Dr. Elena Brizio

Dr. Elena Brizio completed her PhD in Medieval History at the University of Florence in 1993 with a thesis on the prosopographical analysis of the Sienese government in years 1355-1399; on her previous lauree she worked on electoral systems and on a particular archival “fondo”of a Trecento judge and official.

She also completed a Masters in Gender Studies in 2003, working on the role of the dowry in the fourteenth century, whose article appeared in 2004. She has published on the political, institutional and legal history of the Trecento, on “consilia” by the most important Italian jurist of the fourteenth century, Bartolo da Sassoferrato, and on the seventeenth century legal “repetitiones”. Her article In the Shadow of the Campo: Sienese Women and Their Families (14th-16th Centuries) will appear in the volume of essays Across the Religious Divide: Women's Properties in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300-1800), ed. by Jutta Sperling and Shona K. Wray, published by Routledge in 2009. She taught American undergraduate students courses on “The Black Death and its Aftermath” at IES , Institute for the International Education of Students, in Siena.

Dr. Brizio’s current research focuses on the cultural, economic and social power of women in the Renaissance, and her book, provisionally entitled Sienese Women in Troubled Times, will analyze the role of Sienese women in the last century of the Republic, before the war and following annexation of Siena by the Duchy of Florence. She is particularly interested in the role of women whose kin were exiled, and the help women could offer, whether left in the city or –on the contrary—if they chose or were obliged by authorities to follow their exiled kin. Another topic she works on is the use of the law in favor of or against women, and the modifications of local laws (statutes or consuetudines) through the use of the so called ius commune, that is the former civil and canon laws.
She has presented papers at the Biennial Conference of Sarasota, Florida in 2004, 2006, 2008; at the Renaissance Society of America in Cambridge 2005; Miami 2007; Chicago 2008. In 2008 she gave the Annual Bertie Wilkinson Lecture at the Centre of Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, whose title was Florence is not Italy: An Alternative View of Women, Family and Social Ties from Siena.

In her work with the Medici Archive Project, she has continued to pursue her research interests in Renaissance history and Women’s studies. The title of her research project is: Sienese and Florentine Women: Their Role in their Kinship after the Fall of the Republic (1555). At the present time she is working on ‘avvisi’ (news reports) that came from Flanders in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years War.

BOOKS

Inventario dell’Archivio storico di Monteriggioni. Siena, 1991.
Inventario della sezione storica dell’Archivio di Rapolano Terme. Siena, 1987.
Index repetitionum iuris canonici et civilis. With M. Ascheri. Siena, 1985.

ARTICLES

“In the Shadow of the ‘Campo’: Sienese Women and Their Families (14th-16th Centuries)”. In Gender, Kinship and Property in the Wider Mediterranean: Centers and Peripheries (ca. 1200-1800). Ed. J. Sperling and S. Wray. New York, 2009 (in print).

“La dote nella normativa statutaria e nella pratica testamentaria senese (fine sec. XII- metà sec. XIV)”. Bullettino senese di storia patria 101 (2005): 9-39.

“Bordighera, Borghetto e Vallebona”. In Il Catasto della Magnifica Comunità di Ventimiglia. Famiglie, proprietà e territorio (1545-1554). Ed. M. Ascheri and G. Palmero, 211-22. Genova 1996.

“I Consilia di Bartolo da Sassoferrato nel ms. Seo de Urgel 2109“. In Consilia im späten Mittelalter. Zum historischen Aussagewer einer Quellengattung. Ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, 237-42. Sigmaringen, 1995.

“L’elezione degli uffici politici nella Siena del Trecento”. Bullettino senese di storia patria 98 (1991): 16-62.

“Analisi prosopografica di una classe di governo. Siena sotto i Riformatori, 1368-1385”. In Storia e Multimedia: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress, Association for History & Computing. Ed. F. Bocchi and P. Denley, 146-9. Bologna 1994.

“Una indicizzazione ‘automatica’ dei Consilia di Bartolo da Sassoferrato”. Studi Senesi 103 (1991): 101-69, 283-349.

BOOK REVIEWS

Rev. of Medici Women. Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I, by Gabrielle Langdon. Quaderni di Italianistica. Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 29 (2008): 172-4.

Rev. of Commune and Studio in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, by Peter Denley. Speculum 83 (2008): 685-6.

Rev. of Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance. Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna, by Nicholas Terpstra. Confraternitas 18 (2007): 34-6.

Rev. of A Renaissance of Conflicts. Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn. Archivio Storico Italiano 163 (2005): 198-200.

Rev. of Scritti di storia del diritto offerti dagli allievi a Domenico Maffei, ed. Mario Ascheri. Archivio Storico Italiano 151 (1993): 1027-30.