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Archive: November 2011 (2 Posts)

Ornate red and ivory wall decoration, with plaque and symbols

Law, a Curse and Life in an Italian Ghetto

Posted by: Nathan Dorn

Although Alessandro Aldobrandini (1664-1734) was not the first in the long history of Italy’s Aldobrandini family to traverse the cursus honorum of the church’s hierarchy, his record of achievement was substantial: educated first in the Seminario Romano and later in the University of Pisa, where he attained the degree of doctor utriusque juris, he was …

Ornate red and ivory wall decoration, with plaque and symbols

Laws in a Crusader State

Posted by: Nathan Dorn

On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. In so doing, he inaugurated a period of centuries of intense, though intermittent, warfare fought at the peripheries of Christendom. The Crusades exist in our historical memory as a period of near constant bloodshed and destruction, but out of the chaos …