The Santa Maria di Firenze, the venerable Benedictine abbey located in the heart of Florence, is the subject of this book. Leader's richly illustrated, interdisciplinary study examines the abbey's history during the Renaissance.
Churches and palaces in Florence have been the subject matter of book-length, often multi-volume studies over the centuries. This book is a compendium of the main churches in Florence and has been written with two distinct audiences in mind: English-speaking students of Renaissance art, architecture, literature and history and the well-read traveller to Florence who wishes to place the works of art and architecture into the wider context of Italian culture. The choice of churches discussed here was influenced by the author’s experience as teacher for several university programmes on site in Florence. The buildings described and analysed are those which students will most likely encounter in the course of their study-abroad stay in Florence, whether they wish to specialise in art, architecture or the history of the Florentine Renaissance. This book represents a textbook that offers concise information on the history, art, and architecture of 25 of the main Florentine churches, provides plans and photos of the façades, and introduces the student to some of the most important vocabulary and the main textual sources of the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
In Bounded Wilderness, Kathryn Jasper focuses on the innovations undertaken at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in central Italy during the eleventh century by its prior, Peter Damian (d. 1072). The congregation of Fonte Avellana experimented with reforming practices that led to new ways of managing property and relations among clergy, nobles, and the laity. Jasper charts how Damian's notion of monastic reform took advantage of the surrounding topography and geography to amplify the sensory aspects of ascetic experiences. By focusing on monastic landscapes and land ownership, Jasper demonstrates that reform extended beyond abstract ideas. Rather, reform circulated locally through monastic networks and addressed practical concerns such as property boundaries and rights over water, orchards, pastures, and mills. Putting new sources, both documentary and archaeological, into conversation with monastic charters and Damian's letters, Bounded Wilderness reveals the interrelationship of economic practices, religious traditions, and the natural environment in the idea and implementation of reform.
This issue of the Portuguese Studies Review presents essays by Leandro Alves Teodoro, Martin M. Elbl and Ivana Elbl, Isabel dos Guimarães Sá and Hélder Carvalhal, Christian Fausto Moraes dos Santos, Gisele Cristina da Conceição, and Fabiano Bracht, Sandrina Berthault Moreira, and Luís Miguel Pereira Farinha. The topics covered range from the history of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Portuguese synods to the material culture of late fifteenth century Portuguese nobility, epistolary perspectives on Portuguese interaction with Italy and with the Roman Curia in the fifteenth century, the use and benefits of seafood in early Portuguese settlements in Brazil, a legal overview of the administrative frameworks for Portuguese road-building in the early twentieth century, and the comparative use of econometric indices of development to modelling Portuguese data. The issue also contains shorter pieces by Douglas L. Wheeler and Michel Cahen.