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Rome (Italy) -- History Books
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Ferdinand Gregorovius
Storia della città di Roma nel medio evo, vol. 2/8 : $b dal secolo V al XVI
"Storia della città di Roma nel medio evo, vol. 2/8 : dal secolo V al XVI" by Ferdinando Gregorovius is a historical account written in the late 19th century. It traces Rome’s transformation in the early Middle Ages, from the collapse of the ancient civic order to the ascendancy of the papacy, the spread of monasticism, and the city’s struggles between Byzantine authority and Lombard pressure. Figures such as Benedict of Nursia and Gregory the Great exemplify how religious institutions replaced imperial structures and reshaped urban life. Expect a richly detailed political, ecclesiastical, and urban narrative rather than character-driven storytelling. The opening of this volume paints a stark tableau of a ruined Rome—temples crumbling, forums silent, baths stripped—while the Church rises as the city’s only vigilant organizer and protector behind Aurelian’s walls. It recounts Benedict’s retreat to Subiaco, the founding of Monte Cassino atop a former pagan site, the crafting of his Rule, and the swift spread of monastic life (from Cassiodorus’s Vivarium to Roman convents fostered by patrician women), culminating in Benedictines sheltered at the Lateran after the Lombards raze Monte Cassino. The narrative then follows the Lombard advance, the embattled pontificates of Benedict I and Pelagius II, and appeals to Constantinople, with Gregory dispatched as apocrisiarius. Flood and plague ravage the city; Pelagius dies, and the rebuilding of San Lorenzo marks the era’s piety amid disaster. Gregory’s election ushers in penitential processions and the legend of the archangel sheathing his sword atop Hadrian’s mausoleum to end the pestilence. Finally, his first sermons read like a funeral oration over Rome as Agilulf and Ariulf press the siege, while he buys off the enemy, clashes diplomatically with the exarch and emperor, and the text sketches the fragile civic framework—prefect, magister militum, and the near-silence surrounding a vanished Senate.
Ferdinand Gregorovius
Storia della città di Roma nel medio evo, vol. 3/8 : $b dal secolo V al XVI
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Ferdinand Gregorovius
Storia della città di Roma nel medio evo, vol. 1/8 : $b dal secolo V al XVI
"Storia della città di Roma nel medio evo, vol. 1/8 : dal secolo V al XVI." by Ferdinando Gregorovius is a historical account written in the mid-19th century. It examines the civic life and transformation of Rome from late antiquity into the Renaissance era, focusing on the interplay of ancient municipal traditions, imperial claims, and papal supremacy. Drawing on original documents, monuments, and topography, it offers a comprehensive portrait of Rome’s politics, society, religion, and urban fabric across the medieval centuries. The opening of the work introduces the editor’s note on the first Italian translation, acknowledging the author’s corrections and the care taken in printing, followed by the author’s preface outlining the aim: to fill the gap in Rome’s medieval civic history. Gregorovius stakes out his central thesis of three enduring “rights” shaping Rome—republican municipalism, imperial monarchy, and papal dominion—sets the scope from the Visigothic sack to the Sack under Clement VII, and explains his method of uniting archival research with the study of ruins and monuments, while noting the deep German–Italian historical ties. He then frames Rome’s uniqueness by contrasting it with Jerusalem and Athenian civilization, tracing the passage from imperial centralization to the Church’s universal authority and the medieval reverence for Rome as spiritual, political, and cultural center. Finally, he begins a topographical survey of late imperial Rome—its walls, gates, roads, aqueducts, and especially the fourteen regions—moving region by region from the Porta Capena through the Caelian and Colosseum districts, along the Via Sacra and imperial fora, across the Esquiline and Quirinal with the great baths, and into the Forum Romanum and Capitoline, which he presents as the stage for the story to follow.
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