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2019, ProQuest
At the beginning of the thirteenth century the commercial commune of Pisa was one of the two most powerful maritime forces in the Mediterranean, alongside Venice and ahead of Genoa. By the end of the century, however, the city had declined to a position of solely regional political and economic importance. This dissertation delves into the reasons behind Pisa’s decline during the very period when Italy’s three most famous commercial economies of Venice, Genoa, and Florence were experiencing their greatest growth. This study primarily utilizes traditional historiographic approaches for examining Pisa during the long thirteenth century, but also incorporates the interdisciplinary use of statistical and social network analyses to uncover facets of the socio-economic landscape during the final decades of the century. The strength of the present work lies in the chronological breadth of its study, encompassing just over a century of Pisan history. Unlike previous scholarship which has focused more narrowly on a few decades, a broader period of study permits the uncovering of communal behavioral trends and patterns in decision making. The causes of thirteenth-century decline can generally be divided into four categories: imperial allegiance at all costs, ignoring structural changes in the global economy, unquenchable Sardinian aspirations, and the consequences of the traumatic naval defeat at Meloria in 1284. Since at least 1081 Pisa had traded its allegiance for imperial commercial concessions, often to the consternation of the city’s mostly papally-aligned neighbors. During the thirteenth century, as imperial power in Italy waned and factional conflict intensified, Pisa adherence to the imperial strategy repeatedly brought them into military conflict with the rest of Tuscany, ultimately isolating Pisa politically on the mainland. Pisa had built its economic-political prominence primarily through the spice trade with the East and the success of its leather industries at home. Political events and changing consumer preferences conspired to move the primary trade routes northward and westward while market demand for spices was eclipsed by demand for woolen textiles; while Pisa was slow to respond to these changes, the city’s chief competitors adapted quickly and reaped the bulk of the benefits, largely excluding Pisa from later entry. In Sardinia, what had begun as a twelfth-century argument with Genoa over episcopal supremacy evolved into a land grab by Pisa’s most powerful families. As these families wielded significant political power, their personal ambitions bent communal policies to their own interests, repeatedly bringing the commune into violent competition with Genoa. One such encounter was the Battle of Meloria in 1284 which resulted in the death or capture of over 10,000 Pisan men, possibly 25% of the city’s population. This demographic tragedy, combined with the counterproductive policies of a series of strongmen and oligarchies, sent the city spiraling into a protracted economic depression. This depression, discovered for the first time by the statistical and social network analyses of the present study, crippled the already declining economic and political importance of the city, permanently removing any hope of the municipality achieving anything beyond regional importance.
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"Overview of Sardinian History (500-1500)", in A Companion to Sardinian History, 500-1500, ed. Michelle Hobart, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2017, pp. 85-114.
2018, Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
"Recycling for Eternity: The Reuse of Ancient Sarcophagi by the Pisan Merchant Elite in the 12th to 14th century,” in Anne Leader, ed., Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018, 25-48.
2017, Companion to Sardinian History (500 - 1500)
Introduction to the edited volume "Companion to Sardinian History (500 - 1500)" with a "status questions" of the major historical debates in the study of medieval and modern Sardinia, many appearing for the first time in English..
Between the eleventh and thirteenth-century Pisa greatly expanded the boundaries of its domain, exerting a strong poltitical, cultural and economic influence well beyond the the circuit of its walls or its county. The city created (as well as Venice and Genoa) bases, emporiums and colonies throughout the Mediterranean, organized war efforts against hostile political realities, had from kings and emperors extensive privileges, stipulated diplomatic treaties and trade agreements with the cities, the lordships that dotted the shores of the Mediterranean sea. Then it built, in a sense, an "empire" and its particular power was conscious to the point of hiring - in behavior, in artistic productions and architectural - models that recalled roman antiquity.
2007, Medieval Encounters
The history of Tuscany during the Middle Ages has been a topic of great interest for many Italian and foreign scholars since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. Research on the subject has thrived because of this Italian region's exceptional dynamics and high level of urbanization during the XIIth to XIVth centuries, which are practically unique from the political and the economic standpoints, and because of its social structure and its cultural heritage. The paper tries to explain the reasons for the great demographic, economic and social development of Tuscan cities in the city-states age, comparing the situation of major agglomerations with the one of important towns. The text analyzes the massive increase in urban production, trade and banking at an international level, connected to the control of agricultural resources coming from cities' countryside. Attention is also paid to the civic religion, to the historical culture and to political rules of the most important communities, to show the peculiarities of the region on the eve of the Renaissance. The history of Tuscany during the Middle Ages has been a topic of great interest for many Italian and foreign scholars since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century 2. Research on the subject has thrived because of this Italian region's exceptional dynamics, which are practically unique from the political and the economic standpoints, and because of its social structure and its cultural heritage 3. Moreover, these dynamics are well described in many, particularly thirteenth-and fourteenth-century, archive documents and memorialists' accounts.
861 p. Copyright M D Ito, 2007-2014. All rights reserved. Library of Congress, US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration Number TX-6-766-999, April 2014. This work examines the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century grain market at Orsanmichele in Florence, and its attendant confraternity. It argues that the grain market was of systemic economic, political, and social importance to Florence, not unlike the wool market. The grain market was complex and sophisticated, and it functioned essentially as an early commodities exchange. It allowed large international traders operating in the Regno and smaller dealers in local and regional markets to import, with communal support, massive amounts of grain for distribution to the Florentine populace, which included a growing immigrant population employed in Florentine industries. The market’s centralized trading venue enabled the rapid distribution of a bulk commodity, and it served as a mechanism for pricing efficiencies and to shift quickly the risks from the supplier to the consumer. As a centralized location and an important symbol of the new merchant-led government, however, the market was vulnerable to threats from opposing magnate forces that the market’s backers, essentially large international traders (including the families of Orsanmichele) and the communal government, sought to undermine. From this vantage point, I argue that the confraternity of Orsanmichele, established under the grain loggia in 1291, should be viewed in a derivative position to the market, as a political shield providing a “holy wall” of protection for the market. I further argue that the leadership of the commune, market, and confraternity were intertwined, with the market and confraternity essentially serving as arms of the communal government. Even during the dearth of 1329, when the nodal import link, the Porto Pisano, closed due to war and large Florentine traders withheld wheat supplies, I suggest that the commune worked with the confraternity to provide a social safety network and with the trading community to stabilize the market. In providing a market-oriented perspective, I believe that the dearth of 1329 should be viewed as a market break, with an ensuing panic, not unlike market breaks of the modern era. Appendices, including maps, selected documents, tables, data, and other information, start at p. 563.
2012, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies
Interaction between the medieval republic of Pisa and the territories of Sharq al-Andalus began early in the eleventh century and was characterized by fierce military confrontations, peaceful trade, and the importation of numerous Andalusi commodities into the Tuscan city. This article will explore the nature of the Andalusi objects imported into Pisa and the varied understandings of these objects based on the quality and type of object as well as their secondary context in the city. On important civic structures, reused Andalusi artworks were understood as plunder of war, associated with epic battles through literary texts and monumental inscriptions. On other religious buildings, imports from Muslim Spain had greater resonance as fruits of lucrative trade, luxury commodities that manifested the cultural sophistication of Pisa’s citizens. In all cases, however, Andalusi objects had overwhelmingly positive associations for medieval Pisans, as they alluded to the source of the city’s wealth and fame – extensive and profitable commercial exchange with Muslim territories in the Western Mediterranean.
Social Mobility in Medieval Italy (1100-1500), edited by Sandro Carocci and Isabella Lazzarini, Roma, Viella, 2018
2014, Gesta
Pisan churches of the eleventh century feature the use of bacini, or ceramic bowls, as decoration on an unprecedented scale. The hundreds of bowls that still exist all came from the Islamic world and were imported at a time when Pisa was undertaking military campaigns against and conducting trade with Muslim territories throughout the Mediterranean. Eleventh-century visual and textual sources characterize the Pisans as traders and crusaders simultaneously, and this paper argues that the seemingly contradictory qualities of holy warrior and merchant were not only complementary but essential for the definition of a Pisan civic identity. The bacini served as visual manifestations of this identity, as they were located in highly visible locations on numerous public monuments throughout the city. In the eleventh century, the bacini in Pisa came predominantly from North Africa and referenced the advantageous trade relations the Pisans enjoyed in the western Mediterranean, differentiating them from their rivals in Amalfi and Venice, who had already established control over commerce in the eastern Mediterranean. Far from being symbols of triumph over a Muslim enemy, these basins from the Islamic world displayed the city’s success in both crusade and trade and its sense of belonging in a Mediterranean environment.
2015, RiMe. Rivista dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea
The Issue is dedicated to the eight hundred years since the first mention of Castro Novo Montis de Castro (1215), located on the current hill of Castello (castle) overlooking the city of Cagliari. Although the construction of the urban center by the Commune of Pisa began probably a year after, the plant of Novo Castro marked the birth of a city that, in its progressive developments, will come to the present aspect, confirming the role as a gateway to Sardinia and the center of the first importance in the Mediterranean.
2010
2018
On Florentine diplomacy in the early trecento. Paper for Conference/Atti on Ser Matteo Billioti
La vicenda del conte Ugolino Della Gherardesca
2017, Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome - Moyen Âge
In the second half of the fourteenth century, Pisa was a famously cosmopolitan city. External influences, however, are difficult to establish because of the fragmented nature of the Pisan archives, although there is evidence of fiscal exemptions for newcomers that suggest a marked rise in immigration in the 1370s and 1380s. An examination of Catalan archives and those from the Florentine Mercanzia allows us to bypass the lack of information in the Pisan archives and to reconstruct the precise situation of the Catalan and Florentine merchant nations, whose destinies were closely tied because they had built commercial relationships with one another as well as with Pisa. Moreover, they settled in the very same area of the city, their consuls came from the same Pisan families from the elite merchant popolo (Gambacorta, Dell’Agnello, Bonconti, etc.), and the structures of their internal organization had great similarities: their logge are in the very same building (palazzo Gambacorta). While the Florentine merchants had more commercial privileges, the size of their community is almost impossible to determine, whereas the Catalan community would have included around twenty highly mobile people in the 1380s. Dans la seconde moitiédu XIVe siècle, Pise est réputée pour son cosmopolitisme et son ouverture aux influences extérieures, qui sont pourtant difficiles àévaluer dans leur ensemble en raison de la conservation fragmentaire de ses archives. Les actes des conseils pisans accordent des exemptions aux nouveaux arrivants dans les années 1370-1380 et suggèrent une augmentation de l’immigration. Le recours aux archives de la couronne d’Aragon ou àcelles de la Mercanzia de Florence permet de contourner les lacunes des archives pisanes et offre une image précise des nations catalane et florentine, aux destins liés en raison de leur complémentarité économique. Bien plus, Florentins et Catalans sont implantes dans le même quartier, leurs consuls sont issus des mêmes familles de l’élite du popolo marchand de Pise (Gambacorta, Dell’Agnello, Bonconti, etc.), et l’organisation des deux nations présente de grandes similarités, au point qu'elles sont situées dans le même palais Gambacorta. Les Florentins ont davantage de privilèges commerciaux mais la taille de la communauté est quasiment impossible a établir, alors que celle des Catalans devait comprendre une vingtaine de personnes extrêmement mobiles dans les années 1380.
2013, «Filologia italiana», X (2013), pp. 9-55
Stabilito incidentalmente da Claude Fauriel nella prima metà dell'Ottocento e solo recentemente riemerso nelle caute ricostruzioni di Lino Leonardi, il presunto collegamento tra le rime carcerarie tràdite dal noto canzoniere Laurenziano Redi 9 e la prigionia dei pisani a Genova dopo la battaglia della Meloria (6 agosto 1284) richiedeva da tempo la verifica di un'esegesi puntuale. Sulla base di quest'ultima dunque, e del lavoro ecdotico che l'accompagna, la presente edizione intende ora restituire con forza uno dei più interessanti esiti della lirica pisana duecentesca al solo contesto storico-geografico capace di illuminarne il contenuto e le motivazioni profonde.
2006, Journal of medieval history
My proposition is that Dante constructs his system of punishment from three streams: the legal traditions of medieval Tuscany that were inherited from previous legal systems, Classical philosophical and Scholastic theological ideas about crime, sin and punishment and Dante’s artistic creativity. The question that I will answer is how Dante’s system of punishment in the Inferno reflects his culture and that culture’s history versus how the punishment in the Inferno is unique to Dante’s creative enterprise. By tracing these three streams, I will explain the basis for Dante’s theory of punishment and as a result normalize the otherness of punishment in the Inferno.
Le réseau commercial génois (siècles XII-XIV)
Cagliari, AM&D Edizioni 2006. Parte 1
The capture and the death of count Ugolino in the pisan and tuscan sources before and after Inferno, XXXIII
2014, Viator
Beyond being the earliest clear interaction between Pisa and Barcelona, the Balearic Crusade was also one of the earliest Iberian extensions of the crusading movement. Afterward, Pisa abandoned its belli-cose policy toward Western Mediterranean Muslim cities in favor of friendly diplomatic relations and went from protecting Christian cities on the Tyrrhenian to competing aggressively and warring against them. Simultaneously, Catalonia built a navy for campaigns against Muslim targets, sought papal benefits for such campaigns, and formed international coalitions for their execution, all of which helped solidify Catalonia as a political unit and pushed it towards more international commercial integration. Many of these shifts have been noted before but rarely tied to the Balearic Crusade; this article seeks to rectify this scholarly lacuna.
Con questa raccolta di studi la redazione di Reti medievali intende onorare un maestro che, con l’esempio delle sue ricerche e con la sua disponibilità sempre aperta al confronto e alla discussione, ha indicato a un’intera generazione di storici italiani l’importanza di una attitudine sempre vigile alla comparazione e al contatto con la comunità scientifica internazionale degli studiosi del medioevo e dell’età moderna. Il volume ospita i contributi di David Abulafia, Jane Black, Robert Black, Wim Blockmans, Pio Caroni, Jean-Marie Cauchies, William J. Connell, Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Trevor Dean, Gerhard Dilcher, Arnold Esch, Jean-Philippe Genet, James S. Grubb, Julius Kirshner, Miguel Ángel Lader Quesada, John Easton Law, Michael Matheus, François Menant, Hélène Millet, Antony Molho, Edward Muir, John M. Najemy, José Manuel Nieto Soria, Werner Paravicini, Josef Riedmann, Ludwig Schmugge, Chris Wickham; completa il testo la bibliografia degli scritti di Giorgio Chittolini per gli anni 1965-2009.
This paper presents medieval Guelphism as an 'ideological constellation', in which libertas played a prominent role, and argues that, because it was lumped together with references to the French dynasty and the Church, the ordinary concept of liberty in late medieval Italy needs to be understood within the context of partisan struggles. New studies on medieval factions in the fifteenth century support the idea that a concept of libertas derived from the Guelph tradition could fulfill surprisingly different ideological functions, particularly when mobilized in debates and struggles concerning the nature of sovereignty. Pragmatic political documents, in fact, show that a libertas-empire, such as that of the Florentine republic, was by no means the dominant concept of liberty in Quattrocento Italy.
From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, the Italian maritime republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice were almost constantly at war. In the context of crusade, they led military expeditions against foreign enemies in Spain, the Holy Land, and battled adversaries across the Mediterranean Sea. As crusading ventures lost their efficacy in the thirteenth century, these Italian cities engaged in warfare in the service of trade, fighting for commercial concessions and seizing strategic territories from rivals in order to maximize economic opportunities. In both of these scenarios, plunder played a central role, and though war spoils could take a number of different forms—money, people, merchandise—the warriors from these mercantile cities generally appropriated small-scale luxury objects, i.e. they took things. This paper will explore the reasons behind this emphasis on seizing concrete, tangible objects, arguing that it was the materiality and polyvalence of the spoils that made them so desirable. Their physical presence and beauty made them war trophies worthy of public display, their characterization as a fragment allowed for their incorporation into new, meaningful object collections, and their loss of functionality highlighted their materiality while simultaneously activating their symbolic resonance. Once collected and arranged in a triumphal display, these objects could forge relationships with humans and other objects, shifting in significance and accruing new meanings as war trophies from powerful enemies.
2014, in De Gier, I and Fraters, V. (ed): Mulieres Religiosae. Shaping female spiritual authority in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, p. 193-218
2019, QUART. Quarterly of Art History Institute at the University of Wrocław
During the late Middle Ages, between the 12th and 14th centuries, most of the centers now known as historic cities were rebuilt according to new principles [...] Moving populations, a few kilometers or hundreds of kilometers away, is a typical practice of this historical phase, functional to the design of the new territorial structures. An interesting indicator is the different degree of incentive offered to migrant families. In some cities, the assignments of building plots are very expensive, therefore obtainable only after a resolution from the highest political body; in other cases, the assignments of new parcels of land on which to build a house are decidedly cheap, within the grasp of a small family of farmers or artisans. In other cases, the “annual tax” is a symbolic one. Building cities and colonies, encouraging the migration of their citizens or farmers and sometimes forcing entire social groups or villages to change residence, is one of the great programmatic activities on which the construction of a very high number of new towns is based. The transport to distant territories of their own housing traditions, urban planning models and social organisation guarantees the success, at least in the start-up phase, of the new plantations. ___(This paper is part of my communication Migration and way of living. Kinds of cities in South Italy during the Middle Age, between north Africa, Spain and Italy held in the scientific conference “Migracje w miastach Królestwa Polskiego, Pomorza i Śląska w epoce przedprzemysłowej na tle porównawczym” (Wrocław, 2–3 VI 2017)___
2018, Papacy, Crusade, and Christian-Muslim Relations
Over the course of the later twelfth century Pisan merchants came to dominate the Levantine Sea. The rise was sparked by developing commercial activity in Alexandria, often dealing in forbidden war materials. As the Tuscans prospered and adapted to the fluid political situations they encountered, their numbers grew apace with their influence. This article examines the trade and migration patterns of Pisan merchants in the eastern Mediterranean during the twelfth century utilizing a holistic approach, relying on the extant cartulary record to illuminate how events in the major eastern ports afffected the others. Though Pisa's situation at times seemed perilous, shrewd exploitation of fortuitous circumstances propelled her to the height of her power by the turn of the century.
2015, Past & Present
In the year 1000, the Mediterranean thrummed with a commerce as vital as any that has graced its waters. With its heart in Egypt, a trading network spanned the sea from east to west. Its merchants were chiefly Muslims and Jews, and their ships hailed from ports in the House of Islam: Alexandria, Mahdia and Palermo. A century later, the situation was transformed: Italian merchants traversed the sea, and their ships emerged from the quays of Pisa, Genoa or Amalfi. By the late twelfth century, once prosperous North African entrepôts were begging for Italian patronage. Abrupt shifts in maritime hegemony are not rare, but the economic transition of the 1 eleventh-century Mediterranean has attracted little attention, perhaps because of the sense of manifest destiny that has usually accompanied it in accounts of European predominance. Crusade narratives, for instance, often take for granted the seaborne supremacy that made them possible. And from a long-term perspective, the outlines of this economic transition are well known: first, the direction of trade was reversed from south to north; second, the trade techniques of the south were adopted in the north. What we do not know is how this reversal took place. It is the purpose of this paper to propose a mechanism, and its focus will be on the cities of Italy's west
2017, La poesia in Italia prima di Dante, Atti del Colloquio Internazionale di Italianistica, Università degli Studi di Roma Tre (10-12 giugno 2015), a cura di Franco Suitner, Ravenna, Longo
2008, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Commercial conflict resolution in the medieval Mediterranean has been treated by a number of scholars in recent years, notably through the use of documents from the Cairo Geniza and the archives of the Italian port of Genoa. Recent research on this subject, and more specifically on contract enforcement, has focused on contract reinforcement within the Mediterranean Jewish community, largely because of the sources available. Parallels drawn with medieval Italian mechanisms of conflict resolution emphasize differences between public- vs. private-order responses, that is, the reliance on personalized groups in the Islamic world rather than on public institutions typical of the Italian port-cities. These studies do not, however, examine how commercial conflicts were resolved across religious and political lines, despite the growing role of Italian merchants in the trade networks of Islamic North Africa, a role that inevitably led to trade disputes and occasional uncollected payments. Through close textual analysis of 14 Latin and Arabic letters exchanged between Islamic Almohad Tunis and Christian Italian Pisa, this article explores how Almohad commercial agents and governmental authorities sought to maintain positive trade relations across the religious divide while protecting the interests of their own clients and citizens when disputes arose over commercial payments and debt collection. Rather than relying on commercial conflict resolution methods specific to one culture or the other, these documents reveal a middle ground of borrowed vocabulary and procedures. Through these letters, Almohad merchants and officials attempted to negotiate through the bonds of personal trust and reputation established with their Italian counterparts. However, they also appealed to Italian sensibilities with hybridized methods recognizable by the legal and public institutions of both cultures.