The Documents of Angelo de Cartura and Donato Fontaneila: Venetian Notaries in Fourteenth-Century Crete (review)

278 Short Notices Parergon 20.1 (2003) merely introduces the images. Nevertheless, Medieval Panorama is a marvellous collection of well-chosen images within the space of a single volume. Toby Burrows Scholars’ Centre The University of Western Australia Stahl, Alan M., ed., The Documents of Angelo de Cartura and Donato Fontanella: Venetian Notaries in Fourteenth-Century Crete, Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000; paper; pp. xxi, 294; RRP not known. This book contains two notarial protocols by Cretan notaries in the Notarial Archives of the Archivio di Stato in Venice. They belonged to Latin notaries from the town of Candia, present-day Iraklio, in the Venetian possession of Crete in the early fourteenth century. The first was erroneously attributed to Nicolo Pizolo by earlier scholars, but turns out to be the work of Angelo de Cartura. All papers belong to the years 1305-1306. Most of the papers in his protocol belong to the colleganza contracts, a Venetian version of the commenda. This is illustrated by document 103: In June of 1305, Hemanuel Vergizi invests 20 hyperpera in the commercial venture of Bartholomeus de Sirigo, which Bartholomeus can use in trade as he sees fit for up to eight months. Within two weeks of his return to Candia, Bartholomeus must repay the capital, or whatever of it remains, to Hemanuel or his agents, along with two-thirds of profit; he keeps the other third for himself. The risk of loss of the investment at sea or to pirates is to be borne by the investor. The distribution of profits must be done in Candia, and the funds of Hemanuel will bear the same proportion of profits and expenses as those of any other investor (p. xi). The next largest number of documents (99) is related to the sale of slaves. Altogether these papers deal with 52 female and 35 male slaves. Next in importance are 68 contracts which give powers of attorney. In addition there are 58 documents concerning monetary loans, most of them for modest amounts. The other protocol consists of the papers belonging to Donato Fontanella, from a single year 1321. It consists of only 90 documents, compared with 574 Short Notices 279 Parergon 20.1 (2003) for the Cartura protocol. These papers are of the same kind as Cartura’s, but they lack the richness of the former. Together, these two protocols form a welcome addition to a large body of sources on early medieval Venetian Crete published in the last few decades, such as: Salvatore Carbone, ed., Pietro Pizolo, Notaio in Candia (Venice, 1978-1985), 2 vols.; Antonino Lombardo, ed., Zaccaria da Fredo, Notaio in Candia (13521357 ) (Venice, 1968), and in particular Sally McKee, ed., Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete, 1312-1420 (Washington, DC, 1998), 3 vols. Zdenko Zlatar Department of History University of Sydney Sturm-Maddox, Sarah, Ronsard, Petrarch, and the Amours, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 1999; cloth; pp. x, 208; RRP US$49.95; ISBN 0813017211. Perhaps the best known of the poets of the Pléiade, Pierre Ronsard was not backward in appropriating titles for himself, by claiming that his poetic talents carried on past traditions. He was not shy therefore about proclaiming himself ‘le Gaulois Apollon’ (the French Apollo) or, more appropriately for the theme of this book, ‘le Pétrarque français’ (the French Petrarch). Sturm-Maddox’s book does not of course claim originality in identifying for the first time the vast influence Petrarch had on Ronsard’s poetic production (and, by the way, on other poets of sixteenth-century France), but the author reminds her reader continually that the Petrarchan style is ever in the French poet’s work (more specifically, the Amours, the Sonets pour Hélène, the Second livre des Amours and the sequence Sur la mort de Marie). Rather than concentrating on Petrarchan influence at a micro level – a particular image, a calque of a phrase, for example – Sturm-Maddox’s book directs attention to the imitative practice as it emerges at the level of a Ronsardian poetic collection as a whole. The Rime sparse of the Italian poet and the ‘story’ Petrarch imprinted on them are shown to be...