Verona Cathedral
Verona Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Verona, northern Italy, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the designation Santa Maria Matricolare. It is the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Verona, it was erected after two Palaeo-Christian churches on the same site had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1117. Built in Romanesque style, the cathedral was consecrated on September 13, 1187; the structure was modified by several renovation interventions, although the plan has remained unchanged. The façade is divided into three parts, with a pediment and a two storied projecting porch or protiro embellished with sculpture, the work of the twelfth-century sculptor Nicholaus, who executed and signed the entranceway at the abbey church of San Zeno in Verona, Ferrara Cathedral; the portico is supported on the backs of two griffins, similar to those from the dismantled Porta dei Mesi at Ferrara. The lunette depicts the Virgin holding the Christ child in high relief, centered between two low relief scenes, the Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi.
On the lintel in medallions are the three theological virtues, Faith and Hope. Ten figures of prophets are set in the jambs. Set into the walls on either side of the portal are figures of Roland and Oliver, who as holy warriors, remind one of the constant need to provide protection to the church; the Gothic windows in the facade provide evidence of the renovation that took place in the 14th century. The Baroque addition at the upper part of the facade is part of 17th-century additions. On the south side of the church is a second portal executed in Como style; the main apse has retained its integrity and as such is an example of mid-12th-century architecture. The bell tower, begun in the 16th century by Michele Sanmicheli and left unfinished, has two orders of columns with decorated capitals, bas-reliefs and traces of 14th-century frescoes, it contains nine bells in the scale of A. The tenor weight is 4566 kg; the bells are rung with the tradition of Veronese bellringing art. The current appearance of the interior dates from the 15th-century renovations.
It has a nave and two aisles divided by tall pilasters in red Verona marble, which support Gothic arcades. The first three chapels on each side are in the same style, house Renaissance artworks by Veronese artists; the nave ends with the main Chapel by Sanmicheli. The Chapter Library of Verona Cathedral is one of the world’s oldest libraries in continuous function; such is its importance that it has been dubbed the “Queen of ecclesiastical collections”. Many ancient works of the Classical tradition have survived only because of the Chapter Library, including: the only surviving corpus of Catullus. Jacquet de Berchem Chapter Library of Verona Media related to Duomo at Wikimedia Commons Official website
Italian literature
Italian literature is written in the Italian language within Italy. It may refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy languages that are related to modern Italian. Italian literature begins in the XII century when in different regions of the peninsula the Italian vernacular started to be used in a literary manner; the Ritmo laurenziano is the first extant document of Italian literature. An early example of Italian literature is the tradition of vernacular lyric poetry performed in Occitan, which reached Italy by the end of the 12th century. In 1230, the Sicilian School is notable for being the first style in standard Italian. Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest of Italian poets, is notable for his Divine Comedy. Petrarch wrote lyric poetry. Renaissance humanism developed during the beginning of the 15th centuries. Humanists sought to create a citizenry able to write with eloquence and clarity. Early humanists, such as Petrarch, were great collectors of antique manuscripts.
Lorenzo de Medici shows the influence of Florence on the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting; the development of the drama in the 15th century was great. The fundamental characteristic of the era following Renaissance is that it perfected the Italian character of its language. Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini were the chief originators of the science of history. Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language and an influence on the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch. In 1690 the Academy of Arcadia was instituted with the goal of "restoring" literature by imitating the simplicity of the ancient shepherds with sonnets, madrigals and blank verse. In the 17th century, some strong and independent thinkers, such as Bernardino Telesio, Lucilio Vanini and Campanella turned philosophical inquiry into fresh channels, opened the way for the scientific conquests of Galileo Galilei, notable both for his scientific discoveries and his writing.
In the 18th century, the political condition of Italy began to improve, philosophers throughout Europe in the period known as The Enlightenment. Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio are two of the notable figures of the age. Carlo Goldoni, a Venetian, created the comedy of character; the leading figure of the literary revival of the 18th century was Giuseppe Parini. The ideas behind the French Revolution of 1789 gave a special direction to Italian literature in the second half of the 18th century. Love of liberty and desire for equality created a literature aimed at national object. Patriotism and classicism were the two principles that inspired the literature that began with Vittorio Alfieri. Other patriots included Ugo Foscolo; the romantic school had as its organ the Conciliatore established in 1818 at Milan. The main instigator of the reform was Manzoni; the great poet of the age was Giacomo Leopardi. History returned to its spirit of learned research; the literary movement that preceded and was contemporary with the political revolution of 1848 may be said to be represented by four writers - Giuseppe Giusti, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, Vincenzo Gioberti and Cesare Balbo.
After the Risorgimento, political literature becomes less important. The first part of this period is characterized by two divergent trends of literature that both opposed Romanticism, the Scapigliatura and Verismo. Important early-20th-century writers include Luigi Pirandello. Neorealism was developed by Alberto Moravia. Umberto Eco became internationally successful with the Medieval detective story Il nome della rosa; the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Italian language authors six times with winners including Giosuè Carducci, Grazia Deledda, Luigi Pirandello, Dario Fo. As the Western Roman Empire declined, the Latin tradition was kept alive by writers such as Cassiodorus and Symmachus; the liberal arts flourished at Ravenna under Theodoric, the Gothic kings surrounded themselves with masters of rhetoric and of grammar. Some lay schools remained in Italy, noted scholars included Magnus Felix Ennodius, Venantius Fortunatus, Felix the Grammarian, Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, many others.
Italians who were interested in theology gravitated towards Paris. Those who remained were attracted by the study of Roman law; this furthered the establishment of the medieval universities of Bologna, Vicenza, Salerno and Parma. These helped to spread culture, prepared the ground in which the new vernacular literature developed. Classical traditions did not disappear, affection for the memory of Rome, a preoccupation with politics, a preference for practice over theory combined to influence the development of Italian literature; the earliest vernacular literary tradition in Italy was in Occitan, a language spoken in parts of northwest Italy. A tradition of vernacular lyric poetry arose in Poitou in the early 12th century and spread south and east reaching Italy by the end of the 12th century; the first troubadours, as these Occitan lyric poets were called, to practise in Italy were from elsewhere, but the high aristocracy of Lombardy was ready to patronise them. It was not long before native Italians adopted Occitan as a vehicle for poetic expression, though the term Occitan did not appear until the year 1300, "langue d'oc" or "provenzale" being the preferred expressions.
Among the early patrons of foreign troubadours were the House of Este, the Da Romano, House of Savoy, the Malaspina. Azzo VI of E
Chapter (religion)
A chapter is one of several bodies of clergy in Roman Catholic and Nordic Lutheran churches or their gatherings. The name derives from the habit of convening monks or canons for the reading of a chapter of the Bible or a heading of the order's rule; the 6th-century St Benedict directed that his monks begin their daily assemblies with such readings and over time expressions such as "coming together for the chapter" found their meaning transferred from the text to the meeting itself and to the body gathering for it. The place of such meetings became known as the "chapter house" or "room". A cathedral chapter is the body of advisors assisting the bishop of a diocese at his cathedral church; these were a development of the presbyteries made up of the priests and other church officials of cathedral cities in the early church. In the Catholic Church, they are now only established by papal decree. Cathedral chapters are sometimes charged with election of the bishop's replacement and with the government of the diocese during vacancies of his office.
They are made up of canon priests. "Numbered" chapters are made up of a fixed number of prebendaries, while "unnumbered" chapters vary in number according to the direction of the bishop. The chapters were led by the cathedral's archdeacon but, since the 11th century, have been directed by a dean or provost. In the Catholic Church, the chapter appoints its own treasurer and sacristan and—since the Council of Trent—canon theologian and canon penitentiary; the same council approved of other local offices, which might include precentors, almoners, portarii, primicerii, or custodes. Canons are sometimes given the functions of punctator and hebdomadarius as well. In the Church of England, the chapter includes lay members, a chancellor who oversees its educational functions, a precentor who oversees its musical services; some Church of England cathedrals have "lesser" and "greater" chapters with separate functions. A collegiate chapter is a similar body of canons who oversee a collegiate church other than a cathedral.
A general chapter is a general assembly of monks composed of representatives from all the monasteries of an order or congregation. The equivalent meetings of provincial representatives of Franciscan orders is called a Chapter of Mats. A chapter of faults is a gathering for public correction of infractions against community rules and for self-criticism separate from standard confession; the assembled body of knights of a military or knightly order was referred as a "chapter”. Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Chapter". Encyclopædia Britannica. 5. Cambridge University Press. P. 855. Fanning, William. "Chapter". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Baynes, T. S. ed.. "Chapter". Encyclopædia Britannica. 5. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. P. 398. Cripps, H. W.. A Practical Treatise on the Law Relating to the Church and Clergy. K. M. Macmorran. Pp. 127–146
Parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs and young calves, it may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between "parchment" and the more-restricted term vellum. Today the term "parchment" is used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin goat, sheep or cow, scraped or dried under tension; the term referred only to the skin of sheep and goats. The equivalent material made from calfskin, of finer quality, was known as vellum; some authorities have sought to observe these distinctions strictly: for example, lexicographer Samuel Johnson in 1755, master calligrapher Edward Johnston in 1906. However, when old books and documents are encountered it may be difficult, without scientific analysis, to determine the precise animal origin of a skin either in terms of its species, or in terms of the animal's age.
In practice, there has long been considerable blurring of the boundaries between the different terms. In 1519, William Horman wrote in his Vulgaria: "That stouffe that we wrytte upon, is made of beestis skynnes, is somtyme called parchement, somtyme velem, somtyme abortyve, somtyme membraan." In Shakespeare's Hamlet the following exchange occurs: Hamlet. Is not parchment made of sheepskins? Horatio. Ay, my lord, of calves' skins too. Lee Ustick, writing in 1936, commented that: To-day the distinction, among collectors of manuscripts, is that vellum is a refined form of skin, parchment a cruder form thick, less polished than vellum, but with no distinction between skin of calf, or sheep, or of goat, it is for these reasons that many modern conservators and archivists prefer to use either the broader term "parchment", or the neutral term "animal membrane". The word parchment evolved from the name of the city of Pergamon, a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period; the city so dominated the trade that a legend arose which said that parchment had been invented in Pergamon to replace the use of papyrus which had become monopolized by the rival city of Alexandria.
This account, originating in the writings of Pliny the Elder, is dubious because parchment had been in use in Anatolia and elsewhere long before the rise of Pergamon. Herodotus mentions writing on skins as common in his time, the 5th century BC. In the 2nd century BC, a great library was set up in Pergamon that rivaled the famous Library of Alexandria; as prices rose for papyrus and the reed used for making it was over-harvested towards local extinction in the two nomes of the Nile delta that produced it, Pergamon adapted by increasing use of parchment. Writing on prepared animal skins had a long history, however. David Diringer noted that "the first mention of Egyptian documents written on leather goes back to the Fourth Dynasty, but the earliest of such documents extant are: a fragmentary roll of leather of the Sixth Dynasty, unrolled by Dr. H. Ibscher, preserved in the Cairo Museum. Though the Assyrians and the Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, they wrote on parchment from the 6th century BC onward.
Rabbinic literature traditionally maintains that the institution of employing parchment made of animal hides for the writing of ritual objects such as the Torah and tefillin is Sinaitic in origin, with special designations for different types of parchment such as gevil and klaf. Early Islamic texts are found on parchment. In the Middle Ages the 15th century, parchment was replaced by paper for most uses except luxury manuscripts, some of which were on paper. New techniques in paper milling allowed it to be much cheaper than parchment. With the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, the demands of printers far exceeded the supply of animal skins for parchment. There was a short period during the introduction of printing where parchment and paper were used at the same time, with parchment the more expensive luxury option, preferred by rich and conservative customers. Although most copies of the Gutenberg Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment. In 1490, Johannes Trithemius preferred the older methods, because "handwriting placed on parchment will be able to endure a thousand years.
But how long will printing last, dependent on paper? For if... it lasts for two hundred years, a long time." In fact high quality paper from this period has survived 500 years or more well, if kept in reasonable library conditions. The heyday of parchment use was during the medieval period, but there has been a growing revival of its use among artists since the late 20th century. Although parchment never stopped being used (primarily for gover
Sicilian School
The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfred; these poets drew inspiration from the troubadour poetry of Occitania written in langue d'oc, which applied the feudal code of honor to the relation between a man and a woman. This is a reversal of the traditional role of women, traditionally dependent on men, marks a new awareness in medieval society: the decadence of feudalism with the increasing power of the middle class, causes a shift in the reading public, the epic giving way to the lyric. In the lower Middle Ages more and more women were reading books than before and poetry tried to adapt to their point of view and their newly acquired role in society; this features French poetry very influential in Italy.
What distinguishes the Sicilian School from the troubadours, however, is the introduction of a kinder, gentler type of woman than that found in their French models. The poems of the Sicilians hardly portray real women or situations, but the style and language are remarkable, since the Sicilians created the first Italian literary standard by enriching the existing vernacular base inspired by popular love songs, with new words of Latin and Provençal origin. "It is lyric poetry to be in the forefront of literature, inspiring a widespread enthusiasm whose effects will be felt for centuries. The initial boost given by the Sicilian poets from the Svevs' court, the first to use a standardised vernacular to make art poetry will be passed on to many others: and all of them, not just the pedantic imitators of the Siculo-Tuscan school but Guinizzelli, the poets of Dolce Stil Novo and more all writers of verse, will have to deal, though by different degrees, with the Sicilian models, so that some peculiarities will be assimilated into standard usage of Italian poetry."
Though yet confined to a few notaries and dignitaries of the emperors, such poetry shows for the first time uniform linguistic traits and a richness in vocabulary far exceeding that of the Sicilian language by which it was inspired. The Magna curia was not based in any given city, but always moving across Southern Italy, a fact which helped the school avoid the temptation of choosing any local dialect as the starting point for their new language; that is why the new standard was a melting pot of many different vernaculars. The reason for moving from city to city was political. Although his experiment was short-lived, Frederic created the first modern state in Europe, run by an efficient bureaucracy: its members were neither appointed from the aristocracy nor the clergy with good reason, since the former were far more interested in defending their own privileges than the welfare of the country and plotted against him in the hope of regaining their power, while the latter were faithful to the Pope, his biggest enemy.
Frederic was in fact dismantling the feudal system of government inherited from the Normans, his magna curia and minor dignitaries were chosen from lay orders. He abolished internal barriers: free trade brought prosperity to the South, making Bari one of the richest cities in the Mediterranean. But, keeping this modern state afloat, meant that his barons had no power to collect taxes, their greatest source of revenues. Hence the necessity for Frederick to bring law and order by moving his court to and fro. Though the Sicilian School is considered conventional in theme or content it rather "stands out for his refined lexicon, near to the style of trobar clus and for the wise treatment of figures of speech and metaphors of stylnovistic taste taken from natural philosophy". There is a visible move towards neoplatonic models, which will be embraced by Dolce Stil Novo in the 13th century Bologna and Florence, more markedly by Petrarch. Unlike the Northern Italian troubadours, no line is written in Occitan.
Rather, the Occitan repertoire of chivalry terms is adapted to the Siculo-Italian phonetics and morphology, so that new Italian words are coined, some adapted, but none loaned. A most famous specimen is Io m'aggio posto in core by Giacomo da Lentini, who inspired the movement. Giacomo da Lentini is widely credited by scholars for inventing the sonnet, a literary form perfected by Dante and, most of all, Petrarch, he uses it in a number of poems. We quote here the most famous that inspired the whole school: The main inhibiting factor on Sicilian poetry was the political censorship imposed by Frederick: literary debate was confined to courtly love. In this respect, the poetry of the north, though stuck to the langues d'oïl, provided fresher blood for satire; the north was fragmented into communes or little city-states which had a democratic self-government, and, why the sirventese genre, Dante's Divina Commedia and sonnets were so popular: they referred to real people and feelings, though idealised like Beatrice.
A sirventese is, in effect, eminently
Codex
A codex, plural codices, is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, papyrus, or similar materials. The term is now only used of manuscript books, with hand-written contents, but describes the format, now near-universal for printed books in the Western world; the book is bound by stacking the pages and fixing one edge to a bookbinding, which may just be thicker paper, or with stiff boards, called a hardback, or in elaborate historical examples a treasure binding. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document is the continuous scroll, the dominant book form in the ancient world; some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya and Aztec codices, which are long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. These do not meet most current definitions of the "codex" form, but are so called by convention; the Romans developed the form from wooden writing tablets. The gradual replacement of the scroll by the codex has been called the most important advance in book making before the invention of printing.
The codex transformed the shape of the book itself, offered a form that lasted until present day. The spread of the codex is associated with the rise of Christianity, which adopted the format for use with the Bible early on. First described by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Martial, who praised its convenient use, the codex achieved numerical parity with the scroll around AD 300, had replaced it throughout what was by a Christianized Greco-Roman world by the 6th century; the codex provides considerable advantages over other book formats: Compactness Sturdiness Economic use of materials by using both sides Ease of reference The change from rolls to codices coincides with the transition from papyrus to parchment as the preferred writing material, but the two developments are unconnected. In fact, any combination of codices and scrolls with papyrus and parchment is technically feasible and common in the historical record; the codex began to replace the scroll as soon as it was invented. In Egypt, by the fifth century, the codex outnumbered the scroll by ten to one based on surviving examples.
By the sixth century, the scroll had vanished as a medium for literature. Technically modern paperbacks are codices, but publishers and scholars reserve the term for manuscript books produced from Late antiquity until the Middle Ages; the scholarly study of these manuscripts from the point of view of the bookbinding craft is called codicology. The study of ancient documents in general is called paleography; the Romans used precursors made of reusable wax-covered tablets of wood for taking notes and other informal writings. Two ancient polyptychs, a pentatych and octotych, excavated at Herculaneum used a unique connecting system that presages sewing on of thongs or cords. Julius Caesar may have been the first Roman to reduce scrolls to bound pages in the form of a note-book even as a papyrus codex. At the turn of the 1st century AD, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin became used for writing in the Roman Empire. Theodore Cressy Skeat theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and spread to the Near East.
Codices are described in certain works by Martial. He wrote a series of five couplets meant to accompany gifts of literature that Romans exchanged during the festival of Saturnalia. Three of these books are described by Martial as being in the form of a codex. In another poem by Martial, the poet advertises a new edition of his works noting that it is printed as a codex, taking less space than a scroll and more comfortable to hold in one hand. According to Theodore Cressy Skeat, this might be the first recorded known case of an entire edition of a literary work being published in codex form, though it was an isolated case and was not a common practice until a much time. In his discussion of one of the earliest parchment codices to survive from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Eric Turner seems to challenge Skeat's notion when stating, “…its mere existence is evidence that this book form had a prehistory”, that “early experiments with this book form may well have taken place outside of Egypt.” Early codices of parchment or papyrus appear to have been used as personal notebooks, for instance in recording copies of letters sent.
The parchment notebook pages were washed or scraped for re-use and writings in a codex were considered informal and impermanent. As early as the early 2nd century, there is evidence that a codex—usually of papyrus—was the preferred format among Christians. In the library of the Villa of the Papyri, all the texts are scrolls. However, in the Nag Hammadi library, hidden about AD 390, all texts are codices. Despite this comparison, a fragment of a non-Christian parchment codex of Demosthenes' De Falsa Legatione from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt demonstrates that the surviving evidence is insufficient to conclude whether Christians played a major or central role in the development of early codices—or if they adopted the format to distin
Cesare Segre
Cesare Segre was an Italian philologist and literary critic of Jewish descent, the Director of the Texts and Textual Traditions Research Centre of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Pavia. Segre was born in Province of Cuneo, he lived and studied in Turin, where he was awarded his degree in 1950, a pupil of Benvenuto Terracini and famous uncle Santorre Debenedetti. A professor of Romance Philology since 1954, he taught at the universities of Trieste and Pavia, where in the 1960s he became Chair of this discipline. Segre was a Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, University of Rio de Janeiro, Harvard University, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, he collaborated with numerous academic magazines and journals, among which: Studi di filologia italiana, Cultura neolatina, L'Approdo letterario. He has edited with Carlo Ossola an anthology of Italian poetry published by Einaudi. Segre was married to Maria Luisa Meneghetti a professor of Romance philology, at the University of Milan.
He was the president of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. With his important research, Segre has contributed to the introduction of formalist and structural theories in Italian literary critique. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, pivotal are his studies in this area, such as: I segni e la critica. I modelli nella follia. Dove va la critica letteraria?, Torino 1993 Le varianti e la storia. Il Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, con due interventi di Giovanni Giudici e Alessandro Pancheri, Lezione Sapegno 1999, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1999 Ritorno alla critica, Torino 2001 Tempo di bilanci. La fine del Novecento, Torino 2005 I segni e la critica. Fra strutturalismo e semiologia. Con una nuova introduzione, Torino 2008 Dieci prove di fantasia, Torino 2010 Critica e critici Opera critica In 1999 he published an autobiography, Per curiosità. Una specie di autobiografia. A bibliography of his writings has been published in 2009: Bibliografia degli scritti di Cesare Segre a cura di Alberto Conte The Feltrinelli Prize The Grinzane Cavour Prize for Essay Cesare Segre on IMDb Institute for Advanced Studies of Pavia, IUSS Texts and Textual Traditions Research Centre, Pavia
