Abstracts 2020 – LX – Rinascimento


Saggi e testimonianze
James Hankins, The Italian Humanists and the Virtue of ‘Humanitas’	3
Abstract. – This article begins with a reflection on the author’s recent monograph, Virtue Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, published in 2019. It goes on to explore the concept of humanitas in the political tracts of the humanists, particularly the De regno of Francesco Patrizi of Siena. After discussing several key elements of the humanistic program in the educational and political realms, the author then compares the humanist program with that of the Confucian intellectuals of imperial China.
Brian P. Copenhaver, The Harrowing of Humanism in Pico’s Apology. Infernal Metaphysics in Epistemic Bondage	21
Abstract. – Pico wrote none of the three books that he had printed in his lifetime in the humanist manner, and he described two of them – the Conclusions and Apology – as scholastic projects. Since these books were his only public record while he lived, his persona, outside of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, was not all humanist. Eleven of the thirteen Questions in his Apology are thoroughly scholastic, highly technical and – even when they were written – intelligible only to experts on theological metaphysics, epistemology and semantics. These projects were in no way modernizing; they displayed Pico’s considerable skill in methods developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries not only by Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham but also by lesser known philosophers like Durand de Saint Pourçain, Henry of Ghent, Robert Holcot and Jean Quidort.
Fabio Frosini, Leonardo da Vinci e la ‘natura’	63
Abstract. – After a brief methodological premise, we reconstruct the concept of nature in Leonardo da Vinci’s thought, in the awareness of its partially indefinite and composite character. The reconstruction proceeds first by isolating a Stoic component as a basic feature that characterises all of Leonardo’s elaboration, and then by chronologically highlighting an ‘Ovidian’, a Hermetic-Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian component. The presentation concludes with two chapters in which the original developments imprinted by Leonardo on the notion of nature are reconstructed and can be summarized in the two concepts of «being of nothingness» and «mixtures». In this way, it is argued, Leonardo arrived in the final years of his life at a sort of immanentism nourished by Lucretian suggestions.
Simonetta Bassi, Ancora su Bruno e Lucrezio	99
Abstract. – The article marks the presence of Lucretius’ De rerum natura in the corpus of Bruno’s works, both the Latin and vernacular. It aims to highlight the conceptual constellations in which the recovery of Lucretius, explicit and implicit, is inserted, underlining in particular the use of this source in a vitalistic key. Particular attention will be paid to the analysis of explicit revisions of the Lucretius’ text, comparing the 16th-century editions of Giordano Bruno’s texts with those of De rerum natura, highlighting Bruno’s citational strategies each time. Also, the importance of Lucretius’ presence in the magical works will be highlighted, in order to characterize the nature of what has important and significant effects on the body and soul of man while remaining below the level of sensitive and rational awareness.
Laura Carotti, «Entro un pugno di cervello». L’arte della memoria di Tommaso Campanella	121
Abstract. – The article examines the role played by memory and mnemotechnics in Tommaso Campanella’s gnoseology and in particular, in the incessant human way ad infinitum. Memory is a precious resource for the study of nature – provided that it is considered as an authentic memoria rerum. The article also analyzes the theoretical relationship that Campanella established between magic and poetry, making a comparison with Giordano Bruno’s ars memoriae.
Gianni Paganini, Alle origini dell’umanesimo naturalistico dei moderni: Thomas Hobbes	143
Abstract. – In what sense was Hobbes a humanist? Certainly, he practiced studia humanitatis: the study of classics, ancient languages, and by extension the practice of textual, rhetorical, historiographic and literary techniques that he had learned in the works of the Greeks and Latins. He translated Euripides’ Medea, Thucydides, Iliad and Odyssey, and wrote a Latin poem and short treatises on rhetoric. In a more philosophical sense, Hobbes became a humanist by placing man at the center of his philosophy. In truth, his conception of humanity was naturalistic and at the same time cultural – not a metaphysical datum, but a natural construction elaborated over time, strongly conditioned by politics, and whose decisive factors were language and curiosity. The originality of Hobbes’ anthropology is based on curiosity, presented for the first time as a true passion, a moving force like the other passions, and not as the simple natural desire to know adopted by philosophers, in Aristotle’s footsteps, as the root of metaphysics
Testi e commenti
Daniele Conti, Una «machina … apta a rompere exerciti» in una sconosciuta scrittura autografa di Francesco Guicciardini	157
Abstract. – This paper presents an unknown manuscript containing the description and the drawing of an armored vehicle designed in 1515 by the Florentine engineer Francesco Barducci Chierichini for Lorenzo de’ Medici. The text is anonymous but it can be attributed to Francesco Guicciardini on paleographic grounds. The first part of the article presents evidence for the attribution. The second part aims at contextualizing the newly discovered source within the early stages of Guicciardini’s political career under the Medici regime and the development of his interest in military affairs.
Note e varietà
Fabrizio Meroi, Momo o del diverso. Note sul Momus di Leon Battista Alberti	179
Abstract. – Via a series of textual and lexical comparisons, the article presents Leon Battista Alberti’s Momus as a work that revolves around the theme of ‘diversity’ – and its protagonist, Momo, as the figure who embodies to the greatest degree the characteristics of the ‘different’. For Momo, Alberti certainly draws on tradition, which made him the god of slander and ridicule, both adviser and jester, simulator and dissembler. However, for him Momo is most of all the nonconformist par excellence, one who always stands out from the others in any situation (hated by all and exiled, free and revolutionary spirit, different from others and even from himself ). Moreover, all of Momus is pervaded by the idea of diversity, to be understood in multiple senses: as variety, difference and contrast, but also as novelty, oddity and ambiguity; as well as – especially in the work’s introduction – as rarity, uniqueness and exceptionality
Gian Carlo Garfagnini, Savonarola: una questione ancora insoluta	197
Abstract. – Girolamo Savonarola’s arrest, torture and death by hanging constitute the dramatic final chapter of a life spent trusting in the possible, because necessary, synthesis of political activity and Christian faith. A difficult task, which the Friar took on fully aware of the need to work, by his own means, to achieve a system of civil government aimed at ensuring peace and harmony. His cycles of sermons refer to those prophets of the Old Testament through whom God approached his people, and he uses that same means, as in his sermons on Exodus, in which like Moses he completes his mission by pointing out «the promised land» to the faithful, although he would never reach it himself.
Salvatore Carannante, «Per non essere io litterato…». Leonardo da Vinci tra umanesimo e ideologia umanistica	215
Abstract. – Starting from a careful reconsideration of the well-known 1490 ‘proemio’ about the «man without letters», this paper aims to analyze several passages of Leonardo’s manuscripts in order to shed new light on his complex relationship with Renaissance humanism, intended as rebirth via the study of classical antiquity. It then outlines the vast distance separating him from ‘humanistic ideology’, as distinct from humanism and to be identified with the enthusiastic (and very popular in 15th century Italian culture) description of the human being as magnum miraculum and privileged center of the universe. Special attention is focused on the new grounds on which Leonardo tries to establish dignitas and excellentia hominis, pointing out the epistemological primacy of painting.
Gio Maria Tessarolo, Machiavelli, Rousseau e l’«età umanistica»: appunti per un confronto	253
Abstract. – This article compares Machiavelli’s judgement of Humanism with Rousseau’s, considering the issue both from a historical point of view (Humanism as a historical period and an intellectual movement) and a theoretical one (Humanism as studia humanitatis). Recognizing similarities between their positions on this specific issue will make it possible to understand more general resemblances between their political and philosophical projects, which will in turn help clarify why these two thinkers can be considered at the same time both part of and outside of what Delio Cantimori called a «humanistic age» in European intellectual history
Giovanni Maria Fara, Alcune osservazioni su Joachim Camerarius biografo (e traduttore) di Albrecht Dürer	273
Abstract. – In this essay the author reconsiders Joachim Camerarius’s long preface to the Latin edition of Albrecht Dürer’s Human Proportion (De symmetria partium in rectis formis humanorum corporum) translated by Camerarius himself and published in 1532 in Nuremberg «at the expense of Dürer’s widow». This edition is analyzed here in comparison with the Latin translations of Albrecht Dürer’s Instruction on Measurement (Institutiones geometricae) and Instructions on Fortification (De urbibus, arcibus castellisque condendis ac muniendis) published in Paris by Christian Wechel between 1532 and 1535, without the widow’s permission. Thanks to this analysis, with new evidence, the author investigates how Camerarius himself helps to defend Dürer’s legacy, as a creative artist and as a theorist on art.
Luisa Brotto, Pierre Charron e il ‘mosaico’ delle fonti. Considerazioni sull’amicizia nel Traité de la Sagesse	289
Abstract – This paper focuses on how specific writing techniques shape Pierre Charron’s political concepts in his Traité de la Sagesse. Although he was one of the most relevant French moralists – and the first libertine thinker, according to many – Charron has often been portrayed as lacking originality. His writing style, which involves widespread use of implicit quotations, deserves an unprejudiced inquiry. By analyzing the chapters of Traité de la Sagesse devoted to justice and friendship, I aim to suggest that Charron uses his sources as raw material that can be dismembered and combined in new ways, with the explicit purpose of building his own specific views. As he remodels statements of Modern authors, such as Montaigne and Bodin, Charron strongly emphasizes the human need for an earthly kind of virtue. Such moral and political engagement shuns abstract principles and can therefore operate in an irregular, imperfect reality.
Marco Matteoli, Giordano Bruno e l’accademia pitagorica dell’Asino cillenico: i dedicatari occulti della Cabala del cavallo pegaseo	311
Abstract. – The brief but dense dialogue between the Asino and Micco in the Asino cillenico – the third part of the Cabala del cavallo pegaseo – reveals Bruno’s criticism of a Neoplatonic and Ficinian conception of Pythagoreanism, to which he opposes his ‘naturalistic’ and infinitistic idea of Pythagorean doctrines. Hence, this diatribe is the pretext for attacking a cultural background widely present in English culture at the end of the XVIth century and whose main exponent was John Dee. The complex and intricate game of explicit and implicit cross-references finally allows us to hypothesize the possible occult dedicatees of this text.
Saverio Ricci, Umanesimo, scienza e formazione aristocratica nell’Inghilterra moderna. Gli Advices di Henry Percy e di William Cavendish	331
Abstract. – This article deals with the relationship between pedagogical patterns and Humanism in 17th-century England, through texts aimed at the education of young gentlemen. The study of the writings of two aristocrats, Henry Percy and William Cavendish, and their context, against the background of profound changes in English society, aims to point out how the pattern of the education of a gentleman was still influenced by Humanism. In Cavendish’s case, the pedagogical patterns of the leading class were nevertheless affected by the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, and by the effects of the English Civil War, and seem to encompass Hobbes’s issues as well as modern political concerns.
Stefano Brogi, Del buon uso delle controversie: Bayle, l’‘ars disputandi’ e la ‘République des Lettres’	353
Abstract. – In the eyes of Bayle, the Republic of Letters represents a free and collaborative space, in which all scholars cooperate without regard to political and religious barriers; however, it is also the scene of fierce fighting, with all against all as in Hobbes’ state of nature. Controversies, if not well regulated, often serve to obscure the truth instead of clarifying it – yet the search for truth cannot do without disputes. It is therefore a question of defining the rules and limits of the controversy, despite knowing that in some ways it looks more like a merciless struggle than a chivalric tournament. These rules are borrowed from those typical of scholastic disputes, adapted not to the limited space of the university classroom but to the wide and open landscape of the Republic of Letters. However, as the foundation of these rules Bayle identifies the most basic principles of natural morality, on which every reasonable man must agree, starting with the Golden Rule: quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris
Variazioni
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Humanism and Feminism. Some Remarks on a Difficult Relationship	373
Abstract. – This article addresses the problematic relation between humanism and feminism. It argues that the writings of female humanists of the Renaissance deserve more attention both in contemporary feminism and in traditional scholarship on Renaissance humanism. The first part introduces the topic, while the second part discusses and compares the meaning and emergence of the terms ‘humanism’ and ‘feminism’ respectively. After this, it is argued with reference to the works of Pauline Johnson that contemporary feminism could benefit from paying closer attention to Renaissance humanism; and with reference to the works of Italian humanist Laura Cereta it is argued that female humanists could help broaden and diversify our understanding of Renaissance humanism. The last part sums up the results and concludes that it is time for general scholarship on Renaissance humanism to aim at a more inclusive approach.
Lettera di Giorgio Caravale al Direttore	389
Indice dei manoscritti	393
Indice dei nomi	395