Della scienza chiamata cavalleresca libri tre

Avec le marquis Scipione Maffei (1675-1755) et sa Scienza chiamata cavalleresca publiée pour la première fois en 1710, la vertu d’un gentilhomme ne dépendait plus de son lignage et des traditions mais seulement de ses compétences professionnelles. Maffei y fait l'éloge du peuple romain, peuple juste et civil. Il dénonce l'héritage du Moyen Âge, issu des invasions barbares, qui a abouti à une fausse conception de l'honneur nobiliaire. Il s'attaque aussi aux préjugés, combat la croyance à la magie, défend l'art du théâtre et le prêt à intérêt.

“The first major critical examiner of the scienza cavalleresca was Scipione Maffei (1675–1755). Maffei was a prolific scholar and antiquarian, a vocation he pursued after military service in his youth. In 1710, a few years after his service in the Spanish War of Succession, he published his excoriating criticism On the So-Called Knightly Science (Della scienza chiamata cavalleresca). One main aspect of Maffei’s argument was that resentment, contrary to what the scienza held, was a product of interior passion not a tool that contained or revealed truth. Resentment did not have the quality of law or virtue, rather it “emerges nowhere but from our passion, and it has nothing to do with the truth of past events” (Maffei). Maffei argued that the entire system of the scienza cavalleresca made grave errors in attributing to the worst aspects of human nature (being resentful, easily offended, and vicious) the glories of the best. In the eyes of Maffei, it was a category error to have hitched probative qualities to emotion.” (S. T. Cummins)