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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31.1 (2000) 107-108



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Book Review

Medieval and Renaissance Venice


Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Edited By Ellen E. Kittel and Thomas F. Madden (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999) 326 pp. $45.00

This Festschrift for the late Donald Queller reflects the trajectory of the honoree's own studies and provides a "state of the field" look at Venetian studies. Queller's earliest work was largely concerned with diplomatic/military history (especially diplomacy and the Fourth Crusade). He then branched off into a slashing attack on the hypocrisy of the Venetian nobility, before finally initiating a large-scale project (unfortunately uncompleted) to examine family and social relations. All of his interests, from the empirical/institutional to the social/revisionist, and including the numismatic, are represented in the essays offered by a distinguished body of historians from Britain and the United States. In keeping with Queller's work, the contributions are marked by careful [End Page 107] scholarship and lively (even racy) presentation. As befits a celebration of Queller, they also contain genial humor (Robert Davis on bridge battles and himself), engaged but warm-spirited debate (Stanley Chojnacki against Queller on dowries, Alfred Andrea and John Moore against each other), and serious whimsy (David Jacoby on Cretan cheese).

That these essays are generally more interdisciplinary in topic than in method is perhaps inevitable given Venetian documentation; little in the archives would support thick description, saturated quantification, or the like. Yet, Guido Ruggiero is sensitive to the literary construction inherent in judicial testimony; Brian Pullan makes judicious use of serial data about poor relief in Bergamo, and Davis exploits the possibilities of microhistory. Even though the methodology remains empirical, the essays demonstrate the range of questions that can be asked of a single entity. Traditional concerns persist in Louise Buenger Robbert's reconstruction of one merchant's career, Juergen Schulz's dating of a palace, and efforts to settle fine-scale issues of dating (Andrea and Moore on a document of 1203) and sequence (Thomas Madden on Venetian-Byzantine relations 1171-1184). Alan Stahl masterfully traces one step in Venice's rise to monetary capital, and Jacoby demonstrates that economic prosperity was built upon commerce in humble products as well as the glamour items (silk and spices, above all) that have dominated economic history.

The volume makes several forays into relatively new fields as well, reflecting the catholicity of Queller's tastes and the current (and welcome) pluralism of Venetian studies. Included are examinations of women's "microstrategies of power" (Ruggiero), ambivalence toward concubinage (Ruggiero and Alexander Cowan), the permeability of the Ghetto (Benjamin Ravid), the literary representation of ideology (Robert Finlay), and the intersection of Venetians' passionate concerns for gender, patrimonial transmission and preservation, social alliance, and class (Chojnacki). Only consideration of political institutions is missing. But that subject has cooled down in Anglo-American scholarship; its absence accurately reflects both the evolution of Queller's interests and the present emphases of historians of Venice.

Alas, this volume testifies more to where Venetian studies have been, and might conceivably go in the very long run, than to where they will go in the short term. The state archives have virtually shut down, with unannounced closures, the unavailability of entire runs of documents (judicial fondi and pieces shelved too high for retrieval), a massive backlog of unreshelved documents, and severe staff shortages. The intense consultation of primary sources that underlay the work of Queller (and the authors in this volume) is no longer possible. One can only be glad that Queller and so many past masters came along when they did.

James S. Grubb
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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