Truman State University Press Research Articles

Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, Volume 4, by Rami Arav, edited by Richard A. Freund. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2009. xxiv + 338 pp., 179 figures, 21 tables, 1 graph, 14 catalog entries. Paper. $49.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsBethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, Volume 4, by Rami Arav, edited by Richard A. Freund. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2009. xxiv + 338 pp., 179 figures, 21 tables, 1 graph, 14 catalog entries. Paper. $49.00.Samuel R. WolffSamuel R. WolffIsrael Antiquities Authority, [email protected] Search for more articles by this author Israel Antiquities Authority, [email protected] PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research Volume 368November 2012 A journal of the American Schools of Oriental Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5615/bullamerschoorie.368.0116 Views: 3Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research (1921-2021), which is continued by the Bulletin of the American Schools of Overseas Research (2022-present). Copyright 2012 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

ReviewPopulist Cartoons: An Illustrated History of the Third-Party Movement in the 1890s. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2011. ix + 198 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95, paper.) Worth Robert Miller

ReviewPopulist Cartoons: An Illustrated History of the Third-Party Movement in the 1890s. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2011. ix + 198 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95, paper.) Worth Robert Miller

Dead Letter Office

Dead Letter Office Valerie Wohlfeld (bio) Return to Sender is the name of the god of remorse and disaster. Even the zip code is off course in this disaster. Bartleby prefers the unrequited envelope; being tired of the curse of social intercourse is his only disaster. Here dies the wayward summons for divorce, no forwarding address: one fled to Rio, one to Peru; who is the victim, who the source of disaster? Paper columns piled unread like the unraised dead; in unmarked files, mice nest and nurse in this disaster. The end is in the beginning like the force of heat death, verse, and entropy: here lies fortune’s reversal, a universe’s disaster. Valerie, catastrophe is the name of your lover; to live without love is not the worst disaster. [End Page 106] Valerie Wohlfeld Valerie Wohlfeld’s first collection, Thinking the World Visible (Yale University Press, 1994), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Her poetry book Woman with Wing Removed was published in 2010 by Truman State University Press. She received an M.F.A. from Vermont College. Her work has appeared in Yale Review, Hopkins Review, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2012 Middlebury College Publications

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion (review)

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion. By Andre Theve t. Translated by Edward Benson; edited with introduction and notes by Roger Schlesinger. [Early Modern Studies, 3] (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010. Pp. xxxiv, 214. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 9781-931-11298-7.) This book is an annotated translation of thirteen selections from Andre Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (Paris, 1 584). Most of the individuals featured in this edition were Theve t's contemporaries: kings (Francois I, Henri II, Charles IX), aristocrats and warriors (including Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise; Constable Anne de Montmorency; and Chancellor Michel de L'Hospital), and scholars (Guillaume Bude and Guillaume Postel). This gallery of portraits contains little that is new. Thevet's eulogies of powerful political figures often are trite and at times redundant. As Frank Lestringant wrote in his biography of Theve t, a certain realism, if not opportunism, dictated the cosmographer's writing. As a protege of Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, who funded his first voyage to the Levant in 1549,Thevet celebrated de Lorraine (the cardinal's nephew) as a martyr during the first Wars of Religion. According to Lestringant, Theve t reconfigured his political position from 1563 to support the policy of conciliation led by Catherine de Medici and advocated by L'Hospital. After the St. Bartholomew Day's massacre in 1572, Thevet justified persecution of seditious Huguenots. He increasingly veered toward the Catholic Ligue and, before his death in 1590, received protection and favors from Charles, duke of Mayenne and son of de Lorraine. This rapidly shifting political stance may explain why Thevet, a laicized Franciscan and the queen mother's chaplain, largely avoided thorny issues of confessional conflict. The overall absence of ideological steadfastness in Les vrais pourtraits may reflect his career as a quintessential courtier - he managed to serve as royal cosmographer under four successive kings. The introduction in this English edition provides a balanced picture of the events and developments surrounding the Wars of Religion, but it rarely mentions Thevet's political opinions, paying perhaps too much attention to his earlier travel accounts. One wonders whether it would have been more helpful if the editor had attempted to discuss Thevet in the context of political patronage and power politics of the time. …

Conflict in the Ozarks: Hill Folk, Industrialists, and Government in Missouri's Courtois Hills. By David Benac. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2010. ix + 182 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, bibliography, and index. Paper $32.00.

<i>Conflict in the Ozarks: Hill Folk, Industrialists, and Government in Missouri's Courtois Hills</i>. By David Benac. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2010. ix + 182 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, bibliography, and index. Paper $32.00.

ReviewNative Americans and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman. Truman Legacy Series. Edited by Brian Hosmer. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010. 168 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index. $28.95, paper.)

ReviewNative Americans and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman. Truman Legacy Series. Edited by Brian Hosmer. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010. 168 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index. $28.95, paper.)

Boundaries of Faith: Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva. By Jill Fehleison. Early Modern Studies. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2010. vii + 251 pp. $48.00 cloth.

Boundaries of Faith: Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva. By Jill Fehleison. Early Modern Studies. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2010. vii + 251 pp. $48.00 cloth.

Leonarde's Ghost: Popular Piety and "The Appearance of a Spirit" in 1628 (review)

Reviewed by: Leonarde's Ghost: Popular Piety and "The Appearance of a Spirit" in 1628 James R. Farr Leonarde's Ghost: Popular Piety and "The Appearance of a Spirit" in 1628. Translated with introduction and annotations by Kathryn A. Edwards and Susie Speakman Sutch. [Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 82.] (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press. 2008. Pp. xiii, 127. $19.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-931-11279-6.) In 1628 a feverish and bedridden woman who had recently given birth claimed to receive numerous visitations from a spirit. At first, the ill woman (Huguette Roy, the wife of a guard in the local militia who was most likely a tradesman) could not identify the ghost, and the ghost was stubbornly unforthcoming about her identity. Eventually, however, it was revealed that it [End Page 815] was the spirit of Roy's deceased aunt, Leonarde Colin. Colin, so Roy reported to the clergymen who were notified of the visits, had been sent by God to assist Roy in her daily housekeeping duties that she could not perform herself. Eventually Colin revealed that this was penance for her earthly sins and had to be performed to release her from purgatory. Roy was the only earthly creature who ever heard or saw Colin, but the local clerical authorities, and Christophe Mercier in particular, were convinced of the reality of the ghost. Indeed, Mercier wrote "The History of the Appearance of a Spirit which Happened in the City of Dole" (1628), the text that the editors translated for this volume. The editors/translators try to preserve "the roughness, vitality, rhythms, and ambiguities of the original manuscript" (p. xiii), but they are cautious to avoid didactically telling readers how to interpret the text. They do, however, offer an extended introduction (forty-one pages) that provides a useful setting for Mercier's account. We are encouraged to see the connections between the popular piety in the daily lives of ordinary people alongside and in conjunction with the concerns and teachings of the institutional church during a period of intense Catholic reformation. A sort of skepticism was invoked by the authorities to determine the veracity of the spirit (demonic or not), but along the way, we glimpse how ordinary people like Roy understood theological teachings of purgatory and, in the demand by the spirit for pilgrimage to Marian shrines in the region, how redemption immersed itself in their own sense of salvation. Roy's religiosity comes through clearly, but, given the apparent skepticism in the gossip of townsfolk and neighbors, readers might wish for more of an interrogation of how the news of this spirit spread and might have been understood by fellow townsfolk. This modest volume could be useful as an ancillary text in an undergraduate course on early-modern religiosity. It holds few surprises for specialists in the field, but the able introduction provides useful insights into popular piety not easily gained from printed texts. If readers grant that the story is based on Roy's projection of what spirits are and can do, then they can discern from this text popular notions of the other world—how it intrudes on this one, what spirits from it can do, what the relation between the living and the dead might be, and what role these notions can fulfill in the ever-changing schemes of salvation to which early-modern folk like Roy and her neighbors were presented with, and upon which they did so earnestly seize. James R. Farr Purdue University Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America Press

Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque. Edited by Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 78. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2007. xii + 330 pp. $55.00 cloth.

Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque. Edited by Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 78. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2007. xii + 330 pp. $55.00 cloth. - Volume 80 Issue 1

A Passion for History: Natalie Zemon Davis, Conversations with Denis Crouzet (review)

Reviewed by: A Passion for History: Natalie Zemon Davis, Conversations with Denis Crouzet Lisa Keane Elliott Davis, Natalie Zemon and Denis Crouzet, A Passion for History: Natalie Zemon Davis, Conversations with Denis Crouzet (Early Modern Studies, 4), ed. Michael Wolfe, Kirksville, MO, Truman State University Press, 2010; paperback; pp. 232; R.R.P. US$24.95; ISBN 9781931112970. Seven years ago, Natalie Zemon Davis sat down with fellow historian Denis Crouzet to reflect on her life as a historian. The resulting A Passion for History is a highly personal reflection on Davis's life as a Jewish-American girl, daughter, student, woman, academic, wife, mother, and teacher, who forged a personal and professional path for herself. A reviewer has no choice but to respond in [End Page 211] a similarly personal way. Indeed, as a doctoral hopeful currently combating thesis-related insecurities, reading this book helped revive my own passion for history. Davis reflects on how her passion for history developed as a schoolgirl: 'I was fascinated by the simple facts of history, the things that people always complain about as boring. ... I enjoyed memorising them, [and] I liked the sense of mastery I got from being able to remember and use all that historical information' (p. 1). The fascination continued into her college and university years and she recalls the sense of 'wonderment' she felt when delving into the archives for the first time: I was reminded of the tingle of excitement I felt when the librarian placed the first volume of the sixteenth-century Hôtel-Dieu accounts in front of me. 'It wasn't the "perfume" of the archives themselves', Davis recalls, 'but it gave me a stronger sense for the past. I felt that I was coming to know Christine de Pizan, that I was having an encounter with Guillaume Budé' (p. 2). Davis has continually reminded herself, over the years, to 'watch out' for 'this passion to know and to understand [that] is positive insofar as it encourages us to explore a mysterious world ... [but] it also brings a danger - that of being possessed by the illusion of greater familiarity with the past than one really has' (pp. 2-3). (A timely reminder for all historians!) Davis stresses how important it is to respect the 'mental universes of the past' and 'draw on situations, mentalities and reactions analogous or close to those one is trying to understand' when narrating the past. As she says, 'I want to be a storyteller, not a cannibal' (pp. 122, 5-6). Over the years, Davis's passion was drawn toward the lives of women and the menu peuple. Her research was focused by her 'mission', which is 'to save or preserve people - women and men - from obscurity, from the hidden, and give some dignity or sense to their lives, even when they end tragically' (p. 118). She expresses her disappointment with historians who have 'reductionist and naïve' attitudes, 'who are always suspicious of everything one tries to do to discover the voice of the menu peuple', and explains her sense of responsibility for those 'persons from a modest background or from an illiterate milieu [who] have no means to leave traces of themselves'. 'It's the others who need me,' she explains (pp. 32-34). This brought to my mind comments made some years ago about the detrimental effect female historians - with their partiality for unimportant feminine topics such as social history and the history of women - have had on the discipline of history. Certainly, Davis's own body of work gives the lie to the idea that the discipline of history is best served by male historians, who focus on the more palatable and masculine topics of politics and the manly pursuits of great men. [End Page 212] Davis's acclaimed and prize-winning published works demonstrate a diversity of subject matter, issues, and themes, ranging from the journeymen printers of sixteenth-century Lyon, to the lives and writings of early modern women. In her career as a teacher and collaborator with her male and female colleagues, she has demonstrated a similar diversity of interests. Davis recalls that her passion for history was ignited by the traditional...

Ghazal: Jerusalem

Ghazal:Jerusalem Valerie Wohlfeld (bio) In the cracks of the Wailing Wall is the love of Jerusalem.Saffron in the souks' stalls, the love of Jerusalem. Baal and Aphrodite survive in the shattered rocks.In the kippah and the monk's cowl is the love of Jerusalem. City divided like the flanks of a cow the butcher quarters:Jew, Muslim, Christian and Armenian call home their love of Jerusalem. Horizon of gold haze and gold dome:the hookah hastens the nightfall for the love of Jerusalem. Chalk and limestone and the clay of Adam,Eden's fall also for the love of Jerusalem. Who will bring flowers where Caliph and Turk once warred?—When will a child's footfalls echo the love of Jerusalem? [End Page 9] Valerie Wohlfeld Through reading texts of Jewish myth and ritual, Valerie Wohlfeld, who was brought up in an assimilated environment, found her own way to explore her ancestral religion in her poetry. Her first collection, Thinking the World Visible, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her poetry book, Woman With Wing Removed, is being published in October 2010 by Truman State University Press. She holds an MFA from Vermont College. Copyright © 2010 Bridges Association

A. Lynn Martin. Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe. Early Modern Studies Series, v. 2. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2009.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewA. Lynn Martin. Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe. Early Modern Studies Series, v. 2. Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2009.Beat KüminBeat KüminUniversity of Warwick, U.K. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs Volume 24, Number 2Summer 2010 A journal of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/SHAD24020183 Views: 8Total views on this site © 2010 by The Alcohol and Drugs History Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Motets in Amber, and: Migration

Motets in Amber, and: Migration Rebecca Dunham (bio) Motets in Amber Bring to me the two hot fingers.Forehead and temple, they flashover a cornfield's rows,anesthetized and curared, alldried stalks choppedyellow sharp, stunted knives. I'll convulse beneath the storm,my body rubbed byits woolen cloth to somethingrich and new. Amber-bright,I gown myself and go forthfrocked in feather, straw, and leaf. * If the past shines like a fixedstar reflected in the deepest well;if its spring muddies his chillfeet, all wet and wildering; Thalesof Miletus will fall, felled bya wild thirst down earth's pitch tube. * Amber: literally, burn stone. Orin Arabic, straw robber. Duskybirds hang like a handfulof ash thrown into air. Electric:borrowed from the Greekelektron, amber. Out our car's [End Page 118] window, I watch Illinois pour by,power lines lashed to richsoil. Moored as if by a wound'sstitched thread, its black cord. * The frog's dead muscles twitch,kindled by jolts from Luigi Galvani'selectrostatic machine, provingThales of Miletus right: there isno difference between the livingand the dead. Our nerves fire and seek; what connects us burnsfilament-bright, incandesces.Resinous and vitreous in our glassyvacuum, still we spark, chargedtungsten coiling. Why do I notdie? Because there is no difference. * My son traps fireflies in glassjars, a constellationto light his room, to flashlike semaphores across his sleep. Nothing ends, or everything, if,thunderbolt, you leave your cloud. In daylight, their dullamber bodies clickagainst the jar's clear neck. * [End Page 119] Lamprey-like, lightning writhes,June 1752, key knottedto a silk string, a continual streamthe size of a Crow Quill, the bellsring and ring, plasma and kite,a slick flash, a continued, dense,white stream whereby the whole staircasewas enlightened as by sunshine,filling Leyden jars, the violetcorona of a ship's mast and rigging,a blur no man can handfast. * Injured, my body exudes itsamber globules. Syrupy, sappedplanets fed to earth's soil,its blue loam, a resin fossiled lapidary fine. Only to be liftedon ocean's current, eel, torch, whiplash,its long muscled arm, and foamits way ashore. Set me aflame.Aburn. Apine. [End Page 120] Migration Two shoals of geese flylow, mixing amid the carscrossing Cedar River. Snowsieves down and dark-necked,the birds honk likelong-married couplesquarreling over which wayto go. I steer fromthe place I was to the placethat I am going. Migration:from the lost adjective*migros, or moving.Etymology explains meto myself far better thanpsychology. To my doctor,I don't even try to explain,I never do. The birdssort things out and headtheir separate ways, backon course. Of course, Iknow what I am: lost, homeless,each abandoned selfrosaried and strung throughits vacant core. All nightthis bothers me. Onepoint-bird must be wrong. [End Page 121] Rebecca Dunham Rebecca Dunham's first book of poetry, The Miniature Room, won the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and was published by Truman State University Press. She has received an NEA fellowship and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FIELD, Iowa Review, and Antioch Review, among others. Copyright © 2010 University of Nebraska Press

Masculinity in the Reformation Era. Edited by Scott H. Hendrix and Susan C. Karant-Nunn. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 83. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2008. xix+228 pp. $48.00 cloth.

Masculinity in the Reformation Era. Edited by Scott H. Hendrix and Susan C. Karant-Nunn. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 83. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2008. xix+228 pp. $48.00 cloth. - Volume 79 Issue 2

Buried in the Sand

Buried in the Sand Michael Spence (bio) When Those at Home First See Nearly two years passAfter Pearl was bombedBefore we're allowed to seeA photo of our dead.And even this is late:The three soldiers half-Buried in the sandAs if unsure—to hideOr be revealed?Breakers rock and smoothThe beach. Men surfaceLike starfish washed ashoreBy some turmoil undersea.Irregularities. The deadLie as though holdingThe ground more tightly,Since it has lost its holdOn them. Or has the tideHalted their burialWith its now I comeAnd now I leave, foreverLeaving them in this seamBetween the sand and water?And still we see no faces—Just the fabric of uniformsWet with dark, then drying.This leaves us to imagineThe ones we love or the onesWe think are nameless. Palm up,The arm that lies extendedNeither points nor graspsBut does not let us go. [End Page 193] "We Can Do It!" —slogan from World War ii poster I was brought up to believe in bringing upChildren: that was the most important jobI could have. Getting married, having kids—Like breathing in and breathing out. The warChanged my mind; I was rivetedBy the story of Rosie rolling up her sleeveAnd flexing her muscles the way my husband didWhen we were courting. He had been the oneTo fix the broken washer and keep the carRunning "smooth as castor oil," he'd joke. When he and most of the other men sailed off,I learned to repair airplane accessories—Starters, generators, alternators. Me!Who never even went to high school.I walked down rows of Plexiglas nosesFor B-17 bombers, polishing themUntil they gleamed like see-through igloos.Even for a woman, I was small—A bare five feet in my bare feet.So I would grab a flashlight and crawlUp into the gas tanks to look for leaks.I felt like I was part of something largerThan myself, my little goals and worries.And money—I'd never made so much. I boughtThe kinds of food I'd always dreamed of—steak,Not hamburger. And ice cream by the gallon.Sometimes I'd share it with the other galsAt the plant, but not always. Hell, they could buyTheir own. The men of course would cluster around usThick as seeds on a dandelion. PrettyWasn't part of it—the homeliest could get [End Page 194] A hometown hero. I never told my husbandAll that I did. And he was smart enough,When he got back, not to ask. He never toldMe everything that happened overseas.These days our life and love are quiet.I help him change the transmission or rebuildThe carburetor. As he lies beneath the car,I can hand him any tool he can name. Rationing the War A good thing I suffered through the DepressionBefore I hit this.After all I did without, I don't missWhat now takes coupons To buy: any meat that isn't Spam,Gasoline,Rubber for my car's tires, seams of nylonsOn girly gams. Too old, recruiters told me. So I went home,Forced to trollFor victory in my garden, digging little foxholesFor seeds in the loam. But I hate when coffee and sugar disappear—That makes it toughTo haul out of bed and weld the stuffThat jams up the gears Of the Axis. Even the kids chip in:Save the scraps,Their hand-scrawled posters say, to beat the Japs.We want to win [End Page 195] So bad we look like mirrors: smiling to keepMorale highTill our faces ache. Some people can buy,No matter how steep The cost. Mister Black will find it for meIf I've got the pull.He runs his market while pennies turn to steel,And soldiers die for free. [End Page 196] Michael Spence Michael Spence's third book of poetry is Crush Depth, recently published by Truman State University Press. Copyright © 2010 University of the...

My Father's World

My Father's World Valerie Wohlfeld (bio) My father's desk was his world,the tiger-grain lost beneath the varnish and the darkened wax,and in the drawers a wilderness harnessed to the ordered world. My mother had no desk, just a chair where she could knit and purl,while my father sat and calculated his toil and tax.My father's desk was his world. At his touch and pull, a little panel unfurledto form an adjacent writing space for me, next to where his cognacsat. A wilderness harnessed to the ordered world, he filled the drawers with fountain pens marbledin mock tortoise shell; like honey in combed wax,a bottle's mucilage. My father's desk was his world. I was not like every other girl:instead of dolls I preferred my father's graphite pencils and his stacksof unread mail that threatened the order of his world. In the underbelly of the varnished wood was a whorlof shellac I stroked. Mother's needles creaked and clacked like the crackingof some other world that belonged only to her. My father's desk was his world.Order and chaos and the tiger-stripe: I entered my father's world. [End Page 188] Valerie Wohlfeld Valerie Wohlfeld's collection, Thinking the World Visible, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. She received an MFA from Vermont College. Her poetry book, Woman with Wing Removed, is forthcoming from Truman State University Press in Fall 2010. Copyright © 2010 Johns Hopkins University Press

Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque, edited by Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester.

<i>Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque</i>, edited by Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester.

Nicholas Terpstra, ed., The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy. (Early Modern Studies, 1.) Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv, 354; 20 black-and-white figures, tables, and 1 graph. $48 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Nicholas Terpstra, ed., The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy. (Early Modern Studies, 1.) Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv, 354; 20 black-and-white figures, tables, and 1 graph. $48 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Renaissance Siena. Art in Context (review)

Reviewed by Timothy B. Smith Birmingham–Southern College Renaissance Siena. Art in Context. Edited by A. Lawrence Jenkens. [Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Volume 71.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press. 2005. Pp. xvi, 208. $39.95 paperback.) In the opening line of his Introduction to Renaissance Siena, editor A. Lawrence Jenkens asks a significant and seldom-posed question: did the Tuscan city of Siena experience a Renaissance, particularly in regard to art and architecture? The answer, evidenced by this anthology's nine essays, is a resounding yes; taken as a whole, the volume stands as testament to the recent revival of Sienese studies, one with a focus on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rather than the much-considered Trecento Golden Age. What is new in this collection is an attempt to consider Sienese art entirely within a local context, free from the traditional negative assessment engendered by comparison with Renaissance Florence, and in many cases within a social-political framework that contrasts with earlier, more conservative methodological approaches. In particular, there is much here that will be of interest to scholars of the history of architecture and urbanism. Judith Steinhoff examines the rise of a new artistic genre, the contemporaneous cityscape, relating several examples [End Page 934] symbolically to specific political issues and moments of crisis for the Sienese commune. In his contribution, Matthias Quast demonstrates that the fully articulated palace façade emerged in Renaissance Siena only after the systematic removal of balconies and cantilevered additions and in one of three forms that stemmed from Gothic, Florentine, and ancient inspiration. Fabrizio J. D. Nevola's essay on the Palazzo Spannocchi situates that palace within the context of competing public and private interests in urban space, tracing the process by which the patron systematically acquired prime real estate along the Strada Romana, the city's most important thoroughfare and a target of commune-sponsored renewal. Similarly concerned with the conflict between the public and the private, Mauro Mussolin explores the architecture of the church of Santo Spirito and its monastic complex in light of the often-rocky relationship among the Sienese, the local observant Dominican community, and the fiery Florentine preacher Savonarola. Other essays address a range of issues, including civic religion, humanist influence on the visual arts, and the connection between workshop practice and the reading of narrative. Susan E. Wegner charts an increase in Sienese intercessory images of Saint Catherine of Siena and the decline of those of the Virgin, linking the phenomenon to the political strategies of the despot Pandolfo Petrucci. The dynastic and patriotic significance of the frescoes in the Piccolomini Library is addressed by Stratton D. Green, who views the room's painted biography of Pope Pius II as a form of epideictic rhetoric based on the idea of an ancient funerary oration. In his discussion of Francesco di Giorgio's painted scenes on Sienese cassoni, David Benjamin unravels the complicated relationship among artists, patrons, literary sources, and the development of visual narrative. The book's one lamentable exclusion is the study of Sienese sculpture. Although Jenkens partly explains this absence in the Introduction by referring to vital scholarly work yet to be carried out, the anthology would have greatly benefited from at least one exploration of this medium. Regardless of this lacuna, Renaissance Siena represents an important contribution to the field and one that will rightly challenge lingering misconceptions about the city and its art beyond the Black Death.

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations (review)

Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations. Edited by Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin. [Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies Series, 76.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 265. $4995.) This handsome volume is a Festschrift in honor of Elisabeth Gleason. As such, one might expect essays reinforcing her fairly traditional approach to early modern Italian religious history, but it contains some surprises in the introduction and twelve collected essays. In the opening pages, John Martin abstracts the contributions, but adds the argument that an intellectual tyranny of traditional monolithic images about early modern Italian history, not to mention the radical oversimplification they require, has now been overcome. The images are well known: victimized spirituali, proto-totalitarian intransigenti, 1542 as the history turning point, et cetera. Instead, historians have found and adopted a complexity, Martin suggests, for which there was room in early histories of the Counter-Reformation. Part one, Reformers and heretics: new perspectives, then follows with pieces by Massimo Firpo, Michelle Fontaine, and Paul Murphy. These hold together nicely, showing three different reasons why old about who was or was not a heretic, when heresy grew or was repressed in Italy, and when it was not, simply no longer work. In his essay, Firpo speculates-in the absence of evidence-on the reasons behind Lorenzo Lotto's entry, just before his death, into an oblate community at the Holy House of Loreto. Readers of Firpo's other works will likely find his insistence that overly rigid categories don't work in explaining Lotto more than a little remarkable. Fontaine's study on the rapid weakening of heretical thought in Modena after 1550-well before the so-called intransigenti allegedly seized control of the direction of the Church-is excellent. This piece, plus Murphy's treatment of inconsistent supervision over preachers in Mantua under Ercole Gonzaga, a bishop considered an iron ruler even by Ludwig von Pastor, will leave readers craving more. Part two, on the cultural contexts of reform, which features contributions by Ronald Delph, Frederick McGinness, Paolo Simoncelli, Paul Grendler, and Marion Leathers Kuntz, is less coherent. These essays show the broad context of reform action, but the subjects are disparate. Delph illustrates the attractiveness of humanist notions of restoration among supporters of dredging operations on the Tiber, where ideological motivations mixed with more mundane economic concerns. Grendler shows why the standard notion of early modern universities as bastions of traditional learning resistant to change needs revision. Students driven to attend the University of Padua by tradition, like Gasparo Contarini, later took part in decidedly non-traditional reform, promoting new learning. Kuntz delineates the union of ideal political and religious justice in the doge of sixteenth-century Venice, returning to the written works of Guillame Postel, which, over the years, she has mined so thoroughly. …