Abstract

[Exemplary and instructive stories in Leon Battista Alberti’s Intercenals, between literature and law] Leon Battista Alberti in the Intercenales makes original and creative use of the Aesopic model and proposes, between the serious and the facetious, stories that contain a political moral and offer the reader some reflections on the rules for running the state. The narration of the vicissitudes of a variegated bestiary, anthropomorphic in its passions and weaknesses, offers us a penetrating glimpse into the internal dynamics of the civitas, the use of power and the mechanisms that determine the succession of political regimes. In this context, laws must remain unchanged, to ensure the preservation of tradition against the temptation to innovate without criteria and with often disastrous results. Thus, some principles of a philosophical matrix emerge from Alberti’s histories, ready to be translated into positive laws, in the conviction that law can give order and stability to the restless and conflicting becoming of social relations, with a view to achieving the common good of the res publica.