Biography

Robert Black is Professor of Renaissance History at the University of Leeds.  His books includeBenedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaissance (1985), Studio e scuola in Arezzo durante il medioevo e il rinascimento(1996), Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (2001), Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany(2007) and Studies in Renaissance Humanism and Politics (2011).  Together with Louise George Clubb, he has writtenRomance and Aretine Humanism in Sienese Comedy (1993), and with Gabriella Pomaro, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Education (2000).  He has edited Renaissance Thought: a reader (2001) andThe Renaissance.  Critical concepts in historical studies, 4 vols (2006). His Machiavelli (2013) has just been published by Routledge.

Project Summary

Robert Black plans to work on volume 2 of his study, Education and Society in Florentine Tuscany, focusing mainly on school education (pre-university) in Florentine Tuscany and outside the city of Florence during the fifteenth century.  He also hopes to continue work on his ongoing census of manuscripts of classical Latin authors produced and used as schoolbooks in Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.