Book contents
- Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy
- Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Terms and Measurements
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- 1 Urban Gardens and Gardeners
- 2 Patterns and Changes
- 3 The Shape of the Phenomenon
- 4 Alliances and Exchanges
- 5 Values and Ideals
- 6 Conspicuous Cultivation
- 7 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Conspicuous Cultivation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2021
- Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy
- Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Terms and Measurements
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- 1 Urban Gardens and Gardeners
- 2 Patterns and Changes
- 3 The Shape of the Phenomenon
- 4 Alliances and Exchanges
- 5 Values and Ideals
- 6 Conspicuous Cultivation
- 7 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Patronage and commissioning of public events and buildings was a key tool in the attainment and replication of social status in antiquity. In the early Middle Ages, new ideals emerged around Christian forms of wealth and support, and different values were attached to the acquisition of agricultural land. Urban properties took on new relevance, and agricultural property became socially valuable in new ways. Cultivated spaces within cities came to be newly prestigious. This chapter considers the principal means by which aristocrats and rulers performed status and power within the late antique and early medieval cities of Italy, marshalling the new evidence of urban cultivation to inform our understanding of power in the built environment. It then develops three examples of this process from the mid eighth century to the early tenth, in Rome, Ravenna, and Naples. These examples show clearly the sophisticated strategies employed by rulers, ecclesiastical institutions, and families alike to control cultivated spaces, and the social status which came with successful strategies.
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- Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy , pp. 190 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021