Princeton University Press has just released Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy, by Katherine L. Jansen, Ordinary Professor and Chair of Catholic University’s Department of History.
The book examines peacemaking practices in the age of Dante, a period well known for its violence, feuds, and vendetta. But Dr. Jansen was interested in showing a different side of the communal period, one that was preoccupied with peace. She does this by examining how civic peacemaking was forged in the crucible of penitential religious practice and in so doing she reveals how late medieval Italian cities conceived, memorialized, and even occasionally achieved peace. (Click here for more details about Peace and Penance).
The book was a long time coming. Indeed, Dr. Jansen remembers having the idea to investigate peacemaking in medieval Italy while she was doing her doctoral research. But the project did not take form until 2004, when she was able to spend a year in Florence on a fellowship from Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies. Even though the book unfolded in ways she did not expect, as she says, “That is one of the joys of writing a monograph: you often have a pre-conceived idea of what the finished book will look like, but the writing process sometimes has a mind of its own, and takes you down unexpected avenues that you could never have imagined.”
Dr. Jansen is already at work on her next book, tentatively entitled The Relics of Rome, which will bring together her interests in material culture and Christianity in practice.
The Department of History will celebrate the publication of Peace and Penance with a book launch on 11 April, when Professor Miri Rubin of Queen Mary University of London will discuss the book. Check the “Events” section of our website for more details.