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“The Horseshoe Nail”: Structure and Contingency in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Gene A. Brucker
Gene A. Brucker*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

This essay considers the role of contingency in the history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy. Were there any events — a birth, marriage, or death; a battle; a natural catastrophe — that might have changed decisively the trajectory of Italian history? The Roman papacy is one institution whose history, replete with contingent events (1305, 1378, 1418, 1527) had a profound impact on Italian experience. The foreign invasions of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were the product of a cluster of historical accidents in France and Spain, which combined to create the most significant development in the early modern history of Italy.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , Spring 2001 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

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