The King's Body offers a unique and up-to-date overview of a central theme in European history: the nature and meaning of the sacred rituals of kingship. Informed by the work of recent cultural anthropologists, Sergio Bertelli explores the cult of kingship, which pervaded the lives of hundreds of thousands of subjects, poor and rich, noble and cleric. His analysis takes in a wide spectrum, from the Vandal kings of Spain and the long-haired kings of France, to the beheaded kings of England and France, Charles I and Louis XVI. Bertelli explores the multiple meanings of the rites related to the king's body, from his birth (with the exhibition of his masculinity) to the crowning (a rebirth) to his death (a triumph and an apotheosis). We see how particular occasions such as entrances, processions, and banquets make sense only as they related directly to the king's body. Bertelli also singles out crowd-participatory aspects of sacred kingship, including the rites of violence connected with the interregnum (perceived as a suspension of the law) and the rites of expulsion for a tyrant's body, emphasizing the inversion of crowning rituals. First published in Italy in 1990, The King's Body has been revised and updated for English-speaking readers and expertly translated from the Italian by R. Burr Litchfield. Deftly argued and amply illustrated, this book is a perfect introduction to the cult of kingship in the West; at the same time, it illuminates for modern readers how strangely different the medieval and early modern world was from our own.

This comprehensive study of the courts of Renaissance Italy explores every aspect of their diversity and magnificence, from Naples in the south to Monferrato in the north, from the oriental-like splendors presided over by the Swabian emperor Frederick II to the Baroque glories of the Counter-Reformation in Florence. . .Scholarly and well documented, The Courts of the Italian Renaissance vividly evokes the past and is an essential guide for the reader wishing to learn more about one of the most fascinating periods of Italian history. /

Machiavelli, gli Antichi e noi. Editoriale di Monica Centanni e Peppe Nanni Testi Monica Centanni e Silvia De Laude, Cantimori e Machiavelli. Nota introduttiva alla riedizione dei saggi: Rhetoric and Politics in Italian Humanism (1937) e Retorica e politica nell’Umanesimo italiano (1937; 1992). Delio Cantimori, translated by Frances Yates, Rhetoric and Politics in Italian Humanism. Delio Cantimori, Retorica e politica nell’Umanesimo italiano. Monica Centanni, Lucrezio. Nota introduttiva alla riedizione dei due saggi sul Vat. Ross. 844 (Bertelli 1961; Bertelli 1964). Sergio Bertelli, Noterelle machiavelliane: un codice di Lucrezio e Terenzio. Sergio Bertelli, Ancora su Machiavelli e Lucrezio. Saggi Guido Cappelli, Machiavelli, l’umanesimo e l’amore politico. Luciano Canfora, Tucidide e Machiavelli. Luciano Canfora, Machiavelli e i suoi lettori novecenteschi. Enrico Fenzi, Il giudizio di Machiavelli su Scipione l’Africano: la fine di un mito repubblicano? Riccardo Fubini, Machiavelli di fronte al testo antico (Livio, Cicerone, Platone). Peppe Nanni, “Cattivi maestri”: Machiavelli e i classici.