Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century

Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1968. First Edition. Hardcover. Good Condition/Good. This book is not meant to be a definitive exploration of the whole of the two churches in any case. The attempt would be absurd. But the book is not meant, either, to be an intense exploration of "certain aspects" of the two churches. It is meant rather to be an extended essay about the connected differences between the two churches, to use "aspects" as touchstones for comparison. It is meant to be a comparison of two total styles. These are not architectural styles, although there is a marked and significant difference between English and Italian ecclesiastical architecture in the thirteenth century. The nonarchitectural style of the thirteenth-century Italian church might in fact be called sustained Romanesque, or perhaps sustained Burgundian. Comparing England (or Britain) with Italy in order to expose more fully one or both is not a new idea. Historians, like Tacitus and Collingwood, have made the comparison, and so have poets, like Browning and, with superb intellectuality, Clough. This is, at least locally, where angels feared to tread. The famous Venetian Anonymous wrote from the other side in his Relation (of about 1500), and condensed for us his comparison in the observation that unlike the Italians the English felt no real love, only lust. The spring bough and the melon-flower, Collingwood's city and field—the long continuity of the difference is startlingly apparent. Explaining the continuity (and perhaps there is no more difficult sort of historical explanation—its difficulty is painful to the mind) is not the job that this book sets itself. But it would be dull and dishonest to ignore the fact that the continuity exists. 372 pages. Tape marks to endpapers. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 1-2 kilos. Category: History; United States; History; Inventory No: 268579..