Library Special Collections Blog
An Inventory of Property and Feudal Rights in the Orsini Papers: Towards a Feudal Geography of Abruzzi
Library Special Collections welcomes its third Ahmanson Research Fellow this fall, Lorenza Iannacci, who will study medieval documents in the Orsini family papers (Collection 902), specifically a “quaternus” of 1353, which contains the inventory of properties and feudal rights belonging to Napoleone I Orsini, count of Manoppello. The principal aim of her research is to produce a critical edition of the document, and to analyze it from different points of view: historical, paleographic, diplomatistic and codicological. Her work is part of a larger project in Italy undertaken by the Universities of Bologna, Napoli and Lecce and the Engineering School of Milano, Territory organization, land occupation and perception of the space in the Southern Middle Ages (XIIIth-XVth c.): digital systems for a new historical cartography. Through its participation in the project, the University of Bologna is studying and editing sources useful to define the feudal geography in Abruzzi --the Iustitiariatus Aprutii-- during the Angevin age (1266-1442). Lorenza received her degree in Modern Literature in 2005 from the University of Bologna; a part of her dissertation in Latin Paleography and Diplomatics, The cartulary of San Salvatore monastery: documents from 1012 to 1070, was published in 2012 as an essay in the journal Studi medievali. In 2005, she also completed her archival training at the School of Paleography, Diplomatics and Archival Sciences of the State Archive of Bologna. Lorenza has a Ph.D in Medieval History from the University of Bologna, where she wrote her dissertation on the 14th-century Italian jurist Giovanni da Legnano, producing a critical edition of his juridical tractate, the De pace. Since 2008 she has been editing 9th-century charters of Nonantola, Arezzo and Reggio Emilia for Urs Graf Verlag, publisher of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, 2nd series Ninth Century. As an expert on Latin paleography and diplomatics, she collaborates with faculty on the teaching of paleography and diplomatics at the University of Bologna; and from 2008 to 2012, she worked as a freelance archivist at banking foundations in Bologna. Lorenza has a post-doc fellowship at Department of History, Culture and Civilities of the University of Bologna. She is also an active member of the RAM (Research and Analysis of Manuscripts) Study Center of the University of Bologna (www.ram.unibo.it), and her research focuses on the study of documentary writings in Central and Northern Italy during the 9th through 12th centuries, the “chronicles-cartulary,” Angevin documentation, formularies in private acts, the Bolognese notarial school, and the inter-relationships of paleography, historical contexts, and legislation.
From New Zealand to Los Angeles: Ahmanson Fellow Explores Art and Patronage in the Orsini Family Papers
Pippa Salonius is a New Zealander with an international formation in medieval and Renaissance art history.
She completed her laurea in art history under the supervision of Professor Luciano Bellosi at the University of Siena in Italy and her PhD with Professor Julian Gardner at Warwick University in the UK. She has been awarded research scholarships and funding from institutions such as the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence – Max Planck Institute and the University of Florence. She has taught both Italian and North American university students in Italy and Canada. Her practical knowledge of museums has been acquired working in institutions such as the Museo dell’Opera (Cathedral Museum) in Siena, Italy and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Currently, she is coediting a compiled volume of essays in art history entitled The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought, which will appear in the Leeds International Medieval Research series in 2014. She specializes in the art and architectural history of the Italian cathedral and the patronage of the papal court, with reference to the transmission and circulation of ideas both within and beyond the Italian peninsula. As an Ahmanson Research Fellow she will be examining the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Orsini Family Papers and evaluating the Roman baronial family’s appropriation of ecclesiastic benefices in relation to its patronage of the arts.
