Rome in the Fifteenth Century: The Rebirth of the Late Medieval Papacy

SERIES: Open Doors. Rome Through the Centuries at the Center of the World
SPEAKER: Isabella Lazzarini
DATE: Thursday 6 November, 6:00 PM

Between 1453 and 1455, Pope Nicholas V found himself facing, on one hand, the fall of Constantinople and the end of the millennial Byzantine Empire under the assault of the Ottoman Turks led by Mehmed the Conqueror (1453), and on the other, the laborious creation of a common front among the various Italian powers in the form of the Italic League (1455), conceived to unite the peninsula and launch a crusade to reclaim Constantinople. These two events, although differing in nature and scale, both reflect the renewed centrality of Rome: in the fifteenth century, following the papal residence in Avignon, the Great Schism that split Christendom, and a series of general councils held in imperial territories, the popes returned to the Eternal City, redefining their role within the Church as well as in the Italian and European context.
Political dynamics inside and outside the papacy, along with cultural and architectural renewal, laid the foundations for a new age of prominence and splendor for Rome in the 1400s—an era whose fragility would later be exposed by the dramatic sack of the city carried out by Emperor Charles V’s troops in 1527.

Isabella Lazzarini teaches Medieval History at the University of Turin. She trained at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and has held research and teaching positions in institutions such as All Souls College in Oxford and both the Sorbonne and the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris.
Her work focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of Italy from the 13th to the early 16th century, with particular attention to Renaissance diplomacy, the political languages of documentary sources, and gender studies.
Among her recent publications are Communication and Conflict. Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance (1350–1520), Oxford 2015; The Later Middle Ages, in The Short Oxford History of Europe, Oxford 2021; and L’ordine delle scritture. Il linguaggio documentario del potere nell’Italia tardomedievale, Rome 2021.

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