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A List of desiderata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Felix Gilbert*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

When last year I returned to Florence for a long stretch of work, I was overwhelmed by the amount and completeness of the material preserved in the Archives and in the Libraries, though previous experience should have prepared me for what I would find. One becomes strikingly aware of the spottiness with which the material of the Archives has been used in our histories of the Renaissance, and one begins to feel rather critical of the trend in present Renaissance literature towards basing new theories on reinterpretations of the material which nineteenth century historians discovered, instead of turning to the wealth of unused source material. Hardly a day passes when one does not leave the Archives either complaining about the fact that a fundamental source —on whose deciphering one scholar after the other has to spend precious time—remains unpublished, or filled with suggestions for work which ought to be undertaken.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1953

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References

1 Schnitzer has published the passages of the chronicle relevant to Savonarola, but this publication makes a complete edition of Parenti's history by no means superfluous. The sections concerned with Savonarola, which Schnitzer edited, form only a small part of Parenti's story; Schnitzer's publication is even somewhat misleading, because it gives the impression that Parenti was particularly interested in Savonarola; even in the years 1494-98 Parenti discusses at great length events which had nothing to do with Savonarola and which Schnitzer omitted.