Renaissance Message Boards?

Factual Questions
1

I am writing/drawing a graphic novel on the life of Machiavelli. It will be published in 2006. My incredibly geeky question is this: does anyone know of any message boards where I could get answers to questions about the Renaissance? I have my history down pretty cold, but sometimes need to know what people ate for breakfast, what they drank, that sort of thing. Can anyone help a brother out?

Or–is the SDMB the place to go? If there are folks here who can answer the questions above and can, say, comment on the structure of government in the Florentine Republic, I’ve found my home.

Thanks,
Don MacDonald

2

Have you tried SCA ?

It would be a good place to start. Hundreds of people spend their spare time researching that very thing in the SCA.

Good Luck!

3

The SCA can be good, but it can also be Anachronistic. Go figure. If you know your history, you can probably figure out that corn on the cob was not a common dish in Elizabethian Europe, but it’s all over SCA events and Renaissance Faires!

This is a good source.

4

I know there are some Renaissance scholars here (or at least late medieval) so someone can probably at least give you an idea or refer you to a good book (I do northern Renaissance so I’m not much help on Florence. . .). Usually there is someone who, just out of boredom, will do anything on Heaven or Earth to figure out what people in 1500 ate for breakfast for you. . .