Memorie
Fulvio Delle Donne, Il trionfo, l’incoronazione mancata, la celebrazione letteraria: i paradigmi della propaganda di Alfonso il Magnanimo
The triumph celebrated by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1443 was an exceptional moment in the history of the kingdom of Naples. On the one hand, it was a joyous feast, an unprecedented public spectacle, but, on the other hand, it replaced the ceremony of the royal coronation: by choice of Alfonso himself, the ceremony never took place. If the sacred liturgy of the coronation would have represented an act of submission to an oftentimes contested papal authority, the secular liturgy of the triumph, with its references to the Roman tradition, immediately pointed to the propagandistic line that the Magnanimous and his learned humanists would follow: a line linking the aspirations of the new king and the glories of the ancient emperors.
Angela Orlandi, Al soffio degli Alisei. Mercanti fiorentini tra Siviglia e il Nuovo Mondo
This study intervenes in the debate concerning the crisis of the Mediterranean world and its merchant-bankers following the European expansion into the New World, shedding a new light on the presence and the role of Florentine merchants in Andalusia during the sixteenth century. Their business strategy was more successful than previously thought: this assumption comes from comparisons between quantitative data or descriptions offered by sources contained in Tuscan archives, and the written documentation kept in the Spanish archives. Their networks – which included the main economic hubs of Europe – and the financial instruments they would use, allowed the Tuscan merchants to play a role of paramount importance in the Andalusian market. In addition, they invested money in the transatlantic trade, in the manufacturing activities of the West Indies and, in general, in other financial and insurance enterprises.
Lara Marchi, L’organizzazione del lavoro all’interno della Segreteria del Regio Diritto nella Toscana granducale tra XVII e XVIII secolo
The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the evolution and organization of activities in the “Auditorato dei benefici ecclesiastici” (the future Secretariat of the Royal Law), an institution erected in the Sixteenth century by the Medici Grand Dukes in order to manage State-Church relationships in Tuscany. Our attention in this regard has focused on two aspects: on the one hand, on the State and its role in the transformation of the Auditorato into a Secretariat, i.e. from a simple task, assigned to trusted men of the Grand Duke, to an actual ministry, whose roles and salaries were better structured; on the other hand, on the profiles of the officials and bureaucrats who brought the State to the threshold of modernity, while at the same time making the institutions more and more suitable to their daily needs. Both these trends have undoubtedly made the Secretariat one of the better organized institutions in Tuscany, according to the judgement of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo.
Documenti
Silio P. P. Scalfati, I falsi nei privilegi della ‘deutsche Königsherrschaft’ di Federico II
This study examines the false privileges relative to the period of the German reign of Emperor Frederik II Hohenstaufen. For the years 1212-1220 about 500 documents are extant, and they have recently been published in two volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Among the documents published there are about twenty false diplomas, the majority of which favour German and Italian monasteries. The abbots and the priors of these religious bodies had the false documents made in order to gain possession of lands and palaces, and to obtain the protection of kings and emperors, as well as rights of various kind. In this way the ecclesiastics became holders of conspicuous patrimonies and wealth, and could enjoy an important and privileged position in medieval society.
Discussioni
Rita Mazzei, La Ferrara di Ercole II (1534-1559). A proposito di un recente studio sugli ebrei a Ferrara
Recensioni
Condannare all’oblio. Pratiche della damnatio memoriae nel medioevo (Francesco Pirani)
Francesco Salvestrini, I Vallombrosani in Liguria. Storia di una presenza monastica fra XII e XVII secolo (Valeria Polonio)
Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, L’autre Rome. Une histoire des Romains à l’époque communale (Sergio Tognetti)
Fabrizio Titone, Governments of the Universitates. Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Francesco Barone)
Alison Brown, The Returm of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Fulvio Delle Donne)
Alessandro Pastore, Veleno. Credenze, crimini, saperi nell’Italia moderna (Francesco Ciuti)
Notizie
Archivio Storico Italiano – ISSN 0391-7770