Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies - CRRS

06/15/2026

📖 ⛪️ A printshop operated by 16th-century Italian nuns? CRRS Rare Books Specialist and Ph.D. candidate Josiah Lamb shows off one of our new acquisitions, a 1559 volume printed in Venice “by the hands of penitent nuns in the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena”!

Not only was this printing press one of five female-led printing operations in Italy prior to 1550, but it is the only known convent-operated press in early modern Italy that worked collectively as a majority female religious community. Interestingly, this convent printed only religious texts, including 4 texts written by women: 2 mystics and 2 unknown women. However, the history of this printing press is more sinister than one may expect. The reason for the press’s short print run from 1557-1561 was because in 1561 it came to the Church’s attention that the convent’s confessor, a priest known as Zuan Piero Leoni, had been abusing and taking advantage of these women for years. Leoni was sentenced to death on the 15th of November 1561. An onlooker, Ippolito Capilupi deemed Leoni “the most wicked man in the world,” and provides the most detailed records of Leoni’s crimes against these women. While the convent complex no longer functions as a convent after its suppression by the French in 1806, it currently functions as women’s jail, with nuns working as the prison guards, creating a unique full-circle moment for these women.

To learn more, you can check out:

Barbieri, Edoardo. “‘Per monialium poenitentium manus”. La tipografia del monastero di Santa Maria Maddalena alla Giudecca, detto delle Convertite (1557–1561).” La Bibliofilía 113 (2011): 303–54.

Egidy, Ela. “Prostitutes, Penitents, Printers.” Incomplet Design History Podcast. 25 Sept. 2025. https://idh.fm/episodes/prostitutes-penitents-printers-guest-presenter-ela-egidy

Moreton, Melissa N. “‘Scritto di bellissima lettera’: Nuns’ Book Production in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Ph.D. diss. University of Iowa, 2013. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.l282y0od

Richardson, Brian. Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020.

06/12/2026

🎨🖌📖 For today's post, we wanted to highlight some exceptional artistic work found in our collection. These beautiful hand coloured woodcut illustrations were likely done by a previous owner of this text, "Catholicum Precationum Selectissimarum Enchridion." Our copy features nearly 50 illustrations, with the artist often choosing to colour repeat engravings in different ways. Do you have a favourite?

📖: BX2079 .V47 1594

06/08/2026

🏳️‍🌈 This Pride Month, discover early modern q***r histories! In 𝘉𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴: 𝘚𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘙𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤, Umberto Grassi explores one of the largest archives of documents on male-male s*xual interaction in Italy to illuminate networks of homos*xuality in 16th-century Lucca. “Between the 1550s and 1560s, the judges uncovered extended networks of sodomites aged between 15 and 25 who habitually met up on riverbanks not far from the city walls on hot summer days,” Grassi writes. “With their focus on youths as a specific sector of society, these cases shed light on the role of homos*xual behaviour in constructing the performances of masculinity among young people in the Early Modern Period.”

“𝘉𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴: 𝘚𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘙𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤 is an utterly moving, deeply researched, and meticulously contextual urban history that deserves pride of place among the most outstanding books in s*xuality studies.” — Helmut Puff, University of Michigan

“With this meticulously researched and provocative book Umberto Grassi makes an important contribution to the history of so**my in early modern Italy and, more generally, Europe.” — Cristian Berco, Bishop’s University

“This fascinating book offers an important corrective to the widely accepted claim that male/male s*x in the premodern world was merely a practice unrelated to perceptions of identity, especially s*xual. Here instead we have in vivid details drawn from criminal records of Renaissance Lucca revealing accounts of the ways in which it often entailed deeper relationships, self-perceptions, and even a more spiritual vision of love.” — Guido Ruggiero, University of Miami

Recommend to a librarian or order a copy today! (Link in bio and at https://pubs.crrs.ca/products/es49.)

06/04/2026

Congratulations to Professor Mairi Cowan!

Five University of Toronto faculty members have been recognized with 2026 President's Teaching Awards -- the university's highest honour for teaching excellence, educational innovation and educational leadership.

06/04/2026

Congratulations to Professor Nicholas Terpstra!

Three University of Toronto faculty members have been appointed University Professors, a designation that represents the university's highest and most distinguished academic rank.

05/29/2026

Texts in texts, but what texts? 👀
Today we wanted to highlight this gem from our collection. While the printed text is a 1541 edition of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, you’ll notice that there are other texts lurking beneath the covers! The boards of this binding are reinforced with manuscript waste containing fragments of Justinian's Digest 39.4, but the boards themselves are made up of manuscript sheets containing an unknown text. Are you able to help us identify this text?

The detailed manicules and drawing of an animal also stood out to us. Our best guess for the animal is a pheasant—what do you think?

📖: PA6304 .T6 1541

05/25/2026

📖🔎 What is a shelf-read? CRRS Rare Books Specialist and Ph.D. candidate Josiah Lamb explains how we regularly check our rare book collection and update our records with copy-specific information to help researchers find what they need!

Some of the books featured in this video are:

Erasmus, Conscribendarum epistolarum ratio (Lugduni, 1539). Bound with: Francisco Mario Grapaldi, Lexicon de partibus aedium (Lugduni, 1535).
Erasmus Rare PA2905 .E7 1539

Philipp Melanchthon, Commentarii in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (Vitebergae, 1532). Bound with: Erasmus, Dilucida et pia explanatio symboli quod Apostolorum dicitur, decalogi praeceptorum, & dominicae praecationis (1534).
Erasmus Rare BS2665 .M4 1532

Erasmus, In Evangelivm Marci paraphrasis (Strassburg, 1524). Bound with: Erasmus, Paraphrasis in eua[n]gelium secu[n]dum Ioannem (Köln, 1524?).
Erasmus Rare BS2587 .E72 1524

05/22/2026

🪡📖 Do you recognize this technique? For today's rare book post, we wanted to highlight this instance of "pricking and pouncing," a technique that uses the pinpricks of needles to trace an image. First, you prick the design on the paper. Second, you dust a powder called "pounce" through the pricked holes onto the material beneath. It appears that this page has been used to prick the design of foliage in a vase! This technique was often used by early modern women who would prick designs from illustrations in a text to transfer the image to linen for embroidery projects. Do you think that was the case here?

📖: PA3851 .A2 1532

05/20/2026

Announcing our newest publication: 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘢𝘴 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘺, 1200–1800: 𝘌𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺, 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘒𝘶𝘦𝘩𝘯, an innovative collection that redefines the possibilities of socio-legal history in medieval and early modern Italy. Recommend the book to a librarian or pick up your own copy at https://pubs.crrs.ca/products/es62!

Exploring topics including gender, agency, inheritance, property, political conflict, and material culture, 𝘓𝘢𝘸 𝘢𝘴 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘺 illuminates how legal categories and assumptions shaped life across six centuries. The studies in this volume draw on an array of sources, from juristic consilia and statutes to testaments and household inventories, revealing the importance of law as a medium through which people conceived and negotiated their most meaningful social relationships. Together, the essays extend the groundbreaking methods pioneered by Thomas Kuehn, whose scholarship has transformed how historians understand the entanglement of law, family, and society in the premodern world.

CONTENTS:

Introduction
William Caferro and Robert Fredona

Thomas Kuehn Bibliography

1. Standing in the Market Place: The Pomaiole of Late Medieval Cortona
Daniel Bornstein

2. (Im)possible Choices? The Maternal Tutela of Sienese Widows over Orphans
Elena Brizio

3. “Voluit, iussit, et mandavit testatrix”: Agnola Baroncelli’s Testaments, 1414–1430
Lawrin Armstrong

4. Practices of Women’s Literacy and Patrimonial Agency in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Florence
Isabelle Chabot

5. Between Family and Succession: Women in the Consilia of Giasone del Maino
Maria Gigliola di Renzo Villata

6. Private Lives and a Seventeenth-Century Supreme Court in Early Modern Tuscany
Giovanna Benadusi

7. Jurists and Politics in Late Thirteenth-Century Bologna: Consilia on the Property of Banniti
Massimo Vallerani

8. Jurists in the Shadow of the Black Death: Bartolo of Sassoferrato and Francesco Tigrini of Pisa
Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner

9. Castle Lords of Southern Lazio
Edward English and Carol Lansing

10. Legislation and Popular Organization in Early Renaissance Florence
Joseph Figliulo-Rosswurm

11. Reading and Interpreting Household Inventories from Mediterranean Europe
Daniel Lord Smail

12. How to Argue Against Evil: Cesare Beccaria Confronts Doubting Readers in On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
Caroline Castiglione

05/17/2026

🎂🎈 Happy Birthday to Isabella d’Este, one of the most important cultural and political figures of the Italian Renaissance!

Born on 17 May 1474, Isabella received a formidable education at Ferrara before her marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga made her co-regent of Mantua. A successful diplomat and political operator, Isabella was also an influential art collector, a fashion trendsetter, an accomplished musician, and a patron of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian, as well as writers including Ariosto, Bandello, and Castiglione. She was also a prolific writer herself, with over 15,000 of her letters surviving today that document her astonishing life.

To learn more, read Deanna Shemek’s 𝘐𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: 𝘐𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘥’𝘌𝘴𝘵𝘦’𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴, available now at https://pubs.crrs.ca/products/es46! Recommend this book to a librarian or use promo code HAPPYBDAY for 20% off!

“Deanna Shemek is, without a doubt, the world’s leading scholar on Isabella d’Este. […] The knowledge and theoretical expertise that Shemek exhibits in this volume are matched, in my mind, by the profound humanity that all her chapters display, making it invaluable to its readers.” — Maria Galli Stampino, University of Miami

“Deanna Shemek’s marvelous study of Isabella’s correspondence, the product of many years working with this immense archive, gives us a fresh and compelling portrait of one of the most fascinating and important figures in Renaissance Italy.” — Paula Findlen, Stanford University

“Deanna Shemek’s insightful and authoritative study of Isabella d’Este makes a major contribution to our understanding of this multi-faceted figure. Shemek’s deft analysis of her extensive correspondence illuminates how skillfully Isabella used the epistolary art to craft and manage her persona and her relationships.” — Meredith Ray, University of Delaware