GRICE ITALICO A/Z M4

 

si nella storia. E perciò la storia  umana è una storia naturale di tempo e di spazio, è una  cronologia e una geografìa. La storia umana e la storia della  natura, essendo creata dal pensiero, è in ogni sua fase totale  e universale ; solamente non appare e non diventa reale che  in certi punti di tempo e di spazio: in certe epoche, in  certi luoghi, in certi corpi e in certi ii.   È facile scorgere che M. non è felice quando vuole  risalire ai principi sui quali ha fondata la sua costruzione.  Invero non si capisce come quel suo pensiero originario,  avendo nel senso un limite interno, possa non avere anche  un limite esterno, e tutta la natura, che invece deve ancora  nascere; ne si capisce come quel pensiero, a furia di premere  e caricare sul proprio limite, possa fare del senso-pensiero  un senso-senso, possa, in altre parole, trasformarsi da forza  in materia. Ma l'Autore non ha il più lontano dubbio di  star tentando la soluzione di un problema forse insolubile,  certo insoluto. Che forza e materia sieno due cose distinte  ed opposte, ma unite ed identiche è per lui una verità certa,  positiva, reale. Egli dichiara che non ha la pretesa di di-  mostrare, ma solo di far presentire la verità, come la pre-  sente egli stesso: e certo di quella verità da lui pre-  sentita non riesce a dare una dimostrazione logica. In una  pagina che onora il suo senso poetico più che la sua    GENTILE, LA FILOSOFIA ITALIANA. V. Forza e materia, I  naturalisti, Dialogo] profondità filosofica, egli afferma che il corpo è un vegetale,  è l'inferno, l'anima è parte materiale e parte immateriale  ma sempre naturale, il pensiero è il paradiso, e di pensiero  noi siamo tutti uni in Dio ; e per descrivere il suo paradiso  tratteggia con poche belle linee il paradiso dantesco. Come  Dante non può significar per verba il trasumanare, così egli  stesso non può chiarirci come 1' universo si unifichi nel-  l'uomo; solo ci dice con slancio lirico che quella è la sua  fede. Alla fede in quanto è davvero tale e solo tale, ed  è ardente, profonda, incrollabile, sarebbe certo vano, se  pur fosse possibile, 1' opporre argomentazioni. Ma ai principi che di quella fede sono oggetto, e vengono posti a fon-  damento di una costruzione scientifico-filosofica, si può e si  deve chiedere se sieno suscettibili di avere dall'esperienza  una conferma o dalla logica una dimostrazione.   La risposta è negativa.  Quanto alla conferma dell'esperienza, M. dice che con le idee si scopre, è vero, la sostanza delle forme  e si tien dietro al loro movimento essenziale ; ma il controllo  è la stessa realtà che deve rimanere inalterata ed intatta,  ed è il fatto che deve essere riprodotto nella sua integrità,  e con tutte le sue condizioni essenziali. Ma se l'Autore  ammette l'esistenza di realtà e di fatti che non sono idee,  e che solo con le idee possono venir scoperti nella loro  sostanza e seguiti nel loro movimento, dovrebbe indicare  un terzo termine, atto a valutare la rispondenza fra gli altri  due. Non lo indica. Ma è chiaro che il terzo termine non  può essere per lui che la stessa idea, giudice e parte in  causa. Il controllo di cui egli ha parlato manca; e non  poteva non mancare. Nell'ambito dell'idealismo assoluto non  può esistere un controllo esterno, ne si può senza essere  [I tipi animali. Cfr. Dopo la laurea, Le opere scientifiche e la filosofia della natura. incoerenti ammettere l'esistenza di una realtà che non sia  l'idea o il pensiero.Quanto alla dimostrazione logica dei suoi principi, abbiamo veduto che le rare volte in cui M. la tenta  non la raggiunge, e cade in contraddizioni, come quando,  dopo aver affermato che il pensiero è l'essere, ne ragiona  come di un pensiero che pensa l'essere, e considera l'essere  come puro essere e non pensiero ('); o incorre in errori,  come quando afferma che il pensiero originario ha nel senso  un limite interno senza avere un limite esterno; ovvero si  appiglia ad ipotesi degne di un alchimista ostinato alla ri-  cerca della pietra filosofale, come è quella della forza che  diviene materia premendo e calcando sul suo proprio limite. La sua filosofìa della natura, riposando su principi che  possono essere oggetto di fede, ma non possono avere dal-  l'esperienza un controllo né dal ragionamento una conferma,  è una costruzione che può essere, ed è difatto, ingegnosa  e bella, ma è del tutto arbitraria. Di ciò mai ebbe alcun  sospetto l'Autore, sempre fermo nella sua fede hegeliana,  vita della sua vita, anima della sua anima. Egli non  intendeva di cercare una soluzione nuova; solo si proponeva  di svolgere ed elaborare una soluzione già da altri raggiunta.  La sua opera è fallita perchè aveva come presupposto e come  base quella conciliazione dell'essere e del pensiero, della  forza e della materia, che contrariamente a quanto egli cre-  deva non era stata raggiunta da nessuno, e meno che mai po-  teva esserlo da chi, avendo studiata analiticamente la natura,  si ribellava a tagliare il nodo gordiano negando la natura  stessa o riducendola a una mera forma spirituale. Deus creavit.  Forza e materia. Della medicina sperimentale, p. 3 ; e cfr. tutte le opere di M. M.  non è d'accordo col Berkeley, che « sopprime la natura»;   Del Vecchio Veneziani Una costruzione speculativa della natura, quale l'idea-  lismo assoluto e la riduzione della natura a pensiero esigono,  dev'essere tutta una deduzione necessaria per considerarsi  compiuta e riuscita. E in una deduzione logica e necessaria  l'accidente come tale non può trovar luogo. Non si dimentichi, del resto, die l'idea dominante in  tutte le assidue e lunghe meditazioni del M. intorno  alla natura, l'idea informativa di tutti i suoi studi era, come  egregiamente la definiva Fiorentino, « l'idea di con-  trapporre al predominio dell’accidente, che è il lato debole  del darwinismo, una spiegazione più intima e più razionale  delle forme, attraverso delle quali progredisce e si dispiega  la vita della natura... una ragione superiore, che regola lo  sviluppo dei tipi della vita naturale, finche non si dispieghi,  e non si allarghi nell’uomo e nella coscienza. Si trattava dunque per M. di superare quello  scoglio contro il quale, a suo vedere, naufragava il darwini-  smo; di evitare la trasformazione dell' accidente in Deus  ex machina, al quale far ricorso perchè o dove non soccorra  una ragione superiore o una spiegazione più intima e razionale.   M. appunto dice e ridice, anche per quanto si  riferisce alla natura, che la filosofia vive nella sfera della  necessità e della certezza assoluta; ma in contrasto con  questa esigenza afferma anche l’indispensabilità dell’accidente in tutti i momenti della creazione. Ora l'accidente,  che è dichiarato indispensabile, o è razionalmente necessario,  cioè deducibile a priori, e allora deve rientrare nella costruzione speculativa come elemento interno, e non esteriore, sicché non può più dirsi propriamente accidentale. O è la né col Fichte, nel cui sistema la natura c'è soltanto quanto basta per far  la coscienza, ed è quindi ridotta ad una espressione astratta. Cfr. Prenozioni, La filosofia contemporanea in Italia,  Dopo la laurea, negazione della necessità razionale e della deduzione a  priori, ed in questo caso la dichiarazione della sua indispen-  sabilità costituisce il confessato fallimento della costruzione  speculativa. M. oscilla fra le due alternative, senza  sapersi appigliare né all'una né all'altra. Questa non meno di quella avrebbe significato il riconoscimento della contraddittorietà della sua impresa.  Invero l'accidente sembra necessario per lui a costituire  nella catena dello sviluppo creativo l'anello iniziale e gli  anelli di saldatura tra i frammenti non altrimenti congiungibili. L'anello iniziale, poich'egli dice che quando non  c'era la natura e quindi l'accidente » era impossibile al-  l'uomo (ossia all'idea di Uomo, che come fine deve prece-  dere e determinare lo sviluppo), senza arbitrio e « senza in-  flusso di esterno accidente, di scegliere un punto del tempo  e dello spazio in cui operare la iniziale trasformazione della  materia semplice in corpo semplice. Gli anelli di salda-  tura, in quanto dice che l'accidente, elemento costitutivo  della natura, è necessariamente compreso nel processo della  funzion ; che ogni tipo vivente è già idealmente quello  che dee succedergli, ma non basta a crearlo, a produrlo real-  mente nella natura, senza il concorso di cause accidentali e  d'esterni influssi ». E in generale tutto il processo e lo  sviluppo della natura per M. consegue la realtà solo in quanto l'accidente interviene e concorre con l'idea alla  produzione del risultato. Il fatto è anche idea, ma l'idea  non è reale e non esiste che nel fatto; « il principio  e la potenza della vita... è sempre unito a un qualche  elemento materiale e meccanico che lo fa reale e particolare, che è quanto dire individuale ed accidentale. Forza e materia,  / mammiferi. Prelezione al corso di fisiologia dato nella R. Un. di Modena.  Degli elementi della medicina. Le opere scientifiche e la filosofia della natura. M. considera i vari tipi carne momenti evolutivi di un  tipo ideale assoluto, l'uomo eterno. Crede che tutte le forme  preesistano in forme germinali di cui sono lo sviluppo creativo interno e spontaneo. Ma la creazione non consiste soltanto, nella determinazione ideale originaria di quegli schemi  indeterminatissimi », sì anche nella loro delimitazione naturale, o sia accidentale. E molte volte ripete che la natura  è accidente e che l'idea spirituale esiste solo legata all'accidente. Ma qui appunto si potrebbe obiettare alla nostra osservazione, che noi dobbiamo approfondire il concetto del-  l'accidente che M. afferma. Legato all'idea, intrin-  seco alla natura, l'accidente che egli fa entrare in campo a  determinare e spiegare lo sviluppo non è, come l'accidente  dei darwiniani, puramente estrinseco e meccanico. Ha anzi  esso medesimo una necessità interiore ; è il momento della  antitesi, senza il quale non potrebbe svolgersi la sintesi crea-  tiva. L'uomo eterno, dice appunto M., è « la forma,  l'anima, la forza, la spontaneità pura, assoluta, in cui lo stesso accidente, il limite indifferente, l'assoluta particolarità  esiste, ma nella forma di principio, di universalità, di necessità : ed è in questa contraddizione che consiste la sua attività  creatric. Per questa via parrebbe risolversi la difficoltà nella quale  ci appare impigliato la filosofia di M.. Che se anche  altrove egli identifica il puro accidentale col male, non vi  sarebbe contraddizione con la universalità e necessità rico-  nosciuta sopra all'accidente; ma distinzione di due specie  di accidenti o di nature: l'interna e l'esterna; necessaria la  prima, accidentale in senso proprio la seconda. M. difatti parla esplicitamente di una natura esterna che viene  Deus creavit,  (/ tipi ammali. Le opere scientifiche e la filosofia della natura. a dare l'ultima mano alla natura interna, di un agente esterno  ed accidentale che non era compreso nel processo della  natura interna, non era calcolato nella evoluzione vitale, e  oltre a modificare, sia pur solo superficialmente e quantita-  tivamente, le forme, e favorire la trasformazione, e provocare  la nuova interna creazione e lo sviluppo di germi latenti,  « può fare e fa certamente di più, v'introduce qualche cosa  di accidentale e di naturale ». Di fronte a questo accidente,  esterno sta l'interno : « vi è già — soggiunge M. —  nella forma latente un principio di accidente. Essa è semplice ed una, ma nella sua unità vi è un germe di differenza  e di moltiplicità, vi è l'attitudine e la disposizione a dividersi  in molti e diversi, ed è un accidente indeterminato e scolorato, pura possibilità di farsi, più che non è, accidentale. L’accidente esterno feconda 1' accidente interno e gli dà  corpo e colore, e ne fa una realità accidentale e naturale. Gli agenti esterni stimolano, promuovono, determinano, ma Dio opera la trasformazione. L'accidente  può render conto delle differenze secondarie, non giunge ai  veri gradi della formazione. Esiste dunque una storia  interna, essenziale, ed una esterna, accidentale; ed esistono due sorta di accidente: uno necessario ed essenziale,  l'altro secondario e individuale: il primo, l'accidente  necessario, assoluto, realizza l'evoluzione creativa ideale,  intrinseca, assoluta della forma animale; accompagna ogni  realtà, circoscrive esteriormente le forme, e fa esistere gli  individui; l'altro, l'accidente accidentale, nasce dall'intreccio dei processi e dal cozzo inevitabile delle cause na- [Lettera sulla patologia storica] Cfr. Deus creavit, passim. Dopo la laurea, tipi animali, tipi animali, Cfr. Deus creavit, Deus creavit, Le opere scientifiche e la filosofia della naturatura] li, delle quali una è la darwiniana concorrenza vitale, da  cui deriva la formazione delle varietà, delle specie, dei ge-  neri, ma la sua azione non potrebbe estendersi fino ai tipi. La natura finisce per essere, come la società umana, una  lotteria. Finisce, ma non comincia; e non è una lotteria da  capo a fondo », perchè ha le sue basi ideali e le sue leggi necessarie. Se non che arrivati a questo punto noi possiamo doman-  darci : l'obiezione che abbiam detto potersi muovere al nostro  rilievo delle difficoltà inerenti al pensiero del M., è  veramente risolutiva? Questo approfondimento del concetto  di accidente, questa distinzione delle due specie di esso,  interna o necessaria ed esterna o accidentale, elimina vera-  mente la contraddizione nella quale ci era sembrato che questa  filosofia della natura si involgesse ? L’accidente interno consiste nella indeterminazione e  molteplice possibilità della forma latente. Ma intanto M. più volte afferma che senza il concorso di esterno accidente la possibilità non passerebbe all'atto, non si farebbe  realtà di natura. Tra la potenza e l'atto bisogna che s'inserisca un mediatore perchè il passaggio avvenga. Sicché l'accidente esterno è da lui riconosciuto indispensabile non sol-  tanto per l'esistenza degli individui, ma anche per la produzione reale dei tipi nella natura. E del resto la stessa  molteplice possibilità in cui è fatto consistere l'accidente  necessario, del pari che l'intreccio dei processi dal quale si  fa nascere l’accidente accidentale, possono essere a loro  posto in una concezione puramente causale e meccanica della  natura (per esempio in quella cartesiana), ma non sono più  a posto in una dottrina finalistica, nella quale il termine finale, l'uomo eterno, pre-esiste a tutto il processo di sviluppo e lo  genera esso medesimo. Voler dimostrare che nella natura si compie uno sviluppo  teleologico, e non saper negare che vi sia anche qualche cosa  di ciò che il Darwin vi scorge, ossia che la natura finisce per  essere, come la società umana, una lotteria, è contraddizione  non conciliabile tra l'intenzione e il resultato.   E si potrebbe anche aggiungere che una contraddizione è  nello stesso intervento dell' accidente esterno a spiegare la  patologia. L'intero edinzio della patologia storica costruito  dal M. crollerebbe, se non intervenisse l'accidente accidentale, perchè solo «se l'accidente, esterno o interno che sia, se la irragionevole cattiva natura interviene,  e rompe la legge, e viola la ragione; se l'arbitrio umano o  naturale modifica la qualità della causa motrice, e ne muta  la relazione, e ne altera la proporzione con la interna sfera  umana, questa si altera e si disordina. Ora si ricordi che  per M.  la malattia corrisponde al passaggio dall'in-  nocenza alla colpa, a cui succede il passaggio ad una forma  superiore d'innocenza, alla libertà. Se questa forma superiore,  che è il fine dello sviluppo, non è raggiungibile che attraverso  a questo processo, il processo è necessario, e necessari, non  accidentali sono i suoi momenti : la tesi, l'antitesi e la sintesi.  Ma allora come può il momento dell'antitesi essere un ac-  cidente violatore della ragione ? In un idealismo assoluto, e  particolarmente nel ritmo dialettico che si svolge nel movi-  mento degli opposti, il momento negativo non è meno neces-  sario che il positivo a dare con la negazione della negazione  la più alta realtà. Come può dunque in questa concezione  filosofica trovar luogo l'accidente accidentale di M.? Come può un accidente siffatto, cioè un accidente  estrinseco, che rompe la necessità e viola la ragione, essere  costitutivo della natura quale dev'essere intesa in un idealismo  assoluto, cioè come pensiero o ragione ? [Delle prime linee della patologia storica]. Queste contraddizioni si collegano con una profonda, in-  conciliabile contraddizione interna del pensiero di M..  È in fondo il contrasto fra il naturalista e il filosofo idealista,  contrasto che si svolge anche nell'antitesi fra l'ardente e  costante aspirazione a ricongiungere ed unificare la fisiologia  con la filosofia, e lo scrupolo della divisione del lavoro, che  talvolta si riaffaccia: la metafisica ai metafisici, a noi la  fisiologia. Questo è il suo conflitto intemo non superata,  che si potrebbe estendere ben oltre il suo caso individuale. Invero se la natura è, come M. sostiene, idea e  natura a un tempo, la divisione del lavoro non è possibile:  il fisiologo non può essere tale se non è prima filosofo; la  fisiologia non può essere costruita se non è costruita prima la  metafisica. E costruita non da altri, ma dal fisiologo stesso,  come altrove M. riconosce. Perchè, secondo il  principio vichiano ed hegeliano, per M. il fare soltanto ci dà il vero conoscere : criterio del vero è il farlo. Dal che sarebbero pure derivate conseguenze contrarie  alle conclusioni di M. intorno ai rapporti fra la teoria  e la pratica medica. Infatti come può la separazione della  jatrofilosofia dall'attività del medico pratico conciliarsi con  l'unità del vero col fatto? Se la vera scienza è la storia,  perchè è la realtà vivente, non varrà anche per la jatrofilosofia la massima che criterio del vero è il farlo ? E non sarà  quindi contraddittorio il dichiararla disgiunta dalla pratica,  e quindi inutile come tutte le cose eccellenti, virtù, giustizia,  arte, religione, scienza ? Ed ecco il criterio della verità della  jatrofilosofia nella pratica, nella clinica, nella cura delle ma-  lattie, secondo voleva TOMASSI. Anche qui M. Lettere fisiologiche, Cfr. Dopo la laurea, là dove si riconosce come necessaria, sia pur soltanto al sapere positivo, la divisione del lavoro. [Idea della fisiologia greca ; e altrove. La natura medicatrice e la storia della medicina] mostra di non aver raggiunta la piena coerenza del suo pen-  siero, né la piena consapevolezza delle esigenze dei suoi  principi. Egli, come ogni naturalista, riconosce la funzione del-  l' accidente ; ma il rapporto e il contrasto fra il necessario  e l'accidentale, fra ciò che è conoscibile e costruibile a priori  e ciò che è dato solo dall'osservazione sperimentale, rimane in  lui insoluto. Ed egli non riesce a vincere le difficoltà che anche  Hegel aveva incontrate nel costruire la sua filosofìa della na-  tura, la quale è certo la parte più debole del suo sistema. L'errore fondamentale del M. è consistito in questo :  che egli ha attribuite le deficenze della filosofìa della natura  hegeliana a cause fortuite e soggettive, e non ha scorto che  le cause erano intrinseche al sistema, per se stesso tale da non  consentire che vi fosse inquadrata una filosofia della natura  compiuta, razionale e concreta ad un tempo. E andò cercando  per tutta la vita una soluzione non raggiunta ancora, sempre  credendo di lavorare solo alla dimostrazione e alle applica-  zioni di quella, che egli stimava già scoperta da Hegel. Grice: “De Meis’s theory resembles my pirotological progression, heavily! I like his generalisations. I wish we had at Oxford such a freedom to generalise!” -- Camillo De Meis. Angelo Camillo De Meis. Meis. Keywords: implicature, citato da Pirandello in “Il fu Mattia Pascal” “Chi lo dice? – gli domanda forte il giovane, fermo, con aria di sfida. Quegli allora si volta per gridargli: “Camillo De Meis!” –-- Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e e Meis” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Melandri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- le forme dell’analogia – analogia nel convito di Platone – Reale -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Genova). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “One of the ten items he lists in his ‘Contro lo simbolico’ is ‘lo simbolico’ itself!” -- Grice: “Melandri takes analogy more seriously than I did – I do list ‘analogy’ as part of what I call ‘philosophical eschatology – the third branch of metaphysics, along with ontology and category study.” Grice: “Melandri focuses on the Graeco-Roman tradition of analogy, which he pairs with two other concepts: proportion, and symmetry – re-interpreting mainly Aquino’s reading of the Aristotelian tradition in a semiotic approach.” Grice: “Melandri also takes Kant seriously on this.” Grice: “If an Italian philosopher wrote ‘contro la comunicazione,’ another wrote ‘contro il simbolico’!” --  Grice: “He has studied Buehler; I like that!” Laureatosi a 'Bologna, è lettore a Kiel in Germania. Insegna poi a Lecce, Trieste e Bologna. Parallelamente all'attività universitaria, collabora con Mulino e alla rivista omonima, per le quali ha svolto attività di consulenza, con traduzioni e curatele, pubblicando con essa alcuni dei suoi saggi. I suoi saggi vertono sulla fenomenologia di Husserl, sul concetto di analogia e sul principio di simmetria. Tra le sue curatele, anche presso altre case editrici -- Cappelli, Faenza, Laterza, Ponte alle Grazie, Giuffrè, Pitagora ecc. -- ci sono studi che vanno dalla scienza politica di Ritter e di Habermas, alla fenomenologia di  Schütz, dalla logica di Copilowski e dalla filosofia del linguaggio do Hoffmann o dai paradossi di Bolzano (e poi la storia della logica di Scholz), agli studi di metodologia scientifica di Pap, a quelli di psicologia della percezione di Meinong o di Ehrenfels, e dall'estetica di Trier alla metaforologia» di Blumenberg ecc.  Ha istituito un gruppo di studi su Leibniz, in seguito affiliato col nome di «Sodalitas Leibnitiana» alla Leibniz-Gesellschaft di Hannover. Ha anche collaborato attivamente alle attività del Centro di studi per la filosofia mitteleuropea con sede a Trento; partecipando  alla realizzazione della rivista Topoi. Da vita agl’Annali dell'Istituto di discipline filosofiche dell'Bologna, poi trasformatisia nella rivista semestrale «Discipline filosofiche», ancora attiva e di cui è stato il direttore. Tra i suoi saggi, spicca per centralità di pensiero “La linea e il circolo,” definito d’Agamben un capolavoro della filosofia.  Il filo conduttore di tutta la riflessione di M. è il rapporto tra pensiero logico e pensiero analogico. Mentre la logica tende a svilupparsi mediante un concetto d'identità elementare, legato alla discontinuità del principio di non-contraddizione, l’ANALOGIA si fonda invece sul principio di continuità, legato alla figura oppositiva della contrarietà, che ammette una transizione tra gl’opposti. Ora, queste due forme di ragionamento non sono affatto inconciliabili, ma complementari, in quanto fondate, non su una struttura assiomatica, ma su una diversa direzione costitutiva dell'esperienza. Questa diversità prospettica si realizza, secondo M., nella fenomenologia husserliana, di cui egli tende a evidenziare l'empirismo radicale connesso alle strutture costitutivo-trascendentali della soggettività e ben distinto, dunque, da quell'idealismo entro cui troppo spesso si è voluto rubricare l'atteggiamento fenomenologico. In ultima istanza, congiungendo istanze aristoteliche e husserliane, M. assume una concezione dell'essere fondamentalmente equivoca, nell'ambito della quale l'intenzionalità si presenta, al tempo stesso, come principio formale logico e funtore operativo analogico. Inoltre, M. espone questi contenuti filosofici attraverso un metodo d'indagine e d'insegnamento del tutto particolare, che viene così descritto da Besoli, filosofo a Bologna. A lezione, si può dire che M. non parlas, ma pensas ad alta voce dando l'illusione, quanto mai benefica ed essenzialmente terapeutica, di pensare insieme con lui. Si ha l'impressione di assistere, dunque, a un pensiero in corso d'opera, e più propriamente ciò che accade e un'esperienza di pensiero condivisa, giacché la condivisione e appunto la condizione stessa della buona riuscita di tale esperienza  Altri saggi: “I paradossi dell'infinito nell'orizzonte fenomenologico,” -- introduzione a Bolzano, “I paradossi dell'infinito”, Cappelli, Bologna; “Logica ed esperienza,” “La scienza come criterio storio-grafico,” “Note in margine all'organon dei peripatetici; “Considerazioni critiche sui syn-categorematica – co-predicabili – negazione come avverbio, la congiunzione ‘e’ come co-predicabili, la disgiunzione ‘o’ come co-predicabili, l’implicazione ‘se’ come co-predicabile -- ” in "Lingua e stile", “Esistenzialismo,” “Logica e Logistica”  Enciclopedia “Filosofia,” Preti, Feltrinelli, Milano; “Psicologia galileiana” -- poi in Sette variazioni in tema di psicologia e scienze sociali; “Foucault: l'epistemologia delle scienze umane", in «Lingua e stile». “E corretto l'uso dell'analogia nel diritto? Zoon Politikon. Bolk e l'antropo-genesi, Che Fare, “La linea e il circol: studio logico-filosofico sull'analogia, Bologna: Mulino  rist. Macerata: Quodlibet, prefazione d’Agamben, appendice di  Besoli e Brigati, Limongi. Nota in margine all'episteme di Foucault, Lingua e stile, La realtà e l'immagine, in Barth, Verità e ideologia; Sulla crisi attuale della filosofia, Mulino,  L'analogia, la proporzione, la simmetria, Isedi, Milano. I generi letterari e la loro origine, Lingua e stile, Quodlibet, Macerata, L'inconscio e la dialettica, Bologna: Cappelli, Freud: L'inconscio e la dialettica, Sette variazioni in tema di psicologia e scienze sociali, Bologna: Pitagora;  L'inconscio e la dialettica, Macerata: Quodlibet. Bühler. La crisi della psicologia come introduzione a una nuova teoria linguistica, in Animo ed esattezza. Letteratura e scienza, Marietti: Casale Monferrato, Variazioni in tema di psicologia e scienze sociali, Pitagora, Bologna; Matematica e logica in psicologia: applicazione propria determinante o im-propria analogico-riflettente, L'inconscio e la dialettica, Macerata: Quodlibet, Per una filologia del sublime, in "Studi di estetica" (Grice: “I like that; surely there must be an ordinary unpompous way to say or mean ‘sublime’” – “Go thorugh the dictionary!” -- La novità degl’ultimi tremila anni, Mulino", "Faenza" e Marisa Vescovo, L’oblio affligge la memoria; La comunicazione e la retorica, Contro il simbolico. Lezioni di filosofia, -- Grice: “The ten ‘concepts’ he chooses are less important than the generic remarks he makes about the whole ten.” Grice: “While in his study on ‘analogia, proporzione, simmetria,’ he is semiotic, in this one he is thoroughly hermeneutic!” -- Quodlibet, Macerata, postfazione di Guidetti; Sul concetto di descrizione nella psicologia fenomenologica, in "Intersezioni", Su quel che è dato” (Grice: “A good analysis of a phrase I overuse, ‘datum,’ as per sense-datum’! in "erri", Le ricerche logiche di Husserl: introduzione e commento, Mulino, Bologna, Su quel che c'è, e quel che immaginiamo che ci sia, o della principale equi-vocazione del termine 'rappresentazione')", in Discipline filosofiche, Il problema della comunicazione, Paradigmi, Tempo e temporalità nell'orizzonte fenomenologico, Discipline filosofiche, La crisi dei grandi sistemi e l'avvento della filosofia esistenziale, Questo nostro tempo -- studi e riflessioni sull'evolversi della nostra epoca” (Bologna); Filosofia come critica della conoscenza e impegno interdisciplinare, Tratti, Besoli, Il percorso intellettuale, in Studi su M., Faenza, Agamben, Archeologia di un'archeologia, in M., La linea e il circolo. Studio logico-filosofico sull'analogia, Macerata: Quodlibet, Agamben, Al di là dei generi letterari, in M., I generi letterari e la loro origine, Macerata: Quodlibet,  Ambrosetti, Sugli stoici, Roma: Aracne; Ambrosetti, Una lettura di Epitteto", in "dianoia", Besoli, "Il percorso fenomenologico", in  La fenomenologia in Italia. Autori, scuole, tradizioni, Roma: Inschibboleth; Besoli e Paris (Faenza: Polaris); Bonfanti, Le forme dell'analogia. Roma: Aracne. Cimatti, "Postfazione: Psicoanalisi e rivoluzione", in L'inconscio e la dialettica, Macerata: Quodlibet  sinistra in rete.info cultura’ Lagna e Lévano, "Contro l’isomorfismo. Il rapporto soggetto-oggetto, Philosophy Kitchen, Matteuzzi, "Prefazione", in Ambrosetti, Sugli stoici, Roma: Aracne); Palombini, "Dal chiasma ontologico al chiasma trascendentale. Forme di razionalità in «Philosophy Kitchen», Possati, La ripetizione creatrice. lo spazio dell'analogia, Milano-Udine: Mimesis. Sini, "Lo schematismo figurale", in Besoli e Paris. Solerio, Le opere di  M. edite da Quodlibet, edizione completa. Discipline Filosofiche, rivista di filosofia. Enzo Melandri. Melandri. Keywords: Bühler, l’aggetivo ‘galileano’ -- le forme dell’analogia, Grice – analogia – problema della comunicazione, Buehler, teoria di Buehler, analogical unification, lacomunicazione, implicaturaproblematica, aquino, kant, mill, jevons, maxwell, Perelman, abcd, haenssler, dorolle, lyttkens, Reichenbach, newton, cellucci, marramao, aristotele, platone, convito, reale, grice, analogicalunification, owens, ross. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Melandri,” The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Speranza, Liguria.

 

Grice e Melanipide: la ragione conversazionale e la diaspora di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Taranto). Filosofo italiano. The author of a number of tragedies. He appears to have practised a relatively ascetic version of Pythagoreanism. Grice: “Cicerone argues: Melanipide spoke Greek, not Latin; therefore, he is not an Italian. At Oxford, we are a bit more inclusive: Gellner spoke French, he is a Jewish philosopher who teaches at some London red-brick!” -- Melanipide

 

Grice e Melchiorre: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – il corpo – la filosofia dell’amore – amante ed amato – il convito di Turolla – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Chieti). Filosofo italiano.  Grice: “I like Melchiorre; while I refer to bodily identity in my “Mind” essay, Melchiorre has dedicated a whole treatise to ‘the body’ – he has also explored semiotic aspects and come up with nice oxymora: ‘nome indicibile,’ ‘immaginazione simbolica,’ ‘essere e parola.’”. Grice: “Melchiorre’s first explorations on the concept of body is Strawsonian – corpore e persona -. What led Melchiorre to this reflection is what he calls a meta-critique of love – Socrates did his critique of love in the Symposium, and Phaedrus – Melchiorre analyses this from a body-theoretical perspective.” Dopo essere stato ammesso al Collegio Augustinianum, inizia a frequentare la Facoltà di Filosofia all'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, dove si laurea.  Terminati gli studi, nel medesimo ateneo inizia la carriera accademica come assistente volontario di filosofia della storia, per poi insegnare a Venezia.  Richiamato a Milano, ha ricoperto  la cattedra di Filosofia morale, per poi insegnare Filosofia teoretica. Ha diretto, presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università Cattolica, la Scuola di specializzazione in Comunicazioni sociali. Altri saggi: Arte ed esistenza, Firenze’ Il metodo di Mounier, Milano; Il sapere storico, Brescia; La coscienza utopica, Milano; L'immaginazione simbolica, Bologna, Meta-critica dell'eros, Milano, Ideologia, utopia, religione, Milano, Essere e parola, Milano, Corpo e persona, Genova, “Studi su Kierkegaard, Genova, Analogia e analisi trascendentale: linee per una lettura di Kant, Milano, Figure del sapere, Milano, La via analogica, Milano, Creazione, creatività, ermeneutica, Brescia, I segni della storia, Ghezzano Fontina, Al di là dell'ultimo, Milano, Sulla speranza, Brescia, “Ethica,” Genova, Dialettica del senso. Percorsi di fenomenologia ontologica, Milano, “Qohelet, o la serenità del vivere,” Brescia, Essere persona,” Milano, Breviario di metafisica, Brescia, Il nome indicibile, Milano, Profilo nel sito dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Recensione del volume Essere persona. Natura e struttura di Rigobello, in Acta Philosophica, Rivista internazionale di filosofia. Unità e pluralità del vero: filosofie, religioni, culture. I diversi volti della verità Relazione di M., Convegno del Centro Studi Filosofici Gallarate, video integrale nel sito Cattedra SERBATI. M., Rai Educational Enciclopedia Multimediale delle Scienze Filosofiche.  Grice: “Melchiorre, while quoting the necessary German sources for an Italian philosophers – Eros und Agape, tr. N. Gay – he dwells on Enrico Turolla’s beloved (by every Italian schoolboy) version of “Convito” – which Turolla published under the ostentatious title, “Dialogo dell’amore” – Melchiorre typically finds some mistakes, since Turolla was no philosopher – and no lover of Sophia, and no Sophos of love!” -- Virgilio Melchiorre. Melchiorre. Keywords: il corpo corpi e personi, meta-critica dell’eros, il convito di Trolla, il fedro di Turolla – amore – il riconoscimento come identita – la dialettica dell’atto amoroso – l’amante e l’amato – l’amore reciproco, amore e contramore, erote ed anterote --. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Melchiorre” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Melesia: la ragione conversazionale e la diaspora di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Metaponto). Filosofo italiano. A Pythagorean, according to Giamblico di Calcide. Grice: “Cicerone complained that Melesia spoke Greek, not Roman!” – Melesia.

 

Grice e Melisso: la ragione conversazionale e la scuola di Velia -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Velia). Filosofo italiano. A pupil of Parmenide di Velia. The cosmos is not physical and change is an illusion he attributed to the unreliability of the senses. Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Melisso”, The Swimming-Pool Library. Melisso

 

Grice e Melli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- AVRELIO – filosofia italiana – la filosofia a Roma nel tempo di Pomponio – pre-ambasciata -- Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo. Grice: “I like Melli; you see, Italians feel that Marc’aurelio is theirs, so Melli puts his soul in his essay on Marc’aurelio, while his essay on Socrates is rather neutral! For us at Oxford, both Marc’Aurelio and ‘Socrate’ are just as furrin; Locke ain’t!”. Altri saggi: La filosofia di Schopenauer, Felice Tocco, Firenze, Il professor Tocco, Firenze,Commemorazione di Villari, Firenze,  La filosofia greca da Epicuro ai Neoplatonici, Firenze, Socrate, Lanciano. I primi contatti tra i filosofi romani e i filosofi greci non sono amichevoli. Essendosi parlato in senato dei filosofi e dei retori il senato consulto da incarico al pretore Marco POMPONIO (si veda) di provvedere “uti Romae NE essent [FILOSOFI greci]”. Semi della filosofia greca sono sparsi dagl’esuli ACHEI, tra i quali era anche Polibio, venuti dopo la guerra macedonica. Pochi anni dopo, ci e l'ambasciata della quale fa parte Carneade. Anche questa volta vedemmo come CATONE (si veda) s’impensiera dell’efficacia rovinosa che quell’abile parlatore puo esercitare sull'educazione nazionale. Ma Carneade ha un grande successo e l’infiltrazione delle idee filosofiche grechi e già cominciata, specialmente dopo la conquista delle città della Magna Grecia come Crotone – sede della scuola di Pitagora --, Taranto – sede della scuola di Archita --, Velia – sede di Parmenide e Senone – e dopo l’isola della Sicilia – Girgenti, sede della scuola di Empedocle --, e Leontini, sede della scuola di Gorgia. Nei ditti, tradotti o imitati, i filosofi romani senteno parlare di questo ‘amore di sapienza’, filosofia, e degl’amanti di sapienza, filosofi. Un motto si trova in un frammento di ENNIO (si veda), nel Neottolemo. Philosophari mihi necesse est, sed degustalidum de ea, non ingurgitandum in eam. Col progredire della cultura, con lo svilupparsi dell'eloquenza, nasce il bisogno di far istruir i romani presso questi pedagogi schiavi ditti amanti di sapienza. Alcuni grandi personaggi, come SCIPIONE Emiliano (si veda) e il suo amico LELIO (si veda) divieno protettori dei questi pedagogi detti ‘amanti della sapienza’ e li ammettano nella loro familiarità. I giureconsulti trovano un'utile disciplina nella dialettica, studiata nella lingua strainiera, non in romano. La riforme di GRACCO (si veda) -- Gracchi -- e ispirata da idee di questi ‘amanti di sapienza’. Quello che i filosofi romani domandano a questo ‘amore di sapienza’ e 1'orientazione nelle questioni pratiche e una cultura necessaria o utile all’oratore,  al giureconsulto, agl’uomini di stato. Cominciano ad essere conosciute le diverse scuole o sette. Una delle prime ad essere trattata in latino e la dottrina dell’Orto. Sono nominati un  AMAFINO (si veda) e un RABIRIO (si veda) come espositori delle idee, dell’Orto, ma con poca arte. Più tardi è pure ‘edonista’ – sostenitore del piacere -- un certo CAZIO (si veda), “levis quidem, sed non inineundus tamen auctor”, secondo Quintiliano. Ma non ne sappiamo nulla. Il grande interprete dell'edonismo presso i Romani è LUCREZIO (si veda), che segue Empedocle. Altri ‘amanti di sapienza’ sono M. BRUTO minore (si veda), l'uccisore di Cesare, che parla della virtù e dei doveri, e il dottissimo VARRONE (si veda), che insieme con Bruto, sente Antioco in Atene, e in psicologia e in teologia segue più il PORTICO che l'Accademia. Ma tutte queste sono semplici notizie. Il gran nome che oscura, tutti gl’altri ed è per noi il vero rappresentante e inter-prete della filosofia presso i romani è CICERONE (si veda). Giuseppe Melli. Melli. Keywords: AVRELIO. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Melli” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Memmio: la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A bit of an enigmatic character. LUCREZIO dedicates his great Garden poem to him. He acquires the ruins of the house in Athens where Epicuro starts his Garden. Gaio Memmio.

 

Grice e Menecrate: la ragione conversazionale e la scuola di Velia -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Velia). Filosofo italiano. A pupil of Senocrate. Menecrate

 

Grice e Menestore: la ragione conversazionale ela scuola di Sibari -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Sibari). Filosofo italiano. Pythagorean. Giamblico. Menestore.

 

Grice e Menone: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – gl’ottimati di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Crotone). Filosofo italiano. A Pythagorian and son-in-law of Pythagoras, according to Giamblico di Calcide.

 

Grice e Mercuriale: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – il ginnasio – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Forli). Filosofo italiano.  Grice: “At Corpus, as it had been at Clifton, cricket featured as my priority, -- philosophy came second!” Celebre per avere per primo teorizzato l'uso della ginnastica nella filosofia. Suoi sono anche il primo saggio sulle malattie cutanee e un'importante saggio, forse la prima mai scritta, di pediatria.  Ritratto raffigurato in "De arte gymnastica.” Dopo aver studiato a Bologna ed aver conseguito la laurea a Padova, dove ha modo di conoscere TRINCAVELLA, segue a Roma Farnese. A causa della sua fama, infatti, i forlivesi lo inviarono come legato presso Pio IV. Pare aver composto il suo celeberrimo saggio sulla ginnastica.  E professore in entrambe le università dove studia. A Padova, in particolare trascorse un periodo molto fecondo, in cui scrive saggi, alcuni dei quali basati sugli appunti presi dagli studenti durante le lezioni. Si reca poi a Pisa, dove divenne tutore di Ferdinando I de' Medici e poté godere di una certa fama. Cura anche altre importanti personalità del suo tempo, tra cui Massimiliano II, che lo nomina cavaliere e conte palatino. Merita di essere citato un famoso episodio che lo vede convocato a Venezia insieme a molti altri filosofi illustri, consultati per decifrare una misteriosa epidemia che colpiva la città. Escluse fin dall'inizio un caso di peste, in quanto solo una minima percentuale della popolazione si era ammalata e il contagio resta comunque molto limitato. Dopo una settimana però la malattia ha un decorso impressionante, colpendo un terzo della popolazione veneziana tra cui anche alcuni familiari del medico stesso. Sorprendentemente però tale evento non ha gravi conseguenze sulla sua carriera che, anzi, durante lezioni che tenne a proposito della peste, continua a difendere la sua posizione riguardo allo sfortunato caso veneziano. Fa restaurare una cappella dell'Abbazia di San Mercuriale di Forlì, trasformandola in cappella di famiglia, da allora nota come cappella M, dove egli stesso venne sepolto. Ai monaci di San Mercuriale, lascia in eredità la sua biblioteca, purché essi si impegnassero a tenere tre lezioni settimanali di filosofia. Ricevuti i saggi, i monaci, per custodirli e renderli fruibili a tutti, aprirono una biblioteca pubblica. A celebrazione ed a ricordo di M., e murata nella cappella una lapide con le seguenti parole. Questo marmo ricorda ai posteri che i c forlivesi commemorando presso la sua tomba riaffermavano il connubio eterno nei secoli tra la scienza e la fede.  Saggi: “De morbis muliebribus”, Cultore dell'opera ippocratica, “Censura et dispositio operum Hippocratis,”-- in cui discusse in modo critico le opere del medico, “De arte gymnastica,”  la prima opera moderna che consideri scientificamente il rapporto tra l'educazione fisica e la salute, ma anche un testo sulla storia dell'attività ginnica. Oltre a questo originale argomento scrive saggi di pediatria, di balneoterapia, di malattie della pelle, di tossicologia. Fra i suoi numerosi discepoli si segnala Bauhin.  Alcuni altri suoi saggi sono: “De morbis cutaneis,” il primo trattato sulle malattie della pelle, “De morbis puerorum,” “De compositione medicamentorum,” De morbis muliebribus, Venezia; De venenis et morbis venenosis; De decoratione; De morbis ocularum et aurium Nomothelasmus seu ratio lactandi infantes. Dizionario Biografico della Storia della Medicina e delle Scienze Naturali, Liber Amicorum, Citato in Landi, Credere, dubitare, conoscere. De M. vita et scriptis Victorius Ciarrocchi, Latinitas Opus Fundatum in Civitate Vaticana. Santa Sede Dizionario Biografico della Storia della Medicina e delle Scienze Naturali, Liber Amicorum. “De arte gymnastica” Pediatria Dermatologia, Treccani Enciclopedie Istituto dell'Enciclopedia.  Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Grice: “Mussolini said that ‘ginnasta’ and indeed ‘ginnasio’ were effeminate – ‘ginnico’ is the word!” -- Geronimo Mercuriale. Mercuriali. Girolamo Mercuriale. Mercuriale. Keywords: il ginnasio, attivita ginnica,  bagni romani, Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Me and the demijohns,” Luigi Speranza, “Ginnasia,” The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice. Mercuriale.

 

Grice e Merker: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – il filo d’Arianna – Arianna abbandonata a Nasso --– filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Trento). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “My favourite of his books is ‘storia della filosofia ai fumetti.” -- Grice: “The fact that he found Italian words for all that Kant says in “Metafisica dei costume” is admirable!” -- Grice: “I love Merker, and for many reasons; he has philosophised on what makes me an Englishman: my blood, or the fact that I was born in Harrborne?” Grice: “I love Merker: he uses metaphors aptly like ‘il filo d’Arianna’ to refer to what I pompously call ‘the general theory of context.’ --Si laurea a Messina. Trascorse un periodo di ricerche in Germania. Allievo di VOLPE, insegna a Messina e Roma. Cura edizioni italiane di classici dell'età della Riforma, dell'Illuminismo e dell'idealismo, nonché di Marx, Engels e del marxismo. Dopo essersi occupato dei problemi lasciati aperti dalla Seconda guerra mondiale, si occupa dell'idea di nazione, dell'ideologia colonialista e infine del fenomeno populista. Da ricordare la sua opera di divulgazione della storia della filosofia. Inoltre egli ha scritto ben trenta voci per l'enciclopedia filosofica della Bompiani, fra cui le più importanti sono su Heine, Mann, Zweig. Altri saggi: Le origini della logica, Milano, Feltrinelli; L'illuminismo, (Bari, Laterza – la metafora della luce della ragione ;  Lessing e il suo tempo, Cremona, Convegno; Marxismo e storia delle idee, Roma, Riuniti,  Storia della filosofia, La filosofia moderna. Il Settecento, Milano, Vallardi, Alle origini dell'ideologia. Rivoluzione e utopia nel giacobinismo” (Roma, Laterza); Storia della filosofia, Roma, Riuniti); STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA: L’ETA ANTICA -- Storia delle filosofie, Firenze, Giunti Marzocco; Marx, Roma, Riuniti; Erhard, in L'albero della Rivoluzione. Le interpretazioni della rivoluzione francese, Torino, Einaudi; La Germania. Storia di una cultura da Lutero a Weimar, Roma, Riuniti; Lessing, Roma, Laterza; Il socialismo vietato. Miraggi e delusioni da Kautsky ai marxisti” (Roma, Laterza); Storia della filosofia moderna e contemporanea, Roma, Riuniti, “Il sangue e la terra. Due secoli di idee sulla nazione, Roma, Riuniti, -- sangue lombarda – piccolo vedetta lombarda – sangue romagnola -- Atlante storico della filosofia, Roma, Riuniti,  Europa oltre i mari. Il mito della missione di civiltà, Roma, Editori, Filosofie del populismo, Roma, Laterza,  Marx. Vita e opere, Roma, Laterza,. Il nazionalsocialismo. Storia di un'ideologia, Roma, Carocci,.La guerra di Dio. Religione e nazionalismo nella Grande Guerra, Roma, Carocci, La Germania. Storia di una cultura da Lutero a Weimar, Roma, Riuniti, Hegel, Estetica, Milano, Feltrinelli, Torino, Einaudi,  Kant, La metafisica dei costume (Grice: “My favourite Kant, by far!”), Bari, Laterza, Hegel, Rapporto dello scetticismo con la filosofia, Bari, Laterza, Paracelso, Scritti etico-politici, Bari, Laterza,.Lukács, Scritti politici Bari, Laterza,  Herder, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, Linguaggio e società, Bari, Laterza, Lessing, Religione, storia e società, Messina, La Libra, Kant, Lo Stato di diritto, Roma, Riuniti,Forster, Rivoluzione borghese ed emancipazione umana, Roma, Riuniti, Humboldt, Stato, società e storia, Roma, Riuniti, Marx, Engels, Opere, Roma, Riuniti, Roma, Scritti economici di Marx. Roma, Editori Riuniti, Fichte, Lo stato di tutto il popolo, Roma, Riuniti, Hegel, Il dominio della politica, Roma, Riuniti, La scimmia e le stelle, Roma, Riuniti,  Maj, Il mestiere dell'intellettuale, Roma, Riuniti, Kant, Stato di diritto e società civile, Roma, Riuniti, Fichte, La missione del dotto, Roma, Riuniti, Marx, un secolo, Roma, Riuniti,Kant, Per la pace perpetua. Un progetto filosofico Roma, Riuniti, Hegel, Detti di un filosofo, Roma, Riuniti,  Marx, Engels, La sacra famiglia, Roma, Riuniti, Marx,  Engels, La concezione materialistica della storia, Roma, Riuniti, Kant, Che cos'è l'illuminismo?, Roma, Riuniti, Lessing, La religione dell'umanità, Roma, Laterza,, Forster, Viaggio intorno al mondo, Roma, Laterza,  Engels, Viandante socialista, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, Hegel, Dizionario delle idee, Roma, Riuniti, Osborne, Storia della filosofia a fumetti, Roma, Riuniti, Bauer, La questione nazionale, Roma, Riuniti.  La discreta classe delle idee. E’ Merker, asul sito di Rifondazione Comunista  Il contesto è il filo d'Arianna. Studi in onore di  Merker, S. Gensini, Raffaella Petrilli, L. Punzo, Pisa, ETS, T. Valentini, “Ideologia della nazione” e “populismo etnico”. Le riflessioni storico-filosofiche di Merker, in R. Chiarelli, Il populismo tra storia, politica e diritto, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, Curriculum vitae, su uniurb. Merker. Keywords: storia della filosofia – l’eta antica --. il filo d’Arianna, Teseo e il minotauro – omo-sociale – Teseo – Arianna abandonata, giacobinismo, populismo etnico – etnico ennico etnicita ennicita – etnos, Greek ethnos, Latin ethnos -- -- Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Merker” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Messalla: la ragione conversazionale e l’orto romano – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Garden. Friend of Orazio. They study philosophy together. He opposea GIULIO (si veda) Cesare but eventually makes his peace with Ottaviano. He writes philosophical treatises. Allow me to address briefly the L’ORTO philosophy within the context of the difficult tines covering the years which witness the downfall of the republic and the birth of the principate. In  'L’ORTO in Revolt' (J.R.S.) Momigliano takes as a starting point the conversion to L’ORTO of CASSIO who rapidly comes to the conclusion that GIULIO Caesar has to be eliminated because of what appear to be his tyrannical tendencies. The author emphasises that during this crucial period the adherents of the L’ORTO philosophy did not maintain a passive political aloofness. While some followers of L’ORTO actively support GIULIO in a noderate way, a mumber oppose him, among whom are I. Manlio Torquato, Trebiano, L. Papirio Paeto, M. Fadio Gallo, and, as the evidence suggests, L. Saufeio and Statilio. Monigliano concludes with the statement that on the whole, the events prove that Cassio is not an exceptional case among the contemporary L’ORTO. The majority stand for the Republic against Caosarisa." Horace seens to have felt an antipathy tovarda Mbullus and his patron M. which may be explained to sone extent by political factors, in particular the strong republican sympathies which the latter still professs under the principate. Of M., Monigliano notes that ORAZIO writes of him, 'quanquan Socraticis madet sermonibus', a dubious expression, but the Ciris (whatever its date and author) shows him well acquainted with the L’ORTO circle, and his leader is, as he proudly proolaimed, Cassio (Tac.Ann.; Dio; Plut,Brut.). I suspect then that he is a definite member of L’ORTO. It is, then, I think possible that M.'s political persuasions are coloured by his philosophical thinking and that his intellectual interest in L’ORTO is not nerely of an ethical nature. Monigliano, arguing along the lines of Diels, maintains that in a passage of his treatise on the gods FILODEMO of L’ORTO is expressing a political viev: "the words reflect the indignation of a man who sees the defenders of the Republic play into the hands of the tyrant. Similarly in his treatise on death the same philosopher recoends that sen should be ready to face death in the event of political persecution. Followers of L’ORTO are capable of reacting decisively to political circumstances, this being a major point advanced by Monigliano who maintains for instance that the sane Saufeio is not outside politics absorbed in the 'interrundia' but that he mingles philosophy and political action which probably acoount for his being exiled and falliag riotin to the proscriptione, and that Cicerone’s friendship with a number of L’ORTO is based on the faot that adherents of the philosophy possessed political feelings with which he sympathised. Both democracy and the non-tyrannical state find approval in the L’ORTO theory of the social contract, though the adherent of the philosophy is generally advised to renain outside politios. When ve consider M.’s resignation fron the office of 'praefectara urbis' on the grounds that the pover with which he vas invested was unconstitutional (incivilis; see Putnam, C.A.H) I suspect that republican scruples combine with his adherence to a philosophical mode of thought which preached political aloofness, affected hio decision. His is a detached involvement" comments Putnam on M.'s republican sympathies and resignation from office, and suggests political as vell as stylistic sympathy between M. and Tibullus. The philosophical overtones in Mbullus' work in uy opinion reflect this sympathy and remind us that both poet and patron have reservations about contributing wholeheartedly to the advancement of the new regime and its ideals. In the programme elegy it is a detachment from the sort of life which would contribute to the welfare and strength of the state which the poet manifests. Disambiguazione – Se stai cercando l'omonimo, si veda M. console. Console della Repubblica romana Scultura che probabilmente ornava la parte superiore di un piedistallo marmoreo contenente l'urna cineraria di M., rinvenuta nella villa di quest'ultimo ed ora conservata nel Museo del Prado. Figli Marco Valerio Messalla Messallino. Gens                               Valeria Padre                                                Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino Consolato. Proconsolato                  in Gallia Comata. Militare e filosofo romano, patrono della letteratura e delle arti. Membro dell'antica gens Valeria, di ideali repubblicani, nella battaglia di Filippi combatté al fianco di Bruto e Cassio. Passa poi dalla parte di Antonio ed infine entra nelle file di Ottaviano. Trionfo di M. -- rappresentazione sul frontone del Palazzo Krasiński a Varsavia, opera di Schlüter Si trovava nell'Illyricum a combattere gl’Iapidi a fianco di Ottaviano come tribunus militum. Consul suffectus assieme ad Ottaviano, e prese parte alla Battaglia di Azio a fianco di quest'ultimo. In seguito ha il comando di una missione in Asia Minore. Combatté contro il popolo alpino dei Salassi, come proconsole della Gallia, dove soppresse anche una rivolta tra gl’Aquitani. Per queste imprese celebra un trionfo. Tacito riferisce che e nominato praefectus urbi, ma M. rinuncia alla carica dopo pochi giorni adducendo motivazioni legate alla sua incapacità di esercitare l'incarico. In quanto princeps senatus, autorevole esponente dell'aristocrazia romana, avanza la proposta dell'attribuzione a Ottaviano del titolo di pater patriae. M., letterato Alla partecipazione alla vita pubblica, accompagna l'interesse per la filosofia. Influenza considerabilmente la filosofia che incoraggia sull'esempio di Mecenate. Il gruppo che lo circonda e noto come il circolo di M.. Tra gli altri comprende Tibull e Ligdamo. Amico di ORAZIO (si veda) ed OVIDIO (si veda). Elogiato da Tibullo per le sue vittorie in una elegia nel Corpus Tibullianum e in un poemetto -- il Panegirico di M. Suoi omonimi sono il padre, console, il figlio Valerio Messallino, e un discendente M., console come collega dell'imperatore Nerone. Una sua parente, forse una sorella, sarebbe la Valeria, sposa di Quinto Pedio, console  insieme ad Augusto, che aveva proposto la lex Pedia contro i Cesaricidi.  Syme 1993, p. 301.  Wilkes 1969, p. 47. ^ Velleio Patercolo, II, 71.1. ^ Tibullo, III, 106-117. ^ Tacito, Annales, VI, 11.3: quasi nescius exercendi. ^ Svetonio, Augustus, 58. Bibliografia Fonti antiche (GRC) Appiano di Alessandria, Historia Romana (Ῥωμαϊκά), vol.. (traduzione inglese Archiviato il 20 novembre 2015 in Internet Archive.). (GRC) Dione Cassio, Storia romana. (testo greco  e traduzione inglese). (LA) Svetonio, De vita Caesarum libri VIII. (testo latino  e traduzione italiana). (LA) Tacito, Annales. (testo latino , traduzione italiana e traduzione inglese). (LA) Tibullo, Corpus Tibullianum. (testo latino). (LA) Velleio Patercolo, Historiae Romanae ad M. Vinicium consulem libri duo. (testo latino  e traduzione inglese qui e qui ). Fonti storiografiche moderne Eva Cantarella, «Messalla, Ovidio e il circolo dei poeti», Corriere della Sera, 13 gennaio, 2013 (IT) Ronald Syme, L'aristocrazia augustea, Milano, BUR, 1993, ISBN 9788817116077. (EN) J.J. Wilkes, Dalmatia, in History of the provinces of the Roman Empire, Londra, Routledge & K. Paul, 1969, ISBN 978-0-7100-6285-7. Voci correlate Casal Rotondo Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino Collegamenti esterni Messalla Corvino, Marco Valerio, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Alberto Olivetti e Massimo Lenchantin De Gubernatis -, MESSALLA, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1934. Modifica su Wikidata Messalla Corvino, Marco Valerio, in Dizionario di storia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2010. Modifica su Wikidata Messalla Corvino, su sapere.it, De Agostini. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata (LA) Opere di Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino, su PHI Latin Texts, Packard Humanities Institute. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata Predecessore Consoli romaniSuccessore Gneo Domizio Enobarbo, Gaio Sosio31 a.C. con Gaio Giulio Cesare Ottaviano III                                                     Gaio Giulio Cesare Ottaviano IV, Marco Licinio Crasso. Circolo di Messalla V · D · M Guerra civile romana (44-31 a.C.) V · D · M Conquista romana dell'Illirico. Portale Antica Roma   Portale Biografie   Portale Età augustea Categorie: Militari romaniScrittori romaniMilitari del I secolo a.C.Scrittori del I secolo a.C.Romani Consoli repubblicani romaniValeriiGovernatori romani della SiriaAuguriGovernatori romani della GalliaMecenati romani[altre] Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino (console 61 a.C.) Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino Console della Repubblica romana Nome originaleMarcus Valerius  Messalla Corvinus FigliMarco Valerio Messalla Corvino GensValeria Pretura63 a.C. Consolato61 a.C. Censura55 a.C. Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino [1] (in latino Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus o anche Marcus Valerius Messalla Niger; ... – ...; fl. I secolo a.C.) è stato un politico romano.  Biografia Fu pretore nel 63 a.C., l'anno del consolato di Cicerone; fu poi console nel 61 a.C., l'anno in cui Publio Clodio violò i misteri della Bona Dea. Nel 55 a.C. fu censore assieme a Vatia Isaurico, e l'anno successivo, sempre in carica, tentarono di regolare lo straripamento del Tevere. Non tennero il lustrum.[2]  Note ^ William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Vol.1 pag.253 n.1 Archiviato il 20 ottobre 2013 in Internet Archive. ^ T. Robert S. Broughton, The magistrates of the Roman Republic, II, New York, 1952, p. 215. Predecessore                     Console romanoSuccessore                                       Decimo Giunio Silano e Lucio Licinio Murena(61 a.C.) con Marco Pupio Pisone Frugi CalpurnianoLucio Afranio e Quinto Cecilio Metello CelerePortaleAnticaRoma PortaleBiografieCategorie:Politiciromani Consolirepubblicani romani Valerii[altre]Consul. Roman Senator who lived in the Roman Empire in the 1st century. He might have been the brother of empress Messalina.  A member of the Republican gens Valeria. The namesake of the Senator and Augustan literary patron. He may have been a son of the Senator and consul Marco Aurelio Cotta Massimo Messalino, who was a son of M. or possibly the son of the consul Marco Valerio Messalla Barbato, thus making him the brother of Valeria Messalina, the third wife of the emperor Claudio. A member of the Arval Brethren. Served as an ordinary consul with the emperor Nerone and then as a suffect consul with Gaio Fonteo Agrippa. Starting with his consulship, he is granted an annual half a million sesterces to maintain his senatorial qualifications. Biographischer Index der Antike, Lucan, Civil War  Paterculus, The Roman History, Lucan, Civil War  Shotter, Nero  Der Neue Pauly, Stuttgart, Tacitus, Annales, Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome D. Shotter, Nero, Routledge, Lucan, Civil War, Penguin, Velleius Paterculus – Translated with Introduction and Notes by Yardley & A.A. Barrett, The Roman History, Hackett Publishing, Biographischer Index der Antike, Gruyter, Political offices Preceded by Nero II, and Lucius Caesius Martialis as Suffect consulsConsul of the Roman Empire 58 with Nero III, followed by Gaius Fonteius Agrippa. Succeeded by Aulus Petronius Lurco, and Aulus Paconius Sabinus as Suffect consuls Categories: Valerii MessallaeAncient Roman patricians1st-century Roman consuls1st-century clergy Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus  Article Talk Read Edit View history  Tools From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Not to be confused with Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (consul 58). Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. A  Roman general, author, and patron of literature and art.  Family  The triumph of Corvinus in the pediment of the Krasiński Palace in Warsaw  Print of the Roman General, made by Hendrick Goltzius.[2] Corvinus was the son of a consul in 61 BC, Marcus Valerius Messalla Niger,[3] and his wife, Palla. Some dispute his parentage and claim another descendant of Marcus Valerius Corvus to be his father. Valeria, one of his sisters, married Quintus Pedius,[4] a maternal cousin to the Roman emperor Augustus. His great-grandnephew from this marriage was the deaf painter Quintus Pedius. Another sister, also named Valeria married Servius Sulpicius Rufus (a moneyer).  Corvinus married twice. His first wife was Calpurnia, possibly the daughter of the Roman politician Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. Corvinus had two children with Calpurnia: a daughter, Valeria Messalina, who married the Roman senator Titus Statilius Taurus, consul in AD 11; and a son called Marcus Valerius Messalla Messallinus, consul in 3 BC. His second son was Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus, consul in AD 20, who is believed to have been born to a second unknown wife on the basis of the 22-year gap between the consulship of the elder son and the consulship of the second son.[3] The writings of the poet Ovid (Ex Ponto XVI.1-52) reveal that the second wife of Corvinus was a woman called Aurelia Cotta. Another fact supporting the theory that Aurelia Cotta was the mother of Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus is that he was later adopted into the Aurelii Cottae.[5]  Life Corvinus was educated partly at Athens, together with Horace and the younger Cicero. In early life he became attached to republican principles, which he never abandoned, although in later life he avoided offending Caesar Augustus by not mentioning them too openly.  In 43 BC he was proscribed, but managed to escape to the camp of Brutus and Cassius. After the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he went over to Antony, but subsequently transferred his support to Octavian. In 31 BC, Corvinus was appointed consul in place of Antony and took part in the Battle of Actium. He subsequently held commands in the East and suppressed the revolt in Gallia Aquitania; for this latter feat he celebrated a triumph in 27 BC.  Corvinus restored the road between Tusculum and Alba, and many handsome buildings were due to his initiative. He moved that the title of pater patriae should be bestowed upon Augustus. Yet he also resigned from the post of Prefect of the city in 25 BC after six days of holding this office because it conflicted with his ideas of constitutionalism. It may have been on this occasion that he uttered the phrase "I am ashamed of my power".[6]  Patronage and writings His influence on literature, which he encouraged after the manner of Gaius Maecenas, was considerable, and the group of literary personalities whom he gathered around him—including Tibullus, Lygdamus and the poet Sulpicia—has been called "the Messalla circle". With Horace and Tibullus he was on intimate terms, and Ovid expresses his gratitude to him as the first to notice and encourage his work. The two panegyrics by unknown authors (one printed among the poems of Tibullus as iv. 1; the other included in the Catalepton, the collection of small poems attributed to Virgil) indicate the esteem in which he was held.[7]  Corvinus was himself the author of various works, all of which are lost. They included memoirs of the civil wars after the death of Caesar, used by Suetonius and Plutarch; bucolic poems in Greek; translations of Greek speeches; occasional satirical and erotic verses; and essays on the minutiae of grammar. As an orator, he followed Cicero instead of the Atticizing school, but his style was affected and artificial. Later critics considered him superior to Cicero, and Tiberius adopted him as a model. Late in life he wrote a work on the great Roman families, wrongly identified with an extant poem De progenie Augusti Caesaris which bears the name of Corvinus, but in fact is a 12th-century production.  Places associated with Corvinus  The so-called Apotheosis of Claudius, the top part of an Augustan-era funerary monument that may once have contained Corvinus' funerary urn. Found in a country villa at Marino once owned by C. Valerius Paulinus, a descendant of Corvinus, it is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.[8] Corvinus had a house on the Palatine Hill in Rome that used to belong to Mark Antony before Augustus presented it to Corvinus and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.[9] An inscription (CIL 6.29789 = ILS 5990) records Corvinus as the owner of the famed Gardens of Lucullus (Horti Luculliani) located on the Pincian Hill where the Villa Borghese gardens are today.  The Casale Rotondo, a cylindrical tomb near the sixth milestone on the Appian Way, is often identified as being the tomb of Corvinus, but this is debatable.[10] Corvinus is also recorded in an inscription as being one of the three friends of Gaius Cestius responsible for erecting statues that once stood at the site of the famous Pyramid of Cestius which is located close to the Porta San Paolo in Rome.  In 2012, a luxurious villa of Corvinus was found on the via dei Laghi near Ciampino. The finds included seven colossal statues of Niobids that had toppled into the piscina apparently due to an earthquake.[11][12][13]  In 2014 another luxurious villa of Corvinus on the island of Elba was identified as his.[14] It was burnt down in the 1st c. AD. Since its original excavation in the 1960s it was believed to belong to his family since he was a patron of Ovid who wrote of his visit to Corvinus's son on Elba before his exile on the Black Sea. Recent excavations below the collapsed building revealed five dolia for wine which were stamped with the Latin inscription "Hermia Va(leri) (M)arci s(ervus)fecit" (made by Hermias, slave of Marcus Valerius).  Legendary ancestor of Hungarian royalty  The triumph of Marcus Valerius Corvinus in the pediment of the Krasiński Palace in Warsaw The Wallachian-Hungarian family of Corvin, which came to prominence with Janos Hunyadi and his son, Matthias Corvinus Hunyadi, King of Hungary and Bohemia, claimed to be descended from Corvinus. This was based on the assertion that he became a big landowner on the Pannonian-Dacian frontiers, the future Hungary and part of Romania, that his descendants continued to live there for the following 1400 years, and that the Hunyadis were his ultimate descendants – for which there is scant if any historical evidence. The connection seems to have been made by Matthias' biographer, the Italian Antonio Bonfini, who was well-versed with the classical Latin authors.  Bonfini also provided the Hunyadis with the epithet Corvinus. This was supposedly due to a case in which the tribune, Marcus Valerius Corvus in 349 BC, while on the battlefield, accepted a challenge to single combat issued to the Romans by a barbarian warrior of great size and strength. Suddenly, a raven flew from a trunk, perched upon his helmet, and began to attack his foe's eyes with its beak so fiercely that the barbarian was blinded and the Roman beat him easily. In memory of this event, Valerius' agnomen Corvinus (from Corvus, "Raven") was interpreted as derived from this event. The Hunyadis called themselves "Corvinus" and had their coins minted displaying a "raven with a ring". This was later taken up in the coat of arms of Polish aristocratic families connected with the Hunyadis, and also led to Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus' triumph over the Aquitanians (27 BC) being commemorated in the pediment of the Krasiński Palace in Warsaw.  See also Korwin coat of arms Ślepowron coat of arms References  Jeffreys, Roland (1985). "The date of Messalla's death". The Classical Quarterly. 35: 148. doi:10.1017/S0009838800014634. S2CID 170083433.  "Valerius Corvinus". lib.ugent.be.Syme, R., Augustan Aristocracy, p. 230f.  Syme, R., Augustan Aristocracy, pp. 20, 206.  Skidmore, Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Works of Valerius Maximus, p. 116  J.P. Sullivan (ed), Apocolocyntosis (Penguin, 1986) note 44. ISBN 978-0-14-044489-6  Anonymous Panegyric of Messalla: English translation by J.P.Postgate.  Stephan F. Schröder, Katalog der antiken Skulpturen des Museo del Prado in Madrid. Vol. 2: Idealplastik. Mainz: von Zabern, 2004, cat. 206  Cassius Dio 53.27.5  The excavator, Luigi Canina, deduced from a small piece of inscription with the name "Cotta" that the monument had been built by Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus for his father, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, but this inscription and other architectural fragments are now assumed to have come from a smaller monument at the site, and they may have nothing to do with Corvinus, cf. L. Grifi, "Sopra la iscrizione antica dell auriga scirto", Diss. del. Acc. Rom., Rome 1855, p.491ff. [1]; M. Marcelli, "IV MIGLIO, 14. Casal Rotondo", in: Susanna Le Pera Buranelli & Rita Turchetti, edd., Sulla Via Appia da Roma a Brindisi: le fotografie di Thomas Ashby: 1891–1925, Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2003, p.77  Papers of the British School at Rome Vol. 81 (2013), p. 345  "Seven Statues Linked to Ovid Recovered from Roman Pool – Archaeology Magazine". archaeology.org. Retrieved 28 June 2023.  "Ben-Hur villa at risk of demolition in Rome". The Daily Telegraph. London. 30 October 2014. Retrieved 28 June 2023.  Lorenzi, Rossella (13 February 2015). "Excavating an Ancient Villa: Photos". Seeker. Retrieved 28 June 2023.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Messalla Corvinus, Marcus Valerius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 189. Monographs by L. Wiese (Berlin, 1829), J. M. Valeton (Groningen, 1874), L. Fontaine (Versailles, 1878); H. Schulz, De MV aetate (1886); "Messalla in Aquitania" by J. P. Postgate in Classical Review, March 1903; WY Sellar, Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. Horace and the Elegiac Poets (Oxford, 1892), pp. 213 and 221 to 258; the spurious poem ed. by R. Mecenatë (1820). External links Online extracts from Ronald Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy, Clarendon Press OUP, 1986 Political offices Preceded by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Gaius Sosius Roman consul 31 BC with Octavian III Succeeded by Marcus Titius (suffect) Biographie Other IdRef Categories: 64 BC births1st-century deaths1st-century BC Roman governors of Syria1st-century BC Roman augurs1st-century RomansAncient Roman generalsPatrons of literatureAncient Roman patriciansUrban prefects of RomeValerii MessallaePeople of the War of Actium. Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Mesalla: L’Orto” – The Swimming-Pool Library. Marco Valerio Messalla Corvino.

 

Grice e Mesarco: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del figlio di Pitagora  – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Crotone). Filosofo italiano. The son of Pythagoras. He leads the sect after the death of Aristeo. Mesarco.

 

Grice e Mesibolo: la ragione conversazionale e la scuola di Reggio -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Reggio). Filosofo italiano. Pythagorean according to Giamblico. Mesibolo.

 

Grice e Messere: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale  – l’implicatura di Sileno – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Torre Santa Susanna). Filosofo italiano. Ricevuti i primi rudimenti del sapere dai chierici locali, i suoi genitori (Pietro Messere e Teodora Di Leo), sebbene non agiati, decisero di fargli frequentare il seminario di Oria, assecondando così il suo vivo desiderio di intraprendere la carriera ecclesiastica, qui dimostrò sin da subito una profonda passione per lo studio. Ordinato sacerdote per poi ritornare al paese natìo, dove divenne un maestro di grande dottrina. Da autodidatta si applicò allo studio della filosofia, della matematica, della storia ecclesiastica e civile, nonché anche alla musica e al canto. Incolpato dell'omicidio di un giovane chierico, fu messo in prigione nelle carceri del Vescovo di Oria, dove rimase rinchiuso per sette anni, tuttavia non si lasciò mai abbattere dallo sconforto; anzi, procuratosi alcuni libri, M. si applicò allo studio della lingua greca, per la quale già aveva dimostrato una forte predisposizione. Dopo un lungo e dibattuto processo, la sentenza finale lo dichiarò innocente e assolto da qualsiasi reato. Risentito con i suoi concittadini per averlo ingiustamente ritenuto reo, dichiarò che il suo paese mai più lo avrebbe rivisto. Fu così che M. partì per Napoli, dove rimase fino alla morte. Nella città partenopea ebbe modo di affinare e approfondire la sua cultura, divenendo un personaggio di rilievo nel mondo intellettuale napoletano del tempo. La grande conoscenza della lingua greca gli conferì grande notorietà nonché una cattedra di Lettura Greca, che mantenne fino all'anno della morte, presso l'Università degli studi di Napoli. Tale cattedra  era stata nuovamente istituita  a spese di Giuseppe Valletta, filosofo, letterato e giureconsulto dell'epoca ed amico di M.. Valletta aveva una profonda stima per il Messere, il quale fu assiduo frequentatore della sua casa non solo quale insegnante dei suoi figli e nipoti, ma anche perché divenuta luogo di riunioni dei più eruditi intellettuali del tempo. Fra i suoi molti allievi che assistevano alle sue lezioni, ne ebbe alcuni divenuti celebri, si annoverano Andrea, Barra, Caloprese, Gravina, Valletta, Capasso, Cerreto, Egizio, Donzelli ed altri. Vico, noto filosofo suo amico, gli dedicò un breve madrigale dal titolo Ghirlanda di timo per Argeo Caraconasio.Il mondo culturale napoletano fu caratterizzato da importanti innovazioni a livello filosofico, scientifico, civile e politico. Tale fervore culturale aprì la strada alla nascita di un numero notevole di accademie, che divennero luoghi di discussione aperta e di diffusione di nuove idee filosofiche e scientifiche. A Napoli le principali accademie del tempo furono soprattutto quella degli Investiganti e quella di Medinaceli. Che sia stato memM. bro autorevole di entrambe le accademie e frequentatore di circoli e salotti letterari napoletani è testimoniato da non pochi documenti, tra cui manoscritti e altri a stampa conservati nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli; le sue lezioni ebbero un così folto seguito di giovani tanto da far suscitare invidie fra i letterati fanatici dell'erudizione i quali, a furia di schernirlo per la sua ellenofilia, diffusero in Napoli addirittura la moda letteraria della macchietta dello pseudogrecista, satireggiata pure da Vico nella terza Orazione inaugurale. Fu anche tra i primi membri dell'Arcadia fondata dal Crescimbeni e dal Gravina, ove gli fu attribuito il nome pastorale greco di “Argeo Coraconasio,” “dalle campagne dell'isola Coraconaso”. E fondata a Napoli la Colonia “Sebezia” dell'Arcadia e anche qui il Messere e tra i primi iscritti.  L'aver ripristinato l'insegnamento della lingua greca in Napoli valse al M. non solo il titolo di “ristoratore della greca erudizione”, ma contribuì alla ripresa dello studio di Omero, influenzandone il pensiero poetico e filosofico del tempo. Notevole fu l'influenza che egli ebbe sulla formazione del pensiero del Gravina. Essenziale nella vita culturale di Gregorio Messere fu anche l'amicizia con Giuseppe Valletta, suo allievo. La conoscenza che M ha della filosofia fu ugualmente vasta tanto che gli valse l'appellativo di “Socrate” e quando si riferivano a lui veniva anche chiamato il “Socrate dei nostri tempi”.  Non fu solo un insigne grecista, ma anche un poeta. Compose infatti circa 60 componimenti, tra distici, tetrastici, serenate, sonetti, madrigali ed epigrammi in italiano, utilizzando talvolta uno stile che il Lombardo definisce “stile mezzano e semplice”, di carattere pastorale. Un suo epigramma è contenuto in una lettera che Canale inviò al Magliabechi. Non mancò di scrivere componimenti di carattere burlesco e giocoso, in cui contrapponeva l'immediatezza della satira e del dialetto alla ricercatezza esasperata della poesia del Seicento. Si esercitò soprattutto nell'Accademia di Medinacoeli, dove era uso chiudere la seduta accademica con la recitazione di componimenti poetici. Compose finanche versi che celebravano importanti eventi del regno; tra i più salienti, si ricordano quelli contenuti nel volume scritto in occasione della recuperata salute di Carlo II. Da ricordare sono anche gl’emblemata contenuti nel volume scritto per i funerali di D. Caterina d'Aragona, e a cui si ispirò Vico in occasione dei funerali di due uomini illustri  Tra le tante collaborazioni con letterati del suo tempo, degna di nota è quella che ha con VICO per la pubblicazione di un volume in occasione del genetliaco di Filippo V, tre sono i componimenti contenuti in esso. Fu anche collaboratore di una Miscellanea dal titolo Vari componimenti in lode dell'eccellentissimo Benavides conte di S. Stefano. Fatta eccezione per alcuni componimenti inseriti in Miscellanee poetico-celebrative, di M. non esistono opere a stampa. E a ciò ne dà spiegazione il Lombardo quando afferma che egli fu uomo umile e schivo tutto dedito all'educazione dei giovani più che ai propri interessi personali, anzi la sua modestia fu tale che pensò bene di distruggere i propri scritti.  Le lezioni accademiche di cui si dispone sono quelle che  tenne nell'Accademia istituita a Palazzo Reale dal viceré duca di Medinaceli. I codici delle lezioni sono conservati attualmente presso la Biblioteca di Napoli. Due di queste lezioni trattano di poesia. Qui argomenta sulla funzione e natura della poesia, dei suoi rapporti con la storia nonché sul problema delle origini della poesia stessa. Tre altre lezioni sono di carattere storico, esattamente: due sulla vita di NERVA e una sulla vita di DECIO. Il codice napoletano contiene anche un Discorso vario in cui sono presenti motivi autobiografici e una lezione sull'origine delle maschere. L'Accademia di Medinaceli non ebbe lunga vita e, nonostante la sua chiusura avvenuta a causa di rivolgimento politico, continuò ad essere personaggio illustre nel panorama intellettuale e culturale napoletano, come dimostra il fatto di essere annoverato tra i primi membri dell'Arcadia sotto la custodia Crescimbeni e successivamente della colonia napoletana “Sebezia”.  Storia della litteratura italiana  Biografia degli uomini illustri del regno di Napoli  Le vite degli Arcadi illustri scritte da diversi autori, e pubblicate d'ordine delle generale adunanza da  Crescimbeni, pRoma,  (biografia scritta da Lombardo). Cantillo, Filosofia, poesia e vita civile in M.: un contributo alla storia del pensiero meridionale, Morano, Napoli, Prezzo, Storia delle origini di Torre Santa Susanna, Tiemme, Manduria,. Imma Ascione, Seminarium doctrinarum: l'Napoli nei documenti,  Edizioni scientifiche italiane, Napoli; Lomonaco, M., la poesia e l'impegno civile tra Gravina e VICO, in "Diritto e Cultura", VLezioni dell'Accademia di Palazzo del duca di Medinaceli: Napoli,  Rak, Napoli, Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici.  (regio esim liepiera preso Niccola Gjervasi'altirante 1.os. re ( lessen Blusere Filologo Filosofo Namquein Tore diliuramnemlá iTera d Ohrante nel mio Mori in Nlapoli. Ebbe per convincenti indizj, co di Gregorio la sospizione Fu rinchiuso perciò nulla egli fosse reo. me che di, laddove impreseda prigioni per sette anni nelle del greco linguaggio, stessolostndio non conosceva neppur lo avanti , che inbreve con tanta sollecitudine però ,e sn tranoi il maestro ne diyenne solenne restauratore della greca erudizione. onde cadde sopra se del quale per le figure. Vi attese Lo studio delle greche lettere era a quel tempo venuto tranoi insomma decadenza, l'erudizione esi renduta goffa e grossolana ; onde egli adoperó ogni sua cura per richiamarla alla sua dignità primitiva. La profonda sua scienza nella mentovata favella gli seçe meritamente occupare. la catte be  i suoi natali in un mediocre luogo della Regione de' Salentini, oggi Terra d'Otranto, detto la Torre di S. Susanna , discosta da Brindisi intorno a miglia dodici.Suoi genitori furono Pietro Messere, e Dianora di Leo amendue di onesta e civil condizione. M., comechè non proveduto nella sua primiera età di sufficienti maestri, seppe col proprio suo ingegno , e colla sua mente , velocis sima e disposta a d apprendere le più difficili cose supplire a somigliante difetto. Egli attese da se solo aiprofondissimi studj della filosofia delle mattemati che in buona parte, della Teologia , della Storia Ecclesiastica e Civile.Nè intralascio fra la severità di sì fatte discipline l'onesto diletto della poesia e della musica , e tanto in questa ando avanti , che giunse a cantar con lode la parte di basso. M., tutto che si fosse dedicato al Sacerdozio , gl'intervenne una disgrazia , la quale fieramente l o travaglio. S'invaghi un compagno di luididonzellafigliuoladiricco,e nobilpersonag-: gio,enefudipariamorericambiato. Il padre di lei , avutone sentore, lo fece assalir da due sgherri , I quali si accompagnavano con M., ilquale go dea il favore parimenti del mentovato Signore. Ilgio vine amatore ne rimase trucidato I و Fu de'primi ad essere annoverato tra gli Arcadi col nome di Argeo Caraconessin ,e la sua vita ritrovasi descritta fra quelle degl’Arcadi illustri P. 1Scrive a richiesta degli amici sonetti, madrigali ed epigrammi nell'una e nell'altra lingua, i quali componimenti riscossero a que'tempi non poca laude. Mirate la dottrina che si asconde Sotto il velame degli versi strani. Queste poesie furon da lui recitate nella dotta adunanza che CERDA, allora vice-rè di Napoli, tenenel Regal Palazzo. E certamentefuscia gura , dra di greco linguaggio nell'Università de'nostri Stu dj. Bentosto si vide la studiosa gioventù correre a folla alle sue lezioni , e zione,che non solamente I giovanetti,ma puranche crebbe talmente la sua riputa persone distinte per merito di letteraria coltura , a n davano con maraviglia ad ascoltarlo. Allo studio della greca sapienza congiungeva il Messere quello delle scienze più sublimi ; perciò i più doiti scienziati che erano allora fra noi ed ancora stranieri contava egli fra i suoi amici. Tra quelli si annoverano Lionardo di Capoa , Francesco d'Andrea , Carlo Buragna e tanti altri ;'e fra gli stranieri il P. 'Mabillon il quale par la di lui con somina laude nella sua opera Iter Ita licum ;e moltissimi presso de'quali e il suo nome in somma estimazione. Il suo verseggiar burlesco e maccaronico era un dotto poetare , e sempre ridondante di greca e di la tina erudizione, sicchè isuoi versi in questo genere tranne lamateria ridevole,erano molto colti egenti li, sì che avrebbe poluto egli dire con ALIGHIERI: O voice avete gl’ntelletti sani. Il suo modo di comporre era quello che da' maestri vien detto mezzano e semplice, e varie poesie dettò in istile boschereccio e pastorale. Molto però egli valse nel verseggiare giocoso , ed in quella spezie di poesia, già inventata da Folengio, il quale si dice Coccai, che volgarmente maccheronica vien chiamata . che dipartendosi quell'erudito e generoso Si gnore , seco portate avesse , con le altre cose i c o m ponimenti di quella dotta brigata, e che Gregorio non ne avesse gl’originali serbati, e non ne rima nesser che pochi in mano di alcuno de'suoi amici, Ma egli, intento qual novello Socrate ad istruire la gioventù e far rinascere fra di noi lo studio e la scienza della greca favella, la quale è detto brac cio destro della buona letteratura, poco cura le sue cose, e poco ambi di rendersi per le stampe famoso. Dilettavasi egli infatti più della sostanza che dell  و , e più d'istruire la gioventù S!11 renza della dottrina erudizione. diosa , che di far pompa di lussureggiante арра Le virtù cristiane e socievoli di M.  pareg giarono la sua erudizione e la sua dottrina. Era el FILOSOFO e religioso al tempo stesso; ottimo Sacerdote, ed affabile senza ombra di bassezza o di poca digni tà,sprezzatore grandissimodellericchezze, tal che pel noto fallimento del banco dell'Annunziata avendo perduto quelpiccolo avere che collesue ono rate fatiche erasi acquistato , uimase in una fredda in differenza, motteggiando giocosamente come se nulla gli fosse intervenuto. Nè minore fermezza d'animo egli nella morte di tre nipoti per sorella Biagio, Giovan Batista e Capozzeli, giovinetti di grandi speranze i due primi nella medicina,ed il terzo nella legalfacoltà, da lui sommamente ama. ti, ed allevati alla gloria ed alle lettere. Poco curante egli si fu dell'amicizia de'potenti, e di ogni fasto, dimostrò e di ogni civile onore. Maravigliosa era in tutto la sua temperanza, talche i suoi costumi pareano più l'ultimo fine siccome un necessario termine dell'uomo, e narrasi , che es antichi che nostri.Riguardava sendo un giorno aperto , per alcun bisogno di fabbri ca,l'avello di Giovanni Gioviano Pon'ano, ritrovan dosi ogli con un amico , lo prese vaghezza di scen dervi.Di fatti discesovi, sudettesi in una delle nicchie da riporvi i morti intorno alle pareti , e narrasi che mosso da involontaria allegrezza,dicesse: E chi sase questo è il luogo che dee a me toccare? Somme lodi son queste certamente per M., il quale nato essendo nel mezzo della magna Grecia, nell'antica patria degl’Architi, degl’Aristosseni,degl’Ennj, de'Pacuvj, e intendentissimo non meno della grea, della latina e della Italiana poesia, che della più saggia FILOSOFIA, la quale insegna non pur colle parole , ma col sobrio onorato Con grandissimocordoglio di tutti gliamatori delle buone lettere, preso di ac cidente apopletico passò a miglior vita ,e fu sepellito nella detta Cappella del Pontano , siccome in vita avea desideralo. La sua morte fu onorata dal pianto di afflitte vedove Ο Φερδινάνδος ΣανΦελικιος ευγνώμων ακροανης DIAGISTRO DOCTRINAE PULAETIVNI. Ταυτην την Ακαδημιαν ο ποιησαντι e virtuoso suo contegno di vita. Fu per Γρηγοειω Μεσσερε Σαλεντινω Εν ελλαδι φανη εις ακρον ταις παιδειας εληλακοτι il Socrate de’suoi tempi, e datuttiriguar chiamato . Tanta era e cosi dato con istima e con ammirazione perfetta in lui la notizia delle lettere greche, che mosse invidia e stupore in parecchi sapientissimi Greci na zionali,iquali,passando per Napoli,vollero vederlo ed ascoliarlo. Siccome abbiamo accennato,aluisideve in buona parte il risorgimento delle buore lettere della greca dottrina, per tanti ragguar spezialmente che si formarono sotto la sua di. devolissimi letterati sciplina,eperciòhaeglispeziale eprecipuaragio ne ai nostri elogj ed alla nostra riconoscenza. Nel no vero de’suoi discepoli furono i Biscardi, Gennaro d'Andrea, i Calopresi, i Gravina, i Majelli, i Cirilli, i Capassi , gl’Egizi, e tanti altri lumi della n o stra letteratura iqua’i malagevole sarebbe qui no minare . tal ragione e di miserevoli bisognosi, a quali questo uomo incomparabile in ogni maniera di virtù distribuiya tutto ciò che al puro uopo della sua vita soperchia. va. Intervennero ai suoi funerali tutti i professo ri della R. U. non che ragguarde volissimi personaggi. Uno di costoro già suo scolaredi nobilissimo tegnaggio , insigne per lettere e per la scienza della pittura e dell'architettura,innalzò a tanto maestro la see guente iscrizione in greco ed in latino. Τα Διδασκαλω Διδακτρον. SALENTINO IN GRAECA LINGVA AD SVMMVM ERVDITIONIS PROGRESSVM DE ACADEMIA HAC OPTIME MERITO) FERDINANDVS SANFELICIVS GRATVS AVDITOR ANDREA MAZZARELLĄ PA CERRETO. Quantunque non abbiasi cosa alcuna alle stam IV. sti.  pe di M. Torre di S. Susanna, luogo della Terra d'Otranto, tuttavia egli ha buon diritto che di lui si parli in GregorioMesso nella ro edaltriGreci st'opera. La disgrazia avvenutagli que di dover soffri re,sebbene innocente una lunga prigionia to di omicidio , lo determinò Greca, e così felicemente venir riconosciuto qual ristauratore dizione nel Regno di Napoli , e il Mabillon nel suo Iter Italicum parla con somma lode del Gregorio . Occupò egli la Cattedra di questa lingua nellaUni versità della Capitale, e la insegnò con tanto grido , che oltre la gioventù contò fra lisuoi discepoli non poche persone per coltura e per sapere distinte ; e fra i più celebri alunni da lui istruiti si noverano Gennaro di Andrea , il Caloprese Capassi ed altri molti.Benemerito , il Gravina , il perciò della Greca Letteratura congiunse na del poetare, e conobbe le altre scienze con gran vantaggio attenzione specialmente Religione all'epoca della sua morte accaduta ordine di persone il compianse . ogni funerali i Professori ai suoi , ed , ed ebbe onorata s e per sospet a studiare la lingua vi riuscì, che meritò di poi anche alla erudizione lave dei giovani che con zelo ed istruiva ed educava alle lettere ed alla insieme, perlocchè crate. La sua dottrina e le sue cristiane virtù , m a specialmente una carità generosa giunsero a tale,che appellavasi novello S o . Intervennero tutti della R. Università altri ragguardevoli poltura nella cappella dove riposano le ceneri Pontano discepolo con iscrizione Greca e Latina da un del suo composta (2). personaggi della Greca e r u (1) Fu egli ascritto fra i primi Arcadi sotto il nome di Argeo Caran conessio. Biografia degli Uom. ill. del Regno di Napoli. Allorchè si aprì il concorso per la cattedra di lingua greca. Grice: “When they called Messere ‘Socrate’ I hope they don’t mean Alcibiades’s implicature, ‘my dear Sileno!’” – Gregorio Messere. Messere. Keywords: implicature, Sileno, Socrates, Socrate Sileno, Socrate, Silenus. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Messere”.

 

Grice e Messimeri: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Seminara). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “He was of a noble family – he was into the free market – so his is a philosophical economy.” Domenico Grimaldi (Seminara), filosofo. Esponente dell'illuminismo napoletano.  Francesco Mario Pagano. Nato in una famiglia aristocratica che faceva risalire le proprie origini alla nota famiglia di Genova, ricevette la prima educazione dal padre, il marchese Pio Grimaldi, un uomo colto che aveva cominciato a introdurre criteri di conduzione innovativi nelle sue proprietà terriere, peraltro non molto estese, di Seminara. Non essendo molto ricco, il padre lo avviò agli studi giuridici, in previsione di una possibile professione forense, all'Napoli. Nella capitale napoletana M. fu raggiunto dal fratello minore Francescantonio, fece parte con il fratello dell'Accademia dell'Arboscello, frequenta le lezioni di economia di Genovesi. Si trasferì a Genova, dove ottenne la riammissione nel patriziato della Repubblica di Genova, ottenendo così il permesso di esercitare alcune magistrature. In Liguria, tuttavia, M. ha modo di approfondire gli aspetti tecnici, economici e sociali legati all'agricoltura il cui studio lo spinse a viaggi in Francia, specie in Provenza, in Piemonte e in Svizzera. Si interessò in particolare alla colture dell'ulivo e del gelso per l'allevamento dei bachi da seta. Venne accolto fra l'altro nell'Accademia dei Georgofili, che premiò una memoria, nella Società economica di Berna, un centro di cultura fisiocratica, e nella Société royale d'agriculture di Parigi.  Saggio di economia campestre per la Calabria Ultra  François Quesnay, maggior rappresentante della fisiocrazia Frutto delle sue ricerche fu il Saggio di economia campestre per la Calabria Ultra, esposizione di un piano che, partendo dalle condizioni di arretratezza dell'economia calabrese, secondo la dottrina fisiocratica, ne indica i mezzi atti a la trasformare situazione economica della Calabria. All'epoca il settore produttivo più importante era l'agricoltura in quanto i posti nell'industria erano pochi, le alternative limitate all'edilizia, ai lavori pubblici e al settore terziario; l'agricoltura era tuttavia quasi esclusivamente di sussistenza, e lo scarso reddito determinava un esodo massivo dalle campagne. Per Grimaldi l'ammodernamento dell'agricoltura e l'integrazione tra agricoltura e allevamento erano le condizioni prime per avviare la produzione industriale e il commercio. il successivo aumento del reddito agrario avrebbe dovuto essere reinvestito nell'industria tessile e in quelle serica, lattiero-casearia e olearia. La presenza di industrie avrebbe innescato un circolo virtuoso in quanto avrebbe potuto richiamare un afflusso di capitali per la ristrutturazione fondiaria e l'aumento delle dimensioni delle aziende agricole, con successiva formazione e sviluppo di attività miste agricolo-manifatturiere, specialmente alimentari, con impiego di mano d'opera locale. L'imprenditore Vecchio frantojo ligure dismesso M. si impegna a tradurre in pratica questi progetti, con l'aiuto finanziario del padre, impegnandosi nel miglioramento della coltivazione degli olivi, chiamate dalla Liguria maestranze e tecnici per creare a Seminara nuovi frantoi "alla genovese"; rese poi pubblici i progetti e i risultati delle sue innovazioni con un'opera  edita con una dedica a Beccadelli, marchese della Sambuca. Si dedicò più tardi alla produzione della seta. M., che inizialmente intendeva assegnare l'ammodernamento dell'agricoltura all'iniziativa privata, si rese conto che l'approccio utilizzato per l'ammodernamento dell'industria olearia (in questo caso, introduzione in Calabria della lavorazione della seta alla "piemontese") non sarebbe stato sufficiente nella lavorazione della seta per ostacoli di natura fiscale nel regno di Napoli, ossia del dazio sulla seta calabrese. Diede pertanto inizio a vivace polemica nei confronti dei controlli oppressivi doganali e dei monopoli statali nei settori delle manifatture e del commercio.  Il politico  Sir John Acton La riflessione sull'influenza dello stato nel mercato della seta, diede avvio al dibattito sul problema della libertà nel commercio internazionale, in particolare nel commercio del grano che aveva assunto una notevole importanza dopo la carestia. Una delle proposte più importanti di M. fu la costituzione, nella Calabria Ultra, di società economiche concepite come centri promotori il miglioramento della tecnica agraria; ma la proposta non trovò il necessario sostegno né nei proprietari terrieri né nel clero. In seguito allargò lo sguardo dalla Calabria Ultra all'intero Regno, proponendo di svolgere un'attività conoscitiva sulla struttura economica del Regno mediante la predisposizione di piani di visite alle province napoletane affidati a ispettori di nomina regia, con proposte di azione sulle "cause fisiche" dell'arretratezza, principalmente la mancanza di strutture per l'irrigazione innanzitutto nelle Puglie, per le quali suggeriva il ricorso anche al lavoro coatto.   Filangieri Grazie alla notorietà raggiunta con i suoi saggi M. fu nominato dal primo ministro Acton assessore al neocostituito Supremo Consiglio delle Finanze assieme a Filangieri, Palmieri, Delfico e Galanti. Il terremoto che causò gravi danni e lutti alla famiglia Grimaldi. Grimaldi fu favorevole all'istituzione della Cassa sacra, proponendo che ricostruzione fosse eseguita secondo un piano pubblico che prevedesse iniziative strutturali per l'ammodernamento della produzione agricola e industriale. Si adoperò per l'apertura a Reggio Calabria di un istituto professionale nel quale si insegnasse "l'arte di tirar la seta alla piemontese"; la scuola, diretta da M., ebbe un certo successo, ma venne chiusa nel L'interruzione negli anni novanta dell'attività riformatrice di Ferdinando IV di Napoli in seguito alla crisi collegata alla rivoluzione francese comportò un atteggiamento di sospetto, da parte del governo napoletano, nei confronti dell'intellettualità progressista. A Grimaldi venne rifiutata la nomina, proposta dal Galanti, di presidente della costituenda Società patriottica per la Calabria in quanto massone. Fu addirittura arrestato, come gran parte dei massoni reggini (una cinquantina circa) in seguito all'assassinio del governatore di Reggio, Pinelli e trasferito nel carcere di Messina dove si trovava alla nascita della Repubblica Napoletana. Suo figlio Francescantonio aderì alla Repubblica Napoletana. Saggi: “Memoria ai gergofili sopra una specie di pianta pratense chiamata sulla” (Firenze); “Economia campestre per la Calabria” (Napoli: Orsini); “La manifattura dell'olio nella Calabria” (Napoli: Lanciano); “Manifattura e commercio delle sete del Regno di Napoli alle sue finanze, scon alcune riflessioni critiche sopra il bando delle sete” (Napoli: Porcelli); “La pubblica economia delle provincie del Regno delle Due Sicilie” (Napoli: Porcelli); “Piano per impiegare utilmente i forzati, e col loro travaglio assicurare ed accrescere le raccolte del grano nella Puglia, e nelle altre provincie del Regno” (Napoli: Porcelli); “L’industria olearia, e dell'agricoltura nelle Calabrie, ed altre provincie del Regno di Napoli” (Napoli: Porcelli); “L’economia olearia antica sull'antico frantoio da olio trovato negli scavamenti di Stabia” (Napoli: Stamperia Reale); “L’Ulteriore Calabria con alcune osservazioni economiche relative a quella provincia” (Napoli: Porcelli). Franco Venturi, Illuministi italiani,  V: Riformatori napoletani, Napoli: Ricciardi, Piromalli, La letteratura calabrese: Dalle origini al posivitismo, Cosenza: LPE,  Istruzioni sulla nuova manifattura dell'olio introdotta nel Regno di Napoli da M. patrizio genovese, socio ordinario, e corrispondente dell'Accademia de' Georgofili di Firenze, della Società di Agricoltura di Parigi, e di Berna, In Napoli: presso Orsini, a spese di Porcelli, Osservazioni economiche sopra la manifattura e commercio delle sete del Regno di Napoli alle sue finanze, scritte dal marchese Domenico Grimaldi, con alcune riflessioni critiche sopra del Bando delle Sete” (Napoli: Porcelli); “Relazione d'un disimpegno fatto nella Ulteriore Calabria con alcune osservazioni economiche relative a quella provincial” (Napoli: Porcelli); “Piano di riforma per la pubblica economia delle provincie del Regno di Napoli, e per l'agricoltura delle Due Sicilie, scritto da M., Napoli: Porcelli); Piano per impiegare utilmente i forzati, e col loro travaglio assicurare ed accrescere le raccolte del grano nella Puglia, e nelle altre provincie del Regno scritto da M.,  patrizio genovese” (Napoli: Porcelli); “Relazione d'una scuola da tirar la seta alla piemontese stabilita in Reggio per ordine di Sua Maestà, sotto la direzione di M., e l'approvazione del Vicario generale delle Calabrie don Francesco Pignatelli” (Messina per Giuseppe di Stefano). L'opera apparve anonima ed è attribuita a M. da Melzi, Note bibliografiche del fu Melzi, edite per cura di un bibliofilo milanese con altre notizie,  H-R, Milano: Bernardoni) Galanti, Giornale di viaggio in Calabria; introduzione di Luca Addante, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, A. Ubbidiente, Il pensiero e l'opera di M. e Francescantonio Grimaldi. Testi di Laurea. Università degli Studi di Salerno, Facoltà di Magistero. Perna, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia, Basile, «Un illuminista calabrese: M. da Seminara, in: Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, Cingari, Giacobini e Sanfedisti in Calabria, Reggio Cal., "Casa del libro", Morisani, Massoni e Giacobini a Reggio Calabria,  Reggio Cal., Morello,  Romeo, Alcune precisazioni su M. un riformatore Calabrese, in "Historica", Antonio Piromalli, L'attualità del pensiero e delle opere del marchese Domenico Grimaldi, Cosenza: L. Pellegrini, Luciano, M. e la Calabria, Salerno, Carucci. M. la voce nella Treccani L'Enciclopedia Italiana. Grice: “Isn’t ONE Sicily enough?” --   -- Giovanni Antonio Summonte, storico vissuto a cavallo tra il XVI e il XVII secolo, all'interno del secondo volume della sua Historia della città e Regno di Napoli, inserisce un trattato dal titolo Dell'Isola di Sicilia, e de' suoi Re; e perché il Regno di Napoli fu detto Sicilia. In questo scritto l'origine della distinzione tra due «Sicilie» separate dal Faro di Messina viene individuata nella bolla pontificia con cui papa Clemente IV investì Carlo I d'Angiò del Regno di Napoli:  «Papa Clemente IV, il quale investì, e coronò Carlo d'Angiò di questi due Regni, chiamò quest'Isola, e il Regno di Napoli con un sol nome, come si può vedere in quella Bolla, ove dice, Carlo d'Angiò Re d'amendue le Sicilie, Citra, e Ultra il Faro: e questo eziandio osservarono gli altri Pontefici, che a quello successero, e si servirono degl'istessi nomi. Imperciocchè 7 altri Re, che al detto Carlo successero che solo del Regno di Napoli, e non di Sicilia padroni furono, chiamarono il Regno di Napoli, Sicilia di qua dal Faro. Il Re Alfonso poi, ritrovandosi Re dell'Isola di Sicilia, per essere egli successo a Ferrante suo padre, e avendo anco con gran fatica, e forza d'armi guadagnato il Regno di Napoli da mano di Renato, si chiamò anch'egli con una sola voce, Re delle Due Sicilie, Citra, e Ultra; E questo per dimostrare di non contravenire all'autorità de' Pontefici. Ad Alfonso poi successero 4 altri Re i quali furono Signori solo del Regno di Napoli, e si intitolarono, come gli altri, Re di Sicilia Citra. Ma Ferdinando il Cattolico, Giovanna sua figlia, Carlo Vimperadore e Filippo nostro re, e Signore, i quali anno sic avuto il dominio d'amendue i Regni, si sono intitolati, e chiamati Re delle due Sicilie Citra, e Ultra: la verità dunque è, che questi nomi vennero da' Pontefici romani, (come s'è detto) i quali cominciarono ad introdurre, che 'l Regno di Napoli si chiamasse Sicilia.»  La stessa tesi è sostenuta da Giannone nella sua Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli, in cui si citano vari stralci della bolla pontificia, con la quale Clemente IV concesse l'investitura a Carlo d'Angiò «pro Regno Siciliae, ac Tota Terra, quae est citra Pharum, usque ad confiniam Terrarum, excepta Civitate Beneventana». In un altro passo la bolla proclamava: «Clemens IV infeudavit Regnum Siciliae citra, et ultra Pharum». Secondo Giannone è dunque questa l'origine del titolo rex utriusque Siciliae, che tuttavia Carlo d'Angiò non usò mai nei suoi atti ufficiali, preferendo gli antichi titoli dei sovrani normanni e svevi[3]. Marchese Domenico Grimaldi. Grimaldi di Messimeri. Messimeri. Keywords: implicature, economia olearia antica – antico frantoio da olio a Stabia -- Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Messimeri” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Metello: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. A Roman general and politician. A pupil of Carneade. Quinto Cecilio Metello Numidico. Metello.

 

Grice e Metopo: la ragione conversazionale della diaspora di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Metaponto). Filosofo italiano. Cited by Stobeo – He writes a treatise on virtue [VIRTUS, ANDREIA] which survives. Giamblico lists him as a Pythagorean.

 

Grice e Metrodoro: la ragione conversazionale degl’ottimati di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Crotone). Filosofo italiano. A Pythagorean and son of Epicharmo, cited by Giamblico.

 

Grice e Metronace: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale nella scuola di Napoli – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Napoli). Filosofo italiano. Metronace. Porch.A popular teacher of philosophy at Napoli, where Seneca attended some of his lectures.

 

Grice e Micalori: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- Ganimede e l’implicatura sferica di Giove – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano.  Grice: “I took my ideas on longitude and latitude from Micalori” -- Grice: “By calling it ‘sfera,’ Micalori’s statement ENTAILS rather than implicates that the Romans were wrong.” Professore a Urbino.  Opere: “Della sfera mondiale” In Urbino, Mazzantini, M., Antapocrisi, In Roma, Francesco Roma Cavalli.   Zeus features heavily in a lot of starlore, and the Eagle constellation is no exception.  The predominantly accepted mythos for this constellation is the abduction of Ganymede. Zeus had facilitated the kidnapping, fancying the beautiful mortal boy as his personal cup-bearer.  In the constellation, which is situated south of Cygnus on the equator, making it visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, poor Ganymede can be seen hanging from the claws of the eagle as he is swiftly taken to the heavens.  The constellation appears alongside several other bird constellations. The Eagle’s wings are spread, giving it the appearance of gliding through the stars. As Hyginus states, the beak is separated from the body by a milky circle. It was also said to set “at the rising of the Lion and rises with Capricorn”. (Hyginus, Astronomy, 3.15)  Greek astronomy  Humans have a natural urge to identify familiar things amongst the twinkling stars of the mysterious abyss above us. These narratives came out of astronomical observations and ancient time tracking. The study of the sky began long before the earliest Greek sources that (sparsely) discuss them, Homer and Hesiod. They likely developed during the transition from oral to written transmission, but to what is extent is unknown.  Even though the Greeks were late to the constellation conversation, they received a lot of their knowledge from their Eastern neighbors. The Greeks introduced the word katasterismos, or catasterism, which refers to the process of being set in the heavens. Constellations were used for navigation and an indication of seasonal change; many extravagant mythic connections were added later.  Today, there are 88 constellations officially defined by the International Astronomical Union, and many of them have been accepted since Ptolemy’s The Almagest.  Constellations created by the Mesopotamians between 1300-1000 BC originate in older lands, but the Greek astral mythos canon was solidified by Eratosthenes, in a work now lost to us.  Zeus and his trusted companion  The myth of Ganymede is very ancient lore, being told in the tale of Troy by Homer (Illiad) – albeit with no mention of an eagle escort. In the fifth Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Ganymede was said to be whisked off to Olympus by a ‘heaven-sent whirlwind’.  The eagle was not connected to this tale until the 4th century BC. The constellation was accepted as an eagle prior to this, so it is presumed that this addition was made to make the story fit the stars, probably because Ganymede is said to feature in his own nearby constellation, the water-pourer (Aquarius). Micalori. Keywords: implicatura sferica, planifesferio, Casali. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Micalori” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Miccoli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’ANTONINO -- homo loqvens – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Miccoli is a great philosopher – and surgeon – My favourites are his ‘Corpo dicibile,’ which trades on my idea of what it means to ‘say’ something; and his ‘Homo loquens,’ a play on Aristotle’s ‘zoon logikon,’ but which Aristotle would find otiose: man is the ‘vivente’ that speaks, or the ‘animal’ that speaks. To say that it is the ‘homo’ that speaks relies on Darwin’s classifications and phyla of homo sapiens sapiens and the rest!” La divertente commedia umana Incipit Chi si accinge alla lettura dell' Elogio della follia di Erasmo farebbe bene a non dimenticare taluni antecedenti biografici dell'autore che spiegano meglio l'ironia bonaria dell'opuscolo. Li richiamiamo. Geertsz, latinizzato secondo il costume degli umanisti in Desiderio Erasmo, nacque figlio di illegittimo coniugio. La famiglia paterna, in auge nella borghesia di Gouda, come apprendiamo dallo stesso Erasmo, si oppose alle nozze riparatrici del figlio, costringendolo, con inganno, a far intraprendere la carriera ecclesiastica al malcapitato giovanotto.  Citazioni Come umanista Erasmo si sente apparentato alla società dalla duttile forza della parola che ne saggia criticamente le valenze in termini di ironia, sarcasmo, gioco allusivo, bonarietà lungimirante, tolleranza magnanima, moralismo contenuto. Fin dalla dedica dell'opuscolo a Moro si arguisce che l'autore non vuol propinare sapientia austera e compassata, ma buon senso brioso che permei di sé la vita quotidiana della gente, fosse anche d’ANTONINO che sul letto di morte, lui filosofo, esclama, a un certo momento: «Sentenzio me cacavi! La sapienza dei dotti è tanto altezzosa quanto sterile, diversamente dal buon senso che cambia in meglio l'esistenza non sofisticata. (Sotto la penna dell'insigne umanista olandese si fronteggiano al femminile Sapientia e Stultitia: la prima, per voler essere austera ad ogni costo, diventa stolta; la seconda, in quanto «forza vitale irrazionale e creatrice», si palesa veramente saggia alla resa dei conti. L' Elogio della follia conserva un fascino di imperitura attualità. Lo si desume dall'analisi di Histoire de la Folie, dove Foucault evidenzia il confine sfumato tra ragione e sragione in epoca di alta tecnologia, e altresì dalle invettive di Nietzsche contro lo smunto bibliotecario, lo stitico correttore di bozze, il pallido burocrate stipendiato, emblemi tutti del moderno «uomo alessandrino». (Explicit Erasmo conosce e cita perfino pagine della Bibbia a riprova della bontà dei doni che Follia concede ai mortali. Un modo questo, di prendere in giro anzitempo la presunzione dispotica delle società economicistiche che intendono mantenere sotto loro tutela il cittadino «minorenne» sempre bisognoso di dande e mordacchie. Gli autori classici sono, tra l'altro, spiriti lungimiranti. A tali società alienanti di oggi e di domani Blake, con spirito erasmiano, potrebbe ripetere: «esuberanza è bellezza. La divertente commedia umana, introduzione a Erasmo da Rotterdam, Elogio della Follia, TEN, Introduzione a "Vita di Gesù" Incipit Il contesto storico culturale della Vita di Gesù La recente edizione storico-critica delle Opere complete di Hegel consente di far chiarezza sulle discussioni e congetture che hanno tenuto a lungo il campo nella letteratura hegeliana a proposito dei cosiddetti Scritti teologici giovanili, la cui indole cronologica vengono ora sancite su base filologica e critica più accorta. Più che ai titoli apposti da Nohl ai vari frammenti e più che alle congetture sulla data probabile di tali scritti, è più fruttuoso rifarsi agli anni di formazione filosofica e teologica di Hegel nello Stift di Tubinga e reperire nel curriculum studiorum le ascendenze prossime che hanno influenzato maggiormente l'autore in una speculiare lettura dei quattro Evangelisti, da cui desume Das Leben Jesu. Citazioni Gli interessi culturali di Hegel, negli anni tubinghesi, sono prevalentemente filosofici, incentivati dalla lettura di Rousseau, Jacobi, Lessing, Kant, Fichte su temi sociopolitici ed etico-religiosi. (Hegel, studioso di filosofia, si sente chiamato a lumeggiare «spiritualmente» la situazione storica del suo tempo e a porre le premesse di carattere razionale per l'avvento di un «ordine uguale di tutti gli spiriti». Il lettore del Leben Jesu si accorge subito di trovarsi di fronte a una forma di scrittura audace, che desacralizza e sdivinizza la persona di Gesù, riducendolo a maestro di morale sublime.  [Paolo Miccoli, introduzione a Hegel, Vita di Gesù. TEN. “Filosofia della storia”, “Corpi dicibili”, “Homo louqens”. Paolo Miccoli. Miccoli. Keywords: homo loquens, corpo dicibile, corpi dicibili. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Miccoli” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Miccolis: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – BRVNO – filosofi italiani al rogo -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Corato). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Miccoli reminds me of G. Baker, who dedicated most of his life to Witters! Miccolis to Labriola.” Considerato uno dei massimi studiosi di Labriola.  Si trasferì a Perugia per gli studi universitari, laureandosi in filosofia a pieni voti con una tesi dal titolo «Il pensiero politico crociano e la genesi del liberalismo». Abilitatosi cum laude all'insegnamento di storia e filosofia, professore in vari licei della provincia, occupò una cattedra stabile presso l'Istituto tecnico per geometri a Perugia, accostando l'insegnamento di estetica all'Accademia di belle arti Vannucci. Divenne responsabile del settore culturale del PCI per la regione Umbria; ma, preso dagli studî e dall'insegnamento, lasciò l'incarico, comunque seguendo sempre le vicende politiche con attenzione e passione. La sua è stata una formazione liberale: considerava suoi padri spirituali Labriola, Croce, Gobetti. Dalla fine degli anni Settanta la sua vita sarà rivolta allo studio del filosofo cassinese Labriola, da Miccolis ritenuto «un buon punto per capire la storia d'Italia». Nascerà quindi il Carteggio labrioliano, in cinque volumi, presentato da Cesa all'Accademia dei Lincei, edito per gli auspici e con il contributo dell'Istituto italiano per gli studi storici e dell'Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" e favorito dalla consultazione, nel frattempo divenuta possibile, delle carte Labriola del Fondo Dal Pane, acquistato dalla Società napoletana di storia patria. Su tale monumentale lavoro è stato scritto: «un evento letterario, probabilmente l'acquisizione più importante tra le fonti della cultura italiana postunitaria; e, di più, senza esagerazione, si presenta come un capolavoro ecdotico, per accuratezza filologica ed esaustività del commento. Miccolis era certo divenuto col tempo l'esperto più sicuro della impervia grafia del suo autore, della quale conosceva ogni piega e ogni anomalia, dei contesti politici e culturali in cui Labriola si muoveva della spezzettata, dispersa e contorta  labrioliana, difficile da padroneggiare: si era anche impadronito, in base a una sensibilità linguistica non comune, del "vocabolario" dell'Autore in tutte le sue sfumature, ed era perciò in grado di respingere o di dubitare di attribuzioni di testi, datazioni improbabili, letture sghembe». Miccolis scrisse inoltre sistematicamente per varie riviste (Rivista di storia della filosofia, il Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, Belfagor, Critica storica, Nuovi studi politici, etc.); numerosi sono i suoi saggi e notevoli gli ulteriori apporti documentari alla  labrioliana. Collabora intensamente con l'Istituto italiano per gli studi storici e la Fondazione Biblioteca Croce: aveva il compito di revisionare i carteggi crociani, e sotto il suo controllo passavano i volumi dell'Edizione nazionale delle opere di Croce. È stato anche uno dei principali animatori dell'Edizione nazionale delle opere di Labriola, per la quale aveva contribuito a definire il piano editoriale, i criteri metodologici, e il problema del rapporto tra l'opera edita di Labriola e il fondo manoscritto della Società napoletana di storia patria.  Adnkronos, Filosofi, E' morto M., massimo studioso di Labriola, Bari, SAVORELLI, Rivista di storia della filosofia,, fasc. 2. Opere: “ Il carteggio di Antonio Labriola conservato nel Fondo Dal Pane” «Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane»,  «Con la Sua calligrafia che mi ricorda i papiri greci...». La filologia, la guerra, la Crusca nel carteggio di Croce con Pistelli e Teresa Lodi, a c. di M. e Savorelli, in Gli archivi della memoria, Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, (rist. in Gli archivi della memoria e il Carteggio Salvemini-Pistelli, a c. di R. Pintaudi, Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Lauenziana, Polistampa, Labriola, La politica italiana Corrispondenze alle « Basler Nachrichten », M., Napoli, Bibliopolis, Labriola, Carteggio, M., Napoli, Bibliopolis, M., Labriola, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, A. Labriola, L'università e la libertà della scienza, M., Torino, Aragno, Labriola, Bruno. Scritti editi ed inediti M. e Savorelli, Napoli, Bibliopolis, M., Antonio Labriola. Saggi per una biografia politica, A. Savorelli e M., Milano, UNICOPLI,  M., Gli scritti politici di Labriola editi da M., A. Savorelli e M., Napoli, Bibliopolis,   G. Bucci, M., il ricordo a un anno dalla morte, "Corato live", W. Gianinazzi, M. Prat, In memoriam "Mil neuf cent", n° 28, 201. A. Savorelli, Stefano Miccolis, «Rivista di storia della filosofia», fa A. Meschiari, Stefano Miccolis studioso di Antonio Labriola, «Rivista di storia della filosofia». Stefano Miccolis. Miccolis. Keywords: filosofi italiani al rogo. BRVNO. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Miccolis” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Michelstädter: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – il giovane divino -- l’implicatura persuasiva di Platone – filosofia giudea – filosofia nel ventennio fascista – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Gorizia). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “It’s difficult to grasp Michelsteadter’s implicature: his study on ‘persuasion’ is brilliant – he was a close reader of Plato, and he uses figurative language, as ‘il giovane divino.’ My favourite is his account of the persuasive rhetoric of Cicero.” Grice: “Michelsteadter plays with the etymology of persuasion, which is cognate with ‘suave,’ as it should – sweet talk, we should say – which I could make into a maxim which would not be strictly ‘conversational’ unless under the category of modus – ‘be sweet’ –But the sweetness applies in general to my framework: the emissor aims to be sweet if he is going to try to influence the other, and will be influenced by a sweeter co-emissor.”  essential Italian philosopher. Ultimo di quattro figli, da un'agiata famiglia. Il padre, Alberto, dirige l'ufficio goriziano delle Assicurazioni Generali ed è presidente del Gabinetto di Lettura goriziano. È un uomo colto, autore di scritti letterari e di conferenze, rispettoso delle usanze tradizionali ma solo formalmente, per rispetto borghese -- è, anzi, un laico, un tipico rappresentante della mentalità materialistica. Il semitismo non sembra quindi incidere molto sulla sua formazione culturale, che scoprire solo più tardi e con non poca meraviglia di avere un antenato cabalista. Iscritto al severo Staatsgymnasium cittadino, fa propria la rigida Bildung asburgica. Con le traduzioni dal greco e dal latino ha i primi approcci colla filosofia. A iniziarlo sono Schubert-Soldern, solipsista gnoseologico, secondo il quale tutto il sapere va ricondotto alla sfera del soggetto; e l'amico Mreule che gli fa conoscere Il mondo come volontà e rappresentazione, di cui resta traccia soprattutto ne La Persuasione e la Rettorica. Nella soffitta di Paternolli, oltre a Schopenhauer, legge e discute, con gli amici Nino e Rico, i tragici e i presocratici, Platone, il Vangelo e le Upanishad; e poi ancora Petrarca, Leopardi, Tolstoj, e l'amatissimo Ibsen.  Conclusde gli studi ginnasiali e progetta di iscriversi a giurisprudenza; in seguito abbandona l'idea e si iscrive alla facoltà di matematica a Vienna. Ma l'anima è giàper dirla con Leopardi nel primo giovanil tumulto verso un altrove che non riesce a riconoscere nella ferrea logica matematica. Si iscrive al corso di Lettere dell'Istituto di Studi Superiori Fiorentino, città in cui vivrà per quasi quattro anni e dove conoscerà, fra gli altri, Chiavacci, futuro curatore delle sue Opere, ed Arangio-Ruiz, noto filosofo. Continua a ritrarre, fra tratto espressionistico e schizzo caricaturale, la varia umanità in cui s'imbatte, sia nei mesi di studio che nei periodi di vacanza al mare e in montagna. Scrive moltissimo, in modo quasi ossessivo, dalle lettere ai familiari (in particolare alla sorella Paula) alle recensioni di drammi teatrali. Un evento luttuoso segna la sua vita: la morte, per suicidio, del fratello Gino. Due anni prima si era suicidata anche una donna da lui amata, Nadia Baraden. Mreule parte per l'Argentina. Questa partenza è segnata da un evento significativo, una sorta di passaggio del testimone. Si fa consegnare da Rico la pistola che porta sempre con sé. Completati gli esami, ritorna a Gorizia e inizia la stesura della tesi di laurea, assegnatagli da Vitelli, concernente i concetti di persuasione e di retorica in Platone e Aristotele. La sua attività è febrile. Oltre alla Persuasione scrive anche la maggior parte delle Poesie e alcuni dialoghi, tra cui spicca il Dialogo della salute. Il suo isolamento diventa pressoché totale, mangia pochissimo e dorme per terra, come un asceta. Vede solo la sorella e il cugino Emilio. Comunica al padre che dopo la tesi non avrebbe fatto il professore, ma che appena laureato sarebbe andato al mare, forse a Pirano o a Grado. Dopo un diverbio con la madre, impugna la pistola lasciatagli da Mreule e si toglie la vita. Sul frontespizio della tesi aveva disegnato una fiorentina, una lampada ad olio, e aggiunto in greco: apesbésthen, «io mi spensi».  Amici raccolsero i suoi saggi, ora alla Biblioteca di Gorizia. Sepolto nel cimitero ebraico di Valdirose (Rožna Dolina), oggi nel comune sloveno di Nova Gorica, a poche centinaia di metri dal confine con l'Italia. La breve vita di Michelstaedter scorrecome risulta dall'Epistolarioall'insegna di una volontà di vivere continuamente illuminata dal desiderio di un altrimenti e di un altrove metafisico che fa di lui un impulsivo, un irrequieto esploratore di linguaggi e di mezzi espressivi, capace di spaziare dalla pittura alla poesia passando per le ripide vette della filosofia. Nell'apologo dell'aerostato incluso ne La Persuasione e la Rettorica, l'essenza del pensiero occidentale, la rettorica, viene fatta risalire da M. a un parricidio: quello di Aristotele nei confronti di Platone. Questi, nella metafora costruita da M., escogita un mechánema, una macchina volante per abbandonare il peso del mondo e giungere all'assoluto. Maestro e discepoli riescono a librarsi negli alti spazi del cielo, ma restano a metà strada, fra una mera contemplazione dell'essere e del tempo e la nostalgia della terra e delle cure mondane. A riportarli sulla terra ci pensa allora un discepolo più scaltro e intraprendente degli altri, Aristotele, il quale, tradendo il maestro, fa scendere il mechánema restituendo così a tutti la gioia d'aver la terra sicura sotto i piedi. Questa nostalgia del mondo intelligibile platonico fa quindi di lui un discepolo di Schopenhauer, più che di Nietzsche.  La costituzione della metafisica è per lui una storia di rettorici tradimenti, la vicenda di una verità dai grandi persuasi tanto proclamata agli uomini quanto da questi disattesa e inascoltata. Quanto io dico è stato detto tante volte e con tale forza che pare impossibile che il mondo abbia ancor continuato ogni volta dopo che erano suonate quelle parole. Lo dissero ai Greci Parmenide, Eraclito, Empedocle, ma Aristotele li trattò da naturalisti inesperti; lo disse Socrate, ma ci fabbricarono su 4 sistemi... lo disse Cristo, e ci fabbricarono su la Chiesa. La persuasione è la visione propria di chi ha compreso la tragicità della finitezza e ad essa vuol tener fermo, senza ricorrere a quegli «empiastri»i kallopísmata órphnes, gli «ornamenti dell'oscurità»che possano lenire il dolore scatenato da tale consapevolezza. L'essere è finitezza che si rivela solo nella dimensione tragica di una presenza abbacinante, ma gli uomini rigettano questa tragica consapevolezza ottundendosi, pascalianamente, nel divertissement. Persuaso è chi ha la vita in sé, chi non la cerca alienandosi nelle cose o nei luoghi comuni della società perdendo l'irrinunciabile hic et nunc del proprio esserci, ma riesce «a consistere nell'ultimo presente», abbandonando quelle illusioni di sicurezza e di conforto che avviluppano chi vive abbagliato dalle illusioni create dal potere, dalla cultura, dalle dottrine filosofiche, politiche, sociali, religiose. È questa «la via preparata» dalla quale a tutti fa comodo non discostarsi troppo; è questo restare perennemente attaccati alla vitala philopsychìaa far sì che la "rettorica" trionfi sempre. La vita, soffocata dalla ricerca dei piaceri, della potenza, finanche dalla presunzione filosofica di possedere la via e quindi la vita stessa, non vive, perché in ogni istante ciascuno rimane avvolto dalle cure per ciò che non è ancora o dal rimpianto per ciò che non è più, mancando sempre l'attimo decisivo, quello che i greci chiamavano kairós, il tempo propizio. Perciò nella vita facciamo esperienza della morte, di quella «morte nella vita» cantataquasi una danse macabrenel Canto delle crisalidi: «Noi col filo / col filo della vita / nostra sorte / filammo a questa morte».  Il pensiero di M. procede di conseguenza, per liberare il potenziale di tragicità dell'esistenza, attraverso violente contrapposizioni concettuali (persuasione-rettorica, vita-morte, piacere-dolore), senza alcun tentativo di mediazione dialettica. M. respinge, con un gesto iniziatico, l'idea di costruire una dottrina sistematica della persuasione e della salute, in quanto «la via della persuasione non è corsa da 'omnibus', non ha segni, indicazioni che si possano comunicare, studiare, ripetere. Ma ognuno ha in sé il bisogno di trovarla e nel proprio dolore l'indice, ognuno deve nuovamente aprirsi da sé la via, poiché ognuno è solo e non può sperar aiuto che da sé: la via della persuasione non ha che questa indicazione: non adattarti alla sufficienza di ciò che t'è dato». La salvezza individuale è possibile solo in una singolarità irripetibile, irriducibile, concentrata in sé.  Il solipsismo di Michelstaedter è perciò radicale: non ci sono vie, non ci sono cammini, c'è solo il viandante che nel deserto dell'esistenza è «il primo e l'ultimo», crocefisso al legno della propria sufficienza e schiacciato dalla croce di falsi bisogni. Poiché il mondo è negatività assoluta, al pensiero non resta che negare questa stessa negatività rifiutando i dati dell'immanenza: «Solo quando non chiederai più la conoscenza conoscerai, poiché il tuo chiedere ottenebra la tua vita». Si tratta di una sentenza di sapore quasi buddistico: non a caso Mreule enfatizzerà la figura dell'amico descrivendolo come «il Buddha dell'occidente».  Produzione artistica La produzione poetica e quella pittorica di M. possono essere considerate un prolungamento e un completamento di questo sentimento tragico e mistico. Come nel verso poetico egli tenta di esprimere l'inesprimibile, di dire con parole ciò che sfugge al sistema di segni codificato e perciò già da sempre istituito retoricamente, così nel segno pittorico, nello schizzo rapido e scherzoso come nel ritratto composto e meditato, traluce l'impossibilità di giungere a quella che Parmenide chiamava la ben rotonda verità. Non siamo giocati solo dalle parole, ma anche dalle immagini di una realtà fatta di colori e di forme che ci sfuggono nella loro immediatezza e alterità, «come chi vuol veder sul muro l'ombra del proprio profilo, in ciò appunto la distrugge». Anche l'arte e la poesia, come la retorica filosofica, si rivelano infine per quello che sono: fragili orpelli di cui si orna l'oscurità dell'essere e che ogni linguaggio escogitato dall'uomo sarà sempre impotente a esprimere.  Saggi: “Saggi” (G. Chiavacci, Sansoni, Firenze); “Scritti scolastici, S. Campailla, Gorizia, Opera grafica e pittorica, S. Campailla, Gorizia, Il dialogo della salute e altri dialoghi, S. Campailla, Adelphi, Milano Poesie, S. Campailla, Adelphi, Milano, La Persuasione e la Rettorica, Vladimiro Arangio-Ruiz, Formiggini, Genova, edizione critica S. Campailla, Adelphi, Milano poi, con le Appendici critiche, ivi,). Epistolario, S. Campailla, Adelphi, Milano nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata, ivi,  Parmenide ed Eraclito. Empedocle, SE, Milano, L'anima ignuda nell'isola dei beati. Scritti su Platone, D. Micheletti, Diabasis, Reggio Emilia,  Dialogo della salute. E altri scritti sul senso dell'esistenza, a cura e con un saggio introduttivo di G. Brianese, Mimesis, Milano, La melodia del giovane divino, S.  Campailla, Adelphi, Milano  La persuasione e la rettorica, edizione critica, A. Comincini, Joker. M.-Winteler, Appunti per una biografia di M.. M. si riferisce, nell'Epistolario, al bonno Isacco Samuele Reggio, confondendolo con il padre di questo, Abram Vita Reggio  S.Campailla, Il segreto di Nadia B., Marsilio,. Da articoli di cronaca americani dell'epoca, si apprende che il suicidio avvenne con un colpo di pistola alla tempia destra.  La persuasione e la rettorica35  La persuasione e la rettorica  Poesie La persuasione e la rettorica Magris, Un altro mare Il dialogo della salute, Biografie e studi critici Acciani Antonia, Il maestro del deserto. M., Progedit, Bari Arbo Alessandro, Carlo Michelstaedter, Studio Tesi, Pordenone (Civiltà della memoria). Arbo Alessandro, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,. Arbo Alessandro, Il suono instabile. Saggi sulla filosofia della musica nel Novecento, NeoClassica, Roma, Giuseppe Auteri, Metafisica dell'inganno, Università degli Studi, Catania, Benevento, Scrittori giuliani. M., Slataper, Stuparich, Otto/Novecento, Azzate, Brianese, L'arco e il destino. Interpretazione di M., Abano Terme (PD), Francisci); Camerino, La persuasione e i simboli. M. e Slataper, Liguori, Napoli Sergio Campailla, Pensiero e poesia di M., Patron, Bologna. Sergio Campailla, A ferri corti con la vita, Comune di Gorizia Sergio Campailla, Controcodice, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli Valerio Cappozzo, La passione, Les Cahiers d'Histoire de l'Art nº2, Parigi Valerio Cappozzo, Il percorso universitario di  dall'archivio dell'Istituto di Studi Superiori, in  Un'altra società. M. e la cultura contemporanea, S. Campailla, Marsilio, Venezia, Un'introduzione, Perego, Storace e Visone, AlboVersorio, Milano); L'Essere come Azione, Erasmo Silvio Storace, AlboVersorio, Marco Cerruti, Carlo Michelstaedter, Mursia, 2Milano  (Civiltà letteraria, Sez. italiana). Cerruti, Ricordi, L'Essere come Azione", Erasmo Silvio Storace, AlboVersorio, Milano; Cinquetti, M.. Il nulla e la folle speranza, Edizioni Messaggero, Padova Tracce del sacro nella cultura contemporanea,). Paola Colotti, La persuasione dell'impersuadibilità. Saggio su M., Ferv, Roma, Acunto, La parola nuova. Momenti della riflessione filosofica sulla parola nel Novecento, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli Martino Dalla Valle, Dal niente all'impensato. Saggio su M., Imprimitur, Padova Daniela De Leo, M. filosofo del "frammento" con Appunti di filosofia di M., Milella, Lecce Daniela De Leo, Mistero e persuasione in M. Passando da Parmenide ed Eraclito, Milella, Lecce Roberta De Monticelli, Il richiamo della persuasione. Lettere (Marietti, Genova); Roberta De Monticelli, Ricordo di una giovinezza,[ "M.. L'Essere come Azione", Erasmo Silvio Storace, AlboVersorio, Milano Martire della persuasione", tesi di laurea di Massimo Mirizzi, Biblioteca Statale Isontina, Gorizia Dialoghi intorno a M., Sergio Campailla, Biblioteca Statale Isontina, Gorizia 1988. Eredità di M., Silvio Cumpeta e Angela Michelis, Forum Edizioni, Udine Laura Furlan, L’essere straniero di un intellettuale moderno, Lint, Trieste  (Vie di fuga 6). L'immagine irraggiungibile. Dipinti e disegni di M., Gallarotti, Edizioni della Laguna, Mariano del Friuli, Galgano Andrea, Il vortice del nulla, in Mosaico, Roma, Aracne,  Giordano, Il pensiero e l'arte di Carlo Michelstaedter, in "Riscontri", 1. Ora, revisionato, in Id., Il fantastico e il reale. Pagine di critica letteraria da Dante al Novecento, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche italiane, Innella Francesco, M.: frammenti da una filosofia oscura, Ripostes, Salerno-Roma (I tascabili). Vincenzo Intermite, M. Società rettorica e coscienza persuasa, Firenze Atheneum (collana Collezione Oxenford, Rocca, Nichilismo e retorica. Il pensiero di M., ETS, Pisa  (Biblioteca di "Teoria" 2). C. Rocca, L’esperienza del senso, in «Il Cannocchiale», C. Rocca, Il motivo della persuasione e il rapporto con M., in «Il Ponte», “Aldo Capitini, persuasione e non violenza”, T. Raffaelli,  Claudio La Rocca, Esistenzialismo e nichilismo. Luporini e Michelstaedter, «Belfagor», Claudio La Rocca, Prima e dopo la Persuasione. Interpretare M., in M.: l'essere come azione, E. Storace, AlboVersorio, Milano, C. Rocca, La persuasione (e l'oratoria), «Humanitas», un classico del Novecento, Michelis,  Magris, Un altro mare, Garzanti, Milano, Biagio Marin, Ricordo di M., in Studi Goriziani, Marroni, Filosofie dell'intensità. Quattro maestri occulti del pensiero italiano contemporaneo, Mimesis, Milano (IF. Itinerari filosofici). A. Marroni, L’estetica del 'farsi fiamma', in Estetiche dell'eccesso. Quando il sentire estremo diventa grande stile, Quodlibet, Macerata,; Fabrizio Meroi, «Michelstaedter, Carlo» in Il contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero Filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, Roma,. Angela Michelis, Il coraggio dell'impossibile, Città Nuova, Roma (Idee). Muzzioli, M., Milella, Lecce, Negri, Il lavoro e la città. Un saggio su M., Lavoro, Roma 1996. (I grandi piccoli 11). R. Peluso, L'identico e i molteplici. Meditazioni michelstaedteriane, Loffredo, Napoli. Perniola, La "persuasione" tra marginalità e centralità, in "Eredità” Cumpeta e Michelis, Udine, Forum Piero Pieri, Il pensiero della poesia. Il Romanticismo della tragedia, Nautilus, Bologna, Pieri, "Esorcismo e ironia nella critica del primo M.", in «Il lettore di provincia», Pieri, "Modelli di cultura alle origini della Persuasione di M.", in «Il lettore di provincia» P. Pieri, "Il rischio dell'autoinganno (Una errata attribuzione di incisione a M.)", in «Metodi e ricerche» Piero Pieri,"La scienza del tragico. Saggio su M.", Bologna, Cappelli, Pieri, "Nello sguardo della trascendenza. Intorno alla figura dell'ermafrodita e del satiro nella Persuasione", in «Intersezioni», a. X, n. 1, P. Pieri, "Due diverse ma non opposte interpretazioni de «La persuasione e la retorica» di M.", in Studi sulla modernità, F. Curi, Bologna, Clueb, Pieri, "Per una dialettica storica del silenzio. La “vergogna” del filosofo e l'autoinganno dello scrittore", in  Eredità di M., Forum, Udine, Pieri, "La differenza ebraica: grecità, tradizione e ripetizione in M. e altri ebrei della modernità", nuova edizione, Pendragon, Bologna, Pieri, "M. nel '900. Forme del tragico contemporaneo", Transeuropa, collana «Pronto intervento», Massa,. Piromalli, M., La Nuova Italia, P. Pulcina, M.: estetica. L'illusione della retorica, le ragioni del suicidio, Atheneum, Firenze); G. Pulina, L'imperfetto pessimista. Lalli, Poggibonsi (Materiali di filosofia). G. Pulina, "L'incompiuta imperfezione. Note sul pessimismo di M.", in «Storia, antropologia e scienze del linguaggio», Università degli Studi di Cassino, G. Pulina, "Capitini e M.: un dialogo sulla persuasione", «Satyāgraha», N Gabriella Putignano, L'esistenza al bivio. La persuasione e la rettorica di M., Stamen, Roma. M. Raschini, M., Marsilio, Venezia); M. Raschini, M.. La disperata devozione, Cappelli, Bologna, Chiavacci, Il pensiero di M., articolo sul «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana», Russo, Chiavacci interprete di M., in  M. un secolo dopo, Marsilio, Sanò, Le ragioni del nulla. Il pensiero tragico nella filosofia italiana tra Ottocento e Novecento, Città aperta, Troina, Laura Sanò, Leggere La persuasione e la rettorica di M., Ibis, Como. Semeraro, Lo svuotamento del futuro. Note su M., Milella, Lecce); G.  Sessa, “Oltre la persuasion, Settimo Sigillo, Roma Stella Vittori, M., FERV, Milano E. Storace,  L'Essere come Azione, E. Storace, AlboVersorio, Milano. E. Storace, Thanatografie. Per un'estetica del morire in Platone, Nietzsche, Heidegger, M. e Rilke, Mimesis, Milano. G. Taviani, M., Palumbo, Palermo  (La scrittura e l'interpretazione). Veneziani, M. e la metafisica della gioventù, AlboVersorio, Milano. Verri, M. e il suo tempo, Longo Angelo, Ravenna  (Il portico). Visone, L'incidenza di Schopenhauer sul pensiero di M., Liguori, [Archivio di Storia della Cultura, Visone, La via alla persuasione come deviazione dalla noluntas, in M.. L'Essere come Azione, Storace, AlboVersorio Treccani Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Catalogo Vegetti della letteratura fantastica, Fantascienza. Carlo Raimondo Michelstaedter. Carlo Michelstaedter. Michelstaedter. Keywords: l’implicatura di Platone. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Michelstaedter: retorica e persuasione," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Michelstaedter” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mieli: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’uccello del paradiso; ovvero, la lingua perduta del desiderio – la Paradisaeidae di Swinton -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Milano). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Speranza has studied this; he calls it ‘Dorothea Oxoniensis,’ and indeed it is a joint endeavour with C. R. Stevenson – who *knows*!” -- «Spero che la lettura di questo libro favorisca la liberazione del desiderio gay presso coloro che lo reprimono e aiuti quegli omosessuali manifesti, che sono ancora schiavi del sentimento di colpevolezza indotto dalla persecuzione sociale, a liberarsi della falsa colpa»  (Elementi di critica omosessuale. M Attivista e scrittore italiano, teorico degli studi di genere. È considerato uno dei fondatori del movimento omosessuale italiano, nonché uno tra i massimi teorici del pensiero nell'attivismo omosessuale italiano. Legato al marxismo rivoluzionario, è noto soprattutto come eponimo del Circolo di cultura omosessuale M. e per il suo saggio Elementi di critica omosessuale pubblicato nella sua prima edizione da Einaudi nel 1977.  M. penultimo dei sette figli di Walter Mieli e di Liderica Salina. Il padre, ebreo e originario di Alessandria d'Egitto, vive a Milano dalla metà degli anni venti e aveva fondato con successo un'azienda di filati, divenuta in seguito una delle più importanti nella torcitura e nella lavorazione della seta. La madre, milanese, era insegnante di lingue.  Sposati, durante la seconda guerra mondiale i coniugi M. erano sfollati a Lora, frazione di Como. Mario crebbe in questa cittadina, pur mantenendo forti legami con Milano dove il padre continuava a lavorare e a risiedere.  Il giovane Mario si stabilì definitivamente nel capoluogo lombardo quando si iscrisse al liceo classico Giuseppe Parini, raggiunto due anni dopo dalla sorella minore Paola, alla quale fu sempre molto legato. Già in questi anni diede dimostrazione della sua viva intelligenza e dichiarò la propria omosessualità. Secondo quanto testimoniato dal compagno Milo De Angelis, nfondò un circolo di poesia che divenne anche un luogo di incontro per omosessuali. Fu pienamente coinvolto nella contestazione ed evocò questo periodo nel suo romanzo autobiografico Il risveglio dei faraoni.  A causa della sua miopia fu esonerato dal servizio militare alla fine del liceo, si trasferì a Londra per perfezionare l'inglese, come già avevano fatto altri suoi familiari. Qui frequentò il "Gay Liberation Front" venendo a contatto con l'attivismo omosessuale nella sua fase più intensa, subito dopo i moti di Stonewall. Tornato in Italia, fu, insieme ad Angelo Pezzana, tra i soci fondatori del celebre Fuori! a Torino, prima associazione italiana del movimento di liberazione omosessuale italiano.  Convinto assertore di una rivoluzione gay in chiave marxista, si allontanò dal Fuori! insieme a tutta la cellula milanese dell'associazione quando questa si legò al Partito Radicale.  Nello stesso anno fondò a Milano i Collettivi Omosessuali Milanesi e i Collettivi parteciparono al Festival del proletariato giovanile di Parco Lambro, dove Mieli lanciò dal palco lo slogan Lotta dura, Contronatura!. Si laureò in filosofia morale con una tesi, poi pubblicata con modifiche, da Einaudi con il titolo di Elementi di critica omosessuale e che divenne un fondamento delle teorie di genere in Italia e, in misura minore, all'estero, venendo tradotto e pubblicato in inglese nel 1980 con il titolo Homosexuality and liberation: elements of a gay critique ed in spagnolo con il titolo Elementos de crítica homosexual dall'editrice Anagrama. Elementi fu uno dei testi base dei collettivi autonomi gay.  M. fu uno dei primi a contestare apertamente le categorie di genere vestendosi quasi sempre con abiti femminili. Nel frattempo si dedicava al teatro, destando scandalo nella mentalità dell'epoca con opere come lo spettacolo La Traviata Norma. Ovvero: Vaffanculo... ebbene sì! Dava volutamente scandalo anche per il modo in cui si presentava, utilizzò anche immagini e ruoli per portare avanti la propria battaglia dei diritti individuali inalienabili. Nel corso della sua esistenza, cercò di superare i limiti, fece uso di droghe e si dette a pratiche sempre più estreme, inclusa la coprofagia.  Durante un viaggio a Londra, Mieli, vicino già all'antipsichiatria, iniziò a interessarsi di psicoanalisi; fu nuovamente arrestato, quando, semi-nudo e in preda a una crisi psichica, fu fermato nell'aeroporto di Heathrow, in cerca di un poliziotto con cui avere un rapporto sessuale. Prima venne incarcerato, poi messo nella sezione psichiatrica del Marlborough Day hospital, assistito dai familiari venuti dall'Italia in attesa del processo. Venne ricondotto a Milano, dopo la condanna a pagare una multa, e ricoverato in una clinica psichiatrica per un mese. Una volta dimesso, su consiglio del suo psicoanalista Zapparoli, i genitori gli diedero un appartamento autonomo. L'anno seguente viaggiò ad Amsterdam e di nuovo a Londra e si laurea con lode in filosofia. Poco dopo lasciò l'appartamento che gli avevano trovato e interruppe la terapia psichiatrica.  Al V congresso del Fuori!, che sancì la sua rottura col movimento e con Pezzana, M. prese la parola, si dichiarò transessuale e parlò della sua esperienza di malattia mentale («sono stato definito uno schizofrenico paranoide, sono stato in ospedale, in manicomio per questo motivo») e di omosessualità. Dopo questo periodo si dedicò alla stesura degli Elementi di critica omosessuale.  Negli ultimi anni di vita si dedicò all'esoterismo e all'alchimia, abbastanza isolato dal resto del movimento omosessuale, e lavorando al romanzo Il risveglio dei faraoni. Morì suicida infilando la testa nel forno della sua abitazione di Milano dopo un lungo periodo di depressione. Tra i motivi del suo gesto estremo fu l'ostruzionismo che il padre, influente industriale milanese, aveva fatto per impedire la pubblicazione della sua ultima opera, Il risveglio dei faraoni, ritenendolo troppo autobiografico e lesivo dell'onore famigliare. A lui è intitolato il Circolo di cultura omosessuale M. sorto a Roma nello stesso anno della morte.  Il pensiero Il transessualismo universale Il pensiero di M. consiste nel ritenere che ogni persona è potenzialmente transessuale se non fosse condizionata, fin dall'infanzia, da un certo tipo di società che, attraverso quella che Mieli chiamava "educastrazione", costringe a considerare l'eterosessualità come normalità e tutto il resto come perversione. Per transessualità, non intende quello che si intende oggi nella comune accezione del termine, ma l'innata tendenza polimorfa e "perversa" dell'uomo, caratterizzata da una pluralità delle tendenze dell'Eros e da l'ermafroditismo originario e profondo di ogni individuo.  La liberazione omosessuale in chiave marxista fu tra i primi studiosi ed attivisti del Movimento di Liberazione Omosessuale Italiano, accanto a Castellano,Consoli, Modugno e  Pezzana. Tutti partivano dalla certezza che la liberazione dall'ancestrale omofobia dovesse fondarsi sulla consapevolezza della propria identità, censurata fin dalla nascita dalla cultura dominante, da loro ritenuta antropologicamente sessuofoba e pervicacemente omofoba.  Da queste basi partivano per abbattere la discriminazione pluri-secolare nei confronti di chi non si identificava nella sessualità assiomaticamente definita come naturale e normale. Abbracciò immediatamente il marxismo, cercando di rimodularlo sulle istanze della lotta di liberazione ed emancipazione omosessuale e ritenendo la società capitalista intrinsecamente omofoba. Rilettura della psicanalisi Negli Elementi di critica omosessuale, volle rielaborare alcuni degli spunti teorici della teoria della sessualità di Freud, attraverso la lettura che, tra gli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta, ne aveva fatto  Marcuse. Marcuse, infatti, in opere come “Eros e civiltà e L'uomo a una dimensione aveva voluto fondere marxismo e psicanalisi. Fu proprio Freud, infatti, a sostenere che l'orientamento sessuale poteva prendere qualsiasi "direzione", riconducendo eterosessualità e "omosessualità a semplici varianti della sessualità umana in senso lato. Una non escluderebbe l'altra, e anzi, in potenza, tutti saremmo pluri-sessuali, "polimorfi" o, più semplicemente, bi-sessuali.  In base a questa riflessione, riteneva che si dovesse denunciare come assurda e inconsistente l'opposizione ideologica "eterosessuale" vs "omosessuale", essendo viziato il principio stesso di "mono-sessualità". A questa prospettiva unilaterale, che riteneva incapace di cogliere la natura ambivalente e dinamica della dimensione sessuale, M. ha preferito opporre un principio di eros libero, molteplice e polimorfo. Per Mieli era tragicamente ridicola «la stragrande maggioranza delle persone, nelle loro divise mostruose da maschio o da "donna.” Se il travestito appare ridicolo a chi lo incontra, tristemente ridicolissima è per il travestito la nudità di chi gli rida in faccia». Dean, psicoanalista dell'Buffalo, che redasse l'appendice dell'edizione Feltrinelli di Elementi di critica omosessuale, afferma: «Nel processo politico di ristrutturazione della società, M. non esita a includere nel suo elenco di esperienze redentive la pedofilia, la necrofilia e la coprofagia» e «ridefinisce drasticamente il comunismo descrivendolo come riscoperta dei corpi. In questa comunicazione alla Bataille di forme materiali, la corporeità umana entra liberamente in relazioni egualitarie multiple con tutti gli esseri della terra, inclusi "i bambini e i nuovi arrivati di ogni tipo, corpi defunti, animali, piante, cose" annullando "democraticamente" ogni differenza non solo tra gli esseri umani ma anche tra le specie».  A questa rivoluzione sociale sono di ostacolo determinati elementi, ritenuti da Mieli come «pregiudizi di certa canaglia reazionaria» che, trasmessi con l'educazione, hanno la colpa di «trasformare troppo precocemente il bambino in adulto eterosessuale».  Il tema della pedofilia Da provocatore dei "benpensanti", quale è stato tutta la breve vita, facendo esplicitamente riferimento a Freud, M. affrontò a modo suo anche il tema della sessualità infantile, per questo andando incontro a forti critiche. I bambini, secondo il pensiero di Mieli, potevano "liberarsi" dai pregiudizi sociali e trovare la realizzazione della loro "perversità poliforme" grazie ad adulti consapevoli di quanto sopra asserito: «Noi checche rivoluzionarie sappiamo vedere nel bambino non tanto l'Edipo, o il futuro Edipo, bensì l'essere umano potenzialmente libero. Noi, sì, possiamo amare i bambini. Possiamo desiderarli eroticamente rispondendo alla loro voglia di Eros, possiamo cogliere a viso e a braccia aperte la sensualità inebriante che profondono, possiamo fare l'amore con loro. Per questo la pederastia è tanto duramente condannata. Essa rivolge messaggi amorosi al bambino che la società invece, tramite la famiglia, traumatizza, educastra, nega, calando sul suo erotismo la griglia edipica. La società repressiva eterosessuale costringe il bambino al periodo di latenza; ma il periodo di latenza non è che l’introduzione mortifera all’ergastolo di una «vita» latente. La pederastia, invece, «è una freccia di libidine scagliata verso il feto» (Francesco Ascoli)»  (Elementi di critica omosessuale). Nella nota 88 si legge:  «Per pederastia intendo il desiderio erotico degli adulti per i bambini (di entrambi i sessi) e i rapporti sessuali tra adulti e bambini. Pederastia (in senso proprio) e pedofilia vengono comunemente usati come sinonimi» (Elementi di critica omosessuale). Il tema dell'alterazione psichica, della follia Mieli faceva uso di sostanze stupefacenti, attraverso le quali mirava a superare lo stato di normalità in cui riteneva le persone intrappolate. Riteneva che nevrosi, follia, paranoia, delirio e, soprattutto, la schizofrenia, al pari dell'omosessualità fossero caratteristiche latenti in tutti gli esseri umani e, con riferimento a Jung, che tali condizioni permettessero «la (ri)scoperta di quella parte di noi che Jung definirebbe “Anima” oppure “Animus”». In riferimento all'omosessualità, considerava che potesse essere una porta verso il lato inesplorato della personalità, in analogia con la follia: “La paura dell’omosessualità che distingue l’homo normalis è anche terrore della “follia” (terrore di se stesso, del proprio profondo). Così, la liberazione omosessuale si pone davvero come ponte verso una dimensione decisamente altra: i francesi, che chiamano folles le checche, non esagerano».  Opere: “Comune futura,” “Elementi di critica omosessuale, Einaudi, Torino, Elementi di critica omosessuale, Barilli e M., Feltrinelli, Milano,  Elementi di critica omosessuale, G. Barilli e Paola Mieli, Feltrinelli, Milano, “Il risveglio dei faraoni,” preservato da Marc de' Pasquali e Umberto Pasti, Cooperativa Colibri, Milano, “Il risveglio dei faraoni,” Alfonso Sarrio Solidago, dR, Milano,  “Oro, eros e armonia,” G. Silvestri e A.Veneziani, Edizioni Croce, Oro, eros e armonia, Gianpaolo Silvestri e Antonio Veneziani, Edizioni Croce,  “E adesso,” S. Laude, Clichy,  Teatro La Traviata Norma. Ovvero: Vaffanculo... ebbene sì!, Film “Gli anni amari, regia di A. Adriatico.. T.  Giartosio, Perché non possiamo non dirci: letteratura, omosessualità, mondo, Feltrinelli,  Barilli, Il movimento gay in Italia, Feltrinelli, L. Schettini, M. in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Ideologia. Progetto omosessuale rivoluzionario, in Elementi di critica omosessuale, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, in Treccani, Trascrizione del suo intervento in congresso nazionale del “Fuori!”, in Fuori! rancobuffoni/ files/pdf/gp_leonardi_mieli.pdf  M., artista contro la violenza, in La Stampa,  Elementi di critica omosessuale, Einaudi, M. Elementi di critica omosessuale. Milano, Einaudi, Estremo e dimenticato. Storia di un intellettuale provocatore., in Treccani Il tascabile, M., Mieli, Paola. e Rossi Barilli, Gianni., Elementi di critica omosessuale Il risveglio dei Faraoni, in A. Solidago, PRIDE, Milano, dR Edizioni, Silvestri, L'ultimo M.: Oro Eros Armonia: contributi di Ivan Cattaneo e A. Veneziani, 2 ed. riveduta e corretta, Libreria Croce, De Laude, Silvia,, Mario Mieli: e adesso,  A. Pezzana. La politica del corpo. Roma, Savelli, E. Modugno. La mistificazione eterosessuale. Milano, Kaos. S. Casi. L'omosessualità e il suo doppio: il teatro di M. Rivista di sessuologia (numero speciale L'omosessualità fra identità e desiderio,Francesco Gnerre. L'eroe negato. Milano, Baldini e Castoldi, M. Philopat, Lumi di punk: la scena italiana raccontata dai protagonisti, Milano, Agenzia, Concetta D'Angeli, Teatro Talento Tenacia... Mario Mi"Atti&Sipari" Circolo di cultura omosessuale Mario Mieli Fuori! Marc de' Pasquali Movimento di liberazione omosessuale Omosessualità Queer Storia dell'omosessualità in Italia Studi di genere Teoria queer Transessualismo. Biografia, in italiano, su culturagay. Chi era M. (articolo sul  gay.tv), su gay.tv Circolo di cultura omosessuale "Mario Mieli", su mariomieli.org. Mario Mieli. Mieli. Keywords: l’uccello del paradiso; overo, la lingua perduta del desiderio. Refs. Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Mieli” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Miglio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- implicatura ligure – la LIGVRIA e la PADANIA -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Como). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Berlin, who thought was a philosopher, ended up lecturing on the history of ideas, i..e. ideology – M. defines ideology so simply that would put Berlin to shame: an ideology is what politicians propagate to reach or buy consensus!” --  essential Italian philosopher. Sostenitore della trasformazione dello Stato italiano in senso federale o, addirittura, confederale, fra gli anni ottanta e i novanta è considerato l'ideologo della Lega Lombarda, in rappresentanza della quale fu anche senatore, prima di "rompere" con Umberto Bossi dando vita alla breve stagione del Partito Federalista.   Polo scolastico "M." ad Adro. Costituzionalista e scienziato della politica, fu senatore della Repubblica Italiana nella XI, XII e XIII legislatura.  Ha insegnato presso l'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, ove fu preside della Facoltà di Scienze politiche. È stato allievo d’Entrèves e Pallieri, sotto la cui docenza si è formato sui classici del pensiero giuridico e politologico.  Colpito da ictusnon si riprese e morì ottantatreenne nella sua stessa città natale, Como, circa un anno dopo. Il funerale si tenne a Domaso, sul Lago di Como, comune d'origine del padre e sede di una villa nella quale il professore si rifugiava spesso; in seguito M. è stato tumulato nel locale cimitero, a fianco dei membri della sua famiglia. Laureatosi in Giurisprudenza all'Università Cattolica con la tesi, “Origini e i primi sviluppi delle dottrine giuridiche internazionali pubbliche nell'età moderna”, evitò l'arruolamento per la Seconda guerra mondiale a causa di un difetto uditivo congenito, e poté divenire assistente volontario alla cattedra di Storia delle dottrine politiche, che d'Entreves tenne sino alla fine degli anni quaranta nella medesima università.  Libero docente, si dedicò negli anni cinquanta allo studio delle opere di storici e giuristi, soprattutto tedeschi: dai quattro volumi del Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht di Gierke, ai saggi di storia amministrativa di Otto Hintze, alcuni dei quali, negli anni seguenti, vennero tradotti in italiano dal suo allievo e ferrato germanista  Schiera (O. Hintze, Stato e società, Zanichelli).  Fu di quegli anni l'incontro di M. con l'immensa produzione scientifica di Weber: il professore comasco fu uno dei primi ad aver studiato a fondo “Economia e Società”, l'opera più importante del sociologo tedesco che era stata completamente trascurata in Italia.  Sviluppo del lavoro scientifico Miglio storico dell'amministrazione Alla fine degli anni cinquanta, M. fonda con il giurista Benvenuti l'ISAP Milano (Istituto per la Scienza dell'Amministrazione Pubblica), ente pubblico partecipato da Comune e Provincia di Milano, di cui ricopri per alcuni anni la carica di vicedirettore. In un saggio memorabile intitolato Le origini della scienza dell'amministrazione, il professore comasco descriveva con elegante chiarezza le radici storiche della disciplina. L'interesse per il campo dell'amministrazione era dovuto in quegli anni alle politiche pianificatrici che gli stati andavano conducendo per l'incremento della crescita economica.  La Fondazione italiana per la storia amministrativa Ben presto M. sente tuttavia l'esigenza di studiare in modo più sistematico la storia dei poteri pubblici europei e, negli anni sessanta, costituì la Fondazione italiana per la storia amministrativa: un istituto le cui ricerche vennero condotte con rigoroso metodo scientifico. A tal proposito, il professore aveva appositamente preparato per i collaboratori della fondazione uno schema di istruzioni divenuto famoso per chiarezza e organicità. In realtà, fondando la F.I.S.A. M. si era posto l'ambizioso obiettivo di scrivere una storia costituzionale che prendesse in esame le amministrazioni pubbliche esistite in luoghi e tempi diversi: in tal modo egli sarebbe riuscito a tracciare una vera e propria tipologia delle istituzioni dal medioevo all'età contemporanea, al cui interno sarebbero stati indicati i tratti distintivi o, viceversa, gli elementi comuni di ogni potere pubblico. Ma v'era un'altra ragione che aveva indotto M. a studiare i poteri pubblici in un'ottica, come scriveva lui stesso, analogico-comparativa. Servendosi di un metodo scientifico che Hintze aveva parzialmente seguito nella prima metà del Novecento, il professore comasco intendeva definire l'evoluzione storica dello stato moderno, storicizzando in tal modo le stesse istituzioni contemporanee.  La fondazione pubblicava tre collezioni: gli Acta italica, l'Archivio (diviso in due collane: la prima riguardante ricerche e opere strumentali, la seconda dedicata alle opere dei maggiori storici dell'amministrazione) e gli Annali. Tra i più autorevoli lavori storici pubblicati nell'Archivio, si ricordano il volume sui comuni italiani di Goetz e il famoso saggio di Vaccari sulla territorialità del contado medievale. Nella prima serie alcuni giovani studiosi poterono invece pubblicare le loro ricerche di storia delle istituzioni: Rossetti, allieva dello storico Violante, vi diede alle stampe un approfondito studio sulla società e sulle istituzioni nella Cologno Monzese dell'Alto Medioevo; Petracchi pubblicò la prima parte di un'interessante ricerca sullo sviluppo storico dell'istituto dell'intendente nella Francia dell'ancien régime; occorre inoltre ricordare il poderoso volume di Pierangelo Schiera sul cameralismo tedesco e sull'assolutismo nei maggiori stati germanici. Su tutt'altro piano si poneva invece la collezione della F.I.S.A. denominata Acta italica: al suo interno dovevano essere pubblicati i documenti relativi all'amministrazione pubblica degli stati italiani preunitari: è probabile che l'ispirazione per quest'ultima serie fosse venuta a M. dallo studio delle opere di Hintze: verso la fine del XIX secolo, lo storico tedesco aveva infatti scritto alcuni saggi sull'amministrazione prussiana pubblicandoli negli Acta borussica, un'autorevole collana che raccoglieva le fonti storiche dello stato degli Hohenzollern.  L'edizione dei lavori della commissione Giulini Tra i volumi degli Acta italica, occorre ricordare l'edizione dei lavori della Commissione Giulini curata da Raponi uno studio cui M. tenne molto e di cui si servì, molti anni dopo, per la stesura del celebre saggio su “Vocazione e destino dei lombardi” (in  La Lombardia moderna, Electa, ripubblicato in Miglio, Io, Bossi e la Lega, Mondadori). La commissionei cui lavori avevano avuto luogo a Torino sotto la presidenza del nobile milanese Cesare Giulini della Portaaveva il compito di elaborare progetti di legge che sarebbero entrati in vigore in Lombardia nel periodo immediatamente successivo alla guerra. Cavour, che in quegli anni ricopriva la carica di primo ministro, voleva che il governo, nel sancire l'annessione dei nuovi territori al Piemonte di Vittorio Emanuele, mantenesse separati gli ordinamenti amministrativi delle due regioni, lasciando che in Lombardia continuassero a sussistere una parte delle istituzioni austriache esistenti.  Il saggio Le contraddizioni dello stato unitario Nel saggio magistrale Le contraddizioni dello stato unitario scritto in occasione del convegno per il centenario delle leggi di unificazione, M. prese in esame gli effetti devastanti che l'accentramento amministrativo aveva provocato nel sistema politico italiano. La classe politica italiana non fu capace di elaborare un ordinamento amministrativo che consentisse allo stato di governare adeguatamente un territorio esteso dalle Alpi alla Sicilia. Ricorrendo a una felice similitudine, il professore scrisse che la scelta di estendere le norme piemontesi a tutta Italia fu come "far indossare a un gigante il vestito di un nano". Secondo M., i nostri "padri della patria", spaventati dalle annessioni a cascata e dalle circostanze fortunose in cui era avvenuta l'unificazione, preferirono conservare ottusamente gli istituti piemontesi, costringendo la stragrande maggioranza degli italiani ad essere governati da istituzioni che, oltre ad essere percepite come "straniere", si rivelarono palesemente inefficienti.  Nel saggio, M. ha però messo in luce un altro dato fondamentale; il professore scrisse che il paese, quantunque fosse stato formalmente unito dalle norme piemontesi, continuò nei fatti a restare diviso ancora per molti anni: le leggi, che il Parlamento emanava dalle Alpi alla Sicilia, venivano infatti interpretate in cento modi diversi nelle regioni storiche in cui il Paese continuava, nonostante tutto, ad essere naturalmente articolato. Era il federalismo che, negato alla radice dalla classe politica liberal-nazionale in nome dell'unità, si prendeva ora la rivincita traducendosi in forme evidenti di "criptofederalismo".[senza fonte]  Sono inoltre fondamentali, nella sua formazione i saggi di Brunner. Di Brunner fa tradurre svariati saggi, “Per una nuova storia costituzionale e sociale” (Vita e Pensiero), ma promosse anche la pubblicazione dell'opera monumentale Land und Herrschaft: in questo lavorouscito per la prima volta Brunner aveva preso in esame la costituzione materiale degli ordinamenti medievali, ponendo in evidenza i numerosi elementi di diversità tra la civiltà dell'età di mezzo e quella moderna, soprattutto nel modo di concepire il diritto.  La traduzione di Land und Herrschaft, affidata inizialmente alle cure di Emilio Bussi, sarebbe dovuta comparire nell'elegante collana della F.I.S.A. già negli anni sessanta. Interrotto negli anni seguenti, il lavoro venne invece portato a compimento solo nei primi anni ottanta dagli allievi Schiera e Nobili. Pubblicato da Giuffré con il titolo di "Terra e potere", il capolavoro di Brunner apparve negli Arcana imperii, la collana di scienza della politica di cui M. era divenuto direttore nei primi anni Ottanta. Il professore comasco si occupò inoltre dei contributi recati alla scienza dell'amministrazione da parte di altri due storici e giuristi tedeschi: Lorenz Von Stein e Rudolf Gneist.  La chiusura della FISA Negli anni Settanta la F.I.S.A. dovette chiudere i battenti per mancanza di fondi. Il professor M., ricordando a distanza di tempo la fine di quell'autorevole collana di storia delle istituzioni, ne espose le ragioni con un breve commento: "Malgrado la sua efficienza, la F.I.S.A. ebbe vita breve: gli enti che provvedevano al suo finanziamento, non scorgendo l'utilità "politica" immediata della sua attività, strinsero i cordoni della borsa".  M. scienziato della politica e costituzionalista Negli anni ottanta, il degenerarsi del clima politico in Italia indusse il professor M. ad occuparsi di riforme istituzionali; egli intendeva contribuire in tal modo alla modernizzazione del paese. Fu così che, raggruppando un gruppo di esperti di diritto costituzionale e amministrativo stese un organico progetto di riforma limitato alla seconda parte della costituzione. Ne uscirono due volumi che, pubblicati nella collana Arcana imperii, vennero completamente trascurati dalla classe politica democristiana e socialista. Tra le proposte più interessanti avanzate dal "Gruppo di Milano"così venne definito il pool di professori coordinati da M. v'era il rafforzamento del governo guidato da un primo ministro dotato di maggiori poteri, la fine del bicameralismo perfetto con l'istituzione di un senato delle regioni sul modello del Bundesrat tedesco, ed infine l'elezione diretta del primo ministro da tenersi contemporaneamente a quella per la camera dei deputati.  Secondo il gruppo di Milano, queste e numerose altre riforme avrebbero garantito all'Italia una maggiore stabilità politica, cancellando lo strapotere dei partiti e salvaguardando la separazione dei poteri propria di uno stato di diritto. Diversamente dalla F.I.S.A., la collana Arcana imperii era incentrata esclusivamente sullo studio scientifico dei comportamenti politici. Il citato volume di Brunner costituì pertanto un'eccezione perché, come si è avuto modo di accennare, esso doveva essere pubblicato negli eleganti volumi della F.I.S.A. già negli anni sessanta. All'interno della collana Arcana imperii vennero invece inseriti saggi e contributi di psicologia politica, di etologia, di teoria politica, di economia, di sociologia e di storia. Intende costituire un vero e proprio laboratorio dove lo scienziato della politica, servendosi dei risultati portati alla disciplina dalle diverse scienze sperimentali, e in grado di conseguire una formazione che si ponesse all'avanguardia. Vi vennero pubblicati più di trenta saggi. Si ricordano, tra gli altri: il saggio di Ornaghi sulla dottrina della corporazione nel ventennio fascista, l'edizione degli scritti schmittiani su  Hobbes, la pubblicazione interrotta di alcune opere di Stein, il trattato di diritto costituzionale di Smend. Degni di nota anche i saggi di Mises e Hayek. I saggi di squisita fattura, non poterono tuttavia eguagliare l'elegante veste tipografica di quelli pubblicati dalla F.I.S.A., ed un identico destino parve accomunare le due collane: anche in questo caso, e infatti costretto a sospendere le pubblicazioni.  Alla sua formazione contribuirono i saggi di Stein e Schmitt sulle categorie del politico. In ogni comunità sono presenti due realtà irriducibili: lo “stato” e la “società”. La società è il terreno della libera iniziativa, ove gli uomini forti vincono sui deboli e tentano di stabilizzare le loro posizioni attraverso l'ordinamento giuridico. Lo stato è invece il luogo ove regna il principio di uguaglianza. Lo stato italiano o non può che identificarsi con la monarchia. Il re d’Italia è infatti l'unica autorità in grado di intervenire a sostegno dei più deboli. Un monarca, attraverso il potere di ordinanza, e in grado di modificare la costituzioni giuridiche cetuali all'interno del suo territorio, una politica che il re d’Italia puo condurre in porto non senza grosse difficoltà, a vantaggio del BENE COMUNE. Questo e accaduto nel granducato di Toscana e in Lombardia. Quando si sostene che il ruolo dello stato italiano dove “contro-bilanciare” quello della “società”, si ha in mente il riformismo illuminato. Ma la sua filosofia si pone all'interno di uno “stato liberale” e parte dal presupposto che la monarchia, lungi dall'essere un potere assoluto, dove comunque fare i conti con il potere della “società” attestato nel parlamento. La omunità prospera solo quando “stato” e “società” sono in equilibrio, ugualmente vitali ed operanti. Una comunità e dominata da due realtà irriducibili. Lo stato italiano è una realtà storica inserita nel tempo e, come tutte le creature e specie viventi, destinata a decadere, a scomparire ed essere sostituita da altre forme di aggregazione politica. La società non e solo economico-giuridica. E senza dubbio decisivo l'incontro con Schmitt, i cui saggi sono trascurate dagli intellettuali italiani. L'aiuto che Schmitt presta al regime hitleriano, in particolare nel sostenere la legalità delle leggi razziali in un sistema di diritto internazionale, sono più che sufficienti per oscurare in Italia la sua imponente produzione. I rapporti di Schmitt con il nazismo sono di breve durata. Prende definitivamente le distanze da Hitler. Di Schmitt apprezza i saggi di scienza politica e di diritto internazionale. Cura assieme a Schiera l'edizione italiana di alcuni saggi pubblicati dal Mulino con il titolo “Le categorie del politico”. Nella prefazione, si sofferma sui decisivi contributi portati da Schmitt alla scienza politologica.  L'antologia desta scalpore nel mondo accademico. Bobbio sostenne che destabilizza la sinistra italiana". È dall'incontro con la produzione di Schmitt che riusce quindi a fabbricarsi gli strumenti per costruire una parte importante del suo modello sociologico. L’essenza del politico è fondata sul conflitto tra amico e nemico. E uno scontro all'ultimo sangue perché la guerra politica porta normalmente all'eliminazione fisica dell'avversario. L’esempio più emblematico di scontro politico fosse la guerra civile nella storia dell aroma antica -- tra fazioni partigiane. Qui il tasso di conflittualità tra amico (Catone) e nemico (Giulio Cesare) è sempre stato altissimo. Chi ha lo stesso amico non può che avere lo stessi nemico del proprio compagno di lotta. Si crea la solidarietà tra due membri (un gruppo) che è decisivo nella guerra contro l’altro gruppo di nemici. Il rapporto politico è sempre esclusivo. Marca l'identità del gruppo in opposizione a quella degli altri. L’avvento dello stato italiano portato a due risultati di eccezionale portata storica. Primo: la fine della guerre civile all'interno del territorio (le faide e le guerre confessionali) con l'annientamento del ruolo politico detenuto sino a quel momento dalle fazioni in lotta (dai partiti confessionali ai ceti). Da quel momento il sovrano e il supremo garante dell'ordine all'interno dello stato, territorio sempre più esteso ch'esso governa servendosi di un apparato amministrativo regolato dal diritto. Il secondo grande risultato e per certi versi una conseguenza del primo: l'avvento dello stato porta all'erezione di un sistema di diritto pubblico europeo (ius publicum europeum) assolutamente vincolante per i paesi che vi aderirono. Anche in questo caso, il tasso di politicità (cioè l'aggressività delle parti in lotta, gli stati) venne fortemente limitato. La guerra legittima, intraprese solo dagli stati, vennero condotte da quel momento in base alle regole dello ius publicum europaeum. Si tratta quindi di un conflitto a basso tasso di politicità, non foss'altro perché la vittoria di una delle parti in lotta non puo portare in alcun modo all'annientamento dell'avversario, il cui diritto di esistenza era tutelato dal diritto e accettato da tutti gli stati.  La crisi dello ius publicum europaeum, divenuta palese alla fine della Grande Guerrae acuitasi ulteriormente con lo scoppio delle guerre partigiane nei decenni successivi, resero palese a lui la fine della regle de droit su cui si e fondato l'universo giuridico occidentale nei rapporti internazionali tra stati sovrani. La guerra civile e, in modo particolare, l'estrema politicizzazione avvenuta durante le guerre mondiali con la criminalizzazione degli avversari lo persuasero che la fine dello ius publicum europaeum era ormai compiuta. In questo, vide soprattutto il fallimento della civiltà giuridica occidentale nel suo supremo tentativo di fondare i rapporti umani unicamente sulle basi del diritto.  Prende atto della fine dello ius publicum europaeum ma non crede che tale processo segna la fine del diritto e la vittoria definitiva delle leggi aggressive della politica. Fondando il suo originale modello sociologico, sostenne che la comunità e sempre rette su due tipi di rapporti: l'obbligazione politica e il contratto-scambio. Lo stato e un autentico capolavoro perché, apportando un contributo decisivo alla sua costituzione, il giurista e riuscioi a regolare la politica inserendola in una norma fondata sulla RAZIONALITA del diritto, sull'IM-PERSONALINTA del comando e sui concetti di CON-TRATTO e rappresentanza -- elementi appartenenti alla sfera del contratto/scambio. Il crollo dello ius publicum europeum ha però messo in crisi la stessa impalcatura su cui si regge lo stato, che ora dimostra tutta la sua storicità. Non rimane legato all'idea dell'organizzazione statale. La civiltà occidentale, stesse attraversando una fase di transizione al termine della quale lo stato e probabilmente sostituito da altre forme di comunità ove obbligazione politica e contratto/scambio si reggeranno in un nuovo equilibrio. Lo stato e e giunto al capolinea. Il progresso tecnologico e, in modo particolare, il più alto livello di ricchezza cui erano giunti i paesi occidentali lo convinsero che negli anni successivi sono avvenuti cambiamenti di portata radicale, tali da coinvolgere anche la costituzione degli ordinamenti politici. Lo stato ha difficoltà nel garantire servizi efficienti alla popolazione. Ciascun cittadino, vedendo accresciuto il proprio tenore di vita in forza dell'economia di mercato, sarà infatti portato ad avere sempre meno fiducia nei lenti meccanismi della burocrazia pubblica, ch'egli riterrà inadeguata a soddisfare i suoi standard di vita.  L'elevata produttività dei paesi avanzati e la vittoria definitiva dell'economia di mercato su quella pubblica porterà in altri termini a nuove forme di aggregazione politica al cui interno i cittadini saranno desti contare in misura molto maggiore rispetto a quanto non lo siano oggi nei vasti stati in cui si trovano inseriti. Secondo il professore gli stati democratici, ancora fondati su istituti rappresentativi risalenti all'Ottocento, non riusciranno più a provvedere agli interessi della civiltà tecnologica del secolo XXI. Con il crollo del muro di Berlino e la fine della guerra fredda, si creano in altri termini le premesse perché la politica cessi di ricoprire un ruolo primario nelle comunità umane e venga invece subordinata agli interessi concreti dei cittadini, legati alla logica di mercato.  La fine degli stati moderni porterà secondo Miglio alla costituzione di comunità neofederali dominate non più dal rapporto politico di comando-obbedienza, bensì da quello mercantile del contratto e della mediazione continua tra centri di potere diversi: sono i nuovi gruppi in cui sarà articolato il mondo di domani, corporazioni dotate di potere politico ed economico al cui interno saranno inseriti gruppi di cittadini accomunati dagli stessi interessi. Secondo il professore, il mondo sarà costituito da una società pluricentrica, ove le associazioni territoriali e categoriali vedranno riconosciuto giuridicamente il loro peso politico non diversamente da quanto avveniva nel medioevo. Di qui l'appello a riscoprire i sistemi politici anteriori allo stato, a riscoprire quel variegato mosaico medievale costituito dai diritti dei ceti, delle corporazioni e, in particolar modo, delle libere città germaniche.  Il professore studiò a fondo gli antichi sistemi federali esistiti tra il medioevo e l'età moderna: le repubbliche urbane dell'Europa germanica tra il XII e il XIII secolo, gli ordinamenti elvetici d'antico regime, la Repubblica delle Province Unite e, da ultimo, gli Stati Uniti. Ai suoi occhi, il punto di forza risiedeva precisamente nel ruolo che quei poteri pubblici avevano saputo riconoscere alla società nelle sue articolazioni corporative e territoriali. M. si dedica allo studio approfondito di questi temi, progettando di scrivere un volume intitolato l'Europa degli Stati contro l'Europa delle città. Il libro è rimasto incompiuto per la morte del professore.  L'impegno politico diretto e il federalism. S iscrisse alla neonata Democrazia Cristiana, che lascia quando divenne preside della Facoltà di Scienze politiche dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano. M.  rimase comunque legato culturalmente alla DC fnell'immediato domani della Liberazione, fu tra i fondatori, a Como, del movimento federalista “Il Cisalpino”, con altri docenti dell'Università Cattolica di Milano. Ispirato alle idee di Carlo Cattaneo, il programma del “Cisalpino” prevedeva la suddivisione del territorio italiano su base cantonale, secondo il modello svizzero, con la costituzione di tre grandi macro-regioni (“nord”, “sud” e “centro”).  Il suo nome e proposto per il conferimento del titolo di Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, ma una volta informato del fatto rifiuta di accettare l'onorificenza, che venne annullata con un successivo decreto presidenziale. Si avvicina alla Lega Nord. Eletto al Senato della Repubblica come indipendente nelle liste della “lega nord” “lega lombarda” (da allora a lui fu attribuito l'appellativo lombardo di Profesùr) lavora per il partito con l'intento di farne un'autentica forza di cambiamento. Elabora un progetto di riforma federale fondato sul ruolo costituzionale assegnato all'autorità federale e a quella delle tre macro-regioni o cantoni (del Nord o, “Padania”, del Centro o Etruria, del Sud o Mediterranea, oltre alle cinque regioni a statuto speciale). Questa architettura costituzionale prevedeva l'elezione di un governo direttoriale composto dai governatori delle tre macroregioni, da un rappresentante delle cinque regioni a statuto speciale e dal presidente federale. Quest'ultimo, eletto da tutti i cittadini in due tornate elettorali, avrebbe rappresentato l'unità del paese.  I puntisalienti del progetto, esposti nel decalogo di Assago vennero fatti propri dalla Lega Nord solo marginalmente: il segretario federale, Umberto Bossi, preferì infatti seguire una politica di contrattazione con lo stato centrale che mirasse al rafforzamento delle autonomie regionali. Il dissenso di Miglio, iniziato al congresso leghista di Assago, si acuì dopo le elezioni politiche, dove fu rieletto al Senato, quando il professore si disse non d'accordo sia ad allearsi con Forza Italia, sia a entrare nel primo governo Berlusconi. Soprattutto M. non gradì che per il ruolo di ministro delle Riforme istituzionali fosse stato scelto Francesco Speroni al suo posto.  Bossi reagì spiegando: «Capisco che Miglio sia rimasto un po' irritato perché non è diventato ministro, ma non si può dire che non abbiamo difeso la sua candidatura. Il punto è che era molto difficile sostenerla, perché c'era la pregiudiziale di Berlusconi e di Fini contro di lui. Di fatto, il ministero per le Riforme istituzionali a lui non lo davano. (Se Miglio vorrà lasciare la strada della Lega, libero di farlo. Ma vorrei ricordargli che è arrivato alla Lega e che, a quell'epoca, il movimento aveva già raggranellato un sacco di consiglieri regionali». In conclusione per Bossi, M. «pare che ponga solo un problema di poltrone e la difesa del federalismo non è questione di poltrone». In aperto dissidio con Bossi, lascia la Lega Nord dicendo di Bossi. Spero proprio di non rivederlo più. Per Bossi il federalismo è stato strumentale alla conquista e al mantenimento del potere. L'ultimo suo exploit è stato di essere riuscito a strappare a Berlusconi cinque ministri. Tornerò solo nel giorno in cui Bossi non sarà più segretario».  Nonostante ciò, moltissimi militanti e sostenitori leghisti continuarono a provare grande simpatia e ammirazione per il professore e per le sue teorie. Alcuni dirigenti della Lega tennero comunque vivo il dialogo con Miglio, in particolar modo Pagliarini, Francesco Speroni e il presidente della Libera compagnia padana Oneto, al quale il professore era particolarmente legato. In particolare M. fu in stretti rapporti con l'ex deputato leghista Negri, col quale fonda il Partito Federalista. Eletto ancora una volta al Senato, nel collegio di Como per il Polo per le Libertà, iscrivendosi al gruppo misto.  Negli anni in cui la Lega si spostò su posizioni indipendentiste, il professore si riavvicinò alla linea del partito, sostenendo a più riprese la piena legittimità del diritto di secessione della Padania dall'Italia come sottospecie del più antico diritto di resistenza medievale. Nella sua originale riflessione sul contrasto tra i regimi giuridici "freddi" e "caldi" M. sostenne la necessità di sviluppare, all'interno delle diverse società e culture, ordini giuridici in grado di rispondere alle specifiche esigenze. In maniera provocatoria, egli giunse a dichiararsi favorevole al «mantenimento anche della mafia e della 'ndrangheta. Il Sud deve darsi uno statuto poggiante sulla personalità del comando. Che cos'è la mafia? Potere personale, spinto fino al delitto. Io non voglio ridurre il Meridione al modello europeo, sarebbe un'assurdità. C'è anche un clientelismo buono che determina crescita economica. Insomma, bisogna partire dal concetto che alcune manifestazioni tipiche del Sud hanno bisogno di essere costituzionalizzate». La sua riflessione puntava a cogliere quali fossero le ragioni profonde alla base di mafia, camorra e 'ndrangheta (insieme a ciò che genera il consenso attorno a queste organizzazioni criminali), perché solo istituzioni che sono in sintonia con la comunitànel caso specifico, che non dimentichino la centralità del rapporto personale piuttosto che impersonale nella società meridionalepossono creare una vera alternativa al presente. Altre saggi: “La controversia sui limiti del commercio neutrale: ricerche sulla genesi dell'indirizzo positivo nella scienza del diritto delle genti,” Milano, Ispi, “La crisi dell'universalismo politico medioevale e la formazione ideologica del particolarismo statuale moderno,” in: "Pubbl. Fac. giurispr. Univ. Padova", “La struttura ideologica della monarchia greca arcaica ed il concetto "patrimoniale" dello Stato nell'eta antica, in: "Jus. Rivista di scienze giuridiche", “Le origini della scienza dell'amministrazione, Milano, Giuffrè,  “L'unità fondamentale di svolgimento dell'esperienza politica occidentale, in: "Rivista internazionale di scienze sociali", “I cattolici di fronte all'unità d'Italia, in: "Vita e pensiero", “L'amministrazione nella dinamica storica, in: Istituto per la Scienza dell'Amministrazione Pubblica, Storia Amministrazione Costituzione, Bologna, Il Mulino, Le trasformazioni dell'attuale regime politico, in: "Jus. Rivista di scienze giuridiche", “ Il ruolo del partito nella trasformazione del tipo di ordinamento politico vigente. Il punto di vista della scienza della politica, Milano, La nuova Europa editrice, L'unificazione amministrativa e i suoi protagonisti, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, La trasformazione delle università e l'iniziativa privata, in: Atti del I Convegno su: Università: problemi e proposte, promosso dal Rotary Club di Milano-Centro Una Costituzione in "corto circuito", in: "Prospettive nel mondo", Ricominciare dalla montagna. Tre rapporti sul governo dell'area alpina nell'avanzata eta industriale, Milano, Giuffrè,  La Valtellina. Un modello possibile di integrazione economica e sociale, Sondrio, Banca Piccolo Credito Valtellinese, Utopia e realtà della Costituzione, in "Prospettive del mondo", Posizione del problema. Ciclo storico e innovazione scientifico-tecnologica. Il caso della tarda antichità, in Tecnologia, economia e società nel mondo romano. Atti del Convegno di Como, Como, Genesi e trasformazioni del termine-concetto Stato, in Stato e senso dello Stato oggi in Italia. Atti del Corso di aggiornamento culturale dell'Università cattolica, Pescara, Milano, Vita e pensiero, Guerra, pace, diritto. Una ipotesi generale sulle regolarità del ciclo politico, in: Umberto Curi, Della guerra, Venezia, Arsenale, Una repubblica migliore per gli italiani. Verso una nuova costituzione, Milano, Giuffrè,  Le contraddizioni interne del sistema parlamentare-integrale, in: "Rivista italiana di Scienza Politica", Considerazioni sulle responsabilità, in: "Synesis, periodico dell'Associazione italiana centri culturali", Le regolarità della politica. Scritti scelti raccolti e pubblicati dagli allievi, Milano, Giuffrè,  Il nerbo e le briglie del potere. Scritti brevi di critica politica, Milano, Edizioni del Sole 24 ore, Una Costituzione per i prossimi trent'anni. Intervista sulla terza Repubblica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, Per un'Italia federale, Milano, Il Sole 24 ore, Come cambiare. Le mie riforme, Milano, Mondadori, Italia. Così è andata a finire, con "Il Gruppo del lunedì", Collezione Frecce, Milano, Mondadori, ed. Oscar Saggi, Disobbedienza civile,  Milano, A. Mondadori, Io, Bossi e la Lega. Diario segreto dei miei IV anni sul Carroccio, Milano, A. Mondadori, Come cambiare. Le mie riforme per la nuova Italia, Milano, Mondadori, Modello di Costituzione Federale per gli italiani, Milano, Fondazione per un'Italia Federale, Federalismi falsi e degenerati, Milano, Sperling & Kupfer, Federalismo e secessione. Un dialogo, con Barbera, Milano, Mondadori, Padania, Italia. Lo stato nazionale è soltanto in crisi o non è mai esistito?, con M. Veneziani, Firenze, Le Lettere, Le barche a remi del Lario. Da trasporto, da guerra, da pesca, e da diporto, con Gozzi e Zanoletti, Milano, Leonardo arte,  L'Asino di Buridano. Gli italiani alle prese con l'ultima occasione di cambiare il loro destino, Vicenza, Pozza, L'Asino di Buridano. Gli italiani alle prese con l'ultima occasione di cambiare il loro destino. Nuova edizione, pref. di Roberto Formigoni, postf. di Sergio Romano, Varese, Lativa, M.: un uomo libero, coll. Quaderni Padani, La Libera Compagnia Padana, Novara, Un Miglio alla libertà, audiolibro, coll. Laissez Parler, Treviglio, La Libera Compagnia PadanaLeonardo Facco Editore); li articoli, coll. Quaderni Padani, La Libera Compagnia Padana, Novara, Gianfranco le interviste, coll. Quaderni Padani, La Libera Compagnia Padana, Novara,  L'Asino di Buridano. Gli italiani alle prese con l'ultima occasione di cambiare il loro destino, pref. di Roberto Formigoni, coll. I libri di Libero M., Firenze, Editoriale Libero); “Padania, Italia. Lo stato nazionale è soltanto in crisi o non è mai esistito?” (Firenze, Libero); “Federalismo e secessione. Un dialogo, con Augusto Antonio Barbera, coll. I libri di LiberoMiglio n. 4, Firenze, Editoriale Libero, Disobbedienza civile, coll. I libri di Libero; Firenze, Editoriale Libero, La controversia sui limiti del commercio neutrale fra Giovanni Maria Lampredi e Ferdinando Galiani, pref. di Lorenzo Ornaghi, Torino, Aragno,  Gianfranco Miglio: scritti brevi, interviste, coll. Quaderni Padani, La Libera Compagnia Padana, Novara, Lezioni di politica. Storia delle dottrine politiche. Scienza della politica” (Bologna, Il Mulino); D. Bianchi e A.  Vitale, Bologna, Il Mulino,Discorsi parlamentari, con un saggio di Bonvecchio, Senato della Repubblica, Archivio storico, Bologna, Mulino,  L'Asino di Buridano. Gli italiani alle prese con l'ultima occasione di cambiare il loro destino -- Opere scelte” (Milano, Guerini); Considerazioni retrospettive e altri scritti, coll. Opere scelte, Milano, Guerini e Associati,  Lo scienziato della politica, coll. Opere scelte di M., a cura di Galli, Milano, Guerini,.Guerra, pace, diritto, La Nuova Guerra, [S.l.Milano], La Scuola, 1 Scritti politici, Bassani, coll. I libri del Federalismo, Roma, Pagine, Modello di Costituzione Federale per gli italiani” (Torino, G. Giappichelli); “La Padania e le grandi regioni, L'unità economico-sociale della Padania” (Fano, Associazione Oneto); “Il Cerchio,.C. Schmitt. Saggi, Palano, Brescia, Scholé  Morcelliana); “Le origini e i primi sviluppi delle dottrine giuridiche internazionali pubbliche” (Torino, Aragno); “Vocazione e destino dei Lombardi” (S.l.Milano); “Regione Lombardia, Prefazioni Oneto, Bandiere di libertà: Simboli e vessilli dei Popoli dell'Italia settentrionale. In appendice le bandiere dei popoli europei in lotta per l'autonomia, Effedieffe, Milano, Gianfranco Morra, Breve storia del pensiero federalista” (Milano, Mondadori); “Governo della Padania, Manuale di resistenza fiscale” (Gallarate, Oneto, “Croci draghi aquile e leoni. Simboli e bandiere dei popoli padano-alpini; Roberto Chiaramonte EditoreLa Libera Compagnia Padana, Collegno); Sensini, Prima o seconda Repubblica? A colloquio con Bozzi e M., Napoli, Edizioni scientifiche italiane, Ornaghi e Vitale, Multiformità e unità della politica. Atti del Convegno tenuto in occasione del compleanno, Milano, Giuffrè, Ferrari, “Storia di un giacobino nordista” (Milano, Liber internazionale); Bevilacqua, “Insidia mito e follia nel razzismo”; "Il rinnovamento", Campi, “Figure e temi del realismo politico europeo, Firenze, Akropolis/La Roccia di Erec, G. Capua, Scienziato impolitico” (Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), Rubbettino, Vitale, La costituzione e il cambiamento internazionale. Il mito della costituente, l'obsolescenza della costituzione e la lezione dimenticata, Torino, CIDAS, Luca Romano, Il pensiero federalista una lezione da ricordare. Atti del Convegno di studi, Venezia, Sala del Piovego di Palazzo Ducale, Venezia, Consiglio regionale del Veneto-Caselle di Sommacampagna, Cierre, Lanchester, M. costituzionalista, Rivista di politica: trimestrale di studi, analisi e commenti,  Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), Rubbettino. Damiano Palano, Il cristallo dell'obbligazione politica in ID., Geometrie del potere. Materiali per la storia della scienza politica italiana, Milano, Vita e Pensiero. Maroni: voglio riprendere l'eredità di M. M. Verde, su miglio verde. eu. Bossi a sorpresa al convegno su M. a Domaso:"Un grande"Ciao Como, su Ciao Como, la Repubblica/politica: È morto su repubblica. Ticino COMO: Lunedì a Domaso i funerali. Riletture. Arianna. il ricordo. Terre di Lombardia, su terredilombardia. Alessandro, Cristianesimo e cultura politica: l'eredità di otto illustri testimoni, Paoline, Morra, La vita e le opere, La Voce di Romagna, 8 agosto 5.  Il silenzio di M. fa paura alla Lega  Bossi: Pensa solo alla poltrona. "Con Bossi è un amore finito"  Miglio torna nell'arena: è l'occasione buona  Gianfranco Miglio, Una repubblica mediterranea?, in  Un'altra Repubblica? Perché, come, quando, Laterza, Roma-Bari, U. Rosso, M. l'antropologo. 'Diverso l'uomo del Sud', in la Repubblica,  «Non mi fecero ministro perché avrei distrutto la Repubblica» Treccani Istituto dell'Enciclopedia. Dizionario di storia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Dizionario biografico degl’italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. su senato, Senato della Repubblica. Associazione Openpolis.  Istituto per la scienza dell'amministrazione pubblica, su isapistituto. Interviste Intervista sulla Secessione della Padania, su prov-varese. Lega nord. Commemorazione di M. nell’anniversario della scomparsa di Alessandro Campi, su giovanipadani.lega nord). «Non mi fecero ministro perché avrei distrutto la Repubblica», Il Giornale, su newrassegna.camera. Interviste a M. sui "Quaderni della Libera Compagnia Padana" su la libera compagnia. Documenti politici Sezione di approfondimento sul pensiero di Gianfranco Miglio, dal sito ufficiale della Lega Nord. Gianfranco Miglio. Miglio. Keywords: implicatura ligure. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Miglio," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Speranza “Saturdays and Mondays” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Millia: la ragione conversazionale della setta dell’ottimati a Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Crotone). Filosofo italiano. Pythagorean according to Giamblico. He is said to have been one of a group of Pythagoreans who were ambushed but found their escape route blocked by a field of beans. Being prohibited by Pythagoreans precepts from even touching beans, he preferred death to betraying his principles. Millia.

 

Grice e Milone: la ragione conversazionale e la setta d’ottimati di Crotone – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Crotona). Filosofo italiano. According to Giamblico, a Pythagorean. He studied with Pythagoras himself. He died when an anti-Pythagorean mob burnt his house down when he was inside it.

 

Grice e Minicio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale d’Adriano nel diritto romano e Plinio minore-- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma).   Rescritto di Adriano a Gaio Minucio Fundano Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.  L'imperatore Adriano, autore del rescritto a Gaio Minucio Fundano. Il rescritto di Adriano a Gaio Minucio Fundano è un rescritto imperiale inviato dall'imperatore romano Adriano a Gaio Minucio Fundano, proconsole d'Asia dal 122 al 123.[1]  Il documento giuridico, scritto originariamente in latino, fu tradotto e tràdito in greco ellenistico da Eusebio di Cesarea[2] che si rifaceva a Giustino[3].  Il testo è noto agli storici e agli studiosi di Storia del Cristianesimo per essere uno dei più antichi scritti pagani sul cristianesimo.   Indice 1Contenuto e valore del documento 1.1Politica di Adriano verso il Cristianesimo 2Interpretazione del rescritto 2.1Dubbi esegetici 2.1.1Tesi di Marta Sordi 3Note 4 Bibliografia 5                                                            Voci correlate Contenuto e valore del documento Il documento di Adriano, pur indirizzato a Minucio Fundano, rispondeva in realtà a un'istanza sollecitata da Quinto Licinio Silvano Graniano, predecessore del destinatario: Graniano aveva chiesto lumi sul comportamento da tenere nei confronti dei cristiani e delle accuse che venivano loro rivolte.  Adriano rispose al proconsole di procedere nei loro confronti solo in presenza di eventi circostanziati, emergenti da un procedimento giudiziario e non sulla base di accuse generiche, petizioni o calunnie: veniva stabilito così il principio dell'onere della prova a carico dei promotori delle accuse. Eventuali azioni promosse a scopo di calunnia dovevano, al contrario, essere duramente perseguite e punite, affinché non fosse permesso ai calunniatori di procurare del male.[4]  Politica di Adriano verso il Cristianesimo Il rescritto, che è una delle prime fonti pagane sul cristianesimo, è anche di somma importanza per la comprensione della politica tenuta da Adriano e dal suo predecessore Traiano nei confronti dei cristiani: Adriano, infatti, si mosse su un piano analogo, e anche più garantista, rispetto a quello del suo predecessore che si era espresso sull'argomento in un precedente rescritto[5] sollecitato da una specifica richiesta di Plinio il Giovane[6] che era a quel tempo legatus Augusti pro praetore in Bitinia e Ponto[7].  Interpretazione del rescritto  Giustino sostenne l'interpretazione più favorevole del rescritto, accettata da una parte della storiografia moderna. Dubbi esegetici Il significato esatto del rescritto adrianeo, pur confrontato con quello di Traiano, rimane per alcuni studiosi controverso. Se è assodata, infatti, l'affermazione del principio dell'onere della prova da cui, in definitiva, far dipendere la perseguibilità dei cristiani che avessero agito «contro la legge», non è per tutti chiaro, invece, fino a qual punto dovesse spingersi l'assolvimento di quell'onere, se fosse cioè sufficiente provare la sola fattispecie della professione di fede (quello che Plinio, nella sua epistola a Traiano, chiama il nomen ipsum) o si rendesse invece necessario circostanziare anche la contemporanea presenza di reati ascrivibili all'essere cristiani (flagitia cohaerentia nomini), la distinta fattispecie che Plinio già individuava e intendeva suggerire all'imperatore nell'indirizzargli la sua richiesta.  Tesi di Marta Sordi Marta Sordi, storica dell'antichità greco-romana e del cristianesimo delle origini, propendeva per l'interpretazione più favorevole ai cristiani, una posizione esegetica a cui peraltro già aderiva l'apologetica cristiana, da Giustino in poi. Secondo la Sordi, Adriano, in linea con la politica del suo predecessore Traiano, avrebbe non solo confermato il divieto di perseguibilità d'ufficio[8] ma vi avrebbe anche aggiunto, di suo, due nuovi elementi:  Il primo di essi la Sordi lo individua in quel passo in cui Adriano afferma la necessità di dover giudicare «secondo la gravità della colpa» (sempre nel caso - beninteso - di una denuncia sorretta da prove). Il riferimento a una graduabilità della colpa escluderebbe, secondo Marta Sordi, che quest'ultima potesse ridursi al solo 'essere cristiani', una fattispecie che poteva rivelarsi vera o falsa, ma che non poteva ammettere graduazioni: seguendo questa interpretazione, bisogna quindi ritenere necessaria l'associazione a un diverso reato, ascrivibile allo status religioso ma non coincidente semplicemente con questo[8]. Questa interpretazione, inoltre, sempre secondo la studiosa, sarebbe in sintonia con il tono generale della prosa dell'imperatore, da cui trapela, infine, persino insofferenza nei confronti di possibili derive intolleranti[8]. L'espressione di questa insofferenza, sottolineata anche da un'interiezione, è contenuta nella frase «ma, per Ercole, se qualcuno accampa pretesti per calunniare, tu, stabilitane la gravità, devi senza indugio punirlo». E proprio in questa frase si rinviene, secondo la Sordi, il secondo elemento di novità rispetto all'atteggiamento del predecessore:  la necessità che le conseguenze di azioni prive di prova, e pertanto temerarie e calunniose, dovessero ritorcersi contro gli stessi proponenti.[8] Note ^ Gianluigi Bastia, Lettera di Adriano, 29 dicembre 2006. ^ Eusebio di Cesarea, Storia Ecclesiastica, IV, 9, 1-3. ^ Giustino Martire, Apologia LXVIII, 3-5. Il testo greco, in Giustino, è riportato in calce al paragrafo LXVIII (v. Apologia I Archiviato il 26 novembre 2012 in Internet Archive.). ^ Rescritto di Adriano a Caio Minucio Fundano, proconsole d'Asia Archiviato il 6 ottobre 2014 in Internet Archive., pp. 18-19 (o su Giustino, Apologia I Archiviato il 26 novembre 2012 in Internet Archive.). ^ Plinio il Giovane, Epistulae, X.97. ^ Plinio il Giovane, Epistulae, X.96 e X.97. ^ CIL V, 5262  Marta Sordi, I Cristiani e l'impero romano, Jaca Book, Milano, 2004, ISBN 9788816406711 pp. 73 e segg. Bibliografia Marta Sordi, I Cristiani e l'impero romano, Jaca Book, Milano, 2004, ISBN 9788816406711 pp. 73 e segg. Gianluigi Bastia, Lettera di Adriano, accesso 29 dicembre 2006. Eusebio di Cesarea, Storia Ecclesiastica, IV, 9, 1-3. Giustino Martire, Apologia LXVIII, 3-5. Plinio il Giovane, Epistulae, X.96 e X.97. CIL V, 5262. Minìcio Fundano, Gaio, in Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Voci correlate Rescritto di Traiano a Plinio il Giovane Fonti storiche non cristiane sul cristianesimo Gesù storico Storiografia su Gesù Ricerca del Gesù storico Storicità di Gesù Onere della prova Ius puniendi   Portale Antica Roma   Portale Cristianesimo   Portale Diritto   Portale Gesù Categorie: Fonti del diritto romanoStoria antica del cristianesimoAdriano[altre]Military diploma (CIL) attesting his consulship suffect consul. In office Nationality: Roman; Occupation: politician. A Roman senator who holds several offices in the Emperor's service, and is an acquaintance of PLINIO MINORE. He is suffect consul with Tito Vettenio Severo as his colleague. He is best known as being the recipient of an edict from ADRIANO (si veda) about conducting trials of Christians in his province. This is known from an inscription recovered at Baloie in Bosnia. The first office listed is military tribune with Legio XII Fulminata. Next is quaestor, and, upon completion of this traditional Republican magistracy, he would be enrolled in the Senate. Two more of the traditional Republican magistracies follow: plebeian tribune and praetor. The last appointment, before the inscription breaks off, is his commission as legatus legionis or commander of Legio XV Apollinaris. Other sources attest that he was governor of Achaea. The terminus post quem his governorship is when Gaio Caristanio Giuliano is known to have governed. The terminus ante quem he leaves his post is the year of his consulate, although the letters he receives from PLINIO MINORE (si veda) indicate he is no longer in Achaea. The inscription from Baloie mentions he has been admitted to the Septem-viri epulonum, one of the four most prestigious ancient Roman priesthoods. Because this inscription does not mention his consulate, it can be assumed his entrance precedes that office.  Most, if not all, of the letters PLINIO MINORE (si veda) writes to M. fall before is suffect consul. In the first letter of his collection, PLINIO declares that living on his rural estate is preferable to living in Rome, where he is subject to constant pleas for assistance. The second letter petitions him to appoint the son of Plinio’s friend ASINIO RUFO as M’s quaestor for M.’s upcoming consulate; The last letter is another petition to M., canvassing him on behalf of GIULIO NASONE, who is running for an unnamed office. While all of these letters demonstrate M. And PLINIO MINORE are acquainted, they fail to show the warmth of a friendship.  Following his consulate, during the reign of TRAIANO, M. is governor of Dalmatia.  It is through a rescript the historian EUSEBIO preserves at length in his Ecclesiae Historia that we know M. is proconsul of Asia. M.' predecessor, QUINTO LICINIO SILAVNO GRANIANO, asks ADRIANO how to handle legal cases where some inhabitants are accusing their neighbours of not following the Roman cult through informers or mere clamour. ADRIANO’s reply is to state that any such accusations had to be through a law court, where the matter may be properly investigated, and if they are guilty of any illegality, thou M., must pronounce sentence according to the seriousness of the offence. This rescript is important as an independent witness to the existence of one or more non-Roman sects in this part of Anatolia. The only other contemporaneous evidence we have for these communities is the list of the VII churches of Asia in the book of Revelation.  M.’s wife is the daughter of a MARCO STATORIO. We know her name from a funerary inscription, which suggests that she died before M.’s consulship. The name of their daughter, Minicia Marcella, comes from two independent sources. Minicia dies young. Her funerary vase has been identified, which states her age at death as XII years, XI months, and VII days. PLINIO MINORE also attests to her existence, revealing information about the girl that shows that he and M. are better friends than the surviving letters he writes to M. suggest. In the letter, addressed to one EFULANO MARCELLINO, Pliny notes that, although she was not yet XIV years old, she was betrothed. Pliny describes the preparations for her wedding, with which M. was busy; and he asks Marcellinus to send M. a letter consoling him for his loss. It is not known if M. has any other children.  Smallwood, Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, Cambridge, CIL, ILJug., Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome, Princeton; Wheeler, "Legio XV Apollinaris: From Carnuntum to Satala—and beyond", in Bohec and Wolff, eds. Les Légions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, Paris; Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter”, Chiron; Pliny, Epistulae, I.9  Syme, Tacitus, Clarendon; Eusebius, Ecclesiae Historia; Williamson, Eusebius: The History of the Church, Harmondsworth: Penguin; Political offices Preceded by Acilius Rufus, and Quintus Sosius Senecio II Consul of the Roman Empire 107 with Titus Vettennius SeverusSucceeded by Gaius Julius Longinus, and Gaius Valerius Paullinus Categories: Roman governors of AchaiaSuffect consuls of Imperial RomeRoman governors of DalmatiaRoman governors of AsiaEpulones of the Roman Empire Minicii. Keywords: Roman law, Adriano a Minicio -- Gaio Minicio Fundano. Minicio.

 

Grice e Minnomaco: la ragione conversazionale della diaspora di Crotone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Taranto). Filosofo italiano. A Pythagorean according to Giamblico. Grice: “Cicerone argues: Minnomaco speaks Greek; therefore he is no Roman!” Minnomaco.

 

Grice e Minucio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’eulogio ad Ottavio da Frontone -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. He writes “Ottavio” – draws on a speech by Frontone. La gente: Minucia  Marco Minucio Felice Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Marco Minucio Felice (in latino; Marcus Minucius Felix; Cirta, II secolo ca. – III secolo ca.) è stato uno scrittore e avvocato romano. Non è noto con certezza quando visse: la sua vita è variamente collocata tra il 160 e il 300.  Il suo Octavius è simile all'Apologeticum di Quinto Settimio Fiorente Tertulliano, e la datazione della vita di Felice dipende dal rapporto tra la sua opera e quella dello scrittore africano morto nel 230. Nelle citazioni degli autori antichi (Seneca, Varrone, Cicerone) è considerato più preciso di Tertulliano e questo concorderebbe col suo essere anteriore ad esso, come afferma anche Lattanzio;[1] Girolamo lo vuole, invece, posteriore a Tertulliano,[2] sebbene si contraddica dicendolo posteriore a Tascio Cecilio Cipriano in una lettera e anteriore in un'opera.[2] Per quanto riguarda gli estremi della sua esistenza, Felice menziona Marco Cornelio Frontone, morto nel 170; il trattato Quod idola dii non sint è basato sull'Octavius; dunque se quello è di Cipriano (morto nel 258), Minucio Felice non fu attivo oltre il 260, altrimenti il termine ante quem è Lattanzio, attorno al 300.  Anche la zona d'origine di Minucio è sconosciuta. Lo si ritiene talvolta di origine africana, sia per la sua dipendenza da Tertulliano, sia per i riferimenti alla realtà africana: la prima ragione, però, non è indicativa, in quanto dovuta al fatto che all'epoca i principali autori di lingua latina erano africani, e dunque il loro era lo stile cui ispirarsi; la seconda, inoltre, potrebbe dipendere esclusivamente dal fatto che il personaggio pagano dell'Octavius, Cecilio Natale, era africano, come attestato da alcune iscrizioni. Cionondimeno, è significativo che entrambi i personaggi dell'Octavius abbiano nomi citati in iscrizioni africane,[3] e che lo stesso valga per il nome Minucio Felice.Octavius  L'Octavius è un dialogo che ha per protagonisti lo stesso scrittore, Cecilio e Ottavio e che si svolge sulla spiaggia di Ostia. L'opera si è conservata per errore dopo i sette libri dell'Adversus nationes di Arnobio come (liber) octavus. Mentre i tre passeggiano sul litorale, Cecilio, di origine pagana, compie un atto di omaggio nei confronti della statua di Serapide. Da ciò nasce una discussione in cui Cecilio attacca la religione cristiana ed esalta la funzione civile della religione tradizionale, mentre Ottavio, cristiano, attacca i culti idolatrici pagani ed esalta la tendenza dei cristiani alla carità e all'amore per il prossimo.  Alla fine del dialogo Cecilio si dichiara vinto e si converte al Cristianesimo, mentre Minucio, che funge da arbitro, assegna ovviamente la vittoria ad Ottavio.  Il Cristianesimo di Minucio è lo stesso dei ceti dirigenti[6], che non vogliono che il cambiamento di religione sia accompagnato da sommovimenti sociali e sono convinti che debbano, comunque, sopravvivere la finezza e l'equilibrio costruiti da secoli di civiltà greco-latina. Del resto, di questo ceto sono i personaggi dell'Octavius, tutti e tre avvocatiː il pagano, Cecilio Natale, era nativo di Cirta (dove l'omonimo registrato dalle iscrizioni aveva ricoperto cariche sacerdotali) e viveva a Roma, come Minucio, di cui seguiva l'attività forense; Ottavio, invece, è appena arrivato nella capitale all'epoca in cui è ambientata l'opera, e ha lasciato la propria famiglia nella provincia d'origine.  Girolamo gli attribuisce una seconda opera, De fato, di cui però non vi sono tracce.  Note ^ Divinae Institutiones, V 1.  De viris illustribus, LVIII. ^ Ottavio Ianuario a Saldae (CIL VIII, 8962) e Cecilio a Cirta (CIL VIII, 7097, CIL VIII, 7098, CIL VIII, 6996). ^ A Tébessa (CIL VIII, 1964) e Cartagine (CIL VIII, 12499). Bracci, Il linguaggio di Minucio Felice. Fra dialogo filosofico e disputa religiosa, in Controversie: dispute letterarie, storiche, religiose dall'Antichità al Rinascimento, a cura di G. Larini, Padova, Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2004, p. 148. ^ I. Vecchiotti, La filosofia politica di Minucio Felice. Un altro colpo di sonda nella storia del cristianesimo primitivo, Urbino, Università degli Studi, 1973, passim. ^ De viris illustribus, 58.BibliografiaL'Ottaviodi Marco Minucio Felice in italiano: play.google.com/books/reader?id=xj GOJAAAAEAJ&pg=GBS.PA0 Paul Lejay, «Minucius Felix», in Catholic Encyclopedia (1913). F. Bracci, Il linguaggio di Minucio Felice. Fra dialogo filosofico e disputa religiosa, in Controversie: dispute letterarie, storiche, religiose dall'Antichità al Rinascimento, a cura di G. Larini, Padova, Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2004 Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Marco Minucio Felice Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina in lingua latina dedicata a Marco Minucio Felice Collegamenti esterni (EN) Marcus Minucius Felix, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Marco Minucio Felice, su Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Marco Minucio Felice, in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Harper. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Marco Minucio Felice, su MLOL, Horizons Unlimited. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Audiolibri di Marco Minucio Felice / Marco Minucio Felice (altra versione), su LibriVox. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Marco Minucio Felice, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company. Modifica su Wikidata C. Francis Higgins, «Felix, Minucius», in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Opera Omnia dal Migne, Patrologia Latina, con indici analitici, su documentacatholicaomnia.eu.. V · D · M Padri e dottori della Chiesa cattolica Portale Antica Roma   Portale Biografie   Portale Cristianesimo   Portale Letteratura Categorie: Scrittori romaniAvvocati romaniScrittori del II secolo a.C.Scrittori del III secolo a.C.Romani del II secolo a.C.Romani del III secolo a.C.Nati a CirtaApologetiPadri della ChiesaScrittori africani di lingua latinaScrittori cristiani antichi[altre] Minucio – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano.  ATTI DEL CONGRESSO INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE STORICHE   (Roma, 1903 ).   Estratto dal voi. XI. — Sezione VII  Storia della Filosofìa — Storia delle Religioni.    L’APOLOGETICO DI TERTULLIANO   E   L’OTTA VIO DI MINUCIO    COMUNICAZIONE    Prof. FELICE RAMORINO     ROMA   TIPOGRAFIA DELLA R. ACCADEMIA DEI LINCEI  PROPRIETÀ DEL CAV. V. SALVIUCCI    1904     Digitized by AjOOQle    Digitized by LiOOQle    L’APOLOGETICO DI  TERTULLIANO    E   L’ OTTAVIO DI MINUCIO    COMUNICAZIONE   DEL   Prof. FELICE RAMORINO     ROMA   TIPOGRAFIA DELLA R. ACCADEMIA DEI LINCEI  PROPRIETÀ DEL CAV. V. SALVIUCCI   190 4    Digitized by AjOOQle     7? ' 3 tu   M i ' 77 p   Estratto dagli Atti del Congrego internazionale di scienze storiche  (Roma, 1903).   Volume XI. — Sezione VII: Storia della Filosofia — Storia delle Religioni»    /}iaÒ    Digitized by LiOOQle     Ancora non è stata risolta in modo definitivo la questione dei rap-  porti che intercedono tra il discorso di Tertulliano in difesa de’ Cri-  stiani e il dialogo di Minucio Felice, dove alle accuse formolate in  un discorso d' ispirazione pagana messo in bocca a Cecilio Natale, op-  ponesi una eloquente difesa del Cristianesimo per bocca di Ottavio dal  quale il dialogo prende nome. Ancora non sono state date sufficienti  ragioni per stabilire se Tertulliano abbia avuto sott’ occhio Minucio,  o se invece questi abbia tratto da quello come da sua fonte, e quindi  quale dei due abbia da considerarsi come cronologicamente anteriore.   La questione ha un vero interesse per la storia del Cristianesimo  in Occidente perchè trattasi delle prime scritture latine d' ispirazione  cristiana, e dipende di qui il sapere chi primo abbia divulgato fra le  genti di parlata latina le ragioni addotte dagli Apostoli del Cristia-  nesimo, già da più decenni diffuse tra i Greci.   Tale questione sorge dal fatto che tra le due opere corrono tali  e tante analogie di pensiero e di frase, da dover senz’altro ritenere  che l’un dei due abbia avuto sott’occhio l’altro. Si può ben congettu-  rare anche, e s’ è in fatto congetturato, abbiano entrambi attinto a una  fonte comune, che per noi sarebbe perduta. Primo propose quest’ ipotesi  l’ Hartel, poi cercò sostenerla in apposita monografia il Wilhelm (1 887) ;  più tardi (nel 1891) il De Lagarde pensò a dirittura a un’apologià  scritta da papa Vittore I da cui Tertulliano e Minucio avrebbero co-  piato a man salva; infine l’Agahd in una sua ricerca di cose Varro-  niane (24° voi. supp. dei Jahrbiicher di Fleckeisen), ammettendo anche  egli un’apologià cristiana latina anteriore a Tertulliano e Minucio,  ne investigò le fonti in Varrone e in qualche altro libro dell’età ales-   ( 143 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 4 —    sandrina. Ma noi vedremo che i riscontri verbali tra l’Apologetico e  l’Ottavio sono tanti e tali da escludere l’ipotesi d'una terza fonte co-  mune, se non forse per uno speciale punto di dottrina derivato dalla  scuola di Euemero.   Tra quelli che rinunziando all’ipotesi di una terza fonte comune,  riducono la questione ai soli Tertulliano e Minucio, gli uni credono  anteriore Minucio, gli altri Tertulliano, e le due schiere sono egual-  mente notevoli per numero e autorità di aderenti. I fautori della prio-  rità di Minucio, come si fan forti di una espressione di Lattanzio, così  vantano l’adesione di uomini quali 1’ Ebert (1868), il Baehrens (1886),  Ed. Norden (1897), ecc. Gli altri si rifanno dall’attestazione di S. Gerolamo,  e hanno compagni uomini di incontestato valore come lo Schultze (1881),  il Neumann (1890), l’Harnack (1893), nome che vai da solo per molti.  Ultimamente si schierò da questa parte anche il francese Monceaux (1901)  che con tanto studio e dottrina s’ è occupato della letteratura affricana.   Non è qui il luogo di ripetere le ragioni addotte da tutti questi  studiosi, nè di discuterle. Intendo qui di istituire un confronto, il più  completo possibile, di luoghi Minuciani e Tertullianei, presentandoli  in modo che ne riesca chiaro il contenuto e sia facile ai lettori di  trarne le debite conclusioni. Prendo per base il discorso di Tertulliano,  seguendone l’argomento come filo conduttore, e additando via via i luoghi  paralleli di Minucio.    § 1. — Dell' odio contro i Cristiani  e della iniqua procedura con loro usata .   Nei primi tre capitoli del suo Apologetico, mira Tertulliano a far  vedere, come fosse iniquo l’odio che si aveva contro i Cristiani. Vol-  gendo nell’esordio la parola ai reggitori del Romano Impero, dice che,  se non era loro lecito fare una pubblica inchiesta intorno alla causa  dei Cristiani, se a questo solo fattispecie o temevano o arrossivano di  volgere l’attenzione pubblicamente, e se le troppe condanne private  avevano compromesso la difesa della setta cristiana, doveva pur essere  lecito a lui cercar di giungere alle loro orecchie per la via letteraria;  la verità cristiana ben sapere di essere peregrina sulla terra e di trovar  facilmente nemici tra gli estranei, ma non voler essere condannata  senza essere conosciuta. Condannarla inascoltata essere una iniquità, e  far nascere il sospetto che i governanti non vogliano ascoltare ciò che  non potrebbero più condannare conoscendolo. La scusa dell’ignoranza   (144)    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 5 —    non essere che apparente, anzi aggravare il carico dell’iniquità; perchè  qual più trista cosa che l’odiare quel che si ignora, anche se la cosa  meriti effettivamente odio? Se poi si viene a sapere che la cosa non  meritava odio, chi era solo colpevole d’ignoranza, cessata questa, cessa  anche di odiare; come fanno appunto i convertiti al Cristianesimo, i  quali cominciano a odiare quel che erano e a professare quel che prima  odiavano. Invece, dice Tertulliano, gli avversari nostri segnalano bensì  il fatto delle molte conversioni, ma, anziché arguire che ci sia sotto  qualche gran bene, seguitano a ignorare e a odiare. Si dirà che le molte  conversioni non vogliono dir nulla, perchè ci si volge anche al male.  Ma il male, avvertasi, per natura o si teme o se ne ha vergogna; ed  è perciò che i malvagi voglion rimanere nascosti; sorpresi trepidano,  accusati negano, anche tormentati non sempre confessano, e condannati  poi n’han dolore. I Cristiani non si vergognano, non si pentono; si  gloriano d’ esser notati ; accusati non si difendono ; interrogati confes-  sano ; anzi confessano spontaneamente, e condannati ringraziano. Non  è dunque questo un male se non ha le circostanze connaturate al male,  il timore, il rossore! il pentimento, il rimpianto (cap. I). — Anche la  procedura che si segue con noi Cristiani, continua Tertulliano, è iniqua.  Non ci si concede libertà di difesa, e si vuol da noi soltanto la con-  fessione del nome, senza poi esaminare il crimine. E mentre per un  omicida, per un incestuoso, per un nemico pubblico si indagano le cir-  costanze dei fatti, il numero, il luogo, il tempo, i complici dei delitti,  per noi non si procede così ; anzi un famoso editto di Traiano ha proi-  bito che si inizino processi contro noi, mentre poi ha disposto che  data una denunzia, ci si deva punire ; disposizione contradittoria ed  ingiusta. Si viene così ad applicare per noi un’assurda procedura, quella  di torturarci, non per farci confessare come gli altri, sì perchè neghiamo,  mentre se si trattasse di male, noi staremmo sulla negativa, e la tor-  tura ci si applicherebbe per farci confessare. È evidente che non un  delitto è in causa nel caso nostro, ma solo il nome. Si arriva al punto  di biasimare uno che si riconosce come un galantuomo, solo perchè  è cristiano; si cacciano via dalle case, anche contro ogni interesse, le  mogli pudiche e i buoni servi, solo perchè cristiani; è tutto in odio  al nome. Ma che cos’ ha di male questo nome che significa « unti »  o, se si piglia la forma « Crestiani » usata talvolta per errore, ha a  connettersi con « buono » ? Odiasi forse ia setta per il nome   del suo autore ? Ma anche le sette dei filosofi sono denominate dai loro  autori, e niuno se n’offende. Prima di odiare il nome, conveniva in-  dagare e riconoscere dalle qualità della setta l’autore o da quelle del-   ( 145 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 6 —    l’autore la setta ; invece non si è fatto e non si fa nulla di questo, e  si seguita a far ingiusta guerra al nome (cap. II e III).   Fin qui l’ introduzione dell’Apologetico Tertullianeo. Con le idee  qui espresse si ha qualche riscontro nei capitoli 27, 28 e 31 dell’Ottavio,  a metà circa del discorso in difesa della nuova dottrina. Nel cap. 27  accenna Ottavio all’opera dei cattivi spiriti che insinuano l’odio contro  i Cristiani anche prima che siano conosciuti. Il capitolo seguente tocca la  procedura usata coi Cristiani, e Ottavio ricorda che anche egli prima,  credendo alle solite calunnie, usava le stesse arti diaboliche contro i  Cristiani. I demonii appunto ispirano quelle dicerie sciocche le quali,  se mai, hanno un fondo di verità per i pagani non per i Cristiani. La confu-  tazione di tali calunnie si estende per i capitoli 29 e 30 e una parte  del 31. Quest’ultimo poi si chiude con l’ affermazione delle virtù cri-  stiane, la pudicizia, la temperanza, la serietà. L’aumentare del nostro  numero, dice, non è accusa di errore, ma testimonio di lode, e non è  meraviglia se noi ci riconosciamo al segno dell’ innocenza e della mo-  destia, e se ci amiamo a vicenda chiamandoci fratelli. Ecco alcuni ri-  scontri verbali:   Min. Oct. 31, 6: « ... nec in angulis  garruli (sumus) si audire nos publice  aut erubesciti s aut timetis » (intendi:  non è vero che noi facciamo pettego-  lezzi di nascosto, se invece siete voi che  pubblicamente rifiutate di darci ascolto  o perchè arrossite o perchè temete di  farlo).   c. 27, 8 : « sic occupant animos (im-  puri spiritus) ... ut ante nos incipiant  homines odisse quam nosse, ne cognitos,  aut imitari possint, aut damnare non  possint ».   c. 28, 2: Anche noi, prima della  conversione, credevamo alle calunniose  voci sparse contro i Cristiani, e non ci  accorgevamo che eran tutte dicerie sen-  za fondamento ; « malum autem adeo  non esse, ut Cliristianus reus nec eru-  besceret nec timeret , et unum solum-  modo quod non ante fuerit paeniteret ».    ( 146 )    a) Tertull. Apolog. I princ. : « ...si  ad hanc solam speciem auctoritas vestra  de iustitiae diligentia in publico aut  timet aut erubescit inquirere ».    b) Ibid. : u inauditam si damnent,  praeter invidiam iniquitatis etiam su-  spicionem merebuntur alicuius conscien-  tiae, noleutes audire quod auditum dan-  nare non possint ».   c) Ibid.: u Quod vere malum est, ne  ipsi quidem quos rapit defendere prò  bono audent. Omne malum aut timore  aut pudore natura perfudit. Denique  malefici gestiunt latere, devitant appa-  rere, trepidant deprehensi, negant accu-  sati, ne torti quidem facile aut semper  continentur, certe damnati maerent. Di-  numerant in semetipsos mentis malae  impetus, vel fato vel astris imputant,  nolunt enim suum esse quia malum  agnoscunt. Christianus vero quid si-  mile? Neminem pudet , neminem pae -    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 7 —    i    nitet nisi piane retro non fuisse . Si  denotata gloriata, si accusata non  defendit, interrogatns vel ultro confi-  tetur, damnatus gratias agit. Quid hoc  mali est quod naturalia mali non habet,  fimorem, pudorem, tergiversationem,  paenitentiam, deplorationem? Quid? hoc  malum est cuius reus gaudet? cuius  .accusatio votum est et poena felicitas ? »    Qui si osservi come a un cenno fuggevole di Minucio rispetto al  non essere un male il cristianesimo, corrisponde in Tertulliano tutta  una spiegazione psicologica della natura del male e del contegno dei  malvagi col quale si confronta quello dei Cristiani.    d) Apolog. c. IL Si critica la pro-  cedura usata coi Cristiani. Tra l’altro,  si dice : « Ceteris negantibus tormenta  udhibetis ad confitendum, solis Chri-  stianis ad negandum... Quo perversine  cum praesumatis de sceleribus no stris  ex nominis confessione, cogitis tormen-  tis de confessione decedere, ut negan-  tes nomen pariter utique negemus et  scelera... Sed, opinor non vultis noe  perire , quos pessimos creditis... Si non  ita agitis circa nos nocentes ergo nos  innocentissimos iudicatis cum quasi in-  nocentissimos non vultis in ea con-  fessione perseverare, quam necessitate  non iustitia damnandam sciatis. Voci-  ferata homo: Christianus sum. Quod  est dicit; tu vis audire quod non est.  Veritatis extorquendae praesides de no-  bis solis mendacinm elaboratis audire ».    Oct. 28, 3: Noi prima della conver-  sione, mentre assumevamo la difesa di  sacrilegi e incestuosi e anche di parricidi,  « hos (i Cristiani) nec audiendos in toto  putabamus, nonnunquam etiam mise-  rantes eorum crudelius saeviebamus, ut  torqueremus confitentes ad negandum ,  videlicet ne perir ent , exercentes in his,  perversam quaesti onem nòn quae verum  erueret sed quae mendacium cogeret .  Et si qui infìrmior malo pressus et  victus Christianum se negasset, fave-  bamus ei quasi, eierato nomine, iam  omnia facta sua illa negatione pur-  gata ».    § 2. — Delle calunnie d’ infanticidio e di cene incestuose.   Dopo avere nei capitoli IV, Y e VI dell’Apologetico confutato il  pregiudizio che il Cristianesimo non fosse permesso dalle leggi romane,  facendo vedere come le leggi potessero essere benissimo pattate, e mu-  tate furono tante volte attraverso ai secoli, Tertulliano passa a con-  futare le calunnie lanciate contro i Cristiani, d’ infanticidio e di cene  incestuose. Queste cose si dicono sempre, ma nessuno mai si cura d’ in-  dagare so sono vere. La verità è odiata, e ha nemici da tutte le parti.   ( 147 )    Digitized by    Google     — 8 -    Chi ha mai visto a spargere sangue di bambini, e abbandonarsi, dopa  il pranzo e dopo fatti spegnere i lumi da cani lenone s tenebrarum,  a orgie incestuose? Se i nostri ritrovi son segreti, chi può rivelare quel  che vi si fa? non gli iniziati che hanno interesse a non si tradire;  non gli estranei, appunto perchè non penetrarono mai. È dunque tutto  opera' della fama. E qui Tertulliano ha una bella pagina sulla natura  della fama o « si dice » . È antico il motto : fama malum quo non  aliud velocius ullum (Virgilio). Perchè è un male la fama? perchè ve-  loce? o non anzi perchè essa è per lo più menzognera? anche quando  ha del vero, non è mai senza bugia, togliendo, aggiungendo, mutande  dal vero. Ed è di tal natura che non persiste a essere se non in  quanto mentisce, e vive solo fin quando non si arriva alla prova dei  fatto vero. Quando si ha il fatto, cessa ogni « si dice » , e rimane la  notizia del fatto. La fama, nomen incerti > non ha più luogo dov’ è  la certezza. Ora alla fama uom savio non deve credere. Si sa come na-  scono le dicerie. Hanno principio da qualcuno che è mosso o da ge-  losia o da dispetto o da mania di dir bugie; e poi passate di bocca  in orecchio, e via ripetute, nascondono sempre più la verità. Meno male,  che il tempo poi rivela ogni cosa, per felice disposizione della natura-  per cui il vero si fa strada. Le accuse sono nient’ altro che dicerie, ma  non hanno fondamento di verità. Si soggiunge che noi promettiamo la  vita eterna a chi uccide bambini e commette incesti. Ma anche se tu  credi a questo, dice Tertulliano, io chiedo se tu stimeresti tanto questa  eternità da arrivarci con simili infamie. Tu nè vorresti farle queste  cose, nè potresti ; dunque perchè crederai che vogliano e possano farle  i Cristiani, che sono uomini come te ? Si dirà che sono iniziati a tali  cerimonie quando non ne sanno ancor nulla; ma in tal caso, una volta  conosciute tali infamie, non continuerebbero a parteciparvi, per la stessa  avversione che avrebbe impedito loro d’ iniziarsi nel caso che ne fos-  sero informati.   Tale il contenuto dei capitoli VII e Vili dell’Apologetico. Vi cor-  rispondono i medesimi capitoli di Minucio già ricordati dal 28 al 31,  ove con le accuse d’ infanticidio e di cene incestuose si confutano anche  quelle di adorazione d’una testa d’asino, o dei genitali di sacerdoti, o  di un uomo crocifisso, o della croce stessa. E siccome di queste accuse-  si parla anche nel capitolo 9 dove Cecilio Natale le espone facendo  eco alla voce comune, così è da tener conto anche di questo capo per  taluni riscontri verbali:    ( 148 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 9 -    »      c    a) Apolog. VII in. : « quod everso -  fes luminum canes, lenones scilicet te-  nebrarum, libidinum impiarum invere-  cundiam procurent ».   Vili fin.: « candelabra et lucernae  et canes aliqui et offulae quae illos ad  eversionem luminum extendant».   b) Id. Vili : « Veni, demerge ferruin   in infantem, nullius inimicum, nullius  reum, omnium filium, vel ... tu modo  adsiste morienti komini antequam vi-  xit... excipe rudem sanguinem, eo pa-  nerai tnum satia, vescere libenter   Nego te velie ; etiamsi volueris, nego te  posse. Cur ergo alii possint si vos non  potestis?... qui ista credis de homine  potes et tacere ».   c) Id. VII : « Quis talia facinora cum  invenisset celavit?... Si semper latemus  quando proditum est quod admittimus ?  immo a quibus prodi potuit?   d) lbid. : « Natura famae omnibus  nota est (v. il riassunto precedente)...  quae ne tunc quidem cum aliquid veri   offerti sine mendacii vitio est Tam-   diu vivit quam diu non probat, siqui-  dem ubi probavit cessat esse et quasi  officio nunciandi functa rem tradit et  exinde res tenetur, res nominatur. Nec  quisquam dicit verbi gratia: 'hoc Ro-  mae aiunt factum 1 aut : ‘ fama est il-  luni provinciam sortitum sed: ‘ sorti-  tus est ille provinciam ’ , et : * hoc fa-  ctum est Romae \ Fama, nomen incerti,  locum non habet ubi certum est ».    Min. Oct. 9, 6: « canis qui cande-  labro nexus est, iactu offulae ultra spa-  tium lineae qua vinctus est, ad impe-  tum et saltum provocatur. Sic everso  et exstincto conscio lumine impuden-  tibus tenebris etc. ».   Id. 30, 1 : « Illuni velim convenire,  qui initiari nos dicit aut credit de caede  infantis et sanguine. Putas posse fieri,  ut tam molle corpus, tam parvulum  corpus fata vulnerum capiat? ut quis-  quam illum rudem sanguinem novelli  et vixdum hominis caedat f fundat ,  exhauriat? nemo hoc potest credere  nisi qui possit audere ».   28, 2: « ... nec tanto tempore ali-  quem existere qui proderet ».    28, 6: « nec tamen mirum, cum  omnium (quoniam, Vahlen) fama quae  semper insparsis mendaciis alitur, osten-  sa ventate consumitur ».    Anche qui si noti che il modo di esprimersi di Minucio intorno alla  fama non solo è conciso, ma chi legge quell’ostessa ventate consu-  mitur non lo intende se non quando lo confronta con la pagina di Ter-  tulliano, la quale può servire assai bene di commento.    ( 149 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 10 —    §3. — Del doversi tali accuse ritorcere contro i Pagani.    I Cristiani non si contentavano di scagionarsi dalle accuse calun-  niose mosse loro, ma le ritorcevano contro gli avversari, facendo ve-  dere come essi, all’ombra della religione, molti infanticidi e incesti  davvero commettevano. Di ciò tratta il capitolo IX dell’Apologetico,  da confrontarsi con alcuni passi dei capitoli 30 e 31 dell’Ottavio.  Ricordano entrambi i sacrifizi di bambini fatti in Africa in onor di  Saturno, divoratore dei propri figli:    a) Apolog. IX: « cum propriis filiis  Saturnus non pepercit, extran eis uti-  que non parcendo perseverabat, quos  quidem ipsi parentes sui offerebant et  libenter respondebant, et infantibus blan -  diebantur, ne lacrimante s immolaren -  turi).    Oct. 30, 3 : u Saturnus fìlios suos  non exposuit sed voravit ; merito ei in  nonnullis Africae partibus a parentibus  infantes immolabantur y blanditile et  osculo comprimente vagitum, ne flebilis  hostia immolar etur » .    Ma Tertulliano ha maggiori informazioni su questi sacrifizi d’infanti  in Affrica, durati ufficialmente fino al proconsolato di Tiberio, poi vie-  tati ma seguitati a praticare occultamente : et nunc in occulto per -  severotur hoc sacrum facinuSj perchè nessuna costumanza delittuosa  si può sradicare per sempre, nè gli Dei mutano costume.   Oltre questo poi altri sacrifizi umani vanno imputati alla reli-  gione antica. Entrambi i nostri scrittori ricordano i sacrifizi umani fatti  in Gallia in onor di Mercurio, e nella Taurica (Minucio aggiunge anche,  da Cic. Rep., 3, 15, e da Livio, 22, 57, il ricordo di Busiride Egi-  ziano e di antichi riti romani), e l’uso ancor vigente di sacrificare con-  dannati a morte nelle feste di Giove Laziale. E all* infuori della religione,  rinfacciano entrambi agli avversari l’abitudine di esporre i bambini ap-  pena nati o ucciderli, o quello più tristo di spegnere la vita appena  iniziata nell’utero materno.   b) Apolog . IX: « conceptum utero  dum adhuc s angui s in hominem deli-  batur, dissolvere non licet. Homicidii  festinatio est prohibere nasci ; nec refert  ratam quis erìpiat animam an nascentem  disturbet ».   Quanto poi al bevere uman sangue, Tertulliano ricorda da Ero-  doto (est apud Herodotum, opinor) alleanze strettesi fra alcuni popoli  col ferirsi a sangue le braccia e bevere gli uni il sangue degli altri ;   (ISO)    Oct. 30, 2 : u snnt quae in ipsis vi-  sceribus medicaminibus epotis originem  futuri hominis extinguant et parricidium  faciant antequam pariant » .    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 11 -    ricorda poi Catilina, e alcune genti Scitiche divoratrici dei proprii morti,  e il rito dei sacerdoti di Bellona consistente nel ferirsi la coscia, rac-  cogliere il sangue nel cavo della mano e darlo a bere. Minucio, più con-  ciso, non menziona che la congiura di Catilina e Bellona con brevi  cenni. L’uno e V altro poi fanno menzione dell’uso di dare a bere sangue  umano agli epilettici, ma Tertulliano solo adduce il particolare, che  ai raccoglieva a tal fine il sangue scorrente dalle ferite dei delinquenti  .sgozzati nell’arena.   In tutto ciò è strano il modo come Minucio mette questi ricordi  in relazione con la menzione fatta avanti delle cerimonie in onor di  Giove Laziale, dicendo (Cap. 30, 5) : ipsum credo docuisse san -  guinis foedere coniurare Catilinam et Bellonam sacrum suum J ecc.;  quasi che proprio Giove Laziale abbia insegnato a Catilina e ai Bel-  lonari i lor sanguinosi usi ; il che è del tutto fuor di proposito.   Infine, sempre intorno alle bibite di sangue, entrambi gli apologeti  ricordano l’avidità con che solevano alcuni acquistare, per cibarsene, la  carne delle bestie uccise nell’arena, dopo che quéste s’ erano empite le  viscere di membra umane. Ma Tertulliano è più ricco di particolari,  come è più immaginoso ed energico nell’espressione. Confrontisi:   c) Tertull. : « Item illi qui de harena Min. : « non dissimiles ei qui de ha-   ferinis obsoniis cenant, qui de apro qui rena feras devorant inlitas et infectas  se est quandoque memo-  riara dissipari, et simili error impegerit,  exinde iam tradux proficiet incesti ser-  pente genere cum scelere. Tunc deinde  quocumque in loco, domi, peregre, trans  freta Comes et libido, cuius ubique sal-  tus facile possunt alicubi ignaris filios  pangere vel ex aliqua seminis portione,  ut ita sparsum genus per commercia  humana concurrat in memorias suas,  neque eas caecus incesti sauguinis agno-  scat » .    Min.: « etiam nescientes, miseri, po-  testis in inlicita proruere, dum Vene-  rem promisce spargitis, dum passim li -  ber os seritis, dum etiam dorai natos  alienae misericordiae frequenter expo -  nitis, necesse est in vestros recurrere t  in filios inerrare ».    Nella diversa disposizione dei pensieri, pur si riconosce l’affinità  dei due scrittori, dei quali Tertulliano è più ricco e compiuto, aggiun-  gendo qui tra le ragioni di figliuoli dispersi anche l’adozione.   Alla corruttela pagana poi opponesi la continenza cristiana la quale  o si contenta di legittimo matrimonio, o aspira anche alla verginità.   f) Tertull. : « quidam multo secu- Min : « plerique inviolati corporia   riores totam vim huius erroris virgine virginitate perpetua fruuntur potiua  continentia depellunt, senes pueri ». quam gloriantur ».   Dove non isfugga l’esagerazione del plerique minuciano di fronte al-  l’espressione tertullianea più conforme al vero.    ( 152 )    Digitized by Liooole    — 13 —    § 4. — Gli Dei pagani erano in origine uomini .   Nei due capitoli X e XI dell’ Apologetico, passa Tertulliano a ra-  gionare di un’altra recriminazione fatta ai Cristiani, quella che non  venerassero gli Dei e non sacrificassero per gli imperatori ; onde erano  fatti rei di sacrilegio e di lesa maestà. Ora egli dice che i Cristiani  cessarono dal prestar culto agli Dei pagani dacché conobbero che tali  Dei non esistevano ; e non esser giusto il punirli se non quando tale  esistenza fosse dimostrata. E questa convinzione soggiunge che i Cri-  stiani ricavavano dalle stesse testimonianze pagane, concordi nel lasciar  chiaramente vedere che i pretesi Dei non erano altro che uomini di-  vinizzati. Infatti se ne adducevano i luoghi di nascita, le regioni ove  avevano vissuto e lasciato tracce dell’opera loro, e si mostravano anche  i loro sepolcri. Serva d’esempio per tutti Saturno, cui gli scrittori come  Diodoro e Tallo fra i Greci, Cassio e Nepote fra i Latini attestarono  essere stato uomo. La qual cosa è comprovata anche da prove di fatto,  verificatesi sopratutto in Italia, ove egli fu accolto da Giano, ove il  monte che abitò fu chiamato Saturnio, la città che fondò ebbe pari-  mente nome Saturnia, e anzi tutta l’Italia dopo il nome di Enotria  ricevette quello di Saturnia. Da lui l’origine delle legali scritture e del  conio monetario, onde la sua presidenza dell’erario. Dunque era uomo,  è nato da uomini, non dal cielo e dalla terra. Ignorandosene la pa-  rentela, fu detto esser figlio di quelli onde tutti possiamo esser figli,  chiamandosi per venerazione il Cielo e la Terra padre e madre, e figli  della terrà denominando il volgo quelli la cui parentela è incerta. Sa-  turno dunque era uomo; e lo stesso si può dir di Giove e di tutto  l’altro sciame di divinità pagane. Si dice che furono tutti divinizzati  dopo morte. Da chi? Bisogna vi fosse un altro Dio più sublime, ca-  pace di regalare la divinità, giacché da sé questi uomini non si po-  tevan certo crear Dei. Ma perchè il Dio Magno avrebbe donato la  divinità ad altri esseri? Forse per esserne aiutato nel grande còmpito  di dirigere l’universo? Ma che bisogno vi poteva essere di ciò, se il  mondo o era ab aeterno , come volle Pitagora, o venne fatto da un  essere ragionevole, come disse Platone? Del resto questi uomini si lo-  dano per aver trovato le cose utili alla vita, ma non le hanno create,  perchè già c’erano. Si dirà egli che la divinizzazione fu un premio  alle loro virtù? Ma, a dir vero, anziché virtuosi, erano costoro pieni  di vizi e piuttosto da cacciar giù nel Tartaro che accogliere nel Cielo.  Ma mettiamo anche fossero buoni, o perchè allora non s’ è dato lo   ( 153 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 14 —    stesso premio a uomini lodatissimi come Socrate, Aristide, Temisto-  cle, ecc.P   Di tutta questa dimostrazione ragionata a fil di logica, Minucio  non ha nell’Ottavio che un punto solo, l’affermazione che i pretesi Dei  erano uomini. E questa si contiene nel cap. 21 del dialogo, il quale fa  seguito alla parte fisolofica del discorso di Ottavio e alla sentenza che  le favole mitologiche erano tutte finzioni poetiche, da spiegarsi seconde  la teoria di Evemero, della quale cita altri rappresentanti antichi come  Prodico, Perseo, lo stesso Alessandro il Macedone. Connettesi con tale  ordine di idee il ricordo di Saturno già uomo. E qui diversi riscontri :    a) Tertull. Apol. X: «Saturnum ita-  que, si quantum litterae docent, neque  Diodorus Graecus aut Thallus neque  Cassius Severus aut Comelius Nepos  neque ullus commentator eiusmodi anti -  quitatem aliud quam hominem promul-  gaverunt... » .    Min. Oct. 21, 3: « Saturnum enim...  omnes scriptores vetustatis Graeci Ro-  manique hominem prodiderunt. Scit hoc  Nepos et Cassius in historia ; et Thal-  lus et Diodorus hoc loquuntur».    È questo il passo che all’Ebert (1868) e a’ suoi seguaci parve e pare  dimostrativo della priorità di Minucio, per la ragione che il Cassius  Severus di Tertulliano in luogo del semplice Cassius (ossia Hemina)  è un errore, e per la presunzione che chi sbaglia copii. Se tale indu-  zione sia giusta, vedremo in seguito. Per ora notiamo solo che Ter-  tulliano aveva fatto lo stesso sbaglio in Ad Nationes,lì , 12, scrivendo:  Legimus apud Cassium Severum , apud Cornelios Nepolem et Ta-  citurna ecc.    I) Tertull. ibid. : « ... in qua (Italia)  Saturnus post multas expeditiones post -  que Attica hospitia consedit, exceptus  a Iano vel lane ut Salii volunt. Mons  quem incoluerat Saturnius dictus, ci -  vitas quam depalaverat Saturnia usque  nunc est, tota denique Italia post Oe-  notriam Saturnia cognominabatur. Ab  ipso primum tabulae et imagine signa-  tus nummus et inde aerarlo praesidet ».   c) « ... Si homo Saturnus utique ex  homine, et quia ab homine, non utique  de caelo et terra. Sed cuius parentes  ignoti erant facile erat eorum fìlium dici  quorum et omnes possumus videri. Quis  enim non caelum ac terrai* matrem ac    Min. : « Saturnus Creta profugus Ita-  liana metu filii saevientis accesserat et  Iani susceptus hospitio rudes illos ho-  mines et agrestes multa docuit ut Grae-  culus et politus, litteras imprimere,  nummos signare , instrumenta conficere.  Itaque latebram suam, quod tuto la-  tuisset, vocari maluit Latium, et ur.bem  Saturniam idem de suo nomine ut la-  niculum Ianus ad memoriam uterque  posteritatis reliquerunt ».   «... Homo igitur utique qui fugit,  homo utique qui latuit, et pater ho-  minis et natus ex homine. Terrae enim  vel caeli filius (se. est dictus) quod  apud Italos esset ignotis parentibus pro-  ditus, ut in hodiernum inopinato visos    ( 154 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 15 —    patrem venerationis et honoris grati a  appellet? vel ex consuetudine humana,  qua ignoti vel ex inopinato adparentes  de caelo supervenisse dicuntur. Proinde  Saturno repentino utique caelitem con-  tigit dici; nam et terrae filios vulgus  vocat quorum genus incertum est ».   d) « Etiam Iovera ostendemus tam  hominem quam ex homine, et deinceps  totum generis examen tam mortale quam  seminis sui par. »   e) «Nunc ego per singulosdecurram?   . . Otiosum est etiam titulos persequi ».   f) « totum generis examen ... »•    caelo missos, ignobiles et ignotos terrae  filios nominamus».   ... À    « Eius fìlius Iuppiter Cretae excluso  parente regnavit, illic obiit, illic filios  habuit; adhuc antrum Iovis visitur et  sepulcrum eius ostenditur et ipsis sa-  cris suis humanitatis arguitur».   u ...Otiosum est ire per singulos».   21, 4: u Saturnum principem huius  generis et examinis ».    Per la divinizzazione dopo morte, Minucio ha considerazioni di-  verse dai ragionamenti di Tertulliano. Ricorda Romolo fatto Dio per  lo spergiuro di Procolo, e il re Giuba per il consenso dei Mauri ; fu-  rono consacrati Dei come si consacrano gli altri re, non per attestare  la divinità loro, ma per onorare la potestà che hanno esercitato in terra.  Queste stesse persone che si divinizzano, dice, non ne vorrebbero sapere,  e sebbene già vecchi declinano quell’onore. Rileva poi l’assurdo di far  Dei esseri già morti o nati destinati a morire. E perchè non nascono ora  più Dei? Porse s’ è fatto vecchio Giove o s’ è esaurita Giunone? 0 non è  da dire anzi che è cessata questa generazione perchè nessuno ci crede  più ? E del resto se si creassero nuovi Dei, i quali di poi non potreb-  bero morire, s’avrebbero più Dei che uomini, da non poter essere più  contenuti nè in cielo, nè nell’aria, nè sulla terra.   Tutte queste riflessioni di Minucio sono differenti da quelle che  fa Tertulliano ; sicché in questo punto non vi possono essere riscontri ( 1 ).    ( l ) Però confronta:   Ad Nationes 1, XVII fine: « ... qui  deum Caesarem dicitis et deridetis di-  cendo quod non est, et maledicitis quia  non vult esse quod dicitis. Mavult enim  vivere quam deus fieri.    Min. 21, 10: « Invitis his hoc nom.en  adscribitur: optant in homine perseve-  rare, fieri se deos metuunt, etsi iam  senes nolunt ».    (155)    Digitized by Liooole     — 16 —    §5. — Degli idoli , delle irriverenti leggende intorno agli Dei ,  degli scandali pagani .    Nel capitolo XII Tertulliano passa a considerare che cosa sieno  effettivamente i supposti Dei pagani. E prima parla dei loro simulacri,  i quali son fatti di materia identica a quella dei vasi e strumenti co-  muni, o forse dai vasi medesimi artisticamente elaborati. Son dunque  Dei foggiati per mezzo di battiture, di raschiature, di arroventature ;  proprio il trattamento che si fa ai Cristiani, di che questi possono  avere qualche conforto. Se non che questi Dei non sentono i maltrat-  tamenti della loro fabbricazione, come non sentono gli ossequi dei  loro fedeli. Tali statue di morti, cui intendono solo gli uccelli e i  topi e i ragni, non è egli giusto non adorare ? Come sembrerà che  offendiamo tali esseri, mentre siam certi che non esistono affatto?   Riflessioni analoghe fa Minucio nei capitoli 23 e 24. Detto  delle favole mitologiche irriverenti e corrompitrici, nota che le im-  magini di tali Dei adora il volgo, più abbagliato dal fulgore dell’oro  e dell’argento che ispirato da fede vera; e richiama l’attenzione sul  fatto che tali simulacri sono formati dalla mano d’un artista, e se di  legno, forse reliquia di un rogo o di una forca; sono sospesi e lavo-  rati con l’accetta e la pialla, se d’oro o d’argento, magari tolto da  vaso immondo, sono pesti, liquefatti, contusi tra il martello e l’ incu-  dine, ecc.   Ecco riscontri:    a) Tertull. Apoi. XII: « reprehen-  do... materias sorores esse vasculorum  instrumentorumque communium ... vel  ex isdem vasculis et instrumentis... ».   b) « ... quasi fatum consecratione  mutantes ... ».    Min. 23, 12: ... deus aereus vel ar-  genteus de immundo vasculo, ut acci -  cipimus factum Aegyptio regi (Amasi,  Erodoto, II, 172) conflatur, tunditur  malleis et incudibus figuratur... ».   u ..nisi forte nondum deus saxum  est vel lignum vel argentum. Quando  igitur hic nascitur? ecce funditur, fa-  bricatur, sculpitur, nondum deus est;  ecce plumbatur construitur, erigitur,  nec adhuc deus est; ecce ornatur con -  secratur oratur, tunc postremo deus est,  cum homo illum voluit et dedicavit».    c) « Piane non sentiunt has iniurias « ... nec sentit (lapideus deus) suae   et contumelias fabricationis suae dei nativitatis iniuriam ita ut nec postea,  vestri sicut nec obsequia ». de vestra veneratione culturam ».   (156)    \    Digitized by LiOOQle    — 17 —    d) « Statuas .... milvi et mures et « ... Quam acute de diis vestris atti-   nane ae intellegunt.... ». malia muta naturali ter iudicant ! mures,   hirurrdines, milvi non sentire eos sci uni ;  rodunt inculcant insident, ae, nisi abi-  gatis, in ipso dei vestii ore nidificant ;  ... araneae vero faciem eius intexunt et  de ipso capite sua fila suspendunt. Vos  tergetis mundatis eraditis et illos qoos  facitis, protegitis et timetis ».   Si noti qui la maggior quantità di particolari in Minucio, il che  come deva spiegarsi diremo in seguito. Tertulliano invece è poi solo  nel notare (cap. XIII) che i pagani stessi prendono a gioco ( illudunt )  e offendono le loro divività, non riconoscendo tutti le stesse, e trat-  tando alcuni Dei come i Lari domestici con compre- vendite, pignora-  menti, incanti, tal quale s’usa per le case cui sono annessi, altre volte  tsasformando, poniamo, un Saturno in una pentola e una Minerva in  un mestolo.   Di nuovo entrambi ricordano, di passata, le strane cerimonie del  culto pagano (Tertull. cap. XIV in., Min. cap. 24, 3) e rilevano  le invereconde leggende dai poeti ripetute intorno agli Dei, auspice  Omero, e l’aver gli Dei combattuto o pei Greci o pei Troiani, e Venere  ferita, e Marte incarcerato, e Giove liberato per opera di Briareo, ecc., ecc.   e) Tertull. : « Quanta inverno ludi- Min. 23, 3 : « hic enim ( Homerus )   bria! deos inter se propter Troianos et praécipuus bello Troico deos vestros,   Achivos ut gladiatorum paria congres - etsi ludos facit, tamen in hominum re-   sos depugnasse, Venererà humana sa- bus et actibus miscuit, hic eorum pa-   gitta sauciatam , quod filium suum Ae- ria composuit , sauciavit Venererà , Mar -   nean paene interfectum ab eodem Dio- . tem vinooit vulneravit fugavit. Iovem  mede rapere vellet, Martem tredecim narrat Briareo liberatum, ne a diis ce-   mensiìms in vinculis paene consumptum, teris ligaretur, et Sarpedonem filium,   Iovem ne eandem vim a ceteris caeli- quoniam morti non poterat eripere,   tibus experiretur, opera cuiusdam mon- cruentis imbribus flevisse , et loro Ver   stri liberatum , et nunc flentem Sarpe - neris inlectum flagrantius quam in adul-   donis casum, nunc foede subantem in teras soleat cum Iunone uxore con-   sororem sub commemoratione non ita cumbere».   dilectarum iampridem amicarum ».   L’esempio d’Omero indusse altri poeti a irriverenti invenzioni:   f) « Quis non poeta ex auctoritate « ... Alibi Hercules stercora egerit,   principis sui dedecorator invenitur Dee- et Apollo Admeto pecus pascit. Lao-   rum ? Hic Apollinem Admeto regi pa- medonti vero muros Neptunus instituit   scendis pecoribus addicit, ille Neptuni (forse: construit) nec mercedem operis   structorias operas Laomedonti locat. Est infelix structor accipit. Illic (Vulcanus,   et ille de lyricis (Pindarum dico) qui aggiunge TUrsinus) Iovis fulmen cum   (157) 2    Digitized by Liooole     — 18 —    Aesculapium canit avaritiae merito, quia Aeneae armis in ineude fabricatur, cum  avaritiam nocenter exercebat, fulmine caelum et fulmina et fulgura longe ante  iudicatum. Malus Iuppiter si fulmen il- fuerint quam Iuppiter in Creta nasce-  lius est, impius in nepotem, invidus in retur... ».  artifìcem ».   Dal contesto di Tertulliano apparirebbe ch’egli attribuisse le leggende  di Apollo pastore presso Admeto e di Posidone operaio al soldo di  Laomedonte ad altri poeti che ad Omero, mentre è noto che già in Omero  vi è un cenno di queste leggende (II. B., 766 e <P 447). Ma forse  Tertulliano aveva in mente ulteriori elaborazioni di dette leggende forse  in drammi (ad es., per Apollo pastore, l’Alcestide d’ Euripide), come  dopo fa espressa menzione di Pindaro. In Minucio invece tutte le ri-  cordate leggende par si attribuiscano ancora ad Omero, il che viene  a essere inesatto per il racconto di Ercole che scopa le stalle d’Augia,  in Omero non menzionato, e per il ricordo delle armi di Enea opera  di Vulcano, tolto da Virgilio non da Omero f 1 ).   In connessione col precedente argomento, Tertulliano ricorda an-  cora le irriverenze contro gli Dei scritte dai filosofi, specie dai cinici  (tra cui pone Varrone, che chiama « il Cinico Romano * e a cui rim-  provera l’aver introdotto ter centos foves sive Jupitros sine capitibus),  e quelle peggiori contenute nei mimi (cap. XV) e nella letteratura  istrionica, aggravati dalla circostanza che gli istrioni spesso rappre-  sentano essi stessi la divinità, e, dice: vidimus aliquando castratura  Attin , Mura Deum ex Pessinunte, et qui vivus ardebat Eerculem in -  dueraL Di tutto ciò nulla in Minucio. Invece di nuovo vanno di con-  serva nel rinfacciare al paganesimo i sacerdoti corrotti e corruttori.   g) Apoi. XV: «...in templis adul - Oct. 25, 10: dopo ricordati i molti   teria componi , inter aras lenocinia incesti delle Vestali, continua: «ubi   tractari , in ipsis plerumque aedituo- autem magis a sacerdotibus quam inter   rum et sacerdotum tabernaculis sub aras et delubra condicuntur stupra,   isdem vittis et apicibus et purpuris tractantur lenocinia , adulterio medi -   thure flagrante libidinem expungi... ». tantur? frequentius denique in aedi-   tuorum cellulis quam in ipsis lupana-  ribus flagrans libido defungitur ».   Si avverta nel latino di Minucio il meditantur usato passivamente con  una ripetizione inutile di concetto dopo il condicuntur stupra ; si noti   ( x ) Salvo se V alibi di Minucio voglia interpretarsi: «presso altri autori».  Ma tale interpretazione ripugna al contesto, perchè poco di poi, ricordato ancora  Tadulterio di Marte e Venere, e i rapporti di Giove e Ganimede, soggiunge : quae  omnia in hoc (scil. Homero) prodita ut vitiis hominum quaedam auctoritas pa -  raretur.   (158)    Digitized by LiOOQle    - 19 —    pure l’esagerazione del frequentius quam inipsìs lupanaribus che guasta  il concetto espresso dal plerumque di Tertulliano ; in terzo luogo si  avverta l’epiteto flagrans attribuito alla libido , in luogo del thure fla-  grante così significativo di Tertulliano. Infine quel defmgitur , usato  assolutamente, e con soggetto di cosa in senso di « si sfoga » o in  quello passivo di « viene saziata » è tanto poco giustificato da altri  esempi di scrittori latini (*), che fa pensare a un errore del testo. Forse  in luogo di defmgitur , va letto: expungitur .   § 6. — Dell adorazione d'una testa d f asino e del culto della Croce .   Tertulliano dopo le cose dette, si dispone a venire alla parte po-  sitiva della sua Apologia, ma prima confuta ancora (cap. XVI) le dicerie  sparse sul conto de’ Cristiani, che essi adorassero una testa d’asino e  avessero in venerazione la Croce. Quanto alla prima, ne attribuisce  l’origine a Tacito, che avendo narrato nel quinto delle Storie l’esodo  degli Ebrei dall’Egitto, e la sete patita nel deserto, e il fatto che una  fontana era stata indicata da alcuni asini selvatici, aveva soggiunto  che gli Ebrei grati a queste bestie del beneficio ricevuto avevano preso  a venerarle. Di poi la stessa cosa sarebbe stata attribuita ai Cristiani  come setta affine ai Giudei. Eppure, dice Tertulliano, lo stesso Tacito  narra bene che quando Pompeo presa Gerusalemme entrò nel tempio,  non vi trovò alcun simulacro. Piuttosto ai pagani possono i Cristiani  rinfacciare che i giumenti e gli asini intieri venerano insieme colla  dea Epona. Quest’ultimo punto, e solo questo, trovasi anche in Minucio  al cap. 28, 7, onde può riscontrarsi:   a) Tertull. Apoi. XVI: «Tostameli Min. 28,7: « ... vos et totos asinos   non negabitis et iumenta omnia et totos in stabulis curri vestra \jveT} Epona con -  cantherios curri sua Epona coli a vobis » secratis, et eosdem asinos cum Iside   (cfr. ad Nationes I, XI: « sane vos totos religiose decoratis ».   asinos colitis et cum sua Epona et  omnia iumenta et pecora et bestias quae  perinde cum suis praesepibus consecra-  tis »).   0) Impersonalmente trovasi usato defungor in Tee. Adelph., 507 : utinam  hic sit modo defunctum , « purché la finisca qui » ; e con soggetto di cosa pub  ricordarsi il barbiton defunctum bello di Orazio, C. 8, 2tf, 3 « la lira ha finito le sue  battaglie d’amore ». Abbastanza frequente è il defungor usato assolutamente ma con  soggetto personale come in Ter. Phorm., 1022: cupio misera in hac re iam de-  funger e in Ovid. Am., 2, 9, 24: me quoque qui toties merui sub amore puellae,  defunctum placide vivere tempus erat . Sempre defungi ha senso di « finire la  parte sua, esaurire il proprio mandato ».   (159)    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 20 -    Il ricordo degli asini nel culto d’ Iside è solo minuciano, e si  aggiuuge ancora menzione di altri culti strani, come quello del bue  Api e di altre bestie venerate dagli Egiziani (forse dal De Nat. Deor.  di Cicerone 1, 82 e 3, 47).   Quanto al culto della Croce, osserva Tertulliano che anche i pa-  gani adorano i loro idoli di legno ; sarà dunque question di linee, ma  la materia è la stessa, sarà question di forma, ma è sempre il corpo  del creduto Dio. Del resto, dice, le immagini in forma di semplice palo  della Pallade Attica e della Cerere Paria, che gran differenza hanno  dal legno della croce? poiché ogni palo piantato verticalmente è una  parte della croce. Poi gli statuari, quando fabbricano un Dio, si ser-  vono d’uno scheletro ligneo a croce, tale in fondo essendo la figura  del corpo umano ; e un sopporto di legno della stessa foggia usasi pure nei  trofei e nelle insegne militari. Minucio parla di ciò nel cap. 29, 6-8.  Ecco alcuni riscontri:   b) Tertull.: « Qui crucis nos reli-  giosos putat, consecraneus (= correli-  gionario) erit noster. Cum lignum ali-  quod propitiatur, viderit habitus dura  materiae qualitas cadera sit, viderit for-  ma dum id ipsum Dei corpus sit... Di-  ximus originem deorum vestrorum a  plastis de cruce induci » (allusione a Ad  Nationes I, 12, dove la fabbricazione  degli idoli con uno scheletro ligneo a  forma di croce è ampiamente descritta).   « Sed et Victorias adoratis cum in tro-  paeis cruces intestina sint tropaeorum.   Religio Romanorum tota castrensis si-  gna veneratur... Omnes illi imaginum  suggestus in signis monilia crucum  sunt; sipbara illa vexillorum et canta -  brorum stolae crucum sunt. Laudo dili-  gentiam. Noluistis incultas et nudas  cruces consecrare ».   c) Ad Nationes I, 12 : « Si statueris  hominem manibus expansis, imaginem  crucis feceris ».   Tertulliano poi parla ancora della venerazione del Sole attribuita  da alcuni ai Cristiani per l’uso loro di pregare rivolti ad Oriente Ma  anche questo, dice, non è rimprovero che si possa fare ai Cristiani,   (160)    Min.: «Cruces... nec colimus nec  optamus. Yos sane qui ligneos deos  consecratis cruces ligneas ut deorum  vestrorum partes forsitan adoratis ».    « Nani et signa et cantabra et ve -  xilla castrorum quid aliunt quam inau-  ratae cruces sunt et ornatae? tropaea  vestra victricia non tantum simplicis  crucis faciem verum et adfixi hominis  imitantur ».   « Signum sane crucis naturaliter vi-  simus in navi cum velis tumentibus  vehitur, cum expansis palmulis labitur ;  et, cum erigitur iugum, crucis signum  est,* et cum homo porrectis manibus  deum pura mente veneratur ».    Digitized by Liooole    — 21 -    praticando anche i pagani la preghiera al levar del sole. E se i Cri-  stiani fanno festa il giorno del sole (la domenica), fanno ciò per ben  altra causa che la religione del sole : pure i pagani nel dì di Saturno  (il sabato) si davano all’ozio e al mangiare, scimiottando, a sproposito,  i Giudei. Di ciò nulla in Minucio.   Infine nell’Apologetico ricordasi la pittura da un miserabile mu-  lattiere messa in pubblico, a Roma, rappresentante una figura umana  con orecchie d’asino, e l’un dei due piedi ungulato, vestito di toga e  con un libro in mano, appostavi la iscrizione: Deus Christianorum  òvoxoirjtrjQ. Era un Giudeo l’autore di questo indecente scherzo (ad  Nat . 1, 14); e la gente ci credette e per tutta la città scorreva sulle  bocche quell’ Onocoetes. Ma di tali mostri, soggiunge, veneransi più  fra i pagani che tra cristiani; chè essi hanno accolto tra i loro Dei  esseri con testa di cane e di leone, e corna di capri e d’ariete, e  coda di serpenti, alati le spalle o i piedi. Un fuggevole ricordo di  tali mostri è anche in Minucio, che del resto si tace:   d) Tertull. : « Illi debebant adorare  statim biforme numen, quia et canino  et leonino capite commixtos , et de ca-  pro et de ariete cornutos, et a lumbis  hircos et a cruribus serpentes et pianta  vel tergo alites deos receperunt » .   Solo è invece Minucio a scagionare i Cristiani dell’accusa di ado-  rare sacerdoti virilia; alla quale occasione ritorce contro gli avver-  sari la taccia di impudicizia, ricordando le licenze sessuali onde quei  cinedi si disonoravano.    Min. 28, 7 : « item bonra capita et  capita vervecum et immolatis et colitis,  de capro etiam et de homine mixtos  Deos et leonum et canum vultn deos  dedicatis ».    § 7. — Del Dio unico e vero.   Ma venendo ornai alla parte positiva della dottrina, Tertulliano  nel cap. XVII della sua opera celebra il Dio unico, creatore del cosmo,  invisibile sebben si veda, incomprensibile sebbene in via di grazia di-  venga presente, inestimabile sebbene coll’umano sentimento si stimi.  E in quanto si vede, si comprende, si stima, Egli è minore dei  nostri occhi, delle nostre mani, dei nostri sensi; ma in quanto im-  menso, a sè solo è noto. Così la sua stessa grandezza lo rende noto e  ignoto insieme a noi. Ecco appunto il gran delitto, consistente nel  non voler riconoscere Dio, mentre non si può ignorare. Non lo atte-  stano le sue opere? non lo attesta la stessa anima? la quale sebbene   ( 161 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 22 -    incarcerata nel corpo, svigorita dalla concupiscenza, fatta ancella di  falsi Dei, pure quando rientra in sè e sente la sua sanità naturale,  esce fuori in esclamazioni, quali: « Dio buono e grande! », e: « ci  sia propizio Iddio ! », e : « Dio vede », e : « a Dio ti raccomando » e  simili; e queste cose, esclama, non rivolta al Campidoglio, ma al Cielo,  sede naturale del Dio vivo. In Minucio la parte positiva del discorso,  per quel che riguarda la filosofia o teologia razionale, precede la parte  polemica o negativa. Del Dio unico parla Ottavio in principio del suo  discorso, e nel cap. 18, 7 trovansi diversi luoghi paralleli a passi di  Tertulliano. Eccoli:   a) Tertull. : « ... deus ... totam molem  istam ... verbo quo iussit, ratione qua  disposuit, virtute qua potuit de nihilo  expressit » .   Per il dispensare in confronto col  disponere, vedi Cic. Orai. 1, 31 : inventa  non solum ordine sed edam momento  quodam atque iudicio dispensare atque  disponere .   b) « Invisibilis est ... incomprehensi-  bilis... inaestimabilis ».   ò) « ... quod immensum est, soli sibi  notus est ».   d) « Anima ... cum sanitatem suam  patitur, deum nominat... * Deus bonus  et magnus * et ‘ quod Deus dederit 1  omnium vox est. Iudicem quoque con-  testato illum ‘ Deus videt ’ et * Deo  commendo, et * Deus mihi reddet \ 0  testimonium animae naturaliter Chri-  stianae! Denique pronuntians haec non  ad Capitolium sed ad caelum respicit».   Su questo tema dell’anima naturalmente cristiana è noto che Ter-  tulliano scrisse più tardi un opuscoletto a parte intitolato appunto  De testimonio animae , dove le stesse idee sono esposte con maggiore  ampiezza ed efficacia.    Min. : « qui (Deus) universa quae-  cumque sunt verbo iubet, ratione dis ■  pensai , virtute consummat».    18, 8: « hic non videri potest... nec  comprendi potest... nec aestimari ».   u Immensus et soli sibi tantus quan-  tus est notus ».   « Audio vulgus; cum ad caelum ma*  nus tendunt, nihil aliud quam * o Deus ’  dicunt et ‘ Deus magnus est ’ et * Deus  verus est’ et ‘ si Deus dederit’. Yulgi  iste natoalis sermo est an Christiani  confidente oratio ? »    § 8. — Forili letterarie del Cristianesimo — Cristo Dio e uomo.   I capitoli XVIII e XIX dell’Apologetico sono importanti per le  indicazioni delle fonti letterarie della dottrina cristiana. ^Ricordati i  primi storici ispirati dall’Ebraismo e i profeti e i libri ebraici tradotti   (162)    Digitized by Liooole     — 23    in greco dai Settandue per suggerimento di Demetrio Falereo al tempo  <ìi Tolomeo Filadelfo (l a metà del 3° sec. av. C.), ricordata l’antichità  dei primi scrittori ebraici molto maggiore di qualsiasi memoria greca,  e fatto anche un cenno di altre fonti storiche greche, egiziane, caldee,  fenicie fino a Giuseppe Ebreo, notata la concordia e completezza delle  profezie che pronunziarono gli avvenimenti secondo verità, e hanno  acquistata autorità sicura anche per le cose ancora da venire (cap. XX),  Tertulliano espone nel cap. XXI la dottrina di Cristo uomo e Dio.  La teoria della Trinità divina in unità di sostanza è qui già chiara-  mente formolata, e confermasi l’idea del Àóyog, o parola o ragion  divina artefice dell’universo, con testimonianze di antichi filosofi. Poi  si riassume la storia di Gesù e ricordasi la divulgazione della dot-  trina di lui fatta dagli Apostoli, fino alla persecuzione neroniana. Ecco  dunque, conchiude, qual’ è la nostra fede, che noi sosteniamo anche  fra i tormenti : Deum colimus per Christum . Cristo è uomo ma in  lui e per lui Dio vuol essere riconosciuto e adorato.   Di questa, che è la sostanza del Cristianesimo, Minucio tace  affatto; non nomina neppur Cristo, pur parlando a ogni piè sospinto  de’ Cristiani. È questo il lato debole dell’ Ottavio. Solo in un punto  uvvi una non chiara allusione alle dottrine dell’uomo-Dio, cap. 29, 2,  uve per iscagionare i correligionari dall’accusa di venerare un delin-  quente dice : « molto siete lungi dal vero, se ritenete si creda da noi  deum aut meridie ìioxium aut potuisse terrenum , che un Dio o si  rendesse colpevole da meritar supplizio o potesse come cosa terrena  subirlo » ; parole non abbastanza chiare nel testo latino, e che diedero  luogo a ben disparate interpretazioni. Minucio in questo luogo è rimasto  inferiore a sè stesso, nè s’avvide come questa dottrina fondamentale  meritava più ampio svolgimento in una difesa del resto eloquente e  sentita della nuova religione.    § 9. — Dell’ esistenza degli spiriti , buoni e cattivi .   Continuando Tertulliano la esposizione sua, nei capitoli XXII-XXIY  parla dell’esistenza di sostanze spirituali, esistenza ammessa già dai  filosofi e poeti antichi come dal volgo; e, ricordata la caduta di al-  cuni angeli e l’origine dei demoni, parla dell’opera di costoro tutta  rivolta a dannar l’uomo; son essi che eccitano le più strane passioni  u pazzi capricci e corruttele dell’anima; son essi che ingenerano la  fede negli Dei falsi e bugiardi, e, colla loro rapidità di movimenti e   ( 163 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 24 —    parziale notizia del vero anche futuro, ispirano oracoli e vati, e in tutto  contribuiscono a ingenerare inganni e deviar la mente dal vero Dio.  I miracoli dei maghi son da loro ; da loro spesso i sogni e ogni specie  di divinazione. La più bella prova di ciò, dice Tertulliano, è questa  che se uno invaso da un demone si trovi in faccia a un Cristiano, e  questi dia ordine al demone di parlare, quegli senz’altro si confesserà,  quel che è ; e così pure quelli che son creduti invasi da un Dio, in  presenza d’un cristiano confessano di essere nient’ altro che demoni. Il  nome di Cristo basta ad atterrire questi esseri ; una prova di più cho  il nostro è l’unico Dio e vero, e che non esistono gli Dei pagani. Sic-  ché si vede quanto poca regga l’accusa di lesa religione romana, mentre  di vera irreligiosità si macchiano gli avversari coll’ adorare i falsi Dei,  e diversi nelle diverse regioni, e altresì coll’ impedire a noi il culto*  del vero Dio.   Tali pensieri trovansi su per giù anche in Minucio. Cominciando*  dal cap. 26, 7, Ottavio discorre degli spiriti mali, degradati dalla  loro primiera innocenza e tutti intenti a perdere anche gli altri. Tale  discorso continua pel rimanente del cap. 26 e per tutto il seguente r  offrendo vari luoghi paralleli a Tertulliano.    a) Tertull. Apolog, XXII: « Sciunt  daeraones philosophi, Socrate ipso ad  daemonii arbitrium exspectante. Quidni?  cum et ipsi daemonium a pueritia adhae-  sisse dicatur, dehortatorium piane a bo-  no. Omnes sciunt poetaen.    Min. 26, 9 : « eos spiritus daemones-  esse poetae sciunt , philosophi disserunt,  Socrates novit, qui ad nutum et arbi-  trium adsidentis sibi daemonis vel de-  eli nabat negotia vel petebat ».    Il demonio socratico è da Tertulliano giustamente detto debortatorium  a borio; meno esattamente Minucio gli attribuisce efficacia e positiva  e negativa contro la nota verità storica.    b) u Quid ergo de ceteris ingeniis  vel etiam viribus fallaciae spiritalis e-  disseram? phantasmata Castorum , et  aquam cribro gestatara, et navem cin-  galo promotam f et barbam tactu inru-  fatam, ut numina lapides crederentur  et deus verus non quaereretur ? »    Min. 27, 4: « de ipsis (daemoni-  bus) etiam illa quae paullo ante tibi  dieta sunt, ut Iuppiter ludos repeteret  ex somnio, ut cum equis Castores vi -  derentur, ut cingulum matronae navi -  cula sequeretur » (cfr. c. 7, 3).    Tali esempi di miracoli erano conosciuti volgarmente dai libri relativi  all’arte divinatoria, e in riassunti dottrinali non fa meraviglia di veder  citati or gli uni or gli altri.   (164)    Digitized by Liooole     — 25 —    c) Tertull.: « Iussus aquolibet chri-  fitiano loqui spiritus ille tam se daeran-  nem confitebitur de vero quam alibi  •dominum de falso ».   d) «Aeque producatur aliquis ex his  qui de deo pati existiraantur ... Ista  ipsa Virgo caelestis pluviarum pollici-  tatrix, ipse iste Aesculapius medicina-  Tum demonstrator... nisi se daemones  ■confessi fuerint Christiano mentiri non  audentes etc. ... ».   e) « ...vobis praesentibus erubescen-  tes. Credite illis, cura verum de se lo-  quuntur, qui mentientibus creditis. Ne-  mo ad suum dedecus mentitur, quin  potius ad honorem ».   f) « ... de corporibus nostro imperio  «xcedunt inviti et dolentes ».    .... sciunt pleraque pars vestrum ipsos  daemonas de se met ipsis confiteri ,  quotiens a nobis tormentis verborura  et oratìonis incendiis de corporibus  exiguntur ».   « Ipse Saturnus et Serapis et Iup-  piter... vieti dolore quod sunt eloquun-  tur ... ».    « ... nec utique in turpitudinem sui ,  nonnullis praesertim vestrum adsisten-  tibus mentiuntur . Ipsis testibiis esse  eos daemonas credite fassis ».   « ... adiurati per deum verum et so-  lum inviti miseri corporibus inhorre-  scunt et... exsiliunt ».    Un altro riscontro ancora notasi volgendo rocchio al cap. XXVII di  Tertulliano ove si riprende il discorso degli angeli e dei demoni.    g) u Licet subiecta sit nobis tota vis  ■daemonum et eiusmodi spirituum, ut  nequam tamen servi metu nonnunquam  ■contumaciam miscent, et laedere ge-  stiunt quos alias verentur. Odium enim  etiam timor spirat».    « Inserti mentibus imperitorum o-  dium nostri serunt occulte per timorem ;  naturale enim est et odisse quem ti-  meas et quem oderis infestare si possis».    In Tertulliano sono i demoni che temendo i Cristiani, appunto per ciò  qercano di offenderli, perchè il timore partorisce odio. In Minucio si  fa che i demoni insinuino nei pagani Todio contro i Cristiani per mezzo  del timore. Ma ciò, si noti, è meno naturale, perchè i pagani non ave-  vano nessuna ragione di temere i Cristiani. Li odiavano invece senza  conoscere la loro dottrina ; ma ciò non ha a che fare col timore. Non  a proposito dunque Minucio fece sua quest’osservazione psicologica del-  l’odio figlio del timore.   Infine a riguardo della varietà politeistica, nel cap. XXIV Ter-  tulliano ricorda le bestie venerate in Egitto ; e qui è da fare un raf-  fronto con Minucio cap. 28, 8.    h) Tertull. XXIV : « Aegyptiis per-  missa est tam vanae superstitionis po-  testas avibus et bestiis consecrandis et  capite damnandis qui aliquem huius -  modi deum occiderint ».    Min.: « nec eorum (Aegyptiorum)  sacra damnatis instituta serpentibus,  crocodilis, belluis ceteris et avibus et  piscibus, quorum aliquem deum si quis  occiderit etiam capite punitur ».    ( 165 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 26 —    § 10. — Se Bontà dovesse proprio la sua grandezza  alla religione tradizionale .   Una delle ragioni che i pagani opponevano più frequentemente  alle censure dei loro Dei fatte dai seguaci del Cristo, era questa che  a buon conto Roma doveva la sua grandezza alla religiosità tradizio*  naie e al rispetto degli Dei e delle cerimonie istituite in loro onore.  Di questa idea appunto si fa interprete Cecilio Natale presso Minucio  nel suo discorso in difesa del paganesimo, capitoli 6 e 7. I Cristiani  dovettero ribattere queste ragioni, mostrando che Roma se era grande  non doveva nulla ai falsi Dei. Tertulliano svolge questo punto nel ca-  pitolo XXV dell’Apologetico. Con ironia comincia a chiedere se Dei  quali Stercolo e Mutuno e Larentina hanno potuto promuovere T im-  perio ; poiché, dice, non è da supporre che Dei forestieri, come la Gran  Madre, favorissero Roma, a detrimento dei loro fedeli indigeni. Del  resto, soggiunge, molti Dei romani furono prima re ; da chi ebbero la  podestà regia? Forse da qualche Stercolo. E il potere di Roma già  era, molto prima che si costituisse il culto ufficiale, e che di idoli  greci ed etruschi fosse inondata la città. Ma poi tutta la storia ro-  mana è prova di irreligiosità piuttostochè di religiosità. Guerre e  conquiste di città come si fanno senza ingiuria agli Dei, senza distru-  zione di templi e stragi di cittadini e di sacerdoti, e rapine di ric-  chezze sacre e profane? E come può essere che gli Dei delle città  vinte tollerino poi d’essere adorati dai conquistatori ? Non possono dunque  essersi fatti grandi per merito della religione quelli che crebbero col-  l’offenderla o crescendo l’offesero.   Anche Ottavio in Minucio, cap. 25, svolge questi pensieri, ricor-  dando le scelleratezze compiute da Romolo in poi, e mostrando la im-  probabilità che i Romani siano stati aiutati dai loro Dei vernacoli come  Quirino, Pico, Tiberino, Conso, Pilunno, Volunno, Cloacina, il Pavor  e il Pallor , la Febbre, Acca Laurenzia e Flora; tanto meno li aiuta-  rono gli Dei forestieri come Marte Tracio, Giove Cretese, Giunone o  Argiva o Samia o Punica che dir si voglia, Diana Taurica, la madre  Idea, o le non divinità ma mostruosità egiziane, (ricordi attinti a Ci-  cerone e Seneca, v. ediz. Waltzing, pag. 185). Ecco qualche riscontra  con Tertulliano:   a) Tertull. : « Tot igitur sacrilegia Min. 25, 6 : « totiens ergo Romania   Romanorum quot tropaea, tot de deis impiatum est quotiens triumphatum,   quot de gentibus triumphi , tot manu- tot de diis spolia quot de gentibus et   biae quot manent adhuc simulacra capti- tropaea ».  vorum Deorum ».    ( 166 )    Digitized by Liooole     - 27 —    b) « Omne regntim vel imperium  bellis quaeritur et victoriis propagata.  Porro bella et victoriae captis et eversis  plurimum urbibus Constant. Id nego-  tium sine deorum ini uria non est. Eadem  strages moenium et templorum pares  caedes civium et sacerdotum , nec dissi-  miles rapinae sacrarum divitiarum et  profanarum ».   c) Tertull. c. XXVI: « Videte igitur  ne ille regna dispenset cuius est et orbis  qui regnata et homo ipse qui regnat...  Regnaverunt et Babylonii ante ponti -  fices et Medi ante XVriros et Aegyptii  ante Salios et Assyrii ante Lupercus,  et Amazones ante Virgines V est ale s ».    « ... civitates proximas evertere cum  templis et altaribus ... disciplina com-  raunis est Ita quicquid Romani tenent  colunt possident, audaciae praeda est:  tempia omnia de manubiis, i . e . de  ruinis urbium, de spoliis deorum, de  caedibus sacerdotum. Hoc insultare et  inludere est.... adorare quae manu ce-  peris, sacrilegium est consecrare non  numina ».   Min. 25, 12: « ante eos (Romanos)  deo dispensante diu regna tenuerunt  Assyrii, Medi, Persae, Graeci etiam et  Aegyptii, cum pontifices et arvales et  salios et vestales et augures non ha-  berent nec pullos caveas reclusos quo-  rum cibo vel fastidio reip. summa re-  geretur ».    § 11. — Bel culto verso gl’ Imperatori.   Per non volere i Cristiani sacrificare agli idoli, erano tacciati sì  di irreligiosità, ma non potevano essere processati per questo, essendo  ciascuno libero di avere, come gli piaccia, favorevoli o sfavorevoli gli  Dei. Formale accusa invece si moveva loro per non volere sacrificare  in onore dell’ imperatore divinizzato, e chiamavan questo lesa maestà.  Di ciò parla Tertulliano nel cap. XXVIII. La cosa si capisce, die egli ;  voi avete più paura e usate furbescamente più riguardi a Cesare che  a Giove stesso in Cielo. In fondo avete ragione; perchè un vivo vai  più dun morto. Ma commettete voi in questo colpa d’irreligiosità,  dando la preferenza a una dominazione umana; e più presto si sper-  giura da voi per tutti gli Dei che per il solo genio di Cesare.   A questo punto è a notare una lieve somiglianza col discorso di  Ottavio presso Minucio, là dove rimprovera i pagani del prestar culto  divino ad un uomo, e dell’ invocare un nume che non c’ è ; pure, dice,  è per loro più sicuro spergiurare per il genio di Giove che per quello  del re.   a) Tertull. c. XXVIII: « citius de- Min. 29,5: «et est eis tutine per   nique apud vos per omnes Deos quam Ioyìs genium peierare quam regis ».  per unum genium Caesaris peieratur ».    ( 167 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 28 —    § 12. — Delle preghiere cristiane e dei rapporti fra Cristiani.   Segue in Tertulliano un gruppo di capitoli bellissimi, dal XXIX  al XXXIV, in cui con calorosa eloquenza si fa vedere quanto più  onesti ed efficaci voti facessero i Cristiani pregando per la salute del-  l’ imperatore il Dio uno e vero, e a cbi solo può dare chiedendo per  lui lunga vita, securo imperio, casa tranquilla, forte esercito, senato  fedele, popolo probo, mondo quieto; e ciò non con apparati di culto  esterno, ma con sincerità d’anima e innocenza di vita (cap. XXX).  I Cristiani, dice, hanno imparato dal loro Maestro a pregare anche per  i nemici e i persecutori (cap. XXXI); e nel far voti per la diutur-  nità dell' impero, sanno di ritardare quel cataclisma che minaccia al-  l’orbe universo la fine (cap. XXXII). Ma non possono chiamare Dio  l’ imperatore senza derisione di lui e ingiuria al vero Dio (cap. XXXIII  e XXXIV). Perchè dunque saranno qualificati come « nemici pubblici » ?  Forse perchè si astengono dalle licenziose feste pubbliche celebrate a  solennizzare qualche lieto avvenimento della casa imperiale? A buon  conto, non dai Cristiani, ma dal novero dei Komani escono e i Cassii  e i Nigri e gli Albini, cioè i ribelli all’autorità imperiale; i quali  pure avevan preso manifesta parte alla feste pubbliche e ai pubblici  voti per la salvezza dell’ imperatore (cap. XXXV). La vera sudditanza  e fede dovuta all’autorità sta nei buoni costumi e nei rapporti d’onestà  quali noi Cristiani serbiamo con tutti (oap. XXXVI). Amando noi i  nostri nemici, chi possiamo ancora odiare ? Inibita a noi la vendetta,  chi possiamo offendere? Quando mai i Cristiani pensarono a vendi-  carsi neppure del volgo che li malmenava, non rispettando nemmeno  i morti? Eppur quanto facimente avrebber potuto preparare le loro  vendette in segreto, o anche dichiarare aperta guerra, tanto numerosi  essi già sono in tutte le città, nelle isole, nei municipi, nei campi  militari, nel senato stesso e a corte ! Potevano anche senz’armi pugnare,  ritirandosi in qualche angolo remoto del mondo e lasciando dietro sè  una spaventosa solitudine. Eppure ci avete chiamati « nemici del ge-  nere umano», anziché « dell’errore umano» ! (eap. XXXVII). Che ra-  gion vi era di non considerare la nostra setta come una factio licita,  dal momento che non facciamo nulla che turbi la società, e produca  divisioni, attriti, violenze? Una repubblica sola noi riconosciamo, il  mondo. Ai vostri spettacoli rinunziamo, perchè ne conosciamo l’origine  dalla falsa religione. In che v’offendiamo, se abbiamo altri gusti e  piaceri? (cap. XXXVIII). L’unità della fede e della speranza ci unisce   ( 168 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 29 —    e ci affratella. Ci aduniamo a pregare e a leggere i libri santi; ivi  ci esortiamo a far bene, e ci rimproreriamo se manchiamo ai nostri  doveri. Si contribuisce un tanto al mese per alimentare i poveri e so-  stenere le spese delle sepolture e dei derelitti. Il nostro mutuo amore  4, dà noia agli avversari, perchè essi si odiano, noi siamo pronti a mo-   rire l’un per l’altro, quelli ad uccidersi l’un l’altro. Ci riconosciamo  fratelli, perchè abbiamo lo stesso padre Iddio,, e come si mescolano le  nostre anime, così mettiamo in comune le sostanze. Tutto è da noi  accomunato, salvo le mogli. Le nostre cene sono parche e denominate  con parola significante « amore », e lì si prega prima di mangiare come  dopo, e si canta, chi sa farlo, in onor di Dio. Che male c’ è, o a chi  torna di danno tutto ciò, da parlare di factìo illicita ? (cap. XXXIX).   A questo punto, il dialogo di Minucio offre qualche possibilità di  riscontro con l’Apologetico. Giacché, dopo confutata l’accusa di cene  incestuose, Ottavio nel suo discorso prende subito a celebrare l’ inno-  cenza dei costumi cristiani, e qua e là il suo pensiero corre parallelo  a quel di Tertulliano.   a ) Tertull. c. XXXIX, fin.: « haec Min. 31,6: « ... nec factiosi (così   coitio Christianorum merito damnanda THerald; il cod. ha: ‘fastidiosi 1 ) su-   I si quis de ea queritur eo titillo quo de mus, si omnes unum bonura sapimus   factionibus querela est. In cuius perni- eadem congregati quiete qua singuli...».  ciem aliquando convenimus? Hoc su-  mus congregati quod et dispersi, hoc  universi quod et singuli , neminem lae-  dentes, neminem contristantes ».   b) « Sed eiusmodi vel maxime dile- « .... sic mutuo, quod doletis amore   ctionis operatio notam nobis inurit pe- diligimus, quoniam odisse non novimus,   nes quosdam. Vide, inquiunt, ut in vicem sic nos, quod invidetis, frati es vocamus,   se diligant; ipsi enim invicem oderunt; ut unius dei parentis homines, ut con-   et ut prò alterutro mori sint parati; sortes fidei, ut spei coheredes. Yos enim   ipsi enim ad occidendum alterutrum pa- nec invicem adgnoscitis, et in mutua   ratiores erunt. Sed et quod fratres nos odia saevitis, nèc fratres vos nisi sane   vocamus, non alias opinor, insaniunt ad parricidium recognoscitis ».   quam quod apud ipsos omne sanguinis  nomen de affectione simulatum est. Fra-  y tres autem etiam vestri sumus... at   quanto dignius fratres et dicuntur et  habentur qui unum patrem Deum agno-  verunt, qui unum spiritum biberunt san-  ctitatis, qui de uno utero ignorantiae  eiusdem ad unam lucem exspiraverunt  veritatis ».   ( 169 )    Digitized by ooole     - 30 -    Altri riscontri parziali:   c) Tertull. c. XXX : « ei (Deo) offero  opimam et maiorem hostiam... oratio-  nem de carne pudica, de anima inno-  centi, de spiritu sancto profectam ».   d) Tertull. c. XXXVIII : « Aeque spe-  ctaculis vestris in tantum renuntiamus  in quantum originibus eorum, quas sci -  mus de superstitione conceptas, cupi et  ipsis rebus de quibus transiguntur prae-  tersumus. Nihil est nobis dictu, visu,  auditu cum insania circi, cum impudi-  citia theatri, cum atrocitate arenae, cum  xysti vanitate ».    Min. 32, 3 : « qui innocentiam colit  Deo supplicat, qui iustitiam Deo libat...  qui hominem periculo subripit, opimam  (il cod. ha optimam) vidimavi caedit ».   Id. 37, 11 : a nos. . merito malis vo-  luptatibus et pompis et spedaculis ve-  stris abstinemus, quorum et de sacris  originem novimus , et noxia blandimenta  damnamus. Nam in ludis circensibus  (così leggo io, il cod. ha: currulibus)  quis non horreat populi in se rixantis  insaniam ? in gladiatoriis homicidii di-  sciplinami? in scenicis etiam non minor  furor et turpitudo prolixior ; nunc enira  mimus yel exponit adulteria vel mon-  strat, nunc enervis histrio amorem dum  fingit infigit ».    § 13. — Bei disastri pubblici non imputabili ai Cristiani  e della loro innocenza di vita .   I capitoli XL e XLI dell’Apologetico contengono la confutazione  dell’accusa che delle pubbliche calamità fossero causa i Cristiani, come  8’ andava già fin d’allora vociferando, e si seguitò a dire per molte ge-  nerazioni. Tertulliano ricorda molti cataclismi, isole scomparse, terre-  moti e maremoti, e il diluvio, e l’ incendio di Sodoma e Gomorra, di-  sastri avvenuti tutti avanti al Cristianesimo. E col distruggersi delle  città, dice, si distruggevano anche i templi degli Dei; prova che non  veniva da loro ciò che anche a loro accadeva. Bensì il Dio unico e  vero non poteva essere propizio a chi ne disconosceva i favori. Del  resto, i mali ora sono minori di prima, e ciò è dovuto alle preghiere  dei Cristiani che disarmano l’ira divina. Che se il nostro Dio per-  mette i disastri anche a danno de' suoi cultori, ciò non ci stupisce nè  sgomenta, aspirando noi a vita più alta e migliore. Di tutto questo in  Minucio non v’ è parola.   Altro titolo d’ ingiurie contro i Cristiani era il ritenerli alieni  dagli affari e disutili al commercio locale. Tertulliano dedicò a questo  argomento i capitoli XLII e XL1II, dove fa vedere l' insussistenza di  questo rimprovero. Vivevano bene i Cristiani come gli altri, serven-  dosi e dei mercati e delle botteghe e delle officine e dei bagni pub-   ( 170 )    Digitized by LiOOQle    - 31 —    blici. Che se si astenevano da certi usi, se non si coronavano di fiori  la testa, se non intervenivano agli spettacoli, se non sovvenivano i  templi pagani coi loro contributi, avevano bene ragione di farlo. E del  pari certo quattrini non ricevevano da loro nè i lenoni, nè.i sicari,  nè i magi, nè gli aruspici, nè altri tali ; ma in compenso i Cristiani  eran tutte persone innocue da non dar ombra a nessuno.   Qui, rispetto alluso di portar corone di fiori in capo, si può con-  frontare :    a) Tertull. c. XLII: « ...non amo  capiti coronam. Quid tua interest, em-  ptÌ8 nihilominus floribus quomodo utar ?  Puto gratius esse liberis et solutis et  undique vagis. Sed etsi in coronam  coactis, nos coronam nariòus novimus,  viderint qui per capillum odorantur».    Min. c. 38, 2 : « quis autem ille qui  dubitat vernis indulgere nos floribus,  cum capiamus et rosam veris et lilium  et quicquid aliud in floribus blandi co-  loris et odoris est? his enim et sparsis  utimur, mollibus ac solutis, et sertis  colla complectimur. Sane quod caput  non coronamus, ignoscite; auram bo-  nam floris nariòus ducere non occipitio  capillisve solemus haurire ».    1 due capitoli che seguono in Tertulliano, il XLIV e il XLY,  sono rivolti a segnalare l’ innocenza dei Cristiani, proveniente dal se-  guire essi una legge non umana ma divina, e dal considerarsi come in  presenza di Dio sempre, di Dio scrutatore, giudice e vindice.    b) Terlull. c. XLIV : « Tot a vobis  nocentes variis criminum elogiis recen-  sentur; quis illic sicarius, quis manti-  cularius, quis sacrilegus aut corruptor  aut lavantium praedo, quis ex illis etiam  Christianus adscribitur? aut cum Chri-  stiani suo titulo offeruntur, quis ex illis  etiam talis qttales tot nocentes? De  vestris semper aestuat career , de vestris  semper metalla suspirant, de vestris  semper bestiae saginantur, de vestris  semper munerarii noxiorum greges pa-  scunt. Nemo illic Christianus nisi piane  tantum Christianus , aut si et aliud iam  non Christianus ».   c) Id. XLV : « quid perfectius, prò-  hibere adulterium, an etiam ab o culo-  rum solitaria concupiscentia arcere ? »   XLVI: u Christianus uxori suae  soli masculus nascitur ».    Min. 35, 6: « ... de vestro numero  career exaestuat , Christianus ibi nullus  nisi aut reus suae religionis aut'pro-  fugus ».    Id. ibid. : « vos enim adulteria prò -  hibetis et facitis, nos uxoribus nostris  solummodo viri nascimur ... ».    (171)    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 32    § 14. — Delle dottrine filosofiche antiche  o diverse dalle cristiane o dai libri santi ispirate .   Pur vinti da tanta copia di fatti e bontà di ragioni, non si ar-  rendevano gli avversari de’ Cristiani, e, a corto d’altri argomenti, fini-  vano con dire che in sostanza le massime cristiane non erano cosa  nuova, ma erano già state professate e praticate dai filosofi. Di ciò  Tertulliano nel capitolo XLYI, dove istituisce un eloquente confronto  tra le massime e la vita pagana da una parte e i precetti e costumi  cristiani dall’ altra, per dimostrare la superiorità dei secondi. Qui un  riscontro con Minucio:   a) Tertull. c. XLVI: a ... licet Plato Min. c. 19, 14: u Platoni... in Ti-   adfirmet factitatorem universitatis ne- maeo deus est ipso suo nomine mundi   que inveniri facile et inventum enar- parens, artifex animae, caelestium ter-  rari in omnes difficile. Cfr. Plat. Tim. renorumque fabricator, quem et inve-   p. 28 C : « Tòv fxhv noirjrijy xai nire difficile praenimia et incredibili   naréga tovóe tot) navròg eògeìv re eg- potestate (cfr. 26, 12: * Plato qui inve-  lo!', xai etigóvia elg ndvrag àóvvarov nire Deum negotium credidit ... *), et   Xéyeivn. cum inveneris in publicum praedicere   impossibile praefatur».   Non può negarsi, riconosce Tertulliano (cap. XLVII), che i filosofi  antichi hanno espresso molte cose vere, ma queste son derivate dalla  fonte dei nostri profeti. E queste stesse verità sono involute e com-  mescolate a ipotesi e opinioni disparatissime, sicché poi questi filosofi  sono in completo disaccordo gli uni cogli altri. Tale varietà d’opinioni  pur troppo venne anche introdotta nella setta cristiana, sicché bisognò  prescrivere ai nostri adulteri, quella essere regola di verità la quale  venga a noi trasmessa da Cristo per mezzo de’ suoi compagni. Per queste  adulterazioni della verità, insinuate dagli spiriti dell’errore, certi prin-  cipii già si trovano tra i pagani, come il giudizio finale delle anime,  le pene dell’inferno e il soggiorno delizioso degli Elisi, ma tali prin-  cipii in quanto hanno del vero, sono di origine nostra.   b) Tertull.: « quis poetarum, quis Min. 34, 5: « animadvertis philoso-   sophistarum,qui non omnino de prò- pbos eadem disputare quae dicimus,   pbetarum fonte potaverit?... » non quod nos simus eorum vestigia   u Unde baec ... nonnisi de nostris sa- subsecuti, sed quod illi de divinis prae-   cramentis? Si de nostris sacramentis, dictionibus profetarum umbram inter-   ut de prioribus, ergo fideliora sunt no- polatae veritatis imitati sint ».  stra magisque credenda, quorum ima-  gines quoque fìdem inveniunt».   ( 172 )    Digitized by Liooole     — 33 —    § 15. — Della resurresione finale e del fuoco eterno.    Una delle credenze cristiane più combattute e derise dagli av-  versarli, era quella della resurrezione finale dei corpi e del ritorno delle  anime in que’ corpi che già avvivarono. A questo dogma dedica Ter-  tulliano il cap. XLYIII, adducendo la ragione della divina onnipo-  tenza, che come ha dal nulla creato il mondo, così può far risuscitare  i corpi morti. Non è quotidianamente sotto gli occhi nostri il segno  della resurrezione nell’alternativa della luce e delle tenebre, nel tra-  montare e rinascere delle stelle, nel rifarsi delle stagioni e dei prodotti  della natura? Se a Dio fosse piaciuta altresì l’alternativa della morte  e della resurrezione, chi l’avrebbe impedito? Volle invece che alla  condizione presente di vita passeggera, si contrapponesse un’altra vita  eterna, e a questa passassero tutti risorgendo coi corpi, per vivere  un’eternità di premio o di pena secondo i meriti di ciascuno. E il fuoco  eterno che aspetta i dannati, è di natura ben diversa dal nostro; come  altro è il fuoco che serve agli usi umani, altro quello che apparisce  nei fulmini del cielo o nelle eruzioni dei vulcani, perchè questo non  consuma quello che brucia, e mentre disfa, ripara. Tali principii se  sono professati da filosofi e da poeti, si tollerano e si lodano; perchè  noi Cristiani dobbiamo esserne derisi e anche puniti? Infine queste  credenze sono utili, perchè allontanano dal mal fare colla paura dei  divini castighi, e, alla peggio, non fan male a nessuno (c. XLIX).   Anche Minucio mette in bocca al suo Ottavio alcune considera-  zioni sulla fine del mondo e la risurrezione dei morti, dedicandovi tutto il  capo 34 e parte del 35. Sulla fine del mondo ricorda le opinioni  degli Stoici e degli Epicurei e anche di Platone circa la conflagrazione  finale dell’universo, e giustifica così la credenza cristiana. Per la ri-  surrezione pure cita Pitagora e Platone, ma solo per dimostrare che i  saggi pagani in questo vanno in qualche modo d'accordo coi Cristiani.  Ricorre anch’egli all’argomento dell’onnipotenza divina e alla possibi-  lità che rinasca dal nulla quello che dal nulla ebbe origine, come  accenna pure ai segni di risurrezione dati dalla natura, e alle condi-  zioni del fuoco eterno. Qui alcuni riscontri:    a) Tertull. c. XLVIII : « sed quo-  modo, inquis, dissoluta materia exhiberi  potest? Considera temetipsum, o homo,  et fidem rei invenies. Kecogita quid  fueris antequam esses. Utique nihil;    Min. c. 34, 9 : « quis tam stultus  aut brutus est, ut audeat repugnare,  hominem a Deo ut primum potuisse  fingi, ita posse denuo reformari? Sicut  de nihilo nasci licuit, ita de nihilo li-    (173)    3    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 34 -    meminisses enim si quid fuisses. Qui cere reparari? porro difficilius est id   ergo nihil fueras priusquam esses, idem quod non sit incipere, quam id quod   nihil factus cum esse desieris, cur non fuerit iterare. Tu perire et Deo credis   possis rursus esse de nihilo eiusdem si quid oculis nostris hebetibus sub-   ipsius auctoris voluntate qui te voluit trahitur ? »   esse de nihilo ? Quid novi tibi eveniet ?   Qui non eras factus es; cum iterum non  eris fies. Et tamen facilius utique fies  quod fuisti aliquando, quia aeque non  difficile factus es quod nunquam fuisti  aliquando » .   b) Ibid.: « Lux coti die interfecta Min. ib. 11: «in solacium nostri   resplendet et tenebrae pari vice dece- resurrectionem futuram natura omnis   dendo succedunt, sidera defuncta vive- meditatur. Sol demergit et nascitur,   scunt, tempora ubi finiuntur incipiunt, astra labuntur et redeunt , flores occi-   fructus consummantur et redeunt , certe dunt et revirescunt, post senium ar-   semina non nisi corrupta et dissoluta busta frondescunt, semina nonnisi cor -   fecundius surgunt, omnia pereundo ser- rupta revirescunt».   vantar omnia de interitu reformantur ».   c) Tertull. ibid.: « Noverunt et phi- Id. c. 35, 11: « Illic sapiens ignis   losophi diversitatem arcani et publici membra urit et reficit , carpit et nutrit.   ignis. Ita longe alius est qui usui hu- Sicut ignes fulminum corpora tangunt   mano, alius qui iudicio Dei apparet, nec absumunt, sicut ignes Aetnaei mon-   sive de caelo fulmina stringens, sive de tis et Vesuvi montis et ardentium ubi-   terra per vertices montium eructans: que terranno flagrant nec erogantur,   non enim absumit quod exurit , sed dum ita poenale illud incendium non damnis   erogat reparat. Adeo manent montes sem- ardentium pascitur, sed inexesa corpo-   per ardentes, et qui de caelo tangitur, rum laceratione uutritur ».   salvus est, ut nullo iam igni decine-  rescat. Et hoc erit testimonium ignis  aeterni, hoc exemplum iugis iudicii poe-  nam nutrientis. Montes uruntur et du-  rant. Quid nocentes et Dei hostes ? »    § 16. — Della resistenza dei Cristiani ai tormenti.   Eccoci all’ultimo capitolo dell’Apologetica, dove il grande scrit-  tore africano giustifica l’atteggiamento dei Cristiani, esultanti di essere  perseguitati e di soffrire anche la morte per la confessione di Cristo. \   Tale atteggiamento era oggetto di vive censure; eran considerati i  Cristiani come gente disperata e perduta. Pure gli antichi avevano ce-  lebrato invece come eroi gloriosi alcuni uomini che avevano patito,  senza scomporsi, i più atroci dolori, quali un Mucio Scevola, un Attilio  Regolo, ecc. Perchè han da stimarsi pazzi i Cristiani che fan lo stesso?   ( 174 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     — 35 —    Del resto, conchiude Tertulliano, fate pure, o buoni governanti, con-  tentate la plebe tormentandoci, condannandoci, uccidendoci; codesta  crudeltà non servirà che ad aumentare il nostro numero; il nostro  sangue è seme; il nostro esempio e l’ostinazione che ci rinfacciate, fa  scuola ; perchè chi ci vede e ammira, sente di dover ricercare che cosa  ci sia sotto, e conosciuto vi si converte, e convertito desidera patire  alla sua volta per redimere la sua vita anteriore e ottenere Feterno premio.   Di analogo argomento, della resistenza dei Cristiani al dolore e  della lotta loro contro le minaccie e i tormenti dei carnefici, discorre  pure Ottavio in Minucio (capitoli 35, 8-9 e 37, 1-6). Anche per lui  il soffrire non è castigo, è milizia, e non è vero che Dio abbandoni chi  soffre, anzi lo assiste e a sè trae. Che bello spettacolo per Dio quando  il cristiano scende in lizza col dolore e le minacce e le torture, e  contro re e principi difende a testa alta la libertà della sua fede, non  cedendo che a Dio, vincitore anche di chi lo condanna e uccide. Glo-  rioso ritiensi colui che tormenti ha sostenuto con costanza; ma altret-  tali e peggiori soffrono col sorriso sulle labbra i fanciulli e le don-  nicciuole cristiane, evidentemente perchè li aiuta Iddio. In manifesta  affinità di pensieri, non mancheranno riscontri di parole:    a) Tertull. c. L: « ...Victoria est...  prò quo certaveris obtinere ».   b) Ibid.: « Haec desperatio et per-  ditio penes vos in causa gloriae et fa-  mae vexillum virtutis extollunt. Mucius  dexteram suam libens in ara reliquit:  o sublimitas animi ! Empedocles totum  sese Catanensium Aetnaeis incendiis do-  navit : o vigor mentis ! Aliqua Cartagi-  nis conditrix rogo se secundum matri-  monium dedit : o praeconium castitatis !  Regulus ne unus prò multis hostibus  viveret, toto corpore cruces patitur: o  virum fortem et in captivitate victo-  rem! etc. ».    Min. 37, 1 : « vicit qui quod con-  tendi obtinuit » .   Ibid. 3 : « vos ipsos calamitosos vi-  ros fertis ad coelum, Mucium Scaevo-  lam, qui cum errasset in regem peris-  set in hostibus nisi dexteram perdidisset.  Et quot ex notfris non dextram solum  sed totum corpus uri, cremari, sine ullis  eialatibus,pertulerunt,cum dimitti prae-  sertim haberent in sua potestate ! Viros  cum Mucio aut cum Aquilio aut Re-  gulo Comparo? pueri et mulierculae  nostrae cruces et tormenta, feras et  omnes suppliciorum terriculas inspirata  patientia doloris inludunt».    § 17. — Osservazioni e conclusione.   Messoci sott’occhio ordinatamente e nel modo più compiuto pos-  sibile il materiale di raffronto fra Tertulliano e Minucio, possiamo  risolvere il problema, quale dei due abbia avuto sott’occhio l’opera  dell’altro.   (175)    Digitized by LiOOQle     A questo fine chi ci ha seguito fin qui voglia con noi fare due  osservazioni. La prima è che in molti luoghi si trova la stessa ma-  teria trattata con ampiezza e originalità di vedute da Tertulliano, e  accennata brevemente da Minucio; ad es. al § 1 c, come già s’è os-  servato, a tutta una teoria tertullianea sulla natura del male morale  e sull’atteggiamento del malvagio, teoria addotta per mostrare che non  era un male Tesser cristiano, corrisponde in Minucio un cenno fuggevole  della stessa sentenza; così al § 2 d, la natura della fama o diceria  è rilevata con minuziosa analisi da Tertulliano, ed è, in frase inci-  dente, come per transenna, e con parole per sè sole non chiare, toccata  da Minucio; lo stesso dicasi al § 6 i, sullo scheletro ligneo a forma  di croce adoperato nel fabbricare gli idoli; e ‘al § 13 b, sull’essere  i delinquenti in massima parte pagani e d’altri brani ancora. In tutti  questi casi si ha egli a pensare che Tertulliano, visto il breve cenno  minuciano, n’ abbia preso occasione per ampliare e a volte costruire  una teoria intiera basata sull’osservazione psicologica? o non si pre-  senta anzi spontanea T ipotesi che Minucio abbia conosciute e fatte sue  le spiegazioni tertullianee, riassumendole dov’ e’ credeva opportuno? A  chi non parrà questo secondo processo ben più naturale del primo?  Non è questo il modo comune di lavorare in opere letterarie, quando  non si tratta di amplificazioni rettoriche e luoghi comuni? Chi potrà  credere il rapporto inverso, se tenga conto dell’ ingegno vigoroso, del  ragionamento serrato e a fil di logica di Tertulliano, in comparazione  dei discorsi alquanto rettorici da Minucio messi in bocca agli inter-  locutori del suo dialogo?   La seconda osservazione che noi vogliamo si faccia, ci conferma  nell’ ipotesi della priorità di Tertulliano ; e questa riguarda i passi dove  Minucio presenta lo stesso pensiero e la frase tertullianea, ma o in  luogo meno opportuno per la concatenazione delle idee, o con aggiunta  od uso di parole che alterano il concetto esagerandolo. Fin dal prime  riscontro segnalato al § 1 a, il cenno del non volere i pagani udire  pubblicamente i Cristiani desiderosi di difendersi, vien fuori poco op-  portunamente come argomento del non essere essi Cristiani in angulis  garruli Così al § 3, già s’è notata la stranezza del derivare dalle  cerimonie di Giove Laziale gli usi sanguinarii di Catilina e di Bellona.  Nello stesso § 3, il riscontro f ci dà un esempio di esagerata espres-  sione in quel plerique sostituito al quidam di Tertulliano; come al  § 4 g, è fuor di squadra il frequentius . Inesattezze pure riscontrammo  al § 5 f, dove è attribuita ad Omero una leggenda che non gli ap-  partiene, e al § 9 a, ove del demonio socratico si parla men corret-  ene)    Digitized by LiOOQle    — 37 —    tamente che in Tertulliano. Ma il passo più significativo è al § 9 g,  ove poco a proposito, come già s’ è rilevato, Minucio fece sua l’osser-  yazione psicologica del timore che partorisce odio. Tali difetti del-  l’esposizione minuciana sono una evidente conferma della priorità ter-  tullianea ; è nella natura delle cose che l’ imitatore non afferrando con  precisione i concetti dello scrittore che gli serve di modello, alteri i  rapporti delle idee e le renda in modo difettoso ; mentre è ben più  raro, se non impossibile, che un imitatore, prendendo le mosse da un  lavoro altrui, ne emendi tutti i difetti, raggiungendo una precisa coe-  renza e spontaneità, quale spicca in Tertulliano.   Vi sono però due luoghi che paiono far contro la nostra tesi. Uno  è al § 5, b e d, ove a una semplice parola o proposizione tertullianea  {§ 5, 6: consecratione ; d: statuas . . . milvi et mures et araneae in -  ielligunt) corrisponde in Minucio una descrizione più ampia e ricca  di particolari. Ma, se ben si guardi, ciò non vuol dir nulla contro la  tesi che sosteniamo. Già prima si può pensare che Minucio, come per  altre parti del suo dialogo prese da Cicerone e da Seneca, così per  questa abbia attinto ad altra fonte oltre l’Apologetico, desumendone  sia la descrizione dell’ idolo che finché vien lavorato non è Dio e lo  diventa appena è consacrato dall’uomo, sia quella dei topi, delle ron-  dini, dei ragni che rodono e fanno il nido e le ragnatele nelle statue  dei templi. Ma può anche darsi che qui s’abbia a fare con una sem-  plice amplificazione del pensiero suggerito dall’espressione di Tertul-  liano, amplificazione non contenente altro che osservazioni semplicissime  e di dominio comune. Tanto più è probabile che tale lavoro si deva  attribuire a Minucio, quanto che la caratteristica del suo stile, cioè  l’uso degli asindeti trimembri con omeoteleuto, si trova qui più volte:  funditur fabricatur sculpitur; plumbatur conslruilur erigitur; ornatur  eonsecratur oratur; rodunt inculcant insident; tergetis mundaiis era -  ditis, ecc.   L’altro punto che deve qui discutersi riguarda il fatto già segna-  lato al § 4, a , pel quale 1’ Ebert e molti altri conchiusero senz’altro  per la priorità di Minucio, vale a dire l’errore commesso da Tertul-  liano completando in Cassius Severus il nome dello storico Cassius  così letto da lui nelle sue fonti. Pur riconoscendo che Tertulliano ha  qui commesso un errore, era proprio necessario di supporre che l’in-  dicazione di quelle fonti storiche, Diodoro e Tallo Greci, Cassio e Cor-  nelio Romani, egli l’avesse presa da Minucio? Si noti che il discorso  si aggira intorno alla spiegazione euemeristica degli Dei pagani, e si  ricercano le vicende di Saturno e di Giove per conchiuderne che co-   ( 177 )    Digitized by LiOOQle     - 38 —    storo in origine erano nomini. Ora questa tesi non era solo degli apo-  logeti cristiani, ma da secoli era di dominio comune in molte scuole  filosofiche. Può dunque ben darsi che in qualche libro euemeristico del  primo o del secondo secolo dell’era volgare già si citassero Diodoro  Siculo e Tallo, Cassio e Cornelio Nipote, e anche Yarrone, a conferma  della dottrina ; può essere che la citazione di quei nomi fosse diventata  come un luogo comune; tant’ è vero che un secolo dopo Tertulliano,  ancor la ripete con poche varianti Lattanzio (*). Questo è l’unico punto  in cui ritengo vera V ipotesi di una fonte comune anteriore a Tertul-  liano e Minucio. Il che se si ammette, l’errore di Tertulliano non dice  più nulla a favore della priorità di Minucio e contro la tesi inversa  da noi propugnata. Da questa stessa fonte euemeristica potrebbero sup-  porsi derivati i particolari minuciani che sopra avvertimmo non tro-  varsi in Tertulliano, come pure ne derivarono le tradizioni simili a quella  che si legge nel De origine gentis Romanae (1, 2) e nei breviari sto-  rici concernenti le origini di Eoma ( 2 ).   Sia dunque lecito di conchiudere che l’ Ottavio di Minucio è po-  steriore all’Apologetico; di non molto forse, se al tempo della sua  comparizione era ancora sì viva la memoria dell’oratore Frontone da  ricordarlo nel modo che fanno i due interlocutori del dialogo (cap. 9 : Gir -  tensis noster , e cap. 31: Pronto tuus). Non andarono forse errati quelli  che supposero composto il dialogo nel primo o al più nel secondo de-  cennio del terzo secolo, come certo l’Apologetico è degli ultimi anni  del secondo.    ( 1 ) Insù . 1, 13 : omnes ergo non tantum poetae sed historiarum quoque ac  rerum antiquarum scriptores hominem fuisse consentiunt [ Saturnum ]. Qui res eius  in Italia gestas prodiderunt , Graeci Diodorus et Thallus t Latini Nepos et Gas -  sius et Varrò . . .   ( 2 ) V. il Minucio del Waltzing, pag. 204.    ( 178 ) Marco Minucio Felice – He wrote “Ottavio” – draws on a speech by Frontone. – cf. Marco Minucio Felice.

 

Grice e Miraglia: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale di CICERONE -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Reggio). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Miraglia is the type of philosopher beloved by the Oxford hegelians; but then he is a Neapolitan Hegelian!” Grice: “I always found Kant easier, but there’s nothing like a ‘filosofia del diritto’ in Kant! And Hegel’s ethics itself, compared to Kant’s is mighty more complex – that’s why I taught Kant!” Si laurea a Napoli, dopodiché insegna filosofia del diritto nella stessa università, ed economia politica alla scuola superiore di agricoltura di Portici.  Segue una corrente di pensiero eclettica, ad esso contemporanea, che mira all'integrazione di pratiche giuridiche ed ispirazioni filosofiche. Sindaco di Napoli. Tra le più famose si ricordano: “Condizioni storiche e scientifiche del diritto di preda (Napoli); “Un sistema etico-giuridico” (Napoli); “Filosofia del diritto” (Napoli). Nella sua biografia ufficiale per la Treccani è nato a Reggio nell'Emilia, mentre nella sua scheda storico-professionale sul sito del Senato si riporta a Reggio di Calabria. Giuseppe Erminio. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, (latinista) Sindaci di Napoli Senatori della legislatura del Regno d'Italia  Luigi Miraglia, su Treccani Enciclopedie, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.  Opere su open MLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl.  su Senatori d'Italia, Senato della Repubblica. I sistemi filosofici ed i principi del diritto. La speculazione greca e LA DOTTRINA ROMANA. Fichte. Spedalierie Romagnosi. Gli scrittori della reazione. La scuola storica e la scuola filosofica. Schelling e Scleiermacher. Hegel Rosmini. Herbart, Trendelenburg e Krause.Le varie fasi della filosofia di Schelling. Sthal e Schopenhauer Il materialismo, il positivismo ed il criticismo. L'idea della filosofia del diritto. La Filosofia e le scienze. Il carattere della Filosofia mo.  L'idea del Diritto ed i metodi logici. L'induzione e la deduzione. L'induzione, l'osservazione e l'esperimento. L'idea del Diritto naturale e quella del buono civile di AMARI ricavate dall'induzione. L'importanza del metodo storico-comparativo secon do VICO Amari , Post e Sumner-Maine. Parallelo fra lo sviluppo della lingua e lo sviluppo del Diritto. L'induzione statistica. Il compito della deduzione. L'universale astratto e l'universale concreto come principi. Moderna divinato da VICO. La Filosofia del Diritto come parte della Filosofia. L'idea umana del Diritto se condo la dottrina di VICO, e le definizioni di Kant, di Hegel, di Trendelenburg, di ROMAGNOSI e di SERBATI. La teoria sociale e la teoria giuridica. Il Diritto e la Filosofia positiva. L'idea induttiva del Diritto. Lo studio della coscienza etico-giuridica dei vari popoli. Il contributo della razza ariana e della razza semi tica nella storia della civiltà. L'idea del diritto come misura in LA RAZZA ARIANA. La misura riposta nel l'ordine fisico, nella legge positiva e nella ragione. Il principio della personalità. Gl’elementi organici e spi rituali della persona e la loro corrispondenza. La spiegazione del materialismo. La teorica dell'evoluzione. La critica dell'evoluzionismo meccanico La teorica dell'evoluzione e la Psicologia. Il sentimento fondamentale e le sensazioni. La coscienza e la sua origine. Le rappresentazioni sensibili e le rappresentazioni coscienti. Il  pensare e le categorie. La cognizione secondo l'empirismo oggettivo. La critica di questa teoria. I presupposti pratici dell'idea deduttiva del Diritto. Sviluppo e partizione. L'istinto, il desiderio e la volontà. L'arbitrio e la libertà morale. La costanza degl’atti umani rivelata dalla Statistica. Il fine dell'uomo ed il bene. Il bene umano ed il Diritto. La forma imperativa, proibi.  I presupposti teoretici dell'idea deduttiva del Diritto. Seguito dei presupposti teoretici. tiva e permissiva del Diritto. Il Diritto come principio di co-azione , di coesistenza e di armonia. La tri-partizione razionale del Diritto. La divisione di Gaio. Analisi critica delle principali definizioni del Diritto. Le dottrine che riguardano a preferenza il contenuto sensibile del diritto: Hobbes, Spinoza, Roussean, Mill e Spencer. Le dottrine che considerano il diritto come astratta forma razionale: Kant, Fichte ed Herbart. Le definizioni di Krause e di Trendelenburg. Ciò che vi è di vero nelle dottrine esaminate. Il Diritto, la Morale e la Scienza sociale. Il Diritto come disciplina etica. I rapporti fra Morale e Diritto nella storia. Critica della confusione e della separazione dei due termini. Il fondamento comune e la differenza reale. L'Etica e la vita sociale.VICO, Süssmilch ed i fisiocrati precursori della Scienza sociale. La Sociologia di Comte ed i vari indirizzi. La Sociologia di Spencer. La Sociologia come Filosofia delle scienze sociali. Le analogie tra la società e l'organismo. Le relazioni fra il Diritto e la Scienza sociale. Il Diritto, l'Economia sociale e la Politica. L'ordinamento sociale-economico ed i filosofi del Diritto antichi e moderni. L'Etica, la Sociologia fondata sulla Biologia, la Politica e la Storia come presupposti dell'Economia. Il carattere del fatto economico. I rapporti tra il Diritto e l'Economia. Il concetto della Politica. La Politica , la Scienza sociale, l'Etica ed il Diritto. L'idea compiuta dello Stato. Il Diritto razionale ed il Diritto positivo. Fonti ed applicazioni. La distinzione del Diritto razionale dal Diritto positivo in sé e nella storia. La consuetudine ed il costume primitivo. La giurisprudenza ed i suoi uffici. La legislazione ed i codici. L'efficacia della legge nello spazio.L'efficacia della legge nel tempo. Esame delle diverse teorie sulla retroattività . Diritto Privato. La persona. I diritti essenziali o innati ed i diritti accidentali o acquisiti. Il principio dei diritti. Il diritto alla vita fisica e morale. Il diritto alla libertà. I diritti all'eguaglianza, alla sociabilità ed all'assistenza. Il diritto di lavoro . Il concetto storico dei diritti innati. I diritti dell'uomo nello stato di natura.Lo stato di na. tura dei filosofi del secolo decimottavo in rapporto. La persona ed i suoi diritti. Le persone incorporali. Lo scopo delle persone incorporali. La teoria della fin. La proprietà e i modi di acquisto. La proprietà e dil suo fondamento razionale. Dottrine in torno a questo fondamento. Le limitazioni ed i temperamenti della proprietà. I modi originari e deri vativi di acquisto La storia della proprietà e dei modi di acquisto. L'attività procacciatrice dell'animale e dell'uomo. La storia della proprietà e la storia della persona. La proprietà collettiva. La comunità di famiglia. Il Cristianesimo ed il valore della persona individua. Il feudo. La riforma ed il diritto naturale.La com piuta individuazione ed itemperamenti della proprie tà privata. I modi di acquisto primitivi. Le distin zioni dei beni. L'usucapione, l'equità e la procedura civile.. ! all'ordine di natura dei giureconsulti romani e dei filosofi greci.La teorica della conoscenza ed ilmodo di concepire i diritti essenziali della persona. I diritti innati e la Filosofia moderna. Il regime dello status e del contratto . zione e dell'equiparazione. La teoria che riguarda la persona incorporale come veicolo. La teoria del patrimonio sui juris. Le idee dei pubblicisti tedeschi.Il soggetto reale nella corporazione e nella fon dazione. I diritti delle persone incorporali ed il jus confirmandi dello Stato. La teoria di Giorgi. La proprietá prediale. Il collettivismo territoriale. La teoria di Wagner sulla proprietà dei fabbricati. La teoria di Spencer sulla proprietà del suolo. La proprietà privata del suolo e la rendita. Le dottrine di George e di Loria sul la terra La proprietà forestale e mineraria. Le funzioni dei boschi. La libertà del taglio. Il vincolo e le sue ragioni. La proprietà mineraria e le fasi della industria. La critica degli argomenti in favo re del proprietario del suolo. La dottrina che attribuisce la miniera allo scopritore . La merce lavoro ed il suo prezzo. Il lavoro come pro prietà. La coalizione e lo sciopero. La giuria industriale.La proprietà del capitale ed il profitto. Il collettivismo ed il mutualismo. La teoria di Marx. La critica del collettivismo e della teoria di Marx. Le coalizioni degl'intraprenditori. La proprietà commerciale, il diritto di autore e di scopritore. Il concetto della proprietà commerciale. La libertà dello scambio. La concorrenza. La nozione primitiva del commercio. Il diritto di autore prima e dopo l'in  La propriatà industriale. La classificazione dei diritti sulla cosa altrui. Le servitù gimento dell'istituto nelle legislazioni. Esposizione critica delle varie dottrine assolute e relative. Il fon damento razionale. La critica della teoria di Ihering sulla volontà di possedere. Le obbligazioni. zioni. Le loro varie specie e modalità. I differenti modi di estinzione . Il contratto e le sue forme.  L'indole del possesso. La sua origine storica. Lo svol L'obbligazione. La sua origine. Le fonti delle obbliga La nozione del contratto. Le sue fasi ed il suo fonda. mento. I requisiti essenziali. I vizî del consenso ed alcune recenti teorie. L'interpretazione dei contratti. Le loro classificazione e le dottrine di Kant e di Trendelenburg. venzione della stampa. Il suo fondamento ed il suo carattere. La garentia del diritto dello scopritore I diritti reali particolari. e le loro specie. In quali modi le servitù nascono, si esercitano e si estinguono. L'enfiteusi. La superficie. Il pegno e l'ipoteca. Il carattere del diritto di ritenzione Il possesso. La libertà di contrarre ed il contratto di lavoro. La libertà di contrarre, i suoi limiti e la sua guarentigia.. L'interesse e la sua limitazione. La libertà dell'interesse. L'usura ed i suoi procedimenti. L'usura come forma dell'ingiusto civile ed i modi di combatterla. L'usura come delitto. Critica della teoria di Stein. La figura specialedeldelittodiusura.La leggeela vita. La società, la cambiale, il trasporto e alcuni contratti aleatori. Il contratto di società e le sue forme. La società e la. Il prestito usurario. persona incorporale. Il regime dell'autorizzazione e della vigilanza. La cambiale antica e la moderna. L'indole del contratto di trasporto. L'assicurazione e le nuove teorie. Il giuoco. La missione sociale del diritto privato. L'eguaglianza delle parti nella locazione di opera. I sistemi che regolano la responsabilità dell'intraprenditore negli infortuni del lavoro. La famiglia primitiva. L accoppiamento e l'istinto di riproduzione fra gli animali. Le teoriedi LUCREZIO e di VICO. Le unioni pri mitive. La famiglia femminile. L'erogamia ed il ratto. Gl'inizi e lo sviluppo della famiglia patriar   . matrimonio. Le sue condizioni.Il matrimonio civile. La precedenza del matrimonio civile. I rapporti fra i coniugi. L'autorizzazione maritale. Il libro di Bebel e le idee di Spencer. I sistemi con cui si regolano i beni nel matrimonio. L'indissolubilitá matrimoniale ed il divorzio. L'ideale dell'indissolubilità. Le esigenze concrete della vita.La quistione del divorzio in rapporto ai diritti individuali ed alle ragioni sociali e storiche. Il divorzio e la Chiesa. Le cause di divorzio.Le cautele. La tendenza a rivivere in altri. Il fondamento e le fasi della patria potestà. La tutela,le sue specie e la cura. L'adozione. I figli nati fuori del matrimonio. La ricerca della paternità. La legittimazione . Idea, storia e fondamento della successione. Il concetto dell'eredità. La successione legittima e la te. stamentaria nella storia. La successione ed il culto degli antenati. Le dottrine intorno al fondamento  cale. La progressiva individuazione della parentela. Il processo di specificazione e la fine della famiglia. L'amore come fondamento del matrimonio. L'idea del La societá coniugale.. La società parentale. della successione. Il condominio domestico ed il diritto di proprietà come basi della successione. La successione legittima e la testamentaria. La prossimità della parentela e del grado. La capacità   di succedere. Le classi degli eredi. La rappresentazione. La capacità di testare e di ricevere per testamento. Le specie di testamenti, La legittima. Il diritto di rappresentazione e la successione testamentaria. L'errore nella causa finale ed impulsiva, e le condizioni.Il diritto di accrescere. La sostituzione e la fiducia. I principi comuni ad ogni specie di successione. Il mondo romano è il mondo del volere, e quindi del diritto e della politica. Il volere in siffatto mondo da un lato continua a mostrarsi negli ordini superiori ed inflessibili dello stato, e dall'altro comincia a svolgersi in forma di diritto individuale. Con il principio del volere, di sua natura soggettivo, il diritto privato non può non sorgere, e lo stato non può più per lunghissimo tempo conservare le rozze sembianze d'una organica oggettività naturale. In Roma, il diritto privato ė nei suoi primi momenti stretto, ferreo ed arcano. Poi è ampliato, oltre al divenire palese, giovato, supplito e corretto dall'equità, ch'è lo stesso diritto in opposizione ad una legge, la quale non ha saputo attuarlo. Alla fine è diritto umano, e per conseguenza proclama il principio, che la schiavitù, istituto delle genti e contronatura, non riguarda l'anima, echegliuomi ni innanzi al diritto naturale sono liberi ed eguali. CICERONE, il filosofo più alto del mondo romano, non avendo coscienza scientifica della manifestazione del diritto soggettivo, come atto dell'astratta potenza del volere, ė inferiore alla stessa realtà romana. CICERONE non è autore di una filosofia propria, e segue d’ecclettico gli scrittori greci. CICERONE professa il dubbio, non crede che la mente possa  Il vuoto soggetto, rappresentato dall’accademici come oggetto, riceve ora tutta la sua concretezza, ed è in seno del Cristianesimo determinato quale Verbo o mente assoluta. La filosofia quinci innanzi s'informa al principio soggettivo. L'uomo, immagine di Dio ed in carnazione del verbo, si riabilita; e lo stato antico, perdendo il suo alto significato, è costretto a rimpiccolirsi. La parte più intima dell'individuo non è più sottoposta alla potestà politica , sibbene alle nuove credenze, che in origine si mantengono in quell'ambiente ce leste in cui sono nate, e si oppongono al mondo ancora pagano. L'Apostolo scorge una contraddizione tra gli stimoli della carne e gl’impulsi dello spirito. LATTANZIO crede che la vera giustizia sia nel culto di un divino unico, ignoto ai gentili. AGOSTINO parla di una città celeste, sede di verità e di giustizia, in antitesi alla città terre stre, fondazione di fratricidi e prodotto del peccato pri  6 essere assolutamente certa, é pago della semplice verosimiglianza. Nell'etica elimina il dubbio per leconseguenze dannose, e fa appello alla coscienza immediata, in cui si ritrovano i germi della virtù, ed al consenso del genere umano, per definire l'onesto e per stabilire alcuni pre supposti speculativi di esso. Preferisce il principio etico del PORTICO, che tempera da uomo pratico. Trae il diritto non dalle leggi di le XII tavole o dall'editto, ma dalla natura umana. Riproduce la teoria aristotelica del lo stato, e si attiene alla forma mista, propria degl’ordinamenti politici di Roma. Luigi Miraglia. Miraglia. Keywords. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Miraglia” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Misefari: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale --  implicatura anarchica – filosofia calabrese – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Palizzi). Filosofo italiano. ‘Io non sono italiano; io sono calabrese!” Fratello di Enzo (politico calabrese del P.C.I., storico e poeta), di Ottavio (calciatore reggino tra i più conosciuti nei primi anni del secolo; giocò nella Reggina e nel Messina) e di Florindo (biologo, attivista della Lega Sovversiva Studentesca e del gruppo "Bruno Filippi").  Dopo aver frequentato la scuola elementare del piccolo paese di nascita in provincia di Reggio Calabria, a undici anni si trasferì con lo zio proprio a Reggio Calabria. Già da adolescente, influenzato dalle frequentazioni di socialisti e anarchici in casa dello zio, partecipò attivamente alla fondazione e allo sviluppo di un circolo giovanile socialista (intitolato ad A. Babel, rivoluzionario tedesco dell'Ottocento). Iniziò a collaborare al giornale Il Lavoratore, organo della Camera del Lavoro di Reggio Calabria, firmando gli articoli come "Lo studente". Collaborò nello stesso periodo a Il Riscatto, periodico socialista-anarchico stampato a Messina; e con Il Libertario, stampato a La Spezia e diretto da Binazzi. A causa della sua attività anti-militarista esercitata all'interno del Circolo contro la Guerra italo-turca, fu arrestato e condannato a due mesi e mezzo di carcere per «istigazione alla pubblica disobbedienza».  Fu nei due anni successivi che M. si convertì dal socialismo all'anarchia. Ciò avvenne soprattutto con la frequentazione da parte di  Berti, suo professore di fisica presso l'"Istituto Tecnico Raffaele Piria".  Si trasferì a Napoli e si iscrisse al Politecnico, dopo avere studiato fisica e matematica alle superiori, e anche per non dispiacere al padre, proseguì tali studi. Pesò inoltre su questa decisione il fatto che in quegli anni, dopo la tragica distruzione della città di Reggio Calabria a causa del terremoto del 1908, il lavoro che garantiva le maggiori certezze era proprio quello dell'ingegnere. Nondimeno continuò per proprio conto gli studi a lui prediletti: politica, filosofia, letteratura, come aveva fatto fino ad allora. A Napoli si fece subito avanti nell'ambiente anarchico. Il movimento a Napoli contava allora di un centinaio di aderenti.  Si rifiuta di partecipare al corso allievi ufficiali a Benevento e fu condannato a quattro mesi di carcere militare. Diserterà una seconda volta, trovando rifugio nella campagna del beneventano in casa di un contadino. Tornato a Reggio Calabria, interruppe una manifestazione interventista nella centrale Piazza Garibaldi, salendo sul palco e pronunciando un discorso antimilitarista. Venne per questo motivo arrestato e condotto presso il carcere militare di Acireale; sette mesi dopo venne trasferito presso quello di Benevento. Da lì riuscì ad evadere grazie alla complicità di un amico secondino. Fu tuttavia intercettato alla frontiera del confine svizzero; ancora incarcerato, riuscì nuovamente nella fuga. Tocca il territorio svizzero, ma i gendarmi lo condussero al carcere di Lugano. Giunte dalla Calabria le informazioni su di lui, essendo un uomo politico, dopo quindici giorni fu lasciato libero con la facoltà di scegliere il luogo di residenza. Indicò subito Zurigo, dove sapeva di potere rintracciare Misiano, suo caro amico e noto esponente politico socialista, anche lui accusato di diserzione. A Zurigo trovò ospitalità presso la famiglia Zanolli, dove si innamorò della giovane Pia, che diventerà sua compagna di vita.  Durante il periodo di esilio in Svizzera, Bruno svolgeva attività politica tenendo i contatti con Luigi Bertoni e con altri gruppi anarchici elvetici, collaborando anche al giornale: Il Risveglio Comunista Anarchico. Svolse una serie di conferenze in varie città della Svizzera. M. si autoannunciava con un suo pseudonimo anagrammatico Furio Sbarnemi. A Zurigo frequenta la Cooperativa socialista di Militaerstrasse 36 e la libreria internazionale di Zwinglistrasse gestita dai disertori Monnanni, Ghezzi e Arrigoni; in questi ambienti conosce anche Angelica Balabanoff.  Venne arrestato per un complotto inventato dalla polizia. Fu incolpato innocentemente con l'accusa di avere fomentato una rivolta nella città e di «aver fabbricato bombe a scopo rivoluzionario». Con lui furono arrestati diversi attivisti politici, tra i quali lo stesso Francesco Misiano (che fu poi rilasciato perché socialista e non anarchico). Rimase in carcere per sette mesi, e venne poi espulso dalla Svizzera. Grazie ad un regolare passaporto per la Germania, ottenuto per ragioni di studio, si recò a Stoccarda.Lì entrò in contatto con Zetkin (che gli rilascia una lunga intervista sul movimento rivoluzionario in Germania) e Vincenzo Ferrer. Poté rientrare in patria, in seguito all'amnistia promulgata dal governo Nitti. -- è a Napoli e poi a Reggio Calabria. E un periodo intenso per la sua vita militante di M. A Napoli partecipò come oratore a molte manifestazioni, si prodigò a favore dei suoi compagni colpiti dalla repressione, denunciò le provocazioni della polizia; tenne numerose conferenze e comizi. Con il dentista anarchico Giuseppe Imondi, stampò alcuni numeri del giornale: L'Anarchia. In autunno fu chiamato a Taranto a svolgere il compito di segretario propagandista presso la locale Camera del Lavoro Sindacale. Ha stretti contatti con Malatesta, Berneri, Binazzi, Borghi, Vittorio e altri esponenti dell'anarchismo e del sovversivismo italiano. Si impegnò su più fronti per la campagna a favore degli anarchici Sacco e Vanzetti. Nello stesso periodo e corrispondente di: Umanità Nova, settimanale anarchico diretto da Malatesta e collaborò al periodico: L'Avvenire Anarchico di Pisa. Continuò i suoi studi a Napoli con qualche salto a Reggio Calabria con la sua compagna  Zanolli, che sposò. Si laureò a Napoli. Successivamente si iscrisse anche alla facoltà di filosofia.  Nonostante l'avvento del fascismo, fondò un giornale libertario, “L'Amico del popolo,” che però dopo il quarto numero fu soppresso dalle autorità. Nel primo numero del giornale,scrisse un editoriale dal titolo “Chi sono e cosa vogliono gli anarchici.” Lo scritto è l'espressione del suo pensiero libertario:  «L'anarchismo è una tendenza naturale, che si trova nella critica delle organizzazioni gerarchiche e delle concezioni autoritarie, e nel movimento progressivo dell'umanità e perciò non può essere una utopia.»  Da esperto di geologia, progettò per primo in Calabria l'industria del vetro e fondò a Villa S.Giovanni, la prima vetreria in Calabria (Società Vetraria Calabrese). In quegli stessi anni subì però persecuzioni continue da parte del regime. E cancellato dall'Albo di categoria e non poté più firmare progetti. Gli venne mossa l'accusa di avere «attentato ai poteri dello Stato, per il proposito di uccidere il re e Mussolini». Fu prosciolto dopo venticinque giorni di carcere. La polizia ravvisò in un discorso di commemorazione durante il funerale di un amico (tra l'altro un industriale fascista, Zagarella) un'ispirazione anarchica e pertanto lo propose per l'assegnazione al confino. Fu arrestato, in carcere si sposa con Pia Zanolli, fu inviato per il confino, prigioniero a Ponza. Tuttavia sembra che tale provvedimento fosse stato determinato da altri motivi. M., che era ingegnere minerario, si era attivamente impegnato nello sfruttamento su larga scala di giacimenti di quarzo, materia prima per l'industria vetraria, che fino a quell'epoca dipendeva, in gran parte, dai silicati stranieri.  Assunto come direttore tecnico della Società Vetraria Calabrese (di cui era stato finanziatore e Presidente il succitato Zagarella) egli si era dovuto ben presto scontrare con l'assenteismo e l'inettitudine del consiglio di amministrazione che si schierò contro di lui con l'intenzione di eliminarlo in qualsiasi modo, ricorrendo anche ad espedienti politici. Giustizia e Libertà, in un articolo anonimo ddal titolo «Politica e affarismo. Il caso di un ingegnere libertario», attribuisce la causa del confino alle manovre dei suoi ex soci. Durante il confino stringe amicizia con Torrigiani, Gran Maestro del Grande Oriente d'Italia, il quale lo affilia alla Massoneria.  L'amnistia del decennale del fascismo lo liberò dal confino dopo due anni. Ma tornato in Calabria vide il vuoto intorno a sé; scrive infatti a sua moglie: "Amnistiato sì, però a quale prezzo: la salute sconquassata, senza un soldo, senza prospettive per l'avvenire". Gli viene diagnosticata l'esistenza di un tumore alla testa. Va e viene con la moglie da Zurigo a Reggio Calabria. Riesce a trovare il capitale necessario per l'impianto di uno stabilimento per lo sfruttamento della silice a Davoli (in provincia di Catanzaro).  Le sue condizioni di salute peggiorano a causa del tumore. Perde conoscenza, viene ricoverato in stato gravissimo nella clinica romana del Senatore Giuseppe Bastianelli, e lì si spense la sera stessa. Ancora ragazzo, studente, cominciò a ribellarsi contro l'ingiustizia del mondo che lo circondava: Palizzi Superiore, un paese tra i monti dove il castello feudale dei signori locali dominava la valle, dove si ammucchiavano piccole e povere case desolate di contadini. E si ribellò a quel mondo, costruito secondo quell'immagine topografica che portava impresso nella memoria: sopra, chi comanda e non lavora, sotto, chi subisce e lavora. E ancora ragazzo cominciò a sognare un mondo in cui quella gerarchia fosse sovvertita prima, distrutta poi. Poteva scegliere di ispirarsi al socialismo marxistico o al socialismo libertario. Del primo apprezzava l'analisi dell'antagonismo tra le classi, ma mostrava perplessità circa i mezzi proposti dalla diagnosi marxistica per fronteggiare il pericolo di una rivincita dell'avversario di classe. Inclinò perciò verso il socialismo libertario.  «Nel comunismo libertario io sarò ancora anarchico? Certo. Ma non di meno sono oggi un amante del comunismo. L'anarchismo è la tendenza alla perfetta felicità umana. esso dunque è, e sarà sempre, ideale di rivolta, individuale o collettivo, oggi come domani. M., Taccuino personale. La scelta della diserzione fu coerente con il suo obiettivo di combattere non la guerra degli stati, ma a fianco degli oppressi di tutto il mondo contro il loro nemico, tenendo alta la bandiera dell'internazionalismo. Pur sottoposto senza tregua alla persecuzione della polizia e all'inquisizione della magistratura, fu sempre al suo posto accanto a coloro che lavoravano e soffrivano. Come ogni rivoluzionario sincero e coerente, pagò col carcere e col confino la sua fede in un ideale.  Chi sono gli anarchici. Secondo M., essere anarchici voleva dire per prima cosa proclamare, contro ogni violenza, l'inviolabilità della vita umana. Inoltre significava lottare per l'abolizione della proprietà privata e a favore della socializzazione dei mezzi di produzione e di scambio. Proprio per questo gli anarchici sono, di fondo, dei socialisti. A questo esperimento di vita sociale andava affiancata la lotta contro lo Stato, che ne impediva la realizzazione. E la lotta contro lo Stato non poteva essere vittoriosa se non con la rivoluzione. Dunque gli anarchici sono socialisti, antistatali e rivoluzionari. Elemento fondamentale della lotta, secondo Misefari, era l'allargamento di essa alla sfera internazionale. È comunque una lotta che non si fa violenta. M. è fortemente pacifista, contrario all'uso della forza e della violenza armata. L'anarchico è inoltre antireligioso: la religione infatti è considerata "fattore di abbrutimento per l'umanità".  Antimilitarismo Per M. la guerra è pura barbarie, speculazione capitalistica consumata in nome dello Stato.  «L'esistenza del militarismo è la dimostrazione migliore del grado di ignoranza, di servile sottomissione, di crudeltà, di barbarie a cui è arrivata la società umana. Quando della gente può fare l'apoteosi del militarismo e della guerra senza che la collera popolare si rovesci su di essa, si può affermare con certezza assoluta che la società è sull'orlo della decadenza e perciò sulla soglia della barbarie, o è una accolita di belve in veste umana.»  Religione La religione è considerata come un anestetico delle facoltà critiche della mente umana. Sarebbe proprio la religione a imprigionare le energie morali dell'uomo, a inebetire lo spirito critico e di riflessione. Perciò i popoli più religiosi sarebbero i meno progrediti e i più afflitti dalla tirannia, mentre, laddove la religione sparisce, lì è florida la libertà e il benessere.  «È il più solido puntello del capitalismo e dello Stato, i due tiranni del popolo. Ed è anche il più temibile alleato dell'ignoranza e del male.»  È forte nel pensiero di M. la volontà di sottolineare l'uguaglianza sociale tra uomo e donna. In anni difficili e lontani dalle battaglie del femminismo di metà Novecento, egli afferma che la donna nobilita e abbellisce la condizione di vita umana. È dovere della donna lottare per risollevarsi da una condizione di inferiorità, che è tale in virtù di un "delitto sociale" e non dovuta a leggi di natura.  «Donne, in voi e per voi è la vita del mondo: sorgete, noi siamo uguali!»  M. vive di sogni, di ideali. Nella sua concezione non esiste un artista, che sia poeta, filosofo, persino scienziato, che si sia mai messo al servizio della menzogna. Se tutti potevano essere vili, un artista non poteva.  «Un poeta o uno scrittore, che non abbia per scopo la ribellione, che lavori per conservare lo status quo della società, non è un artista: è un morto che parla in poesia o in prosa. L'arte deve rinnovare la vita e i popoli, perciò deve essere eminentemente rivoluzionaria. Poesia composta da M.:  FALCO RIBELLE. Un giovane falco che drizza il libero volo Ne l'alto, ove sono i fulgori di soli immortali Un giovane falco ribelle o piccoli, io sono. Mi spinge ne' campi ignorati, un acre desio Di sante ideali battaglie, di luce e di gloria. Mi splende nell'occhio la speme di certe vittoria, Mi parla nel core la voce sinfonica, dolce D'un caro sublime Pensiero, ch'è Bene ed Amore. Ho giovini l'ale e robuste, o venti, o cicloni, O fulmini immani feroci, vi lancio la sfida. Voi soli potete pugnare col giovine falco, Chè Luce, chè Forza, chè Vita multanime siete. Ma voi, piccoli, no. Coi vermi guazzate nel fango, Dal fango mirate del falco il libero volo.»  Frammenti «Prima di pensare di rivoluzionare le masse, bisogna essere sicuri di aver rivoluzionato noi stessi»  «Ogni uomo è figlio dell'educazione e della istruzione che riceve da fanciullo. Gli Anarchici non seguono le leggi fatte dagli uominiquelle non li riguardanoseguono invece le leggi della natura»  «Prima l'educazione del cuore, poi l'educazione della mente»  «Socialismo vuol dire uguaglianza, vuol dire libertà. Ma l'uguaglianza non può essere senza libertà; come la libertà non può essere senza l'uguaglianza: dunque socialismo e anarchia sono due termini dello stesso binomio, sono i due inseparabili fattori della redenzione proletaria.»  «Quando la giustizia non sarà la durda infame delle tirannidi, quando l'amore non sarà deriso, quando il ferro non sarà legge e l'oro non sarà dio, quando la libertà sarà religione e sola nobiltà il lavoro, allora, solo allora, il mio rifiuto della guerra sarà benedetto.»  «M'è questa notte eterna assai men grave del dì che mi mostrò viltà dei forti e pecorilità di plebi schiave. Lungi da quì il pianto: sto ben coi morti!  (epitaffio) Opere complete M., Schiaffi e carezze, Roma, Morara, M., Diario di un disertore, La Nuova Italia, Entrambi i testi sono stati pubblicati postumi sotto lo pseudonimo Furio Sbarnemi.  Le schede biografiche di alcuni esponenti anarchici calabresi, A/Rivista Anarchica, Antonioli, Antonioli, E. Misefari.  Antonioli,  Pia Zanolli era nata a Belluno. Dopo il matrimonio con Misefari, fu iscritta nell'albo dei sovversivi pericolosi, venendo poi arrestata col marito a Domodossola (cfr.: A/Rivista Anarchica)  Chi sono e cosa vogliono gli anarchici, ed. settembre.  Antonioli, Pia Zanolli, L'Anarchico di Calabria, Roma, La Nuova Italia, Utopia? No, Pia Zanolli, Roma, ALBA Centro Stampa, E. Misefari, biografia di un fratello, Milano, Zero in condotta, M. Antonioli, Gianpietro Berti, Santi Fedele, Pasquale Luso, Dizionario biografico degli anarchici italianiVolume 2, Pisa, Biblioteca Franco Serantini, Bruno Misefari, Schiaffi, Carezze e altro, Pino Vermiglio, Laureana di Borrello, Ogginoi, Furio Sbarnemi, Diario di un disertore, Camerano (AN), Gwynplaine, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Horizons Unlimited srl. Bruno Misefari presso l'International Institute of Social History di Amsterdam, su iisg.amsterdam, Fondo M. presso la Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso di Roma, su fondazione basso. Gli anarchici contro il fascismo, celebre articolo di Giorgio Sacchetti. Bruno Misefari. Misefari. Keywords: implicatura. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Misefari” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Moderato: la ragione conversazionale -- da Crotone a Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza.  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Scuole Pitagoriche. Attivo in epoca neroniana.  Scrisse Lezioni pitagoriche, un'opera articolata in dieci libri, in cui l'autore, rappresentante di quella scuola di pensiero che assommava nel sincretismo ellenistico temi platonici, pitagorici, greci e orientali, pone in antitesi la «Triade» spirituale, rappresentata dall'Uno, l'Intelletto, l'Anima, alla «Diade» rappresentata dalla materia. Di tale opera ci restano solo alcuni frammenti tramandatici da Stobeo. Sembra che le sue Lezioni ebbero una certa influenza sul Neoplatonismo. Calle, Un pitágorico en Gades (Philostr., VA). Uso, abuso y comentario de una tradición, Gallaecia. Collegamenti esterni Moderato di Gades, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Calogero, M, Enciclopedia; M. Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia M., su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Categorie: Filosofi romani Persone legate a Cadice Neopitagorici. Moderato.

 

Grice e Modio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del disonore sessuale -- la filosofia del Tevere – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Santa Severina). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Only in Italy a philosopher writes a treatise on a river – although the Isis would not be out of place for some Magdalenite!” – Grice: “His convito is a jewel!” – Seguace di Neri. Originario di Santa Severina, borgo collinare della Calabria Ulteriore, fu avviato agli studi di filosofia presso l'Archiginnasio di Napoli; in seguito passò a Roma, dove si avviò agli studi in medicina divenendo allievo di Fusconi.  Modio frequenta gli ambienti accademici, dove entrò in contatto con alcuni dei maggiori esponenti di spicco di quell'epoca come Molza e Tolomei.  Pubblica la sua prima opera letteraria più famosa dal titolo I”l convito; overo, del peso della moglie: un dialogo diegetico” (Roma, Bressani) -- ambientato a Roma durante il carnevale della città capitolina, in cui viene trattato il tema delle corna durante un convivio presieduto dall'allora vescovo di Piacenza Trivulzio e a cui parteciparono anche Gambara, Marmitta, Benci, Selvago, Raineri e Cesario. E altresì grande estimatore degli saggi di Piccolomini.  Durante la stesura in lingua volgare di un Operetta de’ Sogni, si ammala di febbre altissima. Si spense dopo qualche giorno a Roma, nella tenuta di palazzo Ricci in via Giulia.  Altri saggi: “Il Tevere, dove si ragiona in generale della natura di tutte le acque, et in particolare di quella del fiume di Roma” (Roma, Luchini) “Origine del proverbio che si suol dire "anzi corna che croci" (Roma, A. degli Antonii,” Jacopone da Todi, I Cantici del beato Iacopone da Todi, con diligenza ristampati, con la gionta di alcuni discorsi sopra di essi e con la vita sua nuovamente posta in luce” (Roma, Salviano). Prospetto autore, su edit16.iccu.. Modio, Il Tevere, cit., c. 45r  Anno di pubblicazione della medesima opera. G. Cassiani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken in the study of sex and gender in Italy from 1300 to 1700 and highlights the impact that recent scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of approaching this subject.In this interdisciplinary volume, twelve scholars of history, literature, art history, and philosophy use a variety of both textual and visual sources to examine themes such as gender identities and dynamics, sexual transgression and sexual identities in leading Renaissance cities. It is divided into three sections, which work together to provide an overview of the influence of sex and gender in all aspects of Renaissance society from politics and religion to literature and art. Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder deals with issues of law, religion, and violence in marital relationships; Part II: Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender considers gender in relation to the senses and emotions; and Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image investigates gender, sexuality, and erotica in art and literature.Bringing to life this increasingly prominent area of historical study, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy is ideal for students of Renaissance Italy and early modern gender and sexuality. SEX, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN RENAISSANCE ITALY Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy explores the new directions being taken in the study of sex and gender in Italy from 1300 to 1700 and highlights the impact that recent scholarship has had in revealing innovative ways of approaching this subject. In this interdisciplinary volume, twelve scholars of history, literature, art history, and philosophy use a variety of both textual and visual sources to examine themes such as gender identities and dynamics, sexual transgression and sexual identities in leading Renaissance cities. It is divided into three sections, which work together to provide an overview of the inf luence of sex and gender in all aspects of Renaissance society from politics and religion to literature and art. Part I: Sex, Order, and Disorder deals with issues of law, religion, and violence in marital relationships; Part II: Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender considers gender in relation to the senses and emotions; and Part III: Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image investigates gender, sexuality, and erotica in art and literature. Bringing to life this increasingly prominent area of historical study, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy is ideal for students of Renaissance Italy and early modern gender and sexuality. Dedication This collection is dedicated to Konrad Eisenbichler, a true Renaissance man who produces bold and prodigious scholarship in multiple research areas with grace, ease, and erudition. For Konrad, sociability is correlated with scholarship. He has spent his career creating communities and networks of scholars around the world. These networks have been brought together through his tireless work for learned societies, publication series, and journals. Konrad not only produces scholarship but is also heavily invested in disseminating the scholarship of others. Scholarly interests often have unusual and serendipitous origins. In a certain sense, this collection began with a codpiece. Konrad’s first scholarly contribution to the field of sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy developed out of a casual conversation with a colleague who provided enthusiastic encouragement. What resulted was a presentation playfully entitled “The Dynastic Codpiece” to the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies in 1987. He revised and published it as “Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere” (Renaissance and Reformation, 1988), an article still cited thirty years later. In this truly groundbreaking interdisciplinary piece, Konrad examined the overly large codpieces worn by Renaissance men for the social and familial messages they conveyed, showing how the messages passed between the generations in competing dynastic portraits. The article established Konrad as a new and powerful voice in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Italian Renaissance. It also illustrated beautifully how his scholarship is inherently interdisciplinary, bridging and incorporating history and literature with artistic representations. Konrad greets friends, colleagues, and students with warmth, good humor, and generosity. A significant manifestation of his academic hospitality is revealed in the multitude of conferences he has organized: forty between 1983 and 2018. These are special events, international in nature, and ref lecting the hostorganizer’s generosity. They are venues conducive to the exchange of ideas and the formation of friendships. It is most appropriate that the most recent of these focused on “Early Modern Cultures of Hospitality.” The themes generally ref lect Konrad’s sense of the discipline and where it is going; these conferences most often culminate in a significant collection of essays, including Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (1996; co-edited with Jacqueline Murray) which helped to promote the study of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Konrad has made myriad contributions to individuals and institutions. His contributions to Renaissance scholarship span social history, women’s history, religious history, and literature. He publishes equally in Italian and English,moving easily between scholarly cultures. A scholar with a global reach, he interacts with colleagues spread across North America, to Italy and Europe more broadly, as well as Australia and South Africa. The heart of his many contributions to the study of Italian Renaissance society lies in his research on sex, gender, and sexuality. In recognition of that, some of his friends and colleagues joined to celebrate Konrad’s creativity, scholarship, and friendship with essays that demonstrate the creative developments in the field since that fateful codpiece three decades ago. We are honored to dedicate this volume to Konrad Eisenbichler in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to Renaissance society and culture. Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy: themes and approaches in recent scholarship Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstraix xi xii1PART ISex, order, and disorder192 The lord who rejected love, or the Griselda story (X, 10) reconsidered yet again Guido Ruggiero213 Sexual violence in the Sienese state before and after the fall of the republic Elena Brizio354 In the neighborhood: residence, community, and the sex trade in early modern Bologna Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas Terpstra535 Though popes said don’t, some people did: adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome Elizabeth S. Cohen Sense and sensuality in sex and gender 6 “Bodily things” and brides of Christ: the case of the early seventeenth-century “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini Patricia Simons 7 In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce Thomas V. Cohen 8 Aesthetics, dress, and militant masculinity in Castiglione’s Courtier Gerry Milligan9 The sausage wars: or how the sausage and carne battled for gastronomic and social prestige in Renaissance literature and culture Laura Giannetti Visualizing sexuality in word and image18110 Gianantonio Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”: homosexuality in art, life, and history James M. Saslow18311 Vagina dialogues: Piccolomini’s Raffaella and Aretino’s Ragionamenti Ian Frederick Moulton21112 Giovan Battista della Porta’s erotomanic art of recollection Sergius Kodera22713 “O mie arti fallaci”: Tasso’s saintly women in the Liberata and Conquistata Jane Tylus247Bibliography of Konrad Eisenbichler’s publications on sex and gender  The editors would like to thank Vanessa McCarthy who donned two hats for this project, that of an author and that of editorial associate. Her scholarly knowledge and administrative expertise contributed significantly to the preparation of this volume, and we’re grateful for her dedication and expertise. We would like to thank the editorial team at Routledge for their support and guidance over the course of this project. Laura Pilsworth guided it through its inception and commissioning, while Lydia de Cruz shepherded it through the final stages of preparation and production, assisted by Morwenna Scott. The University of Guelph and the University of Toronto provide generous support for the research activities of Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra respectively. Thanks as well to the congenial group of scholars whose work is collected here. While editing collections is sometimes likened to herding cats, these colleagues were responsive, generous, and patient. Above all, they were enthusiastic about the opportunity to contribute to a collection which could serve as a gift to a friend and colleague, Konrad Eisenbichler, who has himself been the soul of generosity. We are honored to have worked with you all. Themes and approaches in recent scholarship. From the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, the Italian Renaissance was approached almost exclusively as a period of learning, elegance, and manners as ref lected by the arts and letters of the time. In The Book of the Courtier Castiglione’s perfect courtier embodied virtù and sprezzatura, the two qualities that epitomized Renaissance masculinity. Elite men were celebrated for their bravado, skill, and insouciant nonchalance, whether these were exercised on the fields of battle, the production of art or poetry, or the seduction of women. Castiglione also details the qualities of the ideal court lady, a woman valued for her beauty and affability along with her manners, intellect, and ability to please men. These qualities were appreciated equally in another group of notable women, the courtesans whose beauty and literary accomplishments were acclaimed by poets and artists alike. Thanks in part to the enduring inf luence of Jackob Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860; English translation 1878), this idealized portrayal of sixteenth-century Italian men and women dominated twentieth-century historiography and shaped how a number of generations understood sex, gender, and sexuality in the Renaissance. The idealized creations of Castiglione and Burckhardt, their princes and poets, court ladies and courtesans, appeared as the bright stars in the Renaissance firmament, and contributed to the lure of the field. Yet all along they were chimeras, stereotypes created by Renaissance elites and perpetuated by modern scholars of Renaissance culture. Even when individuals appeared to embody these ideal qualities, they were the exceptions, standing apart from thousands of their contemporaries, urban and rural, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, respectable and disreputable. The idealized courtier, court lady, and courtesan obscure everyday life in Renaissance Italy. In the 1970s, scholars began to ask new questions that ultimately led to a recalibration of research on the history of sex, gender, and sexuality in the2Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraRenaissance. One of the earliest collections was Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (edited by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 1978), which includes topics that are wide ranging and represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives. They include sexuality within marriage, sexual sins and eroticism, celibacy, hermaphrodites, homosexuality, and how the human body was understood. These essays from the 1970s foreground important questions about sex, gender, and sexuality in the past. Yet their scope and insights are constrained. Most essays are based on close, summative readings of literary texts from Dante and Chaucer to Shakespeare and other imaginative authors, but these close readings of texts lack the contextualization or critical perspective to enhance their insights. While the occasional essay engages with multiple sources and genres, the absence of critical theoretical and interdisciplinary analysis inhibits the development of a more comprehensive picture of how issues of human sexuality were actually addressed at this time. Significantly, however, the authors did identify emerging themes that would become central to the study of sex, gender, and sexuality. This collection opened the way to the study of topics such as the nature of the sexed human body, the complexities of celibacy as a sexuality, and the f luidity of sexualities and genders. While prescient in research subjects, the authors did not employ the theoretical and methodological tools that developed soon after publication, tools that were necessary for deeper and more complex analyses of sex, gender, and sexuality. These tools were being forged with the new theories and methodologies of the 1970s that were opening new research subjects and that led to innovations and new definitions of the individual and the self. A series of studies in that decade revolutionized scholarship and have continued to have a transformative inf luence on the understanding of the history of sex, gender, and sexuality into the twenty-first century. The most inf luential authors behind this work perceived the Renaissance to be more complex both in the quotidian aspects of daily life and also in extraordinary behaviors. In 1978, the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality occasioned both excitement and consternation among historians of sex. Foucault, a philosopher and leading post-structuralist scholar, wrote extensively on social construction and social control in European society, including studies of prisons, madness, and surveillance. These perspectives informed his ref lections about the construction and control of sexuality in the European past. Indeed, Foucault’s intervention challenged scholars to reexamine their approaches to sex and sexuality. Another major contribution to the recalibrating of historical studies of sex, gender, and sexuality was John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980). Boswell demonstrated that in the premodern world there were men who engaged in homosocial and/or homosexual relationships, although traditional history had obscured them behind the ecclesiastical rhetoric of homophobia. Boswell argued that there were gay men throughout premodern Europe but his methodology and conclusions were criticized as essentialist and lacking the appropriate consideration of context and cultural inf luences such as Foucault had urged. Nevertheless, despite criticismsSex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 3about essentialism, Boswell did uncover homosexual (sodomitical) and homoaffective men across society, integrated into both clerical and secular societies. In this way, Boswell forged a path for scholars to search for and analyze multiple sexualities that had been overlooked by traditional history or were obscured by the absence of explicit evidence. One of the most telling criticisms levelled at both Foucault and Boswell was their neglect of gender as a category of historical analysis. Arguably, men and women experience the world differently according to how society evaluates and constructs women. This applies equally in the realm of sex and sexuality, which is neither natural nor essential. Foucault paid scarce attention to women’s alternative experience of social construction and surveillance of sex and sexuality. Similarly, while lauded for opening the past for research on homosexuality, Boswell was criticized for eliding lesbians and other non-normative women under the category “gay,” thus perpetuating their invisibility. A more refined and incisive analytical framework emerged out of these debates. What began as women’s history in the 1970s, with the goal of recuperating women in the past, transformed into the critical lens of feminist studies, which analyzed the institutions and structures that restricted or shaped their lives, or contributed to their invisibility in historical scholarship. The other significant theoretical contribution to the new study of sex, gender, and sexuality falls under the rubric of cultural studies. This is a multifaceted approach emerging from literary studies, postmodernism, discourse analysis, and other theoretical perspectives that provided scholars with new linguistic and analytical tools. This versatile and complex perspective also encouraged explicitly interdisciplinary research which suits the intricate nature of sex, gender, and sexuality. As a result, there is a richer sense of the possibilities that were available for the lived reality of sex, gender, and sexuality and an expanded ability to study and evaluate the values, beliefs, and experiences of people in the past. These innovations emerged at a time when the traditional Burckhardtian narratives were being widely criticized by political, social, and intellectual historians, and by the mid-1980s new scholarship was appearing that brought new insights to sex and gender in the Italian Renaissance. They applied methodologies that bridged differences in social and economic status, sex, sexuality, and gender, geography, and religion. While the traditional sources of high culture—art and literature in particular—continued to provide a valuable foundation for understanding the rich cultural life and artefacts of the Renaissance, new analytical approaches yielded new insights. Diverse sources of evidence—court records, letters, chronicles, and Inquisitorial documents, among others—provided access to new populations including servants and prostitutes and the inhabitants of the streets and taverns of myriad Italian towns and cities. These new critical studies were a prelude to the research that would appear in the next two decades. Guido Ruggiero’s The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1985) early on demonstrated how new methodologies and new sources were able to reveal hitherto unexplored worlds of Renaissance sex, gender, and4Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstrasexuality. Ruggiero examines the wide variety of sex crimes that were committed in Venice and he analyzes the various courts and disciplinary councils which enforced the laws, including those pertaining to sexual transgressions. The records reveal an intricate and contradictory approach to regulating sexuality that extended from conventional acts such as adultery and fornication to more egregious behaviors including rape and sodomy. Ruggiero’s essays meet the challenges and opportunities posed by Foucault and Boswell, by feminist history and gender studies. His interdisciplinary reading of the evidence, ranging from the many cases discussed by the criminal courts, along with careful analysis of individual testimony, widened the scope of enquiry. Ruggiero’s discussion reveals the rich detail about individuals, as they negotiated the social norms of sexuality and gender. He brings readers to an understanding of the social context and how individuals were integrated into their local communities and that of wider Venetian society. The movement towards more sophisticated, nuanced, and focused considerations is also ref lected in Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (1996) by Michael Rocke. In many ways, Rocke took on the challenge presented by John Boswell to identify men who had sex with men in their social contexts. Rather than othering them or pulling these men out of their community, Rocke engages with homosexuality as an integral part of Florentine society and culture. He examines seventy years of documentation from the “Office of the Night,” which was established to oversee denunciations of homosexual (sodomitical) activity. This allowed Rocke to trace the nature of relationships between men, how they were treated by society, how and why they were denounced to the court, and the penalties levied. His scholarship reveals that, despite the harsh evaluation of sodomy in ecclesiastical law and in various secular jurisdictions, Florence displayed remarkable tolerance. Where Boswell’s research had scanned 1000 years of European history, seeking to identify men who were possibly homosexual, Rocke analyzes deep and focused sources to identify a specific group of men, applying sophisticated theoretical and methodological tools to reveal new understandings of non-normative sexuality in the Italian Renaissance. Judith Brown’s Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986) similarly contributed to the new approaches to sexuality and identity. She focused on non-normative sexuality, although in a unique context. Here the background is not the streets, homes, and markets of the large, cosmopolitan cities of Renaissance Italy. Rather, Brown’s subjects lived within the walls of a convent, separated from the worldly temptations of secular life. Yet, even in a community of women vowed to chastity, Brown finds convoluted self-identities and a sexual relationship between two women that was transgressive and multivalent. The case of the “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini was instantly controversial. Could two nuns possibly have a conscious lesbian sexual identity, given the social norms and religious context in which they lived? This is the same criticism that greeted John Boswell’s assertions about “gay” men in premodern Europe.Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 5There was widespread agreement that categories such as gay or lesbian were products of late twentieth-century Western society and to impose them back in time was anachronistic and misleading. Moreover, in this case, the individuals evoked far more questions than those of sexual identity or sexual activity, with a relationship complicated by angelic possession and mystical visions. The debate surrounding Carlini’s activities and identities continues, as Patricia Simon’s essay in this collection demonstrates. Yet one of the most enduring contributions of Brown’s study, for the history of sexuality and gender, is her ability to cross 600 years and engage intimately with individuals of the past. This is a history of two nuns, in an out-of-the-way convent, who experienced rich and problematic inner lives, beyond what might be expected. Whether the women can be categorized as “lesbians” does not dispel the impact of recuperating lost women and a lost past, the meaning and implications of which continue to attract scholarly analysis. The profound transformation that occurred between 1978 and 1996 in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality in premodern Europe began with the recognition of new topics and moved to a more rigorous application of the intervening theoretical and methodological insights of Foucault and Boswell, of feminism and cultural studies. If the former approach is exemplified by essays collected in Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1978), the latter is evident in the essays in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (edited by Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, 1996). This volume stresses that human behavior manifests both continuities and transitions that can be independently evaluated and separated from arbitrary and obsolete periodization. Many essays integrate traditional periods moving seamlessly into a premodern world. Some essays rely on traditional Renaissance evidence but deploy law, art, and literature to examine new research questions. Rona Goffen examines Titian’s frescoes to explore misogyny. Other authors address innovative, even bold or cheeky themes. Feminism and critical theory are deployed throughout the collection. The usefulness of interdisciplinarity to reveal new aspects of society and cultural experience is equally evident. Dyan Elliott’s reexamination of the reciprocity of the conjugal debt, the notion that a husband and wife have equal call on their spouse for sexual access jostles the foundations of premodern marriage. Rather than accepting the idea that a married couple’s sex life was balanced and equitable, Elliott concludes that wives were subordinate even in bed and had no right to refuse sexual intercourse. Ivana Elbl examines the doubly transgressive sexual liaisons among Portuguese sailors to Africa. Sailors, who were often already married with families in Europe, frequently formed enduring relationships with African “wives,” transgressing both Christian monogamy and establishing irregular relationships with non-Christian women. Significantly, in Africa these unions were ignored or tolerated by Portuguese leaders, ecclesiastical as much as secular. More theoretically adventuresome is Nancy Partner’s exploration of the psychological dimensions of sexuality. She applies contemporary psychological theory, in particular Freud, to assess the sexual dimensions6Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstraof mystics and their ecstatic visions. Even the realm of masturbatory pornography is probed through Andrew Taylor’s critical reading of marginalia and other physical marks and stains on manuscript pages which could ref lect the sexual responses of readers to the texts. The essays in Desire and Discipline reveal the richness, diversity, and intellectually invigorating research that in just two decades had made the new field of sex, gender, and sexuality one of the most exciting areas in Renaissance studies. While ref lecting new research areas, the roots of which can be found in the theoretical and methodological innovations in the late twentieth century, the essays in Desire and Discipline build upon traditional topics and themes and frequently employ conventional Renaissance sources, to stimulate a metamorphosis of old research perspectives into new and innovative ones. Thus, the ideal courtier has become a man subject to gender-based analysis while the lens of feminist analysis reveals the court lady to be not so much an equal but rather a pale, subordinate shadow to the courtier. Similarly, freed from her artificial manners and learning, the courtesan is revealed as a masculine fiction sanitized from the precarious and harsh life of Renaissance prostitutes. The last quarter of the twentieth century, then, was a watershed for the historiography of sex, gender, and sexuality. Pioneering scholarship foreshadowed issues that would preoccupy later scholars and set the trajectory for subsequent research. This scaffolding of new research questions, theories, and methodologies has resulted in creative approaches that are rapidly transforming the field. While monographs have been, and continue to be, written about sex, gender, and sexuality in the Renaissance, it seems that these topics, at this point in the evolution of scholarship, lend themselves more readily to the genres of essays or journal articles. The essay form allows scholars to analyze focused bodies of evidence and arrive at conclusions that are precise and demonstrable. Presumably, at some point these focused studies will coalesce into broader discussions leading to more generalized conclusions. For the moment, however, the essay collection remains the most significant means for the dissemination of research. Two essay collections in particular demonstrate the very promising new approaches to research into sex, gender, and sexuality in the twenty-first century. In A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (2010), Katherine Crawford provides a chapter that offers redirection from the perspectives of Foucault. She points back to the important role of classical literature, mediated by Christian values, in the formation of beliefs about sexuality and marriage, and classical medical literature which defined the sexed body. In A Cultural History of Sexuality edited by Bette Talvacchia (2011), nine essays address a wide variety of questions about Renaissance sexuality as they emerge from diverse sources. Essays focus on the troubled categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and sex with respect to religion, medicine, popular beliefs, prostitution, and erotica. Collectively, this collection opens wide the possibilities in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality.Sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 7In order best to demonstrate how recent work has reshaped and advanced the field of sex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy, we have organized the essays of this collection into three sections. The first, “Sex, Order, and Disorder,” deals primarily with issues relating to legal and political themes, and particularly with efforts by authorities both political and ecclesiastical to channel or control sexuality. The second section, “Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender,” highlights recent work that has taken some of the turns that are rewriting historical narratives generally, above all histories of the senses, of the emotions, and of food. The third section, “Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image,” considers how we work with early modern f luidity around identities and boundaries, and whether we might now be more restrictive than they were in categories that we bring to our analysis.Sex, Order, and Disorder One of the most obvious sites of sex and disorder in Renaissance Italy surely lies with the buying and selling of women’s bodies. Burckhardt’s perspective that courtesans were elegant, intellectual companions, surviving more on sexual titillation than selling their bodies, has endured, despite the inf luence of feminist research. In particular, Veronica Franco was seen as an elegant, ideal, and appropriate companion for Renaissance princes.1 Much research on courtesans has focused on Franco and her courtesan sisters. It highlights the courtesan’s learning, ability to write poetry and sing pleasing songs, and, most importantly, to entertain men while avoiding becoming common sexual property and losing their allure and their living. Tessa Storey adheres to the older view, assessing the social status of courtesans, suggesting that they were linked to “elite manhood and male honor,” idealizing the relationships between clients and courtesans who were certain that proximity to powerful men would protect them.2 However, the other side of courtesan life was a precarious one of dependence and fear of falling into common prostitution. Social and criminal vulnerability highlights the lives of all prostitutes, include high status courtesans. Even Franco was called before the courts to account for her behavior. More vulnerable courtesans and prostitutes lived precariously, prey to men of all sorts, accosted in the streets, and struggling to support themselves and maintain their dignity. The records of their appearances before the courts reveals they often managed without protectors or financial security. 3 Early on Elizabeth Cohen examined the rough and ready life of prostitutes on the streets of Rome, revealing a form of sociability and social integration.4 Diane Yvonne Ghirardo brings an innovative approach to the role and experience of urban prostitutes. She examines urban planning in Ferrara, revealing the city’s ongoing attempts over decades to maintain prostitutes in the same locales.5 Focusing on the economics of prostitution in Venice, Paula Clarke finds that regulation of prostitution became less rigorous over time, with women experiencing more freedom and the concomitant growth of the sex trade.68Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas TerpstraGuido Ruggiero opens the section “Sex, Order, and Disorder” in this collection with a broader approach to order and disorder in sexuality. He offers a rereading of Boccaccio’s often-studied story from the Decameron of Griselda, a woman who patiently endures the series of humiliations that her husband Gualtieri devises in order to test her faithfulness. The critics and creative artists who have puzzled over the tale and its meaning for centuries have focused mainly on Griselda and on issues of class and gender. Ruggiero moves a step further to ask how those who heard it in the fourteenth century might have received it as a political message. Gualtieri is not only a cruel husband. His willingness to be cruel and unjust to his spouse Griselda highlights the dangers that all may encounter when societies fall under the control of rulers who are narcissistic, vain, and insecure. Florentines could look around to other cities where lords treated citizens as Gualtieri treated Griselda; sexual and political violence were interchangeable and marriages were contracted for money rather than love. There was no reason to suppose that Florence would be exempted from that kind of cruelty and exploitation. The Griselda story offered the lessons of a Mirror for Princes, but it was also a Mirror for Merchants, warning them of what would happen when love did not animate their closest personal relationships. What Boccaccio warned the Florentines about in the fourteenth century was precisely what the Sienese were experiencing in the sixteenth. Elena Brizio observes that sexual violence remained common across Italy. Men used it as a tool to control girls, boys, married women, and widows. In the context of the wars of the 1550s, when Florence annexed Siena, its political “use” expanded greatly. Sexual violence was a means of imposing or confirming power over subordinates, and men across the political, ecclesiastical, mercantile, and professional spheres considered sexual violence a legitimate mode of operating in their social sphere, and so exercised it freely. In contrast to what Boccaccio described, the absolute ruler who came to dominate mid-sixteenth-century Siena positioned himself on the opposite side of the dynamic. Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici proclaimed strict punishments for sexual violence against both men and women in a law of 1558, threatening either death or galley servitude for those convicted. Brizio describes this setting and moves from metaphor to practice as she reviews archival sources, judicial records, and public reports to see how sexual violence was perceived before and after the law issued in 1558. Duke Cosimo I was dealing with more than just a different political milieu, and Brizio also explores whether the changes in the normative codes brought about by the Council of Trent had an impact on social attitudes to sexual violence in Siena and its locale. Normative codes were becoming more explicit and restrictive across Italy in the sixteenth century, but did they have much actual effect? Like Cohen, Ghirardo, and Clarke, Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas Terpstra document and analyze the sex trade in a particular city. Their focus is on working-poor prostitutes’ residential patterns in early modern Bologna, and they find that on the whole these women were integrated into, rather than pushed to the margins of, their local neighborhoods and the wider city. Bologna’s activist and ambitiousSex, gender, and sexuality in Renaissance Italy 9archbishop Gabriele Paleotti was rebuffed when he attempted to impose Tridentine norms for public sexuality. The Bolognese instead approached regulation as a matter of market rather than morals, allowing those prostitutes registered with a civic magistracy to practice prostitution almost anywhere within the city walls. While about half of the 300–400 women registered clustered in specific, unofficial red-light neighborhoods, the other half lived on streets with only one or two other registered prostitutes, where their neighbors were more often workingpoor men and women. In spite of the strict normative codes that continued to be preached and publicly posted by ecclesiastical authorities, prostitutes were seldom actually shunned or marginalized because of their sex work. They were more often incorporated into the working-poor neighborhoods and the larger social fabric of early modern Bologna. These tensions between norms and practice certainly intensified as Tridentine rules became more specific, and as ecclesiastical and public regimes worked to determine whether and how to implement them. In Rome, these authorities came together in particularly complicated ways. Elizabeth Cohen explores how they attempted to address and adjudicate the various forms of sexual impropriety that their normative codes were describing in ever more precise detail. Sexual misconduct came under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, but the records of these courts do not survive in Rome. Criminal court records do survive, however, and since these took charge of some sex offenses we can see how people responded to the new rules. Cohen looks in particular at cases of adultery, which was often defined by the married status of the woman and which, like sodomy, could actually cover a broader range of actions than might be grouped today under the term. Reviewing some trials of real or imagined adulterous relationships, Cohen finds that it is impossible to determine how effective the “reforms” actually were. There was simply more driving these relationships forward than any narrow definition allows: romance, exploitation, assault, and sheer comedy all shape the court testimonies, and show that the parties in many so-called adulterous relationships were thinking less often of sex—or the pope—than authorities thought.Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender The possibilities for research on sense and sensuality in the Italian Renaissance are myriad. The richness and abundance of voices, producing or employing sensual outcomes, and the voices of desire and of sex and of pleasure combine into a garden of delights. Here again, recent essay collections prove particularly valuable for the variety of forms, voices, and experiences that they are able to convey. In The Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy (2010) Sara Matthews-Grieco gathers eight essays that ref lect upon the various ways in which visions of sensuality could circulate, including on painted furniture, decorated bedroom ceilings, or musical instruments, erotic language, or pornographic engravings. So, too, cultural practices are explored such as sensuality within marriage, music in domesticcontexts, and sexual innuendos in writing or in doodles in a book. This collection, then, reveals how creative Renaissance people could be in demonstrating desire and articulating their sensual pleasures. Sexual orientation and sexual desire have also come under scrutiny. A significant collection of essays edited by Melanie L. Marshall, Linda L. Carroll, and Katherine A. McIver, Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early Modern Italy, brings together nine essays that explore sexual desire and sexual orientation through multilayered and intersecting interpretations of art, music, and texts. The result is an intriguing collection of scholarship that maximizes opportunities for interdisciplinary, collaborative research across the disciplines, as an outgrowth of work on critical theory and intertextuality. In a more literary context, marriage orations have revealed some writers not only praised marriage in conventional terms for political ends, social expediency, and the delights of family. Alongside extolling the pleasures of the marriage bed for a husband, some extend that vision of sensuality and sexual pleasure to the wife as well, challenging conventional notions that only prostitutes took pleasure in sex, and not respectable matrons.7 The sensual possibilities of homosexual activities, especially related to male prostitution, were part of Michael Rocke’s study Forbidden Friendships. He argues that male prostitution was harshly condemned, especially anal penetration, as something no adult man should permit. Nevertheless, an examination of some contemporary writers reveals an appreciation of homosexual sensuality along with defenses of sodomy and male prostitution which harkened back to the superior evaluation of homosexuality in classical literature.8 The role of pedagogical pederasty and its celebration within Renaissance mentoring systems has equally been explored in literary sources by Ian Moulton who demonstrates the currency of such studies to both a popular and educated audience.9 These studies show that while male sexuality has been visualized, both in the Renaissance, and by scholars of the Renaissance, as virile and active, it was also vulnerable and contingent. For example, castration was always a possibility in war, for medical reasons, as a consequence of vendetta, or for social or aesthetic reasons.10 Impotence also was part of male sexuality, with extensive social, economic, and political ramifications. Some of these issues are explored in Sara F. Matthews-Grieco’s edited volume Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th century) Impotence could be implicated in social unrest among urban dwellers or occasion political turmoil among the elites. It could be physiological, subject to medical intervention, or magical leading towards the Inquisition and the Renaissance’s fear of witchcraft. Six essays focus on various aspects of the social, cultural, political, medicinal, and literary discussions of impotence in Italian courts and cities, together providing an integrated and provocative view of male sexuality and sensuality. The essays in this collection’s second section, “Sense and Sensuality in Sex and Gender,” traverse back and forth between literature and the lives of men and women. Our literary accounts span what was formerly cast as the division ofhigh and low, including both Castiglione’s serious prescriptions on when a sleeve is more than just a sleeve, and also some more comic accounts by lesser-known poets of when a sausage is more than a sausage. We pair these with two microhistorical accounts of sexual pairings, one grown notorious in recent decades by the controversies that erupted when it was first published, and the other more obscurely quotidian. We aim in bringing them together to revisit what scholars may bring to such accounts, and how that shapes our readings in ways we may want now to rethink. In the first of these microhistorical studies, Patricia Simons re-examines the case of Benedetta Carlini, the early seventeenth-century nun and abbess described above and made famous in Judith Brown’s Immodest Acts (1986). When Brown identified Carlini as a lesbian, on the basis of documents that showed her as having regular orgasmic sex with a younger nun under her supervision, her work stirred controversy. Historians like Rudolph Bell firmly rejected the description of Carlini as “lesbian” on the basis that sexual activities did not imply sexual identities. Simons takes the discussion a step further, arguing that the question of identity is less important now than one related to sense and emotion. Did they—and should we—see their sex as mainly physical? Or were there registers of erotic mysticism that would have led both Benedetta and Mea to frame their contact together as expressions of a spiritual relationship? While some of their contemporaries, like some of ours, may see their religious language as pretext, what happens when we take it seriously and take them sincerely? As the example of their congregation’s patron saint St. Catherine of Siena showed, medieval mysticism provided enough of a language and model for the erotic potential of religious imagery. Thomas V. Cohen then explores another example of when we need to ask whether a transgression is always a transgression, by looking at the case of Ludovico Santa Croce, and the gang he gathered around him to prowl the streets of Rome. The life lived well needed witnesses for validation, and Ludovico’s ego amplified his other drives as he led a group of young conversi to visit the statuesque courtesan Betta la Magra. They shared food, drink, and more, and Ludovico’s boundary crossing brought him to court. But what were his transgressions? Was it just proper and improper sexual practices, was it individual intimacy moving to group sex, was it about commoners and nobles, or about Christians and those who, despite having been “made Christian” were still considered in some way ebrei ? If transgression lies in in the eyes or voices of the witness, we have here a complicated intersection of identities and codes, values and practices. The questions here, as in Benedetta Carlini’s convent, lie with what those in the bed and those around it thought about norms and deviances. Gerry Milligan brings us to what many consider the uber code of the early modern male, Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, the canonical text that we noted at the beginning of this essay. Milligan looks in particular at the relation Castiglione draws between clothing and masculinity. Clothing was fundamental to Renaissance discourses of gender and sexuality. While it wascommon to read that what men wore was critical to discussions of violence, military preparedness, and virtue, it’s not at all clear just how clothing was supposed to do what it did. Was it cause or effect, or sign and symbol of masculinity or effeminacy? Castiglione saw clothing choice as potentially one of life or death, and that not just for reputation alone. As Italy suffered through the invasions of French, Spanish, and Germans, it was common, albeit perhaps too easy, to correlate a soldier’s effectiveness to what he had worn. As Milligan asks, might a focus on clothing show us how aesthetics and militarism functioned in Renaissance projects of social control? Laura Giannetti then takes us from dead seriousness to dietary satire with approaches to a question that Freud might well have faced: is it ever the case that a sausage is just a sausage? Italians valued word play as much as sexual play, and found the convergence of the two absolutely compelling. Carne was meat, f lesh, and inevitably the male organ, and while mendicant preachers may have condemned all of them together, most Italians appreciated them individually for each of their meanings. Religious authorities never managed to expand the imaginative forms of their dismay at the gluttony and carnality that sausages represented; the most they could do was draw on Galen’s counsel of moderation to reinforce their message of self-denial. Yet Gianetti shows that authors and artists who were more aesthetically than ascetically driven began to explore the imaginative potential of sausages as symbols of vitality, fertility, and prowess. Their poems and stories disseminated messages of a humble meat that grew into a powerful cultural symbol.Visualizing sexuality in word and image As early as 1978, Thomas G. Benedek’s article “Beliefs about Human Sexual Function” examined ideas about the sexed body, noting in particular the persistence of the one-sex theory that women and men had parallel sex organs, with the male organs externalized and female organs internalized. Moreover, the balance of the humors—hot, cold, moist, dry—also impacted the nature of any individual’s sexual makeup. Thomas Laqueur, like previous scholars, based much of his argument on medical texts. It was not only the words, but also the images that seemed to portray inverted genitals. Laqueur’s analysis went further, however, to the conclusion that the one-sex body and the humors meant that both women and men needed to ejaculate semen for conception to occur.11 Laqueur’s suggestion that Renaissance doctors and others believed in the two-seed theory was controversial and stimulated a great deal of scholarship on both science and medicine and gender and the body. Interest in the sexed body and the physicality of sex and sexuality has continued to expand, embedding medical perspectives of the sexed body into a cultural context. In her study The Sex of Men (2011), Patricia Simons extended the critical study of men’s history to focus on the physiological construction of men. Her analysis is based upon exhaustive, interdisciplinary research includingtheoretical, textual, and visual evidence. Simons re-focuses attention on the centrality of semen to masculinity and fertility, thus rebalancing the dominant phallocentric evaluation of premodern gender. Sexual acts and sexual pleasure have embraced topics and methodologies that would have been unthinkable by earlier scholars. The collection Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy (2010), edited by Allison Levy, includes an amazing array of topics that illuminate sexual activities in new detail. Renaissance images and objects portray an imaginative array of sexual positions in sources, both textual and physical, ranging from Aretino’s writing on sexual positions to their portrayal on medicinal drug jars. Patricia Simons pushes the cultural history of sex and sexuality further in her essay about the dildo. An analysis of the physical objects is set against descriptions of their imagined use. Renaissance books were sufficiently explicit, however, that the need for visualization was unnecessary. In Machiavelli in Love (2007), Guido Ruggiero challenges some of the fundamental ideas about the history of sex and sexuality proposed by Foucault and which have subsequently dominated research. Rejecting Foucault’s assertion that sex and sexual identity were modern inventions, Ruggiero demonstrates that in fact there was Renaissance sex and Renaissance sexual identity, dismissing earlier theoretical obstructions. Using a combination of court documents and imaginative literature, he highlights the complexities of mind, body, and desire, and the formation of masculine identity. In many ways, this book moves the historical study of premodern sexuality onto a new and more sophisticated plane, one that reveals individuals in their uniqueness. In The Manly Masquerade (2003), Valeria Finucci presented one of the earliest analyses of Renaissance men as an inf lected category deploying not only feminist theory but also psychoanalytic theory to understand the constructions of masculinity from both a psychological and cultural perspective. One of the most violent and sexually problematic figures of Renaissance Italy was the brilliant goldsmith/artist Benvenuto Cellini. Margaret Gallucci presents a new twist to traditional biography by integrating a multidisciplinary analysis of Cellini, his artistic brilliance, his penchant for violence and disorderliness, and his transgressive homosexuality that was sufficiently public to result in criminal proceedings and house arrest. Following new literary criticism and sexuality and gender studies, Gallucci tries to move beyond simplistic evaluations of homosexuality and misogyny to make sense of Cellini’s complex artistic life and disorderly behaviors.12 The third section of this collection, “Visualizing Sexuality in Word and Image,” takes up these questions of sex acts, the body, and identity by focusing on four cases of creative artists who employ sexuality and gender in ways that challenge social norms and expectations, and that raise questions both then and now about identity and voice. James M. Saslow returns to the questions around sexual acts and sexual identities that emerged in disputes around the “lesbian” nun Benedetta Carlini, and to which Castiglione’s sartorial strictures allude. He argues that the case of Italian painter Bazzi contributes to the larger ongoing controversy in queer studies over whether we can locate an embryonic homosexual self-consciousness in Renaissance culture. Bazzi’s fondness for young men gave him the nickname “Il Sodoma” and he never shied away from making this a central part of a very public persona. We have little documentary evidence for his private feelings, yet his art embodied and transmitted homosexual desires, and it is clear from the series of commissions that he attracted an audience which read and sympathized with those clues. Saslow reviews Sodoma’s artworks, patrons, and reputation over a few centuries and ref lects on what the larger stakes are both methodologically and ideologically as we weigh whether these do indeed provide sufficient evidence for a homosexual self-consciousness. Sexual agency and identity are complex enough when we are aiming to interpret what an individual says in a court room or inquisitorial investigation, or conveys in a painting or poem. What do we do when men pretend to adopt the voice of women and project desire, intent, and agency? Ian Frederick Moulton compares two such works, Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti and Alessandro Piccolomini’s La Raffaella, both of them written in the 1530s, and both featuring an experienced woman mentoring a younger woman on the finer points of sex and sexuality. In both, the older woman assures her younger companion that her desires are legitimate and should be acted on to the fullest, even when transgressive. In both these desires are essentially projections of male fantasies. Moulton explores what we learn from male projections of female speech, identity, agency, and particularly how male visualization and ventriloquizing exposes larger issues around the place of women and the articulation of sex and gender in early modern society. While we often emphasize the transformative effects of printing, early modern culture continued to value the oral and visual, and it brought these together in the art of memory. Sergius Kodera reaches back to classical texts that recommended erotic images as particularly memorable, and to the early modern author Giovan Battista della Porta’s L’arte del ricordare (1566) which specifically advised stories of sex between humans and animals as aides memoires. Myths of Leda, Europe, Ganymede, and others were all drawn into this work, though more overtly in the vernacular than the Latin version. Kodera follows this visualization of intercourse between humans and animals beyond the arts of memory and on to texts on cross-breeding and to the paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, seeing all of these as examples of a distinctively early modern embrace of variety, engagement, and hybridity in sexuality. In the final essay, Jane Tylus traces how Torquato Tasso depicted women in both the Gerusalemme liberata (1581) and the Gerusalemme conquistata (1593). While he felt that his powers as an epic poet were expanding, the later work reduces the role and influence of female characters. The shift underscores how the Liberata was more radical in its conception and execution. As he aimed to style himself more self-consciously as an epic poet in the classical tradition, Tasso moved from Virgil to Homer as his model, a move at once stylistic and also insome sense moralistic – he saw this as an answer to criticism of his language and of what he called the “fallacious artistries” that had marked the earlier poem. Gender become critical to his conception of what is true in art, though with ambivalent results – the woman who intervened with power was superseded by the woman who intervened with tears. These essays explore themes that were only emerging two decades ago. Their authors’ commitment to taking both an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach allows re-evaluation of interpretations which were in danger of becoming too rigid and which may have imposed too much on what the voices in stories, trials, letters, and images were aiming to express. Contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity abound. Recent work in all three areas that we have singled out has explored just how widely the gaps between prescription and reality yawn in the period, in part because of ambivalence on the part of those promoting normative regimes. Yet gaps more often emerged because these regimes aimed too far beyond what people expected and were willing to live with in their neighborhoods, their relationships, and expectations. As we move forward undoubtedly there will be new insights gleaned about the lives and loves of Renaissance people. The intellectual and evidential foundation outlined here in letters, court records, poems, pamphlets, and artworks will continue to support a rich and diverse research culture. And there are new questions on the horizon. The literary, philosophical, artistic, and existential implications of transgender are only in a nascent stage of investigation, despite the initial and hesitant foray made in Human Sexuality. Some topics and themes will percolate until new sources and new perspectives allow new insights and conclusions. As the study of sex, gender, and sexuality moves forward, the dialogue between past and present will continue, animated by sharp disagreements, punctuated by moments of clarity, and moving steadily towards a deeper understanding of lives lived in a period of creative foment. The voices gathered here, and the creative exchange they offer, advance that discourse on the lives of those who made the Renaissance a fascinating period of critical change.Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan. Storey, “Courtesan Culture.” Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome. Cohen, “Seen and Known.” Ghirardo, “The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara.” Clarke, “The Business of Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice.” D’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations of Fifteenth-Century Italy.” Rocke, “‘Whoorish boyes.’” Moulton, “Homoeroticism in La cazzaria (1525).” See Finucci, The Manly Masquerade. Laqueur, Making Sex. Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini.Bibliography Benedek, Thomas G. “Beliefs about Human Sexual Function in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” In Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Edited by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 97–119. Pittsburgh: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1978. Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Burckhardt, Jackob. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Translated by S.G.C. Middlemore. Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 2003. Castiglione, Baldassarre. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959. Clarke, Paula. “The Business of Prostitution in Early Renaissance Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2015): 419–64. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Seen and Known: Prostitutes in the Cityscape of Late-SixteenthCentury Rome.” Renaissance Studies Cohen, Thomas V. and Elizabeth S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. D’Elia, Anthony F. “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations of Fifteenth-Century Italy.” Renaissance Quarterly 55, no. 2 (2002): 379–433. Finucci, Valeria. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Gallucci, Margaret A. Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artistic Identity in Renaissance Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Ghirardo, Diane Yvonne. “The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 4 (2001): 402–31. Kalof, Linda and William Bynum, eds. A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance. Volume 3. New York: Berg, 2010. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Levy, Allison M., ed. Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Marshall, Melanie L., Linda L. Carroll, and Katherine A. McIver, eds. Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early Modern Italy: Playing with Boundaries. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Matthews-Grieco, Sara F., ed. Cuckoldry, Impotence, and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th century). Farnham: Ashgate, The Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Moulton, Ian Frederick. “Homoeroticism in La cazzaria The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide Murray, Jacqueline and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas, ed. Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York: Oxford University Press, ‘Whoorish boyes’: Male Prostitution in Early Modern Italy and the Spurious ‘second part’ of Antonio Vignali’s La cazzaria.” In Power, Gender, and Ritual in Europe and the Americas: Essays in Memory of Richard C. Trexler. Edited by Peter Arnade and Michael Rocke, 113–33. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008. Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ruggiero, Guido. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Storey, Tessa. “Courtesan Culture: Manhood, Honour, and Sociability.” In The Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy. Edited by Sara F. Matthews Grieco, 247–73. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Talvacchia, Bette, ed. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Renaissance. Oxford: Berg, 2011.PART ISex, Order, and Disorder. One of the last works that Francesco Petrarch wrote was a short story in Latin which he claimed to have translated from the Italian of the final tale of Boccaccio’s Decameron —the novella of the patient Griselda, who accepted every cruel test her husband, Gualtieri, tried her with to assure her worthiness as a wife. In Petrarch’s version Griselda was a humble peasant and Gualtieri the esteemed Marquis of Saluzzo, a prince loved by all for his wise rule. Tellingly, he claimed that he was translating the tale because it was so very useful as a lesson on how to treat a wife that it needed to be in Latin to gain the wider circulation that the universal language of learned men merited. And, in fact, Boccaccio’s original version has been long read in that light, almost as if Petrarch’s Latin retelling determined its meaning for future generations. Recently, moreover, with more sophisticated discussions of gender, his perspective has garnered even greater purchase, with Boccaccio’s tale being criticized for its misogynistic vision of matrimony and support for a husband’s absolute power over a wife. In turn, this perspective has even colored the way some read the Decameron itself, discovering behind its laughing stories and powerful, clever women a conservative defense of traditional patriarchy. But in this essay, I want to suggest with a historian’s eye that the story of Griselda’s ideal wifely qualities and her husband’s wisdom is in reality not there in the Decameron (X, 10). For while that tale has been often read as an account of Griselda, and her virtually biblical acceptance of her husband’s will, it may well have read at the time as a story much more about the many negative qualities of Gualtieri.1 For he is presented throughout as a dangerous tyrant moved by a misguided sense of honor and a rejection of the emotion of love, which meant that he was incapable of being either a good husband or a good ruler from the perspective of fourteenth-century Florentine readers. Thus, this tale is not just concerned with love and marriage, but also crucially with rule and the rule of princes, in this casenegatively portrayed as tyrants. In a way, then, I want to argue that it is Boccaccio’s “The Prince” a century and a half before Machiavelli. Even the language of the day nicely sets up this theme: for the term signore (lord) had multiple meanings that could span the gamut of power relationships from the everyday husband as signore/lord over his wife and household, to the local signore/lord/noble with power over those below him, on to the signore/lord/ ruler (either a prince or a tyrant depending on one’s perspective), and, of course, finally on to the ultimate signore, the Signore/God. As we shall see, all these meanings are at play in Boccaccio’s version of this tale. The teller of this story of multiple signori, the irrepressible Dioneo, suggests its negative tone right from the start, immediately warning that he finds Gualtieri’s behavior in general and towards his wife “beastly.”2 He states f latly, “I want to speak about a Marquis, not all that magnificent, but actually an idiotic beast. . . . In fact, I would not suggest that anyone follow his example. . . .”3 This, obviously, is hardly the wise prince Petrarch created in his supposed translation of the tale. Dioneo then more subtly attacks him as a ruler (signore), remarking that he was a young man who spent all his time “in hawking and hunting and in nothing else.”4 Here we have echoes of an earlier tale in the Decameron, the third tale of day two, about spendthrift Florentine youths who threw away the riches left them by their aristocratic father by living the thoughtless life of young nobles hunting, hawking, and living like signori.5 Significantly, those Florentine youths, after they lost their inherited fortune, regained it by going to England and loaning money at interest to the apparently even more foolish signori there, the English nobility, like many Florentine bankers.6 Yet quickly they squandered their riches again, because, as the story stresses, they returned to living like signori, eschewing the virtù that made their Florentine merchant/banker contemporaries so successful. What, one might well ask, was this virtù that had allowed them to remake their fortune and that repeatedly brings success to the denizens of Boccaccio’s tales? At one level the answer is simple. For Boccaccio’s contemporaries virtù was a term that identified the range of behaviors that allowed one to succeed and made one person superior to another. Simply put, it marked out the best. But the simplicity of that definition quickly dissolves before the fact that largely because it was such a telling term its meaning was highly contested and f luid, in fact changing considerably over time, place, and across social divides. Speaking very broadly, in an earlier warrior society many saw virtù in aggression, direct action, often violent; and in physical strength, blood line, and blood itself, even as at the same time moralists and philosophers often saw it in more Christian behavior that rejected violence and aggression. In the cities of northern Italy in the fourteenth century this traditional vision of virtù was first expanded, then increasingly overshadowed by a vision more suited to the urban life of the day and newer merchant/banker elites. For many at the time, virtù required the control of passions—in contrast to an earlier vision that privileged their moredirect expression—and included a strong lean towards peaceful, mannered conduct that required reasonable, calculating (at times sliding into cunning) behavior that controlled the present and significantly the future as well.7 In sum, virtù, even as it was contested and changed over time, was a word of power that helped to define an urban male citizen and a truly good man. In the end, however, these youths were saved from their un-virtù -ous behavior by a virtù -ous nephew, Alessandro, who first re-established their fortunes via once again astute money-lending, and then with his virtù won a bride who turned out to be the daughter of the king of England, effectively overcoming all their foolish misdeeds. From this perspective, it is clear that the signore Gualtieri, much like Alessandro’s uncles, was not a virtù -ous or good prince, ruling as he should. Rather, by not attending to anything but his own youthful pleasures, he was acting in a way that Florentines would have easily associated with their fears about contemporary signori/tyrants; for such rulers were seen by them as ruling all too often merely to serve their own whims and selfish pleasures at the expense of their subjects. And, in fact, proudly republican Florence had recently in 1342 experienced a brush with a signore/tyrant of its own, Walter of Brienne. He had been appointed to a one-year term as ruler of the city in the hope that he would be able to overcome an economic crisis caused by the failure of the major banking houses of the city. But, as was often the case, he quickly attempted to take power permanently as a signore and was just as quickly thrown out after only ten months of unpopular rule. Almost immediately afterwards, a popular government returned to power, and it remained wary of signori of any type.8 Significantly, however, most Anglophone critics have failed to note that the Italian for Walter is Gualtieri and thus that Florence had thrown out a tyrannical Gualtieri of their own just a decade before Boccaccio completed the Decameron. Tellingly the negative behaviors often associated with contemporary tyrants are immediately linked to the tale’s Gualtieri and his marriage by Dioneo, who notes that not only did he not pay attention to anything else but his own selfish pleasures, he “had no interest in either taking a wife or having children. . . .”9 This, then, had created problems with his subjects. As they, like all good subjects, wanted him to take on the responsibilities of a mature male and ruler by marrying; for marriage was seen at the time as perhaps the most important sign of reaching full maturity and taking on the sober responsibilities of an adult male.10 Moreover, with marriage, a prince began to produce the heirs that would secure an ordered passage of power at his death, something that for his subjects was crucial. With Gualtieri’s rejection of this, in essence Dioneo had presented his readers with a questionable signore/lord/ruler who refused to give up his youthful and irresponsible ways to rule as an adult prince with virtù.11 In the end, then, although he reluctantly gave in to his subjects’ demands, he decided to do so by taking a bride without consulting with anyone. And once again this would have troubled contemporaries. Arranged marriages were the  norm in fourteenth-century Florence and more widely and crucially theywere negotiated by parents or relatives to secure broader family goals or, in the case of rulers, meaningful alliances. The immature Gualtieri instead took his marriage personally in hand to secure his selfish desires with no concern for his family, his subjects, or even love. Moreover, his lack of love in selecting his bride also evoked the negative presentation in Decameron stories of many unhappy marriages where the lack of love had led to bad matches, especially for women. Repeatedly the tales advocated avoiding this ill-fated situation by marrying for true love, exactly what Gualtieri rejected. From his perspective marrying for love and loving his wife would have endangered his un-virtù -ous life, focused on his own personal pleasures. And at the same time, it would have also signaled the end of his freedom from his responsibilities as a ruler and declare that he had acquiesced in becoming the signore/prince that his subjects desired and that Petrarch had rewritten him as being in his misleading supposed Latin translation of the tale.12 Making his disgruntlement clear, Gualtieri finally did knuckle under to his subjects’ demands, but warned them that whoever he might chose, they must honor her as their lady or feel his anger.13 The reality behind that warning was soon dramatically revealed.14 For Gualtieri had for some time been observing a pretty, well-mannered peasant girl who lived nearby. Yet crucially what made her most attractive to Gualtieri was the fact that as a humble peasant he was confident that he could dominate her so that she did not interfere with his youthful lordly pleasures, the selfish key to his marital strategy again.15 Following Gualtieri’s misplaced desires, we are drawn ever deeper into the dark morass of unhappy marriages in the Decameron. Having selected his bride without disclosing her identity to anyone and without her even being aware of it, he insisted that his subjects come with him to celebrate the matrimony. And so it was that one day they followed him to an unlikely nearby village where the peasant girl, Griselda, lived in poverty with her father. The scene is nicely set by the narrator of the tale Dioneo, as he describes how the richly attired relatives of Gualtieri and his most important subjects arrived on horseback before Griselda’s humble hut. When she, dressed in rags, rushed onto the scene, anxious to see who their lord’s new bride would be, to everyone’s surprise Gualtieri called down to her by name to ask to speak with her father. She replied modestly that he was inside and accompanied him in to the peasant hut to talk with her father, Giannucole.16 Even her father’s name reeked of Griselda’s humble status, for Giannucole is the diminutive for Giovanni. Using the diminutive for an adult male, and a pater familias at that, essentially denied him any status or honor. Gualtieri underlined the point when he did not waste any time with niceties on a person who, given that lack of status, did not warrant them from his perspective. Thus, he did not ask Griselda’s father for her hand as simple politeness required; rather he announced that he had come to marry her. Then, continuing in his high-handed ways, he turned to her and demanded that if he took her for his wife, “will you always be committed to pleasing me and never do or say anything that would upset me.”17 Once again the absenceof love in Gualtieri’s approach to his future bride is stunning, especially for the tales of the Decameron; and moreover, his lack of regard for her father, and for her is deeply troubling. Turning to Florentine history and traditions once more it seemed almost as if his way of treating Griselda and her father echoed what the citizens of Florence most disliked in the high-handed ways of local nobles/lords that they had rejected in the 1290s when they passed their revered Ordinances of Justice. These laws were ostensibly designed to punish local nobles and their ilk (labeled magnates) for just such high-handed behavior and mistreatment of common folk. And these Ordinances had become a symbolic keystone of Florentine republican government and its civic vision and would remain so across the Rinascimento. In fact, one of the few times that the Ordinances were questioned was when they were cancelled almost immediately after Walter of Brienne, the other Gualtieri and would-be Signore of Florence, was driven out. After he was expelled in 1343, the Ordinances were momentarily cancelled by a short lived aristocratic government and then almost immediately reinstated by the popular government that replaced both Gualtieri and that unpopular aristocratic moment, as a strong reminder that the city would not allow signori of any type to mistreat Florentines. And although Gualtieri did not himself revoke the Ordinances, the black legends that grew up around his rule often made him responsible for their momentary elimination and an attack on popular republic government.18 All that this implies is underlined by the famous marriage scene that follows, for Gualtieri, with his demands met, takes Griselda by the hand and leads her from her home. There in front of the whole group of his elegantly dressed subjects to their surprise and dismay he ordered her stripped naked.19 He then had her re-dressed with the aristocratic clothing and the rich accoutrements that made up a noble’s wardrobe and only then consented to marry her. As often noted, this dramatic scene in its undressing and re-dressing of his bride essentially symbolized and perhaps contributed to the rebirth that Gualtieri believed he was engineering, transforming Griselda from a humble peasant to a noble wife, using clothing as both a symbol and a tool. And indeed, the tale goes on to point out how quickly and successfully she impressed the gathering, appearing to take up easily the manner and bearing of a princess in her new noble clothing. That impression was confirmed in the days following, when, as Gualtieri’s wife, she displayed to all impressive manners and wifely virtues. In sum, once redressed she was capable of being transformed from a humble peasant to a noble princess—the very stuff of fairy tales and popular fantasy. But it is also the very stuff of Florentine beliefs at the time—the elite of the city had shifted from old noble families to a newer merchant/banker group who dominated Florence both economically and socially. Thus, a humble peasant who gained the opportunity and the dress to move at the highest social levels was an attractive conceit, demonstrating that anyone with virtù could behave as well as the old nobility. From that perspective Griselda had that delicious quality of fulfilling contemporary fantasies, even if many rich Florentines would havebeen comforted perhaps by the fact that such a leap for someone of her status was highly unlikely. Yet there is a way in which the dramatic stripping of Griselda—a theme that would have great popularity in the future in literature and art—has masked a deeper honor dynamic involved in this troubling marriage. In fact, the tale’s Florentine audience would have been aware from the first that marriages were virtually always moments when issues of honor were central. That was why fathers usually played such a significant role in such affairs: they had, in theory at least, the mature judgment to evaluate the complex calculus of family honor involved in a marriage alliance between two families without letting youthful emotions interfere. Unfortunately, from this perspective the young, selfish, self-centered Gualtieri fell far short of this ideal, as the tale made abundantly clear. Nonetheless, Gualtieri was aware of the honor dimensions of his marriage and was anxious to resolve them in his own high-handed way. Anticipating the resistance of his subjects to his marriage of a peasant and its implications for the honor of all involved—a marriage that he saw as serving his interests and not theirs—from the first he insisted that they accept his choice and “honor” it and him as their ruler. And, of course, as long as his misguided honor was a driving force replacing love in his approach to marrying Griselda, it crippled the relationship and his ability to be a good husband and suggested a similar situation vis-à-vis his subjects as a ruler where love for his subjects was also lacking. Crucially in this way of seeing things, his behavior evoked strong echoes of other husbands and princes in the tales of the Decameron whose lives were destroyed by their misguided sense of honor. In turn, such behavior echoed Florentine fears about the dangers of a central/northern Italian world where it appeared—in many ways correctly—that the days of republics like theirs were a thing of the past. They were being rapidly replaced by the one-man rule of signori who claimed to be princes, but more often than not seemed to Florentines to be self-serving tyrants like Gualtieri, more concerned with their misguided honor and selfish pleasures than just rule. Yet in the short term things seemed to be looking up for Gualtieri’s honor and his marriage. Not only did Griselda win over his subjects, she soon became pregnant and produced a daughter. But not long after the happy birth, the f laws in his personality and his treatment of his wife began to reveal a deeper, darker truth. Almost as if he feared to succumb to the success of his marriage, he decided to test his wife to assure himself that she was ready to honor all his lordly wishes, no matter how cruel and tyrannical they might be. Significantly, however, he defended these tests to Griselda as a concern for his honor, complaining that his subjects were murmuring about her lowly peasant origins and the similar baseness of her daughter. In fact, his claim was presented as false by Dioneo. Gualtieri’s honor was never questioned by his subjects in this context; actually, they are portrayed as quite happy with his bride, even as they were surprised by her success as a lady. Griselda, however, accepted his false claims, and, as a result, unhappily understood the worries about his honor thatwere supposedly tormenting Gualtieri. Thus, she replied obediently as a subject to such a lord must: “My lord (Signor mio), do with me what you will as whatever is best for your honor or contentment I will accept . . .”20 (1239). Once again one wonders how this would have played for Florentine republican readers, who saw in such one-man rule and unjust claims of honor the essence of tyranny—the greatest danger to their own republican values and way of life. And in the context of an unloving, unhappy marriage, we are faced with a man and a relationship definitely gone wrong and a poor wife whose suffering Florentines could feel.21 Things quickly go from bad to worse. Evermore the tyrant, Gualtieri deceitfully uses his honor to excuse his most outrageous demands on his wife/subject. First, he has a servant take her daughter away. And making it clear that he is acting on the lord’s orders, the servant implies that he has been instructed to kill the child. With great sadness Griselda hands over her baby. Although Gualtieri is impressed by her obedience and strength in the face of his horrible demand, nonetheless he allows her and his subjects to believe that the child has been killed, while he secretly sends it off to relatives in Bologna to be raised. Continuing his testing of her, when she gives birth to a male child and heir, he once more claims the child’s life, using again the excuse of fearing for his honor and his rule. Woman, because you have made this male child, I cannot find any peace with my subjects as they complain insistently that a grandson of Giannucole will after me become their Signore, so I have decided that if I do not want to be overthrown, I must do with him what I did to the other [child]. Moreover, given all this [I must sooner or later] leave you and take another wife.22 Dioneo, however, makes it clear to his listeners that once again this claim is false, noting that Gualtieri’s subjects were not complaining about the boy’s humble background or the loss of honor it implied. In fact, he points out that in the face of the apparent murder of both children, his subjects “strongly damned him and held him to be a cruel man, while having great compassion for Griselda.”23 Hardly the response of those anxious to see an unsuitable heir or wife eliminated or those enthusiastic about their exemplary prince, as Petrarch misleadingly portrayed him. Still, as her lord and their tyrant, both she and they had no option but to bow down before his cruel will, yet another lesson about the dangerous honor of lords and their potential for heavy-handed tyranny that would not have been lost on republican Florence. So, the second child joined the first in apparent death—while Griselda lived on sadly under the shadow of her husband’s warning that eventually he would end the whole problem of her humble birth besmirching his honor and threatening his rule by putting her aside  to take an honorable bride. And finally, after twelve years Gualtieri decided that his daughter had grown old enough to pass as his new bride; and it was time for the last tests of his wife. Thus, he acted onhis earlier promise, informing her that he was ready to dissolve their marriage in order to take a more suitable wife. Claiming that he had secured a dispensation from the pope to put her aside, he gathered his subjects together to make the announcement that he was sending her back to her father and her humble life as a peasant. Evidently, he was not content to continue his cruel testing of his wife in private; rather his cruel deeds had to be displayed before his subjects. The power to rule and the honor it required were at play and perhaps also a desire to warn his subjects that he was their signore as well and capable of similar deeds to defend his honor and assert his control over them. But considering what fourteenth-century Florentines would have made of this new outrage is again suggestive; for almost certainly they would have seen in this a cruel lord acting as a tyrant, mistreating his most loyal subject in a way that no right-thinking republican Florentine would ever accept—in sum Gualtieri was the model anti-prince. Gualtieri announced, then, before his troubled subjects and the abject Griselda, that he was renouncing her as his wife because in the past my ancestors were great nobles and lords of these lands, where your ancestors were always laborers (lavoratori ), I wish that you will no longer be my wife, but rather that you return to the house of Giannucole . . . and I will take another wife that I have found that pleases me and is befitting [to my status].24 In sum, his ancestors were nobles and rulers and Griselda’s were humble laborers; therefore, their marriage was unsuitable and he was literally suffering the dishonor of being a lord badly married. The term “lavoratori ” used to describe her ancestors, while it could be used as a synonym for a peasant, may well have suggested something more troubling yet. The more normal terminology for Griselda’s ancestors would have been contadini or villani,25 but by contrasting his nobility with her status as descended from lavoratori, Gualtieri once again was asserting status claims that would have ruff led Florentine feathers. For the people of Florence, who had fought so hard across the thirteenth century to drive out high-handed nobles like Gualtieri, had done so in the name of protecting the laborers of the city from just such high-handed behavior. In fact, the Ordinances of Justice labeled such behavior as typical of the nobility. And the Ordinances were celebrated as wise legislation designed to discipline and punish the nobility and protect lavoratori from their high-handed ways. Once again, the recent attempt to eliminate the Ordinances in 1342 and the threat that posed to the laborers of the city would have added weight to the negative valence of Gualtieri’s speech.26 All this cruel testing of Griselda calls up echoes of another person often associated with her and this tale, who had also suffered greatly under his lord, the biblical Job. In fact, commentators have often pointed to the parallels betweenGriselda’s patient suffering at the hands of her signore/lord/husband and Job’s suffering at the hands of his Signore/Lord/God as a reason for seeing her as an exemplary wife and loyal subject accepting her husband’s rightful dominance, just as Petrarch later recreated her.27 There is an immediate problem with this parallel, however, for Job’s Lord did not actually deal out the setbacks that deeply wounded him. He merely withdrew his protection and left the door open for Satan to attempt to destroy Job’s faith, ultimately without success. From that perspective Gualtieri seems more to parallel Satan than God. Despite that often-overlooked theological nicety, however, the God (Signore) of the Old Testament who allowed the testing of Job might seem to vaguely parallel at a higher level her lord (signore), Gualtieri’s, testing of Griselda. But tellingly in the Trinitarian view of time being preached aggressively in Florence when the Decameron was being written and as war loomed with the papacy, that Old Testament God and His troubling relationship with humanity following the original sin of Adam and Eve—often portrayed as dishonoring that Signore —was seen by many as no longer the order of the day. Christ’s love and his sacrificing of his honor to die as a common criminal to save humanity was seen as inaugurating a new order and dispensation, a view especially stressed by a powerful group of local preachers at the time. And the Godliness of that new age, Boccaccio’s present, was totally alien to Gualtieri and totally alien to his relationship with his wife and his subjects—for crucially, he explicitly rejected love in favor of jealously protecting his honor, much like the vengeful Lord of the Old Testament and nothing like the God of Love of the New. In a work that over and over again stresses the importance of love, love in marriage and in the best relationships between men and women, Gualtieri becomes the cruel husband, the anti-prince, the tyrant par excellence, and a ref lection of a relationship with the wrathful God of the Old Testament that no longer obtained. And, of course, this last tale of the Decameron is told by Dioneo—literally “Dio Neo,” the “new god” of love—who makes it clear that he finds Gualtieri unsuitable as a husband, ruler, and most certainly as any kind of a lover. But this was merely the prelude to his last cruel testing of poor Griselda. For Gualtieri then demanded that she return to prepare and oversee his wedding to his new bride. Once again Griselda accepted this command. But significantly Dioneo insists on making a critical clarification: Griselda accepted his cruel command not as a patient ex-wife or as a loyal subject, but out of love for Gualtieri. He explains that she accepted only because “she had not been able to put aside the love she felt for him.”28 Thus she returned to the palace as a servant, to prepare the new wedding for her beloved. Dioneo relates a number of humiliating moments in the preparations and underlines once again their injustice by noting the deeply troubled reactions of Gualtieri’s subjects to her abuse and their repeated calls for a more just treatment of her. The humiliation comes to a head when Gualtieri has his new bride brought to his palace for the wedding. Presenting her to Griselda, he cruellytwists the knife of her humiliation in public again, asking her opinion of his new lady. She answered, My lord . . . she seems to me very good and if she is as intelligent as she is beautiful, as I believe, I am certain that you ought to live with her as the most content signore in the world. But still I would pray that those wounds that you gave before to the earlier one [wife], you spare this one; because I doubt that she could resist them, for she has been raised with great gentleness, whereas the other was used to hardships from her childhood.29 Yes, Griselda has suffered and finally even she has complained. Subtly, and without ever referring to herself by name, she has pointed out finally the unjust nature of his rule over her and by implication over his subjects. It would be satisfying to claim that Griselda’s final faint demonstration of defiance caused Gualtieri to change his ways, but Dioneo has already informed us that Gualtieri was ready to act even before she spoke. Thus ignoring her comments, he declares: Griselda it is time that you finally hear the fruit of your long patience and that those who have held me to be cruel and unjust and bestial learn that it was all according to plan, wishing to teach you how to be a wife and teach others how to pick and keep a wife and [finally] to guarantee my peace as long as we would live together.30 In the end, then, even Gualtieri admits that his lordly ways have been cruel, unjust, and bestial, but he justifies them by claiming that he has taught Griselda how to be a good wife. And many commentators, following Petrarch, have taken this claim at face value, arguing that Gualtieri is the demanding but just hero of the tale and Griselda the ideal wife fashioned by his treatment of her. Yet, in fact, as the story makes clear over and over again, his cruelty did not teach her anything. She came to him, as she has just pointed out, already accustomed to suffering and accepting the hardships that life brought her as a peasant. She was born into hardship and suffering and she adapted quickly to her lord and his mistreatment because of her own inherent peasant ability to suffer and lack of a sense of honor. Indeed, one would be hard put to find a place where the tale or Dioneo suggest that she learned anything from Gualtieri. And while the fourteenth-century Florentine readers of this tale were more usually urban dwellers than peasants and thus theoretically not as inured to hardship and suffering, they were proudly not nobles either, and it is hard to imagine them accepting from local nobles the treatment that Gualtieri dished out. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that they would have felt sympathy for Gualtieri’s defense of his cruel ways, as they too would have been unlikely to feel any need for such lessons from nobles or signori to learn the patience necessary to survive as subjects (as they had recently demonstrated throwing out their own Gualtieri) or for that matter even to survive as wives.Actually, it might seem strange that finally after retaking Griselda as his wife and explaining his whole plan to his subjects and her, the couple are portrayed by Dioneo as living happily ever after. But providing an explanation for that improbable happy ending is a startling and significant admission by Gualtieri: for, as unlikely as it might seem, all his cruel tests have led him finally to a crucial transformation— the decisive often overlooked climax of the tale. He has finally discovered the emotion of love and has fallen in love with his victim, Griselda. He confesses at the last: “I am your husband who loves you more than anything and believe me when I say that there is no man more content than I in his wife.”31 Crucially with that admission, and Griselda’s ongoing love that survived his every cruelty, no longer is their marriage simply an unhappy mismatch with a wife subject to her lord/husband defending his misguided honor and selfish noble pleasures. Rather, now it is exactly the kind of marriage that the Decameron advocates over and over again. With love as its emotional base, the happy ending that the story, and the Decameron itself, requires is possible and Gualtieri, his wife, and perhaps even his subjects can live happily ever after—not a divine comedy perhaps but a human one.32 For in the end Griselda survived a cruel lord, and with her willingness to suffer and peasant patience, she, not he, for a moment at least became the true teacher, teaching a tyrant who rejected love to love and to become a true prince—in this she was perhaps more Christ-like than Job-like. Let me suggest that by contemporary Florentine standards or those of the imagined and real women listeners of Dioneo’s tale, Gualtieri’s mistreatment of his wife was anything but a model of an ideal marriage until everything changed with love at its conclusion, despite Petrarch’s claim to the contrary. In the end, then, she was a victim, but in ways that many critics have had trouble seeing. First, of course, at the hands of her cruel lord/husband. But also at the hands of the would-be aristocrat and anti-republican Petrarch. For despite his claims about what he saw as an ideal of marriage, he also retold her tale in Latin to celebrate the honor of the often cruel signori—tyrants and lords—that he cultivated for patronage and support far from the republican Florence that claimed him at times with difficulty as an honored son. Still, in the end she and love won out, a fitting conclusion to the new god of love, Dioneo, and his tale, as well as to Boccaccio’s Decameron.Notes 1 I have used for this tale and all citations from the Decameron the classic edition edited by Vittorio Branca: Boccaccio, Decameron. In this reading that looks more closely at the Marquis of Saluzzo, I am following the path breaking lead of Barolini in her article “The Marquis of Saluzzo.” But I emphasize more a Florentine perspective on the tale than Barolini and am less inclined to follow her strategy of using game theory to explain what she labels as the Marquis’ beffa. I discovered after I wrote an early draft of this essay Barsella’s excellent article “Tyranny and Obedience.” My account stresses more the marital as well as the political side of the tale and looks more closely at the Florentine political and social world of the day, while she offers a more complete analysis of the ancient and medieval theoretical literature on tyranny; but we both agree that the tale is more about Gualtieri as a tyrant than about Griselda as a model wife.2 Decameron, 1233. “Beastly” often seems to serve as code word or signal that the male so labelled has sexual appetites that are “unnatural” by Boccaccio’s standards and hence like those of a beast. If beastly is being used in that sense here, it would add another dimension to the Marquis’ rejection of marriage and the love of women, one that Boccaccio regularly paints in a negative light. Barolini provides an interesting discussion of the term drawing similar conclusions but emphasizes its echoes of Dante’s usage of the term, along with its classical and Aristotelian dimension—a perspective that would undoubtedly have had its weight for learned readers and listeners, but perhaps less for a broader audience at the time. Barolini, “Marquis of Saluzzo,” 25–26. 3 Ibid., 1233; italics mine. 4 Ibid., 1234. 5 The three are described as the young sons of a noble knight named Tebaldo from either the Lamberti or the Agolanti families—both Ghibelline families exiled from Florence in the late Middle Ages and thus suspect already in fourteenth-century Florence with its strong Guelf tradition. 6 Although it should be noted that the prospects of profits from loaning money to the English had become less appetizing after the recent failure of Florentine banks in 1342, in part caused by the King of England’s reneging on his debts to them. Actually, recent scholarship has argued that local bad loans in Tuscany and debts built up in the ongoing wars in the region were more responsible for the bank failures, but contemporary accounts tended to place a heavy emphasis on the King of England’s actions—perhaps as a way to divert attention from the more local issues involved. Barsella notes also this connection in “Tyranny and Obedience,” 74–75. 7 Ruggiero, Machiavelli, 163–211. This vision of virtù and its development across the Rinascimento in Italy is one of the central themes of my effort to reinterpret the period in my book The Renaissance in Italy. From this perspective, Boccaccio’s Decameron with its stress on virtù is a work that fits more in the world of fourteenth-century Italy than as a work of medieval literature as it is often characterized. Of course, many of his tales have medieval sources and echoes, but significantly they are rewritten with a very different set of values more characteristic of fourteenth-century Florence and the city-states of central and northern Italy. 8 Walter (Gualtieri) of Brienne actually makes an appearance in the Decameron in his own right as one of the nine “lovers” of the Sultan of Babylon’s daughter, and a quite bloody “lover” at that (II, 7). Boccaccio also wrote a quite uncomplimentary account of his life in his De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, Lib. IX, cap. 24. 9 Decameron, 1234. Dioneo, however, does follow this comment with what appears to be a compliment for this lack of desire to marry, “for which he was to be seen as very wise” (1234). Yet what follows undercuts the force of this apparently very traditional negative vision of marriage. And throughout the Decameron Boccaccio seems to provide an unusual number of tales that see well-matched marriages as positive and at least potentially happy. 10 For this see the discussion in Ruggiero, Machiavelli, 24–6, 172–73 and Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss, 18, 131–34. 11 While the character Gualtieri had the same name as the recent Florentine would-be tyrant, this is not to argue that he was the only tyrant being referred to in the tale. In actuality Florence was surrounded by dangerous and aggressive tyrants who were capable of instilling fear in the city even if they were not named Gualtieri. As often noted, the fourteenth century, following in the footsteps of the thirteenth, was a period where republics were losing out to tyrants everywhere and Florence found themselves surrounded by aggressive signori on virtually all sides. 12 This lack of love also played a significant role in his lack of a positive relationship with his subjects, once again the micro-level of life, in this case marriage, reflecting the macro-level of life, in this case Gualtieri’s rule. Both lacked love and that stood literally at the heart of his negative consensus reality for his subjects and for the Florentine readers of his tale. 13 Clearly with the repetition of “insisting” and Gualtieri’s will, the tale is playing on will as a dangerous source of sin when misplaced as it is in this case. Of course, will from a1415 16 17 181920 2133theological perspective is the basis of all sin, which in the end is merely willing to turn away from the good and ultimately God. In this case Gualtieri might be seen as willfully turning away from love, the good and God much like Satan turned away from love, the good and God in the greatest rejection of all. At this moment in the tale with his willing misdeed, it might be argued Gualtieri confirms his fallen state. Barolini suggests that in these demands Gualtieri, unhappy with his subjects’ calls for his marriage, is setting up a beffa at their expense—a very typical form of Florentine joke that in this case punishes them for forcing him to marry against his will—and the key to the beffa is forcing them in turn to accept the peasant wife that he will pick unbeknownst to them. Although there is a logic to this perspective, it seems more likely that contemporaries would have assumed the driving force in his decision to take a peasant as a wife was his belief that she would have to be totally subservient to him, something that Barolini stresses as well. Decameron, 1235. Although the text is clear that Gualtieri entered the house alone, the discussion between Gualtieri, the father, and Griselda requires that she had entered as well. Perhaps it is significant that she is so humble that her entering the house with Gualtieri does not require mention. Ibid., 1237. The Ordinances of Justice were first passed in Florence on January 18, 1293 and while their meaning at the time has been much debated, they became with time a kind of civic monument to the ideal of Florence as a republic ruled by the popolo without the interference of the traditional Tuscan rural nobility, labeled magnates, who had once dominated the city. For the debate and the more complex reality of the Ordinances and the magnates themselves see my Renaissance, 77–82 and 94–97 and the overview of Najemy in A History of Florence, 81–89, 92–95, 135–38, and for a more detailed study see Lansing, The Florentine Magnates. Suggestively, Petrarch in his rather different retelling of the tale, softens this act of prepotency and male power that once again here strongly underlines Gualtieri’s cruelty and lack of required manners. He adds the telling detail that Gualtieri had Griselda surrounded by women of honor before she was stripped. Here we see how the tale could be changed to make it a hymn to a wise and careful husband anxious to arrange the right kind of marriage that would assure a matrimony that functioned as it should with the husband in command and the woman subservient and obedient. But Dioneo’s careful scripting of Gualtieri’s boorish and self-centered behavior in line with his high-handed ways that evoke the psychological violence of the old nobility, strongly suggest a very different vision of Gualtieri and his marriage—a negative vision in line with many of the tales about the injustices of arranged marriages in the Decameron. Decameron, 1239. One might note here that although Griselda is clearly a victim, she is hardly a heroine as often claimed by critics. There are in fact any number of actual female heroines in the Decameron whose tales were constructed to show their virtù and ability to control their own lives and virtually always their goal of winning a meaningful love in life and often in marriage. Perhaps the best example of this, and a virtual anti-Griselda tale, that gives the lie to Petrarch’s and later critics’ vision of Griselda as a model wife is the tale of Gilette of Narbonne (III, 9), who empowered by love cures the king of France and overcoming a series of seemingly impossible trials (typical of medieval lover’s tales and more normally male knights) in the end thanks to her virtù wins the love of the man she loves, her husband, Bertrand of Roussillon. In this tale he is also portrayed as a cruel lord, but Gilette is anything but passive and takes her life in her own hands to win out in the end—a model of what a woman can accomplish with real virtù in the name of love. It is suggestive also that Gilette is an upper-class non-noble from an urban setting not unlike the Florentine readers of the Decameron and much more easily accepted as active and aggressive than the humble peasant Griselda. Similar virtù overcoming a husband both cruel and foolish is presented also in tale (II, 9) where a Genoese woman, who takes the name Sigurano da Finale, passes as a male and flourishes in a series of adventures thanks to her virtù and in the end recovers the love of the husband she loves despite his murderous misdeeds.Guido RuggieroDecameron,In fact, this is the only use of the term in the tale, usually she and her father are referred to as poor and it is noted that he is a swineherd not a laborer. The title of the tale refers to her as “una figliuola d’un villano” and later when referring to her unexpected virtù, her dress and by inference her status is referred to as “villesco”: “l’alta vertù di costei nascosa sotto i poveri panni e sotto l’abito villesco.” For this see Brucker, Florentine Politics, 114; Najemy, Florence, 135–37. On the Ordinances see note 18 above. Branca actually points out the textual parallels noting that in the story of Job I:20 he states “Nudus egressus sum . . . nudus revertar” in reference to Griselda’s “ignuda m’aveste . . . Io me n’andrò ignuda . . .” In the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the famous lament of Job is rendered “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job I:20 [614]). Decameron, Critics have from time to time referred to the Decameron as “The Human Comedy” playing on an apparent contrast with Dante’s Divine Comedy, but I would suggest that Boccaccio’s comedy was more divine than it might at first seem and Dante’s more human.Bibliography Barolini, Teodolinda. “The Marquis of Saluzzo, or the Griselda Story Before It Was Hijacked: Calculating Matrimonial Odds in the Decameron 10:10.” Mediaevalia Barsella, Susanna. “Tyranny and Obedience: A Political Reading of the Tale of Gualtieri (Dec., X, 10).” Italianistica Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. Edited by Vittorio Branca. Turin: Einaudi, 1992. Brucker, Gene. Florentine Politics and Society 1343–1378. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962. Giannetti, Laura. Lelia’s Kiss: Imagining Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Italian Renaissance Comedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Lansing, Carol. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Najemy, John. A History of Florence,Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Ruggiero, Guido. Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento. New York: Cambridg. Sexual violence in Renaissance and early modern Siena was widespread, barely manageable, and apparently accepted, though not always legitimized, especially when it applied to particular social classes. Both the nobility and the clergy considered it their “right” to engage in behavior that underscored their social superiority.1 This included not only the use of weapons, but also brawls, thievery, private vendettas, and sexual violence. Such behavior did not, however, pertain only to them: commoners also forcefully imposed their brutality, sexuality, and violence on less powerful victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whose only fault was their vulnerability. But not all victims, whether male or female, endured violence passively. For everyone whose voice was not heard, there were many others who, in spite of their age or sex, protested the violence they had endured and described it in detail. Unlike other Italian cities, medieval Siena did not have a single government office charged with the social control of the population and the suppression of behavior deemed to be unacceptable.2 This changed in 1460 when the government established the office of the Otto di custodia (Eight in charge of Protection) to oversee behavior and public health.3 After several changes to its name and tasks, the office was abolished in 1541 by the Spanish protectorate, and then reestablished in 1554 as the Ufficiali sopra la pace (Officers in charge of the Peace) in order to settle citizen disputes and prosecute both blasphemy and violence. Yet this incarnation was also short-lived, and the office was abolished at the fall of the Republic in 1555.4 The administration of justice was entrusted first to the Captain of the People (Capitano del popolo), and then to the Captain of Justice (Capitano di giustizia), before being abolished in 1481. Some of its tasks were entrusted to the Rota court in 1503, but in the event the 1481 suppression was not definitive, and the Captain of Justice seems to have recovered some functions in the first half ofthe sixteenth century. The office of the Captain of Justice was formally revived when Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici issued an edict on the “Reformation of the Government of the City and State of Siena.” in 1561, and it acquired criminal jurisdiction over the city and the podesterie (the administrative structures into which the countryside was organized).5 The Captain of Justice also gained those tasks previously entrusted to the Criminal Judge (Giudice dei malefizi ),6 and functioned under the supervision of the Governor (Governatore).7 The Governor was now the top official in the new administration. He enjoyed “broad political and administrative functions, supervised the public order, issued regulatory actions and had the control of all sentences of tribunals.”8 All other magistrates lost their jurisdiction over criminal lawsuits.9 These frequent changes to judicial offices in Siena help us understand why documentation on crime is scattered throughout many different archival collections and series. It is also incomplete, because much material has been lost. As a result, it is not possible to analyze the Sienese records in as thorough a social or statistical way as it has been done for Florence.10 The preliminary analysis presented in this essay—which uses Sienese documents for the years just before and after the fall of the Republic (1555)—will serve to illustrate at least some cases of violence at a time in Sienese history that, from the perspective of the history of crime, still awaits detailed analysis. A preliminary analysis reveals just the tip of the iceberg. One of the questions that arises from a first glance at the documentation is why so much of the surviving documentation refers to violence in the countryside and not in the city. Perhaps extra-judicial agreements between the parties, reached in order to avoid denunciation, were more common or widespread in the city. Or, perhaps, much of the documentation for urban violence has not survived to the present day. In Siena, and especially in the Sienese countryside already devastated by war, famine, and other problems, Medicean legislation over criminal activities took a long time to be applied and become the norm. One of the reasons for this was that the countryside suffered from a very slow reconstruction process. It took not only time, but a lot of effort, to erode and limit local authorities and personal powers that, for decades after the fall of the republic, continued to impose a social code that penalized those on the lower levels of the social scale.What the law said The rubric on sexual violence in the last republican Sienese statute (1545) followed medieval precedent and listed only adultery, rape, and abduction, in that order, as crimes of violence.11 Sexual intercourse with a married woman of whatever social rank or with an unmarried virgin was punishable by the imposition of a financial penalty; abduction for the purpose of sexual violence, on the other hand, was punishable by death. The definition of sexual violence required that the abductor (raptor) marry the victim, if the father or the senior male members of her family deemed it appropriate, or alternatively that he provide her withSexual violence in the Sienese state 37a dowry. If sexual violence was perpetrated against someone’s wife or daughter, it damaged the honor of the husband and the family, so the culprit had to, somehow, adequately restore that damaged honor.12 Sexual violence by men on men, described in the statute as “a dreadful kind of violence that is used against nature on men,” demanded that the rapist be jailed and pay a fine, but if the rapist was over forty years old, he was to be burned at the stake.13 The regulation in the Duchy of Florence was similar: in 1542 Duke Cosimo I revised the law against “the nefarious, detestable, and abominable vice of sodomy” and not only increased the fines but also imposed physical punishments and even the death penalty on repeat offenders.14 Once Siena had been ceded by King Philip II of Spain to the Medici in 1557 and incorporated into the duchy of Tuscany, the 1558 revision of the Florentine law on sexual violence also applied to the city. This revised law removed the fines and imposed only physical punishments for “those who will use force and violence to women and men to satisfy their sexual desire.”15 If the violence did not lead to an effusion of blood, the culprit was to be sent to the galleys for a certain number of years to serve as a chained rower; if, on the other hand, there had been an effusion of blood the culprit was to be executed. The only exception allowed, and this only for Florentine and Sienese citizens, was commuting the sentence to the galleys into a jail term, but this only at the discretion of Duke Cosimo I. Such discretion generally depended on the social rank, personal reputation, and family honor of the culprit.The rape of women and young girls The new law was tested almost immediately. “Since this case was of such manifest enormity, and the first since the publication of Your Excellency’s last pronouncement against violence on men and women”:16 so begins a letter by Orazio Camaiani (or Camaini),17 a diligent official and Captain of Justice in the “New State” (Stato Nuovo) of Siena, to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in the winter of 1559. Camaiani went on to relate a case of attempted sexual violence against “a poor widow of Belforte” who, on resisting her attacker, was hit by him so hard that she bled.18 Camaiani’s information came not from first-hand observation, but from letters he had received from the vicar of Belforte (fol. 13r), a small mountain-top hamlet about 45 km west of Siena. It included all the necessary negative requirements—night, loneliness, violence. The “poor widow,” who is never named in the letter,19 had been assaulted during the night in her own home by two men who entered on purpose in order to rape her; she resisted the attack, screamed loudly, and was wounded in the head and face. Her attackers ran away without succeeding in their intent. The widow did, however, recognize one of her attackers, “a certain Terenzio Usinini, Sienese” (fol. 13r) and reported him. The Captain of Justice thus knew for whom to look. The information was sent to Duke Cosimo I, but what has survived is scattered and incomplete. It does, however, point to the many cases of violence in a territory that was still sufferingfrom the aftermath of the raids and devastations brought about by the recent Florentine conquest of Siena (1552–59) and the republic’s difficult process of submission to its new Florentine lord. We know very little about Terenzio Usinini. There is no record of his having been baptized in Siena,20 so we can assume that he was born and baptized in the countryside. He also does not appear among the very few Usinini who held secondary appointments in Sienese offices.21 His family pedigree or that fact that the family belonged to one of the major political groups in Siena, the Monte of the Riformatori, were of no help to him—in referring to Terenzio, the Captain of Justice noted that “a worst name against a person cannot be heard in the entire town.”22 In fact, Terenzio did not have a good reputation—after hearing that he had been accused of attempted rape, other women in town went to the Captain of Justice to report that he had raped them, too, or had attempted to do so. Terenzio managed to escape arrest on this occasion, but his accomplice, a priest, was not as fortunate—he was captured thanks to a peasant who tricked him with the help of a woman who was priest’s former lover. The incomplete records do not tell us what happened to either Terenzio or the priest. We can, however, determine that Terenzio seems to have been a violent highborn individual who behaved as if he were above the law and thought he could force his sexual desires upon subordinate women. This may, in fact, be to a certain extent true because Terenzio seems to have managed somehow to escape justice. While highborn locals might have been able to get away with sexual violence and escape justice, the sexual misbehavior of state officials, who were to uphold the legal system, was more problematic, especially when such officials used their power to abuse women and girls. Already in 1378, Pietro Averani from Asti, a district judge was dismissed because he had used the power of his office (sub pretextu offitii ) to rape a young virgin girl living in Siena.23 In a case from 1554, a community in the countryside asked the government in Siena to “immediately” send another commissioner to replace the current one whose violence against some local women was such that it was about to cause serious disorders. One “young, respectable, and good” local woman even went to Siena herself and, in tears, described to the magistrates how the said commissioner had come into her house at night on the excuse of seeing how the soldiers had been billeted and had started to lay his hands on her, at which point she had begun to scream and he stopped.24 Though problematic, the sexual misbehavior of this representative of the legal system seems to have elicited little more than a request for removal from the post or relocation, and no actual physical punishment meted out on the guilty party. We do not know whether this was the limit of what plaintiffs could expect. In a different case, blasphemy was added to the charge of attempted violence. This rendered the accusation much more dangerous because blasphemy was considered an “open crime,” that is, clear and public. Angela reported that Bastiano, the servant of the Bargello (that is, of the chief of police), “on many occasions requested her honor from her.”25 After beating her several times because sherefused, he entered her house while her husband was away and tried to rape her, at which point she started screaming. After threatening her, “he pointed the dagger at her throat saying ‘whore of God, if you scream I will slaughter you,’” but she continued to scream and so he left. The examples given so far point to a somewhat spontaneous, even impulsive attempt on the part of the men to engage in sex with an unwilling woman. There are also cases of carefully planned attempts. Agnoletto the Corsican, for example, not knowing how other to seduce a young woman, did so by impersonating a priest; “because he did not know how else to rape a young girl, he took the clothes the archpriest wore during Lent and, dressed like him, started confessing her in church.” This particular record continues by pointing out that Agnoletto “raped many women and did other impudent things.”26 We have further examples of premeditated rape. A notary reports that Pompeo di Giovanni from Monticello, a 45-year-old man, married and with two daughters, had engaged in “robberies, rapes and, in general, all other sorts of abuses done and committed” including “raping, together with other men, Iacoma the daughter of Filippo, his relative,” and of “having prided himself for having entered through the roof into Antonia di Censio’s house only to have sex with her and perhaps he did so, and because there was no point in screaming she, for the sake of her honor, kept quiet about it.” The notary continues his report with the comment that he “will remain silent on what Pompeo did to certain poor young women who were walking by” and then concludes by recording that Pompeo was eventually found guilty of a long list of robberies and sentenced to the gallows.27 After the Council of Trent (1545–63), a new detail enters into notarial descriptions of sexual violence: some defendants now tried to justify themselves by explaining that they had been tempted by the devil. In 1571, Sandro was accused of raping five-year-old Santina in a wheat field and causing her to bleed from her vagina.28 In his defense, Sandro told the Captain of Justice that when he went in the field to “shout at some children doing some damage,” Santina and Elisabetta came by. Sandro was then tempted by the devil to sit down and grab the said Santina and put her on his lap, and having pulled out his tail [i.e. penis] through the opening of his trousers, he inserted the second finger of his right hand into Santina’s nature [i.e., vagina] and, having seen that it could enter easily, took out his finger and started pointing his tail towards her nature and, in so doing, he could have hurt her and she shouted one or two times. Hearing the little girl scream, her uncle Domenico rushed to help her and found her crying and “totally wrecked and bloody.” He hit Sandro with a bow he had in his hands and moved him away from the girl. Sandro later confessed that since he could not put his member inside Santina’s nature, he was about to finish [i.e. ejaculate] between her thighs or in some other way as best hecould because the devil grabbed him by the hair and he [Sandro] could not stop himself, but the said Domenico stopped him. Sandro’s deposition claims that when he was raping the girl he was not his own self, but was under the control of the devil to the point that he was not physically able to do otherwise until an external force, Domenico, interrupted him and stopped the devil’s control. Referring directly to the 1558 law mentioned above, the Captain of Justice pointed out that, in cases of violence with effusion of blood, the accused must incur the death penalty. Perhaps to elicit a more merciful sentence, the Captain of Justice described Sandro as “a young man between 25 and 30 years old, a bachelor, and more a fool than a scoundrel.” The plea was successful—Sandro was spared his life and received the lighter sentence of “two or three years in the galleys.”A matter of honor, but whose honor? In a letter of March 1524 to the government in Siena, Bartolomeo di Camillo, at that time podestà (chief magistrate) of Sarteano, reported a disturbing case of rape: A certain local man, Agnolo di Ipolito, entered into the house of a certain Giovanni Baptista Tucci, a citizen of Siena, and found a daughter whose name is Iuditta, who is around fourteen-years-old and not yet married, and violently took her and because she did not consent, he started hitting her and eventually he raped her by force so that he broke her nature. 29 Podestà Petrucci then went on to say that: It seemed to me that, since I am in this town, for the honor of your Excellencies first and for my own honor secondly, I had to bring this shameful case to your attention so that it will not go unpunished. Petrucci explained how he sent soldiers to Agnolo’s house to arrest him, but the accused was defended by one of his brothers and other relatives, as well as by the town’s priors. Because the victim’s father, Giovanni Baptista Tucci, was a Sienese citizen, Sienese statutes applied and overrode Sarteano’s local customs and statute (capitoli ). Petrucci thus assumed that he had the authority, as podestà of Sarteano, to deal with the case, so “In a friendly way, I let the Priori know that I did not want to bypass their local customs, but I wanted [to uphold] my honor.” The situation quickly deteriorated and one of Agnolo’s relatives fired “two rif le shots together with offensive words” against the podestà. Another relative, Petrucci reports, “told me, answering back, that if I would have gone to his house, he would have punched not only me, but Christ himself.”Two days later, Petrucci reported that news of the rape had reached one of the subordinate judges in his podestarial team, and that this judge, together with some soldiers, went once again at Agnolo’s house to arrest him. Agnolo’s uncle, Ser Giovanni di Gabriello, threatened them, saying that if the judge tried to get in, he would throw bricks or stones at him. In his report to Siena, Petrucci underlines the fact that “Your Excellencies know that these actions are done against you, that in this place I am your delegate, and that in order to preserve your honor I am ready to give my life.” Two days after this, Cardinal Giovanni Piccolomini, archbishop of Siena, wrote from Rome to the Sienese Concistoro (the lords and main officers) in support of Ser Giovanni; perhaps as a way to show that Ser Giovanni enjoyed important connections and patronage, or perhaps as an attempt to limit more severe outcomes. “Because they had some other enmities [in town]” cardinal Piccolomini informed the Concistoro, Ser Giovanni di Gabriello and his relatives did not recognize, in the darkness of the night, the podestà ’s soldiers and so they defended themselves. He added that Ser Giovanni “in a good-natured and simple way used some inappropriate words” without realizing that he was speaking to the podestà and his soldiers. Cardinal Piccolomini continued that he was certain that the lords of Siena would recognize “the good faith of this country town and in particular of the family and household of said Ser Giovanni who have always been good servants of our city” and suggested that the lords “might show all possible leniency.” A month later, podestà Petrucci happily wrote: Magnificent, excellent and powerful lords [. . .] in order to carry out what your Excellencies have ordered [. . .] I sent for Giovan Baptista Tucci, his wife, and his daughter on the matter of what Agnolo di Ipolito had done, and about the marriage that has to be contracted between them.30 Clearly, the legal solution reached in this case of rape was for the rapist to marry his victim. The records do not indicate what Iuditta, the victim, might have thought of such a solution, or even what she felt about the entire case. There is no trace of her in the reports or the letters. What is ever-present, instead, is the matter of honor—the honor of Siena, of its magistrates, and their delegate, of the town of Sarteano and its priors and local statutes; of Agnolo’s family; of Tucci’s family; and of Iuditta’s own self, which would now be restored through marriage with her assailant. In all of this, the discourse is male while the female voice of Iuditta is completely absent.The rape of young boys Rocco from Campiglia confessed under torture that, while he was at home eating, a certain Curtio, a little boy around eight years old, entered his house and asked him for something to eat; the said Rocco grabbed him and laid him over a table and, having lifted his clothes, put his tail [penis] between the boy’s butt cheeks with the intention of knowing him carnally.The boy’s screams stopped Rocco from proceeding any further in the attempted rape. Under questioning, Rocco admitted that “he did put [his penis] between the boy’s thighs but then finished the job with his hands.”31 In light of the accusation and confession, the Captain of Justice in 1571 asked not only that the usual fine for such sodomitical activities to be levied on Rocco, but also that he be given jail time on account of “the young age of the boy.” The request for jail time may point to the Captain of Justice’s understanding of the aggravating factor in the case (the boy’s tender age) and, perhaps, to his personal feelings about it, but the bureaucratic language of the report does not allow us to delve further into the case nor to understand more fully how Rocco himself might have justified his aggression of Curtio. It does, however, point to the risks and dangers that came with child poverty (Curtio entered the house to ask for food) and the opportunistic behavior of men in the grip of sexual impulses. The charges levelled a few years earlier in 1567 against Giovanni, a 25-yearold man from Sinalunga, “strong and well-shaped,” were many and varied.32 The records tell that that he was “in jail, indicted for having carnally known a she-ass and also for having used the nefarious sin [sic] vice of sodomy.” He was also accused of having sodomized Salvatore, a boy of “around four or five years of age and of having broken his ass [sic] sex.” Salvatore was not the only boy Giovanni had attempted to sodomize; he had done the same to “another little boy [also named Giovanni] of the same age [as Salvatore] or a little more”, but this boy managed to run away crying. Under “rather rigorous torture,” Giovanni explained that he had found a she-ass along the way, moved her off the public road and into a scrub where, he felt the need to mount her and so, approaching her from the back, he put his member into her nature, but because she did not stop moving and grazing, after having kept it there for a little while, he pulled it out and climaxed as he did so. Giovanni also confessed to having taken little Salvatore to a vineyard where, having lifted his clothes, he directed his natural member into the boy’s ass [sic] sex, but because the boy was small he could not insert it more than two fingers, and because this was hurting the little boy, the boy started to struggle and scream so Giovanni let him go and climaxed outside, and he did not notice that he had broken the boy’s sex or caused an effusion of blood. An aunt of the little boy declared, instead, that when little Salvatore came home “the blood was running down his thighs and his ass [sic] sex was chapped.” Giovanni justified himself saying that when they were in a barn he told the child “if you come here, I will fuck you” and then added that “it is not true that he wanted to sodomize him.” The records conclude that “in line with the statutesof this city, it does not look as if Giovanni is subject to capital punishment,” even though blood had been spilled, “but we could condemn him to the galleys, with the approval” of the Governor. Aside from the various crimes listed in this deposition (bestiality, sodomy, child abuse, physical violence causing bleeding), there is an interesting idiosyncrasy in the records. The notary seems to have had second thoughts about some of the words he was using and seems to have felt compelled to attenuate the language; he did so by striking out some words and substituting them with more neutral, though still very precise, terms. As a result, “ass” became “sex” and “sin” became “vice.” While the first correction suggests an attempt to use terminology that is less vulgar or vernacular in favor of a more technical term, the second suggests the presence of a moral consideration whereby the Christian concept of “sin” is replaced by the more secular concept of “vice.” All the previous cases deal with sexual violence in the countryside or smaller towns in the region. The only case of sexual violence I have found in the city of Siena itself involved a young apprentice working in a slaughterhouse in the district of Fontebranda.33 Ascanio accused the butcher Lando, an associate of his employer Orlando, of having sodomized him in the slaughterhouse and having beaten him for resisting. Ascanio explained that it happened “in the workshop when we were going to stretch the tallow in the workshop dais” (fol. 169v). When Ascanio turned down Lando’s sexual request, Lando “took me by the arms, tore the lace off my leggings and lowered them. Then he lowered my head, came into me from behind, and did his wicked things [ poltronerie] to me, and once he had done them, he punched me twice in the back.” Ascanio told the court that he informed his employer Orlando, who in turn informed the shop boys working with Lando as well as other people. Ascanio’s accusation was, however, undermined by his own admission that he had already, on several occasions, been the passive partner in same-sex intercourse with soldiers in Montalcino and with a soldier in Siena in the service of Cornelio Bentivoglio (fol. 170v). In other words, Ascanio had previously been sexually active with other men. Perhaps for this reason Lando did not suspect at first that he had been arrested for having sodomized Ascanio, but thought, instead, that he had been arrested for having beaten him (fol. 171r). Questioned on the details of what happened in the slaughterhouse, Lando reported that perhaps Ascanio had misinterpreted his joking words “what do you think, come here I want to fuck you.” This led the judge to interrogate Ascanio once again, this time with his hands tied. The youth once again declared that “Lando started beating me and wanted to force me and he bent me over and sodomized me” (fol. 172r), but this time Ascanio added that he did not resent his having been beaten. Ascanio was then questioned a third time, this time in front of Lando, who maintained his defensive line saying: “I told him jokingly ‘come here, I want to fuck you’ because he did not want to come.” Interrogated again, Lando confirmed “I ordered him to bring the tallow and to stretch it up, but I did not do anything with him nor with anyone else” (fol. 172v). Ascanio, too, continued to affirm his own version of events pointingout that this happened not only at Lando’s slaughterhouse, but once also at Fontebranda (where Ascanio refused to go along with the attempted sodomy). When Lando kept saying that the accusation was levelled at him because of the beating he had given Ascanio, the latter asked the judge call other witnesses saying, “let the shop boys come here and they will tell you what I told you” (fol. 173r). In the end, Ascanio’s situation became quite complicated as he paradoxically changed from being the accuser to being the accused. He was jailed (allegedly on charges of sodomy), but on 25 December, in celebration of the Nativity, he was pardoned and released “by decree of the lords” (fol. 173r).34 Several factors worked against Ascanio. His position as an apprentice was perhaps too weak to sustain the charges he levelled against a master butcher such as Lando, or to raise doubts about the truth of Lando’s deposition. In a situation such as this, the court seems to have given credence to the more senior and more socially respectable individual. Similarly, the fact that Ascanio’s employer failed to support him in his case must have raised suspicions. Lastly, Ascanio’s admission of having previously engaged in same-sex intercourse with soldiers both in Siena and in Montalcino worked against him. Although Ascanio had the courage to denounce a superior for a sexual crime that was not uncommon, his social status and his previous sexual encounters with men not only placed his testimony in doubt, but actually served to find him guilty and put him in jail.The clergy and violence After Siena fell to Florentine forces in 1555 the Sienese government and part of the Sienese population moved to Montalcino, a small town about 40 km due south of Siena, in a last attempt to resist the conquest and preserve the centuriesold republic. Among the volumes of deliberations that have survived from the “Republic of Siena retired in Montalcino” (Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino) there is the denunciation deposited by Mona Antilia di Andrea, a woman living in Castelnuovo dell’Abate, in which she asks for justice for her eight-yearold son who, she reports, has been “damaged” ( guasto) by the French friar Carlo who worked at the ospedale (hospital or hospice) attached to the Olivetan abbey of Sant’Antimo, in the plains just below Castelnuovo.35 The Sienese authorities summoned the friar to appear in court within three days to defend himself against the accusation that “he had had sodomitical intercourse with the said young boy and had broken his ass” (“di havere fatto culifragio”). Because the friar was French, the court decided to inform the French Marshal Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome, seigneur de Monluc, who had commanded the French troops during the defense of Siena and had then moved to Montalcino with the Sienese government and exiles. A week later, Monluc was informed that the friar had been arrested in Piancastagnaio where the podestà was told to keep the Frenchman in jail and under close surveillance until further notice. About a month later, the friar was transferred to the Franciscan convent in Montalcinowhere the friars were advised of his alleged crime, told to guard him well, and await further orders. At this point, the documents fall silent and we do not know what further ensued with Friar Carlo. We are thus left with no information on what he might have said in his defense, what further evidence the mother and the boy might have brought into consideration against him, or what the final verdict might have been. What we do have, however, is the record of a mother asking for justice against a foreign clergyman who was the subject of, and possibly defended by, a powerful foreign military figure in the region, this during a difficult moment in a war that had devastated the countryside and brought about the near-total collapse of the government and the republic. Civic and moral regulations were still in effect, but the silence of the incomplete records and the transfer of the accused friar to another convent, rather than to a city jail, seem to imply that such regulations had not been strictly applied and that the friar probably escaped justice. The Sienese government, whether in exile or not, was not the only jurisdiction to deal with sexual violence by the clergy. Ecclesiastical courts also dealt with sexual crimes, as we can see from the records in the fonds of Cause criminali housed at the Archiepiscopal Archive in Siena.36 The collection includes the precepts, that is the summons to appear in court, and some of the trial records, but once again many of the files are incomplete. In fact, in the majority of documents and final sentences issued by the archbishop’s vicar are missing, so this case can only be known in its general outlines.Menica and the priest Ser Mauro Criti One case for which we do have a complete set of documents deals with the charges levelled against the priest Ser Mauro Criti, rector of Campriano di Murlo, a hamlet 17 km south of Siena.37 According to the charges brought forth by the victim’s father, the priest used an excuse to enter the accuser’s house and, finding the man’s twelve- or thirteen-year-old daughter Menica alone at home, tried to sweet-talk her by asking her if she wanted him to buy her a pair of shoes. Aware of the priest’s intentions, Menica responded with “I want God to give you a misfortune.” Ser Mauro “then reached out for her neck and kissed her and tried to do something else, but she yelled.” Menica’s shouts were heard by Laura Pasquinetti, a nine-year-old girl who arrived just in time to see the priest leave. He pretended to throw some snow against the window, and said to Menica: “Be quiet, you little beast, I’ll buy you a pair of shoes.” Menica’s father asked that the priest be justly punished, having damaged both his and his daughter’s honor, even though he had to admit that “he could not prove the fact, except as he had told it, because when it happened there was no one else at home.” Although the evidence came from two under-age girls, Menica and Laura, the court was nonetheless obliged to pursue the case. A note signed by FilippoAndreoli, secretary of the Governor of Siena, Federico Barbolano di Montauto, laid out the guidelines the vicar was to follow: The very reverend vicar of the most reverend lord archbishop of Siena will make sure that in the states of His Highness [Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici] crimes committed by priests will not go unpunished and he will not fail to ensure that both public honesty and private interest are upheld. With this note, Andreoli was referring to the 1558 Florentine law on sexual violence and Cosimo’s determination that it be applied evenly and universally. The trial, which lasted almost a year, gathered testimonies not only from the two girls who had been ocular witnesses, but also from many other people, and brought to light the fact that the priest was no saint. At first, the interrogation of Ser Mauro revolved around what he did that day. His responses claimed that his conduct had not been socially improper—he said that when he called at the house and realized that no adult was present he simply went away (fol. 4v). He stubbornly denied having thrown snow at the window, but admitted to having thrown snow elsewhere that day, as confirmed by other witnesses. Brought in for questioning once again, this time with Menica in the room, Ser Mauro reacted with surprise and fear at seeing the girl (fol. 13r), who accused him without fear (fol. 13v). From the examination of other witnesses, the vicar learned that Ser Mauro had also been physically and sexually violent with Caterina, a young girl about fourteen years old, unmarried, who had been brought up by a certain Bernardino. According to testimony, Ser Mauro had “misled and kidnaped Caterina [. . .] brought her to his house, where he kept her for several weeks, raping her and using her contrary to the law [contra forma iuris]” (fol. 23v). He also sought to take advantage of Hieronima, the servant of a priest who had previously been stationed in Campriano. Ser Mauro asked her to wash his clothes in exchange for his giving lessons to one of her sons and then added that he would “give her more affection than the other priest”, and this contrary to the law [contra forma iuris] (fol. 23v). Other witnesses reported that the priest was a confirmed card player and always had with him a deck of cards “that he says is a present from a beautiful girl” (fol. 30v). Ser Mauro denied everything, even under torture, but was found guilty nonetheless and fined 100 lire, removed from his church in Campriano, and confined in Siena for two years.Filippo and the presbyter Ser Cristofano Another case heard by the bishop’s court in Grosseto deals with a mother who brought charges against a priest who had raped her son. Monna Caterina, a thirty-year-old widow living in Campagnatico, in the outskirts of Grosseto, reported that the presbyter Ser Cristofano “has raped my little son Filippo.”38 The narrative she provides illustrates a mother’s care and a young victim’s shame. “For the past year I have sent my Filippo to his [Ser Cristofano’s] school andone evening when he came back one I noticed he was unhappy and very sad.” Caterina asked what was going on, but Filippo refused to answer. Later that evening, when she was “undressing him to put him in bed, I saw his shirt very bloody and I asked him what blood was this.” Filippo confessed that on that day, the priest had called him in his bedroom and had given him a book and he had approached him and while he pretended to teach him, he did that horrible thing on the back, and because the little boy yelled, he hit him few times. Ser Cristofano threatened the boy not to reveal anything to me nor to someone else and so, “looking carefully at the boy, I saw that he had hurt him and had broken his ass and so I decided he would not attend school anymore.” In her testimony, Caterina also reported that she heard that Ser Cristofano had raped “Monna Lena, a widow at that time” and that rumor went around the entire countryside that “he torn her behind.” But what troubled Caterina more was that she and Ser Cristofano were cousins39 —presumably, she did not understand the reason behind his “bad behavior” against his twelve-year-old nephew Filippo. When the bishop’s vicar interrogated young Filippo, the story matched closely with what his mother had reported. Both accounts pointed to a familiar closeness and confidence that the presbyter had showered on Filippo in order to sodomize him. Filippo recounted: I know Ser Cristofano of Ventura, the priest in Campagnatico and my kin, and I attended his school for a year or perhaps more and one evening, after the other pupils had left, I remained there to serve him at dinner and after he had dined he stood up and he went to sit on a chair in his bedroom and he called me. After I made the bed, we went back and he sat again on the same chair. Then he gave me an illustrated book and he put me between his legs: he untied my pants and lifted up my shirt and put his thing into my ass and caused me pain. I started to scream and asked him to let me go, but he was holding me and he was thrashing and kept telling me “be quiet, be quiet” and he closed my mouth so I could not scream and he put his thing into my ass and then he let me go. I went home and, along the way, I could not walk because he hurt me in the ass and I was bleeding and I went to bed and my mother saw my shirt and I think she believed it was scabies because at that time I had it, and then I told her: and she did not want me to go to school again and I did not go anymore. In response to a direct question, Filippo answered, “I never saw nor do I know whether Ser Cristofano did something like this to any other student.”40 Family relation was the justification Ser Cristofano used to keep Filippo back, have him serve dinner, and make the bed. Once there, he used the “illustrated book” to entice the boy enough to sodomize him, counting on the fact that Caterina, as a widow, did not have a husband to defend the family or take action against the presbyter, whose social and cultural position in town served, in part, to protect him.Reading the document with modern eyes, we note Caterina’s maternal sensitivity: she immediately realized that Filippo was unhappy and hiding something. Her understanding of her son and her emotional connection with him were strong and deep. She also had aspirations for her son, enough to send him to be educated by a learned relative who might open doors in life for the boy. In spite of this, Caterina was not about to accept her cousin’s violence against her son and reacted quickly and with determination: “I did not want him to go to his school anymore” she told the vicar’s notary, and then, perhaps to temper her rage, added “I consider him [Ser Cristofano]   wicked man [tristo]41 because he raped my little boy Filippo.” Although Filippo was about twelve years old at the time, Caterina referred to him as a citto (little boy), using a typically vague term for a child that could be adapted to the legal necessities of the moment—in her eyes, Filippo was an innocent child and not a possibly compliant youth. In fact, the records do point to Filippo’s physical weakness and to his inability to deal forcefully enough with the situation to avoid the rape—caught by surprise, he reacted strongly and screamed, but to no avail because the priest’s adult strength, his shutting Filippo’s mouth to prevent the boy from screaming, and his repeated command to the boy to “be quiet” while he raped him all contributed to overpower and subdue Filippo. The consequences of the priest’s violence were not only physical—lacerations, bleeding, pain—but also psychological—the boy’s depression and silence on his return home. While in cases of anal rape in Venice, the authorities, already in the fifteenth century, sought the help of surgeons and barbers to examine and report on the lesions and physical damage done to the victim’s body,42 this was not the case in Siena. There is no trace of such provisions in the surviving statutes of the Sienese barber surgeons’ guild.43 The only reference I have found to an obligation to report on wounded persons is a decree of February 1556 (reissued in 1563) signed Governor Ferdinando Barbolani di Montauto, which refers to wounds in a general way, and not to wounds specifically caused by sexual violence or sodomy.44 In a case of some years later, a certain Arcangelo charged the chaplain Ser Andrea with having sodomized his eight-year-old son Sabbatino, who had been a boarding student in the chaplain’s school, and with having threatened him (Arcangelo) with a weapon.45 Arcangelo reported that “one night, while sleeping in bed with Sabbatino, Ser Andrea sodomized him forcibly and against Sabbatino’s will, so that he broke his ass and then abandoned him.” As he was being raped, the young boy screamed and was heard by a neighbor. The physical damage done to Sabbatino was such that he could not walk. Archangelo heard of this from a local miller who presumably heard the news through the small talk of the neighbors, and went to the chaplain’s house to get his son and take him home. A few days later, Arcangelo went to pick Sabbatino’s things, but the chaplain refused to return them. In front of other people, the chaplain threatened Arcangelo with a hatchet while “another man who is in his house took an harquebus.” Ser Andrea’s violent behavior was not limited to Sabbatino:Arcangelo reported that “he has sodomized four more little boys,” among them two of the miller’s sons.Conclusion The case studies presented in this essay point to a much larger corpus of documents dealing with legal cases against perpetrators of crimes of sexual violence. A first observation we might draw from the evidence presented is that, ten years after the publication and implementation of the 1558 Florentine law against sexual violence, cases were still being handled with leniency towards the accused—at least in Sienese territory. In spite of mounting evidence that included precise and detailed information from the victims, supporting evidence from eye-witnesses and other people, and in spite of the use of torture (in a few cases) to extract further information or confirm previously given information, alleged culprits seem generally to have received lenient sentences that spared their life. What is also striking is that all defendants denied the allegations raised against them, even under torture. In their defense, the accused used standard diversion tactics in order to have the case dismissed or the penalty reduced. This included suggesting that the children’s allegations were reliable because of their young age, or the fact that the children may have been prompted by others to say things that were not true, or that they had been instructed on what to say in order to build a case against the accused. Was this sexual violence against minors “normal” at the time? To modern eyes, the cases and evidence presented here may seem extreme and even unbelievable, and some contemporaries probably felt the same way. Yet, as Ottavia Niccoli reminds us, we must not imagine a constant in “human nature” that might allow us to apply our criteria, our sensibility, our perceptions to people who lived five or six hundred years ago, except in very general terms. The mental frame of our ancestors was, in fact, and at least under some aspects, very different from ours.46 We can observe that those mothers, fathers, and relatives who sought justice for their victimized children did so without fear of the court, or public opinion, or the bureaucratic lengths of time the process would entail. We can also note how local communities were not sympathetic towards people in positions of authority who behaved in improper ways towards the young people they were supposed to educate, defend, and protect. The Sienese evidence suggest that these cases, unlike those in Florence or Venice, were not about voluntary choices.47 These were not cases of same-sex consensual sodomy or prostitution for profit. These were violent acts perpetrated by men in power over young people who could not defend themselves. As Patricia Labalme aptly said, “although there is herein much to pity and much toprotest, this is a story without a moral.”48 The evidence from the Sienese records points to the same conclusion.Notes 1 Di Simplicio, “La criminalità.” For the later period, Di Simplicio, Peccato penitenza perdono. 2 For the case of violent behavior in Bologna see Niccoli, Il seme della violenza. 3 Archivio di Stato di Siena (hereafter ASSi), Guida Inventario, 105, 119–23. 4 Ibid., 105. 5 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 120. 6 ASSi, Guida Inventario, 121. 7 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 120. 8 ASSi, Guida Inventario, 123. 9 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. IV, 117. 10 For social aspects, see Rocke, Forbidden Friendships. For statistical aspects, see Zorzi, “The Judicial System.” 11 Ascheri, ed., L’ultimo statuto, III. 76 “De poena adulterii, stupri et raptus,” 315. 12 Brackett, Criminal Justice, 111. 13 Ascheri, ed., L’ultimo statuto, III. 79 “De poena sogdomitarum,” 316. 14 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASFi), Mediceo del Principato (hereafter MdP) 1869, fol. 13r (February 16, 1559). 17 Giansante, “Camaiani Onofrio.” 18 ASFi, MdP 1869, fol. 27r. 19 It may be possible that she is “domina Francisca relicta quondam Michelagnoli Iacobi de Belforte” with whom Terenzio had disagreements for some quantities of wheat, ASSi, Curia del Placito 750, not foliated (November 4, 1555). 20 He does not appear in ASSi, Ms A 33, fol. 305r (battezzati), a compilation of baptismal records from church registers in the Baptistery and civic records in the office of the Biccherna. 21 ASSi, Ms A 39, fol. 203r (riseduti). 22 ASFi, MdP 1869, fol. 21bisr. 23 ASSi, Notarile ante cosimiano 99, not foliated. Pietro was also legum doctor. 24 ASSi, Concistoro 2453 ad datam (April 18, 1554). 25 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia 645, fols. 17r–19r (August 1570). 26 ASSi, Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino 63, passim (1557). 27 ASSi, Biccherna 1127, fol. 24v (1544); ASSi, Capitano di giustizia 645, fol. 94r–v (July 1571). 28 ASSi, Governatore 436, fol. 86r–v (June 28, 1571). 29 ASSi, Concistoro 2081, not foliated (March 20–24 1524). 30 ASSi, Concistoro 2080, not foliated (April 26, 1524). 31 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia 645, fol. 78r–v (May 29, 1571). 32 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia 611, fols. 138v–139r (April 8, 1567). 33 ASSi, Capitano di giustizia 150, fols. 169v–173r (November 2, 1555). 34 It was common custom to free some prisoners during the most important religious celebrations. 35 ASSi, Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino 5, not numbered Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena (hereafter AASi), L’Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena, ed. G. Catoni and S. Fineschi (Rome: 1970). 37 AASi, Cause criminali 5509, insert 3 (January 23–December 6, 1569). 38 AASi, Cause criminali 5502, insert 4 (May 5–September 1, 1552). 39 “To me he is a cousin brother” (“a me è fratello consobrino”), that is, a cousin born to a sister of Caterina’s mother.40 “For a similar case, see Marcello, “Società maschile e sodomia.” 41 The Treccani Italian vocabulary defines as tristo a person who has a bad attitude. 42 In 1467 the Council of Ten issued a law that obliged doctors to report “anyone treated for damages resulting from anal intercourse”; see Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 117. 43 ASSi, Arti 37 (1593–1776). 44 ASSi, Statuti di Siena 64, fol. 72r. 45 AASi, Cause criminali 5504, insert 4 (February 19–March 5, 1559). 46 “Non dobbiamo immaginare una costanza della ‘natura umana’ che ci consenta di applicare i nostri criteri, la nostra sensibilità, la nostra attitudine percettiva a chi è vissuto cinque o seicento annifa, se non in termini generalissimi. L’attrezzatura mentale di quei nostri antenati era infatti, almeno sotto alcuni aspetti, molto differente dalla nostra.” Niccoli, Vedere, vii. 47 For Florence, see Rocke, “Il fanciullo” and Rocke, Forbidden Friendships. For Venice and the Veneto see Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros. 48 Labalme, “Sodomy,” 217.Bibliography Archival sources Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena (AASi) Cause criminali 5502 and 5509 L’Archivio Arcivescovile di Siena. Edited by G. Catoni and S. Fineschi. Rome: 1970. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASFi) Mediceo del Principato (MdP) 1869 Archivio di Stato di Siena (ASSi) Arti 37 Biccherna 1127 Capitano di giustizia 150, 611, and 645 Cause criminali 5504 Concistoro 2080, 2081, and 2453 Curia del Placito 750 Governatore 436 Guida Inventario. Rome: 1994. Manuscript A 33 and 39 Notarile ante cosimiano 99 Repubblica di Siena ritirata in Montalcino 5 and 63 Statuti di Siena 64Published sources Ascheri, Mario, ed. L’ultimo statuto della Repubblica di Siena (1545). Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 1993. Brackett, John K. Criminal Justice and Crime in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Cantini, Lorenzo. Legislazione Toscana. Volume 1, 3, and 4. Florence: nella stamperia Albizziniana, 1800. Di Simplicio, Oscar. “La criminalità a Siena (1561–1808): Problemi di ricerca.” Quaderni Storici Peccato penitenza perdono, Siena 1575–1800: La formazione della coscienza nell’Italia moderna. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994.Giansante, Mirella. “Camaiani Onofrio.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 17, 1974. Labalme, Patricia. “Sodomy and Venetian Justice in the Renaissance.” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis  Marcello, Luciano. “Società maschile e sodomia: Dal declino della ‘polis’ al Principato.” Archivio Storico Italiano 150 (1992), 115–38. Niccoli, Ottavia. Il seme della violenza: Putti, fanciulli e mammoli nell’Italia tra Cinque e Seicento. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995. ———. Vedere con gli occhi del cuore: Alle origini del potere delle immagini. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011. Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. “Il fanciullo e il sodomita: pederastia, cultura maschile e vita civile nella Firenze del Quattrocento.” In Infanzie: Funzioni di un gruppo liminale dal mondo classico all’Età moderna. Edited by Ottavia Niccoli, 210–30. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1993. Ruggiero, Guido. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crimes and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Zorzi, Andrea. “The Judicial System in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” In Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, 40–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Residence, community, and the sex trade in early modern Bologna Vanessa McCarthy and Nicholas TerpstraEarly seventeenth-century Bologna was unique for its relatively tolerant legislation on female prostitution. Rome, Florence, and Venice required meretrici (prostitutes) and donne inhoneste (dishonest women) to inhabit designated areas and streets. Romans settled on the large area of Campo Marzio for their residence, Venetians ordered women to reside in the old medieval civic brothel known as the Castelletto near the city’s commercial center, the Rialto, and Florentines designated a few streets located in the poorest areas of each city quarter.1 Segregation was motivated by concerns about morality as well as the more pragmatic issues of civic disorder, noise, an  policing. Containment protected sacred spaces and pious inhabitants from the immorality and disruption of prostitutes and their clients and made it easier for authorities to locate and arrest violators, thereby increasing order as well as the fees and fines collected.2 By contrast, Bologna permitted registered prostitutes to live across the city, and the records of its prostitution magistracy demonstrates that they did. The extant annual registers from 1583 to 1630 provide a rare opportunity to map where hundreds of registered prostitutes lived in the city, and to trace individual women’s movements. Only about half lived on streets with ten or more prostitutes, and very few dwelt on streets with twenty or more. Consequently, most Bolognese could count prostitutes and dishonest women as near neighbors, and for many laboring-poor, prostitution and prostitutes per se were not a serious problem.3 Regulation and enforcement in Bologna show that secular and religious civic authorities and the general populace approached prostitution primarily as an issue of economics and public order, and only secondarily as an issue of morality and public decorum. Due to the city’s economic reliance on university students, civic authorities had long regulated prostitution as a commercial issue and prostitutes as fee- and fine-paying workers governed by a civic magistracy known as the Ufficio delle Bollette (Office of Receipts). Established in 1376, theBollette registered “Foreigners, Jews, and Whores” (Forestiere, Hebrei, et Meretrici ). After having tried civic brothels and sumptuary regulations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and residential zones in 1514 and 1525, Bolognese civic authorities of the later sixteenth century bucked prevailing trends with comparatively relaxed legislation that underscored the connections between prostitutes, Jews, and foreigners as coherent communities living and working in the local body social while remaining legally outside the body politic.4 The Bollette’s officials and functionaries negotiated between legislation, their own interests, and the needs of individual prostitutes when enforcing regulation. The hundreds of women who registered annually as prostitutes were integrated into local communities through residence and through familial, work, and affective relationships, and had greater opportunities for agency than broader cultural, religious, and social ideals would lead us to expect. There were bumps on the road to this more relaxed regime. In the late 1560s, the Tridentine reforming Bishop Gabriele Paleotti attempted to separate prostitutes and other dishonest women from most of Bolognese society through residential confinement. Citing the desire “to restrain their wickedness and uncontrolled freedoms of life” and to stop them from polluting others with their “filth,” Paleotti and the papal legate published three decrees that ordered all prostitutes, courtesans, and female procurers to live in a handful of specific city streets. Yet Paleotti was overstepping his jurisdiction. His ambitious reforms failed within eighteen months, and by 1571 the civic government had regained exclusive control over regulation.5 It returned to the more tolerant strategy employed before the bishop’s intervention: all prostitutes and dishonest women were required to register and purchase moderately priced licenses from the Bollette, but they were neither required to wear distinguishing signs nor to live in assigned streets or areas. They were free to live throughout the city. Scholars of Roman, Venetian, Milanese, and Florentine prostitution have tracked the contrasts between strict legislation and lax prosecution. Prostitutes regularly lived outside of designated streets and areas, sometimes thanks to exemptions sold by the magistrates.6 Yet these cities kept their stricter legal regimes on the books. What was distinct about a city that largely abandoned that regime? This essay examines the residential and social integration of prostitutes in Bologna’s neighborhoods. It first maps their distribution across the city in order to examine how far residential “freedom” extended in practice. While about half of registered prostitutes clustered on sixteen specific streets, the other half lived on eighty-five other streets with ten or fewer other prostitutes. It then reviews registrants’ sometimes complex and contested relationships with family, clients, lovers, friends, and neighbors using evidence recorded in the annual registers and testimonies given to the Bollette’s officials. Most were integrated into local networks through the familial, affective, and working relationships they had with other local men and women, and they gave and received support and companionship. Finally, it examines late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century proclamations forbidding prostitutes from residing in specific city streets. Thesedecrees ref lect the civic government’s pragmatism: they were issued in response to the specific complaints of powerful convents, churches, and schools located in areas with large prostitute populations. Trial records, cultural sources, and recent scholarship on gossip and visibility shows that most neighbors were aware of what these women did and that they were not troubled by it. What they did find troubling were the displays of wealth by individual women, the noise and disorder that some brought to their neighborhoods, and instances where neighbors lost control over their communities. The Bollette provided a vehicle for handling these complaints without criminalizing the prostitutes. Taken together, the residential and legal evidence demonstrates that prostitutes lived in most workingpoor neighborhoods of early modern Bologna and that they were largely tolerated as a fact of life.The geography of early modern Bolognese prostitution The majority of registered prostitutes lived in the area between the second and third sets of city walls (see Figure 4.1), the “inner suburbs” where the urban poor typically clustered in Italian cities.7 Only a handful of prostitutes lived near the city center, usually on short alleys hidden behind larger publicFIGURE 4.1Agostino Carracci, Bononia docet mater studiorum, 1581.56buildings that had been licensed for prostitution in earlier centuries.8 The civic brothel noted in the 1462 Bollette regulations had been immediately south-west of the Piazza Maggiore and civic basilica of San Petronio, and some prostitutes worked by particular gates and markets, but from the sixteenth century Bolognese meretrici moved to houses across the low-rent inner suburbs.9 Table 4.1 charts the number and percentage of registrants who lived in each quarter in 1584, 1604, and 1624. The quarters differed in size and population as Figure 4.1 shows, and the larger quarters of Porta Procola and Porta Piera housed more prostitutes. Few lived by the north-western city wall in Porta Stiera, which appear on Agostino Carracci’s 1581 map (reproduced here) as dominated by fields.10 The sharp rise and fall in the number of women registering demonstrate the inconsistencies of early modern bureaucracy, with total numbers increasing by 327 from 1584 and 1604 (from 284 to 611) and then plummeting by 466 between 1604 and 1624 (from 611 to 165). Lucia Ferrante has argued that in 1604 the Bollette was operating with unusual efficiency, and perhaps even over-zealously.11 The f luctuations tell us more about where the Bollette concentrated its work than about where all the prostitutes and dishonest women actually lived. Charting residence by quarter demonstrates that prostitutes spread themselves fairly evenly throughout the outskirts of the city, and across each quarter. In 1604, registrants lived on at least 102 streets, yet only eight streets had twenty or more women, and only eight were home to ten to nineteen women (see Table 4.2). A few streets housed larger numbers, like Borgo Nuovo di San Felice, in the western quarter of Stiera by the city wall, and Campo di Bovi, located by the eastern city wall in the quarter of Porta Piera.12 Women also clustered in the ghetto after the Jews were expelled from the Papal States for a final time in 1592.TABLE 4.1 Residence of registered prostitutes in Bologna’s quarters1584Porta Piera Porta Procola Porta Ravennate Porta Stiera Total16041624Number of resident prostitutesPercent of total registrantsNumber of resident prostitutesPercent of total registrantsNumber of resident prostitutesPercent of total registrants. This table includes only those women with identifiable addresses. In 1584, this was 88% of all registrants (250 of 284 total registrants), in 1604 it was 91.8% (561 of 611), and in 1624 it was 92.7% (153 of 165). Sources: Campione delle Meretrici 1584, 1604, 1624.The sex trade in early modern Bologna 57 TABLE 4.2 Streets with ten or more resident prostitutes in 1604, by quarterQuarter of Porta PieraQuarter of Porta ProcolaQuarter of Porta StieraCampo di Bovi: 36Senzanome: 36Jewish Ghetto: 21Frassinago: 21Borgo Nuovo di Fondazza: 29 San Felice: 47 San Felice by the Broccaindosso: 10 gate: 13 Avesella: 10Borgo di S. Giacomo: 20 Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza: 21 Torleone: 18 Borgo degli Arienti: 14 Borgo di San Marino: 17 Bràina di stra San Donato: 13 Gattamarza: 13Quarter of Porta RavennateSource: Campione delle Meretrici 1604.This was an ironic reversal of the situation in Florence, where the ghetto was deliberately located within the old brothel precinct in 1571.13 In 1604, twentyone women lived in this area. Most streets in Bologna’s inner suburbs numbered only a few prostitutes. In 1604, 84 percent (86 of 102) of the streets on which they registered housed nine or fewer prostitutes, and these women accounted for almost half of all registrants that year (44 percent). Further, 66 percent (68 of the 102 streets) housed five or fewer. Consequently, many of these women lived on streets that were not dominated by prostitutes. A typical example of this is the south-western corner of the city (see Figure 4.2). In 1604, three of the area’s streets were heavily populated by prostitutes: Senzanome housed 36, Frassinago housed 21, and Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza housed twenty-one. However, the majority of the neighborhood’s streets had five or fewer resident prostitutes and dishonest women: five women lived on Altaseda, four on Nosadella, and three on Capramozza. The surrounding streets of Bocca di lupo, Belvedere di Saragozza, Borgo Riccio, and Malpertuso had two or fewer. On these streets prostitutes mixed with day-laborers, artisans, and merchants. They rented rooms from pork butchers and shoemakers, lived in inns, and resided next to potters.14 These were their immediate neighbors, separated only by the porous boundaries of walls, stairways, doorways, and windows where they had frequent day-to-day interactions.15 Like other working-poor women, they were not confined to the streets that they lived on, but could and did move through the surrounding area buying food, engaging in chores, finding work, visiting friends, and going to the Bollette to buy their licenses.16 As Elizabeth S. Cohen writes, prostitutes were both “seen and known” in their neighborhoods.FIGURE 4.2Agostino Carracci, Bononia docet mater studiorum, 1581.Networks, neighborhoods, and communities The Bollette’s records reveal prostitutes’ affective social and familial circles. Some women were registered as living in their mother’s, sister’s, and (more rarely) cousin’s homes, while other women’s female kin, housemates, lovers, and servants bought their licenses. Notaries did not consistently record such details, making quantitative analysis difficult.17 While men regularly appear in the registers paying for licenses, the specifics of their relationships with the women were almost never recorded. The Bollette’s records, particularly testimonies in cases of debt against clients and long-term partners, provide rich information aboutThe sex trade in early modern Bologna 59women’s familial, social, and work relationships. However, the tribunal devoted more effort to investigating unregistered women suspected of prostitution, than to the hundreds of women who had bought licenses. The Bolognese evidence can be placed in the context of evidence from other northern Italian cities demonstrating how prostitutes were surrounded by family, housemates, and allies. In early seventeenth century Venice, three-quarters of 213 prostitutes noted in a census lived with other people. Most headed their own households, but some were boarders or lived with their mothers. The majority of those who headed households sheltered dependent female kin, children, and a variety of unmarried women, including servants and other prostitutes. A few heads of households (6 percent) lived with men, who were either their intimates or boarders.18 Roman parish censuses from 1600 to 1621 show similar cohabitation patterns: 47 percent of prostitutes lived with at least one family member, mostly children but also siblings, nieces and nephews, and widowed mothers.19 Everyone within the household economy benefitted from the income and goods earned by these women. Bologna’s registers give examples of sisters as registered prostitutes, like Dorotea di Savi, called “Saltamingroppa” (literally “Jump on my behind”) and her sister Benedetta, who lived together with their servant Gentile on Broccaindosso.20 Similarly, Margareta and Francesca Trevisana, both nicknamed “La Solfanella” (“The Matchstick”), lived together on Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza for eight years. While Francesca registered annually from 1598 to 1605, Margareta did so only in 1602, 1604, and 1605.21 Before registering, Margareta likely enjoyed the income that her sister earned through prostitution and may have assisted in preparing for and entertaining clients. The Bollette suspected that she had, and so launched an investigation against her when she became pregnant in 1601.22 Mothers and daughters also lived and worked together, like Lucia di Spoloni and her daughter Francesca, who lived on San Mamolo by the old civic brothel area, and Anna Spisana and her mother Lucia, who lived together on Borgo degli Arienti.23 In 1604, Domenica di Loli bought licenses for her daughters Francesca and Margareta, and all three lived just south of the church and monastery of San Domenico on Borgo degli Arienti. Francesca had lived on the street since at least 1600, and while she was no longer registering in 1609, her sister still was. Margareta continued to live on Borgo degli Arienti until 1614, perhaps with her mother and sister.24 Prostitutes often lived together in rented rooms, small apartments, and inns. Residential clustering was not uncommon for unmarried women, who shared the costs of running a household through lace making, street-peddling, prostitution, and laundering.25 The largest could count as brothels, though there were relatively few of them. In 1583, twenty-one dishonest women lived in the house of Gradello on Bologna’s heavily populated Borgo Nuovo di San Felice, by the eastern wall. Yet while registrations climbed in the 1580s, the group at Gradello’s shrank to fourteen women in 1584, and eleven in 1588.26 Moreover no other large houses appeared through this period. In 1604, the street with mostregistrations was Borgo Nuovo di San Felice, with forty-seven women, and the largest single group was thirteen who gathered in the house of Lucrezia Basilia, while the rest had five or fewer.27 On the second and third most populated streets, Campo di Bovi and Senzanome, no house had more than six registered prostitutes living in it.28 These larger clusters were often inns, where prostitutes benefitted from the presence of other women and the protection of innkeepers. Inns popular with prostitutes included those of Matteo the innkeeper (“osto”) on Frassinago and of Angelo Senso on Pratello. Seven registered women lived at Matteo’s inn in 1589, and ten lived in Angelo’s inn in 1597.29 Few women stayed at inns for more than a year and most registered without surnames, but instead with reference to a town, city, or region, like Flaminia from Ancona (“Anconitana”), Francesca from Fano (“da Fano”), and Ludovica from Modena (“Modenesa”) who lived at Matteo’s place in 1598. These could have been recent migrants or women identifying by parents’ origins or using pseudonyms. The inns and brothels helped them build social networks as they secured places of their own. Yet, it was more common for women to live with one or two other prostitutes in rented rooms and small apartments. In 1597, Lucia Colieva lived with Elisabetta di Negri on Borgo di San Martino, and the following year she joined another registered prostitute, Vittoria Fiorentina, on Senzanome.30 Similarly, in 1601 Isabella Rosetti, Giulia Bignardina, and Cassandra di Campi all lived together in Isabella’s home on Frassinago. A year later Giulia had died and Cassandra was no longer registered.31 For just under ten years, Madonna Ginevra Caretta, who was unregistered, managed a small apartment where six to eight registered prostitutes lived.32 Unlike Bologna’s inns and taverns, Ginevra’s household was mobile, moving across town and back again over the years it operated. In 1588 it was located on Saragozza, in the south-western corner of the city, and the next year it moved to San Colombano in the northwest quarter of Stiera. At least one woman, Lena Fiorentina, followed Ginevra to the new street, where she remained for almost a decade before moving to Paglia.33 A few of the prostitutes lived with Ginevra for years, like Pelegrina di Tarozzi, who stayed for four years, and Chiara Mantuana, for three.34 Domenica Cavedagna, registered for thirteen years (1597–1609), ran a house on Centotrecento and then on Bràina di stra San Donato.35 Seven other prostitutes lived with her in 1604, and a year later three had left but six new women had moved in. A few stayed with her for four or five years.36 The Bollette’s registers explain why some of the women moved out of the homes run by women like Ginevra Caretta and Domenica Cavedagna. Some entered service (either domestic, sexual, or both) while others moved to different streets or left Bologna entirely to try their luck elsewhere.37 While living with other prostitutes could bring economic, professional, and even personal security, it could also bring personal rifts or increased attention from the police (sbirri ), who saw these homes as easy targets for making arrests. Men interacted with registered prostitutes as occasional clients, long-term amici, absentee husbands, jealous lovers, and as acquaintances, if not friends.Single women, whether unmarried or widowed, were financially and socially vulnerable, subject to sexual slander, to charges of magic and sorcery, and to general suspicion by neighbors and authorities alike.38 Relationships with men afforded them a degree of protection from the financial and social marginalization they experienced because of their gender, economic status, and work, and so women turned to them not just for income and companionship but also for a measure of protection. The civic government had always prohibited married women from prostituting themselves, since by doing so they committed adultery. The 1462 statutes ordered whipping and expulsion for the women, and fines of 100 lire for officials who looked the other way.39 Women living with husbands could not register with the Bollette, though abandoned wives sometimes could. Francesca di Galianti claimed in 1604 that her husband Bartolomeo di Grandi went to war three or four years previously, leaving her with a three-year-old daughter to feed. She had since given birth to a daughter with a cloth worker Giovanni, with whom she had been living for about a year “to make the expenses.”40 For the Bollette, the question of whether abandoned women like Francesca could and should register was a practical one since women who registered were women who paid fees. These women appealed to the sympathy of Bollette officials by claiming that they were married but had not seen their husbands in many years, leaving unanswered the question of whether their husbands were alive or dead. This ambiguity about the ultimate fate of their husbands would have freed them from charges of adultery at the archbishop’s tribunal (if the husband was alive) while at the same time freeing them from registration with the Bollette (if he were dead). Francesca did not state whether she thought her husband was dead or alive, and ultimately a kinsmen Vincenzo Dainesi swore that he would ensure she left her “wicked life” (“mala vita”) and take her into his home to live with him and his wife.41 The officials were satisfied with this, and so Francesca remained unfined and unregistered. In 1586, Vice Legate Domenico Toschi authorized police to seize “all married women who do not live with their husbands” caught at night in bed with their lovers (amatiis).42 Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti believed such women were clearly committing adultery, and Pope Sixtus V’s bull Ad compascendum (1586) ordered that any married person whose spouse was alive and had sex with another person—even if they had a separation from an ecclesiastical court —should be sentenced to death.43 Toschi’s decree was reconfirmed ten years later by the new vice legate, Annibale Rucellai, and a third time in 1614.44 If a woman returned to her husband, she was to be immediately deregistered and could not be allowed to practice prostitution. If she continued, she was no longer under the Bollette’s jurisdiction, but rather that of the archbishop. Stable relationships with men, referred to in Bologna as amici, “lovers,” or as amici fermi, “firm friends,” offered a measure of economic security for prostitutes by providing money, clothing, and food in varying amounts depending on the men’s own status.45 When Arsilia Zanetti sued Andrea di Pasulini, notary of thearchbishop’s tribunal, for compensation for their three-year sexual relationship (“amicitia carnale”), she noted he had given her three pairs of shoes, a pair of low-heeled dress slippers, and a few coins (a ducatone, half a scudo, and a piastra, a Spanish coin).46 Buying the woman’s licenses could also be part of the arrangement, as Pasulini had also done for Arsilia.47 Even though Bologna’s monthly rate of five soldi, and annual rate of three lire, was extraordinarily low—only onefifth of what Florentine prostitutes paid—this was another expense that women did not have to worry about and suggested commitment on the part of the men.48 Lovers and friends helped women in their interactions with the law. The cavalier Aloisio di Rossi had a three-year sexual relationship with Pantaselia Donina, alias di Salani, and when her landlord complained to the Bollette that she had not paid the rent, di Rossi acted as her procurator and ultimately paid the landlord.49 Other prostitutes maintained relationships with local, low-level arresting officers (sbirri); Elizabeth S. Cohen has uncovered many relationships between prostitutes and such men, noting that “the two disparaged professions often struck up alliances in which the women traded sex, companionship, and information for protection and money.”50 Such partnerships were not unusual in Bologna. In May 1583, the sbirro Pompilio registered Francesca Fiorentina as his “woman” (“femina”) and got her a six-month license for free.51 In 1624 three women registered as living in the “casa” of the Bollette’s esecutore, Pietro Benazzi, on Borgo di San Martino.52 Pietro registered Caterina Furlana on January 11, 1624 and paid for her one-month license. She was subsequently de-registered because “she went to stay in order to serve Pietro Benazzi.” When Caterina di Rossi moved out of her place on Borgo degli Arienti and into Pietro’s house, she paid for one month and never again.53 Though these Bollette functionaries could not keep these women’s names out of the registers, they could keep them from paying for licenses, even when they were most likely still living by prostitution, and may have protected them from harassment by other court officials. Male friends could also be rallied for support, particularly by women who had lived in one street or area for a substantial period of time, building reputations and financial and social ties with their neighbors. When Margareta Trevisana “The Matchstick” (Solfanella) was investigated by the Bollette in 1601, she had been living on Borgo di Santa Caterina di Strada Maggiore with her sister for at least eight years. She confessed that three years earlier she had given birth to the child of Messer Antonio Simio, a married man.54 The Bollette had investigated her then, allowing her to remain unregistered on the promise that she would reform her life and go to live with an honorable woman. In 1601 she was pregnant with the child of another man and was living with her sister Francesca, a registered prostitute.55 Margareta produced statements signed by two male neighbors who described her as a good woman (“donna de bene”) the whole time they had known her, while her parish curate confirmed that she had confessed and taken communion the previous Easter.56 On further questioning by the Bollette, the priest claimed that he had known Margareta for about ten or twelve years, having first met herwhen he lived in the same house as she and her sister. He claimed not to know what kind of life Margareta led, but admitted that she appeared pregnant, and was, as far as he knew, not married. The priest’s testimony cleared her of charges of adultery, but could not save her from registration, a three-lire fine, and probation.57 In May 1602, Margareta produced statements about her “honest life and reputation” provided by two different neighbors and another curate at Santa Caterina di Saragozza, and her name was removed from the register.58 Margareta lived on the same street for ten or twelve years, had relationships with neighbors and housemates, had a sister with whom she lived, and was able to rally four male neighbors and two parish priests to support her. She and others moved amongst family, friends, long-term lovers, and occasional clients, building relationships on reciprocal, if uneven, bonds of financial, emotional, and legal support and protection. They were not just physically a part of Bologna’s working-poor neighborhoods, but also socially and affectively integrated into their communities.Bad neighbors While Bolognese civic law tolerated prostitution and permitted prostitutes to reside throughout the city, public disorder was always a concern. Decrees published by the Bolognese legate, at the request of convents, churches, confraternities, and schools, frequently lamented the dishonest words and daily and nightly reveling by prostitutes and other disreputable people.59 Men socialized in prostitutes’ homes, eating, making music, and talking.60 While some parties remained relatively quiet, others filled the neighborhood with winefueled singing, laughing, and the sounds of dancing and of fights over games of chance. The noise was intrusive, disruptive, and alarming: blasphemous words, violent acts, and sexual slander carried through windows, over walls, and into streets, squares, and other residences. Broadsheets illustrating prostitutes’ lifecycles usually included knife fights by men who discovered that “their” woman had another lover.61 Barking dogs, brawling men, and screaming women heard through f limsy walls and open windows added to the noise of crowded squares, laneways, and streets.62 Men also fought in doorways and on streets in full sight and hearing of neighbors. To reduce these disturbances, Papal Legate Bendedetto Giustiniani forbade prostitutes from throwing parties ( festini ) or “making merry” (trebbi ) in the homes of honest people, or even from eating or drinking in taverns and inns. Other decrees forbade games of chance and betting, like dice and cards.63 Lawmakers recognized that it was less the prostitutes than the men with them who were the problem. In 1602 prostitutes were forbidden from travelling through the city at night with more than three men, under fine of 100 scudi for the men and whipping for the women.64 Eight years later, Legate Giustiniani forbade prostitutes from going through the city at night with any men, under penalty of whipping for both the men and the prostitutes.65Enclosed communities of male and female religious frequently complained about the noise of prostitution. Bolognese authorities attempted general exclusionary zones around convents in the 1560s without success and so moved to proclamations expelling prostitutes and other disreputable people from specific streets; this was similar to Florence, where the streets designated for prostitution were de facto exclusionary zones around most convents.66 Between 1571 and 1630, at least fifty proclamations cleared twenty-five distinct streets in Bologna, about one-quarter of all the streets inhabited by prostitutes in 1604. Most proclamations concerned eight specific convents on the city’s outskirts, though a few male enclosures were also protected.67 All either had elite connections or were newly built, and most were near streets heavily populated by prostitutes. In 1603 Vice Legate Marsilio Landriani forbade all prostitutes, procurers, and other dishonest women from living on a cluster of streets bordering the Poor Clares’ house of Corpus Domini, established in 1456 by S. Caterina de’ Vigri, and the Dominican convent of Sant’Agnese (est. 1223), one of the city’s richest and most prestigious convents with over 100 nuns.68 Landriani’s proclamation stated that the nuns were greatly disturbed and scandalized by the daily and nightly reveling of prostitutes, procurers, and other disreputable people, the “dishonest” words that they spoke, and the wicked examples they posed.69 Prostitutes had just over a month to move out, and those found there after the deadline would be publicly whipped, while their landlords would be fined fifty gold scudi and lose their outstanding rents.70 Yet few prostitutes were actually registered on these streets.71 While registrations generally dropped dramatically in the 1610s and 1620s, these streets declined the most, with only two prostitutes remaining by 1614.72 In 1622, the expulsion was repeated almost verbatim with the addition of two neighboring streets that housed a handful of prostitutes; none remained by 1624.73 Concerns about pollution continued, particularly around shrines. The confraternal shrine of the Madonna della Neve was built in 1479 to shelter a miraculous image of the Virgin on the street Senzanome at the south-western corner of the city.74 Senzanome had twenty-three registered prostitutes in 1594, thirty-six in 1604, and thirty-five in 1609. Yelling, singing, mocking, and jesting disturbed the peace, interrupted the Mass and other divine offices, and forced young, unmarried girls and respectable residents to hide in their houses. Confraternal brothers repeatedly complained to the legate about the noise of Senzanome’s prostitutes and other “people who have little fear of God and his most holy mother.” 75 Between 1587 and 1621 four proclamations expelled dishonest people and prostitutes from Senzanome and around Santa Maria della Neve.76 One of 1608 threatened women caught residing or lingering in the street with a fine of ten scudi the first time, and expulsion the second time.77 Men could be fined ten scudi the first time, and another ten scudi and three lashes the second time. This proclamation even named three specific women, Giulia da Gesso, Doralice Moroni, and Ludovica Giudi, “as well as every other meretrice.” 78 A year later all three of these women were still living on Senzanome, with Doralice Moroni registeredin the house of the priest Campanino and Giulia da Gesso in the house of a priest of San Niccolo.79 Moreover, they shared the street with thirty-five other registered prostitutes. Yet the prostitutes gradually did move away, and in 1614 and 1624, only two women registered on Senzanome.80 The Legate’s 1621 decree ordered dishonorable people living on Senzanome to move to Frassinago, to Borgo Novo, or to “another street appointed to similar people” where there were no convents, churches, or oratories.81 Neighbors had direct, day-to-day contact with prostitutes and knew details about their lives. Gossip—the sharing of local and extra local information— typified neighborhoods and formed the basis of community self-regulation.82 People constantly watched and listened to their neighbors from the streets, in doorways, through windows, on balconies, and through f limsy walls.83 Early modern prostitution was public and visible. Michel de Montaigne remarked that prostitutes sat at their widows and leaned out of them, while others observed that the women promenaded proudly through the streets.84 In his Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (1616), Tommaso Garzoni described how prostitutes worked to catch men’s eyes while sitting at their widows, gesturing and bantering with them.85 Some called attention to themselves by wearing brightly colored gowns with ostentatious decorations and jewels on their fingers and at their necks.86 Contemporary Italian broadsheets depict women sitting at their widows and in their doorways while older women act as go-betweens.87 Bollette testimonies show that Bolognese knew a great deal about the prostitutes who were their neighbors. Witnesses often claimed that they had seen women going through the streets or into buildings and apartments with men. In 1601, Caterina Marema told that when she lived in the same casa as Lucrezia Buonacasa, she frequently saw the tailor Gian Domenico Sesto come to stay and sleep with her.88 Others saw more intimate behavior, like Bartolomea, daughter of Antonio di Miani, who claimed that she knew her neighbors Margareta and Cornelia were “meretrici” because she saw them laughing, dancing, embracing, and kissing men. She also heard that they went to register with the Bollette.89 Still others testified more simply that “everyone in the neighborhood considers her to be a whore,” or, “everyone says that she is his whore.” Finally, some men talked with each other about their sexual relationships with women. Silvio, son of Rodrigo di Manedini, claimed that over the previous three years his friend Tarquino, a sbirro, told him repeatedly that he was “screwing” (chiavava) Lucrezia Buonacasa.90 In this case, Silvio claimed also to have first-hand knowledge of their relationship: he said that he had seen the two in bed together at Lucrezia’s house on via Paradiso and at the watch house of the sbirri. In a close knit, intensely local world like this, prostitutes and dishonest women would have been hard-pressed to keep their relationships and work a secret. In pragmatic terms, some women may not have wanted to keep their work a secret: gossip and visibility acted as advertisement and could attract better clients. Local knowledge of women’s attachments to men might also earn them a measure of respect, even if only while the relationship continued, especially ifthe man was honored locally because of his wealth or status. These relationships could bring a sort of social protection. Whether or not women or their clients and lovers made spectacles of themselves, prostitution was both seen and known. Most working-poor people were not overly scandalized by the fact that their neighbors lived by prostitution, or perhaps they had resigned themselves to living amongst them. No evidence has come to light that working-poor women and men made a concerted effort to drive prostitutes and dishonest women as a group out of their neighborhoods. Most streets on which registered prostitutes lived housed ten or fewer such women, and prostitutes may have been quieter and less given to overt public display, since they did not have to compete with each other for the attention of the men and youths who came in search of their services. With fewer women there was less of the serenading, violence, and harassment by rowdy students and drunken men that offended neighbors, and less attention from patrolling officers looking to fill their purses with rewards for arrests.91 Tessa Storey has argued that as long as Roman prostitutes maintained local order and the appearance of respectability, neighbors did not see them as an exceptional problem. A few written complaints requesting the eviction of specific prostitutes from their streets identified only the most scandalous and the loudest, on grounds that they posed bad examples by “touching men’s shameful parts and doing other extremely dishonest acts” in the streets.92 Those who were well behaved—and these were actually listed by name—were welcome to stay provided that they continued to behave. Working-poor neighbors who found the women’s work immoral or offensive or their noise and disorder overwhelming could move to one of the 100 or so other city streets that were not heavily populated by prostitutes. Even in 1604, the year when the highest number of prostitutes and dishonest women registered with the Bollette, only sixteen streets had ten or more registrants living on them, and only eight had more than twenty. At least half of all Bolognese prostitutes were more widely dispersed through the city, and this may explain why we see no concerted efforts to dispel them as a group. Beyond this, it became increasingly difficult to successfully prosecute violations like adultery or the lack of license. A 1586 order from the vice legate to the Bollette’s officials suggested that small-scale rivalries were behind too many frivolous denunciations. Henceforth, unless a woman was found in flagrante with a man, the testimonies of two neighbors of good repute and the local parish priest would be required in order to find her guilty.93Conclusion For many working-poor Bolognese men and women, living amongst prostitutes was a fact of life. Whether they respected these neighbors or not, they learned to live with them. Prostitutes and dishonest women had their places in the local kinship, social, and economic networks of their neighborhoodsand the larger city. This is not to say that they were not mocked, or that those who treated them with courtesy fully respected them. Yet while some prostitutes annoyed, overwhelmed, and frightened some neighbors with their noise, scandal, and violence, they were also the sisters, mothers, lovers, and friends of many others. Elizabeth S. Cohen has argued that “[prostitute’s] presence corresponded to an intricate engagement in the social networks of daily life. In practice, if not in theory, the prostitutes occupied an ambiguous centrality.”94 Tessa Storey suggests that restrictive legislation, especially residential confinement, elicited sympathy from Romans, who were not overly concerned about the immorality of prostitution.95 This was also true in Bologna, where prostitutes were far more widely distributed across the entire city. Religious authorities like Gabriele Paleotti found them immoral and disruptive, posing bad examples and needing to be separated and marginalized. Yet civic authorities and most lay people appear to have held more nuanced attitudes, engaging prostitutes in the body social and using bureaucratic registration to mediate their place in the body politic. The sources generated by the Ufficio delle Bollette in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries reveal these women operating within networks of sociability, work, and family. They demonstrate women who fit within their communities, more uneasily at sometimes than others, and who both gave and received the resources of support, companionship, and security that characterized the community-centered world of early modern Italy.Notes 1 Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 402. Hacke, Women, Sex, and Marriage, 179. Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà,” 291–92 and 296. Terpstra, “Locating the Sex Trade,” 108–24. 2 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà,” 290–91 and 295; Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 404– 05; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 70–94; Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 48–49. 3 For expanded analysis and archival documentation, see: McCarthy, “Prostitution.” 4 Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna (hereafter BUB), ms. 373, n. 3C, 151v–152v. Terpstra, Cultures of Charity, 205–06, 329. McCarthy, “Prostitution, Community, and Civic Regulation,” 40, 54–61. 5 Archivio di Stato di Bologna (hereafter ASB), Boschi, b. 541, fol. 170v, “Bando sopra le meretrici et riforma de gli altri bandi sopra a cio fatti” (January 31 and February 1, 1568). For more on this episode and the gendered politics of social welfare reform in sixteenthcentury Bologna: Terpstra, Cultures of Charity, 19–54, 206–07. For the comparatively loose regime in the Convertite: Monson, Habitual Offenders. 6 Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 403 and 405–08; Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 49; Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà,” 292. Terpstra, “Locating the Sex Trade,” 116-21. 7 Miller, Renaissance Bologna, 16–17. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred.” 8 For example, Isotta Boninsegna and Giovanna di Martini. In 1604 Polonia, daughter or widow of Domenico Galina of Modena lived on Simia, while in 1614 Maria Roversi did, and in 1630 Domenica Borgonzona lived there. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549– 1796, Campione delle Meretrici (hereafter C de M) 1584, [np] “I” and “G” sections; 1604, [np] “P” section; 1614, 190; 1630, [np] “D” section. 9 This street was called variously the “via stufa della Scimmia,” the “postribolo,” or “lupanare Nuovo,” as well as the Corte dei Bulgari. Fanti, Le vie, vol. 2, 516–17. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 20–67.10 Biblioteca Comunale di Bologna (hereafter BCB), Gabinetto disegni e stampe, “Raccolta piante e vedute della città di Bologna,” port. 1, n. 14.  mappe/14/library.html 11 Ferrante, “‘Pro mercede carnale,’” 48. 12 Borgo Nuovo di San Felice was one of the streets that Bishop Gabriele Paleotti had ordered prostitutes to live in. ASB, Boschi, b. 541, fols. 170r–171v, “Bando sopra le meretrici” (January 31 and February 1, 1568). Zanti, Nomi, 16. 13 Muzzarelli, “Ebrei a Bologna,” 862–70. 14 Francesca Ballerina rented from Giacomo the pork butcher (lardarolo) on Frassinago. Giacoma di Ferrari da Reggio, Ursina de Bertini, and Lucrezia di Grandi all lived in the house of Giovanni Pietro the shoemaker (calzolario) on Senzanome. Lucia Tagliarini lived on Frassinago in the inn of Zanino. Giovanna Querzola, alias Stuarola, lived on Nosadella between the potter (pignataro) and the shoemaker (calzolaro). C de M 1604, [np] “F”, “I”, “V”, “L”, “T”, and “G” sections, respectively. 15 Cohen and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” especially 64 and 68–69. 16 Chojnacka, Working Women; Cohen, “To Pray.” 17 For instance, in 1604, 611 women registered and only eleven mothers and four sisters were recorded as purchasing licenses for their kin. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 220–21. 18 Of the 213 prostitutes who appeared in the censuses, one-third had children. Chojnacka, Working Women, 22–24. 19 Storey, Carnal Commerce, 128–29. On widowed mothers, 114. 20 Benedetta was listed as “sorella di Saltamingroppa.” C de M 1604, [np] “B” and “D” sections. 21 C de M 1605, 175. For Francesca, see C de M 1598, 56; 1599, 49; 1600, 68; 1601, 60; 1602, 72; 1603, 72; 1604, [np] “F” section; 1605, 86. For Margareta, see C de M 1602, 201; 1604, [np] “F” section; 1605, 175. In 1605, Margareta was deregistered when she began working as a wet nurse for the Ercolani, a senatorial family. As the register reads: “Sta per balia del 40 Hercolani.” 22 C de M 1601, 140. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fol. 19v (June 28, 1601). 23 C de M 1584, [np] “L” section. Both were registered under Lucia’s name. C de M 1624, [np] “A” and “L” sections. 24 C de M 1600, 73; 1604, [np] “F” and “M” sections; 1609, 171; 1614, 172. Domenica was not registered. 25 Hufton, “Women without Men.” Chojnacka, Working Women, 18–19. Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 406. 26 C de M 1584 and 1588. 27 Of those who registered, almost all gave their street and residence (44 of 47). For names of co-habitants: McCarthy, “Prostitution, Community, and Civic Regulation,” 224–25. 28 A total of twenty-seven (75 percent) of the thirty-six women who lived on Campo di Bovi identified their homes: five lived in the “casa” of Messer Filippo Scranaro, and the rest lived with two or fewer other prostitutes. A total of thirty (87 percent) of the thirtyfive women who registered on Senzanome identified their homes: six lived in the “casa” of Giulia di Sarti, called l’Orba (the Blind), who was not registered, and four lived in the “casa” of Giovanni Pietro the shoemaker. Otherwise, all the rest lived with two or fewer other prostitutes. C de M 1604. 29 C de M 1589 and 1597. 30 C de M 1597, 61 and 86 respectively; C de M 1598, 95 and 142 respectively. 31 C de M 1601, 99, 78, and 176 respectively. 32 This was between 1588 and 1597. Ginevra registered once, in January 1588, when she paid for a one-month license. C de M 1588, [np] “G” section. In 1588, six registered prostitutes lived with her, in 1589 seven did, and in 1594 and 1597 eight did. C de M 1588; 1589; 1594; 1597. 33 C d M 1589, [np] “L” section; 1594, [np] “L” section. C de M 1599, 28. Ginevra was still there in 1601, when Margareta Tinarolla lived in her home. See C de M 1601, 130.34 C de M 1594, [np] “P” section; 1597, [np] “P” section. C de M 1597, [np] “C” section; C de M 1599, 28. 35 For her first registration, see C de M 1597, [np] “D” section. 36 Eg., Gentile di Sarti, C de M 1601, 79; 1605, 100, and Domenica Fioresa, C de M 1604, [np] “E” section; 1609, 66–67. 37 Lucia Fiorentina left Ginevra’s to serve in the house of a local scholar (“Signor Dottore”). C de M 1589, [np] “L” section. Diana di Sacchi Romana lived in Ginevra’s casa in January 1594, but moved twice more that year, to Borgo Polese and then to Altaseda. C de M 1594, [np] “D” section. C de M 1594, [np] “L” section, Lucia Fiorentina. It is unclear but possible that this was the same Lucia who entered service in 1589. 38 Chojnacka, “Early Modern Venice,” especially 217 and 225. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 253–314. 39 See ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei Forestieri, Scritture Diverse, busta 1, “Statuti,” [np] fol. 8r. 40 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549-1796, Filza 1604, [np] “Die 21 May 1604,” fol. 1r. 41 Vincenzo is described as Francesca’s “cognatus.” Ibid., fol. 1r–v. 42 This permission was copied into the 1586 register and the 1462 illuminated statutes: C de M 1586, [np] “Z” section (28 June 1586); ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei Forestieri, Statuti, sec. XV, codici miniati, ms. 64, 28. 43 For Paleotti’s reaction, see BUB, ms. 89, fasc. 2, Constitutiones conclilii provincialis Bonon. 1586, fol. 95v, cited in Ferrante, “La sessualità,” 993. 44 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, [np] “Decreto d[e]lle bolette” (November 20, 1596); Filza 1614, [np] “Dalla letura delli statuti si cava che le Donne di vita inhonesta si possono descrivere nel campione in 4 modi” (undated). 45 John Florio defines “amico” as “a friend, also a lover.” Florio, Queen Anna’s, 24. See also Cohen, “Camilla la Magra.” 46 The suit was brought to the Bollette. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, [np] “Arsilia Zanetti” (November 12, 1601). For a detailed study of Bolognese registered prostitutes who took clients to the Bollette’s tribunal for debt, see Ferrante, “‘Pro mercede carnale.’” 47 Pasulini bought her two six-month licenses in July 1598 and January 1601. Arsilia’s son, Giovanni Battista, paid for the other months. C de M 1598, 48; 1599, 3; 1600, 4; 1601, 4. 48 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Onestà, ms 1, ff. 27r–31v. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred,” 77. 49 Ludovico Pizzoli, the Bollette’s esecutore, claimed that for three years Rossi had purchased her licenses because he was having a continuous sexual relationship with her even while she was having sex with other men: ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1606, “Cont[ra] Pantaselia Donina[m] al[ia]s de Salanis” (August 19, 1605), fol. 1r. John Florio defines “amicítia” as “amity, freindship [sic], good will.” Florio, Queen Anna’s¸ 24. The Bollette’s 1602 register confirms that Rossi paid for her licenses in person as well as giving money to Pizzoli to pay on his behalf. C de M 1601, 160; 1602, 154; 1603, 170. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, “Molto Ill[ust]re et Ecc[ellen]te Sig[no] re” (May 14, 1601). 50 Cohen, “Balk Talk,” 101. 51 The record in the register does not say why it was given for free, only that Pomilio “solvet nihil.” C de M 1583, [np] “F” section. 52 These were Angelica Bellini, Caterina Furlana, and Caterina di Rossi. C de M, 1624, [np] “A” and “C” sections. 53 Both in Ibid., [np] “C” section. 54 This was according to the curate of her parish church. ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549– 1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fols. 20v–21v (June 20, 1601; July 2, 1601). For her sister Francesca’s registrations: C de M 1598, 56; 1599, 49; 1600, 68; 1601, 60. 55 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fol. 19v (June 28, 1601) and fol. 20r–v (June 30, 1601).56 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1601, [np] “Malg[are]ta Sulfanela” (June 27, 1601). 57 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] fols. 20v–21v (July 2, 1601). 58 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1603, [np] (26 June 1602). C de M 1602, 21. The Convertite confirmed this removal: ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filza 1603, [np] untitled (October 12, 1602). 59 See, for instance, BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 106r, untitled, begins “Non essendo conveniente che presso li Monasteri j di Monache” (March 24, 1603). McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 131–97 60 Cohen, “‘Courtesans,’” 202. 61 “Vita et fine miserabile delle meretrici” (“Life and Miserable End of Prostitutes”), ca. 1600, in Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip, 275. Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, “La vita infelice della meretrice compartita ne dodeci mesi dell’anno lunario che non falla dato in luce da Veridico astrologo” (1692), Museo della Città di Bologna, 2470 (re 1/425). 62 Cohen, “Honor and Gender,” especially 600–01. Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred,” 71, 79–80. 63 ASB, Assunteria di Sanità, Bandi (XVI–1792), Bandi Bolognesi sopra la peste, 45, “Bandi Generali del Ill[ustrissimo] et Reverendiss[i]mo Monsignor Fabio Mirto Arcivescovo di Nazarette Governatore di Bologna,” (February 17, 18, and 19, 1575), fol. 2v; BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 64r, “Bando Sopr’al gioco, & Biscazze, alli balli nell’Hosterie, & che le Donne meretrici non vadano vestite da huomo” (December 9, 1602). 64 Ibid. 65 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (hereafter Fisher), B-11 04425, “Bando generale dell’Illustrissimo, & Reverendissimo Sig. Benedetto Card. Giustiniano Legato di Bologna” (June 23 and 24, 1610), “Delle Meretrici. Ca XXVIII,” 60–61. 66 In 1565, Governor Francesco de’Grassi set the exclusionary zone at 30 pertiche (approximately 114 meters), while in 1566 Francesco Bossi extended the zone to 50 pertiche (190 meters). See Martini, Manuale di metrologia, 92. ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 3, fol. 16r (February 1, 1565); ASB, Boschi, b. 541 (February 1 and 8, 1566), fol. 115r. Florence reduced its exclusionary zone from 175 to 60 meters in this time (i.e., from 300 braccia to 100): ASF, Acquisti e Doni 291, “Onestà e Meretrici” (May 6, 1561). Terpstra, “Sex and the Sacred,” 78–79. 67 These convents were San Bernardino, Santa Caterina in Strada Maggiore, San Guglielmo, San Leonardo, San Ludovico, Santa Cristina, San Bernardo, Corpus Domini, and Sant’Agnese. Proclamations also protected the new monastery of San Giorgio, the Benedictine monastery of San Procolo, the college of the Hungarians, the Jesuits and their school, the new church of Santa Maria Mascarella, and the shrine of the Madonna della Neve. McCarthy, “Prostitution,” 131–97. 68 Zarri, “I monasteri femminili,” 166, 177. Johnson, Monastic Women, 235–37. Fini, Bologna sacra, 14. 69 BCB, Bandi Merlani, V, fol. 106r, untitled, begins “Non essendo conveniente che presso li Monasterij di Monache” (March 24, 1603). 70 One-third of each fine was to go to the accuser, one-third to the city treasury, and onethird to the esecutore. 71 In 1601, one woman registered on Bocca di lupo, two on Capramozza, and four on Belvedere di Saragozza. In 1604, one registered on Bocca di lupo, three on Capramozza, and one on Belvedere di Saragozza. C de M 1601 and 1604. One of the women who lived on Belvedere in 1601 continued to do so in 1604, while another had moved three blocks west to Senzanome, and a third had moved across town to Campo di Bovi by the north-eastern wall. These were Vittoria Pellizani, Gentile di Parigi, and Angela Amadesi, called “La Zoppina.” For Vittoria: C de M 1601, 204 and 1604, [np] “V” section. For Gentile: C de M 1601, 74 and 1604, [np] “G” section. For Angela: C de M 1601, 136 and 1604, [np] “A” section. 72 These were Camilla di Fiorentini, who lived in the house of Caterina the widow, and Cecilia Baliera. C de M 1614, 288 and 39 respectively.73 See BCB, Bandi Merlani, XI, fol. 28r, untitled, begins “Non essendo conveniente, che appresso li Monasterij di Monache” (January 18, 1622). In 1624, four women lived on Altaseta and none on Mussolina. 74 Guidicini, Cose notabili, vol. III, 179–80 and volume III, 346–50. 75 The proclamation clearly states that the order was made at the insistence of the “Huomini della Madonna dalla Neve, Confraternità di essa, e persone honeste di detta strada.” BCB, Bandi Merlani, X, fol. 128r (August 20, 1621). 76 These were published in 1587, 1602, 1608, and 1621. BCB, Bandi Merlani, I, fol. 449r, untitled, begins “Devieto di affitare a persone disoneste nella contrada di S. Maria della Neve” (April 26, 1587); ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 15, fol. 198r, untitled, begins “Essendo la Contrada di Santa Maria dalla Neve sempre stata Contrada quieta” (January 31, 1602); ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 17, fol. 225r, untitled, begins “Havendo l’Illustriss[im]e Reverendiss[ime] Sig[nor] Car[dinal] di Bologna pien notitia” (June 6, 1608); BCB, Bandi Merlani, X, fol. 128r, “Bando Contra le Meretrici, & Persone inhoneste” (August 20, 1621). 77 “non possa, ne possano, ne debbano sotto qual si vogli pretesto, a quesito colore fermarsi, o star ferme per detta strada, sotto il portico, suso il lor’uscio, o d’altri, o suso l’uscio dell’ Hostarie.” ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 17, fol. 225r (June 6, 1608). 78 “comanda espressamente all GIULIA da Gesso, all DORALICE Moroni, alla LUDOVICA Guidi, & ad ogn’altra MERETRICE [sic].” ASB, Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 17, fol. 225r (June 6, 1608). 79 C de M 1609, 73, 121, and 151, respectively. 80 These were Agata Martelli, alias Bagni, from Castel San Pietro and Lena di Stefani who lived in the casa of Messer Domenico Bonhuomo. C de M 1614, 19 and 1624, [np] “L” section. 81 BCB, Bandi Merlani, X, fol. 128r, “Bando Contra le Meretrici, & Persone inhoneste” (August 20, 1621). Though Savelli did not specify which “Borgo Nuovo” they should move to, in all likelihood he meant Borgo Nuovo di stra Maggiore, which had no convents or churches on it. 82 Cohen and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” 67–68. 83 Cowan, “Gossip,” 314–16; Cohen and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” 68–69. 84 Cohen, “‘Courtesans,’” 204–05; Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 396–97. In a later article Cohen argues that “[t]hough typically noisier and more abrasive than feminine ideals would dictate, much of prostitutes’ street behavior was not radically distinct; rather it fell toward one end on a spectrum of working class practices.” Cohen, “To Pray,” 310. 85 Tommaso Garzoni, Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, nuovamente ristampata & posta in luce, da Thomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo (Venice: Appresso l’Herede di Gio. Battista Somasco, 1593), 598. Available online from the Università degli Studi di Torino OPAL Libri Antichi internet archive  GIII446MiscellaneaOpal, cited in Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 397, n. 18. 86 Ibid., especially 396–97 and 399; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 172–75. 87 “Mirror of the Harlot’s Fate,” ca. 1657, reproduced on 278–79 in Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip: Volume 1 and Storey Carnal Commerce, 37. Vita del lascivo (“The Life of the Rake”), ca. 1660s, Venice, reproduced on 39–44 of Storey, Carnal Commerce. 88 ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601, [np] January 22, 1601. 89 Ibid., [np] July 23, 1601. 90 Ibid., [np] January 22, 1601. John Florio defines “chiavare” as “to locke with a key. Also to transome, but now a daies abusively used for Fottere.” He defines “fottere” as “to jape, to flucke, to sard, to swive,” and “fottente” as “fucking, swiving, sarding.” Florio, Queen Anna’s, 97 and 194, respectively. 91 On the attraction of lawmen to streets known for prostitution, gambling, and drinking: Cohen, “To Pray,” 303; Storey, Carnal Commerce, 99–100. 92 The complainants referred to themselves as honorati and gentilhuomini, curiali principali, and artegiani buoni e da bene. Storey, Carnal Commerce, 91, n. 103. She dates the two letters from 1601 and 1624.93 For the vice legate’s order, as transcribed into the 1586 register: C de M 1586, [np], untitled, begins “Ill[ustrissim]us et R[everendissi]mus D[ominus] Bononorum Vicelegatus in eius Camera” (June 28, 1586). 94 Cohen, “Seen and Known,” 409. 95 Storey, Carnal Commerce, 1–2.Bibliography Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB) Assunteria di Sanità, Bandi (XVI–1792) Boschi, b. 541 Legato, Bandi speciali, vol. 3, 15, and 17 Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Campione delle Meretrici 1600, 1601, 1602, 1603, 1604, 1605, 1609, 1614, 1624, and 1630 Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Filze 1601, 1603, 1604, 1606, and 1614 Ufficio delle Bollette 1549–1796, Inventionum 1601 Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei Forestieri, Scritture Diverse, busta 1 Ufficio delle Bollette e Presentazioni dei Forestieri, Statuti, sec. XV, codici miniati, ms. 64 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF) Acquisti e Doni 291 Onestà, ms 1 Biblioteca Comunale di Bologna (BCB) Bandi Merlani, I, V, X, and XI. Gabinetto disegni e stampe, “Raccolta piante e vedute della città di Bologna,” port. 1, n. 14.  Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna (BUB) Manuscript 373, n. 3C Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Fisher) B-11 04425 Museo della Città di Bologna (MCB) 2470 (re 1/425)Published sources Brackett, John K. “The Florentine Onestà and the Control of Prostitution, 1403–1680.” Sixteenth Century Journal 24, no. 2 (1993): 273–300. Chojnacka, Monica. “Early Modern Venice: Communities and Opportunities.” In Singlewomen in the European Past. Edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, 217–35. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999. ———. Working Women in Early Modern Venice. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Balk Talk: Two Prostitutes’ Voices from Rome c. 1600.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal Camilla l  Magra, prostituta romana.” In Rinascimento al Femminile. Edited by Ottavia Niccoli, 163–96. Rome: Laterza, “Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2“Seen and Known: Prostitutes in the Cityscape of Late-Sixteenth-Century Rome,” Renaissance Studies “To Pray, To Work, To Hear, To Speak: Women in Roman Streets c. 1600.” Journal of Early Modern History ‘Courtesans’ and ‘Whores’: Words and Behavior in Roman Streets,” Women’s Studies and Thomas V. Cohen, “Open and Shut: The Social Meanings of the Cinquecento Roman House.” Studies in the Decorative Arts (Fall/Winter 2001–02): 61–84. Cowan, Alexander. “Gossip and Street Culture in Early Modern Venice.” Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008): 313–33. Fanti, Mario. Le vie di Bologna. Saggio di toponomastica storica, 2 volumes. Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 2000. Ferrante, Lucia. “La sessualità come risorsa. Donne davanti al foro Archivescovile di Bologna (sec. XVII).” In Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome “‘Pro mercede carnale.’ Il giusto prezzo rivendicato in tribunale.” Memoria: Rivista di storia delle donne 2, no. 17 (1986): 42–58. Fini, Marcello. Bologna sacra: tutte le chiese in due millenni di storia. Bologna: Pendragon, 2007. Florio, John. Queen Anna’s new world of words, or, Dictionarie of the Italian and English tounges, collected and newly much augmented by John Florio. London: Melch. Bradwood for Edw. Blount and William Barrett, 1611. Guidicini, Giuseppe. Cose notabili della città di Bologna, ossia, storia cronologica de suoi stabili sacri, pubblici e privati. Volume 3. Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1982. Hacke, Daniela. Women, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Venice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Hufton, Olwen. “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in England and France in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Family History Johnson, Sheri F. Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Kunzle, David. History of the Comic Strip. Volume 1: The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450–1825. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973. Martini, Angelo. Manuale di metrologia, ossia misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli. Torino: Loescher, 1883. McCarthy, Vanessa. “Prostitution, Community, and Civic Regulation in Early Modern Bologna.” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2015 Miller, Naomi. Renaissance Bologna: A Study in Architectural Form and Content. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Monson, Craig. Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. “Ebrei a Bologna nel XVI secolo.” In Bologna nell’età moderna Istituzioni, forme del potere, economia e società. Edited by Adriano Prosperi. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008. Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Storey, Tessa. Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Terpstra, Nicholas. Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard  “Locating the Sex Trade in the Early Modern City: Space, Sense, and Regulation in Sixteenth-Century Florence.” In Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City. Edited by Nicholas Terpstra and Colin Rose, 107–24. London: Routledge,“Sex and the Sacred: Negotiating Spatial and Sensory Boundaries in Renaissance Florence.” Radical History Review 121 ( January 2015): 71–90. Zanti, Giovanni de. Nomi, et cognomi di tuttle le strad et borghi d Bologna: Dicchiarando la origine del principii loro. Bologna: Pellegrino Bonardo, 1583. Zarri, Gabriella. “I monasteri femminili a Bologna tra il XIII e il XVII secolo.” Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le province di Romagna. Adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome Elizabeth S. CohenAdultery was no simple sexual lapse. Intricately bound to the fundamental institution of marriage, it threatened honor, family, and livelihood. Traditionally, this grave offense merited harsh punishments like stoning, although by the sixteenth century these had much softened. A sin, a crime, and a breach of contract, in early modern Italy it could be prosecuted under several kinds of law. Beyond canon law’s jeopardy for both spouses, under Roman law enshrining patria potestas, adultery was overwhelmingly a wife’s transgression, to which, furthermore, she was presumed to have consented.1 So, a vengefully passionate husband or kinsmen who killed a wife found f lagrantly abed with a lover could claim immunity from prosecution for murder.2 The adulteress herself figured ambiguously as a theme in Italian paintings, prints, and stories. Nevertheless, neither law nor broader cultural norms ref lected adultery’s complexities as social experience on the ground. To juxtapose prescriptive and lived understandings and to test the crime’s notoriety, we turn to judicial records. For contrast with our culturally framed expectations and to glimpse the everyday worlds of most early modern people, this essay reconstructs four stories from adultery prosecutions in the Roman Governor’s court circa 1600. The particular crimes of these non-elite women and men involved companionship and sex, but little else was directly at stake. My accounts seek to represent both social dynamics and a vernacular culture of sexuality accessible alike to the educated and the illiterate. I highlight a cluster of adulteresses who cultivated not primarily instrumental, but rather personal, alliances outside marriage. The lovers’ choices transgressed and had consequences both at home and in the public courts. Nevertheless, their misconduct was not radically out of step with an everyday culture of sexuality that endured even in Catholic Reformation Rome. Adultery had a lengthy history as a cultural, legal, and behavioral problem. From the twelfth century, an ambivalent medieval literature on humanlove—from Andreas Cappelanus to Gottfried von Strassburg—suggested that passion and marriage did not mix. Despite the Renaissance emergence of more positive takes on sex, the notion persisted that intense eroticism was seldom the business of husbands and wives.3 The church still taught that marriage was the only licit setting for sex, while discouraging the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. The iconography of love on domestic objects linked to betrothals and weddings promoted family policy as much as private spousal gratification.4 Although married people may not have behaved as they were told, they have left few words about sex. If conjugal relations did often tend to routine, adultery could be easily imagined by contemporaries, and by scholars since, as an agreeable alternative. Popular histories have repeatedly featured swaggering Renaissance noblemen, including prelates, who dallied sensuously with mistresses and fathered bastards. Their female partners, who ranged from servants to gentlewomen, were often married, and so adulteresses.5 A wife’s adultery posed problems for both her spousal household and her natal family, but sometimes brought them benefits as well. Under ancient Roman law still frequently cited in the Renaissance, uncertainty about paternity and corruption of the lineage was one major cost.6 Adultery also rattled the public honor of a patriarchal family that could not control its assets, including the chastity and fertility of its women. These concerns appear as conventional rhetoric, but it is far from clear how much they actually drove Renaissance husbands’ retribution. Certainly, charges of adultery were invoked to instigate violence against an inconvenient kinswoman and to cover other, less high-minded goals. On the other hand, where doctrines of sexual exclusivity could bend in practice, adulteresses might reap rewards rather than punishments for their liaisons, especially with powerful men. For example, Giulia Farnese, wife of the Roman baron Orsino Orsini and the mistress of Pope Alexander VI in the 1490s, arranged a cardinal’s hat for her brother, Alessandro, the future Pope Paul III.7 Even bastards could be absorbed and their mothers supported. In the 1460s Lucrezia Landriani, married conveniently to a Milanese courtier, bore four illegitimate children to the young Galeazzo Maria Sforza before he became Duke of Milan and took a bride. Bearing their father’s name and raised in his court, Lucrezia’s brood included Caterina Sforza, the future indomitable Countess of Forlí.8 The husbands of these high-f lying adulteresses managed their role, its perks and its costs, more and less deftly. In Florence, the husband of Bianca Cappello, the mistress and later wife of Grand Duke Francesco I, retaliated by intemperate womanizing of his own, and died at the hands of his paramour’s kinsmen.9 Husbands did not take adultery lightly, but there might be multiple stakes and more than just one bloody end. The dark emotions of adultery—jealousy and anger—struck men and women alike. Legends of aristocratic adulteresses killed in flagrante delictu by vengeful husbands arouse pity, horror, and titillation in later readers. Although the threat and the rhetoric surely circulated, documented historical examples are few.10 More modest women, too, had reason to fear even unmerited spousal violence.For example, in a miracle attested in 1522, the Madonna della Quercia of Viterbo saved a woman mortally assaulted by a suspicious husband, egged on by his mother.11 More peaceably, a Quattrocento necromantic recipe promised that to make a wife “persevere in honest alliance with her husband.”12 Moreover, although adulterers were rarely prosecuted, women deeply resented their husbands’ philandering. In the 1550s a pious Bolognese gentlewoman, Ginevra Gozzadini, asked her spiritual director if she owed the marital debt to her errant husband. Though reluctant to release his disciple from godly duties, Don Leone Bartolini allowed her to decline if her husband refused to forgo his “public adultery and also grazing on his wife like a pig and not a Christian.”13 Renaissance Italian visual and literary culture depicted four roles in adultery’s drama: the wife; the husband or cuckold; the lover; and the chorus of the public. Though shadowed by misogyny, views of women were mixed. Ancient and medieval texts widely posited female propensities to falling in love and to undisciplined and mercenary carnality. Beauty, coupled with fickle mind, made women at once temptresses and easy prey to seducers. These risky frailties in turn justified tightly constraining rules. In parallel, novelle, poetry, madrigals, and commedia dell’arte evoked both woe and delight with representations of love and romantic adventure. Magic, too, offered women and men ways to attract and bind a lover.14 Mainstream cultural norms often lumped non-conforming women together as sexual transgressors. Yet prestige and class, singled out some for celebration. Thus, as whores, prostitutes stood for the obverse of female virtue, but courtesans, especially those dubbed counterintuitively “honest,” earned renown among elite men for their manners and cultural finesse. Even Saint Mary Magdalene appeared in paintings as the brightly dressed, or undressed, playgirl who was the foil to her model penitent. The adulteress partook of this generic bad girl, at once attractive and corrupt, but her jeopardy under law invited ambivalence. For example, many early modern artists represented the Gospel story of the woman “taken in adultery.”15 Sixteenth-century Italian paintings usually depicted a beautiful, young woman, thrust by the Pharisees’ heavy legal hand to stand alone before a crowd to be judged. Although conventional language suggested that she was in some sense caught or trapped, she was still deemed to have consented to dire offense. Viewers would hear Jesus first chide her persecutors, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and then tell her to go and sin no more. All were sinners, not least the adulteress, but law must not trump Christian mercy. Among the men’s roles, not the male adulterer nor the wife’s lover, but rather the husbandly cuckold claimed a share of cultural preoccupation. The aristocratic choice between familial vengeance or instrumental accommodation often came down on the latter side. Instead of destroying the adulteress, the cuckold had his reasons for complacency. In visual imagery, art historians have shown betrayed husbands responding as much with dismayed forbearance as with hot ire. Comparing paintings of Joseph, the helpmate of the Virgin Mary, and Vulcan, the spouse of Venus, Francesca Alberti explained how the aging husbands ofexceptional wives, though vulnerable to mockery by artists and viewers, served divine ends.16 Louise Rice tracked Italian depictions of the cuckold from a nasty late fifteenth-century allegorical engraving through sixteenth-century literary parodies from Aretino and Modio, and finally to Baccio del Bianco’s drawings. These last offered whimsically ironic scenes that normalized both the cuckold and the adulteress.17 Ambivalently allotting pleasure and agency to women and complicating the revenge narrative, novelle offered socially more varied cultural constructions of adultery. In the Decameron, Boccaccio exploited these possibilities in more than twenty-five stories featuring adultery that fancifully permuted its spousal roles.18 The married women of the novelle, again almost always beautiful, pursued love and reaped their adulterous pleasures with ambiguous culpability. At the expense of dull or aging husbands, some wives schemed cleverly both to achieve their desires and to elude discovery and punishment.19 Others, honest, virtuous, and alluring, had to be tricked by would-be lovers into learning that sex outside marriage was more fun.20 Lucrezia in Machiavelli’s Mandragola found similar fortune. Although female delight was only a means to an end in the Decameron’s elegantly ironic lessons, a more literal reading of the stories at least gave a space to imagine wives’ extra-domestic enjoyment. Boccaccio’s cuckolded husbands reacted variously to adultery’s challenges to honor and to its remedies in law. In Day 4, Story 9, a gentlewoman let herself fall to her death after her vindictive husband fed her the heart of her paramour. Explained the woman, since she had given her love freely, she was the guilty one and not the lover. In a lighter vein, Day 3, Story 2 parodied the narratives of murder in f lagrante and, less directly, of Christ forgiving the adulteress. A king, discovering his wife and a groom asleep together, cut the man’s hair to mark his guilt. When the lover woke, he scotched his jeopardy by similarly tonsuring other servants. In the end, the king, rejecting a petty vendetta that would broadcast his dishonor, announced cryptically to his assembled entourage: “He that did it, do it no more, and may you all go with God.”21 In Day 6, Story 7, a hapless husband, fearing penalty if he killed his adulterous wife himself, hauled her before the public court, where, by statute, she faced a sentence of death by fire. Unlike the Gospel’s submissive adulteress, the respected Madonna Filippa staunchly defended herself with two claims. First, as in the tragedy of Day 4, she did it for her “deep and perfect” love for Lazzarino. Secondly, having gotten her husband to agree that she had always satisfied his every bodily wish, she asked: “what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs? Is it not far better that I should present it a gentleman who loves me more dearly than himself, rather than allow it to turn bad or go to waste?” The gathered populace of Prato greeted this charming riposte with approving laughter and, at the judge’s suggestion, altered the harsh statute to punish only adulteresses who did it for money.22 Christian rules as implemented through ecclesiastical courts also ref lected more everyday cultural norms. Although by medieval canon law both spouses owed the marital debt, in customary practice expectations differed for husbandand wife. As historian Cecilia Cristellon shows, the church courts of preTridentine Venice aimed less to police sex than to stabilize marriages and to minimize scandal.23 Many proceedings, often brought by women, sought to formalize separations or annulments of couples who had long since parted company. Adultery by wife or husband was a charge to blacken character but was seldom advanced as the source of a broken marriage.24 In fact, among the lower orders, adultery was a common product of widespread, informal serial monogamy. Finding themselves for various reasons without present spouses, people readily took up new heterosexual partnerships. Although adulterous, such concubinage, sometimes with a formal blessing that made it bigamy, was often marriage-like and, in the absence of contrary evidence, usually accepted by the lay community. In the face of these popular habits, fifteenth-century church courts worked to sharpen the boundaries of marriage, and the Council of Trent’s legislation assimilated concubinage more and more to prostitution.25 Even so, ecclesiastical judges continued less to punish adulterous sex by itself than to seek better moral and spiritual discipline around marriage as a whole. Let us turn now to Rome at the end of the sixteenth century to gauge the moral climate and social textures in which our everyday adulteries took place. For some decades Catholic reformers had worked to burnish Rome’s reputation as a fitting capital for a resurgent church. Issuing repeated regulations (bandi ) to suppress blasphemy and vice, local authorities particularly targeted gambling and adultery.26 Yet these official pronouncements better registered moralistic concern than they energized a thorough cleansing of the civic body. Parallel rules sought to constrain the practice of prostitution, although that trade and fornication by the unmarried were transgressive but not criminal. The magistrates’ concerns turned mostly on guarding sacred sites from taint and restraining violence and disorder by prostitutes’ clients. Yet enforcement of decrees around illicit sex remained sporadic. Pius V’s ghetto for prostitutes of the late 1560s at the Ortaccio did not last long as either structure or policy. That moment was the reformists’ exception rather than the trend. The early sixteenth-century celebrity of Rome’s honest courtesans had certainly waned, but in 1580 the gentleman traveler Montaigne was still keen to admire and visit their kind.27 More generally, the historian of crime Peter Blastenbrei concluded that, for two decades immediately post-Trent, Rome was de facto quite accommodating of heterosexual irregularities and sometimes attracted couples seeking to escape sharper discipline elsewhere.28 All told, by 1600, reform in the papal city had subdued the Renaissance culture of f leshly pleasures, but effective suppression of non-marital sex was scarcely true on the ground. The labyrinth of Rome’s institutions and, especially, the mobile demography of its residents consistently subverted the religious and moral aspirations of its leadership.29 The city’s population swelled, from 35,000 in 1527, after the catastrophic Sack by Hapsburg imperial troops, to around 100,000 in 1600.30 Few people were native Romans. Visitors and migrants f lowed in—men and women, of all social ranks from ambassadors and nobildonne to pilgrims, cattledrivers,and servants. Many also left town. In a f luid residential geography, most people rented their accommodations and often moved house. Although many households had a nuclear core or its remnants, complete families were fewer than in many cities.31 Lodgers and informal clusters of housemates were common. People also changed jobs frequently, and some worked in one part of the city but, regularly or occasionally, ate and slept elsewhere. As a result, ordinary Romans had repeatedly to renegotiate the personnel and terms of daily life. Furthermore, Rome’s sharply skewed sex ratio yielded distinctive economic and marital dynamics. The urban population counted, roughly, only 70 women for every 100 men. Celibate clerics were not the primary culprits. Many of the surplus men came to the city to provide for the needs and comforts of a courtly society, by serving in great households of prelates or secular lords or by supplying goods.32 With males doing much of the domestic work and without a major textile industry, the market for female labor in turn was weak. Of the many men, some married in Rome to help establish themselves, but others had wives elsewhere, or were young and not ready to settle down.33 Although some, nubile, women found husbands readily, many others were left to improvise when fathers died or spouses left town for shorter or longer absences. Typically, they struggled to live piecemeal from laundry, spinning, and sewing. As in Venice, concubinage was common. Prostitution, too, though never as rampant as some hysterical reformers claimed, was another, potentally better paid recourse. Often informally and intermittently, younger, more presentable or gregarious women offered mixes of sexual, social, and domestic services to a shifting contingent of unpartnered men, and to some husbands as well. As a concubine or prostitute, a married woman faced legal jeopardy for adultery. When a husband did not, as obligated, support his wife, she had to find alternatives. Sometimes, he had wasted the dowry. Often, he had been long away, having intentionally or not abandoned his wife. A woman, in turn, unknowing if her spouse had died, often proceeded as if he had and set up new partnerships. In the absence of contrary information, neighbors tended to presume legitimacy for couples who lived appropriately, including taking the sacraments at church. Nevertheless, married women living as prostitutes, concubines, or even bigamist wives were liable, if denounced, to prosecution. The discipline and prosecution of adultery in early modern Rome has left only erratic traces. No trial records survive from the tribunal of the Vicario, who bore many of the city’s episcopal functions for the pope. 34 As an offense of “mixti fori,” however, adultery sometimes came before the criminal courts.35 Killing women for honor was rare, especially in the city, and the ferocity of the ancient law had attenuated. Going to law, though risking unwelcome publicity, became more common, even for noblemen.36 In the 1580 edition of Rome’s Statuta, carnal and associated crimes occupied a brief three pages and mostly specified due punishments.37 In practice, these penalties were often negotiated down, so the statutory guidelines are interesting mostly as a ref lection of judicial thinking and broader cultural values. This section began with sodomy and a tersepronouncement of death by burning. Next, a longer paragraph, De Adulterio e incestu, spoke first of “adultery with incest,” before turning to “simple adultery.” For this last, punishments were calibrated to the woman’s honesty and the man’s social rank. For sex with an “honest” wife, a plebian man faced a hefty fine of 200 scudi and three years of exile. A gentleman owed double the fine and the exile, and a baron triple. Notably, this scale of penalties targeted the common circumstance of high-status men making alliances with women of lower rank. On the other hand, the chance that even a middling family would successfully haul a nobleman into court was slim. Continuing, the statute declared that if the wife was poor and “inhonesta, but not a public prostitute,” the penalties were halved.38 Reputation ( fama) in the neighborhood legally determined a woman’s “honesty.”39 At the same time, where early modern criminal law recognized that virgins might resist forcible def loration (stupro), wives were still held complicit in adultery.40 Thus, every proven adulteress was, in principle, to be sequestered for correction in a casa pia for errant wives (malmaritate), where her husband or family paid her expenses. From the later sixteenth century, adultery came before the Governor’s court by two routes. By legal tradition, reiterated in the Statuta, sexual crimes involving respectable women received public intervention only when brought by a kinsman with honor at stake. Institutional justice, seeking to promote itself and to tame the violence of self-help vendetta, encouraged this recourse with some success. Thus, husbands initiated many of the Governor’s adultery trials, although typically with a keen eye to retaining spousal property.41 On occasion, angry women prosecuted their husbands for adultery.42 To note, the Governor’s criminal court in general took seriously women’s complaints, even without male backing. Their testimony as accused or witness, usually recorded under the same intimidating circumstances as men’s, bore analogous weight. Especially for offenders from the lower social ranks, adultery also came to the court’s attention by an investigation ex offitio, on the state’s initiative. Usually, a secret report by a mercenary spy or grouchy neighbor launched the case, followed by a police raid.43 Such arrests were often handled by summary justice that imposed a fine and issued an injunction against further misconduct.44 A few cases led to full trials, and my stories here of “simple adultery” are among them.45 Although these examples were not formally typical, they involved ordinary people getting into relatively routine kinds of trouble. Bodies and honor were at stake, but neither money nor property were central for either husbands or wives. All the women had engaged actually or potentially in sex with men of their own choosing outside the bonds of marriage. From the tales of these willing adulteresses who ended up in court, we can learn about a range of possibilities for extramarital adventures and about the narratives and discourses that explained them and hoped to extenuate culpability. These women, though several years married, were often young. In other Governor’s court trials around f lawed marriages the wives typically complained of mistreatment to justify their straying. In none of these four stories, however, did that rhetoric appear. The husbands, when theysuspected or learned what was afoot, were angry, but the trials were not about ending a marriage. The lovers, themselves unmarried, were among the many unattached men in Rome, and met the adulteresses through family and local connections. Also telling are the ways that neighbors and colleagues took part, both in the trysts and in their discovery and discipline. In my first two adultery stories, unhappy husbands tried, more and less cannily, to corral their wandering wives. For both, events transpired close to home. In the first case, the spouses spoke of Tridentine teachings to repair a troubled marriage. The pastoral discipline had failed to work, however, and the next time the irate husband resorted to self-help, seriously beating his incorrigible wife. The domestic violence brought the problem to public notice. In the second story, the husband confronted his wife with her misconduct reported by neighbors. When she faced down his efforts at proper spousal correction and still continued to roam, the husband turned for help to the ecclesiastical and public authorities. They, in time, intervened, but notably declined to rush into a private matter without good cause. The first tale provocatively mixed elements of Boccaccio with Catholic reform teaching to the laity. A very short trial from May 1593 recounted adultery trouble that exploded within the cramped premises of a fruit and vegetable seller in central Rome.46 After the beleaguered husband, Hieronimo, had resorted to self-help, the resulting domestic violence led an unnamed informant to alert the police. In this instance, probably because the wife, Caterina, lay injured, instead of collecting testimony at the prison, the notary first hurried to the respectable shopkeeper’s premises to interview both spouses. Husband and wife testified immediately in the heat of events and again, later, in jail. The would-be lover, the shop assistant Leonardo, nimbly decamped before the law arrived. As was common for many city dwellers, Hieronimo Ursini from Milan kept shop on the street f loor and lived upstairs with his wife, Caterina, but evidently had no children. Two garzoni (shop assistants) slept in an adjacent room. The fruitseller had good reason to suspect his young wife. By his account, Caterina, whom he spied often f lirting in the window “with this one and that one,” had repeatedly tried his patience. Worse, he once had caught her at her mother’s house, “almost in the act” of having sex with a tavern keeper. Nevertheless, Hieronimo averred piously, “I forgave her, and she promised to do no more wrong, and we confessed together to the parish priest and took communion, and I took her back and led her home, pardoning everything and keeping her always as well as possible” (ff. 1125r–v). Portraying himself as a pious and forgiving husband, Hieronimo sought to meliorate the court’s view of his later, less irenic, behavior. The testimony, which likely was approximately true, shows us a man of modest status deftly invoking good Catholic teaching. Caterina in turn confessed, “Truly, I did wrong (torto) to do what I did to my husband, because I once fell into error (errore) at my mother’s house, where I had sex with Giovanni Angelo the tavern keeper, and even so, my husband forgave me and took meback into the house” (ff. 1128r–v). Here she acknowledged not only Hieronimo’s forbearance, but also her own inclinations to illicit pleasure. Hieronimo’s jealousy thus primed, on a May morning he climbed early out of the bed that he shared with his f lirtatious wife. According to his testimony, he intended to go to a garden on the edge of the city to cut artichokes for the shop. He tried to rouse his two garzoni who were sleeping in another room. One got up, but Leonardo, also from Milan, claimed to be sick and would not rise. Suspecting the lay-a-bed of setting a “trap,” Hieronimo sent the other assistant out to collect the produce, but he himself slipped into the shop and hid behind a barrel. After a while, Leonardo entered the shop, “sighing,” according to the hidden Hieronimo, “an amorous sigh.” A few minutes later, Caterina appeared, asking where her husband was. “Gone to cut artichokes,” replied Leonardo. Immediately, said Hieronimo, Caterina began to adjust the garzone’s ruff ( fare le lattughe), and quickly the two became playful and kissed each other. The husband, seeing that “Leonardo wanted to lift her skirts and do his thing ( fare il fatto suo),” burst out of hiding shouting, “Oh traitor, oh traitor, you do this to me!” Seeing his master thus enraged, Leonardo, expediently, slipped out the shop door and disappeared from the story. Caterina retreated hastily up the stairs, and Hieronimo surged after, beating her with a broomhandle, a domestic weapon of choice for women as well as men, with his fists, and with his belt. So incensed was he that he pinned her down with his knees on her belly and then on her shoulders, while hauling on her braids, so that he left her “as if dead,” swollen, bloody, and with bruises “blacker that your Lordship’s hat”. Hieronimo volunteered all these details, and one suspects that he may have shocked even himself with his ferocity. Caterina’s tale of the putative adultery and its sorry aftermath provides another perspective. Not surprisingly, she presented herself as aggrieved and “mistreated.” Nevertheless, she reported a similar account leading to the f lirtatious exchange with Leonardo. Her husband, having left early without a word, she rose two hours later. Going into the next room, Caterina rousted Leonardo to get up and open the shop, while she swept. When she went down for a basket to hold the sweepings, she found Leonardo, wrestling with a pair of sleeves. He asked for help in attaching them, and the two began laughing as they struggled with the laces. Just then, Hieronimo sprang out and began to assault his wife. Confirming Hieronimo’s confessed details and adding blows with the head of a hatchet, Caterina claimed that he wanted to kill her. But, “please God,” he had not (f. 1125v). Later, pressured by the court at a second interrogation, the wife admitted to some greater provocation of her husband. In this version, as she came into the shop, Leonardo asked that she help lace his sleeves and moaned about not feeling well. She joked that he was not going to die, and they began to play so that, as in Hieronimo’s account, the garzone had kissed her “lustfully (lusuriosamente)” on the cheek and she responded in kind (f. 1128r–v). Though more theatrical than some tales, this domestic drama had several points in common with other neighborhood adulteries. First, illicit relationssprouted very close to home. These were the settings—through work and domestic propinquity—in which wives were likely to meet other men. Perhaps surprisingly to us, these were also the spaces in which adultery—its initiations and often its consummations—took place. People understood the risks and costs of getting caught; at the same time, privacy, such as we imagine it, was simply not a reality for most people. While married, Caterina had practiced serious f lirtations first in her mother’s house and then in her husband’s, with one of their live-in employees. Even if no real sex had transpired with Leonardo, Caterina saw the wrongful pattern of her conduct. She evidently enjoyed the play and appreciation of her guilty encounters, but she gave little sign of personal feelings for her lovers. In contrast, there does seem to have been some commitment, however f lawed on both sides, between the spouses. While we may doubt that Caterina changed her ways, she did express a sense of responsibility and a belief that she should make peace with her husband. The brevity of the trial suggests that the magistrate was content to dispatch the matter quietly. Both spouses had to answer for their transgressions— Caterina’s sexual misconduct and Hieronimo’s excessive correction.47 The second story of adultery is the only one of the four where the husband himself brought his private troubles to the authorities.48 For more than six months, Bartolomeo from Genoa, alerted by friends, investigated suspicions and then sought to correct his errant wife, Isabetta from Rome. He had tried several times in previous months to enlist the help of the Vicario’s ecclesiastical tribunal, but in vain. Recently, however, he had procured a warrant, probably from the Governor’s court (ff. 832r–v, 834r). So, a police patrol met Bartolomeo outside the building where the lovers had been seen and at his direction made arrests that led to the trial.49 Events took place in a shared neighborhood and within a community of workers, several of whom testified. In this slightly larger, but still face-to-face social terrain, friends and neighbors, notably men this time, had a crucial role in managing their comrade’s disarray. On Saturday, October 22, 1604, right after the arrests, Bartolomeo, coachman to a Monsignor Dandini, complained formally against his wife and Francesco Cappelli from Florence (ff. 831r–v). Bartolomeo had married Isabetta six years earlier; although native Roman women were few, they often married men from outside who sought to establish themselves in the capital. It was a second marriage for Isabetta, who had a grown stepson and a son who lived together in another neighborhood (f. 840v). Bartolomeo lived with Isabetta and their young son near San Pantaleone in the city center. The accused lover, a twelve-year resident of Rome who served as coachman to another churchman, the Archbishop of Monreale, worked from a stable nearby. Bartolomeo’s complaint charged Isabetta with spending “unusually much ( piu dell’ordinario)” time with Francesco. According to reports from several men, including a third coachman, while Bartolomeo lay on his sick bed, Isabetta came and went late in the evening from the stables where Francesco worked. Once healthy again, Bartolomeo berated his wife for her visits and threatened her with arrest and public whipping (f. 831r). She, however, denied all charges and challenged her husband to do his worst(f. 831v). Nevertheless, Bartolomeo asked his friends to spy on her movements (ff. 833v–834r). One morning Bartolomeo’s nephew brought word that Isabetta had been spotted a few streets away going with Francesco into the Palazzo de Picchi. Bartolomeo sent a messenger to alert the city police. When they arrived, Bartolomeo told them to arrest Francesco, then descending the stairs. The husband entered the building, collected Isabetta, and sent her, too, off to jail (f. 831v). Note that the Governor’s police were willing to act, but left it to the respectable husband to hand over his wife. After the arrests, neighbors and colleagues testified to having seen Francesco and Isabetta often together over many months and hearing talk in the piazza of their being lovers. One man observed her three or four times in the last month taking advantage of walking her son to school to stop to talk with Francesco in the courtyard of the Massimi family palace (f. 837v). Another neighbor, Alfonso, intervened directly. Because, he said, Isabetta was his commare, his spiritual kinswoman, he had invited her a month earlier to his house. There, with his own wife present, Alfonso told the wayward Isabetta of the rumors that she was in love (inamorata) with Francesco and having sex with him. Alfonso urged to her to smarten up (stesse in cervello) and amend her ways, because her husband knew and had a warrant to send her to jail, and because it dishonored Alfonso himself, who had helped marry her so respectably (ff. 834r–v). In their early testimonies, the lovers took different tacks. The unattached Francesco downplayed the whole business. He acknowledged, as did Isabetta, that they had known each other in the neighborhood for three or four years. Yet Francesco dismissed her presence in his room or any adulterous reasons for it, “I cannot know the heart of that woman or why she came up” (f. 835v). Isabetta, pressed hard through several interrogations, tried ineffectually to parry the court’s questions. She garbed herself conventionally as a dutiful housewife who minded her own business and seldom went out: “I have to keep working if I want to live” (f. 841r). Accordingly, she implausibly denied knowing local geography; then, insisting that she had never set foot in the stables, she fudged the meanings of being “inside” a place (f. 839r). She invoked her own good name, though in an elaborately conditional mode: “What do you imagine, your Lordship, if I had gone out while my husband was sick, that would have been a fine honor from me” (f. 839v). Blaming her neighbors for their spiteful testimony, she invoked the chronic enmities of local life: “what fine witnesses are these? this is how they repay the courtesies and good will that I have used with them” (f. 843r). Later, however, she backtracked on some of these claims with a pathetic tale of going out at night to fetch some greens to feed the ailing Bartolomeo. Passing by the stable’s open door, she said, Francesco had called out to her, “‘how is your husband?’ I, in tears, answered that the doctor offered little hope, and then Francesco responded, ‘look, if you need anything, be it money or anything else, just ask’” (ff. 843r–v). Spun this way, the errant wife’s visit to the stable got folded into a stirring picture of her desperate efforts to help her husband and of the fellow coachman’s sympathetic offer of aid.Near the end of the trial, the accused lovers, confronted with repeated testimony to their private meetings at the stable and in the palazzo, were pushed to address the presumption that they met for sex. As a judge said in another trial, “solus con sola, one does not presume they are saying the paternoster.”50 When pressed, Francesco exclaimed, “Your Lordship, I will take 100,000 oaths that I had no carnal doings with Isabetta!” He continued, “I can show your Lordship that only with great difficulty can I go with women, and when I do, it is rarely and to my great injury (danno), because four ribs got cut by a Turkish scimitar when I served as a soldier on the galleys of the Grand Duke” of Tuscany (f. 849v). Here we have detail so baroque that we may have to believe it. Francesco aimed to suggest, with timeless logic, that his encounters with Isabetta were not, actually, sex. Whatever it was, however, he feared culpability and had tried, with various moves, to def lect it. Interestingly, Isabetta’s final remarks also denied a sexual relationship by alluding to Francesco’s behavior. In her words, “if he were as proper (netto) with other women as he is with me, he would never have had sex with any woman.” Then, reaffirming her veracity, she concluded with a shift to a rhetoric of intention and sin, “If I had done wrong (errore) and if Francesco had sex with me, I would say so freely and ask for forgiveness, but because I did not do it, I cannot say I did” (ff. 850v–851r). Much more was at stake for Isabetta than for her lover. Knowing well that, in sneaking around while her husband was ill, she had erred in the eyes of her peers, she did not counter Bartolomeo’s charges with complaints of mistreatment. Yet she stood on her word that she could not confess a lie. There the trial record ended with the usual legal instruction that both accused parties be released into the jail’s public rooms (ad largam) with three days to prepare a defense. Accumulated circumstantial evidence, rather than catching lovers in the sexual act, was sufficient for neighbors and, in turn, their publica vox et fama attesting to the offense had weight in court. Nevertheless, perhaps fearing retaliation, people appear not to have turned each other in too quickly. Once an adulterous coupling became common, local knowledge, a friend or associate might assay an informal warning to wife, husband, or lover. Consensus likely deemed these matters family business, better handled privately and with minimal scandal. In this case, Bernardino not only chose official help, but had to persist to get it. In two other stories private adultery and its public prosecution unfolded in different circumstances. Here the adulteresses took advantage of wider urban terrains when pursuing their romantic yearnings. The husbands, although present in the city, were not principal players in bringing the cases to court. Neighbors, on the other hand, took active part, facilitating the alliances or tolerating them for some time, until a moment arrived when someone alerted the authorities. These times, when the police raided an illicit rendezvous, they acted ex offitio, on the newer legal premise that the court could intervene directly, without a kinsman’s request, to ensure order among the city’s lower-status residents. In a third episode of simple adultery, prosecuted in January 1605, the husband, Giovanni Domenico, was in fact the last to know. The short trial consists of apolice report and testimonies from several neighborhood witnesses.51 Neither wife nor lover spoke on record, but procedural annotations at the document’s end register their choice not to challenge any of the witnesses. Most likely, the adulterers accepted a summary decision that ordered them to pay fines and agree formally not to consort any more. Giovanni Domenico di Mattei from Lombardy and his wife, Madalena, lived on the Tiber Island with their two young children and an orphan boy whom they kept “for the love of God” (f. 145v). Husband and wife shared a business selling doughnuts from their home (f. 143r). Giovanni Domenico also commuted daily across the city to Piazza Capranica to work as an assistant to a doughnut-maker (ciambellaro) (f. 145r). The job required his being away overnight, but every morning he returned to his family quarters, evidently bringing pastries to sell. One Wednesday morning, Giovanni Domenico came home to find that Madalena had been arrested, along with Pietro Gallo from Parma, a twenty-five-year-old barber’s garzone who lived two doors down the street (ff. 144r, 145v). According to the official report, a neighbor’s denunciation had informed the authorities that “every night after four hours (10 p.m.) Pietro habitually goes to sleep with Madalena” (f. 143r). Receiving word again last night that the barber was there, the police raided the house late on a chilly January evening. With professional savvy, the lieutenant posted men to watch the exits before knocking on Madalena’s door, which she opened after a few minutes’ delay. While a search inside found no man, a loud noise overhead alerted the police to visit the roof, but in vain. They did soon discover the barber in his nightshirt in his own bed, where he protested that he had been checking the premises above on behalf of his absent landlord. Unconvinced, the police led the two lovers off to jail (ff. 143v–145r). When Giovanni Domenico came home to the unpleasant surprise of his wife’s arrest, he learned that Pietro the barber, carrying a sword (a further offense), had been in the house at night with Madalena. The cuckolded husband went immediately to make a formal complaint and to demand, according to the protocol, the severest punishments for Pietro, Madalena, and anyone with a part in “leading him to her” (ff. 145r–v). The young orphan, Giovanni Santi, nicknamed Scimiotto (Little Monkey), also testified then under his master’s auspices. The boy explained that, during the four months that he had lived in the household, Madalena had many times sent him to invite the barber to eat, and that, when Giovanni Domenico was away, Pietro stayed to sleep. He shared the bed with Madalena and the two children, while the young witness slept on the f loor in the same room. The lover usually entered through the door, but sometimes through a window belonging to a laundress (ff. 146r–v). During her husband’s nightly absences and in plain view of the neighbors, Madalena had carried on adulterously with, like the other women, a young, unmarried man who lived nearby. The affair (amicizia) had been going on for as much as two years, according to gossip in the local wineshop (f. 148v). A hatmaker who lived in the house between the two lovers had for six months heardlocal “murmuring” that Pietro was having sex (negotiava) with Madalena. In passing back and forth, the neighbor had many times seen the barber in her house, their “talking and laughing together publicly .  .  . sometimes in the morning, sometimes after eating, sometimes toward evening” (f. 147r). Often, said the hatmaker, other men also hung out convivially at the shop, eating doughnuts, or, in season, roasted chestnuts (f. 148v). Giovanni Domenico must have been around sometimes when such sociability, presumably good for business, took place. Yet, about a month before the arrests, the hatmaker saw fit one day in his shop to warn the young barber: “the people of Trastevere say you’re having sex with the doughnut-maker’s wife; if you don’t straighten up, you’ll go to jail.” When Pietro denied it, the hatmaker replied that it was not his business, but that the barber had better mind his (f. 147r). Cesare the tavern keeper had also challenged Pietro. Several weeks ago, Cesare had gone to Madalena’s to borrow matches and found her eating with the barber and another man. Seeing the tavern keeper, Pietro had slipped away to hide. Later that day, Madalena’s small son came to Cesare’s house to get a light. Jokingly, he asked the boy: “who was sleeping with your mother last night?” (f. 148r). Later still, Pietro stormed into the tavern and began to threaten the host, saying that he should take care of his own house and not speak of others, or that he would get his head stove in. Cesare, figuring out how his words had passed from the child to his mother and to Pietro, protested that he had only spoken in jest (f. 148r). Although propinquity and opportunity during Giovanni Domenico’s regular absences clearly favored the liaison, we must guess at what drew these two lovers together. The unmarried barber could readily have found sex and even a quasi-domestic companionship elsewhere among the city’s prostitutes. The illicit pair seemed to enjoy each other’s company, alone together and also in groups. In Rome where many men were on their own, taking meals in others’ houses, sometimes in return for a contribution in food or money, was not unusual. Pietro’s sleeping over, especially when he lived so close by, was less acceptable. Interestingly, though, no one called Madalena a whore or said that she was in it for money. This suggests that there was something companionable about the connection, and that may have colored local reactions, at least initially. Some shift of neighborhood opinion in recent weeks, however, had led the hatmaker to confront Pietro and the tavern keeper to make his tactless joke to Madalena’s son. How, then, did the cuckolded husband not suspect? Seemingly, none of the neighbors said anything to him. At least, when he came home to discover the arrests, he hastily adopted a posture of righteous ignorance and mustered shreds of domestic mastery by adding his complaint to the magistrate’s file. Nevertheless, given local practices, the marriage probably muddled on. The fourth case shows a different pattern of adulterous assignation.52 The lovers had been acquainted through family connections for several years. The older married woman, infatuated with a younger man, a cloth dealer, organized their sexual trysts. Completely absent from the trial, the cuckolded husband figured only as an angry specter in his wife’s mind. Here again, a neighbor’s denunciationlaunched the official investigation. Testimonies from the two lovers and from several women neighbors arrested with them confirmed and extended the police report. On Saturday, March 23, 1602, in mid-afternoon, a police patrol raided a modest upstairs room in the Vicolo Lancelotti near the Tiber river. According to their lieutenant, an unnamed local informant reported that a married woman had been meeting a lover there on Saturdays for some months (ff. 1219r–v). The lodging belonged to Filippa from Romagna, a weaver and the wife of Hieronimo Morini, though evidently alone in Rome (f. 1220r). Two other women on their own, including Filippa’s commare Marcella, also shared the staircase. On Saturday, hearing men barge into the building, the weaver was able to warn the lovers, so that the police arrived to find the pair, both fully clothed, the man sitting on the bed and the woman standing beside him. But when the man rose, lifting his cloak from the bed, the lieutenant spotted a “shape” ( forma) betraying the couple’s activity (f. 1219r). The woman, Livia, was known to all present as the wife of Pietropaolo Panicarolo, a carpenter from Milan (f. 1224v). Confronted by the police, she threw herself tearfully on her knees and begged not to be taken to prison, because “this is the time” that her husband would kill her. The man, Marino Marcutio from Gubbio, took an officer aside, saying “I am a merchant” and offering money or whatever he wanted in order to let them go, the woman in particular (ff. 1219r–v). But the righteous policeman refused the bribe, bound the pair, and sent them to jail. The adultery’s backstory emerged from the interrogations. Livia testified that she had been married for twenty-six years, although she likely included a brief first marriage contracted when she was very young (ff. 1225r–v). That husband had died before she was old enough to go live with him, and probably she had been wed soon again to Pietropaolo. In any case, in 1602 Livia must have been at least thirty-five and maybe older. She lived with her husband, but, like Caterina and Hieronimo in the first story, they had no children. Besides Livia’s fear of Pietropaolo’s violence should he discover the adultery, we know nothing of their relationship. As in the third case, the geography in this one spread out across the center of the city. Livia lived currently not far from the Trevi Fountain and was accustomed to moving good distances around the city on her own (f. 1221v). Marino, a younger man, kept shop across town on a corner where the street of the Chiavari met the Piazza Giudea (f. 1220v). Livia had come to know Marino eight years before in her own home, where she nursed his seriously ill cousin, who later died (ff. 1227r, 1229r). Marino had also shared recreation and games with her husband, Pietropaolo, and the merchant’s parents had more recently lodged in the carpenter’s quarters during the Holy Year of 1600 (f. 1229r). Through these domestic encounters, Livia had fallen in love with Marino and had long strategized to meet him discreetly for sex. Livia had known Filippa for two years, during which time the weaver, who worked on a loom in her room, had made three cloths for the more aff luent carpenter’s wife (f. 1221r). Filippa had visitedLivia’s house to collect yarn for the loom and to deliver finished cloth, and Livia had called in the Vicolo Lancelotti, although it was a good way from her home. So, bumping into Filippa at various spots around town, Livia importuned her repeatedly for the use of her room to meet Marino (f. 1221v). Though reluctant, Filippa eventually gave in to the woman who gave her work. At risk of being charged as a go-between, the weaver said she had refused any compensation, but Livia said that she had given Filippa five giulii for the two recent assignations (f. 1227v). In Livia’s own words, she had loved and been in love (inamorata) with Marino for years, and her infatuation had propelled her to arrange a series of private encounters “not having opportunity to enjoy him ( goderlo) in my house out of respect for my husband” (f. 1225r). Livia and Marino both acknowledged having met privately a number of times at Filippa’s room, and twice in the last week that was the focus of the investigation. On the Monday before the arrests, the pair had had a rendezvous at Filippa’s house. Duly chaperoned by a nephew, who left immediately, Livia arrived first after the midday meal and joined the weaver in her room. Marino appeared about a half hour later, bringing some collars for starching as a standard cover story for his presence. After chatting brief ly, Filippa withdrew and left the pair alone. Sometimes, the door was open during the couple’s visits, but on this, as on another, occasion they had been locked inside for about an hour (f. 1221r). When later the policeman asked Filippa what the couple had been doing, she replied, “you know very well that when a man and a woman are together, it is not licit to see what they are doing” (f. 1219v). Although all the women witnesses echoed the sentiment that Livia was in love, it was not clear whether, when the couple next met on Saturday, they had sex. Livia was angry with Marino, because she thought that he was chasing another woman, and they had had words. She also insisted with dubious piety, “on Saturday I don’t commit sin, not even with my husband (il sabbato non fo il peccato, ne anco con mio marito)” (ff.1221r, 1225r). Although during the arrests Marino had tried to protect Livia, under interrogation his story aimed first to exonerate himself. He acknowledged that he had met Livia once before Christmas, twice before Carnival, and another two times during Lent, but, he insisted, only to talk. Making the implausible claim that he only sought the carpenter’s wife’s help in order to secure a “simple benefice” for his brother who was a student, he denied sex altogether (f. 1229v). Describing their emotional bond, he notably cast the feelings in terms of Livia’s warmth toward him, “she is a friend to me and loving because she has helped me (mi e amica et amorevole perche mi ha fatto de servitii ),” referring to her nursing his mother and cousin (ff. 1231v–1232r).53 To dislodge the lovers’ conf licting testimony and to convict Marino, the court proceeded to torture the adulteress in front of the merchant (f. 1234r–v). Using the lighter instruments of the sibille that compressed the hands, this formal act of judicial stagecraft intended, as in Artemisia Gentileschi’s case, to authorize the claims of the sexually compromised woman.54 The tactic failed, nonetheless, to elicit a change in Marino’s testimony that denied any sex, or touch, or kisses,or even hearing that Livia was in love with him (f. 1236v). The judge probably did not believe Marino, but legally his respectability and his adamancy held good weight. Livia’s unknown fate, on the other hand, would have lain in part with her invisible husband. If less dramatic than high culture’s renderings of adultery, adorned by the heft of law, familiar biblical tropes, and colorful narrative in paint and words, these everyday stories of wives seeking illicit moments of love and fun have their own art and pathos. For example, there is the coachman Francesco’s alleged sexual impairment due to a Turkish scimitar injury. Or the hardworking doughnut guy cuckolded by the young barber. Or Filippa the poor weaver, who got into trouble because her friend and employer Livia wore down her resistance to playing hostess to a sexual rendezvous. Paradoxically perhaps, the criminal court’s address to transgression here tells us more about what really happened, and what happened to most people some of the time than the great dramas of high art. Despite reformers’ efforts to discipline marriage and sex, a customary culture that tolerated various forms of heterosexual error persisted in Rome long after Trent. In these four cases, only one husband sought the court’s help. In the others, neighborhood informants alerted the authorities to a public disorder, but only after an adulterous liaison had been known in their midst for some time. While the Governor’s court prosecuted lovers as well as errant wives, the women usually had more to lose, but also perhaps to gain. Even if unwise, some married women broke the rules and went looking for love. What they found was usually close to home so that their adventures took place under the eyes of a local community. These neighbors knew often well before the law got involved and responded in diverse ways. Adultery posed a social problem that demanded a solution, sooner or later. Although the law had its own ambitions, in these sorts of everyday misdeeds justice did not intervene with a devastating external discipline.Notes 1 Cristellon, “Public Display,” 182–85, summarizes Italian legal and customary views of adultery. 2 Clarus, Opera omnia, 51b. 3 Besides essays in Matthews-Grieco, ed., Erotic Cultures, see Bayer, ed., Art and Love, including essays by Musacchio (29–41) and Grantham Turner (178–84). 4 Ajmer-Wollheim, “‘The Spirit is Ready’” 5 McClure, Parlour Games, 36–38. 6 Esposito, “Donna e fama,” 97–98, states this standard view. 7 Cussen, “Matters of Honour,” 61–67. 8 Lev, The Tigress of Forlì, 3–20. 9 Musacchio, “Adultery, Cuckoldry,” 11–34; on Piero’s death 17–18. 10 On wife-killing by nobleman Carlo Gesualdo in Naples, 1590, see Ober, “Murders, Madrigals”; on Vittoria Savelli in the Roman hinterland, 1563, see Cohen, Love and Death, 15–42. Killings of noble wives not caught in flagrante delictu often had motives linked to claims on property or power rather jealous rage. 11 Esposito, “Donne e fama,”  47 48 49Elizabeth S. CohenGal, Boudet, and Moulinier-Brogi, eds., Vedrai mirabilia, 241. Kaborycha, ed., A Corresponding Renaissance, 172 + n. 19. Gal, Boudet, and Moulinier-Brogi, Vedrai mirabilia, 251. Examples include: Titian (1510); Rocco Marconi (1525); Palma il Vecchio (1525–28); Lorenzo Lotto (1528); Tintoretto (1545–48); Alessandro Allori (1577). Alberti, “‘Divine Cuckolds.’” Rice, “The Cuckoldries.” Boccaccio, Decameron. For example, Day 3, Story 3; Day 7, Story 2. For example, Day 3, Story 2; Day 4, Story 2. Ibid., 241–46. My translation of the quote. Ibid., 500–01. Cristellon, Marriage, the Church, 14–19, 159–90. For French parallels, see Mazo Karras, Unmarriages, 165–208. Ferraro, Marriage Wars also includes cases in secular courts, where issues of property, often pursued by husbands, have greater visibility; yet women brought many more suits than men, 29–30. In the complaints, adultery was generally subordinate to other concerns, 71. Cristellon, “Public Display,” 175–76, 180–85, Scaduto, ed. Registi dei bandi, vol. 1 (anni 1234–1605), passim. Storey, Carnal Commerce, 108-14, 242–43. Blastenbrei, Kriminalität im Rom, 274–75. Cohen and Cohen, “Justice and Crime.” Sonnino, “Population,” 50–70. Da Molin, Famiglia, 93–95. Sonnino, “Population,” 62–64. See also, Nussdorfer, “Masculine Hierarchies.” Da Molin, Famiglia, 243. The unexplained disappearance of Vicariato tribunal records precludes Roman comparisons with Venice. Marchisello, “‘Alieni,’” 133–83. See also in the same volume, Esposito, “Adulterio.” Blastenbrei, Kriminalität im Rom, 273, n. 160. Statuta almae urbis Romae, 108–09, for what follows. Forcibly abducting prostitutes was a crime. Ibid., 109. Esposito, “Donna e fama,” 89–90. Marchisello, “Alieni,” 137, 166–68; Esposito, “Adulterio,” 26–27. Alternatively, the legal narrative for the charge of sviamento, leading astray, shifted more blame onto the lover. For example, Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale criminale (hereafter ASR GTC), Processi, xvi secolo, busta 256 (1592), ff. 540r–62; see also, Blastenbrei, Kriminalität im Rom, 272, 275. For example, ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 25, ff. 17r–26v; (1603); busta 91, ff. 1153r–1159r (1610). In parallel, the Statuta almae urbis Romae, 110, declared that men keeping concubines were liable for fines of 50 scudi. Counts based on small numbers of surviving records do not reflect behaviour or even patterns of prosecution. Nevertheless, it may be useful to note that this type of “simple adulteries” represent about a quarter of the adultery prosecutions between 1590 and 1610. ASR GTC, Processi, xvi secolo, busta 270, ff. 1124r–1128v. References to specific folios appear in parentheses in text. The trial record ended with the usual note that those charged had three days to prepare their formal defense. I have found no record of a judgment, but it is likely that the couple were fined. ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 37, ff. 830r–851r. The charge preteso adulterio (appearance of adultery) carried a lesser burden of proof.Adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome50 51 52 53ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 36, f. 63v. ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 44, ff. 142r–149r. ASR GTC, Processi, xvii secolo, busta 17, ff. 1218r–1238r. The range of colloquial meanings for “amica” and “amorevole” was broad. Here Marino used these words to indicate friendship and affiliation, rather than romantic or sexual alliance. 54 Cohen, “Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi,” Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale Processi, xvi secolo, busta 256 (1592) Processi, xvi secolo, busta 270 (1593) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 17 (1602) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 25 (1603) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 36 (1604) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 37 (1604) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 44 (1605) Processi, xvii secolo, busta 91 (1610)Published sources Ajmer-Wollheim, Marta. “‘The Spirit is Ready, But the Flesh is Tired’: Erotic Objects and Marriage in Early Modern Italy.” In Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy. Edited by Sara Matthews-Grieco, 145–51. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Alberti, Francesca “‘Divine Cuckolds’: Joseph and Vulcan in Renaissance Art and Literature.” In Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery. Edited by Sara Matthews-Grieco, 149–82. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Bayer, Andrea, ed. Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Blastenbrei, Peter. Kriminalität im Rom, 1560–1585. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. Translated by G.H. McWilliam. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Clarus, Julius. Opera omnia sive pratica civilis atque criminalis. Vol. 5. Venice: 1614. Cohen, Elizabeth S. “Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History.” Sixteenth Century Journal and Thomas V. Cohen. “Justice and Crime.” In Companion to Early Modern Rome. Edited by Pamela Jones, Simon Ditchfield, and Barbara Wisch. Leiden: Brill, 2018 Cohen, Thomas V. Love and Death in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Cristellon, Cecilia. Marriage, the Church, and Its Judges in Renaissance Venice, 1420–1545. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Originally published as La carità e l’eros. Bologna: Il Mulino, Public Display of Affection: The Making of Marriage in the Venetian Courts before the Council of Trent” In Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy. Edited by Sara Matthews-Grieco, 173–97. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Cussen, Bryan. “Matters of Honour: Pope Paul III and Church Reform (1534–49).” Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 2017.Da Molin, Giovanna. Famiglia e matrimonio nell’Italia del Seicento. Bari: Cacucci Editore, 2000. Esposito, Anna. “Adulterio, concubinato, bigamia: testimonianze dalla normativa statutaria dello Stato ponteficio (secoli XIII–XVI).” In Trasgressioni: seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia, Edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, 21–42. Bologna: Il Mulino, “Donna e fama tra normativa statuaria e realtà sociale.” In Fama e Publica Vox nel Medioevo. Edited by Isa Lori Sanfilippo and Antonio Rigon. Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2011. Ferraro, Joanne M. Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Gal, Florence, Jean-Patrice Boudet, and Laurence Moulinier-Brogi, eds. Vedrai mirabilia: Un libro di magia del Quattrocento. Rome: Viella, 2017. Grantham Turner, James. “Profane Love: The Challenge of Sexuality.” In Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Andrea Bayer, 178–84. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Kaborycha, Lisa, ed. A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375– 1650. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Lev, Elizabeth. The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici. Boston: Houghton Miff lin, 2011. Marchisello, Andrea. “‘Alieni thori violatio’: L’Adulterio come delitto carnale in Prospero Farinacci.” In Trasgressioni: seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (XIV-XVIII). Edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, 133–83. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004. Matthews-Grieco, Sara, ed. Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Mazo Karras, Ruth. Unmarriages: Women, Men and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. McClure, George. Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. “Adultery, Cuckoldry, and House-Scorning in Florence: The Case of Bianca Cappello.” In Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th– 17th Century). Edited by Sara Matthews-Grieco, 11–34. Farnham: Ashgate,  “Wives, Lovers, and Art in Italian Renaissance Courts.” In Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Andrea Bayer, 29-41. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Nussdorfer, Laurie. “Masculine Hierarchies in Roman Ecclesiastical Households.” European Review of History 22, no. 4 (2015): 620–42. Ober, William. “Murders, Madrigals, and Masochism.” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 49, no. 7 (1973): 634–45. Rice, Louise. “The Cuckoldries of Baccio del Bianco.” In Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th Century). Edited by Sara Matthews-Grieco, 215–48. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Scaduto, Francesco, ed. Registi dei bandi, editti, notificazioni e provvedimenti diversi relativo alla città di Roma ed allo Stato Pontificio, vol. 1 (anni 1234–1605). Rome: 1920. Sonnino, Eugenio. “The Population in Baroque Rome.” In Rome/Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Edited by Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte, 50–70. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997. Statuta almae urbis Romae. Rome: 1580. Storey, Tessa. Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.PART IISense and sensuality in sex and gender. The case of the early seventeenth-century “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini Patricia SimonsOn November 5, 1623, two Capuchin friars sent by a papal nuncio finished their investigation regarding whether abbess Benedetta Carlini was a valid mystic. An earlier, local study drawn up for Pescia’s provost in 1619 had been amenable to her claims. In July 1620, she became the first abbess of the newly enclosed convent, a prestigious appointment that suggests belief in her story. Yet Benedetta’s authority within the nunnery was not universally accepted and she lost the support of the civic establishment, leading to the new investigation by more distanced authorities. They decided that she had been deceived by the devil because, according to evidence from disaffected nuns, signs such as her stigmata were faked. New evidence also included the testimony of the abbess’ assistant, Bartolomea Crivelli (often called Mea), who unexpectedly told the men, in explicit detail, about sexual relations between the two women. Most scholars were similarly surprised when Judith Brown published the supposedly “unique” case in 1986, in Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun.1 Responses were varied, the lengthiest being Rudolph Bell’s evaluation in 1987, which argued that the nuncio was already determined to silence Benedetta and that her subsequent lengthy imprisonment in the convent was imposed by the nuns rather than external authorities, a claim refuted by Brown.2 The details of the internal, civic, and ecclesiastical power plays cannot be definitively known, but the sexual dynamics are clear. Over thirty years later, it is time to reconsider this case, neither adhering to a modernist notion of strict sexual identity nor relegating Benedetta and Mea to the margins. In keeping with Konrad Eisenbichler’s ability to draw out erotic implications from literary and archival evidence, this essay respects the reality of the women’s intimacy and examines textual and visual materials in order to situate them in their spiritual and sensual context. This case offers specific details and terminology for what might be called corporeal spirituality, the unequivocal coexistence of amorous language, sexual deeds, pious rhetoric, and religious faith.3Since Benedetta’s visions entailed visitations from Christ, whom she married in a public ceremony, and messages from angels such as Splenditello, in whose voice she often spoke, Brown claimed the two nuns were engaged in a heterosexualized affair: The only sexual relations she seemed to recognize were those between men and women. Her male identity consequently allowed her to have sexual and emotional relations that she could not conceive between women. . . . In this double role of male and of angel, Benedetta absolved herself from sin and accepted her society’s sexual definitions of gender.4 Brown’s judgment associates male sex with masculine gender, and in turn a presumed dichotomy between the two women is seamlessly laminated onto their sex acts. However, this does not accord with either the women’s physical actions, or with possibilities engendered by the sensual spirituality of premodern Catholicism. The souls and f lesh of nuns were not as neatly divided as a later, secular view imagines. Despite the Foucauldian point that discourses of repression can generate the very thing they seek to silence, the presumption of religious “purity” and feminized innocence has hardly disappeared. Benedetta’s case remains nearly ignored in studies of European religion or is cited brief ly with no new interpretation.5 It is seen as an aberration on two counts: she was a nun with a sex life—considered an oxymoron—and her sexual activity was with another woman—thought to be impossible in her time and setting. Documented cases of nuns having sex with clergy or secular men, as well as anti-clerical, fictional stories about such conjunctions, are taken as ordinary, natural, feminine acts by women who were supposedly frustrated in an entirely earthly way.6 But Benedetta, it seems, must be a “unique” case, even “bizarre,” who assumed a male guise and cannot be assimilated into religious history.7 My point here is to remove her from the interdependent frameworks of deviance and heterosexuality, and to reintegrate her into a religious context. Benedetta literally acted out what was usually a world of visual and imaginary culture. Here I try to reconstruct a premodern nun’s agency and the imagination of religious women, who were not necessarily repressed victims with no recoverable history of any import. Nunneries were loci of social and economic power, particular inhabitants inf luenced secular women and male authority figures ranging from fathers to confessors, and some women like Benedetta negotiated rich emotive lives for themselves. We tend to think of nuns as women restricted by institutional confines and discourses that denied them their bodies, but Benedetta’s story urges us to examine the materiality of passion, of art, and of past lives. Only the report of the Capuchins told of Benedetta’s sexual transgressions— f lirting with two male priests as well as “immodest acts” with a woman—and only at the end of its account.8 The inquiry concluded that her visions andecstasies were “demonic illusions.”9 Along with her disturbingly erotic behavior, the inquirers were concerned by their discovery that apparent signs of her special favor, the stigmata, nuptial ring, and a bleeding crucifix, were all forged. The friars integrated Carlini’s sexual behavior with her spiritual behavior—all were sinful and diabolically inspired. In an important sense, we need to take this contemporary contextualization seriously, understanding that Benedetta’s visions were not utterly divided from her corporeal acts. The aspiring mystic, then in her early thirties, had been having regular sex with Mea for at least two years. Neither investigation was sparked byrumors of sexual sin, nor is it clear how central that particular misconduct was to her lifelong imprisonment within the convent.10 Benedetta’s story most resembles cases of what Anne Jacobson Schutte has called “failed saints,” or what Inquisitors termed “pretended holiness” (affetata santità).11 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century penance for a nun’s sexual sin ranged from expulsion or permanent incarceration in the convent to just two years of penance there.12 No witnesses or other evidence confirmed Mea’s testimony and if she had not made a voluntary confession, no one could have uncovered the information. The demoted abbess Carlini herself renounced her past and never acknowledged Mea’s claims. The unusually visible sexual aspects may not be unique. Recalling her secular life of the 1670s, and her enjoyment of men courting her, St. Veronica Giuliani later emphatically interrupted one of her autobiographies. A sentence written in capital letters alluded to imprecise errors, implicitly sexual: “I bore great tribulation for the sins I committed with those spinsters and I did not know how to confess them.”13 Cloistered women may have enjoyed undocumented but thoroughly physical relationships in secluded spaces. From at least the twelfth to the seventeenth century, incidents of same-sex eroticism within female convents are recorded. Around 1660, nuns at Auxonne accused their mother superior of bewitching them, of wearing a dildo, of kissing, and penetrating them with fingers.14 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women in Italian religious refuges for convertite (ex-prostitutes) and malmaritate (abused wives) became friends and in some cases nearly half the inhabitants formed couples sharing rooms, where “officials discovered women who were sexually involved with other women.”15 Close living and supportive conditions also obtained in non- or semi-cloistered communities of pious laywomen. Bell’s critique of Brown usefully corrected various errors, while nevertheless making new mistakes. His chief point was that the male investigators “had no lack of imagination or conceptual framework for describing love between two women” and that it was the nuns rather than the Church officials who condemned Benedetta to life-long imprisonment.16 Certainly, she seems to have been a demanding, imperious abbess who could not cope with the dissension her rule engendered, perhaps in part due to newly instigated clausura. Brown’s label of “lesbian,” despite her careful acknowledgment that it was anachronistic, provoked much criticism. One reviewer of the book, using yet more historically inappropriate terms, insisted that “Carlini is heterosexual or, more properly,bisexual in both her inclinations and conduct.”17 Disagreements over labels and details should not distract from the fundamental fact that physical, sexual contact took place between two nuns. Too often, a series of dichotomies misinform discussions of sexual practices. A binary between the mind and the body, the soul and its vessel, is often mapped onto other seemingly concomitant divides, not only between masculine and feminine but also the celestial and the mundane. The presumption is that religious ideologies constantly repress bodily desires and only secular, putatively modern, frameworks are capable of acknowledging material passion. In a similar vein, a contrast is regularly drawn between “real sex” (whatever that is) and “Romantic Friendships” amongst women. Both the abbess’s visions and her sexual deeds were informed by conventions shaping the lives of all nuns as brides of Christ at a time when dualism was not naturalized. Discussing the exegetical tradition regarding the biblical Song of Songs as an allegory about the soul’s union with the divine, E. Ann Matter noted that the text was “the epithalamium of a spiritual union which ultimately takes place between God and the resurrected Christian—both body and soul.”18 Benedetta’s mysticism links her to a tradition of female spirituality “that made the body itself a vehicle of transcendence. . . . Corporeal images were the stuff with which nuns described their experiences.”19 Heterosexualization of the story is too simplistic, too ignorant of complex issues related to gender dynamics as well as intersex and transgender bodies. What Brown calls Benedetta’s “double role of male and of angel” and “her male identity” was not a consistent performance of masculinity. Speaking on occasion as an angel named Splenditello or as Christ, the nun was a medium for the divine rather than for her “self ” in a modern sense of individual identity, and none of her contemporaries, including Mea, considered her male. During sex, neither seventeenth-century woman believed the other was transformed into a man, and their sex did not necessitate resort to “instruments” or dildos, devices that so obsessed confessors. For two or more years, “at least three times a week,” when the women shared a cell as mistress and servant, they had sex, in the day as well as at night or in the early morning.20 Although Mea sought to protect herself by claiming she was always forced, and a degree of intimidation or overbearing insistence may well have been involved, she implicitly admitted pleasure. “Embracing her,” the abbess “would put her under herself and kissing her as if she were a man, she would speak words of love to her. And she would stir on top of her so much that both of them corrupted themselves.” The women did much more than engage in what Brown and Bell describe, using the dismissive misnomer, as “mutual masturbation.”21 They touched each other until orgasm, in vigorous and multiple ways, including actions that were not possible for a single person, and had no need of a phallus. Rubbing or “stirring” their genitals together to the point of “corruption,” they also manually penetrated each other and actively used their mouths. Presenting herself as more passive, Mea recounted how even during the day the abbess grabbed her handand putting it under herself, she would have her put her finger into her genitals, and holding it there she stirred herself so much that she corrupted herself. And she would kiss her and also by force would put her own hand under her companion and her finger into her genitals and corrupted her.22 A slightly later expansion of the account accentuated Benedetta’s inventive pursuit of pleasure, saying that “to feel greater sensuality [she] stripped naked as a newborn babe,” and “as many as twenty times by force she had wanted to kiss [Mea’s] genitals.”23 The document, although stressing the younger woman’s reluctance, also showed a comprehension of how satisfying the actions could be: “Benedetta, in order to have greater pleasure, put her face between the other’s breasts and kissed them, and wanted always to be thus on her.” During the day in her study, while teaching her companion to read and write, the abbess again enjoyed sensual contact, having Mea “sit down in front of her” or “be near her on her knees . . . kissing her and putting her hands on her breasts.” Despite the reticence Mea tried to convey in her statement, it was clear her lover sought mutual delight. When manually arousing Mea, Benedetta “wanted her companion to do the same to her, and while she was doing this she would kiss her.” The older woman was presented as active and insistent. If Mea tried to refuse, the abbess went to the cot “and, climbing on top, sinned with her by force,” or she would arouse herself (“with her own hands she would corrupt herself ”). Hence, in a phrase recorded only a few times in Mea’s testimony, the younger woman conceptualized her vigorous, forceful lover in standard terms, saying “she would force her into the bed and kissing her as if she were a man she would stir on top of her.” Mea probably had no sexual experience with men, so her comparison was not based on a Freudian model of the phallus or anatomical knowledge of a penis, but on a sense of gendered roles whereby the man took a physically dominant position. Benedetta and Mea enacted substantive, varied sex, in a range of modes, positions, times, and locations. Benedetta’s case spurs us to ask questions about the management of nunneries. How did seemingly “innocent” and “repressed” women learn about sexual details and inventively contravene prohibitions? A stock opposition between knowledgeable yet repressive male authorities, and ignorant nuns without any agency, cannot satisfactorily apply. Some inhabitants of nunneries shared a degree of sexual experience and innuendo with their companions. Dedicated to God after her mother survived difficult labor in 1590, Benedetta was a nine-year-old villager when she entered the religious life.24 Most other entrants (and boarders) were similarly prepubescent or in their early teens, but some were older, sexually experienced women, such as widows or former prostitutes. Heterogeneity was increased by the presence of converse, servants and lay sisters who entered at slightly older ages, did not profess, and sometimes frequented the outside world, although the growth of post-Tridentine enclosure made this less likely from the late sixteenth century onward. The popular and much reprinted Colloquies (1529) by Augustinian friar Erasmus suggested that nunneries were filled with “morewho copy Sappho’s behavior (mores) than share her talent,” and that “All the veiled aren’t virgins, believe me.”25 Through whatever means, cloistered women could have clear ideas about how to attain sexual pleasure. An anonymous nun, literate in Latin, wrote a love poem to another religious woman in the twelfth century, noting that “when I recall how you caressed / So joyously, my little breast / I want to die.”26 Confessors and canonists educated women in their obsessive sense of sexual sin. Due to the urging of questioners, or to a sense of guilt that welcomed the relief of voluntary confession, Venetian Inquisitors heard in the 1660s about how the “failed saint” Antonia Pesenti fought in the nighttime against diabolic temptations to masturbate.27 St. Catherine of Siena (1347–80) was tormented by sexual visions.28 Such a woman, who strenuously resisted association with secular men outside her family ever since she was a girl and refused to place herself on the marriage market, nevertheless had some comprehension of the conventions of sexual sin. Secular inspirations included farmyard sights, carnival songs, and oral jokes. Sermons, or the queries of a confessor, further embedded a degree of simple knowledge, horrifying yet fascinating. Nuns were governed by regulations suspicious of erotic activity in all-female environments, such as the provision since the early thirteenth century of night-lights to deter illicit entries into cells, regular checks on sleeping arrangements, supervision of female as well as male visitors, and careful control of the grille and other points of contact with the wider world. Yet those very rules made everyone aware of the possibility of contravention. Many penitentials and texts of canon law voiced a concern about nuns erotically touching or using “instruments” with each other, possibilities paradoxically furthered through inquiries in the confessional.29 Visual culture, including widely circulated prints and paintings of the damned, was another means whereby nuns were incorporated into a communal imagination regarding both sin and sensual piety. Explicit condemnations of same-sex activities led occasionally to illustrations in religious texts or on the walls of convents.30 Sensitive contact was also represented. Mutual tenderness and awe between the embracing Mary and Elizabeth at the Visitation, liturgically celebrated in the musical crescendo of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) sung every day at Vespers, was powerfully pictured by artists such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Jacopo Pontormo, and Parmigianino ( Figure 6.1).31 Saints’ lives contained legends like Catherine of Siena suckling at Mary’s breast or St. Catherine of Genoa tenderly kissing a dying woman on the mouth.32 A woman’s understanding of sex and sensuality might have been based more on discursive than experiential practices, but it could seem all the more real in its visionary presence. The chief focus of my study is legitimized, mystical eroticism in convents, leading to Benedetta’s mistaken, kinetic literalization of spiritual metaphors. Her pious and sexual performances intertwined on at least three levels of efficacy. Instrumentally, her access to the divine persuaded the younger, initially illiterate Mea to be a witness to the visionary experiences and to become a sex partner.Parmigianino, Visitation, pen and wash. Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo della Pilotta, Parma.FIGURE 6.1De Agostini Picture Library/A. DeGregorio/Bridgeman Images.Whether the ambitious nun was a self-aware manipulator throughout, or convinced by her own delusions, is neither knowable nor particularly pertinent. For some time Mea and the other nuns, the confessor, local officials, and the townspeople were all caught up in a visionary scenario they wanted to believe. At Benedetta’s funeral in 1661, the populace had to be kept away from a body they stillthought capable of miracles.33 The investigators eventually judged Benedetta a “poor creature” deceived by the devil, and she agreed that everything was “done without her consent or her will.”34 That defense of unconscious possession was already evident during the days of her acceptance by the community, but it shifted from being divine favor and spiritual rapture to becoming demonic deception. On the psychological level, the two women were provided with an effective way to cope with guilt. Until Mea “confessed with very great shame” about their sex, the angel Splenditello convinced her the women were not sinning. 35 Initially hesitating, in the presence of a host of saints led by Catherine of Siena, to obey Christ’s command to disrobe so he could place a new heart in her body, Benedetta was reassured by Jesus, who said “where I am, there is no shame.”36 The Capuchin investigators thought her putative ecstasy “partook more of the lascivious than of the divine” but the earlier inquiry, and the convent’s inhabitants like Mea, had not taken it amiss. After all, Saints Catherine of Siena, Catherine de’ Ricci (1522–90), and Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607) received hearts from Christ, and numerous images in printed or painted form continued to disseminate this aspect of female sanctity’s typology.37 Secular poetry and pictures also represented the gifting of manly hearts as a token of a courtly love that metaphorically elevated carnal desire into an idealized realm, without losing sight of erotic thrill.38 Nuns were increasingly devoted to Christ’s wounded heart, and imagined their own hearts as inner loci to be entered by their heavenly groom. The crucial difference was that Benedetta’s imagination was so inventive, and her belief system so literal, that representation of her participation in this mystic ritual included physical—“lascivious”—details. Thirdly, on the affective level, Benedetta’s mysticism heightened her sense of desire, not only for union with the divine, but for sex aided by angels. Equally, it could be said that her yearnings exacerbated her mysticism. Recourse to mystical fantasy endowed her passion with a structure and rhetoric. Rather than sublimation through piety, Benedetta’s case history indicates an intensifying of acts spiritual and sexual. Much of her complex psyche is summed up by the striking act of benediction she performed after sex: as Splenditello, “he made the sign of the cross all over his companion’s body after having committed many immodest acts with her.”39 Priest, angel, nun, lover, guilty and grateful, powerful and placatory, Benedetta moved her hand over a body she rendered simultaneously sacral and sensual. Alongside a renewed disciplinary zeal regulating cloistered life, CounterReformation culture witnessed a heightening of the emotive register of piety. In doing so, the Catholic Church accentuated a venerable, central heritage that used human bodies to imagine spiritual passions. So, in the Mystic Nativity of 1500–01 (National Gallery, London), Botticelli’s angels reenact the ritual of the kiss of peace, a regular liturgical moment, but potential eroticization is indicated by its conjunction with a nuptial kiss and by the exclusion of sinners from the ritual.40 Primarily same-sex pairs kiss and embrace in Giovanni di Paolo’s midfifteenth-century panels representing eternal paradise ( Figure 6.2).41 Angels andFIGURE 6.2 Giovanni di Paolo, Paradise, 1445, tempera and gold on canvas, transferred from wood, 44.5 × 38.4 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Open access.souls of the blessed greet each other, and the blissful unions are all manifested as moments of physical intimacy. Men in religious costume embrace, two secular women tenderly touch, near them two Dominican nuns entwine in one unit, and angels enfold men into the sweet realm of grace. Some female mystics were blessed with a miracle of lactation.42 Catherine of Siena’s experiences especially inf luenced Benedetta because her mother was devoted to Catherine and the convent was under her aegis as its patron saint.43 That role model’s mouth drained pus from a woman’s breast and the abnegation was rewarded by what her confessor termed an “indescribable and unfathomableliquid” f lowing from Christ’s side.44 Both scenes featured in one of the prints comprising a well-disseminated series illustrating Catherine’s life, designed by Francesco Vanni and first issued in 1597, then reissued in 1608 ( Figure 6.3).45 Her confessor Raymond of Capua presented Christ as Catherine’s sensual lover: “putting His right hand on her virginal neck and drawing her towards the wound in His own side, He whispered to her, ‘Drink, daughter, the liquid from my side, and it will fill your soul with such sweetness that its wonderful effects will be felt even by the body.’” Raymond brief ly noted that an earlier confessor had written about how “the glorious Mother of God herself fills her [i.e. Catherine] with ineffable sweetness with milk from her most holy breast.”46 Nurtured at the breasts of Christ and Mary, and moaning that “I want the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ” in church before his body f luid miraculously satisfied her so that “she thought she must die of love,” Catherine’s inf luential model of sanctity encouraged women such as her follower Benedetta Carlini to believe in sensate relief of their spiritual desires.47FIGURE 6.3 Francesco Vanni, St. Catherine of Siena orally draining pus from an ill woman and being rewarded with liquid from Christ’s wound, 1597, engraving, 25.7 × 28.9 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Open access.Benedetta’s maleness supposedly derived from her role-playing as Jesus or an angel, yet neither Christ nor angels were unequivocally male. In a fundamental sense, of course, Christ was masculine, the son of God endowed with visible, male genitals to prove the infant’s assumption of Incarnational humanity.48 His adult manifestation was also primarily masculine and patriarchal. Imitative adoration of their heavenly spouse could lead to mortification and even stigmatization, but nuns were not masculinized through such actions and they did not automatically become lovers of men. Stigmatized like Christ or speaking at times as though Christ was delivering a message,Benedetta was not Jesus, but his bride and servant. Cloistered women were privileged followers of Mary’s role as sponsa, the heavenly bride reenacting the Song of Songs and enjoying sensual relations with an adult, loving Christ. But when a German cleric regretfully noted that “it properly is the prerogative of his [i.e. Christ’s] brides” alone to enjoy sensual union with a celestial bridegroom, he nevertheless vicariously enjoyed a homoerotic fantasy by instructing nuns to kiss Christ “for my sake.”49 As scholars have shown, in many ways the metaphorical body of Christ was “feminine” or homoerotic or, rather, polymorphous in its sensual charge.50 Nuns imagined themselves as suckled infants, nurtured adults, mothers, spouses, female friends, all sharing an affinity as “sisters and daughters in Jesus Christ,” as Catherine de’ Ricci addressed a group of nuns in October 1571 after the death of “your dearest mother,” their abbess.51 While Christ was their child and groom, and Mary their exemplar, nuns were also enfolded in a female genealogy of succession and a feminine household of multiple sisters, daughters and mothers. Fellow nuns tenderly support Catherine of Siena when she is so affected as to faint after receiving the stigmata, painted by Sodoma in the mid-1520s for the Sienese chapel dedicated to her within the Dominican headquarters of her cult (Figure 6.4).52 Catherine is shown with exemplary female acolytes whose intimate, gentle regard for her swooning body suggests a bodily care and unselfconsciousness that requires no masculine intervention. Nuns took on more than one persona in this labile community of affection. After Benedetta married Christ in a special ceremony on May 26, 1619, a brief investigation did not distrust her mysticism, and on July 28, 1620 her religious sisters elected her abbess, head of the new Congregation of the Mother of God.53 As such, “mother” abbess Benedetta embraced her “daughter” and fellow “sister” Mea. Brown conf lates being male with taking on an angelic guise, but Benedetta took on no such “double role of male and of angel.” When using the voice of an angel, she was not adapting a role assigned to unambiguously male figures. Since theologians such as Aquinas believed angels might assume f lesh but had no natural bodies or functions, the ethereal creatures were officially asexual. Names, pronouns, and visual representations implied a degree of masculinity about God’s messengers, but often of a childlike or pubescent and androgynous kind. At the very moment when Gabriel carried the message transmitting the Logos into the body of the Virgin Mary, that archangel was often depicted as especially androgynous. It was probably to a frescoed Gabriel that the orphan,Sodoma, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, Scenes from the Life of Saint Catherine of Siena: The swooning of the saint, 1526, fresco. Siena, S. Domenico. Scala/Art Resource, NY.FIGURE 6.4The “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlinilater Beata, Vanna of Orvieto pointed on a church wall when she said “this angel is my mother.”54 Splenditello and Benedetta’s other angels empowered rather than masculinized her. Splenditello and company were celestial, barely gendered embodiments of winged eros or desire, rather than of a particular lover. Mea’s account moved directly from details of their sex to the statement that the mystic “always appeared to be in a trance (ecstasi ) . . . Her angel, Splenditello, did these things, appearing as a beautiful youth (bellisimo giovane) of fifteen years.”55 The attractive adolescent was endowed with the kind of homoerotic potential celebrated in contemporary paintings such as Caravaggio’s The Stigmatization of St. Francis produced in the first decade of the seventeenth century (Figure 6.5).56 Like the contemporaneous Splenditello, the seraphic spirit of celestial love who gently supports Francis is a creature ostensibly male but fundamentally symbolic of an eroticism which does not insist on singular identifications of gender or sex. The saint swoons in the arms of a lover whose pictorial form embodies the ineffable and polymorphous. Francis’s pious identification with the supreme exemplar Christ is physically and metaphorically consummated as he receives the stigmata in a mystical experience necessarily represented in erotic terms. A little more than twenty years after Mea’s confession, Gianlorenzo Bernini began work on a three-dimensional figuration of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Figure 6.6). With caressing gaze, divine light, a conventional arrow of Love, andFIGURE 6.5 Caravaggio, Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, ca. 1595–96, oil on canvas, 94 × 130 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.Photo credit: Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY.FIGURE 6.6Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, marble, 1645–52. Rome, S. Maria dellaVittoria. Photo credit: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.delicate gestures, Bernini’s embodiment of celestial spirit visits upon Teresa an experience of divine transport. A childlike member of the ranks of the cherubim gently strips Teresa of her worldly garments, lifting the robe so that blissful fire will sear her soul with what she called “a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails.”57 As Teresa described her rapture in the early 1560s, “this is not a physical, but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share.” Corporeal sensation was certainly perceived by an anonymous critic who, around 1670, accused Bernini of having “dragged that most pure Virgin not only into the Third Heaven, but into the dirt, to make a Venus not only prostrate but prostituted.”58 Contemporaries, in other words, were quite aware of the fine line between sensuality and spirituality, a boundary crossed not only by Benedetta but by the renowned artist Bernini. Benedetta’s staging of such favors as her stigmatization and her nuptials with Christ were eroticized events akin to those depicted by artists. She involved an entire community of nuns and a local populace in earthly manifestations of the divine, just as Caravaggio did in oil paint, Bernini in marble, or preachers with words. Miracles were understood to be physically manifest, and visions subtly brought the divine into the corporeal realm. The late thirteenth-century mystic Gertrude of Helfta wondered why God “had instructed her with so corporeal a vision.” Her question was rhetorical, as any acceptable mystic knew: spiritual and invisible things can only be explained to the human intellect by means of similitudes of things perceived by the mind. And that is why no one ought to despise what is revealed by means of bodily things, but ought to study anything that would make the mind worthy of tasting the sweetness of spiritual delights by means of the likeness of bodily things (corporalium rerum).59 As the seamstress and “failed saint” Angela Mellini knew about her visions in the 1690s, “one never sees things with the eyes of the body, but everything is seen intellectually.”60 On the other hand, this reassuring statement was delivered to an Inquisitor, whereas a note written by her halting hand understood that emotional passion had very real effects. Thinking of such things as the pains she suffered in her heart, in imitation of Christ’s passion, she observed that “love makes me experience the truth of sufferings through the senses, now it beats, now it purges, now it hurts and now all sorts of torments are felt.” In order to truly convey the exactitude and reality of her sensate love, in September 1697 she sketched a diagram of her wounded heart, complete with lance, nails, hammer, cross, and crown of thorns. That drawing was produced for her confessor, a man she desired so much that she felt “great heat in all the parts of my body and particularly of movements in my genitals.”61 Like a courtier offering a heart to the beloved, and like the related love-imagery for the soul’s yearning after the divine, Angela availed herself of religious rhetoric and resorted to physical signs when lovingChrist and wooing her priest. Similarly, on Caravaggio’s canvas and in Bernini’s chapel, light is divine and natural, the ecstasy spiritual and embodied. So, too, Benedetta’s sensate and emotive life was a continuous blend of illusion and reality, spirit, and similitude. Echoing her model, Catherine of Siena, Benedetta experienced visions, stigmatization, the exchange of hearts, and a marriage with Christ. Catherine’s reception into heaven after her death, disseminated in Francesco Vanni’s engravings and various paintings, entailed a tender, intercessory greeting by Mary.62 Catherine’s charitable nursing brought her mouth into contact with one dying woman’s breast (Figure 6.3), and on another occasion she transformed an ill woman into her spouse.63 “Full of burning charity,” Catherine rushed to the hospital to tend a bereft woman, “embraced her, and offered to help her and look after her for as long as she liked.” She motivated herself by “looking upon this leper woman, in fact, as her Heavenly Bridegroom.” Benedetta took the actions of her exemplar further, embracing another woman in a relationship where each was a spouse, each a bride. At some level, she perhaps believed the words God spoke to Catherine, that “In my eyes there is neither male nor female.”64 To have an impact, mysticism had to present a degree of spectacle, and thus cross into the physical realm. The special favors bestowed on some mystics were invisible, but then other signs had to appear, especially as the Church grew more cautious about legitimizing local cults, feminine excesses, fakery, and piety which might turn out to be diabolical in origin. Lucia Broccadelli’s stigmata arrived during Lent in 1496 but only becoming visible at Easter, after Catherine of Siena’s supplication in heaven persuaded Christ “that the stigmata should be visible and palpable in me.”65 For several years, the Dominican visionary was highly favored by the lord of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, and officials, including the Pope’s physician, examined her wounds to their satisfaction. But the fortunes of this “living saint” suffered a reversal when her ducal patron died in 1505. The sisters, chafing under her strict rule, were able to mount a counter-offensive because the stigmata had disappeared. Lucia was imprisoned for fraud within the convent for nearly forty years, until she died in 1544. A potential mystic impressing only a relatively small town and without a powerful supporter, Carlini also encountered a backlash from her fellow religious and was investigated in an even more stringent climate. Once the Counter-Reformation took hold, especially after the Council of Trent (1545–63), there was an increase in cases of women ultimately judged “failed saints” or diabolically possessed. Concomitantly, the number of female canonizations decreased, with a suspicion of women deemed credulous and excessive further abetted by Urban VIII’s more strict procedures for canonization.66 Two hundred years earlier, Catherine of Siena’s confessor, Raymond of Capua, later Master General of the Dominican Order, was persuaded of the veracity of her mystical experiences, despite the invisibility of her marriage ring and stigmata, by “watching the movements of her body when she was in ecstasy.”67 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi begged Christ that her mystical ring andThe “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini113stigmata be invisible, but the impulse for humility was neatly balanced by kinetic and audible theatre similar to Catherine’s. Her very wish not to be singled out became itself part of the record collected by her community. In May 1619, Benedetta staged an elaborate wedding witnessed by the secular elite of Pescia. The first inquiry into her holiness began the very next day. But her renewal of the ring (with saffron) and stigmata (with a large pin) only emerged in the course of the later investigation.68 Judged fraudulent by Bell, Benedetta may nevertheless have been acting in good faith, marking her body artificially only when doubts grew, trying to persuade the sceptics by secondary, external signs that she truly believed were there on her soul.69 When a Capuchin nun, the blessed Maria Maddalena Martinengo (1687–1737), piously took a needle to her own body, it was not counted diabolical. She embroidered the instruments of the Passion “with the needle threaded with silk . . . into her own f lesh, nice and big, as chalice-covers are embroidered, nor without bleeding.” 70 To retain her status and stem the tide of opposition in an increasingly fractious convent, Benedetta may have inscribed her body without thinking that the act was forgery. Self-mutilation recurs in the lives of mystics, including Angela of Foligno’s searing of her genitals, Margaret of Cortona’s desire to cut her face, and Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s gouging of her f lesh.71 Benedetta’s piercing, documented by a hostile witness who came forth only after the convent turned against their imperious abbess, may have been motivated in part by a genuine element of imitatio Christi. Rather than judge her by later standards of verisimilitude and honesty, it would be more appropriate to understand her actions, and subsequent downfall, as a naïve, over-literal, and undisguised performance of spiritual conventions that found no meaningful political support amongst higher authorities or in a discordant convent. Like other aspirants to mysticism, Benedetta displayed her celestial vision through mime, “motioning with her hands as if she were taking” souls out of purgatory, for instance, but her choreography went so far as to publicly process in a prearranged mystic marriage, and to act out her erotic drive with Mea.72 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi also kinetically staged her exceptionality. She mimed her wedding with Christ, or in pantomime indicated to the novices under her care that she was being stigmatized. Her charges reported that “she held her hands open, staring at a figure of Jesus that she had on top of her bedstead; she looked like St. Catherine of Siena. So, we thought that at that point Jesus gave her his holy stigmata.” 73 Eroticizing a dormitory, looking at one image and mimicking another, Maria Maddalena involved her young female audience in a highly visual fantasy that drew on widely familiar iconography of female mysticism. Those visualizations were further instilled through skills of internalized sight. Trained, like all Catholics, in contemplative techniques merging the inner and outer eye, Maria Maddalena and her faithful novices witnessed the material reality of a vision. Meditative practices imagined narratives set in contemporary settings, with familiar faces, placing a premium on immediacy and recognition that was also highly valued in visual culture. Visions were regularly made tangible,when nuns cared for and dressed dolls of the Christ Child, acted out the stigmatization, wrote and performed religious plays, or, in Catherine of Bologna’s case, painted and drew images inspired by her raptures.74 To make fantasy real, to don the mantle of holy figures, was orthodox rather than perverse. Benedetta’s concrete sexualization of her religious scenario was not unique. In the early sixteenth century, a Spanish canon lawyer had justified his inordinate lust for some nuns in Rome by arguing that since, as a cleric “he was the bridegroom of the Church and the nuns were brides of the Church,” they could have “carnal relations without sin.” 75 Imprisoned until he renounced these beliefs, the educated man had muddled certain doctrines, but his conf lation of spiritual allegory and physical desire was present in the writings of many a mystic and it was visualized in numerous visions or works of art. By making her desires earthly as well as divine, Benedetta misunderstood conventions, but she did not invent outside a context. While she cannot be posited as a mainstream example of premodern religiosity, there was a logic to Benedetta’s actions that does not rely on a reading of her as a skeptical, manipulative fraud. Angelic disguise transformed the mystic aspirant Benedetta into a forceful seductress, whose tenderness and ecstatic passion was not rigidly fixed along differently sexed lines. Mea reported: This Splenditello called her his beloved; . . . [and said] I assure you that there is no sin in it; and while we did these things he said many times: give yourself to me with all your heart and soul and then let me do as I wish.76 Like the facilitating angel in the mystic encounters represented by Caravaggio and Bernini, Benedetta’s guardian angel was imagined as a beautiful, curlyhaired youth dressed in gold and white.77 The young angel was an instrument of persuasion, the abbess a figure of command and intimidation. Splenditello’s power derived from a patriarchal hierarchy in heaven, but he sounded like a youth rather than a god. His counterpart in Caravaggio’s painting does not heterosexualize that encounter; and in Bernini’s ensemble the young angel eroticizes a spiritual ecstasy that cannot be crudely reduced to phallic penetration by an adult man. Nor does Splenditello’s presence amidst the couplings of Benedetta and Mea reduce them to a differently sexed twosome. There was a third, disembodied protagonist in each of these raptures. The divine was elemental light in Caravaggio’s painting and Bernini’s sculpture. In Benedetta’s visions, as in her sex with Mea, the divine was literally articulated, through voice. Christ or Splenditello was a pivot in a triangulation of desire in which one of the results was frequent, very real sex between two women.78 The interpretation of Benedetta’s acts within the framework of a heterosexualized bride of Christ points to the need to reconsider in quite what ways Jesus was a spouse. Three kinds of marital imagery informed the regulation of female religious: liturgical, allegorical, and mystical. While all nuns were incorporated liturgically and could picture their souls as allegorical spouses of the heavenlybridegroom, only mystics experienced additional nuptials. In 1619, Benedetta’s mystic marriage was an overt, preplanned, public festival, as was her first marriage to Christ in 1599 at the age of nine, taking the veil, ring, and crown at a ceremony celebrated by a bishop, though occasionally the celebrant was an abbess.79 In a drawing by an anonymous German nun around 1500, enthroned Virgin Mary/Ecclesia replaces the priest (Figure 6.7).80 Strikingly, the figure of Christ, particularly as an adult, is absent from many such images. When he does appear, as in an illuminated manuscript of the rule of St. Benedict produced for Venetian nuns, he can bestow the nuptial crown on two Brides at once.81 Describing the ritual as one involving “the giving of a woman to a man” and using the term “heavenly husband” mistakenly suggests a scenario akin to a modern, secular, nuclear family.82 Analogy should not be confused with actuality. The acculturation entailed complex, multiple interchanges, evident in the drawing (Figure 6.7). Its scroll carries the inscription “Take this boy and take care of [i.e. suckle] me (nutri michi). I will give you your reward.”83 Like a priest offering the veil, ring, and crown, and then the eucharist, the Virgin begins to speak, licensing the earthly virgin to embrace the baby. But the infant takes over, urging the young nun to suckle him and promising her eternal reward. Her spouse is an infant, not a dominant patriarch, nor an earthly “husband.” Christ was a communal groom, and a commonly nurtured babe. He was more visible, and more often adult, in images of the allegorical and mystical levels of marriage.84 Mystic marriages of saints show the adult, or often infant, Christ as the pivotal locus of mediation, yet the rhetoric and ritual of marriage also visually and symbolically bonds two or more female characters Anonymous German nun, Consecration of Virgins, ca. 1500.Photo credit: Jeffrey Hamburger. Used with permissionwho are devoted to God’s son. Catherine of Siena imitated St. Catherine of Alexandria’s mystic marriage with Christ, and thereafter the subject of union became popular.85 Female saints, especially the earlier Catherine, are usually depicted in the act of espousal to an infant Christ offered by his mother Mary, just as the German nun remembered (Figure 6.7). Thereby, two holy women engineer a mystical union over the body of a small child. To say that Christ becomes “the object of exalted maternal instincts rather than sublimated sexual desire,” however, is to assume that a nurturing woman’s affection has no component of passion, and that all female desire must be focused on a male object.86 The child-groom can be shown as a young, unknowing instrument guided by his mother, as in a painting by Correggio, where the interplay of hands is particularly sensitive.87 Courtly decorum amongst adults becomes in Correggio’s visualization an intimate, gentle affair in which the child is too young to grant seigneurial permission. Held close so that his body is subsumed in his mother’s, at other times he is a virtual extension of her body, helping to connect through compositional line and symbolic gesture a succession of two or more female figures. His small arms and shoulder stand in for Mary’s left arm in a later painting by Ludovico Carracci, so that his torso becomes especially symbolic of a presence that almost need not be there.88 Guercino’s painting of 1620 depicts a gentle touch between the two women, and tender glances link the three characters, but Christ is relegated to the opposite side.89 Visual management of nuns’ fantasies could imagine them in very physical, explicit actions. A cycle on the Song of Songs painted in the mid-fourteenth century on the walls of a nun’s gallery at Chelmno in eastern Prussia imagined Sponsa eagerly pulling her spouse into her bedchamber.90 It literalizes the Canticle: “I will seize you and lead you / into the house of my mother” (8:2). Such pictures made manifest an emotive intensity that the all-female audience knew they were meant to share with other women.91 In Northern Europe, the instructional habit of elaborating the amorous interchange between Christ and the soul produced a sequential narrative version illustrated in comic-strip fashion, Christus und die minnende Seele (Christ and the loving soul), written in German in the late fourteenth century, later disseminated in printed sheets and books.92 The divine lover embraced the soul, wooed her with music, and crowned her in a ritual reminiscent of a wedding ceremony. She obeyed Christ’s command to divest herself of worldly garments when he said “If you wish to serve me, you must be stripped bare.” It is unlikely that Italian nuns like Benedetta knew this particular text or its imagery, but the practice of encouraging a religious woman’s fantasy through narrative, whether in sermons, sung words, wall paintings, prints, books, or paintings, fostered a widespread, eroticized imagination. The soul’s rapturous reach toward its divine lover from a supine position on a bed, as represented in the Rothschild Canticles, was echoed in Bernini’s marble display of Ludovica Albertoni arching up from a bed where the disarranged sheets are even more telling a sign of the soul’s ecstasy.93 Within this ideological structure, BenedettaCarlini could imagine herself as a privileged soul experiencing ecstatic union with the actual body of Mea. On one of the three occasions when she addressed Mea in Christ’s voice, “he said he wanted her to be his bride, and he was content that she give him her hand; and she did this thinking it was Jesus.”94 Even if the abbess was a manipulative faker, as a crude and cynical reading might have it, Mea believed the illusion, according to her self-protective testimony. If neither woman was skeptical at the time of the conversation, then the words and gesture performed a tangible, if unconventional, enactment of bridal mysticism. Christ was manifest in a human—and female—body rather than only present to the mind’s eye, yet the two believers went on with the corporeal pantomime. If one or both of the earthly players did think that Christ was not speaking, then at least one of them heard a marriage proposal being offered by one woman to another yet did not rebuff or denounce it at the time. Benedetta utilized the traditional metaphors and scenarios of erotic mysticism, but at certain moments she took the logic beyond doctrinal limits. She only assumed Jesus’ voice during three conversations with Mea.95 Twice she spoke “before doing these dishonest things,” first when Jesus took Mea’s hand and suggested marriage. The second time was in the choir, “holding [Mea’s] hands together and telling her that he forgave her all her sins.” “The third time it was after [Mea] was disturbed by these goings on,” and was reassured that there was no sinfulness, and that Benedetta “while doing these things had no awareness of them.” All three occasions offered comfort and framed sex, occurring either before or after their “immodest acts,” but Benedetta did not present herself as a sexually active Christ. However much bridal mysticism structured Benedetta’s actions, she never took on the persona of Christ during sex with Mea, instead acting through an angel when she used any guise at all. Perhaps she is best described as a mystic playwright, someone who wrote scripts during visionary or ecstatic experiences but who acted out rather than wrote down the dramas, for an audience that included not only Mea but also on occasion the other nuns and the local populace. Plays by nuns were performed by inmates who cross-dressed for the male roles.96 In 1553 Caterina de’ Ricci played the part of twelve-year-old Jesus speaking, with “signs of particular love,” lines from the Song of Songs to a fellow nun who was acting as St. Agnese.97 Taking multiple roles, such as Christ or angels with a variety of dialects and ages, as well as sponsa and anima, Benedetta was a consummate performer whose voice and appearance fitted the occasion.98 The mutual gestures of Benedetta and Mea literally followed the Song of Songs: “My beloved put forth his hand through the hole / and my belly trembled at his touch / I rose to open to my beloved / my hands dripped myrrh / . . . / I opened the bolt of the door to my love” (5:4–6). Mea’s account of how Benedetta “put her face between the other’s breasts and kissed them, and wanted always to be thus on her” recalls the Canticle’s enjoyment too. In the adaptation of the biblical Song in the Rothschild manuscript compiled for a nun, Sponsus delightsin breasts: “between my breasts he will abide . . . Behold my beloved speaketh to me: How beautiful are thy breasts, thy breasts are more beautiful than wine.”99 The phrase “sister my bride (soror mea sponsa)” was particularly apt. It occurs four times in the Song (4:9, 10, 12; 5:1), along with “open to me, my sister my friend” (sor mea amica mea) (5:2). Imitating the soul’s statement in Christus und die minnende Seele that “I must go completely naked,” Benedetta “stripped naked as a newborn babe.” Each recalled the Song’s bride: “I have taken off my garment” (5:3). The sequential narrative of the romance between Christ and the soul also had the womanly soul say “I cannot read a book unless you are my master” and “I will tell no-one, love, what I have heard from you,” each lines Mea could have uttered to her abbess.100 Benedetta spoke another line, taking on the voice of Christ to offer the symbolic emblem of mystical marriage: “Since you delight me, love, I set a crown upon you.” She lay on top of Mea, “kissing her as if she were a man [and] she would stir on top of her so much that both of them corrupted themselves,” an arrangement, and finale, which bears comparison with the miraculous levitation experienced by the Capuchin nun Maria Domitilla in Pavia at the very same time, 1622. She recorded that Christ united his most blessed head to my unworthy one, his most holy face to mine, his most holy breast (petto) to mine, his most holy hands to mine, and his most holy feet to mine, and thus all united to me so very tightly, he took me with him onto the cross . . . I felt myself totally af lame with the most sweet love of this most sweet Lord.101 Benedetta’s models, such as the sponsa, the anima, and Catherine of Siena, were feminine, metaphorical, or legendary, and her mistake in dogma was to take the symbolic literally. Benedetta acted as though the material was the spiritual: stripping for Christ or Mea like an obedient and pleasured soul in the Northern sequential romance; kissing a woman or suckling at a breast as did certain female mystics or saints; engaging in mutual, manual penetration of an orifice in line with the Song of Songs; proposing and performing marriage as though she could take both roles in a mystical drama. Her sex partner, Mea, was always a female figure, assigned a feminine part. Benedetta enjoyed repeated sex with a woman, not because that was the only body available to her, but because their religious beliefs were not predicated upon some exclusionary, modern notion of heterosexual identity. Through the vicissitudes of confession and documentary survival, we happen to know that in the early 1620s two under-educated women in a provincial Tuscan convent took religiously legitimized and visualized passion to a literal level. Brides of Christ, nurtured on the notion that their cells were bedchambers for nuptial union with a shared, metaphorical spouse, became in those very spaces lovers on an earthly plane. In seventeenth-century Pescia a patriarchal logic led to an alternative rite of passion. This does not mean that the women’s sexual arousal was incidentalor insignificant, but that their sensual and spiritual inspirations were neither entirely insincere nor irreligious. Benedetta Carlini was a nun, abbess, articulate angel, feminized soul, female mystic, and woman’s lover.Notes 1 Brown, Immodest Acts, 4; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” with “virtually unique” on 487, Brown’s response, 503–09, and Bell’s reply, 510–11. I am grateful to Professor Bell for sharing his microfilms of the documents. The Italian of two missing frames, his figs. 1 and 2, was partly published in the Italian edition of Brown’s book, Atti impuri, esp. 184– 86. I will endeavor to place digital copies of the documents in the Deep Blue repository of the University of Michigan. Ideas here were first explored in a talk at the University of Michigan (January 2000). I am grateful for everyone’s attention in numerous audiences since then, but for conversations I especially thank Louise Marshall and Vanessa Lyon. 2 Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 501–2, Brown’s response, Immodest Acts, 507. 3 Partner, “Did Mystics Have Sex?” 296–311; Salih, “When is a Bosom,” 14–32. 4 Brown, Immodest Acts, 127. 5 An exception is Matter, “Discourses of Desire,” 119–31. 6 Documented cases include Brucker, ed., The Society of Renaissance Florence, 206–12; Chambers and Pullan, with Fletcher, eds., Venice. A Documentary History, 204–05, 208. 7 Matter, “Discourses of Desire”, 122–23: “the nature of Benedetta Carlini’s sexual encounters with her sister nun is so bizarre as to defy our modern categories of ‘sexual identity.’” 8 Brown, Immodest Acts, 161–64. 9 Ibid., 110–14, 160–64; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 491. 10 Carlini’s imprisonment “in penitence” ended when she died in August 1661: ibid., 132. Upon Mea’s death in September 1660, the recorder referred to Benedetta’s fraud rather than sexual deeds: when Benedetta “was engaged in those deceits” Mea “was her companion and was always with her.” But Mea was not imprisoned: ibid., 135. 11 Jacobson Schutte, “Per Speculum in Enigmate, 187, 195 n. 11. For another case see Ciammitti, “One Saint Less.” 12 Brown, Immodest Acts, 7–8, 136; Rosa, “The Nun,” 221; Velasco, Lesbians in Early Modern Spain, 92. 13 Bell, Holy Anorexia, 70. 14 Barstow, Witchcraze, 72, and further cases, 139–41. Others include Velasco, Lesbians in Early Modern Spain, 113–24. 15 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, 92–93, 208–09 n. 65. 16 Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 498. 17 Cervigni, “Immodest Acts,” 286. 18 Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, 142. 19 Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles, 4. 20 Unless otherwise indicated, quotations are from Brown, Immodest Acts, 117–18, 120– 22, 162–64 passim (with emphases added). 21 Brown, Immodest Acts, 120; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 486, 495, 497, 499. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 498 (“le ha voluto baciare le parti pudente”); Brown, Immodest Acts, 120. 24 Ibid., 21–22, 27–28. 25 Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39: Colloquies, 290. 26 Coote, ed., The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, 118–21 for this and another example. 27 Schutte, “Per Speculum in Enigmate,” 192. 28 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine of Siena, 91–93. 29 Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, 43, 61, 99, 102, 138–39, 149–50, 172 n. 136.30 For a female couple sinning sexually in a Bible Moralisée of c. 1220, see Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, 138–39, fig. 125. For the 1468 fresco of the Inferno situated in an upper room of the convent founded by St. Francesca Romana, with a couple of indeterminate sex, but probably male, lying side by side on the lowest (and most easily seen) register, see Bartolomei Romagnoli, Santa Francesca Romana, Pl. 27. 31 Ghirlandaio’s panel is in the Louvre, Pontormo’s remains in Carmignano. 32 See n. 43 below; Jorgensen, “‘Love Conquers All,’” 102–03. 33 Brown, Immodest Acts Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 502. 34 Brown, Immodest Acts, 108, 129, 130. 35 Ibid., 163–64. 36 Ibid., 63, 158, with subsequent quotations from 107, 117, 164. 37 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 165–67; Kaftal, St Catherine in Tuscan Painting, 72–77; Bianchi and Giunta, Iconografia di Santa Caterina da Siena, 112–14 and passim; Maggi, Uttering the Word, 176 n. 15; Vandenbroeck, et al., Le Jardin clos de l’ame, nos. 147, 169; Brown, Immodest Acts, 63–64. 38 Camille, Medieval Art of Love, 111–19, and passim, including figs. 19, 55, 80. 39 Brown, Immodest Acts, 163. 40 Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, 105; McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 81, 152. When Ercole d’Este married Renée of France in Paris in June 1528, at the Pax they kissed each other: Gardner, The King of Court Poets, 194. 41 The quotation is from Rosa, “Nun,” 222. A detail of embracing Dominican women from the panel in Siena’s Pinacoteca appears on the cover of Brown’s book. 42 Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 101, 126, 131–32, 157, 165–80, 270–73, and passim. 43 Brown, Immodest Acts, 26, 41. 44 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 141, 147–48 (hereafter quoted from 148). 45 Marciari and Boorsch, Francesco Vanni, 118–27. 46 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 179. 47 Ibid., 170–71. 48 Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ. 49 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, 390. 50 Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother; Rambuss, Closet Devotions. 51 St. Catherine de’ Ricci, Selected Letters, 39 (no. 47). Subsequent quotations come from Letters 19, 46. 52 For the frescoes by Sodoma and an earlier one by Andrea Vanni in the same church see Riedl and Seidel, Die Kirchen von Siena, II, pt. 2, pls. VII, 596, 627–28 (and pl. 276 for Rutilio Manetti’s canvas of 1630). 53 Brown, Immodest Acts, 41. 54 Frugoni, “Female Mystics, Visions, and Iconography,” 139. 55 Brown, Immodest Acts, 163, a translation here adjusted according to the cropped photograph of the passage in Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 501 (fig. 2), because Brown conflates the information on Splenditello and on another angel Radicello (a fanciullo) aged eight or nine. The common misperception is thus that Splenditello was a boy. 56 Gregori, “Caravaggio Today,” no. 68. 57 Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, 210 (ch. 29). 58 Bauer, ed., Bernini in Perspective, 53. 59 Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 165–66; Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary, 147. 60 Ciammitti, “One Saint Less,” 149. 61 Ibid., 150–52, fig. 3. 62 Bianchi and Giunta, Iconografia, nos. 43, 438, p. 126. 63 Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 131, 133. 64 Ibid., 108–09. During her visionary union with God, the medieval mystic Hadewijch noted that God “lost that manly beauty” so that he dissolved and “then it was to me as if we were one without difference”: Bynum, Holy Feast, 156. 65 Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara, 366–81, 401–05, 431-32, 464–67, 562.The “lesbian nun” Benedetta Carlini66 Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, 141–42, 220–38; Bell, Holy Anorexia, 151, 170–71. Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 100, 175–6. Brown, Immodest Acts, 160. Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” 493. Rosa, “Nun,” 201–02. Bell, Holy Anorexia, with other cases passim; Tibbetts Schulenburg, “The Heroics of Virginity,” 29–72. Brown, Immodest Acts, 159. Maggi, Uttering the Word, 34 (my emphasis). On Catherine of Bologna see Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality. Weyer, De praestiis daemonum, 184–85. Brown, Immodest Acts, 163; Bell, “Renaissance Sexuality,” fig. 2. Brown, Immodest Acts, 64–65, 122. On erotic triangulation, see the classic study Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men, esp. Ch. 1. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 56–61, 240 nn. 125–26; Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides,” esp. 43; Vandenbroeck, et al., Le Jardin clos de l’ame, nos. 168, 172. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, Pl. 7. Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides,” fig. 3. The phrases are in ibid., which often uses “heavenly husband” and has the other phrase on 44. But at 56ff she points out how often Christ is absent from images, although the essay’s point is to suggest parallels between the secular and religious ceremonies. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 56–58. Vandenbroeck, et al., Le Jardin clos de l’ame, nos. 148, 178 and fig. 106a; Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 113–15. Raymond of Capua, Life of St Catherine, 99–101, explicitly noting the antecedent with “another Catherine, a martyr and queen.” Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 57, 239 n. 118. Ekserdjian, Correggio, 137–38. Emiliani and Feigenbaum, Ludovico Carracci, no. 1. In Parmigianino’s red chalk drawing of the subject for an altarpiece, c. 1523–24, the Child does not appear at all: Franklin, The Art of Parmigianino, 104–06. Stone, Guercino, 84 n. 62. Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 85–87, fig. 156 (and see fig. 159); Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary, 409–10, fig. 8.5. Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality, 128ff, 252 n. 31, 253 n. 37. Gebauer, “Christus und Die Minnende Seele. Both nuns and secular women were readers. Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 106–10, 155–62, f. 66r (Pl. 7); Perlove, Bernini and the Idealization. Bernini’s motives included wanting to atone for his brother Luigi sodomizing a boy in St. Peter’s (13–14). Brown, Immodest Acts, Weaver, “Spiritual Fun,” 177, 181–83. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 194–96. Splenditello spoke in three dialects: Brown, Immodest Acts, 160. Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles, 82, 179, cf. Song of Songs Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip, vol. 1, 23. Brown, Immodest Acts, 162; Matter, “Interior Maps,” 64–65.Bibliography Barstow, Anne. Witchcraze. San Francisco: Pandora, 1994. Bartolomei Romagnoli, Alessandra. Santa Francesca Romana. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994.Bauer, George, ed. Bernini in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976. Bell, Rudolph. Holy Anorexia. 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Edited by George Mora and Benjamin Kohl, translated by John Shea. Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1991. Wood, Jeryldene. Women, Art and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press, Thomas V. CohenLet us take two tawdry events, male affronts to women, with social history’s eye to assets, both cultural and material, and to the subtle exchanges that bound men to men, women to women, and one gender to the other. This is social history in nearly-literary mode, keen to read texts closely. We have text of two kinds—first the words on paper provided by a small tangle of criminal trials. If not the actual words spoken before and by the court or in the streets, taverns, and brothels, still these records do come close. The conventions and imperatives of the court itself, and the imperfect scribal hand have, as always, refracted actual speech, but the Roman-legal habits of verbatim transcription still offer material for close, thoughtful reading. Second comes the fabric of the city itself, for our scoundrel and his allies prowled and enjoyed their small corner of Rome, with its streets, squares, and assorted monuments, an urban backdrop and firm anchorage for memories. The urbanscape, so prominent both in what happened and in the telling, in itself invites a reading no less close than the one we accord words on paper. So, before turning to the deeds, note the spaces where they took place. We are in Rome’s Rione Regola, or Arenula, a zone sometimes little changed from the 1550s and 1560s of our stories. Nevertheless, the urbanism of first united Italy and then the Duce made drastic alterations. In the later 1880s, the wide Via Arenula ripped inwards from the Tiber, obliterating a web of streets and squares, and demolishing the church and convent of Santa Anna, right under the grand 1890 apartment where I once lived and wrote. The church survives only in the names of Via Santa Anna, and of a pleasant trattoria whose menu depicts my own abode. A second nineteenth-century destruction obliterated the ghetto, replacing it with a grand synagogue and some lumpish buildings. And then, under Mussolini, nostalgia for the Caesars erased the medieval fabric around the fish market at Pescheria, reducing tight neighborhoods to sterile archeology.So, to trace our scoundrel and his entourage, we must fall back on the old maps, especially the splendidly accurate Nolli Plan of 1747, and read street plans, the surviving urban fabric, and words in court, together. The Nolli plan shows how, from 1555, once the ghetto gates went up, a street our witnesses call the strada dritta became crucial for mobility, especially at night. It is hard today to recapture that very ancient urban street, today the Via del Portico d’Ottavia. Down by the old ghetto, it is now so wide that restaurants sprawl into it to hawk carciofi alla giudia, and, on their Sabbath, Rome’s Jews gather after services for a great chiacchiera —communal conversation. Further north, Via Arenula and the unkempt park in Piazza Cairoli, and a vague piazza before the baroque facade of San Carlo, have all smudged the profile of this street, which, in the sixteenth century, was no less tight than straight. Moreover, it was handy, skirting the ghetto to link the fishmongers’ square at Pescheria to Piazza Giudia. It then passed the palace of the Santa Croce, Renaissance in spirit but, like Palazzo Venezia, still half-medieval in shape, with an ornamental square tower today lopped short. The Santa Croce, banished by Sixtus IV, had lost their houses; readmitted, they threw up this palace, with its elegant diamond-studding on the wall. As the Nolli map shows, heading northwest, the street, at a bivio (a fork), slotted into Via Giubbonari, a curving passage today still narrow. Joseph Connors, in his “Baroque Urbanism,” discusses the extremely ancient streets of this part of Rome, pointing out how they wander eastwards from the bridge from Hadrian’s Tomb, now Castel Sant’Angelo, forking as they go.1 The Renaissance papacy used these roads often, as a way to San Giovanni in Laterano and across Rome, and palaces of the early Renaissance clustered along them. For our nocturnal misdeeds, the wide network mattered little, but the local Strada Dritta bore much social traffic. Our louche central character straddled lines—moral, social, sexual, and religious. A liminal man, he was and is hard to place, and his actions, crossing boundaries ethical and social, remind us not to put Rome and Romans into boxes. His name reveals his hybrid nature—Ludovico Santa Croce. At first glance, nothing strange there, but, as genealogies show, the civic noble Santa Croce, descending, they believe, from Publius Valerius Publicola, anti-Tarquin and one of Rome’s first consuls, in the sixteenth century named their children almost exclusively from Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus: not a Ludovico in sight. Moreover, law courts called him “the son of the late Giovanni Antonio de Franchi” so, if he was a Santa Croce, the noble house somehow adopted him.2 A friend, aware of this f limsy identity, says of him, “The said Messer Ludovico si fa romano de casa de Santa Croce et per romano il tengo.”3 Close reading: the friend does not call him a Santa Croce: just “si fa”—“he claims to be”; the friend readily affirms his Roman identity but, as to family, balks. But Ludovico, clearly, grew up some at the family’s palace. A friend recalls: “I have known him for more than twelve years in Rome and I knew him when he was a lad [ putto] here at the Santa Croce [qui alli Santa Croce].”4 Magrino, the witness, a very recent Jewish convert (Feast of the Annunciation, 1556), testifies not at the prison as is usual, but at home, asIn bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 127he is sick, and with his “here at the Santa Croce” shows how, now fatto christiano, he has moved a mere block or so beyond the ghetto gate at Piazza Giudia to lodgings near the Santa Croce palace. Ludovico is sufficiently Santa Croce that, back in Carnevale of 1557, a noble Santa Croce helped bail him out of prison.5 But he is no signore; his cronies call him messer instead. This title f lags both his status and its ambiguity. In 1557, at his first trial here, Santa Croce is “about twenty-six, as he asserts.”6 If so, then either his friend Magrino knew him longer than twelve years or, back then, age fourteen, he had become a fairly lanky putto. He was born in 1531 or so. By 1565, at the second trial, he would be thirty-four. No sign of a marriage. His loves, we will see, were all casual, among the whores. No sign, either, of a craft, trade, or civic office. He probably still lived at the palace as, for sex, he took his hireling women to the bathhouse (stufa) or bunked down with them at friends’ and seldom, if ever, took them home. So how did he pass the days? He hung out at the Pescheria, the fish market at one end of the Strada Dritta. And the company he kept: fishmongers, Jews, and recent converts. Plus prostitutes. He ate, drank, caroused, and got into abundant trouble. In 1565 the court asks for his criminal record: I have been in prison three or four times, here in Tor di Nona and in Corte Savelli. I don’t remember why. And his lordship asked him that he at least tell for what crimes and excesses he was investigated and tried. He answered: I cannot remember things that are fifteen or sixteen years old, but I know well that I have not been under investigation either for homicides or for ugly things [cose brutte]. It is true that I remember that I was in jail in Corte Savelli for having had a brawl with another gentilhomo, and for it I paid ten scudi to Messer Pietro Bello.7 Here, Ludovico is as evasive as his memory is fuzzy; cose brutte indeed came up in court. The court asks after a jailbreak.8 The fight was probably in Carnevale, 1557, when Pietro Bello was a judge on staff.9 In June, 1563, Ludovico was wounded in a brawl where he, a reluctant fighter, stabbed a spice-trader in the chest.10 In a trial of another unruly gentleman, the court asks the suspect’s serving woman if her master ever wanted to kill our Ludovico. “I don’t know,” she says, “but know that the said Ludovico was wounded once and that [my master] Pietro de Fabii rejoiced.”11 So Ludovico is a man on many margins. A self-proclaimed gentilhomo, he haunts the edge of his foster-family, in a neighborhood strung between Jews and Christians, and his socializing crosses boundaries of station, ethnicity, family, community, and moral action. So let’s join him for the evening. We begin not along the Strada Dritta, but atop Piazza Navona, by Torre Sanguigna and the Pace church, with two Christians, doublet-makers both. It was before Christmas, 1556.12 Antonio Scapuccio and Mario di Simone came offwork at the Ave Maria sunset bell. Mario, aged twenty, lived across town, by Santissimi Apostoli. With Antonio he went back three years, from their work.13 As for Ludovico, Antonio had known him since childhood: “at the time I and he were lads, we had a close friendship.”14 Antonio, via Ludovico, knew that Fabritio, another convert, kept a house where friends gathered. “Antonio brought me to the house of Fabritio, Jew-made-Christian, who sells ironware.”15 When the doublet-makers arrived, Ludovico was there, with Magrino, and one Giulio Matuccio, and the host, Fabritio.16 So began their evening. “We all decided, in agreement, to go find a Signora called Vienna Venetiana, friend of the aforesaid Giulio Matuccio.”17 Mario adds: And when we were at Vienna’s house—she lived at Torre Sanguigna— Antonio Scapuccio knocked on the door, and the mother, if I remember, said that she had hurt her arm and could not keep us company, and that we should let her off.18 Torre Sanguigna was far from Ludovico’s haunts. “We left and went to a pie-shop, also near Torre Sanguigna, and got ourselves a pasticcio. And I don’t remember which of us paid for it.”19 Magrino, a convert, adds that the pie contained a shoulder of pork.20 Ludovico stepped in, announcing as they walked: let’s fetch my whore!21 So entered Betta, a cortigiana grande, says Mario, meaning not a top-rank prostitute, but, as Magrino says disparagingly, a big tall woman—“una donna grande longaccia.”22 Betta lived near the stufa of Felice, near the Cavaglieri family palace, two blocks north of the strada dritta.23 As the five trailed after him, Ludovico vaunted his sex with her: And Ludovico said it again, while he was going with us for that woman, and he was heading to knock on her door . . . that last night he had slept with this woman, and he said that she had a fine ass and that it gripped firmly.24 At Betta’s lodgings, the men remained outside. Ludovico called or knocked and the prostitute came down, and, oddly, if she really had slept with him the night before, in error she embraced the wrong man, as if Ludovico, though a gentilhuomo, was hard to tell from the company he kept.25 “And we asked her if she wanted to come to dinner with us, showing her the pasticcio, and she said yes, and came away. And going down the street Messer Ludovico and she went arm in arm.”26 The passage illustrates handsomely some workings of Roman prostitution. Note how complex were the exchanges between these women and their customers. Roman prostitution was seldom simple sex for plain cash. Like many transactions in the economia barocca, it had wide bandwidth and complex linkages forward, backward, and across society.27 Betta here accepted a promise of food and entertainment, and furnished public gestures of affection, a gift to Ludovico, who could f launt her to posse and to street.In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 129The party, with Betta making seven, retired to Ludovico’s hang-out, the inn at Pescheria, called after its owner Domenidio.28 It was some hour after nightfall.29 “All of us, in company, went to dinner at the aforesaid inn, and we brought with us a pasticcio, and we ate.”30 To this osteria, patrons readily brought food. After dinner, the whole group went to spend the night at Fabritio’s dwelling, near Ludovico’s own house, where Ludovico, other times that winter, sometimes brought women: “in the time that he was made Christian . . . he lent me the room.”31 On the way, the men say, Ludovico again boasted of anal sex with Betta.32 The room had but a single bed; Fabritio, leaving the bed to his gentleman guest, hospitably withdrew to a little attic, a solarello —“no great thing”—and slept.33 Magrino “gave the command to fetch from home a mattress, which we threw on the f loor.”34 Ludovico and Betta undressed at once and slipped under the covers.35 There was a bed curtain. It would have had many colors, and it was mine [Magrino’s]. And to a question he answered: It was not spread around the bed but gathered to one side.36 Ludovico, in his account, avers that the curtain was draped around the bed. 37 While Magrino settled somehow on a chair, clothed, to spend the night, the two doublet-makers and Giulio huddled on the mattress. Ludovico, meanwhile, lay snugly in one convert’s bed and another convert’s hangings, in a convert’s house. “Before the light was put out we were all joking and chatting, and Messer Ludovico told us please to put out the light.”38 And then, as men settled for the night, Ludovico thrust his arm out from the covers, making a letter “O” with his index and middle finger.39 Lest he shame Betta he said nothing, Antonio avers, but Mario claims he boasted loudly.40 Mirth erupted. Everybody laughed at that and said to one another, “He has fucked her in the ass. Fire! Fire!”41 The stake, of course. And slim regard for Betta! What is going on here? The social psychology of this scene is tangled. We have three Christian artisans, two ex-Jews on the f luid boundary of the ghetto, and one semi-gentleman half outside his noble family, a troop cemented, perhaps, by Ludovico’s leadership, occasional largess, and arrant breach of sexual and moral rules. All six men share in Betta’s humiliation. Ludovico parades his transgression and the risks he runs and, laughing, the cronies applaud and, vicariously, thrill to his vulnerability. Collusion cements this solidarity. Ludovico and Betta were the first to fall asleep.42 Much later, say the others, invited by Ludovico to join them in the bed, Magrino left the chair, climbing in still clothed, and fell asleep.43And then awoke, jostled by the bounce of sex. I could feel it when he was screwing her, and she had her bottom towards Ludovico and she was turned with her face toward me. And it was one time that I felt it, and I did not see him stick it in because it was no affair of mine. I know well that he was screwing her, and he was shoving her towards me, so that it made me wake up.44 Magrino is remembering events before Christmas, almost nine months earlier. The trial took place in August, 1557, first at the Inquisition, at the Ripetta. Halfway through, interrogations moved to the prisons of the Governor of Rome. That is why this record survives. Precisely two years later, when Paul IV died, Rome’s most tumultuous Vacant See broke out. Mobs attacked the Inquisition’s Ripetta offices, burning the papers, and ransacked the house of the tribunal’s notary.45 Later, Napoleon’s supporters would destroy the Inquisition’s later trials, so a transcript such as this is rare indeed. Both at Ripetta and later, this trial has a Holy Office feel; the magistrates treated the courtroom as a confessional, sparing neither shame nor feelings with their swift, intrusive questions. Why did the matter slip to the criminal court? The crime in question, though moral and involving converts, revealed no taint of heresy. Prostitution in mixed company was no crime and the court was after anal intercourse. He was asked if on that night he the witness heard the said Betta moaning and crying out, because the said Messer Ludovico was having intercourse and fucking her [ futuebat] from the back. He answered: “I could hear it when she was screwed the first time by Messer Ludovico. She was crying out [si lamentava]. But one can cry out for several things.” And to a question of me the notary he said: “She can cry out the way women do.” And I the notary asked, “And how do women do?” He said, “They can cry out because it pleases them and they can cry out because it hurts them too. But, one time, as I said, I felt it when he screwed her.”46 When the Inquisition hauled her in, Betta did her all to prove it wasn’t so. Her testimony about what went on in bed surely did her little good, as, on point after point, she lied elsewhere about her history with Ludovico, shown as far skimpier than others alleged. Her testimony, earthy and vehement, catches well a prostitute’s voice in court. He never did it to me in that place. It is true that Messer Ludovico told me to turn around, that he wanted to do it cunt-backwards [a potta retro], and I told him, “You want to trick me. You want to stick it in contrary-wise.” And he said no, that he wanted to do it cunt-backwards, and so I turned around and he did it to me cunt-backwards. I know where he went in, and if he was fooled, I was not fooled.47In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 131Betta appears twice in the record. The first time, to cover for the weakness of her case, she regales the judge with promises to live in virtue. If I had consented to the other way, it would seem to me that God would not keep me on earth. And if I have done wrong in one way, I don’t want to do wrong in the other. And if I get out of this I want to go to Santa Maria di Loreto, and then to my home to do good works, and I want to go this September. And if he wants to say that he did it to me from behind against Nature, he is lying through his throat, and he is tricked, and, me, I am not tricked, because I protect myself from this the way I do from fire.48 The next morning, Betta, Ludovico, and most of the posse stayed. (Mario, sleeping clothed, had slipped off early to his shop.)49 At breakfast, the boasts went on: She never heard a word when Messer Ludovico told us that he had twice screwed Betta in the ass, but he said it at length to us. He was asked if the said Betta was at the table eating with them, how could Ludovico have said those words, since they could be heard by Betta. He answered: I will tell you. We were kidding Ludovico . . . and when he said it at the table she had not yet sat down.50 As current events show sadly, Renaissance Italy was hardly the only place where, for some admirers, the swaggering abuse of women gives callous men allure. Jump eight years ahead. It was 1565, not 1557, and Ludovico was now some thirty-four years old. Still unmarried, still at loose ends, he haunted the same tight quarter, up to little good. He had a new entourage; none of the same men turn up. At the center, as ever, sat that osteria of Domenidio, in Pesheria. His cronies were, this time, two or three fishmongers and one Cesare Vallati, son of the civic noble family that owned a palace on the square, facing its ghetto gate. The Vallati house still stands, pared back to its medieval core, which now bears sad plaques about Roman Jewish deaths at Nazi hands. Cesare was gentleman enough to hold, they said, a civic office.51 On Friday, November 23, the friends stirred up dinner at the inn. Meo, fishmonger, says: Ludovico Santa Croce came to me, as I was in Pescheria. It may have been a half-hour after dark, and he asked me if we wanted to go to dinner together at the osteria of Domenidio. I said yes and so I picked up some fish, and along with Grillo and Ludovico we went to the osteria of Domenidio, and while we were setting up to eat Cesare arrived and said, “I want to eat with you,” and so he too sat at the table and we were four in all.52Meo reports that, when he left his fish-bench, he brought sardines, while Grillo fetched clams.53 In the midst of dinner, “a Jew”—nobody names him, ever— joined the group; no sign he ate with them.54 After dinner, except Grillo, all left together. “Let’s go to the house of my whore,” said Ludovico. “We said, ‘let’s go!’ and Cesare said, ‘I want to join you.’”55 The court asks later, did Cesare and Ludovico go with sword in hand?56 Probably. The men took the strada dritta, the ghetto to their left, the Santa Croce tower to the right, over to Il Crocefisso, behind or under where the big church of San Carlo later stood.57 Ludovico’s woman of the month was Olimpia, who, it turned out, was off with an amico, a regular of hers, who, she says, felt ill, so she headed homeward with a Lorenzo stufarolo in tow.58 But when Ludovico and his cronies arrived, only the house’s mistress, Lucretia, was yet home. Olimpia calls Lucretia the house padrona; in court, Ludovico will call her a whore, whom he has known for years, presumably hooking up with tenant after tenant.59 At Olimpia’s front door, the four men, masking voices and pretending to speak Spanish, shouted, “Open up the door!” Lucretia: “They banged six or seven times, for I was not of a mind to open, ever.”60 At last I went to the window and told them that I did not want to open for them under any circumstances, and told them to change their talk because no way could I not recognize them. I knew them just fine, but, with my tenant not home, and because, I knew, they wanted nothing of me, I had no intention of opening for them. Instead, I said, I would throw water on their heads if they did not get away from the door.61 The four men loped east to Via dei Chiavari, still in Lucretia’s sight.62 There they encountered a second Lucretia. Wife of wealthy Cyntho Perusco, and mother of two children, she was returning with a servant—but with no light, lest she be seen and recognized—from a call on her procurator.63 Two men armed with swords and daggers, with their swords under their arms and the daggers in hand unsheathed, came at us and at once they stopped me and one of them put his hand to my neck, feeling my neck, thinking that perhaps I had some chain necklace or string of gems.64 And I said to them, “I am a poor woman. What do you want of me?” And I was screaming, “Thieves thieves!” When they heard that, they let go of me.65 Giovanni Maria, the servant, thought he recognized one of the four assailants: “Ah Meo, why are you doing this to us?”66 Meo at once hid his face behind his cape.67 Giovanni Maria’s assailants, Meo and the Jew, grabbed him. “They were holding on to me and they told me to keep silent, and they held the naked daggers to my neck.”68 The assailants released their quarry, only brief ly. Lucretia will tell the Governor: “When we had walked three or four paces, the same men,In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 133with some others, made a circle around me and some of them grabbed me from one side and some from the other, putting their daggers to my throat.”69 Giovanni Maria tells the Governor: “they began punch me and shove me and they threw me to the ground.” 70 Adds Lucretia: And they took from him a pouch. In it were ten giulios, between testoni coins and giulio coins, and a gold ring that was mine, with a Jesus on the top, and on the bottom, there is a “claw of the great beast” [a fabled stone with curative powers], which was also in that pouch, and they took from it also the belt and a handkerchief. The ring contains 18 giulii of gold.71 Giovanni Maria adds that the pouch had been tied to his waist and that Lucretia had removed her ring to wash her hands.72 One of the band of four, almost certainly Cesare Vallati, as Ludovico was by now no youngster, may have had second thoughts: When this [theft] was done one of those youngsters took me by the hand and told me, “Come here. I promise you as a gentleman that I will not hurt you.” And he asked me, who was that woman. And I told him that she was not for them, and that they should let her go, and that she was the wife of Messer Cynthio Perusco.73 Ludovico had other ideas. One of the two underlings, probably not the Jew but Meo, asked him “Messer, what are we to do?” “Carry her off, carry her off!” 74 And they tried with all their might to lead me to a house, for they took me by force and they dragged me . . . But I cried out, “Thieves! Thieves! Is this how you assassinate people in the street!” And I told them that I had nothing on me and that they should come to my house, that was near there.75 The assailants hauled Lucretia into an alley.76 Lucretia was convinced that they wanted to drag her to a stufa, a bath house of the sort Ludovico haunted. As they pulled her, Lucretia fell in the mud, losing her pianelle, her clogs. “She told them that her clogs had fallen off, and they told her to keep walking, and they were making her walk up that alley, leading her, as there were three or four around her.” 77 And then, providentially, down the alley came two men, in front a servant with a torch, and, behind him, his master, Agostino Palloni, a man of substance whose house stood close to the Santa Croce palace.78 And when the light arrived, I recognized the gentleman, and I begged him for the love of God to help me. And while I was saying those words, one of those young men, who had dragged me, as he thought that the light was not coming from that side and that he would not be seen—Messer Agostino recognized one of those young men, who is called Cesare Romano.And at that Messer Agostino said, “Ah Cesare, what are you doing [che fai]. What is this! Do you see that you [tu] are doing wrong?79 Turning towards Agostino, says Giovanni Maria, Lucretia tripped on an iron grate and once more fell and then, as supplicant, grasped his cape: “Ah, Messer Agostino, don’t abandon me . . .!”80 Agostino, Lucretia, and Cesare then stood together, a threesome. First off, Cesare, to catch his social balance, tried to place Lucretia as a Roman matron. Then Agostino did the same. Giovanni Maria tells the Governor: The man whom Agostino had called Cesare asked Madonna Lucretia if she knew Cyntho Perusco. She said, “Yes, I know him, and I have two children with him, and he is my husband.” And Messer Agostino asked Madonna Lucretia if she knew Messer Francesco Calvi, and she said yes, and if he came to her house with her she would show him her daughter.81 Gentleman to gentleman! Cesare Vallati, in night’s shadow, had strayed well outside his class’s code of conduct, and Agostino’s torch jolted him back from the abyss. He switched codes as nimbly as he could. Then Messer Agostino turned to Cesare and told him, “Cesare, son, you have done wrong.” And then Cesare told Messer Agostino to leave, and said that he would have Madonna Lucretia escorted by a servant of his.82 No such thing happened, of course. After questions to Lucretia about how she came to be out after dark, Agostino, with his torch and serving man, conveyed them both back home.83 At her window, the other Lucretia, the madam, had seen and heard the fracas. Outraged, woman to woman, she strove to allay the trouble. I heard a woman who was starting to scream, and when I looked toward where I heard that cry, I looked and saw a woman with a man, and she was screaming, “What do you want with me, brothers, pull the door rope for me, pull the door rope for me!” and when I heard those words, I feared it might be some neighbor, and I knocked on the window of Diana and told her, “Listen to your sister who is screaming,” and she answered, “My sister is here at home.”84 While Cesare and Agostino parleyed, the other three miscreants probably crept away, and soon, all four were back at Olimpia’s door. This time they had luck, as Olimpia turned up, with Lorenzo her bathhouse worker, and his lute. “I came back home and I found Ludovico Santa Croce there at my door, along with Meo the fishmonger and with two others whom I did not know, but there was aIn bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 135Jew.”85 Lucretia opened for Olimpia and, willy-nilly, in came all the others, with Ludovico, as usual, in the lead.86 Note Lucretia’s version: At that moment, my tenant called Olimpia arrived, along with an amico called Lorenzo the bathhouse worker, who played the lute, and I had to pull the rope, and then there came in, along with my tenant, Ludovico Santa Croce, Meo, Cesare Vallati, and a Jew.87 We learn from Olimpia several things. For one, the Jew was a stranger, known only, presumably, by his obligatory Jew’s cap. For another, Cesare Vallati had rejoined the crew. And, for a third, while she knew Meo, Vallati, a stranger to her if not to the madam, was less central to Ludovico’s habitual posse. Neither he nor the Jew had been part of the dinner’s start; though locals, they were hangers-on. When the men entered, Lucretia, the madam, upbraided them. “And when they were up the stairs, I said to them, ‘Oh this is a fine state of affairs! Poor women cannot go in the street.’ And they told me that they weren’t the ones who did it.”88 Lorenzo, with the lute, would prove Ludovico’s undoing. The men all stayed a while in Olimpia’s room, listening to him play. And then Ludovico led Olimpia off to the Santa Anna stufa to spend the night. The other three escorted him down the block, then went their separate ways.89 We catch a bit of the denouement via Barbara, Meo’s ex-puttana, who, she tells the court, had after three years broken with him because he owed her big money on borrowed goods. Barbara had moved to Monte Savelli, just a block down-river from Pescheria.90 I went to bed without dinner because I felt ill, and while I was in bed with Annibale the fish-monger I heard passing in the street Cesare Vallati with other people whom I did not see, and he said, “Your faithful servant, Signora Barbara, my heart!” I made no answer.91 Annibale and Barbara went back, she says, three years; she swam as easily among the fishmongers as a mackerel in the sea. But Cesare Vallati, clearly, slipped through these same waters; in the intimate spaces of the city, these men and women moved up and down class lines. Annibale, when asked, would tell Madonna Lucretia what he knew about the crime. Small world!92 The very next day, Madonna Lucretia sent her servant to scout the local bathhouses. Lorenzo, the fellow with the lute, a paesano, led Giovanni Maria to Ludovico and Meo, who would be arrested on Monday, together.93 At Olimpia’s, the four men, said Lorenzo, had been “in a terrible mood and all of them distressed.”94 Agostino Palloni, meanwhile, refused to help Lucretia—“he sent word to me through Cynthio that it wasn’t a gentleman’s role to accuse anybody, and that was it was enough that I had suffered no harm.”95 Citing class solidarityhe covered for Cesare Vallati, who either f led or ducked prosecution. The Jew, luckily nameless, got away. We have neither a sentence nor knowledge what our four villains did with the rest of their lives. Our story of status slippage and hasty re-calibration, coarse male solidarity, callous abuse of women, and female resilience models a careful reading of words, places, and actions, with an eye to the density of webs and the fine-grained texture of lives in time and space, to lay out the ref lexes with which Romans navigated their city. Ludovico, uneasily perched on several margins, could build coalitions, trading his noble connections, hospitality, slovenly rapaciousness, and access to paid female sex and company for male support and applause. To Cesare he offered a pathway down, to the others perhaps a step upwards. These male solidarities in a moral grey zone show the porosity of Rome’s social boundaries and its alliances’ often easy give.Notes 1 Connors, “Alliance and Enmity,” 208–09. 2 Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale, Processi (16o secolo), busta 38, case 23, folio 568r: “Ludovicus de S. Cruce filius q. Io. Ant. d. Franchis.” Henceforth, I give busta and folio only. 3 38.23, 559v: Antonio Scapuccio, August 15, 1557, to a notary at the Holy Office. 4 38.23, 573r, Magrino, August 26, 1557, at home sick, to a notary. 5 38.23, 579v: Ludovico cites Valerio Santa Croce and noble Mario Mellino. For Magrino’s conversion at the Annunciation in 1555: 38.23, 573r, Magrino. 6 38.23, 568r. 7 Busta 103, 909r: Ludovico Santa Croce: “. . . costione con un altro gentil’homo . . .” 8 103, 909v: “fregit carceres et unde exivit.” 9 38.23, 572v: “questo carnevale [1557] . . . messer Ludovico uscii di pregione in Corte Savella.” 10 Investigazioni 80, 181v–183v, for 23–24, from June, 1563. 11 38.19, 461v: “. . . se ne reallegrava.” 12 38.23, 577v: Betta: “. . . avanti natale.” 13 38.23, 562v-563r: for age and employment; for the friendship and the workplace: 38.23, 562v–563r. 14 38.23, 559v: “eravamo regazi havevamo amicitia intrinseca insieme.” 15 38.23, 562v: Mario: “Fabritio giudio fatto Cristiano che venne li ferri.” 16 We know little about Giulio, never interrogated. Ludovico seems to place him among the converts: 38.23, 570r–v: “Vi pratica in questa casa Julio Mattuzzo, Fabritio doi o tre altri giudei facti christiani . . . de continuo li se ce vengono giudei et d’ogni sorte de generatione.” But no other witness calls Giulio a convert. 17 38.23, 563r–v: Mario. 18 38.23, 563v: Mario: “. . . lei o la madre . . . disse che era ferita in uno braccio et che non posseva abadarci et che lavessemo per scusata.” 19 Ibid.: Mario: “. . . a un pasticciero pur presso Torre Sanguigna et pigliassemo un pasticcio . . .” 20 38.23, 574r: “comprassemo una spalla de porco.” 21 38.23, 564r: Mario: “. . . disse per la strada che voleva pigliar detta cortigiana.” 22 38.23, 573v. 23 38.23, 563v: Mario: “apresso la stufa de Felice presso li Cavalieri.” 24 28.23, 561r: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . ando con noi per dicta donna et voleva bussare la porta . . . che haveva bravo culo et teneva bene.”In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 13725 38.23, 574: Magrino, for Ludovico’s call: “Messer Ludovico chiamandola . . .”; 38.23, 564r: Mario: “credendosi di abracciar messer Ludovico abraccio un altro in loco suo in cambio.” 26 38.23, 564r: Mario: “Mostrandoli il pasticcio et per la strada messer Ludovico et liei andavano abracciati insieme.” 27 Ago, Economia barocca. 28 38.23, 560r: Antonio Scapuccio: “l’ostaria de Domenidio in Piscaria.” 38.23, 574r: for the name’s origin. 29 38.23, 564r: Mario, for the time. 30 38.23, 560r: Antonio di Scapuccio: “tutti de compagnia . . . portassimo . . . un pasticcio . . .” 31 38.23, 568v: Ludovico Santa Croce: “. . . Fabritio giudio facto christiano apresso . . . [a] casa mia nel tempo che e facto christiano et lui me impresto la stantia”; 38. 560r: Antonio Scapuccio: “presso la casa de Santa Croce.” 32 28.23, 561r: Antonio Scapuccio for the boast: “et di poi che andassemo a magnar a l’ostaria . . .” 33 38.23, 574v: Magrino: “un solaretto di sopra quale era poca de cosa”; 38.23, 572r: Fabritio: “dormivo io sopra una solarello.” 34 38.23, 560r: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . un matarazo quale lo buttassemo in terra.” 35 38.23, 574v: Magrino: “. . . spogliati si misero sotto li panni.” 36 38.23, 574v–575r: Magrino: “un paviglione che saria de piu colori quale era il mio . . . radunato da una banda.” 37 38.23, 569r. Ludovico claims to have closed the curtain: “mettevo il paviglione atorno.” 38 38.23, 564v: Mario: “et avanti che la lume fosse svitata stavamo a burlare et ciancinare . . . che di gratia volessemo svitar la lume.” 39 38.23, 561v: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . facendo un zeno con il deto grosso et con il deto indice facendo uno O designando che lui haveva chiavato nel culo dicta donna”; 38.23, 564v: Mario: “Dicendo forte con noi altri Nel proprio facendo con il detto grosso et con il indice il tondo.” 40 38.23, 561v: Antonio Scapuccio: “lui non diceva chiaramente per rispecto de dicta donna che non volea svergognarla”; Loudly: Mario: “Dicendo forte.” 41 Ibid.: Antonio Scapuccio: “. . . la chiavata in culo foco foco.” 42 38.23, 574v: Magrino: “forno primi messer Ludovico et la donna.” 43 38.23, 574r: Magrino, for sleeping clothed: “et io ancora dormi . . . vestito”; for much later: 38.23, 560r: Scapuccio: “Giovanni Maria . . . dipoi a un gran pezo . . . se ando a corigare nel medemmo lecto.” 44 38.23, 575r: Magrino: “io ho inteso quando lui la chiavava et lei teneva le natiche verso Ludovico et lei voltata con il viso verso di me et io una volta il sentia et io non lho visto metter dentro perche io non ce ho tenuto le mane. So bene che la chiavava et lui sbatteva detta [no noun] verso di me che mi fe svigliato.” 45 Hunt, The Vacant See, 183–84. 46 38.23, 575v: notary and Magrino: “. . . langere et lamentare eo quia . . . ipsam retro negotiabat et futuebat. Respondit io sentivo che le quando fu chiava[ta] la prima volta da messer Ludovico si lamentava. Ma si posseva lamentare de piu cose . . . Si posseva lamentare come fanno le donne . . . Se posono lamentare che li sappia bono et si posono lamentare che se li faccia male ancora. Ma io una volta come o detto o sentito che l’habia chiavata.” 47 38.23, 577v: Betta, August 23, 1557: “lui mai ha fato in tal loco e e ben vero che messer Ludovico mi disse che mi voltassi che me lo voleva far a potta retro et io li disse tu me voi gabare tu me voi mettere al contrario et lui disse de no che il voleva fare a potta retro et cossi io mi voltai et mi fece a potta retro. Io so dove intro. Si lui se e gabbato non me sonno gabbata io.” 48 38.25, 567r: Betta, August 21, 1557: “. . . mi parrebbe che dio non mi tenesse sopra la terra et se ho fatto male per una via, non voglio far male per laltra, et si io ne esco voglio andare a Santa Maria de Loreto et poi a casa mia a far bene . . . et se si gabba lui non mi gabbo io, perche me ne guardaro come dal fuoco.”49 38.23, 565r: Mario. 50 38.23, 576r–v: “Lei non intese mai parole .  .  . Noi davamo la baia a Ludovico .  .  . quando lui il diceva a tavola lei non se ce era messa ancora.” 51 103, 911r: Ludovico: “me pare che sia cancelliero de conservatori.” 52 103, 906v: Meo: “. . . voleamo andare a cena al’hostaria de domenedio insieme . . . et cosi righai certo piscio et . . . andammo alhosteria . . . et mentre voleamo cenare arrivo li Cesare . . . lui se messe a tavola et cenammo tutti quatro insieme.” 53 103, 907r: Meo: “portai certe sarde . . . et Grillo porto certe telline.” 54 103, 907v: Meo: “un’hebreo . . . venne . . . mentre che magnammo.” 55 103, 907r–v: Meo: “voliamo andar a casa della mia puttana et noi dicemmo andamo et Cesare ancora disse io ve voglio fare compagnia.” 56 103, 911v. 57 The present Via del Monte della Farina was then Via del Crocefisso, named for church, San Biagio del Crocefisso (or del Annulo), demolished circa 1617 to expand San Carlo: Lombardi, Roma, 222; Delli, Le Strade, 339; Gnoli, Topografia, 91; Adinolfi, Roma, 171. Olimpia probably lived towards San Biagio. 58 103, 913r: Olimpia: “da uno amico mio quella sera . . . tornai a casa et trovai Ludovico Santa Croce li alla mia porta”; 913v for the name Lorenzo. 59 103, 918r: Ludovico: “sono parecchi anni.” 60 103, 917r: Lucretia the madam: “parlando spagnolo et contrafacendo il parlare loro solito . . . apri qua la sporta che batterno sette o otto volte ch’io non li volsi mai aprire.” 61 Ibid.: “.  .  . non li volevo aprire .  .  . dovessero mutare parlare perche non potessi di non cognoscerli, . . . ma per non ci esser’ la mia pigionante in casa et sapendo che non voleano niente da me io non li volsi aprire anzi . . . haverci buttato del acqua in testa se non si fussero levati dalla porta.” 62 Ibid.: “correre verso li Chiavari.” 63 103, 889r: Lucretia the wife: “retornandome . . . senza lume et con una cannuccia in mano per non esser vista ne conosciuta.” One Cynthio Perusco lodged by the Minerva: Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 29, 15. One puzzle: on October 7, 1567, a Cinzio Perusci by San Marcello, not the Minerva, buried a wife named not Lucretia but Ortensia. de Dominicis, Notizie biografiche, 275; And, at court, (103, 899r) Lucretia appears as “Lucretia q. Petri”—no father’s family name, no husband’s name. Is Lucretia a femina, a semi-wife? 64 Ibid., r–v: Lucretia: “Doi armati . . . me si ferno incontro et subbito me fermorno et un di loro me misse la mano al collo tastandomi il collo pensando forsi ch’io havessi qualche collana o vezza.” 65 Ibid., v: “. . . io son poveretta che volete da me strillando ai ladri ai ladri . . . me lasciorno”; the servant confirms this and notes that other men were also holding Lucretia: 103, 902r. 66 103, 902r: 25: “. . . perche questo a noi.” 67 Ibid.: “se misse la cappa inanti il viso et pero non posso saper’ ne poddi veder’ se l’era quel Meo.” 68 Ibid.: “.  .  . pugnali nudi presso alla gola.” Why daggers? The gentlemen, with their swords, held Lucretia. 69 Ibid.: Lucretia: “. . . un cerchio intorno et chi mi pigliava da un canto et chi dal altro mettendomi li pugnali alla gola.” Giovanni Maria: Ibid., 902r: “ci fermamo per paura.” 70 Ibid.: Giovanni Maria: “. . . dar de i pugni et d’urtoni et mi buttorno in terra.” 71 103, 900r: Lucretia: “. . . con un yesu di sopra et di sotto c’e l’ongia della gran bestia . . . ancho la cintura et un fazzoletto: che l’anello ci e 18 giulii d’oro.” This “yesu” may have been a monogram. Giovanni Maria confirms almost all these goods. 72 103, 902r–v: Giovanni Maria: “una scarsella che io portava cinta. . . . a tenere lavandosi la mano . . . messo in la scarsella.” 73 103, 902v: Lucretia: “. . . vi prometto da gentilhuomo de non ti far dispiacer . . . che non era per loro . . . che era moglie di Messer Cynthio Perusco.” Cesare had yet to hurt the servant.In bed with Ludovico Santa Croce 13974 Ibid,: Giovanni Maria: “messer che volemo fare . . . menavola via menavola via.” See also Lucretia: 103, 899v: “menala su menala su strascinala.” Why do we say Meo and not the Jew? Note Meo’s ongoing relationship with Ludovico, their habit of joint action, plus that prompt “Messer.” 75 103, 899v: Lucretia: “.  .  . con molta instanza di menarmi in una casa che .  .  . per forza . . . me strascinavano . . . a i ladri a i ladri a questo modo si assassina alla strada, . . . che venessero in casa mia . . .” Why this invitation? Probably demonstrate her station, not to proffer loot. 76 103, 199v: Lucretia: “per andare al arco delli catinari.” The present Via dei Falegnami then was Via dei Catinari: Gnoli, Toponomia, 69. This Arco was demolished for San Carlo ai Catinari: Gnoli, Toponomia, 11. 77 103, 903r: Giovanni Maria: “. . . gl’era cascate le pianella . . . diceano che caminasse . . . la faceano camminar . . . tre o quattro attorno.” See also Lucretia: 103, 899v: “cascai in terra in un fangho et lasciai li pianelle.” 78 For Agostino Pallone’s house, see Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds, 136. For the two men: 103, 903r: Giovanni Maria: “arrivò quel che portava la torcia accesa et . . . mr Agostino Palone . . . per il medesimo vicolo.” In 1577, Agostino would be buried in Santa Maria in Publicolis, the Santa Croce family church: de Dominicis, Notizie biografiche, 267. 79 103, 899v–900r: Lucretia: “. . . cognobbi detto messer . . . per l’amor de dio che me aiutasse . . . pensandosi che il lume non venesse da quella banda et de non esser visto detto mr Augistino cognobbe . . . Cesari romano, al quale disse Mr. Augustino ah Cesari che fai, che cosa e questa[!] . . .” 80 103, 903r: Giovannia Maria: “casco con una gamba in una ferrata et . . . se attacò alla cappa di Messer Augistino . . . Mr Augustino di grazia. non me abbandonate per l’amor de Dio.” 81 103, 903r–v: Giovanni Maria: “. . . se conosceva Cyntho Perusco, et lei disse si che lo cognosce et ho doi figli con lui et e mio marito et . . . se la conosceva messer Francesco Calvi et lei disse de si . . . se li andava in casa con lei che li mostraria la figlia.” 82 103, 903v: Giovanni Maria: “. . . Cesari figlio tu hai fatto male . . . che andasse via che farria accompagnare Madonna Lucretia da un suo servitore.” 83 Ibid.; Lucretia: “m’accompagno con la torcia.” 84 103, 917r–v: Lucretia the madam: “. . . guardai et viddi una donna con un’homo che cridava: che diceva che volete da me fratelli che volete da me fratelli et diceva tiratimi la corda tiratimi la corda . . . dubitando io che non fusse qualche vicina, io bussai alla fenestra della Diana . . . senti quella tua sorella che crida . . .” “Tiratimi la corda” here refers to Lucretia’s door-rope: “open up for me!” with a dative. 85 103, 913r: Olimpia: “. . . trovai Ludovico Santa Croce li alla mia porta assieme con Meo pescivendolo et con doi altri . . . ci era un’hebreo.” 86 Ibid.: Olimpia: “. . . Ludovico fu il primo”; 103, 918: Ludovico Santa Croce: “il primo io d’intrare in casa.” 87 103, 917r: Lucretia the madam: “. . . Olimpia insieme con un’ suo amico che si chiama Lorenzo stufarolo, quale sonava di liuto. Et me bisogno tirar’ la corda et alhora intro . . . Ludovico Santa [Croce] Meo Cesar Vallati et un hebreo.” 88 103, 917v: Lucretia the madam: “. . . o bella cosa, le povere donne non ponno andare per la strada et loro dissero che non erano stato.” 89 103, 913v: Olimpia, “Meo et l’altri ci accompagnorno sino alla stufa et poi se ne andorno con dio”; 914v: Meo: “insieme alla stufa et poi io me ne tornai a casa mia e Cesare e l’hebreo andorno a fare i fatti suoi.” 90 103, 922r: Barbara claims Meo has been her amico for three years; 103, 904r: Barbara: “e un mese ch’io l’ho lassato perche non mi piace piu l’amicitia sua et perche ha dieci scudi delli mei in mano.” Monte Savelli is today’s Teatro di Marcello, now stripped bare by archeology. 91 103, 922r: Barbara: “me ne andai a letto senza cena perche io me sentivo male et mentre ch’io stavo a letto con Annibale pescivendolo sentei passare per la strada Cesare 92 93 94 95Vallata con altre genti . . . et disse servitor’ Signora Barbera cor mio ch’io non li resposi altrimente” 103, 914r: Giovanni Maria: “madonna Lucretia domando a . . . pescivendolo predetto per che causa fussi preso questo messer Ludovico et .  .  . rispose che fu preso perche haveva preso una donna nella strada.” 103, 905v: Meo, on Tuesday: “io fui preso hiermatina in Ponte ch’io non so perche causa assieme con Messer Ludovico Santa Croce.” 103, 901r: Lucretia the wife: “et che stavano molto di mala voglia et tutti afflitti.” 103, 900v: Lucretia: “lui mi mando a dir per il detto Cynthio che non era offitio da gentilhomo di accusar nesuno e che mi bastava che io non havessi ricevuto mal nesuno.”Bibliography Archival sources Archivio di Stato di Roma, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case 19 Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case 23 Processi (16° secolo), busta 38, case 25 Processi (16° secolo), busta 103Publisd sources Adinolfi, Pasquale. Roma nell’età di mezzo, rione Campo Marzo, rione S. Eustachio. Florence: Le Lettere – LICOSA, 1983. Ago, Renata. Economia barocca: mercato e istituzioni nella Roma barocca. Rome: Donzelli, 1998. Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 29 Cohen, Thomas V. and Elizabeth S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Connors, Joseph. “Alliance and Enmity in Baroque Urbanism.” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 25 (1989): 207–94. de Dominicis, Claudio. Notizie biografiche a Roma nel 1531–1582, desunte dagli atti parrocchiali. Rome: Academia Moroniana, n.d. Delli, Sergio. Le Strade di Roma. Rome: Newton Compton, 1975. Gnoli, Umberto. Topografia e toponomastica di Roma medioevale e moderna. Rome: Edizioni dell’Arquata, 1984. Hunt, John M. The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum. Leiden: Brill, In two unrelated sixteenth-century texts, a Renaissance prince was described as vulnerable to assassination because of a f lawed fashion judgment. In his Historia patria (published 1503), the courtier Bernardino Corio recounted that just before Galeazzo Sforza left his castle on December 26, 1476, he put on and then took off his corazina because he felt that the chest armor made him look “too fat.”1 The lack of armored protection was crucial as Galeazzo was famously stabbed to death during mass later that day. In his analysis of the event, Timothy McCall provocatively suggests that Galeazzo’s fatally bad judgment was determined by fashion; Galeazzo, according to McCall, was inf luenced by the growing pressure to conform to cultural expectations of a slim masculine figure.2 Sixty years later, a Florentine prince was murdered by stabbing, and similar to the description of Galeazzo Sforza, a chronicler of the episode points to clothing’s role in the affair. Benedetto Varchi’s Storia fiorentina (incomplete at his death in 1565) recounts that just before Duke Alessandro de’ Medici left his bedchamber on the night of his murder in 1537, he contemplated whether he should wear his gloves “da guerra” (for war) or his perfumed gloves “da fare all’amore” (for making love).3 According to the story, Alessandro chose the love-gloves as they better matched his sablelined cape and were suited to his planned sexual escapade. He apparently chose unwisely. Elizabeth Currie argues that Varchi added this presumably invented anecdote about gloves in order to communicate—through sartorial metaphors—the gap between Duke Alessandro’s expected dutiful behavior and his actual irresponsible conduct.4 To Currie’s analysis, I add that the glove anecdote also participates in what had become a literary pattern of associating men’s clothing with physical weakness. If, in the first episode, the author indicates how a soft doublet made Galeazzo defenseless to the knife blade, in the second, the writer implies that the outcome of Alessandro’s evening might have been different had the princechosen his gloves “da guerra.” The two historiographical accounts of Galeazzo’s and Alessandro’s murders underscore not only the high stakes of men’s clothing choices but the relationship between literary representations of dress and elements of masculinity. Varchi, like so many writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, chose to articulate men’s dress as integral components in representations of violence, war preparedness, moral virtue, and sexuality. Clothing was thus fundamental to Renaissance discourses of masculinity. While masculine subjectivity as performed through dress has been the focus of several excellent studies by fashion and art historians, what has gone somewhat unexplored is how clothing functioned in such discourses of masculinity.5 Was, for example, clothing presented as a symptom of men’s loss of masculine virtue or did writers claim that clothing had a more active role in the imperilment of men? Did so-called effeminate clothing cause men to weaken, or was it merely a byproduct of a so-called anima effeminato? This essay will address these questions by looking at the interconnection of male dress, effeminacy, and militarism in Baldassare Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano (Book of the Courtier). I have chosen to concentrate on Castiglione’s Courtier because of its prominent place in the history of dress and fashion as well as its role in the history of masculinity.6 The Courtier presents male dress as a high-stakes enterprise; a misstep in clothing not only had grave consequences for a man’s reputation, it was also a question of life or death. Like the gloves of Alessandro de’ Medici and the cuirass of Galeazzo Sforza, a man’s clothing choice could lead to glory or personal injury, and it could also result in (at least in Castiglione’s assessment) large-scale military defeat.Arms in the Courtier Very early in the book, Ludovico da Canossa declares arms to be the primary profession of the courtier [1.17].7 Yet, the privileged status of arms is not a settled question, and it is destabilized during a debate of arms vs. letters.8 The debate is framed by the same Ludovico, who asserts that the French only respect arms and abhor letters. Ludovico extols the value of letters by describing several successful military generals who trotted off to battle with copies of the Iliad or other literature at their side. His examples of successful and literary generals are offered as proof that the French were erroneous in their belief that literature damaged a man’s ability to fight: “Ma questo dire a voi è superf luo, ché ben so io che tutti conoscete quanto s’ingannano i Francesi pensando che le lettre nuocciano all’arme” (1.43, p. 92) (But there is no need to tell you this, for I am sure you all know how mistaken the French are in thinking that letters are detrimental to arms) (1.43, p. 51).9 Ludovico’s accusation of the misguided French could as well have been leveled against Italian contemporaries of Castiglione, since none other than Niccolò Machiavelli himself was proclaiming that letters were injurious to arms in both his Art of War as well as his Florentine Histories.10Contrary to the view of the French (and Machiavelli), Ludovico proposes that letters are beneficial to arms; letters bring glory, and glory inspires courage in warfare: “Sapete che delle cose grandi ed arrischiate nella guerra il vero stimulo è la gloria. . . . E che la vera gloria sia quella che si commenda al sacro tesauro delle lettre” (1.43, p.92) (The true stimulus to great and daring deeds in war is glory. . . . And it is true glory that is entrusted to the sacred treasury of letters) (1.43, p. 51).11 When Ludovico notes that literature, like the Iliad, could have a positive effect on soldiers, he shifts the debate that began with the hierarchy of arms and letters to the correlative and causative relationship between arms and letters.12 For Ludovico, arms and letters are “concatenate” (conjoined) (1.46). Ludovico’s assessment of the positive effects of letters on arms is troubled by the fact that France, at least since 1494, had proven itself to be militarily superior to Italy. He hedges his argument in a prebuttal, acknowledging that others might cite recent French military success as evidence against his claim: “Non vorrei già che qualche avversario mi adducesse gli effetti contrari per rifiutar la mia opinione, allegandomi gli Italiani col lor saper lettere aver mostrato poco valor nell’arme” (1.43, p. 93) (I should not want some objector to cite me instances to the contrary in order to refute my opinion, alleging that for all their knowledge of letters the Italians have shown little worth in arms) (1.43, p. 51). To this objection, Ludovico states that the defeat of literate Italians by illiterate French is the fault of only a few men: “la colpa d’alcuni pochi aver dato, oltre al grave danno, perpetuo biasimo a tutti gli altri” (1.43, p. 93) (the fault of a few men has brought not only serious harm but eternal blame upon all the rest) (1.43, p. 52). The debate of arms and letters in the Courtier raises two key points for my analysis on dress and militarism. The first is that there is an anxiety among the speakers that the actions of a “few men” can bring shame on all men.13 The book’s project of social control depends in great part on this anxiety. Indeed, the belief that massive military defeat was caused by a few deviant men gives urgency to the entire masculine normativizing process (i.e., the ideal courtier). The second point, related to the first, is that men’s ability to win wars could be affected (positively or negatively) by what are presumably unrelated aspects of a courtier’s masculine identity. Throughout the Courtier, not only letters but music, dance, and of course dress are all placed in a context of their relationship to warfare.14 When, for example, one speaker condemns music as effeminate, another will anxiously argue that music stirs soldiers to combat, and thus it is rightfully masculine (I.47). The book delineates the court and the battlefield as discrete yet interrelated spaces. The courtier-soldier is expected to shuttle between the two while performing hegemonic masculinity in both.15 The challenge is that certain practices of masculinity were viewed as causing a negative effect in one or the other space. The battlefield, in particular, is shown as vulnerable to the presence of courtly practices. Analogously, the court’s refined spaces were shown as incompatible with certain military behaviors.16 Nonetheless, the court often measured itself against a functionality in war (e.g., music was useful in war) just as men in court adopted martial aesthetics (e.g., court dress was an adaptation of the military tunic).17 There thus arises a tension within the Courtier between the masculinity of courtly practices and the masculinity of warfare, and this tension is routinely expressed as a fear that practices at court are deleterious to combat. The speakers never clearly articulate how dress, letters, and music might endanger war tactics and strategies, but they do repeatedly imply that refined behavior threatens masculinity. The reader is then left to leap the epistemological gap that assumes such a claim to be true. The cumulative effect of this rhetorical technique is that a fear of effeminacy underlies the entire project to produce an ideal courtier, and this fear is often articulated in terms of dress and aesthetics.18Aesthetics and masculinity before Castiglione The association of men’s dress and aesthetics with effeminacy has a literary tradition that stretches at least back to Classical antiquity. Craig Williams’ groundbreaking text, Roman Homosexuality, provides scores of ancient examples of writers reproaching men’s aesthetics. In Roman texts, clothing, perfumes, and grooming habits were frequent subjects of scorn. According to Williams, men’s aesthetics were invoked as part of accusations of effeminacy in what was consistently a reproach of men’s loss of dominion and self-mastery.19 More recently, Kelly Olson’s Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity has provided a systematic look at dress in ancient Rome, and she usefully pinpoints specific elements of dress, perfumes, and grooming to show how the Roman man “walked a fine line” between expected grooming and dressing practice and what was considered effeminate.20 As we move into the Middle Ages and Renaissance, writers adopted these Classical condemnations of men’s dress and added their own brand of Christian morality. Renaissance legal codes and prescriptive literature justified the regulation of male dress under the auspices of protecting state expenditures, preventing deviant sexuality, or ensuring the salvation of the soul.21 For example, Francesco Pontano (f l. 1424–41), a professor in republican Siena, attacked male hair styling, cosmetics, and ornate garments as a civic and Christian moral problem.22 In his treatise Dello integro e perfetto stato delle donzelle (On the whole and perfect state of girls), a work written primarily about women’s vanities, the author states that “vain and superf luous ornament” should be disdained by all males “who want to be called real men.”23 Certain men, he states, do not care if they are esteemed as masculine, and thus they spend extraordinary amounts of time on hair and skin care.24 He complains that men multiply the effect of their grooming habits by fussing over dress as well: “Ma i maschi moltiplicano questo errore or co’ lisciamenti or con continui increspamenti di falde, e arrondolamenti de’ cappucci a diadema, e infiniti altri loro frenetichi e babionerie” (But men multiply this error, sometimes using cosmetics and at other times with their continual ruff ling of crinoline and swirls of hoods in the shape of a tiara, as well as their infinite other frenzies and buffooneries) (Pontano 22). For Pontano, so-called luxurious dress muddied the gender binary as well as presented a peril to Christian morality since, as he states, vanities and ornament debased men, who were “made to be equal to the angels” to a status “below pigs.”25 Dress imperiled the body and the very soul of men. Effeminate dress, he states, showed disrespect for God. The crowd of ornate men “non crede che Dio sia, e che non sia alcuno altro iudice che quegli del podestà ovver del capitano” (does not believe that God exists, and that there is no other judge than the podestà or commander) (Pontano 22). Pontano made so-called effeminate dress a moral and theological issue. Similarly, other writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries voiced concern about the morality of dress with respect to sexuality and class status. The chronicler Giovanni Villani (c. 1280–1348) worried that men’s fashion could create dangerous alliances with foreign powers and blur class differences, and San Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444) complained that young men’s short tunics and tight hose were too erotic.26 Ironically, those same tight hose were reevaluated in the sixteenth century as evidentiary proof that the male youths of the past were uncorrupted.27 There has as yet been no systematic study of the condemnations of men’s dress in early modern Italy, but such a study would aid our understanding of possible thematic shifts. Not only did the targets of these condemnations vary (e.g., short tunics, tight hosiery), so too did the rhetoric used to vilify certain dress undergo changes. There seems to be one significant moment in the history of dress and masculinity at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when condemnations of so-called effeminate male dress shifted from threats of Christian imperilment to failed militancy.28 The anxiety over dress and militarism had real-world implications such as the standardized military uniform, just as it may have also inspired some unexpected rhetoric, such as the praise of an unkempt look.29 Most importantly, it made the abstract notions of dependency and autonomy visible; men’s clothing carried the meanings of military victory or loss. Castiglione’s Courtier has a distinct place within the normativization process of the militaristic masculine body as it is an early—possibly the earliest— example of sixteenth-century rhetoric of effeminacy, dress, and military defeat. Castiglione began writing his text during the chaotic years between the invasion of France in 1494 and the Sack of Rome in 1527. In this period of instability, he chose to point to certain courtly behaviors, including dress, in relation to the military losses that were still potentially viewed as reversible. The Courtier blames the subjugation of the Italian people on certain refined masculine behaviors that were otherwise unrelated to militarism, but so, too, it suggests that the salvation of Italy lay in the hands of this same class of men, men who often marked their class by the very dress that undermined their masculinity. There are two moments in which Castiglione suggests that men’s clothing played a role in military loss. I will analyze these passages along with other textual examples of men’s aesthetics and dress to demonstrate that Castiglione is in effect not only making pronouncements about dress but, more importantly, is establishing a practice whereby men can redeem their masculinity through speaking about the effeminizing power of aesthetics. The spoken condemnation of courtly dress purportedly critiques gender and class structures, but like the dress itself, this very speech is what marks the speaker as belonging to the properly masculine elite.30Male aesthetics and dress in the Courtier Book One: sprezzatura and gender nonconformity In Book One, the primary speaker, Count Ludovico da Canossa, says that the ideal courtier should have a manly yet graceful face. What is to be avoided, he exclaims with disgust, are certain male grooming habits: [your face] has something manly about it, and yet is full of grace. . . . I would have our Courtier’s face be such, not so soft and feminine as many attempt to have who not only curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows, but preen themselves in all those ways that the most wanton and dissolute women in the world adopt; and in walking, in posture, and in every act, appear so tender and languid that their limbs seems to be on the verge of falling apart; and utter their words so limply that it seems they are about to expire on the spot; and the more they find themselves in the company of men of rank, the more they make a show of such manners. These, since nature did not make them women as they clearly wish to appear and be, should be treated not as good women, but as public harlots, and driven not only from the courts of great lords but from the society of all noble men. (1.19, p. 27) Certo quella grazia del volto, senza mentire, dir si po esser in voi . . . tien del virile, e pur è grazioso . . . . di tal sorte voglio io che sia lo aspetto del nostro cortegiano, non così molle e femminile come si sforzano d’aver molti, che non solamente si crepano i capegli e spelano le ciglia, ma si strisciano con tutti que’ modi che si facciano le più lascive e disoneste femine del mondo; e pare che nello andare, nello stare ed in ogni altro lor atto siano tanto teneri e languidi, che le membra siano per staccarsi loro l’uno dall’altro; e pronunziano quelle parole così aff litte, che in quel punto par che lo spirito loro finisca; e quanto più si trovano con omini di grado, tanto più usano tai termini. Questi, poiché la natura, come essi mostrano desiderare di parere ed essere, non gli ha fatti femine, dovrebbono non come bone femine esser estimati, ma, come publiche meretrici, non solamente delle corti de’ gran signori, ma del consorzio degli omini nobili esser cacciati. (1.19, pp. 49–50) For Ludovico, the so-called effeminate courtiers are not by nature “molle” (soft) or “ femminile” (feminine), but they work very hard (si sforzano) to make themselvesappear to be so. Moreover, he links aesthetics to acts of despised behavior, particularly obsequious dependency. This condemned behavior occurs when, as Ludovico explains, men affect their appearance and speech around other men of rank. We can situate these despised men within the context of Ludovico’s own theory of sprezzatura. Coining a new term, Ludovico describes sprezzatura as the art of “ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza fatica e quasi senza pensarvi” (1.26, p. 60) (making whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it) (1.26, p. 32).31 In the case of the men who plucked their eyebrows, curled their hair, and augmented certain behaviors around men of rank, they have failed at this art. Rather than concealing a performance, as sprezzatura demands, these men drew attention to the act of ingratiating themselves to men of authority. Their failed performance of sprezzatura thus resulted in the loss of reputation and power, a point also made by Ludovico in his definition of the new term: Accordingly, we may affirm that to be true art which does not appear to be art; nor to anything must we give greater care than to conceal art, for if it is discovered, it quite destroys our credit and brings us into small esteem. (I.26, p. 32) Però si po dir quella esser vera arte che non pare esser arte; né più in altro si ha da poner studio, che nel nasconderla: perché se è scoperta, leva in tutto il credito e fa l’omo poco estimato. (1.26, p. 60) Successful sprezzatura, on the other hand, offered the courtier an ability to perform a “compelling” version of himself that masked a very different, perhaps less putatively masculine identity.32 This “manly masquerade,” however, risked pointing to both a fantastic masculine ideal as well as to the absence of that ideal.33 Dress and aesthetics, or more precisely, the discussions of dress and aesthetics in the Courtier, form a paradox in the logic of sprezzatura. When the speakers complain of the “effeminate” dress or grooming habits of men, they imply that some idealized masculine version of these men existed before the offending grooming or dressing occurred.34 However, this anchoring of essentialist manhood is dismissed in the Courtier. Instead, the speakers reaffirm that since very few men are born with the qualities of the ideal courtier, the ideal (read masculine) courtier manipulates his body, behaviors, and dress. If the ideal courtier is therefore a man who must alter his person in order to be masculine, then the ideal masculine pre-altered courtier—much like the idealized Urbino court itself—is a pastoral fantasy.35 The men who alter their hair and posture when among men of rank, in effect, draw attention to this absence of essential masculinity in all but the rarest courtiers. These men fail at a sprezzatura of masculinity not because they ornament themselves, but because they have exposed the necessity of ornamenting themselves. It is so great an infraction that Ludovico angrily condemns these men to be punished not as women but as “public harlots.” Of course, the reference to prostitution is significant for it foreshadows an episode (discussed below) in Book Four where Ottaviano explains that all courtiers must use their bodies, speech, and behavior to gain princely favors. The irony is that the principal difference between the despicable groomed courtier with plucked eyebrows and the masculine courtier with less apparently plucked eyebrows is solely aesthetic; both sell themselves for favors. The offending behavior of the groomed courtier is therefore that he has failed to conceal this economy.Book Two: foreign dress and foreign occupation Given the gravity of the punishment that Ludovico doles out to certain courtiers, it is apparent that a mistake in styling and grooming could pose a serious threat to masculinity. Thus, choosing proper male dress also caused anxiety for the upwardly mobile courtier. In Book Two, Giuliano de’ Medici expresses his personal difficulty regarding the variety of dress available to men, and he asks for assistance “to know how to choose the best out of this confusion” (2.26). Federico Fregoso responds to this question by stating that men should dress according to the “custom of the majority.” Fregoso then states that the majority of Italians wore the styles of various foreign cultures and that these foreign fashions signaled which cultures would dominate Italian men.36 But I do not know by what fate it happens that Italy does not have, as she used to have, a manner of dress recognized to be Italian: for, although the introduction of these new fashions makes the former ones seem very crude, still the older ones were perhaps a sign of freedom, even as the new ones have proved to be augury of servitude . . . Just so our having changed our Italian dress for that of foreigners strikes me as meaning that all those for whose dress we have exchanged our own are going to conquer us: which has proved to be all too true, for by now there is no nation that has not made us its prey. (2.26, pp. 88–89) Ma io non so per qual fato intervenga che la Italia non abbia, come soleva avere, abito che sia conosciuto per italiano; che, benché lo aver posto in usanza questi novi faccia parer quelli primi goffissimi, pur quelli forse erano segno di libertà, come questi son stati augurio di servitù . . . cosí l’aver noi mutato gli abiti italiani nei stranieri parmi che significasse, tutti quelli, negli abiti de’ quali i nostri erano trasformati, dever venire a subiugarci; il che è stato troppo più che vero, ché ormai non resta nazione che di noi non abbia fatto preda. (2.26, p. 158)Fregoso’s fashion advice poses a host of problems regarding identity and autonomy. By suggesting that men “follow the majority,” he undermines agency, sovereignty, and control, themes often repeated as central to masculinity by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors. Manliness is the ability to look like others, to disappear in the crowd; but it is also ironically defined as following the crowd’s errors. For, as Fregoso states, the majority of Italians have made a grave error and adopted foreign dress, which leads to invasion and occupation.37 If fitting in is a masculine virtue, it could even mean implicating oneself in Italy’s political and military losses. Fregoso’s concern about foreign dress is a Classical trope that has considerable fortune in the Renaissance, where French and later Imperial invasions were not infrequently associated with foreign fashions. 38 The epistemological link of fashion and invasion was so imbedded in the culture that even one hundred years after Castiglione wrote his Courtier, the Spanish priest Basilio Ponce de Leon suggested that God castigated Italy with invasion in 1494 precisely because Italian men wore French fashions.39 Within the Courtier itself, foreign fashion does not incur God’s wrath, but rather, it beckons other nations to “venire a subiugarci” (come and subjugate us). Such a logic—where large scores of men were responsible for invasion because of their fashion choice—stands in contrast to Ludovico’s claim in Book One when he claimed that the collapse of Italy was caused by a “few men.” Book Two thus broadens the guilty parties of Italy’s subjugation from a “few men” to a “majority” of (upper class) men, who, like Castiglione himself, were bedecked in the latest Spanish and French trends.Books One and Two: fashion theory and agency The first two books are differentiated also by the way they discuss men’s aesthetics. In Book One, for example, there is no association between aesthetics and military loss. Ludovico did not state that plucked eyebrows and curled hair brought about military defeat. Rather, his complaint was limited to gender nonconformity. On the other hand, Book Two draws a direct line between aesthetics (foreign dress) and military failure. This shift from Book One to Book Two might be explained by the general ideological difference that distinguishes the two books. Virginia Cox has convincingly argued that Book One proclaims that a courtier’s virtue ensures him success, while in the more cynical Book Two, success at court is depicted as at the whim of the prince.40 In particular, military bravery is praised only when it can be observed by others, particularly by the prince. To risk one’s life when no one is watching would be a waste of one’s personal resources. Virtue, therefore, is whatever the courtier makes seen in the eyes of others. In the context of Book Two, where the courtiers participate in an economy that trades in appearance of virtue rather than intrinsic virtue, clothing takes a central role in masculine identity construction. It thus follows that Fregoso attempts to draw a direct relationship between appearance and essence. He statesthat one must be attentive to what type of man he wishes to be taken for, and then act and dress accordingly, “aggiungendovi ancor che debba fra se stesso deliberar ciò che vol parere e de quella sorte che desidera esser estimato, della medesima vestirsi” (2.27, p. 160) (I would only add further that he ought to consider what appearance he wishes to have and what manner of man he wishes to be taken for, and dress accordingly) (2.27, p. 90). Such action is necessitated by the belief that external appearance (including mannerisms) communicates a person’s identity: “tutto questo di fuori dà notizia spesso di quel dentro” (2.28, p. 161) (all these outward things often make manifest what is within) (1.28, p. 90). The body makes legible the soul, and this externalization of virtue and morality is problematized by the fact that the courtier is taught to manipulate the body according to his fashion. One speaker, Gasparo Pallavicino, pushes back on the theory that dress determines personal character. He states that one should not “judge the character of men by their dress rather than by their words or deeds” (2.28, p. 90). To Gasparo’s comment, Fregoso responds that although deeds and words are more important than dress, dress is “no small index” (non è piccolo argomento) (2.28) of the man. Fregoso’s insistence that dress is ref lective of the essence of man is, however, hard to reconcile with the fact that one’s projected image, as Fregoso himself states, can be false: “avvenga che talor possa esser falso” (2.28) (although it can sometimes be false) (2.28, p. 90 translation altered to ref lect original). Despite Fregoso’s suggestions otherwise, behavior, dress, and bodily adornment do not convey an unproblematic version of the self. In the elegant fishbowl of the court, courtiers manipulate dress with the hopes that others might be duped into believing that it represents an intrinsic identity. Fregoso’s fashion theory, though not cohesive, does communicate to other men that a fashion faux pas imperils the courtier’s masculinity in two ways: it points to a perceived essential effeminacy, or it demonstrates an inability to mask this effeminacy.Book Four: Ottaviano’s paradox The last mention of dress in the Courtier is in Book Four, and it famously gives elegance of dress a virtuous purpose. In Book Four, Federico Fregoso’s brother, Ottaviano, declares that dress, manners, and pleasantries permit the courtier access to the prince so that he can provide the ruler with wise counsel. According to Ottaviano, the courtier must fashion himself with this mask of the “perfect courtier” so that he can lead the prince away from the ills of vice through deception, “ingannandolo con inganno salutifero” (beguiling him with salutary deception) (4.10, p. 213). Ottaviano’s interjection has received much scholarly attention in part because it exposes the fashioning of the perfect courtier as a performance of deceit.41 Berger, in particular, has noted how this deceit can have an effect on the integrity of the courtier: The byproduct of the courtier’s performance is that the achievement of sprezzatura may require him to deny or disparage his nature. In order tointernalize the model and enhance himself by art, he may have to evacuate – repress or disown – whatever he finds within himself that doesn’t fit the model. (20) If sprezzatura requires the courtier to deny or disparage his own nature, then there is an implicit notion that the courtier also risks destabilizing his identity, including his masculine identity.42 This is no more apparent than when we consider how a courtier’s agency is compromised by the act of sprezzatura, an act of self-fashioning that is dependent on the will of others. Ottaviano addresses this very process head on. He states that elegance of dress, along with singing, dancing, and general enjoyment, change a man and make him effeminate. Relevant here, this effeminacy has consequences not only on a courtier’s identity but also on state security: I should say that many of those accomplishments that have been attributed to our Courtier (such as dancing, merrymaking, singing, and playing) were frivolities and vanities and, in a man of any rank, deserving of blame rather than of praise; these elegances of dress, devices, mottoes, and other such things as pertain to women and love (although many will think the contrary), often serve to merely make spirits effeminate, to corrupt youth, and to lead to a dissolute life; whence it comes about that the Italian name is reduced to opprobrium, and there are but few who dare, I will not say to die, but even to risk any danger. (4.4, p. 210) anzi direi che molte di quelle condicioni che se gli sono attribuite, come il danzar, festeggiar, cantar e giocare, fossero leggerezze e vanità, ed in un omo di grado più tosto degne di biasimo che di laude; perché queste attillature, imprese, motti ed altre tai cose che appartengono ad intertenimenti di donne e d’amori, ancora che forse a molti altri paia il contrario, spesso non fanno altro che effeminar gli animi, corrumper la gioventù e ridurla a vita lascivissima; onde nascono poi questi effetti che ’l nome italiano è ridutto in obbrobrio, né si ritrovano se non pochi che osino non dirò morire, ma pur entrare in uno pericolo. (4.4, pp. 367–68) Ottaviano’s claim marks a critical shift from the other cited passages. It is the only time in the Courtier where clothing (along with other courtly behaviors) is described as rendering men effeminate. In Book One, distasteful grooming habits are practiced by those men who “wish” that they were women, and in Book Two, foreign dress beckons military defeat. In Book Four, clothing causes effeminacy, and the effeminized man loses wars. The passage is not only a significant moment in the Courtier, it is an important moment in the history ofeffeminacy. To my knowledge, it is one of the earliest Renaissance texts that figures clothing and other behaviors as the agents that cause effeminacy leading eventually to military defeat.43 Ottaviano’s brief interjection on clothing would have provided the attentive listener with (again) some troubling fashion advice. The passage forms what I call Ottaviano’s paradox: on the one hand, Ottaviano affirms that elegant dress may be necessary to ingratiate the prince and engender virtue, while on the other, he warns that dress has deleterious effects, effeminizing the courtier’s soul and bringing shame to him and Italy. If the courtier performs his requisite duties (which include ingratiating the prince with dress, dancing, music, etc.), he cannot escape losing his own masculinity. It is unclear how the reader is to navigate this paradox. Castiglione may have been genuinely concerned with the possible effeminizing effects of dress, or there may have been some irony in placing these words in the mouth of Ottaviano.44 Ottaviano had, in fact, been derided for his unusual dress in the earlier version of the book known as the seconda redazione (written 1520–21).45 Moreover, Castiglione was himself quite the fashionista. His letters tell us that he was deeply concerned with his own dress, both at court and during military operations. Many of his letters to his mother refer to his need for appropriate clothing, and on some occasions, he refers to this clothing as necessary for exercises carried out in a context of war.46 The fact that Castiglione has left us extensive writing on dress from the period raises hermeneutical questions about Ottaviano’s statement that courtly dress and activities “make spirits effeminate and corrupt youth” and eventually lead to the shame of Italy. Surely the author was not suggesting that winning wars merely a matter of changing clothing. I propose that Castiglione was less interested in changing the garments and grooming habits of Italians than he was in investigating how the rhetoric about aesthetics functioned in defining identity and motivating social groups. His book explores how courtly practices, including dress, determined the boundaries of an elite ruling class, but so too does it explain how the language used to discuss these practices could shift the values added to such practices. Thus, Ottaviano’s paradox—where the courtier is virtuous if he ingratiates the prince but loses his virtue of masculinity by doing so—is in effect a masterful demonstration of sprezzatura. When Ottaviano utters his words, he not only explains how courtliness denigrates a man for a virtuous cause, he also reveals how a courtier can assume an intentional and masculine participation in this virtuous cause. He derides the very courtly practices that he himself performs and then engenders them with virtue.47 By showing that a courtier sacrifices his masculinity on the altar of state security, Ottaviano offers a reclamation of masculinity for any courtier. The trick is, however, that the courtier must be willing to decry the very practices that make him a courtier in order to claim this masculinity. Ottaviano states, in effect, “I criticize the grooming of men as effeminizing, but I will also perform these acts for the larger good of pleasing the prince.”By way of a conclusion, we will turn to this same moment in the second manuscript edition, or seconda redazione.48 Here Ottaviano’s passage appears in Book Three (the final book of the manuscript). It is spoken by Gasparo and, most importantly, the condemned effeminate activities are not routine courtly behavior, but belong to young courtiers in love: Do you not believe that the young would be doing a much more praiseworthy thing if they were to concentrate on arms to defend the patria, their own honor, and the dignity of Italy, rather than to go around with their hair all coiffed, perfumed, and strolling through the neighborhoods with their eyes glued to the windows above without considering anything in the world except their own priorities? And what purpose do these devices and mottoes and elegances of dress serve other than vanity and frivolity? And what is the point of dancing at balls and masquerades as well as games and music (and other such things that you praise so much)? What do these things offer other than to give birth to the effeminizing of men’s spirits as well as corrupting and reducing youth to a delicious and lascivious life? Whence, as Signor Ottaviano so well says, it comes about that the effect of all this is that the Italian name is reduced to opprobrium, and one cannot find a man who dares, I will not say die, but even to risk any danger. And all of this is the cause of women. (Translation mine) Non credete voi che li giovani facessero opera più laudevole, se attendessero all’arme per difender le patrie e l’onor loro e la dignità de Italia, che andar con le zazare ben pettinate, profumati, passeggiando tutto dì per le contrade, con gli occhi alle finestre senza pensare cosa alcuna di quelle che più gl’importano? e queste imprese e motti et attillature insomma a che servano altro che a vanità e leggiereze? e danzare e ballare e mascare e giuochi e musiche e tai cose, fatte con tanta diligenzia e che voi tanto laudate, infine che partoriscono altro che effeminare gli animi, corrompere la gioventù e ridurla a vita deliziosa e lascivissma? Onde, come ben talor dice el signor Ottaviano, ne nascono poi questi effetti che il nome italiano è ridutto in obrobrio, né si truova uomo che osi non dirò morire, ma purentrare in un pericolo. E di tutto questo sono causa le donne. The manuscript passage, like that of the final 1528 version of the Courtier quoted earlier, tells us that men’s dancing, games, music, and elegance of dress are dangerous to Italian sovereignty. However, there are important differences between these two textual examples. In the seconda redazione, dressing and music, etc. are presented as the vices specific to young lovers. This characterization of lovers fits clearly within Gasparo’s stated distaste for any action that involves the courtship of women. Additionally, Gasparo explains the relationship between warfare andeffeminate behaviors in simple terms of time allocation; men should choose to spend time fighting to “defend their homelands,” but instead they focus on love. Thus, when he states that dancing, masquerades, and games effeminize men’s spirits, it follows that this causal effect is at least in part due to the fact that men are busied with these activities and not fighting. When the author adapted the passage for the final version, he changed not the effeminizing practices but the cast of the shameful men, and he removed the phrase that explains that these practices simply took up too much of the courtiers’ time. In Courtier Book Four, the list of mottoes, devices, dancing, and dress are not described as what courtiers do to woo women, but rather, they are general courtly practices. Indeed, Ottaviano mentions the previous evenings’ discussions and takes aims at these activities and practices that are described by Ludovico and Fregoso in Books One and Two.49 These courtly practices were not performed to attract only the attention of women, but also (and primarily) of men; in particular, these practices attracted the attention of other courtiers and, most importantly, the prince. What Ottaviano offers his peers is the chance to reclaim a masculinity of purpose, even while operating in a gender paradox where dress and acts necessarily effeminized the men who pursued this purpose. Ottaviano reclaimed courtly masculinity by denigrating the necessary courtly practices and dress that enabled the courtier to pursue virtue. His accusatory rhetoric allows the disempowered male to assert masculinity even in the performance of dependency. Castiglione’s book enacted the same performance as Ottaviano’s utterance; the book as a whole takes aim at dress as effeminizing while explaining that such dress typified the ideal, masculine, and virtuous courtier. These accusations of the practices of men also served the larger function of the Courtier’s normativizing project, where the “few men” who were responsible for the shame of Italy might be refashioned into warrior heroes. The nagging question is just how aesthetics figured into this degradation of Italy. It is doubtful that Castiglione (or any other Renaissance writer) would suggest that changing one’s ruff les and sleeves would be the key to defeating the French or the Habsburg empire, but why, then, we should ask, did writers frame military defeat in terms of silks and ruff les? It would seem that we still have much to learn about how aesthetics and militarism functioned in the Renaissance projects of social control.Notes 1 Corio, Storia di Milano, 2: 1398–99: “il duca se misse una corazina, quale cavò dicendo parebbe troppo grosso, puoi se vestì una veste di raso cremesino fodrata di sibelline e cinto con uno cordono di seta morella la biretta.” 2 McCall, “Brilliant Bodies,” 472. 3 Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, Vol. 3, Book 15, 186. 4 Currie, Fashion, Introduction. 5 See, for example, Simons, “Homosociality and Erotics,” Currie, Fashion, Biow, On the Importance, and Eisenbichler, “Bronzino’s Portrait.” 6 Paulicelli, Writing Fashion, 3. On masculinity and dress in the Courtier see Quondam, Tutti i colori and Currie, Fashion.7 All Italian quotes of the Cortegiano are from the Garzanti edition. All English quotes are from the Javitch edition (2002) of the Singleton translation. 8 Najemy, “Arms and Letters.” The hierarchy of arms is challenged by Ludovico himself, who states that letters are the “true and principal” adornment of the courtier. Moreover, Bembo argues that arms are actually the adornment of letters; see ibid., 211. 9 Castiglione’s references to France change from manuscript to print edition. In one of the earliest manuscript editions of the book, he calls those who do not appreciate letters, barbari. Pugliese, “The French Factor.” 10 For a discussion of Machiavelli’s position on arms and letters see Najemy, “Arms and Letters,” 207–08. For a later discussion on the danger of letters to arms see Stefano Guazzo’s “Del paragone dell’arme et delle lettere” in which an interlocutor suggests that some people fear that letters “si snervassero gli huomini Martiali,” Stefano Guazzo, Dialoghi piacevoli (Piacenza: Pietro Tini, 1587), 167. 11 See Albury, Castiglione’s Allegory, 65. 12 Ludovico is here discussing the influence of literature on war rather than the study of combat manuals. On Urbino’s master at arms, Piero Monte, who published the “first significant combat manual ever to be printed,” see Anglo, The Martial Arts, 133. 13 My reading on this passage differs from Najemy’s, which argues that Ottaviano, in Book Four, implicates the courtiers as the few bad men, responsible for Italy’s decline. 14 In Book One, Gasparo states that music and other “vanities” “effeminar gli animi” of men. Quondam’s published edition of Manuscript (L) Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnhamiano 409 shows that Castiglione originally phrased his concerns differently, without using the word “effeminize”: “e cosi fatte illecebre enervare gli animi.” Quondam, Il libro del Cortegiano. 15 On hegemonic masculinity, see Connell, Masculinities, 77. 16 Although warfare is typically shown to be endangered by courtly behaviors, there are some moments in which the court is shown to be negatively affected by the presence of warriors; see Book I.17. 17 Newton, Fashion, 1–5; Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court.” 18 On effeminacy in the Courtier see Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy.” On effeminacy in the study of pre-modern texts, see Halperin, “How to Do.” 19 Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 125–58. 20 Olson, Masculinity and Dress; see chapter four in particular. 21 See Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court” for a discussion about several fourteenth-century chronicles that blame a sudden change in dress for battles and plague. See also Muzzarelli, Breve storia; Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market; Sebregondi, “Clothes and Teenagers”; Muzzarelli, Guardaroba Medievale. 22 Francesco Pontano, along with his brother Ludovico Pontano, was a professor at the university of Siena. On Francesco Pontano see Marletta, “L’umanista Francesco Pontano.” 23 “Il quale tanto più è vituperoso in loro in quanto debbono in tutto essere rimoti da ogni vano e superfluo ornamento, s’eglino debbono e vogliono esser detti veri maschi.” Pontano, “Dello integro e perfetto stato,” 22. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 24 “Li quali non minor tempo e industria mettono raschiamenti di coteche e scialbamenti di gote e di collo e de’ vari pelatogi e scorticatogi, e di bionde e d’acque sublimate e stillate, che si facciano le femine.” Ibid. 25 “Talché oggidì l’uomo che fu fatto presso che pari agli angeli ’e di sotto a’ porci e a qualunque altro sporco e vile animale.” Ibid. On dress and gender confusion in early modern England see the essays by Epstein and Straub, Body Guards. 26 See Sebregondi, “Clothes and Teenagers,” which shows how preachers such as San Bernardino da Siena complained about the erotic elements of tight hose and short doublets. Ibid., 31 cites Sermon 37 of Prediche di San Bernardino vol. 3. 27 Sebregondi, “Clothes and Teenagers,” 36. 28 Not all writers condemned male dress. Leonardo Fiorivanti states that the only way to make this “miserable world” better is to dress well and eat well, and that young men dress extravagantly and then change their dress when they reach the age to marry and have children. Fiorivanti, Dello specchio, Book I, chapter 9, 27. On the other hand, Anton Francesco Doni (1513–74) and Scipione Ammirato (1531–1601) both criticize military failings while discussing men’s dress and aesthetics. In language that is contrary to modern notions of military discipline, writers such as Pio De Rossi (1581–1667) suggested that the most courageous warriors were slovenly, dirty, and untidy. De Rossi, Convito morale, 42. On Rossi see Biondi, “Il Convito.” This mechanism functions similarly to the “hypocritical rhetoric of self-censorship” identified by Carla Freccero in that an utterance pretends to do one thing while performing a different function. Freccero, “Politics and Aesthetics,” 271. On scholarly interpretations of sprezzatura see Javitch; Rebhorn, Courtly Performances; and Berger Jr., The Absence of Grace. On the “more compelling figure” see Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 38; on the virility of sprezzatura see Berger, Absence of Grace, 11. I borrow the term “manly masquerade” from Finucci, The Manly Masquerade. How Renaissance writers characterized the pre-dressed (naked) man as masculine or effeminate is discussed by Paulicelli, Writing Fashion, ch. 3. According to Berger, Castiglione casts an idyllic, unreal version of Urbino. Berger describes how Castiglione discloses to the reader his process of casting Urbino as unreal in a “metapastoral” gesture Berger, Absence of Grace, 119–78. On this passage see Quondam, Questo povero cortegiano and Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy.” See Currie, Fashion; Paulicelli, Writing Fashion. On Classical examples see Williams, Roman Homosexuality. Castiglione himself cites an ancient anecdote of Darius III, King of Persia (336–330 b.c.), told by Q. Curtius Rufus, Historiorum Alexandri Magni III, 6. For Renaissance examples see Lando, Brieve essortatione, which states that the Syrians have dominated the Italians through their perfumes, and Lampugagni claims that Italians follow French fashions like monkeys, Della carrozza da nolo. Lampugnani also complains of women who seek to “dis-Italianize” themselves by adopting foreign fashions. De Leon, Discorsi novi, published in Spanish in 1605. “E, quando in Italia cominciarono a vestirsi all’usanza di Francia, molti ciò mirando con prudenza temerono, che i Francesi havessero a mal trattargli; e non s’ingannò l’anima loro, come fra pochi giorni mostrò il successo. Di modo che la natione, che lascia la sua foggia di vestito antica, e naturale per imitare quella de’ Regni stranieri, ben può temere, che Dio non la castighi con guerre, persecutione, rubamenti, e mali trattamenti che le faranno fatti da coloro, i cui habiti ella va imitando,” 628. Cox, The Renaissance Dialogue, 54. On Ottaviano’s interjection see Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, Albury, Castiglione’s Allegory, and Quondam, Questo povero cortegiano. Berger does not characterize courtliness as weak or effeminizing; he instead states that the successful performance of sprezzatura demonstrates a certain virile mastery. Berger, Absence of Grace, 1–12. In his “Education of Boys” Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini suggests that clothing can make boys soft and effeminate. He particularly warns against feathers and silk. Piccolomini, “The Education of Boys,” 71. Basilio Ponce de Leon, Discorsi (Italian Translation 1614) suggests that clothing makes spirits effeminate and soft “Legislatori antichi giudicarono così (e la isperienza lo insegna) che non tanta delicatezza di vestiti si assottigliano gli animi, e di virile, e forti divengono bassi effeminate e molli,” 626. Some assert that Ottaviano’s response might be due to his “republican” leanings. This seems to be overstated given that Ottaviano was the nephew of Guidobaldo de Montefeltro, spent much of his childhood at the Urbino court, and was himself a prince of Sant’Agata Feltria. In response to how a courtier should dress, Federico responds “Voi lasciate una sorte de abiti che se usa, e pur non si contengano tra alcuni di questi che voi avete ricordati, e sono quegli del signor Ottaviano.” Castiglione, Seconda redazione, II.26, 110.46 See, for example, letters 29 and 30. Castiglione, Le lettere, Ottaviano’s censoring of courtly dress follows Carla Freccero’s analysis of “’hypocritical’ rhetoric of self-censorship,” in that it is as much about establishing identity groups as it is about a sincere rebuke of argument. Freccero, “Politics and Aesthetics,” 271. 48 For a useful review of the manuscript revisions to the text, see Pugliese, Castiglione’s “The Book of the Courtier”, 15–24. 49 “Estimo io adunque che ’l cortegiano perfetto di quel modo che descritto l’hanno il conte Ludovico e messer Federico, possa esser veramente bona cosa e degna di laude; non però simplicemente né per sé, ma per rispetto del fine al quale po essere indirizzato” (4.4) Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano, ed. Nicola Longo, 367.Bibliography Albury, W.R. Castiglione’s Allegory: Veiled Policy in the ‘The Book of the Courtier’. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Anglo, Sydney. The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Berger Jr., Harry. The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Biondi, Albano. “Il Convito di Don Pio Rossi: Società chiusa e corte ambigua.” In La corte e il ‘Cortegiano’:2 – un modello europeo. Edited by Adriano Prosperi, 93–112. Rome: Bulzoni, 1980. Biow, Douglas. On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Blanc, Odile. “From Battlefield to Court: The Invention of Fashion in the Fourteenth Century.” In Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, and Images. Edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, 157–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Castiglione, Baldassar. The Book of the Courtier: The Singleton Translation. An Authoritative Text, Criticism. Edited by Daniel Javitch. New York: W.W. Norton, Il libro del Cortegiano. Milano: Garzanti, Il libro del Cortegiano. Edited by Nicola Longo. Milan: Garzanti, Le lettere. Edited by Guido La Rocca. Volume I, 1497–1521. Milan: Mondadori, 1978. Connell, R.W. Masculinities. 2nd edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Corio, Bernardino. Storia di Milano. Edited by Anna Morisi Guerra. 2 vols. Turin: UTET, 1978. Cox, Virginia. The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Context, Castiglione to Galileo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Currie, Elizabeth. Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. De Leon, Basilio Ponce. Discorsi novi sopra tutti li evangelij della quaresima. Translated by Ottavio Cerruto. Venice: Sessa, 1614. De Rossi, Pio. Convito morale per gli etici economici, e politici ordinate et intrecciato si della Ragino di Stato come delle principali materie militari. Venice: Gueriglij, 1639. Eisenbichler, Konrad. “Bronzino’s Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 24, no. 1 (1988): 21–33. Epstein, Julia and Kristina Straub, eds. Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Ambiguity. New York: Routledge, 1991.Finucci, Valeria. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Fiorivanti, Leonardo. Dello specchio di scientia universale. Venice: Sessa, 1583. Freccero, Carla. “Politics and Aesthetics in Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano: Book III and the Discourse of Women.” In Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M. Greene. Edited by David Quint, Margaret W. Ferguson, G.W. Pigman III, and Wayne A. Rebhorn, 259–79. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992. Guazzo, Stefano. Dialoghi piacevoli. Piacenza: Pietro Tini, 1587. Halperin, David. “How to Do the History of Homosexuality.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6, no. 1 (2000): 87–123. Lampugagni, Agostino. Della carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire, et usanze alla moda. 1648. Lando, Ortensio. Brieve essortatione a gli huomini. Brescia, 1545. Marletta, Fedele. “L’umanista Francesco Pontano.” Nuova rivista storica 26 (1942): 32–41. McCall, Timothy. “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North Italy’s Quattrocento Courts.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16, no. 1/2 (September 2013): 445–90. Milligan, Gerry. “The Politics of Effeminacy in Il cortegiano.” Italica 83, no. 3–4 (2006): 347–69. Mosher Stuard, Susan. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Breve storia della mode in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014. ———. Guardaroba Medievale: Vesti e società dal XIII al XIV secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999. Najemy, John M. “Arms and Letters: The Crisis of Courtly Culture in the Wars of Italy.” In Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500–1530. Edited by Christine Shaw, 207–38. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Newton, Stella Mary. Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1981. Olson, Kelly. Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2017. Paulicelli, Eugenia. Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius. “The Education of Boys.” Translated by Craig Kalendorf. In Humanist Educational Treatises. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Pontano, Francesco. “Dello integro e perfetto stato delle donzelle.” In Raccolta di scritture varie pubblicata nell’occasione delle nozze Riccomanni-Fineschi. Edited by Cesare Riccomanni, 13–30. Turin: Vercellino, 1863. Pugliese, Olga. Castiglione’s “The Book of the Courtier” (“Il libro del cortegiano” ): A Classic in the Making. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, “The French Factor in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (Il libro del cortegiano): From the Manuscript Drafts to the Printed Edition.” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et Réforme 27, no. 2 (2003): 23–40. Quondam, Amedeo. Il libro del Cortegiano, v. 2 Il manoscritto di tipografia (L) Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnhamiano 409. Rome: Bulzoni, 2016. ———. Questo povero cortegiano: Castiglione, il libro, la storia. Rome: Bulzoni, 2000. ———. Tutti i colori del nero: moda e cultura del gentiluomo nel Rinascimento. Costabissara: Colla, 2007. Rebhorn, Wayne. Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.Sebregondi, Ludovica. “Clothes and Teenagers: What Young Men Wore in FifteenthCentury Florence.” In The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society 1150–1650. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 27–50. Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2002. Simons, Patricia. “Homosociality and Erotics in Italian Renaissance Portraiture.” In Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Edited by Joanna Woodall, 29–51. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Varchi, Benedetto. Storia Fiorentina. Edited by Gaetano Milanesi. Vol. 3. Florence: Le Monnier, 1858. Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, How the sausage and carne battled for gastronomic and social prestige in Renaissance literature and culture Laura GiannettiIn Girolamo Parabosco’s comedy La fantesca (published in 1556) the sexual activities of a maid, the young cross-dressed Pandolfo who impregnated his young lover Giacinta, were humorously referred to with a culinary metaphor, that of inserting meat in the oven: People, the female servant has become a male in two houses at once as you have seen. And she has shown that she is a better cook than a housekeeper, because she knew better how to put the meat (carne) in the oven than make beds or sweep the house. (V, c. 94)1 The Italian word carne with its multiple meanings of meat, f lesh, and the masculine sexual organ commonly served as a tool for clever word play in Italian literature from the Decameron to the Canti carnascialeschi and enjoyed a renaissance of its own in sixteenth-century comic prose, poetry, letters, and everyday language.2 The early modern dietary corpus reinforced the religious association between eating meat, gluttony, and lust. All nutritious food, in particular meat, created more blood than needed by the body; therefore the surplus translated into an extra production of sperm, which in turn fueled the sex drive.3 A traditional view of the link between gluttony and lust holds that biblical accounts of the Fall considered gluttony the opening door to lust, although the Garden of Eden’s transgression consisted in eating the forbidden fruit, a fig or an apple according to different versions, and not eating immoderately. Many medieval theologians and then Pope Gregory the Great, a medieval doctor of the Church, defined gluttony mainly as a desire to stimulate the palate with delicacies, while also exceeding what was considered necessary for basic nourishment and health.4 But then he drew a more precise connection between the two sins and differentorgans of the body: “when the first (stomach) fills up excessively, inevitably, the other are also excited to sin.”5 Gluttony excites the senses and therefore can carry the sinner to sins of the f lesh. In Dante’s Inferno, and following Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, incontinence (of desire) was the link between gluttony and lust. Paolo and Francesca in Canto V are among the “peccator carnali, / che la ragion sommettono al talento” [Inf. 5.38–39]). Although for Dante gluttony was a sin worse than lust, the common vision at his time was that eating immoderately and lusting were both sins of carne, the f lesh.6 If early theologians’ readings discussed gluttony without referring to a particular food, it was meat that later became the preferred target of moralists and came to be associated with ideas of lasciviousness and lust. Traditionally, animals such as the boar, pig, wolf, and/or ape in late medieval and early Renaissance visual and prescriptive sources represented luxuria7 and gluttony, as inextricably and negatively bonded together.8 Sixteenth-century prints, paintings, broadsheets, and emblem books kept those associations alive in society and culture even as the associations between those animals and gluttony or voracity often surpassed their association with luxuria.9 Sins of the f lesh were often symbolized as sins of carne in the sense of meat.10 But before delving into the imaginative perceptions and symbolism attributed to meat-eating it is advisable to recall brief ly what the lived practice and experience of consuming meat in medieval and Renaissance Italy involved. Symbol of power and violence, masculinity and aggressive sexuality, luxury and abundance, meat was often associated with the aristocracy and its lifestyle.11 As Massimo Montanari and Alberto Capatti have shown, in the Middle Ages the noble table first saw a triumph of big game gained through hunting but later the preference was directed more toward smaller game such as pheasants, quails, and/or farmed animals, like geese and capons. The new court nobility of the twelfth century no longer identified with the warriors’ taste for big, bloody game.12 Gross and nutritious meat was now left to peasants, usually in the form of pork. City dwellers also enjoyed the meat of the pig in the form of sausages but strove to differentiate themselves from the rural inhabitants by buying and eating veal, beef, and small birds. Although Fernand Braudel famously called “carnivore” the period in Europe between 1350 and 1550,13 Italians of the period had other food resources and could not, and often did not care to eat meat every day. Nonetheless, eating meat, and especially good meat, remained an indicator of social elevation and offered the promise of good health. The preference of the new court nobility for small birds and farmed animals received the approval of contemporary doctors, who exalted birds as a source of exceptional nutritional value, with the caveat that it was best suited to an aristocratic diet.14 It was not just the symbolic and nutritional value that was considered important; in dietetic tracts partridges and quails excelled also for their delicate taste and their lightness. But not all agreed. Vatican librarian and gastronome Platina (1421–81) was more open to the pleasures of eating a much wider range of meats, demonstrating more catholic tastes. His De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine(first Italian edition 1487) is full of numerous recipes that included poultry, organ meats, fowl, pork, and sausages. Still much like many doctors, cooks, and courts stewards, he agreed that meat in general was a food healthier than others and had an elevated nutritional value.15 The reputation of meat as a primary source of nourishment and good health continued in the sixteenth century, and was particularly strong among surgeons, medical practitioners, and professors of “secrets.” A Spanish “surgeon and empirical doctor”16 who lived in Rome, Giovan Battista Zapata (ca. 1520–86), claimed that all meat products sustained good health, as long as they were roasted with a rosemary oil and a mixture of other herbs and spices, and were accompanied by good wine.17 Zefiriele Tommaso Bovio (1521–1609)—a Veronese nobleman and lawyer who later became a medical practitioner—wrote a treatise at the end of the sixteenth century against the “medici rationali ” who wanted to impose a strict meatless diet on sick people. He claimed that doctors knew that eating good meat and drinking wine had the power to restore health but kept the secret to themselves for fear of losing fees from patients who recovered from illness and stayed healthy eating meat.18 The nutritional value of meat was thought to rest on the idea that meat could transform into the substance, the very carne, of the human body. The steward Domenico Romoli affirmed in his cooking manual that those who invented the eating of meat did it both for taste but especially for health reasons: they knew that “more than any other food, it is meat (carne) that makes f lesh (carne).”19 In his view eating meat meant literally giving nutriment to human f lesh.20 Renouncing meat, however, was a crucial requirement for early Christian hermits and monks. It represented unequivocally the mortification of the f lesh and contempt for the body, although numerous sources show that meat-eating in many monasteries was fairly normal. In general, the suspicion of meat running through Christian texts in the period appeared to be based on an association of the eating of meat with fears of the f lesh and sexual incontinence. San Bernardino’s preaching in the fifteenth century aggressively linked meat consumption with unruly sexuality and was particularly severe on policing widows and youths’ eating practices. He represented the extreme side of a widespread religious censure of culinary pleasures and the sense of taste, emphasizing the presumed dangers of uniting desire for meat and unruly sexuality.21 Outside of the monastic world, religious proscriptions on food dictated that for periods of fasting, such as Lent, abstinence from animal f lesh, meat, poultry, and eggs, was mandatory to mortify the body and its appetites. And Lent was not just the forty days that followed Carnival; every Friday and many vigils during the year were Lenten days when meat was proscribed as well.22 How much weight did this religious censure or the ideology of the ascetic abstention from eating meat actually have? Apparently not much in everyday life or culture. The desire for meat, originally condemned as gluttony and a carnal practice that took one away from the life of the spirit, was often identified in theliterary imagination with positive expressions of sexual desire. The longstanding Christian prohibition against eating meat associated gluttony and illicit sexuality, and the Galenic dietary theory reinforced this, claiming that the body of the meat eater would have a surplus of blood and thus an increased sex drive. Literary sources valorized the gastronomic desirability and sexual powers promised by eating meat. Slowly but surely the sexual/alimentary play on carne as food and f lesh, positively portrayed in imaginative literature and culture of the sixteenth century, battled successfully against earlier moralistic discourses insisting on restraint of the body and its instincts.23 The emerging cultural war of the period opposed a disciplining view of the body and posited the increasing importance of pleasure and taste in both life and literature, with the enjoyment of meat, carne and f lesh, at their very center.Appetite for meat in literature Returning to the courtly taste for birds in the Renaissance, the link between eating birds and the lustful consequences that followed was visible in literary texts, fresco cycles, and dietary discourses, albeit with different meanings. While Dantesque Inferno punishment scenes in late medieval Italian dietary treatises and church fresco cycles dwelt on the negative consequences of eating birds or eating too much meat, literary texts presented a competing discourse. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, novelle collections such as those by Niccolò Sacchetti (ca. 1332–1400), Giovanni Sercambi (1348–1424), Anton Francesco Grazzini (1503– 84), and Niccolò Bandello (1485–1561), and many satirical and licentious poems, all exploited the phallic meat metaphor to elicit laughter as well as sexually allusive word-play.24 Boccaccio made clear in his Conclusione to the Decameron that the obscene language he had used came from everyday usage and included words from the culinary world: It is not more shameful that I have written words that men and women spell out continuously such as hole, peg, mortar, pestle, sausage, and mortadello. Dico che più non si dee a me esser disdetto d’averle scritte che generalmente si disdica agli uomini e alle donne di dir tutto dì foro e caviglia e mortaio e pestello e salsiccia e mortadello. Many contemporary tales depict adulterous lovers or lovers-to-be enjoying meals with game, fowl, and poultry in preparation for the carnal pleasures to come. The “carne” metaphor to designate the male member had a notable literary tradition. Giovanni Sercambi’s Novelliere (written ca. 1390–1402) presents many instances of the metaphorical/sexual use of the word carne, in some cases distinguishing between “raw” and “cooked” meat to indicate the male sexual organ and actual meat.25 In the novella “Frate Puccio e Madonna Alisandra,” Pseudo-Sermini26 plays on the double meanings of food and sex and the pleasureof tasting the meat and its f lavor.27 The metaphor of “fresh meat” to indicate the male sexual organ continued unabated in the sixteenth century as seen in a laughing novella by the Sienese Pietro Fortini (ca. 1500–ca. 1562) where a lusty friar offers a pound of “carne fresca” for free to a young woman with the excuse that religion does not let him enjoy meat that day. The novella naturally ends with the friar being beaten by the woman’s husband and with the laughter of the brigata listening to the story.28 The offer of an attractive bird for a meal often opened the way to a carnal relationship. In one sixteenth-century novella by Grazzini, the priest Agostino, enamored of his parishioner Bartolomea, decided to entice her with the offer of a large and plump duck. Bartolomea, who was a woman of “easy taste” (buona cucina), let him inside her house and made love to him with the hope of gaining the duck. But the early return of her husband allowed the priest to escape with his duck, leaving her literally empty handed. Agostino bragged cleverly that she would never find another duck, or another member, so large and plump. But, as often happens in Italian novelle, women were cleverer than their lovers. Bartolomea was no exception; when Agostino came back with a duck and two capons to make peace and love again, she got her revenge. With the help of her husband she beat him and sent him away barely able to walk, keeping the birds to enjoy with her husband.29 In this novella, birds carried out their multiple roles: they were an enticing and valued meat, able to stimulate the senses at many levels but also able to transform gluttony and lust into laughter and pleasure. In sixteenth-century comedies, birds such as partridges and pheasants could serve as domestic aphrodisiacs, for both old men and young. In Donato Giannotti’s comedy Il vecchio amoroso (written ca. 1533–36), old Teodoro, in love with the young female slave his son has brought home from Sicily, organizes a banquet where the food includes delicacies like fat capons, birds (starne), and pigeons, served with wine and sweets, in order to prepare him for the rigors of lovemaking.30 The meat of birds was believed to arouse lust because it was seen as hot and moist; for this reason Messer Nicomaco, in the comedy Clizia, plans to eat a half bloody pigeon before his night of love with the young Clizia. Perhaps because of this popular belief, or perhaps because it was the most prized and elegant type of meat, Pietro Aretino, in one of his letters from Venice in 1547, invites the painter Titian to a dinner at his house with a famous courtesan, Angela Zaffetta, promising that the main dish to be served would be roasted pheasants.31 Adulterous lovers with their lascivious dinners were the protagonists of a great number of plays and novella. Some specific language used in sixteenthcentury poetry, dialogues, and comedies also suggested that the desire for meat was closely connected to the practice of sodomy.32 A type of meat that was used euphemistically to signify sodomy, either with men or women, was the young male goat or “capretto.” Pietro Aretino in his Ragionamento (1534) used the masculine gender and the diminutive form of “capretto” to indicate the act of sodomy with a nun, in obvious contrast with the word “capra,” the adult goat used to refer to vaginal sex. In describing a moment at an orgy in a convent, Aretino exploited the culinary metaphor of meat to its fullest: Tired, at the first morsel of the goat he asked for the young goat . . . I tell [you] that as soon as he got it, he stuck inside the meat knife and madly enjoyed seeing it in and out . . . stucco al primo boccone della capra, dimandò il capretto [. . .] dico che ottenuto il capretto, e fittoci dentro il coltello proprio da cotal carne, godea come un pazzo del vederlo entrare e uscire. (Emphasis mine) 33 Matteo Bandello similarly narrates a tale about Niccolò Porcellio, humanist, poet, and historian at the court of Francesco Sforza in Milan, and well known for his notorious passion for young boys. Bandello expresses Porcellio’s desire with the culinary euphemism: he loved “la carne del capretto molto più che altro cibo” (he always preferred the meat of the young male goat much more than any other food). In his final confession, he justified his vice as the most natural thing in the world because it corresponded to his natural taste, and it was a “buon boccone”: Oh, oh, Reverend Father, you did not know how to interrogate me. Playing with young boys is for me more natural than eating or drinking to a man . . . go away as you do not know what a good morsel is . . . oh, oh padre reverend, voi non mi sapeste interrogare. Il trastullarmi con i fanciulli a me è più naturale che non è il mangiar a il ber a l’uomo . . . andate andate che voi non sapete che cosa sia un buon boccone.34 Porcellio insisted that his sexual behavior—the preference for young male goat meat—was as natural as it was natural to eat and drink for humans. His narrator Bandello explained first that Porcellio was forced to marry by the Duke in order to soften the opinion people had of him as someone who always preferred “the meat of young goat.”35 The food metaphor, so widely employed in the novella, was indeed perfect to address his sexual desire as a manifestation of taste, which can vary according to different people. Contemporary literature of the Land of Cockaigne included fantastic maps of Cuccagna [Cockaigne in Italy] where meat, in all of its incarnations, for rich and for poor, was center stage, while the theatrical Battaglia fra Quaresima e Carnevale regularly ended with the victory of Carnival and meat eating.36 The carne of the lascivious goat and luxurious hot birds were generally enjoyed by the rich. Yet it was the meat of the more humble pig, in the form of sausages that became dominant in sixteenth-century literature as a food easily conducive to sexual play, gastronomical delights, and a festive world.The triumph of the sausage The Allegory of Autumn by Niccolò Frangipane, a follower of Titian, is a remarkable painting displaying a lascivious satyr who sticks one finger into a split melon and with his other hand grabs a sausage on top of a table full of other autumn produce. In the cultural imaginary and in the common understanding of the period, that sausage in hand proclaimed with a perverse smile that it was known as a type of meat that promised and was well suited for indulgence, alimentary and sexual.37 The metaphorical use of the term “salsiccia” was not new. Many tales in Sercambi’s Novelliere, fifteenth-century carnival songs, and humorous and popular print allegories of Carnival used the same metaphor associating the consumption of meat/sausages with the pleasures of the senses, especially sexual pleasures. In one novella by Sercambi, a libidinous widow living with her brother, who had not arranged for her to marry again, realizes that there is a similarity between the sausages her brother brought home and the instrument with which her dead husband had made her happy. She decides to satisfy “the need she had of a man” using those sausages as an instrument of pleasure and consumes them little by little until discovered by her brother. 38 A popular sixteenth-century print studied by Sara Matthews-Grieco shows an old lower-class woman selling a sausage during Carnival, just before the time of Lent, when both meat and sexual intercourse will have to be forgotten. While Sercambi’s humorous novella does not attack the widow, who is described as young and naturally deprived of sexual pleasure, the prints and grotesque portraits studied by Matthews-Grieco, more often cruelly satirize old lower-class women desirous of sausages. 39 Pork occupied a particular cultural space in the realm of meat of the time. Far from high-class birds, or middle-class poultry and veal, the pork sausage was the food of the poor, the peasant, or at best, the uneducated.40 Sausages, particularly pork sausages, were a food appealing to taste but otherwise problematic as gross, humid, full of fat, and unsuited to a delicate stomach—or so claimed several early modern doctors and apothecaries. Humoral physiology dictated that the f lesh of a hot and humid animal would be beneficial only to a person with a cold temperament who needed to adjust his/her complexion: people with predominantly moist/hot humors should therefore avoid pork.41 Practice was, however, more complex. Some doctors associated with the Galenic revival of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries promoted the meat of pig as nutritious and easy to digest, although more suited to physical workers. In fact, for all the undesirable characteristics noted, the idea that pork was nourishing and healthful enjoyed wide circulation in dietaries and medical treatises. From there, it was added as a significant qualifier to the traditionally unfavorable descriptions of pigs, and ultimately found its way into comic and burlesque literature, where it merged with the well-established carnivalesque passion for fat meat and gastronomical excess. The Galenic revival maintained descriptionsof pork as gross and humid, but gave more positive press by affirming that it was a nutritious meat. Indeed, despite these warring visions, the sausage and pork continued to win their battles in both literature and life.42 Even with their negative medical and social reputation, sausages had had their partisans in the gastronomical world for at least two centuries. Platina provided a general and expected warning against the meat of pork at the beginning of Book VI (“you will find pork not healthful whatever way you cook it”) but then offered three recipes for sausages, all derived from maestro Martino: pork liver sausages, blood sausages, and the range of sausages known as the Lucanica.43 Platina was more interested in showing how to cook and smoke the meat of pork than in talking about social suitability. He included an elaborate recipe for roast piglet stuffed with a mixture of herbs, garlic, cheese, and ground pepper, beaten eggs, slowly cooked over a grill. At the end of this tempting recipe, he added the usual medical advice: “The roast piglet is of poor and little nourishment, digests slowly, and harms the stomach, head, eyes, and liver.”44 While the roast piglet was ostensibly not a fare suitable for higher classes, Platina’s detailed recipe and the ingredients used meant that the medical proscriptions against pork were losing ground to the culinary practices of courts and an emerging gastronomical culture. In a similar way, Marsilio Ficino, who considered pork a meat more suitable to laborers who already had pig-like physical features, admitted that dressing pork with expensive and luxurious spices could transform it into a valuable food.45 Significantly, in this vein, a testimony by Cristofaro da Messisbugo (late fifteenth-century–1548), steward at the court of the Este in Ferrara, showed how dressing up pork and sausages elevated such meat above its common status as a food prescribed for rustic people. Messisbugo’s cookbook, Banchetti, composizioni di vivande et apparecchio generale (published in 1549), exalted the famous “salama da sugo,” still today a renowned Ferrarese specialty. In his recipe he explained how the less noble parts of pork were mixed together with expensive spices such as cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon to create a dish that the Este family appreciated. Apparently, the salama was served especially at wedding banquets because of the reputed aphrodisiacal quality of its spicy sauce.46 Sex, pleasure, and taste were clearly winning battles for the once-humble sausage. The salsiccia, fresh or cured, also took center stage among a group of bawdy poems on fruit, vegetables, and other humble foods, authored by three of the most representative poets writing in the bernesque style, Anton Francesco Grazzini, Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543), and Mattio Franzesi (ca. 1500–ca. 1555). Firenzuola composed a canzone, and Grazzini and Franzesi capitoli, praising pork sausage for its alimentary and sexual properties, and demonstrating its social primacy over “superior” foods such as pheasants and capons. And, as if in a philosophical debate, these poems regularly elicited long, scholarly, and often obscene prose comments. The erotic allusions of their verses were clearly associated with the consumption of meat during Carnival, suggesting both the literal consumption of carne as meat and of carne as f lesh of a more sexual variety.47 As we have alreadyseen, pig meat had a mixed reputation because it was considered dangerous on one hand and nutritious on the other. Imaginative literature built upon medical and gastronomical culture to produce a more complex vision that allowed considerable room for ambiguity and ambivalence. Pork never entirely lost its reputation for promoting debased gluttony and pig-like manners, but it also gained a more positive reputation as a pleasurable food suitable for both peasants and upper classes to enjoy, as these poems demonstrate.48 The “Canzone del Firenzuola in lode della salsiccia,” written between 1534 and 1538 by the Florentine poet and dramatist,49 boasts of the primacy of his writing on the sausage and plays on the double erotic sense: “Since no fanciful poet / has dared yet / to fill his gorge with the sausage” (“poi ch’alcun capriccioso / anchor non è stato oso / de la salsiccia empirsi mai la gola”).50 He concludes with an invocation to the canzone itself to go and tell the poets’ friends in Florence the secrets of this most perfect food.51 Probably written in Rome while he was a member of the academy known as the Virtuosi52 and followed by an ironic prose commentary signed by a mysterious Grappa,53 the poem recognizes its affiliation with the bernesque poets. Yet it humorously affirms that they deserved an herb crown on their head because they lauded the oven, figs, and “boiled chestnuts” but not the sausage, “the most perfect food.”54 Firenzuola presented the pork sausage produced in Bologna as a food worthy of poets but good also for rich priests and lords, learned men, and beautiful women. He argued that it had a better reputation than the highest priced meat of the time, veal. The poem blended sexual innuendos and gastronomical discussion in its overtly simple description of how to make the sausage. And following the bernesque tradition, it mocked doctors’ recommendations about when to eat certain foods and reassured readers that the sausage “is good roasted and boiled, for lunch or for dinner, before or after the meal”; all these prepositions suggested different parts of the body and different types of sexual intercourse.55 Firenzuola then adds what he labels a “beautiful secret”: never use the sausage during the hot months of summer but wait until August has passed. According to Aristotelian physiology, men who are already by nature hot and dry are less potent in the summer when the excessive heat of the season takes away their sexual force.56 Nonetheless, he argues that even old men who have lost their heat can be young again thanks to the mighty sausage.57 Finally, and appropriately, for his reportedly polymorphous tastes, Firenzuola concluded that one could make sausages with “every type of meat,” referring to all possible sexual practices.58 The sausage’s morphology, then, links it to the male member and to its features that could be seen both as gastronomic and sexual: Sausages were ordered from above / to amuse those who were born into the world / with that grease that often drips from them; and when they are cooked and swelled / you can serve them in the round dish, although a few today want them with the split bread. Fur le salsiccia ab aeterno ordinate / per trastullar chi ne veniva al mondo / con quell’unto che cola da lor spesso; et quando elle son cotte e rigonfiate, le si mettono in tavola nel tondo. / Altri son, che le vogliono nel pan fesso, / ma rari il fanno adesso; / che il tondo inver riesce più pulito, / né come il pan, succia l’untume tutto.59 When a sausage is cooked and ready to serve, Firenzuola advised, it would be best to display it on the table “nel tondo” (the round dish and, metaphorically, the bottom) although others preferred it served with the “pan fesso” (split bread or, metaphorically again, a woman’s genitals). But there are few who prefer the latter today, Firenzuola added. As a Florentine, he prefers the domestic Florentine sausage, large and firm, red and natural, and encased in clean skin. The metaphors roasted or boiled and the adjectives “tondo” and “ fesso” (round and split/foolish), refer to sodomitical and heterosexual encounters, while also alluding to different gastronomical appetites. The poem concludes in an ecumenical and procreative tone, affirming that the creation of sausages was intended to give pleasure and utility to everyone, but in the end the good sausages would always be the reason why men and women were born into this world.60 Firenzuola’s poem affirms that while the sausage is for everybody and every taste, gustatory and sexual, when served “after” and roasted it is good only for upper classes. Like other bernesque poets, he seems eager to assign a higher social status to this “popular” (and economic) food. In fact, usually it was roasted fowl and roasted meat that was theoretically reserved for upper classes. Since he is suggesting sodomy with the reference to roasted meat, that sexual practice is seen as the nobler activity, although forbidden. Elevating a lower-class food to a higher status was the perfect metaphor for speaking in favor of sodomy and introducing social values along with the sexual. What function did this type of poetic imagery serve in a period when sodomy was a crime and even the depiction of non-sodomitical sexual acts in an artistic work such as I Modi proved to be so controversial? It seems likely that images had more power to move viewers than writings, but in an era of printing reproduction, cheap copies of poetry, like the one produced in the Vignaiuoli and Virtuosi circle, could circulate outside an intended audience of intellectuals and fellow poets. It is therefore difficult to assess the impact of these texts, but the humor and the metaphorical language dedicated to meat, vegetables, and fruits may have helped allay the anxiety among authorities, both religious and civic, about the diffusion and circulation of writings exalting sodomy.61 The long Capitolo in lode della salsiccia by Anton Francesco Grazzini, which is followed by an erudite and playful prose commentary by the same author, extolled the sausage mainly from a gastronomical point of view, humorously contrasting its attractions with moralizing medical lore, and interweaving it once again with sexual innuendos.62 Presenting himself as a knowledgeable gastronome, Grazzini also praised the primacy of the Florentine sausage, superior to capons, partridges, and all the meat of birds, as well as to highly prized fish such as lampreys and eels.63 After defining it as a meal worthy of poets and emperors, and begging Greece and Rome to recognize the superiority of the sausage made in Florence, Grazzini once again lauded its colors and its appearance. In addition, much like the cookbooks of his day, he listed its ingredients: well-ground lean meat and fat from the pig, salt and pepper, cloves, cinnamon, oranges, and fennel, all stuffed in a case of animal intestines.64 However, he clarified that his intent was not to explain how to make it but to laud the sausage’s beauty, taste, and goodness. And citing the process of stuffing, “imbudellar la carne,” Grazzini took the opportunity to shift the poem from the culinary to the sexual. He saluted women who always wanted to have their body full of sausages because they are good and healthy—another battle won in the same sausage wars.65 The prose Comento sopra il Capitolo della salsiccia di maestro Niccodemo dalla Pietra al Migliaio, also authored by Grazzini, makes clear that although women love the sausage, the double sense is again a reference to sodomy. The “buona carne,” well done, well cut, and making a good show when displayed in the round dish, once again is a pretext to laud the male bottom. Furthermore, the view of the tagliere wins over all the other poetic images (including those taken from fragments of Petrarch’s poems) such as eyes, hair, breasts, or feet of Beatrice and Laura.66 A long section of the Comento on the gastronomical virtues of pork begins with a verse from a sonnet by Petrarch dedicated to the name of Laura: “O d’ogni riverentia et d’honor degna.” In this line he humorously shifts abruptly from Petrarch’s words honoring his beloved Laura to the more mundane culinary and sexual wonders of pork, the only meal worthy of poets and emperors.67 Even Petrarch’s untouchable Laura takes her blows in the sausage wars. Throughout the long prose comment on his own poem on the pork sausage, Grazzini attacked Petrarchan poetry and current medical lore regarding sausages and pork’s meat. The playful observations on the ability of the sausage to heal every illness—while maintaining a sexual overtone—reads like a learned medical prescription listing several herbs and substances used by apothecaries to prepare their confetti, pills, and tonic drinks.68 Yet Grazzini also made the straightforward culinary point that Florentine pork and lard, key ingredients in their sausages, were exceptionally good for roasting and frying as well as the essential ingredient for making the popular bread with lard called pan unto. The attraction to lard, the white fat of pork, was echoed in a poem by the author and translator Lodovico Dolce (1508–68), “Salva la verità, fra i decinove,”69 dedicated to a gift of wild boar he had received from a friend. This wild pork is defined as “a magnificent and regal gift” whose rich fatty f lavor “will make Abstinence die of gluttony and Carnival lick his fingers.” 70 His enthusiasm for lard in the poem leads to a dream where Dolce witnessed himself, in an Ovidian fashion, metamorphosed into a succulent sausage, rich with fat dripping from the extremities of his body.71 Dolce gave the transference theory of Renaissance doctors a positive spin, since eating pork actually transformed him if not into the animal itself, into its gastronomical essence and pleasure. Accordingly, his poem exploited the common ideaof closeness and fratellanza between pigs and humans in an iconic and paradoxical way that privileged the sausage.72 The third poem on sausages was written by Mattio Franzesi who dedicated it to a certain “Caino spenditore,” a friend presumably in charge of food provisioning in Florence.73 Franzesi employs the language of gastronomy in an amusing pairing with quotidian language referring to sodomy. The sausage is called “buon boccon” (excellent morsel) and “boccon sì ghiotto and divino” when it is paired again with the beloved specialty panunto, declared superior to two famous upper-class foods, the impepato and marzipan.74 Franzesi, like Dolce, describes the panunto or slices of bread with sausage inside as a divine and gluttonous morsel, definitely superior to luxury foods like the beccafico, a fat and fresh songbird.75 Moreover, the salsiccia does not cost much and can be used in many different ways to sustain a meal: it can substitute for a salad (i.e., a woman)76 and priests in particular use it often because they do not need to cook it but can just warm it up between their hands. All the affirmations in Franzesi’s poem can be read in a double sense, as gastronomical discussion or as a metaphorical way of talking about the phallussausage and its pleasures. He refers with technical precision to the gastronomical side of sausages, even when metaphorically discussing sexual acts.77 The sausage is better than prosciutto (both come from pork), when boiled (used with women), and is a good meal for sauces and “guazzetti ” (sauces). Moreover, all the birds in the world would be like truff les without pepper and confetti without sugar, if not accompanied by sausages. A meal with sausages is a meal for taste and pleasure, not a meal for nourishment. Franzesi then describes its shape, and how to make a good-tasting, good-smelling sausage, using spices, herbs, and the unique ingredient for Florentine sausages, fennel. The poem ends with a list comparing the sausage in the panunto as equal to Florentine gastronomical specialties, such as the ravigiuolo cheese with grape, cheese with pears, old wine with stale bread, and others. Exalting a humble subject fitted well with the agenda of the bernesque poetry that lauded simple foodstuffs and everyday objects. But privileging sausages over songbirds was clearly not just a rhetorical ploy because it implied a comparison between a food for rustic people and a luxury food. Franzesi, like Grazzini before him, contributed in his poem to elevating the social status of the pork sausage. It was not simply a food “da tinello,” for poor courtiers used to eating the leftovers of their lord, but a meal worthy of rich people and important prelates.78 In sum, poets, novellieri, and dramatists from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries took full advantage of the possibilities offered by the different meaning inherent in the word carne. It allowed them to discuss virility, sexual potency, masculinity, and sodomy under the guise of the gastronomical discourse. The sausage poems fit well with the constant preoccupation and advice of medical and dietary literature of the time on how to ensure sexual potency. The novelle discussed sexuality between men and women, endorsing a decisively masculine and traditional view that depicted women as lusty and desirous of raw carne,which is able to heal every illness and satisfy every need. The poems on sausages confirm this hierarchical vision of sexuality dominated by the mighty phallus. Yet they also endorse a concept of diverse gastronomical taste, lesso and arrosto, nel tondo or nel fesso, to offer a variety of views of sexuality that responded to every gusto. These poems on sausages were written in the cultural circle of the Vignaiuoli and Virtuosi academies, well known in the period for their substantial corpus of poetry dedicated to the comparison of fruit and vegetables to sexual organs and sexual acts. The not-so-covert sexual sense of most of those poems exalted sodomy, in their praise of peaches or carrots, or sexuality with women in poems on salads and figs. Poems on the mighty sausage covered all the bases of sexuality, although with a preference, often openly stated, for male–male sexuality. Intriguingly, the poetic and linguistic play on carne in the form of sausage allowed lengthy descriptions of an Italian and Florentine gastronomic specialty of the time, totally ignoring the negative vision of pigs as gluttonous, dirty animals presented by dietary literature. Since gluttony was the quintessential behavior represented by pigs, what better way to reclaim pork in the sausage wars than to use it to symbolize gastronomical richness and sexual variety? If sins of the f lesh were often symbolized as sins of carne in medieval times, now in a perfect reversal the pleasures of the f lesh were symbolized by the pleasures of eating meat in all of its variety, thanks in part to these sausage wars. Thus, while a moral and disciplinary vision tried to control the discourse on food and eating in medical and dietetic treatises of the sixteenth century, a counter-argument advanced playfully in literature and bernesque poetry presented carne as a metaphor for the pleasures of the senses.79 The conceptual pairing of gluttony and lust in medieval tradition began to lose ground to a much more complex world of food, taste, and pleasure, and the no longer quite so humble sausage led the way.Notes I would like to thank Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra for inviting me to contribute to this volume in honor of Konrad Eisenbichler, a friend and scholar who always supported my work and my career. The research and writing of this essay took place when I was a fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2016–17. Some of the topics of this essay were discussed at events at the University of Toronto in 2015 and University of Melbourne in 2012. Belated thanks to Konrad Eisenbichler and Catherine Kovesi. This essay is part of my forthcoming book Food Culture and the Literary Imagination in Renaissance Italy. 1 Girolamo Parabosco, La fantesca, quoted in Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss, 143. 2 The popularity and frequency of the word carne to indicate the male sexual organ was matched in Renaissance literature and culture by the use of bird terminology to indicate the virile member as well as, less frequently, the female organ and sexual intercourse. Allen Grieco has recently catalogued and analyzed the numerous references to birds in imagery and literary sources and has studied birds and fowl as food to understand the connection between eating birds and fowl, and sexuality. He has uncovered the widely shared humoral perception of birds as a “hot” food which tended to over-stimulateThe sausage wars the senses. In this way he was able to give a deeper explanation of the theological link between gluttony and lust typical of the period, pointing out the reason why, in common perception, the consumption of luxurious and heating food, especially birds, stimulated the sexual function. According to the taxonomy of the Great Chain of Being, birds belonged to air and they were hot and humid: when eaten they would transfer their properties to the body and stimulate carnal appetite. See Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks.” Albala, Eating Right, 144–47. Quellier, Gola, 15–16. Cited in Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks,” 123. Much later, gluttony was defined as the consumption of luxury foods, particularly birds. On Dante’s conceptualization of sins see Barolini, Dante, chapter 4. The Latin word “luxuria” meant extravagant/excessive desire (for power, food, sex, money, etc.) and in the Italian form “lussuria” became the word for lust in medieval Italy. In Inferno “lussuriosi” sinners are those who had excessive love of others, thus diminishing their love for God. Gluttony is a sin of incontinence like lust. In medieval bestiary and other iconographic sources especially north of the Alps gluttony is often represented as a fat man holding a piece of meat and a glass in his hands and riding a swine or a wolf. Quellier, Gola, 15–23. For medieval bestiaries see chapter one in Cohen, Animals. In Italy church frescoes represented gluttons in Hell suffering the tantalic punishment. At the end of the sixteenth century, in the first edition of Cesare Ripa Iconologia (without images) Gluttony (Gola) is described as “donna a sedere sopra un porco perché i porchi sono golosi . . .” and Gourmandize (Crapula) is identified with a “donna brutta grassa . . .” Iconologia, 111 and 54. This helps to explain, for instance, why the famed preacher San Bernardino da Siena in his Lenten sermons in fifteenth-century Florence condemned the desire of Florentine young men for capons and partridges, claiming they opened the doors to a life of sensual foods and sensual pleasure. In particular, he linked gluttony to lust and sodomy. Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, ed. Ciro Cannarozzi (Pistoia: Tip. A. Pacinotti, 1934), II: 45–46, quoted in Vitullo, “Taste and Temptation,” 106. Montanari, “Peasants,” 179. Montanari and Capatti, La cucina italiana, 76–77. Pheasants and partridges represented the ideal components of a refined and tasty banquet, possible only for people with means. Braudel, Capitalism, 129. “Danno ottimo nutrimento, risvegliano l’appetito, massime a’ convalescenti e sono cordiali. Nuocono a gli infermi, e massime à quei che hanno la febre e fanno venir tisichi i villani.” Residing on a high position on the Great Chain of Being, they represented powerful people and, accordingly, were sternly cautioned against for rustic people, to whom, according to Pisanelli, they could be dangerous. Pisanelli, “De beccafichi, Cap. xxvi” in Trattato de’ cibi, 33. Similarly, pheasants and partridges are responsible for provoking asthma in rustic people (Cap. xxvii and xxix). In his work, Bartolommeo Sacchi, known as Platina, paid much attention to the idealistic principle of moderation derived from the Greek and Roman world, along with his interest in the revival of Epicureanism. Platina, On Right Pleasure. Eamon, Science, 163. Giovan Battista Zapata, Li maravigliosi secreti di medecina, et chirurgia, nuovamente ritrovati per guarire ogni sorta d’infirmità, raccolti dalla prattica dell’eccellente medico e chirurgico Giovan Battista Zapata da Gioseppe Scientia chirurgico suo discepolo (Venice: Pietro Deuchino, 1586; 1st ed. Rome, 1577), 37–41, quoted in Scully, “Unholy Feast,” 85. Eamon, Science, 188. Bovio, Flagello. He gives the example of a doctor whose wife was sick and how he cured her with a diet of French soup, capon, and wine but could not apply the same treatment to his other patients in fear of losing business; see 45–46. “più facilmente di carne si faccia carne che di qualunque altra sorte di cibo.” Romoli, La singolare dottrina; “Delle carni in generale,” 205r. Domenico Romoli (n.d.) previously Laura Giannettiworked as a cook with the name of Panunto (oiled bread) and then became steward for Pope Julius III. For poor people and peasants in particular, pork continued to be the meat of choice; and although it had a negative reputation, in the case of people occupied in heavy physical work, pork was reputed nourishing and healthful. Florentine communal statutes of 1322 prohibited innkeepers from serving up culinary delights because they could attract men and boys and incite them to commit the unspeakable sin of sodomy. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 159. During Cosimo the Elder’s regime Florentine Archbishop St. Antonino—in his confessor’s manual—warned against sloth, excess food, and drink as causes of sodomy. Toscan, Le Carnaval, vol. I: 190. See Giannetti Ruggiero, “The Forbidden Fruit,” especially pages 31–33. Later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Church allowed consumption of eggs, butter, and cheese during famines and epidemics. See Gentilcore, Food and Health. One of the most important representatives of this tendency was the Venetian noble Alvise Cornaro who wrote the extremely successful Trattato della vita sobria in 1558. In general, moralists’ writers of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance continued to advise against eating food that would produce excessive heating of the body. The dietetic literature, particularly the influential earlier author Michele Savonarola and the later Baldassar Pisanelli, supported the restriction of birds and fowl to particular categories of people held to be more capable of controlling the passions they induced, such as the powerful and rich or those needier of stimulation such as the sick and the ailing. Grieco, “From Roosters to Cocks,” 115. See novella “De Novo Ludo” (Sercambi, Novelliere) available online at www.classicitaliani. it/sercambi_novelle_08.htm where Ancroia enjoys her time with the priest: “la donna, come vide Tomeo fuora uscito, preso un fiasco del buon vino, una tovagliuola, alquanti pani e della carne cotta per Tomeo, et al prete Frastaglia se n’andò e con lui si diè tutto il giorno piacere, pascendosi di carne cruda e carne cotta per II bocche . . .” Apostolo Zeno in the eighteenth century attributed the author name Gentile Sermini to the two anonymous caudexes containing the novelle. Monica Marchi in her critical edition of the novelle prefers to use Pseudo-Sermini instead of the conventional name Gentile Sermini. See Marchi, “Introduzione,” in Pseudo-Gentile Sermini, Novelle, 10–22. The novelle were written in the first half of the fifteenth century. “[ . . . ] non altramente fece la valente madonna Alisandra che, agustandole molto la carne e ‘l savore, per quello dilettevole giardino, preso insieme d’acordo giornata . . .” Pseudo-Gentile Sermini, Novelle, xi, 270. Fortini, Le giornate, I, xvi, 296–300. Grazzini (Il Lasca), Le Cene, I: vi, 80–94. Giannotti “Il vecchio amoroso,” II: i, 40–41. On remedies for impotence, and early modern drama, see Giannetti, “The Satyr.” “A Tiziano,” in Aretino, Lettere, 67–68. This section is partially based on Giannetti Ruggiero, “The Forbidden Fruit,” 31–52. See “Ragionamento Antonia e Nanna,” in Aretino, Sei giornate, 38. “The Roman Porcellio Enjoys the Trick Played on the Friar in Confession,” in Bandello, Novelle, vi: 125. See the discussion of the tale in Giannetti, Lelia’s Kiss, 181–82. Ibid., 181. On the battles between Quaresima and Carnival see Ciappelli, Carnevale. Albala, Eating Right, 168 and 181. The painting is now in the Museo Civico of Udine. Sercambi, “De vidua libidinosa” in “Appendice,” Novelle inedite, 417–18. Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages.” Several novelle, from Boccaccio to Sacchetti, related the closeness in everyday life of pigs and humans in rural and urban areas and the importance of pork for sustenance, but also the negative perception of pigs and filthy and gross animals. For instance, see Sacchetti LXX, CII, CXLVI, CCXIV. For Boccaccio see “Calandrino e il porco.” Already in the Middle Ages, from the perspective of the Great Chain of Being, pork and the quadrupeds occupied a questionable position—they were not part of Air like birdsThe sausage wars nor of the Earth but somewhere in between; and pig in particular occupied one of the lowest position among all quadrupeds. Grieco, “Alimentazione e classi sociali,” 378–79. Pigs were voracious animals and, according to the Galenic doctor, eating their fattening meat would transform a person in a pig, as a later image of Gola as a woman sitting on a pork would make really explicit. For instance, in the second half of the sixteenth century, Baldassar Pisanelli advised eating sausages and salami in moderation, but recognized in them some positive characteristics such as reawakening of appetite and helping to make drinking more pleasurable. Pisanelli, Trattato de’ cibi, c. 13. Platina, On Right Pleasure, Book VI, 281. Ibid., 277. Ficino, Three Books on Life, Book 2, 181. See  the section “Sausages and Salami” in Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages.” Pietro Aretino in his comedy Il Filosofo summarizes well this new ambivalence about pork when he had one of his characters resolutely affirm: “refined sugary confections (the biancomangiari) and quails do not stimulate taste as do steaks and sausages.” Pietro Aretino, Il Filosofo, III, 15. See the text in Romai, Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 313–15. Firenzuola is also author of the famous dialogue On the Beauty of Women. vv. 12–14. “Canzon, vanne in Fiorenza a quei poeti,” v. 76 The Virtuosi academy was the continuation of the Vignaiuoli academy, one of the first “academies” of sixteenth-century Italy, an informal gathering of intellectuals that met for dinner, witty conversations, music, and poetry in the early 1530s. Around 1535 or slightly later, the Vignaiuoli renamed themselves Academia della Virtù and/or Reame della Virtù and continued their activities until ca. 1540. Meetings, often held at Carnival time, featured improvised speeches and the recitation of poems, frequently accompanied by music. The Vignaiuoli was one of the first academies in Italy to privilege the usage of vernacular and became most famous for the poetic production of so-called “learned erotica,” as well as for their anti-Petrarchan and anti-classicist poetic stance. Grappa, now identified with Francesco Beccuti, comments on Firenzuola’s poem. See Grappa, Il Comento. On Beccuti see Fiorini Galassi “Cicalamenti.” The allusion here is to the poem Sopra il forno by Giovanni della Casa, De’ Fichi by Francesco Maria Molza, and In lode delle castagne by Andrea Lori. All three are poems dedicated to the female genitals. “Mangiasi la salsiccia innanzi et drieto / a pranso, a cena, o vuo’ a lesso o vuo’ arrosto / arrosto et dietro è più da grandi assai; / innanzi et lessa, a dirti un bel segreto / non l’usar mai fin che non passa Agosto.” vv. 30–35. “Perchè in estate gli uomini sono meno capaci di fare l’amore, le donne invece lo sono di più [. . .]? Perché gli uomini sono più inclini a fare l’amore d’inverno, le donne in estate? Forse perché gli uomini sono di natura più caldi e secchi [. . .]?” Aristotele, Problemi, ed. Maria Fernanda Ferrini (Milan: Bompiani, 2000), IV, 25–28, quoted in Pignatti, ed., Ludi Esegetici II, 200. “O vecchi benedetti! / questo è quel cibo che vi fa tornare giovani e lieti, et spesso ancho al zinnare” vv. 58–60. “Fassi buona salsiccia d’ogni carne: /dicon l’istorie che d’un bel torello/dedalo salsicciaio già fece farla /e a mona Pasife diè a mangiarne? Molti oggidí la fan con l’asinello . . .” vv. 46–50. vv. 61–65. “Basta che i salsiccioli/cotti nei bigonciuoli, / donne, dove voi fate i sanguinacci, / son cagion che degli uomini si facci.” vv. 72–75. On the cultural function of humor see Matthews-Grieco, “Satyr and Sausages,” 37.62 For the text of the canzone, see Grazzini, “In lode della salsiccia,” in Romei, Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 227–30. For Grazzini “Comento di maestro Nicchodemo dalla Pietra al Migliaio sopra il Capitolo della salsiccia del Lasca,” see ibid., 231–309. There is no secure date regarding the writing of the Comento but it should have been written around 1539–40. See Franco Pignatti, “Introduzione,” in Romei, Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 163. 63 Ibid., vv. 22–33. 64 Ibid., vv. 76–81. 65 Ibid., vv. 94–111. 66 “La bellezza del tagliere non è come forse molti credono, e non consiste in l’esser bianco, non di buon legno, non tondo, non ben fatto, ma si bene nell’essere pieno di buona carne ben cotta e ben trinciata; . . . tolghinsi pur costoro i capelli di fin oro, la fronte più del ciel serena, le stellanti ciglia . . . come dire le Laure, le Beatrici, le Cintie e le Flore!” Grazzini, Comento di Maestro, 240–41. 67 Sonetto n. 5 of Canzoniere on the name of Laura: “Quando io movo i sospiri a chiamar voi” 68 “Perciò che quei traditori de’ medici la prima cosa levono il porco e non vogliono a patto nessuno che n’habbia l’ammalato per mantenergli bene il male addosso, sendo il porco e maggiormente la salsiccia, habile e possente a guarir d’ogni malattia e più sana che la sena, più necessaria che la cassia, più cordiale che il zucchero rosato, più ristorativa che il manicristo, et insomma ha più virtù che la bettonica.” Grazzini, Comento di Maestro, 280–81. The terzina commented is 103–05: “Io crederria d’ogni gran mal guarire/ quando haver ne potessi un rocchio intero,/ancor ch’io fussi bello e per morire.” 69 In Dolce, Capitoli. 70 “dono invero magnifico e reale,/da far morir di gola l’astinenza/e leccarsi le dita a Carnevale.” Ibid., vv. 10–12. 71 “E chi m’avesse allora allora punto/aria veduto uscir liquor divino/del corpo, ch’era pien di grasso e d’unto.” Ibid., vv. 43–45. 72 Some authors trying to dignify pork, recycled Galen’s idea expressed in De alimentorum facultatibus where he argued troublingly that pork was pleasurable because it was similar to human’s flesh. For instance “Le carni del Porco fra tutte le altre carni dei quadrupedi han vittorie in nutrire e dar più forza ai corpi perché cosi nel gusto come nello odore par che habbiano una peculiar unione e fratellanza col corpo umano si come da alcuni si è inteso che per non sapere hanno gustato la carne dell’huomo” [For taste as well as for odor, it seems that the meat of pork has a peculiar unity and likeness with the human body, as some reported, who tasted human flesh while not knowing it] in Un breve e notabile trattato del reggimento della sanità, ridotto dalla sostanza della medicina di Roberto Groppetio 362–63 v. The little volume is attached to La singular dottrina. It is not clear whether it was written by Panunto himself or not. For a similar affirmation see also: Della natura et virtù de’ cibi, 68v. Not all agreed with this troubling similarity but it was quite a common affirmation in many medical treatises and in some literary works of the time. 73 In Romei, Plaisance, and Pignatti, eds., Ludi esegetici, 316–18. 74 “Qui non è osso da buttare al cane, / e’l suo santo panunto è altra cosa/che lo impepato overo il mrzapane,” vv. 25–27. 75 “Dicon che la midolla del panunto,/incartocciata come un cialdoncino, / tal che di sopra e di sotto appaia l’unto, / è un boccon sì ghiotto e sì divino, / che se lo provi ti parrà migliore/ch’un beccafico fresco e grassellino,” vv. 38–42. It should be noted that even the luxury food, the beccafico, had strong sexual overtones. 76 The cultural discourses that surrounded salad in early modern Italy and Europe were complex and rich, ranging from sexuality and manners, to taste, gastronomy, and class identity. See Giannetti, “Renaissance Food-Fashioning.”  org/uc/item/1n97s00d. 77 “è un boccon sì ghiotto e sì divino, / che se lo provi ti parrà migliore/ch’un beccafico fresco e grassellino,” vv. 40–43. Franzesi, “Capitolo sopra la salsiccia,” 316–18.78 “Questo non è già pasto da tinello/ma da ricchi signori e gran prelati / che volentieri si pascon del budello.” Ibid., vv. 79–81. 79 On the disciplining vision of the sixteenth century and a counter-discourse in dramatic literature see Giannetti, “Of Eels and Pears.”Bibliography Albala, Ken. Eating Right in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Aretino, Pietro. Lettere. Edited by Gian Mario Anselmi. Rome: Carocci,  Sei giornate. Edited by Guido Davico Bonino. Turin: Einaudi, 1975. Bandello, Matteo. Novelle. Edited by Luigi Russo and Ettore Mazzali. Milan: Rizzoli, 1900. Barolini, Teodolinda. Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Berni. 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Vitullo, Juliann. “Taste and Temptation in Early Modern Italy.” The Senses and Society 5, Visualizing sexuality in word and image10Homosexuality in art, life, and history James M. SaslowFrom his mid-thirties, the Lombard-Sienese painter Gianantonio Bazzi (1477– 1549) was publicly known as “Il Sodoma.” This epithet translates as “Sodom,” the biblical city eponymous with sexual transgressions that were then both a sin and a crime. Sodomy bracketed multiple acts, but most commonly referred to love between men; so, his nickname might be freely rendered as “Mr. Sodomite.” Our principal biographical source is Giorgio Vasari, whose Vita of Bazzi (1568) recounts several revealing or scandalous episodes. A few are exaggerated or false, skewed by Vasari’s disdain for both homosexuality and Siena. However, his plausible explanation of how the artist earned his sobriquet is not refuted by other evidence. Vasari describes him as a gay and licentious man, keeping others entertained and amused with his manner of living, which was far from creditable. . . . [S]ince he always had about him boys and beardless youths, whom he loved more than was decent, he acquired the by-name of Sodoma.1 While sources for private feelings are scanty and often problematic for this period, and Sodoma left little first-person testimony, this and other records suggest a prima facie case for the artist’s erotic interest in other males. He is unique in Renaissance Italy as the only artist whose homosexuality was frankly avowed and widely known. His character and sexual interests offer a provocative case study of the intersections between eros and creativity, and how that sensibility was manifested in his imagery. His experiences further suggest that there were overlapping audiences eager to receive and respond to that sensibility. Sodoma exhibited other character traits also considered eccentric or insolent, and was fond of capricious pranks; the monks at Monteoliveto Maggiore, his first large commission, referred to him as “Il Mattaccio,” the “crazy fool.”2 Hewas an impudent mocker of moral decorum: Vasari reports indignantly about the nickname Sodoma that “in this name, far from taking umbrage or offence, he used to glory, writing about it songs and verses in terza rima, and singing them to the lute with no little facility.” He was also infamous for his f lamboyant clothing and for keeping an entire menagerie in his home, including pet birds, monkeys, squirrels, and race horses; Vasari called the house “Noah’s Ark.”3 He entered his horses in public contests, and we can date his sobriquet back to a series of races in Florence from 1513 to 1515. When his steed won, the heralds asked what owner’s name to announce; Bazzi replied, “Sodoma, Sodoma,” indicating that he was already known by that name and willing to be associated with it. The incident also reveals the precarious social landscape that known or suspected sodomites had to negotiate. Thumbing his nose at a mocking public backfired: a group of outraged elders incited a mob attack, during which he narrowly escaped being stoned to death.4 Anecdotes and documents notwithstanding, historians have long tried, for widely differing reasons, to chip away at the foundations of a historiographical tradition dating back to Vasari himself. For it was Vasari, unwittingly anticipating modern queer scholarship, who first understood Sodoma as having homosexual desires and assumed some connection between his sexuality and his work.5 To the prudish chronicler, that connection was negative: Vasari blamed Sodoma’s failure to achieve greatness on his excesses of character, from laziness to carnality, scolding that if he had worked harder, “he would not have been reduced to madness and miserable want in old age at the end of his life, which was always eccentric and beastly.”6 Value judgment aside, the assumption that artists’ personalities and passions are intimately imbricated with their work runs throughout Vasari’s biographies. Modern generations, beginning with the homophile Victorian critic-historians John Addington Symonds and Walter Pater, acknowledged the same connection with a positive valence, reading Sodoma’s androgynous figures and distinctive iconography as revealing glimpses into the sensibilities of a man aware of both his own desires and the gap separating that passion from social norms. The path they laid down guided post-Stonewall gay studies through the early 1980s.7 More recently, postmodern theoreticians, stressing the ever-shifting social constructions of sexuality and identity, have countered such attempts to posit any individual sexual identity or group homosexual consciousness, however embryonic and sporadic, in that era. Their methodology, inspired by scholars from Michel Foucault to Eve Sedgwick and David Halperin, dismisses such formulations as anachronistic over-reading.8 The generational shift in goals and methods, from “gay and lesbian studies” to “queer studies,” instigated an ongoing debate. These theoretical polarities have implications for the present study, which aims to excavate the embodied passions and creative process of an individual who felt homosexual desire, and to reconstruct, to whatever extent possible, an early moment in the gradual, fitful emergence of self-aware homosexual sensibilities and self-expression.Although I defer consideration of this theoretical controversy until the essay’s end, my working hypothesis parallels the nuanced historiography of Christopher Reed, who reminds us that, although readings of Renaissance homosexuality as similar to modern conceptions were convincingly challenged by Foucault’s insistence that [the modern] sexual typology was not invented until the nineteenth century, [nevertheless] no idea is without roots, and subsequent scholarship provided evidence that convinced even Foucault to recognize stages in the eighteenth, the seventeenth, and even the sixteenth century leading to the invention of homosexuality as a personality type.9 As a personality, Sodoma was among the few early modern artists who visualized homoerotic desire. This essay investigates that process along three intertwined axes: life, work, and historiography. His biography provides a unique microhistory of an early avowed homosexual and his culture’s understanding of that inclination. His works gave visual expression to his erotic sensibility, and contemporary patrons and spectators, from pederastic monks to libertine aristocrats, were ready to receive it sympathetically. Finally, I conclude with a more personal historiographical meditation on the controversy over whether embryonic homosexual consciousness can be located in early modern culture.Early religious works Arriving in Siena as a young man, Sodoma established relations with the Chigi family and the Benedictine order, who commissioned numerous works, mainly on sacred themes.10 Officially, since Christianity condemned all non-procreative sex, theological narratives offered next to no scope for “homo-representation”; but his religious pictures nonetheless provide material for queer readings. If a subject contained any potential for imagining or accentuating a homoerotic subtext, Sodoma exploited it more than any artist of his time except Michelangelo (also a lover of men), seldom missing an opportunity to foreground male beauty or intimacy in nude or suggestively clad bodies. Many images celebrate the boyish, androgynous type that was the most common object of adult male desire at the time, while a few idealize the more heroic male adult body; he often derived both figure types from classical sculptures with a homoerotic pedigree. And many members of the audience for his imagery, both clerical and lay, were likely to appreciate this eroticized beauty. The first example of the interlinked sensibilities of artist and spectators is his fresco cycle for the abbey at Monteoliveto Maggiore, outside Siena (1505–08), depicting the life of the order’s founder, St. Benedict.11 Payment records confirm several Vasarian details about the artist, from his early nickname, Mattaccio, to his use of apprentices ( garzoni ) and his fondness for extravagant finery. Although the austere life of the founder of monasticism was unpromising terrain,Sodoma found novel pretexts for inserting numerous visual features—often rare or unique inventions—that would appeal to the homosexual or bisexual gaze. Most striking in its novel and ironic departure from the subject’s nominal moral is the illustration of Benedict seeking relief from a female devil’s sexual temptation by stripping off his clothes and f linging himself into spiny briar bushes12 (Figure 10.1). Unlike the few earlier representations of this scene, Sodoma renders the vegetation soft and unthreatening: rather than conveying mortification of the f lesh, he presents in full frontal view a nude of heroic proportions, reclining comfortably in a pose modeled on classical prototypes. The all’antica beauty of the body displaces attention from the saint’s physical self-abnegation onto his potential to arouse erotic desire—precisely what Benedict is trying to suppress.13 The most personally revealing of the frescoes is the Miracle of the Colander (Figure 10.2), in which the saint and his homespun miracle (repairing a household sieve) are shunted to the left, leaving the central focus on the figure of Sodoma himself, showing off his legendary wardrobe. His self-portrait corroborates Vasari’s disdainful take on him as a fop, “caring for nothing so earnestly as for dressing in pompous fashion, wearing doublets of brocade, cloaks all adorned Sodoma, Abbey of Monteoliveto Maggiore, Saint Benedict Is Tempted by a Female Devil, fresco, 1505–8.Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.Gianantonio Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”Sodoma, Monteoliveto, Miracle of the Colander, fresco, 1505–8.Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.with cloth of gold, the richest caps, necklaces, and other suchlike fripperies only fit for clowns and charlatans.” Here, as elsewhere, Vasari seems well informed about specific details of Sodoma’s life and work: his comment is supported by the abbey account books, which describe a garment much like the one Sodoma wears here, an embroidered gold cape listed among elaborate items of apparel as a form of payment from the monks, who had received it from a wealthy nobleman.14 The artist also surrounds himself with exotic animals, just as Vasari noted he liked to do: birds and two pet badgers. Sodoma’s sartorial tendencies and other biographical details connect him to a contemporaneous homosexual demimonde in ways that Vasari himself was perhaps unaware of, but which is well attested in social history of the period. His clothing, fondness for androgynous youths, and writing of satirical poetry are all behaviors then associated with sodomites as an identifiable group with its own recognizable customs. Research by Michael Rocke, Guido Ruggiero, and others into the prevalence of sodomy and the emergence of urban homosexual networks in early modern Italy has revealed that they were so widespread they can scarcely be called a “subculture.” As Rocke puts it, Bazzi’s brand of sexuality became “an increasingly common feature of the public scene and the collective mentality.”15 In Florence, a special sodomy court heard hundreds of casesannually until 1502; a substantial percentage of males passed through at some time in their lives.16 Hence “sodomy was . . . a common part of male experience that had widespread social ramifications.” Rocke notes that “this sexual practice was probably familiar at all levels of the social hierarchy” and among a wide range of professions.17 Among those occupations are the “beardless boys” whom Vasari blames for the artist’s nickname, probably his apprentices and workshop assistants. Artists’ studios being all-male, “the potential for homoerotic relations in such an environment was high,”18 and intimate, sometimes sexual relations between assistants or models and their masters are suggested by documents on artists from Donatello to Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Closer to Sodoma’s time, the bisexual sculptor Benvenuto Cellini was taken to court by the mother of one apprentice for coercing him sexually.19 This common social pattern gives Sodoma’s behavior wider implications, since his actions were shared with countless other men. His wardrobe is the clearest exemplar of those erotic implications. Helmut Puff has documented the role of material culture in formulating and enacting sexual subcultures, and how extravagant clothing was a marker of effeminacy and sexual deviance. Exchange of rare and costly textiles or clothing could betoken homosexual relationships, either as gifts for love or payment for services.20 By the mid-fifteenth century, San Bernardino da Siena’s sermons thundered against boys’ receiving clothing and money for sex.21 Within the field of costume studies, which asserts “the centrality of clothes as the material establishers of identity itself,” clothing is understood as a set of materialized symbols with social functions and meanings. As Jones and Stallybrass have explored, clothes can either embody and reinforce submission to normative social roles (uniforms) or, when deployed in violation of sumptuary standards, mark the wearer as consciously rejecting those norms—as Sodoma did by appropriating the dress of an aristocrat.22 Thus, portraying himself in extravagant, coded finery was a subversive act of self-identification with a marginalized minority: in Andrew Ladis’s phrase, “a pose of arrant foppishness, as if the painter personified the very diabolical temptations of the f lesh that he painted and lived, not excluding what was commonly known as ‘the monastic vice’”23 —a revealing euphemism for sodomy. The artist gives freest play to erotic signifiers in the scene of St. Benedict welcoming two disciples, Saints Maurus and Placidus, amid the wealthy youths’ retinue and onlookers24 (Figure 10.3). While the disciples are modestly clothed and posed, both the epicene youth on the center axis and the African groom at right are shown da tergo, Italian for a rear view that spotlights the buttocks. The central youth and his mirror image at far left are boyish androgynes, embodying the predominant pattern of pederasty, in which mature men sought stillfeminine adolescents for anal intercourse. Thus, some viewers, at least, would have appreciated the erotic implications of the motif.25Gianantonio Bazzi, called “Il Sodoma”Sodoma, Monteoliveto, St. Benedict welcomes Sts. Maurus and Placidus, fresco, 1505–8.Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.Reinforcing this erotic interpretation, the two youthful onlookers at center and left also sport versions of Sodoma’s own elaborate clothing, as does the groom to the right of center. They f launt the styles associated with homosexual seduction: tight multicolored stockings, long hair, and extravagant fringes, hats, and colors.26 Such clothing had long been associated with sodomites; Alainof Lille’s De planctu naturae (ca. 1160) lamented that these men “over-feminise themselves with womanish adornments.”27 San Bernardino da Siena inveighed against parents who let their sons wear short doublets and “stockings with a little piece in front and one in back, so that they show a lot of f lesh for the sodomites,” resulting in such an appealing adolescent always “having the sodomite on his tail.”28 These suggestive details may have been projections of Sodoma’s erotic mindset, but it is highly likely that they resonated with some of the monks who were his primary audience. Shifting our focus from the artist, we should also examine the mental world of his viewers. Reception theory or spectator theory asks not what did the artist put into the work, but, rather, what did the audience take out of it? What interests, beliefs, or habits of seeing did his audience have, and how did that subject-position influence their reading of his messages? As Adrian Randolph observed regarding the reception of Donatello’s homoerotic bronze David, an artwork can function as “a receptacle for the beholder’s imaginative concerns.” His and other studies have explored how reception of religious art was determined by the viewers’ gender, particularly in convents, where nuns often specified subjects relevant to their experience; these insights can be extended to male religious and to sexuality as well as gender.29 Sodoma’s audience here was exclusively male clergy, proverbially stereotyped as sodomitical.30 Temptations were exacerbated by the enforced closeness of clerical living arrangements: several scenes depicting Benedict and his monks highlight their day-to-day intimacies both emotional and physical.31 To head off such dangers, the rules of the order specified that no brother is permitted to enter the cell of another without permission of the abbot or a prior; if this is permitted, they may not remain together in the cell with the door closed. And no monk may touch another in any way . . . A light was to burn all night in the dormitory area and latrine, presumably to prevent secret trysts under cover of darkness.32 Such precautions were not entirely effective, as a few visual examples attest. A near-contemporary satirical painted plate depicts a monk pointing to a youth’s bare bottom; the caption explains, “I am a monk, I act like a rabbit” (Figure 10.4)—then, as now, a symbol of tireless sexuality, particularly homosexuality.33 A Flemish print depicts a 1559 event in Bruges in which three monks were burned at the stake for “sodomitical godlessness.”34 These starkly contrasting examples dramatize the contradictory culture within the religious world: male–male sex was acknowledged, though officially taboo and sometimes severely punished, yet often tolerated and even laughed about. Outside monastery walls, free from Church proscriptions, Sodoma found more overt opportunities to celebrate such love. Majolica plate, attributed to Master C.I., ca. 1510–20. Musée national de la Renaissance, Écouen, France.Photo credit: ©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.Secular subjects Sodoma illustrated secular subjects for private patrons and domestic settings. His most career-boosting painting depicted the Roman heroine Lucretia, whose suicide to preserve family honor after she was raped symbolized the ideal of married women’s honorable chastity; gifted to Pope Leo X, it earned the artist a papal knighthood.35 When the opportunity arose, however, as with sacred images, hepaid unusual attention to the homoerotic elements of myth and history, which offered explicit exemplars of male devotion and passion. And the audience for his best-known classical project, a fresco cycle for the papal banker Agostino Chigi, was the sophisticated, libertine Roman society who were as likely to share his sexual interests and habits of spectatorship as were the monks at Monteoliveto.36 In 1516–17, Chigi commissioned Sodoma to decorate the bedroom of his villa, now called the Farnesina. The wealthy financier’s love nest, shared with his mistress Francesca Ordeaschi, offers a revealing microcosm of the hedonistic, tolerant atmosphere of High Renaissance Rome, where even popes had mistresses and bastards, and humanist classical culture provided justification for libertine bisexuality all’antica.37 Numerous rooms were painted with erotic myths both heterosexual and homosexual.38 Given Chigi’s personality and interests, Sodoma was a sympathetic addition to his creative team. Although Sodoma married in 1510, his nickname was public knowledge by 1513, when he registered as “Sodoma” in a list of racehorse owners, and two years later had the heralds call that name. After describing our artist’s clothes, manners, and mocking spirit, including the racing incident, Vasari reports that “in [these] things Agostino, who liked the man’s humour, found the greatest amusement in the world.” The appreciative patron requested episodes from the life of Alexander the Great, historically implied as bisexual.39 The principal scene recreates a lost Greek painting of Alexander’s marriage to Roxana, known through an ancient ekphrasis—a classicizing tribute to Chigi and his beloved40 (Figure 10.5). The emperor proffers a marriage crown to the princess, while putti cavort in playful eroticism. To the right stand two idealized men: nude Hymen, god of marriage, and torch-bearing Hephaestion, Alexander’s intimate companion and, in some accounts, lover. Both figures are based on a well-known Greek statue, the Apollo Belvedere, depicting the most vigorously bisexual of the gods.41 While principally a heterosexual scene, then, the picture’s sub-theme is nude male beauty and the passion Hephaestion represents. Sodoma’s audience was predisposed to appreciate this story’s erotic duality. Many patrons and viewers had bisexual or homosexual desires; an anecdote in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (ca. 1514) reports that “Rome has as many sodomites as the meadows have lambs.” The erotic tone among these clerics, aristocrats, artists, and writers was light-hearted; while sodomy was outlawed, enforcement was spotty and penalties light.42 Eyewitness testimony for “queer visuality” at the Farnesina comes from raunchy bisexual author Pietro Aretino, who spent time there while Sodoma was painting. Aretino recorded an ancient statue of a satyr chasing a boy, an explicit complement to the loftier male love in Sodoma’s fresco. He wrote to Sodoma twenty-five years later, expressing nostalgia for their shared youth, and wishing that “we were embracing each other now with that warm feeling of love with which we used to embrace when we were enjoying Agostino Chigi’s home so much.”43 One glimpses the atmosphere of an affectionately demonstrative, pansexual pleasure-palace. Like the life it looked out upon, Sodoma’s picture is a mélange of sexualities, with intimacy between men given “equal time.”FIGURE 10.5 Sodoma, The Marriage of Alexander and Roxana, Villa Farnesina, Rome, fresco, 1517–19.Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.Further evidence for the casual attitude toward homosexuality—Sodoma’s in particular—is a set of epigrammatic couplets published in 1517 by Eurialo d’Ascoli, a poet in the circles around Chigi, Aretino, and Leo X, bluntly informing his readers that “Sodoma is a pederast.” The poem celebrates Sodoma’s painting of Lucretia, which earned his knighthood; only the final verses turn comic. Having praised the artist for verisimilitude that brings Lucretia back from the dead, Eurialo imagines her interpreting this miracle as an opportunity to convert the artist sexually. The narrator then asks her his own facetious question, implying that as a sodomite the artist would not normally be inspired by female subjects: Now beautiful Venus grants me the nourishment of light breezes [i.e., earthly life], So that I can reclaim you, Sodoma, from tender youths. Sodoma is a pederast; why then, Lucretia, did he make you So lifelike? He has our buttocks instead of Ganymede. Nunc mihi pulchra Venus tenui dat vescier aura, Ut revocem a teneris, Sodoma, te pueris. Sodoma paedico est; cur te Lucretia vivam Fecit? Habet nostras pro Ganimede nates.44Sodoma’s knighthood was cited by whitewashing early scholars as proof that the artist could not have been homosexual, since such sins would have disqualified him from religious honors.45 But here we see again how casually this milieu treated sexual transgressions. The fabulously wealthy Chigi married Ordeaschi in 1519, and Leo X—himself a reputed sodomite who, Vasari records, “took pleasure in eccentric and light-hearted figures of fun such as [Sodoma] was”— legitimized their four children.46 Worldly success was hardly evidence against impropriety. Eurialo’s couplets recall Vasari’s statement about Sodoma’s nickname that “he used to glory [in it], writing about it songs and verses in terza rima, and singing them to the lute.” As with clothing, Sodoma was participating in another cultural tradition that linked artists, writers, and readers of non-normative sexuality in a web of self-expression. Bawdy burlesque poetry treated all sexuality with lighthearted comedy; Sodoma’s texts have not survived, but we can garner some sense of their contents and tone from verses by contemporaries. What Deborah Parker labels “a poetry of transgression,” full of sexual innuendo and whimsical exaggeration, circulated in manuscript, public readings, and print.47 The father of burlesque poetry, Francesco Berni, was banished from Rome in 1523 for too openly mourning a young male lover.48 The genre became popular among visual artists eager to establish their intellectual credentials through writing, including such homosexuals or bisexuals as Michelangelo, Bronzino, and Cellini.49 Sodoma’s personality chimed perfectly with the genre’s subversive insolence. Bronzino’s capitolo “In Praise of the Galleys,” for example, unashamedly eroticizes the all-male world of oarsmen on ships, muscular and sweaty males confined in close quarters where sex among themselves was the only outlet: here “boiled and roasted meats are hardly ever mixed,” a common metaphor for vaginal (wet) versus anal (dry) sex. Berni, expanding on the trope that priests are sodomites, declares that their example is infecting monks, using a fruity symbol for boys’ buttocks: Peaches were for a long time food for prelates, But since everyone likes a good meal, Even friars, who fast and pray, Crave for peaches today. Le pesche eran già cibo da prelati, Ma, perché ad ognun piace i buon bocconi, Voglion oggi le pesche insin ai frati, Che fanno l’astinenzie e l’orazioni.50 The sardonic, guilt-free humor of such texts suggests, as Domenico Zanrè describes, “a marginal undercurrent operating within an official cultural environment,” and demonstrates that “certain individuals were able to produce alternative literary responses within a dominant . . . milieu that attempted to contain and, insome cases, exclude them.”51 An incident around 1530 corroborates Sodoma’s own refusal to accept derogatory comments from authority: when a Spanish soldier insulted him, the artist got revenge by drawing his portrait and identifying him to his superiors.52 San Bernardino was furious precisely because so many sodomites seemed unrepentant and unafraid of divine judgment. What enraged him and Vasari was not these men’s behavior alone, but the quality Italians call faccia tosta—“cheek” or “a big mouth”—refusal to give even lip service to official mores.53 The burlesque mode evinces the first buds of an oppositional response to social disapproval: a selfaware articulation of outsider status, and an emerging rebellion against social convention that opened a space, however narrow, for asserting alternative consciousness and self-affirming values.54 Greco-Roman texts and images served Sodoma, like other homosexual artists and patrons from Michelangelo to Caravaggio, as validation for their all’antica desires and pretexts for visualizing male beauty and eros.55 Within educated elites, a tolerant, classically inspired hedonism held its own against legal and clerical taboos until late in Sodoma’s lifetime, when the Council of Trent began its anticlassical reform (1545). In this libertine culture, an artist widely known for sexual nonconformity was able to smilingly adopt a derogatory nickname as a public identity and even f launt his sexual interests in word and image, with little harm to his string of major commissions and honors.Later religious works Sodoma’s late commissions were predominantly religious. As at Monteoliveto, these images emphasize the erotic appeal of figures who are nominally not sexual: saints, angels, and soldiers. Whereas at the monastery it was possible to analyze the reactions of a specific clerical audience, commissions for more public locations could be viewed by the whole cross-section of society, some proportion of which, as outlined earlier, would have understood and welcomed homoerotic allusion. As Patricia Simons has explained, “Renaissance imagery might appear to condemn non-normative sex . . ., but it was possible for viewers to take works in other, imaginative directions.”56 Sodoma’s best-known work, depicting Saint Sebastian (1525), epitomizes his typical traits: androgynous classicizing male beauty, emotional pathos and sensuous chiaroscuro (Figure 10.6).57 Iconographically, it offers a prime example of his sensitive antennae for elements of religious narrative with specialized appeal. Sebastian was a Roman soldier who refused to renounce Christianity, for which Emperor Diocletian, despite their intimate personal relationship, ordered him shot by archers. Saint Ambrose’s hagiography establishes their strong emotional bond, open to erotic interpretation: he notes that Sebastian was “greatly loved” by Diocletian and his co-emperor Maximian (intantum carus erat Imperitoribus).58 Sodoma paints a virtually nude, Apollo-like Sebastian with blood trickling from several wounds. He looks longingly at the angel bringing a martyr’s crown—his reward for loving sacrifice to God—with an expression that could Sodoma, Saint Sebastian, processional banner, Pitti Palace, Florence,1525. Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.equally connote divine or earthly ecstasy. While his bond with the emperor offered a secular hint at Sebastian’s sexual inclinations, the implied passion between Sebastian and the godhead is a more important, and universal, emotional dynamic, with a profound yet ambivalent homoerotic subtext. For all Christians, intense, loving union with Christ was the ultimate spiritual goal; for men, however, exhortation to the symbolically feminine ideal of passive, ecstatic submission to another male raised the specter of sodomy. The phallic arrows piercing Sebastian evoke sexual penetration, a symbol of the saint’s necessary, but problematic, feminization;59 they also recall Cupid’s love-inducing shafts, multiplying the signals for an erotic response. Cinquecento image-makers were expected to encourage such a passionate response because, as Simons observes in relation to Christ, for Sebastian too “the visualization of supreme beauty was necessary in order to induce reverence.”60 Theoretically, religious images could function on these two levels simultaneously, without contradiction: the lure of physical beauty would hopefully lead the viewer to a higher spiritual adoration. In practice, however, it was difficult to police the borders between earthly and heavenly passion. We know that Sebastian’s beauty was experienced as problematically titillating by at least one sex: the Florentine artist-monk Fra Bartolommeo painted a nude image of the saint so appealing that female parishioners admitted in confession that it stimulated carnal thoughts, after which it was taken down.61 It was just such temptations that the Council of Trent acknowledged when it set out to purge church imagery of eroticism. So, it is not difficult to imagine that men, as well as women, were attracted to Sodoma’s provocative Sebastian in the physical sense.62 The “seeming contradictions of deliberately evoking erotic desire in religious painting” have been parsed by Jill Burke, who sees in this practice “a deep and knowing ambivalence toward sexuality” that signals “a huge variance between official rhetoric and widely accepted practice.”63 By including formal and iconographic cues to a homoerotic response, Sodoma could appeal to men who, like himself, experienced love and desire in male terms. Like extravagant dress and burlesque poetry, pictorial ambiguity opened another narrow cultural space for expressing alternative sexuality.Historiography: a modest proposal This essay has aimed to demonstrate three propositions: that Sodoma was known for, and acknowledged, desire for men; that his work evinces a distinctive mode of seeing and representing that expresses that erotic inclination; and that contemporaneous audiences would have appreciated that sensibility. As Ruggiero asserts, It is no longer possible to ignore the general shared culture of the erotic and its omnipresence in daily exchange, nor is it possible to overlook the particular subcultures that coexisted at the time and that were such a central part of daily life.64Without claiming anachronistically that this evidence establishes anything so coherent and exclusive as a modern “gay identity,” I submit that these emerging networks and customs, alongside visual and literary production on homosexual themes, constitute early shoots of an alternative sexual consciousness that would reach critical mass only during the Enlightenment. I accept the historiographic formulation of the Renaissance as “early modern,” which stresses continuities from that culture into the modern era, presupposing a model of cultural change that is gradual and evolutionary rather than abrupt and discontinuous. To quote Reed again, “If modern ideas of sexual identity and artistic self-expression cannot be simply mapped onto the Renaissance . . . it is nevertheless true that these notions have Renaissance roots.”65 However, to seek the “roots” of anything “modern” in anything “past” has become problematic since the advent of postmodern theory. There are now, as Reed observes, “wildly varying interpretations of Renaissance art’s relationship to homosexuality”66 —more broadly, of relationships among desire, behavior, identity, and self-expression. To social constructionists, the search for glimmers of an alternative, proto-modern awareness in Sodoma’s ambiente is misguided. There can be no transhistorical connections between sexual actors in different periods, because sexual identity is not innate or fixed; rather, it is created through social discourses that define and control sexuality, an unstable product of external forces acting on the passive individual. There were no homosexual persons, only homosexual acts. Puff ’s formulation: “Sodomy was not thought of as a lifelong orientation, let alone a social identity,” is echoed by Reed’s: “[S]exual behavior in Renaissance Italy was not seen as a basis for individual identity.”67 This school coined the term “essentialist” to disparage earlier researchers who, from Symonds to John Boswell, saw sufficient commonality with those in earlier times who desired other men to justify searching the Middle Ages and Renaissance for branches of a sexual family tree dating back before 1867 (when “homosexual” was coined). Without accepting all the methodological baggage identified with an often over-simplified “essentialism,” one can still maintain that someone calling himself “Mr. Sodomite” seems a prime excavation site for evidence of such genealogical links, since his name rendered his erotic proclivity a “lifelong social identity.” Like a genetic mutation that may crop up in random individuals, and only gradually spread across a species’ gene pool, Sodoma constituted an irruption of anomalous possibilities that, while not yet fully articulated, began to diffuse new forms of sexual identity and self-expression that increased over the next several centuries. These methodological disagreements center on two questions: one external and sociological, the cultural categorization of homosexual behavior; the other internal and psychological, the conscious experience of individuals who desired other men and their degree of agency within a hostile official discourse. There was clearly a dominant conceptual structure of canon and civil law that confined homosexuality to taboo acts that might potentially tempt anyone, within whichour modern notion of inherent sexual “orientations” was not officially recognized. Just as clearly, however, no culture is monolithic, and a complex of alternatives operated alongside these formal structures. As we have seen, the elements of this quasi-underworld were in place by the sixteenth century: meeting places, distinctive behaviors, and cultural expressions.68 As Ruggiero has outlined, such “illicit worlds had their own coherent discourse,”69 which viewed male–male sexuality as an amusing peccadillo; suggested that some individuals were drawn to it by distinctive character traits; and expressed awareness of (and resistance to) the gap between official values and their own experience. The solution to this impasse lies in moving beyond an “either–or” cultural analysis to a “both–and” approach. Instead of setting arbitrarily precise boundaries to ever-shifting conceptions of sexuality, it would more accurately ref lect Sodoma’s transitional environment to acknowledge the temporal overlapping of contrasting systems of thought and behavior, and to explore the realities of those who negotiated the dialectic between them. Two tendencies in current scholarship, however, militate against such open-ended rapprochement. The first is reluctance to accept evidence for alternative sexual consciousness; the second is ascribing to cultural discourses an unrealistic power over against embodied experience. What follows is part summary, part personal statement: a roadmap out of an increasingly pointless stalemate, and a brief for greater attention to the lived experience of men-who-had-sex-with-men and its genealogical links to later generations. Two principal examples of the discord over what “counts” as evidence of sexual desire and identity are the tendency to downplay or deny evidence for Sodoma’s sexuality, and the disregard of alternative language imputing distinct personality to sodomites. First, the present examination of how Sodoma expressed his homoerotic desires depends on establishing that his nickname was in fact a marker of his sexuality, which raises the question: how reliable is Vasari? Unfortunately, as Paul Barolsky notes, “How we read Vasari depends on our sensibility and taste. We all ride our own hobbyhorses.” 70 Since the Victorians, homophobic scholars have attempted to discredit Vasari and defend a respected Old Master against any implication of immorality in “his evil-sounding sobriquet.” 71 Efforts to give it a non-sexual meaning are highly speculative: Enzo Carli supposes the nickname was simply Bazzi’s own little joke, “with which . . . he loved to glorify himself facetiously,” but it strains credibility that a heterosexual man would consider a false claim of deviancy “glorifying.” 72 When such dismissals are echoed by queer-studies scholars, the hobby-horse is epistemological caution rather than morality, but the effect is the same: to erase facets of queer history that conf lict with a higher belief—that homosexuality did not (yet) exist.73 We do have to read Vasari cautiously: despite the author’s claims, Sodoma’s wife never left him, nor did he die poor.74 Because few details in Vasari’s psychological profile are confirmed by other sources, postmodern skepticism insists that any statement not independently documented is probably false. But Vasariis generally most informed about artists close to his own time, many of his artistic facts are documentable, and details in the Vite of Sodoma and Beccafumi indicate that he visited Siena, saw artworks, and interviewed informed sources. Moreover, his characterization of Sodoma as capricious, insolent, and sodomitical is corroborated by three period sources: Eurialo d’Ascoli’s couplets, Paolo Giovio’s life of Raphael (“a perverse and unstable mind bordering on madness”), and Armenini’s account of Sodoma’s revenge for an insult.75 Thus, this essay has followed a less restrictive approach, accepting any statement that is not contradicted by external sources as possible and perhaps likely. All historical reconstructions involve judgments of probabilities; giving one’s sources “the benefit of the doubt” can make up for any loss of positivistic certainty with gains in breadth, depth, and detail. Secondly, there is linguistic evidence that particular psychological traits were becoming attached to habitual sodomites; but this suggestive vocabulary is often brushed aside to “save the phenomenon” of an episteme of acts, not personalities. I agree with Simons that “both categorical approaches are problematic.” A more subtle, inclusive view is adumbrated by Robert Mills, who demonstrates that the juridical focus on potentially universal acts was in tension with moral, Church perspectives which also sought to make an identity of the sodomite . . . by characterizing sodomy as a more enduring kind of practice, a vice for which one had a particular disposition, tendency or taste. . . . [S]uch perspectives developed unevenly, over long periods of time, [but there are] signs that some medieval thinkers . . . wished to pin the sin down to particular bodies and selves.76 Examples of how “Sodoma” might thus denote an individual with an inborn sexual preference include one of Matteo Bandello’s humorous tales (novelle), ca. 1540, in which the dying Porcellio, pressed by his confessor to admit that he performed acts “against nature,” claims to misunderstand the question because, he says, “to divert myself with boys is more natural to me than eating and drinking.” 77 Similarly, Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio della bestia triunfante (1584) praises Socrates for resisting “la sua natural inclinatione al sporco amor di gargioni” (his natural inclination toward the filthy love of boys).78 Dall’Orto has surveyed numerous Renaissance Italian terms for those who commit homosexual acts, notably inclinazione, which implies “leaning” in a particular direction.79 Similar spadework for the French cognate inclination has been performed by Domna Stanton, while numerous other French and English tropes, such as “masculine love,” have been catalogued by Joseph Cady.80 Language was clearly emerging at this point articulating distinctive traits among those drawn to sodomy: not yet an “identity” in the modern sense, but a critical shift toward notions of internal difference. If postmodernism underplays evidence of sexual self-awareness, it conversely overestimates the power of discourse, unduly minimizing individual agencyand the imperatives of the embodied self. The ability of collective discourse to enforce social norms is never absolute. It engages in perpetual dialectic with the potentially anarchic desires of society’s diverse individual members, a situation in which “lived eroticism did not always conform to the rules of social hierarchy,”81 from Romeo and Juliet to Sodoma and his apprentices. This ineluctable tension arises because discourse is inculcated into the mind, whereas sexual desire is grounded in parts of the biological organism less susceptible to rational suasion. Embodied experience is transhistorical: lust, like hunger, pre-exists cultural conditioning, and “the recalcitrant realities of human conduct”82 are insistent enough when unsatisfied to overcome any social convention. This essay has marshalled evidence that Sodoma, and his contemporaries with similar inclinations, felt a dissonance between their desires and the dictates of society, and they possessed sufficient agency to imagine alternative values—what Walter Pater viewed as a signal Renaissance development, a “liberty of the heart” that enabled nonconformists to move “beyond the prescribed limits of that system.”83 Individual bodies are not mere passive receptacles for an overpowering discourse “poured into” them, but are capable of awareness of that effort at marginalization, and of active resistance. The ultimate question lying behind such methodological differences is: why do we do queer history? Here again, divergent answers ride different hobbyhorses: postmodernists focus on epistemology, while those open to historical continuity are more interested in phenomenology. The former philosophize, “How and what can we know about Renaissance sexuality?” answering that we can comprehend little about a shifting discourse in which “sexuality” did not exist; the latter psychoanalyze, “How did it feel for sexual outsiders to negotiate this social regime?,” and seek clues in intimations of difference in life, language, and art. While the former stress chronological discontinuity, the latter seek a “usable past,” a narrative that produces affinities and resonances across time. The latter project is inherently political: as George Chauncey characterizes emerging queer studies in the late nineteenth century, claiming certain historical figures was important to gay men not only because it validated their own homosexuality, but because it linked them to others. . . . This was a central purpose of the project of gay historical reclamation.  .  . . By constructing historical traditions of their own, gay men defined themselves as a distinct community.84 Put another way, this school, and this essay, seek to recover evidence of homosexual desire and expression—however fragmentary, ambiguous, and carefully historicized—to counter centuries of suppression, and it seems ironic when social constructionism abets the same historical erasure. A final image, recently attributed to Sodoma, provides an enigmatic but tantalizing coda to this discussion85 (Figure 10.7). His hair garlanded with leaves, beard and brows untamed, “Allegorical Man” leers like a satyr while his rightJames M. SaslowFIGURE 10.7Sodoma (attributed), Allegorical Man, ca. 1547–8, oil, Accademia Carrara,Bergamo. Photo credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Art Resource, NY.hand makes the contemptuous gesture of “the fig,” an insult that, since Martial’s Epigrams (2:28), can imply that the receiver is a sodomite. The picture’s precise iconography remains unexplored; Radini Tedeschi suggests the gesture alludes to Sodoma’s nickname, and the picture may thus be a final self-portrait, literally or symbolically. If so, it contrasts poignantly with the artist’s first self-portraitforty years earlier ( Figure 10.2). Once young and beardless, his foppishness a silent assertion of nonconformity, he has aged to a still elaborately costumed but more overtly defiant graybeard, telling the world in gesture what his burlesque poems expressed in words: I am what I am, I’ve survived your derision, and I still don’t care what you think. Admittedly, this interpretation remains speculative, but it would effectively bookend the scenario of Sodoma’s life and work presented here. Our ability to entertain such a hypothesis depends, however, on more than attribution and iconography. The potential to recover the self-expression of creative Renaissance sodomites also requires a polyvalent openness to a range of both personal and cultural evidence and interpretive methods. Hearteningly, many seminal postmodern theorists are more accepting of multiplicity than their acolytes. Foucault praised Boswell’s conception of “gay,” while Carla Freccero deploys Foucault’s own theoretics against his discontinuity between early modern and modern sexuality. She approvingly cites David Halperin’s suggestion that we supplement rigidly compartmentalized ideas of identity with concepts of “partial identity, emerging identity, transient identity, semi-identity . . .,” the better to “indicate the multiplicity of possible historical connections between sex and identity.”86 Murray reassures us that “the alternative to intellectual conformity is not a lack of coherence but rather a series of interwoven, complementary . . . approaches.”87 Perhaps the most balanced and inspiring methodological f lag has been raised by Valerie Traub, who recalls that, while seeking traces of early modern same-sex eros, she assumed “neither that we will find in the past a mirror image of ourselves nor that the past is so utterly alien that we will find nothing usable in its fragmentary traces.”88 I have sought in Sodoma not a mirror-image, but a family resemblance. He is “usable” as our ancestor: someone with whom we share an identifiable lineage of desire and self-expression, in whose uniquely chronicled creative life we can recapture the origins of an increasingly prominent familial trait.Notes1 2 3 4 5This essay grew from a paper delivered at a 2007 conference at University of Toronto organized by Konrad Eisenbichler. Thanks to Patricia Simons for her constructive suggestions. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 380; Vasari, Lives, 7: 246. Vasari repeats these accusations in his Vita of Domenico Beccafumi, ed. Milanesi, 5: 634–35. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 382; Vasari, Lives, 7: 247. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 381; Vasari, Lives, 7: 246. Vasari, Le vite, 6: 389–90; Vasari, Lives, 7: 251, records the old men’s protest; for documents for the 1513 and 1515 races, see 6: 389 n. 3, 390 n. 1; Bartalini and Zombardo, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 44–45, nos. 15–19. A note on terminology: I use “homosexual” throughout in the narrow descriptive sense, to refer to sexual desire or behavior between persons of the same sex. Although modern audiences read “homosexual” with broader connotations of psychology and identity, here it is only shorthand for “male–male sex.” In modern typology, Sodoma would be considered bisexual, since he was also married and a father.6 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 379; Vasari, Lives, 7: 245. The artist did not die destitute or insane: see below, n. 74. 7 Fisher, “A Hundred Years,” 13–39, outlines the activist project of research into Renaissance homosexuality since the nineteenth century. 8 For an overview of this position, see Grantham Turner, “Introduction,” 8, n. 3. 9 Reed, Art and Homosexuality, 54–55. 10 Bartalini, “Sodoma.” 11 The standard English monograph remains Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi; for Monteoliveto see 93, cat. no. 4. See further on the abbey Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 138–47; Batistini, Il Sodoma; documents in Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 15–31, no. 7. 12 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 93, no. 4.8; Batistini, Il Sodoma, no. 8. The incident is recorded by Gregory the Great, Life of St. Benedict, chap. 2. 13 Only a few illustrations of this subject are known: both a fresco by Spinello Aretino (San Miniato, Florence) ca. 1387 and a panel by Ambrogio di Stefano Bergognone, ca. 1490, show a pale, unidealized body among prominent briars. A sexual reading of the series is supported by Kiely, Blessed and Beautiful, chap. 7, “Sodoma’s St. Benedict: Out in the Cloister.” 14 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 383; Vasari, Lives, 7: 248, for the quote and cloak. The gift, along with other payments of fabrics and clothing, is transcribed by Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 18–19, 266. See also Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 78–80. 15 Rocke, “The Ambivalence,” 57. 16 Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 3–6; his book provides extensive data and analysis of fifteenth-century Florence. On sodomy elsewhere, see Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros; Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, chap. 9; Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons. For a Europe-wide perspective, see Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, chaps. 10–12; Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 79–102. 17 Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 112, 134. 18 Simons, “The Sex of Artists,” 81. 19 Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 163; Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 262–69. 20 Puff, “The Sodomite’s Clothes,” 251–72. 21 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, ed. Pietro Bargellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1936), 796–97, 898, cited and discussed in Dall’Orto, “La fenice,” 5, and n. 27 and n. 28. See also Rocke, “Sodomites.” 22 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 2–7. 23 Ladis, Victims, 109. 24 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 94, no. 12. 25 On anal sex as social practice and artistic motif, see Saslow, Ganymede, chaps. 2–3; Rubin, “‘Che è di questo culazzino!’”; Grantham Turner, Eros Visible, 274–99. Sodoma’s Deposition, ca. 1510, similarly spotlights the rear view of a soldier: Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 117, no. 7. Other artists emphasized rear views, often motivated by the formalintellectual challenge of the paragone: Summers, “‘Figure come fratelli.’” When we have evidence of an artist’s sexual proclivities, as with Sodoma, it is reasonable to explore whether he imbued the motif with personal erotic interest; lacking such evidence, however, we cannot know which other artists might have done the same. Regardless of artistic intent, similar stimuli would invite similar audience responses. 26 Similar figures appear in scenes no. 1, 30, and 36 as catalogued by Batistini (Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 93–4, nos. 1, 20, 26). 27 Alain of Lille, The Plaint of Nature, trans. James Sheridan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1980), 187, cited in Puff, “The Sodomite’s Clothes,” 260. 28 Bernardino, as quoted by Rocke, “Sodomites,” 12, 15; cited in Simons, The Sex of Men, 99. 29 Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 151, chap. 4. For nuns, see Hayum, “A Renaissance Audience”; for both sexes, Hiller, Gendered Perceptions. 30 On the prevalence of clerical sodomy see Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance; Mills, Seeing Sodomy, chap. 4; Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 136–37. See also Parker, Bronzino, 37: “burlesque poets tended to present clerics as sodomites.”31 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 93–94, nos. 4.13, 4.14, 4.21; Batistini, Il Sodoma, nos. 13, 14, 31 (illns. 59, 60, 68). 32 The regulations are in the monastery’s fourteenth- and fifteenth-century chronicle: Regardez le rocher, 182–83, 418–19 (my translation). 33 Illustrated and discussed in Saslow, Pictures and Passions, 103–04. 34 Frans Hogenberg, Execution for Sodomitical Godlessness in Bruges, 1578; illustrated in Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 327. 35 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 387; Vasari, Lives, 7: 250. 36 On the city’s licentious paganism, see Bartalini, Le occasioni, 39–86. 37 Rowland, "Render unto Caesar.” 38 Other homoerotic images are in the Sala di Psiche, where Ganymede appears twice, and one spandrel depicts Jupiter kissing Cupid; Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance, 135–40; Turner, Eros Visible, 109–33. 39 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 384–88; Vasari, Lives, 7: 248–50. Alexander and Hephaestion’s love is alluded to by Aelian, Various History, 12: 7, and other ancient authors. 40 Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 164–77, no. 20; Bartalini, Le occasioni, 78–81; Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 193–94, no. 56. 41 On Sodoma’s use of classical sources and gender ambiguity see Smith, “Queer Fragments.” 42 Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, book 2, chap. 61. On the sexual tone in Rome, see Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 269–90; Talvacchia, Taking Positions. Leo X’s Rome also associated sartorial effeminacy with homosexuality: pasquinades mocked Cardinal Ercole Rangone and sodomite friends for “going around disguised as nymphs”: Burke, “Sex and Spirituality,” 491. 43 Aretino, Lettere sull’arte, vol. 1, no. 68 (1537), vol. 2, no. 244 (1545); Aretino, The Letters, 123–25, no. 58. Other sources record a sculpted Antinous, Hadrian’s lover: Bartalini, Le occasioni, 73–75. 44 d’Ascoli, Epigrammatum, 11v–12r; Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 64–67, no. 29; Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 71–72. 45 Ibid., 23. 46 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 386–88; Vasari, Lives, 7: 250. On Leo’s sodomitical reputation see Giovio’s biography, in Le vite di dicenove, 141v–142v. 47 Parker, Bronzino, chap. 1; Parker, “Towards;” Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 3–5; Tonozzi, “Queering Francesco”; Zanrè, Cultural Non-conformity, chap. 3. 48 Tonozzi, “Queering Francesco,” 589–91. 49 On these artist-authors see Parker, Bronzino; The Poetry of Michelangelo; Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini. 50 Fisher, “Peaches and Figs,” 158–59. 51 Zanrè, Cultural Non-conformity, 1-2. 52 Armenini, De’ veri precetti, 42–43; Vasari, Le vite, 6: 393; Bartalini, Le occasioni, 17. 53 Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,” 71-72, quoting Bernardino, in Le prediche volgari, ed. C. Cannarozzi (Pistoia: Pacinotti, 1934), 277. A document dated 1531, purportedly Sodoma’s tax declaration, is even more insolent, signed with a sexual vulgarity; Bartalini and Zombardo, Fonti, 131–33, 281–92. While now considered a seventeenth-century forgery, it demonstrates that a “legend” about Sodoma’s sexual brazenness persisted after his death. 54 See Milner, “Introduction.” 55 Sodoma depicted anther homoerotic myth distinctively: his Fall of Phaeton is almost unique in including Phaeton’s cousin Cycnus, with whom literary sources imply a loving relationship (Hayum, 135, no. 12). Suggestively, the only other artist to include Cycnus was Michelangelo. 56 Simons, “European Art,” 135. 57 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 390; Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 191, no. 24; Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, Acta sanctorum, 2: 629, 20 Januarii; Jacopo da Voragine’s thirteenth-century Golden Legend repeats this phrase (s.v. “St. Sebastian”).59 On arrow symbolism, including homoerotic potential, see Cox-Rearick, “A ‘Saint Sebastian,’” 160–61. 60 Simons, “Homosociality,” 38. 61 Vasari, Vita of Fra Bartolommeo. For additional complaints about sexualized Sebastians, see Bohde, “Ein Heiliger,” 86, n. 18. 62 Sodoma’s later depictions of Sebastian evoke the same erotic subtext. In his Madonna and Child with Saints, ca. 1541–44 (Hayum, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 257, no. 43), Sebastian stares at Jesus, who toys with the saint’s arrow—a phallic detail seen in no other image. Similarly unique is Sodoma’s Resurrection, 1535 (Hayum, 235, no. 33) in depicting the angels as nude putti. 63 Burke, “Sex and Spirituality,” 488–92. 64 Ruggiero, “Introduction,” 2. 65 Reed, Art and Homosexuality, 43. 66 Ibid., 47. 67 Ibid., 43; Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 84–85. 68 On this alternative culture in various cities see Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 87; Ruggiero, “Marriage,” 23–26; Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,” 61–64, 79. 69 Ruggiero, “Marriage, Love,” 11. 70 Paul Barolsky, “Vasari’s Literary Artifice,” 121. 71 Cust, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 10. 72 Carli, Il Sodoma, 9–12; Carli, “Bazzi.” 73 See, e.g., Patricia Simons, “Sodoma, Il,” 286. 74 Vasari, Le vite, 6: 379, 398, citing contradicting documents, 399 n. 1. 75 On Eurialo see above, n. 44; Armenini, n. 52. On Giovio’s biographies see n. 46; for his comment on Sodoma (“praepostero instabilique iudicio usque ad insaniae affectationem”) see Bartalini and Zambrano, Fonti, 83–86, no. 35. 76 Simons, “Homosociality and Erotics,” 48, n. 4; Mills, “Acts, Orientations,” 205. 77 Bandello, Tutte le opera, ed. Flora, 1: 95, novella 6; Bandello, Tutte le opera, trans. Payne, 1: 94–8. 78 Bruno and Campanella, Opere, 321. 79 Dall’Orto, “La fenice di Sodoma,” 74–76; Dall’Orto, “‘Socratic Love,’” esp. 34–35, 46–50. 80 Stanton, “The Threat.” See further Stanton, ed., Discourses of Sexuality; the historiographic overview by Smith, “Premodern Sexualities”; Cady, “The ‘Masculine Love.’” 81 Puff, “Early Modern Europe,” 87. 82 Brundage, “Playing,” 23. 83 Pater, The Renaissance, 3–6, 18–19; Fisher, “A Hundred Years,” 19–23. 84 Chauncey, Gay New York, 285–86. 85 Radini Tedeschi, Sodoma, 257, no. 118. 86 O’Higgins, “Sexual Choice,” 10; Halperin is quoted and discussed in Freccero, Queer, 48. 87 Murray, “Introduction,” xiv. 88 Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002), 32.Bibliography Acta sanctorum. Brussels, 1863. Aretino, Pietro. Lettere sull’arte di Pietro Aretino. Edited by Ettore Camesasca, 3 vols. Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1957–60. ———. The Letters of Pietro Aretino. 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Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.Piccolomini’s Raffaella and Aretino’s Ragionamenti Ian Frederick MoultonIn 1539, Alessandro Piccolomini, a thirty-one-year-old Sienese nobleman living in Padua, published a short dialogue: La Raffaella, ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne [Raffaella, or a Dialogue on women’s good manners].1 Piccolomini’s dialogue, in which an older woman encourages a younger one to commit adultery, owes much to the example of Pietro Aretino’s scandalous Ragionamenti (1534, 1536),2 in which an experienced courtesan teaches her daughter how to become a prostitute. While the filial relationship between La Raffaella and the Ragionamenti has long been noted, the cultural and ideological significance of this relationship remains largely unexamined. Both texts imagine private female conversations: what do women talk about when no men can hear? The answer in both cases is men. Men and sex. (What else would men think that women talk about?) Both texts are male fantasies of female pedagogy and sexual knowledge, in which male authors adopt a voice of experienced femininity to articulate imagined feminine perspectives on sex, gender relations, and gender identity. In the Ragionamenti, the women’s conversations are scandalous, but also, at times, radical and transgressive, questioning fundamental norms of gendered behavior and exploring the role of power in gender relations.3 Despite Aretino’s ambivalent misogyny, the Ragionamenti imagine possibilities of female agency and power. Piccolomini’s Raffaella, on the other hand, merely encourages women to subvert one form of male authority in order to submit to another; it imagines freeing wives from their husbands the better to subordinate them to their male lovers. Piccolomini playfully suggests that this shift is doing women a favor because it acknowledges their need for sexual pleasure.4 His text takes the subversive energy of the Ragionamenti and turns it into a safe, sly joke. Women, it turns out, do not want autonomy: they want to submit to younger, sexier men. In La Raffaella, female agency is not a threat to male dominance—it simply rewards ardent male lovers over dreary husbands.The conversations of Aretino’s Ragionamenti take place over six days. An experienced courtesan named Nanna is discussing with a younger prostitute named Antonia what way of life would be best for her teenaged daughter Pippa—should she grow up to be a nun, a wife, or a whore? Nanna spends the first three days of the dialogue recounting her own experiences in each of these roles; at the end of the third day she and Antonia decide that Pippa should be a prostitute. They reason that while nuns break their vows and wives are unfaithful to their husbands, prostitutes (for all their faults) are not hypocritical—they are simply doing the necessary work they are paid to do.5 This ends the first volume. In the sequel, having decided Pippa’s future, Nanna and Antonia teach her the things she will need to know. On the fourth day, they instruct her how to be a successful courtesan; on the fifth, they discuss men’s cruelty to women; and on the sixth they listen while a midwife teaches a wetnurse how to make a living procuring women for sex with men. In all the discussions about prostitution, Nanna’s instruction focuses not on how to satisfy men but on how to manipulate them. The condition of a prostitute is inherently hazardous, and Nanna and Antonia teach Pippa how to survive and thrive in a world of gender warfare, where men are always seeking to exploit women, sexually, physically, socially, and financially. Throughout the Ragionamenti the text takes an ambivalent attitude to its speakers. On the one hand, Nanna and Antonia are monstrous women who embody a wide range of misogynist stereotypes. They are deceitful, amoral, gluttonous, greedy, garrulous, and fickle. On the other hand, they are cunning tricksters, who use their superior intellect to dupe those who try to exploit and manipulate them. Nanna is at once a shocking figure of feminine excess and an insightful satirist who bears more than a passing resemblance to Aretino’s own persona as an epicurean scourge of powerful hypocrites.6 The Ragionamenti contain shockingly explicit descriptions of a wide range of sexual activity, but almost all of these are in the early chapters of the text, in which nuns betray their vows in endless orgies and wives betray their elderly husbands to find satisfying sex elsewhere.7 The chapters on prostitution focus not on sexual pleasure or technique, but rather on how best to earn money and swindle clients. Aretino’s whores are not particularly interested in sexual pleasure—they want money, power, and status instead. And the best way to attain all three is by selling the promise of sexual availability while deferring sexual activity for as long as possible; the ideal relationship is one where a man is paying large amounts of money without ever actually managing to have sexual relations with the woman he is buying. As Nanna puts it, “lust is the least of all the desires [whores] have, because they are constantly thinking of ways and means to cut out men’s hearts and feelings.” (“La lussuria è la minor voglia che elle abbino, perché le son sempre in quel pensiero di far trarre altrui il core e la corata.”)8 Through a series of cunning tricks, deals, and lies, Nanna ends up living in luxury in a fashionable house protected by gangs of armed men whom she employs to remove unwanted suitors.9 She survives and thrives by manipulating male desire and profiting from male gullibility.Nanna’s worldly success is, of course, a fantasy that bears little relation to the actual living and working conditions of most early modern prostitutes,10 but the Ragionamenti admit this as well. Nanna knows she is not normative, and that her position remains precarious: “I must confess that for one Nanna who knows how to have her land bathed by the fructifying sun, there are thousands of whores who end their days in the poorhouse.” (“Ti confesso che, per una Nanna che si sappia porre dei campi al sole, ce ne sono mille che si muoiono nello spedale.”)11 On the sixth day, the Midwife agrees: “A whore’s life is comparable to a game of chance: for each person who benefits by it, there are a thousand who draw blanks.” (“E so che il puttanare non è traffico da ognuno; e percìo il viver suo è come un giuoco de la ventura, che per una che ne venga benefiziata, ce ne son mille de le bianche.”)12 Consequently, Nanna makes sure to spend a lot of time warning her daughter Pippa about the many ways that men can harm the women in their power. In contrast to Aretino’s earthy dialogue of whores, Piccolomini’s La Raffaella consists of an imagined discussion between two upper-class women: Raffaella, an elderly, impoverished, but well-born woman, and Margarita, a newly married wealthy young noblewoman. The tone of conversation in La Raffaella is certainly more polite and decorous than Nanna and Antonia’s profane and bawdy language in the Ragionamenti.13 Raffaella, a friend of Margarita’s late mother, presents herself as a pious widow, eager to help Margarita adjust to the challenges of being an adult woman and the mistress of a household. Throughout her talk of pass-times, cosmetics, deportment, and fashion, Raffaella advises Margarita to take full advantage of youthful pleasures; if a woman does not enjoy herself while she is young and beautiful, she is sure to become bitter in her old age: As for God, as I said earlier, it would be better, if it were possible, to never take any pleasure in the world, and to always fast and keep strict discipline. But, to escape even greater scandal, we must consent to the small errors that come with taking some pleasures in youth, which can be taken away later with holy water. . . . And moreover, in all this I’m telling you, presuppose that this little necessary sin will bring you much honor in the world, and that these pleasures that must be taken can be managed with such dexterity and intelligence that they will bring no shame from anyone. Quanto a Dio, già t’ho detto che sarebbe meglio, se si potesse fare, il non darsi mai un piacere al mondo, anzi starsi sempre in digiuni e disciplina. Ma, per fuggir maggior scandalo, bisogna consentir a questo poco di errore che è di pigliarsi qualche piacere in gioventù, che se ne va poi con l’acqua benedetta. . . . E però in tutto quello che io ti ragionerò presupponendo questo poco di peccato, per esser necessario, procurerò quanto piú sia possibile l’onore del mondo, e che quei piaceri che si hanno da pigliarsi sieno presi con tal destrezza e con tal ingegno, ch non si rimanga vituperato appresso de le genti.14Margarita’s husband is constantly away on business; she is bored and feels neglected. By the end of the dialogue, Raffaella has convinced Margarita to embark on an adulterous affair with a young man named messer Aspasio (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Piccolomini himself ).15 It becomes abundantly clear to the reader that convincing Margarita to sleep with messer Aspasio has been Raffaella’s goal all along. As the dialogue ends, Margarita looks forward eagerly to her planned affair, completely unaware of how she has been manipulated by the older woman. She exults, Having learned today through your words that a young woman needs, to avoid greater errors, to pour out her spirit in her youth, and having heard certainly from you the good words of messer Aspasio and the love he bears me, I am resolved to give all of myself to him for the rest of my life. And thus having pledged eternal fidelity to messer Aspasio—whom she has barely met—Margarita goes on to offer the impoverished Raffaella bread, cheese, and ham as a reward for her kindness.16 Given its subject matter, it is not surprising that some readers interpreted La Raffaella as an attack on women’s moral character: older women are presented as corrupt and amoral; younger women as hedonistic and naive. Women of all ages, it seems, are concerned primarily with deceiving men to obtain sexual pleasure. Beyond its general cynicism regarding female virtue, La Raffaella also gives precise and effective direction on ways to deceive one’s husband and to discreetly carry on long-term affairs. Raffaella warns Margarita against writing love letters—especially if her lover is married.17 She recommends that her lover be unmarried, if possible (messer Aspasio is a bachelor!).18 Raffaella tells Margarita she will need a trusted servant to communicate with her lover, and that she should choose that person with great care.19 She recommends a rope ladder for giving a lover access to private rooms without anyone in the household knowing.20 Raffaella encourages Margarita to take full advantage of the pleasures that wealth and leisure can bring, but she insists that all these pleasures are worthless without the final consummation of adulterous sex: What’s love worth without its end? It’s like an egg without salt, and worse. Holidays, dinners, banquets, masques, plays, gatherings at villas and a thousand other similar pleasures are icy and cold without love. And with love they are so pleasurable and so sweet that I don’t believe that one could ever grow old among them. In every person love inspires courtesy, nobility, elegance in dress, eloquence in speech, graceful gestures, and every other good thing. Without love, they are little esteemed, like lost and empty things. E amore poi che val, senza il suo fine? Quel ch’è l’uovo senza’l sale, e peggio. Le feste, i conviti, i banchetti, le mascere, le comedie, i ritruovi di villae mille altri cosí fatti solazzi senz’amore son freddi e ghiacci; e con esso son di tanta consolazione e cosí fatta dolcezza, ch’io non credo che fra loro si potesse invecchiar mai. Amor riforisce in altrui la cortesia, la gentilezza, il garbo di vestire, la eloquenza del parlare, i movimenti agraziati e ogni altra bella parte; e senza esso son poco apprezzate, quasi come cose perdute e vane.21 The “end” of love, which in Neoplatonic treatises was seen as a beatific transcendence of earthly desires, is here clearly redefined simply as sex.22 As a result of passages like this, La Raffaella was attacked both as an insult to women and as an instruction manual for adultery.23 That the text was explicitly dedicated by Piccolomini to “the women who will read it” (“A quelle donne che leggeranno”) only made matters worse.24 Piccolomini was destined from youth for an ecclesiastical career,25 and at the time he wrote La Raffaella he was starting to make a name for himself in Italian intellectual circles.26 He had published La Raffaella under his academic pseudonym, Stordito Intronato, but this did little to conceal his identity. Responding to criticism of the dialogue, Piccolomini disavowed La Raffaella almost immediately, writing in 1540 that the text was a “joke,” written only for his own amusement.27 Clearly, he felt that La Raffaella’s scandalous reputation was not suitable for his public image and future aspirations. Unlike Aretino, who published the Ragionamenti in two installments, Piccolomini not only never published a sequel to La Raffaella, he never wrote anything like it again.28 In his retractions, Piccolomini insisted that he had meant no insult to women in La Raffaella, and compared his work to the licentious novelle in Boccaccio’s Decameron, intended to give “a certain pleasure to the mind, that cannot always be serious and grave” (“per dare un certo solazzo a la mente, che sempre severa e grave non può già stare”).29 Although Piccolomini consistently downplayed the dialogue’s significance, La Raffaella remained in print and remained popular. There were nine Italian editions in the sixteenth century, as well as three separate translations into French.30 Indeed, La Raffaella is the most frequently republished of all Piccolomini’s texts, and one of the few still in print in the twenty-first century.31 Though criticized for its licentiousness, generically La Raffaella was in the mainstream of the literature of its time. Neoplatonic dialogues dealing with love and sexuality were a staple of Italian literary and academic culture, from Bembo’s Asolani (1505) and Judah Abrabanel’s Dialogi d’amore, to Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo d’amore, and Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo . . . della infinità d’amore (1547). Along with books on love, books on the status of women and on feminine deportment were also produced in great numbers in Italy in the midsixteenth century. Advocating adultery may have been scandalous, but men telling women how to behave was commonplace. Besides internationally inf luential texts such as Juan-Luis Vives’ De institutione feminae christianae (1523)32 and Baldassare Castiglione’s Cortegiano (1528),33 there were dozens of lesser known or more specialized books, such as Giovanni Trissino’s epistle on appropriate conduct forwidows (1524),34 and Galeazzo Flavio Capella’s treatise on the excellence and dignity of women (1526).35 The vast majority of these texts were written by men, and many were prescriptive works that attempted to define appropriate female conduct.36 Of 125 works listed by Marie-Françoise Piéjus dealing with the status of women published in Italy between 1471 and 1560, only two were authored by women: Tullia d’Aragona’s 1547 Dialogo . . . della infinità d’amore and Laura Terracina’s 1550 Discorso sopra tutti li primi canti d’Orlando Furioso.37 Given Piccolomini’s deep engagement with academic and literary culture, it is not surprising that La Raffaella draws on a wide range of contemporary texts. The character of Raffaella herself has a strong resemblance to the central figure of the procuress from Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina,38 and passages in Piccolomini’s dialogue closely echo debates over proper feminine dress in Castiglione’s Cortegiano.39 But arguably the most important model for La Raffaella remains Aretino’s Ragionamenti.40 To begin with, there are precise textual echoes: La Raffaella’s discussion of cosmetics closely follows passages from Aretino’s work,41 as does Raffaella’s reference to the illicit sexual activities of nuns.42 Even Raffaella’s notion, quoted above, that youthful sins can be removed with holy water, recalls a speech by Antonia about the relative insignificance of the sins committed by whores.43 Beyond her similarity to the title character of La Celestina, Piccolomini’s Raffaella also recalls the Midwife from the sixth book of the Ragionamenti. Certainly, the Midwife’s following account of her own techniques are a good description of Raffaella, who comes across as a pious churchgoer, says she loves Margarita like a daughter, and has endless advice on fashions and hairstyles: It was always my habit to sniff through twenty-five churches every morning, robbing here a tatter of the Gospel, there a scrap of orate fratres, here a droplet of santus santus, at another spot a teeny bit of non sum dignus, and over there a nibble of erat verbum, watching all the while this man and that girl, that man and this other woman. . . . A bawd’s work is thrilling, for by making herself everyone’s friend and companion, stepchild and godmother, she sticks her nose in every hole. All the new styles of dress in Mantua, Ferrara, and Milan follow the model set by the bawd; and she invents all the different ways of arranging hair used in the world. In spite of nature she remedies every fault of breath, teeth, lashes, tits, hands, faces, inside and out, fore and aft. Io che ho sempre avuto in costume di fiutar venticinque chiese per mattina, rubando qui un brindello di vangelo, ivi uno schiantolo di orate fratres, là un giocciolo di santus santus, in quel luogo un pochetto di non sum dignus, e altrove un bocconicino di erat verbum, e squadrando sempre questo e quella, e quello e questa. . . . Bella industria è quella d’una ruffiana che, col farsi ognun compare e comare, ognun figilozzo e santolo, si ficca per ogni buco. Tutte le forge nuove di Mantova, di Ferrara, e di Milano pigliano la sceda da la ruffiana: ella trova tutte l’usanze de le acconciaturedei capi del mondo; ella, al dispetto de la natura, menda ogni difetto e di fiati e di denti e di ciglia e di pocce e di mani e di facce e di fuora e di drento e di drieto e dinanzi.44 In his Novelle (1554), Matteo Bandello mistakenly attributed La Raffaella to Aretino, in part because of its resemblance to the Ragionamenti.45 Clearly, the similarity of the two texts was apparent to contemporary readers. Socially and intellectually, Piccolomini and Aretino were on friendly terms in the years immediately following La Raffaella’s publication. Piccolomini wrote to Aretino in December 1540, publicly praising his satirical attacks on the abuses of the powerful.46 And in 1541, two years after La Raffaella appeared in print, Piccolomini invited Aretino to join the newly founded Accademia degli Infiammati in Padua. As Marie-Françoise Piéjus has suggested, both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella function as parodies of the ubiquitous conduct books addressed to women in the mid-sixteenth century. The Ragionamenti and La Raffaella are “provocative text[s], animated by an ironic cynicism that, parod[ies] point by point the lessons habitually taught to women.” By focusing on women’s sexual lives, both Aretino and Piccolomini “attest to the divorce between openly affirmed principles and the daily conduct of [their] contemporaries.”47 What makes these texts parodic is their sexual subject matter; they both, in differing ways, affirm women’s fundamental sexuality and attest to the central role of sexual desire in women’s lives. This is precisely the aspect of femininity that most of the conduct books are trying most urgently to restrain, repress, and police. The vast majority of sixteenthcentury conduct books written for women are designed to make women into good wives: chaste, silent, and obedient—pleasing to their husbands and compliant to the wishes of their male relatives.48 It is telling that these two parodic texts are both written in the voice of women. Rather than having a male author lay down the law for women (like Vives does), or imagining a conversation where women listen silently as men debate (as in Castiglione), both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella imagine female conversations with no men present. In Ventriloquized Voices, her study of early modern male authors’ adoption of female voices, Elizabeth Harvey has argued that “in male appropriations of feminine voices we can see what is most desired and most feared about women.”49 If Harvey is right, what Aretino and Piccolomini most desired and feared about women was their sexuality—and the ways their sexuality creates possibilities for female agency. In both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella, an older woman instructs a younger one on issues of gender and sexuality—and on ways to trick men to get what they want. In both cases, the absence of male auditors creates the illusion that the reader is privy to the secret truth of feminine speech. It is significant that both Aretino and Piccolomini imagine that the main topic that women discuss in private is their sexual relations with men. While the conversation in both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella is wide-ranging, both dialogues arguably fail the Bechdel test—an assessment that asks whether or not a work of fiction has twonamed female characters who talk to each other about something other than their relationships to men.50 In both works, the women are constantly concerned about their interactions with men and how their actions are perceived by men. The very categories of female life as set forth in the Ragionamenti—nuns, wives, and whores—are defined by the ways in which women’s sexual relations with men (or their lack) are structured and determined. In their desire to hear the truth of female sexuality, both the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella metaphorically echo a tradition of masculine fantasy in which female genitalia are compelled to speak. In the thirteenth-century French fabliau Du Chevalier qui fist les cons parler [The Knight Who Made Cunts Speak], a poor, wandering knight who treats some bathing fairies with courtesy and discretion is rewarded with the magical power to make vaginas talk.51 He uses this power to discover the truth in situations where people are lying to him: when he encounters a miserly priest riding on a mare, he makes the mare’s vagina tell him how much money the priest is hiding. When a countess sends her maid to seduce the knight, he makes the maid’s vagina reveal the plot. Eventually, he makes even the countess testify against herself by compelling her nether regions to speak.52 The vagina, it seems, always tells the truth. This provocative trope reappears most famously in Denis Diderot’s 1748 libertine novel Les Bijoux indiscrets [The Indiscreet Jewels], in which a sultan has a magic ring that makes vaginas tell all. While there is no evidence that either Aretino or Piccolomini were aware of such tales of talking vaginas, the gender dynamics of their texts are remarkably similar. The trope of a man magically forcing a vagina to speak is culturally resonant on a number of levels. On the most basic level, these stories are fantasies of masculine power: the masterful male commands the female body to do his bidding and reveal its knowledge. There is comedy, of course, in the blurring of function between vagina and mouth—the earthy lower body inevitably tells a tale that refutes the refined upper body. It is important to note that what the vagina says does not merely contradict what the mouth says; it unerringly reveals the hidden truth of the situation. Just as the Ragionamenti and La Raffaella ironically imagine the sexual desires hidden behind a public façade of decorous femininity, in these stories, the mouth tells lies, but the vagina tells the truth of the body; it cannot lie. Indeed, in all these texts, the vagina is the truth, the essence, the thing itself. The truth of woman is her sex. The same assumption underlies Eve Ensler’s popular 1996 feminist play The Vagina Monologues, an episodic work in which women of various ages and backgrounds recount their sexual experiences, some positive, others negative. While the play was acclaimed for giving voice to women’s sexuality, it was also criticized for reducing women to their genitalia: as feminist scholars and activists Susan E. Bell and Susan M. Reverby wrote, “The Vagina Monologues re-inscribes women’s politics in our bodies, indeed in our vaginas alone.”53 But of course, in Ensler’s work, the author who wrote the lines and the actors who perform them are all women. The voices we hear are the women’s voices—not men’s imagination of what a woman’s voice might sound like if there was no man there to hearand record it. In Aretino and Piccolomini’s vagina dialogues, it is always only men talking—even if the characters are female. Piccolomini’s ventriloquized fantasy of female speech in La Raffaella is all the more remarkable given that the Academy of the Intronati,54 the organization under whose auspices he published the dialogue, was more arguably more open to women than any other sixteenth-century Italian academy. The Accademia degli Intronati [the Academy of the Stunned] was founded in 1525 by a group of six Sienese young men. The avowed object of the group was “to promote poetry and eloquence in the Tuscan, Latin and Greek languages” and their motto was: Orare, Studere, Gaudere, Neminem laedere, Neminem credere, De mundo non curare [Pray, Study, Rejoice, Harm no one, Believe no one, Have no care for the world].55 Membership in the Intronati was restricted to men, but as Alexandra Coller has argued, “women were awarded much more than a merely ornamental presence within the context of the academy [of the Intronati], whether as sources of inspiration, correspondents in educationally-oriented literary exchanges, or as discussants in female-centered dialogues.”56 Sometime around 1536, not long before he wrote La Raffaella, Piccolomini himself wrote a brief Orazione in lode delle donne [Oration in Praise of Women]. He delivered the oration to the Intronati in person on his return to Siena from Padua in 1542 and it was published three years later.57 Utterly rejecting La Raffaella’s notion that love must be sexually consummated to have any real value, Piccolomini’s oration draws heavily on the Neoplatonic idealization of love articulated in Pietro Bembo’s Asolani, and in Bembo’s concluding speech in the Fourth Book of Castiglione’s Cortegiano. In this discourse, love is primarily a spiritual discipline that paradoxically leads to a transcendence of physical desire. Women’s beauty is an earthly echo of divine Beauty, and Beauty can be used by the lover to reach a higher plane of spiritual awareness.58 Women are thus to be served, adored, and obeyed, in the way that a Courtier should serve, adore, and obey his Prince.59 Many texts written by members of the Intronati were dedicated to female patrons, including a translation of six books of Virgil’s Aeneid and Piccolomini’s own 1540 translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, a classic treatise on household management.60 A text from the later sixteenth century, Girolamo Bargagli’s 1575 Dialogo de’ giuochi [Dialogue on Games], describes the activities of the Intronati in the 1530s, and attests to the support of the Academy by “many beautiful and noble ladies” (“Molte belle e rare gentildonne”).61 Some scholars have suggested that women may have even participated in meetings of the Academy, a rare occurrence in sixteenth-century Italian intellectual culture.62 An unpublished dialogue by Marcantonio Piccolomini, a kinsman of Alessandro and a founding member of the Intronati, imagines a scholarly dialogue between three Sienese gentlewomen on whether God created women by chance or by design.63 At the outset, however, not all the Intronati were so welcoming to women— at least if Antonio Vignali’s Cazzaria (1525) is any indication. Vignali’s dialogue, in many ways a defense of sexual relations between men, is a fiercely and crudelymisogynist text, a product of an exclusively male environment that denigrates women at every turn.64 The Cazzaria was a scandalous text. It was initially circulated in manuscript among the Academy’s members and was probably printed without its author’s consent. Although it was not publicly acknowledged or defended by the Intronati at any point, it was nonetheless written by one of the Academy’s founding members and was one of the most prominent products of the Academy’s early years.65 Piccolomini was surely familiar with the text— indeed, his kinsman Marcantonio Piccolomini (Sodo Intronato) appears as one of La Cazzaria’s main characters.66 However eccentric and outrageous it may be, La Cazzaria is arguably an accurate ref lection of the attitudes towards women of at least some of the Intronati’s founding members. If the Intronati’s respectful and inclusive attitude towards women represented in Bargagli’s Dialogo de’ giuochi is to be believed, things must have changed a lot by the late 1530s. But it is quite possible that the Intronati’s relatively positive public attitude towards women masked more negative private views. Perhaps Alessandro Piccolomini’s ironic attitude towards women in La Raffaella is a product of this conf lict. As we have seen, the Ragionamenti ’s attitude towards its female speakers is always ambivalent. But La Raffaella’s presentation of its speakers is much more straightforward. Raffaella is a manipulative woman who is working throughout with a very specific goal in mind—to convince Margarita to have an adulterous affair with messer Aspasio. Margarita is simply a dupe. Whatever Piccolomini’s praise of women, whatever support the Intronati gave and received from Sienese noblewomen, La Raffaella ironically suggests that women are fundamentally submissive to male desire. Raffaella’s considerable ingenuity is entirely subordinate to the schemes of messer Aspasio. She has no other function than to help him obtain his desires, and she is in many ways an abject character, forced to make her living by tricking young women into having sex with manipulative men. Piccolomini’s idealistic role as defender of women in his Orazione and elsewhere has an ironic echo in the dedicatory epistle to female readers that prefaces La Raffaella. Here Piccolomini insists that he has always been a staunch defender of women against their detractors. He claims that La Raffaella clearly shows “the appropriate life and manners appropriate for a young, noble, beautiful woman,” and holds up the character of Raffaella as proof that women are capable of “great concepts and profound statements and good judgment.”67 He decries the double standard that sees extra-marital affairs as “honorable and great” for men, and “utterly shameful for women.” He admits that if a woman were to be so foolish as to conduct an affair in a way that would arouse suspicion, that would be “a great error,” but he trusts that his female readers “will be full of so much prudence, and temperance that [they] will know how to maintain and enjoy [their] lovers” for years and years. “There is nothing more pleasing nor more worthy of a gentlewoman than this.”68 In the epistle, Piccolomini is doubling down on the joke that underlies La Raffaella as a whole: what women want most of all is satisfying sex with anattractive and f lattering young man. Anyone who helps them attain this goal becomes their greatest champion.As we have seen, Aretino’s Ragionamenti argue at length that at least some women prefer money, status, and power to sexual pleasure. But this is largely because the whores of the Ragionamenti are not comfortable, upper-class women like those in La Raffaella. Aretino’s whores want power, but his nuns and wives, whose material well-being is secured either by the Church or by their husbands, want sex. In the more elevated world of La Raffaella, the wealthy and well-born Margarita lives in luxury; all that is missing from her pleasurable life is a satisfying sexual partner. The condition of Nanna, Pippa, Antonia—and indeed of Raffaella, Piccolomini’s impoverished elderly bawd—is much more precarious. The single-minded pursuit of sexual pleasure, it seems, is a privilege of the upper classes, of those women who are not compelled to participate directly in a capitalist market for goods and services in which their sexuality is primarily a commodity used to raise capital. Aretino’s attitude to women is often disdainful and dismissive; Piccolomini almost always f latters his female readers. And yet, it is the Ragionamenti that imagine autonomous women who manage to hold their own in conf lict with men, whereas La Raffaella presents women who are entirely dominated by men in one way or another. The Ragionamenti fantasize about the ways in which women trick men; La Raffaella fantasizes about the ways women can be tricked. Aretino’s Nanna provides a powerful contrast to Piccolomini’s fantasy of feminine submission. In Book 2 of the Ragionamenti, when Nanna recounts her experiences as a wife, she does exactly what Raffaella urges Margarita to do— she takes young lovers who can satisfy her sexually in ways her impotent husband cannot. But the key difference is that Nanna makes that choice for herself—she is not tricked into it by a male suitor who is using a female confidant to manipulate her. Even before becoming a prostitute, Nanna is always looking out for herself. She tricks her lovers in the same way she tricks her husband. She plays to win and is never duped. And unlike Margarita, who promises to devote herself exclusively to messer Aspasio, Nanna’s adultery is utterly promiscuous: Once I had seen and understood the lives of wives, in order to keep my end up, I began to satisfy all my passing whims and desires, doing it with all sorts, from potters to great lords, with especial favor extended to the religious orders—friars, monks, and priests. Io, veduto e inteso la vita delle maritate, per non essere da meno di loro, mi diedi a cavare ogni vogliuzza, e volsi provare fino ai facchini e fino ai signori, la frataria, le pretaria, e la monicaria sopra tutto.69 Eventually she ends up stabbing her husband to death when he assaults her after catching her having sex with a beggar.70 It is hard to imagine Piccolomini’s wellbred Margarita acting in a similar manner should her husband ever catch her with messer Aspasio. Piccolomini’s Raffaella fits into larger trends in the ways in which Aretino’s Ragionamenti were read and assimilated into mainstream early modern culture.Broadly speaking, texts that were inspired or inf luenced by the Ragionamenti adapted Aretino’s text in ways that made it less subversive and conformed better to traditional ideas of early modern gender relations. Later editions, translations, and adaptations of the Ragionamenti focused on Book 3 of the first day, on the life of whores, and presented the text to readers simply as a catalogue of female deceit and monstrosity in which the satirical and subversive elements of Nanna’s character were downplayed in order to make her a purely negative figure.71 In a similarly reductive move, La Raffaella takes the notion that women will attempt to deceive men, and limits it to the particular case of aristocratic wives deceiving their husbands—a model which fits well into traditional discourses of courtly love that go back to the twelfth century.72 Women are represented as fundamentally passionate creatures that desire physical pleasures above all else, and these are found more naturally with young men in adulterous relationships than with respectable, mature, and neglectful husbands. Margarita’s husband spends too much time on “business” and not enough with his wife, and the well-bred and discreet messer Aspasio is the natural solution to Margarita’s problems. Raffaella the bawd is not disrupting traditional aristocratic patterns of behavior, she is facilitating them. As long as the affair remains discreet, everyone will benefit and no one will care. (Machiavelli makes much the same point in his play Mandragola, but in that case the satiric irony is obvious.) In La Raffaella the extent to which Piccolomini supports Raffaella’s argument is not clear. As we have seen, he explicitly endorses her point of view in his dedicatory epistle to his female readers. But the degree of irony in the epistle is an open question. It is enough that Piccolomini had deniability when he needed it—La Raffaella, as he later claimed, was obviously a youthful joke. Later commentators agreed that the dialogue, though seemingly immoral, was actually a witty jeu d’esprit. The nineteenth-century scholar and editor Giuseppe Zonta called La Raffaella a “jewel of the Renaissance, the most beautiful ‘scene’ that the sixteenth century has left us, in which didactic intent develops deliciously out of a comic drama” (“gioiello della Rinascita, la più bella “scena” che il Cinquecento ci abbia lasciato, dove l’intento didattico deliziosamente si svolge di su una comica trama”).73 Many things have been said about Aretino’s Ragionamenti, but no one ever claimed that they were a beautiful jewel.Notes 1 On sixteenth-century editions of La Raffaella, see Zonta, ed., Trattati d’amore, 379–82; Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 175–77. There are no known surviving copies of the 1539 edition. Zonta believes the first edition may have been published in 1540. 2 Aretino, Ragionamento della Nanna; and Dialogo di M. Pietro Aretino. 3 Moulton, Before Pornography, 132–36. 4 See the dedicatory epistle to “quelle donne che leggeranno,” Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 31. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to La Raffaella are to this edition. 5 On prostitution as a form of labor and commerce in the Ragionamenti see Moulton, “Whores as Shopkeepers,” 71–86.6 Moulton, Before Pornography, 132–36. On Aretino’s public image, see Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr. 7 Moulton, Before Pornography, 130–31. 8 Aretino, Sei giornate, 132–33. English translation: Aretino, Aretino’s Dialogues, 116. All English quotations from the Ragionamenti are from this edition. 9 Aretino, Sei giornate, 115–16; Aretino’s Dialogues, 102–03. 10 See Larivaille, La Vie quotidienne, esp. chapter 6 on the economic and personal exploitation of whores and chapter 7 on syphilis. On hierarchies of prostitution, see Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 35–37. 11 Aretino, Sei giornate; Aretino’s Dialogues, 135–36. 12 Aretino, Sei giornate, 283–84; Aretino’s Dialogues, 310. 13 Baldi, Tradizione, 106–07. 14 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 41. All translations from La Raffaella are my own. 15 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 121. 16 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 119. 17 Ibid., 101–02. 18 Ibid., 94. 19 Ibid., 112. 20 Ibid., 113. 21 Ibid., 110. 22 Ibid., 135 n. 120. 23 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 82–83. 24 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 27. 25 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 86. 26 Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 10–48. 27 “Molte cose che per scherzo scrisse già in un Dialogo de la Bella Creanza de le Donne, fatto di me più per un certo sollazzo, che per altra più grave cagione.” Dedicatory epistle to Piccolomini, De la Institutione. See Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 7. 28 He did publish two comedies: L’Amor costante (1540) and L’Alessandro (1545). See Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 177–78, 187–88. 29 Piccolomini, De la Institutione (f. 231r-v). See Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 8. 30 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 81, 161. 31 See the 1960 bibliography of Piccolomini’s published works in Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 173–96. 32 An Italian translation of Vives’ De institutione feminae christianae was published in Venice in 1546 under the title De l’institutione de la femina. A second edition appeared in 1561. Vives’ treatise was also the model for Ludovico Dolce’s Della Institutione delle donne (Venice: Giolito, 1545). Further editions of Dolce’s text were published in 1553, 1559, and 1560. 33 Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier. 34 Trissino, Epistola. 35 Capella, Galeazzo Flavio Capella Milanese. 36 Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady. 37 See the chronological bibliography of 125 works on women published in Italy between 1471 and 1560, Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 156–65. Women did address the issue in unpublished texts, such as the collected letters of Laura Cereta (ca. 1488). See Cereta, Collected Letters. Published texts by women were more common is the later years of the sixteenth century. For an overview of “protofeminist” writing in early modern Italy see Campbell and Stampino, eds. In Dialogue, 1–13. 38 Baldi, Tradizione, 99–102. Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 11–15. 39 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 108. On the larger influence of the Cortegiano on La Raffaella, see Baldi, Tradizione, 86–90. 40 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 9. Baldi, Tradizione, 100–07. 41 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 106, 118, 126. 42 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 43.43 Aretino, Sei giornate, 139; Aretino’s Dialogues, 158. 44 Aretino, Sei giornate, 285, 291; Aretino’s Dialogues, 312, 318. 45 Bandello, Novelle, 1.34. Included in a list of licentious books, along with the poems of Petrarch, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. See Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 83. 46 Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 43–44. Piccolomini and Aretino corresponded in 1540– 41. Five letters from Piccolomini to Aretino are included in Marcolini, ed., Lettere scritte. See also Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 253–54. 47 “De là naît, comme dans les Ragionamenti, un texte provocateur, animé pare une ironie cynique qui, parodiant point par point les leçons habituellement données aux femmes, renverse la finalité d’une conduite désormais subordonnée à la recherche du plaisir”; “Piccolomini constate, comme l’Arétin, un divorce entre les principes ouvertement affirmés et la conduite quotidienne de ses contemporains.” Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 147–48. My translation. 48 Kelso, Doctrine, 78–135. 49 Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices, 32. 50 The Bechdel–Wallace test was first outlined in 1985 in Allison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. See Alison Bechdel, “The Rule,” in Dykes to Watch Out For (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1986), 22. Bechdel attributes the idea to her friend Liz Wallace, and says the ultimate source is a passage in Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own. See also Selisker, “The Bechdel Test.” 51 Rossia and Straub, eds., Fabliaux Érotiques, 199–239. 52 In order to silence her vagina, the Countess stuffs it with cotton, but the Knight is able to make her anus speak as well, and all is revealed. 53 Bell and Reverby, “Vaginal Politics,” 435. 54 On the Intronati, see Constantini, L’Accademia. 55 Maylender, Storie delle accademie d’Italia, vol. 3, 354–58. 56 Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,” 223. See also Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 86-103. 57 Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,” 224. A second edition of the Orazione appeared in 1549. See Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, 189. 58 Moulton, Love in Print, 48–53. 59 Piéjus, ‘L’Orazione, 547. Coller, “The Sienese Accademia,” 225. 60 Piccolomini translated one of the six books of the Aeneid. For these and other examples, see Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 91–96. 61 Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi, 22. Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 89. 62 Ibid. She cites Elena De’ Vecchi, Alessandro Piccolomini, in Bulletino Senese di Storia Patria (1934), 426. 63 Piéjus, “Venus Bifrons,” 93–96. The untitled dialogue is roughly contemporaneous with La Raffaella. 64 Vignali, La Cazzaria, 40–41. 65 Ibid., 21–26. 66 As well as appearing in La Cazzaria and being the author of the aforementioned scholarly dialogue between three women, Marcantonio Piccolomini (1504–79) also appears as the primary speaker of Bargagli’s Dialogo de’ giuochi. 67 Piccolomini, La Raffaella, 29. 68 “Io vi confesso bene, poiché gli uomini fuori di ogni ragione tirannicamente hanno ordinato leggi, volendo che una medesima cosa a le donne sia vituperosissima e a loro sia onore e grandezza, poich’egli è cosí, vi confesso e dico che quando una donna pensasse di guidare un amore con poco saviezza, in maniera che n’avesse da nascere un minimo sospettuzzo, farebbe grandissimo errore, e io piú che altri ne l’animo mio la biasmarei: perché io conosco benissimo che a le donne importa il tutto questa cosa. Ma se, da l’altro canto, donne mie, voi sarete piene di tanta prudenza e accortezza e temperanza, che voi sappiate mantenervi e godervi l’amante vostro, elletto che ve l’avete, fin che durano gli anni vostri cosí nascostamente, che né l’aria, né il ne possa suspicar mai, in questo caso dico e vi giuro che non potete far cosa di maggior contento e piú degna di una gentildonna che questa.” Ibid., 30–31.69 Aretino, Sei giornate, 89; Aretino’s Dialogues, 102. 70 Aretino, Sei giornate, 90; Aretino’s Dialogues, 103. 71 Such texts include Colloquio de las Damas (Seville, 1548); Le Miroir des Courtisans (Lyon, 1580); Pornodidascalus seu Colloquium Muliebre (Frankfurt, 1623); and The Crafty Whore (London, 1648). See Moulton, “Crafty Whores,” and Moulton, Before Pornography, 152–57. 72 On Courtly Love as a cultural phenomenon, see Newman, ed., The Meaning of Courtly Love. On the cultural origins of courtly love, see Boase, The Origin and Meaning. 73 Zonta, ed. Trattati d’amore, 377.Bibliography Abrabanel, Judah (Leone Ebreo). Dialoghi d’amore. Rome: Mariano Lenzi, 1535. Aragona, Tullia d’. Dialogo . . . della infinità d’amore. Venice: G. Giolito, 1547. Aretino, Pietro. Aretino’s Dialogues. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Marsilio, 1994. ———. Dialogo di M. Pietro Aretino, nel quale la Nanna il primo giorno insegna a la Pippa sua figliola a esser puttana, nel secondo gli contai i tradimenti che fanno gli huomini a le meschine che gli credano, nel terzo et ultimo la Nanna et la Pippa sedendo nel orto ascoltano la comare et la balia che ragionano de la ruffiania. Turin?: 1536. ———. Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia, fatto in Roma sotto una ficaia, composto del divino Aretino per suo capricio a correttione de i tre stati delle donne. Paris?: 1534. ———. Sei giornate. Edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia. Bari: Laterza, 1969. Baldi, Andrea. Tradizione e parodia in Alessandro Piccolomini. Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2001. Bandello, Matteo. Novelle. 3 vols. Lucca: Il Busdrago, 1554. Bargagli, Girolamo. Dialogo de’ giuochi. Venice: Gio. Antonio Bertano, 1575. Bechdel, Alison. “The Rule.” In Dykes to Watch Out For. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1986. Bell, Susan E. and Susan M. Reverby. “Vaginal Politics: Tensions and Possibilities in The Vagina Monologues.” Women’s Studies International Forum 28 (2005): 430–44. Bembo, Pietro. Gli Asolani. Venice: Aldo Romano, 1505. Boase, Roger. The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977. Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier: European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Campbell, Julie D. and Maria Galli Stampino, eds. In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter, 2011. Capella, Galeazzo Flavio. Galeazzo Flavio Capella Milanese della eccelenza et dignità delle donne. Venice: Gregorio de Gregorii, 1526. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles Singleton. New York: Norton, Il libro del cortegiano. Edited by N. Longo. Milan: Garzanti, 2008. Cereta, Laura. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist. Edited and translated by Diana Robin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Cerreta, Florindo. Alessandro Piccolomini: Letterato e filosofo senese del cinquecento. Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 1960. Coller, Alexandra. “The Sienese Accademia degli Intronati and its Female Interlocutors.” The Italianist 26 (2006): 223–46. Constantini, Lolita Petrarchi. L’Accademia degli Intronati di Siena e una sua commedia. Siena: Editrice d’Arte “La Diana,” 1928.Diderot, Denis. Les Bijoux indiscrets. Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 1968. Harvey, Elizabeth D. Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts. New York: Routledge, 1992. Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956. Larivaille, Paul. La Vie quotidienne des courtesanes en Italie au temps de La Renaissance. Paris: Hachette, 1975. Marcolini, Francesco, ed. Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino. 1551. Scelta di curiosita letterare 132. 4 vols. Bologna: 1875. Maylender, Michele. Storie delle accademie d’Italia. 5 vols. Bologna: Lincino Capelli, 1926. Moulton, Ian Frederick. Before Pornography:Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford, “Crafty Whores: The Moralizing of Aretino’s Dialogues.” In ‘Reading in Early Modern England’. Edited by Sasha Roberts. Critical Survey  Love in Print in the Sixteenth Century: The Popularization of Romance. New York: Palgrave, 2014. “Whores as Shopkeepers: Money and Sexuality in Aretino’s Ragionamenti.” In Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Diane Wolfthal and Juliann Vitullo, 71–86. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Newman, F.X., ed. The Meaning of Courtly Love. Binghampton, NY: State University of New York Press, 1973. Piccolomini, Alessandro. De la Institutione di tutta la vita de l’homo nato nobile in città libera. Venice: Hieronymum Scotum, La Raffaella, ovvero Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne. Edited by Giancarlo Alfano. Rome: Salerno, 2001. Piéjus, Marie-Françoise. ‘L’Orazione in lode delle donne di Alessandro Piccolomini.’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 170 “Venus Bifrons: Le double idéal féminin dans La Raffaella d’Alessandro Piccolomini.” In Images de la femme dans la littérature de la renaissance: préjugés misogynes et aspirations nouvelles, Centre de recherche sur la renaissance italienne 8, 81–167. Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1980. Rossi, Luciano and Richard Straub, eds. Fabliaux Érotiques: Textes des jongleurs des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris: Le livre de poche, 1992. Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Selisker, Scott. “The Bechdel Test and the Social Form of Character Networks.” New Literary History 46, no. 3 (2015): 505–23. Speroni, Sperone. Dialogo d’amore. Venice: 1542. Terracina, Laura. Discorso sopra tutti li primi canti d’Orlando Furioso. Venice: G. Giolito, 1550. Trissino, Giovanni Giorgio. Epistola . . . de la vita che de tenere una donna vedova. Rome: 1524. Vignali, Antonio. La Cazzaria: The Book of the Prick. Edited and translated by Ian Frederick Moulton. New York: Routledge, 2003. Waddington, Raymond B. Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in SixteenthCentury Literature and Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Zonta, Giuseppe, ed. Trattati d’amore del Cinquecento. Bari: G. Laterza,Della Porta’s brief thirty-two-page treatise on the art of memory1 appeared in print in Naples in 1566. There was another edition in 1583; in 1602 Della Porta published a revised Latin version of the text under the title Ars reminscendi.2 Despite the fact that The Art of Remembering did not see nearly as many press runs as Della Porta’s more famous works on natural magic and physiognomy, and despite (or because of?) its brevity, his art of memory was frequently utilized by seventeenth-century preachers.3 Given its author’s dubious reputation with Catholic orthodoxy—and his constant difficulties with the Inquisition—this popularity might seem quite amazing.4 In both a series of articles and a book chapter, Lina Bolzoni has discussed The Art of Remembering; my contribution here seeks to elaborate on Bolzoni’s work by examining the function of a peculiar sequence of images appearing in Della Porta’s text—images that inf luence the entire structure and character of The Art of Remembering. Della Porta recommends the use of explicit sexual fantasies as the most powerful images for organizing the process of recollection. The use of erotic images was not uncommon in the medieval and early modern tradition of the art of memory. Yet in Della Porta’s text, images depicting sex between human beings and animals are amazingly prominent (and especially in the two Italian versions of the Arte del ricordare than in the later Latin Ars reminiscendi ). Here I will argue that Della Porta’s use of pornographic and even, in the modern sense of the word, sodomitic imagery is not merely a consequence of the more innovative aspects of his instructions for developing the capacities of memory. Rather, these images resonate in other of Della Porta’s numerous and highly inf luential texts—namely, his texts for the theater, on human physiognomy, natural magic, cross-breeding, and marvels (meraviglia) in general. Such pornographic images thus refer to the core topics of his most important texts—and, accordingly, to his general endeavors as an early modern magus.5The art of memory Basically, the art of memory consists of imagining a spatial structure—for instance, a house with different rooms (loci )—and then furnishing these spaces with objects and persons (imagines).6 The next step is to walk through the rooms of this imagined building and to assign to each one item one wishes to recall, in the precise order of movement through the architectonic structure. Originally developed in classical antiquity for public orators, this method allows a speaker to recall the general content and order of a speech, but the “art of memory” was also used to recollect specific sequences of words. In this “art,” it is crucial to visualize and memorize a mental structure, with its loci and imagines, in the greatest possible detail. To facilitate this formidable task, the masters of the art of memory frequently recommended that the images have a strong emotional nature (imagines agentes). Conspicuously, manuals for the art therefore often recommend erotically charged images as imagines agentes.7 Remembrance thus becomes dependent on—and simultaneously synonymous with—exercising vivid (and, as we shall see, predominantly male) sexual fantasies. The imaginary loci populated by a sequence of well-ordered and striking images tend to acquire a life of their own. As Bolzoni writes: “it is easy to imagine how centuries of experience in memory techniques have given scholars some idea of the complex nature of mental images and their capacity to inhabit their creators, to come alive and escape their control.”8 And yet the affective movement of the soul, produced by recalling a set of emotionally charged images, clashes with the imperative of order that is the other vital aspect of the art of memory.9 Thus—in contrast to modern literary authors who acknowledge and actively employ this same phenomenon in developing their texts—the masters of memory were faced with the arduous task of restraining the life of their own figments.10Della Porta’s mnemotechniques Della Porta’s approach to the topic is characterized by a methodical pluralism that is typical for the art of memory. Along with the basic principles outlined above, he presents different ways of organizing memory.11 For example, he recommends memorizing a group of ten to twenty women whom one has loved to organize a system of pleasant and striking mnemonic images. He contends that when employing the phantasmata of women one has made love to or one has desired, one can succeed in remembering not only one word, but an entire verse or even several verses.12 Della Porta also states one particular system as his most innovative and preferred innovative contribution to the art. For setting up the loci, he recommends memorizing little neutral cubicles eight palms long, each populated with different impressive personae: here, the sexually attractive women one has made love to or has been in love with are placed alongside cubicles occupied by friends, jesters, noblemen, and matrons.13 Della Porta accordingly recommends the use not only of men and women personal acquaintances, but also of charactertypes—especially from comedy—that during the sixteenth century were populating contemporary stage plays. In this respect, The Art of Remembering follows a widespread tradition in sixteenth-century treatises, as seen for example in Lodovoco Dolce’s contemporaneous Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conservare la memoria (1562).14 Another important precept in Porta’s Art of Remembering is that the sequence of personae must vary; for example, he suggests “a woman, a boy, a girl, a relative, an elderly man.”15 It is crucial to note that this succession of personae is as fixed as the structure of the cubicles where they are placed—which they “inhabit,” as it were. This implies that the personae become part of the spatial setting, of the architecture of the memory palace, the locus.16 These loci/personae determine the temporal sequence in which the imagines appear, and in turn the content to be memorized in the correct sequence (this content I will term the memorandum). In contrast to the fixed personae, Della Porta defines the images as “animated pictures” which we construct or spin out ( fingere/recamare) using the faculty of fantasy to represent things and words.17 The images are mobile and variable: they constitute what the personae in their fixed sequence do. And these activities must be extraordinary in every respect; clothed in lavish and shining robes, the personae’s movements should resemble larger-than-life actors, presenting the mind with a “painting that is new, strange, marvelous, unusual, pleasant, varied, and horrific (spaventevole).”18 Moreover, an image should also be composed of a variable set of living and dead objects, which, like stage props, are added to the persona—for instance, a cornucopia or a swan. Della Porta recommends the use of relatively few loci/personae, condensing the sequence of memoranda to a maximum of ten images agentes, as comic and tragic playwrights would.19 One cannot help speculating that Della Porta discloses here a vital aspect of his writing techniques as a prolific and inf luential author of comedies.20 He obviously followed the advice of his predecessors, shaping his personae in ways reminiscent of the exceedingly grotesque personae in his mannerist comedies.21 The most salient feature of these plays is that they use a limited set of characters whose social roles and statues are fixed in a set of stock scenes.22 The practicability of this system is obvious, because there is no need to memorize hundreds of loci and imagines. Yet there is one obvious difficulty. This artificial memory is rather limited, because it will only allow the practitioner to memorize one story (or a sequence of ten words).Della Porta’s ars oblivionis This limitation is, of course, a general difficulty for the art. From the time of its invention, the ars memoria has entailed an ars oblivions, an art of forgetting, that in turn allows for the memory to be organized anew. This is a difficult task, because laboriously constructed chains of association between personae, imagines, and memoranda must now be erased.23 Della Porta says that if we wish to remember a new story or a new set of words, we can assign the same set of personae, in the same sequence, the task of forging a new sequence of images.To this aim, we must imagine the fixed sequence of personae in their cubicles, with these “usual suspects” stripped naked or merely covered in white sheets, all in identical upright posture, leaning with their shoulders against the walls of their cells.24 In Della Porta’s system, the sequence of personae set in neutral cubicles is a permanent pattern. He compares the personae to the lines on a specially varnished sheet for musical compositions; it is inscribed with permanent lines, but what is written onto them can be washed off. Thus, just as the musical notes (or signs) are impermanent and can be reinscribed onto that sheet in a new order, creating a new melody, so the old imagines agentes may be erased, with the personae free to assume the pose of new imagines agentes.25 It is not only the architectonic structure that functions as locus; the personae (who are usually classified as “images”) become an aspect or a part of “place.”26 The personae assume the paradoxical role of living statues—and this oxymoron aptly circumscribes the self-contradictory function of the memory images: in order to impersonate new imagines agentes, they should be plasmatic, but at the same time their bodies must remain precisely fixed in dress, comportment, gesture, and the corresponding affects communicated by these visual traits. However, Della Porta prescribes that even when the personae are imagined naked, leaning against the wall—in order to prepare them for a new role in another story—they should not be the neutral recipients of images. Rather, they must be imagined in a highly individualized form. And their actions are not arbitrary: Della Porta prescribes constructing these stock characters of the imagination in the most fitting way with respect to “age, facial traits, occupation, and comportment (mores).”27 The personae’s actions are predetermined by their sex, social status, and concomitant habits. Moreover, these actions of the personae—who become the permanent abodes of the variable imagines—have to be related to the content of the word or the story to be remembered. Della Porta’s technique of character development was an important and original modification of the traditional system of loci and imagines.28 In this way, the formal structure of the memory is brought into a strong— and reciprocal—relationship with the content that is to be memorized. In a key example, Della Porta writes that the entire story of Andromeda can be remembered by the image of a naked, shivering, and wailing woman chained to a rock.29 The setup of highly individualized loci/personae is vital for the intricate task of memorizing a sequence of individual images. Since more than one image is required, the spatial arrangement of the personae/imagines becomes very important. The Latin version of The Art of Remembering supplies the following example: if the word to be remembered is avis (bird) and the cubicle is inhabited by the persona of a boy, then he should be Ganymede; if it is “cook” then he cooks the bird;30 if the word is taurus (bull) and a robust boy inhabits the cubicle, then we should imagine Hercules wrestling with Achelous;31 if we wish to remember horn (cornus) and a virgin inhabits the cubicle, we visualize her covered in f lowers and fruits, like a Naiad with a cornucopia in hand.32The Italian Arte del ricordare gives different examples.33 If we suppose the word “bird” to be the memorandum for a prostitute (meretrice), Della Porta suggests constructing an image of Leda during sexual intercourse with Jupiter in the guise of a swan.34 This direction is confirmed in many other examples: for instance, under the memorandum “bull” in the locus/persona of a virgin, we might imagine the rape of Europa.35 If the memorandum “bull” embodies the locus/persona of a meretrice (prostitute), then we should forge an image of Pasiphaë having sexual intercourse with the bull.36 There is no doubt that the imagery of the vernacular Arte del ricordare is more graphic, more sexually explicit, and less polished than the later Latin version. Yet all the versions recommend sexually explicit, or at least erotically charged, imagines agentes. Another striking feature of Della Porta’s examples is that all memoranda— the “bulls,” “horns”— are words with sexual connotations. Of course, uccello “bird” in Italian denotes the penis; thus, the sexual connotation is as present in the memorandum as in the image. 37 This intimate thematic connection highlights the rule that imago and memorandum must be as closely related as possible. These examples reveal that Della Porta wishes his readers to entwine their individual memories of (present or former) personal acquaintances with the stories of classical mythology to construct imagines agentes; like interlacing arches, they support the architecture of the memory palace. It seems that the thematic link between imago agens and memorandum is rather uncommon in the art of memory. Usually the imagines agentes are used as placeholders for any content; for example, one could use the imagines agentes of naked women to remember any sort of text, not only erotic topics. Della Porta’s thematic over-determination would seem to imply that his true interest lay in the actual topics to which the imagines agentes and their corresponding memoranda refer; namely, a discourse concerning the human body, the porous boundaries between human beings and animals. Inherent in these tales of sex with animals is the generation of monstrous—marvelous—offspring.Panoptic visions and living statues From a Foucaultian perspective, Della Porta’s vision of the defenseless personae in their mental prison cells has a panoptic character (though the term here is used, of course, anachronistically). Whereas gazing at naked or sparsely dressed human bodies, even in the imagination, can be considered a form of symbolic violence, it is a technique of visualization in which the different qualities of men and women of various ages, sexes, and professions become—quite brutally— reduced to their physical features, because they are bereft of their clothing and the social insignia, which denote, circumscribe, and protect their social status and their moral integrity. This practice of examining the physical features of naked men and women is echoed in the art of physiognomy of which Della Porta considered himself a master. In fact, in his lavishly illustrated works on the topic we find many depictions of the naked bodies of men and women, with textssupplying the reader with the character traits (mores) ascribed to various medical complexions; that is, the constituent factors of human bodies and their affinities within the animal world.38 Measuring and classifying naked human bodies according to their occupational and concomitant social status was a widespread artistic practice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries following the techniques for painters described in Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura (On Painting, 1435). Della Porta very closely echoes and even plagiarizes Alberti, adapting Alberti’s instructions for painters into his art of memory. In order to create images that appear lifelike and therefore suited for communicating human emotions, Alberti recommends that painters first draw human figures naked and only subsequently dress them (“ma come a vestrie l’uomo prima si disegna nudo poi il circondiamo i panni”). 39 In this context, the parallels between Alberti’s and Della Porta’s ideas are obvious. In order to create emotionally charged imagines agentes they must be as lifelike as possible, which means—especially in the case of erotic imagines—that we undress the personae. Yet, whereas Alberti had pointed to the appropriate decorum of his images, Della Porta opts for larger-than-life-personae—for grotesque and exaggerated representations.40 Another point of reference between the De pictura and The Art of Remembering is that Alberti links his measurements of human bodies to the proportions of buildings. In Alberti’s context, an implied relation of architecture and body clearly results from the process of constructing representations of irregular, organic forms in central perspective. The architectural space must be circumscribed before inserting the non-geometrical figures which are to “inhabit” that space. The parallel to Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering is striking, since for him as well the personae are an integral part of the loci they inhabit. Paradoxically, Della Porta’s personae can be considered moving statues. On the one hand, they must be imbued with as much life as possible; on the other hand, they must freeze in one position, like a tableau vivant. But the idea that moving statues are sexually arousing is much older than Della Porta; Andromeda (one of the key examples in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering) is described by Ovid as sexually arousing to Perseus, her liberator, because her naked body resembles a marble sculpture. “When Perseus saw [Andromeda], her arms chained to the hard rock, he would have taken her for a marble statue (“marmoreum esset opus”), had not the light breeze stirred her hair, and warm tears streamed from her eyes. Without realizing it, he fell in love (“trahit inscius ignes”).”41 When viewed from the perspective of contemporary theater, Ovid’s erotic statue of Andromeda brings to mind the “living statue” of Hermione in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (V, 3) or Othello’s description of Desdemona’s body as “whiter skin . . . than snow” and as “smooth monumental alabaster” (Othello V, 2, 4–5). On Shakespeare’s stage, this transformational power from living being to statue (and back again, in the mode of comedy) is associated with male violence against women caused by jealousy. Such marble statues may also play an important role in imaginings of pregnant women. In a more general context, tales of walking statues are associated with magical arts, as demonstrated in Apuleius’Metamorphoses, a work closely associated with magic. Lucius, the protagonist of this second-century Roman novel, describes his arrival in Corinth, the capital of Greek witchcraft: There was nothing I looked at in the city that didn’t believe to be other than it was: I imagined that everything everywhere had been changed by some infernal spell into a different shape – I thought that the very stones I stumbled against must be petrified human beings, . . . and I thought the fountains were liquefied human bodies. I expected statues and pictures to start walking, walls to speak, oxen and other cattle to utter prophecies, . . .42 A magician’s power thus is akin to what a master of memory does: turning one thing into another. This topic is intimately linked to Della Porta’s other interests in the arts of cross-breeding, of physiognomy, and of natural magic. Yet the relationship between Della Porta’s imagines agentes and contemporary painting becomes even more striking upon a closer examination of the individual imagines agentes ref lected in contemporary media.Ovid’s Metamorphoses as represented by Titian’s paintings Virtually all the examples in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering refer to the thicket of myths recorded in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This is no wonder; as the most inf luential “pagan” text of the Middle Ages and beyond, the Metamorphoses43 constitute a substantial encyclopedia of the transformations of the bodies of gods and human beings—transformations caused mostly by violent sexual acts of transgression on the part of gods, heroes, or powerful men upon their helpless victims. Ovid’s text is thus a rich source for the primary task of Della Porta’s art of memory: not only to associate but to exchange one image for another. Moreover, Andromeda, Leda, Ganymede, Io, and Actaeon, to mention but a few of the imagines mentioned in the Ars reminiscendi, were highly popular subjects for contemporary artistic representation. It is thus no wonder that Della Porta explicitly refers to the paintings of Michelangelo, Rafael, and Titian in his writings.44 In the mode of synecdoche, these imagines agentes serve as abbreviations for entire stories that are reduced to one single imago agens, just as Della Porta had postulated in the case of Andromeda. Accordingly, Titian’s most famous works supply the reader with instructive illustrations for Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. His key example, Andromeda (in Perseus and Andromeda 1554–56), is represented by Titian with a body as white as a marble statue, chained to her rock, with a vivid facial expression, her arms depicted in an unusual, expressive pattern of movement. The same applies to Europa (in Rape of Europa 1559–65), with the major difference that she is not shown in an upright position like Andromeda, but instead reclining against the back of the bull/Zeus; both female figures are naked, their sexual organs barely covered by a piece of white transparent garment. In all likelihood, this is whatDella Porta imagined as the lenzuola with which the bodies of his personae should be covered in their ground positions. Of course, Titian created many striking erotic female figures. One thinks of his many Venuses, but also his renderings of a seductive St. Mary Magdalen (1530–35) or St. Margaret (ca. 1565), paintings also remarkable for the impressive movements of their subjects’ arms as well as gesture, (lack of ) apparel, and extravagant demeanor. The myth of Actaeon is the subject of two of Titian’s most impressive paintings: the Death of Actaeon (1559) and The Fate of Actaeon (1559–75). In the latter painting, the hunter’s head is already transformed into the form of a horned stag. With the exception of Leda and the Swan (by Michelangelo), nearly all the mythological subjects mentioned in Della Porta’s treatise are represented in Titian’s most famous works. We thus do not lack examples of contemporary paintings illustrating the imagines agentes in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. Yet there is one notable exception: the story of Pasiphaë (on whom see below). Like the imagines agentes in The Art of Remembering, Titian’s figures seem to be frozen in their movements, despite their vividness. An entire story is reduced to one spectacular moment—a snapshot (to use an anachronistic term). This reduction is not merely a convenient tool for remembering a myth in a wink of time. It also constitutes an intervention eclipsing all other aspects of the story that are not represented in the one imago agens. Titian’s paintings, like Della Porta’s imagines, are evocations of a story in the mode of synecdoche. Alive and dead at the same time, they are fetishistic representations catering to a male gaze, for a specific set of sexual fantasies. Moreover, the fragmentation implicit in this process also allows for a reduction of different myths to a limited set of structural elements or topics which all point to one and the same topic. This is exactly what Della Porta does in the examples given in The Art of Remembering; he evokes one and the same topic (for instance, a bull) in various loci/personae and the concomitant imagines agentes they enact. Moreover, all the different topics he uses as examples for memoranda (bull, horn, bird) may be subsumed under one single general topic: sex between human beings and animals.Pasiphaë As I shall argue in what follows, the myth of Pasiphaë fulfills a paradigmatic function for Della Porta’s memory technique, since it corresponds so precisely with his preferred focus in natural magic, the mating of different species and the creation of marvelous monsters. The myth is well known. Pasiphaë falls in love with a bull, has intercourse with the animal, and conceives the Minotaur. The sexual act leading to this monstrous birth is made possible through the cunning intercession of Daedalus. This archetypal male master-engineer from classical antiquity constructs a cow-shaped wooden frame in which Pasiphaë could hide while being penetrated by the bull.45 The remarkably imaginative and colorful myth of Pasiphaë thus conjoins illicit sex, the art of the engineer, and the tale of a monstrous offspring.Pasiphaë is a woman in love with an animal. She has sexual intercourse with a real bull, with her desire thus inclined toward the animal world. Ergo, she impersonates a highly negative image of women in the patriarchal societies through which the myth has travelled. This gender bias is highlighted when we compare Pasiphaë to the rape of Europa.46 Both Pasiphaë and Europa are situated in a liminal territory of intersection between the animal, human, and divine— between bodies, souls, and noumenal entities. Indeed, Europa is an inversion of Pasiphaë’s story. Zeus here figures as a male lover and a god disguised as a bull who has sexual intercourse with the maid Europa. Her fate is oriented towards the stars. To have sex with a god in animal guise is a ticket to immortality. To have sex as a woman with a real animal leads to ostracism and to the birth of monsters. Thus, it is no wonder that there are copious visualizations in fine art of the myth of Europa, but virtually none of Pasiphaë. From the perspective of the art of memory, we may say that Pasiphae and Europa, as imagines agentes, are inversions of each other. The mode of synecdoche, whereby an imago agens embodies the stories of Europa and Pasiphaë, invites a synoptic perspective on both myths, connecting as intersecting arches in the image of a woman having sex with a bull. But this contradicts the specific image of Pasiphaë observed in the myth, where the woman engaged in sexual intercourse with the animal was a (real) bull covering a (dummy) cow. Pasiphaë in fact disguises herself in what one could call a statue of a cow-like imago in the art of memory, thus transforming the dummy cow into a caricature of a “living statue.”47 Yet this image, on face value, shows an act that can be observed frequently. The myth’s image of a cow and a bull mating (again, on face value) cannot qualify as an imago agens, nor is it clear why it should be used in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering in the locus of the meretrice. This does not mean the wooden cow is irrelevant to the phantasmatic transactions that characterize the basic method of the art of memory, namely to exchange one image for another. For the myth of Pasiphaë points in an oblique way to Daedalus’s sublime craftsmanship, his ability to fabricate a wooden image which deceives a bull. Despite the fact that Pasiphaë is a witch (Circe’s sister), she seemingly has not been able to concoct a magical love potion that would sexually attract the bull. In order to fulfill her desire, she needs the help of a male master engineer. In Greek philosophical terminology, this ability to produce potentially eternally lasting objects (like tables) is called “poetic.” Daedalus is thus pursuing an activity that he shares with the poets. Indeed Daedalus’ prop is a powerfully poetic cow, and the image he created has the power to evoke a series of (brutally violent) images which are not the image: they are quite literally “in” the image. The dummy cow (with its dark inside where the male imagination can pursue its most graphic phantasies of penetration) is a model for the associative processes at work in the art of memory—but it is in itself not an imago agens. In marked contrast to Ovid’s version of the story, where Pasiphaë is disguised in a dummy cow, Della Porta apparently wishes his readersto create an imago agens in which a prostitute has sexual intercourse with a bull without recourse to Deadalus’ prop. Pasiphaë’s myth points to the idea that the birth of monsters, in this case the Minotaur, requires the intervention of a male mastermind, who not only helps to beget the deviant creature, but also provides the means to contain the dangers arising from it, for it is Daedalus who constructs the famous maze in which Pasiphaë’s child is imprisoned.48 This image of Deadalus as creator and container of monsters or marvels epitomizes the role Della Porta wished to assign to himself as a cunning magus.49 Here, at the crossroads between mechanical device and intervention into the organic body, Della Porta’s particular form of late Renaissance natural magic, physiognomy, and the theater unfolds. Actually, the imago agens of a woman having sex with a bull has an interesting relationship to Della Porta’s Magia naturalis. Here we learn of Della Porta’s keen interest in practices of cross-breeding between human beings and animals. To bolster his claims, he cites the usual suspects for such stories: Pliny, Herodotus, Strabo and their tales of women who were raped by billy goats, producing monstrous offspring.50 This leads him to believe that “some of the Indians have usual company with bruit beasts; and that which is so generated, is half a beast, and half a man” (Magick 2, 12, 43). Della Porta also contends that it would be possible for a man to inseminate a fowl under the right astrological constellation and the right medical complexion.51 In order to create a human/animal monster, Della Porta does not resort to the kind of contraption Deadalus constructed for Pasiphaë, but relies instead on his expertise in measuring, not the proportions of the head as did Alberti, but rather the lengths and depths of male and female sexual organs, the course of the stars, and the assessment of the medical complexions inscribed in the physical traits of human beings and celestial bodies alike. These parameters—basically a doctrine of signatures—are also the most decisive indicators in Della Porta’s texts on physiognomonics, where he postulates the close resemblance of human beings to certain animals, with attendant implications for the human character.52Apuleius’ Metamorphoses This impression is confirmed by looking at another imago agens where a woman has sex with an animal. In both the Italian and Latin versions of The Art of Remembering, Della Porta claims that we remember the woman having intercourse with the ass from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses better than we do the heroism of a Muzius Scevola.53 Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, the second-century novel better known as The Golden Ass, is an interesting source for The Art of Remembering, because Apuleius describes the sexual act between an ass (not a bull) and a woman in great detail.54 Lucius, the protagonist of The Golden Ass, is a young man obsessed by witchcraft who is transformed into an ass after he applied the magical unguent concocted by Pamphile, a powerful Thessalian witch. In the shape of an ass—although never losing consciousness that he is a man—Lucius livesDella Porta’s erotomanic art of recollectionthrough a veritable odyssey during which he is beaten and mistreated. When one of his many keepers discovers that this ass is particularly clever, he makes Lucius the object of special exhibitions and a rich woman falls in love with the ass and hires it. In contrast to Pasiphaë, this woman has sex with the animal without any recourse to a prop. Both Lucius and the woman seem to enjoy the act, in spite of his asinine and—hence proverbially large—sexual organ. This changes as soon as Lucius has to perform the act again, this time as a cruel public entertainment in an amphitheater, where a female convict, before being devoured by wild beasts, is sentenced to have intercourse with the ass. Lucius deeply resents this act and manages to escape.55 It is interesting to note that Apuleius explicitly links his salacious story of the wealthy woman who has sex with the ass to the myth Pasiphaë, given he calls the woman asinaria Pasiphaë (an ass-like Pasiphaë).56 The story is thus marked as a parody of the myth of Pasiphaë in the form of a blunt satire on late Roman mores. Upon closer scrutiny, this story of the noblewoman and the ass is—again structured by a set of inversions, an oblique evocation of the myths of the rape of Europa as well as of Pasiphaë. In Apuleius it is a man, Lucius, who has been turned into the shape of an ass—neither a god ( Jupiter) who willfully changes his shape into a bull (as in the Europa myth), nor a witch (Pasiphae) who desires a real bull and who needs the help of a male engineer to fulfill her desire. Instead, Lucius is a man who has been changed into an animal, not by a Pasiphaë (who was incapable of doing that job for herself ) but by another relative or follower of Circe—Pamphile. The sexualized content with a specific violence towards female bodies is deeply inscribed into the story of Apuleius and, consequently, in the imago agens prescribed in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering, which again condenses the stories of Pasiphaë (the prostitute has sex with a bull) and the story of the sodomite noblewoman in Apuleius, as well as including the plan to showcase the act with female convict. The extremity of this imago agens is enhanced by the fact that such acts of bestiality were a capital crime in Della Porta’s time, primarily because they were believed to engender monstrous offspring, to humanize the animal world, and simultaneously to animalize the human perpetrators.57Io: more cows Another myth Della Porta mentions in his The Art of Remembering —this time, as an imago agens for remembering the word “horns”—is the story of Io.58 Her story is most pertinent because it concerns a beautiful Naiad who is raped by Jupiter and subsequently transformed into what Ovid describes as an extremely beautiful cow. In this shape, Jupiter wishes to protect the girl he has violated from the wrath of his ever-jealous wife. Unexpectedly, however, Juno likes the animal and receives it as Jupiter’s gift. Suspecting some ruse from her husband, she proceeds to have the animal protected by Argos, the moment in the story Della Porta employs as imago agens. According to Ovid, Io did not lose consciousness of herreal identity but, rather, terrified by her transformation, she seeks the company of her (human) family. Io’s father suspects that the tame, suspiciously human cow is his daughter. He exclaims in desperation that he had been “preparing and arranging a marriage (thalamos taedasque praeparam I, v 558), hoping for a son-in-law . . . now you must have a bull from the herd for husband, and your children will be cattle (de grege nunc tibi vir, nunc de grege natus habendus. v.660).” Eventually, Juno discovers Io’s true identity, her wrath subsides, and Io is fully restored to her former human shape. Similar to Apuleius’ story of Lucius in his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes Io’s transformations from human being into cow and back again in great detail.59 Io’s story is constructed as a set of inversions of the story of Europa. Jupiter approaches Io in the form of a human being (not as a handsome bull) and he transforms not his own body but that of the maid into the shape of a beautiful cow, a body in which the sexually abused girl is deeply unhappy. However, the affinities between Lucius and Io are even more striking; their stories appear as mirrored inversions along the gender divide. Both their bodies are transformed into the shapes of animals (a cow viz. an ass), both are beautiful and attractive in that guise ( Juno unexpectedly takes a liking to the cow, the noblewoman has sex with Lucius), neither of them lose consciousness of their human nature and suffer in their shape as animals (but Io seeks the company of her father, whereas Lucius wants his girlfriend back), both are subsequently transformed into human shape again, and both were originally transformed in order to escape imminent persecution. (Io is turned into a cow by Jupiter in order to protect her from Juno’s wrath, Lucius is mistakenly transformed into an ass in order to escape from the law.) The specific aspect making the stories of Europa, Io, Pasiphaë, and Lucius so significant for Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering is the constant interplay of various but related inversions of plots. Indeed, this method is intrinsic to the modes of transformation prescribed by this particular art.60 Interchangeability arises from the set of oblique inter-textual references and inversions of plots, as amalgamated in a given imago agens.61 In the mode of synecdoche, an imago agens is designed to represent an entire story in one image. This is a constitutive strategy of Della Porta’s mnemotechnique, which aims at the thematic interconnecting of persona/locus, imago agens, and memorandum. For example, a prostitute Della Porta has slept with (persona/locus) in turn embodies Leda having sex with Jupiter (imago agens) in order to remember the word bird (memorandum). Della Porta’s personal (phallic) imagination thus becomes entwined with classical myth. Within the positional logic of loci/personae in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering, therefore, Leda, Io, Europa, Pasiphaë, the Roman noblewoman, and the female convict all become different imagines agentes into which one and the same memorandum may be inscribed. Thus, the porous boundaries between human beings and animals integral to Della Porta’s imagines agentes not only indicate his personal taste for a bizarre and grotesque imaginary and his studiesin physiognomy; they embody the basic principles of the Renaissance natural magic tradition of which Della Porta was a late (yet inf luential) exponent. It allows for a “syn-opsis,” a viewing together of very different stories that bolsters one of the foundational tenets of Renaissance natural magic: the universal drive for wholeness permeating the entire enlivened and sexualized cosmos, where the male and female aspects strive to unite. By dint of his profound knowledge of the occult sympathies and antipathies between things, the natural magus has the power to tap and organize these cosmic erotic forces so that he may produce his marvels.62 Within this Renaissance tradition, the human imagination has not only a specific capacity of the soul for evoking and then transforming images that originate from sensory perception. The human imagination also had the power to shape the body it inhabited, as well as other bodies.The formative power of maternal longings Renaissance natural magic coopted an ancient belief in order to exemplify the extraordinary formative powers of the human imagination. If a woman was exposed to a strong sensation or harbored an intense longing during intercourse or pregnancy, this state was thought to inf luence the formation of the embryo in her womb. Renaissance magi thus believed that the image of its mother’s obsession was impressed on the fetus and the future child would physically resemble the entity she had longed for during intercourse. Della Porta makes direct reference to such ideas and related practices. Initially, it appears that he is simply repeating the highly popular theories on maternal longings encountered in authors as diverse as Ficino and Castiglione.63 In the circular reasoning characteristic of natural magic, this set of beliefs about the imagination also opened implications for purposefully shaping future children, by positively conditioning the imagination of the mother. A frequently repeated segreto for creating beautiful children recommends exposing women during intercourse and pregnancy to paintings or sculptures of beautiful children, inf luencing the future child’s shape via beautiful imaginamenta.64 Della Porta refers directly to this bedchamber practice: place in the bed-chambers of great men, the images of Cupid, Adonis, and Ganymedes; or else [.  .  .] set them there in carved and graven works in some solid matter, [. . .] whereby it may come to passe, that whensoever their wives lie with them, still they may think upon those pictures, and have their imagination strongly and earnestly bent thereupon: and not only while they are in the act, but after they have conceived and quickened also: so shall the child when it is born, imitate and expresse in the same form which his mother conceived in her mind, when she conceived him, and bare in her mind, which she bare him in her wombe.65 It is fascinating that Della Porta’s two discourses on memory and on what one could call family planning are also interconnected through his choice of visualexamples, of imagines agentes. As in The Art of Remembering, we again encounter the images of Adonis and Ganymede and of Cupid. Significantly, in contrast to Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering, where predominately female personae cater to male sexual fantasies, all of the images that Magia naturalis prescribes for pregnant women are of beautiful boys. Della Porta’s ideas on the power of maternal longings entail a creative female capacity to produce such images in the shape of children; her imagination is engaged with the future. A master of the art of memory, on the other hand, is engaged in recollecting the past. Hence, the process in the pregnant woman’s imagination constitutes an inversion of the process prescribed in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering: the woman’s imagination allows a marble statue to come alive, whereas the (male) master of the art of memory seeks to freeze the image of a living person (preferably a sexualized woman) into an imago agens—that is, he turns the figment to stone, symbolically killing the persona just when it appears to be most alive. This excursion into beliefs about the effects of maternal longings allows us to re-contextualize the mental process structuring Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. The imagination is a faculty of the human soul capable of producing loci and imagines agentes, to be frozen into statues, into tableaux vivants. The story of the maternal longings confirms Della Porta’s creed that the human imagination can also materialize its products; in both cases, the image may be unfrozen and directed back to its starting position to assume a new pose. The master of Della Porta’s art of memory thus arrogates for himself a phantasmatic power over life and death, inherently a much greater power that the pro-creative capacity he has ascribed to women. The asymmetric gender bias that emerges in this account is instructive. As in the story of Daedalus and Pasiphaë, the art of memory also refers to the preeminent ability of the male magus to create monsters through artificial cross-breeding, whereas the imagination of a pregnant woman requires male protection and guidance to its power to shape future children.Conclusion The evidence for my claim that Porta’s choice of memory images in his The Art of Remembering is not arbitrary, but instead it is closely related to the overreaching project he pursued as author of texts on (and a practitioner of ) natural magic, physiognomy, and the theater. A set of classical myths—Andromeda, Europa, Io, Pasiphaë, and Aktaion—handed down by Ovid, parodied by Apuleius, and painted by Titian, was put to a specific use in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. In the mode of synecdoche, he instructs the reader on how to reduce an entire story to a single imago agens (for instance, the image of naked Andromeda chained to her rock). The imago agens thus functions as a synopsis of the entire myth. This oscillation between the modes of synopsis and of synecdoche—entailing a constant process of re-focalization—in effect constitutes the basic cognitive operation in Della Porta’s The Art of Remembering. Since it reduces a whole welter of ancientmyths to one common narrative, the mode of synecdoche facilitates the perception of thematic or structural affinities between different myths. Accordingly, a series of imagines agentes referring to very heterogeneous stories allows a leveling in our perception of these different narratives and their content. The mode of synecdoche is conducive to focalization on a single topic via myriad topical affinities (which become highlighted in the mode of synopsis). In Della Porta’s mnemotechnique, this re-focalization of a series of stories may transpire not only through a heightening affinity, but also in the mode of inversion (for instance, in the myths of Europa and Pasiphaë). In The Art of Remembering, this results in the reduction of the stories of Io, Pasiphaë, and Europa (as well as Apuleius’ asinaria Pasiphaë ) to the topic of women having sex with animals and generating monstrous offspring (bulls, cows, asses). This topical affinity is also pertinent to the relationship between of sexualized imagines agentes and memoranda (bulls, horns, birds). The imagines agentes operate within the imagination of the master of the art of memory. This particular mental faculty not only receives such images; it also has the capacity to transform them into new images—images which in turn have the power for transforming the human body. Not only does Della Porta’s laboratory of monstrous hybridization constitute a hotbed for the literary imaginary, but the literary image also models the reader’s imagination, and once the imagination is infected by an image, these images may acquire a life of their own. This reasoning has its ultimate proof in the belief that a pregnant woman’s fantasies inf luence the form of the future child. At the thematic intersections of literature, visual art, physiognomonics, natural magic, the core topic—sex with animals and the generation of monstrous offspring—becomes embedded (in the literal sense of the word) with personal erotic experiences. The women who have intercourse with animals are impersonated by the women with whom Della Porta has had—or wished to have—intercourse. As mnemonic personae/loci and hence as slaves of his erotic fantasy, they are forced to embody any role assigned to them by their master. Della Porta is thus obliquely portraying himself in the process of recollecting his own memories—living statues of women who have sex with animals who may be seen as surrogates for him. In a series of constant mise en abimes mirroring a phallic erotic imagination, Della Porta points his readers (and himself ) towards the center of a truly mannerist Minotaur’s abode.Notes I wish to thank Marlen Bidwell-Steiner for many invaluable discussions and comments. 1 On the art of memory, see Yates, The Art of Memory; Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory; Carruthers, The Book of Memory. 2 The Latin Ars reminiscendi was published 1602. L’arte del ricordare was purported to be the Italian translation by a Dorandino Falcone da Gioia, but this was in all probability a pseudonym for the author himself. Both texts are edited in Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi: L’arte di ricordare. For the first English translation of the Italian version and a well-informed introduction to the text in English, see Della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare. On the differences between the Italian and the Latin versions, see in that edition Baum, “Writing Classical Authority”; also Bolzoni, “Retorica, teatro, iconologia, 340, with footnote 5; Maggi, “Introduction,” in Della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare, 29–30; Balbiani on the fortuna of Della Porta’s Magia naturalis in La Magia naturalis. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 175. Valente, “Della Porta e l’inquisizione.” On which see Kodera “Giambattista della Porta,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For a succinct and highly influential discussion of the medieval technique of the art, see Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and trans. Nüsslein, 164–80 (bk III, §§ 28–40, XVI–XXIV); Yates, The Art of Memory, 63–113. On the medieval use of memory images, Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 59, writes: “Most importantly, it is ‘affective’ in nature, that is, it is sensorily derived and emotionally charged.” See also ibid., 109, 134, and 137. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 130–31. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 75. See for instance Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 26–32. As Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, p. 137 (with footnote 12) has pointed out, it is interesting to note that the Ars reminscendi explicitly warns against the use of medicines or drugs for enhancing the capacitances of memory, whereas in Della Porta had presented such recipes in his Magia naturalis. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 68. On the notion of phantasmata in Della Porta, see Kodera, “Giovan Battista della Porta’s Imagination.” Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 70. See Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 92 and the attendant notes directing the reader to medieval sources of this method. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 70. Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 33–34, for example, does not try to assimilate the personae to the loci, but instead distinguishes between them. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 17. It is interesting to note that Della Porta does not seem to be picky about terminology, as for him very different notions—similitudo, idea, forma, simulacrum are synonyms with imago. Ibid., 79. Galileo loved exactly such character traits in Ariosto’s heroes; cf. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 211. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 17–18. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 167 has pointed to the fact that Della Porta is here quoting almost verbatim from Leon Battista Alberti’s, De pictura, 2. 40, arguing that “the theatrical tradition becomes a point of reference to the painter who has to paint an istoria.” For a discussion of the number of loci from a different contemporary perspective see Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 39–43 with many references to earlier sources. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 162–63; Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 145, footnote 345 with much scholarly literature on the connections between the art of memory and theater. Kodera, “Bestiality and Gluttony.” Clubb, “Theatregrams,” has called these variable parts theatergrams. One possibility is to generate a locus which is then invariably used, because it is recharged with new imagines that have the capacity to store a new set of memoranda. Yet if this process of re-inscription of the extant structure proves impossible, one must destroy the entire setup. In order to do this, many masters of memory suggested methods that were outright iconoclastic; cf. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 142–44. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 18. Ibid. Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 131 on the pictorial turn of medieval art of memory. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 76. Ibid. Ibid., 17–18.30 This otherwise puzzling imago seems to be a remnant from a manuscript version of the Arte del ricordare, which refers as examples for imagines agentes to one of Boccaccio’s Novellae, on Chichibio, of the Decameron VI, 4 (Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 77); in that version Della Porta also mentions two more highly salacious stories from the Decameron (III, 10 and VIII, 7); see Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 79 and 95; see also Baum, “Writing Classical Authority,” 159. 31 The hero Hercules and the river god Achelous were fighting over Deianeira, the daughter of Dionysius. During the battle between the two rivals, the bull-headed river god turned first into a snake and then into a bull, whose right horn is broken by Hercules; according to one version, Hercules took that horn down to Tartarus where it was filled by the Hesperides with golden fruit and is now called Bona Dea (cornucopia). Graves, The Greek Myths, 553–54; Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. IX, vv. 1–92. Observe that the cornucopia appears in the next imago agens. 32 Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 18. 33 This increasing prurience is a general tendency in Della Porta’s works and is probably due to the increasingly intolerant intellectual climate characterizing the last decades of the sixteenth century; on this see Kodera, “Bestiality and Gluttony,” 86–87 with references. 34 Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 77. 35 Della Porta here had openly referred to the myth, whereas in the Ars reminiscendi he only alluded to it—namely, by describing the iconography of one of Titian’s most famous paintings (the persona of a virgin sitting and playing on a bull and holding a crown over the animal’s head). 36 In the Latin version the prostitute was substituted with the lover of one’s wife. In the Latin version, ibid., 22, Leda is completely omitted. 37 The word ucello (bird) denotes penis, with birds commonly looming large in all kinds of erotic metaphors; on the semantics of ucellare (the word denoting prostitution, ridicule, and penis) see Alberti, “Giove ucellato,” 59–64; for similar contexts in Della Porta’s theater, see Kodera, “Humans as Animals,” 108–09. 38 Compare Schiesari, Beasts and Beauties, 61–64 for perceptive remarks on the gender bias of Della Porta’s Physiognomy. 39 Alberti, Della pittura, 122–24 (bk 2, §36) For a discussion of the relevant passages, see for instance Heffernan, Cultivating Picturacy, 71–73. 40 Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory, 167. 41 Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, vv 671–675; 112. 42 Apuleius, Metamorphoses: The Golden Ass, Book ii, § 1, 22. 43 See Innes, “Introduction,” 19–24. 44 So does Dolce, Dialogo del modo, 146-47, mentioning Titian’s Europa and Akataion. 45 Ovid, Ars amatoria libri tres, 26–28, bk. I, v. 289–326, Ovid., Metamorphoses, bk. VIII, v. 134–36; Graves, The Greek Myths, 293–94. 46 On Europa, see ibid., 194–97. 47 A caricature of the animation of statues by Egyptian magi, as described by Hermes in the Corpus Hermeticum, an account which it is well known, and haunted many renaissance minds; for a commented edition, Copenhaver, Hermetica. 48 A labyrinth, i.e., an architectural structure designed expressly to get lost in, as opposed to orderly architectural structures—and also the inversion of the clearly represented structure of loci in the art of memory. 49 See Kodera, Disreputable Bodies, 275–93 and Della Porta, De i miracoli, 23–25, bk I, ch. 9. 50 Della Porta, Natural magick, 43, bk 2, ch. 12. 51 Kodera, “Humans as Animals,” 109–15; Della Porta, Magia naturalis libri XX, 76, bk II, ch. 12. This passage is an elaboration of Aristotle on crossbreeding, from De generatione animalium 4.3, 769b. In this case Della Porta’s credulity is greater than that of many of his educated contemporaries, who were usually more skeptical about the possibility of producing offspring through sex between humans and animals. For a very interesting24452 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 6263 64 65Sergius Koderacontemporary discussion of the topic, which clearly accentuates the ways in which Della Porta is bending his evidence, see Varchi, “Della generazione dei Mostri,” 99–106. On this see MacDonald, “Humanistic Self-Representation,” Kodera, Disreputable Bodies, and Schiesari, Beasts and Beauties. Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 78–79. Cf. Apuleius, Metamorphoses lib. X, §§ 19–22. For a succinct introduction to that text, and relevant secondary literature, see Kenney in Apuleius, Metamorphoses, ix–xli. Ibid., 84–186; 190–94, bk 10, § 19–23; § 29–35. Apuleius, Metamorphoseon, bk. 10, § 19, l. 3. See Liliequist, “Peasants against Nature,” 408. On the increasing belief in the real existence of such hybrid animals in the later Middle Ages, see Salisbury, The Beast Within, 139 and 147. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk I, vv. 588–662 and 724–45, Graves, The Greek Myths, 190–92. Just see the example of the re-transformation: Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk I, vv 737–46, trans. Mary M. Innes, 48. For Lucius’ transformations into an ass and back again, see Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 52, bk 3, § 25 and ibid., 202–03, bk 11, § 13–14. In that vein of thought, many more things could be said also on the story of Hercules and the bull-headed river god Achelous (on whom, see above, endnote 31). The Arte del ricordare mentions not only association from the same (dal simile, Della Porta, Ars Reminiscendi, 80 and 81) but also aggiungere, mancare, trasportare, mutare, partire (ibid., 85) and trasponimento dal contrario (ibid., 95). Kodera, “Giambattista della Porta,” 8–9 for a short introduction to the idea that all things in the universal hierarchy of being are moved by the (irrational) forces of attraction and repulsion they feel for one another. Porta provides an impressive description of the macrocosmic animal, the male and female aspects of which mingle in a harmonious and well-coordinated way; cf. Della Porta, Magia naturalis, bk. 1, ch. 9. Della Porta, Natural magick, 51: “Many children have hare-lips; and all because their mothers being with child, did look upon a hare.” For an earlier source see Ficino, De amore, 252. For an introduction to the history of these seemingly widespread practices and the related artwork during the Renaissance, see Jacqueline Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 128–39. Della Porta, Natural magick, 53.Bibliography Alberti, Francesca. “Giove ucellato: quand les métamorphoses sefont extravagantes.” In Extravagances amoureuses. L’amour au-delà de la norme à la Renaissance. Actes du Colloque international du Groupe de recherche Cinquecento plurale, Tours, 18–20 Septembre 2008. Edited by Élise Boillet and Chiara Lastraioli, 41–70. Paris: Champion, 2010. Alberti, Leon Battista. Della pittura: Über die Malkunst. Edited and translated by Oskar Bätschmann and Sandra Gianfreda. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlche Buchgesellschaft, 2014. Apuleius, Lucius. Metamorphoseon. Edited by Rudolf Helm. Stuttgart: Teubner, Metamorphoses: The Golden Ass. Translated by E.J. Kenney. London: Penguin, 1998. Balbiani, Laura. La Magia naturalis di Giovan Battista Della Porta: Lingua, cultura e scienza in Europa all’inizio dell’età moderna. Bern: Peter Lang, 2001. Baum, Gregory. “Writing Classical Authority, and the Inter Text of Memory: From Giambattista della Porta’s L’arte del ricordare to the Ars reminiscendi.” In Giovan Battista della Porta, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare. Edited and introduced by Armando Maggi, translated by Miriam Aloisio, 147–61. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2012.Della Porta’s erotomanic art of recollectionBolzoni, Lina. The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press. Translated by Jeremy Parzen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, “Retorica, teatro, iconologia, nell’arte della memoria del Della Porta.” In Giovan Battista della Porta nell’ Europa del suo tempo. Edited by Maurizio Torrini, 337–85. Naples: Guida Editori, 1990. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Clubb, Louise George. “Theatregrams.” In Comparative Critical Approaches to Renaissance Comedy. Edited byDonald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella, 15–34. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1986. Copenhaver, Brian P. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, With Notes and Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Della Porta, Giovan Battista. Ars Reminiscendi. L’arte di ricordare. Edited by Raffaele Sirri. Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, De i miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura prodotti libri IV. Venice, Magia naturalis libri XX . Rouen: Johannes Berthelin, Natural magick. London, 1658. Anastatic reprint. New York: Basic Books, The Art of Remembering/L’arte del ricordare. Edited and introduced by Armando Maggi, translated by Miriam Aloisio. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2012. Dolce, Lodovico. Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conservar la memoria. Edited by Andrea Torre. Pisa: Scuola normale superiore, 2001. Ficino, Marsilio. De Amore/Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon. Edited by Raymond Marcel. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1956. Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin Books, 1992. Heffernan, James A. W. Cultivating Picturacy: Visual Art and Verbal Interventions. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006. Innes, Mary M. “Introduction.” In Ovid, Metamorphoses, 19–24. London: Penguin, 1966. Kodera, Sergius. “Bestiality and Gluttony in Theory and Practice in the Comedies of Giovan Battista Della Porta.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 38, no. 4 (2015): 83–Disreputable Bodies: Magic, Gender, and Medicine in Renaissance Natural Philosophy. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, “Giambattista della Porta.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, “Giovan Battista della Porta’s Imagination.” In Image, Imagination and Cognition Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice. Edited by Paul Bakker, Christoph Lüthy, Claudia Swan, and Claus Zittel Leiden. Leiden: Brill,  “Humans as Animals in Giovan Battista della Porta’s scienza.” Zeitsprünge 17 (2013): 414–432. Liliequist, Jonas. “Peasants Against Nature: Crossing the Boundaries between Man and Animal in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sweden.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, no. 3 (1991): 393–423. MacDonald, Katherine. “Humanistic Self-Representation in Giovan Battista della Porta’s Della Fisonomia dell’uomo: Antecedents and Innovation.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 397–414. Musacchio, J.M. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. Nüsslein, Theodor, ed. and trans. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler, 1998.Sergius KoderaOvid. Ars amatoria libri tres/Liebeskunst. Edited and translated by Wilhelm Adolf Hertzberg. Munich: Heimeran, Metamorphoses. Translated by Mary M. Innes. London, Penguin, 1966. Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1994. Schiesari, Juliana. Beasts and Beauties: Animals, Gender, and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Valente, Michaela. “Della Porta e l’inquisizione. Nuovi documenti dell’ Archivio del Sant’Uffizio.” Bruniana et Campanelliana 3 (1997): 415–45. Varchi, Benedetto. “Della generazione dei Mostri.” In Lezzioni di M. Benedetto Varchi, 85–132. Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1590. Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. London: Penguin, 1969.13 “O MIE ARTI FALLACI” Tasso’s saintly women in the Liberata and Conquistata Jane TylusThe second half of Torquato Tasso’s tormented life was taken up by his epic poem Gerusalemme liberata and the painstaking revisions he made to it following its unauthorized publication in 1581. Posterity has canonized the 1581 poem rather than its more sprawling successor, Gerusalemme conquistata, which Tasso proudly dedicated to Pope Clement VIII’s nephew when he published it in 1593. Posterity notwithstanding, Tasso claimed that his “poema riformato” was far superior to the earlier work largely because of “the much more certain knowledge I now have of myself as well as of my writings” (“la certa cognizione ch’io ho di me stesso e de le mie cose”).1 One result of this new certainty seems to have been if not the eradication of the Liberata’s female characters, at least the curtailing of their inf luence.2 The enchantress Armida virtually disappears after Canto 13, lamenting her failures to keep the Christian army’s strongest knight with her forever, and no longer converting to Christianity as in the surprising end of the Liberata. The princess of Antioch, Erminia, is denied her remarkable role in the Liberata as the discoverer and healer of the Christian knight Tancredi’s wounded body and the revealer of a secret plot against his captain, Goffredo. Two extraordinary Christian women are completely excised from the Conquistata: Gildippe, who dies fighting by her husband’s side in the Liberata’s twentieth canto, and Sofronia, who offered her life to save the Christian refugee community in a captive Jerusalem, and who, in turn, is saved by the Muslims’ most celebrated woman warrior, Clorinda. Only Clorinda’s tale is relatively untouched—with the exception of her rescue of Sofronia. Both the Liberata and the Conquistata tell of her strident independence and her baptism into her mother’s Christian faith as she lies dying by the hand of Tancredi, who has killed what he loved. This essay will not so much catalogue the Conquistata’s many revisions as attempt to gauge the changing role of the female body in Tasso’s epic practiceTylusand its relationship to Tasso’s growing ambivalence about the status of the “arti fallaci” in his poetry—a phrase, as we will see, that is uttered by the much altered character of Erminia toward the end of the Conquistata. And even if Clorinda and Armida continue to stand out in their memorable particularity in the Conquistata, they are joined by a new host of women who exist largely to create a “dynamic that is reassuringly familial,” as Claudio Gigante has observed, and who no longer possess the self-conscious artfulness that characterized female characters in the Liberata.3 The contrast allows us to see how potentially radical the Tasso of the Liberata was and at the same time how his transformations of women in the Conquistata are tied to his reconceptualization of himself as an epic poet.4 I will elaborate some of these arguments by turning to developments that led to the Conquistata, necessarily addressing selective incidents within both poems in order to depict the nature of Tasso’s poetic transformation. One episode in particular offers itself up for special consideration. It concerns a female figure in the Liberata who has not attracted much attention, and who, as mentioned above, is nowhere to be found in the revised poem: Sofronia.5 Willing to die in exchange for the salvation of her fellow Christians, she is rescued and subsequently exiled from Jerusalem. The contrast between this stirring episode in the Liberata and its muted aftermath in the Conquistata could not be greater, as the following pages will show. At the same time, they attest to what might be called Tasso’s desire for the organicity of his revised epic, a poem in which individual characters would be immune from the criticism launched against Sofronia herself. For according to the Gerusalemme’s first readers, the episode that centered on her in Canto 2 was “poco connesso” to the Liberata as a whole.6 This lack of continuity, in turn, has a stylistic echo in the infamous critique of Tasso’s language as “parlar disgiunto” or disjointed speech—a disjointedness even Tasso acknowledged when he claimed to have learned it from Virgil, admitting that it can tempt one to swerve dangerously from the “truth” in its pursuit of fallacious artistries.7 The path toward wholeness in the Conquistata thus marks a turn away from Virgil and toward the more narratively f luid Homer, as readers of Tasso (and Tasso himself ) have readily ascertained.8 But this path also goes through the body of the female, inscripted into the Conquistata as bearer of a new epic model of integration and personal loss. It is a body that the chastened Tasso, in his final critical writings on his poetic output, may also have recognized as his own. *  **  In the early 1680s, the prolific Luca Giordano executed a series of paintings for a Genovese palazzo recently acquired by the nobleman Eugenio Durazzo. Among the works Giordano designed for the entryway into a palace that was on the “must-see” list of every foreign visitor to Genova, were portraits of the death of Seneca and the Greek hero Perseus. But his paintings also featured a large canvas depicting an event from the Liberata’s story of Sofronia, the brave young woman who volunteers to die for her fellow Christians and who, along with the man who loves her, is saved by Clorinda. Moved by the taciturn stance of thefemale victim before her, Clorinda asks Aladino, Jerusalem’s king, to free the two Christians in exchange for her promise that she will perform great deeds in Jerusalem’s defense, and Giordano chooses to display this moment in his work9 (Figure 13.1).10 At the same time, Clorinda’s back is turned, so that the real savior of the two Christians bound at the stake seems to be a painting of Mary which angels are holding aloft—suggesting that Giordano’s work may also be about the salvific powers of art. Mariella Utili has written of Giordano’s intent to throw into relief the religious aspect of the story: “the exaltation of Christianity, which had been the basis for the immediate success of Tasso’s poem and which many other artists before Giordano had noted as well.”11 Yet with respect to the episode of Sofronia and her would-be lover Olindo, who begs to die with her, such a remark might seem ironic. For this story provoked almost more than anything else in the epic the concerns of the poem’s Inquisitorial readers, and in turn Tasso’s worries aboutFIGURE 13.1Luca Giordano, “Olindo e Sofronia,” Palazzo Reale gia’ Durazzo (Genova).Photo credit: Zeri Photo Archive, Bologna, inv. 110885.the extent to which its inclusion would threaten the Liberata’s publication. So much so, that in a telling letter written on April 3, 1576 to his friend and literary confidant Scipione Gonzaga he writes, “Io ho giá condennato con irrevocabil sentenza alla morte l’episodio di Sofronia” (“I’ve already condemned the episode of Sofronia to death, and my decree is absolute”).12 Having barely escaped death at the hands of Jerusalem’s king, Sofronia was condemned anew by Tasso. The reasons for this condemnation are several, even as the episode contains within itself a germ of the process that will define Tasso’s method in the Conquistata. One reason certainly has to do with the painting which Giordano has f loating in the sky—a touch unaccounted for in the Liberata itself, but prepared for by the odd narrative Tasso weaves in the opening of Canto 2. For the catalyst that set off a tyrant’s rage, leading him to sentence Jerusalem’s Christians to death, is indeed a work of art: an image of Mary taken from the Christians’ church by the magician and former Christian Ismeno, who is convinced of its supernatural abilities to protect the walls of the city against the Crusaders. He places Mary’s picture in a mosque so as to provide “fatal custodia a queste porte.”13 For reasons on which Tasso coyly refuses to pronounce—(“O fu di man fedele opra furtiva, / o pur il Ciel qui sua potenza adopra, / che di Colei ch’è sua regina e diva / sdegna che loco vil l’imagin copra: / ch’incerta fama è ancor se ciò ascriva / ad arte umana od a mirabil opra”; “It was either the work of a stealthy hand, or heaven interposed its potent will, disdaining that the image of its queen be smuggled somewhere so contemptible” [2: 9]14)—the immagine mysteriously disappears from the mosque into which Ismeno has smuggled it. Certain that the Christians have contrived to steal it back, Aladino plots for them universal slaughter, until the beautiful Sofronia steps forward to take the blame so that her people will not die, a confession the narrator describes as a “magnanima menzogna,” a magnanimous lie. In a letter, however, written soon after he released the poem to an official reading, Tasso seems fearful that the stolen immagine has invoked the ire not of Aladino but of Silvio Antoniano, the Roman Inquisitor and official in charge of granting the right of nihil obstat for books published in Rome. Writing to Luca Scalabrino on a later occasion, he continued to insist on excising the “episodio di Sofronia”: “perch’io non vorrei dar occasione a i frati con quella imagine, o con alcune altre cosette che sono in quell’episodio, di proibire il libro” (“I don’t want to give the friars a chance to condemn the book because of that image, or because of any other little things found in the episode”).15 Much of interest has been written of the status of images in the aftermath of Trent, some of it in regard to the poem’s second canto. As Naomi Yavneh has pointed out, Trent was preoccupied with limiting the role that excessive popular devotion played in religious life, and its stance on images was no exception: it perforce needed to clarify the extent to which “immagini” were only the simulacri for the things to which they pointed. As such, the importance of an object in referencing beyond itself—its deictic function—was accentuated by the orthodox proclamations from the 1570s and 1580s. One typical characterization of the post-Tridentine image, although from the Seicento, is offered by the JesuitGiovanni Domenico Ottonelli. He suggests that in gazing at a painting, “which represents something other than the thing which it resembles, and from which it takes its name” (“che rappresenta un’altra cosa, di cui tiene la simiglianza, e prende il nome”), one must recognize that “while the image renders visible what is invisible, the image is only worthy of honor by virtue of resemblance, not substance.”16 Moreover, as Yavneh goes on to point out, in the episode from Tasso’s Liberata, the transformation of the painting of Mary into a thing of “substance”— i.e., it alone can save Jerusalem from harm—is initiated by the renegade Christian, Ismeno, unable to leave his former religion completely behind him (“Questi or Macone adora, e fu cristiano, / ma i primi riti anco lasciar non pote; / anzi, in uso empio e profano / confonde le due leggi a se’ mal note”; “He adores Mohammed, as once he adored Christ, but cannot now abandon the first way, so often to profane and evil use confounds the two religions out of ignorance” [2: 2]). It is Ismeno who recommends that Aladino place “questa effigie lor” of Mary, “diva e madre” or goddess and mother of the Christian’s god (2: 5) into the mosque because of its talismanic status—an idolatrous reading in which the Christians, who leave their offerings before the “simulacro” do not, apparently, concur.17 One can only speculate as to what about the “immagine” in Canto 2 might have angered Tasso’s inquisitorial reader; the letter from Antoniano detailing his objections to the Liberata does not survive. But it is striking that another vergine, Sofronia, proclaims for herself the protective status Ismeno gave to the immagine of Maria. Her sacrifice thus effects a substitution originally engineered by the apostate. She too adopts the language of female uniqueness when boldly stating to the king Aladino her “crime”: “sol di me stessa, sol consigliera, sol essecutrice” (“I was the only one [who knew of it], one counselor, one executor alone”; 2: 23). When Olindo challenges Sofronia’s magnanimous lie, arguing that a mere woman would be unable to carry out the theft, she insists again on her autonomy: “Ho petto anch’io, ch’ad una morte crede / di bastar solo, e compagnia non chiede” (“I too have a heart, confident it can die but once. It does not ask for company”; 2: 30). But Tasso links her in other ways to the Madonna that Ismeno made into a singularly potent object. As commentators have noticed, Tasso compares her to the stolen image when her veil and mantle are roughly taken from her when she is led to the stake.18 Just as Mary’s image, “enveloped in a slender shroud” (“in un velo avolto”; 2: 5) was seized (“rapito”) by Ismeno, so are Sofronia’s veil and mantle seized from her (“rapit[i] a lei [Sofronia] il velo e ’l casto manto”; 2: 26). And an allusion to Mary’s face (“il volto di lei”) returns with “smarrisce il bel volto in un colore / che non è pallidezza, ma candore” (“the lovely rose of [Sofronia’s] face is lost in white which is not pallor, but a glowing light”; 2: 26). And yet the resonances between Sofronia and an inimitable female figure do not end here. Giampiero Giampieri has noted that the white coloring of Sofronia at the stake is echoed eleven cantos later when Clorinda, the third vergine of the canto, dies at Tancredi’s hands. This pale demeanor at death’s arrival in turn has its haunting origins in the phrase accompanying the suicides of Virgil’smost prominent female character, Dido, and the historical figure on whom she is partially modelled, Cleopatra. These intertextual allusions thus trace an unsettling historical trajectory, insofar as far from being “vergini,” unlike their Tassian counterparts, both women are known for their sensuality and, in Dido’s case, unrequited passion. At the same time, Clorinda, like Sofronia, occupies the role enjoyed by Dido and Cleopatra before romantic liaisons led them astray. They are all the singular, female supports of their people. When Islam’s powerful woman warrior enters Jerusalem in Canto 2, Clorinda is defined as the self-sufficient savior of a people that Sofronia and—according to Ismeno—the immagine of Mary have been before her. In greeting Clorinda, Aladino bestows on her the signal distinction of the warrior who alone can protect the city (“non, s’essercito grande unito insieme / fosse in mio scampo, avrei più certa speme”: “though a whole host should come to rescue me, I would not hope with greater certainty”; 2: 47). Not only does he concede to her his scepter (“lo scettro”) but he adds, “legge sia quel che comandi” (“let the law be what you command”; 2: 48), an honor that prompts Clorinda to ask for her reward in advance: the release of the two Christians.19 Even as Clorinda will exact bloody penalties on the Christians who attack the city to which she pledges her protection, this fantasy of female potency that begins in Canto 2 will be eclipsed outside Jerusalem’s walls when Clorinda is killed by Tancredi: Meanwhile they whispered of the bitter chance behind the city wall confusedly till finally they learned the truth. At once through the whole town the bad news made its way mingled with cries and womanly laments, as desperate as if the enemy had taken the town in battle and f lew to raze houses and temples and set the ruins ablaze. Confusamente si bisbiglia intanto del caso reo ne la rinchiusa terra. Poi s’accerta e divulga, e in ogni canto de la città smarrita il romor erra misto di gridi e di femineo pianto; non altramente che se presa in guerra tutta ruini, e ’l foco e i nemici empi volino per le case e per li tèmpi. (12: 100) The defeat of a city in wartime evoked in this moving simile is the fate that Ismeno believes Jerusalem will avoid if Mary’s image is placed in the mosque; that Sofronia believes her people will avoid if she dies at the stake; and thatAladino believes his kingdom will avoid if Clorinda agrees to defend his city. And the moment, of course, looks backward again to Virgil, and to the demise of another city, Carthage, upon the death of another singular woman. “The palace rings with lamentations, with sobbing and women’s shrieks, and heaven echoes with loud wails—even as though all Carthage or ancient Tyre were falling before the inrushing foe, and fierce f lames were rolling on over the roofs of men, over the roofs of gods” (IV: 667–71).20 The “città smarrita,” the urbs in ruin: in both Aeneid 4 and the Liberata, the figurative collapse of the city, portrayed in a simile that reveals the grim devastations of war, is tied to the death of a woman characterized as savior. And in both cases, the two cities of these respective poems will be invaded by the enemy—one during the Punic Wars that are only predicted in the Aeneid, the other in Canto 20 of the Liberata. At the same time, the simile of Canto 12 following Clorinda’s death can be said to silence the diabolical suggestion that women’s bodies might be sufficient protection for Jerusalem’s community; or in rhetorical terms, that the female body stands in an analogical relationship to the city and can procure its health. Sofronia’s self less action in Canto 2 procures temporary salvation for the Christians. But genuine salvation arrives only eighteen cantos later, when Goffredo’s troops invade Jerusalem and secure it for its “rightful” owners. In the meantime, Sofronia, like the Madonna’s image, has been withdrawn forever from the poem. Following her rescue by Clorinda, she does not refuse Olindo her hand in marriage, and with him and others “di forte corpo e di feroce ingegno” (whose bodies are robust and spirits bold; 2: 55) she is banished, so fearful is Aladino of having so much virtue nearby (“tanta virtù congiunta . . . vicina”; 2: 54). Some of the banished wandered aimlessly (“Molti n’andaro errando”; 2: 55) while others traveled to Emmaus where Goffredo’s troops are gathered. Of Sofronia and Olindo, however, no more is heard. All Tasso divulges of their fate is that they both went into exile beyond the bounds of Palestine (2: 54). Such a finale to Sofronia’s sacrificial offering ensures—intentionally, it would seem— that the episode is indeed “poco connesso” to the rest of the poem. Inserted into the beginning of the Liberata, the story of Sofronia operates as a virtually self-contained unit, ending with its main protagonist banished from Jerusalem. That the episode can be said to trace Tasso’s ambivalences regarding “tanta virtù congiunta” in not one, but three, female characters, is suggested by both Sofronia’s and the immagine’s summary dispatch from the poem—as though to insist on the heretical nature of Ismeno’s view of the painting, and the women’s views of themselves, as sufficient to protect a city.21 But there may be another link between the exiled women and the immagine. The latter is both more and less than an icon: it is a work of art, in ways which the woman themselves may replicate. Much of the threat represented by Sofronia has to do with her inscrutability, which mirrors the unknowability of the immagine’s fate and of the painting itself. Moved by generosity and “fortezza,” Sofronia exits alone among the people (“tra ’l vulgo”) after Aladino orders the Christians’ houses burned. But as she journeys publicly to meet the king, Tassointroduces some seemingly gratuitous phrases: she neither “covers up her beauty, nor displays it,” and “Non sai ben dir s’adorna o se negletta, / se caso od arte il bel volto compose” (“If chance or art has touched her lovely face, if she neglects or adorns herself, who knows”; 2: 18). Similarly, she is described in relationship to the young Olindo, who has loved her desperately from afar, as either “o lo sprezza, o no ‘l vede, o non s’avede” (“she scorns him, or does not see him, or takes no note”; 2: 16), and of her considerable beauty, she “non cura, / o tanto sol quant’onesta’ se ’n fregi” (“cares not for it, or only as much as required by honor’s sake”; 2: 14). Even as Tasso depicts her as a “virgin of sublime and noble thoughts” (“vergine d’alti pensieri e regi”), he wastes no time in adding that she is also “d’alta beltà” (2: 14), suggesting that we do not know whether Sofronia is aware of her beauty’s effect on her admirers. In short, she is the product of an artfulness that at once belies her sincerity and renders her inaccessibility to public scrutiny even more pronounced. Indeed, Sofronia is impugned throughout Canto 2 in various ways that can only force the reader to suspect if not her motive—which emerges following her struggle to balance masculine virility or “fortezza” and female modesty (“vergogna”)22—then at least her self-presentation in a public space. And because she is a woman, “amore” emerges as the vehicle through which her integrity can be compromised. Or as Tasso says in introducing Olindo and in returning to the language used only several stanzas before of the chaste image of Mary and its supposed ability to provide “fatal custodia” to the gates of Jerusalem: “tu [amor] per mille custodie entro a i più casti/ verginei alberghi il guardo altrui portasti” (“although a thousand sentinels are placed, you [Love] lead men’s glances into the most chaste of dwellings”; 2: 15). The uncertain status of Sofronia’s agency and her inability to control the reception of her offer are highlighted again after the king, furious over her assertions that she was right to steal the image, orders her to be burned: “e ’ndarno Amor contr’a lo sdegno crudo / di sua vaga bellezza a lei fa scudo” (“too slight a shield is womanly grace for Love to f ling against the crude resentment of the king”; 2: 25): as though she—or Love working through her—might cunningly be able to soften the tyrant in his resolve. The manner in which Sofronia is tied to the stake—her veil and “casto manto” stripped violently from her and used to tie “le molli braccia” (2: 26)—and the ensuing appearance of Olindo beside her, “tergo al tergo,” heighten the barely suffused sensuality of the preceding stanzas in which Sofronia’s ambiguously constructed femininity has been a muted but persistent theme. “O caso od arte.” This is the phrase that threatens to turn Sofronia into the seductress Armida, who appears two cantos later at the threshold of the Christians’ camp to lure the Crusaders away from war. Sofronia is no Armida. Yet in depicting Sofronia’s inner conf lict between “fortezza” and “vergogna,” while refusing to declare the extent of Sofronia’s artful self-consciousness, Tasso highlights the problems that emerge when a woman thrusts herself into the public gaze.23 The questioning presence of male spectators, a group into which Tasso inserts the (male) reader by way of the narrator’s interventions, ultimately pointsto the inability of Sofronia—and by extension, of the immagine of Mary and of Clorinda, who has already unknowingly inspired the passion of the Christian knight Tancredi—to control the effects of her self-presentation. Like the Didos and Cleopatras before her, she is unable to escape from the controlling system of gender that makes her into the object gazed upon and fantasized about as though she were a work of art. At the same time, what prevents Sofronia from becoming a martyr and hence giving her life for her people is another woman, Clorinda: who at first appears to the populous as a male warrior (“Ecco un guerriero [ché tal parea]”) but who is betrayed as a woman by her insignia, the tiger. When Clorinda enters into the crowded piazza where the two Christians are tied to the stake, she notes Olindo weeping “as a man weighed down with sorrow, not pain” (“in guisa d’uom cui preme / pietà, non doglia)” while Sofronia is silent, “con gli occhi al ciel si fisa / ch’anzi ‘l morir par di qua giù divisa” (“her eyes so fixed on heaven that she seems to be leaving this world before she dies”; 2: 42). Clordina’s response to this sight—a Clorinda raised in the woods and led to disdain female pastimes such as sewing and embroidery—is extraordinary: “Clorinda intenerissi, e si condoles / d’ambeduo loro e lagrimonne alquanto” (“Clorinda’s heart grew tender at this sight; she grieved with them, and tears welled up in her eyes”; 2: 43). Such tenderness leads her to ask for the two Christians as a gift in advance of her promised salvation of the city: a salvation, as we will soon know, she can never achieve. Her pity for a woman like herself—at once self-contained and yet vulnerable to others’ fantasies about her sexuality—breaks through the religious and ethnic differences on which the Liberata as a whole depends, and arguably questions for Muslims and Christians alike the very premise of the war. Clorinda will be revealed later in the poem as the daughter of a Christian mother, and in retrospect one might see her recognition of herself in Sofronia as a premonition of her true identity. Yet, at this early point in the poem, her alignment of herself with Sofronia, along with Tasso’s allusions to Virgil’s fateful women, creates a potentially scandalous community of women whose unpredictable and often unreadable actions threaten to undo the transcendental militarism on which the poem is based. The crisis of the immagine, in Ismeno’s feverish recasting of its significance, is like that of the women who are endlessly substituted for it: complete within itself, it has no deictic function, failing to refer beyond itself to heavenly powers. Sofronia, too, points only to herself (“Sol essecutrice”), a presumed self-sufficiency that Tasso’s narrator translates into inaccessibility. It creates for Sofronia the same unknowable status of the stolen painting, and an unknowability Clorinda can only admire, and in which she similarly partakes. Tasso’s simile of the city that dissolves into f lames upon Clorinda’s death ten cantos later is thus ultimately a failed simile. That he will go on to banish all of his Christian women from the end of the Liberata suggests both his attempt to contain the threat represented by the female figures of Canto 2 and his inability to integrate Christian and Muslim women alike into the culminating events of the poem. Clorinda and Gildippe are dead, Erminia is in an “albergo” somewherewithin the city, Armida utters words of conversion but only on Jerusalem’s outskirts, and Sofronia has disappeared forever. To be sure, on the one hand, Tasso’s poem generally refuses to allow any character to stand in for the whole and thus represent the city, earthly or celestial, by him or herself, as the belated “Allegoria del Poema” attests and as numerous episodes involving Rinaldo and Goffredo suggest.24 In an early letter, Tasso protests the custom of romance that allows single characters to decide the fate of entire empires: “non ricevo affatto nel mio poema quell’eccesso di bravura che ricevono i romanzi; cioè, che alcuno sia tanto superiore a tutti gli altri, che possa sostenere solo un campo” (“In my poem, I don’t allow that excess of bravura that the romance welcomes, in which one figure emerges as greater than all the others, capable of defending the battlefield all by himself ”).25 To this extent, transforming the painting of Mary or the body of Clorinda into singularly protective forces copies the excess of romanzi which Tasso claims to avoid. Only the uniting of Goffredo’s “compagni erranti” or wandering companions under “i santi segni” can win for the Christians their city (1:1). The liberation of Jerusalem is the work not of women, but of men; and not of a single man, but many. On the other hand, unlike Goffredo or Rinaldo, these “virtuous” women do indeed disappear from the poem, suffering the fate of the “poco connesso” and summarily excluded from the larger body into which Tasso incorporates his men in the “Allegoria.”26 Yet is such exclusion ultimately a penalty? While at work on the Liberata, Tasso was penning his brief pastoral play, the Aminta, where he experiments with the inaccessibility of a vergine in the figure of Silvia, whose own near-violation while tied to a tree is reminiscent, even in its phrasing, of Sofronia’s violent torture. The Liberata’s “Già ’l velo e ’l casto manto a lei rapito, / stringon le molli braccia aspre ritorte” (“they tear away her veil and her modest cloak, bind hard her tender hands behind the back”; 2.26) echoes Silvia’s victimization at the Satyr’s hands.27 But the exposure of Silvia’s and Sofronia’s bodies is in turn contrasted with the degree to which they refuse to be contaminated by the violence that surrounds them even as they are vulnerable to varying interpretations of their sincerity. The fact that following their rescues neither female character is seen again suggests an additional layer of inscrutability, as though Tasso chose to protect the privacy of his vergini from those who would compromise their virtue.28 Perhaps only in a world where epic values— the seizing of Jerusalem from the renegade Ismeno and the infidel Turks—are unequivocally positive can Sofronia’s premature departure be construed as a loss, rather than a gain. The phrase used with respect to the mosque from which Mary’s image is taken—“a vile place heaven holds in disdain”—might stand in for the contaminated city as a whole that Sofronia inhabits with other embattled Christians. Tasso’s own narrative gesture with regard to all women of “fortezza,” Clorinda included, saves them from the bitter militarism that informs the second half of his poem, preserving for them a space offstage—or above it. But Tasso continued to ponder the ideal relationship of the female body to his epic project, one which would rely on integration rather than separation. Such integration demanded a very different kind of poem from the Liberata, whoseMuslim male warriors, if not its women, are diabolical figures from whom the city must be wrested. The Conquistata has typically been glossed as a work that celebrates the Counter-Reformation Church in all its militancy. But attentiveness to the new women of the revised poem, beginning with a lamenting Mary who has stepped out of the painting to become a character, may suggest otherwise.29 *  **  Death appears in the Conquistata’s opening stanza, where the triumphant prolepsis of “compagni erranti” joining together under “santi segni” no longer exists, and where the explicit allusions to the failures of hell, Asia, and Africa to defeat the Crusaders is replaced by a description of how Goffredo’s military feats “di morti ingombrò le valli e ’l piano, / e correr fece il mar di sangue misto” (“filled the plains and valleys with the dead, and made the sea run red with blood”). With death, there is mourning—and a world, as Tasso will call it late in the poem, of “femineo pianto” female lament (23:117). And the first evidence of female mourning that we see in Tasso’s “poema riformato” is that of the Virgin Mary, who makes a surprising cameo appearance at precisely the moment occupied in the Liberata by the episode with Sofronia. Threatened, as before, by the impending arrival of Crusaders, Aladino decides that the Christian community within the walls poses a danger, and in his rage swears to put them all to death. A stolen painting no longer exists to provoke his anger, but almost immediately the subject of that painting appears, as Tasso’s narrator redirects our gaze from the cowering Christian citizens of Jerusalem to heaven, in two entirely new stanzas: Holy Compassion, you did not keep your thoughts hidden to yourself, as you gazed down from the celestial and sacred realm onto the site where the King had lain buried, and at his faithful f lock. Thus: “Lord,” you cried, “help, help—for now I alone am not sufficient to save their lives.” Upon seeing those moist eyes—the eyes that had wept for her Son who died on the cross—the Father said, “now let me turn my attention to their fear” . . . and the savage man [Aladino] tempers his insane rage. Non fu ’l pensier, santa Pietate, occulto a te ne la celeste e sacra reggia, donde guardavi il luogo in cui sepulto il Re si giacque, e la fedel sua greggia. Pero’: – Signor, gridasti, aita, aita, ch’io non basto a salvarli omai la vita. Vedendo il Padre rugiadosi gli occhi di lei che pianse in croce estinto il Figlio, – Vo’ – disse – ch’al Timor la cura or tocchi – . . . . [e] Tempra dunque il crudel la rabbia insana. (2: 11–13) 30Thanks to this heavenly intervention that happens in the blink of an eye (“ad un girar di ciglio”), Aladino will “temper his rage” by burning the fields where the Crusaders might have found food and by exiling, rather than killing, the faithful—excepting “le vergini”—from Jerusalem, who depart in tears (“gemendo in lagrimosi lutti”; 2: 53). But their laments will not endure for long. When they come upon the Crusaders in their camp, they offer their services to Goffredo and participate, presumably, in the final attack on their former city in the closing cantos of the new poem. As in Canto 2 of the Liberata, we have a threatened community, and once again Mary figures in its protection. But for those familiar with the Liberata, this episode in the Conquistata’s second canto represents a loss rather than a gain, albeit a puzzling loss. Having omitted the episode of Sofronia that apparently, he, and many of his first readers, found so troubling, Tasso leaves us with the mere shadow of the women who once occupied the status, rightly or wrongly, of Jerusalem’s saviors: a mourning mother. When Mary calls upon God to temper Aladino’s wrath, she is gazing at a tomb: “il luogo in cui sepulto/ il Re si giacque.” Jerusalem is a place of death, both past and imminent, and Mary is not celebrating her son’s resurrection, but weeping for his demise on the cross. Her grief is rehearsed again in the following canto in stanzas also new to the Conquistata, where it will be shared by other mothers—many of them Muslim. On tapestries which Goffredo shows the two ambassadors who have arrived from the enemy’s forces—one of them, Argante, “intrepid warrior” (“intrepido guerriero”; 2: 91)—is the thunderous defeat of Antioch, which the Christians have just taken. Tasso lingers not over the victorious assault on the city but on the artist’s attentiveness to women’s loss as they watch their sons die below them: talented artist, you made the faces of their mothers’ pallid and pale, for life no longer was welcome to them. From above each one gazed at her dead child, who lay on the earth by enemies oppressed, his head affixed to the enemy lance; and tears bathed their dry cheeks. And so he created great variety among these images of grief . . . con viso vi [il maestro accorto] feo pallido e smorto le madri, a cui la vita allor dispiacque. D’alto mirò ciascuna il figlio or morto che tra nemici oppresso in terra giacque, e’l capo affisso a la nemica lancia; e di pianto rigò l’arida guancia. E variò le imagini dolente . . . (3: 48–9) The resulting “istoria” tells of a “Città presa, notturno orror, tumulto, / ruine, incendi e peste”, to which the artist adds “Fuga, terror, lutto, e mal fido scampo / . . . . e correr feo di sangue il campo” (“A city seized, nocturnal horrors, tumult, ruin, firesand plague . . . flight, terror, grief, and luckless escape, and he made the field run with blood”; 50). Argante, the Christians’ enemy, is gazing on these images, and one could argue that his perspective inf lects the presentation of the tapestries, much as Aeneas’s grief in Book 1 colors his reception of the carvings in Carthage that detail the fall of Troy. Yet, elsewhere in the descriptions, we hear of the “pious Goffredo,” the “good Beomondo,” the “great Riccardo.” Moreover, the direct apostrophes to the Christian reader (“Italici e Germani uscir diresti . . .” [2: 17]) suggest that it is Tasso’s narrator—and Tasso himself—who lingers over the mournful details. In fact, the singular concentration on the Conquistata’s women as vehicles of lament suggests that Tasso is far from making their response to loss yet another diabolically tinged inspiration. Riccardo, formerly the warrior Rinaldo, now also has a mother, who like Thetis, emerges from sea-depths to comfort her son when his friend Rupert dies. The prayers of Riccardo in turn are carried by heaven to a female figure who with tearful face (“con lagrimoso volto” 21: 74) asks God, as did Mary much earlier, to bring aid by turning “your pitying face to my warrior” (“al mio guerrier pietoso ’l ciglio”; 72). But as the scenes of the tapestry suggest, women’s presence as mourners is most visible in the sections devoted to Argante, scourge of the Christians, and in the Conquistata clearly meant to be a double for Hector from Homer’s Iliad. To strengthen this parallel with the Homeric poem, Tasso had to give Argante a wife to protest his going out into battle as Andromache did with Hector, and a mother—and a Helen—who will mourn him when he dies.31 In the Liberata, this “intrepido guerriero” was killed by Tancredi after a bloody duel outside Jerusalem’s walls. The wandering Erminia, in love with Tancredi, literally stumbles over the bodies when she is escorting the spy Vafrino back to the Christians’ camp, and restores Tancredi to health with pious prayers and herbal medicines. Argante is summarily ignored by the pair until Tancredi insists that they carry his bloody corpse with them to Jerusalem: “non si frodi / o de la sepoltura o de le lodi” (do not deprive him of burial or of praise; 19: 116). But we hear no eulogies, nor do we witness Argante’s burial, and he is as arguably isolated in death as in life. The Argante of the Conquistata receives a very different fate after he dies at Tancredi’s hands. His body is given to the women of Jerusalem, who eulogize him at the close of Canto 23 as husband, father, and son, as well as fierce protector of his city. This last role is given explicitly to him by Erminia, rechristened Nicea in the Conquistata, who laments her inabilities to save him in the plaintive cry “O arti mie fallaci, o falsa spene! / A cui piú l’erbe omai raccoglio e porto / da l’ime valli e da l’inculte arene? / Non ti spero veder mai piú resorto, / per mia pietosa cura” (“O my fallacious arts, o my false hope! What use now the herbs that I gather and carry from the dark valleys and the hidden sands? I no longer hope to see you risen, saved by my compassionate healing”; 23:126). The woman who in the Liberata had collected medicinal herbs for her beloved Tancredi, and who is addressed by him as “medica mia pietosa” after she saves him from death, here reproaches herself for having failed to rescue Tancredi’s enemy Argante. Ifshe saved Tancredi and Goffredo—and the Christian cause—in the Liberata, here she can confess only her failed arts, and in the context of prophetically imagining a future of grief and destruction in the wake of Argante’s death: “Sola io non sono al mio dolor; ma sola / veggio, dopo la prima, altre ruine, / altri incendi, altre morti: e grave e stanca, / quest’alma al nuovo duol languisce e manca” (“I’m not alone in my grief, but I alone can see after this first destruction, more ruin, more fiery blazes, more deaths; and tired and heavy, this soul will languish and expire, sickened by new sorrows”; 127).32 These three weeping women—mother, wife, and friend whose arts cannot save a dead man—integrate Argante not only into the life of the city and the family, but into the future, as the women who survive him imagine their fates as vividly as the female survivors of Hector in the Iliad imagine theirs. Or as Argante’s wife, Lugeria, laments, “Ne la tenera etate è il figlio ancora, / che generammo al lagrimoso duolo, / tu ed io infelici . . . / non vedrá gli anni in cui virtù s’onora, / Né la fama tua” (“Our son whom you and I—unhappy— conceived only for tearful sorrow is still in his tender years . . . he will see the years in which virtue is bestowed on him, nor will he know your fame” (23:119). For herself, she can envision only “foreign shores” (“lidi estrani”) and service in the entourage of some proud, Christian lord. The lines closely follow those of Andromache in the Iliad, much as the lament of Argante’s mother (“Difendesti la patria, e palme e fregi / n’avesti, or n’hai trafitto il viso e ’l petto”; “You defended our country, and had honors and laurels; now your face and breast are pierced [by a lance]”) repeats that of Hecuba in Iliad 24. Thus just as in the Iliad, as Sheila Murnaghan has written, female lament has the function of tying the hero back into his community, while making it clear that the hero’s kleos or fame is achieved at women’s expense.33 Such a constitution of a larger, more sorrowful, poem can be allied in turn with Tasso’s new relationship to epic. Even for a poet as relentlessly psychoanalyzed as Tasso, the creation in the Conquistata of the familial contexts that Tasso may have longed for after the death of his mother, never knew, may come as a surprise.34 Tasso’s redefinition of the epic poet in his unfinished Giudizio del poema riformato, the last of his critical works, may instead have been in response to those readers of the pirated Liberata who complained about the inauthenticity of some of the characters’ emotions that drove the poem. In particular, he argues forcefully in the Giudizio for the new sentiment he seeks to generate throughout the Conquistata: pity, or “la commiserazione e de la purgazione de gli affetti” (“commiseration and purgation of its effects”; 165). With respect to Argante, whom he explicitly declares to have now fashioned as “most similar to Hector” (“similissimo ad Ettore”), he comments, where Argante earlier was not wretched, now he’s completely so, because he’s been changed from a foreign and mercenary soldier into the son of a king and a Christian queen, and has become the natural prince of the city: defending his father, loving his wife, and constant in his defense and in hisfaith; and so that pity that is denied him by [Christian] law can be granted out of natural and human sentiment. dove la persona d’Argante prima [nella Liberata] non era miserabile, ora è divenuta miserabilissima, perché di soldato straniero e mercenario è divenuto figliuolo di re e di regina cristiana e principe natural di quella città, difensor del padre, amator de la moglie e costante ne la difesa e ne la fede; e però quella pietà che si niega a la legge si può concedere a la natura ed a l’umanità. (164) Arguing against the likes of Dion Crisostomos who complained about the scenes of mourning in Homer (“Defunctum vero memoria honorate non lachrymis” [“the memory of the dead are not honored by tears”]), Tasso strives for a poetics “that is more humane and more appropriate to civil life” (“piú umana e piú accommodata a la vita civile”), resisting not only Dion but Plato and the Pythagoreans as “too rigid and severe” (“troppo rigida e severa”). Taking sides with that “most excellent Aristotle,” Tasso argues for a poetry that will motivate the sentiment of compassion “even for the enemy” (“ancora da’ nemici”; 178), and hence for the creation of a human community in which one takes stock not so much of differing religious beliefs, but of the parallels that make all humankind members of a single family. Thus, for example, the king Solimano is to be considered not as the emperor of the Turks, but as a valorous prince and father of a valorous and compassionate son. . . . If they were deprived of the theological virtues, they did not lack natural virtue, nor those bred by custom. non come imperator de’ Turchi, ma come principe valoroso e padre di valoroso e di pietoso figliuolo . . . quantunque fosser privi de le virtú teologiche, non erano senza le virtú naturali e quelle di costume. (177) As a result, as Alain Goddard has observed, Solimano and Argante both now fail to embody “a code of values opposed to that of strict Catholic orthodoxy” (“un code de valeurs opposé à celui de la stricte orthodoxie catholique”)35 —a failure that unleashes “a tide of ambivalence” despite the ideological claims made throughout for Catholicism’s supremacy. And the figures who help to generate such ambivalence and, in particular, compassion for those with “natural virtues” are largely Tasso’s women, as the Conquistata shapes not only a new definition of masculinity but a new role for its women.36 Tasso’s early readers may have challenged the authenticity of Armida’s conversion, the “saintliness” of Sofronia, the status of the missing “immagine,” and the rationale for Erminia’s midnight foray into the Christian camp, and her supposed self lessness when ministering to a wounded Tancredi.37 The Conquistata seems dedicated rather to making female behavior transparent and unquestionably sincere, a sincerity that Erminia/Nicea’s rebuke of her “artifallaci” confirms. The ubiquitous female mourner, for whom Mary is paradigmatic, embodies the essence of non -theatricality, conveying a spiritual intensity which Tasso himself longed to experience as clear from his late canzone to the Virgin, “Stava appresso la Croce,” in which he asks Mary to become the guarantor of his own prayerful sincerity: “Fa ch’io del tuo dolor / senta nel cor la forza” (“Grant that I may sense in my own heart the power of your grief ”), and later in the poem, “Fa ch’l duol sia verace / e ’l mio pianto sia vero” (“Enable my grief to be authentic, my lament sincere”).38 If—with the exception of Clorinda—there was no place for this expression of commiseration in the Liberata, fixated as it was on the triumphant attaining of the city, the Conquistata ensures with its weeping mothers and, on occasion, fathers and friends, that we see Jerusalem’s conquest as mixed a blessing as was the defeat of Troy. If the body recognized in the Liberata’s “Allegoria” is an exclusively militaristic one, the corpus of the Conquistata is familial, in which men are humanized, perhaps feminized, through their claims to having mothers, wives, or children. In the meantime, Erminia’s pious arts of healing, Sofronia’s daring sacrifice, and the immagine itself—aspects of feminine “artistry” not easily assimilable to this model—are gone. *  **  One final glance at Luca Giordano’s painting may help to clarify the trajectory I have attempted to chart throughout this essay. The interesting detail of Mary’s image, lifted high above the scene of impending death, can be said to resolve for Genova’s Counter-Reformation audience the identity of the “thief ” which Tasso had left in abeyance. Clearly the “mano” that perpetrated the theft was that of the queen of Heaven herself, who forcibly intervenes when her image is placed in a mosque, and who exhibits her power by rescuing not only her “immagine” but the brave Sofronia. Giordano restores Mary’s protective immagine, letting us “see” it for the first time as he rescues Mary herself from oblivion in a work that makes the exaltation of Christianity derive from her comforting presence. To this extent, the painting confirms the overtly Catholic structure on which the Conquistata insisted. But it does so by countering the very notion, emphasized by Mary herself in the Conquistata’s new second canto, that she is “not enough now to save their lives” (“io non basto a salvarli omai la vita”). Perhaps the key word in the passage is “omai”: now, as opposed to some earlier time when Mary presumably was sufficient. Reading backward from Mary’s phrase in Canto 2 of the Conquistata, one emerges with a nostalgic vision of female sanctity which the Liberata never intended to confirm; but a vision which for Tasso may have resided in a not-so-distant past before Trent, found in a work such as the Divina commedia, in which the Virgin has power to do more than weep. Her compassion can be said to have generated an entire poem, and it is thanks to her example that Beatrice is able to say to Virgil in Inferno 2, “amor mi mosse” (“love moved me and made me speak”). Giordano’s late seventeenthcentury painting willfully misreads the Liberata, as it envisions a world in which Mary can glowingly transmit her power to the two central women of Canto 2in the form of light radiating from her painting. The work of art thus comes to possess a divine, unambiguously protective status such as a renegade Christian, the wizard Ismeno, would confer on it—even if Tasso himself would not. 39 This was a world that never did exist in the Liberata. But that may finally be beside the point. Yet as Tasso tried to create a poem “senza arti fallacy,” newly directed toward the compassionate involvement of all its personaggi, Muslims and Christians alike, in the family of the “vita civile,” Mary and the women like her enable a different kind of salvation, albeit of a less dramatic kind. If threats of “parlar disgiunto” and episodic discontinuity hang over the Liberata; if the three women of Canto 2 both embodied and actualized these threats, once we arrive at the inclusive poem that is the Conquistata, the lonely isolation of heroic difference is no longer a danger. And as a result, there are no more female heroes.40Notes 1 Tasso, Lettere, ed. Guasti, 5: 72; the letter is from July 1591, when he had almost completed the Conquistata. 2 For a summary of how female characters change in the Conquistata, see Goddard, “Du ‘capitano’ au ‘cavalier sovrano,’” 236–38. Also of interest is Picco, “Or s’indora ed or verdeggia.” 3 See Gigante’s introduction to Tasso’s Giudicio sovra la Gerusalemme riformata, xlviii, as well as his discussion of the Giudicio and Conquistata in Tasso, chapter 13. 4 That the female figures of the Liberata are intriguing mirrors for Tasso himself is not a new argument; particularly in the wake of a feminist criticism that has focused on Armida and Clorinda. In some cases, such as Stephens’ article on Erminia (“Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief ” or Miguel’s “Tasso’s Erminia,” 62–75, a female character’s narrative and artistic capabilities are put forth as convincing evidence for self-portraits of the author/artist. 5 For two recent studies devoted to the episode of Sofronia, Giamperi, Il battesimo di Clorinda and Yavneh, “Dal rogo alle nozze,” 270–94; also see the few pages dedicated to Sofronia in Hampton’s Writing from History, 116–18. 6 Some early readers of the Liberata considered the episode “poco connesso e troppo presto,” a point with which Tasso concurred; e.g., the letter to Scipione Gonzaga from April 3, 1576; Lettere di Torquato Tasso, vol. I, letter #61; 153. Molinari’s edition of the Lettere poetiche of Tasso contains this letter with ample critical text; 374. The debate over the episode went on for a period of many months in 1575 and 1576; see the excellent account of Güntert, L’epos dell’ideologia regnante, 81–85. 7 The syntactic “difetto” or defect that Tasso claims he learned from reading too much Virgil is that of “parlar disgiunto”: “cioè, quello che si lega più tosto per l’unione e dependenza de’ sensi, che per copula o altra congiunzione di parole . . . pur ha molte volte sembianza di virtù, ed è talora virtù apportatrice di grandezza: ma l’errore consiste ne la frequenza. Questo difetto ho io appreso de la continua lezion di Virgilio . . .” (Lettere, vol. I, 115). Fortini calls attention to the symptomatic crisis of “parlar disgiunto” in relationship to Canto 2 in Dialoghi col Tasso, 81, describing it as “la frattura degli elementi del discorso per ottenere maggior rilievo, maggiore drammatizzazione e magnificenza.” 8 Tasso’s references to Homer in his Giudicio are extensive, as are his spirited defenses of Homer against those who would call him a liar; he often invokes Aristotle’s praise of the poet. 9 On Tasso’s impact on and interest in the visual arts more generally, see Waterhouse, “Tasso and the Visual Arts,” 146–61 and, more recently, Unglaub’s Poussin and the Poetics of Painting and Traherne’s “Pictorial Space and Sacred Time,” 5–25.Jane Tylus10 The image is item 176 in the catalogue Luca Giordano, ed. Ferrari and Scavizzi. 11 See Utili’s entry on Giordano’s Olindo e Sofronia in Torquato Tasso, 313. 12 From the letter to Scipione Gonzaga of April 3, 1576; in Lettere di Torquato Tasso, 153; Lettere poetiche, 374. This came less than a month after Tasso had informed Luca Scalabrino on March 12, that he was going to add “eight or ten stanzas” to the end of the Sofronia episode, in the hope of making it seem “more connected” (“che ‘l farà parer più connesso”); ibid., 339. 13 I use the edition of Fredi Chiappelli; II: 6. 14 Translations of the Liberata are from Jerusalem Delivered, trans. Esolen; occasionally modified. 15 Lettere, I, 164; also in Letter poetiche, 406; italics mine. 16 Yavneh, “Dal rogo alle nozze,” 272–73. 17 Giampieri, Il battesimo di Clorinda, 27, has noted in the “casto simulacro” of Mary a parallel with the famous Palladium of Troy: Mary’s image takes the place of the Palladium, and this substitution is extended further when Sofronia herself “porta quella salvezza che tutti si aspettavano dall’efige della Madonna” once the Madonna is gone. 18 See Yavneh, “Dal rogo alle nozze,” 150, as well as Warner, The Augustinian Epic, 86. 19 This line is echoed by Armida eighteen cantos later, when she proclaims herself Rinaldo’s “ancilla,” and observes that his word is her law: “e le fia legge il cenno” (20: 136). Intentionally or not, the line brings us full circle to the missing image of Mary, but reducing the supposed potency of that image and the women who mirror it to a gesture of submission to a “conquering” Gabriel. 20 Virgil, Eclogues, Georgiecs, Aeneid I–VI, 441. 21 The Judith echoes are relevant as well, on which see Refini, “Giuditta, Armida e il velo,” esp. 87–88. But unlike Judith, who dominates the second half of the apocryphal book of Judith, Sofronia and Clorinda disappear long before the ending. 22 “A lei, che generosa è quanto onesta, / viene in pensier come salvar costoro. / Move fortezza il gran pensier, l’arresta / poi la vergogna e ‘l verginal decoro; / vince fortezza, anzi s’accorda e face / sé vergognosa e la vergogna audace” (2: 17). 23 Eugenio Donadoni remarked on Tasso’s “incapacità di ritrarre una santa,” and while he doesn’t elaborate, he clearly has in mind the puzzling presentation of Sofronia herself. Torquato Tasso, 324. 24 As Lawrence F. Rhu nicely puts it, the “Allegoria,” first composed in 1576, probably functioned “as a guarantor of acceptable intentions in the face of potential censorship . . . rather than as a sure guide in the right direction for a comprehensive interpretation of his poem”; The Genesis of Tasso’s Narrative Theory, 56. At the same time, with regard to the conflict between the “one and the many,” the poem, with its announced attention to bring together Goffredo and his “compagni erranti,”and the Allegoria, focused on demonstrating how the bodies of the (male) warriors are eventually incorporated within the body of the army, seemingly speak with a single voice. 25 Lettere, vol. 1, 84. Interestingly, Tasso will exempt Rinaldo from this rule. 26 On the possibility that Tasso resists making his female warriors stronger than the men, see Günsberg, The Epic Rhetoric of Tasso, 128: “female valour is described essentially in terms of negative comparatives. This culminates in male supremacy over a femininity that is already fragmented, and in an act characterized by sexual overtones”—such as the deaths of Clorinda and Gildippe. 27 See Act III, scene 1, from Aminta, and Tirsi’s description of the Satiro’s would-be rape of Silvia: She is tied with her own hair, to a tree, while “‘l suo bel cinto, / che del sen virginal fu pria custode, / di quello stupro era ministro, ed ambe / le mani al duro tronco le sstringea; / e la pianta medesma avea prestati / legami contra lei . . .”; lines 1237–42; from Opere di Torquato Tasso, Volume 5: Aminta e rime scelte. 28 For a more sustained reading of the Aminta and Tasso’s protectiveness of his two main characters, see my chapter in Writing and Vulnerability, 82–95. 29 In truth, a more nuanced criticism of the Conquistata has emerged in recent years, including that of Goddard and of Residori, L’idea del poema, as well as in the recent article of Brazeau, “Who Wants to Live Forever?” Yet critics have been overly hasty to dismiss the30 31 323334 35 3637 38 39 40265later poem as the project of Tasso’s new Counter-Reformation orthodoxy. This may be the case, but surely only in part; as the Giudicio and contemporary letters attest, Tasso was involved in a continuing dialogue with ancient authors, and the Conquistata attests to his desire to write a poem that creates more of a balance between opposing forces. Gerusalemme conquistata, II: 11–12. Luigi Bonfigli’s edition, which comprises part of his five-volume Opere di Torquato Tasso, regrettably has no notes; there is still no fully annotated modern version of the poem. Shortly after Argante’s death a trio of female mourners lament his loss in a passage taken directly from Iliad 24; the fact that they appear in the Conquistata’s twenty-third canto makes the connection structural as well as thematic. See Stephens, “Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief,” on Erminia, in which he talks about Erminia’s imitation of Helen; while he finds in the Conquistata allusions to Helen’s weaving (Canto 3), he does not consider the Homeric echoes in Canto 23. Also see my “Imagining Narrative in Tasso.” Murnaghan, “The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic,” 217: “As she gives voice to her role as the bearer of Hector’s kleos, Andromache’s words fill in what Hector’s gloss over . . . [she] insists that the creation of kleos begins with grief for the hero’s friends and enemies alike. . . . Before it can be converted into pleasant, care-dispelling song, a hero’s achievement is measured in the suffering that it causes, in the grief that it inspires.” Ferguson’s Trials of Desire and Enterline, The Tears of Narcissus explore psychoanalytic material. Goddard, “Du ‘capitano’ au ‘cavalier sovrano,’” 240n. I want here to make note of Konrad Eisenbichler’s suggestive work with respect to new versions of masculinity articulated in early modern Europe, and especially to his generous support of the volume that Gerry Milligan and I edited for his series at the University of Toronto, The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2010). The letters that take up these various episodes, surely to be read in the larger context of Tasso’s oeuvre, include a majority of the letters in Molinari’s Lettere poetiche, which date from March 1575 through July 1576. Opere di Torquato Tasso, vol. V, 583. See Traherne, “Pictorial Space and Sacred Time,” for a bracing discussion as to why Tasso refused to indulge in any ekphrasis of sacred images in his work—as in his late poem, Lagrime. In the Conquistata, Tasso adds eight stanzas (15: 41–8) representing a prophetic dream regarding Clorinda’s future baptism as a Christian—a future less certain in the Liberata, when a number of verbs suggest the possibility of an only apparent conversion (“pare,” “sembra,” etc.).Bibliography Brazeau, Bryan. “Who Wants to Live Forever? Overcoming Poetic Immortality in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Conquistata.” Modern Language Notes 129 (2014): 42–61. Donadoni, Eugenio. Torquato Tasso. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1967. Enterline, Lynn. The Tears of Narcissus: Melancholia and Masculinity in Early Modern Writing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Ferguson, Margaret W. Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. Ferrari, Oreste and Giuseppe Scavizzi, eds. Luca Giordano. Rome: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1966. Fortini, Franco. Dialoghi col Tasso. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Giamperi, Giampeiero. Il battesimo di Clorinda: Eros e religiosità in Torquato Tasso. Fucecchio: Edizioni dell’Erba, 1995.Jane TylusGigante, Claudio. Tasso. Rome: Salerno, 2007. Goddard, Alain. “Du ‘capitano’ au ‘cavalier sovrano’: Godefroi de Bouillon dans la Jérusalem conquise.” In Réécritures 3: Commentaires, Parodies, Variations dans la littérature italienne de la renaissance, 205–64. Paris: Université da la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1987. Günsberg, Maggie. The Epic Rhetoric of Tasso: Theory and Practice. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 1998. Güntert, Georges. L’epos dell’ideologia regnante e il romanzo delle passioni. Pisa: Pacini, 1989. Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Language. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Miguel, Marilyn. “Tasso’s Erminia: Telling an Alternate Story.” Italica 64 (1987): 62–75. Murnaghan, Sheila. “The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic.” In Epic Traditions and the Contemporary World. 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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Utili, Mariella. “Giordano’s Olindo e Sofronia.” In Torquato Tasso: Letteratura, Musica, Teatro, Arti figurative. Edited by Andrea Buzzoni, 313. Bologna: Alfa, 1990. Virgil. Eclogues, Georgiecs, Aeneid I–VI. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Harvard, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1974.Warner, Christopher. The Augustinian Epic: Petrarch to Milton. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Waterhouse, E.K. “Tasso and the Visual Arts.” Italian Studies 3, nos. 3–4 (1947–48): 146–61. Yavneh, Naomi. “Dal rogo alle nozze : Tasso’s Sofronia as Martyr Manqué.” In Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso. Edited by Valeria Finucci, 270–94. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, L’opera poetica di Virginia Martini Salvi (Siena, c. 1510 – Roma, post 1571). Siena: Accademia degli Intronati di Siena, 2012. The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.Books Translations Cecchi, Giovan Maria. The Horned Owl ( L’Assiuolo). Translated with an introduction and notes by Konrad Eisenbichler. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981. 2nd ed. revised edition published in Renaissance Comedy: The Italian Masters. Volume 2. Edited with introduction by Donald Beecher, 221–88. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Firenzuola, Agnolo. On the Beauty of Women. Translated with introduction and notes by Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Savonarola, Girolamo. A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works. Translated and introduced byKonrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003.Books Conference proceedings and essay collections Love and Death in the Renaissance. Edited by K.R. Bartlett, Konrad Eisenbichler, and Janice Liedl. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1991.Konrad Eisenbichler Bibliography 269Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West. Edited by Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society, 1150–1650. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002. The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena. Edited and with an introduction by Konrad Eisenbichler. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Articles and essays “The Religious Poetry of Michelangelo: The Mystical Sublimation.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 23, no. 1 (1987): 123–36. Reprinted in Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English. Edited by William E. Wallace. Volume 5, 123–36. New York: Garland, 1995. “Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere.” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et Réforme 24, no. 1 (1988): 21–33. “Political Posturing in Some ‘Triumphs of Love’ in Quattrocento Florence.” In Petrarch’s ‘Triumphs’: Allegory and Spectacle. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and A.A. Iannucci, 369–81. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1990. “La carne e lo spirito: L’amore proibito di Michelangelo.” In Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia (Università di Siena), Volume 11, 359–70. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1990. Published contemporaneously in Antioco malato: Forbidden Loves from Antiquity to Rossini, 359–70. Firenze: Olschki, 1990. “Il trattato di Girolamo Savonarola sulla vita viduale.” In Studi savonaroliani: Verso il V centenario. Edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 267–72. Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1996. “Prima opera a stampa di Savonarola: I consigli per le vedove.” Città di vita 53, vol. 2–3 (1998): 161–68. Published contemporaneously in Savonarola rivisitato (1498–1998). Edited by M.G. Rosito, 65–72. Firenze: Edizioni Città di Vita, 1998. “Laudomia Forteguerri Loves Margaret of Austria.” In Same-Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages. Edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn, 277–304. New York: Palgrave, 2001. “Savonarola e il problema delle vedove nel suo contesto sociale.” In Una città e il suo profeta: Firenze di fronte al Savonarola. Edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 263–71. Firenze: SISMEL, 2001. “Poetesse senesi a metà Cinquecento: tra politica e passione.” Studi rinascimentali: Rivista internazionale di letteratura italiana 1 (2003): 95–102. Published contemporaneously in Rinascimento e Rinascimenti: Storia, lingua, cultura e periodizzazioni, 95–102. Salerno: Università di Salerno, 2004. “Un chant à l’honneur de la France: Women’s Voices at the End of the Republic of Siena.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 27, vol. 2 (2003): 87–99. “At Marriage End: Girolamo Savonarola and the Question of Widows in Late FifteenthCentury Florence.” In The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy. Edited by Sherry Roush and Cristelle Baskins, 23–35. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. “Codpiece” and “One-sex theory.” In the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Edited by Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Jamsheed Choksy, Judith Roof, and Francesca Sautman, 1: 308 and 3: 1087. Detroit: Thomson/Gale, 2007. “Adolescents” and “Laudomia Forteguerri.” In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History. Volume 3: The Early Modern Period, 1400–1600.Konrad Eisenbichler BibliographyEdited by Victoria L. Mondelli and Cherrie A. Gottsleben, 6–8 and 94–95. New York: Greenwood Press, 2007. “Erotic Elements in the Religious Plays of Renaissance Florence.” In Worth and Repute in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Barbara Todd. Edited by Kim Kippen and Lori Woods, 431–48. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010. “La Tombaide del 1540 e le donne senesi.” In Alessandro Piccolomini (Sienne 1508–1579). À la croisée des genres et des savoirs. Actes du Colloque International (Paris 23–25 septembre 2010). Réunis et présentés par Marie-Françoise Piéjus, Michel Plaisance, Matteo Residori, 101–11. Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III, 2012. “Fils de la louve: Blaise de Monluc et les femmes de Sienne.” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et Réforme 37, vol. 2 (Spring 2014): 5–18. “Sex and Marriage in Machiavelli’s Mandragola: A Close(t) Reading.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme -- abandoned women Abrabanel, Judah Accademia degli Infiammati Accademia degli Intronati Actaeon Ad compascendum (papal bull) adultery: as crime of violence cultural narrative in fiction legal definitions of; locations of  prosecutions for and prostitution Aeneid aesthetics: and masculinity and military prowess and social control agency: of courtiers female Agnoletto the Corsican Agnolo di Ipolito Alain of Lille Alberti Alberti Albertoni Alessandro de’ Medici Alexander the Great Alexander VI Altaseda Amadesi, Angela Aminta (Tasso) anal penetration see also sodomy Andreoli, Andreoli  androgyny Andromeda Angela of Foligno angels, Carlini invoking animals, sex with Antoniano Apuleius Arenula Aretino and Il Sodoma and Piccolomini Ragionamenti aristocratic behaviour Aristotle  Armida  “arti fallaci” autonomy Averani badgers Baliera Ballerina Bandello Bandello Bargagli Barolsky bastards beastliness Bechdel Test beffa Belforte Bell Bellini Belvedere di Saragozza Bembo Benazzi Benedek Benedict Benedictine order Bernardino bernesque poetry Berni Bernini bestiality see animals, sex with Betta la Magra Bianco bigamy Bignardina birds: eating symbolising the penis bisexuality blasphemy Blastenbrei Bocca di lupo Boccaccio Bollette see Ufficio delle Bollette Bologna: Borgo degli Arienti Borgo di San Martino Borgo di Santa Caterina di Saragozza Borgo di Santa Caterina di Strada Maggiore Borgo Nuovo di San Felice Borgo Riccio  Broccaindosso men’s relationships with prostitutes in regulation of prostitutes in  residencies of prostitutes in sausages of Bolzoni The Book of the Courtier (Castiglione) arms and letters in dress and aesthetics in homosexuality in on women’s behaviour Bossi Boswell Botticelli Bovio Bràina Braudel Brizio Bronzino brothels see also prostitution Brown Bruno Buonacasa Burckhardt burlesque literature Cady Camaiani Campi Campo di Bovi canon law Canossa Capatti Capella Cappelli Cappello Capramozza Captain of Justice (Siena) Caravaggio Caretta Carli Carlini: becoming abbess entry into religious life imprisonment of investigation into marriage to Christ modern controversy over, sexual contact with Mea spirituality of carne, multiple meanings of Carnevale (neighbourhood) Carnival Carracci Carracci Castiglione castration Catherine de’ Ricci, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Catherine of Bologna, Saint Catherine of Genoa, Saint  Catherine of Siena, Saint Cavedagna, Domenica Cazzaria (Vignali) Cellini Chauncey Chigi family Christ: Carlini speaking as Carlini’s visitations from forgiving the adulteress gender of loving union with Christianity: and eating meat and masculinity and sexuality Circe Clarke Clement VIII Cleopatra clergy: sexual violence by and sodomy Clorinda baptism of body of death of  and Sofronia clothing: foreign and masculinity and military defeat and sexual deviance Cockaigne, Land of Cohen Colieva Colle Colloquies (Erasmus) “compagni erranti” concubines  conjugal debt Connors Conquistata see Gerusalemme conquistata convents: power of  prostitution and sexuality within Corio Cornaro  Correggio cose brutte Cosimo cosmetics Council of Trent and adultery 7and failed saints and images nunneries after and sodomy  Counter-Reformation court ladies courtesans: in fiction idealized depiction of in Rome courtiers: ideal sacrificing masculinity Crawford Criminal Judge (Siena) Cristellon Crivelli cross-breeding cuckoldry Currie Cycnus Daedalus Dante d’Aragona d’Ascoli de Bertini de Montaigne Decameron: adultery in Branca’s edition of culinary language in and Dante and della Porta female heroines in Griselda and Gualtieri in and La Raffaella Walter of Brienne in deceit, courtiers and de’Grassi della Porta Art of Memory and myth and natural magic and nudity and Titian d’Este the Devil, and sexual violence di Loli family of prostitutes Dido dildos discourse, and social norms Dolce Domenidio, inn of Domitilla Donatello (Donato) Donina dress see clothing Durazzo, ecclesiastical courts effeminacy: in clothing  and military defeat Eisenbichler Elbl, Ivana Elliott, Dyan embodied experience England, debts to Florence Ensler epistemological caution  Erminia/Nicea erotic forces, cosmic erotica, learned essentialism Europa Fabritio faccia tosta fallacious artistries Farnese the Farnesina female bodies see also genitals, female Ferrante Ferrara Ferrari Ficino Finucci Fiorentina, Francesca Fiorentina Fiorentina Fiorentina Fiorentini Firenzuola Florence: annexation of Siena bank failures in conquest of Siena ghetto homosexuality in laws on sexual violence nobility and tyranny in  prostitution in sausages of forgetting, art of fortezza Fortini Foucault Fra Bartolommeo France: in Book of the Courtier  humiliation of Italy Francesco I Franchi Francis Franco Frangipane Franzesi Frassinago Freccero Fregoso Fregoso Furlana Gabriel Galen Galianti Gallucci, Margaret gambling Ganymede Garzoni gender: and art Foucault and Boswell on gender bias gender nonconformity genitals: of animals female male mediaeval theories about Gentileschi, Artemisia Gertrude of Helfta Gerusalemme conquistata (Tasso) female characters in as orthodox  and Sophronia episode Gerusalemme liberata (Tasso) female characters in Sofronia episode in Gesso Ghirardo Giampieri Giannetti Giannotti Gigante Gildippe Giordano Giovanni Giudi Giustiniani gluttony Goddard Goffen Gonzaga gossip Gozzadini Grandi Grazzini Gregory the Great Grosseto group sex Hadewijch  Halperin, David 1Harvey, Elizabeth hearts, gifting of Hercules Homer homoeroticism: between nuns in master-apprentice relationship in religious imagery in in Renaissance Italian art in Sodoma’s secular work homosexuality: among clergy clothing denoting in early modern Italy Il Sodoma and in Renaissance scholarship Saslow’s use of term 203n5; see also lesbians; sodomy honour: and adultery in Decameron  male and sexual violence honour killings  Il Sodoma (Gianantonio Bazzi) “Allegorical Man” biography of early religious works historiography of later religious works of painting of Catherine of Siena secular art of Iliad images: holy sexual imagination, phallic imagines agentes imitatio Christi immagine see images, holy impotence incest, laws on incontinence of desire inns, and prostitution Inquisition instruments see dildos interdisciplinarity intersectionality inversions Italian Renaissance: idealised image of scholarship on sex and gender in Jews: and prostitutes in Rome Kodera La Raffaella (Piccolomini) and Aretino’s Ragionamenti depiction of women textual sources Labalme labyrinth lactation, miracle of Landriani Marsilio lavoratori Leda and the swan lenzuola Leo X Leonardo da Vinci  lesbians, use of term for Renaissance women levitation Liberata see Gerusalemme liberata loci, in art of memory Lorenzo the bathhouse worker love: in La Raffaella masculine Neoplatonic discourse of Lucanica sausages Lucretia, wife of Cynthio Perusco Lucretia (Roman heroine) Lucretia the madam Lugeria lust luxuria Machiavelli magic: charges of and love natural Magrino male dress see also clothing, and masculinity male solidarity malmaritate Malpertuso  manly masquerade Mantuana, Chiara Marcutio, Marino Marema, Caterina Margaret of Cortona Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Saint marital debt see conjugal debt marriage: arranged mystical and passion married women, sexual laws about Martelli Martinengo, Maria Maddalena marvels Mary Magdalene Mary mother of Christ: and Catherine of Siena in Gerusalemme conquistata images of as mourner and mystical marriage Visitation of masculinity: arms and letters in as conformity and courtiers’ self-presentation Renaissance masturbation maternal longings Mattei Matthews-Grieco Matuccio Mauro McCall McCarthy Mea see Crivelli, Bartolomea meat: eating and sexuality see also carne; sausages memory, art of Messisbugo Michelangelo militarism Mills, Robert Minotaur  misogyny mixti fori monogamy, serial monstrous offspring  Montalcino Montanari, Massimo Montauto, Federico Barbolani di Monte of the Riformatori  Monteoliveto Maggiore Moroni, Doralice Moulton, Ian Frederick  Murnaghan, Sheila Muslim women mysticism: erotic  physical signs of myths, classical naked bodies: physiognomy of in Titian Negri Neoplatonism Niccoli Nolli Plan normative codes Nosadella novelle nunneries see convents nuns: as brides of Christ in fiction lust of clergy for and prostitutes sexual activities of Office of the Night Olimpia Ordeaschi Ordinances of Justice Orsini Otto di custodia Ottonelli Ovidio Paleotti Pallavicino Palloni, Agostino Panicarolo, Pietropaolo panopticon Paolo Parabosco Parigi Parker parlar disgiunto  parodies parties, prostitutes throwing Partner Pasiphaë Pasulini Pater patria potestas Paul III Paul IV pederasty pedagogical Pellizani personae, in art of memory Perusco Pesenti Petrarca version of Griselda story Phaeton phallus, sexuality centred around the see also genitals, male Philip II of Spain 3physiognomy Piazza Navona Piccolomini Oration in Praise of Women see also La Raffaella Piccolomini Piéjus Pietro piety, emotive register of pity Pius V Pizzoli Platina (Bartolommeo Sacchi)“poco conesso” poetry, and homosexuality Ponce Pontano Poor Clares Porcellio pork: poetic praise of social attitudes to pork sausage Porta Porta Procola  Porta Stiera 56–7 postmodernism power, in gender relations printing, transformative effects of procuresses prostitution: behaviour associated with and courtesans and courtiers in della Porta evidence of ex-prostitutes in fiction and Ludovico Santa Croce male men’s interaction with female residential patterns in Bologna social and familial circles of Puff queer studies queer visuality Querzola, Giovanna Randolph, Adrian rape see sexual violence Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) Raymond of Capua reception theory Reed re-focalization Renaissance Italy see Italian Renaissance Renaissance scholarship, sexuality and gender in  Renaissance sex Rice the Ripetta Rocke Rojas Roman antiquity, effeminacy in Roman law romance Romantic Friendships Rome: adultery trials in early modern street plan prostitution in regulation of illicit sex in Renaissance demography of sexual bohemianism in Romoli Rosetti Rossi Rossi Ruggiero Sacchetti Sacchi Romana Sack of Rome saints, failed same-sex eroticism see homoeroticism San Colombano Santa Caterina di Saragozza Santa Croce Santa Croce family Sarteano sausages Savi sbirri Scapuccio Schutte Sebastian Sedgwick self-expression self-fashioning  self-harm semen sensuality: in Renaissance Italy and spirituality women known for Senzanome Sercambi sex crimes sex ratio, in Rome sexual fantasies sexual identity sexual innuendos sexual non-conformity sexual positions sexual violence: against women and young girls  against young boys in art in classical myth by clergy laws on in Renaissance Italy sexuality: female Foucault on male (see also phallus); and meat eating Neoplatonic discourse on newer approaches to in poetry see also homosexuality Sforza, Caterina Sforza, Galeazzo Shakespeare, William shrines, prostitution around sibille Siena: administration of justice in Il Sodoma in sexual violence in Vasari on Simio Simon Simone Simons sin, sexual single women, vulnerability of Sixtus V slander, sexual social constructionism social control Socrates sodomy: defences of in early modern Italy and meat preachers against regulating Roman laws on Sienese laws against see also anal penetration; homosexuality; Il Sodoma Sofronia: episode of Giordano’s paintings of inscrutability of Song of Songs Speroni Sperone spirituality, sensual imagery Spisana Splenditello Spoloni sponsa spousal violence, and adultery sprezzatura Stanton statues, living Statuta Stefani Stiera stigmata Storey, Tessa strada dritta stufa subcultures Symonds synecdoche synopsis Tagliarini Tarozzi Tasso “Allegoria del Poema” and female bodies Giudizio del poema riformato and Sofronia episode  Gerusalemme conquistata; Gerusalemme liberata Taylor Tedeschi Teresa Terracina Tiziano Torre Sanguigna torture Toschi transgender Traub, Valerie Trevisana, Margareta and Francesca Tridentine rules see Council of Trent Tuscany, duchy of Tylus Ufficiali sopra la pace Ufficio delle Bollette Urban VIII Ursini Usinini, Terenzio Utili, Mariella The Vagina Monologues 218 vaginas see genitals, female Vallati Vanna of Orvieto  Vanni, Francesco Varchi, Benedetto Vasari, Giorgio Venetiana, Vienna Venice: prostitution in sex crimes in Veronica Giuliani, Saint Via del Portico d’Ottavia  Via Santa Anna  Vicario Vignaiuoli  Villani, Giovanni  Virgil  Virgil virtù: in Boccaccio in Tasso  Virtuosi  visions, religious visual culture Vives, Juan-Luis Walter of Brienne  whores see prostitution witchcraft 1 see also magic women: abuse of depictions in Renaissance culture  honest and dishonest  (see also prostitution); in the Intronati men writing about men writing for 2in myth  published and unpublished texts by see also female bodies women’s history word play Yavneh Zanetti Zanrè Zapata Zonta. Giovanni Battista Modio. Modio. Keywords. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Modio” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Moiso: la ragione conversazionale e ROMOLO, o dell’implicatura conversazionale della filosofia della mitologia – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Torino). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Moiso; I would think my two favourite of his treatises is one on the ‘filosofia della mitologia’ (think Beowulf!) --; the other is a consideration on Goethe on ‘nature and her forms’ – having built my career on the natural/non-natural distinction, it cannot but fascinate me!” Esperto di storia della filosofia e della scienza di fama internazionale, ha insegnato nelle Torino, Macerata e Milano. Le sue ricerche hanno riguardato la filosofia post-kantiana, con particolare attenzione al pensiero di Salomon Maimon, l'idealismo tedesco, con ricerche su Kant, Fichte, Schelling e Hegel, Goethe e l'età goethiana, Achim von Arnim, il concetto di esperienza ed esperimento nel Romanticismo, la filosofia di Nietzsche nel suo rapporto con le scienze, il pensiero di Mach. È stato membro della Schelling Kommission per l'edizione critica di Schelling. Ha partecipato alla Enciclopedia Multimediale delle Scienze Filosofiche di Rai Educational con due interventi sulla La filosofia della natura tedesca e sulla "Scienza specialistica e visione della natura nell’età goethiana". Presso l'Udine è stato istituito il Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sulla Morfologia. Fondamentali per la ricerca filosofica e le oltre 100 pagine dedicate a “Pre-formazione ed epigenesis”, in “Il vivente -- aspetti filosofici, biologici e medici,” – Grice: “Interesting idea, ‘il vivente’ – we don’t have that thing in English, ‘a loose liver’ --. Verra, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Caratteristica degli suoi studi è la connessione tra ricerca storico-filosofica e impianto teoretico, fatto particolarmente evidente in suo saggio su Schelling. “La filosofia di Maimon” (Milano, Mursia); “Natura e cultura” (Milano, Mursia); “Vita, natura libertà” (Milano, Mursia); “Pre-formazione ed epigenesi nell'età goethiana, in “II problema del vivente” Aspetti filosofici, biologici e medici, Verra, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana);  Nietzsche e le scienze” (Milano, Martino)-- Grice: cf. ‘gaia scienza’ – “Tra arte e scienza” (Milano, Marino);“La natura e le sue forme,” C.  Diekamp (Milano, Mimesis); “La filosofia della mitologia,” M. Alfonso (Milano, Mimesis); “Il nulla e l'assoluto” "Annuario Filosofico", “Teleo-logia dopo Kant” in: Giudizio e interpretazione in Kant. Convegno sulla Critica del Giudizio (Macerata, Genova, Idee in Schelling, in IDEA  Colloquio, Roma, Fattori e Bianchi (Olschki, Firenze); Schelling, "Ricerche filosofiche sull'essenza della libertà umana: e gli oggetti che vi sono connessi", Commentario A. Pieper e O. Höffe  (Milano, Guerini); Le Ricerche: una svolta in Schelling?, in Schelling, "Ricerche filosofiche sull'essenza della libertà umana: e gli oggetti che vi sono connessi (Milano, Guerini); “Dio come persona,” in Schelling, "Ricerche filosofiche sull'essenza della libertà umana: e gli oggetti che vi sono connessi", Commentario Pieper e Höffe (Milano, Guerini); “I paradossi dell'infinito, in: "Romanticismo e modernità", Torino, La scoperta dell’osso inter-mascellare e la questione del tipo osteologico, in Giorello, Grieco, Goethe scienziato” (Torino, Einaudi); “Schelling: il romano antico nella filosofia dell'arte, in "Rivista di estetica", Torino, pensatore e narratore dell'Europa, Milano, Gargnano del Garda, Milano: Cisalpino (Acme/Quaderni); E ho visto le idee addirittura con gl’occhi, in: Goethe: la natura e le sue forme, atti del Convegno Arte, scienza e natura in Goethe; Torino (Milano, Mimesis); C.  Diekamp,  Experientia/experimentum nel Romanticismo, in Veneziani, Experientia” (Firenze: Olschki); “L'albero della malattia -- motivi della medicina in età romantica, in Atti della sofferenza. Atti del seminario di studi. Udine,. Casale e Garelli, Itinerari,  La percezione del fenomeno originario e la sua descrizione, in: Arte, scienza e natura in Goethe. Torino, R. Pettoello, In memoriam, "Acme", Alfonso, Matteo, In guisa di introduzione. La filosofia della luce di Fichte, in "Rivista di storia della filosofia,” Ivaldo, La fichtiana dottrina della scienza, In memoria di  M.. La filosofia della natura, in "Annuario Filosofico", Ziche, "Un terzo più alto, la loro sintesi comune". Teorie della mediazione, In memoria di  Moiso. La filosofia della natura, in "Annuario Filosofico",  S. Poggi, Dopo Schelling, dopo Goethe. lettore di Mach, La filosofia della natura, in "Annuario Filosofico", F. Vercellone, Da Goethe a Nietzsche. Tra morfologia ed ermeneutica, in In memoria di M.. La filosofia della natura, in "Annuario Filosofico", Giordanetti, Interprete di Kant", in Rivista di storia della filosofia, Frigo, Natura della forma e storicità della sua comprensione, testimonianze di colleghi e allievi, Torino,  La responsabilità dell'uomo per la natura nel pensiero degli scienziati romantici in Testimonianze (Torino, Trauben); F. Cuniberto, Corpo e mistero, in Testimonianze (Torino, Trauben, M. Alfonso, I corsi: una lezione di ricerca, in Testimonianze (Torino, Trauben); Giordanetti, Il kantismo di Nietzsche, Testimonianze” (Torino, Trauben); L. Guzzardi, Tra filosofia della natura e morfologia dei saperi: un ruolo per l'enciclopedismo, in Testimonianze” (Torino, Trauben);  Viganò, Morfologia e filosofia: la filosofia della natura come "tropica" del reale, in Testimonianze (Torino, Trauben); Potestio, Lo Schelling di Heidegger (Torino, Trauben); Mainardi,  L'estetica pittorica di Friedrich, Testimonianze, Torino, Trauben,  Cazzaniga, La filosofia dell'evoluzione, testimonianze Torino, Trauben, La natura osservata e compresa: saggi in memoria, Viganò, Milano, Guerini,  Moro, In ricordo , in "Rivista di Storia della Filosofia",  antzen, In memoriam: In ricordo, Università degli Studi di Milano, Sala Crociera Alta,  La rivoluzione di Lavoisier, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze, Goethe e la natura, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze Filosofiche, Goethe poeta e scienziato, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze La ri-culturalizzazione della scienza, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze Filosofiche, Scheda biografica su Mimesis. Grice: “Plato is clear about this: other than predicated of ‘shape’ (forma), ‘beautiful’ has no SENSE! Moiso learned that from Gothe –problem with Goethe is that he was interested in the German mandibule!” Grice: “Pliny understood this best: it’s one boring thing to see Apollo Belvedere, larger than life. The good thing is to see or experience a ‘symtagm’, such as ‘I lottatori’ della Tribuna – a statuary group of two males – one may say there is ONE form in the Lottatori – Goethe would say that each body is a form – and so there are two forms.  -- Francesco Moiso. Moiso. Keywords: la morfologia e la fisiologia del vivente --. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Moiso” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mondin: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell ritorno dell’angelo – la semantica filosofica – semantica pel sistema G – interpretazione e validità -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Monte di Malo). Filosofo italiano. Grice:“Trust an Aquino to provide a systematic philosophy! Mind, I’ve been called a systematic philosopher, too!” Grice: “At Oxford, we are very familiar with angels – but only Mondin takes angeologia seriously! Trust an Italian! Ponte Sant’Angelo comes to mind!” Dottore di Filosofia e Religione a Harvard. È stato decano della Facoltà di Filosofia presso la Pontificia Università Urbaniana di Roma. Mondin membro della Congregazione dei Missionari Saveriani. Nei suoi studi, le principali figure di riferimento sono state AQUINO e Tillich, da cui ha tratto l'ideale di un accordo e di un mutuo sostegno tra filosofia e teologia.  “Etica, Etica e politica, Filosofia, Antropologia filosofica, Manuale di filosofia sistematica, La Metafisica di Aquino e i suoi interpreti,” “Storia dell'antropologia filosofica” Antropologia filosofica e filosofia della cultura e dell'educazione; “Epistemologia e cosmologia; “Logica, semantica e gnoseologia; Ontologia e metafisica Storia della metafisica, Storia della metafisica, Storia della metafisica, “Ermeneutica, metafisica, analogia in Aquino; Storia della filosofia medievale Dizionario enciclopedico di filosofia, teologia e morale Il sistema filosofico di Aquino Corso di storia della filosofia, L'uomo: chi è? Introduzione alla filosofia. Problemi, sistemi, filosofi La filosofia dell'essere di Aquino Teologia, Piccolo trattato di mariologia “Il ritorno degl’angeli” -- trattato di angelologia, Roma, Pro Sanctitate. Ospitato su archive.is. Dizionario storico e teologico delle missioni Dizionario enciclopedico del pensiero di AQUINO,  Essere cristiani oggi. Guida al cristianesimo Il problema di Dio. Filosofia della religione e teologia filosofica La cristologia di Aquino. Origine, dottrine principali, attualità Storia della teologia Storia della teologia Storia della teologia Storia della teologia, Gli abitanti del cielo Gesù Cristo salvatore dell'uomo La chiesa sacramento d'amore La trinità mistero d'amore Dizionario dei teologi Introduzione alla teologia Dio: chi è? Elementi di teologia filosofica Scienze umane e teologia Cultura, marxismo e cristianesimo I teologi della liberazione, “Il problema del linguaggio teologico dalle origini ad oggi” Filosofia e cristianesimo I teologi della speranza I grandi teologi Professore  I grandi teologi Professore  I teologi della morte di Dio Dizionario enciclopedico di filosofia, teologia e morale. Software Filosofia della cultura e dei valori Le realtà ultime e la speranza cristiana Religione Nuovo dizionario enciclopedico dei papi. Storia e insegnamenti Commento al Corpus Paulinum (expositio et lectura super epistolas Pauli apostoli) La chiesa primizia del regno. Trattato di ecclesiologia Mito e religioni. Introduzione alla mitologia religiosa e alle nuove religioni L'uomo secondo il disegno di Dio. Trattato di antropologia teologica Preesistenza, sopravvivenza, reincarnazione Teologie della prassi L'eresia del nostro secolo Società Storia dell'antropologia filosofica Antropologia filosofica. L'uomo: un progetto impossibile? Philosophical anthropology Una nuova cultura per una nuova società. In ricordo di M..  Un tomista ed "oltre" del XX secolo: M. di PMontini, Congresso tomista internazionale, Roma,  nel sito "E- Aquinas" Studium thomisticum. Grice: “M. attempts a systematic semantics. Rather he has a section on ‘semantics’ --. The expressions have to be used carefully. System itself, should be used alla Gentzen, or as Myro does with System G in my gratitude. A semantics for System G should include an interpretation and provisions for validity and truth!” – Grice: “Most likely, as most Italian philosophers who haven’t read me do – he uses ‘system’ and ‘semantic’ in a rather pompouns way!” -- Battista Mondin. Keywords. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Mondin” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mondolfo: la ragione conversazionale della filosofia romana – antica filosofia italica -- la filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Senigallia). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Mondolfo is one of the few who have focused on ‘gli eleati’ as involving a locus – pretty much as I do when I talk of Oxonian dialectic.” Grice: “Mondolfo’s study of the politics of Risorgimento is good; especially since every Englishman seemed to endorse it!” -- essential Italian philosopher. Like Grice, Mondolfo believed seriously in the longitudinal unity of philosophy and made original research on the historiography of philosophy, especially during the Eleatic, Agrigento, and later Roman periods. Figlio di Vito Mondolfo e Gismonda Padovani, una famiglia benestante di commercianti. Aderisce alle idee marxiste e socialiste. Studia a Firenze. Si laurea con F. Tocco, discutendo una tesi su Condillac dal titolo: "Contributo alla storia della teoria dell'associazione", un saggio da cui saranno poi tratti alcuni dei suoi primi saggi di storia della filosofia. Frequenta un gruppo socialista. Insegna a Potenza, Ferrara, Mantova, Padova, Torino, e Bologna. Consigliere comunale nelle file del Partito Socialista. Collabora con la rivista "Critica Sociale" fino a quando viene soppressa dal regime fascista.  Compone "Saggi per la storia della morale utilitaria" di Hobbes ed Helvetius”; "Tra il diritto di natura e il comunismo", "Rousseau nella formazione della coscienza moderna", "Il materialismo storico in F. Engels" (Formiggimi, La Nuova Italia) "Sulle orme di Marx". E  tra i firmatari del manifesto degli intellettuali anti-fascisti, redatto da Benedetto Croce. Si dedica alla filosofia italica antica. Ciò nonostante, pur in questo periodo, grazie alla politica di Gentile che volle coinvolgere filosofi di diverso orientamento nell'impresa, collabora con l'Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Compone la voce Socialismo. In seguito alle leggi razziali fasciste che vietavano agli ebrei di ricoprire cariche pubbliche, Mondolfo scrisse il proprio curriculum di benemerenze e vi inserì lo stesso Gentile come testimone il quale ha a propormi per il Premio Reale di filosofia presso i lincei". Gentile autorizza Mondolfo a citarlo tra i testimoni e tenta inutilmente di farlo ri-entrare tra gli esclusi dalle leggi razziali. Costretto a lasciare l'Italia Gentile scrive ad Alberini e lo aiuta a trovare lavoro in Argentina. Il suo archivio personale è depositato in parte a Firenze presso la Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati ed in parte presso Milano.  Altre saggi: Sulle orme di Marx,” – Grice: “Whitehead used to say that metaphysics has been but footnotes to Plato; and Strawson used to say that to rob peter to pay paul you must show first that pragmatics is but footnotes to Grice!” --  Grice: “But of course a footnote is not a footprint – only similar!” – Grice: “While ‘footprint’ involves Roman pressum, ‘orma’ obviates that!” --  Cappelli); “L'infinito nel pensiero dei greci, Felice Le Monnier, La Nuova Italia); “Problemi e metodi di ricerca nella storia della filosofia” (Zanichelli, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, Milano, Bompiani, “Gli albori della filosofia in Grecia,” «La Nuova Italia», Editrice Petite Plaisance, Pistoia,. La comprensione del soggetto umano nella cultura antica, La Nuova Italia (Milano, Bompiani ). Alle origini della filosofia della cultura, Il Mulino, “Il pensiero politico nel Risorgimento italiano,” Nuova accademia, Cesare Beccaria, Nuova Accademia Editrice,. “Moralisti greci: la coscienza morale da Omero a Epicuro,” Ricciardi, “Da Ardigò a Gramsci,” Nuova Accademia, “Il concetto dell'uomo in Marx,” Città di Senigallia, “Momenti del pensiero greco e cristiano,” Morano, “Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici, Einaudi, “Il contributo di Spinoza alla concezione storicistica, Lacaita, Polis, lavoro e tecnica, Feltrinelli, Educazione e socialismo, Lacaita, “Gli eleati,” Bompiani,. Note  Vedi Paolo Favilli, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, riferimenti in.  Fu una delle prime donne italiane a conseguire la laurea (cfr. Le donne nell'Firenze). Sposò civilmente a Firenze in Palazzo Vecchio Cesare Battisti. La sorella di Ernesta, Irene, sposerà Giovanni Battista Trener, per anni collaboratore di Cesare.  Amedeo Benedetti, L'Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani e la sua biblioteca, "Biblioteche Oggi", Milano, Enciclopedia Treccani, vedi alla voce futuro di Cesare Medail, Corriere della Sera, Archivio storico.  «SOCIALISMO» la voce nella Enciclopedia Italiana, Volume XXXI, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana; Paolo Simoncelli41.  Paolo Simoncelli42.  Paolo Simoncelli43.  Vedi Fabio Frosini, Il contributo italiano alla storia del PensieroFilosofia, riferimenti in.  Archivio, Inventari Stefano Vitali e Piero Giordanetti. Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali. Ufficio Centrale per i beni archivistici.  Archivio Rodolfo Mondolfo. Inventari, Stefano Vitali e Piero Giordanetti, Roma, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali. Ufficio Centrale per i beni archivistici, Paolo Simoncelli "Non credo neanch'io alla razza" Gentile e i colleghi ebrei, Le Lettere, Firenze,  L. Vernetti, R. Mondolfo e la filosofia della prassi, Morano,  E. Bassi, Rodolfo Mondolfo nella vita e nel pensiero socialista, Tamari); A. Santucci, Pensiero antico e pensiero moderno in Mondolfo, Cappelli, Bologna); Bobbio, Umanesimo di Rodolfo Mondolfo, in Maestri e compagni, Passigli Editore, Firenze 1984. M. Pasquini, Del Vecchio, il kantismo giuridico e la sua incidenza nell'elaborazione di Rodolfo Mondolfo (Alfagrafica, Città di Castello); C. Calabrò, Il socialismo mite: tra marxismo e democrazia, Polistampa, Firenze); E. Amalfitano, Dalla parte dell'essere umano. Il socialismo di Rodolfo Mondolfo, L'asino d'oro, Roma. TreccaniEnciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. su siusa.archivi.beniculturali, Sistema Informativo Unificato per le Soprintendenze Archivistiche.  Opere su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Opere Fabio Frosini, MONDOLFO, Rodolfo, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero: Filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,. Vita opere e pensiero Diego Fusaro, sito "filosofico.net". Fondo Rodolfo Mondolfo Università degli Studi di Milano. Biblioteca di Filosofia. Fondo Rodolfo Mondolfo Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati.  Italiani emigrati in Argentina – Antica filosofia italica. La filosofia italica sin dai tempi antichi era cosi deita, e quel che più monta, dai Greci stessi, e l'autorità non sospetta di un Platone e di un Aristotele, che non la chiamarono con altro nome, ci sembra dar peso alle ragioni di quanti la vogliono originaria, contro l'opposta opinione di chi tra noi la dice portata dalle colonie greche. Comunque sia, certo è che in questa seconda supposizione, l'Italia non perde tutto il suomerito, perchè la scienza quisorse più splendida mercè il concorso del genio e il sussidio delle tradizioni italiane. Le scuole di cui essa può menar vanto sono due, la di Crotone/Ponto/Taranto e la dei velini. La setta di Crotone e fondata da Pitagora, di cui si tiene incerta così l'origine come iltempo della nascita; l'origine, perchè è dubbio s'ei nascesse à Samo della Ionia od a Samo della Magna Grecia; il tempo, perchè chi lo vuol nato nell'anno 584 av. C.,chi nel 608,e chi ancor prima, ai tempi di Numa, il quale, come ciè noto, mori nel 672, dopo quarantatrè anni di regno. Tra i filosofi che vi appartennero, chiamati ancor essi pitagorici, con un ARCHITA di TARANTO (il più celebre di tutti), che capitana più volte gl’eserciti, e non fu mai sconfitto, si ricordano un FILOLAO, probabilmente di Crotone, un TIMEO di LOCRI, ed un OCELLO di LUCANIA. Taciamo i minori o dimen nota dottrina, come LISIDE, CLINIA, EURITE, ZELEUCO, e CARONDA -- i quali due ullimi, legislatori entrambi, di Locri l'uno, l'altro di CATANIA, insigni rese l'efficacia che, per loro opera specialmente, ha allora la filosofia negl’ordini civili, quando, mutata la forma, i governi regi si convertirono in popolari. La setta di CROTONE ha vita dal bisogno di una scienza, che, professata da uomini austeri e ornati di grandi virtû, e con giunta all'operosità civile -- in ciò la consorteria pitagorica, chè tale fu veramente, distinguesi dalle indiane -- serve di criterio per una riforma riconosciuta necessaria in mezzo al guasto ognor crescente della religione, dei costumi e della libertà; lo che ci spiega le persecuzioni a cui andò soggetto.  Scuola pitagorica. -Nuovo affatto è nella scienza il metodo recatovi dai CROTONESI. Questo metodo -- e lo stesso dicasi del linguaggio --  è il matematico; il quale consiste nell'applicare le idee di quantità alla natura interna ed esterna, ed al principio sommo della medesima; metodo che, tutto essendo nel mondo capace di numero e di misura, non sarebbe forse tanto strano quanto a prima vista appare, se non fosse che i Crotonesi all'esperienza, che la verità ci rivela nell'ordine dei contingenti, il più delle volte preferirono il ragionamento a priori, error palese a chi consideri che dal concetto, per esempio, di circolo, di triangolo, di pentagono, non si può argomentare che questi tipi si effettuino in natura, e chi lo fa si espone al pericolo manifesto di costruire da sè un mondo fantastico, un mondo che non esiste fuori della sua mente. Ma i crotonesi sono educati allo studio delle matematiche; perciò non è meraviglia cheil metodo di queste scienze trasportassero nelle regioni della filosofia. Il gran problema metafisico dei CROTONESI riducesi adunque al seguente: trovare la legge mentale della quantità effettuate nella realtà, e con queste salire alla prima cagione. Ed ecco perchè tutto è numero nel loro sistema. I principi delle cose sono i numeri. Un numero, una unità parziale è ogni cosa. Un numero, una unità generale il loro complesso, cio è l'universo o mondo, il quale comprendendo in sè tutti i numeri od unità parziali, à in sè la pienezza d'ogni grado di entità, epperciò è decade; e la prima cagione, il principio di tutti iprincipi delle cose, la causa che ad ogni altra causa antecede, è numero essa pure, ma il numero per antonomasia, e quindi può chiamarsi l'unità, la diade, la triade, il quadernario (o solido), il settenario e la decade. Ma lasciamo da banda questo gergo simbolico, e vediamo che di sostanziale si peschi in fondo alla dottrina dei Crotonesi, e come s'abbia a intendere la sua formula. Ogni cosa è un numero. Che cosa è il numero per eccellenza, la Monade somma, infinita, il divino dei Crotonesi? E che sarà l'essere individuo? Che cosa il mondo od universo? Il divino èl'ente che in sè contiene la propria essenza e quella di tutti gl’esseri, epperò tutti i contrari, cioè le cose più opposte e disparate (inito ed infinito, dispari e pari, uno e più, positivo e negativo, quiete e moto, luce e tenebre, bene e male, ecc.), ed inoltre la moltiplicità loro insieme concilia, risultandone una suprema unità, un'armonia universale. Il divino, insomma, è l'unità suprema di tutti icontrari. Le cose particolari, gl’esseri derivati da lei sono immagini sue, epperò consteranno anch'esse di elementi contrari, a unità ed armonia ridotti; dunque ogni essere è un numero ed armonia parziale. Poni assieme tutti questi numeri, tutti gl’esseri finiti, e in modo che i contrary non cozzino, ma formino un solo numero , una sola unità vastissima, immagine essa pure della monade divina. Tale il mondo od universo dei crotonesi, il quale e l'assieme dei contrari, non già nell'unità somma inesistenti, ma in atto e dal divino ridotti ad armonia. Ora, in qual modo la generalità dei contrari, cioè la decade, il mondo in esi steva nell'unità per eccellenza, nel divino? Qui crotenesi tacciono, di modo che nulla di positivo e certo può rilevarsi dalla loro dottrina. Bensi e'ci apprendono come l'universo o mondo si venisse formando per ispirazione od aspirazione.La monade universale e suprema, contenente in sè le unità particolari, da principio e una, continua, indivisa, ma non indivisibile, e da ogni parte circondata da un vuoto immenso; il quale, aspirato da essa,come l'aria entra nei polmoni, si introduce fra i contrari,ossia fra le monadi particolari, e cosi separandoli, individuolli, e produsse la grande moltiplicità delle cose mondiali. La formolaesprimentel'armoniauniversale (tuttoènumero) per la scuola pitagorica può dirsi il principio di tutta la filo sofia, dappoichè essa l'applicò in tutti tre gl’ordini --metafisico, logico e morale. Che cosa è l'anima umana , la quale, dice Filolao, giace nel corpo come in un sepolcro? Risponde il crotonesi: un numero, un'armonia, insieme conciliando essa due contrari, cioè i sensi e la ragione, che sono ilnegativo ed il positivo, l'irragionevole ed il ragionevole. E la verità, la co gnizione che cosa è mai ? Un numero, un'armonia, come fuor dell'armonia è l'errore, essendo che per l'acquisto della medesima cooperano gli stessi contrari, quantunque la ragione si spinga più oltre dei sensi, i quali non escono dalla sfera dei contingenti o fenomeni. E che sarà, infine, la virtù? Un numero, un'armonia, che risulia anch'essa dall'accordo dell'irragionevole col ragionevole, essendo la virtù riposta nella soggezione dei sensi all'impero della ragione, toltalaquale, all'armonia sotten traladisarmonia, alla virtû il vizio. Vadasè che la virtù ci rimena alla monade suprema, all'ordine od armonia universale, che d'ogni essere è principio e fine. Critica. Bene esaminando la dottrina dei crotonesi, si scuopre nella medesima un error capitale, che à per sorgente l'abuso del metodo trascendentale, come quello che li condusse a trasportare nell'ordine delle realtà le astrazioni della matematica, e a concepir il divino quasi unità generica o numero per eccellenza, che è come dire quale un'essenza in cui si contengono e si immedesimano le cose tutte quante. Nè a salvarli dal panteismo implicito bastano le alte verità frammischiatevi, eladichia Senofane, schernitore dei politeisti, i qualiammettono più dei, e degli antropomorfisti, che li fingono a loro immagine e somiglianza, insegna che il divino è potentissimo, uno ed eterno; potentissimo, perchè egli è l'ente (entità, forza, energia e potenza per la scuola italica sono termini sinonimi). Uno, perchè, tra più dèi uguali, nessuno è potentissimo per l'uguaglianza, e se inferiori, nessuno è potentissimo per inforiorità; eterno, perchè l'ente non può non essere, e il non ente non può divenire. Si fosse egli qui arrestato! ma fra gli altributi divini ne annovera un quinto, dal quale poi con falsa logica deduce una (1) Colonia ionica di Elea. (2) Velia ha un'altra scuola, fondatavi da Leucippo e Democrito, i quali spiegavano la formazione del mondo con ammettere nel vacuo immenso una infinità di atomi eterni, il cui fortuito accozzamento avrebbe dato origine a tutte cose (atomismo). Questa scuola,chiamata fisica,non siconfonda coll'eleaticasemplicemente detta, e denominata anche metafisica per distinzione. Uno razione di Filolao, Dio essere imperatore e duce sommo, ed eterno, potentissimo, supremo e diverso dalle altre cose; per chè d'uopo è che accetti le conseguenze chi non rinunzia al l'erroneità dei principi. E l’erroneità del principio pitagorico sta appunto nel far di Dio un tutto, un numero che comprende in sè ogni altro numero. « Il sentimento religioso e morale, scri ve il dottissimo Bertini (Idea d'una filosofia della vita) induce va i Pitagorici a collocare Dio molto al dissopra del mondo;ma il fato della logica li forzava sovente ad immedesimarli in una sola sostanza, e ricacciavali nel panteismo ». La scuola eleatica ebbe tal nome da quello della città dove sorse, poco dopo la di Crotone, per opera di Senofane, che, nato a Colofone della Ionia tardi migra di là per l'invasione della patria,e venuto nella Magna Grecia, prenfr stanza in Velia, e vi morì nella grave età di oltre a cent'an ni.- SenofaneebbediscepoloParmenide,eParmenideZenone, buon patriota, che, condannato a morte da un tiranno, corag giosamente sostenne ilsupplizio.Questi due,d'Elea entrambi, con Melisso di Samo, il quale capitano gl’Italioti contro Pericle, continuarono la dottrina del primo, e vi dettero forma più rigorosa, se non incremento. D'altri nomi più famosi non la menzione la storia della filosofia eleatica. Una dottrina si ripugnante al senso comune non poteva menarsi per buona; perciò si levarono a impugnarla e combat terla gli empiristi, o fautori del metodo a posteriori, sostenendo contro gli Eleati el'esistenza reale di sostanze finite, e la loro contingenza e varietà, e la mutabilità loro, attestata dall'evidenza dei fatti. Zenone, quel valente Zenone che Aristotele riconobbe quale inventore della dialettica -- scienza ed arte di ragionare e disputare -- come lo fu senza dubbio tra gli Occidentali, a sua volta non lascia senza difesa la filosofia della sua scuola e del suo maestro, anzi incalzò gliavversari con molta lena e con buona copia d'argomenti diretti a dimostrare, per una parte la fallacia dei sensi e l'autonomia della ragione, per l'altra, e con sofismi ad homincm , che l'empirismo, ilquale all'autorità della ragione oppone quella dei sensi, contiene in sè contraddizioni ben più gravi di quelle che si dicevano implicite nella metafisica eleatica. Ed allora, se la memoria non ci falla, sorse la prima delle po lemiche che, per la loro importanza, ànno meritato una pagina nella storia della scienza. ~ Famoso argomento di Zenone deyto l'Achille.  strana conseguenza: l'ente è tutto od intiero, epperò nulla a lui può aggiugnersi; donde segue che nulla può incominciare ad essere.Qui l'error di illazione, il sofisma del conseguente è manifesto; quanto viene all'esistenza è forse un che d'aggiunto all'infinitudine divina? D'altronde, se nulla può nascere o di venire, che pensare degli esseri contingenti e mutabili, cosi detti perchè nei vari momenti del tempo sono e non sono, e mutano continuamente ? Senofane se la spicciò nettamente con negare a dirittura l'esistenza delle sostanze finite, e sentenziò: « Tali cose non ànno altra vita fuorchè l'apparenza, ed appartengono all'opinione. O che! sarà dunque menzognera sempre la voce dei sensi ? E ci ingannerà di continuo l'intimo sentimento ? Che si, rispondono in coro gli Eleati , quanto ci rilevano i sensi altro non è che illusione; e la ragione è il mezzo unico per giungere al vero; e il vero è che tutto è uno, e l'uno è tuito. Critica. Ma l’arte dei Zenoni, che con sofismi strani pro pugnano la falsità del vero, e quel che è più, l'incertezza del l'evidente, e, prova non dubbia di grande acume, perfin riesco no a dimostrare, contro la possibilità del moto, che nella più rapida sua corsa il più celere cavallo non raggiungerà mai una tartaruga,quantochè tardissima, la quale anche di poco la pre ceda ("), tutta l'arte dialettica, ripeto, non sarà mai da tanto che possa collocare sopra una base solida isistemi della scuola   Filosofia presso i Greci antichi. Principio, mezzo e fine; infanzia,virilità e decrepitezza, o decadimento, ecco i tre stadi o periodi, le tre età dell'antica fi losofia greca. Tra il principio e la fine corrono ben sette secoli, all'incirca; ma noi li percorreremo in minor tempo, se non ci manchi lena. da l'alete a Socrate. La prima età della filosofia greca antica incomincia con Talete, e termina al comparire della filosofia socratica. Talete, già è delio, nacque 600 anni av. C. e Socrate nel 170 ; qui dunque abbiamo press'a poco un periodo di centotrenť anni, durante i quali sorsero due scuole, la ionica e la sofistica; le quali, aggiunte alla pitagorica ed all'eleatica, ci dànno in com plesso l'antica filosofia designata col nome di italo-greca. Scuola ionica. Fondata in Mileto della Ionia, sua patria, da Talete,primo tra i filosofi greci conosciuti, ma forse non tale veramente, que sta scuola è, come vedremo, la men filosofica di tutte le pre cedenti. Nè la ragione è difficile a comprendersi da chi sappia che la scienza ebbe allor contrari i voluttuosi costumi e la ser vitù di quelle cit tà, soggette ai Lidi ed ai Persiani, e che , a giudicarnedalsilenzioe dai pochi cenni della storia, coloroi quali la professavano erano ben lontani dalle virtù che adorna vano i pitagorici; virtù che col venir meno a poco a poco, pois  cleatica; e sono tre: l'idealismo logico, perchè si nega l'au torità dei sensi, per riconoscere soltanto quella della ragione; l'idealismo metafisico, perchè si esclude la materialità, ilmolte plice ed ogni mutamento; e, conseguenza di ciò, ilpanteismo, che ammette la sola esistenza dell'ente immutabile ed eterno, e cosi rimuove ogni concetto di creazione. Il primo nacque colla scuola pitagorica,mada Senofane fu recatoasistema ;ilsecon do venne accolto dagli Eleati per evitare le contraddizioni della medesima, che nell'uno identificava le cose più opposte; il terzo sidirebbe comune alle due scuole,se non fosse che nell'eleatica si lasciò da banda la parte corporea e mutabile, e così si riusci a un panteismo parziale, al panteismo idealistico. Grice: You have to love Mondolfo. As a Jew he was into Sartre’s existentialism, and the rest of it – when Gentile inhibited Jews from teaching Italians, M. had to stream his energy into the study of ‘antica filosofia italica’! for our glory!” -- o ABBAHU di Cesarea (Rabbi) Abraham (= educazione, in Filone) Achei Acheronte Acherusia, vedi Acheronte Achille Adamo Adamson Ade AEZIO Africa, africani Afrodite Agamennone ACATARCO AGATONE Agostino agostiniana corrente filosofia Aiace Albertelli ALCEO Alcibiade ALCMEONE ALESSANDRINA FILOSOFIA ALESSANDRINI MATEMATICI Alessandro, vedi Paride.  ALESSANDRO  Afrodisia  Alessandro Magno ALESSIDE Alfieri Altamura 447.  Ambrogio Amerio Amicizia Amleto Amore ANACARSI di Scizia ANACREONTE Ananke ANASSACORA DISCEPOLI di - ANASSIMANDRO ANASSIMENE Anfione 671.  Anima universale Anselmo ANTICHI POETI E SAGGI 237, ANTICHITÀ CLASSICA, antica scienza, cultura, antico spirito, pen-siero, etc. ANTICO TESTAMENTO ANTIFANE ANTIFONTE Antigone ANTIcoNo di Caristo ANTISTENE Apatia stoica Apocalissi di Pietro Apollo Apollo Lairberos (santuario di)  Aquitania ARCAICo pensiero ARCESILAO ARCHELAO ARCHILOCO ARCHIMEDE ARCHITA Ardizzoni AREIOs DIDYMOS Areopago Aridea, vedi Thespesio.  ARISTARCO ARISTIPPO ARISTOCLE ARISTOFANE ARISTOSSENO ARISTOTELE Armstrong Arnauld Arnim ARTE  Artemide ASCLEPIo (commentatore di Aristotele) Asclepio (dio) Asia minore Asiatico principio AssIoco  Atarassia epicurea Atargatis (dea) Ate Atena Atene, ateniesi ATENIONE di Atene ATOMISMO, ATOMISTI Atreo Atride Augusto Aulide Aymard Baccanti Вассо Bacone Bacone Baeumker Bailey Baius Barbari del nord Barth BASILICA PITACORICA della Porta  Maggiore a Roma Battaglia F. Bauch B. Beare  Becker 0. Behaviourismo Bello Bene Bergk Berkeley BIANTE BIBLICA tradizione Bignone Bill A. Billeter Binder Blanchet Blankert Blondel Boas Lovejoy Boemia Bolland Bossuet Bovis Bréhier Breier F. 241.  Brochard Brune Buccellato Buonaiuti Burnet Bywater CARNEADE CARONDA Carteron H. Cartesio, cartesiano Cassandra  Cataudella Cattolicesimo  Cattolici filosofi, storici  Cefalo CELSO 38.  CENSORINO Centimani Ceramone Cerbero Cesarea Charisio Charu Cherecrate CHEREMONE Cherniss Chimera Chronos Ciaceri Cibele CICERONE, ciceroniano Ciclopi Caino Cairo Calcidio Callahan CALLICLE CALLIPPO Calogero Calvino Cameron A. Campanella Campidoglio Canosa Cantarella Carcopino Carlini Cilento Cilonidi CINICI CIRENAICI Classicista concezione CLASSICO spirito, mondo,  CA cultura Claudio CLEANTE CLEIDEMO CLEMENTE alessandrino Clitennestra Clodd Cohn CoLòTE di Lampsaco Colchide Combarieu COMMEDIA DI MEZZO COMMENTATORI DI ARISTOTELE Comparetti Comte Condillac E.  B. de CoNoNE di Samo Contese Croiset Croce B. Cusano Cypselo (arca di) Dahlmann Daimon Dal Pra M. DAMONE Danaidi Dante Dardania, Dardano Daremberg Ch. e Saglio E. Dario Dedalo Controriforma Copernico Coribanti Corinto, corinzi Conford F. M. 240.  CORPUs HIPPOCRATICUM COSMOLOGHI (primi) Couissin Cousin Covotti CRATETE CRATILO Credaro Creso 414.  Creta Crimine oggettivo CRISIPPO Cristianesimo, cristiano spirito,  pensiero, cristiana era, na, filosofia, etc. Cristo CRITIA Criticismo kantiano Critone 486.  Ctesibio 700.  Delatte DELFICA religione, DELFICO  «ePto, le a Delfi Del Grande Del Re R. Delvaille Demetra DEMETRIo cinico DEMETRIO LACONE DEMOCRITO DEMOCRITEA tradizione DEMOCRITEO-ARISTOTELICA  stinzione  di-  Demoni del cristianesimo 401.  DEMOSTENE Deonna W., vedi De Ridder A.  Derenne De Ridder A. e Deonna Derketo 454.  De Ruggiero Descartes, vedi     Destino De Strycker Deucalione Dewey Dialettica moderna Diano DICEARCO Diderot Diela Diels Diès Dieterich Dike Diller Dimenticanza Dio natura persona DIODORO CRONO DIODORO SICULO DIOGENE di Enoanda DIOGENE  DIOCENE LAERZIO Dione 314.  DIONE CRISOSTOMO DIONISIACO culto, spirito Dioniso Discordia Discorsi menzogneri Aiacol Royor Divinazione Doering Dornseiff Fr. Dostoiewski DRACONE 430.  Ducati Dümmler Dupréel EBRAICO-CRISTIANE eredenze, reli-  gione, tradizione EBRAISMo, ebrei EBRAICA religione EBRAICHE suggestioni ed ispirazioni EBRAICE elementi Ecabe Ecate EcATEo d'Abdera EcATEo di Mileto 48.  Eden 436, Edipo Efesto EcESIA di Cirene Egisto Egitto Egizi EGIZIANO tradizionalismo ELEATI, ELEATISMO,  scuola, dottrina  Elena Elettra Eleusi Eleutherna ELLENICO  genio, spirito, pensie-  ro, etc. ELLENISMO ELLENISTICA eredità ELLENISTICA ROMANA filosofia 2ELVIDIO PRISCO EMPEDOCLE, EMPIRISTICHE correnti Empusa Endimione Enea  ENESIDEMO Enoanda Enoch  (=  pentimento, in Filone) Enos (= speranza, in Filone)  Enriques EPICARMICO principio EPICUREI, EPICUREISMO EPICURO Epidamno Epifanio EPIMENIDE Epimeteo EPITTETO Erarmeno (mito di) Era Eracle ERACLIDE PONTICO ERACLITO FRACLITEA dottrina esigenza proposizione ERACLITISMO BRASISTRATO BRATOSTENE Brinni ERMIPPO ERMOTIMO Ernout Erodico di Selimbria ERODOTO ERoFILo di Calcedone Eros Esaminatore interno (elenchos) ESCHILO ESCHINE Esculapio ESICHIO EsIoDo ESIODEO principio Espero Età post-omerica Eteocle  ETICA ANTICA, CLASSICA cristiana e moderna GRECA morale moderna STOICA Etiopi Ettore Eucken EUDEMO EuDosso Eumenidi Eumeo Euromo di Polignoto EURIPIDE Euristeo Eusebio Eva Evangeli evangelico messaggio  Fabre Falaride, toro di, Farrington B. Fatica Fato Fedra FERECRATE Festa Festugiere Feuerbach Fichte Ficino Fidia Fiere FILEMONE FILISCO Fränkel Frazer Friedländer Frigia Frinide Furie GALENO Galileo Callavotti Gallia Ganter 201.  Gassendi Gea Geffcken Geiger GELLIO AULO Gelosia degli dei Genius malignus di Cartesio Gentile GEREMIA Germani Сет FILODEMO FILOLAO FILONE FILONIANO testo Filoponia FILOSOFIA NATURALISTICA (ionica)  FILOSOFIA OCCETTIVISTICA FILOSOFIA PRESOCRATICA FILOSSENO FILOSTRATO FISICI ANTICHI Fitzralph Flegias Flint FoCILIDE Fougères Frank Gerusalemme GesÚ figlio di Sirach GIAMBLICO Giansenio Gige, anello di, Gigon Gileon GIMNOSOFISTI indiani GIoBBE Giovanni di Rodington GIOVANNI FILOPONO Giove GIOVENALE GIUDAISMO, giudaica chiesa, etc.  Giuliano imperatore Giuliano di Eclano (pelagiano)  Giussani Glaser Glauco di Chio Glotz GNoMIcI poeti CNOMICA saggezza GNOSEOLOGIA ANTICA GRECA medievale NEOPLATONICA Goedeckemeyer Gomar Gomperz Gomperz  Goodenough GORCIA Gorgoni Gottschalk Grande Anno GRECA morale GRECA tragedia, vedi TRAGEDIA.  GRECI, greco pensiero, popolo, spirito, etc.; greca anima, arte, cultura, filosofia, etc.  Grecia Greene Grilli Grousset Guthrie Guyau Halbfass Harnack Hegel Heidel W. A. Heinemann Heinze Henz Herbertz Herder Hermann Hermes Hildebrand Himeros Hirzel  Hobbes Hoffmann Howald E. Hume Hus Huyghens Hybris Ida Idealismo assoluto cristiano GRECO postkantiano Idealisti Idra IEROCLE Ifigenia Ilio ILLUMINISMO, ILLUMINISTI, etc.  Musionismo Indiani Inferi (Enfers) Inganno Inge  Innocenzo III Intelletto Invidia degli dei Lo Ionia, ionico mondo, ionica civil-  ta, etc. JONICA poesia IONICI poeti IONICI (Glosofi) IONICA filosofia scienza Ipermestra IPPIA (sofista)  IPPOCRATE, IPPOCRATICI, ippocrati-  ci scritti, trattati, Ippolito Ippolito  Iris Isaac (= natura, in Filone) Isaac (Abn Jacob Jsaac?) ISAIA Isdoso scolastico Isis isiaco  culto ISOcRATE, pseudo Issione Jaeger Jago Jacob (= ascetismo e perfezione, in Filone)  Janet  Jardé Jehova Jeat Kaibel Kant Kêr, Kêres Kern Kierkegaard Kirk Kitto Kleingünther Klimke  Kock Kranz Krokiewicz Kronos Laas Laberthonnière Labriola Lachesi Lachete Laconia Laio Lamennais Lamenti Laminette auree Lana Langerbeck Latini Lattanzio Latzarus Laurent Lavagnini Leibniz Leonardo da Vinci Leone Ebreo Leonte di Salamina Leonzio Leroux Lesky LeuCIPPO Levi Levi Lévy-Bruhl Licurgo Lidia, Lidi Liénard E.  IONICO-EOLICA LISIA Locke Lodge LOGICA ANTICA Logos divino Loisy Losacco Lotte Lovejoy LUCIANO Lucido Lucifero Lucilio LUCREZIO Lugdunum (Lione) Luria Lusitania Lutero Maddalena Magalhães Vilhena Y. De Magia Maieutica Maier Malcovati Mancini Manetti MANICHEISMO Marbach Marchesi Marchesini MARCO AURELIO Mario Vittorino Marouzeau Marsia Martin Martinazzoli Marx MASSIMO TIRIO Mazziotti M., vedi Enriques F.  Meautis MEDICI EMPIRICI O METODICI  IPPOCRATICI mediche scuole Medievale gnoseologia, scienza, filosofia, teologia — coscienza Medio Evo MECARICA teoria MECARICI Meineke MELIsso di Samo MENANDRO Menelao Menzel MENONE Mercier Messaggio evangelico, ellenizza-  zione del METRODoRo di Chio Milesi Mill Milton Minucio MISTICA, MISTICA soggettività, MI-CORRENTI,  CRECO  (medievale) MITOLOGIA ANTROPOMORFICA CRECA, mitologiche rappresentazioni OMERICO-ESIODEA Mitre Modernismo Moderni, moderno spirito, pen-  cultura, hlosofia,  sia, etc. Ix,  Moeller  Moira Momigliano Mondo classico cristiano greco precristiano ionico arcaico orientale, greco, romano, germanico M. A. M. vedi Zel-Monoteismo cristiano e greco  MORALISTI GRECI Morrison MOSCHIONE Mose Mullach Murray MUSoNIo RUFo 5Nardi Natorp NATURALISMO PRESOCRATICO, NATURALISTI PRESOCRATICI Nauck Nausicaa Neikos Nekyia omerica Nenci NEOACCADEMICI Neohegeliani NEOPITAGORICI NEOPLATONICI, NEOPLATONISMO, NEOPLATONICA teoria, etc. Nestle Nestore Newmann Nicia di Atene Nietzsche  Noè (- giustizia, in Filone) Norden NUMENIO Nuovo Testamento Occhio di Zeus Occhio vendicatore degli dei Oceanidi OCCETTIVISMO ANTICO Olimpica religione Olimpo, olimpici dei Olimpo  Olivieri OMERO  OMERICHE concezioni Ontologica prova ontologico argomento ORACOLO DELFICO, lemma dell',  vedi DELFico precetto.  Oratorio ORAZIO Oreste Orfeo ORFICI, ORFICO  misticismo, religione, etc oRFISMO Oriente, orientali Origene Otium Otto OVIDIO Pacioli PAGANESIMO, PAGANI FILOSOFI, etc.  Palamede Pan PANEZIO Paolo Paratore Parche Paride PARMENIDE DISCEPOLI di parmenideo ente mondo parmenidea Pascal Pascal Pasquali Patristica patristica  eredità  Pearson Peipers Pelagio, pelagianismo Pelasgo Pelope Penía Pericle PERIPATETICI, PERIPATETICA teo-ria, etc. Пері téXvNS Perrotta Perse Persiani Pesce Petelia Petersen Petrarca Pettazzoni Philippson Piat Pico della  Mirandola Pieper Pilade  PINDARO Piriflegetonte PIRRONE PITAGORA PITAGORICI, PITACORISMO, etc. Pittura greca etrusca PLATONE PLATONICO mito PLATONISMO PLAUTO Pleiadi PLINIO PLOTINO PLUTARCO POETI COMICI TEOCONICI TRAGICI Pohlenz PoLIBIO Policleto POLICRATE Polignoto di Taso Polinice POLITEISMO PoLo Poppe PORFIRIO Puech Póros Porzig Posidone PoSIDONIO POSTARISTOTELICA  epoca, filosofia, etc., POSTARISTOTELICI FILOSOFI  Praechter K., vedi Ueberweg Pragmatismo, pragmatisti Predestinaziani 424.  Positivismo, positivisti 29, 578.  PRESOCRATICI FILOSOFI, NATURALI-STI, etc., PRESOCRATICA filosofia Priamo PRIMI FILOSOFI Primitivi popoli PROCLO PRODICO Prometeo PROTAGORA PROTAGORISMO  Protestanti, protestantesimo protestante storiografia Provvidenza PSICOLOGIA « behaviourista», del comportamento platonica Radamanto Radermacher RAFFINATI del Teeteto Ragione divina Regenbogen Regnum hominis Reinach Reinhardt Reminiscenza platonica ReyRinascimento rinascimentale  distinzione  rivoluzione rinascimentali  celebrazioni  — innovatori scrittori Ritter Rivelazione Rivaud Robin Rohde Roma Romanticismo Rosmini Ross Rossi Rosei Rostagni Rousseau Rudberg Ruvo Saffo Saglio E., vedi Daremberg Ch.  Saitta SALLUSTIO SALOMONE Satana Saturnia età Saturno SCETTICI, SCETTICISMO SCETTICA critica Schaerer Schiller Schleiermacher Schmid Schuhl Sciacca Scilla Seiti Scolastica, etc. Scrittura, Scritture Sacre  Segni indicativi, teoria dei, Segni memorativi, utilizzazione  dei SENECA SENOFANE SENOFONTE Senso comune aristotelico Senso interiore agostiniano Serse Sertillanges SESTIO, SESTIL,  scuola  dei EMPIRICO Sette savi Shakespeare Shorey Sibari Sibilla SIMONIDE di Ceo SIMPLICIO SINESIO Siri Sisifo Snell SOCRATE SOCRATICA esigenza esperienza predica SOCRATICI, SOCRATISMO Sofferenze 86.  SOFISTI, SOFISTICA SOFOCLE Sofronisco Soggettivismo cristiano-moderno Sogni Solari Soliman SOLONE Sorley Sparta Spencer Spengel Spengler SPEUSIPPO Spinoza  Spirito classico antico cristiano moderno greco classico Spiritualisti cristiani, spiritualismo cristiano Stefanini TEOCONIE, TEOGONICI POETI Teologi di Oxford Teone Stein Stenzel Stige STILPONE SToBEo STOICI, STOICISMO, etc. Sroic, HOMAN Storicismo, storicistica concezione Stragi STRATONE di Lampsaco Strycker TALETE Tannery Tantalo Tarozzi Tartaro tartareo abisso Tatto interno Taylor Tebe Teeteto Teggart Temesa TEMISTIO Tempo Tenebre TEODETTE TeodoretoTeodoro di Beza TEOFRASTO TEOGNIDE TERENZIO Тевео Thamus Thaumante Theiler Thespesio Theuth Thurii Tieste Tifeo Tifone Tilgher TIMEO TIMONE TIMOTEO Tindaro Tiresia Tiro TISIA Titani Titano Tizio Tommaso Tomismo, etc. Traci TRADIZIONE DEMOCRITEO-EPICUREA Traducianismo TRAGEDIA TRAGICI POETI TRASIMACO Traversari Treves Trieber Troia, troiani Tuchulca TUCIDIDE Türk Tylor Tzetzes Uccisioni Ueberweg Ulisse 4Uno Untersteiner Usener Uxkull Vaihinger Weil Wendland Wilamowitz Windelband Wundt Wycliffe algimigli Vangelo Vangelo Vaso arcaico di Palermo Vespasiano Vico Vidari Vlastos Walzer Wehrli Zafiropulo  ZALEUCO ZARATHUSTRA ZENONE ZENONE Zeller. L'eredità in T. Tasso, in «Archivio di psichiatria, scienze penali ed antropologia criminale», Torino, Memoria e associazione nella scuola cartesiana (Cartesio, Malebranche, Spinoza), con appendice per la storia dell'inconscio, M. Ricci, Firenze. Per le relazioni fra genialità e degenerazione: Guerrazzi, in «Archivio di psichiatria, scienze penali ed antropologia criminale», Torino, Spazio e tempo nella psicologia di Condillac, in «Rivista filosofica», Pavia, Scienza e opinioni di B. Varisco, in «Scienza sociale», Palermo, Uno psicologo associazionista: E. B. de Condillac, R. Sandron, Palermo.  In esso viene riportato anche lo scritto sullo spazio e il tempo in  Condillac precedentemente citato Il concetto di bene e la psicologia dei sentimenti in Hobbes, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, L'educazione secondo il Romagnosi, in «Rivista filosofica», Pavia, Ora anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, a cura di R. Medici, CLUEB, Bologna  Ancora a proposito di refezione scolastica: il pensiero di Romagnosi, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, Saggi per la storia morale utilitaria: I - La morale di T. Hobbes, Drucker, Padova. 1904  11. Saggi per la storia morale utilitaria: II - Le teorie morali e politiche di C.  A. Helvétius, Drucker, Padova.  12. La politica degli insegnanti, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, XIV, n. 24,  16 dicembre, pp. 371-373.  1905  Il dubbio metodico e la storia della filosofia, Prolusione a un corso di storia della filosofia nell'Università di Padova, con appendice storico-critica, Drucker, Padova. Per una filosofia naturale, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, Recensione a G. Marchesini, La funzione dell'anima, Laterza, Bari 1905, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, XV, n. 8, aprile, p. 128.  L'insegnamento liceale della filosofia. Considerazioni pratiche, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, II, fasc. 7, n. 1-3, luglio-settembre, pp. 442-448. L'insegnamento della filosofia nei licei e la riforma della scuola media al congresso di Milano, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, VII, n. 4-6, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 754-763. Per la riforma della scuola media: la scuola unica, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, XV, n. 21, novembre, pp. 326-330. Anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del 900 alla Riforma Gentile), a cura di T. Pironi, Laicata, Manduria 2005, pp. 59-70. Ancora per la riforma della scuola media: polemica fra colleghi, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, XV, n. 22, 16 novembre-1 dicembre, pp. 342-345.  1906  20. Di alcuni problemi della pedagogia contemporanea, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, Anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 71-121.  21. Dalla dichiarazione dei diritti al Manifesto dei comunisti, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, Con alcune variazioni è stato inserito da Mondolfo anche nella raccolta Tra il diritto di natura e il comunismo: studi di storia  =  •archive.org  INTERNET  ARCHIVE  e filosofia, parte I, Tip. degli operai, Mantova 1909, pp. 5-41. Ora anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti Intorno al convegno filosofico di Milano, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, fasc. 8, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 728.  1907  Politica scolastica: per la riforma della scuola media, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XVII, n. 4, 16 febbraio, pp. 53-55. Questioni varie: il problema della laicità nella scuola media, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, IX, n. 3-4, marzo-aprile, pp. 279- 282. Ristampato anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 137-141.  25. Ancora Mazzini e il socialismo, in «La fiaccola», Senigallia, anno II,  n. 9 e 11, marzo.  Altre obiezioni alle idee di Salvemini sugli esami, in «Nuovi doveri», Palermo, n. 6-7, 30 giugno-15 luglio, pp. 108-109. Il contratto sociale e la tendenza comunista in J. J. Rousseau, in «Rivista di filosofia e scienze affini», Bologna, IX, ottobre-dicembre, Presente anche in Tra il diritto di natura e il comunismo: studi di storia e filosofia, parte II, Tip. degli operai, Mantova 1909. 1908  Il pensiero di Roberto Ardigo, Tip. G. Mondovì, Mantova. La dottrina della proprietà del Montesquieu, in «Rivista filosofica», Pavia, Il, fasc. 46, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 129-135. Pubblicato anche in Tra il diritto di natura e il comunismo: studi di storia e filosofia, parte II, cit.  30. La filosofia della proprietà alla Costituente e alla Legislativa nella rivoluzione francese, in «Rivista di filosofia e di scienze affini», Bologna, Pubblicato anche in Tra  761 of 824  [3  il diritto di natura e il comunismo: studi di storia e filosofia, parte II, cit.  Sulla laicità della scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XVII, n. 5, 1 marzo, pp. 69-70. Anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), Religione, fanciulli, educazione, in «Nuovi doveri», Palermo, II, n. 29-30, 30 giugno-15 luglio, pp. 186-187. Ristampato in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma  Gentile), La fine del marxismo?, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XVIII, n. 20, 16 ottobre, pp. 311-312. Pubblicato anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, a cura di N. Bobbio, Einaudi, Torino Roberto Ardigò nelle scuole di Mantova. Notizie e documenti, Tip.  Operai, Mantova.  Studi sui tipi rappresentativi. Ricerche sull'importanza dei movimenti dell'immaginazione, nelle funzioni del linguaggio, nelle pseudoalluci-nazioni e nella localizzazione delle immagini, in «Rivista di filosofia», Roma, I, 2, marzo-aprile, pp. 38-92. Tra il diritto di natura e il comunismo: studi di storia e filosofia, parte I, Tip. Operai, Mantova. La filosofia di Feuerbach e le critiche del Marx, in «La Cultura filosofica», Firenze, III, marzo-giugno, pp. 134-170, 207-25. Accolto in Sulle orme di Marx. Studi di marxismo e di socialismo a partire dalla prima edizione (Cappelli, Bologna 1919, pp. 64-114) con il titolo Feuerbach e Marx. È stato poi successivamente integrato di due capitoli, precisamente il sesto e il settimo, nella terza edizione (Cappelli, Bologna Ora anche disponibile, sempre con il titolo Feuerbach e Marx, in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici La filosofia della storia di Ferdinando Lassalle (Per nozze Mondolfo-Sacerdote), Pirola, Milano. Poi nelle prime due edizioni de Sulle orme di Marx: Cappelli, Bologna 1919, pp. 129-163; Cappelli, Bologna  Recensione a G. Vidari, L'individualismo nelle dottrine morali del secolo XIX, in «Cultura Filosofica», La riforma della scuola media: fra la Commissione Reale e il congresso della federazione, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XX, n. 1, 1 gennaio, pp. Politica scolastica: il dovere presente della federazione degli insegnanti, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XX, n. 6-7, 16 marzo-1 aprile, pp. 89-90. 1911  La vitalità della filosofia nella caducità dei sistemi, Prolusione all'Università di Torino (tenuta il 1° dicembre 1910), in «La Cultura filosofica», Firenze, V, n. 1, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 1-31. Rovistando in soffitta, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Pubblicato anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 79-85. Fra l'ideale e l'azione: per l'unità di teoria e praxis, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXI, n. 16, 16 agosto, pp. 247-248. Disponibile anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 86-90. La filosofia di Giordano Bruno e l'interpretazione di Felice Tocco, in «La Cultura filosofica», Firenze, V, n. 5-6, aprile, pp. 450-482. Pubblicato poi a sé: La filosofia di Giordano Bruno e l'interpretazione di Felice Tocco, Tip. Collini e Cencetti, Firenze 1912. 1912  45. Sul concetto di plus-valore, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXII, n. 4, 16 febbraio, pp. 59-63. L'articolo è in parte tratto e riassunto dal cap. XIII (La pretesa antieticità del materialismo storico - il sopravalore e il passaggio dalla necessità alla libertà) de Il materialismo storico in Federico Engels, Formiggini, Genova 1912. Nell'edizione del 1973 (La Nuova  Italia) è compreso tra p. 351 a p. 386.  Il concetto di necessità nel materialismo storico, in «Rivista di filosofia», IV, fasc. 1, pp. 55-74. È un articolo tratto dal cap. X (II fatalismo materialistico o dialettico e il concetto di necessità storica) de Il materialismo storico in Federico Engels. Nell'edizione del 1973 (La Nuova Italia, Firenze) corrisponde alle pp. 209-36, 246-47. Pubblicato anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 96-114. Il materialismo storico in Federico Engels, Formiggini, Genova. I ginnasi magistrali, in «Unità», Firenze, Partiti politici e generi letterali, in «Unità», Firenze, I, n. 18, 13 aprile, pp. 71-72. Intorno alla filosofia di Marx, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 91-95. La crisi magistrale, in «Unità», Firenze, I, n. 21, 4 maggio, p. 84. La preparazione dei maestri elementari, in «Unità», Firenze, I, n. 23, 18 maggio, p. 91. Intorno alla morale sessuale, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Ancora la morale sessuale, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Rousseau nella formazione della coscienza moderna, in «Rivista pedagogica», Roma-Milano-Napoli, VI, vol. 1, fasc. 3, dicembre, pp. 433-478. Saggio che Mondolfo ripropone nel volume Per il centenario di G. G. Rousseau (Formiggini, Genova 1913) e poi con alcune modifiche nell'Introduzione alle opere di Rousseau (Discorsi e il Contratto sociale, a cura di R. Mondolfo, Cappelli, Bologna 1924). Nuovamente ripubblicato nel volume Rousseau e la coscienza moderna (La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1954), di cui si ha una precedente edizione in lingua spagnola (Rousseau y la consciencia moderna, Imán, Buenos Aires 1944). Ora disponibile anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica.  Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti   Socialismo e filosofia: I. La crisi e la necessità di un orientamento filosofico; II. Materialismo, realismo storico e lotta di classe; III. La necessità della filosofia della praxis, in «Unità», Firenze, Ristampato nelle prime due edizioni di Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna Nella terza edizione in due volumi (Cappelli, Bologna  19233) fu pubblicato privato della prima parte (La crisi e la necessità di un orientamento filosofico) e con qualche aggiunta. Anche in La cultura italiana del '900 attraverso le riviste, vol. V, a cura di F. Golzio e A. Guerra, Einaudi, Torino 1962, pp. 238-247. Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici Personalità e responsabilità nella democrazia, in «La Cultura filosofica», Firenze, VII, n. 1, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 19-36. Per l'amore della moralità e per la moralità dell'amore, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXIII, n. 4, 16 febbraio, pp. 54-58. La preparazione degli insegnanti, in «Unità», Firenze, La crisi della scuola media e il compito delle Università, in «Nuova Antologia», Roma, Ripubblicato da Mon-dolfo, con alcune modifiche, in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, Cappelli, Bologna 1922, pp. 113-144. Discutendo di materialismo storico, in «Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica», Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, fasc. 5, pp. 313 ss.  62. Zur soziologie der Geschlechtsmoral, in «Archiv für Sozialwis-senschaft und Sozialpolitik», Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, vol. 36, pp. 920  SS.  Per la biografia di Giordano Bruno, in «Rivista d'Italia», Roma, XVI, 2, ottobre, pp. 542-545. Appunti di Storia della filosofia La filosofia di Giordano Bruno, R. Università di Torino, Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, Torino.1914 Francesco Acri e il suo pensiero, Discorso tenuto nella R. Università di Bologna, Zanichelli, Bologna. Il pluralismo nell'etica, in «Rivista d'Italia», Roma, n. 2, febbraio, pp. 162-187. Francesco Acri, in «Rivista pedagogica», Roma-Milano-Napoli, VII, vol. I, giugno, pp. 523-528.  1915  La filosofia in Belgio, «Rivista di filosofia», Genova, VII, n. 1, gennaio-marzo, pp. 25-46. La crisi del socialismo e l'ora presente, in «Unità», Firenze, IV, n. 8, febbraio, p. 632. Ristampato anche in La cultura italiana del '900 attraverso le riviste, vol. V, a cura di F. Golzio e A. Guerra, Einaudi, Torino 1962, pp. 455-458. Revolutionärer Geist und historischer Sinn, in «Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung», her-ausgegeben von Prof. Carl Grünberg Hischfeld Verlag, Leipzig. Successivamente in italiano: Spirito rivoluzionario e senso storico, in  «Nuova Rivista Storica» (1917), Roma, I, fasc. 3, pp. 504-17.  1916  71. Le matérialisme historique chez F. Engels, Trad. de l'Italien par S.  Jankelevitch, Giard et Brière, Paris.  72. Chiarimenti sulla dialettica engelsiana, in «Rivista di filosofia», Genova, VIII, novembre-dicembre, fasc. V, pp. 701-715. Ripubblicato nelle prime due edizioni di Sulle orme di Marx con il titolo La dialettica di Engeis (Cappelli, Bologna Cappelli, Bologna  19203, pp. 153-166). Poi in appendice alle edizioni del 1952 e 1973 de Il materialismo storico in Federico Engels. Ristampato anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti Spirito rivoluzionario e senso storico, in «Nuova rivista storica», Roma, I, fasc. 3, pp. 504-17. Titolo originale: Revolutionärer Geist und historischer Sinn, in «Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung» (1915), herausgegeben von Prof. Carl Grünberg, Hischfeld Verlag, Leipzig. Nella versione italiana è apparso anche nella prima edizione di Sulle orme di Marx (Cappelli, Bologna 1919, pp. 50-63) e nelle successive. Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici Dai sogni d'egemonia alla rinuncia della libertà. Discorso letto per la solenne inaugurazione degli studi nell'Università di Bologna il 5 novembre 1917, Zanichelli, Bologna. Confluito con una nota introduttiva e con il titolo La teoria della egemonia tedesca in Filosofi tedeschi: saggi critici, trad. di L. Bassi, Cappelli, Bologna 1958, pp. 108-142. Ristampato anche in Rodolfo Mondolfo e la guerra delle idee. Scritti a cura di G. Ferrandi, Museo storico del Trentino e Società aperta di Trento, Trento 1998, pp. 55-77. 1918  Imperialismo e libertà, in «Unità», VII, 1, p. 4. Il primo assertore della missione germanica: Herder, in «Rivista delle nazioni latine», III, vol.1, n. 3, pp. 155-168. Ristampato in Rodolfo Mondolfo e la guerra delle idee - Scritti (1917-1919), cit., pp. 95-106 Tra il primato d'un popolo e la missione universale delle nazioni, in «Nuova rivista storica», Milano, vol. II, fasc. V-VI, settembre-dicembre, pp. 582-94. Pubblicato anche in Rodolfo Mondolfo e la guerra delle idee - Scritti Leninismo e marxismo, in «Critica sociale», Milano,Poi in Sulle orme di Marx, a partire dalla seconda edizione (Cappelli, Bologna 19203, pp. 29-37). Ristampato nella raccolta di saggi Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, a cura del Centro Studi di Critica Sociale, Morano, Napoli 1968, pp. 21-32. Presenteanche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici Leninismo e socialismo, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXIX, n. 7,8, 9, aprile-maggio, pp. 76-78, pp. 87-88, pp. 104-106. Confluito poi nella seconda e nella terza edizione di Sulle orme di Marx, Ristampato anche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 32-55. Il socialismo e il momento storico presente, in «Energie Nove», Torino, Poi inserito nelle prime due edizioni di Sulle orme di Marx: Cappelli, Bologna 1919, pp. 1-13; Cappelli, Bologna 1920, pp. 1-15. Nella terza edizione con un cambiamento di titolo (Il socialismo dopo la guerra): Cappelli, Bologna Recentemente anche in M. e la guerra delle idee - Scritti  (1917-1919), cit., pp. 123-134.  81. L'insegnamento di Marx, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Saggio apparso anche come Prefazione alla prima edizione di Sulle orme di Marx. Studi di marxismo e di socialismo,  Cappelli, Bologna 1919, pp. I-VIII.  Sulle orme di Marx. Studi di marxismo e di socialismo, Cappelli, Bologna. Per una coscienza realistica della storia e della rivoluzione sociale, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXIX, n. 24, 16-31 dicembre, pp. 338-343. Ristampato nella seconda edizione di Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna 19203, pp. 89-99 e nella 3ª edizione, I volume a pp. 71-81 con il titolo Visioni realistiche e utopie rivoluzionarie. Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 158-168.  1920  Problemi concreti: la scuola: I. L'azione «pro schola» e la difesa della coscienza laica, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 2, 16-31 gennaio, pp. 23-26. Campane d'allarme, in «Il Progresso», Bologna, 17 gennaio, p. 3. Problemi concreti: II. Il proletariato e la scuola media. La difesa dellafunzione sociale della finalità educativa della scuola di Stato, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 2, 15 marzo, pp. 72-76. Più recentemente in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 175-188.  Problemi concreti: III. Linee di un programma d'azione scolastica: a) Premesse generali; b) il concetto di servizio pubblico e la scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 7, 1-15 aprile, pp. 108-110. Problemi concreti: c) L'amministrazione della scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 8, 16-30 aprile, pp. 125-126. Problemi concreti: d) La partecipazione del proletariato alla cultura, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Riportato anche in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 99-106.  Gli adulatori del proletariato, in «Cultura popolare», Milano,n. 8, agosto, pp. 375-378. Anche in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 107-112. Intorno al progetto Rignano, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Recensione a E. di Carlo, Ferdinando Lassalle, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Ardigò, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 18, 16-30 settembre, pp. 285-288. Recensione a G. Bevilaqua, C'è uno spettro in Italia, Modernissima, Milano 1920, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 18, 16-30 settembre, p. 288. Roberto Ardigò, in «Il Tempo», 16 settembre. Socialismo e lezioni della realtà, intervista con Rodolfo Mondolfo, in «Il piccolo della sera», Trieste, 24 settembre. Il marxismo e la crisi europea, in «Scientia», XIV, n. 6, 28, dicembre, pp. 457-466. Il problema sociale contemporaneo, relazione al IV congresso italianodi filosofia, in «Rivista di filosofia», Bologna, vol. XII, n. 4, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 303-324. Confluito poi in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna Parte di questo articolo apparve con il titolo Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Anche in Umanismo di Marx.  Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 186-203.  99. Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «Critica sociale», XXX, n. 24, 16-  31 dicembre, pp. 374-376.  Sulle orme di Marx, 2ª edizione accresciuta di nuovi saggi, Cappelli, Bologna. La rivoluzione e il blocco, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia, 11 dicembre, p. 1. Per la realtà del socialismo, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia, 16 dicembre, p. 1. 1921  103. Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia,  1 gennaio, p.1.  Martoff contro Zinovieff e l'antitesi fra socialismo e bolscevismo, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXI, n. 2, 16-31 gennaio, pp. 21-23. Poi in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 134-140. Ristampato anche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 55-63. Introduzione a F. Turati, Le vie maestre del socialismo, Cappelli, Bologna. Forza e violenza nella storia, Introduzione a S. Panunzio, Diritto, forza e violenza. Lineamenti di una teoria della violenza, n. III della «Biblioteca di Studi sociali diretta da R. Mondolfo», Cappelli, Bologna. Pubblicata con l'aggiunta di alcune note in Sulle orme di Marx, II vol., Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 57-69. Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 204-215. 1 corsi di esercitazione nelle Università, in «Educazione nazionale», Roma, n. 1, 1-15 gennaio, p. 11 funzione sociale della finalità educativa della scuola di Stato, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Più recentemente in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del  '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 175-188.  Problemi concreti: III. Linee di un programma d'azione scolastica: a) Premesse generali; b) il concetto di servizio pubblico e la scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Problemi concreti: c) L'amministrazione della scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX, n. 8, 16-30 aprile, pp. 125-126. Problemi concreti: d) La partecipazione del proletariato alla cultura, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Riportato anche in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 99-106.  Gli adulatori del proletariato, in «Cultura popolare», Milano,n. 8, agosto, pp. 375-378. Anche in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 107-112. Intorno al progetto Rignano, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Recensione a E. di Carlo, Ferdinando Lassalle, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Ardigò, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Recensione a G. Bevilaqua, C'è uno spettro in Italia, Modernissima, Milano 1920, in «Critica sociale», Milano,Ardigò, in «Il Tempo», 16 settembre. Socialismo e lezioni della realtà, intervista con Rodolfo Mondolfo, in «Il piccolo della sera», Trieste, 24 settembre. Il marxismo e la crisi europea, in «Scientia», XIV, n. 6, 28, dicembre, pp. 457-466. Il problema sociale contemporaneo, relazione al IV congresso italiano= • archive. di filosofia, in «Rivista di filosofia», Bologna, vol. XII, n. 4, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 303-324. Confluito poi in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna Parte di questo articolo apparve con il titolo Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXX  n. 24, 16-31 dicembre 1920, pp. 374-376. Anche in Umanismo di Marx.  Studi filosofici Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «Critica sociale», XXX, n. 24, 16-  31 dicembre, pp. 374-376.  Sulle orme di Marx, 2ª edizione accresciuta di nuovi saggi, Cappelli, Bologna. La rivoluzione e il blocco, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia, 11 dicembre, p. 1. Per la realtà del socialismo, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia, Le condizioni della rivoluzione, in «La Giustizia», Reggio Emilia,  1 gennaio, p.1.  Martoff contro Zinovieff e l'antitesi fra socialismo e bolscevismo, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXI, n. 2, 16-31 gennaio, pp. 21-23. Poi in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 134-140. Ristampato anche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 55-63. Introduzione a F. Turati, Le vie maestre del socialismo, Cappelli, Bologna. Forza e violenza nella storia, Introduzione a S. Panunzio, Diritto, forza e violenza. Lineamenti di una teoria della violenza, n. III della «Biblioteca di Studi sociali diretta da R. Mondolfo», Cappelli, Bologna. Pubblicata con l'aggiunta di alcune note in Sulle orme di Marx, II vol., Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 57-69. Presente anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 204-215. 1 corsi di esercitazione nelle Università, in «Educazione nazionale», Roma, n. 1, 1-15 gennaio, p. 11.108. Il proletariato e la scuola, in «La squilla», anno XXI, n. 8, 21-22 gennaio. Recentemente anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 189- 192.  La scuola e i partiti, in «Il Progresso», Bologna, marzo. I discorsi di F. Turati ai Congressi Socialisti, in «Critica sociale», Milano,  Il saggio corrisponde ad alcuni paragrafi tratti dalla prefazione di R. Mondolfo a F. Turati, Le vie maestre del socialismo, Cappelli, Bologna 1921. Collaborazione e lotta di classe, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXI, n. 18, 16-31 settembre, pp. 276-278. Con alcune modifiche inserito anche Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna Per la comprensione storica del fascismo, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Il saggio corrisponde ad alcuni paragrafi (in particolare il IV e parte del V) dell' introduzione alla raccolta Il fascismo e i partiti politici italiani, I volume, Cappelli, Bologna 1924. Significato e insegnamento della rivoluzione russa, in «Critica sociale», Milano, La contraddizione iniziale; II. La conquista compiuta; La nuova contraddizione risultante e la progressiva consapevolezza del problema. Ristampati con alcune modifiche e aggiunte in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 67 ss. Estratto poi in edizione Benporad, Firenze Significato e insegnamento della rivoluzione russa, in «Critica sociale», Milano, La rivincita della realtà; V. L'inevitabile soluzione: dal libero commercio al capitalismo;  VI. La lotta e l'immediato rapporto delle forze; n. 2, 16-31 gennaio, pp.  26-29: VII. L'anello e la catena; VIII. Le nuove condizioni del proletariato e la sua scissione in gruppi concorrenti; I nuovi problemi del Governo: la rivalutazione della moneta; Gli insegnamenti: a) non il dissolvimento ma lo sviluppo è condizionato dalla rivoluzione; b) on ne détruit que ce qu'on substitue; n. 4, 16-28 febbraio, 61-63: c) Le condizioni di un regime socialista: produzione e distribuzione;  d) I limiti dell'azione politica: forza ed economia. Ristampato con alcune modifiche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, La libertà della scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Riportato in Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 9-23. Recentemente in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del  '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 193-208.  Scuola e Stato. Lettera a Luigi Miranda, in «Il Tempo», Roma, 20 aprile. Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit., pp. 30-32. La libertà e la scuola, in «Il Tempo», Roma, 16 giugno, p. 3. L'esame di Stato, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Libertà della scuola, esame di stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, cit.,  pp. 35-43.  La formazione storica delle arti e dello spirito umano in Vitruvio, in «L'Arduo», Bologna, II, n. 3, giugno, pp. 153-159. Presente anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, cit., pp. 117-123. Sempre nuove opposizioni al progetto su l'esame di Stato, in «L'istru-zione media», Perugia-Bologna-Firenze, n. 18, 15-25 luglio, pp. 1-2. Lettera a Piero Gobetti, in «La Rivoluzione liberale», Torino, a. 1, n. 22, 16 luglio, p. 81-82.  Ricostruire, in «La Giustizia», 24-25 luglio. Per la comprensione storica del fascismo, introduzione alla raccolta Il fascismo e i partiti politici italiani, I volume, Cappelli, Bologna. Per la difesa della libertà, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Il problema della cultura popolare, in «Critica sociale», Milano,  XXXII, n. 18, 16-30 settembre, pp. 286-288.  772pp.  Il comunismo è la negazione del marxismo, in «La Giustizia», Milano, 1 ottobre. Libertà della scuola, esame di Stato e problemi di scuola e di cultura, Cappelli, Bologna. 1923  Prefazione a S. Diambrini Palazzi, Il pensiero filosofico di Antonio Labriola, Zanichelli, Bologna. Educazione e rinnovamento sociale in Mazzini e in Marx, in «Rivista di filosofia», XIV, n. 1, gennaio-marzo, pp.7-15. Con alcune modifiche anche in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 142-149. Ora anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, cit., pp. 125-133. Mazzini e Marx, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Poi confluito in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna, Il monito delle tradizioni del Risorgimento nazionale, in «Istruzione media», n. 5, 25 febbraio, p. 1. Ripubblicato successivamente con il titolo Scuola, patria e libertà, in «La Giustizia», quotidiano del Partito Socialista Unitario, Milano, n. 52, 2 marzo 1923, p. 2. Più recentemente anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del 900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp, 227-231. Scuola, patria e libertà, in «La Giustizia», quotidiano del Partito Socialista Unitario, Milano, n. 52, 2 marzo, p. 2. Il materialismo storico: conferenza all'Università Proletaria di Milano, in «L'Avanti!», Milano, 13 marzo. Volontà e necessità nella storia, scambio di lettere tra E. C. Longobardi e R. Mondolfo, in «L'Avanti!», 25 e 30 marzo.  135. Il materialismo storico, in «La Rivoluzione liberale», Torino, II, п.  8, 3 aprile, p. 33-34.  Ristampato con l'aggiunta di una nota in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 217-227.  Mentre la riforma si compie, in «L'istruzione media», I punti oscuri, in «L'istruzione media», n. 15, 25 maggio-5 giugno, p. 1. La riforma della scuola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXIII, n. 11, 1-15 giugno, pp. 168-170. Ora anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del '900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp.  233-241.  Il problema sociale in Mazzini e Marx, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Con alcune modifiche confluito in Sulle orme di Marx, Cappelli, Bologna 19233, pp. 123-137. Scuola e libertà (Note polemiche), in «Critica sociale», Milano,196. Risposta all'inchiesta tra scrittori italiani: Dove va il mondo?, Libreria politica moderna, Roma. Aspetti della crisi contemporanea, in «Studi politici», anno 1, n. 9-10, settembre-ottobre, pp. 221-224.  143. La riforma universitaria, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXIII, n.  20, 16-31 ottobre, pp. 318-321.  Libertà e funzione sociale della scuola nella riforma Gentile, in «Cultura popolare», n. 10-11, ottobre-novembre, rispettivamente a pp. 470-483 e pp. 519-535. Recentemente anche in Educazione e socialismo. Scritti sulla riforma scolastica (dagli inizi del 900 alla Riforma Gentile), cit., pp. 243-283. Si chiedono dati statistici, in «L'istruzione media», n. 26, 5 novembre, p. 1. L'esperimento russo, in «La Rivoluzione liberale», Torino, II, п. 36, 20 novembre, p. 146. Verso la scuola confessionale?, in «L'istruzione media», n. 28, 25 novembre, p. 1. Si chiedono dati statistici, in «L'istruzione media», n. 26, 5 novembre, p. 1. La lotta di classe in Russia, in «La Rivoluzione liberale», Torino, II, n. 37, 27 novembre, p. 150.  150. Le attività del bilancio, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXIII, n. 21, novembre, pp. 328-330. Anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici  1908-1966, cit., pp. 328-330.  Contadini e proletariato nella Rivoluzione russa, in «Nuova rivista storica», Milano, VII, fasc. VI, novembre-dicembre, pp. 541-566. Sulle orme di Marx, 3ª edizione in due volumi, Cappelli, Bologna: vol. 1 Studi sui tempi nostri, vol. Il Lineamenti di teoria e di storia critica del marxismo. La filosofia e l'insegnamento di Francesco Acri (commemorazione nel decennale della sua morte), in «Rivista di filosofia», XVI, n. 4, dicembre, pp. 289-319. Significato e insegnamenti della rivoluzione russa, con prefazione di C. Treves, Bemporad, Firenze.  1924  Contributo a un chiarimento di idee, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXIV, n. 1, gennaio, pp. 14-16. Ristampato anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 235-241. Il rispetto dei diritti acquisiti e l'interesse della nazione, in «L'istruzione media», n. 3, 21-31 gennaio, p. 1. Marxismo e revisionismo, in «Libertà», quindicinale della gioventù socialista, Milano, n. 4, 18 febbraio. La filosofia politica in Italia nel sec. XIX, in Raccolta sulla Storia d'Italia nel secolo XIX, a cura dell'Istituto superiore di perfezionamento pergli studi politico sociali e commerciali in Brescia, Litotipo editrice, Padova, pp. 82 ss.  Dal naturalismo di Feuerbach allo storicismo di Marx, in «Rivista di psicologia», Bologna, XX, n. 1, gennaio-marzo, pp. 36-42. Si tratta di un breve estratto da Feurbach e Marx pubblicato in versione ampliata nella 3ª edizione (vol. II) di Sulle orme di Marx. Si trova anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti Ricordando Antonio Labriola, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXIV, n. 4, febbraio, pp. 61-63. Anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici  1908-1966, cit., pp. 242-246.  L'esame di Stato professionale, in «L'istruzione media», n. 7, 1-10 marzo,p. 1. J. J. Rousseau, Discorsi e Contratto sociale, a cura di R. Mondolfo, Cappelli, Bologna. L'idealismo di Jaurés e la funzione storica delle ideologie, in «Cri-tica sociale», Milano, Ristampato in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, cit., pp. 143-147. Dopo il primo esperimento, in «Istruzione media», n. 25 e n. 26, 1-20 e 21-30 settembre, rispettivamente a p. 1 e p. 2.  Le cose più grandi di lui (i programmi degli esami di Stato), in «Istruzione media», n. 28, 29 e 30, 20 e 30 ottobre e 10 novembre, rispettivamente a p. 1, pp. 1-2, p. 1. Necrologio di Felice Momigliano, in «Rivista di filosofia», Torino, XV, n. 1, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 86-87. Prefazione a F. Dal Monte, Filosofia e mistica in Bonaventura da Bagnorea, Libreria di scienze e lettere, Roma. 1925  168. Sintomi premonitori in Russia. Nuove forze politiche in vista, in«Critica sociale», Milano, XXXV, n. 2, 16-31 gennaio, pp. 22-25.  Anche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 235-245.  169. Opere scelte di Cesare Beccaria, con introduzione e note a cura di  R. Mondolfo, Cappelli, Bologna.  170. La questione istituzionale, in «La Rivoluzione liberale», Torino, IV,  n. 3, 18 gennaio, p. 9.  171. Francesco Fiorentino, in «Nuova rivista storica», Milano, Confluito poi in R. Mondolfo, Da Ardigò a Gramsci, Nuova Accademia, Milano 1962, pp. 45-97.  Discussioni marxiste, in «La Rivoluzione Liberale», Torino, IV, n. 13, 29 marzo, p. 53. Anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908- 1966, cit., pp. 248-253. Intorno ai nuovi concorsi, in «L'Istruzione media», n. 9, 31 marzo, p. 1. I punti del problema: per definire la discussione marxista, in «La Rivoluzione Liberale», Torino, IV, n. 17, 26 aprile, p. 69-70. Ristampato in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp.  254-259.  Liberalismo della vecchia destra, in «Critica sociale», Milano, L'opera di Ferdinande Lassalle, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Il problema delle classi medie, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, Uscito anche come opuscolo con un preambolo di Filippo Turati nell'edizione La Giustizia, Milano 1925.  Il pensiero di Engels e la prassi storica della classe lavoratrice, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXV, n. 14, 16-31 luglio, pp. 162-163. Proletariato e ceti intellettuali, in «La Giustizia», 15 luglio, p. 3. Beccaria e Kant, in «Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del Di-ritto», Genova, anno V, fasc. IV, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 617-619. Ristampato in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, cit., pp. 149-151.  La negazione della realtà dello spazio in Zenone di Elea, in «Rendiconti dell'Istituto Marchigiano di scienze, lettere ed arti», I, pp. 41-49. Poi in Problemi del pensiero antico, Zanichelli, Bologna 1935, pp. 146-155. Per la serietà dell'esame di Stato, in «Istruzione Media», Parma, n. 22, 22 agosto, p. 1  Critiche esagerate?, in «L'istruzione media», Parma, n. 25, 10 ottobre, p. 1. Veritas filia temporis in Aristotele, in Scritti filosofici per le onoranze nazionali di Bernardino Varisco, Vallecchi, Firenze, pp. 235-253. Presente anche in Momenti del pensiero greco, Morano, Napoli 1964,  pp. 1-20.  185. Das Problem der Mittelklassen in seiner Bedeutung für den  Sozialismus in Italien, in «Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung», herausgegeben von Carl Grünberg,  XII, p. 1 ss.  186. Beccaria filosofo, in «Rivista di filosofia», Torino, XVI, n. 1, dicembre, pp. 1-11 ss. Tratto dall' introduzione a Opere scelte di Cesare Beccaria, Cappelli, Bologna 1925.  1926  187. Risposta a un'inchiesta sull'idealismo, in «Il Baretti», Torino, a. 3.,  n. 1, gennaio, p. 72.  Un cervello maschile, un cuore materno. In memoria di Anna Kuliscioff, in «Critica Sociale», Milano, XXXVI, n. 1-2, 1-31 gennaio, p. 20. Moto e vuoto, in «Il Baretti», Torino, a. 3, n. 2, febbraio, p. 76. Il problema etico e culturale del socialismo nei rapporti col movimento socialista, in «Critica sociale», XXXVI, n. 3, 1-15 febbraio, pp. 36-38. Materialismo, idealismo, realismo critico-pratico, in «Il Quarto Stato», Milano, I, n. 4, 17 aprile, p. 3. Ristampato anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 261-265. Per la revisione del bilancio idealistico, in «Il Quarto Stato», Milano, I, n. 21, 21 agosto, p. 3. Anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 266-273.  Primum intelligere..., in «Il Quarto Stato», Milano, I, n. 29, 23 ottobre, p. 1-2. Anche in Umanismo di Marx. Studi filosofici 1908-1966, cit., pp. 274-276. Dall'esperienza agricola russa al problema contadino occidentale, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XXXVI, n. 18-19, 16 settembre-31 ottobre pP. 280-287. Ristampato anche in Studi sulla rivoluzione russa, cit., pp. 247-271. Diderot, D'Alambert e il Trattato delle sensazioni, in «L'idealismo realistico», Roma. 1927  Condillac contro Condillac. Critica della prima parte del Trattato delle sensazioni, in «Rivista di Psicologia», n. 1. Sulla nozione di progresso, sintesi di una comunicazione al Congresso della Società per il progresso delle Scienza (sezione scienze filosofiche), in Atti del Congresso di Bologna. Il trattato delle sensazioni di Condillac, con introduzione su L'Opera di Condillac, Cappelli, Bologna. Spinoza e la nozione del progresso umano, in «Rivista di filosofia», XVIII, n. 3, luglio-settembre, pp. 262-266. Anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti La polemica di Zenone d'Elea contro il movimento, parte I, in «Rivista di Filologia e d'istruzione classica», Torino, Confluito poi con alcune aggiunte in R. Mondolfo, Problemi del pensiero antico, Der Faschismus in Italien (sotto lo pseudonimo di «Rerum italicarum scriptor»), in Internationaler Faschismus, herausgegeben von C. Landauer und H. Honegger, Karlsruhe. La polemica di Zenone d'Elea contro il movimento, parte II, in «Rivista di Filologia e d'istruzione classica», Torino, a. VI, n. 56, pp. 78-107. Confluito poi con alcune aggiunte in R. Mondolfo, Problemi del pensiero antico, Zanichelli, Bologna 1935, pp. 89-145.  Fichte, in «Dizionario di scienze pedagogiche», vol. I, Vallardi, Milano, Confluito poi nella raccolta Filosofi tedeschi: saggi critici, trad. di L. Bassi, Cappelli, Bologna Il realismo di Roberto Ardigò, in «Rivista di filosofia», XIX, n. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 198-210. Anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti Nel primo centenario di Roberto Ardigò, in «Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto», Roma, VIII, fasc. III, maggio giugno, pp. 380-387.  1929  Romagnosi, in «Dizionario di scienze pedagogiche», vol. II, Vallardi, Milano, Il pensiero antico. Storia della filosofia greco-romana, esposta con tesi scelti dalle fonti, Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, Roma-Genova-Milano-Napoli. Sintesi storica del pensiero antico, Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, Roma-Genova. Rassegne di storia della filosofia: I. Filosofia del Rinascimento, in «Rivista di filosofia», XX, Torino, n. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 159-170. L'antinomia fondamentale nella visione della vita e della storia di F. Nietzsche, in «L'idealismo realistico», VI, fasc. 2, pp. 13-18.  211. Die Anfänge der Arbeiterbewegung in Italien bis 1872 und der  Konflikt zwischen Mazzini und Bakunin, in «Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung», herausgegeben von  Prof. Carl Grünberg, Hischfeld Verlag, XIV, heft 3, Leipzig, pp. 339-  365.  212. Il superamento dell'utilitarismo e la coscienza morale nella dottrina epicurea, in «Rendiconto delle sessioni della R. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna», vol. 3, Azzoguidi, Bologna.  Confluito poi in Problemi del pensiero antico, c Responsabilità e sanzione nel più antico pensiero greco, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, II, n. 1, 15 febbraio, pp. 1-16. Poi confluito in  Problemi del pensiero greco, cit., pp. 3-20.  214. Razionalità e irrazionalità della Storia: per una visione realistica del problema del progresso, in «Nuova Rivista Storica», Milano, XVI, fasc.  1-II, gennaio-aprile, pp. 1 ss.  Collaborazione alla «Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences» della Columbia University di New York; voci: T. Campanella, A. Costa. I primordi del movimento operaio in Italia avanti il 1872 e il conflitto tra Mazzini e Bakunin, in «Nuova Rivista Storica», anno XIV, fasc. IV-V, luglio-ottobre, pp. 394-412. Trad. it.: Die Anfänge der Arbeiterbewegung in Italien bis 1872 un Konflikt zwischen Mazzini und Bakunin (cfr. n. 211). Riproposto poi da Mondolfo in una rivista argentina nel 1955 (cfr. n. 410). Nella versione italiana, anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti  Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia Italiana» (Istituto Treccani); voce: Giordano Bruno, vita ed opere, religione e filosofia, dio e l'universo: il monismo, l'etica, vol. VII, pp. 980-984. Nella sua versione rielaborata Mondolfo ripropone questo articolo in Figure e idee del Rinascimento, trad. di L. Bassi, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1963, pp. 35-111. Recensione a G. Tarozzi, L'esistenza e l'anima, in «Nuova Rivista Storica», XIV, ottobre. 219. Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia Italiana» (Istituto Treccani); voci: Comunismo (esposizione critica della dottrina e della storia), vol. IX, pp. 29-34; Filone di Alessandria, vol. XV, p. 352; C. A. Helvétius,  vol. XVIII, pp. 450-451.  1931  Collaborazione alla «Encyclopedia of the social Sciences» della Columbia University di New York; voci: Epicure and epicureanism, Giuseppe Ferrari, Gaetano Filangeri, Pasquale Galluppi, Melchiorre Gioia, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Theodor Karl Grün, Peter Alexeyevitch, Antonio Labriola. Collaborazione a «Pedagogia» (Enciclopedia delle Enciclopedie, Formiggini, Roma); voci: Didattica della filosofia, pp. 305-312; Libertà e Laicità della scuola, pp. 820-835. Entrambi riportati in Educazione e cultura come problemi sociali, Cappelli, Bologna 1957, pp. 149-161 e pp. 123-147. Comunicazione al Congresso della Società Italiana per il progresso delle scienze su Criteri di studio del problema riguardante le origini della filosofia greca. Germi in Bruno, Bacone e Spinoza del concetto marxistico della storia, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, anno III, n. 5, 15 ottobre, pp. 921-933. Scritto pubblicato anche in Germania nel 1932 (cfr. n. 228) e, successivamente, nel 1936 sulla rivista argentina «Dialéctica» (cfr. n.  277). Recentemente anche in Tra teoria sociale e filosofia politica. Rodolfo Mondolfo interprete della coscienza moderna. Scritti 1903-1931, cit., pp.  193-203.  Un educatore scomparso: Giovanni Marchesini, in «La Cultura popolare», XXI, 12, pp. 467-473. Rapporti tra la speculazione religiosa e la filosofia nella Grecia antica, I, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, II, dicembre, pp. 463-468. Intorno al contenuto dell'antica teogonia orfica, in «Rivista di Filologia e d'istruzione classica», a. IX, n. 59, dicembre, pp. 433-461.1932 Rapporti tra la speculazione religiosa e la filosofia della Grecia antica, II, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, III, gennaio, pp. 11-18. Il concetto della «umwälzende Praxis» e i suoi germi in Bruno e Spinoza, in «Grünbergs Fetschrift», C. L. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, pp. 365-376.  I Discorsi e il Contratto sociale di J. J. Rousseau, trad. con introduzione e commento, 2ª edizione, Cappelli, Bologna. Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia Italiana» (Istituto Treccani); voci: Antonio Labriola, vol. XX, pp. 334-335; Internazionale e Internazionalismo, vol. XIX, pp. 394-396. Il Giansenismo in Italia di A. C. Jemolo, in «Rivista di Filosofia», Torino. Discutendo il problema dei caratteri differenziali tra filosofia antica e moderna, in «Rivista di filosofia», Milano, XXII, n. 3, luglio-settembre, PP. 189-209. Articolo contenente il paragrafo finale della Nota sul genio ellenico, inserita nell'edizione italiana di E. Zeller-R.Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: I Presocratici; vol. 1: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, La Nuova Italia, Firenze  1932. Nell'edizione del 1951 si trova alle pp. 344-355.  233. Arte e religione in Grecia secondo gli schemi del neoumanesimo, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, IV, n. 2, giugno, pp. 186-209. Tratto da R.  Mondolfo, Nota sul genio ellenico in E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: 1 Presocratici, vol. I: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, cit. Nell'edizione del 1951 si trova a pp. 336 ss.  234. Nota sulla divisione in periodi della filosofia greca, in «Archivio di storia della filosofia», a. I, fasc. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 156-170. Anche in E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: 1 presocratici, vol. I: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1951, pp. 375-384. Poi anche in Id., La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: I presocratici, vol. II: lonici e Pitagorici, La Nuova Italia, Firene 1938, pp. 27-89.    235. Collaborazione a «Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences» della Columbia University di New York; voci: Lucretius, Karl Geory  Winkelblech (Karl Marlo).  E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: 1 Presocratici, vol. I: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, traduzione e aggiornamenti, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. Studi sopra l'infinito nel pensiero dei Greci, in «Memoria della R. Accademia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, classe di scienze morali», serie 3, tomo 6, Gamberini e Parmeggiani, Bologna 1931-  1932. Pubblicato anche nell'edizione Azzoguidi, Bologna 1932.  1933  Eternità e infinità del tempo in Aristotele, in «Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana», Firenze, XIV, pp. 30-43. Il contributo di Zenone d'Elea alla scoperta dell'infinitesimale, in «Archivio di storia della filosofia», IX, gennaio.  La preparazione dei greci alla comprensione dell'infinito, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, V, n. 1, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 1-14. La concezione dell'Empireo in Platone, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, marzo.  242. Il passaggio dal teleologismo al determinismo nella dottrina peripatetica dell'eternità del mondo, in «Rivista di filosofia», Milano, XXIV, n. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 97-109. Articolo tratto da un capitolo della I edizione de L'infinito nel pensiero dei Greci, Le Monnier, Firenze  1934. Nell'edizione ampliata del 1956 corrisponde a pp. 141-159.  L'infinità divina nelle teogonie greche presocratiche, in «Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni», Roma, vol. IX, pp. 72 ss. Tratto da L'infinito nel pensiero dei greci, Le Monnier, Firenze 1934, pp. 271-294. L'infinità della potenza divina in Aristotele (Dal concetto negativo al concetto positivo dell'infinito), in «Ricerche religiose», Roma, IX, luglio, Pp. 305-311. Tratto da L'infinito nel pensiero dei greci, Le Monnier, Firenze 1934. L'infinità dell'essere in Melisso di Samo (contributi a un processo di riabilitazione), in «Sophia», Padova, 1, aprile-giugno, pp. 159 ss. L'infinità divina da Filone ai neoplatonici e ai suoi precedenti, in «Atene e Roma», Firenze, Le Monnier, anno I, serie III, n. 3, luglio-settembre, pp. 192-200. Articolo rielaborato tratto L'Infinito nel pensiero dei greci, Le Monnier, Firenze, 1934. L'infinità del numero dai Pitagorici a Platone e ad Archimede, in «Archivio di filosofia», Roma, fasc. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 68-79. «Prassi che rovescia» o «Prassi che si rovescia»?, in «Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto», Roma, XIII, fasc. VI, pp. 743 ss. Scritto che viene successivamente inserito da Mondolfo in Il materialismo storico in Federico Engels (1952). Nella successiva riedizione del 1973 si trova alle pp. 401-403. Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia italiana»; voce: Materialismo storico, vol. XXII, pp. 563-564; Il contratto di lavoro nella voce Il lavoro, in XX, pp. 663-665. Collaborazione alla «Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences» della Columbia University di New York; voce: Paolo Paruta. Lezioni di storia della filosofia svolte dal chiar. prof. Rodolfo Mondolfo durante l'Anno accademico 1933-34, a cura di S. Bortolotti e E. Wittig Universita di Bologna, Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, Bologna. 1934  La genesi storica della filosofia presocratica, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, 20 marzo, pp. 82-94. Prefazione al libro di G. Fontanesi, Il problema filosofico dell'amore nell'opera di Leone ebreo, Libreria Emiliana, Venezia, pp. I-XIII. Problema umano e problema cosmico nella formazione della filosofia greca, Memoria presentata all'Accademia delle Scienze di Bologna nella sessione del 17 marzo, Azzoguidi, Bologna, pp. 1-32. Anche in Problemi del pensiero antico, cit., pp. 23-85.  785  255. Note sull'eleatismo: a proposito degli Studi sull'eleatismo di G.  Calogero, in «Rivista di filologia e d'istruzione classica», Torino, a.  XII, n. 62, giugno, pp. 209-228. Poi in Problemi del pensiero antico, Zanichelli, Bologna 1935, pp. 156-185.  256. I problemi dell'infinità numerica e dell'infinitesimo in Aristotele, in  «Rivista di filosofia», Milano, XXV, n. 3, luglio-settembre, pp. 210-  219. Tratto da L'infinito nel pensiero dei greci, Le Monnier, Firenze  1934.  Caratteri e sviluppi della filosofia presocratica, in «Sophia», Roma, luglio-settembre, pp. 274-288. La giustizia cosmica secondo Anassimandro ed Eraclito, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, vol. VI, n. 5-6, settembre-dicembre, pp. 409-424. L'infinito nel pensiero dei Greci, Le Monnier, nella Collezione di «Studi filosofici» diretta da G. Gentile, Firenze. Recensioni in «Pan»: A. Rosemberg Storia del bolscevismo da Marx ai giorni nostri, Sansoni, Firenze, in «Rivista internazionale di filosofia del diritto»; N. Festa, I frammenti degli stoici antichi, vol. I, Laterza, Bari 1932; G. Della Valle, Tito Lucrezio Caro e l'epicureismo campano, Accademia Pontaniana, Napoli 1933; Id., Dove nacque T. Lucrezio Caro?, Stab. industrie editoriali meridionali, Napoli 1933, in «Sophia»; G. Pasquali, Pagine stravaganti di un filologo, Carabba, Lanciano 1933; Conte di Gobineau, Il rinascimento, trad. di F. Gentile Tarozzi, Cappelli, Bologna 1933, in «Civiltà moderna»; G. Mayer, Friederich Engels: Eine Biographie, M. Nijhoff, Haag 1934; Marx-Engels, Historische, Kritische, Gesamtausgabe Werke Schriften, Briefe, Berlin, in «Rivista di filosofia»; C. Ottaviano, Joachimi abbatis liber contra Lombardorum, Reale Accademia d'Italia, Roma 1934.  261. Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia italiana»; voce: Movimento  Operaio, vol. XXV, pp. 402-405.  1935  262. Francesco Fiorentino e il positivismo, in AA.VV, Onoranze a F.  Fiorentino nel cinquantenario della sua morte, Morano, Napoli, pp. 81-  97.  263. Infinità dell'istante e infinità soggettiva nel pensiero degli antichi, in «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana», Firenze, 16, pp. 205-  234. Successivamente in Problemi del pensiero antico, cit., pp. 207-  250. Inserito poi nella V parte de L'infinito nel pensiero dell'antichità  classica, cit.  264. La genesi e i problemi della cosmogonia di Talete, in «Rivista di filologia e d'istruzione classica», Torino, XIII, n. 63, giugno, pp. 145-  167.  265. Physis e theion: intorno al carattere e al concetto centrale della filosofia presocratica, in «Atene e Roma», Firenze, Le Monnier, serie III, a. III,  n. 2, aprile-giugno, pp. 81-100.  Il principio universale di Anassimandro, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, luglio-agosto, pp. 344-354. Questioni di storia della scienza greca, in «Rivista di filosofia», Torino, XXVI, n. 23, luglio-settembre, p. 246-257. L'infinito e le antinomie logiche nel pensiero greco, relazione al «Congresso della Società italiana per il progresso delle scienze», tenutosi a Palermo il 12-18 ottobre, Società italiana per il progresso delle scienze, Roma. Confluito poi in R. Mondolfo, I problemi del pensiero antico, Zanichelli, cit., pp. 251-265. Collaborazione alla «Enciclopedia italiana dell'Istituto Treccani»; voci: Sindacalismo,vol. XXXI, pp. 830-832; Socialismo, vol. XXXI, PP. 990-997; Scienza (classificazione delle scienze e storia della scienza), vol. XXXI, pp. 156-157.  Problemi del pensiero antico, Zanichelli, Bologna 1935. Lezioni di storia della filosofia, a cura di E. Zambrini, Università di Bologna, Facoltà di lettere e filosofia, Bologna. Lezioni di filosofia moderna: Benedetto Spinoza, tenute dal Chiar.mo Prof Rodolfo Mondolfo nell'anno 1935-1936, a cura di G. C. Cavalli, GUF G. Venezian, Bologna.  1936  Gli albori della filosofia in Grecia, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, gennaio. Feuerbach y Marx. La dialéctica y el concepto de la historia, trad. di M. P. Alberti, Claridad, Buenos Aires.  Su una presunta affermazione antica della sfericità terrestre e degli antipodi, in «Archeion», vol. XVIII, n. 1, gennaio-marzo, pp. 7-17. Anaximenea, in «Rivista di Filologia e d'istruzione classica», Torino, XIV, n. 64, marzo, pp. 15-26. Gérmenes en Bruno, Bacon y Espinoza de la concepción marxista de la historia, in «Dialéctica», Buenos Aires, abril. Per Diogene d'Apollonia, in «Rivista di filosofia», Torino, XXVII, 3, luglio-settembre, pp. 189-197. Gli atomisti antichi, in «Il Lavoro», 21 settembre, p. 3. Formes et tendences actuelles du mouvement philosophique en Italie (in collaborazione con il Prof. Limentani della R. Università di Firenze), in «Revue de Synthèse», XII, n. 2, octobre, Paris, pp. 141- L'utopia di Platone, in «Il Lavoro», 17 novembre, p.3. Aristotele ed Epicuro, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, dicembre, pp. 273-279. 1937  Echi del centenario di Romagnosi, in «Il Lavoro», 22 gennaio, p. 3 La vitalità di Aristotele, in «Il Lavoro». La filosofia antica in terra d'Africa e le tendenze del soggettivismo. Estratto da Atti della XXV Riunione della SIPS a Tripoli, Raduno coloniale della scienza italiana, 1-7 novembre 1936. Relazione  Congresso della Società per il progresso delle scienze (Tripoli).  Problemi della cosmologia di Anassimandro, in «Logos», Napoli, XX, fasc. I, gennaio-marzo, pp. 14-30. Da una Nota sulla cosmologia e la metafisica di Anassimandro introdotta come aggiornamento nel Il vol. dell'edizione italiana de E.Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: I Presocratici, Il vol.: lonici e Pitagorici, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1938, pp. 190 ss. Ancora sull'infinito e gli antichi, in «Sophia», V, 1-2, gennaio- giugno, pp. 146-152. La prima affermazione della sfericità della terra. Nota dell'accademico effettivo prof Rodolfo Mondolfo, comunicata il 12 dicembre, in «Rendiconti delle sessioni della R. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe di scienze morali», serie IV, 1, Bologna, Tip. Azzoguidi, p. 18. Trad. it con l'aggiunta di una postilla in Momenti del pensiero greco e cristiano, cit., pp. 101-117.  Collaborazione all'«Enciclopedia italiana Treccani»; voci: Unità, Universo (nella storia della filosofia), vol. XXXIV, pp. 714 e 744. Per l'interpretazione di F. Fiorentino, in «Archivio di storia della filosofia italiana», I, VI, 1, p. 32. Sui frammenti di Filolao (contributo a una revisione del processo di falsità), in «Rivista di Filologia e d'istruzione classica», XV, n. 65, p. 225-245.  Platone e la storia del pitagorismo, in «Atene e Roma», Firenze, Le Monnier, serie III, a. V, n. 4. ottobre-dicemre, pp. 235-251. Tratto da una Nota sulle fonti della nostra conoscenza e ricostruzione storica del Pitagorismo, in E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, pp. 313 ss. Forme e tendenze attuali del movimento filosofico in Italia, (in collaborazione con il Prof. Limentani della R. Università di Firenze), in «Logos», Napoli, XX, pp. 189-215.1938 L'origine dell'ideale filosofico della vita. Comunicazione del socio Rodolfo Mondolfo, presentata nella seduta del 26 maggio 1938, in «Rendiconti delle sessioni della R. Academia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe di scienze morali», serie V, I, Azzoguidi, Bologna, pp. 121-144. E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: 1 Presocratici, vol. Il: lonici e Pitagorici, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. Intorno ad Epicarmo, in «Civiltà moderna», Firenze, I, X, n. 2-3, marzo-giugno, pp. 133-143. L'unità del pitagorismo, in «La Nuova Italia», Firenze, giugno. 1940  Origen y sentido del concepto de cultura humanista, para la inauguración de cursos del Istituto de Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, El Sol, La Plata, pp. 21-36. Historia y filosofia, in «Sustancia», Tucumán, a. I, n. 4, marzo, pp. 530-545. Trad. it. in Alle origini della filosofia della cultura, trad. di L.  Bassi, Il Mulino, Bologna 1956, pp. 164-187.  300. El materialismo histórico en Federico Engels, version castellana de  A. Mantica, Libreria y Editorial Ciencia, Rosario, vol. di pp. 362.  301. R. Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, a cura di R. Mondolfo e E.  Garin, Sansoni, Firenze, pp. XXXIII-104. La traduzione e le note di  Rodolfo Mondolfo vennero pubblicate anonime in questa prima edizione, mentre ricompaiono nelle ristampe successive al 1946.  302. R. Descartes, Principi di filosofia, a cura di R. Mondolfo e E. Garin, Sansoni, Firenze, pp. XXXIII-82. La traduzione e le note di Rodolfo  Mondolfo vengono pubblicate anonime in questa prima edizione, mentre ricompaiono nelle ristampe successive al 1946.      1941  Sócrates, edición de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba. Anche in Moralistas griegos. La conciencia moral de Homero a Epicuro, Imán, Buenos Aires 1941. Sugestiones de la técnica en las concepciones de los naturalistas presocráticos, in «Archeion» de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral, XXIII, n. 1, julio, pp. 36-52. Trad. it di L. Bassi: Suggestioni della tecnica nelle concezioni dei naturalisti presocratici, in Alle origini della filosofia della cultura, introduzione di R. Treves, Il Mulino, Bologna 1956, pp. 87-106.  305. Moralistas griegos. La conciencia moral de Homero a Epicuro, Imán, Buenos Aires. Trad. it. accresciuta a cura di V. E. Alfieri, Moralisti greci. La coscienza morale da Omero a Epicuro, Ricciardi, Napoli-Milano  1960.  306. Espíritu revolucionario y conciencia histórica, in «Revista Mexicana de Sociología», Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, vol. 3,  n. 4, 1 dicembre, pp. 71-86.  1942  El pensamiento antiguo, historia de la filosofia greco-romana, 2 vol., Losanda, Buenos Aires. El problema del conocimiento desde los presocráticos hasta Aristóteles, Publicaciónes del Instituto de Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, n. 19, Córdoba. La teoría del sentido interior en San Agustín y sus antecedentes griegos, in «Insula», Buenos Aires. Trad. it. in Momenti del pensiero greco e cristiano, cit., pp. 59-84. Espíritu revolucionario y conciencia histórica, in «Revista mexicana de Sociología» e nel «Boletín del Instituto de Sociología de Bueons Aires», pp. 43-55. La antinomia del espíritu innovador, in «Sustancia», n. 9, Tucumán, pp. 12- La filosofia política de Italia en el siglo XIX, Imán, Buenos Aires. En los orígenes de la filosofía de la cultura, Imán, Buenos Aires. En el centenario de Galileo, in «Sur», Buenos Aires, 2, 97-99, octubre-diciempre, pp. 86 e pp. 90. 1943  La crítica escéptica de la causalidad, in El problema de la causalidad, Publicaciones del Instituto de Humanidades de Córdoba. El genio helénico y los caracteres de sus creaciones espirituales, Cuadernos de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de Tucumán, Tucumán. Roberto Ardigó y el positivismo italiano, in «Sustancia», Tucumán, n. 13. Naturaléza y cultura en la formación de la filosofía griega, Publicaciones del Instituto de Humanidades, n. 25, Córdoba. Rousseau y la consciencia moderna, Imán, Buenos Aires. Campanella y Descartes, in «Estudios de Filosofía», Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. La filosofía de la historia de Fernando Lassalle, in «Revista mexicana de Sociología», Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, vol. 5, n. 3, pp. 343-381. Traducción de Carmelo di Bruno del original italiano. E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: 1 Presocratici, vol. I: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, 2ª edizione, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. 1944  323. El pensamiento de Galileo y sus relaciones con la filosofía y la ciencia antiguas, Publicaciones del Instituto de Humanidades, n. 33, Córdoba.  30. La filosofía de Giordano Bruno, trad. Ricardo Resta, in «Minerva», Buenos Aires, a. 1, vol. 1, mayo-junio. La ética antigua y la noción de conciencia morale, Imprenta de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Publicaciónes del Instituto de Humanidades, n. 41, Córdoba, pp. 31. Misión de la cultura humanista, in «Papales», Buenos Aires. Determinismo contra volontarismo en la filosofia de Nietzsche, in «Minerva», Buenos Aires, II, n. 4. Anche Ensayos críticos sobre filósofos alemanes, Imán, Buenos Aires 1946, pp. 143-165. Trad. it. Determinismo contro volontarismo nella filosofia di F. Nietzsche, in Filosofi tedeschi: saggi critici, trad. di L. Bassi, Cappelli, Bologna 1958, pp.  145-164.  La politica y la utopía de Campanella. La Ciudad del Sol, in «Revista mexicana de Sociología», Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, vol. 6, n. 2, Mayo - Augosto, pp. 213-223. Origen del ideal filosófico de la vida, in «Revista de estudios clásicos de la Universidad de Cuyo», Mendoza, n. 1, p. 47-78. Inserito successivamente in R. Mondolfo, En los orígenes de la filosofía del la cultura, Libreria Hachette, Buenos Aires 19603, pp. 281 ss. 1945  La trascendencia extratemporal divina y la infinitud temporal en el período religioso de la filosofía griega, in «Philosophia», Mendoza, Universidad de Cuyo, II, n. 2-3, pp. 7-12. Eternidad e infinitud del tiempo en Aristóteles, Publicaciones del Instituto de Filosofía y Humanidades, n. 44. Pubblicato nella «Revista de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba», año 32, n. 2. El infinito y las antinomias lógicas de la filosofia antigua, «Publicaciones del Instituto de Humanidades», n. 45, Córdoba. El primer fragmento de Heráclito: texto, traduccion y comentario, in «Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires», tomo V, a. III, n. 3-4, julio-diciembre, pp. 43-50. El pensamento antiguo, 2ª edición revis., Losanda, Buenos Aires. Sobre la pena de muerte (Kant contra Beccaria), in «Bebel», Santiago del Chile, n. 27, pp. 97 ss. 1946  Bibliografia de G. Bruno, in «Philosophia», Mendoza, Univer- sidad de Cuyo, 3, pp. 39-55. La infinitud del espiritu en la filosofia antigua, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Publicaciones del Instituto de Filosofía y Humanidades, Córdoba, n. 49, pp. 955-976. Qué es el materialismo histórico, in «Babel», Santiago del Chile, n. 31, pp. 36 ss.  339. Prólogo a W. A. Heidel, La edad heroica de la ciencia, Espasa Calpe,  Buenos Aires.  Cesar Beccaria y su obra, Depalma, Buenos Aires, pp. 117. Trad. it con ampliamenti ed aggiunte: Cesare Beccaria, La Nuova Accademia, Milano 1960. R. Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, a cura di E. Garin e R. Mondolfo, Sansoni, Firenze, 2ª edizione. R. Descartes, Principi di filosofia, a cura di E. Garin e R. Mondolfo, Sansoni, Firenze, 2ª edizione. Il problema del male in Agostino e nell'agostinismo, conferenza tenuta nell'aula magna dell'Università di Montevideo il 31 agosto. Confluita in Momenti del pensiero greco e cristiano, cit., pp. 85-97.  1947  344. Ensayos críticos sobre filósofos alemanes, Imán, Buenos Aires. Trad. it a cura di L. Bassi, Filosofi tedeschi: saggi critici, Cappelli, Bologna  1958.  La idea de progreso humano en G. Bruno, in «Babel», Santiago del Chile, n. 39, pp. 97 ss. Tres filósofos de Rinascimiento: Bruno, Galileo, Campanella, Losanda, Buenos Aires. Poi rifuso in Figuras e ideas de la Filosofía del Rinacimento, Losada, Buenos Aires 1955. San Augustín y el problema del mal en el neoplatonismo cristiano, in «Revista de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de Montevideo», n. 1, pp. 127-135.  1948  348. Interpretaciones de Heráclito en el último medio siglo, prólogo a O.  Spengler, Heráclito, Espasa-Calpe, Buenos Aires.  Interpretaciones italianas del materialismo histórico, in «Cultura italiana», Buenos Aires. Trad. it: Il materialismo storico nelle interpre-tazioni italiane, in «Critica sociale», Milano, XL, n. 3, pp. 54-58. Voluntarismo y pedagogia de la acción en Mazzini y en Marx, in «Babel», Santiago del Chile, n. 44, pp. 72 ss. La idea de cultura en el Rinacimiento italiano, in «Jornadas de centro de cultura italiana», Tucumán, Universidad Nacional, 1, n. 1, pp. 1-20. Poi in Figure e idee del Rinascimento, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, Die Klassische Philosophie in Latein-Amerika, in «Universitas», Stuttgart. Problemas y métodos de la investigación en historia de la filosofia, Cuadernos de Instituto de Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán. Sulle orme di Marx, 4ª edizione, Cappelli, Bologna. Le sujet humain dans la philosophie antique, in AA. VV., Proceedingof the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam 1949, pp. 1065-8.  Voluntad y conocimiento en Heráclito, in «Notas y estudios de filosofía», Tucumán, Spinoza y la noción de progreso humano, in «Bebel», Santiago de Chile, n. 52, pp. 227 ss. R. Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, a cura di E. Garin e R. Mondolfo, 3ª edizione, Sansoni, Firenze. R. Descartes, Principi di filosofia, a cura di E. Garin e R. Mondolfo, 3ª edizione, Sansoni, Firenze. El hombre como sujeto espiritual en la filosofía antigua, in Actas de primer Congreso Nacional de Filosofía, tomo III, Mendoza, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. 1950  361. L'utopia di Campanella, in «Studi in onore di Gino Luzzatto»,  Giuffrè, Milano.  J. J. Rousseau, Discorsi e Contratto sociale, a cura di R. Mondolfo, 3ª edizione, Cappelli, Bologna. Il pensiero antico. Storia della filosofía greco-romana, esposta con testi scelti dalle fonti, 2ª edizione, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. Il metodo di Galileo e la teoria della conoscenza, in «Rivista di filo-sofia», Torino, XLI, fasc. 4, ottobre-dicembre, pp. 375-389. Publicato contemporaneamente in lingua spagnola (cfr. n. 366). Confluito poi in R. Mondolfo, Figure e idee del Rinascimento, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1963, pp. 291-313. Ensayos sobre el Renacimiento italiano, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Instituto de filosofía, Tucumán. El método de Galileo y la teoría del conocimiento, in Actas de la Academia de Ciencias Culturales y Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1, pp. 9-27. Trabajo manual y trabajo intelectual desde la antigüedad hasta el Renacimiento, in «Revista de historia de las ideas de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán», Tucumán, n. 1, pp. 5-25. Lavoro manuale e lavoro intellettuale dall'antichità al Rinascimento, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Ristampato in Alle origini della filosofia della cultura, a cura di R. Treves, Il Mulino, Bologna 1956, pp. 125-149. Successivamente anche in Polis, lavoro e tecnica, introduzione e cura di M. V. Ferriolo, Feltrinelli, Milano 1982, pp. 51-71.  369. La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: I presocratici, vol. Il: Ionici e Pitagorici, 2ª edizione, La Nuova Italia, Firenze.  1951  370. Lo humano y lo subjetivo en el pensamiento antiguo, in «Notas y estudios de filosofía», Tucumán,  Sobre una interpretación reciente de Anaxagoras y los eleatas, in «Notas y estudios de filosofía», Tucumán, Preparación profesional e investigación científica, in La universidad del siglo XX, Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, Lima, pp. 333-  342. Trad. it. in Educazione e cultura come problemi sociali, cit., pp. 46-  58.  La reminiscencia platónica y la actividad del espíritu, in «Actas del Congreso de filosofía en Lima» y «Revista de la Universidad Nacional de S. Agustín de Arequipa». Reseñas en «Notas y estudios de filosofía», sobre: M. Dal Pra, La storiografia filosófica antica; C. Moeller, Sagesse grecque etparadoxe chrétien; A. Nogueira, Universo, 1951-52. E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Parte I: I Presocratici, vol. I: Origini, caratteri e periodi della filosofia greca, 3ª edizione, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. 797  1952  376. El pensamiento antiguo. Tomo I: Desde los orígines hasta Platón.  Tomo II: Desde Aristóteles hasta neoplatónicos, 3ª edizione, Losanda, 2 tomos, Buenos Aires.  377. El infinito en el pensamiento de la antigüedad clásica, trad. de F.  Gonzáles Ríos, Ediciones Imán, Buenos Aires.   La filosofía como problematicidad y el historicismo, in «Philosophia», Universidad Nacional De Cuyo, Mendoza, Trad. it: La filosofia come problematicità e lo storicismo, in «Il Dialogo», II, n. 5, ottobre, pp. 43-64.  Il materialismo storico in F. Engels, 2ª edizione italiana, La Nuova Italia, Firenze. Leonardo teórico del arte y de la ciencia, in «Sur», Buenos Aires, Eduard Zeller y la historia de la filosofía, in «Notas y estudios de filosofía», Tucumán, 5, n. 12, octubre-diciembre, pp. 369-381. Intorno alla gnoseologia di Democrito, «Rivista critica di storia della filosofia», Milano, a. VII, fasc. 1, gennaio-febbraio, pp. 1-18. Articolo presente con alcune modifiche anche in un capitolo di La comprensione del soggetto umano nell'antichità classica, trad. di L. Bassi, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1958, pp. 267-297.  383. Problemi e metodi di ricerca nella storia della filosofia, La Nuova Italia, Firenze.  1953  I cirenaici e i raffinati del Teeteto platonico, «Rivista di filosofia», Torino, XLIV, n. 2, aprile, pp. 127-135. Tratto da La comprensione del soggetto umano nell'età classica, cit., pp. 297-310. Il valore del lavoro nel riconoscimento di Senofonte, Platone ed Aristotele, in «Critica sociale», Milano, Trabajo y conocimiento según Aristóteles, in «Imago mundi», Buenos Aires, 1, n. 1, pp. 14-22.  L'unité du sujet dans la gnoséologie d'Aristóte, in «Revue philosophique», Paris, 78, luglio settembre, pp. 359-378. Platón y el concepto unitario de cultura humana, in «Humanitas», Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, a. 1, n. 1, pp. 15-24; nella versione italiana: Platone e il concetto unitario di cultura umana, in Scritti di sociologia e politica in onore di Luigi Sturzo, II, Zanichelli, Bologna, pp. 569-580. Dos textos de Platón sobre Heráclito, in «Notas y estudios de filosofía», Tucumán, 4, pp. 233-244. Leonardo teorico dell'arte e della scienza, in «II Ponte», Firenze, IX, fasc. 8, pp. 1221-1238. Campanella y su utopía, prólogo a T. Campanella, La Ciudad del Sol, Losada, Buenos Aires. Breve historia del pensamiento antiguo, Losada, Buenos Aires, 1953-54. 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Cooperano, a Roma verso la visione ottimistica del progresso, altri influssi, come quelli del lizio e del portico che si riconosceno nella celebrazione da Cicerone del divino potere creatore dell'intelligenza dell’uomo. L'influsso democriteo si ripercuoteva in Diodoro Siculo attraverso Ecateo di Abdera. Quello dell’Orto agiva non solo sul grande poema di Lucrezio, ma anche (attraverso questo) sulla filosofia di Virgilio, Orazio, e Vitruvio. Certo, a Roma ci si mostrano due orientamenti opposti. Quello ottimistico, assertore ed esaltatore del potere creatore dello spirito umano e del progresso. Quello pessimistico, ispirato all'idea di una inferiorità naturale dell'uomo rispetto agl’animali, ovvero di una sua caduta dalla perfezione e felicità primordiali della mistica età saturnia alle miserie, alle fatiche e ai conflitti dell'epoca storica. Queste voci tetre risuonano in Ovidio e Plinio, come già anteriormente in quella di Sallustio (Catilina).  Ovidio, in Metamorph.-, influsso di Cicerone (De natura deorum), esalta la nascita dell'uomo (« natus est homo »), come dell'animale piú savio e di maggior capacità mentale tra tutti, dominatore della natura, di figura simile a quella degli dèi, l'unico che per la sua posizione eretta possa contemplare il Cielo. Ma Ovidio limita l'epoca beata dell’uomo all'età d’oro, quando non ancora l'uomo aveva scoperto i metalli, né inventato la navigazione, né le armi, né le fortificazioni, e neppure l'aratro e iutte le altre creazioni tecniche che sono per Ovidio fonti di pene e di danni per il loro inventore. La creatività della mente dell’uomo ha cosí un riconoscimento in Ovidio, ma come causa lamentevole d'infelicità. “Contra te sollers, hominum natura, fuisti, et nimium damnis ingeniosa tais Amores). D'altra parte Plinio (Natur. hist.) vuole umiliare l'orgoglio di coloro che - come Cicerone in De natura deorum, — affermano che il mondo fu creato *per* l'uomo; e li richiama alla considerazione di tutti gli elementi d'inferiorità che ha l'uomo rispetto agli altr’animali, e dei motivi della sua infelicità: un'anticipazione del pessimismo del “De miseria hominis.”  Ma nell'atteggiamento di Ovidio il riconoscimento (fatto a denti stretti) del potere creatore dell'intelligenza dell’uomo, rivela la forza con cui, nonostante ogni pessimismo, tale idea s'imponeva allo spirito dell'epoca. Aiutata certo nella sua diffusione dalla condizione storica, cioè dall'espansione trionfale del potere di Roma.  Ma ispirata nella sua affermazione da suggestioni teoriche derivanti da filosofi. Dall’orto attraverso l'affascinante esposizione poetica di Lucrezio, e da Cicerone. Influenze combinate si devono riconoscere appunto in Cicerone, nella sua celebrazione dell'eccellenza dell'uomo, del potere creatore dello spirito umano, del lavoro, dell'industria e della co-operazione tra gl’uomini, come fonti delle grandi conquiste della civiltà, che troviamo in “De natura deorum”, “De finibus bonorum et malorum”, “De legibus”, e “De officiis”. L'uomo, dice Cicerone in “De legibus,” questo animale previdente, sagace, molteplice, acuto, dotato di memoria, pieno di ragione e di prudenza, ha da dio la sua natura privilegiata, anzi partecipa con la sua ra-  lavor dichiarate alle he Coceo in “De officis”, L, s, dove ri  corda che Panezio ha sviluppato molto ampiamente e con numerosi esempi ciò che i capitoli 3-5 sintetizzano, specialmente intorno alla co-operazione tra gli uomini, indispensabile per la creazione di tante arti --  “senza le quali la vita non meriterebbe d'esser vissuta” . . Modernamente l'influenza di Panezio è  sione di richiamare l'attenzione nel saggio L'infinito nel pen siero dell'antichità classica, Firenze, La Nuova Italia] gione alla natura e alla comunità divine 7. Seminato sulla terra, ha ricevuto il dono divino dell'anima e la capacità della virtú, che è la natura perfezionata in se stessa ed elevata al suo grado sommo (“in se perfecta et ad summum perducta natura”); e, mediante l'imitazione della natura maestra, la ragione umana, usando la sua capacità industriosa (“sollerter”), è pervenuta all'invenzione di un numero infinito di arti (“artes innumerabiles  repertae sunt”).  La natura diede all'uomo — mediante i sensi messaggeri, la rapidità della mente e la luce dell'intelligenza -- i fondamenti della scienza (“quasi fundamenta quaedam scientiae”), di modo che, per se stessa, la natura umana sempre piú progredisce ed avanza (“ipsam per se natu-ram longius progredi”) e, da sé, senza aver bisogno di maestri (“etiam nullo docente”), arriva a consolidare e a perfezionare la ragione, partendo dalle cose le cui specie ha conosciuto per mezzo della intelligenza primordiale ed iniziale (“ex prima et inchoata intelligentia”) 3.  In tal modo — ripete Cicerone alla fine dell'Hortensius (come riferisce Agostino, De trinit.), con Aristotele, Protrept. fr. c Walzer (61 Rose), l'intelligenza è forza visiva e sforzo attivo della mente (“mentis aciem”), animata dal desiderio attivo dell'investigazione (“ratione et investigandi cupiditate”). E come la sua attività è rivolta ugualmente e congiuntamente  [Eredità di ARISTOTELE, Protreptico, fr. c Walzer = 61 Rose  (che Anoke qul Cierone a apia al concet aristotelice dele  potenza che per se stessa tende all'atto. La potenza fondamentale dell'intelligenza (“inchoatae intelligentiae”) considerata qui, è tanto teorica (argumentamur, etc.) quanto pratica (conficimus), e non è privilegio di pochi eletti, ma possesso di tutti (“communis omnium”). E Cicerone aggiunge (cap. 11) ciò che già diceva Sofocle nel coro dell'Antigone e tornerà a dire nel rinascimento Pico nel suo “De hominis dignitate”, cioè che l'uomo ha nella sua natura la doppia possibilità, d'elevarsi verso la sommità del bene o di sprofondare negli abissi del male alla conquista della scienza e alla creazione delle arti, cosí — ripete Cicerone, “De finibus”, con lo stesso Protreptico di Aristotele - si deve riconoscere che l'uomo è nato per una doppia finalità, mentre ogni animale è nato per un unico compito: il cavallo per la corsa, il bue per arare, il cane per cercare, ma l'uomo, come un dio mortale, per due attività creatrici, intendere ed operare (“ut ad cursum equum, ad arandum bovem, ad investigandum canem, sic hominem ad duas res, ut ait Aristoteles, ad intelligendum et agendum esse natum, quasi mortalem deum”).  Queste idee hanno piú ampio sviluppo in “De natura deorum”, dove la superiorità dell'uomo sugli animali è affermata da Cicerone, seguendo le orme di Panezio, negli aspetti seguenti. La costituzione del suo corpo, la cui posizione eretta gli permette la contemplazione del cielo e gli dà la possibilità di conoscere il corso degli astri, di determinare le divisioni del tempo, di prevedere i fenomeni astronomici per tutto l'avvenire (“in omne posterum tempus”) e di trarre dall'ordine di essi la nozione della divinità legislatrice e governatrice del mondo. I sensi che alla percezione associano i giudizi di distinzione e di valutazione delle impressioni, e si fanno pertanto ispiratori della creazione di arti rivolte a cogliere e ad usare le sensazioni (“ad quos sensus ca-piendos et perfruendos, plures etiam quam vellem artes repertae sunt”); l'intelligenza che comprende, definisce, connette le cose e crea una scienza di tale potere ed eccellenza, che neppure in dio c'è qualcosa di superiore (“qua ne in deo quidem est res ulla prestantior” § 59). E per questa via l'uomo crea anche le arti, le une per le necessità della vita, le altre per il diletto (secondo la distinzione tradizionale di Democrito e Aristotele); e a questi risultati coopera anche il linguaggio che, come mezzo di comunicare le conoscenze e di influire sul sentimento e la volontà altrui, e il vincolo sociale che trasse l'umanità fuori della vita ferina primordiale (“haec nos iuris, legum, urbium societate devinxit: haec  a vita immani et fera segregavit”).  Ma nella creazione delle arti Cicerone torna a far notare, con Anassagora, l'opera della mano, la cui conformazione e agilità permettono all'uomo di operare tanto nelle arti di diletto (pittura, scultura, musica), quanto in quelle di necessità (agricoltura, edilizia, tessitura, cucitura, confezione di strumenti di metallo, etc.). «Per cui si comprende che noi abbiamo conseguito tutto ciò che concerne le cose scoperte dallo spirito e percepite dai sensi, mediante l'applicazione delle mani degli operai, per poter essere protetti, vestiti e salvi, e avere città, difese, domicilii, templi ». Possiamo prendere l'ali-mento e conservarlo; allevare e utilizzare animali per il trasporto e per l'agricoltura; estrarre i metalli nascosti dalle profondità della terra e forgiarli in strumenti e decorazioni; tagliare alberi per riscaldamento, cottura di alimenti, edificazione di case, costruzione di navi, che a noi — unici al mondo — permettono di dominare la forza del mare e dei venti. In conclusione, l'uomo si converte in inventore delle arti e in dominatore della natura, cioè in creatore di una nuova realtà, quella del mondo della cultura.  «Noi usufriamo dei campi, noi dei monti; nostri sono i fiumi, nostri i laghi; noi seghiamo le messi, noi tagliamo gli alberi; noi, mediante l'immissione di acque, diamo fecondità alle terre; noi chiudiamo i fiumi tra dighe, li inalveiamo, li deviamo; insomma cerchiamo di creare con le nostre mani una specie d'altra natura nella natura delle cose ».  Non seguiremo Cicerone nella sua dimostrazione successiva della tesi che il mondo fu creato al servizio dell'uomo, che è la tesi contro cui polemizza Plinio, ma che non interessa il nostro tema. Ciò che ci importa è la celebrazione menzionata del potere creatore dell'umanità, che si può considerare un eloquente commento esplicativo della citazione che il “De finibus” trae dal Protreptico aristotelico, la quale dichiara che l'uomo è nato per la doppia attività, conoscitiva e creativa, come un dio mortale. L'uomo contemplato qui da Cicerone è appunto quello che crea il mondo della cultura e lo sovrappone al mondo della natura; e Cicerone offre una formula efficace per esprimere tale creazione: « nostris denique manibus in rerum natura quasi alteram naturam efficere conamur».  Formula che, insieme alla ricordata definizione (“dio mortale”) tratta da Aristotele, ispira le 'linee memorabili dello Spaccio della bestia trionfante di Bruno, che sintetizzano il contenuto essenziale della dimostrazione ciceroniana: « gli dèi avevano donato a l'uomo l'intelletto e le mani, e l'avevano fatto simile a loro, donandogli facultà sopra gli altri animali; la qual consiste non solo poter operar, secondo la natura ed ordinario, ma, ed oltre, fuor le leggi di quella; acciò, formando o possendo formar altre nature, altri corsi, altri ordini con l'ingegno.... venesse a serbarsi Dio de la terra »  (Gentile, Dialoghi morali, Bari, Laterza). Anche quello che segue nella pagina bruniana, sulle necessità che acuiscono gli ingegni e fanno inventare le arti — di modo che « sempre piú e piú.... allontanandosi dall'esser bestiale, piú altamente s'approssi-mano a l'esser divino › — poteva ispirarsi alle frasi di Cicerone relative all'uomo che « se segregavit a vita immani et fera »; frasi che, tuttavia, esprimevano un concetto comune ad altri filosofi antichi, da Democrito a Lucrezio, i quali insieme a Cicerone influiscono sulle celebrazioni della dignità dell'uomo e della creatività dello spirito, rinnovate dagli scrittori rinascimentali, da Manetti a Bruno e Campanella ?.  Ma in un particolare caratteristico il luogo citato dello Spaccio bruniano poté ispirarsi alla I Georgica di Virgilio, vale a dire nel considerare la mitica età dell'oro come epoca di pigrizia e di stupidità umane, e nel celebrare invece la dura necessità come causa del risveglio dell'intelligenza e della creazione delle arti. « Ne l'età de l'oro,” dice Bruno, “per l'Ocio gl’uomini non eran piú virtuosi, che sin al presente  cultadi, risorte le necessitadi, sono acuiti gl'ingegni, inventate le industrie, scoperte le arti; e sempre di giorno in giorno, per mezzo de l'egestade, dalla profundità de l'intelletto umano si eccitano nove e maravigliose invenzioni. Onde, sempre piú e piú per le sollecite ed urgenti occupazioni allontanandosi da l'esser bestiale, piú altamente 'approssimano a l'esser divino » Senza dubbio il mito dell'età aurea o saturnia, pertamente svalutato qui da Bruno, e motivo di sogni nostalgici per i filosofi dell'epoca d’Ottaviano, quando Ovidio lo evoca in Metamorph., collegandolo con l'altro mito esiodeo delle cinque età della degradazione umana, e lo stesso Virgilio torna a sognare un ritorno del regno di Saturno (« redeunt Saturnia regna ») nella profezia della Sibilla nell'Egloga IV.  Tuttavia questi miti si trovavano già in Esiodo in conflitto con la celebrazione del lavoro condizionante la dignità della vita, oltre che ogni acquisizione di beni.  3 Cfr. anche Gentile, «Il concetto dell'uomo nel rinascimento › ne Il pensiero del rinascimento, Firenze. E il problema torna a porsi per Virgilio, che lo risolve nella I Georgica in un modo che precorre Bruno. L’abbondanza e la facilità di vita della mitica età saturnia significano ozio e letargo mentale; e Giove, che nel detronizzare Saturno introduce le difficoltà, l'indigenza e la necessità del lavoro, da agli uomini per questa via il dono inestimabile dell'attività dell'intelligenza, creatrice delle arti e trionfatrice di tutte le avversità per mezzo del lavoro. «Giove, il padre (pater ipse), volle che non fosse facile la via della coltivazione, e dapprima fa lavorare i campi per mezzo dell'arte, e acuí per mezzo delle preoccupazioni gli spiriti dei mortali, e non permite che il suo regno s'intorpidisse in un pesante letargo », come accadeva prima del suo governo, quando nessuno lavora la terra, e questa concede tutto senz'esser sollecitata dal lavoro umano. Giove cancella totalmente le facilità e comodità, « affinché la necessità suscitasse le diverse arti, a poco a poco, mediante la meditazione ».  Cosí nasce l'agricoltura. Si scopre il modo di accendere il fuoco con la pietra focaia. Si incanalano i fiumi. Si inventa la navigazione, e il navigante impara a conoscere e nominare le stelle. Si inventano gl’artifici della caccia e della pesca. Si forgia il ferro e se ne fanno strumenti come l'ascia e la sega. «Allora vennero le varie arti; trionfano di tutte le difficoltà il lavoro instancabile e l'indigenza che assilla [gli uomini] nell'asperità delle condizioni di esistenza »:  Tum variae venere artes; labor omnia vicit improbus, et duris urguens in rebus egestas.  In tal modo, per Virgilio, la necessità e il lavoro, che Ovidio lamenta come una maledizione per la vita umana, sono una vera benedizione, perché risvegliano l'intelligenza e l'attività creatrice dell'uomo, e stimolano quella meravigliosa creazione delle arti e della cultura, i cui momenti e aspetti Virgilio sintetizza ispirandosi alla ricostruzione storica tracciata nel V libro di Lucrezio. Certo, Virgilio s'allontana da Lucrezio nell'accettare il mito dell'età saturnia, pur valutandolo negativamente rispetto a ciò che è piú essenziale e nobile nell'umanità, vale a dire, l'intelligenza e la creatività dello spirito. Ma un'eco piú fedele della concezione lucreziana sulla condizione primordiale dell'umanità risuona in Orazio (“Satyr.”) con la descrizione dei primi uomini che, come gl’altri animali, formano un gregge muto e turpe (mutum et turpe pecus), lottano tra loro con unghie e pugni, poi con bastoni e piú tardi con altre armi per soddisfare i primordiali bisogni di cibo e di riparo, finché non creano il linguaggio, desistendo dalle guerre, edificando città e creando leggi che impediscano i delitti. In una generazione successiva Giovenale (“Satyr.”, VI e XIII) ripresenta una descrizione analoga dello stato bestiale dell'umanità primitiva, satirizzando l'idea dell'età saturnia: anch'egli, probabilmente, influenzato da Lucrezio e dalla concezione epicurea della storia dell'umanità. Tuttavia, l'eco piú importante, teoricamente, di tale concezione ci si presenta nell'età d'Ottaviano (come oggi si torna a riconoscere da parte della critica storica) con Vitruvio, il quale sembra raccogliere dagli ambienti colti della sua epoca o compiere lui stesso una fusione delle idee esposte da Lucrezio con altre di varia provenienza, relative al progresso umano, derivanti da Cicerone, al cui insieme aggiunge l'intuizione dell'importanza che hanno per il progresso due fattori, apparentemente contrari, ma connessi da lui in una dipendenza mutua, che sono la divisione del lavoro e l'unità organica della cultura umana. Vitruvio mette in rilievo, nella sua concezione del progresso storico dell'umanità e della creazione della cultura, una molteplicità di fattori cooperanti: la durezza primordiale della vita; le esperienze fortuite che suggeriscono qualche mezzo per mitigare tale durezza; le capacità e potenze congenite negli uomini, che sono stimolate al loro esercizio dai due fattori suddetti, e sono avviate cosí ad uno sviluppo progressivo e alla produzione di risultati crescenti; la ripercussione che hanno i fattori citati sulla formazione di raggruppamenti umani permanenti, a partire da quelli temporanei primordiali, e sulla creazione del linguaggio; l'effetto prodotto da tali innovazioni, che non solo permettono l'assommarsi delle capacità individuali, ma provocano il loro acerescimento progressivo, dovuto sia al mutuo aiuto e all'esperienza dei vantaggi della cooperazione, sia allo stimolo reciproco derivante dall'attrito degli ingegni; il sussidio poderoso, che dà a tale processo l'uso di due strumenti meravigliosi, che sono il linguaggio, generato dalla convivenza sociale, e il possesso della mano, organo naturale incomparabile per afferrare ed elaborare le cose, la cui efficacia, già intuita da Anassagora, ha di nuovo posta in rilievo Cicerone; e infine l'imitazione e trasformazione della natura effettuate dalle arti, dove il conoscere è un fare e l'esperienza è un esperimento. Questo fare e sperimentare  воло геві  possibili precisamente dal possesso e dall'uso  delle mani, che rendono capace l'uomo di tentare i piú vari modi di combinazione ed elaborazione dei mezzi naturali, di modo che, a partire da principi minimi, le arti si elevano nel loro sviluppo verso risultati sempre maggiori e progressivi affinamenti delle loro capacità creative. Tutti questi elementi sono messi in rilievo da Vitruvio nel cap. I del libro II del De Architectura: Sulla vita degli uomini primitivi e sugl’inizi e incrementi della civiltà e dell'architettura.” La prima esperienza che, secondo Vitruvio, ha una funzione decisiva per togliere gli uomini dalla vita ferina primordiale e generare la convivenza sociale permanente, fu quella dell'incendio di selve prodotto da qualche tempesta. L'impressione di terrore iniziale è seguita dalla curiosità, per la quale gli uomini, dopo esser fuggiti, tornano ad avvicinarsi e, sentendo il calore del fuoco, intuiscono la sua utilità per la vita. Attratti dallo spettacolo, gl’uomini si riuniscono, concepiscono la possibilità di continuare ad alimentare il fuoco. E cosí iniziano la loro convivenza ed una comunicazione mutua delle loro impressioni mediante voci, che a poco a poco, con il tempo, si convertono in linguaggio. La posizione eretta e il possesso delle mani, che permettono il maneggio di qualunque oggetto, portano gl’uomini alla prima creazione di ripari e di tetti, mediante escavazione di tane o costruzioni di rami e fango che imitano quelle dei nidi di rondini. Lucrezio e  Cicerone insieme suggerivano a Vitruvio questa concezione delle fasi e dei fattori del processo. Vitruvio aggiunge l'idea di un'analogia generale di questo sviluppo storico presso i diversi popoli, allegando i documenti offerti da resti di costruzioni primitive che si trovavano in paesi civili come sul Campidoglio di Roma, e dalle edificazioni che continuavano a farsi in paesi barbari (Gallia, Aquitania, Colchide, Frigia, etc.). Queste osservazioni comparate, che presentano il passato dei popoli civili come analogo al presente dei barbari, potevano suggerire l'idea di un futuro progresso dei barbari verso uno sviluppo analogo al presente dei popoli civili, tanto piúin quanto Vitruvio rileva l'impulso che danno al progresso le relazioni mutue nell'interno d'ogni popolo. L'osservazione reciproca (egli nota) desta non solo la capacità d'imitazione, ma anche l'emulazione, per cui si perfezionano con il tempo i prodotti e si affinano la stessa intelligenza e la facoltà di giudizio dei produttori. Allora con l'osservazione delle costruzioni altrui e l'aggiunta di novità per mezzo delle riflessioni proprie, di giorno in giorno andavano migliorando il tipo delle costruzioni. Ed essendo gli uomini capaci d'imitazione e d'istruzione, nel celebrare giornalmente le loro invenzioni, si mostravano tra di loro i risultati delle loro costruzioni; e in tal modo, nell'esercitare i loro ingegni in competizioni, di giorno in giorno si facevano di giudizio piú raffinato ». Quest'ultima frase, “in dies melioribus iudiciis efficiebantur,” anticipa l'idea di Bruno, che gli uomini acquistano progressivamente giudizio « piú maturo »; il che si determina, secondo Bruno per tre fattori: l'accumulazione delle osservazioni, l'attività riflessiva e inventiva del pensiero, e la varietà delle cose osservate. Ma Vitruvio aggiunge un altro fattore piú importante: l'esercizio attivo del potere dell'ingegno, stimolato dalla emulazione (exercentes ingenia certationibus). In ciò Vitruvio raccoglie la suggestione di Aristotele relativa all'affinamento progressivo del giudizio per via del suo esercizio costante. Ma in Aristotele tale esercizio nasce dall'insoddisfazione e dalla critica delle idee altrui. In Vitruvio dallo sforzo d'emulazione. In entrambi, tuttavia, il processo si realizza tanto nello spirito individuale quanto in quello collettivo; e Vitruvio riconosce cosí la formazione storica dello spirito dell'umanità, considerando il vincolo e l'azione reciproca tra il perfezionamento dei prodotti dell'arte e lo sviluppo dello spirito produttore.Vitruvio esprime cosí u concetto tipicamente storicistico, nel riconoscere che lo spirito umano è in sé e per sé storia e sviluppo; concetto considerato abitualmente « tutto proprio dell'età moderna», come lo define Gentile (Il pensiero del rinascimento, cit.), nel trovarlo espresso da Bruno. Vitruvio riconosce e spiega tale carattere storico dello spirito in rapporto con la storia dell'architettura, che nel suo sforzo di perfezionamento progressivo, per rispondere sempre piú alle esigenze umane, si fa, secondo lui, generatrice di altre arti e discipline, per via dell'esercizio continuo cui obbliga la mente, che in tal modo si potenzia e sviluppa in se stessa nuove capacità, madri di arti e scienze nuove.  « Come, dunque, con l'attività costante (quotidie faciendo) avevano [gli uomini] rese piú esperte ed abili le loro mani per ogni costruzione (tritiores manus ad aedificandum perfecissent), e mediante l'esercizio instancabile dei loro ingegni (solertia ingenia exercendo) erano giunti con l'uso incessante alla creazione delle arti, allora l'attività industriosa aggiunta da essi ai loro spiriti (industria in animis eorum adiecta) fece sí che quelli che erano piú ben disposti e diligenti (studiosiores) si convertissero in artefici professionali (fabros se esse profiterentur) ».  Nasce in questo modo, dal progresso delle capacità intellettuali e pratiche, la divisione del lavoro; ma nasce e si mantiene legata all'unità organica della cultura, affermata già, con notevole vigore, da Vitruvio nel I cap. del libro I. Dove si fa notare per l'architettura il vincolo reciproco dell'attività pratica (fabrica) e di quella teorica (ratiocinatio), che non permette di raggiungere la perfezione dell'arte né al puro homo faber né al puro homo sapiens, ma solo a chi riunisce in sé entrambe le condizioni; e aggiunge Vitruvio che l'architetto ha bisogno di conoscenze di letteratura, disegno,  geometria, storia, filosofia, musica, medicina, diritto, astronomia, cioè di possedere una cultura organica: « tutte le discipline hanno tra loro un vincolo ed una comunicazione mutua.... e la [cosí detta] disciplina enciclica come un corpo unico è costituita di tali  membri ».  Certamente, come tecnico e teorico dell'architettura, convinto e preoccupato dell'importanza preminente della sua arte, Vitruvio nel I cap. del libro II, che stiamo analizzando, sembra che spieghi l'unità e connessione reciproche di tutte le arti e discipline come dovute ad un germinare di tutte dalla radice comune dell'archi-tettura, che per le sue esigenze ed i suoi sviluppi genererebbe le altre arti e scienze, e ne determinerebbe i progressi. « Dalla costruzione degli edifici progredendo gradualmente verso le altre arti e scienze (e fabrica-tione aedificiorum gradatim progressi ad ceteras artes et disciplinas) e utilizzando le armi del pensiero e la riflessione deliberativa', con cui la natura rafforzò le loro menti (cum natura cogitationibus et consiliis arma-visset mentes), essi trassero l'umanità dalla vita ferina e selvaggia a quella civile (e fera agrestique vita ad mansuetam perduxerunt humanitatem) ».  Allora si genera negli uomini la capacità di prepararsi nel loro spirito, e di guardar lontano per mezzo dei pensieri piú grandi, che nascono dalla varietà delle arti (tum autem instruentes animo se et prospicientes maioribus cogitationibus ex varietate artium natis); il che Vitruvio applica, indubbiamente, ai progressi del-l'architettura, ma è un concetto che s'estende da sé ad ogni sviluppo culturale. « Poi con le osservazioni degli  1 Se leggessimo, con qualche edizione, conciliis anziché con siliis, dovremmo pensare che Vitruvio rilevasse qui non già l'importanza della riflessione deliberativa (consilia), bensi quella della convivenza e della cooperazione sociale (concilia). Ma queste  ul-  time sono per Vitruvio creazione umana e non dono della natura.    studi portarono [le loro opere] dai giudizi errati ed incerti alle ragioni certe delle simmetrie. Quindi mediante le loro cure alimentarono e adornarono di piaceri l'eleganza della vita, accresciuta dalle arti (trac-  tando nutriverunt et auctam per artes ornaverunt vo-  luptatibus elegantiam vitae) ».  Si presenta pertanto, nella concezione di Vitruvio, tutto un processo storico nel quale l'uomo, spinto dai bisogni, guidato dalle esperienze, rafforzato dall'eserci-zio, sviluppa e traduce progressivamente in atto le sue potenze naturali, creando le arti e le scienze; ma in questo processo i prodotti reagiscono sul produttore; l'esercizio intensifica i poteri dello spirito e genera nuove capacità; i risultati realizzati si convertono in mezzi e impulsi per creazioni ulteriori; e in questo modo l'umanità progredisce e si sviluppa, creando il mondo della cultura e creando nello stesso tempo spiritualmente se stessa per mezzo del suo lavoro, come causa ed effetto insieme dei suoi progressi. La concezione della creatività dello spirito appare, dunque, raggiunta in pieno da Vitruvio. Lo scambio d'azione che Vitruvio vedeva effettuarel tra lo spirito produttore e i suoi prodotti nella creazione e nello sviluppo progressivo delle arti e delle scienze, significava per se stesso un processo storico di autocreazione e d'autosviluppo incessanti dello stesso spirito umano, che logicamente doveva presentarglisi come un processo infinito. Ma Vitruvio non segnalò, e forse non intuí neppure questa conseguenza della sua conce-  ' (Appare in questa visione un barlume del processo chiamato da Marx il processo della umwälzende Praxis, cioè dell'attività dell'uomo che si rovescia su se stessa e sull'uomo, trasformandolo nel trasformare se stessa.    zione, cosí come non l'aveva espressa né vista Aristotele, benché riconoscesse che il potere intellettuale dell'uomo va aumentando sempre, quantitativamente e qualitativa-  mente, con l'esercizio attivo delle sue capacità di indagine e di riflessione critiche.  La prima affermazione esplicita dell'infinità del progresso spirituale umano ci appare nell'antichità classica con Seneca, che tuttavia era stato precorso parzialmente da Filone ebreo, come diremo. Ma mentre nella concezione di Vitruvio l'infinità potenziale del progresso è in rapporto con il processo di creazione e sviluppo delle arti, a cui egli collegava la scoperta delle scienze, Seneca invece nella polemica contro Posidonio ripudia l'unità e identità tra l'homo faber e l'homo sapiens, che quello aveva affermato (cfr. Epist.).  Contro la celebrazione del progresso tecnico, inserito da Posidonio nello sviluppo stesso della saggezza, Seneca nella sua polemica sembrava ripudiare la creazione umana delle arti, accusandola di complicare e render difficile la vita, e sembrava ritornare, con l'evocazione di Diogene, all'ideale cinico-stoico della semplicità primordiale della vita conforme alla natura, che facilmente soddisfa le sue esigenze minime.  «Non fu tanto nemica la natura, da concedere la facilità della vita agli altri animali e volere che solo l'uomo non potesse vivere senza tante arti.... Siamo noi che ci rendemmo tutto difficile per la nostra tendenza a stancarci (fastidio) delle cose facili.... Tutte queste arti, per le quali la città si eccita e rumoreggia, lavorano per il corpo, a cui prima si imponeva ogni [sa-crificio] come ad uno schiavo, mentre ora gli si prepara ogni [godimento] come ad un padrone » (epist. cit.).  Tuttavia questa posizione polemica non rappresenta integralmente l'orientamento spirituale di Seneca. Seneca è ben lungi dall'identificare la saggezza — nel    cui culto vede l'unica attività che possa render degna la vita umana - con la supposta felicità primordiale dello stato di natura. « Per quanto egregia e priva di inganni fosse la vita di quelli (primitivi), essi non furono savi.... non avevano ingegni perfezionati (consum-mata).... La natura non dà la virtú, e il diventar buono è un'arte.... Quelli erano innocenti per ignoranza; ma c'è una gran differenza tra il non volere e il non saper peccare (multum interest utrum peccare aliquis no-lit an nesciat). Mancava loro la giustizia, mancava loro la prudenza, la temperanza, la fortezza. La loro vita incolta aveva qualcosa di simile a tutte queste virtú; ma la virtú non è conseguita se non da uno spirito edu-cato, istruito e portato mediante l'esercizio assiduo fino al vertice. Certo nasciamo per questo, ma senza que-sto; e anche negli uomini migliori, prima che posseggano l'educazione, esiste la materia della virtú, ma non la virtú stessa » (ibid.).  In tal modo, la virtú torna a presentarsi connessa alla cultura in questa stessa Epistola 90, dove la critica a Posidonio sembrava portare ad una rivendicazione della natura primordiale, simile a quella dei cinici. La virtú, dunque, per Seneca non è un'ingenuità ignorante, ma deve avere chiara coscienza del male e del vizio per trionfare di essi. Seneca fa in certo senso presentire il concetto che ispira in tempi moderni la filosofia della storia di Fichte (Caratteri fondamentali dell'epoca con-  temporanea), secondo cui l'umanità, dopo di essere uscita dalla sua primitiva rettitudine incosciente, abbisogna della piú profonda coscienza ed esperienza del peccato, per elevarsi alla sua cosciente redenzione.  Con la rivalutazione della cultura come condizione e fondamento dell'etica e della filosofia, tornano ad essere pertanto rivalutate da parte di Seneca anche le arti, ed è riaffermato il concetto del Protreptico aristotelico,    della doppia e indivisibile funzione che incombe al-  Q  l'uomo, cioè quella di esercitare tanto l'attività intellettuale quanto quella pratica. Aristotele aveva affermato, secondo la testimonianza di Cicerone (De finibus), che l'uomo nacque per due cose: intendere e operare («ad duas res, ad intelligendum et agendum esse natum »); e Seneca (De otio) ripete che la natura volle che facessimo le due cose: operare e coltivare la contemplazione. « Natura autem utrumque fa-cere me voluit, et agere et contemplationi vacare ». Anzi, aggiunge che egli le fa entrambe, perché sono insepa-rabili, giacché neppure la contemplazione può esistere senza azione: « utrumque facio; quoniam ne contem-platio quidem sine actione est »'. Nessuna virtus è un bene reale, finché non passa all'azione (“in otium sine actu proiecta”). «Chi potrebbe negare che essa deve comprovare nelle opere i suoi progressi, e non limitarsi a pensare ciò che si deve fare, bensí esercitare anche le sue mani e portare a realtà le sue meditazioni? » (* sed etiam aliquando manum exercere, et ea quae meditata sunt ad verum perducere? »).  Questa rivalutazione dell'attività pratica, a causa del legame che l'attività teorica ha con essa, doveva portar seco anche un apprezzamento delle creazioni delle arti, che per questa via tornano ad inserirsi nel processo creativo della cultura, dove si afferma il potere e il valore dello spirito umano. Una celebrazione caratte ristica di questa creatività dello spirito, applicata alle opere della civiltà e delle arti, merita di esser segna-  É evidente la derivazione da Seneca del noto luogo dello  Spaccio bruniano (ed. Gentile): « e per questo ha determinato la providenza, che vegna occupato ne l'azione per le mani, e contemplazione per l'intelletto; de maniera che non con-temple senza azione, e non opre senza contemplazione. Ne l'età dunque de l'oro per l'Ocio gli uomini non erano piú virtuosi, che sin al presente le bestie son virtuose ».    lata nell'Epistola, relativa all'incendio che in una sola notte aveva distrutto la città di Lione (Lugdunum), che era per la sua bellezza la gloria della Gallia. Seneca si rende conto che le opere dei mortali sono. condannate a perire e che noi viviamo tra cose caduche: « omnia mortalium opera mortalitate damnata sunt. Inter peritura vivimus». Ma questo carattere mortale delle opere è superato dall'imperitura energia creatrice del-l'umanità, che ricostruisce sempre ciò che è caduto e lo ricostruisce piú bello e perfetto, di modo che le distruzioni si convertono in fattore di progresso. « Multa cecide-runt ut altius surgerent et in maius ». Come Roma sempre risorse piú bella e potente dalle ceneri degli incendi subiti, cosí anche a Lione tutti competeranno per ricostruirla in forma piú grande e piú solida di quella per-duta: « ut maiora certioraque quam amisere restituant. Ciò che caratterizza l'uomo, dunque, consiste per Seneca nell'esigenza e nello sforzo costanti di superamento; per il loro mezzo lo spirito immortale dell'umanità si sovrappone al carattere mortale delle sue creazioni. Sono mortali - sembra dire Seneca — le creazioni partico-lari; ma è immortale la creazione progressiva della cul-tura, per essere immortale e inesauribile lo spirito creatore.    In questo sforzo interminabile di superamento, le attività pratiche delle arti e della tecnica in generale si unificano, per Seneca, con le attività teoriche della scienza e della filosofia. Possiamo dire che Seneca precorre Lessing nel considerare che questo sforzo spirituale costituisce il valore della vita, che pertanto si afferma solo in quanto l'uomo amplia progressivamente il suo orizzonte e le sue aspirazioni. Se mai l'umanità potesse giungere ad un possesso pieno della scienza, e non avesse piú davanti a sé un cammino ulteriore da percorrere e difficoltà nuove da superare, non avrebbero piúsignificato la vita e il mondo in cui si sviluppa l'attività umana. È lo sforzo ciò che costituisce il valore della vita; la sua persistenza inestinguibile e il suo rinnovamento incessante presuppongono l'impossibilità perenne di raggiungere il fine ultimo; ma questa condizione non significa per l'uomo una maledizione o condanna ad una tensione vana che non può mai essere soddisfatta, bensí alimenta e mantiene il valore della vita come milizia ' ed aspirazione dignificatrice, che sono nello stesso tempo perfezionamento spirituale progressivo.  Quest'idea, dell'infinità dello sforzo e del progresso umano, derivante dall'impossibilità di conseguire il fine supremo, era stata intuita ed espressa parzialmente, prima di Seneca, da Filone ebreo. La posizione degl’uomini in qualsivoglia delle loro attività, dice Filone, sta sempre nel mezzo tra l'inizio e la fine: « Noi siamo trattenuti nell'intervallo tra la fine e l'inizio nell'impa-rare, nell'insegnare, nel lavorare la terra, nell'operare in ciascuna delle altre cose » (Quis rerum divin. heres sit); ma questa inferiorità che caratterizza la nostra imperfezione costante in confronto alla perfezione assoluta di Dio, non significa ristagno e immobilità spi-rituali, bensí movimento e progresso incessanti: « A misura che uno avanza nelle scienze e si pone stabilmente sul loro terreno, si fa tanto piú incapace di raggiungere i loro limiti.... La scienza per i piú capaci è una sorgente sempre in movimento, che produce sempre nuovo afflusso di idee» (De plantat. Noë).  In tal modo per Filone ogni approfondimento della nostra conoscenza è nello stesso tempo un approfondi-  [Cfr. Epist.: Atqui vivere, Lucili, militare est. Itaque qui iactantur et per operosa atque ardua sursum ac deorsum eunt, et expeditiones periculosissimas obeunt, fortes  viri sunt, primo-  resque castrorum; isti, quos putida quies, aliis laborantibus, mol-  liter habet, turturillae sunt, tuti contumeliae causa ».    mento della coscienza della nostra ignoranza: dalla conoscenza acquisita spuntano sempre problemi nuovi; ma dai problemi nasce il movimento progressivo dell'intel-ligenza, in un processo che non finisce mai a causa dell'impossibilità di raggiungere, con il pensiero, il termine ultimo. Questo, per Filone, si raggiunge certo nel rapimento dell'estasi, che è estinzione di ogni movimento attivo della mente; ma fuori della soluzione mistica, c'è solo un processo infinito, conseguenza dell'infinita di-  stanza, che ci divide dall'irraggiungibile oggetto supremo.  Vero è che di questi pensieri di Filone non ebbe alcuna notizia Seneca, il quale giunse per una via parzialmente analoga all'idea dell'infinito progresso conoscitivo, cou-  siderandolo determinato dall'infinita distanza, che ci separa sempre dal fine supremo delle nostre aspirazioni e dai nostri sforzi. Ci sono delle realtà — osserva Seneca in Natur. quaest., a proposito dell'igno-ranza del suo tempo riguardo alle orbite e alle. leggi di movimenti delle comete:  - che non possono essere colte dai nostri occhi, o perché permangono in luoghi sottratti alla nostra vista, o perché la loro sottigliezza è irraggiungibile per la nostra acutezza visiva, o forse anche perché non abbiamo la capacità di percepirle, nonostante che riempiano i nostri occhi. Tutte queste realtà sono accessibili unicamente allo spirito (animo) e debbono essere contemplate con il pensiero (cogitatione). Ma lo stesso pensiero che ci porta fino all'idea dell'esistenza di Dio, che creò tutto l'universo intorno a sé e lo governa, ed è la parte mag-  derlo nella  giore e migliore della sua opera, non arriva a comprenderlo nella sua essenza. « Non possiamo sapere che cos'è ciò, senza di cui nulla esiste, e ci stupiamo per non conoscer bene certi piccoli fuochi (le comete), mentre ci resta celata la parte maggiore dell'universo, dio. Quid sit hoc, sine quo nihil est, scire non possumus,    et miramur si quos igniculos parum novimus, cum maxima pars mundi, deus, lateat »).  Ma da questa situazione nasce in noi uno stimolo all'indagine, che si intensifica con l'esperienza dei pro-gressi già realizzati. Ci sono conoscenze che abbiamo acquisito di recente, altre in gran numero che ancora non abbiamo raggiunto; ma - aggiunge Seneca - verrà un tempo in cui queste cose, che ora permangono occulte, le porterà alla luce un giorno futuro ed una indagine assidua di piú lunga durata.... Verrà un tempo in cui i nostri posteri resteranno stupiti che noi igno-rassimo cose che per essi saranno tanto evidenti. Multa venientis aevi populus ignota nobis sciet; multa saeculis tune futuris cum memoria nostri exoleverit reservantur. Pusilla res mundus est, nisi in illo quod quaerat omnis mundus habeat. Questa inesauribilità dell'indagine e delle scoperte supera con la sua infinità la gradualità progressiva. ma limitata, del processo delle iniziazioni ai misteri, a cui Seneca la paragona. Certo che, come ad Eleusi non si mostrano tutte le cose sacre al novizio, riservandosi le piú importanti per gli iniziati, cosí si può dire che la natura non concede in una sola volta ed a chiunque tutti i suoi sacri segreti, e anche quando ci crediamo iniziati, siamo ancora nel vestibolo del tempio e gli arcani rimangono chiusi nel sacrario interno. Ma nelle cerimonie mistiche gli iniziati pervengono, alla fine, a veder tutto; e nella scienza, invece, il processo di sco-perta non finisce mai. Dei suoi segreti, alcuni potrà sco-prirli la nostra età, altri le età successive (« aliud haec aetas, aliud quae post nos subibit aspiciet »); ma ri-marrà sempre campo per le investigazioni di « tutto il mondo ». E anche nell'ipotesi che gli uomini si dedi-chino completamente all'indagine e alla comunicazione reciproca delle conoscenze acquisite, Seneca dice che a  mala pena (vix) si giungerebbe a quel fondo dove è collocata la verità che ora cerchiamo alla superficie e con leggerezza (ibid., cap. 32); e l'esplorazione di questo fondo, secondo le dichiarazioni precedenti, esigerebbe sempre uno sforzo investigativo infinito.  La sospensione dello sforzo e del lavoro, dunque, non solo ritarda o impedisce del tutto le grandi conquiste ulteriori (« tarde magna proveniunt, utique si labor ces-sat »: cap. 31), e impedisce che si trovi alcunché di ciò che gli antichi indagarono in modo insufficiente, ma fa perdere anche le stesse scoperte già realizzate (« adeo nihil invenitur ex his quae parum investigata antiqui reliquerunt, ut multa quae inventa erant obliterentur »:  cap. 32). Donde la necessità e l'obbligo morale, per cia-scuno, di mantenere attivo lo sforzo incessante e di cooperare attivamente alla grande opera di conquista collettiva dell'umanità. Coloro che rimangono soddisfatti delle acquisizioni già realizzate dagli antecessori, non si rendono conto dell'immenso cammino da percorrere, che si estende davanti a noi. «Non si troverebbe mai nulla, se restassimo contenti con ciò che è già stato trovato. Inoltre, chi si limita a seguire un altro, non trova nulla per conto suo, anzi, non cerca neppure....  Ma coloro che hanno promosso queste investigazioni sono per noi guide, non padroni. [Il cammino del]la verità è aperto a tutti, non è ancora occupato, anzi gran parte di esso resta ancora da percorrere agli uomini del futuro › (Epist.). Confidiamo pertanto e molto nel giudizio dei grandi uomini, ma rivendichiamo anche l'uso del giudizio nostro. Forse neppur essi ci han lasciato scoperte effettuate, ma indagini da compiere » (* Num illi quoque non inventa, sed quaerenda nobis reliquerunt »:  Epist.).  «Non mi sembra che i predecessori si siano impadroniti con la forza (praeripuisse) di ciò che si poteva    dire, ma che ce lo abbiano solamente mostrato (ape-ruisse). Se non che c'è molta differenza tra l'avvicinarsi ad una materia esaurita (consumptam) e ad una solamente preparata (subactam): questa va crescendo giorno per giorno, e le invenzioni effettuate non sono ostacoli per chi realizzerà invenzioni ulteriori (« crescit in dies, et inventuris inventa non obstant »: Epist.). Anzi, chi ha qualcosa da insegnare agli altri, deve spargerlo come semente feconda (« seminis modo spargenda sunt»), la quale, per quanto piccola, cadendo in terreno adatto sviluppa le sue forze, e dalla sua piccolezza originaria, crescendo fino alle sue dimensioni massime, si diffonde (« ex eo minimo in maximos auctus diffunditur»). Gli insegnamenti son come le sementi: ancorché siano limitati (angusta), possono sviluppare una grande efficacia, purché una mente idonea li accolga e li raduni in se stessa; e a sua volta questa mente ne genererà molti altri e ren-    derà piú di quello che ricevette » (Epist. 38).  Naturalmente questo processo storico di accrescimento progressivo della cultura, nella successione delle generazioni e delle comunicazioni da maestri a disce-poli, esige l'attività vivente degli spiriti ricettori. Quindici secoli piú tardi G. Bruno dirà che se « di questi alcuni, che son stati appresso, non siino però stati piú accorti, che quei che furon prima.... questo accade per ciò che quelli non vissero.... gli anni altrui, e, quel che è peggio, vissero morti quelli e questi negli anni pro-prii » (Cena delle Ceneri, ed. Gentile).  Una esigenza analoga aveva affermato Seneca nella  Epist. 84, dichiarando che gli insegnamenti devono, come alimenti digeriti, trasformarsi in forze e sangue di chi li assimila (« in vires et sanguinem transeunt»). Le conoscenze ingerite non debbon lasciarsi tali e quali sono (integra), affinché non restino come cose estranee (alie-na): dobbiamo digerirle (concoquamus), affinché sianonutrimento dell'ingegno e non peso della memoria. I discepoli o le generazioni successive devono assomigliare ai loro maestri e padri come figli viventi e attivi, non come immagini morte: « imago res mortua est »; e nella trasmissione della cultura, invece, occorrono spiriti viventi che (come dirà Bruno) vivano attivamente gli anni dei predecessori e non vivano morti gli anni propri, bensí progrediscano sempre piú. Si deve imprimere la forma della propria personalità a tutti gli elementi di cultura che si raccolgono, affinché confluiscano in una unità (in unitatem illa competant) come le voci di un coro. « Tale voglio che sia il nostro spirito, che abbia in se stesso molte arti, molti precetti, gli esempi di molte generazioni, ma facendoli confluire tutti in una unità», vivente e attiva (« ut multae in illo artes, multa praecepta sint, multarum aetatum exempla, sed in unum conspirata).  L'Epistola 84 integra pertanto l'affermazione del-l'Epistola 80, che lo spirito (animus) non è come il corpo, che abbisogna dall'esterno di molto alimento, di molta bevanda, di molto olio e di lunghe cure; lo spirito invece (continua l'Epistola 80) cresce da se stesso, si alimenta e si esercita da sé, ed abbisogna solo della volontà per il suo perfezionamento. L'Epistola 84, dunque, riconosce che anche lo spirito abbisogna del suo alimento, che consiste nella cultura che riceve dalle generazioni precedenti e dall'ambiente sociale in cui si sviluppa, e che anch'esso deve, non meno del corpo, assimilare il suo alimento e trasformarlo in proprio sangue e forza attivi.  Certamente egli deve avere in sé l'energia della volontà richiesta dall'Epistola 80: ossia deve, secondo il paragone dell'Epistola 39, essere come una fiamma che s'innalza in linea retta e che non può essere inclinata e oppressa, né tanto meno aver tregua: cosí lo spirito    è in movimento ed è mobile e attivo tanto piú quanto piú è energico. Ma questa energia, questa attività, questo movimento spirituali non si esercitano nel vuoto,    bensí nel mondo della cultura, che è creazione dello spirito; nel qual mondo si forma cosí la tradizione vivente e attiva, che è conservazione e accrescimento in-cessanti.  Seneca ha visto che questo doppio aspetto della tradizione implica un doppio atteggiamento spirituale: di dipendenza e d'indipendenza rispetto al passato. I diritti del passato devono essere riconosciuti, ma come condizione e mezzo di salvare e assicurare i diritti dell'avve-nire, che sono diritti di un progresso infinito. Venero pertanto — dice l'Epistola 64 - le invenzioni della sapienza e i loro inventori; bisogna avvicinarsi ad essi come ad una eredità collettiva. A nostro beneficio sono state effettuate queste acquisizioni e questi lavori. Ma comportiamoci come buoni padri di famiglia; rendiamo piú ampia l'eredità ricevuta, cosi che questa passi da noi alla posterità fatta maggiore. Molto lavoro resta ancora da compiere, e molto ne resterà poi; né a nessuno, anche se nasca dopo migliaia di secoli, sarà preclusa l'occasione di aggiungere ancora qualcosa di piú ». Anche nell'ipotesi assurda, che gli antichi avessero inventato tutto, resterebbero sempre nuove l'utilizzazione, la scienza e la disposizione delle invenzioni altrui. Ma siamo ben lungi dalla possibilità di ammettere l'ipotesi citata. Quelli che esistettero prima di noi « multum ege-  runt, sed non peregerunt ».  Certamente dobbiamo ammirarli e onorarli come dei, e professare verso « i precettori del genere umano, da cui ci vennero i principi di un bene tanto grande, la stessa venerazione che dobbiamo ai nostri maestri personali ». Tuttavia l'onore migliore, anzi l'unico onore degno ed efficace che i discepoli possano rendere ai mae-    stri e i figli ai padri, consiste, secondo le affermazioni esplicite di Seneca già citate, nel far viva e operante la loro eredità, nel proseguire le vie che essi ci aprirono, cioè nel compiere per ciò che possiamo il progresso della cultura, la cui infinità esige sempre l'attività creatrice di ogni generazione nel trascorrere infinito del tempo.  In questo senso devono intendersi le affermazioni della Epistola 102, relative allo spirito: « Lo spirito umano è una realtà grande e generosa, che non tollera gli si pongano mai limiti che non gli siano comuni anche con Dio»; cioè afferma la sua esigenza di infinità e vuole tradurla in atto nel doppio aspetto spaziale e temporale. Lo spirito pertanto non accetta che gli si attribuisca una patria umile e limitata, come sarebbe la città natale di ciascuno, e reclama come propria patria tutto l'universo; e «non permette che gli si assegni un'epoca limitata: tutti gli anni sono miei (dice); nessun tempo è inaccessibile al pensiero ». Ma questa doppia esigenza di infinità - che significa coscienza di un potere infinito, e che, quanto al tempo, si estende ugualmente verso il passato e verso il futuro — vale, secondo il pensiero espresso di Seneca, tanto per la contemplazione quanto per l'azione creativa. La contemplazione si realizza per mezzo dell'investigazione e (come vedemmo)   piccola cosa sarebbe il mondo se in esso non avesse sempre tutto il mondo qualcosa da investigare  (Nat.  quaest.); ma d'altra parte (come vedemmo) neppur la contemplazione può darsi senza azione: ne con-  templatio quidem sine actione est › (De otio).  Talché lo spirito deve effettuarle entrambe ad un tempo, nella loro mutua correlazione, e considerare l'infinita estensione dell'universo in tutte le sue dimensioni, e del tempo nella sua doppia direzione di passato e futuro, non solo come oggetto di contemplazione conoscitiva, ma anche come campo d'azione creativa. Per questa via, nellaconcezione delineata da Seneca, lo spirito riconosce ве stesso nell'infinita creazione della cultura, opera del suo infinito passato e compito del suo infinito avvenire 1.  m). In tal modo, nell'affermare esplicitamente e mettere in evidenza sotto vari aspetti l'infinità del processo storico di creazione della cultura e d'accrescimento dello spirito umano, Seneca portava la teoria del progresso al suo piú alto grado di compimento nell'antichità. Dopo di lui, nonostante l'attivismo della gnoseologia e della pedagogia di Plutarco e di Plotino, il predominio crescente dell'orientamento mistico nella filosofia non favorí certo nuovi sviluppi della teoria del progresso; la cui tradizione, tuttavia, lungi dal perdersi, appare conservata — come abbiamo visto a proposito di Aristotele  anche in scrittori tardi come Asclepio e Giovanni  1 Meritano di essere ricordate alcune altre dichiarazioni signi-  Epansa (Sice rel Eple 65) Eaar dee appreanere ne che a  riferisce alle cose divine e alle umane, alle passate e alle future, alle caduche e alle eterne, al tempo, etc.»; e qui Seneca cita esempi delle « innumerabiles questiones» che si pongono per la conoscenza di ogni sfera e di ogni aspetto della realtà universale.  Ma il De otio, mostra che all'infinito numero dei problemi corrisponde l'infinita curiosità (curiosum ingenium) dell'uo-  mo: il desiderio di conoscere lo sconosciuto (cupiditas ignota no-scendi) ci spinge ai viaggi ed alla navigazione, alle investigazioni naturali ed agli scavi, alle ricerche storiche relative all'umanità  ad che poe eseri al dd a del come o aire dacueione dei  probiem pelaurs ar ateria dd ale epifio)  relativi alla materia ed allo spirito, etc. Nello stesso  capitolo del “De otio” aggiunge (come abbiamo già ricordato) che la contemplazione non può mai essere senza azione, e che le cose meditate esigono la loro realizzazione mediante l'esercizio della mano; di modo che il processo infinito di creazione della cultura è inteso nell'unità di teoria e pratica. Filopono; e la loro fonte al riguardo, Aristotele, ci attesta che tale teoria si è trasmessa senza soluzione di continuità. Ma Plutarco ci fa udire l'eco tanto di idee provenienti da Archita e Democrito, intorno alla funzione che spetta alla necessità nel processo storico delle creazioni umane, quanto dell'ordine cronologico in cui Democrito e Aristotele distribuivano la creazione progressiva delle arti di necessità, di quelle di abbellimento e delle scienze. E nello stesso II secolo cui appartiene Aristocle, un documento caratteristico ci dimostra la diffusione raggiunta dall'idea del progresso umano nella coscienza pubblica dell'epoca; documento che consiste nell'utilizzazione che fa Luciano (“Erotes”) di questa idea con fini satirici. L'apologia paradossale dell'amore per gli efebi, che Luciano fonda sul principio che, essendo creazione piú recente dell'amore per le donne, deve costituire un progresso rispetto a questo, poteva avere significato come satira solo in un clima spirituale dove l'idea del progresso figlio del tempo fosse divenuto generale e dominante.  Nella sua esposizione di questa teoria, Luciano dipende specialmente dalla tradizione democriteo-epicurea, ma con infiltrazioni della tradizione platonico-ari-stotelica relativa al rinnovamento ciclico successivo alle catastrofi, e con derivazioni anche da altre fonti. Da Democrito ad Epicuro deriva la descrizione della vita ferina primordiale: « i primi uomini nati dovevano cercare un rimedio per la fame d'ogni giorno, e per il fatto che erano preda della indigenza presente e che la pe-  o chi il ato  nuria non permetteva loro alcuna scelta del migliore, dovevano mangiare le erbe che trovavano, e le radici tenere che dissotterravano, e soprattutto le ghiande delle querce. Mentre la loro vita permaneva cosí incolta e   non concedeva loro ancora la comodità per esperimenti giornalieri al fine di trovare il meglio, essi dovevano accontentarsi di quelle stesse cose necessarie, poiché il tempo, incalzandoli, non permetteva loro l'invenzione di un buon regime». Anche per ciò che concerne la necessità di difese, gli uomini subito, all'inizio della vita, avendo bisogno di coprirsi, 'avvolgevano nelle pelli delle fiere scorticate ed escogitavano come rifugio contro il freddo le grotte delle montagne o le cavità disseccate di radici o alberi antichi».  piú che democritea, poiché è scomparsa in essa, come  pia wete  Questa descrizione è evidente eredità epicurea ancor  tra gli epicurei, la distinzione introdotta da Democrito tra i momenti successivi della prima fase di vita del-  l'umanità. Manca inoltre in Luciano ogni allusione all'introduzione della convivenza sociale e del linguaggio e alla scoperta del fuoco, già considerati dall'epicurei-smo; ma la suggestione epicurea si riconosce nella spiegazione che dà tanto dell'uscita dallo stato primordiale mediante l'agricoltura, quanto delle invenzioni della tessitura e dell'edilizia per via di un'imitazione dei ripari naturali (pelli e caverne) usati primordialmente. La capacità di un'imitazione dei processi naturali, che ripro-ducendoli li modifica e li adatta alle proprie esigenze e finalità, era già per gli epicurei un carattere che differenziava l'uomo dagli altri animali, incapaci di uscire dalla loro condizione naturale originaria. Tuttavia sembra che in Luciano si perda la comprensione della funzione attribuita dagli epicurei alla necessità come forza stimolante dell'intelligenza umana; Luciano la considera piuttosto un ostacolo alla ricerca del meglio. Solamente (dice) « dopo che le necessità urgenti ebbero fine, le intelligenze (zoyouo) delle generazioni successive, liberate dalla necessità, trovarono l'occasione d'inventarequalche miglioramento, e di lí a poco a poco s'accreb-bero al tempo stesso le scienze. E questo ci è possibile congetturarlo dalla considerazione delle arti piú perfezionate ».  Può esservi in queste linee un'eco (certo confusa) della distinzione democriteo-aristotelica dei tre momenti successivi di creazione progressiva: delle arti di neces-sità, di quelle d'ornamento e delle scienze disinteressate; certo Luciano -- utilizzando l'esempio dell'arte tessile, preso dagli epicurei, e quello dell'architettura, derivante forse da Vitruvio - insiste specialmente sul carattere graduale e quasi insensibile dei progressi, dicendo che «le arti presero per maestro il tempo » e progredirono « segretamente». E questa idea di un processo graduale sembra associarsi a quella di un rinnovamento ciclico, cioè alla teoria platonico-aristotelica della rinascita progressiva della cultura dopo le catastrofi distruttrici -  idea rievocata nel II secolo da Aristocle - poiché Luciano scrive che « ciascuna di queste arti e scienze, che giaceva muta e coperta in molto oblio, come da un lungo tramonto a poco a poco si levò nella sua luce raggiante ». Questa confluenza di elementi di derivazione tanto diversa è un indice interessante della conservazione di differenti rappresentazioni del progresso nell'epoca di Luciano, che le mescola senza preoccuparsi molto dei loro eventuali contrasti. E cosí, nonostante la sua apparente accettazione della teoria ciclica platonico-aristote-lica, Luciano delinea un processo di sviluppo della cul-tura, che per se stesso gli si presenta infinito, cosí come era apparso a Seneca. « Poiché ciascuno che faceva qualche scoperta la trasmetteva alla posterità; e quindi la successione di quelli che ricevevano l'eredità, facendo aggiunte a ciò che avevano appreso, continuò a riempire le lacune esistenti ». E cosí ‹ le scienze varie... mediante    sforzi (uoris) si preparano per arrivare (EUENOV 7ÇELV)  alla loro chiara manifestazione, spinte dal tempo infinito (úò To aiovos), che non lascia niente senza indagare. Ma ciò che agisce attivamente sugli uomini attraverso il corso del tempo è (per dichiarazione esplicita di Lu-ciano) « l'intelligenza (ppóvnois), che si accompagna alla scienza e trae dal frequente sperimentare la possibilità di scegliere l'ottimo ». Pertanto « dobbiamo considerare necessario lo studio dell'antico, ma onorare come migliore ciò che la vita seppe trovare poi, dopo aver raggiunto la possibilità di dedicarsi alla riflessione razionale  (поугомоїс) ».  Torna cosí in Luciano il concetto della tradizione vivente, che non è conservazione cristallizzata, bensí creazione progressiva continua realizzata dalla vita; torna l'idea dell'infinità di questo processo, che si estende dal passato e dal presente verso l'avvenire.  Riassumendo, possiamo dire che per tutti gli assertori antichi dell'idea del progresso umano la natura offra il punto di partenza allo sviluppo dell'attività creatrice dell'intelligenza dell'uomo; quindi le conquiste compiute da ogni generazione offrono alle successive i mezzi e gli stimoli per nuovi incessanti esperimenti e nuove acqui-sizioni; e in tal modo la creazione della cultura progredisce insieme con l'intelligenza creatrice. L'antichità dichiara con Cicerone ciò che tornerà a dichiarare il rinascimento con Bruno; cioè che l'umanità è caratterizzata dal suo sforzo incessante di creare, mediante l'opera della sua intelligenza e delle sue mani, un'altra natura, altri corsi e altri ordini al di sopra di quelli che le furono dati naturalmente; e per questa creatività del suo spirito l'uomo merita d'esser considerato  «come un dio mortale» o « dio della terra. Dai presocratici e dai poeti tragici fino a Seneca innegabilmente l'idea della creatività dello spirito si afferma e si sviluppa nell'antichità, e si ripercuote poi sugli ultimi secoli della cultura classica, da Luciano ed Aristocle ad Asclepio e Giovanni Filopono. Per negare agl’antichi il raggiungimento di tale intuizione, occorre chiudere gli occhi alla realtà storica e cancellare l'ampia documentazione che conferma la sua esistenza. Rodolfo Mondolfo. Mondolfo. Keywords: antica filosofia italica. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice, Mondolfo, e la filosofia greco-romana," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Mondolfo

 

Grice e Monferrato: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Casale Monferrato). Filosofo italiano. Autore di opere di teologia e scienza e legato pontificio. Entra nell'ordine francescano nella provincia genovese. Docente presso lo studio francescano di Assisi. Compone il saggio. “Quaestio de velocitate motus alterationis” (Venezia). In esso presenta un'analisi grafica del movimento dei corpi uniformemente accelerati. La sua attività di insegnamento in fisica matematica influenza gli studiosi che operarono a Padova e Galilei che ri-propose idee simili. ‘Giovanni da Casale’, Treccani. Filosofia Filosofo del XIV secoloTeologi italiani Casale Monferrato Storia della scienza. Grice: “Casali dicusses the velocity of motion of alternation. He wisely remarks that if one takes the example of the quality of hotness, onemay conceive of a UNI-FORM hotness throughout – ‘just as a rectangular parallelolgram is formed between two equidistant lines, such that any part you wish is equally wide with another. ‘Let there be throughout a UNIFORMLY DIFFORM hotness, such that it is a triangle!” -- Giovanni da Casale Monferrato. Monferrato. Keywords: corpi inanimati, corpi animati, inerzia, un corpo animato non e un missile guidato – Grice. La liberta dei corpi animati, uniform, uniformly difform, difformly difform. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Monferrato” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Monimo: all’isola – la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Siracusa). Filosofo italiano. A former slave. Wrote two books. Monimo.

 

Grice e Montanari: la ragione conversazionale -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Cf Mazzino Montanari. Massino Montanari.

 

Grice e Montani: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale e il debito del segno – implicatura riflessiva -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Teramo). Flosofo italiano. Allievo di GARRONI (si veda), è Professore di Estetica alla Sapienza Roma, è stato Directeur d'Études Associé presso all'EHESS di Parigi e ha insegnato Estetica al Centro sperimentale di cinematografia di Roma. La sua ricerca si concentra oggi principalmente sui temi di filosofia della tecnica.  Allievo di Emilio Garroni, per M. l'estetica non va considerata come filosofia dell'arte, ma come una teoria della sensibilità umana, che ha la peculiarità di essere aperta agli stimoli del mondo esterno. La riflessione di M. si snoda in diversi passaggi e attraverso il confronto con alcuni dei protagonisti della filosofia, della linguistica, della semiotica e della teoria del cinema del Novecento, avendo sempre come punto di riferimento la filosofia critica di Kant.  Pensiero Ermeneutica e filosofia critica. Pubblica Il debito del linguaggio, in cui, partendo dal confronto con le teorie strutturaliste, in particolare quelle di Jakobson e Mukarovsky, mostra come la questione del significato del testo poetico non possa essere risolta mediante l'individuazione del codice linguistico o semiotico di riferimento, ma rimandi ad una condizione estetica della significazione. Questo tema viene ulteriormente approfondito in Estetica ed ermeneutica. Prendendo le mosse dalla filosofia critica kantiana, propone di ripensare la verità nel senso heideggeriano dell’ “a-letheia”, del “dis-velamento” dell'essere come una situazione ermeneutica strettamente legata all'effettiva esperienza del soggetto, seguendo la rilettura della filosofia di Heidegger proposta da Gadamer.La formazione e il pensiero di M. sono stati segnati dal suo interesse per il cinema e in particolare per Vertov e Ėjzenštejn. Di entrambi ha curato l'edizione  degli scritti.  Nel testo “L'immaginazione narrative” (Guerini) coniuga l'interesse per il cinema con quello più strettamente filosofico per il tema dell'immaginazione. Propone di considerare l'immaginazione nei termini in cui, in Tempo e racconto, Ricœur parla della narrazione, ovvero come di un processo di “rifigurazione” dell'esperienza del tempo da parte dell'uomo. Per Ricoeur la narrazione ha il potere di far fare al lettore esperienza di un tempo propriamente umano. Montani fa propria la tesi di Ricoeur, applicandola però, all'ambito della narrazione cinematografica. M. ritiene che il territorio dell'immaginazione in cui lavora il cinema sia quello dell'intreccio tra finzione e testimonianza, tra la costruzione dell'intreccio narrativo e la documentazione del reale. La trasformazione dell'esperienza del tempo avviene, così, ad un livello più profondo e creativo. Tecnica ed estetica Con Bioestetica si inaugura la fase più recente del pensiero di M., dedicata all'approfondimento del rapporto tra tecnica e estetica. Attraverso il paradigma della bioestetica M. propone di leggere i fenomeni di biopotere che caratterizzano l'epoca contemporanea a partire dalla loro natura innanzitutto tecnica ed estetica, cioè a partire dal fatto che la sensibilità dell'essere umano viene sempre più orientata ed organizzata tecnicamente. Il biopotere consiste proprio nella capacità di canalizzare la sensibilità umana. In L'immaginazione intermediale Montani prende in analisi i modi in cui il cinema risponde alle forme di anestetizzazione. Prendendo le mosse dalla spettacolarizzazione della politica emersa in seguito all'attentato delle Torri Gemelle, Montani introduce il concetto di "autenticazione dell'immagine", che non consiste nell'accertamento del referente fattuale dell'immagine (il vero, il reale) ma nella rigenerazione di un orizzonte di senso condiviso, la capacità di riferimento dell'esperienza e del linguaggio, in un'epoca caratterizzata da crescenti fenomeni di “indifferenza referenziale” La riflessione sul rapporto tra estetica e tecnica continua in “Tecnologie della sensibilità”, in cui viene teorizzata l'esistenza di una terza funzione dell'immaginazione: accanto a quella produttiva e riproduttiva vi è una funzione inter-attiva. L'immaginazione inter-attiva diventa il paradigma attraverso cui leggere l'epoca contemporanea, attraversata profondamente da fenomeni dell'inter-attività digitale e dalla proliferazione di ambienti virtuali. Saggi: “Il debito del linguaggio: l'auto-riflessività nel discorso,” – Grice: “There is the ‘debito’ and there is the ‘credito’ or ‘price’ of semiosis, too!” -- Marsilio, Venezia; -- Grice: “Actually, Montani uses ‘aesthetic self-reflection,’ using ‘aesthetic’ etymologically, as per what he calls ‘ermeneutica sensibile’ --  Fuori campo: studi sul cinema e l'estetica, Quattroventi, Urbino; Estetica ed ermeneutica: senso, contingenza, verità, Laterza, Roma);  L'immaginazione narrativa: il racconto del cinema oltre i confini dello spazio letterario, Guerini, Milano); Arte e verità dall'antichità alla filosofia contemporanea: un'introduzione all'estetica, Laterza, Roma); L'estetica contemporanea: il destino delle arti nella tarda modernià,  Carocci, Roma; Lo stato dell'arte: l'esperienza estetica; Carboni e M., Laterza, Roma); Bioestetica: senso comune, tecnica e arte” (Carocci, Roma; L'immaginazione intermediale: perlustrare, ri-figurare, testimoniare il mondo visibile, Laterza, Roma); Tecnologie della sensibilità. Estetica e immaginazione interattiva, Cortina, Milano. M., Il senso, Rai Scuola, su raiscuola.rai.  I percorsi dell'immaginazione. Studi in onore di M., Pellegrini, Censi, Cine-occhi e cine-pugni: due modi di intendere il cinema, su Nazione Indiana,  L'immaginazione estatica. Estetica, tecnica e biopolitica, su giornaledifilosofia.net. 2 lAlessandra Campo, Biopolitica come an-estetizzazione. Il significato estetico della biopolitica, su sintesidialettica. Montani, L'immaginazione intermediale, Laterza, , M., L'immaginazione intermediale, Laterza, Anna Li Vigni, Gli occhiali per immaginare, Il Sole 24 Ore. La vita immersa nell’estetica del virtuale, su ilmanifesto. Pietro Montani. Montani. Keywords: il debito del segno, Narciso e la reflexione. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Montani” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Montinari: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sovrumano – torna a Surriento -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Lucca). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “If I were asked to identify the main difference between the Italian philosopher and the Oxonian philosopher is that the Italian philosopher takes Nietzsche seriously! But then he lived at Torino!”  «Nelle istituzioni esistenti, sostenute da immani forze di produzione e di distruzione, viene assimilata e mercificata ogni e qualsiasi protesta, persino quella dei Lumpen, ogni tentativo di lasciare la «nave dei folli». Se il metodo di Nietzsche può ancora aiutarci, allora l'unica forza che ci è rimasta è quella della cultura, della ragione.»  Considerato uno dei massimi editori e interpreti di Nietzsche. Ha definitivamente dimostrato che Nietzsche non ha mai scritto un'opera dal titolo “La volontà di Potenza” e che le cinque diverse compilazioni che la sorella del filosofo e altri editori dilettanti hanno pubblicato sotto questo titolo sono testi del tutto inaffidabili per comprendere il pensiero di Nietzsche. Si era formato alla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa e all'Pisa, presso la quale si laureò con una tesi, “I movimenti ereticali a Lucca.” Caduto il fascismo, divenne un attivista del Partito comunista, presso il quale si occupava della traduzione di scritti dal tedesco. Mentre visitava la Germani a Est per motivi di ricerca, fu testimone della rivolta. Successivamente, in seguito alla repressione della Rivoluzione ungherese del 1956, si allontanò dall'ortodossia marxista e dalla carriera nel partito. Mantenne tuttavia la sua iscrizione al PCI, e rimase fedele agli ideali del socialismo. Collabora con le Edizioni Rinascita, e per un anno fu direttore dell'omonima libreria in Roma. Dopo averne rivisto la raccolta di opere e manoscritti in Weimar, Colli e M. decisero di iniziarne una nuova edizione critica. Essa divenne lo standard per gli studiosi, e fu pubblicata in da Adelphi. Per questo lavoro fu preziosa la sia abilità nel decifrare la scrittura a mano (praticamente incomprensibile) di Nietzsche, fino a quel momento trascritta solo da "Gast“ (Köselitz).  Fonda la rivista Nietzsche-di cui fu coeditore. Attraverso le sue traduzioni ed i suoi commenti di Nietzsche, diede un contributo fondamentale alla ricerca storica e filosofica, inserendo Nietzsche nel contesto del proprio tempo.  Saggi: “Che cosa ha detto Nietzsche”  Roma, Ubaldini, ripubblicato come  “Che cosa ha detto Nietzsche,” [Grice: “I convinced Montinari that ‘veramente’ is a trouser word and should be avoided!” -- Campioni, Milano, Adelphi. Su Nietzsche, Roma, Riuniti,  Teoria della Natura, Torino, Boringhieri, Milano, SE,  F Nietzsche, Lettere a Rohde, Torino, Boringhieri, Nietzsche, Opere, (Milano, Adelphi,  Nietzsche, Il caso Wagner: Crepuscolo degli idoli; L'anticristo; Scelta di frammenti, S. Giametta, Ferruccio Masini, Giorgio Colli, Milano, Mondadori Editore, Ecce homo; Ditirambi di Dioniso; Nietzsche contra Wagner; Poesie e scelta di frammenti postumi, Milano, A. Mondadori, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer come educatore, Milano, Adelphi, Epistolario di Nietzsche, Pampaloni Fama, Milano, Adelphi,  Nietzsche, Scritti, Milano, Adelphi, Schopenhauer, La vista e i colori Carteggio con Goethe,Abscondita,  Nota introduttiva a Genealogia della morale, Nietzsche e Van Gogh, due cardini del pensiero occidentale moderno di  Bettozzi (Liberal democaratici), su liberal democratici..  «Tant qu'il ne fut pas possible aux chercheurs les plus sérieux d'accéder à l'ensemble des manuscrits de Nietzsche, on savait seulement de façon vague que La Volonté de puissance n'existait pas comme telle (...) Nous souhaitons que le jour nouveau, apporté par les inédits, soit celui du retour à Nietzsche.» (Deleuze)  Aveva infatti ottenuto una borsa di studio della Scuola Normale Superiore a Francoforte sul Meno.  Rinascita Che era stato il suo maestro. Giuliano Campioni, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani stituto dell'Enciclopedia italiana Treccani Giuliano Campioni, Giuliano Campioni, Lanata, Esercizi di memoria, Bari, Levante, (notizie su M. M. nell'articolo su Colli anche a proposito dell'Enciclopedia di autori classici, Boringhieri, progettata e diretta da Colli e a cui M. M.collaborò). Paolo D’Iorio, L'arte di leggere Nietzsche, Firenze, Ponte alle grazie,Giuliano Campioni, Leggere Nietzsche. Alle origini dell'edizione critica Colli-Montinari. Con lettere e testi inediti, Pisa, M.: l'arte di leggere Nietzsche Paolo D'Iorio, Pubblicato da Ponte alle grazie, Studi germanici — Di Istituto italiano di studi germanici — Pubblicato da Edizioni dell'Ateneo, Originale disponibile presso la l'Università della Virginia — "M., Nietzsche", di Tuca Giuliano Campioni, Da Lucca a Weimar: M. e Nietzsche in Nietzsche. Edizioni e interpretazioni,  Fornari, ETS, Pisa, Die "ideelle Bibliothek Nietzsches". Von Charles Andler M. Pensiero di Schopenhauer Roscani Torino#Filosofi Giuliano Campioni, M., in Dizionario biografico degl’italiani,  Istituto dell'Enciclopedia. Opere di M., Centro interdipartimentale di studi Colli-M. su Nietzsche e la Cultura Europea — Pisa, Lecce, Padova e Firenze (Centronietzsche.net), su centronietzsche.net. Grice: “Montinari is right that ‘la volonta di potenza’ ‘n’existe pas’ – vacuous name. Torna a Surriento.   Umano, troppo umano, uscito cento anni fa, più precisamente nel 1878, e dedicato al centenario della morte di Voltaire, è tra le opere di Nietzsche quella che ha avuto il più lungo periodo di gestazio-ne, dall'estate del 1875 all'inverno 1877-78. Nella mighore e più attendibile biografa di Nietzsche che mai sia stata scritta e che troppe volte non viene presa sul serio, voglio dire in Ecce homo, leggiamo:  « Umano, troppo umano è il monumento di una crist. Dice di essere un libro per spiriti liberi: quasi ogni frase vi esprime una vittoria - con quel libro mi sono liberato da ciò che non apparteneva alla mia natura... qui il termine " spirito libero" deve essere inteso solo in un senso: uno spirito diventato libero, che ha ripreso possesso di se stesso ». Ciò che non apparteneva alla natura di Nietzsche era la speculazione metafisica di Schopenhauer, il pensiero mitico di Wagner (più in generale il • pensiero impuro » dell'artista). L'approdo alla liberazione dello spirito è dunque un processo; esso — per il Nietzsche del 1878 - doveva essere compreso in una sorta di tirocinio, al cui inizio stavano le Memorie di un'idealista (1872-76) di Malwida von Meysenbug e alla fine l'Origine dei sentimenti morali (1877) di Paul Rée. Tra i due nomi, che sembrano in contrasto tra loro, si compie una parabola tipica per la situazione spirituale di un gruppo importante di intellettuali del tardo Ottocento, cui anche Nietzsche appartiene. La vecchia quarantottarda Malwida (an-no 1816) acquisisce negli anni della rivoluzione e dell'esilio (Herzen, Mazzini, Kinkel) una concezione del mondo intrepidamente materialistica ed ateisti-ca, anche se illuminata dall'idealismo pratico-poli-tico e poi sostenuta (dopo l'incontro con Wagner)  dalla pessimistica (e consolatoria) metafisica schopen-haueriana. Ciò spiega, tra l'altro, l'entusiasmo concui ella nell'inverno 1876-77 a Sorrento accolse, per il tramite di Nietzsche, l'‹ ottimismo del temperamento » coniugato al • pessimismo della conoscenza », secondo la formula adoperata da Jacob Burck-hardt per definire il carattere dei Greci. (Questa formula doveva avere fortuna particolare da noi in Italia, nel passaggio dalla Meysenbug a Romain Rolland, e da costui a Antonio Gramsci).  Quindi Paul Rée (anno 1849): il giovane filosofo positivista si era educato alla scuola di Schopenhauer (e di Eduard von Hartmann, al quale anche il giovane Nietzsche doveva qualcosa), ma anche di Darwin e dei nuovi moralisti inglesi, con una considerevole aggiunta di nichilismo russo (Turgenev). Non mi sembra casuale che nel 1877 sia proprio Rée a scoprire (per regalarlo poi alla Meysenbug e a Bay-reuth) il giovanissimo Heinrich von Stein (anno  1857, allievo di Eugen Dühring, filosofo della « realtà »), anche lui schopenhaueriano (e poi wagneria-no) e autore di un libro dedicato agli « ideali » del  « materialismo ».  Questa schiera di personaggi, spiriti più o meno li-beri, tra i quali si trovavano amici e ammiratori di Nietzsche, vive la crisi di un'epoca satura di scienza, che può essere solo onestamente materialistica ed è al tempo stesso intimamente insoddisfatta, perché non riesce a scaldarsi al pallido, nordico agnosticismo königsberghiano, né ad entusiasmarsi per la « nuova fede » ottimistica e scientista del senile D.F.  Strauss. Le rimangono tutt'al più i paradisi artificiali e neoromantici del dramma musicale di Ri-  chard Wagner.  Dopo il grande tentativo wagneriano della Nascita della tragedia, la serie delle Considerazioni inattuali e più ancora la grande massa dei frammenti postumi stesi tra il 1872 e il 1876 si presentano ai nostri occhi come la preparazione del Nietzsche nuovo di Umano, troppo umano. Al di là della predicazione e dell'invettiva del Nietzsche inattuale è possibile infatti cogliere quel processo di intellettualizzazione radicale e di distruzione di ogni convinzione che è uno degli aspetti fondamentali della libertà di spi-rito, come viene enunciata nelle ultime pagine di Umano, troppo umano. Le illusioni e le consolazioni dell'arte, della metafisica, della religione cadono « in balia della storia», e solo la storia può rievocarle - e questa è ancora la nostra fortuna: poter mantenere in noi la possibilità della rievocazione storica dell'umanità passata. L'importanza della conoscenza storica è sottolineata da Nietzsche proprio in rapporto alla fine della metafisica, quando nell'aforisma 37 di Umano, troppo umano scrive:  * Qual è comunque la proposizione principale a cui giunge, attraverso le sue penetranti e taglienti analisi dell'umano agire, uno dei più arditi e freddi pensatori, l'autore del libro: Sull'origine dei sentimenti morali [cioè Paul Rée]? " L'uomo morale" egli dice "non è più vicino al mondo intelligibile (metafisico) dell'uomo fisico". Questa proposizione, temprata e affilata sotto i colpi di martello della conoscenza storica, potrà forse un giorno, in un qualche futuro, servire come l'accetta che reciderà alla radice il " bisogno metafisico" degli uomini: se più a benedizione che a maledizione del benessere gene-rale, chi saprebbe dirlo? ma in ogni caso come una proposizione dalle più importanti conseguenze, feconda e terribile insieme, e che scruta il mondo in quel modo bifronte, proprio di tutte le grandi co-noscenze». Dieci anni più tardi Nietzsche citerà ancora una volta in Ecce homo la proposizione di Rée, presentandola come il preannuncio della sua « trasvalutazione di tutti i valori ». Ho l'impressione che nessuno degli esegeti di Nietzsche abbia preso sul serio quel ritorno estremo a Paul Rée.  A Rée mancano tuttavia la disciplina e l'esercizio del senso storico che troviamo invece in tutta l'opera di Nietzsche, a partire proprio da Umano, troppo umano. Né il nome del massimo rappresentantedell'età dei lumi, di colui che Goethe chiamava la  • luce di noi tutti » si trova sul frontespizio della prima edizione del « libro per spiriti liberi » a celebrare la casualità di un giubileo. Esso rappresenta invece il nuovo programma di Nietzsche, che consiste nel risuscitare e lo spirito dell'Illuminismo e dello sviluppo progrediente » contro lo spirito di Rousseau, padre ambiguo delle « mezze verità » della Rivoluzione francese e del romanticismo. Nel  1876-78 l'antagonismo Voltaire-Rousseau rientra per Nietzsche in una sorta di schema storico, che vale per l'età moderna nei due momenti dell'Umanesi-mo-Rinascimento e dell'Illuminismo. L'Umanesimo-  Rinascimento è un movimento di civiltà che viene interrotto da una rivoluzione (la Riforma) e da una reazione (la Controriforma), così come l'Illuminismo è stato interrotto dalla Rivoluzione francese e dalla reazione romantica. Dalla reazione romantica maturano però risultati imprevisti: da un lato il senso della storia, come forma superiore e prosecuzione dell'Illuminismo, dall'altro, - come prodotto diret-to, secondo Nietzsche, del senso storico, - il socialismo (rivoluzione) e l'oscurantismo moderno (in Germania nelle forme ideologiche del conservatorismo cristiano degli Junker e dell'antisemitismo).  Nietzsche è dalla parte del Rinascimento, dell'Illu-minismo e del senso storico, a cui si contrappongono di volta in volta le coppie rivoluzionario-reazionarie che abbiamo visto.  I valori positivi del passato non sono di coloro che hanno combattuto o reagito contro la Riforma e contro la Rivoluzione francese, come nel presente non è la reazione antisocialista (nel 1878 si hanno le leggi antisocialiste di Bismarck) a cui Nietzsche senta di aderire. La pacata riflessione storica dello spirito libero si colloca piuttosto nella vita contempla-tiva; questa comporta non tanto la rinuncia all'immediatezza vitale dell'azione, quanto e soprattutto il dominio dello « spirito » sulla pienezza e ricchez-za della « vita » (e quel dominio avrà significato in proporzione diretta a questa ricchezza e pienezza).  Un modello di questo dominio è il classicismo illu-ministico, tollerante e cosmopolitico di Goethe, che è il saldo punto di riferimento di tutto il libro.  guerra, bensi come la constatazione del definitivo crepuscolo degli « ideali » metafisici (Schopenhauer)  e mitici (Wagner), a cui secondo lui avrebbero dovuto approdare per onestà della ragione anche i suoi amici e seguaci. Tranne alcune rilevanti eccezioni (Overbeck, in particolare, ma anche Burck-hardt e Karl Hillebrand, che tuttavia non erano propriamente né amici né seguaci) gli amici (Richard e Cosima Wagner, Erwin Rohde, Malwida von Mey-senbug) rimasero costernati e, anzi, si sentirono attaccati e provocati, abbandonati e traditi. Così Nietzsche stesso, che pochi mesi prima aveva scritto cpistole dedicatorie di Umano, troppo umano a Ri-chard e Cosima Wagner, una di esse persino in (brutti) versi, dovette rendersi conto dell'abisso che lo separava non solo dai suoi vecchi amici, ma anche dal suo proprio passato: « Quell'offuscamento metafisico di tutte le cose vere e semplici, la lotta condotta con la ragione contro la ragione, con la mira di vedere in ogni e qualsiasi occasione chissà quali immense meraviglie, per giunta un'arte barocca di ipereccitazione e esaltazione della smodera-tezza, intendo dire l'arte di Wagner: queste due cose messe insieme avevano finito per rendermi sempre più malato e quasi ad estraniarmi dal mio buon temperamento... Mi resi pienamente conto di tutto ciò nell'estate di Bayreuth [1876]: fuggii via, dopo le prime rappresentazioni a cui avevo assistito, e mi rifugiai sui monti, e là in un piccolo villaggio in mezzo alla foresta, nacque il primo schizzo, all'incirca un terzo del mio libro, allora sotto il titolo del Vomere ». Cosi scriveva Nietzsche all'inconsola-bile Mathilde Maier, un'amica di Wagner, nel luglio del 1878, e nella stessa epoca a Rée: « I miei conoscenti ed amici (con pochissime eccezioni) si comportano come se gli avessi rovesciato il pentolino del latte. Dio li aiuti - io non posso fare altrimenti ».  Umano, troppo umano non era nato come libro po-lemico, lo ripetiamo, ma come superamento di una crisi, che non era solo di Nietzsche. Perché non vada perduto, nella presente pubblicazione che non ha commento, riproduciamo qui ciò che l'autore volle premettere nel 1878 alla prima edizione, ‹ in luogo di una prefazione », affinché serva come avviamento alla lettura della prima grande opera veramente sua. Si tratta della traduzione di un brano tratto dalla versione latina del Discorso del metodo di Cartesio:  *- per un certo tempo considerai le occupazioni disparate alle quali gli uomini si dedicano in questa vita, e feci il tentativo di scegliere la migliore tra queste. Ma non è necessario qui raccontare quali pensieri mi vennero nel far ciò: basti dire che, per parte mia, nulla mi sembrò essere meglio che attenermi rigidamente al mio proposito, vale a dire: impiegare tutto il tempo della vita a sviluppare la mia ragione e a seguire le tracce della verità così  come i mi re proponi queche i ri che gali  che, secondo il mio giudizio, non si può trovare in questa vita nulla di più gradevole e di più in-  nocente; oltre a ciò, da quando mi ero giovato di quel modo di considerare le cose, non passava giorno senza che io non scoprissi qualcosa di nuovo, che era sempre di un qualche peso e niente affatto conosciuto dalla generalità degli uomini. La mia anima finalmente divenne allora cosi piena di gioia, che tutte le altre cose non potevano più offenderla in alcun modo ›.Mazzino Montinari. Montinari. Refs. Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Montinari: l’implicatura di Nietzsche” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Monte: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – la prospettiva e la filosofia della percezione -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Pesaro). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like to illustrate a ‘scientific revolution’ with Del Monte’s refutation on the equilibrium controversy, since it involves a lot of analyticity that only a philosopher can digest!” -- essential Italian philosopher. Il marchese Guidubaldo Bourbon Del Monte (Pesaro), filosoMecanicorum liber, Suo padre, Ranieri, originario da un famiglia benestante di Urbino, discendente dalla schiatta dei Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria, fu notato per il suo ruolo bellico e fu autore di due libri sull'architettura militare. Il duca di Urbino, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, gli attribuì, per meriti, il titolo di Marchese del Monte, dunque la famiglia divenne nobile solo un generazione prima di Guidobaldo. Alla morte del padre, ottenne il titolo di Marchese. Studia matematica a Padova. Mentre era lì, strinse una grande amicizia con Tasso. Combatté nel conflitto in Ungheria, tra l'impero degli Asburgo e l'Impero Ottomano. Al termine della guerra, torna nella sua tenuta a Mombaroccio, vicino Urbino, dove passava i giorni studiando matematica, meccanica, astronomia e ottica. Studia matematica con l'aiuto di Commandino. Divenne amico di Baldi, che fu anch'esso studente di Commandino. Ispettore delle fortificazioni del Granducato di Toscana, pur continuando a risiedere nel Ducato di Urbino.  In quegli anni, corrisponde con numerosi matematici inclusio Contarini,  Barozzi e Galilei  e con alcuni di loro si dice abbia avuto anche relazioni più che professionali.  L'invenzione per la costruzione di poligoni regolari e per dividere in un numero determinato di segmento qualsiasi linea fu incorporata come caratteristica del compasso geometrico e militare di Galileo. Proprio fu fondamentale nell'aiutare Galilei nella sua carriera, che e un promessa ma disoccupato. Raccomanda il toscano al suo fratello Cardinale, che a sua volta parla con il potente Duca di Toscana, Ferdinando I de' Medici. Sotto la sua protezione, Galileo ha una cattedra di matematica all'Pisa. Guidobaldo divenne un amico fidato di Galileo e lo aiutò nuovamente quando dovette necessariamente fare domanda per poter insegnare matematica all'Padova, a causa dell'odio e della macchinazione di Giovanni de' Medici, un figlio di Cosimo de' Medici, contro Galileo. Nonostante la loro amicizia, M. fu un critico di alcune teorie di GALILEI, come quella relativa alla legge dell'isocronismo delle oscillazioni. Compone un importante saggio sulla prospettiva, “Perspectivae Libri VI”, pubblicato a Pesaro che ha ampia diffusione. E sicuramente, anche secondo il parere di Galileo, uno dei massimi studiosi di meccanica e matematica. “Mechanicorum liber”. Pisauri. Saggi: “Mechanicorum” (Pisauri, Girolamo Concordia – Venezia, Deuchino -- Mecanicorum); “Plani-sphaeriorum universalium theorica” (Pisauri, Girolamo Concordia); “De ecclesiastici calendarii restitutione" (Pisauri, Girolamo Concordia); “La prospettiva” (Pisauri, Girolamo Concordia -- Roma); “Problematum astronomicorum” Venezia, Giunta); De cochlea,” Venezia, Deuchino);  “Le mechaniche nelle quali si contiene la dottrina di tutti gl’istrumenti principali da mover pesi grandissimi con picciola forza”  (Venezia, Franceschi); “Lettere” (Venezia); “La teoria sui planisferi universali” (Firenze). Galileo (che nel frattempo era stato molto probabilmente anche suo ospite) puo occupare la cattedra di Padova, grazie anche all’intervento delduca., che nell’ambiente veneto poteva contare, oltre che sull’amicizia di un Contarini e di un Pinelli, sull’autorità e l’influenza di M., generale delle fanterie della Repubblica": Fondazione cardinal Francesco maria delmonte -- guidobaldo-del-monte. A. Giostra, La stella o cometa nelle lettere a Giordani, Giornale di Astronomia. Galilei. Guidobaldo II della Rovere Mombaroccio, Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Grice: “There possibly is no equivalent to perspective for the other senses. Prospettiva, as the Italians call it. They are obsessed with it. Consider the human body. Consider Apollo del Belvedere – it is not just a body perceiving another body, there is a perspectival side to it!” Giambattista del Monte. Guido Ubaldo de’ marchesi Del Monte; Guidobaldo Del Monte. Monte. Keywords: implicature, perspective in statuary. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e del Monte," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

 

Grice e Moramarco: la ragione conversazioane e l’implicatura conversazionale della tradizione massonica – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Reggio nell’Emilia). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “Unlike Moramarco, what most people know about massoneria is via “Il flauto magico”!” Grice: “Moramarco analyses massoneria aa a philosophical cult, talking about ‘brotherly link’ ‘vincolo fraterno’ – he has unearthed a few fascinating details about massoneria in Italy. Esponente della Massoneria te assertore di una sintesi religiosa tra Mazdeismo e Cristianesimo. Discende da un'antica famiglia di Altamura, di ascendenze latino-germaniche, cresciuta e ramificatasi durante il dominio dei Farnese. Studioso di Massoneria, ha scritto la Nuova Enciclopedia Massonica in tre volumi, importante testo di ricerca massonologica. Un suo precedente volume, La Massoneria ieri e oggi fu tra i primi, sull'argomento, pubblicati in Russia dopo il crollo del regime sovietico, che aveva proscritto le Logge.  Iniziato nel Grande Oriente d'Italia, divenne Maestro Venerabile della Loggia Intelletto e Amore, ricevette la decorazione all'Ordine di Bruno, conferita a quanti si distinguono nello studio e nella diffusione degli ideali massonici. Coordinatore scientifico del Convegno Internazionale anni di Massoneria in Italia, al quale parteciparono studiosi quali Paolo Ungari, Alessandro Bausani, Mola, Basso, Roversi Monaco, Ricca. Il convegno fiorentino costituì la prima risposta pubblica, da parte della Comunione massonica di Palazzo Giustiniani, alle degenerazioni della P2.  Nello stesso anno, in qualità di Garante d'Amicizia tra il Grande Oriente d'Italia e la Grand Lodge of South Africa, richiese, d'accordo con il Gran Maestro Armando Corona, che tutte le Logge sudafricane, peraltro già avviate in tale direzione  (quando un gruppo di Liberi Muratori della Massoneria Prince Hall era stato ammesso nella Loggia "De Goede Hoop" di Cape Town), abrogassero l'apartheid, scelta che esse fecero, qualificandosi tra le prime associazioni bianche a superare la segregazione razziale. Uscì dal Grande Oriente d'Italia, rigettandone il laicismo, per ravvivare i nuclei massonici di impronta cristiana e spiritualista, che assunsero la denominazione Real Ordine degli Antichi Liberi e Accettati Muratori. Su tale concezione della Massoneria ha scritto La via massonica. Dal manoscritto Graham al risveglio noachide e cristiano (), un testo dal quale emerge, fra l'altro, l'importanza della devozione alla Vergine Maria, come madre del Cristo ed espressione umana della divina Sophia, nella genesi della spiritualità massonica.  Ha ricostruito le vicende della Gran Loggia d'Italia, l'altra associazione maggioritaria di Liberi Muratori in Italia, nel volume Piazza del Gesù. Documenti rari e inediti della tradizione massonica italiana, contribuendo in seguito alla realizzazione di programmi tematici per varie emittenti televisive, tra le quali Rossija 24, Reteconomy e È TV Rete7.  Ha conseguito il 33º grado del Rito scozzese antico ed accettato e il VII del Rito filosofico italiano, che nel secondo decennio del Novecento vide tra le sue fila i neopitagorici Arturo Reghini e Amedeo Rocco Armentano. Fonda in Italia l'Antico Rito Noachita su patente ricevuta presso il British Museum dall'ex Maestro Venerabile della Loggia "Heliopolis" di Londra.  Ha realizzato una colonna sonora per i rituali massonici, dal titolo Masonic Ritual Rhapsody. presso la Loggia "Gottfried Keller" di Zurigo, è stato ricevuto come membro nell'Independent Order of Odd Fellows.  Già attivo con Joseph L. Gentili,  editore del newsletter Brooklyn Universalist Christian, in un progetto di restaurazione della Chiesa Universalista d'America, contro la deriva liberal di quel movimento, ha ricevuto il navjote zoroastriano. Nel volume Il Mazdeismo Universale propone una visione eclettica di tale religione, collegando ad essa elementi del misticismo ebraico, del dualismo platonico e cristiano, del buddhismo Mahāyāna, e riconoscendo in Gesù il saoshyant (divino soccorritore, messia) profetizzato dall'antica religione iranica, in una prospettiva teologica di tipo mazdeo-cristiano, intorno alla quale si è formata una Fraternità Mazdea Cristiana.  Si è avvicinato alle correnti latitudinaria e mistica dell'Anglicanesimo e al percorso religioso di Loyson, confluendo in una comunità religiosa di orientamento eclettico, ove ha potuto conservare la doppia appartenenza, cristiana e zoroastriana. Entro tale gruppo, che nel gennaio  ha assunto la denominazione Reformed Cloister of the Holy SpiritUnione Riformata Universalista, è un oblato di San Pellegrino delle Alpi, secondo la Regola che, ispirandosi alle tradizioni fiorite intorno alla vita di quell'eremita del Cristianesimo celtico, contempla almeno un atto quotidiano "di giustizia, o di soccorso fraterno" anche nei riguardi di animali e piante.  Laureatosi cum laude in Filosofia presso l'Bologna,, con una tesi sul pensatore indiano Sri Aurobindo (relatore il noto indologo e sanscritista Giorgio Renato Franci), nella seconda metà degli anni Ottanta si è formato in Training autogeno e Psicoterapia con la procedura immaginativa sotto la guida di Luigi Peresson.  Ha trattato dei nessi tra Zoroastrismo e Cristianesimo nei libri La celeste dottrina noachita (e I Magi eterni, di fenomenologia del sacro ne L'ultima tappa di Henry Corbin e di tanatologia in Psicologia del morire. Ha scritto sulle esperienze di autogestione dei lavoratori nel mondo e sui rapporti tra socialismo e religione per Azione nonviolenta, la rivista fondata da Aldo Capitini. Con il saggio Per una rifondazione del Socialismo partecipò al simposio "Marxismo e nonviolenza" (Firenze) nel quale intervennero, tra gli altri, Bobbio e Garaudy. -- è un sostenitore della lingua ausiliaria internazionale Esperanto. Ha aderito al gruppo esperantista bolognese "Achille Tellini".  In ambito narrativo, ha scritto Diario californiano e Torbida dea. Si è occupato di storia dello spettacolo, scrivendo I mitici Gufi, sul celebre quartetto di cabaret degli anni sessanta, e partecipando all'allestimento del programma Gufologia per Rai Sat; con l'ex "Gufo" Roberto Brivio ha collaborato sia nella riproposta del repertorio del gruppo in teatri e circoli culturali, sia nella realizzazione di un laboratorio teatrale e musicale che vide attivamente coinvolti numerosi alunni portatori di disabilità, presso l'Istituto medio superiore in cui insegnò psicologia.  Ha inciso quattro CD, Allucinazioni amorose (meno due), Gesbitando, Come al crepuscolo l'acacia e Existenz, che contengono sue canzoni e brevi suites strumentali, ricevendo il plauso, tra gli altri, di critici come Maurizio Becker, Mario Bonanno (Musica & Parole) e Salvatore Esposito (Blogfoolk), di autori come Bruno Lauzi, Ernesto Bassignano, Giorgio Conte e dei jazzisti Giulio Stracciati e Shinobu Ito.  Nel dicembre  è stato chiamato da Luisa Melis, figlia e continuatrice dell'opera di Ennio Melis, il patron della RCA Italiana, a far parte della giuria del Premio De André.  Saggi: “La Massoneria” (Vecchi, Milano), “La Massoneria: cronaca, realtà, idee (Vecchi, Milano), “Per una rifondazione del socialismo, in: Marxismo e non-violenza (Lanterna, Genova) – PARTITO SOCIALISTA ITALIANO --; “La Libera Muratoria” (Sugar, Milano); “La Massoneria. Il vincolo fraterno che gioca con la storia” (Giunti, Firenze) Diario (Bastogi, Foggia) Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico POMBA (Torino); Antroposofia, Besant, Cagliostro, Radiestesia, ecc.). L'ultima tappa di Henry Corbin, in Contributi alla storia dell'Orientalismo, Franci (Clueb, Bologna) “La Massoneria in Italia” (Bastogi, Foggia) Enciclopedia Massonica (Ce.S.A.S., Reggio E.; Bastogi, Foggia); Psicologia del morire, in  I nuovi ultimi (Francisci, Abano Terme) Piazza del Gesù. “Documenti rari e inediti della tradizione massonica italiana” (Ce.SA.S. Reggio Emllia); Sette Lodi Massoniche alla Beata Vergine Maria (Real Ordine A.L.A.M., Reggio Emilia) La celeste dottrina noachita (Ce.S.A.S, Reggio E.) I mitici Gufi (Edishow, Reggio Emilia); “Torbida dea. Psicostoria d'amore, fantomi & zelosia (Bastogi, Foggia); Il Mazdeismo Universale. Una chiave esoterica alla dottrina di Zarathushtra (Bastogi, Foggia ) I Magi eterni. Tra Zarathushtra e Gesù (Om, Bologna ) La via massonica. Dal manoscritto Graham al risveglio noachide (Om, Bologna ) Massoneria. Simboli, cultura, storia (consulenza scientifica di M.M.) (Atlanti del Mistero/Giunti-Vecchi, Firenze ) Introduzione alla Libera Muratoria (Settenario, Bologna ) Musica Allucinazioni amorose (meno due)  (Bastogi Music Italia) (Bastogi Music Italia) Gesbitando, (Bastogi Music Italia ) Come al crepuscolo l'acacia  (Heristal Entertainment, Roma ) Existenz ((Heristal Entertainment, Roma ). Note  Aplogruppo Mola, Un valido impulso per una Massoneria "à parts entières", in 250 anni di Massoneria in Italia, F. Ferrari, La Massoneria verso il futuro (una conversazione con Michele Moramarco) v. )  Una breve rassegna di testi fondamentali sulla Massoneria si trova sul sito del Cesnur diretto da Massimo Introvigne. Vedi anche le recensioni di E. Albertoni ne Il Sole 24 Ore, inserto domenicale, e di G. Caprile ne La Civiltà Cattolica, Il volume fu pubblicato nell’anno della dissoluzione dell'URSS, dalla casa editrice Progress, V. Brunelli, Massoneria: è finito con la condanna della P2 il tempo delle logge e dei "fratelli" coperti, in Corriere della sera, Il Corriere della Sera dedicò un lungo articolo allo "scisma" (v. ). Del Real Ordine A.L.A.M. si è occupato anche il centro di ricerca Cesnur, diretto dal noto storico e sociologo delle religioni Massimo Introvigne, v.//cesnur.org/religioni_italia/a/ appendice_02.htm. Il termine Real non aveva alcun riferimento alla storia italiana, ma si richiamava alla leggenda, contenuta negli Antichi doveri, secondo cui l'Ordine Massonico ricevé le sue proto-costituzioni dal re Atelstano d'Inghilterra (Æðelstan); recentemente il Real Ordine ha assunto la denominazione di Unione Cristiana dei Liberi Muratori  Rito filosofico italiano  Antico Rito Noachita  Masonic Ritual Rhapsody, Bastogi Music Italia, youtube.com/watch?v=rSs0 4kpA36U. A questa esperienza è collegata la sua iscrizione alla SIAE come autore musicale  Del percorso che lo ha condotto verso la visione di Zoroastro (Zarathushtra) si è occupata la rivista parsi di Bombay, Parsiana, così come il quotidiano torinese La Stampa v. mazdeanchristian.wordpress.com/  latitudinarismo, in Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,  v. riformati universalisti.wordpress // In questa comunità si ritrovano, su vari temi, idee tratte dal Manicheismo, dall'Arianesimo, dal Quaccherismo, dall'Unitarianismo, dal Giurisdavidismo e dall'universalismo hindu-cristiano del movimento Navavidhan fondato da Keshab Chandra Sen. Frequenti e significativi sono altresì i riferimenti al pensiero di aint-Martin e alla "religione aperta"o della "compresenza dei morti e dei viventi"elaborata da Capitini, Stracciati  Ito  E. Albertoni, Tante fedi, nessun dogma (recensione della Nuova Enciclopedia Massonica, Il Sole 24 Ore,I, inserto culturale domenicale) M. Chierici, Nasce la Lega dei Venerabili (Corriere della Sera) S. Esposito, Dalle radici del Mazdeismo all'Alleanza Mazdea CristianaIntervista con M. (in Secreta Magazine S. Esposito, Gesbitando: intervista con M. (Blogfoolk) F. Ferrari, La Massoneria verso il futuro (una conversazione con M.) (Bastogi, Foggi8) S. Semeraro, Tra la via Emilia e l'Est. Così parlò Zoroastro (La Stampa, Torino) S. Sari, Unico e plurimo al contempo, Dio secondo gli Zoroastriani [intervista a M.M.](Libero) G. Giovacchini, Cultura e spiritualità della Massoneria italiana [prefazione di M.] (Tiphereth, Acireale-Roma )  Zoroastrismo Universalismo Massoneria Rosacroce michelemoramarco.  blog del Real Ordine A.L.A.M., su realordine.wordpress.com. Pagina sul sito di Heristal Entertainment, su heristal.eu. blog degli anglicani latitudinari, su riformatiepiscopali.wordpress.com. Grice: “The Romans are obsessed with what Moramarco calls ‘paganesimo romano’ – the word ‘pagano’ only makes sense in opposition to Christ. It would be very inappropriate of the greatest Italian philosopher ever, Antonino, to consider his self pagan!” -- Michele Moramarco. Moramarco. Keywords: la tradizione massonica italiana. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Moramarco” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Moravia: la ragione conversazionale -- l’implicature conversazionali dei ragazzi – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Bologna). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Moravia: he has philosophised on what makes us ‘human,’ (“il pungolo dell’umano”) – his analysis of ‘il ragazzo selvaggio’ is sublime – and he has played with ‘reason,’ hidden and strutturata – and the universi di senso with which I cannot but agree! – provided we don’t multiply them ad infinitum!” --  Grice: “I like Moravia’s idea of ‘la ragione nascosta’ – you have indeed to seek and thou shalt find!” -- “Il Nietzsche che prediligo è il Nietzsche terreno, umano, presente nel tempo. È il Nietzsche intrepido esploratore del sottosuolo dell'uomo e dei disagi della civiltà. È il Nietzsche che fertilmente e sofferentemente (non narcisisticamente) vive e pensa il nichilismo: ma per andare oltre il nichilismo. È soprattutto il Nietzsche cheneo-illuminista forse malgrado luivuole conoscere, capire, dare un (nuovo) senso alle cose.” Professore a Firenze.  Allievo diGarin, si è formato in ambiente fiorentino conseguendovi la laurea in filosofia nel 1962 con tesi su Gian Domenico Romagnosi. Professore incaricato, è poi diventato ordinario di Storia della Filosofia all'Firenze.  Nel corso della sua carriera, si è interessato particolarmente dell'illuminismo francese e del pensiero del Novecento, della storia e dell'epistemologia delle scienze umane, con particolare attenzione all'antropologia, la filosofia della mente e l'esistenzialismo. I suoi studi e le sue ricerche hanno aperto nuove prospettive interdisciplinari fra pensiero filosofico e scienze umane.  Attualmente, le sue attenzioni sono rivolte verso l'opera e il pensiero del filosofo tedesco Friedrich Nietzsche del quale pubblica già una celebre antologia dal titolo La distruzione delle certezze e, nel 1985, una raccolta di saggi intitolata Itinerario nietzscheano. Proprio un nuovo modo di avvicinarsi e concepire il pensiero del filosofo tedesco lo hanno reso uno dei suoi interpreti più originali e più discussi.  Grazie ai suoi studi e contributi filosofici, è stato visiting professor presso l'Università della California a Berkeley, l'Università del Connecticut a Storrs e il Center for the Humanities della Wesleyan University.  Conferenziere presso altre sedi universitarie americane (fra le quali, Harvard, UCLA, Boston) ed europee (Francia, Belgio, Germania), è cofondatore della “Società italiana degli studi sul XVIII secolo”, nonché membro del Comitato direttivo delle Riviste filosofiche “Iride” e “Paradigmi”. Collabora ai giornali Corriere della Sera, Quotidiano nazionale, La Repubblica. Saggi: “Il tramonto dell'Illuminismo -- filosofia e politica” (Laterza, Roma); “La ragione nascosta” (Sansoni, Firenze); La scienza dell'uomo” (Laterza, Roma); “L’antropologia strutturale” (Sansoni, Firenze); “Esistenziale” (Laterza, Roma); “La teoria critica della società” (Sansoni, Firenze); “Gl’idéologues -- scienza e filosofia” (Nuova Italia, Firenze); “La distruzione delle certezze” (Nuova Italia, Firenze); “Linguaggio, scuola e società not ‘storia’! -- Guaraldi, Firenze); “Filosofia e scienze umane nell'età dei Lumi” (Sansoni, Firenze); “Pensiero e civiltà” (Monnier, Firenze); “Il ragazzo selvaggio dell'Aveyron.” Pedagogia e psichiatria nei testi di Itard, Pinel e dell'anonimo della "Décade" (Laterza, Roma); “Itinerario nietzscheano, Guida, Napoli); Educazione e pensiero, Monnier, Firenze, Filosofia: storia e testi, Monnier, Firenze, “L'enigma dell’animo” Laterza, Roma); Compendio di filosofia,  Monnier, Firenze, L'enigma dell'esistenza -- soggetto, morale, passioni nell'età del disincanto, Feltrinelli, Milano, L'esistenza ferita -- modi d'essere, sofferenze, terapie dell'uomo nell'inquietudine del mondo, Feltrinelli, Milano, Filosofia dialettico-negativa e teoria critica della società, Mimesis, Milano; “Ragione strutturale e universi di senso” (Lettere, Firenze); “La Massoneria. La storia, gli uomini, le idee, Mondadori, Milano); “Firenze e l’Umanesimo. Arte, cultura, comunicazione” (Lettere, Firenze); Lo strutturalismo, Lettere, Firenze); “Filosofia e psicoanalisi (POMBA, Torino); “L'universo del corpo, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma,  “Animo e realtà psichica” (Borla, Roma, "L'esistenza e il male", in:  "Mysterium iniquitatis", Gregoriana, Padova, Linterpretazione personologico-esistenziale dell'uomo", in:  La questione del soggetto tra filosofia e scienze umane, Monnier, Firenze) – PERSONOLOGIA – PIROTOLOGIA – Grice, persona -- Lettura Magistrale" al Convegno Dalla riabilitazione psicosociale alla promozione della salute(Montecatini), "S.I.R.F. News", "Mente, soggetto, esperienza nel mondo", in La filosofia italiana in discussione -- La filosofia italiana in discussione, Società Filosofica Italiana, Firenze), Bruno Mondadori, Milano, "Crisi della cultura e relazioni generazionali nel mondo contemporaneo", in Giovani e adulti: prove di ascolto, Sansepolcro (AR), "La filosofia degli idéologues. Scienza dell'uomo e riflessione epistemological, Letteratura italiana tra illuminismo e romanticismo, Convegno, Italianistica, Padova,  "Libertà, finitudine, impegno -- genesi e significato della responsabilità nel mondo", in: V. Malagola Giustizia e responsabilità (Convegno, Firenze), Giuffré Milano,  "Dal soggetto persona alla relazione interpersonale", Maieutica, De-mitizzazione e de- valorizzazione. La crisi della 'forma famiglia' nella società", in: Interazioni, "Illuminismo e modernità", Hiram, "Prove d'ascolto. Crisi della cultura e relazioni generazionali nel mondo contemporaneo", Studi sulla formazione, "La guerra giusta", Hiram,  "La filosofia, la conoscenza dell'umano, il dialogo col pensiero religioso", Hiram, "Esistenza e felicità", Hiram, "L'Occidente e la pace. Luci e ombre all'alba del terzo millennio", Hiram,"La filosofia e il suo 'altro'. La riflessione metafilosofica di Adorno in 'Dialettica negativa'", Iride,  "L'uomo: una storia infinita", in:  Per una scienza dell'umano, Arezzo,  "L’'interpretazione personologico-esistenziale dell'uomo" – PERSONALOGIA – Grice, PERSONA. in: L. Neuro-fisiologia e teorie della mente, Vita & Pensiero, Milano, "La scoperta dell'inconscio, l'ambiguità del freudismo e il lavoro della psicoanalisi sull'animale, Convegno "Meta-psicologia”, Napoli, La Biblioteca, Bari, "Un mondo negato. L'assolutizzazione del corpo nella psico-umanologia contemporanea", UMANOLOGIA – ibrido -- Hermeneutica, Corpo e persona, "Complessità, pluralità, confini", in: Dal coordinatore al coordinamento,Coordinatori pedagogici in Emilia-Romagna, Assessorato Servizi Sociali, Bologna, Bruno Maiorca, Filosofi italiani contemporanei. Parlano i protagonisti, Bari, Dedalo,  su sapere, De Agostini. Gran Loggia del GOI dal titolo "Tu sei mio fratello" Registrazione video della Lectio Magistralis "Al di qua del bene e del male Nietzsche esploratore dell'umano" Modena e Reggio Emilia Tavola rotonda del GOI "Pedagogia delle libertà Libertà civili" Convegno del GOI "La scienza non sia ostacolata dall'ideologia, dalla politica e dalla religione" tavola rotonda della Comunità Oasi "Significato e funzione della pena, della punizione e della penitenza nella promozione umana e sociale"  "Catturati dall'effimero?" all'interno del Convegno Giovanile alla Cittadella di Assisi" dsu arcoiris. Sergio Moravia. Moravia. Keywords: ragazzi, personologia. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Moravia” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mordacci: l’implicatura convresazionale e la norma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Milano). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Mordacci – in a way, like I did with J. L. Mackie, Mordacci opposes both ‘assolutismo’ and ‘relativismo’ – and tries to ‘construct’ an ‘inter-personal’ reason out of a full-fledged personal reason. Whereas it would seem that we enjoin the principle of conversational helpfulness out of altruism, there is this balance between conversational self-love and conversational other-love; and we only ‘respect’ the other that respects us as ‘pesonal;’ against Apel, the logic of the inter-personal reduces, in a complex way, to the logic of the personal; without it, we would be annihilating the autonomy of the will.” Grice: “I like Mordacci’s emphasis on reason for normativity – interpersonal reason, as he calls it!” È preside della Facoltà di Filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele dove è Professore di Filosofia Morale.  È Direttore del Centro Internazionale di Ricerca per la Cultura e la Politica Europea.  Laurea in filosofia presso l'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano; Dottorato in bioetica presso l'Università degli Studi di Genova. Ha svolto attività di ricerca e insegnamento presso la Scuola di Medicina e Scienze Umane dell'Istituto Scientifico Ospedale San Raffaele. Insegnato presso l'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, prima presso la Facoltà di Psicologia e dal 2002 presso la Facoltà di Filosofia che ha contribuito a fondare insieme con Cacciari, Edoardo Boncinelli, Michele Di Francesco, Andrea Moro. Ha contribuito a progetti di ricerca ed è stato membro del Consiglio d'Europa per l'insegnamento della bioetica. Dal  è preside della Facoltà di Filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, essendo stato rieletto nel giugno  per il secondo mandato.  Membro del Comitato Nazionale per la Biosicurezza, le Biotecnologie e le Scienze per la Vita della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri.  Dal  al  è stato membro del Comitato Scientifico per EXPO  come delegato del Rettore dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffele.  Dal  è membro della Commissione per l'Etica della Ricerca e la Bioetica del consiglio nazionale delle ricerche e del consiglio direttiva della Società Italiana di Filosofia Morale. Si è dedicato in particolar modo dei temi: "Etica e ragioni morali", "Etica pubblica e rispetto", "Neuroetica". Attraverso l'indagine delle "ragioni morali" e dell'"identità personale" e ispirandosi alla filosofia kantiana, propone una forma di "personalismo critico" in base alla quale il fondamento dell'esperienza morale viene individuato nella ricerca, che ognuno compie, delle "buone ragioni" che danno forma alla propria individualità personale attraverso l'agire. Riconoscere ogni persona come autrice della propria identità fonda un'etica del rispetto delle persone in quanto a ogni individuo viene riconosciuto il diritto e il dovere di esprimere le proprie abilità e costruire la propria personalità.  Si è inoltre occupato di bioetica essendo anche stato coordinatore del progetto Bioetica della genetica: questioni morali e giuridiche negli impieghi clinici, biomedici e sociali della genetica umana del Miur (FIRB, Tra i suoi interessi più recenti, la disciplina della Film and Philosophy: la riflessione su come i film possono fare filosofia e se possono argomentare vere e proprie tesi filosofiche. In questo contesto ha dato vita al Laboratorio di Filosofia e Cinema presso la Facoltà di Filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, conduce il sabato pomeriggio la rubrica "Al cinema col Filosofo" su TgCom24 (stagioni - e -) e la rubrica "Imparare ad amare i film" all'interno di Cinematografo Estate () su Rai 1.  Riviste È membro del comitato scientifico dell'Annuario di Etica (ed. Vita e Pensiero), dell'Annuario di Filosofia (ed. Mimesis) e della rivista online Etica & Politica.  Dalla sua fondazione è membro del Comitato Scientifico della rivista scientifica a cura del Comitato Etico della Fondazione Umberto Veronesi.  Attività teatrale Romeo e Giulietta: nascita e tragedia dell'io moderno, Eloisa e Abelardo: passione e negazione, Occidente, o identità fragile: Auster e le Follie di Brooklyn, analisi filosofiche con letture sceniche, ciclo "Aperitivi con Sophia", Teatro Franco Parenti,La violenza e l'ingiustiziaGorgia, ciclo "Filosofi a teatro" M., Teatro Franco Parenti, L'individuo, la libertà e il perdono. Hegel legge Dostoevskij, lettura scenica di M. e Sorel, ciclo l'Intelligenza e la Fantasia, Teatro Strehler,L'isola della verità. Divagazioni fotografiche e filosofiche, lettura scenica di M., Traini e Stepparava, Cluster Isole, Mare e Cibo, Padiglione P03-Expo Milano  (Rho-Fiera), Kant e il mare, lettura scenica di Roberto Mordacci e Francesca Ria, agosto  Saggi:“Bio-etica della sperimentazione,” Angeli, Milano; “Salute e bio-etica,” Einaudi, Milano); “Una introduzione alle teorie morali,” Feltrinelli, Milano,  La vita etica e le buone ragioni, Mondadori, Milano, “Ragioni personali, ragione inter-personali: Saggio sulla normatività morale,” Carocci, Milano, Elogio dell'Immoralista, Mondadori, Milano; Rispetto, Cortina, Milano. Bioetica, Mondadori, Milano. L'etica è per le persone, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo. Al cinema con il filosofo. Imparare ad amare i film, Mondadori, Milano. La condizione neomoderna, Einaudi, Torino,. Ritorno a utopia, Laterza, Bari,. Note  Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, su unisr. Governo/bioetica, su governo.M., su Le Università per Expo,Commissione per l’Etica della Ricerca e la Bioetica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, su cnr.  Organi della società | SIFM, su sifm. Intervista a L'accento di Socrate, su laccentodi socrate.  Rai 1, Cinematografo estate, su rai.tv.  Scienza e etica: in uscita la nuova rivista della Fondazione Veronesi, su Fondazione Umberto Veronesi.  Chi siamo  su scienceandethics. fondazioneveronesi. Feeding the Mind: Expo-Bicocca Conversation Hour, su unimib. Lettura scenica de "I Sensi del Mare", su//elbareport. 1 Pearson Imparare sempre su pearson. 1º agosto.  Bioetica Mordacci Robertoe Book Mondadori BrunoSai cos'è?FilosofiaePubIBS, su ibs. L'etica è per le personeEdizioni San Paolo, su edizionisanpaolo.  Riflessioni sul senso della vita intervista di Ivo Nardi, sito "Riflessioni", settembre. Ci vuole più rispetto intervista a Roberto Mordacci, Famiglia Cristiana. Ma l'etica non è un'intrusa, intervista a Roberto Mordacci, Avvenire, Ora smettiamola di parlare inglese, intervista a Roberto Mordacci, Il Giornale. Roberto Mordacci. Mordacci. Keywords: la norma, filosofia dela storia, Vico.  Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Mordacci” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Morelli: la ragione conversazionale, l’implicatura conversazionale e la filosofia del digiuno – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Milano). Filosofo italiano. Grice: ‘I once told Austin, I don’t give a hoot what the dictionary says;’ ‘And that’s where you make your big mistake,’ his crass response was!” -- Grice: “I once told Ackrill, ‘should there be a manual of philosophy, must we follow it?’ He replied, “One thing is to know the manual, another is to know how to abide by it!”  Si laurea a Pavia  e l'anno dopo assolve all'obbligo di leva a Trieste dove presta attenzione alle problematiche relazionali dei militari nello svolgimento delle proprie mansioni; si è poi specializzato in Psichiatria presso l'Università degli Studi di Milano. Direttore dell'Istituto Riza, gruppo di ricerca che pubblica la rivista Riza Psicosomatica ed altre pubblicazioni specializzate, con lo scopo di "studiare l'uomo come espressione della simultaneità psicofisica riconducendo a questa concezione l'interpretazione della malattia, della sua diagnosi e della sua cura". Inoltre è direttore delle riviste Dimagrire e Salute Naturale.  Dall'attività dell'Istituto Riza è sorta anche la Scuola di Formazione in Psicoterapia ad indirizzo psicosomatico, riconosciuta ufficialmente dal Ministero dell'università e della ricerca scientifica e tecnologica. Vicepresidente della Società Italiana di Medicina Psicosomatica. Partecipa a numerose trasmissioni televisive sia per la RAI sia per Mediaset (Maurizio Costanzo Show, Tutte le mattine, Matrix, ecc.) e per la radio.  Nelle sue opere ci sono molti riferimenti alle dottrine orientali. Saggi: “Verso la concezione di un sé psico-somatico. Il corpo è come un grande sogno della mente (Milano, UNICOPLI, Milano, Cortina); La dimensione respiratoria. Studio psico-somatico del respiro, inspiro, expiro – spiro --  Milano, Masson Italia, Dove va la medicina psico-somatica (Milano,  Riza); Il sacro. Antropoanalisi, psico-somatica, comunicazione, Milano, Riza-Endas, Convegno internazionale Mente-corpo: il momento unificante. Milano, Atti, Milano, UNICOPLI, Riza, I sogni dell'infinito, Milano, Riza, Autostima. Le regole pratiche, Milano, a cura dell'Istituto Riza di medicina psicosomatica, Il talento. Come scoprire e realizzare la tua vera natura, Milano, Riza, Ansia, Milano, Riza, Insonnia, Milano, Riza, Cefalea, (Milano, Riza); Lo psichiatra e l'alchimista. Romanzo, Milano, Riza, Le nuove vie dell'autostima. Se piaci a te stesso ogni miracolo è possibile, Milano, Riza, Conosci davvero tuo figlio? Sconosciuto in casa. Dal delitto di Novi Ligure al disagio di una generazione, Milano, Riza, Come essere felici, Milano, Mondadori, Cosa dire e non dire nella coppia, Milano, Mondadori, Come mantenere il cervello giovane, Milano, Mondadori, Come affrontare lo stress, Milano, Mondadori, Come amare ed essere amati (Milano, Mondadori); Come dimagrire senza soffrire (Milano, Mondadori); Come risvegliare l'eros, Milano, A. Mondadori, Come star bene al lavoro, Milano, Mondadori, Come essere single e felici, Milano, A. Mondadori,  Cosa dire o non dire ai nostri figli, Milano, A. Mondadori, La rinascita interiore, Milano, Riza, Volersi bene. Tutto ciò che conta è già dentro di noi (Milano, Riza); L'amore giusto. C'è una persona che aspetta solo te, Milano, Riza, Vincere i disagi. Puoi farcela da solo perché li hai creati tu, Milano, Riza); Felici sul lavoro. Come ritrovare il benessere in ufficio, Milano, Riza, I figli felici. Aiutiamoli a diventare se stessi, Milano, Riza, La gioia di vivere. Scorre spontaneamente dentro di noi, Milano, Riza, Essere se stessi. L'unica via per incontrare il benessere, Milano, Riza, Accendi la passione. È la scintilla che risveglia l'energia vitale, Milano, Riza, Alle radici della felicità. Editoriali dpubblicati su Riza psicosomatica, rivista mensile delle Edizioni Riza, Milano, Riza, Ciascuno è perfetto. L'arte di star bene con se stessi, Milano, Mondadori, Il segreto di vivere. Aforismi, Milano, Riza, Realizzare se stessi, Milano, Riza, Vincere la solitudine, Milano, Riza, Dimagrire senza fatica, Milano, Riza, Amare senza soffrire, Milano, Riza, Guarire con la psiche, Milano, Riza, Superare il tradimento, Milano, Riza, Dizionario della felicità, 6 voll, Milano, Riza, Non siamo nati per soffrire, Milano, Mondadori,L'autostima. Le cinque regole. Vivere la vita. Adesso, Milano, Riza, Conoscersi. L'arte di valorizzare se stessi. Via le zavorre dalla mente, Milano, Riza,  I figli difficili sono i figli migliori, Milano, Riza, Il matrimonio è in crisi... che fortuna!, Milano, Riza, Autostima, I consigli di M. per un anno di felicità, Milano, Riza, Le parole che curano, Milano, Riza, Perché le donne non ne possono più... degli uomini, Milano, Riza, Le piccole cose che cambiano la vita, Milano, Mondadori, Come trovare l'armonia in se stessi, Milano, Mondadori,  Ama e non pensare, Milano, Mondadori, Curare il panico. Gli attacchi vengono per farci esprimere le parti migliori di noi stessi, con Vittorio Caprioglio, Milano, Riza, Non dipende da te. Affidati alla vita così realizzi i tuoi desideri, Milano, Mondadori, L'alchimia. L'arte di trasformare se stessi (Milano, Riza); Il sesso è amore. Vivere l'eros senza sensi di colpa, Milano, Mondadori, Puoi fidarti di te, Milano, Mondadori, La felicità è dentro di te, Milano, Mondadori, L'unica cosa che conta (Milano, Mondadori); La felicità è qui. Domande e risposte sulla vita, l'amore, l'eternità, con Luciano Falsiroli, Milano, Mondadori, Guarire senza medicine. La vera cura è dentro di te (Milano, Mondadori); Lezioni di autostima. Come imparare a stare beni con se stessi e con gli altri (Milano, Mondadori); Il segreto dell'amore felice, Milano, Mondadori, La saggezza dell'anima. Quello che ci rende unici (Milano, Mondadori); Pensa magro. Le 6 mosse psicologiche per dimagrire senza dieta (Milano, Mondadori); Vincere il panico. Le parole per capirlo, i consigli per affrontarlo, cosa fare per guarirlo (Milano, Mondadori) Nessuna ferita è per sempre. Come superare i dolori del passato (Milano, Mondadori); Solo la mente può bruciare i grassi. Come attivare l'energia dimagrante che è dentro di noi (Milano, Mondadori); Breve corso di felicità. Le antiregole che ti danno la gioia di vivere (Milano, Mondadori); La vera cura sei tu (Milano, Mondadori); Il meglio deve ancora arrivare. Come attivare l'energia che ringiovanisce (Milano, Mondadori); Il potere curativo del digiuno. La pratica che rigenera corpo e mente (Milano, Mondadori). Segui il tuo destino. Come riconoscere se sei sulla strada giusta (Milano, Mondadori); Il manuale della felicità. Le dieci regole pratiche che ti miglioreranno la vita (Milano, Mondadori); Pronto soccorso per le emozioni. Le parole da dirsi nei momenti difficili (Milano, Mondadori). Movie. Grice: “Should there be a ‘dizionario della felicita,’ I would perhaps follow Austin’s advice and go through it!” –. Raffaele Morelli. Morelli. Keywords: la dimensione respiratoria, inspirare, respirare, spirare, spirito, il corpo animato spira – il corpo spira – corpo spirante, corpo animato --. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Morelli” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Moretti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale e la segnatura romantica – i romantici di roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Moretti – he uses a good metaphor, ‘the wounded poet,’ unless we mean Owen, but he was more than wounded, even if that implicature is cancellable --.” Grice: “I like Moretti also because he wrote on ‘ermeneutica sensibile,’ which is exactly what I do.” Grice: “I like Moretti also because he uses ‘segnatura’ etymologically, when he writes of the ‘la segnatura romantica’ – talk of tokens!” Nasce nel borghese quartiere Trieste, primo di due fratelli. Ottiene il diploma di maturità classica presso il Liceo Giulio Cesare. Successivamente consegue una prima laurea in Giurisprudenza, con una tesi in filosofia del diritto, e, nel una seconda in filosofia, con una tesi in filosofia morale, entrambe presso l'Roma La Sapienza. È poi borsista presso l'Friburgo in Brisgovia, dove imposta un progetto di ricerca che, partendo dall'interpretazione di Heidegger, mira ad un'analisi critica delle categorie filosofico-estetiche del “romantico” in Germania, con particolare attenzione alle opere di autori del romanticismo di Heidelberg, quali Creuzer, Görres, i Fratelli Grimm e Bachofen, che contribuisce a tradurre e a far conoscere in Italia. Al suo rientro insegna dapprima materie letterarie nelle scuole medie e, in seguito, filosofia presso la Scuola germanica di Roma.  La sua ricerca si amplia poi al pensiero estetico di Novalis, di cui cura la prima edizione completa in lingua italiana della Opera filosofica; durante questo periodo consegue il dottorato di ricerca in Estetica presso l'Bologna. Vince la cattedra di professore associato di Estetica all'Bari; Professore a Napoli L’Orientale.  Redattore di Itinerari e Studi Filosofici, collabora con varie altre riviste filosofiche (Agalma, Rivista di Estetica, Studi di Estetica, aut aut, Nuovi Argomenti, Filosofia e Società, Filosofia Oggi, Estetica) e ha spesso partecipato a trasmissioni RAI su temi filosofici e a numerosi convegni.  Saggi: ”Il romantico: poesia, mito, storia, arte e natura” (Itinerari, Lanciano); -- roma – romantico -- “Anima e immagine: sul poetico” (Aesthetica, Palermo); “Nichilismo e romanticismo -- estetica e filosofia della storia” (Cadmo, Roma); La segnatura romantica (Roma, Hestia); “Interpretazione del romanticismo” (Ianua, Roma); “Estetica: analogia e principio poetico nella profezia romantica” -- Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino); “La segnatura romantica -- filosofia e sentimento” (Hestia, Cernusco L.); “Il genio” (Mulino, Bologna); “Il poeta ferito.” Hölderlin, Heidegger e la storia dell'essere” (Mandragora, Imola); “Anima e immagine.” Studi su  Klages, Mimesis, Milano, Heidelberg romantica. Romanticismo e nichilismo” Guida, Napoli, Introduzione all'estetica del Romanticismo, Nuova Cultura, Roma,  Il genio, Morcelliana, Brescia. Per immagini. Esercizi di ermeneutica sensibile” (Moretti & Vitali, Bergamo); Heidelberg romantica. Romanticismo tedesco e nichilismo europeo, Morcelliana, Brescia, Novalis. Pensiero, poesia, romanzo Morcelliana, Brescia, Romano Guardini, Hölderlin, Morcelliana, Brescia. Novalis, Scritti filosofici, Morcelliana, Brescia. J. J. Bachofen, Il matriarcato (Marinotti, Milano); Novalis, Opera filosofica,  I, Einaudi, Torino, Un video con una trasmissione RAI. Un video con un intervento di Moretti. Giampiero Moretti. Moretti. Keywords: roma, romanzo, romanzare, romanzato – non vero. Romanticismo filosofico, I filosofi romantici italiani  Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Moretti: il romanticismo romano” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mori: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale e la coerenza dell’intransigenza – la ripproduzione sessuata fra i antici romani – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Cremona).  Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Mori; he wrote a treatise on Stephen, better known as Virginia Woolf’s father; which reminded me of Bergmann who once called me an English futilitarian!” -- Professore a Torino e presidente della Consulta di Bioetica Onlus, un'associazione di volontariato culturale per la promozione della bioetica laica. L’etica e la bioetica con le varie problematiche connesse sono le tematiche al centro dei suoi interessi filosofici e teorici.  Mori ha studiato all’Università degli Studi di Milano, dove ha conseguito la laurea (con Bonomi e Pizzi) e il dottorato sotto Scarpelli e Jori. Insegnato ad Alessandria e Pisa, prima di essere chiamato a Torino. Studia i temi della meta-etica e della logica dell’etica con le problematiche della teoria etica. Tra i primi a occuparsi di bioetica, nella quale ha dato contributi in tutti i principali settori, con particolare attenzione all’aborto e alla fecondazione assistita. Sollecitato dai casi Welby e Englaro ha dato contributi anche sul fine-vita a difesa dell’autonomia individuale. Per primo teorizza la contrapposizione paradigmatica tra bioetica laica e bioetica cattolica, derivante dal fatto che quest’ultima propone un’etica della sacralità della vita caratterizzata da divieti assoluti, mentre l’altra avanza un’etica della qualità della vita senza assoluti e soli divieti prima facie. Presta grande attenzione al problema della liberazione animale. Fonda Bioetica. Rivista interdisciplinare (Ananke Lab, Torino). Membro di numerosi comitati, tra cui il comitato scientifico di Notizie di Politeia, di Iride del Journal of Medicine and Philosophy e altre. Saggi: “Manuale di bioetica: verso una civiltà bio-medica secolarizzata” (Lettere, Firenze); “Introduzione alla bioetica. temi per capire e discutere” (Piazza, Torino); Il caso Eluana Englaro. La “Porta Pia” del vitalismo ippocratico ovvero perché è moralmente giusto sospendere ogni intervento, Pendragon, Bologna, Aborto e morale. Per capire un nuovo diritto” (Einaudi, Torino); “La fecondazione artificiale. Una forma di riproduzione umana” (Laterza, Roma-Bari); “La fecondazione artificiale: questioni morali nell'esperienza giuridica Giuffrè, Milano); “Utilitarismo e morale razionale. Per una teoria etica obiettivista, Giuffrè, Milano, La legge sulla procreazione medicalmente assistita. Paradigmi a confronto, Net, Milano, Laici e cattolici in bioetica: storia e teoria di un confronto, Le Lettere, Firenze, La fecondazione assistita dopo 10 anni di legge 40. Meglio ricominciare da capo!, Ananke editore, Torino, Questa è la scienza, bellezze! La fecondazione assistita come novo modo di costruire le famiglie, Ananke Lab, Torino.   Mori ha rappresentato, nella nostra infernale esperienza di famiglia, un riferimento grazie al quale trovare un senso agli eventi che si succedevano, i qua-Ii, ai nostri occhi, un senso proprio non lo possedevano.  Ho avuto in lui un osservatore attento, un interlocutore profondo, un contestatore intelligente.  Come direttore di «Bioetica. Rivista interdisciplina-re» è stato il primo a dare rilievo pubblico alla vicenda di mia figlia, e ha sollecitato in vari modi la riflessione sul caso Eluana. Gli sono inoltre debitore di numerose conversazioni chiarificatrici, di lezioni private concesse in esclusiva, e lo considero il filosofo che meglio di ogni altro è stato in grado di tenere testa ai miei, notoriamente poco accomodanti, modi e argomenti.  Auspico che questa lettura possa sortire lo stesso effetto in tutti coloro i quali insieme a lui si apprestano, ora, a partire per questo viaggio nel ragionamento etico.  Nel panorama bioetico italiano la sua posizione non mi pare sia assimilabile ad alcuna predefinita corrente di pensiero, anche perché i suoi maestri e amici hanno manifestato originalità e indipendenza. Credo che il libro vada considerato e letto per le argomentazioni che adduce senza schemi precostituiti.  Può darsi che in alcuni passaggi sia un libro scomo-do. Di questo non c'è da stupirsi, ma da prenderne atto.  Scomodo, dunque. Come mia figlia. Come me. Una scomodità che suscita dibattito e stimola la riflessione. Invece di gridare allo scandalo, si deve cogliere l'impegno a riflettere, sempre e senza compromessi. Così è stato nello sforzo compiuto, alla ricerca di una modalità per farrispettare la legittima volontà espressa da mia figlia. La riflessione seria comporta anche scontri, ardenti e auten-tici, che restano per sempre vivi nella memoria. Essere grandi amici non implica certo un accordo incondizionato di vedute. La franchezza delle nostre collisioni dialettiche mi rimane, indimenticabile, nel cuore. La condivisione dei valori di fondo, comunque, rafforza la sintonia e la stima reciproca.  Questo libro propone una riflessione filosofica di ampio respiro sui problemi sollevati dal caso Eluana. Ma oltre a questo contiene la storia di Eluana ripercorsa nelle sue principali tappe, una cronaca precisa degli eventi noti e meno noti che si sono verificati in questi ultimi mesi di continuo travaglio e logorio. Al trionfo dello stato di diritto, rappresentato dai pronunciamenti della Corte di Cassazione prima e della Corte d'Appello dopo, è succeduto un orrore. Non mi è nota, al momento, altra fonte in cui la narrazione dei fatti, la ripresa del dibatti-to, la ricostruzione degli avvenimenti si sia così fedelmente attenuta ai nostri effettivi trascorsi. Il lettore rimarrà certamente colpito dalla presentazione lineare e puntuale degli eventi, e forse, in qualche caso, ne resterà anche perplesso.  In questo testo è inoltre dimostrata la possibilità di difendere gli stessi valori, di reclamare gli stessi diritti, a partire da percorsi differenti: quello che la mia famiglia ha sempre sentito come un insopprimibile bisogno, connaturato e viscerale, di poter decidere riguardo se stessi - tanto più quando in gioco è la fine della propria vita -, Maurizio  Mori lo dimostra come il risultato di una esigente, legittima e rigorosa riflessione etica. Vi sono argomentazioni morali che sono sostenute da così poderose ragioni da apparire dotate di evidenza. Egli ci costringe al ragionamento leale sui nostri sentimenti e pregiudizi più profondi.  E lui più degli altri ha compreso che non mi può cambiare nessuno.Come i magistrati hanno capito questo di Eluana.  Oltre ai giudici che hanno avuto il coraggio di andare fino in fondo, in favore di una delle nostre libertà fonda-mentali, Eluana avrebbe ringraziato anche lui, Maurizio: per la riflessione filosofica compiuta, per il tempo speso, per il mutuo soccorso, per le andate e i ritorni in mille iniziative, per avere lanciato il sasso ed aver mostrato la mano.  In attesa di sapere quale direzione prenderanno gli eventi, mi fa piacere vedere che la vicenda di Eluana e della nostra famiglia sia stata presentata in un testo così autorevole e umanamente ricco.Maurizio Mori. Mori. Keywords: la coerenza dell’intransigenza.

 

Grice e Moriggi: la ragione conversazionale e la stretta di mano – Ercole e Cerbero – le tre implicature conversazionali -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Milano). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like it when Moriggi does substantial metaphysics; he has edited a collection on ‘why is there something rather than nothing?” – hardly rhetoric – and the subtitle is fascinating: the vacuum, the zero, and nothingness! All in Italian, to offend Heidegger!” Specializza in teoria e modelli della razionalità, fondamenti della probabilità e di pragmatism. Insegna a Brescia, Parma, Milano e presso la European School of Molecular Medicine è conosciuto al grande pubblico attraverso la trasmissione TV E se domani di Rai 3 e per alcuni interventi ad altre trasmissioni. Saggi: “Le tre bocche di Cerbero” (Bompiani. Perché esiste qualcosa anziché nulla? Vuoto, Nulla, Zero, con P.Giaretta e G.Federspil (Itaca) Perché la tecnologia ci rende umani  (Sironi) Connessi. Beati quelli che sapranno pensare con le macchine (San Paolo) School Rocks! La scuola spacca, con A. Incorvaia (San Paolo, ), con prefazione rap di Frankie Hi-nrg. Stefano Moriggi. Moriggi. Keywords: le tre bocche di Cerbero. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Moriggi” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Mosca: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – filosofia siciliana – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Palermo). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “When Austin was defending the ‘man in the street,’ he was thinking Mosca!” -- Grice: “I like Mosca; he speaks of elites – Gellner speaks of elites, too!” -- Grice: “Do Italians consider Mosca a philosopher?” –  Saggi: “Sulla teorica dei governi e sul governo parlamentare,  Appunti sulla libertà di stampa, Questioni costituzionali, Le Costituzioni moderne; Elementi di scienza politica, Che cosa è la mafia, Appunti di diritto Costituzionale, Italia, Stato liberale e stato sindacale, Il problema sindacale,  Saggi di storia delle dottrine politiche, Crisi e rimedi del regime parlamentare, Storia delle dottrine politiche, Partiti e sindacati nella crisi del regime parlamentare, Ciò che la storia potrebbe insegnare. Scritti di scienza politica (Milano), Il tramonto dello Stato liberale (a cura di A. Lombardo, Catania) Scritti sui sindacati (a cura di F. Perfetti, M. Ortolani, Roma) Discorsi parlamentari (con un saggio di Panebianco, Bologna. Appunti di diritto costituzionale dall’Enciclopedia Giuridica Italiana. Milano.  La genesi delle cottituzion imoderne. Cenni storici sulla scienza del diritto costituzionale. Definizione dello stato e della sovranità. Condizioni sociali che prepararono il regime rappresentativo. Dottrine politiche che integrano l'azione del dizioni sociali. La costituzione inglese e sua importanza con  dello di tutte le costituzioni moderne. Origini. Ordinamenti politici ed amministrativi dell'Inghilterra. La prima rivoluzione inglese. La restaura:   Vhabecis corpus. La seconda rivoluzione inglese. Il seconc   dei diritti e Patto di stabilimento. Lo svolgimento della costituzione inglese nel  decimottavo.  Lo statuto albertino.  Caratteri delle prime costituzioni moderne. più dirette dello statuto albertino. Il re. Sue prerogative e norme della succezione monarchica. Il gabinetto, i ministri ed il presidente del consiglio. La responsabilità penale dei ministry. La formazione delle due Camere. Varii sistemi  di suffragio.  La legge elettorale politica. Prerogative e funzioni dell» due Camere. Dell’ordine giudiziario. Dei diritti individuali. Dei rapporti fra la chiesa e lo stato. Lo studio del diritto pubblico in genere e del  diritto costituzionale in ispecie richiede anzitutto  la definizione esatta di certi concetti che, per quanto  non nuovi, non hanno acquistato ancora un significato preciso e determinato e nello stesso tempo  accolto da tutti. Il concetto di Stato, che è il più fondamentale  di tutti, venne ad esempio elaborato fin dalla classica antichità e corrisponde a ciò che i greci chiamavano “polis” ed i romani “respublica”. Eppure anche oggi si disputa sulla origine e la natura  dello stato. Fra tutte le definizioni dello stato la migliore mi sembra quella che lo fa consistere nella organizzazione politica e giuridica di un popolo entro  un determinato territorio, ma anche essa ha bisogno di spiegazioni e commenti.  Quando si dice infatti organizzazione politica di  un popolo, s' intende quella di tutti gli elementi che dirigono politicamente un popolo ossia esercitano funzioni statuali. Nello stato moderno perciò vanno  compresi non solo tutti i pubblici funzionari, tenendo conto pure di quelli fra costoro che non  sono pubblici impiegati, ma anche i membri del parlamento ed i consiglieri provinciali e comunali;  e perfino gl’elettori politici e comunali, quando  sono convocati nei comizi, esercitano funzioni statuali e perciò fanno parte dello stato. Ma per quanto in una organizzazione statuale  democratica lo stato comprende, almeno  giuridicamente dappoiché in fatto le cose vanno diversamente, la parte maggiore della società, pure questa non si confonde mai intieramente collo stato. Perchè anche nei paesi dove vige il suffragio universale vi sono molti individui che pur fanno parte  del sociale consorzio, come le donne, i minorenni  e coloro che per condanne sono esclusi dal suffragio, i quali in nessun caso partecipano alle funzioni politiche o statuali.  Ma se lo stato non è la società, esso essendo  costituito dal complesso di tutti gl’elementi che  partecipano alla direzione politica di questa non è certo al di fuori della società. Il cervello non è tutto  il corpo umano, ma ne fa parte e senza di esso il  corpo umano non può vivere. Bisogna però notare  che la vita del corpo sociale ha delle analogie  non delle identità con quelle dell'individuo umano.  Infatti in questo ogni singola cellula è fissata nell'organo di cui fa parte, mentre negl’organismi sociali più perfezionati, nei quali le funzioni statuali sono suddivise in vari organi le cui attribuzioni sono giuridicamente limitate, vediamo spesso che il medesimo individuo fa parte dello stato nell'esercizio della sua pubblica funzione e é sem-plice membro della società al di fuori della sua  funzione e di fronte a tutti gli altri organi dello stato. Ciò accade tanto al semplice elettore che  al magistrato ed allo stesso membro del parlamento, se non vogliamo tener conto per i due ultimi delle poche speciali prerogative che mirano a  salvaguardarne l'indipendenza nell'esercizio delle  loro funzioni. Molti filosofi considerano intanto lo stato e la  società come due enti che per necessità vivono in  continuo antagonismo, per alcuni anzi lo stato è  il perpetuo nemico della società. Dopo quanto si è  scritto risulta evidente che il loro concetto è per lo  meno inesatto e sopratutto è difettoso perchè contribuisce piuttosto a confondere che a chiarire le  idee che si possono avere sull'argomento. Nondimeno esso non è del tutto falso e può essere anzi  riguardato come una interpretazione sbagliata di  una condizione di cose in tutto od in parte verace.  È indiscutibile infatti che in una società vi possono essere elementi dirigenti che dalla costituzione in vigore sono tenuti lontani dalla organizzazione statuale. Ed allora naturalmente vi è una lotta fra questi elementi e quelli già accolti entro lo stato che può assumere la parvenza di una lotta fra stato  e società. E può anche accadere che i progressi del  senso morale e giuridico di una società abbiano oltrepassato quel livello che si era aggiunto nel  momento della formazione del suo organismo politico. Sicché questo, rimasto arretrato, permette  ai rappresentanti dello stato un'azione che riesce vessatoria ed arbitraria per gli altri membri della società.  Ma in sostanza i periodi di antagonismo acuto  fra gl’elementi statuali e quelli extra-statuali di una  società possono essere considerati come eccezionali e sogliono ordinariamente precedere le grandi  rivoluzioni. Tutto quanto si è detto spiega perchè lo stato sia l'organizzazione politica di un popolo. Se si tiene poi presente che, in tutti i paesi che hanno raggiunto un certo grado di civiltà, le condizioni in base alle quali si arriva all'esercizio delle funzioni statuali ed i limiti di queste funzioni sono determinati dalla LEGGE si vede facilmente come  questa organizzazione sia non solo politica ma anche giuridica; perchè essa crea fra i diversi organi  dello stato e fra coloro che esercitano le funzioni statuali ed i semplici cittadini una serie di rapporti giuridici. Questi rapporti nascono in base ad una facoltà  che lo stato esclusivamente possiede: la sovranità. La sovranità consiste nel potere di conchiudere convenzioni e trattati con un’ altro stato e di creare il diritto e farlo eseguire in tutto  il territorio sottoposto allo stato.  I filosofi, educati quasi esclusivamente alle concezioni del diritto privato, si sono spesso trovati  in qualche imbarazzo riguardo a questo attributo della sovranità. Essi stentano a spiegaisi  come e perchè l'ente che ha facoltà di fare la legge, di modificarla e disfarla e *sottoposto* alla legge. Per darsi ragione di questo fatto i filosofi hanno ricorso a tante ipotesi, fra le quali la  più divulgata è quella che lo stato a sorto in  base ad una convenzione, ad un “contratto”, ad un  atto giuridico tacito od espresso, ma ad ogni modo consentito da coloro che fanno parte del consorzio sociale sul quale esso esercita la sua sovranità.  Prendendo a base il concetto che già si è adottato sullo stato e dei suoi rapporti  con la società non riesce difficile di risolvere la difficoltà accennata. Già fin dal tempo dei filosofi e giureconsulti romani si distinsero nello stato due personalità -- una di diritto PRIVATO, per la quale esso potea contrarre obbligazioni come ogni altra persona giuridica -- ed un'altra di diritto PUBBLICO che  gli confere l'esercizio dei poteri sovrani. L'esercizio di questi poteri produce la conseguenza che lo Stato impone a tutti i cittadini degli obblighi, come ad esempio quello dell'imposta e del servizio militare, senza offrire in cambio alcun corrispettivo diretto. Senonchè è da osservare che nelle forme di stato più perfezionato e sopratutto nello stato  rappresentativo moderno, quando si tratta d'imporre questi obblighi e di esercitare in genere la  funzione sovrana per eccellenza, che è quella di  fare le leggi, è necessario il consenso del capo dello stato e di tutte quelle forze politiche che son  rappresentate nei due rami del parlamento. Nel  momento nel quale, collettivamente e nelle forme  volute, gl’elementi ai quali è affidato il POTERE LEGISLATIVO esercitano questa funzione, essi sono sovrani, cioè, SUPERIORI alla legge perchè la fanno  e la disfanno, in tutti gli altri momenti ed individualmente sono soggetti alla sovranità, cioè all'impero della legge. A guardarci bene nello stato moderno ciò non rappresenta una vera anomalia, perchè anche nell'esercizio delle altre funzioni statuali gl’elementi  che le disimpegnano agiscono, sia individualmente  che collegialmente, in nome dello stato e lo rappresentano nei limiti delle loro attribuzioni. Mentre sono completamente soggetti alla sovranità  dello stato in qualunque *altra* manifestazione della  loro attività personale. Tanto i membri del POETER GIUDIZIARIO che gl’agenti del POTERE ESECUTIVO si  trovano infatti nelle condizioni accennate, colla differenza però che, quando esorbitano dalla loro funzione ed anche nell'esercizio della loro funzione, è sempre possibile di esercitare sopra di essi un controllo che riesce malagevole, se non impossibile, di fronte al potere legislativo.   Sia a causa di una lontana parentela. etnica, sia   perchè l'influenza delle vicine colonie greche dell’ Ita-  lia meridionale avrebbe agito efficacemente fin dal se-  sto secolo avanti l’era volgare, certo è che l’organiz-  zazione politica delle città italiche, all’inizio dell’epoca  storica, presenta molte analogie con quella dello stato-  città ellenico.   In Roma infatti, che è la più nota fra le città  italiche, troviamo in origine il Re, il Senato composto  nei tempi più antichi dai capi delle diverse genti pa-  trizie, ed i Comizi, ossia l’assemblea del popolo. Abo-  lita come in Grecia la regalità ereditaria e sostituita  ad essa il consolato e le altre magistrature temporanee,  elettive e quasi sempre multiple, sorse presto anche a  Roma la lotta tra l’antica cittadinanza patrizia, costi-  tuita da coloro che facevano parte delle antiche genti  e la nuova cittadinanza plebea, composta a preferenza  dai discendenti degli stranieri domiciliati e dei servi  liberati. E per un certo tempo pare che due città coe-  sistessero nell’Urbe, con magistrature speciali all’una  ed all’altra, finchè si fusero quasi intieramente con una    62 GAETANO MOSCA    costituzione che ricorda molto il tipo ellenico della  città-stato, ma che si distingue da essa per alcune par-  ticolarità originali. Le principali sarebbero la maggior  facilità con la quale veniva accordata gradatamente la  cittadinanza, od una semicittadinanza, alla parte mi-  gliore dei popoli vinti, il mantenimento di tutti i di-  ritti di cittadinanza ai coloni che si spedivano in siti  abbastanza lontani dalla capitale, ed infine il carattere  spiccatamente aristocratico che conservò fino all’ultimo  secolo della repubblica la costituzione romana rispetto  a quella di quasi tutte 1é città greche. |   Infatti il Senato romano nell’epoca storica era com-  posto da coloro che erano scelti dal censore fra le per-  sone che avevano esercitato cariche elevate, e solo in  un'epoca relativamente recente i Comizi centuriati fu-  rono riformati in maniera da togliere in essi la pre-  ponderanza alle classi altamente censite ed accanto at  Comizi centuriati furono ammessi i Comizi tributi, nei  quali prevaleva il numero sul censo. Però la legge non  poteva essere approvata se non nelia forma precisa con  la quale i magistrati l'avevano proposta, ed il Senato  romano ebbe attribuzioni ed autorità assai più larghe  di quelle concesse ai corpi analoghi che si potevano  trovare in qualche città ellenica. Ed in quanto alle  cariche elettive il costume, più che lia legge, impedì  sino agli ultimi tempi della repubblica che fossero con-  ferite a veri popolani. Infatti il tribunato militare, che  era il primo gradino che dovevano salire coloro che  aspiravano alla carriera politica, fino alla fine della re-  pubblica non fu praticamente accessibile che ai mem-  bri dell’ordine equestre, i quali dovevano possedere  un censo piuttosto elevato.   Ma quando Roma, dopo avere sottomesso l'’ Italia,  ebbe conquistato quasi tutte le terre bagnate dal Me-  diterraneo apparì chiaramente che la costituzione della    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 63    città-stato, sia pure modificata nel modo accennato,  non poteva più funzionare. Infatti la lontananza della.  grande maggioranza dei cittadini era di ostacolo alla  regolare e pronta riunione dei Comizi nel foro, i quali  in ultimo non furono più frequentati che dalla pleba-  glia che abitava nell’ Urbe. Inoltre diveniva impossi--  bile di conservare l’annualità delle cariche più elevate  quando i consoli dovevano fare un lungo viaggio per  recarsi nelle lontane province.   Oltre a ciò era avvenuto un profondo rivolgimento-  nella distribuzione della proprietà fondiaria, poichè  questa si era a poco a poco accentrata nelle mani di  un piccolo numero di latifondisti, e quindi era grada-  tamente diminuita quella classe di piccoli proprietari  che per lungo tempo aveva costituito il nerbo degli:  eserciti romani. Per riparare a questa deficienza furono.  promulgate due leggi: una proposta da Caio Gracco  nell’anno 123 avanti Cristo, mediante la quale l’arma-  mento non era più a carico del soldato, ma veniva.  pagato dal pubblico erario, e l’altra proposta nell’anno-  108 avanti l’era volgare da Caio Mario, il riformatore-  dell’organizzazione militare romana, con la quale ve-.  nivano ammessi nelle legioni non solo i proletari ma  anche i figli dei liberti.   Conseguenza di queste leggi e delle guerre lun-  ghe e lontane fu che all’esercito cittadino si andò  mano mano sostituendo un esercito di soldati di me-  stiere, reclutati negli strati più bassi della popolazione,  e praticamente il comando (imperium), prima corcesso-  solo temporaneamente e con possibilità di revoca ai  comandanti delle legioni, divenne illimitato e si pro-  trasse per molti anni; sicchè i soldati divennero facili  strumenti dei loro capi sostenendone gli ambiziosi di-  segni a patto di partecipare ai vantaggi della vittoria.  In-questa condizione di cose bisogna ricercare una delle.    64 GAETANO MOSCA    principali origini delle guerre civili, che ebbero come  ‘conseguenza un sensibile spostamento della proprietà  privata; perchè durante la prima, e soprattutto durante  la seconda proscrizione, molte furono le terre che ven-  nero tolte ai ricchi ed ai medii proprietari e furono  «distribuite ai soldati, cioè ai proletari armati.   Viva è stata una disputa fra alcuni storici moderni,  perchè alcuni sostengono che Augusto ha voluto creare  una nuova forma di governo, sostituendo l’ {mpero alla  Repubblica, mentre altri invece opinano che egli volle  conservare la forma repubblicana ritoccandola dove  ‘era necessario.   A noi la questione sembra, in tali termini, posta  male; perchè le persone non troppo addentro nello  studio delle istituzioni romane potrebbero in tal modo  supporre che la repubblica in Roma antica fosse una  forma di governo presso a poco uguale alle moderne  repubbliche e che l'impero di Augusto avesse molta  .somiglianza con gli imperi moderni. La verità è che  Augusto vide che l’antica costituzione dello stato-città  non poteva più funzionare dopo che Roma aveva sog-  giogato tutte le coste del Mediterraneo e che i cittadini  romani erano diventati milioni e perciò aggiunse a  quelli antichi nuovi e più efficaci organi di governo,  adattando pure, per quanto era possibile, gli organi  antichi ai bisogni nuovi.   Quindi i comizi come organi legislativi comincia-  rono ad andare in disuso, sebbene Augusto abbia fatto  .da essi approvare due importanti leggi tutelatrici del-  l'istituto familiare, cioè la legge Papia Poppea de  maritandis ordinibus e la legge Julia de adulteriis.  L’ultima legge approvata dai comizi, di cui si ha no-  tizia, è una legge agraria di Nerva dell’anno 97 dopo  Cristo.   La funzione legislativa dei comizi passò all’ Impe-    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 65    ratore ed al Senato, il quale emanava Senatus consulta  aventi forza di legge. Però le antiche prerogative di  questo corpo politico furono notevolmente limitate; in-  fatti gli affari finanziari e la politica estera, che erano  stati di sua competenza, furono in buona parte affidati  all’ Imperatore !.   Le province dell’impero furono divise in imperiali  e senatorie; le une erano amministrate direttamente  dall’ Imperatore mediante funzionari da lui nominati,  le altre da funzionari nominati dal Senato. È da no-  tare che le province imperiali erano quasi tutte ai con-  fini dell'impero ed in esse risiedevano le legioni delle  quali era generalissimo l’imperatore, il quale aveva con-  seguentemente nelle sue mani la forza militare, e nelle  province imperiali, dove vi era un governo militare,  esercitava un’autorità assoluta.   A Roma e nelle province senatorie 1’ Imperatore  era un magistrato civile, però cumulava in sè tante  cariche che la sua volontà era preponderante. Le an-  tiche magistrature repubblicane furono quasi tutte con-  . servate, ma, accanto ad esse, si istituirono nuove e  più efficaci ciriche, coperte da semplici cavalieri o dai  liberti dell’ Imperatore, che dipendevano direttamente  da lui. Così a poco a poco la burocrazia imperiale    4 Nella civiltà. antica non si riscontra quella netta suddivi-  sione di attribuzioni fra i diversi organi sovrani che, almeno teo-  ricamente, esiste oggi nei paesi di civiltà europea ed americana;  poichè spesso la stessa attribuzione, come ad esempio il potere  legislativo, veniva a vicenda esercitata da due organi diversi. Di ,  fatto poi a Roma, nei primi due secoli dell'impero, i poteri del  Senato si allargavano e restringevano secondo la volontà degli  imperatori; più rispettosi essendo in generale dell’autorità del  Senato quelli che lasciarono un buon nome, come ad esempio  Traiano, meno assai quelli che furono dai contemporanei e dai  posteri giudicati malvagi. oa    G. MOSCA. 5    66 È GAETANO MOSCA    soppiantò le antiche magistrature, che divennero col  tempo puramente onorifiche.   Rimase soltanto, come traccia e ricordo dell’antico  regime politico, la /ex regia de imperio per la quale  nominalmente era il Senato, come rappresentante del  popolo romano, che conferiva all'Imperatore la sua  potestà; sebbene di fatto era il favore ed il disfavore  dei pretoriani e poi delle legioni che creava ed abbat-  teva gli imperatori. Ad ogni modo la legge citata fa-  ceva sì che, fino alla fine del terzo secolo dopo Cristo,  la costituzione dell'impero romano si poteva distin-  guere da quella degli antichi imperi orientali, nei quali  il sovrano era tale per delegazione del Dio nazionale  O per privilegio ereditario della sua famiglia. Di que-  sto concetto relativo all’origine dell’autorità dell’ im-  peratore romano si trova ancora il ricordo nelle Pan-  dette di Giustiniano; e perfino alla fine del sesto secolo  dopo Cristo san Gregorio Magno, scrivendo all’ impe-  ratore d’Oriente, affermava che mentre i sovrani stranieri  (reges gentium) erano signori di servi, gli imperatori  romani (imperatores vero reipublicae) comandavano  ad uomini liberi.   Uno dei punti più deboli della costituzione impe-  riale romana fu la incertezza della regola di successione,  la quale faceva sì che nascessero frequenti lotte fra i  diversi pretendenti al trono. I primi cinque imperatori  appartenevano per sangue o per adozione alla famiglia  Giulia Claudia, spentasi questa con Nerone nell’anno  68 dopo Cristo; dopo un anno di guerre civili sotten-  . trava con tre imperatori, Vespasiano, Tito e Domiziano,  la famiglia Flavia fino al 96. Con quell’anno prevale  il costume dell’adozione, mediante il quale l’impera-    tore vivente designava il successore e, mercè questo.    costume, si ebbe una serie di buoni imperatori fino  all’anno 180 dopo Cristo.    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 67    In quell’anno si tornò alla successione naturale,  perchè a Marco Aurelio succedette l’indegno suo figlio  Commodo e, dopo che questi fu ucciso, nel 192 dopo  Cristo, ricominciarono le guerre civili fra i candidati  alla successione, sostenuti ognuno dalle proprie legioni,  e con il ricominciare di queste lotte si manifestarono  i primi indizi della decadenza dell’ impero e della ci-  viltà antica.   Le dottrine politiche degli scrittori romani non  sono molto originali; i Romani, uomini eminentemente  d'azione, amavano poco di teorizzare. Inoltre nell’ul-  timo secolo della Repubblica, epoca torbida di lotte  civili, le teorie servivano poco e l'influenza delle dot-  trine greche era preponderante. E sotto l’ Impero man-  cava il fine pratico per l’indagine teorica dei problemi  politici. . i   Ad ogni modo fra gli scrittori romani nei quali  si trovano pensieri che hanno rapporti con la vita po-  litica si può anzitutto ricordare Lucrezio, il quale  nel suo poema De rerum natura dopo aver ammesso  l'esistenza degli Dei, i quali però non si occuperebbero  delle cose di questo mondo, ricerca le origini degli  ordinamenti politici.   Afferma che in principio gli uomini si riunirono  in città sotto capi scelti tra i più forti ed i più pre-  stanti, poichè questo è il significato che bisogna dare  all’aggettivo pulcher che Lucrezio usa; costoro dege-  nerando abusarono del loro potere raccogliendo nelle  loro mani tutte le ricchezze e suscitando così la ribel-  lione dei governati, la quale avrebbe provocato uno  stato di anarchia che avrebbe reso necessaria la for-  mulazione delle leggi e l'elezione dei magistrati.   Come facilmente si vede vi è in queste teorie  molto eclettismo e si sente in esse l’ influenza di Pla-  tone e di Polibio.    680 " GAETANO MOSCA    Sallustio nella sua opera De bello jugurtino  ‘ mette in bocca a Caio Mario una violenta invettiva  contro l’aristocrazia romana, inoltre nella descrizione  che fa della congiura di Catilina mette in evidenza in  maniera efficacissima la corruttela della vita politica  romana negli ultimi tempi della repubblica.   Altro scrittore che si occupò anche di politica fu  Cicerone che nel De republica, nel De legibus e nel  De officiis esaminò le tre tradizionali forme di governo,  affermando la sua preferenza per un governo misto nel  quale le tre forme erano fuse. Appare in ciò chiara-  mente l’ influenza di Polibio. Oltre a ciò Cicerone par-  lando della schiavitù non ammette la teoria aristotelica  della disuguaglianza degli uomini, ma la giustifica con  un principio di diritto internazionale, affermando cioé  che nella guerra i vinti ai quali si lascia la vita diven-  tano servi.   Intanto è giusto ricordare che Cicerone trattava  assai umanamente i suoi schiavi, specialmente quelli  colti che venivano -dall’Oriente, e difatti sono molto  affettuose le lettere che scrisse al suo liberto e colla-  boratore Tirone.   Seneca, basandosi sulla distinzione fra diritto na-  turale e diritto civile, sostenne che la schiavitù non  era giustificabile dal punto di vista del diritto naturale,  ma lo era in base al diritto civile.   Tacito nel libro IV degli Annali dice incidental-  mente che i governi misti di monarchia, aristocrazia e  democrazia è più facile che siano lodati anzichè effet-  tuati e che, se sono effettuati, non durano. Non sem-  bra che Tacito sia stato repubblicano nel senso che  avrebbe desiderato il ritorno all’antica forma di go-  verno anteriore a Cesare e ad Augusto, egli era sol-  tanto avverso ai cattivi imperatori e lodava quelli buoni,  ‘ che avevano saputo conciliare il principato con la li-    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 69    bertà, cioè col rispetto delle leggi e dell’autorità del  Senato.    X    CENNI SULLE CAUSE  DELLA CADUTA DELL'IMPERO ROMANO  E DELLA DISSOLUZIONE DELLA CIVILTÀ ANTICA.    Il più grande contributo alla elaborazione della ci-  viltà antica lo diede la Grecia, ma fu merito di Roma  l’avere esteso i risultati della cultura ellenica a buona  parte dell’Asia, all'Africa settentrionale ed a tutta quella  parte dell’ Europa che sta a mezzogiorno del Danubio  e ad occidente del Reno e perfino alla parte meridio-  nale della Gran Bretagna. E merito anche maggiore  di Roma fu quello di avere introdotto, dovunque esten-  deva il proprio dominio, leggi, idee e costumi presso  a poco uguali, sostituendo, senza apparente coazione,  in Occidente il latino, in Oriente il greco, alla molti-  tudine dei linguaggi barbarici e facendo col tempo spa-  rire ogni distinzione fra vincitori e vinti, conquistatori,  e conquistati. Poichè con l’editto di Caracalla, del 212  dopo Cristo, si estendeva la cittadinanza romana a  quasi tutti i provinciali, completando così quella unità  politica e morale di tanta parte del mondo civile, che,  dall’ora in poi, non è stata più raggiunta.    ° Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.    Così cantava il poeta gallico Rutilio Namaziano al  principio del quinto secolo dell’era volgare, riassumendo  in poche parole l’opera grandiosa che nel corso di pa-  recchi secoli Roma aveva compiuto.   La ricerca delle cause che produssero la caduta  dell'Impero romano d'Occidente è ancora uno dei più    70 GAETANO MOSCA    oscuri problemi fra quelli che presenta la storia. Poichè  non si tratta soltanto di spiegare il crollo di un orga-  nismo politico, ma la dissoluzione, sia pure non com-  pleta ma certamente profonda, di una civiltà. Una os-  servazione, che forse finora non è stata fatta, è quella  che riguarda la China e fino ad un certo punto l’ India,  paesi la cui civiltà ha avuto pochi contatti con quella  ellenica e romana, e nei quali, pur essendosi succedute  parecchie invasioni barbariche, i conquistatori, in capo  ad un paio di generazioni hanno assorbito la civiltà  dei vinti e questa ha continuato il suo corso senza che  la decadenza sia stata lunga e molto sensibile. Ciò che  non è avvenuto alla caduta dell'Impero romano d’ Oc-  .‘cidente, ragione per la quale si può supporre che essa  sia principalmente dovuta a cause interne.   È già noto che i primi gravi sintomi della crisi  si ebbero nel terzo secolo dopo Cristo e che essi sono  visibili perfino nell’arte e nella letteratura, che mani-  festano un notevole decadimento del gusto e del pen-  siero. Si è pure accennato alla mancanza di una norma  regolatrice della successione al trono che diede occa-  sione ad una serie di guerre civili, durante le quali  qualche volta si ebbero tanti imperatori quante erano  le province importanti. Contemporaneamente ebbero  luogo le prime irruzioni dei barbari, che sparsero la  desolazione nella Gallia e nella penisola balcanica ed  arrivarono un momento perfino nell'alta Italia.   Gli imperatori Illirici Claudio secondo, Aurelia@o,  Probo, Caro ed in ultimo Diocleziano riuscirono a re-  spingere i barbari pur abbandonando loro la Dacia e  quella parte della Germania che era ad oriente del  Reno e si estendeva fino alle sorgenti del Danubio;  poi Diocleziano per rinforzare il potere centrale com-  piè l’evoluzione già iniziata da Settimio Severo e diede  all'impero il carattere di una monarchia assoluta di    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 7I    tipo orientale, trasformando anche in questo senso l’e-  tichetta di corte. Egli cercò pure di fissare le norme  per la successione al trono in maniera da evitare le  guerre civili, mercè la coesistenza di due Augusti e  di due Cesari che si rinnovavano per cooptazione. Ma,  dopo il ritiro di Diocleziano, si rinnovarono le guerre  ‘ civili, finchè Costantino ristabili l’unità dell’impero,  che però durò poco e, dopo varie vicende, si spezzò  definitivamente alla morte di Teodosio, nel 395 d. C.   Durante tutto il quarto secolo dell’era volgare e  nei primi decenni del quinto la dissoluzione politica,  economica e morale dell'Impero romano di Occidente  si aggravò sempre più fino a diventare un male irre-  parabile. Come già si è accennato è difficile di accer-  tare quale sia stata la causa prima di questa decadenza,  dovuta probabilmente ad un complesso di cause, pre-  valentemente di natura interna, alcune delle quali sono  abbastanza note.   E prima di tutto bisogna segnalare la diminuzione  della popolazione dovuta, oltre che a qualche irruzione  dei barbari, alle frequenti pestilenze ed alle carestie.  Nè l’igiene pubblica nè il sistema dei trasporti erano  allora così perfezionati da potere prevenire le stragi  delle une e delle altre. Si aggiunga che la natalità era  scarsa, perchè il Cristianesimo non era ancora così dif-  fuso nelle plebi rurali da sradicare l’uso del procurato  aborto e dell’esposizione degli infanti. La diminuzione  della popolazione produsse naturalmente l'abbandono  della coltura di molti campi, alla quale si cercò di ri-  parare coll’istituzione del colonato, che legava l’agri-.  coltore ed i suoi figli alla terra, rimedio artificioso ed  insufficiente.   Altra causa fu la decadenza della classe media,  dovuta soprattutto all’eccessivo fiscalismo. Oltre alle  dogane ed alla imposta del cinque per cento sulle ere-    72 GAETANO MOSCA    dità, il maggior provento del fisco imperiale consisteva  nell’imposta sulla proprietà terriera. Essa veniva ripar-  tita mediante il sistema del contingente, in base al  quale il governo centrale stabiliva l'onere di cui era  gravato ogni municipio. Della riscossione erano inca-  ricati i decurioni, ossia i membri del consiglio muni-  cipale reclutato fra i maggiori censiti, i quali erano  tenuti a ricoprire con le loro sostanze la differenza fra  la somma stabilita e quella realmente riscossa. I grandi  proprietari residenti a Roma o nelle ‘principali città  dell'impero si facevano esentare facilmente dal decu-  rionato, che così ricadeva tutto sulle spalle dei medi  e piccoli proprietari e li rovinava.   Si aggiunga che l’incertezza del valore della mo-  neta doveva contribuire ad aggravare la crisi economica.  Durante il periodo dell’anarchia militare, nella seconda  metà del terzo secolo, si era cominciato a coniare mo-  neta falsa, mescolando nelle zecche dello Stato del  piombo all’argento e qualche volta all’oro. Natural-  mente nel commercio queste monete erano accettate  per il loro valore reale con un conseguente rincaro dei  prezzi. Diocleziano cercò di -ripararvi con un’unica ta-  riffa che stabiliva in tutto il territorio dell'impero i  prezzi massimi di tutte le derrate e di tutti i servizi.  Ma ciò era assurdo, perchè fra le altre cose era im-  possibile che una derrata avesse lo stesso prezzo in:  tutte le parti del vastissimo impero, sicchè, malgrado  le gravi pene comminate a chi la violava, la tariffa  non fu applicata.   È noto anche che in molte parti dell’impero il  brigantaggio era una piaga permanente e contribuiva.  a turbare la sicurezza dei beni e ad impoverire a pre-  ferenza il medio ceto, perchè i ricchi si difendevano.  con le loro guardie private ed i poveri erano difesi  dalla loro stessa povertà.    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 73    Ma soprattutto ciò che aggravava le conseguenze  degli errori del governo e rendeva inefficaci quei prov-  vedimenti che sarebbero stati utili fu la corruzione della.  numerosissima ed invadente burocrazia, la quale, dopo  il terzo secolo, avea conquistato sempre maggiori po-  teri a Scapito delle libertà individuali e delle autonomie  municipali. Gli storici ricordano qualche caso tipico  di questa corruzione. Quando i Goti, sospinti dagli  Unni, chiesero verso la fine del quarto secolo di sta-  . bilirsi nel territorio dell'impero a mezzogiorno del Da-  nubio, gli imperatori accolsero la loro domanda, e pro-  misero loro viveri per un anno e sementi per coltivare  la terra a patto che consegnassero le armi. Or i fun-  zionari incaricati di questo servizio li derubarono dei  viveri e delle sementi, e, lasciandosi corrompere dai  loro doni, lasciarono loro le armi. Sicchè i Barbari si  ribellarono, devastarono la penisola balcanica e scon-  fissero ed uccisero in battaglia l’ imperatore Valente.   Altrò caso tipico di corruzione burocratica fu quello  narrato dallo storico Ammiano Marcellino a proposito  di una serie di inchieste che ebbero luogo in Tripoli-  tania. |   Senonchè tutto ciò spiega solo in parte la caduta  dell’ Impero romano d'Occidente e, fatto più grave di  questa caduta, la grandissima decadenza, per non dire  la dissoluzione, della civiltà antica. Perchè in ogni  paese civile ed in ogni generazione, accanto alle forze  dissolvitrici, vi sono sempre quelle conservatrici e ri-  costituenti, rappresentate dai caratteri nobili e devoti  al pubblico bene; ed uomini di questo carattere non  mancavano nella società romana nel quarto e quinto  secolo dell’era volgare, tanto vero che la Chiesa ebbe  allora una serie di uomini superiori, come indiscutibil-  mente furono sant’Ambrogio, son Girolamo, sant’Ago-  stino, san Paolino di Nola, Salviano, Paolo Orosio, ecc.    vi! GAETANO MOSCA    Ma questi uomini superiori per ingegno e moralità  non ritardarono la caduta dell'Impero romano d’Oc-  cidente perchè facevano parte della gerarchia eccle-  siastica; nella quale, sebbene non facesse difetto il  patriottismo, la salvezza dei corpi era posposta a quella  delle anime. All’ideale pagano (partecipazione attiva  alla vita dello Stato, sentimento del dovere civico e  militare, concezione immanentistica della vita), si so-  stituiva, in gran parte e necessariamente, quello cri-  stiano (disinteresse per le cose di questo mondo e quindi  anche per lo Stato, aspirazione alla beatitudine eterna,  concezione trascendentale della vita, considerata come  un esilio, un passaggio, un ostacolo al raggiungimento  della perfezione cristiana). Veniva cioè dissolvendosi  quell’ insieme di idee e di sentimenti che sino ad al-  lora aveano diretto l’azione della civiltà antica e per-  ciò veniva a mancare quella forza morale che è il  coefficiente essenziale degli sforzi collettivi di ogni so-  cietà umana, e tale mancanza doveva -di conseguenza  produrre, sotto la spinta di un urto esteriore un po’  grave, la dissoluzione dell’organismo politico e della  civiltà che erano da quella forza morale vivificati e so-  stenuti.    Così morì l’ Impero romano d’Occidente, che, meno    favorevolmente situato di quello d’Oriente, ebbe inol-  tre la sventura di essere assalito ed invaso dai Barbari  proprio nel periodo più acuto della crisi morale, oc-  casionata dal diffondersi del Cristianesimo fra la sua  classe dirigente; mentre l'Impero d’Oriente ebbe il  tempo di reintegrare le proprie forze materiali e mo-  rali, di superare il momento peggiore della crisi e  potè ancora durare per quasi un millennio. Colà il  Cristianesimo, diventato nel sesto secolo dell’era vol-  gare e nei susseguenti religione nazionale dell’impero,  contribuì ad accrescerne la forza ed a mantenerne la    -    n    STORIA DELLE DOTTRINE POLITICHE 75    compagine di fronte agli attacchi prima dei Persiani,  poi degli Arabi e per lungo tempo dei Barbari del set-  tentrione. Nè bisogna dimenticare che a cominciare  dagli inizi dell’ottavo secolo la lotta contro il culto  delle immagini fu l’effetto, nella società bizantina, di  una reazione dell'elemento laico contro l’ascetismo ed  il monachismo. Gaetano Mosca. Mosca. Keywords: implicatura, mafia. Stato liberale, stato sindacale, regime parlamentare, partito e sindacato.  Refs.: H. P. Grice: “Mosca’s liberalism;” Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Mosca," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria.

 

Grice e Motta: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Vercelli). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “If Mill’s claim to fame is to some his examination of Mill, Motta’s claim to fame is his examination of Rosmini!” -- Il conte Emiliano Avogadro della Motta. Nacque dal conte Ignazio della Motta e da Ifigenia Avogadro di Casanova, entrambi appartenenti a nobili famiglie di vassalli e visconti, i cui antenati risalgono a poco oltre il mille. Tra gli Avogadro vi fu anche Amedeo, inventore della legge sui fluidi. Frequenta con profitto gli studi e si laureò in utroque iure, ma proseguì lo studio in diverse aree della teologia e della filosofia, trasformando le dimore familiari in piccole accademie dove giuristi, filosofi, studiosi di diritto canonico e vescovi si riunivano, per discutere vari argomenti ed approfondire la filosofia moderna e i diversi aspetti del nascente socialismo.  Ricevette l'incarico, che già fu del padre, di riformatore degli studi del Vercellese e in un'epoca in cui si guardava ancora con diffidenza all'istruzione delle classi popolari, egli visitava ciclicamente le scuole d'ogni ordine, scegliendone accuratamente gli insegnanti, convinto che l'istruzione e l'educazione fossero un diritto di tutti e dovessero procedere simultaneamente. Assunse la carica di Consigliere di Formigliana e continuò a dedicarsi allo sviluppo culturale della natia Vercelli, ove fondò la Società di Storia Patria, per incrementare gli studi sul glorioso passato della città. Divenne membro del Consiglio Generale del Debito Pubblico e più tardi sindaco di Collobiano e “Consigliere di Sua Maestà per il pubblico insegnamento” La sua notorietà varcò i confini del Piemonte, allorché ricevette l'eccezionale invito di partecipazione alla fase preparatoria della definizione del dogma dell'Immacolata e le sue riflessioni ebbero un seguito fra alcuni importanti gesuiti, come il direttore de La Civiltà Cattolica, che fece dono a Pio IX del Saggio intorno al socialismo. Azeglio, richiamandosi a M., espresse la propria preferenza per una condanna esplicita di tali errori, da includere nella bolla di definizione del dogma, ma l'autore sollecitò apertamente la distinzione di due argomenti (definizione del dogma e condanna degli errori) dalla portata tanto diversa e lo stesso Pio IX incaricò la Commissione, che aveva già lavorato sulla definizione del dogma, di esaminare gli errori moderni e di preparare il materiale necessario per la bolla e chiese al cardinale Fornari di invitare formalmente alcuni laici a collaborare. Avogadro fu l'unico laico italiano ad essere interpellato e inviò a Roma una risposta singolare e ricca di argomentazioni. Ben presto la Commissione incaricata abbandonò la trattazione univoca dei due argomenti e la solenne definizione su Maria sarà fatta da Pio IX, mentre l'esame degli errori si trascinerà per altri dieci anni, mentre prevaleva in ambito ecclesiastico l'idea di una severa condanna.  Attività parlamentare Diventò membro attivo nella vita politica, quale deputato eletto nel collegio di Avigliana e operò nelle file dello stesso schieramento politico della Destra. La proposta avanzata in Parlamento di ridurre il numero delle feste, indusse Avogadro a scrivere un apposito opuscolo, per difendere la dignità dell'uomo che, in quanto essere intelligente e creativo, «senza tempo libero non vive da uomo, e mal lo conoscono gli economisti che altro non sanno procacciargli se non “lavoro e pane”». In Parlamento prendeva spesso la parola contro il progetto di legge che prevedeva l'obbligo del servizio militare e criticò la cessione di Nizza e Savoia alla Francia, smascherando le reali intenzioni che sull'Italia nutriva l'ambiguo Napoleone III.  Riceve la decorazione della Croce di Ufficiale dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro e continuò a scrivere, oltre a collaborare con l'Armonia, l'Unità cattolica, l'Apologista, il Conservatore, rivista quest'ultima stampata a Bologna e di cui è ritenuto uno dei fondatori e collaboratori. Muore in Torino”, come annotano diversi giornali e riviste, non ultima La Civiltà Cattolica, che gli dedicò un sentito necrologio. Saggi: “Saggio intorno al Socialismo e alle dottrine e tendenze socialistiche” (Torino,  Zecchi); -- partito socialista italiano -- “Sul valore scientifico e sulle pratiche conseguenze del sistema filosofico di Serbati (Napoli, Societa Editrice Fr. Giannini); “Teorica dell'istituzione del matrimonio e della guerra moltiforme cui soggiace, M. già Riformatore delle R. Scuole provinciali degli Stati Sardi, a spese della Societa Editrice Speirani e Tortone, Teorica dell'istituzione del matrimonio Parte II che tratta della guerra moltiforme cui soggiace, per M., già deputato al Parlamento Subalpino, Torino, Speirani e Teorica dell'istituzione del matrimonio e della guerra a cui soggiace, -- che tratta delle difese e dei rimedi, con una Appendice intorno alla ricerca del principio teorico morale generatore degli uffizi e dei doveri coniugali,” Torino, Speirani e Tortone, M. deputato al Parlamento Nazionale, Torino, Tipografia Speirani e Tortone, “Teorica dell'istituzione del matrimonio e della guerra a cui soggiace, Parte Documenti per M. già deputato al parlamento nazionale (Torino, Speirani); “Gesù Cristo nel secolo XIX, Studi religiosi e sociali, Modena, Tipografia dell'Immacolata Concezione, “La filosofia di  Serbati” (Napoli, Giannini); “La festa di S. Michele e il mese di ottobre agli angeli santi, Torino, Marietti, Il mese di novembre dedicato a suffragio dei morti, Torino, Marietti); “Le colonne di S. Chiesa. Omaggi a S. Giovanni Battista e ai Santi Apostoli nel mese di giugno e novena per la festa dei Santi Principi Pietro e Paolo, Torino, Marietti); “Il mese di dicembre in adorazione al Verbo Incarnato Gesu nascente e ad onore di Maria Madre SS.ma, Torino, Marietti); “Opuscoli di carattere storico-giuridico; Rivista retrospettiva di un fatto seguito in Vercelli con osservazioni al diritto legale di libera censura, Vercelli, De Gaudenzi, Delle feste sacre e loro variazioni nel Regno sub-alpino, Torino, Marietti); “Quistioni di diritto intorno alle istituzioni religiose e alle loro persone e proprietà, in occasione della Proposta di Legge fatta al Parlamento torinese per la soppressione di alcune corporazioni, Torino, Marietti, Cenni sulla Congregazione degl’oblati dei SS. Eusebio e Carlo eretta nella Basilica di S. Andrea in Vercelli e sulla proposta sua soppressione. Per un elettore Vercellese, Torino, Marietti); “Parole di conciliazione sulla questione della circolare di S. E. Arcivescovo di Torino); “Del diritto di petizione e delle petizioni pel ritorno di S. E. l'Arcivescovo di Torino); “Lo statuto condanna la Legge Siccardi, Torino, Fontana, Erroneità e pericoli di alcune teorie ed ipotesi invocate a sostegno della proposta di Legge di soppressione di vari stabilimenti religiosi” (Torino, Speirani e Tortone); “Alcuni schiarimenti intorno alla natura della Proprietà Ecclesiastica allo stato di povertà religiosa, ed alle quistioni relative ai diritti e ai mezzi temporali di sussistenza della Chiesa. Con una Appendice intorno alla legalità nell'esecuzione della legge sulle Corporazioni religiose” (Torino, Speirani); “Considerazioni sugli affari dell'Italia e del Papa” (Torino, Speirani); “Una quistione preliminare al Parlamento Torinese” (Torino, Speirani); “Il progetto di revisione del Codice Civile Albertino e il matrimonio civile in Italia, Torino, Speirani); La Rivoluzione e il Ministero Torinese in faccia al Papa ed all'Episcopato Italiano. Riflessioni retrospettive e prospettive” (Torino, Speirani); L'Armonia, Civiltà Cattolica, Rivista retrospettiva sopra la discussione delle leggi Siccardi, Unità Cattolica, Angelo Ballestreri, segretario della Famiglia, presso l'Archivio Storico di Torino. Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana, promossa e diretta dal marchese Vittorio Spreti, Milano, Avogadro di Vigliano F., Pagine di storia Vercellese e Biellese, in Antologia, M. Cassetti, Vercelli, Avogadro di Vigliano F., Antiche vicende di alcuni feudi Biellesi degl’Avogadro di San Giorgio Monferrato (e poi Conti di Collobiano e di Motta Alciata), dalla Illustrazione biellese, XIX, Biella, Corboli G., Per le nozze del Conte Federico Sclopis di Salerano e della Contessa Isabella Avogadro, Cremona, Feraboli, De Gregory G., Historia della Vercellese letteratura ed arti, parte IV, Torino, Di Crollallanza G. B., Dizionario storico-blasonico delle famiglie nobili e notabili italiane estinte e fiorenti,  I, Sala Bolognese, Dionisotti C., Notizie biografiche dei vercellesi illustri, Biella, Amos, Manno A., Il patriziato Subalpino. Notizie di fatto storiche, genealogiche, feudali ed araldiche desunte da documenti,  I, Firenze,  I vescovi di Italia. Il Piemonte, Savio F., Torino, Bocca, Bonvegna G., Filosofia sociale e critica dello Stato moderno nel pensiero di un legittimista italiano: Emiliano Avogadro della Motta in Annali Italiani. Rivista di studi storici, Bonvegna G., Il rapporto tra fede e ragione in Avogadro della Motta, in Sensus Communis,  Valentino V., Un difensore rigoroso dei diritti della Chiesa e del Papa, in Divinitas, rivista di ricerca e di critica teologica, Volumi e tesi sull'autore Bonvegna, M. Il pensiero filosofico-politico e la critica al socialismo, Tesi, Filosofia. Università Cattolica, Milano, De Gaudenzi L., Ultima parola su di una pretesa ritrattazione di M., Mortara, Cortellezzi, De Gaudenzi L., Un'asserzione di Paoli D.I.D.C. tolta ad esame, Mortara, Cortellezzi,  De Gaudenzi, Istruzione del vescovo di Vigevano al Ven.do Suo Clero sul Matrimonio, Vigevano, Spargella, Manacorda G., Storiografia e socialismo, Padova, Martire G., II, Roma, Omodeo, L'opera politica di Cavour, Firenze, Pirri, Carteggi delL. Taparelli d'Azeglio,  XIV di Biblioteca di Storia Italiana Recente, Torino, La scienza e la fede,  XXIV, Napoli Spadolini, L'opposizione cattolica da porta Pia, Firenze, Storia del Parlamento Italiano, N. Rodolico,  Palermo Traniello F., Cattolicesimo conciliarista. Religione e cultura nella tradizione Rosminiana Lombardo-Piemontese, Milano, Valentino, Il matrimonio e la vita coniugale, Facoltà dell'Italia Centrale, Valentino, Un'introduzione alla vita e alle opere, Vercelli, Saviolo, Valentino V., Un laico tra i teologi, Vercelli, Valentino, Il pensiero di Gioberti, Genova, Verucci, Dizionario Biografico Italiano, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia, Roma. Guido Verucci, Emiliano Avogadro della Motta, in Dizionario biografico degl’italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Opere di Emiliano Avogadro della Motta, Emiliano Della Motta (Avogadro), su storia.camera, Camera dei deputati. DEL SOCIALISMO IN GENERALE. Origini del socialismo nel razionalismo protestantico. Le prime eresie tentarono soffocare la fede e la Chiesa; le seconde, viziar l'una, e sostituirsiall'altra. Lutero e Calvinodistrussero il principio della fede, dell’amorale, dellasocietà. Idolli germani cercarono rimedio nella scienza e nell'ecclettismo; la loro filosofia, il loro diritto pubblico.Il protestantismo in Francia fa più audace e ribelle.Combatiuto come selta religiosa produsse i liberi pensatori, che, a titolo di scuola, ne dilatarono il razionalismo empio. Previsioni di Bossuet. Il genio di Voltairee de'suoi discepoli fu essenzialmente anti-cristiano, Paradossi del Gioberti. La guerra del filosofismo dcontro la fede e la scienza e più radicale di quella del protestantesimo. Suo spirito non di separatismo ,ma dicosmopolismo. Da secoli la preponderanza nell'ordine delle idee e devoluta in Europa alla Germania e alla Francia, colà bisogna cercare le fonti dell'errar. Diverso carattere delle due nazioni. Nel razionalismo dell'una, nell'incredulità dell'altra, stette deposto il primo articolo della carta socialistica. Non più autorild Progressi del razionalismo e dell'incredulità nell'idealismo. Kant, il suo antidommatismo; I suoi seguaci. Non vollero dirsi atei, loro panteismo spurio peggiore dell'ateismo. Non vollero comparir scettici ne materialisti, ma sovvertirono la scienza e la morale con l'i dealismo apriori. Hegel, el'idealismo trascendentale e pratico. I teologi protestanti lo seguirono. Il protestantesimo avea sfigurato fin da principio l'idea di un “Cristo”; a cosa la ridusse Strauss. Apparente regresso in Francia dal materialismo e dalle teorie rivoluzionarie. Principio di tolleranza mal applicato in tutte le ristorazioni; indi l'indifferenti. Prefazione Saggio. L'incredulismo e il filosofismo francese e nell'indifferentismo. I tedeschi pensatori seguirono l'esempio, non la frivolezza dei volteriani.   Smo religio sue políticone gli ordini pubblici, l'eclettismo nella scienza. Gl’eclettici vollero mitigare l'idealismo germanico; vollero parer rispettosi al cristianesimo, ma lo condannarono come decrepito. La loro religione filosofica. Non ebbero pensatori. Lamennais, e i razionalisti cattolici. L'idealismo o l'indifferentismo sono morbi quasi insanabili. Questi compongono il secondo articolo del simbolo socialistico: la fede all'Idea propria. Ne sorge l'amore all'indeterminato futuro, l'odio a ciò cheesiste. Giudizio di Staudenmayer. L'uomo nello stato suo presente non comporta nè dommatismo assoluto, nè razionalismo assoluto. La natura e il cristianesimo lo educano colla sede e colla ragione, somministrandogli un'ontologia reale e certa Alcune riflessioni sulle cose anzi esposte. Il protestantismo, il filosofismo francese, e il tedesco, sono professioni d'ignoranza. Pongono fuori delle condizioni di possibilità la religione e la scienza, e abbattono la ragione individuale con un'assurda emancipazione. Tolgono lo scopo della ricerca della verità. La fede per contro è scienza iniziale, anche negl’ordini naturali promettitrice. Gli spiriti penetranti previdero da gran tempo il socialismo moderno; i più furi bondi ne proclamarono e praticarono le massime. La religione e la società reale erano già condannate in teoria dall'Idea dei sofisti, cui non possono corrispondere in fatto. La Chiesa ne è la salute, perchè pre dica la verità positiva, e muta le ipotesi de'sofisti. Questi falsificarono anche I principii positivi, che vollero conservare per ricostrurre la società; tolsero la possibilità dell'amore; sfigurarono le idee di libertà, di eguaglianza, di fratellanza, che portate all'assoluto si escludono mutuamente. Il socialisino vuole ricostituire con queste l'uman genere. Gli uomini di distruzione, e quelli dell'utopia, sorti a slagellare l'umanità colle sperienze d'applicazione e tresta di d'esistenza delle sette. Siappoggianoa un fiero dommatismo. Non inventano dottrine, ma scelgonoe volgarizzano le più acconce ai loro fini. Sono la gerarchia, il sacerdozio, l'esercito della filosofia anticristiana e antisociale, che senza di quelle non sarebbe largamente perniciosa. Ora non sono più mere associazioni, ma trasformandosi divennero società e governi sotterranei. Una buona storia delle sette sarebbe un gran beneficio; come vorrebbe essere fatta. La miglior difesa contro di quelle è farle conoscere. I sommi Pontefici lo vennero facendo, furono mal secondati. Le sette massoniche. Veisaupte l'illuminismo. Le sette moderne teoriche ed esecutive. La Giovine Europa e Mazzini. Loro tre mezzi d'influenza, le loro arti, le loro forze. Non aspirano che alla propria supremazia e tirannia solto nome di repubblica sociale. Gioberti le descrisse con somma perizia mutando l'applicazione. Avvenire delle sette. Non sono esse sole il socialismo, ma ne sono la virtù plastica e direttrice. Carattere e spirito del socialismo. È l' eterodossia. Essa porta all'apice, all'universalità, a l l'atto, le empietà ed aberrazioni de'secoli precedenti. Le sue idee sono Le sette secrete demagogiche. Esse aggiunsero alle teorie un organismo artilizioso ed attivo. Tre aspetti, però terrene e ristrette. È un cattolicismo umanoe diabolico, che vuol essere più universale di quello di Cristo. Il suo Messianismo. Le sue stolte promesse e stolte accuse contro la società. Professa odio a Dio e a Cristo, odio all'uomo, odio alla giustizia. Sovverte il naturale eil supernaturale. L'idea socialistica non è intiera nella mente diverün10 mo, il solo spirito del male ne può abbracciare e volere il tutto. Nelle menti umane prende diversi gradi e forme. Coldomma dell'idea il socialismo raccoglie a sè tutti gli spiriti erranti e passionati; disordina i difensori della verità; esi infiltra nelle menti. Potenza seduttrice del l'Idea e delle Idee. Semisocialismo. Unità di pensiero, di scopo, di forze morali e materiali nel socialismo, collimanti contro il cristianesimo. Fa predetto dai santi Apostoli. Lamorte confuta il domma e le speranze del socialismo, erende calamito se le sue promesse. Il comunismo. È doppio; altro filosofico e in apparenza economico, altro apertamente Jadro e sensuale. Il solo principio della comunanza non valea fondare veruna società che basti a sè stessa. Esseni; comunanze monastiche; sistemi utopistici. Socialismo e comunismo sono due estremi della stessa idea.La Francia è travagliata di preferenza dal secondo, la Germania dal primo, il perchè. Il principio Cristiano non può ameno di somministrare la soluzione di tutti i loro problemi sociali.Sentenza di Jouffroy DEGLI SCOMPARTIMENTI PRECIPUI DEL SOCIALISMO . Delle scuole e dei sistemi sociali più insigni, e in particalare dicoli. Hegel le aprì un orizzonte vasto e pratico colla sua teoria sulla storia, e colle sue viste sul mondo germanico. Con queste infiamm di pietistic protestanti e i politici ambiziosi, specialmentein Prussia.Trovo eco fra novatorianche cattolici e israeliti. Le sette demagogiche germaniche s'impadronirono dell'idea hegeliana di nazionalità, ostile alla religione e alla civiltà romana. I sofisti la parodiarono altrove, adadulare le proprie nazioni CATO II. Sansimonismo, umanitarismo. Il misticismo di Sansimone s'indirizza alle passioni sensuali nobilitando le, alle ambizioni ultra-democratiche esaltando le capacità individuali. I suoi discepoli l'organizzarono amodo di religione panteistica umanitaria. Molti eclettici dell'università francese ne adottarono I principii ideali, compiendo con questi la metafisica hegeliana. Leroux e l'umanitarismo universale; gli umanitarii ricusano le idee di patria e di nazionalità. Il principio saņsimoniano penetra largamente in Francia,e per ogni dove; esso improntò al socialismo l'aria di religione lasciva e cosmopolitica. L'emancipazione della carne e conseguenza logica del l'emancipazione del pensiero dell'hegelianesimo e neo-egelianesimo. Owen e Fourrier vestirono l'idea socialistica e comunistica di sistemi ri . Del svoialismo anarchico e trascendentalmente empio . Prudhon, discepolo intelligente e sfacciato dei socialisti tedeschi, sveld le vere esigenze del socialismo. Professa esplicitamente l'odio a Dio, l'abolizione di ogni diritto, l'anarchia; cosa intenda con tal parola. Flagella i socialisti e comunisti, ma è peggiore di loro. Le sue idee fanno impressione, perchè sono l'espressione la più semplice della idea d'indipendenza assoluta. Lecoutrier, la sua cosmosofia materialistica, prosessa il culto di sè stesso. Condanna la filosofia e la civilizzazione. Il materialismo e l'anarchia spaventano in Francia; ostinazione di certi razionalisti, che non dimenonon ne vogliono vedere il rimedio additato già da Napoleone. Del socialismo operativo o militante, e di quello latente. Il socialismo pensante sta nelle scuole panteistiche incredule, l'operativo nelle sette e fazioni rivoluzionarie. I suoi fasti recenti. Lo scopo principale è distrurre il caltolicismo. Perciò cerca di rivoluzionare moral mente e materialmentela Chiesa. Adocchia l'Italia che ne tiene il centro. Mazzini, la sua filosofia panteistica, le sue idee di nazionalità e di primato italico parodia del primato germanico di Hegel. Sue contraddizioni. È lo strumento del socialismo universale, che non vuol altro in Italia che non più Papi. Per progredire il socialismo vesti in Italia tutte le forme e le ipocrisie. Cerca di alluarvi il comunismo politico. Il socialismo latente. L'Inghilterra ne possiede grandi elementi. Cenni sull'utopia del Moro.La Russia. Nissuna rivoluzione eguaglia quella voluta dal socialismo. Che cosa è una rivoluzione. Diverse specie di rivoluzioni parziali, che ora lutte s'informano dellospiritodelsocialismo.Sono ingiuste,ruinose,infrenabili nei confini voluti dai moderati, dai dottrinarii, dai liberali. Cos'è la riforma vera.Coloro non sono riformatori,ma rivoluzionarji. Possono chiamarsi semisocialisti; lo sono altri in religione, allri in filosofia, altri in politica. Fanno penetrare a tratti a tratti l'idea, ed eseguiscono per parti l'opera socialistica. Sono incoerenti. Giudizi di Joutfroye di Prudhon sui rivoluzionari al minuto. Giudizi di Quinet sui cattolici democratici predicatori d'indipendenza. Non sorge dai loro sistemi la vera democrazia, ma l'anarchia prudoniana in tutte le relazioni degl’individui, e delle società fra loro. L'indipendenza assoluta non esiste al mondo. Epilogo. Giudizio di Sterne sul principio rivoluzionario socialistico, eminentemente anticristiano. Il termine della rivoluzione sociale. La rivoluzione universale sociale non si compirà mai appieno. La rivoluzione religiosa, come è promossa dal socialismo,è nata a far luogo addi questa; e del semi-socialismo. Della rivoluzione universale e sociale; scompartimenti precipui Del panslavismo demagogico, e del ruteno. Un detto napoleonico inverosimile, o malinteso. Il panslavismo. È doppio. L'Idea russa; la suavivacità per forze morali e materiali. Le sue arti. È ostile all'idea Latina e cattolica. È religiosa e politica, panslavi sticae panscismatica. L'Italia ne èminacciata doppiamente. Calamità europea, che si è la dissoluzione dellaGermania nell'anarchia religiosa e politica. L'idea russa, ora antirazionalistica e antidemagogica, può col tempo mutare processo ed allearsi religiosamente al protestantesimo, politicamentealla demagogia europea. La Chiesa non teme, ma aspeita negli ultimi tempi un grande assalto dai popoli di quelle regioni, e dalla apostasia dei propria figli. Quel panslavismo sembra destinato a chiudere l'era del socialismo nostrale. laci, esuberanti, indefinite. La verità e l'autorità hanno l'adesione della maggioranza, ma sono malconosciute. Il clerocattolico fa quella vagliatura per ufficio, ma fra popoli colti la scienza e la dimostrazione è necessaria. Parte dei laici. La filosofia dee essere ricondotta al suo stato normale, da cui si di parti negando o trascurando l’ontologia cristiana e la scienza della socieià universale degli spiriti. In Italia bisogna far conoscere le produzioni della scienza straniera, dei paesi cioè in cui la controversiaè vivace. Bisogna svelare il fondo dei sistemi socialistici; formolare con precision i problemi; porre in lume i principii assoluti; questi non impediscono le temperazioni pratiche. Si fa alcontrario. Esempio nella quistione capitalissima delle relazioni fra chiesa e Stato. Questa in assoluto non è quistione di libertà, ma di autorità. Il principio di libertà non basta a spiegare l'ordine morale.Teorie di Rosmini nel suo saggio Della Costituzione. Il problema religioso vi è mal formolato. Il progetto di costituzione rosminiana non guarentirebbe alla chiesa nemmeno libertà; include l'indifferentismo politico; toglie all'ordine civile la base morale. Necessità della professione religiosa dello stato. Il problema politico intorno al diritto e alla giustizia sociale vi è del pari inesattamente formolato. Nel criticare le costituzioni galliche Rosmini non netacci ai vizii principali. Quale sia laquistione politica odierna; come sia formolata dai socialisti, come da Lainennais. Le emende proposte dal Rosmini alle costituzioni da lui criticate sono vane, o insufficienti a farargine al socialismo e comunismo.È inutile adulare e contrastare a metà le idee di moda, se non si risolve il tema del socialismo. Esso nega Dio e le due leggi provvidenziali per cui l'uo mo è governato dall'uomo, e il diritto sulle cose materiali è diviso fra gl’uomini. I dottrinarii italiani e francesi si contentano di massime generiche, di idee dimezzate, scoza analisi e applicazione. Gli americo una nuova foggia di demonolatria; la rivoluziones cientificaproducela perdita dell'unità di senso morale; la civile,un'anarchia,e tirannia in curabile. La rivoluzione universale,se potesse compiersi,distrurrebbe inultimol'umangenere.Come ilsocialismo l'odii dio dio satanico. Il suo termine logico sarebbe la distruzione dell'ordine di natura e di so prannatura. Il mondo non saràmai tutto socialista come fu tutto pagano, perchè la chiesa ha delle promesse infallibili; ma le nazioni civili non ne hanno, e camminano indolenti verso grandi ruine. Un altro socialism che si dispone a trasformare il mondo europeo. Timori, speranze, rimedii contro l'invasione delle dottrine socialistiche. Vuolsi una buona vagliatura delle idee, dei desiderii, delle speranze fal  mani italiani, e gl’anglomani francesi, non conoscono i tipi stranieri che vogliono imitare. I cattolici idealisti e razionalisti non comprendono che guastano e snaturano il cristianesimo colle misture eterodosse,a vece di farne l'apologia. Quali sieno dunque le tre vagliature,or peces sarie, delle dottrine e delle voglie del secolo. Ancora alcune osservazioni sul modo di trattare ora le controversie. Partito violento. La rivoluzione materiale è sopita, ma l'ideale si dilala. L'Italia odierna, e la Germania di tresecoli fa. Dollinger. È quindiur gente il bisogno di grandi manisestazioni della verità, per mezzo della fede e dellaragione. I governi, ora materialmente forti, sono moralmente deboli; l'epoca presente di razionalismo e di opinioni indeterminate piega alt ermine. Il socialismo vuol dommi e fatti, vuolsi contrap porgli la scienza della fede cristiana, continuando il lavoro dei più grandi genii del cristianesimo. Che cosa è una filosofia cristiana. La polemica dee essere trattata con franchezza; tenendo conto di tutti i principii veri e di tutti i fatti; distinguendo le ricerche di ciò che è giu sto, ediciò che è prudente. Non dee contentarsidi debellare gl’errori singoli, ma metter in luce la storia fillosofica, e il sistema universale dell'eterodossia .Ilpanteismo è lasostanza dell'eterodossia moderna. Considerazioni sul panteismo, suls uo lungo regno, sulle sue fasi.Non sarà l'ultimo errore.Voto umile e riservato per un oracolo della Santa Sede, e una condanna dottrinale e solenne del socialismo e comunismo. Motivi. Insufficienze e pericoli delle discussioni scientifiche. Il socialismo, come sistema compiuto, ha del nuovo; spesso sembra sfuggire agli anatemi degli errori antichi che rinnova. Fra icattolici stessi sinceri visono dubbiezze e illusioni. La gloria del nome di Cristo è avvilita. L'idea di Cristo, e quindi quella della Chiesa, sono meno mate in molte menti.Quella èl'antidoto a tuttol'errare moderno .Lapedagogia pende ad insinuare ilnaturalism o e ilsensualismo. La Santa Sede spesso unì alle decisioni, e condanne dommatiche contro gli errori, le lezioni razionali a illustrar lementi dei fedeli. Esempi. Così bramerebbesi ora, perchè da molti il socialismo e comunismo non sono conosciuti quali sono. Condannati, rimarrebbero nolati d'infamia agli occhi del mondo cristiano, e resi moralmente impotenti. È quel tutto un arcano di sata nasso, alla sola Santa Sede apparterrà svelarlo e conquiderlo; a lei però sola il giudicare della opportunità dei mezzi. Intanto, colle armi già pronte della fede e dellascienza, vuolsi da ognuno colle sue forze combattere la rivoluzione ideale. Teologia e filosofia, rivelazione e ragione, vogliono andar congiunte, distinte, ma non parallele. Un passo del Mancini. Due filosofismi, due rivoluzioni, che neminaccia no una più terribile. Presunzione dei moderni; giudizi dei posteri. Tutti i partiti scontenti del presentemirano all'avvenire; I più sci occhi sono gli aspettanti e ineuirali. Il principio cristiano è incarnato nella Chiesa, essa non fa quistioni di clericocrazia, quando parla alle genti con autorità. L'Italia e isuoiri formatori sispecchino nella Germania di tre secoli fa. La Chie sa benefica e invitta in tutti i secoli. I fedeli hanno da incoraggirsi; fra l'idea socialistica e la cristiana sanno quale abbia la verità,e quale ot Alcuni documenti intorno alle scriesegrere demagogiche.   SOCIALISJIO IN (iKNKRALE.   CAl’O  1.   Origini  del  socialismo  nel  razionalismo  protcstanlieo.   T.p  (uime  eresie  tenurono  soffocare  la  fede  e la  Chiesa;  le  seconde,  viziar  r ona.  e sosiiluirsi  all'  altra.  JLulcro  c Calvino  distrussero  il  principio  della  fede,  della  morale,  della  società.!  dotti  germani  ccrenronn  rime*  dio  nella  scienza  e neireccletlismo;  lo  loro  filosofia,  il  loro  diritto  pubblico.  Il  protestantismo  in  Francia  fu  più  audace  c ribelle.  Combat-  tuto come  setta  religiosa  produsse  i liberi  |>cnsatori,  che,  a (itolo  di  scuola,  ne  dilatarono  il  razionalismo  empio.  Previsioni  di  Bossuct  . >»  17   CAPO  II.   L' increduUsmo  e  il  filosofiimo  francete.   Il  genio  di  Voltaire  e de*  suoi  discepoli  fu  essenzialmente  anticristiano.  Paradossi  del  Gioberti.  La  guerra  del  lilosufismo  del  secolo  XVIII  con-  tro la  fede  e la  scienza  fu  più  radicale  di  quella  del  protestantesimo.   Suo  spirito  non  di  separatismo,  ma  di  costnopolismo  Da  tre  secoli  la  preponderanza  nell'ordine  delle  idee  è devoluta  in  Luropa  alla  Germa-  nia c alla  Francia,  colà  bisogna  cercare  le  fonti  dell' errar  moderno.  Diverso  carattere  delle  due  nazioni.  Nel  razionalismo  dell' una.  neli'iu-  creduliià  dell'  altra,  stette  dcposlo  il  primo  articolo  della  carta  sociali*  slica  : iVoii  più  aulorilà »    CAPO  IH.   Progresti  del  razionalismo  e de/r  nell'  idealismo,   e nell  indifferentismo.   I tedeschi  pensatori  segnirono  l esempio,  non  la  frivolezza  dei  volteriani.  Kant,  il  suo  aiitidommatismo  ; i suoi  seguaci.  Non  vollero  dirsi  atei,  loro  panteismo  spurio  peggiore  dell’ateismo.  Non  vollero  comparir  scettici  nè  materialisti,  ma  sovvertirono  la  scienza  e la  morale  con  l' i-  dealismo  a ;>riori.  Hegel,  e T idealismo  trascendentale  e pratico.  I teo-  logi protestanti  lo  seguirono.  Il  protestantesimo  avea  sfigurato  fin  da  principio  l'idea  di  Cristo  ; a cosa  la  ridusse  Strauss.  Apparente  regres-  so in  Francia  dal  materialismo  e dalle  teorie  rivoluzionarie.  Principio  di  tolleranza  mjl  applicato  ip  tulle  le  ristorazioni  ; indi  1 indifiVreiiti-  Saggio  - 7G  •    Digilized  by  Google    r.9S   smo  rflit^iosu  e politicu  nejilt  ordini  pubblici,  1 ecldtismu  nella  scien-  za. (ìli  ccieltici  vollero  tiiiiigare  ridealismo  |  che  esiste.  Giudizio  dì  Staudeiimayer.  L'uomo  nello  stato  MIO  presente  non  comporta  nè  dommaiismo  assoluto,  nè  razionalismo  assoluto.  ìji  natura  e il  crisUnnesimo  lo  educano  colla  fede  c colla  ra-  gioncj  souuQÌoistraDdogU  un'  ontologia  reale  e certa  ....  pag.  57   CAPO  IV.   Alcune  rifleuioni  iulle  cote  anzi  etpotle»   Il  protestantismo,  il  filosofismo  francese,  e il  tedesco,  sono  professioni  d’ ignoranza.  Pongono  fuori  delle  condizioni  di  possibilità  la  religione  e  la  scienza,  e abbattono  la  ragione  individuale  con  un’  assurda  cmancU  pallone.  Tolgono  lo  scopo  della  ricerca  della  verità.  La  fede  per  contro  è scienza  iniziale,  anche  negli  ordini  naturali  promeititrìce.  Gli  spiriti  penetranti  previdero  da  gran  tempo  il  socialismo  moderno  ; i pib  furi-  bondi ne  proclamarono  e praticarono  le  massime.  La  religione  g la  so-  cietà reale  erano  già  condannate  in  teoria  dall' /dea  dei  sofisti,  cui  non  possono  corrispondere  in  fatto.  La  Chiesa  ne  è la  salute,  perchè  pre-  dica la  verità  positiva,  e muta  le  ipotesi  de'  sofisti.  (Questi  falsifica-  rono anche  i prìncipiì  positivi,  che  vollero  conservare  per  ricostmrre  la  società;  tolsero  la  possibilità  deU  amorc;  sfigurarono  le  Ideo  di  libci  là,  di  eguaglianza,  di  fratellanza,  che  portale  alfassolalo  si  escludono  mu-  tuamente. Il  socialismo  ruolo  ricusiiiuire  con  queste  l’unian genere.  Gli  uomini  di  disinizione.  e quelli  dell’ utopia»  sorti  a flagellare  f umanità  colle  spcrienze  d'applicazione*  a 9.3    CAPO  V.   Le  tette  tecrete  dema^o^icàe.   Esse  aggiunsero  alle  teorie  un  organismo  nriifizioso  ed  atlivo.Tre  aspetti*  e tre  stadi  d'esistenza  delle  sette.  Si  appoggiano  a an  fiero  dommaii-  .sino.  Non  inventano  dottrine,  ma  scelgono  e volgarizzano  le  più  accon-  ce ai  loro  fini.  Sono  la  gerarchia,  il  sacerdozio,  rcsercito  delia  filoso-  fia anticristiana  e antisociale,  che  senza  di  quelle  non  sarebbe  larga-  mente perniciosa.  Ora  non  sono  piu  mere  associazioni,  ma  trasforman-  dosi dirconero  società  e governi  sotlurranei.  Una  buona  storia  delle  sette  sarebbe  un  gran  benefizio  ; come  vorrebbe  essere  fatta.  La  miglior  difesa  contro  di  quelle  è farle  conoscere.  I sommi  Pontefìri  lo  vennero  facendo,  furono  mal  secondati.  Le  sette  tnassonirhe.  Veisaupt  e l' illu-  minismo. Le  sette  moderne  teoriche  ed  esecutive.  La  Giovine  Europa  c  Mazzini.  Loro  tre  mezzi  d' ìiillaenza,  le  loro  arti,  le  loro  forze.  Non  a-  spirano  che  alla  propria  supremazia  c tirannia  sotto  nome  di  repnbblica  sodale.  Gioberti  le  descrisse  con  somma  perizia  mutando  f applicazio-  ne. Avvenire  delle  sette.  Non  sono  esse  sole  il  socialismo»  ma  ne  sono  lu  virtù  plastica  e direttrice » 123    CAPO  VI.   Carattere  e spirito  del  tocialismo.   t r eterodossia  del  secolo  XIX.  Essa  porla  all' apice,  all' unìversalilà,  al*  1 atto,  le  empielà  ed  aberrazioni  de  secoli  precedenti.  Le  sue  idee  sono    Digitized  by  Google    500   però  lorrone  c ri^trelic.  K un  c.iUolicKmo  umano  e diabolico,  die  vuol  essere  più  universale  di  quella  dì  Cristo.  Il  suo  Messianismo.  Le  sue  stolte  promesse  e stolte  accuse  contro  la  società.  Professa  odio  a Dio  e  a Cristo,  odio  all'  uomo,  odio  alla  giustizia.  Sovverte  il  naturale  e il  su-  pernaiurole.  L*  idea  socialistica  non  è intiera  nella  mente  di  veron  ito  215    CAI  0 li.   SuuiimoNiimo,  umanifat  iimo.   11  inislicisnio  di  Sansimone  s'indirizza  alle  passioni  sensuali  nobilitando-  le, alle  ambizioni  ullradeuioi  ratiebe  esaltando  le  capacità  individuali.   1 suoi  discepoli  l'organizzarono  a modo  di  religione  panteistica  umani-  Mria.  Multi  eclettici  dell'università  francese  ne  adottarono  i principii  ideali,  compiendo  con  questi  la  metafìsica  hegeliana.  Leroui  e l umaniia-  risiilo  universale;  gli  uinaniiarii  ricusano  le  idee  di  patria  odi  naziona-  lità. Il  principio  sansinioniano  penetrò  largamente  in  Francia,  c per  ogni  dove;  esso  improntò  al  sorìalismo  V aria  di  religione  lasciva  c co-  Miio|Kiiiiica.  L'eiiiancipaziono  della  carne  era  conseguenza  logica  del-  I cmancipaziono  del  pensiero  • . . • » 235    Digitized  by  Googic    eoo    CAPO  III.   Val  tucùìlUnio  anarchico  t (rciiccnJeiUuImcnfc  em/uo.   Fi  udiion,  disrcpolo  inlelligenle  c sfaccialo  dei  socialisti  Icdcsclii*  svelò  le  vere  esigenze  del  socialismo.  Frofessò  esplicitamente  rodio  a Dio,  rabolizione  di  ogni  diritto^  l aiiarchm;  cosa  intenda  con  tal  parola.  Fla-  gella  i socialisti  e cotuunisiU  ina  è (H.'ggiore  di  loro.  Le  sue  idee  fanno  iinpresaione,  percliè  sono  respressimiu  lo  più  sctnpiico  della  idea  d’ in-  dipendenza assoluta.  Lccoutrier,  la  sua  Cotmosufia  materialìstica,  pro-  fessa il  culto  di  sé  steiso.  Condanna  la  lilosolia  e la  civilizzazione.  Il  iiintcrialisnio  c ranarebia  spaventano  in  Francia;  ostinazione  di  certi  razionalisti,  che  non  di  meno  non  tic  vogliono  vedere  il  rimedio  addi-  tato già  da  Nopoleune  pag,  25i    CAPO  IV.   Del  socialitmo  operaDto  o mtliftmle,  e di  quello  latonte.   11  socialismo  pensante  sta  nelle  scuole  panicistiche  incredule,  l'operalivo  nelle  selle  c fiutoni  rivoluzionarie.  1 suoi  fasti  recenti.  Lo  scopo  princi-  pale distrurre  il  eattolicisino.  Perciò  cerca  di  rivoluzionare  nioral-  tiienle  e riinterialmeiiie  la  Chiesa.  Adocchia  l'Italia  che  ne  lime  il  cen-  tro. Mazzini,  la  sua  filosofia  panteistica,  le  sue  idee  di  nazionalità  e di  primato  italico  parodia  del  primato  gertiumico  di  Hegel.  Sue  contrad-  dizioni. C lo  striinienio  dei  socialismo  universale,  che  non  vuol  altro  in  Italia  che  non  piA /’opu.  Per  progredire  il  socialismo  vesti  iu  Italia  tutte  le  forme  e le  ipocrisie.  Cercò  di  attuarvi  il  comuniSmo  politico.   Il  socialismo  latente.  L'Inghilterra  ne  possiede  grandi  elementi.  Cenni  siiU  titopia  del  Moro.  La  Russia .1 d 280    CAPO  Y.   Della  rivoluzione  uniVeriale  e iociale:  seompartimenti  precipui  di  quetta;  e del  semisocialUmo.   Nissuna  rivuluiione  eguaglia  quella  voluta  dal  socialismo.  Cito  cosa  è una  rivoluzione.  Diverse  specie  di  rivoluzioni  parziali,  che  ora  tulle  s'infor-  nianu  dello  spirito  del  socialismo.  S*ino  ingiuste,  ruinose,  infrenabili  nei  cuitlini  voluti  dai  moderali,  dai  dottrinarii,  dai  liberali.  Cos'èia  iiloiina  vera.  Coloro  non  sono  rirorinalori,  ma  rivoluzioiiarit.  Possono  chiamarsi  scmisocialisti;  lo  sono  altri  in  religione,  altri  in  lilosolia,  al-  tri in  polilira.  Fanno  penetrare  a tratti  a traili  V idea,  ed  eseguiscono  per  partì  l upera  socialistica.  Sono  incoerenti.  Ciudizi  di  Jouffroy  e di  |*ruuhn  sul  rivoluzionari  al  mìmito.  Giudizi  di  Qitinelsuì  callolici  de-  inncruticì  predicatori  d'indi(K!ndenza.  Non  sorge  dai  loro  sistemi  la  vera  democrazia,  ma  V anarchia  prudoiiiana  in  tulle  le  relazioni  degli  indi-  vidui, e delle  società  fra  litro.  L*  indipendenza  assoluta  non  insiste  al  mondo,  hiepiiogo.  Giudizio  di  Sterne  sul  principio  rivoluzionario  so-  iialislico,  iiuiuenlcmentc  aiUicrisiiauo.  . u 323   CAPO  VI.   il  termine  della  rivoluzione  sociale.   La  rivoluziono  univcisalc  sociale  non  si  compirà  mai  appieno.  La  rivolu-  zione Ecìigio^a,  come  è promossa  dal  socialismo,  è nata  a far  luogo  atf    Digitized  by  Google    (U»l   una  nuovfl  di  dtHìonuiaitia;  la  rivoluzione  scientifica  produce  ia  perdita  dell  unità  di  senso  morale;  la  cìvilci  un'anarchia,  e tirannia  in*  curabile.  La  rivoluzione  universale,  se  potesse  com|nersi,  dìstrurrebhc  iu  ultimo  l'nroan  genere.  Come  il  socialismo  Todii  di  odio  satanico.  Il  suo  termine  logico  sarebbe  la  distruzione  delt'urdioe  di  natura  e di  so-  prannatnra.  Il  mondo  non  sarà  mai  lutto  socialista  come  fu  lutto  paga-  no, perchè  la  Chiesa  ha  delle  promesse  Infallibili;  ma  le  nazioni  civili  non  iic  hanno,  e camminano  indolenti  verso  grandi  ruine.  Un  altro  so*  cialismo  che  sì  dispone  a trasformare  il  mondo  europeo  . . . yag.   CAPO  VII.   Del  panslavismo  demagogico,  e del  ruteno.   Un  detto  napoleonico  inverosimile,  o mal  inteso.  11  panslavismo,  è dop-  pio. L'Idea  russa;  la  sua  vivacità  |>er  forzo  morali  e materiali.  Le  sue  arti.  £ ostile  aU'idca  latina  c cattolica.  È religiosa  c politica,  panslavi-  stka  e panscismatica.  L' Italia  ne  è minacciala  doppiamente.  Calamità  europea,  che  si  è la  dissoluzione  della  Germania  neU'anarchia  religiosa  c politica.  L’idea  russa,  ora  antirazionalisiica  c aoUdemagogica,  può  col  tempo  mutare  processo  cd  allearsi  religiosamente  al  protestantesi-  mo, politicamente  alla  demagogia  euro{>ea.  La  Chiesa  non  teme,  ma  aspetta  negli  ullìroi  tempi  un  grande  assalto  dai  popoli  di  quelle  regio-  ni, e dalla  a|K>stQSÌa  dei  propri!  figli.  Quel  panslavismo  sembra  desU-  iiaio  a chiudere  l’era  de!  socialismo  oustraie a 389   CAPO  Vili.   Timori,  speranze,  rimedi»  contro  l'invasione  delle  dollrine  socialistiche.   Vuoisi  una  buona  vagliatura  delle  idee,  dei  desiderii,  delle  speranze  fal-  laci, esuberanti,  indefinite.  La  verità  e l'aulorità  hanno  Padesiune  della  maggioranza,  ma  sono  mal  conosciute.  11  clero  cattolico  fa  quella  va-  gliatura per  ufiìzioi  ma  fra  [>opoli  colti  la  scienza  c la  dimostrazione  ò  necessaria.  Parte  dei  laici.  La  lilosofìa  dee  essere  ricondotta  al  suo  sta-  to normale,  da  cui  si  diparti  negando  o trascurando  l'ontologia  cristiana  c la  scienza  della  società  universale  degli  spirili.  In  Italia  bisogna  far  conoscere  le  prodazioni  della  scienza  straniera,  dei  paesi  cioè  in  cui  la  controversia  è vivace.  Bisogna  svelare  il  fondo  dei  sistemi  socialistici;  formolare  con  precisione  i problemi;  porre  in  lume  i principU  assoluti;  questi  non  impediscono  le  lempcrazioni  pratiche.  Si  fa  al  contrario.  Ksempio  nella  quislione  capitalissima  delle  relazioni  fra  Chiesa  c Stalo.  Questa  in  assoluto  non  è quistione  di  libertà,  ma  di  autorità.  Il  princi-  pio di  libertà  non  basta  a spiegare  P ordine  morale.  Teorie  del  sig.  A.  Itosmini  nel  suo  libro  Della  CostUusione.  Il  problema  religioso  vi  é  mal  furmoialo.  1!  progetto  di  costituzione  rosminiana  non  guarentirebbe  alla  Chiesa  nemmeno  libertà;  include  P indifTercntisino  politico;  toglie  alP  ordine  civile  la  base  morale.  Necessità  della  prufessiono  religiosa  dello  Stato.  Il  problema  polìtico  intorno  al  diritto  c alla  ginstizia  so-  ciale vi  è del  pari  inesallamenlc  formolato.  Nel  criticare  le  costituzioni  galliche  Rosmini  non  ne  taccia  i vizii  principali.  Quale  sia  la  quistiono  politica  odierna;  come  sia  formolaia  dai  socialisti,  come  da  I.amcnnois.   Le  emende  proposte  dal  Rosmini  alle  costituzioni  da  lui  criticate  sono  vane,  o ìnsuilicicnii  a far  argine  al  socialismo  e comuniSmo.  É inutile  adulare  c contrastare  a metà  le  ideo  di  moda,  se  non  si  risolve  il  tema  del  socialismo.  Esso  nega  Dio  e le  due  leggi  provvidenziali  per  cui  Puo-  iiio  è governato  dalPiiomo,  c il  diritto  sulle  cose  materiali  è divìso  fra  gli  iiuniìiii.  1 dominarli  italiani  c francesi  sì  runtentano  di  massime  ge-  neriche, di  idee  dimezzate,  senza  analisi  e spplicazìouc.  Gli  amcrico-    Digiiized  by  Google    G02   mniii  Italiani,  e gli  anglomani  francesi,  non  cono^ono  i tipi  stranieri  clic  vogliono  imitare.  1 cattolici  idealisti  e razionalisti  non  comprendono  che  guastano  e snaturano  il  crisiianesitiio  colle  misture  eterodosse,»  vece  di  farne  l'apologià.  Quali  aieno  dunque  le  ire  vagliature,  or  neces-  sarie, delle  doUrtne  e delle  voglie  del  secolo pug.  412   CAPO  IX.   j4ncora  alcune  ottervatìoni  ost-  zione  generale  appoggiata  con  prove  e dorumenli  irrerragabili.  Lnngi  dall*  a-  vere  esagerato  bisogna  anzi  dire  che  non  ha  approfittato  di  tutti  i suoi  vantag-  gi, perchè  ha  fottcr soltanto  una  scelta  di  tante  prove,  che  erano  a sua  disposi-  zione ( A.  Riccordt.  ;lfanuale  d'  ugni  letteralurOf  SlUano  183tt  pag.  380  ),   Gli  addetti  alle  società  segrete  predicano  alle  genti  il  Barruel  per  un  bu-  giardaccio,  impostore,  sognatore  e parabolano  ma  credono  in  famiglia  che  niu-  no  meglio  di  lui  abbia  svolto  le  dottrine,  le  finezze  e gli  intendimenti  di  Weis-   sbaupi Germogli  dell’  illuminismo  di  Weisshaupt  sono  tutte  le  odierne   società  segrete,  cd  hanno  il  incde;simo  intendimento  che  si  propose  cotesto  o-  dioso  e sfìdato  nemico  di  Dio,  dei  Re  e di  tutta  V umana  società.  ( 3ìemori$  di  LionellOf  nella  Cii’titd  Cattolica,  Voi.  IX,  pag.  260  e 278  ).   Un  grido  d’ indegnazione  accolse  queste  memorie  che  avrebbero  potalo  minacciare  la  sorte  di  molli  intriganti  ivi  oominali  e l'esito  delle  loro  consor-  terie ; ma  niuno  sì  tolse  a provare  che  fossero  calunniose,  sebbene  si  trovas-  sero aliissimi  personaggi  menzionali  come  fautori  0 come  membri  delle  sette  occulte  colà  istoriale.  1 falli  provano  la  verità  delle  dottrine  0 delle  tendenze  altribuile  all’  illuminismo.  Se  Weissbaupt  non  le  avesse  professale,  converreb-  be dire  che  il  Barruel  avesse  mutato  il  nome  del  settario  0 nc  fosse  stato  egli  r inventore  ; certo  è che  dopo  l’apparizione  dell’illuminismo  ic  società  se-  grete rivoluzionarie  non  ebbero  altro  codice,  altra  niosutìa,  altro  sistema  di  go-  verno da  quello  già  da  più  di  cinquant'anni  loro  attribuito  in  tali  àicmorie,  il  loro  liogaaggio,  le  loro  opere,  il  loro  scopo  suno  sostanzialmente  idcntUi  an-  che ai  di  d’ oggi  ( Saggio  intorno  al  socialismo,  Torino  18^1,  pag.  144  ).    VIAGGIO  d'lN  GENTIUOMO  IRLANDESE  IN  CERCA  d’I’NA  RELIGIO.NE,  OPERA  DI  TOMMASO  NOORE.    Quest’ opera  ha  fatto  in  Inghilterra  il  più  grande  incontro.  Il  Moore  com-  batte  il  protestantismo  nelle  sue  basi,  e più  di  venti  opuscoli  gli  furon  scritti  contro.  Quest’  opera,  come  dice  1’  Autore,  offro  un  programma  completo  del  protestantismo,  e vi  si  vedono  messi  in  mostra  a lato  dogli  errori  dogmatici  i  vizi  c gli  scandali  dei  riformaiori.Essa  contribuì  a condurre  alla  fede  parecchi  dei  nostri  traviati  fratelli;  c cièche  prova  il  suo  gran  merito  è la  debolezza  delle  risposte  che  invano  si  tentò  di  opporle  ( Conseils  pour  former  une  bi-  bliothègue }.    Digilized  by  Coogle    LKTTKHF,  SH-L  ITALI V CONSIUEIIATA  SOTTO  IL  RAPFOtlTO  DELLA  RELIGIONE,  OPERA  DI  PIETRO  DE  JOUX.   Icitrrp  S4  iiue  Jn  un  nrotrsontf  ronvoriilu,  tendono  ,i  i   dei  prolrsianli  ed  n diicndere  la  nostra  Rde.  Meritano  d'essi^r  pu'  siecui  Tra/Icnimcrifi  dt  ÀlarAcc,  foli*  £cct7/en2a  ddOi  re/i^tone  di  Milner»  folle  Lcltere  di  Cobbett  c fo^Ii  altri  senili  rhc  vider  ta  luce  in  questi  tempi  e rivelano  tnUa  la  (ìevole/za  del  nroleslantismn.  Alle  savie  disrirssinni  die  quesl*  opera  rarehiude  c che  produssero  c produrranno  i più  grandi  elTeUi  nei  proteslanii  c in  tulli  quelli  che  le  leggeranno,  I*  Aulure  ha  rrapi>usic  abilinen-  le  delle  descrizioni  inicressanii  che  ne  Yendunu  aggradevole  la  Icllura  c tic  formano  nn  opera  convenevole  a darsi  per  premio  alla  gioventù  studiosa  ( Cori*  Sfi/J  pour  formcr  «n«  bibliothèquc  ).   Sl'L  PRINCIPIO  GENERATORE  DELLE  COSTITI  ZIOM  POLITICHE  E DEL-  LE ALTRE  IMANE  ISTITLZIOM,  SAGGIO  DEL  CONTE  GITSEPPE  DE  MAISTRE.   Il  Saggio  sul  principi»  ^cncraiore  doHc  Coslilusiuni  po/t(icitc,  è una  di  quelle  opero  fon  cui  il  de  Maistre  impresse  il  suggello  della  immorlalilA  alla  riputazione  che  già  crasi  acquistala  grandissima  colle  sne  Considcmsioni  sul-  la Francia.  Nel  Saggio  es^itiiina  i)  fomianieiiio  della  scienza,  c rovescia  dal  fondo  l'ediGzio  di  quelle  cflìnicre  legislazioni,  che  da  un  mezzo  secolo  si  suc-  cedono e scompariscono  r.Tpidamcnlc.  Vi  approfondisce  qnistioni  mollo  im-  portanti nell' ordine  sociale  c le  sue  considerazioni  si  collegano  agli  oggetti  ]MÙ  gravi  della  religione  c della  società.  ( A.  iliccurJi.  Manuale  d*  ogni  lette-  ratura. Aii7aao  /A'ò/,  pag.  578  ).   Il  P.  Antonio  Rrescianì  parlando  del  De  Maistre  lo  chiama  uomo,  non  so  se  più  acuto  poltlico*  o profondo  filosofot  o cristiano  eminente.   La  Francia  dà  quasi  ogni  momento  altcstaU  dell*  ammirazione  che  prò*  fessa  pel  grande  ingegno  che  illustrò  la  Savoia  in  sul  principio  di  questo  se-  colo, il  conte  Giuseppe  Deinaistre,  il  Platone  delle  Alpi,  come  lo  chiama  Al-  fonso di  Lainartine,  nel  secondo  volume  dell'  Hisloire  de  la  itestavration.  Noi  leggiamo  nel  A/idt,  giornale  che  si  stampa  a Tolosa,  che  T Accademia  dei  Jeux-Florau:c  decreto  un  premio  d'eloquenza  pel  1853  all* autore  del  miglior  elogio  del  fonte  IVemaistrc,  uno  de'più  grandi  pultblicisli  del  secolo  XIX-  *ìrui-  lo  annunzia  che  il  concorso  del  1853  sarà  ben  ragguardevole  (Dall'  Armonia,  ■l  .Vaggio  f53i  ),   Il  Conte  De  Maislrc  fu  Invialo  del  He  Vilforio  Eromanuelc  1 alla  Corte  di  llnshia,  e in  tempi  infelici  in  cui  la  carica  era  atto  di  singolare  devozione,  da  )mihi  ambita.  Il  Conte  Do  Maistre  è fprse  il  primo  fra  i savi  dell* età  presente  e i?  solo  vero  Glosoft»,  senza  che  altri  possa  o%erlo  a male.  ( Conte  Soìaro  del-  la Margarita,  nel  .Memorandum,  Torino  ISiif,  pag.  485  ).   SAGGIO  INTORNO  AL  SOHALISMO  E ALLE  DOTTRINE  E TENDENZE  SOCIALISTICIIK.   1!  Saggio  intorno  al  socialismo  è un  libro  profondo  che  meriterebbe  di  essere  oticntamcntc  letto  c studialo,  ma  ciò  non  si  farà  imichò  adesso  i diziu>  Ilari,  i giornali,  e i compendi  bastano  a far  gli  uomini  eruditi  e sapienti  ( Con-  te Solaro  della  Margarita,  nel  Memorandum,  Turino  fS51,  pag.  415 ). Emiliano Avogadro, conte Della Motta. Il conte Emiliano Avogadro. Emiliano Avogadro Collobiano e Della Motta. Il Conte Emiliano Avogadro della Motta. Conte Emiliino Avogadro della Motta. Avogadro di Vigliano, Motta. Keywords: implicatura. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Motta” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Motterlini: l’implicatura conversazionale e la critica della ragione economica – il principio d’economia dello sforzo razionale – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Milano). Filosofo italiano. Grice: “I like Motterlini – he has written, echoing Kant, a critique of economic reason, which Stalnaker should read before saying I’m Kantian rather than Futilitarian!”  Specializzato in filosofia della scienza, economia comportamentale e neuro-economia, e noto per i suoi saggi in ambito psico-economico su processi decisionali, emozioni e razionalità umana e per le sue ricerche in ambito epistemologico sulla razionalità della scienza e il metodo scientifico. Insegna a Milanodove. Consigliere per le Scienze Sociali e Comportamentali della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. Si laurea a Milano, dove porta a termine il proprio dottorato in filosofia della scienza. Ricercatore di economia politica e professore associato di filosofia della scienza presso l'Trento; Visiting Associate Professor al Department of Social and Decision Sciences della Carnegie Mellon di Pittsburgh, Visiting Research Scholar al Department of Psychology della UCLA. Professore di filosofia della scienza presso l'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele.  Tra gli altri incarichi è collaboratore de Il Corriere Economia, Il Corriere della Sera e Il Sole 24 Ore, per cui ha curato per anni il blog Controvento. È stato consulente scientifico di Milan Lab, A.C. Milan, fondatore e direttore di Anima FinLab, di Anima Sgr, centro di ricerca di finanza comportamentale e Scientific advisor di MarketPsychData, Ls Angeles.  È direttore del CRESA (Centro di ricerca in epistemologia sperimentale e applicata), da lui fondato a Milano presso la facoltà di filosofia dell'Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. I progetti di ricerca del centro si concentrano su vari aspetti della cognizione umana, dal linguaggio al rapporto tra mente e cervello, dall'economia comportamentale alle neuroscienze cognitive della decisione, con particolare attenzione all'indagine sperimentale multidisciplinare e alle sue ricadute pratiche e applicative (per esempio nell'ambito del policy making e dell'evidence-based policy).  A inizio, ha avviato il progetto di finanza comportamentale per Schroder Italia, dal quale è nato Investimente, un test psicofinanziario al servizio di risparmiatori, promotori finanziari e private banker, per raccogliere e quindi analizzare i dati riguardanti le decisioni di investimento e i bias cognitivi nell'ambito della gestione del risparmio.  Attualmente è direttore dell'E.ON Customer Behavior Lab e Chief Behavior Officer di E.ON Italia; stesso incarico che ricopre per il Gruppo Ospedaliero San Donato. Analizza la proposta falsificazionista, rivelando le difficoltà in cui si imbatte il progetto de-marcazionista e anti-induttivista. Affrontano quindi il modo in cui si ha preteso superare alcune di queste difficoltà, e insieme raccogliere la sfida di Duhem circa il carattere olistico del controllo empirico, tenendo conto delle immagini che il filosofo ha della sua stessa pratica e riferendosi a particolari casi storici come termine di confronto. Sull'orlo della scienza e in edizione ampliata. Nel suo “Filosofia e storia” avanza una interpretazione del progetto razionalista come il prodotto di una peculiare combinazione delle idee di Platone e Hegel. Ciò è motivo della straordinaria fecondità di Platone, ma anche di una inesauribile tensione al suo interno. Una tensione che viene illustrata affrontando la relazione tra filosofia e storia della filosofia (unita longitudinale) in riferimento alla questione della valutazione di una data metodologia in base alle 'ricostruzioni razionali' o construzioni logica a cui essa conduce. Nell'idea che la metodologia filosofica va confrontate con la storia della filosofia è contenuto il germe di una logica della scoperta in cui i canoni non siano fissati una volta per sempre, ma mutano nel tempo, anche se con ritmi non necessariamente uguali a quelli delle teorie filosofiche. Si focalizza su questioni di metodologia dell'economia da una prospettiva interdisciplinare che combina riflessione epistemologica, scienza cognitiva, ed economia sperimentale con aspetti più tecnici di teoria della scelta e della decisione individuale in condizioni d'incertezza. Le ricerche di questo periodo analizzano criticamente lo status delle assunzioni della teoria della scelta razionale, valutando l'impatto delle violazioni comportamentali sistematiche alle restrizioni assiomatiche imposte dai modelli normativi di razionalità. Avanzano quindi ragioni epistemologiche per la composizione della frattura economia e psicologia cognitiva in ambito della teoria della decisione; e suggeriscono di guardare ai recenti risultati dell'economia cognitiva in prospettiva di una nuova sintesi 'quasi-razionale' in cui i modelli neoclassici, integrati da teorie psicologiche che tengano conto dei limiti cognitivi dei soggetti decisionali, rafforzano le previsioni del comportamento economico degli esseri umani.  Neuroeconomia e evidence-based policy Le sue ricerche indagano le basi neurobiologiche della razionalità umana attraverso lo studio dei correlati neurali dei processi decisionali in contesti economico-finanziari, con particolare attenzione al ruolo svolto dalle emozioni, dal rimpianto, e dall'apprendimento sociale.  Parallelamente progetta ed esperimenta i modi in cui i risultati dell'economia comportamentale e della neuroeconomia possono informare politiche pubbliche più efficaci e basate sull'evidenza.  Queste ricerche sono oggetto dei corsi di Filosofia della scienza e di Economia cognitiva e neuroeconomia che insegna all'università San Raffaele, e hanno altresì trovato diffusione attraverso numerosi articoli divulgativi e due libri, Economia emotiva e Trappole mentali. Il suo ultimo libro è Psicoeconomia di Charlie Brown. Strategia per una società più felice. Saggi: “Sull'orlo della scienza,” – Grice: “Must say that ‘orlo’ is a genial word, wish Popper knew it!” –Lakatos, Feyerabend: Pro e contro il metodo, Cortina, Milano.  Popper, Saggiatore-Flammarion, Milano, Lakatos. Scienza, matematica e storia, Saggiatore, Milano, Decisioni mediche. Un approccio cognitive,  Cortina, Milano. Critica della ragione economica. Tre saggi: McFadden, Kahneman, Smith, Saggiatore, Milano, Economia cognitiva & sperimentale, Bocconi Editore, Milano La dimensione cognitiva dell'errore in medicina, Fondazione Smith Kline, Angeli, Milano  Economia emotiva (Emotional Economics), Rizzoli, Milano Trappole mentali, Rizzoli, Milano Mente, Mercati, Decisioni. Introduzione all'economia cognitiva e sperimentale, Egea, Milano  Psico-economia di Charlie Brown. Strategia per una società più felice, Rizzoli, Milano Alcuni articoli scientifici, Lakatos between the Hegelian devil and the Popperian blue sea. In Kampis, G., Kvasz, L., Stoeltzner, M. Considerazioni epistemologiche e mitologiche sulla relazione tra psicologia ed economia, Sistemi intelligenti, Il Mulino, Metodo e standard di valutazione in economia. Dall'apriorismo a Friedman, Studi Economici, Milano. A fMRI Study, PlosONE', Vai in laboratorio e capirai il mercato (con Francesco Guala) Prefazione a Vernon Smith, La razionalità in economia. Tra teoria e analisi sperimentale, IBL, Milano.. Neuro-economia e Teoria del prospetto, voci Enciclopedia dell'economia Garzanti, Milano. Investimente. Test dell'investitore consapevole  Recensione di Hacking sulla The London Review of Books  IlSole24Ore 22.5.//ilsole24ore. com/art/cultura/-05-18/motterlini-spinta-riforme--shtml?uuid=ADAaR2J A Sito su matteo motterlini. CRESA, su cresa.  I am strongly inclined to assent to a principle which might be called a Principle of Economy of Rational Effort. Such a principle would state that where there is a ratiocinative procedure for arriving rationally at certain outcomes, a procedure which, because it is ratiocinative, will involve an expenditure of time and energy, then if there is a nonratiocinative, and so more economical procedure which is likely, for the most part, to reach the same outcomes as the ratiocinative procedure, then provided the stakes are not too high it will be rational to employ the cheaper though somewhat less reliable non-ratiocinative procedure as a substitute for ratiocination. I think this principle would meet with Genitorial approval, in which case the Genitor would install it for use should opportunity arise. On the assumption that it is cha~acteristic of reason to operate on pre-rational states which reason confirms, revises, or even (sometimes) eradicates, such opportunities will arise, provided the rational creatures can, as we can, be trained to modify the relevant pre-rational states or their exercise, so that without actual ratiocination the creatures  84  Paul Grice  can be more or less reliably led by those pre-rational states to the thoughts or actions which reason would endorse were it invoked; with the result that the creatures can do, for the most part, what reason requires without, in the particular case, the voice of reason being heard. Motterlini. Keywords: critica della ragione economica, principle of economy of rational effort, twice in Grice – in Reply, etc. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Motterlini” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Musatti: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell’erote collettivo – filosofia fascista – filosofia del ventennio – Gruppo universario fascista – filosofia italiana -- Luigi Speranza (Dolo). Filosofo italiano.  Grice: “Musatti reminds me of Malcolm, “Tonight I had a dream,”” – Grice: “Musatti has explored the implicatures of ‘who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?’, which comes strictly from Grimm – this is a rhetorical question – and Grimm is implicating that nobody should!” -- Ccesare luigi eugenio musatti. Tra i primi che posero le basi della psicoanalisi, in Italia. Nato a Dolo, sulla riviera del Brenta, nella Villa Musatti a del nonno paterno in cui i parenti erano soliti trascorrere la villeggiatura.  Figlio di Elia, ebreo veneziano e deputato socialista amico di G. Matteotti, e della napoletana Emma Leanza, non fu né circonciso, né battezzato -- durante le persecuzioni razziali si procura un falso certificato di battesimo dalla parrocchia di Santa Maria in Transpontina di Roma -- e non professa mai alcun credo religioso.  Frequenta il liceo Foscarini di Venezia, poi si iscrive dapprima alla facoltà di Scienze dell'Padova per il corso di Ingegneria, e immediatamente dopo alla facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, dove si laurea in filosofia. Dopo la laurea, si iscrisse per due anni al corso di Matematica della facoltà di Scienze matematiche, fisiche e naturali di Padova, ma non sostenne esame alcuno. A diciannove anni fu chiamato a Roma per il servizio di leva. Dopo un periodo di addestramento a Torino, e mandato al fronte come ufficiale, con impegni marginali. Finita la guerra tornò a Padova per terminare gli studi. Sulla cattedra di Psicologia Sperimentale c'era Vittorio Benussi, allora chiamato per chiara fama a insegnare a Padova dall'Graz. Si laurea in filosofia e l'anno successivo divenne assistente volontario del Laboratorio di psicologia sperimentale. Benussi si uccise con il cianuro a causa di una grave forma di disturbo bipolare, lasciando tutto nelle mani di M. e di Silvia De Marchi, anch'essa assistente volontaria, che poi divenne sua moglie. Il suicidio di Benussi fu scoperto da Musatti, il quale però lo nascose per paura di ripercussioni negative sulla psicologia italiana in una situazione di fragilità e precarietà accademica, sottoposta a pressioni da parte sia del regime fascista, con le sue istanze gentiliane, che della Chiesa Cattolica. Negli anni ottanta M. rivelò che Benussi s'era suicidato, non era morto a causa di un malore. Musatti divenne direttore del Laboratorio di Psicologia dell'Padova. Porta in Italia la Psicologia della Forma con importanti lavori di livello internazionale. Dopo aver diffuso in Italia la psicologia della Gestalt, divenne il primo studioso italiano di psicoanalisi. Studiando la psicologia della suggestione e dell'ipnosi, introdotta in Italia da Benussi, approdò alla psicoanalisi, sulla quale tenne il primo corso universitario italiano. Il corso si tenne presso a Padova. Divenne allora uno dei primi e più importanti rappresentanti italiani della psicoanalisi. Nell'Italia le teorie di Freud non erano state accolte bene né dalle Università, né dalla Chiesa cattolica, a causa dell'ideologia culturale gentiliana assunta dal fascismo. La Società psicoanalitica italiana venne limitata anche dalle leggi razziali fasciste che colpirono i membri ebrei della società. Benché non fosse ebreo (poiché figlio di madre cattolica), e allontanato dall'insegnamento a Urbino e declassato ad insegnante di liceo. Nominato professore di Filosofia al Liceo Parini di Milano. Si ritrova con L.  Basso, Ferrazzutto e altri vecchi socialisti con l'intento di creare un partito erede del Partito Socialista Italiano; ebbe l'incarico di trovare denaro per una prima organizzazione e di allacciare rapporti col Partito Comunista clandestino. Musatti lavorò anche durante la guerra. Nel periodo dell'occupazione nazista, fu tratto in salvo dall'avvocato Paolo Toffanin, fratello di Giuseppe Toffanin, che lo aiutò a trasferirsi a Ivrea, ospite dell'amico Adriano Olivetti. Con il suo sostegno fondò un centro di psicologia del lavoro. Ricoprì anche l'incarico di direttore della Scuola Allievi Meccanici, scuola aperta per formare operai meccanici specializzati. Successivamente fu richiamato dall'Esercito per andare sul fronte francese. Ottenne all'Università degli Studi di Milano la prima cattedra di Psicologia costituita nel dopoguerra in Italia, presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia. Vi insegnò per venti anni. A Milano ebbe il periodo più florido della sua ricerca scientifica: gli studenti affollavano le sue lezioni. M. fu il leader del movimento psicoanalitico italiano nei primi anni del dopoguerra. A quel periodo risale il suo “Trattato di Psicoanalisi”, pubblicato da Einaudi. Divenne direttore della “Rivista di psicoanalisi”. Presidente del Centro Milanese di Psicoanalisi fondato da Franco Ciprandi, Renato Sigurtà e Pietro Veltri, che gli verrà intitolato dopo la sua morte. Nel 1976 è diventato curatore della edizione italiana delle Opere di Sigmund Freud, della Casa Editrice Bollati Boringhieri di Torino. Vecchiaia  La località a lui dedicata Musatti scrisse anche libri di letteratura, tra cui Il pronipote di Giulio Cesare, che gli fece vincere il Premio Viareggio. Fu eletto per due volte consigliere comunale di Milano nella lista del PSIUP e fu anche consulente del Tribunale dei Minori del capoluogo lombardo. Sostenne sempre la pace, il progresso dei lavoratori, l'emancipazione femminile ed i diritti civili. M. era ateo, come ebbe a dichiarare in più occasioni, l'ultima delle quali in uno dei martedì filosofici del Casinò di Sanremo. Muore nella sua abitazione di via Sabbatini a Milano. L'indomani dopo una cerimonia laica di commiato celebrata in forma strettamente privata, la sua salma e  cremata a Lambrate. Le sue ceneri sono tumulate, secondo le sue ultime volontà, nel cimitero comunale di Brinzio, località in cui era solito trascorrere i periodi di vacanza. Il suo archivio è conservato presso l'Aspi Archivio Storico della Psicologia Italiana dell'Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.  Il comune di Dolo ha ribattezzato la sua località natale Casello 12 località M. e gli ha intitolato il locale istituto professionale.  Musatti e il suicidio di Benussi Anche dopo la rivelazione che si era trattato di un suicidio, non parla mai volentieri della morte del maestro. Nel generale silenzio dello studioso di Dolo emerge un'intervista. Nell'intervista M. confessa di sognare a volte che in una caserma dei carabinieri in cui viene tradotto, il commissario lo interroga sulla morte di tre sue mogli (si sposò quattro volte), decedute tragicamente, e di Vittorio Benussi. A fine colloquio il militare lo intima di confessare di aver ucciso il maestro per prendere la cattedra di psicologia. «Io gli rispondoprosegue Musatti, da buon psicoanalistache sicuramente nel mio subconscio mi sono sentito responsabile per questa e per altre morti. Il commissario, che non capiva nulla di subconscio, decide: “Mi spiace professore, ma devo arrestarla”. Io allora gli rispondo: ”Non è possibile commissario, perché si tratta di delitti commessi più di cinquant'anni fa, e quindi sono prescritti!”».  ‘Cesare’ è un riferimento al pro-zio M., medico pediatra, uno che aveva visitato il piccolo, nato settimino. ‘Luigi’ e il nome del bonno materno (L. Leanza, morto in carcere, partecipa alla rivolta anti-borbonica); ‘Eugenio’ e il nome di un altro pro-zio paterno, lo storico Eugenio Musatti; cfr. Musatti IX-XIII. Forse la psicoanalisi è nata e morta con lui. Il nome allude alla fermata della tranvia Padova-Malcontenta-Fusina che il nonno, presidente della Società Veneta Lagunare, odierna ACTV, aveva fatto aprire per raggiungere più agevolmente Venezia.  Musatti IX-XIII.  Archivio dell'Università degli Studi di Padova, Carriere scolastiche della Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, Padova, Carriere scolastiche della Facoltà di scienze matematiche, fisiche e naturali, Opuscolo del Centro Milanese di Psicoanalisi, a cura del Comitato Direttivo, redatto da L. Ambrosiano Capazzi Gammaro Moroni, Reatto, Schwartz, M. Sforza, Stufflesser, Milano  Per una storia del Centro Milanese di Psicoanalisi Chiari, Seminario presso il Centro Milanese di Psicoanalisi Cesare Musatti, Milano  Freud, Opere (Torino, Boringhieri); S. Giacomoni, Cerimonia privata per M., la Repubblica, è consultabile sul  dell'Aspi, all'indirizzo web AspiArchivio storico della psicologia italiana, Università degli studi di Milano-Bicocca. D. Mont D'Arpizio, Vittorio Benussi, Padre della psicologia padovana, in La Difesa del popolo, Mille anni di scienza in Italia, opera del Museo Galileo. Istituto Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze,  Mia sorella gemella la psicoanalisi, 1Pordenone, Edizioni Studio Tesi,Luciano Mecacci, M. voce dell'Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti. Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. Ottava appendice, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Saggi: “Analisi del concetto di realtà empirica” (Solco, Città di Castello); “Forma e assimilazione,” in: Archivio italiano di psicologia, “Elementi di psicologia della testimonianza” (Rizzoli, Forma e movimento” (Ferrari, Venezia, da: Atti del Reale Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, Gl’elementi della psicologia della forma, Gruppo Universitario Fascista, Padova, Trattato di psico-analisi (Boringhieri, Torino); Super io individuale e Super io collettivo (Olschki, Firenze); Condizioni dell'esperienza e fondazione della psicologia” (Universitaria, Firenze, Riflessioni sul pensiero psicoanalitico e incursioni nel mondo delle immagini (Boringhieri, Torino); Svevo e la psicoanalisi (Olschki, Firenze); I rapporti personali Freud-Jung attraverso il carteggio, Olschki, Firenze, Commemorazione accademica, Olschki, Firenze Nino Valeri, Olschki Firenze, Il pronipote di Giulio Cesare, Mondadori Milano A ciascuno la sua morte (Olschki, Firenze); Hanno cancellato Livorno (Olschki, Firenze); Mia sorella gemella la psicoanalisi (Riuniti, Roma). Una famiglia diversa ed un analista di campagna, Olschki, Firenze,  Questa notte ho fatto un sogno, Riuniti, Roma, Chi ha paura del lupo cattivo?, Riuniti, Roma, Psicoanalisti e pazienti a teatro, a teatro (Mondadori, Milano); Leggere Freud, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, Curar nevrotici con la propria auto-analisi, Mondadori, Milano: Geometrie non-euclidee e problema della conoscenza, Aurelio Molaro, prefazione di Mauro Antonelli, Mimesis, Milano,Treccani Enciclopedie oIstituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. siusa.archivi.beniculturali, italiana di Cesare Musatti, su Catalogo Vegetti della letteratura fantastica, Fantascienza.com. Cesare L. Musatti. Cesare Musatti. Musatti. Keywords: erote, Gruppo Universitario fascista, il collettivo di Jung, l’ego e il noi collettivo Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Musatti” – The Swimming-Pool Library.

 

Grice e Musonio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del Musonio di Gentile -- Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza.  (Bolsena) Esercita un forte influsso sui contemporanei. Di famiglia equestre dell’etrusca Volsini (Bolsena) suscita per la sua fama di filosofo l’invidia di Nerone. Segue Rubellio Plauto nell'Asia Minore e lo incoraggia a togliersi la vita quando Nerone lo condanna a morte. Ritorna a Roma, dove e bandito insieme con Cornuto in occasione della congiura di Pisone e confinato nell’isola di Gyaros nelle Cicladi, ove per la sua rinomanza attira uditori da ogni parte.Verosimilmente richiamato a Roma da GALBA, negli ultimi giorni di Vitellio si une ad una ambasceria del Senato presso Antonio Primo per perorare la causa della pace fra i suoi soldati, ma senza successo.Quando Vespasiano assunse il potere, M. accusa davanti al Senato P. Egnazio Celere, quale delatore e falso testimonio nel processo di Borea Sorano. Vespasiano lo escluse dalla prima espulsione dei filosofi da Roma (71), ma poi lo esiliò per la seconda volta ; però Tito, che già lo aveva conosciuto, lo richiamò dopo la sua assunzione al trono. In seguito mancano notizie su di lui, ma da una lettera di Plinio il Giovane sembra che non fosse più in vita. Non risulta che abbia composto e pubblicato scritti, anzi sembra che si sia servito soltanto dell’insegnamento orale, del quale, però, rimangono frammenti abbastanza numerosi. Essi comprendono 19 brevi apoftegmi conservati da Plutarco, da Aulo Gellio e dallo Stobeo ; altri apoftegmi e trattazioni filosofiche relativamente ampie raccolti da Epitteto nel suo insegnamento-È e trasmessi i primi da Arriano, le seconde dallo Stobeo ; esposizioni o lezioni che si trovano nello Stobeo o costituiscono la parte più estesa dei frammenti. È verosimile che provengano da uno scritto di quel Lucio che si è già ricordato e che si deve ritenere la fonte più importante dello Stobeo. Un’altra è Epitteto, cioè Arriano. Sembra che un Pollione (probabilmente Valerio Pollione da Alessandria, vissuto sotto Adriano) compone Memorabili di Musonio, ma non ne restano tracce. È giudicata falsa una lettera di Musonio a un certo Paneratide. Le concordanze che si sono osservate tra i frammenti di M, e il Pedagogo di Clemente di Alessandria hanno fatto pensare o alla dipendenza di questo da uno scritto di Lucio o alla derivazione di ambedue da una fonte più antica. Della forte azione di Musonio sui contemporanei sono prova i suoi numerosi scolari, tra i quali si ricordano (oltre al genero Artemidoro, amico e maestro di Plinio il Giovane), i filosofi Epitteto, Dione di Prusa, Eufrate di Tiro e il suo scolaro Timocerate di Eraclea, e insigni romani, come Plauto, Sorano e Minicio Fundano. M. si avvicina ai cinici nell’assegnare alla filosofia finalità radicalmente etico-pratiche, accetta spunti dell’ascetismo dei crotonesi. Ma nel complesso dipende dal Portico con influssi posidoniani. Nel sno insegnamento non trascura le esercitazioni logiche e i frammenti toccano argomenti di fisica, ma ciò che vi è detto degli dei, designati con le denominazioni della religione tradizionale, non supera la sfera del pensiero comune e non ha carattere filosofico determinato. Invece riporta al Portico l'affermazione della necessità universale, che equivale alla teoria del fato. Però l'interesse di M. si concentra sulla funzione pratica della filosofia, che è assolutamente necessaria in quanto (secondo la tesi introdotta dai filosofi dai Cinargo) gli uomini sono malati che richiedono una cura continua la quale dev'essere prestata dalla filosofia, che perciò è necessaria a tutti, alle donne non meno che agli uomini. La filosofia però è identificata alla ricerca e alla realizzazione della virtù, per conseguire la quale non vi è necessità di molti discorsi, nè di molte teorie. Inoltre, in essa l'esercizio ha maggiore importanza dell’insegnamento o del discorso. Siccome la natura ha posto in ogni uomo i germi della virtù, se il discepolo non è stato corrotto, una breve dimostrazione è sufficiente per fargli riconoscere i principi etici giusti. Ciò che soprattutto importa è che maestro e discepolo uniformino la loro condotta ai propri principi. Si comprende che M. si interessasse in primo luogo della formazione etica degli scolari. Nell’insieme, la morale di M. si conforma alle dottrine tradizionali del Portico. Occorre distinguere ciò che è e ciò che non è in nostro potere. Ora da noi dipende soltanto l’uso delle rappresentazioni, cioè l'assenso dato alle opinioni sul bene e sul male, dalle quali è determinata la giusta valutazione delle cose e quindi l'intenzione quale atteggiamento interiore della volontà. In la volonta, se è retta, consiste la libertà, la virtù, la felicità. Tutto il resto non dipende da noi e perciò rispetto ad esso, ossia alle cose esterne, dobbiamo rimetterci all’ordine necessario dell'universo e aecettare volentieri ciò che arreca. Soltanto la virtù è bene, soltanto la malvagità è male e ogni altra cosa è indifferente. Però, per rafforzare la volontà, M. ritene necessario, oltre l'insegnamento e l’esercizio morale, anche l’indurimento fisico, perchè, essendo il corpo uno strumento indispensabile dell’anima, occorre rafforzare ambedue. In generale raccoman, avvicinandosi ai filosofi del Cinargo, la vita semplice e conforme alla natura e accoglie dai crotonesi, il divieto dei cibi carnei. Oltrepassando le opinioni di molti antichi filosofi del portico, esige una vita morale severissima, raccomanda il matrimonio, condanna la limitazione delle nascite e l’esposizione dei figli. Nell'insieme, i frammenti di Musonio rivelano un’anima nobile e retta, appassionata per il bene e guidata dal desiderio di educare gli spiriti, ma a queste doti non corrisponde il valore scientifico degli insegnamenti, perchè i suoi pensieri sono molto mediocri e privi di originalità. Inoltre non si può trovare nelle sue parole l’espressione di una visione della vita vibrante di dolore e di amore simile a quella di Seneca. Gaio Musonio Rufo. M. (Volsinii) è un filosofo romano.   Frammento di papiro (P. Harr.Col.), con parte di una diatribe. Sulla vita di Gaio Musonio Rufo, stoico, si posseggono poche notizie certe. È noto che nacque a Volsinii, corrispondente all'odierna Bolsena, in Etruria, che fu cavaliere. Il ‘prae-nomen’ Gaio lo conosciamo solo attraverso Plinio il minore che ci fornisce anche un’altra notizia su una sua figlia (presumibilmente chiamata Musonia, secondo l’uso romano), sposata ad Artemidoro, al quale Plinio presta aiuto anche per stima e affetto nei confronti del suocero. Sappiamo dalla voce “Mousonios” della Suda che Musonio e figlio di Capitone ma non abbiamo altre notizie sulla sua famiglia, che era comunque di origine etrusca. In effetti, il nomen “Musonius” denotare la gens, e viene indicato da alcuni studiosi della lingua etrusca come forma latina di un gentilizio etrusco “Musu,” “Muśu-nia.”.  E capo a Roma di un circolo o gregge filosofico e si dedica anche alla politica, con idee abbastanza tradizionali e moderate. Fa parte del gruppo creatosi intorno a Rubellio Plauto, un discendente della famiglia Giulia. Quando Rubellio Plauto e allontanato da Roma in via precauzionale da Nerone, M. lo segue in Asia. Due anni dopo giunge l'ordine del principe di eliminare Rubellio Plauto. Musonio ritorna a Roma, ma,  in concomitanza della congiura di Pisone, e mandato in esilio, in quanto allievo di Seneca, nell'isola di Gyaros, inospitale e rocciosa nel Mar Egeo.  Indicativi della sua integrità morale e della sua coerenza sono altri due momenti della sua vita, entrambi riportati da Tacito nelle Storie. Dopo essere ritornato dall’esilio, forse grazie a GALBA, con il quale sembra fosse in amicizia, nella fase finale della guerra civile seguita alla morte di Nerone, Musonio si rese protagonista di un primo episodio significativo, rivelatore della sua generosa attitudine a mettere in pratica i principi morali e gli ideali di pace che insegna. In una Roma che era teatro di violenti scontri tra le fazioni avverse, il filosofo di Volsinii si impegna a svolgere un’improbabile opera di pacificazione. “S’era mescolato agli ambasciatori M., di ordine equestre, zelante filosofo e seguace dei precetti dello stoicismo, ed in mezzo ai manipoli prendeva ad ammonire gli uomini armati con le sue disquisizioni sui beni della pace e sui mali casi della guerra. Ciò fu per molti motivo di scherno; per la maggioranza, di fastidio. E non mancava chi l’avrebbe spinto via o l’avrebbe calpestato, se, dietro consiglio dei più equilibrati e fra le minacce di altri, non avesse deposto la sua inopportuna esposizione di saggezza.” Il secondo episodio, ci presenta Musonio Rufo impegnato nella riabilitazione della memoria dell’amico Barea Sorano, che era stato sottoposto a processo e condannato a morte insieme alla figlia Servilia e a Trasea. Contro di lui era stata resa una falsa testimonianza da parte del suo stesso maestro, Publio Egnazio Celere, anche lui appartenente alla corrente stoica. Musonio, che pure nei suoi insegnamenti si dichiarava contrario ad intentare cause per difendere se stesso dalle offese ricevute, in questo caso non esita ad accusare in Senato il traditore per difendere la memoria dell’amico condannato ingiustamente. Come scrive Tacito: “Allora Musonio Rufo attacca Publio Celere, accusandolo di aver attaccato Sorano con una falsa testimonianza. Evidentemente con quell’accusa si rinnovavano gli odii delle delazioni. Ma l’accusato, vile e colpevole, non poteva essere difeso. Di Sorano e santa la memoria. Celere, che fa professione di sapienza, testimoniando contro Barea, ha tradito e violato l’amicizia.” Musonio porta avanti con tenacia il suo impegno, che e coronato da successo. “Fu deciso allora di ri-aprire il processo tra M. e Publio Celere: Publio venne condannato ed ai mani di Sorano e resa soddisfazione. Quel giorno, che si distinse per la severità dei magistrati, non manca nemmeno di elogi ad un cittadino privato. Si era, infatti, del parere che Musonio avesse agito con giustizia in tribunale. Opinione ben diversa si ha di Demetrio, seguace della scuola cinica, in quanto aveva difeso, più per ambizione che con onore, un reo manifesto. Quanto a Publio, non ebbe né animo, né eloquenza sufficienti in quel frangente.»  Più tardi M. riusce a guadagnarsi la stima di Vespasiano evitando la cacciata dei filosofi. Ci e però un secondo esilio e, dopo il suo rientro a Roma, voluto da TITO, le fonti tacciono. Potrebbe essere stato espulso da Roma, assieme agli altri filosofi, a causa di un senatoconsulto sollecitato da Domiziano, che fa uccidere Aruleno Rustico e cacciare Epitteto e altri. Da un'epistola di Plinio minore si apprende che egli non era più in vita.  Si proclama suo discendente il poeta Postumio Rufio Festo Avienio. Probabilmente in modo volontario, sull'esempio di Socrate o Grice e come fa anche il discepolo Epitteto, non lascia nulla di scritto. I principi della sua predicazione filosofica si ricavano da una raccolta di diatribe dovuta a un discepolo di nome Lucio, di cui 21 ampi estratti sono conservati nell'Antologia di Stobeo. Essi sono intitolati: “Che non è necessario fornire molte prove per un problema” “Su chi nasce con un'inclinazione verso la virtù” “Che anche le donne dovrebbero studiare filosofia” “Se le figlie debbano ricevere la stessa educazione dei figli maschi” “Se è più efficace la teoria o la pratica” “Sul praticare la filosofia” “Che si dovrebbero disprezzare le difficoltà” “Che anche un principe deve studiare filosofia” “Che l'esilio non è un male” “Il filosofo perseguirà qualcuno per lesioni personali?” “Quali mezzi di sostentamento sono appropriati per un filosofo?” “Sull'indulgenza sessuale” “Qual è il fine principale del matrimonio” “Il matrimonio è un ostacolo per la ricerca della filosofia?” “Ogni bambino che nasce dovrebbe essere allevato?” “Bisogna obbedire ai propri genitori in tutte le circostanze?” “Qual è il miglior viatico per la vecchiaia?” “Sul cibo” “Su vestiti e riparo” “Sugli arredi” “Sul taglio dei capelli”. Lo stile delle diatribe è semplice. In genere viene posta una questione iniziale, poi sviluppata con chiarezza durante il testo, spesso costruito in modo figurato, usando metafore e similitudini (spesso sfrutta il paragone con il medico, alcune volte intervengono immagini di animali). Questa caratteristica si adatta bene alla sua personalità e al suo tipo di insegnamento, tutto rivolto alla schiettezza della vita.  Ci restano, inoltre, frammenti minori, spesso in forma di apoftegma. A parte quelli sempre di Stobeo (in numero di 14), due frammenti conservati da Plutarco sono brevi aneddoti che potrebbero essere definiti come "detti celebri", mentre tre brani di Aulo Gellio conservano detti memorabili ed un quarto è lungo abbastanza da rappresentare la sintesi di un intero discorso. C'è, poi, un aneddoto in Elio Aristide ed Epitteto ne racconta una mezza dozzina (11, per la precisione). Restano, inoltre, due epistole, concordemente ritenute spurie. M. rappresenta, con Epitteto, Antonino e Seneca, uno dei quattro esponenti più significativi del portico romano del principato. Egli, se per certi versi corrisponde appieno alle istanze propugnate dalla temperie spirituale del suo tempo, per altri si distingue e mette in luce, soprattutto per il recupero radicale e profondo di una filosofia intesa come arte del vivere bene e onestamente, cioè mezzo per conseguire uno scopo riscontrabile nei fatti.  Il ruolo della filosofia Egli crede che la filosofia (stoica) fosse la cosa più utile, in quanto ci persuade che né la vita, né la ricchezza, né il piacere sono un bene, e che né la morte, né la povertà, né il dolore sono un male; quindi questi ultimi non sono da temere. La virtù è l'unico bene, perché da sola ci impedisce di commettere errori nella vita. Del resto, sembra che solo il filosofo si occupi di studio della virtù. La persona che afferma di studiare filosofia deve praticarla più diligentemente di chi studia medicina o qualche altra attività, perché la filosofia è più importante e più difficile da comprendere di qualsiasi altra occupazione. Questo perché, a differenza di altre abilità, le persone che studiano filosofia sono state corrotte nella loro anima da vizi e abitudini sconsiderate, imparando cose contrarie a ciò che impareranno in filosofia. Ma il filosofo non studia la virtù soltanto come conoscenza teorica. Piuttosto, M. insiste sul fatto che la pratica è più importante della teoria, poiché la pratica ci porta all’azione in modo più efficace della teoria. Sostene che sebbene tutti siano naturalmente disposti a vivere senza errori e abbiano la capacità di essere virtuosi, non ci si può aspettare che qualcuno che non abbia effettivamente imparato l'abilità di vivere virtuosamente viva senza errori più di qualcuno che non è un medico esperto, un musicista , studioso, timoniere o atleta ci si poteva aspettare che praticassero quelle abilità senza errori.  In una delle sue diatribe, si racconta il consiglio che offrì a un re in visita, dicendogli che deve proteggere e aiutare i suoi sudditi, quindi sapere cosa è buono o cattivo, utile o dannoso, utile o inutile per le persone. Ma diagnosticare queste cose è proprio il compito del filosofo. Poiché un re deve anche sapere cos'è la giustizia e prendere decisioni giuste, il principe studia filosofia, anche per possedere autocontrollo, frugalità, modestia, coraggio, saggezza, magnanimità, capacità di prevalere nel parlare sugli altri, capacità di sopportare il dolore e deve essere privo di errori. La filosofia, sosteneva M., è l'unica disciplina che fornisce tutte queste virtù. Per dimostrare la sua gratitudine il re gli offrì tutto ciò che desiderava, al che il filosofo chiese solo che il re aderisse ai principi stabiliti.  Musonio sosteneva che, poiché l'essere umano è fatto di corpo e anima, dovremmo allenarli entrambi, ma quest'ultima richiede maggiore attenzione. Questo duplice metodo richiede l’abituarsi al freddo, al caldo, alla sete, alla fame, alla scarsità di cibo, a un letto duro, all’astensione dai piaceri e alla sopportazione dei dolori. Questo metodo rafforza il corpo, lo abitua alla sofferenza e lo rende idoneo ad ogni compito. Crede che l'anima fosse rafforzata in modo simile sviluppando il coraggio attraverso la sopportazione delle difficoltà e rendendola autocontrollata astenendosi dai piaceri. Musonio insisteva sul fatto che l'esilio, la povertà, le lesioni fisiche e la morte non sono mali e un filosofo deve disprezzare tutte queste cose. Un filosofo considera l'essere picchiato, deriso o sputato come né dannoso né vergognoso e quindi non avrebbe mai litigato contro nessuno per tali atti, secondo M.. L'opposizione di M. alla vita lussuosa si estendeva alle sue opinioni sul sesso. Pensa che gli uomini che vivono nel lusso desiderano un'ampia varietà di esperienze sessuali, sia legittime che illegittime, sia con donne che con uomini. Osserva che a volte gl’uomini licenziosi perseguono una serie di partner sessuali maschili. A volte diventano insoddisfatte dei partner sessuali maschili disponibili e scelgono di perseguire coloro che sono difficili da ottenere. M. condanna tutti questi atti sessuali ricreativi. Insiste sul fatto che solo gli atti sessuali finalizzati alla procreazione all’interno del matrimonio sono giusti. Denuncia l'adulterio come illegale e illegittimo. Giudica i rapporti omosessuali un oltraggio contro natura. Sosteneva che chiunque sia sopraffatto dal piacere vergognoso è vile nella sua mancanza di autocontrollo.  M. difende l'agricoltura come un'occupazione adatta per un filosofo e nessun ostacolo all'apprendimento o all'insegnamento di lezioni essenziali. Gli insegnamenti esistenti di Musonio sottolineano l'importanza delle pratiche quotidiane. Ad esempio, ha sottolineato che ciò che si mangia ha conseguenze significative. Crede che padroneggiare il proprio appetito per il cibo e le bevande fosse la base dell'autocontrollo, una virtù vitale. Sostene che lo scopo del cibo è nutrire e rafforzare il corpo e sostenere la vita, non fornire piacere. Digerire il cibo non ci dà alcun piacere, ragiona, e il tempo impiegato a digerire il cibo supera di gran lunga il tempo impiegato a consumarlo. È la digestione che nutre il corpo, non il consumo. Pertanto, concluse, il cibo che mangiamo serve al suo scopo quando lo digeriamo, non quando lo gustiamo. M. sostenne la sua convinzione che le donne dovessero ricevere la stessa educazione filosofica degli uomini con i seguenti argomenti. In primo luogo, gli dei hanno dato alle donne lo stesso potere di ragione degli uomini. La ragione valuta se un'azione è buona o cattiva, onorevole o vergognosa. In secondo luogo, le donne hanno gli stessi sensi degli uomini: vista, udito, olfatto e il resto. In terzo luogo, i sessi condividono le stesse parti del corpo: testa, busto, braccia e gambe. Quarto, le donne hanno un uguale desiderio per la virtù e una naturale affinità con essa. Le donne, non meno degli uomini, sono per natura compiaciute delle azioni nobili e giuste e censurano il loro contrario. Pertanto, concluse M., è altrettanto appropriato che le donne studino filosofia, e quindi considerino come vivere onorevolmente, quanto lo è per gli uomini.  Suda μ 1305: «Figlio di Capitone, etrusco, della città di Volsinii; filosofo dialettico e stoico, vissuto ai tempi di Nerone, conoscente di Apollonio di Tiana e di molti altri. Ci sono anche lettere che sembrano provenire da Apollonio a lui e da lui ad Apollonio. Naturalmente per la sua schiettezza, le sue critiche e il suo eccesso di libertà e ucciso da Nerone. Numerosi sono i discorsi filosofici che portano il suo nome e anche le lettere. Epistole. Di origine etrusca: cfr. Filostrato, Vita di Apollonio di Tiana, VII 16. Pittau, “Dizionario della lingua etrusca (DETR), Dublino. Tacito, Annales, XIV, Epitteto, Diatribe, III 15, 14. Storie, III 81. Storie, IV 10. Cassio Dione, Girolamo, Chronicon, a. 2095:Titus Musonium Rufum philosophum de exilio revocat»; Temistio (Orationi, XIII, 173c), inoltre, attesta l'amicizia tra Tito e M.. Cameron, Avienus or Avienius?, in "Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik".  L'attribuzione è data nell'estratto XV Hense: sicuramente questo Lucio era un allievo di Musonio, e uno specifico riferimento in cui M. parla da esule a un esule rivela che anche Lucio partecia  al bando del suo maestro. Nella diatriba Lucio riporta una conversazione di Musonio con un re siriano e dice, tra parentesi, che c'erano ancora re in Siria a quel tempo, vassalli dei romani. -- nell'edizione Hence. Una delle due è una lunga lettera scritta da M. a Pancratide sul tema dell'educazione dei suoi figli. Diatriba VIII Hense. Cfr. anche il detto «Un re dovrebbe voler ispirare soggezione piuttosto che paura nei suoi sudditi. La maestà è caratteristica del re che incute timore reverenziale, la crudeltà di quello che ispira paura» (in Stobeo, IV 7, 16). A differenza del suo allievo Epitteto, che mostrava disprezzo per il corpo, M. sottolinea l'interdipendenza tra anima e corpo. Questa visione, del tutto coerente con il panteismo stoico, non è estranea al pensiero neoplatonico. Diatribe III e IV Hense; Nussbaum, The Incomplete Feminism of M., Platonist, Stoic, and Roman, in The Sleep of Reason. Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient and Rome, Nussbaum and J. Sihvola, Chicago. Bibliografia C. Musonii Rufi reliquiae, edidit O. Hence (Lipsia, Teubner); Lutz, Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates, Yale classical studies. Dillon,  M. and Education in the Good Life: A Model of Teaching and Living Virtue. University Press of America. Laurenti, Musonio, maestro di Epitteto, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlino, de Gruyter, King, (Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings. Edited by William B. Irvine. Create Space. DOTTARELLI, M. l'etrusco. La filosofia come scienza di vita” (Roma, Annulli). Musònio Rufo, Gaio, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Calogero, MUSONIO Rufo, Caio, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Musonio Rufo, Gaio, in Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, M., su Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Opere di Gaio Musonio Rufo, su Open Library, Archive. VDM Stoicismo. Portale Antica Roma   Portale Biografie Categorie: Filosofi romani Filosofi del II secoloRomani del II secoloStoici[altre] Grice e Tito – La clemenza di Tito – “Titus M. Rufum philosophy revocat. Amico di Musonio. Grice e Galba. Grice e Nerone – Grice e Vespasiano. Gaio M. Rufo, figlio di Capitone e degli stoici di maggior grido in quell'età, e uno di quelli che si guadagnarono un maggior numero di seguaci per l'efficacia del loro insegnamento. Plinio Secondo infatti, lodando le virtú singolari del suo amico Artemidoro, assicura che per esse ei merito che a C. M. ex omnibus omnium ordinum adsectatoribus gener adsumeretur. E di Volsinio, in Etruria. Ma non si può dire se fosse nato sotto Claudio o sotto Caligola. Benché sia più probabile la seconda supposizione. Appartenne all'ordine equestre. L'incontriamo la prima volta in Roma, quando ne è mandato in esilio da Nerone in quella serie di condanne che segui alla sventata congiura di Pisone. A lui, come a Verginio Flavo, celebre maestro di retorica, nocque, secondo Tacito, claritudo nominis nam Verginius studia iuvenum eloquentia, Musonius praeceptis sapientiae fovebat. Tre anni innanzi era nell'Asia Minore presso Rubellio Plauto, insieme con un altro filosofo, Cerano,il quale non si trova nominato in altro luogo. Sicché è probabile che egli non tornasse in Roma se non dopo la morte di Rubellio, per seguire il quale aveva dovuto lasciar Roma, quando a Rubellio per ordine di Nerone convenne ritirarsi in Asia. Se, adunque, il nostro M. poté essere il filosofo di Rubellio Plauto, del quale vedremo con che ardore proseguisse lo stoicismo, la frase di Tacito ci dice che egli dove esercitare in Roma l'insegnamento pubblico. Le relazioni avute con Rubellio, che al dire di Tacito, omnium ore celebratur, e quei due anni consecutivi d'insegnamento pubblico, devono avergli fruttato la claritudo nominis che fu madre del suo esilio Nerone nella scoperta della congiura pisoniana trova tra i congiurati più d'uno della setta stoica, come Seneca, a quanto pare, e Lucano. Ed era naturale che anche M., l'antico maestro ed amico del suo odiato Rubellio, lo stoico che suscita tanta ammirazione intorno a sé e trasfondeva in tanti il suo entusiasmo, siccome apparisce da quel che ne dicono Tacito e Plinio il giovane, facesse nascere nell'animo di Nerone sospetti e timori e fors'anche invidia. Musonio, cacciato da Roma, e da Nerone relegato nell'inospitale isola di Giaro, tra le Cicladi. E quivi dimora fino alla morte di codesto imperatore. Ma neppur li si rimase dall'insegnare. Giacché Filostrato, testimonio, in verità, non sicuro, ci fa sapere che in quell'isola accorrevano a lui da ogni parte, e da uno dei frammenti conservatici da Stobeo si scorge che in Giaro era alla scuola di Musonio il compilatore di quella specie di 'Azurnusycuata, donde gli estratti musoniani di Stobeo sarebbero tolti. A Giaro si rese benemerito dell'isola, dove non s'era mai vista dell'acqua, ed ei seppe trovare una fonte. Per vedere la quale Filostrato afferma che al suo tempo si visita ancora quell'erma isola. Quanto tempo vi rimane si può precisare da un luogo del suo discepolo Epiteto; dove si ricorda un detto di lui relativo alla morte di Galba, dal quale risulta che M. e già a Roma sotto questo imperatore. Sicché molto probabilmente vi sarà tornato alla morte di Nerone. Non altrimenti dello stoico Elvidio Prisco, cacciato anche lui da Nerone e tornato a Roma all'avvento di Galba all'impero. A Roma, M. si trovava durante il breve impero di Vinelio poicho 1 Potia Coria, sli api basiatori to riti Tao qua dio qui (o in pa la da i, partando gravi Guasti l'ambasceria è rimasta famosa; giacché le parole, onde ce la descrive Tacito, colpiscono una delle debolezze più ridicole che si possano rimproverare ai filosofi: quella di far della filosofia fuori di luogo. Grave il danno prodotto dai Flaviani fuori della città. Il popolo, levatosi in armi, vuole uscire in massa contro gl’assalitori. Tra poco scope terribile la guerra civile. Si convoca il Senato. E questo sceglie dei legati, che si rechino ai duci di quell'esercito, per persuaderli pel bene della repubblica alla concordia e alla pace. Tra i primi inviati c'è uno de' più fervidi e sventurati stoici di quest'età, Aruleno Rustico, allora pretore. Ma egli e i compagni, venuti da Ceriale, furono accolti assai male. Egli anzi ferito. Il che eccita più che mai gli animi del popolo: auxit, dice Tacito invidiam super violatum legati prae-torisque nomen propria dignatio viri. E quest'offesa recata a un uomo di tanta riputazione della sua setta. non dovette essere l'ultimo dei motivi che spinsero quindi Musonio a mischiarsi con gl’altri legati, che andarono da Antonio. Ma già non deve parere strano, che un uomo cosi illustre, cosi rispettato al tempo suo, e che sapeva di essere ammirato e di poter contare sull'efficacia della sua nobile parola, s'inducesse a confidare in questa per calmare gl’animi dei soldati, dimentichi perfino del più sacro diritto delle genti. Sarebbe stata forse la prima volta che M. parla a una moltitudine. Anche le Vestali si fecero apportatrici d'una lettera di Vitellio ad Antonio. Pure non si può non sorridere leggendo in Tacito che Musonio coeptabat permixtus manipulis, bona pacis ac belli discrimina disserens, armatos monere. Id plerisque ludibrio, pluribus taedio: nec deerant qui propellerent propulsarent-que, ni admonitu modestissimi cuiusque et aliis minitantibus omisisset intempestivam sapientiam. Ci si sente Tacito ammiratore del vecchio Agricola, anche in quelle considerazioni che l'aveva sentito più volte a fare circa il suo amore per la filosofia - ultra quam con-cessum Romano ac senatori; anche nell'avere conservato soltanto ex sapientia modum: e pare che goda a metterci innanzi lo spettacolo comico e pietoso della fatuità d'un filosofo fanatico. Ma sotto i colori aggiunti da Tacito si scorge chiaramente un quadro, che è eloquente testimonianza dell'atteggiamento morale e sociale di questo stoi-cismo: nei seguaci del quale vedi l'anima piena di fede, ardente degli apostoli. In Musonio non c'è l'uomo speculativo inesperto della vita, ma un'anima infiammata da profonde idealità, non comprese dai molti. Un'anima compagna a quella dei martiri coetanei della religione novella. Sotto la pretura d'un altro illustre stoico, Elvidio Prisco, dopo il trionfo di Vespasiano, M. si riaffaccia nella storia di Roma. E questa volta con un atto, che gl’attira l'ossequio di tutti gl’onesti. Era costume del tempo, come sotto l'imperatori violenti, di darsi al mestiere di accusatore, cosi sotto l'imperatori miti di dare addosso agli accusatori che più avevano spadroneggiato. Chi non ricorda il commovente processo di Barea Sorano, che occupa gli ultimi capitoli degli Annali di Tacito? In quell'imperversare contro tutti i virtuosi che Nerone vedesse in Roma, mentre Marcello Eprio assale Trasea Peto, Ostorio Sabino citava Barea Sorano a scolparsi dell'amicizia, che nel suo proconsolato in Asia aveva mantenuta con Rubellio Plauto e delle speranze sovversive sparse in quella provincial. E ne trascinava in Senato anche la giovane figliuola Servilia, che, mossa dall'angustia del suo cuore filiale, s'era indotta a consultare gli astrologi sulla sorte del padre (delitto anche questo agli occhi di Cesare, che ci vedeva sotto trame e propositi ribelli di novità). Invano il padre proclamava l'assoluta innocenza della sua Servilia: e accorreva verso di lei per abbracciarla, ma i littori frappostisi glielo impedivano.Venuta la volta de' testimoni, fra essi si fece a deporre contro il padre, suo discepolo, e la figlia, che a lui s'era rivolta per il responso desiderato sulla sorte del padre, quel malvagio stoicastro di Publio Egnazio Celere, vecchio antenato di Tartufo, e che già conosciamo. Quantum mise-ricordiae, dice Tacito, saevitia accusationis permoverat, tantum irae P. Egnatius testis concivit. Ma Sorano e Servilia dovettero morire; e Tartufo ebbe il solito compenso dei delatori: denari ed onori — benché Tacito un po' ingenuamente conchiuda che « dedit exemplum praecavendi quo modo fraudibus involutos aut flagitiis commaculatos, sie specie bonarum artium falsos et amicitiae fallaces ». Dopo d'allora i professori di filosofia avrebbero dovuto diventar tutti fior di galantuomini; il che veramente non pare.Ma tra gli Egnazii per fortuna c'è sempre un Musonio. E Musonio, anni dopo il turpe fatto, ri-staurato con la vittoria di Vespasiano il regno della giustizia, sorse a vendicare la morte del compagno Sorano. Simile al suo sciagurato Rubellio oltre che nella misera fine, nel desiderio di avere presso di sè un filosofo, che gli facesse da mentore, quasi dottrina vivente. Musonio adunque assali Publio Egnazio Celere, accusandolo di falso testimonio contro Sorano. Mentre Elvidio Prisco si apprestava a fare altrettanto contro Eprio Marcello, accusatore di Trasea. Nota Tacito, che con l'accusa di Musonio pareva si rinfocolassero I vecchi odii delle delazioni. Ma che nessuno tuttavia poteva far nulla che giovasse a salvare un accusato cosi vile e cosi apertamente reo:  quippe Sorani sancta memoria; Celer professus sapientiam, dein testis in Baream, proditor corruptorque amicitiae, cuius se magistrum ferebat. Quel giorno però in cui fu presentata l'accusa, si stabili che se ne trattasse il di seguente: e l'aspettativa era grande. Ma, entrato poi Muciano in Roma e tradottosi ogni potere in mano sua, si disviò e rinviò anche il processo di Egnazio, e non fu ripreso che al principio dell'anno seguente un giorno che presiedeva il senato il figlio dell'imperatore, Domiziano.Egnazio fu condannato all'esilio, e Sorano vendicato. Sorani manibus satisfactum, dice Tacito, con onore di Musonio, il quale parve a tutti che fosse venuto a capo di un'opera di giustizia. Vi fu chi ambitiosius quam honestius tentò la difesa della spia: ipsi Publio neque animus in periculis neque oratio subpeditavit. Questa condanna fu un trionfo dello stoicismo, e poté sembrare per un momento che un'aura più propizia incominciasse per i suoi seguaci, grazie al governo mite di Vespasiano. Ma poco dopo, sappiamo da Dione che essi furono da questo imperatore per consiglio di Muciano cacciati tutti da Roma. Tutti, ad eccezione di M., risparmiato forse per l'amicizia personale che lo stringeva, secondo Temistio, a Tito. Si vede le ragioni di questo bando generale dei filosofi a cui Muciano, secondo Dione, avrebbe indotto Vespasiano (che pur tanto favori la cultura) sitofino alla morte, che non si può dire quando sia avvenuta. Ma pare che fosse morto da un pezzo quando Plinio il giovane scrive al padre raccomandandogli l'amico suo e genero di Musonio, Artemidoro, e ricorda l'affetto misto di ammirazione che egli quantum licitum est per actatem, aveva portato al filosofo etrusco. PLINIO, Epist. Lo ZELLER dice soltanto verosimile che il Gaio M. di q. 1. sia il noto filosofo stoico. Ma il contesto della lettera a me non pare che lasci alcun dubbio. Sur A, s.v.(3) TAcioo lo dice “Tusci generis”; Ab excessu; e TUpprvóv FILOSTRATO,Vita Apoll. Ma SuIDA precisa anche la città, confermata da un'iscrizione relativa al poeta Rufio Festo Avieno discendente di Musonio e anch'esso Volsiniense: Corpus inscript. latin., VI, 587. Cfr, anche Epigramm. Anth. lat. (Burm.). Infatti la frase di PLiNIo, Epist. et M., socerum eius (sc. Artemidori), quantum licitum est per aetatem, cum admiratione di-lexi deve far pensare che Musonio fosse innanzi negl’anni quando Plinio era ancora giovane; che perciò intorno all'80 avesse una cinquantina d'anni. Zeller pone l'anno di nascita di lui tra il 20 e il 80 d. C.TAc., Hist., III, 81. (1) Ab excessu, XV, 71. Cfr. DIoNE-SIFILINO, LXII, 27. SUIDA (s. v.) dice: 8iàNépwvos dvoupsitar (cioè è ucciso: ma questo è certo un errore). Da un frammento d'una lettera di GIULIANO l'Apostata, riferito da Suida, si ricaverebbe che quando Nerone bandi Musonio, questi occupa una pubblica carica aTe-jé?eto Bapüv = murorum curator erat; ed. Bernardy). Ma non è chiaro se il frammento di Giuliano si riferisca al nostro Musonio, o al Musonio vissuto sotto Gioviano, a cui si riferisce l'art. seguente di Suida. Тас., Аб ехсеззи, XIV, 59. Ma forse è una stessa persona con lo scrittore di questo nome ricordato da PliNio tra le fonti della Nat. Hist. A torto l'HALM (nell'Index historicus, s. v. Coeranus nella sua ediz. di Tacito) sospetta che sia da sostituire Cornutus nel detto luogo Ab exc.; perchè la lezione è sicura; e d'altra parte Cornuto in quel tempo era in Roma. Su Cornuto, maestro di Persio e Lucano, v. per ora MARTINI, De L. Ann. Cornuto, Lugd., Bat.;ZELLER; TEUFFEL-SCHWARE, Roem, Litter.-Gesch.; e PAULY-WIssOwA, Real-Encyclopidie s. v. Il Lipsio al cit. loc. di Tacito sospetta che il Coeranus dovesse con lieve mutazione di lezione identificarsi con quel Claranus, condiscepolo di Seneca, di cui questi parla nell'epist. 66. Ed invero la probabile data di questa lettera  (Hu-GENFELD) e il dirsi in essa che Seneca aveva riveduto cotesto Clarano post multos annos combinano con l'anno 63, nel quale ei si sarebbe trovato con Rubellio in Asia. Ma nè anche di Clarano s'avrebbe altra notizia. Ab exc. A questo tempo si può riferire la notizia di EPITETo (Diss.) di un rimprovero dato a Trasea Peto, che avrebbe detto voler egli morire la vigilia di quel giorno, in cui gli sarebbe toccato di lasciar Roma.TU ODU aUTÕ POSSOS SiTEV; El uéy d5 PapÚTEpOr ¿xTErA, TIS i Mapia tÃsextorisi si d'ós xoupótepor, tis ool déduxev; aù d618i6 pelerãy apxsiolesTỘ Siouévo. Quando Musonio tornò, Trasea e morto. Quanta incertezza ci sia intorno all'autore dei frammenti musoniani di Stobeo, comunemente attribuiti a quel CLAUDIo PoLLIoNE, che secondo SUIDA (Moudúvos) avrebbe scritto appunto degli anourquoveú para Mouraviou vedidi thy puyny pains au Epaxévos pE X.T.?, STon.Cir. WENDLAND, JULIANI epist. in Rhein. Mus., XIII, 24, Froste., Vita Apoll., VII, 16.Tutti gli altri luoghi di Filostrato in cui si nomina un Musonio, si riferiscono a un altro Musonio, di Babilonia, cinico EPITETO (Diss.) dice: POÚpO TIS ElEYE, l'álßa aparèvros,8t Noy Movoi o MóJHOE dOEia; "O 8à, Mi yap dyú ool tot', egn, añò l'arßaнатвохейава, оть проова б хосноє діохвіто. Il concetto di Calba accennato in questo passo M. non avrebbe potuto averlo se non a Roma, dopo essere steto da lui richiamato ed averne sperimentato il governo assai mite inconfronto del precedente. ZELLER cita anche (come il MoNasEN, Ind. plin.) Tac., Hist. Ma questo luogo non proverebbe. È un evidente errore quello di Girolamo, all'anno M. philisophum de exilio revocat/ Giacché nella cacciata Musonio fu eccettuato, e rimase sempre in Roma sotto Vespasiano.Il CHRIST, Gesch. d. griech. Litter., Nördlingen, dice che Musonio torna in Roma sotto Trajano! -Molto probabilmente allora era morto. TAc., Hist., IV, Hist., III, 80,Tac., Hist. Miscuerat se legatis... ». Egli non era dunque propriamente un legato.prodie tot, il vole di grinto rogu latativo. Bai minciava sompre Era stato consul suffectus sotto Claudio nel 52; e apparteneva forse alla famiglia Servilia (Ephem. Epigr.). Sua figlia infatti si chiamava Servilia. Crimini dabatur amicitia Plauti et ambitio conciliandae provinciaead spes novas. Tac. O 8è On MOÚTAOS Eri uE to duxopaurig nal xpipara Nai tudE EraßEpostquam pecunia reclusa sunt. di Tac.. Barea Sorano dovette volgersi allo stoicismo dopo il 52, perchè in quest'anno lo vediamo (TAc., Ab exc.) autore di quel senatoconsulto (Pul-NIo, Ep., e SvEr., Claud.) in cui si decretavano le insegne pretorie e 150 milioni di sesterzi a Pallante. Chi consideri il modo onde Plinio parla di quel S. C., uno stoico non avrebbe commesso un tale atto; mentre poi TAcITo, Ab excessu, dice che Cicerone volle distruggere la virtù stessa, virtutem ipsam excindere concupivit, con l'uccidere Trasea e Sorano.(4). Tum invectus est Musonius Rufus in P. Celerem, a quo Baream Soranum falso testimonio circumventum arguebat. Tac., Hist. Il nome d'Egnazio, come s'è visto più su, rimase tristamente celebre come sinonimo di delatore e traditore vilissimo. Lo dimostrano le frequentiallusioni di Giovenale. Justum officium [Nipperdey) explesse Musonius videbatur • Tac., Hist., IV, 40. Per la condanna della spia cfr. DIONE-SirIL., e lo ScHoL. di Giovenale ad Sal., I, 33. - TAcrro, l. c., continua: • Diversa [da quella di Musonio] fama de Demetrio Cynicam sectam professo, quod manifestum reum ambitiosius quum honestius defendisset Ma è da sospettare che Tacito abbia confuso il Demetrio cinico, onorato da tutti gli stoici migliori del tempo (cfr. Ab exc.), col Demetrio causidico, delatore di Nerone, ricordatodallo ScuoLIAsTE di Giovenale, ad Sat., Tac., 1. c. DIoNE-SIFIL., LXVI, 18.(5) Orat. XIII, 178.SvEr., Vesp. ingenia et artes vel maxime fovit ..Epist., III, 11. Le lettere del lib. III di Plinio devono essere state scritte tra il 101 o il 102, secondo il MouMsEN, Zur Gesch. d. junger. Plinius, nell' Her. mes, III, 1869, p. 40 (v. lo stesso studio con aggiunte nella Biblioth, de l'école des hautes étude, trad. par Morel, Paris, Franck, Sulla vita di Musonio non v'è che la vecchia Dissertatio de M. R. di NIEUWLAND, ristampata innanzi a C. M. R. Reliquiae et apophthegmata, cum ann. ed. F. VENHUIZEN PEERLKAMP, Harlemi, e uno scritterello del REINACH, Sur un témoignage de Suidas relatif à Mus. R., in Comples rendus de l'Acad. des inscriptions et belles lettres. Rufo (si veda). Tito Musonio Rufo. Gaio Musonio Rufo. Keywords: Etruria. Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Musonio”, The Swimming-Pool Library. Musonio.

 

Grice e Mussolini: la ragione conversazionale e la storia della filosofia di Lamanna – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Filosofo italiano. . In his history of philosophy for ‘i licei classici’, he rewrote his Manuale di filosofia into a ‘Sommario’. – The history goes smoothly up to Kant. The third volume is about MUSSOLINI. He is the only philosopher he cares to capitalize. He also capitalizes fascism into FASCISMO, which is odd seeing that his main source is Mussolini’s own entry for ‘fascismo’ in the Treccani which does not give it such a status. The third volume is ITALO-CENTRIC, from VICO onwards, FARLINGIERI, and notably GENTILE to end with MUSSOLINI. The idea is presented by L. as a ‘riconstruzione dello stato’ – we are talking of the ‘stato moderno’ – il stato liberale borghese is in ruins – and although he plays with the ‘socialist state’ he does not consider it within the realm of the proper history of philosophy when he talks of French illuminism. So his concern is wht the idea of the state in the liberal party – the philosophy of the laissez-faire. It provides NEGATIVE freedom. Freedom from the other. And there is competition. Also, as he notes, liberalism lies in that the ‘condizioni iniziali’ are hardly ‘equal’ for every member of society, so that liberalism only pays lip service to ‘liberale’. With the socialist state, the problem is the opposite: the state becomes a gestore – and there is this idea of an endless dialectic among the classes. So how does Mussolini reconstruct all this. He calls it ‘stato fascista’ – Had L. continued from Kant to Fichte and Hegel, the student would be more prepared! Mussolini’s idea of the state is Hegel’s – it is the NAZIONE-STATO. While Mussolini speaks of the ‘individui’ of this nazione, he means the Italians (not the Jews, etc.). SO this NAZIONE however, is MORE than the sum of its individui. Individui come and go – but the state remains. The state becomes governo. Mussolini’s prose is machist and homosocial, and Lamanna has to lower down the rhetoric, but nothing is said about Germany. It is ITALY which is seen as proposing this new or novel idea of the state (after la rivoluzione fascista) with a Kantian approach. Since L. has only read Kant seriously, he applies Kantian categories here: Mussolini’s fascist state gives each individual POSITIVE freedom – to be a slave to the CAPO or Duce who ‘knows’ how to command. L. quotes from CICERONE to the effect that it is obeying the law that makes us free. The emphasis is constantly on the azione or prassi, which is understandable since the pupils are supposed to learn about philosophy. So where is the dotttina? Mussolini is candid about this. When ‘I all started it’ I did not know where I was going. It was the ANTI-PARTY movement --. L. provides the editorial. During the ventennio, this action, which is the INSTINCTIVE FORCE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NATION, becomes legalistic, a party is formed, and indeed a government (polizia, politeia) established. But Mussolini accepts castes in society. Even the religion, a civil religion, is subdued and one can very well be allowed to worthip the God of the Heroes. It is an ‘etica guerriera’ and it targets the male – virtu, andreia. Being commanded by one know knows is a privilege. Ths is interesting because this is conceived after the temporary successes in Africa – Mussolini romano e africano – and before the problems of the second world war. For the first time, Italians FEEL they are part of a NATION. The seeds are in the Risorgimento, but this got stuck with a liberal kind of state, which only provides negative freedom, anyway, and where the initial conditions are  unequal. Lo stato fascista does not play with parlamentarism, so Congress is closed, and the only party is the national party. Jews are excluded from PUBLIC service -- even if some wrote panegirici for fascism, like Mondolfo. The philosophical foundations are found in Hegel. If Hegel concentrated all in the Kaiser of Prussia, Mussolini does so with himself. GENTILE did not really help, although he was the official voice of fascist philosophy --. The student of philosophy then is taught the lessons of history (philosophy is IDENTIFIED with its history) and indoctrinated in the final stages into a particular IDEOLOGY. The tone is catechistic, and there is no idea of dissent. L. however emphasises that the stato fascista still recognizes the indidivuality and the personality of each member – as the stato comunista or socialista would not!” Mussolini.

 

Grice e Mustè: la ragione conversazoinale e l’implicatura conversazionale nella filosofia dell’idealismo italiano – il dialogo di Socrate e il dialogo di Gentile -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Roma). Flosofo italiano. Laurea in filosofia con la tesi, “Marx,” borsista dell'Istituto italiano per gli studi storici di Napoli, dove ha svolto attività didattica e di ricerca, collaborando con Gennaro Sasso. Redattore della “nuova serie” della “Rivista trimestrale”. Consegue il titolo di dottore di ricerca alla Sapienza. Lavora alla "Fondazione Giovanni Gentile per gli Studi Filosofici" dell'Università "La Sapienza" in qualità di “Segretario e Curatore dell'archivio e della biblioteca di Gentile”. È stato professore a contratto di Storia della filosofia. Insegna a Roma.  È membro del Consiglio scientifico della Fondazione Gramsci e della Commissione scientifica per la Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Ha collaborato con l'Enciclopedia Italiana, in particolare ai volumi: Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. Filosofia (ottava appendice), Enciclopedia machiavelliana e Croce e Gentile. La cultura italiana e l'Europa. Ha diretto la rivista "Novecento". Fa parte del Comitato scientifico di alcune riviste, tra cui: "Giornale critico della filosofia italiana", "Annali della Fondazione Gramsci", “La Cultura”, “Filosofia italiana”. Scrive su diverse riviste scientifiche, tra le quali, con maggiore continuità: "Giornale critico della filosofia italiana", "La Cultura", "Studi storici", "Filosofia italiana". Nel  è stato nominato dal Ministero dei beni culturali Segretario del "Comitato nazionale per il bicentenario della nascita di Bertrando Spaventa". Dal  al  ha insegnato Ermeneutica filosofica, in qualità di Visiting Professor, alla Pontificia Università Antonianum.  Ricerche Le sue ricerche si sono rivolte alla storia della filosofia italiana, con contributi dedicati all'idealismo e al marxismo. Per quanto riguarda l'idealismo italiano, ha indagato i momenti e le figure fondamentali (sino al profilo complessivo) e le premesse nella filosofia dell'Ottocento, specie in relazione al pensiero di Vincenzo Gioberti (soprattutto con il libro su La scienza ideale). Di particolare interesse gli studi su Bertrando Spaventa e le monografie su Omodeo e Croce. Ha dedicato saggi e ricerche al pensiero di Antonio Gramsci e ad altri momenti del pensiero marxista italiano: del  è la monografia su Marxismo e filosofia della praxis, che ricostruisce la storia del marxismo italiano da Labriola a Gramsci. Sono noti i suoi studi sul pensiero politico nell'Italia contemporanea, con particolare riguardo alle figure di Rodano, Balbo, Noce.  Ha approfondito lo studio dell'opera di Marx e in generale la storia della filosofia tedesca tra Hegel e Nietzsche.  Particolare attenzione ha poi rivolto (con il libro  su La storia e con altri scritti, tra cui quelli sull'evento e sulla teoria delle fonti) alle questioni specifiche della teoria della storiografia.  Metodi Conduce l’indagine teoretica in stretta relazione con gli studi di storia della filosofia e di storia della storiografia, in generale nell’ambito della storia delle idee, adottando un metodo storico-critico che spesso privilegia l’uso di fonti archivistiche e di documentazione inedita. Il suo metodo cerca di coniugare l'analisi strutturale delle opere filosofiche con la ricerca filologica sulle fonti e sulla tradizione dei testi, con particolare riguardo ai processi di lungo periodo della filosofia italiana moderna e contemporanea. Saggi:“Storiografia” (Mulino, Bologna); “Croce, Morano, Napoli  Franco Rodano. Critica delle ideologie e ricerca della laicità” (Mulino, Bologna); “Carteggio Croce-Antoni, Mulino, Bologna Politica e storia in Bloch, Aracne, Roma La scienza ideale. Filosofia e politica” (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, Franco Rodano. Laicità, democrazia, società del superfluo, Studium, Roma Grice: “’superfluo’ is possibly one of the most unsuperfluous words in the Italian philosophical dictionary – cf. “I was in New York, which was black out.” -- Gioberti, Il governo federativo” (Gangemi Roma) – nazione e stato federale – federazione, governo federativo --  Rodano, Cristianesimo e società opulenta, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, Roma, Il giudizio sul nazismo. Le interpretazioni -- La storia: teoria e metodi, Carocci, Roma, La filosofia dell'idealismo italiano, -- Grice: “filosofia” is superfluous here, seeing that idealism already ENTAILS philosophy!” -- Carocci, Roma, Croce, Carocci, Roma Tra filosofia e storiografia. Hegel, Croce e altri studi” (Aracne, Roma); “La prassi e il valore -- la filosofia dell'essere” Aracne, Roma “Filosofia della praxis” Viella, Roma); “In cammino con Gramsci, Viella, Roma. L'ermeneutica, in «Rivista trimestrale», Il problema del mondo nel «Tractatus» di Wittgenstein, in «Rivista trimestrale», Le fonti del giudizio marxiano sulla rivoluzione francese  in «Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici», L'orizzonte liberale di Dahrendorf, in «Critica marxista», Sturzo e il popolarismo – POPOLARISMO -- nel giudizio, in Sturzo e la democrazia europea, Laterza, Roma-Bari, Croce e il problema del diritto, in «Novecento», Metodo storico e senso della libertà” “La storiografia crociana, in «La Cultura», Omodeo. Il pensiero politico, in «Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici», Libertà e storicismo assoluto: per un'interpretazione del liberalismo di Croce, in Croce e Gentile fra tradizione nazionale e filosofia europea, Riuniti, Roma, “La società civile democratica, in «Novecento»,  Sul giudizio politico, in «Novecento», Il marxismo politico nell'interpretazione di Noce, in «Poietica», Gioberti e Cartesio, in Bibliopolis, Napoli, Comunismo e democrazia, in La democrazia nel pensiero politico del Novecento” (Aracne, Roma); Guido Calogero, in «Belfagor», Gioberti e Leopardi, in «La Cultura», Verità e storia, in «Storiografia», “La morale”, Rosmini e Gioberti. G. Beschin e L. Cristellon, Morcelliana, Brescia, Il destino dell'evento nella nuova storia” francese, in «La Cultura», Carattere e svolgimento delle prime teorie estetiche di Croce,  «La Cultura», Liberalismo etico e liberismo economico, in Croce filosofo liberale, -- cf. Grice, “Do not multiply liberalisms beyond necessity: ‘liberalismo semiotico’” – Grice: “Muste is very witty in distinguishing between liberalism and liberrism!” Reale, LUISS University Press, Roma, La teoria della storia in Croce, in «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana», L'idea di “Risorgimento” in Gioberti, in «Quaderni della Fondazione Centro Studi Noce», Il significato delle fonti storiche, in «La Cultura»,  La storia: teoria e metodi, in «History and Theory», Il passaggio all'anti-fascismo di Croce, in Anni di svolta. Crisi e trasformazione nel pensiero politico della prima età contemporanea, Sciullo, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, Alterità e principio del dialogo in Calogero, in L'idea e la differenza. – principio dialogo – il noi -- Noi e gl’altri, ipotesi di inclusione nel dibattito contemporaneo, M.P. Paternò, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli Il principio del nous nella filosofia di Calogero, in «La Cultura», La filosofia come sapere storico, in Il Novecento di Garin. Atti del Convegno di studi, Vacca e Ricci, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Gioberti, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. Filosofia, M. Ciliberto, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Lo storicismo italiano nel secondo dopoguerra, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero. Filosofia, M. Ciliberto, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Il problema della libertà nella filosofia di Scaravelli, in «La Cultura», La libertà del volere nella filosofia di Croce, in Filosofia e politica. Cesarale, M., Petrucciani, Mimesis, Milano, Il senso della dialettica nella filosofia di Spaventa, in "Filosofia italiana", apr.  Storia, metodo, verità, in «La Cultura»,, Gentile e Marx, «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana», Togliatti e Luca, «Studi storici», Gentile e Socrate, (Grice: cf. caricature of Gentile as Aristotele in ‘La scuola d’Atene”) -- in La bandiera di Socrate. Momenti di storiografia filosofica italiana nel Novecento, Spinelli e F. Trabattoni, Sapienza Università, Roma, Gentile e Gioberti, «La Cultura», Gramsci, Croce e il canto decimo dell’Inferno di Alighieri, «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana»,, Spaventa e Gioberti, «Studi storici»,, La presenza di Gramsci nella storiografia filosofica e nella storia della cultura, «Filosofia italiana», Dialettica e società civile. Gramsci “interprete” di Hegel, «Pólemos. Materiali di filosofia e critica sociale», Marx e i marxismi italiani, «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana»,  La “via alla storia” di Ginzburg, in Streghe, sciamani, visionari. In margine a “Storia notturna” di Ginzburg, Presezzi, Viella, Roma, Filosofia e storia della filosofia nella riflessione di Sasso, «Filosofia italiana», Opere Sapienza Roma. Dipartimento di studi filosofici ed epistemologici, su lettere uniroma1. Intervista sulla storia della "Rivista trimestrale" Intervista di M. su  Croce del //diacritica/ letture-critiche/lo- storicismo-di-croce-e-la-morte-della- metafisica-intervista-a- M. Socrate e Gentile. Se consideriamo i libri custoditi presso la biblioteca personale di Gentile, troviamo, a proposito di Socrate, soprattutto opere di autori italiani, con alcuni dei quali da tempo era in corrispondenza: oltre le vecchie versioni di Ferrai (Padova), vi figurano le edizioni dell’Apologia curate da Acri (riproposta da Guzzo) e da Manara Valgimigli (Bari); le opere di Giovanni Maria Bertini (fra cui l’edizione di Senofonte), che, come si dirà, avevano occupato la critica di Bertrando Spaventa; quindi i libri che via via, nella prima metà del secolo, erano apparsi in Italia: quelli di Giuseppe Zuccante, che Felice Tocco aveva presentato nel 1909 alla Reale Accademia dei Lincei, poi quelli di Covotti, Mignosi, Labriola, Banfi, Levi,  Brocchieri. Ma a proposito di Socrate, Gentile utilizzò anche altri mo- menti della storiografia filosofica italiana, appoggiandosi, per esem- pio, ad alcuni testi dello storico del cristianesimo Alessandro Chiap- pelli e del romanista Pascal. Se allarghiamo lo sguardo oltre i confini nazionali, i riferimenti principali rimangono quelli di Zeller (a cui si era prevalente- mente richiamato Spaventa), ma anche di Gomperz e di Tannery. Di Zeller, Gentile possede i primi due volumi dell’edizione  Mi piace ricordare che la ricerca su libri, opuscoli e periodici posseduti da Gentile 1 può ora essere svolta online sul sito della Biblioteca di Filosofia della Sapienza di Roma, grazie al lavoro di digitalizzazione del catalogo compiuto sotto la direzione del dott. Gaetano Colli: cfr. Colli. Anche il catalogo dei corrispondenti dell’archivio di Gentile (custodito presso la “Fondazione Giovanni Gentile per gli Studi Filosofici” a Villa Mirafiori) è consultabile nel progetto “Archivi on-line” del Senato della Repubblica.  italiana della Filosofia dei Greci curata da Mondolfo; e di Tannery conservava la seconda edizione, di Pour l’histoire de la science hellène, che la moglie Erminia aveva donato, con dedica, al figlio Giovannino. A Zeller, come si sa, dedicò un ampio necrologio nel quale elogiò la sua opera di storico criticandone tuttavia i princìpi neokantiani2; e avvicinandovi, ap- punto, i nomi di Tannery e quello, «così geniale», di Gomperz. Pro- prio a Gomperz, d’altra parte, aveva fatto un più che positivo riferi- mento nella prolusione palermitana su Il concetto della storia della filosofia, dove parlò di un «concetto equivalente al mio, che nella storia della filosofia si riassuma tutta la storia dell’umanità»4; e, nella lunga recensione che nel 1909 dedicò al Socrate di Zuccante, ne parlò come di «uomo di gusto», sia pure privo del «bernoccolo del filosofo», assumendone soprattutto la critica della testimonianza di Senofonte. Gentile si trovò di fronte, fin dalla giovinezza, due modelli inter- pretativi, tra loro, per altro, connessi. In primo luogo le pagine che Ber- trando Spaventa aveva dedicate a Socrate, dapprima discu- tendo sulla “Rivista contemporanea” la memoria torinese di Giovanni Maria Bertini Considerazioni sulla dottrina di Socrate6, poi nel grande corso sulla filosofia italiana, dove aveva aggiunto, come appendice, lo Schizzo di una storia della logica, nel quale riprendeva il tema socratico7. Il secondo riferimento è Labriola, la cui memoria su La dottrina di Socrate era stata ripubblicata da Benedetto Croce per l’editore Laterza. Per quanto, in maniera caratteristica, nel discorso preliminare del all’edizione degli Scritti filosofici di Spaventa, si limitò a un breve cenno alla discussione con Bertini8, e anche nella Prefazione al Gentile. Bertini. Ma la memoria, a cui Spaventa si riferisce, era stata presentata in una seduta. Poi in Bertini. Da una lettera a Spaventa, si apprende che l’articolo di Bertrando era solo il primo di una serie di scritti socratici, che poi non realizzò: cfr. Spaventa La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea, in Spaventa Gentile Gentile e Socrrate volume Da Socrate a Hegel mancò di entrare nel merito della questione9, è da ritenere, per le ragioni che si vedranno, che l’influenza spaven- tiana pesasse in maniera determinante nella sua prima lettura di Socrate. Spaventa confuta l’interpretazione di Bertini, cercando di definire i rapporti, da un lato, tra Socrate e la filosofia antica, e, d’altro lato, tra Socrate e la filosofia moderna. Per tale confutazione, si era appoggiato al capitolo hegeliano delle Le- zioni sulla storia della filosofia e all’opera di Zeller, ma anche, per deter- minare i caratteri generali del pensiero greco, alla traduzione francese di Claude Joseph Tissot della Storia della filosofia di Heinrich Ritter10. Tuttavia, la lettura di Socrate risultò ben diversa da quanto quei libri potevano suggerirgli. Possiamo dire, in breve, che se per Hegel è Parmenide il vero iniziatore della filosofia, perché ha sollevato il pensiero alla massima astrazione dell’essere11, per Spaventa la filosofia inizia propriamente con Socrate, che ha scoperto la dimensione del “concetto”, superando il naturalismo immediato della precedente vita greca. La critica a Bertini si appuntava su questo aspetto. Per Bertini, di fronte all’attacco dei sofisti, Socrate aveva restaurato l’ethos greco, sal- vandolo dalla dissoluzione. Per Spaventa, le cose andavano diversa- mente. Non solo Socrate non aveva restaurato la vita greca, ma le aveva inferto «il vero colpo di grazia» (La dottrina di Socrate, in Spaventa), ponendo un nuovo principio, quello della «soggettività universale»: caratterizzata la filosofia presocratica come indistinzione immediata di pensiero ed essere, Socrate aveva inaugurato l’antitesi dei due termini, senza tuttavia trovarne l’unità e la sintesi, e anzi la- sciando al pensiero moderno questo compito ulteriore. I sofisti, dun- que, lungi dall’essere dei distruttori, si presentavano quali profondi innovatori, anche se il loro soggettivismo era piuttosto un individuali- smo, fermo alla dimensione naturale ed empirica dell’individuo. So- crate trasformava, con la dottrina del concetto, questo individualismo in un autentico, universale soggettivismo: «in questo senso» – scriveva Spaventa – «Socrate e Cartesio, che che ne dica il professor Bertini, si rassomigliano». Spaventa Parmenide, Hegel [Ritter Cfr. Hegel Ma soprattutto, per il riferimento a  Da questo punto di vista, Socrate non appariva affatto come un fi- losofo pratico o morale, ma come un filosofo schiettamente teoretico. Più precisamente, il carattere della sua filosofia veniva indicato in un radicale formalismo. Bisogna prestare attenzione all’uso che Spaventa fece di questa espressione, per certi versi anticipando i temi della sua riforma della dialettica. Formalismo significava che Socrate, scoprendo il principio nuovo della «soggettività universale», lo riconosceva solo nella forma, nell’attività dialogica della ricerca della verità, in quanto presupponeva, alla maniera di tutto il pensiero antico, il contenuto og- gettivo e naturale: se per i moderni, scriveva, la soggettività è non solo «universale» ma «assoluta», «il puro rapporto del pensiero a se stesso», per Socrate «non è già il soggetto che determina l’essere oggettivo, ma l’essenza oggettiva delle cose che determina il soggetto». La visione moderna – per cui, come si chiarirà nella riforma della dialet- tica, il pensiero è negazione determinante dell’essere -- appariva qui rovesciata, nel senso che l’essere si delineava come il cercato, come la verità ideale del soggetto. Questa tesi del formalismo era quella vera- mente decisiva nell’interpretazione di Spaventa, poiché a essa veni- vano ricondotti tutti i temi della riflessione socratica: l’induzione, il dialogo, l’ironia, e poi soprattutto l’ignoranza, interpretata come con- sapevolezza della mancanza di verità del soggetto, quasi come ammis- sione del limite storico della propria posizione. E ancora, l’eudemoni- smo socratico diventava (seguendo qui i Magna moralia) l’assenza del concetto del Bene e, quindi, la sua identificazione con l’utile. Infine, ed è un altro aspetto di rilievo (e qui la fonte era in parte aristotelica in parte hegeliana), mancava in Socrate la psicologia, cioè la cognizione della parte irrazionale dell’individuo, delle passioni: la sua soggettività «universale» non riusciva a cogliere né il contenuto del concetto né la base irrazionale dell’individuo, restando sospesa tra il particolare e l’universale e non potendo intravedere la sintesi e l’unità tra i due momenti, cioè l’autentica realtà e immanenza del concetto. Nella memoria su La dottrina di Socrate, con la quale vinse il premio della Regia Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli, Labriola non citò mai lo scritto di Spaventa, ma certo ne riprese [Si veda per questo aspetto Mustè La dottrina di Socrate, in Spaventa. Gentile e Socrate 43 almeno un paio di aspetti14. In primo luogo riprese la tesi del formali- smo, a cui dedicò la parte centrale dello scritto e che anzi sviluppò fino alle conseguenze estreme, mostrando come «il suo di Socrate sapere è pura esigenza» e «quello che egli cerca deve ancora trovarlo» (Labriola). In secondo luogo, insisté sulla mancanza in Socrate di ogni notizia di psicologia, con accenti e motivi molto simili a quelli che Spaventa aveva adoperato nella polemica con Ber- tini. Ma certo mutava il quadro complessivo dell’interpretazione, anzi tutto per la scelta, molto radicale, di affidarsi esclusivamente o quasi alla testimonianza di Senofonte, non attribuendo, scriveva, «a Socrate nessun principio, massima, o opinione che non sia, o esplicitamente riferita, o indirettamente accennata da Senofonte»; poi per il fatto che la tesi spaventiana del formalismo serviva ora a recidere i rapporti tra Socrate e la tradizione filosofica presocratica (ibid., 555), superando il problema stesso che aveva animato la discussione tra Spaventa e Bertini. Per Labriola, Socrate non era affatto un filosofo: «Socrate come semplice filosofo – scriveva – è un parto d’immagina- zione» (ibid., 569); e tanto meno poteva essere considerato come «il creatore del principio della soggettività», neanche di una soggettività «universale» come quella di cui Spaventa aveva parlato. Al contrario, la figura di Socrate era ricondotta a due linee fondamen- tali di lettura, tra loro convergenti: da un lato il processo di sviluppo della religione greca, dove Socrate aveva inserito l’idea della divinità «come intelligenza autrice e reggitrice del mondo», riuscendo per questo «a isolare la sfera morale dalla naturale; d’altro lato, in relazione agli studi che allora conduceva per «una storia dell’etica greca» interpretò Socrate come concreta espressione della crisi della storia greca, come l’emergere di una colli- sione tra forma della tradizione e volontà dell’individuo: per cui, sorge nell’individuo «il bisogno di rifarsi da sé quella certezza» che l’opinione comune ha smarrito, tornando a porre, con l’esercizio del dialogo, le[ L’interpretazione di Labriola è stata analizzata da Cambiano, Il Socrate di Labriola e la storiografia tedesca e da Spinelli, Questioni socratiche: tra Labriola, Calogero e Giannantoni che si leggono rispettivamente nel primo e nel terzo volume di Punzo3, Spinelli ricorda opportunamente un breve quanto penetrante articolo di Giannantoni, Il Socrate di Labriola, apparso nel supplemento di “Paese sera”. Tra gli altri studi, mi limito a ricordare Cerasuolo, e le lucide osservazioni di Poggi domande induttive sulla definizione, sul «cosa è» la giustizia, la virtù, la santità. Per certi versi, Labriola seguiva la linea interpretativa di Spa- venta, ma ne modificava la prospettiva, calando Socrate non più nel centro problematico della storia della filosofia ma in quello della vita religiosa e sociale del mondo greco. A prescindere dallo sviluppo peculiare che ebbe nella memoria di Labriola, la tesi spaventiana del formalismo di Socrate restò alla base delle prime riflessioni di Gentile. Già nella tesi di laurea su Rosmini e Gioberti – dove il problema principale, sulle orme di Donato Jaja, era quello dell’intuito, e quindi della profonda differenza tra l’intuito ro- sminiano dell’essere puro e quello, platonico ma soprattutto prove- niente da Malebranche, delle idee determinate e formate (Gentile) – i riferimenti a Socrate risentono della discussione di Spa- venta con Bertini. Lo si vede, soprattutto, nella nota che inserì per di- scutere la memoria di Aurelio Covotti Per la storia della sofistica greca. Studi sulla filosofia teoretica di Protagora (pubblicata nel 1896 negli “An- nali” della Regia Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), dove, criticando le interpretazioni di Wilhelm Halbfass e di Theodor Gomperz, ribadì la necessità di distinguere l’individualismo empirico di Protagora dal soggettivismo di Socrate, pur sottolineando la sua distanza dal kanti- smo, mancando ancora in Socrate «il concetto del pensiero come pro- duttività» (Gentile). Una lettura, questa, che trovò poi uno sviluppo più organico nella recensione al Socrate di Zuccante, dove criticò «l’interpretazione soggettivistica» di Protagora, che l’autore aveva dato, insistendo piuttosto sul rapporto con Demo- crito: con riferimento a un articolo di Victor Brochard, affermò anzi che la tesi dello storico francese andava «rovesciata», perché non Demo- crito aveva appreso da Protagora i princìpi della gnoseologia sofistica, ma viceversa questo, Protagora, era stato «scolaro» di quello, di Democrito (Gentile). Questo tema del rapporto tra Socrate e Protagora era d’altronde essenziale nell’equilibrio del libro, perché tanto Rosmini che Gioberti avevano appunto confuso i due momenti (l’individualismo e il soggettivismo), lasciando oscillare la figura di Socrate tra Protagora e Platone: «il Gioberti» – spiegava Gentile Gli articoli di Brochard vennero ristampati in Brochard (ma si veda la 4° edizione ampliata, Paris, con l’introduzione di Delbos).   Gentile e Socrate 45 «come il Rosmini, non conosce altro soggettivismo che il falso antro- pometrismo protagoreo», e perciò, aggiungeva, si vede costretto a tro- vare in Socrate Platone, «altrimenti del maestro di Platone non si fa che una ripetizione di Protagora» (Gentile). Alla maniera di Spaventa, insomma, il soggettivismo di Socrate non andava confuso né con l’individualismo di Protagora né con la successiva dottrina pla- tonica delle idee. Questo atteggiamento spiega anche la presenza di Socrate nel saggio su La filosofia della prassi, dove, per dimostrare che Marx aveva assunto il concetto della prassi dall’idealismo, e non dal mate- rialismo, chiamò in causa il «soggettivismo di Socrate», facendo dell’antico filosofo greco il primo idealista, anzi il primo teorico della praxis: perché, spiegava Gentile, Socrate non concepiva la verità come un bene formato da trasmettersi, ma come il risultato di un «personale lavorio inquisitivo», cioè del dialogo e dell’arte maieutica: «il sapere – concludeva – importava per Socrate un’attività produttiva, ed era una soggettiva costruzione, una continua e progressiva prassi» (Gentile). Altrove scriveva che il merito di Socrate «consiste appunto nel superamento di quella dualità di volontà e intelletto, che è presup- posta così dal determinismo come dal concetto del libero arbitrio»: e arrivava ad affermare che, se avesse approfondito questo aspetto, sa- rebbe stato condotto «al concetto hegeliano dell’unità di libertà e ne- cessità razionale» (Gentile). Di questa singolare definizione di Socrate come primo idealista, Gentile darà una spiegazione, nei Discorsi di religione, quando dirà che, con Socrate, «la filosofia acquista coscienza del suo carattere idealistico», anche se questa co- scienza «si oscurerà tante volte nel corso del suo sviluppo storico»: e quasi per dare un esempio di tale oscuramento, ricordava l’«idealismo ancora naturalistico» di Platone e Aristotele, che aveva ricompreso l’intuizione socratica nel realismo del «mondo delle idee» e in quello di «Dio, forma o atto puro, o pensiero del pen- siero. . Questi primi riferimenti, in larga parte ispirati dalla posizione di Spaventa, cominciarono a complicarsi negli anni appena successivi, quando Gentile iniziò a elaborare la filosofia dell’atto puro, e quindi, bisogna aggiungere, ad approfondire la distanza tra dialettica del pen- sato e dialettica del pensare, tra pensiero antico e pensiero moderno. Un preludio della successiva lettura di Socrate può essere indicato,  d’altronde, nella lunga recensione al Socrate di Zuccante, dove Gentile, richiamandosi implicitamente (senza mai citarla) alla posizione di Spaventa, chiarì due aspetti fondamentali della pro- pria interpretazione. In primo luogo, in un passaggio di particolare im- portanza, rielaborò e chiarì la tesi del formalismo socratico, definito appunto come la sua «gloria». Scrisse infatti: la verità è che la ricerca socratica è prevalentemente umana, perché l’uomo coi sofisti era venuto al primo piano della speculazione, segna- tamente nella rettorica. E lo stesso tentativo di sollevare a scienza la rettorica, operato dai sofisti, ne mette a nudo l’essenziale formalismo, e fa sentire il bisogno di quella più schietta e più concreta scienza dello spirito, che Socrate persegue col suo motto divino: conosci te stesso. Qui è la radice dell’unità del suo interesse speculativo, teorico, e del suo interesse morale, pratico: qui anche la radice del formalismo spe- culativo e morale, a cui s’arresta lo stesso Socrate. Il quale supera la forma rettorica con l’affermazione del contenuto della rettorica (giusto, ingiusto ecc.): ma di questo contenuto non definisce altro che la forma: il concetto come universale, non intravveduto da nessuno dei filosofi precedenti: il concetto di ogni cosa (logica) e il concetto stesso del giusto (morale). In che consiste il valore di questa scoperta, che è la gloria di Socrate (Gentile). In secondo luogo, stabilito il senso del formalismo socratico, Gentile chiariva il significato della scoperta logica di Socrate, affermando che si trattava non solo, e non tanto, della scoperta del concetto, ma del «concetto del concetto», della «essenza dello spirito»: se i filosofi prece- denti sempre avevano adoperato concetto e definizione, ora Socrate sollevava il pensare a «pensiero del pensiero», conferendo agli uomini una «seconda vista», quella della schietta universalità. Grazie a Socrate, il pensiero diventava, per la prima volta, oggetto di sé stesso, sostituendosi all’orizzonte della natura: e questo, oltre quello più limitativo dell’assenza di un contenuto assoluto, era il carattere del suo formalismo, inteso appunto come considerazione della forma logica in sé stessa. Negli scritti di questo periodo, l’accento cominciava a battere con più forza sulla continuità tra Platone e Aristotele, perché – scriveva – «con Aristotele [non] si fa un passo avanti» rispetto al metodo trascen- dente di Platone (Gentile). Non solo infatti, come precisò nella prolusione palermitana su Il concetto della storia della filosofia, Platone aveva «trasformato» il concetto socratico in «idee eterne e immobili, puro oggetto della mente»; ma iniziò a riportare la filosofia di Platone alla fonte eraclitea e soprattutto a quella parme- nidea, che ai suoi occhi costituiva il vero approdo del Teeteto e del So- fista: «Platone» – scriveva – «non vide mai altro che l’essere immobile e realmente immoltiplicabile, tal quale l’essere (fisico) degli Eleati. Qui si doveva arrestare una filosofia ignara della natura dello spirito». Più che Socrate, dunque, la filosofia di Platone in- contrava, con la teoria delle idee, l’essere di Parmenide, superando in esso anche la primitiva lezione di Cratilo. Fu nel primo volume del Sommario di pedagogia che il giudizio su Socrate cominciò ad assestarsi. Gentile vi si soffermò in due diverse parti dell’opera: in primo luogo, nella sezione su L’uomo, a proposito dei concetti; in secondo luogo, nella parte terza, su Le forme dell’educazione. Il capitolo che dedicò al «merito di Socrate sco- pritore del concetto» finì per risultare piuttosto singolare. Riconobbe a Socrate il «merito straordinario» di avere affermato «il carattere uni- versale del vero» (Gentile); ma subito aggiunse che quel con- cetto non era poi il vero concetto, il conceptus sui, ma una forma che, conseguita per via induttiva, con «un processo di generalizzazione», era piuttosto irreale, astratta, lontana dalla concreta determinazione del mondo: offrì insomma del concetto socratico una lettura singolar- mente negativa, quasi rappresentandolo nella figura degli pseudocon- cetti o finzioni che, nella Logica e nella Filosofia della pratica, Croce aveva teorizzato. Di più, in un capitolo successivo, affermò che il concetto socratico, «base dell’erronea teoria platonica e aristotelica del concetto» , presupponeva la scissione tra teoria e pratica: ne- gando dunque a Socrate proprio quel merito che, come abbiamo osser- vato, gli aveva riconosciuto nel saggio su La filosofia della prassi. La considerazione trovava uno sviluppo rilevante, come si diceva, nella terza parte dell’opera, dove Gentile poneva la figura di Socrate all’origine del concetto di «educazione negativa», collocandolo sulla stessa linea che, nell’epoca moderna, avrebbe prodotto la «possente» opera di Rousseau. A questo principio dell’educazione negativa, Gen- tile tornava a rivolgere un elogio, perché capace di implicare «l’imma- nenza del divino nell’uomo»  e dunque di anticipare lo spi- rito di libertà di Rousseau: ma anche qui osservava che Platone aveva  convertito la maieutica socratica in un innatismo delle idee, come un ritorno dell’anima «a quella pura cognizione originaria che ella si reca in sé dalla nascita». Una critica, d’altronde, che si legava all’idea, sostenuta ancora nei Discorsi di religione, secondo cui il pen- siero antico non poté mai accedere al problema morale, perché privo del principio stesso della volontà (Gentile). In tutta la prima fase della sua riflessione, Gentile tenne fermo il Socrate di Spaventa, cioè la tesi del formalismo e della scoperta della soggettività universale, via via innestandovi i motivi essenziali nella propria filosofia: così, nell’Introduzione alla filosofia parlerà di So- crate come del «primo grande martire degl’interessi più profondi dell’uomo e della sua nobiltà e grandezza» (Gentile), come di colui che, con il Nosce te ipsum, aveva vinto l’antico naturalismo e sco- perto la «concezione umanistica del mondo»; e nella più tarda Filosofia dell’arte arriverà a svolgere il motivo spaventiano (e labrioliano) della mancanza di una psicologia in Socrate nella tesi, ben più radicale, dell’assenza del sentimento e, in generale, del principio dell’arte in tutto il pensiero antico (Gentile). Ma la trasforma- zione essenziale e decisiva avvenne certamente nelle opere più siste- matiche dell’attualismo, in modo particolare nel Sistema di logica, quando Socrate, come ora vedremo, acquistò il volto più complesso di fondatore del logo astratto: che era uno svolgimento dell’idea, comun- que presente in Spaventa, che proprio in lui, in Socrate, e non in Par- menide e nei filosofi presocratici, andava indicato l’autentico inizio della filosofia occidentale. Nella Teoria generale, dove il problema fondamentale era quello dell’individuo e dell’individualità, si faceva più nitido il quadro dell’intero sviluppo della filosofia greca, ponendo al centro del natu- ralismo quella che definì «la disperata posizione di Parmenide» (Gen- tile 1959b, 107), quintessenza dell’intero mondo mitico e presocratico e carattere della «seconda natura» delle idee, stabilita da Platone. Tra Parmenide e Platone, Socrate appariva come colui che aveva operato «la netta distinzione tra genere e individuo», non riuscendo certo a trovare la sintesi tra i due momenti, ma lasciando aperta, con il suo formalismo, tanto la via platonica tanto quella aristotelica. Di fronte a entrambi, a Parmenide e a Platone, Socrate era delineato come colui che «scopre il concetto come unità in cui concorre la va- rietà delle opinioni»: affermazione di grande significato,  Gentile e Socrate  perché, almeno in senso formale, indica una rottura dell’intero natu- ralismo antico, un presagio – se così può dirsi – della sintesi e della vera individualità, che solo il pensiero moderno, osservando il con- cetto come conceptus sui e come autocoscienza, arriverà, dopo il cri- stianesimo, a compiere. Però, come si diceva, solo nei due volumi del Sistema di logica, la figura di Socrate acquistò una nuova luce e un più preciso significato, all’interno della dialettica del logo astratto e del logo concreto. Possiamo dire che il punto centrale della considerazione delle forme storiche del logo astratto è proprio il passaggio da Parmenide a Socrate, che è poi il passaggio dal naturali- smo antico alla logica del pensiero pensato, inteso come momento eterno e insuperabile del logo. Il punto socratico è quello fondamen- tale, se non altro perché, superando la posizione, disperata e assurda, di Parmenide, Socrate pone, nel concetto universale, l’intero circolo del pensiero antico, che in Platone (con la teoria della divisione) e in Aristotele (con la teoria del sillogismo) troverà solo uno sviluppo coerente e un adeguamento. All’altezza della dottrina del logo astratto, Gentile segnava con meno forza, rispetto ai testi precedenti, il distacco tra So- crate e Platone, ma indicava con molta più forza la differenza tra So- crate e Parmenide. È vero che, in un passaggio non privo di ambiguità, disse che Parmenide rappresentava «il fondatore della logica dell’astratto», colui che «per primo cominciò a intendere in tutto il suo rigore il concetto del logo quale presupposto del pensiero» (Gentile). Ma subito precisò che tale fondazione del logo era in verità una negazione del pensiero, perché il suo essere, privo di determina- zione e di differenza, è in realtà mancanza di pensiero, il nulla del pen- siero, il semplice immediato: e per Gentile, così come per Spaventa, non è l’essere di Parmenide a segnare l’inizio della logica, come acca- deva in Hegel, ma il concetto universale di Socrate. È con Socrate in- fatti, come ripete più volte (concordando, per altro, con quanto Croce aveva sostenuto nella Logica), che «nasce formalmente la scienza della logica» (Gentile), che viene posto non «l’immediato essere astratto», ma la «mediazione», il «rapporto tra soggetto definito e predicato onde si definisce», per cui, concludeva, «l’astratta identità dell’essere naturale di Parmenide e di Democrito qui è vinta». E altrove   Croce.  chiariva: «la logica comincia propriamente con Socrate, quando l’es- sere spezza la dura crosta primitiva della immediatezza naturale, in cui s’era fissato nelle concezioni degli Eleati e degli Atomisti, e si me- dia nella forma più elementare possibile del pensiero: identità che sia unità di differenze» . Nel concetto socratico, nella definizione, è già tutta la logica antica, che troverà nella dialettica platonica e nel sillogismo aristotelico solo uno sviluppo necessario. Più precisamente, Socrate diventa, nel Si- stema di logica, il fondatore della logica dell’astratto, che non si esprime più nell’assurda immediatezza di A (essere naturale), ma nel rapporto A=A, che indica il principio d’identità e l’intero «circolo chiuso», come lo definì, del logo astratto: rapporto che è già rapporto di pensiero, perché il primo A si distingue dal secondo A, generando la figura del giudizio, sia pure di un giudizio analitico e definitorio. Così, il passaggio (che impegnò il secondo volume dell’opera) dal logo astratto al logo concreto indicava anche il merito e il limite della posizione socra- tica, il suo elogio e la sua critica: perché il «circolo chiuso» che Socrate aveva fondato, immettendo l’uomo nella regione del pensiero, era pur sempre un circolo, una mediazione e un movimento, e perciò inclu- deva, sia pure in maniera inconsapevole, il riferimento del pensato al pensare, dell’astratto al concreto. Lo includeva, come spiegò, nella forma «mitica» di tutto il pensiero antico, non ancora come «pensa- mento del logo astratto nel concreto», ma viceversa come «pensamento del logo concreto nell’astratto» (Gentile). La lettura del momento socratico sembrava così compiuta nei ter- mini fondamentali. Ma negli ultimi mesi della sua vita, Gentile delineò una intera storia della filosofia, che doveva fare parte della collana «La civiltà europea» della casa Sansoni, e di cui riuscì a scrivere solo la prima parte, fino a Platone. Di questa opera, che è stata pubblicata a cura di Bellezza, ci rimane, tra le carte del filosofo, l’in- dice dell’intero lavoro (che si sarebbe dovuto concludere con la consi- derazione di Varisco, Martinetti, Croce e Gentile stesso) e il manoscritto di un «prospetto» che si riferisce alla parte successiva e non scritta sulla filosofia antica, fino alla sezione terza, che avrebbe dovuto occuparsi di epicurei, stoici, scettici, accademici e neoplatonici. Archivio della “Fondazione Giovanni Gentile per gli Studi Filosofici”, manoscritti pubblicati. Gentile e Socrate 51 In questo ultimo scritto sulla filosofia antica, Socrate diventava ve- ramente il centro dell’intera considerazione, lo snodo decisivo tra na- turalismo e metafisica. Più chiara e conseguente risultava, in primo luogo, la ricostruzione della filosofia presocratica. Le due figure prin- cipali di questa epoca, Parmenide ed Eraclito, rappresentavano due aspetti complementari della medesima intuizione della natura e del cosmo, priva della luce del pensiero: nell’essere di Parmenide, che è lo stesso fuoco di Eraclito fermato nel suo eterno ardere, si riassume il peccato capitale della prima filosofia greca, che ora Gentile definiva come «misticismo» (Gentile), come «intellettualismo» e «for- malismo», cioè – spiegava – come il primo esempio di una filosofia «che fa lavorare il cervello, ma lascia, si può dire, vuoto e inerte il cuore». E tutto il successivo atomismo, soprattutto in Demo- crito, gli appariva come l’esito naturale di tale originaria assenza del pensiero, che finì, come doveva finire, nel «pretto materialismo», dove «il pensiero è identico alla sensazione». S’intende perché, nella linea che già era stata di Spaventa, Gentile riservasse parole di elogio alla sofistica: a Protagora, come a colui che scopre «il tarlo se- greto che rode questo essere a cui pur tutto, per chi pensa e ragiona, si riduce», e che costituisce, dunque, tanto l’autocritica in- terna quanto il logico compimento del naturalismo eleatico; e soprat- tutto a Gorgia, che scopre «la potenza della parola», di quell’elemento attivo e umano che l’essere di Parmenide non poteva includere né spie- gare: una potenza, quella della parola, che rappresenta l’emergere di un nuovo mondo, di cui «non siamo più soltanto gli spettatori, ma vi facciamo da attori». Sono i sofisti, perciò, che «preparano Socrate e tutta la filosofia del logo che ne deriva», che «rendono possibile la scoperta di questo nuovo mondo». E il capitolo su Socrate, come si diceva, co- stituisce il cuore di tutta l’interpretazione che qui Gentile proponeva del pensiero antico. A differenza di Labriola, anzi tutto, e in parte an- che di Spaventa, Gentile mostrava di privilegiare nettamente il Socrate di Aristotele, considerando inattendibile la descrizione di Senofonte, che ne fa «un troppo bonario e grossolano pensatore», e in fondo anche quella di Platone, che nei dialoghi presenta «un Socrate idealizzato e platonizzante»: «il Socrate storico – scriveva – non è il Socrate platonico». «Più attendibile» dunque Aristotele, pur  «ne’ suoi cenni sommari», perché in Aristotele emerge- rebbe la vera fisionomia di Socrate, autore di una sola ma fondamen- tale scoperta, quella del concetto, o meglio della definizione e del giu- dizio, cioè del pensiero: non il termine, ma il giudizio, «quel giudizio che come atto del pensiero rivolto all’essere naturale Parmenide e i seguaci suoi avevano dimostrato impossibile».  Così Socrate compie il «passo gigantesco», «trova il pensiero», e «il pensiero, per la prima volta, si viene a trovare alla presenza di se stesso: di se stesso nell’oggetto che può conoscere, e conosce».. Per questo, e solo per questo, Socrate rimane per sempre «il modello da imitare» per ogni filosofo successivo, come «una delle incarnazioni più splendide dell’ideale umano, se umanità vuol dire, come vide So- crate, pensiero». La preferenza che Gentile accordava alla fonte aristotelica derivava, d’altronde, da un lungo percorso, che aveva trovato nella discussione con Zuccante un punto di particolare chiarezza. In quella oc- casione, appoggiandosi ad alcune analisi di Gomperz e soprattutto di Joël, aveva definito i Memorabili come l’opera «più sciagurata uscita dalla penna di Senofonte: pesante, monotona, tutta infarcita di banalità e di vere caricature dello spiritoso e malizioso dialogo socratico» (Gentile), soprattutto per la tendenza ad attribuire a Socrate «una specie di prammatismo», eliminando quell’elemento «logicistico» che per Gentile ne costituiva, invece, il tratto saliente. Di conseguenza, aveva rifiutato l’intera impostazione di Labriola, che aveva as- sunto il «Socrate senofonteo» come la pietra di paragone di ogni altra testimonianza. Non si può tacere che, in tale uso delle fonti, si celava una certa tendenziosità e forse qualche equivoco. Anzi tutto, come è facile osservare, il richiamo ad Aristotele era, in verità, un riferimento quasi esclusivo ai passi della Metafisica su Socrate come «fondatore della filosofia concettuale» e «scopritore dell’universale» (Maier), con una larga sottovalutazione di quanto, nella fonte aristotelica, rinviava alle dottrine etiche e morali. Anche la contrappo- sizione fra la testimonianza aristotelica e quella senofontea, seppure giustificata da un dibattito interpretativo allora in corso (si pensi alle 18 Si ricordino, a questo proposito (soprattutto con riferimento a Labriola, il cui scritto è definito «il migliore studio italiano sull’argomento», e a Joël), le osservazioni di Calogero nella voce Socrate del dell’Enciclopedia italiana.   Gentile e Socrate diverse letture di Döring e di Joël), trascurava i possibili legami che alcuni autori, come Heinrich Maier o Georg Busolt, avevano stabilito tra i passi socratici di Aristotele e i Memorabili senofon- tei19. Si trattava, insomma, di una semplificazione del ben più arduo problema delle fonti socratiche, ma di una semplificazione necessaria affinché, nel discorso di Gentile sulla filosofia antica, emergesse in piena luce il posto assegnato a Socrate, come iniziatore della logica e superatore del precedente naturalismo. Dunque Socrate appariva, nelle pagine che ora Gentile vi dedicava, come la rappresentazione vivente della scoperta del concetto come giudizio, e a questo principio del logo andavano ricondotti tutti gli aspetti della biografia. Socrate fu, pertanto, il maggiore dei Sofisti (Gentile), perché convertì la parola di Gorgia nella nuova «fede nel pensiero», restituendo a quel mondo umano, che pure i sofi- sti, con la loro opera distruttiva, avevano scoperto, il pregio dell’uni- versalità e della verità. Questo era il senso dell’ironia e del dialogo: il dialogo, possiamo dire, si superava nel logo, e si risolveva in esso, per- ché, come aveva chiarito Platone nel Teeteto, era in verità un monologo, «un interno dialogare della mente con se stessa» (ibid., 170), dove il concetto unico e universale costituiva il presupposto e la mèta, l’inizio e la fine, dentro cui i dialoganti, lungi dal distinguersi, si unificavano come simboli di un solo ritmo logico. Certo Gentile riprendeva lette- ralmente l’indicazione spaventiana del «formalismo socratico», ma in certo modo, come ora vedremo, ne metteva piuttosto in rilievo l’aspetto positivo, schiettamente logico, rispetto alla costru- zione successiva di una metafisica, culminante nell’opera di Platone. «Formalismo» significava, perciò, visione formale del concetto e del giudizio, fede nella forma del pensiero, non ancora fissato in un tra- scendente mondo delle idee. Per molte ragioni non potrebbe dirsi che Gentile trasformasse la fi- gura di Socrate in quella di un precursore dell’attualismo, come per esempio era accaduto, a proposito di Gesù di Nazareth, ad Omodeo o a Ruggiero: la sua prosa si manteneva più sobria, [Si ricordi la netta affermazione del Maier, che risale all’edizione di Tubinga del Sokrates: «debbo confessare che mi riesce incomprensibile come mai si siano potute dare tanta importanza e tanta fiducia alle sue [di Aristotele] scarse osservazioni» (Maier) controllata, ma certamente tendeva ad assegnare a Socrate un valore unico in tutto l’orizzonte della filosofia antica20. Il «formalismo» indi- cava un merito, non un difetto. E in tutto il capitolo sull’«essere come concetto», ne sottolineò l’importanza, senza mai indicare il limite della visione socratica. Limite che emerse piuttosto nelle pagine successive, quelle sull’«essere come idea», dove, per spiegare il passaggio a Pla- tone, accennò pure al «problema centrale di Socrate», consistente nel «dualismo da vincere» tra il mondo umano e il mondo naturale, tra il concetto e l’esperienza, perché – scriveva – Socrate «non aveva saputo dir nulla di quella natura che ci sta davanti, in cui si nasce, si vive e si muore, e con cui all’uomo che pensa per concetti rimane pur sempre da fare i conti» (Gentile). Era necessario segnare il limite di Socrate, per offrire una spiegazione del passaggio successivo, quando il suo «formalismo» ripiegò in una compiuta metafisica, tornando di fatto al naturalismo e al mito eleatico dell’essere immutabile. E il lungo capitolo sull’«essere come idea», che copre quasi la metà della parte scritta dell’opera, costituisce in effetti una delle pagine più importanti, e in fondo drammatiche, che Gentile abbia composto negli ultimi giorni della sua vita. Parlò di «un nuovo abisso, che si de- lineava tra Socrate e Platone, come quello che aveva diviso la filosofia umana di Socrate da quella naturalistica che lo aveva preceduto; e ne preparò l’analisi con una sottile considerazione delle scuole socrati- che minori, culminante nella figura di Euclide, che «proveniva dall’eleatismo» e che per primo, inaugurando l’opera che sarà di Pla- tone, «trasferiva il concetto o universale socratico dalla mente dell’uomo nella realtà in sé. Di fronte al dualismo irri- solto di Socrate, tornava, fin da Aristippo o Teodoro, il vento gelido della vecchia cultura, che riempiva il «formalismo» di un contenuto antico, quello della natura, della trascendenza, del realismo. Platone stesso, in fondo, compì questa opera necessaria, appoggiandosi ai suoi veri maestri, l’«eracliteo Cratilo» e Parmenide, e ab- batté «la barriera tra l’umano e il divino», innalzandovi sopra quell’edificio possente che è la metafisica. All’analogia tra Socrate e Gesù, Gentile aveva fatto riferimento nella recensione a G. Zuccante, Socrate. Fonti, ambiente, vita, dottrina (Gentile). Per Omodeo, il rinvio è a Omodeo; per Ruggiero, al primo volume di Ruggiero Gentile e Socrate Quando, in una decina di pagine di forte intensità, entrò all’interno di questo meccanismo, e cercò di spiegare con più precisione il passag- gio che si era consumato dal formalismo di Socrate alla metafisica di Platone, Gentile non mancò di osservare che la «soluzione» che la dot- trina delle idee aveva dato al «problema» di Socrate, unificando ciò che nel maestro si conservava diviso, era in fondo fallimen- tare, perché metteva capo a un nuovo e più duro dualismo, quello che si apriva tra eraclitismo ed eleatismo: due anime – scrisse – inconciliabili: né Platone riuscì più a mettere una a tacere, come in qualche modo erano riusciti a fare Parmenide ed Era- clito e lo stesso Socrate. Il poderoso sforzo da lui tentato di strin- gere insieme le due opposte esigenze pur nella forza indomabile dell’energia con cui esse reciprocamente si escludono, non potrà non fallire. La vicenda post-socratica delineava dunque la storia di un falli- mento; e di un fallimento, bisogna aggiungere, che aveva un prezzo elevato per la filosofia: perché l’idea di Platone altro non era che l’es- sere di Parmenide («dire idea – scriveva – è lo stesso che dire essere») e il dialogo, che Socrate aveva coltivato come ricerca sogget- tiva della verità, si irretiva nella dialettica oggettiva delle idee trascen- denti, dell’essere, nella «dialettica consistente nella relazione che hanno le idee in se stesse», in «dialettica oggettiva, che è norma e fine della soggettiva» Gentile parlava bensì di conquista del pensiero platonico, di progresso, ma in tutta la sua pagina circolava l’impressione del regresso e della decadenza, del passo indietro, della chiusura metafisica. Impressione che si fece nitida nel brano in cui, mettendo a diretto confronto i due filosofi, Socrate e Platone, affermò che il primo, di fronte all’antico naturalismo, aveva scoperto il pen- siero come «relazione», «soggetto, predicato e loro relazione», mentre l’altro quella relazione aveva ricondotta «in un’idea suprema», unica e universale, e perciò l’aveva annientata e assorbita nell’ordine ogget- tivo dell’essere che nega e dissolve il pensiero: «quest’idea – spiegava – pel fatto stesso che totalizza la relazione, l’annienta; perché l’idea delle idee, essendo unica, è irrelativa». E dunque metteva capo all’«unità massiccia, immota, morta, che è tutto un blocco, da prendere  LA BANDIERA DI SOCRATE o lasciare. Proprio come l’Essere eleatico. Pare pensiero, e non è. Che era una critica della metafisica platonica e, al tempo stesso, il più alto riconoscimento a Socrate: il quale restava, così, al centro di questa storia, come una possibilità inesplosa dell’antico, che solo il pensiero moderno, dopo il cristianesimo, avrebbe ripreso e realizzato. Nota bibliografica BERTINI, “Considerazioni sulla dottrina di Socrate.” Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Opere varie. Biella: Amosso. CERASUOLO.“Il “Socrate” di Labriola.” In La cultura classica a Napoli. Napoli: Pubblicazioni del Dipartimento di Filologia Classica dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli. BROCHARD, Études de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne. Paris: Alcan. COLLI. Biblioteche di filosofi nella biblioteca di filosofia della Sapienza romana.” Culture del testo e del documento. CROCE, Logica come scienza del concetto puro, Bari: Laterza. DE RUGGIERO, GUIDO, Filosofia del cristianesimo, Dalle origini a Nicea. Bari: Laterza. GENTILE Recensione a Zuccante, Socrate. Fonti, am- biente, vita, dottrina (Torino). La Critica. Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere. Firenze: Sansoni. Rosmini e Gioberti. Saggio storico sulla filosofia italiana del Risorgi- mento. Firenze: Sansoni. Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere. Firenze: Sansoni. La filosofia di Marx. Firenze: Sansoni. Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro. Firenze: Sansoni. Storia della filosofia (dalle origini a Platone), a cura di V.A. Bellezza. Firenze: Sansoni. La religione. Firenze: Sansoni. Gentile e Socrate. La riforma della dialettica hegeliana. Firenze: Sansoni. La filosofia dell’arte. Firenze: Sansoni. Introduzione alla filosofia. Firenze: Sansoni. Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica. Firenze: Sansoni. Spaventa. Firenze: Le Lettere. HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH, Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia (vol. II). Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Scienza della logica. Roma-Bari: Laterza. LABRIOLA,“La dottrina di Socrate secondo Senofonte Platone ed Aristotele.” In Tutti gli scritti filosofici e di teoria dell’educa- zione, a cura di L. Basile e L. Steardo. Milano: Bompiani. MAIER, Socrate. La sua opera e il suo posto nella storia. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, ed. or. Sokrates: sein Werk und seine geschichtliche Stellung. Tübingen: Mohr. MUSTÈ, “Il senso della dialettica nella filosofia di Bertrando Spaventa.” Filosofia italiana. OMODEO, Gesù e le origini del cristianesimo. Messina: Princi- pato, POGGI, STEFANO, Introduzione a Labriola. Roma-Bari: Laterza. PUNZO Labriola. Celebrazioni del centenario della morte. Cassino: Edizioni Dell’università Degli Studi di Cassino, RITTER, Histoire de la philosophie ancienne, 4 voll., traduit de l’allemand par C.J. Tissot. Paris: Ladrange, SPAVENTA. Lettere, scritti e documenti pubblicati da Benedetto Croce. Napoli: Morano, SPAVENTA, Opere, a cura di Gentile. Firenze: Sansoni. Marcello Mustè. Mustè. Keywords: la filosofia dell’idealismo italiano, popolarismo, governo federativo, democrazia, kratos – natoli, il potere – un concetto di kratos – dirrito, il principio politico, liberalismo, partito liberale italiano, comunismo,  il libero economico, il libero etico, libero politico, ri-sorgimento italiano, liberta del volere, “Gentile e Socrrate” -- -- Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Mustè” – The Swimming-Pool Library.