The aim of this article is to try to build an historical framework by which to contextualise the new data offered by the nEU-Med project. The areas investigated during the Early Middle Ages were characterized by a close integration into the public sphere, coordinated in Tuscany by the dukes/marquises of Lucca. The public institutions had a very long and exceptional fortune in Tuscany. The political, economic and social life still in the late eleventh century was structured by the court and by the circuits of redistribution of the material and symbolic resources moved by the marquis. Thus, my intent is to shed some light on the features of the nerve centre of Tuscan public institutions, the palace in the western suburb of Lucca, on the mechanisms that regulate the functioning of court life, and on the wide network that connected men, things, places and models gravitating in the Tuscan public orbit. To do this, I will use sources of difference nature and origin: archaeological evidences, parchments and two renowned literary works produced outside Lucca, namely Antapodosis and Ruodlieb.
The Power of the Gift. Early Medieval Lucca and its Court
Paolo Tomei
2018-01-01
Abstract
The aim of this article is to try to build an historical framework by which to contextualise the new data offered by the nEU-Med project. The areas investigated during the Early Middle Ages were characterized by a close integration into the public sphere, coordinated in Tuscany by the dukes/marquises of Lucca. The public institutions had a very long and exceptional fortune in Tuscany. The political, economic and social life still in the late eleventh century was structured by the court and by the circuits of redistribution of the material and symbolic resources moved by the marquis. Thus, my intent is to shed some light on the features of the nerve centre of Tuscan public institutions, the palace in the western suburb of Lucca, on the mechanisms that regulate the functioning of court life, and on the wide network that connected men, things, places and models gravitating in the Tuscan public orbit. To do this, I will use sources of difference nature and origin: archaeological evidences, parchments and two renowned literary works produced outside Lucca, namely Antapodosis and Ruodlieb.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
