Maybe an example will help explain why I think it's so important for researchers to qualify what they mean by northern Italy when discussing Beinecke 408...
When we talk about northern America (the "new world") in 1460, it would be misleading to refer to it as "the western USA" or as "eastern Canada". It gives a wrong political and cultural impression, just as referring to "northern Italy" in c. 1408 to c. 1438 without qualifying it gives a misleading political and cultural impression.
In the early 1400s, "northern Italy" (if collectively referring to the Italian city-states) barely includes Rome (on the west coast) and barely includes Venice on the east coast and everything north of that was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire, leading up to and including the time of the VMS, was mainly ruled by the Houses of Wittelsbach and Luxembourg, which were germanic.
Calling it part of the southern HRE might be a mouthful, but it would be more historically, politically, and culturally accurate than calling it northern Italy.
People migrate. The USA might be primarily Europeans now, but that was not so in 1460. These kinds of migrations happened all over Europe and Asia as well. The Scandinavians migrated as far as northern Africa. Some of the Greek islands still have pockets of people who are blond and blue-eyed who have been there for centuries. As the Holy Roman Empire shrank, so did the dominions of the germanic people (although Lombardy kept some of its culture and customs for a longer period, on a smaller scale). We have to put our mindset in the 15th-century (and earlier) as much as is possible.
When we talk about northern America (the "new world") in 1460, it would be misleading to refer to it as "the western USA" or as "eastern Canada". It gives a wrong political and cultural impression, just as referring to "northern Italy" in c. 1408 to c. 1438 without qualifying it gives a misleading political and cultural impression.
In the early 1400s, "northern Italy" (if collectively referring to the Italian city-states) barely includes Rome (on the west coast) and barely includes Venice on the east coast and everything north of that was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire, leading up to and including the time of the VMS, was mainly ruled by the Houses of Wittelsbach and Luxembourg, which were germanic.
Calling it part of the southern HRE might be a mouthful, but it would be more historically, politically, and culturally accurate than calling it northern Italy.
People migrate. The USA might be primarily Europeans now, but that was not so in 1460. These kinds of migrations happened all over Europe and Asia as well. The Scandinavians migrated as far as northern Africa. Some of the Greek islands still have pockets of people who are blond and blue-eyed who have been there for centuries. As the Holy Roman Empire shrank, so did the dominions of the germanic people (although Lombardy kept some of its culture and customs for a longer period, on a smaller scale). We have to put our mindset in the 15th-century (and earlier) as much as is possible.