Brian Pullan – författare

The decline of Venice remains one of the classic episodes in the economic development of modern Europe. Its contrasts are familiar enough: the wealthiest commercial power in fifteenth-century Europe, the strongest western colonial power in the eastern Mediterranean, found its principal fame three centuries later in carnival and the arts. This metamorphosis from commercial hegemony to fashionable pleasure and landed wealth was, however, a complex process. It resulted not so much from the Portuguese voyages of discovery at the beginning of the sixteenth century as from increasing Dutch adn English competition at its end, and from industrial competition chiefly from beyond the Mediterranean. Several of the Articles Dr Pullan has chosen to illustrate these changes are made available in English for the first time, and two have been revised for this book. Four deal with the fortunes of entrepot trade and shipbuilding, which had furnished the basis of Venetian wealth adn influence in the Middle Ages; four others expamine the new fields of enterprise which Venice explored in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and which helped to compensate for the decline in traditional activities. This classic book was first published in 1968.

During the Renaissance, there were two centres of art, culture and mercantile power in Italy: Florence, and Venice. This is a sourcebook of primary materials, almost none previously available in English, for the history of the city-state of Venice. The time period covers the apogee of Venetian power and reputation to the beginnings of its decline in the 1630s. Sources used include diaries, chronicles, Inquisitorial records, literature, legislation, and contemporary descriptions, and are organized in sections by theme and accompanied by brief introductions.Originally published by Basil Blackwell, 1992.

The essays in this collection, first published over a thirty-year period, attempt to show how Roman Catholic communities in early modern Europe (particularly the great cities of Italy, and Venice above all) treated poor people and organized poor relief. Some essays discuss the principal groupings of poor, from the genteel, ’shamefaced’ poor to orphans and foundlings, and from working folk to idle rogues. Others examine the motives and functions of the principal types of organization that dealt with poor people, either incidentally or as their main concern: religious brotherhoods, hospitals, conservatories, public loan banks, houses for the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity. One main argument is that, although Catholics and Protestants shared a dislike and fear of vagrancy and reacted in similar ways to economic crises, Catholic charity was in many respects quite different from Protestant. Les essais contenus dans ce recueil, initialement parus sur une période de trente-quatre ans, tentent de montrer comment les communautés catholiques (romaines), à l’aube de l’Europe moderne (particulièrement dans les grandes cités italiennes et surtout à Venise), traitaient les pauvres et organisaient leur soutien. Certains essais s’interessent aux principaux groupements de pauvres: des pauvres décents et honteux, aux orphelins et enfants trouvés, ainsi que des travailleurs aux bons à rien. D’autres examinent les motifs et fonctions des principaux types d’organisations qui s’occupaient des pauvres, soit de façon occasionnelle ou en tant qu’activité principale: confrèries religieuses , hospices, conservatoires, caisses d’emprunts publiques, centres de conversion au Christianisme pour Juifs et Musulmans. Un des arguments principaux étant le suivant: Catholiques et Protestants, bien que partageant la même peur et le même dégoût vis à vis du vagabondage et que réagissant de façon analogue face aux situations de crise é

The decline of Venice remains one of the classic episodes in the economic development of modern Europe. Its contrasts are familiar enough: the wealthiest commercial power in fifteenth-century Europe, the strongest western colonial power in the eastern Mediterranean, found its principal fame three centuries later in carnival and the arts. This metamorphosis from commercial hegemony to fashionable pleasure and landed wealth was, however, a complex process. It resulted not so much from the Portuguese voyages of discovery at the beginning of the sixteenth century as from increasing Dutch adn English competition at its end, and from industrial competition chiefly from beyond the Mediterranean. Several of the Articles Dr Pullan has chosen to illustrate these changes are made available in English for the first time, and two have been revised for this book. Four deal with the fortunes of entrepot trade and shipbuilding, which had furnished the basis of Venetian wealth adn influence in the Middle Ages; four others expamine the new fields of enterprise which Venice explored in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and which helped to compensate for the decline in traditional activities. This classic book was first published in 1968.