1,721,037 research outputs found
The language of politics and the process of state-building: approaches and interpretations
No full textIntroduction The theme of ‘political languages’ is not only one of those most frequently discussed in recent historiography, but is also probably among the most difficult to outline, since it appears to include so much. Understood as a system for conveying political content, as a code of communication of which social actors know the rules, the meanings, the potential to generate new realities, such language can indeed be verbal, but also figurative, musical or ritual. Nor can there be any doubt that each of these forms was used during the early Renaissance to express ideals, to create consensus, to delimit membership, to establish hierarchies, to produce legitimacy, to shape identity and to define the contents of a new sense of the state. In reality not all these codes were accessible to the same degree to all social actors; some seem in fact to have circulated among quite restricted groups, as in the case of some musical expressions of political language. Think of the music of courts: with texts in Latin or French and generally requiring complex groups of musicians, these musical expressions of ideas constituted a form of communication better adapted to horizontal and vertical circulation, among members of an elite (the only ones able to grasp the message conveyed by the complex relation between the musical and vocal elements) rather than among the many components of political society. Other sorts of music would be open to wider comprehension, in particular, sonorities understood by all and associated with a specific political message (as in the case of the sound of bells, which in late medieval cities and in the countryside were used to summon heads of families to communal assemblies or to call men to arms)
Istituzioni, scritture, contabilità. Il caso molisano nell'Italia tardomedievale", a cura di I. Lazzarini, A. Miranda, F. Senatore, Viella, Roma, 2017
No full textSi dà notizia del volume Istituzioni, scritture, contabilità. Il caso molisano nell'Italia tardomedievale, a cura di I. Lazzarini, A. Miranda, F. Senatore, Viella, Roma, 2017. Se ne discutono criticamente i singoli saggi pubblicati, con riferimento alle tematiche storiografiche attual
Lombardy under the Visconti and the Sforza
No full textIntroduction Cautious victor, gentle orchestrator of peace. The archbishop Ottone Visconti appears thus in the Angera cycle of frescoes celebrating his victory, and that of the Milanese nobles, over the Della Torre and the Milanese pars populi, the harbinger of Ottone himself being proclaimed lord of Milan by the general council (22 January 1277). Unarmed, Ottone saves the lives of his enemies starting with his arch-rival Napo Della Torre, calms the situation and distances himself from the factious conflict to which his ascendancy was linked. The pax of the Visconti covered Milan and its surrounding area. The events depicted in the Angera frescoes narrate an exclusively Milanese story centred around concluding and overcoming the conflict between the nobles and the populares of Milan. Some elements, however, refer to larger areas. The defeated Della Torre are taken to a prison near Como, and it is the hand of a nobleman from Pavia, ready to kill Napo Della Torre, that is stopped by Ottone. These details serve as a reminder that for a long time events in Milan had an effect on a wider scale, beyond that of the city itself. Examples can be seen in the central role of the Milanese commune in the alliances opposed to the undertakings of the emperor; in the extensive travel of the Milanese to be podestà in nearby towns; and the nature of the influence of the Della Torre, which already extended beyond the city of Milan
Tuscan states: Florence and Siena
No full textIl saggio offre una disamina delle grandi linee dell'evoluzione politica dei grandi stati cittadini nella Toscana dei secoli XIV_XVI, particolarmente pensata per il dibattito storiografico in lingua inglese
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