PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

Elena Brizio teaches Medieval and Early Modern History at Georgetown University Villa Le Balze in Fiesole (Italy). Co-editor of Idealizing Women in the Italian Renaissance, published by CRRS in 2022, she also has published extensively on the political and institutional history of Siena in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Her current research focuses on the political and social agency of Sienese women of the Renaissance. At PIMS, as Visiting Scholar, she will work on the maternal guardianship, that is the role that mothers had (or could have) in the guardianship of their underage orphaned children, in the case their father died. She will focus in particular on the canonistic reading and interpretation of the role of mothers in this fundamental but often legally difficult task.