Download or read book Discourse on the State of the Jews written by Simone Luzzatto and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1638, a small book of no more than 92 pages in octavo was published “appresso Gioanne Calleoni” under the title “Discourse on the State of the Jews and in particular those dwelling in the illustrious city of Venice.” It was dedicated to the Doge of Venice and his counsellors, who are labelled “lovers of Truth.” The author of the book was a certain Simone (Simḥa) Luzzatto, a native of Venice, where he lived and died, serving as rabbi for over fifty years during the course of the seventeenth century. Luzzatto’s political thesis is simple and, at the same time, temerarious, if not revolutionary: Venice can put an end to its political decline, he argues, by offering the Jews a monopoly on overseas commercial activity. This plan is highly recommendable because the Jews are “wellsuited for trade,” much more so than others (such as “foreigners,” for example). The rabbi opens his argument by recalling that trade and usury are the only occupations permitted to Jews. Within the confines of their historical situation, the Venetian Jews became particularly skilled at trade with partners from the Eastern Mediterranean countries. Luzzatto’s argument is that this talent could be put at the service of the Venetian government in order to maintain – or, more accurately, recover – its political importance as an intermediary between East and West. He was the first to define the role of the Jews on the basis of their economic and social functions, disregarding the classic categorisation of Judaism’s alleged privileged religious status in world history. Nonetheless, going beyond the socio-economic arguments of the book, it is essential to point out Luzzatto’s resort to sceptical strategies in order to plead in defence of the Venetian Jews. It is precisely his philosophical and political scepticism that makes Luzzatto’s texts so unique. This edition aims to grant access to his works and thought to English-speaking readers and scholars. By approaching his texts from this point of view, the editors hope to open a new path in research into Jewish culture and philosophy that will enable other scholars to develop new directions and new perspectives, stressing the interpenetration between Jews and the surrounding Christian and secular cultures.

Download or read book Historical Seismology written by Julien Fréchet and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern seismology has faced new challenges in the study of earthquakes and their physical characteristics. This volume is dedicated to the use of new approaches and presents a state-of-the-art in historical seismology. Selected historical and recent earthquakes are chosen to document and constrain related seismic parameters using updated methodologies in the macroseismic analysis, field observations of damage distribution and tectonic effects, and modelling of seismic waveforms.

Download or read book The Years of Alienation in Italy written by Alessandra Diazzi and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Years of Alienation in Italy offers an interdisciplinary overview of the socio-political, psychological, philosophical, and cultural meanings that the notion of alienation took on in Italy between the 1960s and the 1970s. It addresses alienation as a social condition of estrangement, caused by the capitalist system, a pathological state of the mind and an ontological condition of subjectivity. Contributors to the edited volume explore the pervasive influence this multifarious concept had on literature, cinema, architecture, and photography in Italy. The collection also theoretically reassesses the notion of alienation from a novel perspective, employing Italy as a paradigmatic case study in its pioneering role in the revolution of mental health care and factory work during these two decades. Alessandra Diazzi is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Manchester, UK. Her work focuses primarily on the reception of psychoanalysis in Italian culture, with a particular focus on the relationship between psychoanalysis and impegno in Italy. She has published articles on contemporary Italian literature and cinema. Alvise Sforza Tarabochia is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Kent, UK. His research encompasses visual culture and psychiatry in Italy. He has published a monograph on the theoretical implications of Basaglia’s thought, as well as articles on Italian literature, biopolitics, visual culture and psychoanalysis.

Download or read book Uncommon Dominion written by Sally McKee and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1211 until its loss to the Ottomans in 1669, the Greek island we know as Crete was the Venetian colony of Candia. Ruled by a paid civil service fully accountable to the Venetian Senate, Candia was distinct from nearly every other colony of the medieval period for the unprecedented degree to which the colonial power was involved in its governance. Yet, for Sally McKee, the importance of the Cretan colony only begins with the anomalous manner of the Venetian state's rule. Uncommon Dominion tells the story of Venetian Crete, the home of two recognizably distinct ethnic communities, the Latins and the Greeks. The application of Venetian law to the colony made it possible for the colonial power to create and maintain a fiction of ethnic distinctness. The Greeks were subordinate to the Latins economically, politically, and juridically, yet within a century of Venetian colonization, the ethnic differences between Latin and Greek Cretans in daily material life were significantly blurred. Members of the groups intermarried, many of them learned each other's language, and some even chose to worship by the rites of the other's church. Holding up ample evidence of acculturation and miscegenation by the colony's inhabitants, McKee uncovers the colonial forces that promoted the persistence of ethnic labeling despite the lack of any clear demarcation between the two predominant communities. As McKee argues, the concept of ethnic identity was largely determined by gender, religion, and social status, especially by the Latin and Greek elites in their complex and frequently antagonistic social relationships. Drawing expertly from notarial and court records, as well as legislative and literary sources, Uncommon Dominion offers a unique study of ethnicity in the medieval and early modern periods. Students and scholars in medieval, colonial, and postcolonial studies will find much of use in studying this remarkable colonial experiment.

Download or read book The Holy Crown of Hungary written by Patrick J. Kelleher and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Venetian Patriciate written by Donald E. Queller and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Clothing of the Renaissance World written by Cesare Vecellio and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour de force of scholarship and book production: an essential reference for anyone interested in costume history, Renaissance studies, theater, and ethnography.

Download or read book The Mediterranean Medina written by AA. VV. and published by Gangemi Editore spa. This book was released on 2016-01-03T00:00:00+01:00 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects the proceedings of the International Seminar The Mediterranean Medina, that took place in the School of Architecture at Pescara from 17th to 19th of June 2004.

Download or read book Socrates or on Human Knowledge written by Simone Luzzatto and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge, published in Venice in 1651, is the only work written by a Jew that contains so far the promise of a genuinely sceptical investigation into the validity of human certainties. Simone Luzzatto masterly developed this book as a pièce of theatre where Socrates, as main actor, has the task to demonstrate the limits and weaknesses of the human capacity to acquire knowledge without being guided by revelation. He achieved this goal by offering an overview of the various and contradictory gnosiological opinions disseminated since ancient times: the divergence of views, to which he addressed the most attention, prevented him from giving a fixed definition of the nature of the cognitive process. This obliged him to come to the audacious conclusion of neither affirming nor denying anything concerning human knowledge, and finally of suspending his judgement altogether. This work unfortunately had little success in Luzzatto’s lifetime, and was subsequently almost forgotten. The absence of substantial evidence from his contemporaries and that of his epistolary have thus increased the difficulty of tracing not only its legacy in the history of philosophical though, but also of understanding the circumstances surrounding the writing of his Socrates. The present edition will be a preliminary study aiming to shed some light on the philosophical and historical value of this work’s translation, indeed it will provide a broader readership with the opportunity to access this immensely complicated work and also to grasp some aspects of the composite intellectual framework and admirable modernity of Venetian Jewish culture in the ghetto.

Download or read book Byzantium 330 1453 written by Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is published to accompany an exhibition devoted to the artistic and cultural riches of Byzantium. Essays trace the history and cultural development of more than 1000 years of Byzantine art, revealing the splendours of the imperial city of Constantinople. Numerous artefacts reveal the distinct style and character of Byzantine art.

Download or read book Venice s Mediterranean Colonies written by Maria Georgopoulou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-19 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the architecture and urbanism in the Venetian colonies of the Eastern Mediterranean and how their built environments express the close cultural ties with both Venice and Byzantium. Using the island of Crete and its capital city, Candia (modern Herakleion) as a case study, Maria Georgopoulou exposes the dynamic relationship that existed between colonizer and colony. Georgopoulou demonstrates how the Venetian colonists manipulated Crete's past history in order to support and legitimate colonial rule, particularly through the appropriation of older Byzantine traditions in civic and religious ceremonies.

Download or read book Venetians in Constantinople written by Eric Dursteler and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian Eric R Dursteler reconsiders identity in the early modern world to illuminate Veneto-Ottoman cultural interaction and coexistence, challenging the model of hostile relations and suggesting instead a more complex understanding of the intersection of cultures. Although dissonance and strife were certainly part of this relationship, he argues, coexistence and cooperation were more common. Moving beyond the "clash of civilizations" model that surveys the relationship between Islam and Christianity from a geopolitical perch, Dursteler analyzes the lived reality by focusing on a localized microcosm: the Venetian merchant and diplomatic community in Muslim Constantinople. While factors such as religion, culture, and political status could be integral elements in constructions of self and community, Dursteler finds early modern identity to be more than the sum total of its constitutent parts and reveals how the fluidity and malleability of identity in this time and place made coexistence among disparate cultures possible.

Download or read book The Impresario from Smyrna written by Carlo Goldoni and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-25 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First produced in Venice in 1761, The Impresario From Smyrna is a comedy depicting the vanities of eighteenth century Italian opera singers. Ali, a wealthy merchant from Smyrna, is planning to introduce Italian opera into Turkey and has enlisted the aid of two agents, Count Lasca and Nibio. Ali is attracted to three pretty sopranos, Lucrezia, Tognina and Annina, but their constant bickering over who is to be considered the prima donna and the exorbitant demands of all concerned make him reconsider his plans. He returns to the relative peace of his Smyrna harem, leaving the company a small sum of money, which they decide to spend on launching a theatre.From the performers to the impresario, the play is a funny look at behind-the-scene rivalries, diva fits, casting couches and audition gossip but it is also about the beautiful vulnerability of the romanticized artistic personae and the mythologies that surround stage life."

Download or read book Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb written by Giuseppe Veltri and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book deals with the coordinates of a oemodernitya as premises of Jewish philosophy in the Renaissance and early modern period.

Download or read book The Sinews of Power written by John Brewer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1989. `The book is a distinguished work - of importance to students of governmental development generally. It is written in a fluent, non-technical manner that should reach a wide audience.' American Historical Review.

Download or read book Men of Empire written by Monique O'Connell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city-state of Venice, with a population of less than 100,000, dominated a fragmented and fragile empire at the boundary between East and West, between Latin Christian, Greek Orthodox, and Muslim worlds. In this institutional and administrative history, Monique O’Connell explains the structures, processes, practices, and laws by which Venice maintained its vast overseas holdings. The legal, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity within Venice’s empire made it difficult to impose any centralization or unity among its disparate territories. O’Connell has mined the vast archival resources to explain how Venice’s central government was able to administer and govern its extensive empire. O’Connell finds that successful governance depended heavily on the experience of governors, an interlocking network of noble families, who were sent overseas to negotiate the often conflicting demands of Venice’s governing council and the local populations. In this nexus of state power and personal influence, these imperial administrators played a crucial role in representing the state as a hegemonic power; creating patronage and family connections between Venetian patricians and their subjects; and using the judicial system to negotiate a balance between local and imperial interests. In explaining the institutions and individuals that permitted this type of negotiation, O’Connell offers a historical example of an early modern empire at the height of imperial expansion.

Download or read book Embroidery of the Greek Islands and Epirus Region written by Sumru Belger Krody and published by Scala Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique in its diversity within a small region, the embroidery of the Epirus region of Greece and the islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas provides an insightful look at the relationships between textiles and culture. The geographical position of the are