This paper offers a fresh appraisal of the problems of the existence, location and contents of the papal library, and the associated problems of Roman script and Roman book production in the early Middle Ages. The palaeography and codicology of books from Rome, and books possibly produced in Rome, between the sixth and the ninth centuries, are reassessed in the light of current scholarship. This includes a discussion of the possible loss of Roman books originally written on papyrus, and of books in both Latin and Greek. The current archaeological evidence relating to a Lateran library and its location is considered. The implications of the evidence relating to the papal scrinium, archive and library are discussed, with particular reference to the proceedings of the Lateran Council of 649. It is argued that these records actually provide important evidence for the contents and use of the Lateran library in the early Middle Ages. The paper proposes that the papal library had a crucial function as well as a symbolic role in the early Middle Ages as a repository of orthodox and authoritative texts.

This paper presents the results of an historical and topographical survey carried out in the middle Tiber valley, more specifically in the Sabina Tiberina, in the area around Poggio Sommavilla. The survey focused particularly on the area under the present-day administration of the Comune of Stimigliano, with the aim of reconstructing the topographical layout of the Roman landscape. The field survey shed important new light on the nature of the archaic and Roman road network. In particular, as well as the Via Flaminia that runs along the western limits of the study area, another road was identified running in a broadly northeast-southwest direction, which appears to have formed the main trade route that served the area during both the archaic and Roman periods. Furthermore, the study of earlier maps, together with the evidence from the survey, has permitted the identification along the Tiber of a number of ancient ports, the positions of which were not known previously.

It is interesting to note that the settlement pattern characteristic of the Iron Age, which favoured high plateaux overlooking the Tiber, continued into the archaic period. This appears to have had a significant impact on settlement of the Roman period, in that the earliest attested Roman villas in this area are those situated next to the Tiber. The development of the ‘phenomenon of the villa’ in the area of the Sabina Tiberina from the end of the Republican period (third to second centuries BC) is consistent with the results of studies in other parts of central Italy. The study of the pottery collected from settlements of the archaic period (Colle Rosetta) and the Roman period (San Sebastiano) confirms the importance of the Tiber as a trade route for commercial exchange.

This article highlights the importance of photography for landscape archaeology and topographical studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and explores the value of photographic collections for the reconstruction of research itineraries and reconnaissance excursions in this period. Photographs held at the British School at Rome are utilized to demonstrate the ways in which collections of images can be used to retrace and chronicle the historical paths and itineraries of early researchers in Italy. Several journeys involving pioneers in both topographical studies and the use of photography for landscape archaeology in Italy are discussed. The photographs taken by amateur photographers on these excursions are important visual records of the Italian countryside and its monuments. These images are cultural artefacts themselves and they demonstrate what was still accessible to scholars and archaeologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historical paths and itineraries of these trailblazers, and the visual and textual records they produced, are now an integral part of the history of topographical studies, landscape archaeology and the Roman roads and countryside of Italy. Through photographs, this article retraces the paths of several of these pioneers and brings their historical journeys to life.

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.

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.

Among the problems connected with the conquest of the kingdom of Sicily by Charles of Anjou in 1266, not the least interesting are those which concern the members of the nobility of northern France who formed a large part of his invading force. Setting out with the Pope's blessing as a crusading army against one of the last of the ‘nest of vipers’, they perhaps expected to go on to Jerusalem after conquering the kingdom in southern Italy. Most of them, however, remained to govern and defend it for its first two rulers. The main facts about what happened to them thereafter have been well known for some time: of the many knights who were given lands forfeited by those members of the native baronage who supported Conradin in 1268, only a few families (and most of these Provencal) survived after the early years of the fourteenth century to become absorbed into the greater Neapolitan nobility. The present article does not aim to give a complete explanation of the disappearance of the majority and the survival of only a minority of these families, but to examine three cases, where the documentation is unusually full.

Quasi tutti gli storici riportano la fondazione del Regnum Siciliae alla bolla dell'antipapa Anacleto II, emanata a Benevento il 27 settembre 1130. Benché la bolla sia a noi pervenuta soltanto nella redazione di una raccolta di manoscritti vaticani del secolo XIV, non vi è motivo di dubitare della sua autenticità, tanto più che di essa si ha notizia anche dalla cronaca coeva di Falcone di Benevento. La concessione, la donazione e l'autorizzazione da parte di Anacleto a Ruggero II del Regno di Sicilia, di Calabria e di Puglia (elevazione a Regno di territori già appartenenti alia famiglia degli Altavilla e prima distinti nel ducato di Puglia, con l'annesso principato di Salerno, e nella contea di Calabria e Sicilia), nonché del Principato di Capua, dell'Honor di Napoli e dell'auxilium degli uomini di Benevento, con l'esplicita menzione della Sicilia come capitale del Regno, sanciscono la dipendenza vassallatica del nuovo re e dei suoi successori dalla Chiesa di Roma, ai cui pontefici essi son dovuti a prestare omaggio e a giurare fedeltà, con l'obbligo inoltre di pagare ogni anno 600 schifati.

I have to thank the Director for giving this article a place in the Annual. The Italian collections far outweigh those of the rest of Europe on the subject of Homer; and the opportunity of collating the Vatican Odysseys I owe equally to the self-sacrificing kindness of Father Ehrle, the good offices of my old friend William Bliss, who died early in 1909, and the enviable quarters Augusto mense of the British School at Rome.

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.