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Longman History of Italy #2
Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch, 1216-1380
John Larner examines all the major developments across the Italian peninsula in the period that saw the rise of Florence and Venice, the development of a commercial empire by Italian towns which stretched from England to China, as well as the extraordinary cultural growth of the time.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
John Larner
9 booksJohn Patrick Larner, British historian who specialised in Medieval Italy with a particular interest in the life and career of Marco Polo. He taught for many years at the University of Glasgow where he was made Professor of History (1978-1994).
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April 30, 2017This is another volume in my austerity reading programme - an attempt to read the unread or partially read books that live on my bookshelves. Although apparently bought third or fourth hand I seem to have been the first to have ventured through the depths of this volume judging by the lack of spinal damage and absence of underlinings and marginalia, which was entirely my gain for although this is a textbook introduction to the period it was engaging and had a nice turn of phrase ("families that slayed together had every reason to stay together").
There are two early chapters running through the major political background followed by neat essay like chapters, each with end notes and further reading. There was an introductory chapter on the historiography and source materials which pleased me. I like to know how we got to our current state of knowledge and what it is all based on. The rest being chapters on the family, nobility, the countryside, religious life the cities and trade - the inclusion of poverty and worklessness I thought particularly interesting.
A few points stood out for me.
Firstly diversity. Serfdom disappearing in this period in parts of northern Italy but persisting in other areas - in Sardinia until 1838.
The victory of one party in factional struggle leading not to peace but to the splitting of the faction and renewed struggle, with extremely local conflicts identifying as part of larger political struggles - the biggest of which was between the supporters of the successors of the Emperor Frederick II and the supporters of the Papacy.
The aspiration towards and the identification with noble values. This saw on the one hand trade and banking as an adventure featuring daring, boldness, sang froid and irrational exuberance, on the other the evasion of taxation through the development of regressive taxes and transforming state debt into an opportunity for profit. The discussion of the wedding of Lionel, the son of Edward III of England, to Violante daughter of the Visconti Lord of Pavia with courses of gilded meat and fish with gifts of locally manufactured arms and armour and locally bred warhorses with its combination of mercantile interests, conspicuous consumption seems to epitomise the spirit of the age.
Reading Robert Sabatino Lopez (long ago and far away) there was an emphasis on trade as an inevitable consequence of geography. The likes of Amalfi or Venice, lacking the land for agriculture had no choice but to trade. However the lust for adventure and the broad penetration of chivalric ideals throughout society in Larner's view better explains the bank rolling of Edward I and the speculative lending that enabled warfare on a larger scale or conflicts, like that in southern Italy over Sicily that dragged on for ninety years. Merchants in effect were star struck by the world of kings and heraldry at the same time as having a desire to make audacious deals. This isn't surprising, the world of The Merchant of Prato shows that more ordinary commercial life generated only low levels of profit over long periods of time and was also at risk from brigandage, warfare, and the cruel vicissitudes of fashion.
St Thomas Aquinas championing Southern Italy under the Angevins - the mountains laboured and brought forth a mouse springs to mind, and his political views reflecting the narrow world and values of the southern Italian nobility.
Stifling effect of too effective and intrusive royal authority in the south?
Excess of nobles with nothing to do as a cause of brigandage or on going low level warfare - there is a nice literary example of this in Boccaccio's Decameron (second story of day ten).
On the downside I am now tempted to search out a copy of Salimbene di Adam's chronicle which provides some of the colourful anecdotes that pepper the chapters of this book.
There are two early chapters running through the major political background followed by neat essay like chapters, each with end notes and further reading. There was an introductory chapter on the historiography and source materials which pleased me. I like to know how we got to our current state of knowledge and what it is all based on. The rest being chapters on the family, nobility, the countryside, religious life the cities and trade - the inclusion of poverty and worklessness I thought particularly interesting.
A few points stood out for me.
Firstly diversity. Serfdom disappearing in this period in parts of northern Italy but persisting in other areas - in Sardinia until 1838.
The victory of one party in factional struggle leading not to peace but to the splitting of the faction and renewed struggle, with extremely local conflicts identifying as part of larger political struggles - the biggest of which was between the supporters of the successors of the Emperor Frederick II and the supporters of the Papacy.
The aspiration towards and the identification with noble values. This saw on the one hand trade and banking as an adventure featuring daring, boldness, sang froid and irrational exuberance, on the other the evasion of taxation through the development of regressive taxes and transforming state debt into an opportunity for profit. The discussion of the wedding of Lionel, the son of Edward III of England, to Violante daughter of the Visconti Lord of Pavia with courses of gilded meat and fish with gifts of locally manufactured arms and armour and locally bred warhorses with its combination of mercantile interests, conspicuous consumption seems to epitomise the spirit of the age.
Reading Robert Sabatino Lopez (long ago and far away) there was an emphasis on trade as an inevitable consequence of geography. The likes of Amalfi or Venice, lacking the land for agriculture had no choice but to trade. However the lust for adventure and the broad penetration of chivalric ideals throughout society in Larner's view better explains the bank rolling of Edward I and the speculative lending that enabled warfare on a larger scale or conflicts, like that in southern Italy over Sicily that dragged on for ninety years. Merchants in effect were star struck by the world of kings and heraldry at the same time as having a desire to make audacious deals. This isn't surprising, the world of The Merchant of Prato shows that more ordinary commercial life generated only low levels of profit over long periods of time and was also at risk from brigandage, warfare, and the cruel vicissitudes of fashion.
St Thomas Aquinas championing Southern Italy under the Angevins - the mountains laboured and brought forth a mouse springs to mind, and his political views reflecting the narrow world and values of the southern Italian nobility.
Stifling effect of too effective and intrusive royal authority in the south?
Excess of nobles with nothing to do as a cause of brigandage or on going low level warfare - there is a nice literary example of this in Boccaccio's Decameron (second story of day ten).
On the downside I am now tempted to search out a copy of Salimbene di Adam's chronicle which provides some of the colourful anecdotes that pepper the chapters of this book.
November 24, 2021
For the English-language reader, Italian history is a subject that has received only episodic coverage. There is an overwhelming abundance on ancient Rome, a wide range of studies about the Renaissance era, and a good variety from which to choose about the Risorgimento and the united Italy that emerged from it. By contrast, those interested in Italy’s history between those eras will find a shortage of available works, and will struggle to fill the void with the few that are available. Among the best of those available for anyone undertaking such an effort is the multi-volume Longman History of Italy. Designed as survey volumes for upper-division undergraduate students, they provide overarching coverage of the decades they address. Originally published in 1980, John Larner’s contribution was the first book published in the series, and it set a high bar for those who followed.
Despite the fact that their names enjoy featured billing in the book’s title, readers seeking this book in order to learn about Dante or Petrarch will be disappointed. Instead, what Larner offers is a wide-ranging description of Italian politics, government, and society during the 14th and 15th centuries. They begin with the attempts by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, to unify all of Italy under his rule. His failed efforts to do so proved, as Larner notes, “the final blow to any attempt to create a united Italy before the nineteenth century,” representing, in that respect, a starting point for an era in Italian history that would last for 600 years.
These were centuries of considerable diversity, creativity, and violence. Yet they also embody the underlying challenge for any attempt to write any history of “Italy” during this period, which is the inability to provide a cohesive single narrative of the peninsula. Larner does not many any attempt to do so, choosing instead to provide primarily a thematic overview of the 130 years following Frederick’s death in 1250. In successive chapters he details various aspects of the history of the period, including the family and social structures, the economic life of the town and countryside, the religious lives of Italians, and the governments of the peninsula and the concerns they addressed. Within those he identifies various commonalities and notes the differences that existed in the various regions. His approach is balanced and extremely effective in conveying the diversity of life in Italy at that time while simultaneously providing a sense of order to understanding this period.
This combination makes for a useful survey of a period of Italian history for which English-language alternatives are scarce. Though dated and poorly edited, it remains the single best introduction to Italy during the high Middle Ages available to someone unable to access the greater range of works in Italian on the subject. Perhaps its most effective achievement in that respect is to demonstrate the need for more studies of the era, as the dynamism and drama that Larner describes underscores the pivotal nature of the period in terms of the broader history of the country, which has for too long been under-served by an excessive focus on the periods of Italian history that are only superficially more interesting than the ones that have been skipped over.
Despite the fact that their names enjoy featured billing in the book’s title, readers seeking this book in order to learn about Dante or Petrarch will be disappointed. Instead, what Larner offers is a wide-ranging description of Italian politics, government, and society during the 14th and 15th centuries. They begin with the attempts by Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, to unify all of Italy under his rule. His failed efforts to do so proved, as Larner notes, “the final blow to any attempt to create a united Italy before the nineteenth century,” representing, in that respect, a starting point for an era in Italian history that would last for 600 years.
These were centuries of considerable diversity, creativity, and violence. Yet they also embody the underlying challenge for any attempt to write any history of “Italy” during this period, which is the inability to provide a cohesive single narrative of the peninsula. Larner does not many any attempt to do so, choosing instead to provide primarily a thematic overview of the 130 years following Frederick’s death in 1250. In successive chapters he details various aspects of the history of the period, including the family and social structures, the economic life of the town and countryside, the religious lives of Italians, and the governments of the peninsula and the concerns they addressed. Within those he identifies various commonalities and notes the differences that existed in the various regions. His approach is balanced and extremely effective in conveying the diversity of life in Italy at that time while simultaneously providing a sense of order to understanding this period.
This combination makes for a useful survey of a period of Italian history for which English-language alternatives are scarce. Though dated and poorly edited, it remains the single best introduction to Italy during the high Middle Ages available to someone unable to access the greater range of works in Italian on the subject. Perhaps its most effective achievement in that respect is to demonstrate the need for more studies of the era, as the dynamism and drama that Larner describes underscores the pivotal nature of the period in terms of the broader history of the country, which has for too long been under-served by an excessive focus on the periods of Italian history that are only superficially more interesting than the ones that have been skipped over.
November 21, 2011
Good introduction to the history of Italy for the period. This kind of book is nearly impossible to write - Italy at this point is really fragmented and fairly chaotic, so a regular chronological history doesn't work terribly well. John Larner does a nice job overall though, and he's good about allotting space to more nebulous, hard-to-pin-down issues like the family, childhood, lay piety, and urban poverty. Since he uses a thematic approach things can feel a bit disconnected, but Larner avoids that as much as possible. Overall, good introductory book and a good place to get a general background before you dive into more specific topics.
November 27, 2021
I was close to giving this book 2 because it is more info based and very bland, but I would expect that from a multi volume short page series. A good summary of why Italy had a hard time calling itself Italy for a long time. Everyone wants a piece of papal influence and land. Looking forward to the next few volumes.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews