Dante’s political treatise Monarchia has long been read as a bold and controversial statement of political thought with its groundbreaking theorization of separation between church and state. But how did medieval and Renaissance readers actually understand the text—as philosophy, theology, or political theory? And how did those interpretations change over time? These questions sit at the heart of the postdoctoral research carried out by Francesco Feriozzi at the University of Notre Dame (2023–2025), where he examined the afterlife of Dante’s Latin writings through their manuscript transmission and reception.
Building on earlier interests in manuscript circulation and literary reception, Francesco focused in particular on Dante’s Monarchia, examining its manuscript transmission, paratexts, marginalia, and changing political and philosophical interpretations from the fourteenth through the sixteenth century. Thanks to research funding provided by Notre Dame, Francesco was able to travel to multiple libraries worldwide, where he conducted firsthand study of manuscript copies of the Monarchia and its Tuscan translations. A distinctive feature of his research during the fellowship was its attention to the manuscripts’ materiality and the historical contexts of the manuscripts’ production and fruition. By studying how the Monarchia circulated alongside other texts and how it was annotated, translated, and excerpted, Francesco showed how Dante’s authority as a political thinker, philosopher, or theologian was continually redefined in response to new intellectual and political contexts. This work resulted in a major article on Trecento readers of the Monarchia, featured in the latest issue of Le tre corone. The article is included in the thematic section of the volume Poetry, Politics, and Philology: Reading Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Across the Centuries, co-edited with Laura Banella. Francesco’s contribution, together with the other essays in the thematic section, is freely available online through the support of a generous grant from Notre Dame’s Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good.
Alongside his individual research, Francesco played an active role in shaping collaborative scholarly initiatives. The thematic section of Le tre corone grew out of a series of international conference panels on Dante’s reception that Francesco organized or co-organized, including sessions at the Renaissance Society of America and the Society for Italian Studies, as well as a recurring major workshop at Notre Dame Rome. These activities not only disseminated his own work but also helped build an international network of scholars working on Dante, manuscript studies, and premodern literary circulation.
Francesco’s postdoctoral years were also marked by sustained engagement with teaching and graduate education. He taught the undergraduate Italian-language survey course in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture; led multiple graduate seminars and delivered guest lectures on manuscripts, Dante’s Monarchia, troubadour poetry, and the history of vernacular authority; mentored doctoral students; and served as a discussant in research presentations at Notre Dame Rome. Throughout his teaching and service, he consistently brought students into direct engagement with primary materials and with the methodological questions central to premodern literary studies. In addition, he co-taught Notre Dame Rome’s flagship course, All Roads Lead to Rome, with Prof. Chiara Sbordoni for one semester.
Taken together, Francesco’s postdoctoral work at Notre Dame reflects a scholar who combines academic rigor with conceptual ambition, and individual research excellence with a strong sense of institutional and collaborative engagement. In parallel with this new line of research on the Monarchia, the postdoctoral fellowship allowed Francesco to develop his doctoral dissertation into a monograph on the reception of troubadour poetry in Italy, now under revision for publication by Oxford University Press. Throughout both research strands, he consistently relied on the advice and supervision of Prof. Theodore Cachey and Prof. Laura Banella.
This body of work now continues in Francesco’s new role as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts at the University of Hamburg. In this position, he will further his research on the reception of the Monarchia within a strongly interdisciplinary environment, building on the research and skills developed at Notre Dame while also engaging with the Cluster’s interdisciplinary methods, which bring together scholars from the humanities alongside computer scientists and natural scientists in the study of manuscripts.
Despite his move to the University of Hamburg, Francesco’s ties with Notre Dame remain strong. In March, he will return as a presenter in the OVI-Notre Dame seminar series, where his talk will focus on the reception of Dante’s Monarchia, continuing lines of inquiry developed during his postdoctoral fellowship. The seminar offers an opportunity to engage with his ongoing research while also underscoring the enduring scholarly connections between his current work and the projects and conversations fostered during his time at Notre Dame. Francesco also remains an active member of the committee for Notre Dame’s hybrid Tre corone book presentation series and is organizing a Dante Canon panel for the upcoming Notre Dame–Yale Conference at Notre Dame Rome (May 2026).
The Notre Dame fellowship proved to be a pivotal step in Francesco’s career, supporting his transition from doctoral student to independent researcher and enabling him to expand his scholarly network. We wish Francesco all the best as he continues his scholarly research and academic career and we very much look forward to continued collaboration and future joint projects.
Originally published by at italianstudies.nd.edu on February 01, 2026.