Contribute by: dr. Benedetto Ligorio, Ph.D. Post-Doc, Early Modern History, Department of Philosophy in Villa Mirafiori Sapienza University of Rome.
In the International Conference Venice and Eastern Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern History.
Venice 27-29 April 2023. Organized from Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica di Venezia. Romanian Cultural Institute, State Archive of Venice.
Ideas of European inclusive Republics from Balkan Renaissance.
The The Port-Jew Pirri, the Philosopher Patrizi, the Rector Gozze.
The research will focus on the Republic model presented by the works of three Renaissance authors who worked in the Eastern Adriatic. The Sephardic Port-Jew Pirro Dicado (aka Jacopo Flavio Erboriense), the Slavic-Venetian philosopher of Bosnian origin Francesco Patrizi (Frane Petrić) and the Ragusa rector Nicolò Gozze wrote works of extreme interest on the ideal republic.
An ideological perspective, markedly egalitarian, all the more original because it was developed within the Adriatic Balkans and through three markedly divergent cultural prisms, which however do not go beyond a political-ideal convergence resulting from a strong cosmopolitanism with a Renaissance imprint typical of the first Republic of letters that it saw its first beginnings in the modern mercantilist Mediterranean and closely connected to it.
It is precisely in this context of constant economic exchange that a properly secular idea is born, linked to the utilitarian and functionalistic vector of the republic which sees the market as a leveling element of religious differences of faith to the full advantage of the circulation of capital goods and ideas.
In this sense, the republican ode of the Marrano Didaco, the small treatise by the philosopher Patrizi and the monumental work of the rector Gozze, although in different proportions and literary styles, are the expression of a mentality that finds its full fulfillment in the mercantile republic, but at the same time they testify to the divergent social status of the three authors, if the Didaco expresses a profound gratitude and total loyalty to the republic that has become his new homeland (Ragusa / Dubrovnik), and Patrizi can only subtly indicate in Venice the prototype of ideal republic, only Gozze, by virtue of his political influence and economic strength, expresses with greater clarity a socio-political critique such as to invite an egalitarian and meritocratic reform of the republic itself in order to build a republic of the best based on secular religion and ethics.
Content and diachronic comparativism aimed at the reconstruction of the philosophical thought of the authors and its evolution.The research intends to demonstrate how Renaissance thought is not only fully accomplished in the eastern Adriatic as in Italy, but finds in the cosmopolitanism of the Balkan culture the pivot of a cultural originality which constitutes an added richness.
European Jewish History Project 