Instructor:
Using the relationship between Church and State as a starting point, this course examines the cultural history of early modern Italy. Students will examine representations of this relationship in literary texts such as Dante’s Inferno and Boccaccio’s Decameron, Saint Catherine’s Letters, political treatises such as Valla’s On the Donation of Constantine and Machiavelli’s The Prince, and artistic masterpieces such as Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s frescoes. A complex picture will emerge from these works in which the boundaries between lust for power and sexual intemperance are blurred, and saints and sinners share the same stage. Taught in English.