An archaeological reversal : the invention of Cola di Rienzo

Abstract

For Brunelleschi, as for Le Pogge in the ^15th century, invention in the ruins of the past was first and foremost an urban experience. But a century earlier, Cola di Rienzo was already a pedestrian in theUrbs fracta, faced with the social violence of the barones urbis. Drawing in particular on the testimony of theAnonimo romano, the lecture explores the historical experience of the Roman notary in its political (how to " organize the people " ?), urban (how to decipher the reproaches levelled at us by the ruins of greatness ?) and ideological (what mirror of Rome can the tribune hold up to his fellow-citizens ?) Cola's disarming word turns into a tyrannical harangue - " then the tribune began to make himself hated ", we read in the Cronica of the anonymous Roman. By attempting to tie together the notions of reversal, profanation and legibility, the analysis addresses the question of anachronism and reenactment : can history be replayed ? This is the question posed tragically by Cola di Rienzo's political adventure.

Contents

• When Vasari saw Brunelleschi as more of a seer than a visionary
• Architecture is a cosa mentale : behind the ruins, invisible cities and potential lives
• Constructive optimism and " destructiveness " (Walter Benjamin, 1931) : " if he puts everything that exists in ruins, it is not for the love of ruins, but for the path that emerges between them "
• Freud, the city and the accumulation of possibilities(Malaise in civilization, 1929) : " if we want to translate historical succession into space, we can only do so by placing things spatially side by side; the same unity of place does not tolerate two different contents "
• The test of modernity : Fontenelle's Dialogues des morts (1683)
• Building says one, destroying says the other : saturated memory and wilful oblivion
• " Pompeii is falling into ruins only now, since it has been exhumed " (Freud, " The Rat Man ")
• Cola di Rienzo, overwhelmed pedestrian in the ruins of Rome, confronted with the social violence of the barones urbis
• Did he pass " like a meteor ? " (Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Cola di Rienzo, Rome, Salerno, 2002)
• L'Anonimo romano : the chronicle of a political experience(Chronicle. Rome, time, the world and the revolt of Cola di Rienzo, ed. and trans. Jacqueline Malherbe-Galy and Jean-Luc Nardone, Toulouse, 2015)
• Dunqua, da quale novitate comenzaraio ? News and novelty : when history begins, it has already begun
• Rome, 1325, from the perspective of a frightened child
• " Organizing the people " : the paradox of the pars populi (Igor Mineo)
• " I stand aside " : writing history so as not to perceive " the war and the torments spreading throughout the country "
• Redressing the chronology : Cola di Rienzo's political experience in the context of the Regimi di Popolo (Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, L'autre Rome. Une histoire des Romains à l'époque communale (^XIIe-XIVe siècle), Paris, 2010)
• Senza paura : munitiones, urbanistic openness and medieval institutions of appeasement
• Le dictator et le langage d'apparat de l'ars dictaminis (Benoit Grévin, Rhétorique du pouvoir médiéval. Les Lettres de Pierre de la Vigne et la formation du langage politique européen (^XIIIe-XVe siècle), Rome, École française de Rome, 2008)
• " The beautiful style of Cola's language " : an emotional shock
• The disarming word : politics begins when the killing stops (Jean-Claude Milner, Pour une politique des êtres parlants. Court traité politique 2, Lagrasse, 2011)
• " He dressed like a real Asian tyrant. Already he was showing that he wanted to rule by force as a tyrant " : the habit, the monk and the signature
• " Then the tribune began to make himself hated " : circulation of affects and bodily retention
• Rome, " its food and its paralysis " (Jacques Le Goff) : what mirror of Rome was Cola di Rienzo holding up to his fellow citizens ?
• Knowing how to decipher the reproaches made to us by the ruins of greatness
• Reversal, profanation, legibility : the Lex de imperio Vespasiani
• Anna Tsing's ruins again, where " can [capture] the scent of latent commons and that elusive aroma of autumn "
• The ruins of Michel Butor : " Dear friends, I summon you from the depths of the Middle Ages "
• Ruins for the future, so as not to install the Apocalypse permanently
• " Soon, we would pass the streets yellowed by the so-called urban lighting, and join our favorite neighborhoods, that is, of shipwreck " (Antoine Volodine, Des anges mineurs, Paris, 1999)
• Robin Collingwood's Constructive Reenactment (Alain de Libera, L'Archéologie philosophique, Paris, 2016)
• History provides us with a wealth of statements in the form of solutions, but to which questions ?
• Anachronism, feint and agency : re-enacting history (Rémy Besson, " Le reenactment en question : entretien avec Anne Bénichou ", www.entre-temps.net)