This article statistically analyzes quantitative data from numerous sources in order to assess changes in marriage patterns, family structure, and rates of social mobility during the period from 1282 to 1494. During this period, three systems of social stratification coexisted — wealth, political office, and age of family — but these contending status systems were not consistent in their rankings of families. Each status system was conservative in the sense that elite families at the top of that hierarchy married each other in order to stabilize their position. But because of inconsistency in rankings, contradiction within the elite opened up the Florentine marriage system to widespread upward social mobility by new men. In their own families, successful new men aggressively imitated their economically and politically declining status superiors. Sharp class divisions thereby blurred into continuous and negotiable status gradients. These open-elite patterns of social mobility, present throughout the early Florentine Renaissance, were most extreme during the Albizzi regime, immediately following the Ciompi Revolt.

In studying Donato Bramante's Ruined Temple (1481), this essay looks beyond the traditional question of its subject matter, considering this engraving as an image about images of all kinds. Taking the inconspicuous cross on the column as its focal point, it shows how the print offers a dialectical disquisition on the value of the Christian sign as measured against the alluring remains of pagan civilization. The vexed nature of this choice registers a profound artistic problem. Caught between the ideals of classical antiquarianism and contemporary devotion, Bramante here claims the ground between artistic fame and obscurity, righteousness and idolatrous ruin.

The Habsburgs and the Nassaus, who collaborated during the reign of Charles V, clashed sharply during the reign of Philip II: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, became the leader of the Dutch Revolt. Instead of focusing on religious and political matters in the Netherlands, this article examines the underlying development of both men's dynastic identity to explain this new hostility. I argue that Habsburg family affairs — the division of the dynasty into two branches — led to an increasingly Spanish dynastic identity on Philip's part, while William could not, or would not, break free from his German-focused family identity, leading to a crucial loss of common ground between the two men.

Early English readers of Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) annotated their copies of John Florio's (1553[?]–1625) translation with remarkable frequency and vehemence, creating a context within which printed appropriations of the essayist may be fruitfully examined. No topic intrigued these readers more than custom. Drawing from transcriptions of over 4,000 marginal annotations and situating the Montaignean borrowings of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and other English writers within a culture of active reader response, this essay treats the Montaignean account of custom as a case study wherein differences between manuscript and print appropriation may be investigated. Montaigne's reception in seventeenth-century England cannot be understood without scrupulous attention to both traditions.