Ombre sarpiane. Il “Principe repubblicano” di Paolo Sarpi e il pensiero politico genovese (1602-54)

Abstract

This essay is largely based on primary sources and contains a review of the ideas of sovereignty elaborated by Giulio Pallavicino (1558-1635), Andrea Spinola (1562-1631) and Raffaele Della Torre (1579-1666), eminent Genoese thinkers. Is it possible to  hypothesise some convergences between Genoese republicanism and the idea of sovereignty elaborated by Paolo Sarpi? Is it possible to hypothesise that the political and literary issue revolving around Sarpi’s unfinished treatise Della potestà de’ prencipi (Potestà) intercepted some of these biographical and intellectual trajectories? The most interesting case is that of Della Torre and his Astrolabio di Stato, published in Genoa and Venice in 1647.