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 texts for Chapter 5: The Hohenstaufen

We’ve just added some new texts to Chapter 5: The Hohenstaufen, for the reign of Henry VI. These include Richard of San Germano’s narrative of Henry’s invasion and conquest of the Regno and Naples; and his chancellor Conrad of Querfurt’s description of the Virgilian marvels of Naples and its environs. We’ve mixed in some creative dissonance by using the illustrations from Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis. After all, it was Conrad who had persuaded Peter to compose that work. Many of these images are now available online with Wikimedia. We hope to be adding selections from Peter of Eboli soon as well.

Chapter 4, The Normans, Now Online

The first entries for Chapter 4, The Normans, are now online. This chapter currently includes texts from Alexander of Telese and Alexander of Neckham on Roger II’s conquest of Naples, on the Exultet rolls and their place in Neapolitan liturgy, and selections from Benjamin of Tudela’s Itinerary, describing his visit to the Campania and Naples. The current selections range in date from 1130 to c.1165. We will continue to add texts as we go along. We’ve also added some new texts to Chapter 3: Ducal Naples, including the Pactum or Promissio of Sergius VII with the Neapolitans of 1130.

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.

Chapter 3 Update

We’ve added and revised some entries to Chapter 3: Ducal Naples; and we're also continuing work on the print version of Naples: A Documentary History, Art History, 400–1400, with chapters already published online by Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo. We hope to have work completed on this by summer’s end.

William Tronzo, Naples in the Early Middle Ages

Italica Press is pleased to announce the publication of William Tronzo’s “Art History: Naples in the Early Middle Ages,” chapter 10 of Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 in Italica Press’s series, A Documentary History of Naples. Tronzo, an internationally known scholar of late ancient and early medieval art history, 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, the forum area, including S. Paolo Maggiore and the early history of S. Lorenzo Maggiore, and the Pietrasanta. 
This chapter is available as a cross-searchable, downloadable PDF document, full of color and B&W images, plans and digital reconstructions. It joins the chapter by Caroline Bruzelius on The High and Late Middle Ages to form a complete review of the art history of medieval Naples.

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.