Search results for ""Benevento""

My Perfect Wife, Her Perfect Son reimagines the Holy Family’s story through the very human voice of Joseph. Mary’s pregnancy only begins his troubles. He has to navigate the unreasonable dictates of a disheveled, wise-cracking Angel Shlomo, Mary’s surprising insistence that she remain a “Blessed Ever Virgin,” pushy in-laws, Roman contractors, Jesus’s crazy cousin John, and the allure of the harlot Safiya, just a few of the challenges for an imperfect man assigned to become a role model for the son of God.

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What could be more simple than a pan'ino? Take some bread and butter, slice it through the middle and fill it. Seen in this way, the sandwich is almost an "anti-cuisine", a nomadic shortcut that allows for speed and little thought. But when Alessandro Frassica thinks about his pan'ino, he considers it in a different way, not as a shortcut, but as an instrument for telling stories, creating layers of tales right there between the bread and its butter. Because even if the sandwich is simple, it is not necessarily so easy to create. Alessandro searches for ingredients, and in the raw foods he finds people: producers of pecorino cheese from Benevento, anchovies from Cetara, 'nduja spicy salami from Calabria. Then he studies the combinations, the consistencies and the temperature, because a pan'ino is not just a random object; savoury must be complemented by sweet; tapenade softens and provides moisture; bread should be warmed but not dried; thus the sandwich becomes a simple way of saying many excellent things, including finding a complexity of flavours that can thrill in just one bite.

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A marble plaque that weeps twice a year, exceptional scuba diving among the mosaics and temples of an ancient Roman city, a magnificent amphitheatre full of stone spectators, forgotten pagan traditions, the world's largest censer, a sublime secret library hidden in a monastery, traces of the beating wings of the Archangel Michael, flagellation in a remarkable penitential rite, pitchers from the Wedding at Cana in an obscure sanctuary, stunning little-known frescoes ... The Campania region, far from the crowds and clich s, has one of the richest cultural heritages in Italy. Whether on the Amalfi Coast, at Pompeii, in the Cilento, at Benevento, or Caserta, or just in the area around Naples, its hidden treasures are revealed only to locals and to travellers who know how to leave the beaten path far behind. An indispensable guide for those who thought they knew Campania well or who would like to discover other facets of this fascinating region.

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The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has identified and collected the surviving sources of an important repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant. Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the practice of Medieval music.

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Essays on varied topics, with particular emphasis on the Normans in the mediterranean world. Papers here have as a general theme the "Norman Age", with a special slant towards the Mediterranean world. Subjects treated include the policies of the Norman rulers, their military and naval organisation and coinage, chronicle sources and aspects of church history in their principalities, and the relations of the Normans with Byzantium, the Fatimid rulers and the crusading states. Other papers treat more generally of art, literature and language in the Norman period. Listing: Adam of Balsham's Oratio de Utensilibus; Chronicle of Falco of Benevento; Coinages of Norman Apulia and Sicily; De Clericis et Rustico; Franks in 11cByzantium; Knight's Arms and Armour 1150-1250; Marriage of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily; Military Combat in Anglo-Norman Art; Nobilitàe Parentela nell'Italia Normanna; Norman Kings of Sicily and the Fatimid Caliphate; Norman Naval Activity in the Mediterranean c.1060-c.1108. Normans through their Languages; Richard of Salerno 1097-1112; Simon Magus in S. Italy; Tomb of King John in Worcester Cathedral; Tombs of Roger II in Cefalù. Contributors: J.J.G. ALEXANDER, GEORGE BEECH, MATTHEW BENNETT,ARMANDO BISANTI, H.E.J. COWDREY, VINCENZO D'ALESSANDRO, WALTER FRÖÖHLICH, PHILIP GRIERSON, JEREMY JOHNS, PATRIZIA LENDINARA, G.A. LOUD, JANE MARTINDALE, LUCIO MELAZZO, IAN PEIRCE, JONATHAN SHEPARD, LIVIA VARGA.

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The liturgical chant sung in the churches of Southern Italy between the ninth and thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of a territory in which Romans, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans, Jews, and Muslims were all present with various titles and political roles. Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas examines a specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and expand pre-existing liturgical chants. Widespread in medieval Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy, especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics of the city of Benevento. These texts shed light on the creativity of local cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with contemporary waves of religious spirituality, and to experiment with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their representing an epistemological 'beyond', and in their interconnectedness with the parent chant, these prosulas can be likened to modern hypertexts. In this book, author Luisa Nardini presents the first comprehensive study to integrate textual and musical analyses of liturgical prosulas as they were recorded in Beneventan manuscripts. Discussing general features of prosulas in southern Italy and their relation to contemporary liturgical genres (e.g., tropes, sequences, hymns), Nardini firmly situates Beneventan prosulas within the broader context of European musical history. An invaluable reference for the field, Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas provides a new understanding of the phonetic and morphological transformations of the Latin language in medieval Italy, and clarifies the use of perennially puzzling features of Beneventan notation.

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In 66 BC, young, almost unknown but ambitious Julius Caesar, seeking recognition and authority, became the curator of the Via Appia. He borrowed significant sums to restore the ancient highway. It was a way to gain crucial electoral votes from Roman citizens in towns and villages along the route, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312-191 B.C. He succeeded and rapidly grew in popularity, supported by grateful villagers along the route. After achieving greatness in Rome and the far reaches of Gaul, he led armies along this road to battle enemies in Roman civil wars. And then, across the Adriatic Sea, he joined Via Appia's sister road, the Via Egnatia that began in today's Albania. Other armies followed these two roads that eventually connected Rome to Byzantium, today's Istanbul. Octavian, who became, in 27 B.C., Rome's first emperor and his friend and later enemy Mark Antony traveled portions of both roads to defeat Caesar's murderers Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in eastern Macedonia. The great Roman statesman Cicero, the Roman poet Homer, the historian Virgil and many other notables traveled along one or both of these roads. In the first century of the Roman Empire in the earliest years of Christianity, the apostles Peter and Paul traversed portions of them, eventually meeting their deaths in Rome. Pilgrims, seeking salvation in far away Jerusalem, followed them as well throughout much of the Middle Ages. In the late first century A.D., the emperor Trajan charted a new coastal route between Benevento and Brindisi, later called the Via Traiana, bypassing the deteriorating final section of the Via Appia. Today, short stretches of the original three roads can be seen in the ruins of ancient Roman cities, now preserved as archaeological wonders, and through the countryside near, and sometimes under, modern highways named for their predecessors. Following those routes - in some places the hidden ancient roads had to be guessed at - is the purpose of following the path that Caesar and so many others took over the early centuries. Modern eyes, seeing through the mists of more than two thousand years of history, lead the traveler along these three roads coursing through six countries between Rome and Istanbul. It is a journey full of adventure, discovery, and friendship, one worth taking.

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Every once in a while a long-forgotten work emerges from the shadows of the Middle Ages to be published in English for the first time. This is the first complete English translation of the prose chronicle named for the abbey of Santa Maria della Ferraria. It was written during the reign of Frederick II, Italy's greatest medieval ruler, early in the thirteenth century about the Normans and Swabians in southern Italy. Based in part on the work of Falco of Benevento and others, it complements our knowledge of a complex era of Italian history. The identity of its author, a monk in an abbey in the Volturno Valley near Naples, is not known. Discovered in the nineteenth century, his manuscript - which reposes in quiet dignity in a library in Bologna - brings to life the figures who forged the Kingdom of Sicily. First published (in its original Latin) in Naples in 1888 in a limited edition of just 275 numbered copies, the chronicle long remained virtually unknown. As a rarity found in just a few library collections, its very existence was something of an 'open secret' among specialized scholars. The Apulia of the title is not simply Puglia, which in the Middle Ages extended from the heel of the Italian peninsula northward to Pescara and even Ancona, but southern Italy generally, embracing regions such as Basilicata and parts of Calabria. Although parts of the chronicle are drawn from earlier sources, the span of time from circa 1195 to 1228 is original, based on the monk's firsthand knowledge of the reign of Frederick II, who visited the abbey in 1223, when the chronicler probably met the monarch (the original Latin of the chronicle's last years was written in the present tense). Even for the Norman reigns of the twelfth century, it brings us a few details not found in the surviving codices of other chronicles. Ms Alio advances the theory that this medieval work, with its style conforming to more than one genre (chronicle, annal), its facts drawn from several sources, and its principal range (1096-1228) spanning several generations, could be considered the first history of the Kingdom of Sicily, which was founded in 1130. It is the last chronicle written in the Kingdom of Sicily during the reign of Frederick II to be published in English. As a scholarly work intended for use as a reference, this book contains over 400 informative end notes, five appendices, eight pages of maps and seven genealogical tables, along with numerous (black and white) photographs. It includes an introductory background chapter on the medieval history of southern Italy and its Greeks, Arabs, Lombards and Normans. Also included is an insightful introduction to the chronicle and its author (the longest essay ever published about it in English). Ms Alio's translation is faithful to the original Latin, yet fluid and understandable. Her native's knowledge of southern Italy and its people is evident on every page. This volume is a useful resource for researchers and an interesting excursion into the medieval world for armchair historians. Its publication was long overdue. The book is printed on acid-free paper.

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