Sumptuary Law In Italy 1200-1500

The luxurious spending habits of Italians in the Renaissance are well known. The new luxury, however, was not greeted with universal approval,and chroniclers, poets, churchmen, and statesmen were often critical of, and preoccupied by, its effects. The most voluminous and telling evidence of this preoccupation is the body of laws enacted to restrict and regulate all aspects of luxury consumption - the so-called sumptuary laws.

In this book Catherine Kovesi Killerby offers the first comprehensive study of Italian sumputuary laws through a chronological, geographical, and thematic survey of more than three hundred laws enacted in over forty cities throughout the peninsula. She examines the nature of these laws up to 1500 and relates them to the cricumstances, the framework of ideas and the habits of mind which gave rise to them.

Review: Kovesi Killerby has much to offer ... Medieval and early modern historians of clothing should find much of use in this well-documented text. Its great strength lies in its comparative approach ... extremely useful. Textile History ... excellent ... this informative book sheds new light on Italian sumptuary law.

Costume Society ... important and elegantly-written ... The book revises a number of scholarly orthodoxies ... One of the virtues of the book is that it should help establish sumptuary laws and their social impact as deserving of serious study ... this book will become an important port of call for all scholars interested in medieval dress and cultural practices, and the motivations guiding their control.

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