Kucher, Michael

English

University of Washington: UW Tacoma Digital Commons

University of Washington TacomaUW Tacoma Digital CommonsSIAS Faculty Publications School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences10-2009Review of "Teachers and Schools in Siena,1357-1500" by P. DenleyMichael KucherUniversity of Washington Tacoma, kucher@uw.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_pubPart of the European History CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Tacoma Digital Commons. Ithas been accepted for inclusion in SIAS Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UW Tacoma Digital Commons.Recommended CitationKucher, Michael, "Review of "Teachers and Schools in Siena, 1357-1500" by P. Denley" (2009). SIAS Faculty Publications. 30.https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_pub/30Reviews 1035of Reims the powerful institution that it became. Demouy's volume is invaluable as a sourceof detailed information about that church. It will be for others to use such detail for otherends.CONSTANT J. MEWS, Monash UniversityPETER DENLEY, Teachers and Schools in Siena, 1357-1500. (Documenti di Storia, 78.)Siena: Betti, 2007. Paper. Pp. v, 162 plus unnumbered pages; 1 black-and-white figure.€25.To most viewers, the classroom scene depicted in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's painting TheEffects of Good Government represents university students listening to a lecture. PeterDenley suggests that it could just as well be an image of a state-supported grammar school,preparing students for the university or professional careers (p. 27). Many readers of thisjournal have used the following passage in their own classrooms from Villani's Chronicleto illustrate the educational achievements of Florence in the 1330s: "We find that the boysand girls learning to read [numbered] from 8,000 to 10,000, the children learning theabacus and algorism from 1,000 to 1,200, and those learning grammar and logic in fourlarge schools from 550 to 600" (Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: IllustrativeDocuments, trans. Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond [New York, 1961], p. 72).Yet, how many of us can discuss the educational system that produced those results or thequalifications of the teachers or would think to connect those schools to Lorenzetti's image?Such challenges to conventional wisdom and gaps in our knowledge suggest that al-though the outlines of the history of secondary education in the Middle Ages are known,the details and regional variations will require more research in municipal archives. Den-ley's book is the product of such a search in Siena and thus presents a case study as wellas a model for future work in the field. From his book emerges a detailed collective portraitof over a hundred secondary teachers of grammar and abacus in Siena's schools from 1357to 1500. Although making no claims to being exhaustive or complete, the number ofindividual careers Denley has unearthed and analyzed is humbling to behold.Denley examines the growth of secular schools and the types of individuals the cityrecruited to teach in them. The book consists of a brief monograph followed by biograph-ical portraits (illuminated by extensive quotations from the sources), a time line on whichthe known years of the teachers' activity are mapped, and the usual scholarly apparatus.The format speaks both to the book's origins as an offshoot of Denley's study of theUniversity of Siena and to the preliminary state of the investigation. The limits of theevidence and the resulting clarity of the presentation justify the format.Denley's diligence and imagination in the use he made of Sienese records and secondarysources are conspicuous on every page of the book. It is hard to imagine someone followingin his footsteps and finding something he missed. The reader's confidence is further boostedby meticulous copyediting. Despite the text's complexity of language and depth of citations,not a single error is apparent anywhere in the book.Denley shows how teaching in Siena evolved from a patchwork of ad hoc private ar-rangements supplemented with church-supported schools to a state-supported and state-managed system of public secondary schools. Denley notes that basic literacy was stillacquired through a less formal system of private study. The public schools, although free,were available only to the children of urban families who could afford the loss of theirchildren's labor, a minority of the population. The teachers, with one or two assistants,ran the whole classroom.Most of the book discusses the grammar teachers who prepared students for universitystudy in humanistic topics or for careers as notaries. Denley finds that besides the grammar1036 Reviewsschools, Siena also sponsored training in abacus, which included math, geometry, andsurveying. The abacus masters had a different job description from that of the grammarteachers: in addition to teaching, their contracts stipulated that about half their time wouldbe spent using their skills on city projects, such as surveying the city walls, building dams,or assisting architects. These split demands allowed for the development of a schoolroomthat shared some of the features of a medieval workshop, in that it could develop into afamily enterprise, involving siblings or members of different generations filling in for eachother while the master was away from the classroom on a city project. Denley finds furtherthat whereas the city generally sought non-Sienese grammar teachers, it frequently hiredSienese abacus teachers. He suggests that the preference for outsiders shows that the city'sleaders understood the advantages of hiring people not trained in Siena. This reviewerwould suggest that the city's preference for local math teachers is evidence of the city'sconfidence in its citizens' technical competence.The presence of two separate tracks of secondary education (one for technical careers,the other for humanist ones) in addition to apprenticeship in agriculture or trades wouldmake it very difficult for a scholar to know practical math, an engineer Latin, or a mastercraftsman either. One way the city overcame the limits of specialization was by lending itsmath teachers to projects requiring their skills. It is worth noting that whereas all the knownabacus teachers were men, Denley has found records of at least three women hired to teachgrammar.In sum, Denley's work provides context to better understand the passage from Villaniquoted above. I marvel at how much Denley has done with numerous, but ever so terse,sources. Denley's work allows us to parse Villani's sentence and discern the possible exis-tence of three different systems of education: primary literacy, reaching the largest numberof children; secondary training in math; and preparation for careers requiring grammar, anumber amounting to only half the number learning math. Denley's work will whet thereader's appetite for more such prosopographical studies that will tell us the extent to whichVillani's numbers for Florence are plausible and whether they might apply to other citiesas well.MICHAEL KUCHER, University of Washington, TacomaWERNER DIEM, Ein arabisches Rechtsgutachten zum Eherecht aus dem 11.-12. jahrhun-dert aus der Heidelberger Papyrussammlung. (Schriften der Max Freiherr von Oppen-heim Stiftung, 17.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. Paper. Pp. 57; black-and-white fig-ures and tables. €19.80.In medieval Muslim societies the fatwd (pi. fatdwd) played a key role in the elaboration ofIslamic law and its application to practical circumstances. Similar to the responsum in theRoman and Jewish legal traditions, it was an opinion rendered by a jurist on some partic-ular point of law, always in response to a query. Because of Islamic law's broad remit,however, these replies could deal with virtually any aspect of life, from how to draw up acontract of sale to how to say prayers to whether the state was justified in going to war.Although in most cases this was a private, informal, noninstitutional exchange between agiven believer and a jurist he regarded as competent to act as his mufti, the giving of fatdwdcould also take place in public contexts and in connection with the state's juridical appa-ratus.Even when a fatwd was given face-to-face, it was common for some written record tobe made, at least a summary if not verbatim. It is thus both frustrating and intriguing thatwe have so little extant documentary evidence for the fatwd before the Ottoman period.Occasional examples are quoted or discussed in legal and historical texts, and we have

Review of  Teachers and Schools in Siena, 1357-1500  by P. Denley

https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=ias_pub

Review of Teachers and Schools in Siena, 1357-1500 by P. Denley

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Washington: UW Tacoma Digital Commons