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.