Università di Genova, Istituto di Medievistica, Publications

182 Reviews saturation of markets, etc? To m y mind Spufford's analysis places undue emphasis on the role of precious metd in the economy to the detriment of its other mechanisms. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Universita di Genova, Istituto di Medievistica, Publications (1) Cinquant' anni di storiografia medievistica italiana e sovietica. Gli insediamenti genovesi nel Mar Nero: atti del Convegno storico italo-sovietica e della Tavola Rotonda, Genova 11-13 novembre 1976 (Collana storica di fonti e studi, fuore serie), Genoa, Associazione Italia-URSS, 1982; pp. 384; II. 8. These are the acts of a joint Italian-Soviet colloquium at Genoa in November 1976. The participants included a star-studded cast of all the important names in contemporary medieval Genoese history. Papers were organized on themes with, by and large, an Italian and a Soviet contribution to each. Those on economic history included Victor Rutenburg, Luigi de Rosa, and Eugenia Gutnova. Those on religious history, Raoul Manselli and Anatoli Novesel'cev. Those on Byzantine studies in Italy and the U S S R , Agostino Pertusi and Zinaida Udal'cova. Paolo Brezzi reviewed medievd studies in Italy for the years 1925-1975. Appendices were contributed by Rimna Bondar on the Italian Black Sea colonies in the light of Soviet archaeological research and by Aldo Agosto on the sources for the Black Sea colonies in the Archivio di Stato di Genova. The volume is finished off by a fine colour reproduction of the Adante luxoro portolan chart from the Civica Biblioteca Berio di Genova. (2) Balletto, L., Bllancio di trent'anni e prospettive della medievistica genovese (Collana storica di fonti e studi, fuore serie), Genoa, Universita di Genova, 1983; pp. 154. This is a survey of the work of the Genoese school of medievdists which began with the foundation of the Istituto di storia medievale e m o d e m a della Facolta di Lettere at the University of Genoa in 1950 by Giorgio Falco. This later became the Istituto di paleografia e storia medioevale from 1963 udner Geo Pistarino; renamed from 1982 the Istituto di Medievistica. The volume contains a survey of the work of the Italian scholars at the Institute and a complete bibliography of their publications (pp. 99-154). The productivity of some of these scholars is little short of bewildering. Pistarino has 178 items to his credit many of them books. Even his students have extraordinary publication records: Gabriella Airaldi 90 items, and Laura Bdletto 61. Again many of these are whole books and extensive chapters and articles containing the results of important original research. The only works by foreigners included are those by Reviews 183 scholars such as Michel Balard and Roberto S. Lopez who have been associated with the Institute in some of their publications. (3) Pavoni, R., ed., Notai genovesi in Oltremare: atti rogati a Cipro da Lamberto di Sambuceto (gennaio-agosto 1302) (Collana storica di fonti e studi No. 49), Genoa, Universita di Genova, 1987; pp. 411; 2 plates. The acts of the famous Genoese notary Lamberto di Sambuceto, who worked in Cyprus in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, were first edited by Comelio Desimoni in Archives de I'Orient Latin (1884) and Revue de ('Orient Latin (1893). The present volume is the fifth in the series of a modem edition of his Cypriote acts. This present volume contains 283 documents from Notarial Registers Nos 382 and 173 of the Archivio di Stato di Genova. Happily, editorial policy is now to print the documents in extenso, thus preserving their legal niceties and orthographical integrity and making them avdlable to historians of all persuasions, rather than to use the abbreviations and cdendar forms which still plague editions of medieval documents elsewhere. The documents of Lamberto di Sambuceto present a fascinating world in the eastern Mediterranean dter the fall of Acre. Cyprus, particularly Famagusta, became a cosmopolitan 'Mecca' for people from all over the Mediterranean world. There are Marseillese and Marsalans, Pisans, Genoese and Venetians, Provencals and Catalans, Greeks and Armenians, and many others. The commerce of the town with Lesser Armenia, particularly Ayas and Tarsus, had become very intense after the loss of Acre in 1291...