City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy

City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy PDF Author: Anthony Molho
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

Book Description
This comprehensive yet suggestive book offers innovative answers to familiar questions, as in the articles of David Whitehead and Erich Gruen on the nature and power of the citizen body. City-States also breaks new ground in its persuasive documentation of the ways in which seemingly disparate disciplines may profitably share methods and data.

Medieval Lucca

Medieval Lucca PDF Author: M. E. Bratchel
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191562289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Although there are many books in English on the city and state of Lucca, this is the first scholarly study to cover the history of the entire region from classical antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. At one level, it is an archive-based study of a highly distinctive political community; at another, it is designed as a contribution to current discussions on power-structures, the history of the state, and the differences between city-states and the new territorial states that were emerging in Italy by the fourteenth century. There is a rare consensus among historians on the characteristic features of the Italian city-state: essentially the centralization of economic, political, and juridical power on a single city and in a single ruling class. Thus defined, Lucca retained the image of an old-fashioned, old-style city-republic right through until the loss of political independence in 1799. No consensus exists with regard to the defining qualities of the Renaissance state. Was it centralized or de-centralized; intrusive or non-interventionist? The new regional states were all these things. And the comparison with Lucca is complicated and nuanced as a result. Lucca ruled over a relatively large city territory, in part a legacy from classical antiquity. Lucca was distinctive in the pervasive power exercised over its territory (largely a legacy of the region's political history in the early and central middle ages). In consequence, the Lucchese state showed a marked continuity in its political organization, and precociousness in its administrative structures. The qualifications relate to practicalities and resources. The coercive powers and bureaucratic aspirations of any medieval state were distinctly limited, whilst Lucca's capacity for independent action was increasingly circumscribed by the proximity (and territorial enclaves) of more powerful and predatory neighbours.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Carrie E. Benes
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271037660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
Between 1250 and 1350, numerous Italian city-states jockeyed for position in a cutthroat political climate. Seeking to legitimate and ennoble their autonomy, they turned to ancient Rome for concrete and symbolic sources of identity. Each city-state appropriated classical symbols, ancient materials, and Roman myths to legitimate its regime as a logical successor to&—or continuation of&—Roman rule. In Urban Legends, Carrie Bene&š illuminates this role of the classical past in the construction of late medieval Italian urban identity.

City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity

City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: Ralph Rosen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047409183
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
The third in a series that explores cultural and ethical values in Classical antiquity, this volume examines the dichotomy between 'city' and 'country' in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Fourteen papers address a variety of topics on this theme, and include a variety of methodological approaches—archaeological, iconographic, literary and philosophical. The book demonstrates that, despite a common rhetoric of polarity in antiquity that tended to construct city and countryside as very distinct, oppositional categories, there was far less consistency (and far more nuance) about the ideologies felt to inhere in each.

Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean

Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean PDF Author: Thomas J. MacMaster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351609033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean addresses the understudied topic of the Italian peninsula’s relationship to the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, across the early and central Middle Ages. The East Roman world, commonly known by the ahistorical term "Byzantium", is generally imagined as an Eastern Mediterranean empire, with Italy part of the medieval "West". Across 18 individually authored chapters, an introduction and conclusion, this volume makes a different case: for an East Roman world of which Italy forms a crucial part, and an Italian peninsula which is inextricably connected to—and, indeed, includes—regions ruled from Constantinople. Celebrating a scholar whose work has led this field over several decades, Thomas S. Brown, the chapters focus on the general themes of empire, cities and elites, and explore these from the angles of sources and historiography, archaeology, social, political and economic history, and more besides. With contributions from established and early career scholars, elucidating particular issues of scholarship as well as general historical developments, the volume provides both immediate contributions and opens space for a new generation of readers and scholars to a growing field.

The Ruin of the Eternal City

The Ruin of the Eternal City PDF Author: David Karmon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199766894
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
The Ruin of the Eternal City provides the first systematic analysis of the preservation practices of the popes, civic magistrates, and ordinary citizens of Renaissance Rome. This study offers a new understanding of historic preservation as it occurred during the extraordinary rebuilding of a great European capital city.

The City-State in Europe, 1000-1600

The City-State in Europe, 1000-1600 PDF Author: Tom Scott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199274606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
In this, the first comprehensive study of city-states in medieval Europe, Tom Scott analyzes reasons for cities' aquisitions of territory and how they were governed. He argues that city-states did not wither after 1500, but survived by transformation and adaption.

The Ancient Greek City-state

The Ancient Greek City-state PDF Author: Mogens Herman Hansen
Publisher: Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab
ISBN: 9788773042427
Category : Cities and towns, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean

The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean PDF Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195188314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

Book Description
Tracing the evolution of the state from its beginnings to the early Middle Ages, this comprehensive handbook focuses on key institutions and dynamics while providing accessible accounts of states and empires in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.

Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean PDF Author: Denise Demetriou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316347893
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
The Mediterranean basin was a multicultural region with a great diversity of linguistic, religious, social and ethnic groups. This dynamic social and cultural landscape encouraged extensive contact and exchange among different communities. This book seeks to explain what happened when different ethnic, social, linguistic and religious groups, among others, came into contact with each other, especially in multiethnic commercial settlements located throughout the region. What means did they employ to mediate their interactions? How did each group construct distinct identities while interacting with others? What new identities came into existence because of these contacts? Professor Demetriou brings together several strands of scholarship that have emerged recently, especially ethnic, religious and Mediterranean studies. She reveals new aspects of identity construction in the region, examining the Mediterranean as a whole, and focuses not only on ethnic identity but also on other types of collective identities, such as civic, linguistic, religious and social.