Excerpt from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 58 Je crois furtout que nous ne tenons rien, ni nous ni les Chinois des Egyptiens. Ils n'ont pu former une fociéte policée et favante que long-temps après nous puifqu'il leur a fallu dompter leur Nil avant de pouvoir cultiver les campagnes et bâtir leurs villes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The innovative city culture of Florence was the crucible within which Renaissance ideas first caught fire. With its soaring cathedral dome and its classically-inspired palaces and piazzas, it is perhaps the finest single expression of a society that is still at its heart an urban one. For, as Brian Jeffrey Maxson reveals, it is above all the city-state – the walled commune which became the chief driver of European commerce, culture, banking and art – that is medieval Italy's enduring legacy to the present. Charting the transition of Florence from an obscure Guelph republic to a regional superpower in which the glittering court of Lorenzo the Magnificent became the pride and envy of the continent, the author authoritatively discusses a city that looked to the past for ideas even as it articulated a novel creativity. Uncovering passionate dispute and intrigue, Maxson sheds fresh light too on seminal events like the fiery end of oratorical firebrand Savonarola and Giuliano de' Medici's brutal murder by the rival Pazzi family. This book shows why Florence, harbinger and heartland of the Renaissance, is and has always been unique.

This study provides an overview of Florentine intellectual life and community in the late Renaissance. It shows how studies of language helped Florentines to develop their own story as a people distinct from ancient Greece or Rome.

The sixteenth century was a period of tumultuous religious change in Italy as in Europe as a whole, a period when movements for both reform and counter-reform reflected and affected shifting religious sensibilities. Cinquecento culture was profoundly shaped by these religious currents, from the reform poetry of the 1530s and early 1540s, to the efforts of Tridentine theologians later in the century to renew Catholic orthodoxy across cultural life. This interdisciplinary volume offers a carefully balanced collection of essays by leading international scholars in the fields of Italian Renaissance literature, music, history and history of art, addressing the fertile question of the relationship between religious change and shifting cultural forms in sixteenth-century Italy. The contributors to this volume are throughout concerned to demonstrate how a full understanding of Cinquecento religious culture might be found as much in the details of the relationship between cultural and religious developments, as in any grand narrative of the period. The essays range from the art of Cosimo I's Florence, to the music of the Confraternities of Rome; from the private circulation of religious literature in manuscript form, to the public performances of musical laude in Florence and Tuscany; from the art of Titian and Tintoretto to the religious poetry of Vittoria Colonna and Torquato Tasso. The volume speaks of a Cinquecento in which religious culture was not always at ease with itself and the broader changes around it, but was nonetheless vibrant and plural. Taken together, this new and ground-breaking research makes a major contribution to the development of a more nuanced understanding of cultural responses to a crucial period of reform and counter-reform, both within Italy and beyond.

The Grand Tour has become a subject of major interest to scholars and general readers interested in exploring the historic connections between nations and their intellectual and artistic production. Although traditionally associated with the eighteenth century, when wealthy Englishmen would complete their education on the continent, the Grand Tour is here investigated in a wider context, from the decline of the Roman Empire to recent times. Authors from Chaucer to Erasmus came to mock the custom but even the Reformation did not stop the urge to travel. From the mid-sixteenth century, northern Europeans justified travel to the south in terms of education. The English had previously travelled to Italy to study the classics; now they travelled to learn Italian and study medicine, diplomacy, dancing, riding, fencing, and, eventually, art and architecture. Famous men, and an increasing proportion of women, all contributed to establishing a convention which eventually came to dominate European culture. Documenting the lives and travels of these personalities, Professor Chaney's remarkable book provides a complete picture of one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of western civilisation.

Mining the rich documentary sources housed in Tuscan archives and taking advantage of the breadth and depth of scholarship produced in recent years, the seventeen essays in this Companion to Cosimo I de' Medici provide a fresh and systematic overview of the life and career of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, with special emphasis on Cosimo I's education and intellectual interests, cultural policies, political vision, institutional reforms, diplomatic relations, religious beliefs, military entrepreneurship, and dynastic concerns. Contributors: Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Nicholas Scott Baker, Sheila Barker, Stefano Calonaci, Brendan Dooley, Daniele Edigati, Sheila ffolliott, Catherine Fletcher, Andrea Gáldy, Fernando Loffredo, Piergabriele Mancuso, Jessica Maratsos, Carmen Menchini, Oscar Schiavone, Marcello Simonetta, and Henk Th. van Veen.

A pioneering text which covers the urban society of early modern Europe as a whole. Challenges the usual emphasis on regional diversity by stressing the extent to which cities across Europe shared a common urban civilization whose major features remained remarkably constant throughout the period. After outlining the physical, political, religious, economic and demographic parameters of urban life, the author vividly depicts the everyday routines of city life and shows how pitifully vulnerable city-dwellers were to disasters, epidemics, warfare and internal strife.

A concise history of Italy from the fall of the Roman empire in the west to the present day.

Nestled in the Apennines, cradle of the Renaissance, home of Dante, Michelangelo, and the Medici, Florence is unlike any other city in its extraordinary mingling of great art and literature, natural splendor, and remarkable history. Intimate and grand, learned and engaging, Michael Levey's Florence renders the city in all of its madness and magnificence.