Pisa nel Medioevo

The rise of the Italian city-states of central and northern Italy—most markedly that of Genoa, Pisa and Venice—represents one of the more defining phenomena of the Middle Ages. Their emergence signified quite revolutionary transformations in Europe’s political, urban, commercial and culture landscape. It is, above all, the latter two transformations with which Michael Mitterauer and John Morrissey’s well-researched and engaging study of Pisa is concerned. Indeed, the subtitle—sea power and engine of culture—pinpoints exactly where the work’s focus lies. The authors aim to locate Pisa within those above-mentioned wider European changes and, in doing so, to establish the importance of pursuing a consistent comparative approach throughout. Thus, we learn a great deal also here about Florence, Genoa, Lucca, Luni and Venice, and this in turn builds a more rounded picture of Pisan developments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The study is structured through an intelligent and clear arrangement into three parts. Part One serves as a platform for the subsequent analysis in Parts Two and Three. It covers the rise of Pisa from Late Antiquity, and particularly its function within the regional power politics of Tuscany. Part Two then offers lengthy treatment of Pisan commercial activity across the Mediterranean, demonstrating how this port city on the Arno became one of the major economic forces of its day and how, by extension, it played a pivotal political and military role, particularly in the fluctuating struggles between the Christian and Islamic worlds. What Mitterauer and Morrissey are particularly good at showing here is that the Crusades and the Crusader States formed just one theatre of Pisan activity among many. The Balearics, Constantinople, Corsica, Egypt, North Africa, Sardinia, southern Italy and Sicily were all zones in which Pisa operated. As in all effective commercial enterprises, spreading assets and risks was crucial. And the authors also engage sensibly with the thorny issue of protocolonialism, especially in the case of Sardinia. Part Three, finally, assesses Pisa’s remarkable cultural impact: the significance of its celebrated civic–religious complex, the Piazza dei Miracoli, the city’s artistic associations with Rome, and, by extension, its contribution to intellectual renewal, driven by some remarkable individuals (Burgundio of Pisa and Leonardo Fibonacci among others)

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Humanities · Middle Ages · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Subtitle · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Medieval History and Crusades · Philosophy