Public Life in Renaissance Florence

Richard C. Trexler is Professor of History at Binghamton University.

A remarkable book.... One of the most original and absorbing to appear for some time.... In Trexler's hands old clues and apparently antiquarian learning have been transformed into a powerful new vision of society in Florence (and, by implication, in other late medieval urban communities).... An enviable achievement. Few academic historians have it in them to write a book such as Public Life, at once a creative whole (one which will outlive many of its particular propositions) and a rare stimulus to further research.(Journal of Modern History) Immensely stimulating and useful.... A rich mine of ritual lore with a practicality inexhaustible vein of arresting insights on the role of ceremony in a community.... Trexler brings to his ritual actors a forceful constructive and critical intelligence, extraordinary resources of imagination and energy, and a wonderfully perceptive and committed appreciation for both the creative play and the moral purposefulness of their performances.(Art Bulletin)