Medieval Italy: Constraints and Creativity

Abstract

Marvin Becker's MedievalItaly is the latest entry in the increasingly so- phisticated enterprise to explicate the remarkable phenomenon of the Italian Renaissance.As in his earlier, two-volume study, Florence in Tran- sition, and his numerous articles on individual themes, Becker has identified the development of a mentalité, a set of psychological condi- tions, as the central element in understanding how the world was changed in Italy, sometime around 1300, from something recognizably "Medieval" to something clearly Renaissance.Specifically, in this case, the author steps back into Medieval Italy to investigate the seeds of that new Renaissance psychology and discovers that "what emerged in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was a change of mentality" (178).Charting that change and identifying its causes and effects constitutes Becker's study.

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