La porta del sapere. Cultura alla corte di Federico II di Svevia

The door to knowledge. Culture at the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Emperor: Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194-1250) was the last one to give a universal meaning to that title. For about thirty years he was the most powerful ruler in Europe, revealing in every gesture full awareness of his own role: an awareness that he acquired gradually and more and more clearly as the fire of his violent clash with the papacy flared up. This is the primordial root that led him to become the supporter of an extraordinary ideological renewal, of which the literati and the officials who surrounded him were the architects. His court thus became an attractive center for multiform cultural traditions (Latin, vernacular, Occitan, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew) and a driving force for literary and scientific innovations destined to exert decisive influence for centuries to come. In this book the characters and the elaboration of a disruptive cultural conception are fully investigated: for the first time in history, the knowledge derived from in-depth study was represented as a stairway leading to wisdom, the only gateway to nobility: both the spiritual one, and the more concrete one (functional to the administration of the state). The book was translated in French. Reviews here: http://www.carocci.it/index.php?option=com_carocci&Itemid=72&task=schedalibro&isbn=9788843095025