• RHETRUST
  
• About the Project
  
• Research and Funding
  
• Main Outcomes

About the Project

Main Goals and Theoretical Background

The 16th century was a period of instability in European history, marked by a proliferation of struggles over politics and religion.

In such a divided context, both public and private forms of communication became crucial for finding ways to resolve ongoing conflicts.

Learning, teaching, and practicing rhetoric—often through the recovery and reinterpretation of ancient sources—took on an indirect political and civic significance. It meant acquiring or providing the skills to intervene in crises and transform disruptive social dynamics into productive ones.

The RheTrust project examines treatises and commentaries on classical rhetoric, considering them as works of social education that convey behavioral precepts.

The main research hypothesis of the project is that, by exploring references to trust and belief, it is possible to uncover overlooked options for social inclusion and conflict management.

Special attention is given to the connection between the dynamics of consent (how and when it is granted, and how it is earned from others), the construction of educated beliefs, and the potential for building bonds of trust.

Fides is analyzed as a key concept used by Renaissance authors to explain—and potentially remedy—various types of conflicts among individuals or social groups.

Key Questions

Through an interdisciplinary methodology—combining the history of moral and political concepts, the study of manuscripts and early prints, as well as elements of moral and political philosophy, philosophy of law, and social psychology—the RheTrust project explores questions such as:

What strategies for conflict management and social inclusion can be found in early modern works on rhetoric?

How did early modern authors connect rhetorical precepts to contemporary social and political issues?

What role did they attribute to beliefs and trust in either de-escalating or exacerbating social conflicts?

Primary Sources

Within this framework, the project will initially focus on texts written in the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth century, all of which bear traces of an engagement with an extremely fragmented and constantly changing political context. 

These include: 

Latin texts on rhetoric that circulated 

in universities and resulted from official teaching, such as treatises and commentaries

Works on rhetoric or oratory texts written in the Italian vernacular and intended for wider  circulation outside universities

In order to fully integrate the texts on rhetoric into the political discourse of the time, some consistencies or differences with contemporaneous texts addressing political and social behavior are emphasized.

To address some aspects of the European reception of the selected Italian sources and cultures of trust, the project addresses their influence on some texts about rhetoric and collections of political maxims published in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the 17th century.

The choice to connect Italian and Polish-Lithuanian documents allows, on the one hand, for tracing the revival of reflections on trust and belief, as well as the sharing of strategies for interpreting ancient sources in this context. On the other hand, it provides insight into how these concepts were adapted in very different social and political settings. While sixteenth-century Italy was divided into many conflicting states, Poland-Lithuania was perhaps the largest political entity in Europe. The Italian Peninsula featured a variety of political forms, while Poland-Lithuania was an elective monarchy based on a parliamentary system. Religious norms also differed significantly: in Italy, the power and influence of the Inquisition were strong, while Poland-Lithuania had laws granting some forms of religious tolerance. The project thus focuses on how strategies for conflict management were employed in these distinct contexts.