The Italian Renaissance

by Peter Burke

  The cultural importance of the court as an institution was that it brought together a number of gentlemen – and ladies – of leisure. It was crucial to what Elias calls ‘the civilizing process’. Like elegant manners, an interest in art and literature helped show the difference between the nobility and ordinary people. As in the salons of seventeenth-century Paris, the presence of ladies stimulated conversation, music and poetry. We must, of course, beware of idealizing the Renaissance court. Castiglione’s famous Courtier must not be taken too literally. It was planned as a courtly equivalent of Plato’s treatise on the ideal republic, and it should also be regarded (as the history of the revisions to the text demonstrates) as an exercise in public relations, from the defence of the threatened duchy of Urbino in the first draft to the censorship of anticlerical remarks in the final version, when the author was launching himself on a second, ecclesiastical career.34 It is likely that courtiers often found time hanging heavily on their hands. Even in the pages of Castiglione we find them turning to practical jokes as well as to parlour games in order to alleviate boredom. One of the speakers in the dialogue describes courts where the nobles throw food at one another or make bets about eating the most revolting things: so much for ‘civilization’.

  A good corrective to the generally idealized portrait painted by Castiglione is the little book produced by the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini in 1444, fourteen years before he became pope as Pius II. The Miseries of Courtiers, as it is called, is doubtless something of a caricature, and it draws on a tradition of literary and moral commonplaces, but it adds a few sharp personal observations. If a man seeks pleasure at court, writes Enea, he will be disappointed. There is music at court, it is true, but it is when the prince wants it, not when you want it, and perhaps just when you had been hoping to sleep. In any case you cannot sleep comfortably because the bedclothes are dirty, there are several other people in the same bed (which was normal in the fifteenth century), your neighbour coughs all night and pulls the bedclothes off you, or perhaps you have to sleep in the stables. The servants never bring the food on time, and they whisk the plates away before you have finished. You never know when the court is going to move; you make ready to leave, only to find that the prince has changed his mind. Solitude and quiet are impossible. Whether the prince stands or sits, the courtier always has to be on his feet. These do not sound like the conditions most likely to stimulate creativity, but they are the conditions in which poets such as Ariosto, to take only the most famous example, must have worked.

  Courts existed all over Europe, and there were city-states, in practice if not always in strict political theory, in the Netherlands, in Switzerland and in Germany. It is worth asking whether Italian forms of political organization were distinctive in this period and, if so, whether this distinctiveness encouraged the cultural movement we call the Renaissance. As the Italian historian Federico Chabod asked, ‘Was there a Renaissance state?’

  Chabod’s answer was a qualified ‘yes’, not so much on the grounds of the political consciousness of which Jacob Burckhardt made so much as of the rise of bureaucracy.35 ‘Bureaucracy’ is a term with many meanings. It will make for clarity if we follow the precise definitions of the German sociologist Max Weber and distinguish two political systems, the patrimonial and the bureaucratic, on six criteria in particular.

  Patrimonial government is essentially personal, but bureaucratic government is impersonal (the public sphere is separated from the private, and it is the holder of the office rather than the individual whom one obeys). Patrimonial government is carried out by amateurs, bureaucratic government by professionals, trained for the job, with appointment by merit rather than favour, a fixed salary, and an ethos of their own. Patrimonial government is informal, while bureaucrats put everything on record in writing. Patrimonial government is unspecialized, but in the bureaucratic system the officials practise an elaborate division of labour and are careful to define the frontiers of their political territories. Patrimonial government appeals to tradition, bureaucratic government to reason and to the law.36

  There is certainly a case for arguing that some at least of the states of Renaissance Italy were precociously bureaucratic, thanks to Italian urbanization and the consequent spread of literacy and numeracy, discussed above; thanks to the existence of republics, where loyalty was focused not on the ruler but the impersonal state; and thanks to the existence in Italy of the capital of a huge international organization, the Catholic Church. The distinction between public and private was certainly drawn quite explicitly by some contemporaries, such as the speaker in Alberti’s dialogue on the family who rejected the idea of treating the former in any way as if it were the latter (ch’io in modo alcuno facessi del publico privato).37 There was an institutional means of preventing officials confusing public and private to their own advantage: the sindacato. When an official’s term of office expired in Florence, Milan and Naples, he had to remain behind until his activities had been investigated by special commissioners or ‘syndics’. The pope’s dual role as head of the Church and ruler of the Papal States also encouraged awareness of the distinction between an individual and his office.38

  Again, full-time officials were relatively numerous, especially in Rome, and a doctorate in law was something of a professional training for them. Some had tenure and developed a corporate ethos. Fixed money salaries were not uncommon, and some of them were relatively high. In Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, secretaries in the chancery averaged 125 ducats a year, about the salary of branch managers of the Medici Bank. Attempts were made to ensure appointment by merit rather than by purchase, favour or neighbourhood. In Rome, too, the role of secretaries increased in importance in the period.39

  In the greater Italian states, there was considerable demarcation of function between officials. In Milan under Ludovico Sforza, for example, there was a secretary for ecclesiastical affairs, a secretary for justice and a secretary for foreign affairs, who was in turn served by subordinates who specialized in the affairs of different states.40 In Florence and Venice specialist committees were set up, concerned with trade, naval affairs, defence, and so on. In Rome in the later sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus V set up ‘congregations’ or standing committees of cardinals with specialized functions ranging from ritual to the navy. It was in Renaissance Italy that diplomacy first became specialized and professionalized.41

  The importance of written records in administration was increasing. In the fifteenth century, a bishop of Modena was already declaring that he did not want to be a chancellor or ambassador and live in ‘a world of paper’ (un mundo de carta).42 The most striking examples of the collection of information come from the censuses, notably the Florentine catasto of 1427, dealing with every individual under the rule of the Florentine Signoria.43 It was, of course, less difficult to undertake a census of a small state like Florence than of a large one like France. As for the filing and retrieval of information, some sixteenth-century rulers such as Cosimo de’Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, and popes Sixtus V and Gregory XIII, took a particular interest in the setting up of archives.44 There was also increasing awareness, in Rome in particular, of the need for budgeting – in other words, for calculating income and expenditure in advance.45

  One is left with an impression of Italian self-consciousness and innovation in the political field as in that of the arts. In so far as a bureaucratic mode of domination had developed, it is useful to speak of a ‘Renaissance state’. All the same, the extent and speed of change must not be exaggerated. Italy had no lack of courts, and at court, as we have seen, public administration was not separated from the private household of the ruler; loyalty was focused on a man, not an institution, and the ruler by-passed the system whenever he wished to grant a favour to a suitor. In appointments and promotions, the prime necessity was the prince’s favour. As Pius II remarked in his complaint of the miseries of courtiers, ‘at the courts of princes, what matters is not what you do but who you are’
(non enim servitia in curiis principum sed personae ponderantur).46

  At the court of Rome, official positions were regularly sold, especially in the reign of Leo X, and the department of the Datary grew up to deal with this business.47 Offices were also sold in the states of Milan and Naples.48 The buyer of the office might not exercise it in person but ‘farm’ it – in other words, pay a substitute to perform the duties for the fraction of the proceeds, like the ‘vicar’ in a parish. Offices were seen as investments and were expected to bring in an income. However, official salaries were often inadequate. In Milan in the middle of the fifteenth century, the chancellor of the duke’s council was paid little more than an unskilled labourer. Administrators relied on presents, fees and other perquisites, such as the right to a proportion of confiscated goods.

  Even the administration of republics was in many ways far removed from Max Weber’s model of an impersonally efficient bureaucracy. Indeed, in some respects, such as the corporate ethos of officials, Florence seems to have been less bureaucratic than Milan.49 The official system may have stressed equality and merit, but one also has to take into account what Italians today call the sottogoverno, the underbelly of the administration. In Venice, for example, some offices were bought, sold and given as dowries. In any Italian state of this period it is difficult to overestimate the importance of family connections and also of what was known euphemistically as ‘friendship’ (amicizia) – in other words, the links between powerful patrons and their dependents or ‘clients’. The many surviving letters addressed to members of the Medici family in the years immediately before Cosimo came to power in 1434 give a vivid impression of the importance of amicizia to both parties. These letters give substance to the contemporary complaint by Giovanni Cavalcanti that the Florentine commune ‘was governed at dinners and in private studies [alle cene e negli scrittoi] rather than in the Palace’.50

  Many of the political conflicts of the time were struggles between rival ‘factions’ – in other words, between groups of patrons and clients. Perugia, where the Oddi fought the Baglioni, and Pistoia, where the Panciatichi fought the Cancellieri, were notorious for their factionalism. As Machiavelli put it in the twentieth chapter of his The Prince, it was necessary ‘to control Pistoia by means of factions’ (tenere Pistoia con le parti). Local rivalries continued to give some substance to the venerable party terms ‘Guelf’ (originally a supporter of the pope) and ‘Ghibelline’ (a supporter of the emperor) as late as the sixteenth century. The importance of patronage in political and social life gave its force to the Italian proverb ‘You can’t get to heaven without saints’ (Senza santi non si va in Paradiso), picturing the next world in the image of this one. The patronage of artists and writers formed part of this wider system.

  At this point we may return to the links between politics and culture. Following Norbert Elias, it has been argued that Renaissance Italy illustrates the links between ‘state formation’ and ‘civilization’.51 More precisely, we might say that the organization of both political and artistic life was taking increasingly complex and sophisticated forms in Italy, which was in these ways ahead of many other parts of Europe. Given the contrast between different Italian regimes, a more precise question is also worth asking. Which was the better form of government for the arts, the republic or the principality?52 Contemporaries discussed the question, but their opinions were divided. Leonardo Bruni argued, as we have seen (p. 32), that Roman culture flourished and died with the republic, and Pius II suggested that ‘The study of letters flourished most of all at Athens, while it was a free city, and at Rome, while the consuls ruled the commonwealth.’53 On the other hand, the fifteenth-century humanist Giovanni Conversino da Ravenna complained bitterly: ‘Where the multitude rules, there is no respect for any accomplishment that does not yield a profit … everybody has as much contempt for the poets as he is ignorant of them, and will rather keep dogs than maintain scholars or teachers.’54

  The fact that the two great republics, Florence and Venice, were the cities where most artists and writers originated is an obvious point in favour of the Bruni thesis. However, it is not enough to record a correlation; we have to try to explain it. Although it is impossible to measure the achievement drive, it is reasonable to expect it to be greater in republics because they are organized on the principle of competition, so that parents are more likely to bring up their children to try to excel over others. One might also expect this drive to be stronger in Florence, where the system was more open, than in Venice, where the major public offices were virtually monopolized by the nobility. So it was better for artists and writers to be born in a republic; they had a better chance of developing their talents.

  After these talents had been developed, however, patronage was needed, and in this case it is less easy to say which political system benefited artists and writers most. In republics there was civic patronage, at its most vigorous in Florence in the early fifteenth century, when artisans still participated in the government, while Brunelleschi was elected to one of the highest offices, that of ‘prior’, in 1425. It was helped by campanilismo, a sense of local patriotism fuelled by rivalry with the neighbouring commune and expressed architecturally in the magnificent town halls of the period (the Sienese deliberately built their tower higher than that of Florence). Civic patronage was weaker in the later fifteenth century and weaker in Venice than in Florence, despite the official and quasi-official positions of Bembo, Titian and others. It is not surprising to find artists who had been born and trained in republics attracted to courts – Leonardo to Milan, Michelangelo to Rome, and so on. An enterprising prince who was willing to spend the money could make his court an artistic centre fairly quickly, by buying up artists who were already in practice. What he could not do was to produce artists. Whether young men chose to follow the career of artist or not depended, as we have seen, on the social structure.

  THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE

  One reason for the trend towards bureaucratic government not going further was that impersonal administration was impossible in what was still essentially a face-to-face society. Only two cities, Naples and Venice, had populations over 100,000. Loyalty to one’s quarter of town, or ward, or rione (as in Rome), or sestiere (as in Venice) was strong, a loyalty which has survived – whatever the reason – among the contrade of Siena today and is symbolized in the famous annual race, the palio.55 Within the quarter, the neighbourhood (vicinanza) was a meaningful unit, a stage for local dramas of solidarity and enmity. In Florence, the neighbourhood, or more exactly the gonfalone (a quarter within the quarter, or a sixteenth of the city), was a focus for political activity, as has been shown by studies of the ‘Red Lion’ and ‘Green Dragon’.56 The parish was often a community, and so was the street, which was frequently dominated by a particular trade, such as the goldsmiths in Via del Pellegrino in Rome. Cities were small enough for the sound of a particular bell, such as the marangone in Venice or the bell in the Torre del Mangia in Siena, to announce the opening of the gates, or the beginning of the working day, or to call the citizens to arms or to a council.57 Official impersonality was hindered by the fact that citizens might know officials in their private roles.

  Renaissance Florence seems in some ways more like a village than a city, in the sense that so many of the artists and writers with whom we are concerned knew one another, often intimately. A vivid illustration of relationships in this face-to-face society is the meeting of experts called by the Opera del Duomo of Florence in 1503 to decide where to display Michelangelo’s David. Present were thirty men, mainly artists, including Leonardo, Botticelli, Perugino, Piero di Cosimo, Cosimo Rosselli, the Sangallos and Andrea Sansovino, all recorded in the minutes as discussing one another’s suggestions. ‘Cosimo has said exactly where I think it should go’, says Botticelli, and so on.58

  However, Italian society was certainly complicated enough to need an elaborate system of classification. The range of occupations was expanding, especially what we now call ‘profe
ssions’ – not only lawyers and physicians, but professors, managers and secretaries.59 A simple way of illustrating this complexity is to quote a few examples of annual income, in lire, in order to show the range in variation, which works out at 3,500 to 1.60

  L140,000 the richest Venetian cardinal, c.1500

  L77,000 great merchant, Venice, c.1500

  L21,000 doge of Venice, c.1500

  L12,500 ambassador, Venice, c.1500

  L3,750 captain of infantry, Milan, c.1520

  L900 secretary in the Chancery, Venice, c.1500

  L900 master shipwright, Venice, c.1500

  L600 branch manager, Medici Bank, Florence, c.1450

  L400 silkweaver, Florence, c.1450

  L250 soldier, Milan, c.1520

  L250 court trumpeter, Milan, c.1470

  L200 young bank clerk, Florence, c.1450

  L150 soldier, Venice, c.1500

  L120 mason or carpenter, Milan, c.1450

  L70 shop-boy, Florence, c.1450

  L60 labourer, Milan, c.1450