Recent studies of medieval preaching have tended to focus on sermon texts. This is the first scholarly study in English of preaching and its social context in thirteenth-century Italy. Augustine Thompson O.P., both an academic and a preacher, reconstructs the "Great Devotion" of 1233 and analyzes its devotional, social, political, and legal elements. He shows how the preachers of this revival crafted an image of divine authority that supported their intervention in factional disputes and facilitated their arbitration in social and political conflicts. They exploited forms from revived Roman Law and developing city statutes in order to create flexible procedures for mediation, and ultimately were able to revise communal ordinances to enshrine their message of social harmony. This is a work of original scholarship, carefully researched and lucidly written, which is a valuable contribution to our understanding of religion and politics in the middle ages.

Writing for general readers and specialists alike, Gallo illuminates the artistic, cultural, social, and political dimensions of secular music, vocal and instrumental. His account also sheds new light on the potent influence of French culture in Italian courtly life.

Medieval Italy gathers together an unparalleled selection of newly translated primary sources from the central and later Middle Ages, a period during which Italy was famous for its diverse cultural landscape of urban towers and fortified castles, the spirituality of Saints Francis and Clare, and the vernacular poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The texts highlight the continuities with the medieval Latin West while simultaneously emphasizing the ways in which Italy was exceptional, particularly for its cities that drove Mediterranean trade, its new communal forms of government, the impact of the papacy's temporal claims on the central peninsula, and the richly textured religious life of the mainland and its islands. A unique feature of this volume is its incorporation of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily—the glittering Norman court at Palermo, the multicultural emporium of the south, and the kingdoms of Frederick II—into a larger narrative of Italian history. Including Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Lombard sources, the documents speak in ethnically and religiously differentiated voices, while providing wider chronological and geographical coverage than previously available. Rich in interdisciplinary texts and organized to enable the reader to focus by specific region, topic, or period, this is a volume that will be an essential resource for anyone with a professional or private interest in the history, religion, literature, politics, and built environment of Italy from ca. 1000 to 1400.

A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry takes a ground-breaking approach to the relationships between centers of medieval Hebrew poetry and their implications regarding matters of poetics. It shows on the one hand how literary efforts by members of the Spanish school of secular poetry, from its zenith in the eleventh century to the thirteenth century, helped gradually shape its predominance. On the other hand, it presents thirteenth century Hebrew poets from Iraq, Egypt, Italy and Provence, and charts the different strategies of these “peripheral” authors, who had to cope with Iberian fame. The analysis, which draws on concepts from literary and cultural theories, provides close readings of many works in both the original Hebrew and, in most cases for the first time, an English translation. "Kfir’s book makes a strong case for the craft, vibrancy, and richness of Medieval Hebrew poetry as rooted in place. Highly recommended for scholars of medieval Hebrew poetry, poetry aficionados, and historians." - David B. Levy, Touro College, in: Association of Jewish LIbraries 8.4 (2018)

This book is not meant to be a definitive exploration of the whole of the two churches in any case. The attempt would be absurd. But the book is not meant, either, to be an intense exploration of "certain aspects" of the two churches. It is meant rather to be an extended essay about the connected differences between the two churches, to use "aspects" as touchstones for comparison. It is meant to be a comparison of two total styles. These are not architectural styles, although there is a marked and significant difference between English and Italian ecclesiastical architecture in the thirteenth century. The nonarchitectural style of the thirteenth-century Italian church might in fact be called sustained Romanesque, or perhaps sustained Burgundian. Comparing England (or Britain) with Italy in order to expose more fully one or both is not a new idea. Historians, like Tacitus and Collingwood, have made the comparison, and so have poets, like Browning and, with superb intellectuality, Clough. This is, at least locally, where angels feared to tread. The famous Venetian Anonymous wrote from the other side in his Relation (of about 1500), and condensed for us his comparison in the observation that unlike the Italians the English felt no real love, only lust. The spring bough and the melon-flower, Collingwood's city and field—the long continuity of the difference is startlingly apparent. Explaining the continuity (and perhaps there is no more difficult sort of historical explanation—its difficulty is painful to the mind) is not the job that this book sets itself. But it would be dull and dishonest to ignore the fact that the continuity exists. All that this book has to say may be no more than that the thirteenthcentury Italian church was in fact, as Browning warned, a melon-flower. The book may be only a gloss on amore. The symbol is more inclusive, more evocative, less guilty of excluding the essential but undefined, than detailed description can be. Melon-flower and amore, however, fortunately for the purpose of this book, say very little about the intricate, connected detail of administrative history. Collingwood's (after Tacitus's) city against field presses less deeply but says more. The general difference between the styles of the English and Italian churches has a great deal to do, and very directly, with the fact that the inhabitants of Italy were continually city-dwellers and the inhabitants of Britain were essentially not. Although this book is about both England and Italy, it approaches them differently. The thirteenth-century Italian church is, particularly in English and French, practically unknown. Before it can be explained or analyzed, it must be recreated, formed again in detail. The job is in part really archaeological. The outline of past existence must be uncovered. This is not at all true of the thirteenth-century English church. It has been well explored. This disparity in past observation forces my book to talk much more of Italy than of England; but, if it is a book about one church rather than the other, it is a book about England. England is meant to be seen, for a change, against what it was not. In this sort of profile it has a different look. England may no longer seem a country in the frozen North, incapable, in the distance, of responding fully to Lateran enthusiasm. Its full response to ecclesiastical government may seem clearly connected with its, of course relatively, full response to secular government.

Robert Brentano evokes papal Rome in all its paradox and complicated brilliance. From a detailed re-creation of the physical "town" with its series of brick "campanili" and green and purple mosaic floors, to the intrigues of the great families, like the Orsini and Colonna, the reader is guided through complex and fascinating culture. Brentano's skill lies in his ability to combine the story of the vaulting ambition of the great families, only mildly tempered by their very real religious piety, with a vivid reconstruction of everyday life in postclassical Rome.

In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.

"Explores the history and architecture of two city squares, constructed by rival political parties, in the Italian city of Parma from 1196 to 1300"--Provided by publisher.