«Martiri della verità» e modelli di umanità. Sulle fonti italiane di Herder

This contribution is about Herder’s selection and use of Italian literary, philosophical and scientific sources. His later writings (especially the Briefe, and the journal «Adrastea») contain a huge repertory of Italian sources and confirm Herder’s purpose to present authors of the past as ‘models’ for developing a new kind of humanity and to offer, by means of an historical recognition, an instrument to face the future.