This dissertation examines the cultural, intellectual and artistic contributions religious women made in the production of secular and religious books in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. It presents the first comparative study of nuns' book production across Italy and introduces new manuscripts to the canon of nuns' bookwork. Though the scholarship of the last fifty years has increased our understanding of the institutional and individual lives of nuns, little research has been done on their production and exchange of texts. Nun-scribes and manuscript painters produced liturgical, devotional and administrative books for use in-house, as well as for secular and religious communities and individuals outside the walls of the convents. Evidence of their bookwork repositions them as active participants in a rich spiritual, intellectual and artistic life and broadens their sphere of activity and influence to include a wide community of secular and religious patrons, artistic collaborators, scholars, family members, and book-buying clientele. Through a close examination of the material evidence in their manuscripts, this study illustrates how nuns used the production and exchange of texts to further their individual and institutional goals. This dissertation makes an important contribution to the current understanding nuns' spiritual, artistic and intellectual life and practice and significantly reshapes the current understanding of women's education and learning in Renaissance and early modern Italy (1400-1650).

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The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman armies of Mehmed II in 1453 was a cataclysmic event that reverberated throughout Renaissance Europe. This event intensified the exodus of Byzantines to Italy and beyond and they brought along with them the heritage of Greek antiquity. Laonikos Chalkokondyles contributed to the Renaissance with his detailed application of Herodotos to the fifteenth century, Apodeixis Historion, and made sense of the rise of the Ottomans with the lens of ancient history. The Apodeixis was printed in Latin, French, and Greek and was widely successful. The historian restored Herodotean categories of ethnicity, political rule, language, and geography to make sense of contemporary events and peoples. This was a thorough study of ancient historiography and Laonikos thus parted ways with previous Byzantine historians. I refer to Laonikos' method as "revolutionary classicizing", to describe the ways in which he abandoned the ideal of lawful imperium and restored the model of oriental tyranny when he described the nascent Ottoman state. What appears to be emulation of the ancient classics was radical revival of political concepts such as city-states as ethnic units, freedom defined as independence from foreign rule, law-giving as fundamental aspect of Hellenic tradition which did not encompass the Christian period. Laonikos has often been studied in the context of proto-nationalist historiography as he had composed a universal history, wherein he had related extensive information on various ethnic and political units in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, such proto-nationalist application does not fully capture Laonikos’ classicizing interests. Laonikos referred to his contemporaries as Hellenes, not because he was a nationalist who defined political identity only by recourse to language and common history. Rather, Laonikos believed that Hellenic identity, both referring to paganism as well as ethnicity, was relevant and not bankrupt. Importantly, we introduce manuscripts that have not yet been utilized to argue that Hellenism as paganism was living reality for Laonikos, his Platonist teacher Plethon, and their circle of intellectuals in the fifteenth century.

This thesis is an examination of the circulation networks and the patterns of collection of Italian printed books in France in the sixteenth century. Although the cultural relations between the Italian and French territory have been studied, a systematic survey to assess the impact of books on the shaping of the French Renaissance has never been attempted. The first section of this study examines the trade routes and networks which facilitated the circulation of Italian printed books across the French territory. Because of the nature of the French early modern book trade, focused primarily on two major centres (Paris and Lyon), a geographical division has been adopted in investigating this phenomenon. Chapter one explores the trade networks existing in sixteenth-century Lyon, from the powerful Compagnie des Libraires to the activity of the libraires italianisants in the second half of the century. Chapter two examines the importance of Italian editions in Paris. Chapter three is devoted to the circulation of Italian books in the provinces and the impact of large regional centres and trade routes on the availability of books locally. Chapter four investigates private networks and their importance in making specific texts available to French readers. The second section of this study investigates the status and importance of Italian printed books within French Renaissance libraries. Chapter five looks into the development of the French Royal library and the role played by Italian items in defining its identity as an institution. Chapter six examines the presence of Italian books in French aristocratic and courtly collections. Chapter seven is devoted to the libraries of the French literary milieu, analysing the extent to which Italian books were cherished as literary exemplars, particularly with regard to vernacular texts. Chapter eight examines the presence of Italian books in professional collections, with particular attention here given to texts in Latin and other scholarly languages imported from Italy. The conclusion draws all of these strands together, looking at the specific role played by Italian culture, through the printed book, on the development of the French Renaissance. A catalogue of about 2,400 Italian printed books with early modern French provenance is included as an appendix volume. This data provides the evidential basis for this study.