Few topics offer more ground for interdisciplinarity than water. The reason is as obvious as its implications are crucial: fresh water is the most critical resource for human communities, and as such it has accompanied and influenced human civilization from its very cradle. This consideration is strikingly clear when we focus on the geographic characteristics of urban settlements, which are both the primary evidence and the prime mover of civilization and whose development is inextricably shaped by (and, in turn, inextricably shapes) the hydrographic structure of a territory.

Given this premise, it is no surprise that Marco Leonardi in his book addresses the issue of water management in late medieval and Renaissance Europe from an essentially urban viewpoint. In doing so, he merges the study of social and cultural structures with that of geographic and environmental settings, in an ambitious attempt to perform a critical comparison of two emblematic case studies: the German city of Freiburg im Breisgau and Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily. The reason for this peculiar choice is rooted in the author’s academic and scholarly path: he is both a researcher in medieval history at the University of Catania and a longtime collaborator with the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg. It was this fortunate circumstance that granted him access to the Stadtarchiv in Freiburg and to a number of analogous institutes in Catania (the Civica and A. Ursino libraries, the State Archive, and the Historical Diocesan Archive), where he discovered and studied the many documentary sources on which this book draws. A selection of these documents is featured in the appendix at the end of the volume (225–29), along with an interesting glossary of the most significant water-related technical terms used in southwestern Germany and in eastern Sicily during the late medieval and Renaissance periods (239–45).

The interdisciplinarity of this book shines through in its four chapters, all addressing various complementary aspects of the human-water relationship. Chapter 1 provides a detailed etymological reconstruction of the toponyms in Catania and in Freiburg whose origins can be traced back to terms and practices related to water. The hydrogeological and climatic history of southwestern Germany and eastern Sicily is the subject of chapter 2, which evaluates how the considerable environmental differences between these two areas of Europe affected their hydrographic structure. Still, as chapter 3 explains, human intervention played no lesser a role in this result: throughout the centuries, the water from the main streams in the Freiburg and Catania areas (the Dreisam and the Amenano Rivers, respectively) was channeled through aqueducts and canals into the urban fabric and to the nearby lands, where it was used for a variety of (often conflicting) purposes such as grinding mills, fishing, irrigation, fountains, wells, and public hygiene. Not surprisingly, this heterogeneous use entailed the development of an intricate web of regulations and laws, as quarrels and disputes among the inhabitants (and between the inhabitants and the political and religious authorities) to claim control over this resource were far from infrequent. In fact, as chapter 4 remarks, the use of water was the common denominator of virtually “all the trades and professions which formed the microcosm of the late medieval and early Renaissance city” (159). From the tanner to the miller, from farmers to butchers, from the craftsmen’s shops to thermal baths and brothels, water linked the many social strata of the population, unanimously affected by the availability of this vital resource and by the many potential threats it posed (just think of the devastating effects of droughts and floods on public health and civic stability).

It is by focusing on the evolution of urban areas throughout the centuries that we realize how mutually pervasive the interaction between man and water is. So pervasive, in fact, that it touches every aspect of human endeavor. Leonardi’s interdisciplinary effort, performed on two different yet surprisingly similar contexts such as Catania and Freiburg, has been described as a rare and virtuous example of “total history” (v), and rightfully so. It offers a vivid and precious picture of the many geographic, environmental, and cultural factors that shaped the intricate relationship between urban societies and water in Europe from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.