75893 - History of Institutions and Cultural Heritage in the Middle Ages

Learning outcomes

The course provides the student with knowledge and skills that will allow him to understand the methods of formation and transmission of the historical, cultural, monumental as well as documentary heritage of the Middle Ages in Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean. At the end of the course the student is able to know, understand and frame, in their complexity, the politico-institutional processes and socio-cultural interactions that characterized the Middle Ages and fostered the creation of its peculiar cultural and historical identity. He is also able to apply the learned knowledge: (1) to the analysis of a specific urban, archival or librarian context and to the understanding of the cultural memory of a given institution; (2) to communicate the results of a bibliographic survey or critical reading of narrative and documentary sources; (3) to independently extend the investigation to new situations, using the methodological tools acquired during the course.

Course contents

Course title: Gesta municipalia. Archives, administration, and urban memory in Italy between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

In the administration of the late antique city, every transaction that involved the transfer of ownership of immovable goods was recorded and kept in the municipal archives. The procedure leading up to the registration was carried out during a meeting of the city council, which was the body responsible for the conservation of documents. With reference to Italy, we have evidence of this practice in documents from the second half of the fifth to the sixth century collected in the so-called 'Ravenna papyri'. Based on the reading of some of these papyri, the course aims to reconstruct the administration of the late antique city and the characteristics of its social memory, as well as follow the profound metamorphoses that occurred in these fields during the seventh and eighth centuries.

Readings/Bibliography

The following readings are mandatory:

 

— A. H. M. Jones, Il tardo impero romano (284-602 d. C.), vol. II, trad. it. Milano 1974, pp. 929-1018.

— J.-O. Tjäder, "Alcune osservazioni sulla prassi documentaria a Ravenna nel VI secolo", in G. G. Archi (a cura), Il mondo del diritto nell'epoca giustinianea. Caratteri e problematiche, Ravenna 1985, pp. 23-42. 

— N. Everett, “Scribes and Charters in Lombard Italy”, Studi medievali 41/1 (2000), pp. 39-83.

— F. Santoni, “I papiri di Ravenna: gesta municipalia e procedure di insinuazione”, in J.-M. Martin, A. Peters-Custot, V. Prigent, L’héritage byzantin en Italie (VIIe-XIIe siècle), I, La fabrique documentaire (Collection de l’École Française de Rome, 449), Rome 2011, pp. 9-32.

— W. C. Brown, “On the Gesta municipalia and the Public Validation of Documents in Frankish Europe”, Speculum 87/2 (2012), pp. 345-375.

— S. Cosentino, “Istituzioni curiali e amministrazione della città nell’Italia ostrogota e bizantina”, Antiquité Tardive 26 (2028), pp. 241-254.

 

N.B. Non-attending students are requested additional reading of:

— L. Loschiavo, L'età del passaggio. All'alba del diritto comune europeo (secoli III-VII), Torino 2016.

 

Teaching methods

The course is organized in a seminar way; during it the teacher will translate and comment upon some sources (mainly in Latin). Attendance to it is therefore highly recommended.

 

P.S. Foreign students who wish to enroll in the course must have an Italian knowledge of at least level B 2.

Assessment methods

The passing of the exam requires the writing of a paper (concerning compulsory the topic treated in the monographic part of the course) and its discussion with the teacher.

– paperwork: consists of a written paper (12-15 pages long, excluding bibliography: page layout: side margins 2 cm, margins at the top and bottom: 2.5 cm, body font 12, line spacing 2) to be delivered to the teacher as an e-mail attachment one week before the date of the oral exam. Paperwork aims at verifying notions, concepts and euristic tools learned by the student during the course and her/his capacity to organize a written analysis on a historiographical topic.

— oral exam: consists in the discussion of the paperwork and the assessment of historical general notions transmitted during the course.

The final evaluation for passing the exam is determined by the following scores: 20/30 for paperwork; 10/30 for its discussion and other historical notions.

Different modes of passing the exam for 'attending students' and 'non-attending students' will not be used.

 

Teaching tools

— Translation of sources

— Distribution of photocopies

— Power-point presentations

— Visit to the archiepiscopal archive of Ravenna.

— No resources will be uploaded on 'Virtuale'.

 

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Cosentino