Roberto Sabatino Lopez

Roberto Sabatino Lopez (born October 8, 1910 in Genoa , † July 6, 1986 in New Haven (Connecticut) ) was an American historian of Italian-Jewish origin.

Roberto Sabatino Lopez was the son of the writer Sabatino Lopez (1867-1951). He studied medieval history at the University of Milan and received his doctorate there in 1932. Lopez had lectureships at the universities in Cagliari and Pavia . In 1936 he became a professor of history in Genoa .

Faced with the Italian Racial Laws enacted in November 1938 , Lopez left Italy in 1939 and emigrated to the United States. At the University of Wisconsin followed in 1942 with a Ph.D. another PhD. Lopez initially did not seek an academic career. At the Office of War Information (OWI) he worked from 1942 to 1944 in the Italy division of the Voice of America channel . There he also met Claude-Anne Kirschen , whom he married in 1946. He was a lecturer at Brooklyn College from 1943 to 1945 . In 1945 he was a lecturer at Columbia University . From 1946 to 1981 he taught at Yale University . At Yale he taught as an Assistant Professor (1946–1950), Associate Professor (1950–1955), Professor (1955–1964), Durfee Professor (1964–1975) and finally until his retirement in 1981 as Sterling Professor of History. At Yale in 1962, Lopez founded the interdisciplinary graduate program in medieval studies. Lopez became a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1962 and a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1982 . In 1969 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1976 as a corresponding member of the British Academy . Notable academic students included David Herlihy , Edward M. Peters, and Patrick J. Geary . Lopez died of cancer in 1986.

Lopez submitted 16 books and more than 100 articles on various topics of medieval Europe. The focus was on the economy of Genoa and trade in the Mediterranean. Lopez was able to show that Europe's strongest economic expansion occurred between 950 and 1300 and not only during the Renaissance . The previous view was based on a continuous progress from the medieval backwardness. He published a groundbreaking article in which he subjected the Muhammad / Charlemagne thesis by Henri Pirenne to an extensive revision. In this study Lopez denied a causal connection between the drying up of the gold circulation, the use of papyrus and the spread of luxury items in the West with the appearance of the Arabs in the Mediterranean.

literature

• Hiroshi Takayama: Lopez, Roberto Sabatino (1910-1986). In: Daniel R. Woolf (Ed.): A global encyclopedia of historical writing. Volume 2: K-Z (= Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. 1809). Garland, New York NY et al. a. 1998, ISBN 0-8153-1514-7 , p. 572.
• Antonio Varsori: Roberto Lopez. L'impegno politico e civile (1938–1945) (= Università degli Studi di Firenze. Dipartimento di Storia. Studi. 2). Università degli Studi di Firenze - Dipartimento di Storia, Florence 1990.
• Archibald R. Lewis, Jaroslav Pelikan , David Herlihy: Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America. Robert Sabatino Lopez. In: Speculum . Vol. 63, No. 3, 1988, pp. 763-765, JSTOR 2852701 .
• Harry A. Miskimin, David Herlihy, Abraham L. Udovitch (Eds.): The medieval city. In honor of Robert S. Lopez. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. a. 1977, ISBN 0-300-02081-3 .

Web links

• Publications by Roberto Sabatino Lopez in the Opac der Regesta Imperii
• Robert S. Lopez This. Yale History Professor. In: New York Times , July 9, 1986.

Remarks

1. ^ Deceased Fellows . British Academy, accessed July 2, 2020.
2. ^ Archibald R. Lewis, Jaroslav Pelikan, David Herlihy: Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America. Robert Sabatino Lopez. In: Speculum . Vol. 63, No. 3, 1988, pp. 763-765, here: p. 764.
3. ^ Robert S. Lopez: Mohammed and Charlemagne: A Revision. In: Speculum. Vol. 18, No. 1, 1943, pp. 14-38, doi: 10.2307 / 2853637 .