PARADOXICAL VIRTUES: INTELLECTUALS BETWEEN THE COURT AND THE ACADEMY IN AGOSTINO MASCARDI’S CHE LA CORTE È VERA SCUOLA NON SOLAMENTE DELLA PRUDENZA, MA DELLE VIRTÙ MORALI (1624)

Abstract

This article analyses the oration Che la Corte è vera scuola non solamente della prudenza, ma delle virtù morali (1624), delivered at the Accademia degli Umoristi by Agostino Mascardi, a courtier, professor of rhetoric, and renowned member of academies. Mascardi’s oration has traditionally been read as a commendation of the court, and as proof of intellectuals’ willing submission to political powers in the seventeenth century. This article aims to challenge such a reading by proposing a reinterpretation of the text that suggests the oration is, in fact, paradoxical. This article also considers Che la Corte è vera scuola in relation to Mascardi’s other writings on courts, and investigates them in the larger context of the accademie of early seventeenth-century Rome in an attempt to shed light on the role that academies played for early modern Italian intellectuals in trying to define their relationship to political power.