The Anjou Bible

Long known to scholars of Naples for its frontispieces of Robert of Anjou and the royal Angevin genealogy, the Malines (Mechelen) Bible is one of the most magnificent manuscripts of the Angevin period — and one of the most important visual sources for the reigns of Robert of Anjou and Giovanna I. A new edition has just been published in print facsimile and online. The print volume, The Anjou Bible: Naples 1340. A Royal Manuscript Revealed, edited by Lieve Watteeuw and Jan Van der Stock (Paris, Leuven & Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010), offers a collection of twelve essays by such noted experts as John Lowden, Frans Gistelinck, Cathleen A. Fleck, Alessandro Tomei and Stefania Paone, Michelle Duran, Nicolas Bock, Alessandra Perriccioli (Saggese), Luc Dequeker, Pierre Delsaerdt, Marina Van Bos, Roberto Padoan, Marvin E. Klein, Gerrit de Bruin, Barnard J. Aalderink, and Ted A.G. Steemers.

The new book covers the provenance, codicology, conservation and restoration of the manuscript, its creation and artists and its cultural and political contexts. The print volume is accompanied by extensive annotations, an excellent bibliography, and full-color reproductions of every illustrated folio in the manuscript.

In November 2010 the Anjou Bible Research Project (Illuminare, K.U. Leuven) mounted a far-ranging exhibition and series of panels around the restoration. Even more important, the complete series of illustrated folios is now available online, free and open access, with an excellent high-resolution image viewer at: http://www.anjoubible.be/thebibleonline .

Interactive Map, Bibliography, Google Translate

We’re happy to report that our Interactive Map and Bibliography are reaching expanding audiences. When we last reported on our Interactive Map back in September 2009 it had seen about 9,700 hits. As of today this number has risen to 25,725, over 16,000 hits in one year. The same holds true of our online Bibliography, which has now seen over 25,000 downloads, up from 10,000 a year ago.

We continue to revise the Interactive Map with newly added sites, revised and updated information, and new bibliography. Our downloadable Bibliography is now been supplemented by dynamically added listings on WorldCat arranged by period. We’re pleased that these resources are finding an audience and hope that they are of value.

You’ll also notice that we’ve added Google Translate to this blog: readers can now view these entries in a fairly accurate translation into their preferred language. Please do not hesitate to contact us here with your comments and suggestions for changes and additions.

New Dynamic Bibliographies on WorldCat

Our comprehensive Bibliography for Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, arranged by period and type of resource, was last updated on January 4, 2009.

We’re happy to report that our new updates are now available online through WorldCat, the international cataloging resource provided by OCLC and a host of contributing libraries and library systems. With WorldCat one can view all available editions of books, articles, reviews and digital resources, as well as the libraries that hold these titles, with hyperlinks to your local library’s own online catalog. In addition, WorldCat provides links to online samples of books and hyperlinks for these titles to online sellers or free and open-access collections of books, texts, and archival resources.

Users can also create custom selections from these lists, download or export them into a number of online formats, including HTML, and format them according to a variety of scholarly style sheets, thus making these bibliographies ideal for research and teaching.

These supplemental bibliographies are works in progress, which we will update on a regular basis. WorldCat also allows users to annotate items and to suggest editions, thus making it a valuable interactive resource. We will eventually move all the titles on the comprehensive bibliography into WorldCat lists.

Chapters 2 and 3 Now Online

We’re pleased to inform our readers that the first selections in Chapters 2, Late Roman and Byzantine Naples and Chapter 3, Ducal Naples have now been launched online. Texts include the histories of Jordanes, Paul the Deacon, Procopius and the Liber Pontificalis; the Variae of Cassiodorus and Letters of Gregory I and selected archival documents.
Chapter 2 covers the period from 476 to the beginnings of the Duchy in 568. Chapter 3 picks up the narrative from 568 to the end of the Duchy in 1137.
Selections include hyperlinks to online archives and editions, bibliographical references, full-scale views of art, links to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples and other chapters in the Documentary History.
These offerings are only the beginnings of these chapters. As we go along we’ll be adding further texts drawn from existing editions, and from our own translations of texts and archival documents. Thus far we have posted over 60 texts across all chapters of Medieval Naples, with over 100 illustrations, already making this the most extensive documentary selection in English for the history of medieval Naples.

Early Medieval Naples Now Forthcoming

We’re happy to announce that William Tronzo’s contribution to our Documentary History of Naples: Art History. Naples in the Early Middle Ages is now in final production and will be published soon.

William Tronzo is an internationally known scholar of late ancient and early medieval art history. He brings his expertise and elegant style to bear on the city’s transition from ancient Greco-Roman town to medieval capital, reviewing the development of its urban fabric and chief monuments, including the catacombs, Sta. Restituta, the baptistry of S. Giovanni in Fonte, and the Pietrasanta.
This chapter will soon be available as a cross-searchable, downloadable PDF document, full of color and B&W images, plans and digital reconstructions. It will then join the chapter by Caroline Bruzelius on the High and Late Middle Ages to form a complete print book on the art history of medieval Naples.

Caroline Bruzelius, Naples Art History, Is Published

We’re very pleased to announce the newest addition to our Naples: A Documentary History, 400–1400. Caroline Bruzelius’ Art History: Naples in the High and Late Middle Ages is the first comprehensive review of the city’s architecture, art and urban development in the high and late Middle Ages in English since the author’s The Stones of Naples.

Clearly and concisely written, it is an ideal introductory survey for the scholar, student and general reader. This downloadable, interactive e-book is fully searchable and can be navigated with the standard Adobe Acrobat interface: page by page, through an interactive table of contents or via bookmarks. It offers dozens of illustrations — maps, plans, elevations, drawings, color and black & white photos — that can be viewed at any number of screen resolutions. The work provides hyperlinks to web-based photo galleries of all the major monuments, to many documents cited in the text, and a complete — and free — downloadable Bibliography.

Napoli: Atlante della Città Storica

One of the best finds in our research trips to Naples has been Italo Ferraro’s six-volume Napoli: Atlante della Città Storica (Naples: Clean, Oikos, 2002-).

Each of these hefty volumes takes on a different section of the city, moving rione by rione through the architecture and arts, urban fabric and history of the city with gorgeous color and black and white images, maps and street plans, elevations and axonometric projections of city blocks and individual buildings and complexes. The format is large, the design and layout elegant, and the information authoritative and up-to-date. Ferraro and his colleagues offer a wealth of detail, bibliographical citation and fine indexes.

We came across a copy of the first volume several years ago at the Port’Alba book stalls. It was a real steal and we lugged it home in our baggage. Subsequent volumes have been a bit more pricey (140-180 Euros), but well worth the investment.

Next time you're at Port’Alba look for some bargain copies (and if there are extras, do let us know!)

With the end of the summer we return to our work on Naples. This autumn we’ll be adding more texts, images and hyperlinks to resources for our pages of readings.

In the meanwhile, we wanted to let you know that our open-access resources for medieval Naples are proving quite popular with readers. The free and downloadable Bibliography has already received over 10,000 downloads, while our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples has to date received over 9,700 views. We’ll keep editing and expanding both resources in the months ahead.

We’re also happy to inform our readers that Caroline Bruzelius’s chapter on Art and Architecture in High and Late Medieval Naples is in its final stages of editing and will be available to readers soon this fall.

Naples on Google Books

We've recently experienced some of the benefits and pitfalls of using Google Books as a resource for the study of the Neapolitan past. We report on this experience in the June 12, 2009 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, available today online in an article entitled "Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past"

and accessible free for the next week.

Mutilation — of kingdoms and of scholarship — emerges as a key theme.

Psalter of Cristoforo Orimina

The liturgical psalter illuminated by Cristoforo Orimina is online with E-Codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland.  The manuscript is Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes 15. Shown here is fol. 29r. Orimina was a court painter during the reigns of Robert of Anjou and Giovanna I and probably completed this manuscript some time between 1335 and 1350 for the house of Agnes de Périgord  (1305–1345), the widow of Robert’s youngest brother, John of Gravina, duke of Durazzo. The arms at the center bottom show those of Talleyrand-Périgord and of Armagnac. The manuscript shows the clear influence of Roberto di Oderisio, responsible for the frescoes in Sta. Maria Incoronata. According to some scholarship it reflects the influence of Franciscan ascetics at the Angevin court. Perhaps, but the manuscript is also replete with delightful marginal images of people at sport and play, making music, dancing, showing off the latest fashions, and in general demonstrating the love of life for which Naples and its court were well known in the mid-fourteenth century.

Baths of Pozzuoli now online

Petrus de Eboli’s De balneis Puteolanis (The Baths of Pozzuoli)  is now online in E-Codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland. The manuscript, Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 135, is believed to have been created in Naples during the reign of Giovanna I, some time between 1350 and 1370. It appears to show first-hand knowledge of the Bay of Naples’ and Bay of Pozzuoli’s archaeological remains of Roman baths.

First composed by Petrus, court poet to Henry VI of Sicily, between 1196 and 1220, it is one of the most important sources for medieval Naples’ topography and for the history of science and medicine in medieval Europe.

To access the collection, please see our entry on Petrarch’s visit to the baths in October 1343 and click on the thumbnail.

We review Paola Vitolo in RQ

There’s a fine new book on Sta. Maria Incoronata that we've recently reviewed in the Spring 2009 issue of Renaissance Quarterly. It’s Paola Vitolo, La chiesa della Regina: L’Incoronata di Napoli, Giovanna I d’Angiò e Roberto di Oderisio (Rome: Viella, 2008). Readers can access the online review hosted by the University of Chicago Press. We hope in the future that Chicago will keep up the high standards established by RQ.

Bibliography and Interactive Map

We’re happy to report that two of our new Medieval Naples pages are being used quite a bit by readers. Our Bibliography has now received almost 1,500 downloads. It is searchable and currently contains nearly 600 items of value to researchers in all periods of medieval Naples. It can be downloaded free of charge.

Our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples has now received nearly 3,900 views. This map uses the online tools available in Google Map. Clicking on the zoom-in or zoom-out buttons on the upper left will magnify views down to the street level. Users can also view this map in “Map” (or street) mode, Satellite (aerial photograph), or Terrain (topographical) views. It uses standard cartographical symbols for abbeys, churches, secular buildings, walls (early medieval and Angevin), gates, and fortifications.

Clicking on any of these symbols will open a window with descriptive texts, images, bibliography and hyperlinks to other texts, sites, and web-image galleries produced by Italica Press.

Clicking “View Larger Map” below will open this map in Google Map and provide a complete index of sites. There you can also open the map in Google Earth (a free, downloadable program) and see the medieval city set against a navigable three-dimensional landscape.

Both the Bibliography and Map are works in progress. We welcome your suggestions for additions and changes.