La Bisanzio dei lumi. L'impero romano d'oriente nella storiografia e nella cultura.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, especially (but not exclusively) starting from the reign of Louis XIV, the interest in Byzantine Empire has seen in France – and also in Italy although in a more marginal way – a new flowering. In this period of time, almost a century and a half, going from the reign of the Sun King (1638-1715) until the French Revolution (1789), the revival of Byzantine studies is determined from different factors – religious, political, emotional, philosophical – which cannot be reduced only to the discreditable image provided by the Enlightenment (however, not by “all” Enlightenment). The Byzantine Empire with its Greek orthodox faith becomes from a catholic point of view the emblem of the betrayal of the “true” Roman Catholic faith and, for this reason, connected with the more recent Protestant Reformation. From another one, Byzantium is meant to glorify Louis XIV, whose lineage went back to the Latin emperors of Constantinople (1204-1261), as well as to support his pretensions to the Constantinopolitan throne against Habsburg’s one. At the same time, if from one side Byzantine history is aimed at the celebration of French monarchy, on the other one, with the rise of the Ottoman Empire threatening Europe, the Byzantine Empire conquered by the Turks in 1453 is raised as a negative model to avoid. In the end, with the rise of Enlightenment thought in the 18th century, Byzantium is taken as example of the despotism and the violence of despotic power against an absolutism more “enlightened”. However, contemporary, a positive, although not predominant, view of the Byzantine Empire can be found. In particular that is concerning the crusades involving the Byzantine Empire between the 11th and 13th centuries, seen and condemned as an attack of the Latins against the Byzantines. The aim of this work is hence to shed light on the complexity of the “Byzantium problem” in the 17th-18th centuries, showing how the history of Byzantine Empire has been subject to a different and sometimes controversial, interpretations which it is not possible to ascribe to a coherent and uniform thought.