This magisterial study proposes a revised and innovative view of the political history of Renaissance Italy. Drawing on comparative examples from across the peninsula and the kingdoms of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, an international team of leading scholars highlights the complexity and variety of the Italian world from the fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries, surveying the mosaic of kingdoms, principalities, signorie and republics against a backdrop of wider political themes common to all types of state in the period. The authors address the contentious problem of the apparent weakness of the Italian Renaissance political system. By repositioning the Renaissance as a political, rather than simply an artistic and cultural phenomenon, they identify the period as a pivotal moment in the history of the state, in which political languages, practices and tools, together with political and governmental institutions, became vital to the evolution of a modern European political identity.
Author(s): Andrea Gamberini, Isabella Lazzarini (eds.)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: XIV+634
Notes on the contributors vii
Note on translations and usage xiii
Italy in 1454 xiv
Introduction / Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini 1
Part I. The Italian states 7
1. The kingdom of Sicily / Fabrizio Titone 9
2. The kingdom of Naples / Francesco Senatore 30
3. The kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica / Olivetta Schena 50
4. The papal state / Sandro Carocci 69
5. Tuscan states: Florence and Siena / Lorenzo Tanzini 90
6. Ferrara and Mantua / Trevor Dean 112
7. Venice and the Terraferma / Michael Knapton 132
8. Lombardy under the Visconti and the Sforza / Federico del Tredici 156
9. The feudal principalities: the west (Monferrato, Saluzzo, Savoy and Savoy-Acaia) / Alessandro Barbero 177
10. The feudal principalities: the east (Trent, Bressanone/Brixen, Aquileia, Tyrol and Gorizia) / Marco Bellabarba 197
11. Genoa / Christine Shaw 220
Part II. Themes and perspectives 237
12. The collapse of city-states and the role of urban centres in the new political geography of Renaissance Italy / Francesco Somaini 239
13. The rural communities / Massimo della Misericordia 261
14. Lordships, fiefs and 'small states' / Federica Cengarle 284
15. Factions and parties: problems and perspectives / Marco Gentile 304
16. States, orders and social distinction / E. Igor Mineo 323
17. Women and the state / Serena Ferente 345
18. Offices and officials / Guido Castelnuovo 368
19. Public written records / Gian Maria Varanini 385
20. The language of politics and the process of state-building: approaches and interpretations / Andrea Gamberini 406
21. Renaissance diplomacy / Isabella Lazzarini 425
22. Regional states and economic development / Franco Franceschi and Luca Molà 444
23. The papacy and the Italian states / Giorgio Chittolini 467
24. Justice / Andrea Zorzi 490
Bibliography 515
Index 600
