Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome

by Robert Brentano

Robert Brentano evokes papal Rome in all its paradox and complicated brilliance. From a detailed re-creation of the physical "town" with its series of brick campanili and green and purple mosaic floors, to the intrigues of the great families, like the Orsini and Colonna, the reader is guided through complex and fascinating culture. Brentano's skill lies in his ability to combine the story of the vaulting ambition of the great families, only mildly tempered by their very real religious piety, with a vivid reconstruction of everyday life in postclassical Rome.

Genres: History, Italy, Medieval

357 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1974

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very vivid account of 13th century Rome. Brentano uses property transactions and surviving wills (along with an intimate knowledge of the city itself) to explore the political, social, and religious life Rome and he does a very nice job of conjuring up a personal, lived-in feel. His account of Roman neighborhoods - especially Sant'Angelo, the fishmongers' district - is fascinating in its details and its perception, and he does a really nice job of exploring the complicated and overlapping nature of Rome's heritage - classical, Christian, political, religious, and more. It really, really made me want to go visit Rome.

That said, I'm a little hesitant to recommend it to people. Brentano takes a case study approach to most of his chapters (the chapter on religious life, for example, focuses almost exclusively on two monasteries-turned-convents). While this gives his account a very detailed and intriguing flair, it's not always terribly representative of a full century of history. The section on the papacy is a good example - Brentano's dichotomy between Innocent III and Boniface VIII is too extreme, and it doesn't spend enough time exploring other developments within the papacy or how it interacted with the rest of the city. While it's a pretty good overview of the century, I wish the account was a bit less impressionistic and a bit more comprehensive.

[Ellis Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous stories in here. Brentano is a quirky writer, with a love of detail combined with a fondness for broad generalizations. This can be frustrating for the serious researcher; it can also be frustrating for the novice, as he is not writing for the newbie. But it's a great book for a graduate student familiar with the era but needing more depth.