Influenze averroistiche nell’azione politica di Federico II

Moving from a symbolic-political hermeneutics of the frescoes of the Cappellone degli Spagnoli in the Florentine convent of Santa Maria Novella, the essay aims to highlight the probable influence of Averroes’ thought on Frederick II’s mental posture and governing strategy. The Magna Curia, in fact, as pointed out by Ernest Renan (albeit with some “abuse of conjecture”), was an attractive pole of multifarious cultural traditions, turning out to be the center of irradiation of Arab peripatetic thought (especially through the magisterium of Michael Scotus) and the auroral moment of the so-called “political Averroism”.