Naples Photo Galleries

We’ve been happy to discover that our open-access Image Galleries on Flickr have been a popular addition to our Medieval Naples project. Thus far all images in our Naples gallery have had 47,000 views.

That encourages us to keep adding photos and other images to our galleries and to continue to link them to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples.

Our two book-length publications, Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History, 400-1400 by Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo and Medieval Naples: A Documentary History History, 400-1400 by Ronald G. Musto have been selling well in their hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions.

New Kindle Edition

The newly revised Kindle edition of Ronald G. Musto’s Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 is now available. It offers the complete text with all the Kindle’s latest features, including hyperlinked footnotes, links to external resources, such as Italica Press image galleries and Interactive Map of Medieval Naples, and all images in full-color. All for only $9.99.

Now Kindle also offers free updates on all purchased Kindle titles. Be sure to follow their update instructions if you have already purchased a copy. 

Interactive Map updates

Our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples has now logged over 59,000 views; and we continue to update and revise it. Our latest update includes new information on the late ancient and medieval port, the Byzantine baths at Sta. Chiara, revisions to the ancient and early medieval shoreline, and a few new images for our linked Naples image galleries.

Several of these changes are in response to Paul Arthur's positive and thoughtful review of Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo's Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History in Speculum 88.1 (January 2013) and to update information just published in Ronald G. Musto's Medieval Naples: A Documentary History 400-1400.

A Documentary History 400-1400

We’re happy to announce the print publication of Ronald G. Musto’s Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 as the latest volume in Italica’s A Documentary History of Naples.

This is a revised and expanded version of the edition published online for the Kindle and iPad over a year ago. This edition includes new readings and additional sections edited by Eileen Gardiner on medieval Naples’ literature, hagiography, literate and book culture. 

A new Introduction offers a comprehensive survey of the periods covered in the historical texts, with a discussion of the historiography and of important research and interpretive issues. These include the material development of the medieval city from Late Antiquity through the end of the Angevin period, the condition and use of the available primary sources and archaeological evidence, with particular attention given to the wide variety of recent excavations and of archival materials, the question of the ruralization and recovery of its urban core through the little known Ducal period — with some discussion of the city’s changing population — the question of Naples’ importance as a commercial and political capital, its developing economic and material base, and the question of its relationship to its hinterland on the one hand and to broader Mediterranean contexts on the other. It also surveys the changes in Naples’ grid plan, its walls and fortifications, its port, and its commercial and residential development. It complements the discussions in Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo’s Medieval Naples: An Architectural a Urban History.

It totals 460 pages, contains 82 readings covering all aspects of Neapolitan urban life and culture from c.400 to c.1400, 74 figures, 60 thumbnail images keyed to a map of medieval Naples, a complete bibliography, index, and a key to external resources, including our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples, our online Bibliographies, and our online image galleries. The book is now available in paperback and the hardcover edition will be ready soon. A revised and expanded Kindle and iPad edition will follow shortly after that.

We’re happy to be back after a prolonged season of hard work on other projects. We return with some very good news: the first is that Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo’s Medieval Naples: An Architectural & Urban History has received a very good review in The Burlington Magazine. Written by Cordelia Warr, a leading expert in medieval Neapolitan art history, the review covers the content of the volume, its excellent style, its illustrations and its online components: including over 450 color images of the medieval city and its monuments.

Our second piece of good news is that the print edition of Ronald G. Musto’s Medieval Naples: A Documentary History 400–1400 is now in final page proofs. This is a revised and expanded version of the edition launched online in the Kindle and iPad over a year ago. This edition includes new sections edited by Eileen Gardiner on medieval Naples’ literature, hagiography, literate and book culture. It comes in at over 400 pages, contains 81 readings covering all aspects of Neapolitan urban life and culture from c.400 to c.1400, 74 figures, 60 thumbnail images keyed to a map of medieval Naples, a complete Bibliography, index, and a key to external resources, including our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples, our online bibliographies, and our online image galleries. The book should be available in hardcover and paperback in January 2013. A revised and expanded Kindle and iPad edition will follow shortly after that.

New Image Galleries

Technology is a good thing for publishers, scholars, and readers. But the pace of technological change can sometimes be so fast that it leaves us all bewildered at times. So it was lately when Apple announced that it was rolling out its new iCloud computing technology. Lots to like, along with a new operating system: automatic synching between devices for images, music, text, spreadsheets, etc. But there was a catch: the “old” iDisk technology, along with other Apple remote server tools, was ending on June 30, 2012.

That meant that the hosting platform for all of Italica Press’s Naples image galleries, linked to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples, would disappear in two weeks, along with all that online content, unless we moved as quickly as the rate of technology change. Well, there’s good news: we have.

Beginning today, all Italica Press Naples image galleries — and all hyperlinks from the Interactive Map — will now be using the Flickr platform. While this has taken some work to migrate all those hundreds of images, Flickr itself has many benefits, including advantages over the old iMac Gallery technology: images are more easily uploaded, sorted, tagged, sized, viewed, and glossed. They are also more discoverable by Internet search engines. Online images galleries is also Flickr’s business. All-in-all a change for the better.

Some things still need to be updated: the hyperlinks for the Kindle editions of our Medieval Naples series will have to be redirected; and the list of URLs in the appendix to the print edition of Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo’s  Medieval Naples: An Architectural & Urban History, 400–1400 (p. 125) will need revision. We’ll provide an online, downloadable concordance to those links; but most will be straightforward and transparent by simply using the now updated Interactive Map.

Two New Titles

We’d like to call your attention to two new, important titles on medieval Naples. Alas, since we assumed editorship of Speculum, we’ve had to refrain from reviewing titles here. But here they are:

The first is Amedeo Feniello’s Napoli: Società ed economia (902-1137) (Nuovi Studi Storici 89), Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2011. Feniello is among the most important historians of Naples working today, and his various works have shed light on many under-studied aspects of the city for some years now.


The second title is Samantha Kelly’s edition of The Cronaca di Partenope: An Introduction to and Critical Edition of the First Vernacular History of Naples (c. 1350), Leiden: Brill, 2011. This is one of the most important sources for the history of the later Middle Ages in Naples and it’s now in a reliable edition, with an expert introduction.


We encourage you to have a look.

Bruzelius & Tronzo Reviewed

Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo's Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History has just received a positive and thoughtful review by Thomas Granier of the Université Montpellier-III in the most recent online offerings of The Medieval Review. The review has many good things to say about this volume, praises the overall Documentary History of Naples and its mix of print and electronic resources but also raises some interesting questions about this mix and the autonomy of the individual volumes of the Medieval Naples sections.

While Bruzelius and Tronzo make it clear that their subject matter is the known, major monuments of the medieval city — and the overall historical contextualization of their development — Granier does present some caveats, among them the transition from late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages, and most especially the use of archival materials so well presented in Amedeo Feniello's latest work.

In fact, however, the complementary volume, Ronald G. Musto's Medieval Naples…Historical Texts, attempts squarely to address just these issues, but as Granier notes, in a separate and (so far) digital-only Kindle volume. The reviewer also generously notes that this is an ongoing project and that such materials will of course find their way together into the larger scheme of the project. It's criticism and advice both anticipated and well taken as we work our way through the complex issues of ongoing publication in the print and digital worlds.

S. Giovanni Maggiore

We have just returned from a brief trip to Naples where we obtained permission from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici to view and photograph the church and the scavi of S. Giovanni Maggiore, one of the most important early-Christian buildings of Naples, constructed under Bishop Vincenzo c. 550-60.

The church was meticulously and beautifully restored by the Soprintendenza under the supervision of Arch. Orsola Foglia and team but has been closed since its completion in 2003/4. Thanks to Arch. Foglia and the Soprintendenza, we have now expanded out its entry in our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples and have posted a complete series of images in our web gallery.

Most notable among these for medievalists are the two spoliated capitals surmounted by Vincenzo’s monograph, and the remains of the early-Christian ambulatory, incorporating spoliated columns and pilasters from Leptis Magna dating from the second century CE. Both the scavi and the restoration of the dazzling 17th-century basilica (by Dionisio Lazzari) are important cultural sites in Naples, and we urge readers to make inquiries to the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici (Palazzo Reale, Piazza del Plebiscito, Napoli) both to view the site and to urge its reopening and the complete publication of its restoration and excavations.

Historical Texts, 400–1400 is Published

We are happy to announce the publication of Ronald G. Musto’s Medieval Naples: A Documentary History 400–1400, Historical Texts. This title is one of Italica’s born-digital works and is now offered exclusively on the Kindle platform for both the Kindle itself and other handhelds, such as the iPad, iPhone and iPhone Touch. It incorporates all the texts available until now on the Medieval Naples section of our website and adds a new general introduction to the period, its historiography, and important research and interpretive issues. It will soon also be available in hardcover and paperback editions.
    Medieval Naples, 400–1400: A Documentary History is the first comprehensive and most complete English-language collection of sources yet to treat the history of the city from late Antiquity to the beginnings of the Renaissance. Sources are drawn from the historical, economic, literary, artistic, religious and cultural life from the fall of Rome through the Byzantine, Lombard, Norman, Hohenstaufen and Angevin periods.

    This work takes full advantage of digital resources: hyperlinking to complete bibliographical information on WorldCat, to Italica Press image galleries, to external web resources, including digital archives and manuscript collections, online reference works and images, and to our own online bibliographies and Interactive Map of Medieval Naples.

Boccaccio’s Life of Giovanna I

It’s been a very busy Spring and Summer for us, but with September we’re back editing and adding texts and other news and links for our Medieval Naples.

Our most recent addition in Chapter 6, The Angevins, is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Life of Giovanna I, from his On Famous Women (De claris mulieribus). This is excerpted from our newly published, revised edition of Guido A. Guarino’s translation. Our edition now includes a bibliographical note and bibliography to bring research on Boccaccio and this work up to date and reflect recent interpretive trends and debates.

This newly added reading is accompanied by an introduction on Boccaccio’s work and its place in Neapolitan historiography.

Medieval Naples: An Architectural & Urban History

We are happy to announce that Medieval Naples: An Architectural & Urban History, 400-1400 by Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo has now been published. These two leading American experts on the subject offer the first comprehensive English-language review of Naples’ architecture and urban development from late antiquity to the high and late Middle Ages.

William Tronzo treats the early Middle Ages, from the end of the western Roman Empire to the end of the Duchy, or from about 400 to about 1139. He covers a range of topics, discussing the development of the city’s 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.

Caroline Bruzelius then picks up the narrative and analysis from the twelfth century to the end of the Angevin period, or about 1400. She brings up to date and nuances many of the findings and themes of her The Stones of Naples. She revisits some of the same material on the early medieval city from a different perspective, that of religious foundations and urban topography. She proceeds to patronage — religious, mercantile, noble and royal — and then moves on to the role of Tuscan artists in Naples, concluding with the Angevin reconfiguration of the city in the late Middle Ages.

Clearly and concisely written, it is an ideal introductory survey for the scholar, student and general reader to medieval Naples, its chief monuments, and to the scholarly discussions and interpretations of the material, visual and documentary evidence.

Preface, select bibliography; appendices, including the Tavola Strozzi with key to buildings, map of medieval Naples with a thumbnail key; and index.

Illustrated with 83 black & white figures, plus 60 thumbnail images.
List of links to online resources from the Documentary History of Naples, including primary-source readings; online galleries containing over 450 additional images in full color; and links to full bibliographies with ongoing supplements.

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 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.