Edizione Digitale
L’edizione digitale dell’Archivio storico per le province napoletane è visionabile a questo link
https://www.polodigitalenapoli.it/it/29/ricerca/detail/lo10015850/
Dalla scheda, aprire la tendina “esplora la testata” e, cliccando sull’annata che si vuole visionare, si potrà accedere alla copia del volume.
Gli ultimi due numeri della rivista sono visionabili qui di seguito.
I singoli articoli sono accessibili dal link a partire dal tiåtolo.
Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, CXLIII 2025
SAGGI
Matteo Villani, Per dove passava la via publica que pergit Sipontum? / Where the public road que pergit Sipontum once ran?
The hospitium of St. Benedict, founded in 1098 in Monte Sant’Angelo, was located near the via publica to Siponto. The essay identifies the route of this road within the itineraries used for the mobility and the pilgrimage in the Gargano. This makes it possible to define the function of the various routes, distinguishing the vie carrarie from the devotional routes (the Scale Sante), and to provide a global knowledge of the area that is also useful for a more complete appreciation of the historical area’s and cultural heritage.
On the basis of an extensive survey of primary sources, the essay studies the migration process in the Angevin and Aragonese Mezzogiorno, focusing on groups of peasants moving to locations other than their original residence. In particular, the diverse causes of migration, its territorial diffusion, its variables over time and the reactions of lords and sovereigns are investigated.
Maria Luisa Lustri, Marco di Paolo Veneziano a Villa Badessa di Roscieno (Pescara) / Marco Paolo Veneziano at Villa Badessa in Roscieno (Pescara)
A St. Peter and a St. Apollonia attributed in 2006 to the 14th-century Venetian painter Marco di Paolo, hitherto considered works of unknown location, are preserved in Abruzzo, precisely in Villa Badessa, a hamlet in the territory of Rosciano in the province of Pescara. The two panels are displayed in a Byzantine-Greek rite church dedicated to St. Mary of the Assumption Kìmisis (Dormition), which houses several icons belonging to the Arbëreshë community that migrated from southern Albania to the countryside of the middle Pescara River valley in 1743. This contribution proposes the attribution of a small St. Nicholas of the same collection, previously overlooked by studies, to the Venetian artistic context of the late 14th century.
The paper analyses the 15th century ms. IV.C.18 in the National Library of Naples, which contains the Decade III of Livy’s Historiarum Romanarum from the library of the convent of S. Giovanni a Carbonara. The manuscript is an unpublished example of late Gothic illumination in Apulia, which is proposed here to be attributed to the Master of the Missal of St. Conrad, who illuminated the Missal of St Conrad, now in the Capitular Archive in Molfetta, and the Book of Hours W.322 in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, made for Anna Colonna. It is also suggested that Decade III may have formed a “diptych” with Decade I, ms. IV.C.19 in the Library of Naples, made for Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo. The discovery of ms. IV.C.18 extends the corpus of manuscripts illuminated by the Master of the Missal of St. Conrad, an illuminator who is still little studied, and adds a bit a piece to the knowledge of the production of illuminated books in Apulian territory in the 15th century.
The story of the capture by Algerian corsairs of two galleys of the Sicilian fleet in 1578 is re-examined in the light of new documentation. It is representative of two typical aspects of the confrontation between Christians and Muslims in the second half of the 16th century: warfare and slavery, as means that contributed to the strategies pursued by the two cultures for predominance in the Mediterranean. The political impact of the event is also investigated.
Marcella Campanelli, Inquisiti e reati in una diocesi della periferia meridionale (secc. XVI-XVIII) / Inquisitions and Crimes in a Diocese on the Southern Italian Periphery (16th–18th Centuries)
The paper studies the Rubricella criminalium kept in the diocesan archives of Sant’Agata dei Goti. It contains the list of 3,740 defendants, both ecclesiastical and lay, and the relative accusations for which they were summoned before the bishop’s court from 1505 to 1788. The Rubricella does not allow us to study how the local ecclesiastical justice worked, but the apparently sterile list does allow us to enter the everyday life of the diocese through the original and unusual channel of the ‘crime’. An attempt is made to get to know the prevalent ones, their perpetrators and the periods in which they most affected the social framework, in the context of the work of moralisation repeatedly attempted by the bishops.
The preceptory of Bitonto, whose origins date back to the mid-15th century, was substantially amplified during the 16th century, in the context of the reform process of the Johannite Order, to include the neighbouring towns of Ruvo and Corato. This paper examines the events of the commenda during the 17th century, the period when the decline of the Order of Malta began, and it focuses mainly on the economic aspects thanks to an unpublished cabreo of 1618 and some notarial deeds.
The decrees of the Neapolitan Gran Corte della Vicaria and the cases it discussed give some insight into the housing of the Neapolitan population during the 18th century. The paper investigates the typology of housing, the social position of owners and lodgers, access to water infrastructure, and the practice of subleasing. The peculiar relationship between the scarcity of available space and the increasing demographic pressure is shown to be a critical element destined to worsen housing conditions.
The essay traces the history of the villa of Pietro Giannone on the Vomero hill in the village of Due Porte through the reading of the letters written by the famous jurist, of some known archival sources, and of some other unpublished ones, consulted at the Historical Archive of the Banco di Napoli and The Archivio di Stato of Naples. The cross-referencing of the data with the analysis of historical cartography and on-site inspections has made it possible to identify the site of the casino, whose architectural transformations were then studied in depth, designed by Ferdinando Sanfelice and carried out during the years of exile by his brother Carlo.
Gerardo Ruggiero, Filangieri e Romagnosi a confronto. Fra suggestioni e discordanze / Filangieri and Romagnosi: A Comparison. Between suggestions and disagreements
The author compares the two thinkers in order to underline their disparity of views and, at the same time, to reveal what suggestions Romagnosi may have drawn from Filangieri’s work.
Serena Morelli, Gli studi di Noël Coulet per la storia del Mezzogiorno angioino / Noël Coulet’s Studies on the History of the Angevin Southern Italy
Noel Coulet died on 15 January 2023. He has been one of the most prolific and innovative French medievalists in the last fifty years. Professor at the University of Aix-Marseille, director of the journal Provence historique, he devoted his life to the study of medieval Provence and to the research of historical sources. The essay recalls his work as regards the study of economic, demographic, social and administrative relations with the Italian peninsula in the late Middle Ages. As a careful scholar of the Angevin domains, the historian has been among the promotors of the researches that have also involved southern Italy; he has established lasting scientific relations and friendship with numerous Meridionalist historians and he has written some important essays to understand which contacts and connections were created between Provence and southern Italy during the Angevin monarchy.
DOCUMENTI
A new draft of the Rules of the Accademia degli Oziosi, the best known of the Neapolitan academies of the early 17th century, founded by Giambattista Manso and Prince Francesco Brancaccio, which counted among its adherents many renowned intellectuals including Giovan Battista della Porta, Giovan Battista Basile and Giambattista Marino, has been found in the series Libri proibiti of the Neapolitan Archivio Storico Diocesano. Most probably, this is the first version, which was censored by the Congregazione dell’Indice dei Libri Proibiti. The first inventory of the collection is published in the Appendix.
Carolina Belli, I “Processi” del Tribunale Misto (1740-1806) / The “Trials” of the Tribunale Misto (1740–1806)
Overview and inventory of the archival fonds Processi del Tribunale misto of the Archivio di Stato in Naples. The fond, consisting of 911 volumes dating from 1734 to 1806, is completely unknown to scholars. These documents can provide an important contribution to the history of southern society during the 18th century.
Demetrio Salazar (Reggio Calabria, 1822 – Pozzuoli, 1882) was an important patriot, painter, scholar of medieval art and promoter of industrial art, active in Naples. This contribution presents the correspondence directed to him, preserved in the Fondo Salazar in the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. It contains letters on political, artistic, archival and private topics.
The paper reconstructs the cultural relations between Antonio Casamarte, Matteo Camera, and Bartolommeo Capasso from the mid-1870s to the end of the 19th century on the basis of the extensive unpublished correspondence preserved at the Maria Bassino Casamarte Treccia contessa Bezzi Foundation in Loreto Aprutino (PE). Casamarte was interested in historical-genealogical information on the family and its illustrious members, their noble chapels in the churches of Sorrento, their transfers to Corsica/Sorrento-Amalfi/Abruzzo, the Sorrento church and Torquato Tasso. His research was based on in-depth archival investigation of Amalfitan, Sorrentine and Neapolitan sources that still existed at the time.
PER MARIO DEL TREPPO
Two unedited texts by Mario del Treppo are published: the Conversazione autobiografica, a lecture given on 11 April 2000, in his last academic year of service, for students of the PhD course in Storia della Società Europea at the University of Naples Federico II (from the transcription of the recording) and a letter sent to his friend Errico Tecce on 26 March 2013, described by Del Treppo himself as ‘a spiritual biography’.
Giovanni Vitolo, «Vivere per raccontarla». Del Treppo, Galasso, Rossetti e altri storici / «Vivere per raccontarla». Del Treppo, Galasso, Rossetti, and Other Historians
Mario Del Treppo, Giuseppe Galasso and Gabriella Rossetti – among the protagonists of Italian historiography in the second half of the twentieth century – were engaged in different ways not only in the study of broad themes, including those regarding the Mediterranean Europe and the “two Italies”, but also in the reflection on the role of the historian and on the relationship between politics and history. From such fields important acquisitions have arisen, which have had further developments on the occasion of the presentation of books and conferences organized within the framework of the programs of GISEM, the inter-university study group for the history of Mediterranean Europe promoted by Rossetti. This experience then later ended some years ago, during which not only the political, cultural and economic scenario of the Mediterranean has changed, but also the reflection on the problem of the relationship between politics and history has weakened. Both in Italy and in Europe the belief that economists, jurists and sociologists have many more qualifications than historians to deal with the Mediterranean is increasingly growing.
Bruno Figliuolo, Gli studi amalfitani di Mario Del Treppo / Mario Del Treppo’s Amalfi Studies
Mario Del Treppo dealt with the history of Amalfi from the beginning of the 1970s. His studies culminated in a monograph published in 1977. He returned to the subject more than twenty years later, with a long essay in which he explored some themes economic history of the town’s. Once he had completed his fifteen-year research on trade in Barcelona in the 15th century, Del Treppo felt the need to concentrate on the history of the Mezzogiorno, studying the region’s most emblematic city in order to demonstrate the structural differences between the Catalan and southern economies in the 15th century. The Neapolitan historian’s book had a considerable historiographical impact, received many reviews and was much discussed, although, it seems, not fully understood in all its methodological complexity.
Roberto Delle Donne, Storia e memoria nell’opera di Mario Del Treppo / History and Memory in the Work of Mario Del Treppo
The article examines the relationship between history and the “freedom of memory” in the work of Mario Del Treppo, one of the most prominent Italian historians of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of selected contribu- tions, it highlights how Del Treppo explored the ways in which memory not only preserves the past but also emancipates itself from the constraints of “grand narratives,” asserting its own interpretative autonomy. The article reflects on Del Treppo’s contribution to historiographical debate, emphasizing the role of free memory in the construction of a critical understanding of history.
Francesco Storti, L’ultima impresa di Micheletto: Mario Del Treppo e la storia militare / Micheletto’s Latest Campain: Mario Del Treppo and Military History
The paper analyses the contributions made by Mario Del Treppo to military history, highlighting, despite their fragmentary nature, their enormous originality and the impact they have produced, and still produce, in the field of military studies: one more chance to appreciate, from, so to speak, a ‘minor’ perspective, the depth of the critical method and the broad scope of the historiographic interests of the great Istrian scholar.
Francesco Senatore, Una monografia inedita di Mario Del Treppo. Prolegomena all’edizione critica / An unpublished monograph by Mario Del Treppo. Prolegomena to the critical edition
Between 2007 and 2008, Mario Del Treppo began working on a new monograph, entitled Nell’amministrazione angioina e aragonese del Regno di Napoli, which has unfortunately remained incomplete. Thanks to the scholar’s archive, which has just been donated to the Società Napoletana di StoriaPatria, it is possible to describe the structure of the volume, its drafting stages, the typology of existing texts and the most appropriate philological approach in view of publication. The draft materials are particularly interesting, including an outline of the last chapter, in which Del Treppo intended to discuss the relation between narrative and sources in his work referring to+ a wellknown essay by Italo Calvino, Cibernetica e fantasmi.
Antonella Venezia, Una longeva dedizione. Mario Del Treppo e la Società Napoletana di Storia Patria / A Lifetime of Dedication: Mario Del Treppo and the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria
For over half a century, Mario Del Treppo was one of the leading figures of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. He joined the association in thevearly 1950s and became a member of his board in 1964, a position he held until 2010. His main efforts were devoted to the library, the preservation of the Society’s heritage, and the journal, also contributing to the organization of significant cultural initiatives.
Guido D’Agostino, Ricordo di Mario Del Treppo / In Memory of Mario Del Treppo
Personal memories about Mario Del Treppo, whom the author knew when the latter was an ordinary assistant to the common mentor Ernesto Pontieri.
Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, CXLIV 2026
SAGGI
This essay aims to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the political and social dynamics of the aristocratic elite of Sorrento, starting with the significance to be attributed to titles of nobility and the establishment in the area of families from outside the region, before going on to identify their subsequent settlement within the city walls, which allowed them to become members of the two Sedili (noble association) of Dominova and Porta.
This article analyzes the Arcani Historici di Giovanna I, the personal register of Niccolò Alunno d’Alife, a key figure in the political and cultural context of the Angevin court of Naples from the first thirty years of the 14th. The study offers an overview of the document, the original version of which has been lost and is only partially preserved in subsequent handwritten copies, one of which is kept by the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. The text is a crucial source for the political and social events of southern Italy in the 14th century.
The article is focused on the manuscript Arch. Cap. S. Pietro D.188 from the Vatican Apostolic Library, containing the Sermones in Cantica Canticorum by Bernard of Clairvaux, attributing its decoration to a Neapolitan illuminator active between the 1380s and the first decade of the 15th century. The Orsini coat of arms painted in the lower margin of the first page and surmounted by the cardinal’s galero, together with the provenance from the archives of the Chapter of St. Peter’s, also allow us to identify Cardinal Giordano Orsini († 1438) as the owner of the volume.
This paper analyses Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae linguae Latinae, ms V.D.57 of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, investigating stylistic and iconographic features that support the attribution of the decoration to the Masterria of Isabella of Chiaromonte and expand the catalogue of works ascribed to this 15th-century illuminator. The analysis highlights new codicological elements, mainly palaeographic, useful for reconstructing previously unknown phases of the manuscript conservation history.
Antonella Balbi, De Melite insula et an sit Italica (1566)
The autograph manuscript De Melite insula et an sit Italica, written in 1566 by the Cremonese Gian Giacomo Torresini, is currently preserved at the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria (shelfmark XXIX E 26.5). This research presents a palaeographic study of the manuscript, which also contains a treatise, where Torresini argues that Malta belongs to Italy, as well as the edition, with a translation into Italian, and textual analysis of the opening elegy, which recalls the siege of the island of Malta by the Ottoman Turks in 1565.
Geppino Buonomo – Antonio Vannugli, Tra Napoli e Würzburg: una traccia per la Sacra Famiglia con due angeli del Domenichino / Between Naples and Würzburg: a path for the “Sacra Famiglia con due angeli” by Domenichino
The identification of three painted versions of a Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist in Naples, Piedimonte Matese and Würzburg respectively, related to an invention by Domenico Zampieri il Domenichino – so far known through a cartoon and two preparatory drawings, all of them in England, and at least two prints – has made it possible to reconsider the dominant opinion that the Bolognese artist never transferred his composition into painting. From this lost original, presumably created in the second half of the 1620s, the copies in Würzburg and Naples independently derive, while the later copy in Piedimonte Matese was taken after the former.
Franco Cavallone, L’emblema di Gallipoli nel Thesaurus philo-politicus di Daniel Meisner / The Emblem of Gallipoli in Daniel Meisner’s Thesaurus philo-politicus
In the emblem of the city of Gallipoli, the only example of an Apulian landscape view published in the work of the Bohemian Daniel Meisner, the Thesaurus philo-politicus (1623-1631), an unfavorable judgment was found towards the Salento center, accused of an unseemly conduct, which only adherence to Lutheranism could free and bring closer to salvation and heavenly concord. This interpretation that cannot be shared is systematically examined, starting from the Thesaurus.
Even though the great Southern Italian aristocratic households settled down in Naples in the first half of the Sixteenth century, most of them continued to spend part of the year in their lands. Life in feudal castles and palaces has traditionally been considered as a rather rough shelter for those families who couldn’t afford the expenses of the Neapolitan court. However, a close study of archival sources unveils a rather interesting outlook of aristocratic provincial courts, as places of lively patronage of literature, music, and theatre between 16th and 17th centuries.
Orsola Lorena Purcaro, La fabulosa storia del codice SNSP, ms XXI B 3 contenente la Vita greca di san Gennaro / The fascinating story of the SNSP manuscript, ms XXI B 3, containing the Greek Life of Saint Januarius
The SNSP manuscript, codex XXI B 3, the only Greek manuscript in the library of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, was “discovered” by Archbishop Falcone and used as a source for his Intera istoria in 1713. Initially presented as a direct copy of a sixth-century manuscript, the codex sparked a heated debate regarding its authenticity, both due to its material features and the unusual content of which it is the sole witness. Likely created to reinforce the Neapolitan origin of Saint Januarius, it is now recognized as a forgery pro- duced between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Shayna Muckerheide, The Rise and Fall of Harmonic Gut-Strings in 18th Century Naples: Story of the Angelucci Family
The historic production of harmonic strings from sheep intestine is a craft largely unknown today. The strings most prized by European musicians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were those produced in Rome and Naples by Abruzzese craftsmen. The Angelucci family based in Naples with Salle origins were once the most famous cordari but were largely forgotten. It is time for the craft and contributions of the Angelucci family to be recognized and remembered once again.
The Italian Esposizioni Nazionali of the second half of the nineteenth century were frequently accompanied by retrospective exhibitions of ancient art, in which illuminated manuscripts were also included. Among these, the Esposizione dell’Arte Antica Napoletana, held in Naples in 1877 presented a substantial number of illuminated manuscripts of southern Italian origin or provenance. The present study undertakes a thorough examination of this exhibition, aiming to elucidate the critical reception and exhibition history of the miniature from southern Italy.
DOCUMENTI
After a brief mention of the problem of forgeries, the author investigates the causes of forgeries in the Abbey of the SS. Trinità in Cava de’ Tirreni, briefly identifies the causes and hypothesizes the possible authors of the forgeries, and concludes by providing some indications for identifying the forgeries in the Abbey’s archives.
Giuliana Vitale, Monache “proprietarie” e badesse amministratrici / “Owner” nuns and abbesses as administrators
In the pre-Tridentine era, the nuns of the Neapolitan monastery of San Gregorio Armeno sometimes engaged in their own independent economic activities and were also free to dispose of assets that were their exclusive property. In short, even after entering the convent and taking their vows, women could own personal property, trade in it and dispose of it by bequest, as demonstrated by several exemplary cases drawn from the monastery’s primary records.
The paper, the result of careful research conducted in the Archivio storico diocesano di Napoli and various parish archives, provides new biographical information on the sculptor Gennaro D’Amore, a pupil of Giacomo Colombo. He was born in Acigliano, now a hamlet of Mercato Sanseverino (Salerno), on September 9, 1707, and likely died in Naples on May 21, 1782. He created works destined to various provinces of the Kingdom, including Sicily. All documents published to date his work, drawn from the Archivio di Stato di Napoli and the Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli, have been revised and integrated with inedited ones.
Vincenzo Palmisciano, Novità per il profilo biografico di Francesco Antonio Giusto / New information regarding the biography of Francesco Antonio Giusto
This is a transcript of the correspondence between Carlo Troya and Giuseppe Canestrini. He through Francesco Bonaini, his dear friend, offered some unpublished documents to the Neapolitan historian, thus inaugurating a fruitful collaboration.
Antonella Venezia, «Nell’aspettativa de’ suoi pregiati fogli»: il carteggio Canestrini – Troya
This is a transcript of the correspondence between Carlo Troya and Giuseppe Canestrini. He through Francesco Bonaini, his dear friend, offered some unpublished documents to the Neapolitan historian, thus inauguratin a fruitful collaboration.
Antonella Venezia, «Città bene vestita, mal calzata». I diari di viaggio di Scipione Volpicella / «Città bene vestita, mal calzata». The Travel Diaries of Scipione Volpicella
Edition of two travel diaries by Scipione Volpicella, the first president of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria.
