Volume 105, Issue 1

Taking a region-specific approach to the analysis of the narration and communication of imperial power in the Middle Ages reveals differences in the development and reception of imperial discourse as well as in the communication tools and the reception of imperial discourse in local contexts. The monographic section of the QFIAB 2025 tackles this complex topic following some guidelines that can be summarized (in a non-exhaustive way) as follows: What were the main arguments and theses of imperial discourse in the central and late Middle Ages? What implications did the dissemination of the imperial narrative have for the drafting of official documents? How was imperial discourse received in different geographical areas? Who were the actors involved in narrating and promoting imperial discourse north and south of the Alps in the late Middle Ages?

This article analyses Alfonso X of Castile and Leon’s self-presentation in his documentation for the fecho del imperio , his bid to become Holy Roman Emperor during the Great Interregnum. The Castilian king was in open competition with another would-be emperor, Richard of Cornwall, but could muster three possible arguments for legitimacy to deploy within his imperial propaganda against his English rival: Swabian blood (on his mother’s side), Crusader and Spanish imperial heritage (on his father’s side), and his election as King of the Romans by the German princes in early 1257. Of the three, Richard could boast only the third, as he had also been elected rex Romanorum by other prince-electors on the same occasion. Contrary to most scholars’ beliefs, however, Alfonso X chose to rely on the argument of his imperial election rather than the other two in his documentation. Alfonso’s narrative is based not on rhetoric and ideals, but rather on specific legal arguments.

After the death of Frederick II, many cities in northern Italy entered an experimental phase, characterized especially by the proliferation of signorie. Among them, one of the earliest and most extensive was that of Marquess Oberto Pelavicino (1249–1266). This essay discusses the various ways in which the marquess drew upon the ideal of the Empire – of which he was vicarius  – to build up his dominion in the years immediately following 1250. He achieved this both through political action and through governmental writings, whose vocabulary in some cases borrowed explicitly from the chancery formulae of the Hohenstaufen.

The essay analyses the strategies adopted in the 1330s by King John of Bohemia and Poland, Count of Luxembourg, to attempt a political experiment in the Kingdom of Italy. The unfinished plan of Henry VII’s son is also considered in relation to the designs of the papacy, particularly John XXII, and the ruling French dynasty. However, the complex political landscape of central and northern Italy prevented the implementation of the agreements drafted by the Bohemian king’s envoys in Avignon in 1331. The conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines and the consolidation of seigneurial powers ultimately made the Bohemian option unfeasible: a Kingdom of Italy without an empire.

This essay investigates the narration of the late medieval empire in chronicles from areas south of the Alps. The performativity, narration and self-representation of the individuals heading governmental and administrative political institutions such as the Empire and their officials played a key role, making deliberate use of discourses, symbols and communicative processes. The study is also accompanied by an examination of the reception, perception and narration of political power by individual authors and in different local contexts. The analysis aims to understand both the image of power transmitted to contemporaries, and the actors and mechanisms that underpinned its manifestation, as well as the individuals in whom decision-making power resided and the cultures and values from which an idea of power developed and found meaning within a political regime. The survey deals specifically with the reception of the imperial ideal in the chronicles of Matteo Villani and Donato di Neri and in the „Liber de coronatione Caroli IV“. Specifically, it focuses on the claims and actions of government in areas south of the Alps, demonstrating the persisting vitality of the fourteenth-century Empire in the territories of Reichsitalien.

The 10th and the 11th centuries were a crucial period for the development of new forms of aristocracy in central Italy. The case study of the Counts of the Marsi, also known as the Berardi family, exemplifies this process. Originally from southern France, the family founder, Berardus, moved to Italy during the reign of Hugh of Arles and settled in the Marsica region, in modern-day Abruzzo. Over the course of several generations, the family managed to acquire substantial wealth and secure an important social role among the local elites. Two of the most important partners in this consolidation of their power were the monasteries of Farfa and Subiaco, located in Latium, not far from the borders of Marsica. The documents held in the monastic archives testify not only to the different phases of the Berardi family’s rise to power but also to the progressive establishment of a common identity. This paper discusses these sources to investigate the features of this identity-building process and determine how the Counts of the Marsi represented a new form of aristocratic group.

The archives of the Church of Molfetta differ from other archival collections of the Terra di Bari for the scarcity of sources predating the sixteenth century and the absence of systematic inventories, summaries and critical editions of the surviving parchments. This study attempts to fill the gap by providing summaries of 21 documents, 2 records and 3 inserts contained within 20 manuscripts dated to between 1162 and 1481, currently divided between the collections of the Cathedral Chapter and the Bishop’s Curia of the Diocesan Archive, and that of the Library of the Episcopal Seminary of Molfetta. Specifically, it examines the holdings of the two institutions, their current manuscript collections, the available aids to consultation, and the historical circumstances that have led to the progressive depletion of this archival heritage over the centuries. Moreover, by distinguishing between parchments directly related to the Church of Molfetta and those incorporated into the archives at a later date, the study proposes a diplomatic and content-based classification of the material. It also includes an analysis of the chronological conventions employed and presents some preliminary findings that shed new light on the history of the Church and Chapter of Molfetta.

The essay illustrates the system of direct taxation, the colletta , applied in the city of L’Aquila in the Angevin and Aragonese periods. By analysing the administrative processes, it defines the role of the institutions involved: that of the municipal government and that of the local government, both inside and outside the city, which identified themselves with L’Aquila’s founding communities and ensured the management of land and collective assets. The criteria for the distribution of the tax are also determined by the recognition of the procedures used to calculate the contribution: on a personal basis, through censuses (called numerationes foculariorum ), and on a cadastral basis, through land registers ( apprezzi ).

The taxation of the Apostolic See has been studied in depth in many areas of Christian Europe, especially in the phase of its birth and expansion. Italy has seen a successful series of such studies thanks to the publication of the „Rationes decimarum Italiae“. Unfortunately, overall reflections on the impact of the fiscal apparatus in the various regions are lacking. This essay aims to provide an overview of the sources available for the reconstruction of a complete picture of the various taxes imposed on the clergy of Basilicata. In doing so, it reflects on the potential of these sources to track the vicissitudes experienced by the population and by ecclesiastical institutions in this area, which is poor in archival sources but very interesting for its location and inland nature. The essay is divided into three parts: a general introduction to sources and approaches; an illustration of the various taxes attested; and a critical reflection on methodology and possible lines of research. An extensive set of tables and graphs and the transcription of unpublished sources from the Vatican Apostolic Archive complete and support the discussion.

This essay aims to tell the story of the German community in L’Aquila between the 15th and 16th centuries through a study of the notarial sources in the L’Aquila State Archives. The documentation collected makes it possible to determine the composition of this group of foreigners, apparently heterogeneous and well-integrated into the local social fabric, and to reconstruct the histories of individual alemanni by focusing on personal relationships, employment profiles, economic aspects, and their distribution in the area. In addition, the essay examines forms and modes of community organization, which resulted in a merchant consulate and a national religious confraternity whose members included not only Germans from Germany but also subjects from the Flemish area.

In the latter half of the fifteenth century, the Diocese of Olomouc (Moravia) was one of the two (out of four) properly functioning dioceses in Czech territory, alongside the Silesian Diocese of Wrocław. The period between the death of Bishop Tas of Boskovice (1482) and the accession of Bishop Stanislaus Thurzó (1497) was marked by disputes among various candidates. The election of the bishop was complicated by the influence of King Matthias Corvinus, who persuaded the chapter to elect his preferred candidate, Bishop Jan Filipec; however, this election was never ratified by the pope. Subsequent candidates had various reasons to aspire to the position: János Vitéz of Kamarca, another candidate proposed by Matthias Corvinus, sought status and income to support him in his diplomatic role; Bohuslav Hasištejnský viewed the post of bishop of Olomouc as the culmination of his ecclesiastical career, supported by the local nobility and King Wladislas; Cardinals Ardicino della Porta and Juan Borgia (Borja) needed the extra income and were supported by the popes. The dispute reflects the efforts of local rulers as well as local Estates to exert influence over the decisions of the chapter, and the Papacy’s attempts to strengthen its authority in church governance, pointing to a dynamic of ecclesiastical and political changes in the region.

From the early 16th century onward, the Apostolic Penitentiary broadened the scope of an office, which until this period had granted papal grace to tens of thousands of petitioners from all over Christendom. From then on, in hundreds of cases the office allowed church properties to be leased, especially in and around cities. In accordance with Roman law, the Penitentiary gave permission to clerics and laymen to use the form of the emphyteutic lease. This paper presents some examples from Naples and Rome that deserve further in-depth research.

The status of Venetian relazioni has long been debated in historiography. Since Leopold von Ranke, relazioni have been read as „the perfect type of testimony“, while more recent interpretations have highlighted their complex rhetorical scope. Starting with a framing of the genre, this article focuses on a particular case study, namely the relazioni of the Venetian baili and the extraordinary ambassadors in the Ottoman Empire around the Cyprus War (1570–1573), with the aim of defining their rhetorical vs. historiographical function. Through a comparison with contemporary sources from the Venetian area, the skillful rhetorical construction of the texts is emphasised, testifying to an ideological function that goes beyond mere reporting. At the same time, the realistic and pragmatic perspective of the genre is highlighted in its capacity to delineate a lucid fresco of the relations between the Serenissima and the Sublime Porte. A multi-layered reading of the reports is thus proposed, which integrates their rhetorical and historiographical dimensions, and which identifies them, in their allusions to the internal Venetian debate in the post-Lepanto years, as an instrument of participation and of reflection on the part of the urban elite on the Venetian system of government.

In 1631 a paper was passed around describing the events that occurred during a banquet attended by high imperial officers and diplomats in Vienna that ended in uproar. It gives an impression of the very tense atmosphere occasioned by the alarming military progress of the Swedish army in Germany and the pope’s failure to provide generous aid. The violent quarrels between the papal nuntio and the Spanish deputy Ottavio Villani demonstrate that politicians at the Habsburg courts were not unaware of Urban VIII’s secret diplomatic activities in favour of France. This awareness compromised the reputation of the pope, who expected to be respected as a neutral padre comune , promoting peace among the Catholic states of Europe. Moreover, the details of Villani’s career not only give us an impression of the combative character of the nuntio’s opponent, but reveal the strongly polemical attitude of the Roman Curia towards a man who had been administrator for the house of Orsini, executive member of the commission for imperial fiefs in Italy, assistant to the princes of Guastalla and, in 1633, a politician in charge of ensuring that Wallenstein would not abandon his support for the Spanish objectives in the Thirty Years’ War as he had decided.

This article addresses the history of European colonialism during the age of imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century from a transimperial perspective. It starts with the assumption that colonial history is all too often written along national lines that offer a limited perspective on events and circumstances. By contrast, this study emphasizes instances of exchange and mutual aid between two colonial powers, Germany and Italy, which shared a degree of inexperience in the conquest of overseas territories. The two countries did not experience the start of the construction of their respective colonial empires exclusively as a moment of competition, but also of mutual support in the face of similar dangers and common uncertainties. Among the many areas of analysis, the article focuses on the mobility of soldiers and the awarding of decorations across colonial borders, the diplomatic and scientific visits between the two imperial contexts, and the network of scholarly exchanges on different aspects of colonial governance. Further avenues of research may concern other areas of exchange and aid, as well as other empires.

In his lecture „Lust for Violence. Affects and Mass Murder in National Socialism“, published posthumously here, Habbo Knoch (1969–2024) examined the role of affective motivations in Nazi violence and asked why the scholarship has for so long been reluctant to consider the lust for violence as a central feature of perpetrators’ actions. Knoch argued that Nazi mass violence cannot be understood solely as a rationally organised process of extermination; rather, euphoria, disinhibition and a sense of empowerment also play a key role. For many perpetrators, violence was not just a means to an end, but an act of self-fulfilment by which they became integrated into a new social order. Knoch questioned whether perpetrators might have perceived their actions as an ‚attractive option‘ (Jörg Baberowski) and noted that violence was reinforced by positive feedback loops. At the same time, he emphasised that research had long shied away from analysing these dynamics to avoid falling into an individualising or pathologising trap. By interpreting the desire for affective violence as an integral component of organised mass violence and as a coalescing, epiphanic phenomenon of ‚socialised‘ violence in Nazi-German society, he advocated a differentiated view of Nazi crimes that gives equal weight to structural and emotional factors.

Ever since Alberto Grandi advanced his thesis that Italian cuisine is a mere product, indeed an invention, of the 1970s, the Italian public has rebuffed this notion. The economic historian prominently publicized this interpretation of Italian cuisine in his 2018 book „Denominazione di origine inventata“, but the ensuing heated debate has never abated. In part, this is because Grandi continues to fuel the discussion with a constant media presence and his penchant for espousing combative theories. At the same time, his arguments have provoked a form of Italian culinary national pride, conducive to fostering the development of a collective identity. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to identify Grandi’s main points, his line of argument and the reasons for the strident nature of the debate. It does so specifically by positioning Grandi’s arguments within the broader context of gastronationalism, that is, the connections and interplay between cuisine, national identity and – to emphasize Grandi’s core point – marketing ploys. As the German translation of the 2018 book was published last year and attracted great interest in German media features, the article concludes with some remarks on the reception of Grandi’s theses in Germany.