Il Woldomiro di Paolo Emilio Campi. Caterina II e l'eredità di Vladimir I

The essay reconstructs the genesis and encomiastic-diplomatic function of Paolo Emilio Campi’s «Woldomiro o sia la conversione della Russia» (1783), read as a component of a “diplomacy of letters” that, between Italy and Russia, deploys theatre to engage the political imagination of Catherine II. Starting from the institution of the Order of St Vladimir (1782) and Catherine’s “Greek Project,” Campi develops a parallel between Vladimir I and the empress, flattening the ruler’s historical ambiguities — above all his responsibility for the elimination of his brother — in order to avoid awkward analogies with the coup d’état of 1762. What emerges is a representation of religion as an instrumentum regni and a tragedy aimed more at spectacle and propaganda than at the coherence of its plot.