How much revenue did the College of Cardinals receive as a corporate financial organisation in the late fifteenth century? What was the share of individual cardinals from the corporate sources of the College?

These are questions to which as yet no answer has been given, though materials long known to historians of papal finance exist towards answering them. The most important of these records are the division registers of the College of Cardinals contained in the series of Vatican Cameral documents entitled ‘Obligationes et Solutiones.’ Only one such register (vol. 80 in the series) survives for the late fifteenth century, while a fuller number are extant for the earlier period, notably three under Eugenius IV forming a continuous series for the pontificate. These earlier volumes, some rather different in character, deserve closer study in themselves and will be used here merely for general comparisons.

While numerous sections of vol. 80 have been studied and printed the register has rarely been considered as a whole or for what its main original purpose was, namely to record the cardinals' shares in the service taxes.

Round the ancient abbey of S. Maria della Strada, its casale and its church, perhaps the most important Romanesque building now remaining in the province of Molise, there has accumulated an abundant literature, because of the many problems, historical as well as artistic and archaeological, which it presents. These problems have of recent years been the subject of fresh studies by Avv. Dott. V. E. Gasdìa and Dott. E. D. Petrella, who have reviewed the existing work on the subject, and have also called attention to a very considerable body of documentary evidence for the history of the church. Gasdìa in particular has laid the Angevin Registers and Fascicoli under contribution, and Petrella has called attention to some hitherto neglected printed sources. Gasdìa has, moreover, carried out a minute and observant examination of the building and its monuments, often with happy results; and on this and on the Angevin evidence has based his interpretation of the circumstances of the foundation and history of the monastery.

Francesco di Giorgio, the Sienese architect and artist, visited Rome c. 1470. By looking at his plan of the ‘porticho del Champitolio’, it is possible to reconstruct not only what Francesco di Giorgio saw on the Monte Tarpeo, but also what Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo, Pietro del Massaio and others saw there. It was apparently a notable site, an evocative ruin worthy of commentary, artistic representation and imaginative reconstruction. Whatever temple remains continued to be visible, however, these were insufficient to suggest that they were originally part of the temple. By the end of the fifteenth century, the temple had been lost. None the less, Francesco di Giorgio unwittingly documented the last standing columns of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

The conversion of a fourth-century secular basilica into the church of Sant'Andrea Catabarbara in Rome during the 470s invites a discussion of how architectural adaptation contributed to the identity of its restorer, Valila. More than a century after the praetorian prefect of Italy, Junius Bassus, founded the basilica in 331, a Goth named Valila, belonging to the senatorial aristocracy, bequeathed the structure to Pope Simplicius (468–83). References to Valila's last will in the church's dedicatory inscription were inserted directly above Junius Bassus's original donation inscription, inviting reflections upon the transmission of élite status from one individual to another. The particularities of Valila's legacy as a testator, as indicated in the references to his will in the Sant'Andrea Catabarbara inscription and confirmed by a charter he wrote to support a church near Tivoli, suggest that he sought to control his lasting memory through patronage. Valila's concern for a posthumous status provides a context for interpreting the interior of the Roman church. Juxtaposed to the church's fifth-century apse mosaic were opus sectile panels depicting Junius Bassus, together with scenes of an Apollonian tripod and an illustration of the exposed body of Hylas raped by two nymphs originating from the earliest phase of the basilica. The article proposes that Valila nuanced his élite identity by preserving the fourth-century images and thereby hinted that preservation fostered both the accretion of physical layers and the accrual of multiple identities by a Gothic aristocrat in Rome.

In Lucca in 1430 the republic was restored after 30 years of princely rule. The restored republic ruled over a territory that included much of the Versilia and parts of the Garfagnana. The important role played by notaries in the administration of the territories of both cities and princes has long been recognized. Moving rapidly from office to office, notaries were key figures in the courts, as administrators, and for the fisc. The present article examines the functions, personnel, reputation and effectiveness of notaries in the service of fifteenth-century Lucca following the restoration of liberty. Much attention has been paid to state-formation and territorial administration in the recent literature; relatively little to the precise role played by notaries. This article aims to provide a case study against which experiences elsewhere can be measured. Lucca was distinctive in the fifteenth-century context by virtue of its continued independence as a traditional city-state. Comparisons have been drawn between Lucca and its neighbouring states, but with due recognition of the obvious differences that divide Lucca both from the newer territorial conglomerations and from subjected cities that continued to enjoy extensive, supervised rights over their local administration.

Il contributo si propone di presentare i reperti provenienti da un saggio effettuato all’interno dei cosidetti Magazzini Traianei a Portus (Fiumicino) e in particolare nel corridoio prospicente la darsena in corrispondenza della cella 9 e all’interno di essa. L’intervento di ricerca era principalmente volto a definire le diverse fasi edilizie della struttura dei magazzini, è tuttavia stato possibile mettere in luce livelli datati tra il IV e il V secolo d.C., connessi alle fasi di frequentazione a scopo funerario della cella. Lo studio preliminare dei materiali offre un primo panorama delle produzioni attestate nell’area in età tardoantica e del rapporto percentuale intercorrente tra di loro, restituendo un’immagine delle dinamiche commerciali. In particolare è stato possibile verificare la presenza di alcuni contenitori da trasporto degni di nota, come ad esempio le anfore Keay LII e affini, che testimoniano la rinnovata produzione di vino calabro–siculo nel corso del V sec. L'incremento di questi beni di consumo si deve alla crisi della produzione viticola che investì l’Italia centro–settentrionale e alla conseguente imposizione del titulus canonicus vinarius alle regioni del Bruzio e della Sicilia. Tali contesti tardi si caratterizzano inoltre per la presenza di ceramica da fuoco di Pantelleria e di produzioni africane di ceramica da cucina, comune e terra sigillata. Si segnala infine la presenza dell’anfora ispanica Mojón 1, imitazione degli spatheia africani. Il panorama delle attestazioni permette di istituire confronti all’interno del sito stesso, con i reperti provenienti dagli scavi dell’Antemurale e della Basilica Paleocristiana, e con i contesti ostiensi e romani, sia per quanto riguarda la prevalenza dei contenitori da trasporto sul resto del vasellame, che in relazione alla preponderanza del materiale d’importazione, all’interno del quale spicca la ceramica africana.

Well into the seventh century, masons in Rome built bonded-masonry walls using materials and techniques directly descended from antiquity. But walls erected starting in the eighth century are very different and distinctively ‘medieval’. The late seventh / early eighth century therefore represents a moment of rapid transition or even rupture in the Roman building industry, when older ways of doing things ceased forever. Drawing on recently excavated structures on the Palatine and at San Paolo fuori le Mura that offer new insights into this crucial transitional period, I suggest that the break with centuries-old building traditions reflects a fundamental shift in mechanisms of patronage, and of control over the city's built environment. After a hiatus in the second half of the seventh century, when the Roman construction industry languished between a Byzantine administration in decline and a Church bureaucracy not yet empowered to supplant it, early eighth-century popes faced the challenge of creating anew the means and methods to build on a substantial scale. The newly excavated structures of the early eighth century offer an unexpected perspective on the growth of, and the growing pains experienced by, Rome's nascent papal government.