Medieval Apulia

This paper presents three ostraka discovered during excavations at Otranto conducted by the British School at Rome in 1978. One of the ostraka is very interesting and is discussed in detail. Incised on the body sherd of an amphora probably dating to the 10th or 11th century and of likely local origin, it mentions the angel Arlaph and regards a magic/medicinal formula apparently aimed at protecting the health and life of a newborn child or its mother, more likely both, against the nefarious actions of a demon. The formula also refers to the curative properties attributed to the plant Meum athamanticum or spignel and lead, which effectiveness would have been enhanced or made possible solely by divine mediation.

Whilst historians often regard the Norman Kingdom of Sicily as centralised and administratively advanced, County and Nobility in Norman Italy counters this traditional interpretation; far from centralised and streamlined, this book reveals how the genesis and social structures of the kingdom were constantly fraught between the forces of royal power and a re-invented local aristocracy. The result of thorough research conducted on the vast source material for the history of this fascinating twelfth-century world, this book sheds important new light on medieval Italy.

The purpose of the study is to analyse the elephant iconography during the Middle Age. The first step of the study is to analyse the mosaic in the cathedral of Trani (Puglia, Italy), representing a scene having a complex meaning.
The elephant, symbol of Christ and imperial animal, crowed the medieval bestiaries, and sculptured, the wall of the sacred buildings in Puglia.

The paper presents examples of baptismal building located in the northern part of the Provincia Apulia et Calabria: the first group is that of the urban baptisteries, which includes the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Canosa (BT), the two baptismal fonts of Venosa (PZ , Basilicata) and the baptistery of the basilica of Aeclanum (near Mirabella Eclano, AV, Campania). The second group instead the rural baptisteries of San Giusto (near Lucera, FG) and Belmonte (near Altamura, BA). The text takes into account the plant, the archaeological and historical context, the classification in the surrounding area and the type of building and the baptismal font.

The article discusses the interest that Southern Italian history writers manifested in the Norman conquest, and the ways in which the knowledge about that period was transmitted until the end of the Middle Ages. Taking the three main narratives of the conquest (Amatus of Monte Cassino, William of Apulia and Geoffrey Malaterra) as a starting point, the discussion covers three timespans: 1) the writings contemporary or nearly contemporary with the conquest (up to the royal coronation of Roger II in 1130); 2) the writings composed in the Kingdom of Sicily under the Norman dynasty and their Stauffer successors (1130–1266); 3) post-Norman writings originating from the Angevin Kingdom of Sicily and from Sicily, which was part of the Crown of Aragon after 1282.

Large, concentrated settlements known as ‘agro-towns’ abound across Southern Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean. The prevalence and persistence of these settlements are very curious but not yet well understood. Initially, scholars interpreted their development as stemming from Southern Italy's economic and social ‘backwardness’ and inequality. This view has now been challenged by scholarship which emphasises that the pre-industrial Mezzogiorno supported not only a dynamic economy but also a diverse array of institutional structures. By recourse to a comparative study within Apulia, this paper suggests that both interpretations are equally correct. ‘Agro-towns’ in Southern Italy were linked to the inequitable distribution of land, perpetuated over the long term, but the institutional origins of this inequality were both diverse and dynamic.

Y a-t-il un modèle «agro-urbain» dans le Sud de l'Italie? Racines et développement d'une structure agro-urbaine: une étude comparative dans les Pouilles
En Italie du Sud, comme dans d'autres régions méditerranéennes, les grandes colonies de peuplement concentré appelées «agrovilles» sont nombreuses. La prévalence de ces localités surprend autant que leur persistance qui reste encore mystérieuse. Initialement, les chercheurs interprétaient le développement de cette forme d'habitat groupé comme issu du «retard» économique et social de cette région méridionale et d'inégalités spécifiques. Mais ce point de vue a été maintenant contesté par de récents travaux scientifiques qui soulignent que le Mezzogiorno préindustriel a connu non seulement une économie dynamique, mais aussi un large éventail de structures institutionnelles. La présente étude comparative, menée dans les Pouilles, suggère que ces deux interprétations sont de fait également correctes: les «agrovilles» du sud de l'Italie étaient liées à une distribution inégalitaire du foncier, situation perpétuée sur le long terme, mais les origines institutionnelles de cette inégalité étaient à la fois diversifiées et dynamiques.

Gibt es ein Agrarstadt-Modell für das südliche Italien? Eine vergleichende Fallstudie für Apulien fragt nach den unterschiedlichen Wurzeln und Entwicklungssträngen der agrarstädtischen Struktur
Süditalien und andere Regionen im Mittelmeerraum wimmeln von großen, konzentrierten Siedlungen, die als Agrarstädte bezeichnet werden. Die Verbreitung und Langlebigkeit dieser Siedlungen sind äußerst seltam, aber noch kaum wirklich verstanden. Während man ihre Entwicklung ursprünlich als Folge der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen „Rückständigkeit“ und Ungleichheit Süditaliens gedeutet hat, wird diese Auffassung inzwischen durch Forschungen angezweifelt, die darauf abheben, dass das vorindustrielle Mezzogiorno nicht nur eine dynamische Wirtschaft, sondern auch ein vielschichtiges Spektrum institutioneller Strukturen besaß. Unter Bezugnahme auf eine vergleichende Studie innerhalb Apuliens legt dieser Beitrag nahe, dass beide Auffassungen gleichermaßen richtig sind. Agrarstädte in Süditalien waren mit der ungerechten Landverteilung, die langfristig aufrechterhalten wurde, eng verknüpft, aber die institutionellen Ursprünge dieser Ungleichheit waren sowohl vielschichtig als auch dynamisch.

The paper introduces research on medieval landscapes in the Salento conducted within the scope of the project PRIN 2010-2011. It aimed to analyse and integrate data from various sources, archaeological, environmental and historical, so as to define the most significant changes that took place in the Terra d’Otranto over the circa thousand years of the early and late Middle Ages. Much of the data comes from research that began in the early ’90s, including the cataloguing and recording of medieval sites and the excavation of a sample. This paper also illustrates some of the settlement and economic characteristics of the landscape, such as the genesis of the village and the question of continuity/discontinuity with Roman sites, and problems such as cemetery location and monastic foundations.

Swabians and Angevins on the outskirts of Byzantium. The stories of St. Catherine and St. Margaret on the vault of S. Maria della Croce at Casaranello (Lecce)

The hagiographical cycles on the vault of S. Maria della Croce at Casaranello, in the Salento region, by scholars have been dated from the time of Frederick II up to the early fourteenth century.
In this paper, by analyzing of the historical context and of the iconographic and stylistic elements, the author proposes a dating at the Angevin age and in particular at the last quarter of the thirteenth century, highlighting also the relations with the French figurative culture of the time of St. Louis.

This paper discusses the eleventh-century relief icon with the Virgin and Child which is today located in the Church of Santa Maria di Dionisio at Trani. It provides a detailed iconographic analysis of the icon and suggests which type of source model may have inspired it. I also examine the icon’s relationship with the inscription along the frame recording the name of its patron, Delterios, and situate the icon in the cultural milieu of Trani and Byzantine Apulia. By doing this, I hope to address the gap Leslie Brubaker has identified in contemporary discussion about the cult of the Mother of God: “…while we are increasingly aware of why the Byzantines venerated the Virgin in particular ways, the registers of levels of that veneration remain unstudied: why were particular groups, at particular times or in particular places […] drawn to the Mother of God? How does the veneration of the Virgin intersect with the hierarchies of gender and status?”
My research into Delterios’ icon demonstrates that in the mid-eleventh century, a local Latin-speaking man held one of the highest position in Byzantine Trani and opted for a purely Byzantine model in commissioning his icon. The consistency of Delterios’ dedication to Byzantine sources, reflected in the desire to have a relief icon, the choice of the Hodegetria dexiokratousa type, and the Greek invocation which addressed the speakers of that language, is indicative of a conscious imitation of the acts of patronage which were common in Byzantium. One of these was the practice of seeking help from the Virgin during the times of war, which Delterios experienced within the context of the Norman siege and assault on the town of Trani. By asking for the protection of the Logos Incarnate in Greek and by drawing on a Byzantine lead seal, perhaps even his own, as the iconographic source model, Delterios presented himself as a representative of Byzantine government in Trani, a tourmarches responsible for collecting taxes but also for dispensing justice. The stylistic estimates of previous scholarship, in judging the icon to be merely aesthetically unrefined and provincial, have overlooked a hidden history of public dedication, political allusion and local exigency in time of war, which can be observed only through a combination of iconographic analysis and historical contextualization.

When the Sicilian monarchy was established after years of conflict, King Roger II began to consolidate his authority on the Italian peninsula. The establishment of titles for the organization and control of the continental provinces has been noted by several scholars as an instrumental feature of the kingdom’s social arrangement. Yet, contemporary scholarship has dismissed the royal comestabuli as unimportant social agents, either as 'officials' documented in the Catalogus Baronum or as territorial lords. As a result, several questions surrounding the issue remain unanswered: to what extent did the local, lesser aristocracy shape the kingdom’s effective social, and military, control over Southern Italy, and who were the nodal characters that allow us to discern this process? Was a comestabulia a fixed administrative district, or rather a type of social authority? This article offers the results of a recent prosopographical exploration of South Italian sources for the Norman period. By taking the comestabuli as a starting point, I study the intermediary position that particular barons held as both royal agents and para-comital supervisors of the military contingents levied from the kingdom’s aristocracy. This article attempts not only to shed some light on this almost ignored class of functionaries, but also to further explore the social roles established amongst the Italo-Norman nobility.

Sulla base dell'edizione pubblicata da Léon-Robert Ménager vengono analizzati la struttura ed il personale della cancelleria, i caratteri intrinseci dei diplomi (Intitulatio, arenghe, conclusio e formula comminatoria,  formula dello scrittore e notifica del sigillo, datazione e testimoni) e la scrittura ed altri caratteri estrinseci, seguono osservazioni su terminologia e contenuto.