Italy

A politically unified Italy as we know it did not exist until the 19th century. During the Renaissance, the Italian Peninsula was fragmented into city-states, principalities, dukedoms, republics, and the Papal States ruled by the pope, with Naples, Sicily, and

History, Government, and Society

Sardinia under Spanish or French control for most of this period. Venice was famous for having the oldest form of republican government, and Florence followed closely behind. Both Siena and Lucca had a republican government, and Genoa was ruled by an oligarchy of powerful merchants rather than by a single individual. Even in autocratic Milan, firmly ruled by the Visconti and then the Sforza dukes, the Ambrosian Republic (1447-50) lasted almost three years when the last Visconti died. In no instance, however, did any sort of representation in government extend beyond the cities and towns themselves; workers in the surrounding countryside were treated as subjects with no rights at all. To those at the bottom level of society, it made no difference whether the local government was a voting republic or a hereditary principality.

Guilds had been an important political force during the late Middle Ages, and in several towns, such as Bologna, guild members revolted against papal administrators to establish republican rule. They were the strongest element of the rising middle class. Guilds provided microcosms of selfgovernment, with their constitutions and elected officers and councils. Renaissance Italy, with its strong history of communal government during the Middle Ages, enjoyed much more self-government than did the rest of western Europe. The Politics of Aristotle was analyzed by early Italian humanists, who distinguished between autocratic rule and political rule, in which government was limited by the people’s law. Knowledge of the ancient sources on political philosophy, rhetoric, and oratory greatly expanded during the 15th century. These subjects contributed to the humanistic character of Renaissance republicanism.

During the 16th century, the Italian Wars changed the political structure of several parts of the peninsula. In 1494, the French king, Charles VIII (1470-98), invaded Italy; he entered Naples in the spring of 1495. Through the house of Anjou, he claimed Naples as part of his inheritance. His ultimate political goal was to use the port of Naples as a strategic point from which to capture Constantinople and become emperor of Byzantium. (He failed to accomplish this endeavor.) Charles VIII’s chief opponent in the Italian campaigns was the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I (1459-1519), who refused to accept French claims on the duchy of Milan. Except for three years between 1508 and 1511, when he allied himself with France against Venice, Maximilian continued the Habsburg-Valois battle on Italian soil for as long as he was able to fight. Although lacking the support of the German princes in his Italian campaigns, the emperor nevertheless attempted to capture territory on the Venetian mainland, which bordered Habsburg lands. He also claimed Milan as an imperial duchy.

When Francis I became king of France in 1515, one of his goals was to maintain French administrative control of Milan and Genoa, important buffer zones between France and Habsburg dominions. In the ensuing military campaigns, Imperial forces under Charles V seized Milan in 1521, and the French lost Genoa. Because Charles V was also king of Spain, the previous balance of power with the French in northern Italy, the Spanish in the south, and Italians in central Italy was upset by these losses. French forces, however, did not have a chance to regain lost territory because both the pope and the king of England sent troops to assist the Imperial army. In 1524 the French invaded Italy again, seizing Milan, but were decisively defeated at the Battle of Pavia, and Francis I was sent to Spain as a hostage. In the Treaty of Madrid (1526), Francis relinquished his claims in Italy, but he repudiated the agreement as soon as he was released. In the subsequent conflict, the city of Rome was sacked in 1527 by the troops of Charles V. In 1528 the city of Naples suffered during a siege by the French, led by the Genoan admiral Andrea Doria (1466-1560). Doria, however, decided that Francis I had betrayed him, and he returned to Genoa to create a republican state protected by the Spanish Crown. When the duke of Milan died in 1535 without naming an heir, Charles V took charge of the city by appointing an imperial governor. Thus the emperor and the kings of France continued to encroach upon Italian territory, with city-states occasionally playing these foreign rulers against each other. In 1552, for example, the citizens of Siena asked France to protect them from the Imperial troops that they had driven out of the city. The Italian Wars finally ended when Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559.

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

Map 2. Italian Peninsula, c. 1500

History, Government, and Society