Download PDF | (Great courses (DVD). Ancient & medieval history) Bartlett, Kenneth R - The Italians before Italy _ conflict and competition in the Mediterranean-Teaching Company (2007).
120 Pages
The Italians before Italy: Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean
Scope:
This course discusses the political, economic, and social worlds of the Italian city-states in the period from the Middle Ages to the loss of their autonomy in the later 16"" century. The course includes some references to the status of certain Italian cities in antiquity and brief mention of their subsequent development from 1559 until the Risorgimento, the movement of Italian national unification in the 19" century. The focus is on the development of the institutions and structures that gave each independent state its essential character.
Thus, Florence will be discussed in the context of the rise of the bourgeois republic and its concomitant mercantile economy, until the hegemony of the Medici family gradually transformed the commune into a monarchy in the 16" century. Siena, that other great Tuscan republic, which once rivaled Florence, will be shown to have declined over this period as a consequence of factional and class division, until it was incorporated into the Medici duchy of Florence in 1557.
Venice will be investigated not only as a state that managed to sustain republican patrician rule until its extinction at the end of the 18" century but also as a city-state that built, over time, a great empire on Italian soil and in the Mediterranean. Genoa and Pisa were also great mercantile republics but wracked by internal dissention and external threats. These cities once rivaled Venice for control of the luxury trade routes to the East and established maritime empires of their own until they were eclipsed by the Venetians. The complex history of Rome will emerge as the seat of an imperial papacy, building on ancient memories and responding to contemporary challenges, such as the Reformation, to create a state whose power rested more on confessional allegiance and artistic grandeur than on military force. Milan, despite suffering from many incompetent rulers, had the resources to create the most powerful state in the north, one that came close to uniting the peninsula while creating a vibrant courtly culture. The principalities of Mantua, Urbino, and Ferrara reflect simultaneously the exquisite culture and the brutal military power of their rulers, many of whom financed their states by serving as condottieri, that is, mercenary captains. Naples, that feudal kingdom to the south of the Italian peninsula, must be seen as a world apart from the republics and petty principalities to the north.
The introductory lectures in the course bring together the common threads of a history shared by the independent states of Italy. Various attempts were conceived to unite the peninsula, beginning with Dante’s hope that the Holy Roman Emperor would impose his rule and reduce the power of the pope. This Ghibelline vision remained strong, despite the continued authority of Rome and the papacy on the peninsula to sustain the Guelf cause. These almost ideological calls for unity accompanied the real ambitions of such princes as Giangaleazzo Visconti of Milan to assemble the vast wealth and military power of his state to build a single kingdom from the mosaic of independent states. Equally, the Holy See attempted to use the authority of the Church to cement the allegiance of the entire Italian nation, both through faith and through force of arms. Cesare Borgia’s campaigns on behalf of his father, Pope Alexander VI, came close to success at the turn of the 16" century; and Pope Julius II’s campaigns restored papal rule in the states of the Church after the disintegration of Borgia power.
Finally, this course argues that the richness of the culture of Italy resulted from its lack of political unity. The various constitutional, cultural, and economic experiments among the patchwork of states, together with their competition with one another and their jealousy and ambition, all made such an efflorescence of culture possible.
Kenneth R. Bartlett, Ph.D.
Professor of History and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto
Kenneth Bartlett, Professor of History and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1978. He served as editor of the journal Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme and president of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies. He was founding director of the University of Toronto Art Centre and first Director of the Office of Teaching Advancement.
Much of Dr. Bartlett’s career has been devoted to bringing Italian Renaissance culture into the undergraduate and graduate classroom. He has taught regularly in the University of Toronto Program in Siena, Italy, as well as in the Oxford Program. In 2002, he was appointed the first director of the Office of Teaching Advancement for the University of Toronto, and he has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards, most notably, the 3M Teaching Fellowship, awarded by the Canadian Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and the inaugural President’s Teaching Award for the University of Toronto. In 2007, Dr. Bartlett was one of the 10 finalists in TVOntario’s Best Lecturer competition, which pits students’ favorite instructors against one another in a battle of charisma, clarity, passion, and conviction; that same year he was recognized by an inaugural Leadership in Faculty Teaching award by the government of Ontario.
Professor Bartlett is the author of The English in Italy, 1525-1558: A Study in Culture and Politics (1991), The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance (1992), and Humanism and the Northern Renaissance (with M. McGlynn, 2000); co-editor or translator of four other books; and author of more than 35 articles and chapters on Renaissance history and culture. In 2003, he was co-curator of the exhibition Gods, Saints and Heroes: Italian Renaissance Maiolica from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art. In addition, Dr. Bartlett has been the academic consultant on the I/luminated Filmworks videos about the Vatican Library, The Halls of Virtuous Learning, The Galleries of Sixtus V, and Pages of Light, as well as for the international exhibitions Raphael and His Circle: Drawings from the Royal Collection at Windsor and Angels From the Vatican at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Professor Bartlett lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife, Gillian.
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