Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420-1447 (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History 11)

Elizabeth McCahill

ISBN 10: 0674724534 / ISBN 13: 9780674724532

Published by Harvard University Press, 2013

About this Item

Condition: Previous owner's name on flyleaf. Otherwise the book is in pristine condition. Dimensions: 24 x 16.5 x 3cm.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1752485909393

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420-1447 (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History 11)
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674724534
• ISBN 13: 9780674724532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Weight: 628 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Renaissance
  • Italy
  • Humanism

About this title

Synopsis

In 1420, after more than one hundred years of the Avignon Exile and the Western Schism, the papal court returned to Rome, which had become depopulated, dangerous, and impoverished in the papacy's absence. Reviving the Eternal City examines the culture of Rome and the papal court during the first half of the fifteenth century, a crucial transitional period before the city's rebirth. As Elizabeth McCahill explains, during these decades Rome and the Curia were caught between conflicting realities--between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between conciliarism and papalism, between an image of Rome as a restored republic and a dream of the city as a papal capital.

Through the testimony of humanists' rhetorical texts and surviving archival materials, McCahill reconstructs the niche that scholars carved for themselves as they penned vivid descriptions of Rome and offered remedies for contemporary social, economic, religious, and political problems. In addition to analyzing the humanists' intellectual and professional program, McCahill investigates the different agendas that popes Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugenius IV (1431-1447) and their cardinals had for the post-Schism pontificate. Reviving the Eternal City illuminates an urban environment in transition and explores the ways in which curialists collaborated and competed to develop Rome's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.

About the Author

Elizabeth McCahill is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.