Kategoria BISAC: History >> Europe - Italy

They envisioned a brave new world, and what they got was fascism. As vibrant as its counterparts in Paris, Munich, and Milan, the avant-garde of Florence rose on a wave of artistic, political, and social idealism that swept the world with the arrival of the twentieth century. How the movement flourished in its first heady years, only to flounder in the bloody wake of World War I, is a fascinating story, told here for the first time. It is the history of a whole generation's extraordinary promise--and equally extraordinary failure.

The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical...

This is a translation of the memoir of John of Procida written as a chronicle in Middle Sicilian around 1290 as Lu Rebellamentu di Sichilia contra Re Carlu, with accompanying commentary by one of Sicily's leading historians.

The chronicle of John of Procida brings us the spy story, the swashbuckler, the wartime saga and the morality play in a work that transcends any single genre. For historians, the chronicle is a key source in the study of the Sicilian Vespers uprising of 1282, an event that changed the course of European and Mediterranean history.

It is also the earliest...

This book investigates the actions of marriage tribunals by analyzing the richest source of marriage suits extant in Italy, those of the Venetian ecclesiastical tribunal, between 1420 and the opening of the Council of Trent. It offers a strongly representative overview of the changes the Council introduced to centuries-old marriage practices, relegating it to the realm of marginality and deviance and nearly erasing the memory of it altogether. From the eleventh century onward, the Church assured itself of a jurisdictional monopoly over the matter of marriage, operating both in concert and...

The histories of six generations of the Strozzi, Gondi, Guicciardini, and Capponi families are traced from the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries by focusing on the family household as defined by the economic bonds reflected in account books. These four families were among the best known of the city's patriciate and were influential in affairs of the city. Their histories serve as case studies in seeking to determine the nature of the patrician family as a specific kind of social institution and to assess its importance in Florentine history. A concluding chapter attempts to relate...

Lawyers at work-in diplomacy, in relations with the Church, in territorial government, in the formulation of policy, in administration, and in the political struggle provide the unifying theme in this analysis of the exercise of political power in Renaissance Florence. Professor Martines studies the actual techniques of government, the hidden legal and constitutional questions raised by everyday affairs, and the responses of individual lawyers to the pressures of politics. He shows precisely how Florentine lawyers, both republicans and oligarchs, viewed the state. An appendix lists and...

Italy in 1850 was a politically weak and divided country. The revolutionary spirit of 1848 had faded; much of the country was again under foreign control. Her political leaders were in exile, but they could not dismiss their dreams of a united Italy. Raymond Grew, in his account of the Italian National Society, shows the part that the Society had in realizing these dreams, and presents fresh material on the climactic years of the Risorgimento--who participated in it, what issues were involved, and how unification was accomplished. Drawing upon unpublished materials from archives and...

This book, analyzing the government of Florence during one of her most critical periods, and the forces that destroyed it, is the first study of the Florentine Trecento to use archival sources of the communal government systematically.

Originally published in 1962.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and...

This volume provides an overview of current research in the history of Italian technology in the long run, from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. The contributors focus on different aspects of Italian creativity in a local, transnational and global dimension, tracing the trajectory from primacy to relative decline. The themes range from the creation and establishment of new technologies in laboratories or enterprises, the processes of learning, diffusion, and copying and the institutions involved in the generation of a national technological capability and innovation system....

A Mattress Maker's Daughter richly illuminates the narrative of two people whose mutual affection shaped their own lives and in some ways their times. According to the Renaissance legend told and retold across the centuries, a woman of questionable reputation bamboozles a middle-aged warrior-prince into marrying her, and the family takes revenge. He is Don Giovanni de' Medici, son of the Florentine grand duke; she is Livia Vernazza, daughter of a Genoese artisan. They live in luxury for a while, far from Florence, and have a child. Then, Giovanni dies, the family pounces upon the...

Like many inhabitants of booming metropolises, Machiavelli alternated between love and hate for his native city. He often wrote scathing remarks about Florentine political myopia, corruption, and servitude, but also wrote about Florence with pride, patriotism, and confident hope of better times. Despite the alternating tones of sarcasm and despair he used to describe Florentine affairs, Machiavelli provided a stubbornly persistent sense that his city had all the materials and potential necessary for a wholesale, triumphant, and epochal political renewal. As he memorably put it, Florence...