Civil History in the Kingdom of Naples: some considerations

The essay aims to highlight the special importance of southern Italian historiography between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, as part of a more generalized consideration of the origins of a sixteenth century “model” of civil history and its subsequent developments in Europe. The chronicles of Notar Giacomo, Melchiorre Ferraiolo, Giacomo Gallo, Giuliano Passero, Gregorio Rosso and the istorie of Giovanni Albino, Girolamo Borgia, Antonino Castaldo, Giovanni Antonio Summonte were only a few of the works in a vast output of history writing, of which nothing was published during the time of the events (they describe) and only a small portion were printed in the Kingdom of Naples at the end of the sixteenth century. This is current of historiography that lasted a long time and which from the southern reaches of the Italian peninsula spread, over the course of the modern age, to northern Europe through the work of the Neapolitan historian Pietro Giannone (1676-1748), whose Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli enjoyed great success in Europe during the Enlightenment when it also circulated in English and French translations.