was stirring the enthusiasm of literary circles. Boccaccio composed a brief Latin life, De vita et moribus domini Francisci ·Petracchi (1341 — 1342), noting that no poet had been crowned at Rome since late antiquity but praising Petrarch's Italian lyrics as well as his Latin endeavors. Boccaccio wrote that if souls were reincarnated, people would think of Petrarch as the reincarnation of Virgil. Clearly, excitement over a revival of ancient culture had much to do with Boccaccio's own enthusiasm.
In 1343—1344, Boccaccio was once again experimenting with a new kind of work; the result—Elegia di madonna Fiammetta (Elegy of Lady Fiammetta)—has been considered one of the first novels. Elegia is narrated by Fiammetta, a young married woman of Naples; she tells of her falling in love, the departure of her beloved, and his failure to return despite his promises. Small events evoke long psychological reactions as Fiammetta's alternating hope and depression lead her ever deeper into despair. Her attempted suicide is foiled, and she writes her book both to warn other women and to glory in her own tragedy. As in the earlier works, descriptions of real life are mingled with mythical references; and psychological realism coexists with hints of a moral allegory about passion and reason. Venus is associated with the Fury Tesiphone, and in a sense we witness Fiammetta's descent into hell (there are echoes of Dante's Inferno)—a hell of misery, violence, hypocrisy, and stubborn pride. Ovid's Heroides and Seneca's tragedies, especially Phaedra and Hippolytus, were important sources for this work.
Boccaccio had used the name Fiammetta for his beloved in earlier books (Filocolo, Teseida, Comedia delle ninfe, and Amorosa visione); however, her identity changed from work to work—she was a daughter of the king of Naples from before or after his coronation, a nymph, and a descendent of Aquinas. In Elegia she is a middle-class Neapolitan, and her unhappy love mirrors the unhappiness of her lover in the earlier works. His is the pain of unrequited desire; hers the pain of having been seduced and abandoned. Her name will appear once more, in the Decameron—where, as a Florentine, she is one of the narrators, ruling the day of love stories with happy endings. It is worth noting that most of these happy endings consist in marriage.
Marriage is also celebrated in Ninfale fiesolano (1344-1346?), an Ovidian pastoral narrative about the love of the country boy Africo and one of Diana's nymphs, Mensola. Diana turns the pregnant Mensola into a stream in the Tuscan countryside; and Africo, who commits suicide, gives his name to another stream nearby. Both Venus's advocacy of rape and Diana's insistence on chastity yield before social marriage, however, as Africo and Mensola's son grows up, marries, and sires citizens of the new community, Fiesole. The work ends with a rapid history of the origins of and relations between Fiesole and Florence. As in Filostrato, clarity and lightness of language go hand in hand with the use of stanzas of ottava rima; if Boccaccio did not invent this form, he established it as a graceful and effective mode of narrative, taken up by poets of the Renaissance. The adoption of Ovidian metamorphoses to mythicize features of the local landscape is another feature that became immensely popular.
The mid-1340s saw political turmoil and violence in Florence, along with the failure of Florentine banks. Perhaps to escape all this, Boccaccio lived for a while (1345-1346?) in Ravenna; he dedicated his translation of Livy's fourth decade to its ruler, Ostasio da Polenta. He next spent a short time (1347-1348?) in Forli. Naples was then undergoing a period of chaos: the king of Hungary invaded it to avenge the death of his brother Andrew, who had been the husband of the queen of Naples and had been mysteriously murdered. Francesco Ordelaffi, lord of Forlì, wanted to join the Hungarian expedition and nearly took Boccaccio along. Boccaccio wrote several Latin eclogues on the situation in Naples; he was at first critical of the Neapolitans but was later outraged by the brutality of the king of Hungary.
Boccaccio was back in Florence when the dreadful plague of 1348 struck. Both his father and his stepmother died, leaving Boccaccio responsible for the remaining family and its property. The death of between one-third and half of the population of Florence, and the survivors' fear of contagion, caused a temporary breakdown of Florentine society. Out of this terrible experience came the Decameron (1349-1351), whose ten narrators flee the plague, take refuge in their villas in the hills, and tell each other stories for ten days, ending each day with a song. (Activities such as singing and telling comic tales were actually recommended by doctors to preserve the balance of humors and thus prevent disease.) The hundred tales are "retold" by Boccaccio for women who are obsessed by love and unable to distract themselves as men can. (There are echoes here of Ovid's Remedia amoris.) By chasing away their melancholy, Boccaccio hopes to restore their mental health. The Dantean journey from the pestilential city to a garden which resembles an earthly paradise suggests a moral as well as a physical meaning. Yet the layering of narrative voices (the real Boccaccio, the inscribed "I", the narrators, and often characters telling tales within tales) complicates the possible interpretations. As with Boccaccio's earlier writings, critics have disagreed about how to read this work. Some have seen it as championing the rights of "nature" against social morality; others as teaching Christian morals; others as rejecting any moral function of literature in favor of aesthetic pleasure; others as intentionally thwarting any possibility of fixed meaning. The Decameron has been considered feminist and misogynist, radical and conservative, conducive to the reordering of society after its breakdown and subversive of established order.
In writing the Decameron Boccaccio drew on a complex mixture of popular and literary sources. Proverbs and tales from the oral tradition; recent events and anecdotes; evocations of Dante; and classical narratives by Ovid, Apuleius, and Valerius Maximus all merge in a rich work that has been called the "human comedy." Although many of the tales take place in Italian towns in Boccaccio's own time or the recent past, there are also other settings, including the Orient and ancient Athens. Branca (1976) has suggested that the wandering knights of romance have been replaced here by wandering merchants who encounter everything from prostitutes to disguised princesses.
Each day (except days 1 and 9) is assigned a topic, so that the tales interact as variations on a theme, while Dioneo's final tale on each day often parodies the preceding stories. The topics are also linked: the power of fortune is followed by the achievement of one's desires; unhappy love stories are followed by happy ones; tricks by women against men are followed by the deceits of humans generally against each other; and the final topic, magnanimous behavior, is introduced as a corrective to all that has gone before.
This collection had an enormous influence on prose fiction throughout Europe for the next several centuries. The major themes of the Decameron—fortune, love, trickery, the deceits of women, the hypocrisy of clergymen—became those of a genre called the novella. Another feature, the framing tale, was also copied, with variations. Dramatists found the Decameron a wonderful source of plots. Boccaccio's prose—combining formal Latinate syntax with lively, realistic dialogue—established a standard for Italian prose, just as Petrarch became the model for Italian poetry. However, unlike Petrarch, who denigrated Italian and encouraged writing in Latin, Boccaccio defended Italian as a literary language. His admiration for Dante, whose Commedia he sent to Petrarch with exhortations not to scorn it, undoubtedly persuaded him of the potential power and range of the vernacular.
In October 1350, Petrarch came to Florence, and Boccaccio went outside the gates of town to meet him and invite him home. This was the beginning of a deep friendship that lasted to the end of their lives, and many of their letters to each other are still extant.
From 1350 on, Boccaccio became more and more involved in public life. He was given responsible offices within the city and was sent on sensitive embassies abroad, including one to the pope in Avignon in 1354. In 1355, he made one of his disappointing trips to Naples; during this journey, the best beloved of his five illegitimate children died—the little girl whom he affectionately memorialized in his eclogue Olympia. (All five children seem to have died very young.) At the rich library of Monte Cassino, he copied a number of classical texts, because he was beginning to work on his own historical volumes: Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, The Fall of Illustrious Men, and the geographical dictionary Of Mountains, Forests,. . . and Seas (De mon tihus . . .). All these works took many years to complete. They reflect Boccaccio's more humanistic, scholarly side, which was encouraged by Petrarch and was highly valued by the humanists of the following century.
In the early 1350s, Boccaccio wrote, in Italian, Trattatello in laude di Dante (Little Treatise in Praise of Dante) for a manuscript in which he copied all the known poetry of Dante; this collection became a major source for the transmission of Dante's verse. Tratatello, which was revised several times (c. 1360 and before 1372), was a celebration as well as a biography, offered in lieu of the ancients' physical monuments to great men. Boccaccio praises Dante as a poet-theologian and discusses poetic theory but also passes on popular anecdotes about Dante and describes his appearance and manners.
Boccaccio's last work of Italian fiction, Corbaccio (Ola Crow, 1355 or perhaps 1365), is a dream vision in which a mocked lover, the narrator, encounters the ghost of his lady's husband. The ghost reveals the wife as evil, turning the narrator's love into hatred, and urges him to compose a work that will bring the woman shame instead of glory. This misogynistic tirade has left readers perplexed. Some see it as angry, but others see it as humorous—as a work meant to show us the narrator's double error, first in falling in love and then in swerving to the opposite extreme. Still others see it as a moral lesson. On the one hand, the husband has been taken as Boccaccio's mouthpiece; on the other hand, the husband has been seen as an infernal ghost who seeks to bring his rival to harm. The title has been seen as referring to the widow, to the husband, to lust, and to the harsh voiced book as a whole. The form of the book, a dream vision, is reminiscent of Amorosa visione, which Boccaccio was simultaneously revising.
Genealogie deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan Gods), first circulated c. 1360 but revised in 1372, contains further reflections on poetry. In its fifteen books, classical myths are organized according to major gods and their descendants. The myths are then glossed; but although they are given natural, historical, or moral meanings, they are not Christianized. Boccaccio had frequently used classical myths in order to formulate Christian meanings, but here he was concerned to discover what the ancients themselves might have meant by these tales. The final two books contain a defense of literature and of the study of pagan writings. The work remained a basic source about mythology for writers and artists of the Renaissance.
De casibus virorum illustrium (The Fates of Illustrious Men) was finished c. 1360 but was enlarged later (1373-1374). It offers a series of examples of the instability of worldly glory, running all the way from Adam through King Arthur to contemporary cases but mainly emphasizing classical history. Inserted among these examples are famous chapters on the praise of poverty, the combat between Poverty and Fortune, the defense of literature, the nature of dreams, and other topics. The work became known in England through Lydgate's Fall of Princes.
Boccaccio also took up the case of women, protesting against their neglect by other historians, including Petrarch. De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women), written and revised several times between 1361 and 1375, presents biographies from Eve to Queen Giovanna of Naples, i.e., it covers the same span of time as De casibus. In Genealogie, Boccaccio had given historical readings of some myths; similarly, in De mulieribus claris he assumes that classical goddesses were human women deified for their contributions to human life; thus Ceres, for example, is considered an early teacher of agriculture. Boccaccio finds far fewer women to praise in his own time than in the past. He celebrates ancient women writers for their intellectual pursuits, exhorting his contemporaries not to let their minds lie idle. Christine de Pizan reworked these histories into her feminist Book of the City of Ladies.
During the political crisis in Florence in 1360, several of Boccaccio's friends were exiled or killed. He himself withdrew from Florence to Certaldo c. 1365. In a letter of consolation (1361 — 1362) to his exiled friend Pino de' Rossi, Boccaccio declares the advent of a new era: the path of the ancients, long overgrown, has been cleared by Petrarch, and others may now follow in his steps. This sense of a new opening also appears in Boccaccio's praise of Giotto (Decameron, 6.5) for reviving an art long dead. Boccaccio himself also participated in launching this new era, reviving classical forms, themes, and histories. In contrast to his usual humility, Genealogie contains his one boast—that he had revived Greek studies (15.7):
Was it not I who intercepted Leontius Pilatus on his way from Venice to the western Babylon [Avignon] . . .? Did I not make the utmost effort personally that he should be appointed professor [of Greek] in Florence, and his salary paid out of the city's funds [1360-1362]? Indeed I did; and I too was the first who, at my own expense, called back to Tuscany the writings of Homer and of other Greek authors, whence they had departed many centuries before, never meanwhile to return.... I, too, was the first to hear Leontius privately render the Iliad in Latin [1359—1360]; and I it was who tried to arrange public readings from Homer.
Devotion to the classics, as Boccaccio argued in Genealogie, was in no way anti-Christian. In 1360—1361, the pope gave Boccaccio a full dispensation for his illegitimate birth, enabling him to hold some church office or benefice that probably provided him with an income. Nonetheless, a message in 1362 from the holy man Pietro Petroni, warning Petrarch and Boccaccio to turn from literature to God or risk damnation, caused Boccaccio serious misgivings. His fears were calmed by Petrarch, who argued that although intellectual pursuits are not necessary to salvation, they offer a higher way than simple faith. Petrarch even invited Boccaccio to live with him, but Boccaccio preferred to remain independent.
In 1363, Boccaccio did accept an invitation to live at the court of Naples, bringing De mulieribus and probably De casibus with him as a gift. His illusion of ending his days comfortably as a great man at the court were quickly shattered, however. In an angry letter, he complained of having been lodged and fed with lowly servants and forced to follow the seneschal, Niccolo Acciaiuoli, around in his constant travels, making study impossible; as a final insult, he had even been left behind by the entourage. After a consoling visit with Petrarch in Venice, Boccaccio returned to Certaldo bitterly confirmed in his preference for impoverished independence. His public duties for Florence resumed in 1365.
Besides Boccaccio's prose and verse narratives, 126 of his securely attributed lyric poems remain. They were written throughout his life on such topics as love, religion, and poetry and were never assembled into any fixed collection. (Nearly fifty poems less surely attributed to him have also been published.) The influence of Ovid, the stilnovisti, and Petrarch is recognizable in many of Boccaccio's verses. Around 1370, Boccaccio circulated his completed Carmen buccolicum: sixteen diverse Latin eclogues on amatory, political, moral, literary, and religious matters. Three of the later eclogues present a hell, paradise, and purgatory clearly inspired by Dante's. Boccaccio also copied together into one manuscript the eclogues of Virgil, Petrarch, Dante, Giovanni del Vir gilio, Checco di Meletto de' Rossi, and his own; this anthology of pastoral verse contributed to the subsequent popularity of the genre.
In 1373, Boccaccio was invited to give the first public lectures in Florence on Dante's Commedia. These lectures were interrupted by his illness during the following year; moreover, Boc caccio expressed his concern, in several sonnets (122-125), that he might be prostituting the muses by exposing Dante's poetry to the crowds. His written Esposizioni (Commentaries), divided into literal and allegorical explanations, break off at Inferno 17. In the midst of his own illness, Boccaccio received news of Petrarch's death (July 1374), and he mourned Petrarch in Italian verse. Near the end of Boccaccio's life, one of his most devoted friends was Coluccio Salutati, who was to be important to the next generation ofhumanists. On 21 December 1375, Boccaccio died at Certaldo, leaving his books to the Augustinians of Santo Spirito. He had composed his own epitaph:
Beneath this stone lie the ashes and bones of Giovanni;
His spirit sits before God adorned with the merits of the labors
Of his mortal life. His father was Boccaccio,
His home Certaldo, his eager study was nourishing poetry.
See also Cantare; Certaldo; Cino da Pistoia; Dante Alighieri; Florence; Naples; Ottava Rima; Ovid; Petrarca, Francesco
JANET LEVARIE SMARR
Amorosa visione, ed. Vittore Branca. Tutte le opere, Vol. 3. Verona: Mondadori, 1974.
Caccia di Diana, ed. Vittore Branca. Tutte le Opere, Vol. 1. Verona: Mondadori, 1967.
Carmina, ed. Giuseppe Velli. Tutte le opere, Vol. 5, t. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
Comedia delle ninfe Florentine, ed. Antonio Enzo Quaglio, Tutte le opere, Vol. 2. Verona: Mondadori, 1964.
Corbaccio, ed. Tauno Nurmela. Suomaiaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia: Annaies Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Series B, 146. Helsinki, 1968.
Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca. Tutte le opere, Vol. 4. Verona: Mondadori, 1976.
De Canaria, ed. Maniio Pastore Stocchi. Tutte le opere, Vol. 5, t. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
De mulieribus Claris, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria. Tutte le opere, Vol. 10. Verona: Mondadori, 1970.
Elegia di madonna Fiammetta, ed. Cesare Segre. In Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Milan: Mursia, 1963.
Epistole e lettere, ed. Ginetta Auzzas. Tutte le opere, Vol. 5, t. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Giorgio Padoan. Tutte le opere, Vol. 6. Verona: Mondadori, 1965.
Filocolo, ed. Antonio Enzo Quaglio. Tutte le opere, Vol. 1. Verona: Mondadori, 1967.
Filostrato, ed. Vittore Branca. Tutte le opere, Vol. 2. Verona: Mondadori, 1964.
Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, 2 vols., ed. Vincenzo Romano. Bari: Laterza, 1951.
Lettere edite e inedite, ed. Francesco Corazzini. Florence, 1877.
Ninfale fiesolano, ed. Armando Balduino. Tutte le opere, Vol. 3. Verona: Mondadori, 1974.
Opere Latine minori, ed. Aldo Francesco Massera. Bari: Laterza, 1928.
Rime, ed. Vittore Branca. Tutte le opere, Vol. 5, t. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
Teseida delle nozze di Emilia, ed. Alberto Limentani. Tutte le opere, Vol. 2. Verona: Mondadori, 1964.
Trattatello in Latide di Dante, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci. Tutte le opere, Vol. 3. Verona: Mondadori, 1974.
Vite, ed. Renata Fabbri. Tutte le opere, Vol. 5, t. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
L'Ameto, trans. Judith Serafini-Sauli. New York: Garland, 1985
Amorosa visione, trans. Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel. Hanover, N.H., and London: University Press of New England, 1986.
Amorous Fiammetta (Elegia di madonna Fiammetta), trans. Bartholomew Young. London, 1587. (Rev. ed., Edward Hutton, London, 1926. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970.)
Boccaccio on Poetry, trans. Charles Osgood. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930. (Genealogie, books 14 and 15.)
The Book of Theseus (Teseida), trans. Bernadette McCoy. New York: Medieval Text Association, 1974.
Concerning Famous Women, trans. Guido Guarino. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963.
The Corbaccio, trans. Anthony K. Cassell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. (2nd ed. rev., Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993.)
Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. (2nd ed., 1995.)
Decameron, trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. New York: Norton, 1982.
Diana's Hunt: Caccia di Diana—Boccaccio's First Fiction, ed. and trans. Anthony K. Cassell and Victoria Kirkham. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Eclogues, trans. Janet Levarie Smarr. New York: Garland, 1987.
The Elegia di Lady Fiammetta, trans. Mariangela Causa Steindler and Thomas Mauch. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
The Fates of Illustrious Men, trans, and abridged Louis Brewer Hall. New York: Ungar, 1965.
Il Filccolo, trans. Donald Cheney with the collaboration of Thomas G. Bergin. New York: Garland, 1985.
[Il Fibcolo, extract.] Thirteen Most Pleasant and Delectable Questions of Love, trans. H. G. London, 1566. (Rev. ed., Harry Carter, New York: Potter, 1974. ("H. G." may be Henry Grantham.)
Il Filostrato, ed. Vincenzo Pernicone, trans. Robert P. ap Roberts and Anna Bruni Seldis. New York: Garland, 1986.
The Filostrato, trans. Nathaniel Edward Griffin and Arthur Beckwith Myrick. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929. (Reprint, New York: Octagon, 1970.)
[Il Filostrato.] The Story of Troilus (Filostrato), trans. Robert Kay Gordon. London: Dent, 1934. (Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.)
Life of Dante, trans. James Robinson Smith. In The Earliest Lives of Dante. New York: Holt, 1902. (Reprint, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.)
The Life of Dante (Trattatello in laude di Dante), trans. Vincenzo Zin Bollettino. New York: Garland, 1990.
The Nymph of Fiesole, trans. Daniel J. Donno. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
Nymphs of Fiesole (Ninfale fiesolano), trans. Joseph Tusiani. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971.
Theseid of the Nuptials of Emilia, trans. Vincenzo Traversa. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Consoli, Joseph P. Giovanni Boccaccio: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1992.
Esposito, Enzo, with the collaboration of Christopher Kleinhenz. Boccacciana: Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli scritti critici 1939-1974. Ravenna: Longo, 1976.
Studi sul Boccaccio. 1963-. (Contains bibliographic updates.)
Traversari, Guido. Bibliografia boccaccesca. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1907.
Barolini, Teodolinda. "Giovanni Boccaccio." In European Writers: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. William T. Jackson. New York: Scribner, 1983, Vol. 2, pp. 509-534.
Bergin, Thomas G. Boccaccio. New York: Viking, 1981.
Boccaccio 1975: Secoli di vita—Atti del Congresso Internazionale, Boccaccio 1975, ed. Marga Cottino-Jones and Edward Tuttle, Ravenna: Longo, 1978.
Branca, Vittore. Boccaccio: The Man and His Works, trans. Richard Monges. New York: New York University Press, 1976.
de' Negri, Enrico. "The Legendary Style of the Decameron." Romanic Review, 43, 1952, pp. 166-189.
Hollander, Robert. Boccaccio's Two Venuses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Lee, A. Collingvvood. The Decameron: Its Sources and Analogues. London: David Nutt, 1909.
Serafini-Sauli, Judith Powers. Giovanni Boccaccio. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1982.
Smarr Janet L. Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Almansi, Guido. The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
Cottino-Jones, Marga. Order from Chaos. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.
Dombroski, Robert, ed. Critical Perspectives on the Decameron. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
Fido, Franco. "Boccaccio's Ars Narrandi in the Sixth Day of the Decameron." In Roots and Branches: Essays in Honor of Thomas G. Bergin, ed. Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976, pp. 225-242.
Forni, Pier Massimo. Forme complesse net Decameron. Florence: Olschki, 1992.
—. Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's Decameron. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Greene, Thomas. "Forms of Accommodation in the Decameron." Italica, 45, 1968, pp. 297-313.
Hollander, Robert. "Utilità in Boccaccio's Decameron." Studi sul Boccaccio, 15, 1985-1986, pp. 215-233.
—. Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Fiction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Kirkham, Victoria. "Love's Labors Rewarded and Paradise Lost." Romanic Review, 72, 1981, 79-93. (Day 3.)
—. "An Allegorically Tempered Decameron." Italica, 62, 1985a, pp. 1-23.
—. "Boccaccio's Dedication to Women in Love." In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrogh et al. Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985b, Vol. 1, pp. 333-343.
Lessico critico decameroniano, ed. Renzo Bragantini and Pier Massimo Forni. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995.
Marcus, Millicent. An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-Consciousness in the Decameron. Stanford French and Italian Studies, 18. Saratoga, Calif., 1979.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Musa, Mark, and Peter Bondanella, eds. The Decameron: 21 Novelle, Contemporary Reactions, Modern Criticism. New York: Norton, 1977.
Olson, Glending. Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Scaglione, Aldo D. Nature and Love in the Late Middle Ages: An Essay on the Cultural Context of the Decameron. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
Smarr, Janet. "Symmetry and Balance in the Decameron." Medievalia, 2, 1976, pp. 159-186.
Wallace, David. Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
The Roman philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480-524) was a near contemporary of Saint Benedict and Cassiodorus. He was born into a famous Roman senatorial family, and on his father's early death was adopted into another at least as renowned, Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus took the young boy under his wing and brought him into a circle of privilege and power. Boethius married Symmachus's daughter Rusticiana, with whom he had two sons. Driven perhaps by the Platonic ideal of the philosopher-king, Boethius took a public office as consul in 510. His sense of earthly fulfillment may have peaked in 523, when he was appointed master of the offices (a sort of prime minister and chief of staff) by the Ostrogothic king Theoderic at Ravenna, the outpost capital of the western empire.
Then fortune's wheel took its inevitable turn. Although Theodoric himself was an Arian, his reign had been marked by religious tolerance and deference to the traditions of the ancient Roman senatorial class; now, however, he seems to have grown suspicious of a collusion between Roman aristocrats and the imperial authority in Constantinople. In an atmosphere of fear and mutual recrimination, Boethius's principled defense of a fellow senator led to his own downfall. He composed his famous Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae, c. 524526) while he was under arrest in Pavia and awaiting execution. Eventually canonized as Saint Severinus, he is buried (like Saint Augustine) in San Pietro in Cielo d'Oro at Pavia.
In the history of ideas, Boethius is perhaps the most significant of a small handful of thinkers in his time who transmitted the world of ancient Greek and Roman learning to the Middle Ages. One of the last pre-Renaissance intellectuals to command a thorough knowledge of Greek philosophy in the original language, he was convinced of a fundamental harmony between Aristotle and Plato and set out to convey this through a comprehensive program of Latin translations. Today we have his translations and commentaries on Aristotle's logical works (principally Categories, De interpretatione, and Prior Analytics); his original works on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism; and his translation of Porphyry's Isagoge, a major work of Alexandrian Neoplatonism that introduced the vexed question of universals into medieval philosophy. Boethius was also very much concerned with the survival of the liberal arts curriculum in Latin. Although his De arithmetica was substantially derived from Nicomachus of Gerasa (second century), it includes an illuminating excursus on the profound interrelationship among the mathematical arts: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy—four connected paths of study for which, it appears, Boethius here coined the term quadrivium. Like Augustine, Boethius wrote an influential treatise on music as Pythagorean number theory that became a standard during the Renaissance.
The extent of Augustine's influence on Boethius, and particularly on Boethius's doctrines of the Trinity as expounded in the theological tracts, or opuscula sacra, remains a matter of some discussion among scholars; more generally, the precise nature of Boethius's Catholicism is also a matter of scholarly discussion. In his sophisticated disquisitions on classical learning, Boethius seems utterly unconcerned with their relation to the Christian faith; and he writes as something of a detached logician even in his avowedly theological works (among others, De trinitate, De fide catholica, and a tract against the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius). His crowning achievement, The Consolation of Philosophy, is marked by this same bracketing off of the Christian perspective.
In the Consolation, Boethius—like Dante—casts himself as the protagonist. As he languishes in prison lamenting his ill fortune and lost glory, a magnificent lady, Philosophia, appears to instruct and console him by reminding him of the eternal Platonic truths. She chides him for having invested himself in the transient and temporal; she coaxes him toward an appreciation of rational design in the universe; she reaffirms the lasting good of the human soul in contemplative union with divine form. Though reflecting in part both Stoic and Aristotelian science, the Consolation makes plain its author's strong Neoplatonic tendencies, particularly in the ninth meter of Book 3, O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas, a brilliant lyric distillation of Plato's Timaeus. At once appealing as moral philosophy and as literature, Boethius's elegant Latin prosimetrum (five books of alternating verse and prose) enjoyed huge popularity throughout medieval Europe and was translated into all the major vernaculars, including Italian, by 1500. His personifications of Philosophy and Fortune began a long and colorful iconographic tradition.
Dante, whose Convivio echoes the Consolation in many places, surely felt an affinity for Boethius as a fellow martyr for the truth and a fellow exile. In Paradiso 10, Boethius is shown among the contemplatives in eternal beatitude.
Boethius, Consolation of Phibsophy. Textus Boetij: Anitij Manlij Torquati Seuerini Boetij . . . consolatio philosophica. Lyon: Simon Vincent, 1510, Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
See also Dante Alighieri; Liberal Arts; Neoplatonism; Plato; Theodoric
GARY P. CESTARO
Atkinson, Keith. "The French and Italian Translations of Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae by Bonaventure da Demena." Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society, 7, 1998, pp. 67-80.
Boethius. Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.
Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.
Courcelle, Pierre, La Consolation de Philosopbie dans la tradition litteraire: Antecedents et posterite de Boece. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1967.
Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in The Consolation of Philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Reiss, Edmund. Boethius. Twayne's World Author Series. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1982.
Bohemond (or Bohemund; Bohemond I, prince of Antioch, c. 1050 or 1058-1111) was the eldest son of Robert Guiscard by Robert's first wife, Alberada. He developed in the shadow of his father's transformation from a Norman brigand-mercenary to the founder, as duke of Apulia, of a powerful new state in southern Italy. Bohemond emerged early as his father's chief lieutenant, notably during Robert Guiscard's daring invasion of the Byzantine empire in the early 1080s.
Bohemond was bypassed in the succession to his father's Apulian realm in favor of Roger Borsa, Robert's eldest son by his second wife. However, Bohemond forcibly extorted from his half-brother a territorial enclave that included Bari, Beyond that, he had inherited his father's grandiose dream of carving out a realm in the east at the expense of Byzantium. The great project that was to become the First Crusade was clearly a perfect opportunity for Bohemond. When Pope Urban II called for crusaders to champion Christendom against Islam, Bohemond was among the western barons who responded. He was an archetype of the self-seeking opportunist, hungry for a principality of his own in the east.
Bohemond set out in the autumn of 1096 for Constantinople, where the crusaders had agreed to meet. The Byzantines, who knew him all too well, inevitably suspected that he had ulterior motives; but Bohemond went out of his way to be deferential to Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (Alexios Komnenos), Pledging loyalty, he sought for himself the Byzantine post of domestikos of the east, and he became a leading negotiator between the crusaders and Alexius. He accepted Alexius's terms—an oath of fealty and a promise to surrender to the emperor any conquered cities or lands that had previously belonged to the empire—but Alexius had no illusions about Bohemond's sincerity or goals. As the expedition proceeded beyond the taking of Nicaea, Bohemond's self-interest became increasingly evident, and at a very early point he seems to have set his sights on the important Syrian city of Antioch, one particularly desired by Alexius. Bohemond was a leader in the prolonged, brutal siege of Antioch (1097-1098), and by clever manipulation he was able to secure its surrender to himself. He refused to share it with the other leaders, and—by now outspoken in his hostility to Alexius—he made it the center of his own principality. Bohemond remained in Antioch while the rest of the crusaders' forces went on to storm Jerusalem (1099).
Bohemond soon found himself beleaguered by both Byzantines and Turks; he was even briefly taken prisoner by the Turks, and he felt that his hold on Antioch was precarious. Convinced that Alexius was his supreme obstacle, Bohemond developed a characteristically daring scheme of attacking Byzantium directly, in his father's pattern. In 1104, he left behind his nephew and longtime deputy, Tancred, to hold Antioch, and secretly had himself conveyed back to Europe. (A story is told that, to avoid interception by Byzantine squadrons, Bohemond gave out the report that he was dead and then spent much of the voyage in a coffin, along with a dead chicken to add olfactory verisimilitude.) In Rome he convinced the gullible Pope Paschal II of Alexius's treachery and animosity to the crusade and was given a blessing to organize a force to attack Byzantine lands, disseminating vicious propaganda against Alexius in the process. Bohemond made a landing at Avlona in October 1107 but was quickly contained by Alexius at Dyracchium. Compelled to surrender, Bohemond signed a humiliating treaty with Alexius in September 1108, once again accepting Byzantine suzerainty over Antioch. Bohemond never returned to his hard-won principality; shortly after making this treaty, he died, perhaps in Bari. Tancred refused to recognize the treaty of 1108 and thus initiated an independent Norman rule in Antioch that would last for the next few generations.
Bohemond was buried in a curious tomb, of either Muslim or crusader design, still to be seen outside the duomo in the town of Canosa di Puglia. On its bronze door there is an inscription of fulsome praise to this restless but ultimately futile Norman prince.
See also Byzantine Empire; Robert Guiscard; Urban II, Pope
JOHN W. BARKER
Anna Comnena. Alexiad, trans. Elizabeth A. S. Dawes. London, 1928.
—. Alexiad, trans. E. R. A. Sewter. London, 1969; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
Douglas, David C. The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
—. The Norman Fate, 1100-1154. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Rowe, J. G. "Paschal II, Bohemund of Antioch, and the Byzantine Empire." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 49, 1966-1967, pp. 165-202.
Runciman, Steven. The First Crusade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. (Abridged from Vol. 1 of his History of the Crusades, 1951.)
Yewdale, Ralph Bailey. Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1924. (Reprint, Amsterdam, 1970.)
The town of Bologna sits on the edge of the fertile plain of the Po River at its intersection with the Apennines. The site is an important junction of the roads and waterways connecting Lombard/ and the Romagna with the Veneto and Tuscany. Bologna became the home of the most important school of legal studies in Europe and a center of political and institutional innovation for much of the thirteenth century. Remarkably, guilds representing the town's artisans held a share of power for a century, 1228—1327. From the 1270s on, Bologna was torn by factional civil wars. The town faded in size and influence and fell repeatedly to the rule of signori, the Visconti, and the papacy. In the fifteenth century the Bentivoglio family established a long-lasting signoria.
Bologna is on the site of an important Etruscan town, Felsina, The Romans established a colony, Bononia, in 189 B.C.; it was destroyed by fire and rebuilt by Claudius in A.D. 53. Bologna was sacked by Alaric and the Visigoths in 410 and became part of the exarchate of Ravenna, under Byzantine rule. The Lombards sacked the town in 727 or 728 and then held it until the Carolingian conquest in 774. Charlemagne conceded the town to the papacy, though it remained under imperial authority and the jurisdiction of Carolingian counts. Bologna was a frontier town during the Carolingian and Ottonian periods and was reduced to a military center of modest proportions. From the end of the tenth century on, there was intensified traffic on Via Emilia, and Bologna enjoyed modest population growth and new construction, including the transfer of the cathedral of San Pietro from a suburb to the center of town.
The twelfth century saw a sporadic struggle for independence from imperial authority. In 1115, at news of the death of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, the Bolognese tore down the castle that represented imperial and comital jurisdiction over the town and destroyed the records of their obligations. Henry V (king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor) ratified a fait accompli when he issued a diploma dated 16 May 1116 pardoning the Bolognese who had taken part in the revolt, including two jurists who were named as leaders. Henry conceded local autonomy and extended imperial safeguards, with provisions that protected the interests of merchants and landed proprietors, including safe navigation of the Po. In exchange the emperor was promised a substantial sum in annual tribute during imperial visits to Italy. The diploma effectively ratified a new, independent commune.
Significantly, the diploma was witnessed by Irnerius, the scholar of Roman law who first gave the Bolognese studio its reputation for legal studies. The studio gave Bologna special importance; political leaders were quick to perceive its usefulness. When the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, at the Council of Roncaglia of 1158, sought to restore imperial authority, he drew on Bolognese jurists to define the imperial regalia, or jurisdictional rights. On the basis of the opinions of four learned students of Irnerius, he asserted his right to name civic magistrates and consuls.
In their relations with Barbarossa, the Bolognese fluctuated between cooperation and uprisings against imperial jurisdiction as represented by a podestà (podesta, or hired city manager). In 1167 Bologna joined the Lombard League and built an enlarged city wall to defend against any attack by the empire. After the peace of Constance, Bologna's autonomy from the emperor was effectively established. Emperor Henry VI allowed the town the right to mint its own coins; his death in 1197 marked the real end of imperial influence.
Bologna established a consular regime like that of many other communes. At first, the consuls were elected by acclamation by the arengo, or general assembly, but over time systems of indirect election developed. As elsewhere, this regime enabled an elite urban group to dominate most offices; members of the elite served as not only as town consuls but also as canons of the cathedral, Bologna, like other Italian towns, attempted to avoid factional domination of executive offices by bringing in outsiders as podestas. In 1200-1203, the commune built a Palazzo del Podestà and demolished houses, churches, and towers to construct a large open piazza that was to become the Piazza Maggiore.
Church of Santo Stefano, Bologna. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
In the course of the thirteenth century the political base of government gradually broadened beyond the narrow consular aristocracy: corporations—including shoemakers, drapers, and tailors as well as merchants and money changers—were represented in the civic councils. Guilds were formed from the mid twelfth century on; they appear in documents of 1144 and 1169, and guild statutes exist from the 1240s. In the early thirteenth century the guilds were joined by societies of arms, voluntary associations for mutual protection. These had an improvised, ad hoc quality. Some were based in neighborhoods and overlapped with parish organizations; others brought together interest groups, including outsiders, like the Society of Lombards or the Society of Tuscans. Some arms societies—such as the butchers—were also guilds. The arms societies protected their members: for instance, if a member was involved in a legal case against a powerful opponent, other members might accompany him to court. Some societies worked with the civic government to police neighborhoods. Twenty to twenty-four arms societies existed; their size varied from more than 100 to as many as 600 men.
Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
By 1217-1219, the leaders of the guilds and arms societies held seats in the consiglio, a town council that until then had been made up of the consular aristocracy, including merchants and bankers. However, an aristocratic reaction set in, and the societies were dissolved in 1219-1220. In 1228, against the background of a conflict between Frederick II and the Second Lombard League, the merchant and landowner Giuseppe Toschi led a popular revolt that culminated in an attack on the town hall and the destruction of the statutes and the court and tax records. The armed societies and guilds then claimed and received a share in governance, which they held for more than a century. Popular political institutions were quickly formed: the most important such institution was the anziani, or elders, men elected by the guilds and armed societies who together with the consuls of the money changers and merchants formed the podesta's council.
Bologna played a major role in the Second Lombard League. In response to the military threat from Frederick in 1226-1227, the town built a stronghold called Castelfranco and a third set of walls—initially a ditch, earth rampart, and palisade. Beginning in the twelfth century the Bolognese commune had worked to subject its contado, or rural lands, to civic authority, building fortifications, imposing taxes, and gradually reducing the autonomy of rural communities as well as that of seigneurs, including the bishop. Frederick II supported the bishop against the commune, and when war broke out in 1226 the bishop sided with Frederick against the commune and the Lombard League. After the peace, conflict over the commune's appropriation of episcopal jurisdictional rights continued; this led, in 1232, to a papal excommunication of Bologna, which forced a temporary suspension of the university. At the Battle of Fossalta in 1249 the Bolognese army captured Enzo, Frederick's favorite son; Enzo remained a prisoner until his death in 1272. Pini (1993, 1996, 1997) has argued that the division between Guelfs and Ghibel-lines within the town's nobility derived from debates over Enzo's fate.
The economy of Bologna was relatively weak: the contaao was small, and much of it was mountainous and unproductive. Ultimately, Bolognese merchants and bankers were not competitive with the Florentines. The town's major economic function was probably to house, provision, and maintain students. The Bolognese communal government made repeated attempts to strengthen the economy, including active efforts to bring in skilled artisans, particularly textile workers. In 1228-1231, 153 wool and silk masters and their families—500 to 600 people in all—were attracted by favorable contracts financed by the commune. Giuseppe Toschi, the leader of the popular revolt of 1228, sponsored twenty-three families. The civic government also sought to control and enhance resources that could stimulate the economy. One example is the canals, which had been begun in 1183 by private monopolistic groups but by 1217 were controlled by the commune. These provided hydraulic energy for grain mills, served the textile and leather industries, and ensured a water supply for the town's population. Public works included the third circle of city walls and a new cattle market. The Bolognese commune also recognized the advantages of porticoes lining the streets, and so it passed statutes systematizing the existing porticoes and requiring property owners to build new ones. In the thirteenth century, Bologna became a city of porticoes.
The town also created new free communities at sites of economic and strategic importance in the contado and made efforts to attract immigrant workers from other regions. A political campaign to free Bologna's serfs in 1256-1257 led to the emancipation of 5,855 people on 3 June 1257; their names and the names of their former lords are recorded in Liber paradisus. Lay proprietors were reimbursed eight lire for serfs under fourteen years of age and ten lire for adults. The preamble to the list speaks of restoring the liberty given by God at creation; but since serfs and men married to serfs were exempt from civic taxes, the emancipation was probably also motivated by a desire to increase tax revenues and preserve a rural workforce.
Legal studies were probably pursued in Bologna from the late eleventh century on. Ambitious rulers and emperors called on Bologna's jurists to provide legal justification for their authority. The most important early figure was Irnerius (died c. 1130), a teacher of the liberal arts who turned to the study of Roman law—notably, to the sixth-century Digest of Justinian, which had received little attention. As mentioned above, it was Irnerius who witnessed the imperial diploma giving the Bolognese commune autonomy. A series of scholars of Roman law through the twelfth century culminated in the Florentine Accursius, whose Glossa ordinaria (completed c. 1228) became the standard textbook. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries scholars called "postglossators" applied principles derived from Roman law to contemporary political problems.
Bologna was also a center of studies of canon law; in this regard its most important product was the Concordance of Discordant Canons or Decretum (1140) by the monk Gratian. The study of canon law was supported by the popes, particularly after the papacy of Alexander III (mid-twelfth century), who was himself a legal scholar.
Rhetorical studies at Bologna began with Adalberto Samaritani, a contemporary of Irnerius. Influential rhetorical and epistolary manuals were written by Buoncompagno da Signa (fl. c. 1195-1240) and Guido Faba (before 1190-1248). Notarial studies were established at Bologna by Ranieri da Perugia; Rolandino de' Passeggeri's Summa artis notariae (c. 1255) became the standard textbook. The other university faculties were weaker: arts and medicine did not emerge until the second half of the thirteenth century, and the theology faculty was not established until 1364.
The formal university was created in 1190, when law students who were not Bolognese but were living in the city formed an association, or universitas scholarium, to aid those who were not protected by the civic or church courts. A complex constitution took shape, including for a time four universitates, governed by rectors and counselors elected by the students. The university rapidly took over the supervision of teaching, including hiring masters, paying their salaries, and imposing stiff fines if they failed to meet their obligations. Neither the masters themselves nor the citizens of Bologna had a voice. The licentia docendi was introduced by papacy in 1219. The university statutes were approved by the commune and papacy in 1252-1253. In its medieval heyday, the university probably comprised some 2,000 students, despite a tradition that puts the number at 10,000. In the fourteenth century the power of the students dwindled, and by 1350 the commune was appointing the masters. Notaries and jurists had a powerful impact on Bolognese politics; an important example is Rolandino de' Passeggeri, a doctor of notarsal arts who became a popular political leader. A few remaining monumental tombs of glossators, jurists, and notaries, including Rolandino, are striking visual evidence of these scholars' role in the medieval town.
The Dominican order arrived in the city as early as 1218 and became an important presence; Dominic himself was buried in Bologna. Francis preached in Bologna in 1222; the Franciscan convent was built on land donated by the commune to the order in 1236. The town was a center of the Alleluia, a religious revival of the 1230s. The Dominican preacher John of Vicenza arrived in Bologna in 1233 and played a dramatic role as mediator and prophet; he was even reputed to raise the dead, and bands of his followers marched in streets. John arbitrated a long-standing dispute between the town and the bishop over the commune's usurpation of episcopal jurisdictional rights, and he was invited to revise the town's statutes. It was John who first encouraged development of a cult around Dominic's corpse.
For a long time, the Cathars were present in Bologna. The registers include extensive documentation of a major Dominican Inquisition held in 1291-1310, during which 103 men and 37 women were implicated in Catharism. Bolognese Cathars tended to be artisans, particularly in leather and textiles, and many were immigrants to the city. In 1299, when two living men and one dead woman were burned at the stake for heresy, the town rioted in protest. The Inquisition also pursued the Apostolici, a group founded by Gerard Segarelli and led by Fra Dolcino.
During the 1270s, Bologna was weakened financially and became embroiled in civil wars. Elite factions had developed in mid-century or earlier; they were identified with the Geremei and Lambertazzi families and linked to the international Guelf and Ghibelline parties. The city's political instability was worsened by a disastrous and costly war with Venice in 1272-1273 over control of the regional waterways, used to transport grain. In 1274, there was a ferocious battle between the factions. The Lambertazzi, who had ties to the Ghibellines, were expelled along with their relatives and followers, and their goods were confiscated by the town. This was a massive exile: 4,123 families numbering perhaps 12,000 to 14,000 people were driven from the city. In 1279, under pressure from Pope Nicholas III to reconcile the factions, Bologna readmitted the Lambertazzi; but after forty days of violence it expelled them again. In 1287, severe damage was done to 155 houses of the Lambertazzi. The faction was again admitted in 1299 and its goods, its access to civic office, and its privileges were restored. However, a third expulsion took place in 1306.
At the same time as these factional conflicts, antagonism arose between the popolani and the magnates, or nobles. Popular leaders, notably Rolandino de' Passeggeri, feared that the mag nates—a group they described as rapacious wolves—would dominate the town and oppress the mild sheep, i.e., the guildsmen. Beginning in 1271, the Society of the Popolo imposed a series of ordinances that restricted the magnates' political power. The laws of 1282—1284, the ordinamenti sacrati e sacratissimi, established a list of about forty families who were considered magnates and limited their access to civic offices. This legislation also broke with tradition by requiring magnates to post a surety of 1,000 lire against their possible commission of crimes against the popolani; in addition, such crimes by the magnates were to be severely punished.
Significantly, Bologna never developed the rift between greater and lesser guilds that destabilized politics in Florence. The Bolognese popular regime was, by medieval standards, broad-based. Large numbers of men were admitted to public office: 800 sat in the consiglio comunale; 600 to 650 sat in the consiglio del popolo e della massa; and the 2,000 members of the consiglio dei duemila, who represented quarters, were charged with electing civic officials. The college of anziani and consoli held the real executive power; it was made up of four consuls from among the merchants and money changers and twenty from the guilds and armed societies.
From the late thirteenth century on, Bologna—like other Italian towns—suffered a long decline. It was affected by a series of sieges as well as by famine and by successive waves of plague. The population dropped from some 50,000 in 1294 to 43,000 by 1324 and only 20,000-25,000 after the plague of 1348. The economy shrank. The university also suffered, particularly during a papal interdict of 1339 directed against Bologna and its signore, Taddeo Pepoli. The independent commune was put at risk after the emperor, in 1278, confirmed papal rather than imperial authority over the region. The banker Romeo Pepoli took over the town briefly in 1320. His son Taddeo was able to establish a signoria, or lordship, over Bologna that lasted from 1337 until 1350, when his sons sold the town to the Visconti of Milan. Bologna came to be ruled by Giovanni Visconti (1355-1360) and Giovanni da Oleggio (1355-1360); then it fell to the papal reconquest by Cardinal Albornoz and was ruled by papal legates from 1360 to 1376. By the 1370s, the town began to recover; in 1371 the population numbered about 32,000. The Bolognese rose up in revolt and drove out the papal legate to establish a second communal age in 1376-1401. Many of the old forms of civic independence were regained, although the new regime was an oligarchy, with power in the hands of an elite and the representatives of the quarters rather than artisan corporations. The surest sign of this revival is the coining of the pure gold bolognino in 1380. During this period Bologna built the Palace of the Notaries and the Mercanzia, and in 1390 the town began the great church on the Piazza Maggiore, dedicated to San Petronio—an offer of thanks for its restored liberty. The Bentivoglio family controlled the town briefly in 1401-1402 and then, in 1435, established a signoria that was to last until 1507.
See also Accursius; Alaric the Visigoth; Albornoz, Gil Alvarez Cabrillo de; Apostolic Brotherhood; Buoncompagno da Signa; Cathars; Constance, Peace of; Dolcino, Fra; Dominic, Saint; Dominican Order; Education; Exarchate of Ravenna; Frederick I Barbarossa; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Glossa Ordinaria: Roman Law; Guido Faba; Guilds; Henry V, Emperor; Henry VI Hohenstaufen; Irnerius; Law: Canon; Law; Roman; Lombard Leagues; Lombards; Rolandino de' Pas-seggeri; Universities; Visconti Family
CAROL LANSING
Chartularium studii Bononiensis: Documenti per la storia dell'Università di Bologna dalle origini fino al secolo XV. Bologna: Istituto per la Storia dell'Università di Bologna, 1909-.
Fasoli, Gina, and Pietro Sella, eds. Statuti di Bologna dell'anno 1288, 2 vols. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1937-1939.
Frati, Luigi, ed. Statuti di Bologna dall'anno 1245 all'anno 1267, 3 vols. Bologna, 1869-1877.
Gatta, Francesco Saverio, and Giuseppe Plessi, eds. Liber Paradisus con le riformagioni e gli statuti connessi. Bologna: 1956.
Gaudenzi, Augusto. Statuti delle Società del Popolo di Bologna, Vol. 1, Società delle Armi; Vol. 2, Società delle Arti. Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 3-4. Rome: Forzani, Tipografia del Senato, 1889-1896.
Gaudenzi, Augusto, ed. Statuti del Popub di Bologna del secolo XIII: Gli Ordinamenti Sacrati e Sacratissimi colle riformagioni da loro occasionate e dipendenti ed altri provvedimenti affini. Bologna: Fratelli Merlani, 1888.
Griffoni, Matteo. Memoriale historicum de rebus Bononiensium (aa. 4448 A.C.-1472 D.C.), ed. Lodovico Frati and Albano Sorbelli. Rerum Itaiicarum Scriptores, new ed., Vol. 18, part 2. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1902.
Malagola, Carlo, ed. Statuti delle Università e dei Collegi dello Studio bolognese. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1888.
Montanari, Paolo. Documenti su la popolazione di Bologna alia fine del Trecento. Bologna: Istituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1966.
Paolini, Lorenzo, and Raniero Orioli, eds. Acta S. Officii Bononiae ab anno 1291 usque ad annum 1310, 2 vols. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1982-1984.
Sorbelli, Albano, ed. Le croniche bolognesi del secolo XTV. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1900.
—, ed. Corpus Chronicorum Bononiensium. Rerum Itaiicarum Scriptores, 18, part 1. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1905-1940.
—, ed. Cronica gestorum ac factorum memorabilium civitatis Bononiae, edita a fratre Hieronymo de Bursellis. Rerum Itaiicarum Scriptores, new ed., 23, part 2. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1912-1929.
Tamba, Giorgio. La società dei notai di Bologna: Saggio storico e inventario. Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1988.
Bertram, Martin. "Bologneser Testamente, Erster Teil: Die urkundliche Überlieferung." Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 70, 1990, pp. 151-233.
—. "Bologneser Testamente. Zweiter Teil: Sondierungen in den Libri Memoriali." Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 71, 1991, pp. 195-240.
Blanshei, Sarah. "Criminal Law and Politics in Medieval Bologna." Criminal Justice History, 2, 1981, pp. 1-30.
—. "Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna." Journal of Social History, 16, 1982, pp. 121-138.
Bocchi, Francesca. "Le imposte dirette a Bologna nei secoli XII e XIII." Nuova Rivista Storica, 57, 1973, pp. 273-312.
—. "I debiti dei contadini (1235): Nota sulla piccola proprietà terriera Bolognese nella crisi di feudalesimo." In Studi in memoria di Luigi dal Pane. Bologna: CLUEB, 1982, pp. 169-209.
—, ed. Atlante storico di Bologna. Vol. 1, Da Febina a Bononia: Dalle origini al XII secolo, by Jacopo Ortalli, Cristiana Morigi Govi, Giuseppe Sassatelli, and Francesca Bocchi. Bologna: Grafis, 1996. Vol. 2, Il Duecento, by Francesca Bocchi. Bologna: Grafis, 1995. Vol. 3, Da una crisi all'altra (secoli XIV-XVII), by Rolando Dondarini and Carlo De Angelis. Bologna: Grafis, 1997.
Brizzi, Gian Paolo, and Antonio Pini, eds. Studenti e università degli studenti dal XII al XIX secolo. Bologna: Presso l'Istituto per la Storia dell'Università, 1988.
Capitani, Ovidio, ed. Cultura universitaria e pubblici poteri a Bologna dal XII al XV secolo: Atti del 2o convegno, Bologna, 20-21 marzo 1988. Bologna: Istituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1990.
Dal Pane, Luigi. Vita economica a Bologna nel periodo comunale. Bologna, 1957.
Dowd, Douglas. "Power and Economic Development: The Rise and Decline of Medieval Bologna." Journal of European Economic History, 3, 1974, pp. 424-452.
Fasoli, Gina. "Le Compagnie delle Armi a Bologna." L'Archiginnasio, 28, 1933a, pp. 158-183, 323-340.
—. "La legislazione antimagnatizia a Bologna fino al 1292." Rivista di Storia del Diritto Italiano, 6, 1933b, pp. 351-392.
—. "Le Compagnie delle Arti a Bologna fino al principio del secolo XV." L'Archiginnasio, 30, 1935, pp, 237-280; 31, 1936, pp. 56-79.
Federico II e Bologna. Bologna: Deputazione di Storia Patria, 1996.
Giansante, M. "L'età comunale a Bologna. Strutture sociali, vita economica, e temi urbanistico-demografici: Orientamenti e problemi," Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Arcbivio Muratoriano, 92, 1985-1986, pp. 103-222.
Heers, Jacques. Espaces publics, espaces privés dans la ville: Le Liber Terminorum de Bologne, 1294. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1984.
Hessel, Alfred. Geschichte der Stadt Bohgna von 1116 bis 1280. Berlin: Ebering, 1910. (Reprint, 1965. See also Italian translation: Storia della città di Bologna dal 1116 al 1280, trans. Gina Fasoli. Bologna: Alfa, 1975.)
Hyde, John Kenneth. "Commune, University, and Society in Early Medieval Bologna." In Universities in Politics: Case Studies from the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Periods, ed. John Baldwin and Richard Goldthwaite. Baltimore, Md,, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972, pp. 17-46.
Notariato medievale bolognese, 2 vols. Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1977.
Ortalli, Gherardo. "La famille à Bologne au XHIe siècle entre la réalité des groups inférieures et la mentalité des classes dominantes." In Famille et parenté dans l'Occident médiéval, ed. Georges Duby and Jacques LeGoff. Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 30, 1977.
Paolini, Lorenzo, L'eresia a Bologna fra XIII e XIV secolo, 2 vols. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1975.
Pini, Antonio Ivan. Campagne bolognesi: Le radici agrarie di una metropoli medievale. Florence: Le Lettere, 1993.
—. Città medievali e demografia storica: Bologna, Romagna, Italia (secc. XIII—XV). Bologna: CLUEB, 1996.
—. "Magnati e popolani a Bologna nella seconda metà del XII secolo." Magnati e popolani nell'Italia comunale: Quindicesimo convegno di studi, Pistoia, 15—18 maggio 1995. Pistoia: Centra Italiano di Studi di Storia e d'Arte, 1997, pp. 371-396.
Prodi, Paolo, and Lorenzo Paolini, eds. Storia della chiesa di Bologna. Bergamo: Bolis, 1997.
Rinaldi, Rossella. '"Mulieres publicae': Testimonianze e note sulla prostituzione tra pieno e tardo medioevo." In Donne e lavoro nell'Italia medievale, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Paola Galetti, and Bruno Andreolli. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991, pp. 105-125.
Rodolico, Niccolò. Dal comune alla signoria: Saggio sul governo di Taddeo Pepoli in Bologna. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1898. (Reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1974.)
Sorbelli, Albano. Storia dell'Università di Bologna, Vol. 1, Il medioevo (secc. XI—XV). Bologna: Zanichelli, 1940.
Vallerani, Massimo. "L'amministrazione della giustizia a Bologna in età podestarile." Atti e Memorie delle Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna, n.s. 42, 1992, pp. 291-316.
Bolsena is close to the site of an ancient Etruscan town, Velsna, near Orvieto in the region of Latium. Bolsena (in Latin, Volsinii) was founded by refugees from Velsna when the latter came under Roman control in 280 B.C. During the early Middle Ages Bolsena was destroyed and depopulated so severely that its bishopric moved to Orvieto. It was for some time under the control of the Lombards and was then absorbed into the papal states. In 1186, it became a possession of Orvieto; it was taken from Orvieto by Frederick II in 1240 but was returned in 1251. The papal states and Orvieto contested for possession of Bolsena, but in 1296 Pope Boniface VIII established joint ownership with Orvieto. The fourteenth century was characterized by continuing struggles, and in 1377, following a popular uprising, the walls of the town were largely destroyed by Pope Gregory IX.
The nearby Lake of Bolsena was well known for its marine life, and particularly for its fine eels; Pope Martin IV is said to have died of a surfeit of them. According to tradition, a miracle occurred in the grotto in the chapel of Santa Christina in 1263—the famous Miracle of Bolsena. It is said that an apparition of Christ's blood during the eucharist refuted the celebrant's doubts as to the truth of transubstantiation, and the priest's bloodied vestment is kept in an elaborate reliquary in the Chapel of the Corporale in the cathedral of Orvieto. The miracle is commemorated in the fresco cycle by Ugolino di Prete Ilario, also in the cathedral of Orvieto; and in Raphael's famous fresco in the Stanze of the Vatican palace.
See also Martin IV, Pope; Orvieto
JOHN W. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Bonagiunta (c. 1220-before 1300), a poet from Lucca who preceded the stil novo, is a character in Dante's Divine Comedy (Purgatorio, 24). Bonagiunta was a judge and a notary; accordingly, in two authoritative manuscripts (Vatican 3793 and 3214) the poet is given the honorific ser, and his name is preserved in deeds drawn up between 1242 and 1257. Fewer than forty of his poems have survived: eleven canzoni, two "discords" (descorts, or disputes), five ballads, and some twenty sonnets. Three of the sonnets are addressed to other poets: one to Guinizzelli (d. 1276) and two to unidentified correspondents. Another two or three sonnets belong to a tenzone—a cycle of verses by several authors—initiated by the judge Gonnella Antelminelli with Bonagiunta and a certain Bonodico, all from Lucca. Bonagiunta's themes include, as might be expected, his changing moods (sorrow, hope, joy, disappointment) as an apprehensive lover, and praise of his lady. In some poems, as is also true of Guittone d'Arezzo (c. 1235-1294) and other Tuscan poets of the time, Bonagiunta touches on or develops moral topics: honor versus pleasure; wisdom and integrity versus foolishness; boasters; corrupt judges; how to deal with fortune; and so on.
To ascertain Bonagiunta's place in poetry, and to give him his due in the development of the Italian lyric, three crucial connections must be explored. How can we relate him to (1) the Sicilian school, (2) Guittone d'Arezzo, and (3) the stil novo? An adjunct to the third question is this: Why did Dante, in seeking a narrative catalyst to give himself an opportunity to proclaim and define his dolce stil nuovo (Purgatorio, 24:57), select Bonagiunta and not, as Contini (1960) wonders, Giacomo da Lentini or Guittone?
With regard to question 1, it is easy to reach agreement. Between the Sicilian school and Bonagiunta there is, in fact, a clear path of transfer and continuity; thus we have no trouble in granting, with Contini, that "apart from the very members of the School, Bonagiunta was the real transplanter of the Sicilian poetry to Tuscany."
However, as regards questions 2 and 3, Contini seems to go too far by loosening the connection between Bonagiunta and Guittone in an attempt to establish, instead, a more direct link between Bonagiunta and the poets of the stil novo; according to Contini, beneath the cumbersome superstructure of Guittone's trobar clus (hermetic style), Bonagiunta elaborated the Sicilian tradition and channeled it toward the results finally achieved by the Florentine stil novo. Marti (1973) has toned down this interpretation. Bonagiuntismo may have been the state of affairs to which Guittone was reacting in developing his own innovative, pithy writing; but Bonagiunta was no doubt attracted by the younger, more authoritative, and more charismatic Giuttone. Although Bonagiunta's own tendency was comparatively archaic and leu (free, open), he considered himself a staunch supporter of Guittone. This is revealed in the sonnet directed to Guinizzelli (Vol, ch'avete mutata la mainera, "You who have changed the manner"), where he harshly chides Guinizzelli for changing the style then gloriously in force: that is, Guittone's. In addition, Dante perceived—and condemned—Bonagiunta as a Guittonian, in De vulgari eloquentia (1.xiii.1) and also in a famous episode in Purgatory, 24 (although, we should note, lato sensu, i.e., without the benefit of a detailed stylistic analysis).
An even thornier question is whether Bonagiunta might be considered a forerunner or incubator of the stil novo (a problem which also arises, for instance, in trying to place Chiaro Davanzati). This question is especially difficult because we do not know when Bonagiunta died or, more important, when he stopped writing. He probably outlived Guinizzelli, but we have no idea how long he remained active as a poet in the last twenty years of the century. However, it is not very likely, given his advanced age, that the features of the stil novo which some readers discern in his verses were due to any influence exerted on him by the new school (especially Cavalcanti), as Francesco Novati was inclined to believe. Considering the continuity and the constraints of the lyrical tradition, one should be cautious in retrospectively applying the term stil novo, or even "stilnovistic," to lexical and metric combinations in the work of earlier poets. In such cases the real significance is to be found in the context, both literal and cultural.
For the episode in Purgatory 24, then, Dante would have thought of Bonagiunta for several reasons. For one thing, only through Bonagiunta could the lyrical reminiscence of Gentucca be introduced; for another, Dante certainly held Bonagiunta responsible for having blindly exalted Guittone's reputation (Purgatory, 26.124-126) over that of Guinizzelli, whom Dante considered his own poetic father. Bonagiunta had resented and objected to the novelty of Guinizzelli's "sweet style"; let him now joyfully acknowledge, in the unescapable dialectics of contrappasso, the messianic renewal that Dante was bringing about.
See also Dante Alighieri; Dolce Stil Nuovo; Guinizzelli, Guido; Guittone d'Arezzo; Italian Poetry: Lyric
RUGGERO STEFANINI
Barolini, Teodoiinda. Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the "Cotnedy." Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 1, pp. 257-282; Vol. 2, p. 825.
De Sanctis, Francesco, and Gerolamo Lazzeri, eds. Storia della letteratura italiana dai primi secoli agli albori del Trecento. Milan, Hoepli, 1950, pp. 376, 396, 520-529.
Marti, Mario. "Orbicciani, Bonagiunta." In Enciclopedia dantesca. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973, Vol. 4, pp. 181-182.
Quaglio, Antonio Enzo. "I poeti siculo-toscani." In La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, ed. Carlo Muscetta. Bari: Laterza, 1970, pp. 241-258.
Tartaro, Achille. "Guittone e i rimatori siculo-toscani." In Storia della letteratura italiana, ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno. Milan: Garzanti, 1965, Vol. 1, pp. 381-389.
Zaccagnini, Guido, and Amos Parducci, eds. Rimatori siculo-toscani del Dugento. Series la: Pistoiesi, Lucchesi, Pisani. Bari: Laterza, 1915, pp. 47-93, 112-118.
The Latin poet Bonaiuto of Casentino (died c. 1312) was originally from Borgo alia Collina, near Poppi in the province of Arezzo. He arrived in Rome during the winter of 1291-1292, and over the next nine years—a period that largely overlaps with the papacy of Boniface VIII—he pursued a successful career as a writer and chaplain at the papal court.
During this time, Bonaiuto produced, in addition to his routine documentary work, a number of occasional poems and other brief texts, not all of which have survived. His Diversiloquium (Varied Discourse) is a miscellany containing fourteen poems ranging in length from six to 155 lines and an unfinished prose treatise in epistolary form on virtues and vices. These were collected by Bonaiuto's scribe, G. of Romandiola (i.e., the Ro magna), and in most instances the occasion for each work is noted in the prose prefaces that the compiler provided. The datable pieces belong to the period 1292-1297. Several of the pieces celebrate aspects of Boniface's reign or commemorate members of his family, and it evidently because of this aspect of the work that Diversiloquium was preserved: the only known copy was already the property of the papacy in 1311. Two religious lyrics in Diversiloquium are addressed to Boniface's personal physician and are accompanied, in the manuscript, by musical notation; at least one of these, the sequence Hec medela corporalis, has entered the modern performance repertoire of medieval Italian music. Bonaiuto's other surviving literary work, transmitted separately, is a 52-line poem on the first papal jubilee (that of 1300); like Diversiloquium, it honors Boniface by name.
In 1301, Boniface appointed Bonaiuto (who was by then a canon of Le Mans and of Aquileia) a papal tax collector for parts of Germany, parts of Austria, the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, the duchy of Poland, and the marquisate of Moravia. Bonaiuto occupied this position until at least 1309. Bonaiuto's death is assumed to have occurred shortly before 29 April 1312, when Pope Clement V assigned to others property in the vicinity of Bologna that Bonaiuto had willed to the church.
Bonaiuto's poems, most of which have only recently been edited, shed light on certain aspects of curial life and document historical events, and their literary quality is far from negligible. Written in several different styles and forms, including classicizing hexameter verse, leonine hexameters, and accentual lyrics, they reveal the learning, skill, and versatility of their author and bear witness to the artistic culture valued at Boniface's court.
See also Boniface VIII, Pope; Latin Literature
JOHN B. DILLON
Frugoni, Arsenio, ed. "Il carme giubilare del 'Magister Bonaiutus de Casentino.'" Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 68, 1956, pp. 247-258. (With critical commentary.)
Petoletti, Marco, ed. "Il Diversiloquium di Bonaiuto da Casentino, poeta di curia ai tempi di Bonifacio VIII." Aevum, 75, 2001, pp. 381-448. (With critical commentary.)
Gallo, F. Alberto. "Dai convenri di Salimbene alia corte di Bonitacio VIII." In La sequenza medievale: Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Milano 7-8 aprile 1984, ed. Agostino Ziino. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1992, pp. 81-86.
Petrucci, E[nzo]. "Bonaiuto da Casentino." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 11. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1969, pp. 520-522.
Vecchi, Giuseppe. "Carmi esametrici e ritrai musicali per Bonifacio VIII." Convivium, n.s. 28, 1960, pp. 513-523.
See Buffalmacco, Bonamico
Guido Bonatti (c. 1210-c. 1297), the foremost astrologer of his century, was born in the Romagna at Forli. He practiced medicine as well as astrology, both of which he probably learned at nearby Bologna. He spent most of his life in Forlì, where he owned land, but from time to time he left to advise various Ghibelline leaders. In 1248, he warned Frederick II by letter of a plot against him, but Bonatti does not seem to have been Frederick's regular astrologer. He was at the court of Ezzelino da Romano in 1259, attended Guido Novello in 1260-1261, and counseled Guido da Montefeltro during Montefeltro's years at Forlì (1275-1283). There are many anecdotes about Guido Bonatti's legendary astuteness and astrological expertise, but today he is best remembered for his Liber astronomicus (after 1277), the most successful Latin textbook of astrology of the period. In Inferno (20.118), Dante placed Bonatti among the diviners in hell.
See also Astrology; Dante Alighieri; Ezzelino III da Romano; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Guido da Montefeltro
Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. 2. New York, 1923, pp. 825-835.
Vasina, Augusto. "Bonatti, Guido." In Enciclopedia dantesca, Vol. 1. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970, pp. 668-669.
Vasoli, Cesare. "Bonatti, Guido." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 11. Rome, 1969, pp. 603-608.
RICHARD KAY
Bonaventura Berlinghieri (II. 1235-1244) painted a gabled altarpiece at Pescia depicting Saint Francis flanked by six scenes of Francis's life and miracles. This work, unusual because it is both signed and dated (1235), is a linchpin in the chronology of Italian painting: it clarifies developments in style as well as in Franciscan iconography; and current analyses have been aided by its restoration in 1982.
The format and style of this work suggest that Bonaventura was the most innovative of the three sons of the Lucchese painter Berlinghiero di Milanese. Documents place the activity of Berlinghiero and his sons—Bonaventura, Barone, and Marco—between 1228 and 1282, primarily at Lucca; a relatively recent attempt by Caleca (1981) to associate the Berlinghieri of Lucca with Volterra has not changed that localization. Although Marco was commissioned to illuminate manuscripts and both Marco and Bonaventura received commissions for frescoes, most of the extant works associated with the Berlinghieri are images of the Virgin and Child and the Passion painted on wooden panels. These works are in a distinctive style, in which the linear Italian Romanesque tradition is transformed by a new and intense familiarity with Byzantine images produced shortly before 1200. On the basis of the resulting angular, expressive facial types and the architectural and landscape settings, a large number of works have been associated with the Berlinghieri family. Several of these have been attributed to Bonaventura Berlinghieri and his followers, including a diptych originally from Lucca but now in the Uffizi in Florence, portions of a Crucifixion in Tereglio, and a group of works sometimes attributed to a separate "Oblate Cross Master." Together, these Lucchese painters had a profound impact on the style of painters in other Tuscan centers, especially Florence, such as the Bardi Saint Francis Master, the Bigallo Master, the Master of the Uffizi Crucifix 434, and Coppo di Marcovaldo.
See also Painting; Panel
Bonaventura Berlinghieri (1235-1274), altarpiece of Saint Francis and stories of his life. San Francesco, Pescia. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
REBECCA W. CORRIE
Angiola, Eloise M. "Nuovi documenti su Bonaventura e Marco di Berlinghiero." Prospettiva, 21, 1980, pp. 82-84.
Ayer, Elizabeth. "Thirteenth-Century Imagery in Transition: The Berlighiero Family in Lucca." Dissertation, Rutgers the State University, 1991.
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Boskovits, Miklós. The Origins of Florentine Painting 1100-1270, trans. Robert Erich Wolf. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, 1, Vol. 1, 1993.
Caleca, Antonino, and Mariagiulia Burresi. Momenti dell'arte a Volterra: Volterra, Palazzo Minucci Solaini, Agosto-Settembre 1981. Pisa: Pacini, 1981.
Capolavori e Restauri, Firenze, Palazzo Vecchio, 14 Dicembre 1986-26 Aprile 1987. Florence: Cantini Edizioni d'Arre, 1986.
Garrison, Edward B., Jr. "A Berlinghieresque Fresco in S. Stefano, Bologna." Art Bulletin, 28, 1946, pp. 211—225.
—. "Post-War Discoveries—III: The Madonna 'di sotto gli Organi,'" Burlington Magazine, 89, 1947, pp. 274-279.
—. Italian Romanesque Panel Painting. Florence: Olschki, 1949.
—. "Toward a New History of Early Lucchese Painting." Art Bulletin, 33, 1951, pp. 11-31.
—. Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, 4 vols. Florence: L'Impronta, 1953-1963.
Gombrich, Ernst H. "Bonaventura Berlinghiero's Palmettes." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 39, 1976, pp. 234-236.
Kriiger, Klaus. Der frühe Bildkunst des Franziskus in Italien: Gestaltund Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1992.
Marcucci, Luisa. Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze, I Dipinti toscani del secolo XIII, scuole bizantine e russe dal secolo XII al secolo XVIII. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1959.
La pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento. Milan: Edizioni Electa, 1985, Vol. 2, pp. 557-558.
Sandberg-Vavalà, Evelyn. La croce dipinta italiana e l'iconografia della passione. Verona: Casa Editrice Apollo, 1929.
Sinabaldi, Giulia, and Giulia Brunetti. Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento, catalogo della Mostra Giottesca di Firenze del 1937. Florence: Sansoni, 1943.
Saint Bonaventure (or Bonaventura; Giovanni Fidanza, c. 1217-1274) entered the Franciscan order in 1243 and studied in Paris, first in the faculty of arts and then with the theologian Alexander of Hales. While he was in Paris, he prepared a commentary on the Four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard. Bonaventure taught at Paris from 1248 on, successfully if somewhat controversially, until he was elected minister-general of the order in 1257. At some unrecorded point he had acquired the nickname Bonaventure or Bonaventura ("good fortune")—the name by which he is now known.
As leader of the Franciscans, Bonaventure tried to steer a middle course between the growing moral laxity of the order's Official wing and the increasing extremism and anti intellectualism of its fundamentalist Spiritual wing. The Constitutions of Narbonne, drawn up under his direction in 1260, were a first step toward healing the breach within the order, although the task was eventually to prove beyond the strength of either Bonaventure himself or his successors. His commentary on the Franciscan rule and his writings about Francis, based on his collection of reminiscences of the saint in the area around Assisi in 1261, are important documents recording his own moderate position. His life of Francis, Legenda maior and Legenda minor, was accepted by the order as the official biography in 1263; and three years later a general council of the order declared—to the fury of the Spiritual Franciscans—that all other biographies of Francis then in circulation should be destroyed.
Bonaventure's gifts as a conciliator were crucial in ending the lengthy vacancy in the papacy that arose after Clement IV's death in 1268; the election of Gregory X in 1271 was due largely to his influence, Bonaventure died shortly after making a vital contribution to the attempt at the Council of Lyons to settle the schism between eastern and western Christianity.
Bonaventure's voluminous writings—commentaries, philosophy, theology, history, biography, devotional treatises, and ser mons—were widely available and highly influential in the late Middle Ages. As a theologian he adhered substantially to a tradition inherited, through Saint Anselm, from Saint Augustine. Bonaventure was much less receptive than his contemporary and fellow Dominican Thomas Aquinas to the ideas and methodology associated with scholastic Aristotelianism, although the two taught simultaneously in Paris in 1256-1257. In their differing positions and approaches Bonaventure and Aquinas largely incarnated the profound differences between their two orders. Bonaventure's thought as a whole is marked—in a way that contrasts clearly with the essentially rational and philosophical tenets of Aquinas's thinking—by his belief in the value of mysticism as a form of knowledge, and of mystical experience as a means of knowing God. This is the doctrine encapsulated in what is perhaps his most popular and influential work, Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Mind's Journey into God), a title in which the choice of the preposition—in ("into") rather than simply ad ("to")—is highly significant. Itinerarium has sometimes been posited as an influence on Dante's Comedy, because Bonaventure recounts a mystical ascent toward visionary experience comparable to that described in Dante's work; but the connection, though not unlikely, has not been conclusively demonstrated,
Saint Bonaventure. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 214r.
However, it is in the Comedy that Bonaventure makes his most celebrated appearance in Italian literature, as one of the principal characters in the narrative of Paradiso (12.28-145), There, Bonaventure plays the role he occupied in history: spokesman for a moderate and spiritually pristine form of Francis canism guaranteed by the authority of the order's founder. In an episode that parallels Thomas Aquinas's eulogy of Francis in Canto 10, Dante's Bonaventure first (verses 31—105) speaks at length in praise of Saint Dominic, founder of the Franciscans' great rival institution, and then (verses 112-126) bitterly condemns the failings of his own order in the early fourteenth century, summed up in the Official Franciscans' dwindling devotion to Francis's rule and the Spiritual Franciscans' excessively rigorous application of it. Finally (verses 127-145) he announces his own identity and goes on to list the other souls who appear alongside him: other early Franciscans (verses 130—132) as well as an assortment of Jewish and Christian thinkers—including, paradoxically and perhaps polemically, Joachim of Fiore, the intellectual patron of the Spirituals whom the historical Bonaventure (unlike Dante) disparaged.
See also Dante Allighieri; Francis of Assisi; Franciscan Order
STEVEN N. BOTTERILL
Bonaventure. Opera omnia, ed. Fathers of the College of Saint Bonaventure. Ad Claras Aquas: Quaracchi, 1882-1902,
—. Works, ed. and trans. Ewert Cousins. New York: Paulist, 1978.
—. The Disciple and the Master: Saint Bonaventure's Sermons on Saint Francis of Assisi, trans, and ed. Eric Doyle. Chicago, Ill.: Franciscan Herald, 1983.
Bougerol, J. G. Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure. Paris and New York: Desclée, 1964.
Gilson, Etienne. The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure. New York: Desclée, 1965.
Hagman, Edward. "Dante's Vision of God: The End of the Itinerarium Mentis." Dante Studies, 106, 1988, pp. 1-20.
Little is known about the thirteenth-century Florentine poet Bondie Dietaiuti, although some conjectures have been made from his surviving works—four canzoni and three sonnets—in MS Vaticano Latino 3793. Bondie's compositions are marked by imitations of courtly Sicilian motifs (e.g., the phoenix and salamander found in bestiaries) and themes (love from afar, the physiology of love). Particularly important is Bondie's canzone d'amtco (Amor, quando mi membra) in response to Brunetto Latini's only extant canzonetta (S'eo sono distretto inamoratamente), which immediately precedes it in the Vatican manuscript. Avalle (1977) suggests that Bondie's correspondence poetry with Brunetto and Rustico Filippi (two of the seven works) constitutes homoerotic texts, amounting to subtly coded personal communications between friends.
See also Brunetto Latini; Italian Poetry: Lyric; Rustico Filippi
H. WAYNE STOREY
Avalle, D'Arco Silvio. Ai luoghi di delizia pieni, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1977, pp. 87-106.
Panvini, Bruno, ed. Rime delta scuola siciliana. Florence: Olschki, 1962.
Boniface (c. 985-1052) was born in Mantua, the son of Tebaldo of Canossa and the countess Julia. He was a feudal lord, loyal to the German emperors Henry II and Conrad II. His north Lombard duchy included Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Ferrara (and perhaps also Cremona, Brescia, and Piacenza); in 1027, the March of Tuscany was added to it by a decree of Conrad II.
Boniface was a strong proponent of the incorporation of the church within feudal structures. One of his allies in pro-imperial causes was Aribert, archbishop of Milan; but Boniface also followed Aribert's anti-imperial sentiments. Boniface accompanied Henry III to his coronation in Rome but refused to support Henry's intervention in papal disputes there. Boniface's first marriage was to Countess Rachilda, daughter of Guilberto degli Obertenghi. His second marriage was to Countess Beatrice, daughter of Duke Frederick of Lower Lotheringia (Bassa Lorena); he and Beatrice had three children, the most celebrated of whom was Matilda of Tuscany. Boniface was killed in San Martino dell'Argine; his death may have been ordered by Emperor Henry III as a consequence of Boniface's power and political autonomy vis-à-vis the emperor.
See also Aribert; Conrad II; Henry II, Saint and Emperor; Matilda, Countess of Tuscany
JOHN W. BARKER AND CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Falce, A. Bonifacio di Canossa, padre di Matilde. Reggio Emilia, 1926-1927.
Grimaldi, N. La Contessa Matilde e la sua stirpe. Florence, 1928.
Pope Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, sometimes Gaetani; c. 1235 or 1240-1303, r. 1294-1303) was born in Anagni, a hill town southeast of Rome that was his family's ancestral home. He is remembered as the last great monarch-pope, an ambitious amasser of power and wealth. He asserted the supremacy of papal authority in the power struggles attending the advent of the European nation-states—struggles in which he was an able player. However, he was defeated in his clash with the French king Philip IV (the Fair) and was tried posthumously. Often, it is from the record of these posthumous proceedings that historians and Boniface's biographers have gleaned details of his personal character; thus it is difficult to know how seriously to take the charge that Boniface was a heretic who openly denied the immortality of the soul and the sanctity of the eucharist. He did surely use his office to increase the wealth of the church and did openly declare that it was a logical impossibility for the pope to be guilty of simony. Dante, for one, begged to differ and proclaimed Boniface's imminent arrival among the simoniacs in Inferno 19.
The young Benedetto (Benedict) Caetani began his legal education and his ecclesiastical career at Todi and Spoleto in the 1260s; he gained valuable diplomatic experience as a papal legate in France and England. He was made a cardinal by Pope Martin IV in 1281. The following year, the uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers transferred control of Sicily from Charles I of Anjou, king ofNaples (a papal fief), to Pedro III of Aragon. The struggle between Anjou and Aragon for the control of Sicily was to plague Boniface's entire tenure as pope.
The precise circumstances that led to Cardinal Benedict's accession to the papacy as Boniface VIII remain somewhat mysterious. After the death of Nicholas IV in 1292, the Colonna and Orsini factions in the College of Cardinals could not come to terms, and the conclave, removed to Perugia from malarial Rome, dragged on into the hot summer months of 1294. Benedict, who was now in his sixties and was intermittently unwell, with gout and kidney stones, rested in Viterbo and Sismano. He spent time in the company of a certain Parisian doctor with whom he discussed, rather casually, questions of faith and sexual morality. One witness reported having overheard Benedict say, "Sleeping with women or boys is no more a sin than rubbing your hands together." Meanwhile, the weary conclave finally agreed on an unlikely outsider, Pietro Morrone, a devout eremite of the Abruzzi who was an exponent of the fanatical asceticism that had been sweeping central Italy for a century. Pietro became Pope Celestine V and spent his entire his five-month papacy in Naples under the watch of Charles of Anjou, frustrating the Franciscan Spirituals who hoped to make Celestine their long-awaited reformer, and overwhelmed by political demands he could not fathom. Celestine wanted to escape, and although it was unclear whether a pope could legally abdicate, Benedict assured him that abdication was both legal and appropriate. (One of the more wild-eyed chronicles has Benedict haunting Celestine at night, casting his voice into Celestine's cell through a tube and urging him to resign.) Celestine resigned on 13 December, and Benedict became Boniface VIII on the day before Christmas.
Boniface acted at once to reimpose papal authority by invalidating Celestine's appointments, which in any case had been rather arbitrary. During the first few years of his papacy, he intervened deftly in European affairs. By 1296, however, his tense relations with Philip the Fair and with Edward I of England had reached a crisis over the issue of taxation: did secular monarchs have the authority to tax the clergy? In the bull Clericis laicos, Boniface soundly forbade taxation of the clergy without the pope's approval. Philip responded by expelling Italian trading agents from France and outlawing the export of gold bullion. The scene was set for their final conflict.
In 1297, however, there was a commotion closer to home. The Colonna, who were alarmed by the loss of their lands to the Caetani and Orsini under Boniface, at last openly challenged the legitimacy of his election. Boniface declared war, indeed a holy war, against the Colonna and their property, and by late 1298 he had the Colonna at his mercy: they had taken refuge in their mountaintop fortress at Palestrina. These events inform Dante's encounter in Inferno 27 with Guido da Montefeltro, a soldier turned Franciscan, an encounter in which the apparently penitent friar provides treacherous advice. In the end, Palestrina was razed, and the Colonna fled to France to bide their time.
Also in 1298, Boniface published an important compilation of canon law. In 1300, he declared the first jubilee. In 1301, he invited Philip's landless brother Charles of Valois to Italy, ostensibly to help him restore peace in Sicily—and in upstart Florence, where dangerous experiments in republican democracy had been under way since the early 1290s and the aristocratic Black Guelfs had been banished from power. By November 1301, Charles had entered Florence, reinstalled the Black Guelfs, and taken what he could for himself; but no peace came of his efforts. The Black Guelfs immediately exiled the leading Whites, including Dante, whose disdain for Boniface as an emblem of ecclesiastical corruption marks the entire Comedy.
In the meantime, the tension with Philip had led to open conflict and defiance on both sides. In 1301, Boniface issued the letter Ausculta fili (Listen Here, Son), an unbridled indictment of Philip; and in November 1302 he issued the famous bull Unam sanctum. According to Unarn sanctam, it is true that the world is ruled by two swords, temporal and spiritual, but the spiritual must forever guide and judge the temporal; and this must be taken on faith as divine revelation. In April 1303, Boniface recognized Albert of Hapsburg as Holy Roman emperor while reaffirming the absolute supremacy of the papacy in the bull Patris aeterni, in which the earlier military metaphors are replaced by astronomy; pope and emperor are, respectively, like the sun and moon, a greater source and a lesser, reflected light. Dante would redefine this traditional imagery in Book 3 of Monarchist, where both lights are declared to be equally dependent on God. In the same month that he issued Patris aeterni, Boniface founded the University of Rome.
Through the spring and summer of 1303, Philip the Fair held council with his ministers and the alienated Colonna and drew up formal charges against Boniface, denying the legitimacy of Boniface's rule and demanding that he stand trial. Boniface moved to excommunicate Philip. A contingent of men led by Sciarra Colonna and Philip's minister Guillaume de Nogaret laid siege to Boniface at Anagni and seized the pope during the first week of September. Boniface managed to escape after three days, but he was utterly undone by the episode. He died in Rome on 12 October.
Arnolfo di Cambio (c. 1245-1302), bust of Pope Boniface VIII. Appartamento Pontificio, Vatican Palace, Vatican State. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
See also Anagni; Caetani Family; Celestine V, Pope; Colonna Family; Dante Alighieri; Florence; Montefeltro Family; Papacy; Rome
GARY P. CESTARO
Boase, T. S. R. Boniface VIII. London: Constable, 1933.
Bonifacio VIII e il suo tempo: Anno 1300 il prima giubileo, ed. Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce. Milan: Electa, 2000. (Catalog of exhibit in Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 12 April-16 July 2000.)
Chamberlin, E. R. "The Lord of Europe: Benedict Gaetani/Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303)." In The Bad Popes, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969, pp. 75-103.
DuPuy, Pierre. Histoire du differend d'entre le pape Boniface VIII et Pbilippes le Bel, roy de France. Paris: Cramoisy, 1655. (Reissue, Tucson, Ariz.: Audax, 1963.)
Ferrante, Joan M. "Boniface VIII, Pope." In The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing. New York and London: Garland, 2000, pp. 122-124.
Kessler, Herbert L., and Johanna Zacharias, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.
Oestreich, Thomas. "Pope Boniface VIII." The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1999. (Online edition: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02662a.htm.)
Tosti, Luigi. Pope Boniface VIII and His Times, trans. Eugene J. Donnelly. New York: Samuel R. Leland, 1933.
The thirteenth-century troubadour Bonifacio Calvo was Genoese but spent the greater part of his life in Spain, at the court of King Alfonso X the Wise. There, Bonifacio mainly wrote sirventes (poems of blame) in the style of Bertran de Born. For instance, he tried to incite Alfonso to war on Henry III of England, who was occupying the Gascogne (Gascony); these particular sirventes can thus be dated 1253-1254. A particularly fine piece of work by Bonifacio is a planh (lament) on the death of his lady. Bonifacio's stay in Spain was also long enough to enable him to compose two cantigas de amor in Gallego-Portuguese; in his love poetry, he imitated Arnaut Daniel.
In 1266, Bonifacio returned to Genoa, where he wrote works in Occitan, including two descorts (disputes) with the Genoese poets Scot and Luquet Gattulus. Equally well known is Bonifacio's sirventes against the Venetians, which was answered by the merchant troubadour Bartolomeo Zorzi, then (1266-1273) a prisoner of the Genoese. In total, nineteen of Bonifacio's poems and two of his descorts are preserved.
HANS-ERICH KELLER
Branciforti, Francesco, ed. Le rime ai Bonifacio Calvo. Catania: Universita di Catania, 1955.
Horan, William D. The Poems of Bonifacio Calvo. The Hague: Mouton, 1966.
Critical Studies
Bertoni, Giulio. I trovatori d'Italia. Geneva, Slackine, 1974, pp. 106-110. (Originally Modena: Orlandini, 1915.)
Keller, Hans-Erich. "Italian Troubadours." In Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. Ronald P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 302-303.
Schulze-Busacker, Elisabeth. "Topoi." In Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. Ronald P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 425-437. (Edition, translation, and analysis of the planh.)
See Campione, Bonino da
The thirteenth-century Florentine Bono Giamboni was famous in his own time as a translator of Latin works; he was also the author of noteworthy original prose works and indeed can be considered one of the fathers of Italian prose. His dates are unknown, but since he was a judge as early as 1261, he may have been born around 1235; the last document to contain his name is from 1292.
Two remarkable volgarizzamenti from Latin (translations into the vernacular) bear his name: Orosius's Historiae adversus paganos (Histories Opposing Pagans) and Vegetius's Epitoma rei militaris (Summary of Military Matters). They are evidence that at this time in the Middle Ages, although there was not yet any full awareness of different periods of latinity, there was an incipient interest in Rome and the classical world. In translating these works, Bono clearly intended to do justice to their content more than to the letter of the text. The attention to detail, the rhythm and syntactic structure, and the formal elegance of the Italian are uncommon for the period, as is the generally even tone. Bono also translated the austere De miseria humane conditionis of Lotario Diacono (Pope Innocent III), as Delia miseria dell'uomo. Here Bono reworks his source to suit his own pleasure; he includes the much lighter work of Albertano (Albertanus) da Brescia to create a small book of moral persuasion unusual for its originality and verve.
Bono also used a Boethian pseudo-autobiographical scheme for his major original work, Libra de' vizi e delle virtudi (Book of Vices and Virtues), in which Philosophy takes the narrator to the palace of Faith and to a battlefield of vices and virtues. This work shows Bono's familiarity with Latin authors, his thoughtful use of sources, and his quest for a noble Italian prose style that could simultaneously teach and narrate. Its early date makes it a valuable example of contemporary prose, and its content is comparable to that of Brunetto Latini's encyclopedic Trésor and even to Dante's Paradiso.
During the Middle Ages, dozens of other works were attributed to Bono, perhaps because of the popularity of his own writings or perhaps for reasons that are now unclear to us. Among these attributions is a translation of Brunetto Latini's Trésor from Picardian French into Italian, although we cannot document with certainty that Bono could even read French, much less translate it. A recent theory is that Bono was the first translator of the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, and that the otherwise unknown Guidotto da Bologna reworked Bono's translation to produce Fiore di rettorica. Still other works may eventually be ascribed to Bono, who is certainly an interesting figure, but we need to approach such attributions with caution.
See also Brunetto Latini; Italian Prose
DAVID P. BÉNÉTEAU
Segre, Cesare. "Bono Giamboni." In Dizionario critico delta letteratura italiana, 2nd ed., ed. Vittore Branca. Turin: UTET, 1986, Vol. 1, pp. 377-379.
—, ed. Volgarizzamenti del Due e Trecento. Turin: UTET, 1953.
Segre, Cesare, and Mario Marti, eds. La prosa del Duecento. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1959.
Bonvesin da la Riva (c. 1240 or 1245-1313, 1314 or 1315) was the most important figure in thirteenth-century Lombard literature, and his work is so vast and various that he should appear as well in the cultural map of medieval Europe as a whole. He was probably born in Milan; he spent the first part of his adult life in the nearby town of Legnano, but by 1288 he had returned to Milan, where he later died. Bonvesin was sincerely religious and was deeply involved in charitable organizations (he belonged to the third order of the Humiliati), but he remained a layman and married twice, though he remained childless. He kept private schools in Legnano and Milan, where he taught Latin (grammatica) and possibly other fundamentals to the sons of well-to-do bourgeois. He himself was also a member of the industrious middle class—the people who formed the backbone of the commune. (The Humiliati had interests in the profitable manufacture of textiles and in general were known for their economic activities no less than for their works of charity.) Bonvesin lived through a period of social and political upheaval during which the glorious old commune of Milan was undermined and the seignory of the Visconti family was established. As a man of law and order, Bonvesin did his best to adjust to these dramatic changes.
Bonvesin's surviving writings consist of nineteen vernacular poems ranging in length from fifty-two to 1,048 lines. They bear Latin titles (either original or analogically reconstructed), and scholars have conventionally designated them by capital letters. In the following list, vv. indicates number of verses.
To these must be added the following. (The letters U and W are not used.)
However, the two manuscripts of V contain a text too corrupted to allow a recovery of the original reading.
The meter to which Bonvesin adheres faithfully is the quatrain of caesured alexandrines; in fact, his verses are more regular and more "literary" than, e.g., those of Giacomino da Verona, showing no tendency toward the decasyllable of the jongleurs. Only in N and in V do the lines rhyme in pairs (aabb); in all the other poems the stanzas are monorhymed (aaaa, bbbb, and so on).
There are eight manuscripts (dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), traditionally identified with Greek (lowercase) letters. Only manuscripts Alpha (α), Beta (β), and Gamma (γ) contain more than a single poem each, as follows.
Manuscript Alpha (α) is at the Preussische Staatsbibliotek in Berlin; manuscripts Beta (β) and Gamma (γ) are at the Ambrosian Library in Milan.
N was published (from Gamma, or γ) by B. Biondelli as early as 1847 and was subsequently (1869) reprinted and translated into English by W. M. Rossetti. Meanwhile (1850-1851), I. Bekker had caused something of a stir among specialists by publishing in the Berichte of the Prussian Academy all the poems preserved in Alpha (α). There were subsequent partial editions—such as T (E. Lidforss 1872) and the controversial group Q-S (V. De Bartholomaeis 1901; L. Biàdene 1902)—until the 1930s. At that time G. Contini devoted himself to the task; and in 1941 he was able to offer, under the aegis of Società Filologica Romana, a masterly annotated critical edition of Bonvesin's vernacular poems. This edition was complete except for the three fragments of X and the second manuscript of V, which had not yet been discovered. Contini's edition is either based or modeled on manuscript α, from the early fourteenth century, which records Bonvesin's Old Milanese dialect most faithfully.
Thematically, the poems can be grouped in five categories, which will be discussed in turn:
Category 1. As a hagiographer, Bonvesin can be a remarkable narrator. He presents, in the moving tones of a participant, the wrenching sufferings of Saint Job and Saint Alexis; and he introduces numerous exempla, full of pathos and suspense, to illustrate the benevolent power of the Virgin Mary and the generosity of almsgivers (whose pity is always lavishly rewarded).
Category 2. In the cateogory of religious didacticism, the central position is held by the "Book of the Three Scriptures," a triptych describing hell, Christ's passion, and paradise (respectively the "Black," "Red," and "Golden" scriptures). Hell and paradise—the two eternal destinations to which humans will be assigned by divine justice—depend on Christ's sacrifice, because Christians will be saved by treasuring the redemption or lost by forfeiting it. Bonvesin divides hell into twelve punishments and paradise into twelve blessings or glories, in order to convey that there are both correspondences and a sharp opposition between the two realms. Thus the stench, the company of devils, and the bloodcurdling screams of hell in S (1) correspond to a heavenly fragrance, the society of angels, and sweet singing in S (2). Although Bonvesin uses his own descriptive pattern, all the typical ingredients of the genre are present: exempla ficta, the cruelties of the devils, the pathetic (and edifying) complaints of the damned, and so on. For paradise, he retains the metaphor of the Heavenly City, whose glory is matched only by the superlative fire of punishment. The rendering of this material, predictably, is flatter and more repetitious. In the section on the passion of Christ, which ends with some stanzas expressing intense pity, the suffering of Christ's mother is also emphasized.
Category 3. In the category of secular didacticism, "the fifty courtesies that must be observed at the table" (N, 1.3) are listed, sententiously but affably. They can surely be seen in the context of medieval courtesy books, and they are a delightful introduction to a late Gothic banquet hall and to the social life of the communal bourgeoisie.
Category 4. As regards the category of religious debates, there is no doubt that Bonvesin was a master of the debate—a rhetorical form which could be applied to love poetry and to didactic and religious genres. In E-F, in a series of speeches and debates, he elaborates on the well-known dispute between body and soul: the creator warns the soul; a "chapter" of members accuses the heart; and souls, both blessed and damned, address their former bodies, first when the bodies are still entombed and again at the resurrection. In I, the entreaties and the arguments of a repentant sinner succeed in mollifying a disapproving Virgin; in A, the crafty, insinuating Satan—one of Bonvesin's best characters—tries to dissuade Mary from intervening on behalf of souls, since her interference makes his job too difficult.
Category 5. In the category of moral-political debates, the term "moral-political" suggests the two different levels of meaning that can be constructed from a literal datum, the fable. These debates reveal Bonvesin's concerns as a citizen. The charming and useful Violet asserts its merits in the face of the arrogance and opulence of the Rose, and at the end, the judge—the Lily—proclaims that there is no winner. Here, allegorically, the communal class confronts the dissatisfied and threatening magnates of the city (G). In H, the hardworking Ant, who is another version of the Violet, vigorously attacks and puts to flight the profligate Fly, who represents a parasitic and anarchic "left" tainted with heresy. In T, which can be seen as an amplified apologue that makes use of disputation, Bonvesin acknowledges as necessary the charismatic authority of King January over the unruly Months—thus indicating his acceptance of the Visconti's seignory, which he must have considered the only viable alternative to civic discord.
The bulk of Bonvesin's vernacular works can probably be placed in the 1270s and early 1280s, when he was still living and teaching in Legnano. His three Latin works are usually usually placed in subsequent decades; however, the prose of De magnalibus Mediolani—a fascinating panegyric to Milan discovered and published by Francesco Novati in 1894—may be dated with certainty to the year 1288. Carmina de mensibus (Song of the Months, in 430 hexameters, published by Leandro Biàdene in 1901), is Bonvesin's own translation of T from the Italian. Some scholars hold that the Latin text of Carmina de mensibus might have been the original version of the poem, but this idea does not seem very credible. Vita scholastica, a long poem in elegiac couplets (w. 936), is a handbook meant for students but also useful to teachers; here the old grammaticus applies his rich personal experience. Vita scholastica was transmitted by more than thirty codices (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) and twentytwo printed editions (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries) and apparently was a success from the beginning.
The medieval poets of Lombardy were on the whole confined to the limbo of the archives, where they were seldom visited; not until the mid-nineteenth century did linguists and historians start looking for them. There were at least two reasons for this neglect: first, the literary Florentine dialect spread to northern Italy beginning in the late fourteenth century; second, the literary and academic tradition was firmly centered on Florentine. (Later, Boiardo tried to write his heroic poem in Florentine; and Poliziano, in Favola d'Orfeo, had already used the northern vernacular, by then a dialect, to achieve a sense of "otherness.") Today, the Lombard poets—unquestionably headed by Bonvesin—have been retrieved from oblivion by perceptive philologists and may finally be taken into account by critics who are unhindered by linguistic or aesthetic prejudice and are seeking an organic reconstruction of the literary civilization of Italy.
See also Dante Allighieri; Giacomino da Verona; Milan
RUGGERO STEFANINI
Contini, Gianfranco. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960, Vol. 1, pp. 667-712 (G, L, and N); Vol. 2, pp. 845-846.
—, ed. Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva. Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1941.
Diehl, Patrick S., and Ruggero Stefanini, eds. and trans. Bonvesin da la Riva: Volgari scelti/Selected Poems. New York: Lang, 1987.
Gökcen, Adnan M., ed. I volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva: 1 Parte (Testi del ms. Berlinese). New York: Lang, 1996.
During the Middle Ages, Italian bookkeeping led all of Europe in technical achievements. Although we may assume that merchants had kept account books in earlier times, the oldest remaining fragment of such a book dates from 1211: in it, the debtors' and creditors' accounts of a Bolognese client of a Florentine bank are written out in volgare, i.e., the vernacular. During the second half of the thirteenth century, we find an increase in the number of surviving records; and c. 1300 we find not only parts of account books but also complete books: those of the Fini, Farolfi, Peruzzi, Bardi, and Del Bene. Starting in the 1360s, we have the account books of Francesco Datini of Prato, which include many auxiliary and subsidiary books (until 1410, a total of almost 600 books). Without these resources, any analysis of the accounting systems would have to be based on presumptions.
Most of the account books that survive from before 1350 were written by Tuscan merchants. The first extant book of this period is from Milan in the second half of the fourteenth century (bank of del Maino, Marco Serrainerio company). These books are written in Latin, but with regard to bookkeeping and accounting they are structurally almost identical to Tuscan account books written in the vernacular. Not until the fifteenth century do we find evidence of account books from other regions of Italy (for example, an account book of 1436—1439 of the Venetian Giacomo Badoer).
The entries of the accounts consisted mostly of one or several full sentences, skillfully set forth on a page divided into three columns. An entry started with the name of the debtor or creditor: the first letter of his name was placed in the left column. After the phrase dee dare (shall give) or dee avere (shall have), a statement of disposition followed the reason for the entry, with a short description of the business transaction, which often included an exact description of the trade goods. In older account books this was completed with the names of witnesses or guarantors who were present during the business transactions. Here the sentence was made up in such a way that the quantity of the traded goods—as well as the first letter of the client's name—could be written in the left column. At the end of the sentence or entry, the amount was noted so that it could easily be placed in the right column.
Italian merchants used Arabic numerals in calculations as early as the thirteenth century; but in their account books Roman numerals predominated—though with decreasing frequency—until the late fifteenth century. The page numbering and dates were increasingly written in Arabic numerals, as were notes, often appearing as intermediate totals or subtotals. However, the number of traded goods (placed in the left column) and the noted amount (in the right column) were written only in Roman numerals. This prolonged use of the "old" writing style was mostly due to a widespread belief that Roman numerals were forgery-proof.
For a long time, especially in notebooks, debits and credits were placed not side by side but rather one on top of the other (this was called a sezione sovraaposto entry). If a debt had been paid, it was written below the debit entry or entries. The entry was written as a whole sentence similar to the format described above; but instead of dee dare and dee avere, it used the words ha dato (has given), ha avuto (has gotten), or abbiamo dato (we have given). During the fourteenth century, account books were divided, on the whole, into one debit part in the front and one credit part at the back. The direct line-up of debit and credit was not established in Tuscany until nearly the end of the century, although it may have been practiced somewhat earlier in Venice. At first, both the left page and the right page of two open sheets in the accountant's ledger were used (this format was called alla veneziana); later, a single page was divided into two parts by a vertical line.
Merchants kept different books for various areas of their businesses. Thus a libro di entrata e uscita (book of income and expenditures) served as a cashbook, whereas large quantities of goods traded over long distances were noted in a libro di balle mandate (book of bales dispatched). The income and profits of the socii (members or partners) as well as agreements made by the management, including elaborate business contracts, were recorded in a libro secreto (secret book). The ledger, in which debtors and creditors were recorded, was called the libro grande (by Datini), mastro, campione, libro dell'asse, libro dei debitori e creditori (by the Medici), or libro reale (in Arezzo), Because a great amount of information had to be recorded, several successive account books of the same type were required. In the beginning, such successive books were differentiated only by terms such as libro nuovo for the most recent book and libro vecchio for a book already completed. Quite soon, however, a system of identifying account books with single letters, colored bindings, or both was established. For example, one of Datini's ledgers is called libro grande o giallo, segnato A (large or yellow book, marked A).
In addition to classifying books by type of business or chronological order, merchants took into consideration whether the books contained original entries, which were then indicated as the first note for a transaction, or whether the lots were based on entries previously written in other account books. As shown in Datini's early account books from the 1360s and 1370s, rough chronological drafts—called ricordanze—were used even before the introduction of double-entry accounting. The entries for debtors and creditors in the ricordanze were then copied into a memoriale, a book which had been divided into a front section for debits and a back section for credits. Here, various entries for a particular person could be summarized. In order to condense information further, the entries in the memoriale were copied out again in the ledger.
Only in large companies do we find merchants whose main task was keeping the account books. Typically, several employees would make entries into the different account ledgers more or less continuously. Quite often, there is evidence of more than one hand on a single page in an account book.
Not until sometime during the first half of the fifteenth century was "bookkeeping" taught by teachers or in schools. Before that, although calculation with Arabic numerals was taught in schools, a young merchant would study accounting as part of his education in his company's shops (botteghe). Nonetheless, a relatively homogeneous kind of bookkeeping was established because traders had strict contracts among themselves. A merchant from, say, Genoa or Milan could write a letter to his business partners in Tuscany asking them to enter his expenditures for purchased goods in his account in their books, and vice versa.
It is probable that from the beginning, commercial bookkeeping had to serve several simultaneous functions. A primary function was the legal security of the client, the socii, and the associates. Thus in the book dating from 1211 we find, in addition to the guarantors, the names of witnesses who could, if necessary, confirm business transactions; and after the bankruptcy of the Peruzzi in 1343, their books were examined by a communal committee. Moreover, there was a growing acceptance of commercial activity in general, and specifically of the widening practice of noting the proceedings; as a result, during the second half of the fourteenth century account books came more and more to be considered valid evidence in courts of law. Baldo degli Ubaldi granted a ledger (which he called codex rationum) almost the same evidential value as a notarial document. About 1400, Francesco Datini sent for the account books of his branch in Avignon because he planned to use them in a legal dispute at the Court of the Guild. Furthermore, in some books we find notes (called ricordanze) indicating that someone had prepared a legal document regarding one or another business transaction. However, merchants generally did not—as the monk and mathematician Luca Pacioli proposed in 1494—submit their accounts to guild committees or municipal offices for authentication.
Another function of bookkeeping was control over employees. Cashbooks and spese di casa books, especially, had to be designed in a way that would make it hard for an unsophisticated employee to embezzle money. If the balances of cash and cash income corresponded, one could assume proper management. Still, we should note that cashbooks were not always kept with the necessary continuity.
A third function was to maintain exact and quick balances of business transactions, as an indicator of success. In fact, scholars and researchers assumed for a long time that bookkeeping in the Middle Ages served mainly this function, as is the case today; accordingly, they interpreted the further development of bookkeeping as an early indication of a capitalistic, profit-focused mentality among Italian merchants. Double-entry bookkeeping was considered a particularly sensible method of maintaining balances: every financial event had to be entered twice, once as a credit and once as a debit; together, these events formed a sort of closed system with at least five different types of accounts (de Roover 1937,270). In the 1920s, the German sociologist Werner Sombart was one of the first to link capitalistic profit-focused thinking with the abstract concept of enterprise as such (in contrast to a concrete concept of the merchant), and with the method of double-entry bookkeeping. Italian researchers (particularly Melis) also subscribed to this view, and they used surviving fragments of account books to argue that it was applicable in very early times.
The first generally accepted evidence of double-entry bookkeeping derives from the communal account books of the city of Genoa in 1340; and it is stated in these books that they are being kept ad modum banchi (in the manner of a bank), so we can assume an earlier use of the method among private merchants. However, the method did not become popular among Italian merchants until the 1380s, and even thereafter it spread relatively slowly. In 1383, Datini changed the bookkeeping of almost all his fondaci to the new system; but by the end of the fourteenth century it had been introduced by the Bank of del Maino in Milan for only a short period. The earliest evidence of a "journal" dates from the 1390s; this was not a necessary element of double-entry bookkeeping, but it was a rather important auxiliary book in which the entries were formulated for the assignment of sums to specific accounts. The first actual descriptions of double-entry booking are to be found in Il libro dell'arte di mercatura (1459) by the merchant Benedetto Cotrugli and in a chapter of Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportionalita (1494) by Luca Pacioli. Summa was once believed to be the earliest description; this was not true, but the explanations in Summa are more extensive than Cotrugli's and, having already been printed, were disseminated more quickly (Cotrugli's writings were not printed before the mid-sixteenth century).
The rather slow spread of double-entry bookkeeping and its rather late use in tractates suggest that during the fourteenth century the method was considered less advantageous than scholars and researchers may have assumed. Yamey has pointed out that, owing to the rather inconsequential manner in which the method was used by merchants in the Middle Ages, it could hardly have been seen as a suitable instrument for determining gains and losses. Even in the fifteenth century, most of the "balance" sheets of the Medici did not balance, and there is no evidence of efforts to find and correct the mistakes. Therefore, when we consider the world of medieval merchants, the importance of double-entry bookkeeping in particular—and, more generally, bookkeeping as an indicator of success—must be seen in relative terms.
We have so far noted three functions of bookkeeping: legal security, control of employees, and the maintenance of balances in order to indicate gains and losses and hence success. A fourth function—memory—is usually identified as a basic and very old motive for establishing account books. In Italy, moreover, the practice of selling goods on credit (something that was not done by German merchants) made it necessary to note debtors and also creditors, i.e., suppliers. This explains why personal expenditures of that kind were recorded so early and so frequently. In the second half of the fourteenth century, these accounts, kept as memory aids, apparently still formed the core of bookkeeping. For this exclusive purpose, the first company whose accounts were recorded almost completely—a company led by Francesco Datini and Toro di Berto, founded in Avignon in 1367—noted, within a period of less than six years, more than 10,000 lots for several hundred clients. Such a large amount of information can hardly be given an orderly structure ad hoc, and so it needs considerable revision to ensure that the layout of the entries is clear and that no entry can be inadvertently overlooked. The necessary revision of entries written for the purpose of memory was the main reason for copying entries from the ricordanze into the memoriale and ultimately into the ledger as described above. In other words, in this context the inevitable restructuring of material had to do mainly with a need to establish a usable base of information by copying entries from a very large number of notes into a new account book. The first steps toward elaborate bookkeeping may have resulted from the function of the method as an aid to memory, and from the necessity of revision.-In any case, for some time the element of bookkeeping that was kept up most consistently was the running of debtors' and creditors' accounts. This is understandable, because a forgotten entry of a debtor most certainly meant a loss of money for the company, whereas a carelessly kept cashbook, for instance, would entail a loss of money only if dishonest employees were involved.
Many connections may be drawn between account books and the libri di famiglia in which merchants noted "private" events. There are numerous parallels, including the style of writing (mercantesca, which developed from notary italic during the fourteenth century); the names of books (ricordanze and libra segreto are found in both types of texts); and the structure of entries (births, marriages, and deaths in libri di famiglia are frequently listed like entries in an account book in paragraph form). Probably, these similarities arose because merchants used account books so extensively. Furthermore, "personal notes" may be found in business books, and large sections of libri di famiglia quite naturally contained commercial transactions.
See also Banks and Banking; Datini, Francesco di Marco
FRANZ ARLINGHAUS
Castellani, Arrigo, ed. Nuovi testi fiorentini del Dugento. Autori Classici e Documenti di Lingua Pubblicati dall'Accademia della Crusca, 2 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1952. (With introduction, linguistic treatises, and glossary; contains, inter alia, fragments of account ledgers up to 1300.)
—, ed. La prosa italiana delle origini, 1, Testi toscani di carattere pratico. Vol. 1, Trascrizioni; Vol. 2, Facsimili. Bologna: Patron, 1982. (Includes, among other documents, fragments of the earliest Italian account ledgers until 1275.)
Melis, Federigo. Documenti per la storia economica dei secoli XIII-XVI: Con una nota di Paleografia Commerciale ed., Elena Cecchi. Florence: Oischki, 1972.
Sapori, Armando. I libri di commercio dei Peruzzi. Pubblicazioni della Direzione degli Studi Medievali, 1. Milan: Fratelli Treves Editori, 1934.
Zerbi, Tommaso. Il mastro a partita doppia di un'azienda mercantile del Trecento, Como: Cavalleri, 1936.
Arlinghaus, Franz-Josef. Zwischen Notiz una Bilanz: Zur Eigendynamik des Schriftgebrauchs irt der kaufmännischen Buchführung am Beispiel der Datini/di Berto-Handelsgesellschaft in Avignon (1367-1373). Gesellschaft, Kultur und Schrift-Mediävistische Beiträge. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998.
de Roover, Raymond. "Aux origines d'une technique inteiiectuelle: La formation et l'expansion de la comptabilité à partie double." Annates d'Histoire Économique et Sociale, 9, 1937, pp. 171-193, 270-297.
—. "The Development of Accounting prior to Luca Pacioli According to the Account Books of Medieval Merchants." In Studies in the History of Accounting, ed. Ananius Charles Littleton and Basil Selig Yamey. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1956, pp. 114-174. (Reprint, Raymond de Roover. Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Julius Kirshner. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1974, pp. 119-180.)
Melis, Federigo. Storia della ragioneria: Contribute alla conoscenza e interpretazione delle fonti più significative della storia economica. Bologna, 1950.
—. Aspetti della vita economica medievale. Studi nell'Archivio Datini di Prato, 1. Florence: Olschki, 1962.
Miglio, Luisa. "L'altra metà della scrittura: Scrivere il volgare (all'origine delle corsive mercantili)." Scrittura e Civiltà, 10, 1986, pp. 83-114.
Sombart, Werner. Der moderne Kapitalismus, Vol. 2. Munich, 1924, pp. 110ff.
Yamey, Basil Selig. "Accounting and the Rise of Capitalism: Further Notes on a Theme by Sombart." Journal of Accounting Research, 2, 1964, pp. 117-136. (Reprint, Basil Selig Yamey. Essays on the History of Accounting. New York: Arno, 1978.)
—. "Notes on Double-Entry Bookkeeping and Economic Progress." Journal of European Economic History, 4, 1975, pp. 717-723. (Reprint, Basil Selig Yamey. Essays on the History of Accounting. New York: Arno, 1978.)
—. "Benedetto Contrugli on Book-Keeping (1458)." Accounting, Business, and Financial History, 4(1), 1994, pp. 43-49.
Three great figures stand out in the world of books in Italy at the beginning of the Middle Ages: Cassiodorus, Benedict of Nursia, and Gregory the Great.
Cassiodorus (c. 490-c. 583) was perhaps the first to have recognized a need to conserve ancient books and texts. He was born into the ordered life of a patrician elite that still maintained the traditions of empire, and he served the Ostrogoth king Theodoric in a number of increasingly important positions. However, Cassiodorus withdrew from politics after Theodoric's death and the subsequent struggles between the Goths and the Byzantines for control of Italy. In later life he witnessed the Lombard invasions which destroyed the last vestiges of the empire in Italy and its ancient culture. During the Gothic conquest, the Roman aristocrats had maintained themselves by becoming a valued bureaucracy for their illiterate masters, and this bureaucracy came to control writing, government documents and records, and books. The Lombards, by contrast, had no use for such services or for the class that provided them. Cassiodorus could look back to a time when the empire had supported a flourishing book trade, but now, with the collapse of the larger economic system and the social and cultural structures that would support a large-scale secular book trade, book production came to a halt. At about the time of his retirement from public life in about 540, Cassiodorus established his celebrated monastery at Vivarium (though he did not take up permanent residence there for another fifteen years) and began the process of collecting books and making new copies. Book production was at the center of this monastic community, as detailed in Institutiones (c. 562), in which Cassiodorus sets out his instructions for scriptorial procedures and practice. Unfortunately, Vivarium did not endure after Cassiodorus died, but his vision of reviving book production in a monastic setting did endure, with great and positive results.
Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547) is important to medieval book production because of his authorship of Regula sancti Benedicti, which became the basis for western monasticism. Actually, books and bookmaking have only a small place in the Regula, and the contrast between the early Benedictine community at Monte Cassino and Cassiodorus's Vivarium is striking. But even so, Benedict recognized the necessity of books—both for private study and for public reading—and from that small beginning the Benedictines would go on to create great monasteries across western Europe containing large scriptoria and extensive libraries. It was as if Cassiodorus's vision of a book-centered monastic community had been adopted by the Benedictines. However, the vision that reshaped the Benedictine movement and gave books and book production a central role was not Cassiodorus's but that of Gregory the Great (c. 540-604).
When the monastic community founded by Benedict at Monte Cassino was forced to flee in the face of the Lombards' attacks, the monks sought refuge in Rome. Here, in Gregory, they found friendship and the support of a fellow monk. As pope (590-604), Gregory began to emphasize bookmaking as a significant and important part of monastic life. Books were essential to Christianity; and Bibles, liturgical works, and other patristic books were required for the church to function. These books had to be supplied, and in addition Gregory was a prolific author who wanted his own works to circulate. Whatever might have been left of the old secular book trade in Rome, it was insufficient to meet Gregory's needs. His solution was to put his fellow monks to work copying books, an act that permanently changed the nature of Benedictine monasticism. Wherever the Benedictines went and established new monasteries, they brought books and bookmaking. In Italy this was particularly true in Farfa, San Vincenzo at Volturno, San Salvatore, and the restored Monte Cassino.
At this time books had several forms. The most common format was the codex, but rolls and wax tablets continued to be used. Each format had its appropriate use. The roll, which had been the dominant format in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, was used for documents in the Vatican archives well into the Middle Ages. Likewise, the wax tablet—usually consisting of several wooden tablets hollowed out on one side, filled with wax, and then joined together with thongs, like a notebook—remained a common writing surface through much of the medieval period for initial composition, correspondence, notes, or business memorandums. Wax was a medium that allowed for exceptionally quick writing, using a stylus; and later the surface could be easily smoothed for reuse. At the time when Gregory was reviving book production in Rome, the wax tablet, the papyrus roll, and the parchment codex each had a specific and integrated role in bookmaking. Gregory's Moralia, a commentary on the Book of Job, is a case in point. Before becoming pope, Gregory had served as papal ambassador in Constantinople, where he preached a series of sermons on the Book of Job. These sermons were taken down in shorthand by a stenographer on wax tablets, in a highly abbreviated cursive script. Soon afterward, the text was transferred, still in an abbreviated cursive form, to papyrus rolls, and the wax tablets were smoothed over for reuse. Thirty-five papyrus rolls were used for Moralia. After Gregory became pope, the text was transferred to parchment codices, six in all, written in a careful set uncial script using few abbreviations beyond the nomina sacra (holy names). While the codex was certainly the end product, the wax tablet and the papyrus roll played important and integrated parts in the production of the text. Papyrus rolls may have continued to be used in this manner for some centuries, but as papyrus became expensive and difficult to acquire, the small quantities of available papyrus were used for more permanent purposes. Wax tablets, on the other hand, continued to be used for initial composition for many centuries to come, and it was only with the rise of scholasticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that authors changed from the ancient mode of dictating to a secretary who wrote using a wax tablet to the modern mode of composition by the author using a pen and parchment (or paper).
As important as the Benedictines were to the survival of books in the early Middle Ages in Italy, other monastic influences were also present. In particular, the great Irish missionary monk Columbanus (d. 615), after having established a series of Irish monastic houses, including Luxeuil and Fontaines in Gaul, spent the last months of his life in Bobbio, a monastery on the Trebbia River in Northern Italy. Bobbio, like the other Irish establishments on the continent, soon became an active center for book production. However, it has been celebrated particularly for its extensive reuse of older manuscripts: these palimpsests preserved within their primary texts several ancient works that would otherwise have disappeared. Although the Roman and Celtic churches disagreed on a number of doctrinal points, particularly on calculating the date for Easter, they were in complete agreement on the importance of book production. When the Celtic houses were subsumed by the Benedictines, many things changed, but not the central place of books and bookmaking in the life of the community. Bobbio became one of the greatest Benedictine houses in northern Italy.
Monastic book production was relatively uniform across Italy and indeed much of the rest of western Europe, although a distinctive Italian script developed in the eighth century and survived for many centuries in the south (where it is called Beneventan), beyond the reach of Carolingian reforms. In the Benedictine houses the scriptorium, where book production was undertaken, was generally a large room that might also have served as the library (which more often than not was simply a chest full of books). The librarian—the amarius or bibliothecarius—was often in charge of the scriptorium. Depending on the size of the monastery and the scriptorium, there might be several classes of scribes, though such distinctions varied with place and time. Scribes might be distinguished as senior (anti-quarit) and junior (librarii). There might also be rubricators, miniators (or painters), illuminators, and correctors. Before the twelfth century, scribes were almost always monks, but after this time there began to develop a class of professional scribes, often employed by monasteries. Monastic scribes generally worked about six hours a day copying. Copying and their religious duties accounted for all the daylight hours; artificial light was rarely used. Silence was imposed on the scriptorium in the sense that conversation was forbidden, and in order to communicate the monks devised an elaborate system of hand signals. But the copying itself was not silent. Silent reading was a development of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Before that time, each scribe essentially dictated to himself, and the scriptorium was filled with a dull murmuring.
Beyond a text to copy, bookmaking required parchment (later paper), ink, and pens. Parchment, usually thick and rough, has traditionally been made from sheepskin; and vellum, thinner and finer, from calfskin—though in practice it is difficult to determine the origin of any finished skin. Skins were usually soaked in a lime solution for three to ten days, washed in water, and then stretched on a frame and scraped. Parchment, or sheepskin, was scraped only on one side; vellum, or calfskin, was scraped on both sides. When the skin was dry, it was wet slightly again, and then it was pounced (rubbed with pumice) to smooth the surface and remove blemishes. The skin was then completely rewet and dried again under tension. Finally it was finished again by pouncing, and perhaps by rubbing chalk or some other compound into it to give the skin a smooth white surface which would take ink but would allow no bleeding.
An alternative to parchment in the later Middle Ages was paper, which had the advantage of being much less expensive, although it was not as durable. Paper was introduced into Italy in the eleventh century by the Muslims in Sicily. By the first half of the thirteenth century paper mills were active in Fabriano (where paper is still made today) and in the hills above Genoa. Italian papermaking was a departure from the traditional techniques used by the Muslims. The Italian papermakers used large hammers embedded with nails to pulverize the fermented rags (usually linen); rigid molds made of wires (which allowed an innovation, the watermark) with removable deckles that were immersed into vats of suspended rag pulp to create sheets of paper; new drying techniques; and sizing (an additive which kept the ink from bleeding). From these small beginnings we can trace the origin of western paper manufacture. Within fifty years after the introduction of paper, many mills were operating in the hills of central Italy and in the north, producing paper of exceptional quality, and soon Italian paper was being exported throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. By the fifteenth century, mills were operating in France and north of the Alps; these curtailed the demand for Italian paper to some degree, though Italian paper always enjoyed the reputation of being of the first quality.
Having selected a writing surface, the scribe might need to prepare ink. Iron-gall ink was made by mixing pulverized plant galls with ferrous sulfate (commonly known as copperas) and gum arabic to give it viscosity. More often than not, the ink was already prepared for the scribe, and at most he might need to mix the powdered ink with water.
The third requirement was a pen. This was a reed in the Middle Ages, and a quill later.
With the appropriate materials before him—the parchment or paper (or perhaps both), ink, and pen—-the scribe first produced a quire, or a gathering of leaves. This could be accomplished in two ways. The more traditional way was to take four sheets of parchment or paper, fold each once, and then nest one inside the other, thus creating a booklet or quire. This was naturally the easiest method with large books. With smaller books, it was easier to use the folding method. By folding the sheet twice, one obtained a quire of four leaves or eight pages; by folding it three times one obtained eight leaves or sixteen pages—the standard quire size during the Middle Ages (though this varied with place and time).
For the parchment book, it was essential that the sheets be positioned so that the hair, or outer, side of the skin always faced another hair side—and likewise that the flesh, or inner, side of the skin always faced another flesh side. The hair side of a skin is yellower and rougher than the flesh side, which is often milky-white. For aesthetic reasons, it was essential that at any opening of the book the reader would see only one color and texture of skin. If the sheets were arranged properly the reader was never even aware of a difference in the sides of the skin, but should hair face flesh the difference could be jarring. If the quire was constructed by the folding method, it would automatically form the correct pattern of hair and flesh. Naturally, however, there were unsolvable problems in arranging the hair and flesh sides when it was necessary for textual or other reasons to add an extra leaf, or bifolium.
The next step was to prick the quire. This produced a series of small, almost invisible, holes which acted as guides for ruling each page. In addition to pricking along the side margins, it was also usual to place several prickings along the top and the bottom so as to delineate the textual frame. The quire might be pricked folded; this was the most efficient method, as it required prickings down only one side of the leaf. Or the quire might be pricked flat; this method required prickings in both outer margins. After the quire was pricked, it was ruled. There were three major modes of ruling. The first, usually associated with the early Middle Ages (though also commonly found in humanistic manuscripts of the fifteenth century whose writers adopted Carolingian practice in the belief that it was Roman), was the use of a stylus that created a furrow as it was pulled across the surface. This method produced nearly invisible ruling and had the advantage of producing multiple rulings, on both sides of each sheet stacked in a pile. It was, however, rather unsuitable for paper, as the stylus could easily rip or tear the surface. The second method of ruling, usually associated with the middle of the medieval period, was to use lead plummet, an early form of pencil. The third method, most common at the end of the Middle Ages, was the use of pen and ink. No doubt this was a result of the increased use of paper in book production during the period. Both lead plummet and ink were far less efficient than drypoint ruling, as each side of each sheet had to be individually ruled.
Now the scribe was ready to write. In the ancient world dictation to a group of scribes had been quite common, but medieval scribes copied individually. The desk was at an angle, and often the scribe would write with one hand and hold a penknife in the other to keep the writing surface in place; the knife was also useful for making erasures by scraping off the wet ink. The normal method of writing was to begin on the first page (the recto of the first folio) of the quire and copy the text straight through in its natural order. The scribe had to pause after finishing each recto (except for the middle bifolium) before going on to the verso in order to let the ink dry. As the scribe finished each page, he would take a fine-nibbed pen and lightly write instructions in the margin on how to fill blank spaces with rubrics, decorations, capitals, pictures, and the like. These instructions have rarely survived, because they were usually trimmed away by the binder.
After the scribe had finished copying a quire, it was often checked by a corrector. The corrector's job was to compare the exemplar with the copy and make sure there were no errors. When errors were found, they might be erased by scraping off the ink with a knife, or by applying a lightly acidic solution to loosen the ink. The corrector could then supply the proper reading. In many instances the corrector simply lined through the error and supplied the correction interlinearly or marginally.
Rubrication, the next stage, was almost invariably red (rubrica is red earth or red ocher). Typically, it consisted of chapter headings or, in more specialized texts such as commentaries, the word or phrase being glossed. In addition, the rubricator might supply colored paragraph marks and highlight capital letters in the body of the text.
The decorating, painting, and illumination could be a complex process involving several scribes and artists. After a base coat was applied, the next step was usually to make an outline in pencil (lead plummet) and then ink. If there was to be any illumination, or gilding, it was done before paint was applied, so that the paint could cover any rough edges. Each color was applied in turn and allowed to dry; the final step at this stage was the application of stipple, or white highlighting.
The end of the bookmaking process was binding. The binder would make sure that the sheets or quires were properly assembled and ordered. The gatherings were placed in a sewing frame and attached with linen thread to several leather thongs, flat or twisted strips of vellum, or cords—known generally as bands once they had been sewn to the text block—which give medieval books their characteristic "ribbed" appearance. A binder might supply a bifolium, of vellum or paper, which would serve as a pastedown and a free endpaper, or he might supply several bifolia that functioned as flyleaves. The book might be soft- or hardbound. A softbound book was usually covered in vellum, though stiffened leather was also used. A hardbound book was bound in stout boards and covered in leather or pigskin. During the medieval period, the boards were made flush with the text block because books were stored on their sides. As a protective measure for books that were laid flat, medieval binders added metal bosses and metal corners to the covers. Titles were written on the fore-edges but not on the spines, and covers were usually held together with metal clasps. The covers might be decorated with simple tooling, more detailed panel stamping, or even elaborate metalwork laden with jewels. Yet most ordinary medieval books had only modest bindings with little decoration, and indeed many books had no bindings at all beyond a protective piece of parchment that was wrapped around the quires of the book and might or might not be loosely attached.
With the Gregorian reform of the eleventh century, there was a shift away from the monastic scriptoria, as cathedral and abbey schools became more important and as cities and merchants developed notarial needs, The newly established mendicant orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans were often associated with the new universities and obtained their books from the book trade in Bologna and other Italian university cities. The universities created a new reading public that required new texts, reference works, and commentaries. The new secular book trade became a licensed appendage of the university (before the end of the thirteenth century in Bologna); this trade consisted of stationers, scribes, parchment makers, papermakers, bookbinders, and others associated with making books. They enjoyed certain rights, such as an exemption from taxes and the right to be tried in university courts. The same book tended to be sold and resold through many generations, and it was the stationer's responsibility to sell a book, buy it back, sell it again, and so forth. He could buy and sell only under certain conditions: he had to advertise the titles he had in stock; prices were fixed; and students and professors received discounts.
In order to produce the large numbers of textbooks required by students and maintain their textual accuracy, the pecia system of copying was instituted. The system began in Italy c. 1200 and ended c. 1425-1450. It existed in at least seven universities in Italy and many others across Europe. The stationer held one or more exact copies (the exemplar) of a text in pieces (hence Pecia), usually a gathering of four folios (sixteen columns) or perhaps six folios. Each column had to have a standard number of lines (usually sixty), and each line a standard number of letters (usually thirty). Each part was rented out for a specific time (a week at Bologna) so that students or scribes could copy it. In this way a number of people could be copying parts of the same book at the same time. Stationers were required to rent pieces to anyone who requested them, and the charges were fixed (e.g., at Treviso in 1318 the charges were six pence for copying, and two pence for correcting).
In thirteenth-century Italy, there was no single center of book production that provided an authoritative model for the whole country (as Paris did for France). Monte Cassino still maintained the old monastic customs, as was also true in Rome and Tuscany. Bologna had developed its own style of script and bookmaking, which was adopted in the universities of Padua and Naples. The aristocratic courts in the cities of the northeast eagerly consumed locally produced deluxe copies of Provencal lyrics and French epic poetry and romances. But even though no single style of book was dominant in Italy, certain trends were evident. During this period books became smaller, script became more compact, and the number of abbreviations increased. The two-column format became the norm, and ornament was almost abandoned on all books except those for the luxury trade. Scholastic texts became more complex, and this complexity was reflected in the organizational design and layout of books. In this regard, the developments included dividing the text into chapters and subchapters and adding tables of chapter headings, alphabetical tables by subject, and running heads. New forms of punctuation, such as colored paragraph marks, were introduced. Quotations were underlined in red, marginal notes were added, and diagrams were supplied. The resulting multistructured apparatus, perhaps most commonly seen in a glossed Bible or Psalter, was visual and was meant for a reader, not a hearer. Soft bindings tended to replace wooden boards, and parchment became progressively thinner as the number of folios per gathering increased. Ultimately, paper replaced parchment altogether.
By the end of the thirteenth century another reading public was emerging in the cities of Italy, comprising merchants, artisans, civil servants, and women. The commercial book trade that developed in Milan, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, and other Italian cities catered to these customers and therefore specialized in vernacular books, written in common everyday scripts such as littera mercantesca. Spurred on by a demand for books of hours, a particular favorite of women, the new urban book trade completely replaced the monastic scriptoria as producers of deluxe illuminated books. Books of courtly poetry, which had been produced in Provencal for traditional aristocratic readers, were now translated into Italian for the new urban readers. And of course vernacular prose and poetic works from such great Italian authors as Dante (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-1374), and Boccaccio (1313-1375) soon filled many volumes. It was in these volumes, especially those of Petrarch, that a new model for Italian books emerged. Petrarch rejected the medieval Gothic book, particularly because of its ugly, cramped script and its awkward size. He advocated a much more legible and less abbreviated script based on Carolingian minuscule, which he believed to be the script of the ancients. He also advocated a much smaller and more manageable book that would easily fit the hand and make reading an easy and comfortable act. He was ultimately concerned with the book as an extension of the authorial persona. In Florence at the end of the century, Niccolo Niccoli (1364-1437), amerchant and scholar; Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), a young scribe; and the statesman Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) created the mature model envisioned by Petrarch. Though it was not the small, intimate book Petrarch had hoped for, it was nonetheless elegant, legible, and authoritative. The humanist book of the fourteenth century is a hallmark of the Renaissance and remains today an unquestioned model for fine bookmaking.
See also Benedict of Nursia, Saint; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Cassiodorus; Dante Alighieri; Farfa; Gregory I, Pope; Palaeography; Petrarca, Francesco
RICHARD W. CLEMENT
Bataillon, Louis J., Bertran G. Guyot, and Richard H. Rouse, eds. La production du livre universitaire au moyen age: Exemplar et pecia—Acts du symposium tenu au Collegio San Bonaventura de Grottaferrata, May 1983. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991.
Boyle, Leonard. Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Braswell, Laurel N. Western Manuscripts from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance: A Handbook. New York: Garland, 1981.
Brownrigg, Linda L., ed. Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Clement, Richard W. "A Survey of Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Book Production." In Art into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia, ed. Carol Garrett Fisher and Kathleen Scott. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995, pp. 9-28.
De Hamel, Christopher. Scribes and Illuminators. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
Destrez, Jean. La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siecle. Paris, 1935.
Farquhar, James Douglas. "The Manuscript as a Book." In Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing. College Park: University of Maryland Press, 1977, pp. 11-99.
Garand, Monique-Cecile. "Manuscrits monastiques et scriptoria aux XIe at XIIe siecles," Codicologica, 3, 1980, pp. 9-33.
Gilissen, Léon. "La composition des cahiers: Le pliage du parchemin et l'imposition." Scriptorium, 26, 1972, pp. 337-354.
—. "Un élément codicologique trop peu exploité: réglure." Scriptorium, 23, 1969, pp. 389-403.
Irigoin, J. "Les origines de la fabrication du papier en Italie." Papiergeschichte, 13, 1963, pp. 62-67.
Ivy, G. S. "The Bibliography of the Manuscript Book." In The English Library before 1700, ed. Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright. London: Athlone, 1958, pp. 32-65.
Jones, L. W. "Pricking Manuscripts: The Instruments and Their Significance." Speculum, 21, 1946, pp. 389-403.
Lowe, E. A. The Beneventan Script: A History of the South Italian Minuscule, 2nd ed., ed. Virginia Brown. Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura, 1980.
O'Donnell, James Joseph. Cassiodorus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Orlandelli, Gianfranco. Il libro a Bologna da 1300 al 1330, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1959.
Petrucci, Armando. Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
Pollard, GraJham. "The Pecia System in the Medieval Universities." In Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson. London: Scolar, 1978, pp. 145-161.
Reed, Ronald. Ancient Skins, Parchment, and Leather. London: Seminar, 1972.
Ruck, Peter, ed. Pergament: Geschichte, Struktur, Restaurierung, Herstellung. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1991.
Saenger, Paul. Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Thompson, Daniel V. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. London: Allen and Unwin, 1956.
Thompson, James Westfall. The Medieval Library. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1939.
Vezin, Jean. "La realisation materielle des manuscrits latins pendant le haut moyen age." Codicologica, 2, 1978, pp. 15-51.
Like animals, plants of every imaginable kind made their way into early Christian literature, which eventually became a source for the herbals and medical texts of the late Middle Ages. Among the earliest church fathers to gather information about plants systematically was Melito, bishop of Sardis (d. 190), whose Clavis scripturae (Keys to the Scriptures) was composed of several books: De bestiis, De lignis et floribus, De avibus, and De mundus. In the section On Wood and Flowers, Melito offers brief symbolic attributes of plants based on the scriptures. This appraoch to the natural world was later amplified in works such as sermons by Ambrose, bishop of Milan (Saint Ambrose, d. 397; Hexameron, "Paradise," "Cain and Abel"), and the early church father Basil (c. 329—379; Homilies). These were followed by the encyclopedic, theological, and narrative texts of later medieval writers such as Saint Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury (d. 709, in Aenigmatum liber, or Book of Riddles); Hrabanus Maurus (c. 784-856, in De universo mundi); Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1099—1179, in De physica); Petrus Comestor (eleventh century, in Historia scbolastica); Herrad, abbess of Landsberg (c. 1130-1195, in Hor- tus deliciarum, or Garden of Delights); Albertus Magnus (bishop of Ratisbon, 1193-1206); Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. c. 1220-1240, in De proprietatibus rerum, or On the Properties of Things); and Petrus de Mora (in De rosa).
Very early in medieval botanical literature we find comments and commentaries on plants that diverge from the the early church fathers; these follow instead the Aristotelian approach of documenting natural phenomena, as exemplified in Theophrastus (On the Enquiry into Plants). From the Aristotelian tradition emerged the first compilations of plant descriptions and lore that had medicinal value. For example, Pliny the Elder's Natural History (second century B.C.) was a major source of plant lore in the Middle Ages. Aemilus Macer Floridus's De viribus herbarum (Rufinus's Herbal, c. 16 B.C.) was copied frequently during the ninth through twelfth centuries, when it was sometimes called Materia medica or De viribus herbarum. A version under the title De viribus herbarum was one of the first printed books. In this apotropaic tradition, the work that was most famous and most frequently copied and cited was by Apuleius Barbarus Sextus (c. 400); it was known under several titles: De medicaminibus herbarum, Herbarius Apulei Platonici, Herbarium se Sextus Apuleius Barbarus, and De herbarum virtutibus. A notable example of medicinal herbals is a Greek herbal by the physician Dioscorides Pedanius of Anazarbos (c. 40-90); the earliest surviving manuscript is the beautifully illustrated Dioscorides of Anicia Juliana (512). Walafrid Strabo's Hortulus (c. 840) deals with plants strictly from a gardener's and poet's point of view, offering no symbolic analogies but some lore about the medicinal value of each plant mentioned.
In the late Middle Ages there was an infusion of Arabic texts on the medicinal value of plants, particularly in and around Arabic-Italian communities of southern Italy such as the one at Salerno, and a type of medical book combining eastern and western lore emerged in the thirteenth century. Among books of this type is Circa instans by Matthaes Platearius (c. 1130-1161), a larger version of the Salernitan texts, which were usually small books called Pocketbooks of Health (Taccuinum santitatis) or Pocketbooks of Salerno (Taccuinum salernitatum). These books purported to be based on secret knowledge of curative and poisonous attributes of plants.
The encyclopedists often integrated apocryphal lore with references to scripture and to the sermons of the church fathers; following their works, another form of commentary on plants emerged in popular literature and travel narratives. These texts include L'acerba (c. 1314) by Cecco d'Ascoli (1269-1327); Mirror of Human Salvation (Speculum humanae salvationis, anonymous), which was probably based in part on Mirror of Nature (Speculum naturale) by Vincent of Beauvais; and various "leg-ends"—of Seth, the infancy of Christ (Protoevangelary Infancy), Adam and Eve, the unicorn, and the oak. Other works in this vein include Herrad of Landsberg's Hortus deliciarum and the Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) of the prelate Jacobus da Voragine (1228 or 1230-1298). Popular Italian poetry dedicated to the Virgin, though based on prototypes found mostly in Psalms, abounds in references to Mary as a rose, a violet, a hortus conclusus (enclosed garden), and a wreath of flowers (ghirlanda).
By the fourteenth century, a significant amount of information on plants had been accumulated, including apociyphal lore, symbolic commentaries, and medicinal herbals. Each type of information was treated in its own separate category and used for some particular end—therapeutic, homeopathic, symbolic, poetic, or practical (as nourishment).
In the fifteenth century, there was a brief nourishing of plant symbolism that would continue to have an impact for the next two centuries; but this symbolism was of a different character from that in the Middle Ages and included another ingredient: legends from classical literature. Much later, in the eighteenth century, this large body of plant images and lore would be transcended by a rationalistic approach, and the documentation of Linnaeus would supersede ancient and Christian traditions in an attempt to achieve completely objective observation and scientific classification.
See also Allegory; Aviary; Bestiaries; Physiologus
DARRELL D. DAVISSON
Albertus Magnus. De la virtu de le herbe, animali et pietre preciose; e di molte maravigliose cose del mondo: E secreti delle done e degli huomini dal medesimo authore composti. Venice: n.p., n.d. (Possibly 1537.)
Apuleius Barbarus Sextus. The Herbal ofApuleius, Known as De medicaminibus herbarum liber uno; or Herbarius Apulei Platonici; Herbarium se Sextus Apuleius Barbarus; Herbarius Apuleius Plato; and De herbarum virtutibus, ed. J. Lignamine. Rome, 1481.
Bartholomew Glanville (Bartholomaeus Anglicus). De proprietatibus rerum. Frankfurt am Main, 1603. (Reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964.)
Dioscorides Pedanius of Anazarbos. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides [De materia medico], trans. John Goodyear, ed. Robert T. Gunther. London: Hafner, 1968. (Original translation, 1655; originally published 1934.)
Herrad of Landsberg. Hortus deliciarum, ed. Rosalie Green. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1979.
Isidore Hispalensis. Etymologiarum sive originum libri, 2 vols., ed. W. M. Lindsay. Oxford, 1911.
—. An Encyclopedia of the Dark Ages, ed. and trans. Ernst Brehaut. New York: Franklin, 1964. (Originally published 1912.)
Macer Floridus. A Middle English Translation of De Viribus herbarum, ed. Gosta Frisk. Uppsala: Almquist, 1949.
Matthaeus Platearius. Circa instans: Le Livre des simples medicines, trans. Ghislaine Maladin. Paris: Éditions Ozalid et Textes Cardinaux; Bibliothèque Nationale, 1986.
Melito, Bishop of Sardis. Clavis scripturae sacre. Spicelegium Solesmense, ed. Jean Baptiste Pitra. Graz: Akademische Druck-Universitats, 1962-1963. (Originally published 1874.)
Rufinus. The Herbal of Rufinus, ed. Lynn Thorndike. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1946.
Vincent of Beauvais. Speculum Quadruplex, 1, Speculum naturale, Douai, 1624. (Reprint, Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlangstalt, 1964-1965.)
Anderson, Frank J. An Illustrated History of the Herbals. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
L'arbre: Histoire naturelle et symbolique de l'arbre, du bois et du fruit au Moyen-Age. Paris: Léopard d'Or, 1993.
Behling, Löttlisa. Die Pflanzenwelt der Mittelalterlichen Kathedralen. Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1964.
—. "Das italienische Pflänzenbild um 1400—zum wesen des pflänzlichen Dekors auf dem Epiphaniasbild des Gentile da Fabriano in den Uffizien." Pantheon, 24, 1966, pp. 347-359.
—. Die Pflänze in der mittelalterlichen Tafelmalerei. Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1967.
Blunt, Wilfrid. The Art of Botanical Illustration. New York: Scribner, 1951.
Blunt, Wilfrid, and Sandra Raphael. The Illustrated Herbal. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994.
Dalli Regoli, Gigetta. "Animal and Plant Representation in Italian Art of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: An Approach to the Problem." In Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer, Weinheim: VCH, 1987, pp. 83-89.
Friend, Hilderic. Flowers and Flower Lore. New York: Columbia University Press, 1891.
Garland, Sarah. The Complete Book of Herbs and Spices. New York: Viking, 1979.
Haas, A. "Pflanze." Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed., ed. J. Höfer and Karl Rahner. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1957—1967.
Singer, Charles Joseph. "The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 47, 1927, pp. 1-52.
Brescia occupies a strategic position at the mouth of Val Trompia on the road from Verona to Bergamo. It was originally the capital of the Cenomani Celts of Cisalpine Gaul. It became an ally of Rome in 225 B.C. and an imperial colony under Augustus in 27 B.C. The rectangular city plan preserves traces of the Roman plan, and significant remains erected by Vespasian in the first century after Christ survive. By tradition Brescia was the main suffragan see of Milan, and according to legend, the first bishop was consecrated by Barnabas, the companion of the apostle Paul. The city was certainly an episcopal see by the end of the fourth century, when Gaudentius (died c. 410) is recorded as bishop.
Brescia was sacked by the Huns under Attila c. 450 and conquered by the Lombards in 596. According to Paul the Deacon, it became the seat of several Lombard noble families, and by 601 it was the seat of a duchy under Rothari (d. 652), later king of the Lombards. Desiderius, the last Lombard king, was duke of Brescia before he obtained the crown in 756. His wife Ansa founded the Benedictine monastery of San Salvatore, which subsequently became one of the most powerful monasteries in northern Italy as a result of royal patronage. Early in the Carolingian period, the Frankish Supponid family obtained comital privileges in Brescia. Through royal gifts and fiefs the Supponids assembled extensive holdings in Lombardy and western Emilia. In the succession crisis following the death of Louis II in 875, they were crucial supporters of their kinsman Berengar I (d. 924), duke of Friuli, who became king of Lombardy in 888. During Berengar's reign, a threat of Hungarian raids led to the fortification of the city and its suburbs.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, Brescia was part of a trading network that included several Lombard cities to which it was linked by the Oglio River. A growing prosperity was reflected in the construction of a new cathedral over the sixth-century basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, of which floor mosaics survive. The cathedral, known as La Rotonda because of its central plan, is a good example of Lombard Romanesque. Sources of this period refer to a count of Brescia, but the bishop appears to have been the dominant political figure. There is evidence that the citizens conducted diplomatic negotiations as early as 969; and in 1038 an association of 154 citizens forced Bishop Uldericus to concede jurisdiction over territory adjacent to the city. The bishops nevertheless remained powerful well into the twelfth century. In 1139, Bishop Manfred (d. 1153) secured from Innocent II the condemnation and exile of Arnold of Brescia (d. 1155), whose teachings on poverty and church reform supported a citizenry independent of the church's control.
La Rotonda, or old duomo, Brescia. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
The first reference to a commune and a citizens' assembly dates from 1120. By 1127, the commune was appointing magistrates called consuls, drawn from powerful local families. The Brescian commune allied itself with Milan, Bergamo, and Mantua against Emperor Frederick I and joined the first Lombard League in 1167. In the mid-twelfth century, a senior consul appears to have exercised authority over a college whose number varied, while merchant consuls oversaw trade, perhaps in connection with the establishment of a new market in 1173. After 1182, consuls alternated with a podestà (podesta, a chief magistrate). The influence of Milan over Brescian affairs was reflected in the appointment of the Milanese Guglielmo de Osa as the first podesta. Several buildings survive from the communal period. The Torre del Popolo at the northern end of the Piazza del Duomo dates from the eleventh century. The adjacent palace of the commune, the Broletto, was begun in 1187 but was not completed until 1235. The defensive walls were enlarged in 1184-1186 and again between 1235 and 1249; the Castello that dominates the city from the Cidneo Hill was rebuilt by the Visconti in the fourteenth century. The Romanesque churches of Santa Giulia and Santa Maria in Solario were built in the twelfth century. Though much altered in the fifteenth century, the Romanesque-Gothic church of San Francesco retains its thirteenth-century plan and facade.
By 1200, Brescia was dominated by armed aristocratic factions whose conflicts reflected the quarrels between Guelfs and Ghibellines in Milan. After 1227, Brescia sided with the Milanese Guelf faction of the della Torre against Frederick II, who unsuccessfully besieged the city in 1238. The commune's victory was short-lived: beginning in 1258 Brescia was held in succession by the Ghibelline signori (lords) Ezzelino da Romano, Oberto Pallavicino, and Buoso da Dovara, passing finally to the Guelf Charles of Anjou in 1266. The growth of the popolo, a broader-based association of citizens, was reflected in this period by the expansion of the communal council to 2,000 members, the establishment of popular institutions parallel to those of the commune, and the construction of a Palazzo del Popolo in 1285. These developments, however, coincided with a rise in factionalism that perpetuated the domination of the city by a succession of signori in the second half of the thirteenth century.
In 1311, Brescia was captured by Emperor Henry VII and incorporated into the Veronese empire of the della Scala. Reconquered for the Guelfs in 1316 by Robert of Anjou, the city was forced to seek protection against Ghibelline exiles by placing itself under the lordship of John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, in 1330, only to be taken two years later by Mastino della Scala. In 1339, Azzone Visconti, who had been elected signore of Milan, captured Brescia. Thereafter, except for a short period under the Malatesta early in the fifteenth century, the city remained under the control of the Visconti until 1426, when it was conquered by the Venetians.
See also Arnold of Brescia; Delia Scala Family; Desiderius; Frankish Kingdom; Ghibelline; Guelfs; Lombards; Milan; Verona; Visconti Family
LAWRIN ARMSTRONG
Annales Brixienses, ed. Ludwig Bethmann. Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, 18 (811-820). Hannover: Hahn, 1863. (Reprint, Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1925.)
Paul the Deacon. History of the Lombards, trans. William Dudley Fouike. Philadelphia: Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1907. (Reprint, ed. and intro. Edward Peters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974.)
—. Pauli historia Langobardorum, ed. Ludwig Bethmann and G. Waitz. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Reruin Langobardorum at Italicorum Saec. VI-IX (12-192). Hannover: Halm, 1878. (2nd ed., 1964.)
Statuti di Brescia da sec. XIII ed. Federico Odorici. Historiae Patriae Monumenta, 16. Turin: Officina Regia, 1876.
Jones, Philip. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Storia di Brescia, 5 vols. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1963-1964.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400-1000, London: Macmillan, 1981.
Brindisi, in a sheltered inlet beyond a natural harbor on the Adriatic coast, has been an important port city since its origins. According to various legends it was founded by the Greek Diomedes, returning from the Trojan war, or by Cretans from Knossos; but it seems to have developed by the seventh or sixth century B.C. as a port town used by a local people, the Messapians, in their trade with neighboring Greek settlements. For a long time, it competed with the important Greek city of Taranto (Tarentum) for domination of the "heel" of Italy. However, the true significance of Brindisi began in 266 B.C. with its incorporation into Roman Italy, and with its eclipse of Taranto when that city fell to Rome during the Pyrrhic war. Brindisi formally became a Roman colony in 244 B.C. as Brundisium. It was rewarded for its steadfast loyalty to Rome after the battle of Cannae, and it became the chief Roman naval base during the Punic war and the wars against the Illyrian pirates.
Meanwhile, the Via Appia, running to Taranto and terminating at Brindisi, was completed in the late third century B.C.; its completion made Brindisi the Mediterranean gateway for Rome and the principal port for traffic to and from Italy. Brindisi also offered a junction with Via Egnatia, which extended from Aqusleia in northern Italy across the Balkan Peninsula and connected to Thessaloniki and eventually to Constantinople; thus Brindisi soon became the counterpart of Durazzo (Dyracchium or Epidamnus, modern Durres in Albania) across the Adriatic. In 49 B.C., Caesar attempted to bottle up his rival Pompey in Brindisi, and nine years later Brindisi was the venue for the foedus brundisinum, a brief reconciliation between Mark Antony and Octavian; both events suggest the importance of the city. After peace was restored, Horace described the journey from Rome to Brundisium in a famous satire; and here, on 21 September 19 B.C., the weary Virgil died upon returning from Greece—according to local tradition (and a plaque), the house by the harbor where he died, or at least its site, can be identified. Brindisi became even more accessible when Trajan constructed an alternative coastal road, Appia Traiana, opened in 109 A.D.; its terminus at Brindisi's harbor was marked by two columns, one of which still stands. Under the Romans, Brindisi remained prosperous for generations, as travelers of every stripe, from emperors to slaves, passed through it to enter or leave Italy by sea.
Tradition dates the beginning of the Christianization of Brindisi to Saint Leucio in the second century, and it became the seat of a bishopric. But with the disruption of Roman rule, Brindisi began to decline. After being held for a time by the Ostrogoths, it was retaken by the reconquests of Justinian and was used as a command post by Byzantine generals in their struggle with Totila. In the second half of the seventh century it passed into the hands of the Lombards, becoming the southernmost holding of the duchy of Benevento. It was devastated repeatedly by raiding Saracens, who briefly occupied it until 868, when the Frankish emperor Louis II destroyed it. With the restoration of Byzantine government in Puglia (Apulia) in the late tenth century, Brindisi was revived, and its bishopric—which had been removed for some time—was not only restored but elevated to an archbishopric, under the see of Constantinople. Nevertheless, Brindisi suffered in recurrent wars between the Byzantine rulers and the dukes of Benevento. Then it became a prey of the Normans, who finally occupied it in 1071, when they also took Bari. The victorious Robert Guiscard awarded Brindisi to his brother Godfrey, but it became a crown possession under Roger II (1095-1154), the son of another brother of Robert Guiscard. Under Roger and his successors the city was a pivot for the Normans' naval operations. At the same time, the revival of maritime traffic in the Mediterranean, the recurrent passage of crusaders, and the rapid expansion of pilgrimages all made Brindisi once again a lively and significant port and commercial center.
Until the 1150s, the Byzantines made sporadic efforts to recover the city, culminating in the machinations of Emperor Manuel I, but without real success. (By tradition, some of the city's churches were allowed to retain the Greek rite.) In contrast, Brindisi was one of the strongholds of the last Norman king, Tancred of Lecce, in his struggle with the Hohenstaufen claimant, Emperor Henry VI. Henry's son Frederick II (1194—1250) granted Brindisi numerous privileges, but he also built one of his strong fortresses there, and passed it on to his own son Manfred.
With the coming of the Angevins, Brindisi received new fortifications, an arsenal, expanded port facilities, new churches, and further privileges. But the price was a disruptive involvement in the dynastic wars that plagued the Angevin realm during the fourteenth century. Brindisi was sacked in 1352 by Louis the Great of Hungary, of the Durazzo branch of the Angevins; and in 1383 by Louis I of Anjou, of the Neapolitan branch. The sack of 1383 was followed by the stormy lordship of Raimondo Orsini del Balzo and the ravages of his policies of war.
During one phase of Aragonese rule, efforts to protect the city from Turkish attacks prompted alterations of the port entries that nearly destroyed the harbor. In 1456, an earthquake badly damaged the city; Ferdinand of Aragon sponsored its rebuilding. For a brief time (1496—1509), Brindisi was held by the Venetians. The reestablishment of Spanish rule initiated an era of decay and decline that was not arrested until 1869, when the opening of the Suez Canal revived Brindisi's commercial prospects.
The city today still preserves a number of fine medieval monuments. The Romanesque cathedral, which incorporates elements of earlier construction, was first dedicated by Urban II in 1089, and work on it continued until 1132. Frederick II celebrated his marriage to Yolanda of Jerusalem at the cathedral in 1225. Although it was considerably rebuilt in the eighteenth century; it still preserves noteworthy sections of mosaic pavement dating from 1178. Particularly interesting is San Giovanni al Sepolcro, a large circular baptistery built by the Knights Templar in the late eleventh century on the remains of an early Christian structure and later passed from the Templars to the Hospitallers (Knights of Saint John). Its horseshoe-shaped ambulatory has columns with some finely sculptured capitals, and its walls are decorated with thirteenth- and fourteenth-century frescoes.
Fountain of Tancredi, Brindisi. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
Another early Romanesque church, San Benedetto (1080), has imaginative interior and exterior sculptural decoration and a lovely cloister. The Romanesque church of Santa Lucia preserves interesting architectural and decorative features, although it has been been repeatedly rebuilt and altered. The crypt (1225) is especially fine, and the church itself retains fragments (twelfth-fourteenth centuries) of what must originally have been extensive fresco decoration. The small thirteenth-century Chiesa del Cristo (del Crocifisso) has a richly decorated facade, and the interior preserves a thirteenth-century wooden crucifix of unusual significance.
The Swabian castle (1227) is largely a construction of Frederick II, with subsequent additions by Ferdinand of Aragon (1481) and Charles V (1550). The Palazzetto Balsamo is notable for its charming sculptural decoration (early fourteenth century).
Just outside the old city are two more monuments of interest, the Fountain of Tancred and Santa Maria del Casale. The Fountain of Tancred, along the main road to the west of the castle, is said to have been built in 1192 to commemorate a political marriage: that of Eirene Angelina, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos, to Roger, the ill-fated son of the equally ill-starred Tancred of Lecce, the last Norman king. (After Isaac and Tancred were defeated, Eirene was married off by the victorious Hohenstaufen emperor, Henry VI, to his brother, Philip of Swabia.) Tradition has it that the Fountain of Tancred was a favorite stopping-place for pilgrims and crusaders on their way into the city.
About 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) north of the city center is the impressive church of Santa Maria del Casale, an ambitious structure in mixed Romanesque-Gothic style erected in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century by Philip of Anjou, prince of Taranto. Its facade is decorated with elaborate geometric designs in two-color stone mosaic. There is also handsome sculptural work, and the interior has unusually fine frescoes: a grand Last Judgment, signed by Rinaldo da Taranto, plus a full cycle of supplemental scenes, all in the Byzantine revival style of the early fourteenth century.
See also Angevin Dynasty; Bari; Benevento; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Henry VI Hohenstaufen; Justinian I; Lombards; Louis II, Emperor; Manfred; Normans; Ostrogoths; Robert Guiscard; Roger II; Tancred of Lecce and Roger III, Kings of Sicily; Totila; Virgil
JOHN W. BARKER
Codice diplomatico Brindisino, Vol. 1, 492—1299, ed. Gennaro Mario Monti et al. Trani: Vecchi, 1940.
Bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) was one of the most prestigious materials in antiquity, and the casting of doors in bronze, requiring considerable technical expertise, was highly prized. Bronze doors still survive from antiquity and can be seen, for example, at the church of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. These are plain, without figurative illustrations.
In the Romanesque period bronze doors became a fashionable and costly feature of prestigious programs of church decoration, especially in the Italian peninsula. The principal difference in their design, in comparison with antique doors, was in the introduction of narrative illustrations, usually scenes from the life of Christ or scenes having to do with local saints. Narrative is one of the key elements of Romanesque art.
Italy in the eleventh century did not have a tradition of bronze casting comparable to that developed in Germany at the end of the tenth century under the Ottonian rulers, or to that found in the Byzantine empire. One option, therefore, was to commission and import doors wholesale from elsewhere. An early example of this practice can be seen at Amalfi in southern Italy, where the doors for the cathedral were imported from Constantinople. Their design consists of incised figures with inlaid silver heads, hands, and feet (most of the silver has, however, been removed). These doors have an inscription giving their date (1066) and the name of their donor, Mauro, who came from the Mauronne family of Amalfi—wealthy merchants with trading links in Constantinople. Saint Mark's in Venice has similar doors, which were obtained from Constantinople; its central nave door, however, was commissioned locally by Leo da Molino (who is himself represented on them, prostrate before Saint Mark) in or c. 1112 and is generally thought to have been made in Venice.
Door of duomoy Amalfi. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
In contrast, it is thought that a team of itinerant metalworkers from Saxony in Germany were hired to produce the original doors for the church of San Zeno in Verona, in northern Italy. These are very different in style and technique from the Byzantine doors discussed above. They are unusually wide for church doors, probably as a result of enlargement at the end of the twelfth century. These doors have forty-eight bronze panels attached to a wooden backing, with figures set off in high relief. Two distinct styles have been distinguished in their execution: the earlier of the two styles is roughly contemporary with the construction of the church in the 1130s and was probably produced by the team of Saxon artists; the later additions belong to the late twelfth century and appear to be the product of local artists, as their figure style is very close to that of the portal sculpture. The doors have illustrations from both the Old and the New Testaments as well as from the life of the titular saint, Zeno.
In the second half of the twelfth century bronze casting in Italy began to flourish, and indigenous workshops arose. Two distinctive artistic personalities stand out: Barisano of Trani and Bonanno of Pisa. In an age when artists are usually anonymous, the fact that they are identified by means of inscriptions is an indication of their status.
Bronze doors, church of San Zeno, Verona. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Barisano of Trani was responsible for executing the doors of the cathedral in Ravello (which bear the date 1179) and at Trani. He worked closely within the Byzantine tradition, although using low relief rather than the silver inlay technique favored by the Byzantines. The doors at Ravello may be taken as representative of his work. They contain largely single-figure subjects, principally the apostles, but also narrative scenes from the New Testament such as a Deposition. Barisano appears to have reused molds, as subjects identical to those found at Ravello recur in other works by him. Barisano later worked on the most prestigious artistic commission of the period, the great monastic church—later the cathedral—of Monreale, near Palermo, which the last Norman ruler of Sicily, King William II, commissioned as a dynastic mausoleum. Barisano was responsible for the doors on the northern side of the church, which provide an entrance to the nave and are usually dated between 1185 and 1189. These doors are in low relief and have largely single-figure subjects.
Bronze doors of duomo (Barisano da Trani), Ravello. Photograph courtesy of Christopher KJeinhenz.
Bonanno of Pisa's style and technique may be aligned with the German tradition found at San Zeno in Verona, grafted onto indigenous artistic traditions. His most important commission was for the doors of the west facade of the cathedral of Pisa, which were completed in 1180 but were destroyed by fire in 1595. Bonanno's doors for the south transept (the Porta di San Ranieri), however, survive. They contain narrative illustrations from the life of Christ, beginning at the bottom left with an Annunciation and ending at the top right with an Ascension, and, above that, a double panel representing Christ and the Virgin Mary enthroned. Between these narrative scenes are interspersed figures of prophets. A noteworthy feature in certain scenes on these doors is the presence of palm trees, which give a sense of place. Bonanno of Pisa also worked at Monreale, where he was responsible for the doors for the west portal, which bear the date 1186 and are far more ambitious in design than those by Barisano in the north portal. They are the largest bronze doors to survive from the Romanesque period—about 26 feet (7.8 meters) by 12 feet (3.7 meters)—and they contain an extensive iconographic program of illustrations from the Old and New Testaments.
White (1988) has demonstrated the importance of Bonanno's doors at Pisa and Monreale, with their clear, legible designs, for later developments in Trecento narrative art. They were an important source for Andrea Pisano in the design of the south doors of the Baptistery of the cathedral in Florence, which were commissioned in 1329 by the Calimala (wool importers) guild. The bronze doors of Romanesque Italy rank among the greatest artistic and technical achievements of the period.
See also Amalfi; Monreale; Pisa; Pisano, Andrea; Trani; Verona
ANDREAS PETZOLD
Geddes, Jane. "Door, 2, Western World; 1, Early Christian and Medieval, before c. 1400." In The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove's Dictionaries, 1996, Vol. 9, pp. 151-156.
Iacobini, Antonio. "Porta." In Enciclopedia dell'arte medievale. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1998, Vol. 9, pp. 655-672.
Lasko, Peter. Ars Sacra 800-1200. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972. (2nd ed., 1994.)
Mende, Ursula. Die Bronzetuerert des Mittelalters 800-1200. Munich: Hirmer Veriag, 1983.
White, John. "The Bronze Doors of Bonannus and the Development of Dramatic Narrative." Art. History, 11, 1988, pp. 158-194.
Brunetto (c. 1220-1294) was active in Florentine public life as a notaio (notary) or lawyer by 1254. In 1260, he was sent as ambassador by the Florentine commune to King Alfonso X el Sabio (the Wise) of Castile, with the aim of enlisting Alfonso—a Guelf—in the struggle against Manfred and the Ghibellines. Brunetto was returning from this embassy, according to his Tesoretto (verses 123-162), when he met at the Pass of Roncesvalles a student from Bologna who told him of the Guelfs' defeat at Montaperti (4 September 1260). Brunetto then spent six years of exile in France until the defeat and death of Manfred at Benevento (28 February 1266). During his exile Brunetto visited friars at Montpellier (Tesoretto, 2539-2545); wrote notarial letters at Paris (September 1263) and Bar-sur-Aube (April 1264); and composed his two most important didactical works: the prose Livres dou trésor (Book of the Treasure) in the Picardian dialect, and the verse Tesoretto (Little Treasure) in his native Tuscan. In France Brunetto also wrote his Rettorica, an Italian translation of and commentary on the first seventeen chapters of Cicero's De inventione. After returning to Florence, Brunetto held a series of important public offices and was frequently consulted by the Florentine government. He introduced the stilus altus (high style) of the imperial chancery into Florentine letters; he also continued his efforts toward public education by translating a number of Ciceronian orations into Italian and composing his Sommetta, a collection of letters for teaching ars dictaminis. Brunetto was married and was the father of a daughter and two sons. He was buried at Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence.
In both Trésor and Tesoretto, Brunetto strove for a compendium of diverse technical information, but any closer association that he may have intended for these works remains unclear. Since he decided to write in the vernacular, both works are aimed at a secular readership, although in different ways: in Trésor he transposes Latin learning into a flourishing Romance koine for popular use, whereas Tesoretto fosters Italian as a vulgaris illustris (refined vernacular). Brunetto followed the example of the Roman de la Rose (c. 1225-1230) of Guillaume de Lorris—predating the continuation of the Roman by Jean de Meun (Jean Chopinel, Jean de Meung, c. 1269-1278) and beginning an interest in this great allegory of love that would absorb four or five generations of Italian poets. This early italianization of the Roman de la Rose proved to be rough going: the narrator of Tesoretto repeatedly interrupts himself to lament that its heptasyllabic couplets impose constrictions on his burgeoning material.
Tesoretto opens with an adulatory dedication to an anonymous valente segnore (skillful lord), a man peerless in all the arts of peace and war, surpassing even the respective virtues of such figures as Solomon, Alexander, and Cicero. The narrative introduces the political turmoil that occasioned Brunetto's embassy to Alfonso the Wise; but then the student's calamitous news and his own exile cause his thoughts to turn inward, he loses his way in a forest, and the historic-biographical scene modulates into a visionary landscape. There his thoughts revive, and he observes the vast spectacle of Nature, a personification closely akin to figures in two other influential models for Tesoretto: Boethius's Consolatio philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy) and Alanus de Insuiis's De planctu naturae (Lament of Nature). Nature instructs Brunetto in the history and metaphysics of creation, in human psychology and physiognomy, and in astronomy and geography. Carrying Nature's insegna (banner) to guard against evil, Brunetto moves from cosmology to ethics: he proceeds to the court of the empress Virtue, who, with her four daughter-queens, is encircled by magnates and scholars. He overhears the practical advice—mostly concerning interrelations of honor and finance—given to a knight by Larghezza (Largesse), Cortesia (Courtesy), and Prode-ffa (Prowess, who counsels the knight to hire a lawyer before opting to avenge a tort bodily). The narrator then decides to seek Fortune, parting from the knight and going to the right along a forking road to arrive at a fair meadow, the Kingdom of Love. There follows an excursus on the psychology of pleasure until the narrator, exasperatingly, falls subject to Cupid's power; suddenly, however, he sees Ovid, who teaches him self-mastery in matters of love. He next journeys to the friars at Montpellier, where Tesoretto closes on a note of penitent introspection and reopens (verse 2427) in the modus dicendi (style) of a personal letter. Now acutely conscious of the ambiguity of this world, and of its characteristically slippery language, Brunetto is disposed to ask his fino amico caro (dear friend): Nonsai tu ke lo mondo/Si dovria dir "non mondo"? (2457-2458, "Don't you know that the world/Itself should be called impure?"). The glorious personages invoked in the dedication are now seen to have been vanquished by death, and Brunetto's previous investment in fame is retracted through an exposition of the seven deadly sins, with pride foremost. Brunetto is then sufficiently penitent to take up his journey to the seven liberal arts, forgoing his search for Fortune. Finally he finds himself on Mount Olympus, where he meets Ptolemy; the poem breaks off (2944) just as Ptolemy is about to respond to a question on the interlinking of the four elements.
Tesoretto has recently been characterized as an Ovidian "art and remedy of fame"; be that as it may, Dante Alighieri evidently found Brunetto himself in need of therapy. The hunger for knowledge that inspired Trésor and impels Brunetto through Tesoretto informs—more or less directly—the controversial depiction in Canto 15 in Dante's Inferno, where Brunetto appears among the sodomites, bitterly cursing the Florentines for not overcoming their savage origins. Dante's Brunetto believes that the published treasure of his learning (mio Tesoro) can effect a kind of worldly immortality, and Dante honors him for teaching come l'uom s'etterna ("how man makes himself immortal," 85). However, it remains to be answered why Dante damned his Brunetto, his former teacher, to this part of hell. The grammar teacher as pederast was, often, little more than a common trope; thus critics have been skeptical about the idea that Dante was imputing homosexuality to Brunetto—either they deny the notion (for which, in fact, there is no evidence) or they contextual ize it, correctly identifying the medieval use of "sodomy" as connoting various forms of behavior, sexual or not, that signify violence done to nature. In this sense, Dante could also be implying that Brunetto betrayed his heritage by seeking renown through his French writings and thereby committing an unnatural act against his mother tongue (cf. Convivio, 1:10-13).
Tesoretto survives in sixteen manuscripts. Its influence, though considerable, was confined mostly to Trecento Italy. Boccaccio was sufficiently inspired by it to extend its general enterprise in his Amorosa visione, adapting French narrative models to Italian conditions for expressly didactic purposes.
See also Allegory; Ars Dictaminis; Dante Alighieri; Florence
WILLIAM MARVIN AND DAVID WALLACE
Armour, Peter. "Inferno XV." Lectura Dantis, 6 (suppl.), 1990, pp. 189-208.
Brunetto Latini. Il tesoretto, ed. and trans. Julia Bolton Holloway. New York: Garland, 1981.
—. The Book of the Treasure (Li livres dou trésor), trans. Paul Barrette and Spurgeon Baldwin. New York: Garland, 1993.
Carmody, Francis J., ed. Li Livres dou Trésor de Brunetto Latini. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947.
Ceva, Bianca. Brunetto Latini: L'uomo e l'opera. Milan: Ricciardi, 1965.
Holloway, Julia Bolton, ed. Brunetto Latini: An Analytic Bibliography. London: Grant and Cutler, 1986.
Jauss, Hans Robert. "Brunetto Latini als allegorischer Dichter." In Formenwandel: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Paul Böckmann. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1964, pp. 47-92.
Kay, Richard. Dante's Swift and Strong: Essays on Inferno XV. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978.
Wallace, David. "Chaucer and the European Rose." Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, 1, 1984, pp. 61-67.
—. "Brunetto Latini." In Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn. New York: Garland, 1995, pp. 151-152.
Bruno (c. 1040 or 1050-1123) was educated at the schools of Bologna, which were becoming increasingly important during his time. In 1079, he was sent to Rome for a synod on the eucharistic doctrine of Berengar of Tours. There, reportedly, Bruno's vigorous denunciation of Berengar carried the day and won him the friendship of Pope Gregory VII. That same year, Bruno was consecrated bishop of Segni.
Bruno traveled regularly in Gregory's entourage and was an outspoken supporter of the pope. In 1082, Bruno was briefly imprisoned by Count Aynulf of Segni, a partisan of Emperor Henry IV. Bruno later served actively under popes Victor III (r. 1086-1087) and Urban II (1088-1099), and he attended several councils, including Clermont (1095).
In 1103, Bruno entered the abbey ofMonte Cassino; in 1107, despite his prolonged absences, he was elected its abbot. If Bruno saw this as a possible step toward the papacy, he was right: John of Gaeta, who had been a monk at Monte Cassino, became Pope Gelasius II (r. 1118-1119). However, Bruno himself, after vehemently criticizing Pope Paschal II (r. 1099—1118) for signing the Concordat of Sutri (1111), was forced to return to Segni, where he died.
The great number of Bruno's extant works, including homilies and scriptural and liturgical commentaries, testify amply to the high regard his contemporaries had for his skill as an exegete. His work is more innovative as political allegory than as theology, and it offers the historian valuable insights into the rhetorical battles of the reform movement.
There are no critical editions of Bruno's works, with the exception of one letter available in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Libelli de lite; however, the manuscripts have been examined by Grégoire (1965). Bruno's extant works are contained in Patrologia Latina (Vols. 164-165).
LOUIS I. HAMILTON
Gigalski, Bernhard. Bruno, Bischof von Segni, Abt von Monte-Cassino (1049-1123): Sein Leben und seine Schriften—Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte im Zeitalter des investiturstreites, und zur theologischen Litteraturgeschichte des Mittelalters. Munster I. W., 1893.
Gregoire, Reginald. Bruno de Segni: Exégète médiéval et théologien monastique. Spoleto, 1965.
Hamilton, Louis 1. "To Consecrate the Church: Ecclesiastical Reform and the Dedication of Churches." In The Liturgy of Rome in the Eleventh Century, ed. Richard F. Gyug. Leiden, 1999.
Robinson, Ian S. '"Political Allegory' in the Biblical Exegesis of Bruno of Segni." Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale, 50, 1983, pp. 69-98.
—. The Papacy 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
The fourteenth-century Tuscan painter Bonamico Buffalmacco was celebrated by fabulists for his great wit but remains one of the more obscure characters in the history of late medieval Italian art. Some scholars argue that Buffalmacco participated in the decoration of significant projects, including an important (and highly controversial) Pisan fresco, but little documentation has been unearthed that might either confirm or disconfirm his contribution to the visual arts.
What we know with certainty about this elusive figure can be summed up briefly. In archival sources, there are three references to a painter named Bonamicus. In 1320, he is mentioned as a member of Giotto's workshop. He appears in a Pisan document in 1336, promising to return to a priest five gold florins paid as an advance on an unfinished altarpiece. In 1341, Bonamicus is named as the painter of a fresco (now damaged) in the bishop's chapel in the Duomo at Arezzo. Beyond these meager traces, nothing of substance can be said about the life or work of Bonamicus.
Thanks to the musings of Boccaccio, however, specialists in the trecento are confronted with a tantalizingly complete, although unsubstantiated, biography of this Bonamicus. A "Bo namico," with the surname Buffalmacco added, is featured in four stories in Boccaccio's Decameron (8:3, 6, 9 and 9:5). This character is presented as a clever, astute, and keenly observant painter, but easily distracted and more interested in playing pranks than in creating pictures. His foil in two stories is Calendrino, a halfwit who manages to endure both a stoning by Buffalmacco and the consumption of dog ginger dipped in sweetened aloe. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Buffalmacco is anything more than a figment of Boccaccio's active imagination, just as there is no evidence to suggest that Calendrino (or Pampinea or Filomena, for that matter) was a living Florentine. Perhaps Boccaccio's Buffalmacco, whose name derives from the Italian word for humor or joke (buffo), is merely a stereotype of trecento painters.
Not surprisingly, however, Boccaccio's account caught the attention of later writers. Franco Sacchetti (c. 1330—1400) included Buffalmacco in novella 161 of his Trecentonovelle, where the painter again appears as a wisecracking savant; and both Ghiberti and Vasari worked strenuously to create a body of work for the man. More recently, some scholars have tried to reconstruct Buffalmacco's supposed career, using the three archival references to the mysterious Bonamicus as the basis for their conclusions.
Perhaps the most elaborate attempt to reconstruct Bufralmacco's career was Beilosi's (1974). Bellosi not only elevated Bonamicus to the status of a major master but also identified him as the painter responsible for the important fresco Triumph of Death in the Camposanto in Pisa. Although the archival entry of 1336 places Bonamicus in Pisa at a convenient, albeit early, time, Beilosi's theory is problematic, for there is no consensus on the date of the Triumph of Death: Longhi and Meiss believed the painting to have been executed after the black death, but Bellosi (1974) and De Benedictis (1974) have argued that it was done before the plague. In either case, though, there is still no hard evidence that Buffalmacco was its painter, or even a real person.
In the end, all we can safely say is that Bonamicus Buffalmacco's biography and works are shrouded in mystery because of an irritating lack of documentation. We know so little about him that it is impossible to say anything more substantial.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Pisa; Sacchetti, Franco
GEORGE BENT
Bellosi, Luciano. Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della Morte. Turin: Einaudi, 1974.
De Benedictis, C. "A proposto di un libro su Buffalmacco." Antichità Viva, 1974, pp. 3-10.
Donati, P. "Proposta per Buffalmacco," Commentari, 18, 1967, pp. 290-296.
Among the peoples of late antiquity called barbarians were the Bulgars, originally seminomadic Central Asians speaking a probably Turkic language. Many Bulgars moved into the eastern Danube provinces of the Roman empire in the late fifth century; some served with the Roman (early Byzantine) army, mostly as mounted troops, and some of these may have seen combat in Italy when it was was being reconquered for the empire. Gregory the Great has a story in Book 4 of the Dialogues involving a Bulgar soldier on Narses's staff speaking the (exotic) Bulgar tongue in the city of Rome in the 550s or 560s. Paul the Deacon (c. 720-c. 799) tells us that Bulgars formed part of the ethnic assortment brought into Italy by the Lombards in their migration of the late 560s and that the Bulgars had left their mark in the names of villages still in use in his own day. An organized group of Bulgars said to have been part of a large diaspora from the qaganate of Great Bulgaria to the northeast of the Black Sea entered Roman territory in the exarchate of Ravenna c. 660 and were settled in the Pentapolis. Not long afterward, a sizable Bulgar military force accompanied by the soldiers' families offered its services to the Lombard king Grimoald I. This force was sent to the duchy of Benevento, and its members were given lands in present-day Molise, where their leader, Alzec, became a local gastald. In Paul the Deacon's time their descendants still used their original language but also spoke Latin. Human graves dated c. 650-700 indicating practices associated with steppe culture (including horse burials) have been found in the part of Molise where these Bulgars are said to have settled; the graves may well document this element of the ethnic mix in early medieval Italy.
Also in the later seventh century, many Bulgars settled in the lower Danube region in areas still nominally Roman; the qaganate they formed there is the ancestor of modern Bulgaria. Over time they were assimilated into the general population and became Slavic-speakers. In contemporary sources, their Slavic descendants and successors are also called Bulgars; this usage of the term really specifies a region of origin. Eugenius Vulgarius, a Campanian poet and churchman of the late ninth and early tenth century whose culture was both Latin and Greek, may have had such Bulgarian antecedents. Most of the presumably Bulgar place-names attested to in medieval Italy do not appear in the records before the eleventh century, although the district in northern Lombardy called Bulgaria or Burgaria is a prominent exception. These place-names are now usually thought to reflect local Bulgarian settlements (known to have occurred at various times) or the presence of Bogomils (members of this originally Bulgarian sect were often called Bulgari) but not that of earlier, unslavicized Bulgars. Some too may have completely different etymologies unrelated either to Bulgars or to Bulgarians.
See also Lombards
JOHN B. DILLON
Braga, G [abriella]. "Eugenio Vulgario." In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 43. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1993, pp. 505-509.
Brown, T. S. Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy A.D. 554-800. Rome: British School at Rome, 1984. (See especially p. 70.)
Christie, Neil. The Lombards: The Ancient Longobards. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 64, 98-100.
De Benedittis, Gianfranco, et al. "Crisi e rinascita: Il VII secolo d.C." In Samnium: Archeologia del Molise, ed. Stefania Capini and Angela Di Niro. Rome: Quasar, 1991. (See pp. 325-365 and plates 27-32 on pp. 395-400.)
Petkanov, Ivan. "Bulgarus nell'onomastica e nella toponomastica italiana." Lingua Nostra, 21, 1960, pp. 17-20.
Together with Bene da Firenze and Guido Faba, Buoncompagno (or Boncompagno, c. 1165-c. 1240) was among the leading representatives of the Bolognese school of the rhetorical ars dictaminis (art of prose composition) during its heyday in the thirteenth century, and of these three he was by far the most versatile and colorful. He was born in Signa, near Florence, sometime between 1165 and 1175. He began his studies in Florence and probably completed them in Bologna. By 1194, he had begun his career in Bologna as a teacher (magister) of rhetoric; eventually he became the preeminent doctor of that discipline, which served largely as a propaedeutic to the study of law. (At the time, law predominated in the university at Bologna.) After 1215, he worked in Venice, Reggio, and Padua; he returned to Bologna by 1235, but in 1240 we find him in Florence. The chronicler Salimbene of Parma also reports that Buoncompagno tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain an appointment at the papal curia in Rome in 1240. Buoncompagno died, apparently in poverty, in the hospital of San Giovanni Evangeiista in Florence.
Buoncompagno's writings centered on ars dictaminis, and his most influential work in this genre is the Rhetorica antiqua, or Ancient Rhetoric, also known as Boncompagnus (1215, revised 1226). This is primarily a vast collection of sample letters, arranged according to the social positions of writers and recipients, and covering a wide variety of situations from students' requests for money from home to correspondence with popes and emperors. It had been preceded by smaller works in the genre. V tabule salutationum (Five Catalogs of Salutations, c. 1194) gave a systematic overview of epistolary greetings, to which X tabule (Ten Catalogs) added instructions, now lost, for composing letters, privileges, orations, and wills. Tractatus virtutum (Treatise on Virtues, c. 1197) discussed virtues and vices of style. Notule auree (Golden Notes, c. 1197) provided suggestions for openings of letters, a subject revisited in Breviloquium (Summary, c. 1203). Palma (c. 1198) gave general rules for the main parts of a letter—salutation, narration, and petition—as well as for some secondary parts, such as the introduction (exordium), appeal for goodwill (captatio benevolentiae), and conclusion; it also discussed prose style. Ysagoge (1204) provided systematic instruction on salutations, the parts of the letter, and introductions. Rota veneris (before 1215) was a collection of sample exchanges of love letters, i.e., letters for initiating, maintaining, and ending amorous relationships; it thus was part of a tradition of ars amatoria exemplified by Ovid and Andreas Capellanus. In Rota veneris, Buon compagno in effect constructed satirical (epistolary) novellae, anticipating aspects of the narrative art of Giovanni Boccaccio.
Buoncompagno's interest in prose composition extended beyond letters to various types of legal documents; thus he included within ars dictaminis elements of ars notaria, which received particular attention in the legally-oriented professional climate of Bologna. He published brief works on the writing of privileges and confirmations (Oliva, 1199), statutes (Cedrus, 1201), and wills (Mirra, after 1201).
While Buoncompagno's work reflects a general shift toward written composition in medieval rhetorical studies, he did not entirely neglect the traditional focus of the discipline: oratory. His historical work on the siege of Ancona (c. 1172), Liber de obsidione Ancone (written between 1198 and 1200), echoes the rhetorical traditions of classical historiography both in its emphasis on the moral lessons of history (in this case the encouragement of the heroic defense of Italian liberties against a foreign oppressor) and in its inclusion of several orations during the course of the narrative. Moreover, Buoncompagno's second major treatise, Rhetorica novissima (1235), was devoted to training advocates in rhetoric for their oral pleadings; it represented an attempt (unsuccessful) to replace classical works such as Cicero's De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium, which continued to be used for such instruction in the Middle Ages. Rhetorica novissima also includes brief remarks on the conduct of negotiations and popular assemblies.
Rivalry with Cicero is also a theme of Buoncompagno's two philosophical tracts: Liber de amicitia (Book of Friendship, c. 1204) and Libellus de malo senectutis et senii (Little Book on the Evils of Old Age and Decline, c. 1240). In Liber de amicitia, Buoncompagno distinguishes twenty-six types of friends; since many of them are less than admirable, he is here undercutting more uplifting works such as Cicero's De amicitia. Libellus de malo senectutis et senii, Buoncompagno's pessimistic last work, is based on his sad experience of his own decline; here, then, he is undermining Cicero's paean to the blessings of old age, De senectute.
Many of the characteristics of Buoncompagno's writing that make it interesting to the modern reader—such as his lively flights of narrative fancy, his pervasive sense of irony and satire, his fondness for quirky digressions into obscure erudition, and his quarrelsome insistence on his originality—allow a strong individuality to emerge from his work. However, these same traits limited its practical impact in his own time, compared with the more mundane efforts of his less colorful contemporaries. Nevertheless, Buoncompagno's advocacy of a more direct and less artificial style of letter writing, in contrast to the classicizing and ornate approach favored by the Orléans school of dictamen, ultimately carried the day.
See also Ars Dictaminis; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Guido Faba; Notaries; Ovid; Ovid in the Middle Ages
HANNS HOHMANN
"Boncompagnus." In Testi riguardanti la vita degli studenti a Bologna nel sec. XIII (dal Boncompagnus, lib. 1), ed. Virgilio Pini. Testi per Esercitazioni Accademiche, 6. Bologna: Biblioteca di Quadrivium, 1968. (Excerpts.)
Breviloquium, ed. Giuseppe Vecchi. Bologna, 1954.
"Cedrus" and "Boncompagnus (or Bonconpagnus or Rbetorica antiqud)." In Briefsteller und formelbücher des eilften bis vierzehnten jahrhunderts, ed. Ludwig, Rockinger. New York: Burt Franklin, 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 121-127, 128-174. (Reprint of 1863-1864 ed.; Cedrus, complete; Boncompagnus, excerpts.)
Libellus de malo senectutis et senii, ed. F. Novati. Rendiconti della Regia Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di Science Morale, Series 5(1), 1892, pp. 50-59.
Liber de amicitia, ed. S. Nathan. Miscellanea di Letteratura del Medio Evo. Rome, 1909, Vol. 3, pp. 46-88.
Liber de obsidione Ancone, ed. Giosuè Carducci et al. In Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 2nd ed., Giulio C. Zimolo. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1937, Vol. 6, part 3, pp. 3-55.
"Palma." In Carl Sutter, A us Leben und Schriften des Magisters Boncompagno: Ein Beitrag zur italieniscken Kulturgeschichte im dreizehnten Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau: Mohr, 1894, pp. 105-127.
"Rhetorica novissima." In Bibliotheca iuridica medii aevi: Scripta anecdota glossatorum, ed. Augusto Gaudenzi. Bononiae (Bologna): P. Virano, 1892, Vol. 2, pp. 249-297.
Rota veneris, ed. Friedrich Baethgen. Rome, 1927.
Rota veneris, ed. Paolo Garbini. Rome: Salerno, 1996.
Rota veneris: A facsimile Reproduction of the Strassburg Incunabulum, ed. and trans. Josef Purkart. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975.
V tabule salutationum. In Giulietta Voltolina, "Lo scambio epistolare nella società medioevale attraverso l'opera inedita di un magister dell'Università di Bologna: Boncompagno da Signa." Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale, 30, 1988, pp. 49-55.
Gaudenzi, Augusto. "Sulla cronoiogia delle opere dei dettatori da Buoncompagno a Bene di Lucca." Bulletino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano, 14, 1895, pp. 85-174. (For Buoncompagno, see pp. 86-118.)
Purkart, Josef. "Boncompagno of Signa and the Rhetoric of Love." In Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, pp. 319-331.
Sutter, Carl. Aus Leben und Schrijien des Magisters Boncompagno: Ein Beitrag zur italienischen Kulturgeschichte im dreizehnten Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau: Mohr, 1894.
Tunberg, Terence O. "What Is Boncompagno's 'Newest Rhetoric'?" Traditio, 42, 1986, pp. 299-334.
Voitolina, Giulietta. "Lo scambio epistolare nella società medioevale attraverso l'opera inedita di un magister deil'Università di Bologna: Boncompagno da Signa." Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale, 30, 1988, pp. 45-55.
Witt, Ronald G. "Boncompagno and the Defense of Rhetoric." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 16(1), 1986, pp. 1-31.
See Montefeltro Family
The Buondelmonti, an ancient Florentine noble family, first appear in records of the mid-eleventh century. In 1135, the Florentines destroyed the Buondelmonti's castle of Montebuoni in the Valdigreve, which had dominated the route to Siena. The family relocated to the city (see Dante, Paradiso, 16.66, 133-135), establishing a stronghold in Borgo Santi Apostoli. Members of the family served the imperial government of Frederick I Barbarossa in Tuscany, two as viscounts.
In February 1216, Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti was murdered by Schiatta Uberti and Oddo Arrighi, after an insult at a banquet and a subsequent breaking of a betrothal; this killing set off a full-scale feud between the Uberti and the Buondelmonti. The Uberti and their followers, who supported the empire, took the name Ghibellines; the Buondelmonti and their followers, who supported the papacy, took the name Guelfs. (According to a chronicler, this was "the first time the new names were heard.") The resulting family feud lasted well into the fourteenth century.
In 1247, the Buondelmonti led the Guelfs' resistance to the imposition of Frederick of Antioch as Tuscan vicar-general by his father Frederick II. Their effort failed, and, along with other Guelfs, they fled the city. The Scolari branch of the family remained loyal to the emperors and went into permanent exile after the battle of Benevento (1266). Other Buondelmonti established strong ties with the Angevin court of Naples; the Florentine merchant Manente, for instance, married the sister of the seneschal Niccolò Acciaiuoli and became a royal chamberlain. Though the family was banned from office by the Ordinances of Justice of 1293, many Buondelmonti served in office and on missions, including Benghi (d. 1381), who married the daughter of the Alberti count of Certaldo. Benghi held important military captaincies and was also the podestà (city magistrate) of Prato. He was exiled during the Ciompi tumult of 1378 as a member of the Guelf ruling oligarchy. At this time, other Buondelmonti changed their name to Montebuoni.
See also Dante Alighieri; Florence; Ghibelline; Guelfs
JOSEPH P. BYRNE
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze. Florence: Sansoni, 1956-1968.
Schevill, Ferdinand. Medieval and Renaissance Florence. New York: Harper and Row, 1961.
Byzantium is too readily dismissed as the "eastern empire" or even the "Greek empire"—something alien to Europe and the Christian Middle Ages. In fact, however, Byzantium was no more and no less than a direct and uninterrupted medieval continuation of the Roman empire. The capital of Byzantium was the great metropolis of Constantinople; and the Byzantine empire evolved with its focus on the eastern Mediterranean, following the loss of the western provinces to various Germanic regimes in the fifth century and the detachment of the southeastern lands by the Arab conquests of the seventh century. Its recovery, and its predominance, reached a pinnacle by the eleventh century; but soon thereafter Byzantium fell into internal decay, accelerated by pressures from the stirrings of western Europe (culminating in the disastrous Fourth Crusade) and the menace of new Turkish regimes (Seljuk and Ottoman). Nevertheless, Byzantium continued to survive, evolve, and flourish even as it declined, until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
As the western Roman court crumbled during the fifth century, the government in Constantinople maintained an interest in Italy, sending what help or intervention it could. Emperor Zeno (r. 474-491) apparently encouraged the remarkable German ruler Theodoric the Ostrogoth to invade Italy and destroy the regime of Odovacar, but during Theodoric's later years his relations with Constantinople deteriorated. After Theodoric died, Emperor Justinian pursued the recovery of Italy in his own Gothic wars (535-553), at first with the brilliant general Belisarius as his commander. Imperial government had barely been restored, under Narses, when much of Italy was overrun by the Lombards. In the ensuing stalemate, imperial power was preserved mainly in the south—in Campania, Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria. In the north, all that remained was the enclave around Ravenna, which became Italy's imperial capital, under the regime of the exarchate, and would remain the capital until the resurgent Lombards took it in 751. In 663, Emperor Constans II (r. 641-668) personally led campaigns against the Lombards; then, for the last years of his life, he established his residence and court at Syracuse in Sicily. By the end of the seventh century, the southern Italian regions were reorganized as themes, or military provinces.
By the eighth century, the religious policies of Iconoclasm promulgated by the sovereigns at Constantinople had alienated their Italian subjects; and in any case the Italians felt little loyalty toward overlords who expected obedience and revenues but were unable to provide any help against the Lombards. Emperor Leo III (r. 717—741) punished the Roman popes by transferring their jurisdiction over the territories of Sicily, southern Italy, and Illyricum in the Balkans to the patriarchate of Constantinople. Disillusioned with subjection to Constantinople, the popes of the latter eighth century placed themselves instead under the protection of the Franks. This epochal realignment of power in the west culminated in the powerfully symbolic coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the Romans in 800—a title that the Byzantine court bitterly contested.
The ninth century brought a new blow to the tenuous Byzantine presence in Italy: the Arabs' seizure and conquest of Sicily, actually a process that went on throughout the century. From this new and independent corsair regime, the Arabs' raids gravely menaced not only Byzantine territories on the mainland but the survival of Christian rule in Italy; indeed, for a brief period an Arab emirate was established in Bari. Nevertheless, during the latter ninth century, especially under Basil I (r, 867-886) and his successors in the new Macedonian dynasty, the Byzantines improved their situation in Italy in a number of ways. The resourceful patriarch Photios brilliantly beat off the efforts of Pope Nicholas I to intervene in the Constantinopolitan church and reclaim the lost ecclesiastical provinces. Following Nicholas's failure, the papacy declined to its notorious era of degradation (the "black night"). Above all, new assertions of power in the Adriatic and in southern Italy restored Byzantine control in these areas, where the Greek culture and population were already being reinforced by refugees from Iconoclasm and from Sicily. As a result, southern Italy was effectively reincorporated into the Byzantine world, and its administrative themes were eventually placed under a single commander (the katepan) whose headquarters were in Bari. Religious and cultural life in southern Italy became strongly oriented toward Constantinople, and Italian scholars, churchmen, and monks regularly journeyed to and from eastern Byzantine regions.
Byzantine control weakened once again during the tenth century, however. Remnants of old Lombard principalities, cities around Naples and beyond (under various princely or republican regimes), and regional grandees—many of them theoretically dependents of Byzantium—pursued their own independent, often conflicting and dissident, policies, although there were periodic alliances against the Arab menace, and some of these alliances included the papacy. That menace continued for some time, but by the early eleventh century the Arab regime had been weakened and was in retreat from the stirring Christian power in the western Mediterranean. A new era was promised by the stern military emperor Basil II (r. 976-1025), who brought Byzantium to its zenith as the preeminent power of the western world in general. After successes elsewhere, Basil II planned the reconquest of Sicily; in preparation for this, he sent the able commander Basil Boioannes to restore firm control on the mainland. Boioannes defeated the local rebel Melo, paving the way for the formidable emperor to reach his goal; but then Basil II died. Sicily remained in Arab hands, and Byzantine control again seemed about to unravel amid local revolts and dissent from indigenous groups who were not always assimilated into Greek culture.
During this unstable period, the first Normans began to trickle into the territory as mercenaries. From c. 1020 onward, as circumstances allowed, they served local regimes, dissidents, and even imperial commanders. After the death of Basil II, the court in Constantinople slipped into corruption and general incompetence, and the Italian policies of Byzantium became even more muddled. In 1038, an effort was made to renew the Sicilian reconquest that Basil II had been unable to complete; this project was entrusted to the brilliant general George Maniakes, whose forces included Byzantium's Varangian Guard. (Among them was the formidable Norse warrior Harald Haardraade, who, however, fell out with the commander and left the campaign.) Maniakes made a good beginning, landing in Sicily and taking its eastern coast, including Messina and Syracuse. But intrigues against him at court resulted in his recall to Constantinople and his imprisonment there. He was given a second chance in 1042, when his target was the depredatory Normans. Once again, however, there were intrigues against Maniakes in the corrupt capital, and, exasperated, he proclaimed himself emperor, led his troops out of Italy, and took the road to Constantinople. Along the way, in 1043, he was killed in an unexpected battle.
Byzantium. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 62v.
Maniakes's death left a vacuum in southern Italy, but this was filled by rebels and by Norman freebooters, whose presence became increasingly disruptive. Melo's son, Argyrus, attempting a new rebellion against the Byzantines, found his movement taken over by these ambitious warriors, and he fled to Constantinople. There he became an intermediary in negotiating an alliance of convenience between the Byzantine court and the new reformist pope, Leo IX. Though the two parties shared an opposition to the Normans, the alliance soon foundered over clashes of court and ecclesiastical interests; in 1053, all hope of halting the Normans' progress was dashed when the Normans defeated and captured the pope at Civitate. Reluctantly, the papcy condoned the Normans' conquest of Byzantine southern Italy and of Saracen Sicily, legalizing the invaders' status and in effect making them the awkward new champions of Roman Christianity against both Orthodox Christianity and Islam.
The ambitious Hautville chieftain Robert Guiscard, as duke of Apulia, assumed paramount leadership of the Normans against all opposition. He completed his triumph over Byzantium by taking the empire's last toehold, the port city of Bari, in 1071. Robert thereafter assisted his younger brother, Count Roger I, in a successful conquest of Arab Sicily (1060-1091). As a result of the creation of powerful new Norman regimes by the end of the eleventh century, southern Italy was no longer a Byzantine satellite but became a menace to the empire. Robert Guiscard, who craved control of both sides of the Adriatic, undertook a daring assault on the Byzantine Balkans in the last four years of his life; he nearly succeeded, but he was distracted by an obligation to recover Rome for Pope Gregory VII (1083), and then he died (1085). Robert's ambitions in the east were to be the heritage of his son Bohemond, who became a thorn in Byzantium's side: Bohemond was involved in the First Crusade, and then in a Norman attack of his own in the Balkans in 1107. The direct Norman menace abated under Robert Guiscard's heirs in Apulia, but it was redefined when Roger II melded his Sicilian realm with the Norman territories on the mainland, creating a formidable new kingdom by 1130. Roger's threat to the empire reached a height in 1147, when, taking advantage of the international confusion caused by the Second Crusade, he launched a devastating maritime raid on areas of Greece, carrying off to Sicily literally the entire Byzantine silk industry—workers, technology, tools, and all.
Byzantium meanwhile faced another threat in Italy, from the enterprising mercantile republics. Merchants of Bari and Amalfi were subjects of the empire and had special trading opportunities within the tightly controlled Byzantine economy. But Venice, long prosperous as a Byzantine dependency, achieved considerable strength as the dominant naval power in the Adriatic, so much so that by the eleventh century—a pivotal period—it could deal with Byzantium as an ally of almost equal status. Emperor Alexius 1 Comnenus (Alexios I Komnenos, r. 1081-1118), fighting off Robert Guiscard's invasion, obtained the aid of the Venetian navy in exchange for granting Venice sweeping exemptions from Byzantine tariffs and trade control in the empire (1082). Alexius's successor, John II (r. 1118-1143), tried but failed to nullify these concessions; he then resorted to a policy of playing the Venetians off against their mercantile rivals from Genoa and Pisa. In the process, Byzantium's lucrative commerce was largely taken over by the Italian entrepreneurs.
Whether or not the Byzantine emperors after 1071 had any intention of recovering territory in Italy, such a policy was recklessly undertaken by the third Comnenian sovereign, Manuel I (r. 1143-1180), who was perhaps influenced by the memory of Justinian. Manuel professed to support the Italian cities and the pope against the German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and actually sent an expeditionary force in 1155. That force seized from the Norman realm the entire coast of Apulia from Taranto to Ancona; but in 1156 the Norman king William I (r. 1154-1166) recovered these territories, revealing the weakness of Byzantium's reach. Manuel attempted further intrusions into Italy, in the form of diplomatic schemes, but the upshot was his total humiliation, as all the other parties in Italy resolved their quarrels with no reference to him. Moreover, his dramatic expulsion of the Venetians from the empire in 1171 deepened the hostility of Venice toward Byzantium. The collapse of the Comnenian regime brought a massacre of other Italians in Constantinople by a Byzantine mob in 1183. Two years later, the massacre was used to justify a Balkan expedition of the Norman king William II (r. 1166-1189); William's force collapsed, but not before it had subjected Thessaloniki to a savage storming and a horrific occupation. The new regime of the Angelan dynasty was incompetent and corrupt; it cowered before the threats of the German emperors Frederick I and then Henry VI while internal decay mounted and Byzantium became more and more discredited and vulnerable internationally. The climax came in 1203-1204, when a complex mixture of circumstances and personalities—above all, the formidable Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo—prompted the forces of the Fourth Crusade to intervene in an Angelan dynastic quarrel and then take Constantinople by storm. From its share of this conquest, Venice was able to build a vast new maritime empire that gave it a signficiant advantage in its commercial rivalries.
But Byzantine society and culture, far from being degenerate or moribund, proved resilient and survived the shattering blow of 1204, if tenaciously, in the form of several splinter states. The most effective of these states was based in Nicaea. One of its rulers, John III Vatatzes (1222-1254), cultivated a diplomatic friendship with the Hohenstaufen sovereign Frederick II and married one of Frederick's daughters. Eventually, in 1261, the Nicaean government was able to recover Constantinople from the decrepit Latin regime there. The emperor of the restoration, Michael VIII Palaeologus (1259-1282), faced the menace of Charles of Anjou, the powerful successor to the Hohenstaufen in the Norman realm. To obtain support against Charles, Michael pursued a disastrous policy of promising the popes to unite the Byzantine church with that of Rome. Michael played one last Byzantine game of grand diplomacy by throwing his influence, and his gold, into an alliance with Aragon that brought about the smashing of Charles's power in an episode called the Sicilian Vespers (1282).
Byzantine's restored empire lasted 170 years more, during which its culture and art throve and were a powerful influence. But these years saw the empire itself reduced to a pathetic regional power. Italian and other princes with hereditary claims to Byzantine lands had to be bought off in various ways, while the spiraling rivalry between Venice and Genoa diverted virtually all Byzantine commercial traffic and left Constantinople continually caught in the middle of their recurrent wars. Two reigning emperors (John V in 1360-1370, and his son Manuel II in 1400-1402) included Italy when they visited western regions to seek aid against the Turkish threat. It was, however, the birth of humanism in the mid-fourteenth century that opened the way for a final connection between Byzantium and Italy. From the late fourteenth century onward, emigré Byzantine scholars brought their learning and resources to Italian intellectual centers, making classical Greece—its language, authors, texts, and philological traditions—once again accessible in the west, and a major contribution to the Renaissance.
See abo Amalfi; Bari; Belisarius; Bohemond of Taranto; Charlemagne; Charles I of Atijou; Constans II; Dandolo Family; Exarchate of Ravenna; Frederick I Barbarossa; Frederick II Hohenstaufen; Genoa; Gothic Wars; Gregory VII, Pope; Henry VI Hohenstaufen; Humanism and Protohumanism; Justinian I; Leo IX, Pope; Lombards; Narses; Nicholas I, Pope; Normans; Odovacar; Pisa; Ravenna; Roger II; Sicilian Vespers; Sicily; Theodoric; William I; William II; Zeno, Emperor
JOHN W. BARKER
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Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.