Medieval Italy - (Middle Ages) by Katherine L Jansen & Joanna Drell & Frances Andrews (Paperback)

About the Book

Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation gathers together, for the first time in one volume, newly translated primary sources critical to the study of the Italian Middle Ages, ca. 1000-1400 C.E. What makes this volume unique, too, is its incorporation of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily into a larger narrative of Italian history.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"This collection of texts from throughout the Italian peninsula, translated from Latin, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and even Spanish, and ranging in date from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is an ambitious undertaking, representing the full cultural diversity of medieval Italy, its islands and colonies. . . . A very rich and varied collection, long in the making, but well worth the wait."-- "Early Medieval Europe"

About the Author

Katherine L. Jansen is Associate Professor of History at The Catholic University of America, Joanna Drell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond, and Frances Andrews is Reader in Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews.