Renaissance
Italian Politics - Background for Machiavelli
* Italy dominated by small city states by 1160
- election among
nobles for positions
-> family
alliances and ties crucial, strategic marriages abound
- guilds’ political
power building by 1180
-> upper working class - middle class
power
- trade between SW
Asia and Europe passing through Italy
-> Italians making money as merchants
- Up and down the
Italian peninsula, a maze of city states
-> most powerful
states in the North: Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence
-> Central Italy
dominated by the Papal States
=> The Pope
was head of own country
-> South
dominated by Spanish from Naples down (such as Messina)
-> Italy was a
region, not a country
=> not even a language
such as Italian, only Latinate languages converging
=> Shakespeare
gets the idea right with "Signior Montanto"
* Popolo governments - 1200ish
- middle class guilds
burst into conflict with nobles
- by 1260 most of
Italy is in Popolo government
-> run by
Podestás
=> first are
local nobles elected by council of guilds
=> later
imported noble with own staff
=> leads to
professional "captains of the people"
-> why?
=> guild economic power growing
=> sophisticated organization and literacy
* Popolo governments self-destruct
- Podestás support
interests of rich bankers & merchants
-> guilds not
strong enough or sophisticated enough
=> too limited a base
- impossible demands
from lower and middle
-> social welfare and attacks on rich
- Signori develop as
conquering outsiders or podestás gone bad
-
by 1300 most Popolo governments gone
* The Signori
- hired heads of
mercenary armies
-> sometimes hired by towns, sometimes brought in by a faction
-> citizens don't want to do own fighting
- Signori use their
armies to take over towns
-> military
technology makes opposition hard
-> everyone's doing it - keep up
-
once they take power, they disarm populace making themselves necessary
-
survival leads to legitimacy
-> seize and wait for papal or imperial blessing
-> Este, Gonzaga, Carrara, Visconti, Malatesta
- reinventing
themselves as the new nobles, they return to the politics of family
* Florence
- doesn't go
completely despotic
-> love
hate-relationship with the Medici
-> often
republican, often Medici dominated
- 1349 Ciompi
rebellion
-> uprising by woolworkers
-> seize the government and run it for a few days
-> first real class-based rebellion
-> unable to stay united, fractured and broken
-> brutally repressed
-
Florence has strong Arts, Literature, and myth of republicanism
* Culture in Florence and under the Signori
- Powerful men need
good bureaucracies
-> bankers and
mercenary leaders understand importance of good paperwork
-> creates a need
for schools to educate men
- old Roman/Latin
texts studied
-> law and
government the main interests
-> literature and
art are also studied
=> Shakespeare
has his characters in Much Ado… talking about Cupid and Saturn
-> not exactly
schools yet, but clusters of well-paid scholars group in the courts
- Rich men want to
show their culture and taste
-> Signori need
to prove they aren't just thugs
-> Medici want to prove they deserve to
"rule" a republic
-> painters and
poets paid by patrons to produce art
=> Leonardo da
Vinci, Michaelangelo, etc. as hired painters
-> promising
young men follow scholars to court to learn
* Immediately previous to Machiavelli
- 1494 Florence goes
fully republican
- 1495 French move
into Naples, then Milan
- in 1500 Milan rebels
and then is crushed after a few months
- Venice is at war
with the Turks from 1499-1501
- with Kingdom of
Naples gone, the Pope takes out his
allies to form large
papal state
- Cesare Borgia
-> illegitimate
son of Pope Alexander VI
-> using French
troops and papal money, takes over his own
kingdom
-> ditches French
and sets up own power base
-> possibly
poisons himself and his father accidentally
-> Alexander dies
and Julius II takes over, hates Borgias
-> Cesare is sick
and faces strong foreign powers and local
rivals
- threat from Spain
brings the Medici back to power in
Florence, ending
republic
-> Machiavelli
banished and writes the Prince to ingratiate
himself