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9:30-11 am
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo
Humanism & Humanists
Chair: Patricia Osmond, Rome
Patrick Baker, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
A Renaissance translatio studii: Eloquence’s Return to Rome from Exile
Just as Cicero entrusted his history of ancient rhetoric to his dialogue Brutus, Paolo Cortesi records the history of Italian Renaissance humanism in his De hominibus doctis (ca. 1489), a youthful dialogue between himself and two other representatives of the Roman milieu. This paper will consider Cortesi’s presentation of humanism as a modern translatio studii, a return of classical Roman culture to its ancient seat from a millennium-long exile in Byzantium. Throughout his treatment Cortesi gives Rome ever greater priority and eventually depicts it as the uncontested center of humanism. Accordingly he marginalizes other cities like Venice, Naples, and especially Florence, and he characterizes Florentine developments such as vernacular learning and Neoplatonic poetics as deviant currents. It is instead Roman Ciceronianism that he places in the vanguard of the movement and sets up as the true heir to ancient eloquence.
Kenneth Gouwens, University of Connecticut
Romanitas and Italianità in Paolo Giovio’s “Ischian” Dialogue
The Dialogus de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus, set in autumn 1527 and written soon thereafter, offers rich insights about Italian politics and culture in the early Cinquecento. Set on the island of Ischia where Giovio had found refuge with Vittoria Colonna after the Sack of Rome, it comprises three “days” that survey, respectively, outstanding military leaders, literati, and noblewomen. The subjects are intertwined: political and military blows to Italian autonomy relate directly to crises in humanistic culture and in the condition and character of female aristocrats. This paper explores how Giovio positions contemporary Italian identity with respect to the heritage of classical Rome. Like Pierio Valeriano’s De litteratorum infelicitate, this dialogue commemorates a particular political and cultural moment — from the Sack of Rome in 1527 to the coronation of Emperor Charles V in 1530 — that humanists found difficult to incorporate meaningfully into narratives of their own era.
Angela Quattrocchi, Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria
Da S. Francesca Romana agli spirituali moderati. Origini e continuità dell’umanesimo religioso di Latino Giovenale de’ Manetti
Le ultime ricerche su Latino Giovenale Manetti (ancora inedite) hanno portato alla conoscenza delle sue origini legate alla famiglia d’origine di S. Francesca Romana. Si ritiene che, non solo per formazione umanistico-letteraria e affinità culturale, ma anche per l’indubbia influenza che l’appartenenza a quella famiglia ha esercitato sulla sua indole e maturazione religiosa, Latino sia stato portato a condividere un autentico interesse per il dibattito teologico e le profonde tensioni religiose degli spirituali moderati che si distinsero nettamente nell’elaborazione dottrinale dell’evangelismo.
La sua sincera convinzione religiosa ha indotto alcuni storici a dedurne che egli sia stato tra i primi adepti della Compagnia ovvero Oratorio del Divino Amore e che abbia fatto parte anche di quei personaggi partecipi di quel movimento di riforma che, pur non proponendosi il distacco dalla Chiesa di Roma, operava per la conciliazione tra cattolici e luterani e per l’acquisizione da parte della Chiesa di alcune dottrine riformate.
La sua adesione agli ideali di un umanesimo religioso promosso dagli spirituali moderati si è riflessa negli ultimi anni, nel contributo alla realizzazione del Gesù, e nella conoscenza e divulgazione del Vangelo diffuso a livello popolare dando luogo ad un punto di aggregazione di laici e religiosi attivi nel proselitismo presso la chiesa di S. Maria in Monticelli che, consolidandosi, sfocerà nella creazione dei Padri Dottrinari per opera del francese Cesare de Bus. Infatti emerge un legame di continuità tra la dimora di Latino Giovenale posta nell’insula comprensiva della chiesa di S.Maria in Monticelli e l’attuale localizzazione della sede generalizia della Congregatio Patrum Doctrinae Christianae o Padri della Dottrina Cristiana fondata da un membro appartenente al ramo francese della stessa famiglia la cui salma è tutt’oggi venerata in quella sede.
9:30-11 am
University of California, Rome Study Center
Urbanism
Chair: Antonella De Michelis, University of California, Rome
Andrea Branchi, Saint Mary’s College, Rome
Alexander VI’s Plans for Rome
The fame of Alexander VI Borgia – notwithstanding recent scholarship – is still fashioned for the public on the ‘black legend’ of daggers and poisons exploited by Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo. Contemporary broadcasters both of fiction as well as documentaries very often have a propensity to overemphasize the ‘dark and spicy’ side of the Italian Renaissance, regrettably missing most of the appealing subtleties and richness of countless personalities. Beyond the clouds of fictionalization, Rodrigo Borgia powerfully contributed to the greatness of the Roman Church and of Rome. The paper focuses on the great architectural operations he progressively commanded in Rome and their meaning in terms of political behavior. From the improvements of Castel Sant’Angelo with the latest advances in the science of fortification to the opening of a new straight road to St. Peter through the gardens and slums of Borgo, christened for himself as Via Alexandrina, the Borgia Pope shaped a triumphant display of papal prerogatives and princely virtues in the urban setting.
Katherine Rinne, California College of the Arts
Angling for Acqua: Topography, Technology, and Water Lust in Rome from 1572-1581
Sixtus V’s construction of the Acqua Felice (1585-87) is often credited with initiating Rome’s metamorphosis from a medieval into a baroque city. Yet, the transformation was well underway in the Campo Marzio (a densely-inhabited, low alluvial plain) by 1581. By then, water flowed through gravity from the newly restored Acqua Vergine (1560-70) to new fountains in Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Navona, Piazza della Rotonda, and Piazza Colonna; to drinking, animal, and laundry basins; and to at least 130 private palaces, gardens, monasteries, and hospitals. But, whether public or private, industrial or decorative, all fountains of necessity stood below the level of available pressure at 19.70 meters above sea level. This paper charts some of the social and physical changes wrought in the Campo Marzio as a result of access to Vergine water, and also investigates technical and political strategies that elite Romans living above the 19.70 contour devised to bring water to the Pincian and Quirinal hills between 1572 and 1581. Their efforts led to the construction of the higher elevation Acqua Felice, which satisfied their lust for water.
Lauren Jacobi, New York University
The Banchi in the Rione di Ponte: Architecture and Urbanism
While the development of Italy’s early modern economy has received a vast amount of scholarly attention, a lacuna persists when one turns to the architecture of the very buildings used for monetary exchange and deposit. Exploring this understudied subject, the paper focuses on the sites of the Roman branches of the Altoviti, Chigi, Fugger, Medici and Strozzi banks active in city’s Rione di Ponte district ca. 1490–1530. The location of these banks is analyzed, as is their architectural articulation. The paper argues that Julius II’s early cinquecento urban reforms in the area responded in part to the architecture of buildings that housed financial operations, deliberately using a distinct visual language to establish a papal presence in the neighborhood. The paper also confronts a long persistent demarcation of the Renaissance palazzo as domestic architecture, demonstrating that sites of business and leisure could overlap in the early modern city.
11:30-1pm
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo
Gender & Antagonism
Chair: Mariateresa Guerra Medici, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”
Laurie Nussdorfer, Wesleyan University
Hierarchies of Masculinity in Baroque Rome
This paper utilizes trial records and other sources to analyze tensions over the meanings of manhood between generations, nations, professions, and laymen and clerics in Baroque Rome. Its point of departure is the fact that Rome was a distinctly “male” city in this period, with a disproportionate number of men between the ages of 15 and 44. Not only was there a skewed sex ratio but the usual patriarchal distribution of domestic and political power was also disrupted by the tight hold of ecclesiastics on government office. For Rome’s rulers manhood could not be conveyed in exactly the same terms as it was in other places. At the same time their definitions could not assume a stable hegemony over alternatives; many inhabitants of the “male” city contested or disregarded both the masculine norms of the clerical elite and those of domestic patriarchs. The paper explores the varied languages of manliness and what they meant for politics and culture in the Baroque city.
Elizabeth S. Cohen, York University
La Romana Agonistes: Broomsticks and Fighting Words c. 1600
In Rome, as in other early modern Italian cities, contest and local agonism signified more than failures of public order. This competition for reputation and material well-being engaged not only men, but also women. Responding to a scholarship on gender norms that cast women as largely the objects of male discursive and bodily constraint, recent studies present Roman noblewomen as diplomatic and managerial protagonists for family interests. In a different social and linguistic register, this paper proposes a parallel activism in the efforts of ordinary romane, with their menfolk, with other women, and on their own. Specifically in the agonistic arena of the neighbourhood, women with fighting words and even impromptu weapons sometimes adopted offense as the best defense.
Thomas V. Cohen, York University
Bartolomeo Camerario—Legist, Polemicist, Chief of the Annona, Collector of Young Girls
After the Spanish War of 1558, Bartolomeo Camerario, Neapolitan exile, legal scholar, Catholic pamphleteer, and French protege, for nine months ran the grain office amidst post-war, post-flood penury and confusion. Ruling with strong hand and arm, he offended many and then fell, at the hand, as often, of Cardinal Caraffa. His trial unveils both the nature of his administration, amidst emergency, but also what seems to have been his abnormal private life. If we can believe his accusers, and doubts are possible, Camerario collected girls, generally prepubescent, and stowed them in nunneries, but borrowed them to ornament his post-prandial repose. We hear from many: parents, kin, servants, and the girls themselves. What is interesting is less the sex – or veiled semi-sex -- itself, real or just asserted, than the web of meaning cast around it by the law, the laity, the defendent, and the girls themselves, who do appear in court and speak. Many vocabularies converged on the affair, some pious, some legal, some vernacular and street-wise. Moreover, the seductions, if such they were, involved elaborate gift-exchanges and cagey bargains involving both the girls and their protectors, who jockeyed for scarce grain, rich gifts of clothing, and patronage, dangling youngsters but hoping not to lose their own grip on the tender bait and on their own social reputations. So, I hope, this is a microstudy in the political and cultural anthropology of barely licit sex, in Rome, amidst the Riforma Cattolica.
11:30-1pm
University of California, Rome Study Center
Church and Antiquity
Chair: Carolyn Smyth, John Cabot University
Jill E. Blondin, University of Texas, Tyler
Space, Memory, and Sixtus IV at SS. Vito e Modesto
SS. Vito e Modesto, originally a diaconia built in the fourth century on the Esquiline Hill between S. Maria Maggiore and the Nymphaeum of Alexander Severus, was rebuilt by Sixtus IV for the Holy Year of 1475. The extraordinary façade features the Arch of Gallienus (262 AD). The Arch not only extends the façade and distinguishes it from other churches, but it also preserves the memory of ancient Rome. As a monument that emphasized the emperor’s triumph in antiquity, the Arch persuaded the fifteenth-century viewer to compare the triumphs of the past with those of contemporary Rome. Further, the Arch activated the space around SS. Vito e Modesto by encouraging processions. This paper will consider the space around this little-studied church and the memory of the past as embodied by the façade and nearby ancient monuments to yield a nuanced understanding of antiquity during the papacy of Sixtus IV.
Minou Schraven, Leiden University
Founding Rome Anew: Pope Sixtus IV and the Foundation of Ponte Sisto (1473)
On 29 April 1473, Sixtus IV performed the foundation ceremonies of the Ponte Sisto, the first bridge built in Rome since antiquity. Assisted by cardinals and bishops, the pope laid a cornerstone inscribed with his name, along with bronze portrait medals with the bridge on the verso. The Ponte Sisto assumed pride of place in the Renovatio Urbis of the Sistine pontificate, figuring prominently in fresco cycles, laudatory poems and biographies, portrait medals, and manuscript illuminations. This paper proposes to study the foundation of the Ponte Sisto and its appeal to humanist culture, preoccupied with reviving the ceremonies and institutions of ancient Rome. Specific attention will be given to panegyric claims that Sixtus surpassed Romulus and Augustus in founding the city anew; to the connection between the building of bridges and the title “Pontifex Maximus;” and to the revival of the ‘Parilia’ by the Accademia Romana.
3-4:30 pm
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo
News and Knowledge
Chair: Nick Wilding, Georgia State University and the American Academy in Rome
Paul M. Dover, Kennesaw State University
“News of the world”: The Papal Court as a Clearing-House for International News in the Second Half of the 15th Century
As the praxis and institutions of the “new diplomacy” took hold among Italian states in the second half of the fifteenth century, Rome assumed its place as Europe’s most important locale for diplomatic activity. For ruling Italian princes and republican oligarchies the papal court was simultaneously the social and administrative center of the universal church, the primary locale for ecclesiastical patronage and office-seeking, and a place of intense political arbitrage between the many ambassadors and other representatives stationed there. Rome thus became Europe’s foremost information exchange. My focus in this paper is on the flow of information from abroad, and how ambassadors in Rome tapped into it. The presence of non-Italian cardinals and other churchmen, regular visits from foreign political and ecclesiastical envoys, as well as the general impact of the church’s international dimensions meant that the papal court was unrivaled as an exchange for news from beyond the Italian peninsula. Assiduous information gathering on the part of a resident ambassador or “national” cardinal was expected to supply his prince or patriciate a window on the world that it could not access in any other manner.
Giovanni Pizzorusso, Università degli Studi “G. D’Annunzio” Chieti Pescara
La quinta parte del mondo: missioni e conoscenze a Roma in età moderna
Grazie alla presenza dei missionari nei vari continenti e alla fondazione di istituzioni centrali di promozione e di controllo dello sforzo apostolico, Roma diventa uno dei luoghi preferenziali di arrivo di notizie sulle varie parti del mondo, al pari delle capitali dei grandi imperi coloniali. Il collegamento con le periferie del mondo porta notizie che aggiornano le conoscenze geografiche, “etnografiche”, linguistiche, antiquarie che vengono rielaborate all’interno delle istituzioni culturali romane, più o meno legate all’azione apostolica (gli ordini regolari, la Sacra Congregazione “de Propaganda Fide”, i collegi di formazione del clero, le scuole di lingua, le biblioteche e i luoghi di produzione libraria). Ma non si tratta di una pura e semplice accumulazione di conoscenze. Oltre e forse più della “curiosità” erudita, è la stessa giurisdizione sulle missioni che, mettendo i principi tridentini portati dai missionari alla prova del confronto con le culture locali, stimola da parte dei superiori romani la riflessione, la scrittura di libri, la produzione di strumenti di conoscenza (carte, dizionari, testi giuridici). Attraverso questi “saperi missionari” emerge specificamente a Roma -- nell’età della Controriforma, ma anche della Nuova Scienza -- un’immagine complessa e diversificata del mondo nel corso dell’età moderna.
Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame, Rome
The Friendship of Alexander VII and Athanasius Kircher, 1637-1667
The German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher met Inquisitor Fabio Chigi in Malta in 1637, where, amid visits to ostrich farms and troglodyte caves, they forged a friendship that was destined to endure for the rest of their lives. This paper will argue that Chigi’s protection and international connections were essential to Kircher’s success, providing protection both within the Society of Jesus and in the international Republic of Letters. Kircher’s intellect, in return, provided Chigi with inspiration for a number of the artistic projects he sponsored during his pontificate. On rare occasions, however, their interests clashed, when Chigi’s political aims and Kircher’s intellectual aims led in different directions.
3-4:30 pm
University of California, Rome Study Center
Violence Real and Rhetorical
Chair: Julia L. Hairston, University of California, Rome
Costanza Gislon Dopfel, St. Mary’s College of California
Reshaping Rome’s Narrative: The Curious Case of Sigismondo Malatesta’s Execution
On April 27 1462, the people of Rome gathered to witness the execution of the infamous warlord Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta da Rimini. Since Sigismondo himself was safe in Rimini, the event was conveying a figurative message, yet staged to achieve the same impact of a “real” execution. To make up for the lack of a body to be burned, Pope Pius II ordered that three life-size puppets made of rags, with a sign reading “Sigismundus Pandulfus de Malatesta de Arimino hereticus”, should be burnt in the three main public places in Rome: Campo dei Fiori, the steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Campidoglio. Starting with this famous “execution,” the paper investigates the connection between the geography of Rome, the visual and contextual impact of location in the display of public violence, and the creation of a city narrative within the politics of the reborn papal power.
Nancy E. Goldsmith, University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio (1504-1573) and the Sack of Rome
The past is defined as much by catastrophe as by achievement. Artistic responses to an event mould what we wishfully call factual history. While pillage by mercenaries was not new, the 1527 Sack of Rome stunned Christendom by its ferocity. Florentines Benvenuto Cellini and Francesco and Luigi Guicciardini wrote the best-known reactions to this event. In the frame-tale of Gli ecatommiti by the Ferrarese Giraldi, a nobil brigata flees the Sack by ship. The lack of a modern critical edition has hindered study of this work. To the elements of civic anarchy derived from Boccaccio’s Decameron Giraldi combines details known from other sources (the German captain killed by the bullet of an harquebus, the weakly-defended pope’s flight to Castel Sant’Angelo, the involvement of the Colonna) with Counter-reforming moral indignation. Giraldi as theorist expressed clear distinctions between the purposes of poetry and history. How does his frame story fit into history?
John M. Hunt, University of Louisville
The Consumption of Violence: Carriage Culture in Early Modern Rome, ca. 1550-1650
In addition to palace-building and art-collecting, owning a carriage was prominent way for Roman nobles to display their status through consumption. Indeed, Peter Burke and Jean Delumeau have noted an explosion of carriages in the streets of late-sixteenth-century Rome. Related to the rise of the carriage was a concomitant rise in violence. Yet, except for a few passing remarks, scholars have not studied the violence connected to the carriage. This violence was sparked not only from fights over honor and precedence, but also from the illicit activities that could be performed within the concealed walls of the carriage. Nobles and their henchmen forged secret plots, gambled, held illicit trysts, and murdered enemies inside their carriages. Papal decrees and police action did nothing to attenuate this problem. This paper will use trials and police reports from papal judicial tribunals and diaries to examine this mobile space of violence in early modern Rome.
3-4:30 pm
University of California, Rome Study Center
Renaissance Individuals
Chair: Paolo Alei
Luca Marcozzi, Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Bembo in Rome: From Passion to Disenchantment
Pietro Bembo, the most influential sixteenth-century Italian man of letters, lived in Rome in different periods of his life, from his first journey at the age of eighteen, in order to gaze at the ruins of classical Rome in 1487, to his death in Campo Marzio in 1547. As a young humanist, Bembo lived the glorious renaissance of Julius II’s Rome. Later, as Secretary of the Curia, he had an enormous influence on the development of Roman literature, rhetoric, and historiography. Finally, as a Cardinal, he knew the years of bitterness and disillusionment just before the Council of Trent. The paper will present some remarkable accounts of Roman life and culture at the end of the Renaissance that this extraordinary witness offered in his letters and literary works and will emphasize his key role in Roman culture during the Cinquecento.
Paolo Carloni, Temple University, Rome and Monica Grasso, Università degli Studi di Urbino
Michelangelo, Petrarca e la figura della vergine nel Giudizio Sistino
Il nostro intervento si propone di focalizzare l’attenzione sulla particolare raffigurazione di Maria nel complesso contesto del Giudizio michelangiolesco. La gestualità e la postura – originalissime – hanno suscitato numerose interpretazioni a partire dalla suggestiva lettura data da Vasari nelle Vite che vedeva il gesto della Vergine come un timoroso ritrarsi. Si vuole però suggerire l’utilità – per la piena comprensione dell’invenzione michelangiolesca—di un’attenta rilettura dell’opera poetica di Petrarca in relazione alla figura mariana, troppo spesso trascurata a favore di una prevalente generica lettura dantesca dell’intero ciclo di affreschi. Il particolare colloquio simbolico tra Maria e Cristo verrà analizzato alla luce di alcuni innovativi confronti iconografici tratti dalla cultura pittorica manierista ma altresì dalla vasta serie di traduzioni incisorie del capolavoro michelangiolesco. L’innovativa rilettura della figura mariana potrà fornire una nuova e originale prospettiva attraverso la quale guardare al Giudizio in un più stretto rapporto con le vicende biografiche e sentimentali di Michelangelo.
Costanza Barbieri, Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli
Il cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici diplomatico e riformatore ritratto da Scipione Pulzone
Con l’attribuzione di un inedito ritratto al pittore Scipione Pulzone da Gaeta, acclamato ritrattista del secondo Cinquecento romano, sarà possibile approfondire la conoscenza di un cardinale che ha avuto un ruolo decisivo nella Roma della Controriforma: Alessandro de’ Medici (1535-1605), figlio di Ottaviano de’ Medici, appartenente a un ramo minore della famiglia, e di Francesca Salviati, nipote di Leone X. L’impresa più importante del cardinale Alessandro, a parte la brevissima stagione come pontefice—eletto il primo aprile 1605 passa a miglior vita il 27 dello stesso mese—è la delicatissima missione diplomatica volta a riconciliare Enrico IV di Francia con la Chiesa cattolica, che il cardinale conclude con successo ottenendo l’atto di abiura il 19 agosto 1596. Intimo amico di Filippo Neri, suo confessore, il cardinale abbraccia inoltre il rinnovamento culturale e religioso propugnato dagli Oratoriani, che si traduce concretamente in importanti restauri di alcune chiese romane ispirati a modelli paleocristiani.
5-6:30 pm
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo
Spain in Italy
Chair: James Nelson Novoa, Villanova University
Anna Maria Oliva, CNR, Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea
Gli oratori spagnoli a Roma tra fine Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento
Lo studio e, in alcuni casi, l’edizione delle relazioni degli oratori ed ambasciatori spagnoli, accreditati presso la Curia pontificia tra fine Quattrocento e primi del Cinquecento, propongono una lettura nuova delle vicende politiche, sociali e culturali, che videro in quegli anni Roma e la Curia trasformarsi in centro nevralgico della politica europea. L’interesse maggiore per questo tipo di fonti deriva dal fatto che le relazioni nascevano quale canale di informazione per la Corona riservato ed ufficioso e quindi speculare e complementare alla documentazione ufficiale. Lo studio si inserisce nel vivace dibattito storiografico nazionale sulla rilevanza di questo tipo di fonti sul piano storico-culturale e propone nuove prospettive di ricerca alla storiografia iberica che sino ad ora le ha trascurate o marginalmente utilizzate.
Rose Marie San Juan, University College, London
The Transformation of Bernini’s Rio de la Plata
The Fountain of the Four Rivers, designed by Gian-Lorenzo Bernini in the late 1640’s as part of an ongoing re-organization of Piazza Navona, retains a surprising degree of opaqueness that can be directly attributed to its urban location. One aspect of the fountain that remains elusive is the figure of the Rio de la Plata, which in the 1650’s was the focus of much discussion, especially due to its “Ethiopian” appearance, but which subsequently became submerged in the attempt to make the fountain’s geographicl scheme coherent. I will argue that this figure offers the opportunity to reflect on the historical problem of visibility and invisibility, and I will consider how the 1644-47 visit of Chilean-born Jesuit Alonso da Ovalle to Rome, during which he produced at the behest of the pope (the patron of the fountain) a forceful argument against the importation African slaves into Spanish America through the route of the Rio de la Plata, might serve to reconsider this figure’s visibility in a piazza that was reclaimed as the centre of Rome, but also as the particular territory of the Spanish nation.
Piero Ventura, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”
L’arciconfraternita dei napoletani a Roma tra XVI e XVII secolo
La comunicazione si incentra sulle vicende della fondazione dell’arciconfraternita dello Spirito Santo dei Napoletani a Roma, negli anni settanta del XVI secolo, e sui suoi successivi sviluppi istituzionali, politici e spirituali, durante il XVII; indagati attraverso lo spoglio dell’inedita documentazione conservata presso l’Archivio Storico del Vicariato di Roma. Si illustreranno gli scopi assistenziali e la composizione socio-professionale del sodalizio.
Innocenzo XII, il papa Pignatelli, già suo primicerio nel 1643 e nel 1646, assegnò all’arciconfraternita le rendite di alcune abbazie soppresse nel regno di Napoli, nel 1698 e nel 1699. Ciò nonostante rimasero irrisolti i problemi del sostegno finanziario, cui pure concorrevano vari esponenti delle élites meridionali. Si può parlare di un sodalizio in affanno, rispetto ad altri meglio organizzati nella capitale pontificia. Il caso dello Spirito Santo dei Napoletani, da inscrivere nell’ambito della più generale presenza spagnola, è tuttavia interessante perché consente
5-6:30 pm
University of California, Rome Study Center
Strategies of the Nobility
Chair: Stefanie Siegmund, Jewish Theological Seminary
Eleonora Canepari, CNRS, Paris
How to Become Illustre? Civic Nobility and Neighborhoods in the Renaissance and Baroque Rome
The paper focuses on the relationships between the civic élites and the urban population in Renaissance and Baroque Rome, as a way for nobility the to get political power. In fact, according to the city’s statute of 1580, to be elected as a civic officer one had to be informally recognized as an illustrious man (uomo illustre) of a neighborhood (rione) : no official nobility’s list limited the access to the Capitol hill at least until the first half of XVIIth century. The paper aims to show that the reputation of uomo illustre was achieved mostly thanks to the social influence and the outstanding position that the nobleman had between the inhabitants of a neighborhood. Focusing on the exercise of the authority by the caporioni, mostly in Trastevere during XVIth and XVIIth century, I wish to emphasize the exchanges between lower and upper classes, often described by historians as two separates sectors of the society.
Jennifer Mara DeSilva, Eastern Connecticut State University
Red Hat Strategies: Elevating Cardinals, 1471-1549
In both the early modern and modern periods the College of Cardinals has attracted criticism for many of its practices. Not least amongst the practices was the enlargement of the College itself. Although cardinal elevations were the prerogative of the pope alone, periodically the cardinals were complicit in the continued expansion of their ranks beyond the limit of 24 men established by the Council of Constance (1414-1418). Critics claimed that venality, excessive nepotism, and inappropriate concern for politics drove popes to inflate the College. This study will explore the criticism and reveal the strategies of the High Renaissance popes, from Sixtus IV della Rovere to Paul III Farnese (1471-1549), which for centuries have born the blame for encouraging a College of full of princes and politicians instead of priests. While modern historians consider Sixtus to be the initiator of this pattern at the papal court, historians view Paul as a transition towards the period of reform. In truth the popes through this period shared a vision of the cardinalate that was similar, although the circumstances of their elevations differed, which greatly contributed to criticism of their motives and their historical reputation.
Antonella De Michelis, University of California, Rome
Family and Famiglia: Political Strategies and Social Mobility in Farnese Rome
This paper investigates a specific group of Roman families during the pontificate of Paul III, those whose members served as maestri di strade, high-ranking officials responsible for overseeing the funding and completion of roadwork. This influential and profitable position originally fell under the purview of the S.P.Q.R. and although from the late fifteenth century the office came under the direct control of the Cardinal Camerlengo, the maestri di strade continued to be exclusively Roman. Between 1534 and 1549 there were a total of fifteen maestri belonging to thirteen prominent Roman families including the Massimi, Caffarelli and Del Bufalo. It is the unique identity of this office, both papal and Roman, which provided these officials parallel avenues of advancement. This paper is a case study of the men who served as maestri di strade under the Farnese pope and their careers as papal officers and representatives of the Popolo Romano.