Catherine Homes
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199279685
- eISBN:
- 9780191707353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279685.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter focuses on Byzantine administration in the Balkans and Southern Italy. It demonstrates how the emperor's wars with Symeon Kometopoulos, the ruler of Bulgaria, provide the key context to ...
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This chapter focuses on Byzantine administration in the Balkans and Southern Italy. It demonstrates how the emperor's wars with Symeon Kometopoulos, the ruler of Bulgaria, provide the key context to military administration in the Balkans until the final decade of the reign. It discusses the problems that John Skylitzes' Synopsis Historion presents for understanding the scope and chronology of the wars themselves, and the administrative structures that underpinned martial action. The detailed analysis of Skylitzes' testimony earlier in the book is used to generate some new answers to the most important difficulties inherent in the Synopsis Historion. It is argued that after Basil's annexation of Bulgaria in 1018, a similar style of flexible and devolved government was pursued on the new Balkan frontier as on the eastern frontier. This situation had distinct parallels in Byzantine southern Italy.Less
This chapter focuses on Byzantine administration in the Balkans and Southern Italy. It demonstrates how the emperor's wars with Symeon Kometopoulos, the ruler of Bulgaria, provide the key context to military administration in the Balkans until the final decade of the reign. It discusses the problems that John Skylitzes' Synopsis Historion presents for understanding the scope and chronology of the wars themselves, and the administrative structures that underpinned martial action. The detailed analysis of Skylitzes' testimony earlier in the book is used to generate some new answers to the most important difficulties inherent in the Synopsis Historion. It is argued that after Basil's annexation of Bulgaria in 1018, a similar style of flexible and devolved government was pursued on the new Balkan frontier as on the eastern frontier. This situation had distinct parallels in Byzantine southern Italy.
John A. Davis
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198207559
- eISBN:
- 9780191716720
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207559.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book takes the southern Italian Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as the vantage point for a reconsideration of Italy's history in the age of Napoleon and the European revolutions. The book's central ...
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This book takes the southern Italian Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as the vantage point for a reconsideration of Italy's history in the age of Napoleon and the European revolutions. The book's central themes are posed by the period of French rule from 1806 to 1815, when southern Italy was the Mediterranean frontier of Napoleon's continental empire. The tensions between Naples and Paris made this an important chapter in the history of that empire and revealed the deeper contradictions on which it was founded. But the brief interlude of Napoleonic rule later came to be seen as the critical moment when a modernizing North finally parted company from a backward South. Although these arguments still shape the ways in which Italian history is written, in most parts of the North political and economic change before Unification was slow and gradual; whereas in the South it came sooner and in more disruptive forms. This book develops a critical reassessment of the dynamics of political change in the century before Unification. Its starting point is the crisis that overwhelmed the Italian states at the end of the 18th century, when Italian rulers saw the political and economic fabric of the Ancien Régime undermined throughout Europe. In the South, the crisis was especially far reaching and this, the book argues, was the reason why in the following decade the South became the theatre for one of the most ambitious reform projects in Napoleonic Europe. The transition was precarious and insecure, but also mobilized political projects and forms of collective action that had no counterparts elsewhere in Italy before 1848, illustrating the similar nature of the political challenges facing all the pre-Unification states. Although Unification finally brought Italy's insecure dynastic principalities to an end, it offered no remedies to the insecurities that from much earlier had made the South especially vulnerable to the challenges of the new age: which was why the South would become a problem — Italy's ‘Southern Problem’.Less
This book takes the southern Italian Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as the vantage point for a reconsideration of Italy's history in the age of Napoleon and the European revolutions. The book's central themes are posed by the period of French rule from 1806 to 1815, when southern Italy was the Mediterranean frontier of Napoleon's continental empire. The tensions between Naples and Paris made this an important chapter in the history of that empire and revealed the deeper contradictions on which it was founded. But the brief interlude of Napoleonic rule later came to be seen as the critical moment when a modernizing North finally parted company from a backward South. Although these arguments still shape the ways in which Italian history is written, in most parts of the North political and economic change before Unification was slow and gradual; whereas in the South it came sooner and in more disruptive forms. This book develops a critical reassessment of the dynamics of political change in the century before Unification. Its starting point is the crisis that overwhelmed the Italian states at the end of the 18th century, when Italian rulers saw the political and economic fabric of the Ancien Régime undermined throughout Europe. In the South, the crisis was especially far reaching and this, the book argues, was the reason why in the following decade the South became the theatre for one of the most ambitious reform projects in Napoleonic Europe. The transition was precarious and insecure, but also mobilized political projects and forms of collective action that had no counterparts elsewhere in Italy before 1848, illustrating the similar nature of the political challenges facing all the pre-Unification states. Although Unification finally brought Italy's insecure dynastic principalities to an end, it offered no remedies to the insecurities that from much earlier had made the South especially vulnerable to the challenges of the new age: which was why the South would become a problem — Italy's ‘Southern Problem’.
Joshua C. Birk
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199755042
- eISBN:
- 9780199950508
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755042.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter focuses on the disconnect between the rhetoric of holy war in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the experience of the crusading soldiers, particularly those from southern Italy. ...
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This chapter focuses on the disconnect between the rhetoric of holy war in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the experience of the crusading soldiers, particularly those from southern Italy. When scholars discuss the experience these soldiers have with Muslims, they tend to make generalized statements that these soldiers had previous experience fighting against Muslims, in a series of religious conflicts that prefigure the Crusades. What they do not generally discuss, however, is that the common experience of the southern Italian soldier was not fighting against Muslim soldiers, but fighting alongside them as allies. This background shapes the southern Italian understanding of the First Crusade, and explains why their behavior differs so markedly from that of other Crusaders.Less
This chapter focuses on the disconnect between the rhetoric of holy war in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the experience of the crusading soldiers, particularly those from southern Italy. When scholars discuss the experience these soldiers have with Muslims, they tend to make generalized statements that these soldiers had previous experience fighting against Muslims, in a series of religious conflicts that prefigure the Crusades. What they do not generally discuss, however, is that the common experience of the southern Italian soldier was not fighting against Muslim soldiers, but fighting alongside them as allies. This background shapes the southern Italian understanding of the First Crusade, and explains why their behavior differs so markedly from that of other Crusaders.
John A. Davis
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198207559
- eISBN:
- 9780191716720
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207559.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter describes the crisis of the of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the context of the changes that were undermining the European Ancien Régime in the second half of the 18th ...
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This chapter describes the crisis of the of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the context of the changes that were undermining the European Ancien Régime in the second half of the 18th century. The chapter explores the impact of these changes on the economic, political, and social conditions of the Kingdom; the Bourbon monarchy's experiments in Enlightened absolutism in the closing decades of the 18th century; and its attempts to reduce the privileges of the feudatories, the church, and the powerful corporate bodies that dominated the Ancien Régime state.Less
This chapter describes the crisis of the of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the context of the changes that were undermining the European Ancien Régime in the second half of the 18th century. The chapter explores the impact of these changes on the economic, political, and social conditions of the Kingdom; the Bourbon monarchy's experiments in Enlightened absolutism in the closing decades of the 18th century; and its attempts to reduce the privileges of the feudatories, the church, and the powerful corporate bodies that dominated the Ancien Régime state.
Bianca de Divitiis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526117045
- eISBN:
- 9781526141910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some of the most conspicuous remains of antiquity in the Italian peninsula were found in the Kingdom of Naples. These included not only Roman ruins, but ...
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Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some of the most conspicuous remains of antiquity in the Italian peninsula were found in the Kingdom of Naples. These included not only Roman ruins, but also pre-Roman ones, such as Greek and, Italic relics, which testified to the diverse and very ancient origins of many of its centres. Magnificent ruins, such as temples or tombs, marked the landscape of cities and countryside and were regarded as traces of a glorious local past. Ancient remains were, furthermore, constantly unearthed across southern Italy either through chance findings or as a result of purposeful excavation and antiquarian research. Examining literary and artistic evidence, this essay considers local antiquity as a central theme of Southern Italian antiquarianism, for example in Capua and Venosa. It will also question the nature and perception of a diverse body of Southern Italian ‘antiquities’, which could include medieval monuments, imported classical works, or forgeries.Less
Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some of the most conspicuous remains of antiquity in the Italian peninsula were found in the Kingdom of Naples. These included not only Roman ruins, but also pre-Roman ones, such as Greek and, Italic relics, which testified to the diverse and very ancient origins of many of its centres. Magnificent ruins, such as temples or tombs, marked the landscape of cities and countryside and were regarded as traces of a glorious local past. Ancient remains were, furthermore, constantly unearthed across southern Italy either through chance findings or as a result of purposeful excavation and antiquarian research. Examining literary and artistic evidence, this essay considers local antiquity as a central theme of Southern Italian antiquarianism, for example in Capua and Venosa. It will also question the nature and perception of a diverse body of Southern Italian ‘antiquities’, which could include medieval monuments, imported classical works, or forgeries.
Carol Bonomo Jennngs and Christine Palamidessi Moore
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231751
- eISBN:
- 9780823241286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231751.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter attempts to convey some of the thickly textured patterns of Italian-American gender relations. Edward C. Banfield put forth the theory of the southern Italian social system as an ...
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This chapter attempts to convey some of the thickly textured patterns of Italian-American gender relations. Edward C. Banfield put forth the theory of the southern Italian social system as an egregious example of “amoral familism.” This theory is still widely used by social scientists and other writers in influential intellectual circles. Banfield's view that people in southern Italy had no community or social moralities, only loyalty to their nuclear families' short term interests, is often cited or quoted. The patriarchal and amoral familism theories of the Italian-American family are well entrenched, not only among scholars, but also among oldstyle nativists and others who still speak of the Italian immigrants' “less than ideal cultural baggage,” which caused and still causes problems for a morally superior American culture.Less
This chapter attempts to convey some of the thickly textured patterns of Italian-American gender relations. Edward C. Banfield put forth the theory of the southern Italian social system as an egregious example of “amoral familism.” This theory is still widely used by social scientists and other writers in influential intellectual circles. Banfield's view that people in southern Italy had no community or social moralities, only loyalty to their nuclear families' short term interests, is often cited or quoted. The patriarchal and amoral familism theories of the Italian-American family are well entrenched, not only among scholars, but also among oldstyle nativists and others who still speak of the Italian immigrants' “less than ideal cultural baggage,” which caused and still causes problems for a morally superior American culture.
Sabina Donati (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804784511
- eISBN:
- 9780804787338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804784511.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
“Becoming Visible”: Italian Women and Their Male Co-Citizens in the Liberal State
“Becoming Visible”: Italian Women and Their Male Co-Citizens in the Liberal State
Antonino De Francesco
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199662319
- eISBN:
- 9780191757310
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662319.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter suggests that Giuseppe Micali’s model came under fire when, after the political unification of the Italian peninsula, it became clear that the encounter between the various parts of ...
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This chapter suggests that Giuseppe Micali’s model came under fire when, after the political unification of the Italian peninsula, it became clear that the encounter between the various parts of Italy was not a particularly harmonious one and that the problematic area of southern Italy seemed to obstruct, rather than smooth, the way towards a rapid process of stabilization for the newly unified state. The chapter also casts light on how the southern regions’ difficulty in becoming an integral part of the new unified Italy would determine the reflections on the roots of a diversity which, at the end of the 19th century, would come home to roost in the considerations concerning the Aryan and Mediterranean races which had populated ancient Italy.Less
This chapter suggests that Giuseppe Micali’s model came under fire when, after the political unification of the Italian peninsula, it became clear that the encounter between the various parts of Italy was not a particularly harmonious one and that the problematic area of southern Italy seemed to obstruct, rather than smooth, the way towards a rapid process of stabilization for the newly unified state. The chapter also casts light on how the southern regions’ difficulty in becoming an integral part of the new unified Italy would determine the reflections on the roots of a diversity which, at the end of the 19th century, would come home to roost in the considerations concerning the Aryan and Mediterranean races which had populated ancient Italy.
Incoronata Inserra
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041297
- eISBN:
- 9780252099892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041297.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This book ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of tarantella, a genre of Southern Italian folk music and dance; in particular, it explores this phenomenon by ...
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This book ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of tarantella, a genre of Southern Italian folk music and dance; in particular, it explores this phenomenon by observing local and national music and dance festivals and international dance performances and workshops, as well as by analyzing the contemporary production of new tarantella music text. Examining tarantella's changing image and role among Italians and Italian Americans, the book illuminates how factors like tourism, translation, and world music venues have shifted the ethics of place embedded in the tarantella cultural tradition. Once rural, religious, and rooted, tarantella now thrives in settings urban, secular, migrant, and ethnic. The book argues that the genre's changing dynamics contribute to reimagining southern Italian identity, especially in relation to the Italian Southern Question; in fact, they help Southern Italian groups redefine their own identities as immigrants within a larger Mediterranean and postcolonial context. They also translate tarantella into a different kind of performance that serves new social and cultural groups and purposes. Indeed, as tarantella moves from local and national Italian festivals to the Italian diaspora as well as to New Age and world-music scenes, its growth promotes a reassessment of gender relations in the Italian South and helps create space for Italian and Italian American women to reclaim gendered aspects of the genre.Less
This book ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of tarantella, a genre of Southern Italian folk music and dance; in particular, it explores this phenomenon by observing local and national music and dance festivals and international dance performances and workshops, as well as by analyzing the contemporary production of new tarantella music text. Examining tarantella's changing image and role among Italians and Italian Americans, the book illuminates how factors like tourism, translation, and world music venues have shifted the ethics of place embedded in the tarantella cultural tradition. Once rural, religious, and rooted, tarantella now thrives in settings urban, secular, migrant, and ethnic. The book argues that the genre's changing dynamics contribute to reimagining southern Italian identity, especially in relation to the Italian Southern Question; in fact, they help Southern Italian groups redefine their own identities as immigrants within a larger Mediterranean and postcolonial context. They also translate tarantella into a different kind of performance that serves new social and cultural groups and purposes. Indeed, as tarantella moves from local and national Italian festivals to the Italian diaspora as well as to New Age and world-music scenes, its growth promotes a reassessment of gender relations in the Italian South and helps create space for Italian and Italian American women to reclaim gendered aspects of the genre.
Thomas James Dandelet
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300089561
- eISBN:
- 9780300133776
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300089561.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter tells the story of Ferdinand and Isabella, and how they kept insinuating themselves into the political life of Naples and Rome in an effort to consolidate their power in southern Italy. ...
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This chapter tells the story of Ferdinand and Isabella, and how they kept insinuating themselves into the political life of Naples and Rome in an effort to consolidate their power in southern Italy. The young monarchs, by showing support for the church of San Pietro in Montorio in 1480, created for themselves an image that depicted them as strong allies of Naples and powerful defenders of Rome. In that same year, the interests of the Catholic Kings and those of Italy and the popes intersected, with the help of the Turkish threat to Rhodes and southern Italy. Ferdinand wanted to protect his realm of Sicily and the interests of his family in Naples. In addition, he and Isabella started to represent themselves as loyal protectors of the church. It was important to them that the policies of their court were seen as adhering to those of Rome. Stability in southern Italy and strong relations with Rome went hand in hand.Less
This chapter tells the story of Ferdinand and Isabella, and how they kept insinuating themselves into the political life of Naples and Rome in an effort to consolidate their power in southern Italy. The young monarchs, by showing support for the church of San Pietro in Montorio in 1480, created for themselves an image that depicted them as strong allies of Naples and powerful defenders of Rome. In that same year, the interests of the Catholic Kings and those of Italy and the popes intersected, with the help of the Turkish threat to Rhodes and southern Italy. Ferdinand wanted to protect his realm of Sicily and the interests of his family in Naples. In addition, he and Isabella started to represent themselves as loyal protectors of the church. It was important to them that the policies of their court were seen as adhering to those of Rome. Stability in southern Italy and strong relations with Rome went hand in hand.
Ralph Pite
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112945
- eISBN:
- 9780191670886
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112945.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
Throughout his career, Coleridge had been able to include the Commedia and several other of Dante's poems in his readings but his references to Dante are often either ornamental or incidental. This ...
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Throughout his career, Coleridge had been able to include the Commedia and several other of Dante's poems in his readings but his references to Dante are often either ornamental or incidental. This chapter asserts that there are certain important similarities between the works of Dante and those of Coleridge in two particular periods in Coleridge's life. It first discusses the parallels evident in Coleridge's travels to both Malta and southern Italy during the period between 1804 and 1807. Also, it looks into the parallels when Coleridge worked on the rewriting of his periodical entitled The Friend for the publication of its three-volume edition across 1818. It particularly concentrates on the changes in Coleridge's notion of symbols and symbolic writing.Less
Throughout his career, Coleridge had been able to include the Commedia and several other of Dante's poems in his readings but his references to Dante are often either ornamental or incidental. This chapter asserts that there are certain important similarities between the works of Dante and those of Coleridge in two particular periods in Coleridge's life. It first discusses the parallels evident in Coleridge's travels to both Malta and southern Italy during the period between 1804 and 1807. Also, it looks into the parallels when Coleridge worked on the rewriting of his periodical entitled The Friend for the publication of its three-volume edition across 1818. It particularly concentrates on the changes in Coleridge's notion of symbols and symbolic writing.
Niamh Cullen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198840374
- eISBN:
- 9780191875953
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198840374.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Social History
This chapter is an exploration of southern customs of love, courtship, and marriage. The notion of honour, strong in the southern regions and particularly Sicily and Calabria at least up to the late ...
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This chapter is an exploration of southern customs of love, courtship, and marriage. The notion of honour, strong in the southern regions and particularly Sicily and Calabria at least up to the late 1960s, strongly shaped courtship and marriage. Since family honour was measured by the sexual purity of unmarried daughters, young women’s lives were often tightly controlled. Honour crime, elopement, and kidnap marriage were the outward and most extreme signs of these customs and attitudes. The second part of chapter moves away from the diary and memoirs because of the difficulty in finding sources that both write openly about such experiences, and are willing to be published. Film was a medium that was increasingly used to draw attention to such customs, although crime reportage and the courtroom and are the real arena of this chapter. The well-known but seldom explored case of Franca Viola forms the core of the chapter’s second part. Kidnapped in 1965 with the aim of forcing her into marriage, Franca Viola was the first Sicilian woman to refuse to marry her kidnapper and by implication to have him prosecuted. The trial of Filippo Melodia and his accomplices in 1966 saw competing definitions of love and honour on trial in the Sicilian courtroom, each connected to different ideas of what it meant to be Italian, Sicilian, and modern. Although the trial was a great public victory for Sicilian women, with Melodia found guilty and sentenced to prison, a closer look at the sources suggests that, in private, attitudes were slower to change.Less
This chapter is an exploration of southern customs of love, courtship, and marriage. The notion of honour, strong in the southern regions and particularly Sicily and Calabria at least up to the late 1960s, strongly shaped courtship and marriage. Since family honour was measured by the sexual purity of unmarried daughters, young women’s lives were often tightly controlled. Honour crime, elopement, and kidnap marriage were the outward and most extreme signs of these customs and attitudes. The second part of chapter moves away from the diary and memoirs because of the difficulty in finding sources that both write openly about such experiences, and are willing to be published. Film was a medium that was increasingly used to draw attention to such customs, although crime reportage and the courtroom and are the real arena of this chapter. The well-known but seldom explored case of Franca Viola forms the core of the chapter’s second part. Kidnapped in 1965 with the aim of forcing her into marriage, Franca Viola was the first Sicilian woman to refuse to marry her kidnapper and by implication to have him prosecuted. The trial of Filippo Melodia and his accomplices in 1966 saw competing definitions of love and honour on trial in the Sicilian courtroom, each connected to different ideas of what it meant to be Italian, Sicilian, and modern. Although the trial was a great public victory for Sicilian women, with Melodia found guilty and sentenced to prison, a closer look at the sources suggests that, in private, attitudes were slower to change.
Claudia Rapp
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780195389333
- eISBN:
- 9780199396795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389333.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter presents the evidence for the ritual of adelphopoiesis as attested in the Byzantine liturgical manuscripts, from the late eighth century, until the sixteenth century and beyond. ...
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This chapter presents the evidence for the ritual of adelphopoiesis as attested in the Byzantine liturgical manuscripts, from the late eighth century, until the sixteenth century and beyond. Sixty-six manuscripts (listed in Appendix 1) were consulted. The ritual was popular throughout monastic Byzantium, in court circles in Constantinople, and among lay communities in Southern Italy. The liturgical gestures and prayers that appear with adelphopoiesis show that, in the eyes of its practitioners, the ritual bore no resemblance to marriage. It consisted of two core prayers that often appeared in conjunction with additional prayers (a table is given as Appendix 2). Sixteen prayers are known, testimony to the adaptability of the ritual. The prayers’ texts (translated in Appendix 3) show a variety of concerns, especially the avoidance of strife and the expectation of mutual support to cement an existing friendship or association, but they may also have been used to reconcile enemies.Less
This chapter presents the evidence for the ritual of adelphopoiesis as attested in the Byzantine liturgical manuscripts, from the late eighth century, until the sixteenth century and beyond. Sixty-six manuscripts (listed in Appendix 1) were consulted. The ritual was popular throughout monastic Byzantium, in court circles in Constantinople, and among lay communities in Southern Italy. The liturgical gestures and prayers that appear with adelphopoiesis show that, in the eyes of its practitioners, the ritual bore no resemblance to marriage. It consisted of two core prayers that often appeared in conjunction with additional prayers (a table is given as Appendix 2). Sixteen prayers are known, testimony to the adaptability of the ritual. The prayers’ texts (translated in Appendix 3) show a variety of concerns, especially the avoidance of strife and the expectation of mutual support to cement an existing friendship or association, but they may also have been used to reconcile enemies.
G. A. Loud
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198777601
- eISBN:
- 9780191823152
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198777601.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
The south Italian agrarian economy in the central Middle Ages was based upon a system in which lords leased lands to peasants in return for rent, and largely upon the mezzadria—rents in kind of a ...
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The south Italian agrarian economy in the central Middle Ages was based upon a system in which lords leased lands to peasants in return for rent, and largely upon the mezzadria—rents in kind of a proportion of the crops. Under such a system issues such as serfdom were largely irrelevant. However, this chapter calls attention to instances in southern Italy, and especially in the Campania region, where labour services were still exacted, often in addition to rents in kind or cash, and asks what these may tell us about the structure of the countryside and the status of south Italian peasants.Less
The south Italian agrarian economy in the central Middle Ages was based upon a system in which lords leased lands to peasants in return for rent, and largely upon the mezzadria—rents in kind of a proportion of the crops. Under such a system issues such as serfdom were largely irrelevant. However, this chapter calls attention to instances in southern Italy, and especially in the Campania region, where labour services were still exacted, often in addition to rents in kind or cash, and asks what these may tell us about the structure of the countryside and the status of south Italian peasants.
Jason Pine
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816636310
- eISBN:
- 9781452947662
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816636310.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
“In Naples, there are more singers than there are unemployed people.” These words echo through the neomelodica music scene, a vast undocumented economy animated by wedding singers, pirate TV, and ...
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“In Naples, there are more singers than there are unemployed people.” These words echo through the neomelodica music scene, a vast undocumented economy animated by wedding singers, pirate TV, and tens of thousands of fans throughout southern Italy and beyond. In a city with chronic unemployment, this setting has attracted hundreds of aspiring singers trying to make a living—or even a fortune. In the process, they brush up against affiliates of the region’s violent organized crime networks, the camorra. This book explores the murky neomelodica music scene and finds itself on uncertain ground. The “art of making do” refers to the informal and sometimes illicit entrepreneurial tactics of some Neapolitans who are pursuing a better life for themselves and their families. In the neomelodica music scene, the art of making do involves operating do-it-yourself recording studios and performing at the private parties of crime bosses. It can also require associating with crime boss-impresarios who guarantee their success by underwriting it with extortion, drug trafficking, and territorial influence. This book offers a riveting ethnography of the lives of men who seek personal sovereignty in a shadow economy dominated, in incalculable ways, by the camorra. The text navigates situations suffused with secrecy, moral ambiguity, and fears of ruin that undermine the anthropologist’s sense of autonomy.Less
“In Naples, there are more singers than there are unemployed people.” These words echo through the neomelodica music scene, a vast undocumented economy animated by wedding singers, pirate TV, and tens of thousands of fans throughout southern Italy and beyond. In a city with chronic unemployment, this setting has attracted hundreds of aspiring singers trying to make a living—or even a fortune. In the process, they brush up against affiliates of the region’s violent organized crime networks, the camorra. This book explores the murky neomelodica music scene and finds itself on uncertain ground. The “art of making do” refers to the informal and sometimes illicit entrepreneurial tactics of some Neapolitans who are pursuing a better life for themselves and their families. In the neomelodica music scene, the art of making do involves operating do-it-yourself recording studios and performing at the private parties of crime bosses. It can also require associating with crime boss-impresarios who guarantee their success by underwriting it with extortion, drug trafficking, and territorial influence. This book offers a riveting ethnography of the lives of men who seek personal sovereignty in a shadow economy dominated, in incalculable ways, by the camorra. The text navigates situations suffused with secrecy, moral ambiguity, and fears of ruin that undermine the anthropologist’s sense of autonomy.
Ernesto de Martino
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288423
- eISBN:
- 9780520963368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288423.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking ...
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Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking anthropologists. Since then, however, the importance of his contributions to the field has received wider recognition. In the book Terra del Rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism), de Martino unravels how alterity may be found “at home,” through a study in the southern peninsula of Salento of rural people seasonally affected by tarantismo, a form of possession attributed to the bite of the tarantola spider.1 The affliction is cured by the performance of “choreutic” dances followed by pilgrimages and offerings made to Saint Paul. For de Martino, tarantismo is the living presence of an other-than-Catholic history—an echo of earlier pagan, erotic ritual forms. Tarantism can be understood only when placed within the context of Catholicism’s regional history, its broader social and economic conflicts, and tensions around gender, kinship, and sexuality within the home. The cult is one that the Catholic Church has “purged” but also resignified and appropriated in an effort to contain its vitality. As de Martino shows, however, the church’s engagement with the cult in the first half of the twentieth century colludes with scientific and medical—particularly psychiatric—discourses. The relevance of this work for a modern anthropology of Catholicism is plain in its historical breadth and the richness and detail of de Martino’s ethnographic research. But it is also interesting for the way it highlights how questions of science, magic, and enchantment have posed challenges of different types for the modernizing, bureaucratic church.Less
Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking anthropologists. Since then, however, the importance of his contributions to the field has received wider recognition. In the book Terra del Rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism), de Martino unravels how alterity may be found “at home,” through a study in the southern peninsula of Salento of rural people seasonally affected by tarantismo, a form of possession attributed to the bite of the tarantola spider.1 The affliction is cured by the performance of “choreutic” dances followed by pilgrimages and offerings made to Saint Paul. For de Martino, tarantismo is the living presence of an other-than-Catholic history—an echo of earlier pagan, erotic ritual forms. Tarantism can be understood only when placed within the context of Catholicism’s regional history, its broader social and economic conflicts, and tensions around gender, kinship, and sexuality within the home. The cult is one that the Catholic Church has “purged” but also resignified and appropriated in an effort to contain its vitality. As de Martino shows, however, the church’s engagement with the cult in the first half of the twentieth century colludes with scientific and medical—particularly psychiatric—discourses. The relevance of this work for a modern anthropology of Catholicism is plain in its historical breadth and the richness and detail of de Martino’s ethnographic research. But it is also interesting for the way it highlights how questions of science, magic, and enchantment have posed challenges of different types for the modernizing, bureaucratic church.
Paolo D’Iorio
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226164564
- eISBN:
- 9780226288659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226288659.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
The last chapter stands as an elegy of the Sorrento journey. D'Iorio hypothesizes that Nietzsche was unable to return to Sorrento because of the emotional trauma he had suffered since the 1876-77 ...
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The last chapter stands as an elegy of the Sorrento journey. D'Iorio hypothesizes that Nietzsche was unable to return to Sorrento because of the emotional trauma he had suffered since the 1876-77 stay, including the rupture of his friendship with Paul Rée and the death of the young Albert Brenner, as well as his definitive break with Wagner. We are led through excerpt from Meysenbug's autobiography, where she tells the story of her own return to Sorrento in 1900. She recounts how she sent a branch of laurels from Sorrento to Weimar, where Nietzsche was living his last months with his sister, Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche. Yet we see that she entirely misunderstands his thought, as she reasserts his philosophical investment in the imperishable, the divine. This, combined with the fact that Nietzsche's sister would give him a Christian funeral, sadly predicts, and initiates, the tragic misinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought that continues into our time. D'Iorio offers the suggestion that Nietzsche ought to have been buried in Sorrento, or even on the Isle of Ischia, so that he could have been reconnected with the idea of the Free Spirit, and hence remembered in this light.Less
The last chapter stands as an elegy of the Sorrento journey. D'Iorio hypothesizes that Nietzsche was unable to return to Sorrento because of the emotional trauma he had suffered since the 1876-77 stay, including the rupture of his friendship with Paul Rée and the death of the young Albert Brenner, as well as his definitive break with Wagner. We are led through excerpt from Meysenbug's autobiography, where she tells the story of her own return to Sorrento in 1900. She recounts how she sent a branch of laurels from Sorrento to Weimar, where Nietzsche was living his last months with his sister, Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche. Yet we see that she entirely misunderstands his thought, as she reasserts his philosophical investment in the imperishable, the divine. This, combined with the fact that Nietzsche's sister would give him a Christian funeral, sadly predicts, and initiates, the tragic misinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought that continues into our time. D'Iorio offers the suggestion that Nietzsche ought to have been buried in Sorrento, or even on the Isle of Ischia, so that he could have been reconnected with the idea of the Free Spirit, and hence remembered in this light.
