Conference: Transalpine Invectivity. Disparaging communication in Italian and German humanism

Date: November 10-12, 2025

Location: DHI Rome, Via Aurelia Antica 391, 00165 Rome

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Registration link at DHI Rome
Please note: A separate registration is required for the keynote lecture by Frank Rexroth (further down on the same page).
It is also possible to register for the keynote alone.

Description of the conference

In the processes of group formation, be it in political or cultural contexts, the use of attacking communication, i.e. invectiveness in the broadest sense, plays an indispensable role: this can be explained by the fact that every social, political or cultural group needs a scapegoat, a common enemy who helps to create and maintain a mood of collective identity; this "asymmetrization" or asymmetrical positioning of one's own group membership and that of the "others" is a necessary and indispensable prerequisite for the assertion of political or cultural agency claims.

These assumptions are valid for almost every point in history, but they take on a special significance in the context of the so-called Renaissance humanism of the 15th and 16th centuries. Even without entering into the controversial question of the definition of humanism, one can easily recognize the strikingly polemical and invective character of much of the production of the personalities who recognize and present themselves as participants in the movement; in this, as in many other respects, Francesco Petrarch plays a pioneering and fundamental role, with his violent attacks against the cultural alternatives of contemporary culture. The spread and reception of his texts, or rather their "transalpine diffusion" (J. Helmrath), is the basic prerequisite for the development of disparaging communication between Italian and German humanists.

The aim of the conference is therefore to observe individual phenomena of group formation through the pejorative form of communication as case studies (e.g. the split within Florence between the supporters of the aristocratic party and the participants in the circle around the Medici, which forms the background to the exchange of invectivae between Poggio Bracciolini and Francesco Filelfo), and at the same time to follow the comparative development of the form of communication between Italy and Germany (e.g. the reception of Petrarch's notorious Liber sine Nomine in German humanist circles).