Monday, October 31, 2016

news and reflections late Oct 2016

This Halloween it would be welcome to see more of these. A portrait of a kind of civic order. By Edouard Vuillard, 1911, reworked in 1923. Rather than spend money on more war, maybe we could cut off more energy trains. And not just in North Dakota. ______________________________________________________
But militants attempting to counter the Maduro regime, go on the offensive after a summer of deepening violence and a swelling lack of basic necessities. ________________________________________________________ In the US, at the height of our quadrennial pre-election media frenzy, the Republicans seem bent on destroying their own brand to the extent that old-guard conservative leaders are trashing the reputation of actual office holders. _________________________________________________________
The purge of old officials in Turkey continues following this summer's attempted coup. Some more context on Turkey's recent movement. _______________________________________________________
Earthquakes in Italy continue to upset their increasing desire for stability.
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Better Control, More Money, More Problems: Cortes of Toledo, 1480

Key among the reforms that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in Spain began with the 1480 Cortes of Toledo, were in its own royal counsel, the Consejo Real. This essential but traditional entity despite its fluidity had become unwieldy. These reforms, as they played out, would remove many of the greater magnates in Castile from influence in the central state decisions, those of the sovereign King and Queen. This also, as J.H. Elliott relates, allowed a shifting in revenue streams for the Crown and thus, another kind of removal of influence, providing greater control over the Spanish magnates in Castile.

Though the Royal Council had long been central as working bodies that represented the Crown, certain offices and leaders were promoted and others were let go. They had advised on appointments and acted as 'a supreme court of justice and supervised local Castilian governments'. These were reduced to a dozen or so roles dependent on royal prerogative. A prelate, three caballeros and eight or nine jurists (letrados) would do the work of all the rest. Others might come to meetings but would not be allowed to decide matters.
"This exclusion of the great magnates from voting on matters of state meant that the traditional offices of some of the proudest families of Castile were transformed into empty dignities. The Velascos continued to be Constables of Castile, the Enriquez Admirals of Castile, but their high-sounding titles ceased to give them a proscriptive right to the exercise of political power."
Instead, 'new men' were promoted and the old, well established bureaucracy was left to drift. People of university learning were established as secretaries who acted as scribes detailing communications and remained dependent on the workings of the Council's activities. It hadn't always been that way. [p.90]

The Consejo had previously been remade under different circumstances in the 1300's due to the same sort of expansions of magnate control and power, with much of that falling to local regidores acting as municipal administrators. Based on the model in Burgos, as Elliott tells us, there were six alcaldes or judges with judicial duties and sixteen regidores who operated a sort of closed oligarchy. In city after city in Castile, more and more municipalities expanded on this model of civic office-holding with corregidors, royally chosen representatives to influence these municipal affairs with royal input. But the Crown lost a lot of power thru the 1400's and this entire system needed to be reformed. As a result with the Cortes of Toledo in 1480, more of these corregidors took on more duties across Castile.
"The growth of venality, and the decline of royal control, left the field open for local magnates and competing factions to extend their influence over the organs of municipal government, so that towns were either bitterly divided by civil feuds, or fell into the hands of small, self-governing oligarchies." [p. 94].
By the time Isabella had come to power these problems had become more important to quell, and once they were, new order had to be asserted. Hereditary grants of offices were revoked. New town halls were erected in many towns that had not had them before. Written records were to be kept of what transpired in all the places.New offices of these corregidors would be entrusted with administrative and judicial duties. These individuals were to be selected by Queen and King and they would work hard to choose the replacement figures from any place they saw fit. Not necessarily, Elliott warns, were these chosen from the lower classes, but at least, these selected were not limited to those former traditional noble families. So on the one hand there was a kind of greater inclusion from society at large, while simultaneously cutting out many of the old family namesakes.

In time the old alcaldes were replaced with temporary royal corregidores that acted as justices. By the mid 1500's in the reign of Phillip II there were 66 corregimientos in Castile. [p. 95] Similarly the economy of Castile and then greater Spain was effected. Independent revenues that came from sources other than the traditional Cortes was crucially important for the independent viability of the Crown and its continued well-being. Too often had the Crown of old required assistance from this or that municipality or this or that collection of royal representatives in order to carry out its goals. With greater diversity in revenue streams, of new and trusted eyes and voices out in the many towns and cities, in time, the sovereigns could extend their own control, bit by bit, becoming greater arbiters of power and their regal will. The process would expand over decades.

Earlier in their reign they found the Cortes useful in putting down rebellions and upstarts. By the time of the Cortes of 1480, and in the midst of the Reconquista program pushing out the older traditional forms of rule in many cities, the Crown also found it useful to promote their own trusted figures in doing so. The putting down of rebels, and muslims, of corrupt locals and puffed up magnates, coincided with an increase of wealth and wealth distribution in Castile. [p. 92] These benefits, including better record keeping and accurate informants, even firmer judicial decisions by trutsed appointees, all effectively swelled the coffers of the crown, allowing them to operate outside the decions of the limiting Cortes. In turn, more wealth led to a kind of virtuous cycle, in that it renewed attention to goals like the Conquest of  Granada, and establishing greater influence in Italy, bringing more power to the Crown. [p. 93]
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J.H. Elliott: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 : Penguin, NY, 2002

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Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Florentine Cultural Patrons In the Fifteenth Century: Portrait from Weinstein's "Savonarola", III

In depicting the broad cultural milieu of the period in Florence prior to the main subject of Weinstein's Savonarola , he describes, in addition to the famous Medici family, a group of thinkers and doers, teachers and clergy that had great influence. Despite this Republic's advancement of external holdings like Pisa, of growing internal urban industry, and economics in the 1400's, there were a few who would be able to help steer them through the many changes until at least the period up to the Italian Wars and Savonarola. The short list that Weinstein chooses in order to offer up some of the voices for the contours of those times, skates over a mere fifteen pages addressing church ritual, the scourge of forced loans, the ideas inherent in humanism and charged interest as well as taxes. The footnotes should be good too.

The Archbishop of the City held a special, privileged position. Married to the Church in a pageant of prestigious ritual, he also held great responsibility and power and influence.
"He was the chief authority in matters regarding the clergy. He presided over the ecclesiastical court, exercising jurisdiction over the laity in important matters such as marriage and faith. From the revenue producing properties under his control he dispensed patronage, most of it to the city's illustrious families. A successful archbishop had to know how to balance the interests of the local clergy with those of the curia. He had to speak for the laboring classes without aggravating their masters. He had to be a skillful administrator, a student of canon law and theology, a diplomat ... and ... shepherd of his flock, and effective preacher and doctor of souls." [p. 50]
One Antonino Pierozzi played the role from 1444 to 1459. His father was a notary, and he himself became a protege of Pope Eugenius IV and 'chief disciple' of the founder of Dominican Observance in Florence. As archbishop he became known as one who banned lewd festivals and issued death warrants for errant Franciscans. But in his semons, Weinstein says, Pierozzi tended to weave an ethos of humanism into the prior predominant mold of Thomas Aquinas. "He promoted the idea that service to the common good (bene comune) was a Christian as well as a civic virtue, especially relevant to life in a communal polity such as Florence." A chief problem was in the charging of interest which was not in agreement with Church teaching. [p.50]

It was his generation's misery to witness the slow demise or a shift in certain cultural attitudes. There was more money by mid-century and hence more ways to make money for more people. Pierozzi could still preach until his end that this pursuit of wealth may not all be bad so long as it was for public works, for aid to the poor and for the greater good of the community. But this generosity and magnanimity must be performed, he thought, as one of a few necessary civic duties, and not just for personal salvation. This was also an idea that Cosimo de' Medici could get behind. But for a city full of bankers and takers this must have been hard to reconcile for a mendicant Dominican. He was made a saint in 1523.[p. 51]

But Cosimo was also constantly reminded about the costs for security. The proliferation of mercenaries to quell bandits or just protect messengers, as well certainly, for the transport of goods and coin, was also more and more expensive. Interested in extending the influence of Florence, Cosimo also went ahead and built palaces in the cities and countryside round about. He could fill them up too, by extending his generosity to artists and builders, to musicians and those who studied rhetoric. Of course he did, and he did so for schools as well as churches and monasteries or the Mendicant Orders.  His patronage of the arts 'was personal, open and princely', Weinstein says.
"He was an avid builder of palaces and churches, employed the finest painters and sculptors of his time, and retained agents who traveled far and wide hunting for rare manuscripts and books. He sponsored Greek and Latin scholars, most notably Marsilio Ficino, the son of his physician, setting him up with the income from a farm at Careggi and a house in town, where he translated and commented on Plato and taught his brand of Neo-Platonism to leading citizens and their sons."
 "... [He] also liked to be seen as a benevolent father figure who embodied the traditional Florentine virtues of the pious Christian, shrewd pragmatic merchant, and republic-loving patriot. He played on the symbolism of the family name: the Medici were the republic's medici, physicians protecting the health of the polity." [p. 52]
But, he also nearly broke the bank funding Francesco Sforza's successful overthrow and capture of Florence's long time rival Milan, in 1449. When Cosimo died in 1464 he was hailed as Father of His Country and defender of its liberty.

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quotes and pagination in Donald Weinstein: Savonarola: the rise and fall of a renaissance prophet , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

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Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Maximillian In Italy, later 1496: Index of Francesco Guicciardini, ii

It is in the second volume of the 1763 edition of Austin Goddard's translation of Francesco Guicciardini's History of Italy, that the tale of Maximillian Habsburg's trip to Italy - to save Pisa from so many suitors - forces its way into view. Max had a mix of changing intentions and not enough money and not enough troops to accomplish so much. The uncrowned emperor tried to get as much of these as he could. He tried to find out what the players really wanted and found instead that was a changeable thing, too. There were motives all over, there were motions on the field. In the end, the players, as well as Max, returned to what they were doing before he came to Italy. The result was a great loss of prestige for Maximillian and for Ludovico, the duke of Milan.

Here follows then a bird's eye view of the many turns and switchbacks, presented as a glossing index of topics in the same sequence as Goddard's text of Guicciardini.

pp 48-52, Venetian doge gives reasons for protecting Pisa
pp 52- 55, reasons for a vain Ludovico, safe in his delusions of grandeur, not to worry
pp 56-108: troop movements, payments, allocations, battles thru summer 1496
p.108 Why King of France decided to stay in France, for now,

pp 109:::>> Max goes to Italy and then leaves, then comes back
p 110 Ludovico convinces Max to come to Italy, w/ promise of 30,000 additional ducats above the 60K already promised. Ferdinando of Naples dies, Giovanni son of F&I in Spain offered as King of Napoli which doesn't happen.
p 111 Max returns w/ few troops to Vigevano, where allies counselled to take Asti, then Montferrat & Savoy. But no one was impressed w/ Max's troops and wouldn't budge much.
p 112 Max asked Ercole duke of Ferrara to come but he wouldn't budge since Max 'held' Genoa;
p 112-3 Ludovico of Milan took it upon himself to influence Pisa w/ money and Max's prestige should give to himself and Milan the power over Pisa.
p 114 Guicciardini thinks Max wanted Pisa and more money for himself and that is why he was there
p 115-6 motives and view of Florence on Pisa, influence of Savonarola at this point
pp 117-19 Pisa takes action again and again to defend itself against Ludovico, Venice
pp 120-21 battles of Florence and Pisa
p 122 Pisa leans toward Venice after supplies granted
p 123 Ludovico was ill tempered and seen as ill-suited to be put in charge of Pisa

p 124 Max convinced he should go to Pisa, sent ambassadors to all allies to 'take Cognizance'
p 125 Venetian influence grew in Pisa w/ supply of troops and food
p 126 fear grows in Florence of losing Pisa
p 127 Ludovico of Milan kept petitioning the Pisan's to wait for Max
p 127-29 Pisa decided they should not defer to Max's decision and give up their rights before they had received their lost possessions taken thru violence
pp 130-32 Florentine ambassadors refuse to talk to Ludovico of Milan

p 132 Max leaves Genoa w/ six galleys and many more Genoese vessels, Venetian ships, and many armies in order to 'get a closer look' at Pisa from Livorno; Pietro Bembo says this happened on October 7, 1496.
p 133 but the French were in communication w/ Florence
p 134 French fleet encounters allies' preparatiions near Livorno
pp 135-36 siege of Livorno from sea and land: French ship drops off grain and leaves,
pp 137 cannon is used on Florentine castle but then a storm sinks Genoese ship w/ Max and 2 Venetian ships

p 138 Max makes it to Pisa, leaves for Vico Pisano, lays 2 bridges across the Arno then leaves for Milan asking Venice for more money. They refuse and he asks for 22000 Rhenish florins a month
p 139 Max goes on to Pavia, then Lomellino and then Cusago w/out entering Milan, and then Como
p 140 Max hurries home instead of seeing the pope's rep, Florence retakes Pisan forts and

p 141 Ludovico withdraws his armies. Venice consolidates theirs and looks for supplies. Meanwhile Tortona is taken by Venice
p 142 French retreat from more forts and return to France

pp 143-44 France decides to go after Genoa and Pope goes after holdings of the Orsini
pp 145-47 siege by pope of Bracciano the fortress of the Orsini
p 148 French arrive to give aid to Bracciano
pp 149-51 the siege was raised in time but incursions continued until
pp 152 peace articles over the Orsini were finalised
p 153 pope turns to secure the port city of Ostia from French

Alll the above taken from the online photocopy of the John Adams Library copy of this Second Edition of Austin Goddard's translation of The History of Italy, volume ii, London, 1763.

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