Campanian antiquarians and the local past in the early modern period

Between the late Middle ages and the early Modern period, in several southern Italy towns developed an antiquarian – but also encomiastic and sometimes apologetic – literature which aimed to investigate and celebrate the local civic past, which was generally a classical past, since the most of southern Italy centres could boast Greek or Roman origins. In the present paper, even if my arguments would probably fit with the whole southern Italy antiquarian literature, I will deal only with the Campanian centres. The phenomenon that I call here ‘Campanian antiquarianism’ constitutes a non-homogeneous literary production concerning almost every Campanian city which could boast an ancient (and preferably classical) past, and which still had a status of universitas in the modern period. This literature focused on a single centre (more rarely on a single area or region) and had both descriptive and encomiastic aims.