Search results for ""author laurie nussdorfer""
Johns Hopkins University Press Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome
A fast-growing legal system and economy in medieval and early modern Rome saw a rapid increase in the need for written documents. Brokers of Public Trust examines the emergence of the modern notarial profession-free market scribes responsible for producing original legal documents and their copies. Notarial acts often go unnoticed, but they are essential to understanding the history of writing practices and attitudes toward official documentation. Based on new archival research, Brokers of Public Trust focuses on the government officials, notaries, and consumers who regulated, wrote, and purchased notarial documents in Rome between the 14th and 18th centuries. Historian Laurie Nussdorfer chronicles the training of professional notaries and the construction of public archives, explaining why notarial documents exist, who made them, and how they came to be regarded as authoritative evidence. In doing so, Nussdorfer describes a profession of crucial importance to the people and government of the time, as well as to scholars who turn to notarial documents as invaluable and irreplaceable historical sources. This magisterial new work brings fresh insight into the essential functions of early modern Roman society and the development of the modern state.
£54.00
Princeton University Press Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII
In this colorful depiction of daily political life in Baroque Rome, Laurie Nussdorfer argues that the lay persons managed to sustain a civic government under the increased papal absolutism of Urban VIII (1623-1644), who oversaw both sacred and secular life. Focusing on the S.P.Q.R. (the Senate and the Roman People), which was ministered from the capitoline Hill, she shows that it provided political representation for lay members of the urban elite, carried out the work of local government, and served as a symbol of the Roman voice in public life. Through a detailed study of how civic authorities derived their sense of legitimacy and how lay subjects maneuvered in informal and disguised ways to block or criticize the papal regime, the author advances a new way of conceiving politics under an absolute ruler.As Nussdorfer analyzes the complex interactions between the lay administration and Urban VIII and his family, the papal administration, and Romans of the upper and lower classes, she also provides fresh insights into the actual practice of early modern government. She takes the plague threat of the early 1630s, the War of Castro (1641-1644), and the interregnum following the pope's death as important test cases of the state's power in times of crisis.Laurie Nussdorfer is Assistant Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
£43.20
