“A Pearl of Powerful Learning”: The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century. Paul W. Knoll. Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 52. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xviii + 790 pp. $209.
ing to resort to the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, for example, or more extensive sources. Nevertheless, a problem arises: the author does not seem to have consulted the most recent bibliography and in particular the critical editions such as De Principe or De Sermone that have updated the texts released from later interventions. The classics of the bibliography on Southern humanism are present but not entirely up to date. For example, the author seems to be unaware of the article by Salvatore Monti, although it dates from 1963, that fixed the date of birth of Pontano at 1429, since she has him born in 1426. If this was the result of new research, I would have liked to see that noted here. In fine, the book is very strongly structured throughout the four chapters and stresses the construction of a genuine humanistic network, and will, I hope, reach a wider audience of enlightened amateurs, by contextualizing Italian humanism within cultural studies of early modern Europe.