Traces the intellectual life of Italy, where humanism began a century before it influenced the rest of Europe.

Based on the study of over 500 surviving manuscript school books, this comprehensive 2001 study of the curriculum of school education in medieval and Renaissance Italy contains some surprising conclusions. Robert Black's analysis finds that continuity and conservatism, not innovation, characterize medieval and Renaissance teaching. The study of classical texts in medieval Italian schools reached its height in the twelfth century; this was followed by a collapse in the thirteenth century, an effect on school teaching of the growth of university education. This collapse was only gradually reversed in the two centuries that followed: it was not until the later 1400s that humanists began to have a significant impact on education. Scholars of European history, of Renaissance studies, and of the history of education will find that this deeply researched and broad-ranging book challenges much inherited wisdom about education, humanism and the history of ideas.

The Vatican Library contains the richest collection of western manuscripts and early printed books in the world, and its holdings have both reflected and helped to shape the intellectual development of Europe. One of the central institutions of Italian Renaissance culture, it has served since its origin in the mid-fifteenth century as a center of research for topics as diverse as the early history of the city of Rome and the structure of the universe. This extraordinarily beautiful book which contains over 200 color illustrations, introduces the reader to the Vatican Library and examines in particular its development during the Renaissance. Distinguished scholars discuss the Library's holdings and the historical circumstances of its growth, presenting a fascinating cast of characters - popes, artists, collectors, scholars, and scientists - who influenced how the Library evolved. The authors examine subjects ranging from Renaissance humanism to Church relations with China and the Islamic world to the status of medicine and the life sciences in antiquity and during the Renaissance. Their essays are supported by a lavish display of maps, books, prints, and other examples of the Library's collection, including the Palatine Virgil (a fifth-century manuscript), a letter from King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, and an autographed poem by Petrarch. The book serves as the catalog for a major exhibition at the Library of Congress that presents a selection of the Vatican Library's magnificent treasures.

A study in the intellectual history of Italy between 1325 & 1450. During this period there began to define itself quite clearly a new attitude toward life which the documents incorporated in this volume offer an opportunity to explore.

For more than a century, scholars have believed that Italian humanism was predominantly civic in outlook. Often serving in communal government, fourteenth-century humanists like Albertino Mussato and Coluccio Saltuati are said to have derived from their reading of the Latin classics a rhetoric of republican liberty that was opposed to the 'tyranny' of neighbouring signori and of the German emperors. In this ground-breaking study, Alexander Lee challenges this long-held belief. From the death of Frederick II in 1250 to the failure of Rupert of the Palatinate's ill-fated expedition in 1402, Lee argues, the humanists nurtured a consistent and powerful affection for the Holy Roman Empire. Though this was articulated in a variety of different ways, it was nevertheless driven more by political conviction than by cultural concerns. Surrounded by endless conflict - both within and between city-states - the humanists eagerly embraced the Empire as the surest guarantee of peace and liberty, and lost no opportunity to invoke its protection. Indeed, as Lee shows, the most ardent appeals to imperial authority were made not by 'signorial' humanists, but by humanists in the service of communal regimes. The first comprehensive, synoptic study of humanistic ideas of Empire in the period c.1250-1402, this volume offers a radically new interpretation of fourteenth-century political thought, and raises wide-ranging questions about the foundations of modern constitutional ideas. As such, it is essential reading not just for students of Renaissance Italy and the history of political thought, but for all those interested in understanding the origins of liberty