In Rome on May 20, 1347 Cola di Rienzo, a young visionary with a gift for oratory, overthrew the rule of the barons and the pope. Cola's revolution then attempted to restore the greatness of the medieval commune, revive the ancient Roman Republic, and usher in a new age of liberty, justice and peace. The bright hope for Rome and Italy soon changed to disillusionment, however, as pope and barons conspired to isolate and then topple the Tribune of the People only seven months later. After a period of exile and wandering in the Abruzzi Mountains, he traveled to the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague where he was befriended by Charles IV but eventually arrested, imprisoned by the Inquisition, and turned over to his arch-enemy, Pope Clement VI in Avignon. In a bizarre turn of events he was freed and returned to Rome to restore the republic. Shortly thereafter the barons revolted again; and Rienzo was slain by a mob on the Capitoline Hill, near where his bronze statue now stands. Using their letters and other writings, plus many other contemporary documents, this book tells the story of the relationship between Cola di Rienzo and Francesco Petrarch, the poet and Renaissance humanist. Petrarch's initial break with the Tribune and his eventual bid to save him from death offer a remarkable case study of the interaction between the world of letters and politics - between the contemplative and the active lives - in the early Renaissance. Translated from Latin by Mario E. Cosenza. 3rd, revised, edition by Ronald G. Musto. Updated introduction, bibliography, map, notes and index.

The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo

Literature & Fiction

Mario Emilio Cosenza

Francesco, Petrarca

History & Criticism

Italica Press

Written for the pilgrim and sightseer c.1143 by Benedict, a canon of St. Peter's, this is the best medieval guide to the city and an important source for the location of its medieval churches and ancient monuments. It narrates the early Christian legends that are connected with many of these sites; and documents the medieval sense of Rome's ancient grandeur. In the twelfth century the inhabited part of Rome, the abitato, as it was called, was a small city tucked into the bend of the Tiber River in the midst of the ruins of the great ancient city. The walls and gates of the ancient city were still in place, and between them and the abitato were fields where the animals grazed among the temples and baths. This edition contains the full text of the Marvels, a detailed Gazetteer identifying all the sites mentioned and providing full bibliographical and topographical references, a new introduction, 5 maps, bibliography, and index. 2nd ed., illustrated.

Marvels of Rome

History

Gardiner, Eileen

Benedict, Master

Nichols, Francis Morgan

Europe

Fifteen essays by Paul Oscar Kristeller's senior colleagues at Columbia University. Authors include: Roger S. Bagnall, J.M.W. Bean, James Beck, Richard Brilliant, Alan Cameron, James Coulter, Robert W. Hanning, Arthur Hyman, Gillian Lindt, Eugene F. Rice Jr., David Rosand, Karl-Ludwig Selig, Robert Somerville, Leonardo Tarán, and David Yerkes. 218 pp. 18 illustrations, index.

Florilegium Columbianum: Essays in honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Short description: "Cosima" tells the story of an aspiring writer growing up in Nuoro, Sardinia during the last decades of the nineteenth century when formal education for women was rare and literary careers unheard-of. Based on Deledda’s own life, the work describes a young woman’s struggle against the dismay and disapproval of her family and friends at her creative ambitions. Yet it also reads like a charming fable with details of family life, rural traditions and wild bandits, and it is as much a novel of memory as of character or action. Deledda’s characters are poor country folk driven by some predetermined force. Their loves are tragic, their lives as hard and as rigidly controlled as nature itself in the hills of Sardinia. Deledda creates memorable figures who play out their lives against this backdrop of mountains and bare plains, sheepfolds and vineyards. Shimmering in the distance is the sea and escape — for a few — to the Continent or America. In 1926 Grazia Deledda became the second woman and the second Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She wrote thirty-three novels, including "Reeds in the Wind," and many books of short stories, almost all set on Sardinia. Her work has become well known to English-speaking readers through Martha King’s translations for Italica Press.

Cosima

Grazia, Deledda

Contemporary

A first-hand description of Constantinople (Istanbul) by this French humanist and diplomat c. 1550, during the age of Sleiyman the Magnificent. Gilles discusses the city's rich history and describes the hills, palaces, temples and churches, the markets, cisterns, columns, baths and other ancient monuments of this great capital. Illustrated, new introduction, bibliography, index, glossary, and five new maps. Based on John Ball's 1729 translation from Latin. Second edition, third printing.

The antiquities of Constantinople

Pierre Gilles

At some point in January or early February of 1347, Petrarch briefly visited the remote Carthusian monastery of Montrieux, where, four years before, his beloved brother, Gherardo, had pledged himself to live in perpetuity as a renditus, one who took the same vows as a monk but who was not cloistered. In the day and night he spent at Montrieux, Petrarch spoke privately with Gherardo, had lively discussions with other residents, and attended religious services celebrated by the brothers with "angelic singing." Unwilling to disturb the rigid discipline of the monastery longer, he reluctantly departed the next morning accompanied by the prior and the brothers to the limits of their property and he imagined them continuing to watch him until he disappeared from view. Returning to the Vaucluse, still "mindful of that whole blessed sweetness which I drank in with you," and troubled that in the course of the hasty visit he had not been able to say many things that he would like to have said, he decided "to express in writing what I was not able to do in person." The body of the work that was to become the "De otio religioso" was composed sometime during Lent or between February 11 and March 29 of that year. Not untypically, however, Petrarch continued to add to the text as late as 1356, and the finished treatise was probably not dispatched to Gherardo until 1357. This first English translation by Susan S. Schearer faithfully and elegantly presents Petrarch's exordium to the life of contemplation and offers the reader a fresh view into the spiritual world of fourteenth-century humanism. Ronald G. Witt's introduction places the work into its historical and intellectual context, discusses its structure and development, and examines Petrarch's characteristic synthesis of Christian and classical sources. First English translation. Introduction, Notes, Bibliography, Index of Citations, General Index.

On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso)

Witt, Ronald G.

Schearer, Susan S.

World

"Woman at War" is the diary of a woman's growing self-awareness. Beginning as a passively absent narrator, Vannina encounters a fascinating array of characters during the holiday she takes on an island in the Bay of Naples with her husband, Giacinto. When he returns to work in a garage in Rome, Vannina travels to Naples with Suna, a friend she has made on vacation. This startling character opens Vannina to the possibility of finding love through other women and helps her reject the role of serving coffee to the men who would change the world through violence. Back in Rome, Vannina rejects her former life and moves toward complete, if difficult, independence. Maraini's writing is superb. Its warm and sensual style gives life to details: the food of the Mediterranean, the smell of its herbs, the acts of making coffee and making love, the step-by-step journey of an individual to self-awareness, self-reliance and independence. Everything is vivid and vibrant. Maraini's women grow in strength beyond the clamor of political slogans. The values of understanding, intuition and compassion effect real change that transcends the wearisome struggle between the chauvinisms of the political Right and the political correctness of the Left. A milestone in Italian literature.

Woman at War

Dacia Maraini

This essential and widely used collection of visions of heaven and hell, the first in English, presents new translations of two visions and newly edited versions of previously translated ones. Describes the place of these works in medieval literature and provides a helpful resource for studying elements of medieval religion. Includes: St. Peter's Apocalypse, St. Paul's Apocalypse, St. Brendan's Voyage, St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the Visions of Furseus, Drythelm, Wetti, Charles the Fat, Tundale, the Monk of Evesham, and Thurkill. Bibliography, index, glossary, notes, illustrated.

Visions of Heaven & Hell Before Dante

This collection of twenty-four stories by seventeen contemporary Italian women celebrates a high level of accomplishment that draws on a tradition of women's literature in Italy, but also marks a new and exciting vitality in Italian fiction. Writing of various experiences and from different regions, these women all create with an ease born of confidence in their art. They exhibit a control, an emotional detachment, that allows the deep irony of their invented world to play below the surface. They have a succinctness, a skill in limiting, that reveals more than layers of detail possibly could. These women share a talent for contriving psychological insights that surprise and touch the reader. Authors include Anna Banti, Grazia Deledda, Paola Drigo, Natalia Ginzburg, Geda Jacolutti, Gina Lagorio, Rosetta Loy, Dacia Maraini, Milena Milani, Marina Mizzau, Giuliana Morandini, Elsa Morante, Maria Occhipinti, Anna Maria Ortese, Fabrizia Ramondino, Francesca Sanvitale, and Monica Sarsini.

New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction (Women Writers)

King, Martha

Literary

"Contemporary Italian Women Poets" introduces English-reading audiences to the diversity of contemporary women's poetry in Italy during the past five decades. It includes twenty-five authors whose work has been published since World War II: poets from different generations and regions, some with international acclaim, others known primarily to those within women's literary circles. The poets who appear are: Mariella Bettarini, Gabriella Leto, Cristina Campo, Dacia Maraini, Anna Cascella, Daria Menicanti, Patrizia Cavalli, Alda Merini, Elena Clementelli, Giulia Niccolai, Rosita Copioli, Luciana Notari, Biancamaria Frabotta, Rossana Ombres, Luciana Frezza, Piera Oppezzo, Vera Gherarducci, Amelia Rosselli, Margherita Guidacci, Gabriella Sica, Armanda Guiducci, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Jolanda Insana, Patrizia Valduga, and Vivian Lamarque. Dual-language poetry. Introduction, notes on the poets, bibliography &amp; index of first lines.

Contemporary Italian Women Poets (People's Place Booklet) (English and Italian Edition)

Poetry

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