Giulia Delogu

The project, funded by Regione Veneto (LR 39/2019) and currently carried out at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice,  investigates how during the early modern age Northern Adriatic port cities favored the emergence of initial forms of public health and systematic collection of information on health matters. Venice established itself as a useful model for the other Mediterranean and European port cities for health issues and, above all, as a gateway for reliable, verified and certified information on the health situation of the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean. During the eighteenth century Venice, as an information and health management hub, was challenged by other emerging trade centers, such as Livorno and Trieste, triggering mechanisms of competition, collaboration, improvement.
The project finally illustrates the evolution towards the modern concept of public health (and right to health) of health control policies, showing how Northern Adriatic port centers have been real precursors in this field.
Furthermore the project intends to highlight the enduring importance of international cooperation, the dialogue between science and politics and the communication and information dimension in the management of health crises.
https://pric.unive.it/progetti/citta-porto-alto-adriatiche/home

During the 18 th century, the analysis of the intertwinement between power and ethics underlines the image of commerce as driving force is strengthened. Such image is not a mere stereotype. It is materialized by the parallelism between the circulation routes of people and goods and those of immaterial objects such as ideas and news. The correlation of communication and commerce emerges as ideal standpoint to rethink information process during early modern age. • The study of communication in the specific dimension of the free port can be particularly meaningful. The free port has a liminal and liquid character. It is a place where imperium is suspended, where the power's grasp over information is continuously challenged in the name of commercial needs. It is the place where early modern processes such as territorialization of power and nationalization of language and culture are reversed. It is also the place where fading mercantilism and rising liberalism meet. The free-port allows to reconsider the development of information and communication during early modern age according to a new and more complex outlook. Such development can be recodified not as an intellectual product generated by thinkers and philosophers, but as the result of exchanges between different agents and of the mutual influences between political, cultural and commercial environments. The commercial needs within the free-port favored communicative process directed to swift, efficient and widespread circulation and creation of news. The communication within free-ports can be examined from at least three points of view: 1. How new forms of communication are created within the free-port; 2. How the image of the free-port is construed and the spread ; 3. How definitions and images of free-port are influenced by institutions / how institutions themselves are conditioned by the definitory struggles around the concept of free-port.

The volume investigates how in the course of the early modern age the Northern Adriatic port cities with their institutions favored the emergence of the first forms of public health and systematic collection of information on the subject. Venice with its Adriatic information network also established itself as a useful model for the other Mediterranean and European port cities for health issues and, above all, as hubs for reliable, verified and certified information on the health status of the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean. During the eighteenth century Venice, as an information and health management hub, was challenged by other emerging centers, such as Livorno and Trieste, triggering an alternation of competitive, collaborative and improvement mechanisms. By reconstructing these information flows, the volume finally illustrates the evolution towards the modern concept of public health (and right to health) of health control policies, showing how the Northern Adriatic ports have been real precursors in this field. Furthermore, starting from the historical case studies, the project intends to highlight the continuing importance of international cooperation, the dialogue between science and politics and the communication and information dimension in the management of health crises.

Il volume indaga come nel corso dell’età moderna le città porto alto adriatiche con le loro istituzioni abbiano favorito la nascita di prime forme di sanità pubblica e di raccolta sistematica di informazione in materia. Venezia con la sua rete informativa adriatica si andò affermando come modello utile anche le altre città porto mediterranee ed europee per le questioni sanitarie e, soprattutto, come punto di raccolta per informazioni degne di fede, verificate e certificate sullo stato sanitario dell'Adriatico e del Mediterraneo orientale. Nel corso del Settecento Venezia, quale hub di informazione e di gestione sanitaria, venne sfidata da altri centri commerciali emergenti, quali Livorno e Trieste, innescando un alternarsi di meccanismi competitivi, collaborativi e migliorativi. Ricostruendo tali flussi informativi, illustra infine l’evolversi verso il concetto moderno di sanità pubblica (e diritto alla salute) delle politiche di controllo sanitario, mostrando come i centri portuali alto adriatici siano stati veri e propri precursori in tale campo. A partire dai casi di studio storici, inoltre, il progetto intende mettere in luce la perdurante l’importanza della cooperazione internazionale, del dialogo tra scienza e politica e della dimensione comunicativa e informativa nella gestione delle crisi sanitarie.

Cosa significa virtù? In realtà, non contano le tante possibili accezioni, ma piuttosto le sue funzioni in quanto chiave di volta su cui far poggiare l’edificio comunicativo. La virtù è onnipresente e si riaffaccia nei temi più disparati: dal linguaggio della massoneria alle teorie medico-pedagogiche del giacobino Giovanni Rasori, dalla tradizione moderna di Plutarco alla rappresentazione di Napoleone, dalle poesie di Tommaso Crudeli alle meditazioni di Pietro Verri. Una pervasività e una pluralità che continuano a suscitare domande e interrogativi circa le sue funzioni. Questo volume nasce dall’idea che per indagare il concetto di virtù tra Sette e Ottocento è necessario, prima di tutto, tracciare una storia di come lo si comunica e lo si rappresenta, di come trova incarnazione nei modelli positivi dei ‘grandi uomini’, di come si lega alla questione del potere e della sua definizione. Si tratta di una storia della comunicazione, e di una storia della comunicazione politica in particolare, nella quale assume rilevanza, accanto ai contenuti, anche la forma scelta per diffondere il proprio messaggio. Ne emerge una profonda
continuità tra Sette e Ottocento, in cui il momento rivoluzionario agisce non come cesura ma piuttosto come filtro. Il concetto di virtù mantiene una connotazione positiva e non perde di autorevolezza. Coloro che lo incarnano continuano a essere eroi dotati di caratteri eccezionali, di quella stessa fibra morale – o costanza – dell’Enea metastasiano; anche se non devono più necessariamente avere il sangue blu o l’obiettivo della sola felicità pubblica, ma piuttosto quello della difesa dei diritti e della repubblica.

FULL TEXT: https://academic.oup.com/past/article/257/Supplement_16/294/6782269

This chapter analyzes a series of interconnected Italian cases in its enquiry into how disinformation was created, and how it impacted on society. It argues that disinformation is an inherent element of information itself. Disinformation is understood here as an intentional construction of fictional and often conflicting narratives, helpful in times of crisis and also in routine governance in the pursuit of political goals both internally and internationally. Since health matters figured prominently in early modern public discourse and policy making, the article focuses on health-related cases to explain how disinformation worked and may still work today.

During the eighteenth century, smallpox raged throughout the world. News of new outbreaks, and attempts to prevent it through inoculation, both sparked huge controversy, in which no participant in the dispute was above manipulating data and fabricating stories to bolster their arguments. After having laid out the context of early modern perceptions of diseases and health institutions, the chapter centres on specific instances: a successful text with Tuscan roots published in Milan by Giovanni Calvi (Tre consulti, 1762), and the port city of Livorno’s management of information about epidemics. The analysis of focal points such as port cities, along with the study of textual sources reveals the entire information chain (construction, circulation and reception). Ultimately the essay points out how disinformation itself is not an exception in the eighteenth-century media ecosystem, but is rather an essential part of interaction within public spaces.

This contribution brings together sources of different nature (from the Customs Regis-ters of the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia to gazettes, from medical and moralizing pamphlets to successful novels) with the aim of depicting the panorama of the mate-rial and immaterial reception of colonial goods through the observatory of Venice, whose enduring role is highlighted as a centre of commercial circulation but above all of gathering, building and refraction of ideas and information.
This double perspective that intertwines the economic and cultural data allows us to illustrate how Venice had not given up the attempt to build organic commercial poli-cies, looking especially to the West and col-lecting in a systematic and conscious way an important amount of data and informa-tion that should have been translated into reforms.

The free ports of Rijeka and Trieste, along with their surrounding areas from which Ljubljana stood out, were part of a vast network where information was not only collected and exchanged but also created, thereby influencing the state institutions themselves. This article proves that these processes did not fall within the sole free port, but that they acted as a sort of propeller and accelerator in favoring reforms
that also impacted the surrounding territory. Beginning with archival documents, the article summates the management of health information and the institutional reforms that derived from it in the 1750s.

The article, using extensive archival documentation, analyzes the construction of communication and commercial networks between the Austrian Hereditary Lands (in particular through Trieste), Cadiz and Latin America in the aftermath of the Treaty of Aranjuez (1752). To be constituted such networks needed a constant flow of information, which was not mere circulation of news, but a systematic activity of recoding: that is to say a continuous collection and an incessant re-adaptation of contents and functions based on contexts and agents involved. Through these processes, generated by a multi-agent negotiation, information was transformed into knowledge capable of stimulating institutional metamorphoses. The recodification of information, in particular in “nodal point” such as the Mediterranean and Atlantic port cities, thus became both a tool for the exercise of power and a leaven for political, economic and cultural innovation.
L’articolo, facendo ricorso ad ampia documentazione d’archivio, analizza la costruzione di reti comunicative e commerciali tra gli Stati ereditari austriaci (in particolare attraverso Trieste), Cadice e l’America Latina all’indomani del trattato di Aranjuez (1752). Per essere costituite tali reti necessitavano di un costante flusso di informazioni, che non era una semplice circolazione di notizie, ma piuttosto una sistematica attività di ricodificazione: vale a dire una continua raccolta e un incessante riadattamento dei contenuti e delle funzioni in base ai contesti e agli agenti coinvolti. Attraverso questi processi, generati da una negoziazione multi-agente, l’informazione veniva trasformata in conoscenze capaci di stimolare metamorfosi istituzionali. La ricodificazione dell’informazione, in particolare in luoghi nevralgici quali le città porto mediterranee e atlantiche, diventava così sia strumento per l’esercizio del potere sia lievito per l’innovazione politica, economica e culturale.

Gioia’s Thought, Napoleon’s Policy: Free Ports in the Early Nineteenth Century
This article offers some preliminary results of a research on the evolving debate over free ports, the role played in them by Melchiorre Gioia, and the mutual influences between the political economist’s thought and Napoleon’s actions. The debate over free ports provides a useful vantage point for formulating hypotheses on Napoleon’s visions of economic policy
– aside from the category of exceptionality given the persistent state of war that characterized his government experience – and on their legacy during the nineteenth century. Gioia, author of Nuovo prospetto delle scienze economiche, is one of the fundamental figures for understanding
the political debate over free trade and free ports (many of which concentrated in the Italian area), and therefore Napoleon’s choices.

Early modern information and communication: imagining, defining, communicating the free port The study of information during the early modern age must take into account the mutual influences that characterize cultural environments and commercial ones. The analysis in the specific dimension of the free port may prove to be of particular interest, since the needs of commerce and merchants favored the development forms aimed at quick, efficient and widespread creation and circulation of news. Communication and information in the free port can be investigated according to different perspectives. In particular, the definitional effort-which between the 17 th and 18 th centuries triggered a cultural, economic and legal debate and which accompanied the affirmation of the free port as an institution in the Mediterranean-is a process that has not been considered in a systematic way. This definitional process is an operation that is anything but neutral. The attempt to clearly define an object that was economic, political and cultural not only brought along intellectual debates but was a terrain of negotiation and clash between different interests and different agents, in an inseparable intertwining of mutual influences between institutional change and semantic and conceptual evolution. In parallel, the model of the free port spread globally in many variations, generating more and more opportunities for theoretical discussion and international political negotiation.

Global Napoleon: celebrity, great men and political communication Starting from Lilti's studies on celebrity, the author explores the "making" of Napoleon's political celebrity. If Lilt'is attention to Bonaparte is focused on post-1821 and French sources, the author wonders how starting from 1796 (and not only in France) Napoleon built (and around him was built) a new and powerful communication. The birth of the myth of Napoleon is not only a relevant case that allows us to observe the mechanisms of celebrity, but it appears as a fundamental turning point for political communication. The global dimension of the Napoleonic phenomenon invites us not to limit ourselves to the thematic description of the intellectual processes underlying the elaboration of this imaginary, but to observe it from a spatial point of view and to lay the foundations for the reconstruction of networks of power and communication, in which there is a "contagious" exchange of information between different media and publics and the development of a new language. A partire dagli studi di Lilti sulla celebrità, l'autrice esplora il "farsi" della celebrità politica di Napoleone. Se l'attenzione di Lilti per Bonaparte è incentrata sul post-1821 e fonti francesi, l'autrice si interroga su come a partire dal 1796 (e non solo in Francia) Napoleone abbia costruito (e intorno a lui sia stata costruita) una nuova e potente comunicazione. La nascita del mito di Napoleone non solo è un caso rilevante che permette di osservare i meccanismi della celebrità, ma appare come un punto di svolta fondamentale per la comunicazione politica. La portata globale del fenomeno napoleonico invita a non limitarsi alla descrizione tematica dei processi intellettuali sottostanti all'elaborazione di tale immaginario, ma ad osservarlo da un punto di vista spaziale e a porre le basi per la ricostruzione di networks di potere e di comunicazione, in cui si assiste a un "contagioso" scambio di informazioni tra media e pubblici diversi e all'elaborazione di un linguaggio nuovo.

Many recent studies either assert that the concept of virtue in eighteenth-century Italian intellectual culture is a polysemous term without really explaining its meaning, or concentrate on just one of its many facets. However, so far no study has explored the shades of meaning ascribed to 'virtue' to their full extent. This study is an attempt to reconstruct the eighteenth-century Italian intellectual perspective on virtue and to reveal its geographical complexities, its semantic evolutionary curve and its interconnections in different fields. The aim is not to create a simple 'map', but rather to focus on the limits of the intellectual debate in defining and communicating virtue, and to envisage the understanding of the political functions of virtue through more popular and widespread media such as poetic texts. Despite its ever-changing meaning, virtue remains not only a keyword of political discourse over the century, but also stands as one of the very pillars on which powerful imageries of political communication were constructed. Therefore, this article provides a first step towards an analysis of political communication in eighteenth-century Italy, which, in subsequent studies, will take into account poetic sources, which at that time were regarded as an effective instrument to overcome the aforementioned intellectual limits and better exploit the possibilities of a rhetoric of virtue.

La raffigurazione del potere nel Settecento si intreccia con l’evoluzione delle strategie di comunicazione politica. In questo quadro, la poesia assume un ruolo pubblico strumentale: educare alla virtù. Il concetto stesso di virtù viene investito di significati politici. La virtù si incarna nei sovrani’. Il paradigma del sovrano virtuoso trova a Vienna espressione nell’opera di Pietro Metastasio che forgia l’immagine positiva del re-padre. Il modello di Metastasio viene poi ricodificato nella Napoli di Ferdinando IV e Maria Carolina. Maria Teresa aveva caratterizzato la rappresentazione della sua persona con metafore familistiche, insistendo soprattutto sui suoi caratteri materni. Maria Carolina segue la medesima strada e la sua rappresentazione pubblica risulta giocata ruoli di genitrice e consorte. Lo studio della raffigurazione della regina di Napoli, attraverso fonti poetiche dal 1768 al 1799, può essere letto come un interessante esempio che ben mostra inoltre l’esistenza di un doppio binario, maschile e femminile, nelle strategie di rappresentazione e comunicazione del potere in età moderna.

SOMMARIO: Questo studio mette in luce l'esistenza di un network commerciale e culturale nel-l'Alto Adriatico che, muovendo dalla Trieste asburgica e napoleonica, favorì la circolazione di merci, idee, testi letterari e persone; il caso analizzato documenta un processo di ricodifica-zione concettuale e linguistica che investì il concetto di virtù, in particolare all'interno della battaglia delle idee tra istanze rivoluzionarie e controrivoluzionarie prima, e filo e anti-napo-leoniche in seguito. ABSTRACT: This essay on one hand highlights the existence of a commercial and cultural network, which had its centre in Hapsburg and Napoleonic Trieste and fostered the circulation of goods, ideas, texts and people in the Adriatic area. On the other hand, it utilizes Trieste as a case study to show the reco-dification process that characterized the concept of virtue, in particular during the battle of ideas, which opposed initially revolutionary and counterrevolutionary positions and later on filo-Napoleonic and anti-Napoleonic ones.

The ideal man is a theme of fundamental importance in eighteenth-century Masonic poetry. This paper considers a certain number of Italian and French texts in an attempt to outline the history of this new kind of man as well as the secular worship and " canonization " of this figure. The ideal Freemason was a friend of truth and an enemy of error, however to begin with his precise identity was left undefined. He was described as a perfect friend, a benefactor, a virtuous and wise person, a synthesis of Plato and Epicurus. From the 1770s, this ideal was embodied by such renowned Masons as Voltaire and Lalande in France, and Filangieri and Mascheroni in Italy. The set of virtues and characteristics typical of the ideal Freemason inspired the poets of the French Revolution, who portrayed and celebrated both figures of the recent past such as Voltaire and Rousseau as well as the new heroes like Marat. That being said, many significant and valuable texts were dedicated Napoleon Bonaparte. Regardless of the fact that he never joined any lodge, Bonaparte was always thought of as a sort of honorary " Brother ". In fact, Masons adored him as a secular divinity, as the « image des dieux sur la terre. » He was synthesis of all virtues, and he presented himself he alone as the hero of his times. He would seem to have been seen therefore as the authentic incarnation of the ideal man and an unrivalled model to look up to. RÉSUMÉ / « PORTRAITS POÉTIQUES » : DE L'IDÉAL MAÇONNIQUE AU CULTE DE NAPOLÉON L'homme idéal est un thème d'une importance fondamentale dans la poésie maçonnique du dix-huitième siècle. Cet article examine un certain nombre de textes italiens et français afin de décrire l'histoire de ce nouveau type d'homme ainsi que le culte laïque et la " canonisation " de cette figure. Le franc-maçon idéal était un ami de la vérité et un ennemi de l'erreur, mais pour commencer son identité précise a été laissée indéfinie. Il a été décrit comme un ami parfait, un bienfaiteur, une personne vertueuse et sage, une synthèse de Platon et Épicure. Depuis les années 1770, cet idéal a été incarné par des maçons célèbres, comme Voltaire et Lalande en France, Filangieri et Mascheroni en Italie. L'ensemble des vertus et caractéristiques typiques du franc-maçon idéal a inspiré les poètes de la Révolution française, qui ont décrit et célébré deux figures du passé récent comme Voltaire et Rousseau, ainsi que les nouveaux héros comme Marat. De nombreux textes importants et précieux ont été consacrés à Napoléon Bonaparte. Indépendamment du fait qu'il n'a jamais rejoint une loge, Bonaparte a toujours été considéré comme une sorte de « frère » honorifique. En fait, les maçons l'adoraient comme une divinité laïque, comme l '« image des dieux sur la terre. » Il était la synthèse de toutes les vertus, et lui-même s'est présenté seul, comme le héros de son temps. Il semble avoir été vu donc comme l'incarnation authentique de l'homme idéal et un modèle inégalé inspirant.

A inizio Settecento il noto viaggiatore domenicano Jean-Baptiste Labat approdava a Livorno, principale scalo della Toscana. Descrivendo la città, nei suoi racconti di viaggio non mancava di notare quanto fossero vivaci i traffici, ampio il porto ed armoniose le nuove architetture. A colpirlo nel profondo, tuttavia, non era il successo commerciale del porto franco, ma la commistione di persone di diverse etnie, culture e soprattutto religioni. In mezzo a tante e diverse fedi quella che per Labat era l’unica e vera fede, la cristiana cattolica, rischiava di andare perduta. Agire per contrastare tale rischio era fondamentale e così il dominicano annotava che anche il vicario del vescovo di Pisa, che era la più alta carica ecclesiastica della città, stava correndo ai ripari e aveva richiesto al suo superiore l’invio di una missione straordinaria perché portasse i cittadini alla penitenza e alla correzione dei
costumi che ormai erano «estremamente corrotti»

Questo contributo si propone di analizzare i contenuti, l’impatto e le
funzioni dei Cenni morali e politici sull’Inghilterra (1806) di Melchiorre
Gioia, un’opera che, come aveva sottolineato già Carlo Morandi nel 1944,
andava «al di là della polemica contingente e dell’occasionale propaganda
politica». Infatti, i Cenni morali ebbero un’immediata diffusione, per impulso
governativo, nel Regno d’Italia, come si vedrà attraverso la documentazione
conservata all’Archivio di Stato di Milano. Essi però rappresentano
anche un tassello fondamentale nella evoluzione del pensiero di Gioia verso le concezioni in materia economica e politica che poi sarebbero state esposte in maniera sistematica nel Nuovo prospetto delle scienze economiche (1815- 1817) per continuare ad essere oggetto di riflessione da parte del pensatore piacentino, e non solo, negli anni della Restaurazione.

Johann Thomas von Trattner opened his editorial branch in Trieste in 1756. It was the first typography opened in the city since 1645. The branch was directed by Trattner’s son-in-law, Franz Winkowitz, obtained the printing privilege for official documents in Trieste and started publishing books in German, Italian, Latin, Croatian and Slovene. This was a turning point for the development of the city. Trattner, in fact, did not limit himself to printing books (many of them as we will see having an educational character). But he paved the way for the creation of media able to respond both to the needs of the merchant class (rapidity, brevity and clarity of information) and the will of control of the central government from which he received the printing privilege. The case of Trattner in Trieste – which during the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries was called ‘city of Minerva and Mercure’ by its own citizens - magisterially shows how deep are the interconnections between economic, editorial and cultural growth, how moral and material development are parallel and how the needs of the merchant class favored the birth of an information society.

Se oggi si pensa alla mansuetudine, l’immagine che richiama alla mente è quella di un agnellino, o al limite di un vitello. Certo, difficilmente si potrà pensare al the, al caffè, alla cioccolata o al tabacco. Questo contributo, tuttavia, mostra come la mansuetudine fosse una virtù politica e sociale da conquistare ed esercitare con sforzo e per farlo parte proprio dalle quattro novità “esotiche” che conquistarono l’Europa d’età moderna. D’altro canto, la prospettiva della mansuetudine e della virtù rivela come chicchi e foglie fossero al centro di ampie discussioni, che toccavano non solo la moralità o la medicina, ma anche interessi commerciali e visioni socio-politiche.

Maria Carolina fu oggetto di attenzione e di rappresentazione pubblica fin
dal 1768, quando, appena sedicenne, attraversò l’Italia per andare in sposa
a Ferdinando IV, a Napoli. Da allora, come avrebbe osservato anche Pietro
Colletta discutendone la figura, avrebbe passato quarantasei dei suoi sessantadue anni di vita come regina, attraversando gli anni della Rivoluzione e delle guerre napoleoniche. Al di là della longevità, quello di Maria Carolina è un caso di grande interesse perché mostra l’evolversi della comunicazione costruita a partire dal potere regale.
Tra il 1768 e il 1799, infatti, la regina fu al centro, insieme a Ferdinando,
di una rappresentazione familistica e positiva del potere di forte ascendenza asburgica. Tale immagine della sovrana-madre, portatrice di caratteri caritatevoli e rassicuranti, era talmente codificata e diffusa da venire perpetrata per Maria Carolina anche all’indomani della dura repressione del 1799. Dopo la morte, e soprattutto in seguito ai moti del 1821, invece, l’immagine di Maria Carolina si sarebbe arricchita di nuove funzioni comunicative, divenendo il simbolo su cui edificare (o distruggere) la legittimità del governo borbonico.

Following the Peace of Passarowitz, the Mediterranean Sea saw an increase in the circulation of goods and people as well as of information, and also a wider informative system on how diseases spread. The essay offers a Mediterranean and
European overview, focusing on the ports of Venice, Trieste and Livorno. It then considers the global debate on smallpox vaccination, and finishes considering the role of seaports in the 18th-century cultural, health and scientific information routes, as well as the continuous negotiation between institutions and social classes on health protection and freedom of commerce, that ended in creating new strategies and new communication products.

In Early Modern Italian States, Freemasonry had a difficult start. Lodges were created in Rome, Florence, Naples, Milan by the first half of the Eighteenth Century, however almost all of them faced difficulties and even persecutions. The most notable case is that of Florence: poet and freemason Tommaso Crudeli was imprisoned by the Florentine Inquisition. Although later freed, he never recovered and died shortly afterwards, becoming the first martyr of Italian Freemasonry.
Nevertheless, Freemasonry persisted and, in the Seventies, re-emerged as a key-player, especially in the Kingdom of Naples favored by Queen Maria Carolina, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under Peter Leopold and in Austrian Lombardy. Freemasonry fostered the creation of cultural networks which helped exchange ideas and books. During the Enlightenment, the most interesting Italian example of cultural, political and masonic intertwinement is represented by the Neapolitan reformism of Gaetano Filangieri and Francesco Mario Pagano.
The revolutionary outburst brought along a new season of oppression: Freemasonry, for instance, was banned from all the Austrian territories. On the contrary, the arrival of Napoleon in 1796 caused an unprecedented dissemination of masonic lodges and ultimately to the creation of the Grand Orient of Italy in 1805.

Convegno internazionale, Venezia, 12-13 ottobre 2022
Evento organizzato all’interno del progetto “Le città porto alto adriatiche e lo sviluppo della sanità pubblica in età moderna” Intervento realizzato con il contributo della Regione del Veneto ai sensi della L.R. n. 39/2019
PI: Giulia Delogu

Seminario con Andrea Graziosi (SSM Napoli), Pasquale Palmieri (Università di Napoli Federico II) e Giulia Delogu (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)
Scuola Superiore Meridionale - Napoli
Largo San Marcellino, 10
Area disciplinare: Global History and Governance
Martedì 13 dicembre 2022
ore 15.00, aula 2

The Collegio Ghislieri Graduate Conference is a multidisciplinary conference aiming to put together graduate students, PhD candidates and early career scholars from different background. It encompasses the historical analysis of ideas in a broaden chronological dimension.
To facilitate the scholarly dialogue and exchange each year a core theme is selected. This edition will explore the theme of Political Communication from the antiquity to the contemporary age in a multidisciplinary perspective.

Introduction This paper reflects upon the "essence" free ports. Starting from the political debate aroused in Venice at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it tries to illustrate the dialectical process around free ports seen either as states of nature of artifacts against nature, as steps towards universal free trade and liberalism or emblems of despotic rule. First, it inserts the Venetian case in a more general framework. Some hypothesis about free ports and their role in international relations between late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century are made. The underlying idea is that free ports are institutions-laboratories in which it is possible to witness contradictions between a still "feudal system" and innovation pushes both at an economic and at a political level. It briefly presents the eighteenth-century debate on free ports and then moves on to the Napoleonic age, during which the free port of Venice was firstly created. Moreover, Napoleon's attitude towards free ports-which so far as not been analyzed in a systematic way-seems to be a key-example to understand the intertwinement of economy and politics in the creation and abolition of free ports. Nevertheless largely unsuccessful, the Napoleonic policies of economic and political control over the seas show a keen interest in exploiting the institution of free ports (modelled on Genoa and not on Marseilles) at a global level and in the end they might have had an impact in keeping the debate on free ports alive and then in assuring the nineteenth-century diffusion of free ports outside of Europe. Then, after Napoleon, there is a widespread debate on free ports seen alternatively as a solution to revitalize commerce or as a threats not only to internal economy but also to liberal principles of equality. It is particularly strong in Venice, but involves also the rest of Europe and in the 1830s reaches the newly-founded Republics of Latin America. In such discourses Napoleon still features an important role and his project of creating a global set of entrepot is even seen as an attempt of "founding the freedom of the seas". Those less favorable to him acknowledge that «even though he was a sworn enemy of freedom» he promoted a system of free ports and free trade. 1 The nineteenth-century narrative on free ports is usually a global and comparative one: catalogues of all the existing free ports are published in encyclopedias and dictionaries, free ports are continuously compared to each other (the successful ones, such a Trieste, and the unsuccessful one such as Venice). Finally, the case of Venice case represents a thorough theoretical reflection on free ports and their characters both as economic and as political objects in which mainly two points of view confront each other. One is the idea that free ports reflects, for human beings, the primordial state of nature (a commonplace much exploited in the debate on free ports during the French Revolution) and therefore are an institution able to enhance not only economic but also social and political progress. The other considers free ports are as highly artificial establishments that will only lead to the destruction of the balance between human beings and the environment and between the different social components of the city, and thus the economic decadence and political despotism. The debate also illustrates the birth of a wide economic, political and cultural debate on the links between commercial and urban development and therefore the impact of human activities on the lagoon that is still vital and ongoing today.

The analysis of communication in the specific dimension of the free port may prove to be of particular interest, since especially during the 18 th century, the needs of commerce and merchants favored the development forms of communication aimed at quick, efficient and widespread creation and circulation of news.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the concept of modernity-as perceived by eighteenth-century Italian culture-played a relevant role in shaping projects of large-scale reforms which encompassed education, legislation, commerce, politics and religion. Modernity, in fact, as opposed to tradition, was considered the standard to which everything had to conform. In this instance, the semantic evolution of the term virtue represents a highly interesting case. In Italy, in fact, the discussion about what was to be deemed modern was intimately related with morality: if modernity corresponded to commerce, how should it be reconciled with traditional moral values such as stoic-republican or Christian virtue? The traditional narratives, which identified virtue with Christian self-denial, republican love of country, Aristotle's mediocritas, or Epicure's pleasure, soon appeared inadequate to answer the needs of modern societies. The Italian debate on virtue derived from the will of overcoming precisely this long-standing division between Christian and pagan virtue and of redefining the concept in accord with modernity. The answers Italian intellectuals gave show a significant semantic evolution of the term virtue, which, through commerce and legislation, goes from morality to politics. Their interpretation of virtue could finally agree with those considered the hallmarks of modern society (commerce and luxury), and at the same time with a more comprehensive understanding of modernity meant as equality, liberty and human rights. Ultimately, by stating that modernity was indeed virtuous, they recognized its positive connotation and projected their reflections towards future and progress. I will therefore argue that, in eighteenth-century Italy, modernity represented a key-concept, used not only to re-codify essential values such as virtue into secular, political and humanitarian meanings, but also to justify a radical reform of the existing society.

In 1719 Charles VI made Trieste a free port within the Habsburg Empire. Hence the city enjoyed a nearly miraculous growth, becoming a vital trade hub. 18 th century Trieste was a prosperous trading city and melting pot of people and cultures, thus the best place for the circulation not only of material good, but also of less tangible ones, such as ideas and poems. Studying the activity of local literary academies (the Arcadia Romano-Sonziaca and the Società di Minerva), the flourishing multilingual publishing industry and the press (chiefly the «Osservatore triestino»), I reconstructed the 'Trieste Poetic Network', namely the extensive cultural network which united Trieste to cities all over Europe. Poetic texts, in fact, circulated to and from Trieste in many different directions. The study, based on more than 1.500 poems, highlighted a few interesting facts. Firstly, the multilingual character of the Triestine literary production, which counts texts written in Italian, French, Hebrew, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Slovenian and Venetian dialect. Secondly, the importance of French influence over Triestine authors, despite their staunch loyalty to the Habsburg Empire. Thirdly, the political commitment of many texts, which were published throughout the Empire, in order to spread politically-oriented messages. The analysis of the Triestine poetic corpus unveiled the centrality of Trieste in the 18 th century European cultural panorama. It underlined also the importance of poetry itself as political and communicative media. Especially during the Napoleonic wars, in fact, the circulation of poems became an actual 'Battle of Ideas', which opposed Napoleon's supporters to Habsburg' loyalists. Both for the abundance of unedited archival documentation and for its character of 'marginal land', 18 th century Trieste represents an intriguing case study from which it is possible to reconstruct the parallelism between merchant and cultural roads, and also the interconnections between politics, economics and poetry.

During the 18th century poetry was a fundamental and powerful media. Masonic principles, in fact, were spread all over Europe through poems and chansons and not through treatises and constitutions. Masonic principles were molded on the new Enlightenment ethos, based on values such a Tolerance, Equality, Freedom, Friendship, Benevolence, Truth and Virtue. Given this consonance of principles, It is indisputable that Freemasonry played a relevant role in the circulation of the new ideas and in the progressive erosion of the certainties of the Ancien Régime. During the years of the French Revolution many Freemasons poets were actively engaged in the cultural machine of the new government. They wrote a multitude of poetic texts. These texts were written and recited in order to transmit ethical and political messages to all the social classes. The linguistic analysis of a relevant amount of Masonic poems from Italy and France clearly shows how Freemasonry paved the way for key concepts of the French Revolution. The manner in which the Revolution made use of terms and themes present in Masonic texts, giving them a different sense, both more political and concrete, can also be revealed. This process invested the Masonic poetry whose language evolved, moving from ideal to concrete: originally elitist, it became universal. The choice I made to compare Italy and France is due to their strong Masonic and cultural ties. This relationship can be reconstructed through the rich documentation conserved in the Fonds maçonnique of the Bibliothéque Nationale de France in Paris. In this paper, I intend to underline how an " underground poetry " , today largely forgotten, was nonetheless a might force in the voltairian " lutte contre l'infâme " , that is to say in the diffusion of the values of the Enlightenment. In order to do that, I will present case studies including, for instance, the analysis of significant terms such as Equality and Freedom.