The Medieval constitution of the lands and jurisdictions of Frederick II
The purpose here is to demonstrate how the proprietary conception of political power that emerged with the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire’s organization in «officia» highlights some elements common to all Italian territory. These include seigneurial justice over the various types of rural dependents, a certain way of graduating jurisdictions in accordance with the hierarchy of the territories, and more. Many of these elements were to survive the introduction of the feudal system, and were indeed veiled from it. Therefore, in the southern Kingdom of Frederick II, feudal justice (to which the Emperor showed a strong aversion) often included seigneurial justice, resulting in some confusion to modern scholars, in the approach both to the leges of the Liber Constitutionum and to the surviving documents. Only with the early Angevin age were the two typologies of jurisdiction to be unified into juridical and constitutional theories of great relevance, due also to their expression of concrete institutional practises, marking a net difference from the Swabian age.

«Vetustas», «anus» and «vetulae» in the Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, although women had a life expectancy of less than thirty-five
or thirty-eight years, many reached and surpassed the age of sixty, seventy, or even eighty years. The high female mortality rate was due to poor hygiene, a diet low in iron, the shortcomings of medical science and pharmacopoeia, as well as, for married women, the consequences of pregnancy and childbirth. The late Middle Ages saw a remarkable turnaround, and treatises spread practical advice and medical and dietary suggestions. The longest-lived women, however, were the nuns and queens who lived in an environment that ensured greater protection from violence and a rich and balanced diet. Old women now were either respected (mothers, grandmothers, nurses) for their wisdom and experience, or despised when they refused to accept the faults of time and tried to hide them with baubles and rouge, or when they induced the youth to adopt lascivious and unscrupulous attitudes (pandering and procuring), or engaged in magical practices (herbariae and strigae). Good or bad, wise or dissolute, the old women left their mark on society and on the mentality of the Middle Ages.

Research on teratology in Sicily (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries) 
In Sicily, reflections on monsters and on «generative stumbles» first appear in a treatise from the second half of the sixteenth century, containing one of the first medicalphysiological descriptions of two-headed births and written in the vernacular by the famous physiologist and anatomist Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia. Ingrassia’s contribution to the field of teratology is interwoven with his more important and observable activity in the role of protomedico (chief of the controlling body of all the medical activities in the Kingdom of Sicily), which required him to make important public decisions regarding medical care. It seems certain that Ingrassia’s scientific treatise cannot be easily classified along with other teratological descriptions of the second half of the sixteenth century. Rather, a naturalistic sensitivity emerges that is disengaged from transcendental presuppositions. Starting with an analysis of this important work by Ingrassia, this paper then draws comparisons with other teratological treatises.

Republicanism and Republican ideas in the Italian eighteenth century: Giuseppe Maria Galanti between the ancient and modern
Studies of republican ideas in early modern Europe have transformed republicanism into a historiographical category in which its contents and contexts are not always clear. In general, scholars of republicanism tend to emphasize continuities over changes. Thus, from Machiavelli to the American Revolution, the common characteristics rather than the differences between Venice and Holland or between England and the United States come to the fore. After reviewing a number of historiographical contributions on this theme, this article examines republican ideas in eighteenth-century Italy, in particular those of one of the most significant thinkers of the Enlightenment and reform in southern Italy, Giuseppe Maria Galanti. In his historical and geographic writings, there emerges a clear reference to the republican model of pre-Roman Italy and not to that of early modern Italy. Genoa, Venice, and Lucca were for him examples of closed aristocracies and institutional weakness. Likewise, he would have considered the democratic republicanism of the revolutionary period with equal hostility.

Joseph de Maistre’s two modernities. Isaiah Berlin and the interpretation of Fascism
The article focuses on the analysis of the Berlinian interpretation of the genealogy of Fascism and of Joseph de Maistre’s thought, which Isaiah Berlin considered one of the major intellectual forerunners of Fascism. The purpose of this essay is twofold. Firstly, it demonstrates that Isaiah Berlin’s interpretation of the Savoyard as a modern thinker has to be referred not only to the influences that his anti-rationalism had on the theory of right-wing totalitarianism, but also to the role that Maistrean historicism, contextualism and realism played in the formulation of Berlinian liberalism itself. Secondly, the article shows that Berlin not only affirms a link between Fascism and Maistrean or Romantic irrationalism and pluralism, but also dwells on the monistic (even rationalistic) roots of Fascism.

Giulio Einaudi in exile
Shortly after the armistice of 8 September 1943, the Italian publisher Giulio Einaudi (1912-1999), like many other anti-Fascists, fled his country and took refuge in Switzerland, settling in Lausanne. During those same days, Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967), a founder and leading member of the Action Party and European Federalist Movement, crossed the Italian-Swiss border and reached Lugano. The correspondence between them, while spanning little more than one year (October 1943 – March 1945), embraces a large variety of topics and issues: plans for publications, attitudes toward cultural work, and above all, ideas and hopes about the political organization of future Europe. It also sheds light on the project of a collection of essays on modern political thought, addressed to a European audience and significantly called «Éditions européennes». This ambitious and pioneering project was destined to fail due to the ideological contrasts between the azionista Rossi and the Communist Einaudi.

Dante Di Nanni: myth and history
This essay examines specific conditions of the birth of a myth during the period of the Resistance, starting from an episode that took place in Turin, in which the central figure – and victim – was a young partisan, Dante Di Nanni. Starting from this event, as it has been handed down, the research proposes an analysis aimed at recovering original elements that, although already known at that time, were excluded from the immediate reconstruction, thereby helping to conserve an intact legendary vision that still remains vital. Through comparison between the historiography of past decades and the sources, contradictions are highlighted, raising questions that this essay attempts to answer by focusing on the myth, and the reasons for its construction. This type of approach is now very advanced as regards the First World War, but is still unusual for Resistance historiography; this is also because only with difficulty does Resistance mythology overcome the local context, unlike the establishing dimension of the Fatherland taken on by that related to Great War.

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