The Captain's Concubine. Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany. Donald Weinstein
teaching experience in Bologna and, subsequently Padua; his Roman sojourn as consistorial advocate; and his final return to Siena; and his scientific contribution as author of responsa, consilia, commentaria. Bargagli also follows Bartolomeo in his political ascent from Capitano delpopolo and Ufficiale di Balia in his native Siena, to a whole range of diplomatic and mediating roles and missions on behalf of the Sienese and Florentine governments, and finally to his involvement in the politics of Lodovico Sforza whom he served as Consigliere di giustizia. A friend of popes and powerful rulers, close to literati of the caliber of Poliziano, Sozzini participated in times of political turmoil for his native Siena, Florence, and the Italian peninsula in general (particularly in the Pazzi conspiracy, territorial disputes between Siena and Florence, the intervention of Charles VIII and, subsequently, of Louis XII). Of this much sought-after lawyer, whom the most prestigious universities competed to attract, and whom Siena never stopped fighting to get back, we previously had only some eighteenthand nineteenth-century biographies, such as the one in G. Pancirolus, De claris legum iurisconsultis (Lipsiae, 1721) or in G. Tiraboschi, Storia della lettertura italiana (Venice, 1795), and a few contemporary publications conveying some of Sozzini's biographical data and documents. Basing her research on extensive archival work as well as a substantial number of published studies that deal with the historical, political and legal context, Bargagli offers a richer picture of this famous and influential lawyer, meticulously assembling data and facts, without failing to analyze them. The fascinating image of Bartolomeo Sozzini that emerges from her pages is one of an astute negotiator who, on the political scene, was always able to place himself in the midst of momentous events and end up on the winning side, while on the academic scene he knew how to use to the fullest the leverage power that came from his competing job offers and his popularity among students (this is the long forgotten student golden age, when, in the peninsula, the reputation and the salary of a university teacher rested on students' satisfaction). Last, but not least, Bargagli's work reveals another aspect of the complex personality of this remarkable civil lawyer: although not a humanist in any rigorous sense of the word, Sozzini showed a philological attention in his approach to legal texts which gained him the appreciation of Filippo Beroaldo the Younger. MARIA ESPOSITO FRANK University of Hartford