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The Palgrave Macmillan History ofInternational· Thought Series seeks to publish the best work in this growing and increasingly important field ofacademicinquiry. Its scholarly monographs cover three ·types·ofwork: (0 exploration ofthe intellectual impact of individual thinkers, from key disciplinary figures to neglected ones; (ii)examination of the origin, evolution, and contemporary relevance of.specific schools or traditions of international thought; and (iii). analysis of the evolution of particular ideas and concepts in the field. Both classical (pre 1919) and modern (post 1919) thought are covered.' Its books are written to be accessible to audiences in International Relations, International History, PollticalTheory, and Sociology. Series Editor: Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Politlcal Science Advisory Board: Jack Donnelly, University ofDenver Fred Halliday, London School of Economics and Political Science David Long, Carleton University H'ideml Suganami, University of Keele Also in the Series: Internationalism and Nationalism in European Political Thought by Carsten Holbraad The International Theory ofLeonard Woolf: A St1>tdy in Twentieth-Century Idealism by Peter Wilson Tocqueuille, Lieber, and Bagehot: Liberalism Confronts the World by David Clinton Harold Laski: Problems ofDemocracy, the Sovereign State, and International Society by Peter Lamb . The War Over Perpetual Peace: An Exploration into the History ofa Foundationai International Relations Text by Eric S. Easley Liberal Internationalism and the Decline ofthe State: The Thought of Richard Cobden, David Mitrany, arid Kenicbi Ohmae by Per Harnrnarlund
From Hierarchy to Anarchy Territory and Politics before
Westphalia Jeremy.Larkins
Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations: From Anarchy to Cosmopolis by Robert Jackson The Hidden History ofRealism: A Genealogy ofPower Politics by Sean Molloy Hugo Grotius inInternational Thought by Renee Jeffery The International Thought ofMartin Wight by Ian Hall Honor in Foreign Polity: A History and Discussion by Michael Donelan Realist Strategies ofRepublican Peace: Niebuhr, Morgen·thau,and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent by Vibeke Schou.Tjalve From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and Politics before .Westphalia by Jeremy Larkins
palgrave
macmillan
Contents
List ofIllustrations
ix
Acknowledgments
xi
1
Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia, and International Relations
1
International Relations, Political Theory; and the Territorial State
17
3
Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History
35
4
Hierarchy, Order, and Space in the Medieval World
53
5
Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse
73
6
The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy
101
7
Machiavelli, Territoriality, and La Stato
123
8
Picturing Renaissance. Territoriality
145
9
The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society
169
Conclusion: Territoriality, the Renaissance, and International. Relations
195
2
10
Notes
201
Bibliography
245
Index
263
III ustrations
5.1
5.2
8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
The Skrzicziek Miniature, in Gratian of Bologna, Decretum: Distinctionesv, Pars 1, c.1140. Archives of the Prague Castle; Prague, Czech Republic. © Archives of the Prague Castle. The Emperor in Majesty,c. 975 (vellum) by German school (tenth century). Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/The Bridgeman Art Library. German. Out of copyright. View of an Ideal City, 1490-1500 (oil on panel) by Italian School (fifteenth century). © Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. Portraits of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-82) and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415-92). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian, Out of copyright. The Triumphs of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422"-82) and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415"-92). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright. Arrival of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, greeted by his father Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga III (reigned 1444-78) and his brothers, from the Camera degli Sposi or Camera Picta, 1465~74 (fresco) by Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506). Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
75
86
151
156
157
161
x
8.5
8.6
9.1
9.2
•
IIIustrations Map of the world, based on descriptions and coordinates given in "Geographia," by Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus ofAlexandria) (c.90--168 AD), published in Ulrn, Germany, 1486 (color engraving) by German.School (fifteenth century). British Library, London, UKI© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library.· German. Out of copyright. Carta della Catena, 1490 (Detail) by Italian School (fifteenth century). Museo de Firenze Corn'era, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright. Columbus at Hispaniola, from "The Narrative and Critical History of America," edited by Justin Winsor, London, 1886 (engraving) by Bry, Theodore de (1528-98) (after). Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. Flemish. Out of copyright. Credit: Copy of Monumenta Cartographia, 1502 (color litho) by © Royal Geographical Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Acknowledgments 164
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T
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191
h is book has taken far too long to reach completion and in the process I have incurred a considerable number of debts. Some of the . ideas presented here first saw the light of day during my graduate studies at the London School of Economics. During the enjoyable years I spent at the LSE many people contributed to my intellectual journey. My greatest debt is to my teacher and supervisor Mr. Michael Banks who encouraged my forays into pastures new while reigning in some of my wilder impulses. Several other members of the department of International Relations at the LSE also offered valuable. support and encouragement. In particular I would like to mention Chris Coker, Mark Hoffman, Justin Rosenberg, and Hayo Krombach. My examiners David Campbell and Chris Brown provided many insightful comments and criticisms that have been incorporated into the present work. The.graduate community at the LSEin the mid-1990s was remarkable in many ways and Molly Cochrane, Joal de Almeida, Eddie Keene, Bernice Lee, Mairi Johnson, Bice Maiguashca, and Agostinho Zacarias were sources of inspiration and friendship. In recent years colleagues in several institutions have made me feel welcome. Despite our differences oyer the nature of research methods, Yossi Mekelberg at Regents' College has been instrumental in my return to teaching. I also appreciate the warmth shown to me by the members of Department of Politics at Goldsmiths, in particular from Jasna Dragovic-Soso, Richard Greyson, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Gonzo Pozzo, and Sanjay Seth. My future research ambitions have in no small way been inspired by the department's intellectual ethos. Within the broader International Relations community, Mats Berdal, Stephen Chan, James Der Derian, Mervyn Frost, Nick Renegger, Hidemi Suganami, and Rob Walker have all contributed in various ways to the project. I would also like to thank the members of the Warburg Institute of the University of London for allowing me to use their wonderful library.
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Acknowledgments
At Palgrave Macmillan several people have played important roles in nurturing this project. I am particularly indebted to Peter Wilson the editor of the "History of International Thought Series" for expressing an interest in my work and encouraging me to submit a manuscript for consideration. This series is an important outlet for those of us who think that the history of ideas matters. Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Toby Wahl, and Asa Johnson have all provided a publishing novice with invaluable support. and advice. I would also like to thank Victoria Hogarth at Bridgeman Art Library and Marek Suchy ar the Archives of the Prague Castle for their help with obtaining the images. The external reviewer's comments were extremely insightful and I am very grateful for their close reading of my manuscript. I have incorporated many of the reviewer's valuable suggestions and believe that the final text is considerably improved as a result. Finally many thanks to Philip Davis for his diligent work compiling the index and reading the proofs. Emotional and psychological support· on what has sometimes been a difficult journey has come from many people. Professor Valerie Cowie provided not only valuable professional assistance but also hours of stimulating conversation. I am grateful for the, often bemused, understanding and patience shown by Zoe Rahman and Zaklina Manevska-Hamilton..One could not wish for better friends than Spyros Economides and Katerina Dalacoura who have picked up the pieces on more than one occasion. My parents Fay and Gordon, my sister and brother, Frances and Matthew, and their families, have all been sources of kindnesses beyond the call of family duty. I have dedicated this book to Dominique Jacquin-Berdal. Dominique's tragic death in early 2006 not only robbed the International Relations community in Britain of one of its brightest prospects and Africa of one of its most passionate advocates but also many of us of a dear friend. Dominique was an unfailing source ofwisdom, generosity, and kindness and I consider myself blessed to have been able to count her among my dearest friends.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia, and International Relations
International Relations and the Territorial State The sine qua non of modern International Relations theory has been the idea of an international system comprised of independent political communities or states. Since this representation of the international system has no place for an overarching Leviathan or hegemon it is generally assumed that the relations between states are structured by anarchy. International theorists, perhaps mindful of Kenneth Waltz's caution against reductionist explanations of international processes and outcomes, have tended to leave the task of theorizing the state to political theorists.' Nevertheless, even those theories of International Relations that explicitly eschew the business of state theory implicitly endorse certain assumptions about the nature and character of the states that make up the international system. Mainstream theories of international relations have been particularly well served by Max Weber's famous account of the state as a human community that "claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given rerritory,"? Violence, legitimacy, and territory define the Weherian state. In International Relations the themes of violence and legitimacy have been subject to much debate and discussion. Most attention has focused on the idea of legal domination, which for Weber distinguished modern from traditional or charismatic forms of state domination. Legal domination in .inrernational political theory is rewritten as the principle of sovereignty, which, it is claimed, is the constitutive principle of the Westphalian international system. However, the territorial aspect of the state, the fact of the state's physical presence in space-s--which for Weber, writing in a culture dominated by geopolitics, seemed
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From Hierarchy to Anarchy
self-evident-has. not received equivalent critical consideration in International Relations. Indeed, it would be fair to say that, for most international political thought the claim that the state has a territory or is in some sense territorial has assumed the status of a common-sensical, self-evident truth. All states, regardless of historical and geographical variables, are assumed to. have some physical extension in space, to occupy an identifiable place on the surface of the earth, to have borders that clearly distinguish inside from outside and self from others. As Stephen Krasner writes (( [tjhe assertion of final authority within a given territory is the core element in any definition of sovereignty," the only alternatives being "either a world in which there are no clear boundaries or a world in which there is no final authority within a given territory."3 This final authority is not just derived from the internal monopoly of violence but also comes from the constitutive principle of the state system "that political life must be territorially organized with one final authority within a given rerritory/" Following Kant I identify this essentialist .account of the relationship between the state and territory as the "territorial a priori." In Kant's Newtonian framework space and time were universal a 'priori conditions for knowledge. However, the intellectual revolution associated with the early twentieth century sciences of relativity forced a. paradigm shift in understandings of space and time and showed that the Newtonian-Kantiancategorieswere not universal but particular, the products of historically specific knowledge. This book will make a similar claim with respect· to the territorial a priori. of International Relations. It will suggest that the idea of the territorial state is neither universal nor immutable but contingent and historical. It is a modern cultural representation, a discursive construct, with a complex history whose origins lie in the Renaissance transformation of man's understanding of his being-in-space. Contemporary Neorealists are unlikely to be unduly disturbed by the assertion that the territorial state has a history. After all they deny that differences in the nature of the units that. make up any international system have any causal impact on the dynamics ofwar and the balance ofpower. However, their Classical Realists predecessors, whose Realism was more imbued with history and political theory, recognised that the modern state's territoriality was a fundamental factor in the emergence of the modern international system. Hans Morgenthau stated clearly that an international system composed ofsovereign territorial states only emerged in the period after the end of the Thirty Years War. Sovereignty or supreme power over a particular territory became the determinant political fact of early modern Europe only once it reflected the new social reality derived from the double victory of the territorial princes: externally over the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, and internally over local barons. For Morgenthau the legal doctrine of territorial sovereignty formulated by the jurists and lawyers of
Introduction
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3
the later sixteenth century was a response to the emergence of the "new phenomenon of the territorial state. It referred in legal terms to the elemental political fact ofthat age-----the appearance of a centralized power that exercised its lawmaking and law-enforcing authority within a certain territory."?
The Westphalia Narrative Morgenthau's claim that the sovereign territorial state emerged out of the turmoil of the religious wars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is one account of the Westphalia 'myth', according to which the agreements reached at the Congresses of Munster (1644~48) and Osnabriick (1645-48) and subsequently ratified by the Treaties of Westphalia (1648) gave birth to the modern states-system. According to this narrative ever since Westphalia the international system has been a territorial order whose actors, sovereign states, have been coterminous with bounded, compartmentalized, spaces.f Although the International Relations 'myth' ofWestphalia is often at odds with the historical events and social and political conditions of the time, the aura ofWestphalia remains largely undiminished; not least because Westphalia has a significance that goes beyond the immediate concerns of International Relations." For many it connotes the moment when politics, having spent several centuries in the darkened caves of medieval Christianity, emerged blinking into the daylight of modern rationality and reason. Westphalia symbolized a transformation from a system of political rule based in the hierarchical structures of medieval Christianity to one. ordered in terms of independent sovereign territorial states: a transition from hierarchy to anarchy. For Leo Gross, the Homer of the Westphalia myth, this structural transformation is precisely what made Westphalia so significant: it "marks the end of an epoch and the opening of another. It represents the majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world.I" Westphalia represented the victory of centrifugal forces, empowered by the rising . sense of individualism promoted by the Renaissance and Reformation, over the Papacy and Empire upon which the hierarchies of the Christian medieval world had been centered. It "marked man's abandonment of the idea of a hierarchical structure of society and his option for a new system .characterized by the co-existence of a multiplicity of states, each sovereign within its territory, equal to one another, and free from any external earthly authority."? In the Westphalian international system, composed of independent sovereign territorial states, the structure of authority is horizontal: there is no Leviathan or transcendental authority figure dictating how states should relate to each other. This structural transformation in the nature of political authority from medieval hierarchy to. modern anarchy both enabled and required a profound
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From .Hierarchy to Anarchy
alteration in man's conception of his political being-in-space or his territoriality. The transition from a vertical. to a horizontal political cosmology is, suggests Michael Shapiro, captured in Aldous Huxley's novel Grey Eminence in which Cardinal Richelieu and his foreign emissary Father James embody, respectively, aspects of the modern and medieval spatial imaginaries. In Father James'smedieval cosmology the world appears as a vertical set of spaces organized into a mundane present and a transcendental eternity, whereas for Richelieu the hierarchies of the Christian order have given way to the modern geopolitical horizontal of sovereign states. The novel can thus be read as a chronicle of the waning 'of the medieval and the waxing of the modern spatialization of the world, aneffect so powerful that, ever since, people pursuing statecraft have been able to subjugate and direct ecclesiastical authority on behalf of policy that unfolds within a horizontal, desacralized world. Indeed, much of the subsequent history ofworld politics involves the demise of the authorities connected to a vertical world and the ascension of those connected to a horizontal, geopolitical one.!" Shapiro's observations raise two fundamental. questions. First, under what circumstances, within what set of intellectual and cultural conditions could this transition from a hierarchical to an anarchical territorial order be conceived and represented? .Second, when did this transformation occur? With respect to the first question, one of the working premises of this book is that, contrary to the implicit claim of the territorial a priori, ideas of sovereign-territoriality are not universal, fixed and objective, but particular, transitory and subjective; they are embedded in a culture's collective imagination and become manifest in its representations of its being-in-space. The transformation from hierarchy to anarchy was, maintains Shapiro, primarily derived from changes in the way that the relationship between space and politics was imagined: "the separation of the world into kinds of space' is perhaps the most significant kind of practice for establishing the systems of intelligibility within which understandings of global politics are forged."!' How we imagine our being-in-space has consequences for politics and vice-versa. Concepts of space and political ideologies combine in practices of representation, made manifest in texts and images, which do not simply reproduce the truths of some pre-existing reality. They are discourses understood not as "groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations)" but in Michel Foucault's sense as "practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak."12 Thus when we examine texts or images that convey, implicitly or explicitly, particular, notions of territoriality we must, as David Campbell warns, be mindful of the political consequences of "adopting one mode of representation over another."13 Thus territory must
Introduction
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5
be addressed as an object or an idea that is produced by discourse. This book's insistence on the notion of the territorial imaginary seeks to posit an alternative to the territorial a priori in which territory is synonymous with extension in physical space. The territorial imaginary reminds us that in any culture or society assumptions about man's political being-in-space are "constituted by the ensemble of representations which extend beyond the limit imposed by the facts of experience and the deductive conclusions authorized by them."14 As far as the historical purview of this work is concerned one can begin by reiterating Donald J. Puchala's statement that "[tjhere were, of course, international relations before 1648."15 Commenting on the various dates put forward to signify the birth .of the modern states-system, Martin Wight has observed that they tend to derive less from balanced assessments of historical data than from scholars' personal value systems and ideological biases. Thus, if one's pri-.. ority is to emphasize the legal recognition of independent sovereign states then Westphalia is an appropriate. date. However, if one thinks that an operative balance of power is a necessary requirement for an international system then the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht might be more artractive.l'' Yet, notes Wight, even if we identifyUtrechtas the coming-of-age of the modern states-system, we must recognize that it was preceded bya long period of gestation, which began in the fourteenth century. The real break, prepared through the fourteenth century, becomes manifest in the fifteenth. In the fifteenth century the old constitution ofthe Respublica Christiana finally breaks down. The attempt at its constitutional reform in the Conciliar Movement is a failure. The papacy is transformed from an ecumenical theocracy into an Italian great power. The assertion of sovereignty by the secular powers, growing since the thirteenth century, becomes normal. The first lamentations about international anarchy are heard. To mitigate the anarchy, the first attempts at collective security are made. To assist them, the new invention of reciprocal resident embassies becomes general. As collective. security proves itself unworkable, because demanding too much, the simpler system of a balance of power grows up}? Despite Wight's insistence that institutional developments in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries established the conditions ofpossibility for the emergence ofa distinctly modern form of international relations it is notable that this period of European history, the Renaissance, has received remarkably little scholarly attention within the discipline of International Relations. Of course, this is primarily a consequence ofthe Westphalian narrative that has drawn a deep, if arbitrary, line across the historical record. Ironically, the discipline's foundational historical myth requires that earlier events and ideas are themselves mythologized;
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From Hierarchy to Anarchy
presented as curios that serve to illustrate the distance that the civilized modern world, imbued with Enlightenment ideals, has taken from the passions and doxas of medieval Christendom. As Wight observes "[tjhe Westphalian interpretation of the history of the states-system fits in with the doctrine that the Scientific Revolution marks a more important epoch. in the general history of Europe than does the Renaissance."18 Of course history is rarely so neat. As Krasner points out both the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire remained significant international actors after 1648, and several medieval political entities (the independent city states of northern Italy, the realm of England and some German city states) were de facto if not de jure sovereign institutions with effective control over their territories from as early as 1300. 19 In many ways the Westphalian narrative dovetails with the ideal of modernity as Cosmopolis. As described by Steven Toulmin, Cosmopolis was the utopia of seventeenth century rationalists, an order combining nature (cosmos) and human society (polis) in which the perceived structure of nature reinforced a rational social order according to the dictates of reason.20The intellectual architects of Cosmopolis, motivated by faith in science and the dictates of natural philosophy, set out to distance their society from the values, principles, and ideals of an earlier Renaissance humanist tradition of modernity. Toulmin, however, makes too much of the Renaissance/Cosmopolis distinction. Not all Renaissance thought was as open-mirided and as 'sceptically tolerant' of plurality and ambiguity as his reading of Montaigne, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Erasmus implies. Conversely, many Classical minds were opposed to the rationalist architectonic projects of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Indeed, with respect to space and territoriality the conditions of possibility for a Cosmopolitan imaginary in which space could be known rationally, ordered systematically and rendered the object of man's desires, was established during the European Renaissance of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Renaissance texts and images reveal that in terms of space and territoriality it was during this period and not during Cosmopolis that the rupture or break with the medieval territorial imaginary was initiated. It was during the Renaissance that the hierarchical arrangement of medieval culture, structured by the prevalent spatial figure of above and below, was undermined. The medieval mind conceived of sovereign-territoriality through a prism in which order was determined by rigid perpendicular chains of being. The multiple overlapping jurisdictions and allegiances of the medieval political world were structured vertically through hierarchies of political authority that extended up far beyond the temporal authorities of Emperor and Papacy to culminate in the ethereal realm of the Civitas Dei. This whole edifice was destabilized by the Renaissance re-imagining and reconstituting of the relationship between man and his being-in-space. In terms of political territoriality this resulted in the gradual delegitimization of any claims to sovereignty located
Introduction
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7
above the state. The Renaissance established the modern territorial imaginary in which territorial sovereignty is parceled out over a horizontal plane and the dominant spatial motif opposes inside and outside. This transformation from a medieval to modern political cosmology, from a vertical and hierarchical order of sovereign-territoriality to a horizontal and anarchic order, is the subject of this book.
International Relations and the Renaissance The dichotomy between medieval and modern international systems is less neat than the Westphalia narrative presumes. This has been acknowledged by those few International Relations scholars who have incorporated aspects of the Renaissance-a period of European history that bridged "the medieval" and "the modern" while simultaneously bringing both into question--within their histories of international relations. International Relations scholarship on the Renaissance tends to focus on three issue areas: the political philosophy of Machiavelli and other humanists; the Renaissance contribution to modern diplomacy; and the social relations leading to the institutional rise of the sovereign state. The remainder of this introduction will briefly consider their work, both to situate the present study and to indicate how its arguments extend beyond existing discussions of the Renaissance in international political thought. Scholars of political philosophy often remark that the efflorescence of political theory .associated with Renaissance humanism is not matched by equivalent advances in thinking about international politics. Torbjern L. Knutsen argues that although Machiavelli's writings on self-interest and raison d'etat anticipated some ofthe concerns of modern international political theory, The Prince is primarily concerned with domestic politics and is not a modern treatise since it continues to articulate power politics in terms of the classical categories of virtu andfortuna. 2 1 Indeed, for Knutsen, the closest the Renaissance came to developing a theory of international relations is Guicciardlni's adaptation of T'hucydides' balance of power theory to describe Lorenzo de Medici's foreign policy. David Boucher, who unlike Knutsen does not limit himself to The Prince, agrees that Machiavelli did not entertain the concept of a balance of power, but maintains that the Florentine did have a distinctive view of international relations: "Machiavelli's view of human nature and the subordination of morality to politics postulates a dynamic view of the relations among nations, each of which has its own common good which it is prepared to enhance at the expense ofothers."22 Since it is human nature to always desire more, in the competitive environment of international relations, all states, even those that seek only to maintain the status quo, will be threatened by others, a threat that will spur their own desire and need for conquest. Both Knutsen and Boucher,
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highlighting a theme that will be discussed extensively throughout this work, acknowledge that even if Renaissance political thought articulated little by way of explicit international relations theory, the humanist critique of medieval scholasticism did pave the way for the subsequent development of modern secular political and international theory. Machiavelli and Guicciardini's descriptive realism, which described and explained politics in terms of human nature, the exercise of free will and rationality, isolated politics from the normative prescriptions of Christian theological discourse. Renaissance political theorists were no longer compelled to frame their discussions of the state in terms of its relations to either celestial or temporal Christian authorities, but rather depicted it as a human creation that needed constant vigilance in order to be sustained. Boucher and Knutsen treat this theme, which Boucher neatly terms "the priority of the secular," largely through an explication of Machiavellian statecraft and raison d' etat as adumbrated within the concepts of necessita, virtu,· and fortuna. Important as these concepts are to understanding Renaissance political theory, neither study provides an extensive discussion of how the state was understood during the Renaissance-.Thus in chapter 4 a close textual reading of Machiavelli will explore how humanist political thought conceived of lostato and how that conception played out in terms of a territorial imaginary. Ifthe Renaissance lacked a general theory of internationalrelations, its contribution to the theory and practice of diplomacy is well acknowledged. In his classic Renaissance Diplomacy, Garrett Mattingly argues that modern diplomacy began with the exchange of permanent resident embassies between the principal courts of Renaissance Italy during the period of the Milanese wars (1444-54).23 Drawing on Jacob Burckhardt's characterization of political life in Renaissance Italy as illegitimate and requiring permanent vigilance, Mattingly claims that the resident ambassadors were simultaneously "the agents and the symbols of continuous system of diplomatic pressures.Y" During the remainder of the fifteenth century the machinery of Renaissance diplomacy was gradually refined and the rights and duties of diplomats were clarified. The heyday of Renaissance diplomacy was brought to a close by the French invasion of 1494 and the ensuing struggles between the Valois and Hapsburg dynasties for. hegemony over the peninsula. However, because the northern powers adopted the Italian diplomatic model it became the European standard, even surviving the CounterReformation wars of religion. Renaissance Diplomacy remains a valuable work if only for its insistence that the period between 1420 and 1530 was significant in the history of international relations. Yet, Mattingly's claim that modern diplomatic practice emerged during the Renaissance has been challenged. For James Der Derian Mattingly's text shares two of the characteristic flaws of the classical tradition of diplomatic studies. First, by narrowly conceiving of diplomacy as "an exchange of accredited envoys by states, and asa valuable norm for the
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international order" it serves to "reinforce if not reify ... a status quo diplomatic system.'25 Second, it reinforces this tradition's evolutionist historical narrative that records the gradual refinement and improvement of diplomatic practice. Nevertheless, Der Derian agrees that the establishment of permanent residences during the Italian Renaissance was an important innovation, especially in the context of the humanist revival of the classical doctrine of raison d' etat, Just as Meinecke's diplomat was "the discoverer of the interests ofstates" so Machiavelli posited raison d'etat as the state's "intelligence," which allowed it to form an objective awareness of its environmenr.t'' However, for Der Derian neither Machiavellian. raison d'etat nor the institution of permanent residences qualify as instances of "diplomacy" understood as the "mediation of mutual estrangeraenisbeiioeen states."27 Renaissance practice "corresponded to an extreme state of anarchy and estrangement of the city statesfrom hegemonic empires' and is thus a manifestation of "proto-diplomacy" or a one sided mediation, whose genealogy can be traced back to St. Augustlne.r" Although for Der Derian the gaze of Renaissance is primarily directed to the past, occasionally it glimpses the future. For, like Boucher and Knutsen, he credits Machiavelli with sweeping away "the remnants of a mythical Christian unity to open the way for a system of diplomacy based on states' interests."29 Thiswork will share Der Derian's suspicion of evolutionist narratives, but whereas for Der Derian the Renaissance is .still predominantly an expression of medieval thought and practice, I shall contend that the modern territorial imaginary had its genesis during this transformational epoch in European cultural history. Der Derian's refusal to enfold Renaissance diplomacy within an evolutionist historical narrative is echoed in Christian Reus-Srnit's comparative study of international societies in The Moral Purpose of the State. 30 For Reus-Smit the primary institutions of international society are historically and culturally contingent. Their differences are derived from the fundamental set of core values or constitutional structures that the states that comprise each international society look to when justifying their right to exist and act as sovereign entities. International society is ordered by these "coherent ensembles of intersubjective beliefs, principles, and norms" because they determine which actors are legitimately recognized as states and the limits to their actions.i" Of these, the moral purpose of the state is the fundamental normative criterion: it determines the basis upon which sovereign rights are established, the organizing principle of sovereignty, the norm of procedural justice, and ultimately the nature of an international society. Reus-Smit argues that the social structure of Renaissance Italy was constituted by patronage, which had arisen as a response to the anxieties .generated by the erosion of guild-based corporate structures and the retreat of papal and imperial sources of authority. Relations of patronage bound "patrons and clients in a webof mutual obligations, established and maintained
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through rhetorical speech and ritual gesture."32 All authority claims were grounded in '(appeals to honorific grandeur," which engendered a specific rational for sovereignry-c--t'the pursuit of civic glory, or grandezza, was celebrated as the city-state's primary raison d' etre."33 The realization of grandezza, required the nurturing of concordia whereby individuals would place the common good before their own self interest or factional advantage. Although the humanists promoted concordia as substantive justice, rewarding virtue and rectifying vice, in practice the values of patronage prevailed in "the ritual enactment of virtue, through ceremonial rhetoric and gesture, determining patterns of social and political interaction, individual worth and entitlement, and the distribution of social goods."34 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as city states moved to seigniorial or oligarchic rule, these ritual norms and practices not only shaped relations between individuals but also came to determine those between rulers and subjects and were adopted by political elites "to establish the social identity, legitimacy and status of their city states within the interstate system, and when courting cooperative relations with other states."35 Thus resident ambassadors served as the conduits for "oratorical diplomacy" or the presentation and promotion of civic grandeur as a key element of a .state's identity and an essential element in the balance of power. Reus-Smit makes an important claim, one fully endorsed here, that the political institutions of the Renaissance need to be understood within a broader matrix of social relations and normative values. This contextual approach has some affinity with historical sociological studies ofthe development of the modern states-system, such as Justin Rosenberg's historical-materialist critique of Realism's "transhistorical theory of states-systems sui generis" in The Empire ofCivil Society.t" For Rosenberg because Realists isolate geopolitical structures from the social relations within which they are embedded, they reify what are historically specific social forms of sovereignty and anarchy and reduce international history to recurrent power struggles between sovereign states operating within anarchy. This impoverished historical imagination occludes the differences between different historical state systems and could be enriched byadopting a historical-materialist method that recognises how the prevailing forms of the relations of production constitute social and political institutions, including those underpinning the international system. Since relations of production change across time so do political structures and the nature of the relations between them. Thus with respect to the Renaissance, Rosenberg takes issue with Mattingly's assertion that "Italy first found the system of organising interstate relationship[s] which Europe later adopted, because Italy, towards the end of the Middle Ages, was already becoming what later all Europe would become."37 Mattingly fails to acknowledge that the autonomous political institutions of the Italian city-state arose as particular responses to "a radical institutional
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separation of politics and economics premised upon a form of material reproduction dominated by exchange relations, itself contingent upon a structural location within feudal Europe which enabled the cornering of such. flows sufficient to support them."38 The Communes' ability to isolate themselves from private individual power so prevalent in feudal Europe and so reconstitute an autonomous public sphere of political life-characterized by the institutions of the podesteria and capitaneria-was derived from their unique role in the feudal economy: their control of East-West trade, their production of manufactures such as textiles, and the presence of colonies of Italian merchants in various European cities. Rosenberg's argument is persuasive if one accepts his economic determinism, but from the perspective of discourse analysis it is too restrictive. There are surely limitations to any discussion of the Renaissance, which ifit was anything was a cultural and intellectual movement that eschews any consideration of ideas and art. This may be a consequence of Rosenberg's idiosyncratic dating of the Renaissance to the emergence of the Communes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, few intellectual or cultural historians would. accept that Renaissance culture in any meaningful sense existed before the late thirteenth century when it erupted in Florence with the writings of Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch and the painting of Giotto di Bondone. Rosenberg'schronology merely serves to efface an important distinction between medieval and Renaissance cultures that in terms of their different territorial imaginaries is profound. The Westphalian narrative of the modern states-system is also contested in Hendrik S pruyt's institutional historical sociology.'? The processes of evolution and change underlying the transformation from a feudal system to one of sovereign territorial states are not, he suggests, satisfactorily explained by N eoMarxist, Neo-Durkheimian or Neo-Weberian "unilinear iexplanations" that highlight one explanatory variable-the economic contradiction in feudalism, changes in dynamic density, or an instrumentally rational formal organization. These functionalist and teleological explanations cannot account for the eventual triumph of the sovereign state as the dominant political institution of Early Modern Europe for there was "nothing inevitable about the emergence of the sovereign, territorial state."40 Spruyr's nonlinear view of institutional evolution, derived from Fernand Braudel and Stephen Jay Gould, argues that the political landscape of Late Medieval Europe was profoundly altered by the expansion of trade and the growth of towns. Neither the conflict-ridden feudal institutions of lordship nor the universal Church or Holy Roman Empire were unable to take advantage of these developments. By contrast, the emergent institutions of the sovereign territorial state, city-league, and city-state, embodied in Capetian France, the Hanseatic League and Italian. city-states, were able to bolster and legitimize their political authority by means of effective alliance formations
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with the new urban configurations of social and economic power. Theultimate victory of thesovereign state was not due to superior war-making as many historical sociologists have contended. For although the Hanseatic League and Italian city-states had effective command of money, warfare and security, it was the ability of the larger. territorial states to deploy their superior organizational capabilities to provide the higher degree of standardization and certitude required for the expansion of commerce that secured their victory. As regards Italy, Spruyt shares Rosenberg's interest with the emergence of the two to three hundred independent communes that dominated Italy around 1200. By 1450, however, this political landscape had changed profoundly for the ascent of the signoria, tougher market conditions and foreign interventions had reduced their number to a handful of territorial city states that in many ways "resembled the sovereign, territorial state. Like the French monarchy, the city-state had developed notions of sovereignty and the public realm. Roman law figured predominantly. And like the sovereign state,the city state had territorial parameters.T'! However, the Italian city-states cannot be considered as fully fledged sovereign territories because many of the previously independent towns within their territories retained considerable degrees of independence and factional struggles within the cities prevented the emergence of a sovereign authority analogous to the French king. Spruyt is correct that Renaissance city-state territoriality was structured in terms of centers and peripheries. However, this did not preclude Renaissance political thinkers like Machiavelli from articulating an idea of sovereign territoriality that, while it may have been a more apt description of the northern states at the time, did nevertheless establish the conceptual and ideological premises underlying the modern discourse of sovereign territoriality. SinceSpruyt, like Rosenberg, favors a methodology that tends to pass over primary source material in favor of secondary interpretations, these expressions of the modern territorial imaginary in Renaissance discourse are overlooked.
Chapter Outlines The next chapter, "International Relations, Political Theory, and the Territorial State," considers the place and role of the territorial a priori in International Relations theory. It argues that International Relations theory, from Realism to Constructivism and. from Liberal Institutionalism to International Society, implicitly endorses an ideal of the territorial a priori that is derived from an "absolutist" tradition of political theory reaching from Hobbes to Hegel. Since Max Weber's theory of the state established the paradigm of the modern territorial a priori and its attendant geopolitical sensitivity it is discussed in detail. Finally, the poststructuralist critics of the "sovereignty problematic" in International Relations is considered as a starting point for further investigation
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into the workings and provenance of the modern territorial imaginary. Building on this discussion of post-structuralism, chapter 3, "Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History," establishes the theoretical or methodological premises that underpin the subsequent inquiry into the cultural history of space and territoriality. Drawing on a wide body of work that has addressed the intellectual, social, cultural, and political nature of space, the chapter defines three aspects of the "territorial imaginary" that serves as the primary heuristic concept used throughout this work. First, the "territorial imaginary" recognizes that the idea of state territoriality is a representation of space, a product of various discourses of knowledge. and power that order political space. Second, the concept of the "territorial imaginary" alert us to the fact that political discourses of sovereign territoriality are informed by a broad matrix of ideas and practices that together constitute a society's culture of space. This culture, comprising various discourses of space, .determines the epistemic field of possibility within which representations of territoriality come to have meaning and value. Third, the "territorial imaginary" refuses the claim that territoriality is a primordial or transcendent feature of all human social formations. Territorial imaginaries are historically and culturally contingent. New configurations of spatial discourse and practice produce new frameworks for understanding man's being-in-space. With the theoretical framework in place, the next two chapters move to the historical account of the transformation of the European territorial imaginary. The medieval culture of space was dominated by the episterne of hierarchy. Chapter 4 begins by outlining the writings of Dionysius the Areophagite on the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, for they established the paradigm of hierarchy within which the medieval understanding of man's political being-in-space was articulated. The Dionysian hierarchical order of space was made manifest in medieval society through the structures of feudalism, notably vassalage and fief-holding, in the codes of chivalry and, in particular, in feudalism's legitimizing "mental representation" of the three orders. Dante's Divine Comedy is read to demonstrate how the medieval culture of space interwove physical and political cosmology within a shared spatial episteme determined by the figure of above and below. Scholastic theological discourse, which reinforced the hierarchical structure of being, also impacted on medieval geography. In the famous T-O maps, the earth's spaces were not, as in modern maps, defined in terms of abstract mathematical coordinates, but were distributed in places that were allocated different values according to hierarchical principles. Chapter 5, "Cbristanitas, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse,' builds on this general account of the medieval culture of space to argue that its hierarchical architectonics determined the possibilities for. thinking about territoriality within medieval political discourse. This claim is made with reference to the tripartite power struggle between Papacy, Empire, and Monarchy that defined
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medieval international relations. At stake was not only the right torule over but the ability to determine the nature of European political society. However, the differences between the ideals. ofEcclesia or Christianitas promoted by the papal doctrine of plenitudo potestatis, Dante's imperial ideal of humana ciuilitas, or John of Paris's Capetian-sponsored advocacy of civitas were less significant than their shared territorial imaginary. All were premised on the understanding that sovereign-territoriality was. not restricted to the horizontal plane of the earth's surface but was structured hierarchically, .extending from the Civitas Terrena to the Civitas Dei, the divine font of sovereignty. The spaces of the medieval world, including its territorial imaginary, were structured according to the episterne of hierarchy. Chapter 6, "The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy," begins the task of identifying in the Renaissance culture of space those ideas that would challenge the hierarchies of the medieval order. The meaning of the Renaissance is contentious and the chapter begins by acknowledging the difficulties in defining its contours and determining its relationship to medieval and modern cultures. An important challenge to the medieval episteme of hierarchy was mounted in the Renaissance cosmologies of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola that developed a recognizably modern notion of sovereign identity. Their promotion of the "dignity of man" not only released man. from his lowly fixed position in the cosmos and thereby destroyed the pivotal foundation of the hierarchical universe, but also asserted that man as self-fashioner was capable of shaping and .ordering nature and its spaces, rather than being shaped arid ordered by them. Machiavelli's realism also assisted in dismantling the hierarchies of the medieval political cosmos. Machiavelli not only situated politics within a new conception of time, but also resited politics in the space of modern territorial sovereignty. In maintaining that religion had no purpose other than to cement solidarity within political society and by castigating Christianity as an especially ineffective form of state religion, Machiavelli brought down territorial sovereignty from the celestial spaces of the Civitas Dei to the mundane world of terrestrial politics. Machiavelli is also the main subject of the next chapter, "Machiavelli, Territoriality, and Lo Stato", which explores the modernity of Machiavelli's territorial imaginary in terms ofhis promotion of the secular state. Starting with a consideration of the various meanings of 10 stato in Renaissance political discourse, ·the chapter then identifies in Machiavelli's discussion of the state in The Prince and The Discourses three elements. of the modern territorialImaginary, First, Machiavelli's emphasis on the legal concept of dominion embodies a distinct sense of sovereignty as the extension of political authority over a defined territory. Second, Machiavelli's distinction between the internal and external exercise of political violence legitimizes the spatial figure of inside/ outside. Finally, Machiavelli's evocation of italianita, articulated in terms of
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an opposrtion to the barbarian other, expresses the modern desire to ground national identity on the territory of the state. Chapter 8, "Picturing Renaissance Territoriality," moves to the representation of sovereign territoriality in Renaissance art. A particular concern is the effect that the technique of perspective had in transforming man's relationship to space. The basic principles of perspective construction are introduced with reference. to the rules laid out by Alberti and their use in painting by Piero della Francesca. Perspective is also addressed as a discourse of power/knowledge that not only objectified space but also constituted man's subjectivity in space. The chapter considers how Renaissance paintings of principalities (as represented by Piero della Francesca's diptych of Federico da Montelfeltro and Battista Sforza) and city states (as depicted in the ideal cityscapesof the Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin panels) endorsed the values of an emerging modern territorial order of sovereignty, politics and space. Perspective was also instrumental in promoting .a cartographic sensibility that allowed the territorial boundaries between Renaissance kingdoms to be drawn on topographical and regional maps. Moving from the internal projections of Renaissance territoriality, chapter 9, "The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society" looks outward to the territorialization of the "new world." The "invention of America" and the epistemological revolution derived from the voyages of discovery radically altered man's perception of his being-in-the-world, not least in freeing him from the confines of the medieval Christian geographical imaginary. The discovery of the "new world" shattered the medieval view of the world as a cosmic jail and freed man from the confines of the Orbis Terrarurn, These transformations went hand in hand with more explicitly political territorializations of the new spaces ·of international society. The famous papal demarcation line of the Inter caetera bulls and the division of the new world agreed to at the Treaty of Tordesillas reflected, at the level of high politics, strategies of territorialization on the ground. These processes, which reflected the complex interplay between the drives to conquest and conversion, wereIegitimized through texts and images. Accounts of the naming and possession of territories in the journals of Columbus and Vespucci and the cartographic representation of the "new world" on maps like the Miller Atlas and the Cantino Planisphere were instrumental in the production. of territorialized spaces that constituted the new reach of Renaissance International Society.
CHAPTER 2
International Relations, Political Theory, and the Territorial State
art in Wight established a famous dichotomy between, on the one hand, the tradition of political theory. that since Plato: and. Aristotle has sought to establish the conditions by which mankind might progress to some ideal of the "good life" within the state and, on the other hand, international theory, which focusing on relations between states, that amounts to little more than a depressing account of the eternal recurrence of war and the balance of power.' Whereas students of domestic politics assume the presence of some sort of governmental system in which law and institutions override the naked struggle for power, students of international politics presume that government in any meaningful sense is absent and those laws and institutions that do exist are always vulnerable to the machinations of power politics.r Although Wight was personally attuned. to the tragic nature of international politics, this dichotomy has served to legitimize International Relations as an academic discipline in so far as study of the anarchic relations between states has become its sole preserve. Yet, as Justin Rosenberg observes, this disciplinary identity is secure only as long as the idea of the sovereign state retains its legitimacy: "the same absolute character of the sovereignty of the modern state that is the foundation of order within national boundaries simultaneously dictates the persistence of an external condition of anarchy among states.T' One important feature of this dichotomy between sovereignty and anarchy is that it is inscribed in space: "[tjhe borders and landscape of this environment are set and policed by the twin concepts of sovereignty and anarchy.I" This chapter will explore how the modern ideal of political space, as embodied in the idea of the territorial state, has served to maintain these dichotomies.
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The first section looks at state theory in International Relations and argues that it tends to be underpinned by, what I term, the .territorial a priori. The second section will trace the emergence of the idea of the territorial state in an absolutist tradition of political theory that, reaching from Hobbes to Hegel, reaches its apotheosis in Weber's famous definition of the modern state as an institution laying legitimate claim to the means of violence within a defined territory. Section three frames this paradigm of state territoriality within the Cosmopolitan tradition of modernity. Finally, I shall discuss how the poststructuralist critique of the "sovereignty problematic" in International Relations unsettles the assumptions that underpin the idea of the territorial state.
The Territorial a Priori of International Theory In the Critique ofPure Reason Kant asserts that space and time "are the pure forms of sensible intuition, and are so what make a priori synthetic propositions possible."? This statement refers back ·to some of the basic elements of Kant's critical project. Thought is in. immediate relation to objects through intuition. Intuition requires that we receive representations of objects through the capacity of sensibility: "Objects are given to lis by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding and from the understanding arise concepts.t'' The effect of an object upon the faculty ofrepresentation Kant terms sensation. Sensation produces empirical intuitions whose undetermined object is appearance. The appearance that corresponds to sensation is matter, but Kant is interested in that which "so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered" or the form of appearance. While matter is given to usa posteriori only (as empirical knowledge possible only through experience) form must "lie ready for the sensations" a priori in the mind-c--a priori knowledge being absolutely independent of all experience. The critique's necessary first step is the constitution of the transcendental aesthetic that identifies the pure forms of sensible intuition. These pure forms are space and time and they serve as the principles of a priori knowledge. In the eighteenth century there were. two competing conceptions of space. The dominant paradigm was Newton's in which space was conceived of as absolute pure entity, the same throughoutandirnmovable, and which existed in and of itself without any relation to anything external to. it. The secondary paradigm, associated with Leibniz, conceived of space like time as a relative quality, as "an order of co-existences as time is an order of successions."? Kant proposes four postulates about space that reveals his affinity with the Newtonians. First, space is not an empirical concept derived from outerexperience, for any representation of an object as being outside of oneself: or as different from other objects, presupposes the representation of space. Second,
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[s]pace is a necessary a priori representation, which underlies all outer intuitions. We can never represent to ourselves the absence of space, though we can quite well think it as empty of objects. It must therefore be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a determination dependent upon them. It is an a priori representation, which necessarily underlies outer appearances. 8 Third, because we can only represent one space to ourselves"space is essentially one" rather than multiple. It is pure intuition rather than a general concept that requires thought to impose limitations on it. Finally, space is represented as an "infinite given magnitude" containing an infinite number of representations within it," Space then in Kant's idealist framework is an a priori intuition located within the subject. It precedes objects and allows the concept of the object to be determined a priori. 10 I shall return to Kant presently, but at this stage I want to advance the proposition that territory in international theory has a status analogous to space in Kant's transcendental aesthetic. Just as for Kant space is the condition of possibility for sensible intuition of the world, so territory serves as an a priori condition underpinning state theory in International Relations. The territorial a priori takes many different forms in International Relations theory ranging from crude associations with some physical or material reality to more profound, but nonetheless still unsatisfactory, attempts to understand territory in terms of the institutional determinants of sovereignty. The most explicitly materialist statements of state territoriality tend to be made by Classical Realists who argue that the power of the state is dependent on the material resources at its disposal.!' According to John Herz the modern nation-state has ·an underlying essence that is found "in its physical, corporeal capacity: as an expanse of territory encircled for its identification and its defense by a 'hard shell' of fortifications."12 Reflecting on the state of the state at the beginning of the Cold War, Herz forecast the "passing ofthe age ofterritoriality" as the state's space became penetrated by economic forces and by psychological, air, and nuclear warfare. However, ten years later, he expressed renewed confidence in the ability of the territorial state to survive. The "new or neo-territorial" state was now capable of resisting both nuclear attack and the forces of transnationalisrn.P Herz also maintained that the state's territorial impermeability was the underlying foundation of the classical system of international relations and its institutions of international law, the balance of power, and war. Accordingly, now that the state's territorial integrity was guaranteed he did not foresee any imminent structural changes to the contemporary states-system.l'" Raymond Aron also emphasized the material reality of the state's territory, claiming that a state's authority was dependent on its possession of "a fragment of the earth's
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crust, with the men and objects thereon.l'P Because the space or milieu a state occupies is an important source of its power-c-It provides the resources and manpower required for defense---.;.it is in the interests of states to increase their space. Thus the history of the international system has been driven by conflict over space, as states, seeking to increase their power, dispute the territories occu.. . pied by some and desired by others. The consequence of this Darwinian struggle for possession ofthe earth's physical space is that "[ejveryinternational order, down to our own day, has been essentially territorial. It represents an agreement among sovereignties, the compartmentalization of space." 16 In Kenneth Waltz's structural neorealism the territorial a priori is less explicit. For Waltz, who resists any reductionist explanations of the international system in terms of the nature of the units that make it up, the question of state territoriality takes a back seat.'? Because all international systems are structured by anarchy the actors. are logically undifferentiated and functionally equivalent, meaning that the only significant variable ofconcern to international theory is the distribution of power. Analysis of international politics must "abstract from every attribute of states except their capabilities." Territory is simply a component of a state's material power resource or capability. States can thus be ranked according to "how they score on all the following items.size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability, and competence.T'" In contrast to Waltz, Robert Gilpin offers a more rigorous and historically sensitive neorealist account ofstate territoriality. Gilpin acknowledges that the state has taken on many different forms in practice and that only the modern state embodies complex class and social structures, asserts a claim to national identity, and exercises a distinctive means of controlling its territory.I" The modern state is the only state form characterized by "a strong central authority that is differentiated from other social organizations" and is capable of exercising "control over a well-defined and contiguous territory.Y" For Gilpin a state's territoriality has a functional role similar to that of property rights in the domestic realm. Resources in international politics are distributed in terms of relative territorial extension and just as the redistribution and redefinition of property rights signals fundamental transformations in domestic politics, so the redistribution of territory following major wars indicates significant transformation in the realm of international pol itics.r ' Contemporary realism has adopted some of the theoretical premises of constructivism. Alexander Wendt rejects both theneorealist insistence that anarchy forces states into self-interested behavior resulting in conflict, and the neoliberal hypothesis that states in anarchy can learn to cooperate with one another in the pursuit of absolute gains. For Wendt anarchy is a fluid concept determined by the "inter-subjectively constituted structure of identities and interests in the system."22 Anarchy is the product of the practices of state interaction. Although
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Wendt denies any fixed essential meaning to anarchy, he nevertheless privileges the state as actor on the grounds that "states are ontologically prior to the states system."23 Despite its changing identities and interests "the essential state is an organizational actor embedded in an institutional-legal order that constitutes it with sovereignty and a monopoly on the legitimate use of organized violence over a society in a territory."24 Territory is one of the properties of the state and quite possibly the most important: "No territory, no state." For Wendt the relationship between the state and its territory is evident from the Latin etymology that combines "terra ('earth' or 'land') to torium ('belonging to' or 'surrounding,' presumably the state.}"25 It is precisely its exercise of authority over territory that distinguishes the state from other institutional actors such as the church or firms. To be fair, Wendt does admit that the assumption of International Relations states-system theory that territory is an exogenous given is problematic. The historical record demonstrates, first, that territorial boundaries tend to be flexible and shifting rather than rigid and fixed, and second, that national interests and identities are rarely coterminous with the boundaries of the state. Yet, if we are to successfully develop a social theory of the states system such anomalies must be put aside. It is not the task of International Relations scholars to write a "'biology' of the state" that seeks to "problematise territory 'all the way down'."26 Ideas all the way down then; at least until one collides with the hard material shell of territory. Wendt makes an analytical distinction between sovereignty and territory, which he discusses as. two distinct and not necessarily related properties of the state. By contrast, in Stephen Krasner's theory of sovereignty as an institutional structure that conditions, to varying degrees, the interests,· capabilities and actions of states in foreign affairs, the relationship between sovereignty and territory is rather more complex. Krasner identifies four possible meanings of sovereignty. Two of these,·"domestic sovereignty" that refers to the organization and effectiveness of public authority within a state, and "interdependence sovereignty" that denotes the ability of public authorities to control trans-border movements, are only implicitly connected to territory. However, the other two meanings of sovereignty are explicitly grounded in the principle of territoriality. "International legal sovereignty" attests to states' mutual recognition of each other as the only legitimate participants in international relations. Such recognition is only extended to "entities, states, with territoriality and formal juridical autonomy."27 Finally, "Westphalian sovereignty" is an institutional arrangement for organizing political life based on the principles of territoriality and independence from external intervention in the exercise of domestic authority. Westphalian sovereignty is symbolized by the norm of non-intervention formalized by Wolff and Vattel at the end of the eighteenth century. However, endemic violation ofthis norm by states means that the institution ofsovereignty amounts
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to little more than a form of organized hypocrlsyr'" .Alrhough ·Krasner posits' territory as an a priori reality underpinning the various permutations of sovereignty, he avoids crude materialism and recognizes. that territorial-sovereignty is constituted through a permanent exchange between knowledge and practice. Territory in not simply synonymous with physical space hut is embodied in' the principle of territoriality. It is an institution or idea that is not anterior to but produced in practice. . The English School or International Society approach also acknowledges a mutually constitutive relationship between territory and sovereignty. Rejecting the structural determinism of neorealism, English School scholars maintain that states accept, or at least pay lip 'service to, the rules and institutions. of international society because theypromote their common interests and values. Mutual recognition of each other's sovereignty is the ground rule of international society and confirms membership of the society of states. However, in order to gain access to this club, prospective members must possess a territory. Hedley Bull defines states as "independent political communities" that "possess a government and assert their sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth's surface and a particular segment of the human population.V" Similarly Alan James asserts that since each of the member states of international society exclusively represents a distinct "physical sector of the land mass of the globe", so the landscape of international society is "divided into states by frontiers rather as a farm is into fields by fences and walls.."30 Now" that international society has expanded globally "almost every square kilometer of the earth's land surface" has been allocated to "orie sovereign state or another, with virtually all frontiers being tidHy delineated or clearly demarcared.Y' English School thinkers also endorse the institutionalist assumption that the inside/outside spatial. distinction between domestic and international politics is primarily articulated in terms of sovereignty. Bull, for example, distinguishes the exercise of internal sovereignty (which gives a state supremacy over all other authorities within a territory and over a population) from external sovereignty {which denotes independence from outside authorltlesl.V Again the underlying assumption here is that territory exists a priori 'and is something onto which' sovereignty is somehow fixed. English School emphasis on the importance of international law has lead 'many of its advocates to endorse the idea of the state as a Recbstaat, that is, as the embodiment of the collective agency of social power through representative institutions, created bylaws, customs, and· practices. However, even the Rechstaat resides upon the territorial a priori. As Cornelia Navari defines it, the Rechstaat is "a particular kind of political community, one that is territorially located, with a more or less delimited set of persons distinguished from the citizenry by the name of government, and that is conceived as law maker."33 English School theories of international relations that emphasize the state's
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entrapment within webs of legal constraints thus fail to offer an alternative to the territorial a priori of the Classical realists. 34 Certainly' classical international law offers a standard account of the state's relation to its territory. As defined by Hans Kelson, territory is that space within which, in principle, one state, the state to which the territory belongs, is entitled to. carry out coercive acts, a space from which all the other states are excluded. It is the space for which, according to general international law, only one definite national legalorder is authorized to prescribe coercive acts, the space within which only the coercive acts stipulated by this order may be executed. It is the space within the so-called boundaries of the state. 35 In sum we can endorse John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge's observation that international theory, or at least states-system theory, is floundering in a "terri.. torial trap." They argue that Internarional Relations' geographical imaginary divides the world up into mutually exclusive territorial states, thereby restricting the discipline's potential field of enquiry. This territorial trap is set by three related intellectual dispositions. First, the assumption that state territoriality is always and everywhere coterminous with state sovereignty has the effect of sanctifying the sovereign territorial state as a "sacred unit beyond historical time.."36The second presumption, derived from the mercantilist subordination of economics to politics, posits territorial states as the primary nodes of international economic exchange. Finally, the social is subsumed within the political in so far as' the only social groups (nations) viewed as being significant are 'those coterminous with the boundaries of the territorialstate. Unable to see beyond the walls and bars of the architecture of its incarceration, mainstream theory is, they argue, unable to account for the emergent phenomena of globalization such as population movements, capital mobility, environmental insecurities and the chronopolitics of the modern military: "[sjocial, economic and political life cannot be ontologically contained within the territorial boundaries of states through the methodological assumption of 'timeless space'."37
The Territorial Legacy: political Theory from Hobbes to Hegel International theory is far from being the only body of thought to have stumbled into the territorial trap. Indeed International Relations theorists might, with some justification, claim that the theory of the state they draw on has a venerable ancestry reachirigback to Hobbes, if not further. Navari points out that Hobbes' political philosophy reflects the discursive strategy, ',implicit in
much political discourse of his time, to establish the identity of the modern stater, . ;
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From Hierarchy to Anarchy
by opposing it to the state of nature represented as its other. The architects of the new sovereign state presented it in its modernity. It was bounded, abstract, institutional, demythologized, and secular.P" At the same time "a number of princes sitting in a field uttering the words, cuiusregio, eius religio" invented international relations as a state of nature.f" Many of these princes represented the emerging absolutist states, the archetypal political projects of Cosmopolis. For Zygmunt Bauman the absolutist state, with its projection of an image of order and security, offered a palliative to the pervasive sense of insecurity and fear that swept though early modern. culture. as the theocratic hierarchies of the medieval world were swept away by the new spirit of rationalism. The Cosmopolitan search for order manifested itself in spatial projects that sought to substitute the chaotic and disorderly space of the medieval town for the linear purity and perfect order embodied by Versailles.t" This new order was designed, created and legitimized by a modern "space-managing state" that set about "landscaping the wasteland ... subjecting all local features to one unifying homogenizing principle of harrnony.T'! The Cosmopolitan opposition between the absolutist state and the state of nature replicates the inside/outside dichotomy characteristic of modern political discourse. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan neatly sets up the opposition. between the state of nature and the sovereign state. 42 Rob Walker argues that Hobbes's political theory is infused with a desire to overcome the temporal and contingent nature of politics by fixing it to a secure and permanent space. 43 Hobbes believed that through the application of science and geometry to politics "man could construct a political order as timeless as a Euclidean theorern.T'" Nevertheless, Leviathan does not contain an explicit statement of modern sovereign territoriality. The Common-wealth's territoriality is only addressed in the context of a discussion of the rights that the European Commonwealths have over their. colonies. Since God allocated raw materials to different parts of the earth Commonwealths must by necessity trade with one another. These bodies are partially distinguished by their dominion over different territories: "[tjhis Matter, commonly called Commodities, is partly Native, and partly Forraign: Native, that which is to be had within the Territory of the Common-wealth: Forraign, that which is imported from without.T'? Perhaps the most striking representation of sovereign territoriality in the Leviathan is the famous image adorning the frontispiece. Here the Leviathan, made upof the members of the commonwealth and brandishing a scepter ofjustice and a sword, towers over the city and its surrounding countryside that he both protects and controls. A more direct engagement with the spatial aspect of politics can be found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Following Aristotle, Rousseau in the Social Contract seeks to establish the optimum size for a state. A successful political community must maintain an appropriate balance between the size of its territory and the
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number of people that inhabit it. Men "make up the State and the land feeds the men."46 Rousseau's admiration for the ancient polis and the Renaissance city-state led him to conclude that social harmony is to be found in small communities and to doubt the benefits of expansionist policies. The larger a state grows the more protracted the social bond becomes and the greater the chance of "deficient government" and the suppression of freedom.V Further, the social contract is forged in a bond that unites individual private property with state territory. In order to establisha political community each individual must give himself: "his force and possession," to it. "Each 0/ us puts his person and all his
power in common under the supreme direction ofthe general will; and in a body we receive each.member as an indivisible part o/the whole."48 Under such an arrangement it is understandable how the combined and contiguous lands of private individuals become public territory, and how the right of sovereignty, extending from the subjects to the ground they occupy, comes to include both property and persons, which places those who possess land in a greater dependency and turns even their force into a guarantee of their loyalty. This advantage does not appear to have been well understood by ancient monarchs who, only calling themselves Kings of the Persians, the Scythians, the Macedonians, seem to have considered themselves leaders of men rather than masters of the country. Today's kings more cleverly call themselves Kings of France, Spain, England, etc. By thus holding the land, they are quite sure to hold its Inhabitants.V With respect to colonial territories, Rousseau argues that the European powers do not have the right to dispossess the indigenous inhabitants ofrheir lands even if these people have no recognizable state institutions. The inhabitants of a land are protected by the right of first occupant secured through private property. However, certain conditions must be met for this right to be recognized: the first inhabitants must only occupy previously uninhabited land, they may only take the amount of land required for subsistence, and possession must betaken by labor and cultivation rather than by "vain ceremony." From these premises Rousseau, with an eye to the exclusion of the French from the conquest of South America, criticizes the territorial claims of the European colonial powers. How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and deprive the whole human race of it except through punishable usurpation, since this act takes away from the remaining men the dwelling place and foods that nature gives them in common? When Nunez Balboa, standing on the shore, took possession of the South Sea and all of South America in the name of the crown of
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Castile, was this enough to dispossess all the inhabitants and exclude all the Princes of the world?50 By the time Immanuel Kant published Perpetual Peace the idea of the territorial state was firmly established in European political thought. 51 Kant, like Rousseau, accepted that the legitimate actors of international politics were independent sovereign territorial states. Yet he considered the Ancien Regime practice of acquiring states by "inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift" to be Illegltlmate because a state, unlike the ground upon which it is based, is not a possession (patrimonium). It is a society of men, which no-one other than itself can command or dispose of. Like a tree, it has its own roots, and to graft it on to another state as if it were a shoot is to. terminate its existence as a moral personality and make it into a cornmodiry.V Anticipating the English School requirement that the members of international society must be territorial states, Kant declares that in order for the republican states to combine successfully in a pacific federation they must first have established control over their own territories. Once accepted as members of the federation they will retain their territorial integrity. Kant does not desire the borderless space of a universal state.. Indeed, international" justice requires the "separate existence of many independent adjoining states." Although such a divided territorial order can never fully eradicate the threat of war, reason shows that it is to be preferred to "an amalgamation of the separate nations under a single power which has overruled the rest and created a universal monarchy."53 Kant also holds territorial differentiation to be a necessary condition for the cosmopolitan right to universal hospitality, which requires that the "stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else's territory."54 While the stranger may be turned away, as long as he behaves in a peaceable manner he must not be treated with enmity.55 In Hegel's philosophy of right the state is the arena in which subjectivity and expressive unity, the necessary conditions of freedom in modernity, come together. The state is the place where Spirit achieves its most elevated political being. 56 It is an absolute rational being where the ethical idea achieves its highest mode of expression. Thus attributes such as power, wealth and spatial extension are contingent facts of external appearance, historical variables that are not consequential for understanding its essential being. 57 However, asserts Henri Lefebvre, Hegel was instrumental in inscribing modern politics within space. With Hegel historical time gives birth to the space that the state occupies and rules over; "[f] or Hegel space brought historical time to an end and
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the master of space was the state. Space perfected the rational and the realsimultaneously.P" Certainly in his writings on international law, Hegel affirms the individual subjectivity of independent territorial states. In order to be autonomous they can and should meet their needs within their own borders.V The individual state, like the individual human being, is a subject to the extent that it is aware of its own existence "as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is autonomous vis-it-vis the others.T"
Max Weber and the Modern Territorial State If the territorial a priori was implicit rather than explicit in political philosophy from Hobbes to Hegel, Max Weber would bring it centre stage. [A] state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly ofthe legitimate use ofphysical force within a given territory. Note that "territory" is one of the characteristics of the state.... The state is considered the sole source of the "right" to useviolence.P' Weber emphasizes the state's territoriality as a consequence of his realist political ontology that stresses domination and coercion rather than cooperation and negotiation. A "ruling or dominating (Herrschaftverband) organization" will be called "political" insofar as its existence and order is continuously safeguarded within a given territorial area by the threat and application of physical force on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political organization with icorrtinuous organizations (politischer Anstaltbetrieb) will be called a "state" insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order. 62 The particular potency of the modern territorial state derives from its capacity to command the forces of rationalization, nationalism and geopolitics. In modernity the eclipse of value rationality by purposeful rationality, evident from the scientific mastery of nature to the bureaucratic control of society, make most human life, motivated only by instrumental goals,. drearily pre-dictable.v' An important aspect of bureaucratic .rationalization was the use of discipline or "the consistently rationalized, methodically trained and exact execution of the received order, in which all personal criticism is unconditionally suspended and the actor is unswervingly and exclusively set for carrying out the
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command," to regulate the body's location in space and movement in tirne.P" The modern state is able to coerce its subject population not only because it has access to the means of physical violence but, equally importantly, because it has a vast bureaucratic machinery at its disposal through which it disciplines everyday activity. However, there is a price to pay, for the bureaucratic state is in danger of becoming a "frozen spirit" or a "living machine" that "[rjogether with the dead machine (in the factories) ... is in the process of erecting the scaffolding of that futuresubjection or enslavemenr/'F' In developing Weber's concepts of rationalization and discipline, Anthony Giddens argues that the modern state's administrative capability is defined by a potent form of surveillance, which combines the collection and organization of information stored by agencies used to monitor the activities of an administered population with the direct supervision of the activities of subordinates by superiors in a particular organization.P'' Together they form the basis of an administrative power that controls the timing and spacing of human activity. All states utilize surveillance to some degree but only the modern nation state has the necessary technologies to effectively police the codes of criminal law and to control deviance across its entire territory.67 Another aspect of state territoriality explored by Weber is the mapping of national identity onto territory. State legitimacy per se depends on the justifica.. . tion of the claim to the monopoly of violence within a defined territory. While other states looked to tradition or charismatic leadership to ground this claim, the modern state appeals to legal rational authority or the de facto legality of rules and the right of those who enact those rules to do so.68 However, ina dis.. . enchanted world modern states faced a "legitimacy deficit" for the procedural criteria of legal and political legitimacy could not secure political commitment to the state. What was required was an appeal to nationalism or those "irrational political instincts in the masses towards the nation-state.Y'" For Weber nationalism was simultaneously subjective-a nation exists where a people have a sense of belonging toa "community of sentiment"-and objective-c-irhe subjective sense of solidarity is based in objective factors such as common race, language, religion, customs and political experience. To qualify as a nation a group must meet three criteria: there must be an objective common factor between the people that differentiates them from others; this common factor must be considered as a source of value able to produce "a feeling of solidarity against outsiders"; and this feeling of solidarity must be expressed in autonomous political institutions coextensive with the commun iry. " A nation's identity is secured through its Kulture or "those particular values which distinguish a group or society from others ... and which are given self-conscious formation, typically in the art or literature of the society.V! Where national Kulture corresponds with the boundaries of the. state a mutually reinforcing relationship
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develops between state and nation. The state provides the protection necessary for safeguarding Kulture, while national communities generate the feelings of solidarity that reinforce the state's legitimacy. However, while state and nation are ideally coextensive, Weber recognized that this was not always so. "There are three rational components of a political boundary, military security, economic interest, community of national culture; the three do not just coincide like that ona map."72 Weber's desire to fix national identities within bounded territories was a typical response to the sense of insecurity generated by transformations in the European experience of space during the fin de siecle. The development of the new technologies of railways, telegraphs and telephones had two important consequences for Europeans. First, places that had previously been experienced as distant appeared to become more proximate as exchanges between them increased in volume. Second, the idea that the European heartland constituted the centre of the world was undermined by an increased awareness of the existence of other places and cultures. The combination of collapsing distances and the decentering of Europe led to what David Harvey has called the "insecurities of a shifting relative space."73 This cultural unease precipitated measures to reaffirm personal and communal identities in place. Indigenous traditions were reinvented and local cultural memory affirmed in museums, libraries, exhibitions, and ruins. The perception that the world's spaces were shrinking and combining revitalized the European desire "embedded in their historical consciousness" to take command ofspace. 74 This desire to master space imbued much contemporary geopolitical writing that asserted that politics and history were ultimately determined by spatial factors such as states' size, location and the distance between them. Friedrich Ratzel, the discipline's founder and Weber's contemporary, drew on Darwinian evolutionary theory to represent national struggles for survival as conflicts over space. States were rooted, living organisms that, had to evolve by increasing their territories. National cultures were grounded in the "spatial unity of life" or the land (culture meaning literally the tillage of soil) and cultural development was dependent on territorial expansion. The larger a state became the more civilized it could become and, conversely, "[a]ll people who remain. at lower stages of cultural development are also spatially small (kleinraumig)."75 Ratzel, implicitly justifying imperialist expansion, argued that the development of all states "stands under the law of progress from small to big spaces."76 This Darwinian geopolitical discourse, premised on the assumption that the state. is an organic body that must necessarily evolve to greatness, is also found in Weber's writings on geopolitics which, while critical of the cult of Machtpolitik, betray grandiose aspirations for Germany. All political organizations seek to reach their full potential and Germany was
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no different. Its rightful destiny was to achieve the value-prestige or glory of power that accrued to great powers.Y To be fair, Weber was mindful of the obligations that the great powers had to their smaller neighbors. In a world of Machstaaten the balance among the Great Powers must not threaten the inde-pendence of smaller nations and Germany had a duty to prevent the world being carved up between the "regulations of Russian. officialdom" and the "convention of Anglo-Saxon society."78 Weber's political writings are premised on a theory of the state conditioned by the territorial a priori and so logically lend themselves to an interpretation of international relations as geopolitics. As such we can. concur with Michael J. Smith that in many ways Weber was the intellectual forefather of much Realist discourse.?" At the same time, it renders problematic Fred Halliday's proposition that International Relations theory should incorporate the institutional state theory of neo-Weberian historical sociologists such as Michael Mann and Theda Skocpol. 80 For Halliday this school's sophisticated state theory is a considerable advance on the vague notion of a "national-territorial totality" commonplace in International Relations theory. By isolating the coercive and administrative institutions of the state from broader social, political and economic structures, institutional state theory enables the analyst to identify the state's relative autonomy vis-a-vis not only other states but also its own domestic constituency. However, because neo-Weberian historical institutionalists work within the Weherian state paradigm a crude geopolitics tends to determine their understanding of international relations. For example Michael Mann claims that the state has several defining characteristics: the exclusive ability to make rules and back them up with a monopoly of violence; differentiated institutions and personnel; and "a central place and a unified territorial reach" in that the resources and authority of state elites radiate out from a centre to territorial boundaries.f" Whether a state is despotic (able to carry out its activities without routine institutionalized negotiation with civil society) or infrastructural (able to control and infiltrate social life by means of an exchange with civil society), its autonomous power is partially derived from its territoriality. Furthermore Mann acknowledges that there is a necessary correspondencebetween the territorial state and geopolitics. "The very definition' of the' State as a delimited territory suggests a further set of political relations between this state and other states-that is, geopolitics."82 This logic deriving geopolitics from the ideal of the territorial state is acknowledged by Theda Skocpol who admits that the modern state as conceptualized by Weber and Hintze is necessarily "part of a system of competing and mutually involved states."83 The modern state is "Janus faced, with an intrinsically dual anchorage in class divided socioeconomic structures and an international system of states."84 Weberian-historical sociology offers no way out of the territorial trap.
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Postmodernism Confronts the Territorial a Priori The inability of Weberian state theory to offer an alternative to the territorial a priori should come as no surprise. Weber's analysis of the ~t~te is, sug~ests Walker, characteristic of a tradition of Western thought that privileges the spatial delineation of an inside and an outside" and seeks to limit political life to the former. Weber's emphasis on the territorial foundations of the state was an attempt to reinforce state autonomy in a world of "radical historicity" by fixing "history on a spatial terrain."85 Walker's emphasis o~ t~e ro~e. of this sP:tial figure of inside/outside in the constitution of modernity s political order IS central to the so-called postmodern critique of international political theory. With particular reference to the work of Walker and Richard Ashley, the final section will. consider how postmodernism in International Relations highlights the discursive production of territoriality and offers a useful starting point for thinking about the relationship between politics and space in ter.t?s of the ter... ritorial imaginary. For Ashley and Walker international theory is conceived of under the "sign of sovereignty." N eorealism and neoliberalisrn represent the state as an auto~.. omous unit capable of making rational decisions about its interests and mobilizing the necessary resources to carry them out. This implies that the state is "an entity having .absolute boundaries unambiguously demarcating a domestic 'inside' and setting it off from an international 'outside'."86 For Ashley this demarcation privileges the state, imbuing it with sovereign presence and is typical of modern "heroic practice" which turns on a simple hierarchical opposition: a dichotomy of sovereignty versus anarchy, where the former term is privileged as a higher reality, a regulative ideal, and the latter term is understood only in a derivative and negative way, as a failure to live up to this ideal and as something that endangers this ideal. On the one hand, the sign of "sovereignty" betokens a rational identity: a homogeneous and continuous presence that is hierarchically ordered, that has a unique center of decision presiding over a coherent "self," and that is demarcated from, and in opposition to, an external domain of difference and change that resists assimilation to its identical being. On the other hand, the sign of "anarchy"betokens this residual external domain: an aleatory domain characterised by difference and discontinuity, contingency and ambiguity that can only be known for its lack of coherent truth and meaning 87 . expresse d by a sovereIgn presence. In political thought the principle of sovereign.identity underpins a hierarchical opposition between "domestic community as presence" and an "international absence ofcommunity."88 The universal values of freedom, truth and obligation
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are restricted to communities within the boundaries of a sovereign state. Outside the state there is only the residual realm of the particular, the different and the other. Insides and outsides, selves and others are produced in state discourse and practice.P? The domestic domain of sovereign men, securely enclosed within the boundaries of the territorial state, is constituted and differentiated from the foreign, dangerous and external by means of the knowledge-practices of statecraft.?" Statecraft produces and secures the identity of the domestic state-society by marking off as dangerous and as requiring discipline and control, other forms of knowledge and ways of being such as the insane and the criminal. By inscribing specific problems and dangers as exterior to sovereign men statecraft isolates the space of the domestic population over which the state is dominant and able to secure its claims to legirirnacy.?! One realm of otherness marked out by statecraft is "international politics" envisioned as the permanent threat of war and anarchy. The representation of international relations as a constant source of insecurity, danger and threat allows domestic society to cohere around a sovereign centre offering security in exchange for subordination. "international politics" is a practice of the inscription of the dangerous, the externalizarion and totalisation of dangers, and the mobilization of populations to control these dangers-all in the name ofa social totality that is never really present, that always contains traces of the outside within, and that is never more than an effect of the practices by which total dangers are inscribed. The sign of international politics is invoked in opposition to a "domestic society" conceived as an identical social whole. 92 Ashley and Walker stress. that the .sign of sovereignty does not just condition modern political and international relations theory and practice but regulates the epistemological and ontological possibilities of modern Western thought 93 per se. Representations. of the sovereign state mirror the desired ideal of Western man as a rational, sovereign, self-identical presence. At the heart of the paradigm of sovereignty is a set of preconceptions and assumptions about space. Modern philosophical epistemology is predicated on an a priori spatial separation between the autonomous knowing subject and the known object. Walker claims that modern philosophical categories are attempts to overcome "a metaphysics of distance, a dialectics of here and there, the delineation of presence and absence in the stately measure .of eternal geometry.T'" Sovereign identity is secured through the establishment of difference; it is derived from the "claim to be able to fix a point of identity-e-auniversallty in space and time against which all differences in space and time can be measured, judged and
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put in their place'.95 Likewise for Ashley, a "Cartesian practice of spatialization" reinforces the distinction between domestic and international politics by drawing an absolute boundary between inside and outside and privileging the former over the later. The inside is taken to be the space of identity and continuity-the privileged space of the Self Here, it is assumed, is a sharply bounded identity-an identity that is hierarchically ordered" that has a unique centre of decision presiding over a coherent Self: and that is demarcated from and in opposition to an external space of difference and change beyond its boundaries and eluding its rational control. Here, too, according to Cartesian practice, resides the very possibility of rational political subjectivity, be it that of an individual or a political community. As for the outside, this is the space of difference and discontinuity-the residual space of the Other that escapes the rational truth residing within. 96 Ashley does not specify which particular themes in Descartes' work lead him to the notion of Cartesian practice of spatialization. Descartes' major contribution to the mathematical understanding of space was to advocate the use of coordinates to determine the position of a point in a plane by its distance from two fixed lines. However, it is likely that Ashley is referring to the philosopher's famous dualism of mind and matter as the two mutually exclusive divisions of the universe. Walker also hints at a broader frame of reference by suggesting that the combination of the political doctrine of state sovereignty with certain "spatial constructs associated with Euclid and Newton" produced a "sense of inviolable and sharply delimited space."97 By drawing Descartes and Newton into the frame of reference Ashley and Walker imply that the discourse of territorial sovereignty cannot be accounted for exclusively within the terms of politics. Walker suggests that discourse of sovereignty fed off a spatial consciousness that extended "from Descartes' philosophy to Mercator's cartography, from Galilean mechanics to the magnificent constructions of Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant."98 Following Ashley and Walker this work will seek to identify significant correspondences and relays between overtly political conceptions of space, such as state territoriality, and ideas and representations of space generated in fields outside of the political sphere. However, it will reject Ashley's notion of Cartesian practice with its implicit claim that the territorial a priori emerged with the Cosmopolitan modernity of Descartes. Rather, it will argue that the origins of the territorial a priori are to be found in the widespread revolution in the conceptualization and representation of space that occurred during the
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Renaissance. Despite this particular historical oversight, International Relations post-structuralism is instructive in that it questions the assumption of modern political discourse that the territorial state is a universal political category. Post.. . structuralism, which construes territoriality as discourse, denies to the territorial state an ontological a priori status that transcends history. Only by adopting the idea of territoriality as discourse can we account for the transition from a hierarchical to an anarchical order of political space.
CHAPTER 3
Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History
T
h e discourse of International Relations, or at least that part of it concerned with the nature and evolution of the states-system, constructs theory on the grounds of the territorial a priori. Territory is conceived of as a material object, a portion of the earth's surface, a universal sine qua non of political community. In this chapter I want to propose an alternative understanding of territory that counters the claims inherent in the territorial a priori. First, against the assertion that territory is an objective material resource, I want to recast it as an idea, a component of the social imaginary that is produced in discourse. Second, rather than conceiving of territory exclusively from within the paradigm of political theory, I shall propose that discourses of territoriality, which produce and naturalize the politics of space, need to be related to the ideas and practices that permeate a society's culture of space. Third, I question the assumption that territory is a universal feature of human society shared by all political communities. Rather, I shall suggest that since the territorial imaginary is a cultural product it changes as societies develop new representations and understandings of their being-in-space.
Territorial Discourse These three heuristic principles-territory as an idea rather than an objective material reality, territory as related to cultural representations in non-political spheres, and territory as historically contingent rather than universal-are implied in Robert Sack's work on territoriality as the geographical manifestation of social power. Territoriality, for Sack, is a geographical strategy that controls people and
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things by controlling the area they are located within. Territoriality is "the means by which space and society are interrelated. Territoriality's. changing functions help us to understand the historical relationship between society, space and time."! The designation of an area asa territory involves more that simply circumscribing things in space or on a map. Territoriality is a social practice through which an individual or group aims to "affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area."? A territory is a place that needs to he maintained through. constant vigilance and whose boundaries must be permanently policed. Territoriality produces three effects: classification by area; the communication of the limits of that area by physical or verbal boundary markers; and control over access to the area and things in it. As a social practice, territoriality has different historical meanings depending on the extent to which societies maintain different degrees of access to people, things, and relationships. It is. a form of power that is not limited to the political sphere but is exercised in every arena in which humans interact in space: from a parent restricting a child's access to certain parts of the kitchen, to the layout of desks in offices, or to the zoning strategies of city planning. Nevertheless, the most effective instrument of territorialization is the modern state which is able to control a society in which different classes pursue distinctive economic activities abstracted from place. The state itself is an abstracted form of power and in order for it to appear "more accessible, visible or 'real'" it is "endowed with the most basic attribute of objects-location and extension in space. In civilisation, the political power of the state is areal or territoriaL The state is reified by placing it in space. Whatever else a state may be or do, it isterrttorlal.":' Sack's theory of territory as a historically contingent product of social practice is insightful. However, it retains elements of the territorial a priori. First, Sack insists that in order to explain complex interactions a theory of territoriality must disclose a set of propositions which are logically and empirically Ilriked." As such he remains committed to what David Campbell has termed an epistemic realism, which assumes that "the world comprises objects the existence of which is independent of ideas or beliefs about them" and which locates the explanations of action and events in material causes.? Second, Sack's contention that territoriality as a social construct is willed into being can be construed as remaining beholden to the discourse of sovereign presence, in so far as a territory is envisioned as the desired outcome of a process orchestrated by a fully constituted sovereign being (parent, chief: city-authority or state bureaucracy) whose identity is secured prior to its deployment of territoriality-the regulation of behavior within defined bouridaries.f Such a utilitarian notion of territoriality as a form of social control at the service of an already constituted power does not allow for the possibility that the subjectivity or identity of the body exercising territoriality is itself produced by such practices.
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Sack's theory of territoriality then retains a place for the humanist ideal of a fully constituted subject able to know and control its world. This humanist subject is rejected in historical materialist geographies, like that of David Harvey, which class space and time as epiphenomena that express the dominant relations of production. Harvey argues that material practices of capitalism reproduce the structures of social life, including the categories of time and space. Every mode of production incorporates "a distinctive bundle of time and space practices and concepts."? Furthermore, contemporary consumer capitalism is particularly adept at restructuring geographical space in order to both widen and deepen markets so as to fulfil its inherent logic of expansion. 8 Yet, not all historical materialist geographers are as economically determinist as Harvey. Indeed the pioneer of historical materialist geography, Henri Lefebvre, argues against such determinism, claiming that the relays between space and social production are complex, with neither having ultimate priority over the other. Relations of production both produce and are produced in space. While each mode of production has a distinctive space, it is not possible to assert that the forces of production necessarily give rise to particular configurations of space or time," The production of social spaces from the raw material of nature involves many layers of mediation from economics to technology and from politics to culture. Social space for Lefebvre is at once a precondition and a result of social superstructures. The state and each of its constituent institutions call for spaces-but spaces which they can then organize according to their specific requirements; so there is no sense in
which space can be treated solely as an a priori condition ofthese institutions and the state which presides over them. Is space a social relationship? Certainlybut one which is inherent to property relationships (especially the ownership of the earth, of land) and also closely bound up with the forces of production (which impose a form on that earth or land); here we see the polyvalence of social space, its "reality" at once formal and material. Though a product to be used, to be consumed, it is also a means ofproduction; networks of exchange and flows of raw materials and energy fashion space and are determined by it. Thus this means of production, produced as such, cannot be separated either from. the productive forces, including technology and knowledge, or from the social division of labour which shapes it, or from the state and the superstructures of sociery.'? Indeed, Lefebvre insists that although space· is formed out of natural and historical elements it is also profoundly political: "it is a product literally filled with ideologies."!' In order to expose these ideologies Lefebvre's methodology differentiates three moments or modalities -of social space: the perceived, the
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conceived, and the lived.. Perceived space is embodied in spatial practice or the time-space routines and spatial structures through which social, political, and economic life is produced and reproduced. Spatial practice can be observed empirically. It is the material expression of social relations in space as manifest in architecture, city-planning, classrooms, marketplaces, factories, and in everyday life. 12 By contrast, lived or representational spaces are those appropriated by the imagination to give physical space meaning by way of historically embedded signs and images.':' Representational space "is alive: it speaks, it has an affective kernel or centre: Ego, bed, bedroom, dwelling, house; or square, church, graveyard. It embraces the loci of passion, of action, and of lived situations ..."14 Further, it is often a place of resistance where cultural and artistic movements oppose the spatial practices of the dominant social order. For our purposes the most important of Lefebvre's three modalities is conceived space or representations of space. These are the conceptual abstractions, the frames ofknowledge (savoir) that configure spatial practices. Representations of space are the abstract, visual, and imaginary spaces of social engineers, urban planners, architects, and cartographers who materially inscribe the dominant social order's relations of production. They are the conduits through which knowledge of space leads to the production. of space in practice. Representations of space intervene and modify spatial textures and have a substantial role in the production of space. Their intervention occurs "by way of architecture, conceived of not as the building of a particular structure, palace or monument, but rather as a project embedded in a spatial context and a texture which calls for 'representations' that will not vanish into the symbolic or imaginary realms."15 Lefebvre's concept of representations of space has some similarity with Michel Foucault's theory of discourse. To be sure, Lefebvre refused any such association and regarded Foucault as an intellectual sophist, purveying idealist conceptions of space premised on the mistaken ontological assumption that the mental realm envelops the social and physical worlds. For Lefebvre, Foucault's use of spatial meraphors-c--for example where Foucault .writes "knowledge [savoir] is also the space in which the subject may· take up a position and speak of the objects with which he deals in his discourse"-lacked intellectual rigor. It failed to specify either the nature of the spaces being considered or how the gap between epistemology and the social use of space could be bridged.l" Nevertheless, Foucault's investigation into the discursive production of space, especially in the later genealogy with its concern with the political mapping of forms of power, has more affinity with the notion of representations of space than Lefebvre seems to allow for. In the earlier archaeology, which sought to reveal how knowledge in diverse systems of thought was conditioned by common figures and tropes, Foucault rejected the standard epistemological assumptions that discourse denotes "the sign of something else" of "things" which are
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"silently anterior to it," and that words are linked to things by relations such as symbolization, reference, or truth.'" As it is not possible to decipher the truth of the world through signs, any representation of the world does violence to things. IS Discourse is not a "groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents orrepresentations)," but "practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.?'? Foucault's increasing awareness of the institutional constraints and controls exercised over the formation of discourses led him toward the genealogical concept of the dispositif or apparatus. As a heterogeneous matrix of discourse and institutional practices the dispositif arises at a given historical moment in response to a particular need, it "has a strategic function and manipulates specific relations of force."2o For example, the apparatus which identified and controlled madness and neurosis arose as a response to the mercantilist economy's need to assimilate the mobile population.r! In the dispositif fluid relations of power and knowledge combine to reproduce ideas of truth and subjectivity.v' Two important consequences derive from the concept of the dispositif First, the subject is unable to speak truth to power. There is no privileged position outside of power from where its hidden effects can' be uncovered by truth. Truth in all societies is the effect of an accepted truth regime in which certain discourses, reproduced by institutions and techniques, are validated as being true. 23 Second, discourses of power/knowledge create subjectivity and identity. They categorize and define the individual qua individual and produce the individual's identity as a subject.j" Although Foucault does not offer a systematic method for analyzing the relationship between space and discourse he is acutely aware of its importance. "There is an administration of knowledge, a politics of knowledge, relations of power which pass via knowledge and which, if one tries to transcribe them, lead one to consider forms of domination designated by such notions as field, region and territory."25 In Discipline and punish Foucault shows how, in the Classical era, incarceration and surveillance were enabled by the discovery of the "docile body" as an object of power to be appropriated, taken apart, and reconstituted for speed and efficiencyr''' Disciplinary power constituted individuals in space by means of several strategies: enclosure within confined spaces such as colleges, schools, barracks, workshops, and factories; partitioning or the assignment of individuals to separate places; the production of functional sites or "useful spaces" coded for particular operations; and classification which allocates places in a system of ranking. 27 Although. Foucault Was at pains to distinguish disciplinary power from sovereign power, Michel de Certeau observes discipline producing and organizing space at all levels of society. Disciplinary power pervades science, politics, and military strategy. It can be deployed by any subject power willing and able to designate a place as its ownfrom which relations with "an exteriority composed of targets or threats" can be managed and controlled.
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The primary task of disciplinary power is to "delimit one's place in a world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other."28 Its secondary concern is to overcome and master the uncertainties of history and time by achieving ownership of and control Over an autonomous place. Sight is the primary modality enabling the exercise of disciplinary power. "The division of space makes possible a panoptic practice proceeding from a place whence the eye can transform foreign forms into objects.that can be observed and measured, and thus control and 'include' them within its scopeofvlsion.V'' De Certeau's broader conceptual framework implies that the state also has disciplinary powers at its disposal. It is therefore at odds with Foucault's insistence that disciplinary power is of another order to "juridico-discursive" or state power based in the discourse of right. The juridico-discursive power of sovereignty and law operates by. prohibition, negative interdiction, and repression. By contrast disciplinary power is productive, and in order to understand how it works we must "cut off the King's head," that is forget the person of the sovereign and his representation of power.30 If a territory is a geographical area controlled by a juridico-political power and Foucualt's distinction between disciplinary and sovereign power is to be respected it may be methodologically problematic to analyze state territoriality deploying genealogical concepts such as ·pbwer/knowledge. 31 However, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's depiction of the state as a body that striates space offers a possible resolution.V Like Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari are interested in non-sovereign forms of power or "rnicropolitics." However, they situate the relationship between micropolitics and state power within a broad conceptual landscape characterised by a ubiquitous opposition between the forces of nomadism and the dictates of State power. This all-pervasive struggle between the rhizomatic nomad and the arboreal State manifests itself in certain registers as "territorialization." Deleuze and Guattari derive their notion of territorialization from Lacan's contention that a mother's nourishment and care is imprinted on her child's libido; producing chargederogenous zones and objects out of organs. However, territorialization is not just limited to this primal psychological relationship but pervades all aspects of man's social relationships. Territorialization denotes the incessant and all-pervasive regulation and coding of flows by social and political "machines." No human society is a milieu of free-exchange and circulation, everyone is marked by "a socius of inscription" whose primary function is to code flows. 33 The most effective agent of territorialization is the state. This "apparatus of capture" draws into itself flows of people, commodities, and capital. As a "milieu of interiority" the state resists and opposes. the nomads and the war-machine which inhabit the outside realm of exteriority.v" This realm of exteriority is the domain of smooth space, which the nomad seeks to expand and which the State seeks to counter. by deploying geom.etric
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and mathematical theories of striation.P It segments space into homogeneous units of equal and translatable values. As with Foucault's disciplinary spaces and Lefebvre's representations of space, vision is at the heart of this process. "The central eye has as its correlate a space through which it moves, but it itself remains invariant in relation to its movements."36 The state's primary function then is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a means of communication in the service of striated space. It is the vital concern of every State not only to vanquish nomadism but to control migrations and, more generally, to establish a zone of rights over an entire "exterior," .over all of the flows traversing the ecumenon.... There is still a need for fixed paths in well-defined directions, which restrict speed, regulate circulation, relativize movement, and. measure in detail the relative movement of subjects and objects.V
Territoriality in Cultures of Space The second heuristic premise to be developed is that representations of political space, and. hence the production of territoriality, are informed by structural codes that determine how a particular cultures represent and use space. Stephen Kern's study of European culture between 1880 and 1914 shows how a culture's dominant representations and conceptions of space impact on almost all dimensions of life. Kern writes, All people, everywhere, in all ages, have a distinctive experience of time and space and, however unconscious, some conception of it. It is possible to interpret how class structures, modes of production, patterns of diplomacy, or means of waging war were manifested historically in terms of changing experiences of time and space.r" In Fin de siecle Europe analogous conceptions of space emerged simultaneously in diverse realms of knowledge from philosophy to aesthetics, from architecture to urban design, and from anthropology to studies of the natural world. Developments in one sphere resonated in others and across the culture as a whole there emerged an understanding of space which substituted universality and homogeneity with relativity and heterogeneity. Elements of this new spatial vocabulary can be identified in Einstein's theory of relativity, which replaced absolute space with an infinite number of spaces perpetually changing position vis-a-vis oneanother, in Cubism which "abandoned the homogeneous space of linear perspective and painted objects in a multiplicity of spaces from multiple perspectives," and in Durkheim's anthropology of religion which showed
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that perceptions of space were not, as Kant had asserted, based on some innate understanding shared by all men, but were culturally dererrn ined.f" These intellectual reconceptualizations of space mirrored profound transformations in social relations. The Cubist leveling of the traditional aesthetic hierarchy, which had prioritized the subject over its background, found its social equivalent in the leveling of aristocratic society, the emergence of democracy, and the collapse of the distinction between sacred and profane spaces in religion. Kern's work is important in that it promotes the idea of an overarching culture of space in which common vocabularies of space are to be found across a wide range of knowledges. The implication for our study is that political theories of territoriality are likely to be conditioned by spatial categories that permeate representations of space throughout the culture of modernity. However, Kern's vivid descriptions of changes in the way in which space was thought about are not complemented by a coherent explanatory methodology. How do changes in one sphere impact on another? Is there a deep underlying structure that determines the conditions of possibility for thinking about space that somehow straddles diverse branches of knowledge? In this respect, Lefebvre is perhaps bolder when he asserts that modernity has one dominant spatial code, one language of space, derived from classical perspective and Euclidean sp!l-ce that arose out of "a specific relationship between town, country and political terr itory.T'" These codes produce a space of common sense; of knowledge (savoir) , of social practice, of political power, a space hitherto enshrined in everyday discourse, just as in abstract thought, as the environment of and channel for communications; the space, too, of classical perspective and geometry, developed from the Renaissance onwards on the basis of the Greek tradition (Euclid, logic) and bodied forth in Western art and philosophy, as in the form of the city and town.v' John Ruggie is one of a few International Relations scholars who has sought to explain transformations in the international system with reference to how changes in territoriality reflect broader developments in the cultural representation of space. 42 For Ruggie the transformation from the medieval to the modern international system was premised on a profound re-irnagining of territoriality, itself a response to an equally fundamental transformation in the principle of socio-political individuation. Ruggie, as a social constructivist, opposes the neorealist view that all international systems are functionally similar. Rather, he sees the modern system of states as embodying a distinctive territorial order. Its social construction drew upon the raw material found in three irreducible dimensions of European collective experience: first, the material environment constituted by eco-demographics, relations of production and
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relations of force; second, the "matrix of constraints and opportunities within which social actors interacted" as defined by the structure of property rights, coalitions between social actors and differences between private and social rates of return; and, third, the mental equipment people use "in imagining and symbolizing forms of political community or collective existence."43 This last dimension, which Ruggie terms the "social episteme," reveals that the emergence of principles of differentiation in political doctrines like cujus regio ejus religio and Rex in regno suo est Imperator regni sui mirrored equivalent transformations in social epistemology such as the replacement of Latin by vernacular vocabularies, the standardization of the I-form of speech, the invention of single-point perspective in visual art, and new notions of individual subjectivity.44 A social epistemedenotes "the process whereby a society first comes to imagine itself, to conceive of appropriate orders of rule and exchange, to symbolize identities and to propagate norms and doctrines.T''' However, Ruggie does not develop the idea of the social episteme other than to suggest that it combines the thesis of German social theory that society comprises webs of meaning and signification and the French idea of mentalites collectives. Ruggie passes over any methodological difficulties that might arise from combining Durkheim's science positive with Weber's verstehen or Foucault's critique of subject-centered reason with Haberrnas's project for communicative rationality. Ruggie's social episterne, while suggestive of the relays between territoriality and cultural representations of space, lacks methodological rigor and cannot he deployed uncritically. More useful is Foucault's concept of the episteme as worked out in the archaeology of knowledge. Although the archaeology does not set out a specific program for investigating spatial discourses as such, its ethos has a distinctly spatial tincture. Foucault's language is full of spatial metaphors: he talks of the "space of knowledge," "epistemological space" and "sites of dispersion." However the utility of the episteme for. analyzing the territorial a priori can be derived from more substantive material. In The Order of Things Foucault describes an episterne as a sort of" historical a priori" which in a given period, delimits in the totality of experience a field of knowledge, defines the mode of being of the objects that appear in the field, provides man's everyday perception with theoretical powers, and defines the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognised to be true. 46 The episteme denotes an unconscious set of rules, a system of regularities, that determines how a culture orders things. This system, which establishes relations ofsimilarity and difference between things, provides objects with their identities. In making reference to the Renaissance or Classical episteme Foucault does not
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intend to invoke the sense of a Weltanschauung or spirit of an age. An episterne does not underpin all forms of knowledge within a culture.V The archaeologist's task is to expose the" discursive regularities" that identify and order the objects of knowledge in heterogeneous discourses. Thus, in the Classical age (roughly 1650-1800), which is the main focus of The Order o/Things, Foucault finds a pattern of discursive regularities, a "polymorphous cluster. of correlations," in the relations within and between the empirical sciences of natural history, general grammar and the analysis of wealth. 48 Each of these branches of knowledge was subject to the epistemic order of representation inwhich the identities of things were established by marking out their differences from others. Its main structures were mathesis- (a universal science of measurement'and taxonomia-the principle of classification or ordered tabulation. From an archaeological perspective there is identity where we might expect difference: natural history, general.grammar, and the. analysis of wealth share codes .that produce similarities between statements produced in each branch of knowledge. In accordance with this archaeological principle, the conditions of possibility for the articulation of the modern territorial a priori must be sought not only in the realm of political discourse but also in other. spatial discourses which share its underlying ordering principles. Foucault set his archaeology against progressive narratives of the evolution of science in which the subject as historical consciousness achieves ever greater objectivity and knowledge of the world. Rather, archaeology traces the ruptures, breaks, and discontinuities between epistemes. The . Classical episteme did not evolve organically out of the Renaissance episterne, "the prose of the world," in which words and things were united in a web of resemblance or similitude. This form of knowledge is incommensurable with the Classical episteme which "replaced infinite resemblance with finite difference."49 Likewise, the ordered regularities of the Classical episteme are incommensurable with the dynamic historical categories of the modern episrerne, which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century. The modern episteme was the first to posit man in his factual, contingent existence as a legitimate object of inquiry. Hence Foucault's controversial claim that "the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date."5o Thus the archaeology also demonstrates there is difference where we might expect identity: in terms of their ordering principles these Classical empirical sciences of natural history, general grammar, and the analysis of wealth have little in common with the modern discourses of philology, political economy, and biology that replaced them. It might be objected that if our task is to prove that the modern territorial a priori was established during the Renaissance then Foucault's archaeology is an inappropriate method because it stresses discontinuity. According to its caesurallogic Renaissance territoriality is most likely to. be incommensurable.with classical, let alone, modern
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territoriality. However, Foucault made it clear that epistemes do not pervade an entire culture, but unite specific discourses. ''Archaeology disarti~ulates the synchronicity of breaks.... [tjhe period is neither its basic unity, not its horizon.... if it speaks of these things it is always in terms of particular discursive practices.T'! Both Lefebvre and Kern agree that the modern spatial episteme extended from the Renaissance invention of perspective to Einstein's subversion of the Euclidean paradigm, and it is within this epistemic timeframe that the territorial a priori was articulated and legitimized. Foucault's archaeology traverses established disciplinary boundaries in its search for the epistemic "conditions of possibility" underlying the articulation of statements in different discursive formations. This inter-disciplinary ethos is taken a step further in Deleuze and Guattari's "schizoanalysis" which describes the multiple rhizomatic networks that criss-cross multiple domains of being and thought. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari also prioritize the question of space and its relationship to thought. In particular, they highlight the relays and associations between, on the one hand, smooth space and nomadic or rhizomatic thought, and on the other hand, striated space and state thought.V Deleuze and Guattari term the dominant tradition of Western thought, particularly as represented by linguistics and psychoanalysis, as arborescent or State thought. It is organized by the principle of interiority that establishes a structure or axis (the soul, consciousness, or production) in terms of which objects and their relations to other objects are understood and explained. They contrast arborescent thought with rhizomatic or nomadic thought which, driven by desire, seeks to forge multiple, ever changing and mutating connections or lines between heterogeneous realms such as semiotic chains, organizations of power, the arts and sciences, and social struggles. 53 The antagonism between arborescent and nomadic thought extends into all realms of intellectual endeavor. In the sciences, for example, nomadic thought is represented by Archimedean and atomist sciences which fix on flux and flows and emphasize becoming and heterogeneity. However, they are marginalized by the keepers of royal or State sciences who promote Euclidean space and Newtonian gravity in order to prioritize the stable, the eternal, and the identical. Similarly, modern philosophy, as embodied in the Cartesian cogito and Kantian critique, takes the form of State thought. In the modern rational state everything "revolves around the legislator and the subject."54 State thought orders mental space in terms of two universals: "the Whole as the final ground of being" and "the Subject as the principle that converts being into being-for-us."55 Although dominant, State thought has been challenged by. thinkers like Kierkegaard,Nietzsche, and Foucault whose nomadic ethos seeks to undermine the universal thinking subject, resist any grounding in totality, and offers sites of resistance to State
rhought.r"
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In terms of space, the arborescent/nomadic confrontation is manifest in the opposition between the smooth and the striated. Whereas in the abstract realm striated and smooth spaces exist and are produced in opposition to one another, in practice they combine in unstable configurations. Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate the alrerity between smooth and striated space across several registers or modalities: a technological model contrasts the parallels and perpendiculars of woof and weave in cloth with the fibrous entanglement of felt; a musical model, drawing on Boulez, distinguishes the organization of horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonies with the continuous variation of form that produces properly rhythmic values; an environmental model opposes the open undefined spaces of desert, sea or steppe with the closed delineated spaces of the city; and a mathematical model separates the fixing of points and line within coordinates and axes in Euclidean physics from the open geometry of Archimedes or the multiplicities of Riemann space.V There are profound differences between smooth and striated spaces. First, the relations between points and lines differ: in striated space a line is something that goes between two points, as in geometry, while in smooth space priority is given to the line, with the points acting merely as relays between successive lines. Second, lines have different characteristics in the two spaces: in smooth space lines are locally directional with open intervals, while in striated space lines are subordinate to global dimensionality and have closed intervals. Third, the surface of each space isdifferent: "[i]n striated space, one closes off a surface and 'allocates' it according to .determinate intervals, assigned breaks; in the smooth, one'distributes' oneself in open space, according to frequencies and in the course of one's crossing (logos and nomos)."58 In striated space, whose archetypes are Euclidean geometry and Renaissance perspective, planes and. surfaces are homogeneous; it has no qualitative values but viewed from or concentrated on a central point is abstract and universally replicable; in it points can he specified, counted, and mapped and trajectories are determined by the points from which they leave and arrive. By contrast in the heterogeneous "particularities" of smooth space, points are subordinate to the trajectory; the inside spaces of tents, .igloos or boats conform to and are determined by the outside-s--sreppe, ice or sea; smooth space is directional rather than dimensional or. metric; lines are vectors which organize the points and stops; in smooth space affects rather than properties dominate and perception is haptic rather than optic-one travels by being receptive to the tactile and sonorous qualities of the intensities, particularly winds, that occupy it. At the political or social level, whereas the state is the institution of territorialization or striation par excellence, the nomad occupies smooth space. Nomadic territoriality is exercised across smooth space by constituting points, such as water holes and assembly points, as mere relays on a trajectory, subordinate to and not determining of paths. Nomadic trails or routes have a different
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function to the sedentary roads imposed by state bodies which parcel out a closed space to people, assigning each person a share and regulating communication. The nomad's trajectory" distributes people (or animals) in an open space, one that is indefinite and non-communicating.T" While sedentary space is striated by "walls, enclosures, and roads between enclosures", nomadic space is smooth, "marked only by 'traits' that are effaced and displaced with the trajectory.P" Just as the state perpetually seeks to striate space so the nomad deploys the war machine "the constitutive element of smooth space" to continually expand smooth space, to "increase the desert."61
Histories of Space and Territory So far we have established two heuristic propositions. First, the object ofenquiry, the territorial a priori, is not an objective material resource but an idea, a component of the modern social imaginary produced in discourse. Second, we should not examine territory exclusively from within the parameters of political theory. Discourses of territoriality produce and naturalize the politics of space-and need to be related to the ideas and practices that permeate a society's culture of space. The third proposition is that as cultures of space emerge, mutate, and disappear so do. discourses of territoriality. This principle is opposed to the prlrnordialist contention that territory is a universal pre-condition o{all social life. Advocates of primordialism trace it back to Aristotle's writings on the polis, and see its paradigmatic statement in Ferdinand Tennies' theory that by according symbolic or sacred value to soil Gemeinschaft societies are able to ensure that residence thereon is the basic qualification for membership of the .community.62 To be sure, the primordialist theory of territory is more sophisticated than the territorial a priori in so far as territory is not simply synonymous with empty physical space but is understood as the repository of symbolic value. Because territory is life sustaining the. collective consciousness becomes symbolically attached to it and its boundaries become defined by shared language, religion, or law. 63 Nevertheless, for prirnordialists, like Stephen Grosby, this symbolic attachment is "a fundamental feature of all human societies," as basic to human existence as nourishment or shelter.P" It is universal and cannot be "segregated historically" for in all historical situations "man has believed that his (sic) own life is dependent upon the continued existence of the territorial sovereignty of 'his country' for it gives and sustains life·."65 Putting aside the questionable hermeneutic which gives Grosby knowledge of the meaning that territory has had for all men and the contestable humanist assumptions embodied in his notion of man, can it really be the case that territoriality exists outside of history, unaffected by changes in economic modes of production, cultural codes or political institutions?
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Even within .International Relations primordialism has been challenged. Ruggie maintains that the configuration of political space and territory that characterises the modern international system is, in some instances, being replaced by a postmodern order based in alternative principles of spatial differenriation.P'' Ruggie worries that International Relations, relying on Waltz's neorealist understanding of change in the international system as being determined by variations in the distribution of capabilities among constituent units, lacks the appropriate conceptual vocabulary with which to account for this transformation. He hopes that by exploring how changes in the principles of differentiation caused the previous structural transformation from the medieval to modern international system, we might derive an appropriate conceptual vocabulary with which to theorize the emergence of a postmodern international system. Again neorealism is found wanting here. Waltz is unable to explain the transformation from a medieval to modern international system because he understands differentiation as denoting the comparative differences between units rather than the underlying principles that separate them. 67 Drawing on Meinecke's portrayal of medieval actors as being restricted by "heteronomous shackles on their authority," Ruggie claims that in medieval Europe the underlying principle of differentiation was that of heteronomy, meaning that actors were subject to a variety of different laws or principles. Political authority was exercised through personal relations that blurred the boundaries between public and private. The medieval political landscape was a complex mosaic of "overlapping and incomplete rights of government" in which "different juridical instances were geographically interwoven and stratified; and plural allegiances, asymmetrical suzerainties and anomalous enclaves abounded.T'" Inside and outside did not exist as clearly demarcated realms. The first territorial markers established in the thirteenth century functioned more as permeable frontier zones rather than as rigid boundaries. The conflation of public authority with private estates and multiple chains of lord-vassal relations meant that the medieval aristocracy claimed authority over non-contiguous spaces throughout Europe. Further, the common bodies of law, religion, and custom that legitimized the medieval system of rule byrecourse to inclusive natural rights did not threaten the integrity of the constituent units in the system because the units "viewed themselves as municipal embodiments of a universal community.P" In sum, "the spatial extension of the medieval system of rule was structured by a nonexclusive form of territoriality, in which authority was both personalized and parcelized within and across territorial formations and for which inclusive bases of legitimation prevailed."70 The principle of differentiation which underpins the distribution of political space in rnodemuv is the antonym of heteronomy: homonomy which denotes 'oe\.n.~ ~~'o\ec.t. t.() t.b.e. ~<\.m.e \<\."Ws. \he ID.()Q.etn. ~t.<\.t.e \~ <\. \~~\()t\. ()\ <\. \?<\.tt.\.c.u.\ar
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form of property, embodying the right to exclude others from possession, with a form of authority based on the total integration of all legal authority into one public realm: "the modern system of rule consists of the institutionalization of private property within rnutually exclusive jurisdictional domains."71 In modernity the principle of homonomy structures political space into "territorially disjoint, mutually exclusive, functionally similar, sovereign sta~es."72 These sovereign territories evolved hand in hand with the consolidation of parallel spatial distinctions between public and private and internal and external. The "modern system of rule has ... differentiated its subject collectivity into territorially defined, fixed, and mutually exclusive enclaves of legitimate dorninion.V'' Although the heteronorny-homonomy opposition does not prioritize the reorientation of territoriality from a world of vertically structured hierarchies to a horizontal order, it is implicit throughout. The presence of overlapping jurisdictions implies a hierarchical stratification of authority, while independent territorial. states exist side by side on a horizontal spatial plane. Ruggie's work highlights the historicity of practices of territoriality. The universalist pretensions of the territorial a priori are also challenged by Deleuze and Guattari's comprehensive history of territorialization in the Anti-Oedipus, which traces, over an extensive temporal horizon, the lines of flight along which vectors of de-territorialization pass and the efforts of striating institutions to reterritorialize these flows. 74 The Anti-Oedipus proposes that primitive, despotic, and capitalist "social machines" are distinguished by three distinctive modalities of territorialization.f" Of these only the primitive machine is literally territorial for it inscribes bodies onto an indivisible earth. It controls the productive forces by "tattooing, excising, carving, scarifying, mutilating, encircling and initiating" bodies?6 In primitive society the enjoyment of rights and the assignment of duties are legitimized by symbolically marking bodies and consigning organs and their exercise to the collectivity. The first signs in human history are "territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies" and which attach and inscribe the primitive's body onto "the undifferentiated, undivided earth."77 When these primitive rural communities are overcome by barbarian despotic states a new modality of territorialization comes into play. The earth is divided and segmented by a landed and residential administration. This is less a promotion of territoriality than the first moment of de-territorialization. "The immanentunity of the earth as the immobile motor gives way to a transcendent unity of an altogether different nature-e--the unity of the State; the full body is no longer that of the earth, it is the full body of the Despot ..."78 The despotic State machine overcodes the territorial codes and filiations of the primitive machine and transfers them to the despot's body, which becomes the focus of desire and production. Advanced forms of the despotic state take advantage of developments in the sciences of mathematics and geometry to promote rational
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models of territorialization. The Greek city-states embodied. a "homogeneous isotopic space" and the Roman Empire imposed a "geometrical or linear reason ofState on space", marking the boundaries of segmented spaces by means of the lines of camps and fortifications. The third moment of territorialization, characterized by decoded flows, arises with the emergence of the capitalist social machine. Capitalism is a "general axiomatic of decoded flows" that evolves from the conjugation of decoded and de...territorialized flows of unqualified wealth and unqualified labor; it replaces intrinsic codes with an "axiomatic of abstract quantities in the form of money."79 Capitalism substitutes the codes and over-codes of the primitive and despotic machines for an axiomatic of abstract quantities determined by exchange. However, this decoding carries substantial risk for the subjectivity released as labor and desire resists reintegration into the capitalist axiomatic. Hence the capitalist state must be the most effective apparatus of capture. It must re-territorialize and recode these schizophrenic flows, which, if left, will form vectors ·of nomadism traveling liberally within: .the domains of smooth space.f" The modern state is not displaced by global' capitalism but serves as the locus where capitalism is realized: it groups together and combines the various flows required by capitalist production. Capitalist territorialization therefore combines "trans-national capital as locus of high-speed deterritorialization and ... various forms of State as loci of rererritorializatlon.T" Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on the relationship between the body and space as an intrinsic element in the history of territorialization is mirrored in Lefebvre's history of Western culture as decorporeaiization. He identifies a transition from the "space of the body," in which spaces were ordered and conceived of in terms of the body's organization, to the "body-in-space," where the body becomes fragmented' and decomposed into localized functions. The earliest modes of production both produce and are reproduced in absolute space, which takes two forms. The space of primitive societies is analogical in that the physical form of dwellings and villages represents and reproduces a divine bodyitself a projection of the human body. The first ancient civilizations introduced a cosmological space in which the built form of the political city, its elements and configurations, expresses the architecture of the cosmos. The city-state, establishes a fixed centre by coming to constitute a hub, a privileged focal point, surrounded by peripheral areas which bear it stamp. From this moment on, the vastness of pre-existing space appears to come under the thrall of a. divine order. At the same time the town seems to gather in everything which surrounds it, including the natural and the divine, and the earth's evil and good forces. As image of the universe (imago mundi), urbanspace is reflected in the rural space that it possesses and indeed in a sense contains. 82
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Both analogical and cosmological space are absolute and iconic. They do not refer to or symbolize any reality outside of or beyond themselves. For its citizens "the city constituted their representation of space as a whole, of the earth, of the world."83 Political and religious spaces, set apart from the mundane, are simultaneously imaginary and reaL "The 'mental' is 'realized' in a chain of 'social' activities because, in the temple, in the city, in monuments and palaces, the imaginary is transformed into the real."84 Everything in these societies was situated, perceived, and interpreted in terms of such places. Absolute space was thus more than just a collection of signs or sites but "a space, at once and indistinguishably mental and social, which comprehends the entire existence of the group concerned.Y'' With the decline of the ancient civilizations and the emergence of the feudal mode of production in Western Europe absolute space was replaced by symbolic space. Symbolic space literally de-crypted the subterranean spaces of death, the catacombs and burial chambers that had embodied the cosmos in the early Christian imaginary. From the twelfth century onward space was turned on its head and inverted. The darkness and descent of tombs and crypts give way to the illumination and elevation of the monumental Gothic cathedrals. These buildings were the built archetypes for the hierarchical spatial iIiiaginary of medieval culture and we shall explore how they both expressed and legitimized religious and political hierarchies in chapter 5. Gothic cathedrals were vast symbolic spaces whose architectonics, structured according to the hierarchical allocation of horizontal layers, conveyed two important motifs. The first was, of course, the dominion of heaven. On entering these cathedrals the observer's thought was inexorably drawn up from the mundane world of appearances to contemplate the wonders of the divine order. Second, these were also sociopolitical spaces suffused with signs of power. The vertical towers and emblematic facades signified the prestige and authority of "Church, King and city to the crowds flocking to the porch."86 Lefebvre's fourth spatial order is that of abstract space, which is aligned to the capitalist mode of production. Lefebvre, as we have already seen, considered the modern codes of space to be underpinned by the criteria of classical perspective and geometry. While the symbolic spaces of the feudal order were partially constituted through a visual logic, which combined the abstract language of geometry and logic with theocratic authority, the abstract spaces of capitalism are constituted by an all-encompassing logic of visualization, embedded in the regime of linear perspective.V By the end of the twentieth century the spread of late capitalism had ensured the global triumph of abstract space. These spaces of late capitalism are constituted by representations of space that are complicit with the complementary processes of commodification and bureaucratization. The commodification of space imposes a geometric grid of property relations and
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property markets on the earth, while commodification (through space installs economic grids of capital circulation through. which abstract space inscribes abstract labor and the commodity form. This commodification process is complemented by bureaucratization. The bureaucratization of space occurs where an administrative system stakes out and marks it territory. Meanwhile bureau-cratization through space installs juridico-political grids which allow the state to survey and regulate social life. 8 8 In the aesthetic register, abstract space. was created through the spatial language of modernists such as Picasso, Klee, and Kandinsky who privileged the optical as the basis of aesthetic practice. Picasso's art presents "an unreservedly visualized space, a dictatorship of the eye and of the phallus.T'" Leaving aside the specific details of these histories of space, we can derive some important conclusions from them for the purposes of the present study. First, they all accept that spatial ideas and practices vary according to particular historical conditions, which they both reflect and help to constitute. Thus, despite its self-proclaimed universal purchase, we must recognise that the territorial a priori is embedded within the specific modernculture of space. Second, while these histories of space offer different periodizations of spatial orders, they all acknowledge the distinctiveness of the modern regime of space. They all, explicitly or implicitly, highlight a fundamental. rupture between medieval and modern cultural representations of space. Ruggie identifies this. as the shift from heteronomy to homonomy; for Deleuze and Guattari it is the. shift from despotic de-territorialization to the capitalist axiomatic of flows; and Lefebvre characterizes it as a transition from symbolic to abstract space. Our task is to delineate the precise contours of this transformation as it relates to the re-imagination of political territoriality, by comparing and contrasting the medieval spatial regime of hierarchy with the modern territorial order of anarchy. Finally, each of these histories emphasizes an intimate relationship between the visual and space and, in particular, the role of linear perspective in the promotion of modern rational and logical space. Linear perspective was, of course, a Renaissance invention and was one of the primary elements in the reimagining of the Western spatial imaginary that led to the consolidation of the modern territorial a priori. However, before addressing the Renaissance we must first describe Medieval Europe's hierarchical imaginary of space and territoriality.
CHAPTER 4
Hierarchy, Order, and Space in the Medieval World
d eas of territorial-sovereignty are not universal and fixed but historical and fluid. They are the products of particular, arbitrary, and ever-changing discursive conjunctions of politics and space. Histories of territorial-sovereignty must therefore avoid two temptations: either to write a progressive history in which sovereign-territoriality achieves its telos in modernity, or to assume that absolute discontinuities or ruptures exist between different modes of territorialization. Both of these tendencies are present in the Westphalia narrative that represents medieval international politics as other to the modern international system of sovereign territorial states. This dichotomy between medieval and modern must be set aside and attention paid to the complex and often contradictory processes of transition, some evolutionary, some caesural and some continuous between the medieval spatial political order of hierarchy and the modern territorial order of anarchy. Accordingly the Renaissance, an era that is at once both medieval and modern and neither of these, becomes a legitimate locus of enquiry. However, the immediate task at hand is to familiarize ourselves with the medieval landscape of hierarchy and its manifestations in the medieval discourse of territoriality.
I
Dionysius and the Sacred Order of Hierarchy Kenneth Waltz contends that domestic and international politics can be differentiated in terms of the ordering principles of hierarchy and anarchy. The parts ofdomestic political systems stand in relations ofsuper- and subordination. Some are entitled to command; others are required to obey. Domestic
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systems are centralized and hierarchic. The parts of international-political systems stand in relations of coordination. Formally, each is the equal of all the others. None is entitled to command; none is required to obey. International systems are decentralized and anarchic.' For many International Relations theorists the hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy serves as a universal model for distinguishing the realms of international and domestic politics. In the Westphalia narrative this synchronic structural model is inserted into history and becomes employed diachronically to differentiate the modern anarchical international system from the medieval hierarchical system that preceded it. However, in the medieval imaginary hierarchy had meanings and significations that extended far beyond simple "relations of super- and subordina... tion." The term hierarchy, in medieval Latin (h)ierarchia, is derived from the Greek bierarlehes composed of hieros sacred and -arkhes rule. The paradigm of the medieval understanding of hierarchy was established in. the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an unknown Greek author of the fifth or sixth century. The De coelesti hierarchia .(On the Celestial Hierarchy) and De ecclesiastica bierarchia (On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy) were repeatedly translated and commented upon in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to Ernst Cassirer, Dionysius' oeuvre constituted. a unifying standard of medieval thought, an assessment confirmed in Dante's Com media, in which Dionysius resides in Paradise, at a vantage point from where he can observe the hierarchy of the angelic order.? Dionysius gave himself to contemplation of these same orders with such holy zeal that he named and ranked them just as I have done." Dionysian hierarchy is underwritten by the N eo-Platonist principle of emanation, associated with Plotinus; that all things proceed from, are derived from, and are understood in terms of, the One, the Absolute, the first principle. NeoPlatonists conceived of emanation as the diffusion of a light issuing from a primal source of infinite intensity. Dionysius regarded the source of this light to he God so "each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us, and, in its power to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the oneness and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in."4 As the light ray descends so it creates things-angels, men, animals-until it reaches a place where it can penetrate no further and there is only darkness and nothingness. Lying about thefeet of God is a golden chain binding all that exists between the two infinities. Each rank in the chain strives to ascend the order and to transmit
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its manifestation ofdivine light to the stage below. The creations of the divine ray are finite mirror images (speculum) of God, a theophany or manifestation of the divine, whose position within the hierarchy are determined by their relative degree of perfection.P Medieval scholastics reinforced the Dionysian hierarchy by combining it with the doctrine ofanalogy, which denoted a proportional relationship between God and his creations. The universe is ordered by analogy: all created things are images (aenigmata) or symbols of a divine reality, which they can indicate but not have a pure sense of Even forms drawn from the lowliest matter can have correspondence with heavenly beings, for matter "owes its subsistence to absolute beauty and keeps, throughout its earthly ranks, some echo of intelligible beauty. Using matter, one may be lifted up to the immaterial archetypes.I''' These archetypes or ideas (paradeigmata), which determine the order of the universe, exist only in God in whose being they are united. The relationship of the divine to created effects is one of manifestation. Conversely effects are related to their cause by imitation (mimesis) or participation (methexis). The models are .thus both causal principles and goals toward which created things strive. Analogy denotes the possible degree of imitation any particular being can have to the absolute, its place and role in the hierarchy of reality. Driven ~y love all things seek assimilation or union with the divine. Yet even after achieving such union they retain their place in the hierarchical order, for the degree. of perfection they can achieve by becoming themselves is a relative state of perfection as established by the divine idea. Salvation does not result in a thing losing its identity through assimilation with God, but is a perfect correspondence between a thing and its archetype." For Dionysius hierarchy.is a trinity: it is "a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divinc/" Its goal is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with him. A hierarchy has God as its leader of all understanding and action. It is forever looking directly at. the comeliness of God. A hierarchy bears in itself the mark of God. Hierarchy causes it members to be images of God in all respects, to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed of God himself. It ensures that when its members have received this full and divine splendour they can then pass on this light generously and in accordance with God's will to beings further down the scale." There are, as Joseph Anthony Mazzeo observes, military connotations to this representation of hierarchy as a sacred order or ranking (taxis). Hierarchy is a "cosmological chain of command" which ensures that divine radiation is transmitted according to the precise order that God, who is master of all hierarchies,
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establishes between the ranks. Order pertains to hierarchy in the senses of both arrangement and commandment. The structure of the universe and the place of beings in it are fixed absolutely by divinely established laws. An order of being can only partake of divine illumination through. the mediation of the order above, for each rank not only has its own illumination and powers but incorporates .the attributes of those lying. below: "[h]ierarchy is thus a 'scale of forms,' each higher form transcending but including the functions and powers of the forms below,"!" The highest hierarchy, which most nearly attains to perfection, is the heavenly hierarchy of angels or intelligences. They have no need of mediation through other forms and therefore surround GOd.I I The nine intelligences are grouped into three triads, positioned in ascending ordet according to their functions of purification, illumination, and perfection. The first triad, which "circles in immediate proximity to God," comprises, starting with the most perfect, seraphim or perpetual warmth, cherubim or "the power to know and to see God," and God-bearing thrones. Seraphim, closest to God, is able to absorb divinity perfectly and can hold the divine light unveiled and undiminished; it is aflame with love for God. Second, cherubim, able to contemplate divine power in its primordial essence, is radiant with light derived from its knowledge of God and his mysteries, with which it seeks to enlighten others. Finally, thrones, which are free of all earthly passion and material concern, can receive god's justice in its divine essence, glorify in it, and transmit it to rulers on earth. The middle ranks of heavenly intelligences, which "indicate ways in which God is imitated and conformed to," include dominions, the virtues and the powers. Dominions are unfettered by earthly tendencies toward the tyranny of dissimulation or slavery and send down power to assist temporal authorities to govern prudently. The virtues, looking directly to the transcendent power, receive divine enlightenment. with courage and determination. They are filled with a divine strength which allows them to perform great miracles. Third, the powers or holy authorities receive God in a harmonious and uniform way and embody the orderly nature of celestial and intellectual authority. They have power over the devil and can help people resist the temptations offered to them by demons. The final triad comprises the "godlike principalities, archangels and angels." It is closest to the world and is primarily concerned with revelation. The principalities, imbued with princely powers, command the lower angels and direct them to the fulfillment of divine orders. The archangels and angels "take care of our own hierarchy." Archangels, the guardians of nations and individuals, oversee prophecies, knowledge, and the understanding of God's will. At the bottom of the heavenly hierarchy and closestto men are the angels. Angels are appointed as men's guardians. They announce the lesser mysteries and intentions of God and teach people how to live virtuously and righteously before God. Each of the
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heavenly powers have specific functions and, as movers of the spheres, rule over natural processes. However, for Dionysius their most important role is as mediators and transmitters of light as grace, knowledge, being and beauty. They are intermediary beings between god .and man, representing degrees of knowledge and consciousness, which radiate truth and grace down to the place where the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies converge. In De ecclesiastica bierarchia, Dionysius reaffirms that "every hierarchy is divided in three" but recasts the division in terms of sacraments, initiators and initiated.V Divinity extends its sacred gifts into the human domain through the lowest order of hierarchy: that of the Law. In this hierarchy truths are contained in symbolism, enigmas, and imagery, for men's "weak eyes" would be harmed if they looked directly upon the truths contained in the divine light. The legal hierarchy described by Dionysius is that of the Jewish rite which preceded the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Christian rite. It comprises three elements: sacraments or an "uplifting to worship in spirit; the initiators or those men whom Moses initiated into the holy tabernacle; and the initiated or those whom these symbols of the law lift Up."13 Between the heavenly hierarchy and the hierarchy of the law stands the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It shares with the celestial hierarchy the "contemplation of understanding" and with the hierarchy of the Law "the use ofvaried symbolism." While the pure intelligences of celestial hierarchy function according to spiritual principles, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is composed of incarnate intelligences that transmit spiritual truths and powers via sensible agencies such as the sacraments and teaching. The members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have special knowledge of the Scriptures and transmit this knowledge through language and rites to men. As with the other two hierarchies, the powers are ordered according to functions of purification, illumination and perfection. Deacons oversee purification by providing ethical instruction to those who do not carry "God's likeness within them," i.e, catechumens, penitents, and the possessed.l'' Once purified, these souls are then lifted up to the "light-bearing order of priests" which "guides the initiates to the divine vision of the sacraments." However, only the "divine order of hierarchs," the highest within the human hierarchy, who are able to contemplate the intelligible. realm directly have the powers of consecration. The rites of bishops "are images of the power of the divinity, by which the hierarchs perfect the holiest of symbols and all the sacred ranks.') All the hierarchs from pope to bishops have spiritual plenitudo potestatis, or the power to sanctify, instruct and govern. The pope is the sole ruler of this monarchical structure. We shall return to a consideration of the role of the papacy in this hierarchical structure, and in particular to the question of th~ relationship of the pontiff to the heavenly hierarchy, in the next chapter. However, for now it is enough to recognize that this vertically ordered Dionysian hierarchy served
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as the epistemic condition of possibility for the erection of a hierarchical spatial architectonics that would support medieval theocracy for a millennium.
Feudalism and the Three Orders Ernst Cassirer suggests that the distinction between the lower and higher worlds, which is fundamental in Dionysius's account of the hierarchies, operated as a structural principle that ordered the entire social and political imaginary of medieval European culture. In religious life we find the ecclesiastical hierarchy that reaches from the Pope at the summit, to the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops down to the lower degrees of the clergy. In the state the highest power is concentrated in the Emperor, who delegates this power to his inferiors, the princes, the dukes, and all the other vassals. This feudal system is an exact image and counterpart of the general hierarchical system; it is an expression and a symbol of that universal cosmic order that has been established by God and which, therefore, is eternal and imrnutable.P Drawing on this observation, and in accordance with our working principle that territorial imaginaries are produced in heterogeneous discourses of space, this section will discuss how the hierarchical spatial imaginary was manifested in feudalism and its ideology of the three orders. Feudalism was the dominant social order across much of Europe from the mid ninth to early thirteenth centuries. As in Marc Bloch's classic definition, feudalism denotes A subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e, the fief) instead of a salary ... ; the supremacy of a class of specialized warriors; ties of obedience and protection which bind man to man and, within the warrior class, assume the distinctive form called vassalage; fragmentation of authority .... 16 Feudalism incorporated two primary institutions: first, the personal relations of vassalage that bound alord to his freeman or noble follower; and second, the fief or the property relationship that vassalage implied. I? In feudal society "the characteristic human bond was the subordinate's link with a nearby chief. From one level to another the ties thus formed...........like so many chains branching out indefinitely-joined the smallest to the greatest."18Compared· to serfdom, which bound the peasant tenants to servile labor on lordly estates in perpetuity, vassalage was more of a voluntary or reciprocal personal relationship which
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had to be reaffirmed whenever one of the original parties to the arrangement died. Vassalage was a relationship of protection distinctive to a warrior class. Originating in the personal ties of the barbarian war-bands, it flourished in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth century where the state was weak and neither family nor village could provide protection against external threats. Free men entered into vassalage through the ritual of commendation and by taking an oath of fidelity. The homage or commendation paid by a vassal to the lord was symbolized by placing joined hands between those of the lord, a kneeling proc... lamation of declaration and, finally, a kiss. These rituals signaled that the vassal would enter into a relationship of dependence and protection with a king or lord for the rest of his life. In return for providing the lord with military assistance (auxilium) and counsel (consilium) he would receive protection and some form of maintenance. He might become a member of the lord's household or receive wages in money or land. The homage ritual was subsequently reinforced by Christian rites of fealty, such as laying hands on gospels or relics. These rites symbolized that the rights and duties of vassalage were based in mutual fealty or fidelity. The Frankish Kings .Pepin III (747-68) and Charlemagne (768--814) promoted vassalage as a system of hierarchically arranged layers of lords to extend their authority from their own vassi dominici to all their subjects. Despite the king's position. at the apex of the pyramid of vassal relations he could not count on the support of all those at lower levels. The personal nature of the links between lords and vassals meant that in .a situation where the king came into conflict with a lord it was likely that lord's vassals would fight on the lord's behalf against the royal forces. As the thirteenth century French jurist John de Blanchot put it "the man of my man is not my man."19 Indeed, as the emergence of a plethora of private vassalages, following the break-down of the Carolingian Empire in the middle of the ninth century, showed vassalage could exist independently of a centralized state authority. The forces that bound society together were personal bonds rather than abstract ideas of respublica. In classical feudalism property relations of vassalage were embodied in benefice or fiefs. Fiefs were units of property either created by a lord granting property, usually in . land, to someone to hold in fief to him, or through the surrender of an alod or independent property to a lord which was then received back as a fief. A fief was distinguished from the servile holdings of peasants and privately held alods-although the distinction became blurred following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire when many fiefs became effectively alodized. With the revival of monarchical authority in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the alods were converted back to fiefs. Subsequently, practically all social groups above the peasantry were bound together by vassalage relations. Each vassal owed duties both to his immediate lord above hi~ and to his own vassals below to whom he had granted a fief. As such "landholdings formed a
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hierarchy-the 'hierarchy of tenure' or 'feudal pyramid'."20 Whereas Roman law concepts of dominion held that property rightswere absolute, the system of fiefs was based in the convention that property was divisible. As Bloch points out in the feudal world the word "ownership" (propriete) as applied to landed pro~erty (un immeublei would have been almost meaniriglessr" Harold Berman argues that according to feudal notions of property land "was not 'owned' by anyone; it was 'held' by superiors in a ladder of 'tenures' leading to the king or other supreme lord. (,Tenure,' derived from the Latin word tenere, 'to hold,' itself means 'a holding')."22 Further, property as fief was not clearly distinguished from government, reflecting the absence of rigorous distinction between public and private realms. Fiefs carried jurisdictional rights and obligations that were settled in local courts. The hierarchical structures of feudal society were symbolized in the rituals of chivalry. The rigid mores and .codes of chivalry, in Johan Huizinga's view "the crown of the whole social system," reinforced the conviction that the social, order was divinely ordained.r" Value was determined by one's proximity in space to God: "if the degrees of the social edifice are conceived of as the lower steps of the throne of the Eternal, the value assigned to each order, will not depend on its util. proXimIty ' . . to t h e hi:Ig h est pace. ' I "24 Th e ity, but on its sanctity-th at is to say, Its social hierarchy of feudalism was also symbolized by depictions of God as a magisterial figure in Carolingian art. Pictures showing God enthroned as an imperial sovereign, the Pantocrator, his head encircled by thernandorla, affirmed that "God had become a feudal lord or Dominus."25 A similar message is found in texts like the Libri Carolini which reiterated St. Augustine's assertion that the "Creator is called creator with respect to his creatures just as the master is called master with respect to his servants," and St Anselm's Cur Deus Homo which portrayed God as a feudal lord owed vassal service by angels, monks, and peasants.r" Georges Duby has argued that rnost significant collective "mental representation" or imaginaire of feudal society was that of the three orders, first articulated by two eleventh century bishops in Northern France.V In the poem Carmen ad Rodbertum regem, Adalberon bishop of Laon declared that The celestial people then form more bodies, and the people of the earth are arranged in its image .... The house of God, which i~.~ believed to be one, is therefore divided into three: here below, some prey (orant), others fight (pugnant) and others still work (laborant). These three parts co-exist and cannot be separated; the services rendered by one provide the conditions by which the others can operate.r" Likewise, the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium records a speech by Gerard bishop of Cambrai in which "he demonstrated that from the beginning" the
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human species has been divided into three: between the people of prayer (oratoribus), the cultivators (agricultoribus) and the warriors (pugnatoribus); he provided the self-evident proof that each is the object of a part and at the same time ofa reciprocal care."29 Duby maintains, following' Georges Dumezil, that the bishops' scheme is derived from the prevalence in Indo-European civilizations ofa tripartite structure of sovereignty in which jurist, warrior and pri~~t constitUte its three different aspects of law, violence and religion. Other cultural historians, such as Jacques Le Goff, claim that the three orders imagery was derived from the Roman structure ofjupiter, Mars and Quirinus.P" The French bishops may also have drawn on Anglo-Saxon images in which the three orders serve as the pillars of monarchical authority. In Boethius' De' Consolations Pbilosopbiae, authored or inspired by Alfred around 892, it is noted that for a king to sustain his power he must be able to call upon "sceal habban jebedmen & weorcmen" and in Wulfstan's letters to Aelfric he states that "every throne that rules effectively, bases its rule on three pillars: the men of prayer, the men of work and the warriors.T" The three orders imaginary replaced the idea of a concentric order, promoted by the Carolingian authorities, in which the Empire was envisaged as the terrestrial reflection of the kingdom of God. Just as God ruled from the centre of the civitas Dei so the Emperor occupied the centre of his kingdom. "In this sphere, one unique centre, the king; anointed by Christ, image of a single God, he presided over the destinies of all Christian people to whom he had the responsibility to guide them towards their salvation."32 With the demise of the Carolingian empire this monarchical imagery became obsolete and was replaced by a plethora of diverse imaginaries promoting the legitimacy of the different groups-heretical orders, the Cluniacs etc.-which proliferated in a world of feudal structures based in lordship and church authority. Whereas the concentric model had assigned the Church a privileged positi~nat the king's side, now it was just one, albeit the wealthiest, of several competing seigniories. The new social status of the Church as an enriched part of the seigniory required the elaboration of a new mental representation: a modified Carolingian model. Adalberon and Gerard did not totally abandon the idea of monarchy; it could not be dismissed entirely for just as there was only one sovereign in the civitas Dei so there should be only one supreme ruler on earth. However, they transferred sovereign authority "into the realm of the unreal, no longer . tne h powers 0 f t h e supe~~atura1"33 conserved in the realm of appearance but In . If the three orders model was only incidentally an instrument of monarchical ideology, it was very much a hierarchy. The priests resided at the top and the peasants endured at the bottom. In the era of bastard feudalism, 'however, the institution of monarchy could not function as a viable pivot, upon which this hierarchy could he supported and so its proponents turned toward the Christian
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patriarchs in order to reproduce "sur terre l'ordre celeste.T? Although monarchy was not an integral component of the three orders imaginary it could, however, be readily absorbed into it. Thus with the resurgence of Capetian power at the end of the twelfth century, Andreas Capellanus in De amore and Guillaume Le Breton in Philippidos libri XII remolded the three orders model to legitimise a monarchical structure of aurhority.P Adalberon and Gerard constructed their theocratic edifice for the three orders using building blocs provided by three of the Christian Fathers: from St Augustine came the notion that order is both peace and the way to God; Gregory the Great offered a prescription for ordering Christian society in rigid, almost military, structures of subordination; and Dionysius provided the conceptual framework, the structural analogies, which connected the visible to the invisible, celestial to temporal society and enabled the bishops to "rattacher l'ordre politique a celui des etoiles.T" Exegetes of the Fathers argued that when God became incarnate as Christ the hierarchical order became immanent in the terrestrial world; the two hierarchies were united in Christ's body. The Church, instituted by Christ as his successor, therefore "constituted the entire terrestrial order: from the Church and through the Church divine law spread out over humanity."37 The Dionysian model had particular appeal to the champions of Episcopal authority for not only did it demote the monast~ries as rival sources of spiritual authority, it also made the bishops the direct recipients of celestial wisdom, including that pertaining to political action. It placed the bishops above human law at the apex of the pyramid. The Dionysian framework allowed "the ecclesiastical hierarchy to represent itself as an 'entre-deux'able to progressively emancipate humanity from its spatioternporal constraints, allowing it to emerge in ways ever more total and pure into the strictly intelligible world, incorporeal and in-temporal, that of the divine.T" Once the three orders framework was reimagined as a theocratic hierarchy, the bishops could abandon any pretence that the three functions had equal status and mutual relations of exchange. Their relative orders of merit could be divined from those Dionysius established among the angels. Gilbert of Limerick's De statu ecclesiae 1110-39, for example, described society as a pyramid with the clergy at the top. I mean to say that those who are at the apex of the pyramid are those who pray; and since some among them are married, therefore we have nominated both men and women. The labourers, men and women, are to the left of the pyramid. To the right are the warriors, again both men and wornen.i'" Images and texts representing the three orders appeared up to the Renaissance. However, its influence waned from the second half of the twelfth century as it was gradually replaced by a hierarchy in which the tanks were distinguished
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according to the socio-professional status of different estates, rather than the will of God or divine law. The humanistic tendencies of this social imaginary prompted a counter response from the Church authorities who promoted the idea of Christendom as divinely ordained hierarchy within one unified body, albeit a bicephalous one, in which the two heads are the pope and emperor.t? In the next chapter we shall consider in some detail how this idea of Christendom as a divinely ordained hierarchy, and the particular notions of territoriality it implied, established the conditions' of possibility for medieval political discourse.
Hierarchies of Space in Medieval Cosmology and Geography I suggestedin the last chapter that representations of territorial sovereignty are enclosed within a culture's spatial imaginary. This section discusses the extent to which medieval understandings of space as represented in cosmology and geography were configured by hierarchy. Today geography and cosmology are considered to be different branches of knowledge but in medieval learning they combined in a set of general reflections on man and his place in the world. However, as EdmundoO'Gor1llan has pointed out, the vocabularies of medieval cosmology and geography did make significant distinctions between various categories of being. The "universe" designated the totality of the celestial and sub-lunar spheres. The "terraqueous globe" referred to the entirety of the earth's sphere, both land and water. The Orbis Terrarum or Island ofthe Eartf;; denoted the known interconnected continental landmass of Europe, Asia a'~d Africa. Finally "the world" signified man's cosmic dwelling place and was generally thought to be contained within the Orbis Terrarum-few could envisage that men could be living in the far away antipodal lands separated by vast seas. 41 Christian theologians rejected the ideal of the ancients that the cosmos was complete and harmonious; a realm of beauty, order and dignity. Rather, man's world was seen to be tainted by sin and only the celestial world remained as a space of perfection. In this dualist vision "the concept of the 'cosmos' broke up into two diametrically opposed concepts: civitas Dei and civitas terrena, with the latter closely' bordering on the concept of civitas diaboli."42 The opposition between earth and heaven was not conceived of as one of terrestrial life in space as opposed to heavenly life existing in some form of non-space, for life in heaven also unfolded in space. 43 Opposed to heavenly life, earthly life became a value category with moral and religious significance. Christianity's spatial dualism was reinforced by the vertical structures ofDionysius' hierarchies. As A. J. Gurevich notes, "[cjosrnic space, .social space and ideological space were all given hierarchic structure" and the beings within; them were distributed on various planes according to their relative degrees of perfection.t'' The values of different spaces were determined according to the places that they were allocated on the vertical
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axis of being. Above was associated with God, nobility, purity, and goodness and below with Satan, baseness, evil, and coarseness.P The text which most explicitly inscribes this spatial value system into the cosmological landscape is Dante's Divine Comedy. In Inferno the hierarchy of sins is symbolized by the corresponding position of the sinner. Men are already judged and ;"put in the place that is theirs forever; the physical character of each station accords with the ethical worth of its inhabitants.T'" The medieval cosmological imagination combined elements of Aristotelian physics, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Christian theology. From Aristotle came the assumption that "an unbridgeable gap separates the 'above' from the 'below,' the 'higher'· heavenly world from the 'lower' sublunar world."47 The universe takes the shape of a sphere, the perfect solid form, eternal and finite. However, as Johannes de Sacroboscostates in De Sphaera (c.1230), the eternal and perfect are placed over and above the mutable and imperfect. The machine of the universe is divided into two, the ethereal and the elementary regions. The elementary region, existing subject to continual alteration, is divided into four. For there is earth, placed, as it were, as the centre in the middle of all, about which is water, about water air, about air fire, which is pure and not turbid there and reaches to the sphere of the moon, as Aristotle says in his book of Meteorology.48 In the sublunar world nature is corruptible and objects are impermanent. The elements are ordered into concentric circles according to their relative degrees of baseness: the earth at the centre is surrounded by water, then air and, finally, fire. Dante's depiction of the sublunar world follows this pattern precisely. At the centre of the universe is the Earth, "the bedrock of the elemental core" (although, as Arthur Lovejoy points out, strictly speaking Dante's universe is diabolocentric in that its core is Lucifer's abode at the bottom of the upturned funnel extending into the interior of the northern hemispherej.t" Above Earth lie the waters or oceans which cover three quarters of the world. Above the waters is the sphere of air, untainted by any cold vapors from the sea or Earth. Dante and Virgil enter this sphere while climbing Mount Purgatory "that soars highest to Heaven from the sea."50 On reaching the summit Dante enters the bounteous Garden of Eden and inhales "that free air open to heaven and earth."51 Then, accompanied by Beatrice, he ascends the sphere of fire!1i o the moon, the lowest sphere of the heavens. In the heavens, by contrast, the celestial bodies are made of quinta essentia or imperishable substance and revolve for eternity through geometrically perfect cycles: "all is changeless, eternal, divine. Motion is in circles, space is filled with ether, the heavenly bodies as well as their spheres are of an ethereal
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substance."52 Beatrice tells Dante that because the heavenly bodies are made up of ether they are neither heavy nor light. 53 In the heavens the rotating spheres carry along the stars and planets which have no motion themselves. Above all is the Prime Mover, primum movens immobile, who is one and eternal and upon whom the whole of heaven and all of nature depends. According to Beatrice the hierarchical structure reaches fromthe very top of the universe to its low: est place. She tells Dante that although men's souls, the spheres and the angels were created directly by God and are thus immortal, the elernentsjand their compounds, as well as the souls of plants and animals, were created by the intermediate agencies of the heavenly bodies.P" The order of things is tightly circumscribed: all things, whatever their mode, observe an inner order. It is this form that makes the universe resemble God. ... all Being within this order, by the laws of its own nature is impelled to find its proper station round its Primal Cause.P In the Almagest Ptolemy had positioned the seven planets according to the relative time they took to rotate the Earth. The fixed stars were assigned to the outermost sphere and Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, whose motions were most similar to them, were placed furthest from the earth. The moon, whose motion was the most dissimilar to that of the stars, was placed nearest the earth. The remaining three planets, Sun, Mercury and Venus all shared an annual orbit around the earth. Their relative positions were assigned in accordance with astrological tradition. The Sun Was allocated to the middle sphere, which left Venus and Mercury beneath it. Christian theologians adapted the Ptolemaic system to make the cosmos comply with the description of the heavens in Genesis. The biblical firmament was identified as the eighth sphere of the fixed stars. The waters above the firmament, which were understood to be hard and made of crystal, became the crystalline heaven. The heaven created on the first day was allocated to the outermost sphere, the motionless Empyrean, the ultimate container of the universe and the dwelling place of God and the elect. Dante's cosmological landscape accurately represents this composite scheme, combing ancient wisdom and Christian dogma. The moon is "la prima stella," Mercury ceil secondo regno," Venu~ ceil terzo ciel," the spirits met in the sun are "la quarta famiglia," Mars is "questa quinta soglia," and "piuIevato" than the last heaven, Jupiter is the "stella sesta," Saturn "il settimo splendore." The starry heaven is alluded to as "Ia
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spera ottava." The PrimumMobile is "il cilevelocissimo," "il maggior corpo." "·1 . 1 c h" e pura 1',,, . ca 11e d "I' u 1·" 56 T h empyrean, 1 ere uce, IS trrnate spera, "... E In Canto XXVII of Paradiso Danteand Beatrice reach the Primum Mobile, the sphere "that spins with it as it goes all of the' universe.T" The ultimate source of the motions of the planets and starry skies is God the Prime Mover. It was thought that the spheres moved due to one of two causes. Either each of Dionysius' nine orders of angels had responsibility for the movement of one sphere which they imparted through fervor and adoration. Or, the ardent longing of "every particle of the crystalline heaven to be united with every particle of the most divine tranquil heaven" causes an intense gyrating movement that is passed on to the other spheres. 58lt is love or the striving for perfect union that sets the spheres in motion. All such movement proves the existence of a First Mover who is "loved, / desired by all creation, sole, eternal/who moves the turning Heavens, Hjmselfunmoved.T" As one progresses down through the ranks of the hierarchy so one encounters 'less movement. Finally, at the bottom there is the heavy immobile earth that is the domain of the geographers. w. G. L. Randles maintains that the discourse of medieval geography entertained an uneasy synthesis between the Christian chorographical representation of the world as the flat oecumene and the classicala,stronomical theory of a round earth.P" The notion of a spherical terraqueous globe was of ancient provenance. Aristotle had hypothesized that the earth was a sphere from the premise that all objects fall to the earth's centre to find their natural location. Building on Aristotle, Crates de Mallos (c. 180-50BC) proposed the four island theory. Crates had noted a contradiction between estimates of the circumference of the earth's sphere by mathematicians, such as Eratosthenes, and the empirically known extent of the oecumene which, lying between the Ganges and the Pillars of Hercules, could, at best, only account for a quarter of the sphere. In order to counter this imbalance in the sphere, which offended the Greek sense of symmetry, Crates drew a globe with three other "continents." Crates' scheme was subsequently outlined in Macrobius' fifth century Commentary on Cicero's
Dream ofScipio. Then referring to our quarter, indeed, and speaking about those who are separated from us and from each other, he [Cicero] says, Some nations stand obliquely, some transversely, and some even stand diametrically opposite us; hence not only the barriers that separate us from another people but also the barriers that separate all of them from each other are intended. They must be divided as follows: those who are separated from us by the torrid zone, whom theGreeks namedantoikoi, the Antoeci; next, those who live on the underside of the southern hemisphere, the Antipodes, separated from the Antoikoi
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by the south frigid zone: next, those ["Perioikoi"] who are separated from their Antoeci, that is, the inhabitants of the underside of zone, by their torrid zone; they are in turn separated from us by the north frigid zone. 61 Medieval cosmologists generally accepted the idea of a spherical earth. However, a minority of Christian theologians, citing the authority of the Christian fathers, considered it to be heretical. In The Divine Institutions (Diuinarum lnstitutionum) c. 303-11 Lactantius had rejected it in favor of the flat earth theory, arguing that" it is impossible that the sky is below the earth."62 Similarly St. Augustine had argued that it was only scientific conjecture rather than "historical knowledge" (i.e., biblical knowledge) that the "earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other."63 Macrobius mentions that torrid and frigid zones separate the four continents. Here he is drawing on Parmenides' theory of the five climatic zones, which also had considerable influence on 'the medieval geographical imaginary. The two peripheral zones lying between the Arctic and Antarctic circles and their corresponding poles were considered to be uninhabitable because they were glacial. Also considered uninhabitable and, for many, un-traversable was the equatorial area or Torrid Zone lying between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, whose intenseheat no man could hope to survive. This left two temperate zones where life Was theoretically possible: one located between the Arctic Circle" and the Tropic of Cancer and the other between the Antarctic Circle and the lTropic of Capricorn. In Cicero's words, You can also make out certain belts, so to speak, which encircle the Earth; you, observe that the two which are furthest apart and lie under the poles of the heavens, are stiff with cold, whereas the belt in the middle, the greatest one, is scorched by the heat of the sun. The two remaining belts are habitable: one, the southern, is inhabited by men who plant their feet in opposite direction to yours and have nothing to do with your people; the other, the northern" is inhabited by you Rornans.P" Macrobius' assumption in this passage that the antipodes were inhabited was not universally accepted in medieval geography. The four island theory certainly implied that it was likely that men lived in other continents than the Orbis Terrarum. This conclusion was uncontroversial for the ancients but posed a dilemma for the Christian theologians who had to resolve it with the scriptural doctrine that all mankind was descended from Adam. Their solution was to confine humanity to the Orbis Terrarum and to declare the other continents uninhabitable on the basis of their inaccessibility. Thus, a hierarchical division
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of the earth's sphere emerged in which one of the four continents came to have greater value than the others. Gradually the four islands combined into two; forming a simple opposition: the oecumene in the temperate boreal zone and an antipodal continent in the temperate austral zone. St. Augustine was happy to dismiss "the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours" as being "on no ground credible."65 It was absurd, he conjectured, to suggest "that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side ofthe world to the other, and thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man."66 Later St. Isidore of Seville, rather less adamantly, admitted there could be a body of land in the southern hemisphere but denied it could be inhabited. Dante seems to have adopted a similar position. Before he begins his ascent out of the lower depths of hell by climbing up the cavern formed by Lucifer's fall, Virgil explains to him that, You are under the other hemisphere where you stand; the sky above us is the half opposed to that which canopies the great dry land. On this side he plunged down from heaven's height, and the land that spread here once hid in the sea and fled North to our hemisphere for fright;67 The implication being that apart from Mount Purgatory, which was pushed up by the force of Lucifer's fall, no dry land exists in this hemisphere. Randles notes that the views of more modern thinkers like Roger Bacon in his Opus Majus (1264/67) and Albert Le Grand in De Natura Locorum (first printed 1514) that the Torrid Zone could be crossed and that the austral hemisphere was not only habitable but inhabited, were sidelined due to a .lack of supporting empirical evidence. In so far as the Scriptures made no mention of land in the southern hemisphere, St. Augustine readily concluded that it was entirely covered by water. This relates to another topic of contention in medieval geography concerning the relative proportions of land and water that covered the earth's sphere. Here medieval thinkers faced a paradox. An axiom of Aristotelian physics was that lighter elements entirely enclose heavier ones. Therefore.logically all land should be immersed under water. How then to explain the presence of those lands that rose out of the seas? In the Imago Mundi (1410) Pierre d'Ailly offers a possible Aristotelian explanation: "the Water does not surround all the Earth, but leaves a part uncovered for the habitation of animals. There is a part of the Earth which is less heavy than the Other; this is why it is higher and farther from the
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centre of the Earth. The rest, besides the islands, is entirely covered by water according to the common opinion of the philosophers.Y" However, a more popular explanation was provided by the creation narrative in Genesis.H'salm 103), which recorded how, on the third day, God ordered the waters to assemblein one location (congregatio aquae). Although Aristotle's Physics had not specified the proportional relations that existed between the elements, medieval philosophy of the natural world established a ratio of 1:10 between the volume of one and the next in decreasing order of density. According to this principle the surface area of earth .left uncovered by the water, which corresponded to the 1¢hristian oecumene; remained insignificant with respect to the immensity of the sphere of . . . 11e etre representee comme pate. 1 "69 water an d as suchh "pouvalt-e· As medieval voyagers began to travel further, recording ever extending coastlines, one solution to the problem of the antipodal lands was to maintain that the Orbis Terrarum was considerably larger than had been previously thought. The authority invoked to support this thesis was the Book of Esdras which claimed, contrary to Aristotle, that the ratio of land to sea was 6:1. If this was the case it could be surmised that the Orbis Terrarum was an island ofsuch magnitude that some of its inhabitants could have reached the antipodes by land and therefore justifiably claim descent from Adam. Columbus would cite Esdras as proof that a sea voyage was possible from the western (Iberian) to eastern (Chinese) shores of the island earth. However this was a minority view and the standard view of the Orbis Terrarium, as expressed by Sacrobosco, held that it was located "between the semicircle drawn from east to west along the equator and the semicircle carried from east to west through the Arctic pole." Not all of it was inhabited, however, "since that zone which lies between the tropics is said to be uninhabitable because of the fervour of the sun ... those two zones which are described by the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle about the poles of the world are uninhabitable because of too great cold."70 Pierre d'Ailly writes that A.
..
I
I . .
.
According to Pliny, Solin, Grose, Isidore and many other cosmographers or describers of the World, in agreement with certain astrologers like Albaregni, the Earthis divided into three parts, that isAsia, Africa and Europe ... the ancients did not divide these three parts of the Globe equally. Thus Asia extends eastward from the Midi until the Septentrion; Europe goes from the Septentrion to the west and Africa from the west to the Midi. From which it appears. that two of these divisions, Europe and Africa, occupy a half of the World, while only Asia occupies the other half?l This landmass, Dante's "gran secca," consisted of the dry land God !ltad gathered together, as recorded in Genesis I: 9. According to Ptolemy's calculations it extended about 180 degrees oflongitude and, apart from a small meridional
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strip, was confined between the equator and arctic pole. Dante's oecumene had an "extension less than one seventh ofthe entire terraqueous surface."72 In cartography. the .land that made up the oecumene was traditionally represented by the T-O motif of the mappae-mundi. The boundaries of the Orbis Terrarum were determined by the Ocean Sea-the 0 on the maps.73 For Dante "the sea that girdles all the land" was the only limit to the' Empire's potential extension r'" Since man possessed a material body it was natural that his world should be located on .the soil of the oecumene. However, this correspondence implied that the rest of the universe comprised foreign or alien spaces. The Ocean was certainly regarded as a hostile environment. Although it formed part of the terraqueousglobe, it also symbolizes the limits of man's world. In terms of geography "the Ocean was nothingness or a void; it was not considered susceptible of juridical possession or of being an object on which the sovereignty of princes could be exercised."75 Consequently; argues O'Gorman, the world was not just man's home in the cosmos but also a jail with impregnable boundaries. Furthermore, it was only because God had ordered the congregatio aquae that the world existed at all. As such the world really belonged to God and man was little more than a tenant or serf on land over which he had neither absolute propriety nor usage. The crossbar or T of the mappae-mundiwas formed by the intersection of the Tanais and Nile rivers. It divided the upper semi-circle of Asia from the lower quarter-circles of Europe and Africa, which wereti\~hemselves separated by the Mediterranean, the T's down-stroke. This perpendicular arrangement evoked the form of the Christian cross. This Christian symbolism was further reinforced by the location ofJerusalem at the heart of the mappae-mundi. In the ancient, or at least Roman, geographical imaginary, Rome, the Eternal City, was situated at the centre of the world. However, as the pagan religions of Rome were gradually replaced by Christianity the focal point moved east and by the time of the Crusades Jerusalem was the fulcrum of the world. The appropriateness of this was signaled by the fact that on midsummer's day at twelve noon the sun casts no shadow. Dante, for example, placed Jerusalem directly beneath "the high point of its [the sun's] meridian circle."76 We have seen how in Christian cosmology space is ordered hierarchically: different places within the hierarchy have different values. The same principle underpinned the arrangement of geographical space. Jerusalem was the sovereign centre of medieval space, the place to which all other spaces were orientated. On the extraordinary Ebstorf map which incorporates the entire oecumene into Christ's body, Christendom's orientation toward the Holy City is symbolized by an image of the resurrection in which the omphalos of Christ's body and the site of the Holy Sepulchre share the same coordinates. The representation of the eastern landmass as the site of spiritual journeys of enlightenment in the mappae-mundi was replicated in the
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semi-fantastical travel narratives recalling the experiences of personal pilgrimages following the route from Jerusalem to the Earthly Paradise.V Mandeville's journal recalls the inscription near the St. Sepulchre "Hie Deus rex noster ante saecula est salutem in medio terre."78 Spaces are accorded distinctive moral values in these narratives. As Yuri Lottman writes "[gjeography becomes a kind of ethics."79 A journey through space symbolizes a passage to salvation or damnation. In the Commedia, Dante's journey unfolded in accordance with the established tropes for representing the moral journey of a righteous person or sin ner in space: from the parental home to a monastery or house of sin; from one's own country to holy or impure lands; and from earthly lands to paradise or hell. John G. Demaray reads the Commedia as a figural pilgrimage:' Dante's fantastical ascent up Mount Purgatory in the southern hemisphere mirrors and evokes the real journey of palm-bearing pilgrims up. Mt Sinai in the northern hernisphere.f" Compared to Europe and Africa, Asia, occupying the entire upper semicircle, was represented as a vast landmass on the mappae-mundi. Europeans imagined Asia as both the source of great wealth and marvels and the domain of Prester John's theocratic utopia. The spaces of the oecumene, especially its Asian parts, tended to be defined in terms of their relative alterity to the culture of Christendom. Although Europe and Christendom were not coterminousthe Moorish settlements in Spain were a constant source of embarrassment to those who sought to locate the civitas terrarum within the boundaries of the Roman Empire-c--t'the geographical horizon was a spiritual one, that of Christian Europe.Y" In both geographical and cultural terms the I?tzantine Empire was the closest. The Byzantines occupied a liminal place in th~t~estern Christian geographical imaginary fot as schismatic Christians they simultaneously belonged to and were independent of Christendom. The chronicles of the first crusade record that the Western crusaders both respected and were somewhat envious of the material riches and cultural sophistication of Constantinople. Islam, however, occupied a more clearly defined space) that of the infidel, the "enemy-elect" with whom, at least in Crusade propaganda, there could be no reconciliation. Christian views of Muslims ranged from polemical crusade narratives such as Jacques de Vitry's HistoriaOrientalis in which Muslims were depicted as subhuman and Mahomet as an anti-Chrlst to the more objective, if still patronizing, views of Aquinas. 82 In the chansons de geste the representation of Muslims as beasts defiling the sanctity of the Holy Land conveniently overlooked the prosperous mercantile contacts that trading cities like Venice maintained with Muslim traders and the diffusion of Arab science into European cultures during the Renaissance of the twelfth century. The third zone of alterity was occupied by other pagans, who, although they worshipped idols, were, unlikethe Muslims, regarded as porenrialChrisrlans,
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Such peoples on the northern and eastern reaches of Christendom, in Seleucia, Pomerania, and Prussia to the north of Poland, were subjected to proselytizing campaigns of forceful conversion to ensure that they did not succumb to the false promises of the Byzantine and Muslim missionaries. Finally, at the eastern extremities of the Orbis Terrarum were the Mongols. For the Christians of central Europe who were the victims of their regular raids these men were the fearsome, bloodthirsty, monstrous Tartars-.However others believed that they Were the Christian peoples who had been converted by thelegendary Prester John. Indeed, in the thirteenth century several missions were sent to the East with the intention of creating an anti-Muslim Christian alliance. The project was, however, abandoned following Marco Polo's descriptions of the Tarter's social and political life, which Were deemed incompatible with basic Christian tenets. Our review of the medieval culture of space has shown that the perception and representation of man's-being-in-space was, in several different registers, determined by the figure of hierarchy. The medieval culture of space was structured by the rigid hierarchies that Dionysius had identified as the divinely authorized design of all celestial and terrestrial being. If the Kantian ideal of the space of modernity is abstract, homogeneous, universal and empty, the heterogeneous spaces of the medieval imaginary are differentiated, full of particular significances, meanings and values. Such criteria were generally determined by their relative positions in the hierarchy of things. Dionysius' hierarchies with their value laden spaces and places provided the basic structural principles underpinning the social order of feudalism and its three orders, Dante's vision of the cosmos, and the discourse of medieval geography. Medieval political discourse was also interwoven within the knowledge structures and cultural practices of Christianity. Thus we might expect that the conditions of possibility for the articulation of the medieval territorial imaginary were also determined by hierarchy. We shall pursue this hypothesis in the following chapter.
CHAPTER 5
Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse
W
e have established that the principle ofhierarchy conditioned medieval ideas of place, space, and man's being in them. This chapter examines medieval political discourse in order to determine whether a similar spatial logic of higher and lower, inferior and superior, also underscored medieval ideas of sovereign-territoriality. To be sure, the term medieval political discourse is problematic. This is especially so if one maintains that post-Westphalian political theory and practice is modern precisely because it emancipated itself from Christian theology. Certainly, the Christianization of classical political philosophy by medieval political theology produced an intricate weave, an interlacing of temporal and spiritual concerns, that makes it difficult to identify a discrete realm of political discourse as such. Such issues cannot be resolved here and I shall not attempt to do so. Nevertheless, historians of medieval political discourse have argued that the templates for many of the concepts characteristic of modern. political. thought were established between the ninth and fourteenth centuries when institutional rivalry and ideological upheaval combined in the "crisis of church and state." At the heart of this crisis was a tripartite struggle for supremacy between the institutions of Papacy, Empire, and Monarchy. This contest, which constituted the essence ofmedieval international politics, was both a physical armed conflict and a war of ideology. At stake in the ideological struggle between sacerdotium, imperium, and regnum was the nature and legitimacy of political sovereignty within Christian European society. These three bodies promoted alternative visions of Christian political society as Ecclesia or Christianitas, humana civilitas or civitas, each of which entailed different settlements between ter~itory and
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sovereignty;' In this respect they articulated variations of the medieval territorial imaginary. However, these differences of ernphas is were subsumed within a common understanding that space was structured hierarchically. In terms of territoriality, this translated into the undisputed recognition that over and above the civitas terrena lay the civitas Dei-the divine font of all sovereignty. Papal universalists, imperial dualists, and monarchists each claimed that they and they alone occupied the liminal space at the fulcrum of the political cosmos between the celestial kingdom of the civitas Dei and the mundane world of Christendom. From this privileged place they were able to gaze upon the civitas Dei and know God's intentions for the best political arrangement of men on earth. It is with these rival claims that this chapter is primarily occupied.
Secerdotium The meaning that medieval actors gave to their political actions and sought to convey in their political tracts can only be understood within the context of the hegemony of Christianity, which permeated every aspect of medieval life. Knowledge was produced in, communicated through, and controlled by ecclesiastical institutions..Therefore it makes sense to .start our investigation into the hierarchical conditions of possibility within which the medieval discourse of territorial sovereignty could be articulated with the doctrines of papal universalism which, while contested, largely determined the parameters of political debate in the first centuries of the second millennium. The doctrine ofpapal universalism, initially developedduring the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII (1073---85) and promoted by Canonists well into the fourteenth century, is a substantial and complex body of thought.r Nevertheless, its essence is conveyed by the Skrziczick miniature, which appears in a fourteenth century Czech edition of Gratianof Bologna's Decretum (c. 1140). Gratianhad standardized medieval canon law and subsequent editions of the Decretum contained further commentary by the Decretists on the basic principles he had set out. In the opening DistinctionesGratian discusses the proper limits of ecclesiastical power and concludes from the fact that the Church was founded on the rock of faith by Christ "who conferred simultaneously on the blessed key-bearer of eternal life [Peter] the rights over a heavenly and an earthly empire" that the Emperor's imperial power was ultimately derived from the pope.f The Skrziczick miniature (figure 5.1) is a representation of the Dionysian hierarchical principle of emanation in the political register. Christ's celestial sovereignty is transmitted first to the pope, as Peter's successor, and then on to the lower ecclesiastical and temporal authorities on earth.f The miniature emphasizes a rigid spatial division between the upper· and lower realms. The upper level shows the civitas Dei in heaven, signified by a background of stars. Christ,
Figure 5.1 The Skrzicziek Miniature, in Gratian of Bologna, Decretum: Distinctiones 3> Pars 1) c. 1140. Archives of the Prague Castle, Prague, Czech Republic. © Archives of the Prague Castle.
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enthroned and holding a papal tiara, is flanked by two kneeling angels bearing a scepter and a crown, symbols of temporal authority. Heaven and earth are separated by a neutral area of floral motifs that signify the atmosphere of the universe. The Petrine throne, placed near the apex of the Earth's hemispheric curve, is occupied by the pope in his capacity as vicarius Christi. The extension of the pope's halo into the heavenly sphere illustrates the direct passage of Christ's authority to the pope. Within his person, it becomes bifurcated and then passed on down to the ecclesiastical and temporal authorities. The pope hands the book conveying the truths of the eternal scriptures t();, a cardinal and gives a sword indicating the duty of material protection of the C'hurch to the emperor. By depicting the moment when the emperor accepts the gladius materialis from the pope at his investiture this image reinforces the message that the emperor is an ecclesiastical ruler, a minister and servant of God who receives his authority from the pope rather than directly from Christ. The rest of the lower level shows the, structure of the hierocratic system on earth. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy authority passes down from the cardinal to two bishops and then on to a monk and priest in accordance with Dionysian principles. Beneath the emperor are two kings, one holding a royal staff indicating legislative power and the other wielding a sword symbolizing executive power. 'These, in turn, have as their subordinates a knight and noble. The miniature presents the societas Christiana as being contained within the greater political organization of the civitatis rex Christus. Christ resident in the celestial realm is the ultimate source of sovereignty and the emperor as an ecclesiastical ruler is subordinate to papal authority. The spatial composition of this image conveys a clear hierarchy of powers: the emperor in the lower position is the servant or vassal of the pope who occupies a more elevated place. This hierarchical imagetywascomplemented by the canonist representation of Christendom as one body, with the pope as its head. In his controversial bull Unam Sanctam (1302) Boniface VIII (1294-1303) asserted that there is only one holy Catholic Church outside of which there can be no remission of sins. This church "quae unum corpus mysticum repraesentat, cuius caput Christus, Christivero Deus" ("represents one mystical body whose head is Christ, while the head of Christ is God.")? This body is a unity, the seamless garment of the Lord which was not cut but fell by lot. Therefore there is one body and one head of this one and only church, not two heads as though it were a monster, namely Christ and Christ's vicar, Peter and Peter's successors, for the Lord said to this Peter, 'Feed my sheep.'(John 21: 17).6 Prior to Gregory VII's pontificate the Church was idenrified as corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, "besides which or in which the 'states' functioned as governments rather than as autonomous bodies."? As Bishop Jonas of Orleans insisted
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in De institutione regia (c. 830) "[ajll the faithful must know that the Universal Church is the Body of Christ, that the same Christ is its head and that there are in it mainly two exalted persons, the priestly and the kingly.'" The implication being that political authority was derived from and exercised within rather than over or besides the Church. In the twelfth century, as states began to refer to themselves as bodies politic, the Roman Church reasserted its status as the supreme political corporation by deploying the formula corpus Christi mysticum, with its connotations of spiritual foundation and divine' starus." During the period of the crisis of church and state, two traditions of hierocratic thought emerged: Ecclesia and Christianitas, each of which promoted a different understanding of the corporational nature of the Church.l" .Drawing on the Carolingian view of the functional nature of government, the?~iiotion· of Ecclesia, which persisted into the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, presented regnum and sacerdotium as two dignitaries, two spiritual eyes, within one body, unum corpus." Within Ecclesia the temporal and spiritual constituted two sides of the same body, two aspects of one power, potestas duplex. Lay power could have no autonomy or independence from spiritual power: it is a subordinate part of the whole that exists to bring into being the Augustinian pax terrena. Michael Wilks argues that until around 1300 societas Christiana tended to be equated with Ecclesia so that all Christians, and potentially all men, formed one indivisible corporate entity, unum corpus, animated by Christian faith but existing as a universal body politic.P Ecclesia was equivalent to a Platonic ideal whose universal essence in Christ was reflected by the organization of human society on earth. It embraced all men and corporate institutions ina hierarchical structure. The Ecclesia is both a single corporation itself and the greatest of a hierarchy of corporations stretching from the whole world down to the .lowesr political unit, the village or manor, by way of the kingdom, the province and the city. Each of the communities is at the same time as much a civil as an ecclesiastical corporation: the universal church is the universal empire; the kingdom is equally an episcopal province, the city is a bishopric, and the village is a parish.l' As with other corporational metaphors, the constituent parts of Ecclesia have different functions. For the whole to work effectively each must be allocated to its proper place by the head. Only the Pope at the summit of the clerical hierarchy can have direct access to divine wisdom in matters of faith but also of law, government, and jurisdiction. He alone can understand the architectonic structure ofthe whole as planned by the divine architect. The pope's role is to maintain God's established order on earth, to ensure that the co,:ngregatio ~:';Q.:
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fidelium, forming the single polity of Christendom, will achieve its end by being received into the civitas Dei. Without such hierarchy, writes the anonymous author of the Disquisitio theologico-iuridica, "ordine mundus stare non possit nee homines vivere."14 According to Walter Ullman, the Canonist argument that the political was intrinsically inferior to the spiritual was primarily derived from the ancient binary opposition, found in Aristotle's de Anima, in which anima, mind or spirit, the realm of the divine, was set over and above corpus or matter, the realm of the mundane. For canonists there was an obvious analogy between the pope's superiority over the emperor and the soul's priority over the body." Gerhardt Ladner argues that Ullman focuses too much on the more extreme canonists and consequently tends to oversimplify the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority in hierocratic thought.i" In particular Ullman downplays the contributions of those who conceived of Christian society as Christianitas rather than Ecclesia. Etienne Gilson points out that ·if "Christendom (Chretiente) appears initially as the society formed by all the Christians, spread out over the whole world, unified by the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope". and "[f]rom this aspect it is no different from the Church," there is one significant difference for "the members of the Church, the Christians ... are living beings in space and time, [and so] form a temporal society and so a people."1? As Ladner points out, the important issue for those who differentiated Christendom from Ecclesia and who were swayed by the idea of an Aristotelian natural political order was not whether pope or emperor was supreme in the Church but "who was superior in Christendom: the Church under the Pope or thekingdoms, including the Holy Roman Empire."18 Indeed, to the extent that the relations between church and state at this time amounted to a conflict between two different institutions, Christendom had to exist as. a Christian society of peoples distinct from the church. Nevertheless, canoriists like Stephen of Tournay could still argue that the" duae vitae, spiritualis et carnalis" constituted two distinct bodies within the common-weal without implying that the clerical and lay orders had equal status. 19 In the final reckoning, the jus divinum regulating spiritual life determined and contained the jus humanum. As the Hungarian canonist Damasus stated "Ordo clericorum dignior est coetu laicorum."2o While the notion of Christianitas gave more legitimacy to temporal politics it continued. to guarantee the priority of the spiritual in the hierarchical order of things. Canonists seeking to justify the pope's right to intervene in temporal as well as spiritual matters frequently cited the controversial doctrine of plenitudo potestatis or papal fullness of power. Plenitudo potestatis is another elusive concept with contested meaning. For Ullman the doctrine maintains that "the supreme pontiff was to possess complete and exclusive jurisdiction over the spiritual and temporal affairs of the whole world. Papal plenitude of power
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embraced every conceivable aspect of human life."21 Ladner is more cautious arguing that it implies "spiritual sovereignty with temporal consequences, plus temporal sovereignty in the Papal States and temporal suzerainty over certain states (Sicily, Aragon, etc.)."22 Contemporary scholarly differences reflect the different emphases that the canonists themselves placed on plenitudo potestatis. Innocent III (1198-1216), the pope who did most to promote the doctrine, voiced both extreme and moderate positions. Sometimes he seemed to advocate a universal extension of papal sovereignty: ... To me is said in the person of the prophet, "I have set thee over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build andto plant" (Jeremias 1:10). To me also is said in the person of the apostle, "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon\ earth it shall be bound in heaven, etc." (Matthew 16:19) ... thus the others 'were called to a part of the care but Peter alone assumed the plenitude of power. You see then who is this servant set over the household, truly the vicar ofJesus Christ, successor of Peter, anointed of the lord, a God of Pharaoh, set between God and man, lower than God, but higher than man, who judges all and is judged by no one. 23 This passage, incorporating a hierarchical spatial metaphor characteristic of the medieval territorial imaginary, seems to imply that plenitudo potestatis could be extended beyond ecclesiastical affairs in special circumstances.e" Yet Innocent's rhetoric failed to specify precisely how plenitudo potestatis could legitimize direct intervention in the affairs of temporal rulers. Some historians claim that he was wary of overstepping the limitations established by St. Bernard, for whom it only designated the pope's responsibility for ecclesiastical government. 25Jnnocenes diplomatic practice does not help to clarify the conceptual ambiguity. During the contested succession to the imperial crown between Otto of Brunswick and Rudolf of Swabia he issued the bull Venerabilem (1202) that confirmed the right of the electors to choose the emperor and only reserved for the papacy, as the body that has to "anoint, consecrate and crown" the approved candidate, a right of examination. Likewise in Novit (1204)-addressed to the French bishops who had opposed Innocent's intervention in the disputes that arose when the French king Philip Augustus occupied King John of England's fiefdom in Normandy-Innocent denied that he sought to "diminish or disturb the jurisdiction and power of the king" yet, as the final authority on earth concerning matters of sin (ratione peccati), he had the right to rebuke and coerce the king on the grounds that breaking a peace treaty agreed to under oath amounts to a sin. 26 Although Nouit acknowledged limits to the pope's right of intervention in feudal disputes, it should be remembered that the See of Rome had an extensive
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fiefdom typical of the vertical layering of medieval territoriality. The kingdoms of England and Ireland were theoretically added to this fiefdom when John accepted Innocent's over-lordship in return for the pope's support. Innocent celebrated this event by noting that "provinces which formerly had the holy Roman church as their proper teacher in spiritual matters now have her as their special lord in temporal matrers.Y" England remained a de jure if not de facto papal fief. until Parliament abolished the relationship in 1366. Another powerful weapon in the papal camp's discursive armory was the pope's status as uicarius Christi. Innocent III had officially referred to the pope as vicarius Christi in his Decretales.. However, the first pope to use it as a weapon of political rhetoric was Innocent IV (1243-54) in the!:,~}:ontext of his struggle with Frederick 11. 28 Relations between empire and papacy had been soured by Frederick's ambitions to unite the kingdom of Sicily with the imperial lands and cities of Lombardy. If successful this strategy would have cloaked the entire Italian peninsula in Imperial colors and have relegated the pope to the status of a dependent bishopvAt the Council of Lyon (1245) Innocent issued a sentence of deposition against Frederick in which, after listing Frederick's various sinswhich included abjuring God, breaking peace agreements, imprisoning churchmen and heresy-c-she proclaimed in his capacity as vicariusChristi that Frederick had lost all honor and dignity in the eyes of God and so' forfeited his rights to the Empire. Innocent absolved "for ever all who owe him allegiance in virtue of an oath of fealty from any oath of this kind" and warned that anyone who continued to treat Frederick as their feudal overlord would themselves be excomrnunicated.r? In Eger Cui Levia (1246) Innocent confirmed that the Roman pontiff as the ultimate judge of all members of the Christian commonweal in matters of sin, has the authority to excommunicate anybody and once excommunicated that person is rightfully "deprived of the power of any temporal rulership that he had."30 Michele Maccarrone suggests that Innocent was able to enhance the political remit of vicarius .Christi by building on the image of Christ the King, which Innocent III had also promoted. In the Apparatus to the Decretales (1245) Innocent IV argued that since Noah's time the leaders of the Jews had been kings. This regal. status was confirmed in the person of Jesus Christ "qui fuit naturalis dominus et rex noster.' was later. conferred on St. Peter, and was subsequently transmitted on to his successors. 31 Innocent's appeal to historical precedent, argues Maccarone, was .intended to demonstrate not only the necessity of extraordinary recourse to papal authority but also "to affirm a general principle of reliance on the pope in matters temporal of all the sovereigns •... this vvas not derived from a particular right, as with the Emperor but came from the plenitudo potestatis which the pope possessed in his capacity as vicar ofChrist."32 Innocent's assertion of papal sovereignty as vicarius Christi was supported by the canonist Hostiensis who insisted that the Pope's plenitudo potestatiJi~~ouldbe exercised over
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all forms of secular authority, especially the Empire. Although God had willed two distinct authorities on earth, the temporal was subordinate to the spiritual in every way, for '(just as the moon receives its light from the sun and not the sun from the moon, so too the royal power receives authority from the priestly and not vice versa."33 From the theocratic principle that ecclesiastical authorities would be demeaned if they physically carried out any punishments they handed down and that accordingly such acts should be delegated to secular powers, Hostiensis concluded that royal prerogative amounted to little more than the executive power to inflict punishment. Clearly then "pontifical power ought to have precedence as being greater and more honorable like one that enlightens in the manner of a shining lamp, while the royalpower ought to follow, as being lesser and cruder like a club for striking and beating down infidels and rebels."34 Regarding those lands located outside Europe, Innocent IV clCl;&fned that as vicarius .: Christi papal plenitudo potestatis had .global territorial extension, embracing peoples and places beyond the boundaries of Christendom. Since Christ is lord of all men, including the infidels, they should all benefit from his vicar's beneficent rule, at least de jure. 35 The pope's authority as iudex ordinarius (highest competent judge) extended over all men: infidels as well as Christians.V' "We do certainly believe that the pope, who is vicar of Jesus Christ, has power not only over Christians but also over all infidels, for Christ had power over a11."37 The pope's de jure right to intervene in the affairs of non-Christian societies embraced several prerogatives: to alter parts of the constitutions of countries which harmed Christians; to punish non-Christian individuals in non-Christian countries who defied natural law; to guarantee missionaries and other papal representatives free-entry into and unrestricted movement within non-Christian lands; and, the right to re-conquer formerly Christian lands which pagans had illegally expropriated-c--Including, of course, the Holy Lands. 38 However, Innocent acknowledged the pagans' right to property ownership within and territorial rule over all lands that had never been occupied by Christians on the basis that they numbered among the rational beings to whom God had originally extended these rights: "lordship, possession and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly" and therefore" it is not licit for the pope or thefaithful to take away from infidels their belongings or their lordships or jurisdictions."39 Hostiensis was less magnanimous and argued that with Christ's corning every dominion, principality and jurisdictional power that had previously been in possession of the .infidels had been automatically surrendered to the faithful. All men were therefore subjects of the vicarius Christi and any who failed to acknowledge the Church's overriding dominion should be considered unworthy of their possessions and deprived of their sovereign rights. 40 From the images, metaphors, and analogies that suffused Christian culture the canonists derived necessary truths about the divinely ordained hierarchical
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order of temporal and spiritual authorities in Christendom. One of the most powerful images was the allegory of the two swords found in St. Luke's Gospel (Book 22) where the evangelist describes the events of the Last Supper and the Passion. Jesus has just told the apostles that Peter will deny knowing him and that he will be arrested. The apostles' immediate instinct is to declare that they will defend Jesus with physical force: cc 'But they said: Lord, behold here are two swords' to which Jesus replied enigmatically' it is enough.' "41 Pope Gelasius I (492-96) had interpreted this passage as scriptural confirmation that "'the two powers by which this world is chiefly ruled' are the sacred authority (auctoritas) of the Pope and the royal power (potestas)'."42 Gelasius, in seeking to limit the Emperor's interference on matters of church doctrine, argued that spiritual power was of a higher order since it was in charge of all men's souls, including those of rulers. Morrall points out that this _message was reinforced by Gelasius's deployment of the legal distinction between auctoritas which in Roman law denoted the ultimate sovereign source of government and potestas which identified the power of a delegated executive agency to govern.v' For advocates of Ecclesia the Gelasian doctrine confirmed a hierarchical order in which the pope held both swords directly from Christ and handed one of them on down to the Emperor. In 1150 St. Bernard, -responding to a renewed threat to the Christians in the Holy Land, urged Pope Eugenius III in his capacity as Peter's successor to draw both swords to protect the Holy Land. Both swords are Peter's: one is unsheathed at his sign, the other by his own hand ... Both swords, spiritual and material, then, belong to the church; the one exercised on behalf of the church, the _other by the church: the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of thesoldier, but clearly at the bidding of the priest (ad nuturn sacerdotist and the order of the ernperor.t" For the commentator Alanus ab Insulis (1128-1203) not only does the emperor hold his sword by the grace of the pope but the pope isthe ultimate arbitrator of all princely power. Alluding to the hierarchical structure of feudal society, he writes, "[wjhat has been said of the emperor may be held true of any prince who has no superior lord. Each one has as much jurisdiction in his kingdom as the emperor has in the empire, fot the division of kingdoms that has been introduced nowadays by the law of nations is approved byrhe pope ..."45 In Unam Sanctam Boniface VIII combined the two swords imagery with Dionysian principles to designate the proper places of spiritual and temporal powers in the spatial hierarchy of the medieval territorial imaginary. One sword ought to be under the other and the temporal authority subject to the spiritual power. For, while the apostle says, "There is no power but from
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God and those that are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1), they would not be ordained unless one sword was under the other and, being inferior, was led by the other to the highest things. For, according to the blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity for the lowest to be led to the highest through intermediaries. In the order of the universe all things are not kept in order in the same fashion and immediately but the lowest are ordered by the intermediate and inferiors by superiors. But that the spiritual power excels any -earthly one in dignity and nobility we ought the more openly to confess in proportion as spiritual things excel temporal ones. 46
Imperium For the publicists the two swords allegory affirmed papal plenitudo potestatis and a hierarchical order in which the spiritual was placed over and above the temporal. However, it could also lend itself to -a defense of imperial sovereignty. During the Investiture Contest Henry IV's ghost writer Gottschalk of Aachen condemned Gregory VII's recent excommunication of the emperor as Hildebrandica insania. Gottschalk argued that by undermining the emperor, the pope was guilty of holding in contempt the divine decree, clearly indicated by the symbolism of the two swords, that there should be two powers of equal status.Y For imperialists the spiritual sword was not held over the temporal, for both authorities occupied an equivalent place in the spatial hierarchy. The temporal authority of the emperor was not exercised at the beck and call of the papacy but in a cooperative relationship of equal sovereignty. "The emperor had the power of the sword and the imperial dignity through election by the princes and people" wrote Huguccio, and because Roman emperors existed long before popes, the latter could depose an emperor only after the electors had convicted him of wrong-doing.f" Imperial dualists therefore insisted that the tW;9 swords, symbolizing spiritual and temporal authority, were held directly froITl God by pope and emperor respectively.t" However, as long as imperialists accepted the notion of Ecclesia as a universal corpus mysticum within which imperium and sacerdotium denoted two distinct functions-in temporal affairs the lay ruler is a real monarch ruling by divine right while the pope's authority is limited to spiritual affairs in the sacrum romanum imperium-their argument was weakened because it evoked -the monstrous image of one body with two heads. Indeed, imperialists were on stronger grounds when they accepted the premise that within Ecclesia the functions of rex and sacerdos should be combined in one person, but then concluded from it that this person should be-the emperor rather than the pope. For Wilks the rhetoric of imperial dualism merely obfuscated the German emperor's real aspiration to reclaim the status of pontifex maximus accorded to their Roman predecessors. "King and priest, the emperor
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is now to be seen as the true ruler of the world.T" However, for Francis Oakley the idea of rex-sacerdos in European medieval political-theological discourse had less absolutist connotations than it had had in imperial Rome.P' Because Greek and Roman cultures retained the archaic notion that kings were also priests and sometimes gods they also kept aspects of themonistic social imaginary of primitive societies. In such societies the divine is immanent in nature and the function of kingship is to ensure aharrnonious bond with nature by overseeing rites and policing taboos. However, Judaism and Christianity substituted a transcendental and exclusive sense of the divine for "the archaic sense of the divine, as a continuum running through the worlds of nature and man, JudeoChristian beliefs undercut also (and therefore) the very metaphysical underpinnings for the archaic pattern ofsacralkingship."52 Patristic Christianity denied any sacred status to the political sphere. St. Augustine regarded the state as a debased secular body, an aberration consequent on Adam's fall, and inferior to the other-worldly civitas Dei where man's true telos lay. Naturally the deeply rooted archaic archetype of sacral kingship could not be easily displaced and vestiges survived in the Byzantine Empire, with the Carolingian and Ottonian emperors, in extremist doctrines. of papal plenitudo potestatis, and on into the early modern discourse of the divine right of kings. Such sites of resistance aside, the attack by Gregorian reformers on the pontifical kingship of the German emperors set in motion three centuries of struggle. between spiritual and temporal authorities that effectively denied that both powers could be held by either institution. It was, writes Oakley, "between the hammer and the anvil of conflicting authorities, religious and secular that Western political freedoms were forged."53 This view is confirmed by Brian Tierney who points out that although the most common form of government in recorded human history has been one where a single ruler aspires to supreme spiritual and temporal power, the middle ages was remarkable not because some emperors and popeswere drawn to theocratic rule but rather because such ambitions were never fully satisfied.P" This is not to say that Carolingian and Ottonian emperors desisted from promoting themselves as Christendom's legitimate rex-sacerdos. Charlemagne was proclaimed rex et sacerdos by the Synod of Frankfurt (796--800), which also approved a liturgy ofkingship that promoted the emperor as christomimetes-s-tiu: imitator of Christ as both God and man. 55 Once anointed and crowned the emperor took on the attributes of God and Christ by grace. As described by Ernst Kantorowicz, the liturgical chants of these ceremonies placed the emperor at the fulcrum of the terrestrial and celestial hierarchies. These liturgies evoked, the cosmic harmony of Heaven, Church and State, an interweaving and twining of the one world with the other and an alliance between the powers on earth and the powers in heaven. Each terrestrial rank is associated with
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a group of celestial intercessors. The king as theChristus Domini is linked to the group of angels and superangelic intercessors, the pope to that of the apostles, the army to the martyrs, the queen-if she is acclaimed-to the choirs of virgins, and the bishops to. the confessors. Human society thus reflects, and is organised after, the model of the hierarchy above. 56 'Thisharmonious spatial hierarchy in which the emperor is the conduit between the world of heaven on high and the powers on earth was also nurtured in Ottonian iconography which popularized Christ-centered kingship. The famous miniature of Otto II as kosmokrator in the Gospel book ofAachen (c. 973) shows "the emperor elevated unto heaven (usque ad celum erectus), all earthly powers inferior to his, and he himself nearest to God."57 In figure 5.2 the young emperor is depicted seated on a throne receiving homage from two archbishops and two warriors. While his feet ar~:resting on the footstool carried by Tellus (earth) his head breaks through into the heavens where it shares space with the four evangelists, and is touched physically by God's hand. The evangelists are carrying a white banderole, the veil of the tabernacle, which divides the emperor's gigantic body and symbolizes the sky separating earth from heaven. In this image of spatial hierarchy it ~s the emperor rather than the pope who occupies the place at the centre of the political cosmos. His body unifies the celestial and temporal orders and it is the emperor who mediates between heaven and earth. The emperor's unique corporeal being, simultaneously terrestrial and heavenly, underpins the claim of the Norman Anonymous (c.1l00) that the emperor's power comes directly from God in heaven. Therefore the emperor, by the Lord Jesus Christ, is said to be elevated even unto heaven. Even unto heaven, I say,. not unto the corporeal sky which is seen, but unto the incorporeal heaven which is unseen; that is, unto the invisible God. Truly, unto God he has been elevated, since so much is he conjoined to Him in power that no other power is more nigh unto God or more sublime than that of the emperor; yea, all other power is inferior to his. 58 As we saw, after the Investiture Contest canonists transferred the emperors' titles of rex imago Christi and rex vicarius Christi to the pope. Imperial scholars countered by denoting the emperor as rex imago Dei or rex vicarius Dei, and "[h] enceforth a papal Christus in terris was sided by an imperial deus in terris."59 The imperialist discourse of kingship claimed divine right as devolved through the Father rather than the Son. It was complemented by a legal theory of monarchical authority which Frederick II (1215-50) promoted in the Constitutions of Melfi, or the Liber Augustalis of 1231. 60 This legal code for the kingdom of
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Figure 5.2 The Emperor in Majesty, c. 975 (vellum) by German school (tenth century). Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/The Bridgeman Art Library. German. Out of copyright.
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Sicily, declared by "we, whom he elevated beyond hope of man to the pinnacle of the Roman Empire," stated that the prince as an instrument of God has a duty to establish laws, promote justice, and chastise wrongdoers.P' Kantorowicz refers to the Liber Augustalis as "the birth certificate of the modern adminis.. . trative state," arguing that it signaled a transition from liturgical to legal kingship.62 In Policraticus (1159) John of Salisbury refers to the prince as rex imago aequitatis, the image of justice or equity and argues that the prince's persona publica is both above the law (legibus solutus) and subject to it (legibus alligatus). 63 In the LiberAugustalis the prince's persona rnixta is no longer that of Christ, God and man, but pater et filius lustitiae (the Father and Son of justicel.P" This blend of theological and legal discourse in "Frederick's imperial theology of rulership" reflected a culture in which the administration of justice by judges and lawyers had the same mysterious aura as the administration of the sacraments by priests. The emperor's dual function as both "lord and minister of justice" harked back to two precepts of the Justinian Code: lex regia-specifically the law by which the Quirites conferred the imperium together with a limited right of creating law and law exemption on the Roman princes-and lex digna-which asserted that the Emperor is morally obliged to serve certain laws even though he was not legally subject to them. Frederick did acknowledge that "although our imperial majesty is free from all laws, it is nevertheless not altogether exalted above the judgement of Reason, herself the Mother of all Law."65 The emperor's legal standing, above Positive Law but subject to Reason, was strengthened by association with the classical hierarchy of the goddesses of law. The highest place in the Templum lu~itiae is occupied by Ratio (Reason), identified with the Law of Nature and closest to Divine Law. Aequitas (Equity), who oversees the positive laws made by man for the government of the state, resides in the lowest position. lustitia (Justice), being less a form of law than an ideal or extra-legal premise of legal thought, partakes of both divine and positive law. Her abode is thus a place between Reason and Equity. lustitia mediates between divine and human laws, therefore the emperor as her terrestrial representative also assumed! this role. "If Justice was the power 'intermediate between God and the world,' then the Prince as the Iustitia animata necessarily obtained a similar position."66 The ideological war between sacerdotium, imperium, and regnum reached a crescendo at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Whereas Boniface's Unam Sanctam stood as a statement of papal plenitude potestatis and John of Paris' De potestate regia et papali (1302-3)-which shall be considered presently-flew the flag for regnum, it was Dante's Monarchia (c. 1313) that epitomized imperial discourse.P" In Monarchia, Dante sought to prove the necessity of temporal government, defined as "a single sovereign authority (unicus principatus) set over all others in time (super omnes in tempore)" by refuting Thomas Aquinas' argument for papal sovereignty. 68 Aquinas. had argued that because man's true end
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is eternal beatitude and only the Church can assist man to reach this state, then logically all princes, who are rnenvrnust be subject to the pope. 69 Dante accepted Aquinas' logical principle that "the whole basis of the means for attaining an end is derived from the end itself" but started from a different opening premise: that man· has two (not one) ends. Ineffable providence has thus set before us two goals to aim at: i.e, happiness in this life, which consists in .the exercise of our own powers and is figured in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the eternal life, which consists in the. enjoyment of the vision of God (to which our own powers cannot raise us except with the help of God's light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise.I" By the "exercise of our own powers" Dante meantthe universal and free exercise of man's highest faculty; that is to "exist as a creature who apprehends by means of the potential intellect; this mode of existence belongs to no creature (whether higher or lower) other than human beings.":" This cannot be achieved by individuals or groups in isolation but only by the "whole of human society (universalis ciuilitatis humani generis) in a universal condition of peace."?2 Only the emperor, who, alone among terrestrial rulers, is imbued with profound philosophica1 wisdom and has the means to ensure universal peace, can direct man toward this end; he is, therefore, the only legitimate ruler of mankind. Dante rejected the canonist's claim that the Church's authority was temporal as well as spiritual. The Church, he argued, is not an effect of nature but a supernatural entity created by God.73 Christ's renunciation of an earthly kingdom before Pilate-"My kingdom is not of this world (Regnum· meum non est de hoc mundo)"...:.-shows that God intended the Church's powers to be purely spiritualr''' The radical incommensurability of man's temporal and celestial destinies means that he requires the service of not one but two independent guides: "the supreme Pontiff: to lead mankind to eternal life in conformity with revealed truth, and the Emperor, to guide mankind to temporal happiness in conformity with the teachings of philosophy."?5 Both are the absolute sovereigns of their respective realms and thepapalists' contention that the emperor holds his sword by order of the pope is whimsical speculation; "the authority of the temporal monarch flows down into him directly without any intermediary from the Fountainhead of universal authority.V" In the Commedia Dante draws on the metaphor of the two suns to affirm the absolute separation oftemporal and spiritual authority Rome use to shine in two suns when her rod made the world good, and each showed her its way: one to the ordered world, and one to God.
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Now one declining sun puts out the other. The sword and crook are one, and only evil can follow from them when they are together;?? Here Dante subverts the canonist metaphor in which the sun's radiance symbolizing papal power is identified as the source of the light of the moon i.e, imperial authority. Rather, emperor and pope co-exist as two equal sovereigns, two suns illuminating respectively the complementary ways of the world and God's divine ordtnancev" Dante's dualism managed to avoid the 'pitfalls of previous imperialist thought, which in positing the .existence of two authorities within Christian society as Ecclesia, had conceded superiority to the Church hierarchy. Dante demoted Ecclesia. Rather than embracing both spiritual and temporal institutions, it becomes a separate corporate body in a space alongside but not above the terrestrial civitas. Dante, contends Gilson, initiated a radical break-with the doctrinal premises of the dominant Christian ideology in which theIiniry ofa medieval Christianity ruled by popes was sustained by the submission of philosophy to theology. "The separation of Church and Empire necessarily presupposed the separation of theology and philosophy, and this is why at the same time that he clove in two the unity of medieval Christianity, he also rent asunder the unity of Christian wisdom, principle unifier and bond of Christianity." 79 In order to prove that the Emperor was independent of papal jurisdiction Dante had to establish a new space for politics, a territorial imaginary independent of the pope, the Church, and even the Christian religion. To this end Dante promoted an ideal of bumana universitas as "a world sector actualized in the symbol of the 'terrestrial paradise'."8o Dante's humana universitas implied a number of alterations to the territorial imaginary of Ecclesia. First, as Kantorowitz suggests, Dante not only isolated humanitas from Ecclesia but even from Christianitas: his humana universitas embraced all men not just Catholics or Christians. "Whereas great portions of men-c--jews, Mohammedans, Pagans~did not belong to the mystical body of Christ, or belonged to it only potentially,Dante's humana ciuilitas included all men: the pagan (Greek and Roman) heroes and wise men, as well as the Muslim Sultan Saladin and the Muslim philosophers Avicenna and Averroes.t"" Second, although Dante felt that a Christian philosopher-emperor would be the ideal guide to lead the humana universitas to its self-actualization as the terrestrial paradise, his choice of the pagan Augustus, during whose rule Christ chose to become man, as the best role model for emperor indicated that the emperor's religious beliefs were not the primary concern. Third, the idea of humana universitas opposed the papalist claims that the pope as vicarius Christi had global sovereignty. In the words of the author of the Somnium uiridarii, "Papa non est
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super paganos secundum. apostolicas sanctiones, sed solummodo super Christianos; ergo non est dominus temporalis omnium."82 Finally humanauniversitas drew on a secular Aristotelian philosophy of politics: the aim of political life for Dante is the fulfillment of human needs, that is the improvement of civilization byrational means, and the polis as the virtuous self sufficient community is the best political order for achieving these ends. For Dante the limit of contemporary empire was Oceanus encircling the orbis terrarum, "[H]urnana civilitas is potentially a 'world-city,' indeed the World-City for the entire world is conceived of as a single political community ... Modelled largely after the historical Roman imperium, Dante's ideal might he described as the Romanized cosmopolis." 83 If humana ciuilitas extricated imperial authority from the overarching hierarchy of Ecclesia where it was subordinate to the pope, Dante was still far from imagining a political order outside of the episteme of hierarchy. The celestial paradise is the model for governance on earth and the relations between celestial and terrestrial polities remain those of superiority and inferiority, higher and lower. In Paradiso XVIII Dante describes seeing an imperial eagle, created by the lights issuing from the souls of the just and temperate rulers, evolving out of final m of the phrase Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram (Love righteousness, you who are the judges of the earth) written across the sky of ]upiter. 84 The message is that the emperor is the channel through which divine justice flows to man on earth. The Emperor's position. ofeminence, high above other mortals, provides him with a clear panorama of the Civitas Dei and allows him to guide people to it. Men, therefore, need restraint by law, and need a monarch over them who sees at least the towers of The True City.85 Like the Ottonian christomirnetes, Dante's emperor straddles both terrestrial and celestial worlds; he occupies an interstitial place and mediates between the transcendent realm of the civitatis Dei and the mundane world of the Empire; he is the conduit between them, Iustitia anirnata, the fulcrum of the hierarchy. Beatrice alludes to the fact that through the person of the emperor the terrestrial city is contained conceptually within the potential extension of the celestial city, when, after welcoming Dante to "nostra citra" in the Rose of Paradise, she points out a "great throne with the crown already set'l ro which shall come "the soul, already anointed, of Henry the Great / who will come to Italy to bring law and order."86 The symbolism of Henry's celestial enthronement allows Dante to juxtapose, and reveal the connections between; these two realms. The heavenly kingdom, God's perfect realm where the citizens enjoy eternal peace, is the
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model for government on earth and just as God is the sole ruler of ~h.e celestial kingdom so the emperor is the sole sovereign authority on earth. Only the emperor is charged with government of the bumana civilitas and his authority to rule is not mediated by papal jurisdiction but comes directly through God.
Regnum Alongside sacerdotium and imperium, regnum constituted the third corner of the base of the medieval pyramid of sovereignty. Although, as the Westphalia narrative records, regnum would ultimately triumph, this outcome was far"from guaranteed, even at the end of the twelfth century when Philip the Fair decisively outmaneuvered Boniface VIII. Regnum was, in terms of material resources and ideological influence, the least powerful of the three institutions. Nevertheless, in the ideological competition to dominate the medieval imaginary of territorial sovereignty, its proponents did have a particularly powerful spectacular weapon to hand. If the Skziczick miniature captured the essence of papal universalism and the image of Otto II best conveyed the aspirations of the emperor, then the Gothic cathedral constituted the symbolic representation of regnum."The French cathedral," wroteViollet-le-Duc, "was born with monarchical power."87 For Henri Lefebvre the Gothic cathedral epitomized the symbolic space of the feudal mode of production: the spatial aesthetics of vertical projection reproduced and legitimized the hierarchical structures of a world in which "the social edifice itself resembled a cathedral."88 The Gothic aesthetic that developed in the Ile-de-France reflected the social and cultural conditions of French feudal relations during the revival of French royal authority under the Capetians.Y Capetian power was primarily based in the wealth of Paris. Yet, as kings of France they had suzerainty over several great bishoprics on their borders. Although these royal sees were officially subject to the crown, six of the bishops were dukes and counts of the realm, great feudal lords whose combined possessions exceeded the royal domains. These six bishops had permanent,; seats in the royal college of twelve and exerted a considerable influence on ror~i policy. Aware that their power could not be exercised independently of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Capetian kings sought to represent themselves as rex and sacerdos: "the pyramidal structure of the state now culminated in the king who knew he was a priest and sat on his throne, surrounded by bishops."9o The most important architect of the Capetian vision of sacral kingship was Abbot Sugar of Saint-Denis. Erwin Panofskyargues that Abbot Sugar was animated by a grand politico-theological vision comprising three truths: first, that the king of France was a "Vicar of God," "bearing God's image in his person and bringing it to life"; second, that because the king held the sword spiritual "for defence of the Church and the poor" he had a sacred duty to subdue all
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internal strife and any challenges to his own authority; and third, that the central authority and the unity of the nation were symbolised, even vested in, the Abbey of Saint-Denis, believed tohave been founded by the Frankish king Dagobert and to contain the relics of the Apostle of all Gaul, "the special and, after God unique protector of the realm."?' Between 1134 and 1144 Sugar oversaw the rebuilding of the royal abbeyin a style which would become the archetype of the Gothic. Central to his vision was his belief that Saint Denis, the patron saint of France, was also Dionysius the Areopagite. Thus, just as Dionysius wrote that the hierarchical harmony of the universe was constituted by the emanation of divine light, so Sugar pointed out that by virtue of the columns and central arches of the nave and side-aisles, "the whole [church] would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most sacred windows, pervading the interior beauty."92 The architecture of Saint-Denis, seemingly transparent, allowed light to unify all matter and space within the building and to.comrnunicate the sense of the unity of the divine cosrnos.l" The Gothic "theology of light" embodied the splendor of Heavenly Jerusalern.?" Furthermore, as the artistic incarnation of Dionysian hierarchy, Saint-Denis also perpetuated an "idea of the French monarchy [that] gradually became inseparable from the vision expounded in the Corpus areopagiticum: (i.e. that the king as head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was through his coronation transformed into a Christus Domini, so mirroring, according to Dionysian principles, Christ's position at the head of the celestial hierarchy)."95 The over-awed medieval spectator gazing up at the vaults would have inferred that a space built as the manifestation' of Dionysian principles was also a symbol of the sacred nature of monarchy. "Precisely because it evoked the mystical archetype of the political order of the French monarchy, the style of St.-Denis was adopted for all the cathedrals of France and became the monumental expression of the Capetian idea of kingship."96 In the contest over who should exercise. sovereignty within the territories of Christendom, regnum came into its own during Philip IV's (1268-1313) struggle with Boniface VIII. This conflict was the first dispute between church and I state "which can properly be described as a dispute over national sovereignty."97. ~' Hostilities erupted because the French and English crowns, who were at war, sought to finance their campaigns by imposing taxes on their clergy. For Boniface this amounted to a negation of the principle that the pope was the head of all ecclesiastical hierarchies wherever they were located. His response was the bull Clericis Laicos (February 1296), which asserted that as iudex ordinarius omnium, set over all kings, the pope had the right to settle international disputes, and that by forbidding clergy to pay these taxes he could justly deprive the kings of their war chests. However, the monarchs interpreted Clericis Laicos as an attack on their. sovereignty, for not only did. it challenge their control over mem'oers at the ecclesia and. their ~ood.s, 'out it also \e~itim.i'Led. clerical
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resistance to royal command. Philip's response was twofold: he banned the export of precious goods from France thereby reducing the Holy See's revenue; and he threatened to support the pope's enemies in Italy. Boniface stood down and issued Etsi De Statu (July 1297) which exempted Philip from the prohibition in Clericis Laicos. The second dispute started when Philip arrested and tried Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Palmiers on charges of blasphemy, heresy, and treason, thereby challenging the canon law principle that only the Pope could try bishops. Boniface refused to accept the legitimacy of Philip's actions, reasoning that if he endorsed Philip hewould implicitly be approving of the king's unlimited power over the French episcopate. He issued a series of bulls, calling for Saisset's release, reversing Philip's previous exemption and calling the French bishops to a crisis council in Rome. In Ausculta Fili (December 1301) he accused Philip of undermining the French church by abusing clerical privileges and warned him not to be deluded into thinking that "you have no superior or that you are not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hlerarchy.T" Although Boniface's main concern was to reassert his control over the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Philip's minister Peter Flotte claimed at the Estates-General in Ap!il 1302 that Boniface was claiming feudal lordship over France. Philip's pressure on the French bishops ensured that only thirty six out of seventy eight attended the Roman council Boniface called in October 1302. Boniface's response was to issue Unam Sanctam (November 1302) directed toward any French bishops whose patriotism might override their duty to the Church. The inflammatory rhetoric of Unam Sanctam put paid to any hope of compromise between the two camps. Philip's minister Guillaume de Nogaret condemned Boniface before a council of French bishops in March 1303, and then, assisted by Boniface's sworn enemy Sciarra Colonna, occupied the pope's home town of Anagni. Although Boniface escaped he was deeply shocked and died a few weeks later in Rome. Philip's victory was confirmed when he cajoled the French pope Clement V (1305-14) to renounce ClericisLaicos and to issue Meruit (1306) which declared that Unam Sanctam should not be interpreted as a papal claim for lordship over France. In this instance regnum'svictory was down to skilful diplomacy and displays of physical force. However regnum'» star was also burning brightly in the ideological wars. Monarchical government was bolstered by the twelfth century recovery of much of Aristotle's work, including the Nichomacbean Ethics (full Latin translation by Robert Grosseteste c. 124617) and the Politics (William of Moerbeke 1265) as well as various commentaries by Moslem philosophers such as Avicenna (980......1037) and Averroes (1126-98).99 Aristotle's metaphysics challenged many tenets of established Christian doctrine. It depicted a rationally ordered cosmos in which matter and motion were eternally derived by necessity from the potentiality of prime matter by a primum movens immobile,
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the uncaused self-activity of reason. It portrayed man asa composite of bodily matter and a rational soul. The Averroists in particular unsettled Christian doxa by distinguishing between philosophical and theological truths. Drawing on Aristotle they promoted the idea of a world-soul embracing all individual souls, which challenged the Christian doctrines of personal immortality and rewards in life after death. The Christian creation myth was undermined by the Aristotelian argument that the world was both eternal and necessary. Further, the Aristotelian view of politics as an autonomous sphere of human activity with its own logic, values, and virtues challenged the premise of Christian political theology that the temporal was inherently inferior to the spiritual. According to Aristotelian logic the potential invested in human nature was not to be fulfilled outside of quotidian time and space in the eternal realm of the celestial City of God, but in the political community as it existed in the here and now. A good life, independent of personal reconciliation with God in the hereafter, could be achieved within thepolis. It would fall to Thomas Aquinas to reconcile the received doctrines of Christianity with the rediscovered Aristotelian corpus.l''? Aristotle's work, he maintained, could be brought to bear upon two current disputes among Christian theologians: first, whether "the world" was part of the divine plan of a beneficent God or the result of man's corruption and fall; and, second, whether knowledge acquired by reason was compatible with revelations of faith. l o l Aquinas argued that reason or knowing things .through the senses was compatible with faith. "Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it."I02 The purposes of man's temporal and spiritual lives could be reconciled within an ethos, acceptable to both Aristotle and Christianity, of final causation, of nature as being both rational and purposive: "nature does nothing in vain." The world and man's place In it are determined by the telos to which all being and becoming are directed. Sin, for example, should not be regarded as an aberration but ·as an integral aspect of God's divine plan for man to achieve happiness. It was on similar grounds that Aquinas challenged St. Augustine's condemnation of civil government as a manifestation of the corruption of human nature. Augustine had argued that "the citizens of the earthly city are produced by a nature which is vitiated by sin" and that temporal rulers-c--whose archetypes Cain and ·Romulus founded kingdoms by acts of fratricide-are inherently debased and only fit to serve as the executioners of spiritual authorities. I03 In De Regimine Principum Aquinas challenged Augustine's view of the corrupted nature of politics by reiterating Aristotle's premises that "man is by nature a political and social animal" who in association with others can achieve life's necessities by means of the free exercise of his reason and the application of his natural talents.i'" Just government will ensure that individuals do not act purely according to their private interests, for it establishes the
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conditions within which individuals can, by exercising their faculty of rational judgment, establish the common good and identify the best ways to ac;fiieve it. _ Furthermore, as Ezekeil's proclamation that "[mjy servant David will he king all over, and there will be one shepherd over all of them" makes clear, kingship ' is the best form of government to achieve such aims. l OS i Aquinas' argument that government should be exercised by rational man seems to evacuate the divine from the political realm and to present an alternative to the papal and imperial versions of the territorial imaginary in which, sovereignty issues from a higher space, passes down rigidly structured spatial hierarchies, and is exercised over terrestrial Christendom. While terrestrial government may ultimately be sanctioned by the civitas Dei, those who command it do so free of the dictates of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This message is reinforced by Aquinas's assertion that since the civitas is the, unique subject of both types of human law-the law of nations, jus gentium and civil lawrulers can adapt it to suit their community's best interests. Yet, the autonomy Aquinas granted to the practical application of human law is circumscribed, for he placed human law at the bottom of the hierarchy of laws. In a scheme which mirrors Frederick Irs plan for the Templum Justitiae, Aquinas differentiated the' different forms of law accordingly: the highest most perfect law is eternal law or God's· plan for the universe; beneath eternal law comes natural law or "the rational creature's [man's] participation of the eternal law" by the use of reason, and finally at the base is human law or the application of natural law to specific socieries.l" So while Aquinas' state is somewhat autonomous, operating according to its own laws and independent of ecclesiastical supervision, the 'Chrlstlan Aquinas, for whom all lawful authority must be subject to God, ensures that the civitas remains integrated into the Christian hierarchical order. Aquinas did not, however, state his position on these matters clearly and his rare forays into discussions of church and state relations were characterized by considerable ambiguity. For example, having asserted in one passage that the secular and spiritual powers must accept each other's sphere of authority, he adds, in a: statement which would have done any canonist proud, "[ujnless, perhaps, the secular power is joined to the spiritual, as in the pope, who holds the\.~pex of both authorities, the spiritual and the secular."I07 A more overtly partisan supporter of regnum at least of the French Capetians, was John of Paris.l'" In the Tractatus de po testate regia et papali John investigated both the general relationship between spiritual and temporal powers and the' specific correspondences between rulers and subjects within Ecclesia and civitas. The truth about the "power of ecclesiastical pontiffs" lay between two extreme positions: the ascetic Waldensian assertion that "the prelates of God's church, the successors of the apostles, ought not to have dominion over temporal wealth," and the canonist contention that "the lord pope, in as much as he stands in the J
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place of Christ on earth, has dominion; cognizance, and Jurisdiction over the temporal goods of princes and barons.. "109 John didriot object to prelates having "dominion and jurisdiction over temporal things" as such but insisted that they recognize that such privileges were not derived from their status as vicars of Christ or as, successors to the apostles, but rather" that they (,have such powers as a concession from or with the permission of princes."110 Central to John's argument was a distinction between the power of kings and the power of priests. John drew on Aristotle's account of man as a naturally political or civil animal and theories of natural law and the law of nations to define kingship as "rule over a community perfectly ordered to the common good by one person."Ill Man has two ends: to live virtuously on earth and to achieve eternal life in heaven. Kings can only lead men to the former so another guide, namely Jesus Christ, whose authority is currently manifest in the priesthood, is required to direct man to the divine. As Dionysius the Areophagite had established, within the ecclesia hierarchy is the proper order and the pope is rightly supreme so-that he can settle matters of doctrinal controversy or institutional conflict. Ho~~ver, John argued, in a passage directed as much against imperium as sacerdotium, that
mankind toward the greater goal, but rejected the implication that princely temporal authority was derived from spiritual power.
it is not the case that the faithful laity are by divine law subservient to one supreme monarch in temporal matters. Rather, they live civilly and in community according to the prompting of a natural inclination which is from God. Accordingly, they choose different, types of rulers to oversee the well-being of their communities to correspond with the diversity of these cornrnunities.Uf '
Ultimately John ofParis was still beholden to the Christian Weltanschauung and its structures of hierarchy, yet there are intimations of a post-medieval territorial imaginary in his work, especially where he exploited the contest between sacerdotium and imperium to further the interests of the Caperians. In their attacks on the Emperor the canonists had unwittingly served as midwives to the monarchical discourse of territorial sovereignty. In the decretal Per Venerabilem (1202) Innocent III proclaimed that the Emperor had no authority over other secular rulers, "since the king himself [of the French] does not recognize a superior in temporal matters (quum rex ipse [Francorum] superiorem in temporalibus minime recognoscat)," This declaration was seized upon by advocates of monarchy, like John, who generated from it the more extensive sovereignty claim of a "rex qui superiorem non recognoscit:" In the fourteenth century French and Neapolitan lawyers combined it with the formula rex in regno suo est irnperator regni sui to propound a "thesis of royal territorial sovereignty."115 Second, John voiced an embryonic French nationalism in rejecting the papalist thesis that the Donation of Constantine gave the pope de jure authority over the kingdom of France. According to the Donation narrative, in return for baptism and a cure from leprosy, Constantine had given Pope Sylvester I the Lateran palace, his imperial crown (actually refused by Sylvester) and the right to wear imperial insignia and garrnents.U" Donarists claimed that since Constantine had handed over not only the government of Rome and Italy but also that of some western imperial territories, including contemporary France, the pope's patrimony and imperial power still extended over these lands. John countered by arguing that that "royal
The implications of the autonomy John granted cztntas from Ecclesia and Christianitas were as radical as Dante's notion of humana ciuilitas. Although one supreme head was required to guarantee the unity of the Catholic faith and the common identity of the Christian peoples, "this purpose does not require that the faithful beunited in any common state (politia communi). There can be different ways of living and different kinds of state, (politie) conforming to differences in climate, language and the condition of men, with what is suitable for one nation (una gente) not so foranorher/'J'" In his response to Hugh of SaintVictor's arguments in De sacramentis that the spiritual authority of the pope was prior to kingship in both time and dignity,' John further restricted the remit of the pope's spiritual authority to intervene in the affairs of kings. Against Hugh's argument that becausepriesthood was instituted by God it therefore antedated any human temporal authority, John claimed that kings existed prior to Moses and that the first true priest was Christ. Against Hugh's contention that the spiritual is universally prior to and superior to the material, John accepted that the dignity of the priesthood was greater than kingship in so far as it directs
For the latter secular power does not relate to the higher spiritual power in such a way that it arises or derives from it. This is how the power of the proconsul relates to the power of the emperor; and the latter is greater in all things because the proconsul's power is derived from ,the emperor. The relationship, rather, is like that between the power of the head of a family and that of a master of soldiers; one is not derived from the other, but both are derived from some superior power. Therefore, secular power is greater than spiritual power insome things, namely, temporal things; and it is not subject to the spiritual power with reference to them in any way, because secular power does not arise from spirirual power. The two arise directly from one supreme power: the divine power ... Hence, the priest is superior principally in spiritual matters; and, conversely, the prince is superior in temporal matters, although the priest is superior absolutely insofar as the spiritual is superior to the temporal. l 14
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power both existed and was exercised before the papa~~0 and there were kings in France before there were Christians. Therefore neither the royal power nor its exercise is from the pope but from God and from the people who elect a king ... "117 Although the Romans had conquered the Gauls they did not overcome the noble Franks who, directly descended from the Trojans, had not only never succumbed to imperial power but had themselves subjugated the whole of Germany and Gaul: "they settled in Gaul, and named it France; and they were subject neither to the Romans nor to anyone else."II8 From these elevated peoples sprang the "saintly kings" who ever. since St. Louis's canonization had exercised authority over the kingdom of France. 119 Thus not only does France have a venerable genealogy extending back to the Frankish empire, but her king was also the personal embodiment of the country's sacred status.. The tone ofJohn's history of the Franks has lead Jean Riviere to describes the Tractatus as an example of" le nationalisme Francais." 120 It certainly evoked the religious patriotism of the thirteenth century which, maintains Kantorowicz, was embodied in a revival of the Greek and Roman ideal of the heroic warrior who lost his life pro patria, that is for the greater cause of the polis or respublica Romana. 121 During the feudal era civic death pro patria had been replaced by either the crusader's martyrdom in the cause of Christianitas or the vassalgiving his life for the honor of his feudal lord. However, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the classical values of patria were. recovered by the early state builders and fatherland came "to refer to a national kingdom, or to the 'crown' as the visible symbol of a national territorial community."122 In the chansons de gesteFrance was depicted as a sacred land, the successor state of the Frankish empire. Just as the crusaders had endured martyrdom on behalf of the patria aeterna, the City of God, so Charlemagne's French crusaders who fought the Saracens in Spain were seen as role models prepared to lay down their lives for Francia Deo sacra. 123 Clearly it was regnum's version of the medieval territorial imaginary that would eventually evolve into the modern secularized ideal of the sovereign national territorial state. However, the other two medieval territorial imaginaries and the spatial hierarchies .within which they were embedded would continue to resonate for centuries. The spirit of papal plenitudo potestatis was kept alive in hierocratic writing such as Augustinus Triurnphus' Summa de potestate ecclesiastica (1326) and Alvarus Pel agius' De planctu ecclesiae (1330-1332) well into the fourteenth century. Likewise, although by 1300 imperium was a setting star and Dante's Monarchia already rather anachronistic, the idea of humana civilitas was an importantcontribution to modern secular politics. Indeed the modern discourse of the divine right of kings, which prompted the religious or sacred aura of regnum wellinto the era of Westphalia, contained within it vestiges of the hierarchical arrangement of territoriality characteristic of medieval
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political discourse. However, we are concerned with rupture rather than continuity and the .following chapters will discuss the challenges mounted to the medieval. territorial imaginary by the Renaissance revolution in thil1~ing about space. With the Renaissance the episteme of hierarchy buckled and gave way to a modern culture of space that established the conditions of possibility for the modern representation of the territorial politics of anarchy. !
CHAPTER 6
The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy
n e of this book's tasks is to unsettle the Westphalia narrative of • International Relations that identifies the Peace of Westphalia as the symbolic moment when medieval international relations gave way to the modern international system of sovereign territorial states. This modern/ medieval dichotomy has heuristic value in that it isolates the modern states system from. the limitless text of history. Nevertheless, it is ideological for it reinforces the Western myth of progress: it legitimizes the international system by aligning it with the progressive values of modernity that signified man's escape from the Middle Age mire ofreligion and superstition. However, serious study of the Renaissance, during which thought seems to be reaching to modernity while being constrained by the grammars. and vocabularies of medieval Christianity, collapses this neat opposition between the Medieval and the Modern. In the Renaissance modernity advances and retreats like the wash of an incoming tide as reason and myth, science and superstition battle it out for suprem'lcy. Study of the Renaissance shows that modern thought, culture, and polities did not emerge suddenly phoenix-like out of medieval darkness and so undermines the Westphalian chronological rupture between medieval and modern international politics. My concern in this chapter is with the Renaissance critique of hierarchy. However, before addressing this aspect of Renaissance thought consideration must be given to the meaning of the Renaissance per se. Although invisible in most IR scholarship, the Renaissance is one of the most contested concepts of intellectual and cultural history.' Much debate has focused on the question of originality. Did the Renaissance revolutionize the way that man conceived of himself and his being-in-the-world or did it merely reformulate established ideas and belief systems? Was the Renaissance the dawning of modernity or the waning of the Middle Ages, or both simultaneously?
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The Idea of the Renaissance At the end of a survey of five centuries of Renaissance historiography, Wallace Ferguson concluded that as an object of historical enquiry the Renaissance reveals more about the values and aspirations of those who have studied it than some essential truth about its meaning or significance. 2 Although the various connotations that the Renaissance has today emerged over many centuries, the Italian humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were already convinced that the return of the glories of classical culture they were witnessing signified the dawning. of a new era of civilization. Indeed, it was this historical self-consciousness that first gave voice to the medieval/modern dichotomy, which today underscores the Westphalia narrative. Petrarch (1304-74), driven by nostalgia for Rome, rejected the teleological.,narrative of Christian history-in which the divine oversaw mankind's progression from "heathen darkness to the light that was Christ"-by identifying two distinct historical eras: historiae antiquae and historiae novae. 3 Whereas the Christian narrative implied progress from antiquity to the present-the latter being more proximate to the moment of divine revelation-Petrach reversedit by portraying historiae antiquae, the period of royal, republican, and imperial Rome, as the age of glory and light and contrasting it with the following centuries of darkness and decay caused by Rome's adoption of Christianity as the state religion. Inspired by Petrarch, the Italian humanists saw themselves as the harbingers of new age of history. The revival of classical antiquity would usher in a historical consciousness as different ·from the medieval past as early Christian Europe had been from Rome. For Erwin Panofsky the prevalence of" biblical antitheses between darkness and light, slumber and awakening and blindness and seeing" indicates that the Renaissance was not just an intellectual movement or new cultural sensitivity but an almost religious experience.t Two centuries later, Vasari (1511-74) would declare that la rinascita, the revival or rebirth of art inspired by the humanist recovery of ancient civilization, amounted to a caesural rupture with the past. Vasari identified contemporary, recent and antique artistic styles. using terminology replete with connotations of regression and progress. Thus by maniera vecchia (the oldfashioned style) he denoted two unsophisticated artistic styles of the recent past: greci vecchi e non antichi (Byzantine) and maniera tedesca (Gothic). By contrast, rnaniera antica signified la buona maniera greca antica (the good, antique-Greek style). Finally;moderno designated contemporary art, the Renaissance style, which Vasari contrasted to the base art forms of the middle ages.? His division of history into three distinct periods drew "the first major dividing line in the annals of Western Europe between antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the second between the Middle Ages and what Vasari and
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his contemporaries proposed to call the 'modern era'."6 The impasse between antiquity and the middle ages arose from the destruction of the pagan artifacts of Roman civilization by barbarian pillagers and Christian iconoclasts. This cultural vandalism had erased the artistic sensibility through which mankind's most honorable values had been expressed. The second rupture, between the middle ages and the modern, came with the rediscovery of painting and the rejection of the "ugly form of Byzantine style" by the artistic geniuses Cimabue-"perhaps the first cause of the restoration of the art of painting"-and Giotto who, infused with divine inspiration, "revived the modern and excellent art of painting."? Enlightenment thinkers built on Vasari's basic scheme to present the Renaissance as the rebirth of Europe's culturevvalues, and civilization." For Voltaire, men like Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cimabue, and Giotto pioneered a perfect aesthetic which managed to combine the wisdom of the past with the promise of the future. On reading Petrarch, Voltaire experienced "t~e beauty of antiquity, together with the freshness of modern times."? Late eighteenth century Europeans, infused with Enlightenment promises of progress, began to see the Renaissance not just as the recovery of classical civilization but as a pivotal moment in the history of mankind's emergence into maturity. In Hegel's account of the Renaissance three new sensitivities come together-the flourishing of Fine Arts, which turned man toward the sensual; the revival of learning or study of antiquity, which directed his attention away from heaven; and the geographical discoveries, which turned. the spirit outward toward the earth---'-to establish the conditions within which the spirit or Godhead could achieve its highest stage of reflective self-awareness. The Renaissance was comparable with that blush ofdawn, which after long storms first betokens the return of a bright and glorious day. This day is the day of Universality, which breaks upon the world after ·the long, eventful, and terrible night of the Middle Ages-a day which is distinguished by science, art and inventive impulse-that is, by the noblest and highest, and which Humanity, rendered free by Christianity and emancipated through the instrumentality of the Church, exhibits as the eternal and veritable substance of its being.!" The apotheosis of the idea of the Renaissance as the historical emergence of a new mode of civilization was Jacob Burckhardt's claim in Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien that the Renaissance discovered man and the world.I' In Burckhardt's view, Renaissance culture floutished in the prosperous economic and dynamic political condition of the Italian city-states. Economic independence and the art of governance promoted individuality and self-expresslon.P
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In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness-that which was turned within as that which was turned without-lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation-only through some general· category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the State and of all the things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such. 13 Burckhardt's vision of the Renaissance as a moment of salvation, a release from the barbarism of the preceding ages, was challenged by medieval historians who rejected its negative assessment of European culture between the sixth and fourteenth centuries asa monotonous religious uniformity. They identified distinctive and innovative elements in medieval art-previously regarded as crude and barbarous in the light ofVasari's classical schemes-and showed how postRoman medieval civilisation had absorbed much of Rome's legal, cultural, and economic thought and practice. Scholars, like Walter Pater and Charles Haskins, maintained that the culture of twelfth century France, combining Romanesque and Gothic styles, the blossoming of lyric and epic vernacular poetry, and new learning and literature in Latin, showed an intellectual and spiritual sensitivity equal to, if not greater than, the Italian Renaissance of the quattro cento. "The Middle Ages [is] less dark and static, the Renaissance less bright and less sudden, than was once supposed.Y'" For Pater if the Renaissance is understood asa movement during which "the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling and sensation and thought, not opposed to but only beyond and independent of the spiritual system" then the legendary figure ofAbelard was arguably the prototype for Renaissance man.P Within the realm ofscience, Dana Durand argues that if modernity emerged out of the scientific revolution then the quattrocento did not achieve "a radicalbreak with the Middle Ages and institute the era of Modern Europe.f '" Compared to. medieval scholastics, .Renaissance humanists made few breakthroughs in scientific. methodology, cosmology, mathematics, or physics. The Renaissance only produced three innovative scientific thinkers in Leonardo, Cusa, and Toscanelli, and it made no significant contributions to scientific knowledge, even within established paradigms. Lynn Thorndike's judgment is harsher still. He argues, against Burkhardt, that the modern individual, capable of appreciating nature and beauty, was the product of medieval civilization rather than the Renaissance.'? Furthermore, Middle Age art and architecture displayed both a sensitivity to nature and signs of an innovative mode of scientific inquiry that the humanists, with their retrospective obsession
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with ancient texts, did not develop. Thorndike favors ·ditching the i~ba of the Renaissance entirely because "[i)t has kept men in general from recognizing that our life and thought is based more nearly and actually on the middle ages than on distant Greece and Rome, from whom our heritage is more indirect, bookish and sentimental, less institutional, social, religious, even less economic and experimental." 18 Renaissance historians did not let this attack on the uniqueness of the Renaissance by the scientific "deperiodizers" go unchallenged. They sought to reassert the distinctiveness of the Renaissance while acknowledging the vitality of medieval civilization. Hans Baron challenged the view that the Renaissance was irrelevant to the emergence of modern science.l" Yes the humanists sidelined natural science in favor of history, but their notions of man and the world directly inspired subsequent scientific breakthroughs. Galileo's confirmation of Copernican cosmology drew on Nicholas of Cusa's vision of a decentralized and peripatetic cosmos. Similarly, the ethos of the artist-workshops of Renaissance Italy-characterised by experimentation, observation and causal thinkinginfluenced Galileo's decision to place observation and hypothetico-deductive reasoning at the heart of scientific method. Leonardo also insisted that for an enquiry to be scientific it should satisfy mathematical tests. For Baron the "subtle interrelations between the 'realism' of the Renaissance and the subsequent rise of the scientific spirit" justify the claim that the Renaissance was the prototype of the modern world.j" Another staunch defender ofthe idea ofthe Renaissance was Federico Chabod, who denied that it was either radically incommensurate with a preceding "epoch of barbarism and darkness" or. a superficial intellectual or stylistic movement of little consequence to the overall passage of history. Chabod identified the Renaissance as a "period" in the sense of "a movement of ideas, an artistic, literary and cultural period which is first of all and above all a spiritual reality."21 As such, its particular significance was derived from its reception of classical
culture and its promotion of conceptual realism. Although ClassicaI~ntiqUity
had permeated medieval life and was cherished and admired, it was ~t"an ideal unrecoverable world. By contrast, the humanists felt it was possible to live the spirit of the classical age through imitatio. Whereas for the scholastics Roman history was merely a passage on the greater journey to Revelation, the humanists viewed the pagan model of Rome as the Golden Age when man's highest aspirations were realized. Furthermore, although both medieval and Renaissance cultures produced rich and vivid descriptions of the world, the humanists replaced providential causality with a "conceptual realism" that prioritized the actions of great men as the motor of universal history.22 Historical events were no longer explained in terms of divine retribution or reward for good conduct but as the consequences of human agency. Nevertheless, Chabod admits that in many
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spheres of life attitudes remained far from modern. ,Economic life, in particular, was still constrained by a Christian ethic which regarded the instrumental pursuit of money as sinful. There was no economic equivalent to Machiavelli's "politics for politics' sake" or Alberti's "art for art's sake." Likewise, ethical discourse failed to escape the values of theological' reasoning. The facts of the existence of man and the world could be explained rationally but their justification required recourse to a universal moral law established by God or Providence. Furthermore, the idealization of classical .antiquity emulated the, Christian belief in the' revelation of truth at a particular moment in history. Finally, the humanist anticipation ofa new humanitas rnirrored the eschatological expectation of the coming of the kingdom of God. Despite such caveats, Chabod's Renaissance was not simply the final instance of another medieval culture, but challenged its very essence. Similarly, for E. H. Gombrich, Renaissance intellectual and artistic life, embodied in the recovery of an elegant Latin style and the rebirth of art through perspective and nude drawing, was so distinctive that it forced a rupture with pre-existing European culture.f' In the post-war era the Renaissance' debate shifted to an evaluation of its importance within macro-historical processes. In narratives which staged Western history as an unfolding drama of human progress and development, reaching its final act in modernity, the Renaissance was cast as a principle actor. Taking a broad chronological perspective (1300-1600), Wallace Ferguson defined the Renaissance as a period of transition in Western civilization during which medieval social structures and ideologies grounded in feudalism and the Church were replaced with the institutions of modern civilization: commerce and industry supplanted' agriculture; a money 'economy and capitalism emerged; feudal particularism and Christian universalism were replaced by national centralized states; the hegemony of the Catholic church was challenged by Protestant sects; and, urban elites emerged as political leaders, cultural arbiters and sponsors of secular learning and knowledge.r" Scholars promoted the "age of the Renaissance" as a period of transition from the medieval to the modern world, one that anticipated modernity as much as it honored the legacies of medieval culture. However, William Bouwsma points out that the validity of the bridging thesis depends on the intelligibility of the two ages it connects. "The Renaissance as 'transition' suggests something like an unsteady bridge between two granitic headlands, clearly identifiable as the Middle Ages and the modern (or, at least, early modern) world."25 Accordinglyit rests upon two weak premises: that the modern world is an intelligible entity, and that modernity emerged out of a single linear process. Subsequent Structuralist histories have sought to overcome this by substituting progressive history with an emphasis on discontinuity and rupture between durees. In Le Roy Ladurie's history of the longue duree the centuries between 1000 and 1800 figure as a motionless unity
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constrained by an inescapable Malthusian dynamic. From the perspective of the longue duree there is no meaningful distinction between medieval and early modern Europe and the significance of the Renaissance as a period of transition disappears. Nevertheless, claims Bouwsma, since Ladurie explains the ending of longue duree in terms of "elitist forces of revolution" motivated by impulses such as individualism and practical empirical rationality, he effectively reinstated the Renaissance, which first promoted such values.r'' If there is one thing that emerges from these debates, it is that the Renaissance is not simply one thing or another. It was neither medieval nor modern, but embraced aspects of both. Renaissance thought, as Eusebio Colomer describes it, constitutes a threshold between "the ancient and medieval past and the modern future ... in Leibniz's phrase imbued with the past and pregnant with the future."27 The subsequent inquiry into the Renaissance "origins" of the modern territorial imaginary will, therefore, avoid depicting the Renaissance culture of space as a coherent, unified, and organized body ofspatial discourse that brought about an absolute break with the hierarchical order of medieval Christianity, ';'
Individual and Cosmos Richard Ashley and Rob Walker assert that the Cartesian spatial practices of modernity, which have differentiated the inside spaces of territorial sovereignty from the outside spaces of anarchy, are symptomatic ofa broader structural principle of sovereign identity. Walker and Ashley imply that the principle of sovereign identity, and obviously Cartesian practice, are products of the Cosmopolitan culture of seventeenth century Europe. However, as I shall demonstrate in this section, the principle of sovereign identity was already present in Renaissance philosophical 'reflections on the nature of man and his place in the cosmos. Intimations of the principle of sovereign identity can be identified in Marsilio Ficino's depiction of man as an image of God and in Pico della Mirandola's promotion of the dignity of man. 28 Ficino and Pi co gave man the means to escape from the confines of the base position to which he had been allocated in the medieval spatial episteme. In so doing they removed the pivotal foundation upon which the cosmology of hierarchy was constructed. Self-fashioning Renaissance man was able to mark out his being-in-space and took a significant step toward the modern territorial imaginary. However" it would be incorrect to assume that either Ficino or Pico rejected the basic hierarchical premises ofmedieval cosmology. Their ontological horizon was still determined by the vocabularies and categories of Neo-Platonism and Christian scholasticism. It reflected the continued prevalence of the medieval spatial episteme in Renaissance culture.I? Peter Burke argues that few sixteenth century Italians would have challenged Dante's division of the cosmos into a
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higher and a lower world; their mental universe was "like that of their medieval ancestors, animate rather than mechanical, moralized rather than neutral and organized in .terrns of correspondences rather than causes."30 The continued appeal of the hierarchical universe was derived from its provision of an intelligible "ready-reference system for the allocation by category of every phenomenon to its place in the scheme of things."31 Its hegemony ensured that new cosmological theories were resisted by much of the educated elite and remainedunknown to the mass of the population. By and large, "[tjhe men of the fifteenth century still lived in a walled universe as well as in walled towns."32 Ficino's cosmos would certainly have been familiar to Dante. It was a closed system of hierarchically ordered spheres in which each being has its place and degree of perfection. God at the summit presided over a descending hierarchy of orders: angels and souls; celestial and elementary spheres, then animal, plant and mineral species and, at the bottom, shapeless prime matter. The realms of the four elements moved according to Aristotelian criteria of substance and quality. Seven heavens moved according to their disposition and the eighth, which moved both east-west and west-east, .had the qualities of brilliance and splendor. The seven heavens were in turn enclosed within the crystalline sphere, which only moved east to west and had a single quality of brilliance. Then in accordance with the principles that position is. superior to motion and the source of light is superior to light itself: the summit of the universe is occupied by the static and luminescent Empyrean, related to the stability and light of the Trinity. In the Empyrean the nine orders of angels are disposed in a manner consistent with Dionysius the Areopagite; three hierarchies of divine spirits, each of which contains three orders. 33 In Ficino's cosmos all being is ordered in relations of hierarchy. For P. 0.· Kristeller, Ficino's "hierarchical order constitutes ... an ontological space that embraces all corporeal and incorporeal elements alike and in which all things have a definite relationship. of proximity to each other."34 All entities are ranked according to their relative dignity or perfection and are included in an ascending or descending sequence oEgrades: "divine sun" at the summit over "angelic mind," "rational soul" in the middle, then "active quality" giving form to matter and at the bottom, the "dull mass ofbodies."35 Although Pico's philosophy was more eclectic than Ficino's and complemented the Neo-Platonist core with Aristotelian, Averroist, and Hebraic Cabbalist elements, the universe in the Heptaplus remains essentially hierarchical. The cosmos consists of three worlds: the elemental world of nature, the celestial world of-the planets, and the angelic world of the intelligences, arranged in ascending order according to their relative values in the hierarchy. In the first world, God, the ptimal unity, presides over the nine orders of angels as if over many spheres and, without moving, moves all toward
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himself: In the middle world, that is, the celestial, the empyrean heaven likewise presides like the commander of an army over nine heave~~y spheres, each of which revolves with an unceasing motion; yet in imitati~n of God, it is itself unmoving. There are also in the elemental world, after the prime matter which is its foundation, nine spheres of corruptible forms. 36 Man belongs to the fourth world and it contains all those things found in the others. Pice's universe is an emanative sympatheia for "whatever is in any of the worlds is at the same time contained in each."37 The allegorical principle that everything is in everything is the basis of all knowledge. For Pico, "[bjound by the chains of concord, all these worlds exchange nature as well as names with mutualliberality."38 Although none of this. challenged the basic hierarchical structure of the medieval cosmos, Ficino and Pico made one significant alteration by reassigning man's place within it. The order of things in the medieval cosmos had been established by the Plotinian model of six hypostases: One, Mind, Soul, Sensation, Nature, and Body. However, in the Theologia Platonica, Ficino only recognized five grades of substances: God, Angel, Soul, Quality, and Body. Although the upper part of this hierarchy reproduced the Plotinian scheme, by placing Soul at the centre of the symmetrical hierarchy of ontological order, Ficino guaranteed its indissolubility and immortality; for, if the soul perished the whole hierarchy would dissolve. By giving "the privileged place in its centre to the human soul ... [Ficino gives] ... a kind of metaphysical setting and sanction to the doctrine of the dignity of man."39 As the absolute median connecting the extremes of the world, Soul confirms the inner unity of Being. Situated between and having attributes of both higher and lower beings it is the mean of all God's creations. Soul is in all things simultaneously, possessing images of the divine things on which it depends and concepts of the lower things which it generates. "Therefore it may be rightly called the centre of nature, the middle term of all things, the series of the world, the face of all, the bond and juncture of the universe.T'" For Charles Trinkaus, Ficino's conception of the soul was the most radical statement ofhuman autonomy made in the Renaissances" Man as rational soul not only serves .as the conduit between eternal and te~poral and between divine and nature, but is the only entity able to movebetween the corporeal and divine realms. Man is unique because his soul "is not compelled by the divine, from whose providence it is free from the start, nor is it coerced by anything natural over which it widely rules."42 Unlike other animate creatures whose actions are determined by nature, man, like God who created him in his own likeness, is able to exercise free will through the application of his intellect. Man acts freely and 011 nature rather than according to nature and by implication is capable of controlling rather than being imprisoned in time and space.
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Furthermore, intellect provides man with relative autonomy from the influence of the heavens. The soul's direct relationship to God elevates man above the heavens for their form is "corporeal, singular, local and temporal" while the form by which the "mind intellects is incorporeal; universal and absolute."43 This autonomy is the source of man's capacity to deploy the arts-s--Indusrrial, civil and liberal-and sciences for his own purposes. For, as though a participant of providence on the model of divine governance the soul rules itself the home, the city, the arts, and the animals ... the power of man, therefore, is very similar to that of the divine nature, seeing that man by himself that is through his own decision and art, rules himself without being in the least limited by his physical nature, and imitates individual works of the higher nature.t" In the Oration on the Dignity ofMan Pico would further undermine the hierarchical cosmological order.P He endorsed thg"humanist proposition that man is the most wonderful and fortunate of creatures. However, he did not feel that any of the reasons put forward thus far-man is an intermediary between creatures, he is the intimate of the gods, the king oflower beings, or the being with the most developed senses, intellect or use of reason-explained why man is so worthy of admiration and occupies suchan enviable rank in the universal chain of being. For Pico, the dignity ofman arose asa consequence of God's creation of the world, for once the supreme Architect had finished his work he desired a being that could appreciate and contemplate it. 46 He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature, and assigning him a place iri the. middle of the world, addressed him thus: "Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according to thy judgement thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form, and what functions thou thyself shalt desire. The nature of all. other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have set thee at the world's centre that thou mayest from thence more easily observe whatever is in the world. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honour, as though the maker and moulder of thyself: thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms oflife, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out ofthy soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.V
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There can be few more emphatic declarations of the principle of sovereign identity than Pice's Oration. Man's uniqueness derives from the fact that he is the only being who has not been poured from a prefabricated mould and has the power to enter into any form he wishes; only man can escape the rigid striations of the medieval world. Man, notes Cassirer, has the "almost unlimited power of self-transformation at his disposal" and "unlike any other creature, he owes his moral character to himself: He is what he makes of himself... 48 Not only is Man able to fashion his own self but the entire universe, elements and beasts below and angels and celestial souls above, is at his service. It is a truly divine possession of all these natures at the same time flowing into one, so that it pleases us to exclaim with Hermes, "A great miracle, o Asclepius, is man." The human condition can especially be glorified for this reason, through which it happens that no created substance disdains to serve him. To him the earth and the elements, to him the animals are ready for service, for him the heavens fight, for him the angelic minds procure safety and goodness.f" Man's capacity for self-fashioning raises him above all other animate beings driven by instinct, and even above the angels and heavenly intelligences whose nature and perfection is impressed upon them at creation. In conclusion, we must acknowledge. that Fieino and Pico played only a modest part in undermining the hierarchies of the medieval cosmos. Ficino's dynamic conception of the universe "transcends the limits of the traditional notion of hierarchy" and with Pica man is no longer a definite element in the hierarchical series, not even its privileged centre: he is entirely detached from the hierarchy and can move upward and downward according to his free will. Thus the hierarchy is no longer allInclusive, while man, because of his possession of freedom, seems to be set entirely apart from the order of objective reality.l'' However, their promotion of the doctrine of the dignity of man is important in so far as it anticipates the principle ofsovereign identity. Man is no longer directed by the heavens and, as a sovereign subject detached from the hierarchical structures of the world, he is able to observe it as an objective reality that he can manipulate and control. He is no longer imprisoned within but able to know, order and control space. and time. With dignity man also acquires the agency of territorialization and comes to embody the principle of sovereign identity driven by the desire to "fix a point ofidentity-a universality in space and time against which all differences in space and time can be measured, judged and put in their pla~e."51
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Cusa, Copernicus, and Infinity If Pico and Ficino promoted the principle ofsovereign identity, it is also true that they left the essential structure of the medieval cosmos intact. As we saw earlier, in the medieval world political and social hierarchies mirrored and so drew their legitimacy from the divinely ordained structure of the cosmos. We might therefore expect that any· non-hierarchical representation of the cosmos might serve to weaken the appeal of a hierarchical political cosmology. Direct causal links between the substitution of hierarchy for infinity within Renaissance cosmology arid the replacement of hierarchy by anarchy in Renaissance political discourse remain somewhat elusive. Nevertheless, at the level of metaphor and analogy there is a strong correspondence between new conceptions of political territoriality and the new cosmology. Alexander Koyre contextualizes the demise of the Christian cosmos an.d the rise of modern cosmology within a widespread spiritual revolution which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, embraced the "secularisatron of consciousness," the discovery of man's "essential subjectivity," and the replacement of the vita contemplativa by the vita activita. In combination thes~ new modes of thought precipitated a philosophical and scientific revolution that engineered the destruction of the Cosmos, that is, the disappearance, from philosophically and scientifically valid concepts, of the conception of the world as a finite, closed, and hierarchically ordered whole .... and its replacement by an indefinite and even infinite universe which is bound together by the identity of its fundamental components and laws, and in which all those components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implies the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations, based on valueconcepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the utter devalorization of being, the.divorce of the world ofvalue and the world of facts. 52 For Koyre this revolution started with Copernicus's De revolutionibus otbi~tm coelestium (1543), was consolidated by Descartes' Principia philosophia.e (1644), and concluded with Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia matbematica (1687). However, Renaissance scholars like Kristeller have predated this revolution by a century, arguing that Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia (1440) was the first text to undermine the hierarchical conception of the cosmos and to promote a new 'understanding. of man's place in it. 53 Cusa's purpose in De docta ignorantia was not, however, to establish a new cosmology but to develop a theory of knowledge.54 From two starting premises: first Aristotle's .dictum that ''All men .by nature desire to know" and second
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that everything created by God strives to achieve perfectibility, Cusa reasoned that because Man is distinguished. by his intellect his purpose is to seek perfect knowledge, that is knowledge of God. 55 Despite such aspirations, De docta ignorantia sought to show that man is unable to know anything beyond the Socratic doubt: "assuredly we desire to know that we do not know. If we can fully attain unto this [knowledge ofour ignorance], we will attain unto learned ignorance."56 The failure of the intellect to reach the truth is a consequence of understanding's reliance on comparison: "all those who make an investigation judge the uncertain proportionally, by means of a comparison with what is taken to be certain. Therefore, every inquiry is comparative and uses the means of comparative relation (medio proportionis)." The common measure by which comparative relation can be thought is number: "number encompasses all things related' comparatively (proportionabilia)." However, because understanding through number traces definite relations or comparisons of greater and lesser, it can only comprehend the finite world while "the infinite,quainfinite, is unknown, for it escapes all comparative relation." This is especially significant when it comes to knowing Godar the Absolute Maximum which "is not of the nature of those things which can be compara-tively greater and lesser, it is beyond all that We can concelve.l'V Rather, in God there are. no such categories and all opposites, including maximum and minimum, coincide. Cusa drew on a well established metaphor to describe God as "an infinite sphere, whose centre -is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere."58 Further, he extended it to the cosmos to convey the sense .thatsince God is in all things, he must be equally close to every part of creation; the centre of the universe, that is God, is present in all things everywhere.t" Everything has its origin or measure in God so "every created thing is, as .it were, a finite infinity or a created God."60 The universe is also a finite infinity: infinite like God but not a divine unity, rather a "multiplicity, a manifold spread out in space and time."61 Cusa's universe hasno centre and no circumference and opposes the values of the medieval hierarchical cosmos, for if it had a centre and a circumference there would be 'some space and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which, are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the world should be enclosed within a corporeal centre and a corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the world, whose centre and circumference are God. And though this world cannot be infinite, nevertheless it cannotbe conceived as finite, since there are no limits within which it could be confined. The earth, therefore, which cannot' be the centre, cannot be wholly without motion.... And just as the world has no centre, so neither the sphere of the fixed stars nor any other is its circurnterence.Pe
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Several important consequences derive from Cusa's representation of the universe as permanently in movement, acentric, and limitless. First, once the earth is removed from the centre of the universe and placed among the stars, Aristotle's upper/lower distinction between a celestial sphere of superior being and a mundane world of debased substances effectively breaks down. Second, once place and movement are no longer fixed and absolute, knowledge becomes relative. Aristotle had argued that. the universe could be known objectively by taking measurements from fixed and immutable points prescribed by the nature of things. For Cusavhowever, these points were hypothetical and ideal, posited by the free mind. Finally, and most disturbing, was the implication that ifboth the universe and God's creative power were infinite then life in other places was a distinct possibility. The modernity of Cusa's cosmology becomes apparent when it is contrasted with Copernicus' model in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543).63 From the proposition that the earth moves around the sun, Copernicus attempted to demonstrate that the planets make up a coherent integrated system. He substantiated this claim by showing how adequate planetary tables could be calculated from geometrical models that had the sun at their centre. Despite Copernicus' popular reputation as a revolutionary thinker, historians of science dispute his originality. For Bertrand Russell, Copernicus was more Pythagorean than modern, and Lovejoy estimates that Copernicus merely altered the details of the orthodox Christian theological cosmos:" [f] or Copernicus the solar system and the universe remained identical; his world, though not geocentric, was still centered, still spherical in shape, still securely walled in by the outermost sphere."64 Cusa's infinite and. acentric universe was considerably more modern than Copernicus's heliocentric universe.i? Certainly traditional premises underlay Copernicus' vision of a heliocentric universe.F" Copernicus accepted the established view of the earth as a sphere but argued that it should have rotational motion appropriate to its form. Hence the apparent rising and setting of sun, moon, stars, and planets could be accounted for by the earth's daily rotation. Second, from the Aristotelian premise that the movement of the eternal heavenly bodies in a symmetrical and harmonious universe mustbe circular and uniform, he surmised that because their movement, as viewed fromrhe earth, was non-uniform and irregular, the earth could not be the centre of the universe. Because "the same planets are observed nearer to the earth and farther away [this] necessarily proves that the centre of the earth is not the centre of their circles."67 If the earth is not the centre of the universe and itself moves' around a centre then the yearly cycle can be "transformed from a solar to a terrestrial movement." Finally, "it will be realised that the sun occupies the middle of the universe. All these facts are disclosed to us by the principle governing the order in which the planets follow one another, and by the harmony of the entire universe.T" Once the earth is recognized as
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a planet revolvingaroundrhe sun, the orderof the other planets can be established. Venus and Mercury, seen only at dawn and dusk, are within the earth's orbit, while the rest, seen all night, lie outside. With the sun at the centre, their positions could be established according to the relative duration oftheir orbits: "the sphere of the fixed stars, which is immovable, then Saturn. (with a circuit of thirty years) foIlowed by Jupiter (twelve), Mars (two), the Earth (an annual orbit), Venus (nine months) and Mercury(eightydays)."69At the heart of this universe is the sun at rest which illuminates everything: "called by some people the lantern of the universe, itsrnirid by others, and its ruler by still others. The Thrice-Great Hermes labels it a 'visible god'; and Sophocles' Electra, 'that which gazes upon all things.' Thus indeed, as if seated on a kingly throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around -it."70 How did the cosmological visions sketched out by Co-sa and Copernicus contribute to the Renaissance reirnagination of political cosmology and the promotion of a modern territorial imaginary? Mindful of Michel Foucault's claim that analogous episternic shifts occur simultaneously in heterogeneous discursive formations, ·we can cite ErnstCassirer'sobservation that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in both astronomy and politics "one breach after another" was made in the hierarchical system. 71Cassirer prefaces a discussion of the leveling of political hierarchies, caused by the decline of the feudal order and the rise of territorializing monarchs and princes, with Giordano Bruno's summary of Cusa'sworld as an infinite whole, lacking any privileged ·points or any sense of above or below.72 The erasure of hierarchy in Renaissance cosmology and political discourse mirror one another, for in both "the difference between the 'lower' and the 'higher' world vanishes. The. same principles and natural Jaws hold for the 'world below' and the 'world above'. Things are on the same level both in the physical and in the political ordet."73 JUSt as Copernicus and Cusa undermined the hierarchies of the cosrnos; so Machiavelli and others undermined the hierarchies of Papacy and Empire. by. secularizing politics and grounding it on the territories of republics and princedoms.
Machiavelli: Anti-Hierarch The modern territorial imaginary presupposes that man's .political spaces are ordered along one horizontal plane, that there are no vestiges of the hierarchies---ef--t-he--Gh-r-i-stia-n--Me-dievar-rheological-political .cosmos obstructing the landscape.' The Renaissance thinker who did most to. undermine the legitimacy of the hierarchical political imaginary was Machiavelli, who dismantled the spaces of political hierarchy as he undermined the temporal politics of eternity. J. G. A. Pocock has placed Machiavelli in a .current of Renaissance political thought concerned to replace the Christian temporal paradigm of eternity and
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universality with one of change and contirigency.r" In the medieval time-frame the random flow of events on earth were considered meaningless in and. of themselves; they acquired. .mcaningonly when related to the .eternal and-universal. Events were interpreted within an eschatological framework as signs or intimations ofmillennium and apocalypse; "though the signs are in theearchjy city they esetiot.abota it, not about secular history, but only signals of the corning ultimate event in sacred history, the Day of Judgement, that will mark the destruction of the earrh ly city and with it the destruction of time and the end of history."75 Both Church and Empire promoted the temporal qualities of eternity, stability, and universality and imbued them with positive values. Canonists and. Imperialists alike claimed that because the papacy and empire had been established directly by divine will, they were, therefore, imbued with the divine qualities of eternity and universality. Imperial political society was imagined as "the existence among men of the hierarchical order existing in heaven and in nature; its legitimation and its organising categories were alike timeless, and change could exist in it only as degeneration of recovery. Affiliation with the empire, then, like affiliation with monarchy generally, was affiliation with the timeless." 76 The paradigm of the fixed and eternal was first challenged by the Florentine humanists Coluccio Salutati.and Leonardo Bruni during the "crisis" of the early fourteenth century. Salutati and Bruni, worried that Florence was threatened. by the attempts by the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, to consolidate a monarchical state in northern and central Italy, hoped that by appealing to the city's special ethos they could rally the citizens to her defense. They promoted. a new foundational myth in which the patrimony ofJulius Caesar was substituted for that of republican Rome. From then on, writes Pocock, "the republic of Florence, stated as a high ideal but existing in the present and in its past, was affiliated only with other republics and with those moments in past time at which republics had existed." 77 It was not represented as a universal Platonic ideal somehow outside of history, and the politics of citizenship and republicanism were explicitly divorced from the natural hierarchical order. Indeed, for Pocock, because its organisation affirmed its "sovereignty and autonomy, and therefore its individuality and particularity" it simultaneously asserted "that it existed in time, not eternity, and was therefore transitory and doomed to impermanence, for this was the condition of particular being."78 Salutati also reworked the traditional distinction between vita activa (engagement in social activity) and vita contemplativa (the solitary pursuit of pure knowledge) by aligning the former with the idea of vivere civile, the active promotion of civic life and citizenship. This implicitly undermined the imperialist chronology, for the active citizen, busy dealing with the practical contingencies of everyday politics, had no time to "contemplate the unchanging hierarchies of
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being and to find his place in an eternal order."79 At the turn of the sixteenth century, another turbulent period in Florence's history, Francesco Cuicciardinj, Dino Giannotti, and Niccolo Machiavelli again insisted that the potential of civic life in an environment of uncertainty and danger could only be achieved if all citizens actively pursued the uiuere civile. They aligned the vita activa with the Aristotelian image of mart esxoonpolitileon, a political animal whose telos can only be realized in thepalis, that is the republic.. With an eye on Venice, whose mixed constitution was widely regarded as the guarantor of her longevity and relative stability, they endorsed Aristotle's maxim that the best form. of government, that is the one most capable of instilling civic virtu in its citizens, was a mixed government of the One, the Few, and the Many. Guicciardini and Giannotti held that the goal of a mixed government found in a republican constitution was to secure Florence's being as an Aristotelian ideal of excellence .: and civic virtue. able to overcome the contingencies of history. However, Machiavelli. drives history right through the heart of the polity, making it the essence of political. being. The new prince who has occupied OJ illegally acquired a state is an innovator, a man who, having overturned the established order,now faces the task of holding onto his new possessions without the legitimacy derived from established dynastic rule. Machiavelli's prince has entered "the domain of contingency" where fortuna, the capricious god-dess of chance; rules supreme. However, "the time-realm he now In habit.sis not wholly unpredictable or unmanageable" for bold action guided by uirti« can turn her "slings and arrows" to his advanrage.i'" Likewise, Machiavelli proposed that the republic should also enter the stream ofhistorymanifest in power politics and triumph over it by destroying her enemies. Hence his admiration of bellicose Rome, the model republic; maintained by a well-disciplined and patriotic body of soldiers drawn from the citizenry. Yet Machiavelli remained true to the spirit of Polybius' theory of anacyclosis which dictated that all constitutions pass through stages of change and decay: from Kingship to Tyranny, then Rule of the Best to Domination of the Few, and down to popular government and anarchy. Thus even Rome's virtuous leaders were unable to guide that most gIo-rious republic away from an inevitable. decline as. dictated by the requirements of natural law. 81 Further, while Polybius argued. that the destiny of all political bodies trapped within the unending cycle Was a· return to their natural state, Machiavelli was less optimistic about the future, and doubEea-t-n-a-t-a-n-y-repttbli-c--would be able to endure such traumatic changes arid still survive in. a hostile international environment.V For.while the republic is in a state of commotion, lacking counsel and strength, it is likely to be overcome by a "neighbouring state which is better ordered.T" Machiavelli inserted politics into the .stream of history in .rhe context of Charles VIII's 1494' invasion of Italy..This expedition had come to symbolise
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the inability of Italy's rulers to determine their own destinies, when external forces, deriving from power struggles taking place over the Alps, were seen to be shaping the peninsula's political fortunes. In this context" it was natural for Machiavelli to draw the conclusion that the dimension in which politics worked was history and that every political action had to be fitted into the conrextof h istorical change."84 No longer moored to the secure shores 'of the civitas Dei, Machiavelli cast politics adrift into the mundane world of change, chance, and contingency ruled over by the capricious and unpredictable goddess Fortuna. If political leaders are to overcome this wily foe they must cul... tivate a judicious combination of instinct, force, and virtu-"-the capacity to anticipate and prepare for the unexpected and thereby turn it to one's own advantage. In the principality, virtu was incarnate in the talents and character of the prince; while in the republic it was generated by the active participation of the citizens in the res publica. 85 Originally the Roman pagan goddess of chance, medieval Christianity had recast Fortuna as an agency of divine will, a "ministering angel entirely subservient to the Christian God.~'86 Machiavelli, however, reclaimed her pagan identity, making her the ruler of man's political fortunes: "Fortune governs supreme. Instead of being a ministra of God, she is the mistress of human destiny, and that destiny ... is subject to chance, not to reason .... in the Machiavellian cosmos, there is no room for God's Providence."87 In chapter XV of II Principe Machiavelli makes it clear that Fortuna is not a servant of the civitas Dei but a sovereign in her own right, whose domain is the terrestrial world of politics.f" Machiavelli opened this chapter by voicing his concerns about the defeatism and resignation that had arisen throughout Italy because of the failure of the Italian polities to defend themselves against foreign interventions. Although these defeats suggested that even the most carefully cultivated prudence is impotent in a world "governed by fortune andGod," Machiavelli refused to give up on virtu "because our free will is not extinct, I judge that it is likely that fortuna determines the outcome of half of our actions, she allows us sovereignty over the other."89 Machiavelli's rhetoric inthis chapter, maintains Mikael Hornqvist, effected "a descent from the exalted heights of Renaissance cosmology toward the political here and now;" for the world of politics is no longer "governed by fortune and God" but Fortuna alone dictates the extent to which men are able to exercise their free-wi llv'" She alone is the ruler of the civitas Terra and God no longer has a role to play. Machiavelli's rejection of Christian political cosmology and its hierarchies was not limited to his territorialization of Fortuna~His study of "the effective reality ofthings" (verita ef{etuale della cosa) led him to conclude that Christianity and politics were essentially incompatible. Machiavelli's writings on religion are not always consistent and his personal religious beliefs remain the subject
The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy.'," 119 of scholarly debate, yet there is much in ·Giuseppe Prezzolirii's claim that Machiavelli was "the most anti-Christian thinker of his time." 91 Machiavelli mounted a critique of the political doctrines of Christianity and the historical record of the Church as a political institution on several fronts. The most superficial was his polemical attack, which drew on a vibrant tradition of Florentine anti-clericalism extending back toDante, on the current adrninistration ofthe Roman Church for its divisive and pernicious influence on .Italian politics. Machiavelli called into question the popular myth, as he saw it, that' the Italian city-states were blessed due to their close association with the Chiesa Romana, On the contrary" because the religious establishment was the arbiter of a people's sense of selfworth and virtu, the venal and salacious conduct of the Roman court had made the Italians irreligious, thereby causing them to loose any sense of communal identity. In its role asa temporal power (imperio temporale) the Church had been divisive, the root cause of the Italians' failure to unite either around a virtuous prince or within a unified republic. The Church's influence was pernicious because
!
neither its power nor its. virtue has been sufficiently great for it to be able to subjugate Italian tyrants and to make itself their prince; nor yet, on the other hand, has it been so weak that it could not, when afraid of losing its dominion over things temporal (il dominic delle sue cose temporali), call upon one of the powers (uno potente) to defend itself against an Italian state (quello) that had become too powerful.V
Machiavelli's contempt for the Church exudes from the sarcastic rhetoric he used when refusing to discuss Ecclesiastical Princedoms in 11 Principe the grounds that they are "governed by superior causes, unto which the human mind cannot reach," and' "because being exalted and maintained by God, to discourse on them would be the task ofa presumptuous and rash man."93 Underlying Machiavelli's attack on the temporal power of the Pope and the ecclesiastical hierarchy was his belief that Christianity's advocacy of th~ vita con... templativa over vivere civile had, ever since the end of the Roman Empire, had a universally detrimental effect on European political life. Christianity's high valuation. of humility, its contempt for worldly goods, and its recommendation of withdrawn contemplation of the eternal, had had the effect of undermining political life, for with their attention directed heavenward, men ignored.rheday to day realities of terrestrial politics which required constant vigilance iF virtu was to overcomefortuna. Further; the devaluation of civic or political honour in Christian culture meant that men were less inclined to identify with andhence fight on behalf of their polities. Machiavelli assessed religions according to their political efficacy, that is their ability to promote political virtu. According to
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such standards Christianity was inferior to those ancient religions which valued worldly honour, assigned the highest values to "greatness of spirit, strength of body," and which glorified great generals and princes who had achieved honour pursuing the vita activa. Christianity's beatification of "humble and contemplative men" had allowed wicked and corrupt men to take control of the world. These usurpers had little to fear from those "who aspiring to reach Paradise are prepared to bear, rather than avenge, their injuries."94 Machiavelli cited the example of Classical Rome, specifically the policies of Numa Pompilius, to demonstrate how important religion is to maintaining a well-ordered state. Numa's genius was to realise that religion could be used in "controlling the armies, in inspiring the people, in keeping men good, in making the wicked ashamed.T" By promoting a religion which drew on people's instinctual fear of the Gods, Numa was able to reinforce the social contract through the swearing of oaths, to promote civil obedience and, most importantly, to secure the loyalty of the military. The religion he introduced into Roman society was "one of the chief causes (cagioni) of that city's prosperity" for it "caused good laws (ordini), and good laws make good fortune, and from good fortune comes happy success in all enterprise."96 Therefore, the rulers of republics and kingdoms have a duty to "preserve the founda~ions of the religion they hold. If they do this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their state religious, and consequently good and united."97 Machiavelli's instrumental dismissal of Christianity as an effective state religion directly undermined the legitimacy of the Christian political order. His discussion ofNumawas predicated on a functionalist methodological premise that all religions, including Christianity, can be evaluated in terms of their political efficacy.98 .It does not uphold Christianity as a truer or more profound r~ligion than that of pagan Rome, but 'simply concludes that for a political society to be successful it must be founded not just in laws and military discipline but also in a belief in divine sanction. "Those principalities or those republics which desire to maintain themselves uncorrupted must, above all, maintain their religious ceremonies uncorrupted and always ensure that they are held in veneration; for there can be no greater indication of the ruin of a state (provincia) than to see its divine cult being neglected."99 Machiavelli's functionalism issued severalchallenges to the Christian body politic and its hierarchical order. First, it undermined the traditional Providential narrative in which Christianity transcended the preceding pagan culture. For Machiavelli, Christianity and paganism were simply two incompatible moral orders with irreconcilable ultimate values: the redemption of the individual and the preservation of the polis. This moral relativism, which challenged the basic assumption ofWestern civilisation since Plato that one overarching principle-Nature, God, The Chain of Being-regulates life and sets the standard by which means and ends can be evaluated, is, suggests
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Isaiah Berlin, the root cause of the centuries of hostility that Machiavelli's work has provoked.looSecond, Machiavelli undermined the scholastic heggrnony. .He rejected the premise of scholastic moral philosophy that all knowledge of man', could be interpreted within Christian theological categories and concepts. For Machiavelli, polities is an autonomous realm. of human action that warrants its own self-contained branch of knowledge. Political realism brackets off the, traditional questions asked of religion concerning its truth, its meaning for the individual, or the influence of divine providence on .men's affairs. Its only con... cern is to ascertain the importance of religiousfactors in dererrniningindividual and social behaviour and in legitimising political power. Machiavelli's realism not only distinguished political and theological spheres, but, at times, seems to invert the established hierarchy between them. Consider his discussion of the ordering principles of pagan and Christian religions. Machiavelli claimed that every religion is founded in institutions (ordi71i) which 'are particular to "a man's homeland" (dove l'uomo e nato). The implication being that all religions, including Christianity, are accidents of geography and history, rather than universal truth-bearing belief systems. Likewise, the title of the chapter in I Discoursi, "In order for a religious institution or commonwealth to endure for a long time it is necessary that it should be often returned to its founding principle," challenges the medieval association of the Church with immutability and permanence,. attributes of the higher worldc)f the divine. Rather, the Church exists on the same plane, the mundane w-orld 'of change, as other secular authorities.l'" Machiavelli had no interest in whether or not religious institutions commu-nicated with a higher transcendental order, nor was he concerned with spiritual salvation. His instrumentalist evaluation assessed religion purely in terms of its role in providing a cultural identity that could facilitate the efficient conduct of politics. Religion gives form to a society's culture and promotes its basic values; it constituted "at the highest level the cement of society."102 Bernard Guillemain suggests thatreligion had similar status for Machiavelli as the conscience collective did for Durkheim; both are collective and coercivefactsexpressedand reinforced through ceremony and ritual. Religion is, asCampanella noted, subordinate to politics and Machiavelli's maxim religio instrumentum regni issued a profound challenge to the hierarchical Christian order based on the opposite belief. lo3 Likewise, for Cassirer, The Prince can be considered the first texLo£mnde~t:-I1-·~ political philosophy precisely because it rejected scholasticism and refuted "the cornerstone of this tradirion-c--the hierarchic system."104 Machiavelli's political experience had taught him that power does not issue from God and that the' state is not of divine origiru there is nothing divine about the power wielded by princes and the notion of the divine origin of kings was little more than an ideological fantasy.
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With Machiavelli we stand at the gateway of the modern world. The desired end is attained; the state has won its full autonomy.... The sharp knife of Machiavelli's thought has cut off all the threads by which in former generations the state was fastened. to the organic whole of human existence. The political world has lost its connection not only with religion or metaphysics but also with all the other forms of man's ethical and cultural life. It stands alone-in an empty space.l'" In the following chapter we shall investigate how Machiavelli filled that empty space with attributes of sovereignty, violence, and identity, which would come to define the modern territorial imaginary.
CHAPTER 7
Machiavelli, Territoriality, and La Steto
·R.
enaissa~~e t~oug~t undermined the. spat. ial hie.rarch.ies of th.: medieval political Imaginary. The promotion of the ideal of sovereIgJ.1. man challenged the belief that man was a prisoner in space, trapped in a mundane world, which existed only as a dull reflection of the divine world of the heavens. Further, Machiavelli's realism removed republic and princedom from the political theology of Christianity, in which territoriality was conceived of as ,an attribute of Christendom rather than as an exclusively political space, the locus of Aristotle's ziion politikon. However, no sooner had the state been de-territorialized, extricated from the vertical spatial order of the medieval cosmos, than State-thought sought to re-territorialize it, to striate its space with the markers and symbols of sovereign territory. Concentrating on Machiavelli, this chapter explores how Renaissance political discourse territorialized 10 stato by fixing sovereignty, violence, and identity onto state space.
Lo Steto in Renaissance. Political Discourse In Machiavelli's writings 10 stato has multiple meanings. One reason for this is that although Machiavelli's prose is not particularly abstruse, he "uses the same vocabulary for different concepts and expresses the same concepts with different vocabularies."! Second, the lexicon of Renaissance political thought was, like other contemporary vocabularies, "imbued with the past and pregnant with the future."2 Accordingly, 10 stato had multiple connotations that varied depending on the context in which it was used.:' The first meaning, common in the Northern kingdoms such as England and France, was derived from status, which, in Roman law, denoted. the standing a ruler enjoyed, that is the status of majesty, or the status of the political community. This is the sense Giovanni
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Campana deploys in De regendo rnagistratu where he argues that republics could only achieve optimus status respublicae if their leaders strove forjustice. According to Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli implies this meaning of status when he advised new princes on how to "tenere or mantenere 10 stato" or how to maintain their position as rulers over their new territories." Lo stato was also used to classify different forms of government. This meaning derived from the humanists' use of status to translate Aristotle's types of government constitutions. Thus, Leonardo Bruni translates Aristotle's distinction between democracy and aristocracy as status popularis and status optirnaturn, and in Filippo Beroaldo's Libellus de optima statu the typology of legitimate regimes are status populare, status paucorum, and status unius? During the fourteenth century Florentines described their own popular regime government as populare stato orpopularis status." However, notes Nicolai Rubinstein, the use of 10 stato to denote different forms of government gave way to stato as an indication of effective power; "[s]tatus, defined by 'what has the supreme power in the state,' comes close to the meaning with which statowas widely used in fifteenth-century Florence."? For Skinner,· this use of 10 stato "to refer to the institutions of government and means ofcoercive control that serve to organize and preserve order within political communities" was a major linguistic innovation of the Renaissancc.Pzs.lthough 10 stato as the governmental and administrative apparatus was kept conceptually distinct from citta or republica---the political community or state as a whole---it was not always clearly distinguished from those who had effective control of it. Sometimes the distinction is relatively clear, as when Vespasiano describes how Alessandro Sforza conducted himself "in his government of 10 stato," and when Guicciardini in his Ricordi asks how the Medici "lost control of 10 stato in 1527."9 Again, in a letter to Lorenzo de Medici discussing the enhanced security that Florence would gain from a treaty with Naples, the Florentine Chancellor highlighted the benefits that will accrue to "you and the regime which is joined to you and for the state which is joined to the regime.Y'" However, by the time Lorenzo had overcome the Pazzi plot in 1477, the stato of Florence was to all effects and purposes designated by the Medici. Lo stato had come to refer not to state's power structure but to the dominant regime in control of it: 10 stato di Medici. 11 The final meaning of 10 stato, and the one which will be addressed in the rest of this chapter, was indicated when "writers contemporaneous with Machiavelli used stato to designate a geographical area." 12. Here 10 stato is "a way of referring to the general area over which a ruler or chief magistrate needs to exercise control.Y':' Machiavelli's work reflects the general conceptual ambiguity surrounding 10 stato at the time. Sometimes he distinguishes the institutions and structure of lo stato from those who control it. In such instances, 10 stato not only has its own foundations, laws, customs, and institutions, but is a subject capable of
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choosing between different courses of action and of drawing on the citizen's loyalty. As such, maintains Skinner, II Principe was not just a handbook of princely conduct but a considered meditation on the abstract issues of "statecraft (dello stato) and cose di stato or affairs of state."14 Yet, at times, Machiavelli combined the apparatus of government and its rulers into the one concept: "10 stato, as he often puts it, remains equivalent to il suo stato, the prince's own state or conditions of rulership.Y'? J. H. Hexter has identified five different meanings of 10 stato in II Principe: "[tjake (1) 'territory,' (2) 'the governed,' (3) 'ruling power,' (4) 'status, position or rank,' (5) 'national-political territorial entity,' and try substituting each ofthem wherever 10 stato appears in II Principe. It is rare indeed that two of the meanings will not fit. It is surprising how often three, four, or' occasionally even all five of the meanings will fit."I6 The one thing that unites, them is that Machiavelli tends to deploy 10 stato with verbs of an exploitative tonality, such as acquistare, tenere, mantenere, togliere, and perdercitco acquire, hold, maintain, take away or lose). It is thus an "object of political exploitation," an instrument for the manipulation of the people by a prince and, therefore, far removed from the modern ideal of the state as a sovereign subject. Hexter's claim that Machiavelli's definition of the state lacks conceptual rigor is rejected by Giuseppe Prezzolini, who argues that Machiavelli consistently uses 10 stato to denote an organization that unites individuals and institutions into a superior state of being that transcends their particularity. I? Unlike Dante's Empire, which, provided for by the divine, is eternal, Machiavelli's state is an organic living being, a "corpo misto" obeying the natural laws of birth, life, change, corruption, competition, and death that apply to every living being. As a political adviser, the best Machiavelli can do is to suggest to rulers how they can prevent the state dying before its time. Like all organic bodies its various parts have different degrees of importance and the minor ones can be sacrificed in the cause of the greatest good: the survival of the state itself: The communal good embodied in the state is the greatest known to man and whatever action is required to constitute and save it can be excused. In the light of these disputes, F.Chiapelli's bold judgment that Machiavelli's stato "bears the meaning of 'State' in its full maturity," that is as a nationalpolitical territorial entity may appear somewhat rash.l'' Of course, any evaluation of the modernity of Machiavelli's state requires some a priori criteria for understanding what precisely makes the modern state modern. For Federico Chabod, the modern state is a sovereign unit, distinct from the ruler, limited to a defined territory, incorporating the nation or patria, and .represented institutionally by a rationalized bureaucracy of appointed officials. As the Renaissance state from Lorenzo di Medici to Richelieu was concentrated around two poles "the power of the sovereign and the hierarchy. of the 'officials'," it only fulfilled the last of these criteria and failed to reach the standards of the modern
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state.l" Likewise, for Skinner, Machiavelli's account of the state was not modern for it failed to distinguish it as a form of public power separate from both the ruler and ruled and constituting the supreme political authority within a certain defined territory-an idea first formulated by sixteenth-century legal humanists such as Bude, Du Haillan, and Bodin in France and Starkey, Ponet, and Humphrey in England.r'' On the other hand, Skinner acknowledges that by the end of the quattrocento works like Patrizis treatise on The _Kingdom and Education ofthe King had begun to articulate an abstract idea of the state as an independent political apparatus which the ruler has a duty to maintain. A similar sense can be found in II Principe when Machiavelli declares that in times of adversity the state has need of its citizens (10 stato ha bisogne de' cittadini) and where he assures the prince that he can overawe his rivals by calling on "the majesty of the state"(lamaesta dello stato). It is unlikely that the issue of the modernity of Machiavelli's state will ever be resolved. There are no universally accepted criteria by which we might define the modern state and distinguish it from other forms; hence no hard and fast standards exist in light of which Machiavelli can be held to account. Nevertheless, Machiavelli's territorial imaginary does embrace three elements-sovereignty, violence and identity-that are often cited in definitions of the modern state.
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any consequential resentment will be subsumed "nell' antichita econtinuazione
del dominio."22 Machiavelli's slippery use of conceptual vocabulary is evident with respect to
dominic. Even in the brief passage above dominio seems to have several different meanings: it is a body equivalent to but different from the state which has.imperium over men; it is an entity which can either live under princely rule or be free; and, as in the last phrase, it seems to refer to an abstract notion of juristic legality, which Allan Gilbert translates as sovereignty. We have seen that the ali'gnment of sovereignty and state territory is a mainstay of the modern territorial a priori. Thus, if dominio is synonymous with territorial-sovereignty, then it can be claimed that the modern territorial imaginary was present in Renaissance discourses of politics and law. According to Sebastian de Grazia, the opening sentence of II Principe offers the essential components of the Machiavellian state. Machiavelli locates the constituents of a state in three nouns. A state has all three-'--a dominion, an imperium, and men. It is a special case of dominion (the definiens): one that is held by rightful (for which can be substituted just, lawful, or authoritative) command (which from its military antecedents contains a strong sense of sanctions or force) over men (who are located in the territory and obey the commands-laws, orders, rules, decrees-as rightful)~23
Machiavelli's Territorial Imaginary Sovereignty Machiavelli's famous declaratory statement opening II Principe: "Tutti gli stati, tutti i domini che hanno avuto ed hanno imperio sopra gli uomini, sono stati e sono 0 repubbliche 0 principati" translates as "[a]ll the states, all the dominions that have had or now have authority over men have been and now are either republics or princedoms.V! Princedoms are either hereditary or new. Ifnew, they are either completely new, like Milan was when it was taken over by Francesco Sforza, or they can be joined to the hereditary state like new members (come membri aggiunti allo Stato), as Naples was when acquired by the Kingdom of Spain. These dominions (questi domini) are. either used to living under princely rule or they are free (they are republics). They can be acquired either by using one's own forces or troops under the command of another leader (mercenaries) and either by fortuna or virtu. In chapter two Machiavelli points out that in hereditary states (negli. Stali ereditari) the new prince should have little difficulty in holding onto his position (nel suo Stato-here in the sense of status) if he continues to rule according to the traditions and customs established by his predecessors. As long as he does not develop any particularly unpleasant vices, his new subjects should be well disposed to him; innovationwill be tolerated as
The Renaissance use of dominium to signify a domain or territory and imperium to designate right or authority to command have their antecedents in the -legal, political and military vernacular of the Roman and Holy Roman Empires. In Roman Law the Latin dominium denoted ownership or full legal power over a. corporeal thing, the right of the owner to use it, to take proceeds therefrom, and to dispose of it freely. The owner's plena potestas in re (full power over a thing) is manifested by his faculty to do with it what he pleases and to exclude anyone from the use thereof unless the latter has acquired a specific right to it ... which he might obtain only with the owner's consent.r" However, in Renaissance legal discourse the sense of dominion to denote private property or ownership had been supplemented by two public meanings. First, was the "[tjhc power or right of governing and controlling" where dominion referred to the acts of exercising control, authority or sovereignty. Second, dominion also referred to the space over which rule or sovereignty is exercised, "[t]he lands or domains of a feudal lord.... The territory owned by or subject to a king or ruler, or under a particular government or control."25 In so far as the
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public meaning of dominion denoted both a subject-the sovereign-and an object-c--the territory over which sovereignty is exercised-it heralds the modern concept of sovereign-territoriality. However, most historians ofpolitical thought reject the claim that Renaissance political discourse articulated a modern concept of sovereignty, understood as the" idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political community ... and no final andabsolute authority exists elsewhere."26 For F.H. Hinsley although Renaissance political theorists challenged the secular authority claimed by the Papacy and Emperor, the first explicit justification and recognition of the legitimate independence of political communities was Jean Bodin's Les six livres de laRepublique (1576). Likewise, for Jens Bartleson, Renaissance political texts express only a loosely developed notion of proto-sovereignty. The Renaissance "general theory of the state" neither individuated the state as a sovereign entity nor prioritized it as the object of study.27 It also lacked a sense that something existed outside of it, that is an international system-an integral component of modern sovereignty.e" Nevertheless, Hinsley and Bartleson do acknowledge the presence in Renaissance political discourse of incipient features of modern sovereignty. With respect to Machiavelli, Bartleson writes that "[i]f 11Principe was focused around the problem of security and written from the vantage point of the sovereign subjectivity of a ruler, this perspective is reversed in the Discorsi. It is written from the vantage point of the sovereign subjectivity of a people."29 Similarly, Hinsley acknowledges that Renaissance political thinkers were instrumental in de-legitimizing Christendom, an idea incompatiblewith modern. sovereignty. They hastened the erosion of the Christian political order by rejecting the. theocratically based claims of Papacy and Empire to universal authority, by questioning. the idea that Christendom was a political society, and by denying that. regional rulers were beholden to laws superior to them. Further, Hinsley accepts that Machiavelli made two important contributions to the modern understanding of sovereignty. First, Machiavelli, like Guicciardini, tried to resolve the competing interests of princes and subjects by conceiving of 10 stato as an instrument in the hands of the ruler that was to be used in the interests of the ruled. Their shared interests would be served if the prince was freed from custom and tradition and able to act on behalf of the body politic. Machiavelli, however, stopped short of "knitting ruler and society closer together in a body politic which itself became endowed with sovereign power."30 Second, Machiavelli limited politics to the terrestrial world by dismissing the Augustinian notion that temporal rulers should aim to realize a superior law or purpose. While historians of political thought .downplay the extent to which Renaissance political discourse entertained a modern ideal of territorial sovereignty, for legal historians the principle was well-established. The principle of
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legal territorial sovereignty can be traced back to the fourteenth century crisis of church and state, discussed in chapter 4, when the regional monarchs first proclaimed their independence from the Holy Roman Empire. The test-case was Robert of Naples' challenge to the authority of the Emperor Henry VII in 1312. Robert had been charged with crimen laesae majestatis for inciting and allying with imperial enemies in Lombardy and Tuscany and for occupying imperial territory. He not only rejected the charge but responded by citing the arguments of French and Neapolitan lawyers that the Holy Roman Emperor's claim to be dominus mundi, or the lawful overlord and supreme monarch of Europe with jurisdictional authority over all kings, was invalid. John of Paris and Andreas de Isernia championed the principle of rex est monarcha in regno suo and denied that the Holy Roman Empire had any superior juristic or political status over the regional kings. 31 They maintained that the Emperor had the same status and powers as the other kings of Europe. His jurisdiction, like theirs, extended only over his own realm: "Whatever the Emperor can do in his lands, the king can do in his kingdom ... kings have as much freedom in their kingdoms as the Emperor has in theEmpire."32 Robert mobilized these arguments to declare that as a sovereign himself he did not recognize any higher sovereign authority and Was not obliged to obey the demands of any other temporal rulers. Robert's rejection of the Emperor's claim to wield jurisdictional power over kings resident outside the bounds of the Empire was subsequently confirmed by Pope Clement V in the decree Pastoralis Cura (1313). Clement, who regarded Naples as a papal fief andhad been upset by Henry's claim to Naples, declared that the Emperor had no authority to summon any king extra districtum imperii or to use force to bring a king to book extra imperium. For Walter Ullman, by the time Marsiglio of Padua wrote Defensor pacis (1324), the principle that the sovereignty of the humanist individual (legislator humanus) should be reflected in the sovereignty of the universitas civium was a staple of legal discourse.Y [sjubjectivized sovereignty must be supplemented by it objectivized component part, and that means that sovereignty, or what is the same, jurisdiction must be territorially anchored, must have a territorial connection ... territorial boundaries had become boundaries of the law, jurisdiction and hence of sovereignty. The territory had acquired juristic personality. Both governmental practice and juristic doctrine had postulated that the personal kind of sovereignty must be complemented by its territorial counterpart.P" The citizen's place in space had become an element of his legal status as both an individual and a citizen. A person's domicile united the res or territory with the persona; it combined theanirnate person with inanimate soil. The implication of this territorialization of the universitas civium was that no government could
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claim jurisdiction over subjects resident in places outside its own territory and, as 1312 proved, a citizen domiciled in one territory could not be summoned to attend court in another.P While it may be the case that Renaissance political discourse did not have, as Bartleson insists, a sense that the outside was constituted by an international system, the legal principle of dominion did operate a distinction between inside and outside in that the territories of republics and principalities were distinguished from the myriad of other political spaces existing outside their boundaries. The dominio of lo stato was a circumscribed space within which the state authorities could wield coercive power and enforce internal jurisdiction. Machiavelli experienced this coercive aspect of Renaissance territoriality first hand in November 1512 when, following the fall of Soderini's government, he was expelled from the Chancery and confined in territorio et dominio Florentino per unum annum continuum. 36 Machiavelli's confinement within Florence's territorio et dominio was a major hardship and after six months he wrote to his friend Venturi in Rome declaring his intention to visit "if I could get out of this hole of dominion."37 The legal principle of territorial sovereignty also came into play during the negotiation of diplomatic treaties. The treaty which formed the Italian League (1454) "was concluded 'ad tutelamet conservationem statuum et dominiorum' of the signatories' and in it 10 stato referred to a combination of political power and territorial domi nion.v'' Renaissance diplomatic documents often distinguished a ruler's stato from his lands and subjects. This distinction implied that the sovereign subject and the territorial object were not coterminous. According to the terms of the treaty between Francesco Sforza and Federico Montefeltro (31 August 1450) Sforza agreed to take into his protection "'el stato, citade, terre, castelle, homini, subditi ... of Federigo.' "39 Here stato and terre are distinct components of the state. For Rubinstein, this distinction was especially pertinent with respect to principalities and despotic states because the signore held both the internal regime and the territory as components of his dominio.G-habod suggests that in Machiavelli's stato the territory is, like the specific body of people who occupy it, an object that is subjected to the juridical authority or political power of either the prince or the dominant group in the republic. Stato, therefore, not only designates a subject, that is the body exercising command, "clearly separated from the object of command, which remains outside of and subservient to it. But it also signifies territorial extension, 'dominio' in the objective sense (the space-and population-within which and upon which a determined authority is exercisedj.T'" There is a complex relationship in Machiavelli's stato between the prince as sovereign subject and the territory as an.objective component of his jurisdiction. This has been commented on by Michel Foucault, who sees Machiavelli's stato as
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a transitory stage in the development of the state, lying somewhere between "the state of justice, .born in the feudal type of territorial regime which corresponds to a society of laws" and "the administrative state; born in the territoriality of national boundaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and corresponding to a society of regulation and discipline.T" For Foucault, Machiavelli's account of the relationship between territory and sovereignty in II Principe reflected the juridical principle, characteristic of contemporary theories and philosophies of public law, that "sovereignty is not exercised on things, but above all on a territory and consequently on the subjects who inhabit it." Variations in the attributes of the territory-such as its fertility, the numbers of people occupying it, and their wealth or labor-are insignificant "by comparison with territory itself which is the very foundation of principality and soveteignty."42And yet, the prince's relationship to his territory is. fragile, synthetic, and permanently threatened by external enemies and internal opponents. It needs constant attention if the prince is to achieve his raison d ~ etre, which is simply to hold onto what he has got. In this sense, irrespective of how he has acquired his principality, whether by conquest or inheritance, the prince remained alienated from it. 43 The objective of the prince's exercise of power is to strengthen and protect the principality, understood not as "the objective ensemble of its subjects and the territory, but rather the prince's relation with what he owns, with the territory he has inherited or acquired, and with his subjects.T'" Foucault draws our attention to a paradox. Although territory is a fundamental component of Machiavellian sovereignty, the sovereign prince is estranged from the territories which define his sovereignty. In Renaissance sovereign-territoriality the hyphen between the two terms separates rather than unites; it differentiates the subjectivity of the sovereign prince from the object of his power, his territory.
Violence In the first chapter we saw how the inside/outside spatial demarcation which underpins the territorial a priori is reinforced by Max Weber's assertion that the state exercises the legitimate monopoly of violence throughout its territory. Machiavelli shared Weber's premise that violence is an integral element of pol iticallife and his realism dispensed with the euphemisms which medieval writers had used to disguise this aspect of political life. It for St. Augustine, violence was debased, an instrument appropriate to terrestrial authority commanded to execute the coercive sanctions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, for Machiavelli, violence replaced divine sanction as the warrant of secular power politics. Sheldon Wolin claims that Machiavelli saw the state as an "aggregate of power" whose "profile was that of violerice.T? Machiavelli stressed that a sue... cessful state had to have good institutions or Jaws (buone istituzione) and strong
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armies (eserciti efficienti), but, when push comes to shove, armies are the most important. "The main foundations of all states, whether new, old or mixed are good laws and good armies.... It is not possible to have good laws without good armies and where there are good armies good laws follow ...."46Machiavelli was adamant that if the prince were to achieve his political ends, he must not shirk from employing violence where appropriate, even at the risk of being considered cruel. For a prince to acquire and maintain a principality he must cultivate military virtu. All the most accomplished rulers in history have devoted themselves to the study of war, the greatest of the princely arts. Francesco Sforza's acquisition of the Duchy of Milan was a recent illustration of how a man who has mastered the art of war can rise from the mass of private citizens to become a successful prince. Conversely, rulers who neglect the study of war while pursuing the finer rewards of power will loose their states.V Machiavelli was convinced that a state should exercise its monopoly of violence through a standing army made up of soldiers drawn from the subject population. The question of armies was very important to Machiavelli, who had been responsible for recruiting. a militia force for Florence, and discussions on how to raise, maintain, and deploy armed forces appear in all his major works. 48 He repeatedly insisted that the Italian rulers should establish their own forces rather than deploy unreliable and dangerous mercenaries or auxiliaries/'" Mercenaries are "disunited, ambitious, undisciplined and treacherous"; they have no fear of God, no loyalty to the prince who hires them, and will not risk their lives for their paltry wages. 50 Consequently, any prince who tries to hold "his state on the basis of mercenary forces will never be stable or securc.T" Living memory could furnish an acute example of the limitations of using mercenary forces. During the 1494 invasion of Italy by the French King Charles VIII, the mercenary forces employed by Italian rulers had dispersed in the face of superior foreign troops, thus allowing Charles to "conquer Italy with a piece of chalk."52 Equally dangerous was the policy of hiring another's man's troops as auxiliaries. These troops are loyal only to their own commander who, if the prince is in a dire situation, can easily switch allegiance and turn his men against the prince, thereby destroying him. A strong prince will be able to defend himself against any attacker without calling for any external assistance. Machiavelli advised both princes and the ruling elites of city-states to replace mercenaries with militia forces made up of loyal local men. The state's security cannot be guaranteed if the armies, the means of violence, come from outside the boundaries of the dominio. Fortuna in the guise of internal rebellion or foreign incursion can only be overcome by virtu as embodied in an indigenous militia force. Armies must be autochthonous, made up of men whose livelihoods come from the lands which make up the state's dominio, and who recognize that by enlisting in the militia and making the state more secure
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their own interests would be better protected. The militia has both an internal coercive function and an external defensive function. If the militia is conducted properly, "it naturally suppresses all disturbances-rather than fomenting them-among its constituents" as well as being able "to protect them against the fear of foreign enemies."53 The inherent resentment and hostility a popolo exhibited toward their rulers could be contained if they were drafted to serve as soldiers in a military structure in which the mechanisms of discipline and control were well developed. Further, in the "tightly-packed condition of political space" where the new prince had to carve out a new state while "hemmed in by vested interests and expectations, privileges and rights, ambitions and hopes" the prince could not expect to hold onto power without creating enemies.r" In a political environment where faction and intrigue are rife it is the militia that must be relied upon to quell any. rebellious factions or internal challenges to the prince's authority. A loyal and well-disciplined army is especially important for a regime which has just taken power, for it must liquidate anybody hostile to the new order. "He who establishes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and he who establishes a democratic regime and does not kill the sons of Brutus will not last long."55 A militia was also required for external warfare. At a time when the marauding armies of the oltramontani were rampaging through Italy, Machiavelli admonished those princes and republican leaders who lacked sufficient of their own soldiers to defend their own states or to join in a united effort to rid Italy of the foreigners. 56 Machiavelli's hopes that Florence would acquire a militia force capable of both internal peace-keeping and external war-fighting is symptomatic of the modern. sovereign territorial imaginary in so. far as the modern territorial state is defined by its ability to exercise violence, internally and externally, at will. However, in Renaissance Italy, few princes or. republican leaders had sufficient coercive resources at their disposal to exercise their sovereignty equally effectively over all the spaces that made up their dominions. Machiavelli, therefore, advised a weak prince under attack from superior forces to "fortify and provision his city, and to make no account of the territory lying outside it."57 The prince should "take. refuge behind walls and defend them" for he will be able to withstand a siege and hold onto his state if he makes sure that the city is well fortified and that the people within it remain loyaL58 As long as the city holds fast, the countryside or contado is expendable; a space that the enemy can occupy without threatening the existence of the state as a whole. However, this image of state territoriality, structured around central and peripheral spaces, fails to meet the standards of Weber's ideal type in which the state's monopoly of violence is exercised evenly across the entire territory. Florentine republican writers, who used 10 stato in a geographical sense to denote the extent of the city's dominion, automatically made a distinction between a center based on
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the city and a periphery of outlying areas. "Giovanni Villani divides the stato of Florence into city, contado and distretto" and Guicciardini "speaks circa 1508 of Pisa as belonging to '10 stato nostro.' "59 Elana Guarani claims that this centerperiphery territorial order reflected the reality of Italian political communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Renaissance states which had territories further out than the castles and villages located in the immediate contado did not exercise "a form of immediate sovereignty over a territory.T" Rather, the jurisdiction they exercised over the people living in these outlying spaces was indirect and diffused, being filtered through local institutions and communal structures. The center-periphery structure of Renaissance state territoriality, therefore, still maintained the vestiges of a "hierarchical and polarized organisation of... space."61 While serving in the Florentine Chancery, Machiavelli travelled extensively, visiting potentially rebellious cities and recruiting soldiers for the militia. During these trips he became sensitive to the potential weaknesses of these center-periphery systems and shared the general view that the inability of the communes to unify and discipline the feudal aristocracies domiciled in their distretti had led to the crises of the fourteenth century. In this context, Pisa, which Florence had brought from Gabriele Maria Visconti in 1405 and lost in 1494 following Charles VIII's invasion, had a special role in 11Principe for it demonstrated the difficulties facing a prince trying to hold onto a recently acquired city-state that has a long established tradition of liberty. Earlier, in the Discorso dell 'ordinare 10 stato di Firenze alle armi (1506), Machiavelli had contrasted the restlessness in the Florentine distrettopopulated by rebellious cities to the peaceful contado of the city's immediate vicinity.V He worried that Florence's survival was threatened by "the fragility of its territorial system, badly guarded, exposed to external pressures, undermined internally by the presence of cities 'which desire your death even more than their life'."63 For Florence to ensure peace and security within her dominio she must develop both a military force capable of defending the city and controlling the rebellious cities, and a coercive justice system capable of punishing seditious subjects. One might surmise that Machiavelli might have encouraged the Florentine authorities concerned to quell dissension in the dominio to sanction more of the spectacular violence that some Renaissance rulers were partial to. In the tract "On the Method of Dealing With the Rebellious Peoples of the Valdichiana," Machiavelli warned the Florentine leaders that the Duke of Valentino, Cesare Borgia, who Was seeking to establish his authority in Romagna and to build a powerful territorial state in central Italy, was trying to incite rebellion among the discontented peoples of the Florentine state.P'' However, in 11Principe, Valentino is praised for his attempts to hold onto his new principality in the most difficult of circumstances. Valentino had conquered Romagna not only by using other
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men's forces-his armies were heavily reinforced.by mercenaries belonging to the Orsini and by soldiers on loan from the French king, Louis XII-but also with the assistance offOrtuna-he had been able to rely on the support of pope Alexander VI, Roderigo Borgia, his father. Valentino recognized his position was threatened by the dubious loyalties of the Orsini mercenaries, Louis' disapproval of his plans for further expansion into Tuscany, and the resentment of those living in Romagna who were sick of being ruled by weak, exploitative lords. Valentino eradicated the leaders of the Orsini and Colonna families and broke his alliance with the French.P" In order to pacify Romagna, he put in charge "Messer Rernirro de Orco, a man cruel and ready" who" in a short time tendered the province peaceful and united." Then, in order to avoid incurring resentment at the violent means used to restore order, Cesare wanted to show that any cruelty which had gone on did not originate with himself but with the harsh nature of his agent. So getting an opportunity for it, one morning at Cesena he had Messer Remirro laid in two pieces in the public square with a block of wood and a bloody sword near him. The ferocity of this spectacle left those people at the same time gratified and awestruck.I'" The Remirro case is an example of the use of spectacular violence in the consolidation of the territoriality ofa Renaissance state. This state shared many characteristics with the states of Early Modern Europe, in which, as Foucault pointed out, control was maintained by both spectacular and disciplinary violence. 67 However, the modern state rarely, if ever, engages in spectacular violence, for it is able to ensure order by means of an extensive surveillance apparatus, which permits it to coordinate individuals' time-space routines across the entire territory under its jurisdiction.. Nevertheless, Renaissance states did have some mechanisms of disciplinary power at their disposal. Pierangelo Schiera argues that if the modern state constitutes "a point of unity" in which the institutional and legitimate organization of power is combined with the discipline that determines the collective behavior its subjects, then while these three elements came together in the seventeenth century, they all developed, albeit separately, in Italian hurnanism.P'' The institutional dimension arose out of negotiations between the signoria, the papal andirnperial vicariati, and the principate, and replaced an ancient civic legitimacy with a state based legitimacy. City-states derived their legitimacy, as Marsiglia had noted, from their status as a community that protects individuals so that "the men belonging to it may live and live we11."69 Discipline arose from the codes of the guilds, corporations, universities, and Church, which ensured the co-ordination of the citizens' behavior with the needs of the communal civic order. Machiavelli, despite his contempt for the
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institutions of the Roman church, recognized, as we have seen, that religion had a vital role in reinforcing social cohesion and identity. It is the duty of "the rulers of a republic or of a kingdom to preserve the foundations of the religion they hold. If they do this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their state religious, and consequently good and united."70 Religion can also assist in securing the discipline of armies. Machiavelli praised rulers who "with very great ceremonies ... had their soldiers swear to observe military discipline, in order that if they acted against it, they would have to fear not merely the laws and men but God; and they used every device to give them strong religious feeling."71 Nevertheless, the territoriality of center and periphery remained the norm. It characterized not just relations between citta and distretto, but also those between citta and contado. Although city and countryside in Renaissance Italy were closer knit than they had been in feudal society, mutual distrust and resentment was still endemic. The replacement of serfdom by more flexible tenancies, based in commercial leases and contractual sharecropping or mezzadria, drew the. cities and countryside together in relations of dependency: city dwellers relied on food, fuel, and labor drawn from rural areas, while investment and speculation by the mercantile and noble classes of the cities brought prosperity to the countryside. Like Machiavelli, who owned a farm at Sant' Andrea in Percussina outside Florence, many city dwellers had farms near the city or were absentee landlords in estates further out. Yet, economic ties of necessity between the urban upper classes and the agrarian workers did not necessarily engender mutual feelings of trust or affection. Franco Sacchetti's declaration that "[t]he city should produce good men, the villa good beasts" is indicative of the type of prejudice that many of urban landowners felt toward the peasantry.r? The animosity of urban dwellers toward rural society was a legacy of the medieval conviction that law and order were restricted to the city, while the countryside was a lawless space full of dangers and threats. This theme is evident, for example, in Giotto's frescoes for the Arena Chapel which depict Injustice as a tyrant, sitting outside the city-gates, ruling over a wilderness in which brigands are robbing and murdering the unfortunate inhabitants.F' Many later Renaissance paintings, notably those by Mantegna and Leonardo, continued to promote the ideal of urban life as the embodiment of civic virtue and economic wealth by contrasting it to the lawlessness and anarchy shown outside in the countryside. Indeed, for Lauro Martines, artists were so "[ijnfected by the arrogance of the domineering city" that many picture of walled cities depicted the surrounding rural space as "a sort of no man's land fit for armies and desolation, not for civilized living (vivere civilmente)," thereby producing "fantasticated pictures of the established relationships of power." 74 Indeed, territoriality in Italy, would remain structured along a center-periphery axis long into the sixteenth century. The Medici rulers of that century were well
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aware that the degree of power they exercised over the immediate environs of Florence and her contado was attenuated in the outer Tuscan territories. Tuscany was a pluralistic society in which cities, towns and rural communities maintained their own councils and government bodies. They were responsible for tax collection and public expenditure as well as the maintenance of public order and defense?5 One city-state where relations between the city and its peripheral spaces were especially strained was Venice which, notes Machiavelli, had taken "possession of a large part of Italy, for the rnost part not with war but with money . . . 0 f t h e CIty, . cca strange an d cra f t. "76 Th"'\T' e venetian state was a h eterogeneous mIX centre placed at the borders of its state, a seafaring and mercantile city, foreign to the world ofcommon law," and the Terrafirma, "a multiform and polycentric periphery, organized around big urban poles and dotted with feudal lordships and 'little princes'."77 Venice's policy of territorial acquisition was admired by Machiavelli in so far as it showed that her leaders had absorbed the lesson of imperial Rome that territorial expansion could diffuse internal tensions and struggles. Expansion could refocus the destructive energy. generated by internal conflict and, by projecting it outward in a constructive manner, so increase the state's power resources against rivals and bolster the citizens' sense of civic virtu. 78 Of course, expansionist policies risk increasing the sense of threat felt by other states and setting the logic of the security dilemma into motion. Indeed, Venice's expansion did not just alarm other Italian powers but was seen as a threat by the Spanish, French, and German rulers. Under Pope Julius Irs leadership these disparate interests were brought together in the League of Cambrai which defeated the Venetians at the battle of Agnadello (May 14, 1509). For Machiavelli, the Venetians had attained such a reputation for power that not merely to the Italian princes but to the kings beyond the Alps they gave cause for dread.. Hence when these foreign rulers made a league against them, in one day the Venetians were deprived of the territory which in the course of many years they had gained with boundless expense. 79
Identity Together with sovereignty and violence, the third interlocking component of the modern territorial a priori is identity. In a reading of Rousseau's tract The Government ofPoland, William Connolly demonstrates how identity, violence, and territory combine in the modern political imaginary. Rousseau argued that if the Poles were to become a free people they needed to inscribe their identity into a defined territory. The people who inhabit the land must all use a common language, and have shared values and mores. Connolly identifies in
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Rousseau's argument a set of correspondences underwritten by violence: "to be free you must belong to a people; to be a people you must have a common identity burned into you; to be a flourishing people you must exclusively inhabit a contiguous territory; to flourish freely as a territorialized people you must stringently limit contact with the foreign." Poland could only be endeared to its citizens through violence: the violence "done to the internal other (those inhabiting the territory who do not belong), the interior other (the other within the self which resists such. strong identification with the collectivity) and the external other (those who are foreign)."8o Machiavelli first touches upon issues of identity in II Principe in his discussion of the problems faced by a prince who has recently acquired mixed principalities.f ' If the new territory has the same customs, mores, and language as those established in his antico stato and if the inhabitants of the new territory are already accustomed to princely rule then assimilating the territory in tutto un corpo will be relatively easy. The prince does not need to alter existing laws and taxes, but merely has to ensure that all members of the previous ruling family are wiped Out. If he follows these rules "in a very short time they unite with his old princedom in a single body."82 1£ however, the inhabitants of the newly acquired territory speak a different language and have different laws and customs, the prince will require good fortuna and need to cultivate virtu. He will either have to move his court to the new lands or to establish colonies in it. He must forge alliances with the minor nobility of the region, while being careful not to increase the power of arty potential rivals. Some of the hardest territories to retain are those where the previous ruler shared power with several minor lords. These lands will contain several alternative foci of allegiance around which those who oppose the new prince's rule could coalesce. However, the hardest stati to retain are those republican cities with strong traditions of liberty and procedures of civil life based in time-honored indigenous laws. The prince cannot expect to eradicatememoties of liberty and freedom and if he wants to hold onto such a republic he must destroy the city, set up his court within its walls, or establish a government that retains most of the old laws. 83 Like Rousseau, Machiavelli maintained that identity is constituted through language. The language spoken by the inhabitants of the newly acquired provincia would determine whether or not they shared the same identity as the subjects of the prince's antico stato. 84 "[T]he territories [stati] a conqueror annexes and joins to his own well-established state are either in the same country (provincia) with the same language or they are not."8S Although Machiavelli sometimes uses provincia to designate Italy, here lingua does not refer to a national language. Cramsci, four centuries later would still be ruing the fact that Italian remained the exclusive vernacular of the cultural and social elites and that the vast majority of the population still spoke various incompatible dialects,
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which compromised any attempts to coalesce into an effective political force. 86 Nevertheless, many Renaissance humanists felt that it was important to define the role and function of the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Dante, himself had insisted in De vulgari eloquentia that his new vernacular or curiale, the language of the courts spoken by courtiers, popes, dukes, and literary men was not, as many Florentine humanists insisted, based in the Florentine dialect. Machiavelli, as a good Florentine, wrote a counter tract refuting Dante's denial of the Florentine patrimony of Italian and even accused the poet of defaming their common patriae 87 Machiavelli's criticism of Dante has a tincture of campanilismo, the fierce allegiance to and pride in one's city or region felt by many Renaissance Italians. Florentines, argues de Grazia, felt that the Palazzo della Signoria and the Duomo symbolized the city's grandeur and glory. "Brunelleschi's cupola high in the heavens is the cosmos centred in Florence and covering an empire of the peoples of Tuscany." 88 However campanilismo could easily slip into the type of smallminded parochialism that Machiavelli mocked in Mandragola where one of the characters is belittled by being told that "you're not used to losing the Cupola from sight."89 Indeed, although Machiavelli rose to Florence's defense when he felt that she had been unfairly maligned and famously declared that "I love my country more than my soul," he was not a Florentine chauvinist.l'" He rarely trumpeted his city's prodigious cultural achievements, which, in his eyes, could not compensate for the failure of this "[tjruly ... great and miserable city" to achieve its promise of political greatness. He would have gladly exchanged her cultural riches for a political elite of equal military virtu and boldness of spirit to the senatorial class of ancient Rome. Only then could the petty factionalisms, internecine rivalries, and class' conflicts that had bedeviled the city since the eradication of the noble class be overcome. However, despite such disappointments, the spirit of Florence still burned in his soul. Every time that I have been able to honour my patria, even at my own expense and risk of danger, I have done $0 voluntarily; because a man has no greater obligation in his life. On it depends his whole being and moreover from it comes every good thing which fortuna and nature have conceded to us; these are notably so much greater in those who come from the most noble patria. 91 It is true that the territorialization of political identity in Renaissance Italy was primarily local or regional, determined by residency in or cultivation of the lands that made up a prince's dominic or a republic's contado. However the piccola patriawas not the only locus of identity. Humanist writings regularly display a tension between the immediate loyalty owed to the piccola patria, one's citta or
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stato, and la grande patria or some notion of Italy-embodying the cultural her-
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[T]his barbarian rule stinks to everyone. Your illustrious house must therefore take on this challenge with the spirit and that hope that comes from taking up any just cause, so that under its standard this patria will be ennobled. and under its auspices will be verified Petrarch's saying: 95 Then Virtue will seize arms 'Gainst madness, and the battle will be brief For ancient valour is Not dead, as yet, within Italian hcarts.i''' Machiavellian scholars continue to debate the intended meaning of this chapter. Nineteenth century followers of Ranke, who viewed Machiavelli as an Italian patriot and the prophet of the modern national state, claimed that Machiavelli intended that all the advice he offered throughout II Principe should assist the potential liberator to free Italy. However, Meinecke argued that II Principe was not a unified composition, and that the final chapter was a rhetorical addendum, designed to curry favor with the Medici. Machiavelli's loose
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use of language means he could have been advocating a temporary military alliance, a permanent federal constitution, or a unified national state. Against this divisionist view, unifiers, like Chabod, claim that II Principe has a natural narrative progression leading toward the telos of the final chapter.f" Either way it would be rash to assume that Machiavelli envisaged a national territorial based identity, equivalent to that aspired to by the state-builders of modernity. Prezzolini argues that the romantic and mystical discourse of nineteenth century nationalism, proclaiming the right of a population to form a separate state when they have a common language and cultural traditions, would have been alien to Machiavelli. His nationalism was utilitarian in that "conformity of language, of customs [religion] and institutions [laws and military]" could provide a realistic basis fora viable state, free of the religious allegiances of the medieval territorial irnagiriary.r" Chabod concurs that Machiavelli had no sense of the sacredness attributed to the modern nation. He cut off religion from the political but did not transfer the religious sentiments of sacrifice and martyrdom to the nation. His only interest was the unity of the state: "the nation exists for him to the extent that it is organised or can be organised into a political body, in a unified state, with an established government."99 To be sure, Machiavelli only rarely uses the term nazione and applies it to both the large populations of foreign states and to the piccole patrie of Italy.loo However, even if Machiavelli's idea of the nation was not fully modern, we cannot deny that it does convey a sense of a communal identity grounded on a space that exceeded the boundaries of the local patria. Even if Machiavelli remained hopeful that the Italian polities could survive if they continued to develop the traditions of civic humanism, upon which their liberties and greatness had depended upon in the past, his time as Florentine emissary to the court of France and the lessons of 1494 would have made him acutely aware that the power of the northern kingdoms surpassed that of any of the Italian city-states.l'" Hence, Machiavelli's appeal for a national militia assembled under a Medici leader, that could rival the armies of the French, Spanish, and Swiss. Exactly which parts of the peninsula such troops should be recruited from is not clear. If only Italian speakers were to be enlisted then by Machiavelli's own criteria they wouldbe restricted to men from five provinces: Lombardy,Romagna, Tuscany, the territory of Rome, and the kingdom ofNaples. lo2 As Vincent Ilardi notes, "Venice, Piedmont, Liguria, and the islands (Sicily and Sardinia) were not part of Italy for Machiavelli, linguistically speaking."I03 Nevertheless, Italia did have meaning for Machiavelli. In citing Petrarch's "Italia Mia" he purposely invoked the sentiment of italianita,--a sense of shared cultural identity characterized by common language, literature, customs, manners and traditions-that had been nurtured by Italian humanists for generations. In "Italia Mia" Petrarch had. grounded this identity in spatial images.
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He praised the fecundity of Italy's soil-"this verdant earth"; the beauty of her landscape----"our lovely countryside"; and her territorial uniqueness-"that part of the world which is most fair."I04 Furthermore, by combining imagery of maternal nurturing with the nourishing capacity of the homeland, the poem also alludes to the modern territorial theme of blood and belonging. Is this soil not the earth that I first touched? This not the nest where I Have been so sweetly nursed? And is this not my homeland that I trust? A mother, pious, kind, Who shelters both my parents in her soil?105
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Although italianita was not a mass sentiment, being largely limited to the intellectual elite, it nevertheless expressed themes that would echo in later nationalist rhetoric. First, it was a discourse whose appeal was strongest when the political fortunes of the peninsula were lowest. Fazio degli Uberti's ''Ai Signori e Popoli d' Italia" (c.1350) had described the parlous state of fourteenth century Italy during the "age of despots", when princes fought wars using marauding bands of foreign mercenaries. lOG For Uberti, only an Italy united under a Ghibelline monarch could restore the fortunes of the peninsula and evict the foreign soldiers. During the fifteenth century, when foreign interference was minimal and Italian politics were relatively autonomous, humanists could praise the virtues of their own piccola patria, while retaining a sense of belonging to and having a responsibility to a greater community. Thus Coluccio Salutati praised Florence for" defendirig her own freedom" on the grounds that in doing do "she had 'saved liberty in Italy.' "107 After the devastation of the French expedition of 1494, italianita flourished once again. Second, just as the German Romanticists would seek the origins of German culture in a mythical golden age of the Holy Roman Empire, so the Italian humanists drew on the legacy of Rome. Projects such as Flavio Biondo's archaeological descriptions of the ruins of Roman civilization in Romae instauratae libri tres (1482) reinforced a sense of an inherited cultural superiority.l'" Third, the sheer physical presence of the Alps provided a natural territorial marker or boundary for italianita. The coherence of Italian culture seemed to be divinely ordained, in that "God-or Nature-had placed the Alps as a protecting wall around Italy. People living beyond the Alps were foreigners and it was unnatural for oltramontani to interfere in Italian affairs."109 These proto-nationalist themes: the forging of identity in adversity, the evocation of cultural genealogies, and the delineation of natural territorial markers, were often .expressed in rhetoric which differentiated Italia from the barbarian other. In "Italia Mia" Petrarch acknowledged that
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Nature made good provision for our state, To set an Alpine shield Between us and the Germans' ravening. 110 He contrasted the "noble Latin blood" that runs in Italian veins with the "blood of the barbarians."IlI By the fourteenth century, the word barbarian in Italian discourse had acquired several connotations: a non-Christian, a writer of bad Latin, and the ancient sense of someone outside of the cultural ambit of Rome. 112 From the fourteenth century on, humanists developed the latter meaning to distinguish Italy from the rabies barbarica north of the Alps. Salutatis official correspondence of 1376 "identified Florence with Italy, Italy with Latinitas and barbarism with the French and English mercenaries."113 With the sixteenth century revival of italianita the barbarian theme came to the fore again. In the .History ofFlorence, Machiavelli uses barbarian to describe and to draw analogies between the Germanic tribes who attacked the Roman Empire between 377 and 439 and contemporary foreign invaders. Recent wars had opened a new road "to the barbarians, and Italy putherselfback into slavery to them."114 However, notes Marcel Gagneux, it was Guicciardini rather than Machiavelli who did most to privilege "the couple 'Barbarians-Italians' as the fundamental element of identification through opposition.t 'P In Storia d 'Italia, Guicciardini records a speech by Marchionne Trivisano warning his fellow senators of the Venetian Consigli de' Pregato not to enter an alliance with the French against Lodovico Sforza, on the basis that all barbarians are "eternal enemies of the Italian" and there is an essential" difference between barbarian and Italian spirits."116 Guicciardini also praised Pope Giulio II, the incarnation of the national struggle, as "liberatore di Italia da' barbari."117 Guicciardini's discursive construction of italianita through opposition to the figure of the barbarian is aptly demonstrated in an analogy he drew between Hannibal and Charles VIII. [PJ assing into Italy through the mountain pass of Monginevra ... through which Hannibal of Carthage passed with great difficulty in antiquity, the king entered Italy on the ninth of September 1494 bringing with him the seeds' of innumerable calamities, ghastly events, and changes in almost all things. II8 Clearly, much of chapter XXVI of II Principe rehearses the standard themes of italianita: "[l]aments over the oppressed state of Italy, and over the divisions among the Italian leaders; contempt for the foreigners as' 'barbarians,' yearnings for the great Roman past, appeals for a leader, the wish to be free of the invaders ... "119 Machiavelli's depiction of a coherent Italian identity, differentiated from the surrounding world and threatened by foreign forces, was not new.
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However, Machiavelli's originality was to fuse these disparate elements into a program of political action. He sought to revive Italian virtu by installing a spirit of martial valour into the people, by forming an army of indigenous soldiers to replace the mercenary troops, and by unifying the province under one prince. Machiavelli's models for Italian unity were contemporary France and Spain: "Italy was to become a "provincia unita" in order to withstand the assaults of other 'provincie unite'."I20 Yet this political program would remain an aspiration rather than a reality. For Italy's regional princes, italianita was merely a convenient tool of realpolitik which they appealed to when their own interests were threatened.V! Florentine and Papal negotiators seeking to encourage Venice to drop her stance of neutrality after Charles VIII's invasion argued that" 'a good Italian' with concern for the 'universal danger' and 'universal needs of Italy' " would abandon such a policy.I22 But Italian interests rarely took precedence over the immediate interest of the piccola patria. The Venetian Doge replied to the Papal legate that Venice would not risk going to war with Milan and France for the sake of a vague ideal. Furthermore, princes were prepared to put their contempt for the barbarians aside, if the military services they offered could be used to overcome local rivals. The weakness of Italian interest when set against personal ambition became abundantly clear in 1494 when, motivated by his desire for territorial gains at the expense ofVenice, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, encouraged Charles VIII's invasion on the pretext of the Angevin claim to the Kingdom of Naples. Machiavelli was disgusted at Sforza and blamed his deviousness for "the growth of those evil seeds that not long after, since no living man could destroy them, devastated----and are still devastating-Italy."I23 Italy would not achieve anything like the status of a national territorial state until well into the nineteenth century, and would experience many more "barbarian" incursions before then. Nevertheless Renaissance political discourse; by aligning the state space with sovereignty, violence, and identity commenced a process of striation that would eventually coalesce into the modern territorial imaginary.
CHAPTER 8
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n.the ded -. ica.:or y " t:er to L..0..renzo de M~dic.i prefacingIIPrincipe, Machiavelli expressed hIS worries that Lorenzo might take offence that a mere citizen I . should presume to offer counsel on the conduct of princely affairs. He justified his unsolicited advice by means of an analogy. ·
I hope it will not be thought presumptuous if a man of low and humble station dares to discuss and advise on the conduct of princes. For just as those who draw up maps of countries place themselves in low lying valleys to observe mountains and high places and to observe low lying areas situate themselves high up in the mountains so, likewise, to understand clearly the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to discern clearly that of princes, he must be one of the populace.' Machiavelli's analogy evokes a passage in Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting in which Leonardo declared that the artist who mastered perspective would become lord of all types of peoples and of all things. If he wants valleys, if he wants from high mountain tops to unfold a great plain extending down to the sea's horizon, he is lord to do so; and likewise if from low plains he wishes to see high rnountains.r Carlo Ginzberg argues that Machiavelli Was attracted to this image of the "sovereign painter" with the world at his command because it posited an analytical distance between the painter and the world he represenred.:' A similar principle underpinned Machiavelli's desire to describe political life in terms of "la verita
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effectual delle cosa." Politics is a relationship between the prince and his people. So, Machiavelli, occupying the low plain, can provide the prince with an objective view on the conduct of politics which the prince, who occupies the heights, is unable to .experience. Machiavelli combined perspective and politics through metaphor. However, according to the International Relations theorist John Ruggie, there is, in terms of the production of modern territoriality, a more immediate relationship between perspective and politics. In chapter three we discussed Ruggie's contention that the transformation from the heteronomous, territoriality of the medieval international order to the homonomous territoriality of modernity was partially produced by a reimagination of subjectivity within the European social episteme. Ruggie contends that the essence of modern subjectivity and its being-in-space is embodied by single-point perspective, which prioritized the sovereignty of "a single point of view, the point of view of a single subjectivity, from which all other subjectivities were differentiated," in relation to thevanishing point.4As in art, so in politics
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political space came to be defined as it appeared from a single fixed viewpoint. T'he concept of sovereignty ... was ... the doctrinal counterpart of the application of single-point perspectival forms to the spatial organisation of pol itics.P
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Unfortunately, Ruggie does not develop this tantalizing observation much further, leaving us to wonder how exactly single-point perspectival forms were applied to the spatial organisation of politics. This chapter, building on Ruggie's suggestive insight, addresses the question of how perspective, in essence a code or technique of pictorial representation, could have assisted in the promotion of the modern territorial imaginary. In particular, it explores how following the collapse of the vertical structures of medieval territoriality, perspective enabled the territorialization of politics along a horizontal axis. Perspective will be addressed from two, as it were, perspectives. First as an epistemic structure whose assumptions about the subject and its being-in-space are reproduced across various spatial discourses. Second, as a representational technique which lent itself to the legitimization of the' modern idea of territorial sovereignty. The first section introduces the basic, principles of perspective with reference to Leon Battista Alberti's paradigmatic text On Painting and some of Piero della Francesca's paintings. This is followed by a discussion of recent work on perspective by cultural theorists and critical geographers who have theorized it as a representation of space or a matrix of power/knowledge. With the conceptual framework in place, we can analyze how the Renaissance regime of perspective served to striate the territorial imaginary, with reference to three pictorial expressions of
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territorialized politics: the ideal cityscape, the portrait of a prince in a landscape and local topographical maps.
Perspective Theory and Practice In essence, perspective is a technique of pictorial representation that allows artists to depict three-dimensional space and the positions of objects within it on a two-dimensional canvas. Erwin Panofsky describes perspective as the capacity to transform the material reality of a picture's surface into a transparent plane or a window, and so create the illusion that "we are looking through this window into a space."6 This "space comprises the entirety of the objects in apparent recession into depth, and is not bounded by the edges of the picture, but rather only cut off."7 In Renaissance art history three foundational events constitute the "invention" or "rediscovery" of perspective: Filippo Brunelleschi's peepshow experiments carried out in Florence's Piazza del Duomo and Piazza dei Signori (1425), which demonstrated the principles of perspective; Masaccio's application of these principles in the Trinity fresco in Florence's Santa Maria Novella (1427); and the systematization of these principles in Alberti's De pictura (1435)-"the 'Magna Carta' of the Renaissance.i" Depicturaset out the rules for perspective construction with a geometrical rigor and established the parameters of the discipline of painting within the liberal arts." Alberti started with the most fundamental humanist premise. The Stoics taught that man was by nature constituted the observer and managerof things. Chrysippus thought that everything on earth was born only to serve man .... Protagoras ... seems to some interpreters to have said essentially the same thing, when he declared that man 'is the mean and measure of all things.l" Man has a duty to study "the natural order of things in God's creation" and the painter's particular task is to reveal Nature's concinnatus or harmony, which the divine has inscribed in the perfect proportional correspondences of number, shape, and location in the world. I I Since perspective could show things in proportion, it enabled the artist to represent the classically defined ideal of beauty as a harmony of parts.'? Alberti began De pictura with a general description of geometrical concepts such as point, line, and surfaceand discussed their material existence. He explained that the world is made manifest through rays, of light, which issue from the surface of an object and converge on the eye in the configuration of a cone or pyrarnid.l ' The visual pyramid is constituted by three points or surfaces: the seen surface, which forms the base; extrinsic light rays, which constitute the
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sides of the pyramid and "hold on like teeth to the whole of the outline, form an enclosure around the entire surface like a cage"; and the vertex in the eye, where the angles of the quantities meet. Two other types of rays complement the extrinsic rays: median rays, which convey surface characteristics such as light and color; and the centric, perpendicular or axial ray-"the leader and prince of rays"-which passes along our visual axis and whose position determines what appears on the surface. The concept of the visual pyramid in itself was not new-it had been a standard device of medieval optics or Perspectiva-however, Alberti was the first to describe a painting as the intersection of the visual pyramid by a plane perpendicular to the centric ray and to imply that because the painting forms a proportional triangle within the broader triangle,. the objects recorded on it retain their relative sizes and positions.l'' Book Two set out the rules of costruzione legittima or vanishing point construction. Alberti believed that if the artist adhered to these rules he would be able to represent the vertical and horizontal dimensions in and across the space of a picture in correct proportion. The fundamental principle underlying costruzione legittima is that man is "the scale and measure of all things," in relation to whom the sizes and distances of objects can be represented in proportion.P Once the artist has learnt the rules he will be ready to produce a painting in the three stages which mirror our perception of things in Nature: circumscription---outliningthe position of the object in space; composition---reproducing various combinations of an object's surfaces; and, finally, the depiction ofsurface colors through sensitivity to "the reception of light." 16 Finally, Alberti discussed artistic virtu. In order to choose the most suitable istoria or subjects selected from scripture, history, or myth, the painter must he learned in the liberal arts. He must also be a student of nature, able to discern all of its qualities, especially that of beauty. I? Only then can he paint appropriate istoria with "a systematic and communicative naturalism within a framework of order and restrained delectation.t'" Piero della Francesca was one of many Renaissance artists influenced by Alberti's rules of costru.zione legittima. For Henri Focillon, Alberti's principles are particularly well demonstrated in Pieros use of space in the Flagellation of Christ (1455---60). The composition of the image is severe and simple. The convergence of the floor and ceiling lines to an imaginary point reveal the presence of a structuring scheme that orders and divides the space, in which "[tjhe figures, similar to pawns in a game of chess, are placed with implacable and rigorous precision in their halves." 19 Piero uses the architecture of the elegant classical temple to organize the space of the Flagellation so that it complies with Alberti's rules for measuring volume and space. The Flagellation is composed around a single vanishing point that not only assigns a place to all the objects within the pictorial space, but also determines the place of the observing viewer-in order to make sense of the composition as a unified whole, the observer must
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stand directly in front of the painting's centre.r" The sense that the protagonists "appear to be inscribed in eternity" comes from Piero's adherence to Alberti's recommendation that the spaces of paintings should not be crowded out by highly animated figures, but should include empty spaces in which the principal figures can move with grace and dignity.21 Neither Piero nor Alberti treated perspective as merely a set ofrules for achieving a realistic aesthetic representation of the world. Perspective was a symbolic system capable of reproducing the harmony of God's created universe. Piero was not only a master technician of perspective on canvas but also a theorist of perspective, interested in its wider symbolism. In the treatise De prospectiva pingendi (c. 1474) he insisted that if the artist wished to reproduce the harmony of Nature he had to be attentive to the correct geometrical representation of objects and figures. 22 In The Flagellation both the proportions and dimensions of the architecture and the numerical harmonies of the angular stones have symbolic overtones which, in combination with the .light, were intended to reflect the divine order. There is, for example, the regular occurrence of the number eight, a numeral heavy with Christian symbolism (coming after the seven days of creation, the eighth day signified rebirth or Christ's resurrecrionj.F' In Piero's work, geometry and perspective are "symbolic elements for the representation of the dimensions of the Absolute, which are themselves mirrored in perceivable reality." 24 In terms of perspective's broader cultural impact, Henri Lefebvre identifies it as the dominant Renaissance representation ofspace. Perspective gradually overlaid the traditional representational space "of religious origin, which was now reduced to symbolic figures, to images of Heaven and Hell, of the Devil and the angels."25 Drawing on Lefebvre, Stuart Cosgrove has identified the Renaissance as the birthplace of "landscape" or modernity's characteristic "way of seeing." Landscape, made possible by a fusion of linear perspective and Euclidean geometry, enabled the appropriation of the external world "by a detached, individual spectator to whom an illusion of order and control is offered through the composition of space according to the certainties of geometry."26 Landscape pervaded many levels of man's interaction with his environment: from landscape painting and garden design to the surveying of estates and mapping of the new world. Whereas in the medieval imaginary man came to terms with the alterity of spaces, the threats and dangers they contained, by crowding them with signs and symbols of the divine, the cosmopolitan spirit of modernity required spaces to be brought under man's control, to be made subject to his sovereignty. Thus through technologies of landscape man imposed order on space, stripping it of symbolic meaning and rendering it an abstract object to be appropriated and used at will. Renaissance perspective or landscape introduced into European culture three modern aspects of
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space. First, the eye became the sovereign ruler of modernity's ocular-centric culture.V In Alberti's costrueione legittima the rays of the visual pyramid centre on the eye, it is the sovereign centre of the visual world. The eye, writes Norman Bryson, has "absolute mastery over space. Visually space is rendered the property of the individual detached observer, from whose divine location it is a dependent, appropriated object."28 Second, the rise of the sovereignty of the eye augmented the process of de-corporealization. Lefebvre describes how the abstract ideal of the humanist subject came to replace the living body as the standard by which space was measured and conceived and in terms of which man understood his being-in-space.r" Alberti's Man now occupied "a central position as observer of a pictorial world of which he himself is the measure."30 Giulio Argan claims that once man was no longer conceived of as a particular inscribed within a universal transcendent Nature, perspective became the vehicle by which the newly constituted Ego, by means of the senses and reason, was able to apprehend "nature as a reality conceived by man and as distinct from him as the object from the subject.T" Third, the sovereignty of the eye and de-corporealization complemented a new understanding of space as "geometrically isotropic, rectilinear, abstract and uniform."32 Panofsky argues that the emergence of perspective accompanied the transformation of psychophysiological space into modern rational, systematic, and mathematical space. Perspective served the modern Weltanschauung which "demands and realizes a systematic space"---in modernity perception is "governed by a conception of space expressed by strict linear perspective" which, in turn, is "comprehensible" only for a "specifically modern, sense of space, or ... sense of the world."33 Note that for Panofsky modern systematic space is a prerequisite for rather than a product of perspective. He identifies in early Renaissance paintings such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Annunciation (1344) an underlying coordinate system ordering the space long before it was postulated by the abstract mathematical thought of costruzione legittima. 34 Samuel Edgerton agrees that "a 'systematic' space, infinite, homogeneous, and isotropic" precipitated the rediscovery of linear perspective in the quattrocentoP? The practice of linear perspective was based on the assumption that "visual space is ordered a priori by an abstract uniform system of linear coordinates" which allows painters to conceive of a subject in the realm of spatial homogeneiry.P" However, James Elkins warns that this argument falsely projects back onto the Renaissance a Kantian conception of space in which an a priori intuition of pure space makes possible the appearance of the a posteriori world of objects. Perspective, for Elkins, did not arise from a general sense of rationalized space. While some painters did have "an inchoate idea of rationalized space" it is going too far to "attribute an interest in the rationalization of all space to painters who looked at specific objects with geometrical eyes."37
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The Ideal City
Figure 8.1 View of an Ideal City, 1490-1500 (oil on panel) by Italian School (fifteenth century). ©Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Perspective was an urban-based .revolution which complemented the rise of the town and the decline of the feudal landed order (figure 8.1). It was during the Renaissance that the medieval conception of the town as a metaphysical presence, as imago mundi, gradually dissipated. Now the town was able assume its own identity as an urban space unified in terms of a political principle and represented graphically according to plans in perspective.l" According to Lewis Mumford, the aspirations to grandiosity, uniformity, and regimentation characteristic of the Baroque city, and, we might add, the Baroque absolutist territorial state, had their origins in the Renaissance ideal of a city reflected in the purity and harmony of its architectural forms. 39 Indeed, the archetype for the Baroque city is captured in three Renaissance paintings of ideal cities, known as the Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin panels. All three show images of grand architectural or theatrical scenes constructed with strict adherence to the principles of costruzione legittima. Ordinary housing is barely evident and the countryside can only just be glimpsed far outside of the city walls. There are no human figures present in either the Berlin or Urbino panels and the few that populate the Baltimore panel appear "lost in the vastness of the spatial cornposition.T'" The layout of the squares and the styles of the buildings comply with the principles of architectural humanism set out in Alberti's De re aedificatoria (1443-52).41 The buildings shown in the paintings are examples of the standard types common to ideal urban layouts: a templum or principal church, a basilica or law court, palaces for leaders serving both administrative and domicile functions, squares for commercial and political meetings, and symbolic antique monuments.V The details of the facades, porticos, loggia windows, and columns all conform to Alberti's requirements.
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Art historians continue to debate the provenance and purpose of the panels. One view is that the panels depict architectural or urban models. Fiske Kimball suggests that the paintings were made by Luciano .Laurana, the architect who 43 built Federicoda Montelfeltro's palace at Urbino between 1470 and 1480. Laurana was a member of Federico's court at the same time as Bramante and Raphael and their influence seems to be evident in the architectural style represented in the paintings. Likewise, for Andre Chastel the panels are "urban views in perspective" similar to the images found on many marquetry panels and cassone fronrals .. The paintings are representations of the city designed to valorize its spaces. Perspective was used "to define solemn places, ennobled by forceful architectural references, Colissea, triumphal arches, temples ...so as to suggest singular crystalline spaces set apart in the interior of the city, ideal for processions ... One should think of them in the context of ritual entries, of ceremonial decoratioris.T'" Another school of thoughtclairns that the panels. are theatrical scenography. Alessandro Parronchi identifies them as sets designed by the Ghirlandaio brothers for the comedies, including Machiavelli's Mandragola, that were staged as part of the festivities celebrating the marriage of Lorenzo di Medici and Madeleine di II Tour d'Auvergne in September 1518. The panels later found their way to .Urbino when Pope Leo X made Lorenzo de Medici duke of the province in 1519.45 Richard Krautheimer argued (before retracting his statement) that the panels Were not specific stage sets but generic models of theatre architecture; figural representations of what Sebastiano Serlio would later term, drawing on Vitruvius, the tragic (Baltimore) and comic (Urbino) scenes.I'' All thesereadings, argues Hubert Damisch, are limited by their adherence to a. "descriptive allusion," which seeks to establish the real world referents of the buildings. Thlsallusion is premised on the false assumption that both language and art are primarily concerned with representation: the notion that pictures or linguistic statement have meaning to the extent that they describe or present some external objective reality of facts, whether real or imaginary.V Damish brackets such concerns and asks a different question: how do the paintings function as a series demonstrating the function of perspective as an "expressive apparatus." Just as the sentence assigns "the subject a place within a previously established network that gives it meaning" so perspective determines the position of objects on the pictorial plane. 48 As conduits of the modern principle of sovereign identity the sentence and perspective have similar spatial functions of allocation, distribution, and differentiation. Perspective functions like a language, for it "institutes and constitutes itself under the auspices of a point, a factor analogous to the 'subject' or 'person' in language, always posited in relation to a 'here' or 'there'."49 In the Urbino panel the orthogonals come together at a vanishing point within the opening of the tempio door "at the height of an eye
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of an imagined observer standing there, half hidden by the closed panel door and directing a Cyclopean gaze towards us."50 This is the place occupied by the sovereign subject, toward which our sight is inexorably drawn and from which the panoptic gaze, which for de Certeauand Foucault is the primary instrument of discipline in modernity, observes us. In modernity, as Lefebvre indicates, the symbolic places of the medieval imaginary are colonized by the abstract and rational spaces of capital and sovereign territoriality. Archetypes of modern abstract spaces, the representations of space of urban planers and architects; are reproduced and legitimized in these paintings. For Lauro Martines these panels with their "vast organised spaces ... neatly boxed and absolutely controlled" are representative of Renaissance projects for ideal cities in which "power and imagination united and the ensuing vision of space was domineering, moved by faith in men's ability to control the spatial contiriuurn.f" The perfected forms of the. imaginary ideal city-c--grand, symmetrical, proportioned, in fixed optical recession-went forth from a wish for control over the whole environment and from the implicit assumption that this was possible. The quest for the control of space in architecture, painting and bas-relief sculpture was not analogous to a policy for more hegemony over the entire society; it belonged, rather, to the same movement of consciousness. Behind the two different enterprises was the same drive to comprehend the environment: to convert the surroundings, urban and even rural to a "known" field. 52 The rigorously planned, tightly controlled representations of space in these panels contrast with the organic lived-in spaces of medieval cityscapes. Cosgrove draws out this contrast by comparing Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of Good and Bad Government to Pietro Perugino's Christ Giving to StPeter the Keys to the Kingdom ofHeaven. Lorenzetti's city is a vibrant, bustling world, the sights, sounds, and smells of which are communicated to viewers as if they were pedestrians walking in the streets. How different to Perugino's formal monumental space, in which the regimentations of the checkerboard piazza and the trees and hills in the background attest to the rigid geometrical order striating the spaces of the urban landscape.V Rather than random and spontaneous gatherings, Perugino's human groups strike choreographed theatrical poses. Individuals do not inhabit this impersonal space; they have no personal relationship to it, but exist in it as objects situated by an external plan or scheme. In the ideal. city panels the logic of de-corporealization is taken yet further. These spaces are almost. entirely devoid of human figures, as if their impure physical presence would contaminate the space's perfect proportions and refined lines. Although
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a few isolated figures. populate the Baltimore panel, these bodies, most noticeably the burdened figure leaning on a stick in the foreground, seem to be visibly oppressed by the totalitarian monumental spaces that enclose them. These ideal cityscapes capture the spirit of the territorial imaginary of the cosmopolitan absolutist state: the broad avenues and monumental order, symbolizing ecclesiastical and secular power, are striated, coded, and free from all traces of nomadic existence; here there are no "vagabonds, vagrants or nornads.P" In so far as these spaces evoked the moral values of purity and cleanliness, they can be aligned with the dispositifthat, as documented by Richard Sennett, legitimized the construction ofJewish ghettoes in Venice. In the early sixteenth century Venice's fortunes were in decline and the city was beset by cultural and rnoral unease.P It was also home to a number of Jewish immigrants who had been exp~lled from Spain in 1494. These newcomers were easy scapegoats for the authorities who, seeking to apportion blame for an outbreak of syphilis, encouraged a general "fear of touching". The Jewish body became associated with corrupting bodily vices, which had to be isolated to avoid infecting or contaminating the Christian community. However, the Venetian rulers were aware that the Jewish community had made a significant contribution to the city's economic fortunes, and "sought a spatial solution to deal with its impure but necessary Jewish bodies."56 In 1515 Zacaria Dolfin drew up plans to use the foundry site of Ghetto Nuovo to segregate the Jews and advised the Venetians to "[s]end all of them to live in the Ghetto Nuovo which is like a castle, and to make drawbridges and close it with a wall; they should have only one gate, which would enclose them there and they would stay there."57 In 1516 seven hundred Ashkenazi Jews were sent to the Ghetto Nuovo, and in 1541 the nearby Ghetto Vecchio was also designated as a part of the city exclusively reserved for Jewish habitation. The sanitized de-corporeal spaces of the panels were also examples of what Martines terms "signorial space"-they revealed the elites' aspirations to construct environments that would evoke the grandeur of classical antiquity.V Renaissance urban planners, commissioned by the wealthy and powerful, constructed real and imaginary cities comprising vast squares, wide streets and large buildings in which "more space was allotted to the powerful and less to the powerless ."59 Alberti's De re aedificatoria, for example, striated space according to class distinctions. Alberti advised the tyrant to build his city according to a circular plan of two walled cities. This wall, I believe, should not run diametrically across the city but should form a kind of circle. For the wealthy citizens are happier in more spacious surroundings and would readily accept being excluded by an inner wall, and would not unwillingly leave the stalls and the town-centre workshops to the
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market traders; and that rabble, .as Terence's Gnatho calls them, of poulterers, butchers, cooks, and so on, will he less of risk and less of a nuisance if they do not mix with the important cirizens.P"
Dere aedificatoria Was, argues Francoise Choay, an "instaurational" text that founded the discourse of urbanism. It was the first to conceive of the built domain as a totality and the first to propose a rational method for conceptualizing and realizing buildings. Moreover, it expressed a new Foucauldian epistemological configuration, which, extending across the discourses of architecture, painting and sculpture; "resulted in the imposition of a new ideal of control over the world and a transformation of relations between European man and his productlons.Y! Of course, few really existing Renaissance cities achieved the aspirations of striated territoriality evoked by the ideal cityscapes. Class boundaries were rarely as neatly demarcated in space as Alberti and his tyrant might have liked. Further, when it came to actual control of urban space, the elites sought to asset their territorial supremacy over each other. In Renaissance Florence, for example, patrician families, seeking to extend their territorial power within the city, contested the ownership of private and public spaces. 62 The patronage of churches and convents was particularly sought after and their walls were inscribed with family coats of arms and other patrimonial symbols as signs of territorial possession. K. J. P Lowe argues that in a Florence "obsessed with ownership, display and boundaries," the Medici were the most effective practitioners of territorial patronage and used such means throughout the quattrocento to extended their territorial control outside of their immediate neighborhood of S. Lorenzo. 63 However, once they had fallen from power many of their symbols of hereditary family rule were erased by Soderini and over-coded with symbols of republican rule. In the convent of Le Murate a votive wax statue of Lorenzo the Magnificent was replaced by one of the Virgin Mary; and at the convent of San Gallo, founded by Lorenzo, Soderini dedicated a chapel to his own family.
Painting the Prince Perspective not only contributed to the Renaissance territorial imaginary by enabling the representation of ideal cosmopolitan cityscapes, it also gave princes an ideological tool with which to promote their claims to territorial sovereignty. The most striking example of this is the diptych of Federico cia Montefeltro the Duke of Urbina and his wife Battista Sforza by Piero della Francesca (figure 8.2 and 8.3).64 On the diptych's inner panels we see Federico and Battista in profile. Battista's portrait has two notable features: first, her face is very white like a funeral mask, alluding to her recent death in childbirth;
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Figure 8.2 Portraits of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422~82) and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415~92). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
second, her elaborate hairstyle and exquisite jewelry are rendered in considerable detail revealing Piero's mastery of miniature portraiture. Federico's portrait is also very detailed, showing the various moles and blemishes on his olive skin. Federico presents his left profile to the viewer and thereby hides from view his blind right eye which, like his broken nose, was acquired in battle. Behind both Federico and Battista, receding into the far distance until it reaches the horizon where it merges with the sky is an extensive countryside landscape, comprising cone-shaped hills, fields, and a lake. On the reverse panels, Battista and Federico are represented in triumphal procession. Federico's carriage is being pulled by two white cavalry horses driven by Eros. Federico is sitting in a gilded chair, dressed in a full suit of amour and holding a scepter and is in the process of being crowned by the angel of la Vittoria. Toward the front of the carriage sit the four Virtues: Prudenza, Temperanza, Fortezza, and Giustizia. Battista's carriage, also driven by Eros, is drawn by two unicorns the symbols of chastity and purity. She has taken on a pious reading pose and is accompanied by Fedeand Carita, at the front, and Speranza and Modestia, at the back, of the
Figure 8.3 The Triumphs of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-82) and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415-92). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
carriage. Once again the backgrounds of both pictures are provided by extensive landscapes of the Urbino territories: behind Federico is Lake Trasimeno and behind Battista is the fertile countryside ofValdichiana. The message Federico sought to convey through these paintings is clearly one of territorialized sovereignty. The Latin inscription underneath his triumph declares: "His eminence is carried in great triumph for his famed eternal virtue proclaims him worthy of bearing the sceptre as the equal of the most distinguished condotrieri.T? Federico, following in the Montefeltro family's traditional "profession of arms," had made his fortune as a successful condottiero and became the ruler of Urbino in 1444 (subsequently raised to a duchy by Sixtus IV in 1474).66 Although Federico seems to have embodied ntany of traits of princely virtu admired by Machiavelli and could even be regarded as an equal to Cesare Borgia in terms of ambition and ruthlessness, Machiavelli despised him not only because he was a condottiero or mercenary but also because of a personal history of treachery toward Florence.I'/ Machiavelli noted that during
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the formation of two rival alliances between 1473 and 1474 which had pitted Florence, Milan, and Venice against the Papacy and Naples, Frederick, the ruler of Urbino, then considered the ablest general in Italy, had for a long time carried on wars for the Florentine people. The Pope [Sixtus IV] and the King [Ferdinand of Naples], therefore, in order that the hostile league might be without this leader, determined to get hold of Frederick, so the Pope advised him to visit the King of Naples and Ferdinand invited him. Frederick consented, to the wonder and displeasure of. the Florentines ... and Frederick returned from Naples and Rome with high honour and as general ofSixtus and Ferdinand's league. 68 Federico's shift of allegiance to Rome broke with the Montefeltro family's traditional allegiance with the Empire. Damisch suggests that this move prompted Federico to revoke "the Ghibelline mode of tyranny" and while "motivated by power politics as much as by reason" to endorse the idea that his authority should be founded on virtu and prudencc.P" The iconography of the portraits indicates that Federico sought to project an image of himself not as "the leader ofa band of mercenaries" but as someone who strove to "comport himself like prince."70 Although in the triumphal procession he is wearing amour, the standard iconography of the warrior-prince is largely absent. His military virtu is presented alongside and complementary to other princely qualities of good governance and cultural patronage. As his biographer Paltroni surmised, the life of this excellent prince is to be compared and equated with the life of any of the more worthy and notable ancients in any of the great generations. For the things he did so outstandingly in handling arms he merits the greatest fame and eternal memory, as he does for his singular sapienza (wisdom) in ruling and governing ... and for being learned in scienza (knowledge), eloquence, liberality, benevolence, and clemency, and for the splendid court and for magnificent and splendid buildings.:" Castiglione also felt that Federico's military virtu was equal to that of the great generals of antiquity and insisted that it was Just one of his many qualities alongside "prudence, humanity, justice, generosity and an indomitable spirit."72 His contemporary biographers were particularly impressed by the palace at Urbino designed by Laurana-Castiglione considered it the "most beautiful to be found anywhere in Italy."73 It was not only furnished and decorated with luxurious trappings ofwealth and prestige, but also displayed a wealth of objects-antique statues, pictures, musical instruments, and rare Latin, Greek,
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and Jewish texts-which testified to its patron's high culture and learn ing.r'" The architecture of the palace was designed to symbolize Federico's benevolent and compassionate rulership. The public spaces of the cortile and garden were accessible to all of his subjects, whom, we are told, he treated with such kindness and humility that they considered themselves to be the favored children of a kindly parent?5 Just as the palace architecture embodied Federico's good governance, so did the images that decorated its walls. It seems likely that the diptych would have hung in one of the palace's public rooms, thereby informing any visitors that the fruits of the prince's good government were evident throughout his domains. As such these paintings belong to the tradition of pictorial representations of good and bad government established by Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of Allegories ofGood and Bad Government in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico (1338-40). Lorenzetti symbolized the abstract idea of good government by making its consequences manifest in the realistic visual landscape and the human activity taking place therein. Elegantly attired city folk ride out to enjoy the reinvigorating effects of the country, while peasants walk to town to sell their animals and crops. The landscape is the scene of various pastoral practices-reaping in the fields, tilling the soil, hunting in the country-all ofwhich testify to the fecundity of Sienna's contado. Even the hillsides in the far distance have been extensively cultivated according to the rules of sound agricultural practice. This detail communicates the essential meaning of the fresco: the presentation of a well-governed land where human needs and pleasures are satisfied.I" For Kenneth Clark, Renaissance landscape painting evolved out of a tradition in medieval art which had developed an increased realism and naturalism to critique Christian symbolism and didactic imagery. The medieval "landscape of symbols," in which material objects were presented as symbols of spiritual truth and arranged in an unified flat surface in a decorative yet· harmonious pattern, was replaced by a "landscape of fact" in which istoria could be presented in realistic settings that embodied "a new nexus of unity, enclosed space."7? Chronologically, the Lorenzetti frescoes predate both the rediscovery of perspective and the maturity of the genre of landscape art, yet intimations of landscape emerged in art from the early fourteenth century.i'' The realistic landscape of Duccio di Buoninsegna's Entry into Jerusalem (1308-11), argues Richard Turner, removed this event from its traditional representation within the symbolic narrative of the unfolding of divine will. Rather, Duccio communicates a sense of how the participants in and witnesses to the event might have experienced it. Further, the landscape itselfwas a source of meaning, rather than just a nugatory backdrop for the istoria.t" By the dawn of the quattrocento, Renaissance landscape was increasingly represented as a domesticated and humanized space, a place that served man's
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physical needs and spiritual yearnings. "Its fields and groves are carefully groomed and only rarely give way to wild ravines, spectacular vistas, or deserted places."8o Renaissance landscape had come to symbolize man's capacity to exercise sovereignty over his environment and was a forerunner of the cosmopolitan desire to organize, manage and cultivate space, which as William Connolly's reading of Tocqueville's justification for the .foundation of the American state shows, is integral to the modern territorial imaginary. 81 Tocqueville.. while aware that th~ foundation of this new state imposed an alien social form on the preexisting Indian communities, nevertheless argued that since the Indians were nomadic wandering tribes, lacking the knowledge of agricultural practice, they occupied but did not posses the land they lived on. Thus the continent of North America was effectively empty, waiting for the introduction of "civilization" by newcomers who would territorialize the land through agriculture, possession, and the exploitation of natural wealth. Similarly, the landscape extending behind Federico and Batista has been coded by agriculture. It is a space which, by means of agricultural processes, directed and overseen by the sovereign authority that possesses it, has been civilized. For Eugenio Batisti, the landscape has clearly been "modified by man" and there is a modernity to the general system of agriculture. The countryside has been shaped by modern farming practices: irrigation schemes, artificially created pastures, farms enclosed within rectangular hedgerows, and modern ploughing and tillage systems. Further, the buildings have been constructed according to the latest techniques, the little farmsteads a~e fecund, and a network of roads brings the component parts together. 82 In this representation of territorial sovereignty Piero painted a relatively unembellished landscape. By contrast, Andrea Mantegna's lncontro fresco (1474), in the Camera degli Sposi of the palace at Mantua, represented the same theme against an invented landscape. The lncontro shows an outdoor meeting between the Marquis of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his son Francesco, who had recently been elevated to the status of a cardinal. Both men are accompanied by their entourages. The image symbolized a union of temporal and spiritual power within the persons of the Gonzaga family. Like Piero, 1J[antegna expressed the transcendental sovereignty of his signori by according their figures a rigid formality and monumentality. However, while Piero's sovereigns are shown againsta landscape that was recognizably that ofUrbino's contado, Mantegna's sovereigns are placed in an entirely fictitious landscape, com rising a vast walled medieval city set on top of a hill, the slopes ofwhich are strew- .with antique temples, pyramids, and statues. By placing the Gonzaga arms 0 two of the entrance gates, whose approaches are presided over by Hercules, th god of political and civic wisdom, Mantegna makes it clear that the family controls and effectively owns this city, the seat of their political power. However, Ma tua is actually situated in a flat countryside and lacks any significant Roman r ins.
Figure 8.4
Arrival of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, greeted by his father Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga III (reigned 1444-78) and his brothers, froin the Carnera degli Sposi or Camera Picta, 1465-74 (fresco) by Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506). Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy/The Bridgenlan Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
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The city is, therefore, "a fantasy Mantova, a city of Lodovico's dreams," which with its allusions to imperial grandeur sought to present the Gonzaga as the inheritors of the majesty of imperial Rorne.f" Perspective serves to unite figures with the spaces that enclose them. In the Urbino Portraits this unifying quality of perspective lent itself to the visual representation ofsovereign-territoriality by facilitating the inscription of the human figures of the sovereigns into the landscape of their territories (figure 8.4). One notable compositional feature of the painting is Piero's successful unification of two distant perspective planes, the foreground figures and the landscape background, without resorting to the traditional ploy of placing an architectural balustrade between the figures and the landscape. Pieroachieved "a remarkable synthesis ... between the accurate description according to the rules of linear perspective, as elaborated by Italian art, and "miriiaturistic" painting obtained thanks to the techniques of oil paints, developed ... by Netherlandish artists."84 Federico and Battista are inscribed into the landscape of their territorial dominion by means of pictorial juxtapositions: the wealth and authority revealed by the minutia of portrait detail in their faces and clothes are mirrored in the precise execution of the symbols of fertility and productivity in the landscape.' The space of the painting is dominated by the imposing hieratic profiles of the sovereigns in the same way that "the power of the rulers portrayed dominates over the expanse of their territories.V''' The geometric lines of their profiles replicate and unite with the horizontal and receding lines which carve out the extended territory behind them. Although both sovereigns are placed against a background landscape of hills and mountains, there is an important difference conveying a political message. In the duchess's portraits the landscape encloses the scene, while behind the duke it opens· onto a navigable body of water. Damisch reads this "almost as if these were the two complementary wings of a single political agenda, one of them affirming the dynasty's geographic roots, the other signaling the opening to the exterior reflected in the duke's enterprises."86 These images are visual representations of the modern territorial imaginary, which not only express the fact of the extension of the prince's authority over a territory but also serve to legitimate it by showing the order and prosperity that have arisen as a consequence.
Mapping Territorial Boundaries Another form of image used by Renaissance state authorities to promote and legitimise their territoriality was the map. Deleuze and Guattari point out that the State-thought is constantly seeking to striate space. Now, in many ways, the map is the instrument of striation par excellence. As Mark Monmonier points out, maps are useful instruments for asserting claims to territorial sovereignty.
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The map is the perfect symbol of the state.. If your grand duchy or tribal area seems tired, run down, and frayed at the edges, simply take a sheet of paper, plot some cities, roads and physical features, draw a heavy, distinct boundary around as much territory as you dare claim, colour it in, add a nameperhaps reinforced with the impressive prefix of "Republic of"-and presto: you are now the leader of a new, sovereign, autonomous country. Should anyone doubt it, merely point to themap. Not only is your new state on paper, its on a map, so it must be real. 87 Renaissance mapping and cartography combined tradition with innovation. The reception of ]acopo d'Angelo's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geographia in 1406 nicely captures this Janus faced looking back and reaching forward.F'' Although the dissemination of the Geographia would have widespread reper~us sions, reaching beyond the obvious constituencies of geography and cosmology into many branches of Renaissance knowledge, its .publication did not immediately render obsolete the medieval cartographic imaginary, based in the coordinates of divine symbolism.P? The rediscovery of the Geographia was initially filtered through a scholastic discourse which ensured that "the modernization of Ptolemy was complex, tentative and obscure."90 For a start, the Geographia appealed to churchmen interested in the traditional discourse of perspectiva. The 'optical theorem that only the aspect of an object on an axis with the eye's centre could be clearly observed, resonated in Ptolemy's instruction to mapmakers to view the part of the world to be mapped as if it were connected at its centre to the centre of the viewer's eye by an abstract visual axis or perpendicular line. 9 1 The Geographia, argues Edgerton, reinforced rather than overturned the traditional belief of Euclidean-based perspectiva that the perfect harmonies and .symmetries of geometry revealed the plan of the universe as designed by God. 92 Renaissance Europe retained the belief that geometric patterns found in orthogonal relationships symbolized the ordered perfection of God's universe. Ptolemaic scientific cartography did not dispel these notions, but reinforced faith in the divine mission of Christianity. Indeed, the cartographic grid became a talisman of Christian authority.F' However, the Geographia did inspire new cartographic techniques. Ptolemy showed how to map places in terms of longitude and latitude and gave cartographers the ability to preserve the correct proportion of small areas to the whole earth. His method unified within one geometrical space, two mapping techniques: chorography which mapped small areas using pictorial elements and geography which produced maps of the world showing features by lines and dots. The striating longitude and latitude grid system of the Geographia (figure 8.5) which "depended on imagining the globe not as amorphous topography but as a homogeneous surface ruled by a uniform geometric grid" would, as we shall see
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Figure 8.5 Map of the world, based on descriptions and coordinates given in "Geographia," by Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria) (c.90-168 AD), published in DIm, Germany, 1486 (color engraving) by German School (fifteenth century). British Library, London, UK/© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library. German. Out of copyright. in the next chapter, eventually presage the end the T-O map.94 However, in Italy, which even during the middle ages had been "by far the most map-conscious part of Europe," Renaissance cartographers inspired by ·the. Geographia, pioneered topographical mapping as a technique for territorializing the local landscape and marking-out territorial boundaries.l" Unlike small-scale maps, which show a whole province or nation, the topographical map is a large-scale map of a small area or district, which shows the shapes and patterns of the landscape in terms of standardized formats and within a uniform scale. Representations of territoriality were promoted in two types of Italian Renaissance topographical map: bird's-eye views of towns and district or regional maps. Until the fifteenth century the picture maps of Italian towns tended to: be rather basic, showing little more than the outlines of walls and the most notable buildings (figure 8.5). Some were made of Milan and Florence but the v~st majority, such as the maps in Paolino Veneto's Magna chronologia (1320-30) r in Flavio Biondo's Roma instaurata (1444-46), were of Rome. By the end of t e quattrocento the basic plan no longer satisfied the realism required of art, an
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Figure 8.6 Carta della Catena, 1490 (Detail) by Italian School (fifteenth century). Museo de Firenze Corn'era, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
cartographers sought inspiration from the more realistic ground-view images of towns in paintings like Lorenzetti's Siena in Good Government or Benedetto Bonfigli's Perugia in the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori (1454). Cartographers combined realism with perspective to construct birds-eye views of cities of striking accuracy. Such detailed realism characterized the engravings of Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Constantinople made by Francesco Rosselli's workshop in Florence. One of the most famous of Rosselli's maps is the Map with Chain (1482), which depicts Florence as seen from the hills to the south-west. This map is an intriguing example of the representation of Renaissance territoriality within the regime of perspective, since Rosselli purposely included the person of the artist-surveyor, the agent of territorialization, drawing up the plan in the bottom right hand cornet. Territoriality is being produced by knowledge. This simple self-referential motif embodies the ideological claim of the modern perspective regime that man is master and owner of all that he surveys. Yet, in so far as the walls separating the city from the contado are the most prominent territorial boundaries, the image also reflects the characteristic center-periphery ordering of Renaissance territoriality. Another feted practitioner of topography was Jacopode' Barbari who, in 1500, produced a map of Venice that P. D. A. Harvey calls "a masterpiece of the vision and skill of the Italian Renaissance.":" To achieve the single perspective required by a bird's-eye view, Barbari
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combined a mosaic of individual sketches within the framework of an existing plan of Venice, which had been adjusted to achieve the uniform foreshortening. Through his mastery of painterly techniques, Barbariwas also able to emphasize the city's great size, its wealth and its power. Leonardo da Vinci also drew several bird's-eye maps of towns. During the 1503 war between Florence and Pisa, Machiavelli, as Florence's Secretary of State for War, commissioned Leonardo as a military architect to draw up an embanking scheme to divert the course of the Arno to cut Pisa off from the sea. This map was not only drawn to scale, but also depicted the surrounding countryside as a flattened projection as seen from above. It is possible that Machiavelli commissioned Leonardo after seeing the latter's bird's-eye plan of Imola, which the artist had presented to Cesare Borgia in 1502. In this map the plans of the buildings are drawn in proportion and the monuments remain to scale. Eight compass lines radiate out from the centre of the city to the circumference of the map's frame to enable accurate plotting of distances. Leonardo's maps showed how, by drawing to scale and supplanting pictorial imagery for outline plans, cartography could be used to promote landscape as both an economic resource and as an arena for military strategy and tactics.i" A second type of topographical map produced during the Renaissance was the district or regional map of a small area. State authorities began commissioning these as administrative tools in the quattrocento and they had become widespread bythe end of the sixteenth century. Perhaps aware of Machiavelli's insistence that "[tjhe prince who lacks expertise in topography lacks the first quality needed by a general, because it teaches how to find the enemy, to choose encampments, to lead armies, to plan battles, and to besiege towns with advantage," many of these maps were used as aids to military strategic planning. 98 Several surviving fifteenth century maps provide "a graphic guide to the theatre of war at the time of the first Venetian conquests of the terrrafirma."99 During the war between Milan and Venice (1437-41) two maps were made of Lombardy showing several items of military significance, such as walled towns and bridges and the Fosse Bergamasca boundary ditch between Milan and Bergamo. In the fifteenth century, district maps of Verona, Padua, Parma, and Brescia were also commissioned. A substantial Venetian mapping project was initiated in 1460 when the Council of Ten requested that the governors of territories, cites, and castles under Venetian rule should commission maps and surveys and then send them to Venice. Several of these maps survive including those made of Padua (1465), Brescia (1469-70), and Verona (1479-80).100 There is also a 1496-99 military map of the Venetian terrafirma that highlights its territorial fortifications. These maps were used to "define borders, to aid in water and lagoon management, to illustrate and clarify ambassadorial dispatches, for defense and fortress designs, and to resolve disputes in court cases."lOl Although district
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maps in the quattrocento Were almost exclusively restricted to north Italy, there were some notable exceptions: a manuscript of the Geographia printed in 1448 reproduced a map of Tuscany by Pietro de Massaio; and Giovanni Pantano in the first decade of the sixteenth century produced a scale map based on a measured survey of the northern boundary ofNaples for King Ferdinand. There was a massive increase in the Venetian mapping projects in the sixteenth century. Venetian land surveyors or periti mapped and charted 150,000 hectares of land in the terrafirma between 1560 and 1600. The periti, armed with compasses, cross-staff quadrants, and astrolabes mapped ·the land using methods which combined perspective and Euclidean geometry with naturalistic landscape imagery.1020 n e map commissioned by the Office of the Border Commissions (1538) showed the land between Strasoldo, Cervignano, Aquileia, and the Aussa River, has a "clear demarcation of proprietorship between Venice and Germany (de Tedeschi)"103 Renaissance cartography, where it clearly demarcated the borders between political communities, manifested the principles of the modern discourse of territorial sovereignty. However, Renaissance cartography, underscored by the regime of perspective, would also playa significant role in the political territorialization of spaces beyond European Christendom. The Renaissance expansion of European international society would lead Europeans into spaces of danger and alrerity, Cartography would be one of several discursive strategies called upon to territorialize these spaces and discipline their inhabitants. These processes, which are considered in the next chapter, would not only enfold them within the framework of a European territorial imaginary, but also require and enable Europe's own transition from a medieval to modern political spatial cosmos.
CHAPTER 9
The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society
",, M
artin Wight has wr,itten "[WJh,ether or not w,e agree with Adam Smith that 'the discovery of the Americas and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind,' those events largely governed the development of international society." 1 If the previous two chapters discussed the internal dimension of Renaissance territorialization, this, chapter looks outward, to its external projection through the discovery and conquest of the New World and the beginning of the expansion of European International Society. This process was, as William Connolly has observed, one in which the inscriptions of identity and difference were pararnou nt.r Columbus did not discover America but a "world ofotherness." The encounter between Europeans and Amerindian natives was not simply a meeting between two already-constituted subjects and the subsequent mastery of one by the other. America was not a preexisting world which the Europeans happened upon but a text to be discovered in the sense of an unfamiliar, unrecognizable set of empirical date which, in order to be made intelligible and therefore conquerable, was created and imagined in terms of the cultural predispositions and expectations of the Europeans, which were themselves altered by the experience of the encounter. In terms of space, the new was rendered intelligible and conquerable by processes of territorialization, which drew on representational media, notably cartography and traveler's narratives, to invent America as a space that could be understood, assimilated, and possessed by Europeans. Our concern, then, is with how the, expansion of international society was achieved by strategies of territorialization. .Such strategies demarcated and
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possessed space on behalfof political sovereignty, not only through direct phys.. . ical occupation but also by means of representational media deploying spatial figures and vocabularies that determined how contemporaries understood and represented their individual and collective being-in-space. Clearly these historical events have generated a wealth of literature and the focus of this chapter is restricted to the initial period of discovery, broadly speaking from Christopher Columbus' first voyage in 1492 to the publication of Martin Waldseemiiller's Cosmographiae introductio in 1507. The "new" spaces of international society were territorialized by representational discourse operating at two interrelated levels of analysis. First, the machinations of various sovereign powers at the level of high politics, that is through the diplomatic negotiations which lead to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and the division of the world into Portuguese and Spanish spheres. However, the Renaissance territorialization of international society was not simply the result of popes and sovereigns arbitrarily dividing the world into spheres of influence. Equally significant, and providing the conditions for such grand gestures, was the discursive construction of the "discovered" territories by cartographic practices, which sought to make familiar the nature and limits of these unfamiliar spaces, and the rituals of naming and possession, recorded in explorers .Iogs and official correspondence, which accorded these lands and their inhabitants their identity within international society.
The Invention of America and the European Territorialization of the New World The thesis that America was invented rather than discovered, associated with the pioneering work of Edmundo O'Gorman, provides a useful heuristic model with which to address the Renaissance territorialization of international society. The political territorialization of the new world was deeply implicated in the epistemological invention of America. This process profoundly changed man's perception of his being-in-space, for it broke with the medieval conception of the orbis terrarum as a cosmic jail and promoted a new ideal of sovereign man as an agent capable of fashioning his world. For O'Gorman, discovery and invention are different acts. One discovers by finding something whose essence was already known, such as a new planet. Invention by contrast, denotes the act of bringing into existence a new category of being, that is the planets themselves. The weight of documentary evidence indicates not only that Columbus set sail fully intending to reach the western shores of Asia but also that throughout his voyages he never wavered from the conviction that he had achieved this goal. Nevertheless, Columbus scholarship from Oviedo to Morison has portrayed Columbus as the discoverer of America by resorting to one of two hypotheses: either Columbus was the instrument of a larger historical process of which he
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was unaware, or he was an agent of chance..' However, argues O'Gorman, for an act to have meaning it must have intention and it is logically nonsensical to assert that Columbus could have discovered America without first showing that he had the intention of doing so. In order to have discovered American he would have had to have been aware of the specific being of the land which he found, that is a continent named America. Thus "when we are told that Columbus revealed the being of an object entirely different from the one with which he endowed it, we are actually being asked to believe that the object itself revealed its secret and hidden being at the moment when Columbus perceived it."4 This argument not only discounts Columbus' own purposes and opinions, but also makes man the agent of intentions supposedly present in some inanimate object. ForO'Gorman, the root of the problem lies in the assumption of Western metaphysics that all things have an immutable Platonic essence, that the being of things is fixed in nature and transcends time and space. This substantialist conception of reality fails to recognize that the being (not existence) of a thing is merely the meaning or significance it is given within an overall framework of reality accepted as truth at any particular historical moment, "the being of things is not something that they contain within themselves, but something that is assigned or granted to them."? The error of the discovery thesis, then, is to assume that the lump of cosmic matter that we now know as the American continent has always been such, rather than only becoming America when this meaning was given to it. America is not a thing in itself an a priori essence, but an idea, the product of a historical process of invention. The invention of America was part of a widespread re-assessment of man's place in the world, precipitated by the early voyages of discovery, which undermined many of the assumptions of the medieval Christian geographical imaginary." W. G. L. Randles argues that the empirical evidence of the discoveries undermined a clever synthesis of the medieval geographical imaginary. This had managed to combine the Greek proposition of a spherical earth with the biblical image of a flat earth, by positing a vast surface disproportion between the tiny habitable oecumene and the infinitely vast surface of the sphere. This synthesis began to come apart as the Portuguese voyaged along the African coast south of the Equator. Sacrobosco's hypothesis of the existence of uninhabitable zones collapsed and the distinct possibility emerged that humans ignorant of God's message lived in antipodal lands. The adventurer Duarte Pacheco Pereira reported that "under this equinoxialline there are many people, as we have seen in practice; and as experience is mother of everything, it is through it that we have come to know the whole truth."7 These travelers' accounts were integrated into official cosmologies such as Enciso's Suma de geografia (1519). Between roughly 1480 and 1520 the surface of the oecumene almost quadrupled, all of its constituent parts were proven to be accessible, and most appeared to be habitable. In 1515
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Vadianus wrote that "today there is no region of the earth which is not inhabited by men and other animals.l" Second, the empirical experience of the navigators in the southern hemisphere refuted the Aristotelian-Biblical consensus that a sphere of water encircled that of the .earth, and led to the modern idea of the 9 terraqueous globe. Encisco could declare that water and earth together form one body at the centre of the universe. Third, the discoveries led to a revival of Crates' four island theory as an epistemological model to locate the new lands. In his Physices compendium (1520) Pedro Margalho asserted that the Spanish, traveling to the west beyond the Fortune Isles (Canaries), had encountered the lands of the perioleoi, while the Portuguese, having sailed beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, had reached the lands of the antoikoi.r" In sum, as biblical authority gave way to empirical observation of the austral hemisphere, so the medieval image of the flat earth gave way to the new notion of the terraqueous globe: "experience had established in an incontestable fashion that the oecumene was spherical.'"! O'Gorman has laid out in painstaking detail the gradual process by which American was invented. The crux of his thesis is that, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Columbus throughout his four voyages refused to abandon his a priori belief that the lands he had come across were the outer regions of the eastern coast of the orbis terrarum, wherein lay the dominion of the Grand Khan as described by Marco Polo. During the first voyage (1492-93) he informed his patrons Ferdinand ofAragon and Isabel of Castile that "I shall set out for another large island which, according to the indications given me by the Indians whom I have aboard, must be Chipangu. They however call it CoIba (Cuba) and say that there are many large ships and sailors there.... I am still determined to go to the city of Quinsay (Hangchow-the capital ofGreat Khan as described by Marco Polo) to deliver your Highnesses' letters to the Grand Khan ... "12 Much of the second voyage (1493-96) was spent navigating what is today's southern coast of Cuba. However, despite being told by the indigenous people that they lived on an island, "[tjhe Indian ... told the Admiral that Cuba was definitely an island," Columbus maintained that he was navigating the southern coastline of the Chinese province of Mangi. 13 He even had a public instrument drawn up to this effect and had his crew declare on oath, under threat of fines and flogging, that because the coastline was so long it could not be insular and that the civilizations of the Golden Chersonese could be found a few leagues to the south.l" The third voyage (1498-1500) was undertaken with the intention of locating the sea passage to the Indian Ocean, which Columbus believed lay south of the Golden Chersonese. Columbus, however, came across a substantial landmass-today's north-eastern coast of South America. To salvage his belief in the presence of a sea passage to the Indian Ocean he was forced to admit that the land was an inhabited southern orb or new world comparable to the orbis terrarum. The heresy implicit in this position was somewhat mitigated by identifying these lands
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as the site of the Garden of Eden, which was spiritually, if not geographically, regarded as being located within the world, that is the cosmic place assigned to rnan.P The fourth voyage (1502-4), also undertaken with the aim of locating the elusive sea-passage, navigated shores in the vicinity of the Panamanian-Costa Rican border. On the basis of native reports that a wealthy province replete with gold, jewels, and spices lay only nine days away by overland travel, Columbus identified these coasts as part of an isthmus, an additional Asian peninsula, lying between him and the province of Ciguare in the Indian Ocean.l" It was, however, Amerigo Vespucci's voyage (1501-2) that for O'Gorman opened up the possibility of the invention of America. Vespucci set sail expectingto reach Cattegara, the southernmost point of Asia, where, it was generally believed, the coastline turned to the west. From there he intended to cross the Sinus Magnus to India and then return to Portugal having circumnavigated the globe. I 7 However, after reaching the eastern coast of Brazil and following the coast south, the expected turn to the west did not materialize and the caravel sailed as far as the Antarctic Circle before returning to Lisbon by way of the Atlantic. At first Vespucci did not conclude that the southern land mass was separate from Asia and the orbis terrarurn, although he did surmise that as it extended at least fifty degrees south latitude it must be part of a continental landmass. In the subsequent Mundus Novus, however, he identified the land mass as a new world. During these last few days I have written to you at length on the subject of my return from these new regions which we have explored and discovered, thanks to the armed fleet paid for and commissioned by his serene highness the King of Portugal. ... it truly seems that they are another world, and is not without justification that we have called them a new world [mondo nuovo] because the ancients had no knowledge of them and the things that have recently been rediscovered [ritrovate] by us overrides their opinions. They maintained that beyond the equator towards the south there is nothing apart from an extensive sea and a few barren islands; this sea they called the Atlantic, and if some among them have affirmed that there is a continent there they have understood it to be barren and uninhabited. But my last voyage has clearly demonstrated that this last opinion is false and totally contrary to the truth, since beyond the Equator I found lands [paesi] more fertile and more densely populated by men and animals than our own Europe, or even Asia or Africa, and furthermore a more temperate and agreeable climate than is found in whatsoever region known to US. I 8 Once it was accepted that the new land was a continent, the next task was to establish whether it was contiguous with Asia and therefore formed part of
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the oecumene (as for Columbus) or whether it was independent anti-oecumene. In Mundus Novus Vespucci favors the second option: "We recognised that this land was a continent and not an island because its coast extended for a considerable distance without enclosing it and because it was filled with an infinite number of Inhabitants."!" Vespucci, argues O'Gorman, was correct to identify the discovered lands as new because they were previously unknown and their presence refuted the traditional belief that the southern hemisphere was entirely covered by sea. Not only did Vespucci conceive of the new lands as a different geographical entity to the three parts (Europe, Asia and Africa) of the orbis terrarium, but, having seen that they were inhabited, he identified them as a new world in the heretical sense of an orbis alterius, distinct from the orbis terrarum assigned to man by God. Vespucci's view that he had sailed to the fourth part of the world was, claims Randles, derived from Isidore de Seville's Etymologiarum, "Outside of these three parts of the world, there exists a fourth, beyond in the Ocean in a southerly direction, a region. which is unknown to us due to the fieriness of the sun, at the interior limits of which it is reported live the antipodes of the fable."20 Because Vespucci reverted to the traditional concept of the orbis alterius to identify the new lands, America had not yet been invented. Nevertheless, his voyage was the "empirical determinant that opened up the. possibility of explaining .the new-found lands in a way that contradicted the accepted picture of the world."21 Later in the Lettera, Vespucci would affirm that the new lands neither belonged to Asia (and thus the orbis terrarum) nor were they an orbisalterius. Rather they constituted a previously unknown geographical unity, "a barrier running north. and south through both hemispheres and lying across the Ocean between Europe and Asia, separate and distinct from the Island of the Earth."22 It was left to Waldseemiiller in the Cosmographiae to assign the being of America to this unforeseen land barrier.· Summarizing the current state of cosmographical knowledge, Waldseemiiller began by noting that the sphere of the earth is infinitesimally small compared to the size of the celestial globe. However, whereas the ancients had knowledge of about one quarter of the earth's sphere, the inhabited Island of the Earth, modern geographical knowledge recognizes that a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (...). Inasmuch as both Europe and Asia received their names from women, I see no reason why anyone should justly object to calling this part Amerige, Le., the land of Arnerigo, or America; after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great ability.... Thus the earth is now known to be divided into four parts. The first three parts are continents, while the fourth part is an island, inasmuch as it is found to be surrounded on all sides by the ocean. 23
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All these ideas Were illustrated in the accompanying map. For O'Gorman Waldseemiiller's naming ofAmerica is less important than his conception of the new lands as an identifiable geographical being: "[tjhe independence of the new lands is finally recognized; they are conceived of as a distinct entity, separate from the Island of the Earth. Moreover, a specific being has been attributed to that entity and a proper name has been given to it to distinguish it from other similar entities."24 The meaning of the new found land is "the meaning of being the "fourth pan" of the world."25 Yet, for O'Gorman, there is an apparent cont:adiction in the Cosmographiae for the new lands are at once geographically disriner from the orbis terrarum and comprise.irs fourth part. Now orbis terrarum not only signified the traditional tripartite landmass, but also denoted the traditionallandmass and the new lands which, although insular (being separated from the other three pans by the Ocean), also belong to it. This new representation of the orbis terrarum implied that the traditional conception of the Ocean as an absolute boundary was no longer valid. The archaic notion of the world as a bounded place within the universe collapsed as the Ocean is transversed and the world extends beyond its ancient insular boundaries to embrace the entire. terraqueous globe. Further, this world is no longer providentially given or assigned to man. Rather, from now on man can, potentially, make his world anywhere; it is a place which he makes, owns, and is responsible for. When the author of the Cosmographiae Introductio asserted that the new lands, notwithstanding their isolation by the Ocean, were one of the parts that for the moment made up the world, he Was really claiming for the first time in history his sovereignty over the whole universe.... the world havi~g ceased to be considered as a son of cosmic jail, man was able to picture h imself as a free agent in the deep and radical sense of possessing unlimited possibilities in his own being, and as living in a world made by him in his own image and to his own measure. 26
tnterCeetem, Territoriettty, and Sovereignty !he voyages ofdiscovery underpinned a new geographical imaginary that, echoIng the conquest ofcosmological space heralded by Ficino and Pico, declared the sovereignty. of an ov~r the world's spaces. However, the voyages of discovery were ~o.t pnmanly m~t1vated by a desire to advance geographical knowledge but by relIgIOUS, econorruc, and political interests. These interests would determine how the naked ontological presence of these newly encountered lands would be integrated within the European territorial imaginary. The"discoveries" would project the dynamics of territorialization onto spaces well beyond the boundaries of those European states nestled within the traditional orbis terrarum.
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From the .beginning the race between Castile and Portugal to acquire colonies was adjudicated and legitimized by the Holy See. The legality of Rome's claim to adjudicate on such matters was established in Nicholas V's bull Romanus Pontifex (1455), which granted the Portuguese crown sovereignty over the recently discovered islands of Madeira, Cape Verde and the Azores, and over any further discoveries in the Atlantic. Nicholas claimed he was the rightful arbiter of disputes in the Christian world, including those concerning rival claims to lands inhabited by unbelievers, on the basis that he was "the successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Christ." Romanus Pontifex also confirmed that the right of the Christian princes to possess the new lands was derived from their role in the ongoing crusade of Christianity against Islam. The Portuguese deserve "suitable favours and special graces" for their role as "intrepid champions of the Christian faith," whose primary intention was to "restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels" by "vanquish[ing] them and their kingdoms and habitations ... and subject [ing] them to their own temporal domain." Portuguese colonial policies-such as the campaign against the Saracens in Africa, the founding of Christian settlements on the Atlantic islands, and the conversion of pagan peoples along the African coast-were commended for their contribution to the divine mission of spreading the Christian imperium wherever possible. In order to make this mission more secure in future, Nicholas gave his approval to Alonso and his successors "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans, whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed" and "to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery" and to appropriate and use for their own ends any "kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods" from the "capes of Bojador and ofNao as far as through all Guinea and beyond."27 Clearly, a correspondence between the territorialization of international society and the Christian mission was established at the very outset. On his return journey to Castile at the end of the first voyage in March 1993 a storm forced Columbus to land in Lisbon where he was received by joao II. Having heard Columbus' descriptions of the lands he had happened upon, joao remarked "that it seemed to him, according to what had been agreed between them,. that the newly conquered lands should belong to him."28 The agreement joao was alluding to was the Treaty of Alcacovas-Toledo (Sept 4 1479), under the terms of which the Spanish sovereigns, Isabel and Ferdinand, had agreed that for the sake of peace neither they nor their heirs would contest Portuguese sovereignty over any of the "islands, coasts, or lands, discovered or to be discovered ... from the Canary Islands down toward Guinea. For whatever has been found or shall be found, acquired by conquest, or discovered within the said limits, beyond what has already been found, occupied, or discovered, belongs to the said King and Prince of Portugal and to their kingdoms, excepting only the
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Canary Islands ..."29 At the request of Alfonso V of Portugal, Alcacovas-Toledo had been approved and confirmed by the "apostolic authority" of Pope Sixtus IV in the bull Aeterni Regis (June 21 1481).30 Worried that joao intended to seek another papal bull that would cede all Castilian claims derived from Columbus' voyage to Portugal, Ferdinand and Isabel published Columbus' First Letterfrom America as a declaration of their legal entitlement to the Indies. They argued that the Portuguese claim to any territories discovered beyond Guinea was too vague to be legally binding and denied that this undetermined beyond could include the lands discovered by Columbus. However, to avoid open conflict with Portugal they sought to have their position recognized in law and so turned to the Holy See in its capacity as Christendom's international court of appeal. The new incumbent, Alexander VI,· Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was a Spanish ally and the Spanish sovereigns were confident that subsequent papal bulls would rule in their favor. They were not to be disappointed. The two bulls Inter Caetera and Eximiae Devotionis which Alexander issued on May 3 1493 certainly favored Castile. Inter Caetera, while safeguarding previous Portuguese concessions, granted to Castile in perpetuity all "known and unknown, discovered and to be discovered mainlands and islands" including any "lordships, cities, castles, places, villages, rights, and jurisdictions" as long as they were not already owned by other Christian princes. Eximiae Devotionis reinforced these privileges by specifying that the Castilian remit extended over the western part of the Ocean Sea and was of the same order as the rights the Portuguese had over parts of Africa, Guinea, and the Gold Mine.I' A second Inter Caetera, issued on May 4, allocated these privileges to the Spanish over all islands and lands one hundred leagues west of the Azores.Y Inter Caetera reveals much about the nature of territorialization in this early stage of the expansion of international society. First, it makes explicit the correlation between internal and exremalterrirorializanon. As Adam Watson has noted, the initial impetus to expand outward from Europe arose from the fusion of the turbulent culture of Latin Christendom----with its drives for crusading, honor, and material gain-with the technologies and resources available to the centralizing territorial states. The overseas expansion served as an outlet for, a displacement of, drives to expand and acquire which, had they been allowed to fester within the confines of European space, would have precipitated disastrous conflicts between the fledgling dynastic powers. The displacement of conflict to the new colonial territories allowed the European states to establish an international society within Europe based on the principles of sovereignty and juridical independence and then to .extend them globally in the .wake of their imperial conquests.P Pope Alexander stated that the most important task of current times is that "the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for, and
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that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the true faith." Various "illustrious deeds" of .the Spanish monarchs demonstrate that they both desire and are working diligently toward this goal. Of all their endeavors the one which most clearly expresses their commitment to the "glory to the Divine Name" is their recovery of the Kingdom of. Granada from Saracen tyranny. Alexander then acknowledges their intention to seek out and discover certain islands and continents, remote, unknown, and not hitherto discovered by others, so that you might bring their residents and inhabitants to the worship of our Redeemer and the profession of the Catholic faith. Having been up to the present time engaged in the siege and recovery of the Kingdom .of Granada, you were. unable to accomplish this holy and praiseworthy purpose. But finally, as was pleasing to the Lord, the kingdom having at least been regained, you wish to fulfil your desire.f"
Inter Caetera simultaneously unified and legitimized within the discourse of Christian mission the reconquista and the conquista (figure 9.1). Columbus reasserted this formal conjuncture ofinternally and externally projected territorialization on several occasions. On his arrival in what he assumed was the Indies he declared, "there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them I have taken possession for their Highnesses by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled."35 As Anthony Pagden observes this ritual of possession alluded to the raising of the royal standard over the Alhambra following the surrender of Granada. Columbus claimed that it was the fact ofthis victory over their internal enemies, which he witnessed, that enabled the sovereigns to authorize his voyage: [I]n this present year of 1492, after Your Highnesses had brought to an end the war with the Moors who reigned in Europe and had concluded the war in the great city of Granada where ... on the second day of january I saw Your Highnesses' royal banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra ... and I saw the Moorish Kingcome out to the city gates and kiss Your Highnesses' royal hands ... Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes devoted to the Holy Christian faith and the furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India;36 The procedures enabling the internal territorialization of Castile, which required Christianity to overcode the signs of the previous Islamic culture, were replicated during the external territorialization of the new world. Lest there be tny doubt as to the correspondence between internal and external territorializat\n,
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Figure 9.1 Columbus at Hispaniola, from "The Narrative and Critical History of America," edited by Justin Winsor, London, 1886 (engraving) by Bry, Theodore de (1528-98) (after). Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. Flemish. Out of copyright.
Columbus also brings into the terms of reference the ongoing campaign against that other great Other of European culture: the Jews. In the same vein he, somewhat arbitrarily, continues "[s]o, then after having expelled all the Jews from all your kingdoms and dominions, in this same month ofJanuary, Your Highnesses commanded me to take sufficient ships and sail to the said regions of India."37
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Ferdinand and Isabel had formally institutionalized the Inquisition, the archetype of internal territorialization, on Spanish soil when they solicited Sixtus IV to bestow on Fray Tomas de Torquemada the office of Grand Inquisitor, a decree eventually approved by Innocent VIII in 1487. 38 The Indian, the Jew, and the Moor must all be converted to the true faith and any who resist assimilation can rightfully be shown the error of their ways by coercive means. "I hope in Our Lord that Your Highnesses will determine with all speedto bring such great peoples to the Church and convert them, just as you have destroyed those who refused to confess the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."39 As Tzvetan Todorov characterizes it, 1492 symbolizes a double movement in the history of Spain, for, in the same year "the country repudiates its interior Other by triumphing over the Moors in the final battle of Granada and by forcing the Jews to leave its territory; and it discovers the exterior Other, that whole America which will become Latin.T'" Second, Inter Caetera reaffirmed the tenet of Romanus Pontifex that it was proper that those who were committed to spreading the faith should receive appropriate economic rewards for doing so. Alexander thought that hardships incurred pursuing the task of spiritual conversion could be compensated by material rewards, especially in the form of gold. In return for their efforts in bringing "the residents and inhabitants" of "certain islands and continents, remote and unknown, and not hitherto discovered by others" to "the worship of our redeemer and the profession of the Catholic faith" it is right that the Catholic sovereigns should have exclusive access to the" [gJ old, spices and a great many other precious things" found in these lands. Columbus also elides gold and conversion. "Your Highnesses must resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that once you begin you will in a short space succeed in converting to our faith a multitude of peoples while gaining great kingdoms and riches and all of their peoples for Spain. Because without doubt there is in these lands a huge amount of gold ... "41 For Todorov this association derives from Columbus' hopes that gold finds in the new lands would finance a new crusade to liberate Jerusalem. The language used by Columbus and Alexander was characteristic ·of what Stephen Greenblatt calls the" discursive economy of Christian imperialism," which assumed that all desires are convertible and amenable to excha nge.V For Columbus "[g] old constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it may do what he will in the . d iti world, and may so attain as to bring sou Is to P.ara diise. "43 C ommo itres are converted into gold, which is used to finance the project of conversion and thus to save souls. Further, the discourse of Christian imperialism is able to conflate earthly gain and divine purpose by reasoning that by depriving the Indians of their temporal possessions and enslaving them, the Spanish are thereby freeing them from their own bestiality and providing the conditions for the salvation of their souls.
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Inter Caetera can also be read as a document which symbolizes the transition from hierarchy to anarchy. It embodied an important juncture in the state of relations between the waning authority of the papacy and the waxing authority of the incipient nation-states. The language which Alexander deployed to authorize his conferring of apostolic favor on Castile's overseas enterprise harked back to the hierarchical discourse of papal plenitudo potestatis. [F]rom the plenitude of our apostolicpower, the authority ofAlmighty God conferred on us in blessed Peter and the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which we hold on earth, by these decrees we give, grant, and assign forever to you, your heirs and successors, the monarchs of Castile and Leon, all islands and continents [insulas et terras firm as] found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south of a line to be drawn from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole, namely the south, whether these continents and islands to be found are in the direction of India or toward anywhere else, found by your envoys and captains, together with all their dominions, cities, forts, towns, and villages, and all rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances. 4 4 By what right could Alexander make these concessions? Michael Donelan, for whom the proselytizing aspect of the conquests indicates a fideistic impulse underpinning the initial expansion of international society, notes that the bulls did not seek to legitimize the Spanish enterprise in terms of just war: there was no mention of the recovery of wrongly annexed lands, the right to defense from attack in support of preaching, or the correction of a breach of natural law. 45 This is perhaps surprising since the European monarchs were well aware that territorial aggrandizement could be veiled by the discourse of just war. A letter from Ferdinand to his ambassador in Rome, Jerome Vich, written whilepreparing for an expedition against Algiers in 1510, had acknowledged that
for a better justification of the saidwar [against Algiers] it would be appropriate for His Holiness to declare war ... against all infidels, to give us 'the right of conquest over all lands we would acquire from them, because it is said that it is not lawfully permissible for Christian princes to make war in any of the lands of the infidels, except in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, unless these infidels start a war against Christians, or unless war is declared against them by the SupremePonriff" Another hypothesis is that Alexander's division of the new-found lands between the crowns of Portugal and Spain was an act of feudal investiture. This infeudation. thesis has, however, been rejected by Luis Weckmann-Munoz because
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Alexander did not request vassalage from the kings of Castile in return for ceding to them dominions in the New World. 47 Further, in 1493 no one had any notion that a new continent had been discovered. Neither Inter Caetera nor the drawing of the so-called Alexandrine line entailed the enfoeffement of a continent for "how can AlexanderVI have" divided" a continent whose existence was not even suspectedr T'" Rather, suggests Weckmann-Munoz, the pope's authority as fons iuris with the prerogative to grant new-found lands to Spain on condition that the Spanish converted the natives to Christianity, was derived from the omni-insular doctrine established in Urban Irs Cum Universae Insulae (1091). Citing the spurious Donation of Constantine (750-800)-which asserted that Pope Sylvester had been bequeathed "all provinces, palaces and districts of the city of Rome and Italy and the regions of the West" by the first Christian Emperor on his withdrawal to his Eastern capital of Constantinople-this bull had claimed that all islands in Western Europe, particularly those recovered from the Muslims, were automatically assigned to the dominion of the Holy See, which had the right to cede them to whomsoever it'wished. Initially the reach of the omni-insular doctrine was limited to the Mediterranean basin, but following the Portuguese discoveries in the Atlantic its range was extended in bulls such as Romanus Pontifex. Yet, points out Miguel Battlori, the remit of an omni-insular doctrine would not have covered lands identified as terrafirma.t" Rather, Alexander relied on the medieval theocratic doctrine of papa vicarius Christi, which had asserted the pope's sovereignty over both spiritual and tern.. . poral spheres. As vicarius Christi the pope could. arbitrate in disputes where the princes directly petitioned the Holy See. Similarly, Donelan maintains that the only way the temporal powers of the papacy could have been legitimately stretched to give lordship over the Indies to the Castilian monarchs in return for spreading the Faith was by conflating Innocent Ill's principle of plenitudo potestatis, which allowed the pope to exercise temporal power for the well-being of Christendom, with Innocent IV's claim that as vicarius Christi the pope exercised God's lordship over the world.i'" Of course, Ferdinand and Isabel would have rejected the implications of these outdated and barely credible remnants of medieval theocratic discourse as being antithetical to attempts by princes and kings, like themselves, to carve out enclaves of territorial sovereignty free from papal interference. However, Renaissance Europe was a society whose norms, values, and laws were still filtered through the skein of Catholicism and the Spanish monarchs were aware of the requirement to at least seem to be operating within the discursive framework of Christian doctrines and institutions. Inter Caetera was evidence that, at least in terms of ideology, the Renaissance expansion of European international society was not exclusively a secular project, but was imbued with the still pervasive, if essentially empty, temporal claims of the papacy. If we cannot fully endorse
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Wight's assertion that Inter Caetera was "the most far-reaching exercise of papal world-sovereignty," there is truth to Donelan's argument that as an attempt to keep peace between Spain and Portugal "it was well-grounded use of the papal "plenitude of power" in the society of states."51 Either way, it is evident that the territorialization of European international society did not begin with a caesura! rupture with the hierarchies of the Christian-Medieval cosmos. Although they were happy to utilize the rhetoric of Christian mission for their own expansionist ends, the Iberian monarchs considered themselves to be independent sovereigns and would have extended their territorial reach to the newly discovered lands with or without the approval of the pope. The terms of agreement drawn up between Columbus and the Castilian crown indicate that commercial motives far outweighed any religious concerns. In the memorandum of intent to form a business partnership, known as the Santa Fe Capitulations (April 17, 1492), Ferdinand and Isabel granted Columbus five concessions.V First, he was given a commission as admiral "on all those islands and mainland discovered or acquired by his command or expertise in the Ocean Seas." Second, he was appointed viceroy and governor general in the same territories. Third, he was given the right to "one-tenth of all and any merchandise, whether pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices," obtained or exchanged within the limits of his admiralty. Fourth, he was given jurisdiction. over lawsuits arising from any matters pertaining to commerce within his admiralty. Fifth, he was given the right to invest one eighth of the cost of fitting out any vessels for trade or business and take one eighth of any resulting profits. These terms were confirmed in the Granada Capitulations (30 April 1492) in which the sovereigns re-affirmed that because Columbus was prepared to put his life in danger while seeking out new lands and islands on their behalf he should be rewarded appropriately. "You will be empowered from that time forward to call yourself Sir Christopher Columbus, and thus your sons and successors in this office and post may entitle themselves sir, admiral, viceroy, andgovernor of them."53 In contrast to the papal bulls, these agreements make no mention of any duty to convert pagans and barbarians or to advance the universitas fidelium. The rationale for the discovery and possession of these lands was exclusively commercial, and these documents are to be interpreted in light of the struggle between Spain and Portugal for control of anticipated Atlantic trade routes to Asia. The stakes of this rivalry had increased dramatically since the annexation of Genoese trading stations by the Ottomans at the end of the fifteenth century, which had severed an important access route to the Asian markets for European traders. The Portuguese were seeking a sea route to Asia by circumventing Africa. In light of the progress they were making down the Western coast of Africa, Castile feared that it would be permanently eclipsed by its rival. This fear grew considerably when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good
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Hope in 1488.54 Castile's response was to sponsor Columbus's expedition to the west as a way to preempt its rival and negotiate a commercial monopoly with the mainland Asians before the Portuguese arrived by the southern route. Henri Vignaud famously rejected the thesis that the Spanish intended to reach the Asia mainland, insisting that their aims were limited to reaching certain islands in the Atlantic.P However, the presence of the term tierra firme in these documents does suggest that the objective was to reach the fabled cities of the Asian mainland. Ferdinand and Isabel wrote that they were commissioning Columbus to go "to the region of India, by way of the Ocean Sea."56 This raises another intriguing question. If tierra firme refers to the Asian mainland, how could Ferdinand and Isabella have expected to acquire and possess land that, presumably, already lay under the sovereignty of the Chinese rulers? Helen Nader suggests that the Spanish intended to establish fortified trading posts on the Asian coasts in accordance with the model already established by the Portuguese, who financed their Atlantic ventures as royal monopolies and claimed sovereignty over their trading posts. The most important Portuguese trading post, Sao Jorge da Mirra, was established in 1480 with the permission of local West African rulers. 57 The Capitulations clearly stated that Columbus, as "admiral, viceroy, and governor," was a royal agent, invested with the authority to take possession of and to govern land and seas that he added to the royal dominions on their behalf. Evidently the Castilian monarchs sought to extend their sovereignty to the overseas islands and main-lands. However, in appointing Columbus, a foreigner, as a hereditary admiral, Ferdinand and Isabel came up against a constitutional barrier. Castilian law prohibited monarchs from permanently giving away or selling any part of the crown's military or juridical functions as hereditary offices. Any such actions would have violated a fundamental tenet of monarchical government that had "developed in Europe on the premise that the royal domain belonged to the royal family as a function of the monarch's judicial and military responsibilities, carried out for the welfare of the entire realm.T" In order to circumvent this obstacle, the Castilian royal secretary Fernan Alvarez de Toledo drafted a preface to the agreements stating that the monarchs were acting of their own free will and added a postscript confirming the royal intention to make these grants in perpetuity as hereditary private possessions. He justified this permanent alienation of royal offices and income with arguments from philosophy, Roman law, and scripture.P'' The question of how to take legitimate possession of the newly discovered lands also exercised the discoverers themselves. The Crowns had issued highly formalized general instructions for its representatives taking possession of lands: The manner that you must have in the taking of possession of the lands and parts which you shall have discovered is to be that, being in the land or
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part that you shall have discovered, you shall make before a notary public and the greatest number of possible witnesses, and the best known ones, an act of possession in our name, .cutting trees and boughs, and digging and making, if there be an opportunity, some small building [edificio], which should be in a part where there is some marked hill or a large tree, and you shall say how many leagues it is from the sea, a little more or less, and in which part, and what signs it has, and you shall make a gallows there, and have somebody bring a complaint before you, and as our captain and judge you shall pronounce upon and determine it, so that, in all, you shall take the said possession; which is to be for that part where you shall take it, and for all its district [partido] and province or island, and you shall bring testimony thereof signed by the said notary in a manner to make faith. 60 In the following account, of Columbus taking possession of the Indian island of Guanahani, it appears that while he did not enact any of the established symbolic rituals that physically marked the land, such as placing stones, cutting grass, raising mounds or pillars, or erecting crosses; he did perform the required speech acts of proclamation and naming. Immediately some naked people appeared and the Admiral went ashore in the armed boat, as did Martin Alonzo Pinzon and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral raised the royal standard and the captains carried two banners with. the green cross which were flown by the Admiral on all his ships. On each side of the cross was a crown surmounting the letters F and Y (for Ferdinand and Isabella). On landing they saw very green trees and much water and fruits ofvarious kinds. The Admiral called the two captains and the others who had landed and Rodrigo de Escobedo, recorder of the whole fleet, and Rodrigo Sanchez de Segovia, and demanded that they should bear faithful witness that he had taken possession of the islandwhich he did-for his sovereigns and masters the King and Queen. He further made the required declarations, which are recorded at greater length in the evidence there set down in writing. 61 The display of the royal standard established the context within which these formal speech acts had meaning: they were performed on the sovereigns' behalf and were made official by being enacted in the presence of witnesses and recorded in writing. Stephen Greenblatt claims that there were two (absent) audiences for these linguistic acts, whose efficacy lay in the phrase "y no me fue contradichio," "and I was not contradicted." The real intended audiences were the other European powers who had the language and discursive conventions to dispute the claims but were not in situ. The Indians constituted a second
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intended audience despite that fact that the proclamations were issued in a language they could not be expected to understand. Columbus, argues Greenblatt, was not concerned with the subjective consciousness of the Indians but with the correct enactment of the legal process by which, according to Roman law, land could be transferred from one patrimony to another as long as the original owner consented. Columbus staged a legal ritual that depended upon the formal possibility of a contradiction without actually permitting such a contradiction; "it enables him to empty out the existence of the natives, while as the same time officially acknowledging that they exist."62 However, if the Indians, as Columbus himself admitted, had identifiable, if primitive, social, and economic conventions, then the legality of the possession remained dubious.v' Francisco de Vitoria would later insist that although the Indians might be pagan and living in mortal sin, in so far as they were rational beings with political, cultural, and social institutions and systems of exchange requiring the use of reason, there was no legal basis for appropriating their territory.64 In natural law, lands had to be either uninhabited, in which case they became the property of the first occupant, or they had to belong to a recognized enemy who had been defeated. Thus during the third voyage, by which time Inter Caetera and Tordesillas had formally designated the new lands as spaces under Portuguese or Spanish sovereignty, Columbus adopted a more derogatory representation of the Indians as lawless, warlike nomads living beyond the bounds of civilisation. The previous markers of civility, the "infinity of small hamlets," disappeared to be replaced by "a large and warlike people, with customs and beliefs very different from ours. These people live in mountains and forests without settled townships.T? Once the Indians were depicted, in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, as the nomadic war-machine, the other against which European civilization has defined itself since Aristotle, they could legitimately be territorialized by whatever means necessary. The second discursive ritual by which the new-found lands were possessed was that of naming. I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which our most illustrious king and queen, our sovereigns, gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them I have taken possession for their Highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found, I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, who marvellously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." To the second, I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepcion; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana, and so to each one I gave a new narne.P''
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Tzvetan Todorov has remarked that, rather like Adam in Eden, in order to make sense of and possess the virgin world that confronted him Columbus set about naming it. Occasionally this precipitated "a veritable naming frenzy."67 He steered east to a cape which he called Belprado, a distance of four leagues, and from there to the southeast is the mountain which he called Monte de Plata, and he says it is eight leagues. From cape Belprado east by south is the cape he called delAngel.... From Cabo delAngel four leagues in the same direction is a point which he called the Punta Seca, then six leagues farther is the cape which he called Redondo . . .68 Columbus' first gesture on contact with new lands was "an act of extended nomination, the declaration that the lands will henceforth be part of the Kingdom of Spain.P" This naming was intrinsic to the "principle of attachment" which, suggests Anthony Pagden, informed the Europeans' initial responses to the encounter with the Indians. Strange Indian customs, habits, and rituals were interpreted through European categories of reference. This allowed commonalities. and equivalences to be identified. between Indian and Christian rituals, even if they were really incommensurable. Although the "principle of attachment" reduced the distance between self and other by rendering that marked by alterity as partially knowable, in making Indian otherness accountable, it also ran the risk of, if not eliminating the difference, assimilating the unknown to the known.· For Pagden the discoverer entered into his discoveries through a sequence of epistemological strategies: attachment, recognition, and naming, which set up the conditions for the final act of possession. The first person to see a new land could claim a right of possession, which was recorded and secured by naming and the appropriation of titles. "The Europeans as they crossed and re-crossed the oceans, became inveterate narners and possessors."70 Names, of course, are transferable; they are symbolic units that could be transported across the globe. "Just as maps could transform the un-possessable world into a series of lines and figures which could then be carried home to Barcelona or Lisbon, names had the power to reduce what still remained to be explored, possessed and settled into a single transportable set of phonernes.V:'
Tordesillas and the Cartographic Representation of International Society The relative importance of fideisric and commercial motivations for the Renaissance expansion of international society will probably never be resolved. For Nader, because the papal decrees rested legal title to islands and continents on the imperative to convert the native people to Christianity, the Spanish appeal
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to the papacy changed the nature of the Indies enterprise from its purely commercial origins to a mission infused with religious objecrives.Y Yet, Battlori is surely right that despite the personal religious beliefs of the sovereigns and their interests in evangelizing and maintaining the true faith, "the Alexandrine bulls had only subsidiary value in claims to dominion over the new lands."73 Perhaps it is best to assume that economic gain and spiritual salvation were complementary objectives as the economy of exchange between gold and souls suggests. Whatever the underlying motivations and the respective interests of papacy and kings, they coalesced in Alexander VI's infamous drawing of a demarcation line on a world map to mark out the respective spaces of Portuguese and Spanish sovereignty. This was not the only time that cartography would have a pivotal role in the territorialization of Renaissance international society. In Inter Caetera Alexander had affirmed that the line should be "distant by one hundred leagues west and south from whatever of the islands that are called in Spanish 'the Azores and Cape Verde' or any territory that was in the effective possession of any Christian king or prince before the Christmas just past, from which the present year one thousand four hundred and ninety-three begins."74 Samuel Edgerton has drawn our attention to the distinctly cursory nature of this division: Pope Alexander VI ... sat down before his mappamundi and arbitrarily, in the blank space to the left of the oikoumene, drew in a new meridian that he proclaimed to he "one hundred leagues west of the Azores." All the vast terra incognita to the west of this purely abstract" demarcation line" he awarded to the Spanish. Everything east must go to Porrugal.i" However, this was not to be the end of the matter. Later in the year Alexander, responding to further pressure from Castile, issued Dudum Siquidem (September 26, 1493) which stated that ifany Spanish agents, when sailing west or south, landed in eastern regions and "there discover islands and main-lands that belong to India" they did not have to cede them to the Portuguese. The Spanish were granted the freedom and authority to "take corporal possession of the said islands and countries and hold them forever, and to defend them against whosoever may oppose."76 This blatant declaration of Spanish interest, which effectively nullified Portuguese rights over any further discoveries, displeased Joao who insisted that the line be extended further to the west. After a period of intense diplomatic maneuvering an agreement was reached between the two crowns and confirmed by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Under its terms the signatories agreed that "a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight ... at a distance of
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three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands." All islands and main-lands, known or to be discovered, to the east of the line "shall belong to, and remain in the possession of, and pertain forever to" the King of Portugal and his heirs while those to the west shall belong to Spain. 77 Both sides agreed not to send ships into each other's sphere of influence with the specific purpose of discovering land and accepted that any accidental discoveries must be passed to the rightful owner. Although lip service was paid to the traditions of religious oaths-the parties swore not to violate it "before God and the Blessed Mary and upon the sign of the Cross, on which they placed their right hands and upon the world of the Holy Gospels," and it was agreed that pope would be asked to confirm and approve it by issuing a bull-Tordesillas dispensed with the rhetoric of proselytization and conversion that is so marked in Inter Caetera. The sole stated purpose of the agreement was the "sake of peace and concord" between the two kingdoms. Tordesillas is an intriguing document of territorialization not least because it describes in some detail the process by which this line could be inscribed onto the physical surface of the globe. In order that the line should be both straight and at a distance of three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands both crowns agreed to commission a joint expedition comprising pilots, astrologers, and sailors who, having studied the sea, courses, winds, and the degrees of latitude would be able to identify a mutually acceptable point through which the line should be drawn north to the Arctic pole and south to the Antarctic pole. Once they had agreed on where this point should lie, delegates of both sides, conferred with their respective sovereign's authority and power, should "draw up a writing concerning it and affix thereto their signatures," thereby confirming that it was a permanent mark or boundary that could not be denied, erased or removed. If the line should cross any island or mainland, at the first point of such intersection ... some kind of mark or tower shall be erected, and a succession of similar marks shall be erected in a straight line from such mark or tower, in a line identical with the above-mentioned bound. These marks shall separate those portions of such land belonging to each one of the said parties; and the subjects of the said parties shall not dare, on either side, to. enter the territory of the other, by crossing the said mark or bound in such island or mairiland.f'' Clearly it was intended that this line should designate an absolute limit in space rather than just a frontier, there being, as Daniel Nordman has noted, a significant difference in the meaning of these two terms at the time.7 9 A limit denoted a theoretically fixed or immutable barrier, whether marked physically into the
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terrain. or represented symbolically on a map, between two or more political or administrative bodies: signories, dioceses, juridical, or administrative zones, state boundaries. Their immutability was often reinforced by being established along divinely designated natural physical demarcations, such as mountain ranges or coastal littorals, and as they changed so geographical representations changed. A frontier, by contrast, separated two societies or groups whose stance toward one another was generally hostile; it was often marked by a visible material military presence, a garrison, or fortress, which, because it could be captured or destroyed, meant that the frontier advanced and retreated in space. "While the limit is immobile the frontier is movable."80 The Tordesillas division of the world;' which was anterior to most of the discoveries, effectively transformed a frontier zone between Spain and Portugal into an absolute limit, establishing their respective areas of present and future domination. This process, this territorialization of the world, known and unknown, physical and representational, entailed a significant shift in man's relationship to the sea. Recall that in the medieval geopolitical imaginary the Ocean was an empty void that could neither be possessed nor made subject to the exercise of sovereignty. To some extent this attitude still prevailed at the end of the fifteenth century. Frank Lestringant points out that because the ocean was an abstract place devoid of shape, relief and color it was natural that the Tordesillas line of demarcation "was in the beginning traced across the indefinite space of the seas."81 The sea, Deleuze and Guattari's "espace lisse par excellence," the archetype of all smooth space, was a blank canvas on which the fantasies of the imperial imagination could run free. Immersed in this space the Renaissance mind reacted with a mixture of wonder and respect.V The Spanish cosmographer Pedro Medina considered the crossing of an ocean to be a wondrous achievement because it traced a course across "a thing so vague and spacious ... where there is neither path nor trace."83 However, as with all smooth spaces the sea was soon to be exposed to the forces of striation. Medina taught seafarers the new art of astronomical navigation and was a pioneer in the "politics of science" which territorialized and striated the sea. Maritime space became enclosed within the striations of the cartographic grid, as technicians of space combined bearings obtained by astronomical calculations and the plotting of locations within meridians and parallels. The Capitulations, writes O'Gorman, show a "desir~ on the part of the Crown to exercise an act of sovereignty on the Ocean ... the contain an express declaration in favor of Spanish seigniory and lordship over the Ocean, which was ... something unusual if not unprecedented."84 The forces of striation were in the ascendant. The striation of the sea. was only one role that cartography would play in the invention of the spaces of Renaissance international society (figure 9.2). Renaissance cartography not only enabled the intellectual visualization of land
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Figure 9.2 Credit: Copy of Monumenta Cartographia, 1502 (color litho) by © Royal Geographical Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.
but. also provided practical tools for its "conquest, appropriation, subdivision, commodification, and surveillance."85 Visible emblems of political and religious ideology decorated the Renaissance maps of European expansion. Particularly striking was the sweeping line of royal blue running from pole to pole on maps like the Cantino planisphere (1502). This cerulean swathe symbolized the Tordesillas demarcation and converted maps into "stridently geopolitical documents," recording and symbolizing "the division of the world into different national spheres of influcnce.T" Yet, territorial claims were not just asserted through the drawing of boundary lines. Decoration, inscriptions recording discovery, commemorative portraits, and coats of arms all communicated ownership and possession. Embedded in the new world lands of the Cantino map are images of the. national flags of Portugal and Spain that act as declarations of
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ownership, which reaffirm the physical acts of possession enacted by explorers underneath the unfurled banners of their sovereigns. Just as these acts of territo-rial possession were recorded and legitimized in legal documents, so maps were covered in script confirming the symbolic messages of territorialization. Next to the image of the land that today denotes Brazil the author of the Cantino map affirms that this territory was "found by Pedro Alvares Cabral, a nobleman of the King of Portugal," while the islands of the West Indies are marked as the "Antilles of the King of Castille" (Has antilhas Rey de castella), "discovered by Columbus, who is Admiral of them."87 In the Cosmographiae, Waldseemiiller explained that "[a]s farmers usually mark off and divide their farms by boundary lines, soit has been our endeavour to mark the chief countries of the world by the emblems of their rulers." Thus "the emblems of those sovereigns" were placed over "the fourth division of the earth, discovered by the kings of Castile and Portugal."88 Symbols of political conquest were often accompanied by signs symbolizing the religious mission. For example, on the Juan de la Cosa world map (c.1500) the compass rose situated on the Tropic of Cancer embraces. ~he Holy Family, while thrust into the core of the dense, dark, heavy mass of the terra incognita is an image of Columbus as Christoferrens, bearing the Christ child into the unknown world. These early maps of discovery did not just communicate the international politics of modern territoriality through iconography. At a formal level they expressed and contributed to the transformation of man's being-in-space enabled by perspective and its rationalization of space. Edgerton states that Alexander's gesture of demarcation was made on a mappa-mundi but it is probable that maps derived from Ptolemy's Geographia were also used during the formulation of Inter caetera and the negotiations leading to Tordesillas. The Geographia presented a world ordered by geometrical coordinates; Ptolemy's organizing system "depended on imagining the globe not as amorphous topography but as a homogeneous surface ruled by a uniform geometric grid."89 By calling on Ptolemy's mapping techniques, which made possible the plotting of coordinates on intersecting perpendicular axes, the cartographer was able to combine the local surveys of the new lands made by the European sailors and the spaces of the known world into a synthetic whole. The Geographia signaled the end of 'the Christian symbolism of the T-O map and the sanctified spatial hierarchies which had structured the representation of the Christian oecumene.From the late-fifteenth-century cartography would fix the spaces and boundaries of international society within a new conception of abstract, geometric, and homogeneous geographic space.?" However, as we have seen, Renaissance discourses of space tended to retain some imprints of the medieval spatial imaginary. Cartography was no different and scholastic geographies were not entirely erased from maps until the early
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seventeenth century. Even Mercator's world map of 1569, for many an emblem of modern cartography constructed according to Strict mathematical principles, still drew on non-scientific geographical sources. Mercator's representation of the Arctic, based on the legend of the four rivers recounted by the fourteenth century English monk Nicholas of Lynn, and his depiction of the Antarctic, based on the contestable authority of Ptolemy and Marco Polo, are, suggests Peter Whitfield, examples of "pure medievalism."?' As William Boelhower has demonstrated with respect to the mapping ofAmerica during the Renaissance, a modern cartography based onrhe Ptolemaic system existed simultaneously with two medieval cartographic models: the pictorial map and the portolan chart.F Thus icons, which on medieval pictorial maps conveyed the characteristics of local place, were used by Renaissance mapmakers to convey the sense of wonder and strangeness that explorers felton first contact with the new continenr.P'' Images of mythical Indians and bounteous virgin lands served as representational substitutes that could be brought back to the Iberian courts in lieu of the objects themselves. Further, the rhumb lines criss-crossing the seas of many Renaissance world maps and the" dense toponymic chains along the outer edge of the new land" which deployed a "mnemotechnic device of naming to indicate possession and imminent settlement" harked back to the portolan maps used to chart sailing routes in the Mediterranean and the distances between and 94 along coastline places. The modern system of cartographic line and scale map, "uncontaminated by the imperfect body of the earth," freed of "the local perspectivism of the image" and thus able to project a global universalism within the orthogonal grid, would only come into its own with the rational and juridical organization of new Northwest territories when the cartographic line would mark out the boundaries of national spaces. Although cartography was an important instrument in the Iberian expansion and territorialization of the new world, the gridded map and the abstract spatiality it embodied were not universal. In Spain it was largely restricted to an elite group of cosmographers and geographers working for the Crown at .the Casa de la Contratacion. 95 Modern derivatives of the Latin mappa did not enter general circulation until the middle of the sixteenth century and only within specialized technical discourses did derivatives of spatium denote a "geometric, abstract, isotropic expanse."96 The geographical descriptions sent back to Spain by colonial administrators still tended to rely on a medieval epistemology, which situated places in respect to the traveler's body passing through them rather than in terms of an objective optical abstraction. A text like Martin Fernandez' Suma de geografia (1519), which combined the new spaces of geometrical abstraction with the traditional linear space of narrative itinerary, conveys the hybrid spatiality characteristic of Renaissance Hispanic culture. The gridded map, suggests Ricardo Padron, was more a cartographic ideal rather than an achievable reality.
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Nevertheless it as Walter Mignolo claims, an important aspect of colonialism is the struggle between competing semiotic systems and cultural modes of representation, then the gridded map served as an effective instrument of territorialization, since it effectively silenced Amerindian cartographic traditions, reducing them to barely legible imprints on the European maps.97 European territorial representations filled out the spatial boundaries of the new world with meaning, memory, and identity; they were discourses of power and truth which silenced any alternative Amerindian representations of these spaces. In the mapping of America "European territorial representations (maps, descriptions), helped by the printing press, silenced Amerindian ones, which were never printed during the colonial period, producing the effect that the former were more appropriate or truthful descriptions of space than the latter."98 However, these European maps did not only erase the spatial imaginary of the Amerindian. They were also representations of space which reinforced the notion that territoriality in the modern world should and could be ordered in terms of clearly demarcated and isolated parcels of sovereign space. They were, like all the representations of space discussed in this book, instruments for the inscription. of identity and difference in space that defined the cosmopolitan or modern ideal of territoriality. They were part of a modern spatial imaginary which, born out of the Renaissance challenge to the hierarchical Christian medieval spatial episteme of above and below, made possible the territorial regime of inside and outside upon which the international relations of anarchy have been grounded ever since.
CHAPTER 10
Conel usion: Territorial ity, the Renaissance, and International Relations
J
orge Luis Borges' enchanting fragment "On Exactitude in Science" captures succinctly the claim that our ideas about territoriality, and in particular the territorial state, are subject to the requirements of representation and irnaginarion.! Purporting to be part of a travel record of one seventeenth century Suarez Miranda, Borges' textual fragment exposes the hubris that accompanies any attempt to provide a true, undistorted, and objective representation ofspace. In a certain Empire, reports Miranda, the practice of cartography had achieved such a degree of perfection that the map of a province occupied an entire city and a map of the empire a whole province. Taking this process to its logical end the "Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it." However, their successors, who were less enamored with such ambitions and realized that "the vast Map was Useless," abandoned the map to the vagaries of the seasons, and today the only evidence of its existence are a few tattered remains scattered across the desert region. Borges' parable denies the possibility that we can ever achieve some true, objective, or disinterested representation of territory. And yet, most International Relations theory is underpinned by the assumption, sometimes explicit but more often implicit, that the territorial state is a-historical, primordial, and universal. This conception of state territoriality, the territorial a priori, assumes that all states are characterized by physical extension in space, that they occupy a clearly defined place on the earth's surface, and that they have borders that clearly differentiate inside frornoutside and self from others.
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This book has advanced two interwoven critiques of the territorial a priori that, taken together, expose some of the deep-rooted epistemological and onto-logical assumptions about space and politics that inform much political and international political theory. The first critique is conceptual. Seeking to develop a methodology appropriate for a cultural or intellectual history of space and territoriality, it has two parts. First, it has challenged the assumptions, integral to the territorial a priori, that present sovereign-territoriality as universal, fixed, and objective. Second, it has advocated replacing the territorial a priori with the more fluid concept of the territorial imaginary, which emphasizes the historically contingent, transformative, and subjective nature of sovereign-territory. The territorial imaginary does not situate ideas of sovereign-territoriality exclusively within the domain of political discourse. Rather, it frames the imagination and representation of the politics of space within the more extensive landscape of a society's culture of space. It alerts us to how how the particular configurations of spatial discourses prevalent in any society construct ideas about space that limit the possibilities for conceiving of political existence within it. The book's historical. claim is that in dismantling the medieval culture of space, ordered in terms of the hierarchical logic of above/below, the Renaissance erected the scaffolding upon which the modern territorial imaginary could be built. In the medieval culture of space, embodied by the soaring edifices of gothic cathedrals, all being was constituted in perpendicular chains of hierarchy, reaching from the debased spaces of the terrestrial world to the lofty elevated heights of the celestial world. Constricted by this framework, the medieval mind conceived of sovereign-territoriality in terms of multiple, overlapping jurisdictions and allegiances structured vertically through hierarchies of political authority, which extended far above the temporal authorities of Emperor and Papacy to culminate in the ethereal realm of the civitas Dei. During the Renaissance, the hierarchical architectonics of this medieval culture of space were discarded and the territorial imaginary it had generated was replaced. The novel spatial vocabularies and categories of the Renaissance culture of space established the conditions of possibility for the modern territorial imaginary. Man's being-in-space was redefined during the Renaissance; no longer imprisonedwithin space, man became the master of space, which could henceforth be known rationally, ordered systematically, and rendered the object of man's desires. In terms of political territoriality, this resulted in the gradual delegitimation of any claims to sovereignty above the state. The Renaissance established the modern territorial imaginary in which territorial sovereignty is parceled out between clearly differentiated political authorities co-existing on a horizontal plane of equivalence. The Renaissance made possible the modern conception of a territorial imaginary, no longer governed by the spatial motif of above/below; but authorized by the oppositional figure of inside/outside.
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One of the implications of stressing the representational or imaginary nature of territoriality has been to prioritize its cultural dimensions. In so far as territoriality is produced in various discourses of space, territorial imaginaries are made manifest in a plethora of written and pictorial cultural texts. If we continue to adhere to the positivist goal of constructing scientific theories that satisfy Popper's criteria of verification or falsification, we will miss the constitutive dimension of these cultural texts. Thus this work has looked to hermeneutic or interpretative methodological tools prevalent in the humanities. For example, the evolution of perspective in painting was identified as an integral component of the Renaissance territorial imaginary; for not only did it promote a general sense of man as the master of space but it also gave various political authorities, notably princes and city-states, the means with which to express and legitimize their aspirations to territorial sovereignty. The implication that Piero della Francesca's portrait of Federico da Montelfeltro is as significant as Machiavelli's Prince for understanding Renaissance international politics may not convince many dyed-in-the-wool social scientists. Nevertheless, it is in keeping with the tenet of the "aesthetic turn" within International Relations that "the political" is constituted, legitimised and resisted in the spaces of representation. 2 At least it is hoped that this research has justified taking an interdisciplinary approach to the subject matter of international politics. Thinking about space requires that we explore areas of knowledge outside of International Relations' traditional constituency of politics, sociology, economics, and law. The political resolution of space in terms of sovereign-territoriality cannot be fully accounted for unless one explores coeval representations of space produced in discourses such as cosmology, art theory, urbanism; cartography, and geography and expressed in cultural commodities such as maps, paintings, and buildings. There are important political implications of conceiving of territoriality, and specifically the territorial state, not as some primordial or universal material fact but rather as a historically and culturally constituted form of representation or imaginary. The first is to acknowledge that the territorial state and the geopolitical distribution of space it authorizes-what Michael Shapiro calls the "international imaginary"---is not only historically contingent but is also achieved through violence.:' All cultures have different experiences of places and spaces and code onto them alternative ways of being. However, since the Renaissance the expansion of the European world system, and the universalization of its projects of capitalism, modernity and Enlightenment, has resulted in the overcoding and erasure of indigenous conceptions and experiences of space. As the discussion of the Renaissance territorialization of international society demonstrated, the European appropriation and conversion of the "new world" was orchestrated as much through the discursive production of a novel territorial consciousness, as through acts of physical violence against its inhabitants. The
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mapping of the new world, the cartographic division of the world, and journal records of rites of possession all served to territorialize the "new world," domesticating unknown and foreign places and extending European power and control over the new spaces of international society. Putting the Americas on the map was less about determining the shape and extent of the earth than about "controlling territories, diminishing non-European conceptualization of space, and spreading European cartographic literacy; thus colonizing the imagination of people on both sides of the Atlantic: Amerindians and Europeans."? The second implication of territorialization it that, as Deleuze and Guattari remind us, state strategies of territorialization and striation are always and everywhere challenged and opposed by the nomadic forces of de-territorialization. Again with reference to the European territorialization of the Americas, Walter D. Mignolo suggests that residual expressions of Incan cosmology in contemporary Peru can be read as a form of resistance to the dominant territorial imaginary ofWestern rnodernity.? For Shapiro this international territorial imaginary needs to be challenged by alternative visions ofidentities and spaces that privilege the flows of people rather than the static boundaries of sovereign territorialities, constructed according to the logics of inclusion and exclusion." Of particular interest here is the critique of the dominant territorial model mounted by diaspora or border theory, with its celebration of cultural hybridity. "The nationstate," argues James Clifford, "as common territory and time, is traversedand, to varying degrees subverted by diasporic attachments."? The hegemony of the international territorial imaginary recedes in the face of Homi Bhabha's observation that nations, nation-spaces are performative or narrative constructs that are always seeking to erase the memories of their hybridity. Imaginary nations, like territorial imaginaries, are produced in in-between spaces within which novel notions of selfhood and identity arise: "[i]t is in the emergence of the inrerstlces-e-rhe overlap and displacement of domains of difference-that the intersubjective and collective experience of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiared.I" Mirroring our critique of the territorial a priori, Bhabha's exposes the essentialist myth of the nation as an "originary and initial subjectivity", an "imagined community" secure within homogeneous empty time. 9 Rather, insists Bhabha, we must listen to to "counter narratives of the nation" that accentuate and highlight the "irredeemably plural modern space" of the nation. The phenomenon of de-territorialization has become a staple of of the contemporary discourse of globalization. Jan Aart Scholte has argued that if globalization means anything at all, it denotes a process of "respatialization with the spread of transplanetory social connections" or "the advent and spread of what are alternately called 'global,' 'transplanetary,' 'transworld' and in certain respects also 'supraterritorial' social spaces."!" However, contrary to the enthusiasm of
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the hyperglobalizers, Scholte stands back from claiming that globalization has completely erased the map of territorial geography and the economic, political, and identity formations that it engenders. Today's global landscape, he suggests, is one in which global and territorial spaces coexist and interrelate in complex fashions. "We do not live in a 'borderless world' where territory is obsolescent."!' The research undertaken in this work supports such caution .. The discourse of globalization has a tendency to hyperbole, portraying the transformation from the modern Westphalian to the globalized postmodern world system in terms of a caesural rupture of extremely short duration. For example, Saskia Sassen identifies the 1980s as a "tipping point," when the internationalism of the Bretton Woods system gave way to today's global era. This transition so radically transformed the organizing logics of territory, authority, and rights that it moved "us from an era marked by the ascendance of the nation-state and its capture of all major components of social, economic, political and subjective life to one marked by a proliferation of orders."12 This is quite some claim. Especially in view of the fact that the cultural and intellectual revolution of the Renaissance lasted for most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that even at the end of this period few, if any, contemporaries had completely divested their thinking of some of the legacies of the hierarchical territorial imaginary. Of course, one of the claims made by globalisation is that we live in a world of acceleration and speed. Nevertheless, is it likely that if the transformation from medieval to modern territoriality took at least two centuries, that the transformation from the modern to the postmodern order is likely to have occurred in two decades? A second contribution that the research undertaken in the present book can make to the current debates about globalisation is to suggest a broader rnethodological remit than scholars in International Relations have tended to allow for. Both Scholte and Sassen are intellectually predisposed to see the territorial transformation of globalization as an objective process, one that the methods and epistemologies. of the social sciences can adequately analyze and explain. However, as we have seen, transformations in ideas about political territoriality are intimately related to prevailing cultures of space. Thus, we need to examine how the transformations in the territorial imaginary of globalization are represented, and, indeed, produced in contemporary art, literature, and film. If my argument that the shift from the medieval territorial imaginary of hierarchy to the modern imaginary of anarchy was primarily represented and imagined within the cultural sphere has validity, we should perhaps, as International Relations scholars pay attention to the aesthetic postmodern re-imagination of space and place, so carefully documented by Frederic jameson.l' Yet, one need not justify historical research purely on the grounds that it allows us to better understand or explain today's world. International Relations as a discipline is not noted for its historical rigor, and the discipline as a whole
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can only be enriched by meticulous and patient research into the historical conditions of its existence. Thus, this work has tried to fill some of the gaps in a major lacuna in the discipline's historiography. The Renaissance can justly claim to have been as important a cultural and intellectual movement as the Enlightenment, which, due to the contributions that Rousseau, Locke, and Kant made to our understanding of the Westphalian international system, has been the subject of much research in international political theory. However, with the exception of Garrett Mattingly's magisterial Renaissance Diplomacy, the Renaissance is either absent or little more than a footnote in most International Relations texts. Indeed, the characteristic attitude to the Renaissance of the discipline is encompassed by Sasson's history of territoriality "from medieval to global assemblages" that makes no mention of the Renaissance at all. In common with much International Relations history, by erasing the Renaissance, Sassen is able to present the medieval and the modern international systems as two neat coherent historical formations. This neat binary implicitly holds out the promise of progress and modernity as the medieval is swept away by the modern. Of course, the historical narrative is rarely so neat, and by paying attention to the Renaissance we become sensitive to the complex and often non-linear nature of historical transformations. It is hoped that work has made a small contribution to restoring the Renaissance to its rightful place in the cultural and intellectual history of international political theory.
Notes
1
Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia, and International Relations
1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 2. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in From Max U7eber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 77-128, at p. 78. 3. Stephen D. Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," in The Elusive State: International and Comparative Perspectives, ed. James A. Caporoso (Newbury Park: Sage, 1989), pp. 69-96, at p. 92. 4. Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," P: 92. 5. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed., rev. Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 327. 6. Of course, the surface of the globe has never been neatly divided into sharply differentiated sovereign territorial units, but has included many fuzzy or porous territories, such as UN Protectorates, Imperial spheres of interest, mandates, trusteeships, and neutral zones. See Friedrich Kratochwil, "Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System," WOrld Politics, 39:1, 1986, pp. 27-52; and Daniel H. Deudney, "The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, Circa 1787-1861," International Organization, 49:2, 1995, pp. 191-228. 7. See Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London: Verso, 2003); and Andreas Osiander, "Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth," International Organization, 55:2,2001, pp. 251--87. 8. Leo Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," The American Journal of International Law> 42:1, 1948, pp. 20-41, at p. 28. 9. Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia," pp. 28--29. 10. Michael]. Shapiro, "Textualising Global Politics," in James Der Derian and Michael ]. Shapiro (eds.), International/lntertextual Relations: Postmodern
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Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 11-22, at pp.12-13. 11. Shapiro, "Textual ising Global Politics," pp. 12-13. 12. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 1972), p. 49. 13. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 4. 14. Evelyne Patlagean, "L'h istoire de l'imaginaire," in Jacques Le Goff: Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel (eds.), La nouvelle histoire (Paris: CEPL, 1978), pp. 249-69, at p. 249. My translation. 15. Donald J. Puchala, Theory and History in International Relations (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), p. 7. 16. Martin Wight, Systems ofStates, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 113. 17. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 151. 18. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 113. 19. Stephen D. Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 235-64. Subsequently Krasner appears to have retracted this position. He writes that "the Peace of Westphalia was a break point with the past" and that it marked a "transition from Christendom to reason of state and balance of power as the basic cognitive conceptualization informing the actual behavior of European rulers." Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 82. 20. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 21. Torbjorn L. Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), pp. 36-54. 22. David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 95. 23. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover, 1988). 24. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 64. 25. James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy o/Western Estrangement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 2. 26. Friedrich Meinecke, quoted in Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 103. 27. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 110. 28. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 106. 29. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 102. 30. Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose 0/ the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 31. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose ofthe State, p. 30. 32. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose a/the State, p. 70. 33. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose o/the State, p. 74.
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34. Reus-Smir, Moral Purpose ofthe State, p. 76. 35. Reus-Smit, MoralPurpose ofthe State, pp. 79-80. 36. Justin Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society: A Critique ofthe Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso, 1994). 37. Mattingly quoted in Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 75. 38. Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 75. 39. Hendrik Spruyr, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis ofSystems Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 40. Spruyt, The Sovereign State, p. 18. 41. Spruyt, The Sovereign State, p. 150.
2
International Relations, Political Theory, and the Territorial State
1. Martin Wight, "Why Is There No International Theory," in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), pp. 17~34. 2. Martin Wight, Power Politics, ed. Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), pp. 101 and 102. 3. Justin Rosenberg, The Empire ojCivil Society: A Critique of The Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso, 1994), p. 142. 4. Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 30. 5. Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1929), p. 80. 6. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 65. 7. S. Korner, Kant (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 33. 8. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 68. 9. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 69. 10. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, pp. 70-71. 11. John H. Herz, "The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State," in Herz, The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics (New York: David McKay, 1976), pp. 99-123; and Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, tr. R. Howard and A. Baker Fox (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1966). 12. Herz, "The Rise and Demise," pp. 100-101. 13. John Herz, "The Territorial State Revisited: Reflections on the Future of the Nation-State," in Herz, The Nation-State, pp. 226-52, at p. 238. 14. See Herz, "The Rise and Demise," pp. 108-14. 15. Aron, Peace and War, p. 181. 16. Aron, Peace and War, p. 181. 17. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 18. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 131. 19. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 15.
204
!; " ·.:,1.:, 1
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Notes
20. Gilpin, War and Change, p. 122. 21. Gilpin, War and Change,p. 37. 22. Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," reprinted in James Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 129-77, at p. 138. 23. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 198. 24. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 213. 25. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 211. 26. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 211. 27. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 14. 28. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, p. 20. 29. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study o/Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 8-9. Italics added. 30. Alan James, Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 13. 31. James, Sovereign Statehood, p. 3l. 32. Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 8-9. 33. See Cornelia Navari, "Introduction: The State as Contested Concept in International Relations," in Navari (ed.), The Condition of States (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 1-18. 34. Navari, "Introduction: The State as Contested Concept," all quotes from pp. 12-15. 35. Hans Kelsen, General Theory ofLaw and State, tr. Anders Wedberg (New York: Russell and Russell, 1945), pp. 210,-2l. 36. John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 89. 37. Agnew and Corbridge, Mastering Space, p. 100. 38. Cornelia Navari, "Knowledge, the State and the State of Nature," in Michael Donelan (ed.), The Reason of States: A Study in International Political Theory (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 102~21, at p. 108. 39. Navari, "Knowledge, the State and the State of Nature," p. 119. 40. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations ofPostmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992). 41. Bauman, Intimations ofPostmodernity, pp. 178-79. 42. On the inappropriate appropriations of Hobbes in International Relations, see R. John Vincent, "The Hobbesian Tradition in Twentieth Century International Thought," Millennium, 10:2, 1981, pp. 91-10l. 43. Rob Walker, "Realism, Change and 'International Political Theory'," International Studies Quarterly, 31:1, 1987, pp. 65 ......86. 44. Sheldon Wolin, "Hobbes: Political Society as a System of Rules," in Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 239-85, at p. 243.
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45. Hobbes limits his discussion of territory to-chap. XXXIV of Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 170-176, at p. 17l. 46. J ean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract, or Principles ofPolitical Right, in Rousseau, Collected Writings Vol. 4, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, tr. Judith Bush, Masters and Kelly (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994), pp. 127-224, at p. 160. 47. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 168. 48. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 139. Italics in original. 49. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, P: 143. 50. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 143. 51. Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch," in Kant, Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. Hans Reiss, tr. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 93-130. 52. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 94. Kant accepted the contemporary distribution of political territories, even though many were acquired by these illegitimate means, on the grounds that "the prohibition relates only to the mode ofacquisition, which is to be forbidden henceforth, but not to the present state ofpolitical possessions ." 53. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 115. 54. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 105. 55. The stranger may claim a "right of resort" as all men are entitled to present themselves in the society of others "by virtue of their right to communal possession of the earth's surface." See Kant, "Perpetual Peace," pp. 105-8. 56. William E. Connolly, Political Theory andModernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 121. 57. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 157. 58. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 279. 59. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, p. 213. 60. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, p. 208. 61. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 77-128, at p.78. 62. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, Vol. 1, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 54. 63. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (London: Routledge, 1992). 64. Max Weber, "The Meaning of Discipline," in From Max Weber, pp. 53-64, at p. 253. 65. Weber, quoted in Fred Dallmayr, "Max Weber and the Modern State," in Asher Horowitz and Terry Maley (eds.), The Barbarism of Reason:' Max Weber and
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the Twilight of Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 49-67, at p. 59. 66. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two ofa Contemporary Critique ofHistorical Materialism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), p. 47. 67. Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, p. 49. 68. The typology of legal orders is in Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1~ pp. 212-30l. 69. Bryan S. Turner, Max Weber: From History to Modernity (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 197. 70. On Weber's theory of the nation-state, see David Beetham, Max weber and the Theory ofModern Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 119-47. Quote at p. 122. 71. Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, quoted in Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory ofModern Politics, p. 125. 72. Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, referred to in Beerharn, Max Weber and the Theory ofModern Politics, p. 129. 73. David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), pp.258-83. 74. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 236. 75. Ratzel, quoted in Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 224. 76. Ratzel, quoted in Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 226. 77. For Weber's views on great powers, see Economy and Society, Vol. 1, pp. 910---91l. 78. See Weber's article "Zwischen zwei Gesetzen,," referenced in Beetharn, Max Weber andthe Theory ofModern Politics, p. 137. 79. Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from ~ber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 53. 80. Fred Halliday, "State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda," Millennium, 16:2, 1987, pp. 215-29, esp. pp. 218-19. 81. Michael Mann, "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results," in John A. Hall (ed.) States in History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986») pp. 109-36, at pp. 112 and 123. 82. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Potoer, Volume Two: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 56. 83. Theda Skocpol, "Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research," in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Ruescherneyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 3-37, at p. 8. 84. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative A 11:alysis ofFrance; Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 32. 85. R. B. J.Walker, "Violence, Modernity, Silence: From Max Weber to International Relations," in David Campbell and Mick Dillon (eds.), The Political Subject of Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 137-58.
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86. Richard K. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique," Millennium, 17:2, 1988, pp. 227-62, at p. 248. 87. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State," p.230. 88. Richard K. Ashley, "The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Towards a Critical Social Theory of International Politics," Alternatives, 17:4, 1987, pp. 403-34. 89. R. B.]. Walker, "International Relations and the Concept of the Political," in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), pp. 306-327, at p. 32l. 90. Richard K. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War," in ] ames Der Derianand Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 259-321, at p. 301. 91. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines," p. 302. 92. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines;" pp. 303-4. 93. R. B. J. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the Horizons of Contemporary Political Practice," in Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds.), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1990), pp. 159-85. 94. R. B. J. Wa.lker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 128. 95. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community," p. 175. 96. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines," p. 290. 97. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 129. 98. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community," p. 172.
3
Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History
1. Robert David Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p~ 5. 2. Sack, Human Territoriality, p. 19. 3. Robert David Sack, Conceptions of Space in Social Thought: A Geographic Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 40-41. 4. Sack, Human Territoriality, pp. 28-29. 5. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 4. 6. Richard K. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique," Millennium, 17:2, 1988, pp. 227-62. 7. David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), p.204. 8. David Harvey, "The Geopolitics of Capitalism," in Derek Gregory and John Urry (eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), 128-63. 9. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), at pp. 46 and 77.
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10. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 85. My emphasis. Two points are worth
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
18.
19. 20.
21. 22. 23. 24.
25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
noting. First, although Lefebvre contends that social spaces mirror the dominant relations of production, he does not suggest that space is reducible to them. Each mode of production has a space, but the characteristics of space are not equivalent to the mode of production. Indeed, he regarded the tendency to reduce the aesthetic, social, and mental realms to the economic as a "disastrous error." Lefebvre, quoted in Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), p. 38. Second, Lefebvre regarded social spaces not as distinct and bounded, but as overlapping, interpenetrating, and superimposed on one another. They cannot be explained in terms of isolated discourses (urban, geographic, architectural, or anthropological) which focus on particular aspects rather than the whole of social space. Henri Lefebvre, "Reflections on the Politics of Space," Antipode, 8:2, 1976, pp. 30--37, at p. 31. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, pp. 413-14. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 39. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 42. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 42. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, pp. 3-4. For a discussion of Foucault's epistemology, see Richard Rorty, "Foucault and Epistemology," in David Couzens Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 41-49. Michel Foucault, "The Order of Discourse," in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 48-78, at p. 67. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 1972), p. 49. Michel Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," in Foucault Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 194-228, at p. 194. Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," p. 197. Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," p. 196. Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge, pp. 109-33, at p. 131. Miel Foucault, "Afterward: The Subject and Power," in Herbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982), pp. 208-26, at p. 212. Michel Foucault, "Questions on Geography," in Power/Knowledge, pp. 63-77, at p. 69. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, tr. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 136-38. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 143-46. Michel de Certeau, The Practice ofEveryday Life, tr. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 35-36. de Certeau, The Practice ofEveryday Life, p. 36.
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30. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Vol 1, tr. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1984), p. 85; and Foucault, "Truth and Power," p. 121. 31. Michel Foucault, "Questions on Geography," p. 68. 32. Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. RobertHurley (London: Athlone Press, 1984); and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi (London: Athlone Press, 1988). 33. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 142. 34. Deleuze and Guattari, A. Thousand Plateaus, p. 360. 35. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 452. 36. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 211. 37. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 385-86. 38. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 4. 39. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 143. 40. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, P: 17. 41. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 25. Lefebvre suggests that modern space was fundamentally altered around 1910, when its codes and practices
42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.
53. 54. 55.
began to dissolve. However, this common-sense space of Euclid and perspective did not disappear completely but left traces in consciousness, where it continues to inform words, images, and metaphors. John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations," International Organization, 47:1, 1993, pp. 139-74. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 158. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 158. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 157. Foucault, quoted in]. G. Merquior, Foucault (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 36. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 54 and x. Foucault, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, p. 191. Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 55-56. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 387. Foucault, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, p. ·176. Deleuze presents Foucault's archaeology as an engagement with statements that situates them in terms of three orders or realms of space: collateral, correlative, and complementary. See Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, tr. Sean Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 1-22. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, esp. pp. 3-25. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 376. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 379. In a similar manner, Gaston Bachelard diagnoses modern philosophy as having contracted a "geometrical cancerization of its linguistic tissue" in which, "[ojutside and inside form a dialectic of division, the obvious geometry of which blinds us as soon as we bring it into play in metaphorical domains. It has the sharpness of the dialectics of yes and no, which decides everything. Philosophers, when confronted with outside
210
56.
57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
63. 64. 65. 66. 67.
68.
69.
70. 71.
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Notes
and inside, think in terms of being and non-being. Thus profound metaphysics is rooted in an implicit geometry.... The dialectics of here and there has been promoted to the rank of an absolutism according to which. these unfortunate adverbs of place are endowed with unsupervised powers of ontological determination." Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics 0/ Space, tr. M. jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 211-12. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 379. Nietzsche's aphoristic method is typical of nomadic thought, a "force that destroys both the image and its copies, the model and its. reproductions, every possibility of subordinating thought to a model of the True, the Just, or the Right (Cartesian truth, Kantian just, Hegelian right, etc.)." p. 377. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, esp. "1440: The Smooth and the Striated," pp. 474--500. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 481. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 380. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 381. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 382. For a discussion of the Aristotelian territorial legacy, see Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). Stephen Grosby, "Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of Modern Societies," Nations and Nationalism, 1:2, 1995, pp. 143-62, at p. 150. Grosby, "Territoriality," p. 155. Grosby, "Territoriality," p. 150. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," pp. 138-48. All social organisations have some mode of differentiating human collectivities from each other in space. Ruggie identifies three ideal types other than territorial states: non-territorial collectivities based on kinship; the fluid territorial constituencies of nomadic property rights; and systems of territorial rule in which rights are not necessarily mutually exclusive as in medieval Europe. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 149. Ruggie's citations are from Joseph H. Strayer and Dana C. Munro, The Middle Ages (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1959), p. 115; and Perry Anderson, Lineages o/theAbsolutistState (London: New Left Review, 1974), pp. 37-38. See Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," pp. 149-50. John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Towards a Neorealist Synthesis," in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press), 131-57, at 143. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 150. Ruggie, "Continuity," p. 143. There are correlations between bourgeois theories of private property, which represent civil society as a framework for the protection of natural individual property rights, and international theory that managed to achieve a balance between the political rights of sovereign states and the idea of a community of states. Both" differentiate among units in terms of possession of self and exclusion of others; advance a possessive individualist
72. 73. 74.
75.
76. 77. 78. 79.
80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.
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theory of the social realm as a contrivance to preserve the differentiation of the units and facilitate orderly relations between them; and are legitimized in terms of the minimal social needs of the component units." (p. 146). Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 151. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 151. For example, the English Enclosure Acts served the capitalist machine by deterritorialising dispossessed peasants, thereby establishing the conditions for their reterritorialisation in the textile looms. See Deleuze and Guattari, AntiOedipus, pp. 139-271, for the "universal history" of the three "social machines." Universal history is an abstraction and the social machines, rather than describing particular societies, suggest a set of abstract figures in terms of which particular societies may be understood. Universal history is also anti-historicist; the abstract machines are not stages of evolution with one machine resulting from the effects of another. See Paul Patton, "Conceptual Politics and the WarMachine in Mille Plateaux," SubStance, 13:3/4, 1984, pp. 62-80. The social machines are literally machines, which have "an immobile motor and undertakes a variety of interventions: flows are set apart, elements are detached from a chain, and portions of the tasks to be performed are distributed. Coding the flows implies all these operations." Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 141. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 144. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 145. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus,pp. 145--46. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 453; and Anti-Oedipus, p. 139. This resume of Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of capitalism is greatly simplified. See Anti-Oedipus, pp. 222-71, for a fuller discussion. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti- Oedipus, p. 252. They view schizophrenia as other to capitalism," its difference, its divergence and its death.," Anti-Oedipus, p. 246. Eugene W. Holland, "Deterritorializing 'Deterritorialization': From the AntiOedipus to A Thousand Plateaus," SubStance, 20:3, 1991, pp. 55-65, at p. 63. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 235. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 244. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, p. 251. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 240. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 261. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, P: 261. This summary of the colonization of lived by abstract space is taken from Gregory, Geographicallmaginations, p. 401. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, pp. 302 and 286.
4
Hierarchy, Order, and Space in the Medieval World
1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 88. 2. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 131.
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3. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, tr. John Ciardi (New York: W. W.Norton, 1970), Paradiso, XXVIII, 130-132, p.569. Beatrice places the angels in Paradiso according to the Dionysian order. 4. Pseudo-Dionysius, "The Celestial Hierarchy," in The Complete Works, tr. Calm Luibheid (London: SPCK, 1987), 143-91, at I:120B, p. 145. 5. This discussion of Dionysius the Areophagite draws heavily on Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition in Dante's Comedy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. 14~55. 6. Pseudo...Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," II: 144C, pp. 151-52. 7. Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition, p. 19 8. Pseudo-Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," III: 164D, p. 153. 9. Pseudo-Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," III: 165A, p. 154. 10. Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition, p. 22. 11. Dionysius's account of the heavenly powers is in "Celestial Hierarchy," VI~IX, pp. 160-73. 12. Pseudo-Dionysius, "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," in The Complete Works, pp. 193-259. 13. For the description of the Hierarchy of Law, see "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," V: 301C, p.234. 14. All quotes are from "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," V, 500c-509a, pp. 233--39. 15. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p.132. 16. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2nd ed., tr. L. A. Manyon (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 446. For Bloch, the feudal system ensured the systematic economic subjection of the peasantry by the ecclesiastical and warrior oligarchies. Feudal society was "an unequal society, rather than an hierarchical one--with chiefs rather than nobles; and with serfs, not slaves." p. 443. 17. A useful summary ofthe literature on vassalage and fiefs is Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassels: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 17--74. 18. Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 444. 19. Quoted in Reynolds,Fip andVassels, p. 22. 20. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassels, pp. 50-51. 21. Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 115. 22. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 312. 23. ]ohan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman (London: Penguin Books, 1955), p. 55. Huizinga claims that despite the substitution of nobility and feudalism by monarchs and states, chivalry survived as a meaningful form of social expression well into the fifteenth century. 24. Huiz.inga, The Waning ofthe Middle Ages, p. 55-56. 25. Jacques Le Goff Medieval Civilization 400-1500, tr. Julia Barrow (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 156. 26. Quoted in Le Goff: Medieval Civilization 400-1500, p. 156.
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27. Georges Duby, Les trois ordres ou I)imaginaire du ftodalisme (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1978). 28. My translation of an Italian translation ofDuby's French translation of this passage from the Latin, in Ottavia Niccoli, I sacerdoti, i guerrieri, i contadini: storia di un' immagine della societd (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1979), p. 18. 29. My translation of Duby's French translation from the Latin in Les trois orders, p. 15. 30. Le Gof£ Medieval Civilization, p. 256. 31. My translation from Niccoli's translation into Italian, I sacerdoti, p. 13. 32. Georges Duby, "Les societes rnedievales: Une approche d'ensemble," in Duby, Hommes et structures du moyen age (Paris: Mouton Edireur, 1973), pp. 361-79, at p. 369. My translation. 33. Duby, "Les societes medievales.Lp. 368. My translation. 34. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 150. 35. On this point and for a good general discussion of Duby and the three orders, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, "Georges Duby and the Three Orders," Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 17, 1986, pp. 51-64. 36. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 141. 37. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 146. My translation. 38. R. Roques, L'uniucrs dionysien: Structure hierchiqi«: du monde selon le pseudoDenys (Paris: Aubier Editions Montaigne 1954), p. 174. My translation. 39. Quoted in Niccoli, I sacerdoti, p. 25. My translation. In medieval culture the left had multiple negative connotations. Therefore, by placing the agricultural workers on the left side of the pyramid the superiority of the knights was confirmed. 40. Le Gof£: Medieval Civilization, p. 264. 41. For these distinctions, see Edmundo O'Gorman, The Invention of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), pp. 51-69. 42. A. ]. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, tr. G. L. Campbell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 58. 43. Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A. Semiotic Theory of Culture, tr. Ann Shukman (London: 1. B. Tauris, 2001), pp~ 177-85. 44. Gurevich, Categories ofMedieual Culture, p. 70. See pp. 42-91 for an overview of medieval perceptions and representations ofspace. See also Harald Kleinschmidt, Understanding the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydall Press, 2000), pp. 33-61. Kleinschmidt traces a shift from early medieval notions of space as the sum of qualitatively different places occupied by objects to the high/late middle age notion that space encloses objects and has presence between them. 45. Gurevich, Categories 0/Medieval Culture, p. 72. 46. Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World~ ed. T. Silverstein, tr. R. Mannheim (University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 106. Auerbach discusses how Dante built his ethical system around the Nicomachean Ethics as elaborated by St. Thomas and interpreted by Brunetto Latini, pp. 105-21.
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47. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, tr. Mario Domandi (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), p. 178. Aristotle replaced Plato's idea of chora or space as a vast sphere in which objects are not confined to specific places or regions, by place as a distinct top os. Aristotelian space contained all particular places. Space encloses bodies; it is the geometrical line between bodies constituted by the boundaries of other adjacent bodies. There are no gaps between bodies and so all individual places are connected to space as a whole. In this universe there is no empty space. Aristotelian place is like a vessel that surrounds and contains the body located within it. Place is unchanging, "the inner surface of the innermost unmoved container of a body," Aristotle from Physics, quoted in Edward S. Casey, The Fate ofPlace: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 55. See on Aristotelian concepts of space, Casey, Ope cit., pp. 50-71, Cassirer, Ope cit., pp. 174-85; and M. A. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers (London: Allan Wingate, 1956), pp. 75-83. 48. Johannes de Sacrobosco, De Sphaera, tr. Lynn Thorndike, in Thorndike, The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 118-42, at p. 119. 49. Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 51, p. 573. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 102. 50. Dante, Purgatorio, III, 15, p. 196. 51. Dante, Purgatorio, XXXI, 145, p. 375. 52. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers, p ..82. 53. Dante, Paradiso, XXII, 132, p. 531. 54. See Dante, Paradiso, VII, 124-41, p. 434. 55. Dante, Paradiso, I, 102--5 and 109-111, pp. 379-80. 56. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers, pp. 296-97. 57. Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 70, p. 567. 58. Dante, Conuiuio, 2:4, quoted in Karl Federn, Dante and his Time (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1970), p. 81. 59. Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 130---132, p. 544. 60. W. G. L. Randles, De la terre plate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique rapide (1480~1520) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980). Much of the following discussion is drawn from Randles. See also 0' Gorman, Invention of America, pp. 51-69. 61. Macrobius, Ambrosius .Theodisius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, tr. William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press [Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, 48J, 1952), II: 5, 32-33, p. 206. 62. Quoted in Randles, De La terre plate, p. 13. 63. Saint Augustine, Concerning the City ofGod against the Pagans, tr. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), XVI: 9, pp. 664-..:65. 64. Macrobius, Commentary, II: 5, 1---3, p. 200. 65. Augustine, City ofGod, XVI: 9, pp. 664-65. 66. Augustine, City ofGod, XVI: 9, pp. 664-65. 67. Dante, Inferno, XXXIV, 112-4 and 124-26, p. 180.
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68. Pierre d'Ailly, Imago Mundi, tr. into French by Edmond Buron, in Texte latin et traduction franraise de quatre traites cosmographiques de d 'Ailly et des notes marginales de Christophe Colomb, ed. Buron (Paris: Maisonneuve Freres, 1930), p. 187. My translations refer to the French edition. 69. Randles, De la terre plate, p. 11. 70. Sacrobosco, De Sphaera, p. 129. 71. Pierre d'Ailly, Imago Mundi, pp. 254---55. 72. Paolo Revelli, L 'Italia nella Divina Commedia (Milano: Fratelli Treves, Editori, 1922), p. 33. My translation. 73. On rnappae-rnundi, see Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), pp. 26---33; David Woodward, "Maps and the Rationalization of Geographic Space," in Jay A. Levenson (ed.), Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press [National Gallery ofArt, Washington, DC], 1991), pp. 83-7; and Brenda Deen Schildgen, Dante and the Orient (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp.66-91. 74. Dante Paradiso, IX, 83, p. 446; and Dante, Monarchia, tr. and ed. Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), I:XI, 12-14, p. 27. 75. O'Gorman, Invention ofAmerica, p ..67. 76. Dante, Purgatorio 11,1-4, p.191. Jerusalem at the centre of the northern hemisphere is directly opposite the Earthly Paradise, "the luxuriant holy forest evergreen," in the southern hemisphere,Purgatorio, XXVIII, 2, p. 354. 77. On Mandeville, see Randles, De la terre plate, pp. 17---20. 78. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 17. 79. Lorman, Universe ofthe Mind, p. 172. 80. John G. Demaray, "Dante and the Book of the Cosmos," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 77:5, 1987, pp. 14-15. 81. Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, p. 138. The following scheme is derived from Le Goff. 82. See Schildgen, Dante and the Orient, pp. 66-91.
5
Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse
1. The best introduction to these debates is Jean Riviere, Le probleme de l' eglise et de l'itat au temps de Philippe Le Bel (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Louvariiense, 1926), esp. pp. 2-60. See also Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State 1050~1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [in association with the Medieval Academy of America]' 1988), pp. 33---95. Tierney provides an excellent selection of abridged primary source material. 2. The classic study is Walter Ullman, Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London: Methuen, 1949). 3. Gratian, D istin ctiones, 22:i (c. 1140), in Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, p. 119.
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4. See on this image, and other rruruatures illustrating editions of Gratian's Decretum, Anthony Melnikas, The Corpus ofthe Miniatures in the Manuscripts of Decretum Graziani: Vol. I (Rome: StudiaGratiana XVI,. 1975), pp. 24-62. My discussion of the Skrziczick miniature draws heavily on Melnikas. 5. Boniface VII, Unam Sanctarn (November 1302). Latin version in Corpus Iuris Canonici, II, ed.Aemilius Friedberg (Graz: Academische Druck-U. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), col. 1245-46. English translation in Tierney, The Crisis ofChu rch and State 1050-1300, pp. 188-89. 6. Boniface VII, Unarn Sanctam, p. 188. 7. Gerhart B. Ladner, "Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," reprinted in Ladner, Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies in History and Art, Vol. II (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983), pp. 435---55, at p. 447. Ladner observes that the Augustinian tradition between the fifth and late eleventh century entertained a functional concept of the state: "states are not communities or territories, but forms and functions of just government in the mixed condition in which the City of God finds itself on this earth." p. 437. 8. Quoted in Ladner, "Aspects .of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," p.439. 9. Ladner, "Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," p. 446. 10. Gerhart B. Ladner, "The Concepts of 'Ecclesia' and 'Christlanlras' and their relation to the idea of Papal 'Plenitudo Potestatis' from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII," reprinted in Ladner, Images and Ideas, pp. 487-515. 11. The term Ecclesia is central to medieval theocratic thought, but the meaning is somewhat slippery. Ladner explains that with the increased emphasis on the doctrine of papal primacy from Gregory VII onwards, the universal church (ecclesia uniuersalis) became increasingly identified with the Roman church (Romana ecclesia). "The terms Ecclesia and Ecclesia Romana thus appear to coalesce into one concept comprising the Church both as an institution, that is as an essentially clerical 'corporation', and as the community of all the faithful, the Body of Christ. It was, perhaps, the formation of a 'corporational'-institu;... tional aspect of the concept of the Church which gave increasing importance to the concept of Christian 'temporal' society (Christianitas, populus Christian us, politia or respublica Christiana), not simply identical with the Church." Ladner, "Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," pp. 444-45. 12. Michael Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty in the Later Middle Ages: The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). 13. Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty, p. 28. 14. Quoted in Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty, p. 58. 15. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 8. 16. "Ullman's contention that the mediaeval belief in the superiority of anima over corpus (the primacy of the spiritual) must lead to the doctrine of direct temporal power of the Pope, is not borne out by the sources." Ladner, "The Concepts of 'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," fn. 32 on p. 495.
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17. Etienne Gilson, La philosophic au moyen age: des origines patristiques a la fin du XlVe siecle (Paris: Payot, 1944), p. 257. 18. Ladner, "The Concepts of'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," 492. 19. Quoted in Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 97. 20. Quoted in Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 97. 21. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p.l07. 22. Ladner, "'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," p. 508. 23. Innocent III, "Sermon on the Consecration of a Pope," in Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 131-32. 24. Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050-1250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 431. 25. In the official documents of Innocent's predecessor, Alexander III (1159-1181), plenitude potestatis designated the delegation of power to a papal legate equivalent to the principle of plena potestas in civil and canon law. John B. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [In association with the Medieval Academy of America], 1980), p. 66. 26. On the other hand, Tierney notes that neither of these decretals contained any passages that were incompatible with claims to universal jurisdiction. Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 127-28. 27. Innocent III, letter to King John, accepting his feudal homage (April 1214), in Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 135-36. 28. See on the genesis of vicarius Christi and Innocent Ill's deployment of it in respect to potestas vicaria, that is the pope's authority within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Michele Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi: Storia del titolo papale (Rome: Lateranurn, N.S., xviii, 1953). 29. See the "Sentence of deposition promulgated by Innocent IV in the General Council of Lyon" (June 1245), in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, p.144. 30. Innocent IV, encyclical letter Eger Cui Levia (c.1246), in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, pp. 147-49. Eger Cui Levia also rejects the imperialist interpretation of Constantine's donation of the empire to Pope Sylvester. For imperialists all papal claims to temporal authority rested on this act, which could be rescinded by the present emperor. Against this, Innocent argued that popes had inherited both royal and priestly powers from Christ. Thus, in surrendering the empire to Sylvester, Constantine did not bestow temporal power for the first time on thepapacy, but merely acknowledged the de facto possession of what it already held de jure. 31. Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p. 125. 32. Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p. 126. My translation. 33. Hostiensis, On Decretales,4.17.13, in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, pp. 156-57, at p. 156. 34. Hostiensis, On Decretales, 1.33.6, in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, p.157. 35. See Ullman; Medieval Papalism, pp. 114-37. 36. See Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, pp. 84-85.
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37. Innocent IV, Comments on the decretale Quod Super, quoted in Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p. 126. My translation from the Latin. 38. See Ullman, Medieval Papalism. 39. Innocent IV, Comments on Quod Super, in Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p.126. 40. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, pp. 130-131. 41. On the two swords, see ]. A. Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," in ]. H. Burns (ed.), Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 367-423. Luke quote at p.370. 42. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, p. 22. 43. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, p. 22. 44. Bernard, De consideratione iv, iii, 7, quoted in Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," p. 373. 45. Alanus, Commentary on Dist. 96 c. 6 (c.1202), in Tierney, Crisis 0/ Church and State, pp. 123-24. 46. Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, p. 189. 47. On the Investiture Contest, see Joseph Canning, A History ofMedieval Political Thought 300-1450 (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-110; and 1. S. Robinson, "Church and Papacy," in Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 252-305, esp. pp. 246-48 and pp. 301-4. 48. Huguccio, quoted in Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," p. 376. See also Huguccio, Commentary on Dist. 96 c. 6 (1189-"-91), in Tierney, Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 122-23. 49. Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," p. 372. 50. Wilks, Problem ofSovereignty, p. 79. 51. Francis Oakely, The Medieval Experience (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [in association with the Medieval Academy of America], 1988)~ esp. pp. 105-35. 52. Oakely, The Medieval Experience, p. 111. 53. Oakely, The Medieval Experience, p. 114. 54. Brian Tierney, "Medieval Canon Law and Western Constitutionalism," The Catholic Historical Review, 62:1, 1966, pp. 1-20 at pp. 7-8. 55. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946). 56. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, p. 62. 57. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 63-64. See pp. 61-78 for Kantorowicz's reading of this image. 58. Quoted in Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 63. 59. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 92. 60. Liber Augustalis, or Constitutions ofMelfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick Two fir the Kingdom o/Sicily in 1231, tr. James M. Powell (New York, Syracuse University Press, 1971). 61. Liber Augustalis, p. 4.
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62. LiberAugustalis, p. 92. The following discussion draws heavily on Kantorowicz's consideration of the theological-juristic discourse of the emperor, The King's Two Bodies, pp. 87-143. 63. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, pp. 94-97. 64. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 99. 65. Quoted in Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 106. See pp. 102-7 for Kantorowicz's discussion of lex regia and lex digna. 66. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 137. 67. Dante Alighieri, Monarchia, tr. and ed. Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 68. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 5. 69. See on Aquinas' reasoning, Etienne Gilson, Dante et la philosophic (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1939), pp. 191-92. 70. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 7, and III: xvi, p. 145. 71. Dante, Monarchia, I:iii, p. 9. 72. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 7 and I:iv, p. 11. 73. Dante, Monarchia, III:xiv, p. 141. 74. Dante, Monarchia, III:xv, p. 143. 75. Charles Till Davis, "Dante and the Empire," in Rachel Jacoff (ed.) , The Cambridge Companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 67-79, at p. 68. 76. Dante, Monarchia, III:xvi, p. 149. 77. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, tr. John Ciardi (New York:W. W.Norton, 1970), Purgatorio, XVI, 106-11, p. 280. 78. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Dante's 'Two Suns'," in Kantorowicz, Selected Studies (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 325-38. 79. Gilson, Dante et la philosophie, p. 210. My translation. 80. Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p. 457. 81. Kantorowicz, Kings Two Bodies, p. 465. 82. Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p.465, fn. 41. 83. Donna Mancusi-Ungaro, Dante and the Empire (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), p.26. 84. Dante, Paradiso, XVIII, 92-117, pp. 504-5. See PieroBoitani, "From Darkness to Light: Governance and Government in Purgatorio XVI," in John Woodhouse (ed.), Dante and Governance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 12-26. 85. Dante, Purgatorio, XVI, 94-96, pp. 280. 86. Dante, Paradiso, XXX, 128-38, p. 581. 87. Quoted in Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins ofGothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 62. 88. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr.D Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 266. 89. Georges Duby, The Age o/the Cathedrals: ArtandSociety 980-1420, tr. E. Levieux and B. Thompson (London: Croom Helm, 1981), p. 93. 90. Duby, Age o/the Cathedrals, p. 95.
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91. Quotes from Sugar in Erwin Panofsky, "Introduction" to Abbot Sugar, On the Abbey Church ofSt.-Denis and Its Art Treasures ed. and tr. Panofsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 2. 92. Abbot Sugar, On the Abbey Church ofSt.-Denis, p. 101. 93. The form of "the High Gothic cathedral sought to embody the whole of Christian knowledge, theological, moral, natural and historical, with everything in its place and that which no longer found its place suppressed." Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe, PA: Archabbey Press, 1951), pp. 44-45. 94. Duby, Age ofthe Cathedrals, p. 104. 95. Duby, Age ofthe Cathedrals, p. 104. 96. von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, p. 141. Against the view that Suger understood kingship in sacral terms, some historians argue that his Life ofLouis VI offers a more traditional theory ofkingship as royal suzerainty at the summit of a pyramid of feudal ties. See Andrew W. Lewis, "Suger's Views on Kingship," in Paula Lieber Gerson (ed.), Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986),pp. 9-54. 97. Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, p. 172. The following account of the dispute is drawn from pp. 172-92. 98. Boniface VIII, Ausculta Fili (December 1301), in Tierney, Crisis of Church and States, pp. 185-86. 99. For Aristotle's impact on medieval Christian thought, see Canning, fliitory of Medieval Political Thought, pp. 125-7; and Paul E. Sigmund "Introduction," to St. Thomas Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, tr. and ed, Sigmund (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. xvi-ix. 100. For Canning, Aquinas was not the main conduit ofAristotle's political ideas to the Middle Ages. More influential was Giles of Rome's (Aegidius Romanus) De regimine principum (1286), History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 133~34. 101. See Sigmund, "Introduction," pp. xix-xx. 102. "Gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam," Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Ia, 8,2), quoted in Canning, History ofMedieval Political Thought, p. 145. 103. St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, tr. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), XV:2, p. 598. 104. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum [The Governance of Rulers or On Kingship] (1265-67), tr, P. Sigmund, in Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, Chapter 1, p. 14. 105. Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, p. 15 and pp. 16-17. 106. See "The Treatise on Law (Qu. 90-97)", Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, pp. 44-60. Divine law, the fourth law of the quadrate, is outside this order, for it pertains to God's commands for guidance to supernatural destiny, as revealed to Christians through the Scriptures. 107. Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in IV Libros Sententiarum (125.3,,.,,,.55)/Jin Tierney, Crisis ofChurch and State, p. 171.
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108. Original Latin version of Tractatus de Potestate Regia et Papali (1302-3) in Dom Jean Leclercq,jeande Paris et i'ecciesiologiedu XlIle siecle (Paris: Librairie Philsophique, J. Vrin, 1942), pp. 171-260. English translation is John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, tr. Arthur P. Monahan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). The best overview of the Tractatus is Riviere, Le probleme de ['eglise et de l 'etai, pp. 281-300. 109. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 1-2. 110. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 4. 111. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 7-8. John, like Aquinas, considered kingship, if possible mixed with aristocracy and democracy, to be the best form of government. 112. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 13-14. 113. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 15 (Tractatus de Potestate, p. 181). 114. John of Paris, On Royaland Papal Power, p. 20. 115. See J. P. Canning, "Introduction: Politics, Institutions and Ideas, c. 1150c.1450," to Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 341-66, at
p.
363~
116. The Donation was a Carolingian forgery based on the Legenda sancti Silvestri (Legend of St Sylvester 480-90). See J. P. Kirsch, "Donation of Constantine," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). 117. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 43. 118. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 115. 119. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 115. 120. Riviere, Le probleme de l'eglise et de l'etat, pp. 272-307. 121. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought," in Kantorowicz, Selected Studies,pp. 308-24. 122. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori, p. 312. 123. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori, pp. 314-15.
6
The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy
1. The exception is Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover, 1955). 2. Wallace K Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1948); also Ferguson, "The Reinterpretation of the Renaissance," (1956), reprinted in Wallace K. Ferguson, Renaissance Studies (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 1963), pp. 17-30. See also Johan Huizinga, "The Problem of the Renaissance" (1920) in Huizinga, Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, tr. J. S. Holmes and H. van Marle (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 243-87. 3. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1960), p. 10. 4. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 36.
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Notes
5. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 35. 6. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 35. 7. "quasi prima cagione della rinovazione dell'arte," quoted in Huizinga, "Problem of the Renaissance," p. 247; and "quella greca goffa maniera; et risuscito la moderna, et buona arte della pittura," Vasari, Vita di Giotto, quoted in Federico Chabod, "II Rinascimento," (1942) in Chabod, Scritti sui Rinascimento (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1967), pp. 73-109, at p. 77. 8. On Enlightenment attitudes to the Renaissance, see Huizinga, "Problem of the Renaissance," pp. 248-54. 9. Voltaire, quoted in Huizinga, "Problem of the Renaissance," p. 250. 10. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 410-411. 11. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon Press, 1995). 12. Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy, p. 61. 13. Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy, p. 87. 14. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), P: vii. 15. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, ed, Donald L. Hill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 5. 16. Dana B. Durand, "Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy: 'II Prirnato dell' Italia' in the Field of Science," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 4, 1943, pp. 1-20. 17. Ly~n Thorndike, "Renaissance or Prenaissance," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 4, 1943, pp. 63-74. 18. Thorndike, "Renaissance or Prenaissance," p. 74. 19. Hans Baron, "Towards a More' Positive Evaluation of the Fifteenth-Century Renaissance," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 4, 1943, pp. 21-49. 20. Baron, "Towards a More Positive Evaluation," at pp. 32 and 45. 21. Federico Chabod, "II Rlnascirnento," (1942) in Chabod, Scritti sui Rinascimento, pp. 73-109, at p. 83. My translation. 22. Chabod, "II Rinascimento," p. 92. 23. E. H. Gombrich, "The Renaissance-Period or Movement?" in Background to the English Renaissance: Introductory Lectures, ed. J. B. Trapp (London: Gra.y-Mills Publishing, 1974), pp. 9-30. 24. Wallace K. Ferguson, "The Interpretation of the Renaissance: Suggestions for a Synthesis," (1948) in Ferguson, Renaissance Studies, pp. 125-35. 25. William J. Bouwsma, "The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History," The American Historical Review, 84:1, 1979, pp. 1-15 at p. 5. 26. Bouwsma, "Drama of Western History," p. 8. 27. EusebioColomer, "Individuo e Cosmo in Nicolo Cusano e Giovanni Pico," in L'opera e ilpensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell' umanesimo (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1965), pp~ 53-102, at p. 102. My translation.
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28. My discussion of Ficino and Pico is limited to their writings on space. Useful general introductions can be found in Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, Vol. 11 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1970). 29. For Copenhaver and Schmitt, Ficino's Platonic Theology is "as much patristic and scholastic as classical, depending not only on Plato, Plorinus and Proclus but also on Augustine and Aquinas," Renaissance Philosophy, p. 149. 30. Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), p. 201. In Botticelli's Primavera the space between the earth and moon is filled with nymphs, wood spirits, and demons. 31. John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 562. 32. Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of the Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 101. 33. Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia 1:19, quoted in Pauline Moffitt Watts, "PseudoDionysius the Areopagite and Three Renaissance Neoplatonists: Cusanus, Ficino and Pico op. Mind and Cosmos" in James Hankins, John Monfasani and Frederick Purnell Jr. (eds.), Supplementum Festiuum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Binghampton: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1987), pp. 279-98, at p. 294. 34. Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficin 0, tr. V. Conant (N ew York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 74-75. 35. On Flcino's hierarchy of being, see Kristeller, The Philosophy ofMarsilio Ficino, pp. 104-9. 36. G. Pieo della Mirandola, Heptaplus, quoted in Watts, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," p. 290. 37. Pico, Heptaplus, quoted in Watts, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," 290-291. 38. Pico, Heptaplus~78-79, quoted in R. Waddington, "The Sun at the Centre: Structure as Meaning in Pico della Mirandola's Heptaplus," Journal ofMedieval and Renaissance Studies, 3, 1973, pp. 69-86, at p. 83. 39. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 43. 40. Ficino, quoted in Kristellet, Philosophy ofMarsilio Ficino, p. 120. Kristeller provides a comprehensive discussion of the soul, love, and the principle of affinity in Ficino. 41. Charles Trinkaus, "Marsilio Ficino and the Idea of Human Autonomy," in G. Garfagnini (ed.) Marsilio .Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1986), pp. 197---210. 42. Ficino, Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum, quoted in Trinkaus, "Human Autonomy," p. 201. 43. Ficino, Theologica Platonica II, quoted in Trinkaus, "Human Autonomy," p.204.
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44. Trinkaus, "Human Autonomy," pp. 206 and 207. 45. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," in The Renaissance Philosophy ofMan: Selections in Translation, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and J. H. Randall Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 223-54. 46. Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," p. 224. 47. Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," pp. 224-25. 48. Ernst Cassirer, "Giovanni Pica della Mirandola: A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas," in Paul Oskar Kristeller and Philip P. Wiener (eds.), Renaissance Essays From the Journal of the History ofIdeas (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 11~60, at pp. 45 and 34. 49. Pica, Heptaplus, quoted in Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, p. 519. 50. Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Ficino and Pomponazzi on the Place of Man in the Universe," in Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 102-10, at pp. 109-10. 51. R. B. J. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the Horizons of Contemporary Political Practice," in R. B. J. Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds.), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political CommtJr;..i.ty (Boulder: Lynne Rein ner, 1990), pp. 159-85, at p. 175. 52. Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 2. 53. Kristeller, "Ficino and Pornponazzi," p. 109. More recently, Karsten Harries, Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 54. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, tr. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Banning, 1981). Good introductions to Cusa's cosmology are Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, pp. 108-16; Koyre, From the Closed World, pp. 5~2.3; and Harries, Infinity and Perspective, pp. 22~63. 55. Quoted in Harries, Infinity and Perspective, p. ·50. 56. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 1:1, p. 50. All quotations in this paragraph are from this passage. 57. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 1:2, p. 51. 58. Harries points out that Cusa took the metaphor from Meister Eckhardt who, in turn, refers to the twelfth-century pseudo-Hermetic Liber J0YI1/ philosopborum, Infinity and Perspective, p. 59. 59. Harries, Infinity and Perspective, p. 60. 60. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 11:2, p. 93. 61. See Harris, Infinity and Perspective, p. 60. 62. Cusa quoted in Lovejoy, Great Chain ofBeing, pp. 112-13. 63. Nicholas Copernicus, De revolutionibus erbium coelestium, reprinted in Michael J. Crowe, Theories ofthe Worldfrom Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (New York: Dover, 1990), pp. 102-34. 64. Bertrand Russell, A History o/Western Philosophy (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), p. 513; and Lovejoy, Great Chain ofBeing, pp. 103-4. 65. Harries, Infinity and Perspective, pp. 33-34.
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66. Copernicus assumed that the structure of the universe was based on the symmetry of its parts. He placed the sun, the symbol of good in the Platonic tradition, in the middle of the universe. He assumed that the universe must be a sphere because "of all forms, the sphere is the most perfect." Furthermore, the "earth too is evidently enclosed between poles and is therefore spherical" and "is perfectly round, as the philosophers taught." Copernicus, De revolutionibus, at pp. 114 and 116. 67. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, p. 119. 68. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, pp. 127-28. 69. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, p. 132. 70. Copernicus, De reuolutionibus, p. 133. 71. Ernst Cassirer, Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 132. 72. Cassirer, Myth ofthe State, p. 133. 73. Cassirer, Myth o/the State, p. 136. 74. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). For Pocock, paradigms are language structures whose function is to define and determine the commonly held view of politics in a society, thereby licensing some forms of political belief and action and restricting others. 75. J. H. Hexter, "The Machiavellian Moment," History and Theory, 16:3, 1977, pp.306-37, at p. 316. 76. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53. 77. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53. 78. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53. 79. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 56-57. 80. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment,p. 165. 81. Gennaro Sasso, "Machiavelli e la teoria dell~nacyclosis,"Rivista Storica Italiana, 70:1, 1958, pp. 333-73. See Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Levio, ed. Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1984), I:ii. For a useful comparison of Polybius .and Machiavelli, see Leslie J. Walker, "Notes on Book I," in The Discourses of'Niccolo Machiavelli, ed. Walker (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), pp. 6-13. 82. Sasso, "Machiavelli e Anacyclosis," p. 340 83. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:ii, p. 67. This and all subsequent quotes are my translations. 84. Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), p. 199. 85. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 184. 86. Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 19. 87. Anthony]. Parel, The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 65. Cary J. Nederrnan, "Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and Free Will in Machiavelli's Thought," Journal 0/the History ofIdeas, 60:4, 1999,
226
87.
88.
89. 90.
91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.
100. 101. 102. 103. 104.
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Notes
Notes
pp. 617-38 argues against Parel that Christian providentialisrn still underscores Machiavelli's concept ofJortuna. Parel argues that Machiavelli's references tofortuna in his political writings shows that he is still beholden to the beliefs of a premodern mindset, such as a belief that the heavens determine man's destiny. A.]. Parel, "The Question of Machiavelli's Modernity," The Review ojPolitics, 53:2, 1991, pp. 320-29, at p. 321. Niccolo Machiavelli, II Principe, ed. Arthur L. Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), XVI, pp. 365-67 and p. 358. These and subsequent quotations are my translations. Mikael Horriqvist, Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236. Giuseppe Prezzoli ni, Machiavelli: Anticristo (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1954), p. 30. My translation. Compare Strauss's view of II Principe as "immoral and irreligious" and Machiavelli as a "teacher of evil with Sebastian De Grazia's claim that the many references to God "[s] cattered about his writings ... like poppies in a field of chick peas" indicates that scholastic categories of knowledge and Christian cultural norms pervade Machiavelli's writing to the extent that he "discourses about God always in the conventional reverent attitude." Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1969), pp. 9-10 and p. 12; and Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), pp. 58-59. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 96. Machiavelli, II Principe, XI, p. 248. Machiavelli, Discorsi, II:ii, p. 299. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xi, p. 92. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xi, p. 93. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 95. J. Samuel Preus, "Machiavelli's Functional Analysis of Religion: Context and Object," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, XL:2, 1979, pp. 171-90. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 94. Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli," in Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History ofIdeas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: The Hogarth Press, 1979), pp. 25-79. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III:i, p. 461. Bernard Guillemain, Machiavel: L'anthropologie politique (Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 1977), p. 328. My translation. Guillemain, Machiauel.L'anthropologie politique, p. 328. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 135. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 140.
7
Machiavelli, Territoriality and Lo Stato
1. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Machiavelli: Anticristo (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1954), p. 3. 2. Eusebio Colomer, "Individuo e Cosmo in Nicolo Cusano e Giovanni Pico," in L'opera e ilpensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell'umanesirno
(Florence:
Istituto Nazionale di Studi suI Rinascimento,
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MCM LXV) ,
pp. 53---102, at p. 102. My translation. 2. The secondary literature on the meaning of lo stato in Renaissance political theory is extensive. I have found particularly useful, Nicolai Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato in Florence before Machiavelli," in J. G. Rowe and w. H. Stockdale (eds.), Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K Ferguson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), pp. 313-26; Quentin Skinner, "The State," in Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell L. Hanson (eds.), Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 90-131; Federico Chabod, "Esiste uno State del Rinascimento?" in Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1967), pp. 593~623; and Chabod, "Alcune questioni di terminologia: Stato, nazione, patria nel linguaggio del Cinquecento," in Scritti sul Rinascimento, pp. 625~61. 3. Skinner, "The State," p. 98. 4. These examples are from Rubinstein and Skinner respectively. 5. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 315. 6. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 317. 7. Skinner, "The State," p. 101. 8. Vespasiano and Guicciardini are both quoted in Skinner, "The State," p. 101. 9. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 319. My translation. 10. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 318. Rubinstein claims that by the time Piero de Medici was ousted in 1494 "the theoretical concept of stato as constitution had lost most of its original meaning by the transformation of the power structure of Florence into the Medici regime." p. 319. 11. Felix Gilhert,Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965),p. 177. 12. Skinner, "The State," p. 100. 13. Skinner, "The State," p. 102. 14. Skinner, "The State," p. 103. 15. ]. H. Hexter, The Vision ofPolitics on the Eve ofthe Reformation: More, Machiavelli and Seyssel (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 175. 16. Prezzolini, Machiavelli, pp. 14-17. 17. F. Chiappelli, Studi suI linguaggio de/Machiavelli, quoted in Skinner, "The State," p. 102. 18. Chabod, "Esiste uno State," p. 604. My translation. 19. Although this concept of the modern state was a product of the seventeenthcentury tradition of natural law absolutism, represented by Bodin, Suarez, Grotius, and Hobbes, the Renaissance republican idea that the res publica, the community, was the ultimate source of authority, and that the rulers and magistrates were merely elected officials was also influential. Skinner, "The State," p.l07. 20. Niccolo Machiavelli, Il Principe, ed. L. Arthur Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), 1, pp. 173-74. All subsequent citations are from this text and are my translations, unless stated otherwise.
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21. Machiavelli, II Principe, p. 183. Allan Gilbert translates this as "[t]he remote origin and long continuance of such sovereignty," Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince in Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others: Volume One, tr. Gilbert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), p. 12. 22. Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (New York: Harvester Wheatshea£ 1989), pp. 158-59. 23. Adolf Berger, Encyclopaedic Dictionary ofRoman Law (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), p. 441. 24. Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. I~ 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p.949. 25. F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 26. 26. Jens Bartleson, A Genealogy ofSovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 88-136. 27. Bartleson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty, p. 136. Bartleson rejects the "Renaissance hypothesis" that the 1494 French expedition into Italy symbolized the moment when the state began to be imagined as distinct from an international system existing outside of its borders. Because there was no rigid differentiation between the inside and outside of particular states in Renaissance discourse, the notion of the international as a realm of the relations between autonomous states "dependent on yet ontologically distinguishable from individual states" was not possible. 28. Bartleson, A Genealogy ofSovereignty, p. 118. 29. Hinsley, Sovereignty, p. 113. 30. See Walter Ullman, "The Development of the Medieval Idea of Sovereignty," English Historical Review, 64, 1949, pp. 1-33. 31. "Rexpoterit in regno suo, quod imperator in terra imperii . . . Liberi reges tantum habent in regnis suis quantum imperator in imperio," quoted in Ullman, "The Development of the Medieval Idea of Sovereignty," p. 24. 32. Walter Ullman, "Personality and Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis': The Problem of Political Humanism," in Ullman, Law andJurisdiction in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), pp. 397-410. For Ullman the development of the principle of territorial sovereignty could be seen in the changing intitulations of kings from Rex Francorum to Rex Franciae and from Rex Anglorum to Rex Angliae. 33. Ullman, "Personality and Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis'," p. 401. 34. Robert could not "potest trahi extra territoriurn," see Ullman, "Personality and Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis'," p. 402. 35. DeGrazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 159. 36. "se io potessi sbucare del dominio," Machiavelli, quoted in de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 159. 37. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 320. In diplomatic documents despotic states had the same status as republics. 38. Rubinstein, "Notes on theWord Stato," fn. 79, p. 326. 39. Chabod, "Alcune questioni," p. 631. My translation.
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40. Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in Graham Burchill, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatshea£ 1991), pp. 87-104, at p. 104. Foucault argues that the sixteenthcentury territorial administrative state, analogous to the territorial a priori, of International Relations was supplanted in the classical age by the "governmental state," no longer defined by its surface area or territory but by a population which it controls through economic savoir. 41. Foucault, "Governmentality," p. 93. 42. Foucault, "Governmentality," p. 90. 43. Foucault, "Governmentality," p.90. 44. Sheldon S. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy ofViolence," in Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 195-238, at p. 221. 45. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, pp. 253-55. 46. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 277. 47. See, especially, Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art ofWar, tr. and ed. N. Wood (New York: Da Capo, 1965). 48. As first secretary of the Ten of Liberty and Peace and later as secretary to the Nine of the Florentine Ordinance and Militia, Machiavelli had been personally involved in the recruitment and training of troops, conducting operations and negotiating treaties, and in proposing statutes governing the recruiting, equipping, paying, and disciplining of native infantry.. See de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, pp. 93-97; and Machiavelli, "LaCagione dell'Ordinanza," in Niccolo Machiavelli, L'Arte della Guerra, Scritti Politici Minori (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2001), pp. 470-476. 49. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 255. 50. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 255. 51. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 256. 52. Machiavelli, The Art ofWar, I, p. 40. 53. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy of Violence," p. 221. 54. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca diTito Levio, ed. Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1984), III:iii, p. 467. My translation. Machiavelli's reference is to Brutus who, according to Livy, not only ordered the death but attended the execution of his sons, the rebellious Tarquins. 55. Machiavelli, Discorsi, Irxxi, p. 114. 56. Machiavelli, II Principe, X, p. 244. 57. Machiavelli, II Principe, X, p. 244. 58. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," pp. 320-321. 59. Elana Fasano Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," The Journal ofModern History, 67, 1995, 574-96, at 574. 60. Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," S74-75. 61. Elena Fasano Guarani, "Machiavelli and the Crisis of the Italian Republics," in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds.), Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 17-40.
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62. Machiavelli, quoted in Guarani, "Machiavelli and the Crisis of the Italian Republics," p. 23. 63. See the extracts in Machiavelli, The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, pp. 161-2. 64. In 1502 and 1503 Machiavelli was sent on official missions to Valentino's courts at Imolaand Cesana, and then to the Papal court in Rome. From these courts he sent detailed dispatches to the Ten of Liberty reporting on the status of the ongoing alliance negotiations between Florence and Borgia. In these legations Machiavelli describes Cesare's rise and fall. See the extracts from Legation 11, "An Official Mission to Duke Valentino in Romagna" in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 1, pp. 121-42; and Legation 13, ''An Official Mission to the Court of Rome" in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 1, pp. 142-60. In the Roman legation Machiavelli reports on the death of Pope Alexander in 1503 and the succession ofJulius II; these events reappear in The Prince as the blow offortuna which ultimately cost Cesare his princedom. On Cesare's elimination of the Vitelli and Orsini factions in January 1503, see Machiavelli, 'A Description of the Method Used by Duke Valentino in Killing Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto cia Fermo, and Others' in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 1, pp. 163-9. 65. Machiavelli, The Prince, r- 31. 66. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, tr, Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp.136-138. 67. Pierangelo Schiera, "Legitimacy, Discipline and Institutions: Three Necessary Conditions for the Birth of the Modern State," The Journal ofModern History, 67: Supplement (December 1995), pp. SI1-33, at pp. S30 and S32 68. Marsiglio of Padua, quoted in Schiera, "Legitimacy, Discipline and Institutions," p. S19. 69. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1:12, in The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, p. 227. 70. Machiavelli, Art ofWar, 6, in The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, p. 69. 71. Sacchetti quoted in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 1979), p. 165. 72. Martin Warnke, Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), p. 40. 73. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 166. 74. Guarani, "Center and Periphery," S81-82. 75. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:vi, p. 78. 76. S. Zamperetti, 1 piccoli principi: Signorie locali, feudi e comunita soggette nello Stato regionale veneto dall' espansione territoriale ai primi decenni del' 600, quoted in Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," S86. 77. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy of Violence," p. 219. 78. Niccolo Machiavelli, The History ofFlorence, in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 3, I: xxix, p. 1069. 79. William E. Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory and Violence," Theory, Culture and Society, 11:1, 1994, pp. 19-40, at p. 22. 80. Machiavelli, II Principe, III, pp. 183-200. 81. Machiavelli, Il Principe, III, p. 187.
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82. The problems that Florence faced in keeping hold of cities with traditions of liberty also exercised Guicciardini, "it has been harder for the Florentines to acquire their small dominion than for the Venetians to gain their large one. For the Florentines are in a province that used to be full of free republics, which are very difficult to extinguish. It requires the greatest effort to conquer them and, once conquered, it is no less difficult to keep them.... The cities captured by the Venetians have been used to being subjected and lack the determination to defend themselves or to rebel.' Ricordo 29, Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi, Diari, Memorie, ed. Mario Spinella (Rorna: Editori Riun iti, 1981), p. 150. My translation. 83. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p.163. 84. Machiavelli, Il Principe, III, p. 186. 85. Antonio Crarnsci, Quaderno 29 "Note per una introduzione allo studio della grammarica," in Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere, Vol III (Giulio Einaudi, 1975), pp. 2339-53. 86. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alIa nostra lingua," in Niccolo Machiavelli, Tutte Le Opere, ed. Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (Firenze: G. Barbera, 1929), pp. 770-78. 87. de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 146. 88. Quoted in de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 148. 89. Machiavelli, "Letter to Francesco Vettori," April 16, 1527, quoted in de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 420. 90. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alIa nostra lingua," pp. 770-71. My translation. 91. The terms piccola patria and la grande patria are from Chabod, ''Alcune Questione." In most Italian quattrocento texts patria refered to the city, although it occasionally denoted the wider collectivity. 92. Machiavelli, Il Principe, XXIV, "Esortazione a Liberare L'Italia da' Barbari," pp.365-71. 93. Machiavelli, II Principe, XXIV, p. 367. 94. Machiavelli, II Principe, XVI, p. 371. Patria here denotes Florence, which will be ennobled if the Medici take on the role of liberating Italy. 95. Translation from Petrarch, Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, tr. James Wyatt Cook (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995, p. 185. "Italia Mia" is on pages pp. 182-87. 96. See on these debates: Felix Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism in Machiavelli's Prince," Studies in the Renaissance, 1, 1954, pp. 38-48; David Laven, "Machiavelli, italianita and the French invasion of 1494," in David Abulafia (ed.), The French Descent into Renaissance Italy: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot:Variorum, 1995), pp. 355-69; and Hans Baron, "The Principe and the Puzzle. of the Date of Chapter 26," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 21:1, 1991, pp. 83-102.
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Notes
97. Prezzolini, Machiavelli.· Anticristo, p. 73. 98. Federico Chabod, L'idea di nazione (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1962), p. 7. My translation. 99. See, for example, Machiavelli, Discorsi, III:xliii, p. 565. 100. Niccolo Machiavelli, "Ritratto di case di Francia," Machiavelli, Tutte Le Opere, pp.731-39. 101. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua," p. 771. 102. Vincent Ilardi, "'Italianita' among Some Italian Intellectuals in the Early Sixteenth Century," Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History> Thought and Religion, 12, 1956, pp. 339-67, at p. 362. 103. Petrarch, "Italia Mia," lines 21, 30, and 56. 104. Petrarch, "Italia Mia," lines 80-86. 105. Fazio degli Uberti, Rime, XVII "Ai Signori e Popoli d Ttalia, Serventese," at http://www.classicitaliani.it/trecento/fazio_uberti04.htm. 106. Salutati, quoted in Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 4l. 107. On Flavio Biondo see The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11 (Online 2003), http:// www.newadvent.org/cathen/02575a.htm. 108. Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, p. 255. 109. Petrarch, "Ital ia Mia," lines 33-35. 110. Petrarch, "ItaliaMia," lines 74 and21. 111. Denys Hay, "Italy and Barbarian Europe," in Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. E. F. Jacobs (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), pp. 48---68. 112. Hay, "Italy and Barbarian Europe," pp. 57-58. 113. Machiavelli, History ofFlorence, V:i, p. 1233. 114. Marcel Gagneux, "Iralianire, Patrie Florentine et service de L'Eglise dans l'oeuvre et dans la vie de Francois Guichardin," in Quetes d>une identite collective chez lesItaliens de la Renaissance (Paris: Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1990), pp. 67-119, at p. 80. 115. Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d Ttalia; ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi (Torino: Giulio Einaud i, 1971), IV:vi, pp. 376 and 377. 116. Guicciardini, quoted in Gagneux, "Italianite," fn. 44, p. 80. 117. Guicciardini, Storia d Ttaiia, I:ix, p. 78. My translation. 118. Ilardi, "Italianita," p. 359. 119. Ilardi, "Italianita," p. 359. 120. Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 44. 121. Quoted in Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 43. 122. Machiavelli, History 0/Florence, VI:xxxvi, p. 1435.
8
Picturing Renaissance Territoriality
1. 'Niccolo Machiavelli, 11Principe, ed. L. Arthur Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1891), pp. 173-74. 2. Leonardo, quoted in RogerD. Masters, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science 0/Power (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p. 52.
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3. Carlo Ginzburg, "Distanza e prospettiva: Due metafore," in Ginzburg, Occhiacci di legno: Nove riflessioni sulla distanza (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998), pp. 171-93. 4. John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations," International Organization, 47: 1, 1993, pp. 139-74, at p. 159. 5. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 159. 6. Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, tr. C. S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 27. 7. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, fn. 5, p. 77. 8. "[L]a 'Grande Charte' de LaRenaissance', Henri Focillon, Piero della Francesca (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), p. 100. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, tr. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin Books, 1991). The best introduction to Alberti and perspective is Alison Cole, Perspective (London: Darling KindersLey, 1992). 9. Martin Kemp, Behind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 95-96. 10. Alberti, quoted in Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 90. 11. Martin Kemp, "Introduction" to Alberti, On Painting, p. 2. 12. Giulio Carlo Argan, "The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins of Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth Century," Journal 0/ the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 9, 1946, pp. 96-121. 13. Alberti, On Painting, p. 37. 14. Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 93. 15. Alberti, On Painting, p. 53. 16. Alberti, On Painting,pp. 64-65. 17. On Alberti's notion of the virtuous painter, see Kemp, Behind the Picture, pp.96-97. 18. Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 96. 19. Focillon, Piero della Francesca, p. 104. My translation. 20. Alessandro Angelini, Piero della Francesca (Florence: Scala, 1985), p. 17. 21. Focillon, Piero della Francesca,p. 112. My translation. 22. On De prospectiva pingendi see Kemp, Behind the Picture, pp. 97-101; Marco Bussagli, Piero della Francesca (Firenze:Giunti, 1992), pp. 5-13; and James Elkins, "Piero della Francesca and the Renaissance Proof of Linear Perspective," The Art Bulletin, 69:2, 1987, pp. 220-30. 23. Cole, Perspective, p. 18. The squares of the terra cotta pavement are eight wide and deep, there are eight-pointed stars behind and in front of Christ, and an octagonal arrangement of patterned floor tiles around the stars. The piazza, in which the foreground figures are standing, is eight units deep into the shade of the middle distance, and then another eight units deep into light-flooded areas in front of the far wall. 24. Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, p. 15. My translation. 25. Henri Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, tr, Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 79.
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Notes
26. Denis Cosgrove, "Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea," Transactions of the Institute ofBritish Geographers: New Series, 10, 1985, pp. 45-62, at p. 55. 27. Martin Jay, "Scopic Regimes of Modernity," in Hal Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988), pp. 3--23. For Jay, Cartesian perspectivalism, which combined philosophical ideas of subjective rationality with the artistic principles of perspective, was the dominant visual model or "scopic regime" of modernity. Although Cartesian-Perspectivalism was preeminent because it seemed to best express "the 'natural' experience of sight valorised by a scientific world-view," it was challenged by two counter regimes: (1) an "art of describing," as in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, based in cartographic principles; and (2) a "madness of vision," as in Baroque art, which flaunted the opacity of the sublime subject and underscored the rhetorical conventionality of sight. 28. Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1983), p. 94. 29. Perspective erased "the living body itself: this is a space dominated by the eye and the gaze." Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), p. 392. 30. John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), p. 121. 31. Argan, "Architecture of Brunelleschi," p. 96. 32. Jay, "Scopic Regimes," at pp. 4 and 6. 33. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, pp. 42 and 34. 34. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, p. 58. 35. Samuel Y. Edgerton, jr, The Renaissance Rediscovery ofLinear Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 161. 36. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery ofLinear Perspective, p. 7. 37. James Elkins, The Poetics ofPerspectiue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp.28-29. 38. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, p. 78. 39. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (London: Penguin Books, 1961). 40. Richard Krautheirner, "The Panels in Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin Reconsidered," in Henry A. Millon (ed.), Italian Renaissance Architecture: From Brunelleschi to Michelangelo (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 233--56, at p. 238. 41. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art ofBuilding in Ten Books, tr. Joseph Rykwerr, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988). 42. For an overview of the theme of the ideal city in the Renaissance, with particular emphasis on Alberti's De re aedificatoria and Filarete's Trattato d'architettura, see Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution in Europe, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 42-67. 43. Fiske Kimball, "Luciano Laurana and the 'High Renaissance'," Art Bulletin, 10, 1927-8, pp. 124-51. The only other grand visionary urban settings produced
44.
45. 46.
47. 48.
49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.
61.
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235
until the second decade of the Cinquecento were the doors of the ducal apartment in the palace ofUrbino(1474-82). Andre Chastel, "Vues urbaines, peintres et theatre," quoted in Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, tr. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 225. Alessandro Parronchi, "Due note, 2. Urbino-Baltimora-Berlino," Rinascimento, 29, 1968,pp. 355-61. Richard Krautheirner, "The Tragic and Comic scenes of the Renaissance: The Baltimore and Urbino Panels," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 33, 1948, pp. 327-48. He retracted this reading in "The Panels in Urbina, Baltimore and Berlin Reconsidered." Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, pp. 238-39. Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, p. 446. Damisch views the panels as "representations of representation," a demonstration of perspective. He is interested in how costrueione legittima functions as a dispositif or model "what linguists call an 'expressive apparatus' (dispositifd'enonciation, sometimes translated as 'sentence structure')." Costruzione legittima is "characterised by the conjunction, the bringing together at a given point designated the 'origin', of lines that measure the declension of figures, by establishing their relationship to a shared horizon line, while simultaneously determining their conj ugation on a plane.," p. xxi. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 53. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 341. Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A Knopf: 1979)., p. 272. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 275. Denis Cosgrove, "Prospect, Perspective," p. 49. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992), p. xv. Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), esp. pp. 212-51. Sennett, Flesh and Stone, p. 227. Dolfin, quoted in Sennett, Flesh and Stone, pp. 234-35. Ghetto means foundry in Italian from the verb gettare, to pour. Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 271-76. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 274. Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 118. Alberti's utopia was a product of its time, "adapted to the realities of fifreenth-century Italy and thus envisioned under different forms of government-a republic; a prince ruling in accord with his subjects; or one imposing his will, a tyrannus." Krautheimer, "The Panels Reconsidered," p. 255. Francoise Choay, The Rule and Method: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 5. De re aedificatoria was presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and printed by Poliziano in 1485.
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J. P. Lowe, "Patronage and Territoriality in Early Sixteenth Century Florence," Renaissance Studies, 7:3, 1993, pp. 258-7l. Lowe, "Patronage and Territoriality," p. 260. The best discussion of the Urbina Portraits is Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca (Milano: Instituto Editoriale Italiano, 1971), pp. 355-71. See also Angelini, Piero della Francesca, pp. 60-7; and Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, pp. 43-47. Originally the two portraits were separated by a hinge that allowed them to be opened and shut like a book. When closed, the cover showed the two allegorical triumphs. The precise dates of the portraits remains u~known. Battista's portraits were probably commissioned by Federico after her death in July 1472. Bussagli claims Federico's portraits were painted before 1467. For Battisti, Federico's allegorical triumph is a reference to his crowning in Rome which means it must be dated after the summer of 1474. Focillon dates both portraits to Piero's residency in Urbino in 1456. Bussagli notes that it was not until 1834 that claims that they were portraits of either Francesco Petrarca and Laura or of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and his consort Isotta degli Atti were abandoned. Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, p. 45. My translation of Bussagli's Italian translation from the Latin. The Montefeltro had been mercenaries since the Middle Ages. The profession had given them the resources to control their terre castellate in the mountainous frontier region between the Papal domains and Imperial territories. According to Vespasiano da Bisticci, Federico's military virtu was partially derived from his mastery of Latin, which allowed him to absorb the lessons of the ancients. See the excerpts from Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite, in Eugenio Garin, II Rinascimento Italiano (Bologna: Capelli, 1980), pp. 236--38. Niccolo Machiavelli, The History of Florence, Chief Works and Others, Vol. III, tr. Allan Gilbert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), VII:xxxi, p. 1376. Machiavelli notes several subsequent shifts ofallegiance by Federico. From 1447-8 Federico served Florence as a general against King Alfonso of Naples. However in 1452 he commanded 12,000 of Alfonso's troops against Florence. Between 1467 and 1474 Federico was once again in the pay of Florence, campaigning against Venice and quelling disturbances in Volterra. Then as a papal soldier, Federico again fought against Florence, leading an attack on the city of Radda in 1478. Darnisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 187. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 188. Pierantonio Paltrorii, Commentari della vita et gesti dell'illustrissimo Federico Duca d'Urbino, quoted in C. W. Westfall, "Chivalric Declaration: The Palazzo Ducale in Urbino as aPolitical Statement," in Henry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin (eds.), Art and Architecture in the Service ofPolitics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), pp. 20-45. Baldassarre Castiglione, II libro del Cortegiano, ed. Ettore Bonora (Milano: Mursia, 1972), r.u, p. 33. My translation. Castiglione, Illibro del Cortegiano, p. 33
62. 1(. 63. 64.
65. 66.
67.
68.
69. 70. 71.
72. 73.
Notes
Notes
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237
74. da Bisticci notes that these objects were not just for show, but reflected the fact that Federico was himself a man of high culture: well-read in history, conversant with philosophy, knowledgeable of architecture, and appreciative of music, sculpture and painting. Vite, pp. 236-37. 75. Westfall, "Chivalric Declaration," pp. 28-31. 76. A. Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 11-12. 77. Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (London: John Murray, 1949), p. 14. 78. Scholars disagree when ·landscape painting emerged as a distinctive genre. E. H. Gombrich, "The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of Landscape," in Gombrich, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art o/the Renaissance (London: Phaidon Press, 1966), pp. 107-21, argues that Giorgione's Tempesta (c.1512) was the first landscape painting. Clark dates the origins of the landscape of fact earlier to Gentile da Fabriano's Flight into Egypt 1423, which, although still replete with symbolism, is the first painting where the details of a landscape are united by light rather than by decorative arrangements. Clark, Landscape into Art, p. 15. 79. Turner, Vision ofLandscape, pp. 9-10. 80. Turner, Vision ofLandscape, p. 3. .. 81. William E. Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory and Violence," Theory, Culture and Society, 11:1, 1994, pp. 19-40. 82. Battisti, Piero, pp. 357-58. Federico's biographers attributed these innovations directly to the prince. Castiglione reasoned that Federico's subjects enjoyed the fruits of fertile and abundant lands because of the wise and just rule of their ottimi Signori. Castiglione, II libra del Cortegiano, I:ii, pp. 33. For da Bisticci, Federico took a personal interest in the cultivation of the land: he provided housing and security for the agricultural laborers, and personally visited their workshops and farms to enquire into their well-being., da Bisticci, Vite, p. 238. 83. Andrew Martindale, "The Middle Ages of Andrea Mantegna," Journal of the Royal Society ofArts, 127, 1979, pp. 627-42, at p. 631. 84. Angelini, Piero della Francesca, p. 66. 85. Angelini, Piero della Francesca, p.62. 86. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 188. 87. Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 88. 88. The Geographia was introduced into the Western tradition by Manuel Chrysoloras and Jacopo d'Angelo. The first edition, without maps, was published in Venice in 1475, the first with maps in Bologna 1477. Six editions were published before 1500. The general ideas rather than the work as a whole are derived from Ptolemy himself. The Geographia was compiled by Byzantium scholars in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the maps were drawn by a Greek monk Maximos Planudes around 1300. See, W. G. L. Randles, De la terre plate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique rapide (1480-1520) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980).
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89. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr, "From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian
90.
91. 92. 93. 94. 95.
Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance," in David Woodward (ed.), Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 10'-50. Dana B. Durand, "Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy: 'II Prirnato dell'Italia' in the Field of Science," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, IV, 1943, pp. 1-20, at p. 5. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 14. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," pp. 12-15. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 11. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 13. P. D. A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), p. 58. The following discussion draws heavily on Harvey. John Marino accepts that in Europe only Italy had a "map consciousness" but warns that it was premised in "an integrated cosmography of spiritual and geographical knowledge," John Marino, "Administrative Mapping in the Italian States," in David Buisseret (ed.),
Monarchs, Ministers and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as ia Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 5-25, at p. 5. Harvey, History of Topographical Maps, p. 76. Harvey, History of Topographical Maps, p. 155. Machiavelli, II Principe, XIV, pp. 279-80. Harvey, History ofTopographical Maps, p. 59.
96. 97. 98. 99. 100. These fifteenth-century maps were not sophisticated. They had no consistent scale, tended to overemphasize the main city, and rarely illustrated more than the fortifications of outlying towns. 101. Marino, ''Administrative Mapping,"·p. 6. 102. Denis Cosgrove, "The Geometry of Landscape: Practical and Speculative Arts in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Land Territories," in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds.), The Iconography ofLandscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 254-76. 103. Marino, "Administrative Mapping," p. 7.
9
Notes
University Press, 1961). For a strident critique of O'Gorman see Wilcomb
4.
5. 6. 7.
E. Washburn, "The Meaning of 'Discovery' in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," The American Historical Review, 68:1, 1962, pp. 1-21. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 39. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 41. W. G. L. Randles, De la terreplate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique rapide (1480-1520) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980). Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeralda de Situ Orbis (Lisbon: 1508), quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 38. My translation. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 39. My translation.
8. 9. Although the term terraqueous globe was first used in the seventeenth century, Randles believes all the essential elements were in place by the middle of the sixteenth. 10. Pedro Margalho, Physices Compendium (Salamanca: 1520), quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 65. My translation. 11. Randles, De La terre plate, p. 90. My translation. 12. "Digest of Columbus's Log Book on his First Voyage made by Bartolome de las Casas," in Christopher Columbus, The Four Voyages, ed. and tr. ]. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 37-76, at pp. 71-72. 13. Fernando Colon, The History of the Life and Deeds of the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus, [Repertorium Columbianum Vo/XII] , tr. Geoffrey Symcox and Blair Sullivan (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004), LVI, p. 124. 14. See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 109. 15. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 101. 16. Columbus, "Lettera Rarissima," 7/7/1503, in Columbus, The Four Voyages, pp. 283-304, esp. pp. 287-89. 17. Vespucci, "Letter to Lorenzo de Medici," 4/6/1501, cited in O'Gorman,
Invention ofAmerica. 18. Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus Novus or "Sornmario di Amerigo Vespucci fioren-
1. Martin Wight, Systems ofStates, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), pp. 114-15.
1992).
239
3. Edmundo O'Gorman, The Invention of America (Bloomington: Indiana
The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society
2. William E. Connolly, "Identity and Difference in World Politics," in James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), In ternational/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 323---42. See also David Campbell, WritingSecurity: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics ofIdentity (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
•
19. 20. 21. 22.
tino, di due sue navigazioni, al magnifico M. Pietro Soderni ... ," in Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navigazione e Viaggi; Vol. 1, ed.Marcia Milanesi (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1978), pp. 670-81, at p. 670. My translation. The Ramusio version is a translation from the Latin Mundus Novus, itself a translation from the original (lost) Italian letter, which Vespucci originally addressed to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici. Not all scholars accept that this document is genuine. Vespucci, Mundus Novus, p -.672. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 72. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 117. O'Gorman, The Invention ofA merica, p. 122. See "The Four Voyages ofAmerigo Vespucci," [translation of the Latin "Quatuor Americi Vespuccici Navigationes," itself a translation of Vespucci's Italian letter to Pier Soderini (Sept 1504)] in
240
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Notes
Martin Waldseemiiller, The Cosmographiae Introductio, [1507 Academy St Die], tr. Mario E. Cosenza,ed.Charles George Herbermann (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), pp. 84-151, esp. pp. 133-44. 23. Waldseemiiller, Cosmographiae Introductio, IX, p. 70. 24. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 124. 25. O'Gorman, The Invention of America, p. 124. Washburn disagrees with O'Gorman that when Waldseemiiller uses inventa est to describe Vespucci's relationship to America it can be translated as conceived of rather than discovered. Accordingly, the argument that Vespucci was the real discoverer in the sense of conceiver of America as the fourth part of the world is doubtful. Washburn, "The Meaning of 'Discovery'," pp. 12-15. Conversely, Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), quotes Waldseemiiller's "alia quarta pars pe~ Americum Vesputium ... inventa est" in support of O'Gorman's claim that invenio can be translated as conceive rather than invent. Fn. 11, p. 189. 26. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, pp. 129-30. 27. The Bull Romanus Pontifex (Nicholas V, January 8 1455), tr. Frances Gardiner Davenport, in Davenport (ed.) , European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), pp. 20---26. 28. Colon, History ofthe Life, p. 98. 29. "Treaty between Spain and Portugal, concluded at Alcacovas, September 4 1479," tr. J. A. Robertson, in Davenport (ed.), European Treaties, pp. 43-48, at p. 44. 30. The Bull Aeterni Regis (Sixtus IV, June 21 1481), tr. Davenport, in Davenport (ed.), European Treaties, pp. 53-55. 31. The Bull Eximiae Devotionis (Alexander VI, May 3 1493), tr. Davenport, in Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 67-70. 32. Inter Caetera or "Papal Decree Granting Castile Sovereignty over the Indies," Rome, June 1493, in The Book of Privileges issued to Christopher Columbus by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, 1492-1503, ed. and tr. Helen Nader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 93-98, at P: 96. The second Inter Caetera has been interpreted as a concession to the Portuguese, who were seemingly guaranteed exclusive rights to all navigational routes throughout Africa, the eastern Atlantic and all territories to the East. Davenport argues that because the Portuguese are not mentioned directly this interpretation is too strong. 33. Adam Watson, "European International Society and its Expansion," in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion ofInternational Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 13-32. 34. Inter Caetera, pp. 93-95. 35. Christopher Columbus, "The Spanish Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant'Angel," 4/3/1492, in Columbus, The Four Voyages of Columbus: A History in Eight Documents, ed. Cecil Jane (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), pp. 2-19, at p. 2.
Notes
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241
36. Christopher Columbus, journal of the First Voyage, ed. and tr. B. W. Ife (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990), p. 3. 37. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, p. 3 38. A good general history is John Edwards, Inquisition (Gloucester: Tempus, 1999). 39. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, 6/11/1492, p. 75. 40. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, tr. Richard Howard (London: Harper Collins, 1985), p. 50. 41. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, 12/11/1492, p. 77. 42. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 43. Columbus, quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 7l. 44. Inter Caetera, p. 96. 45. Michael Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," in Bull and Watson (eds.), The Expansion ofInternational Society, pp. 75-85. 46. Quoted in Miguel Batllori. S. J., "The Papal Division of the World and Its Consequences," in Fred Chiappelli (ed.), First Images ofAmerica: The Impact of the New World on the Old (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 211-21, at p. 213. 47. Luis Weckmann-Munoz, "The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493: Pseudo-Asiatic Documents," in Chiappelli, First Images ofAmerica, pp. 201-10, at p. 20l. 48. Weckmann-Munoz, "The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493," p. 203. 49. Batllori, "The Papal Division ofthe World," p. 215. 50. Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," p. 80. See my discussion of these ideas in chapter five. 51. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 119; and Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," p. 80. 52. "Santa Fe Capitulations," Santa Fe, 17 April 1492, The Book of Privileges, pp.63-66. 53. "Granada Capitulations," Granada, 30 April 1492, The Book of Privileges, pp. 66-69, at p. 67. 54. On the Portuguese navigation of the Western coast of Africa and its consequences for the rivalry between Portugal and Spain, see Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), esp. pp. 46-88. 55. Henry Vignaud, Toscanelli and Columbus (London: Sands, 1903). 56. Ferdinand and Isabella Letter, quoted in Nader, "Introduction," Book of Privileges, p. 2l. 57. Nader, "Notes on the Translation," Book ofPrivileges, p. 197. 58. Nader, "Introduction," Book ofPrivileges, p. 29. 59. The lawyers in the Royal Chancellery phrased the capitulations as contingent grants. The concessions became operative only if Columbus discovered and took possession of any islands or mainland in the name of the monarchs. During the negotiations and preparations the purpose and destination of the voyage was kept secret. Documents described the voyage in the vaguest terms to "certain parts of the Ocean Sea" so as to avoid spies reporting back to Portugal. On Columbus' return to the court he asked the monarchs to elevate
242
60. 61. 62. 63. 64.
65.
•
the Granada Capitulations from simple informal writ of grant cartasde merced to a permanently binding charter of privilege cartas de privilegio emplomadas. Both documents were rewritten and upgraded in March 1493. This did not satisfy Columbus who asked that they be confirmed before the start of each of his voyages. Crown instructions to Juan Diaz de Solis, quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 56. "Digest of Columbus's Log Book," 11/10/1492, p. 53. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 65. Columbus describes the Indian communities not as savage confusion" but "admirable orderliness," quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 65. Franciscus de Victoria, "The First Relectio on the Indians Lately Discovered," tr. John Pawley Bates, in de Victoria, De Indis e de lure Belli Relectiones, ed. Ernest Nys (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), pp. 115-62. Columbus, "Letter to Dona Juana de Torres," 10/1500, in The Four Voyag~,pp.265-76,atp.274.
66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.
76. 77. 78.
79.
Notes
Notes
Columbus, "Spanish Letter," p. 2. Todorov, Conquest ofAmerica, p. 27. Columbus, Journal ofthe First Voyage, 11/1/1~92, p. 189. Todorov, ConquestofAmerica,p. 28. Pagden, European Encounters, p. 34. Pagden, European Encounters, p. 27. See Nader, "Notes," Book ofPrivileges, p. 37. Batllori, "Papal Division," p.216. Inter Caetera, p. 96. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr, "From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance," in David Woodward (ed.), Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 10-50, at p. 46. The Bull Dudum siquidem (Alexander VI, September 26 1493), tr. Davenport, in Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 82-83. Treaty between Spain and Portugal, concluded at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, tr. E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, in Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 93 .....100. Treaty of Tordesillas, pp. 96-97, Ferdinand and Isabel initially thought Columbus might oversee the establishment of the line: "It seems to us that the line, or border, that is to be made is an extremely difficult matter requiring great wisdom and trust. If possible, therefore, we would like you to locate it yourself and establish it with those who are to be involved on behalf of the king of Portugal." See "Letter from Fernando. and Isabella to Columbus, enclosing a copy of Treaty of Tordesillas," Segovia, 16 August 1494, Book of Privileges, pp. 99-100, at p. 100. Daniel Nordman, "Fronriere et Decouverte (XV-XVI siecles)," in Renzo Zorzi (ed.), L' Epopea delle Scoperte (Venezia: Olschki, 1994), pp. 17-35.
•
243
80. Nordman, "Frontiere et Decouverte," p. 26. My translation. 81. Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The GeographicalImagination in the Age ofDiscovery, tr. D. Fausett (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), p. 15. 82. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Mille Plateaux (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1980), p. 598. 83. Medina, cited in Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World, p. 15. 84. O'Gorman, Invention ofAmerica, P: 76. 85.]. Brian Harley, "Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 82:3, 1992, pp. 522-42, at p. 524. Good reproductions of many important early maps of discovery are in David Buisseret, The Mapmaker's Quest.; Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 86. Harley, "Rereading the Maps," pp. 528-29. 87. Harley, "Rereading the Maps," p. 528. 88. Waldseemiiller, quoted in Harley, "Rereading the Maps," p. 529. 89. Edgerton, "From Mental Matrix," p. 13. 90. Brotton, Trading Territories, p. 32. 91. See Peter Whitfield, The Image of the World: Twenty Centuries of World Maps (London: The British Library, 1994), esp. p. 38. 92. William Boelhower, "Inventing America: A Model of Cartographic Semiosis," Word and Image, 4:2, 1988, pp. 475-'-97, at p. 477. 93. Boelhower, "Inventing America," p. 488. 94. Boelhower, "Inventing America," pp. 481-82. 95. Ricardo Padron, The Spacious World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 96. Padron, The Spacious World, p. 12. 97. Walter D. Mignolo, "Colonial Situations, Geographical Discourses and Territorial Representations: Towards a Diatopical Understanding of Colonial Semiosis," Dispositio: American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories, XIV, 1994, pp. 93-140. On Amerindian maps and the impact of the Spanish need for administrative maps of the colonies on the Indian tradition of pinturas, see Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy> Territoriality and Colonization, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp. 296-309. 98. Mignolo, "Colonial Situations," p. 94.
10
Conclusion: Territoriality, the Renaissance, and International Relations
1. Jorge Luis Borges, "On Exactitude in Science," Collected Fictions, tr. A. Hurley (Middlesex: Penguin, 1998), p. 325. 2. See Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory," Millennium, 30:3, 2001, pp. 509.....33.
244
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Notes
3. Michael J.Shapiro, "Introduction," in Shapiro and Hayward J. Alker (eds.), Challenging Boundaries: Global Floios, Territorial Identities (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. xv-xxiii. 4. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), pp. 296-309. 5. Mignolo, The Darker Side ofthe Renaissance, p. 311. 6. Shapiro, "Introduction." 7. James Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthology, 9:3, 1994, pp. 302-38. 8. Homi K. Bhaba, The Location ofCulture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), p. 2. 9. Bhaba, The Location ofCulture, p. 2. 10. Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), p. 3. 11. Scholte, Globalization, p. 76. 12. Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 9. 13. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logics of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991).
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Index
Note: page numbers in italic denote references to illustrations. Jonas of Orleans 76-77 Saisset, Bernard, Bishop of 147-50, 151, Palmiers 93 154-55 Bloch, Marc 58, 60 De pictura 147-48 Boucher, David 7, 8 Americas, the 169jf., 182 Bouwsma, William 106, 107 anarchy 3, 9, 10, 17,20-21, 31, 117 Bull, Hedley 22 hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy 54 bureaucracy 27-28 hierarchy-anarchy transition 181 Aquinas, Thomas 71, 87-88,94-95 Campbell, David 4 Aristotle 64,66,69, 78, 93-94, 114 canonists, the 78, 79, 80-81, 88, Aron, Raymond 19-20 art and artists 102-103, 104, 106, 95-96,97 capitalism 37, 50, 51-52 136, 152, 153, 159 Cassirer, Ernst 54, 58, 111, 115, 121 Giotto di Bondone 103, 136 Castile, Kingdom of see Spain and the landscape 149, 156, 157, 159-60, 166 Spanish Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin panels, Chabod, Federico 105-106, 125, 130, 141 the 151-55 Vasari, Giorgio 102""'-103 Christ, as symbol or representation 70,74-76,77, see also Leonardo da Vinci; 80, 81, 92 Mantegna, Andrea; Piero della civitas. rex Christus 76 Francesca Ashley, Richard 31, 32, 33 Church, the 61,62,63,77, 78, 88 Augustine, St 60, 62, 67, 68, Christian mission, the 177, 178, 179, 180, 188 84, 94, 131 role of gold and "precious things" balance of power 2, 5,7 in 180 "crisis of church and state," the 73, Bauman, Zygmunt 24 Berman, Harold 60 77/f,129 bishops 57, 61, 62, 93 Ecclesia 77-78,82,83,89,90 Agnew, John 23 Alberti, Leon Battista
264
•
Index
Index
Church, the-Continued Christianitas 77,78,89 Machiavelli's contempt for 119,
10, 167, 169, 176, 178, 182, 185 see also Italy; Portugal; Spain
Europe and Europeans
121 Christianity, see under medieval period, the; Renaissance, the citizen, the 129-30 Columbus, Christopher 69, 169, 170-71, 172-73, 175, 177-78,
179-80, 185, 186, 192 his agreements with Ferdinand and Isabel 183, 184, 190 and "naming," 186-87 Copernicus, Nicolaus 114-15 Corbridge, Stuart 23 Cosgrove, Stuart 149, 153 Cosmopolis and the Cosmopolitan 6,
24,90 Cusa, Nicholas of
88~89,90,
139
87~91
da Vinci, Leonardo
109,111 fortuna/Fortuna 7,8,117,118,119 see also virtu Foucault, Michel 4, 38-41, 43-45, 115, 130-31, 153 Discipline and Punish 39 Order of Things, The 43 frontiers 22, 189-90
104,112-14
Damisch, Hubert 152, 158, 162 Dante Alighieri 54, 64-66, 68, 70,
71, 72, Monarchia
Federico de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino 155-59 Ferguson, Wallace 102, 106 feudalism 58fj, 72 three orders, the 60-63, 72 Ficino, Marsilio 107-108,
104, 105, 145,
166 de Certeau, Michel 39-40, 153 Deleuze, Gilles 40, 45, 49, 186, 190 Der Derian, James 8-9 Dionysius the Areopagite 54-58, 62,
63,66,72,74,92 De coelesti hierarchia 54-57 De ecclesiastica hierarchia 57-58 diplomacy 8-10 proto-diplomacy 9 discipline 27-28 Divine Comedy; The, see Dante Alighieri Donelan, Michael 181, 182, 183 Durkheim, David Emile 41-42,
121 emperors, role of, see Holy Roman Empire, the
Giddens, Anthony 28 Gilpin, Robert 20 Gilson, Etienne 78, 89 globalization 23, 198-99 God 54jj, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 69,
70, 110, 113 civitas Dei 6, 61, 63, 74, 78, 84, 90, 118 incarnate as Christ 62 "good life," the 17, 94 Gothic architecture and aesthetic 91-92 government 77, 95, 124, 159 Greenblatt, Stephen 180, 185-86 Grosby, Stephen 47 Gross, Leo 3 Guartari, Felix 40,45,49, 186, 190 Guicciardini, Francesco 7, 8, 117, 128, 143 Halliday, Fred 30 Harvey, David 29,37 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm . Friedrich 26-27, 103
hegemony 1, 9 Christian hegemony 74 Herz, John 19 hierarchy and hierarchies 3, 24, 5 4f!,
72, 74jj, 79, 90, 92, 95, 108, 109, 112, 183, 196 ecclesiastical hierarchy 57-58 heavenly hierarchy 56-57 hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy 54 hierarchy-anarchy transition 181 spatial hierarchy 74, 75, 85, 86,
95, 134 see also Holy Roman Empire, the; Monarchy; Papacy, the Hobbes, Thomas 23, 24 Leviathan and territoriality 24 Holy Roman Empire, the 2,3,6,58, 61, 63, 73, 78, 79, 83!f, 129 Charlemagne 59, 84 Emperor, role and position of 74, 76,82,129 Frederick II 80, 85, 87 Otto II 85, 86 two swords allegory, the 82-83, 88 humanists 7, 104-105, 106, 110, 116-17, 126, 139, 142, 143 see also Guicciardini, Francesco; Machiavelli, Niccolo identity 137ft language, role of 138-39 imperium" see Holy Roman Empire, the international society 22, 26, 169, 170,
178, 182, 187-88 international theory 17!f 23, 31 Italy and the Italians 10, 103, 117-18, 119, 133, 140, 141-44, 164 see also Alberti, Leon Battista; Columbus, Christopher; Dante Alighieri; Federico de Montefeltro, Duke ofUrbino; Ficino, Marsilio; Culcciardinl,
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265
Francesco; Machiavelli, Niccolo; Mantegna, Andrea; Pi co della Mirandola, Giovanni, Count; Piero della Francesca James, Alan 22 John. of Paris 95-98, 129 Kant, Immanuel 2, 18-19, 26, 72 Critique ofPure Reason 18-19 Perpetual Peace 26 Kantorowicz, Ernst 84, 87, 89, 98 Kelson, Hans 23 Kern, Stephen 41-42,45 kings, role of, see Monarchy Knutsen, Torbjorn L. 7, 8 Krasner, Stephen 2, 6, 21-22 Lacan,]acques 40 Ladner, Gerhardt 78, 79 law and legality 1,2-3,28,62, 87,
95, 127, 129, 131-32, 186 Dionysius's legal hierarchy 57 international justice 26 international law 23 medieval canon law 74, 93 natural law 186 Roman law 184, 186 Lefebvre, Henri 26, 37-38, 45,
50-52,91, 149, 150 legitimacy 1, 184-85 linear perspective, see perspective Lovejoy, Arthur 64, 114 Machiavelli, Niccolo
7-8,9, 12,
115jf, 123ft, 145-46, 157-58, 166 and Florence 139, 166 his contempt for the Church
119, 121 10 stato 123-26, 130-31 on armed forces 132-34 Prince, The 7, 118, 121, 125, 126, 128, 131, 134, 140-41, 143
266
•
Index
Index
104,109-,-11,112,123,147,148, 149, 150, 176 Mantegna, Andrea 160-62 maps and mapping 69-71, 162-67, 170, 188, 190-94, 195, 198 mappae-mundi, the 70-71 Martines,Lauro 153, 154 Mattingly, Garrett 8, 10 medieval period, the 3,48,51, 52/f, 104-105, 107, 111, 112, 116 canon law 74, 93 Christianity in 3, 51· see also Augustine, St; bishops; canonists;Church, the; God; Papacy, the Europein 48,71,72 politics in 73jf, 84 understanding of space in 63jf, 196 modernity 104,105,106,122,149, 150, 153 monarchs, role of, see Monarchy Monarchy 73, 79-80, 84, 91/f Capetians, the 91, 92 Isabel and Ferdinand 177-80, 181, 182, 183, 184 Joao II 177, 188 Philip the Fair 91, 92-93 morality 7, 9 Morgenthau, Hans 2-3
man
nationalism 28-29, 141 nation-states, the 181, 198 nature 94, 109, 150 Navari, Cornelia 22, 23 Neorealism 2, 31, 48 "new world," concept of 173, 174 New World, the, see Americas, the Ocean Sea, the, see sea O'Gorman, Edmundo 63, 70, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175-76,190
Panofsky, Erwin 102, 147, 150 Papacy, the 2, 3, 6, 57, 63, 73, 7~, 83,88, 89, 181, 182-83 Alexander VI 178-79, 180, 181, 188 Inter Caetera 178!f, 186, 188, 189, 192 Boniface VIII 76,82-83, 87, 91, 92-'-93 Clement V 93, 129 Gelasius I 82 Gregory VII 74 Innocent III 79-80,97 Innocent IV 80, 81 Nicholas V 176-77 Romanus Pontifex 176-77, 180 papal fullness of power 78-79, 80-81,83,84,98,182,183 papal universalism 74, 75 pope as vicarius Christi 80-81, 89, 182 two swords allegory,the 82-83, 88 see also Church, the Peace of Westphalia, the 3, 5, 101 medieval/modern dichotomy, the 101, 102 Westphalia myth 3 Westphalia narrative, the 53,54, 91, 101 Westphalian international system, the 1,3 Westphalian sovereignty 21 perspective 51, 52, 106, 145, 146, 147/f, 162, 165, 192, 197 as a symbolic system 149 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Count 107,108-109,110-11 Piero della Francesca 148-49, 155-59, 160, 162, 197 Pocock, J. G. A. 115, 116 politics 3-4,7, 8, 17, 24,31, 53-54, 90, 94, 116-17, 146
medieval politics 73If power politics 17, 131, 158 Renaissance politics 117f{ popes, role o£ see Papacy, the Portugal and the Portuguese 172, 176-77, 183-84, 188-89 joao II 177, 188 see also, Tordesillas, Treaty of power 3, 20, 28, 36, 39-40, 77,97 two powers, the 82 see also Machiavelli, Niccolo Prezzolini, Giuseppe 119, 125, 141 primitive communities or societies 49, 50, 186 princes and princedoms 126-27, 128, 130, 131, 132, 138, 144, 146, 159, 177, 182 territorial princes 2, 115 see also Federico de Montefeltro, Duke ofUrbino Prince, The, see under Machiavelli, Niccolo Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, see Dionysius the Areopagite Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolernaeus of Alexandria) 65, 69, 163, 192 Geographia 163-64, 167, 192 Puchala, Donald J. 5 Randles, W. G. L. 66, 68, 171 rationalism 24 Ratzel, Friedrich 29 Realism and Realists 2, 10,20 Classical Realists 19, 23 regnum, see Monarchy Renaissance, the 2, 3, 5, 6f{, 44, 53, 101ff, 199,200 Christianity in, see under Church, the; God; Papacy, the economic life in 106 human autonomy, concept of 109 ideal city, the 151, 153 ghettos in 154
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267
its culture of space 107 its representation of space 149 politics in 112,123-26,128 Renaissance cosmology 112 Renaissance humanism, see humanists republic, concept of 117, 120 Reus-Smit, Christian 9-10 Rosenberg, Justin 10, 11, 17 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 24-26, 137-38 Social Contract, The 24-26 Ruggie, John 42-43, 48, 146
sacerdotiurn, see Papacy, the Sack, Robert 35-37 Sacrobosco, Johannes de 64,69, 171 sea, the 70, 190 Sforza, Battista 155-56 Shapiro, Michael 4 Skinner, Quentin 124, 125, 126 Smith, Michael J. 30 social space, see space and society soul, the 109-10 sovereign identity 107, 109-11, 152,153 sovereignty 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 17, 19, 21-22,31-32,73,92-93,95, 126-31, 146, 160 national sovereignty 92 sovereign state, the 7, 17, 32 territorial sovereignty 2-3, 6, 22, 63, 128-29, 130, 157, 160, 162-63, 196 Westphalian sovereignty 21 see also Holy Roman Empire, the; Monarchy; Papacy, the space 2,3,4,6, 18-19,20,24, 26-2Z 29, 31, 33-34, 37!f, 47f!, 149-50, 169, 176, 192 absolute space 50, 51 abstract space 51-52 conceived space 38
268
•
Index
space- Continued cosmological space
63ff, 107.!f, 171-72, 173, 174, 176 inside/outside 31, 32, 33,49, 130, 195 landscape, see under art and artists lived space 38 man's being-in-space 2,4,5, 6, 35, 72, 107, 146, 170, 192, 196 medieval understanding of 63.!f, 196 perceived space 37-38 public/private 49 smooth space 40-41,45,46-47, 190 and society 36, 37-38 striated space 40-41,45,46-47, 123,144,153,154,155,163,190 symbolic space 51 systematic space 150 "timeless" space 23 upper/lower 74-'-76, 114, 115, 196 see also perspective Spain and the Spanish 172, 178, 179, 183-84, 188-8~ 193 see also Columbus, Christopher; Isabel and Ferdinand under Monarchy; Tordesillas, Treaty of Spruyt, Hendrik 11,12 state, the lff, 8, 9,11-12,17,
19,20-21, 22, 26-27, 30, 31, 32, 36, 40, 45, 77, 95, 98, 122, 125-26 absolutist state 24 city-state, the 10, 11, 12, 25, 50, 119, 135, 137 "crisis of church and state," the 73, 77ff,129 despotic state, the 49-50 importance of religion in 120 10 stato, see under Machivelli, Niccolo modern state, the 48--49, 125, 126, 133, 135
Index
Rechstaat, the
22
Renaissance state, the 125, 128, 135 state domination state theory 18-23, 30 Weberian state, the 1, 27-30 see also sovereignty; space; territory surveillance 28, 135 1, 2, 3, 19, 20, 21, 22, 35ff, 115, 131, 133 center-periphery systems 134, 136-37, 165 colonial territories 25-26, 194 10 stato, see under Machivelli, Niccolo territorial a priori 2, 4, 5, 18--'-23, 30, 35, 36, 43, 44, 47, 131, 137, 195-96 territorial boundaries 21, 162-67 territoriality 4, 20, 35ff, 40, 41ff,47, 146, 160, 165, 194, 195-200 territorialization 40, 49-50, 169, 178, 179, 190-92, 198 territorial sovereignty 2--3, 6, 22, 63, 128-29, 130, 157, 160, 162-63, 196 territorial state 2,3, 11, 17,26, 27-30,34,195,197 territorial trap, the 23, 30 see also Tordesillas, Treaty of time 2, 18, 26, 37 Todorov, Tzvetan 180, 187 TonniesvFerdinand 47 Tordesillas, Treaty of 188-90, 191
territory
Toulmin, Steven Ullman, Walter
6
78, 129
Vespucci, Amerigo 173--74 violence 1, 2, 21, 28, 131-37
virtu
7,8,117,118,119
artistic virtu 148 military virtu 132, 140,
144, 158 see also fortuna
Waldseemiiller, Martin 174-76, 192 Walker, Rob 24, 31, 32 Waltz, !(enneth 1, 20, 48, 53-54 war 2, 3, 20, 132 armies 132-33, 136 just war 181
Milanese wars 8 Weber, Max 1, 27-30, 131 Wendt, Alexander 20-21 Westphalia see Peace of Westphalia, the Wight, Martin 5, 6, 17
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269