Abstract

Until a few decades ago, scholars used to place republics at the center of the political and cultural Italian history between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This interpretation has now been revised. However, we are still missing a reconstruction of the alternative scenario that this would imply. Discussing this historiographical process and reconsidering the Italian geopolitical system under the new perspective of the centrality of the courts is a necessary premise to explain how Italian princely courts became culturally central and capable of exporting to Europe their ‘political language.’ In fact, princely courts carpeted the peninsula from Sicily to the Alps and maintained their cultural supremacy from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.

Keywords: republics, courts, historiography, political geography