Opinion, Opinion in public, Public Opinion

The transformations of the European media system between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries prompted more or less conscious reflections on the relations between the formation of individual opinions and their impact in public contexts. The paper considers the notion of "opinion" that emerges in some of these reflections and its evolution, relating it to the actual instruments and practices that nourished opinions. In the concluding part, based on a Dialogo (1666) by Gregorio Leti, the focus turns to the effects of the spread of periodical political sheets in the Italian Spanish dominions.