Venetian Senate Research Articles

Interconfessional Contacts and Conflicts in the Peloponnesos (Thirteenth to Fourteenth Century)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the features of interconfessional interaction of the Romaioi, Franks, and Venetians in the Peloponnesos in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from the Latin invasion to the period when certain traditions of interconfessional communication between the conquerors and the Romaioi developed. Using the accounts of the Chronicle of the Moraia, resolutions of the Venetian Senate, Venetian private-law documents, as well as Byzantine historical (George Akropolites, George Pachymeres, John VI Kantakouzenos), polemical (John VI Kan- takouzenos), and epistolary (Gregory Akindynos) writings, the article has analyzed the features of Greek-Latin contacts in the religious sphere, the nature of the contra- dictions between the Orthodox and the Catholics, the cases of change of confession and combined worship, considering the incidence of the said phenomena. The con- clusion is that the gateway to the long-term and relatively peaceful coexistence of the Greeks and Latins in the Peloponnesos was the Latins’ loyal policy towards the other-believers performed from the moment they initially appeared on the peninsula. In case of the biggest part of the Greek-Latin population of the Moraia, their relations with neighbours were most often of a compromise nature. Peaceful forms of inter- confessional contacts between the Latins and the Romaioi were more common than open conflicts on religious grounds. The arousing conflicts were generally associated with the actions of specific figures of strangers who represented the central government, and often had a pronounced political colouring.

Тимур-султан и Керим-бирди: два нападения на венецианскую Тану в 1410 и в 1418 гг.

The purpose of the study is to consider the problem of the existence of the Venetian and Genoese trading stations in Tana within the territory of the Golden Horde city of Azak during the internecine war in the Golden Horde between the sons of Toktamysh and Idegei. Through an analysis of sources, an effort is made to determine the circumstances of the attacks of the Golden Horde khans and the level of damage that arose from them. Research materials: Unpublished documents of the State Archives of Venice (Italy), as well as Venetian chronicles and historical works of the 15th–16th centuries. Results and scientific uniqueness: The study of Venetian sources showed that during the second period of turmoil in the Golden Horde which erupted after the defeat of Toktamysh by Tamerlane, Tana trading stations underwent extremely difficult times during the period of the domination of beklerbek Idegei. The point of disagreement between the Tatar khans and the Venetians was the non-payment of a tax for renting land, called terraticum, by the Venetian merchants who traded at the mouth of the Don. The Venetians tried to maneuver between the sons of Toktamysh and the henchmen of Idegei, but since power in the Horde often changed hands at the time, Tana became a hostage in this internecine struggle. In 1410, Tana suffered from an unexpected night raid by Timur Khan and was captured. The damage amounted to between 100,000 and 120,000 ducats. Many Venetian sources tell us about these events, but with great discrepancies in details. Thanks to the inclusion of an important commerce-related source – the protocol of the Venetian judges on petitions – we can determine the exact date of the attack, the name of the khan, and the amount of damage. In 1418, there was an even more devastating second attack on Tana by Khan Kerim-birdi. After that, the Venetian Senate, having comprehensively studied the situation, decided to surround Tana with stone walls and repair its fortifications. Thanks to the erection of strong fortifications at Tana, it was possible for the town to hold out until the Ottoman Turkish conquest in 1475.

Notarial archives as political objects in the early-modern Alps. The community of Valle Camonica

Notarial archives in the early-modern Alpine region were managed according to an extreme variety of styles. This paper presents the case of a community of the central Italian Alps, set at the north-western borders of the Republic of Venice. Focusing on the local response to a law promulgated by the venetian Senate in 1612, notarial archives and their preservation become, in an “institutional perspective”, a political weapon in defending local autonomies against the centripetal force exercised by urban cities.

Lessons from the Past: The Venetian Republic’s Tailoring of Patent Protection to the Characteristics of the Invention

In recent years, much discussion in patent law has revolved around granting tailored protection to provide better incentives to inventors in different industries and to increase patent quality. For example, the deliberations that led to the enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) focused specifically on the role of the patent system in different industries as well as on modifying remedies and patent terms to reflect the needs of distinct technology sectors. Whereas in the literature there seems to be substantial agreement on the fact that tailored protection would be beneficial for the effectiveness of the patent system, there is no consensus with respect to which entity should be vested with the authority to produce tailored patent policies, standards and rules based on the needs of the various industries. Currently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are the two principal candidates for this role. Some of this debate is connected to the broader issue in legal academia of granting general regulatory authority to administrative agencies with highly specialized knowledge. Contrary to other administrative agencies, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Congress has never granted such authority to the USPTO; scholars have criticized this inconsistency. The strongest argument they have used to question the current status of the USPTO refers to the fact that much could be gained from the information that this agency has accumulated through years of experience working with inventors in different industries, particularly with respect to tailoring patent protection. Historically, the Venetian Republic provided tailored patent protection based on the characteristics of the invention. In that context, the entity entrusted with the power to tailor the protection granted in each case was the Senate, the issuing authority. Moreover, although the Venetian Republic enacted what is widely recognized as the first Patent Act in the world in 1474, the Venetian Senate continued its practice of granting tailored patents until the end of the Republic in 1797. In fact, as explained by Luigi Sordelli in 1974, following the enactment of the 1474 Act, inventors could obtain protection in Venice in two ways: through the newly created statutory system or through the much older customary system of senatorial grants. Conclusive evidence that Sordelli’s view was correct is provided in a separate paper that I co-authored with Ted Sichelman and Toni Veneri, in which we shed important new light on the true origin of patent law. In this article, I focus instead on tailoring patent protection. Specifically, I use original documents from the Venetian State Archives to present a detailed account of how the Venetian Republic used its customary patent system to tailor protection to the unique characteristics of an invention. Furthermore, I provide a full analysis of what can be learned from the Venetian experience to inform the modern debate on tailoring patent protection. Until now, only two other legal scholars have conducted extensive examinations of the original Venetian patents: Ted Sichelman and Sean O’Connor. The Venetian patent system appears to have been a very successful one; it operated for more than 300 years and during the 16th century helped Venice to transform itself from being a nation of sailors to being a nation of artisans and engineers, and ultimately the center of technological development in Europe. Thus, the Venetian customary patent system offers important lessons on how tailored patent protection and higher patent quality can be achieved. An accurate description of this system is crucial to further understanding the specific steps that we should take to reach these goals today.

The Nineteenth-Century Italian Translators of Lord Byron’s <i>Marino Faliero</i>

The tragic story of Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice who was executed for high treason in 1355, came to the attention of writers and artists of various European countries during the early nineteenth century thanks to a number of historians who published insightful works on the history of the Venetian Republic. Among those who were fascinated by the irascible old warrior who tried to overthrow the oligarchy on becoming head of state was Lord Byron. In 1821, the English poet published the historical drama Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice on the tragic end of a hero whose personal grievances with the Venetian Senate intertwined with an ill-fated plebeian rebellion against the nobility. Byron’s popularity in Italy brought the story to the attention of Italian romantic literary circles, where it was not only appreciated as a tragedy of honour and revenge, but also for its ideological implications in the context of the Risorgimento. This study focuses on the three translators who produced the first complete Italian versions of Byron’s play published in the nineteenth century, namely Pasquale De Virgili, Giovan Battista Cereseto, and Andrea Maffei. Based on André Lefevere’s theory on rewriting, it analyses the ideological and poetological reasons behind the translations, how the translators’ intentions shaped the target texts, as well as the impact these translations had on Italian literature and the arts. The strategies adopted by the translators are also illustrated through a comparative textual analysis of a sample passage.

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522–1525, to unfamiliar readers, as well as to elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal – may simply be following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters and reports of other contemporary observers, like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travellers and businessmen, like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.

La protezione del Furioso: Ariosto e il sistema dei privilegi in Italia

First best seller of Italian literature, the Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto was printed at Ferrara in three editions under the same author’s superintendence (1516, 1521, 1532). The poet showed great resourcefulness in organizing the whole operation by himself: he purchased the paper, took charge of sales, and obtained privileges to protect the book from unauthorized reproduction, and to preserve his text in its integrity. Therefore, he incurred the time and expense of seeking privileges from several jurisdictions, from the Pope, the Emperor, Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Genoa, and other potentates. Despite this, the poem was reprinted many times, especially by Venetian printers that decreed its unstoppable rise. In addition, the Ariosto death (1533) nullified all privileges he had obtained with great difficulty, and led his heirs to try to remedy the situation by asking for privileges which protected the interests of the family. In particular, Ariosto’s heirs obtained (1535) from the Venetian Senate a privilege for the publication of the poet’s unpublished minor works.

Reformbedarf und Reformen an der norditalienischen Peripherie. Der Deutsche Orden in Venedig und in Venetien (14.–15. Jh.)

Needed Reform vs. Effected Reform on the North Italian Periphery. The Teutonic Order in Venice and its “Terraferma” (14th–15th centuries) This article examines manifestations of decline in the Bailiwick of Lombardy (Lamparten) that ultimately affected the lives of brothers in all commanderies within the dominion of Venice. It discusses the problems ensuing from the transformation of ecclesiastical property into free benefices and the attempts of the Venetian government to seize control of all appointments of all offices and prebends. A strict control of the conditions in the North Italian commanderies could have been achieved by regular and frequent visitations. These inspections, however, were not instigated until the second half of the 14 th century and only occurred – perhaps for financial reasons – in long intervals. Whether or not there were specific reasons for dispatching visitors can no longer be determined. The underlying cause of the problems in most commanderies was the extremely low membership in the individual houses: nowhere did the number of brothers in the Teutonic Order suffice to achieve the minimum number required by the established Rule to lead a conventual life. It was easy, therefore, to ignore – whether by accident or design – any regulations. The sources only report the most spectacular cases also involving secular jurisdiction. The Teutonic Order was only affected by transformation of church property into free benefices in the diocese of Treviso. However, the ecclesiastical prebend politics in the area of study was so inconsequential that the Order never even protested. Of much greater danger to the Order was the politics of Venice: since the 1360s, the Venetian government had seized control of all ecclesiastical offices and benefices. The Order saw its autonomy seriously threatened when the Venetian Senate began, in the early 15th century, to focus not only on the secular church but also the established religious communities in Venice and its mainland possessions, including the religious military orders. Sources document that the Teutonic Order, in order to protect itself against all interference in its internal affairs by the Venetian state, cooperated with the Knights Hospitallers. They were equally threatened, but their networking in Venice gave them more influence. The joint protest of both religious military orders caused the Venetian government to retreat. The Senate’s order was not enforced and the Teutonic Order retained its autonomy. One typical example of the Order’s problematic conduct can be observed in its holdings in Astian / Stigliano (Diocese of Treviso), where it gravely neglected its responsibilities as patron of the small church there. The Order even allowed the Diocese of Treviso – before the Council of Constance – to divert income from church property designated to pay the local resident priest, as a pure prebend to support underpaid clergy at the cathedral chapter of Treviso. Not until the reform debates at the Council of Basel was the Order – more precisely: the German Master (“Deutschmeister”) responsible for Italy – reminded of its patronage rights in Stigliano. At the end of July 1435, the Order and the Diocese of Treviso agreed to a compromise in which the vicar of the (at the time) vacant see of Treviso recognized the Order’s presentation right as patron of the church. The Order acquiesced in the transformation of the ecclesiastical property in Stigliano into a free prebend to support the clergy of Treviso, thereby quite pragmatically consenting to the personnel-political schemes of the church of Treviso. Already by the mid-1430s, the Teutonic Order’s financial situation in the Bailiwick of Lombardy was so acute that it was unable to fulfill its responsibilities attached to the church patronage in Stigliano or even to maintain the church building. Later, this became even more difficult – or better, impossible – when the commanderies faced accumulating financial obligations. From the mid 15th century, the Bailiwick of Lombardy was unable to raise even the smallest portion of the financial means necessary towards the maintenance and regular repairs of St. Nicholas Church in Stigliano. The reason: the enormous extra contributions demanded by the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, deeply in debt because of the unsuccessful war against Poland. Even though the Order was entirely incapable of performing its duties as patron of this small church, it still refused to relinquish its patronage. English translation by Cornelia Oefelein

The Expansion of Intellectual Property Rights in Southeast and East Central Europe in the Context of the First World War

AbstractIt is usually held that by the turn of the millennium Latin Christians stopped enslaving their fellow-believers from within Europe. Scholars have therefore tended to define the late medieval type of domestic slaves in Italian and Iberian households, most of whom had been traded from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region to Europe, by their cultural and religious difference. Yet, the numerous Christians from the Balkans who came across the Adriatic Sea to the West (and especially to Venice) clearly complicate the picture. They were mostly under twelve years of age and could be purchased at a very low price. The paper examines the commercial policy of the Venetian Senate in respect of the Adriatic human trafficking and sounds the strategies Venetian merchants used in order to pursue their interests, within and outside the legal framework set by the state authorities East and West of the Adriatic Sea.

“Those other Venetian book illustrations”

Although the invention of printing is credited to Gutenberg in fifteenth-century Mainz, by the end of the same century Venetian books, led by Aldus Manutius and the de Gregoriis firm, set the pace for European publications. Many were illustrated, although by anonymous designers and craftsmen, and featured decorated black borders with white highlights. Narrative scenes from such texts as Ovid and the Italian vernacular canon featured lively figure movement in persuasive settings. In 1500, Venetian woodcut production climaxed with a mural composite woodcut View of Venice, designed by Jacopo de’ Barbari but sponsored by German producer Anton Kolb, and protected by the Venetian Senate with one of the first print privileges ever granted.

Detestabile scelus Perastinorum - the psychological and social background of the murder of Pompejus de Pasqualibus, the abbot of the St George Abbey near Perast

The St George Abbey was founded on an island near Perast by the Benedictine Monastic Order by the beginning of the 11th century. From the mid-13th century, the community of Kotor had the right of patronage over the abbey, which allowed the patriciate of Kotor to elect abbots as well as have a say in numerous monastery affairs, including propriety rights. Therefore, on November the 2nd 1530, Minor Council of Kotor named Pompejus de Pasqualibus, a nobleman from Kotor, the abbot of the St George Abbey. After the official consent from Rome and Venice, father Pompejus took over the abbey. Soon after, a gruesome crime took place on the island, a crime unseen in the history of the Kotor church. On the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross, May 3rd 1535, a group of Perast locals, armed with sticks and daggers, broke into the abbey and killed abbot Pasqualibus at the altar as he was saying Pater Noster. Nikola Krosic, the chaplain of the St George Abbey, and a few others tried to stop the murderers, but to no avail. The killers went on to humiliate the body of the deceased by throwing it out of the church and dumping it into a nearby pit, which added to the resentment, especially among the patriciates of Kotor. Three days later, on the Feast of the Ascension, the bishop of Kotor, Luka Bizanti, publicly excommunicated the killers and their men in the cathedral, while Pope Paul III forbade all service at the church where the crime had been committed. The interdict wasn?t recalled until 1546. In the decree of excommunication, Bishop Luka Bizanti emphasized the fact that father Pompejus hadn?t said or done anything to provoke the killers. What are the reasons of such an outpour of mass anger among dozens of Perast locals? Around that time, for several decades, Perast, a village founded on St George?s fief, started to improve its economy as a result of the expansion of ship-building and trading. More and more inhabitants of Perast started to sail and take part in the trade, especially on the rye and salt market. They had the support of the Venetian authorities, which caused envy among the inhabitants of Kotor, who considered Perast a part of their district. The tendency to achieve a full emancipation from the community of Kotor included church interests as well. After a gradual weakening of church life on the island, the St George church took on the role of a parish church under the patronage of Kotor. Perast locals were evidently dissatisfied with the idea of their parish priest being a noble Pasqualibus of Kotor, whose descent and position were representative of everything they despised and fought against. The motive of the murder was a trivial one - father Pompejus refused to hold service at the St Church on the Feast of the Holy Cross, which deeply insulted the people of Perast. The exceedingly long process of turning the Benedictine abbey into a parish church and a sepulchral chapel of Perast reached its peak on November the 17th1634 with the edict of the Venetian Senate taking the right of patronage away from the community of Kotor. From then on, ius patronatus belonged to the Venetian Senate, while the choice of the abbot, the parish priest of Perast in fact, was left to the locals.

Mit zweierlei Maß. Der Adriaraum als Laboratorium spätmittelalterlicher Praktiken des Slaving / Two Degrees of Bondage: The Venetian Adriatic Sea as a Laboratory for European Practices and Discourses of Slavery

Abstract It is usually held that by the turn of the millennium Latin Christians stopped enslaving their fellow-believers from within Europe. Scholars have therefore tended to define the late medieval type of domestic slaves in Italian and Iberian households, most of whom had been traded from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region to Europe, by their cultural and religious difference. Yet, the numerous Christians from the Balkans who came across the Adriatic Sea to the West (and especially to Venice) clearly complicate the picture. They were mostly under twelve years of age and could be purchased at a very low price. The paper examines the commercial policy of the Venetian Senate in respect of the Adriatic human trafficking and sounds the strategies Venetian merchants used in order to pursue their interests, within and outside the legal framework set by the state authorities East and West of the Adriatic Sea.

Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II's requests reconsidered

Gentile Bellini's portrait of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, painted in 1480 during the artist's stay in the Ottoman capital, has become emblematic of cultural exchange between Venice and the Ottomans. However, documentary evidence suggests that the sultan was more interested in obtaining bronze founders than painters. A re‐consideration of the documents of the Venetian Senate from 1479–1480 will alter the perspective from which this episode is usually viewed, giving Bellini a less central role and indicating that the contemporary mission of the bronze founder Bartolomeo Bellano was of no less importance. Mehmed's requests for bronze founders – made simultaneously to Venice and Florence – have been interpreted as a sign of Mehmed's enthusiasm for portrait medals. This explanation will be questioned and it will be argued that the sultan's interest in bronze founders extended beyond their artistic production to their knowledge of cannon technology, shedding light on Venice's refusal to send a second founder.

Commercial agreements between Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and Venice at 1400

An example of the fruitfulness of diplomacy as a resource for economic development may be found in the arrangements disposed in 1400 by the Venetian Senate to establish commercial agreements with the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. Those agreements show also an open attitude from the Nasrid authorities facing a commercial stimulation of their territories, easing greatly new incorporations of the leading business communities from the Late Medieval Western world.

“Clamber not you up to the casements”: On ghetto views and viewing

On 29 March 1516 the Venetian Senate ordered all Jews residing in the city to move behind the walls of the ghetto. The mandate stipulated that Jews would be watched by Christian guards twenty-four hours a day and restricted by a nighttime curfew. In such a surveilled space, Venice’s ghetto windows played an integral role in the complex and interactive networks constituting the city and its constituency. The singular status of ghetto architecture—especially the injunctions regarding its fenestration—provides an opportunity to explore the processes of ghettoization that partitioned a population and monitored the activities of Jews and Christians alike. Windows produced spatial occasions for looking and being looked at that reinforced social difference and created profound cultural fissures. This article studies the windows of the Venetian ghetto and the city’s ongoing claims to obstruct them in the early modern period. To study the window is to study the demarcation between public good and private plurality, between the citizen and the subordinated Other.

Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence

It has been rarely remarked how seldom a competitive spirit comes into play in the relations among these [Renaissance Florentine] merchants. The vast correspondence of Datini and of the Medici themselves (the largest collections of business letters to survive before the sixteenth century) yields hardly a hint of competition. . . . However individualistic the Florentine world appears in contrast with the tight corporate structures elsewhere—the Venetian senate, the Hanseatic league, the south-German cartels, the London regulated companies—it was still permeated with something of the spirit of medieval corporatism. This is what the fiducia Florentine business historians make so much of really comes down to—that sense of trust in one another that in a way also kept everyone in line.1

Controlling Expenditure, or the Slow Emergence of Costing at the Venice Arsenal, 1586–1633

This paper aims to aid our understanding of the emergence of accounting as a control instrument in complex proto-industrial settings, through its perceived capacity of mirroring the production process. The paper starts off from an archival document, the 1586 deliberation by the Venetian Senate, which imposed on the Arsenal a stocktaking to be conducted every three years, and ad hoc galley production accounts to be kept in double entry format, where the passage of materials and work-in-process between units were recorded both in physical quantity and value. In this deliberation the Venetian Senate was clearly posing explicitly the problem of costing and the efficient use of resources within the Arsenal. Until then, the Senate controlled this organisation only by limiting the funds allocated to activities (wages, oars, ‘stuffs’) without entering into the substance of the operations. Two interrelated investigations are carried out. First, a content analysis of the 1586 document is made. Second, the question of its ‘impact’ on the Arsenal's actual accounting practices is addressed. In a 1633 Report by Alvise Molin, a magistrate of the Republic, some elements of the 1586 deliberation seem to surface, insofar as a quite sophisticated calculation of the production costs of galleys is provided. In this sense it might well be that the notion of cost emerged as a sort of ‘accidental by-product’ of the Senate's efforts aimed at introducing tighter forms of control on the Arsenal.

Venice between East and West: Marc'Antonio Barbaro and Palladio's Church of the Redentore

This article reconsiders the role of Palladio9s friend and patron the Venetian Senator Marc9Antonio Barbaro in the design of the church of the Redentore in Venice, commissioned after the great plague of 1575-76. It examines the circumstances surrounding Barbaro9s unsuccessful support of the centrally planned design in light of his recent return from a five-year period as consul in Constantinople. The religious and political issues informing the debate are investigated in detail, in order to amplify the motives behind the final choice of plan. The architectural dialogue between Venice and Milan, two cities seeking to build votive churches after the plague, forms one axis of the debate, but Venice characteristically looked east as well as west. The article suggests that Palladio9s subtle range of allusions may have included not only the lessons of antiquity and issues of church reform, but also ideas drawn from the recent work of the great Ottoman architect Sinan. Significantly, Barbaro9s dispatches from Constantinople had transmitted enthusiastic descriptions of new Ottoman buildings to the heart of the Venetian Senate.

Uncommon dominion: Venetian Crete and the myth of ethnic purity

From 1211 until its loss to the Ottomans in 1669, the Greek island we know as Crete was the Venetian colony of Candia. Ruled by a paid civil service fully accountable to the Venetian Senate, Candia was distinct from nearly every other colony of the medieval period for the unprecedented degree to which the colonial power was involved in its governance. Yet, for Sally McKee, the importance of the Cretan colony only begins with the anomalous manner of the Venetian state's rule. Uncommon Dominion tells the story of Venetian Crete, the home of two recognizably distinct ethnic communities, the Latins and the Greeks. The application of Venetian law to the colony made it possible for the colonial power to create and maintain a fiction of ethnic distinctness. The Greeks were subordinate to the Latins economically, politically, and juridically, yet within a century of Venetian colonization, the ethnic differences between Latin and Greek Cretans in daily material life were significantly blurred. Members of the groups intermarried, many of them learned each other's language, and some even chose to worship by the rites of the other's church. Holding up ample evidence of acculturation and miscegenation by the colony's inhabitants, McKee uncovers the colonial forces that promoted the persistence of ethnic labeling despite the lack of any clear demarcation between the two predominant communities. As McKee argues, the concept of ethnic identity was largely determined by gender, religion, and social status, especially by the Latin and Greek elites in their complex and frequently antagonistic social relationships. Drawing expertly from notarial and court records, as well as legislative and literary sources, Uncommon Dominion offers a unique study of ethnicity in the medieval and early modern periods. Students and scholars in medieval, colonial, and postcolonial studies will find much of use in studying this remarkable colonial experiment.

Promoting the past: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as antiquarian enterprise

Despite Colonna's enticement above, very few readers in the fifteenth century would have taken seriously the claim that the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was sent down from the heavens as a receptacle of divine revelation. Those who shouted ‘poliphilian words!’ to stifle the pretentious windbags in the Venetian senate did not seem to mind profaning this enigmatic work. Castiglione, concerned above all with effective social grace, also found something objectionable in this learned fantasy when he derided the ‘Poliphilian’ language of those courtiers who had the bad taste to strut around in a costume of alienating erudition. Indeed, the hybrid artificial language of Colonna's illustrated romance is alienating for those who prefer to keep their Latin and Greek endings separate. The narrative plot consists of an incoherent series of encounters with fantastical architecture, amorous nymphs, and ancient occult mysteries, all of which our contemporary narrator, Poliphilo, describes in onerous detail. In short, this is a book admired for its images, but seldom read.