Florentine networks in the Middle East in the early Renaissance

By crossing data from Florentine collections with notarial records produced in Egypt and Syria, this article focuses on the Florentine trading networks operating in the eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth century. It highlights two factors influencing Florence’s long-distance trade in the area: political unrest characteristic of Italian Renaissance cities, and the scant interest of the Florentine government in building diplomatic and commercial institutions. Initially woven by exiled merchant-bankers and offshore companies, the network reconfigured towards the middle of the century around a group of entrepreneurs based in Rhodes, who were deeply entrenched in local finance and in business with the Islamic cities. The article provides a more complex view of relations between government institutions and Mediterranean long-distance trade by approaching the rise of the Medici in Florentine politics and their handling of the network.     

Florentine alum mining in the Hospitaller islands: the appalto of 1442

This article publishes a document from the archives of the Order of Saint John recording the Hospitallers’ concession of an alum exploration and mining monopoly, an appalto, to a group of Florentines in 1442, and examines the implications of this agreement for the economic development of the Latin East in this period. This enterprise forms part of a pattern showing Florentine merchants attempting to extend their activities further up the alum supply chain and so to gain increasing control over a commodity of vital importance to their city’s economy, for which they had been dependent on the Genoese who dominated the trade. This development in turn forms part of a wider fifteenth-century trend of the Florentines interloping in areas of activity previously the preserve of other communities, principally the Venetians and Genoese, with a long-established maritime, territorial, diplomatic and commercial position in the eastern Mediterranean. It also forms part of a pattern of new speculative alum mining enterprises in the Aegean in the mid-fifteenth century, calling into question the traditional view that the alum trade was afflicted by a glut at this time, and thus also the traditional explanation of the ensuing consolidation of alum firms. The article also compares this document with a previously published contract issued the preceding year, concluding that the differences between them reflect the developing familiarity of the Hospitaller leadership with the mining business, while their common characteristics confirm the currency of the term appalto in the mining business of this period as denoting a monopoly. It tentatively concludes that this effort to establish an alum mining industry in Hospitaller territory was probably ultimately unsuccessful.     

Foreign banks in the pacific: a note

The lives of Pacific Islanders during World War II can be described through a combination of documentary and oral history. This article reviews the experiences of the people of Chuuk (formerly ‘Truk’) in the Central Caroline Islands during the Pacific War. Chuuk served as headquarters for the Japanese Imperial Navy's Fourth Fleet and, later, rear area headquarters for the Combined Fleet. When the Japanese military shifted to defence in mid-1943, troops fortified the island, resulting in the confiscation of land and relocation of the Chuukese. From late 1943 to August 1945, Chuukese experience was shaped by Allied bombing, intensive labour demands from the Japanese garrison, and severe food shortages. After surrender, Chuuk was occupied by a minimal US Navy presence. The war and its aftermath shaped modern Chuuk through permanent changes in its resources, economy and political role.     

一个尼姑和一个女人

好多年以前，我写过一篇文章，题目叫《一个老尼的自述》，虽然那时候的想法很幼稚，但现在再翻一翻，我依旧觉得那个以第一人称自述的“我”是一个自己喜欢的人物，我喜欢她在生命中遇到的一切：包括做尼姑的经历、没有浪漫邂逅的婚姻、生活中积累的爱和感激、很多的孩子、以及能在小庙里侍佛颂经的晚年。     

Death ritual in fifteenth-century manuscript illumination

Realistic images of death and burial appear in unprecedented numbers as illustrations for the Office of the Dead in late medieval prayerbooks. Taking issue with the traditional, generalized interpretations of these images as expressions of the late medieval preoccupation with death, the author argues that the iconography of death ritual that emerged after 1375 was actually a manifestation of the popular need to assert the restoration of social and religious traditions that had been suspended during the period when the Black Death ravaged western Europe. Viewed against the background of pre-plague catholic death rituals and the literary evidence of the disruption and suspension of those rituals resulting from the onslaught of bubonic plague, the new iconography of death and burial assumes social significance that sets it apart from more eschatologically oriented visual and literary themes associated with death and dying during the late middle ages.     

Death ritual in fifteenth-century manuscript illumination

Realistic images of death and burial appear in unprecedented numbers as illustrations for the Office of the Dead in late medieval prayerbooks. Taking issue with the traditional, generalized interpretations of these images as expressions of the late medieval preoccupation with death, the author argues that the iconography of death ritual that emerged after 1375 was actually a manifestation of the popular need to assert the restoration of social and religious traditions that had been suspended during the period when the Black Death ravaged western Europe. Viewed against the background of pre-plague catholic death rituals and the literary evidence of the disruption and suspension of those rituals resulting from the onslaught of bubonic plague, the new iconography of death and burial assumes social significance that sets it apart from more eschatologically oriented visual and literary themes associated with death and dying during the late middle ages.     

Words and Deeds, Stasis and Change: New Directions in Florentine Devotion Around 1500

Members of Renaissance Italian confraternities spoke an official language that emphasized stability and permanence rather than change, a fact which can obscure the precise relationship between the culture of organized lay devotion and events in society as a whole. Examining four miraculous cults that achieved prominence in Florence around 1500, this essay argues that, far from their being static or conservative organizations, confraternities exemplify major changes transforming Florentine society at this time. The representations of class, wealth, gender, and age that emerge from the analysis help to problematize and complicate developments that otherwise appear as overly simplified, teleological trends.     

The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century

The development of the silk industry in Renaissance Florence – as in other large Italian cities such as Venice, Genoa, Bologna and Milan – was a response to the profound economic changes wrought by the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century. The decrease in the available labour supply, the rise in labour costs, changes in demand and consumption, particularly among the upper classes, encouraged entrepreneurs in Florence and other urban economies of Renaissance Italy to direct their manufacturing interests towards the production of expensive high-quality goods. The Florentine silk industry was born in the last decades of the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century quickly developed into a dynamic industry capable of producing large quantities of luxury fabrics for export to all the principal European markets.