ITALIANO: Nei secoli XIV e XV si avverte lo sforzo verso una resa piu nitida e sistematica dei confini della danza, espressi in termini di non interferenza con lo spazio e con il tempo sacro, di intenzione onesta, di pudicizia e di disciplina corporea. Mi occupero nel seguente saggio di analizzare i documenti che trattano delle ripercussioni della trasgressione coreutica sull’evoluzione delle performance, ed in particolare della sospensione della sfera temporale e della dilatazione del ballo. Trattero il tema attraverso il confronto di testimonianze esemplaristiche e letterarie bassomedievali provenienti dall’area franco-italiana, ovvero dal territorio che accolse i primi tentativi di codificazione della danza. / ENGLISH: During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries efforts were made to codify a language of licit dance, by reorganising and controlling gestures and making the boundaries of choral dancing clearer and more systematic in terms of non-interference with sacred space and time. The article analyses documents that deal with the repercussions of transgression in choral dancing on the evolution of performances, and in particular on the suspension of the temporal sphere and on the expansion of dance. I address the subject by comparing exemplaristic and literary sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced in Western Europe, and especially in France and Italy, i.e. those areas where court dances had developed the most.

ITALIANO: Con l’elezione a re dei Romani nel 1308, la corte comitale di Enrico VII di Lussemburgo si trasforma radicalmente: non soltanto essa si ingrandisce e internazionalizza, ma accoglie un numero crescente di esperti del diritto, della finanza e della scrittura che mettono al servizio del nuovo sovrano le loro competenze tecniche. Scopo di questo saggio e quello di ricostruire la carriera e il profilo di uno di questi professionisti, Simone da Marville, giurista e diplomatico che, dopo numerosi anni trascorsi alla Curia apostolica, fu “prestato” da Clemente V a Enrico VII, assicurando la funzione di secretarius del futuro imperatore fino alla vigilia della Romfahrt. / ENGLISH: The election of Henry VII, count of Luxembourg, as King of the Romans in 1308, brought about a radical transformation of his court. Not only was it enlarged and internationalized, but it incorporated a growing number of experts in law, finance and writing who put their technical skills at the service of the new sovereign. This essay aims to reconstruct the career and profile of one of these professionals, Simon of Marville, a jurist and diplomat who, after a long period at the Apostolic Curia, was “lent” by Clement V to Henry VII, fulfilling the function of secretarius of the future emperor until the eve of his Romahrt.

This essay discusses the historiography of Western medieval political thought, as reflected in Il pensiero politico medievale by Gianluca Briguglia and Il potere al plurale: un profilo di storia del pensiero politico medievale by Roberto Lambertini and Mario Conetti. These two volumes propose vastly different approaches to the topic both in terms of chronology and focus, the first focusing mainly on texts, the other primarily on practices and institutions. Read in conjunction with one another, these books testify to the complexities involved in conceptualizing the emergence and development of political ideas in Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the era of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

ITALIANO: Una serie di volumi recenti dedicati alle figure di Carlo Magno e di Desiderio offrono spunti interessanti per ripercorrere un argomento controverso e a lungo dibattuto dalla storiografia quale il supposto matrimonio tra Carlo e una delle figlie dell’ultimo re longobardo. Il presente contributo cerca di ribaltare le conclusioni pressoche unanimi alle quali e giunta la ricerca fino ad ora, sostenendo che a sposare la figlia di Desiderio non sia stato Carlo, ma il fratello Carlomanno. Dopo avere discusso la notizia contenuta nella Vita Karoli, la prima che attribuisca l’unione all’imperatore, l’articolo analizza criticamente la narrazione di Eginardo e vaglia tutte le fonti cronologicamente piu prossime agli eventi e che fino ad oggi sono state poco valorizzate o mai esplorate. Emerge cosi un quadro estremamente contraddittorio. L’ipotesi di un matrimonio della principessa longobarda Gerberga con Carlomanno risulta suffragata da una serie di elementi che restituiscono una lettura meno lineare delle relazioni politiche tra il regno dei Franchi, il papato e il regno dei Longobardi nell’intervallo compreso tra il 768 e il 772 ca. / ENGLISH: Recent studies on Charlemagne and Desiderius have prompted reflections on the controversial issue, which has been long debated by historians, of the supposed marriage between Charlemagne and one of the daughters of the last King of the Lombards. The aim of this article is to overturn the conclusions that the most historians have drawn about this marriage, and to demonstrate that it did not take place between the Lombard princess and Charles, but between the former and Charles’ brother Carloman. Einhard’s Vita Karoli is the first source to claim that the Lombard princess married Emperor Charles. After a critical analysis of this biography, the article assesses all those sources that are chronologically closer to the event, and which until now have either received little attention or not been explored at all. A picture emerges that completely contradicts the traditional understanding of the Lombard-Frankish marriage. This new hypothesis of a marriage between the Lombard princess Gerberga and Carloman is supported by several clues that provide a far more nuanced and less linear interpretation of the political relationship among the Franks, the papacy and the Lombard Kingdom between 768 and 772.

This Monographic Section proposes to study female monasteries in Italy in the period 700 to 1100, focusing on comparing and contrasting those in cities covering northern, central and southern Italy (Brescia, Venice, Verona, Ravenna, Rome, Benevento and Naples). Key elements of this comparison are the links of nuns and abbesses with the most powerful royal and aristocratic families in the area, and the way in which these contributed to the power and wealth of the relative houses. Examining these, as well as the role of the nuns in the memorialisation and representation of these families through prayers, relics, and patrimonies, will also lead to a comparison between various monastic traditions (Lombard, Frankish Carolingian, post Byzantine, Roman) in different areas, and to the identification of specific features of these in their associations with the contemporary elites.

The article highlights the relations between Italian medieval studies and digital humanities, starting from researches conducted on Vatican documents and other ecclesiastical sources since the 1980s; then it goes on to discuss some more recent projects, based on various types of sources. A multi-faceted debate emerges, in which the experiences of historians and editors of medieval sources are intertwined with those ones gained in the world of archives and libraries, to face the incessant transformation of Information Technology, from the first “Read-Only” Web to the Web 2.0, from the Semantic Web to the recent challenges posed to historians by research data and Linked Open Data technologies.

The only extant copy of the 1395 Constitutions of the Faculty of Law of the University of Pavia has come down to us through a fifteenth-century manuscript kept in Basel. This article tackles facts and reasons leading to the commissioning of this manuscript in the context of the refoundation and early development of the University of Basel (1460). Basel adopted constitutions and organization models peculiar to Pavia and other universities in order to imitate “ritum et stilum vniversitatum Ytalie”. Champions of a successful recruiting policy, jurists from Pavia employed by the University of Basel transferred books and knowledge, their experience contributing to the lively debates revolving around the rising Faculty of Law. The active transfer of institutional models, books and lecturers from Pavia and Turin, is a tile of the cultural and “geopolitical” mosaic of the post-conciliar period that still needs to be explored from multiple angles.

Here are collected the expanded and reworked papers presentedon 15 June 2018 at the 1st Congress of the Medievistic Historiography, organized by Italian Society of Medievalists.

Ricostruire correttamente la scena del parto, così come le personalità e le azioni di coloro che assistevano la partoriente nel periodo medievale, risulta un compito difficile, non privo di ambiguità. Il soggetto per essere chiarito necessita di studi nell’ambito dell’antropologia, della religione, della storia della medicina. Attraverso l’analisi dei racconti dei miracoli del parto, presenti in testi agiografici (processi di canonizzazione e libri miraculorum) redatti dal XIII all’inizio del XVI secolo – alcuni dei quali inediti –, si è cercato di aumentare le conoscenze sull’argomento. Tali fonti appaiono fondamentali per contribuire alla storia delle malattie e della salute della donna e del parto nel periodo medievale.

Medieval Roman monasticism has historically been of little scholarly interest, overshadowed, as so often happens, by the imposing presence of the papacy. The essays published here attempt to fill this gap, at least in part, by gathering together research relevant to the later Middle Ages, and in particular to the mendicant orders. Benedictine monasticism, however, remains relatively unexplored.