Rivista di letteratura storiografica italiana | 2018 | N. 2

Remarks on Dante in Dino Compagni’s chronicle · Through an analysis of the most significant passages in Dino Compagni’s Cronica this essay discusses the political and moral climate that characterized Florence and, more generally, both Italy and Europe between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. This analysis leads to an assessment of the impact that such a wide and complicated context had on Dante Alighieri, who reflected on these matters while in exile and in his Divine Comedy. Also, the essay highlights precious information on Dante’s life that one can find in Compagni’s Cronica.

This essay highlights and discusses both similaritiesvand differences between the chronicles of Giovanni and Matteo Villani. In doing so, it focuses on the originality of each work and the different strategies to promote their circulation. In regard to the former, both writers succeed at adapting their style to the main cultural climate of the time, which was mostly shaped by Dante for Giovanni and by Boccaccio for Matteo. As for the latter, both Giovanni and Matteo organized efficient scriptoria that put their works on the market shortly after reaching a definite editorial stage (as revealed by the respective manuscripts). Despite these differences, both chroniclers strove to provide fellow Florentines with a set of moral exemplars that would also serve as a means of propaganda for their city.

This article has grown out of the author’s dissertation project entitled A Greek in the City – Thucydides between Leonardo Bruni and Niccolò Machiavelli. By viewing Bruni as a subtle reader of Thucydides, the author suggests that the digression on Etruscan history and topography in the first book of the History of the Florentine People should be read against the backdrop of Thucydides’ Archaeology. In this light, Bruni’s passage on Etruscan culture and its legacy can be seen as a powerful message for those Florentines who were seeking a new civic identity at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

This essay gathers several preparatory studies in view of a new, annotated edition of Cardinal Bessarion’s letters. The opening section contextualizes Bessarion’s figure from a historical point of view. The central part addresses several issues concerning the text, the transmission, and the order of this humanist’s letters. An in-depth discussion of Bessarion’s dedication letters follows, with particular emphasis on the dedication of his Adversus calumniatorem Platonis to the Sicilian humanist Ludovico Saccano. The closing section analyzes the historical and philosophical importance of the Greek Cardinal’s letters. The essay also provides an edition of several (previously unpublished) epistles from Bessarion to Ludovico Gonzaga, Girolamo Guarini, Nicodemo Tranchedini, and Giovanni Arcimboldi.

The redactional layers of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s De Europa · This article investigates (from a philological and historical point of view) both the structure as well as the text of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s De Europa (1458). Through a survey of his previous literary production (Historia Bohemica, Historia Austrialis and Germania), the essay tackles the issue of this work’s various redactions. In particular, the research discusses the thesis put forth by Nicola Casella. According to Casella, the final section of De Europa (which contains a description of the Italian States) had been written before the former, where transalpine peoples are treated.

This article examines Mario Salomoni degli Alberteschi’s Orationes ad priores florentinos and De principatu. More specifically, it provides an edition of one of Alberteschi’s speeches (the Oratio de nobilitate rei publicae florentinae), identifies its sources, and puts it in the context of the author’s term as “Capitano del Popolo” in Florence from 21 October 1498 to 20 April 1499. In addition, this article aims to highlight the ideological continuity between the orations that Alberteschi recited while serving in Florence and his later De principatu (1511-1513), a dialogue on the nature, role, tasks of princes as well as their relations with the people that – according to Alberteschi – they are expected to serve.

In this essay the director of the “Biblioteca Riccardiana” publishes and comments on a previously unknown sonnet by the Italian writer Renato Fucini (1843-1921). Fucini wrote this playful poem and sent it to his friend Laura Milani Comparetti while vacationing on the Tuscan coast in the summer of 1906. In February 2017 Clara Frontali (a descendant of Mrs. Milani Comparetti) donated to the “Biblioteca Riccardiana” all the letters and the poems that Fucini and her ancestor exchanged in the early twentieth century. Among those documents is the autograph sonnet on the Vada beacon (a few miles off the Leghorn coast) that is published here for the first time.

The Mafia has been studied by criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, journalists, mafiologists of every type, and even psychoanalysts and psychologists. These scholars and authors have produced an overabundance of literature that is difficult to navigate. In addition, several historians have attempted to introduce their voices into such as vast literature. This essay explores the main achievements and problems of Mafia historiography, comparing the results obtained by historians with each other, as well as with those reached by scholars of other disciplines. In general, it seems possible to distinguish two historiographical families, the principal difference between the two being the definition of “Mafia” itself.