Dr M.F. Iovine (Fiammetta)

I have obtained a Rubicon Grant (2023-2025) by the NWO (the Dutch Research Council) with the project “When Rome Lost the Golden Age. Academic Cultures at the Dawn of Enlightenment”, which is being currently conducted at Roma Tre University (Rome) under the supervision of Prof. Antonio Clericuzio.
Despite the pressure of the Catholic hierarchies and the addresses of Counter-reformation, the Roman Academic milieu has been incredibly lively in the seventeenth-century. While engaging mostly in literary exercises, Roman academies also dealt with mechanical philosophy, atomism, and alchemy, with the purpose of attaining a synthesis with Christian religion. How this program turned into the ‘failed Enlightenment’ of Rome, richer in sources, and yet utopian and anachronistic, is at the core of my research.
Roman academies, such as the Umoristi, the Lincei, the Accademia Reale of Christina of Sweden, the Accademia Fisico-matematica, the Congresso medico romano, the Arcadia – and their connections with the Royal Society, the Imperial Leopoldine Academy in Germany, the French Academy of Sciences – are then key to investigate the intellectual agenda of the time. As self-contained and rather elitist arenas, often enjoying the patronage of illustrious Churchmen, Academies provided in fact a space for free thinking and knowledge transfer.

• Seventeenth-century Italian Academies

• Center for the History of Philosophy and Science