Renaissance Books

The only autobiography ever written by a reigning Pope (r.1458-1464), it is very entertaining and well written. It offers a window on a Renaissance man and his life and world written in his own words. This recent 2003 Harvard University translation is modern and easy to read, with the original Latin text on each facing page (ie. the amount of actual English translation is about 188 pages). It is mostly about current political events of the day (a time of great conflict and strife) and memorable scenes from his life, written with great artistic skill by a master of rhetoric.

Some of the more memorable scenes including his trip to Scotland where he stays the night in a hay-loft with two Scottish women.. the incredible set-piece when he is elected Pope, the drama of which is nothing short of some of the best I've read in a while, his entire life leading up to this scene: "All sat in their seats, pale and silent, thunderstruck, as if in a trance. For some time no one spoke, no one opened his lips, no one moved any part of his body except his eyes, which kept darting about." And the travel from Rome northward to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor to discuss what to do about the Turks and the recent Fall of Constantinople - in particular some of the accounts of lords and the tortures and sexual abuses they committed were really very shocking - a window on the world as it was.

Excerpted from a book review published in "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" (2004.11.08):

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Margaret Meserve, Marcello Simonetta, Pius II: Commentaries (Volume 1). I Tatti Renaissance Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01164-3.

Reviewed by Dr. Dustin A. Gish, John Cabot University and The American University of Rome


"These are the labors of the night, for we have borrowed the hours owed to sleep and spent the better part of them on our writing. Another man, it is true, might have used his watch better, but I felt an obligation to my mind, which took such delight in the task."

Thus writes Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405-64; Pope Pius II, r. 1458-64), in 1462, one of the tensest years of his papacy, regarding the completion of his treatise on Asia, part of an ambitious, yet unfinished Cosmographia. These lines serve as a fitting epigram for Aeneas Sylvius [hereafter, AS] and open the Introduction to the first of five projected volumes of Pius II: Commentaries from the I Tatti Renaissance Library, edited and translated by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta.

In this volume we have the first two books of AS's Commentaries: a monumental work (thirteen books in all) of literature, historiography, and autobiography, authored by one of the most intriguing characters in the humanist movement. It is the only autobiography ever written by a reigning pope, and the fitting culmination and keystone of a Renaissance career which may be called 'typical' only in the sense of being truly exemplary. AS excelled as a humanist scholar and diplomat, and was an accomplished Latin poet (crowned 'Poet Laureate' in 1442: I.11.1); held the post of secretary to two bishops, three cardinals, an anti-pope, and the Holy Roman Emperor (by his own admission, "an extraordinary distinction": I.14.1); served as ambassador and vice-chancellor to the Emperor as well as papal legate and apostolic secretary to two popes; was made bishop of Trieste, and later of his native Siena; finally, in 1456, was created cardinal and -- only two years later -- elected pope.

The present volume reflects AS's education and ascent as poet, orator, secretary, and statesman (I.1-32); the circumstances surrounding his membership in the College of cardinals and elevation as Pius II, following the death of Pope Calixtus III (I.33-37); and events of his papacy leading up to his convocation of the Congress of Mantua in 1459 to meet the gathering threat to Europe posed by the Ottoman Turks, interspersed with AS's orations and observations during his travel from Rome to Mantua (II.1-44).

Overall, in the classically-inspired pages of AS's Commentaries, "composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero,"we discover the highly-polished mirror of a Renaissance man amid the splendor and tumult of his times.2 Fittingly, the first two books of AS's Commentaries (and this volume) conclude with his praise of the noble young orator who had addressed the pope on his arrival in Mantua (II.44.1).3 Speaking of the beautiful young lady, only thirteen years of age, who on that occasion composed and delivered an oration in Latin worthy of her illustrious and eloquent host, AS remarked: "her style was so elegant that all who heard her were lost in wonder and admiration." (II.44.4) No small praise from the poet laureate and pope who in his younger days had himself held the courts and potentates of Europe captive with his eloquence.

This book is a series of very short (sometimes just a couple of pages) articles on major issues about Medieval & Renaissance music. Great scholars explain the matter in a very succinct and accessible way. All the aspects of the musical phenomena are investigated. From notation, to performance, criticism, iconography, historical context, etc.
I strongly recommend this book to integrate a music history textbook because it allows the reader to consider exclusively some genres and some particular issues.

Readers of my many reviews of European music from the 11th to the 16th centuries have asked me more questions than I can find time to answer. This book does the job more eloquently than I ever could, including 49 essays by noted musicologists like Reinhard Strohm along with performing musicians of the caliber of Anthony Rooley and Paul Hillier. Here's a list of the subject sections:
1. The Music of the Past and the Modern Ear
2. Aspects of Music and Society
3. Questions of Form and Style
4. Using the Evidence
5. Pre-performance Decisions
6. Performance Techniques

Topic 3 is especially deep, covering the genres of vocal and instrumental music, the origins of medieval instruments, and the techniques of composition in the era before keyboards.

Some of the essays are clearly by scholars for scholars, but the majority will be comprehensible to anyone with a basic musical vocabulary.

My mentor Lee Slonimsky (of Pythagoras In Love) highly recommended this
author because of the similarity in the tone of our "walking poems".
The prose and poetry by Louise Labe, with excellent translation by Annie Finch, depicts a poignant tale of love and passion that transcends death.
The markings in her tombstone brought me tears, while her sizzling passionate poem (of kisses) mirrors my own romantic expressions in poetry.
Simply loved it! Kudos to Annie Finch for capturing such fine moments of a French lover, in English.

This is an excellent edition of the complete works of Louise Labe, who is one of the most important women writers of the French Renaissance and whose poetry is especially wonderful, providing a much-needed female perspective on the love lyric. One mustn't ignore Labe's prose however, for her "Debate of Folly and Love" is an excellent addition to the literary tradition of the debate and showcases Labe's proto-feminism.


Deborah Lesko Baker provides excellent introductions to Labe's poetry and prose, describing her life and times and her relation to other Renaissance writers (esp. Christine de Pisan). Baker illuminates Labe's role as a distinctively female writer and how her sonnets respond to those of Petrarch. Essentially, then, Baker provides all the background necessary for a full understanding of Labe, and she also supplies copious and helpful footnotes to Labe's works.

In addition, Annie Finch's translations of Labe's poetry are superb, capturing the spirit of the originals (of course, the french is on the facing page). All in all, this is an essential purchase for anyone interested in Labe or French Renaissance literature, being the only complete bilingual edition of Labe's works available and a model for all scholarly editions of its kind.

While clearly not exhaustive, this one-volume encyclopedia is a goldmine of key facts about significant individuals, movements, and styles, as well as such subjects as crime, family, mathematics, mirrors, nature, patronage, population, rhetoric, science, and wars. You will find here a convenient explanation of the term "Renaissance," a French word applied to an Italian movement. If you thought Mannerism was simply a reaction to the High Renaissance style, its entry will enlighten you. However, if you want to know the difference between, say, the High Renaissance style in Rome and in Venice, you will have to read the entries for individual artists and draw your own conclusions -- or go farther afield than this book. It's not quite that comprehensive. The descriptions of particular cities focus on political history rather than artistic history, a puzzling lapse considering that Siena, Florence, Rome, and Venice, to name a few, had such identifiably different styles. Some gaps notwithstanding, this is a very useful book. My calling it "affordable" may be a misnomer if it's unavailable. Keep it on your wish list and hope the publishers reprint it.

I bought my copy of this book some years ago when studying for my Bed degree. It must be on it's upteenth reprint by now, but still remains the most informative, clearly laid out and interesting reference/guide to the Italian Renassance that I have encountered. This book is a constant source of 'factual' information, dates, names, places and people and though my issue runs to three hundred and sixty pages and two hundred and thirty seven illustrations it is still a handy portable size. John Hale has edited a long list of Ren. scholars contributions into an easy, succinct style of writing with each entry in the Encyclopaedia having references to source material and further reading. The only, slight, drawback to this book is that their are no colour pictures - but this probably keeps the price down and that has to be good! I would recommend this excellent introduction to the Italian Renaissance to anyone interested in the subject, particularly those studying a course.

Where's the great editorals from some leading authors and experts in the field ? Just started to re-read. Great stuff for those spearheading a re-engineering project. Still awaiting your next text/book from the trio of Kelvin, Rich and John.

The book is crisply written, and gives some remarkably clear insights and advice on reengineering. It also provides some useful, applicable tools (process maps, LP diagrams) to make an effort more effective. Advice includes service quality design, organizing a reengineering effort, and implementation. All is invaluable.

I stongly recommend this book.

From a review by Anthony Grafton in The New York Review of Books, March 4, 1999 (Vol. XLVI, No. 4), pp. 34-38. "Like Burckhardt, Ingrid Rowland sees the Renaissance as the birth of a new culture and society. Like Burckhardt, too, she brings this lost world back to three-dimensional life and vivid color, for, like him, she too is a splendid writer whose words evoke unforgettable images of Renaissance society. Rowland deftly describes the young artists and warriors we know from Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, every ready to fight or fornicate. . . . More remarkably, Rowland does as much for the city's old scholars." "Though Rowland peoples her story with memorable characters, she also re-creates the institutions in which they had to make their way." "Especially effective-and particularly fascinating-are Rowland's recreations of particular Roman circles and their ways of making scholarship into art." "Rowland's remarkable enterprise in cultural history synthesizes earlier scholarship of many kinds: that of urban historian like David Coffin, Christopher Frömmel, and Charles Burroughs; of intellectual historians like John D'Amico and Charles Stinger; of historians of the classical revival in art and architecture like Otto Kurz, Elisabeth MacDougall, and Phyllis Pray Bober; of passionate delvers into Vatican manuscripts like Vittorio Fanelli and Massimo Miglio. But this book really rests more on primary than on secondary sources. . . . Her view of Roman intellectual life, her sense of personal interactions and intellectual collisions, derive directly form the cornucopia of documents she has discovered, evaluated, and edited." "Painters and writers, life as art, style as mediations, banquet years: Ingrid Rowland, like a contemporary Burckhardt, brings a lost world to life. She has given us a genuinely metropolitan High Renaissance, not only passionate and learned, but also sexy, urbane, and fascinating."

It is nearly impossible to overpraise Ingrid Rowland's book. Strikingly original, _The Culture of the High Renaissance_ is a dazzling display of scholarship and one of the finest examples of historical writing in recent memory. There is exceptional erudition here--her work is a feast of information, rare insight, and compelling interpretation--and it is presented by Rowland from beginning to end with enthusiasm and considerable grace. Refreshingly, she always gives the sense of inviting the reader along to share in the discovery of a world she knows so well, and so clearly loves. The writing itself is something extraordinary. Here the fascinating world of sixteenth century Rome is presented with passion, affection, and humor--a more than welcome antidote to the bloodless prose of much current academic writing. This should come as no surprise to readers familiar with Rowland's pieces in _The New York Review of Books_ (her current article, "Titian: The Sacred and Profane" is characteristically dazzling and not to be missed). It is easy to see why Rowland was recently recognized for her outstanding teaching at the University of Chicago. Lucky students...lucky readers. Prof. George Lechner, Italian Renaissance (Honors), University of Hartford

This is a great place to start for anybody interested in the influence of alchemical symbolism on english literature. The alchemists (and especially those who produced alchemical texts) did all kinds of strange, obscure, difficult, puzzling, and therefore fascinating things with language. This fact was not lost on the many important literary figures who never got their hands dirty but found alchemy useful as a theme or symbol in their work, and as this book demonstrates they had many good reasons to take an interest. So will you. Alchemy has been too long neglected as a key element in the religious life of the renaissance and after, and the texts of literary authors dealing with alchemy are an important source for our understanding of this--which still has yet to be fully researched and explained. This book is an important first step, and hopefully will inspire many future studies.

Occultists and spiritual alchemists with an interest in literature and the history of alchemy will find much of value here, although it does not speak to the post-19th century occultist reading of alchemy as much as the renaissance and medieval tradition.

Linden is probably one of the few serious scholars to have taken into consideration the importance of the use of alchemical registers in various central works of late medieval and early modern English literature. Together with an impressive knowledge of the fundamental and less known works of sixteenth century English alchemy, Linden provides his readers with a fisheye view on the idiosyncratic uses authors like Chaucer, Donne, Herbert and others, have made of basic alchemic concepts. The text is important for those scholars and amateurs of the field who still think that alchemy occupies a central position in the "languages", in Pocock's words, spoken in Early Modern England. A work of admirable seriousness and impressive documentation.

The public was outraged when a few years back an angry thoughtless marauder attacked the magnificent sculpture, Michelangelo's David, destroying one on the great toes. Now there is a well written book that discusses the near tragedy and the manner in which the officials dealt with the damage. It is an important document, especially in an age of terrorism!

Author Antonio Paolucci discusses and illustrates (with quite impressive photographs) the status of the sculpture before the cruel attack, the results of the damage, and then the painstaking restoration of the work that not only repaired the damage, but also brought important cosmetic healing to the ravages of time. The results as depicted in the fine photographs are not only beautiful but reassuring to see.

Paolucci then turns his attention to a brief but well-written and illustrated biography of Michelangelo and his contemporaries, showing his growth into the finest observer of the human body the world has ever known. This is a beautiful art book, a very interesting read on how creative people can restore works of art, and a concise commentary on the life of the redoubtable Michelangelo. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, November 05

Michelangelo's David has never been seen with such detail and in so many fresh and haunting imagas! BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!

Ms. Young does a wonderful job of taking a tremendous volume of information of several of the most credible philsophers and distills there views (on the meaning of life) into a few hundred pages.

Ms. Young also brings the views of ancient philosophers into the context of modern times.

A very engaging and entertaining review. I would recommend it for the serious "intellectual" as well as for the Average Joe.

There is something in here to be learned by everybody.

This is a very good book, full of ideas and insights, and -- last but not least -- solid, thoughtful criticism of the various thinkers treated (after a short opening chapter on Plato, it's basically Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche through to Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida). Young is a superbly clear writer, reluctant to obfuscate or to oversimplify. As I have said, he criticizes and in doing so doesn't pull his punches, though he's never unfair. He explains each thinker's philosophical approach, and then discusses it in terms of the overarching theme of the book: what counts as human flourishing for the thinker in question, and to what extent is the thinker's account a compelling one. He engages with arguments, puts the philosophers into context, and into debate with each other. Finally, I found that he was enjoyably critical of Foucault for the philosopher's derivative Nietzschean hedonism (the idea that the best answer to the question of how to live, and how to promote human flourishing, is to live one's life as though it were a work of art). This is a book many readers would like and get a lot out of even if they aren't philosophers. I have a high regard for his other books (on Heidegger and Nietzsche) but this one, for all of the care he takes in presenting arguments, allows his personality to show through a little bit. And he sounds like an interesting, likeable chap.

'Death of the Duchess' is the first novel by Elizabeth Eyre, which is the pen name of two London-based authors, Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey, who also write under the pseudonym of Susannah Stacey for another mystery series.

This novel is the first of a series, and it introduces the main detective character, Sigismondo, a shadowy, moral character of the early Renaissance in Italy. Sigismondo has an unknown background, high in mystery, travel, education, and experience. Equally at home among the street urchins and the courtiers, the politicos and the clerics, he seems to move with ease to find the information he's seeking, and acts with skill (both physical and intellectual) to avoid or, when avoidance doesn't work, escape problematic situations.

Sigismondo is joined by Benno, a character reminiscent of Sancho in Don Quixote. Benno provides support, a 'talking point' (much like Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes), and a bit of comic relief.

The story begins with a kidnapping. There is a long-standing feud between the di Torres family and the Bandini family, both noble families whose continuing feud threatens to destabilise the region. The handmaiden of the kidnapped daughter is discovered dead. As the story progresses, the duchess herself is discovered stabbed to death during a wedding feast, and accusations fly back and forth between di Torres and Bandini family members.

Sigismondo, not one to take anything presented at face value, searches neighbouring villages, monastic centres, and noble houses to search for the truth behind the kidnapping (which seems odd, given the state of preparedness of the house, which seemed set up to be ripe for a kidnapping) and the murder of the duchess, a bold act to take place in the midst of a crowded house during a banquet by a member of the Bandini clan who was bound to be recognised and caught.

During the course of his investigation, in which Sigismondo shows himself witty, skillful, a master of disguise and of discerning subtrefuge and double-dealing, he discovers cracks in the supposedly loyal internal family structures, which serves to heighten the mystery and intrigue. Is the kidnapper also a murderer? To what end was the daughter really kidnapped? Was the marriage between the duke and duchess of Rocca as faithful and happy as had been publicly presented?

In the end, Sigismondo puts together a strange alliance of enemies who had been set against each other to uphold an unlikely ruler and thus solve the mystery, which impacts on the larger ambitions of foreign princes--but, I get ahead of myself here. I mustn't give everything away.

One of the things that makes Eyre's story so appealling is the attention to detail, both in physical description and in political and psychological motivation. Great care has been taken to thoroughly immerse the reader in Renaissance Italy, and Eyre's research has been very good to discover details of menu, house operation, church and monastic life, city life, and minor family political nuances. (The book is dedicated to Niccolo Machiavelli, of fond memory.)

Complete with a down-to-the-wire, suspenseful conclusion, this is a great story, and a perfect introduction of characters who continue in other alliterative mysteries such as 'Poison for the Prince' and 'Curtains for the Cardinal'.

Historical mysteries have seemed to appear with a leap and a bound over the past several years, due to the amazing fascination that readers have with this genre. And Elizabeth Eyre's contribution in 1991 with "Death of the Duchess" is a welcomed--and respected--inclusion. The first of the series, "Duchess" introduces us to Sigismondo, an independent solver of crimes. Set during the Italian Renaissance, the book quickly captivates the reader as the daring Sigismondo is commissioned to find out where an abducted daughter of a local aristocrat. The daughter is from one of the leading families of duchy (a di Torre) and it is suspected she is the victim of a plot by the other leading family, the Bandini, due to an ages-old hatred. Earlier, the daughter, Lady Cosima, had been betrothed to young Leandro Bandini, as per the Duke's command so that the feud could be ended once and for all.

Not that it is so easy, however, for the Duke's own wife is found murdered in her chamber. Young Leandro is found unconscious in her chamber and it appears that he is guilty of the crime. Thus, the plot unravels at an alarming rate from this point on. The authors introduces us to all kinds of people, and red herrings and other points of confusion abound. It is left up to Sigismondo to solve the mystery and to restore peace once more to the duchy.

A man of mystery himself, the muscular (and handsome) Sigismondo is also quite intelligent, witty, and capable of taking care of himself in the martial arts (a true 'Renaissance Man'). He early on picks up Benno, a slow-witted ragamuffin, as his assistant and servant. Benno proves to be more than his appearance allows, however. The two, and Benno's dog Biondello, will appear in the next Eyre novels.

This book, while taking on some very recognizable traits from another Renaissance mystery of "two houses divided," is a delight to read, no matter how familiar the plot. The author (actually a pseudonym of Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey) seems well versed in the period and there is no problem of verisimilitude!

The storyline moves quickly and the characters are convincing. There is enough action, romance, and, yes, even murder to propel the book to its exciting finish, naturally with a surprise or two in its conclusion. It's worth one's time!