The School at Court and the School of the Court: The Education of the Elite in the Italian Renaissance as a way to Literacy and Distinction (Historiographical Aspects)

On the impulse of the pioneering studies of the 1990s, in the last 20 years in Italy there has been a revival of the studies on the education of the Italian elites, both in a princely and republican environment, in the period between the late 14th century and the first half of the 16th. In this sector, the historiography of school and education has been able to treasure the suggestions coming from many other historiographical streams and methodological proposals. These have led to a revision of the classical approach and of its philological and philosophical imprint on behalf of a more document-based his- torical research. The epistolographic studies, both qualitative and quantitative, the insti- tutional-historical literature on the Renaissance courts and republican elites of the 1990s to the more recent ones that focus on the broader concept of distinction (which can also be applied to non-princely context) and social mobility in the last centuries of the Mid- dle Ages have strongly influenced the rereading of the pedagogical treatises of the Renaissance and the approach to the study of the various schools and masters, as well as the approaches and educational practices that characterize the various Italian realities.