Theoderich’s “Guide to the Holy Land” is one of the best known and most widely used of the medieval pilgrim’s guides to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Written around 1172 by the German monk Theoderich of Würzburg, it offers a complete guide to the city’s sacred sites and history, as well as to the legends and places of historical interest in the medieval kingdom of Jerusalem only fifteen years before its destruction by Saladin. The sites are so accurately drawn that Theoderich has become a major source for medieval knowledge of the region and for Jerusalem’s topography. He gives detailed descriptions of its art and architecture, especially for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, with precise notations of architectural elements, building materials, and housing styles, as well as accurate comparisons to buildings in Europe. His work offers valuable descriptions of fields full of ripe barely and roses, groves of palm and olive, orchards, natural features and various stone and soil types. He also offers a dispassionate picture of a multi-cultural society, of Moslems living side-by-side with Christians, carrying on their agriculture and trade with their customary work routines and traditions. But Theoderich also explores a geography of the imagination: of Jerusalem as the center of the universe, a cosmological fact so clear to him that he shows us proof marked clearly in its stones and pavements. In Theoderich’s Guide mythology and travel narrative combine to offer a Holy Land of miracle and natural wonder. Here are rivers that run underground, here the Dead Sea casts up the stone and wood of Sodom and Gomorra every year on the anniversary of their destruction, here also still stands the pillar of salt that was once Lot’s wife. The Guide to the Holy Land is thus a valuable resource for the travel lore and the sacred geography of the Middle Ages. Based on Aubrey Stewart’s translation from the Latin. Illustrated, new introduction, maps, bibliography, and index.

Theoderich: Guide to the Holy Land (Historical Travel Series)

History

Europe

Italica Press, Inc.

The Tales of Firenzuola present in English translation the ten extant stories of this collection, which are delightful, humorous and realistic pictures of secular, urban life in Tuscany during the Renaissance. The Tales are probably the most popular of Agnolo Firenzuola's prose works. On one side they continued in the popular story-telling tradition of Boccaccio and on the other side the Tales contain the seeds of the developing Italian novel of the sixteenth century. They reflect the worldly realism of the town rather than the elevated idealism of the court. Full of sex, money, revenge and anti-clericalism, they draw a humorous, entertaining, bawdy and realistic picture of Florence and neighboring Tuscany in the early sixteenth century. With witty style and fast-paced narration the Tales are a bridge in literary history from the medieval tales to the picaresque novel. Translated from Italian.

Tales of Firenzuola

Literature & Fiction

Firenzuola, Agnolo

Literary

“Family Chronicle” tells the story of two brothers: one leads a life of privilege, while the other survives as a struggling writer. Pratolini's brilliant prose reveals the depth of spiritual strength in these two men as they draw together once again and develop bonds of love and trust for one another. “Family Chronicle” (Cronaca familiare) has been critically and popularly recognized as among the most important Italian novels of the twentieth century. Vasco Pratolini, one of Italy's leading neo-realist novelists and screen writers, frames his tale against the backdrop of the urban poor of Florence, the rise of Fascism, and the disastrous effects of World War II.

Family Chronicle

Vasco Pratolini

In this modern retelling of the Parsival legend, the throne belongs to the storyteller who keeps the community alive through the magic of myth and narrative. Only occasionally, by some hand of fate, does the outsider find and then refind the house of the throne as a stage in his own quest for meaning and love. The Wooden Throne, Sgorlon's most famous book, was awarded the prestigious Premio Campiello when it was published in 1973. It has gone through fifteen printings since and is now considered a twentieth-century Italian masterpiece. It has been translated into French, Spanish and Slavic. This was the first English edition of Il trono di legno or, indeed, of any of Sgorlon's literary work. His “Army of the Lost Rivers” was published in English by Italica in late 1998.

The Wooden Throne

Sgorlon, Carlo

The physician Ariete returns to his Sicilian birthplace to investigate the mysterious disappearance of its villagers. There he and the psycho-ethnologist Mario Sinus discover a magic world of archaic gods, rituals, and beliefs that may provide redemption from the destructive forces of modern life. Bonaviri's mixture of magic realism, a pre-modern "scientific" learning, and a deep ecological awareness make this novel a fascinating and original experiment.

Dolcissimo

Bonaviri, Giuseppe

Contemporary

When terrorist bombs explode in a bank in Milan on December 12, 1969 they raise the curtain on a cast of unlikely players. Prof. Gaspare Subissoni and his lifelong companion and inspiration, Vivés, are both anarchist veterans of the Spanish Civil War trying to retain their dignity, and their commitments in the face of a new age. The young Count Oddo Oddi-Semproni and his two unmarried aunts, Clelia and Marzia, who have protected him — and themselves — hide from the modern world in their crumbling Renaissance palace. Their chauffeur Giocondini serves them — and himself — with limousine tours to "Italy" and with overwrought dreams of a revived Duchy. But then the young prostitute Dirce — whom Oddo would have as his countess — sets all their worlds upside-down when she, Gaspare and Vivés join forces for one final act. This satire of Italian social and political contrasts uses a wry wit and keen sense of detail to ask what, ultimately, is more real: the images of distant conflicts, allegiances and celebrities that flicker on and off the TV screen? Or the loves, memories, and loyalties of a single lifetime?

Last Act in Urbino

Volponi, Paolo

History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, 400-568 A.D. (for Windows)

Annie Hamilton

David S. Chambers

Ferdinand, Gregorovius

“The Lives of the Popes and Emperors” enjoyed a number of printings in the early Renaissance: Florence, 1478; Venice, 1507, 1526 and 1534. Today copies of these editions may be found in at least eight American libraries: New York Public, University of Miami, Chicago, Cornell, Indiana, Princeton, Washington (Seattle) and Yale. The obvious reason for this popularity was its attribution to Petrarch and Petrarch’s reputation as a great historian of the eminent men of the ancient past. In fact, his greatest work was often considered his “De viris illustribus” — Latin biographies of the outstanding classical men of action. Yet there is general agreement that this book is not Petrarch’s. This book was written in Italian, in the Tuscan vernacular, and offers the lives of 230 popes and 117 emperors from Julius Caesar to Pope Clement VII and the year 1526. It combines the medieval chronicle’s narrative of people, events, natural and celestial wonders with the grand themes of papal and imperial history and of sacred and secular authority. Not much more has been known about this work until the present edition. Working from the 1534 edition, renowned translators Aldo S. Bernardo and Reta A. Bernardo offer a fresh, elegant and contemporary English translation of the complete text, adding to the legacy of their superb translations of Petrarch’s “Letters on Familiar Matters” and “Letters of Old Age” now also offered by Italica Press. Dr. Tania Zampini provides a complete introduction to the work that describes the book and discusses its genre and possible sources. She then analyzes the book as a cultural artifact and traces its history in the Renaissance, the complex issue of the work’s authorship and parallels to Petrarch’s “De viris illustribus” and the “Liber pontificalis” of the medieval popes. She then places the Lives within the important works in the “De viris illustribus” tradition, including those of Saint Jerome, Bartolomeo Platina, Giovanni Colonna, Bartolomeo Scala, Leonardo Bruni and Vespasiano da Bisticci. The introduction also treats contemporary works of similar intent and parallel content, including Hartmann Schedel’s “Nuremberg Chronicle.” In her conclusions, Dr. Zampini places the Lives into the larger context of Renaissance society and culture, focusing on the work’s major themes and its interest in papal, imperial and central Italian politics as well as on the newly emerging lay textual communities and religious cultures of the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli, Leo X, Clement VII and Martin Luther. The text is fully annotated with historical, cultural and biographical details and accompanied by the introduction, a select bibliography, seventeen illustrations and a complete index. 322 pages. History, cultural studies, Mediterranean studies, humanism.

The Lives of the Popes and Emperors (Italica Press Medieval & Renaissance Texts)

Biographies & Memoirs

Petrarch, Pseudo

Historical

The Song of Roland

"The Song of Roland" is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world's greatest epic poems. The earliest extant example of a medieval "chanson de geste" ("song of deeds"), its four thousand lines represent the most famous literary celebration of Carolingian mythology from the Middle Ages. Written down around the year 1090, the Song of Roland's finely crafted verses tell of the betrayal and defeat of Charlemagne's beloved nephew at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees and of the revenge subsequently sought on his behalf. Although the identity of the surviving work's author cannot be known with certainty, his poetic genius cannot be doubted. His mastery of chanson de geste compositional techniques transformed an historically minor military setback - the ambush and slaughter of the great emperor's rearguard by a band of Basque highlanders in August 778 - into the most immediately popular and subsequently cherished artistic expression of medieval chivalry, kingship, national pride, feudal and Christian service in the Western world. Michael Newth's new verse translation of the "Chanson de Roland" - the first in English for over fifty years to preserve the full poetic diction of the medieval composition - recaptures the form, feel and flow of the original work in performance by restoring the genre's "verbal music" to the *Song* of Roland. Newth's introduction traces the extant work's origins, examines its artistic achievements and summarizes its enormous influence on the social and artistic consciousness of medieval France and beyond. His text is followed by a glossary of medieval terms used in the translation and suggestions for further reading about the Roland phenomenon and its surviving one hundred or so fellow chansons de geste. This translation of the "Chanson de Roland" meets the need for a new version of the great poem to illustrate its relevance and widen its appeal to English readers of the twenty-first century, and it also highlights its potential as a viable piece of performance art.

ANONYMOUS

Poetry

On Famous Women

Boccaccio's "On Famous Women" ("De claris mulieribus") is a remarkable work that contains the lives of one hundred and six women in myth and history, ranging from Eve to Boccaccio's contemporary, Queen Giovanna I of Naples. It is the first collection of women's biographies ever written. Boccaccio composed it at Certaldo in 1361/62 and revised it in various stages to the end of his life in 1375. He dedicated it to Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Altavilla in the kingdom of Naples and sister of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, the grand seneschal of Queen Giovanna I. In his preface the author states that the biographies of illustrious men had been written often by a number of excellent writers, and he cited his hero Petrarch's "Lives of Famous Men" ("De viris illustribus") as an example. No one, however, had ever done the same for women. Boccaccio therefore presents a wide variety of women from antiquity to his own time, offering their lives as both moral "exempla" and entertaining reading. Boccaccio is best known as the author of the "Decameron" in which he portrayed women among the "lieta brigata" of pleasure-seeking young aristocrats and among the various characters of their tales. But in these biographies we find more serious themes that became standards of the Renaissance: secular and religious life; politics and private life; fame, fortune and earthly power; advantage and adversity; women's character, virtues and vices; their social roles, individual talents and achievements. "On Famous Women" is the earliest source of women's biography in the West and has had a long and distinguished publication career and literary influence. Its impact can be seen in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," in Christine de Pizan's Livre de la cité des dames," and in the work of Spencer, Alonso de Cartagena and Thomas Elyot, among many others. Guido A. Guarino's translation is based on the edition of Mathias Apiarius, printed in Bern in 1539. This new edition includes the original woodcut illustrations of the 1539 Apiarius edition, a new bibliography and bibliographical essay. First English translation. 2nd revised edition. Introduction, new bibliography.  310 pages, 14 illustrations.

BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI

Community & Culture

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