Albertino Mussato, Cicerone e la congiura di Niccolò da Lozzo (lettura di “De gestis Henrici VII Cesaris” X rubb. 2-3)

This essay discusses the second rubric in Book x of Albertino Mussato's De gestis Henrici vii Cesaris, reporting the conspiracy that the Paduan nobleman Niccolo da Lozzo plotted against the communal government of his own city in December 1312. In particular, this study intends to show how Mussato's text tries to present the author himself as a new Cicero during his consulship at the time of Catiline, that is, the Roman revolutionary's main opponent. The account of this event in Mussato's De gestis is also tied to Lozzo's portrait in the De generatione aliquorum civium urbis Padue tam nobilium quam ignobilium by Giovanni da Nono, another Paduan historian and a contemporary of Mussato.