University of Rochester

Graduate Student, History

Other Affiliations: Stony Brook University, History

Thesis Title: Honor, Nobility, and Violence: A study of Chivalry and Knighthood in Medieval Florence, 1200-1400 (tentative)

About

I study medieval Italian history with a particular interest in the intersection of private and public violence in Italian communes, conceptions of chivalry and knighthood in comunal Italy, and the conduct and perception of warfare in northern and central Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries. My dissertation focuses on the important influence of the ideology of chivalry among Florentine knights from aristocratic or "knightly" families that boasted martial traditions (cavalieri delle stirpi militare), with a specific interest in the way in which this ideology influenced their conduct in war. My dissertation is focused on the Florentine territorial state, and follows the fortunes of these families during a period in which they struggled to maintain their political, social, and economic predominance in the face of the growing power and coercive authority of the commune (and eventually the territorial state) and the rise of wealthy nuove gente. I am particularly interested in the military communities formed by fuoruscitismi (communities of exiles) who were forced to wage perpetual war against their native cities or chose to offer their swords in the service of "foreign" lords or mercenary captains.

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