H-Sicily

15/05/2026

our 2025 issues are free to access for the next month—head over to our website to explore 47 brilliant pieces!

in the coming days, we'll be spotlighting key articles, ideas, and insights from across the issues. stay tuned!!

https://linktr.ee/postmedieval

15/05/2026

The Carolingian South, eds. Sam Ottewill-Soulsby and Graeme Ward (Manchester University Press, May 2026)

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526176288/

The Carolingian South turns the Frankish world upside down by taking as its subject the lands of the Carolingian empire south of the Loire and the Alps. It assembles an international group of scholars from different disciplines to examine how the Carolingians defined and were defined by this region. This book asks how Carolingian power was created and negotiated in the south. It views the Frankish empire from the perspective of the Christian and Muslim polities of the Mediterranean, while also following the movement of people and ideas through the endlessly fascinating world that they made.

CONTENTS:

The Carolingian South: Introduction -- Sam Ottewill-Soulsby, Graeme Ward

Part I – Agents and Institutions

What’s Carolingian about the Kingdoms of the Carolingian Midi? Structures of Power in Aquitaine and Provence -- Fraser McNair

The Material Impact of the Carolingian Empire in the Spanish March: A Relational Approach -- Carlos Tejerizo García

Entangled Competitions on the Fringes of the Carolingian South-East: Rethinking the Council of Mantua (827) -- Francesco Veronese

Northeastern Italy in the Early Carolingian Period: Archaeological Perspectives on the Integration of a Border Area -- Yuri A. Marano

Lopsided Legacy: Autonomy, Relics, and Carolingian Dalmatia -- Shane Cavlovic

Part II – Watching the Carolingian South

Roman Perceptions of the Carolingian World in the Ninth Century -- Rosamond McKitterick

Asserting Political Authority in Lombard Southern Italy: Adelchis of Benevento and Emperor Louis II -- Giulia Zornetta

‘All the Kings Who Reign in Francia Are Called Charles’: The Carolingians in the Eyes of al-Andalus -- Sam Ottewill-Soulsby

Part III – Carolingian Gothic

Visigothic Dusk: The Cities of Septimania after the Seventh Century -- Javier Martínez Jiménez

Rethinking the Visigothic Refugees -- Graeme Ward

Learning from the Vanquished? Visigothic Legal Texts in the Empire of the Franks -- Karl Ubl

Rejecting renovatio? Cultural and Intellectual Interactions between the Iberian Christian Kingdoms and the Carolingians -- Gaelle Bosseman

Part IV – Writing the Carolingian South

The Taming of the South: Aquitaine, History and Character in the Poems of Ermoldus Nigellus -- Carey Fleiner

Charlemagne’s Jerusalem: Imperium, Exegesis, and the *Breve Commemoratorium de casis Dei* -- Daniel Reynolds

The Carolingian Legacy in Aquitanian Historical Culture (Eighth–Twelfth Centuries) -- Julien Bellarbre

15/05/2026

Featuring contents from one of our editors, Jessica Minieri!

Publication Announcement: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages, eds. Michelle M. Sauer, Diane Watt, Liz Herbert McAvoy (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2026)

This is the first encyclopedia devoted exclusively to medieval women’s writing globally. Focusing on the thousand-year period between 500-1500, this comprehensive reference work addresses a long-standing gap in scholarship on women writers from this period. It challenges current understandings of the literary tradition of women by incorporating early writers and texts that remain marginal and by expanding definitions of textual composition to include more collaborative and contextual activities. This encyclopedia also presents women in the context of the global Middle Ages. Entries extend beyond works written in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to include works by women from Europe, Africa, and Asia. By locating medieval women’s writing within its cultural, social, religious, and political contexts, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages will be an ideal entry point for students and researchers coming into the field, and a valuable resource for established scholars. See less

More information: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031875236

15/05/2026

Vernacular Documents of Medieval Sardinia: Editions and English translations of the Carte volgari, the condaghes of Silki and Bonárcado, and the Carta de Logu of Arborea, eds. trans. Alex Metcalfe, Hervin Fernández-Aceves, and Maurizio Virdis (Brill, May 2026)

https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/72357

This ground-breaking volume presents a collection of the most important charter materials of medieval Sardinia from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Composed in Sardinian, they include the earliest administrative–legal documents from a European chancery to be written in vernacular and not in Latin or Greek.
New readings from the primary sources are here translated into English for the first time, and they are accompanied by a Sardinian–English glossary of terms, opening up the politics, society, culture, and language of an island at the centre of the medieval Mediterranean to a wide range of historians.

12/05/2026

Apply to The Newberry Library. Powered by SlideRoom.

09/05/2026

See the full CFP on H-Sicily here: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20151113/bibliotheca-hertziana-global-power-local-memory-funeral-monuments

New :
👑 Global Power / Local Memory: Funeral Monuments on the Iberian and Italian Peninsulas during the Spanish-Habsburg Rule

📅 November 12–13, 2026
📍 Rome | Bibliotheca Hertziana
⏳ June 21, 2026

The international workshop, organized by the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History and the University of Hamburg, wants to open new perspectives in funerary monument research by examining tomb monuments within a broad, culturally and socially heterogeneous context such as that of the global Spanish Habsburg Empire. While studies on individual funerary monuments exist for the Iberian Peninsula, Naples under the rule of Spanish viceroys, the Duchy of Milan, or the Portuguese Kingdom, the transnational dimension of memorial practices has remained underrepresented to date.

✍️Please submit your abstract (max. 500 words) for a 20-minute presentation, along with your curriculum vitae in German or English, by June 21, 2026.

🔗 Full call and further information: https://www.biblhertz.it/en/opportunities

📷 Funerary monument of Jacopo Sanseverino, Santi Severino e Sossio, Naples (©️BHMPI/Archivio dell’Arte - Luciano e Marco Pedicini)

09/05/2026

OPEN ACCESS🏆
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II, ed. trans. Thomas E. Burman, Nuria de Castilla, Seonyoung Kim, Sergio La Porta, Jeremy Pearson, and Alison M. V***a (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, May 2026)

https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/lamine/lamine6

This book offers the first comprehensive edition and translation of all surviving versions—Latin, Armenian, Arabic, and Aljamiado—of the polemical correspondence attributed to the Byzantine emperor Leo III and the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar II. Far from simple diplomatic communication, these letters form part of a centuries-long Christian–Muslim exchange, rooted in fictional authorship but widely circulated across the Mediterranean from the eighth to the sixteenth century. The book explores their multilingual transmission and textual fluidity, as well as the evolution of their arguments, especially regarding scriptural reliability and Christology, to demonstrate how diverse communities adapted the texts to local polemical contexts. It identifies three main textual groupings and traces recurring argumentative strands, many of which derive from specific Qurʾanic passages, suggesting their origins in an oral, cross-confessional polemical milieu. The correspondence not only reflects shared themes of religious disputation but also continuously imagines itself as one episode in a larger, unending dialogue between Christianity and Islam. By situating these texts within vibrant Mediterranean networks, the book provides crucial insights into the construction, adaptation, and transmission of polemical literature in the premodern world.

07/05/2026

New book!

Out now! Harding’s Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike | A fresh annotated translation of Diodoros' invaluable account of the careers of Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great.
Find out more: ☑️ https://cup.org/4cl5DEh

04/05/2026

Featuring a new book chapter from one of our editors, Laura Ingallinella 👏👏👏

Cultures of Exchange: Mercantile Mentalities between Italy & the World (XII–XVI c.), eds. Susanna Barsella, William Caferro and Germano Maifreda (University of Toronto Press, May 2026)

https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/9781487549879

Cultures of Exchange examines the mercantile culture of the Italian peninsula, whose wealth and geographic location made it a focal point of cultural exchange in the Mediterranean. The volume explores the integration of the peninsula into international and global networks, the effect on societal structures and attitudes, and the role in the transfer and reception of knowledge, goods, and peoples.

Susanna Barsella, William Caferro, and Germano Maifreda bring together the work of an array of scholars – literary critics, art historians, numismatists, and historians – using diverse methodologies that provide a genuinely interdisciplinary discussion of a field that is still in its elemental stages. The chapters in the volume deal with interrelated issues from diverse perspectives, questioning whether cultural exchange also involved cultural appropriation, while interrogating the political, economic, social, religious, material, artistic, gendered, and racial aspects of exchange. Essays on cartography offer a strong visual component to the book, and the use of digital humanities adds to the methodological sophistication in assessing primary source materials.

Bringing into conversation the work of a broad range of scholars, Cultures of Exchange is written with accessibility and readability in mind and is a major intervention in the growing field of Mediterranean Studies.

CONTENTS:

Introduction -- Susanna Barsella, William Caferro, Germano Maifreda

Part I – The Context: A Network of Diversities

Revising a Paradigm: Florence, Capitalism, and International Trade -- William Caferro

Florentine Merchants and Texts in Translation (c. 1460–75) -- Laura Ingallinella

Coordinating Color across the Medieval Mediterranean: Dyestuffs and their Exchange in an Era of Growth (c. 1000–1350) -- Stephanie Leitzel

Swallowed by the Leviathan: Transmission and Transformation of Italian Public Banks in the Spanish Empire, XV–XVI cc. -- Sama Mammadova

Baldassare Degli Embriachi, World Maps, and Trade Networks -- Joanne Morice

Transgressing Periphery, Dressing Otherness: Locating Geo-Cultural Spaces of Diversity in the Medieval Mediterranean -- Roberta Morosini

Global Exchange, Then and Now: The Digital Discovery of Dati’s *La Sfera* -- Laura Morreale

Part II – Cultures of Exchange and their Discontents

Dante and the Merchants: A Portrait of Ambivalence -- Teodolinda Barolini

Practical Mathematical Knowledge and Economic Dynamics in the Italian South -- Maria Teresa De Luca

Allegorical Economies: Fortune, Reason, and the Cultures of Exchange in Late Medieval France and Italy -- Filippo Petricca

Born under Mercury: God’s Influence on the Future Perspective of the Medieval Italian Merchant -- Nicolò Zennaro

Part III – Money and Wealth

The Importance of Coins: Messer Torello’s Story by Master of Charles of Durazzo -- Elsa Filosa

Between the *Decameron* and the Bill of Exchange: New Insights on Medieval Merchants’ Notebooks -- Stefano Locatelli

For the Salvation of His Soul? The Merchant Marco Carelli and His Fabulous Donation -- Martina Saltamacchia

Part IV – The Ethics of Exchange

Tracing Representations of Domestic Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Italy -- Beatrice Arduini

Translating Moral Economy: Vernacular, Scholastic Thought and Mercantile Culture -- Giovanni Ceccarelli

The Treatment of Piracy and Robbery in the *Decameron* -- Alessandro Ceteroni

Part V – Society, and the Politics of Exchange

Dante and Production / Dante and Wealth / Boccaccio and Mercantile Ethics -- Susanna Barsella

The Representation of Political Economy in Venetian Chronicles c. 1300–c. 1500 -- Giorgio Lizzul

Jewish Women’s Agency in Premodern Trade: Evidences from an (Infamous) Inquisitorial Trial (Trent, 1475–76) -- Germano Maifreda

A Money-changer as Would-be Noble in Medieval Venice -- Alan M. Stahl

An Ottoman-Venetian Merchant in the Sultan’s Service: Alvise Gritti (c. 1480–1534) and the Competing Ottoman-Habsburg Universalisms in the Early Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean -- Ebru Turan

21/04/2026

Naming Pathology from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, eds. Alessandra Foscati, Michèle Goyens (Brepols, April 2026)

https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503620114-1

This collection of contributions from international scholars offers a cross-language and multi-period analysis dedicated to the constitution of the lexicon of pathology between Antiquity and the Early Modern period. By analysing unpublished texts and studying sources written in different languages (Greek, Latin, Arabic and different vernaculars), the authors demonstrate that the pathological terminology of the past did not have an unambiguous meaning and therefore, to be understood, must be historicized and evaluated according to sources and context. The volume offers the reader the possibility of observing continuity and change in the perception, representation and theoretic paradigm of the disease lexicon, in a wide range of cultural contexts.

CONTENTS:

The Names of Diseases of the Past: A Challenge for Historians -- Alessandra Foscati & Michèle Goyens

Disease Names in Latin Translations of Galen’s Works from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance: The Case of ἄνθραξ, ἕρπης, ἐρυσίπελας, and ϕαγέδαινα -- Stefania Fortuna

Scotomia: A Label in Search of an Illness -- Michael McVaugh

The Enlarged Cl****is: Naming and Defining Female Pathology in Rodrigo De Castro’s De uniuersa mulierum medicina -- Cristina Santos Pinheiro

The Medical Lexicon of Sleep Disorders -- Ana Isabel Martín Ferreira & Cristina de la Rosa Cubo

The Lexicon of an Eating Disorder in Latin Medical Texts: A Case of Renaissance Pica -- Victoria Recio Muñoz

In nostro vulgare dicuntur lo tac: The Complexity of Naming Diseases in Latin and French Texts -- Alessandra Foscati

A Pathology Related to Cold in Early Modern Southern Italy: References to the male del freddo in Hagiographic Sources -- Marco Papasidero

Gręce liquoides, Latine lupus id est strangulatio: The Names of the Diseases in the Pseudo-Galenic De Spermate -- Outi Merisalo

The Arabic-Latin Astrological Tradition of Disease Names and Descriptions -- Charles Burnett