Early Modern Italy Research Articles

Disgust and the duel: Aristocratic violence, the scienza cavalleresca, and feeling rules in early modern Italy

Disgust and the duel: Aristocratic violence, the <i>scienza cavalleresca,</i> and feeling rules in early modern Italy

Interpreting and Judging Petrarch’s ‘Canzoniere’ in Early Modern Italy ed. by Maiko Favaro (review)

Interpreting and Judging Petrarch’s ‘Canzoniere’ in Early Modern Italy ed. by Maiko Favaro (review)

Sumptuary Laws, Gender, and Public Dressing in Early Modern Genoa

Abstract This article explores sumptuary legislation and its enforcement in early modern Genoa. Whereas the sumptuary laws from other early modern Italian city-states partitioned society by social rank, profession, or citizenship, the laws in effect in late sixteenth-century Genoa divided the population only into men and women. Genoa therefore represents a key site for exploring gender difference through dress and adornment. Adopting a gendered, sociological, and material culture framework, this article demonstrates how sumptuary laws informed understandings of gender and gendered practices of dressing. It takes as its point of departure a ledger of sumptuary denouncements for the year 1594, and examines how Genoa’s citizens adhered to, or transgressed the gendered expectations set out by the city’s legislative structures. It argues that while prescriptions for idealized masculine and feminine comportment coloured the content and wording of the law, in daily life a spectrum of gendered identities could be enacted through clothing. This article thus advances discourse on the impact of sumptuary laws on understandings of gender in early modern Italy, and the ways in which masculine and feminine identifications were negotiated through and in dialogue with clothing.

Commemorating festive performances in popular print in sixteenth‐century Italy☆

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show that the popular print sold and distributed during and after festive events, such as Carnival, had an impact on the commemoration and shaping of festive culture in early modern Italy. That is, the mass medium of print that had begun to shape European cultures, especially in Italy where Venice was one of Europe's first major printing centres, created festive pamphlets and small books that were attractive for individuals in various cities in Northern and Central Italy. This becomes apparent not only from the sources themselves but also from the connections that exist between these sources and historical and theatrical contexts. A study of popular print related to festive events addresses the most important criticisms of festival studies, namely that festivals were primarily local affairs, which would prevent researchers from making a meaningful contribution to festive culture studies on a larger scale. This article aims to overcome this by studying a selection of affordable pamphlets and small books, presenting the Carnivalesque text La guerra di Carnovale contro la Quaresima, which was intended for large audiences.

Saving Sanctity: The Roman Inquisition and the Initial Prosecution of Girolamo Cardano

The impact of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reform movement on the ecclesiastical censorship of science, philosophy and magic has been an enduring theme in the historiography of early modern Italy. In this paper, I consider how the Church’s desire to defend the truth of miracles from Protestant criticisms on the one hand and their efforts to centralise the process of verifying miracles on the other affected the investigation of philosophical works. Taking the case of Girolamo Cardano, whose works were the subject of intensive investigation by the Catholic Church from the 1570s, I examine the issues that censors flagged as points of concern. One recurring theme was the fact that his accounts of the cosmos appeared to offer natural explanations for miracles and the actions of the martyrs. Although the intellectual problems raised by Cardano’s work were far from new, I suggest that the events of the sixteenth century raised their salience with Church authorities.

Printed Riddles in Early Modern Italy: Traditional Perspectives and New Approaches

The purpose of the article is to draw attention to Italian riddles of the Renaissance. This publishing and literary genre has been studied especially from ethnological or literary perspectives. What is completely lacking, however, are studies that deal with how this literature was produced, how it circulated and who printed it. These perspectives are highly relevant: they make us realise that such texts were not only produced by the likes of Cervantes, Bembo or Shakespeare, but that riddles were often written, performed and printed by men who are now forgotten, sometimes not fully literate and often not from elites. The intention here is to place these writings in a methodological and historiographical framework that may lead to more in-depth study in the future.

Religious Attraction and Its Discontents: Tensions Surrounding the Monachization of Baptized Jews in Early Modern Italy

Both female monasticism and Jewish conversion acquired an accentuated significance in Catholic Europe during the age of reformations. Their convergence was ritually expressed in the celebration of the monastic vestition of converts from Judaism. This article centres on the experiences of baptized Jewish girls who entered monastic communities, based on an analysis of cases from central and northern Italy. It argues that Church authorities valued the radical break of formerly Jewish girls with the religious traditions of their ancestors. Yet at the same time, the highly esteemed attraction to female monasticism on the part of baptized Jews could also arouse considerable anxiety, which led to distancing attempts. These, the article suggests, were manifested by restricting converts’ monastic professions to designated institutions; by giving the cold shoulder to baptized Jews who took the veil and socially isolating them within their communities; or by not assisting sickly neophytes to fulfill their religious vocations.

:Gendering the Renaissance: Text and Context in Early Modern Italy

:<i>Gendering the Renaissance: Text and Context in Early Modern Italy</i>

Voyeur &amp; Violator: The Obscene Narrative in Early Modern Italy

Voyeur &amp; Violator: The Obscene Narrative in Early Modern Italy

The Muslim Friend: Cross-Confessional Male Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Abstract In early modern Italy, stereotypes about Muslim men’s supposed inclination towards the vice of ‘sodomy’ gave rise to fears that Christian masculinity was being tainted. Eighteenth-century court records from the Republic of Genoa and the Papal States contain numerous instances of cross-confessional male relations that faced persecution by state authorities. In each of these cases, Christian men were prosecuted for taking a sexually ‘passive’ role in relation to sexually ‘active’ Muslims, while the reverse scenario was never pursued. This article argues that the sexual focus of judicial authorities obscured the enduring bonds of affection and mutual obligation that developed between men across religious lines. The existence of these relationships unveils an intimate sphere of connections across faith in the early modern Mediterranean while highlighting an intersectional site of Christian social anxiety, where fears of religious contamination overlapped with concerns about same-sex intimacy.

Skin on Trial: Experts and Expertise on ‘Skin Diseases’ in Early Modern Italy

Summary By using both static or normative documents (licenses, official regulations, barber-surgeon’s manuals) and more dynamic sources (trials of the Protomedicato), my presentation asks what was an expert on skin diseases in early modern Italy and how the loose category of “skin diseases” came into being under the influence of medical theory, surgical practice, patient demand, and civic regulation of medical practice. I argue that by the late seventeenth century “skin disease” became an independent category, the surface of the body an independent object, and the empiric surgeon an expert of such surface. As human skin as a surface acquired autonomy as an object of knowledge and practice, a class of experts emerged following a path which is in large measure independent from the transformations of Galenic theoretical medicine and the rise of mechanistic medicine which are typically described as central in this period. I argue that empirical surgeons and barber-surgeons became experts on skin through the licensing system and by inverting the classical path of medical knowledge – not from the inner body to its surface as manifestation of internal humoral imbalances, but rather from the surface to the knowledge and the treatment of the inner body.

:Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science and Censorship in Early Modern Italy.

:<i>Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science and Censorship in Early Modern Italy.</i>

Between Innovation and Resistance: The Role of Guilds in Early Modern Italian Ribbon Manufacturing.

The historiographical debate about the influence of guilds on economic development and innovation lacks consensus. Scholars are divided: some argue that guilds fostered a positive environment for technological innovation through privileges that ensured profits for inventors, while others underline the guilds' role in stifling innovation to protect their interests. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of ribbon manufacturing in early modern Italy, a sector known for its technology transfer across Europe. It finds that the nature of the guild and its specific privileges crucially determined technology transfer and innovation acceptance. In addition, the redistribution of profits within guilds was vital to the innovative process. The article concludes that the key to technology transfer and innovation lay in preserving the guilds' profit monopolies and internal stability.

Educating the Catholic People: Religious Orders and their Schools in Early Modern Italy (1500–1800) by David Salomoni (review)

Educating the Catholic People: Religious Orders and their Schools in Early Modern Italy (1500–1800) by David Salomoni (review)

Bravura in Blue: Ultramarine in the Works of Artemisia Gentileschi

Abstract: This paper adopts materiality as an interpretive lens to explore the gendered resonances of ultramarine in the works of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. The history of ultramarine in early Italian devotional painting and the Renaissance theory of colore provide a contextual backdrop for investigating how Artemisia considered the significance of her materials in the competitive seventeenth-century art market. As a female artist, Artemisia was uniquely scrutinized by her male patrons and competitors and was therefore pressed to strategically craft her self-representation as a woman in early modern Italy. Artemisia's conspicuous use of ultramarine perhaps indicates her strategy to build upon the embedded meanings of the pigment and imbue her work with the value of both skill and material as she sought recognition for her artifice.

Interpreting and Judging Petrarch's “Canzoniere” in Early Modern Italy. Maiko Favaro, ed. Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2021. xiv + 178 pp. $115.

Interpreting and Judging Petrarch's “Canzoniere” in Early Modern Italy. Maiko Favaro, ed. Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2021. xiv + 178 pp. $115.

Destruction and Preservation of Hebrew Books

This introduction lays the foundation for a collection of high-quality research papers, presenting novel findings, innovative scientific approaches, and the latest developments in the field of the history of Catholic censorship, libricide, and the preservation of Hebrew books during late medieval and early modern Italy. The primary objective of this thematic section is to investigate diverse topics, including the Catholic censorship and expurgation of Hebrew texts, books, and documents. Additionally, it explores the repurposing of these materials in book bindings and notary files, shedding light on how Digital Humanities facilitates the recovery of manuscripts or printed books that would otherwise be lost to history.

George Lily, Ignazio Danti and Evolving Perceptions of Wales in Early Modern Italy

George Lily, Ignazio Danti and Evolving Perceptions of Wales in Early Modern Italy

Ralegh Radford Rome Awards: Crafting knowledge, telling stones: the art of pietre dure tables in early modern Italy, 1550s–1660s

Ralegh Radford Rome Awards: Crafting knowledge, telling stones: the art of <i>pietre dure</i> tables in early modern Italy, 1550s–1660s

The Dynamics of Learning in Early Modern Italy: Arts and Medicine at the University of Bologna David A. Lines

<i>The Dynamics of Learning in Early Modern Italy: Arts and Medicine at the University of Bologna</i> David A. Lines