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The article deals with two books that, nonetheless their different objects and approaches, share the evergreen issue of rebellions and rebels. The first part (“Historiographical analysis and questions to the present time”) presents the last book dedicated by Aurelio Musi (2019) to the Neapolitan famous rebel Masaniello. The starting point for the second part (“History’s lessons and policy’s theatres”) is a groundless cliché on Masaniello which can lead to a theatrical representation of Masaniello in 1649 England. The third part (“An unknown source for Shakespeare”) presents a book published in February 2018 by the computer’s expert Dennis McCarthy together with the Shakespearean scholar June Schlueter that shows an until now unnknown source for Shakespeare’s historical dramas like Coriolanus, Henry V, 2 Henry VI , and offers both the transcript and a digitalized reproduction of the source. Some among the several issues raised by that source, George North’s A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and rebels (1576), are discussed in the fourth and last part of the article (“Sources for the Shakespeare’s unknown source”).

Among the multitude of Luther studies, the review takes into account two books: the biography written by Heinz Schilling (Der Reformator Martin Luther 2017. Eine wissenschaftliche und ge­denkpolitische Bestandsaufnahme, Berlin-München: De Gruyter-Oldenbourg, 20142), lately translated in Italian (Martin Lutero. Ribelle in un’epoca di cambiamenti radicali, edizione italiana a cura di Roberto Tresoldi, Torino: Claudiana, 2016) and the Robert von Friedeburg’s recent book Luther’s Legacy. The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of ‘State’ in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. The main issue raised by both books concerns the “evergreen” political theme of Luther’s and Lutheranism’s contribution to the formation of the “modern State” in a comparative perspective between German and Italian late-medieval and early-modern historiography.

The first section of the introduction begins by providing a presentation of the nature and objectives of the workshop which took place from October 2-3 and concludes with a synthesis of the contributions of John Donoghue, Raffaele Laudani, Matteo Battistini and Paola Rudan.The second section discusses on some of the questions addressed during the introduction to the workshop that took place on October 2 (Neither disobedient nor rebels: arguments from the laws between the Old and the New World), through a reading of some English and French sources from the ends of the 17th and 18th centuries: the anonymous History of Self Defence, in requittal to the history of passive obedience (1689); Algernon Sidney, Discourses concerning Government (1698); James Murray, Fast Sermons (1781); Théophile Mandar, Des insurrections. Ouvrage philosophique et politique, sur le rapport des insurrections avec la liberté et la prospérité des empires (1793).

Is it possible to be a free citizen and the subject of a sovereign contemporaneously? In 1589, Camillo Paleotti, a Bolognese senator and the city's ambassador to Rome, sought to explain how in a treatise directed to Pope Sixtus V. Until his election, the pope had implemented a policy seeking to nullify Bolognàs libertas and the liberties exercised by its citizens in the governance of the res publica. Paleotti composed a brief manuscript treatise, De Repubblica, that is divided into two parts. The first treats the definition of the term res publica, the models of the ancient republics, and the problem of the best regime. The second considers Bolognàs status within the Papal State, as well as traditional Bolognese customs. My paper centers on the distinction between false and true libertas made by Paleotti in addressing the question of whether Bolognese libertas is compatible with subjection to the pope.