The aim of this thesis is to conduct an analysis of Peter Damian’s letters specifically grounded in the immediate social and political contexts within which the letters were produced. Whilst Damian (c. 1007 - 1072) is generally seen as an important figure in the history of the Church as a whole, he is rarely studied as an active member of his contemporary Italian society. This thesis will seek to relate the ecclesiastical to the social, and the clerical/monastic to the lay, and to integrate Damian’s approach to women and to gender into the broader picture of his activity in northern and central Italy. The thesis examines how Damian interacted with "the world" — what he saw as constituting the "saeculum", and how he set himself apart from it. As a hermit, prior, cardinal, papal legate and reformer, Damian straddled institutions, and came into contact with powerful lay people and ecclesiastics alike. What must be done is to build a context, through these interactions, for Damian’s rhetoric. There is a sizable corpus of material relating to Damian’s social contacts, comprising letters, charters and some narrative works. His role as prior of Fonte Avellana brought him into a series of complex relationships with religious institutions and laymen, yet it remains understudied. Through this material we can see how Damian’s positioning of himself as being ’otherworldly’ was in fact a key aspect of how he acted in the world.

After tracing the survival and manifestation of interest in the antiquities of Rome from the 5th to the 14th centuries, an attempt is made to show in what ways Petrarch is the precursor of the humanist antiquarians of the early Quattrocento. His writings on Rome, and those of his followers, cannot be isolated from the political realities of 'Babylonish Captivity' and Schism, which for so long frustrated any concerted attempts to rejuvenate Rome, or investigate its antiquities. But the return of Pope Martin V to his native city in September 1420 paved the way to its recovery, and inaugurated a decade of intensive exploration of its ancient remains, undertaken by the artists and humanists who came to Rome from Tuscany and Northern Italy to work for the Pope, or his Cardinals. This study, at the source of rinascita, was to decisively change the course of both Italian art and humanism. Intellectually pre-eminent among the humanists who entered the Curia under Martin V, Poggio Bracciolini, it is argued, was the effective founder in modern times of both field-archaeology and classical epigraphy: disciplines which give the description of Rome inserted into Book I of his De varietate Fortunae its distinctive and original tone. The rival claims made on behalf of either Cola di Rienzo or Nicolo Signorili as founders of epigraphy are shovm to be mistaken. The latter, in his own treatise on Rome, commissioned by the Pope, attempted unsuccessfully, it is suggested, to wed the Roman tradition of communal antiquarianism to the humanistic approach recently introduced into the Curia by Poggio. The death of Martin V in February 1431 precipitated renewed hostilities, which forced Eusenius IV, his successor, into exile, and interrupted the course of archaeology in Rome for over a decade. The Roma instaurata, the treatise composed by his secretary Flavio Biondo, coincides with the Pope's eventual return to the city in September 1443, and reflects his attempts to restore it; its commemoration of the Pope's instauratio accompanies its recovery of Roma antica. The first sustained attempt at a humanist topography of ancient Rorne, Biondo's work draws on a wealth of disparate, and in many cases newly discovered, source material. In its erudition, and in its restoration of what had come to be corrupt, it must rank, it is claimed, as a major contribution not only to Roman topography, but to the historiography of the Renaissance, and the European revival of learning.

L'évolution du débat européiste de la naissance du mouvement antifasciste Giustizia e Libertà (GL) en 1929 jusqu'à la dissolution du Partita d'Azione (PdA) en 1947 est le cœur de cette recherche. Le propos est sa contextualisation dans une dimension européenne. Si GL agit surtout en exil dans les années Trente, le PdA, né en 1942, est l'un des protagonistes de la Résistance armée italienne. Leur révolution démocratique aspire à souder les valeurs de la liberté politique et de la justice sociale. Ils souhaitent la constitution d'une Italie républicaine dans le cadre d'une Europe politiquement unifiée et démocratique. Cette thèse met en exergue les idées d'unité européenne élaborées dans ce milieu antifasciste pluriel. Dans une période de crise du processus de la construction européenne, l'exploration de cette filiation politico-intellectuelle ambitionne de contribuer à la connaissance des courants européistes et des réflexions diverses autour de l'unité de l'Europe. / The evolution of the Europeanist debate from the birth of the anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà (GL) in 1929 until the dissolution of the Partita d'Azione (PD) in 1947 is the heart of this research. The purpose is its contextualization within a European dimension. If GL acts mainly in exile in the Thirties, the PdA, born in 1942, is one of the protagonists of the ltalian Armed Resistance. Their democratie revolution aspires to weld the values of political freedom and social justice. They want the constitution of a republican ltaly within the framework of a politically unified and democratie Europe. This thesis highlights the ideas of European unity developed in this plural anti-fascist milieu. ln a period of crisis in the process of European construction, the exploration of this political and intellectual filiation aims to contribute to the knowledge of Europeanist currents and the various thoughts regarding the unity of Europe.