Gesammelte Abhandlungen und Aufsätze: Volume 1: Von Dante zum Risorgimento. Studien zur Geistesgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte Italiens; Volume 2/1: Studien zur Papst- und Reichsgeschichte, zur Geschichte des Mittelmeerraumes und zum kanonischen Recht im Mittelalter. Erster Halbband; Volume 2/2: Studien zur Papst- und Reichsgeschichte, zur Geschichte des Mittelmeerraumes und zum kanonischen Recht im Mittelalter, Zweiter Halbband (review)

The Collected Studies of Peter Herde reflect his scholarship over some forty years with extensive archival research, especially in Italy. He exhibits a pronounced global perspective in much of his work, a quite unique trait for a medieval Latin paleographer and historian by training. These volumes contain editions of numerous Latin documents, color photographs, and topographical maps of medieval battlefields. Of the thirty-four articles, six are in Italian and two in English.

Volume 1 considers humanism in Italy and the transition of Florence from a republic to an oligarchy. The author observes that an agonal mind arose among the many city-states of Tuscany, Umbria, Lombardy, the Veneto, and Piedmont which led to a spirit of inquiry and creativity which were so essential for the development of the Renaissance. Herde illuminates Dante's intellectual development and increasing political responsibility, especially the way in which his views evolved from a personal to a broader Florentine perspective. Visits to Naples, San Gimignano, and Rome most likely occurred in his capacity as an official or pilgrim during the 1290's to 1300. Dante remained skeptical of his city's commercial ties to France and the Angevins, while his personal feelings toward Boniface VIIIdid not cloud his ability to separate the office and the person of the pope. His idea of a philosopher-emperor did not rely on historical precedent, i.e., on the imperial German dynasties, while the subordination of the emperor to the pope could only be understood in terms of fatherly grace.

The wealthy and traditional magnate families were excluded from power with the rise of politically well-versed families which saw themselves as Guelfs. By the 1260's the Church and Guelf circles dominated politics as Florence became the center of the Guelf movement, anti-imperial and pro-papal, espousing freedom of the communes. About 1300 the names Guelf and Ghibelline spread into Lombardy and south central Italy, but by the 1330's the Guelf bloc had disintegrated. The interests of the communes were no longer identical with those of the pope, now in Avignon. For a brief period during the Otto santi rebellion of 1375-1378, the lower classes asserted themselves, but the oligarchic reaction soon silenced them.

As chancellor since 1375, Coluccio Salutati shaped Florentine policy ideologically. His official correspondence reveals a Guelf and pro-French attitude after his initial interest in Rienzo's concept of sovereignty and Petrarch's idea of a universal emperor had faded. By 1400, during the so-called crisis of the early Italian Renaissance, the Giangaleazzo crisis in Florence, signs of the decline of liberty were already being felt. Humanists began to conform and to serve new rulers, and politically Florentine humanism became a neutral entity. In this context Herde concurs with scholars like Michael Seidlmayer that the thesis of Hans Baron about liberty vis-à-vis tyranny is too sharply drawn. In addition, scholars have overrated the Giangaleazzo crisis because they took the rhetoric of humanists like Salutati literally.

Herde's analysis of the Guelf idea and its Neo-Guelf variant deserves a close reading. Conradin's demise gave Guelfs much food for thought. Thomas...