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Apr 19, 2024
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2018-2019 Academic Catalog [Archived Catalog]
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HIST 225H - Pirates, Princes, Popes: The Medici and Early Modern Europe
Credits: 4
Prerequisite: Membership in Bascom Honors Program
This course explores the history of Florence, “the most turbulent city between Ghent in the 14th century and Paris in the 19th” and the dynasty which struggled to govern it over the course of four hundred years. Florentine history witnessed great revolutions in science and state building, in international commerce and overseas exploration. Between the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492 and the end of their line in 1737, the Medici transformed Florence from a weak city-republic to a state powerful enough to hold its own against the major continental monarchies. As one of the most politically cunning dynasties in Europe, the Medici indelibly shaped the course of western history. With humble beginnings as bankers and merchants, the Medici family rose to command the papacy in the sixteenth century, and a great pirate fleet in the seventeenth. By the end of the early modern era, they had intermarried with the most powerful royalty in Europe, and their patronage of artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Vasari ensured that their influence on the religious, political, and cultural evolution of Europe would carry through to the present day.
Class participants will learn about the Medici and their world through secondary readings and such contemporary works as Machiavelli’s Il Principe or Pietro Aretino’s bawdy letters. By the semester’s end, students will have a firm grasp of key Renaissance and early modern developments in art and patronage; gender, sexuality, and power; epistemology and the history of science; and the emergence of nation-states and national identities in early modern Europe. [M; W; I]
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