June 22, 2023 – An event that represents the 2023 DAS highlight. Our guest coming from Italy is Professor Marcello Simonetta, an extraordinary expert on Renaissance history2023 DAS highlight. The lecture is co-hosted with the prestigious Charleston Library Society.
The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy’s many city-states providing the grist for Machiavelli’s classic work on take-no-prisoners politics, The Prince. The attempted assassination of the Medici brothers in the Duomo in Florence in 1478 is one of the best-known examples of the machinations endemic to the age. While the assailants were the Medici’s rivals, the Pazzi family, questions have always lingered about who really orchestrated the attack, which has come to be known as the Pazzi Conspiracy.
More than five hundred years later, Marcello Simonetta, working in a private archive in Italy, stumbled upon a coded letter written by Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, to Pope Sixtus IV. Using a codebook written by his own ancestor to crack its secrets, Simonetta unearthed proof of an all-out power grab by the Pope for control of Florence. Montefeltro, long believed to be a close friend of Lorenzo de Medici, was in fact conspiring with the Pope to unseat the Medici and put the more malleable Pazzi in their place.
Marcello Simonetta earned his laurea at Sapienza in Rome and his Ph.D. at Yale University. He has authored several books, among which his Medici trilogy, “The Montefeltro Conspiracy” (Doubleday, New York: 2007, translated in ten languages), “Volpi e Leoni. I Medici, Machiavelli e la rovina d’Italia” (Bompiani, Milan: 2014, translated in 4 languages) and “Caterina de’ Medici. Storia segreta di una faida famigliare” (Rizzoli, Milan: 2018, translated in four languages). He is currently a Senior Scholar at The Medici Archive Project in Florence, and is also teaching at NYU and Syracuse Florence.
THURSDAY, JUNE 22 , 6PM @ Charleston Library Society 164 King St, Charleston, SC 29401
Buona Sera,
My husband and I would love to go to this event. We have just joined the Dante Alighieri Society – and happy to be members! How do we get tickets for this event? Thank you.
Dear Alecia,
We are sorry to answer you only today. Yesterday was a too busy day.
With your membership level you can join most of the events with no ticket. Events that involve food have tickets and it will appear in the invitation.
Looking forward to meeting you,
Donatella della Porta