Project at HIAS

The Conquest of the Aztec Empire in Peter Martyr’s De Orbe Novo Decades. Classical Tradition and Christian Providentialism

At HIAS, Nicoletta Bruno will work on a book examining the Fourth and Fifth Decade of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera’s De Orbe Novo Decades (1530), the earliest Latin narrative of the discovery of the New World and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. She will explore how Martyr integrates classical references and Christian Providential thought to shape his account, offering a critical re-evaluation of early colonial historiography. By placing his narrative in dialogue with contemporary indigenous sources, her research aims to uncover alternative perspectives and challenge Eurocentric interpretations, reaffirming Martyr’s pivotal role in shaping early modern views of the Americas.

Her Tandem Partner is Claudia Schindler, professor of classics (Latin philology) at the University of Hamburg.

Biography

Nicoletta Bruno is currently a Research Associate at the Department of Ancient Civilizations at the University of Basel and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. She earned her PhD in Classics from the University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro’, conducting research also at the Universities of Oxford and Freiburg im Breisgau. She has received numerous prestigious fellowships and research grants, including the Fritz Thyssen Postdoctoral Fellowship (held at LMU Munich), the Basel Fellowship in Latin Literature, and a Research Grant from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. She has also conducted research at leading institutions such as the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (BAdW), the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald, and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies at the University of Innsbruck.

Her main research interests include Latin epic poetry (Lucretius and Vergil), ancient historiography (Tacitus), Latin lexicography, the Classical Tradition, and Renaissance Humanism, with a particular focus on the work of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera. She has published numerous articles and books, including a commentary on Lucretius’ De rerum natura (5, 1110–1349) (Bautz, Nordhausen, 2020), and an edited volume, Archaeologies, Origins, Antiquities: Narrating Early Cultural History in Ancient Greece and Rome (De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2025).

Bruno’s HIAS Fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.