Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
Emperor Valentinian III (Placidus Valentinianus, Flavius Valentinianus; 419-455, r. 425-455) was the son of the emperor Honorius's sister Galla Placidia and the patrician (later emperor) Constantius, and the brother of J usta Grata Honoria. In the early 420s, Valentinian was proclaimed nobilissimus ("most noble") by his uncle Honorius, but neither this title nor his father's emperorship was initially recognized in the east. After his mother had a falling-out with Honorius, the young Valentinian accompanied her and his sister to exile at the court of his cousin Theodosius II (401 or 402—450) at Constantinople. The attitude of the eastern court toward Valentinian changed in 423, when the usurper Johannes seized power in the west. Valentinian was first reaffirmed as nobilissimus in 423-424 and then named Caesar (junior emperor) in 424. Also in 424, he was betrothed to his cousin Licinia Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II. In 425 Valentinian was proclaimed Augustus at Rome after the defeat of Johannes, and in 437 he returned to Constantinople for his marriage. Merobaudes wrote a poem (now partially extant) in honor of the wedding.
In the early years of his reign, Valentinian was overshadowed by his mother. After his marriage, much of the real authority lay in the hands of the patrician and master of soldiers Aetius. Nor does Valentinian seem to have had much aptitude for ruling. He is described as spoiled, pleasure-loving, and influenced by sorcerers and astrologers. He divided his time primarily between Rome and Ravenna. Like his mother, Valentinian was devoted to religion. He contributed to two churches of Saint Laurence, in Rome and Ravenna. He also oversaw the accumulation of ecclesiastical authority in the hands of the bishop of Rome as he granted ever greater authority and prestige to Pope Leo I (the Great, r. 440-461) in particular.
Valendnian's reign saw the continued dissolution of the western empire. By 439, nearly all of North Africa was effectively lost to the Vandals, although Valentinian did attempt to neutralize that threat by betrothing his sister Placidia to the Vandal prince Huneric. In Spain, the Suevi controlled the northwest, and much of Gaul was to all intents and purposes controlled by groups of Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, and Alans. In 454, Valentinian murdered his supreme general, Aetius, presumably in an attempt to rule in his own right. But the next year he himself was murdered by two members of his bodyguard who had been partisans of Aetius.
Although Valentinian was ineffectual as a ruler, his legitimate status and his connection to the old ruling dynasty provided a last vestige of unity for the increasingly fragmented Roman empire. After his death, the decay of the west accelerated. The different regions of the west went their own way, and the last several western emperors, the so-called shadow or puppet emperors, were usually overshadowed by one barbarian general or another and were also limited primarily to Italy.
See also Aëtius, Flavius; Eudoxia; Honorius, Emperor; Galla Placidia
RALPH W. MATHISEN
Codex Theodosianus, ed. P. Kruegeri and T. Mommsen. Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1990. (Originally published 1905.)
Haenel, Gustav Friedrich. Novellae Valentiniani III. Leipzig: Teubner, 1850.
The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions, trans. Clyde Pharr. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.
Barnes, Timothy D. "Patricii under Valentinian III." Phoenix, 29, 1975, pp. 155-170.
Ensslin, Wilhelm. "Valentinians III. Novellen XVII und VIII von 445." Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stifiungfür Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung, 57, 1937, pp. 367—378.
Musumeci, Anna Maria. "La politica ecclesiasdca di Valentiniano III." Siculorum Gymnasium, 30, 1977, pp. 431-481.
Selb, Walter. "Episcopalis audientia von der Zeit Konstantins bis zur Nov. XXXV Valentinians III." Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungfür Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung, 84, 1967, pp. 162-217.
The Roman writer Valerius Maximus (fl. c. a.d. 20) was of undistinguished origins. He accompanied the proconsul Sextus Pompeius to Asia c. 27. After returning, Valerius wrote (c. 29— 32) a collection of historical anecdotes, Factorum et dictorum memorabiiium libri (Books of Memorable Words and Deeds), which was dedicated to the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37). This book includes extracts from Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Pompeius Tragus, and others; the extracts are divided into two categories— "domestic" and "foreign"—and are usually concerned with various moral traits. The book is full of rhetorical artifice and is in general a characteristic production of the Latin "silver age." Two epitomes were made in the fourth and fifth centuries, and the work was a popular school text during the Middle Ages.
RALPH W. MATHISEN
Duff, J. Wight, and A. M. Duff". A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age: From Tiberius to Hadrian, 3rd ed. London and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964, pp. 54-66.
Kempf, Carolus, ed. Valerii Maximi Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem cum Iulii Paridis et Ianuarii Nepotiani epitomis. Leipzig: Teubner, 1888.
See Camaldoli; Giovanni Gualberto, Saint
The Vandals are believed to have originated in Scandinavia in the distant past. By the second century after Christ, they occupied the area around Silesia and were divided into the Silings and the Asdings. During the third and fourth centuries, they frequently raided the Roman empire, and some Vandals accompanied Radagaisus in his invasion of Italy in 405. On 31 December 406, a horde of Asding and Siling Vandals, accompanied by Alans, Burgundians, and Suevi, crossed the frozen and unprotected Rhine into Gaul. In 409, all but the Burgundians passed into Spain. In 416, the Silings and Alans were overwhelmingly defeated by the Visigoths. Their remnants then joined the As-dings, whose kings henceforth were known as kings of the Vandals and Alans.
In 428, Gaiseric, who was to become one of the most able Germanic kings of the period, succeeded to the Vandal throne. In the next year, he led an estimated 80,000 Vandals and Alans across to Africa, perhaps having been invited to do so by a disaffected Roman count. In 439, Carthage itself was captured. The loss of North Africa was a disaster for the western empire. Not only did it put much of the grain supply of Italy into enemy hands; it also gave the Vandals an opportunity to take to piracy. Vandal raiders descended on the coasts of Italy, Spain, and even Greece. In 455, Gaiseric went so far as to land at Ostia, the port of Rome. Pope Leo I was said to have met him and prevented an out-and-out sack, but the Vandals nevertheless looted and plundered for fourteen days. They returned to Carthage not only with the spoils taken by Titus from Jerusalem in A.D. 70 but also with the empress Eudoxia and her daughters Eudocia and Placidia. Placidia was then married to Gaiseric's son Hun-eric.
Unlike the Germanic settlers in Europe, the Arian Vandals had difficulty reaching an accommodation with the local Roman population. They persecuted the Catholics, and many bishops went into exile, often to either Sardinia or Italy. Other Romans also fled to Italy and the east. The Vandal kingdom came to an end in 533, when the emperor Justinian's general Belisarius defeated the last Vandal king, Gelimer, in two battles. Of all the Germans who occupied the Roman empire, the Vandals probably had the least lasting impact.
See also Belisarius; Eudocia; Eudoxia; Gaiseric the Vandal
RALPH W. MATHISEN
Cessi, Roberto. "La crisi imperiale degli anni 454-455 e l'incursione vandalica a Roma." Archivio della R. Società Romano, di Storia Patria, 40, 1917, pp. 161-204.
Courtois, Christian. Les Vandales et l'Afrique. Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1955.
Gautier, E. F. Genseric: Rot des Vandales. Paris: Payot, 1932, pp. 240-247.
Although a number of Sienese paintings are attributed to Andrea di Vanni d'Andrea (fl. c. 1332-1414), he is not a well-known painter. He was active in Siena, and his work is found in frescoes and panel paintings; but his birth and death dates remain unknown, and even his relationship to his contemporary Lippo Vanni has not been clearly established. Andrea is identified as sharing a workshop with Bartolo di Fredi for two years (1353-1355). Berenson (1968) identifies only one of Andrea Vanni's works as signed, a triptych of the Agony in the Garden, Crucifixion, and Descent into Limbo (Washington, Corcoran Gallery, c. 1383). In 1370, he was working on mages of the Blessed Andrea Gallerani with Antonio Veneziano in the duomo of Siena. Andrea Vanni is last documented on two trips to Naples in 1375 and 1383, but other works are attributed to him well after these dates.
Andrea Vanni's work shows the strong influence of many well-known Sienese painters of the first half of the century: Lippo Memmi, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers. His conservative stylistic approach, however, appears to have been governed by choice rather than by social or historical circumstances; evidently, then, his style was accepted and found a market during the period after the plague. Frescoes formerly attributed to him or to Simone Martini are now attributed to Bartolo di Fredi, indicating a parallelism of styles among the Sienese workshops.
Andrea Vanni's work centers in Siena, where he is known to have been active from the 1350s through the first decade of the fifteenth century. Among his most important Sienese works are the following: frescoes painted in the Sala dei Cardinali (Palazzo Pubblico), which bear the partial date "136—"; a Madonna Lactam in the church of San Donato; a fresco of Saint Catherine of Siena in the Cappelle delle Volte in San Domenico; and three panels from a polyptych of Saint Anne holding Mary, Saint Ursula, and Saint Agnes. Works of his have also been identified in the environs of Naples at Aversa, in the Cappella di Casaluce, dating from his trip to this region in 1375. These frescoes include scenes of the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin, accompanied by representations of saints Anthony Abbot and Catherine of Siena. A work dating from 1398 was painted in collaboration with Giovanni di Paolo in the first chapel to the right of the choir of San Francesco. It was followed by a polyptych for the high altar of Santo Stefano in the tradition of Duccio's Maestà. This large altarpiece portrays an Enthroned Madonna and Child with Fourteen Saints and the Four Evangelists. Andrea Vanni's early relationship to Bartolo di Fredi becomes apparent when one compares his Adoration of the Magi (New Orleans, Isaac Delgado Museum, Kress Collection) with panels of the Adoration by Bartolo. Both of them seem to have influenced the Strozzi Adoration (Florence, Ufifizi) by Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370— 1450), in their Lorenzettian conflations of the iconography with the misbehaving animals in the background and orientalizing motifs. Even the saddle on which Mary is sitting represents as much a departure from conventional Sienese images of this subject as the altar on which Gentile places his Madonna and Child. Another work attributed to Andrea Vanni is a Madonna in the Palazzo Comunale in Seggiano.
Andrea Vanni's oeuvre is closely linked to that of his predecessors Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, and the Lorenzetti, and to that of his contemporaries Luca di Tommè and Giacomo di Mino; it is thus at the hub of fourteenth-century Sienese painting.
See also Bartolo di Fredi Cini; Lorenzetti, Pietro and Ambrogio; Martini, Simone; Memmi, Lippo
DARRELL D. DAVISSON
Berenson, Bernard. Pictures of the Italian Renaissance, Central ana North Italian Schools, Vol. 1. London and New York: Phaidon, 1968, pp. 440-442.
Christiansen, Keith. Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983.
De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura Senese 1330-1370. Florence: Salimbeni Libreria Editrice, 1979.
Edgell, George Harrold. A History ofSienese Painting. New York: L. MacVeagh, Dial, 1932.
Fehm, Sherwood. "Attributional Problems Surrounding Luca di Tommè." In Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. Sergio Bertelli, Gloria Ramakus, and Craig Hugh Smyth, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978.
Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean Due de Berry. London: Phaidon, 1967.
Van Marie, Raimond. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1923-1938. (Reprint, New York: Hacker, 1970.)
Lippo Vanni was born in Siena and raised in the Sienese artistic traditions of the early Trecento. He emerged as one of the city's masters of illusionism. His earliest work appears to be largely in miniatures, but he went on to wall frescoes and panel paintings. He is first documented in 1344, when he was commissioned by the spedale (hospital) of Santa Maria della Scala to paint an illuminated book. He was then accused of having taken and pawned a chorale book owned by the hospital, and a court order and soldiers were necessary to retrieve the book—an episode suggesting that Vanni either was a thief or was embroiled in a dispute over his wages.
Lippo Vanni's style reflects strong influences from Lippo Memmi, the Lorenzetti brothers, Simone Martini, and the miniaturist Niccolò di ser Sozzo Tegiiacci. For example, the painted cover of a gabella (city tax book) of 1345, formerly attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, is probably the work of Vanni; their styles are very close. Among Vanni's earliest works are miniatures in the corale of Libro dei Conti Correnti (1345; Siena, Opera del Duomo, Corale n. 4), the Gradual for the Collegiata at Casole d'Elsa (c. 1345-1350), the Berry Antiphonary (Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts), and a roundel held by angels over the entrance door to the monastery church of Lecceto. Works attributed to Vanni from the period 1350-1360 include a Madonna and Child (Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell'l/'mbria); a seminary chorale book (Siena, Seminario Pontificio Pio XII); an antiphonary (Siena: Opera del Duomo); and a fresco of the Madonna and Saints for the seminary in Siena, which presents itself as though it were a regular polyptych with gilded wooden frame and other details. For the monastery church of Santi Domenico and Sisto in Rome, Vanni painted the triptych of Saint Aurea, showing the Madonna and child enthroned with saints Aurea and Dominic and angels; Eve is seated at the feet of the Madonna, and the tempter serpent is writhing on the floor. This unique work is signed and dated (1358). Between 1360 and 1370, Vanni decorated the triumphal arch over the choir and painted a series of frescoes depicting the life of the Virgin at the church of San Leonardo al Lago, in the province of Siena. Lippo also painted a reliquary triptych of saints Dominic, Peter Martyr, and Thomas Aquinas (1372-1374; Vatican Galleries, Museo Cristiano). Another reliquary triptych (in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore) dates from c. 1374-1375. Vanni painted in grisaille the Battle of Torrita in the Val di Chiana in the Sala del Mappamundo of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (1363) and worked on the vaults of the duomo with Antonio Veneziano (1369-1370). In 1372, Lippo executed a fresco of the Annunciation in the church of San Domenico in Siena.
See also Lorenzetti, Pietro and Ambrogio; Martini, Simone
DARRELL D. DAVISSON
Berenson, Bernard. "Due nuovi dipinti di Lippo Vanni. Rassegna d'Arte, 1, 1914, pp. 97-104.
Carli, Enzo. Lippo Vanni a San Leonardo al Lago. Florence: EDAM, 1969.
Dale, Sharon. "Lippo Vanni: Style and Iconography." Dissertation, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, 1984.
De Benedictis, Cristina, La pittura Senese 1330-1370. Florence: Salimbeni Libreria Editrice, 1979.
E.dgell, George Harrold. A History of Sienese Painting. New York: L. MacVeagh, Dial, 1932.
Meiss, Millard. "Quattro disegni di Lippo Vanni: Nuovi dipinti e vecchi problemi." Rivista d'Arte, 30, 1955, pp. 137-142.
Os, Henk W. van. "Lippo Vanni as a Miniaturist." Simiolus, 7, 1974, pp. 67ff.
Venturi, Adolfo. Storia dell'arte italiana, Vol. 5, La pittura del Trecento e le sue origini. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1907.
Vertova, L. "Lippi Vanni versus Lippo Memmi." Burlington Magazine, 112, 1970, pp. 437-441.
The earliest undisputed date for Paolo Veneziano (died c. 1362) is 1333, when he signed and dated a triptych, the Dorrnition of the Virgin, formerly at San Lorenzo in Vicenza and now in the civic museum there. An art collector in Venice mentions him in a memorandum of 1335. His Madonna and Child Enthroned in the Crespi collection in Milan is signed and dated August 1340. A signed deposition by Paolo of March 1341 is in the Venetian archives, where there was once a document of September 1342 commissioning a throne for use in a state festival from a painter named Paolo. This Paolo, who appears to be the same artist, enjoyed official status at the time. In April 1345, Paolo and his sons Luca and Giovanni signed and dated a panel used to protect the enamel and gold Pala d'Oro on the high altar of the basilica of San Marco. The cover, which is still in place, depicts episodes from the legend of Saint Mark, with half-figure saints and the Man of Sorrows above. A Venetian archival document of January 1346 records payment to Paolo for an altarpiece for the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the ducal palace; two scenes from the life of Nicholas in the Soprintendenza at Florence may have once belonged to it. An Enthroned Madonna and Child at Carpineta in the Romagna bears Paolo's signature and the date 1347. A document of April 1352 in the archives at Dubrovnik relates to an altarpiece by him which is now lost. In 1358, Paolo and his son Giovanni signed and dated the Coronation of the Virgin now in the Frick Collection. Paolo died sometime between then and September 1362, when a Venetian archival document mentions him as deceased.
A large body of undocumented work is attributed to Paolo and his workshop, which is known to have included his sons Luca, Giovanni, and probably Marco, and at least one other artist. This body of work may be divided into two groups. One group falls within Paolo's documented career and is widely accepted, although with differences of opinion concerning chronology and autograph share; the other group is placed before that and is controversial. Important works among the former group are as follows: the votive tomb lunette of Doge Francesco Dandolo in Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice, painted around the time of the doge's death in October 1339; the Enthroned Madonna and Child with angels and donors in the Accademia in Venice, probably c. 1340; the polyptych from Santa Chiara in the same museum, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin and scenes from the lives of Christ, Saint Francis, and Saint Clare, probably from the early 1340s; a dismembered polyptych in San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna, possibly c. May 1344, when the church was consecrated; a crucifix in the church of Saint Dominic at Dubrovnik, probably the one mentioned in a document of March 1348; dated polyptychs of 1349 at Chioggia, 1354 in the Louvre, and April 1355 formerly at Piran in Istria; and another late polyptych, dismembered, at San Severino in the Marches.
The other group of works, which is a subject of debate, should be attributed to Paolo's early period. It includes the panel masking the sarcophagus of the Blessed Leo Bembo, dated 1321, once in San Sebastiano, Venice, and now at Vodnjan in Istria; the dated Coronation of the Virgin of 1324 in the National Gallery in Washington; five panels from the early life of the Virgin and her parents at Pesaro; an altarpiece with half-length Madonna and child and four scenes from their lives in San Pantalon, Venice; sixteen panels from the legend of Saint Ursula in die Volterra collection in Florence; and a polyptych with an image and narrative of Saint Lucy, originally in her church at Jurandor and today in the bishop's chancellery at Krk in Dalmatia. The undated works were apparently done during the 1320s, in the order listed. The painted donor figures in a wood relief of 1310 at Murano have also been ascribed to Paolo, but they seem too early to have been painted by him and may show the hand of his master. It also has been suggested that Paolo and his workshop illuminated manuscripts and designed or executed mosaics and embroideries.
Although a long Venetian mosaic tradition survived into the fourteenth century, relatively little work on panel or in the other pictorial media was produced in the period immediately before Paolo. The traditional view is that Paolo was the founder and first great master of Venetian Trecento painting, and this view would have to be upheld unless the works assigned to him before his documented activity are rejected. Some of these works, particularly the panels at Pesaro, show the direct influence of Giot to's frescoes in nearby Padua; others, such as the Coronation of the Virgin in Washington, show the intrusion of Gothic style and iconography into the local Byzantine tradition. These same ingredients—the Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Giottesque— are the fundamental elements in Paolo's later works, in which the Gothic becomes more pronounced. The Byzantine and Gothic are so harmoniously blended as to suggest their ultimate common source in the distant classical past; the same might be said of the Giottesque. The influence of the Saint Cecilia Master and the school of Rimini may also be detected. The published literature assumes that, despite the obvious similarities, Paolo attained his style independently of direct Sienese influence. Such examples as his Accademia Madonna, which is close to Duccio's in the Pinacoteca at Siena; and his figures of Saint Catherine in the Sanseverino polyptych and in a panel at Chicago, which resemble Simone Martini's fresco of that saint at Assisi, suggest otherwise. The bold patterns and glowing colors give Paolo's paintings an opulence unequaled even by the Sienese.
Paolo Veneziano had a profound influence on Venetian pictorial art, particularly panel painting, until the end of the fourteenth century. The style that he instituted was continued by Lorenzo Veneziano (whose dated works range from 1357 to 1372) and others into the fifteenth century and the international Gothic style. Paolo had relatively little influence on the mainland, which, with the exception of Istria and Dalmatia, responded to more progressive artistic stimuli.
See also Rimini, School of; Venice: Art
BRADLEY J. DELANEY
Lucco, Mauro, ed. La pittura nel Veneto: II Trecento. Milan: Electa, 1992.
Muraro, Michelangelo. Paolo da Venezia. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970.
Pallucchini, Rodolfo. La pittura veneziana del Trecento. Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1964.
Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra oriente e occidente, ed. Francesca Flores d'Arcais and Giovanni Gentili. Milan: Silvana, 2002.
The city of Venice is a product of its geography. People settled on the unstable islands where the rivers of northern Italy meet the Adriatic Sea. These islands have been formed, since the last ice age, from rock and silt brought down by rivers and dumped where the tides from the sea meet the freshwater rivers. A row of barrier islands (the lidi) protect the lagoons from the open sea, but the salt water enters into the lagoons daily through the openings in the lido at Chioggia, Malamocco, and San Nicolo di Lido. Two types of river enter the lagoons. Swift-flowing rivers (theTagliamento, Livenza, Piave, Sile, Brenta, and Bacchiglione) rush down from the Dolomite Alps in the north and bring silt and small rocks to deposit before the incoming tides. The rivers coming from the west, which drained the plain of northern Italy (the Adige and the northernmost branch of the Po), move more slowly yet inexorably, bringing finer silt. Against these flows, the saltwater tides enter the lagoons daily from the Adriatic and retreat, scouring the lagoons in channels and cleansing the waters to create a healthy environment in which people can live. On occasion, however, the tides become much higher (acqua alta) and inundate the low-lying islands. On other occasions, the rivers hurry into the lagoons with springtime force, causing flooding. As these flows vary from year to year, channels are created or abandoned by the sea and the islands are raised or, more frequently, subside into the brackish waters. Earthquakes also occasionally threaten the lagoons.
Into this unstable environment came humans. History and archaeology combine to demonstrate that the islands of the northern Adriatic have been inhabited since prehistoric times. The environment of the lagoons stimulated settlement. The brackish waters sheltered fish and birds. Salt could be evaporated from its waters. In addition, the complex of sinuous channels gave protection from invasion by mainlanders and encouraged seafaring. Places that were inhabited in classical times have since become landlocked; for example, the ancient seaports of Ravenna, Spina, Padua, and Aquileia are now far from the Adriatic Sea. In the seventh century, the ancestors of present-day Venetians built their homes farther out in the lagoons, some in places that are uninhabitable today. Up to the ninth century, as we know from only scarce documentation, these early communities grew and then declined as people moved farther out to other islands. In the ninth century, if not before, the complex of islands 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) from the mainland, known as the Rial to (the rivo alto, or high bank), became the political and social center of life in the lagoons.
How were buildings constructed on such uncertain land? First, great numbers of poles were driven down into the mud. On top of these were placed platforms of wooden boards and then stone for the foundation of structures. Archaeologists have reported finding wood, stone, and ceramic from layers of mud dated to the sixth and seventh centuries in the lagoons, suggesting the strength of these early settlements. Houses of wood with thatched roofs alternated with gardens, fields, and fisheries, and with watercourses and swamps. By the early thirteenth century, among the great stone structures that had been built were the basilica of San Marco; the churches of San Lorenzo, San Giovanni Decollato, and San Nicolò dei Mendicoli; and the great homes of the Ziani, Bernard us Teutonicus (the German merchant), and Renier Dandolo, son of the doge.
The Venetians recognized the precariousness of their environment. In its earliest official records, the Venetian commune concerned itself with the preservation of the environment. Since the salubrity of the air and the water of the lagoons depended on the daily washing by the saltwater tides, the Venetians attempted to defend the tidal waters and to prevent the narrowing of the lagoons. It was observed that "a large lagoon makes for a great seaport" (gran laguna fa gran porto). Venetians understood that the action of the tides and the deposit of silt from the rivers raised the bottom of the lagoons and created more land. The lagoons also narrowed when people extended the shorelines in order to create more land for agriculture or for buildings. In the fourteenth century, the Venetian republic began to divert the river mouths away from the lagoons so that they emptied into the Adriatic north and south of the lagoons. Furthermore, the republic ordered regular dredging of the channels in the city so that the waters would flow more freely. In the Renaissance, the Venetian republic tried to save the lagoons from silting up by prohibiting the dumping of debris to create more land on the marshes and the mudflats. Thus the Venetians tried to maintain their residence in this inherently unstable environment. The efforts to control this instability increased in the Renaissance and continue to this day.
Today there are 118 islands and more than 200 canals within the heart of the ancient city. The Grand Canal winds in a reverse S-shaped curve over 2 miles (3 kilometers) through the city; the canal is more than 12,000 feet (3,800 meters) long, 100 to 230 feet (30 to 70 meters) wide, and 18 feet (5-5 meters) deep. Forty-five channels (rii) open onto the Grand Canal. Today it is a concern of the world that this unique environment be preserved for its historic heritage.
Romans had visited the lagoons in the pre-Christian era, but the historical record does not confirm settlements until A.D. 537-538, when Cassiodorus mentioned that men from the lagoons supplied Ravenna with salt. After 586, mainland Romans began to flee to the lagoons before the invading Lombards. Roman leaders from Padua settled Chioggia and Malamocco; those from Roman Altino colonized the island of Torcello. People from Opitergo (Oderzo) founded Eraclea (or Cittanova), named for Emperor Heraclius. These centers were separated from each other by marshes, channels, and brackish lakes.
Whereas the mainland became part of the Lombard kingdom, the lagoons honored Constantinople's representative in Italy, the exarch of Ravenna. He appointed dukes chosen from the local tribune class. In the early eighth century, when the Lombards threatened Ravenna, Paolo (or Paulicio) in Eraclea became the first locally chosen duke. He soon transferred his seat to the more defensible Malamocco on the lido.
The metropolitan of the Christians had also fled mainland Aquileia and established Grado as his seat. He became known as the patriarch of Grado, and he built the basilica of Santa Eufemia there in the sixth century. Torcello's basilica of Santa Maria Madre di Dio was begun in 639.
Nominal ties with Constantinople continued for several centuries. Eighth-century dukes in Malamocco were often removed in violent factional strife. Only eight times in the first three centuries were the dukes chosen peaceably, usually from the Particiaco, Candiano, and Orseolo families. All other changes were violent.
When the Carolingians attempted to conquer Italy, the settlements on the lagoons asserted their autonomy. In 810, Charlemagne's son Pepin tried to conquer the lagoons, but he met the determined opposition of the men from Malamocco, assisted by a Byzantine fleet. By mid-century, both Carolingians and Byzantines recognized that the lagoons were autonomous; they had become a cushion between the western and the eastern empires. Their duke (pronounced doge on the lagoons), a genuine representative of local autonomy, moved his center from Malamocco to the Rialto, seat of the bishopric of Olivolo. Now the settlements on the lagoons began to bear the name Venice. In 828, two Venetians transferred the relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist from Muslim Alexandria to the Rialto. Their placement in a new ducal chapel legitimized the doge, but civil strife 150 years later would damage his chapel.
Doge Pietro II Orseolo (r. 991-1009) established his authority over the upper Adriatic by leading a naval demonstration to Istria and Dalmatia in the year 1000. This doge also made treaties with all the Muslim powers of the Mediterranean literal and achieved recognition from both western and Byzantine emperors. Doge Domenico Contarini (r. 1042-1071) confirmed ducal authority by initiating the reconstruction of the ducal chapel, which became the basilica of San Marco, housing the relics of the evangelist. Each new doge at his election was acclaimed by all the people, and lauds were sung in his name in the basilica of San Marco. Eleventh-century doges, however, continued to bear Byzantine titles.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, judges drawn from among the better class (maiores) assisted the doge in his curia. The local neighborhoods maintained their own bridges, wells, shorelines, and night watches. With Doge Domenico Selvo (r. 1071-1084), a circle of the leading men dominated the popular assembly (arengo). They represented the collective will; they elected the doge, whom they usually chose, during the twelfth century, from the Falier or Michiel family. About 1143, Venice became a commune, led by the doge and a committee of judges known as the sapientes. But the popular assembly took matters into its own hands in 1172 and assassinated Doge Vitale II Michiel on his return from an unsuccessful punitive expedition against Constantinople. Leading merchant aristocrats reestablished order and elected their own Sebastiano Ziani as doge. They also replaced the popular assembly with a "great council," whose members included only the important families, officeholders, and former officeholders of the commune. The six sapientes (ducal councillors) became the "little council." Each doge after 1192 was required to take an oath of office (promissio ducale), which increasingly limited the ducal powers.
The doges of the early Venetian commune were remarkably strong leaders. Doge Enrico Dandolo led the commune in accepting the invitation of Flemish crusaders to participate in a crusade. This Fourth Crusade climaxed in 1204 with the capture of Constantinople and the beginning of Venice's overseas colonial empire. In the first half of the thirteenth century, the doges codified the laws of Venice.
Venetian interests in the eastern Mediterranean increased greatly during the thirteenth century, when Venice waged two wars with its commercial rival, Genoa. At home, the government became more rational. The organs of the commune formed a pyramid, with the general assembly at the base. Above it, the great council held the most power, electing all officials of the government, passing laws, and sitting in judgment on civil matters. A new council, called "the Forty" (quarantia), assumed responsibility for legal appeals, prepared the agenda for the great council, and controlled finances and the coinage. Later in the century, the sixty men who supervised commerce, naval, and foreign affairs were organized as the senate (consilium rogatorum or consiglio dei pregadi). When appropriate, the Forty and the senate acted jointly.
Church of San Zaccaria, Venice. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
Above these councils sat the ducal council or signoria, which included the doge, his six councillors, and the three heads of the Forty. They initiated governmental activities and officiated during crises, but they also had to obey the other councils. Most magistrates held office for one year or two, except for the doge, who held office for life. The doge presided over all the councils, providing continuity for the commune. The doge was head of state, but he was an elected leader and was restrained by the prohibitions specified in his oath of office. On completion of their terms, the doge and all other officials were subject to detailed examination of their work in office by the public prosecutors (avogadori de' comun) and subject to punishment if they had misused their office. A doge's heirs were responsible for his acts. Elected officials continued to multiply in the thirteenth century as the state became more influential in the lives of its citizens.
It is estimated that by the end of the thirteenth century, 100 public officials were elected annually by the great council, comprising varying numbers of patricians. In 1297, Doge Pietro Gradenigo led the commune to adopt new legislation, the Serrata ("closing"), which defined the membership of the great council. Members of the council, descendants of members, and men who held office in the commune were accepted. After the Serrata, membership in the great council defined a family as a member of the Venetian ruling class, the patriciate, the nobility. Only patricians could hold high office.
Two conspiracies called this reform into question. First, certain commoners under Marino Boccono disputed the reforms, but Boccono was hanged in 1300. More serious was the conspiracy of 1310, led by three patricians—BajamonteTiepolo, Marco Querini, and Badoero Badoer. They organized a three-pronged military assault against the center of government, the Piazza San Marco. However, Doge Gradenigo, who had received a warning, defeated the insurgents with the assistance of loyal patricians and workers from the arsenal. When Tiepolo's standard-bearer was struck by a mortar dropped from a window, he and his forces retreated to their palaces. Querini was killed; Badoer was captured and executed. But because Tiepolo was very popular and because both his grandfather and his great-grandfather had been doges, the commune sentenced him to perpetual supervised exile. To enforce this sentence leniently and to suppress any further plots, the commune created a special "council of Ten." Its members were elected annually from the great council and could act secretly and quickly. Their ability to act decisively made them one of the most important organs of the commune in later centuries.
Citizens of Venice, who were not enrolled in the patriciate, staffed the civil service from the fourteenth century on. One of them was grand chancellor to assist the doge. In the second half of the thirteenth century, the great council recognized the existence of many craft guilds. These checks and balances characterized the commune of Venice and ensured its stability.
During the fourteenth century, Venice was challenged by wars with Ferrara and with the king of Hungary, by insurrections in Crete against Venetian rule, and by two more wars with the Genoese. The Scaligeri despots of Verona and the Carrara of Padua in turn challenged Venetian domination of the rivers emptying into the lagoons. Also during this century, flooding from high tides threatened the lagoons in 1314, 1342, and 1386. The bubonic plague struck Venice fiercely after a Venetian galley returning from the Crimea in the autumn of 1347 brought the black death. Venice suffered for eighteen months, losing perhaps three-fifths of its population. The plague struck again in 1350, 1382, 1393, and 1395. Despite these challenges, the government structure held firm.
The third war with Genoa (1350-1355) strained the resources of the commune, which was then led by the humanist Doge Andrea Dandolo, a friend of Petrarch's. Marino Falier, the next doge (r. 1354-1355), although an experienced administrator and admiral, attempted to overthrow the aristocratic councils of Venice and become sole ruler. When his conspiracy was discovered by the ducal councillors, he was beheaded at the Giant's Staircase in the palace of the doges.
Twenty-three years later, Venice endured the most extreme challenge to its independence since Charlemagne—its fourth war with Genoa (the war of Chioggia, 1378—1381). Following the peace of Turin, Venice survived to limp back to mercantile and political strength, but Genoa lost its independence. In the 1390s, when the Carrara of Padua again threatened Venice, the commune allied itself with Gian Galeazzo Visconti to defeat the Carrara. Venice took Padua and executed its rulers. As a result, Venice added Padua, Vicenza, and Verona to its dominion in 1404-1406. Thus began the mainland extension of the Venetian state.
Seaborne commerce caused the growth of Venice. Early residents of the lagoons caught fish, hunted waterfowl, and collected the salt evaporating along the Adriatic, which they exchanged for products of the mainland. By the tenth century, Torcello in the lagoons was an important Adriatic seaport. The Lombard and Carolingian rulers in Pavia bought incense, silks, and spices from the merchants of the lagoons, who "neither sowed nor reaped and bought all their grain from others." Little documentation survives to describe this early Venetian trade.
Regular contacts were maintained between the Rialto and Constantinople throughout the early centuries, while Venice remained subject to the eastern Roman empire. The emperors attempted to suppress Christians' trade with Muslims in time of war. Venetian fleets assisted the Greeks against the Muslims on the Adriatic in the ninth and tenth centuries, when Muslim fleets attempted to close the Adriatic and even pillaged Grado on the lagoons. In 992, the Byzantine coemperors Basil II and Constantine VIII granted Venice relief from the special port taxes in the Sea of Marmara, although the Venetians were expected to abide by other Byzantine laws.
Relations between the ducal family and the Byzantine imperial house became closer in 1102, when the son of Doge Pietro Orseolo II married the niece of Emperor Basil II, and when doge Domenico Selvo (r. 1071 — 1084) married Theodora, the sister of emperor Michael VII. She scandalized the Venetians by her fastidious cleanliness, her use of a fork to convey food to her mouth, and her perfumes.
In 1082, Emperor Alexis I Comnenus granted the Venetians exemption from all tolls in Byzantine ports. They also obtained a protected quarter in Constantinople itself and trading privileges in the Byzantine seaports on the Aegean and Ionian Seas. In return, Venice allied itself with Byzantium to defend Byzantine Durazzo against their common enemy, Robert Guiscard. With these privileges, Venetian merchants had an enormous economic advantage over all other foreign traders and over the Byzantines themselves. Much of the Venetians' commercial profit came from their business in Romania (the Greek east). From this time, Byzantines began to depend on Italian sea power, rather than on their own war fleets, and the Greeks were forced to recognize the relative autonomy of the lagoons.
Venetian overseas trade increased greatly during the crusades, 1095—1291. Fleets from Venice assisted the crusaders at the conquest of Haifa in 1100 and at Sidon in 1110. A Venetian fleet defeated a large Egyptian fleet in the waters off Ascalon in 1123 and assisted in the capture of Tyre the next year. Conse-quently, the Latin kings of Jerusalem granted Venetians special quarters in the crusader cities. Venetian merchants concentrated their Syrian-Palestinian business in Tyre but also had privileges in Acre, Jaffa, and Ascalon. The Christian lords of Syria granted Venetians some privileges in the northern Syrian seaports where the Pisans and Genoese were more strongly entrenched.
Venetians also traded with Egypt during the crusades, as they had done for centuries. Crusading warfare interrupted this trade whenever Venetian fleets sailed to assist the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, but the profits to be made in the markets of Alexandria and Damietta attracted the Latins again as soon as peace returned. Unlike Constantinople or the seaports of the crusading states, the Egyptian ports did not offer extraterritorial privileges to the Venetians during the twelfth century. Venice probably had no permanent settlement in Egypt until the thirteenth century. Venetians could, however, travel and do business there. Saladin's successor al-'Adil, in 1208, granted men of Venice two marketplaces in Alexandria where they could conduct business, drink wine, and eat pork. Subsequent commercial treaties in 1238, 1254, and 1264 further defined Venetians' privileges in Egypt, and the commune posted a consul there to represent transient Venetian merchants before Egyptian authorities.
The Venetian trading pattern during the crusading centuries revealed the realities of medieval commerce. Before the compass and the cog came into general use in the late thirteenth century, shipping across the Mediterranean was usually confined to the warmer months. Voyages to and from the Aegean, Constantinople, and the crusader states would be accomplished in one season, but the longer voyage to and from Egypt usually required an overwinter stay. The heavier cargo (grains and metals) traveled on round ships propelled by sails; but the smaller, shallower galleys with oars and sails carried luxury products of small volume. Merchants would form partnership contracts (commenda or sea loans) for a single voyage, and the profits would be divided at the end of the trip. Some families held property in common, and their overseas business would continue for several years before settlement. A senior merchant residing in Venice would send a junior partner overseas to carry out the contract. Venetian agents overseas, who lived in Venetian compounds in foreign ports, assisted in the business negotiations. As many as 10,000 Venetians were residing in Constantinople in 1171.
What were the products of this overseas trade? Venetians carried from Europe its woolen cloth, lumber, wooden utensils, and metals (copper, tin, iron), and also some bullion. Although the doges prohibited the slave trade across the Mediterranean, Venetians did participate in it. In Constantinople they purchased local luxury products: silk fabric, ivories, ornamental metalwork, enamels, and mosaics; in Syria-Palestine, they bought sugar, dates, raw silk, and fine cotton fabrics. Into the crusader states and Egypt came luxury spices (galingale, nutmeg, cloves, rhubarb), pearls and other precious stones, silks, camphor, and musk from the far east. After the Fourth Crusade, the luxuries from farther Asia were loaded onto Venetian ships in the Black Sea, Cilician Armenia, the Turkish ports of western Anatolia, and Egypt. Egyptian markets also furnished raw cotton while Constantinople, Crete, and the Black Sea provided foodstuffs (wheat, barley, oats, millet, cheese, and sugar).
Products were priced by agreements between the parties in the local money of each seaport. Byzantine hyperpera served markets of Romania; gold bezants (solidi) of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem served the crusader states; and Egyptian bezants circulated along the Nile. At home, Venetians used money struck in other Italian communes until the last decades of the twelfth century. The first truly Venetian coin, a penny (denarius), was struck in the 1170s; the more successful, larger, purer grosso appeared in 1194. During the thirteenth century, the grosso achieved ever greater acceptance in the eastern Mediterranean. Gold coins of Florence and Genoa began to supplant the Byzantine gold hyperpera in the west after 1252. Not until 1284 did Venice strike its gold ducat at the same weight and fineness as the florin. In the fourteenth century, this gold ducat achieved international acceptance. By 1400, the Venetian gold ducat, famous for its stable weight and purity, had conquered all the markets in the eastern Mediterranean
Each Venetian overseas compound (fondaco) was fortified. There the traveling merchant could stay for a time, store his merchandise, and enjoy the company of his fellow Venetians. These compounds usually also had bake ovens and a chapel, and they retained the standard for Venetian weights. Sometimes Venetian holdings extended outside these compounds, as at Tyre and Constantinople.
Constantinople was the largest of the twelfth-century Venetian colonies, owing to the extraordinary privileges Venetians held in Byzantium. In 1119, the emperor John Comnenus refused to renew the Venetians' privileges; consequently, the Venetian fleet plundered Greek ports in the Ionian and Aegean, forcing the emperor to renew the privileges in 1126. Although the privileges were renewed again in 1148, the Byzantines were beginning to play off the Genoese and Pisans against the Venetians. In Constantinople, Venetians, Pisans, and Greeks rioted against the Genoese in 1162. Nine years later, the Byzantines suddenly imprisoned all Venetians in Constantinople and confiscated their goods. In 1182, the emperor proceeded similarly against the Pisans and Genoese, whereupon Venice once more sought its former privileges from the Greeks. Byzantium gave Venice some satisfaction in 1183 and 1187, and still another emperor reconfirmed the Venetians' privileges in 1198.
Relations between Venice and Romania changed dramatically with the Fourth Crusade, 1201-1204. Flemish and French knights came to Venice in 1201 to obtain transportation on a crusade. Venice agreed to provide ships, transportation, and food for 33,500 men and horses for one year, in return for 85,000 silver marks. The Frankish crusaders who gathered in Venice in 1202, however, were far fewer in number than had been anticipated. The Venetians had prepared 50 galleys and 450 transports for the anticipated crusade to be led by Boniface of Montferrat. To pay the cost of the fleet, the crusaders agreed to assist Venice against its Dalmatian possession, Zara, which had revolted. Enrico Dandolo, the Venetian doge, then took the cross along with many other Venetians. After subduing Zara, the crusaders received a new proposal from a Greek prince, Alexios. He offered to provide more troops, supplies, and money to the crusaders and to unite the eastern and western churches if they placed him on the imperial throne of Constantinople, removing a usurper. After much discussion, the leaders agreed to redirect the crusade to Constantinople. They sailed. On arriving at Constantinople, the crusaders were jeered, but they did enter the city. The usurper fled, and the crusaders installed young Alexios and his blind father on the imperial throne. When the Greeks would not honor Alexios's promises to assist the crusade, the crusaders circumspectly withdrew from the city. Yet another Byzantine prince deposed and murdered young Alexios and his father and took the throne. At this, the crusaders massed their forces and took the city by storm in April 1204. Afterward, they sacked the city for three days. The crusaders' cruelty and devastation in Constantinople have been long remembered by the Greeks.
After the sack, the crusaders and Venetians carried out the terms of their previous agreements. The booty was collected, and three-fourths of the first 200,000 marks of booty was given to the Venetians to pay for their fleet while the Franks received the other fourth. The rest of the booty they split evenly. Twelve electors then chose Baldwin of Flanders as the future Latin emperor of Constantinople, according to the contract, and the office of Latin patriarch of Constantinople was awarded to Venice. A committee of twelve Franks and twelve Venetians produced the "treaty of partition" (October 1204), which divided the vast Byzantine empire according to an agreed-on ratio: one-fourth of the Greek lands to the Latin emperor, three-eighths to the Franks, and three-eighths to the Venetians. The committee awarded the Venetians the Thracian coast and the inland area as far as Adrianople; much of mainland Greece, including the Morea (Peloponnese); the Aegean islands; the Ionian islands; and the Dalmatian coast, with its islands. However, except for Constantinople, all these remained in Greek hands. As Venetians took possession of some of these lands, the Venetian colonial empire was born.
From 1205 to 1261, the Latin emperors in Constantinople relied on Venetian sea power and financial strength for their existence. In Constantinople, Venice regained its special commercial and legal privileges and the Venetian podestà was second only to the Latin emperor. Venetians composed half of the imperial council. Venetian ships could sail freely into the Black Sea. They temporarily took possession of the ports on the Sea of Marmara and the straits of the Dardanelles. Venetian naval strength predominated in these waters during the Latin empire.
Outside the immediate environs of Constantinople, the Venetians did not extend their control over all places awarded them by the treaty of partition. A fleet from the commune took Ragusa, Durazzo, the Ionian Islands, Moron, and Coron in the Morea; but the Greek despot of Epirus captured Durazzo, Corfu, and Cephalonia within a decade. Venice never held the inland Morea but tenaciously kept and fortified its southwest promontories, Modon and Coron.
The commune of Venice purchased the large island of Crete and rights in Negroponte (Euboea) from the marquis of Montferrat in 1204. Military expeditions and permanent military colonists from Venice established the authority of Venice in Crete against challenges from Genoese pirates and local Greek lords. Crete became the largest and most populous Venetian colony. Negroponte also came under Venetian influence, since the three gentlemen from Verona who were Montferrat's vassals needed the advice, credits, and naval protection of Venice.
Venetian citizens, with their own privately financed and privately equipped expeditions, took possession of certain other Aegean islands. Marco Sanudo conquered Naxos and its neighboring islands in the Cyclades beginning in 1207. He and his heirs became independent dukes of the archipelago. Sanudo awarded Andros to his cousin Marin Dandolo. The Ghisi brothers, Andrew and Jeremiah, captured the northern Sporades (My konos, Tenos, Skyros, Skiathos, and Scopelos) in 1207. Filocalo Navigaioso held Lemnos as megaduke under the Latin emperor. Jacopo Viaro held Cerigo, and Marco Venier held Cerigotto. These men were independent lords in the Aegean, but they were also citizens of Venice. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that not until the fifteenth century did Venetian noblemen begin to control the islands of Anaphe, Astypalaea, Carpathos, Chios, Cyprus, Seriphos, Thera, and Therasia.
With these holdings, Venetian strengm and influence prevailed along the routes from Venice to Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt. Genoa challenged the Venetian colonial empire in four wars. In the first war (1257-1270), the Genoese and Venetians fought over the markets of Acre and over control of the sea lanes. Venice won victories at Acre in 1258, at Settepozzi in 1262, and at Trapani in 1266. Peace was made in 1270 when King Louis IX of France intervened to provide transportation for the forces of his last crusade.
During these hostilities, in 1261, Genoa, in the treaty of Nyrnphaion, agreed to assist Michael VIII Palaeologus, the Greek emperor of Nicaea, in recovering Constantinople. The Latin empire fell to the Greeks the same year, when one of Michael's lieutenants took Constantinople in the absence of the Venetian fleet. Genoese ships then protected the restored Byzantine empire and gained the Venetians' former profitable commercial privileges. Michael, mistrusting the Genoese, readmitted Venetians to Constantinople in 1269, but he did not reaffirm all their former privileges in the city.
After 1261, the Venetians trailed the Genoese in exploiting the Black Sea. Venetian merchants did establish themselves in the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and after 1291 in Trebizond. Marco Polo traveled from Venice to China via the Black Sea and stayed for twenty years before returning to Venice. His return to Venice was rerouted owing to Venice's second war with Genoa. During this war (1294-1299), Genoese fleets defeated the Venetians off Lajazzo in Asia Minor and off Curzola in the Dalmatian coast. Even the Byzantines joined the Genoese against Venice, but again the results of the contest were inconclusive.
In the fourteenth century, Venetian wealth from its colonial empire increased greatly. The senate dominated commercial policy. The commune added a permanent presence in Constantinople and market privileges in the Crimea, Tana, and Trebizond in the Black Sea and, late in the century, on the island of Corfu. The independent Venetian fiefdoms in the Aegean depended more and more on the Rialto for protection from the threats of Turkish pirates.
Venice maintained a mercantilist policy toward its colonies. The commune siphoned all seaborne trade from the colonies on Venetian vessels to Venice and insisted that certain quantities of grain be shipped annually to Venice to feed the inhabitants. The Venetian commune monopolized the production of salt on the lagoons, Istria, and the Adriatic coast and became the sole supplier for the northern Italian mainland. In the fourteenth century, Venetian ships brought salt from the Aegean to satisfy this demand.
During the fourteenth century, the governments of the Venetian colonies mirrored that of Venice itself. Each colonial executive was elected by the great council of Venice from the Venetian patriciate. He served for two years, together with other, lesser elected Venetian officials. Crete had its duke, Modon and Coron had their castellan, Alexandria had its consul, and Negroponte had its bailiff, as did Constantinople. Each elected colonial governor had the duty of enforcing civil and criminal law and justice, assisted by Venetian officials and by a council representing the resident colonists.
Competition from Genoese, Greek, and Turkish pirates at sea and from predatory land powers created unsafe conditions for Venetian commerce, although commerce became increasingly profitable in the fourteenth century, when it was bound by regulations enforced by Venetian civil servants. At mid-century, Venice experienced an economic crisis brought on by the black death and by the indecisive third war with Genoa (1350-1355), which was expensive in terms of both men and money. This was followed by a thirty-year truce between Venice and Genoa; but the truce in turn was followed by the decisive fourth war with Genoa (the war of Chioggia, 1378-1381). The fourth war began when the two republics clashed over Tenedos, guarding the Dardanelles, and also over the lucrative markets in the Black Sea. Venetian fleets under Carlo Zeno and Vettor Pisani fought against Genoese fleets throughout the Mediterranean, but Pisani was imprisoned by the commune because he had lost a battle with the Genoese at nearby Pola in Istria. The Genoese, assisted by their allies on the mainland, besieged Venice itself and took Chioggia at the southern edge of the lagoons. A Genoese fleet patrolled the Adriatic, cutting off the Rialto from its food supply. With famine threatening, the desperate commune released the popular Vettor Pisani from prison. He created a new fleet of small boats manned by enthusiastic Venetian craftsmen and shopkeepers, who maneuvered through the shallow lagoons to besiege the Genoese in Chioggia. At this critical moment, Carlo Zeno's fleet returned to the lagoons from successful raids against the Genoese. With Zeno's blockade by sea and Pisani's blockade on the lagoons, the Genoese were forced to surrender. The resulting peace of Turin, mediated by Amadeus VI of Savoy (the "Green Count"), divided the points of colonial conflict between Genoa and Venice.
Next, Venice faced the growing threat of Turkish sea power, as the Ottomans gained more territory in Thrace and Thessaly to complement their control of the interior of Asia Minor. At the end of the fourteenth century, Tamerlane burned Tana on the Sea of Azov and temporarily destroyed all Venetian access to the northern silk route. Venetian commerce was to grow during the Renaissance in spite of these challenges.
The people of Venice were bound together by their physical setting and the common need to protect themselves in an unfriendly environment. Not only the rivers but also the sea flooded them, and earthquakes shook them on their small islands at the upper reaches of a salt sea. Their position, however, was easily defensible. Only twice before 1400 did they come under enemy attack: in 811 from the Carolingians and in 1380 from the Genoese. Each time the Venetians emerged victorious.
Who was a Venetian? He or she had a Venetian father and lived on the lagoons. Persons who had a Venetian father in a Venetian colony were also recognized as Venetians. To be Venetian conferred distinct commercial advantages. Before 1204, Venetians could buy and sell in the Byzantine empire without paying the heavy Byzantine commercial dues. In the Latin empire of Constantinople, Venetians were guaranteed special privileges. During the fourteenth century, only Venetians could bid at auction to own and outfit a great galley in the annual convoys from Venice
The patricians of Venice directed the city throughout its history. A tradition from the Renaissance, recently questioned by historians, names twelve founding families, the "apostolic families," who continued to lead Venice for centuries. The earliest patricians of Venice were known as tribunes, local officials enforcing law and order under the exarchs of Ravenna. The early doges came from this class and were assisted by it. Some patrician families died out, and other families took their place. The Serrata of 1297 separated the members of the great council from other Venetians, and yet that council accepted new families during the fourteenth century, particularly during the war of Chioggia. One must accept the fluidity of society in medieval Venice.
Feudalism did not exist in Venice. A society policed by men on horseback could not exist in the islands on the lagoons, where everyone moved by boat. Yet some trappings of feudal society were copied by Venetians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: feudal manners, and the enjoyment of jongleurs, romances, and jousts. Venetian landholding in the lagoons was never subject to enfeoffment. The limited land available was bought and sold, mortgaged and rented. By the tenth century, if not before, the major activity of Venetians would be trading down the Adriatic, across the sea to Byzantium and the Muslim world. This urban mercantile society differed sharply from the agrarian-based feudal society of mainland Italy.
The lite of a Venetian patrician followed a regular pattern. In his youth, he learned the techniques of business from a master of the abacus. In his teens, he would accompany a mature merchant on trading voyages. Venetian merchant manuals, which have survived from the fourteenth century, demonstrate that the young merchant collected information on the "conversion of the bewildering variety of medieval weights, measures, and moneys and information on local conditions, on quality standards, and on common frauds." As an adult, he would travel frequently with partnership contracts for other merchants and would also participate in the government of the commune. Domenico Gradenigo made thirteen commercial voyages abroad between 1206 and 1224. In old age, the merchant usually remained at home, entrusting his investments to younger men. In extreme old age, the Venetian would retire to a monastery.
Venetian women seldom appeared in the medieval sources. Girls were educated in convents. Their fathers arranged their marriages and calculated the dowries, which included money and credits, household goods, and clothing. Some articles of apparel were passed down from generation to generation. Spiritual, ill-favored, or unlucky girls became nuns, and their fathers gave their dowries to the convents. The Benedictine convent of San Zaccaria, next to the ducal palace, played a significant role in politics because daughters of the most noble patricians entered it. Widows sometimes operated on their own authority without the permission of a male relative. A widow's dowry and inheritance were hers to invest in local business, real estate, and the overseas trade, although male relatives often guided a woman's business. Medieval Venetians sometimes married foreign women: Doge Pietro IV Candiano (d. 796) married Waldrada, the sister of Marquis Ugo of Tuscany; Doge Otto Orseolo (d. 1032) married the sister of King Stephen of Hungary; Doge Pietro Ziani (d. 1229) married Costanza, the daughter of King Tancred of Sicily. Venetians living in overseas colonies often married local women. Gasmules, the sons of Venetian men and Greek women in the east, had special status in Venetian law.
Beginning in the fourteenth century, wealthy nonnoble Venetians who did not engage in mechanical trades were called cittadini. Native cittadini who were trained as lawyers and notaries could aspire to positions not open to patricians in the ducal chancery and the law courts. The most important position was grand chancellor to the doge. Cittadini and patricians enjoyed the same commercial privileges at home and in the colonies.
Venetian industrial production expanded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as foreign markets and immigration from the mainland created a greater demand. Craftsmen and shopkeepers produced and sold items for local consumption: woolen cloth, shoes, weapons, and household utensils. Carpenters and stonemasons built the palaces, bridges, and warehouses of the city. Shopkeepers sold wine, meat, vegetables, and other foodstuffs. Craftsmen built ships both in private shipyards and in the government-controlled arsenal. This arsenal, first mentioned in 1104, and enlarged in 1303 and 1325, produced and outfitted large ships lor the commune.
Craftsmen and cittadini organized into confraternities (the scuole and the guilds) for religious observances and mutual aid. By 1300, the four larger nonprofessional confraternities were recognized as scuole grandi. Craftsmen also organized into craft guilds with charters approved by communal officials. By 1300, more than 100 craft guilds were known in Venice. However, in Venice—unlike Florence and nearby Padua—these craft guilds did not participate in the government of the commune but rather were regulated by it. Each guild elected its own gastald, chosen from the ranks but approved by the authorities. No guilds were formed by the most numerous of the city's workforce, the seamen; or by the most influential businessmen, the international merchants. The rich merchants had no need to form guilds, because they controlled and staffed the commune's offices to benefit their own commercial interests. Since cittadini, craftsmen, and shopkeepers were encouraged to rise to prominence, each in his own niche, and since patrician authorities promoted peace and trade that benefited all, the city of Venice rarely experienced social upheavals after 1300.
Venice, like the rest of Europe, experienced great population growth in the 250 years before the black death of 1347—1349, Its population, estimated at 160,000, placed Venice among the largest cities of Europe just before the black death. But that sudden catastrophe killed perhaps three-fifths of the population of the lagoons within eighteen months. Afterward, the city began to recover. Immigrants came from the mainland when local harvests were poor, attracted by Venice's reputation for feeding its people with grain imported from overseas. Lombards, Tuscans (especially men of Lucca and Florence), Dalmatians, Germans, Hungarians, and Jews swelled the population. In the fourteenth century, citizenship was made available to foreign-born persons residing in Venice if they had lived in the city for twenty-five years and did not engage in the mechanical trades, or if they married Venetians. A few of these new wealthy citizens were granted membership in the patriciate at the critical time of the war of Chioggia.
Venetians joined together in support of their church. By the twelfth century, they were organized into seventy parishes. The Venetian church leaned toward Rome and accepted the Roman theology, liturgy, iconography, and system of church government. After the translation of the remains of Saint Mark the Evangelist to Venice in the ninth century, Mark became the spiritual father of the lagoons, a symbol of the unity of Venice. As England had Saint George and Rome had Saint Peter, so Venice had Saint Mark. The basilica of Saint Mark was the private chapel of the doge, where state ceremonies began. The primicerio of this palatine chapel was the leading ecclesiastic in Venice, politically more important than the patriarch of Grado, titular head of the Venetian ecclesiastical establishment. Under Enrico Dandolo (the uncle of Doge Enrico Dandolo), patriarch from c. 1135 to 1187, the patriarchal palace was permanently transferred from Grado, which was frequently flooded, to the parish of San Silvestro near the Rialto. Patriarchs belonged to Venetian patrician families and often, but not always, supported the policies of the doges. Six bishops served under the patriarch of Venice. The bishop of Castello (earlier known as bishop of Olivolo) had jurisdiction over the Rialto but was himself subordinate to the patriarch. Until the late thirteenth century, all abbots, bishops, and other church dignitaries belonged to patrician families.
Monasteries on the lagoons perpetuated the rule of Saint Benedict and were under the authority of the local bishops. The monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on its own island, held first place among Venetian houses. It was founded in 982 by the entire population of Venice, headed by the doge, patriarch, and bishops. By 1300, the lagoons had sixty Benedictine houses.
Because the Venetian church and state were so closely intertwined, the papal reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries did not take hold on the lagoons; instead, local ecclesiastics carried through their own reforms. Cluny, Citeaux, and the Pre monstratensians established no more than a weak presence. The patriarch and local bishops led the fight in Venice against heresies; not until 1289 did an emaciated papal Inquisition appear there. The Venetian clergy were not hostile to the commune; they supported it. Writing to Pope Innocent III during the Fourth Crusade, a Venetian cleric said, "We Venetians always work for the honor of God and of the holy Roman Church." The ducal oaths of office supported the premise that God and the church joined in the Venetian state. The doge, rex sacerdotus, with powers from God, approved the election of church officials and invested them with their property.
In the thirteenth century, Venetian society welcomed the Franciscans and Dominicans. Doge Iacopo Tiepoio donated land to build the great Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where doges, admirals, and captains would be buried. The great Franciscan church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, was built on land donated by the Badoer family. Venetian laymen welcomed the friars and willed bequests for them. Dominicans began to occupy the patriarchal and episcopal seats of Venice in the late thirteenth century; among these Dominicans was Tolomeo da Lucca, bishop of Torcello from 1318 to 1327, theologian, historian, and confessor of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Venetian was the language most commonly spoken on the lagoons, but it appeared in written form only occasionally from the eleventh century on. It was not the language of culture, science, business, or government. Priest-notaries drafted documents in Latin for the church, private business, and government. Proximity to Bologna brought legal scholars to Venice, and patricians sent their sons to Bologna for legal training. The earliest written law codes, drafted in Latin before 1250, recorded the local customary criminal, maritime, and civil law. The civil law of Venice compiled for Doge Iacopo Tiepolo in 1242 continued to be the basic law of Venice until 1797. Venetian jurists added interpretations, drawn from opinions of Italian glossators such as Odofredus. Venetians also developed their own historical tradition; and most histories were written in Latin. When the Venetian Marin Sanudo Torsello (1270—1343) wished to propagandize for a new crusade, he wrote in Latin. The scholarly doge Andrea Dandolo (d. 1354) composed his chronicles in Latin.
Yet Venice, like other Italian cities and the Venetian colonies in the thirteenth century, accepted French as a literary language. The Venetian troubadour Bartolomeo Zorzi wrote in French, as did the engaging chronicler Martino da Canal. Marco Polo's Relazioni, taken down in a Genoese prison by a Pisan, appeared first in French.
With Dante, however, Venetians, like other Italians, began to accept Tuscan as a literary language. Petrarch lived in Venice for many years. The commune gave him a house on the Riva degli Schiavoni, and he offered to bequeath his library to the city. Although the library was dissipated, Petrarch's example and his friendship with Doge Andrea Dandolo and Andrea's grand chancellors Benintendi dei Ravagnani (d. 1365) and Rafaino Caresini (d. 1390) established humanistic ideals in the Venetian patriciate. Consequently, Venice assumed a unique identity among the cities of northern Italy, because the city joined its local traditions with influences from both the Latin west and the Greek east.
See also Amadeo VI, Count of Savoy; Aquileia; Dandolo Family; Falieri, Marino; Genoa; Grado Patriarchate oft Orseolo Family; Petrarca, Francesco; Polo, Marco; Ptolemy of Lucca; Tiepolo Family; Torcello; Venice: Art; Visconti Family
LOUISE BUENGER ROBBERT
Arnrnerman, Albert J. Probing the Depths of Venice." Archaeology, July-August 1996, pp. 38-43.
Brown, Horatio F. Studies in the History of Venice, 2 vols. New York: Dutton, 1907.
Dotson, John E. Merchant Culture in Fourteenth-Century Venice: The Zibaldone da Canal. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994.
Lane, Frederic C. Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1934.
—. Venice, a Maritime Republic. Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
Lane, Frederic C., and Reinhold C. Mueller. Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, Vol. 1, Coins and Moneys of Account. Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
McNeill, William H. Venice, the Hinge of Europe, 1081—1797. Chicago, 111., and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Oliphant, Mrs. The Makers of Venice: Doges, Conquerors, Painters, and Men of Letters. London and New York: Macmillan, 1893.
Queller, Donald E„ and Thomas F. Madden. The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Zorzi, Alvise. Venice, the Golden Age: 697-1797, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski and Simon Mackenzie. New York: Abbeville, 1980.
The urban geography of Venice as we know it today dates from the twelfth century. Over the course of some four centuries the small, swampy islands of the Venetian archipelago had been gradually drawn together through a Herculean process of land reclamation to which the early documents give eloquent testimony. The earliest known plan of Venice, of c. 1346—which is preserved in the Cronaca magna in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana—is based on a twelfth-century exemplar. It already presents a compact landmass, traversed by a broad S-shaped canal, that speaks of the formed city. Beginning in the thirteenth century, the formation of the city entered a new phase as the state began to play an increasingly larger and more directive role, ultimately assuming a substantial part of the financial burden in the impressive process of fusion that transformed the scattered islands into a functioning urban unit.
The major focus of Venice's first phase of urban development was the defining of a civic center. Shortly after the mid-twelfth century, in the 1160s or 1170s, on a site at the southern edge of the city that had previously contained a fortified enclave, a regularized civic center began to be constructed. It included residences for high-ranking administrators, an extended palace structure (palatium communis) that housed the doge's residence together with law courts and meeting rooms, and a grand new church of San Marco to shelter the relics of Venice's patron saint, Mark. Under Doge Sebastiano Ziani (r. 1172-1178), the land in front of San Marco was acquired for the state and established as a great open space with roughly the dimensions of Piazza San Marco as it stands today. In Venice, the term piazza is reserved for Piazza San Marco.
Two events can serve as anchor dates for the formative development of the civic center. On one side is the establishment, first recorded in 11 52, of the opus ecclesie sancti Marci, the office of works of the new church of San Marco. This office, soon designated as the procuratia di San Marco, would eventually expand into a key administrative and financial bureau for the city as a whole. Marking the finalization of the conception of the civic core was the paving of the great open space that defined the civic center, Piazza San Marco, in the 1260s. In 1277, the state mint, the zecca, was moved to the civic center from the Rialto. thus concentrating the major government units at this central site. As a splendid urban scheme, the development of the Venetian civic center has been linked to the great imperial forums of ancient Rome and the antique forums and gathering places, still carrying the cachet of imperial rule, that remained extant in medieval Constantinople.
The art of medieval Venice has its first phase in connection with the building and embellishment of the structure that dominates the civic core, the church of San Marco. The traditional starting date for work on San Marco as we see it today—the third church on the site—is 1063, under Doge Domenico Contarini (r. 1043-1071) and hence referred to as the "Contarini San Marco." According to a cherished Venetian tradition, San Marco was modeled on the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople; but in a pattern that was to stamp Venetian art for much of its history, San Marco represents a creative amalgam of western and eastern elements. The plan brings together aspects of the Roman basilica and the Greek-cross plan. Specific aspects of the construction—e.g., the type of the crypt and the character of the brickwork (thick bricks joined by thin layers of mortar)— separate San Marco from Byzantium and further connect it to the west. To be considered in conjunction with San Marco is the testimony to indigenous building provided by a group of churches on the nearby islands of Torcello and Murano. Having escaped later rebuilding campaigns, these structures bring one close to the early stages of church building in Venice. The church of Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano, substantially of the twelfth century, is basilican in plan with a superb hexagonal apse and handsome exterior brick patterning. The cathedral of Torcello, Santa Maria Assunta, founded in the seventh century and rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, stands as a starkly impressive brick basilican structure. Also on Torcello is the small central-plan church of Santa Fosca, largely of the eleventh century with some twelfth-century additions, constructed on an octagonal plan and elegant in its exterior brickwork.
By rhe mid-twelfth century, work on the brick architectural shell of San Marco had reached a point where the interior was ready for the extensive deployment of mosaics that gives San Marco its distinctive identity among the churches of medieval Italy. The mosaic decoration of the domes and the interior vaults was carried out during the course of the twelfth century and the early thirteenth century. While clearly inspired by the mosaicencrusted interiors of Byzantine churches, the mosaics of San Marco, like the plan, bring together eastern and western elements. Following Byzantine precedent, the scheme is a Christ centered cycle, but there are numerous deviations from Byzantine formulas that speak to traditions of Italy and France. Dominating the scheme are the three large domes set on an east-west axis. These present a succession of monumental Christological statements: the Ascension of Christ in the center dome; a Pentecost in the west dome that includes an exotic depiction of the Nations of the World; and Christ as Emmanuel (with the original composition intact but heavily restored) in the east dome. Narratives of Christ's life, the lives of apostles, and the lives of Venice's most honored saints are placed on the side walls and in the two auxiliary domes. The outer architectural unit or narthex running along the west and north flanks of the church carries an Old Testament cycle executed in the thirteenth century, generally thought to be based on early Christian manuscript models. It has been suggested that the inclusion of an Old Testament cycle may represent a response—and challenge—to the early Christian decoration programs of basilicas in Rome.
The mosaic workers of San Marco were famous and in demand in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Pope Honorius III, in a letter of 1218 to the doge of Venice, Pietro Ziani, refers to a Venetian mosaic master sent to work in the church of San Paolo in Rome and requests two additional workmen. In 1302, the Arte di Calimala of Florence, the guild in charge of the fabric of the city's Baptistery, planned a search to locate skilled Venetian mosaic workers for the decoration program then underway. The San Marco mosaic workshops, under the supervision of the procuratia di San Marco, were strictly regulated. Preserved is an order of 1258 issued by the procuratia that spells out in detail the apprenticeship system within the workshops.
A new level of economic prosperity, and hence a new phase of urban development, accompanied the dramatic change in Venice's fortunes that took place at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Fourth Crusade of 1201-1204, an enterprise in which the Venetians played a crucial role and which culminated in the Latin conquest of Constantinople, decisively changed the artistic stance of medieval Venice. New attention was directed to the exterior of San Marco, transforming it into a glittering urban showpiece. The exterior was sheathed in marble from the east, most notably the bluish-white proconnesian marble, used in both straight-cut and dramatic zigzag patterning. In addition to prized marble, a large number of sculptures, reliquaries, and other religious objects were brought from the east. Among the more renowned pieces transported from Byzantium in the wake of the Fourth Crusade are the porphyry group of the tetrarchs, the porphyry head of a Byzantine emperor (the so-called Carrnagnola) on the balustrade of the upper story, and, most spectacularly, the four gleaming bronze horses of San Marco, set high on the west facade, resonating with overtones of Roman imperial triumph and the triumphal spread of Christianity.
Jacopo de' Barbari, map of Venice of 1500, detail of civic center. Rosenwald Collection, Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C,
The thirteenth-century embellishment of the exterior of San Marco included an extensive sculptural program, carried out largely from 1220 to 1260. The work consists of two principal components: the archivolts framing the three main doorways of the west facade, and the reliefs set into the facade and flanks of the church. A significant number of these reliefs also represent Byzantine spoils, although scholars are still sorting out which are Byzantine and which come from the workshops of San Marco. The highly original archivolt sculptures, featuring personifications of virtues, the months, and the trades of Venice, reveal the strong influence of sculptors working in other parts of northern Italy, in particular the classicizing sculptor Benedetto Antelami. The upper face of the west facade was inset with an important series of figural reliefs. These include a figure of the orant Virgin, possibly of Venetian manufacture; and two much-discussed reliefs of Hercules, one (Hercules and the Boar) of late antique production and the other (Hercules with the Hind and Hydra) attributed to a thirteenth-century Venetian sculptor known as the Hercules Master.
In the second half of the thirteenth century, the urban development of Venice spread out from the civic core. Indicative of the intensified attention to the development of the city as a whole are the regulations of 1269—1272 regarding construction along the principal thoroughfare leading from San Marco to the Rialto and the paving of this thoroughfare in brick. In 1282, a new public office, the Piovego, was created, with vast responsibilities for overseeing growth and development within the city as a whole.
The oldest palaces, extensively altered in later periods, have their first stages in the urban consciousness of the second half of the thirteenth century. In the thirteenth century, a distinctive Venetian palace type was already established, with storage rooms and access to the water on the lower level and living quarters above. A long passageway, the androne, cut through the entire depth of the building on the ground at water level; the great center hall—the salone or portego—was placed above it. The earliest Venetian palaces were two stories high, extended to three and four stories in later periods, with facade decorations focused on the windows of the second story. The Ca da Mosto on the Grand Canal near the Rialto, although also enlarged, remains one of the more vivid reminders of the early thirteenth-century phase of palace building in Venice. The structure known as the Fondaco dei Turchi (it was leased by the Venetian government to the Ottoman merchants in 1621 and is now the natural history museum of Venice) presents a larger and grander example of a thirteenth-century Venetian palace, complete with corner towers flanking two stories of elegant elongated Byzantine arches. The tower units were much amplified during the late nineteenth century, in a generally disastrous and misleading restoration, and almost everything behind the facade is of later construction. The Ca Farsetti and the Palazzo Loredan, both at the Rialto, are also notable for preserving a thirteenth-century core. A series of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century palaces that carry the distinctive stamp of Gothic Venice replicate the thirteenth-century palace type, with successively more elaborate facade treatments but maintaining the basic plan and organization.
During the fourteenth century, Venice experienced a building boom that included the newly built, greatly enlarged mendicant establishments of Santi Giovanni e Paolo for the Dominicans (begun 1333), and Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari for the Franciscans (begun 1340). The new churches were accompanied by important open spaces known as campi. The model presented by Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Frari was taken up by numerous fifteenth-century Venetian churches. Among those that work variations on the fourteenth-century mendicant type are San Giovanni in Bragora, San Giobbe, and Santo Stefano.
Venezia, relief rondel from west facade, Palazzo Ducale, attributed to Filippo Calendario. Reproduced by permission of Osvaldo Böhm, Venice.
The restoration and substantial rebuilding of the Palazzo Ducale was the most significant building project of fourteenth-century Venice, involving a shift in artistic focus within the civic core from the state church to the seat of government. The late thirteenth-century reorganization of the Venetian government known as the serrata del maggior consiglio—the "closing" of the great council—had, in fact, resulted in a vast increase in the membership of that key governmental body. In 1340, plans were made for an expansion of the palace that would include a grand new meeting hall to accommodate the new membership. This vast room, with a capacity of 3,000 people, became one of the great meeting halls of Christendom, serving as a model for legislative chambers in Italy and elsewhere. The work of decorating the new room extended over most of the second half of the fourteenth century. The decorative scheme had three separate pictorial components, all to some degree replicated in the late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century campaign that created the room as we see it today. At the top of the walls, directly below the cornice line, was a sequence of ducal portraits en buste, each doge carrying a banner inscribed with a brief phrase heralding an important achievement of his dogado. A cycle of large narrative paintings on three sides of the room—among the earliest monumental secular narrative cycles of the post-antique period—de picted events of twelfth-century Venetian history. On the wall in back of the dais where the doge presided with his counselors, there was a huge fresco of the Heavenly Jerusalem, known as the Paradise (dated by inscription to the dogate of Doge Marco Cornaro, 1365—1368), dominated by a depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin. Fragments rescued from the fire of 1577 are on display in the Palazzo Ducale. Guariento di Arpo, a painter whose style had a strong Tuscan, Giottoesque component, was called in from Padua to paint the Paradise and several of the historical scenes of the side walls. Work on the room may have been largely complete by 1382, when the Palazzo Ducale came under the jurisdiction of the procuratia di San Marco. The first meeting in the new room is recorded in 1419.
San Marco also had its fourteenth-century phase, above all in the program of intensified ducal emphasis carried out under one of the most intriguing figures of late medieval Venice, Doge Andrea Dandolo (1343-1354). The chapel of Saint Isidore (1354-1355) was built onto the left transept arm to house the relics of Isidore, a Byzantine warrior saint; it has an extensive mosaic cycle in a lively narrative style. The baptistery was given a complementary mosaic decoration focused on Christ and John the Baptist and including a Crucifixion in which Dandolo is shown at the foot of the cross. Dandolo was also responsible for the sumptuous reinstallation of the Pala d'Oro, a project dated by inscription to 1345, on the high altar of San Marco. This "golden altarpiece" is believed to have served earlier in San Marco as an altar frontal and to have been constructed at least in part of enamels imported from Constantinople. It was reorganized and partially remade in the fourteenth-century installation, set with hundreds of gems and given a gold filigree outer frame. Dandolo's role in the remounting is recorded in the inscription, together with a brief recounting of the earlier history of the pala.
The fourteenth century saw the emergence of Venice's first artistic personalities identifiable by name. The most important sculptor and architect of fourteenth-century Venice was Filippo Calendario (c. 1315—1355). Calendario played a major role in both the architecture and the sculptural program of the Palazzo Ducale. He was very likely the director of the workshop that initiated the superb series of capitals of the ground-floor loggia of the Palazzo Ducale, one of which bears the date 1344. These capitals present an elaborate encyclopedic program that includes representations of the classes of society, the trades and peoples ofVenice, aspects of daily life, historical personalities from antiquity, and personifications of wisdom and justice—emerging out of luscious leafage, the foglie grasse of Venetian Gothic architecture.
The second major artistic figure of fourteenth-century Venice is the painter Paolo Veneziano (fl. 1333-1358). It has been argued that Paolo Veneziano had the status of official painter to the republic of Venice. His state projects included the commission of a wooden painted cover, dated by inscription to 1345, for the Pala d'Oro, with a sequence of the life of Saint Mark. He also worked on one of the important ducal tombs of the fourteenth century, the tomb of Doge Francesco Dandolo (d. 1339) in the chapterhouse of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Panel painting came relatively late to Venice, and it is with Paolo Veneziano that the altarpiece became firmly established within the Venetian artistic tradition. He appears to have been the initiator of the typically Venetian altarpiece with elaborate architectural enframement, bristling with cornices, spires, and sculptural accents. To be numbered among the masterpieces of his career are two altarpieces of the coronation of the Virgin, a subject that had considerable currency in Venice during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of these, dating from the 1430s, is a large polyptych painted for the Franciscan nunnery of Santa Chiara (now in the Accademia in Venice). The second, from his last period and showing him at the height of his powers, is the Coronation of the Virgin panel now in the Frick Collection in New York; it is signed with an inscription naming both Paolo and his son Giovanni, and bearing the date 1358. Paolo Venezi-ano was head of a family workshop that included a number of his sons, a type of workshop that was to become the norm in the artistic life of Venice for sculptors as well as painters.
The artistic qualities promoted by Paolo Veneziano—richly patterned fabrics and an enamel-like vividness of color—decisively stamped Venetian painting until the end of the fourteenth century. To be singled out for special attention in the second half of the fourteenth century is Lorenzo Veneziano (fl. 1356-1372), who played a directive role analogous to that of Paolo Veneziano in the first half of the century. Lorenzo's earliest signed surviving work is a polyptych of 1359 from the church of Sant'Antonio in Venice featuring at its center an Annunciation (Accademia, Venice) with an elaborate inscription giving the names of the carver of the frame, the founder of the church, and the commissioner of the work, the patrician Domenico Lion. Lorenzo Veneziano preserved a great deal of the aesthetic of Paolo Veneziano; particularly striking is his adherence to the attenuated Byzantine figure of the saint. However, Lorenzo also incorporated new currents into his work. His figures interact with a new vivacity, and there is a turn toward the heavier, more physically present figure favored on the mainland. His altarpieces introduced a number of new themes into the Venetian tradition. The large-scale Annunciation figures prominently in his work, often as the central panel of a polyptych, and his Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter (Museo Correr, Venice) presents a heavy, forceful seated figure that would influence later Venetian altarpieces of enthroned saints. Although the full account of late fourteenth-century Venetian painting still needs to be worked out, a few interesting personalities hold out promise for future work. Among these is the evocative and mysterious Jacobello Alberengo (d. before 1397), known from a series of Apocalypse panels (in the Accademia) from the demolished church of San Giovanni Evangelista on Torcello.
Medieval Venice should also be understood as rich in sculptural accents of a wide-ranging variety. The public squares (campi) as well as private interior courtyards had handsome wellheads, large numbers of which are still to be seen in the city although they no longer serve a practical function. Miscellaneous pieces, often of Byzantine or presumed Byzantine manufacture, mark the outside walls of private dwellings. Buildings and calli— the narrow Venetian streets—are marked by emblems of confraternities and family arms. Notable are the carefully constructed sculptural statements that serve as encapsulations of Venice. The Lion of Saint Mark, placed during the thirteenth century on a column marking the entrance to the civic center from the sea, is a composite piece made to serve as an emblem of Venice's patron saint and of the city itself. A relief personification of Venice, enthroned and crowned like the Virgin, ruling with wisdom from Solomon's lion throne, was placed on the west facade of the Palazzo Ducale as part of the fourteenth-century rebuilding campaign; Wolters (1976, 1994) attributes this relief to Filippo Calendario, Tomb sculpture is another significant aspect of the art of medieval Venice. The ducal tomb became part of the public display of Venice around the mid-thirteenth century when the tomb of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo (r. 1229-1249) was placed outside the entrance to Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Notable fourteenth-century tombs are those of Doge Giovanni Sora nzo (r. 1312-1328) in the baptistery of San Marco, the first tomb of a ruler in the west to be erected in a baptistery; Doge Francesco Dandolo (r. 1329-1339) at the Frari, the first tomb of a ruler in a mendicant chapterhouse; and Doge Michele Morosini (1382) in the choir of Santi Giovanni e Paolo—a densely sculptural tomb with an elaborate architectural fresco surround, one of the outstanding tombs of medieval Italy in its wall-filling ambitions.
Appropriately, what can be considered the last major artistic project of late medieval Venice and the culmination of its sculptural style—a work from the end of the fourteenth century— was commissioned for San Marco. This is the superb ensemble of grieving apostles and the Virgin by Jacobello dalle Masegne (fl. 1383—c. 1409) and his brother Pierpaolo dalle Masegne (fl 1383-c. 1403) that crowns the iconostasis closing off the Cappella Maggiore of San Marco. The architrave carries an inscription dating the work to 1394 and names the government officials—Doge Antonio Venier (r. 1382-1400) and the two procurators of San Marco—under whom the work was carried out, as well as the two sculptors. The work is not a true iconostasis in the Byzantine sense—that is, a carrier of icons—but rather a typically Venetian melding that brings together the eastern concept of iconostasis, the French idea of choir screen, and the Italian idea of dramatic display of individual sculptured figures. Stylistically, the figures of the iconostasis draw heavily on mainland developments—a link with Andrea Pisano and his followers is to be particularly noted—but the austerity and severity of many of these figures suggest that the artists looked closely at Byzantine pieces.
See also Masegne Brothers; Pala d'Oro; Veneziano, Paolo; Venice
DEBRA PINCUS
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Testi, Landedeo. La storia delta pittura veneziana, 2 vols. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1909-1915.
Wolters, Wolfgang. La scultura veneziana gotica 1300-1460, 2 vols. Venice: Alfieri, 1976.
—. "Il Trecento: La scultura (1300-1460)." In Storia di Venezia: Temi—L'arte, ed. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1994, Vol. 1, pp. 305-341.
Venosa is a city in Basilicata, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) east of Melfi. It was important under the Romans and was a bishopric in the sixth century, but it was destroyed by the Lombards (and probably lost its bishopric, which, however was functioning again by 817). The Arabs took it in 842; however, Emperor Louis II recovered it c. 868. It became part of the Lombard duchy of Salerno but was then seized by the Normans in 1041. Drogo de Hauteville became its lord and revived the building of the abbey of the Santissima Trinita that had been begun in 942 by Gisulph of Salerno and abandoned. From Drogo (who was assassinated there in 1051) Venosa passed in turn to his brothers Humphrey and Robert Guiscard. Their tombs are in the abbey. Venosa was the center of two major rebellions (in 1127 and 1128) and an unsuccessful invasion by Emperor Lothair III (1134). It prospered under Frederick II and supported both Manfred and Conradin against Charles of Anjou, who severely punished it after the battle of Tagliacozzo. Later, Charles established a hospital for injured veterans there. Under Joanna I, Venosa declared for the Hungarians in 1350; when it was recovered, Joanna granted it to the Sanseverino. After Melfi, Venosa was the largest town in Angevin Basilicata. Its main products were wheat, barley, and wine.
A huge enlargement of the abbey was begun in 1063 under Robert Guiscard: a cruciform apsidal church was planned, incorporating the old church in the nave, the architecture modeled on French Cluniac churches; but only the walls together with pilasters, piers, and columns, all with Romanesque carved capitals, were built. The enterprise was finally abandoned when Pope Boniface VIII transferred the abbey from the Benedictines to the Hospitallers in 1297.
See also Boniface VIII, Pope; Charles I of Anjou; Conradin; Joanna I of Naples; Manfred; Melfi; Robert Guiscard; Tagliacozzo, Battle of
CAROLA M. SMALL
Crudo, Giuseppe. La Santissima Trinità di Venosa: Memorie storiche, diplomatiche, archeologiche. Trani: V. Vecchi, 1899.
Lorenzo, Giuseppe de. Venosa e la regione del Vulture. Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1906.
The treaty of Verdun (843) spelled out an agreement among the three sons of Louis I the Pious partitioning the unified empire that Louis had sought to create into an independent kingdom for each son. Louis received all territories lying east of the Rhine, creating a kingdom of the East Franks. Charles received as his kingdom of the West Franks the territories west of a line marked by the Meuse, Scheldt, Saône, and Rhone rivers. To Lothair (Lothar) went the "middle kingdom," comprising the territories between the kingdoms of Louis and Charles from the North Sea to the Alps as well as Italy. Lothair was recognized as emperor, but that title implied no effective authority over his brothers.
See also Frankish Kingdom; Lothar I; Louis I the Pious
RICHARD E. SULLIVAN
Classen, Peter. "Die Vertrage von Verdun und Coulaines als politischen Grundlagen des westfränkischen Reiches." Historische Zeitschriji, 196, 1968, pp. 1-35.
Ganshof, F. L. "On the Genesis and Significance of the Treaty of Verdun (843)." In The Carolingians and the Prankish Monarchy: Studies in Carolingian History, trans. Janet Sondheimer. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971, pp. 289-302.
Penndorf, Ursula. Das Problem der "Reichseinheitsidee" nach der Teilung von Verdun (843): Untersuchungen zu den späten Karolingern. Munich: Arbeo Gesellschaft, 1974.
Der Vertrag von Verdun, 843: Neun Aufsätze zur Begründung der europäischen Völker- und Staatenwelt, ed. Theodor Mayer. Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang, 1943.
The site on the Adige River that we now call Verona was inhabited as early as the Neolithic era. Its identity as a city developed in 49 B.C., when it was recognized as a Roman municipium. The arch of the Gavi, a theater, and an imposing arena still survive to recall its prosperity under imperial rule. Roads and rivers made it a very hospitable place.
Verona is nestled in a crook of the Adige just as the river begins to meander southward across the plain and thus was on the edge of two very different worlds. To the north rise the foothills of the Alps; to the south stretches the broad expanse of the Po River valley. Three major Roman thoroughfares passed through the city. The Via Claudia Augusta took travelers south to Rome or north through the Alps to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). The Via Postumia traversed the entire Po valley beginning in Aquileia, turning southwest at Verona, and continuing to Genoa. The Via Gallica carried traffic westward to Brescia. These roads remained major arteries through the Middle Ages.
The Adige's serpentine embrace made the site of Verona easily defensible: the river bounded three sides, and then walls closed off the southern flank. In Roman times, the walls were pierced by only two gates and enclosed roughly a third of a square mile (about eight- or nine-tenths of a square kilometer). During the Middle Ages, the city expanded both northward and southward. The Lombards created a fortified center (castrum) across the Adige on the slope of Colle San Pietro, and in the twelfth century the commune extended these fortifications to the southeast. At the same time, it enclosed the suburb under the Roman walls by building a new set of walls a third of a mile (about 0.5 kilometer) further south. Under the rule of the Visconti in the late fourteenth century, Verona's walls were expanded again, more than doubling the fortified area.
The grid of the old Roman street plan is still evident in the city center. The Roman forum (today Piazza delle Erbe) remained the market of the medieval city and its center of public authority. The royal and ducal residences of the early Middle Ages were nearby; the commune built its palace on the edge of the piazza in the twelfth century; and the Scaliger (Delia Scala) signori erected their palaces alongside. To the northwest, in the curve of the Adige, was Verona's medieval ecclesiastical center, with the cathedral, the bishop's residence, and the canons' library and cloister. The city's most venerable monastery, San Zeno, was located outside the Roman and communal walls just off the Via Gallica. In it was buried the city's patron, Saint Zeno, the fourth-century bishop who converted the Veronese.
During the fifth century, as various invaders, such as Odovacar (Odoacer) and the Ostrogoth Theodoric, assumed the frayed mantle of imperial rule in Italy, Verona took on greater importance as a military and political center. Theodoric's decisive defeat of Odovacar occurred just east of the city (at San Martino Buonalbergo), and Theodoric had a palace built for himself on Colle San Pietro overlooking Verona. During the Gothic wars, the city fell to the Byzantine general Narses c. 556, but this restoration of imperial rule lasted only twelve years. In 568, the Lombards established their kingdom in northern Italy, and Verona became one of their two capitals (Pavia was the other). The choice of Verona turned out tragically for the conqueror Alboino, who was assassinated in the palace on Colle San Pietro in 572, but his successors fared better in the city. Under kings Desiderius and Liutprand in the eighth century, the Lombards abandoned Arian for Catholic Christianity, and the bishops of Verona transferred their see within the walls to the site of the present cathedral.
The cathedral clergy, in particular, flourished after the Carolingian conquest in 774. Bishop Ratoldus organized and endowed the chapter (or schola) in 813, and its famous library, which is still serving scholars today, seems to have originated around this time. The manuscripts preserved in the library suggest that Verona participated actively in the Carolingian renaissance. This is also suggested by the accomplishments of its bishops: Egino (780-803) designed Saint Peter's basilica in Reichnau before coming to Verona; the theologian Nottingus (840-844) corresponded with Hincmar of Reims and Rabanus Maurus; and Adelard (876-915) was a poet.
Although Charlemagne was in Verona at least once in 787, Carolingian rule was normally exercised in the city through a count. Verona did not become a royal residence again until the Italian kingdom faced a crisis when Louis II died in 875 without an heir. Of the many claimants to the throne, Berengar I of Friuli (888—924) managed to eliminate all his rivals by 905 and assert uncontested authority; he made Verona his capital and the city's bishop his archchancellor. The city remained important in the politics of the kingdom under Hugh of Aries (r. 926-947), Lothar II (Lothair, r. 931-950), and Berengar II of Ivrea (r. 950-962), but during this period of its history its bishop, Ratherius, was a more potent force.
Ratherius, a monk of Liège, was bishop of Verona in 931 — 934, 946-948, and 961-968. Imperial politics, and the importance of bishops in these politics, can account for his first exile in 934 (Ratherius had wavered in his allegiance to Hugh during Arnulf of Bavaria's bid for the kingdom), Ratherius's own fierce religiosity, caustic wit, and strong will contributed to his other expulsions from the see. A vivid, if somewhat unflattering, view of the Veronese church and society emerge from the bishop's letters, his sermons, and his Praeloquia, a discourse on human roles and duties. Although Verona was certainly not unique in suffering from political corruption, ecclesiastical disorder, and pervasive greed, it was unique in having an articulate observer to chronicle all this. Ratherius of Verona was one of the few literary luminaries Europe produced in the tenth century.
With the establishment of Ottonian rule in northern Italy in 961, Verona's location at the base of the Brenner Pass made it a fulcrum of imperial rule. For the rest of the Middle Ages, the city made the most of this strategic position; it remained loyal to the imperial party but repeatedly negotiated privileges and rights in return for its allegiance. Emperors and their armies spent considerable time in the city, particularly the embattled Henry IV, whose retreat over the Brenner Pass was blocked by southern German opponents in the 1090s. San Zeno, just outside the city walls, became an imperial center; a significant palace complex emerged here in the twelfth century.
Within the walls, an alliance of merchants, lesser knights, and the bishop gave birth to an independent communal government in the early twelfth century. An accord on trading privileges between leading Veronese citizens and Venice in 1107 is the first evidence of independent governance, although consuls do not appear until 1135. By the mid-twelfth century, the commune had established its sway over the contado (countryside), and it gained grudging if practical recognition from the empire in 1156, after Frederick I Barbarossa came to realize how perilous the mountainous roads north of Verona could be without the city's friendship. Like other cities of the Marches and Lombardy, however, Verona participated in the leagues arrayed against Frederick's attempted reimposition of direct imperial rule and won the full juridical recognition set out in the peace of Constance (1183). This communal government ruled Verona until the advent of the Scaliger lordship in 1277.
Like that of most Italian communes, Verona's government was led alternately by consuls or rectors and podestà (podestas, city magistrates) throughout the late twelfth century. Factional infighting between the aristocratic Conti party (whose main constituent was an old comital family, the Sambonifacio) and its more popular opposition (the Monticoli, a leading mercantile family, and their supporters) brought the city under the domination of the tyrant Ezzelino da Romano in 1225. Under his leadership, Verona briefly adhered to the second Lombard League against Frederick II in 1226, but it was reconciled with the emperor the following year. Ezzelino's vicious rule, however, exhausted the city, and fear of new factional violence after his death in 1259 resulted in the domination of native signori, the Delia Scala (Scaliger).
Under the Delia Scala, Verona became the center of a significant territorial lordship encompassing, at its height in the 1330s, most of the Veneto and parts of Emilia and Tuscany. In 1387, the city exchanged its native signore for a foreign one when it fell to Gian Galeazzo Visconti and was incorporated into the Milanese territorial state. As dominusgeneralis etperpetuus, Gian Galeazzo ruled the city, through local functionaries, until his death in 1402. Like the Scaliger lords, he maintained the outer forms of the communal government, but he "reformed" its statutes to suppress all independent local political activity. Financial exactions led the Veronese to revolt on 22—24 June 1390, but a prompt and thorough sack of the city by Visconti troops restored Milanese control.
Gian Galeazzo's death led to a brief attempt to restore the Delia Scala. With the help of the Da Carrara family of Padua, Guglielmo Delia Scala returned to the city in 1404. The local allies of the Visconti (the Dal Verme, aided by the Gonzaga of Mantua) appealed to both Venice and Filippo Maria Visconti to oppose the Scaliger faction. As Filippo Maria was planning to reconquer the city, the Venetians won over the Gonzaga with promises of several key castles, and the popolo rose against the Da Carrara and sought an accord with Venice. On 23 June 1405, Verona came under Venetian rule, which was to last until the Napoleonic conquests.
In the Roman era, Verona produced several important agricultural commodities: spelt, wood, and wine. The area still excels in viticulture: Valpolicella, Bardolino, and Soave are all notable wine-producing communities in the rolling hills north of the city. Flax seems also to have been grown, and lintiones (linen workers) appear in early sources.
In the Middle Ages, the production of cloth (wool, cotton, and linen) continued to be a significant part of the local economy. Verona's prosperity, however, depended on no single industry. Its economy was diverse, with strong artisanal activity (wood, leather, and metalworking) and trade in agricultural products, manufactured goods, and raw materials. As early as the mid-tenth century, commerce was pervasive enough to draw ecclesiastical censure: Bishop Ratherius once barred the gates of the city in a dispute with townspeople over trading on Sundays. From the eleventh century on, Veronese merchants were active all along the major trade artery linking Venice, and the goods of the Mediterranean world, to Germany and northern Europe.
Through the twelfth century, the bishop held rights over the city's central market at the old Roman forum (Piazza delle Erbe) and collected tolls and dues at the city's gates and on river traffic along the Adige. However, through leasing arrangements with laypeople to facilitate the collection of these dues, and through a progressive diminution of episcopal power in the communal era, jurisdiction over trade came under secular authority. In the early thirteenth century, a council of merchants emerged as a separate deliberative body in the government, distinct from the council of the commune. In 1209, this domus mercatorum had its own podestá and consuls and was exercising jurisdiction over the guilds and military control over the major arteries of commerce (roads and the Adige). By the advent of the Delia Scala signoria, it was the most influential body within the commune.
Commerce was so pervasive that by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was little distinction between a feudal and a mercantile nobility. Even branches of the comital Sambonifacio family were sufficiently involved in commerce to serve as officials in the domus mercatorum, and elite knightly families—such as the Visconti, Avvocati, and Turrisendi—collected tolls and market fees. Urban families that came to prominence through mercantile activities, such as the Crescenzi and the Monticoli, tended to become vassals of leading ecclesiastical institutions and through these ties acquired lands and castles in the countryside. The enmity between Verona's two factions, or partes—the Conti and the Monticoli (later the pars quattrovigenti)—was based on political competition rather than social distance. The mercantile Crescenzi, for example, supported the Conti; and the Turrisendi family, counts of Garda in the twelfth century, supported the Monticoli.
The expansion of settlement in the Veronese countryside during the eleventh century—evident in new place-names and mentions of land clearance—indicates a growing population. In the twelfth century, this rural expansion continued with swamp drainage projects sponsored by the commune. The urban population was also expanding. The population of Verona was probably at least 10,000 in the eleventh century and approximately 20,000-25,000 in the thirteenth; it reached its maximum for the medieval period—35,000-40,000—just before the black death. When records again allow us to gauge the population, in the early fifteenth century, it was only 14,800, but a rapid recovery in the second half of the century brought it back up to 42,000.
Early medieval churches were built of wood in most parts or Italy, but several examples of early stone churches survive in Verona. The church of Sante Teuteria e Tosca was built in the late ninth century, as was the rural parish of San Zeno in Bardolino with its beautiful Carolingian capitals. The crypt of San Procolo also dates from before 1000, as do parts of Santo Stefano. San Giorgio in Valpolicella has an ornately sculptured and inscribed ciborium from the early eighth century; and the monastery of Santi Nazaro e Celso preserves a cycle of tenth-century frescos. Another highly significant remnant of medieval Verona is an eighth-century altar cloth known as the Velo di Classe (now in the Museo Nazionale at Ravenna), embroidered with images of twelve early Veronese bishops.
Verona is best-known, however, for its Romanesque art and architecture. Its political and economic ties made the city a fertile meeting ground for Mediterranean and ultramontane influences. Its early rural Romanesque churches—San Severo in Bardolino, Sant'Andrea in Sommacampagna, San Pietro di Legnago, San Giorgio di Valpolicella—blend Carolingian plans with the rhythmic decoration and rounded masonry forms of the magistri comacini. More refined and complex examples are also found in the city. San Fermo Maggiore (begun c. 1065) is a double basilica, in which the lower church better preserves the Romanesque aesthetic (the upper church was renovated in the late thirteenth century, incorporating Gothic elements). San Lorenzo (c. 1110) has two round towers at its facade and a rhythmic alternation of slender columns and substantial piers down the nave. Good later examples of Romanesque architecture are Santi Apostoli, Santissima Trinità, San Giovanni in Valle, and the baptistery, San Giovanni in Fonte.
The city's finest Romanesque church is San Zeno Maggiore. A monastery and church are documented on the site from the eighth century, although the community was certainly much older. The earliest elements in the present church date from the early eleventh century, but the structure assumed its characteristic form c. 1123-1135. San Zeno is a wooden-roof basilica with three naves, a small clerestory, and somewhat irregular bays (a result of delays in construction). A high choir, its parapet edged with sculptures of the apostles, sits above the crypt enclosing the patron saint, and ornately sculptured Romanesque arches frame the entrance to the crypt. The apse and the trefoil ceiling are Gothic. Alternating bands of white tufo and red brick ornament the exterior. The facade, following the basilican profile, is dominated by a Romanesque porch (protiro) and an immense rose window (dating from the late twelfth century) encircled by a wheel of fortune. Flanking the porch are marble relief sculptures: those on the right, depicting scenes from the Old Testament, were signed by the sculptor Niccolò; and the series on the left, presenting scenes from the life of Jesus, were the work of Guglielmo. Sculptured scenes depicting the months of the year grace the architrave. The lunette contains a relief representing San Zeno and the forces of the commune; the saint offers his blessing and vexillum (standard) to the knights and foot soldiers of the city.
San Zeno's bronze doors, however, are its most notable ornament. Affixed to the wooden doors are forty-eight bronze panels, formelli (two missing panels are in Berlin), which are evidently the work of at least two artists from two distinct periods. The oldest group of formelli dates to the very late eleventh century or the early twelfth century. Toward the close of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth century, the doors were enlarged and other panels were added. These additional bronze relief sculptures, especially those depicting the life of San Zeno, are much more naturalistic in design than the earlier formelli, which have a delightful cartoon-like simplicity. Most of the earlier panels depict scenes from the New Testament, whereas the later panels added Old Testament scenes and episodes from the patron's life.
The city's cathedral, or duomo, Santa Maria Maggiore, was also rebuilt in the first half of the twelfth century, and it too has an impressive Romanesque protiro. The sculptures here are also the work of Niccolò (c. 1135-1339). The rhythmic arches of the portal incorporate figures of prophets; the outer face of the portal has two paladini, usually identified as Roland and Oliver. An image of the Madonna enthroned dominates the lunette, flanked by the angel announcing the savior's birth to the shepherds and the wise men offering their gifts. The columns supporting the protiro rest on sculptured griffins.
Like San Zeno, the cathedral is a basilica without transept, culminating in a single apse. This plan, and its bichromatic (tufo and brick) exterior, place the duomo firmly within a well-articulated local architectural tradition. Its frieze ornamentation is particularly striking: it combines a rounded and fluid acanthus pattern embracing expressive animal figures with more sedately classical dentillated moldings and Corinthian capitals. The roof was raised, Gothic vaulting was added, and new columns were installed in the fifteenth century. Elements of Gothic architecture are also evident in the city's two mendicant churches, Sant' Anastasia and San Fermo.
However, the quality of painting in late medieval Verona far exceeds that of architecture. In the late fourteenth century, the Veronese artist Altichiero worked in the Delia Scala palazzo and completed an impressive fresco cycle (c. 1380) in the Cavalli chapel in Sant'Anastasia. In the early fifteenth century, Pisanello undertook several projects in the city. The most noteworthy is a fresco of Saint George and the princess in Sant'Anastasia. Mantegna produced the beautiful triptych of the Madonna with saints and cherubs above the high altar in San Zeno c. 1459.
The best local artists of the Quattrocento actually did most of their work for the Gonzaga dukes of nearby Mantua. Francesco Bonsignori, who was strongly influenced by Mantegna, worked in the Palazzo Ducale. A painting of the Madonna and child is preserved in the museum at Castelvecchio in Verona, and a series of paintings in the Banda chapel in San Bernardino. Like Bonsignori, the Veronese Domenico Morone worked in the Mantuan Palazzo Ducale, but more of his work survives in Verona. Morone decorated the cupola in Santa Maria in Organo, the Medici chapel and the Sagramoso library at San Bernardino, and the cupola of the San Biagio chapel in San Nazaro.
See also Cangrande della Scala; Delia Scala Family; Ezzelino III da Romano; Holy Roman Empire; Lombards; Urban Development; Visconti Family
MAUREEN C. MILLER
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Un logo, una civiltà: Il Garda, 2 vols., ed. Giorgio Borelli. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1983.
Verona e il suo territorio, 7 vols. Verona: Istituto per gli Studi Storici Veronesi, 1960-.
Verona in età gotica e longobarda: Convegno del 6-7 dicembre 1980—Atti. Verona: Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, 1982.
Castagnetti, Andrea. "Le due famiglie comitali veronesi: I San Bonifacio e i Gandolfingi-di Palazzo." In Studi sul Medioevo Veneto, ed. Giorgio Cracco. Turin: Giappichelli, 1981, pp. 49-93.
Cavallari, Vittorio. "Il conte di Verona: Cronologia del comitato (fino all'inserimento dei Sambonifacio)." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Letters di Verona, 139, 1962-1963, pp. 103-141.
—. "Il conte di Verona: I Sambonifacio e i conti di Verona nel X secolo—Milone." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, 140, 1963-1964, pp. 207-246.
—. "Il conte di Verona fra il X e l'XI secolo." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, 142, 1965-1966, pp. 61-105.
—. "Il conte Verona fra l'XI edition il XII secolo." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, 145, 1968-1969, pp. 203-274.
Cipolla, Carlo. La storia politica di Verona. Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1954.
Galli, Giuseppe. "La dominazione viscontea a Verona (1387-1404)." Archivio Storico Lombardo, 54, 1927, pp. 475-541.
Il primo dominio veneziano a Verona (1405-1509): Atti del Convegno tenuto a Verona il 16-17 sett. 1988. Verona: Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, 1991.
Rosenwein, Barbara. "The Family Politics of Berengar I (888-924)" Speculum, 71, 1996, pp. 247-289.
Simeoni, Luigi. "Le origini del comune di Verona." Studi Storici Veronesi, 8-9, 1957-1958, pp. 87-151.
Varanini, Gian Maria. Cornuni cittadini e stato regionale: Richerche sulla terraferma veneta nel Quattrocento. Verona: Libreria Editrice Universitaria, 1992.
Beliotti, Luigi. "Gil statuti sinodali dei vescovi Adelardo II (1188-1214) e Norandino (1214-1224)". In Ricerche intorno alle costituzioni del capitolo della cattedrale di Verona nei secoli XIII-XV. Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1943, pp. 39-64.
Biancolini, Giambattista. Notizie storiche delle chiese di Verona, 8 vols. Verona: A. Scolari, 1749-1771.
Borders, James Matthew. "The Cathedral Chapter of Verona as a Musical Center in the Middle Ages: Its History, Manuscripts, and Liturgical Practice," 2 vols. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1984.
Castagnetti, Andrea. La pieve rurale nell'Italia padana: Territorio, organizzazione patrimoniale e vicende della pieve Veronese di San Pietro di Tillida dall'alto medioevo al secolo XIII. Italia Sacra, 23. Rome: Herder, 1976.
Chiese e monasteri di Verona, cd. Giorgio Borelli. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1980.
Chiese e monasteri nel territorio Veronese, ed. Giorgio Borelli. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1981.
De Sandre Gasparini, Giuseppina. "L'assistenza ai lebbrosi nel movimento religioso dei primi decenni del duocento Veronese: Uomini e fatti," In Viridarium floridum: Studi di storia veneta offerti dagli allievi a Paolo Sambin, ed. Maria Chiara Billanovich, Giorgio Cracco, and Antonio Rigon. Medioevo e Umanesimo, 54. Padua: Antenore, 1984, pp. 25-59.
Drew, Katherine Fischer. "The Italian Monasteries of Nonantola, San Salvatore, and Santa Maria Teodota in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries." Manuscripta, 9, 1965, pp. 131-154.
Miller, Maureen C. The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950-1150. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.
—. "Toward a New Periodization of Ecclesiastical History: Demography, Society, and Religion in Medieval Verona." In Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy, ed. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., and Steven A. Epstein. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 233—244.
Castagnetti, Andrea. La famiglia Veronese degli Avvocati (secoli 11-13). Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano, 1974a.
—. "Primi aspetti di politica annonaria nell'Italia comunale: La bonafica della palus comunis Verone (1194-1199)." Studi Medioevali, Series 3(15.1), 1974b, pp. 363-481.
—. La società Veronese nel medioevo, Vol. 1, La rappresentanza veronese nel trattato del 1107 con Venezia. Verona: Libreria Universitaria Editrice, 1983a.
— "I Veronesi da Moratica: Prestatori di danaro, signori rurali, esponenti della pars comitum (1136-1267)." In Studi in onore di Gino Barbieri: Problemi e metodi di storia ed economica. Pisa: IPEM, 1983b, pp. 409-447.
—. La società Veronese nel medioevo, Vol. 2, Ceti e famiglie dominanti nella prima età comunale. Verona: Libreria Universitaria Editrice, 1987.
Ferrari, Gianino. "La campagna di Verona dal sec. XII alla venuta dei Veneziani (1405)." Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, 74, 1914-1915, pp. 41-103.
Herlihy, David. "The Population of Verona in the First Century of Venetian Rule." In Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale. London: Faber and Faber, 1974, pp. 91 — 120.
Mazzaoui, Maureen Fennell. "The Emigration of Veronese Textile Artisans to Bologna in the Thirteenth Century." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, Series 6(19), 1967-1968, pp. 275-321.
—. The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Mazzaoui, Maureen Fennell, with Egidio Rossini. "Società e tecnica nel medioevo: La produzione dei panni di lana a Verona nei secoli XIII e XV." Atti e Memorie della Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze, e Lettere di Verona, Series 6(20), 1968-1969, pp. 571-624.
Simeoni, Luigi. "Dazii e tolonei medievali di diritto privato a Verona." Studi Storici Veronesi, 8-9, 1957-1958, pp. 191-248.
Arslan, Edoardo. L'architettura romanica Veronese. Verona: Tipografia Veronese, 1939.
—. La pittura e la scultura Veronese dal secolo VIII al secolo XIII. Milan: Fratelli Bocca, 1943.
Brugnoli, Pierpaolo. La cattedrale. Verona: Vita Veronese, 1955.
La chiesa di San Procolo in Verona: Un recupero e una restituzione, ed. Pierpaolo Brugnoli. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1988.
Da Lisca, Alessandro. La basilica di San Zenone in Verona. Verona: Vita Veronese, 1956.
De Maffei, Fernanda. Le arche Scaligere di Verona. Verona: Edizioni La Nave, 1955.
Faccioii, G. L'arena nella leggenda e la storia. Verona: Lessinia, 1949.
Magagnato, Licisco. Arte e civiltà a Verona, ed. Sergio Marinelli and Paola Marini. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1991.
Porter, Arthur Kingsiey. Lombard Architecture, 3 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1917.
Sambugar, Marta. Una pieve a Verona: San Giovanni in Valle. Verona: Edizioni di Vita Veronese, 1974.
Simeoni, Luigi. La basilica di San Zeno di Verona. Verona: C. A. Baroni and C. Libreria Editrice, 1909a.
—. Verona: Guida storico-artistica della città e provincia. Verona: C. A. Baroni, 1909b. (Reprint, Verona: Vita Veronese, 1953.)
La torre e il palazzo abbaziale di San Zeno: Il recupero degli spazi e degli affreschi. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1992.
The "veil of Veronica," in the best-known versions of this celebrated legend, is a cloth offered by a woman of Jerusalem to Christ as he was carrying his cross up toward Calvary and crucifixion. When he returned the cloth to her after wiping away the blood and sweat from his face, an image of his features was miraculously imprinted on it.
Veronica and the veil. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493, p. 97r.
An object alleged to be the relic, venerated at Rome since about the eighth century, was solemnly installed in Saint Peter's on the orders of Pope Boniface VIII in 1297, and popular devotion to it—despite the claims of similar, rival cloths in Milan and Spain—became intense and widespread during the later Middle Ages. Dante refers to la Veronica nostra ("our Veronica") in his famous passage about a pilgrim coming forse da Croazia ("perhaps from Croatia") to gaze at the relic in wonderment (Paradise, 31: 103-108). In Vita nuova (40.1) he refers to quella imagine benedetta la quale lesu Cristo lascib a noi per essemplo de la sua bellissima figura ("that blessed image that Jesus Christ left us as exemplar of his most beautiful face"). During the later Middle Ages, the name Veronica, applied in the apocryphal (probably fourth-century) Acts of Pilate to the woman with an issue of blood who touched the hem of Christ's garment (Matthew 9.20-22; Luke 8.43—48; Mark 5.25-34), became associated with the legend of the miraculous portrait. Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146—1223), in his Speculum ecclesiae, calls the cloth itself veronica and explains its name as deriving etymologically from the Latin-Greek hybrid vera icon ("true image"). Matthew Paris (c. 1200-1259) claims in his Chronica majora that Veronica was the name of the woman who gave the cloth (who was herself eventually venerated as Saint Veronica). The familiar narrative elaboration in the context of Christ's ascent to Calvary is first recorded in the fourteenth century, by which time devotion to the cloth itself was already well established.
See also Reliquaries; Rome: Guidebooks
STEVEN N. BOTTERILL
Kuryluk, Ewa, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a "True" Image. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Vicenza, a city and bishopric in northern Italy (Venetia), is situated at the northern edge of Mount Berici, where the Retrone and Bacchiglione rivers meet. The territory of the diocese of Vicenza is not identical with that of the county (contado), as it embraces an area extending to within a few miles of Padua, as well as a narrower strip of the area of Verona,
After the Roman municipium Vicetia had been conquered by the Lombards in 568-569, it was soon elevated to a ducal seat and developed into an important ecclesiastical and political center. The conquest of Padua in 603 permitted Vicenza to expand its own territory and gain ascendancy in the area between Treviso and Verona until well into the post-Carolingian period. Vicenza also played a role as the residence of important and renowned Lombard family groups. The presence of a bishop, Horontius, is first documented c. 590. It is now taken as an established fact that Horontius was actually the first bishop of Vicenza.
The foundation of the oldest and most important monastery in Vicenza, Santi Felice e Fortunato, possibly dates back as far as the eighth century. Although the exact date of this foundation is obscure, it is known that the two largest abbeys of northern Italy, San Salvatore di Brescia and San Silvestro di Nonantola, expanded their landed properties and rights well into the area of Vicenza during the second half of the eighth century. Further documents dating from the eighth century tell us of a royal gastald as administrator of the royal fisc. The importance of Vicenza was confirmed when mint rights were bestowed on the town under King Desiderius (r. 756—774). In 825, the capitular of Emperor Lothar (Lothair) I made Vicenza the site of a school for all towns in eastern Venetia (Padua, Treviso, Feltre, Ceneda, Asolo), thus underlining its cultural position.
The county of Vicenza is documented without a break from the ninth century onward, although contemporary sources mention counts of Vicenza only occasionally. Presumably this office remained vacant at times—a not infrequent phenomenon, especially during the reigns of the Italian kings. In the Ottonian period (perhaps c. 970), we hear of a count of the counties of Vicenza and Padua. The general crisis of central power in the ninth and tenth centuries led to the legal and political breakup of the county, and to the development of a phenomenon called incastellamento. These processes began when the church and the secular lords started to obtain castles and procure sovereign rights, having assumed powers of jurisdiction as signori or domini loci, replacing the juridical authority of the public powers. Thus the bishop of Padua and monasteries in Verona and Mantua as well as several secular lords (the San Bonifacio or Sambonifacio family) owned castles and rights in the county of Vicenza. However, the episcopal church of Vicenza took a leading position among those wielding power: in the year 1000, Bishop Jerome received a diploma from Otto III granting him a range of privileges and confirming existing ones.
The secular and ecclesiastical sovereign rulers maintained their authority till the end of the twelfth century. Vicenza's economy, with its exclusively agricultural base, was largely responsible for the relatively slow development of the city; in comparison with those of other northern Italian cities, Vicenza's social and economic structures do appear somewhat backward. The first record of consuls dates from 1147, in connection with the peace treaty of Fontaniva concluded between Vicenza and Padua. (In the first half of the twelfth century, the March of Verona was beset by incessant warfare among Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, and Venice over the control of waterways and overland traffic routes.) We can assume that Vicenza (like the other towns of the March of Verona) was subject to imperial control, either indirectly by the civic podesteria (city magistracy) or directly by imperial administrators. In the great political conflict between the Swabian emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and the cities of northern Italy, Vicenza took an anti-imperial stance. As early as 1164, Venice, feeling itself threatened by Frederick and accepting financial support from the Byzantine emperor Manuel Com nenos, set up an alliance against Frederick together with Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso. In 1167, Vicenza joined the Lombard League.
From 1175 on, power in Vicenza alternated between consulate and podesteria (both native and foreign); thus the families of the counts once again assumed leadership of the commune. During this period, the commune succeeded in overthrowing the most important castle in the territory, that of Bassano, which had already played an important role three decades earlier in the war between Padua and Treviso. After c. 1200, the counts and the family of da Vivaro were leaders of the commune. They always had control of the podesteria, whether directly or indirectly, the consuls generally belonging to their domus. Thus although the commune was an independent organism, its selfadministration was inextricably bound up with die large families who had moved from the surrounding territory into the town—signoria families who were often at odds with the bishop. The chronicler Gerardus Maurisius, who witnessed events in Vicenza and ill the March of Verona between 1194 and 1237, does not mention the commune, but he does talk about families (one in particular, that of the da Romano, whose leader Ezzelino I was podestà from 1183 to 1184) and about the partes into which the town was divided: that of the da Vivaros and that of the count. In those years, Vicenza was thoroughly involved in the quarrels among the large signoria houses in the March of Treviso. Certainly by the first decade of the thirteenth century, domination by the da Romano family, which would last for thirty years, had begun (first by Ezzelino II and then by his son Ezzelino III). After a group of students and lecturers had seceded from Bologna, an attempt was made, with the support of Pope Innocent III, to establish university studies in Vicenza, but this failed between 1205 and 1209, one reason being the political confusion prevailing at the time. A rough estimate would put the population of Vicenza at this time at 5,000—6,000.
Duomo, Vicenza. Photograph courtesy of John W. Barker.
The town community, largely controlled by the nobility, was not able to exploit the difficulties of its sovereign lord, the bishop, to its own advantage. Instead, Ezzelino III succeeded in ruling the town without restrictions and with the consent of all decisive social groups. Following the death of Frederick II and the defeat of Ezzelino III, Vicenza became independent for a short while (1259-1266). It was then under the influence first of Padua (especially in the years just after Ezzelino's death) and next ofVenice (Vicenza had called for its support against Padua). Nevertheless, from the second half of the thirteenth century onward, the town did try to assert its autonomy with a fair amount of determination. During this short period of political autonomy, its independence was confirmed by the drawing up of Regestum possessionum communis Vicentie and, soon afterward, the town statutes (1264), this compilation of statutes having been imposed on Vicenza by Padua. Both texts contain the list of demanded ville, organized in quarters, which the district of the town could claim but which in fact were only very fragmentarily within its control. By and large, in the second half of the thirteenth century, the town gradually managed to assert authority over the plains and the Colli Berici; in the valleys of the alpine foothills of Vicenza the seigneurial families still clung to their power and kept control of masnade and castles. How weak the commune really was became apparent when it entrusted the leadership of the town to Bishop Bartolomeo da Breganze in 1261 and handed generous powers over to him as if he were the undisputed leader of the community. All citizens swore an oath of loyalty, and for the next three years he was in spiritualibus et ternporalibus civitatis Vicentinae dominus. The weakness of the commune became yet more obvious when it was subjected to Paduan rule in 1266, forever losing its political independence. Furthermore, it was reduced by the loss of Bassano, which was handed over to the Paduan territory, with all the attendant losses regarding taxes and jurisdiction. Henry VH's march to Italy and his conflict with Guelf Padua led to Vicenza's being subjected to the rule of the imperial vicar Cangrande I Delia Scala as its signore (1311). In the fourteenth century, the wool-processing industry in Vicenza began to prosper, the town gained tighter control over its districtus, and the decline of the seigneury, especially that of the bishop, entered into its last phase. After the overthrow of the Scaligers in 1387, Vicenza became dominated by Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Following his death, Vicenza was the first of the Venetian towns to submit to the republic of Venice (deditio April 1404); it would remain under the dominion of Venice until the end of the eighteenth century. The commune of Vicenza was governed by the patricians who had climbed to power in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and it managed to retain a certain degree of independence during Venetian rule. Vicenza thus typifies those town communities that gained ascendancy over a certain territory, this in turn being subject to an external political power.
See also Cangrande della Scala; Ezzelino III da Romano; Frederick I Barbarossa; Lombards; Padua
MARITA KEWE
Gerardi Maurisii Cronica dominorum Ecelini et Alberici fratrum de Romano (1183-1237), ed. Giovanni Soranzo. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new ed., 8(4). Città di Castello: Lapi, 1914.
Maurisio, Gerardo. Cronaca ezzeliniana (1183—1237), ed. Flavio Fiorese. Testi Inediti o Rari, 4. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986.
Nicolaus Smereglus Vicentinus. Annates civitatis Vincentiae, ed. Giovanni Soranzo. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new ed. 8(5). Bologna: Zanichelli, 1921.
Pagliarini, Battista. Delle croniche di Vicenza, ed. Giorgio Giacomo Alcaini. Vicenza, 1663.
—. Cronicae, ed. James S. Grubb. Padua: Antenore, 1990.
Rolandinus Patavinus. Cronica in factis et circa facta Marchie Trivixane (c. 1200.-1262), ed. Antonio Bonardi. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new ed., 8(1). Città di Castello: Lapi, 1905.
Statuti del comune di Vicenza. MCCLXIV, ed. Fedele Lampertico. Venice: R. Dep. Veneta di Storia Patria, 1886.
Vicentino, Antonio Godi. Cronaca dall'anno MCXCIV all'anno MCCLX, ed. Giovanni Soranzo. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new ed. 8(2). Città di Castello: Lapi, 1909.
Arnaldi, Girolamo. "Scuole nella Marca Trevigiana e a Venezia nel secolo XIII." In Storia delta cultura veneta, Vol. 1, Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1976, pp. 377-384.
Cabianca, Jacopo, and Fedele Lampertico. Storia di Vicenza e sua provincia, 2nd ed. Brescia: Sardini, 1975.
Canova, Antonio, and Giovanni Mantese. I castelli medievali del vicentino. Vicenza: Accademia Olimpica, 1979.
Capitani, Ovidio. "Città e comuni." In Storia d'Italia, Vol. 4, ed. Giuseppe Galasso. Turin: UTET, 1981, pp. 1-57.
Carlotto, Natascia. La città custodita: Politica e finanza a Vicenza dalla caduta di Ezzelino al vicariato imperiale (1259-1312). Gli Studi, 3. Milan: Ed. La storia, 1993.
Castagnetti, Andrea. I conti di Vicenza e di Padova dall'età ottoniana al comune. Verona: Libreria Universitaria Editrice, 1981.
—. "La Marca veronese-trevigiana." In Storia d'Italia, Vol. 7(1), Comuni e signorie nell'Italia nordorientale e centrale: Veneto, Ernilia-Romagna, Toscana, ed. Giuseppe Galasso. Turin: UTET, 1987, pp. 159-357:
Fasoli, Gina. "Per la storia di Vicenza dal IX al XII secolo: Conti vescovi, vescovi-conti." Archivio Veneto, Series 5(36-37), 1945, pp. 208-241.
Grubb, James S. Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
—. Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Istituzioni, società, e potere nella Marca trevigiana e Veronese (secoli XLLL—XLV): Atti del Convegno (Treviso 25-27 settembre 1986), ed. Gherardo Ortalli and Michael Knapton. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1988.
Lomastro, Francesca. Spazio urbano e potere politico a Vicenza nel XIII secolo. Vicenza: Accademia Olimpica, 1981.
Morsoletto, Antonio. "Castelli, città murate, torri, e fortificazioni scaligere nel territorio vicentino." In Gli Scaligeri (1277—1387), ed. Gian Maria Varanini. Verona: Mondaaori, 1988, pp. 301-314.
—. "Aspetti e momenti del regime ezzeliniano a Vicenza." In Nuovi studi ezzeliniani, Vol. 1, ed. Giorgio Cracco. Nuovi Studi Storici, 21. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1992, pp. 267-322.
Storia di Vicenza, Vol. 2, L'età medievale, ed. Giorgio Cracco. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1988.
Pope Vigilius (a. 555, r. 537-555) had been a Roman deacon. In that capacity, he had accompanied Pope Agapetus I (r. 535-536) to Constantinople, where Agapetus was ambassador to the emperor Justinian for the Ostrogothic king Theodahad. Agapetus opposed the empress Theodora's efforts on behalf of Monophysitism, but the ambitious Vigilius chose to cultivate Theodora's favor, promising to support her aims. When Agapetus died in Constantinople (22 April 536), Theodora supported Vigilius as his successor.
Vigilius found, however, that Theodahad had already made Silverius pope. In December 536, Justinian's general Belisarius entered Rome during his first campaign to recover Italy in the Gothic wars. Through the general's wife, her friend Antonina, Theodora compelled Belisarius to arrange the deposition of Silverius (March 537) and the installation of Vigilius, who sent his predecessor to death in exile (2 December 537).
When he became pope, Vigilius found that he could not fulfill all his promises to the empress: though he made some double-dealing contacts with Monophysite prelates in the east, the consistent anti-Monophysite theology of the church in the west made it impossible for him to betray Chalcedonian orthodoxy. This enraged Theodora, who sought to punish him.
Partly as a result of her persuasion, Justinian adopted a policy, embodied in his Edict of the Three Chapters (544), aimed at achieving a compromise with the Monophysites by condemning certain disputed writings that had been accepted at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and were particularly hateful to them. Constrained by his situation, Vigilius refused to cooperate. Needing his support, and not wishing him to fall into the hands of the Gothic king Totila, who was then menacing Rome, Justinian had Vigilius arrested in November 545. Vigilius was removed for a year to Sicily, from which he sent grain shipments to aid the populace of Rome; he was then brought to Constantinople in January 547.
For the next eight years, Vigilius was caught in a nightmare of complicated negotiations, coercion, and humiliation as Justinian attempted to bend the pope to his will. Vigilius evaded, vacillated, resisted, and temporized, even in the face of force and even when the emperor called the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). Only when Italy was clearly in the emperor's hands, and capitulation was the pope's only chance for return to his see, did Vigilius give in on every point. Broken and degraded, Vigilius was allowed to leave Constantinople in the spring of 555; but during the return voyage, at Syracuse in Sicily, he died of kidney disease on 7 June, never to reach the Rome he had paid so dearly to recover.
See also Belisarius; Gothic Wars; Justinian; Theodahad; Theodora; Totila
JOHN W. BARKER
The Book of the Popes (Liber pontificalis), Part 1, trans. Louise Ropes Loomis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1916.
Browning, Robert. Justinian and Theodora, rev. ed. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.
Bury, J. B. A. History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395-565), Vol. 2. London: Macmillan, 1923. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1958.)
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. 4. London, 1889. (Reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1967.)
Kelly, J. N. D. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
The Florentine humanist Filippo Villani (c. 1330-c. 1405) was the son and biographer of Matteo Villani, whose chronicle he continued for a brief period after Matteo died in 1363. Filippo is first recorded as a law student at the University of Florence in 1358; by 1361, he had been awarded his doctorate and was appointed as a lecturer in law for a year from the previous October. In 1375, he was entrusted by his commune with a diplomatic mission to Genoa, intended to resolve a legal dispute between Genoese and Florentine cloth merchants. Following a rebellion by Perugia against the papacy, instigated by the Florentines during the "war of the eight saints," Filippo was invited to assume the chancellorship of Perugia, an office that he held from 1376 to 1381. After he resigned this position, he returned to Florence, and it was probably shortly after his return that he composed the work for which he is renowned: On the Origins of Florence and On Its Famous Citizens.
In the first part of this work, Filippo did little more than summarize the legends about the foundation of Florence recorded in the chronicle of his uncle, Giovanni Villani. But in its second part, made up of short biographies of distinguished Florentines, Filippo broke new ground by dealing not so much with leading political figures as with writers, theologians, jurists, painters, musicians, physicians, astrologers, historians, soldiers, and even actors and jesters. He thus provided valuable information on men who had made a significant contribution to Florentine culture but who had not previously been considered worthy of scholarly notice; moreover, he set a precedent that was to be followed later by authors writing in the vernacular, such as Vespasiano da Bisticci and Vasari. Filippo's work was corrected and commended by a friend, the Florentine chancellor and humanist Coluccio Salutati; thanks to Salutati's endorsement, it acquired considerable authority, both in its original Latin version and in a later vernacular adaptation, probably by Antonio Manetti.
The closing years of Filippo Villani s life were devoted to a study of the poetry of Dante; earlier, it had been Filippo's gathering of biographical data on Dante that first suggested to him the idea of producing a collection of brief lives. In 1391, Filippo was engaged by the University of Florence as a lecturer on Dante's Divine Comedy,; his appointment to this position was renewed in 1397, 1401, and 1404. Filippo's public commentaries on this text continued an expository tradition that had been initiated by Boccaccio and engaged a number of leading humanists.
See also Chronicles; Dante Commentaries; Florence; Salutati, Coluccio; Villani, Giovanni; Villani, Matteo
LOUIS GREEN
Villani, Filippo. Liber de civitatis Florentine famosis civibus, ed. G. C. Galletti. Florence: Mazzoni, 1847a. (Philippi Villani.)
—. Le vite d'uomini illustri fiorentini, ed. G. Mazzuchelli. Florence: Coen, 1847b.
—. Exposito seu comentum super "Comedia" Dantis Allegherii, ed. Saverio Bellomo. Florence: Le Lettere, 1989.
—. De origine ciuitatis Florentie et de eiusdem famosis ciuibus, ed. Giuliano Tanturli. Padua: Antenore, 1997.
Villani, Matteo. Cronica, con la continuazione di Filippo Villani, ed. Giuseppe Porta. Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo; U. Guanda, 1995.
Calò, Giovanni. Filippo Villani e il "Liber de origine civitatis Florentie et eiusdem famosis civibus." Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1904.
Manni, Domenico Maria. Osservazioni istoriche . . . sopra i sigilli del secoli bassi, Vol. 4. Florence: Ristori, 1740, pp. 72-74.
Marchesini, Umberto. "Due manoscritti autograft di Filippo Villani." Archivio Storico Italiano, Series 5(2), 1888, pp. 366-393.
—. "Filippo Villani, pubblico lettore della Divina Commedia." Archivio Storico Italiano, Series 5(16), 1895, pp. 273-279.
The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani (c. 1280-1348) was a merchant and politician as well as a writer. He was the author of the Nuova cronica (New Chronicle), a history of Florence set in a much wider context, beginning with the tower of Babel and extending to 1348, the year when he died of the plague. In this work, he combined municipal patriotism and a cosmopolitan outlook with a passion for statistics and detail. Despite its length, it was (like Dante's Comedy) a great popular success, circulated in many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. However, although there were a number of subsequent printings, it was given a critical edition only quite recently (Porta 1990-1991).
Giovanni Villani was born into a mercantile family of some standing in Florence. Giovanni's father served a term as a prior—a member of the main governing board of the city—in 1300; and Giovanni and his three brothers were able to secure positions with two of the leading Florentine banking and commercial houses. Giovanni himself became a successful and rich businessman, though he must have lost most of his fortune in the great financial crash of the 1340s. He was also successful socially and politically. He married, as his second wife, a woman from the aristocratic Pazzi family; and he held a place in the ruling Florentine oligarchy, serving in various communal offices, including three terms as prior. His business career not only gave him intimate knowledge of the power struggles in his own city but also put him in touch with the wider world. He was able to travel extensively and receive reports from all over western Europe at a time when Florence was one of its richest and most populous cities. In this golden age, Florence enjoyed—as Giovanni observed in a meticulous statistical description of its trade and resources c. 1338—an income greater than that of many kingdoms. At this time, its banking and mercantile companies controlled and manipulated a disproportionately large concentration of capital and trade. Of these companies, the most powerful were the Bardi and the Peruzzi. As early as 1300, Giovanni was a shareholder with the Peruzzi firm, and c. 1302 he went to Bruges in its service; he was connected with it for a number of years, as were several of his relatives. Then, probably by 1312, but certainly by 1322, he transferred his activities to a new but rapidly growing firm, the Buonaccorsi, in which he and his brother Matteo became prominent—in fact, Giovanni was its codirector by 1324. Certainly by the late 1320s its operations were varied and widespread, including not only banking but also trading in many commodities, and extending over a vast area: southern and northern Italy, southern and northern France, Brabant, Flanders, England, and various parts of the Mediterranean. Although Giovanni mentions other places from time to time, it is these regions of which he seems to have had real knowledge. At least for those chapters of his chronicle that cover the period 1300-1348, we may suppose that conversations, oral reports, and merchants' letters are at least as important a source as chronicles and official documents.
Giovanni's access to both official and private documents must have made possible his unusually rich and accurate statistics about such things as armies, tax revenues, cloth production, wine consumption, coinage parities, and the number of castles in private and in communal hands. No doubt his collection of such quantitative information was greatly facilitated by the various offices and appointments entrusted to him by his city and his guild. Apart from his three priorates, these were mostly financial. As a municipal official, for example, he supervised the commune's money and the building of a stretch of the third circle of walls. As an official of the Calimala guild, he served on the mercanzia council of eight and oversaw the making of Andrea Pisano's bronze doors for the Baptistery. He also went on some diplomatic missions: he was sent to Cardinal Bertrand de Pouget in Bologna in 1329 and a little later to negotiate (unsuccessfully) for the surrender of Lucca. Most of his officeholding was in 1320—1330. After that, he may have been under a cloud, having been tried for barratry in 1331 for his part in building the walls, even though he was cleared of the charge. The fact that Charles of Calabria, then lord of the city, entrusted to the Buonaccorsi company the collection of the taxes from three of the six districts of Florence to pay for the building of those very walls may not have helped Villani's reputation. But real disaster came later, in 1346, after the collapse of the great Florentine commercial companies. Then Giovanni was imprisoned for alleged misconduct as the representative of the Buonaccorsi in negotiations with the communal government about their bankruptcy liabilities. Giovanni does not mention this personal disgrace, but he does express remorse for his share of responsibility in the losses of the small investors in the great companies. We do not know how long his imprisonment lasted. He died in 1348, some two years after it began, and was buried in Florence in the church of the Santissima Annunziata. His brother Matteo and his nephew Filippo continued his chronicle.
For the most part, the opinions Giovanni Villani expresses in his chronicle are remarkably balanced and moderate. His patriotism as a Florentine, for example, was real but not exaggerated. He knew that Florence was sometimes unjust to its neighbors, and though he praised its resilience and resourcefulness in times of crisis, he often deplored its lack of talent for war. He disliked signori and signorial government, but he could not always conceal his admiration for a despot as brilliant as Castruccio Castracani, despite the defeats Castruccio inflicted on Florence. Giovanni favored republican government and connected it with political liberty. But he bitterly condemned factional strife and considered the rule of a benevolent signore like King Robert of Naples sometimes necessary to restrain it. Villani was also critical of republican regimes representing one class, whether that class was aristocratic, mercantile, or (especially) artisan.
Giovanni was not only a moderate patriot and republican but also a moderate, though very loyal, Guelf. The rival Ghibelline party had been driven out of Florence in the late 1260s, before Giovanni was born, at the same time that the rule of the Ghibellines' Hohenstaufen patrons in southern Italy had given way to the rule of Charles of Anjou, called in by the pope to govern the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Ghibellines remained strong in the north and in some parts of Tuscany, but Guelf Florence, Angevin Naples, and the papacy, despite occasionally violent quarrels, were linked by strong economic and political bonds. For Giovanni, these bonds seem to have been ideological as well, reinforced by sincere religious feeling. He regarded Charles of Anjou as a new Charlemagne, summoned to Italy to rescue the Roman church from the Hohenstaufen Lombards. Giovanni devoted perhaps his most sustained literary effort to a long and eloquent account of Charles's Italian campaigns. He also portrayed Florence as usually an ally of the church, from the struggle between Pope Gregory VII and the Emperor Henry IV in the late eleventh century down to his own time. The intervals during the later period when the pope and Florence were at odds worried Giovanni, as did the taxation of the Florentine clergy without their consent by his own commune. At the same time, he did not hesitate to criticize individual popes and Angevin rulers for avarice and immorality, and his fellow Guelfs for factionalism. He thought that the expulsion of the White Guelfs in 1302 was disgraceful, but he was glad that their assault on the city in 1304 did not succeed. He was also glad that Henry VII failed to capture Florence in 1312, but he said that the emperor's original intention had been to deal justly with Guelfs as well as Ghibellines. Such urbane judiciousness was appropriate to a rich businessman who numbered kings and princes among his acquaintances and had wide experience of the world.
In the prologue to the Nuova cronica, Giovanni says that his pride in the noble origins of his city and his desire to delight and instruct his fellow citizens had impelled him to write its history. In Book 9, Chapter 36, he relates that he began to write in 1300, after returning to Florence from Rome, where he had participated in the great papal jubilee. Seeing the ancient Roman ruins, reading the ancient histories, and reflecting on the decline of Rome had inspired him to tell the story of the rise of Florence, an offspring of Rome. Whether or not Giovanni began his chronicle immediately after his return to Florence, it is evident that he wrote primarily for Florentines and that one of his main purposes was to celebrate their successes without omitting their blunders and failures. The history of no other European city except Rome had hitherto been told at such length. Giovanni also conveys a sharp awareness of developments in the physical shape and monuments of Florence—for example, its central octagonal church, the Baptistery, which he says travelers assured him was the most beautiful in the world; its other churches and public buildings, whose siting and arrangement he compared, following an old Florentine historical tradition, with those of similarly named Roman monuments; the dimensions of its walls, towers, and bridges; and even the emblems on the banners of its militia and the decoration on its war cart, or carroccio. He is also aware that Florence is not just a city but a European power, and his ability to see Florence as part of a greater world is one of his main merits as a historian. Giovanni also likes to include a good story or a vivid detail, from wherever it comes. He touches on such topics as astral portents, monstrous births, costumes, public feasts, civil and religious rituals, relics, epidemics, earthquakes, inscriptions, apparitions, the lions behind the communal palace in Florence, coins, Gog and Magog, Muhammad, what might have happened, famous men (like Aquinas, Dante, and Giotto, of whom he writes pocket biographies), sea battles, sermons, governments, and expedients for increasing public revenue. Given such variety, it is no wonder that many critics have accused Giovanni Villani of being episodic and lacking a unifying theme or point of view. Porta believes that Giovanni did revise the chronicle extensively but that his main purpose was probably to introduce new information at many points—a process made easier because the chronicle is for the most part organized not thematically but year by year.
Giovanni Villani, Istorie fiorentine. Milan: Società Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, 180. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
Giovanni certainly wants to instruct as well as entertain and inform his readers. He says that he wants to show future Florentines which actions of their predecessors they should imitate and which they should avoid. The guidance he offers is more moral than intellectual. It is true that much shrewd commentary on business, politics, and war is scattered through his book, but he has no single large lesson to teach. His analysis of the secondary causes of a particular Florentine victory or defeat can be thorough and penetrating, as, for example, in his explanations of the failure of Florence to acquire Lucca after the death of Castruccio Castracani. Very often, however, he is content—as a devout and right-thinking Florentine Guelf—to attribute such disasters to the wrath of the deity at the wickedness of the Florentines: their pride, avarice, and envy. Giovanni knows the Old Testament well, and his God, like Yahweh, is swift to punish. Sometimes, particularly in the later books of his chronicle, he seeks scientific, or at any rate astrological, explanations; but he consistently denies that the influence of the stars negates free will or men's responsibility for their actions, and he expresses again and again his conviction that the stars are immediately and totally subject to God's commands. He does try to account rationally for one great problem in thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century Florence: factionalism. He does so by a literal application of Dante's metaphor about the opposition between the two peoples who, according to Florentine legend, shared in populating the city, the allegedly "noble and virtuous" Romans and the allegedly "rough and fierce" Fiesolans. For Dante, "Romans" were all those willing to submit to the emperor's laws; "Fiesolans" were those "barbarians" who resisted it. For Giovanni Villani, the two names designate two peoples who actually participated in populating Florence and whose imperfect mixing produced chronic strife. He finds the story of this mixing in the Chronica de origine civitatis (written before 1231) and its Italian translations. (It is very unlikely that he was able to find the origin, as some scholars have maintained, in the so-called Malispinian chronicle, which was almost certainly written after his own and was largely copied from a compendium of his work.) In the Chronica de origine civitatis, the Roman origins of Florence were exalted and Julius Caesar himself was included among the founders of the city; but though the Fiesolans were represented as fierce enemies of the Romans, they were not depicted as barbarians. This Giovanni could have found in no surviving work before Dante's Inferno, circulated c. 1314. Probably Giovanni was also paraphrasing Dante's words in Paradiso (15.109-111), as Aquilecchia (1965) has suggested, when he referred in Book 9, Chapter 36, to the rise of Florence and the decline of Rome.
Up to this point in his chronicle, Giovanni is mainly concerned with describing the steady ascent, despite occasional disasters, of Florence, the child of Rome. Afterward, misfortunes multiply and the direction of Florence's development is not so clear. But Giovanni retains much of his optimism until the 1340s, the imposition and overthrow of Walter de Brienne's regime, and the subsequent financial crash. Neither communal nor personal calamities slowed the chronicler's busy pen. It continued right up to his death to provide an invaluable picture of the attitudes of the fourteenth-century oligarchy of Florence toward its past and present, and, especially for the period from c. 1320 to 1348, a narrative source for medieval Florentine history of inexhaustible richness and variety.
See also Chronicles; Dante Alighieri; Florence; Gliibelline; Guelfs; Malispini Ricordano; Villani, Filippo; Villani, Matteo
CHARLES T. DAVIS
Villain, Giovanni. Cronica, 8 vols., ed. Ignazio Moutier. Florence: Magheri 1823. (Reprinted in Florence: Coen, 1844; Milan: Borroni e Scotti, 1848.)
—. Selections from the First Nine Books of the "Croniche Fiorentine" of Giovanni Villani, trans. Rose E. Selfe, ed. Philip H. Wicksteed. Westminster: A. Constable, 1896.
—. Cronisti del Trecento, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1935, pp. 153-466.
—. Nuova cronica, 3 vols., ed. Giuseppe Porta. Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo; U. Guanda, 1990-1991.
Aquilecchia, Giovanni. "Dante and the Florentine Chroniclers." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48(1), 1965, pp. 30-55.
Arias, G. "Nuovi documenti su Giovanni Villani." Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 34, 1899, pp. 383-387.
Bee, Christian. "Sur l'historiographie marchande a Florence au XIVe siecle." In La chronique et l'histoire au moyen-age: Colloque des 24 et 25 mai 1982, ed. D. Poiron. Paris, 1984, pp. 45-72.
Becker, Marvin B. Florence in Transition, Vol. 1, The Decline of the Commune. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967.
Bruni, Francesco. "Identità culturale e mito delle origini: Firenze nella Cronica di Giovanni Villani." In Storia delle civilta letteraria Italiana, Vol.1, Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. G. Barberi Squarotti. Turin: 1990, part 2, pp. 716-728.
Castellani, A. "Sulla tradizione della Nuova cronica di Giovanni Villani." Medioevo e Rinascimento, 2, 1988, pp. 53-118.
—. "Pera Balducci e la tradizione della Nuova Cronica di Giovanni Villani." Studi di Filologia Italiana, 48, 1990, pp. 5-13.
Cipolla, C. M. The Monetary Policy of Fourteenth-Century Florence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Davis, Charles T. "Dante, Villani, and Ricordano Malispini." In Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957, pp. 244-262.
—. "The Malispini Question." Studi Medievali, Series 3(10.3), 1970, pp. 215-254. (Reprinted in Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 94-136.)
—. "Il buon tempo antico." In Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N. Rubinstein. London, 1968, pp. 45-69. (Reprinted in Dante's Italy and Other Essays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 71-93.)
—. "Topographical and Historical Propaganda in Early Florentine Chronicles and in Villani." Medioevo e Rinascimento, 2, 1988, pp. 35-51.
Delia Torre, A. "L'amicizia di Dante e Giovanni Villani." Giornale Dantesco, 12, 1904, pp. 33-44.
Del Monte, A. "La storiografia fiorentina dei secoli XII e XIII." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 62, 1950, pp. 175-282.
De Matteis, M. C. "Ancora su Malispini, Villani, e Dante: Per un riesame dei rapporti tra cultura storica e profezia etica neH'Alighieri." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 82, 1970, pp. 329-390.
—. "Malispini da Villani o Villani da Malispini? Una ipotesi sui rapporti tra Ricordano Malisini, il 'Compendiatore,' e Giovanni Villani." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 84, 1973, pp. 145-221.
Fiumi, Enrico. "La demografia fiorentina nelle pagine di Giovanni Villani." Archivio Storico Italiano, 108, 1950, pp. 78-158.
—. "Economia e vita privata dei fiorentini nelle rilevazioni statistiche di Giovanni Villani." Archivio Storico Italiano, 111, 1953, pp. 207-241.
Frugoni, Arsenio. "G. Villani Cronica, XI, 94." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 77, 1965, pp. 229-255.
Green, Louis. Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Hartwig, Otto. Quellen und Forschungen zur ältesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz, 2 vols. Marburg: N. G. Elwert'sche Verlagsbuchh., 1875-1880.
Hyde, J. K. "Medieval Descriptions of Cities." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48(2), 1966, pp. 308-340.
Imbriani, V. "Sulla rubrica dantesca nel Villani." In Studi danteschi. Florence, 1891, pp. 1-175.
Lami, V. "Di un compendio inedito della cronica di Giovanni Villani nelle sue relazioni con la storia fiorentina malispiniana." Archivio Storico Italiano, Series 5, 1890, pp. 369-416.
Link-Heer, Ursula. "Italienische Historiographie zwischen Spätmittelalter und fruher Neuzeit." In Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, Vol. 11(1). Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 1987, pp. 1068-1129. (See especially pp. 1078-1088.)
Luiso, F. P. "Le edizioni della Cronica di Giovanni Villani." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 49, 1933, pp. 279—315.
—. "Indagini biografiche su Giovanni Villani." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 51, 1936, pp. 1-64.
Luzzati, Michele. "Ricerche sulle attivita mercantili e sul fallimento di Giovanni Villani." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 81, 1969, pp. 173-235.
—. Giovanni Villani e la compagnia dei Buonaccorsi. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1971.
Mattucci, Andrea. "Da Giovanni Villani al primo Guicciardini: I mondi separati della narrazione e del discorso." In Machiavelli nella storiografia fiorentina: Per la storia di un genere letterario. Florence: Olschki, 1991, pp. 3-30.
Mehl, Ernst. Die Weltanschauung des Giovanni Villani: Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Italiens im Zeitalter Dantes. Leipzig: Tuebner, 1927.
—. "G. Villani und die Divina Commedia." Deutscbes Dante-Jabrbuch, 10, 1928, pp. 173-184.
Meissen, T. "Attila, Totila, e Carlo Magno fra Dante, Villani, Boccaccio, e Malispini: Per la genesi di due leggende erudite." Archivio Storico Italiano, 152, 1994, pp. 561-639.
Milanesi, G. "Document! riguardanti Giovanni Villani e il palazzo degli Alessi in Siena." Archivio Storico Italiano, n.s., 4, 1856, pp 3-12.
Morghen, Raffaello. "Dante, il Villani, e Ricordano Malispini." Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 41, 1921, pp. 171-194.
—. "La storiografia fiorentina del Trecento: Ricordano Malispini, Dino Compagni, e Giovanni Villani." In Libera cattedra di storia della civiltà fiorentina—Secoli vari: '300, '400, '500. Florence: Sansoni, 1958, pp. 69-93.
Najemy, J. M. Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
—. "L'ultima parte della Nuova Cronica di Giovanni Villani." Studi di Filologia Italiana, 41, 1983, pp. 17-36.
Neri, F. "Dante il primo Villani." Giomale Dantesco, 20, 1912, pp. 1-31.
Ottokar, Nicola. Il commune di Firenze alla fine del Dugento. Florence: Vallecchi, 1926. (See also 2nd ed. Turin: Einaudi, 1962.)
Pezzarossa, Fulvio. "La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica." In La "memoria" dei "mercatoresTendenze ideologiche, ricordanze, artigianato in versi nella Firenze del Quattrocento, ed. Gian-Mario Anselmi, Fulvio Pezzarossa, and Luisa Avellini. Bologna: Pàtron, 1980, pp. 39-149.
—. "Le geste e' fatti de' Fiorentini: Riflessioni a margine di un'edizione della cronica di Giovanni Villani." Lettere Italiane, 45, 1993, pp. 93-115.
Porta, Giuseppe. "Censimento dei manoscritti delle cronache di Giovanni, Matteo, e Filippo Villani, 1." Studi di Filologia Italiana, 34, 1976a, pp. 61-129.
—. "Testimonianze di volgare campano e francese in G. Villani." Lingua Nostra, 37, 1976b, pp. 8-9.
—. "Censimento dei manoscritti delle cronache di Giovanni, Matteo, e Filippo Villani, 2." Studi di Filologia Italiana, 37, 1979, pp. 93-117.
—. "Aggiunta al censimento dei manoscritti delle cronache di Giovanni, Matteo, e Filippo Villani." Studi di Filologia Italiana, 44, 1986a, pp. 65-67.
—. "Sul testo e la lingua di Giovanni Villani." Lingua Nostra, 47, 1986b, pp. 37-40,"
—. "La storiografia fiorentina fra il Duecento e il Trecento." Medioevo e Rinascimento, 2, 1988, pp. 119-130.
—. "Giovanni Villani storico e scrittore." In I racconti di Clio: Tecniche narrative della storiografia—Atti del Convegno di Arezzo, 6—8 novembre 1986, ed. Roberto Bigazzi, et ai. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1989, pp. 147—156.
—. "Les rapports entre l'Italie et la France dans la persepective des chroniqueurs florentins du XIVe siècle." In Die kulturellen Beziehungen zwischen Italien und den anderen Laendern Europas im Mittelalter, ed. Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok. 1993a, pp. 147-156.
—. "Le varianti redazionali come strumento di verifica dell'autenticita di testi: Villani e Malispini." In La filologia romanza e i codici: Atti del Convegno di Messina, 19—22 dicembre 1991, Vol. 2. Messina, 1993b, pp. 481-529.
Ragone, Franca. "Le scritture parlate: Qualche ipotesi sulla redazione delle cronache volgari nel Trecento dopo l'edizione critica della Nuova Cronica di Giovanni Villani." Archivio Storico Italiano, 149, 1991, pp. 783-810.
Rubinstein, Nicolai. "The Beginnings of Political Thought in Florence." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942, pp. 198-227.
Santini, Pietro. Quesiti e ricerche di storiotrafia fiorentina. Florence: Seeber, 1903.
Matteo Villani (d. 1363) was the father of Filippo Villani and the brother of Giovanni Villani, whose chronicle he continued from Giovanni's death in 1348 until his own. Relatively little is known about Matteo's early life. He was the son of V'illano di Stoldi di Bellincione and, in 1337-1338, under the name of Matteo Villani Stoldi, was a member of a committee of officials charged with carrying out the terms of an alliance with Venice and several Lombard states. His involvement in civic politics appears to have ended, like his brother's, as a result of the bankruptcy in 1342 of the Bonaccorsi company; he was a partner in the company and had represented it in Naples between 1319 and 1325 and between 1340 and 1341, and in Avignon between 1333 and 1335. Despite belonging to a family with a record of service to the commune up to the 1330s, Matteo failed to find favor with the more conservative groups which, from the late 1350s onward, sought to exclude their opponents from government by "admonishing" them as Ghibellines. In 1362, shortly before Matteo's death, this device was used against him, to debar him from office. His undistinguished political career did not, however, prevent him from marrying women from highly regarded Florentine families. He is recorded in 1341 as the husband of Lisa, the daughter of Messer Monte dei Buondelmonti; and in 1361 as the husband of Monna di Messer Francesco dei Pazzi.
Matteo's chronicle, which opens with an account of the black death, is pessimistic in tone and focuses on the misfortunes and barbarities of his age—the threat of tyranny, the depredations of the mercenary companies, and the decline of morality in the years following the pestilence. His interpretation of events is governed much less than that of his brother, Giovanni, by a providential view of history. In his tendency to judge actions by their effects and to defend abstract values such as freedom rather than a particular cause, such as that of the church, Matteo anticipates humanist practice—as he also does by prefacing his books with introductory passages reflecting their texts. While his writing remains stylistically within the tradition of the merchant chronicle, the outlook he expresses foreshadows the values of a new age.
See also Buondelmonti Family; Chronicles; Florence; Pazzi Family; Villani, Filippo; Villani, Giovanni
LOUIS GREEN
Archivio di Stato di Firenze. Provvisioni Registri. (28 fols. 28r, 95v; 32 fol. 63v; Balie 2 fols. 10v, 20v, 46v.)
Green, Louis. Chronicle into History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 44-85.
Manni, Domenico Maria. Osservazioni istorkhe . . . sopra i sigilli dei secoli bassi, Vol. 4. Florence: Ristori, 1740, pp. 75-76.
Marchionne di Coppo Stefani. Cronaca fiorentina, ed. N. Rodolico. Rerurn Italicarium Scriptores, new ed., 30(1). Città di Castello: Lapi, 1903, p. 261.
Renouard, Yves. "Le compagnie commerciali Florentine del Trecento." Archivio Storico Italiano, 96, 1938, p. 164.
Villani, Matteo. Cronica, ed. F. G. Dragomanni, 2 vols. Florence: Coen, 1846.
—. Cronica, con la continuazione di Filippo Villani, ed. Giuseppe Porta. Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, U. Guanda, 1995.
Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro, 15 October 70-21 September 19 B.C.) was born near Mantua to a family of modest landholders. He was probably educated in Rome and Naples, although precise details about his early life are not known. In 41 B.C., many landowners around Mantua were dispossessed by confiscations intended to compensate veterans of the conflict at Phillipi. Ancient notices link Virgil's father and family to this turmoil, implying that their property was appropriated but then restored to them through the intervention of a powerful administrator; however, the historical accuracy of this account is not clear. At some point Virgil settled in Rome and quickly became acquainted with an influential group of politicians and literati. After 39 B.C., Virgil gained the patronage of Maecenas and through him entered the circle of Octavian, who was known as Augustus after 27 B.C. The remainder of Virgil's life was devoted exclusively to poetry. In 29 B.C., Virgil read the Georgics to Augustus, and he later read to Augustus portions of the Aeneid as well. Augustus was very supportive of Virgil's effort and tracked the development of the work with personal interest. Virgil died in Brundisium and was buried in Naples. Although the poet had considered his masterpiece unfinished—and, according to tradition, had asked his literary executor to burn the Aeneid if death prevented its completion—Augustus arranged for its publication shortly after Virgil's death.
The earliest work definitively attributed to Virgil is a collection of ten brief poems known as the Eclogues or Bucolics. The poems, all composed in hexameters, were written between 42 and 39 B.C. The poems continue a genre popularized by the Hellenistic poet Theocritus (c. 310-250 B.C.), in which an idealized pastoral landscape forms the backdrop for a community ot shepherds who discuss love and poetry. Like Theocritus, Virgil sets his poems in a bucolic countryside, an Arcadia that bears as little resemblance to the Greek region known by that name as it does to any place in: the real world. Despite the rarefied setting of the poems, Virgil's Eclogues manage to take up political and social issues of the time: the first and ninth poems, for example, refer to the expropriations near Mantua in the wake of the civil wars. Several of the poems treat the topic of desire; the second and eighth eclogues consider unrequited love, with the latter imagining a lovesick woman resorting to witchcraft. The best-known of the eclogues is the fourth. Here, the narrator prophesies the birth of a child who will usher in a blissful era of peace, a golden age. The poem does not reveal the young boy's identity, and although possible answers to this question have been proposed—including the early Christians' conjecture that Virgil prophesied the coming of Christ—the puzzle remains unsolved.
Virgil, Opera vergiliana. Lyon: J. Mareschal, 1528. Reproduced from original held by Department of Special Collections of the University Libraries of Notre Dame.
Virgil's second collection, the Georgics, completed in 29 B.C., moves from the pastoral to the didactic genre. In four books of hexameters, Virgil instructs his readers on various aspects of agriculture and animal husbandry. The first book considers the cultivation of crops; the second, arboriculture; the third, livestock; and the fourth, beekeeping. The poem, however, remains a work of art rather than a manual; Virgil's object is to examine the relationship of man and nature, and the sizable digressions that conclude the books serve to link the work to larger issues of life and death, the country and the city, and the greatness of Rome. Book 1 ends with an apocalyptic vision of the civil wars. The digression in Book 2 first praises rural life, then sets forth Virgil's own poetic ambitions. Book 3 describes a devastating animal plague. Book 4 offers the story of Aristaeus and Orpheus, a tale of love, loss, and rebirth. Like Lucretius's De rerum natura, which influenced the Georgics both formally and thematicaily, Virgil's poem is diversified and elevated by these set pieces.
Virgil's interest in the history and destiny of Rome take center stage in the Aeneid. This epic, divided into twelve books of hexameters, recounts the founding of Rome by the Trojan warrior Aeneas. The first half of the epic narrates Aeneas's journey from his destroyed city to Italy. Aeneas and his crew are shipwrecked near Carthage and are welcomed by its queen, Dido. Aeneas describes the dire final hours of the Trojan war, in which he loses his wife and carries his aged father from the city on his shoulders, and recites his crew's subsequent nautical adventures. He concludes his tale with the account of his father's death. Dido conceives an irrepressible love for Aeneas, which is reciprocated until the voyager is recalled to his foreordained task by the gods. When Aeneas prepares to depart for Rome, Dido kills herself. In the sixth book of the poem, Aeneas voyages to the underworld, where he encounters his father's ghost. His father reveals to him the course of Roman history, concluding with events nearly contemporary to the composition of the poem. The first half of the epic has traditionally been considered Virgil's version of Homer's epic the Odyssey, since, like Homer, Virgil tells of a traveler's adventures after the Trojan war.
Simone Martini (1284-1344), An Allegory of Virgil: frontispiece to a manuscript of the works of Virgil. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Photo: © Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.
The second half of the Aeneid, in which a bloody war is waged, naturally suggests comparisons with Homer's other epic, the Iliad. In Book 7, Aeneas reaches the Tiber and makes a pact with the king of the native Latins. When the goddess of discord intervenes, war breaks out. The Trojans and their allies, the Arcadians and Etruscans, take heavy losses. Finally, once the gods reach an accord among themselves, Aeneas kills Turn us, the man betrothed to the Latin king's daughter, Lavinia, effectively ending the conflict and allowing for the destined union of the Trojan and Latin peoples. The poem ends on an ambivalent note, however; we know that Aeneas is fated to marry Lavinia, but the last lines of the epic emphasize Aeneas's merciless violence rather than any spirit of reconciliation.
From one point of view, the Aeneid represents as much a monument to Augustus's program of national mythologizing as any of the emperor's many building projects. The poem functions as a bridge between ancient Rome and the mythical past of the Trojan war and thus helped endow Augustan Rome with a sense of its own historical importance. A contrary view, however, is that, while Virgil certainly contributes to Augustus's political ideology, there is ample occasion for the reader to discern the poet's own uneasiness with the more brutal aspects of the empire. In either case, the poem became the model against which any subsequent epic work was considered. It stood—and continues to stand—as one of the most significant literary contributions to western culture.
See also Allegory; Dante Alighieri; Virgil in the Middle Ages
JESSICA LEVENSTEIN
Aeneia, trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Random House, 1983.
Eclogues, trans. Guy Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
Eclogues and Georgics, trans. C. Day Lewis. London: Cape, 1963, 1940.
Works, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.
Works, rev. ed., 2 vols., trans. Henry R. Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Austin, Roland G. Aeneid, Books 1, 2, 4, 6. Oxford: Clarendon, 1955, 1966, 1971, 1977.
Coleman, Robert. Eclogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Conington, John, and Henry Nettleship. Works, 3 vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963. (Originally published 1881-1884.)
Eden, P. E. Aeneid, Book 8. Leiden: Brill, 1975.
Fordyce, Christian J. Aeneid, Books 7 and 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the University of Glasgow, 1977.
Gransden, Karl W. Aeneid, Books 8 and 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 1991.
Harrison, S. J. Aeneid, Book 10. Harrison. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Mynors, Roger A. B. Georgics. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
Pease, Arthur S. Aeneid, Book 4. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Thomas, Richard F. Georgics, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Williams, Robert D. Aeneid, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1972.
Alpers, Paul J. The Singer of Eclogues: A Study of Virgilian Pastoral, with a New Translation of the Eclogues. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Cairns, Francis. Virgil's Augustan Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Conte, Gian Biagio. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, trans. Charles Segal. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Griffin, Jasper. Virgil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Hardie, Philip R. Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
Johnson, Walter R. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Lyne, R. O. A. M. Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
Otis, Brooks. Virgil, a Study in Civilized Language. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. (Originally published 1964.)
Parry, Adam. "The Two Voices of Virgil's Aeneid." Arion, 2, 1963, pp. 66—80.
Putnam, Michael C. J. Virgil's Poem of the Earth: Studies in the Georgics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Wilkinson, Lancelot P. The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. (Originally published 1969.)
From the early days of imperial Rome, Virgil was regarded as the greatest Roman author, and his poetry was venerated as a repository of religious tradition and universal knowledge. The fullest expression of this attitude, which reached its peak during the "pagan revival" of the later fourth century, is the Saturnalia of the learned official Macrobius (c. 431), but it appears also in an ancient practice, the sortes Virgilianae, in which a passage selected at random is used to determine conduct or foretell the future. In the schools, the elaborate commentaries of Servius, Donatus, and others—largely grammatical, but including many glosses of a moralizing, euhemeristic, allegorical, and occasionally philosophical character—solidified Virgil's reputation as a sage and visionary.
Virgil's place in Christian literary culture was almost equally high. The "messianic" prophecy of Eclogue 4 was commonly taken as foretelling the birth of Christ, and Augustine repeatedly invokes the Aeneid in defining the mission of Rome as a vehicle to the realization of the city of God. The Latin fathers continually allude or refer to the Aeneid, allegorizing like the grammarians. There is also a rich tradition of Christian poetry in Virgilian style. Juvencus's version of the Gospels in Virgilian hexameter (c. 330) was a frank attempt to exploit Virgil's popularity; and the great Prudentius (348—405) assumes in his reader the familiarity with Virgil which the education of the period ensured. The hymns of Ambrose (340—397) allude to familiar contexts in the Aeneid; and Sedulius, seeking to convey the joys of paradise in his Carmen paschale (c. 430), cites the idyllic landscape of the Eclogues, the "happy crops" of the Georgics, and the Elysium of Aeneid 6.
Virgil retained his status during the postclassical period. A famous letter from Pope Gregory I (540—604) chastising Bishop Desiderius of Vienne for teaching Virgil is aimed not at the study of Virgil but only at its unsuitability for a bishop. Virgilian Latin verse seems to have survived in Italy as well. Even in the dark century after Gregory and Fortunatus (535-600), Virgilian echoes are heard in the tituli of churches and other inscriptions, and the tradition reemerges strongly with the eighth-century Lombard scholar-poets Paul the Deacon (720-800) and Paulinus of Aquileia (726—802). During the ninth and tenth centuries the appearance of new manuscripts of Virgil's works and the enrichment of libraries at such centers as Bobbio and Cremona attest to a more general renewal of classical studies. The poet who, in 915, celebrated the imperial coronation of King Berengar with a Panegyricon in skillful elegiacs was probably a teacher of Virgil's work: his many allusions to the Aeneid are explained by elaborate Servian glosses. In the offhand Virgilian references of Liudprand of Cremona (920-971 or 972), secular culture is taken for granted, and this is true as well of Latin poetry, which remains dominant through the eleventh and twelfth centuries. An occasional poet, like the anonymous author of the Gesta (1162—1166) of Frederick I, will consciously emulate the epic style, but to say that the verse of the Cassinese poets Guaiferius and Alfanus, Moses of Bergamo, or Pietro da Eboli is "Virgilian" is merely to say that they are educated men of their day.
Awareness of Virgil takes other forms in this period. In two eleventh-century manuscripts, speeches from the Aeneid appear with musical notation, and from the twelfth century forward Mantuan coins were stamped with Virgil's likeness. Harder to explain is the proliferation of a body of popular legends concerning the poet's supposed powers as a magician. Such stories may recall the oracular Virgil of the sortes and the putative prophecy of the Fourth Eclogue, perhaps augmented by the knowledge of magic exhibited in the incantatory love song of Eclogue 8. Many stories center on Naples, where Virgil spent much of his life and where he was buried, and collectively they make him a virtual patron saint. According to one of these stories, he created a bronze fly which, when placed on a city gate, kept Naples free of flies; another tells of a glass bottle containing a miniature "image" of the city, which preserved the city from attack for as long as the bottle remained unbroken. Other stories deal with his power to banish serpents, prevent meat from spoiling in the market, and even deodorize Neapolitan latrines; the location of his burial place; and the properties associated with his bones. These legends were given wider circulation by Conrad of Quer-furt, viceregent of Naples and Sicily in the late twelfth century; and by the itinerant Englishmen John of Salisbury (Policraticus, 1159) and Gervase of Tilbury (Otia imperialia, 1211). The legends became known throughout Europe and appeared in many vernacular versions.
The literary activity of thirteenth-century Italy responded to French vernacular literary culture and to a new narrative form, the romance. The earliest romances, the so-called romans d'anti-quité, include the anonymous Eneas (1150-1160), an adaptation of the Aeneid which grafts an elaborate account of the flowering of Aeneas's love for Lavinia onto the story of his imperial mission. In the Roman de Troie of Benôit de St.-Maure (c. 1165), a rambling account of the Trojan war, the amours of Greek and Trojan heroes are again prominent. The influence of these works, in a period of growing demand for popular adaptations of classical literature, was immense, in Italy as elsewhere, and the ancient poets lost something of their traditional status. The Historia destructionis Troiae of Guido delle Colonne (1287), itself widely influential, pays due respect to the classical poets, but its chief source is Benoit. Guido and Benoit together underlie the several vernacular works of Trojan "history" produced in fourteenth-century Italy, and provide material for even so learned a production as the Tresor of the protohumanist Brunetto Latini. Whatever of Virgil survives in all this has hardly more to do with the classical epic and the classical world than the claims of Padua and other Italian cities to have been founded by Virgilian heroes.
Against this medievalizing background, Dante's Virgil stands out: with striking clarity. From early in his literary career, Dante is set apart from his contemporaries by the precision with which he notes the distinctive characteristics of the great Roman poets and offers them as models for imitation. For Dante, working in the classical tradition involves not just a painstaking synthesis of verbal echoings (as is all too often true of the Latin poetry of the schools) or an adaptation of classical themes to new literary modes (as in the work of the French vernacular writers), but a profound assimilation of the defining qualities of style and vision.
Virgil in cathedra. Thirteenth-century statue, Palazzo del Poaestà, Mantua. Photograph courtesy of Christopher Kleinhenz.
The realization of this ideal, die Virgil of the Commedia, is something more than an authority on the origins and triumph of Rome. Like the Virgil of the ancient schools, he is a figure of exemplary wisdom, and Dante gives a new coherence to his traditional role as a prophet: the Aeneid is a tragedy, fatalistic and circumscribed by the spiritual horizons of paganism, but it is at the same time a secular testament, and its proclamation of the destiny of imperial Rome is a worldly counterpart to the Pauline and Augustinian vision of the mission of the church.
But the figure who appears to Dante in the dark wood and becomes his guide is above all a poet, unique in the elevation of his language and style, a speaker whom only Dante can rescue from the "long silence" in which he languished during centuries when an impoverished classical tradition was incapable of appropriating his power. Dante's bello stile will appropriate that power. This profound affinity of style and the sense that his Commedia is a new realization of the capacities of high poetry, an extension of the epic tradition, lead Dante to identify himself, in Inferno 4, as one of the great poets, a member of the "school" of Homer.
In the years following Dante's death in 1321, there is a steady increase in versions of classical literature, including a number of adaptations of the story of the Aeneid that draw directly on Virgil, but only Petrarch sought to rise to the level at which Dante had addressed the epic tradition in the Commedia. Like Dante, Petrarch views the challenge of imitating Virgil as both aesthetic and moral. Petrarch's Secretum and his famous account of his ascent of Mont Ventoux are charged with allusions comparing his own struggles to the labor and vicissitudes of Aeneas. Like Virgil's, his Latin Eclogues, the Bucolicum carmen, include a number of reflections on the character and evolution of his life as a poet; and his Latin epic, Africa, on the triumphs of Scipio, carries forward the historical narrative begun in the Aeneid, consciously building on the tradition of Christian-Virgilian epic inaugurated by Dante.
Boccaccio offers no such monument as these; his classical narrative poems—Filostrato and Teseida—are in the tradition of the roman d'antiquité, and only in the remarkably Virgilian style of his Eclogues does he take up a classical model directly. But Virgil emerges as the "hero" of the great defense of poetry in the concluding books of Genealogia deorum gentilium (1363-1366), the supreme exemplar of Boccaccio's claim that the dedication, learning, and spirituality of the greatest poets enable them to express divine truths. The arguments of Genealogia reappear in a lecture on Inferno 1, as an extended gloss on Virgil's poeta fui. Curiously, an accompanying gloss recalls the Virgil of medieval legend (whom Dante and Petrarch had ignored), the "astrologer" who performed wonders on behalf of Naples. At the very end of the Middle Ages, this juxtaposition of popular tradition with lofty humanism provides an apt summary of the fortunes of Virgil during the medieval period.
See also Allegory; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Brunetto Latini; Dante Alighieri; Guido delle Colonne; Petrarca, Francesco; Troy, Legend of; Virgil
WINTHROP WETHERBEE
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, ed. Giorgio Padoan. Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, 6. Milan: Mondadori, 1965.
Comparetti, Domenico. Virgilio nel Medio Evo, 3rd ed., 2 vols., ed. Giorgio Pasquali. Livorno: F. Vigo, 1872; Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1937-1941. (Reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1966. See also English translation, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke. London, 1895. Reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.)
Davis, Charles T. Dante and the Idea of Rome. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957.
Gorra, Egidio. Testi inediti di storia trojana, preeeduti da uno studio sulla legenda trojana in Italia. Turin: Casa Editrice C. Triverio, 1887.
Lectures médiévales de Virgile: Actes du colloque organisé par l'École Française de Rome (Rome, 25-28 octobre 1982). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1985.
Osgood, Charles G. Boccaccio on Poetry. Princeton, N.J., 1930. (Reprint, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956. Translation of Books 14 and 15 of Genealogia deorum gentilium.)
Parodi, E. G. "I rifacimenti e le traduzioni italiane dell'Eneide di Virgilio prima del rinascimento." Studj di Filologia Romanza, 2, 1887, pp. 97-368.
Petrie, Jennifer G. Petrarch: The Augustan Poets, the Italian Tradition, and the Canzoniere. Dublin: Irish Academic, 1983.
Spargo, John W. Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 10. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934.
Virgilio nel Medio Evo. Studi Medievali, n.s., 5, 1932. (Special number.'
The Visconti, a Milanese family, established a powerful lordship over Milan and much of northern Italy in the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. The Visconti can be traced to the tenth century, when they were a family of capitanei linked by ties of vassalage to Archbishop Landulf II of Milan (r. 978-998 or 999). From Landulf, they received the archiepiscopal revenues of the pieve of Marliano (today Mariano), which they were recorded as possessing in a judgment of 1157. They held the vicecomital office, which they made hereditary, turning the title into the family name Visconti. An Anselmus vicecomes, mentioned in 1067, is the earliest known member of the family.
The Visconti took a leading role in Milanese politics beginning in the thirteenth century, when Otto (1207-1295) was appointed archbishop by Pope Urban IV (1262). The Delia Torre, who then controlled Milan and were rivals of the Visconti, refused to recognize the election; however, Otto, putting together a force of Visconti exiles, defeated Napoleone Delia Torre at the battle of Desio (20—21 January 1277). When he entered the city, Otto was proclaimed lord (signore) by the popolo. Archbishop Otto ceded the lordship to Marquis Guglielmo VII of Monferrato for reasons of military convenience, but in 1282, Otto reasserted himself, and he was again proclaimed lord of Milan. Before Otto died, a succession to power was arranged for his grandnephew Matteo I (1250-1322), who was elected captain of the people (1287) and was granted the imperial vicariate (1294). In 1302, the Visconti were ousted by the Delia Torre faction (known as the Torriani), but Henry VII of Luxembourg restored the Visconti to Milan and made peace between the two factions. In 1311, the Visconti instead chased out the Torriani, and in that year Matteo I was given a new imperial vicariate. In these factional struggles, the Torriani were aligned with the Guelf powers—the papacy, the Angevins of Naples, and the French—while the Visconti were staunchly Ghibelline. After the death of Henry VII and the double election in Germany, Pope John XXII declared all of Henry's imperial vicariates invalid; Matteo I then abandoned the imperial title and had the popolo proclaim him lord. Matteo greatly extended the Milanese state, absorbing Como, Bergamo, Piacenza, Tortona, Alessandria, and Pavia. This aggressive territorial policy resulted in Matteo's excommunication and a papal interdict, during which (one source tells us) Matteo discussed inviting Dante Alighieri to use necromancy against John XXII. After Matteo's death in June 1322, his successor, Galeazzo I, was forced to leave the city, but that same year Galeazzo was called back and proclaimed lord. In 1327, when Lewis of Bavaria came to Milan and was crowned king of Italy, he imprisoned Galeazzo on suspicion of plotting with the pope against him. However, the two were reconciled, and in 1328 Lewis conferred the vicariate on Galeazzo's son, Azzo (1302-1339), for the price of 60,000 florins. Azzo extended Milanese rule, pacified the factions, and established solid relations with other cities in the Po Valley. The feud with the Torriani having ended, the Visconti lordship became more stable. Milanese communal institutions were transformed, as the older councils became consultative and administrative bodies, while executive functions passed to the Visconti and their appointed officeholders.
When Azzo died with no heir, the Milanese elected as his successors his two uncles, Luchino (1292—1349) and Giovanni (1290—1354, archbishop of Milan). At first, affairs were controlled by Luchino, who took Asri and Parma, won the papal vicariate, and established a hereditary succession for the Visconti house. Then, after Luchino's death, Archbishop Giovanni took charge, acquiring Bologna (1350) and Genoa (1354). Giovanni was succeeded by three sons of his dead brother Stefano: Matteo II (1319-1355), Bernabo (1323-1385), and Galeazzo II (1320-1378). The Visconti lordship reached its highest point with Gian Galeazzo (Giangaleazzo, 1351 — 1402), the son of Galeazzo II, who in 1385 put his uncle Bernabo in prison and became sole lord of the Visconti lands. Gian Galeazzo extended the control of the Visconti to Verona, Padua, Pisa, and Siena. In 1389, he married his daughter, Valentina, to Louis, duke of Orleans; this match became the basis for the claim of Louis XII to Milan in the sixteenth century. In 1395, Gian Galeazzo purchased the title of duke from the emperor Wenceslas for 100,000 florins. After the dramatic death of Gian Galeazzo from the plague in 1402, and a period of weakness under his brother, Giovanni Maria (1389-1412), the duchy passed to Filippo Maria (r. 1412—1447) who married the widow of the condottiere Facino Cane and substantially rebuilt the state. Filippo Maria died without a legitimate heir, and there ensued a brief political experiment known as the Ambrosian republic. The lordship then passed to the Sforza family, after it was seized by Francesco Sforza, who had married Filippo Maria's illegitimate daughter.
In Convivio (4.20.5), Dante praised the Visconti lineage, but he denied them nobility, "since the divine seed does not fall on bloodlines . . .; it falls rather on individual persons."
See also Della Torre Family; Henry VII of Luxembourg; Milan
WILLIAM J. CONNELL
Biscaro, Gerolamo. "Dante Alighieri e i sortilegi di Matteo e Galeazzo Visconti contro papa Giovanni XXII." Archivio Storico Lombardo, 47, 1920, pp. 446-481.
Bueno de Mesquita, Daniel M. Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (1351-1402): A Study in the Career of an Italian Despot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Cognasso, Francesco. "L'unificazione della Lombardia sotto Milano." In Storia di Milano, Vol. 5, La signoria dei Visconti (1310-1392). Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1955, pp. 3-567.
—. I Visconti. Milan: Dall'Oglio, 1966. (Reprint, 1987.)
L'età dei Visconti, ed. Luisa Chiappa Mauri, Laura De Angelis Cappabianca, and Patrizia Mainoni. Milan: La Storia, 1993.
Fossati, Marco, and Alessandro Ceresatto. "La Lombardia all ricerca d'uno Stato." In Comuni e signorie nell'Italia settentrionale: La Lombardia, ed. Giancarlo Andenna, Renato Bordone, Francesco Somaini, and Massimo Vallerani. Turin: UTET, 1998, pp. 483-572.
Repertorio diplomatico visconteo, Vol. 1. Milan: Hoepli, 1911. (See also supplement, 1937.)
Santoro, Caterina. La polttica finanziaria dei Visconti. Documenti, 3 vols. Milan: Giuffrè, 1976-1981.
Zambarbieri, Teresa. Castelli e castellani viscontei. Bologna: Cappelli, 1988.
By the late third century, the loose confederation of tribes that the Romans collectively called Goths had coalesced into two fairly cohesive groups, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. In 332, Emperor Constantine I made a treaty between Rome and the Goths, which brought Gothic troops into the Roman army and increased the trade between the two peoples. During these interactions, Christianity spread across the Danube to the Gothic people. At first Gothic leaders persecuted converts, but one chief, Fritigern, supported Christianity and received aid from the Arian emperor, Valens. The famous Gothic bishop Ulfilas (d. 383) forwarded Arian Christianity among the Goths. During his pastorate, he translated the Bible into Gothic. Arianism then became closely associated with Goths, and it was a continuing cause of separation and controversy between the Go ths and Romans for centuries.
In 376, Huns attacked the Visigoths, and the Christian Fritigern received permission to bring his band of Visigoths across the Danube and settle safely in the empire. The land given to the Visigoths would not support the tribe, so Fritigern began a revolt that led to a Gothic victory over the Roman forces at Adrianople in 378; Emperor Valens was killed in this battle.
For the Visigoths, the next three decades involved intermittent wandering and raiding. Fritigern had been searching for land that would keep his people safe from starvation and marauding Huns, while the empire was looking for a way to keep itself intact from encroaching "barbarians." In 382, Emperor Theodosius I (the Great) made the Visigoths Roman foederati and granted them settlement in Trace. But under their new leader, Alaric, they rebelled and threatened Constantinople itself. The eastern court at Constantinople made efforts to buy them off, but they pillaged their way though Greece and then moved on into Illyricum, territory disputed between the eastern and western courts. Because of the tension between the courts, the western generalissimo Stilicho avoided a decisive confrontation with Alaric's forces, which remained in Illyricum for about a decade, playing off both courts. Alaric had made one unsuccessful foray into Italy in 401, and in 408 he renewed his effort seriously, with menacing effects. The fall and execution of Stilicho that year removed Alaric's one real obstacle. While the vapid Emperor Honorius remained safely in Ravenna, Alaric advanced on Rome and found it defenseless. For three days in August 410, Alaric's Goths sacked the city without opposition—an episode that was not at all decisive immediately but was regarded as a symbolic calamity at the time and has been considered a pivotal event ever since.
The Visigoths—having no intention of occupying Rome permanently and no capacity to do so—moved south through Italy. Alaric hoped to lead the Visigoths to the rich lands of North Africa, but his plan was foiled when his ships were wrecked in storms before he could cross to Sicily. Alaric decided to move north; however, he died suddenly at the end of 410. His successor, Aistulf, assumed the task of leading the Visigoths out of Italy, and their renewed search for suitable lands brought them to southern Gaul. Aistulf compelled Honorius's sister Galla Placidia to marry him (414), and he received official Roman recognition for their settlement, which, in effect, created what was to become the first of the so-called barbarian successor states replacing Roman rule in the western territories. Entering Spain (416-418) on Roman authority to restore order, the Visigoths made a second effort to reach Africa; they were again unsuccessful, and their regime was consolidated for some years again around Toulouse in southern Gaul, in their capacity as Roman foederati. In 451, they supported the Roman government against the penetration of Attila and the Huns into Gaul.
Later in the fifth century, the Visigoths extended their rule firmly in Spain, but in 507 the Franks deprived them of their original lands in southern Gaul. This confirmed the identity of the Visigothic kingdom as ruling the Iberian peninsula. It was only minimally affected by the reconquest program of Emperor Justinian I. The Visigothic regime survived, in increasing decadence, until the beginning of the eighth century, when it was easily destroyed by the Moorish and Arab invasion of 711.
See also Aistulf; Alaric the Visigoth; Attila the Hun; Galla Placidia; Honorius, Emperor; Justinian I; Ravenna; Stilicho
JOYCE E. SALISBURY and JOHN W. BARKER
Burns, Thomas S. Barbarians within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, c. 375-425 A.D. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1994.
Heather, Peter. Goths and Romans, 332—489. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Heather, Peter, and John Matthews. The Goths in the Fourth Century. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991.
Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders, 376-814, Vol. 1, The Visigothic Invasion, 376-476. London, 1880. (Reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1967.)
James, E. Visigothic Spain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Thompson, Edward Arthur. The Visigoths in the Time of Wulfila. Oxford: University Press, 1966.
—. The Visigoths in Spain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
The earliest document mentioning the painter Vitale da Bologna (died c. 1359 or 1361) refers to his completion of a chapel in San Francesco in Bologna in March 1330. This and another chapel in San Francesco, which Vitale finished in 1340, are now lost; but a fresco of the Last Supper and flanking saints in the guest house of that church is apparently mentioned in a document of December 1340. This damaged fresco would be Vitale's earliest datable work. The Madonna del Denti in the Davia Bargellini Gallery in Bologna is signed and dated 1345. Two of the four saints that originally flanked this Madonna were formerly in the Lanckoronsky collection in Vienna. This altarpiece came from an oratory adjoining the church of Sant'Apollonia di Mezzaratta in Bologna, where it was accompanied in the seventeenth century by two wings of a polyptych, now in the city collection and once apparently part of the same work. Some detached frescoes in the Pinacoteca, originally in Sant'Apollonia di Mezzaratta, while not strictly documented, are supported by a strong local tradition and may be attributed to Vitale and dated to around the time of the Madonna dei Denti. The most important of these frescoes is a large Nativity. A payment voucher of 1349 proves that Vitale decorated the Saint Nicholas chapel in the duomo of Udine; these frescoes survive in somewhat better condition than the ones from Mezzaratta. An unsigned but documented polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin in San Salvatore, Bologna, was commissioned in July 1353. Other documents establish the date of Vitale's death between June 1359 and July 1361.
Signed, but not dated, are the Madonna of the Flagellants in the Vatican Pinacoteca, Saint George and the Dragon in the Pinacoteca at Bologna, and some work in Santa Maria dei Servi, Bologna, not done before c. 1345-1348, when the church was built. The frescoes of Saint Eustace, Christ in Majesty, and other subjects in the apse of the abbey church at Pomposa, possibly 1351 (the inscribed date, which is unreliable), are generally attributed to Vitale. Important among the panel paintings that may be ascribed to him are four panels from the legend of Saint Anthony Abbot in the Pinacoteca, Bologna, possibly from a signed polyptych mentioned in an eighteenth-century manuscript; a diptych of the Adoration of the Magi and the Man of Sorrows now divided between Edinburgh and the Longhi collection in Florence; and two Crucifixions, one in the Thyssen collection in Lugano and one in Philadelphia. Their chronology is uncertain, but all seem to be mature or late works, with the possible exception of the last. In 1343, Vitale agreed to furnish four polychromed wood statues to the bishop of Ferrara. These are lost or untraced, and no sculpture is currently attributed to him.
Although Bologna had been a major center for the production of illuminated manuscripts since the mid-thirteenth century, it had little indigenous panel or fresco painting when Vitale's career began. Various panels that were once thought to show his influence may in fact be early enough to have affected his style. Some of these, as well as Vitale's juvenilia, were inspired by the School of Rimini, through which the innovations made around the turn of the century at Assisi, and giottesque and Sienese styles, were transmitted to Emilia. A polyptych from Giotto's workshop was in Santa Maria degli Angeli in Bologna and is now in the Pinacoteca. It inspired Vitale's Madonna dei Dentil, but despite this and other apparent borrowings from Giotto, Vitale's art is generally more Gothic than Giottesque, and it shows a stronger imprint of Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti.
Many of Vitale's works, particularly his frescoes, are fluidly executed, with sharp contrasts of light and dark. The figures are expressively contorted, with lively flashing glances. The compositions are built up of isolated compartments that are not interrelated by means of a visually consistent figure scale or spatial continuity. Here, parallels to the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano are so close that a strong influence should be assumed.
Similarities have been noted between Vitale's work and the Triumph of Death and other frescoes in the Camposanto at Pisa. These frescoes are usually, though not universally, attributed to the Pisan painter Francesco Traini. Their style is shown in some frescoes in the baptistery of Parma, not far from Bologna. Furthermore, some images of the Madonna and child by Vitale resemble a panel at Princeton that is generally ascribed to Traini. It is often claimed that Vitale influenced the painter of the Camposanto frescoes, but it is more likely that the influence went the other way. Proponents of the former theory sometimes hold that the painter was not Traini or some other Tuscan but an Emilian follower of Vitale.
Vitale da Bologna had a profound impact on panel painting, fresco painting, and manuscript illumination in Bologna until the end of the fourteenth century. His style spread throughout much of northeastern Italy, even penetrating into Bohemia.
See also Lorenzetti, Ambrogio and Pietro; Martini, Simone; Rimini, School of; Traini, Francesco
BRADLEY J. DELANEY
Gnudi, Cesare. Vitale da Bologna and Bolognese Painting in the Fourteenth Century, trans. Olga Ragusa. New York: Abrams, 1964.
Gnudi, Cesare, and Paolo Casadio. Itinerari di Vitale da Bologna: Affreseki a Udine e a Pomposa. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1990.
Per la Pinaeoteca Nazionale di Bologna: Vitale da Bologna, ed. Rosalba D'Amico and Massimo Medica. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1986.
Pittura bolognese del '300: Seritti di Francesco Arcangeli, ed. Alessandro Conti and Massimo Ferretti. Bologna: Grafis Edizioni dArte, 1978.
Skerl Del Conte, Serena. Vitale da Bologna e la sua bottega nella Chiesa di Sant'Apollonia a Mezzaratta. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1993.
Viterbo, situated about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Rome on a major pilgrimage route, was an important regional power in the Middle Ages, the chief local rival to Rome, and a papal resort and stronghold. Although later mythologizers attributed its founding to Hercules and Noah, the first settlement was Etruscan. The site of Viterbo was not a center of habitation in the Roman or early medieval period, but it was settled by the Lombards in the eighth century as a frontier outpost. Archaeological research has confirmed Viterbo's accounts of its early history, according to which settlement began in three distinct locations that coalesced to form Viterbo.
Viterbo is built on several ridges that bordered a small river (which was buried in the early twentieth century) at the foot of the Cimini mountains. It is in a volcanic plain that slopes to the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the west. Via Cassia (the medieval Via Francigena) runs through the city, on its way from Rome into France.
Viterbo preserves many physical traces of its medieval past. Its walls, though early modern in their present form, follow the course of the medieval walls. They and the churches, fountains, and houses were all constructed in a local dark-gray stone called peperino. The San Pellegrino quarter of the city is remarkable for its medieval houses. Medieval and baroque fountains—one of Viterbo's distinctive features—are scattered throughout the city. There are a number of small eleventh- and twelfth-century parish churches, as well as the Romanesque cathedral of San Lorenzo. San Lorenzo shares a piazza with the impressive thirteenth-century papal palace, which has a lovely Gothic loggia. The important mendicant churches on the edges of Viterbo were extensively damaged in World War II. San Francesco has been reconstructed and preserves two important medieval papal tombs, but the Dominican church of Santa Maria in Gradi remains an inaccessible ruin. Viterbo's thirteenth-century patron saint, Rose, is still an important figure in civic life. Both her (presumed) house and her body are preserved for viewing.
The institutional history of Viterbo centers on the complex interactions of the various powers claiming some authority over the city and its citizens. As a Lombard foundation, it had a count, but by the time Viterbesi documents began to survive in any quantity, in the late tenth century, Viterbo's communal government was already negotiating as the count's equal. Counts disappear from Viterbo's records in the twelfth century, but nobles, especially those based in the country surrounding the city, persisted. The most prominent nobles in Viterbo's records are the Di Vico, whose center of power was southeast of Viterbo. They were often allied with Viterbo's enemies, the Romans and the emperor, in the thirteenth century, but they became dominant as signori of the city's government in the fourteenth century.
Under the Carolingians, Viterbo and its region became a part of the papal state or patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia. Papal rule only occasionally affected the internal workings of Viterbo's government, at least until 1285, when Viterbo lost to the popes the privilege of choosing its own podestà (city magistrate).
In Viterbo, unlike many other northern and central Italian cities, the bishop was a minor figure in the city's power structure. In fact, during the early years of its development as a commune (a phase when bishops were often particularly influential elsewhere), Viterbo had no bishop; it did not acquire a bishop until the see was moved there from Tuscania in 1193 by Pope Celestine III. Later, the bishops were overshadowed by other powerful figures and even had to move from their residence whenever a pope arrived.
Viterbo's commune first appears in documents in the late eleventh century. At that point it was led by elected consuls, whose number varied between ten and two. The first mention of a podestà is in 1170: Ildebrandino, a member of the old comital family of the region. After a succession of consuls and podestà, the podestà began, c. 1220, to be the usual leader of the commune. Until 1285, the podestà and consuls were chosen, through a complex form of election, by the special council. After 1285, the podestà was appointed by the popes.
The commune also had three main assemblies of citizens. The general parliament included all citizens but rarely convened except to affirm a major decision. In 1288, it had between 6,000 and 12,000 men (these figures were cited by opposing sides in a lawsuit and therefore presumably represent the extremes). The general and special councils were groups of elected citizens. The general council was larger and was for the most part advisory; the special council, consisting of twenty-six to forty-eight men, had fairly extensive legislative powers.
From at least the mid-twelfth century on, Viterbesi documents mention the existence of a popolo as a part of the power structure of the city. At that point its institutional status is uncertain, but in the thirteenth century it appears clearly distinguished from the commune and in greater detail. The popolo was organized by artes (guilds), and its leader was initially the bailivus of the artes, elected by the leaders of the guilds to participate in running the city. In 1254, the bailivus w&i replaced by the captain of the people, an office usually held by a member of one of Viterbo's noble families.
In the 1280s, the popolo led rebellions against some of Vit-erbo's aristocrats, instituting governments led entirely (aside from the podestà appointed by the pope) by popular anziani or rectors of the guilds. The Otto del Popolo survived through the end of the Middle Ages, though its period of greatest power was from its foundation in 1292 through c. 1312. In the early fourteenth century, Viterbo's government was dominated by a single noble, a signore, first from the Gatti family, then from the Di Vico. This dominance by a signore continued through the fourteenth century; it was only temporarily interrupted by Cardinal Albornoz's conquest of the papal state in mid-century.
Some of Viterbo's earliest surviving documents record the young commune's acquisition of territories in its vicinity. The city continued to expand its control over the region throughout the thirteenth century, until its contado (countryside) became a mosaic of dependent, allied, and independent sites extending from Aquapendente in the north to Sutri in the south, and from the Tiber to the sea. The growth of Viterbo's sphere of influence brought the city into conflict with Rome, which was at that time much closer in size to Viterbo than it is now. Viterbo also was frequently tangled in papal and imperial politics, owing to its size and strategic location. The large-scale conflict between the papacy and the empire had local ramifications, for various reasons—because one of the principals was actually present, or because local forces were marshalling themselves to fight in the ranks of one side or the other, or because factions within the city used the pope or the emperor as a rallying point and became his allies. Viterbo was most frequently an ally of the pope. The city's patron saint, Rose, was celebrated for her vocal opposition to a short period of Ghibelline (pro-imperial) rule under Emperor Frederick II; and her opposition was considered all the more saintly because Ghibellines allegedly had ties to heretics. (This reasoning seemed easy when supporting the emperor meant challenging the pope.)
After Frederick's death in 1250, Pope Innocent IV reconciled Viterbo's Guelf and Ghibelline factions, and the subsequent history of the city, however acrimonious, shows no reversion to those earlier divisions. The pacification was marked by the codification of Viterbo's statutes of 1251 — 1252, which are an important source for Viterbese history. The popes were frequent residents through the later thirteenth century, importing European political conflicts into the city. Such conflict was particularly evident during two conclaves held in Viterbo. The more famous of the two is the Long Conclave of 1269—1271, during which the Viterbesi—who were irritated, like the rest of Europe, by the cardinals' inability to come to an agreement on a new pope—took the roof off the hall in which the conclave was being held and threatened to give the cardinals only bread and water and no toilets until they elected a pope. In 1281, local people and the Angevins were both hostile to the Orsini, who were represented by three cardinals; consequently, the podestà led a violent eruption into the conclave and the Orsini cardinals were kidnaped. Viterbo's conflict with the Orsini resulted in the removal of the city's privilege of electing its own podestà.
By the end of the thirteenth century, papal authority in the region was, if not fully effective, a force that Viterbo always had to take into account. With the removal of the papacy to Avignon, that authority diminished, until Cardinal Albornoz arrived to reinforce it. From 1305 until the 1350s, political decisions in Viterbo were made by its signori, who led the city into constant wars with other cities in the region. This warfare resumed not long after Albornoz's reorganization, this time exacerbated by another factional division in Viterbo—that between the Gatti and the Mangonesi families.
Viterbo's economy was largely agricultural: olives, wine grapes, grains, pigs, sheep, and chestnuts from the mountains. The statutes and many agreements with dependent towns (castri) are concerned with raising and selling produce, especially grains. Viterbo insisted, when it could, that grain from its contado would be sold in the city, so that it would receive the tolls and taxes from the sales.
Linen was a regional specialty, and medieval Viterbo was the center of a thriving industry. Because linen processing creates pollution, this industry had to be extensively regulated, particularly to ensure an uncontaminated supply of water. Overall, Viterbo's water statutes are well developed and thorough, showing that the administration of the water supply was very important and that the commune could claim a great deal of authority in the provision of such a basic necessity.
Viterbo was not a major mercantile or banking center. Though some Viterbesi entered into long-distance trade, most seem to have focused on local exchange. The most important of Viterbo's guilds, judging from the surviving documents, was that of the judges and notaries. Other guilds were formed for trades such as builders, butchers, millers, shoemakers, and innkeepers.
The innkeepers must have been important, for Viterbo's economy was boosted by the streams of pilgrims traveling to and from Rome, and by the frequent presence of the curia. The impact of the curia led (by agreement between the city's podestà and the cardinals) to a doubling of the normal rents and food prices that were higher than usual, though not unlimited. The vast throng of curial servants such as cooks and grooms, and the accompanying swarm of petitioners and others who had business in the curia, must have filled Viterbo's lodgings and substantially affected the city's economy.
Viterbo's Lombard period is represented most purely by the cloister of Santa Maria Nuova; it is also manifest in Lombard-style architectural details such as the external staircases on many medieval houses. Many of Viterbo's churches are Romanesque or have been restored to the Romanesque—the destruction that took place during World War II has enabled restorers to rebuild some churches in their original style, removing the Baroque remodeling that most of them had acquired. The cathedral of San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Nuova both represent Viterbese Romanesque, as does San Sisto, which also preserves some of its Romanesque bell towers. San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Nuova retain some of their medieval frescoes. San Lorenzo's other interesting medieval features are its Cosmatesque paving and a Sienese-style striped bell tower.
The papal palace, on the same piazza as San Lorenzo, was built for the most part in the late 1260s. It is the largest surviving thirteenth-century papal palace, consisting of a large meeting hall, curial offices, storage areas, and private quarters organized in a sequence that generally recalled the Lateran in Rome. It is approached by a large stairway and is flanked by a loggia built by the Gatti family in the 1270s; this loggia has lovely Gothic tracery, an early instance of the style in this part of Italy.
San Francesco, the Franciscan church, was heavily bombed in World War II, but has been restored to an approximation of its original Gothic. It contains two interesting marble-and-mosaic papal tombs: one of these, the tomb of Adrian V, is believed to be by Arnolfo di Cambio; the other is believed to be by an artist working under Arnolfo's influence. Gothic influences are also apparent on facades of several palaces that had belonged to noble Viterbesi families: the Gatti, the Alessandri, and the Chigi.
Viterbo's two most important medieval writers were Godfrey of Viterbo (c. 1125-c. 1202) and James of Viterbo. Godfrey wrote the Pantheon, an encyclopedia of theological ideas and history in verse that was drawn on by medieval historians such as Ptolemy of Lucca and Sicard of Cremona. James was a political theorist who wrote on papal and worldly power; he wrote De regimine christiano between 1301 and 1303 in support of Pope Boniface VIII.
See also Godfrey of Viterbo; Latin Literature
ANDREA HOOD
Bentivoglio, Enzo, and Simonetta Valtieri. Guida a Viterbo. Universale di Architettura, 49. Bari: Dedalo, 1982.
Bussi, Feliciano. Istoria della città di Viterbo. Rome: Bernabo, 1742. (Reprint, Bologna: Forni Editore.)
Calisse, Carlo. I prefetti di Vico. Archivio della Societa Romana di Storia Patria, 10. Rome: R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, 1888.
Carbonetti Venditelli, Cristina, ed. Liber memorie omnium privilegiorum et instrumentorum at actorum communis Viterbii. Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 34. Rome: Società Romana di Storià Patria Presso la Biblioteca Valliceiliana, 1990. (Original date 1283.)
Carossi, Attilio. Le epigrafi medievali di Viterbo, secoli VI-XV. Viterbo: Consorzio per la Gestione delle Biblioteche Comunale degli Ardenti e Provinciale A. Anselmi, 1986.
Ciampi, Ignazio, ed. Cronache e statuti della città di Viterbo. Florence: Cellini, 1872.
Egidi, Pietro, ed. L'archivio della eattedrale di Viterbo. Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano, 27, 1906.
—. Gli statuti viterbesi del 1237-1238, 1251-1252, e 1366. Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 69. Rome: Statuti della Provincia Romana, 1930.
Franchi, Antonio. Il conclave di Viterbo (1268-1271) e le sue origini: Saggio con documenti inediti. Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncula, 1993.
Hood, Andrea. "Viterbo in Conflict: The Orsini, Power, and Territory, 1277-1307." Dissertation, University of California-Berkeley, 1996.
James of Viterbo. On Christian Government, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1995.
Kamp, Norbert. Istituzioni comunali in Viterbo nel medioevo. Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1963.
—. "Viterbo nella seconda metà del Duecento." In Celebrazioni del VII centenario del primo conclave a Viterbo, 1268-1271. Viterbo: Azienda Autonoma a cura di Soggiorno e Turismo in Viterbo, n.d., pp. 113-132.
Lanconelli, Angela, and Rita Luisa De Palma. Terra, acque, e lavoro nella Viterbo medievale. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1992.
Manselli, Raoul. "Viterbo al tempo di Federico II." In Celebrazioni del VII centenario del primo conclave a Viterbo, 1268-1271. Viterbo: Azienda Autonoma a cura di Soggiorno e Turismo in Viterbo, n.d., pp. 7-20.
Petrassi, Mario. Il palazzo dei priori a Viterbo. Rome: Editalia, 1985.
Pinzi, Cesare. Storia dellà citta di Viterbo, 4 vols. Viterbo: G. Agnesotti, 1887-1913.
—. Gli ospedali medievali e l'ospedale grande di Viterbo. Viterbo, 1893.
Il Quattrocento a Viterbo. Il Quattrocento a Roma e Lazio, 6. Rome: De Luca, 1983.
Radke, Gary. Viterbo: Profile of a Thirteenth-Century Papal Palace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Signorelli, Giuseppe. Viterbo nella storia della chiesa, 2 vols. Viterbo: Tipografia Cionfi, 1907—1940.
Vacca, Anna Maria. La menta a la croce: Santa Rosa di Viterbo. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1982.
Valtieri, Simonetta. La genesi urbana di Viterbo. Rome, 1977.
Waitz, Georg, ed. Gotofridi Viterbiensis opera. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 22. Hannover: Hahn, 1872, pp. 1-376.
Waley, Daniel. "Viterbo nello Stato della Chiesa nel secolo XIII." In Celebrazioni del VII centenario del primo conclave a Viterbo, 1268-1271. Viterbo: Azienda Autonoma a cura di Soggiorno e Turismo in Viterbo, n.d.
Weber, Loren James. "Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon: Origin, Evolution, and Later Transmission." Dissertation, University of California-Los Angeles, 1993.
Paul the Deacon, writing his History of the Lombards in the late eighth century, thought highly enough of the wine of Italy to suggest that it caused an invasion: "The reason the Gauls came to Italy is represented to have been this: when they tasted the wine brought from this country, they were enticed by greed for this wine and passed over into Italy." Long before this, the Greeks had named the peninsula Oenotria, the "land of wine"; and in the Roman world Italy was famous for both the quality and the quantity of its vintages. There can be little doubt that Roman viticulture in Italy was wildly successful, as huge quantities of wine were produced and sent all over the Mediterranean. This commerce, which reached a peak in the late empire, was not restricted to higher-quality wines (such as those of Campania); ordinary wine of no particular quality also found its way out of Italy.
In medieval Italy, viticulture was based on Roman skills such as those recorded by the agronomist Columella, who devoted two whole books of his treatise On Agriculture to the cultivation of vines. Viticulture was, and remains, a manual task, and a very specialized and labor-intensive one at that. The size of the crop and the taste of the wine in the first instance depended on care by the farmer during the long time (about five years) before the vines reached maturity. Although it is certain that wine production remained important in the medieval period, no literary discussion of it survives until that of the Bolognese agronomist Piero de Crescenzi, c. 1320. Columella's work was copied in the ninth century (although not in Italy), so Roman viticultural skill was not lost, despite the supposed disasters of the sixth and seventh centuries. From the eighth century on, charter texts record vines all over the Italian landscape, on great estates and tiny peasant plots alike, where they were treated with particular care in enclosed fields (clausurae). The Lombard law codes of Rotharius (c. 643) and Liutprand (early eighth century) imposed fines on those who damaged individual vine plants. Such cosseting was the medieval norm; not until later, c. 1300, does the promiscuous cultivation of vines seem to have become especially common.
As the Christian churches began to make more of an impact on the Italian landscape in the eighth and ninth centuries, new uses of wine began to develop. Churchmen were involved with wine not simply as a drink (although Saint Benedict made specific provision in his monastic rule of c. 540 for the monks to drink it), but also in medicine and especially in the liturgy. This interest was reflected in ordinary agrarian contracts between community and peasant in which vines frequently appeared; it was also reflected in documents in which abbots arranged for new vineyards to be planted on monastic lands. The expansion of a vineyard area was reckoned as a noteworthy achievement, as can be seen from the funeral inscription of Peter, abbot of the monastery of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, who died in 900 and was remembered because "he built temples, palaces, vineyards, olive-groves, and orchards; he augmented the treasury; and he doubled the lands of the monastery."
Most of the evidence for earlier medieval viticulture in Italy comes from the north—especially from the Po valley, where there seems to have been a lively commerce in wine all along the river. By contrast, much less is known about the great regions of Roman wine growing, Campania, Lazio, and Umbria; and it is unlikely that wine production there continued at Roman levels. Certainly, there is very little evidence that Italian wine was exported beyond Italy between 700 and 1100 on anything like the Roman scale. From c. 1100 on, the great maritime towns of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi do seem to have been trading in high-quality wine, a trend that continued for the rest of the Middle Ages. At this time, demand for wines of quality also began to increase within Italy, especially in the cities that had been the great wine consumers of the Roman world. From c. 1000 on there is evidence that vines were actually being grown in cities (two cases which have been investigated are Bologna and Rimini), possibly to meet an increased demand. It is not clear if this had also been a Roman practice. Tastes began to change, too. Romans, especially the elite, had always drunk wines such as Falernum and Albanum. Medieval Italians preferred younger wine, normally the most recent vintage. New varieties were developed, and wine came to be made from a quite amazing variety of grapes. Even today, Italy preserves by far the largest number of grape varieties of any country, and some of its commonest types (trebbiano, vernaccia, and schiava) are medieval, not Roman, in origin.
See also Agriculture
ROSS BALZARETTI
Columella. On Agriculture, trans. Harrison Boyd Ash. London; Heinemann, 1941.
The Lombard Laws, trans. Katherine Fischer Drew. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973.
Paul the Deacon. History of the Lombards, trans. W. D. Foulkes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1907.
Carandini, Andrea. "Italian Wine and African Oil: Commerce in a World Empire." In The Birth of Europe: Archaeology and Social Development in the First Millennium A.D., ed. Klaus Randsborg. Rome: Bretschneider, 1989, pp. 16-24.
Imberciadori, Ildebrando. "Vite e vigna nell'alto medioevo." Settimane di Spoleto, Centro Italiano di Studio sull'alto Medioevo, 13, 1965, pp. 307-342.
Montanari, Massimo. L'alimentazione contadina nell'alto medioevo. Naples: Liguori, 1979.
Pini, Adriano. "La viticoltura italiana nel Medioevo: Coltura delle vite e consumo del vino a Bologna dal X al XV secolo." Studi Medievali, Series 3(15), 1974, pp. 795-884.
—. Vite e vino nel medioevo. Biblioteca di Storia Agraria Medioevale, 6. Bologna, 1989.
Purcell, Nicholas. "Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy." Journal of Roman Studies, 75, 1985, pp. 1-19.
Renouard, Yves. "Le vin vieux au Moyen Age." Annales du Midi, 76, 1964, pp. 447-455.
Seward, Desmond. Monks and Wine. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1979.
Tchernia, Andre. Le vin d'Italie romaine: Essai d'histoire économique d'après les amphores. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françfaises d'Athens et de Rome, 261. Rome, 1986.
Unwin, Tim. Wine and the Vine: A Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade. London: Routledge, 1991.
Properly, the term volgarizzamenti refers only to translations from Latin into the vernacular (the volgare) until the Renaissance. However, we need to take a much broader view and consider all Italian texts modeled on Latin or French originals until Boccaccio. There are at least three reasons why this is necessary: first, our notion of translation is a humanistic concept; second, there are many different ways of transposing a text (abbreviating, lengthening, rewriting, compiling, contaminating); third, we must take into account the role played by volgarizzamenti from French in the divulging of classical texts.
The volgarizzamenti reflect a new mode of thought for Italian writers, who were eager to escape the restrictions imposed on them by a closed notion of genres with their corresponding styles. They are interesting because they reflect not only the availability and popularity of texts, but also the changing tastes of a growing audience ol middle-class and relatively uneducated readers. Viewed together with other documents from early Italian literature, the volgarizzamenti reveal an attempt to create a new literary prose.
Among the models chosen for such an enterprise, the French literature of the langue d'oïl was the most easily adapted to Italian: many volgarizzamenti show only phonetic changes from the original and a plethora of words copied verbatim; many texts became Italian only gradually. The literature of the langue d'oc, mostly in poetry, was widely read and available in Italy (for instance, at the Sicilian court of Frederick II), but it appealed to an aristocratic audience that had little need for Italian versions; very few volgarizzamenti from Provencal have come down to us. The frequent and growing commercial relations between Italy and France; the availability and popularity of many French works known in Italy in the original (many French codices which have come down to us from the thirteenth century were written in Italy); and the presence of oral traditions of mixed-language epics in northeastern Italy are all factors in the wide distribution and popularity of the volgarizzamenti in Italy.
Although we can surmise that most or the early volgarizzamenti from French have disappeared, we can measure the interests of the audience through the number of surviving manuscripts. Virtually all of these are anonymously translated. They reflect the more popular levels of culture; the number of codices is generally inversely proportional to the length of a text. But it would be wrong to underestimate the influence of these works: in some cases, for instance, a volgarizzamento has no surviving antecedent; in others, miscellaneous codices contain otherwise unknown parts of texts of great documentary and linguistic interest.
Only a brief summary of the most representative volgarizzamenti is possible here. The Arthurian and Breton legends (Tristano riccardiano and Tavola ritonda), praised by Dante, constitute remarkable examples of a timeless, magical, dreamlike prose denuded of all but the most symbolic referents (trees, fountains, castles, woods). Narrative works (Conti morali by the Anonimo Senese, from the Vies des anciens peres; the very popular Libra dei sette savi, deriving from a French prose original) show a quest for a literary language modeled on the immediacy and power of the spoken word. Translations of didactic works such as Richard de Fournival's Bestiare d'amours and the French version of Egidio Colonna's De regimine principum were popular and influential. Books written by Italian authors in French (Brunetto Latini's Tresor and Marco Polo's Divisament don monde) were translated very soon; many scientific works came through French translations of Latin and Arab works (Zucchero Bencivenni's fine Italian translation of Aldobrandino da Siena's Régime di corps dates from 1310).
The classical heritage exerted a very strong pull on the middleclass audience, especially as the comuni developed and sought legitimation in knowledge of the past. Six versions of the popular French text Li fet des romains (dated 1213-1214; first translated c. 1260) have survived, in more than sixty manuscripts; Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie was adapted in a number of works (among which is the Conti di antichi cavalieri). The growing interest in history is brilliantly represented by the first translation of Livy in Italy, the First Decade, made in 1323, already a sign of a changing cultural climate; the language is effective, and the orations are noble and powerful.
With volgarizzamenti from Latin, Italian literature begins to show real signs of the vitality that will lead to humanism. Latin literature provided prestigious models and an abundance of materials that gave an impetus to ever-greater experimentation in genres and styles. We can follow a progression from short and still largely fictionalized texts (Fiori e vita di filosafi, Disciplina clericalis) toward more ambitious projects, such as the Storie de Troia and the Miracole de Roma. Perhaps the central classical author to be translated is Cicero; he is widely present in the romance tradition as a knight or a cleric, and he becomes the master of rhetoric, which gradually took over the old system of knowledge based on the artes. Thus Guidotto da Bologna's Fiore di retorica (a translation of the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad herennium) is quickly followed by Brunetto Latini's Rettorica (a partial version of De inventione, written in France shortly after 1260) and perhaps even more significantly by the three orations (Pro Ligario, Pro rege Deiotaro, Pro Marcello), which were meant to provide models of eloquence for the political world of the communes. Brunetto started to disseminate an idea of the cultured man as one who knows how to express himself. Vocabulary expands greatly with pedagogic works (the scholastic Disticha catonis) and scientific texts (notable in this respect is Pier de' Crescenzi's voluminous Trattato di agricoltura, written c. 1310), among which medical works attributed to Zucchero Bencivenni figure prominently. Pious literature represents another tendency and another quest for expression which yielded interesting results in Domenico Cavalca (Vite di Santi Padri, Dialogo di San Gregorio) and in the volgarizzamenti of Albertano da Brescia; the anonymous translation of the Legenda aurea is essential reading for understanding the origins of Boccaccio's Decameron.
The great role played by Bono Giamboni in the development of volgare can be measured by comparing his original work (il libro de' vizi e delle virtudi) with his translations from Latin, notably Orosius and Vegetius; although no translation of his from French can be identified with certainty, he is perhaps the most widely attributed translator of the Duecento. Around 1310, Bartolomeo da San Concordio's translations of Sallust reveal an author preoccupied with reproducing the concise and powerful style of his original, where the quality of the expression is designed to match the content of the narrative. From here the road to humanism is visible: when we read the transla tion of Valerius Maximus, it is easy to breathe a new air of respect for the source and its language (res publico, is repubblica, not comune; legatus is legato, not ambasciatore). The figure of Livy casts a gigantic shadow over the cultural landscape when the Third Decade and Fourth Decade are translated (from Petrarch's emended text), perhaps by Boccaccio himself, in the mid-fourteenth century; one can find in this work the full balanced sentence, the harmony of the synctactic elements, and the power of expression of a mature literature.
A final word about volgarizzamenti of poetry: if prose is truly the bearer of the great novelty represented by the volgarizzamenti, then the translations of poetry represent a more specific quest for the expressiveness of the single word; medieval translators experimented with Virgil (1320-1340), Boethius (1330), and especially Ovid (Remedia amoris, Heroides, and Metamorphoses). Recent years have seen a revival of scholarly interest in the volgarizzamenti, and a number of much-improved editions, but a great deal of work remains to be done to give us a clearer view of the role played by the volgarizzamenti in the development of a consciousness of the unique Italian literary experience.
See also Albertano of Brescia; Arthurian Material in Italy; Bartolomeo da San Concordio; Bencivenni, Zucchero; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Bono Giamboni; Cavalca, Domenico; Disticha Catonis; Petrarca, Francesco; Polo, Marco; Tavola Ritonda; Tristan; Troy, Legend of
DAVID P. BENETEAU
Lippi Bigazzi, Vanna, ed. I volgarizzamenti trecenteschi dell'Ars amandi e dei Remedia amoris: Edizione critica. Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1987.
Schiaffini, Alfredo. Testi fiorentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento. Florence: Sansoni, 1926.
Segre, Cesare, ed. Volgarizzamenti del Due e Trecento. Turin: UTET, 1953.
Segre, Cesare, and Mario Marti, eds. La prosa del Duecento. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1959.
Casella, Maria Teresa. Tra Boccaccio e Petrarca: I volgarizzamenti di Livio e di Valerio Massimo. Padua: Antenore, 1982.
Crespo, Roberto. "Volgarizzamenti." 1st Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, 2nd ed., Vol. 3. Turin: UTET, 1986, pp. 462-468.
Folena, Gianfranco. Volgarizzare e tradurre. Turin: Einaudi, 1991.
Maggini, Francesco, I primi volgarizzamenti dai classici latini. Florence: Le Monnier, 1952.
Segre, Cesare. Lingua, stile, e società: Studi sulla storia della prosa italiana. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963.
Petrucci, Armando. Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
Volterra, in Tuscany, was founded on a Villanovian site and was an ancient Etruscan city (Velathri), the northernmost of the twelve cities in the Etruscan confederation. In the third century B.C. it entered into an alliance with Rome, becoming the Roman municipium Volaterrae. It retained local rights and liberties and enjoyed considerable prosperity down to the period of the social wars. Then, because of its support of the Marian faction, it was besieged and punished by the supporters of Sulla, who reduced it to a military colony. In this diminished state, it passed through the Roman imperial period.
By the fifth century, it was an episcopal city and a place of refuge for Catholic Christians who were being persecuted by the Vandals of North Africa. Successively, under the Lombards and Franks, it was the residence of a count; but over time the bishops became the true rulers of the city. Their jurisdiction and powers were confirmed successively by emperors Henry III (1052), Frederick I Barbarossa (1164, 1185), and Henry VI Hohenstaufen (1189, 1194). From 1150 to 1239 the powerful office of bishop became a hereditary monopoly of the Pannocchieschi family. As early as 1150, however, a commune had begun to emerge in the city under its own consuls and eventually (1193) a podestà, challenging episcopal authority.
In the course of the thirteenth century, the commune achieved dominance in the city, subjecting powerful feudal nobles in the countryside. However, factional struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines prompted a brief ascendency of the supporters of Frederick II in 1245-1250. By the constitutum of 1252, provision was made for a podestà, a capitano, and twelve anziani (elders). Nevertheless, continued internal strife made Volterra vulnerable to interventions by the neighboring cities of Florence, Siena, and Pisa. Episodes of revived episcopal leadership alternated with renewed struggles between Guelfs and Ghi bellines. Experiments with seigneurial regimes were climaxed by those of Ottaviano Belforti (1340), alternating with those of the duke of Athens (Walter of Brienne, 1342-1343) and his sons (1348). Finally, in 1361, the Florentines seized the city's fortress, imposed their own capitano, and excluded all native citizens from political offices. Volterra thus became a part of Florence's progressive absorption of all of Tuscany. Subsequent Florentine rule of the city did not pass, however, without recurrent episodes of rebellion.
Volterra preserves a rich assortment of material survivals from all phases of its history. The massive Etruscan walls are an outstanding example of their kind. The museum (Museo Etrusco Guarnacci) houses one of the finest collections of Etruscan antiquities in Italy. From the Roman period, a splendid theater and adjacent baths have been excavated. The historic center preserves numerous medieval monuments, among which are many ordinary houses and towers of the period. The Palazzo dei Priori (1208-1254) is perhaps the archetypical civic palace in Tuscany. Across the square from it is the Palazzo Pretorio, which, combining various structures of the thirteenth century together with the Torre del Porcellino (or del Podestà), served as the residence of the capitano del popolo. The duomo, begun in the twelfth century in the Romanesque style, was rebuilt in the Pisan style in the thirteenth century and later underwent extensive internal changes; it houses a celebrated Deposition group by a Pisan sculptor in polychrome woodcarving (1228). The octagonal baptistery with alternating horizontal bands of black and white marble has sculptured heads of Christ, Mary, and the apostles on the architrave over the doorway (dated 1283). The city's medieval heritage is conveyed not merely by individual buildings but by its character and atmosphere.
JOHN W. BARKER and CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ
Carli, Enzo. Volterra nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento. Pisa: Pacini, 1978.
