Mad Blood Stirring

This was another book that really inspired my choice of profession. Located in the northeast corner of the Italian peninsula, Friuli emerges as something like the wild west of Renaissance Italy in this engrossing study.

Far removed from the urbane cities and courts and the worlds of art and literature commonly associated with the Renaissance, Edward Muir reveals the continuing binds of feudal obligation, family, vengeance, and honor, and the violence they provoked in the early sixteenth century. Incidentally, the history he tells also encounters the real-life origins of the story that would become Romeo and Juliet.

Like Trexler,… show more.

We often think of the Renaissance as a time of intellectual and artistic advances, elite cultural experiences, and royal courts or sober republican governments. It was also a time of violence – and attempts to control that violence. Muir focuses on a violent riot known as the Cruel Carnival of 1511, which took place in the remote Friuli region of northern Italy, then under the control of the Republic of Venice. He uses this event to explore vendetta conflict, factional violence, and peasant culture, showing a very different side of Renaissance Italy. This book is a fascinating exploration of ritualized… show more.