L'Aquila Spagnola. Percorsi di identità, conflitti, convivenze (secc. XVI-XVIII)

Ai confini del Regno di Napoli la città dell'Aquila, al centro della Via degli Abruzzi, rappresenta un teatro di trasformazioni importanti nell'età spagnola, che riflette e proietta i paradigmi che gli studi storici hanno rilevato negli ultimi decenni per molte realtà urbane in antico regime. Il rapporto conflittuale con il contado, la formazione dei ceti dirigenti tra governo delle Arti e Regno di Napoli, la nascita della coscienza nobiliare, la corte rinascimentale di Margherita d'Austria, le espressioni culturali e religiose delle élite tra Accademie, Gesuito, confraternite e monasteri, racchiudono le tracce di percorsi di identità in cammino che, al di là della categoria dell'antispagnolismo, mstrano i segni delle complesse articolazioni di nuove reti di convivenze, oltre che di conflitti, che connotano l'affresco della storia delle Monarchia spagnola

This research proposal concerns the study of an important part of Italy’s past: that of a part of the Spanish Kingdom of Naples between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries seen as a window on the Spanish monarchy and its relationships with its outlying kingdoms. The Anglo-American scholarly production of research regarding the Italian Renaissance and European culture and society during the period make up a large, almost majority portion of significant modern historiography. It is therefore fundamental to the project that this body of work is thoroughly analyzed and evaluated. In fact, preliminary research carried out these issues concerning the City of L’Aquila, have highlighted the need to make a through, analytical comparison with distinguished American and English scholarship in the fields of urban history, network history, religious history, gender history and the anthropologic histories of space usage, ceremony, and social relationships. The research project to be carried out follows directly on archive research and studies of manuscripts conserved at the Italian National Archives in L’Aquila and Naples and the Spanish National Archives in Simancas on “Culture and Society in L’Aquila in the 16th and 17th Centuries”: The themes of this research are: urban morphology, civil institutions, monasteries and convents, the Jesuits, the academies, court of Margaret of Austria, and noble and patrician families. Another important theme is the political debate on the management of government in the Modern Age between the central monarchy (Spain) and its peripheral kingdoms (e.g. Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, etc.) It is therefore indispensable that the project include a thorough historiographic evaluation and comparison of the rich and important body Anglo-American scholarship, especially with regards to sociological and political scholarship, in order to identify and analyze the complexity of these themes. The City of L’Aquila was one of the Kingdom of Naples’ most important and prestigious urban centers during the 16th and 17th centuries. It was the home of an important renaissance court – that of Emperor Charles V’s daughter Margaret of Austria – and was an early publishing center thanks to the activity there of one of Gutenberg’s disciples. The Spanish also had a strong architectural influence on the city, anchored around the imposing Castle-fortress built by order of the Emperor on the designs of one of the period’s most advanced military architects. Also fundamental to the research are the interconnections and political dynamics of the administrative, noble, and patrician classes and the distant Spanish monarchy, themes that – as the works of Domenico Sella and others have demonstrated – profoundly influenced the 17th century in Italy and in Europe as a whole. A period of time researching the extensive collections o texts, journals, manuscripts and other materials available at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Libraries, and at the Memorial Library in particular, would make an extremely important contribution to this research project. The open-stacks system, almost unheard of in Italy, and the electronic cataloging system greatly enrich the quality and efficiency of research and facilitate the possibility of discovering connections between different schools of research and thought. The opportunity to interact and make contact with the scholars of modern history, social history, renaissance studies, gender studies and related disciplines who work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would be a further positive influence.