Republic and Humanism in 15th Century Italy. An Introduction

The article introduces the three essays that make up the monographic section of this issue, Republic and Humanism in Italy in the Fifteenth Cen-tury. They examine, in an innovative way, the problem of the relationship between humanism and political cultures in three different contexts: the towns of the Veneto, the communities of Friuli (all under Venetian rule: the former studied by Clemence Revest, the latter by Lorenzo Freschi), the Kingdom of Naples and, in particular, its great capital (Monica San-tangelo). Despite the obvious peculiarities of each of these realities, these contributions share an attempt to rethink the Italian political space and the categories with which it has long been represented.