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.

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.

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.

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.

The Hohenstaufen

We’ve begun posting texts for Chapter 5, the Hohenstaufen period, beginning with the reign of Frederick II. These include selections from Villani, the Licterae Generales establishing the University of Naples, and some trade insurance documents concerning trade at the port of Naples.

We'll be expanding this chapter soon with additional texts.

New Readings on Sex, Style and Spending

We’ve added three new readings to our chapter on Robert of Anjou that sample his legislation on prostitution in central Naples (1314), record his spending on cavalcades and church support (June 1334), and translate his sumptuary edict on youth fashion (1335).

We've begun Chapter 6: The Angevins

After many years of delay and false starts we have arrived upon what we think is an ideal solution to our launching the publication of A Documentary History of Naples: Medieval Naples, 400–1400. Rather than wait until we have sifted through hundreds of primary sources, made our limited selections, translated, edited and prepared them for print, we’ve decided to use the potential of online publishing to forge ahead.
In the weeks and months ahead you’ll therefore begin to see many full-text selections on Neapolitan history in English translation appear on these pages. We’re beginning with two areas: the history of the Angevin period and Neapolitan literature and book production. The texts we’ve assembled represent only a small fraction of what we’ll be publishing, but as far as we know they already offer more English-language texts on medieval Naples than can be found published anywhere else.
As we continue to add content, change readings or texts, we’ll be posting entries on this blog. Subscribing to the RSS feed provided here will also give you immediate notification of these changes. The blog format of these pages will also give you a voice in the process: suggesting texts, additions and emendations, editorial and other changes to the texts we’ve already posted. We look forward to this process, and to hearing from you.