The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600 (Studies in European History from the Journal of Modern History)

r'[/,e (jrigins of l/,e dlale in 9laLy 130lJ-1600

Studies in European History from the Journal of Modern History John W. Boyer and Julius Kirshner Series Editors

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JULIUS KIRSHNER

The University of Chicago Press Cbicago and London

The essays in thIS volume onginally appeared in the Journal of Modern HIstOry, 67 supp. (December 1995). © 1995 The UnIversIty of ChIcago Press All rights reserved. Published 1996 Pnnted in the United States of America ISBN (cl.) 0-226-43769-8 ISBN (pa.) 0-226-43770-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The ongIns of the State In Italy, 1300-1600 / edIted by JulIus KIrshner. p. cm - (StudIes In European hIstory form the Journal of modem hIstory) The essays In thI~ volume ongInally appeared In The Journal of modern hIstory, December 1995 supplement Includes bIblIographIcal references and Index ISBN 0-226-43769-8 (cloth). - ISBN 0-226-43770-1 (pbk) 1 Italy-Hlstory- 1268-1492 2 Italy-Hlstory- 1492-1559 I KIr~hner, Juhu~ II Sene~ 3 Italy-Hlstory- 16th century DG531 075 1996 96-12101 945' 05-dc20 CIP

The paper used In thIS publIcatIon meets the mInImum reqUIrements of Amencan National Standard for InformatIon SCIences - Permanence of Paper for Pnnted Library Matenals, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Contents

Editors' Note 1

JULIUS :BJRSHNER

Introduction: The State Is "Back In" 11

PIERANGELO SCHIERA

Legitirrlacy, Discipline, and Institutions: Three Necessary Conditions for the Birth of the Modern State 34

GIORGIO CHITTOLINI

The "Private," the "Public," the State 62

ALDO MAZZACANE

Law and Jurists in the Formation of the Modern State in Italy

74

ELENA FASANO GUARINI

Center and Periphery

97

ANTHONY MOLHo

The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Florence 136

TREVOR DEAN

The Courts

152

ROBERTO BIZZOCCHI

Church, Religion, and State in the Early Modern Period 166

RICCARDO FUBINI

The Italian League and the Policy of the Balance of Power at the Accession of Lorenzo de' Medici 200

INDEX

Editors' Note The eight essays published in this issue were originally delivered at a bilingual conference on the origins of the state in late medieval and early modem Italy held in April 1993 at the University of Chicago. The conference, which brought together historians from England, Italy, and the United States, was sponsored by the Journal of Modern History and the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trent. We wish to express our gratitude to the individuals and organizations whose generous support made the conference possible: Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, who conceived the conference-and were largely responsible for its planning; Stefano Maria Cacciaguerra Ranghieri, formerly Consul General of Italy in Chicago; and Annamaria Lelli, formerly of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Chicago. Financial support was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Consulate General of Italy in Chicago, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Chicago, the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trent, and the University of Chicago Press.

Introducticln: The State Is "Back In" Julius Kirshner University of Chicago

In his essay of 1958, "Was There a Renaissance State?" Federico Chabod proposed that states did emerge in ]taly in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, but he was properly cautious in equating Renaissance states with modem states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1 He considered alien to the Renaissance state such essential features of the modem state as patriotism, national identity, and boundaries. Even the term "state," or stato, did not acquire its celebrated modern impersonality-its distinctness from the person of the ruler-until the eighteenth century. 2 It was nevertheless axiomatic, Chabod argued, that Renaissance balance-of-power diplomacy was predicated on the existence of states. He was familiar with Max Weber's claim that the Italian signoria "was the 1first political power in Western Europe which based its regime on a rational administration with (increasingly) appointed officials.,,3 On the basis of Weber's sociology of the bureaucratic state and the city and Otto Hintze's s,tudies on the formation of states and the Prussian civil service, which were still in vogue at the time he composed his essay, Chabod was led to argue that the salient characteristic of the Renaissance state was a staff of trained officials with distinctive routines and 1 Federico Chabod, "Y a-t-II un etat de la Renaissance?" in Actes du colloque sur La Renaissance (Paris, 1958), pp. 57 - 7 4. For the English and Italian versions, see Federico Chabod, "Was There A RenaIssance State?" In The Development of the Modern State, ed. Heinz Lubasz (New York, 1964), pp. 26-42, and "Esiste uno Stato del Rinascimento?" in Chabod's Scritti 5ul Rinascimento (Turin, 1967), pp. 593-601. 2 Federico Chabod, "Alcune questioni di terminologia: Stato, nazione, patria nel linguagglo del Cinquecento," in Scritti sul Rinascimento, pp.625-61 (originally published in 1957); Alberto Tenenti, Stato: Un'idea, una logica: Dal comune italiano all'assolutismo francese (Bologna, 1987); and Paolo Grossi, L' ordine giuridico medievale (Bali, 1995), pp. 41-49. 3 Max Weber, "The City," in his Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1978), 2: 1318. Weber's essay was probably written around 1913 and publi shed posthumously in 1920- 21 in the Archiv fur SocialpoUtik. For an assessment of thIS work, see Wilfried l\ippel, "Introductory Remarks: Max Weber's 'The CIty' Revisited," in Athens and Rome, Florence and Venice: City-States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy, ed. Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and Julia Emlen (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 19-30.

ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern Hlstory 67, suppl (December 1995)

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a collective Identity which carried out defined tasks impartially. If the modem state did not yet exist in the Renaissance, it was, according to Chabod, first anticipated in the protean administrative apparatus of the signorie and principalities like the Visconti-Sforza duchy of Milan. Chabod dismissed as fetching but fanciful the Burckhardtian trope of the state as a work of art. Scholarship that glorified despots as ruler-artists, or that transformed lords and princes of once-independent communes into lawful dictators-or conversely, that demonized the Renaissance state as an instrument of repression and exploitation wielded by a ruling minority-he considered a mockery of the historical record. Methodologically, as one would expect of a historian whose ideas were conditioned by archival research, Chabod distrusted one-sided models that easily eliminated the contradictions and the haphazard, halting, and backtracking developments that marked the maturation of the state in Renaissance and early modem Italy.4 Chabod's essay, I believe, along with his splendid research on the duchy of Milan, had less to do with a search for modernity than with a hopeful attempt to provide both a plausible alternative to approaches to the past (de)formed by right- and left-wing politics and a worthy historical foundation for the post-World War II Italian Republic. 5 His identification of political modernity with the admInistrative state contrasts sharply with Antonio Gramsci's identification of the Communist Party as the "Modem Prince," prepared to act ruthlessly to achieve its ends. Comparing Chabod's cautious optimism to the current despair of the philosopher Lucio Colletti is also instructive. Again invoking the spirit of Machiavelli, Colletti questions whether present-day Italy, lacking military forces capable of intervening in Bosnia-or even of defending tourists sunbathIng on its Adriatic coast from Serbian reprisals-deserves to be called a state. 6 Chabod's state-oriented model of Renaissance Italy endures in the United States as well as in Italy. His essay is still cited piously by those scholars who view the emergence of administrative functionaries in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance as prima facie evidence of state building, rationalization, and modernization. Yet from the outset, in his own country, Chabod's conceptu4 See FederIco Chabod's "USI ed abusl nell'ammInistratIone dello Stato dl MIlano a mezzo '500." in Studl stoncl In onore dl Gluseppe Volpe, 2 vols (Florence, 1958), 1:95-191. 5 On Chabod, the antI-FascIst, patrIot, and liberal, see the essays publIshed In Fedenco Chabod e fa "nuova storiografia" italiana daf primo af secondo dopoguerra (1919-1950), ed. Brunello VIgezzI (MIlan, 1984), esp Giuseppe Galasso, "La storia reglonale e la formazlone dello Stato moderno," pp. 163 - 230. 6 LUCIO CollettI, "Se 10 Stato e' un'Illusione," Cornere della Sera (June 20, 1995), pp 1, 5 It must be noted that whIle Chabod was agaInst mIlItarIsm, he recognIzed the necessIty of powerful mIlitary forces in the development of modem states.

Introduction: The State Is "Back In"

3

alization was never fully accepted as orthodoxy. Rather, it was resolutely contested, criticized as a distortion of the past by Marxian historians for whom the autogenic development of regional states in the Italian Renaissance was a harbinger not of modernity but of unabashed regression: of the loss of communal liberties, social involution, economic stagnation, and galloping aristocratization. This critique paralleled a widespread conviction at the time that the contelnporary Italian state was not the strong modem state envisioned by Chabod, but a vacuous entity occupied by political parties dedicated to patronage-namely, the control of the means of administration for the purpose of allocating public resources to special interests. Furthermore, the master narrative of traditional political history, centered around turning points in high politics, fell into disrepute from a series of conspicuous methodological assaults: first, from social history, which made political and legal theory and institutions expressions of ambient social structures; second, from historical ethnography, which metamorphosed political practices into self-fashioning rituals and strategies; and third, from poststructuralism and Foucauldian epistemology., which radically reconceived the Renaissance state as a decentered site for discoursing subjects, the production of knowledge, and administrative procedures and personnel de signed for the surveillance and control of populations and territory. In Italy, the genre of political history focusing on particular individuals, acts, and events, though battered, was never choked out by exotic species of historiography imported directly from France or indirectly from the United States. Obituaries announcing its dernise have turned out to be premature. The ingrained resilience of established political history is largely due to traditions of empirical and philological scholarship; intractable localism and geographic diversity not easily reduced to holistic paradigms; vocabularies of power and authority originating with the Romans and continuously enriched by over two thousand years of history; and never-ending discussions about the actual workings of politics that began in the Renaissance. Traditional political history is typically directed toward identifying the particularities of state formation in [taly rather than toward model building, comparisons, hypothesis testing, or e\Jen finding a Sonderweg that might serve to explain the rise of centralized states. At the same time, without abandoning its grounding in archival and philological research, the genre of political history has expanded to include new multidisciplinary and comparative approaches. Methodological challenge's have roused Italian historians to reappraise their fundamental assumptions regarding the emergence of an organized system of regional states. The Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trent has been at the vanguard of this "reappraisal. " The conferences and publications sponsored by the institute, which bring together contributors from different countries, have

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opened fresh vistas on the creation of regional states. L' organizzazione del territorio in Italia e Germania, secoli XIII-XIV (Bologna, 1994), edited by Giorgio Chittolini and Dietmar Willoweit, is an illuminating comparative historical venture investigating political, institutional, social, and geographical similarities and differences in the territorial consolidation of city-states in Germany and Italy. La repubblica internazionale del denaro tra XV e XVII secolo (Bologna, 1986), edited by Aldo Maddalena and Hermann Kellenbenz, suggestively treats merchant banking in early modem Europe as a sort of superstate avant la lettre, an "international republic of money" that profited while servicing the fiscal needs of the emperor, kings, and princes. Paolo Prodi, codirector of the institute and a distinguished historian of medieval and early modem ecclesiastical institutions and political theology, has written a deservedly praised study of papal monarchy in early modem Europe. His Sacramento del potere: II giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell 'Occidente (Bologna, 1992) reveals that the act of oath taking (sacramentum iuris) functioned as a transcendent justification of both the vertical ties binding ruler and subjects and the horizontal ties binding citizens within the city-state to each other. Pierangelo Schiera, the institute's other codirector, is well known in Italy and Germany for his many publications on Staatsrechtswissenschaft and his translations introducing to an Italian audience the works of German historical scholarship on the state, including Otto Brunner's Land und Herrschaft and the controversial writings of the antiliberal political and constitutional theorist, Carl Schmitt. 7 The collaboration between the institute and the Journal of Modern History is an opportune outgrowth of the JMH's long-term commitment to publishing research articles and review essays on early modem Italy-a decisive period, we believe, in the development of what has been aptly described as "the state tradition in Western Europe." 8 The eight articles published in this volume are revised versions of papers delivered at the conference held in Chicago in April 1993. We have chosen not to include the formal comments of the respondents, which have already been published in the Italian version of the conference's proceedings (Origini della Stato: Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed eta moderna [Bologna, 1994], edited by Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera). It will be obvious immediately from the table of contents that this volume does not offer conlprehensive coverage (which would have quadrupled its size) but concentrates on a thematically coherent group of eight issues. Other key issues, ranging from art and power 7 An excellent EnglIsh translatIon of Brunner's work with a cntical introductIon has been pubhshed as Land and Lordship, trans. Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton (Philadelphia, 1992). 8 Kenneth Dyson, The State Tradltlon in Western Europe (Oxford, 1980).

Introduction: The State Is "Back In"

5

to sexuality and gender, from warfare and military organization to the political theorizing of ~~iccolo Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini, surfaced at the conference bUlt were not treated systernatically. From the beginning, it must be stressed, the conference planners-Chittolini, Molho, and Schiera-tried to be inclusive. A large group of scholars representing a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches-sometinles in contention with each other-were invited to participate. The result was four exciting days of debate about the challenges and rewards awaiting those who wish to decipher the elusive mysteries of the state in Renaissance and early modem Italy. Differences aside, there was general agreement among the participants that the rulers of the Italian regional states tended to consolidate power in their own hands, especially in regard to judicial, fiscal, and military matters. But this historical pattern, they admonis.hed, should not be taken to mean that autonomous self-sustaining centralized administrative structures came into existence. Indeed, the notion of a centralizing state was literally inconceivable, and its use as a category of analysis for understanding the Italian regional state in this period is best avoided. N or should these Italian regional states be represented by the figure of the sovereign, a juridical persona endowed with total control of all the available resources in the territories he administered. Nor should they be equated with the monopolistic powers associated with sovereign states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which possessed the self-defining capacity to determine the legitimate scope of their own authority-what German jurists call Kompetenz-Kompetenz. More positively, a majority of the discussants stressed the political adaptability and dynamism of the new regional states in insuring internal order, external security, spheres of liberty, and territorial equilibrium. In hindsight, thi s transformation may seem natural and even predictable, an outcome contrived by history's invisible hand. Yet, as shown by the articles in this volume, as well as the massive scholarship on which they rest, the making of the regional states was a kaleidoscopic event opening up a new imaginative territory that can be fruitfully studied from different angles. Schiera returns to Weber's classic discussion of the Italian communes and signoria in Z)ie Stadt (The city) to launch his own article on the political legitimacy of the aborning regional states. For Weber, the sworn corporate bodies of urban merchants and artisans in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries represented self-consciously illegitimate and revolutionary political associations. Bloody conflicts between the popolo and the nobility torpedoed the republics and self-governing towns, paving the way for the city tyrant. This illegititnate political figure would eventually earn the obedience of homo urbanus and homo rationalis by providing political security while preserving the trappings of the old constitutional order. Eventually his rule was institutionalized as a hereditary patrimonial princedom. Schiera explores the

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respective roles of the papacy and the empIre in their capacity and readiness (for a price) to confer political legitimacy on the signorie. He argues that political legitimacy for both mInor signorie and the large regional states was not founded on papal and imperial InterventIon, invited and important though that may have been. Nor was the new authoritarian law-and-order statism based on ideological forms of coercion or cultural hegemony, as Gramsci would have insisted. Rather, Schiera alleges, it was grounded in voluntarism: the collective desire of subjected citizens for the political stability and material benefits that ensue from fulfilling civic obligations and obeying the law. As Aldo Mazzacane observes, the cosmos of law was not an immutable entity; it changed as society changed. Thanks to the studies of European and Amencan legal historians, we have numerous illustrations of how medieval and early modern legal culture, despite its forbidding formalism and projection of immobility, was in constant flux, shaped and reshaped by wealth and power. Modern notions such as the rule of law and Rechtsstaat have been mistakenly applied to thIS non-rights-oriented legal culture. It cannot be stressed too strongly that in this period there was no necessary connection between civil and political liberties, while disputes over "inviolable" privileges and corresponding duties were subjected to endless and often inconclusive exercises of judicial discretion. Indeed, we now have a greater appreciation of the creative role of civilians and canonists from the twelfth century on-in Imagining ever more subtle configurations of power and authority, in drawing bluepnnts for their legItimate use, and in addressing the Intricate relationshIp between citizens and governments, subjects and rulers. Mazzacane's own artIcle shows how the opinions of several leading jurists made important contributions to theorizing the Venetian territorial state. 9 Elena Fasano GuarinI reprises her own pioneering research on Grand Ducal Tuscany and the latest Italian historiography treating the regional states as complex territorial structures. By the sixteenth century, the local communities-the so-called periphery of the regional states-were no longer self-sufficient islands basking in their ancient privileges, immunities, and autonomy (iura propria). They could no longer afford to confine their efforts to defending their particularity and to resisting the authority of the so-called center; they were now compelled to join a regional network of political relations. Conversely, these local communities were condemned to atrophy when they failed to make this leap and to comprehend that a realization of their own interests was linked to a broader system of political associations and 9 See also Ingnd Baumgartner, "Rechtsnorm und Rechtsanwendung In der veneZlanlschen Terraferma des 15 lahrhunderts: Die Consilia von Bartolomeo CIpolla," 1n Consiha 1m spaten Mute/alter Zum hlstonschen Aussagewert einer Quellengattung, ed Ingrid Baumgartner (S1gmanngen, 1995), pp. 97 -103.

Introduction: The State Is "Back In"

7

a dispersion of power throughout the territory. It thus happened that local communities, including client groups, institutional actors, and sectoral elites, continued to implement critical political functions. These thenles reemerge in Roberto Bizzocchi's discussion of the early modern incarnations of church, religion, and state. He recognizes that the constant com petition for resources generated tensions and jurisdictional conflicts bet\veen church and state. Paradoxically, these conflicts were the inevitable result of the close collaboration between church hierarchies, local elites, and ruling dynasties like the Sforza and Medici in resolving legal disputes, conferring ecclesiastical offices and benefices, and, above all, alienating fanlily property to local ecclesiastical institutions in order to avoid taxation. Overall, the Italian-style marriage between church and state served to perpetuate the center's control over the periphery and to retard for several hundred years Italy's entry into the club of modern states. Noone is better qualified than Riccardo Fubini, an expert on Florentine diplomacy in the fifteenth century and an editor of Lorenzo de' Medici's correspondence, to parse the shifting diplomatic relations among Florence, Venice, Milan, the papacy, and the kingdom of Naples. His essay on the cooperation of these principal powers in creating the Italian league (1455 - 94) sheds new light on the origins, aims, and consequences of balance-of-power diplomacy. He demonstrates that, in addition to resolving conflicts among its principal menlbers and their clients and insulating the Peninsula from foreign invasion, an overriding purpose of the league was a "mutual commitment to support the respective internal regimes or at least not to interfere with them" (pp. S187 - 88). These aims were successfully realized. He also presents new evidence that leads him to endorse Guicciardini's praise of Lorenzo as a skillful statesman and Florence as a "point of balance" in mediating the conflict between the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples. In his trenchant survey of recent scholarship on Italian courts, Trevor Dean reminds us th at the subject took off as a respectable field of academic study only in the ]970s. This event was precipitated by Norbert Elias's epochmaking works, Die hofische Gesellschaft [Court society] and Ober den Prozess der i.~ivilisation [The civilizing process], published in 1969. Elias's identification of the development of the European courts and courtly culture with the development of modern states and civilization, though criticized for its baggage of inchoate assumptions and factual deficiencies, has nonetheless provided a highly productive research agenda. As a staunch adherent of "the Anglo-Saxon empirical tradition," Dean finds the project of comparative historical sociology unhelpful, contending that its homogenizing models of traditional and modern society have produced caricatures of complex historical phenomena. Similarly, he is dismissive of the series of works of structuralist literary criticism and history on the Estensi court in Ferrara and

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the Farnesi court in Parma published by the Centro Studi Europa delle Corti. Fixated on deciphering the mental habits and social grammar of court society, the structuralist approach, in Dean's eyes, is an elaborate intellectual game that has had the stultifying effect of turning the court into an ahistorical, self-referential mise-en-scene. Dean conceives "the court as an open rather than a closed space, a space open to a vast range of outside influences" (p. SI44). Accordingly, he calls for systematic archival research that would propel the field beyond problematic assertions about the existence of a discrete court culture, the curialization and domestication of the nobility by a distant, sacralized prince, and the court as a vehicle for state building. As warfare among states became more capital-intensive in the early modem period, the ability to mobilize unprecedented amounts of capital efficiently through mechanisms of public finance and taxation became a primary policy objective of European states. Recent scholarship recognizes that different political institutions and socioeconomic infrastructures prompted states to take divergent paths to reach this objective. Yet many historians agree that paying for the skyrocketing costs of warfare, or what Charles Tilly calls "capitalized coercion," was the biggest single stimulus in European state formation. lOIn his article on Florence, Anthony Molho argues that the Tilly model and the accompanying jargon of historical sociology does not adequately account for the underlying forces shaping the public finances of Florence or other major states like Venice, Genoa, and the kingdom of Naples. Decisions regarding taxation and public finance, according to Molho, were driven less by the costs of war than by the "internal politics of regimes in power" (p. 103). In this perspective, Florence, in the period bracketed from the fall of the Ciompi regime (1382) to the advent of the Medici regime (1435), appears to have been a state on the road to modernization. It was a period of almost constant warfare financed by millions of florins raised through forced loans, dramatically increasing the city's public debt (Monte Comune). It was a period of "centralizing administrative tendencies" and expansive territorial integration exemplified by the acquisition of Pisa in 1406 and a lex terrae detailed in the statutory compilation of 1415. It was also a period of fiscal experimentation: first with the Dowry Fund (Monte delle doti), created in 1425 with the dual aim of encouraging marriage by reducing its costs and using deposited funds to extinguish the city's public debt, and then with the catasto (1427), a system of tax assessments based on relatively objective criteria and fiscal equity imposed on the inhabitants of the capital city and the Florentine territory. The catasto got off to a solid start but stalled under Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, when the administration of public finances and the distribution of the 10 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).

Introduction: The State Is "Back In"

9

tax burden was manipulated increasingly to satisfy the commercial interests and lifestyles of Florence's elite to the detriment of the public interest and trust. Such were the beginnings of a patrimonial state characterized by the exploitation of public institutions and resources for the private ends of the Medici and their kinsmen, allies, and clients, with a corresponding fixation on fiscal privileges and exemptions-a state of affairs perfected in the sixteenth century under the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. To the liberal mind imbued with the Weberian ideal of a formally guaranteed legal order and impartial administration, the patrimonial state really adds up to misgovernment, institutionalized greed, and deep-dyed corruption, making it incompatible \\rith the idealized modem administrative state. Historicists like Giorgio Chittolini see things differently. Invoking the antistatist vision of Otto Brunner and his school, the generative structuralism of Pierre Bourdieu, and the microstoria of anthropologically inclined Italian historians, Chittolini argues that it is ahistorical to dub clientelism, factions, and feuds as antimodern, dysfunctional associations and thus as evidence of statelessness. These collective practices were not only treated as accepted means of negotiating authority, power, and obligations but in addition they "might better be understood and judged in historical terms as elements of cohesion and consolidation of the state" in Renaissance and early modem Italy (p. 51). <:hittolini's argument complements his previous studies illuminating the ways public power expanded over the course of this period. His current position-that in early modern Europe the public and the private were inseparable on the level of social practices (a position informing all the articles in this volume)-is presented as a corrective to conceiving the history of the state "as a history of public stnlctures of governance, tidily planned institutions, hierarchies of power, and actions of magistrates and officials" (p.42). Chittolini's efforts to bridge the divide between political and social history have paid off. His multimethod approach has proved very attractive to contemporary scholars who, versed in the practices of virtual reality, are comfortable \vith the notion of the state as a nonteleological network of multiple interconnected sources of social and political power. Aware that this approach runs the risk of falling prey to fashionable eclecticism, he urges that research findings be submitted to the test of comparative empiricism. Twenty years ago, when the "Annales School" had reached the apogee of its influence, when scholarship was about to take a linguistic tum, the historical study of the state was at a low ebb. Today, the prospects for the historiography of the state in Renaissance and early modem Italy are bright. In fact, the state is "back in." 11 The origin of the modem state in Europe has 11 Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985).

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once again become a central topic of contemporary historical research, no doubt in part because of current debates over the future of the state as a viable entity for collective action and over the future of the political organization of Europe. We hope the following articles will contribute to these converging projects of rethinking the state.

Legitimac)', Discipline, and Institutions: Three Necessary Conditions for the Birth of the Modem State* Pierangelo Schiera Italian/German Historical Institute, Trent

I Let me begin by pointing out that I do not intend to question the validity of the historiographical tradition that continues to give Italy first place in the formation of the state. We all know this only makes sense in the context of the increasing nUlnber of comparative studies that are now being done.] I also do not wish to delve into the history of the historiography of this problem, however interesting and indeed necessary such a discussion might be. Instead I will begin on a personal note by observing that, only some twenty years ago, placing the state at the center of an interpretation of modern history was still controversial? Times have changed so much that now a state-centered interpretation limi1 ed to the modern age seems entirely inadequate. The history of the state, if such exists, goes back at least to the high Middle Ages, as the following discussion will show. In spite of Iny disclaimer, I must say something about the role of American historiography concerning the first centuries of the state in Italy. We are in fact here in Chicago to take account of this continuously rich historiographical tradition. I anl tempted to offer an ideological interpretation of this interest,

* ThIS arttcJle OrIginally appeared as "Legittlmlta, disciplina, istttuzioni: Tre presupposti pella nascita dello Stato modemo," In Originl dello Stato: Process 1 di jormazione statale In Italia jra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. GiorgIO Chlttohnl, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera., Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanlco (Bologna: II Mulino, 1994), 39: 17 -48. Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Barbara Dooley. I For instance, the French Centre NatIonal de la Recherche SClenttfique project tItled "Genese de l' Etat modeme" (1984) and the related project of the European SCIence Foundation titled "Onglns of the Modern State In Europe, 1300-1800." For the past twenty years a more limIted project has been under way at the Istituto Stonco Italo-Germanico In Trent, aimed particularly at comparing the situatIon In Italy with the one In Gerrnany and concentrating not on the general theme of the development of the state but rather on some of its basIc components, such as terrItory, finances, church-state relatIons, relations between pubhc and prIvate, and so forth. 2 See Ettore Rotelh and Plerangelo Schlera, eds., Lo stato moderno, 3 vols. (Bologna, 197] -73). ThIS essay ongInally appeared In the Journal of Modern

HHtOn'

67, suppl (December 1995)

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but I will resist and refer the reader to the recent studies on this topic. 3 Instead I will explain my outlook by taking advantage of what I have learned about the state as a historian and political scientist, by looking for the "reasons of state" from the point of view of the peculiarity of the Western political experience. I am, in fact, the Italian translator of Otto Hintze, Otto Brunner, and Gerhard Oestreich, authors who still enjoy considerable favor in the English-speaking world, partly, I believe, because of what I hinted at above concerning the effort to research, recuperate, and reinvent an American state tradition. These three masters of Verfassungsgeschichte, constitutional history, have been successful, I believe, in their effort to use the term "state" for expressing the richness and conceptual consistency necessary for describing the political unity of an organized community in each period, typical of the Western experience. If the characteristic trait of modem politics is the capacity acquired by a community of men for resolving the problem of its own political unity institutionally (i.e., artificially, by laic, responsible, and rational means), then the state can be seen as a very good way to realize this trait historically. Hence the historian must concentrate on the institutional profile of the state, which represents perhaps the greatest novelty with respect to the politics-or lack thereof-of the previous period, and, beyond the institutional profile itself, must search for the deepest and most Intrinsic elements that every state constitution must possess in relation to the historical consistency of its political unity.4 Historical research on the problems of the state must therefore focus first of all on the subjects of the state-that is, on those who are its natural references, as individuals or as bodies, with their interests and needs, with their commitments and capacities for action, with their courage and fears. These persons are in fact the real and exclusive protagonIsts of political unity, for whose constitution the state is responsible according to the peculiar course taken by organized society from the first millennium onward in the part of the world that was medieval Europe and In which Italy occupied a prominent position. 5 This is one of the most fundamental points in Max Weber's reconstruction of the transition from ancient culture to European culture. In his great 1921

3 See GiorgIo ChittolInI, ed., "Special Issue: Storici amencani e Rinascimento ItalIano," Chelron, vol. 8, no. 16 (1991). 4 German work on the logIcal connectIon between polItics, constItutIon, and constitutIonal hIstory has been partIcularly Influenced by Carl SchmItt, Verfassungslehre (Berhn, 1928) 5 For the InstItutIonal hIstory of this problem, see C. VIolante and 1. Fned, eds., Il secolo XI Una svolta? (Bologna, 1993); for cultural hIstOry, see Paolo Prodi and Luigi Sartofl, eds., Cristlaneslmo e potere (Bologna, 1986). Concerning the "revolutionary aspects of the eleventh century, see also K. Leyser, "Am Vorabend der ersten europalschen RevolutIon Das 11. lahrhundert als Umbmchszett," Hlstorisches Zeztschn{t 257 (1993) 1- 28.

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work, The Ci~y, he emphasizes the role of Christianity in breaking down the ancient sacred and blood ties and rep lacing them with new rational ties based on the recognition of "citizenship" through privileges of "social category" as well as on "political associations. ,,61"'he comune thus arose as a constitutional projection of the city in its specific quality of "association of social categories," that is, a voluntary and self-conscious (i.e., institutional) grouping of men with the same primary aims of union, peace, and well-being, and depending essentially on "systematic acquisitive labor." It is well known that Weber's typological definition of the non-ancient city has a definite political significance that is not reducible to a simple sociological classification. Hence his emphasis on the people as a political subject, "selfconsciously illegitimate and revolutionary." Obviously he is speaking of a real political reestablishment organized around the problem of the creation of a new legitimacy of command and obedience. 7 Therefore, the "people" as a political subject seems self-consciously illegitimate, because it self-consciously contests the preexisting legitimacy and attempts to found a new one. This is the basis of my definition of the modem state as constituting a deliberate choice by historical men seeking, with their precise needs and their particular forces, a new and different distribution of power. Laicity, responsibility, and rationality-the characteristics of modem political institutions and actions-must therefore not only express the aspects of rationality and efficiency belonging to the active side of power (i.e., command) but must also emphasize the significance of self-conscious acquiescence (i.e., obedience) by the passive side, that is, the side belonging to those subject to power, who are in fact the members of the political community organized into a "state." For this reason the question of discipline, in its double function of attitude to\\rard obedience on the part of the subject and of capacity to exercise command on the part of the authority, is so predominant in the history of the state. Both functions reach a synthesis in the medieval period that we are considering, in the disciplining capacity of the Church, since "church discipline took control over one's whole life to a degree that is inconceivable to US.,,8 6 Max Weber, Wirtsehaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologle, ed. J. Wlnckelrnann (Tubingen, 1972), pp. 736 ff. The role of the "essenza individualizzante" of Christianity is discussed on p. 746. 7 See the pe:rsuasive summary of the debate concernlng Weber's concept of the legitimacy and illegitimacy of the urban eonjuratio provided by O. G. Oexle, "Les groupes sociau l( du Moyen Age et les debuts de la sociologie contemporalne," Annales ESC 47 (1992): 758. 8 Max Weber, Wirtsehaftsgesehichte: Abrif3 der universalen Sozial- und Wirtsehaftsgeschiehte (Bel ltn, 1958), p. 313. Concerning this problem, see the special issue of Annali dell'Istituto storieo italo-germanieo In Trento, vol. 18 (1992), and the proceedings of

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These features must be studied carefully because they have an important influence upon the functioning-that is, upon the instItutional organization-of the new political formation called a state. In fact, one of the first and principal functions of the state consists precisely in providing a structure and apparatus capable of building and maintaining the consensus and participation of the citizen-subjects. Another equally innovative function, the exact opposite of the first, is that of demanding and obtaining appropriate social behavior from those subjects. LegitimatIon and discipline are, in my view, the two crucial functions of the modern organization of power, because they are capable of entering deeply into the essence of political relationships, touchIng the most secret and mystenous center where command and obedience come together in the physical determination of the persons of the subjects and in the concrete manIfestations of theIr behavior, as individuals and as social groups, in a properly regulated society. Furthermore, only In thIS way, I believe, can some meaning be attached to the importance assumed by institutions as consolidated if not codified forms of collective political behavior in the organization of power characteristic of the modern West. Institutions are nothing other than crystallizations of the many encounters between command and obedience that occur along the two paths of legitimation and discipline. The first path concerns the establishment of power, whIch must be legitimate in order to be institutional; the second concerns the secret impulse toward obedience that subjects demonstrate for their own convenience and by conviction. From the slow and difficult formation of institutions of this type, the state emerges as a coherent composite-on the factual plane as well as on the theoretical and doctrinal one-of appropriate collective behavior aiming at the progressive elimination of private conflicts through their immediate or progressive neutralization Into institutionally comprehended, represented, and regulated force relations. 9 I would now like to summarize this brief introductory sketch of the political model that developed in the West after the demise of ancient culture, a demise that resulted from profoundly social causes and engendered profoundly social results.]O And I shall offer some provisional suggestions about how the origin of the modern state might be traced as far back as I am proposing here. the conference held In Bologna In October 1993 and dedIcated to "Dlsclplina del corpo, dlsclphna dell'anlma e disciplina della SOCIeta fra Medioevo ed Eta modema, " Just published In the Istttuto Stonco Italo-Germanlco senes (Bologna, 1994). 9 The maIn work In questIon here IS Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft (1939), recently translated Into Enghsh as Land and Lordshlp: Structures of Governance In Medieval Austrza (PhIladelphIa, 1992). 10 Still helpful here IS Weber's brief but important 1896 essay "DIe sozialen Grunde des Untergangs der antlken Kultur," now In Gesammelte Au/satze fur SOZlal- und Wlrtschaftsgeschlchte (Ttibingen, 1988), pp. 289-311. It was wntten just a year after

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These suggestions take for granted, as does my entire exposition, Weber's "Westernizing" point of view and his "cultural" approach to framing the question: "If 1his development has occurred only in the West, the reason for this is to be sought in certain features of its general cultural development that are characteristic only of the West." 11 This formulation manages to combine and unify the technical and rational part of the "state in the modern sense" that he organized somewhat teleologically, drawing on the experience of the nineteenth-century constitutional state, around the three categories of "legal constitution" (gesetze Veifassung), "slpecialized bureaucracy" (Fachbeamtentum), and "citilzenship" (Staatsbiirgerrecht). 12 But what fascinates me most is that this formulation also combines the aspect of the state corresponding to cultural anthropology, namely, that which concerns the existence and social and political action of men possessing a "rational ethos of lifestyle." This corresponds to the central role played in Weber's research by the theme of "Kultur," according to a very characteristic trend in the late nineteenthcentury debate in Germany, viewed both in the sense of high-but also material-cuI1ure, as in the work of Burckhardt, and in the more vulgar and applied but no less global sense attributed by Lamprecht, in spite of many polemics and contradictions. The very close connection between the concept of "Kultur" and the more modern one of "constitution" needs no further emphasis; 13 suffice it to say that this connection is just one more indication of the complex background of the entire question of legitimacy. T'his connection also explains Weber's attempt to trace the "types" of man's constructions and his "lifestyle" in the the famous Freiburg ProlUSIon, where he seems to offer a sketch of the main motives behind his future research, which both Wll1helm HennIS and I belIeve was to be on the historical aspects of Menschtum. See hls Max Webers Fragestellung: Studien zur Biographie des Werks (Ttibingen, 1987). 11 Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, p.270. 12 Worth further study is the obvious influence on Weber of Jellinek's legal work, on which see G. Hljbinger, "Democratizzazione nello Stato, nella societa e nella cultura: Max Weber tra politica e scienza politica," in Max Weber e le scienze sociali del suo tempo, ed. Marta LOSItO and Pierangelo Schiera (Bologna, 1988), pp. 455-79.. Further study also ought to be dedicated to the relation between Weber's "formal" concept of the state and that of Kelsen. These Issues are discussed in GIuseppe Galasso, "Stato e storiografia neUa cultura del secolo X:X: Appunti su alcuni aspetti del problema storico," in Visions sur le developpement des Etats europeens: Theories et historiographies de l'Etat moderne, ed. Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet (Rome, 1993), pp. 95-] 15. 13 On this, see the classic essay of Gerhard Oestreich, "Die Fachhistorie und dIe AnHinge der sozialgeschichtlichen Forschung In Deutschland," Historische Zeitschrift 208 (1969): 320-63. For the WIde diffUSIon of a cultural history perspective at the beginning of the twentieth century, see also the recent essay by D. Wuttke, "Aby M. Warburgs Kulturwissenschaft," Hlstorische Zeitschrift 256 (1993): 1-30.

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historically determined context of Western culture. Indeed, I am persuaded that the latter represents the basic object of Weber's inquiry; and I would go so far as to say that his interest in the state plays a subordinate, instrumental, and even occasional role in his research. His insistence upon endowing the state with the characteristics of rationality must be understood from the standpoint of cultural history rather than institutional history. He is more interested in making possible and favoring a particular sort of ethical and rational behavior than in explaining the bureaucratic and juridical function of the structures. Culture and constitution make up the proper field for a genetic inquiry into the "common way" whereby Western men have organized their collective life in the institutional form that has gradually come to be defined as "state." Institutional organization, legitimation, and discipline seem to me to be three plausible angles in which to enclose the cultural and constitutional extent of the modem state, beginning with its perhaps incomplete genesis in medieval Italy.

II There are two standpoints from which the birth of the modem state has traditionally been viewed. The first is that of a "decadence" following the unsurpassed greatness of "communal liberties. "From this standpoint, the state is seen to develop from the degeneration ofthese liberties with the emergence oftyranny and despotism. Of course, according to this analysis, the state might be called upon occasionally to play the role of repairing or even of renewing those ancient liberties. This occurred particularly in the "liberal" nineteenth century, during which historians conceived the theme of "communal liberties" itself, certainly not by chance but for very clear ideological reasons. 14 The second standpoint calls for reading the same events not as a fall and subsequent redemption but as a result of the powerful and irrepressible realization of some universal principle of late Hegelian lore. 15 One such principle might be rationality-for instance, in the Weberian sense just mentioned, most likely in a distorted popular 14 See Reinhard Elze and Pierangelo Schiera, eds., Italla e Germania: Immagini, modelli, miti ira due popoli nell'Ottocento: II Medioevo-Das Mittelalter: Ansichten, Stereotypen und Mythen zweier Volker im neunzehnten lahrhundert: Deutschland und Italien (Bologna and Berlin, 1988). 15 Also useful in this connection, although primarily concerned with other problems, is R. BHinlmer, " 'Der Absolutismus war ein Gluck, der doch nicht zu den Absolutisten gehort': Eduard Gans und die hegelianischen Ursprtinge der Absolutismusforschung in Deutschland," Historische Zeitschrift 256 (1993): 31-66. More generally concerned with the hIstoriographical elaboration of the theme of the state in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany is W. Weber, "Voraussetzungen und Erscheinungsformen

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version. Another might be civilization, in the sense of "cultural history" understood by Burckhardt and Lamprecht, which has had much success in the United States. 16 Both of these standpoints are controversial, though we are all aware that somle form of teleology is inevitable in any attempt to understand the state as a unitary phenomenon developing according to a single dynamic from the Middle Ages to our own tirrle. Two caveats are in order. The first is that, in my view, in the expression "modem state in Italy" the term "rnodern" must not be understood as a periodic concept denoting something different from "ancient" or "contemporary." It must be understood in the sense of the history of culture, with reference to the values expressed in the notion of modernity.17 The basic problem of historicism, highly relevant to this discussion, emerges here: namely, that historicism, too, leads to the identification of modernity with Kultur, in the rnaterial and constitutional sense that this has had in the history of European politics from the Middle Ages to our own time. 18 A second caveat regards "Italy," the context to which we are attributing the (modem) state. In fact, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, there were at least three Italies where the formation of the state could be discussed, each with subtly difIerent meanings: namely, the Kingdom of Sicily and the south, the territories of the Church in the center, and the city-communes of the north. 19 All three contexts were in crisis because of the increasingly obvious

des Staates in der deutschen Historiographie des 19. und 20. J ahrhunderts," in Blockmans and Genet, eds., pp. 169-202. 16 See Anthony Molho, "Gli storici americani e il Rinascimento Italiano: Una ricognizione," ('heiron 8 (1991): 9-26. 17 Reinhard BHinkner, " 'Absolutismus' und 'fruhmoderner Staat': Probleme und Perspektiven der Forschung," in Fruhe Neuzeit-Friihe Moderne? Forschungen zur Vielschichtigkeit von Obergangsprozessen, ed. R. Vierhaus (Gottingen, 1992), pp. 4874, p.48: "In der Diskussion tiber die IJrsprunge und den Charakter der Moderne nimmt das ProbJlem des 'Staates' einen prominenten Platz ein." I offer a preliminary sketch of my notIon of "modernity" In my Introduction to F. Rella, ed., Forme e pensiero del moderno (Milan, 1989), pp. 17 -25. Concerning the "state-individual" as an aspect of modernIty in Weber, see M. Zangle, Max Webers Staatstheorie im Kontext seines Werkes (Berlin, 1988). 18 For a broad survey of historicIsm in relatIon to cultural history, see O. G. Oexle, ·'Von Nietzsche zu Max Weber: Wertproblem und Objektivitatsforderung der Wissenschaft 1m Zeichen des Histonsmus," In Rechtsgeschlchte und theoretische Dimension (Lund, 1990), pp. 96-121. 19 Still relevant is the reconstruction offered by F. Ercole, Da Bartolo alf'Altusio: Saggi sulfa storia del pensiero pubblicistico del Rinascimento italiano (Florence, 1932), esp. the essay, "Studii sulla dottnna pohtica e suI diritto pubblico dl Bartolo." The author, in polemic with Bartolus, points out the city-communes' limited power (at least in respect to "medieval" autonomy); they were not sibl pnncipes. The situatIon was, of course, different in the Kingdom of Sicily, the State of the Church, and the

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inadequacy of the papal and imperial umbrella, and all three sought a decisive element of "modernity" in order to maintain a plausible political space in the historical process then under way.20 Indeed, from such efforts, often mutually contradictory rather than competitive, came the stimuli for constructing the organization of power we call the modern state. True, in the end Italy was not the historical place where that state could emerge with all its features, in the baroque monarchical form characteristic of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury absolutism. I believe the concretely historicist and abstractly idealtypical aspects of the problem of the "modern state in Italy" may be illuminated by this contradiction between, on the one hand, the genetic and ideal moment (mainly in Italy) and, on the other, the moment of its greatest institutional development (certainly not in Italy). "At present, we see clearly that the events of 1250 and 1302 were decisive, and that thanks to them Europe was destined to live under the regime of division and coexistence between sovereign states. At the time, very few and perhaps no one saw this.... They saw at least that the universal monarchy solution had been condemned by history, and they concluded that the new problem was the coexistence of states enjoying, if not an equal influence, at least an equal sovereignty." 21 These words, written by an internationalist and not by a historian of the state, best depict the historical situation at the beginning of our exploration and allow me to start with the first aspect that interests me: namely, the problem of legitimacy. Marsilius of Padua was among the few to understand this situation. Let us therefore be guided by him, keeping in mind that he himself gives us a definition that fits well with the tripartite scheme just delineated for the Italian situation of the state-called regnum in the original Latin of the 1324 work and reame in the 1363 Franco-Florentine translation. He writes: The term "'state" has many meanIngs. In one sense It IndIcates a certaIn number of "'cItIes" (clVltatum) or "'prOVInces" that are contained wIthIn a certain regIme, and In thIS sense the state IS the same as the city as far as the specIes of constItution is Repubhc of VenIce Ercole InsIsts, as we shall see, on the Importance of the Impenal and papal Vicanate as an Instrument for change and for legItImIzing the Infenor condItIon of the cItIes 20 G. Mlglio, "'La cnSI dell'universahsmo POhtiCO medloevale e la formazlone Ideoiogica del partlcolansmo statuale moderno," in Marsllio da Padova· Studl raccoltl nel sesto centenano della morte, ed. A. Cecchlne and Norberto Bobbio (Padova, 1942), p. 233: "'Durante la seconda meta del secolo XIII e la prima del XIV Sl assiste da un lato all'epllogo dell'urto fra l'unlversahsmo teocratIco e l'unlversahsmo degh Imperaton romano-germanIcl, e daB' altro al conflitto fra ambedue tah conceZlonl e la nuova nOZIone dello Stato particolare 'supenorem non recognoscens.'" But see also Riccardo FubinI's essay In thIS Issue. 21 Chnstian L. Lange, Hlstolre de I'lnternatlonallsme (KnstIanIa, 1919), 1.88 - 89.

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concerned, differing only in quantity. In another sense, a state may consist In a single city or else in diverse cities, as happened in fact in the time in which the CIVIC communities emerged, because then there was usually one king for every city. The third and most familiar sense of the term is a combination of the first and the second. And in its fourth sense, "state" signifies something that every sort of temperate regime has in common, whether composed of a single city or of many cities. 22

This last meaning is the one that interests us. In the light of the preceding discussion of 'Weber, the phrase "something that every sort of temperate regime has in common" sounds remarkably like an ideal type. It is also very significant, in nay view, that the term civitas used by Marsilius means the same as "commonwealth" used by Hobbes three centuries later, not only lexically but with very profound affinities of content. It seems to me that we may begin to seek symptoms, if not characteristics, of the "nascent state," according to the path suggested by Marsilius, in all the various conditions of Italy at the time. And, froD1 a methodological perspective, this means that historicism and model building must be combined wherever possible in the study of the state. Marsilius looks for the "common element" using the precociously realistic and modem technique of an experimental researcher. "All men who are not deformed or disabled by other causes naturally desire a sufficient life and flee whatever damages this." Again, "man is born with contrary components, and in fact because of these contrary actions and passions, some of his substance is continuously being destroyed.... [l-fe] is born bare and defenseless against the air and the other elements surrounding him, as natural science rightly teaches." His conclusion is that "the city is a community established so the men belonging to it may live and live well. ,,23 For this reason, Marsilius saw internal peace, which he pragmatically defined as the absence of discord, conflict, and internal struggles,24 as the primary object of the city and the state: "The relation between the cities and their parts and tranquillity will therefore seem similar to the relation between an animal and his parts and health . . . [in the sense that] health is the optimum disposition of an animal according to his own nature, and similarly, tranquillity is the optin1um disposition of the state established according to reason. ,,25 22 Marsilius of Padua, Il difensore della pace, ed. C. Vasoli (Turin, 1960), p. 114. The anonymous translation into the Florentine volgare, now available in an edition by Carlo Pincin, Defensor Pacis nella traduz.ione in volgare fiorentino del 1363 (Turin, 1966), is more incisive, though misleading. See also the English translation by A. Gewirth, Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of Peace (New York, 1956). 23 Marsilius, pp. 120, 121, 124. 24 Indeed, the 1363 translatIon gave the book's tItle as Illibro del defenditore della pace e tranquillita and used this last word consistently in the text in order to emphasize the internal, civJlc, and operative dimension of peace. 25 Marsilius, p. 115.

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This is not the place to analyze Marsilius's thought or even to offer an assessment of its importance in the Paduan, Bavarian, and imperial context in which it emerged and developed. Anyone undertaking such a task might rightly be tempted to make a transtextual comparison of his thought with the great icon of "Good Government" in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena painted in the same years (which, incidentally, are also the years of Bartolus).26 Suffice it to point out that Marsilius provides a summary of the strongest and indeed most common motifs of the new trend of legitimacy that was just then gaining consistency. Founded upon Aristotelianism, this trend exploited the fundamental pragmatic teaching of the Augustinian tradition, mixing the two ingredients into a conception of the world that was ethical in connotation but that had an ever more laic and rational basis-namely, that of the teachings of the Stoics, acquired by way of Seneca and Cicero, as well as that of the sophisticated Arabic culture, which Marsilius and others absorbed through Averroes. 27 Before proceeding from the legitimacy stage just exemplified by Marsilius to the institutional stage, which was the classic and true place for the formation of the modem state, I would like to explore the newly fashionable field of discipline. We might conveniently start with a citation from Giovanni Villani's Chronicle, which gives a pithy sketch of the constitutional situation of Florence at the time of the translation "into Florentine" of the Defensor pacis. At that time the city was still open to the cultivation of long-abandoned ideals, based in Padua but present generally in all of northern Italy. Villani writes, "before the duke of Athens ruled, the better-off sort of people ruled. They did this badly, as you have seen; for the duke was able to assume tyrannical power because of their defects. After the duke was thrown out, the better-off and the common people ruled together for a short time with great success. Now the artisans and the common people rule.,,28 26 One may, however, conclude WIth Vasoh ("IntroduZlone" to IbId., p. 17), that "In dIrect contrast with the universahstic Ideal and In full accord with the historical phenomena manIfestIng themselves In hIS time, MarsIlius bases his doctrine of the state partIcularly upon the 'partIculanstIc' perspective of the 'CIty-state' or of the 'national kingdoms,' concepts that were perfectly consonant WIth the new course that European hIstory was takIng" 27 See E. Troilo, "L' averrOismo di Marsiho da Padova," In Cecchine and Bobbio, eds., pp. 47 - 78. Vasoh has noted more recently that Marsilius also departs from Anstotle on the idea of the natural SOCIability of man, "in order to affirm instead the phySIcal and bIologIcal IneVItabIlity of SOCIal tendencies and the natural character of the 'VIta suficiente ' " 28 GiovannI VillanI, Cronlca (Florence, 1823), bk. 12, chap. 24, and bk. 7, chap. 76, CIted in C PincIn, "Nota critlca," to Defensor Pacis, p. 536. Pincin also refers to N. Rodohco, La democraZla fiorentlna nel suo tramonto (1378-1382) (Bologna, 1905).

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Similar in tone is Cipolla's nineteenth-century comment about the same situation in Florence. He cites a passage from a novel by Sacchetti that concludes, from the factions and civic discord, that "the balia led to the signoria"; whereas, for Machiavelli, "one may become a prince by the favor either of the common people or of the great." Cipolla comments, "in these passages of the two Florentines lies the origin of the signorie and their nature, showing why they were at first uncertain, suspicious and cruel." 29 In spite of the record of communes and signorie, factions, struggles, discord, decline, decadence, and despots, the modem state begins in Italy-or is this an illus lon?30 Ought one perhaps speak, again in Weberian terms, of an illegitimate birth of the state in the midst of a political and constitutional crisis of the communes and of the papacy and empire? I would be inclined to respond affirnlatively to this question, and I would analyze the illegitimacy problem in the following way. With respect to the communal constitution, this illegitimacy v/ould consist, also according to Weber, precisely in the "illegitimate" effort to establish a new legitimacy, that is, in the revolutionary basis on which the commune was founded. In this sense, every new constituent power is illegitimate in that it is established with the aim of founding something new as an alternative to what already existed. But the program is that the new communal "constitution," once founded, itself had to gain legitimacy. Because of the way it "vas founded-namely, illegitimately-it could not be Inade legitimate by reference to its constituting elements, which were, on the one hand, the citizens "vho had taken an oath and, on the other, the purposes and material interests that were part of their oath. With respect to the first, there arose the problem of "discipline," that is, of coordinating the 29 In the sanle sentence, C. Cipolla dramatically expresses the relation between the institutional and cultural aspects of fourteenth-century Italy. See hIS Storza delle signorie italiane dal 1313 al 1530 (MIlan, 1881), p.2: "Henry VII of Luxemburg, having descended Into Italy to reconcde the factions and restore the name of the GermanIc empire, died at Buonconvento near Siena on August 24, 1313. After his death Italy experienced a period of political decay. The communes dIssolved and changed into signorie. ... Just when Italy was beginning once again to play the part of teacher of the other civilized nations, it disintegrated politIcally and became weaker in action and thought. ... The period of the' signorie' is the link that unites the period of the 'communes' to that of the 'foreign domination.' " 30 Concerning discord, I cite the charmIng Florentine language of MarsI1ius's translator: "la quale discordia secondo I dotton e sperienza e dlstrassie e malvagia disposizione del governamento ciVIle, COSt come malatia e la mala disposizlone del corpo della bestIa" (p. 11). Might not thIS be the Paduan "doctor's" reference, however oblique, to melancholy? See Pierangelo Schiera, "Melanconla e disciplina: riflessioni critllche," in Il vivente e 1'anima: Tra scienza, filosofia e tradlzione, BioLogica 4 (l\.ncona and Bologna, 1990), pp. 137-52.

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citizens' behavior with the communal order; wIth respect to the second, a process of institutional "production" was begun, a process adapted to the exigencIes of the interests being pursued. The communal crisis was not a crisis of legitimacy; it was the historIcal adaptation of the newly established criteria to quickly changing exigencies. Roughly the same thing could be said for the other historical contexts that existed in Italy in the early and central Middle Ages, especially in the Kingdom of Sicily in the south and in the territories of the Church in the center. In these cases, too, one may speak of an original "illegitimate" foundation, although more successful and accompanied by new institutions and means of discipline. One may also speak of a crisis of adaptation with variable results. On the other hand, one may not deny the essential contribution of these two experiences to the formation of the modern state. The kingdom of Frederick II has often been mentioned as a first form of the state, and someone has offered an analysis, however problematic, of the papal origins of modern state sovereignty.31 Nonetheless, I believe the real cradle of the state must not be sought in these two contexts so much as in the communal context. The main reason is that both the Kingdom of Sicily and the papal lands were, In different ways, too intensely related to a universalistic perspective-in the one case imperial and in the other papal. They were therefore unable to sustain the necessary burden of the formation of the modern state, which consisted in the desire and capacity of an organized community to find inside itself the purposes and forces necessary to provide for its own peace and tranquillity. What dictated the first steps in the transformation of autonomy into sovereignty in the Italian communes was therefore a mentality, a direction of thought, a psychological orientation. ThIS IS the sense In which the significance of the theme of discipline must be understood as the "immediate and automatic adaptation to a command" on the part of the citizens. The "civic sense" of communal Italy was no greater than in the other two parts of Italy, contrary to one recent excessively ideological study.32 Instead, communal "discipline" was greater than its "pontifical" and "Sicilian" counterparts; and this guaranteed a different sort of development, institutionalizing a legitimacy acquired illegitimately. The old literature on despotism is now a bit out of fashion and has been overshadowed by the lIterature on civic or civil republicanism, WhICh prefers to speak of "good subjects" rather than "good princes." But the older 31 Paolo Prodl, Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anlme. la monarchla papale nella prima eta moderna (Bologna, 1982), Enghsh translation, The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls· The Papal Monarchy In Early Modern Europe (Cambndge, 1987) 32 R. D. Putnam, Maklng Democracy Work: ClVlC Traditlons In Modern Italy (Pnnceton, N.J , 1993)

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literature teaches that the signori were always the preferred instruments to "faction dictatorship," although the instruments often got the better of the "factions" therrlselves. 33 It also suggests that their success was not based on pure chance but rather on some objective conditions. The transition from head of faction to prince in fact had two prerequisites: a more integrated method of government and a generally more attractive program than those characteristic of the feudal nobility.34 These features Jmight help a signore obtain more easily what he wanted most, namely, the citizens' determined and spontaneous support for founding a stable regime. However, for such stability to be possible, power recently attained had to be joined by a de jure title; and here is another distinctive characteristic of the various attempts by the signori to realize their po\ver, detaching themsel ves in this manner from mere de facto signorie and inaugurating the way that would lead to the modern state. 35 Ethico-philosophical legitimacy had to be followed by juridical legitimacy, preparing the way for the eventual development of an autonomous "political" discourse. But lhe passage from one to the other was not automatic, nor was it merely theoretical or doctrinal. It was indeed "doctrinal" in a sense diametrically opposed to the modern one and very close to the high medieval origin of the term. 36 In the so-called modern city, conditions were never created for the exercise of a doctri ne understood as a teaching, as an inducement to concrete behavior, as an application of principles and theories 33 D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, "The Place of DespotIsm In Italian Politics," in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale, J. R. L. HIghfield, and B. Smalley (London, 1965), p. 315. 34 Ibid., p. 318. 35 E. Sestan, "Le onginl delle Signone cittadine: un problema storico esaurito?" In La crisi deglz ordlnamenti comunali e Ie originl della Stato del Rinasclmento, ed. G. Chittolini (Bologna, 1979), separates the problem of legitimacy from that of the slgnoria, criticizing Ercole in the following terms: "No great insight IS necessary for recogniZIng that the problem suggested by Ercole does not really regard the origin of the signoria but the situating of the institution of the signoria withIn the juridical and constitutional stnucture that the Juridical ethos of the time conSIdered as necessary and indIspensable for the juridical conscience to be assuaged by its legality." Now, "juridical and constitutional structure," "juridical ethos," "Juridical conscIence," and "legality" are certainly not pointless terms; indeed they seem to me to Indicate useful factors for understanding the constitutional itinerary from the signoria to the state (p. 57). 36 H.-I. Marrou, " 'Doctnna' et 'dlscipllna' dans la langue des Peres de I'Eglise," Bulletin du Cange 10 (1934): 5-25; M.-D. Chenu, "Notes de lexlcographle philosophique rnedH~vale: Disclplina," Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologlques 25 (1936): 686-92; W. Durig, "Disciplina: Eine Studie zum Bedeutungsumfang des Wortes In der Sprache der Llturgle und der Vater," Sacrzs erudiri: Jaarboek voor Godsdlenstwetenschappen 4 (1952): 245 - 79; Plerangelo Schiera, "Melanconla e dlsclphna: Considerazloni prehminarl su una coppla di concetti all' alba dell'eta modema," In Studi politici in onore di LUigi Firpo, ed. S. Rota Ghlbaudl and F. Barcia, 4 vols. (Milan, 1990), 1.257 - 77.

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to practical reality-as a premise, in other words, for discipline. On the other hand, it is impossible to investigate this point now, since there is no historiographical tradition that observes medieval civic life in a coherent and organic fashion. I can only point to the prevalent "disciplinary" significance of the statutory norms; to the disciplining practice of the system of the guilds and corporations; to the eminent-and still underestimated-disciplinary function of the university, with its own jurisdictional tribunal; to the multiple disciplinary roles of the Church, especially in civic life (preaching, the whole system of "charitable works," schools, and so forth). These aspects should provide an approximate picture of the rate at which discipline could take place and develop in the civic world, a world founded especially on literacy and on the resulting recourse to the written word, the first mass phenomenon in modern society?7 From this rapid overview, I think it should be possible to say that the foundations of political obligation in the signorie are the same as those we have seen in our rapid glance at the work of Marsilius: the provision of pax et quies by the prince, behavior as boni subditi by the citizens. The result is the same and is identified with civilis joelicitas: 38 good subjects were in fact those who obeyed, who behaved decently (i.e., costumatamente), and sought union and concord in a virtuous life (indeed, vita civile). In fourteenth-century Lucca, on the other hand, the civitas was described as "conversatio populi assidua ad jure vivendum collecti," for which, in typical Ciceronian language, "omnium civitatum homines, maxime principalium, omnia civiliter atque honeste agere oportet et decet." 39 We need only remark that an accurate historical reconstruction shows the signore/prince holds no "title" to power apart from his "effectiveness," which consists in the disciplining of the citizen-subjects in direct relation to their obligation to obey. I must insist on this, emphasizing the "functional" significance of Weber's definition outlined 37 ConcernIng the former aspect there is G. RossettI, "11 princlplo di sovranita nell' eta del ComunI: Riflessioni Intorno a Il sacramento del potere dl Paolo Prodi," Annali dell'lstztuto stonco ltalo-Germanlco in Trento 19 (1993): 423-29. Concerning the problem of literacy, with particular reference to juridical life in the communes of northern Italy, see H. Keller, "Oberitahenische Statuten als Zeugen und als Quellen fur den Verschnfthchungsproze~ 1m 12 und 13. Jahrhundert," Fruhmittelalterllche Studien 22 (1988)' 286-314~ and J. W. Busch, "Zum Prozefj derVerschriftlichung des Rechtes In lombardlschen Kommunen des 13. Jahrhunderts," Fruhmlttelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 373-90. 38 Vasoh (n. 26 above), p 26. The 1363 Florentine translation of this passage is magnIficent: "civIle filicltade e beata vita, la quale e il tragrande bene e magiore de' desiden che uomo puote aqulstare In questo secolo e 'I sezzaio de' fattl umanI" (Illibro del defendltore, p. 14). 39 For these cItatIons, see Bueno de MesqUIta, p. 328. Note that Marsilius also refers to cItizens as "clvlhter communicantes."

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above. Both of these paths, legitimation and discipline- clearly monastic and ecclesiastical in origin but also decisively influenced by the civic environmenteventually led to the civilitas of Erasnlus, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the phenomenon of the court, which was also European, though of Italian origin. 40 One nlust also speak of the neo-Stoic recovery of Roman disciplina militaris by Justus Lipsius. 41 But most of all these paths lead to the Machiavellian "effectiveness" to which I have just indirectly referred, granting the title of autonomous "discourse" to political thought and the title of autonomous "institution" to the practical reality this thought expressednamely, to the state.

III Having discussed the two closely related aspects of the superstructure, legitimacy andl doctrine or discipline, I shall now move on briefly to the institutional aspect. Here, too, I would like to suggest the possibility of an "illegitimate" origin of the modem state in Italy. I will attempt to show to what extent thi s hypothesis, in the context of the signoria states, tallies with Weber's thesis concerning the origin of the modem city and the commune. This provides an opportunity, no less iJnportant, to bring in Jakob Burckhardt's brilliant description of the figure of Ezzelino da Romano in the beginning of The Civilization of the Renaissance: He stands as the representative of no system of government or administration, for all his activity was wasted in struggles for supremacy in the eastern part of Upper Italy; but as a political type he was a figure of no less importance for the future than his Imperial protector Frederick.... Here for the first tIme the attempt was openly made to found a throne by wholesale murder and endless barbarities, by the adoption, in short, of any means with a view to nothing but the end pursued. None of his successors, not even Cesare BorgIa, rivalled the colossal guilt of Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten, and his fall led to no return of justice among the nations, and served as no warning to future transgressors. 42 40 See D. Knox, " 'Disciplina': The ~v1onastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility," in Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., ed. John Monfasani and R. G. Musto (New York, 1991), pp. 107-35; and F. Cygler, "L'Ordre de Cluny et les 'rebelliones' au XIIIe siecle," Francia 19 (1992): 61-93. 41 Let me nov, cite the main wntings of Gerhard Oestreich on the state in the early modern period, now collected in Geist und Gestalt des friihmodernen Staates (Berhn, 1969), and in Neostoicism and the Early NJodern State (Cambridge, 1982). A collection of his essays has appeared in Italian translation as Filosofia e costituZlone della Stato modemo (Naples, 1989). See also the recent publication of his doctoral dissertatIon, Antiker Geist und moderner Staat bei Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) (Gottingen, 1990). 42 Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (Oxford and London, 1945), p. 3. Innocenzo Cervelh has shown how important

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The hypothesis of an "illegitimate" origin of the state in Italy in the mIddle centuries of the Middle Ages might also be tested by bringing in the concept of the vicariate,43 which so far has been misunderstood and underestimated. F. Ercole, for instance, used this concept to confirm his thesis that "during the fourteenth century and for most of the fifteenth, almost no government of central and northern Italy felt able to exercise power validly and legitimately, however it had been obtained in fact, except after having gained recognitIon and confirmation from the emperor, and except by exercising this power juridically in his name. ,,44 For Ercole, this thesis served to confirm, against the opinion of Bartolus, "that these civitates could not be considered sihi principes or as having in se ipsas imperium," and therefore to deny that these entities already could have in themselves the nucleus of modem statehood. For us, however, this thesis serves to show, rather, that more is required to assure the presence of a "state" than simple civitates, and that the vicariate, imperial in this case, could perhaps furnish this further element, beginning a process that would have been impossible at the civic leve1. 45 For G. De Vergottini, another scholar of the vicariate, the problem is slightly different but eventually produces the same result. For him, the imperial use of the vicariate was an unmistakable sign of Henry VII's failure in trying to produce a reorganized and centralized bureaucracy for the Italian Burckhardt's reference to the figure of Ezzehno was for an interpretation so strongly centered on the Itahan Renaissance state in hiS introduction to W K Ferguson, If Rlnasclmento nella cntlca stonca (Bologna, 1969), p. XiV. 43 Let us not forget that Burckhardt himself emphaSizes Ezzelino's role as vicario when he presents his dramatic charactenzation· "At the Side of the centralizing Emperor appeared a usurper of the most pecuhar kind, his Vicar and son-in-law, Ezzehno da Romano" (Burckhardt, p.3). Concerning Ezzelino, see the recent collection of essays edited by G Cracco, NUOVI StUdl ezzehnlani (Padua, 1991). 44 Ercole (n 19 above), p. 146. See also p 148: "And why were the strongest slgnona governments and the strongest repubhcs, like Florence, Pisa, Siena, induced to payout large sums of money to weak and practically helpless emperors ... to obtain diplomas in exchange.. if those diplomas did not have their own legal value. .? The answer IS that only from these diplomas could repubhcan and slgnoria governments gain the Jundical legahty and stability that they felt they lacked otherWise; that is, the transformatIon of the governments themselves was made possible from pure and SImple de facto governments into true legal governments. And for this transformation espeCially the de facto holders of supreme power had to obtain the impenal vicanate in every autonomous clvltas." 45 Ibid., P 151 On p 154 he says' "The Itahan Cities of the Itahan kingdom were therefore much more fully comprehended WIthIn the medIeval system of autonomy than Bartolus supposed In other words, they were not on the extreme margins of the system, hke the true clvltates slbl pnnClpes. The latter were autonomous In the true sense of the word, that is, in the sense that does not exclude subjection but presupposes it by limiting it "

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kingdom and hJls recognition that the I.Jombard and Veneto signorie could not be suppressed. ~,6 De Vergottini also speaks of the communes as "particularistic organisms" or "autonomous particularisms," depicting a conflict between, on the one hand, the universalistic imperial situation that had already entered into crisis and, on the othe r, the new and still inchoate "state" perspective. For him, the problem is simply whether the concession of the vicariate could take precedence over and supplant the election of the signore by the commune. In my view, the problem is more complex. I wonder whether the vicariate was capable of giving its own sort of legitimacy, besides that implicit in the concession of signoria by the commune. I wonder, in other words, whether the vicariate may be seen as a stage in the evolution of local particularism toward the acquisition of sovereignty through the addition of a significant trace of "superior" povver, even if delegated. Obviously, generalizations are impossible. Each case is separate, and anyway the signore or vicar would alvv'ays have to come to terms with "local forces" as well as with his superior, ~fhere necessary. Nonetheless, I wish to consider the problem of the political revaluation that the vicariate might imply, whether conceded in a later moment as though to legitimate an accomplished fact or acquired before the signore took power. 47 One might hypothesize that after the middle of the fourteenth century, as the empire's ambitions of exercising direct power in Italy began to diminish, the use of the figure of the imperial vicar by the communes and signorie themselves became more intense. Plccording to De Vergottini, the "progressive decadence of the democratic and communal bases of the signorie" was followed by "their transformation into autocratic states, into principates." This, he claims, is clearly related to the full recognition of the imperial title. 48 G. De VergottinI, Vicanato imperiale e signoria (Milan, 1941). In fact, De Vergottini prefers to view the question from the special point of view of the empire. For hIm, the concession of the vicanate (and its acceptance by the commune by means of certain agreements) is always the reflection of a precise power relation between the two sides, In whIch the signore/vicar has practically no importance. Thus, on p.21, he writes: "Therefore, one may truly affirm that the acceptance or nonacceptance on the part of the commune of the imperial conceSSIon whereby the imperial vicariate would be the unique and exclusive source of power to govern the comrrlUne, depends only on the effective degree of power of the empIre, and not on the systern.... Only when the empIre is capable of forcibly imposing ItS own concept of the relation between imperial Vllcar and commune can it be accepted by the commune." In fact, thIS represents a violatIon of communal autonomy and of the imperial concessions at the Peace of Con~,tance. 48 Ibid., p. 26: "Later, certainly, the imperial vicariate seemed to stand on its own as a suffiCIent jundical baSIS for the government of the commune, regardless of the 46 47

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If this is true for the imperial vicariate, what then is the situation of the papal variant on the same institution? The beginning seems similar. John XXII eventually conferred the apostolic vicariate upon the Este in Ferrara (1329) only after failing to achieve centralization and direct government by the Church there. 49 And whereas the mid-thirteenth century was, as we have seen, a low point In the fortunes of the empire, this penod in Church hIstory signaled a change for the better. Abandoning, at the temporal level, the universalistic dream, the Church began to orient itself toward a "modern" solution to its territorial problem by attempting to assume the role of a state. In 1351, with Clement VI, the states of the Church were still in the midst of the crisis of papal sovereignty. By 1360, with Innocent VI, the Albomoz restoration had already occurred. Papal usage of the vicariate follows all these political events and, indeed, was probably an important stimulus. Certainly, it represents the way in which the pope managed to exercise central power and to bring together the disintegrative forces that had been activated in the first half of the fourteenth century. 50 For the Church, too, as it established temporal dominion over its territories the initial problem was maintaining the peace and tranquillity of its subject communities. Again the communes desired Internal peace, and the papacy itself invoked both internal and external peace as a rationale for its interference in civic affairs: The question was who, the pope or an aspirant to despotism, was to profit by this need." 51 The former won, also because the local signori felt better able to keep in touch with the internal administrative situation of the state of the Church than with that of the empire. "There was I. I.

actual power of the empIre In the penInsula-but thIS happened not WIth regard to the empire but In regard to the progressIve decadence of the democratIc and communal base of the slgnorie that thereupon began theIr transformatIon Into arIstocratic states and pnncipates." 49 For G. De VergottIni, Note per la storia del Vlcanato apostohco durante tl secolo XIV (MIlan, 1939), p. 8, the recognitio Imposed by John XXII upon the Este before the concession of the vicarIate "was the bitterest (theoretIcal) affirmatIon of the papal desire for centralIzatIon, expressed however (unfortunately) exactly In the moment In which the papacy began for the first tIme to sanction by the chnsm of legItImacy a slgnona formed WIthIn the terrae Eccleslae." 50 In partIcular, papal practIce was never to make deals concernIng the duratIon of the conceSSIon of the Vlcanate. See IbId, p. 22' "If the restoratIve polItICS of the cardinal-warrior had WIshed to accept and Indeed extend the InstItutIon of the apostolIc VIcariate as a juridIcal baSIS for the relatIons between papal sovereIgnty and slgnone, nonetheless, thIS politIcs never derogated from the temporary character of the vlcanal conceSSIons, whIch were clearly In oppositIon to the general practIce followed from the time of the empIre " 51 P. J. Jones, "The Vicanate of the Malatesta of RlmlnI," English Hlstoncal Revlew 264 (1952): 321.

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a permanent adlministration in the papal states, papal government was never reduced to merely theoretical claims, and the papal vicars were never wholly immune to its control. It was otherwise with the vicars of the empire, as their duties declined their rights were progressively extended. ,,52 In spite of the different outcome, there are many similarities in the evolution ofthe vicariate in imperial and Church territories. First of all, the juridical "title" that the vicariate was able to confer on the signore was similar, whether or not he was formally invested with jurisdiction by the commune. This evidence is decisive for my argument. In addition, there is Bartolus, the greatest theorist who regarded the civic governments as illegitimate due to lack of title. The problem of "title" \vas not only one of finding a place within the imperial, papal, feudal, civic, corporate, or other world in which to situate the new figure of the citizen!signore. The whole initial systen1 was put in question; indeed, the signore appeared to represent something new with respect to both the feudal and the civic or corporate systems, and elements belonging to the old system, which supposedly was being surpassed, had to be exploited in order to increase the force of the ne~1 institution that was be ing created. A dialectic was established, especially between the old universalistic idea and the new dimension of the territorial signoria, favoring the expansion of the modernity that had already begun in the city as well as the legitimation of the original genetic illegitimacy of the city, resulting ina tendency toward a principate. One may therefore suppose that by institutional means, according to the dialectic betwel~n signoria, vicariate, and principate, the ancient civic legitimacy (which was really illegitimate, in Weberian terms) could be transformed structurally into a new modern state type of legitimacy. One has the sense, in other words, that, from an institutional standpoint, the vicariate belongs to an intermediate stage between the fall of the old universalism and the affirmation of a new particularism. It could have become the common denominator between the t~'o, although for different and sometimes opposite reasons in either case. The next task is to see whether a trace in it may be found of some aspect of the modernity we have suggested as the basis of state development. Perhaps such a trace may be found in the relation of the vicariate to the themes of despotism and tyranny discussed by Bartolus. 53 52 Ibid., p.324. He continues: "Finally, well before the end of the fourteenth century, the Imperial vicariate had evolved from a terminable grant ad beneplacitum into what was virtually a perpetual privilege, though always subject in theory to the will of the king. The papal vIcariate was to follow a similar development; but more slowly, less obVIously to the profit of the signori, and wIth the Important dIfference that it finally succumbed to the restoratIon of direct government by the pope." 53 Diego QuaghonI, Polztica e dzritto nel Trecento italzano: If "De Tyranno" di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314 -1357) (Florence, 1983), pp. 57 ff.

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IV This analysis of the institutional field, like the analysis of the other two aspects of our inquiry, necessarily involves some distortion. In any case, let us now examine the hypothesis that the modem state may have developed because of the connection between the three aspects outlined above. This hypothesis regards the state as a point of unity between the institutional aspect of the organization of power, the ideological aspect concerned with the legitimacy of its function vis-a-vis the subjects, and the disciplinary aspect connected with determining the collective behavior of the subjects. On the other hand, the etymology of the word "state" expresses a sense of duration connected to the notion of a "mechanism whereby certain behavioral norms (especially prohibitions) created by men in a previous period become assimilated as natural and ineluctable laws (i.e., coercions)."54 This seems to be the direction in which the "statutory" and "governing" tendencies typical of modem politics tend;55 indeed, the latter is well expressed in the use of the term "state" in the inscription accompanying the fresco of "Buongoverno. ,,56 Duration and decision prefigure modem sovereignty. The problem of despotism remains. How can this recurring accusation definitely be removed? Bartolus takes refuge in the concept of bonum commune. 57 But if that is equivalent to "good government," that is, sovereignty, where then is the difference between good government (i.e., sovereignty or state) and despotism? To say that the difference is in the presence or absence of "common good" seems tautological, unless this good could be connected specifically to the strategic relation between order and plurality, that is, public and private. In this case, the concept of discipline, along with the individual and collective aspects contained in its sociopolitical definition, could be joined to the entire dimension of regulated order.58 The difference then would be in the desire of 54 Gianfranco Miglio, "Genesl e trasformazioni del termine-concetto 'Stato,' " in Stato e senso dello stato oggi in [talia (Milan, 1981); now in Miglio, Le regolarita della politlca, 2 vols. (Milan, 1988), 2:804-5. 55 Again Miglio insIsts upon the powerful decision-makIng component impliCIt in the nch vocabulary connected to the term "lnstituere," with a remarkable accentuation Just at the beginning of the thirteenth century (ibid., 2:808-9). 56 "Questa santa VIrtu ladove regge / induce ad unita h animl molt!, / e questl acclo ncolti, / un ben comun per lor signor Sl fanno, / 10 quale per govemar suo stato, elegge / di non tener glamma gli occhi rivoltI / da 10 splendor de' volti / de Ie vIrtu che torno allUI si stanno; / per questa con triunfo allul Sl danno / cenSI, tributi e slgnone di terre / per questo, senza guerre, / seguita poi ogni cIvIle effetto / utile necessano e dl diletto." In A. Cairola, Simone Martini e Ambroglo Lorenzetti nel Palazzo Pubblico di Slena (Florence, n.d.), p. 13. 57 Quaglioni, p. 37 58 Pierangelo Schiera, "11 'Bonum commune' fra COrpl e dlsciplina: Alle radici della politica nel medioevo," in Democrazia e dirztto (1991), pp. 29-51

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the "many minds" to place and maintain themselves "in unity," creating many spheres of life at the same time: from that of territoriality and duration to that of discipline and self-discipline, to that of legitimacy to that of doctrine. All these would be combined in the physical dimension of the territorial base, which has not yet been discussed because of its obvious structural link to politics and its organization. It is necessary to bring up this territorial aspect because the state (i.e., the common good) requires a constant connection between its parts to produce concord; the great novelty is the establishmLent and functioning of a network of communications, internal as well as external, that translates into coordination. 59 Without these requirements, the ne'w "machine for decision making," that is, the (modern) state, could not be constructed. The problem is to combine simultaneously the necessary and sufficient requirements for the machine to exist-in other words, to have its own constitution. Before this moment, there may be traces of a developing statehood, and afterward other elements may be added that could improve the machine and make it function more effectively, but the critical point is to find the genesis of the machine itself. At one point it did not exist; at another point it did. The existence of the machine is also connected, as has been said, to the availability of an adequate technology of communications and information. 6o T'his, however, calls for reevaluating the role of communication in the doctrinal-disciplinary aspect of the state. The model might be constructed using insights from Habermas or Luhman along with the traditional Weberian ones. The term "state" in Machiavelli has been said to signify, in concrete terms, the combination of men and means, that is, resources, around which every regime must be organized. The state is thus the material constitution, that is, the political unity of the organized community.61 Miglio's hypothesis proceeds from this conception. He suggests that Machiavelli's state signifies a reality capable of joining the older meaning of "position" to the modem one 59 Giuseppe Sergi, "Le istituzioni politiche del secolo XI: Trasformazioni dell' apparato pubblico e nuove forme di potere," in II secolo XI: Una svolta? pp. 84-85, which draws upon Giovanni Tabacco, "Le strutture del regno italico fra XI e XII secolo," in Studi matildici (Modena, 1978). 60 Miglio, "CJenesi e trasformazioni" (pp. 810-11), identifies a second developmental phase of the "modem state" in the "corporative state," which originates with the seventeenth century: "If the constitutional revolution whIch I have described and ascribed to the period 1250-1350 creates the 'motor' of the future '(modem) state'-princes and 'technicians' being its helpers-the gratification of the multiple needs produced by that 'revolution' couJld only be reached through the procedures (customs and institutions) offered by tradition and--even more-imposed by the technological level of communication and information." 61 H. De Vries, Essai sur la terminologie constitutionnelle chez Machiavel (ll "Principe") (The Hague, 1957).

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of "abstract order." In this, Miglio goes too far in his explanation of these processes. However, his hypothesis is valid in that it identifies in the doctrIne of "reason of state" a movement toward the abstract concept of a state. "The principal difficulty was in transforming the private and personal 'interest' of the prince and his 'entourage' into the 'interest' of an objective entity external to the prince himself and therefore abstract. The difficulty was overcome by 'inventing' that which we now call the 'modern state.' ,,62

*** In conclusion, if the particular entity known as a "modern state" can be said to develop through a conjunction of the three aspects of the path to the unity of the "many minds" -that is, legitimacy, discipline, and institutions-then its Italian origins are unmistakable. For these three ingredients enjoyed a simultaneous development only in ItalIan humanism, even though in forms too narrow and awkward, and indeed "despotic," for the possibilities to be completely realized there. A few centuries were necessary for the mixture of Ingredients to reach their proper consistency and for the final formula of the state as "duration in space" to be realized. But there is no doubt that the miracle occurred in Italy, and there myth was imagined, that is, became reason and work of art. The modern state may be said to have emerged in medieval Italy at least as far as concerns the primary element that composes it and that is the fundamental nucleus of its "modernity"-namely, the man-citizen, or rather the men-citizens, the "many minds" of which I have been speaking. These are the most immediate subjects of the action of disciplining, but they are also the immediate objects of the legitimacy that is a predominant concern in modern state regimes. And the history of the vicariate, especially the papal one (since the imperial one loses its importance with the decline of the empire), throws much light on this question. Having emerged as a remedy to the despotic control of the signore, and therefore as a first response to the communal citizens' desire for legitimacy, it disappears in the same way, leading where possible to more secure and tranquil forms of the organization of power-in the papal case, in the "State of the Church." The real protagonists of these episodes were not the signori but the subject-citizens. Carlo Cipolla was right to remind us that "the Florentines of the fourteenth century who had thrown out the Duke of Athens could scarcely see anything but the ugly side of the new signorie. Nor could they compare the Italian tyrant with those in other countries and therefore realize how much their own were capable of favoring intellectual progress. ,,63 But now we must realize 62

63

Migho, "Genes! e trasformazionl," 2:823 Cipolla (n. 29 above), p. 2

Legitimacy, Discipline, and Institutions

33

this, because vve are able to comprehend that the origin of the modern state was not merely institutional, that is, centered on the construction of an apparatus, but also cultural, that is, connected with legitimacy, and behavioral, that is, conneclted with doctrine and discipline. Therefore, in our study of the origin of the "modem state," the Italian signorie and principates of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and especially their citizen-subjects, must be studied just as carefully as the new European monarchies that were soon to emerge.

The "Private," the "Public," the State* Giorgio Chittolini Universlty of Milan

The term "private" recurs with notable frequency in current discussions of the history of the state and of politics in early modern Europe. It can be used in a variety of senses and in the context of very different discourses, as we shall see, but these often share a common denominator: that is, "private" appears as a binomial element juxtaposed with the term "public," much as the two concepts reciprocally defined each other during the formation of the absolute state. I In this admittedly generic sense, the term "private" has been used broadly to indicate whatever might be identified as "not pertaining to the state" in the political organizations of those centuries. It thus can serve as a useful historiographical device for clarifying the orientations of recent Italian

* ThIS artIcle onginally appeared as "11 'pnvato,' il 'pubblico,' 10 Stato," In Origini dello Stato: Processl dl formazione statale In Italia fra medioevo ed eta moderna , ed. GIorgIO ChlttohnI, Anthony Molho, and Plerangelo Schiera, Annah dell' Istituto Storico Italo-GermanIco, vol 39 (Bologna· II Muhno, 1994). Translated for the Journal of Modern Hlstory by DanIel BornsteIn. I I am referring above all to Paolo CappelhnI, "Pnvato e pubbhco (dintto IntermedIo)," In Enclclopedia del dlntto (Milan, 1987), 35 :660- 87. See also Norberto BobbIo, "Pubbhco/pnvato," In Enclclopedla Einaudi (Tunn, 1980), 11 :401-15, and Stato, governo, SOCleta. Per una teona generale della politica (Turin, 1985), pp. 3 ff. (trans. Peter Kenneally as Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Llmits ofState Power [MInneapohs, 1989], pp. 1- 21). On the separation of the private sphere from the pubhc as an essentIal component of the formation of the modern state, and on the "great dichotomy" that follows from thIS, one should still consult Hans Kelsen, Offentliches Recht und Privatrecht (Stuttgart, 1968); and ReInhart Koselleck, Cntlca llluminlstlca e cnSl della societa borghese (Bologna, 1972). The bInomial "pubhc/pnvate" IS one of the most stable and endunng In the hIStOry of legal doctnne and political thought Over the course of tIme, the two terms have acquired various meanings that must be carefully Isolated and dIstinguished. See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformatlon of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeols Soclety, trans. Thomas Burger WIth Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); S. I Benn and Gerhard F. Gaus, eds., Public and Private in Social Life (London, 1983); and, on one Important turning pOInt In the hIStOry of the two concepts, DanIela GobettI, Pnvate and Public· Indlvlduals, Households, and Body POlitlCS In Locke and Hutchlnson (London and New York, 1992). On the medieval penod, see Georges Duby, "Private Power, Pubhc Power," In A Hlstory of Private Llfe, vol 2, Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 3-31. ThIS essay orIgmally appeared m the Journal of Modern History 67, suppl (December 1995)

The "Private," the "Public," the State

35

studies of the political history of the period between the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modem era, as they bear on the question of "the origins of the state." This survey, it should be noted, will focus specifically on historical literature, thus excluding a vast amount of scholarly work in other disciplines-such as political science, law, sociology, and anthropologydespite the close connections these disciplines have with historical approaches to state formation. What lies behind this great interest in the "private"? It is, I think, a sign of a significant shift in historiographical outlook, a shift that began as early as the late 1970s. 2 Even as many Italian scholars were turning with increased attention to a "new political history" (understood, that is, not as a traditional history of politics, but a hJlstory ofthe forms ofpolitical organization), their studies revealed profound misgivings about the "history of the state" and about interpretive categories and points of reference derived from the "historiography of the modem state." This was especially true when' 'the modem state" was taken in a strong sense to mean a nucleus of full sovereignty, unconditioned by external interference and in1ernally centered entirely around the authority of the prince and his government, an authority capable of pervading and placing its stamp on the structures of the whole society-its groups, its individuals, its communities. It was even more true when the concept of the modem state was bound up with other highly charged values, such as the common good, planning, universitas, or (even more) rationality, modernization, and progress, 3 so that, as Ernst Cassirer has argued, it assumed the metahistorical characteristics of a myth. 4 These misgivings not uncommonly extend to the very concept of "the state," particularly when it is assimilated, as it often is, to that of the modem state; but also when that concept, despite being less charged with "modernity" and other values, is still presented as the interpretive key or point of reference for a comprehensive history of politics. It has been objected that the history of the state is often a story of empty appearances. An older historiographicalltradition has been rejected as pervasively 2 See the historiographical remarks in the first chapter of Jean-Claude Waquet, Le Grand-Duche de Toscane sous les dernzers Med,CIS (Rome, 1990), pp. 13-51. 3 On the use of the concept of the state in recent works, especially (though not exclUSIvely) on the history of law, see Maurizio Fioravanti, "Stato (storia)," in Enciclopedia del dlritto, 43:708-54. On its use in Italian historical and philosophical traditions, see (iiuseppe Galasso, "Stato e storiografia nella cultura del secolo XX: Appunti su alcuni aspetti del problema storico," In Visions sur Ie developpement des Etats europeens: Theories et Historiographies de I'Etat moderne, ed. Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet (Rome, 1993), pp. 95-115. See also Gianfranco Miglio, "Genesi e trasformazione del termine-concetto 'stato,' " in Stato e senso della stato oggi in Italia (~[ilan, 1981), pp. 65 - 86; now in his Le regolaritQ della politica, 2 vols. (Milan, 1988), 2:799-832. 4 Ernst Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State (New Haven, Conn., 1946); ItalIan translation, Il mito della Stato (Milan, 1950).

36

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marred by misleading "statist" prejudices while the society it purported to study now seems "irreducible to the statal dimension." The "imaginary" quality of the state's monopoly of power has been highlighted. By the end of the 1970s, scholars could speak of "the crisis of the notion 'the State' in contemporary historiography."5 It is in this context that the concept of the "private" acquired prominence, either as an indication of all that was "nonstatal" in those societies or as the referent of entirely novel models of politics. These new directions in research are not limited to Italy. They are also evident in the historiography of other countries, especially those whose unfolding constitutional history has been less molded by the paradigm of the "modem state," or those that, at any rate, were less marked by a powerful tradition of history of the state. This would include a significant number of European countries,6 in addition to Italy.7 In Italy as elsewhere, these new approaches do not simply spring from academic reflection on the history of institutions; rather, they are bound up with stimuli and concerns deriving from 5 As Roberto Ruffilh did In hIS IntroductIon to Crisi della stato e storiografia contemporanea, ed. Roberto Ruffilh (Bologna, 1979). The debates on these tOpICS have been wIde-rangIng. See Roberto Ruffilli, "11 processo dl statalizzazione nell'Europa modema," Quadernl sardl 4 (1983-84): 9-24~ Lorenzo OmaghI, " 'Crisi' del centro statale e 'disseminazione' di centn politici," Quaderni sardi 4 (1983-84): 43-55~ Cesare Mozzarelli, "Introduzione" to pt. 1 ("L'amministrazione nell'Itaha modema"), sec. 1 ("L'Italia d'antico regIme: L'amministrazione prima dello stato") of L'amminlstraZlone nella stona moderna, Istituto per la Scienza dell' Amministrazione Pubblica, ArchivIo, n.s 3 (Milan, 1985), 1:5-20~ Pietro Costa, Lo stato immaginano: Metafore e paradigml nella cultura giuridlca italiana fra Ottocento e Novecento (Milan, 1986)~ the exchange on "Tra 'crisl dello stato' e 'Stato immaginario,' " in Chelron 4 (1987): 213-47~ and Angela De Benedictis, "Stato, comunita, dimensione giundica: Una riflessione su recentI dibattiti," Societa e stona 11 (1988): 379-93. 6 See Blockmans and Genet, eds., esp. the contributions of Wim Blockmans, Pablo Fernandez AlbaladeJo on Spain, Rolf Torstendahl on Sweden, and so on. On approaches to the history of law in Spain in partIcular, see Bartolome Clavero, Paolo Grossi, and Francisco Tomas y Vahente, eds., Hispania: Entre derechos propnos y derechos nacionales (Milan, 1990). 7 The political vicIssitudes In Italy in the late MIddle Ages and early modem period have not generally encouraged an interpretatIon in terms of "the rise of the state." The prevailing vIsion of that penod has instead been one of moral and political decadence-a judgment that has proven to be one of the most powerful and endunng in Italian historiography, for all the dIfferences between the various Ideologies and historiographical schools that have invoked it, from Francesco De SanctIs to AntonIo Gramsci and the Gramscian tradition. See GIorgio Chittolini, "Alcune considerazloni sulla storia politico-istituzionale del tardo Medioevo: aIle ongini degli 'stati regionali,' " Annali dell'Istituto stonco italo-germanico In Trento 2 (1976): 401-19. In contrast, interest In the hIStOry of the state instItutions that took shape in the course of the fifteenth century has been quite scant. See the recent remarks of Riccardo Fubinl, Italla quattrocentesca: Politlca e diplomaZla nell'eta di Lorenzo II Magnifico (MIlan, 1994), pp. 36-37.

The "Private," the "Public," the State

37

political debates over the ever more evident "crisis of the state." 8 They are approaches, moreover, that can best be understood in the context of a wider historiographical debate: a context of radical challenges to time-honored paradigms, of profound rethinking and critical reworking in which categorical statements, grand models, global visions, and historicist and "teleological" interpretations arouse doubt and suspicion. One notes instead "the appeal of the small-scale, ... an emphasis on individual values and everyday life," and even "a preference for an ethics of pleasure over an ethics of responsibility."9 These issues have stirred controversy for some time now. IO In Italy, too, the new scholarly approaches are hotly debated: welcomed by some as offering freedom from old habits of mind and outworn ideological frameworks, and denounced by others as worrisome signs of intellectual confusion, a crisis of "theoricity." I I x Wim Blockmans, "Les ongines de~, Btats modernes en Europe, XIII e -XVIII e slecles: Btat de la question et perspectives," In Blockmans and Genet, eds., pp. 1-14, esp. pp. 1-2 9 These are cited as "typIcally 'postmodern' concerns" in Antonio Manuel Hespanha, Storia delle istizuzionl politiche (Milan, 1994), pp 10-11. 10 Some fifteen years ago, summIng up baSIC trends In Amencan scholarshIp on the RenaIssance, William J. Bouwsma spoke of a "collapse of the traditional dramatIc organIzatIon of Western historiography," referring to the crisis of a global interpretive model of modern hIstory and to the loss of the central place that the RenaIssance had occupied in that model ("The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History," Amencan Histoncal Revlew 94 [1979]. 1-15, repnnted in William J. Bouwsma, A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990], pp. 348-65). Bouwsma noted scholars' widespread reservations about Interpreting modern hIstory in terms of a unIfied and unihnear development toward values that were generally acknowledged, In the late nIneteenth and early twentIeth centunes, to be fundamental to Western cIvIhzation. These reservations occurred in the context of a broader crisis of confidence concerning the possibility of constructing organIC and general models. ThIS change In outlook has become even more marked in more recent studies of Renalssance hIstory. See, e.g., Anthony Molho, "Gh storici americani e il Rinascimento italiano," Cheiron 8, no. 2 (1991): 9-26; and Ronald F. E. Weissman, "Dal dlalogo al monologo: La stona tra I FIorentinI," Cheiron 8, no. 2 (1991): 95 -Ill. For an Impassioned attack on the "ne\v history" In an Anglo-Saxon settIng, see Geoffrey R. Elton, Return to Essentials: Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study (Cambridge, 1991); Italian translatIon, Ritorno alla storia: Rijiessioni sullo stato attuale degli studistoricl (MIlan, 1994). I I ThIS last reference is to aVIdIO CapI1 anI, "Cnsi epIstemologIca e cnSI di Identita: AppuntI sulla ateoretIcIta di una medievIstica," Studl medievali, ser. 3, 18 (1977): 395-460, reprinted In avidio CapItani, Medioevo passato prossimo: Appuntl storiograficl: Tra due guerre e molte cnSl (Bologna, 1979), pp. 271-356. See also avidio CapItani, "Dove va la stonografia medloevale Italiana," Studi medlevah, sere 3, 8 (1967): 617 -62, also repnnted in hIS Medloevo passato prossimo, pp. 211-69. For other contributIons to this debate, see PIetro Rossi, ed., La stonografia contemporanea. Indlrizzi e problemi (MIlan, 1987); LuigI De Rosa, ed., La storiografia itahana

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Chittolini

An analysis of these problems would carry us far from our subject. To remain within the ambit of the history of institutions properly speaking, we can note that in this general climate of revision and renewal, political history, too, is exploring new paths, which lead it in different directions. Generally speaking, one might observe that interest in the figures, structures, and practices that composed what one might call the physiognomy of ancien regime states has been supplanted by a new curiosity about figures, structures, and practices that coincided only partially, if at all, with those formalized as "public" or state institutions, and that instead seem to belong to the realm of the "private," at least in the sense that we have assigned to that term. One revealing sign of this shift is the warm reception accorded the work of Otto Brunner, which for some time now Pierangelo Schiera has been urging upon the attention of Italian scholars, particularly for Brunner's efforts to craft a political history of society without resorting to the terminology of the "history of the state." 12 However, numerous examples of a new kind of political history have emerged in other areas of inquiry as well, focusing on themes that in the past were not considered proper to historical study but that now have been brought to the foreground by the transformation and enlargement of the research agenda. Of particular importance has been the "valorization of micropolitics," inspired by scholars like Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, which springs from an awareness of the "molecular and omnipresent character of the mechanisms of power." The world of private relations has been shown to contain "a complex web of regulation and discipline entirely autonomous of formal power, as that is conceived on the statist political model." Moreover, deglz ultlml vent'annl, 3 vols. (Rome and Ban, 1989), esp. the essays by Mario Mazza, "La storia romana," in vol. 1, Antlchita e Medloevo, pp. 67 -126~ and SergIo Bertelli, "II Cinquecento," In vol. 2, Eta moderna, pp. 3-62; Angelo Torre, Stato e SOCleta nell'anclen regime (Turin, 1983); Carlo Ginzburg, Mitl, emblemI e spie· Morfolgia e storia (Tunn, 1986), trans. John TedeschI and Anne C. Tedeschi as Clues, Myths, and the Hlstoncal Method (BaltImore, 1989); GIovanni Levi, "A proposlto dl mlcrostona," In La stonografia contemporanea, ed. Peter Burke (Rome and BarI, 1993), pp. 111-34 (onginally published as "On Microhlstory," in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed Peter Burke [Cambndge, 1991], pp. 93 -113)~ and AurelIo MUSl, La stona debole: Cntlca della nuova stona (Naples, 1994). 12 See esp. the partIal Italian translation of Otto Brunner's Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschlchte, 2d ed (Gottingen, 1968), titled Per una nuova stona costltuZlonale e soclale, ed. Pierangelo Schlera (Milan, 1970). See also the recent Amencan translation of Otto Brunner's Land und Herrschaft, Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance In Medieval Austna, trans. Howard KamInsky and lames Van Hom Melton (Philadelphia, 1992), which contaIns a valuable Introduction by the translators.

The "Private," the "Public," the State

39

the Interest aroused by manifestations of power In Its most everyday forms and by what today are less readily apparent levels of social organization and regulation has opened historians' eyes to those manifestations of power and law in earlier periods, which, to the degree that they differed from the liberal-representative and legal-positivist political model, became that much more Invisible. To put it another way, historians of power have begun to see new things, and those thIngs, because of their connections with current hidden agendas, have increasingly begun to interest both the community of writers of history and their readers!3

These new topics have often been tackled with new methodologies borrowed from anthropology, sociology, and ethnology, just as ethnologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have invaded fields of study once reserved for historians. Even the history of law and of legal thought bears eloquent witness to these new approaches-for instance, in its emphasis on the "privatistic" framework of early modem juridical thinking about institutions, relations, and functions, which today vie tend to conceive as belonging to the sphere of public law l4-while similar developments are apparent in the history of political theory, particularly in studies of the concept of interest, the "incorporated society," and so on. 15 In this greatly enlarged field of study, the traditional history of the state and its institutions now occupies just one sector, and a sometimes marginal one at that. In contrast, topics and areas of inquiry once considered extraneous to a "history of the state," or even to what might properly be called the political arena (such as clientelism, corruption, and "illegal" practices-all topics to which we shaH return), can now be grasped in their full potential as essential tools for understanding the structure and workings of late medieval and early modem society. Much that was labeled "private" according to interpretive categories used to discuss the foundation of the modern state has now been shown to be constitutive of the political structures of the ancien regime. 13 Hespanha, pp. 11-12. But see the remarks on German approaches to constitutional history made some years earlier by Frantisek Graus, "Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters," Historische Zeitschrift 243 (1986): 529-89. 14 Among the many possible examples, one should see Angela De Benedictis on the "contracts" bet\veen princes and cities (Repubblica per contratto: Una cltta e uno Stato: Bologna nella Stato della Chiesa, in press), which develops and expands her many earlier studies, some of which have appeared separately; and Luca Mannori on the "prehistory" of the administrative function ("Per una preistoria della funzlone amministrativa: Cultura giuridica e attivita dei pubblici apparati nell'eta del tardo diritto comune," Quademi fiorentlni per la storia del pensiero giuridlco moderno 19 [1990]: 323-504). 15 Lorenzo Ornaghi, Stato e corporaz/one: Storia di una dottrzna nella CrzSI del sistema politico contemporaneo (Milan, 1984), and his Introduction to his Il concetto di interesse (Milan, 1984).

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Examples of this approach are quite numerous and may be found in studies from highly diverse areas of inquiry. I shall not attempt to give an exhaustive survey of them-in particular, I shall set aside all the rich literature on "the private" that does not bear directly on "the public" and the state-nor will I linger over the importance of their achievements. Rather, I will limit myself to reflection on a few methodological issues they raise: first, how these new approaches relate to a more traditional historiography of the state and of public institutions (and what validity the older approach might still retain); and second, what other models these new research programs offer as better suited to understanding early modem society.

I.

POLITICAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONS

A. A sense that the categories derived from the "public sphere" (as we normally think of it, with reference to more "modem" models of the state) and an external "history of institutions" are inadequate for reconstructing the politIcal dynamic of Renaissance and ancien regime societies is readily apparent in many works informed by the approaches I have summarily described. We must now examine the content of such works more closely. I have in mind, for instance, the many studies emphasizing the importance of robust "private" structures of aggregation, both horizontal and vertical, such as clans, kin groups, courtly circles, factions, and parties. These structures are private in that they are not always formalized like public institutions. Because they do not coincide or coincide only partially with those structures that are, as it were, draped in institutional dignity, they go unrecognized or are denied by the official system. Nonetheless, they emerge as vital and robust nuclei of the political organization of society. The power of these structures of aggregation gave rise to "privatistic" political practIces, such as chentelism, brokerage, corruption, favoritism, nepotism, mediations, courtly intrigues, and feuds. Such "alternatives" to public power differ from the practices envisioned by the official hierarchy charged with the machinery of the state and are often oppositional. Nevertheless, these structures can at times act more incisively and effectively than the agencies of the state. Indeed, state agencies and officials have themselves been shown to engage in anomalous and "illegal" governmental practices. Numerous studies, including many contributions from French- and Englishspeaking historians, have explored these issues in recent years, paying particular attention to Florence and Venice (among other urban settings). These studies have shown the importance of other forces at play in the political game and of other protagonists than those propounded by institutions: factions, the prince as a private person, courtiers, favorites, kin groups. They

The "Private," the "Public," the State

41

have shown the importance of forms of authority and influence and of social practices that were barely acknowledged or not acknowledged at all by institutions (even if they were recognized through other mechanisms of legitimation, both private and public), and of some equally anomalous governmental operations and forms 0 f administration of justice. Other centers of power have been identified alongs Lde the offices and magistracies, such as princely courts with their parallel powers and the "private and secluded" chambers of the patriciate. 16 At the same time, in studying the public institutions of states, cities, and village communities, historians have brought out the essential role played by ties of kinship, clan, and faction, by patronage and clientage, both within and outside the various institutions, and their part in shaping political strategies and influencing social dynamics. 17 Prosopographical studies aimed at shedding light on these ties and this play of interests have multiplied; officials and "state employees" have been scrutinized for behavior, attitudes, and expec16 For some issues and themes In this vast and nch bibliography, see Paolo Grossi, ed., Storia sociale e dimenslone giuridica: Strumenti d'indagine e ipotesi di lavoro (Milan, 1986); Paolo Cappellinl, "Gli 'antichi' e i moderni: Stona sociale e dimensione giuridica," Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 58 (1985): 411-44; Cesare Mozzarelli, ed., "Familza" del prznclpe e famiglia ariJtocratica (Rome, 1988); SergIo Bertelli, ed., La mediaZione: Max Weber, "Wlrtschaft und Gesellschaft, " I, III, 5 (Florence, 1992); Luciano Martone, Arbiter-arbztrator: Forme dl glustiZia przvata nell'eta del diritto comune (Naples, 1984); Mario Sbriccoli, "Fonti gludiziane e fonti giundiche: Riflessloni sulla fase attuale degli studi di storia del crimine e della giustizia criminale," Studi storici 29 (1988): 491- 50 1; Marcello Verga, "Tribunali, giudici, lstituzionl, dotton In eta modema: Note in margine a un recente convegno," Quadernl storici 25 (1990): 421-44; Claudio Povolo, "La confhttuahta nobiliare in Italia nella seconda meta del Cinquecento: II caso della Repubblica di Venezia: Alcune ipotesl e possiblh lnterpretazioni," Attl dell'Istituto veneto dl SClenze, lettere e arti-Classe di SClenze moralz, lettere ed arti 151 (1992 - 93): 89 - 139, with an ample bibhography. On the court in particular, see Trevor Dean, "Le corti: Un problema stonografico," in Originl della Stato: ProceSSi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. (jiorgio Chittolinl, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, Annali dell'IstItuto storico italo-germanico, Quademo 39 (Bologna, 1994), pp. 425 -47. 17 Several Issues of Quadernl storici have been devoted to communIties and the systems of kInship and factional ties that defined theIr political life. See no. 46, GIovannI Levi, ed., "Villaggi: Studi di antropologla storica," Quadernl storicl, vol. 16 (1981); and no. 63, Sandro Lombardini, Osvaldo RaggIO, and Angelo Torre, eds., "Conflltti locali e ldioml pohtici," Quadernl storicl, vol. 21 (1986), esp. the articles by Osvaldo Raggio, "La pohtica della parentela: Confllttl locali e commissan in LIguria onentale (secoli XVI-XVII)," pp. 721-57; and Angelo Torre, "Faide, fazioni e partiti, ovvero la nde11nlzione della pohtlca nel feudl lmpenah delle Langhe tra Set e Settecento," pp. 796- 810. See also the vvlde-ranglng overview of Giovanni TOCCI, in the IntroductIon to the anthology he edIted on Le comunlta negli Statl ztalzanl d'antico regime (Bologna, 1989), pp. 9-58, and the works cited below in n. 37.

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tations that do not fit with the principles of public interest or service to the prince. I8 Even the study of ecclesiastical institutions is often pursued outside the classic framework of church-state relations in order to grasp and highlight the tensions, alliances, or aims of the protagonists apart from their status as clerics or laymen as well as to gain the greatest possible understanding of the interplay between ruling groups and orders. I9 Similarly, in the field of international relations, the idea that the state held an exclusive right to engage in diplomacy has been discarded. Attention has turned instead to the far-flung systems of relations forged by the interstate ties between leading families and noble or princely houses as they sought to further their interests, and to the interaction between these strategies and internal political arrangements.2° There is no question that thanks to these perspectives and what they have revealed, the history of the forms of political organization has been transformed and is now notably richer and more complex than in the past. B. Recognizing the importance of these private associations and practices has added fuel to critical debates about whether the concept of the state is an apt means for grasping the overall political organization of the societies in question. As we have noted, there is a growing conviction that a history of the state conceived as a history of public structures of governance, tidily planned institutions, hierarchies of power, and actions of magistrates and officials cannot adequately describe the nature and dynamics of the structures of association and the powers at work, nor can it describe the forms and modes in which they are employed. Indeed, any historical approach that would claim to reconstruct the entire political system of a society merely by reproducing 18 For some Indications, see Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nella stato-cltta medievale (Florence, 1978), pp. 128-35; Cesare Mozzarelh, "Corte e amministrazione nel pnncipato gonzaghesco," Socleta e stato 5 (1982): 245-62; GIorgio ChIttoliru, "L'onore dell' officiale," in Florence and Milan: Comparisons and Relations, ed. Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai RubInsteIn, and Craig Hugh Smyth (Florence, 1989), pp. 101-33; Andrea Zorzi, "I Fiorentini e gh uffici pubblici del primo Quattrocento: concorrenza, abusi, illegalita," Quademi storici 22 (1987): 725-51, and "Ordine pubblico e amministrazione della giustizia nelle formazioni politiche toscane fra Tre e Quattrocento," in Italia, 1350-1450: Tra cnsi, trasJormazione e sviluppo (PistoIa, 1993), pp. 419- 74. 19 Roberto Blzzocchi, "Clero e chiesa nella societa ltahana alla fine del Medio Evo," in Clero e societa nell'Italia moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Rome and Bari, 1992), pp.3-44. 20 Riccardo Fubinl, "Classe dingente ed esercizio della dipiomazia nella Firenze Quattrocentesca," In I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana nel quattrocento (Florence, 1987), pp. 1-47, and his Italia quattrocentesca (n. 7 above), pp. 185 - 219; Paolo Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali: Le ambascerze sJorzesche fino alla conclusione della Lega italica (1450-1455) (Florence, 1992), esp. pp.264-93; and Franca LeverottI, Diplomazia e governo della stato: I ''famigli cavalcanti" di Francesco Sforza (PIsa, 1992).

The "Private," the "Public," the State

43

models of magistracies and governmental operations (as these are defined by constitutions, laws, and treatises) has been roundly condemned as illusory. Such are the leading arguments in the critique of the concept of the state and the validity of categories derived from the public sphere. It has even been suggested, at times, that it is pointless to study a state that never existed, if "state" is understood to mean a power that functions in the name of abstract sovereignty and public interest, above any "private" purposes and forces. As Roberto Bizzocchi has argued recently, "Against Aristotle's famous dictum that the laws, not men, should govern, one might offer the simple observation that behind any law there are always men who make use of the law as an instrument of their power. There is no institutional functioning at 'degree zero.' Every institutional action is, in its context, a political act. Every institutional body physiologically requires the exercise of power." There is no such thing as "a politics devoid of the political content of politics, a politics of the pure exercise of sovereignty"; "no institution functions disinterestedly, not even the j nstitutions of the state ,,21 Accordingly, one cannot conceive of the state the way the eighteenthcentury philosophers did, as the product of a contract that assigns it a sovereign povver that can be exercised entirely in the public interest, devoid of politics. Political power should be understood instead "according to the model domination-repression, in which repression is not an abuse (as oppression was in terms of the contract) but simply the consequence and continuation of the relation of d0 mination." In this model of domination-repression, "the relevant contrast is not between legitimate and illegitimate, as in the earlier model, but between struggle and subjugation." ~'2 Moreover, conceiving the state as a contract entails a sort of objectification of the state itself ("the quid, meaning the exercise of sovereignty in the public interest, remains constant throughout history"), and makes the state "an immutable object, with an existence prior to the practices of power that are justified by reference to it." When the state is conceived in these terms, "throughout history the state experiences vicissitudes, not reconfigurations. Its role in the drama remains always that of the public interest. Its nature is defined once and for all. ,,23 This makes it literally impossible to write a history of the state. On the one hand, this invites us to free ourselves from our false beliefs: "Our error, as Paul Veyne would say, is to believe in the state or in states, instead of studying the practices that generate objectivizations which we then take to 1

2]

Roberto BIzzocchi, "Stato e/o potere: Una lettera a GIorgIO Chittohni," SClenza

e polltlca 3 (1990): 57, 58. 22

23

Ibid., p. 60. Ibid.

44

Chitto/ini

be the state or some kind of state." 24 On the other, we are asked to accept this .... model of domination" and stand on its head the idea of the state as preexisting relations of power. In practical terms, Bizzocchi calls for a shift In approach to historical research, which should begin not .... with the state as a natural and neutral object, but with the prelimInary contextualization and connotation that It generates as a power in ever-shifting relation with social realIty. ,,25 These are very complex Issues and ones that are hotly debated nowadays, as we noted. While their theoretical implications may be of greater concern to political scientists than to historians, the historian nonetheless must address the concrete problem of how to frame his or her research in such a historIographical praxis. In particular, the question remains of what stance to adopt viS-a-VIS a hIstoriography that seeks to examine, as in the past, the hIstory of institutions and of public structures-what once upon a time could be called, without overwhelming misgivings about the term, the history of the state. The need to decide what importance and what legitimacy such an approach might retaIn remains as well. C. To tell the truth, on one point-the historIographical use of the concept of .... the state" -It seems to me that these cries of alarm have not always been Justified and that some clarification is in order. As it is actually used by historIans, the concept of the state IS not necessarily charged with those lofty and potent values that are so fiercely contested nowadays. To be sure, there is a certain hIstorIographical current that seeks to reconstruct more or less teleologically some general processes of state formation, ascribing to those processes more or less strong values~ but this IS not the rule. A systematIc hypostatization of the concept of the state-with all of its connotations of centralization, absolute sovereignty, progress, and so on-IS most often found, paradoxically, among some of Its fiercest critIcs: frequently those very persons who have paired with it an equally modernIzing notion of the private. It is as ifcurrent polItical debates, whIch for some time now have struggled to come to terms with a concept of the state Inherited from the past-a concept felt to be too .... lofty," burdensome, and much in need of rethinking and historicization-have spilled over into disCUSSIons of pohtical and instItutional history. Scholars may thus be seeking to assert the Innovative character of a research program that claims to break sharply WIth .... traditional" approaches. But this insistence on ascrIbing such high valences (theIr sIgns now neatly reversed, yet still credited with theIr full force) to the concept of the state, In its historiographical usage, strikes me as often a self-serVIng polemic, waged on Inappropriate and sterile grounds. 24 BIzzocchl'~ reference IS to Paul Veyne's essay, "'Foucault revolutIonne l'hl~tolre," In Comment on ecrit l'lllstolre, SU1VI de Foucault revolutionne l'hlstolre (Pans, 1979), p 219 25 BIZZOcchl. .... Stato e/o potere," p 64.

The "Private," the "Public," the State

45

In point of fact, the concept of the state, as employed by historians, has generally maintained a rather low profile. For the most part, it has been used merely to indicate, in the words of Otto Brunner, any "enduringly ordered collective life in a political association. ,,26 I would add further that this usage is particularly widespread among historians concerned with state organizations that are [1ot "modem," such as the Renaissance state, the early modem state, or the ancien regime state. 27 These are state organizations whose characteristics have long been recognized to be distinct from those of the "absolutist" rnodern state, or the nineteenth-century state, in which power seems more concentrated and more "autonomous." In contrast, these state organizations are characterized by a marked pluralism of bodies, estates, and political nuclei within the state itself, each of which has claims to authority and power; by a limited capacity and desire to act on the part of the central government and public agencies; and even by a certain institutional inclination to limit their own prerogatives and recognize instead separate and particularized forms of political organization. 28 These are states, in fact, that include among their constituent elements not only the government of the prince, the officials, and the magistracies, but a] so the territorial assemblies, the estates, and the privileged orders-cities, communities, nobles, feudatories, ecclesiastics--which is why these state arrangements can be interpreted in terms of dualism or of the "estates-polity." 29

26 Brunner, Land and Lordship (n. 12 above), p. 95. See also the remarks of Ernesto Sestan quoted In n. 33 below. 27 On this point, see Hespanha (n. 9 above), pp. 15-16. 28 On the character of the Renaissance state, see the observatIons of Bernard Guenee, L'Oecident aux XIV e et XV e sieeles: Les Etats (Pans, 1971), p. 181 and paSSIm; and Jajme Vicens Vives, "La struttura amministrativa statale nei secoli XVI e XVII," In Lv stato moderno, vol. 1, Dal Medloevo all 'eta moderna, ed. Ettore Rotelli and Pierangelo Schiera (Bologna, 1971), pp. 221 -46. On the very limIted extent to whIch categories of analysis derived from the modem state can help Illuminate the distInctive features of, e.g., the Sforza state, see Giorgio Chittolini, "Governo centrale e poteri locah," in Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia e i lorD rapporti eon gil statl italiani ed europei (1450-1535) (Milan, 1982), pp. 27 -41; WIth regard to a larger region, see GIorgio Chittolini, "Stati padani, 'Stato del Rinascimento': Problemi dl ricerca," In Persistenze feudail e autonomle eomunitatlve In stati padanl fra Clnque e Seieento, ed. Cilovanni Tocci (Bologna, 1988), pp. 9-29. For a contrastIng Interpretation, whIch treats the Italian states of the aneien regime In terms of the paradigm of the "modem state," see Enrico Stumpo, "L'organizzazione degli stati: Accentramento e burocrazIa," in La storia: 1 grandi problemi dal Medioevo all'Eta Contemporanea, ed. Nicola Tranfaglia and Massimo Firpo, vol. 3, L'Eta Mode rna. 1.1 quadn generall (Turin, 1987), pp. 431-57, esp. pp 450-53. 29 This is tnle even though the distinc1Jve evolution of polItical forms in Italy makes it impossible to mechanically apply the classical German and French model of Stiindestaat, or estates-polIty, to Italian state InstitutIons. For some remarks on the

46

Chittolini

These states confirmed ample privileges, immunities, and exemptions through institutions such as the fief, the "pacts of lordship" (Herrschaftsvertrage), and the variegated assortment of concessions that now have become so familiar. Venality of office, corruption, and occasional fees were deeply ingrained in the "bureaucracies" of these states. Their administration of Justice was molded on one side by arbitrary interventions, letters of grace, sospensiones causarum, and the like, and on the other by the innumerable informal strategies of conflict resolution they recognized and often even promoted. The state was, in short, a system of institutions, of powers and practices, that had as one of its defining features a sort of programmatic permeability to extraneous (or, if one prefers, "private") powers and purposes while retaining an overall unity of political organization. These elements appear to complement one another, intimately bound up as they were in a knot that could hardly be unraveled. This collective constitution may not have been recognized by a political theory that tended to insist instead on a new notion of sovereignty,30 but it was legitimated as a wid~spread practice of governance. An attempt to sort out the elements that might be called "private" or "public" in a modem sense would run the risk of generating anachronisms, for the demarcation line between the two concepts was not yet drawn according to the politIcal geometry of absolutism. It is precisely these aspects of political organization that have attracted special attention from historians of the Renaissance and ancien regime state in recent decades. In the actual practice of research, the concept of the state does not seem to have ordinarily and inevitably assumed those connotations-of full sovereignty, absolutism, the preeminence of public institutions, centralization, coercion, the exercise of power in the name of the public interestthat have been called into question. Nor do Renaissance republics and principalities seem to have been studied exclusively from a teleological perspective in which they were judged according to their degree of "stateliness," the growth and consolidation of their sovereign powers. I would deem such a perspective entirely legitimate, despite the risk of a certain distortion or states of northern and central Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see GIorgIO ChIttolinI, "Stadte und Reglonaistaaten In Mittel- und Oberitalien zwischen spatem Mlttelalter and fruher NeuzeIt," Der Staat 8 (1988): 179- 200, and "The Italian CIty-State and Its TerrItory," In Cay-States In Classlcal Antiqulty and Medieval Italy, ed. Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and Julia Emlen (Ann Arbor, MIch., 1991), pp.589-602. On the claSSIC models of the society of classes or estates and the estates-polity, see most recently Pierangelo Schlera, "IntroduzIone" to Societa e corpi (Naples, 1986); and LUIgi Blanco, "La stonografia 'corporativa' e 'costituzionale' di EmIle Lousse· OsservaZIonI e hnee dl verifica," Annali dell'Istituto storico italogermanlco In Trento 13 (1987): 271-326 30 But see Diego QuaglionI, I limlti della sovranita: Il penSlero dl Jean Bodin nella dottrina pohtica e glundlca dell'eta moderna (Padua, 1992).

The "Private," the "Public," the State

47

flattening of pe~rspective, for addressing the grand question of the formation of the modem state-that form of state 'which, for better or worse, constitutes a fundamental feature of European history.31 However, it seems to me that, more generally, the state might be conceived simply as an arena for the mediation and political organization of various forces, of differing actors and interests-as an "enduringly ordered collective life in a political association"-without necessarily implying that its powers and its sovereignty conferred any special quality or efficacy.32 Engaging in an ongoing polemic against an "imaginary" state, one that exists as a straw man more than as an interpretive category applied to ancien regime institutions, threatens (as I said) to become a sterile exercise. Several decades ago, when Enrlesto Sestan addressed the question of the state in the early Middle Ages, he warned against the tendency to ascribe eternal and unvarying features to that concept, noting instead that it acquires "a concrete meaning only when it is both temporally and qualitatively delimited: the modem sovereign state, the medieval feudal (and nonfeudal) state, the ancient city-state, the medieval theocratic state, and so on.... The important thing is that one adopt what I would call a historical mind set and that, whether it be openly stated or tacitly understood, one never lose sight of the entirely particular meaning that the external sign, the label, has in a specific historical moment." 33 31 This argunlent requires a far more thorough discussion than I can offer here. I will simply note that the need to grasp the defining features of a society in one particular phase of 1ts political evolution does not necessarily rule out studying, on another spatial and temporal scale, processes and transformations that unfold over longer periods and in wider arenas A wide-ranging debate over these issues has been reopened in recent years in connection with a major research program on the modem state, initiated in France by the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique and later supported by the European Science Foundation: see Bloclanans and Genet, eds. (n. 3 above), which also provides references to other volumes already published or in preparation. To my m1nd, this debate has shown that it is possible to address this problem in fresh ways, avoid1ng old models and foregone conclusions. 32 These approaches have become an integral part of research in this field, as can be clearly seen froln two recent surveys mentioned above, both of which are thorough and well-informed, despite their differing conceptual frames: the chapter "Quelques observations sur l'historiograph1e des anciens Etats italiens," in Waquet (n. 2 above), pp. 13-51; and the encyclopedia entry by Fioravanti (n. 3 above). 33 Emesto Sestan, Stato e nazione nell 'alto Medioevo, 2d ed. (1952; Naples, 1994), p. 23; quoted by Galasso (n. 3 above), p. 114. Sestan went on to say: "It seems utterly pointless to adopt a new terminology that would eliminate the guilty word, simply because the concept to which it presently refers does not square with the reality of earher times. The term 'state' shares this inconvenience with many other terms in the modem historic al vocabulary: church, people, country, law, liberty, and so forth. Every concept has 1tS own historical life; the term that expresses 1t remains or can remain intact and unchanged while gradually coming to include shifting and diverse conceptual realities."

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Chittolini

D. If the term "state" for the period of the Renaissance or ancien regime is indeed taken as having the features I have described, then a history of the state-and of the entire system of norms, institutions, and powers that might be called public in its structures and functions-cannot, I think, be neglected. Such a history offers a global design and model of social organization, albeit one that must be examined and interpreted; at the same time, it allows us to grasp the importance of other forces ("nonstatal," "private," extraneous to the machinery of governance and its purposes) and to evaluate their roles relative to the political system as a whole. This is true first of all because the public order itself is a reflectionhowever rough and distorted it may at times be-of the forces at play and their combination in a political organization. A public order or constitution helps us to understand the sort of society we are observing, even in the case of weak states (even, that is, when their institutional outlines tum out to be significantly deformed in practice); it offers a revealing reflection of those forces and a privileged vantage point from which to sort them out. In effect, the institutions of the ancien regime are not the expression of a public order centered entirely on the prince, nor do they draw the historian's attention only to the "center" (and to centralization, or to topics such as bureaucracy, administration, the effectiveness of the apparatus of governance, and so on). The study of Renaissance or ancien regime institutions gives ample attention-and rightly so-to cities, communities, fiefs, corporations, orders, and social groups, examining not only their own political forms but also the way they complement the prince and the ruling city, and hence their integral contribution to the dualistic arrangements of those states as estatespolities. When Edoardo Grendi notes that "the historicopolitical analysis of a regional society entails more than just an evaluation of the forces and mechanisms of centralization and control set in action by the metropolis (including those, significant as they may be, institutionalized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)," and adds that "such an analysis requires attentive consideration of the autonomies effectively present in the region, both at the level of cities and towns-that is, the loci of regional political polycentrism that govern subject communities-and at the level of the individual residential communities that claim an identity as distinct and effective cultural units," it seems to me that he is highlighting the fecundity of studies that have been under way for some time now. And when he opposes to this analysis "the statalist point of view, from the center, which presupposes a political system that hinges on the state," I believe he is invoking a concept of the state that is thoroughly reductive as an instrument of historical analysis, a concept that seems so powerful simply because he charges it with meaning. 34 34

Edoardo Grendl, II Cervo e fa Repubbhca' II modello hgure di antlco regime

(TUrIn, 1993), p 3.

The "Private," the "Public," the State

49

Moreover, precisely because of that inherent proclivity for granting exceptions, pardons, and immunities mentioned earlier, institutions to a great extent reflect margins of personal and collective privilege, and areas of authority and influence, that differ from those of the formally recognized apparatus and system of "public" power. Such are the "contradictory" characteristics often noted in Renaissance states, in which a tendency toward concentration of power is systematJlcally counterpoised by recognition of positions of privilege and community rights and by acknowledgment of special power s of political agency--a recognition and legitimation that, nevertheless, can subsume these elelnents within the framework of a more general systenl of governance. The public order and institutions do not just trace the basic outlines of political organization. Important powers emanate from public institutions: not all powers, certainly, and not powers that are detached from the desires and intentions of the constituent groups that form a society. Yet the impact of such powers is far from negligible. Renaissance and early modern societies contained functioning magistracies and offices in various alTangements: authorities that maintained order and dornestic peace; judicial powers that investigated, sentenced, incarcerated, fined, and confiscated; armies that were simultaneously war machines, instruments of internal control, and rnechanisms for social advancement and legitimation; fiscal systems that imposed tax assessments, determined criteria for apportioning and collecting them, and proceeded to exact them; offices that had a hand in nominations to important ecclesiastical benefices and kept an eye on ecclesiastic al property. Indeed, the Quattrocento witnessed the formation of regional states in which the central government's relations with the subject cities, fiefs, communities, estates, and social groupings were new and different from those in the city-state and involved nevI public institutions. As Giovanni Tabacco writes, a "process of gradual state-building" was accompanied by a "more or less self-conscious effort to conserve the equilibrium of a pluralistic society." 35 This process unfolded in that lively interplay between institutions, which Elena Fasano has repeatedly called to our attention. 36 It also evolved out of that dynamic inherent in any political organisln almost biologically intent on structuring and maintaining itself; it used the interests and forces that gathered around it, at times exceeding the purposes for which it was created. The result was to give 35 Giovanni Tabacco, "'Regimi pohticl e dinamiche soclali," In Le Italie del tardo Medloevo, ed. Sergio Gensinl (Pisa, 1990), p. 49. 36 Elena Fasano, "'Gli stati dell' Italia centro-settentrionale tra Quattro e Clnquecento: Continuita e trasformazloni," SOcleta e storia 6 (1983): 617 -39. On the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see In particular Gian Mana Varanini, "Dal comune allo stato regionale," in La stona, ed. Tranfaglia and Firpo, vol. 2, Il Medioevo, 2, Popoli e strutture polltiche (Tunn, 1986), pp.689-724; and on the Veneto In particular, Varaninl, Comunl cittadinl e stato reglonale: Rlcerche sulfa Terrafirma veneta nel quattrocento (Verona, 1992).

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Chittolini

life to more complex public institutions, with positions of greater independence vis-a-vis the interplay of interests and societal forces, and with greater freedom of intervention and action (and a greater capacity to exercise influence on social structures and class dynamics). The web of alternative powers and political practices that conditioned or undermined the public powers may have been enormously vast and complex, and the prince's ability to regulate and discipline these practices and behaviors may have been limited, but the governmental apparatus nonetheless grew and developed a greater range of action. One sign of the growing role of the government apparatus is the struggle waged around honors, offices, and benefices. If it is true that control over these privileges indicates the victory of "private" forces over public purposes-and enables us to gauge the strength of families, kin groups, and factions, and the effectiveness of their strategies-those struggles are also a sign of the vital importance attributed to public positions of power as instruments of further advancement and empowerment. E. Public and private concerns may thus be said to mirror one another to a greater or lesser extent in governmental institutions and practices, while the institutions themselves are not merely the reflection but a more or less direct expression of "private" interests and groups. If this is so, then analyzing this interplay and the extent to which it occurs will, on the one hand, help us to grasp the distinctive characters individual states assume and, on the other, will help us to understand the particular and gradually changing forms of organization that private interests and forces derive from their relationship with public institutions. Accordingly, I find particularly promising those avenues of research that seek to analyze the defining features and force of the mechanisms of government in terms of their ability (or inability) to respond to significant private interests in this unavoidable reciprocal interaction. Depending on the case, the effect may be either to reinforce or to weaken public structures and to reorient private interests in relation to "public." In some situations a sort of osmosis seems to take place, thereby reinforcing the action of the state and public institutions. These institutions appear to be most effective when they are the powerful and fairly direct expression of tightly interwoven private and collective interests. When the private is present within the public, the mechanisms of governance and the political system are strengthened. This occurs, for instance, where instruments of consensus are employed to bind individual figures or groups to the authority of the prince and the power of his apparatus, through favors, pardons, and the practice of clientelisffi. 37 This can also happen on a more general level, when larger 37 Medicean Tuscany has been a particularly nch field for studies of this sort. See, e.g., Wilham j. Connell, "Clientehsmo e Stato territonale: II potere fiorentino a Pistoia nel XV secolo," Socleta e stona 14 (1991): 523-43, Patrizia Salvadon's introduction

The "Private," the "Public," the State

51

groups or entire orders are linked to the state by analogous means. I have in mind certain £orms of corruption, which are tolerated as a means of coping with rigid and archaic laws, or the venality of offices, as a way of disciplining and controlling the class of officials, or even an instrument for creating a social group v,hose social legitimacy derives from the exercise of public functions. On an even grander scale are the cohesion and consensus produced by the distribution of offices (and ecclesiastical benefices) within closed governing elites, such as the aristocracies of the Renaissance republics-those scorned practices of misgovernment that might better be understood and judged in historical terms as elements of cohesion and consolidation of the state. 38 It has also been observed that, in these republics, the formation of a funded public debt enabled the creation of a certain solidarity between personal profit (albeit of a small circle) and public interest. Common goals were reinforced by political arrangenaents that entrusted the management of the public debt and state finances to the creditors themselves. 39 Similar effects could derive from the creation of military structures that linked noble interests with those of the early modem monarchies. 40 However these devices may be judged in ternlS of public morals or civic spirit, they allowed interests and consensus to crystallize around the state. One might then concur with Walter Barberis, whose study of the military structures of Savoyard Piedmont and the role the nobility played in them concluded that "the state is the central figure of this particular Piedmontese drama, as it is by implication in broader Italian developments. But this is not to Lucrezia Tonlabuoni, Lettere, ed. PatrizIa Salvadori (Florence, 1993), pp. 3-45; and Lorenzo Fabbri, Alleanza matrimoniale e patnziato nella Firenze del '400: Studio sulla famiglia Strozzi (Florence, 1991). 38 These practices have recently been highlighted in studies that emphaSIze how sharply they contrast with the strong sense of public Interest and CIvic duty that, according to students of civic humanism, was nobly cultivated among late medieval citizen aristocracies. The Venetian patriciate In particular, long celebrated for its disinterested obedience to the "sacred laws," has had the mask stnpped off its utilitarian hypocrisy, venal practices, petty familIal strategIes, and paraSItical exploitation of offices and benefices. See Donald E. Queller, The Venetian Patriciate: Reality versus Myth (Urbana, Ill., 1986); and FelLx GIlbert, The Pope, His Banker, and Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1980). On the collapse of this and other "myths" of Venetian historiography, see James S. Grubb, "\Vhen Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography," Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 43 -94. 39 Marvin B. Becker, "Economic Change and the Emerging Florentine Territorial State," Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): 7- 39; Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico (n. 18 above), pp. 117 - 28. On these aspects of the management of the Venetian public debt, see Michael Knapton, "Guerra f' finanze," in Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton, La repubblica di Venezia nell'eta moderna: Dalla guerra di Chloggia al 1517 (Turin, 1986), pp. 311-12. 40 For one example, see Walter Barberis, Le armi del principe: La tradizione militare sabauda (Turin, 1988).

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that semI-Imaginary state that historians like to label modern, in which a government apparatus run by functionaries seemed to give concrete force to the uncontested will of a sovereign. Rather, it is a state that effectively managed to assume the trappings of its own fictive personality: one, that is, in which it seemed possible to integrate the 'particular' of many private interests in the 'general' of an accepted public interest. ,,41 In other situations, in which this osmosis did not take place or did so to a very limited extent-in systems less organic and structured than those of Savoy or Venice-we seem to discern, on the one hand, a greater weakness of state structures and, on the other, different and more contentious ways of organizing special interests. This was the case with Milan at the end of the fifteenth century, during the crisis of the Sforza regime, when the urban ruling classes, because of their long-standing exclusion and estrangement from the operations of governing the city and the state, did not identify the fortunes and preservation of their "state" with the fortunes of the dynasty. Instead they tried to come to terms with successive foreign regimes in return for special liberties and privileges-a process the various constitutional arrangements faithfully reflect. 42 There is the emblematic case of Liguria, with its autonomous communities and powerful factional organization. Important recent studies have made the outer reaches of Liguria a sort of privileged terrain for this kind of analysis. 43 Yet even these forms of political organization were influenced by the central government in important ways. It does not seem possible to understand their internal dynamics without taking into account the role of public institutions and their powers of intervention, which they demonstrated by mediating conflicts, confirming social standing and hierarchies, and so on. 44 These studies have shed light on such interventions. They even highlight the role of factions as constitutive of the overall political system of the Ligurian state (when they turn their attention to this overall system) or as powerful instruments of governance in the hands of the republic of Genoa and its ruling classes. Factional power turns up in various forms in other Renaissance states as well. 45 41 Walter Barbens, "TradIZIone e modernIta: II problema dello Stato nella storia d'Italia," Rlvista stonca itallana 102 (1990): 254. 42 GIorgIo ChIttohnl, "Di alcunl aspetti della cnSI della stato sforzesco," in MlLano e Borgogna. Due stati pnncipeschi fra Medioevo e RlnaSClmento, ed. Jean-MarIe Cauchles and GiorgIo ChIttolinI (Rome, 1990), pp. 21 - 34. 43 Osvaldo Raggio, F alde e parentele· Lo stato genovese VIStO dalla F ontanabuona (Tunn, 1990). 44 Povolo (n. 16 above) IS nch in InsIghts. On conflict as an endemIc feature of ancien regime socIetIes, see GIorgio POlItI, "I dubbI dello sviluppo: RIlevanza e ruolo del mondo rurale in alcune opere recentl (secoh XV-XVIII)," Socleta e stona 5 (1982). 367 - 89. 45 On the relation between factIons and state authority in another Apennine valley, see DanIele AndreOZZI, Nasclta dl un dlsordlne: Una famiglla slgnorile e un'1 valle

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53

In short, these are phenomena that can be read from different points of view. To be sure, any reading of this intersection of public and private must insist on the powerful grip of the private on the public, even in an age that saw the emergence of new forms of state. This was emphasized a decade ago by a historian of la\\!, Manlio Bellomo, speaking of the relation between powerful groups and the state: Even as the unique and unItary power of an organizatIon with a large territonal base gradually forms or reforms until it emerges with the characteristic features of the modem state, powerful groups embed themselves ever more deeply in it. If lineages and consorts discard their old robes and drape themselves in the liveries of the prince, they nonetheles5. neither disappear nor identify themselves entirely with the interests, ambitions, outlook, and programs of the prince. In short, whereas previously these powerful groups were neither coordinated nor fixed in a stable pattern of relations, they now transform themselves and grasp the utility of a new rapport with an organization taken as an instrument and arena for fruitful new endeavors~ and while they retain and reshape much of their original potential for autonomous action, they also graft themselves to the essential framework, both central and peripheral, of a unitary constitutional structure, that structure we continue to call the modem state. 46

Yet the very aspects brought to light by these studies-the way these powers fasten onto a comprehensive political order and graft themselves to its essential framework-strike me as being of equally vital importance for a different sort of reading, one directed at the comprehensive political order and constitutional frame\\!ork. Here we discern a transformed public/private dialectic, conducted at a level of greater complexity and on a broader scale. We also find a state organization in which institutions appear more minutely engaged and more fully interactive, deriving from their role a more compelling legitimacy and greater authority. These elements help us to grasp the specific physiognomy of that political system in its historical setting, its differences from other systems, and the processes of change that have taken place. F. A history of the state (in the sense employed here, as a system of institutions 47 that operates like an underlying web in which diverse forces and purposes are interwoven in mutual interdependence, not that heavily value-laden piacentIna tra XV e XVI secolo (Milan, 1993). On the way "mediation" contnbutes to "the formation of the absolute Renaissance state, in that gradual 'monopolIzation' of vIolence (to use the terminology of Elias and Foucault) which is the principal sign of the strengthening of central authonty," see Sergio BertellI, "Potere e mediazIone," In Bertelli, ed. (n. 16 above), p. 14. 46 Manlio Bellomo, "Poteri dei gruppi e gruppi al potere dal medioevo agli inizi dell'eta moderna," in Potere, poteri enlergenti e lorD vicissitudini nell'esperienza gzuridica italiana, ed. G. Piva (Padua, 1986), p. 90. 47 "InstitutIons" in the broad sense of the term, as used, e.g., by GIovanni Tabacco, "Lo studio deBe istituzioni medievali In Italia," in Convegno dell 'Associazione dei medievalisti italiani (Bologna, 1976), pp. 27 - 28.

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concept evoked at the outset) thus strikes me as potentially a very real history, anything but eternal and unvarying and not necessarily teleological but, rather, capable of offering essential parameters for judging the evolution of the political organization of society. Interests and practices that change over time-because they are the expression of gradually shifting groups, with differing components-give life to institutions and organizations that in tum experience notable and revealing transformations. A city-state republic will reflect one sort of society in the thirteenth century and a different one in the fifteenth; princely states, like those of Savoy or the Sforza, reflect other kinds of societies. Institutions reflect shifting political force fields: changes in the classes and groupings that express interests, the variable character of the interests themselves (from the most elementary concerns for the security of one's person and possessions to the most ambitious desires of those who seek to establish themselves as protagonists), and the various organizational forms that those interests assume-in their different weights, at various levels, in positions of dominance for some and subordination for others, in arrangements that in one moment are more stable and in another more conflictual, in shifting combinations that spawn redistributions of power and gradually changing political orders and machineries. Such a history can supply a very useful perspective-indeed, a privileged observation point-on the evolution of political systems. Of course, stopping at an external history of institutions would be inadequate. But it is essential to keep constantly in mind the structures of association, the intentions, and the formal and informal uses of power generated by society in that interplay between "public" and "private" that we have described-as one must to interpret any form of state, even in other periods and geographical settings. This is especially true of the period with which we are concerned here, the fourteenth to the sixteenth century_ During that time I think we can discern an increasing disentanglement of the official apparatus of power from the dynamics of society as public structures were both expanded and strengthened. 48 Admittedly, this order and apparatus continued to function according to the logic of mediation between political forces and coordination of interests; but, faced with a more complex society and political structures, with different interests and different groups that interacted ever more closely,49 they certainly required and presupposed a growing degree of organization and 48 Tabacco, "Regimi politici e dinamiche sociali" (n. 35 above); VaraninI, "Dal comune allo stato regionale" (n. 36 above), pp. 693- 724; Fubinl, [talia quattrocentesca (n. 7 above), pp. 27 ff. and 35 - 37. 49 In that process of condensation (or perhaps of "Stelgerung der pohtischen Intensittit," In Gerhard Oestreich's formulation) expenenced by all of late medIeval society. See Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung: Das Reich zm spiiten Matelalter, 1250-1490 (Berlin, 1985); and, In another context, Gerald

The "Private," the "Public," the State

55

of mediation, and, correlated with this, a greater Herrschaftsintensitiit (to use Otto Hintze's old concept). All this urges a judicious consideration of the new structures and new powers that came into play, especially since governmental institutions and operations could hardly restrict themselves to reflecting without distortion the interests of individuals and of particular groups. The organization that the state gives to private forces and interests is something different from the arithmetic sum of its parts: institutions and structures take on their own distinctive and autonomous appearance, with new bases of legitimacy and new arenas of action and intervention. Reflecting on the Florentine comInune's growing assumption of sovereign prerogatives in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and on the political and juridical theory that developed along with it, Riccardo Fubini has spoken of "revolutionary advances toward the state" and proclaimed "the full modernity of the Italian states of the Quattrocento." 50 These claims, like those for what is "modem" and what is a "state," can and should be debated. But these were indubitably new features, features that would become characteristic of Renaissance political systems.

II.

OTHER MODELS?

A. The term "private" is used not only to define forces, interests, and practices that are contrasted to a "public" order and apparatus (thus recognizing by implication the existence of that order and its institutions). It is also invoked by way of contrast to suggest a social and political organization based on structures that are not public-minded and that do not refer to the concept of the state (or to conceptions of the public and of public law developed together with the concept of the state but not appropriate to a society that does not recognize the public/private dichotomy, like that of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and therefore needs to be understood according to its own principles). Following this line of reasoning, our focus should not be public institutions and the state apparatus, but the internal structures and working machinery of the society. Our categories should furnish a genuine and concrete picture of the forces and dynamics in play, the true web of relations and powers. This raises the question of whether we should use a dIfferent model, a "stateless" one, in which a public right or institution or power is not presented as distinct or different from private powers and rights: an alternative model of Harriss, "Pohtical Society and the Growth of Government In Late Medieval England," Past and Present, no. 138 (1993), pp. 28 - 57. 50 Fublnl, Italia quattroce'1tesca, pp. 28 and 36.

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political organization based on an assemblage of "private" relations. One might imagine, for instance, a political structure formulated in terms of lineages, factions, and groups, organized on the basis of systems of relations and mechanisms of power that are private in nature, a society that could not be adequately described by an analysis in terms of publIc institutions and the state. The challenge would then be to see how everything could come together in a comprehensive (but not "statal") order, in an interweaving of different systems of relations and distinct arenas .of power and authority-an order that also Includes the powers and authority that in other contexts would be called "public." Rather than being neatly contrasted to one another, these systems would instead be reassembled according to a new logic. 51 Such an approach would apply, of course, when one wishes to try to grasp the overarching structures of political organization of these societies: when one seeks not just to identify, for example, the interests at play and the forces on the field, the nature and mechanisms of their relations, but to see how they all come together at a level that transcends the local, where larger wholes are formed on the basis of recognizable rules of functIoning and development. This IS not the only possible approach, but it was the goal to which the old "history of the state" aspired. It attempted to reconstruct integrated political systems 52 that could be identIfied by their defining institutions and to trace the 5\ It would also be InterestIng to dISCUSS the possibIlItIes opened by ~tudles In the hIstory of law-more preCIsely, of legal theory-In the early modern penod. These studIes have shown how often legal theory resorted to InstItutIons and concepts of pnvate law to explaIn InstItutIons, relationshIps, and functIons that nlneteenth- and twentieth-century hlstonography tends to present In publIc terms It seems to me that preCIsely thIS absence of the modern category of the publIc (and the recourse to pnvate law concepts stretched to cover new meanIngs) cannot help but make It hard for legal theory to recognIze In appropnate terms realItIes that were nonetheless effectIvely operatIve and hardly reducIble to pnvate law. As Mannon observes, legal theory IS unable to define a specIfic "admlnlstratlve functIon" proper to the ancien regime state, to whIch It nonetheless assIgns Important admInIstrative tasks. He also notes that ....ancien rl?gime Jundlcal culture remained utterly uninterested In (or even conscIously opposed to) lImItIng the actIvIty of full satIsfactIon of the publIc Interest to a unIfied functIonal typology dIstInct from the admInIstratIon of JustIce on the one hand and the management of the pnvate patnmony of the body polItIC on the other One may note at the same tIme that JUrIsts were fully conscIous of groupIng In these two categorIe~ the prInCIpal cases that would later be brought Into the framework of the admInIstratIve functIon" (,,'Per una prelstona della funzlone ammlnlstratlva" [no 14 above], pp. 324 and 500). Clearly, It IS hard to artIculate the novelty of powers, functIons, and groupIngs that do not fit In thIS framework. See also Angela De BenedictIs, ....Consoclazlonl e 'contrattl dl slgnona' nella costruzlone dello Stato In Italla,,, In ChlttolInI, Molho, and Schiera, eds (n. 16 above), pp 591-608. 52 Brunner emphaSIzed thIS unIty In hIS concept of the state, notIng that "we cannot dIscard It WIthout the nsk of neglectIng the deCISIve element of 'polItIcal unIty and order' " (Land and Lordship [n 12 above], p 95)

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succession of different types of state (such as the feudal state, the estatespolity, the absolutist state). This concern retains much of its validity, for if the analytical categories of the modern state seem inadequate, it is also true that one should be able to imagine global structures of political organization, albeit with different foundations and different joints, and to wonder how one should conceive an integrated polilical order and what parameters should be used to measure its evolutionary modes and stages. It is also valid to wish to avoid isolating the various elements of the picture and losing a vision of the whole in which the individual protagonists act and the various mechanisms function according to specific and gradually shifting rules, making it impossible to assess their effective role and impact on the total framework. And it is valid to want to grasp the distlnctiveness of one political system relative to others from different periods, which may nonetheless be based on similar structures and mechanisms-from "feudal" societies to our world of multinational corporations and great financial lobbies. To clarify what I mean by way of an example, I believe that this was the concern that inspired Paolo Prodi's recent study of the oath, which outlines a sort of model of late medieval society. His model, which makes great use of the insights and achievements of cons titutional history, manages to present an organic picture of late medieval political structures based on relations of private law, without distinguishing between public and private. The period from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century was the apogee of what Prodi calls the "sworn" or "incorporated" society: a society in which "the management of power was scattered over a continuum that knew no break between the private sphere and the public." In this society, the oath emerges as "the fundarnental device for transforming de facto realities into law, the center of gravjty around which a system in perpetual motion maintained its general equilibrium. ,,53 Echoing the concept of Personenverbandstaat, as Brunner uses it, Prodi describes a society formed by a complex web of personal relations, both horizontal and vertical, which gave life to a plurality of social bodies (based on kinship, association, and subjugation), all bound up with one another and cemented by s\vom pacts. These social bodies were also political bodies, since this "diffuse sovereignty" found expression in "the web of oaths, which developed from the most elementary relations of fealty, through the ever more complex and articulated conventions of private associations, to the pacts of lordship and international treaties" -without any distinction between the latter and other forms of swonl agreements, and without any need, for instance, "to consider 53 Paolo Prodi, Il sacramento del potere: Il giuramento POhtlCO nella stona costituzionale dell' Occidente (Bologna, 1992), p. 161.

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the international treaties joining political dynasties as different in nature from ordinary marriage contracts. ,,54 This web of oaths constituted "not a limitation on state powers but rather their bones and sinews," since "the laws and liberties [which the sovereign swore to uphold in his coronation oath] were not abstractions or fixed privileges, but the sum of these sworn pacts. ,,55 This "diffuse sovereignty" dissolved and obliterated distinctions between the social and the political and created the sort of continuum between the private and public spheres mentioned earlier. This approach strikes me as interesting because it focuses not on public institutions but on the primary system of relations from which those institutions derive. It identifies in the content of the pacts that order the system the way to recover, moment by moment, what might be called the contents of the political: the gradually shifting basic issues around which society finds its lines of balance and organizing structures. It uses concrete terms rather than the abstractions of a vague concept of power. Moreover, it coherently redefines the role of the "state" and the "public" apparatus as one of the many forms of power and authority that the system of sworn pacts puts to work, a form that differs qualitatively from the rest only in the number of people who swear to respect it and the force it is able to apply from time to time. Regardless of any questions and possible objections that this model might provoke, 56 one cannot help but admire its remarkable solidity and its ability to offer a unified and coherent picture of the political organization of late medieval society. B. The problem of how to conceptualize a political history according to categories that are new and different from those of the traditional political history is currently at the center of a maelstrom of reflections and debates. I will limit myself to suggesting one point for discussion: the fact that the need for organic models-models that could bring out internal connections, long-term developments, and the mechanisms of change-does not seem to be strongly felt or widely shared. This need, certainly, is rarely satisfied. 57 IbId., p. 199. Ibid., pp. 205, 202 56 I wonder In particular whether thIS "fabnc" of sworn relatIons was really able to create a hIgh concept of sovereIgnty. It should be borne in mInd that ProdI's study covers the thIrteenth through fifteenth centunes; In the fifteenth and sixteenth centunes thIS pattern would gIve way to a dIfferent, more "statal" model (ibid., pp 227 -82). 57 Sharon Kettenng comes to simIlar conclUSIons In her survey of studies of clientelism, whIch have generally treated theIr subject In a "behavIoral perspective, and far less In Its relatIon to the polItIcal system." In thIS connectIon, Kettering pOInts out a certaIn disjunctIon between the "local level" and "natIonal level" In studies of "patron-chent" systems, few of whIch have discussed chentehsm "as a form of linkage between one and the other ... We have relatIvely httle systematIc informatIon 54 55

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59

This strikes me as one reflection of that climate of distrust of general models mentioned earlier. Even when vie do not want to limit ourselves to "a sort of antiquarian savoring of the past,"58 and do not deny the need to find organizing categories and interpretive guidelines, we rarely feel obliged to recover the outlines of a comprehensive mode1. 59 Such comprehensiveness is sacrificed without any great regret to the polycentrism of research, the thrill of opening new \vorkshops, and identifying the forces on the field and the interests in play. the nature and mechanisms of their relations. If this "does not presage the creation of a new unifying synthesis,"60 it does have the advantage of blazing unexplored paths of research and breaking age-old historiographical silences. 61 In any event, this widened horizon and enriched vision, this attention to the political in its n10st capillary and scattered forms and manifestations, make it objectively more difficult to compose vast and unified pictures. If the political pervades the entire universe of public and private relations, if (as I said at the outset) everything is political, it becomes harder to identify global structures in which the diverse forms of the political array themselves in an integrated system. about how this mJlcro-level analysis feeds into and affects the processes and actors that are visible at the national level of political life" ("The Historical Development of Political Clientelism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 [1988]: 447). 58 "Introduzione" to Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti, eds., Il pensiero debole (Milan, 1983), p. II. 59 Mazza has assessed studies of Roman history In similar terms: "One seems to sense the lack of a general vision, a fundamental hypothesis that would be methodologically and historiographIcally unIfying-in short, a 'paradigm,' in the sense in which this term Js used by historians of scientific thought." Nonetheless, as Mazza adds, "this absence of a 'unifying paradlgm' and the reality of a fragmented and flexible cultural program (one that is 'weak,' in the terminology of Vattimo and his followers) might be considered a hidden strength, precisely because of its polycentrism, its connections with diverse ideologies and values, its inability or refusal to construct all-embracing myths and fashions" ([n. 11 above], p. 103). See also Capitani, "Crisi epistemologica e crisi dl Identlta" (n. 11 above). 60 Edoardo Grendi, "Del senso comune storiografico," Quaderni storiei 14 (1979): 698-707, esp. 702-3: "Whereas formerly the historian's work was conceived as contributing one's part to a common design, and one perhaps lamented the inanity of stacking monographs to produce an ever more unlikely unifying reconstruction (in keeping with the metaphor of a whole built out of many little pieces), nowadays this goal is abandoned and research is broken into a growing number of subfields, which entails ipso facto the assertion of many di fferent meanings and an implicit refusal to arrange them hierarchically." 61 "But In effect age-old historiographical silences are gradually overcome, and alongside of the publIc one reconstructs (to use a banal distinction widely employed nowadays) the private; alongside the exceptional, the quotidian, lived experience; alongside deeds, the mental, or mentalite and sentiments" (ibid., p. 703).

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The identification of especially important forms and arenas of power-the court, for instance, with its widely branching courtly relations-has sometimes suggested the possibility of deriving broader models. But these models hardly seem general or sophisticated enough to provide comprehensive blueprints for the organization of Renaissance society.62 Still other problems crop up in those studies that have taken the "small scale" as their point of departure. Microhistory is one of the liveliest sectors of research in Italy today. However, it seems to me that the very scale on which microhistorians choose to conduct their inquiries makes it hard to define the relations and connections-at that level of political history that concerns us here-between the individual case studies and the larger systems of which they are a part. The passage from the circumscribed or segmented settings that individual research projects take as their own proper fields to a broader context, in which the various elements would be assembled and rendered intelligible in a comprehensive political order, has not always been easy. If "microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved, ,,63 one cannot simply transpose the results onto a larger scale and generalize from them. Modification of the scale inevitably modifies the object of study as wel1. 64 Serious problems also arise if we want to consider development over time, the succession of differing structures of political organization. First of all, the possibility of achieving a "dynamic vision" runs up against the fact that the descriptive ethnographic approach leads more often to "a structural analysis, which in any case is implicit in the very notion of a model." 65 Moreover, scholars tend to shy away from those "teleological views" referred to earlier, from a chronological arrangement suggested by a historicism that is both "selective and teleologically at odds with the historicity of experience," and from that "traditional hierarchy of meanings" derived either from this sort of historicism or a debased historiographical common sense. The question of a chronological evolution through an ordered series of phases is found, if it is found at all, reformulated as "the problem of the circularity of experience" of

62 Elena Fasano Guarini, "Modellistica e ricerca storica: Aicuni recenti studi sulle corti padane del Rinascimento," Rivista di Letteratura italiana 1 (1983): 605-34; Chittohni, "Stati padani, 'Stato del Rinascimento' " (n. 28 above), pp. 21-22. 63 LevI, "A proposito di microstoria" (n. 11 above), p. 115 (also in "On Microhistory," p. 97). 64 On the problems involved in shifts of scale, see Bernard LepetIt, "Stona: Questioni di scala," Societa e storia 16 (1993): 849-71. 65 Grendi, Il Cervo e La Repubblica (n. 34 above), p. Xill. See also Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni, "11 nome e il come: Scambio ineguale e mercato storiografico," Quaderni storici 40 (1979): 181-90; trans. as "The Name and the Game: Unequal Exchange and the Historiographic Marketplace," in Microhistory and the Lost PeopLes of Europe, ed. Edward Muir and Guido RuggIero (Baltimore, 1991), pp. 1- 10.

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the mechanisms "of change and innovation," or as the problem of an "integration of the planes of historical process. ,,66 In this context, the demand for a broad vision or for an orderly reconstruction of phases--or, in the old terms, the question of what fundamental features of the political organization of a society, in a certain period and place, distinguish it from other periods and other societies-runs the risk of sounding anachronistic, the product of old mental habits. I do not know whether these questions and these demands are valid and well founded, whether they can be quietly discarded, or whether (as I tend to believe) they still await reformulation in new and more persuasive terms: terms that would be able to offer both an ample breadth of vision and that sense of development and change that remains the specific concern of the historian's craft.

66

Grendl, "Del senso comune storiografico," p. 703.

Law and Jurists in the Formation of the Modem State in Italy* AIda Mazzacane University of Naples

I.

CULTURAL SYSTEMS AND DOCTRINAL MODELS

It is common practice for historians to begin their papers by lamenting the insufficiency of existing research. I also wish to do that-and not just as a rhetorical expedient. The question of the "formation of the modem state in Italy" first of all involves constitutional issues and issues concerning the organization of institutions. This subject requires juridical expertise. So far, Italian juridical historiography has not dealt with it in an exhaustive way. 1 Nevertheless, to understand and define the economic, political, and social transformations that took place between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the role played by law and by jurists must be analyzed. 2 The European history of the early modem period, like the history of any other period, has underlying cultural structures. 3 People interpret, organize, and "live" their experience through cultural structures, which give meaning to the data and make them comprehensible and communicable to others. These structures do not just reflect the existing social situation. Made up of shared values, myths, and communicative and linguistic symbols, these structures determine customs, actions, and behavior. Jurisprudence has a place among the myths and values of the late Middle Ages and the early modem period. It has a central role in the anthropology of European history. It is not an artificial phenomenon, a "superstructure" of society. It does not appear post factum to legitimize already established situations, to disguise interests and mediate

* ThIS artIcle onginally appeared as "Diritto e giunstl nella formazione della Stato moderno in Itaha," in Origlnl dello Stato: ProceSSI dl formazione statale In Itaha fra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Plerangelo Schiera, Annah dell' Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico, vol. 39 (Bologna: 11 Muhno, 1994). Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Barbara Dooley. 1 A bnef survey of Italian juridical historIography on the modern period may be found in my "Neuere Rechtsgeschichte In Italien," Zeitschrift fur neuere Rechtsgeschlchte 14 (1992). 243-59, containing references to the most Important preVIOUS surveys. 2 For a comparative survey of various European countnes, see R. Schnur, ed., Die Rolle der Juristen bei der Entstehung des modernen Staates (Berhn, 1986). 3 M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985). ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern Hlstory 67, suppl (December 1995)

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conflicts through various sorts of private manipulation. It is true that these aspects are part of it, and this explains its multifaceted complexity, but jurisprudence also establishes connections, determines proportions and ways to measure and settle the conflicts of society, generates expectations, and projects and creates power relations. The play of existing forces has a real effect only through the cultural structures it provides. In the past it also provided a language, in that for centuries the ideas of politics, econornics, and sociology were expressed in Latin. Social rules were conceived and expressed in theologic'al-juridical terms. The new sciences managed to discard Latin and assert their autonomy only slowly and with difficulty. Moreover, between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, for the inhabitants of I~urope the perception of belonging to a structured community depended more on jurisprudence than on anything else. 4 For a long time this perception was expressed in the terms of private law, but it gradually moved to a new conceptual space. The emergence of this new space gave further meaning to the juridical integration of the inhabitants of a territory and signaled the appearance of the modenl state, no matter how problematic and multifaceted this institution might appear today. The theoretical contributions of jurists developed an intellectual foundation for the social and political process that took place in Italy. Their contributions provided the conceptual context that bounded, determined, and limited this process. Some studies have dealt with crucial aspects of these contributions. But except for a few pages in the better-documented manuals on the history of public law, vv'hich are often characterized by a formalistic approach toward problems of doctrine, I can think of only two recent studies that deal with the subject exhaust ively. The first one, by Guido Astuti, originally appeared in 1957 and was revised ten years later. 5 The second, by Antonio Marongiu, deals especially with parliaments; for other topics it resorts to the existing literature and to Astuti's juridical franlework. 6 Astuti's explanations and observations are important, but they strongly reflect the typical author's position, which he states clearly at the outset. "This is a course on juridical history," he says, "and not on political history." He adds, "Our lessons will utilize technical terms and dogmatic concepts drawn from today's public law doctrines.,,7 l\lthough aware of the possible risks of such a method, Astuti essentially measures past experience by its anticipation of or resemblance to present ideas. He summarizes the birth of the modern 4

5 6 7

M. Oakeshou, On Human Conduct (C)xford, 1975). G. Astutl, La jormazione della Stato lnoderno in Italia (Tunn, [1967]). A. Marongiu, Lo stato moderno: Llneamenti storico-istituzionali (Rome, 1970). Astuti, pp. 3 ff.

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state in Italy in four points: (1) the state emerged "as the supreme and primary source of the legal system," capable of overcoming any competing sources; (2) the state assumed the function of prescribing rules and increasingly became the only "source" from which they derived; (3) "the law became the supreme power," and consequently "overruled every public authority"; (4) "the separation of powers" emerged, and "the three basic functionslegislative, administrative, and judiciary-were assigned to different bodies. ,,8 This interpretation is obviously based on classifications used in recent legal writings. But without investigating these transformations from a historical point of view, there is little likelihood that we will reach a full understanding of complex and distinct phenomena like the constitutional, juridical, and administrative changes that took place in Italy between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Moreover, there is reason to question the applicability of the expression "modem state," since the two words of which it is composed can assume different meanings. The expression is basically conventional, presupposing a general agreement on the meaning of "state" and of "modernity." This agreement depends inevitably on the influence that the juridical and ideological interpretations prevailing at any given moment exercise on historical culture. Maurizio Fioravanti has written recently on this subject. 9 He studied "the interpretations" of the "political modernization" that took place with "the construction of that fundamental collective structure that goes under the conventional name of modem state." More precisely, instead of describing the outcomes of the historiography, Fioravanti has analyzed the main models that determined the direction of research on the modem state. In his opinion, these models can all be found in the "technical solutions to the issue of the modem state that were formulated in Europe between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries." These solutions correspond to "three distinct ideas of development" accepted "toward the end of the last century, and created a theoretical framework that is still influential today." The models identified by Fioravanti "can be defined by the key words institutionality/rationality, unity/supreme authority, and finally, balance" of rights and powers. In order to recognize the "modem" phase of the state, it is usual to measure the level of correspondence between the European political entities and the three theoretical models, or their pennutations and combinations. The first model takes the process of institutionalization and rationalization in the exertion of authority to be fundamental. The second model emphasizes territorial unification under IbId., pp. 21-29. M. FIoravanti, "Stato (storia)," in Enclclopedia del dlntto (Milan, 1990), 43:708-58. 8

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an absolute sovereign. The third model emphasizes institutional structure within a balance of powers. According to Fioravanti, these models were from the beginning "highly prescriptive, showing new directions of development." They corresponded to a strong accelleration of social and political dynamics that provoked an institutional crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century. In a way, the theoretical bas is provided by these models gave direction to research. On the other hand, the models resorted to historical experience to build the theory itself, and thus produced "images of premodern politics capable of corroborating those elements" that are considered indispensable features of the modem state. Fioravanti's essay contains critical remarks on the interpretive traditionwhich includes Jellinek and Weber, Otto Brunner, Hintze, Kelsen, Gierke, Maitland, and their interpreters-as \vell as suggestions for further research. One aspect is highly stressed: dealing with "the formation of the modem state" from the point of view of historiography means dealing with doctrinal choices and conceptual definitions. I~esearch cannot do without them even when inspired by the strongest pragnlatism.

II.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL THEMES

Recent trends in studies on the history of the republics and the principalities of the peninsula seem to confirm this need for doctrinal choices and conceptual definitions. to For the mOS1[ part these studies are not by jurists but by historians. They devote unprecedented attention to jurisprudence, whose formal structures constituted not a subordinate variable but an essential element of political and power relationships. Therefore, in accordance with the trends of llnternational historiography, studies have taken into consideration the data of distinct cases. Instead of seeking a unitary model for the formation of the modem state, these studies have examined social dynamics and their influence on institutions in every territory. We find evidence of this new trend in the two most important Italian works in the field of historiography: the Storia d'Italia published by Einaudi and the Storia d'Italia published by Utet. The latter is for the most part a history of the single states and their changing institutions. In spite of the risk of excessive organizational fragmentation, more and more studies have been done on Piedmont, Milan, Venice, the minor republics and principalities, Tuscany, and the Kingdom of Naples. They have been able to reconstruct the connections

between society and institutions as well as the dialectical relationship between politics and the law. Italian histori ans, both jurists and nonjurists, have 10

Mazzacane, "Neuere Rechtsgeschichte in Italien."

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illustrated the innovative ideas, opposition, and conflicts that resulted from the actual practice of justice and the comparison of doctrines. In Italy legal historians studying the formation of modern states have devoted more attention to some topics than others. One such topic is the idea of sovereignty. Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, jurists codified certain notions that went on to shape politics over a long period. Another topic is the long and difficult process of reorganizing the administration of justice. This process involved relations between the existing powers-central and peripheral magistracies, city and territory, representative organs and baronial courts, and so on. The process also called for radical technical changes in the ambiguous tribunal functions of government in the early modern period. Furthermore, the process called for reform of the trial system, of jurisdiction, of the relations between law and legal procedure. All these issues were most evident in the field of penal law. Indeed, the repressive function of government bodies changed and so did ideas of jurisprudence and criminal prosecution. In the third decade of the sixteenth century, this change produced wide-ranging legislative measures in the German empire, in France, and in England. II The reform of criminal law culminated between the sIxteenth and the seventeenth centuries in the theories of Giulio Claro, Prospero Farinacci, Anton Matthai, Benedikt Carpzov, and Josse Damhouder. I would like to dwell upon the following questions: What was the setting of the constitutional change that took place in the political regimes in Italy in the early modern period? What was the contribution of jurists to this change? Once again, the answer to these questions lies in the relation between ius commune and ius proprium-that is to say, between the common law of Christianity and the rights of autonomous institutions and groups-and in the way this relation was presented. This old theme of legal literature cannot be dismissed. Indeed, the most important element in the formation of modem states was the fact that certain political bodies managed to free themselves from the unIversalistic medieval system. I will sum up the already well-known aspects of the question and add some examples concerning Venice, whose history illustrates rules and exceptions in a particularly helpful way.

III. Ius Commune

AND

Ius Proprium

The prevailing doctrine among Italian jurists at the end of the Middle Ages is relatively clear. 12 The Glossators and then Bartolus and Baldus authoritatively II J. H. LangbeIn, ProsecutIng Cnme In the RenaIssance: England, Germany, France (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). 12 A broad survey of opinIons on the subject IS In B. ParadisI, "II problema del dIntto comune nella dottnna dl Francesco Calasso," in Studl suI Medio Evo giuridIco, 2 vols. (Rome, 1987), 2' 1009-1112.

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established it. The Commentators then repeated it, at least in academic courses, although in the numerous consilia that they wrote for particular controversies they often upheld much subtler theses. All these jurists presented the legal system as a whole, as a structure subdivided into numerous sources on the basis of technical criteria: Roman law according to Justinian (interpreted by the "jurists"), canon law (within which were further divisions), feudal law, customary law, the laws of princes, and the statutes of cities, of rural communities, of noble societies, of merchants' and artisans' associations, of monastic orders, and of fraternities, and so forth. They organized all these sources according to the Romanist principle that defined the relation bet ween rule and exception. Since the ius proprium of individuals or communities was an exception, they proposed to consider this first. In case of legislative gaps or ambiguous interpretations, they claimed to consult the ius commune as a supplementary source. But in reality things were quite different. Roman law, the function of which was in theory only subsidiary, played a much more substantial role. In fact, it constituted the background of the jurists who were assigned the task of evaluating customs and drawing up la ws, statutes, and regulations. Moreover, Roman law was also the source of the principles guiding the interpretation and enforcement of laws and statutes. The Romanist tradition provided the cultural structures, the language, and the forms into which thinking was organized. The superimposition of and interaction between different rules required constant interpretation. Jurisprudential interpretation constituted the ruling structure of the entire system and used Romanist categories. Conflicting laws coexisted and had various versions in the juridical pluralism of the late Middle Ages, arising from different sources and applications. In theory, their hierarchical order was well defined, with a clear distinction of subject and jurisdiction, but in practice it was often chaotic and confused. The notion of abrogation of a law was practically nonexistent. New laws were added to old and very old ones; customs overlapped. Practice decided whether a law was in force: the practice of jurisprudence, that is, through scholarly opinions, verdicts, and consultations. Gratian had written: "The laws are posed by promulgation, but are established with approbation by users' customs," where "users" were actually the jurists. ]3 On the other end, laws, even in the case of solemn promulgation, were almost always issued through interpretations, by inventing new principles or stating preexisting ones. And this corresponded exactly to the doctrinal procedures followed in the classrooms and law courts. When did the theory that harmonically combined the unity of the Christian world and the pluralism of autonomous political entities disappear? When did 13 "Leges instituuntur cum promulgantur, firmantur cum moribus utentlum approbantur." Gratian, Decretum, Dictum ante c. 4, Dist. IV.

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political entities start the process of forming states? The literature on the subject is extensive,14 and so are the sources. I will mention only two turning points. The first such turning point took place in the second half of the thirteenth century, with the appearance of the formula "Rex est imperator in regno suo" (A king is emperor in his own kingdom). Scholars have long discussed whether this formula originated in southern Italy, in France, or among the canonists; thIS IS not the place to tackle the issue. What is certain is that it represents, in constitutional terms, the existence in a particular territory of a political power independent from the emperor and superior to the power of the collectivity, of social bodies and of individuals. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, Baldus took a further step and regarded the population of a principality as a juridical unit. "Baldus conceived of the territory and people over which the prince ruled as a unitary entity with rights that should be preserved and that should remain inviolable. We call this entity a 'state.' For Baldus it had no name." 15 This does not mean, of course, that the traditional juridical pluralism was eliminated; indeed, it lasted for centuries. At the end of the ancien regime Voltaire memorably quipped that a traveler going through France found himself under a different legal system more often than he changed horses at the post. The question then is whether, in the theory and practice of the jurists of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, there can be found an abstract subject, a center capable of giving recognizable coherence and continuity to the government structures of a territory. IV. VENICE AND ITS DOMINION

The Republic of Venice is an important case. The conquest of the Terraferma at the beginning of the fifteenth century forced Venice to define a new system of government corresponding to a changed geographic reality. During the course of the lively debate concerning government and territory two contrasting lines emerged, corresponding to two different visions of the political role and destiny of Venice. One vision traditionally associated Venice with "the sea," that is, the Adriatic, known at the time as gulfum Venetiarum and represented as an extension of the Serenissima. 16 The galleys that carried goods and orders to 14 See K. PennIngton, The Pnnce and the Law, 1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights In the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993). 15 IbId., p.208 See also J. Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldls (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 185 ff., 206-8. 16 F. C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (BaltImore, 1973).

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the Near East traveled on this sea, but the Near East remained foreign with respect to the city-state. From the Near East, Venice received raw materials and goods in transit. And Venice established the conditions for these exchanges on the basis of power re lations that determined varying agreements. The institutions of Venice were hardly affected by this, except for the creation of a branch of the senate, il Senato da mar, to make decisions on the issues involved. The other vJlsion connected Venice with the Terraferma, which for a long time remained nothing but a background for economic and financial transactions, for variously successful land investments, and a place for cultivating the pleasures of the countryside and life in the villa. I7 The acquisition of the Terraferma deeply changed the coUective mentality and imposed a new balance between old ideals and the changing republic. Once a hinterland connected in various ways to the lagoon, the Terraferma now became one of the poles of an antithesis between the city and its dominion. It retained this position for more than a century. In the evolution of this relation, founded on heterogeneous and contradictory realities, the jurists played a subordinate, though not unimportant, role of reflection and elaboration. I8 Their doctrines were often instruments of union and cohesion, theoretical and technical foundations for a cultural system and an ideology capable of imparting organic form and the appearance of a state to a confused overlapping of different entities. The legal diversity in the subject territories was perfectly evident. The cities had statutes going back to the period of the communes; feudal law existed in Friuli. Except in Venice, which did not recognize superior authority (superiorem non recognoscens), the Romanist tradition of ius commune was observed everywhere. C:anon law was in force in the Terraferma in matters connected with benefices, which the republic had always considered its own prerogative. The criteria followed by the Venetian oligarchy are well known. I9 In spite of fluctuations inlposed by events, the institutions of the acquired provinces were maintained. The pacts of dedition were observed and the rettori (governors) sent by Venice controlled and coordinated the most important political decisions. Venice carefully avoided interfering in long-established constitutional systems and changing existing social balances. Using the pacts of 17 S. J. Woolf, "Venice and the Terraferma: Problems of the Change from Commercial to Landed Activities," in CriSIS and Change in the Venetian Economy, ed. B. Pullan (London, 1968), pp. 175-203. 18 A. Mazzacane, "Lo stato e 11 dominlo nei giuristi veneti durante 11 'secol0 della terraferma,' " in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3, pte 1 (Vicenza, 1984), pp. 577650. 19 See J. S. Cirubb, Firstborn of Venice· Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State (Baltimore, 1988).

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dedition as revokable contracts, liable to derogations and modifications, the Serenissima reserved for itself the last word in political matters. At the same time, this system opened the way to recurring contention between the institutions of Venice and those of the subject territories.

V.

JURISTS AS CONSULTANTS AND THE FORMATION OF THE TERRITORIAL STATE

The jurists, who never had the chance to determine Venetian policy, covered the areas of contention between overlapping systems. In fact, the republic never delegated the administration of the law to a specialized group of experts. Both legislation and jurisdiction remained the privilege of the political body constituted by the aristocracy.20 The fact that we will not meet any Venetian common citizen among the protagonists of our story is not at all coincidental. Nevertheless, the juridical consultants' painstaking labors devoted to the resolution of conflicts, especially among private citizens, created a milieu in which juridical interpretation was capable of giving order and stability to the regulations. Without interfering in the necessary political balance between Venice and the Terraferma, these jurists undertook the task of harmonizing, case by case, autonomous customs and centripetal forces, special "privileges" and the legislation of Venice. They thus managed to propose a relatively organic and comprehensive vision of the overall regulations and the constitution. The signs and results of this interpretive trend are to be found above all in the production of consilia, or in any law case of practical character. For example, the consilia by Paolo di Castro, professor of law in Padua since 1429, are often a faithful mirror of the numerous problems encountered by the republic as its territory expanded and the polity's nature and substance changed along with its size. They also suggest possible solutions. Paolo undertook to build a difficult theoretical structure. His "Venetian" opinions often touch upon themes connected with the interaction between feudal law, statutes, special customs, and the legislation of Venice, as well as the traditional topic of the relation between ius commune and ius proprium. 21 He often used the notion of citizenship (civilitas) to determine which rule applied to whom.2 2 His notion of citizenship was related to his notion of Venetian "sovereignty" in defining the respective spheres of different regulations and 20 G. Cozzi, Repubblica di VeneZla e Stall ltalianl: Pohtica e giusllzia dal secolo XVI al XVIII (Turin, 1982); and the two volumes of essays by various authors, Stato, socleta e glustizia nella Repubblica Veneta (secoli XV-XVIII) (Rome, 1980- 85). 21 The pnncIpal ones are examined In Mazzacane, "Lo stato," pp. 585 ff. 22 See J. KIrshner, "Paolo dl Castro on cives ex privlleglo: A Controversy over the Legal Qualification for Public Office in Early FIfteenth-Century Florence," In Renalssance Studles in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. A. Molho and J. TedeschI (Florence,

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coordinating these different regulations along with the ius commune. Utilizing general principles derived from the ius commune, Paolo aimed at giving a complete picture of the relationship between the powers of the prince and those of the Inagistrates, between the citizens of the subject lands, ius proprium, and those of Venice, between the various institutional regimes and the ordinary rule coordinating them. His consilia somehow reflected the political reality of the republic. They were an attempt, however fragmentary, to define the boundaries of the laws, although they did not resolve the dualism between Venice and the subject lands. On the contrary, that dualism was reinforced by recovering autonomous customs, feudal privileges, and agreements. However, the loss of power of local magistracies subordinated emphatically to the authority of the prince and the attempt to include every relationship in an "ordinary" rule, whose characteristics were just beginning to emerge, demonstrated a desire to overcome that dualism and to describe the new nature of the republic.

VI.

BETWEEN THE FIFfEENTH AND THE SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

Such ideas were rarer in the theoretical writings that originated in the university teaching of this period. Much more frequent were ideas influenced by the universalistic vision of the late J\1iddle Ages. These characteristics were even more marked in the case of jurists connected with the nobility or the patriciates of the Terraferma. For instance, in the second half of the fifteenth century, Bartolomeo Cipolla of Verona brought the ideas of his nlilieu into his writings. These writings were designed for his legal practice, in which he achieved considerable success. 23 As a mainland patrician, he aimed above all at maintaining intact the local government of the cities of the Terraferma in spite of the changes brought about by Venetian conques t. Concentrating on the very practical matter of appeals,24 he countered the aequitas of the Venetian magistrates, which freed them from observing ius civile, with the juridical Romanist ratio, valid in the subject cities and binding even the emperor. In fact, in an appeal, even the emperor had to consider the law applied from the first judge. In other words, the arbitrium of the Venetian judges and the prince were strictly limited, since they were obliged to apply the common la\v in force in the Terraferma in the appeals filed in their courts. 1971), pp. 229- 64; see also his "Civltas sibi faciat civem: Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," Speculum 48 (1973): 427-52. 23 See V. Piano Mortari, Itinera jurzs: Studi dz storia giurzdica dell'eta moderna (Naples, 1991), pp. 3 ff. 24 Barth. Caepollae De interpretatione legis extensiva, Venetiis, apud Comlnum de Tridino Montisferrati, 1557, CC. 38v-39r

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Cipolla concentrated above all on relations within the republic because of the profound changes that were then taking place. But he also strongly insisted upon its independence from the empire. His arguments are difficult and cannot be analyzed in detail here. Basically, he followed a conservative ideology aimed at defending the ancient juridical particularism. He did not see a new entity emerging from the competing systems. He recognized the political sovereignty of Venice but preferred to find the basis for this in the continuity of the overall social and juridical system. He resorted to the usual de iure/de facto distinction to protect tradition without denying legitimacy to the new order the republic was creating. In the same period there were further variations on the theme of the merit of the autonomous regulations of the Terraferma, which went so far as to denounce the disadvantages caused by the misgovernment of Venice. 25 Toward the end of the fifteenth century, juridical studies on Venice had difficulty following a continuous and homogeneous train of thought concerning, on the one hand, the problem of its "freedom," that is to say, its relationship to the empire, and, on the other hand, the problem of the administration of rule in the territory. I would like to mention one contribution that is important both for the authoritativeness of the jurist and for the consistency of his consilia and academic lectures: I am referring to that of Giason del Maino. When commenting on the lex ex hoc iure of the Digest (D.l.l.5) in Padua in 1487 he unequivocably asserted the independence of Venice from the empire, drawing some unchallenged authorities: the Venetians claim the right of liberty, which, according to Bartolus, they use as a defense against the emperor. Albericus de Rosciate is said to have seen a privilege of his liberty and exemption from imperial rule that was sealed with a golden seal. lacobus Alvarottus stresses the significance of the title doge (dux). For Baldus, the Venetians are free de iure, because their city is built on the sea. They also own the Gulf of Venice, where they can forbid navigation to the Genoese and others. 26 Thus he linked the theme of libertas with that of lordship and conjoined two interpretations that in the past had often developed along separate and contradictory lines. Above all, he proposed an image of Venice that tranMazzacane, "Lo stato," pp. 601 ff. "Eodem modo Veneti sunt in quasi possessione libertatIs quia prescripserunt contra imperatorem, secundum Bartolum. Plus, dicit Albericus de Rosciate ... se vidisse pnvilegium libertatis et exemptionis Venetorum bullatum bulla aurea. Et refert lacobus Alvarottus ... quis dicatur dux... Baldo etiam ... tenetur, quod de lure VenetI sunt liben, quia eorum cIvitas est fundata in man. Item gulfus mans Venetorum est In eorum dominio, et possunt interdicere de iure lanuensibus et aliis, ne possint in gulfo navigare." las. Mayni In primam Dig. Vet. partem Commentana, Venetiis, apud luntas, 1622, f. 8r, nn. 26- 27. 25

26

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scended the long-established dichotorny between land and sea. He outlined with great acuilty the traits of a body luling its various separate components. He recognized the varieties in the republic's institutional articulation, but he also saw signs of a movement toward a coherent and individualized structure capable of containing them. From that time on, Venice did not display a dichotomy betvveen its maritime and Inainland interests so much as a juridical dualism between the Dominante and the subject territory. The latter, which included the Terraferma, the Near East, and the Gulf, was viewed as being organized within a polycentric entity rather than a monolithic one, with a level of abstraction that made it recognizable to its members as well as outsiders. There was no name for it yet, but the concept already existed; and I would not know what else to call it but "modenl state." Giason del rv1aino's idea rested on the ideal and ideological foundation of libertas Venetorum recognized de iure. This allowed him to propose an image of the Serenissima as an independent state, ruled through a constitutionally coordinated internal organization. He made his point in a consilium concerning the complex questions connected with appeals, a consilium whose importance Paolo Sarpi later stressed. 27 This consilium, which is related to two others, by Bartolomeo Sozzini and Carlo Ruini, takes us to the threshold of a mature theorization of the Venetian juridicopolitical system. This theorization appeared in a more open and explicit form only after the reorganization that followed the crisis of Agnadello. And even then, these ideas appeared primarily in consilia even though more serious efforts were made. Between 1517 and 1521, Tommaso Diplovatazio tried to exhaust the question once and for all in the Tractatus de Venetae urbis libertate et eiusdem imperii dignitate et privilegiis, which also accompanied some of his other work. 28 The modest success his work encountered within government circles was due to the political and cultural situation of the period. But his apology for Venice contained all the elements describing a modem state.

27 las. Mayni Consllia sive responsa, 'Venetiis, apud Fr. Zilettuffi, 1581, vol. 1, f. 157rb-vb (cons. 123). 28 Mazzacane, "Lo stato" (n. 18 above), pp. 622 ff.

Center and Periphery* Elena Fasano Guarini University of Pisa

I This article concerns the ideas and methods of recent Italian historiography analyzing the Italian states of the early modem period as power systems possessing a territorial dimension. By territorial dimension I do not mean what George Allies or Peter Sahlins has referred to for later periods, namely, a form of immediate sovereignty over a territory, to be distinguished from the jurisdiction exercised over the subjects through the entities and communities representing them. 1 In fact, the latter is the prevailing system between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I am referring to the formation, development, and organization of states that include spaces larger than the surrounding castles and villages already under the jurisdiction of the cities. For scholars of the Italian states, the territorial or regional dimension has been and continues to be a favorite field of study and investigation in which to compare different visions of the political systems of the early modem period. 2 In the following exposition I will try to indicate some of the issues arising from past and present discussions and research. The terms "center" and "periphery" in my title have been used widely in Italy and elsewhere since the 1970s (actually, more then than now) by historians and social scientists analyzing geographical, economic, social,

* This article originally appeared as "Centro e periferia, accentramento e particolansmI: Dicotomia 0 sostanza degli Statl in eta moderna?" In Origini dello Stato: Processi dl formaZlone statale in [talia fra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-GermanIco, vol. 39 (Bologna: II Mulino, 1994). Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Barbara Dooley. I G. Allies, L'invention du territoire (Grenoble, 1972); P. Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), pp. 28-29. 2 For geographers and sociologists "temtory" and "regIon" are clearly distInct notions, although considered somewhat difficult to grasp. See the two entnes by M. Roncayolo in Enciclopedia (Tunn, 1980), 11:772-77, and (Tunn, 1981), 14:218-43; see also L. Gambl, "Autonomia e temtorio-autonomia e reglone," Parole chiave 4 (1994): 89-95. For histonans the terms "territorial state" and "regIonal state" have often overlapped and been confused. On the definition of regional state, see my introduction to Potere e societa negh Statz reglonali ltalianl del' 500 e ' 600, ed. E. Fasano GuarinI (Bologna, 1978), pp. 18 - 20. ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern History 67, suppl (December 1995)

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cultural, artIstIc, and political struc tures that exist in a space in order to indicate some kind of hierarchical and polarized organization of that space. 3 There is no need here for a theoretical discussion of this subject. But the manifold fields to which the model can be applied should be kept in mind in order to emphasize its complexity, which will become evident in the following pages. To historians of the Italian states of the early modem period, the model recalls some older as well as more recent debates on the nature of these states and on the different ways of reconstructing their histories. 4 Some historians have looked at their formation process in terms of centralization, that is, of modernity; others have stressed the stubborn resistance of the periphery or the longevity of pluralistic power structures. They have also discussed the nature of the centers--cities, princely governments, courts-and the variously active and passive role of the periphery. Last, they no longer consider political systems only from the "center" and from "above" but also see them from "below" and from the "periphery." The very use of such polarized terms as "center" and "periphery" for the first centuries of the modem period has also been debated. I have used them in my title not to validate them as an analytic and interpretative approach but 3 In the field of pohtical geography, see C. RaffestIn's studies, which take account of the histoncal dimension: Pour une geographie du pOUVOlr (Paris, 1980), and "L' evoluzione stonca della territorialita In SVIzzera," In Territorialita e paradigma centro-periferia: La SVlzzera e la padania, ed. J. B. RaCIne, C. Raffestin, and V. Ruffy (Milan, 1978). The success of the paradIgm "center-periphery" among historians of the modem period comes from the fact that I. Wallerstein apphed it to the history of world economy. See his The Modern World-System, vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), vol. 2, Alercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (New York and London, 1980). On thIS work, see A. Tenenti, "Centri e perifene nella vita economica dell' eta nloderna," Quaderni sardl 3 (July 1981-83): 3-14. In the field of politics, the same paradIgm was used, in the same years, by S. Rokkan; see in particular Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo, 1970), discussed in Rivista politica italiana, vol. 3 (1980); and, with more direct applicatIon to the themes of state centralizatIon-decentralizatIon, by S. TaITow, Between Center and Periphery: Grassroots Polzticians in Italy and France (New Haven, Conn., 1977). In Italy, concerning artistIc and cultural phenomena, see E. Castelnuovo and C. Ginzburg, "Centro e periferia," In (2uestionl e metodi, vol. 1 of Storia del/'Arte italiana, ed. G. Ballati and P. FossatI (Tunn, 1978), pp. 285-352. More generally, see the monograph "Center and Periphery" in (2uaderni sardi, vol. 4 (July 1983 -June 1984), wIth contributIons by R. Ruffilli, L. OrnaghI, A. Musi, C. Mozzarelh, et al. The expression was used as the title of a volume by G. LevI, Centro e periferia di uno stato assoluto-tre saggi su Piemonte e Liguria in etl1 moderna (Turin, 1985), where it apphes only to the first of the three essays included, "Come Torino soffoco il Plemonte." For more recent studIes on the subject, see T. C. Champion's introductIon to his edited volume Center and Penphery: Comparative Studies in Archeology (London, 1989), pp. 1- 21. 4 See the initIal remarks by M. Rizzo, "Centro spagnolo e perifena lombarda nell'Impero-asburgico tra Cinque e SeLcento," Rivista storica italiana 104, no. 1 (1992): 315.

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in order to discuss the debates and contrasting historical views that they evoke. The comments that follow will establish the limits within which I believe it is appropriate to use them today.

II Marino Berengo's 1967 outline of Italian postwar historiography concerning the sixteenth century is a very useful starting point. 5 His work touched upon the theme of the state and its sixteenth-century developments-a theme that he linked to Federico Chabod's studies on the administration of the state of Milan. It has been observed that he overestimated the importance of Chabod's ideas at the expense of different views that had emerged in those years in the works of Antonio Marongiu and Guido Astuti. 6 Nonetheless, I do not think any substantial continuity can be established between the historiographical views of Berengo and those of Chabod. Berengo recognized the "extraordinary richness" of Chabod's research themes: the study of bureaucracy, for example, which was essential "for understanding the development of a new political process" in order "to recognize the social forces that support it" and "to base political history upon an analysis of society." But, according to Berengo, "the study of central government administration," to which Chabod had dedicated much of his work, was not "the same as the study of power." The latter had to take into account "the resistance that intermediate social institutions and feudal lordships, country and cities, patriciate and clergy, were able to offer to royal absolutism." Thus, "the play of the local forces" had to be examined, in contrast to Chabod's centralizing model.? I should point out that Berengo makes no mention of modem state or Renaissance state. These categories, though familiar to Chabod and used in those years by other historians, were essentially foreign to him. 8 He understood Italian politics of the sixteenth century not in terms of "modernity" but, on the contrary, in terms of crisis and especially of the "crisis of freedom." In spite of the political "catastrophe" that ended the Renaissance, 5 M. Berengo, "II Cinquecento," In La storzograjia italiana negli uItlmi vent'annl, 2 vols. (Milan, 1970), 1:483 - 518. 6 C. Mozzarelh, IntroductIon to L'ammlnlstrazione nella storia moderna, 2 vols. (MIlan, 1985), 1:5 - 20; G. AStutI, La jormaZlone della Stato moderno in Italia (Tunn, 1967). 7 Berengo, "II Cinquecento," 1:488-89. 8 Compare Chabod's two essays of 1956-57, now published under the tItle "Esiste uno Stato del Rinascimento?" in F. Chabod, Scrittl suI Rinascimento (Turin, 1967). BesIdes the above-mentioned Astuti, see, e.g., G. Galasso, "Momenti e problemi dl storia napoletana nell' eta di Carlo V," In hIS Mezzogiorno medievale e moderno (Tunn, 1965), pp. 167 ff.

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Chabod, following Weber, had considered the formation of a bureaucratic apparatus free of personal ties as a step along a path shared by the Italian and European states. Berengo, on the contrary, identified the sixteenth century with "the decline of the true forms of Italian political life, and of one in particular that had been typical of that world: namely, the city-republic." It was a decline with no redeeming features, not accompanied by the "formation of states with solid administrative and judiciary structures" but only by the "triumphant particularism of the intermediate social institutions destined to characterize the history of the old regime in Italy.,,9 Berengo's encouragement to study not only the center but also the tormented life of the periphery-intermediate social institutions and local forces, feudal lordships and communities-no doubt reflected the attention to social and po]litical conflicts that he had previously devoted to an essentially urban setting Jln his research on Lucca, one of the few city-states to survive the early sixteenth-century "crisis." 10 But it was also linked to his negative evaluation of the process of development of sixteenth-century states and society. In those years, Berengo's vjew was shared by many other scholars, who even applied it to the High Renaissance. In 1964 Angelo Ventura illustrated tht~ long "decadence" of the cities of the Venetian Terraferma between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 11 His was a history of urban societies rather than states. His interest, like Berengo's for Lucca, was in the analysis of the conflicts intra moenia between "nobility" and "the people" and of the processes of crystallization and "aristocratization" that, in his opinion, had brought about the fomlation of oligarchic governments both in the larger cities and in the smaller centers. But those processes were closely interconnected with the erosion of freedom in the cities, first under the signorie and then under the Venetian dominion, that is, with the emergence of a new systenl of power that today would be called "regional." And as a background to that history of declining cities he revealed his vision of the Venetian Tenraferma. To him, it \vas not a "federative" state, as a long tradition of local studies had claimed, but a dominion founded on conquest. It was not a unitary state but a system characterized by a lasting schism between Venice and its territory, between "center" and "periphery," which the alliance between the \/enetian patriciate and the oligarchies of the subject cities only seemed to overcome. Some years later, in considering the whole complex of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian states, Ventura wrote that they were not "modern states," but at best "aggregates of orders and intermediate social institutions, of cities and rural signorie, of provinces and 'towns,' each 9 10 11

Berengo, "11 Cinquecento," 1:495. M. Berengo, Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del '500 (Tunn, 1965). A. Ventura, Nobilta e popolo nella societa veneta del '400 e '500 (Bari, 1964).

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endowed with special privileges by the prince." In other words, this was the "modern state of the old regime." 12 Seen from this point of view, the Italian Renaissance states had nothing in common with the model proposed by Chabod. And they had even less in common with the formula of the "state as a work of art" in which Jakob Burckhardt had condensed his interpretation of the Italian Renaissance in terms of political "modernity." The fact that in the same years, in the United States, this interpretation inspired the scholars of "Western Civilization," who were then, with few exceptions, very little interested in the territorial dimension,13 can help explain the difficulties encountered in the dialogue between historians on the two sides of the Atlantic for many years. In Italy in the 1960s, the only historians who spoke of the state, and sometimes of the modem state, were those who studied southern Italy, where republican "vivere civile" had had very little space, where the role of the cities had been negligIble, and where, on the contrary, the feudal-monarchic system had been fundamental. The feudal periphery, with the dynamic and violent tensions that characterized it, certainly had great importance in the works of Giuseppe Galasso and Rosario Villari. The debate between them concerning "refeudalIzation," a concept that found one of its best exemplifications in the history of the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, is well known. But the kingdom as a whole, constituting the periphery of the distant Spanish center and the province of an empire, seemed to both scholars also to be an organic entity characterized by its own existence as a state. The interpretations of the two historians diverged greatly. According to Galasso, who claimed to continue the tradition of Benedetto Croce, the kingdom proceeded along its own path toward the realization of a "modern state" between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. 14 On the contrary, according to Villari, the "European crisis of the seventeenth century" -which was then the subject of much historical research and of a debate in which he was involved-marked the final "split between 12 A. Ventura, Introduction to Dentro lo "Stado ltalico": Venezia e la Terrafermafra Quattro e Seicento, ed. G. Cracco and M. Knapton (Trent, 1984), pp. 5 - 15. 13 A. Molho, "GII stoncI amencanI e II RInascImento ItalIano: Una ncognizIone," Chelron (August 1992): 9- 26. The Interest In the penphery and the process of "penphenzatlon" Itself was already present In D. Herlihy, MedIeval and Renaissance PistoIa: The SocIaL HIstOry of an Italian Town (New Haven, Conn., 1958). The terntonal dImensIon was also present In M. Becker, Florence in Transition, vol. 2, Studies In the RIse of the Terntorial State (Baltimore, 1968). For the case of SIena at the tIme of the communes, see W Bowsky, A MedIeval Commune: Siena under the NIne (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981). 14 G Galasso, "ConslderazionI sulla storia del Mezzoglorno d' Italia," pp. 13 - 59; and "Momentl e problemi dl stona napoletana dl Carlo V," pp. 137-97, both In MeZ2ogiorno medievale e moderno (Tunn, 1965).

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the south of Italy and modern Europe." 15 But they both thought nevertheless that the history of the kingdom was determined by the relation between central power and feudal periphery, by the interaction of local and Spanish powers and institutions, by the diverse and complex combination of centripetal forces and defense of original autonomies. Plnd they concluded that it could only be understood in its totality, as the history of a single state. In the 1970s the tendency of a substantial number of Italian historians to consider the history of Italy as diverging from that of other Western European countries grew considerably. After examining the models of economic and social development and the political processes of the other European countries, they came to view the history of Italy as the sum of a series of delays. In spite of internal differences, inevitable in a collective work, this was the orientation that has characteri2,ed the Storia d'Italia published by Einaudi beginning in 1972. This work also offered an interpretation of the role in Italian history of the city and the "bourgeoisie," and therefore of the commune, that differs considerably from the very positive interpretation Berengo espoused in 1967, an interpretation that dated back to the Risorgimento. l'his is obvious in Corrado Vivanti's emphasis on "lacerations and conflicts"-above all, conflicts between city and countryside-as an original characteristic ofthat history, precluding harmonious political and social development. It is even more obvious in Philip Jones's reversal of the relation Carlo Cattaneo established between the city, the "ideal principle of Italian history," and the countryside~ and in Ruggiero Romano's insistence upon the persistent feudal character of the Italian economy (" a block of fifteen centuries"). 16 The voice of (ialasso, if not dissenting, once again remained distinct. In his analysis of the forms of power and the social hierarchies, although he was attentive to the "logic of particularism" that had characterized the history of both oligarchic urban Italy and feudal Italy, Galasso intended to outline the specific paths that led to a common outcome, "the modem state." 17 The problenls and perspectives that I have examined so far go beyond the specific subject with which we are dealing here. But recalling them may serve to explain the context of the contributions made to the study of territorial 15 R. Villari, La nvolta antlspagnola a Napoh: Le ongini (J 585 - J647) (Bari, 1967), p. 3. 16 See C. Vivanti, "Lacerazloni e contrasti," in I caratten originali, vol. 1 of Stona d'Italia, ed. R. F~omano and C. Vivanti (Turin, 1972), pp. 869-948~ R. Romano, "Una tipologia econoInica," in Ibid., pp. 256-304~ P. Jones, "Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale: La leggenda della borghesia," In Dal Feudaleslmo al capitalismo, Storia d'Italia, Annali (Turin, 1978), 1: 187 -372. 17 G. Galasso, "Le forme del potere, classi e gerarchie sociali" in Romano and VIvantI, eds., 1:401-599, later developed In G. Galasso, Potere e lstituzioni in Itaha dalla caduta dell'Impero romano ad ogg,i (Turin, 1974).

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states in the 1970s. It was a context in which centralized models of the "modem state" were hardly present. These were later rediscovered, offering an incentive to reconsider, on the one hand, the studies of Chabod and the Italian historians who had been working along the same lines since the beginning of the century and, on the other, the research of those who had built myths about the communes and hypothesized a long period of political decline for Italy when they ended, or of those who had identified some of the structural aspects of the history of the peninsula in a persistent particularism and fragmentation.

III This reflection was no doubt encouraged by European--especially Germanhistoriography on the "modem state" and by the categories that it had developed. The various works dealing with this subject, which had been fairly unavailable in Italy, were discussed and presented to the Italian public in a systematic way only at the beginning of the 1970s, first of all through the voluminous anthology edited by Ettore Rotelli and Pierangelo Schiera. 18 To be sure, some scholars had already undertaken the study of the territorial dimension of states through their contributions to a project that presupposed this approach, namely, the Atlante Storico Italiano. A group of historians, including Berengo, developed and discussed this project. The first phase of it was carried out at the end of the 1960s. The project was quite ambitious; not limited to the political-institutional level, it was supposed to include maps of roads and of ecclesiastical, economic, agricultural, and demographic structures. It would thus reconstruct "the basic features of Italian society" from different angles, not just by means of the published maps but also in the preparatory research published separately. The state maps, especially those of the "regional states" before the unification of Italy, were the main axis and indispensable premise of the work. The first job, according to the announcement, was "to establish the size of the states, their external boundaries and their internal jurisdictions, both public and feudal," and therefore to know "who, in the various territories, collected taxes and administered justIce." 19 The project did not imply a "modern" and centralized vision of the state. On the contrary, since it had to produce results that could be put on maps, it paid less attention to the powers and institutions located in the center than to those in the periphery. It gave ample space to the analysis of particularisms, E. Rotelli and P. Schlera, eds., Lo Stato moderno, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1971 - 74). M. Berengo, "Premessa," in Problemi e neerehe per l'Atlante stoneD ltallano del/'eta moderna: Attl del eonvegno dl Gargnano, 27-29 settembre 1968 (Florence, 1971), pp. 1-9. 18

19

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local autonomies, and fiscal and jurisdictional exemptions. For the south of Italy, the authors naturally planned to do the research for the feudal maps first, followed only later by that of the royal jurisdictions, with the intention of combining the results in the maps. But drawing maps and boundaries, thinking about their nature and quality, wondering who ruled and how, who administered justice and fiscal exactions, forced the authors to think in terms of territorial or regional systems of power, as they began to be called. It encouraged them to define the structural logic and the internal equilibrium of those systems. It urged them to think about these systems' institutions and "material organizations," as they later came to be called, and to consider the dynamics that had brought about changes both in the institutions and in the organizations by periodizing and tracing phases and transitions. At least this is what I did in my work on the Grand Duchy of Tuscany at the time of Cosimo I. If the project had been carried out-at least for the part concerning the state maps for the modern period-it would have offered an irreplaceable basis for analyzing the territorial dimension of the state structures and power systems in Italy. It would have been a precious instrument for beginning work on Italy's complex and varied sociopolitical microcosm and for answering some general questions. For instance, should one speak only of two Italies, one feudal and the other urban, as Galasso wrote? Or is it better to conceive of a more complex mosaic of little states, different in size and complexity and in the nature of their centers and peripheries, but not lacking some structural affinities? Can one discern common evolutionary tendencies, though with different timing or irreparably different destinies? Actually, only my map of "La Toscana granducale al tempo di Cosimo I" and the corresponding preparatory notes were published, but the common work we carried out in preparation for the Atlante represented one of the starting points for a different way of considering the Italian states of the modern period. 20 My research, which continued in subsequent years, brought me to see in the sixteenth-century Medicean state a model quite different from the one Ventura outlined on the basis of the Venetian Terraferma, though it too appeared distant from the model of the "modern state." 21 Even for Tuscany, the 20 E. Fasano (iuarini, Lo Stato mediceo di Cosimo I (Florence, 1973). The map was published by the Centro Nazlonale delle Ricerche (undated) and later as "The Grand-Duchy of Tuscany at the Death of Cosimo I: A Historical Map (with enclosure)," Journal of Italian History, vol. 2 (1979). 21 E. Fasano (}uarini, "Citta soggette e contadi nel dominio fiorentino tra Quattro e Cinquecento: 11 caso pisano," In Ricerche di storia moderna, I, ed. M. Mirri (Pisa, 1976), pp. 1-94, "Potere centrale e comunita soggette nel Granducato di Cosimo I," Rivista storica italiana 89 (1977): 490-538, "Considerazioni su giustlzia stato societa nel Ducato di Toscana del Cinquecento," in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and

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impression of pluralism, particularly in the area of statute law, and of the vitality and resistance of local powers, can hardly be avoided. Cities, towns, and rural communities, each with their own councils and government bodies, were, in effect, the basic elements in the structure of the country and in the organization of the territory, the main institutional context in which local interests were expressed both in conflict and in consensus. Due to the lack of a strong central bureaucracy, the communities were in charge of the collection and apportionment of taxes; for the most part, of maintaining public order; and, until Cosimo I, of defense. Beyond the boundaries of the contado, their relations with Florence continued to be regulated by the terms agreed upon at the time of subjugation. They enjoyed many fiscal and jurisdictional privileges, which they maintained tenaciously. The state did not exhaust the constitutional variety of the territory. But the communities were included in a close network of leagues, podestariati and vicariati governed by city officials. Besides, from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, they were also subjected to the administrative and financial control of chancellors appointed by the central offices, which they received unwillingly and often met with violent resistance. Through these networks, which also had a corresponding hierarchy of local government bodies, not only was justice administered and the collection of taxes organized but local life was regulated and disciplined. The orders of the prince were transmitted and carried out. His bans and police regulations were publicized. His orders to work, that is, the opere and the comandate that for a long time remained indispensable for the construction of the grand-ducal buildings and the great waterworks and for the maintenance of the highways, were imposed. This was neither an "aggregation," as Ventura claimed, nor a centralized state, according to Antonio Anzilotti's old thesis,22 but a coherent system of power, regional in scope, within which the communities continued to exist, with their functions and autonomies based on a persisting contractual system; meanwhile, the authority of the prince was strong, guaranteed by efficient instruments of control and wide-ranging government influence. 23

Relations, vol. 2, Cinquecento, ed. S. Bertelli, N. RubInstein, and C. H. Smyth (Florence, 1980), pp. 135 -68, and "Gh statuti delle cltta soggette a Firenze tra '400 e '500: Riforme locah e interventi centrali," In Statutz citta terrztorz in Itaiza e Germanza tra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. G. Chittohni and D. Willoweit (Bologna, 1991), pp. 69-124. 22 A. Anzl1otti, La costztuzione znterna della Stato fiorentino sotto Coszmo I (Florence, 1910). 23 For the Jundical aspects, see L. Mannon, L'amminlstraZlone del territorzo nella Toscana granducale: Teorza e praSSl dl governo fra antzco regime e riforme (Florence, 1988), and Il sovrano tutore: Pluralzsmo istituZlonale e accentramento ammznistrativo nel princzpato del Medlcz, secc. XVI-XVIII (Milan, 1994).

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It seemed to me that all this was not just the result of the undeniable innovations itnplemented by Cosimo I, but of a much longer course, the beginnings of \¥hich go back to the period of the fifteenth-century formation of the state, in the years 1408-15 in which the new city statutes began to contemplate the issue of the organization of the dominion and the catasto was being prepared to include the whole of it. 24 In the 1970s Giorgio Chittolini studied at length the formation of the regional states between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His starting point was a critique of the historical tradition dating back to the Risorgimento that saw the age of the communes as an exceptional historical moment, progressive and liberating, and the internal struggles of the commune as the beginning of the rise of new "bourgeois" classes against the old feudal classes. 25 Instead of following that tradition, already questioned both in Italy and elsewhere, Chittolini planned to look at the territory beyond the walls of the city. In the relations of the commune with the contado, in the commune's inability to uni fy the contado and to subdue the armed feudal aristocracies that were part of it, he identified the reasons for the commune's fragility and the main reason for its fourteenth-century crisis. But Chittolini's historiographical revision is quite different from the one proposed by the Einaudi Storia d'[talia. 26 His criticism of the "myth of the commune" did not have as its premise or as its result the idea of a "block" of Italian history. Harking back to the tradition that runs from Francesco Ercole and Anzilotti to Chabod via the late works of Gioacchino Volpe, C:hittolini identified, in the decline of the communes and the coming of the signoria and the principality between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries~ a tendency to form more stable power structures and stronger centers, to accumulate territory and discipline the diverse forces inhabiting it. Even if this process was accompanied by regressive social phenomena, such as the formation of restricted power oligarchies or the coming of the signorie, it still led in Chittolini's opinion to the formation of new states, which he called "regional" or "Renaissance," as Chabod had done before him. They were not modem states, hovvever, and certainly not absolute states. Whether we consider the largely feudal duchy of the Visconti and the Sforza, to which Chittolini has devoted ample specific studies, or the small principalities 24 On that period, see A. Zorzi, "Lo stato territoriale fiorentino (secoh XIV-XV): Aspetti giurisdizionali," Societa e Storia 13 (1990): 790-825. 25 G. Chittolini, "La crisi delle liberta comunali e Ie istituzioni del contado," Rivista storica italiana, vol. 82 (1970); now in G. Chittolini, La jormazione della Stato regionale e le istituzioni del contado: Secoli XIV e XV (Turin, 1979), pp. 3- 35. 26 On this sUlbject, see G. Chittolini, "Introduzione," La crisi degli ordinamenti comunali e le origini della stato del Rinascimento, ed. G. Chittolini (Bologna, 1979), pp.22-23.

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in Emilia, or a city-state like Florence, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century public organization was always based on a pact?? It was based on a division of power between the central government and a periphery that by now was disciplined but retained its vitality for a long time, resigned to the loss of its independence but not to that of its liberties. To define these states Chittolini resorted to the category of "dualism" already employed by German historians like Otto Gierke, Otto Hintze, and Otto Brunner, who applied it to the German state to describe the relations between princes and orders in Germany, or by Werner Naf, who used it to describe the "rulership contracts" in Flanders and Brabant. The use of this category, which is applied to many European contexts, corresponds to the author's intention to link the history of the state in Italy to the history of the state in the rest of Europe. The idea of Italian "delays" was thus replaced by the idea of a process of formation of new political systems that was slow and complex both in Italy and elsewhere. This process was characterized everywhere by a phase still not completely "modem," during which the centralization of power in the hands of the prince was accompanied, or even made possible, by the various orders' participation in power. This change has had a profound influence on the evolution of studies on the modern state in Italy. Not just in Italy, but elsewhere, too, the model of the modern state seems to be less and less convincing and is evoked more to discuss its sense and use than to affirm its validity. Even in the recent complex multinational research project organized under the seemingly unequivocal title of "Genese de I' etat moderne," the hypothesis of a great one-way process, of "a historical movement that brought the societies first to the modern state and then to the nation-state," was accompanied by the affirmation of the nonlinearity of this process and by the conviction that we should not only mention the "advances" but also "the consistency of the resistance and the backsliding."28 Other models have emerged, with more nuances and a tendency toward pluralism. Suffice it to mention the success of the notion of "composite state," which has been used to define apparently very distant systems, like the Republic of Venice and the great European monarchies. 29 The models on which Italian historians based their idea of the Italian political See the studIes collected in ChIttohnI, La formazione dello Stato regionaLe. B. Chevaher, "IntroductIon," L'etat moderne: Genese. Bilans et perspectives: Actes du colloque tenu au CNRS a Pans Les 19-20 septembre 1989, ed. J. P. Genet (Pans, 1990), p. 11 The terntonal dimensIon has been studied In particular In N. Coulet and J P. Genet, eds., L'etat moderne: Le droit, L'espace et Les formes de ['etat: Actes du colloque tenu a La Baume-Les-Alx, 11-12 octobre 1984 (Paris, 1990). 29 J. Grubb, Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza In the Early Renaissance State (BaltImore, 1988)~ J. H. EllIott, "A Europe of Composite Monarchies," Past and Present, no. 137 (1992), pp.48-71. 27

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"delays" have themselves now been challenged. It is certainly not irrelevant that in France today centralism and unification, traditionally attributed to the absolute monarchy, are discussed starting from the "periphery" even in the eighteenth century, which was the period during which the absolute monarchy experienced its maximum expansion. Scholars have recently discovered the survival of the powers of the cities and the importance of the pays in the organization of society, and the perrnanence of private forms of justice as composition and arbitration that are hardly compatible with the idea of centralization. 30

IV Studies of the states as systems of territorial power have multiplied in Italy since the 1980s. In some cases they have followed quite closely the methodological indications and interpretative categories provided by the European historiographical tendencies mentioned above. Angela De Benedictis's studies on Bologna, "res publica per contratto" inside the papal states from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, for example, reflect her desire to take into account the models elaborated and discussed recently by the German, Spanish, and more generally European historiography, of which she has direct and ample knowledge. Her studies aim to define the contractual and "republican" foundation of the relations between Bologna in the periphery and the distant papal center. Her work is characterized by particular attention to the juridical-institutional situation, whose duration she sees as an expression of the profound continuity and constitutional affinity that, in her view, characterize the Italian and non-Italian states of the old regime in spite of their undeniable differences. 31 30 Y. Durand, Vivre au pays au XVllIe siecle: Essai sur la notion de pays dans l'Ouest de la l~rance (Paris, 1984); M. Derlange, Les communautes d'habitants en Provence au dernier siecle de l 'Ancien Regime (Toulouse, 1987); p. Guignet, Le pouvoir dans la ville au XVllle siecle: Pratiques politiques, notabilite et ethique sociale de part et d'autre de la frontiere franco-beige (Paris, 1990). On the continuation of extra- and infralegal practices, see Y. Castan, Honnetete et relations sociales en Languedoc, 1715-1780 (Paris, 1974); and N. Castan, Justice et repression en Languedoc a I' epoque des Lumieres (Paris, 1980). 31 A. De Benedictis, "Ad bonum regimen, ordinem et gubernationem: Per una storia della costituzione territoriale tra Quattro e Clnquecento: II caso di Bologna," in Persistenze feudali e autonomie communitative in Stati padanl fra Cinque e Settecento, ed. G. Tocci (Bologna, 1988), pp. 195--217, "Repubblica per contratto: Una cltta (Bologna) nello Stato (pontlficio)," Scienza e politica 4 (1990): 59- 72, "Contrattualismo e repubblicanesimo in una citta d' antico regime: Bologna nello Stato della Chiesa," Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridlca 2 (1992): 269-99. By the same author, see also Patrizi e comunita: Il governo del contado bolognese nel '700

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In other studies, such as those devoted to the Republic of Venice that proliferated beginning in the 1980s, attention to the peculiarities of a single case has prevailed. Studying the politics of law, and the practices of government more generally, Gaetano Cozzi has reconsidered the peculiar nature of the state, along with the social dynamics that define the history of Venice's ruling class. 32 He too has spoken of dualism. But in his work this word does not refer only to the contractual nature of the juridical-institutional relations between the Republic of Venice and its dominion. It also suggests the "social, spiritual, political, economic and environmental" differences that separated Venice-which was a strange center placed at the borders of its state, a seafaring and mercantile city, foreign to the world of common law-from the Terraferma, which was a multiform and polycentric periphery, organized around big urban poles and dotted with feudal lordships and "little princes." 33 This original "dualism" had a deep influence on the structures and development of the Venetian state. But, according to Cozzi and his younger students as opposed to Ventura, this dualism did not prevent the formation of a lasting political system capable of surviving serious crises-most serious of all, the crisis caused by the defeat inflicted on Venice by the League of Cambrai. 34 It did not prevent the formation of a regional unity and a state within which the authority of Venice was accepted, legitimized, and strongly

(Bologna, 1984), and Repubbllca per contralto. Bologna: Una cllta europea nella stato della Chiesa (Bologna, 1995). 32 G. Cozzi, "La politlca del diritto nella Repubblica di VenezIa," In Stato societa e giustizia nella Repubblica veneta (sec. XV-XVIII), ed. G. Cozzi (Rome, 1980), pp. 15 - 152, and Repubblica dl Venezia e Stati Itallani: Politica e giustizia dal secolo XVI al secola XVIII (Tunn, 1982), pp. 217 - 318. See the review/discussIon of the latter by A. Ventura, "Politlca del dintto e amminIstrazIone della giustlzia nella repubbhca veneta," Rivlsta stonca italiana 94 (1982): 589-608. See also G. Cozzi:'Ambiente veneziano, amblente veneto, governantt e govemati nel Dominio di qua dal Mincio nel secoli XV-XVIII," In Stona della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. G. Arnaldi and M. Pasture Stocchi (Venice, 1984), pp. 497 -539. Among the studIes by COZZI'S students, see, in particular, C. Povolo, "Aspetti e problemi dell' ammInIstrazIone della gIustizIa penale nella Repubbhca di VenezIa, secoli XVI-XVIII," In Cozzi, ed., pp. 153-258; M. Knapton, "Tra Dominante e dominlo (1517 -1630)," In G. Cozzi, M. Knapton, and G. Scarabello, La Repubblica dl Venezia nell'eta moderna (Turin, 1992), pp. 465-549; and, more recently, A. Viggiano, Governanti e governati' Legittlmita del potere ed esercizio dell'autonta sovrana nella Stato veneto della pnma eta moderna (TrevIso, 1993). 33 S. ZamperettI, I piccoli principl: Signone locall, feudl e comunita soggette nello Stato regionale veneto dall'espansione terntoriale al pnmi decennl del '600 (Treviso, 1991 ). 34 See I. Cervelli, Machiavelli e La criSI della stato veneZiano (Naples, 1974); G. Del Torre, Venezia e la Terraferma dopo la guerra di Cambrai: Fiscallta e ammlnlstraZlone (1515-1530) (Milan, 1986).

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perceived from the periphery as well as from the center. 35 This was, in their view, the result of the concrete ties. established between Venice and the dominion. An important feature was the widespread presence of Venetian patricians in the territory who served as administrators of the subject cities and were holders of ecclesiastical bene1ices and owners of landed property. Another important feature was the centripetal attraction exercised by Venice on the ruling class of the Terraferma and the circulation of culture. An even more important feature was the way Venice governed and administered justice. What counted was its ability to respect the autonomous statutes and the privileges of the subject cities and communities, and at the same time to overrule them through the equitable intervention of its own Venetian administrators, its desire to assert its authority without excluding the pursuit of consensus. Venice pursued a mediation policy in local conflicts. It was willing to accept compromises and to ally itself with the oligarchies of the subject cities while endeavoring to erode their powers, as in fact happened between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries with the formation of autonomous territorial entities in the contadi. 36 For the south of Italy, "the Neapolitan path to the modem state" has continued to be one of the mainstays of research. 37 This path, too, is viewed as having been strewn with compromises. Scholars have insisted on the centralization processes and the erosion of the political spaces left to feudal forces in the periphery.38 But they have also stressed the nonlinear nature of these processes, marked by interruptions, recovery, and crises. 39 There have been discussions of the disciplining of ruling elites by the state, of their degradation from political authorities. to de facto powers, and of the state's failure to absorb the elites that it had long recognized and guaranteed as privileged orders. Historians have continued to see the key to the history of the 35 See, e.g., Grubb, pp. 99 ff.; and G. M. Varanini, Comuni eittadini e Stato regionale: Rieerehe sulfa Terra/erma veneta nel Quattroeento (Verona, 1992). 36 M. Knapton, "II Terntorio vicentino nello Stato veneto del '500 e primo '600: Nuovi equilibn politici e fiscali," in Cracco and Knapton, eds. (n. 12 above), pp. 33-115; S. Zamperetti, "I 'Sinedri dolosi': La formazione e 10 sviluppo dei corpi territoriali nello Stato regionale veneto tra '500 e '600," Rivista storiea italiana 99 (1987): 269-320, and bibliography quoted therein. 37 The expression is by A. Musi, Mezzogiorno spagnolo: La via napoletana allo Stato moderno (Naples, 1991), who refers to G. Galasso, Intervista sulla storia di Napoli (Ban, ]978). Along the same lines, see G. Muto, Le finanze pubbliehe napoletane tra riforme e restaurazione (1520-1634) (Naples, 1980). 38 See, in particular, A. Cernigliaro, Sovranita e feudo nel Regno dl Napoli (1505-1557), 2 vols. (Naples, 1983). 39 The CriSIS of 1647 continues to recelve the most attention; A. Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello nella seena politiea baroeea (J~aples, 1989). ConcernIng Calabria, see P. L. Rovito, La rivolta del notabili (Naples, 1988).

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kingdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the dialectic between these orders, which has often been seen to coincide with that between the capital, Naples, residence of the so-called ceto civile, the order of the "Republic of magistrates, ,,40 and the feudal periphery. Furthermore, starting from the peripheries, a new attention to the history of the urban centers has developed in recent years. Even in the case of the kingdom, some scholars today see the cities basically as centers of territorial aggregation, which, although they were subject to processes of rapid marginalization, were powerful enough in the late fifteenth century to act as interlocutors with the central government before becoming its instruments for disciplining particularisms and peripheral social groups between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 41

v Regarding the Republic of Florence and Republic of Venice, the state of the Visconti and the Sforza, the duchies of the Po Valley and the Kingdom of Naples, our knowledge today would seem sufficient to formulate a comparative history of the territorial organization of the Italian states in the early modem period. 42 However, historical research does not proceed mainly by accumulation of notions but by turning points that lead us to the discovery of new problems and horizons. And today the time for turning points and discussions has come. If the problem of the Italian "delays" seems to have run its course, historians (not only in Italy) still talk about the nature and evolution of the political systems in the early modem period and whether it is opportune to define them in terms of "state" and "statehood." Some scholars have maintained that these historical categories cannot be backdated and that their application to old

40 P. L. Rovito, Respubhca dei togati: Giuristl e societa nella Napoli del Seicento (Naples, 1981), wIth an introductIon by R. Aiello. 41 ThIS IS particularly true for Apulia. See A. Spagnoletti, "L'incostanza delle umane cose": Il patnZlato dl terra di Ban tra egemonia e crisi (XVI-XVIII secolo) (Bari, 1981); M. A Visceglia, Te rritorio, feudo e potere locale: Terra d'Otranto tra Medloevo ed eta moderna (Naples, 1988); and, above all, Francesco Tateo, ed., Storia dl Ban nell'antlco regime, 2 vols. (Bari, 1991-92). 42 ThIS comparison has been the subject of numerous conferences that have also examined the relation between center and penphery. See S. Bertelh, N. RubinsteIn, and C. H. Smyth, eds , Florence and Venice: Compansons and Relatlons, vol. 1, Quattrocento, vol. 2, Cinquecento (Florence, 1979-80), and Florence and Milan: Comparisons and Relatlons, 2 vols. (Florence, 1989); and J. M. Cauchles and G. ChittolinI, eds., Mzlano e Borgogna: Due statl pnnclpeschi tra Medloevo e Rinasclmento (Rome, 1990).

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regime societies implies a misleading prejudice based on an anachronistic use of concepts drawn from public law. 4 ] There is an increasing tendency to define differently the "centers" or the "political spaces" and forms of aggregation in the long period that has often been defined, quite deliberately, not as "modem period" but as "old regime." Some scholars have located the predominant form of the organization of power not in the state and its apparatus but in the "patrician system," with its processes of self-legitimation and co-optation. 44 They have identified the court as the center in which the relations between the prince and the ruling classes were defined and legitimized in terms that were no longer feudalchivalric but also not yet bureaucratic and impersona1. 45 In Italy, too, following tendencies that have long been popular in other countries, especially in English-language scholarship on the Renaissance, there has been an increasing interest in networks and in relations of clientage and patronage, considered as real channels of political power exercised outside the institutions. 46 43 See C. Mozzarelli, "Corte e amministrazione nel principato gonzaghesco," Societa e storia 5 (1982): 245-62; L. Omaghi, " 'Crisi' del centro statale e disseminazione di centri politici," Quaderni sardi 4 (1983-84): 43-55; E. Rotelli and C. Mozzarelli, introductions to vol. 1 of L'amministrazione nella storia moderna (n. 6 above). In this regard, see also the critical observations by G. Chittolini, "Stati padani, 'Stato del Rinascimento': Problemi di ricerca," in Tocci, ed. (n. 30 above), pp. 9- 29. For a review of European discussions on the "statalist paradigm," see A. M. Hespanha, "Para uma teoria da hist6ria institucional do Antigo Ftegime" in his Poder e instituroes na Europa do Antigo Regilne: Colectanea de Textos (Lisbon, 1984). 44 C. Mozzarelli, "Stato, patriziato ed organizzazione della societa modema," Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 2 (1976): 421-512, "11 sistema patrizio," in Palriziati e aristocrazie nobiliari, ed. C. Mozzarelli and P. Schiera (Trent, 1978), pp. 52-63, "Strutture sociali e formazioni statuali a Milano e a Napoli tra '500 e '700," Societll e storia 3 (1978): 431-63. An extensive critical survey may be found in G. B. Zenobi, Corti principesche e oligarchie formalizzate come "luoghi del politico" nell'ltalia dell'eta moderna (Urbino, 1993). See also M. A. Visceglia, introduction to Signori, patrizi, cavalieri nell' eta moderna (Bari, 1992). Visceglia considers the development of feudal and patrician networks of power complementary to the developnlent of states, not antithetical. 45 This is especially true for the numerous studies on the Italian courts published by the center Europa delle Corti. In relation to the present theme, see, in particular, G. Papagno and i\. Quondam, "La corte e 10 spazio: Appunti problematici per il seminario," in La corte e 10 spazio: Ferrara estense, ed. G. Papagno and A. Quondam, 3 vols. (Rome, 1982), 2:823-38. See also C. Mozzarelli, "Principe, corte e govemo tra '500 e '700," in Culture et ideologie dans la genese de l'etat moderne (Rome, 1985), pp. 367 - 79. For an updated critical bibhography, see Zenobi. 46 See the discussion-survey by S. Bertelli, "Ceti dirigenti e dinamica del potere nel dibattito contenlporaneo," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1987), pp. 1-47.

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Interest in the periphery and in the histories of single communities has increased. The purpose of this interest in microhistorical approaches has not always been to criticize the conceptual apparatus used by the historians of the "regional state." Many scholars have considered the community as "a sort of ideal unit," open to different approaches and methodologies-from the history of institutions, fiscalism, and justice, to the history of mentalites, to social anthropology.47 In the history of communities, often identified with their most important families, historians have looked for the manifestations of social evolution as perceived from the ground up-or, if one prefers, from the periphery. Claudio Povolo, one of the founders of the "genre," wrote that historians interested in this approach did not, however, intend to exclude "the city, the contado, the state" from their analyses. 48 In some cases, though, the analysis of peripheral realities-communities, factions, kinships-has led to research itineraries different from those of institutional and administrative history, and to models of power systems that are alternatIve to the state models, even when (or if) the latter are understood pluralistically. The study of the "interdependence between local societies and state institutions," based on categories drawn from economic and social anthropology, has challenged "juxtapositions such as community/state and periphery/center, which evoke the basic cultural dualism between 'high' and 'low.' " The very idea of "community," conceived not as an original and primordial reality but as a "historical construction and the result of constant interaction," has been challenged by a more complex view of relations. This perspective is illustrated by numerous essays published in Quaderni storici as well as in two recent works on Ligurian topics: Osvaldo Raggio's work on the Fontanabuona Valley in the Apennines and Edoardo Grendi's work on the community of Cervo. 49 The idea of challenging the model of the "modem 47 G. TOCCI, Introductlon to Le comunita negli Statz italiani d'antico regime (Bologna, 1989), p. 10. I recommend this volume for its extensive bibliography up to 1989. After 1989, see, e.g., D. Montanari, ed., Mazzano-Storia di una comunita-secoli XII-XX (Mazzano, 1992). Other works have examined relations between communIties and the central government to measure durations and transformations of regimes based on pacts. See, esp. for the papal state, De Benedictis, Patrizi e comunita (n. 30 above); C Casanova, Comunlta e governo pontljicio In Romagna in eta moderna (Bologna, 1982), C. Penutl, "11 princIpe e Ie comunita soggette: 11 regIme fiscale dalle 'pattuizionI' al 'buongoverno,' " In Finanze e ragion di Stato in Italza e zn Germania nella przma eta moderna, ed. A. De Maddalena and H. Kellenbenz (Bologna, 1984), pp 89-100. 48 C. Povolo, Introduction to Dueville, ed. C. Povolo (Venice, 1985), pp. xix, XXI. 49 See, In partIcular, S. Lombardini, O. RaggIO, and A. Torre, eds., "Special Issue: Conflitti locali e idiomi policI," Quadernl stOrzCl, vol. 63 (1986); the quoted passages come from the foreword. See also other speCIal Issues of the same journal: G. Dehlle, E. GrendI, and G. LeVI, eds., "Special Issue: Famiglia e comunita," vol. 33 (1976);

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state" (a "limjted tool for understanding political and social movements in general," according to Raggio), the desire to suggest a different interpretation of the political reality starting from the periphery, is quite evident in these cases, especially in the work of Grendi, which constitutes the most mature expression of this trend. 50 Seen from C~ervo, the Ligurian Republic continues to appear indispensable as an institutional frame of reference. (]enoa exercised its sovereignty over the territory; it was the metropolis where high justice was centered. It imposed and collected taxes, although it had to resort to local institutions to do so and had to deal with their resistance. The podesta and officers who acted in the peripheral cOlnmunities were Genoese. According to Grendi, one can even identify a seventeenth-century trend toward the consolidation of the state and the erosion of local immunities and privileges, although there was never "a coherent state plan." 51 Grendi believes that governing the territory required first participating in the complex interaction of "primary associations that were radically 'different,' 'alien' from the administrative and territorial political reality." To understand the logic of the system we must look at the reality of those associations-feuds and kinships in the valley of Fontanabuona, previously studied by Raggio; communities, parishes, villages, boroughs, and towns on the eastern I~iviera around Cervo. The system was not centered only around the metropolis; it was influenced also by the nature of the territory, the morphology of its settlements, and the distribution of resources. Its connective tissue consisted of the asymmetrical circuits of exchange between the villages and the towns or boroughs: the network for food provisioning; the commerce of grain, oil, and wine; larger operations going beyond the limits of the commune and organized around other activities (e.g., in Cervo, around the collection of coral); migration as an interwoven balancing phenomenon. The relations within these nonpolarized interlocking systems suggest "the plurality of the protagonists in the territory" and the interaction between local powers and state functions. The state existed because it mediated conflicts between villages and towns, protecting the former; it regulated markets and supplies; it controlled the lending and coining of money; together with the institutions of power in the communities, it governed the "regional economic society," making integration possible. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Grendi's work-which, on the institutional level, seems to reassert well-known pluralistic models-lies in its G. Levi, ed., "Special Issue: Villaggi: Studi di antropologia storica," vol. 46 (1981). See also O. Raggio, Faide e parenteLe: Lo stato genovese visto dalla Fontanabuona (Turin, 1990); E, Grendi, Il Cervo e La repubbLica: Il modello Ligure di antico regime (Turin, 1993). 50 Raggio, p. i x. 51 Grendi, p. 21.

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concern with the material aspects of the territory and its geographical, economic, and social connotations as well as with the concrete nature of relations that take place within that territory. The Ligurian case was certainly unique because of the morphology of its land (situated between the sea and the mountains) and the nature of its metropolis. Genoa continued to seem like a city-state rather than the capital of a territory. It had survived at the periphery of the system composed of the great continental monarchies and was engaged in a financial venture of pan-European scope between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries that had little influence on the life of the territory.52 It is not difficult to imagine the existence of different structures, such as in Florence, where the metropolitan ruling class developed a strong interest in landed property and the territory, and where a different morphology of settlements and more intense urbanization prevailed. It is no coincidence that the Florentine government chose to intervene more directly in the territory. Besides mediating conflicts, it controlled local administrations and finances and organized a polarized provisioning system. The system was controlled through a series of offices and territorial jurisdictions, reflecting not only the supremacy of Florence but also the hierarchy of the subject cities. 53 In some areas, like the contado of Pisa, the communities themselves remained vital but underwent structural transformations between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The expansion of Florentine landed property had a profound impact on local situations while the spread of the "mezzadria" sharecropping system brought in groups of "foreigners" representing outside interests, whose fiscal obligations and access to markets and credit were different from those of the "natives.,,54 But if the "Ligurian model" based on "specific and closely focused research" cannot be extended automatically to other contexts-and Grendi does not claim that it can-the "distinctive approach" he proposes is certainly "reproducible." 55 This approach allows us to grasp 52 Ibid., p. 79. At the end of the eighteenth century travelers still noticed the lack of interest In the territonal government among the dominant group in the city, consisting of "negociants" who "n' ont point de pays." See C. M. Du Paty, Lettres sur l'Italie en 1785 (Lausanne, 1796), 1:83, quoted In G. Assereto, "Dal!' amminlstrazlone patrizla all'amministrazione modema: Genova," In L'ammznistrazione nella storza modema, 1:95. 53 A. M. Pult QuaglIa, "Per provvedere az popoli": Il szstema annonario nella Toscana dei Medici (Florence, 1990). 54 D. Pesciatini, "Continuita e trasformazione: Ie comunita del contado di PIsa nel secolo XVII," in Ricerche di Storia moderna, III, ed. M. Mlrri (Pisa, 1985),3:293-379. On the expansion of Florentine property In the contado around Pisa, see P. Malanima, "La propneta fiorentIna e la diffuslone della mezzadria nel contado pisano nel secoli XV e XVI," In Contadini e proprietari nella Toscana moderna, 3 vols. (Florence, 1979), 1:545 - 75; A. Menzlone, "La proprieta terriera nelle campagne plsane del secolo XVII: Primo studio della dlstnbuzione catastale," In Ibid., pp. 473-93. 55 Grendi, p. 20.

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the concrete elements of territorial systems of power that might otherwise escape more isolated vantage points ]ike courts, patriciates, or communities.

VI Other scholars have emphasized the relation between regional state and economic region in different ways. One way has been to study the history of single Italian cities at the time of their subjection. Whether the city in question was Vicenza, 'I. firstborn of Venice," or Pescia "in the shadow of Florence," or Prato, an urban microcosm situated only a few miles away from Florence, these studies have tried to explain the modem history of such places by examining the political, economic, and cultural introduction of the old urban centers into the new regional realities. 56 The result is a history of the way these cities responded to external stinluli and influences, their long period of adjustment, and, at the same time, their tenacious assertion of their own local identity, threatl~ned by a process of "relegation to the periphery." The theme has also been approached more directly. Paolo Malanima, who has studied the case of Tuscany, has suggested a parallel between the formation of the state andl the contemporaneous regionalization of the economy between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He has insisted on the basically harmonious process of division of labor that took place and on its favorable consequences in temlS of economic developn1ent. 57 In the 1970s, Yves Barel, a French sociologist, had already studied the"decline of the medieval urban system" and the socioeconomic rather than political process of territorialization. 58 Previously, David Herlihy, in a pioneering study of Pistoia well known to Barel, had pondered the meaning of the entrance of that city into the economic and political system newly centered in Florence. 59 Nlarco Tangheroni later took up the theme, studying fourteenth-century Tuscany.6o 56 Grubb (n. 28 above)~ J. C. Brown, In the Shadow of Florence: Provincial Society in Renaissance Pescia (New York and Oxford, 1982); E. Fasano Guarini, ed., Prato storia di una citta, vol. 2, Un microcosmo in movimento (1494 -1815) (Florence, 1986); and M. Montorzi and L. Giani, Pontedera e le guerre del Contado: Una vicenda di ricostruzione urbana e di instaurazione istituzionale tra territorio e giurisdizione (Pisa, 1994). 57 P. Malanirna, "La formazione di una regione economica: La Toscana nel secoli XIII-XV," Societa e storia 20 (1983): 229-69, and "Politica ed economla nella formazione dello Stato regionale: II caso toscano," Studi veneziani, n.s. 11 (1986):

61-72. 58 V. Barel, La ville medievale-systeme social/systeme urbain (Grenoble, 1977). 59 Herlihy (n. 13 above). 60 M. Tangheroni, "11 sistema econOlnlCO della Toscana nel Trecento," in La Toscana nel secolo XIV: Caratteri di una civilta reglonale, ed. S. Gensinl (Pisa, 1988), pp.41-66.

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Recently S. R. Epstein has compared the Sicilian, Tuscan, and Lombard models from this perspective. His thesis goes against the traditional view of the city as the origin of modern economic development. He maintains that the centering of Tuscany around Florence during and after the fourteenth-century crisis caused stagnation rather than development, as proved by the long decline of the other urban centers and the contemporaneous ossification of their hierarchy. He believes that this centering was both cause and effect of a policy of preferring dominion to integration, a policy suggested by the nature of the institutions and by the way power was used to the advantage of the dominant city. According to Epstein, conditions in Sicily were much more favorable to economic recovery. There, not only did the crisis tip the scale in favor of the countryside but the modification of urban hierarchies and the decline of the old metropolitan centers of Palermo and Messina allowed a more equitable distribution of resources. The Lombard system, too, was more favorable to economic recovery than the Tuscan one. Economically, it was characterized by more numerous and dynamic urban centers. Politically, the Lombard dukes, first the Visconti and then the Sforza, demonstrated a willingness to favor the minor centers as well as the major ones, both in the distribution of resources and the siting of markets. 61 The idea of a close link between regional state and economic region has emerged not so much through the work of institutional historians as through that of economic historians interested in institutions, such as the authors I just mentioned. According to Malanima, the economic region was "a complex territorial structure consisting of interdependent realities based on forms of geographic division of labor," within which "the different areas were like the different limbs of a body, all aiming at the same common goal.,,62 As we have just seen, different analyses and interpretations of historical development originate from these notions. These differences indicate that some issues have not been settled. The very rigidity of the supposed link between regional state and economic region might appear less convincing to those who have accepted a "weak" model of the state for the early modern period, corresponding to a relatively incomplete political form. 63 At the same time, new 61 S. R. EpsteIn, "Cities, RegIons and the Late MedIeval CrisIs: SIcily and Tuscany Compared," Past and Present (February 1991), pp. 3-50, and "Town and Country: Economy and Institutions in Late Medieval Italy," Economic History Review 46 (1993): 453-77. See also S. R. Epstein, An Island/or Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992). 62 Malanima, "La formazione di una regione economica," p. 229. 63 One wonders how important the attraction exercised by Rome was for the Tuscan periphery in the sIxteenth century, especially In the south and east, as a place for financIal investment, as a center for educatIon, and for attractIng highly qualified immIgrants.

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possibilities are opening up, allowing historians to analyze not only the formation processes of the regional states but also the changes that their organization later underwent. 64 Two points must be emphasized. First of all, partly encouraged by recent developments in the fields of geography and economics, recent studies have adopted systernic approaches, such as the "central place" theory to which Epstein refers. 65 The notion of system seems to work better than the juxtaposition of center and periphery. It also allows a more complex view of peripheries organized as networks around economic, administrative, and power centers. Second, local and state institutions as well as political power are once again taking their place beside economic factors as keys for understanding economic change in the period. In this view historians have analyzed the lnechanisms of political power, namely, decision making on matters regarding fiscal impositions and duties; policies concerning demography, roads, and hydraulics; intervention in the location of markets and manufacturing activities; and choices concerning urban planning-sometimes simply projects, at other times decisive and radical changes. The port city of Leghorn, whose construction was a political project conceived and realized by the first Medicean grand dukes, within forty years became the second city in the state. 66 Beltween the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its development upset the urban hierarchy and displaced the economic and demographic axes of the grand duchy. Around the same time a political project by the Savoy dynasty, namelly, the establishment of a new capital, brought about the rapid growth of Turin in Piedmont, while the urban network was reduced and restructured. 67 Even in the more fragile structure of the early sixteenth-century Genoese state, a political decision and an intervention by the new dominant power-in this case one unwilling to make compromises-brought about the closing of the port of Savona, powerful rival to the port of Genoa, and the drastic and lasting debasement of that city.68 But even in the absence of noteworthy events, political and economic factors seem to have helped 64 On the net~d for a dynamic history of the formation of states, see E. Fasano Guarini, "Gli stati dell'Italia centro-settentrionale tra Quattro e Cinquecento: Continuita e transfomlazioni," Societa e storia '21 (1983): 617 -39. On the relation between the development of the state and the formation of economic regions between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, see the observations by M. Mirri, "Formazione di una regione economica: Ipotesi sulla Toscana, suI Veneto, sulla Lombardia," Studi veneziani, n.s., ] 1 (1986): 47 -59. 65 Epstein, "Cities, Regions, and the Late Medieval Cnsis," p. 21. 66 L. Frattarellli Fischer, "Livomo citt~l nuova: 1574-1609," Societa e Storia 46 (1989): 872-93 67 Levi, "Corne Torino soffoco il Piemonte" (n. 3 above). 68 A. Pacini, I presupposti politici del "secolo dei Genovesi": La riforma del 1528 (Genoa, 1990), pp. 237 ff., 243, 286 ff.

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preserve or transform urban hierarchies within the system, modify the relations between city and countryside, promote or hinder the development of local centers and the proliferation of towns, redistribute resources and manpower, and shape and define economic regions. One can perhaps speak of "center" in the singular as a source of political decision, although certainly not of "centralization." Setting aside, at least for the time being, the debates concerning the notions of "state" and center/periphery, the territory, with its reality and its concrete problems, can provide us with many useful elements for analyzing the structural and dynamic aspects of political systems. As noted by C. Raffestin, a geographer attentive to the historical dimension, the territory is a preeminently historical product that reflects the history of the "geography of power. ,,69 Perhaps territory is the unifying framework that could be used to link institutional history to the history of extrainstitutional aggregations, state to community, public to private. 7o In this historical dimension, it may be possible to combine the analysis of juridical and constitutional forms, which has played such an important role in recent research on states, with that of the less known economic and social dynamics that are partly presupposed and partly hidden by those forms.

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Raffestin, Pour une geographle du pouvoir (n. 3 above), pp. 129 ff. Chlttolinl, "Stati padanl, 'Stato del Rinascimento' " (n. 42 above).

The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Fllorence* Anthony Molho Brown University

I The nexus between arms, riches, and a government's strength has been a staple of political and historical literature. Since the time of Cicero and Tacitus to the fifteenth century and beyond, authors often asserted that the tranquillity of nations was impossible without annies, armies without soldiers' wages, or wages without tribute. 1 The overwhelming number of these authors hesitated little in ascribing primacy to the power of money in bringing about beneficent results, among which the most significant was the strength of armies and the nation's internal peace. Pecunia nervus rerum was the aphorism with which statesmen and political theorists, from fourteenth-century Florence to sixteenthand seventeenth-century France, Spain, and Germany, conveyed this common wisdom. Machiavelli was nearly alone in the premodern era to have boldly asserted that "i danari non sono il nen'o della guerra, secondo che ela comune opinione," (moneys are not the sine\vs of things, as common opinion would have it), training his polemical attack on contemporaries and ancestors misled into thinking that money could supplant virtu. 2 Guicciardini corrected Machiavelli's aim and softened his friend's bold dismissal of the efficacy of

* This article originally appeared as "Lo Stato e la finanza pubblica: Un'ipotesi basata sulla storia tardomedioevale di Firenze," in Origini della Stato: Processi di iormazione statale in Italia ira medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, i\nnali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico, vol. 39 (Bologna: 11 Mulino, 1994). 1 Cited by Enrico Stumpo, "Finanze e ragion di Stato nella prima Eta modema: Due modelli diversi: Piemonte e Toscana, Savoia e Medici," in Finanze e ragion di Stato in Italia e in Germania nella prima Eta moderna, ed. Aldo di Maddalena and Hermann Kellenbenz (Bologna, 1984), p. 227, from Tacitus, Historiarum 4.74: "nec quies gentium sine annis, nec arma sine stipendiis, nec stipendia sine tnbutis haberi queunt." 2 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 2.10. It may be interesting to note that, as late as December 1498, six months after Machiavelli's entrance into government service, a communal scribe repeated ,~hat by then was almost a cliche when registering a new piece of fiscal legislation: "Sappiendo el nervo della guerra et il mantenimento della liberta di ciaschuna Republica essere il danaio," citizens were ordered to pay a set of new forced loans with which to finance the war against Pisa (Provvisioni-Registri 189, fo1. 108v, December 10, Jl498, Archivio dl Stato, Florence). Of course, this maXIm was not known only in Florence. Ludovico il Moro evoked a variant of it when he wrote that ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern History 67, suppl (December 1995)

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wealth. But on the more important point-that war and wealth were inextricably linked in Italy's recent politics and that they contributed to a state's strength-Guicciardini could not but support the older man's assertion. This theme was echoed by political commentators in subsequent centuries, in a refrain whose analysis need not detain us here; Michael Stolleis's treatment of this subject in German political literature of the early modern era offers more than a convenient starting point for future explorations. 3 In recent times, the consequences, both economic and political, of fiscal policies and public debts have been discussed by more than a few scholarseconomists and historians alike. But a close variant of the common wisdom criticized by Machiavelli-that there is a deep link, something of a causal effect, between the strength of states and their fiscal policies-has found renewed currency in the work of a number of sociologically minded historians, who have returned with some insistence to this old nexus. Norbert Elias, in one of his last works, underscored the connection between war and taxes, on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing centralization and modernization of European states, expressions that in his interpretation seem to carry the same valences that the term nervus carried in the aphorism of ancient and premodern times. In a passage quoted more than once recently, he wrote that in the early modern era, when modern states came into being, "free use of military weapons is denied the individual and reserved to a central authority ... and likewise the taxation of the property or income of individuals is concentrated in the hands of a central social authority. The financial means thus flowing into this central authority maintain its monopoly of military force, while this in turn maintains the monopoly of taxation. Neither has in a sense precedence over the other; they are two sides of the same monopoly."4 At roughly the same time, these connections were also being made by others, perhaps most importantly by a group of scholars led by Charles Tilly, whose own book, significantly entitled Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1990, itself was published fifteen years after the appearance of an important collective volume on the formation of nation states in western Europe. 5 Even If their attention was focused primarily on French, English, and "essendo Ie Intrate el nervo et fermeza de h Stati" (Franca LeverottI, "La crisl finanziaria del ducato di Milano alla fine del Quattrocento," In Milano nell' eta dl Ludovico tl Moro [Milan, 1983], p. 585). 3 MIchael Stolleis, "Pecunia nervus rerum: II problema delle finanze nella letteratura tedesca della raglon di Stato nel XVII secolo," In di Maddalena and Kellenbenz, eds , pp. 21-44. 4 Norbert Ehas, The CiVilizing Process, vol. 2 of Power and Civility (New York, 1982), p. 104. 5 Charles TIlly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Pnnceton, N.J., 1975); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1990

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Prussian deveJlopments, the links that Tilly and his colleagues, especially Gabriel Ardant and Rudolf Braun, drew between state formation and public finance offer an initial point of departure for some of the observations that follow. They claim that public finance became more efficient because of the pressure of war. In tum, this efficiency contributed to the modernization of the state. It is inconceivable to think of the modem state without these "two sides of the same monopoly." Even more recently, Jean-Philippe Genet, in a variant of Tilly's view, concluded that in the late Middle Ages war "opened an era of ferocious competition between states, which from the fourteenth century onwards had to extract more and more resources and to invest them into the war-business. States which could not cope with the tide of conflict just disappeared. ,, 6 If in this article we must address the suggestive hypotheses advanced by Tilly's and Genet's schools, there is another large set of questions we must also take stock of in our discussion. To the degree to which in the past several decades scholars have continued their reflection on the nexus between the state and public finance, Max Weber's influence has been crucial, with many historians and sociologists eager to measure the results of their inquiries against the criteria he presented early in this century. The key here was Weber's expression "modem form of bureaucracy," which has been variously interpreted, but which, more often than not, has been associated with Weber's explanation that "the theory of modern public administration ... assumes that the authority to order certain matters by decree-which has been legally granted to an agency-does not entitle the agency to regulate the matter by individual conamands given for each case, but only to regulate the matter abstractly. This stands in extreme contrast to the regulation of all relationships through individual privileges and bestowals of favor, which ... is absolutely dominant in p.atrimonialism." 7 This thought clearly and profoundly influenced much work on the nature of pre-nineteenth-century states until about a generation ago. Although there is no need to dwell upon these discussions, when considering late medieval and early modem Italian developments it may be useful briefly to return to an oft-cited and significant passage of Federico Chabod, who, alongside a small group of other historians (among whom perhaps Antonio Anzilotti should be mentioned here), had reached the conclusion that the "renaissance state," most precociously in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century central and (Oxford, 1990); see also P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (New York,

1974); and Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford, 1988). 6 Jean-Philippe Genet, "Which State F~ises?" Hlstorical Research 65 (1992): 131. 7 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth .and Claus Wittich (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978), p. 958.

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northern Italy, was characterized by an emergent nationalist spirit, the slow forging of bureaucracies, and the consequent increase in the government's administrative efficiency. Despite the considerable softening of his position in later years, even in his influential 1956 Parisian lecture, he lingered over the renaissance state's "forte organizzazione centralizzata" and its "organizzazione burocratica centrale." 8 His earlier formulation had been even more striking for having called attention to "10 stato impersonale, razionale, legalistico, burocratico, livellatore." With the exception of a chapter in his famous book on the state of Milan during the reign of Emperor Charles V, Chabod did not accord special attention to the state's fiscal policies. References to state budgets are largely limited to the effects that the practice of the sale of offices, and of the consequent "parasitism," had on the state's fiscal burdens. The emphasis throughout was on the forging of a central state administration, and of the personnel that staffed the new offices-their function, social origins, relations to prince and court. 9

8 For this and subsequent citations in this paragraph, see Anthony Molho, "Patronage and the State in Early Modern Italy," in Klientelsysteme im Europa der Friihen Neuzeit, ed. Antoni Maczak (Munich, 1988), pp. 233 -42, and "Recent Works on the History of Tuscany: Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 57 - 77. 9 ThIS neglect was not Chabod's alone. A few years ago, Aurelio Musi examined some of the reasons for the general neglect of "administrative hIStOry" (what he also defines as the "social history of power") in the historiography of early modern Italy and suggested that the prevalence of juridical studies and a long-standIng interest in ideological and abstract expressIons of power In the age of absolutism obscured from the view of historians of the state that history's fiscal dimensIon (Stato e pubblica amministrazione nell' ancien regime [Naples, 1979], pp. 16-17). While Gino Luzzato, Enrico Besta, Bernardino Barbadoro, Jacques Heers, Gino Barbien, and before them Heinrich Sieveking were devoting considerable attention to the history of public finance in indIvidual Italian states, more often than not their attention was all too sharply focused on economic dimensions, on technical innovations in the administration of incomes, expenditures, and debts, on what we mIght define as the economic and entrepreneurial aspects of the management of public finances. I think it is fair to say that, at least in the field of late medieval Italian historiography, the first recent reexamination of the links between the state and publIc finance was advanced by two non-Italian historians, Louis Marks and MarVIn Becker, both students of Florence. Louis Marks, in his University of London doctoral dissertation and in two ploneenng articles ("La crisi finanziaria a Firenze dal1498 aI1502," Archivio storico italiano 112 [1954]: 40-72, and "The FInancial Oligarchy in Florence under Lorenzo," in Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E. F. Jacob [London, 1960], pp. 123 -47), began to unravel the connections between politics and government finance in late fifteenth-century Florence. For his part, Marvin Becker's powerful hypothesis regarding the transformation of communal government Into somethIng alternatively defined as the "renaissance" or the "territorial" state has continued to reverberate in works devoted to the history of the late medieval state, not only in

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More recently, the teleological and modernizing paradigm of the state rooted in Max Weber's concept has been sharply questioned. Its place is now taken by a more complex, subtle, and variegated image in which neither the center is as strong and disciplined nor the periphery as weak and subordinated to the center as an older generation of scholars had imagined. In this vision, particularistic institutions-in an older interpretation, precisely the type that the premodern state disciplined and subordinated to its own authoritycontinued to thrive in the late medieval and early modem centuries. Indeed, these were nOlt mere relics of a preceding political and constitutional order; they gave the early modem state its peculiar and idiosyncratic character. Collectivities 'Nhose privileges and liberties were rooted in old feudal grants, corporations of professions and occupations, territories with fiscal, juridical, and even political immunities have now been placed at the center stage of political development from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. And it increasingly appears that a key feature in the political organization of states in the period that interests us was not the traditionally perceived antinomy between center and periphery, whereby one (the center) was strengthened at the expense of the other; rather, center and periphery were often strengthened in tandem, in a process of mutual reinforcement that allowed the center new juridical and administrative powers but concurrently strengthened traditional freedoms that institutional and corporate bodies of the periphery had enjoyed in the past. This, certainly, is the striking image conveyed in James Given's recent book, lne State and Society in Medieval Europe. 10 In short, in this new interpretation, premodern states are seen as much less "integrated" than states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is thought that they tended to differentiate and to distinguish among their subjects, that they were not characterized by the geometric and systematizing penchants of eighteenth-century reformers and nineteenth-century statesmen. In Giorgio Chittolini's conclusion of some years ago, "the Italian state of the Renaissance is not a modena state, and even less is it an absolute state." 11 Clearly, there are differences arrlong historians who uphold this new view. Some are inclined to privilege the position and power of peripheral institutions and corporate bodies, and even to continue juxtaposing the "state" with "society," where by state they refer to agencies of the central government and by society to the customs and practices that prevailed in the periphery. Others look to Florence but in northern and central Italy at large (Florence in Transition, 2 vols. [Baltimore, 1967 -68]). 10 James GIven, The State and Society in Medieval Europe: Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (Ithaca, r~.Y., 1990). II "Non e... 10 stato italiano del Rinascimento quello 'Stato moderno' 0 meno che mal quello 'Sta1.O assoluto' " (GiorgIO Chittohni, La crisi degli ordinamentl comunali e Ie origlnl dello stato del Rinascimento [Bologna, 1979], p. 40).

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socially "integrative" processes, such as clientage, through which premodern states tended to coalesce into integrated political entities. Still others have cast their attention on institutional mechanisms either inherited from the past but adapted to changing circumstances or newly invented to meet the exigencies of governance. Whatever these differences, the fact remains that the old unitary, integrated, bureaucratic, modernizing vision of the state has largely been abandoned as containing more than an accep~able dose of anachronism. The general picture that emerges from the preceding summary considerations contains one important contradiction. Historians such as Elias, Tilly, and Genet, having posed a set of questions about the relationships between, on the one hand, political and institutional developments of late medieval and early modern states, and, on the other, development of their fiscal policies, concluded that these very fiscal policies were the engines that led medieval states to transform themselves into modern, centralized ones. Yet another set of historians, whose focus has been more sharply cast on the political and administrative histories of those same city-states, has concluded that the defining characteristic of these states was their stubbornly and resiliently premodern nature. These historians have in mind lack of centralization, fragmentation of authority, and the persistence of administrative and juridical patterns clearly associated with medieval governance. The preceding considerations help to focus our attention on the issues responsible for the contradiction briefly outlined above: When viewed from the perspective of their fiscal histories, what sort of states does one identify in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italy? Were these states tinged by the sort of Weberian hues contained in Tilly's description, or were they closer to the images conveyed by Chittolini's and Elena Fasano's descriptions? Furthermore, what does an examination of the histories of these states during an era of nearly incessant war and relentless military expense do to the view put forth by Elias and others about the unmistakably modernizing impulses brought to bear by fiscal pressure upon the realm of political organization? In short, on the basis of late medieval and early modern Italian experience (roughly from the onset of the fourteenth-century crisis to the mid-sixteenth century), what hypothesis is It appropriate to formulate about the bearing of fiscal policy on the operations of governments?

II For the sake of clarity, it may be best to start with the following hypothesis: late medieval and early modem Italian governments, beset by myriad fiscal problems, the most pressing of which was funding the costs of war, ordinarily sought to address them in an ad hoc fashion in the expectation that these were ephemeral difficulties to be overcome with the passage of a crisis. It is

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generally hard to detect in late medieval and early modern Italy a steady, much less irreversible, movement from late medieval fragmentation to early modern bureaucratic states. Marino Berengo's dramatic description of the defining characteristic of early modern Italian states-their "trionfante particolarismo dei corpi"-captures as well as any short definition could these states' principal trait, and, over the long run, the key element of their fiscal policy as well. Yet this view of an institutional irnmobilism over the longue duree often obscures moments of great political tension when alternate forms of government organization-a different balance between center and periphery (terms used here not only in their geographic accession)-represented a clear and well-defined political program. Indeed, on few occasions (and these, for our purposes, represent important exceptions) some governments addressed, seemingly wi1h a long-term political vision and even on the basis of an explicitly forrnulated political program, deeper and more structural fiscal problems of governance. These few efforts-unmistakably evident in early fifteenth-century Florence, perhaps also in Genova early in the fifteenth century when the Casa di San Giorgio was created, in Naples during the 1440s when I<:.ing Alfonso sought to fashion a new fiscal system, in Venice toward the end of the sixteenth century when the government succeeded in extinguishing its huge debt, and no doubt at other times and places-would seem to bespeak the sort of centralizing penchant some historians have imputed to the Italian states of the period. But these moments, which reinforced the central agencies of government and eroded local privilege, did not necessarily (or did not only) depend on pressures of war and the consequent skyrocketing of military expenses, but on the internal politics of regimes in pO~Ner. External pressure and exogenous factors, such as war and military costs, should be seen as necessary but not sufficient causes in contributing to such change. Missing from many discussions on the history of the relations between fiscal policy and state making is a credible internal dimension-the state's politics, its po'wer balances and social tensions, and the ideological orientation of politically active classes. Thus, to cite one (no doubt extreme, and in this sense perhaps atypical) example that will be analyzed below, war and its attendant fiscal consequences produced an unprecedented degree of institutional reorgan'ization in early fifteenth-century Florence. Yet, from an institutional perspective, war and fiscal pressure produced little change of consequence in the very late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Thus, an examination of late medieval Tuscany raises the possibility that the current historiographic tendency, which takes the fragmentary and decentralized nature of prenlodern states for granted, might need some refinement. At least in the Tuscan case, this fragmentation appears not as a deep and immutable

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structure but as the outcome of a political process. A regime that had come to power in the early 1380s set out to fashion a political program based on the very much greater concentration of authority in the offices of the central government. The defeat of this regime in the fourth decade of the fifteenth century resulted in the abandonment of this political program, although, perhaps not insignificantly for our hypothesis, not of the institutions forged by the preceding regime, which had aimed at the greater concentration of powers in the central institutions of government. Thus, those who discard the older view-which, for the sake of argument, we might associate with Weber or Chabod-and replace it with one that highlights the late medieval and early modern state's chronic and allegedly inherent inability to strengthen its core overlook precisely the evidence that suggests a movement from a policy promoting more centralized government operations (which, for the sake of hypothesis, we could define as a more clearly discernible if inchoately bureaucratic Florentine territorial state) in the early fifteenth century to a more fragmented, patrimonial grand-ducal state in the sixteenth.

III An overview of Italian history during the centuries that interest us could easily identify a number of circumstances that endowed Italian states with a common history and cohesion. Among these circumstances, war and all its consequences were among the most important. The need to marshal unprecedented large material resources with which to defray the expenses of war was shared by all major Italian states; the phenomenon has been studied most recently by Luciano Pezzolo, who briefly but efficiently provided especially graphic quantitative evidence to measure it. 12 But beyond the community of experience created by war and its consequences, there were other traits, of a more nalTowly fiscal nature, shared by late medieval Italian states. Of these, three deserve attention. 13 The first pertains not only to medieval Italy but also to much of late medieval and early modern Europe: a deeply ingrained aversion to imposing direct taxes on citizens. Wherever one turns-in Italy as in Germany, 12 LUCIano Pezzolo, "Esercito e stato nella pnma eta modema: Alcune considerazionI preliminan per una ricerca sulla repubbhca di VeneZIa," in Guerre, stati e citta: Mantova e I' Itaha padana dal secolo XIII al XIX, ed. Carlo Marco BelfantI, Francesca Fantini D'Onofrio, and Daniela Ferrari (Mantova, 1988), pp. 13-29. 13 For the follOWIng paragraphs, see Anthony Molho, "Tre Citta-Stato e I loro debIt! pubblicI: Quesitl e Ipotesl sulla stona dl FIrenze, Genova e Venezia," in Italia, 1350-1450: Tra cnsi, trasformazione, sviluppo, ed. Centro italiano dl StUdI di stona e d'arte (Pistoia, 1993), pp. 185-215.

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Flanders, or France-one encounters more or less the same phenomenon. With the increase in military expenditures stemming from the fourteenthcentury crisis, ordinary revenues were no longer sufficient to cover needs. Although in France, wherever the monarchical government was consolidated, systems of direct taxation (the taille) were imposed, in central and northern Italy (and in those areas of Germany and the Low Countries where forms of urban governrnent prevailed, especially in cities dominated by entrepreneurial elites) direct taxation upon legal residents of each territorial state's capital was carefully avoided. There was a correspondingly marked preference for loans (often forced loans, imposed ovenNhelmingly on the capital's residents) intended to make up shortfalls of income from indirect taxes. To be sure, there were moments in the histories of most states when, because of overriding circumstances, recourse was made to direct taxes. In Florence early in the fourteenth century both Charles of Calabria and Walter of Brienne imposed direct taxes, but the failure of their regimes doomed, for generations thereafter, this fiscal option. Even the direct tax (decima) on income from real property instituted during the crisis-laden mid-1490s when the popular regime of Girolamo Savonarola was in power, was quickly abandoned in favor of the more traditional interest-bearing forced loans (accatti).14 Similarly, in the 1330s, Simon Boccanegra made a comparable attempt in Genova, with no more enduring success. I5 In Venice, following the collapse of the Monte and at the outset of the war against Turkey, the decima was imposed in 1463, but less than twenty years later renewed recourse was made to borrowing. I6 But in Milan, even in the depths of the crisis in the 1490s, Ludovllco il Moro did not entertain the possibility of imposing a direct tax on Milanese citizens. Loans, alienation of gabelles, requests for subsidies from the cOInmunities-these were the expedients to which the Milanese signore resor1ed to close the gap between incomes and skyrocketing expenses. I7 Only in the kingdom of Naples, whose history diverged on so many counts from the histories of other Italian regions, does it appear that income 14 Bernardino Barbadoro, Le finanze della repubbLica fiorentina: Imposta diretta e debito pubblico fino all' istituzione deL Monte (Florence, 1929); Elio Conti, L' imposta diretta a Firenze neL Quattrocento (1427-1494) (Rome, 1984). 15 Giovanna Petti Balbi, Simon Boccanegra e La Genova deL '300 (Genova, 1991), pp.94-103. 16 Gino Luzzatto, Il debito pubbLico della repubblica di Venezia: DagLi uLtimi decennl deL XII secoLo allafine deL XV (Milan and Varese, 1963), pp. 244-65; Michael Knapton, "Guerra e finanza (1381-1508)," in Storia della repubblica di Venezia: Dalla guerra di Chioggia alla riconquista della Terraferma, by Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton (Turin, 1986), pp. 324-- 28. 17 Leverotti (n. 2 above), p. 589.

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from direct taxes weighed more heavily than that of indirect taxes, amounting as it did to nearly two-thirds of the government's regular income. 18 If contemporary governments shied away from direct taxes on citizens' property (regardless of whether it was located in the capital city or in the territory), no such hesitation defined fiscal policies toward residents of subject towns and territories. The estimo was the standard if variably successful form of revenue-raising from these areas. The point that bears emphasizing here is that, throughout, a principle of fiscal policy was the differentiation by status of taxpayers: everyone, of course, was subject to gabelles and to the salt tax, some were subject to forced loans, others to the estimo or decima. There is little question but that citizens of the state's capital received preferential fiscal treatment while contadini and distrettuali tried, when they could, to transfer their legal residence to the capital so as to lighten their fiscal burdens. A further element of this system was that, because each one of these territorial states had been created over time and under a variety of circumstances, no state had a uniform fiscal policy toward its towns and territories. Some towns had been purchased from their previous overlords; others had surrendered to their more powerful neighbors; others had been conquered, some after brief warfare, a few following protracted siege; still others had been acquired by diplomatic maneuvers. Circumstances surrounding the incorporation of each of these towns into its territorial state tended to define its fiscal regime and the taxes-their nature and size-owed to the capital city. Here again Naples seems to represent an exception, for the focatico Alfonso imposed on his kingdom in the 1440s was meant to be applied on his entire domain. 19 Thus, a defining characteristic of fiscal structures in these states was the fragmentation and differentiation of fiscal regimes: status and residence mattered, and their importance tended not only to be confirmed by tradition but was often reiterated in diplomatic and other legal documents as well. This legal and ideological sanctioning of differentiation, and its defense in the name of ancient customs or liberties, made it difficult for any government to raise incomes substantially from its territories. Of course, all governments tried, and the case of Venice toward the end of the fifteenth century shows that some were more successful than others. 2o Still, one suspects that these traditional fiscal arrangements, by bestowing such evident advantage on residents of capital cities, made fiscal policy even less flexible. For how could governments continue to increase tax loads on the periphery when wealth was 18 Giuseppe Galasso, Il regno di Napoll: Il Mezzoglorno angioino e aragonese (1266-1494) (Turin, 1992), p. 756. 19 IbId., pp.754-55; Alan Ryder, The Klngdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous: The Making of a Modern State (Oxford, 1976), pp. 210-13. 20 Frederick Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 237 -38.

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so much more heavily concentrated in the capital, which, by comparison, was being undertaxed, and the periphery's fiscal status was sanctioned by law and by more or less ancient tradition? The funding of public debts in many of these states-but, significantly, not in Milan and other signorial regimes--was the third common characteristic to which reference should be made here?1 In times of endemic warfare, given the inelasticity of the government's revenues from available taxes, the need for added resources led to the imposition of an increasing number of forced loans. Revenues from gabelles were used to pay interest to creditors, so that an evident and direct relationship existed between the burden of indirect taxation on the populace at large and the frequency with which a government borrowed frOlTL its citizens. Obviously, such a distribution of fiscal burdens was favorable to the wealthy and discriminated against the poor. Outstanding credits of these debts, freely traded in secondary markets but almost never outside the territory controlled by the government that had issued them, tended to be concentrated in the hands either of the well-to-do or of the charitable institutions to which they had been given in order to support various endowments. Servicing the public debt through indirect taxes, which then as now proportionately strike the less affluent, resulted in a steady upward circulation of 'Nealth and an increasing accentuation of economic imbalances. While contemporary politicians often understood this problem (see, e.g., Boccanegra's attempt in Genova and the Ciompi's in Florence either to cap, essentially, the size of the debt or to contain the rate of interest paid to creditors), governments found it difficult to reduce their reliance on borrowing because recourse to loans made it possible for them to obtain large resources without raising the tax burden. In the long run, of course, the debt would be serviced by forcing everyone to pay higher taxes. But in the short run, governments could raise funds and correspondingly enhance their power to act without an innmediate tax increase. The inelasticity of the government's regular revenues could partly be made up by the flexibility of this system. There is another point on which it may be important to dwell briefly. This complex of fiscal strategies-the widespread recourse to loans, to indirect taxes with whose revenues to pay the debt's carrying charges, and to direct taxes imposed on inhabitants of the countryside and of subject cities-was common in many cities, both in Italy and elsewhere. To finance themselves, governments also turned to foreign lenders, usually important figures or rulers of signorial regimes, happy to invest in the public debts of commercial cities. One of the peculiarities of central and northern Italian cities was their ability to round up the liquid cash necessary for their needs largely within their own 21 This and the following paragraphs summarize Molho, "Tre CiUa-Stato e i loro debiti pubblici."

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economies. They did not have to make use, as many northern European town governments did (at least not in a massive way), of foreign capital. This meant that unlike, say, the cases of fifteenth-century Douai or Hamburg, whose public debts were overwhelmingly held by foreigners, or of Naples, among whose creditors one finds a large number of Genoese investors, the histories of late medieval public debts in the principal central and northern Italian states help to focus one's attention on their internal histories and political tensions. The picture that emerges from the preceding considerations suggests that it would be difficult to detect in the fiscal policies of anyone of the Italian territorial states in the late medieval centuries a unified and coherent plan. To be sure, some general principles of the sort just mentioned-avoidance of direct taxes on citizens of each capital city, differentiation of fiscal treatment according to residence and social status, reliance upon deficit financingconfer a retrospective coherence on these fiscal policies. But, evidently, this is a retrospective cohesion, easier for historians to reconstruct a posteriori than to document in contemporary treatises or disquisitions on fiscal matters. When dwelling upon their fiscal woes, something circumstances constrained them to do at regular intervals, politicians and government clerks overwhelmingly tended to see only patchworks of policies. Rare is the contemporary document that contains more than a general, often moralistic prescription about ways of enhancing the state's revenues. Rarer still is such a prescription adopted by a government. No state-not even Naples, in whose fiscal history some historians have detected traces of a coherent, unified, and systematically applied policy-seems to have moved very far during the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries toward fashioning a comprehensive set of principles with which to account at once for the financial needs of the government, the wealth of its inhabitants, and the exigencies of the moment. 22 Of all institutions to which recourse was made by late medieval Italian governments to address their fiscal needs, none appears more of a true Innovation than the public debts, which were funded variously from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth centuries. 23 And no other fiscal institution illustrates as clearly as these public debts do the limits-of resources, political will, and imagination-to which the management of public finance was subject in the city-states of the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. The undeniable institutional novelty of these public debts, and the cultural ramifications of their creation-characteristics that recently gave rise 22 Ryder~ and Mana Del Treppo, "11 regno aragonese," In Storia del Mezzoglorno, ed. GIuseppe Galasso and Mario Del Trappo (Rome, 1986), vol. 4, pt. 1: 1-172; but see also the comments of GIovannI Tabacco, "Regimi politici e dinamiche sociali," In Le Italie del tardo Medioevo, ed. SergIO GensIni (PIsa, 1990), p. 48. 23 For a brief recent overview, see Molho, "Tre Citta-Stato e i loro debIti pubblici" (n. 13 above).

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to some very interesting discussions 24-should not obscure the (perhaps predictably) conservative political consequences of their management. Public debts in Italian city-states helped to consolidate the domination of existing ruling classes and to render them more resilient to change. For all the fascination these debts have provoked in scholars (and, quite amazingly, in an increasing number of amateur historians), 25 this is not the occasion to dwell upon their histories, \¥hich, in their broad outlines, are rather well known. 11 will suffice, perhaps, to remember that, despite the initial differences among them, by the fifteenth century the three most important of these debts, in Venice, Florence and Genova, had increased manyfold, that they represented immense values of \.vealth invested in them, and that they required huge outlays for their servicing. By the late fourteenth century, financing the debt generated persistent social tensions, for in Genova, Florence, and Venice its carrying charges consumed considerable fractions (from 20 to 40 percent) of each government's regular incomes. Thus, however convenient the instrument of borrowing may have been, and whatever flexibility it may have allowed governments, by the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries financing these debts created administrative, fiscal, and political problems. Every gove1mment sought a vast range of expedients to discover new sources of income: despite widespread discontent, especially among the low and middling classes, the burden of the gabelles was considerably increased by raising their tariffs, imposing new ones, and not infrequently manipulating the currency in which their payments could be made. Moreover, one finds an aggravation of the tax burden borne by subject communities and territories, and an attempt to strike at ecclesiastical wealth, to limit the effects of mortmain, and to increase taxes imposed on Jews. On different occasions and in particular political circumstances, governments imposed severe penalties upon taxpayers in arrears of their taxes. All these initiatives were intended to increase revenues. Beyond this, there was a parallel effort to reduce expenditures, to render the administration of magistracies more efficient, and in particular to decrease the expenses of the public debt. Thus, throughout, interest rates promised to creditors were reduced, payment of annual interest on the debt ,,'as deferred, and part of the interest due was converted into credits of the debt itself (with an obviously counterproductive effect, since 24 Becker (n. 9 above); and Giorgio C'hittolini, "Di alcuni aspetti della cnSl dello stato sforzesco," Publication du Centre europeen d'etudes bourguignonnes (xive-xvi e s.) 28 (1988): 28-31. 25 Raymond Goldsmith, Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1987), chap. 9; Michael Veseth, Mountain of Debt: Crisis and Change in Renaissance Florence, Victorian Britain, and Postwar America (New York, 1990), chaps. 2 and 3.

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while at the moment of conversion there was an immediate decrease in the amount of ready cash needed for the debt's carrying charges, the debt itself increased, as did the sums needed to finance it in the future). In some cases, part of the interest received by creditors was withheld, a de facto imposition of a direct tax. The situation just described is fully recognizable by anyone even superficially familiar with the recent literature on the finances of the late medieval Italian republics. Nearly all scholars who have written on this subject have emphasized the need of contemporary governments to rely on forced loans, given what for both cultural and political motives proved to be a rigidity-a nearly insurmountable limitation-in the fiscal administration of the period. This limitation, the striking inelasticity of incomes in the face of a seemingly infinite elasticity of expenses, did not characterize only the histories of governments that had important public debts. In addition to Venice, Florence, and Genova, Milan, Rome, and Naples faced the same chronic shortage of incomes, a constant stimulus to reexamine fiscal operations by introducing measures that might alleviate the chronic fiscal crisis, enlarge the government's tax base, reduce resistance to new taxes, and streamline, where possible, fiscal administration. In general, these efforts were successful only in part. To examine one situation at close range, observe the contexts in which such efforts at streamlining and strengthening fiscal agencies were carried out, and, finally, present the elements on which the hypothesis presented above was constructed, I shift my perspective and, in the next section, focus attention on Florence. I hope that two points will emerge with some clarity in the course of the following overview: the importance of rooting a discussion of administrative reform-in this case the organization of Florence's fiscal apparatus-within a specific political context; and the contingent and often strikingly provisional nature of efforts to enhance a government's authority and centralize its administration.

IV We begin on January 1, 1383/34, when Lionardo di Niccolo Beccanugi, provveditore of the Camera del Comune, started a new series of account books, to my knowledge unique in the annals of Florentine history. The scion of an important family, who had distinguished himself in political life during the turbulent 1370s and who had consistently embraced a firm and cautious policy in diplomatic and fiscal matters,26 Beccanugi wrote that in this new 26 Gene Brucker, The CIVIC World of Early RenaIssance Florence (Pnnceton, N.J., 1977), p. 275, n. 92; p. 322, n. 97; p. 329, n. 123.

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book "will be ,written all of the Florentine Chamber's incomes and expenses, each account st~parately, and also all the incomes and expenses of the gabelle [indirect taxes] of the said commune of Florence, and every other item which will appear to Ine necessary for clearly discerning all necessities with regard to the said conllmune's incomes and expenses, beginning in the kalends of January, MCC(:LXXXIII, and ending on the last day of December 1384. May God, who is father and lord, grant grace so that there may ensue praise and reverence, the said commune of Florence's good and profit, and my honor.,,27 This was the first time since the establishment of the Camera in the late thirteenth century that one agency would account for all the government's incomes and expenses. Until the beginning of this set of books, the Camera's ledgers excluded extraordinary taxes, imposed to defray specific expenses; such taxes were accounted for in the books of the magistracy charged with meeting these expenditures. Even ordinary revenues were often assigned well before their collection to one or another agency, whose clerks then recorded their accounting. In short, as often as not, before the 1380s there existed no central government recording of all incomes and expenses, no way for a government of15cial, or for a modem historian, to have an overall view of the state's resources and its liabilities?8 Now things were to change, and a central accounting agency would gather all the information necessary for keeping track of the flo\v of money in governlnent coffers. In fact, careful examination of the series be:gun by Beccanugi sho',vs that government incomes, regardless of whether they were assigned for collection directly to specific magistracies, were recorded in these books?9 Every item in the government's incomes and 27 "Si schrivera tutta entrata e uscita della chamera del comune di Firenze, e clascheduna rag lone di per se, e appresso tutte entrate e uscite delle gabelle del detto comune di Firenze, e ogn' altra cosa che Ini parra che bisogno sia a chiarezza di potere vedere quanto sara di bisogno intomo alle rendite e uscite del detto comune, comminciando in kalendi di gennaio, anna MCCCLXXXIII e finendo a dl ultimo di dicembre 1384. Idio ch'e padre e signore ne concieda grazia dl fare siche sia laude e reverenzia, e bene e utile del detto comune di Firenze, e mio onore" (Camera, Provveditori e IVlassai-Entrata e Uscita, 1, fo!' lr, Archivio di Stato, Florence). 28 On the early Camera, see Domenico IGherardi, "L'antica Camera del commune di Firenze e un quademo d' uscita dei suoi camarlinghi," Archivio storico italiano, n.s., 16 (1885): 3- 51; Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, trans. Eugenio DupreTheseider, vol. 5 (Florence, 1973); Becker. For the history of the Camera In the decades immedlately preceding the period treated in this article, see Charles de la Ronciere, "Indirect Taxes or 'Gabelles' at Florence in the Fourteenth Century," in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. Nicolai RubinsteIn (London, 1968), pp. 140-92. 29 One exaInple taken from this fil st volume: in the period December 30, 1383-December 25, 1384, the gabella delle porti had an income of 428.775 £ 5 s. 7 d.; it spent 428.476 £ 6 s. 10 d., of which 12.254 £ 12 s. 2 d. was for its own administrative expenses; the remaInder ~as assigned, as required by law, to a variety

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expenses is carefully itemized, from ordinary gabelles, to forced loans, to, significantly, extraordinary taxes, each accounted for separately.30 For every one of these taxes, we can trace not only the sum it produced each year and the provenance of its income but also its allocation to government agencies authorized to spend specific sums of money. As we shall see, these books were continued until the early 1430s, with a succession of prominent politicians following Beccanugi in this office. By 1388, the provveditori had become two, and the description of their charge was even more precise. That year's officials, Iacopo di Francesco Arrighi and Nigi di Nerone di Nigi, described their book as "the mirror," /0 specchio, in which "will be written in an orderly fashion all incomes of the commune of Florence, their sources, and where and to whom the said moneys will be given, so that it will clearly be shown by this book all of the commune's and of the chamber's affairs which refer to the commune's incomes and expenses.,,31 By 1420 Rinieri Baronci, scrivano of the provveditori, would express even more sharply his intent in compiling the year's accounts in the preamble of that year's book. In it, he would write "the state of the Magnificent commune of Florence." 32 There is no trace of a formal decision that required the provveditori of the Camera to undertake such systematic and methodical record keeping; one can even imagine the remote possibility that the first book was begun by Beccanugi on his own initiative and that it was continued by his successors in office. Even so, one cannot doubt that the systematic continuation of these books for nearly half a century-with the same format and attention to detail-bespeaks the existence of a political vision that assigned to the government responsibilities and powers it heretofore had lacked. The "facts" revealed in this public "mirror" were bound to generate a new sense of order and discipline; their accumulation, year after year, would enable those in charge of policy to have a clearer understanding of the magnitude of the resources on which they could reasonably count. Just as was the case with of other maglstracies (Camera, Provveditori e Massai-Entrata e Uscita, 1, fols. 442v-443r, ArChlVio di Stato, Florence). For a somewhat more detailed analysls of these books, see Anthony Molho, Florentine Politics in the Early Renaissance, 1400-1433 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). 30 One example among many: Camera, Provveditori e Massal-Entrata e Usclta, 11, fol. 207, for the year 1395: estimo straordinario imposto del mese ... di fionno 1 alla bra. The collectlon of this special tax began on May 17. 31 "Si scrivera ordinatamente tutte l'entrate del chomune di Flrenze, e onde dette entrate venghono, e chosl tutte l'uscite del detto chomune, e dove e a chui i detti danarl si daranno, siche chiaro Sl mostrera per questa libro tutti 1 fattl del chomune e della detta chamera, appartenenti a entrata e a usclta del chomune" (Camera, Provvediton e Massai-Entrata e Uscita, 5, fol. Ir). 32 "Lo stato del Magnificho chomune dl Firenze" (Camera, Provvedltori e MassalEntrata e Uscita, 28, fol. Ir).

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entrepreneurs, who during precisely those decades were developing new techniques of accounting with which to obtain better control of their business affairs, the "books of income and expenses of the overseer of the Chamber of the commune of Florence," 33 gave ri5.e to new possibilities of power and of its application outwardly from the government's fiscal core. The point was not lost on a particularly acute contemporary observer who wrote that "the regulators [sic,'] must always tend to all the Commune's revenues and incomes, so that they may be well maintained and not be compromised; ensure that the Comnlune not be cheated in its expenses; have all the Cashiers' accounts overseen; and ensure collection from whoever is the Commune's debtor. ,,34 The history of the Florentine fiscal agencies cannot be detailed here. The example of the provveditori illustrates with particular eloquence a point that strikes me as important for our discussion. Starting in the middle of the fourteenth century-as Marvin Becker argued several years ago-the Florentine government experienced a series of unprecedented crises. A succession of wars, epidemics, fiscal crises, and political tensions began to transform its very foundations, generating a consciousness, evident in men such as Matteo Villani and Marchione di Coppo Stefani, that new instruments of governance and new attitudes toward the governrnent were necessary. In addition to the redaction of the statutes in 1355, perhaps the most important institutional innovation of those decades was the funding of the public debt (Monte comune) and the government's systematic recourse to public credit in order to meet its unusually high military needs. It was only after the massive defeat of the Ciompi and of their corporate ideology, the establishment of a regime dominated by the elite of the arti maggiori, the triumph of a new aristocratic and socially repressive ideology, and the elimination from the political arena of the precedJlng generation's socia]l tensions that the city's ruling class undertook an impressive array of changes whose cumulative outcome was to recast many of the territorial state's institutional infrastructures. 35 Fiscal matters were close to the center, but certainly were not the only elements in this array of institutional change. 36 At the heart, and in some ways 33 Gregorio I)ati, L' Istona di Firenze dal 1380 al 1405, ed. Luigi Pratesi (NorcIa, 1904), p. 151. 34 "RegolatoJi [sic!] hanno a provedere sempre a tutte Ie rendite e entrate del Comune che Ie si mantengano bene e non sieno maculate, e' n tutte Ie spese che si fanno provedere che il Comune non sia ingannato e fare rivedere Ie ragioni de' Camarlinghi e fare riscuotere da chi e debitore di detto Comune" (ibid.). 35 Brucker; John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus zn Florentzne Electoral Politics, 1280-1400 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982). 36 Many of the developments mentioned below can best be followed in Brucker, but see also RIccardo Fubini's numerous and very important contributions, among which

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the culmination of this tenacious reorganIzIng penchant, was the double redaction of the statutes in 1409 and 1415, entrusted to two of the age's premier jurists. Activities perceived as subverting the social orderprostitution and homosexuality-and institutions such as convents and confraternities were more closely regulated. The government set out to buttress the city's fragile economy: a fleet was constructed and attempts were made to introduce new crafts and industries, most important, to strengthen the production of silk cloth. The regime also pursued an aggressively expansionist policy, managing to enlarge considerably the bounds of its territory, bringing under its jurisdiction, by conquest or purchase, Arezzo, Pisa, Cortona, and Livorno. In addition, Andrea Zorzi has shown that the administration of the territory was put on a new footing and that a wide-ranging process of reform was undertaken by the dominant regime, aimed at streamlining and making the state's apparato giudiziario more dependent upon executive authority?7 And, of course, during those very decades, a new ideology was being forged by some of the government's principal clerks, who urged their audiences to embrace a new social and political ethic. Signs of institutional innovation and, perhaps more crucially, of the regime's eagerness to strengthen the government's authority are abundant during those decades. Fiscal innovation in which this period also abounds should be set in the broader context of the political design of the regime. Given the unprecedently expensive wars fought by Florence during those decades, the elaborate and inevitably tortuous initiatives for raising funds with which to pay soldiers nonetheless have in common a set of principles, part of the broader design to which I have already referred. 38 In its aim to raise the vast treasure with which to fight its wars, the government followed two general, if inchoate, guidelines: manage the debt so as to allow the government continued access to sources of credit controlled by the very social class that, during those decades, comprised the city's political elite; and create as much of a unified fiscal structure as possible so as to reduce the influence of intermediary collectivities (neighborhoods in the city; parishes and other administrative units in the countryside IS "From Social to PolItical Representation in Renaissance Florence," In City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy, ed. Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and JulIa Emlen (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 223-39. 37 Andrea ZorZI, "Lo stato terntoriale fiorentino (secolo XIV-XV): AspettI giunsdizionah," Societa e stona 13 (1990)" 799-825, and "Ordlne pubblico e amministrazione della giustIzia nelle formazioni politIche toscane tra Tre e Quattrocento," in Itaha, 1350-1450: Tra crisl, trasformazione, sviluppo (n. 13 above), pp. 419 - 74. 38 The broad outlines of fiscal policy can be followed in Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finances In the Early Renaissance, and "L' ammlnistrazione del debIto pubblico a Firenze nel quindicesimo secolo," In I cetl dlrigentl nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1987), pp 191-207; and Conti (n. 14 above).

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and in subject cities) which, in the preceding era, had exercised a key role in the allocation of fiscal burdens. The managernent of the public debt during the years 1382 -1433 represents one of the most intriguing and complex chapters in the city's history. For our purposes, suffice it to say here that during those years the government applied a combination of stringent and inventive policies to ensure that the Monte would continue to operate properly. The fiscal burden was increased across the board, especialJly on the vast majority of the territorial state's disenfranchised inhabitants-most important, on the urban middling classes and on residents of the contado and distretto-to ensure that the discount prices of Monte credits would remain high and interest to the Monte's creditors was disbursed so that, in tum, they would continue advancing loans to the state. The size of the public debt continued to increase unabated during those decades, with the result that the government ensured (in fact, it forced) the transfer of a substantial amount of wealth from less to more affluent inhabitants. Renewed war against !\1ilan in the early 1420s, and the leadership's disastrous miscalculation later in that decade to launch war against Lucca, resulted in fiscal pressure that until then had been unimaginably high. In the midst of this crisis, the government stepped in, and in one of the most ingeniously imaginative inventions, it created the Monte delle doti, an agency that combined, as never before in the city's history, citizens' private interests and the government's financial strength.3 9 For if the advantage the Monte delle doti offered private investors was that they could ensure the availability of dowries for their nubile daughters, in return the government counted on diminishing the funded debt's carryi ng charges by rolling over substantial portions of that debt through the Dowry Fund. The failure of this plan to provide lasting fiscal relief as its inventors had imagined should not obscure the ingenuity of this idea. The point was that exigencies of war and the resulting fiscal pressures had led the political leadership to produce a new government institution that, unmistakably, insinuated itself in one of the most private realms of citizens' and subjects' social lives, the marriages of their offspring. The initiative that resulted in such intermingling of private and public interests was congruent to numerous other such initiatives of those decades, all of which led to considerable strengthening of the government. If the maintenance of the Monte's good health was one of the regime's two overriding fiscal objectives, the second was the diminution of the influence of 39 Julius Kirshner, Pursuing Honor while Avolding Sin: The Monte delle dOtl of Florence (Milan, 1978); Julius Kirshner and Anthony Molho, "The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence," Journal of Modern History 50 (1978): 403-38; and Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Lnte Medleval Florence (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).

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intermediary collectivities, which in a preceding era had determined taxpayers' assessments, and the establishment of the clear principle whereby every taxpayer was directly responsible to an agency of the central government for the determination and payment of his onera. The distribution of fiscal burdens, in Florence as in nearly every other medieval commune, had always represented a delicate and contentious political issue. The distributio onerorum had been widely debated throughout the fourteenth century and first two decades of the fifteenth century.40 In this regard, with the imposition of the catasto, the regime established at least three important principles: first, that objective criteria in the computation of tax assessments (or distribution of forced loans) would be applied across the board to large categories of taxpayers (citizens of Florence, inhabitants of the contado, residents of subject cities) so that, in theory, every contributor would be able to compute his (or her) assessment. The second principle was rooted in the first: individual contributors would now be responsible for the payment of their taxes and forced loans to the government itself, and not to some local committee consisting of neighbors or local officials. Finally, the decision to distribute taxes and forced loans according to objective criteria resulted in the creation of a vast new archive of government documents-the declarations of wealth submitted to the catasto officials by the territory's citizens and subjects, and the official summaries of these documents prepared by clerks-which made it possible for government agents to check the veracity of future declarations of wealth. Repeatedly during the fifteenth century-as late as 1480-catasto declarations were checked against those submitted in preceding years by a citizen or his immediate ancestors. The very existence of this institutionalized and government-controlled memory of families' wealth enhanced the government's ability to intervene in the private affairs of its citizens. Thus, if the 1427 catasto was an important step toward establishing, on the basis of criteria worked out by a small group of clerks, the principle of fiscal equity in the city, it also had ramifications of some consequence toward the fiscal and social control of the urban populace, now required to divulge, under strict penalty, all assets and liabilities. Giuseppe Petralia has recently shown that a catasto-like system ofdistributing onera was first applied in Pisa in 1416, at the time Florence was devising new means ofextending its direct control over its once proudly independent neighbor. Samuel Cohn's current study of the Florentine mountain communities reinforces Petralia's finding and even extends it to the years at the tum ofthe century. What's more, the extension of the catasto to the entire territory had potentially farreaching consequences for the very political control of the territorial state. As Petralia correctly suggests, this policy "contributed to undermining local au40

ContI

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tonomy in the realm of direct taxation by threatening the establishment of an unprecedented practice of routinely imposing direct taxes; and also interfered in the relationship with the contadi by bypassing the dominant urban groups, thus undermining their predominance. ,,41 To their dismay, Volterra's inhabitants discovered the degree to which Florence would insist on applying the catasto even to subject territories that until then had enjoyed considerable autonomy.42 The preceding summary runs the risk of presenting too sharp, even too anachronistic, a picture, and of imputing too rigid and inflexible a political design to the early fifteenth-century regime. !'for should the degree of attempted centralization, accompanied and promoted by new government agencies, necessarily lead to conclusions about the modernity or efficiency of the Florentine state. A working hypothesis on the Florentine state's alleged modernity would require further discussion, both terminological and empirical. Suffice it to point out the governrnent's persistent reluctance to apply forms of direct taxation in the city and its attendant preference for a fiscal policy based on distinctions between residents of Florence and those of subject towns and territories. However hard the government may have tried to integrate its recently acquired territorial state, differences in fiscal treatment bet'Neen capital and periphery, between citizens and subjects, even between different locations within the contado or distretto, not to speak of between affluent and indigent (expressed most clearly in the exclusion of the value of private homes and of their furnishings from catasto assessnrlents), remained close to the core of its politics. Nor, shifting attention to developments of an adminis,trative sort, does one witness a concerted effort to plan ahead, to prepare projecti ve budgets with which to anticipate government incomes and expenses. And, as, Brucker, Fubini, and Zorzi have pointed out in much of their work, these policies were themselves the often contested outcome of sharp clashes within the regime's own ranks, especially in the first decades of its existence. Still, it might be possible to argue that, in Florence, during the last decades of the fourtee nth and the opening decades of the fifteenth centuries, the conjuncture of war and military expenses did bear out, albeit indirectly, the traditional ancient and medieval wisdom that wars, by generating a great need of money, strengthen states. When filtered through the contemporary political 41 "Andava a ledere I' autonomia locale In matena di impoSlzione diretta, minacciando I' instaurazj one di una inedita prassi di prelievo diretto ordinario, e perche andava a interferire ne lla reiazione con I contadi scavalcando I ceti urbani dominanti e lncrinandone l'egemonia" (Giuseppe Petralia, "Imposlzione diretta e dominio territoriale nella repubblica fiorentina del Quattlocento," in Societa, Istituzioni, Splrztualita: Studi in onore dl Cinzio Violante [Spoleto, 1994], pp. 639-52). 42 Lorenzo Fabbri, "Autonomismo cornunale ed egemonia fiorentlna a Volterra tra '300 e '400" (paper presented at a conference on the history of Volterra, October 1993).

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balances, war and its attendant fiscal demands produced a centripetal movement from the margins of the territorial state toward its core, loosening, and on occasion even breaking, some of the many forces that contributed to making the late medieval Florentine state-as nearly all contemporary states in Europe-a patchwork of more or less ill-fitting components. That war and its attendant fiscal pressure need not necessarily result in that outcome became evident following the change of regime. Important recent studies have shown that, in the generations following 1434, power in Florence was overwhelmingly exercised by personal influence, expressed through political patronage, instrumental friendship, and marriage alliance. Now, more often than not, crucial decisions on key policy issues were taken in the shadows, in the privacy offered by the fortresslike walls of the Medici Palace, or in the country estates of Medici lieutenants. William Kent, Dale Kent, William Connell, Roberto Bizzocchi and Patrizia Salvadori have shown that the charting of political relations in post-1434 Florence requires the reconstruction, in their minutest details, of personal, private relations, which, in tum, are traceable in the elaborate exchange of favors and the scheming of great bosses, who shaped not only the public issues of their day but the lives of their followers. However flawed and imperfectly applied by its association with a specific regime, the republican ideology articulated before 1434 exalted the equality of citizens before the law, the assumption being that citizens should command other citizens only through the mediation of the state's institutions. Now increasing numbers of Florentines found themselves dependent on other more powerful compatriots. Ties of dependence became the nonn, and, however elaborate the attempts of some to dissimulate this translation of power, by the late 1470s Alamanno Rinuccini could, with more than a trace of outrage, denounce the fact that he and his compatriots were being driven round and round by the whims of a young man. Of course, things did not change overnight. Patronage had been exercised before 1434, and, as Niccolai Rubinstein has shown, republican institutions maintained a good deal of their superficial resilience even after the Medici ascendancy. But a change had taken place, and the new set of circumstances was all too evident in the fate of one of the preceding regime's impressive achievements: the catasto. Elio Conti has shown that, with the advent of the Medici, the catasto was for all intents and purposes set aside, replaced by older forms of distributing tax burdens. Tax commissions were once again created, charged with estimating taxpayers' assessments; liquid wealth was excluded from taxation. The catasto had proved difficult to reconcile to the material interests of the city's wealthy families. Already in June 1434, during the turbulent months preceding Cosimo de' Medici's recall from his Venetian exile, an older fonn of distributio, the novina (assessed, as the name suggests, by a commission of nine citizens, who would use their discretion to set individual

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tax rates), was approved by the legislative councils. Symbolic, perhaps, of the change in fiscal regime is the very first enactment of the plenipotentiary commission (balia) convened to recall Cosimo to Florence: the imposition of a novina whose revenue would be used to pay 63,000 florins to Count Francesco Sforza. 43 No further recourse to the catasto would be made for the following twenty-three years. Only in moments of great crisis, in 1457 -58 and in 1480 following the Pazzi conspiracy, were pale imitations of the 1427 catasto reintroduced, to be scuttled following the crisis. Once again, therefore, the fiscal regime reverted to standards and practices prevalent before 1427. As Conti observed, following the establishment of the Medicean regime, "one witnesses ... the tendency ... to concentrate in a few trusted hands the preparation of tax rolls, largely dismantling that system of formal guarantees that until then had been at the base of the distribution of fiscal assessments. ,,44 The case of Ivlatteo Palmieri, exemplarily studied by Conti, shows that influence peddling in the setting of tax rates became rampant once again after 1434. However great the fiscal demands of war during the decades of the Medicean regilne, the impetus toward strengthening the government was interrupted, as new political relations and a new political culture had now taken root. Available knowledge of Florence's fiscal relations with its territories is even more scarce than that of many other topics. One has the impression that the new regime in Florence-because of its own inclinations, and reinforced in this instance by the general decline of military costs in the second half of the fifteenth century-allowed a considerable loosening of the grip, fiscal and otherwise, placed on the territories in the first decades of the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the fiscal burden seerrlS to have been lightened. The most systematic study of this question, Judith Brown's analysis of Pescia, points in this direction, and so, it seems, do some of Petralia's concluding hypotheses about Pisa and Connell's about Pistoia. 45 In the territories and subject towns as well, one discerns the functioning of those political mechanisms that had been put in place by the Medici in Florence itself-most important, the relations 43 Bane 25, fol. 17r, September 29, ]434, Arch1v1o di Stato, Florence. On thIS method of d1stnbutlng onera, see Conti, pp.94-98; and Matteo Palmien, Ricordi fiscali (1427-1474) con due Appendici relative a 1474-1495, ed. Elio Conti (Rome, 1983), pp. 74- 75. 44 "Sl assiste ... aHa tendenza ... d1 accentrare In poche man1 fidate la formazione dei moli di imposta, smantellando In gran' parte quel sIstema di garanzie formali, che fino ad aHora avevano isplrato la ripartlzlone del coefficlentI di imposta" (Conti, p. 323). 45 Judith Brown, In the Shadow of Florence: Provinclal Soclety in Renalssance Pescla (Oxford, 1982), chap. 4; PetralIa; William J. Connell, "ClIentelismo e stato temtoriale: II potere fiorent1no a Pistoia nel XV secolo," SOCleta e storia 53 (1991): 523-43.

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between patrons and clients, the Medici (but not they alone) dischargIng favors, the recipients often being the cities or localities of the territorial state. Certainly, this impression is made by Prato's cultivation of close ties with the Medici, who mediated requests of the Pratese government for fiscal and other favors with the government in Florence. 46 The impression is reinforced by consideration of the treatment afforded to subjects of provincial communities in their access to the Monte delle doti. Letters and embassies sent by local governments in Arezzo and San Gimignano to important local politiciansmembers of the Pitti and Capponi families-requesting the right for their citizens to invest in the Monte suggest that during the second half of the fifteenth century even such Important matters were mediated by personal ties, with a commensurate erosion of the government's power to regulate them without constant reference to particular interests. 47 This very same trend-an unmistakable distancing from the centralizing administratIve tendencies of the pre-Medicean regime-is also evident in the registration of the state's incomes and expenses. Lionardo Beccanugi's ambitious project in the Camera, continued for half a century by other officials and their scribes, came to an end in 1433. In truth, the last volume In this series compiled according to Beccanugi's rigorous standards is for the year 1432. 48 The volume for 1433, while still containing much useful information, IS marred by gaps, the outcome, perhaps, of the confusion and upheaval of the year's events. Starting in 1434, the volumes become largely useless. More often than not, their pages are blank~ they contain only occasional and extremely fragmentary information. No comparable sets of account books seem to have been initiated after 1434. The Monte's bulky-and, in their own way, admirable-account books begIn only in the 1450s, and they are largely confined to a regIstration of the Monte's incomes and expenses. True enough, by the 1450s an increasing fraction of the government's fiscal administration had passed over to the Monte ("pulsus ... nostre civitatis," wrote a scribe in 1452),49 and its master books contain as complete an accounting as one could hope to find for the second half of the fifteenth century. But the point is that the Monte's books are not as complete as the preceding books of the Camera, for incomes not assigned to it were sImply not registered in its books. In this instance as well, one witnesses a reliance on practices that had prevailed before innovations introduced during the late fourteenth-century regime. 46 Elena Fasano Guannl, "Un mlcrocosmo In mOVlmento (1494-1815)," In Prato: Stona dl una Cltla, ed. Elena Fasano Guannl, 5 vols. (Florence, 1986), 2:864-65. 47 Molho, Marnage Alhance In Late Medieval Florence, chap. 3 4X Camera, Provvedlton e Massal-Entrata e Usclta, 35, Archlvlo dl Stato, Florence~ see also Molho, Florentine Pubhc Finances In the Early Renaissance (n 29 above), app B. 49 Balle 52, fols. 53r-v, November 17, 1452, Archlvlo dl Stato, Florence.

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One detects the same movement (although more circuitous and complex) in the management of the city's public debt, whose protection had remained every upper-class government's goal since its funding in the 1340s. Prices of Monte credits in the secondary market remained high until the mid-1420s, when they fell because of the acute military crises produced by the Milanese and Lucchese vvars. At the time of the first catasto's redaction in 1427, the discount prices of Monte comune credits hovered around 50 percent, where they remained for several years. By the mid-1430s, they began to fall precipitously, losing more than half their value from the mid-1430s to the late 1440s. Thereafter, for the balance of the century, they remained at very low levels, occasionally but briefly rising to as high as 22 - 24 percent of par, but more often than not being traded at 10- 12 percent of their face value. The loss of so much of their value, coupled \vith the steady decline in the rate of interest-by the century's end the Monte promised a rate of return of between 2 and 2.5 percent-meant that the government had largely abandoned its hope of raising substantial sums of money through the medium of broadly based forced loans, as it had done in the preceding decades.50 Instead, increasingly, a complex mechanism allowed the government to raise funds by short-term borrowing froml a small number of financiers, who also occupied positions of central importance in the Medicean regime. Recourse to a short-term, floating debt was not new in Florence. It had been widely used in the crisis-laden late l420s and early 1430s. 51 But, by the middle of the century, short-term borrowing seems to have become the preferred option for raising cash. A network of bankers, who more often than not also acted as officials of the Monte, could be counted on to advance substantial SUITlS against the incomes of indirect taxes that the government expected to collect, and whose collection was often directly assigned to the Monte, on whose board these bankers served. This "financial oligarchy," which, by the time of Lorenzo's regirne when it became highly visible, had accumulated decades-long experience in this practice, represented an elite within an elite. whose access to public resources was assured both in their capacity as public officials and as creditors of the government. 52 The private accounts of one of these financiers, Lorenzo di Matteo Morelli, show that he advanced substantial sums to the government;53 that he was compensated with 50 For a dIScussion of these issues, see lv1olho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence, chap. /2. 51 IbId., chaps. 6-7. 52 "Financial ohgarchy" is Marks's apt label ("The FInancial Ohgarchy In Florence under Lorenzo" [no 9 above]). 53 The accounts of Morelli were very kIndly brought to my attention by Leonida Pandimiglio. I shall dISCUSS this document (Carte Gherardi Piccolomini d' Aragona, 166, Archivio di Stato, Florence) In detail on another occasion. From September 15,

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an annual rate of return of approximately 14 percent; and that he himself raised a good deal of the capital for these loans by obtaining credit from other bankers to whom he often paid annual interest of approximately 9 percent. If the profits he made in these transactions were not enormous, they were, nonetheless, respectable; more important for our purposes, through this practice he and his colleagues contributed to setting the foundations for the creation in Florence of the sort of patrimonial state that would clearly emerge at the time of Cosimo 1. The interpenetration of private and public interestsespecially, as we noted, in the case of the Monte delle doti-had been a staple of Florentine political tradition for generations. But while before an entire social class had been implicated in this practice, now, increasingly, the perquisites of office were being reserved for a restricted group, who could not help but end up by thinking that their own interests were identical with those of the collectivity. The risks of distortion are no less serious in this part of this discussion than in the preceding one. Discontinuities between the two regimes have been emphasized here, whereas a different analysis might well have dwelt on continuities. Many of the "oligarchic" regime's administrative changes persisted in the century's mid-decades and beyond: the magistracies, for example, fashioned in the earlier period to control behavior considered to be deviant or subversive. The cinque del contado also survived, although no one, to my knowledge, has studied their records, and we do not really know what policy their systematic study might reveal. Moreover, the Monte's decline was consummated over a number of decades, and, arguably, much fiscal policy during the 1440s and 1450s could be seen as aimed (although one could not help but note the half-heartedness of the effort) at propping up the gargantuan funded debt the earlier regime had bequeathed to its successor. In the 1470s and 1480s, when the most perilous war since the 1440s threatened the security of much of the territory, administrative innovation was undertaken to ensure tighter control of the state's peripheries. But even here, this greater organizational energy appears aimed at ensuring the presence of Florentine magistrates in the periphery through whom local privileges and advantages were managed with an eye to protecting Florence's own vital interests. 54 Still, no one would deny that the political climate had changed, as had the "politIcal style. ,,55 The Medicean regime's political approach eroded impersonal institutions precisely because its style could not easily coexist with the 1483, to May 13, 1385, Morelh advanced the government a total of more than 29,643 flOrIns; from August 31, 1486 to February 29, 1487 - 88 he was reimbursed for these sums and for Interest owed hIm. 54 Connell (n 45 above), pp. 531-32. 55 For the use of thIS expression, see John Najemy, "The DIalogue of Power in FlorentIne Pohttcs," In Molho, Raaflaub, and Emlen, cds. (n. 36 above), p 281.

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types of garanzie formali the preceding regime had aspired to enforce, especially in its fiscal policy. The point--more appropriately, a hypothesis-is that following Cosimo's access to power, despite the considerable fiscal demands generated by almost continuous war in the regime's first two decades and then again from the 1470s on, fiscal policy was conceived and applied to express the regilme's style of governance. In the city, the regime's fiscal policy was characterized by the exercise of personal influence in the determination of tax (or forced loan) assessments on citizens; outside the capital there prevailed a variegated po] icy that differentiated according to tradition and precedent. A seemingly careful avoidance of impersonal and across-the-board criteria for distributing tax burdens on subject to~'ns and territories defined fiscal policy during the last two-thirds of the fifteenth and the opening decades of the sixteenth centuries. Where security interests were perceived as under danger, as, for example. in the maintenance of fortifications in strategic locations, the government did not hesitate to intervene vigorously, seeking firm control of the territories. ()therwise, and especially in the application of a fiscal regime, a looser, less stringent, less centrally guided policy is clearly evident. One further point bears raising here, even if only fleetingly. A number of historians have remarked upon the modest tax revenues raised by the government following the middle of the fifteenth century. Some scholars have even suggested that the Florentine economy's renewed vitality during those decades should. at least in part, be imputed to this "lighter tax load," which obtained even in periods of acute military crisis, as in the 1470s and 1480s. The government failed to raise anywhere near the sums it had in the 1420s, when the city's economy was more strapped for financial resources. But even in periods of peace, when it did not have to contend with large military outlays, and when the government was in dire need of funds with which to shore up the ailing Monte and the nearly chronically cash poor Monte delle doti, it simply did not make much of an effort to tax its citizens. One wonders why, especially since during the first two decades of the century it had been able to raise such conspicuous sums. Might it be that now the government was unable to marshal its citizens' wealth precisely because of the new political and ideological climate, which made it difficult to generate the sort of commitment that had been possible in an earlier era? Might it be that this lighter tax load was itself a sign of .a government that was conspicuously weaker during Lorenzo's time than during the pre-Medicean regime? For all the obviously intrinsic interest that the history of public finances in grand-ducal Tuscany might hold, the fact is that little is known about the subject. And what little we do know deals more with normative aspects of tax distribution and the organization of the fiscal administration than with the ducal state's revenues and expenditures. From the available evidence, it would appear that the institutional structures on which the grand duchy erected its

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fiscal policy were largely inherited from the preceding republican era. 56 The nature of the new patrimonial state that emerged around the figure of Cosimo I-with the duke's policy of intermingling his private commercial interests and a public role sufficiently noteworthy as to attract the attention of foreign ambassadors-could be traced to traditions long held in the republic. Throughout his career, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici had tried to adhere to the dictum he formulated (however disingenuously) to justify his acceptance of power following his father's death: "I accepted reluctantly, and only to protect friends and wealth, because without the state one lives badly in Florence." 57 Duke Cosimo seems to have shared that sentiment, even if he reversed the order of activities: "a Firenze si PUQ mal governare senza Ie sostanze," his continued and active commercial activities seem to suggest. 58 But the result was much the same, with the same confusion of spheres that had prevailed earlier. And if members of the city's ruling classes had become accustomed to (indeed, had come to theorize the importance of) drawing profit from the state, either by serving as government officials or by investing in one of the government's public funds, the duke's courtiers and officials showed no less acute an inclination to continue drawing profits from the state. Furthermore, it appears that the duchy's fiscal policy, in many of its essential aspects, at least through the first half of the sixteenth century, represented a continuation and adaptation of policies inherited from the republican era-a process Elena Fasano Guarini has appropriately characterized as a crystallization of previous, communal forms of governance. 59 The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the duchy's creation, the immediately preceding wars and interventions of foreign powers, the discrediting of the previous regime and its humiliating, if heroic downfall, the successful wars against exiles and then against Siena did not give rise to new fiscal systems. However new the stato nuovo may have been, and however searing the circumstances surrounding its creation, in its fiscal structures it was deeply anchored in the stato vecchio, just as its ruling class, as Fasano Guarini and R. Burr Litchfield have shown, was a continuation of the republic's ruling class. 6o No great innovations in fiscal structures are evident. No new taxes were introduced by the new dukes; instead, they relied on forms of taxation already devised in the preceding era. The decima, a land tax 56 Elena Fasano Guarini, Lo stato mediceo dl Cosimo I (Florence, 1973), pp. 15 -17, 78; Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin, 1976); Stumpo (n. 1 above). 57 "Mal volentien accettai, e solo per conservazione degh amici e sostanze, perche a Firenze si puo mal Vivere senza 10 stato" (Diaz, pp. 146-48). 58 Ibid. 59 Fasano GuannI, Lo stato medlceo di Coslmo I, p. 78 60 R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton, N.J., 1986).

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first instituted in 1495, continued to be assessed and collected through the sixteenth century, although two points. are perhaps worth making about the ducal decima: that the land values established in the early sixteenth century, at the time of the republican regime, remained unaltered for nearly a century and that the same system of variegated application of the fiscal laws, a characteristic of the second half of the fifteenth century, remained in force through the sixteenth. The decima was not applied on all cities and territories; ecclesiastical lands, for example, were not subject to it, nor were Livorno and Pisa. Fasano Guarini has remarked upon the "varieta dei criteri" applied in the calculation of the estimo assessed on the communities of the distreUo, while Petralia, when evaluating the mid-sixteenth-century fiscal policy toward the territory, mused upon the "enduring sign of the defeat consumated around the 1430s, in the cLIlminating phase of the republic's expansion and consolidation. ,,61 As for the city, Diaz remarks LIpon the "instruments, themselves not new,,62 used by Cosimo I for raising Jmoney from his citizens, although one must admit tha1 we lack any systematic studies of the fate of the Florentine Monti in the sixteenth century.63 One final point: much has been made of Cosimo I's intensely personal interest in go\' ernance, and the attention he devoted to examining and approving all sorts of petitions, decisions, and declarations. Yet it seems clear that this interest and the ensuing intensely personal style were not translated into a more efficient bookkeeping of the state's accounts. To listen to the few historians who have studied this problem, the fragmentation and outright disorganization of government accounts in the mid-sixteenth century exceeded those of a century before. D'espite Diaz's observation about "the princely govenlment's equalizing intervention in the matter of catasti and taxes, ,,64 he cannot but marvel at the duke's "carelessness and lack of preparation in the area of expenses," as a result of which "accounts of incomes and expenses that are scattered through contemporary documents are always partial and approximate." 65 On this point at least, it would be hard not to agree with Enrico Stumpo's observation that "what is increasingly missing

61 "Traccia duratura della sconfitta maturata intorno agh annI trenta del Quattrocento, nella fase culminante dell'espansione ed aggregazione della repubbhca" (Fasano GuarinI, Lo stato mediceo di Cosimo I, pp. 15-16; Petralia [no 41 above]). 62 "Strumenti, anch'essl non nuovi" (D'Iaz, p. 151). 63 But see no\v Carol Bresnahan Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di P,eta of Florence (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993). 64 "Intervento agguagliatore del governo principesco in materia di catasti e tributI" (Diaz, pp. 153, 160, 161). 65 "DisInvoltura e improntitudine in ordinI di spesa," as a result of WhICh "1 rendiconti di entrate e spese che si trovan 0 qua e la nei documenti dell' epoca sono sempre parziali e approssimatlvl" (ibId.).

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... in the Medicean state's fiscal structure is a central organization, which might correspond to a central and unified VISIon of the adminIstration of the [state's] incomes. ,,66 A new regime had been born because of the crises of the age. Neither its novelty nor the circumstances surrounding its creation contributed to its greater efficiency, nor, certainly, to the adoption of a new set of fiscal laws intended to strengthen the government's central organisms. At least one question has not been addressed in the preceding reflections. How can one characterize the differences between the Florentine state at the tum of the fifteenth century and in the middle of the sixteenth? What, if anything, had changed in this interval? Granted, it would be difficult to use the case of Florence to illustrate the emergence of a state of the sort Chabod envisioned in the 1950s. From the perspective of much recent study on the history of late medieval and early Italy, Cosimo I's stato nuovo appears to have been less impersonale, razionale, legalistico, burocratico, livellatore than its antecedent of more than a century earlier. In fiscal matters, It had surrendered its claim to tax liquid wealth, as also any hope of applying a universal tax system on all its territories, and its subjects (the Church included). The early fifteenth-century policy of renewing fiscal rolls at brief intervals so as to account for people's changing economic fortunes was abandoned. Even the decline of the Monte delle doti-through which private interest was intertwined with the interest of the republic-was a sign of the state's more modest ambition, of its retreat from goals its leaders had reached, for a short period of time, In the first half of the fifteenth century. There is a good case to be made that from the early fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, Florence, when studied through the prism of its fiscal history, had become a patrimonial state, endowed with a government that was less legalistico or livellatore than it had been before. 67 Yet, however correct this view might be, it would probably be a mistake to rest the argument here. The experience of the early fifteenth century had left its own traces, evident for generations thereafter. Anyone who examines the registers of the decima granducale cannot fail to be struck by the similarities-in format, organization, and even content-between these volumes and those of the earlier catastl. It is impossible to avoid the Impression that the introduction of the catasto-not only the 1427 decision to undertake an enormous tax census but the very manner of registering and filing individual tax returns as well-led to a lasting change in the manner in which 66 "Quello che Vlene a mancare ... nella struttura fiscale dello stato medlceo e una organizzazlone centrale, che nsponda ad una vislone centrale e unltana della gestlone delle entrate" (Stumpo [no 1 above], p 224). 67 See Peter Partner's comparable comments regardIng Rome In "Papal FinancIal Policy In the RenaIssance and Counter-reformation," Past and Present, no 88 (1980), p.62

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the state collected and maintained information on whose basis it assessed taxes. The mid to late fifteenth-century account books of the Monte also bear witness of the provveditori della Camera's influence in shaping the work of subsequent officials in charge of comrrLunal incomes and expenses. The fact is that, even if they are less complete than the books of the provveditori, the Monte account books are more systematic and complete (in their recording of the Monte's intake and expenses) than any government accounts before 1382. Traces of the previous regime had also left their imprint here, shaping the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century government apparatus. The same traces are evident in other areas of political life: for example, in the judicial reorganization in 1502, which, as Zorzi has shown, followed the lines of administrative reform undertaken in the early fifteenth century. Although the political contexts within which individual institutions functioned had changed, these institutions could survive for decades, even centuries. Their survival ensured that they would endow government agencies with jurisdiction and power unavailable but for the preceding season of administrative reorganization and centralization. If the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed a trend toward a new "coherent regional-wide system of power,,68 and the emergence of "more stable power structures ... and more powerful centers,,69 (as Elena Fasano Guarini and Giorgio Chittolini have suggested), it may be that, in a sense, "system" and "power" were legacies beqeathed by a previous season of administrative innovation made possible by political circumstances. Change in these circumstances ensured that administrative innovation inherited from the past-even if agencies and authority created by that innovation had formally survived--would now result in different political consequences. In the case of Florence's Tuscany from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries, this meant that the central government's power would be more modest and reduced-both in the substance of its actual authority and in the range of its ambition-than it had been in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

v One might ask whether the preceding proposition can be tested for other territorial states. Of course, it is easy to make links between new political regimes and the adoption of stringent (or at least new) fiscal policies. This happened in Genova, when, from 1315 to 1350, after Simon Boccanegra's reforms, the government was able to amortize 68 percent of the public debt, 68 "Coerente sistema di potere di ambito reglonale" (Chittohni [no 11 above], pp.38-39). 69 "Apparatl dl potere P11] stabili e ... centn pili forti" (ibId.).

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with all the fiscal consequences that such a drastic reduction of the debt's carrying charges was bound to have?O A comparable departure from past tradition could be argued for Bologna, when in 1447 the city surrendered to the pope, and the papal governors recognized the autonomy of the Credito di tesoreria, the foundation of the city's fiscal structure for the following several decades.? 1 One could argue the same case for Parma and Piacenza with the establishment there of the Famese signoria in 1545, which, according to the most recent historian of its public finance, applied a fiscal policy that systematically favored the Famese holdings in central Italy over those in the south.?2 Perhaps the same case could finally be made for the kingdom of Naples and the advent of the Aragonese dynasty, for the general consensus now is that King Alfonso launched a major program intended to centralize and render more efficient the imposition and collection of revenues. This, certainly, seems to be the point made by Mario Del Treppo, the most recent historian of the kingdom's economy and of its fifteenth-century public finance.?3 More such examples could be identified in the histories of other late medieval and early modem Italian states, although the lacunae in our knowledge of each of these states' histories do not lead to clear links between fiscal developments and political structures, at least not of the sort made for Florence. The case of Venice might merit an ever slightly more detailed consideration here, because there is one moment in its history that could perhaps be fruitfully examined from the perspective suggested in this article. The regime that emerged in Venice following the dramatic events of the early decades of the sixteenth century has often attracted the attention of historians. Dominated by a small number of old patrician families, the Venetian governance of the mid-century, despite (or, perhaps, because of) an economy adjusting to the profound changes in the contemporary economy and two brief if intense periods of warfare with the Ottoman Turks, was subjected to an increasing 70 DomenICo Gioffre, "La npartizione delle quote del debIto pubblico nella Genova del tardo '300," in hIS La stona del genovesi: Atti del convegno di studi sui ceti dlrigentl nelle istltuZloni della repubblica dl Genova (Genova, 1982), pp. 141-42. 71 I follow Mauro Carboni, "Pubhc CredIt and Public CredItors: A Study of the DIstnbutIon of Shares of the PublIc Debt of Early Modem Bologna, 1555-1655" (Ph.D diss., MIchIgan State UnIversIty, 1993), pp.73-83; and, more generally, Gianfranco Orlandelli, "I MontI dl pubbhche prestanze In Bologna," Acta Itahca 14 (1969): 169-93. 72 Marzio A. Romani, "Finanza pubbhca e potere politIco: II caso dei Farnese (1545 -1593)," In Le cortl farnesiane di Parma e Piacenza, 1545-1622, vol. 1, ed. Marzio A. Romani (Rome, 1978), pp. 3-85. 73 Del Treppo (n 22 above), pp. 106-19. See also Ryder (n 19 above), esp. chap. 6, entitled "FInance," for a set of even stronger claims for Alfonso's government; and Tabacco (n. 22 above), p. 48, for a gentle reproof of these claims

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degree of discipline and streamlining?4 In the words of Gaetano Cozzi, following the prolonged and intense '~ars of the preceding decades, the city was in need of an "organism that could effectively place itself above other organisms, and result in a more expeditious and effective internal and foreign policy." 75 This organismo turned oul to be the Consiglio dei Dieci, which together with the Zonta soon came to dominate most aspects of Venetian administration. By the middle of the sixteenth century, there was no aspect of governance that escaped the tentac ular extension of the Dieci's power. Decisions that, until the 1530s, had been made by the Senate were now made by this smaller and restricted magistracy. And while an obviously oligarchic and secretive penchant defined their procedures, one notes the systematic application of a policy to take charge, to centralize operations of government, and to have other government agencies account to the Dieci. Of course, they were responsible for carrying on diplomatic negotiations, going so far as, twice in the span of a few decades, to negotiate secretly the conclusion of war with the Turks.. They were also charged with overseeing the Serenissima's military operations. Soon, too, they were supervising a series of other magistracies: the Savi delle acque, the officio delle biave, even the ducal chancery, the organization of the territory. They created new offices, such as the esecutori della bestemmia and the inquisitori contro La propaLazione dei pubblici segreti. And even though there seems to have been resistance to their ever widening authority, by 1570, when the second war against Turkey began, the Dieci had carried out their program to produce a more centralized government. "'here is no better sign of their enhanced position than the extension of their power to matters defining criteria for admitting new members to the patriciate, and for waiving age requirements for membership in the Maggior Consiglio. By 1571, the Dieci decreed that its own magistracies would now wield jurisdiction in penal cases involving patricians?6 In short, the regirne that governed Venice during those decades was animated by a precise and cohesive vision: centralize power, eliminate as much as possible overlapping and contrasting jurisdictions, create a clear locus of political and administrative authority. One should set Venice's fiscal history during those decades in the context of the ambitious and overarching set of initiatives undertaken by the Dieci. 74 On the dornination of the Venetian government by a few patrician families, see Paul Grendler, "The Leaders of the Venetian State, 1540-1609: A Prosopographical Analysis," Stud'; veneziani, n.s., 19 (1991): 35-85. 75 "OrganiSITlO che ... fosse in grado di collocarsi di fatto al di sopra degli altri organismi, impIimere un corso pill rapido e serrato alIa politica interna ed estera" (Gaetano Cozzi. Repubblica di Venezia e stati italiani: Politica e giustizia dal secolo XVI al secolo XVIII [Turin, 1982], p. 146). 76 IbId., p. 169.

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Given the growth of its jurisdiction, it was not surprising that the Dieci took charge of fiscal matters as well. And under its jurisdiction, initiatives that tended toward the centralization and reorganization of fiscal affairs were launched. A general reform of indirect taxes was begun in 1563, with the intent of ordering tariffs in modo stabile e unitario, while the tariff rates for merchandise introduced from the Levant and from the Terraferma were revised. 77 In 1566, despite the Senate's active resistance, the Dieci claimed authority to compile comprehensive annual budgets. 78 Perhaps the most striking element of this fiscal program was the determination to reduce the size of the government's large public debt. The Monte Nuovo, funded in 1482, was paid off by 1552; starting in the next year, the Dieci set aside fifty thousand ducats annually to amortize some of the other Monti. 79 Even more remarkable among the regime's fiscal initiatives was its decision to extinguish the enormous debt accumulated during the second Turkish war. Created following the authorization given by the Dieci to the Zecca to accept interest-bearing deposits, by the war's conclusion in 1573, this debt amounted to approximately six million ducats. In the mid-1570s, the carrying charges on all the government's debts exceeded 700,000 ducats, an enormous sum, more than one-third of the government's total annual intake. 8o The situation had alarmed many contemporaries. Some feared simply the government's inability to gather the necessary resources with which to pay these huge sums, especially if another emergency comparable to the Turkish war were to present itself. Perhaps even more pertinently for the argument presented here, in the words of Niccolo Contarini, a contemporary observer, such a huge debt undermined the authority of the government because, unless things changed, "The commonweal, deprived of its incomes, was entirely allowed to pass into private hands.,,81 And Contarini continued that such a state of affairs would result in a dangerous situation, "because in the absence of the commune's 77 Aldo Stella, "La regolazione delle pubbliche entrate e la cnsi pohtIca venezlana del 1582," in Miscellanea in onore di Roberto Cessl, 2 vols. (Rome, 1958),2: 159; and Daniele Beltrami, "Un ricordo del Priuli Intorno al problema dell' ammortamento dei depositi in Zecca del 1574," In Studl in onore di Armando Sapori, 2 vols. (Milan, 1957), 2: 1075, n. 4. 78 Stella, 2: 163. 79 Luciano Pezzolo, L'oro dello stato: Socleta, jinanza e jisco nella Repubbhca veneta del secondo '500 (Venice, 1990), p. 176. 80 On the details of the debt's history Immediately before the decision to extInguish It, see U. Corti, "La francazlone del debito pubbhco della Repubbhca dl Venezia proposta da Gian Francesco Priuh," Nuovo Archivio Veneto 7, pt. 2 (1894): 331-64; and Pezzolo, L' oro dello stato, pp. 200-209, where there are references to other works on this subject. 81 "II pubhco, spogliato delle entrate, tutto fusse lasclato passare nelle rendite pnvate" (Gaetano Cozzi, II doge Niccolo Contarinl: Rlcerche sui patnZlato veneziano

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treasury, everything was administered to the better advantage of private interest." 82 In short, Contarini seems to have perceived the existence of this enormous debt as a threat to the pol itical design the city's ruling class had pursued over the preceding several decades. Following a series of discussions whose sharpness, in traditional Venetian style, was greatly muted in public documents, within seven years-froIn 1577 to 1584-the government had extinguished this debt, purchasing back the credits at par, and thus injecting as much as six mlillion ducats of cash in the Venetian economy. This was a remarkable feat, an expression of the Dieci's ability to take and stick to a difficult decision, and also of the government's capacity to implement such an ambitious measure. Yet, whether directly related to this set of events or not, the decision of the D ieci coincided with an important turning point in the Serenissima's political history. Between late 1582 and spring 1583, the Dieci was stripped of ITluch of its authority. Historians have disagreed as to the significance of this event. Some consider it a milestone in Venetian history, the rejection by the giovani of the restrictively oligarchic and centralizing tendencies pursued by the vecchi since the century's early decades. 83 Others have pointed to the' essential continuity of the city's ruling class, as the same families that led the Dieci before 1583 now dominated the Senate's affairs. 84 Someone who has not directly studied the relevant Venetian sources has difficulty taking a clear position on this important issue, especially since no one so far seems to have paid close attention to the government's policies follov/ing the drastic diminution of the power of the Dieci. 85 Yet it does seem fair to ask if the realignment of power between the Dieci and the Senate might not have been related to the policies pursued by the former, especially to the decision to extinguish the public debt. Historians who have written on this episode have generally commented on its extraordinary character, on the Venetian government's ability-unprecedented in the annals of late medieval and early modem Italy-to extinguish such a huge debt and, by so doing to add mightily to the liquidity of the Venetian economy and to

agli inizi del Seicento [VenIce and ROlTle, 1958], pp. 312 -13, where one finds the relevant text of Contarini's Historiae Venetiane). 82 "Dove non vi essendo pill erario del commune, tutto come al particulare interesse tornava meglio amministrato" (ibid.). 83 Cozzi, Repubblica di Venezia e sta/i italianl, esp. pp. v and 173 - 74, where he quotes comments that Paolo Sarpi made to Christoph von Dohna, twenty-five years after the fact, to the effect that in 1582-83 the republic "canglo governo." 84 Martin John Clement Lowry, "The Reform of the CouncIl of Ten, 1582-3: An Unsettled ProbJlem?" Studi veneziani 13 (1971): 275-310~ Grendler (n. 74 above) appears to share Lowry's view. 85 ThIS very point IS made by Cozzi In Repubblica di Venezia e stati italzani (n. 75 above), p. xv.

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the city's general prosperity.86 Yet there is a question that seems to require further discussion: those who invested in the debt did not simply enjoy a very good return on their capital, which ranged from 8 to 14 percent a year; their return was enhanced by the fact that interest on that investment was tax free. The extinction of the debt may have injected a large sum of money into the Venetian economy; it also enlarged the state's tax basis, and substantially reduced the return earned by a group of investors, whose number and identity, unfortunately, are not known. The political ramifications of the Dieci's extraordinary decision will be hard to assess so long as the social history of investment in the public debt and the composition of the class of investors remain unknown. 87 The available facts do not enable one to pursue this point further, especially since an even more basic issue-the nature and significance of the 1582-83 events-are not better understood. One needs to adduce more detailed evidence with which to test the hypothesis presented above: that a centralizing penchant defined certain regimes, which made systematic efforts-not in the fiscal realm alone-to streamline and make the government's authority more efficient; the fall or weakening of such a regime brought an end to the season of centralization, as opposing groups, animated by different views and attached to different interests, now took over the governance of the state. So, the argument goes, the history of these states is not marked by steady progress toward centralization, bureaucratization, and efficient administration, nor was the government's predictable response to the chronic effects of war the increasing centralization of authority in the central agencies of government. Rather, seasons of centralization alternated with those of fragmentation; fluctuations depended as much, if not more, on the state's internal politics as on external pressure generated by war. Of course, even the most far-reaching plans for reorganization often exceeded their sponsors' ambitions, and there was a constant gap between proposals for centralization and their implementation. Such gaps are evident everywhere, although, perhaps, nowhere are they clearer than in Naples, even during the most ambitious and sweeping reform efforts made by King Alfonso. "The tension between ... the tendency toward centralization, and the sociopolitical reality" noted by Aurelio Musi for the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century kingdom of Naples could just as easily be applied to other Italian territorial states. 88 But while this observation 86 This is the dominant theme in Lane (n. 20 above), pp. 325 - 26, and in several other essays Lane has devoted to this subject. 87 Pezzolo, In L' oro dello stato, pp. 204-5, suggests that there was little opposition to the liquidation of the debt because Venetian investors could apply theIr cash to the purchase of lands in the Terraferma. 88 "Dialettica di incontri e scontn, di coincidenze e scarti tra il progetto assolutista dl mantenere libera e organizzare In modo indipendente la sfera della direzione statale,

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helps one to understand the fragility and brevity of centralizing initiatives, it does not lead to the link which, it has here been proposed, emerges in a consideration of the history of Florence. The problerTl may well be just that: t.hat the analysis in the preceding section and the attendant hypothesis about the nexus between war, government, and the state's internal politics are based on the history of Florence, in many respects an altypical territorial state. No other state-not even Genova, notorious for it s chronically unstable politics-underwent as many changes in regime as Florence. However resilie nt the city's ruling class, and however pliable its mernbers to changing political circumstances, even if one undertakes a survey starting only with the mid-fourteenth century, a number of moments-in 1343, 1348, 1378, 1382, 1433, 1434, 1494, 1498, 1512, 1527, 1531-produced major political reorientation. It is unlikely that such volatility over so long a period of time could be matched by other major Italian territorial states. Equally unlikely, therefore, might be the suggestion that the hypothesis presented above is applic able to other territorial states. What is more, for reasons that need not detain us here, the history of Florence has been explored in much greater detail than have the histories of many other Italian states. Not even Genova and Venice--republican regimes that relied heavily on public debts, left behind massive archives with which to illuminate their distant pasts, and therefore could serve as convenient points of comparisonhave been explored with anywhere near the intensity evident for generations in the work of students of Florence's past. The key element of our hypothesis concerns a tenritorial state's internal politics, the composition and interests of its dominant class; one can think of these as metaphorical filters through which pressures of funding the costs of war were translated into administrative change and fiscal policy. The absence of systematic research and the resultant fuzziness of other territorial states' internal histories make it difficult to draw contrasts and comparisons with Florence. Finally, it is clear that even if one had the most detailed and thorough accounts of these issues-for Genova, Venice, or any other late medieval Italian state-the variety of political experience in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy-the different political trajectories followed by territorial states as different from each other as Milan was from Florence, and either Venice or Genova from Naples, and any of these from Ferrara, Lucca, or Perugia-would often make precise comparisons not only difficult, but even contrived and unnecessary. Yet, as Tabacco recently suggested, by the fifteenth century a number of common elements emerged in the disparate histories of the Italian states. One

of these, he argued, was "the increasing distancing of the official power la tendenza all'accentramento, e la realta politICO sociale" (AurelIo Musi, "11 viceregno spagnolo," in Galasso and Del Trappo, eds. [no 22 above], vol. 4, pt. 1:205).

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structures from society's processes." 89 The Quattrocento, he continued, was at once a period of transition, in a long process of "progressive statal construction" and a "more or less conscious search for equilibria in a pluralistic society. ,,90 Even if the adjective progressiva might require more precise definition, Tabacco's reflection fully captures a defining trait in the politics and society of late medieval Florence. The tension of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in the organization and administration of the state is evident in Florence's history, and I hope that it emerges clearly in the outline, however schematic, presented in this article. Other scholars more familiar than I am with the histories of other Italian regions must decide if the hypothesis developed in reference to the history of Florence might also apply outside of Tuscany. The end result of such a comparison might be the discovery of yet another small piece of that wider mosaic of common Italian experience evoked by Tabacco.

VI Having started this article by referring to Niccolo Machiavelli's insight that, contrary to the common wisdom of his day, "i danari non sono il nervo della guerra," it might be appropriate to close by returning to his reflection. A variant of his aphorism might be that public finance was not the ingredient indispensable to the centralization and strengthening of states. Instead, politics offers a more useful vantage point from which to examine the link between government and public finance in late medieval and early modem Italy. Institutional parallels in the realm of public finance-be these public debts, diversity of fiscal regimes in the capital city and the territory, and heavy reliance on indirect taxes-and even each government's need for great treasure with which to fight the nearly endemic warfare of the period did not have the same consequences as regards the history of states. Galasso's characterization of the "storia italiana preunitaria" as "a multiplicity of urban, regional, and interregional histories, which at once run parallel to and intersect each other" 9 I seems entirely applicable to the fiscal sphere as well. This multiplicity of histories, at the very least as regards the nexus between the state and public finance, would seem easier to account for by referring to political experience and to the histories of regimes. Thus, it is clear that the 89 "La separazlone crescente dell'apparato ufficlale del potere dalle dInamIche della socIeta" (Tabacco [no 22 above], p. 49) 90 "Progressiva costruzione statale" and a "ncerca pIll 0 meno consapevole dl equihbn in una socleta plurahstIca" (IbId.). 91 "MoltephcIta dl stone cIttadIne, reglonah ed Interreglonah, parallele ed Interferenti tra loro" (GIuseppe Galasso, Potere e istztuzioni In Itaha dalla caduta dell' Impero romano a Oggl [Turin, 1974], p. 83).

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existence of public debts in Florence, C}enova, and Venice does not shed much light on the nature of each of these three territorial states. Rather, their natures and the different histories of the public debts themselves can be better understood by keeping in mind their political processes as well as the balance of their political forces. This, at least, is the hypothesis drawn from the Florentine exp1erience. To what degree might it be helpful in explaining the history of other territorial states? If it was thought to be helpful, might it then be necessary to devote considerably more attention than has been done recently to the study of political history, to the tensions, clashes, and political balances that define their histories, and to the political culture, or style, of their governing classes? This work would appear to be the indispensable filter through which to examine the history of late medieval and early modern public finance of the Italian territorial states.

The Courts* Trevor Dean Roehampton Institute, London

The natural inclusion of the court in a conference on the origins of the modem state is a demonstration of the great distance traveled by court studies in the past fifteen to twenty years. Two decades ago, would the court automatically have figured among historians' conceptions of the modem state? Other themes-taxation, law and its juridical base, the institutional centertraditionally arise when historians write of the state, but the court is not part of the traditional notion of what the state comprised. As Mozzarelli and others have stated, since the nineteenth century the court has been identified either with the merely ceremonial and cultural (at best) or with irrationality, waste, and luxury (at worst), in antithesis to the rational and positive development of bureaucratic institutions, offices, and mentalities. 1 In this older view, the court lay outside the purely political and administrative world in which the origIns of the modem state were to be found. Two historiographical developments have overturned this traditional devaluation of the court: first, historians, following anthropologists, have become more seriously interested in the ritual and symbolic aspects of rulership as part of, not extraneous to, the political system;2 second, the recognition that princely government remained personal government has refocused attention on the whole personal and domestic world

* This artIcle origInally appeared as "Le corti: Un Problema stonografico," In Onginl dello Stato: Processi di formaZlone statale in [talia fra medloevo ed eta moderna, ed. GiorgIO ChittolinI, Anthony Molho, and Plerangelo Schiera, Annah dell'Istituto storico Italo-gennanico, vol. 39 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994). I WIsh to thank the discussants and partICIpants of the Istituto Storico Italo-GermanicoUniversity of ChIcago conference for theIr comments, to whIch I have referred tn reviSIng this article. I C. Mozzarelh, "Pnncipe e corte nella storiografia del Novecento," In La corte nella cultura e nella storiografia: Immaglnl e posiZlonl tra Otto e Novecento, ed. C. Mozzarelli and G. Olmt (Rome, 1983), pp. 248-50, 273, and "Prince and Court: Why and How Should the Court Be StudIed Today?" Schifanoia 8 (1989)· 35~ D. Stievermann, "Southern German Courts around 1500," In Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650, ed R. G. Asch and A. M. Birke (Oxford, 1991), p. 161 2 D. Potter and P. R. Roberts, "An Englishman's Vtew of the Court of Henn III, 1584-1585: RIchard Cook's 'Description of the Court of France,' " French History 2 (1988): 315-16. ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern Hzstory 67,

~uppl

(December 1995)

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within which the prince lived. Court and state are now seen as complementary, confused, or identical, and no longer as separate worlds. 3 A recent survey of this new history of the court in early modem Europe (which strangely contains little reference to Italy) provides a useful framework within which to approach the role of the court in the origins of the modem state. 4 Ronald Asch's excellent introduction to the volume focuses critically on four aspects of the court's function. First, he questions Elias's view of the court as a tool to domesticate the nobility, suggesting that, conversely, the court could become a "stronghold" of aristocratic influence. Contrary to this is the common view that the early modem court had the function of integrating various territorial (and other) elites in10 a composite ruling class: Asch points to kingdoms where the court was too small to perform this function, or where integration was also achieved through other political or social centers, such as capital cities or assemblies of estates Second, Asch sees important changes taking place in the years around 1500, when royal courts became dominant in their own territories and when an ideal of courtly life began to replace the previous chivalric-military ethos of court life and the prevailing anticourtier tone of much intellectual discussion of the court. 5 Associated with these changes was an increasing differentiation of the king's court from the aristocratic household, which it had formerly resembled. Other trends apparently spread from the Burgundian court where they had first appeared: increasing distance between ruler and subject, sacralization of the ruler, greater expenditure on the court, and the development of a specific courtly culture. The outcome of these four trends was, in Asch's view, that the court "now celebrated the king's supreme majesty, whereas earlier ceremonies highlighted the bond between ruler and realm." Third, Asch focuses on the problematic relations between court and household and between court and state: How far are court and household the same? To what extent had administrative functions "gone out of court" by the sixteenth century (when they were located in separate councils and departments of state)? Fourth, he examines the court's role in systems of clientage and patronage, as centralr

3 V. Omaghi, "La 'bottega di maschere' e Ie orig1ni della politica modema, " in 'Familia' del principe e famiglia aristocratica, ed. C. Mozzarelli (Rome, 1988), pp. 9-10; V. Press, "La corte principesca in German1a nel XVI e XVII secolo," 1n ibid., p. 159; Stievermann, p. 161; J. Boucher, "La commistione fra corte e stato in Francia sotto gJli ultimi Valois," in La corte in Europa, ed. M. Cattini and M. A. Romani (Brescia, 1983), pp. 93-130. 4 For what follows, see R. G. Asch and A. M. Birke, "Introductlon," in Asch and Birke, eds., esp pp. 1-32. The only Italian topic treated is papal power and family strategy in the s.ixteenth and seventeenth centuries (W. Reinhard, pp. 329-56). 5 For a recen1 example, see Giovanni Conversin1 da Ravenna, Two Court Treatises, ed. B. G. Kohl and J. Day (Munich, 1987).

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ization of power led to the necessary emergence of favorites and court managers to control nobles at court and to shield the ruler from importunate petitioners. As mentioned above, the Italian Renaissance court is conspicuously absent from Asch's volume, the focus of which is more on Germany, France, and England, with the Burgundian court taking the role of trendsetter. One possible reason for this absence is that Italian studies of the court, though profuse in the past decade, have tended to develop in a manner that cannot be well Integrated Into the historIographical mainstream. Italian study of the court has flourished largely (though not wholly) under the promotion of the Centro Europa delle corti, whIch has now published dozens of volumes on the courts and theIr rulers, and particularly on the literary forms of court culture. Much of this production has been the work of specialIsts in literature, not history, and has adopted a structuralist and interdisciplinary approach. Both the structuralism and the interdisciplinanty have drawn criticism from non-Italian historians. The structurahst interpretation sees the court as a "total place of representation and sign," as a "structure-symbol, a form immutable in time, beyond typological varIeties and politIcal-dynastic variables,,;6 it addresses "the court phenomenon" rather than the historical varieties and variables. More important, it strives for an Interpretation of the court that is closed to what is outside the court, claiming that the court is approachable only from the viewpoint of the courtier. Typical of thIS method is Papagno's depiction of the court as a labyrinth, in that it eliminated the usual categories of orientation, had no clear end, and allowed no sense of the whole, only a series of precarious possibilities and choices. 7 In accordance with structuralist practice, other scholars refer to, or seek to explore, the" grammar of court society" and the "rules of the game," or present it as a total "theatrical space" with roles, actors, and an impresario. 8 To historians in the Anglo-Saxon empirical tradition, this sort of intellectual sophistication is unhelpful, and the adoption of the vocabulary of literary 6 The quote IS from G. Ferroni and A. Quondam, "Dialogo sulla scena della corte," In Le corti farneSlane dl Parma e Placenza (J 545 - J622), ed. M. A. RomanI (Rome, 1978), p. xxx~ see also P. MerlIn, "11 tema della corte nella storiografia itahana ed europea," Studl stoncl 27 (1986): 226 - 27. 7 G. Papagno, IntroductIon to La corte e 10 spaZlo: Ferrara estense, ed. G. Papagno and A. Quondam (Rome, 1982), pp. 11- 20, and "Corte e cortlglanl," In La corte e if "Cortegiano, " vol. 2, Un modello europeo, ed. A. Prospen, 3 vols. (Rome, 1980), p. 209 8 OmaghI, pp 13, 17~ M. A. RomanI, "Fedelta, 'famIlia,' stato: Gughelmo Gonzaga e la socleta dl corte mantovana alIa fine del Clnquecento," In Mozzarelh, ed., pp.358-59, 361 ~ A Tenentl, "La corte nella stona dell'Europa modema (13001700)," In RomanI, ed., p xv~ M. CaHlni and M. A. RomanI, "Le cortI parallele: Per una tlpologia delle cortI padane dal XIII al XVI secolo," in Papagno and Quondam, eds., p. 75

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crItIcIsm, as vlell as that of social science, is a limitation, preventing full understanding of historical realities. 9 Structuralist literary criticism is "a context ... particularly ill-suited to hislorical research," forcing an elision of important differences among the courts, which are pushed together as il fenomeno corte. 10 Study of the grammar and rules of "court society" has not only questionably elevated the court as a closed system but has also neglected the study of relations between court and society (whether the material support of the court or its political support through patronage networks and faction). The distance between Italian and English historiographies thus becomes clear: for English histofJlans, "the history of the court is the history of those who enjoyed access to the king"; 11 for Italians, it has tended to be a "structure-symbol," a "stage of stnlctural simulation." It is difficult to believe that an English historian would present a story of patronage denied-such as Romani's story of Camillo Luzzara and Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga-in terms of the deformation of the Castiglionesque ideal and the rules of the courtly game. I2 The interdisciplinarity of the work of Centro Europa delle corti has also attracted criticism. The Centro's major historical projects have approached specific courts (Ferrara under the I~stensi, Parma and Piacenza under the Farnesi)I3 and individual rulers (eiiovanni II Bentivoglio, Federico da Montefeltro )14 by collecting large numbers of essays on individual aspects in the hope that, just as the court itself ,vas the locus for a convergence of many and various intellectual and social forces, so, too, a mixing-pot approach to its study would be the most fruitful and appropriate. IS The quality of the resulting volumes varies: that on Federico da Montefeltro especially stands out. Unfortunately., critics have seen in this approach only unevenness, an ill-matched assortment of separate disciplinary studies, a miscellany of articles concerned with Renaissance rulers and cities, many of which are "irrelevant" to the theme of the court; "an anthology of current special 9 K. LippIncott, "The Neo-Latin Historical Epics of the North Italian Courts: An Examination of 'Courtly Culture' in the Fifteenth Century," Renaissance Studies 3 (1989): 415-28; and see M. Greengrass, reVIew of Patrons, Brokers and Clients In Seventeenth-Century France, by S. Kettenng, English Historical Revlew 103 (1988): 680-82. 10 LippIncott, p. 415. 11 D. Starkey, "Introduction: Court History in PerspectIve," In The English Courtfrom the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey et al. (London, 1987), p. 5. 12 Romani. 13 Papagno and Quondam, eds.; RomanI, ed. 14 B. Basile, ed., Bentivolorum magnijicentla: Princlpe e cultura a Bologna nel Rinascimento (Rome, 1984); GIorgio Cerboni BaiardI, GiorgIo Chittolini, and Plero Floriani, eds., Federico di Montefeltro: La slato, le artl, la cultura, 2 vols. (Rome, 1986). 15 G. Papagno and A. Quondam, "Appendice," In Papagno and Quondam, eds., 2: 823-38.

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studies" in which "the mental habits of specialists ... have meant that in practice the intention did not even begin to be realised." 16 What has been especially noted is the apparent reluctance of Italian scholars, individually or collectively, to mount a comprehensive, truly integrated study of a Renaissance court: in comparison to the French (e.g., Boucher's multivolume study of the court of Henri III), "no-one is really tackling the study of a single court." 17 What is needed is a team of scholars to settle in an archive (e.g., Modena) and to dig through the mountain of financial registers there. 18 What we have instead is, on the one hand, a collection of ill-fitting fragments, and, on the other, some premature attempts at synthesis, which either, as Gundersheimer remarked of Bertelli's Italian Renaissance Courts, are "virtually useless" because of their imprecision and vagueness, with elements of the court "of which we know in fact practically nothing" being given lofty interpretations, or, as Lockwood remarked of the typology of Po valley courts by Cattini and Romani, "it is hard to say on what it is really all based" given the inadequacy of the sources cited. 19 Alongside the structuralists and the generalists, however, there has emerged a group of scholars, Italian and non-Italian, whose work has provided partial studies of most of the major courts of the Renaissance (Milan, Urbino, Ferrara, Savoy) as well as some of the minor ones (Bologna, Mantua), such as can be fitted into the framework provided by Asch. 2o 16 The quoted material IS from, respectIvely, J. Lamer, "Europe of the Courts," Journal of Modern History 55 (1983): 672-73; L. Lockwood, review of La corte e 10 spazio, edited by G. Papagno and A. Quondam, Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 726 - 27; A. TenentI, reVIew of La corte e 10 spazio, edited by G. Papagno and A. Quondam, Annales 38 (1983): 1126. 17 Tenenti, reVIew of La corte e lo spazio, p. 1125. 18 Lockwood. 19 W. Gundersheimer, review of Italian Renaissance Courts, by S. Bertelli, Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 114-16. See the more muted critIcism in Merlin (n. 6 above), pp. 239-40. Lockwood, p. 727; T. Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court In the Later Middle Ages," Renaissance Studies 3 (1989): 357. 20 On the major courts, see G. Lubkin, "The Court of Galeazzo Mana Sforza, Duke of Milan (1466-1470)" (Ph.D. dISS., UnIversity of CalIfornia, Berkeley, 1982); A. RosIe, "RItual, Chivalry and Pageantry: The Courts of Anjou, Orleans and Savoy In the Later MIddle Ages" (Ph.D. dISS., UniversIty of EdInburgh, 1990); A. Barbero, "CortI e storiografia di corte nel Plemonte tardo medievale," In Piemonte medievale: Forme del potere e della societa (Turin, 1985); U. Gherner, "Reclutamento di dingentI, mobilta della corte e clrcolazlone di esperienze nei domini sabaudi," In Giacomo Jaquerio e II gotico internazionale, ed. E. Castelnuovo and G. Romano (Turin, 1979); P. Peruzzi, "Lavorare a corte. 'Ordini et officii': DomestIci, familiarI, cortegIanl e funzionan nel serVIZIO del Duca d'Urbino," In Baiardi, Chittolinl, and FlorianI, eds.; Papagno and Quondam, eds. (n. 7 above); Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court," and Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450

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I First of all, let us consider the issue5. of domestication and integration of the ruling class. Where domestication did take place-that is, where an old political and \varrior aristocracy was transformed into a class of courtiers and officials of the prince-the costs to the princely state are now as likely to be stressed as the benefits. Barbero's study of the Challant family of the Val d' Aosta sho'-'1s that, as its members took up offices and careers in the Savoyard court and administration, they nevertheless continued to defend and even to expand their own local power as well as regional particularism. Moreover, the progress of princely power was accompanied by a concentration of the Challant patrimony in the hands of one line of the family, which was for a tinle openly hostile to the duke. 21 As Mozzarelli has observed, subjects could use the wealth, power, and prestige that they drew from the court in ways that ran counter to the interests of the state. 22 Integration, too, remains a contested matter. Some historians still subscribe to the thesis: Lubkin asserts that Galeazzo Marja Sforza's court promoted integration through the establishment of relations of marriage or godparenthood or business among its prominent members;23 the cohesion of the duke of Savoy's court is seen as enhanced by ducal involvement in the marriages of its members and in the baptism of their children. 24 However, a more skeptical view does seem to be gaining ground. Even the court of Burgundy, which Asch singles out as undoubtedly achieving integration, was dominated by Burgundians and Picards, with little room left for the other regional elites.2 5 It is clear that in Italy a large component of the court came not from local elites but fronl outside the prince's territory, and the court, insofar as it had an integrative function, integrated courtiers into the ruling class of the capital, rather than amalgamating the various territorial elites.2 6 We also need to

(Cambndge, 1987); J. E. Law, "City, Court and Contado In Camerino, c. 1500," in City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. T. Dean and C. Wickham (London, 1990). Regarding the minor courts, see Basile, ed. 21 Barbero, "Principe e nobl1ta negli stati sabaudl: Gli Challant in valle d' Aosta tra XIV e XVI sec 010," In Mozzarelli, ed. (n. 3 above). 22 C. Mozzarelh, "Corte e amministrazione nel principato gonzaghesco," Socleta e storia 16 (1982): 261-62. 23 G. Lubkin, "Strutture, funzioni ,e funzlonamento della corte milanese nel Quattrocento," in Milano e Borgogna: Due stati pnnclpesche tra Medioevo e RlnaSclmento, ed. J -M. Cauchles and G. Chittohni (Rome, 1990), p. 81. 24 Rosie, pp. 45 -46. e 25 W. Paravicini, "Structure et fonctionnement de la cour bourguignonne au XV siecle," In Cauchies and Chlttolini, eds., pp. 67 -74. 26 Dean, "1\rotes on the Ferrarese Court"; see Rosie, p. 11: Louis d'Orleans's chamberlains ~rere drawn from all over France rather than mainly from his own lands.

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dIstinguish carefully and precisely between domestication of an existing nobility and the generation, through relations created or at least blessed at court, of a new aristocracy: thus the duke of Savoy's council is claimed to have integrated families from newly acquired territories and bourgeois specialists Into the aristocratic group of long-term Savoyard loyalists. 27 The whole integrative function has also been questioned in Chittolini's denial that the court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza was a place of aggregation: it was largely populated by provincials and foreigners, and used only cautiously by Galeazzo Maria to bind to him the Milanese aristocracy, who in any case were cool or resistant to attendance at court. 28 Similarly, in the sixteenth century the Famese dukes of Parma failed to attract to their court the elite of Novara, who preferred to gravitate toward Milan. 29 And the low native component of Duke Guidubaldo da Montefeltro' s familia has been seen as responsible for its inability or reluctance to defend the state of Urbino in 1502.3° Far from integrating, the court could thus have had a divisive and destructive effect. Though the "old court-country hobbyhorse" has been "finally ... put down" in the study of seventeenth-century England, it lives again, at least in political terms, in Klaniczay's study of sixteenth-century Transylvania, where the large foreign presence at court is seen as alienating the native nobility, just as it did in mid-fifteenth-century Naples or Savoy.3 l We must also be aware that, because of feuding among the aristocracy, the inclusion of one family or regional group could mean the exclusion of others: what appears as integration could in fact be the partisan winning of the prince's favor. The issue of integration cannot be posed effectively, however, without first addressing the question of how and why courtiers entered princely service, a question that has not received the attention it deserves. Leaving aside the issue of economic "crisis" among the aristocracy, propelling it to seek the rewards and profits of service, one might want to explore the relationship between the court and other social and cultural centers, such as capital cities and universities, or to ask such questions as how much competition there was for

27

Ghemer, p 96.

2~ G. Chlttohnl, "DI alcunl aspettl della cnSI dello stato sforzesco," In Cauchles and Chlttohnl, eds , pp 21 - 34. 29 A. Parma, "La corte lontana. Poten e strategie nel marchesato farneslano dl Novara," In Mozzarelh, ed., pp. 500-501 30 C. H Clough, "La 'famlha' del duca GUldubaldo da Montefeltro ed II Corteglano," In Mozzarelh, ed. (n. 3 above), pp. 335-41. 31 T. Klanlczay, "Gh antagonlsml fra corte e socleta In Europa centrale: La corte transllvanlca alla fine del XVI secolo," In Cattlnl and RomanI, eds. (n. 3 above); Rosie (n. 20 above), pp. 37 -40; A. Ryder, The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous (Oxford, 1976), pp. 55-58

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posts at court, whether places were bestowable by patrons, how long people stayed, or whether place at court was reward or training.3 2 Were men actively sought out for employment at court, or was the court open to hangers-on and fortune seekers?33 Merely to ask such questions is to move in an antistructuralist direction, to conceive of the court not as a closed, autonomous space, but as a contingent space, with its personnel installed or removed through the operation of patronage, its integrative function dependent on its ability to recruit and retain members. Revealing patterns of recruitment is difficult,34 and it may be that there were different patterns of recruitment (as well as different careers and rewards) for different categories of servant. 35 Nevertheless, a high rate of turnover among householdmen at least does seem to be established, as noted both for Galeazzo Maria Sforza and for the Este earlier in the fifteenth century,36 though this is not a necessary aspect of court life, as the stability and narrow recruitment of Elizabeth I's household shows.3 7 Among cardinals' households, it seems, a distinction can be made between the transient, wage-earning artists, gentlelnen, and servants, and the stable core of clerical pensioners, the real familia of chamberlains, chaplains, and secretaries, who stayed for decades. 38 However, the essentially temporary nature of any court groLlping would seem to be confirmed in Bueno de Mesquita's picture of Giangaleazzo Visconti's court as composed of "men from all over Italy, attracted by promises, by persu asion and by the magic of his political vision," as well as by the number of princes who quickly sent away their predecessor's Jlntimates.3 9 And the opportunistic, accidental nature of recruitment is revealed by Giovanni Conversini's stumbling into the service (which he later regretted) of Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua,40 just as Francesco II da Carrara recruited, on at least one occasion, as need dictated and from 32 G. R. Elton, "Tudor Government: The Points of Contact. III. The Court," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26 (1976): 214; see Lamer (n. 16 above), p.680. 33 Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese COUlt" (n. 19 above), pp. 363-64. 34 R. J. Knecht, "La corte di Francia nel XVI secolo," in Mozzarelli, ed., p. 225 35 Peruzzi (n. 20 above), pp. 266-75, 281-88, 291-95. 36 Lubkin, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza" (n. 20 above), pp. 166, 180-84, and "Strutture, funzioni e funzionamento della corte milanese" (n. 23 above), p. 78; Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court," pp. 363-64. 37 P. Wright, "A Change in Direction: The Ramifications of a Female Household, 1558-1603," in Starkey et aI., eds. (n. 11 above), pp. 157 -58. 38 P. Hurtubise, "La 'famiha' del cardinale GIovanni Salviati (1517-1553)," In Mozzarelli, ed., pp. 595-96. 39 D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (1351-1402) (Cambridge, 1941), p. 182. 40 Conversini da Ravenna (n. 5 above), pp. 27 - 31.

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whatever source was at hand. 41 Were princes obliged to accept mobility and transience among their courtiers because these were facts of urban life, while attempting to ensure stability of loyalty, at least, through largesse?42 To become aware of the temporary nature of presence at court, whether of persons or objects, is also to conceive of the court as an open rather than a closed space, a space open to a vast range of outside influences. Ambassadors were often not courtiers at home. 43 Traders might practice in the court but not be of it. 44 On festal occasions, artists would be fetched from cities outside the state, silver would be borrowed from churchmen, itinerant entertainers and friars would be hired. When visited by dignitaries, princes were often forced to accommodate them or their entourages in borrowed houses. 45 The internal organization of the palace was marked by constant rearrangement, provisional functions, and extemporized furnishing. 46 Court officials had "hinterlands" of their own: they brought with them the traditions and tastes of their families and provenance, the influence of their studies and experiences. 47 How successfully did any court meld such disparate elements into a system with rules? Conversely, was it this very openness, perhaps increasing, that explains the enormous circulation and success of manuals of specifically courtly behavior in the sixteenth century?

II The second broad theme to be addressed consists of four elementsIncreasing distance and sacralization of the prince, greater cost and cultural specificity of the court-as the basis for increasing differentiation of the princely court and its promotion of majesty. Increasing distance certainly seems to be the pattern in northern Europe, if we compare, say, Louis XI, Edward IV, and James VI with Charles I and Henri III, but where Lubkin sees the open type of medieval court "fluctuating in form and membership," giving 41 Galeazzo e Bartolomeo Gatan, Cronaca carrarese, ed. A. MedIn and G. Tolomei, Rerum ltalzcarum scriptores, 2d ed. (Cltta di Castello, 1909-12, and Bologna, 1919-31), 17, pt. 1, 1:390; and see HurtubIse, pp. 591-92. 42 Gatan, Cronaca Carrarese, pp. 377, 390; Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court" (n. 19 above), p. 361. 43 G. Soldl Rondinlnl, "Aspects de la vie des cours de France et de Bourgogne par les depeches des ambassadeurs milanais (seconde moitie du XV e slecle)," In Adelzge Sachkultur des Spatmittelalters (Vienna, 1982), p. 198. 44 I. Florescu, ""Gli spaZI del quotidiano: La reggla," In Rltuale, cerimoniale etlchetta, ed. S. Bertelh and G. Crifo (MIlan, 1985), p. 103. 45 ROSIe (n. 20 above), pp.61-62, 171, 173, 186-87; Lubkln, ""The Court of Galeazzo Mana Sforza" (n. 20 above), pp. 340-41. 46 Florescu, pp. 104-8. 47 Gherner (n. 20 above), p. 89.

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way to the closed early modem court, and constituting a separate society, Starkey seems prepared to contemplate the participatory and the distant as two styles of rule, adopted according to the personal taste of the ruler, not as successive fornls of rulership, the one medieval, the other modem. 48 As far as access is concerned, late fourteenth-century Italy already provides an example of a distant ruler in Giangaleazzo Visconti, whom it was very difficult to approach in person. 49 Similarly, in the sixteenth century, we have Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, who "locked himself tightly in the Corte vecchia," causing estrangement, then acrimony and irreverence, among courtiers and officials. 5o But his example would seem to be anticipated in Cangrande II della Scala, who provoked rebellion among his former courtiers by taking up enclosed residence in the castle, coming out at night only to visit prostitutes. 51 To what extent increasing distance therefore represented an early modem trend in Italy has yet to be fully established. Sacralization, too, seems to be a less prominent characteristic, and that for one very good reason: Italian princes were not royal, nor did they work cures. 52 Nevertheless, one can detect in the second half of the fifteenth century an increasing sense of identification of the spiritual interests of ruler and state. Ercole d'Este imported nuns for his new monasterit~s to stock the city with holiness, had a miraculous image of the Virgin at court, staged publicly sacre rappresentazioni, and, like Galeazzo Maria Sforza, gave a dynastic emphasis to the local calendar of religious festivals. 53 Cardini has written more generally of the increasing sacrality of 48 On the vanous kings, see Soldi Rondinini, pp.202-4; R. A. Griffiths, "The King's Court during the Wars of the Roses Continuities in an Age of Discontinuities," in Asch and Birke, eds. (n. 1 above), p. 54, N. Cuddy, "The Revival of the Entourage: The Bedchamber of James I, 1603-1625," in Starkey et aI., eds. (n. 11 above), pp. 178 - 80; K. Sharpe, "The Image of Virtue: The Court and Household of Charles I, 1625-1642," in Starkey et aI., eds., pp. 226-60; Knecht (n. 34 above), pp. 241-42; Potter and Roberts (n. 2 above); Lubkln, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza," pp. 9-10; Starkey (n. 11 above), pp. 7-9 49 Bueno de lV[esquita (n. 39 above), pp. 179-80; Gatari (n. 41 above), pp. 339, 359, 362. 50 Romani (n. 8 above), pp. 357 -58. 51 Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court" (n. 19 above), p. 361. 52 Lamer (n. 16 above), pp. 671-72. 53 On the Importation of nuns, see G. Zarri, "Pieta e profezia aIle cortI padane: Le pie consigliere dei principi," in Il Rinascilnento neUe corti padane: Societa e cultura, ed. P. Rossi (Bari, 1977), pp. 201-37. Itegarding the sacre rappresentaZloni, see, recently, F. Crucianl, "Gli attori e l' attore a Ferrara," pp. 451-66~ and F. Ruffini, "Linee dirette e lntrichi: II Vitruvio di Cesariano e la Ferrara teatrale di Ercole I," both in Papagno and Quondam (n. 7 above), pp. 365-429. And for calendar of religious festivals, see R. G. Brown, "The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, 1450-1505" (Ph.D. dISS., Unlversity of Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 285 - 391; Lubkln, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza," pp.52-55, 356-73; C. M. Rosenberg, "The Use of

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the prince in the fifteenth century: the "whiff of magic" spreading from the combination of a special dynastic relationship with saints, living and dead, with a more conspicuous attention to astrology and relics (and, might one suggest, to ancestor remains: Sigismondo Malatesta?), leading to the creation of an "enchanted setting" in the "sacred precinct" of the court.54 But we should beware of exaggeration here. Is this qualitatively different from the usual princely religiosity of masses and feasts, vows and endowments, lenten and Easter devotions?55 And we should recall that association with vehicles of holiness was a feature of Italian signori already in the thirteenth century, and of the city-communes before them. Regarding the greater costliness of the court there seems little room for doubt. Lubkin has demonstrated the expansion of the court under Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who changed its residence, doubled the numbers of gentlemen and chamberlains, commissioned frescoes, built up the chapel choir, staged elaborate ceremonies, expanded his bodyguard, and held regular public audiences. 56 Similarly at Savoy, the size and structure of the court in the fifteenth century became larger and more complex, with greater magnificence in ceremony and in the decoration of chapels and castles, and the development of court historiography.57 In the sixteenth century this was followed by enlargement of the palace, further expansion in numbers, the creation of new offices, and increased attention to "stage-management. ,,58 The creation of a specific courtly culture is much more debatable: either the court was home to cultural forms that circulated only among other courts or the court originated cultural forms that it then transmitted to other sectors of society. Before the sixteenth century, both conjectures are seemingly easier to assert than to demonstrate. Comparative evaluation of the court and other centers (e.g., universities, aristocratic households) as patrons or consumers of culture would be required. And much would seem to depend, too, on whether Celebrations in Public and Semi-pubhc AffaIrS in Fifteenth-Century Ferrara," in Il teatro italiano del Rinascimento, ed. M. de Panlzza Lorch (MIlan, 1980), pp 522 - 24, 529-34. 54 S. Bertelli, Italian Renaissance Courts (London, 1986), pp. 232-41, and p 12 for "sacred precInct." 55 As described, e.g., in E. Pontien, Alfonso II magnanlmo re dl Napoll (14351458) (Naples, 1975), p. 176. 56 LubkIn, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza" (n. 20 above), pp. 80-81; E Samuels Welch, "The Image of a Fifteenth-Century Court: Secular Frescoes for the Castello dl Porta Glovla, MIlan," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990)· 163-84. 57 See, respectively, Rosie (n. 20 above), pp. 35-42; Barbero, "CortI e stonografia dl corte" (n. 20 above). 58 D. Frigo, "L'affermazlone della sovranlta: Famlglia e corte dei SavoIa tra CInque e settecento," in Mozzarelli, ed. (n. 3 above), pp. 299-300

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one sees the court as patron or consumer. It has been suggested that in late medieval England, for example, the court was only one employer of artists among many, such that court style was merely the local style of the area where the court happened to reside, and that there was little consistency or distinctive identity to the court as cultural patron. 59 Similarly, in late fifteenth-century Bologna, the 'court" of Giovanni II Bentivoglio exercised little cultural leadership; ne~N cultural forms were also patronized by members of the aristocracy, and writers generally gravitated to the university.6o It might be objected that in these cases we are dealing only with unformed or medieval courts. Yet the same problem obtains for such fully and exclusively courtly cultural products as the Latin epics written in or for the courts of Milan, Ferrara, Urbino, Mantua, and Rimini in the second half of the fifteenth century: here the relation between "patron" and "producer" is anything but clear. "One interesting fact about the neo-Latin historical epic is that it was neither motivated nor particularly well nurtured by courtly patronage.,,61 More radically, the very concept of "court culture" is still not universally accepted: comlnissions by individual rulers, it has been pointed out, are not court acts; "strictly speaking writers and their writing revolved around the king rather than the court. ,,62 And the long, drawn-out debate, in seventeenthcentury English studies, of the alleged division between "court" and "country" cultures seems to have resulted in the highly plausible view that these were not different cultural worlds at all, but merely "the same people at different times of year," and that coun culture was not dominated by the king but was "polycentric, eclectic and divided within itself. ,,63 We should note, too, that some historians are skeptical of the existence and effects of greater ritual and formality at court. "Have \\'e, led by accounts of great occasions," 4

59 V. Scattergood, ed., English Court (;ulture in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1983). 60 A. De BenedIctis, "Quale 'corte' per quale 'signoria'? A proposito di organizzazione e immagine del potere durante la preminenza di Giovanni II Bentivoglio," in Basile, ed. (n. 14 above), pp. 24-31. 61 Lippincott {no 9 above), p. 427. 62 Lamer (n. l6 above), pp. 678-79. The quotation is from P. Moraw, "The Court of the German Kings and of the Emperor at the End of the Middle Ages, 1440 - 1519," in Asch and Birke, eds. (n. 1 above), pp. 129-30. 63 For the debate concerning the division between the cultures, see J. Guy, reVIew of The English Court, edited by D. Starkey et aI., English Histoncal Review 105 (1990): 1020; and J. Adamson, review of Cnticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I, by K. Sharpe, English Historical Review 105 (1990): 132-33:, J. C. Robertson, "Caroline Culture: Bridging Court and Country')" History 75 (1990): 388-416. On the eclectic nature of court culture, see C. Hibbard, review of Courl Culture and the Origins of the Royalist Tradition In Early Stuart England, by R. M. Smuts, English Historical Review 104 (1989): 419. The quoted material is from Guy.

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ponders Elton, "endowed life at court with a degree of coldly distant order that did not exist?,,64 Elton's exemplification of informal behavior by and in the presence of sixteenth-century monarchs is mirrored by Lamer's expressed wish for more discussion of the efficacity of court rituals, given that, "if all that we are told about ritual be true," some kings should not have met the brutal deaths they did. 65 "The language and tone of many discussions of royal imagery," argues Anglo, "are too elevated and tendentious. They assume the very things that ought to be proved": "A good deal of attention has been directed to how and why symbolism functions: but none whatever has been paid to its limitations and failures. ,,66 Such doubt sits uneasily with Italian cultural historians' certainty that, in the sixteenth century if not before, the court was the generator of exportable models of behavior, the source and promulgator of new manners among and beyond the aristocracy. These two views have yet to receive any sort of resolution. Insofar as these four elements supported the differentiation of the princely court from the aristocratic household and the assertion of sovereign majesty, in Italy the situation remains unclear, especially because the aristocratic household has yet to receive much attention, and also because the Italian princes had no full sovereignty to assert. 67

III In English historiography of the sixteenth century, the relation between court and state is one of the most aggressively contested: at stake is the Eltonian "Tudor revolution in government," which allegedly transferred government from the undifferentiated royal household of the later Middle Ages to a national bureaucracy of ministers and secretaries under the Privy Council, with new institutions of finance and authorization replacing older, more personal forms of household control. This confrontation is so consuming that Starkey's The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War is in fact a history only of one of the departments of the household, allowing him to argue for the continuing vitality of personal government into the seventeenth century.68 Nothing like this debate exists in Italian historiography of the court, partly because the process of bureaucratization is generally seen more as a long-term evolution, partly because the Renaissance principalities did not Elton, "Tudor Government" (n. 32 above), pp. 218-21. Lamer, pp. 679-81. 66 S. Anglo, Images of Tudor Klngship (London, 1992), pp. 1-4. 67 See, however, on anstocrahc households, some of the contributions in Mozzarelli, ed. (n. 3 above). 68 See G. R. Elton's review of The English Court, edited by D. Starkey et aI., Hlstorical Journal 31 (1988): 425-34. 64

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receive the sanle legacy from the medieval past. Indeed in Italy the process of transfer from in-court to out-of-court rnay well have operated in reverse, as the urban lordships dismantled communal structures of government and drew to themselves the commune's fiscal and legislative powers, even to the point, as in late fifteenth-century Ferrara, of moving into the court the meeting place of the surviving communal council. 69 T'he Italian debate, insofar as it exists, revolves more mutedly around the ragged border between court and state and around the general direction of development. How much of the state is it admissible to include in the court? At Sforza Milan as at Sforza Pesaro, the most important offices of government (financial and secretarial) were located in the prince's palace, and the officials of this central administration participated in some of the court's activities or were closely connected to the prince's familia. 7o However, it seerns that both provincial and surviving communal adnlinistrations were not part of this world, and we must recognize, as Guy has said, that "the government extended far beyond the court.,,71 As regards the direction of long-term development, Tenenti has asserted that the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century sees the transition from complete confusion of court and state to their almost complete separation. 72 l'hough this model has been challenged for France by Boucher, who argues for the continuing identification (not confusion) of court and state into the late sixteenth century, Italian treatises on courtly life do seem to confirm it. 73 For whereas in the late fourteenth century Giovanni Conversini could claim that courtiers properly so-called were those prudent and experienced men in vvhom the prince entrusted public affairs, as opposed to the noisy fortune seekers hanging around the palace, in the seventeenth century Lorenzo Ducci argued that those who serve the prince in his public capacity and in public affairs are not called courtiers, as this term is reserved for those who serve him privately, in his familia. 741fhe claim, then, is that the early modem ruler allocated functions more appropriately to specialists rather than indiscriminately to familiares: it is certainly true that those closest to the late medieval lord seem to have performed multiple functions, as ambassadors,

69 T. Dean, "Commune and Despot: The Commune of Ferrara under Este Rule, 1300-1450," in Dean and Wickham, eds. (n. 20 above), p. 188. 70 S. Eiche, "Towards a Study of the 'Famiglia' of the Sforza Court at Pesaro," Renaissance and Reformation 9 (1985): 82-83; Lubkin, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza" (n. 20 above), pp. 77 -78. 71 Guy, p. 1020. 72 Tenenti, "lLa corte nella storia dell' Europa modema" (n. 8 above), pp. xiii-XIV. 73 Boucher (n. 3 above). 74 Conversinl da Ravenna (n. 5 above), p. 45; P. Plssavlno, "11 De OffiCIlS del Della Casa e alcuni raffronti metodologiCl," In Mozzarelli, ed., pp. 52-53.

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governors, and military commanders, but even thirteenth-century lords had their specialists (e.g., lawyers), while the actual extent of later "rationalization" still remains unclear.

IV Finally, the court needs to be placed in relation to networks of patronage and clientage. It has been argued that the presence of patronage and favoritism, the dominance of famil y connections, and the prince's personal relations over specialist skills and official hierarchies denote a prebureaucratic and premodern political system. 75 Similarly, Kettering, whose work is based on seventeenthcentury France, has claimed that patron-client relationships are characteristic of incompletely centralized states, as they provide weak governments with the necessary links between center and periphery.76 Conversely, an important transition toward modern political order is made when patronage is centralized in the court and when local and regional patronage networks are subordinated to that of the prince (as Papagno has shown for sixteenth-century Portugal).77 Though it has also been argued-for the Burgundian Netherlands, for example-that territorIal agglomeration and centralization, with their matching bureaucratic expansion, so pressed and injured vested interests at the local and regional level as to spread the need for mediating systems of brokerage and corruption, to which the prince readily acceded, but which undermined bureaucratIc procedures and values. 78 As far as Italy is concerned, we simply know too lIttle about patronage networks in the principalities to begin to perceive any general trends, but the same is also largely true of Burgundy.79 How far is it true for Italy, as it seems to be for England, that the late medieval royal practice of creating affinities in the shires, as an underpinning for the court, continued into the sixteenth century, only to be abandoned with fatal consequences for the crown in the seventeenth?80 So far Italian historians have explored patronage mainly as a system of gift exchange, noting typologically the functions of gift giving, and the results when rulers departed Moraw (n. 62 above), p. 114. S. KetterIng, Patrons, Brokers and Clzents In Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986). 77 G Papagno, ""La Vlrtuosa bemfeltona," In Mozzarelh, ed. (n 3 above), pp. 181--211, and "Corte e cortigIanl" (n. 7 above) 78 W. Blockmans, "Patronage, Brokerage and CorruptIon In Symptoms of InCIpIent State Formation In the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands," In Klzentelsysteme im Europa der Fruhen Neuzelt, ed. A. Maczak (MunIch, 1988), pp. 123-25. 79 Paravicini (n. 25 above), p. 73. 80 See C Glven-WIlson, The Royal Household and the King's Affinity. Service, Politics and Finance, 1360-1413 (New Haven, Conn., 1986); Starkey, "IntroductIon" (n. 11 above), pp 22-23 75

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from the "rules of the game" and failed to reward. 81 What is lacking is any detailed and specific examination of the connections among resources, politics, and factions, as has long been present in the historiography of late medieval and t~arly modem England.

v How far, and how successfully, has Italian historiography of the court addressed the problems of the transition from medieval to modem? It is clear that in almost all directions much more searching questions need to be posed and more intensively researched answers provided. Above all, we should not assume that certain "modern" features were present in the seventeenth century and absent in the thirteenth: from the curialization of the nobility and the bureaucratization of the state to the sacralization of the ruler and the centralization of patronage, the passage from medieval to modem was not always a straightforward or linear one. For some, if not all, of these "modem" features, what vIe have in the age of principalities is not their origin but merely their princely reincarnation.

81 On patronage as gift exchange, see Pissavino, p.56; Papagno, "La Virtuosa bemfeitoria," pp. 183-84, and "Corte e cortigiani," pp. 203-4,208-9,212; Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court" (n. 19 above). On the functions of gift giving, see M. Fantoni, "Feticci di prestigio: 11 dono alIa corte medicea," in Bertelli and Cnfo, eds. (n. 44 above), pp. 141-61. And on the failure of rulers to reward, see RomanI (n. 8 above).

Church, Religion, and State in the Early Modem Period* Roberto Bizzocchi Unlversity of Udine

A distinguished Italian medievalist recently congratulated me on an academic promotion that resulted in my leaving the Scuola Normale of Pisa. He said, partly in jest, that I could now escape the nefarious influence of that den of free thinkers. Perhaps he was remembering different times. Since events in Italy and the world in general signal the end of the secular model of the modem state, he asserted, we should all seek our security in the absolute truth offered by the church, whose history is not measured by the petty course of a few short centuries. When I objected that the atrocities committed every day in the name of religious belief are plain for all to see, he reminded me that the history of the formation of the state was also marked by tragedy. I prefer to keep my original opinion. And I relate this episode to remind our foreign guests and friends about the passion with which even the best Italian historians studied church-state relations until thirty years ago. Not too long ago another Italian historian, animated by ideas diametrically opposed to the ones I mentioned above, devoted an entire chapter of one of his books to a meticulous inventory of daily processions in Baroque Rome. His conclusion: there were too many. British historian Denys Hay's harsh indictment, in a pioneering synthesis of fifteenth-century Italian ecclesiastical history, cannot be easily dismissed. Confessional culture, he noted, largely monopolized the history of the church as an institution; secular historians instead looked exclusively at the intellectual history that has challenged that institution. 1 One objection to this view is that there are many exceptions-for example, Federico Chabod's Important and excellent essay on religious life in the state of Milan, which also counts as a masterpiece of church institutional history. Another objection is that little else could be expected from historiography in Machiavelli's country during the first hundred years after the unification of Italy and the end of the papacy's temporal power. More important, the

* ThIS artIcle ongInally appeared as "Chiesa, rehgione, Stato agh InIZI dell' eta modema," In Orzglnl dello Stato: ProceSSl di formaZlone statale In Itaha Ira medloevo ed eta moderna, ed. GIorgIO Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and PIerangelo Schiera, Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico, vol. 39 (Bologna: II Mulino, 1994). Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Barbara Dooley. 1 Denys Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambndge, 1977). ThIS essay ongmally appeared m the Journal of Modern History 67, suppl (December 1995)

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situation has changed considerably over the past twenty years, both among mature Italian historians and among those at the beginning of their careers. Gene Brucker and Melissa Bullard have noted this change in their accurate and well-infonned comments presented at the conference "The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600." Adriano Prosperi, in his recent edition of Cantimori's work on heretics published by I~inaudi, has redirected attention toward the continuing validity of our great tradition of religious historiography. Scholars in Italy and elsewhere conltinue to follow that great tradition. Indeed, religious historians demonstrate more and more often hOVJ the history of the church can combine themes concentling religious life and it s conflicts with themes concerning even the most repressive institutional aspects of the church. In his recent synthesis concerning the Inquisition in Italy in the volume Clero e societa nell'[talia moderna, Prosperi prudently avoided the trap of ideological simplification. 2 He did not fail to recall the repressive character of the church, showing that among the people who had to submit to it were also confessors who exercised their own form of control over souls through absolution. But he gave a more conlplex analysis of the fundamental role of the Inquisition in the organization and government of Italian society. Citing the case, previously mentioned by M. 1. Piozza Donati, of a Modenese peasant tried in 1598 for blasphemy but denounced by his wife for violent behavior, Prosperi demonstrated the Inquisition's indirect and subtle wayof moving from a lively prelinlinary battle over doctrine to a far-reaching effort to control behavior. The ltalian Inquisition's desire to control was greater than its desire to persecute. i\nd Prosperi believes this explains why witch trials evinced moderation in Italy before they did in many Protestant countries. In the same volume, Gigliola Fragnito in her essay "Gli Ordini religiosi tra Riforma e Controriforma" recalled the importance of the regular clergy in the Italian church well before the end of the great episcopal and clericosecular movement inspired by the Council of Trent. She saw in the activity of the old and new orders not only the complex coexistence of ideas and religious sentiments that existed before doctrine became more clearly defined and restrictive but also an ability to interpret and give institutional form to religiosity in Italy, ranging from the refined demands for reform by the aristocratic Venetian Camaldolites to the missions of Christianization and assistance begun by Capuchins and Jesuits among the Italian rural populations during the sixteenth century. This is not the place, nor am I the person, to provide a deeper understanding

of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Italy. What I would like to 2 Adriano Prosperi, "L'inqulsizione in Italia," in Clero e Socleta nell 'Ita II a moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Rome and Bari, 1992).

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stress is that the Institutional history of the so-called confessional age has played, and still plays, a fundamental role in inspiring studies on the history of church and state in Italy. The motivation behind this approach and periodization have obviously been different from that prompting research on the heretical ongin of modem thought, and it may result in platitudes more apt to impovensh than to enrich historical discourse, just as in any study particularly concerned with institutional continuity. But that approach helped bring church history out of the confessional realm to which it had been relegated and made a vital contribution to studies on the dynamics of the state. Paolo Prodi's II sovrano pontefice not only reexamined the papacy and the Roman curia but even gave them a central position in the history of early modern Italy-this after they had long been mentioned by Italian historians only in condemnation. 3 The papacy's mid-fifteenth-century decision to adopt a policy of cooperation with the Italian states in order to overcome the conciliar crisis is a useful starting point for understanding the long-term processes-fraught with conflicts but always Interrelated and interdependent-of the formation of the state and the church. The church becomes increasingly more like a state, and the state becomes more and more involved with the religious sphere. So the papal state, the bete noire of the secular historiography of the Risorgimento, becomes the model par excellence of the formation of the modem state, since its dual nature makes it better equipped to face the difficulties of competing jurisdictions. Opposition to this particular aspect of Prodi's research has been expressed, for example, by Irene Polverini Fosi in her La societa violenta, and I am not so sure this can be easily dismissed. 4 But by inviting scholars to study institutions in the confessional age from two standpoints, Ii sovrano pontefice marked a fundamental turning point. The Italian solution to the conciliar crisis and the religious rift, consisting of actual cooperation between Rome and the Italian governments in the administration of churches, with representatives from the elites of the secular governments in the Roman curia, suggests a constant link between ecclesiastical and even religious history, on the one hand, and, on the other, politics and the state. This solution should also suggest a history of the formation of the state in which the church and religion are not viewed merely as annoying obstacles. A proper use of Prodi's approach for studying the state might be to utilize some of the recent work that has been done in the old tradition of 3 Paolo Prodl, Il sovrano pontejice. Un corpo e due anime: La monarchla papale nella prima eta moderna (Bologna, 1982). 4 Irene Polvennl Fosl, La SOCleta vlolenta: II banditismo della Stato pontljiclo nella seconda meta del Clnquecento (Rome, 1985).

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ecclesiastical-religious studies, which j s methodologically innovative but not concerned with state formation. Since there are no Italian historians here representing this school of research, one might be led to believe that they or their publications are few and lacking Jln influence. In fact, their publications, although very fragmentary and uneven in quality, represent a majority of current work and are often very good, sometimes even excellent. A few years ago some irritated reactions to my book on fifteenth-century Tuscany forced me to reexamine its bibliography. 5 The reasons for the irritation soon became obvious to me. I had included numerous old French and German works as well as more recent ones in English, but almost no Italian works on eccle'siastical history. There was nothing on the activity of the Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, on the work of my very active colleagues in the Venetian Terraferma, on the indefatigable activity of the specialists of the mendicant orders, on the often isolated but sometimes remarkable studies of ecclesiastical institutions in southern Italy. But I was not alone in my neglect. Indeed, the themes of this voluminous work on the ecclesiastical history of the late Middle Ages and early modem period do not form a major part of the one thousand or more pages of volume 9 of the Einaudi Annali of the Storia d'Italia. the most ambitious Italian effort to date to provide a synthetic account of the relation between church and state. 6 This absence, partial in the Annali volume and total in my monograph, is easily explained. Projects conceived with very precise ideas in mind suggest very personal criteria for selecting mal erial. Studies adopting an institutional point of view and examining the relation between jurisdictional theory and policy do not necessarily call for finding evidence and terms of comparison where there are none. However, the two recent volumes of the latest conference of the Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia show a considerable willingness to adopt a comprehensive vision;7 and many excellent ideas for developing and enriching the discussion on state and church have come from the abundant crop of studies on ecclesiastical subjects concerned with local life and with the widespread presence of the church in secular society. These studies remind us that even in the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the age of religious "decadence," there was more to the church than

5 Roberto Bizzocchl, Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Bologna, 1987). 6 Giorgio Chltlohni and GiovannI Miccoh, eds., La chiesa e II potere politico dal medioevo all'eta contemporanea (Turin, 1986). 7 G. De Sandre Gasparini et aI., eds., Vescovi e diocesi In Italia dal XIValla meta del XVI secolo (Ftome, 1990).

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culture and patronage, high politics, and curial diplomacy. Without mentioning any titles here (see my essay in Clero e societa nell'Italia moderna for a detailed bibliography), let me point out that valuable information is now available on such subjects as the endurance of the secular clergy due to priestly corporativism, the numerous positive consequences of the revival of the regular clergy in the fifteenth century, the mendicants' success in penetrating southern rural areas, preaching as a way of transmitting models of behavior, confraternities as places for cultivating spiritual life and organizing social services, monti di pieta as reinforcements for the economy and for popular morality, the partial reorganization of ecclesiastical property and the relation of the latter to secular property, the various forms of the benefice system across the peninsula, synods and pastoral work even before the Council of Trent, the employment of local pastors and their cultural identification with the communities in which they operated. I hope this partial list at least suffices to demonstrate the importance of these themes. The foundations for the shared role of state and church in creating the modem state and church lie in local events. These events allow us to understand history in a way that a one-sided approach cannot. They also show us that the church's presence in secular society was not only important but, indeed, fundamental, and consequently that its worldliness was not abnormal. It is very useful to follow the innumerable channels through which the ecclesiastical presence penetrated secular society. If this link between ecclesiastical and secular society is kept in mind as the background for a more political approach, a clearer understanding is possible of the meaning of the interplay between secular power and ecclesiastical structure that was so important in Italy, particularly in the age of the communes. A German historian writing about Kleriker als Burger might be expected to examine the effort of the cities to bring under their jurisdiction the ecclesiastical aristocracy that drew its power from outside the urban environment. This was not absent in Italy; the jurisdictional dispute, so passionately described by Salvemini, was an important part of the Italian political history of the late Middle Ages. But the Italian side of this jurisdictional dispute was particularly characterized by a wide range of common interests as well as shared protagonists linking the political world to that of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Consider, for instance, Mauro Ronzani's research on bishops, chapters, works departments of cathedrals, and urban religiosity in northern and central Italy as well as the research of Bruno Ruggiero and others on the south, where the situation is complicated by the relations among ruling dynasties, baronage, and urban corporativisms. Research on the formation of the modem state in Italy, when it considers the problem of relations with the church, can be built upon the solid foundations of other fields and borrow promising points of departure from those fields to

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combine an analysis of the regulations and the institutional separation of powers with an analysis of a particular configuration of social and political relations. This is not the place to introduce complex matters of method. For the purposes of 1this debate, my remarks regard ecclesiastical immunity as well as every form of power limiting the absolute sovereignty of the state. The logic of absolute sovereignty is not to be underestimated, especially considering the importance of its theoretical elaboration and its role in the development of the bureaucratic bodies of the state. 8 And indeed, this logic can be identified in the course of history. Nevertheless, historically it cannot be separated from the exercise of a po\\'er determined by social conditions and political relations. These determinants call for great flexibility in adapting to different contexts our model of the fOffilation of the state. Otherwise the model runs the risk of following too closely the nineteenth-century juridical model of the state, namely, of a power regulating society from the outside. The following are three cases in point drawn from my research. They are presented at first in the mlost abstract form poss ible and then fleshed out by historical examples. In the first case, two candidates are competing for the same ecclesiastical benefice. The government of the Italian state in which the territory of the benefice is situated supports the curialist candidate backed by the pope rather than the local candidate chosen by the bishop. The fact is that the curialist is in reality more deeply involved with the local power than his adversary. In the second case, the lay inhabitants of the contado of a subject city in an Italian territorial state complain to the central government that the lay inhabitants of the city have taken to suing them on secular matters before the city's episcopal tribunal rather than before the competent civil tribunal, which is not based in the city but in the region surrounding the city. The central government is divided on what to do. In my opinion, those citizens turn to the episcopal tribunal not so much because it is an ecclesiastical tribunal as because it is an aristocratic and municipal one. In deliberating on this, the central governrnent is concerned less about the jurisdictional choices than about the appropriate kinds of intervention in the relation between city and contado. In the third case, the members of the ruling class of an Italian state discuss the problem of what to do about excessive alienation of lay property to the church for ecclesiastical benefices to avoid taxes. In spite of some firm resolutions to stop the abuse, nothing will be done about it because among 8 ThIS centralIty and Importance have been effectively studIed by G. ChIttolIni ("Stat! padanI, 'Stato del RinascImento' problemI di ncerca," in Perslstenze feudali e autonomie comunltatlve In stati padanlfra Cinque e Settecento, ed. G. Tocci [Bologna, 1988], pp. 9-29).

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those present are some of the worst offenders, as one of them points out. This story suggests that state taxation of ecclesiastical property was not an abstract and neutral practice of an institutional prerogative, and it was not separable from the political choice that the members of the political aristocracy made concerning the sharing of the fiscal burden. Those in Italy who most belligerently oppose the use of the concept of the modem state generally ground their opposition in a critique of the notion of centralization that it embodies. Indeed, the -actual weakness of so-called absolute sovereignty is clearly borne out by the case of Fontanabuona in Liguria, about which Osvaldo Raggio has written an excellent book. 9 Compared to the logic of factIons and local interests, the state indeed appears far away and its bureaucracy appears impotent. But this new point of view is not completely satisfactory. Certainly, obstacles and resistance existed and should be mentioned. But if these are the terms of the problem, then we should immediately recognize that the modem state is still far from being realized in Italy, even if Liguria is not the first region that comes to mind in this regard. I advocate concentrating on the social and political actions of the state in dealing with clienteles, kinships, noble aristocracies, and the church, not so much to study the more or less illegal resistance of these groups to the state as to analyze their influence on the state's own jurisdictional activity. Measuring the strength or weakness of the state against external resistance can be misleading; it is not possible to compare the strength of things that are distinct only in theory. 10 The three examples previously mentioned are simply clues to the complicated interaction at the beginning of the confessional age between the secular world and the ecclesiastical world, local reality and Roman curia. Italian scholars of the history of the church, although motivated by different goals than ours, give many vivid examples of this interaction. They thus provide us with infinite opportunities to verify and confirm the validity of Prodi's model, conceived by examining the situation not at the base but at the center and at the apex. After the failure of conciliarism in the middle of the fifteenth century, the Interaction between the Italian states and the papacy led both sides to resolve their differences and conflicts in the area of jurisdictional competence, not by rigidifying their respective positions but by employing negotiation at a political level. The papacy's influence in the collation of ecclesiastical benefices and in the administration of justice was guaranteed, and not only in 9 Osvaldo RaggIo, Fazde e parentele: Lo stato genovese visto dalla Fontanabuona (Turin, 1990). 10 For a more In-depth analysIs, see my "Stato e/o potere: Una lettera a Giorgio Chittohnl," Sczenza e politica 3 (1990): 55-64.

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cases dealing \\'ith spiritual matters. ()n the other hand, the secular governments' involvernent in the offices and tribunals of the curia allowed them to share in and influence this authority. Taxes were imposed on the clergy of the various regions according to a procedure more and more often decided in concert by the church and the various states. The political role of the church's own state in Italy, in spite of the clashes caused by its growing importance, was a decisive element in the development of diplomatic approaches to managing the sacred sphere. 11 There is no reason to minimize the importance of conflicts over religious and ecclesiastical matters in the history of the modern state in Italy, as Fragnito pointed out in our conference. But the idea of interaction between state and church implies recognizing that the shared management of common interests increases conflicts. It seems to me that the problem is to grasp the political dimension of even the most picturesque cases of jurisdictional conflict, as Gaetano Cozzi did in his studies on Sarpi and the Interdict. 12 Asked to nalne one fault of the handsome volume 9 of the Annali mentioned above, one would have to reply that its mainly normative approach yields an excessively theoretical and institutional image of the state-church conflict. The volume does not give enough space to the innumerable and inconclusive controversies and negotiations that constitute the history of religious and ecclesiastical politics in Italy during the confessional age. The reason for this defect of the volume is its neglect for canon law, which was nonetheless a fundamental element of the church as an institution, and the main tool, utilized by jurists on both sides, in the political management of the many cases generated by the existence of two separate institutions. Historians should also study canon law as the rnediator, in actual political and social situations, of the institutional diversification established in the eleventh century between state and church. In a culture imbued with law, power struggles immediately assume juridical form (in this case, obviously, jurisdictional). But the prenormative law known to the meticulous jurists of the time, consisting of endless sources to interpret, was both elegant and arbitrary, creative and inconclusive. Technically it lent itself to every solution; it made cleric or lay status a flexible condition, and it regarded the very idea of immunity as a matter of interpretation. It did not emphasize institutional differences, but worked around thenl; it gave to a composite power the opportunity to play the same game at two different tables and with different rules. 11 Along these lines, see the proceedings of the seminar: P. Prodi and P. Johanek, eds., Strutture ecclesiastiche in [talia e in Germania przma della Riforma (Bologna, 1984). 12 Gaetano Cozzi, Paolo Sarpl tra Venezia e l'Europa (Turin, 1979).

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I am aware of the necessity to avoid oversimplification. Our job as historians is to give accurate account of changes in space and time, starting from the great process of transformation of justice and tribunals that occurred in the modem period, and about which the jurists have taught us much at this seminar. Italy is a large place, and two centuries are very long for anyone who does not measure time in biblical terms. During the confessional age the grand duchy of Tuscany practically became the quintessence and symbol of the agreement between state and church. A recent authoritative history of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany took as its premise the fervent conviction that a modem state failed to emerge in Tuscany because of the common interests of Florence and Rome and the compromise solution eventually reached. 13 This notion self-consciously recalls the reactions of the Lorraine officials who arrived in Florence toward the middle of the eighteenth century, in a much changed political and social context. Scandalized by the Gordian knot they observed uniting state and church, they saw "cutting it" as the only possible solution. Elena Fasano has provided many kinds of convincing evidence from many points of view of how the Medicean state managed to strengthen itself also by controlling and relying on the consensus of its clientes (also in this issue). On the other hand, I do not entirely agree with the simple reversal of the Lorraine thesis proposed at a major recent Tuscan conference (La Toscana nell'eta di Cosimo III, ed. F. Angiolini, V. Becagli, and M. Verga [Florence, 1993]), where the grand duchy in the time of Cosimo III was held up as a model of European absolutism. The rehabilitation of Cosimo III and the rest of the Medici on the basis of their contribution to the formation of a modem and secular state is not an easy task. I would pose the problem in different, nonjurisdictional terms. Under Cosimo III the first efforts were made toward more adequate taxation of large ecclesiastical estates. In light of these efforts, there would be little point in trying to determine whether the state had more or less jurisdictional strength in its relation with the church. After a deep shift toward agriculture in the Tuscan economy, an unbalanced fiscal policy leaning toward indirect taxes that benefited large estates could no longer be sustained. In Tuscany these great estates, whether they belonged to the church or to laypeople, were actually in the hands of an aristocracy, because of the two-century-old association of the civil elites with

the ecclesiastical hierarchies. 14 While the Florentine financial elite had maintained ties with the Apostolic Chamber since the thirteenth century, the case of Milan was quite different. FUrIO DIaz, II Granducato di Toscana: I Medici (TUrIn, 1976). See my essay, "Politica fiscale e Immunlta ecclesiastica nella Toscana medlcea fra Repubbhca e Granducato (secoh XV-XVIII)," In Fisco, relzglone e Stato nell'eta confesslonale, ed. H. Kellenbenz and P. Prodl (Bologna, 1989), pp. 355-85. 13

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Rome and Milan were, in fact, less interdependent, which meant greater jurisdictional latitude for the latter. Nevertheless, the complete results of the research coordinated by Giorgio Chittolini, aimed at eventually publishing a Lombardia sacra, are now available. 15 This volume shows that around the middle of the fifteenth century even the Sforza, whose involvement with Rome was quite different from that of the Medici, had to work with the ecclesiastical authority. The essays by Michele Ansani on the distribution of benefices and by Gianluca Battioni on the diocese of Parma show, from two different points of view, that the Sfor2,a used their office of vacant benefices not to provide a jurisdictional barrier against Roman intervention so much as to provide an ecclesiastical instrument of control against any move toward autonomy among the minor Lombard cities. Sforza leverage came from having early designated a diplomatic rnediator with the curia, a position that was later reinforced by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, studied by Marco Pellegrini. The weakening of the Milanese position in the last period of the already vacillating Sforza state is a sign of the political importance of negotiations in jurisdictional affairs, as Paola Oldrini has shown. Recent research by Flavio Rurale on the Jesuits seems to confirm the relation between jurisdictionalism and politics in Habsburg Milan. He has shown the forces at play in those events and examined the state/church dialectic by analyzing the interests and the aims of the governor, the urban patriciate, Carlo Borromeo, the clergy.. and the Milanese people. 16 Any conclusions on the situation of Venice should be postponed until after the publication of Giuseppe Del Torre's book on the Venetian church and the republic between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. This should explain what happened at the crucial moment of the confessional period in the state, which had been independent from Rome since the Middle Ages and was to remain so throughout the modem period. Del Torre's contribution to the volume Fisco, religione e Stato nell'eta confessionale shows that even in the case of Venice ecclesiastical policy should be understood in the context of relations between the patriciate and the church, and should be reconstructed keeping in mind how jurisdictionalisrn interacted with the consequences of Terraferma expansion and with the creation of a territorial state. Even in the midst of the modem period, Venice's pronounced attitude of independence from Rome could be modified in the light of political policy. This is shown in 15 G. Chittolini, ed., Gli Sforza, Ia Chiesa Iombarda, Ia corte di Roma: Strutture e pratiche beneficiarie nel ducato di Milano (1450-1535) (Naples, 1989). 16 Flavio Rurale, I Gesuiti a Milano: Religione e politica nel secondo Clnquecento (Rome, 1992). The same author has produced a useful survey, with a long bibliography, "Stato e Chiesa nell'Italia spagnola," in L'Italia degli Austrias: Monarchia cattolica e domini italiani nei secolz XVI e XVII, ed. G. Signorotto, In Cheiron 17-18 (1992): 357-80.

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two remarkable recent studies, one by Gianvittorio Signorotto on the reasons for the return of the Jesuits in the middle of the seventeenth century, the other by Andrea Del Colon Venice's control over and participation in the activities of the Inquisition. 17 I can only agree with those who complain about the lack of national historical syntheses for the south of Italy. But I expect that the revision by nonecclesiastical historians of the thesis about two separate Italies will end up widening the application of the confessional model of state and church, something that so far has been done for northern and central Italy. In the previously mentioned volume of the Annali, the south of Italy is relegated to a separate essay (written by expert Mario Rosa) obviously unconnected to the comprehensive structure of the work. And whenever the issue of the relation between church and state is discussed only in the context of the Kingdom of Naples, this sort of subordinate treatment helps to reinforce the image of the south as a conquered land exploited by the great protagonists of the development of church-state diplomacy, namely, the cardinals and curial lawyers, who are also representatives of the governing elites. It is true, as Aurelio Musi reminds us in his contribution to Fisco, religione e Stato, that the Kingdom was the most heavily taxed by Rome. Perhaps the question to be asked is to what extent fiscal exactions, especially in the form of ecclesiastical pensions, particularly important in the south, were part of a sort of exchange in the process of negotiation between the local power elites and the world of the curia. Certainly, the main characteristic of the south is that a large portion of such elites, indeed, that portion whose liquid assets made such interaction more probably profitable, often had roots outside the Kingdom. But I think this question has less to do with church-state relations than with the role of a largely imported financial elite in stimulating or retarding the development of southern economic life-indeed, a question that has been debated by Mario Del Treppo and Giuseppe Galasso. Studies of the Italian ecclesiastical situation at the beginning of the modern period confirm the view somewhat ruefully suggested by Chittolini in a synthesis included in the Annali volume. In Germany, he pointed out, the sense of remoteness and distance from Rome, sometimes greater in appearance than in fact, reinforced the doctrinal reasons for the separation. In France and Spain, and in different ways in England, the presence of national monarchies promoted the formation of state churches. In Italy all the political premises necessary for a church-state to emerge from the religious crisis and influence the destiny of the Italian states were present. 17 Gianvlttono Signorotto, "VeneZIa e il ritomo dei Gesuitt (1606-1657)," Rlvlsta di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 28 (1992): 277-317; Andrea Del Col, "L'Inquisizione romana e la repubbhca di Venezia," Critica Storica 28 (1991): 189-250.

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This is the tirne to discuss the role of the Council of Trent, a great landmark in the developm ent described in this paper. Extraneous to this discussion is the work currently being done on the enforcement of the council in this or that diocese. More to the point are studies considering the novelties introduced by the Council of Trent into the one-hundred-year-old context of ecclesiastical politics. Gaetano Greco, for instance, apart from his work on one specific case,18 has also adopted a more general approach in his contributions to the Einaudi and Laterza volumes. For the south of Italy, Maurilio Guasco has followed this approach in his study of seminaries for the Annali volume, and still others have confirmed it. 19 Greco has devoted considerable attention to the fact that in Italy, church refornl, carried out with varying rapidity, coexisted and conflicted with the institutions and forms of life of secular society. The case of the lay jus patronati on benefices is typical. In fact, they were regulated 1to avoid abuses but they did not lose their patrimonial function for noble younger sons whose familles practiced primogeniture more and more frequently. In her essay for the /\nnali, Gabriella Zarri has studied this function over a long period of time in connection with nuns and has shown great understanding of the coexistence of religious and social motivations. I believe that the solid political and institutional basis of such studies helps to prevent the risk of oversimplification when the perspective broadens to include the dinlension of general history. John Bossy's book, which crams three centuries of Catholic and Protes tant history into two hundred pages, is brilliantly provocative although highly debatable.2° In Italy, some of the objections have been expressed in Quaderni Storiei. 21 Particularly controversial was Bossy s dismissal of heresy as "a footnote on the page of history." Beyond these debates, his book offers a stimulating suggestion about combining the institutional history of orthodoxy and social anthropology. There are already studies in Italy that treat the history of the post-Tridentine church as social history by using institutional data. Daniele Montanari, in his work on the diocese of Brescia in the second half of the sixteenth century, measures the actions of Bishop Bollanl not only by the traditional yardstick of reform of the clergy and ecclesiastical structures but also by taking into account the increased presence of the church as an institution in the general disciplining of religion and society.22 The action of the state as an institution has a prominent place in his analysis, represented by the support given by the 'I

Gaetano Greco, La parrocchia a Pisa nell'eta moderna (Pisa, 1984). G. De Rosa and A. Cestaro, eds., I/ Cancillo dl Trento nella vita spirituale e culturale del Mezzoglorno, 2 vols. (Venosa, 1988). 20 John Bossy, Chnstianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985), p. 113. 21 Quaderni Stonci, vol. 66 (1987). 22 Daniele Montanari, Disciplznamento in terra veneta: La diocesi di Brescia nella seconda meta del XVI secolo (Bologna, 1987). ]8

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RepublIc of Venice to a member of its patriciate actIng as a bishop of a subject city. An important recent book by Miriam Turrini applies the model of confessionalization to a problem rather than to a situation. By studying texts containing lists of moral cases and manuals for penitents and confessors published in Italy from the middle of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century, she has shown how the strengthening of secular power through laws and judges reinforced conscience and how Catholic morality contributed to the power of the state by regulating thoughts and behavior. 23 Before concluding, let me mention one last point even more directly linked to the social anthropology of power: namely, the cultural context of consensus. Naturally, my remarks here cannot do justice to this topic. Other participants in this seminar, especially Marcello Fantoni, have devoted their attention to thIS; nevertheless, it cannot be excluded from the section on state, church, and religion. The success of state absolutism cannot be explained only by the use of strength and the acquisition of instruments of dominion. Prodi's recent book on oaths raises numerous issues even more controversial than our erudite discussions, and his judicious suggestions may take some tIme to be fully absorbed and utilized.24 I believe his comprehensive reconstruction of a Western conscience diametrically opposed to the "virtuous atheism" of Spinoza and Pierre Bayle emerges from a lifelong conviction informing all his research. Technically speaking, what Prodi does is to tackle unhesitatingly the theme of the relation between the sacred sphere and power over a long period of time, showing a strong preference for the institutional and juridical side of the problem and including a reexamination of Kantorowicz from an unusual point of view. Those who study the sacredness of power will have to deal with Prodi's encouragement to apply Marc Bloch's lesson on the study of political mentalities to the Institutional sphere. Let me end on a personal note related to these themes. I have recently been working on a study of the meaning of genealogical historiography. If the foundations of legitimation are to be found in history and not only in the law, this work may well bear upon the power of the culture of legitimation. In 1592 a Belgian monk named Arnold Wion printed in Rome a history of the Benedictine order entitled Lignum vitae. In it he describes how the Hapsburgs descended from Saint Benedict and, through him, from the gens Anicia, the main Roman family of the late empire. Texts like this, which also abound for the great Italian families, raise many questions unrelated to the present question of the formation of the state. But the metaphor of the genealogical 23 Miriam Tumru, La COSClenza e le leggl: Morale e dlntto nei testl per la confessione nella pnmn eta modema (Bologna, 1991). 24 Paolo Prodi, Il sacramento del potere' Il gluramento nella stona costltuzionale dell 'Occldente (Bologna, 1992).

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tree, both religious and familial, demonstrates that the sacred legitimation of power possessed a historical dimension. And on this subject much remains to be done.2 s

25 See my recent book, Genealogie lncredibih: Scntti di storia nell'Europa moderna (Bologna, 1995).

The Italian League and the Policy of the Balance of Power at the Accession of Lorenzo de' Medici * Riccardo Fubini University of Florence

First let me refer to F. Guicciardini's famous passage about Lorenzo il Magnifico as architect of the balance of power in Italian politics at the end of the fifteenth century, a commonplace of Renaissance historiography: "Knowing that it would be very dangerous both for himself and for the Florentine republic if one of the great powers increased its strength, he sought by every means to make sure that Italian affairs were balanced, in other words, that they did not incline in one way or another; and he could not do this without maintaining peace and ensuring that even the slightest accident should not occur. ,,1 Let us put aside the question of our own judgment about the role Guicciardini, the great sixteenth-century historian, assigned to his hero Lorenzo. What must be done now is to find out what truth the scholar of today might be able to extract from the old historiographical topos. And the main question is whether the political and diplomatic balance in Italy, of which Guicciardini and his contemporaries dreamed after it had already been lost, may be identified with the foundation of the Italian League, created with the Treaty of Lodi In January 1455. The issue is not a futile one. On the one hand, there is disagreement among historians concerning the meaning and effectiveness of the Italian League as well as concerning the responsibilities of the various members. On the other hand, there is consensus in establishing the formal temporal boundary of the league as the foreign invasions at the end of the fifteenth century. And yet, as

* ThIS artIcle onglnally appeared as "Lega itahca e 'pohtIca dell'equilibrio' all'avvento dl Lorenzo de' Medici al potere," in Origlnl dello Stato: Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed eta moderna, ed. GIorgIO Chlttolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera, Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico, vol. 39 (Bologna. II Mulino, 1994). Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Barbara Dooley I F. GUlcclardlni, Storza d'Italla, In Opere, ed. E. Scarano (Turin, 1981), 2:89: "Conoscendo che alIa repubbhca fiorentIna ease proprio sarebbe molto pencoloso se alcuno de'magglon potentatI amphasse PIU la sua potenza, procurava con ognl studio che Ie cose d'Itaha In modo b11anclato si manteneSSlno, che PIU in una che In un'altra parte non pendessino: 11 che senza la conservaZlone della pace e senza vegghiare con somma diligenza ognl accidente benche minima succedere non poteva." ThIS

e~say

ongIllally appeared

III

the Journal of Modern History 67,

~uppl

(December 1995)

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Vincent Ilardi "'Tote in 1959, "To date there is no monograph dealing with the entire period of the League, generally taken to include the forty years from 1454 to 1494." This is still true today, even taking into account the brief synthesis by G. Pillinini (based on a discussion of past contributions rather than on direct research)? We are concerned, then, with a problem that historiography has failed to evaluate adequately (except for some recent observations by N. Rubinstein) yet that is essential to an understanding of Lorenzo's political and diplomatic career from its very beginnings at his accession to power in 1469-70. 3 Let us consider the origins of the Italian League. To begin with, the league was not conceived by those involved in the Treaty of Lodi-Francesco Sforza and Venice, and later Florence4-but by Pope Nicholas V. In June 1451, and again in October 1453, he organized diplomatic encounters between the main Italian rulers in order to reach a peaceful agreement and create a league. Nicodemo Tranchedini, Francesco Sforza's envoy in Rome, wrote the following as early as November 4, 1450: "In fact, this whole court or the largest part of it desires that His J-1[oliness should intervene for a good universal peace and fears that Your Illustrious Highness and the Florentines and the Genoese, being desperate, might call the French or some other nation down into Italy, and that the fire will spread so much that no one will be able to put it out, especially no one around here.,,5 What pushed the pope in that direction was not the recent alliance of Florence and Milan but his adversaries, especially Alfonso of Aragon. Since his reconciliation with the papacy in 1443, the latter had assumed what his most recent biographer describes as "a cavalier attitude towards the very institution of the papacy." 6 This caused both parties to aSSUIne inflexible positions, causing the conflict of 1452-54. In 2 V. Ilardi, "The Italian League, Francesco Sforza, and Charles VIII," Studies in the Renaissance 6 (1959): 129-66, quote on 144~ G. Pillinini, II sistema degli Stati italiani (1454-1494) (Vt~nice, 1970). 3 N. Rubinstein, "Das politische System Itahens in der zweiten Halfte des 15. lahrhunderts," in "Bundnissysteme" und "Auf3enpolitik" im spateren Mittelalter, ed. P. Moraw (Berlin, 1988), pp. 105-19 (hereafter cited as "Das politische System Italiens"). He stresses the ability of the leghe particolan inside the lega generale to maintain the status quo ("nur dreier- und Zweierbundnisse realistische AUSSlcht," p. 110) and observes that in the peace of 1486, unlike the previous ones, "war von elner Emeuerung der Italienischen Liga nllcht mehr die Rede" (p. 116). 4 See P. Margaroh, Diplomazia e stati nnascimentall: Le ambascerie sJorzesche fino alla conclusione della Lega italica (1450-1455) (Florence, 1992), pp. 55-57. Also see my essay, "A.ppunti sui rapporti diplomatici fra tl Dominio sforzesco e Firenze medlcea," In Gli Sforza a Milano e In Lombardla e I loro rapporti con glz stati ztalzani ed europei (Milan, 1982), pp. 291- 334, esp. pp. 301 ff. (hereafter cited as "Appunti"). 5 Margaroli, [),plomazia e stati rinascilnentalz, p. 72. 6 A. Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King oj Aragon, Naples and Sicily, 1396-1458 (Oxford, 1990), p. 259.

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Florence, the faction led by Neri Capponi favored the league as part of its policy of maintaining good relations with Venice and loosening the bond between Florence and Milan. Cosimo and his supporters, on the other hand, opposed the pope's proposal "to form a general peace and league for the conservation of states.,,7 His refusal caused the expulsion of the Florentine merchants from Venice on June 1, 1451, followed by a similar measure in Naples. This turned the agreement between Florence and Milan into a formal alliance (July 27), and consequently Italy was divided into two blocks. These events were followed in 1453 by the Anjou expedition. 8 But the papacy's idea of being the promoter and partly the leader of a league limited to the Italian rulers may be traced to an earlier date. It was inherent in the issue of the popes' establishing (or reestablishing) control over the states of the church as a condition for the protection of their authority. Something similar had already happened in the fourteenth century at the time of the legates of the Avignon popes. The great leagues created to stand up to the "peregrine spade" (like the one of 1366) aimed to protect the pope's authority, although they had precisely the opposite effect. Florence and the Visconti in Milan joined together, united by their antiecclesiastical claims; the War of the Eight Saints broke out; and the return of the papacy to Rome caused the Great Schism. 9 But the more direct and true precedent of the Italian League can be found in the policy of Martin V of the Colonna family, elected by the Council of Constance, who finally resolved the schism. The council, which in virtue of the decree Frequens claimed superiority over the papacy in jurisdictional matters and called for periodic obligatory council meetings, forced the pope to realize that the most important issue was the reestablishment of the temporal power of the papacy and, inseparable from that, the reestablishment of diplomatic initiatives. 10 The most important problem was then Braccio da Montone. Much more than an unruly captain, he had been the founder of the "nobles' government" (governo dei nobili) in Perugia that supported the city's autonomy from Rome. He had strong bonds of friendship in the Florentine oligarchy and a connection with Alfonso of Aragon, pretender to the throne of the Kingdom of Naples. From the point of view of the papacy, this was a dangerous concentration of forces threatening its legitimate jurisdictional "Che SI facci una pace e lega generale a conservatlone delll statl." For the oppOSItion of Coslmo and his followers to the project of lega generale, see Fublni, "Appunti," p. 301. The pope's proposal appears in a letter of the Sforza's agent Jacobus (da Camenno) from Florence, June 11-14, 1451. 9 See P. Partner, "Florence and the Papacy, 1300-1375," In Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Hale, R. Highfield, and B. Smalley (London, 1965), pp. 76-121, esp. p. 109 10 See P. Partner, The Papal State under Martin V' The Administration and Government of the Temporal Power in the Early Fifteenth Century (London, 1958). 7

8

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claims. Pope ~v1artin's diplomatic scheme, which we are almost tempted to define as Ghibelline, was to appeal to the restored Visconti power in Milan and to mediate an alliance with Louis III of Anjou, Alfonso's rival, who had been recognized as the legitimate pretender since 1419. 11 "From the very beginning of his pontificate," P. Partner writes, "Martin V practiced a conciliatory policy towards Milan, facilitating the Milanese designs on Genoa, which led to the transfer of the city to the Visconti in 1422." 12 The war against Braccio assumed the form of a crusade, and the Italian rulers were invited to cooperate in the absence of imperial power. Thi51 is the text of the papal brief sent to the duke of Milan and to the other states of the peninsula: "Considerantes quod Romanum Imperium et alia regna atque dominia christianorum, a quibus Ecclesia in casibus gravioribus subventionem petere consuevit, aut suis propriis laboribus occupata aut nimis remota sunt, et nostra necessitas auxilio propinquo indigere noscatur, direximus oculos nostros ad te, quem inter alios principes christianos nobis et ipsi I~cclesiae fidelem atque devotum esse cognoscimus." 13 Although the framework is still uni versalistic-the iustijicatio non petita is in itself very significant-the papacy clearly seems to entrust its safety to a speCIfically Itallian scenario. And this safety seemed an accomplished fact after the great victory over Braccio in the battle of L' Aquila in June 1424. According to another brief, again sent to the duke of Milan, the goal of Italian peace seemed 10 have been reached: "Que (victoria) statim ducit ad pacem, in qua bellorum omnium finis est: quern pacis finem utilem et honestum non dubitamus, te pro tua bonitate et prudentia cogitare et propterea si placeret tibi ut nos interponeremus ad contractandum pacem inter nobilitatem tuam et florentinos." 14 This intention was repeated not long afterward, after the Florentines were defeated in the war against Milan. Martin V, going beyond immediate peace proposals, proposed the more wide-reaching plan of a league "including the pope, Florence, Milan, Venice and the Kingdom of Naples," a project which, as Partner points out, "was to appear many times in the papal diplomacy of the fifteenth century." 15

See Ryder, p. 79. P. Partner, "Florence and the Papacy in the EarlIer Fifteenth Century," in Florentine Studies: Pohtics and Society In Renaissance Florence, ed. N. RubInsteIn (London, 1968), pp. 381-402, quote on p. 390. 13 The brief, wntten in February 1424, is published in R. ValentinI, "Lo stato dl Bracclo e la guerra aquilana nella politica di Martino V (1421 - 1424)," Archivio della socleta romana dl stona patria 52 (1929)· 223-379, quote on 363; see also 304. 14 Ibid., p. 370; see also p. 333. 15 See Partner, The Papal State under Martin V, p. 87; see also C. Guasti, ed., Commlssioni dl Rinaldo degh Alblzzi pel il Comune dl Firenze dal 1399 al 1433, 3 vols. (Florence, 1867 -73), 2:383. 1I

12

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A. Ryder, another English historian, has recently devoted his attention to the papal policy following the schism, this time in relation to the pontificate of Nicholas V. He wrItes, "A detailed study is wanting of those peace conferences held under papal auspices which ran in counterpoint in the Italian wars that filled the years of Nicholas's pontificate.... It would reveal, I suspect, close harmony, perhaps collusion, betw,een the courts of Naples and Rome to steer conflict away from the states of the Church towards northern Italy." 16 His theory is only partly true. It was certainly in the interest of the recent Aragonese dynasty of Naples to divert the temporal interests of the church toward its tormented jurisdiction over the Marche, Umbria, and Romagna. For the purpose of keeping Francesco Sforza away from the March of Ancona, thus breaking his bond with Cosimo in Florence, Alfonso had joined forces with Eugenius IV. In his by no means disinterested defense of the church during the peace conference organized by the pope in Siena in March 1444, Alfonso went so far as to propose a league of all the major Italian states for purposes of mutual defense against every possible aggressor. 17 And, in 1452, he "promised Nicholas protection against Emperor Frederick." The emperor, at the beginning of that year, had manifested his intention of negotiating the peace among the Italian states. And "indeed, there was someone who consented," the agent of the Sforza commented from Florence, In a transparent allusion to Alfonso himself. 18 A discussion of the Italian League cannot be limited to only one power or even to a bilateral relation. First of all, at the time of the league, the presence of the empire, although sometimes not too obvious, was by no means less real than at the time of Pope Martin. On more than one occasion, and not only at the time of the Council of Basel and the conflict with Eugenius IV, Alfonso had put pressure on the church by using the threat of political and dynastic agreements with the emperor. An example of these tactics was the marriage between Eleonora of Portugal and Frederick III. It was concluded under the auspices of Alfonso, and the emperor visited Naples in 1452. 19 Pope Nicholas V could not ignore the holder of the supreme secular authority and the recent, and hardly resolved, conflict of the Council of Basel. On that occasion the empire, first with Sigismund, then with Albert II, and above all with FrederIck III, had replaced the papacy even on spiritual matters (such as ecclesiastical reform and the crusade). Faced with the schism of Felix V, the empire declared its "neutrality," which was the same as accepting the conclusions of the Ryder (n. 6 above), p. 261. IbId., p. 273 18 IbId., p.260. Margaroh, Dlp[amaZla e statl rinaSClmentah (n. 4 above), p.27: "Pure c'e stato qualcuno che gh prestava orechie" (Boccaccino Alamanni to F. Sforza, February 4, 1452). 19 See Ryder, p. 284. 16 17

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desired future "third council" (differing either from the Council of Basel or else from the Council of Ferrara, later transferred to Florence and the only legitimate one in the eyes of the papacy).20 Nicholas V and Frederick III made the Concordalt of Vienna (March 19, 1448), which regulated ecclesiastical issues concen1ing fiscal and jurisdictional matters in the territories of the empire. But J. B. Toews, a scholar who recently studied the subject, observed that "though ostensibly symbolizing the restoration of the Roman papacy and the submission of the Empire to aposltolic authority, there was little in the pact of 1448 which provided Nicholas with any security.,,21 The concordat, Toews adds, considered in respect to the preceding and subsequent events, "was simply an attempt by the pope, as head of the Church, to clarify his relationship \vith an individual state., in this case the Empire." I have some reservations concerning this reduction of the empire to an "individual state. ,,22 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that in the postconciliar period, more than ever before, political and ecclesiastical issues were inseparably combined in a tangle of disputes that required an increasingly intense network of diplomatic rellations. A fundamental issue in Italy, equally important to the emperor, the pope, and the other potentates, was the fate of the Duchy of Milan, especially after the extinction of the Visconti, with the death of Filippo Maria in 1447. As I have said before, since the time of Martin V the papacy had hoped to reestablish its temporal dominions through a political balance based on the alliance between the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan. The opposite scenario, that is, the subversion of the papal states, was contemplated by the direct alliance nlade in 1435 between Alfonso of Aragon and Filippo M aria Visconti, with Emperor Sigismund and the Council of Basel also involved. In this pact the hypothesis of a dynastic marriage was contemplated for the first time. 23 After the death of the duke, Alfonso made 20 See A. Black, Monarchy and Comnlunlty: Polztical Ideas In the Later Concilzar Controversy, 1430-1450 (Cambridge, ]970), pp. 80-124; also J. W. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, The Council ofBasel and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authoritles In the Empire (Leiden, 1978), pp. 132 ff.; and E. Meuthen, "Das Basler Konzil als Forschungsproblern der europaischen Geschichte," In Rheinisch- Westfalische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vortdige G 247 (Opladen, 1985). 21 J. B. Toe\vs, "Formative Forces in the Pontificate of NIcholas V, 1447 -1455," Catholic Historical Review 54 (1968): 261- 84, quote on 268 ff. The author is referring to his previous research, "Pope Eugenius IV and the Concordat of Vienna (1448): An lnterpretation,,, Church History 34 (196'5): 178-94; see also Stieber, pp. 304 ff., 341 ff. 22 See H. Thomas, "FrankreIch, Karl IV, und das Grofje Schisma," In Moraw, ed. (n. 3 above), pp. 69-104; and esp. S. Wefers, Das politische System Kaiser Slgmunds (Stuttgart, 1989). 23 For the bibliography of the question see R. Fubini, "Lorenzo Valla tra il concIho di Basilea e quello di Firenze, e il processo dell'Inquisizione," in Conczliarismo, Statl

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claims to the vacant title, hoping to gain either direct or indirect dominion. Ryder observed that "not since the time of Frederick of Hohenstaufen had a ruler with substantial extra-peninsula resources at his disposal made himself master of so great a part of Italian territory." This stirred fears (and in some, hopes) that he would become "king of Italy. ,,24 Control of the political-diplomatic balance of Italy was therefore an essential condition for the security, indeed the survival, of the church as a sovereign body. This would have been the case if the church had put itself under the protection, that is to say, in the power, of the king of Aragon. An even worse scenario for the church was the possibility of an agreement between Alfonso and Emperor Frederick III, which would bestow on the former the vicariate of Tuscany and on the latter control over Lombardy.25 Or, according to a negotiation that was to be taken up again in the future, the king of Naples might solve his problems with the king of France by sharing Lombardy with him. 26 Finally, the Italian political picture would not be complete without mentioning the Aragonese claims to sovereignty over Genoa, fueled by a desire for mercantile hegemony and political and strategic contro1. 27 Particular mentIon should be made of the issue of the feudal subjection of the Kingdom of Sicily to the church. Jurisdictional and fiscal reasons, not to mention the question of the faithfulness of the barons, made this subjection such an important Issue for the church that the papacy was anxious to reiterate it at every dynastic succession. On the contrary, Alfonso, and later his successor, Ferdinando, tried to turn it into a mere formality by threatening the papacy in Rome itself, particularly through the extremely powerful and well-connected Orsini family. A new diplomatic balance was therefore essentIal for the church, and the papacy achieved it through an agreement with the Milanese duchy of Francesco Sforza, In spite of Venetian hostility and stern imperial objections. It is not surprising, then, that Pope Nicholas V was among the first-along with Florence, but independent of it-to recognize Francesco Sforza as duke of Milan. I am referring to the papal dispensation that appears to have been naZlonalt, lnlz,l dell'Umaneslmo (Spoleto, 1990), pp. 287-318, esp. p. 293~ see also J. Amettler y Vinyas, Alfonso V de Aragon en Italla y la CrzSlS rellglosa del slglo XV, 3

vols. (Gerona, 1903), 2'115. 24 See Ryder (n 6 above), p. 273~ also Margaroli, DlplomaZla e stati rznasclmentalt, p 108 25 Ryder, p. 285 He IS refernng to projects In 1447. 26 Ibid, p. 264 For the recurrence of SImilar SItuations at the tlme of FerdInand of Aragon and LOUIS XI of France, see Lorenzo de' MedICI, "Excursus III," In Lettere, II (1474-1478), ed R Fubini (Florence, 1977), pp. 491-96 (hereafter Lorenzo, Lettere, II ). 27 See Ryder, pp. 261 ff., 400 ff.; and also M. Del Treppo, I mercantl catalanl e ! 'espanslone della corona d'Aragona nel secolo XV (Naples, 1972), pp 495 ff., 590 ff

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published on the day of the new duke's entrance into Milan (April 1, 1450) but was actually an answer to the petition of June 18 and published at the beginning of the following year. 28 As the excellent research by M. Ansani has recently demonstrated, the dispensation did not mean that the papacy gave up its prerogatives concerning ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The popes had traditionally claimed reservation on all benefices since the fourteenth century, but they had also been willing to recognize the needs of the secular rulers by granting therTl "a distribution of the ecclesiastical offices to some degree according to tJaeir exigencies and the ir internal political balances." 29 It was a mutual exchange: Francesco Sforza acknowledged and obeyed the absolute power of the pope, master of the benefices (dominus beneficiorum), who had emerged victorious from the conciHar crisis, and the pope, ignoring the imperial prerogatives, recognized the new and controversial ducal title of the Sforza. Quite different from the agreements made with the sovereign powers of the empire or the various kingdoms, the dispensation assumed the character of an all-Italian pact. It eluded the inlperial prerogative as well as the claims of the king of France in favor of Orleans' right of succession, and it opened "the way to an identical recognition by the other Italian powers, formulated in the general conventions for the peace and League of 1455. ,,30 This was also the way to reestablish a balance between the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, both of which had recently entertained expansionist designs. Mediation and diplomatic agreements were a way to limit mutual claims tending toward territorial expansion and toward the establishment of various "protectorates" and areas of political influence that cut into the jurisdictional sphere of the church. One need only recall that in the 1435 agreement, Filippo Maria Visconti and Alfonso of Aragon had contemplated a partition of the dominions of the church. 31 The picture would be incomplete without mentioning the two main "republics," v'enice and Florence. Diplomatic relations among popes, sovereigns, and princes had ideological bases. The words of Filippo Maria Visconti 28 See M. Ansani, "La provvista del benefici (1450-1466): Strumentl e limlti dell'lntervento ducale," in Gli Sforza, la Chiesa lombarda, e la corte di Roma: Strutture e pratiche beneficiarie nel ducato di Mllano (1450-1535), ed. G. Chlttohnl (Naples, 1989), pp. 1-113, esp. pp. 1-8. 29 Ibid., p. 4. 30 Ibid., p.5. Outside Italy, similar agreements between the papacy and secular Italian states were regarded as proceeding from an improper partIality. The complaints of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, are typIcal. Referring to the current events in France and the empIre for the convocation of the Council, "dlsse voler dlsponere de Ii benefitii SOl como fano h Slgnon de Itaha, e volersi appellare al concilio de moIte altre cosse" (papal nuncio P. Ahprandi to G. M. Sforza, Bruges, December 31, 1472, in Carteggi dlplomaticl fra Milano sforzesca e la Borgogna, ed. E. Sestan, 2 vals. [Rome, 1985], 1:301 ff.). 31 See n. 23 above.

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concerning the problematic succession in the Duchy of Milan are well known: "It seems better to remain subject to a natural lord and king ... than to remain in danger of becoming subject to communes or lordships where there are shoemakers, tailors, and every other kind and species of men, or else to captains who do not know who their fathers were.,,32 We find the same point of view in a letter Alessandro Sforza wrote in 1447, referring to a step taken with King Alfonso "to try to arrange their affairs [i.e., those of the Milanese] and those of the count [i.e., Francesco Sforza] and His Majesty, so Italy will be in the hands of many and not just of one power intent upon gaining a monarchy over Italy for itself, which would be a very particular shame for the noble Italians of our time." 33 Venetian expansionist policies had in fact been a real scandal and cause for alarm at the time of the Milanese succession. Venice trespassed upon imperial rights and was so indifferent to agreements and loyalty among princes that the myth of its unlimited expansionist desires spread even beyond the Alps.34 Finally, let us remember that Venetian jurisdictionalism was not only prejudicial to the rights of the empire but also to the church, both in the temporal sphere (e.g., in the recent annexation of Ravenna) and in the spiritual one. The Milanese ambassador in Rome referred to this when, speaking to the pope, he compared the "virtue" of his lord with

32 See Ryder, p.274· "Meglio ne pare stare ad obedientia de uno SIgnore e Re naturale ... che stare a penculo de venire ad obedientta de communitate 0 signone, In Ie quale sieno calzolari, serton et ogni altra sorte e specie de homini, overo de capitani quah non sapiano ancora che Sia stato suo padre." See also G. P. Bognetti, "Per la storia dello Stato Visconteo: Un registro di decreti della cancelleria di FIlippo Mana VIscontI, e un trattato segreto con Alfonso d' Aragona," Arehivlo storieo Lombardo 54, pt. 1 (1927): 266. 33 See G. Soidi Rondinini, "Milano, il regno dl Napoh e gli Aragonesi (secoh XIV-XV)," in Gli Sforza a Mzlano e in Lombardia (n. 4 above), pp. 229-90, quote on p. 251, a letter to Alessandro's brother Francesco, September 18, 1447: "Per vedere de aconzare el facto de costoro (the Milanese) e del conte (Francesco Sforza) con la mayesta del re, In modo che Ytalia restt In mane de pili et non de una sola potentIa, qual apetIscha la monarchia de Ytalia per se sola, cheseria troppo singulare vergogna a Ii nobih italIani de questa eta." 34 See N. Rubinstein, "Italian Reactions to Terraferma Expansion in the Fifteenth Century," in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), pp. 197-217. ConcernIng the Catalans' worries that Venice might take over Genoa, see Ryder (n. 6 above), p. 277. The reigning dynasties were also concerned about the continuity of the VenetIan government, which seemed immune to alterations and succession cnses. Paul II (Pietro Barbo, a Venetian) compared ItS continuity to that of the church. Unlike the church, however, he considered It eVIl. In fact, the church's friendship was not "rapaze, come seria quella de Venesia, che, benche sia durabIle, e perzQ mala compagnia," as the pope said to Gentile Becchi, Lorenzo de' Medici's envoy. Becchi related the pope's words to Lorenzo In a letter of March 1, 1471; see Lorenzo, Lettere, 1(1460-1474), ed. R. FubinI (Florence, 1977), p. 265 (hereafter cited as Lorenzo, Lettere, I).

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the "dishonesty" of the Venetians, who were "diabolical men" and "illbaptized. ,,35 The case of Florence, although different, was no less problematic. The republic's expansionist policy was directed particularly against the interests of the church, although no longer in the dramatic forms of the War of the Eight Saints. The hostility evident during the pontificate of Martin V had exploded again after 1443, because of the strategic and not just tactical support that Cosimo had given Francesco Sforza in the March of Ancona. In 1447 this gave Alfonso of Aragon occasion to attack. He was concerned with defending the papacy-not, indeed, for selfless reasons-and with establishing his own bases at the borders with Tuscany and along the Tyrrhenian Sea. Cosimo established close relations with Francesco Sforza in spite of strong opposition in Florence, no doubt in part because Sforza might one day become ruler of the Duchy of Milan. But Cosimo's first choice would have been to put him in charge of the western part of the duchy as captain and lord-lieutenant of the king of France. And he never really abandoned some version of this plan. 36 In other words, 'Nhile Florence's expansionist policy, commercial competitiveness, and ambitions as a maritime power alienated it from Venice, they also isolated It politically from the other Italian states. If collusion between the king of Naples and the pope might lead to aggression and war, the prospect of Venetian hegemony in northern Italy was not very attractive either. Even worse was the prospect of an agreement between Milan, Naples, and the papacy that ~lould strangle Florence by cutting it off from its traditional spheres of influence in Romagna and Umbria. This is one of the reasons why pro-French feelings remained strong not only among the rulers but also among the public (Florence, the Milanese ambassadors said, "is full of lilies"). These feelings provided the city with a sense of continuity in spite of the succession of events and regimes. 37 Florence, as the most isolated among the Italian 35 See Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali (n. 4 above), p. 78. The quotes are taken from three letters WrItten by N. Tranchedini to F. Sforza, Rome, June 24 and December 4, 1451, and July 1, 1452. 36 See R. FublnI, "L'eta delle conglure I rapportl tra Flrenze e Milano dal tempo di Piero a quello ell Lorenzo de' MedIci (1464-1478)," In Florence and Milan: Comparisons and Relations, ed. S. Bertelli, N. Rubinstein, and C. H. Smyth, 2 vols. (Florence, 1989),2:189-216, esp. 2:190 and n. 10; see also F. FossatI's reVIew ofF. MassaI, Nicodenlo da Pontremoli, in Archivio storico lombardo 2, sere 7 (1935): 133-45; V. Ilardi, "France and Milan: The Uneasy Alliance," in GIi Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia, pp.415-47, esp. p.428, and "The Banker-Statesman and the Condottiere-Prince: COSImo de' MedICI and Francesco Sforza (1450-1464)," In BertellI et aI., eds., 2:217 -39, esp. 2:225, 230. 37 See FubinI, "Appunti" (n. 4 above), pp.306 ff.; RubInstein, "Das politische System Italiens" (n. 3 above), p. 107. [n 1476 Sixtus IV still had reason to be concerned about the pro-French sentiments of the FlorentInes Independent of the

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powers, was therefore the least willing to create an Italian confederation. The ancient Guelph traditions were channeled into favoring French ambitions or, as Angelo Acciaiuoli wrote to Francesco Sforza in 1447, into making "one ruler in Italy so powerful as to be able to defend you against everyone else." 38 Acclaiuoli, not coincidentally, was the diplomat accredited to both powers when he handled Florence's alliance with France and with the new duke of Milan In 1451-52. 39 All these elements help us to understand why there could be no true continuity of purposes between the intention expressed by the curia in 1451 and the league concluded in 1454-55 on the basis of the Treaty of Lodi, contrary to what often has been said. 40 The pope was particularly interested in mediating a compromise among the Italian powers, especially to solve the political and dynastic quarrels between the duke of Milan and the king of Naples. Such mediation was necessary to prevent a direct agreement between the two at the expense of the church's dominions, as had happened in recent times. Furthermore, mediation could help prevent the intervention of foreign powers, especially the king of France and the emperor, who might seize the opportunity to descend Into Italy under the pretext of establishing peace. The pope's major preoccupation was that the political situation might give ammunition to the concIliar movement, only temporarily in abeyance. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, promulgated by Charles VII in 1438 with the

polIcy of the MedIcean regIme. He was sufficIently reassured that the common Interest of the ItalIan powers would prevent an Intervention by the French ("et hassI soa BeatItudIne ficta questa opInIone, che non SIa potentia In ltalIa che non habn qualche Interesse contra dIcta Re, e che non habIa ad appnre Ii ochn ad non 10 lassare mettere pede In ltalIa"). Nevertheless, he saw Florence as the only exceptIon: "DIce ben che la sente de bono loco che l'humore de' FIorentIni forsl non curana tanto del movere del re de Franza qualche cosa In ItalIa come curariano I' altn potentatI, perche glI pare quasI essere francIosI, et forsl credenano starne meglIo che non stando COS! . ,tamen pur se persuade da l'altro canto che ChI governa se lassana rezere ad Vostra CelsItudIne [the duke of MIlan]: del populo soa Beatitudlne ne ha questa credenza" (Sacramoro da RImInI to G M. Sforza, VIterbo, June 8, 1476, In R. FubInI, "In margIne all'edizIone delle Lettere dl Lorenzo de' MedIcI," in Lorenzo de' MediCi' Studi, ed G. C. GarfagnInI [Florence, 1992], p 231). 3H Soldl RondInlnI, p. 247. ""uno SIgnore in Italia, 11 quale fusse sl grande che ve defendesse da ognI altro" ThIS letter was wntten by AccIaIuoh to F Sforza on September 11, 1447, to dIssuade him from making an alhance wIth Alfonso of Aragon, to the detnment of a more certaIn allIance WIth the kIng of France 19 See IlardI, "France and MIlan," p. 421, FubIni, ""AppuntI," pp. 295 ff. For the complete documentatIon, see P. M Kendall and V. IlardI, eds., Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France and Burgundy, 1450-1483, 3 vols. (Athens, OhIO, 1970), 1:2-70, 373-82 40 See AnsanI (n. 28 above), p 5, concernIng "the role of protagonist played by NIcholas V In the events that led to the Treaty of LodI and the Italian League"

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conciliar schism looming, was still in force. The call by France and the empire for a "third council," which might settle the quarrels of Christendom on the initiative of secular princes, was stilll too recent. This was one of the main arguments expert diplomat NicodeIIlo Tranchedini used in his negotiations with the pope: "bringing to bear many examples to show how it was always in the power of whoever was the duke of Milan to disturb not only the state of the church but all of Italy, and to favor councils and other discourtesies to whoever is in the position of His Holiness; and how the French happily expected His lHoliness to go to the council at Lyons on the Rhone, as he was obliged to do by the agreement of Pope Felix. ,,41 The urgent question of the crusade against the Turks, especially after the fall of Constantinople, was another major source of worry for the pope. Since the time of the schism and the Council of Constance, the emperor had assumed the task of protecting Christianity against the aggression of the infide1. 42 Consequently, the convocation of the imperial diets and the proclamation of the crusade made the papacy appear either absent or negligent. The diplomatic meetings called in Rome by Nicholas V, and even more the Diet of Mantua called by Pius II, should be considered in this context as means of preventing imperial diets. 43 From this point of view, Alfonso of .~ragon represented the most dangerous neighbor. In l451 he declared himself willing to summon a diet for the 41 Margaroli, Diplamazia e stati nnascimentah, p.79: letter to F. Sforza, Rome, May 11, 1451: Htocandogli per moltl exempli quanto sempre sla In arbitrio de chi e duca de Milano ad inquietare, non che'l stato della ChIesa, rna Halla tuta, et dare favore a concilil et altri assay mancamenti contra a chi resede dove e soa Sanctita ... ~ et como FranzeSI caldamente attendono che soa SanctIta vada al conciho a Lione In suI Rodano, come e obligato per I' acordo de papa FelIce." The letter probably refers to the French messages of the previous year, when the king had reminded Nicholas V Hof his promise to hold a general council, and proposed that it be held in France" (Stieber [no 20 above], p. 333). 42 See Wefers (n. 22 above), p.40: HSlgmund war gewl~ personlich von der unhaltbaren Lage der Kirche betroffen.... Ein welteren Motiv ftir seIne AktiviUlt (in 1412) war die Aussicht auf einen Kreuzzug gegen dIe Osmanen, wozu die Beendigung des Schismas unabdingbar und dIe Union der lateinischen und der griechlschen Kirche wtinschenwert "'lar." These were the questIons that would be at the center of the Basel debate and that remained in the background of the polItical controversies throughout the century. 43 For the Diets of Regensburg and Frankfurt, Apnl and October 1454, respectively, see G. Soranzo, La lega italica (1454-1455) (MIlan, n.d. [1924]), p. 124. See also Margaroh, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali, pp. 246 ff. ~ for the diet summoned at Wiener-Neustadt In January 1455, and suspended for the death of Nicholas V, see Ryder (n. 6 above), p. 295. It should be noted that whIle the crusade is not mentIoned in the original charter of the Italian League signed by the secular states, It is mentIoned In the document that records the pope's JoinIng (H SI finem optatum consequeretur, in quo propter ImminentIa Christianltatis pencula fidehum conlunctIo ImpnmlS est necessaria," in Soranzo, p. 211).

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crusade that he himself was to lead, according to the pressure put on the pope of that time by the duke of Burgundy.44 In fact, the appeal was not to the pope but to the "church militant," with threatening allusions to the Aragonese king's past procouncil or, indeed, caesaropapist inclinations. This is what the malicious Tranchedini was referring to when, in his conversations with the pope, he described Alfonso as an impious and godless man whose goal was "to destroy this machine of the clergy. ,,45 Finally, the discord between the duke of Milan and the king of Naples had fueled the jurisdictional and political violations of Venice and Florence. They appeared all the more transgressive as they were perpetrated by bourgeois "republics." Pius II's Commentarii indicate the immensity of the scandal they created. 46 During the war of 1452-54, Nicholas V remained neutral but had to deal with the two opposing alignments: Naples and Venice on one side, Milan and Florence on the other. Both sides threatened to involve Transalpine powers in their fight and neither intended to give up its traditional sphere of influence on the papal states. The pope's concern can be inferred from the joint message he received from Florence and Milan immediately after the Treaty of Lodi, reassuring him "that the integrity of the state of the church would always be respected and protected by them. ,,47 Note, however, that Florence, just as it was concluding the joint diplomatic mission aimed at getting the pope and the king to join, hastened to make a pact of mutual defense with the Baglioni regime in Perugia. At the same time, Milan behaved as the interested protector of the signoria of the Bentivoglio in Bologna, which was subjected to the rival interference of Venice and Florence. 48 44 See Ryder, p. 293. The document IS from July 25, 1451: "si pur sentIa e trobava en la ecclesla mIlItant, <';0 es nostre Senyor 10 papa prelats e clero e axi en 10 Emperador e Reys e pnnceps senyores e comltats de Christians tal peu subsidi e aiuda de gens ... necessaries ... a una tal e tan gran empresa." 45 See Margaroli, DlplomaZla e statl nnascimentall (n. 4 above), p. 80: "disfare questa machlna del clero." Tranchedini's letter is from December 22, 1452. 46 See Enea SilVIO Plccolomini (Pope Pius II), I commentarii, ed. L. Totaro, 2 vols. (MIlan, 1984), 1.350, in WhICh, dunng a hIstorical excursus on the expulsion of the duke of Athens, he takes the opportunity to denounce this false freedom: "quo tandem pulso, populus In hbertatem se vendlcavit, quamvis tum maxime serVlre coepit cum se hberum existImavlt, ut qui, uno eiecto domino, multos admislt" (vol. I, bk. 2, chap. 27). SImIlarly, the chapter "De forma et modo gubemandl Venetorum" (vol. 1, bk. 3, chap. 27, pp. 537 -46) concludes: "Cur autem CIvitas liberam sese asserat paUClS referendum est. Quae nec semper hbera fUlt, neque, si ratio vera spectetur, nunc hbera dici potest, quae duro et intractabili paucorum civlum servitio premitur." For the hard Judgments of the MIlanese ambassadors on the SOCIety and CIty pohtIcs of Florence, see Fublnl, "Appuntl" (n. 4 above), pp. 327 ff. 47 Margaroh, DlplomaZla e statl rinasclmentali, p. 55. 48 On the alhance concluded between Florence and Perugla on September 30, 1454, in mutual support of the respectIve "status et regimina," see R. Fublni, "Federico da

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There was another complication that especially concerned Florence and its internal reginle. The Treaty of Lodi had been made almost without the knowledge of Florence and had been accepted only because of the alliance between the Medici and the Sforza. But the Florentine government was divided on what policy to follow and on the goals of the diplomatic action. Cosimo's opponents, led by Neri Capponi, liked the renewed alliance with Venice. So the old plan of Cosimo and the major exponents of his regime (particularly i\ngelo Acciaiuoli) was foiled. They had thought of turning Francesco Sforza into the basis of an alliance with France, which would have tied him even more closely to Florence. 49 Furthermore, Cosimo, by now at loggerheads \\7ith the old oligarchy that had helped him to power, had to face another, more insidious, threat. The t.alks called by the pope in Rome seemed to the internal opposition a way to loosen, if not to break, the bond with Francesco Sforza that so powerfully influenced the domestic scene. Such was the conduct of ambassadors Bernardo Giugni and Giannozzo Pitti, elected in October 1453, that Cosimo commented, "They could scarcely have behaved worse" in encouraging the pope "to choose the course of unilaterally imposing the peace by virtue of his apostolic authority." 50 Meanwhile Francesco Sforza secretly instructed his ambassadors, Vtho were supposed to act in concert with

Montefeltro e la congiura del Pazzi," in F'ederico da Montefeltro: Lo stato, Ie artl, la cultura, ed. G. Cerboni Baiardl, G. Chittohni, and P. Floriani, 3 vols. (Rome, 1986), 1:420 ff. It is interesting to notice that, under ducal orders, the Ml1anese ambassadors were not allowed to visit the Baglioni when passing through Perugia (see Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali, p. 136). Sforza, on the other hand, through his agent in Ferrara, was invited in February 1451 "a conservare il presente stato di Bologna, onde conservare l' amore del Papa" (ibid., p. 192). The Sforza maintained the unwntten agreement betwleen the dukes of Milan and the papacy, as the Visconti had done in the past, in the coramon interest of prevent ing Venetian and Florentine interference in Bologna and Romagna. See Lorenzo, Leltere, I (n. 34 above), p. 272, concerning N. Tronchedini's dispatch from Rome, Apnl 28, 1471, in which the pope declared himself pleased that the duke of Milan took "cura di Bologna e di Imola," against Venice's expansionist pol'icy. FInally, there is an obscure aspect of the negotiations that led to the Italian League that can be interpreted as a Florentine precaution regarding the Church. On September 6, 1454, a committee of ten eminent citizens, in which Cosimo was represented, got together to propose 10 the Venetians a secret separate treaty with the lang of Naples; on this see R. Fubini, "Classe dirigente ed esercizlo della diplomazia nella Firenze quattrocentesca," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento (l\10nte Onolo, 1987), p. 178. The Florentine ambassadors, Bernardo de' Medici and I)ietisalvi Neroni, who had been part of the committee, actually brought to Naples a proposal for a separate peace (see Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali, p. 62). 49 See Margaroh, DiplomaZla e stall rinascimentali, pp.54-57; also see n. 35 above. 50 Margaroli, DiplomaZla e stati rinascimentali, pp. 50, 89. Margaroli quotes a letter by Cosimo to Sforza, January 14, 1454: "'non se poteano pegio portare."

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their Florentine counterparts, to avoid participating immediately in the peace proclaimed by the pope. He hoped to reap some successes in the ongoing campaign against the Venetians, for which he confided in "divine grace" and in the "favors of the most Christian house of France.,,51 More specifically, he wanted to avoid being involved in a general and binding treaty, such as the one eventually confirmed by the supreme authority of the pope. He had already begun the negotiations that would result in marriages between his family and the Aragonese dynasty. His plan was to make separate treaties with the pope, with Florence, with Venice, and perhaps also with France (as actually occurred).52 Therefore, there was nothing left for Nicholas V but to acknowledge the situation, give up enforcing the plenitudo potestatis, and, in spite of the exhortations of the College of Cardinals, renounce asserting "the authority and the general role of the papacy for an eventual general pacification of the peninsula. ,,53 The originality of Pope Nicholas V's contribution does not lie in the fact that he was the author of the pacification of Italy-which was undone by the Treaty of Lodi-but in his adoption of the political pragmatism of the Sforza. He answered the Florentine ambassadors' exhortations by saying the bull was ready, but he cautiously added, the ambassadors reported, "that he wanted to make sure it did not go beyond the observation of the peace and did not accuse the French or anyone else. ,,54 But shortly afterward, Francesco Sforza and Cosimo clarified their intentions throughout the new 51 IbId., p. 88. He quotes the secret orders given to the Milanese ambassadors on October 21, 1454. In the officIal orders, Sforza pretended to comply with the pope's plans: "et questa se possa dire essere pace et non guerra perpetua, la quale cosa e pur Interesse della soa Sanctita et de la Sancta Chiesa et della altre potencie d' Italia." 52 Tranchedini had already mentioned this project with the Aragonese to the duke on September 28, 1454, considenng the risk for Milan should the Catalans ally wIth Genoa: "Salvo se gUIdate questa soa pratica de parentado et vera amicitia, secretissImamente tamen, et con quelle pill honeste dilactione fossero possibtle" (see ibid., p. 57). The negotiation was actually resumed after the league had been formed in July 1455 and ratified on February 6, 1456 (see Ryder [no 6 above], p. 411). Concerning the French alliance, these are Sforza's words to his wife, Bianca Maria, in a letter of August 22, 1452: "Considerato che questo stato de Lombardla non po stare senza 10 appogio overo del Imperatore 0 della prefata Maesta delia corona de Franza, haVlffiO deliberato fare fondamento in essa corona de Franza" (see Margaroli, Dlp/omazia e stati nnasclmentalz, p. 249). 53 Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentalz, p.69. 54 "Che non Intende si dlstenda in altro che alIa observatione della pace, et non punto contro a' FranClOSI ne altri." Bernardo Glugni and Glovannozzo Pltti to the Signori e Dlecl di Baiza of Florence, Rome, January 5, 1454/55, In Archivio di Stato dl Firenze (hereafter ASF), Signori, X di Balia, VIII di Pratlca, Legazionl e Commissarie, Missive e Responsive (hereafter Slg., X, VIII), filza 62, reg. 6, c. 169r. I used the thesis by N. Del GigIa, "Rapporti tra Firenze e 10 Stato pontificio ~urante

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secret joint missions of the highly trusted diplomats Nicodemo Tranchedini and Otto Niccolini, who modified the messages of the official ambassadors still resident in Rome. This fact made the pope doubt the efficacy of his own actions. He now admitted that he had been prompted by King Alfonso. 55 True, he also wished to exalt the role of the Holy See, "which is superior to all," and which had just come out victorious from the schism of Base1. 56 Nevertheless, he had learned from past experience about the precariousness and persistent political weakness of the church and, consequently, about the uncertainty of human things. Indeed, a short time before, Poggio Bracciolini had dedicated

11 Congresso dl Roma del 1453-54, attraverso la corrispondenza degli Ambasciaton fiorentini" (Universita di Firenze, Facolta di Magistero, 1975-76). 55 "RIspose che haveva pnnciplato questa praticha per parere d'altri et contro a suo parere, et haveva voluto PiuttOStO credere ad altri che a se medesimo." Otto Niccohni, Bernardo GIUgntI, and Glovannozzo Pitti to the Signori e Dleci di Balia of Florence, Rome, March 13, 1454, In Archivlo Privato dei marchesi Niccolini, Florence (hereafter ANF), filza 15, reg. 5, cc. nn. AgaIn I used the thesIs of Del Gigla. 56 See Margaroh, Diplomazia e stati nnasclmentali (n. 4 above), p. 143. He quotes the dispatch of the MIlanese ambassadors In Rome, March 7, 1455: "e anche prometendo el Papa In la ligha la defensione del stato de la V.S. como ducha de Milano, cum deliberatione et consentImento de Ii cardinah, pare expressamente che la Sancta Ghesia conferma e aprova la V. S. e Ii vostn figlioli in 10 Ducato: e per ben non Ii sia quelIa de 10 Imperatore, questa e pero de grande efficatia e auctonta, e potera dire la V. S. che'l Papa cum Ii cardinali ha contrata la hga luy e tolto la deffensione sua come 'contra quoscumque,' como dIce el capitulo de la hga; e questo sempre faria grande e digno ostaculo contra 10 Imperadore e altn che volesseno alegare el titulIo e Ie ragione de 1.1 V. S., siando quelIe non modo aprobate, rna tolte in protectIone et deffensione de la Sancta GhesIa, la qualIe e superiore de tuti, e questo e un notabelIe e dlgno effeto che se resulta de questa liga." It is worth remembering that the Imperial claIm went be) ond the objection to the Sforza succession. It dated back to the ImmedIate successors of Emperor Wenceslas, who had granted the ducal investiture to Giangaleazzo ViscontI. Emperor Sigismund, at the time of hIS election (1410), had rejected Wenceslas's Investiture of Giangaleazzo as part of his electoral program. See Wefers (n. 22 above), p. 20· "In dieser Hinsicht noch bedeutensamer war die Zusage der Revindikation alIer dem JReich entfremdeten Lander, insbesondere Mallands." The Intent was then obstinately pursued by Frederick III throughout his reign. See also the dispatch of the MIlanese ambassador (Rome, April 8, 1452, In Margaroh, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali, p.244), which reports the emperor's statement to the cardInale VIce camerlengo: "comes Franciscus et dominIum Venetorum fatIunt controversiam de eo quod ad nos et nostrum spectat Imperium." Frederick III made the same claIm at the time of the marrIage alhance with Charles the Bold, as an informant in the cuna learned. and as the Florentine ambassador informed Lorenzo from Rome, March 8, 1476: "si Ii alIargho como dicti princIpi (the emperor and the duke of Burgundy) volevano passare in Italia et recuperare alIo Imperio tutte Ie terre che mai furono sotto quello" (in Fubinl, "In margine all'edizione delle Lettere dl Lorenzo de' ~r1edIci" [no 37 above], p. 216; and also in Lorenzo, Lettere, II [no 26 above], pp. 500 ff).

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to him his De varietate fortunae. 57 As Nicholas himself said, he had understood that no peace could be forever, because the things of the world were not stable. His Holiness remembered well forty-eIght years because he was fifty-six. And he spoke of all the changes that had occurred in the Itahan slgnone dunng thIS time He thought that In the future things would continue like thIS or worse, _which would dIscourage him from attemptIng an ImmedIate and certaIn peace. But he believes that peace can be lastIng, If achieved because each power is aware of being unable to subjugate the other and because all are tIred of wars. The powers WIll be hke two horses that after attacking and hurtIng each other must Just stare each other down wIthout further action 58

He had hoped "to remain the ally of all sides, or at least not the enemy," but the signs were not encouraging. 59 He had therefore refrained from using spiritual arms, in spite of pressure from the College of Cardinals. And he actually says that the cardInals told hIm he should use everything In hIS power to achIeve thIS peace, [but] what they wanted could only be done by USIng hIS spintual or temporal authonty. HIS temporal authonty was not enough agaInst powers such as these; as to hIS spIritual authority, he dId not Intend to use interdict and excommunIcatIon. In fact, the pnnces would not be very afraId of these, and excommunicatIng and InterdIctIng the people pOIntlessly (Inasmuch as they were unaware of It) was not good pohcy and would not bnng to Italy the peace he wants. 60

And he concluded: "I intend to reconcile all the parties involved but I do not wish to be part of any leagues because this would create a problem." Therefore, around the middle of March 1454, the congress of Rome was dissolved. 61 57 See O. Mensalo, "POggiO e i principI: Osservazioni su alcunI temI del De vanetate fortunae dl POggiO BracciohnI," Medioevo e Rinasclmento: Annuano del Dlpartimento dl Studl sui Medioevo e if Rinascimento dell' Unlversita di Firenze, 4 n.s. 1 (1990): 203 - 21; see also R. FubIni, "Papato e stonografia nel Quattrocento," Studl medlevali 18, ser. 3 (1977): 321-51, esp. 333 ff. 58 B. GIugni and G. Pittl to the Slgnon e DleCI dl Baiza of Florence, February 7, 1454, ASF, SIg., X, VIII, 62, 6, c. 182r-v. They report on the pope's IntervIew after the arrIval of Niccohni and Tranchedinl. 59 IbId., c 182v 60 IbId., February 27, 1454, c 188v (also In ANF). See also the report of N TranchedinI, February 26, 1454, In Margaroh, DiplomaZla e stati nnasclmentali, p. 92: "Le excommunicatione non cadeno In Ii populi 0 in la muititudine, et Ii InterdictI per la poca devotione che regna in Ii christiani sono male observati." In the intervIew with the MIlanese ambassadors, NIcholas V had attributed "la magglor parte della responsabIhta a Firenze e VenezIa" (ibId.); see also n. 46 above. 61 See the letter of B. Glugnl and G Pitti to the SignOri e Dieci dl Baiza of Florence, Rome, March 16, 1454, ASF, SIg, X, VIII, 62, 6, c.193v (also In ANF).

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The Treaty of Lodi, concluded on .A.pril 9, 1454, was thus made possible by the pope's pragmatism. The two main belligerents, Venice and Milan, had been negotiating it since the previous fall, while Cosimo's men-primarily Dietisalvi Neroni-procured the reluctant consent of Florence. 62 Still, it must not be considered to have been can'ied out under the auspices of the pope, thanks to the mediation of the sacred figure of Brother Simone da Camerino (this legend, handed down by the sixteenth-century historian C. Ghirardacci, has not been completely dismissed by modern historiography).63 As I have already explained, the league negotiated among the powers that had joined in the accords concluded in Venice on August 30 did not carry forward the previous treaty negotiated in Rome but replaced it. The new treaty among Venice, Milan, and Florence took the initiative away from the pope, with important political consequences and perhaps even ideological ones. In fact, the Treaty of Lodi was potentially aimed against the papacy, particularly from the Venetian point of view. The cautionary clause suggested by Florence, that "the intention was to prevent any action against the pope, against the eInperor, or against the house of France," was rejected. 64 The part referring to the pope was rejected by Venice, the part referring to the emperor was rejected by Francesco Sforza, and the part referring to the house of France was rejected by all the other parties. 'fhe exception of the "pope and the state of the church" was rejected by the Venetian senate, while the "scandalous and vituperous" reference to the emperor, about which Venice complained, was left implicit, but was not excluded, according to the wish of Francesco Sforza. 65 Finally, Pope Nicholas \T and Alfonso of Aragon reached an agreement allowing them to enter the league, which thus became "universal." One of the main reasons for this agreement was to prevent French intervention. The pan ies formed a league against whoever threatened their safety, according to the following clause: "Neminem ... excipiendo, undecunque venerit, cuiuscunque gradus et dignitatis existant, etiam si tales essent de quibus necesse foret fieri mentionem specialissimam. ,,66 The pope became the

62 See Fublni, "Appunti" (n. 4 above), p. 306; Rubinstein, "Das politlsche System Italiens" (n. 3 above), p. 107; Margaroli, Diplomazia e statl nnascimentalt, p.57. 63 Soranzo (n. 43 above), pp. 12 ff., 144. 64 Ibid., pp. 31 ff.: "non s'intendesse Jrllai che azione potesse farsi contro al Papa, contro all' Imperatore, contro alla casa eli Francia." Soranzo quotes the answer the Signoria of Florence gave to its ambassadors in Venice, July 8, 1454. 65 Ibid., p. 42. Soranzo quotes from the correspondence of the Milanese ambassadors in Venice C~ugust 13, 18,20,23) and from the delIberation of the Venetian Senate (August 8). 66 Ibid., p. 192. Soranzo quotes from the treaty of August 30, 1454, and gIves the text on pp. 192--95; see also p. 47.

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honorary head of the league as its protector and guarantor ("conservator, protector et custos esse dignetur").67 And since the league's declared goal was the crusade against the Turks, the imperial diets could no longer accuse the papacy of not doing its part. But the actual role of the church remained ambiguous. Informally, as they were departing, the ambassadors of the secular powers involved made a "solemn declaration and promise that the authority and dignity of the Holy See and His Holiness and also the security of the state of the church would be entirely and always respected and defended by the whole league.,,68 Nevertheless, the church's bargaining power was weakened by the number of men it was supposed to contribute-that is, the same number as Florence but many fewer than the other powers. 69 The temporary aspect of this agreement (it was stipulated for a term of twenty-five years) emphasized the pragmatic character of the league and the fact that it was a compromise, not the "perpetual peace" produced by a unilateral and peremptory pronouncement by the supreme pontifical authority {treaties between sovereigns were usually in theory "perpetual").7o But the most obvious imbalance in the league was caused by the participation of the kIng of Naples. His behavior concerning Faenza, Rimini, and Genoa, beyond the contingent reasons provided as explanation, demonstrated the long-standing desire to maintain strategic control in central Italy and rule the most important Tyrrhenian port. 71 His unusual attitude toward the papacy and the state of the church is also worth mentioning. As he had done in the past with Eugenius IV, Alfonso expressed to Nicholas V his intention of maintaining his role of protector of the church according to the agreement of 67 IbId, p. 211. Soranzo quotes from KIng Alfonso's instrument of adherence to the league, January 26, 1455, pp. 208-11. See also Rubinstein, "Des pohtIsche System Itahens," p. 108. 68 See Soranzo, p 147. The author adds: "It IS not clear right away from the text of the treaty of the league whether the pope, as president of the same, had full dIscretIonary powers; for example, whether in case of conflict or disagreement among the powers or the members of the InvestIgatIng and executIve commIssIon, he could act as arbItrator and Impose a solutIon to the controversy by authority." 69 IbId., pp. 192 ff., 212. VenIce, MIlan, and the king were supposed to maIntaIn six thousand cavalry and two thousand Infantry in tIme of peace (and eIght thousand and four thousand, respectIvely, In tIme of war), Florence and the church, two thousand cavalry and one thousand Infantry In tIme of peace (and five thousand cavalry and two thousand Infantry In tIme of war) 70 As an example, see the treaty made between Francesco Sforza and the DauphIn of France, renewed when the latter became king, October 6, 1460, and July 24, 1461, respectIvely: "volentes ... perficere, que Ipsam hgam et confederationem et omnIa et sIngula supradIcta perpetua atque etema reddant" (Kendall and Ilardi, eds. [no 39 above], 2:462- 73). 71 See Soranzo (n. 43 above), pp. 112-16; Ryder (n. 6 above), pp. 400 ff., 405

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1443 ("promisit ... prefati Sanctissimi Domini Nostri suorumque successorum ... canonice intrantium ac prefate Sacrosancte Romane Ecclesie patrimonium' provincias ... iurisdictiones et iura ... tueri et defendere cum effectu ab omni impugnatione, invasione et m01lestatione contra quamcumque personam, quacunque dignitate prefulgeat"). 72 hnplicit in this role, however, was the desire to control or even threaten the papacy itself. This became evident later, in the bitter conflict between Alfonso and Calixtus III, Nicholas's successor, when the former threatened the pope with council and the latter threatened the king with deposition. 73 The story is well known and had recently been examined by Ryder and Ilardi in well-documented and persuasive studies. 74 Here mention need only be made of a characteristic phenomenon that would repeat itself with Alfonso's heir, Ferdinando: namely, the alternation in the relationship between the Kingdom of Naples and the church, ,vhereby an alliance with one pope was followed by a period of bitter conflict with his successor. Sometimes these changes occurred during the same pontificate. The friendly relationship established tov(ard the end of Eugenius's pontificate and throughout Nicholas's pontificate was followed by bitter conflict with Calixtus III. The alliance was reestablished with Pius II, who granted the investiture to Ferdinando, but was broken later during the pontificate of Paul II. Similar conflicts occurred again during 1he pontificates of Sixtus IV and later Innocent VIII. The contradiction is only apparent. In fact, the church aimed at raising the cost of its alliance. It wanted to insist upon the relation of feudal sovereignty over Naples and to regain direct control over contended jurisdictions (particularly Benevento and Terracina), partly in order to reduce danger due to the close Soranzo, p. 210. See Ryder, p. 420. See also Biagio Cihihni, abbot of S. Ambrogio, to F. Sforza, Rome, June 27, 1457: "Fazo avisata 1a Vostra Exce1encia como eazunto qua un nunCIO de 1a universitate de Parisae per fare certe proteste coram papa et cardina1ibus, e a intimargh decem et octo articulos multi infamatori e domanda 10 conciho.... Ancora sapIa como 1a ~1aiestade de 10 Re de Ragona haviva mandato da N. S. re per la confimaclone de una postulacione fata de Ii canonICI de uno vescovato fata In 10 figliolo de don Ferando. Non voglando 10 papa confermare, 10 dICto ambasadore interpose una appellatione ad futurum concilium: papa maledixit illi et excommuntcavit eum, lu dixe a 10 papa che se ne apellava a Deo tusto che 10 1iberera de 1a maledicione. Lo papa scrise uno breve in questa cosa a 10 Re, e la fine era questa e tn queste parole: 'verba pape: Sciat tua matestas quod papa SCtt deponere reges.' Lo Re fece nsposta e la fine de la lettera diciva COSt: 'Verba regts: sctat tua SanctItas, quando voluerimus repenemus modum deponendt pontificem.' " In L. von Pastor, Storia dei Papi dalla fine del Medio Evo, trans. A. Mercati (Rome, 1931), 1:864 ff. See also my reVIew of R. Trexler, The Splritual Power, In Studl medlevah 19, sere 3 (1978): 284-92, esp. 287. 74 See IlardI, "The Banker-Statesman and the Condottiere-Prince" (n. 36 above), pp. 219 ff. 72 73

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proximity of the kingdom. 75 The aversion demonstrated by Calixtus III (Alfonso Borgia) toward his old king was only apparently a contradiction. Although Borgia had been a great official at Alfonso's court, he was also the canonist and prestigious ecclesiastical dignitary who had resisted the proconciliar policy of the king. Furthermore, he had been the true instigator of the inquisitorial trial of Lorenzo Valla, author of the most vehemently antiecclesiastical pamphlet of the century.76 He knew the situation well, and the struggle he carried out as pope was nothing but the continuation of a more covert struggle that he had long been carrying out in defense of ecclesiastical immunities and papal supremacy.77 On the other hand, as I have already mentioned, the Aragonese kings aimed at freeing themselves from feudal subjection. Joining the Italian League was, among other things, one of the ways to achieve this goal. Another was the dynastic pact made with the Sforza in 1456, which continued, under new conditions, the policy begun with Filippo Maria Visconti. So much for a brief general summary on the Italian League. Next let us analyze its crisis during the pontificate of Paul II and the role Lorenzo de' Medici played in the league when he took power. The reasons that had contributed to the formation of the league can be summarized as follows: Venice's need to cover its flank in the worsening conflict against the expansionist policy of the Turks; Francesco Sforza's need to find at least a partial legitimation for his recent ducal title; the Medicean regime's internal need to maintain the alliance with the Sforza, even if this meant endorsing conditions unfavorable to Florence; and Alfonso's need to find a place in the Italian political system as a guarantee against French-Angevin claims and also 75 On the contention between Ferdinando of Aragon and Paul II, see Lorenzo, Lettere, I (n. 34 above), pp.541 ff.; on the requests presented by Ferdinando WIth the embassy of obedience to Sixtus IV in 1471; see ibid., p. 338, n. 8. BeSIdes the contention over jurisdictional matters, Ferdinando also intended to promote the ecclesiastical career of hIS son John (later cardinal), who had already been at the center of the controversies between Alfonso and Calixtus III (see n. 72 above). The attitude of the papacy toward the Kingdom of Naples is revealed in a letter of CardInal Francesco Gonzaga to his father Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, July 14, 1471, wntten In a particularly tense moment between Paul II and King Ferdinando (see Lorenzo, Lettere, I, p.273). He explaIned the pope's project: "smembrare un puocho quello Reame, perche, habial0 chi se voglia, non fa a proposito ne del Papa ne del Duca (of Milan) che sia tanto potente." 76 See FubinI, "Lorenzo Valla tra il concilio di Basllea e quello di Flrenze" (n. 23 above), pp. 312 ff.; see also my essay "Contestazioni quattrocentesche della Donazione di Costantino: Niccolo Cusano, Lorenzo Valla, " Medioevo e Rinascimento 5, n.s. 2 (1991): I 19 - 61. 77 See M. Mallett, The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty (London, 1969), pp.59-61, and "Borgia Alfonso," in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 16 (1973): 769-74.

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as a refuge in the midst of his changing relations with the papacy. Finally, the papacy was looking for more opportunities to have its authority recognized in the papal states-indeed, Calixtus III called for help against the raids of J acopo Piccinino, protected by the king 78-and it was also aiming at a sphere of unquestioned obedience on spiritual matters, as a buffer against Transalpine challenges. After all, the conciliar idea was revived, both in France and in German-speaking areas, around the 1460s; and at the time of the conclave of Calixtus III, and even more during the conclave of Pius II, there were fears that the papacy might be forced to leave Rome. 79 For all the parties involved, the fundamental clause remained the one concerning "the defense of the states," 80 that is, the mutual commitment to support the respective internal

See Ryder, pp. 405 ff., 409 ff. Ibid., p. 407, concerning the conclave of Cahxtus III: "In Venice and Florence fears grew that a fresh exile of the papacy from Italy might be imminent." But Pius II's Commentarii reInain an essential source of Information on the 1458 conclave. One of the arguments used by Guillaume d'EstoutevI11e, cardinal of Rouen and probable candidate, to dissuade the conclave frorn voting for Enea Silvio Piccolomini, hIS adversary, who \vas favored by the Germans, was the follOWIng: "Ex Germania recens venit; neSCImus eum; forsitan et Curiam eo traducet" (Totaro, ed. [no 46 above], 1:200). Enea SilVIO used the opposite argument to answer the French cardinal: "At Rhotomagensis nationem suam praefert Italicae, et gallus in Galliam cum summa dignitate advolabit," because a French pope would either favor the return of the Angevins on the throne of Naples, "et serviet regina gentium Italia extero domino erimusque mancipia Gallicae gentis," or "ibit in Galliam pontifex Gallus" (Totaro, ed., 1:208). Contemporary documents confirm thIS concern. See, e.g., Antonio da Pistoia to F. Sforza, Rome, August 26, 1458: "Laudato Dio, che e rimaso in Italia!" (Pastor [no 73 above], 2:680). The involvement of the papacy in the Italian confederation had not failed to provoke a reaction. Both France and the t~mpire, in competition with each other, had designs to take the papacy away from ROIne in a repetition of the Avignonese period. Such tenacious designs did not fail to be discovered later. In 1476 Georg Hesler, Frederick Ill's chancellor, who had come to Rome to maneuver for a cardinalship, revealed the talks that had taken place between the emperor and the king of France. During these taJlks, besides the plans for a new council, they had discussed the pOSSIbility of moving the papacy, which would have been shared in tum by the French and the Germans. This is what Sacramoro da Rimini, the Milanese ambassador, reported (Rome, June 23, 1476): "Perche, quando fu [i.e., Hesler] ad soa Maesta [Louis XI], quell a non istatte tanto de alcune cose dal Imperatore, quanto soa imperiale Maesta volesse concorrere ad concilio, con dire che noy Italiani havevamo usurpato a loro el papato, che tanti anni era stato in Franza, et che saria tempo da retorcelo; et che dappoy che 10 trahessimo de Franza, sempre quello suo regno fu exausto de dinari; et diceva che potriano convenire che uno teJupo 10 havessino Ii Alemani et uno tempo loro" (in Fubini, "In margine all'edizione delle Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici" [no 37 above], p. 229). 80 "Ad conservationem et defensionem statuum IpSarum partlum" (see Soranzo [no 43 above], p. 192; and Rubinstein, "Das politische System Italiens" [no 3 above], p. 116). 78

79

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regimes or at least not to interfere with them. This allowed the MedicI to overcome the very serious internal crisis in the years 1455-58, when the extraordinary government measures of wartime were no longer justifiable. 81 The league was also an essential element in overcoming the succession crisis at the death of Alfonso of Aragon and in protecting Ferdinando from the Angevin expedition of 1459-64. It also helped to justify the assistance Francesco Sforza and Pius II provided to Ferdinando and guaranteed the neutrality of Venice and Florence. 82 But the causes that could jeopardize peace, already implicit in the treaty of 1454-55, soon started to take effect. The first was the submission of Genoa to France, through which the city protected itself from the king of Naples and from the Catalan commercial threat. In 1463 - 64 Louis XI granted Genoa and Savona in fief to the duke of Milan. ThIS strengthened the bond between the king of France and Sforza in a way that was incompatible with the terms of the Italian League. The conflict was hidden, but not solved, by the Milanese "reservation" of the league in the treaty that made the duke a vassal and ally of the king of France. 83 In fact, the acquisition of Genoa was a kind of pledge through which the duke of Milan would guarantee the loyalty of the dukes of Savoy to the king of France. This caused a dangerous involvement of the duke of Milan in Transalpine conflicts and increased his expansionist designs (particularly toward Asti and Vercelli, old possessions of the Visconti) in a way that was even more incompatible with the Italian League. 84 Cosimo de' Medici was well aware of the situation and, almost going back to his old and daring projects of the 1430s and 1440s, contemplated the idea of receiving some territorial rewards in exchange for the support given to the pro-French policy of Sforza. He thus returned to an expansionist policy that went back to the time of the acquisition of Pisa, which had as its ultimate aim the conquest of Pietrasanta, Sarzana, or even Lucca. 85 The second reason, more important although less noted than the first, was the election of Pietro Barbo (Paul II), the successor of Pius II (1464-71). He 81 See N. RubInsteIn, Il governo di Firenze sotto i MediCI (1434-1494) (Florence, 1971), pp. 107 -62; and Fubini, "Classe dirigente ed eserclzio della diplomazia nella Firenze quattrocentesea" (n. 48 above), pp. 178-81. 82 See Ilardi, "The Banker-Statesman and the Condottiere-Prince" (n. 36 above), pp. 226-28; Soldl Rondlnlnl (n. 33 above), pp. 266-86. 83 See IlardI, "France and Milan" (n. 36 above), p. 436. In 1461 Louis XI had even offered Sforza the exchange "of the Duke's status as vassal of the Empire for that of a peer of France" (ibid., p. 433). 84 IbId., p. 432; and R. Fubinl, "I rapporti diplomatICI tra Milano e Borgogna con partlcolare nguardo all'alleanza del 1475-1476," Nuova rlvista stonca 72 (1988): 23 -46, esp. 34 ff. 85 See IlardI, "The Banker-Statesman and the Condottiere-Prince," p. 227; and also FubinI, "Appunti" (n. 4 above), p. 314, and "L' eta delle congiure" (n. 36 above), pp. 191 ff.

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was a nephew of Eugenius IV, to whoJTI Nicholas V's political pragmatism had been a reaction. 86 Paul II's papacy, like his uncle's, was characterized by a rigid legalistic and doctrinarian spirit. His version of the bull In coena Domini contained additional clauses concerning heresy and violations of ecclesiastical liberty that caused it to be described later as "a return to the policies of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)~ indeed, the penalties it prescribed and its insistence that the pope alone had lhe power to lift an excommunication classify it as a repetition of Boniface VIII's bull Clericis laicos. ,,87 The Otto di Guardia and the Dieci di Balia {the highest officials of the Medicean regime) were excommunicated in 1466 for "offences to religious persons," and the censures placed on them were lifted only in 1469. 88 Even the old dispensation granted by Nicholas V to Francesco Sforza, which had been revised and perfected with new extralegal concessions by Pius II, was severely denounced. It was a load on the new pope's conscience to "compromise himself with a lord suspected ... of dlicitly taxing ecclesiastical revenues." And to the Milanese ambassador who invoked the custom-hallowed rights of rule, Paul II answered, "Bad usages are merely corruptions and may be disregarded."89 His "absolute intransigence ... in matters regarding benefices" applied to others too, "starting with the Venetians," with even more serious political consequences. 90 In an age characterized by ill-de1ined and conflicting institutions, it is difficult to separate the jurisdictional contests from the political ones, even in ecclesiastical issues. The pontificate 0 f Paul II provides an excellent example. Dsing as a starting point, or rather as a pretext, the fact that the duke of Milan had accepted Cienoa and Savona in fief from the king of France, he accused the new duke (ialeazzo Maria Sforza, Francesco's heir, of violating the terms of the league, which consequently had to be renewed. 91 Pope Paul was undoubtedly worried about France's interference in Italian politics, but his real FubIni, "Papato e storiografia nel Quattrocento" (n. 57 above), pp. 331 ff. See L. Prosdocimi, Il diritto ecclesiastico dello Stato di Milano, dall'inizio della Signorza viscontea al periodo tridentino (sec. XIII-XVI) (Milan, 1941), pp. 121 ff. 88 See my review of Trexler (n. 73 above), esp. pp. 289 ff.; and "Ficino e i MedicI all'avvento di Lorenzo il Magnifico," Rznascimento 24 (1984): 24; and also R. Bizzocchi, Chiesa e potere nella Toscana deL Quattrocento (Bologna, 1987), pp. 11719, 221-13, 327 ff. 89 See Ansani (n. 28 above), p. 25. He quotes from the dispatch of Agostino ROSSI, Milanese ambassador to the Curia, January 17, 1465: "Le cattive usanze essere corruptelle et non si dovere mantegnlre per niente." 90 IbId., p. 26. He quotes A. ROSSI to CICCO Simonetta, Rome, January 13, 1466: "Nam, incominciando da VenetianI, non ha voluto dare a suo modo un minimo beneficlo In quel domInio." 91 See G. Nebbia, "La lega italica del 1455: Sue vIcende e sua rinnovazione nel 1470," Arehlvio storieo Lombardo 4, n.s. (J 939): 117 -35, esp. 121 ff.; Ilardi, "France 86 87

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reasons went beyond that. Let us not forget that he had succeeded Pius II, who had emulated and even gone beyond the political pragmatism of Nicholas V, taking up where the latter had left off. Nicholas V had desisted from promulgating the bull of pacification in spite of pressure from the Council of Cardinals; Paul tried to reassert the pope's jurisdictional authority. Around the same time, as we learn from Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, Paul II had the privileges of the various vicars and lords of Romagna revised. 92 More than on the Milanese acquisition of Genoa, which was by then no longer very recent, Paul II counted on the weakening of the regimes in Milan and Florence, both recently shaken by succession crises. He also counted on the weakening of the king of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon, who had just emerged from the war with the Angevins and was now alienated from the Holy See due to conflicts originating in the war. Another bone of contention was the expense that the church had incurred when Pius II had gone to Ferdinand's assistance, and for which it now demanded to be repaid. 93 No less important was the situation beyond the Alps. The great feudal lords, united in the League of the Public Weal, rebelled against Louis XI. Besides many other important consequences for Italy, this rebellion pitted the Anjou against the French crown. This meant that if the Angevins were called to Italy, they would be outside the control of the king of France and consequently outside the control of the duke of Milan, recently made his ally and vassal. The chief supporter of the Angevin party in Italy was Borso d'Este, marquis of Ferrara, overtly encouraged by Venice. Their captain was Bartolomeo Colleoni, secretly encouraged by Venice, who received privileges and a condotta by Rene of Anjou as a reward for his services. The Florentine political exiles of 1466 gathered around Colleoni and included Cosimo's old companions Dietisalvi Neroni, Niccolo Soderini, and Angelo Acciaiuoli, who had aimed at breaking the political and diplomatic bond with the Sforza when he died. 94 The pope himself was inclined to listen to Borso d'Este and the Angevin party as relations with the king of Naples continued to deteriorate. He also showed hostility to the Medici regime in Florence because of the virtual exile in the curia of the Florentine archbishop and Milan" (n. 36 above), p. 438; Rubinstein, "Das pohtische System Italiens" (n. 3 above), p. 112 92 "E per questo da qui Inantl ha deliberato de non aceptare da lor censo, e col tempo ha in anImo de tirarse ugni cosa sotto" (Francesco to Ludovico Gonzaga, Rome, July 31, 1466, in W. Tommasoli, Momenti e figure della politica dell'equtlibrio: Federico da Montefeltro e l'impresa di Rimini [Urbino, 1968], p. 18; and also Lorenzo, Lettere, I [no 35 above], p. 542). 93 See Lorenzo, "Excursus I," in Lettere, I, pp. 541-46; and also n. 74 above. 94 For an up-to-date bibliography, see M. Phillips, The "Memoir" ofMarco Parentl: A Life in Medici Florence (Princeton, N.J., 1987).

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Giovanni Neroni, Dietisalvi's broth(~r, during the repression of September 1466.95 The main event that irreparably damaged Nicholas V's compromise treaty occurred under these circumstances. l)nited by the threat to the bases of their respective regimes, Naples, Milan, and Florence formed a league on January 17, 1467. The contract was deliberately formalized in Rome and followed the formula of the Treaty of Lodi of 1454. Implicit in the request for subscription from the pope and, this time, Venice,96 was an accusation: the parties previously absent, especially the pope, had to answer for the violation of the old treaty. The message sent from Florence to the ambassador in the curia on March 14, 1467, was: "If he fails to use the power he no doubt has to prevent the peace of Italy from being wrecked, not only all of Italy will experience great difficulties, but even the holy faith and Christian religion committed to his care will be severely endangered. ,,97 The message was clearly an implicit attempt to blackmail the church. Denouncing the pope's failure at the spiritual level was the same as mentioning the plans for a new council that were being discussed by the French court. It would not take long for the participants in the league to become involved in these plans, especially at the instigation of the duke of Milan. 98 Also worth mentionj1ng is that on May 8, 1468, Federico da Montefeltro joined the league and broke his old treaty with the church. A secret clause kept the captain safe from possible hostilities by the pope-the same transgression clause that had been discussed and temporarily set aside at the conclusion of the Treaty of Lodi. The formula had perhaps been introduced for the first tinle not in the official document of the treaty but in a chancery note written on the occasion of the alliance between Florence and Barnabo Visconti in 1375, in the midst of conflict with the church. 99 As far as we know, 95

See Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 260 ff., 544 ff.; and Bizzocchi (n. 88 above), pp. 211

ff. 96 See Rubinstein, "Das politische System Italiens," p. 113; and Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 260 ff. 97 Lorenzo, Lettere, I, p. 261: "Perb che, se potendo obviare, come pub veramente, lasciera la pace italica fare naufragio, senza dubIO vediamo Ie cose condursi in luogo che non solamente tutta Italia si condurra in grandissimi affanni, rna la fede sancta et religione christiana commessa aHa sua cura ne verra in manifestissimo pericolo." 98 Ibid., p.68, citing L. Guicciardini, Florentine ambassador in Milan, to Piero de' Medici, July 2, 1469: "Questo Illustre Signore scrisse pill di sono al re di Francia, persuadendolo a fare concilio contro a questo Papa." For more, see ibid., p. 116, n. 3. On the subject, see H. Jedin, "Sanchez de ,\revalo und die Konzilsfrage unter Paul II," Hzstonsches lahrbuch 73 (1954): 95 -119: and J. Macek, "Le mouvement conciliaire: Louis XI et Georges Podiebrady, en particuher dans la periode 1466-1468," Historica 15 (1967): 5-63. 99 See my review of Trexler (n. 73 above), p. 287.

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it reappeared only in the 1460s, and from that time on the formula "Contra quoscunque ... etiam si suprema dignitate fulgerent temporali vel spirituali" became customary in the formation of Florence's "particular leagues." It appeared, in fact, both in the renewal of the league between Milan and Naples signed on July 8, 1470, and in the substitute one between Milan and Venice signed on November 2, 1474. 100 Paul II's answer was no less radical. On February 2, 1468, he promulgated the Bulla pacis that Nicholas V had had to abandon. At first it was rejected by the triple league because it called upon each of the parties to contribute to the condotta of Bartolomeo Colleoni (according to a system King Alfonso had proposed in the past for Piccinino), who would be stationed in Albania for the campaign against the Turks. 101 But the unstated reasons for this rejection were more important and substantial. As I have already mentioned, the bull revived theocratic and "Constantinian" arguments whereby the pope assumed the task of establishing the rules for the Italian potentates. 102 Its clearly expressed goal was the "bellum contra ipsos infideles." In contrast to the limited temporal validity of the old league, the new bull, under the threat of the most serious canonical sanctions, called for eternal "pacem inter universos christicolas," according to the requisites and duties of the Christian pastor, and specified "imprimis Italiam ipsam inhabitantibus veluti propinquiores hostibus." This was followed by a long series of scriptural and canonistic citations confirming the prerogatives of ecclesiastics. Finally the bull reaffirmed the injunction to obedience "de ... nostrae et apostolicae plenitudine potestatis inter universos Italiae potentatus et principes, etiam si regale vel quavis alia praefulgeat dignitate." 103 Although the pope had been forced at first to withdraw the bull, this was later mentioned in the peace treaty concluded in Rome on May 8 of the following year. On this political occasion, Paul II did not miss the opportunity to clarify his objectives further. He spoke against the inclusion of 100 See Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp.79 ff., and Lettere, II (n. 26 above), pp.489 ff.; Fublni, "Fedenco da Montefeltro e la congiura dei Pazzi" (n. 48 above), 1:377 ff. Against the treaty of November 2, 1474, Sixtus IV appealed to the emperor, using these words to justify his not havIng joined: "Quia multa in eadem liga ac aliis ab ea dependentibus contenta adversus Sedem Apostolicam ac Maiestatem Nostram tenderent" (according to the contents of the answer of Fredenck III, June 25, 1475; see Lorenzo, Lettere, II, p. 88). 101 See Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 30-32; and Ryder (n. 6 above), p. 414. 102 See M. Migho, "Vidl thiaram Pault papae secundi," in Stonografia pontificia del Quattrocento (Bologna, 1975), pp. 121-53; and also Fublni, "Papato e stonografia nel Quattrocento" (n. 57 above), pp. 341 ff. 103 Bulla Paull II Pontificis Maximi, qua expeditio contra Turcos decreta, perpetua pax lnter Pnncipes Itallae indlcta vetensque concordlae inter eos pactlone redlntegrata fuerunt de dle Nonis Februarii anna 1467, In J. Chr. Ltinig, Codex Itallae dlplomatlcus, vol. 3 (Frankfurt and Llpsia, 1732), cols 33-35.

The Italian League and the Balance of Power

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lands or lords directly or indirectly subject to the church in the lists of league members. Since the parties to the agreement included these lists in the charter of the treaty, the mention of those lords and lands was nothing but a way to outline their spheres of influence or at least to demonstrate their interests. "Non esse iustum," the pope said, "neque conveniens quod aliquis potentatuum in pace praedicta comprehensoIum nomine alterius potentatus similiter in dicta pace comprehendi subditos pro confederatis, colligatis et adhaerentibus." 104 In retaliation, the pope mentioned cities and lands subject to secular powers, affirnling that they had been removed from the church's high jurisdiction. Thus he went so far as to imply that territorial states (which resulted from the vicissitudes of the times of the Great Schism) were illegitimate. va call attention only to the case of Florence, he listed Pisa, Arezzo, Cortoltla, Volterra, Pistoia, Pescia, and Prato-not to mention Borgo San Sepolcro, to which the church had a direct right. 105 After all this, the immediate failure of the treaty should not be surprising, although the pretext was a different one. The new duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, claiming that he had been deceived by his ally the king of Naples, repudiated Lorenzo Terenzi, his ambassador in Rome, who had signed the document. The main reason for his repudiation was this: Sforza wanted to continue to maintain in the new treaty the bond of subjection and alliance that he had established with the king of France, as he now confirmed through a special legation and protestation. 106 As a consequence, Venice created a defensive alliance with the duke of Savoy, and the following year it allied itself with the pope, with whom it shared a common interest. Both wanted to prevent interference by the triple league in Rimini, which was now within the sphere of influence of Ferdinando, just as it had previously been in that of 104 Tractatus de pace publica inter Principes [taliae in instrumento super eisdem tractatibus confecto Romae Anno 1467 et landem die 8 Maii An. 1468 absoLuto, quibus varia approbationis et nominationis foederatorum atque sociorum dipLomata eodem anno et data accesserunt, in ibid., cols. '39 ff. esp. col. 44. The pope's statement is dated June 17. 105 Ibid., col. 81. 106 The accreditation Galeazzo Maria Sforza gave to his ambassadors to the pope, G. G. Rizzo and G. A. Cagnola, on May 25, 1468, are in ibid., cols. 56 ff. The duke mentions the commitments derived by the league "cum Sanctissimo d.d. Paulo II Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Summo Pontefice, Ser.mo principe et Ex.mo d. Ferdinando Siciliae ~~ege, Communitate Florentiae et nonnullis Italiae potentatibus" (note the absence of Venice), and at the same tin1e obligations of confederations and leagues "quas habemus cum Ser.mo principe et Christianissimo d.d. Ludovico Dei gratia Francorum etc. Rege." On the incipient conflicts with the king of Naples, see P. Margaroli, "Bianca Maria e Galeazzo Sforza nelle ultime lettere di Antonio da Trezzo (1467 -1469)," A.rchivio storico Lombardo 112 (1985): 327 - 77; and Lorenzo, Lettere, [ (n. 34 above), pp. 104 ff.

194

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Alfonso. Roberto Malatesta, natural son of Sigismondo Pandolfo, had in fact taken possession of the city and become its lord in spite of his promise to let it devolve on the church. l07 The conflict over Rimini, pitting the triple league against Venice and the church, caused a serious crisis inside the triple league itself. The duke of Milan was reluctant to live up to his pledges because he did not want to compromise himself with the pope over something he considered a particular interest of the king and his captain, the count of Urbino. But above all, the duke of Milan was concerned about the conduct of the king of France. The latter, having temporarily come to an agreement with his great rival, the duke of Burgundy, was again becoming interested in Italian events and seemed willing to pay attention to Angevin claims. At his father's death in December 1469, Lorenzo inherited the war of Rimini and the consequent political-diplomatic crisis. To a group of prominent citizens who had come to make sure the succession went smoothly, he declared "that among the other legacies of his father and grandfather was servitude to and friendship with the duke of Milan and the king, which he would continue whenever they suggested that he should do so." 108 A look at what happened afterward confirms that Lorenzo kept his word. But any suppositions about continuity between Lorenzo's policy and that of Cosimo and Pietro might, if taken out of context, distort the historical facts. The irreversible crisis of the compromise treaty of Nicholas V had made the political situation very different from what it had been in Cosimo's time, and consequently the relation between the Medici and the Sforza was also changing. Under Galeazzo Maria, the Sforza family, now allied with France, sought a monarchically centralized ducal power and was therefore increasingly intolerant of outside pressure. As far as the Italian scene was concerned, Florence now had the role, which in the past had been claimed by the papacy, of mediator between the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples and was beginning to be called "point of the balance." I 09 This, of course, put the city on a collision course with the papacy, which in fact tried to break the triple league several times. Between October and December 1470, there were arduous negotiations to renew the 107 See Tommasoli, Momentl e figure della polztica dell'equilibrio (n. 92 above), and La vita di Federico da Montefeltro, 1422-1482 (Urbino, 1978), pp. 177 ff.; Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 541-46; and in general, P. J. Jones, The Malatesta of Rimlni: A Political History (Cambridge, 1974). 108 Lorenzo, Lettere, I, p. 60; dispatch of Sacramoro, December 6, 1469: "Tra l'altre heredita che gli haveva lassato l' avo et patre suo, era la servitu et amicitla del duca dl Milano et del Re, la quale lui contlnuana, quando da loro fosse conslgliato." 109 Ibid., pp. 232-33; citation is to Gentile Becchi to Lorenzo, Rome, November 24, 1470.

The Italian [,eague and the Balance of Power

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lega generale. After the pope refused to accept the "reservation" of the lega particolare, the king of Naples proposed a possible solution, which was accepted by the duke of Milan. Th is solution called for the creation of a quadruple league, either excluding the pope or forcing him to join later from a position of weakness. In other words, it was a treaty similar to the one concluded in 1455 or, rather, similar to the treaty that might have existed if not for Nicholas 'I's attitude toward conlpromise. The curia's worries about the jurisdictional consequences of such a treaty are of particular interest. Gentile Becchi wrote 10 Lorenzo from Rome that he sees the pope becoming worse off than a chaplain and the ecclesiastical benefices being pillaged. 110 Lorenzo, however, secretly dissociated himself by means of Becchi, his secret envoy to the pope, and this helped prevent a similar agreement. Lorenzo's disassociation encourag(~d Paul II to declare the league renewed, as he did with a simple declaration on December 22, 1470. 11 ] But this was another immediate failure, first of all because of the incompatibility of the triple league with a lega generale under the auspices of the pope. The treaty also failed because Galeazzo Maria insisted on showing off his alliance with France in order to get the pope to join, either against Naples or against Venice, provoking these two powers to form a defensive alliance on January 1, 1471. 112 Since Milan did not ratify the treaty and Florence was also induced to withdraw its ratification, the treaty of December 22, 1470, remained dead letter. From then on the lega generale was just a formula. It was often debated during diplomatic meetings in Rome, but ahvays in view of personal political goals; and it was therefore regularly opposed by those whose interests were threatened by Jlt. 113 On one such occasion Lorenzo said, "I care little about the universal league because I have no fear as long as our [particular league] lasts; and if it shouldn't, I put more trust in desires and minds than in written provisions, which, as you know, are made and broken whenever necessary." 114 The lega particolare was not a substitute for the lega generale. It was an alternative that, according to good Florentine tradition, allowed Lorenzo to keep his bargaining position in his relations with the church and 110 Gentile Becchi to Lorenzo, Rome, December 16 [actually 19], 1470, ASF, Mediceo avanti il Principato, filza 61, 36: "Veggo lui nmanere peggio che un capellano et e nostri benefici andarne in preda." Here Becchi is also speaking as an ecclesiastic. 111 See Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 236 ff., n. 5. 112 Lorenzo, Lettere, I, pp. 251-59, 267 - 73. 113 See Fubini, "In margine all'edizione delle Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici" (n. 37 above), pp. 178-91, 213-32. 114 Lorenzo to Sacramoro da Rimini, Cafaggiolo, September 2, 1471, in Lettere, I, p. 322: "Lo fo pocha stima della lega universale, perche, stando la nostra, non la temo: quando la nostra non stessi, of piu conto delle volonta et animi che de' capitoli, e quah, come sapete, si fanno et disfanno chome meglio viene a proposito."

196

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his fellow members. In short, it allowed him to be the guarantor of the political balance. As for the old bond with the Sforza, Lorenzo's position seemed the opposite of Cosimo's. Even before Francesco attained the ducal title, Cosimo, thinkiqg of a strategic alliance, had striven to bring Francesco Sforza together with France. Lorenzo, on the other hand, tried to moderate Duke Galeazzo Maria's display of the alliance with France and again, in 1475-76, his display of the alliance with the duke of Burgundy. In fact, Lorenzo needed to keep the disagreements and suspicions that divided Milan and Naples in check in order to maintain a balance in the power relations inside the city. Furthermore, in order to strengthen his regime, which was still feeling the consequences of the internal rift of 1465-66, he needed to loosen the excessively demanding bond with the Sforza. Lorenzo regularly tried to dissuade the king of France from direct intervention in Italy. He turned to the king of France on more than one occasion, but with a different goal: to encourage actual or threatened intervention in spiritual matters in the form of presenting the prospect of a council to intimidate the pope in time of harsh conflicts with him-an effective tactic indeed, according to the testimony of the Milanese resident in the curia in 1474. 1 15 Typical in this respect was Lorenzo's conduct after the Pazzi conspiracy, when the alliance with the king of Naples had been replaced by an alliance with the Venetians. Lorenzo had the name of Ferdinando of Aragon, now an enemy and directly involved in the plot, prudently removed from the proceedings of the trial; and he turned to the king of France only to retaliate against the ecclesiastical censures. He wrote to Lionetto de' Rossi, his agent in France, "the league can stand up by itself agaInst a force; but the king will have to help us defend ourselves from these spiritual things." 116 The guarantee that Lorenzo gave King Ferdinando on his trip to Naples toward the end of 1479 did not represent a turning point in his policy. On the contrary, it was a return to an earlier goal that found here its definitive confirmation. Lorenzo's position was exemplified in his support for the king in the war agaInst the barons, which was all the more meaningful because it ran contrary

115 See FubInI, "I rapportl diplomaticI tra MIlano e Borgogna con particolare nguardo all'alleanza del 1475-1476" (n. 84 above), p. 33, quoting the dIspatch of Sacramoro, Rome, Apnl 3, 1474, about the concern created In the curia by the meeting In Tner of Charles of Burgundy and the emperor the prevIous November. "EI vera e questo, che non ecosa che fazza resentIre Ii Ponttfici nisI simIle Imbandisone che sanno dl concIho." 116 Lorenzo to Llonetto de' ROSSI (at the court of France), June 1, 1478, In Lorenzo, Lettere, Ill, ed. N. RubInstein (Florence, 1977), p 37: "La lega e per se potente a resistere alla forza, rna bisognerebbe il Re CI alutassi dIfendere da queste cose spIntuah " For further study, see FubIni, "Federico da Montefeltro e la congiura dei Pazzi" (n. 48 above), pp 369 ff.

The Italian League and the Balance of Power

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to the prevailing opinion in Florence. The result of this policy was the attainment of a bargaining position strong enough to influence the papacy (in this case, Innocent VIII): Florence assumed the role of arbiter and enjoyed unprecedented influence in Italian politics. Understanding exactly how Lorenzo attained such a bargaining position would require further investigation. Here let us simply indicate his matrimonial alliance with the Orsini family, originally treated as a guarantee of his recent alliance with the king of Naples, and, furthermore, the condotta that he personally concluded with Virginio Orsini, head of the family, in 1486. The Orsini, let us remember, had been one of Alfonso's most effective \veapons in intimidating the pope. 117 The point here is that, except for emergency situations, Lorenzo consciously tried to limit himself to the Italian political scene, unlike Cosimo and an older generation of Florentine politicians. (tne of his main concerns was to limit the church's political initiative, obviously going in the opposite direction from the pope's effort to promote the Italian confederacy. The contradictory goals of both Lorenzo and the pope were evinced in the treaty concluded in Rome on March 13, 1480, nominally to renew the lega generale. 118 This time the authors of the document were the reconstituted league of Naples, Milan, Florence, and Pope Sixtus IV. But the refusal of Venice to sign caused the immediate invalidation of the treaty both de jure and de facto, since it was supposed to aim "ad pacem et felicitatem totius Italiae." Like the 1455 treaty, this one was supposed to last twenty-five years. But, paradoxically for a treaty that had the pope himself as major player, it repeated the same 1470 and 1474 transgressIve clause about which Sixtus IV had complained to the emperor: "pro statibus ipsarum (partium) quos possident in Italia, contra omnes de cetero non lacessitos aut provocatos ... turbantes seu turbare volentes ... neminem ... excipiendo undecunque venerit cuiuscunque gradus et dignitatis existat, etiam si suprema quacunque fulgerent dignitate temporali vel spirituali." 119 This first clause contains an allusion to the attack that Florence had just suffered from the papacy. But after the next clauses inviting Venice and Ercole d'Este, duke of Ferrara, there is the following ample recognition of the papal prerogatives: "predicte partes ... promiserunt quod predicti Sanctissim]l Domini Nostri Pape et suorum successorum canonice intrantium ac prefate Sacrosancte Romane Ecclesie auctori117 See N. Palmarocchi, La politica italiana di Lorenzo de'Medici: Firenze nella guerra contro Innocenzo VIII (Florence, 1933), pp. 77 ff.; H. Butters, "Florence, Milan and the Barons' War (1485-1486)," In Grarfagnini, ed. (n. 37 above), pp. 281-308; and C. Shaw, "Lorenzo de' MediCI and ~Hccolo Orsini," in ibid., pp. 257 - 79. 118 See RubInsteIn, "Das pohtische System Italiens" (n. 3 above), p. 115. The text of the treaty of March 13, 1480, is pubhshed in Lorenzo, Lettere, V, ed. M. Mallett (Florence, 1981), pp. 279-290. 1 19 Lorenzo, Lettere, V, p. 281.

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Fubini

tas, dignitas, preheminentia, honor et status ... conservabitur et manutenebitur pacificus et tranquillus," and no contracting parties "directe vel indirecte in dannum, iactarum, preiudicium vel dedecus ipsius Sanctissimi Domini nostri et dicte Sacrosancte Romane Ecclesie aliquid attentetur, innovetur vel moveatur." For the first time, I believe, this political treaty explicitly provided for the protection of the pope's spiritual prerogatives: "quod circa spiritualia prefatus Sanctissimus Dominus Noster manuteneatur et conservetur ac etiam reintegretur sicut est de iure et approbata consuetudine secundum determinationem Dei et Sanctorum Patrum." 120 These words were a transparent allusion to the fact that Lorenzo had appealed to the king of France for calling the pope to answer before the council. The implicit and conflicting elements inherent in the very essence of the Italian League were thus brought to the surface and, in consequence, the crisis of the league was definitively announced. The so-called policy of equilibrium, openly disrespectful of the supreme prerogatives of the church and the empire ("etiam si suprema quacunque fulgeret dignitate temporali vel spirituali"), represented the replacement of the league, not its continuation. And Lorenzo was rightly considered to be the author of this replacement, even if its premises could be found in the events of the years 1466-67, that is, in the time of the successions of Francesco Sforza and Cosimo, whose tight political bond had contributed so much to the Treaty of Lodi. Lorenzo consciously assumed this role, and from the very outset he formulated a strategy that he basically never abandoned. His success could be measured in Florence's acquisition of unprecedented influence and security, as Machiavelli's unbiased account acknowledged. 121 The most typical and extraordinary product of his policy was the influence he exercised on the papacy, from which he managed to obtain a cardinalship for his son: it was the paradoxical ecclesiastical consecration of an aggressively secular line of conduct. Rubinstein ends his recent reevaluation of the Italian League with a reference to the Holy League formed on March 31, 1495, against the French: "pro quiete Italiae ... pro conservanda dignitate et auctoritate Apostolicae Sedis, pro Sacri Romani Imperii iuribus tuendis proque defensione et conservatione communium statuum partium praedictarum." 122 The participa120 Ibid. The renewal of the lega generale of Paul lIon December 22, 1470, already contained contradIctory clauses. It first mentioned the lega partieolare of Naples, MIlan, and Florence and the oblIgations that it involved, but then It confirmed the prevIous reservations and obligations of the church. These were exactly the same as those defied by the lega partieolare and that had so far been an Impediment to the conclusion of the treaty. 121 See N. Machiavelli, Istorie florentine, ed. P. Carli, 2 vols. (Florence, 1927), 2:219. 122 See RubinsteIn, "Das politische System Italiens," p. 119.

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tion of the empire (the duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro, had by then obtained, although too late, his long-sought investiture) marks the beginning of a new epoch. European conflicts, from which the Italian League had tried to protect the peninsula, were now using Italy as their main battlefield. The other novelty was that, once the Medici had been eKpelled, Florence resumed its traditional pro-French role. Lorenzo's "Italian" and princely line of conduct was now a thing of the past. Maybe in the light of these events, the nostalgic judgment expressed by (iuicciardini and some of his contemporaries will appear a little less simplistic than our contemptuous modem historiography has tried to make it appear.

Index A accatti, 10 Acciaiuoli, Angelo, 179, 190 aggregation, pnvate structures of, 40-41, 82 Agnadello, 73 agriculture, 80 Albania, 192 Albert II, 170 Alfonso, 103, 106, 128, 132, 166-99 Allies, George, 74 Alvarottus, Iacobus, 72 anachronIsm, 46, 61, 102, 117 AngiohnI, F., 160 Anglo, S., 148 Anjou, Rene of, 190 AnsanI, MIchele, 161, 173 anthropology, and hIstory, 9, 35, 39, 62, 90, 136, 163 antistructuralism, history and, 143 AnzilottI, AntonIO, 82, 83, 99 Apostohc Chamber, 160 arbltrium, 71 Ardant, Gabnel, 99 Arezzo, 114, 120, 193 aristocracy, 77, 87, 141-42, 158, 160; and privIlege, 70, 78; see power, pnnce AristotelianIsm, 20 ArrighI, Iacopo di Francesco, 112 art, state as, 2, 78 artisans, 5 Asch, Ronald, 137, 138, 140, 141 Astuti, Guido, 63, 76 Atlante Storico Itahano, 80, 81 authority, 64, 102 Averroes, 202 B BaghonI, 178 balance of powers, 64-65, 166-99; see diplomacy Baldus, 66, 68, 72 balla, 20, 119 Barbens, Walter, 51 Barbero, 141 Barbo, Pietro, see Paul II Barel, Yves, 93 Baronci, RinIen, 112 Bartolus, 20, 26, 28, 29, 30, 66, 72 BattionI, Glanluca, 161 Bayle, Pierre, 164 Becagli, V., 160

Index Beccanugi, Lionardo di Niccolo, 110-12, 120 Becchi, Gentile, 195 Becker, MarviIll, 113 behavior, regulation of, 153, 164 Bellomo, Manlio, 53 Benedict, Saint, 164 benefices, 87, ]56-59, 173, 195 Berengo, Marino, 76, 77, 79, 102 Bertelli, S., 140 Bizzocchi, Roberto, 7, 44, 118 Bloch, Marc, 164 Boccanegra, Simon, 105, 107, 127 Bollani, Bishop, 163 Bologna, 85, 128, 140, 147, 178 Boniface VIII, 189 bonum commune, 30 Borgia, Alfonso, see Calixtus III Borgo San Sepolcro, 193 Borromeo, Car] 0, 161 Bossy, John, 163 Boucher, J., 140, 149 Bourdieu, Pierre, 9, 38 Brabant, 84 Braccio, 169 Bracciolini, Poggio, 181 Braun, Rudolf, 99 Brescia, 163 Brown, Judith, 119 Brucker, Gene, 117, 153 Brunner, Otto, 4, 9, 12, 38,45, 57, 65, 84 Bullard, Melissa, 153 Burckhardt, Jakob, 2, 15, 25, 78 bureaucracy, 15, 99-100, 132, 150; and sovereignty, 157 -58; study of, 76- 77 Burgundy, 141, 150, 178 C Calixtus III, 185, 186, 187 Camaldohtes, 153 Cambrai, League of, 86 Camera del COlmune, 110-12, 120 Camerino, Simone da, 183 Cantimori, 153 Capponi, Neri, 120, 168, 179 Capuchins, 153 Cardinals, College of, 180, 182, 190 cardinals, households of, 143 Cardini, 146 Carpzov, Benedikt, 66 Carrara, Francesco da, 143; Francesco II da, 143 Casa di San Giorgio, 103

201

202

Index

Casslfer, Ernst, 35 Castro, Paolo dI, 70 catasto, 8,83, 116-18, 121, 126 Cattaneo, Carlo, 79 CattanI, 140 center and penphery, 74-96, 101, 103, 150 centrahzatIon, 8,48, 102, 127, 132, 150; of finances in Florence, Ill, 116, 117, 120, 123, 126, and modernIty, 75, 98; nonlinearity of, 87; and sovereIgnty, 158 Centro Europa delle cortI, 138, 139 Centro Studi Europa delle Corti, 8 Cervo, 90, 91 ceto civile, 88 Chabod, Fedenco, 1-3, 76, 77, 80, 83,99, 100, 103, 126, 152 Challant, 141 Charles I, 144 Charles V, 100 Charles VII, 176 Charles of Calabna, 105 Chlttohni, GIorgIo, 4, 5, 9, 83, 84, 101, 102, 127, 142, 161, 162 Chronicle (VIllanI), 20 church, and dIscIplIne, 13, as pnvate InstItutIon, 42, and state, 152-65, 175; structures, 80; taxatIon of, 157 -60; wealth of, 109 CIcero, 20, 97 Cinque del contado, 122 CiompI, 8, 107, 113 CIpolla, Bartolomeo, 71, 72 CIpolla, Carlo, 20, 32 CItIzens, equahty of, 118 cItizenship, 13, 15, 70- 71 CIty, and country, 79,81,92-94, 147; and state, 19,93; see center and periphery CIty-states, 7, 8, 77, 79, 83, 84, 92, 93; finances of, 105-10; and see IndIvIdual cities CI vlhzatIon, see hIstory, cultural CIvilization of the Renaissance (Burckhardt), 25 CIVIl serVIce, Prussian, 1 Civitas, 19 Claro, GUlho, 66 Clement VI, 28 Clencis laicos (BonIface VIII), 189 Clero e societa nell'Italia moderna (Rosa), 153, 156 clIentelism, 9, 39, 89, 102, 137, 150, 158 Coena Domini, In (Paul II), 189 Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1990 (Tilly), 98 Cohn, Samuel, 116 ColleonI, Bartolomeo, 190, 192 CollettI, LUCIO, 2 command, see dISCIplIne Commentarll (PIUS II), 178 Commentators, 66 communes, 13, 21, 146; and church, 156; hIStOry of, 79, 83

Index conciliarism, 158, 176-77, 186, 187 Concordat of 'Vienna, 171 Connell, William, 118, 119 consensus, context of, 164 Consiglio dei I)ieci, 129-32 consilia, 70, 7] constitution, 15, 16, 21 contado, contadini, 82, 83, 87, 92, 106, 117 Contarini, Niccolo, 130 Conti, Elio, 118, 119 contract, and power of state, 43 Conversini, Giovanni, 143, 149 corruption, 39, 46, 51 Cortona, 114, ]93 Council of Basel, 170, 171 Council of Constance, 168 Council of Fen'ara, 171 Council of Trent, 153, 156, 163 Counter-Refornrlation, 153 court and court culture, 8, 136- 51; see anstocracy, power courtiers, defined, 149 Cozzi, Gaetano, 86, 129, 159 Credito di tesoreria, 128 Croce, Benedetto, 78 crusade, 170, 178, 184, 192 cultural structures, and law, 62 - 63 D Damhouder, Josse, 66 Dean, Trevor, 7 De BenediCtls, Angela, 85 debt, public, 107, 108-9, 113, 121, 127 -35 decadence, religious, 155-56; state and, 16 decima, 105, 106, 124, 125, 126 Defensor pacis, 20 de iure/de facto, 72, 73 Del Col, Andrea, 162 Del Torre, Giu5,eppe, 161 Del Treppo, Mario, 128, 162 demographic structures, 80 despotism, 22-23, 29, 30 De Vergottini, (}., 26, 27 Dlaz, 125 Diet of Mantua, 177 diplomacy, 1, 7; private, 42 Diplovatazio, Tommaso, 73 discipline, 11- 33; and religion, 163 documentation, financial, 108, 111, 120; see centralizatIon Donati, M. J. PLozza, 153

203

204

Index

DouaI, 108 dowry fund, see monte delle doti Ducci, Lorenzo, 149 E ecclesiastical-relIgIous studies, 155 economic development, 93-94; structures, 80 Edward IV, 144 effectiveness, Machiavellian, 24-25; see rationalIzation Eleonora of Portugal, 170 Elias, Norbert, 7, 98, 102, 137 Elton, G. R., 148 Emilia, 84 England, 138, 147, 150, 151, 162 English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (Starkey), 148 epistemology, Foucauldian, 3 EpsteIn, S. R., 94, 95 Erasmus, 25 Ercole, Francesco, 83 Estensi, 7, 28, 139, 143; Borso d'Este, 190; Ercole d'Este, 145, 197 estimo, 106, 125 ethnography, hIStOry and, 3, 39, 60 Eugenlus IV, 170, 184, 189 expansionism, 174- 75, 186, 188 expenditures, court, 144, 146 F factions, 9, 52 Faenza, 184 FantonI, Marcello, 164 FannaccI, Prospero, 66 Famesi, 139 Fasano GuarinI, Elena, 6, 49, 102, 124, 125, 127, 160 FelIx V, 170, 177 Ferdinando, 185, 188, 190, 193, 196 Ferrara, 7, 28, 133, 139, 140, 149, 190, 197 feudalIsm, 79 feuds, 9, 91, 142 finance, publIc, 97 -135; Florentine, 110-27; Venetian, 129-30 financIers, in Medicean regime, 121 FioravantI, Maunzlo, 64-65 FISCO, religione e stato nell'eta confesslonale, 161, 162 Flanders, 84, 105 Florence, 8,40, 55, 82, 84, 88,92, 94, 9-135, 160, 167; as atypIcal, 133; finances of, 110- 27; see ItalIan League focatlco, 106 Fontanabuona Valley, 90, 91, 158 Fosi, Irene Polvennl, 154 Foucault, Michel, 38

Index

205

FragnIto, Gigliola, 153, 159 France, 105, 138, 150, 162~ and Italian League, 166-99 Frederick II, 22 Fredenck III, 170- 72 freedom, 76- 77 fnendshlp, 118 ~ see patronage Frequens, 168 Fnuli,69 Fublni, Riccardo, 7, 55, 117

G gabelle, 105-7,109, Ill, 112 Galasso, Giuseppe, 78, 79, 81, 162 genealogy, and legItImacy, 164-65 Genet, Jean-Philippe, 99, 102 Genoa (Genova), 8,52,91,92,95,102,105,107-10,127,133,135,184,188-90 Germany, 84, 104, 105, 138, 162 Ghlrardacci, C.. 183 Gierke, Otto, 65, 84 gift-gIvIng, and patronage, 150 Giovanni II BentIvoglio, 139, 147 Giugni, Bernardo, 179 Given, James, 101 "Gh Ordlni religiosi tra Rlforma e Controriforma" (Fragnito), 153 Glossators, 66 Gonzaga, Francesco, 190 Gonzaga, Guglielmo, 139, 145 government adrninistratIon, study of, 76, 100 GramscI, Antonio, 2, 6 Gratian, 67 Greco, Gaetano, 163 Grendi, Edoardo, 48, 90-92 Guasco, Maunllo, 163 GUlcclardlni, Francesco, 5, 97 -98, 166, 199 Gundersheimer, W., 140

H Habermas, Jurgen, 31 Hamburg, 108 Hay, Denys, 152 Henri III, 140, 144 Henri VII, 26 heresy, 153, 154, 189 Herlihy, DavId, 93 Hintze, Otto, 1, 12,55, 65, 84 hlstonography, 11, 35-37, 80, 85, 148, ]l53 hIstory, cultural, 17~ MarxIan, 2, 3~ pohtical, 3, 35, 64, and poststructuralism, 3, social, 3 Hofische Gesellschaft, Die (Ehas), 7 Hobbes, Thomas, 19

206

Index

Holy League, 198 homosexuahty, 114 households, stabIhty of, 143 -44 I IlardI, Vincent, 167, 185 Innocent VI, 28 Innocent VIII, 185, 197 InquIsItIon, 153, 162 InstItutIons, and state, 11-33, 136, 163; hIstory of, 90; Interplay among, 49-50; and war, 103 Interdisciplinanty, 138 IStitUtO Stonco Italo-GermanIco, 3-4 ItalIan League, 166-99, origIns of, 167 - 70 Italian Renaissance Courts (Bertelh), 140 Italy, dIfferences wIthIn, 17 -18; role In European history, 3, 4, 8, 9 -12, 17 -18,

32-33, 36-37, 62-64, 84-85 clvt!e, 71 IUS commune, 66-69,70-71 IUS propnum, 66-68,70-71 lustlficatio non petlta, 169 IUS

J James VI, 144 Jelhnek, 65 JesuIts, 153, 161, 162 Jews, taxes on, 109 John XXII, 28 Jones. PhIhp, 79 JunsdictIon, church vs. state, 157-59, 161, 168, 173, 174, 193 Junsprudence, see law

K KantorowIcz, 164 Kellenbenz, Hermann, 4 Kelsen, 65 Kent, Dale, 118 Kent, Wtlham. 118 Kettenng, 150 KlanIczay, T, 142 Klenker als Burger, 156 Kompetenz-Kompetenz, 5 Kultur, 15, 17 L Lamprecht, 15 Land und Herrschaft (Brunner), 4 L' AquIla, battle of, 169 Lamer, J , 148 LatIn, 63

Index

207

law, canon, 159; history of, 35, 39, 62-74, 90, 136; medieval structure of, 67 -69; private, 85; politics of, 86; public, 89 League of the Public Weal, 190 legal administration, 66; culture, 6 Leghorn (Livonrlo), 95, 114 legitimacy, 11-33; culture of, 164 liberalism, 16 libertas, 72, 73 Lignum Vitae ('¥ion), 164 Liguria, 52, 90--92, 158 Lipsius, Justus, 25 Litchfield, R. B UIT, 124 literacy, 24 loans, forced, 105, 112, 116; and public debt, 107 Lockwood, L., 140 Lombardy, 27, 94, 161, 172 Louis III, 169 Louis XI, 144, 188, 190 Lubkin, G., 141, 144, 146 Lucca, 77, 115, 133, 188 Luhman, 31 Luzzara, Camillo, 139 M Machiavelli, 2, 5,20, 31,97, 134, 152, 198 Maddalena, Aldo, 4 Maggior Consiglio, 129 magistracies, Venetian, 129 Maino, Giason del, 72, 73 Maitland, 65 Malanima, Paolo, 93, 94 Malatesta, Roberto, 194 Malatesta, Sigis mondo, 146 Mantua, 140 maps, 80-81 Marongiu, Antonio, 63, 76 marriage, 118, 180, 197 Marsilius of Padua, 18, 19, 20, 24 Martin V, 168-71, 175 Matthal, Anton, 66 mediation, and papacy, 176 Medici, 7-9, 81, 95, 120, 179, 188; Cosimo, 8, 81-83, 118-26, 161; Cosimo III, 160,170,179-80, 188, 194, 197; Lorenzo de' 7, 8, 121-24, 166-69, 186, 195-98 mendicants, 156 mentalites, history of, 90 merchants, 5 Mesquita, Bueno de, 143 Messina, 94 microhistory, 9, 60, 90

208

Index

Middle Ages, CIVIC life of, 24, 93; jurisprudence and, 62, 66-67, 71; public/private distinction, 55; and state, 11-12, 16-17,22,26,35,47,102,116,147-49,155 Miglio, 31-32 Milan, 2, 7, 52, 65, 76, 100, 105, 107, 110, 115, 133, 140, 142, 149, 160, 161, 167; and see Itahan League modernIzation, 2, 100; see centralization, rationahzatlon Molho, Anthony, 4, 5, 8 monarchies, 18; see ruler, state Montanari, Daniele, 163 Monte, 105, 115, 120-23, 127 Monte Comune, 8 Monte delle dotl, 8, 115, 120-26 Monte Nuovo, 130 Montefeltro, Federico da, 139, 191 Montefeltro, Guidubaldo da, 142 montl di pieta, 156 Montone, Braccio da, 168 Morelli, Lorenzo di Matteo, 121 Moro, Ludovico iI, 105, 199 Mozzarelh, C., 136 MUSI, Aureho, 132, 162 N Naf, Werner, 84 Naples, 7, 8, 65, 78, 88, 103, 106, 108, 110, 128, 132, 133, 162, 167 nationalism, 100 Neroni, DIetlsalvI, 183, 190 NiccolinI, Otto, 181 Nicholas V, and Italian League, 166-99 NIgi, Nigi di Nerone di, 112 nOVlna, 118, 119

o oath taking, 4, 57 -58 obedIence, see disciphne old regime, 89 OldrinI, Paola, 161 organic model of state, 58-61, 69, 70 Organlzzazione del territorio In [talia e Germania, 4 Ongini della Stato, 4 "OrigIns of the State in Italy, 1300-1600," 153 OrsinI, 172, 197 p

Palermo, 94 PalmIerI, Matteo, 119 papacy, 18, 154, 180, 187; and Itahan League, 166-99; and legitimacy, 5, power of, 152, 158-59, 198; and sovereignty, 22, 28, 32 Papagno, G., 138, 150 Parma, 8, 128, 139, 161

Index Partner, P., 169 patrician systerIl, 89 patrimonialism, 5, 99, 126 patronage, 3, 89, 118, 137, 143, 150-51, 156 Paul II, 185 - 92 Pazzi conspiracy, 119, 196 peace, as goal, 19, 28, 169, 180, 184 Pellegrini, Marco, 161 periphery, see center personal rule of prince, 136-37, 142, 148-50; see power personal ties, see patronage, friendship, rnarriage Perugia, 133, 168, 178 Pesaro, 149 Pescia, 93, 119, 193 Petralia, Giuseppe, 116, 119, 125 Pezzolo, Luciano, 104 Piacenza, 128, ]l39 Piccinino, Jacopo, 187, 192 Piedmont, 51-52, 65, 95 Pietrasanta, 188 Pillinini, G., 167 Plsa, 92, 114, 116, 193 Pistola, 93, 119 193 Pitti, 120; Giannozzo, 179 Pius II, 177, 178, 187, 188, 190 podesta, 82, 91 political science, and history, 35 politics, modern, characteristics of, 12 -13 Portugal, 150 Po Valley, 88, 140 Povolo, Claudio, 90 power, anthropology of, 164; and arIstocratic pnvilege, 49-50, 70, 78, 101; consolidation of, 5, 127, 129, 133-34; local privilege, 81; princely, 82, 149 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 176 Prato, 93, 120, 193 preaching, 156 prince, power 0 f, 82 private, see pub lic/private privilege, see power Prodi, Paolo, 4, 57, 154, 158, 164 property, 156 Prosperi, Adriano, 153 prostitution, 114, 145 Prussia, 1 public/private conjunction, 9, 34-61, 46; defined, 34, 38, 55 public structures, 54 I

Q Quaderni stonci, 90, 163 quadruple league, proposed, 195

209

210

Index

R Raffestin, C., 96 Raggio, Osvaldo, 90, 91, 158 rationalization, 2, 16, 64-65, 100, 149-50 reame, 18 refeudalization, 78 Reformation, 153 regnum, 18 regulation, increased, 144; see behavior religion, see church Repubblica intemazionale del denaro, La, 4 Republic of magistrates, 88 resources, 7, 31, 91, 104, 121, 151 revolutionary, people as, 13, 21 Rimini, 184, 193, 194 Rinuccini, Alamanno, 118 Risorgimento, 154 Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in [talia, 155 Romani, 140 Romano, Ruggiero, 79 Rome, 110, 160, 161, 162; see Italian League, papacy Ronzani, Mauro, 156 Rosa, Mario, 162 Rosciate, Albericus, 72 Rossi, Lionetto de', 196 Rotelli, Ettore, 80 Rubinstein, Niccolal, 118, 167, 198 Ruggiero, Bruno, 156 Ruini, Carlo, 73 ruler, role of, 137, 144-45; see patrimonialism; power "rulership contracts," 84 Rurale, Flavio, 161 Ryder, A., 170, 171, 185

S Sachetti, 21 sacralization of ruler, 144, 145 Sacramento del potere, 4 Sahlins, Peter, 74 Salvadori, Patnzia, 118 Salvemtni, 156 San Gimignano, 120 Sarpi, Paolo, 73, 159 Sarzana, 188 Savona, 95, 188, 189 Savonarola, Girolamo, 105 Savoy, 95, 140, 142, 146, 193; see Piedmont Scala, Cangrande II della, 145 Schiera, Pierangelo, 4-6, 38, 80 schism, 168, 170, 177, 181, 193

Index

211

Schmitt, Carl, 4 Seneca, 20 Serenissima, 68-70, 73, 129, 131 Sestan, Ernesto, 47 Sforza, 2, 7, 54,83,88,94, 161, 179-80, 186, 188, 190, 196; Alessandro, 174; Ascanio, Cardinal, 161; Francesco, 119, 167, 170, 172-76, 183, 186, 189, 196, 198; Galeazzo Maria, 141-43, 145-46, 189, 193-95 SIcily, 17, 22, 78, 94 Siena, 124, 170 Sigismund, 170" 171, 194 signoria, 1, 2, 5, 6, 20, 22, 24, 27, 28, 32, 77, 83, 105, 128, 146, 178 SIgnorotto, Gianvittono, 162 Sixtus IV, 185, 197 Societa violenta, La (Fosi), 154 sociology, and history, 35, 39, 99 Soderini, Niccolo, 190 Sonderweg, Itab an, 3 Sovrano pontefice, II (ProdI), 154 Sozzini, Bartolomeo, 73 Spain, 78-79, 162 Spinoza, 164 Staatsrechtswissenschaft, 4 Stadt, Die (Weber), 5, 13 Starkey, D., 145, 148 state, 9, 15, 19, 101; defined, 1, 18-19,30-31,35,42-45,64,76,78,83,90-91, 101; "imaginary," 35-36, 47; models, 55-56,84,90-91,94-95 State and Society in Medieval Europe (Given), 101 stato, see state Stefani, Marachlone di Coppo, 113 Stolleis, Michael, 98 Storia d'Italia (Einaudi), 65,79, 83, 155, 159, 162, 163 Stona d'Italia (lJtet), 65 structuralism, and history, 9, 138 Stumpo, Enrico, 125 T Tabacco, Giovanni, 49, 133, 134 TacItus, 97 tail/e, 105 Tangheroni, Marco, 93 taxation, 104-6, 112, 123, 129-30, 136, 157 -60 Tenenti, A., 149 Terraferma, see Venice Tilly, Charles, 8, 98, 99, 102 Toews, J. B., 171 Toscana nell'eta di Cosimo III, La (Angiohni, Becagli, Verga), 160 TranchedIni, Nicodemo, 167, 177, 178, 181 Transylvania, 1~ 2 Treaty of Lodi, 166, 167, 176, 178-80, 183, 191, 198 triple league, 191- 99

212

Index

Turin, 95 Turrini, Miriam, 164 Tuscany, 6, 9, 65, 81-82,93,94,103,155,160,172 tyranny, see despotism

U Uber den Prozess der Zivlllsation (Elias), 7 urbanizatIon, 92-94, 95, 156; see CIty, center Urbino, 140, 142

V Valla, Lorenzo, 186 varietate fortunae, De (Bracciohni), 181- 82 VenIce, 8, 27, 40, 52, 65, 68- 73, 77, 81, 86-88, 93, 103, 105, 106, 109-10, 128-29, 133, 135, 155, 161, 164, 167; see Italian League Ventura, Angelo, 77, 81, 82, 86 Verfassungsgeschichte, 12 Verga, M., 160 Veyne, Paul, 43 vicanate, 26- 29, 32, 82 Vicenza,93 Villani, GiovannI, 20 Villani, Matteo, 113 VIllari, Rosario, 78 Visconti, 2, 83, 88, 94, 169, 171; Barnabo, 191; Filippo Maria, 171, 173, 186; Giangaleazzo, 143, 145 Vivanti, Corrado, 79 Volpe, GioacchIno, 83 Voltaire, 68 Volterra, 193 voluntansm, 6 W Walter of Brienne, 105 war, 8, 188; and finance, 97 -135 War of the Eight Saints, 168, 175 War of 1452-54, 178 "Was There a RenaIssance State?" (Chabod), 1 Weber, Max, 1, 5, 9, 12-13, 15-16, 19, 21, 24-25, 65, 77, 99, 100, 102-3 Willoweit, Dietmar, 4 WIon, Arnold, 164 Z

Zarri, Gavriella, 163 Zecca, 130 Zonta, 129 Zorzi, Andrea, 114, 117, 127

CONTRIE~UTORS ROBERTO BIZZOCCHI

is Professor of His.tory at the University of Udine.

GIORGIO CHITTOLINI

is Professor of Medieval History at the University

of Milan. is Principal Lecturer in l-listory at the Roehampton Institute, London.

TREVOR DEAN

RICCARDO FUBINI

is Professor of History at the University of Florence.

is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Pisa.

ELENA FASANO GUARINI

JULIUS KIRSHNER

is Professor of History at the University of Chicago.

ALDO MAZZACANE

is Professor of Law at the University of Naples

"Federico 11." ANTHONY MOLHO

is Professor of History at Brown University.

is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Trent and Cultural Advisor at the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin.

PIERANGELO SCHIERA