Narrazione e percezione dell’impero nella cronachistica

Abstract This essay investigates the narration of the late medieval empire in chronicles from areas south of the Alps. The performativity, narration and self-representation of the individuals heading governmental and administrative political institutions such as the Empire and their officials played a key role, making deliberate use of discourses, symbols and communicative processes. The study is also accompanied by an examination of the reception, perception and narration of political power by individual authors and in different local contexts. The analysis aims to understand both the image of power transmitted to contemporaries, and the actors and mechanisms that underpinned its manifestation, as well as the individuals in whom decision-making power resided and the cultures and values from which an idea of power developed and found meaning within a political regime. The survey deals specifically with the reception of the imperial ideal in the chronicles of Matteo Villani and Donato di Neri and in the „Liber de coronatione Caroli IV“. Specifically, it focuses on the claims and actions of government in areas south of the Alps, demonstrating the persisting vitality of the fourteenth-century Empire in the territories of Reichsitalien.