Sanudo Digest: late January, 20-31, 1497-1531

It is in many places the time of year for carnival and parties in general. This was true in Sanudo's time, in Venice in particular.

Also, I live in a college town, one where the university student's generally go away for the Christmas/New Year's holiday and return some time around the holiday for MLK here, like the third Monday of the month. The entire population changes and then we have parties thru the new year and capping it off at the end is the National NFL super bowl - which was last night and for those of us in basketball worshiping communities there is still NCAA hoop hopes which extends in its own madness thru Feb/March. 

Yesterday, I heard tell of the local university announcing it's changes to core curricula. A change they hope benefits the students and the future and a rare one in this scope and breadth. 

But because in the west, by the calendar and in politics, it is still the beginning of the year and soon it will be the end of the Chinese year, it is natural to look at things with hope and still some reflection on past times. Winter time has been called the death of seasons. As if to point that out without referring directly Prairie Home Companion had a New Orleans band playing funeral marches and carnival street musics, yesterday as well.

Of course,back then in Venice there were parties too, and now and again disruptions, scandals, but also a series of problems around the schools, lecturers, students and what to do with Count Besarion's books, in January.

Today's Digest then is a recap, fashionably late to the www of recent posts of Marin Sanudo that he and our editors got on time. I'm the late one. I still  think I'm doing much better than Congress. 

Any of these are interesting views into society and what they thought important but taken in larger bird's-eye view, if only in listed digest form like this, one can still see a society working. Adapting or not to changing circumstances and trying to hold on to what was dear, even if sometimes misguided.

But just a glimpse of what our editors have compiled for late January should give all the reason one should need to go get the book already and read it yourself! There are links to other articles of more of their work in past postings here.

I also know I need to wrap up with the chapter on Burckhardt, the look at Poggio and the slim but wonderful book of Wunderli and also return to the story of Naples, the Borgia pope, the book of the courtier and the continuing state of Italian wars. Those will be overtaken by wider events in Europe this year because of what happens in the new world and how people back in Europe interpreted that. But here's a list of the two dozen topics the wonderful editor's chose  to provide for perusal in their wonderful book that I will sadly set down again as other areas of my story need to be attended to.

________________________________________________________________________________

January 20, 1507: students in Padua refuse classes after denied Carnival, p 451

January 20, 1517: Verona taken back, p 95

January 21, 1526: scuola for foundling orphan girls, pp 318

January 22, 1516: party with women causes trouble, because their husbands were not invited and 'young men' tried to break into it instead, p 294

January 23, 1500: death of a greek + latin scholar means competition for his seat, pp 434-5

January 23, 1512: another lecturer petitions to get a job, p 438
January 23, 1521: another party by the same Ortalani compagnie gets out of hand, p 291-2

January 24, 1513: a mummery with foreign commoners, performers from a dance school, p 505
January 24, 1518: problems during carnival, a boy is killed for offending and the bulls are let loose and that's all, pp 519-20

January 25, 1517: Paduans petition for attention, and subsidies from Venice, p 96-7; nominees put fwd by doge for Grand Chancellor, pp 309-310
Jan 25, 1525: a noble wedding showing off city, pp 298-301

January 26, 1504: patriarch speaks against Greek religious rites in Venice, p 334
January 26, 1506: a murderess gets tried and executed, pp 126-7
January 26, 1508: wedding goes sour, pp 301-2
January 26, 1513: competing humanists have quarrel that must be solved by the council, whether one who was privately subsidized could lecture at the same time as the publicly subsidized lecturer, p 439
January 26, 1531: lack of wood causes problems, pp 87-8

January 27, 1505: the old fondaco de tedeschi burnt down, pp 332-2
January 27, 1516: attempt to reform apellate court, pp 143-4
January 27, 1517: Sanudo's sister dies, p 30-1

January 29, 1499: Gritti says Turks slowly assemble armada, p 233; Garzoni bank starts to fail, Collegio promises to keep it going, p 236

January 30, 1516: the story of Besarion's library and the lack of official care in establishing Venice's own official history, while they try to do just that, pp 442-4
January 31, 1497: Florentine wins a case in Venice against a group of patricians, p 116
January 31, 1514: mutants gain religious and political significance in troubled times, pp 416-7
January 31, 1526: limits placed on wedding expenses, pp 303-305

__________________________________________________________________

All page entries from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008