Luca Zenobi
I am a historian of Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean world between 1300 and 1600.
Having read history and trained as an archivist in Milan, I moved to Oxford for my PhD and then to Cambridge, where I was a research fellow at Trinity College and an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of History. I joined the University of Edinburgh in 2023 as a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow.
I like to think of my work as a geography of the past. I am interested in how people articulated their presence in the landscape, moved and communicated across distances, and ultimately inscribed their experiences in both texts and objects.
I have written articles and book chapters on the process of community- and territory-formation, the spatial organisation of factions and family militias, and the experience of migration, exile and displacement.
Recent projects include a volume on early modern disinformation, which was developed in collaboration with literary scholars, as well as essays on topics such as medieval marriage networks and the comparative history of rivers and waterways.
My first single-authored monograph, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy, was published in 2023. The book explores how borders were understood, made, and encountered at the end of the Middle Ages, and what they can tell us about the spatial fabric of society at the threshold of modernity.
Having read history and trained as an archivist in Milan, I moved to Oxford for my PhD and then to Cambridge, where I was a research fellow at Trinity College and an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of History. I joined the University of Edinburgh in 2023 as a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow.
I like to think of my work as a geography of the past. I am interested in how people articulated their presence in the landscape, moved and communicated across distances, and ultimately inscribed their experiences in both texts and objects.
I have written articles and book chapters on the process of community- and territory-formation, the spatial organisation of factions and family militias, and the experience of migration, exile and displacement.
Recent projects include a volume on early modern disinformation, which was developed in collaboration with literary scholars, as well as essays on topics such as medieval marriage networks and the comparative history of rivers and waterways.
My first single-authored monograph, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy, was published in 2023. The book explores how borders were understood, made, and encountered at the end of the Middle Ages, and what they can tell us about the spatial fabric of society at the threshold of modernity.
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At its core, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy is the account of a frontier which would mark the Italian peninsula for centuries, that between the territories of the Duchy of Milan and those of the Republic of Venice. But it is also a study of how rulers and subjects alike defined spaces they could call their own. Luca Zenobi combines methods from several disciplines and applies them to a range of evidence from twenty different libraries and archives, including theoretical treatises and pragmatic records, written chronicles and cartographic visualisations, private documents and official correspondence. The cast of characters is equally eclectic, featuring influential thinkers and pragmatic statesmen, zealous factions and clumsy bureaucrats, hopeless beggars and ambitious princes. On the border, their stories intersect and reveal their part in a shared history.
[ENGLISH] For much of Italy, the first half of the Quattrocento was a transformative period. As fewer and fewer states came to expand their dominions over larger and larger spaces, the interstices between them were eventually filled up and the polities of the peninsula put in direct competition with each other. In the north, this process brought the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan into conflict over eastern Lombardy – namely the cities and territories of Bergamo, Brescia and Crema. Once the Venetians were finally able to wrest these areas from the Visconti’s grasp, the frontier between two dominions was fundamentally shifted and the political geography of the region redesigned. It was but the final step towards the establishment of Venice’s Terraferma state. The initial product of a larger investigation into the spatial fabric of late medieval Italy, the present article considers the conflicts and peace-making efforts through which Milan and Venice negotiated these profound changes. It does so by examining the text of well-known treaties (such as those of Ferrara and Lodi) alongside several other records from both Milanese and Venetian archives. This is to shed light on the proceedings through which territories were annexed and frontiers moved in late medieval Italy, while also uncovering the range of actors involved, and the series of principles and techniques they adopted to accomplish their goals.
[ITALIAN] L’intervento indaga i processi di mobilità geografica e sociale innescati dalla conquista veneziana delle valli bergamasche nella prima metà del Quattrocento. In particolare, esso ricostruisce con metodo prosopografico le sorti di alcune agnazioni ghibelline come gli Arrigoni di Val Taleggio e i vari Brembilla della valle omonima; agnazioni che a causa della loro fede politica, nonché del ruolo giocato nella difesa del territorio orobico all’avanzare dei veneziani, furono costrette a rifugiarsi anzitutto nelle vicine Valsassina e Brianza, per poi insediarsi anche a Milano e in molte altre città del ducato – Pavia, Lodi, Cremona. Il saggio suggerisce che tre specifici fattori determinarono un itinerario vincente di mobilità, creando dunque un discrimine fra le famiglie che riuscirono ad affermarsi socialmente e quelle destinate al declino: 1) la possibilità di avvalersi dell’aiuto di parenti e alleati politici già emigrati in altre parti del ducato, 2) la benevolenza espressa dal duca sotto forma di privilegi e favori, e 3) la capacità da parte di queste stesse famiglie di riconoscersi in una storia condivisa e quindi far leva sul proprio passato da esuli per migliorare la loro condizione presente.
[ITALIAN] Quello dell’organizzazione militare nel Rinascimento italiano è un tema molto studiato, specie con riguardo alla dinamica strutturale delle condotte e all’affermarsi di contingenti statali permanenti. Avendo considerato questi due aspetti, il presente contributo intende mettere in luce il ruolo complementare giocato a fianco delle armi e degli officiali dello stato da parte dagli abitanti di una frontiera come quella dell’Adda – confine fra ducato di Milano e Terraferma veneziana nel Quattrocento. Lo studio di alcune comunità del territorio milanese affacciate sulle rive occidentali del fiume, in particolare, mostra come la partecipazione degli abitanti della frontiera alla difesa dello stato fosse direttamente correlata a pratiche politiche e militari di lungo periodo facenti capo a una serie di eminenti parentele rurali. Una partecipazione che si esprimeva da una parte nell’arruolamento di squadre armate fra parenti e clienti, e dall’altra nella sorveglianza dei confini offerta da torri e proprietà fortificate.
[ITALIAN] Fra Tre e Quattrocento alcune comunità e famiglie del contado a nord di Milano si schierano fermamente a sostegno dei Visconti, coadiuvandoli nel loro tentativo di inquadrare le variegate forze del territorio e garantendo la difesa del confine sul fiume Adda. Come ricompensa Bernabò, Gian Galeazzo e i loro successori concedono a queste comunità e famiglie delle vantaggiose esenzioni fiscali: sono proprio queste esenzioni ad accomunare le numerose comunità rurali e le irrequiete famiglie delle colline briantee, cementandone il fronte in difesa della comune condizione privilegiata. Le parentele più influenti del territorio, tutte fortemente di fede ghibellina, svolgono in questo senso un’azione centripeta, atta a far nascere e sviluppare in Brianza un senso d’identità nuovo, costruito sul comune carico fiscale, ma anche intimamente politico, legato da una parte alla neonata Università territoriale del Monte di Brianza e dall’altra al potere dei signori di Milano.
At its core, Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy is the account of a frontier which would mark the Italian peninsula for centuries, that between the territories of the Duchy of Milan and those of the Republic of Venice. But it is also a study of how rulers and subjects alike defined spaces they could call their own. Luca Zenobi combines methods from several disciplines and applies them to a range of evidence from twenty different libraries and archives, including theoretical treatises and pragmatic records, written chronicles and cartographic visualisations, private documents and official correspondence. The cast of characters is equally eclectic, featuring influential thinkers and pragmatic statesmen, zealous factions and clumsy bureaucrats, hopeless beggars and ambitious princes. On the border, their stories intersect and reveal their part in a shared history.
[ENGLISH] For much of Italy, the first half of the Quattrocento was a transformative period. As fewer and fewer states came to expand their dominions over larger and larger spaces, the interstices between them were eventually filled up and the polities of the peninsula put in direct competition with each other. In the north, this process brought the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan into conflict over eastern Lombardy – namely the cities and territories of Bergamo, Brescia and Crema. Once the Venetians were finally able to wrest these areas from the Visconti’s grasp, the frontier between two dominions was fundamentally shifted and the political geography of the region redesigned. It was but the final step towards the establishment of Venice’s Terraferma state. The initial product of a larger investigation into the spatial fabric of late medieval Italy, the present article considers the conflicts and peace-making efforts through which Milan and Venice negotiated these profound changes. It does so by examining the text of well-known treaties (such as those of Ferrara and Lodi) alongside several other records from both Milanese and Venetian archives. This is to shed light on the proceedings through which territories were annexed and frontiers moved in late medieval Italy, while also uncovering the range of actors involved, and the series of principles and techniques they adopted to accomplish their goals.
[ITALIAN] L’intervento indaga i processi di mobilità geografica e sociale innescati dalla conquista veneziana delle valli bergamasche nella prima metà del Quattrocento. In particolare, esso ricostruisce con metodo prosopografico le sorti di alcune agnazioni ghibelline come gli Arrigoni di Val Taleggio e i vari Brembilla della valle omonima; agnazioni che a causa della loro fede politica, nonché del ruolo giocato nella difesa del territorio orobico all’avanzare dei veneziani, furono costrette a rifugiarsi anzitutto nelle vicine Valsassina e Brianza, per poi insediarsi anche a Milano e in molte altre città del ducato – Pavia, Lodi, Cremona. Il saggio suggerisce che tre specifici fattori determinarono un itinerario vincente di mobilità, creando dunque un discrimine fra le famiglie che riuscirono ad affermarsi socialmente e quelle destinate al declino: 1) la possibilità di avvalersi dell’aiuto di parenti e alleati politici già emigrati in altre parti del ducato, 2) la benevolenza espressa dal duca sotto forma di privilegi e favori, e 3) la capacità da parte di queste stesse famiglie di riconoscersi in una storia condivisa e quindi far leva sul proprio passato da esuli per migliorare la loro condizione presente.
[ITALIAN] Quello dell’organizzazione militare nel Rinascimento italiano è un tema molto studiato, specie con riguardo alla dinamica strutturale delle condotte e all’affermarsi di contingenti statali permanenti. Avendo considerato questi due aspetti, il presente contributo intende mettere in luce il ruolo complementare giocato a fianco delle armi e degli officiali dello stato da parte dagli abitanti di una frontiera come quella dell’Adda – confine fra ducato di Milano e Terraferma veneziana nel Quattrocento. Lo studio di alcune comunità del territorio milanese affacciate sulle rive occidentali del fiume, in particolare, mostra come la partecipazione degli abitanti della frontiera alla difesa dello stato fosse direttamente correlata a pratiche politiche e militari di lungo periodo facenti capo a una serie di eminenti parentele rurali. Una partecipazione che si esprimeva da una parte nell’arruolamento di squadre armate fra parenti e clienti, e dall’altra nella sorveglianza dei confini offerta da torri e proprietà fortificate.
[ITALIAN] Fra Tre e Quattrocento alcune comunità e famiglie del contado a nord di Milano si schierano fermamente a sostegno dei Visconti, coadiuvandoli nel loro tentativo di inquadrare le variegate forze del territorio e garantendo la difesa del confine sul fiume Adda. Come ricompensa Bernabò, Gian Galeazzo e i loro successori concedono a queste comunità e famiglie delle vantaggiose esenzioni fiscali: sono proprio queste esenzioni ad accomunare le numerose comunità rurali e le irrequiete famiglie delle colline briantee, cementandone il fronte in difesa della comune condizione privilegiata. Le parentele più influenti del territorio, tutte fortemente di fede ghibellina, svolgono in questo senso un’azione centripeta, atta a far nascere e sviluppare in Brianza un senso d’identità nuovo, costruito sul comune carico fiscale, ma anche intimamente politico, legato da una parte alla neonata Università territoriale del Monte di Brianza e dall’altra al potere dei signori di Milano.
The volume collects papers that were delivered over the course of one year at the University of Cagliari. The papers were presented at different seminars, but they are all concerned with assessing how and to what extent intellectual knowledge, professional expertise, and technical skills functioned as channels of social mobility. This is evident from the very structure of the book, which is divided into four subsections, each focusing on the theme of a single seminar. In the end, this makes the volume very accessible and informative not just to scholars working on social mobility, but to a wider audience whose interests overlap only with one of these four subthemes...
Kantorowicz's life and works have been the subject of dedicated articles, conferences and extensive biographies - notably by Alain Boureau and now by one of his students, Robert E. Lerner. Over the years, much has been said, written and debated about Kantorowicz's early involvement in nationalist circles, about his belated opposition to the Nazis regime and his later defiance of McCharthy's anti-communist inquisition. More recently, however, less attention has been placed on Kantorowicz's method as professional historian, or on its potential for use in current disciplinary - and interdisciplinary - research. In marking the 2013 anniversary, a workshop in Pavia set out to offer scholars from all over Europe an opportunity to reflect on this. The present volume, published by Pavia's own University Press, collects seven of the ten papers given on that occasion...
05 Giugno 2024 | 15:00 — 16:30
Hybrid/Mixed - FBK Aula Piccola
We're especially looking for speakers at this stage, but do let us know if you'd like to get involved in some other way, perhaps by chairing a session or by coming as a discussant if we hold a roundtable
See you soon in Leeds,
Luca & Ben
This conference will explore the boundaries between truth and falsehood in the early modern period, thinking about disinformation, fiction, and power in tandem. The nature of the global is a crucial dimension of early modern uses of fiction and (dis)information, and therefore we seek to explore this topic from the perspective of the ‘early modern world’ rather than merely from Europe. By drawing together scholars working across regional, linguistic and disciplinary specialisms, we will call into question the idea of ‘fake news’ as a uniquely modern phenomenon, while bringing fresh perspectives to classic debates on the evolution of news networks, the development of fictional forms and the origin of the public sphere in the early modern world. By doing so, we will provide a forum in which scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds can share tools, methods and perspectives connected to the political, social and cultural history of disinformation.
For further information, please visit
https://oxdisinfo.wordpress.com
In focusing on these issues, the conference also intends to relate to current social challenges. The world is now more mobile than ever, yet it is often argued that more spatial boundaries exist today than ever before. The conference hopes to reflect on this contemporary paradox by exploring the long-term history of the tension between the dynamism of communities, groups and individuals, and the human construction of spaces and borders.
The conference brings together both early career and more established scholars from over a dozen different countries. It features a total of 20 papers and 2 keynote speeches, which will be given by Dr Mario Damen (University of Amsterdam) and Dr Rosa Salzberg (University of Warwick).
In so doing, the seminar hopes to...
* encourage its participants to think broadly about their research topic and to acquaint themselves with a diversity of perspectives;
* provide graduates with an opportunity to present their work in a professional but friendly environment and to get early feedback from their peers;
* foster a sense of scholarly community in the faculty and promote connections across existing research groups and college-based seminars.