An assessment of how four humanists in the court of Pope Clement VII - Pietro Alcionio, Pietro Corsi, Jacopo Sadoleto, and Pierio Valeriano - interpreted the cataclysmic Sack of Rome (1527), which called into question their earlier images of the Renaissance papacy. Building upon recent discussions in literary criticism and cognitive psychology, the author elucidates how these humanists' narratives gave meaningful shape to their memories and, in so doing, helped to redefine the image of Renaissance Rome as it would be "remembered" by subsequent generations.
Author(s): Kenneth Gouwens
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 85
Publisher: Brill
Year: 1998
Language: English
Pages: 254
City: Leiden
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
A Note on the Transcriptions and Translations xv
Prelude: 6 May 1527 xvii
Chapter One: The Sack of Rome and the Theme of Cultural Discontinuity 1
Chapter Two: Pietro Alcionio's Orations on the Sack of Rome 31
Chapter Three: Pietro Corsi's Perpetuation of Curialist Ideology 73
Chapter Four: Renegotiation and Remembrance: Jacopo Sadoleto's Letters to Curial Friends, 1527-1529 103
Chapter Five: The Italian Humanism of Pierio Valeriano 143
Chapter Six: Traumatic Memory into History: The Cultural Significance of Humanists' Narratives of the Sack of Rome 168
Plates: Two details from BAV MS Vat. Lat. 3436 175
Appendix One: Orations of Pietro Alcionio 179
Appendix Two: Letters from Sadoleto to Clement VII 213
Bibliography 219
Index 229
