Irony, historiography, and political criticism : The Porcaria coniuratio

This article examines Leon Battista Alberti’s 'Porcaria coniuratio', the historical epistle on Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against Nicholas V, which was discovered by the pope before the conspirators could carry out the plot, in January 1453. This text is the only proper historiographical work written by Alberti and it allows us to explore (for the first time) his idea of history and historical writing, in a period when the humanist debate on the ars historica was becoming extremely lively. The investigation of the text, which is carried out from different perspectives, shows that Alberti’s lucid representation of the events is combined with sharp political criticism. This critical standpoint is often conveyed, on the one hand, through the adoption of a sarcastic and ironic tone, on the other, through the complex stylistic and rhetorical construction of the whole text. The analysis of these elements reveals more clearly some important overtones of Alberti’s uneasy political thought. The targets of the humanist’s bitter political reflection are mainly the conspirators, but also, more implicitly, the Curia. This critical perspective is framed through the sophisticated employment of specific classical references, some of them significantly drawn from satirical sources and combined with the predominant model of Sallust, which is always re-elaborated by the author in a personal way

The conflict after the Pazzi conspiracy and Poliziano's ‘Coniurationis commentarium’ : literature, law and politics

This article aims to analyse how and to what extent juridical and diplomatic issues influenced Angelo Poliziano's Coniurationis commentarium, the very famous literary account of the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici brothers (1478). Written immediately after the plot, Poliziano's work is a sophisticated literary transposition of the historical events and is conceived as the cornerstone of the Medici propaganda, aimed at supporting the Florentine government against the accusations by the instigators of the attack, Pope Sixtus IV and the King of Naples, Ferdinando of Aragon. In particular, the juridical controversy between Florence and Rome, which is built on different legal texts and doctrinal documents, plays a not irrelevant role in the composition of Poliziano's work. The Commentarium indeed shows unspoken but direct correlations with the legal consilia commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici from the most eminent Italian jurists, who formulated the Medici's official defence against the pope. Poliziano himself actively collaborated in the collection of these consilia and was influenced by diplomatic and legal issues also in the revision of his literary work two years after the composition, in 1480, in a changed political context

La virtù e la storia : il principe nel De Maiestate di Giuniano Maio

Il saggio presenta un’analisi del "De maiestate" di Giuniano Maio, importante trattato politico composto a Napoli nel 1492 e tramandato da un prezioso codice della Bibliothèque Nationale de France (ms. Italien, 1711). L’analisi esamina il canone delle virtù principesche definito da Maio e la loro illustrazione negli "exempla" storici all’interno del trattato, con particolare attenzione al recupero e alla rielaborazione delle fonti classiche e delle teorizzazioni coeve. Il modello di stato proposto dall’umanista, in particolare, risulta basato sui principi di organicismo e centralismo politico e sull’idea di un potere incarnato nella figura del "princeps"

A Digital Exploration of 16th-Century Heretical Networks in the Italian Medical Context: Methodological Challenges and Research Perspectives

After the Reformation began in 1517, Protestant ideas soon crossed the Alps and spread out of Italian cities, fascinating (especially, but not exclusively) the humanists and scholars who were part of the late-Renaissance intellectual environment. In particular, between the 1530s and the 1590s a great number of Italian physicians absorbed, promoted, and re-elaborated, often in radical terms, the reformed and heretical discourse. In this article I am presenting some research perspectives and methodological challenges concerning the application of social network research and digital humanities tools to the history of 16th-century religious dissent. In particular, I will discuss and examine the reconstruction, out of a sample of 200 cases, of a network of dissident physicians who faced religious repression and opposed dogmatic confessional boundaries in Italy, and in their European diaspora, as a part of my own ongoing interdisciplinary research

Mapping Heresy in Sixteenth-Century Venice

Drawing on a systematic study of the Savi sopra l’eresia archive in Venice, the most complete collection of historical records pertaining to Italian heretical movements and their repression, this article sketches the geography of heretical circles in Venice between the 1540s and the 1580s. The article puts space back into history and reads the history of religious dissent against the urban structure of sixteenth-century Venice, where streets and squares favored people’s encounters, allowing and fueling the exchange of information and the process of knowledge generation. Shifting the focus from people to places, and emphasizing fluidity and porosity, suggests new ways to pursue a more dynamic and performative conception of religious dissent

MECCANISMI COINVOLTI NELLA FORMAZIONE DEGLI INCLUSI NEURONALI NELLE CELLULE STRIATALI

Il sistema Ubiquitina-Proteasoma (UP) è un complesso proteolitico responsabile della degradazione intracellulare di proteine coinvolte nel mantenimento e nella regolazione di vari processi cellulari, come le proteine nucleari e quelle citosoliche La mancanza di dopamina riduce significativamente le alterazioni ultrastrutturali indotte nel tessuto striato dalla MET. Ciò suggerisce che l’integrità dei terminali dopaminergici striatali svolge un ruolo chiave nell’induzione degli effetti post-sinaptici della MET. La dopamina è richiesta per l’induzione di inclusi intracellulari in colture primarie di cellule striatali. Tali inclusioni sono positive per l’ubiquitina e per l’α-sinucleina. La morte cellulare e la formazione degli inclusi sono inversamente correlate, suggerendo che gli inclusi neuronali possano rappresentare una fase più leggera e/o precoce di tossicità e supportando l’ipotesi di un ruolo protettivo degli inclusi stessi. La formazione di inclusi neuronali è correlata alla inibizione del sistema UP. Gli effetti neurotossici della dopamina sulle cellule striatali sembra mediato dalla stimolazione selettiva dei recettori D1. L’inibizione di tali recettori riduce significativamente la morte cellulare indotta da alte dosi di dopamina e aumenta il numero di cellule con inclusi, suggerendo che il meccanismo di formazione delle inclusioni neuronali possa rappresentare una risposta protettiva per la cellula contro gli insulti neurotossici

Le monete alternative nel modello dell’amministrazione condivisa

Le istanze di partecipazione civica, di inclusione sociale e di sviluppo sostenibile, espresse dai cittadini che si attivano per il benessere della comunità, sono al centro, costituendone la linfa vitale, della “rivoluzione carsica” che caratterizza la nascita, sempre più frequente e diffusa, dei cosiddetti circuiti monetari alternativi. Si tratta di sistemi fondati su strumenti di pagamento complementari — che si aggiungono, integrandola, alla valuta ufficiale — concepiti per l’acquisto di beni e servizi all’interno di ambiti geografici generalmente circoscritti. In queste esperienze (nel mondo se ne contano più di cinquemila esempi), spesso limitate quanto a dimensione territoriale di riferimento, la moneta è concepita come un fatto sociale di cui il cittadino si riappropria, in un’ottica di reciprocità, per il perseguimento e la cura del bene comune, ovvero dell’interesse generale, che supera il mero “vantaggio” ottenuto dallo scambio di mercato. La novità e la differenza di cui si compone il concetto di “alternativa” dalle stesse proposto, pertanto, non sta solo nella distinzione rispetto alla moneta emessa dalla Banca centrale, avente corso legale — e dunque efficacia liberatoria, secondo l’articolo 1277 del codice civile — ma anche e soprattutto nelle finalità e nei principi che con tali strumenti si intendono affermare

Performing Power in Early Renaissance Italy: Princely Image and Consensus in Political Treatises

This article investigates how the idea of performing power becomes crucial in Italian Renaissance political thought. The analysis focuses on two pre-Machiavellian mirrors for princes written in the second half of the fifteenth century in the kingdom of Naples, under the Aragonese monarchy: Giovanni Pontano’s De principe (1465) and Giuniano Maio’s De maiestate (1492), respectively in Neo-Latin and the vernacular. These are the first Italian political treatises where the concept of majesty is systematically theorized and is linked with the practical aspects of the art of governing and the performance of power. In particular, the whole second part of Pontano’s text defines and illustrates the virtue of majesty as coinciding with the “external” image of princely rulership and with all concrete strategies deployed by the prince to gain consensus. This concept is recovered and emphasized in Maio’s De maiestate, the first treatise entirely devoted to this key aspect of kingship, to the extent that the figure of ideal princeps is encapsulated in the all-encompassing notion of majesty, the virtue that becomes the most important royal attribute. Thus, this new theory of statecraft, with a specific focus on the image that the ruler is able to give to his subjects and on the importance of the people’s consent, displays the emergence of a blossoming idea of political realism, which is specific to this age and context and would develop in more mature forms in the following century

Heretical Physicians in sixteenth-century Italy: the Fortunes of Girolamo Massari, Guglielmo Grataroli, and Teofilo Panarelli

Renaissance knowledge was not composed of disparate, specialist disciplines. In particular, medicine and religion were strongly interconnected, and in times of intellectual crisis, the turmoil occurring within one field could affect the other. Considering this, it is worth examining the intersection between the scientific and the religious, choosing Italian physicians as the primary characters of study. This paper considers the religious and scientific paths of three sixteenth-century heretical physicians who spent their lives in the Veneto and/or, during their religious exiles, in Basel. Taking into consideration these case-studies, I will discuss the extent to which \u201coutsider\u201d physicians could contribute to the rise of new conceptions of science and religious discourse

A Digital Exploration of 16th-Century Heretical Networks in the Italian Medical Context

After the Reformation began in 1517, Protestant ideas soon crossed the Alps and spread out of Italian cities, fascinating (especially, but not exclusively) the humanists and scholars who were part of the late-Renaissance intellectual environment. In particular, between the 1530s and the 1590s a great number of Italian physicians absorbed, promoted, and re-elaborated, often in radical terms, the reformed and heretical discourse. In this article I am presenting some research perspectives and methodological challenges concerning the application of social network research and digital humanities tools to the history of 16th-century religious dissent. In particular, I will discuss and examine the reconstruction, out of a sample of 200 cases, of a network of dissident physicians who faced religious repression and opposed dogmatic confessional boundaries in Italy, and in their European diaspora, as a part of my own ongoing interdisciplinary research