Thursday, May 26, 2016

Bembo on Venetian Captains In Italian Wars: Bernardo Contarini, pt 1


Another life that Bembo highlights and mentions repeatedly through the period of the French invasion of Italy is that of Bernardo Contarini. In the spring of 1495 when the Venetian Senate decreed to make Francesco Gonzaga captain general, they also put this Contarini in charge of the stradiots [ii, 40]. These were special soldiers imported from Greece and Albania, hired mercenaries, and now with a local captain. Under orders from Gonzaga they were moved with his larger army west across the Po and north Italy, as the French had moved north from Pisa. Contarini is mentioned heroically throughout this period, again and again, in Bembo's history of Venice, as an example of bravery and loyalty.

Before the battle of Fornovo, Contarini was sent with 600 stradiots to be near the forces of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, then outside Novara. Here, the forces of Milan and the stradiots under Contarini continually repulsed the French forces sallying out from the walls of the town. After Fornovo in July, and as more allied forces hostile to the French came to Novara, those French soldiers and cavalry still there retreated behind the city walls. All summer the combined allied forces assembled outside, brought a state of siege to the Duke of Orleans, the French king's brother and those (many thousands) that stayed with him [ii, 61].

As the siege wore on numerous parties tried to escape and messengers and other attendants tried to reach the French assemblage encamped near Asti. Time and again the forces of Contarini would intervene and cut them down.

Negotiations with the Duke of Milan at this time were especially fractious and suspect. Many had accepted the idea that the Duke was playing a double-game with both his allies (Venice and the pope) and the French. And this after the peace treaty was drawn up. Discussions came to such a head that when Contarini spoke to the proveditors in the field, he argued for a plan to assassinate the Duke. He said that when the Duke came for negotiations, that he would draw the daggers himself.

In one of those rare instances where Bembo gives quotes from his subject to further his narrative, he lets Contarini speak. It shows him as a man of action with an eye to consequences of his actions.
"Today, as usual, you will be holding discussions with Ludovico [the Duke] about matters of common concern. His captains will be with him, and you will have your captain-general and officers with you. The doors will be shut, and debate will ensue. I shall make as if to address him, but will then run him through with this dagger and kill him. That done, I know for sure that none of his captains will draw his sword -- which of them is not more timid than any woman? Which of them, one or two excepted, does not regard him with the utmost loathing? And those one or two will have gone to Charles [the French King] as peace envoys and will not be present. Ludovico's army will also surrender their standards to you once he is dead, if they realize that you will accept them, especially if some prospect of largesse is held out to them. And if that happens, his duchy too will be in your hands. In this way he will pay the penalty for his crimes as he deserves, while you have taken vengeance for the wrongs done to the Republic without cost, and so keep your reputation untarnished."  [ii,65]
The proveditors and their counsellors said this plan could be used only as a last resort and would have to see if there was another way for Ludovico to be 'brought to his senses by honorable means'. Word was sent back to the Heads of the Council in Venice, Bembo tells us, of Contarini's proposal, asking if they were agreeable, in the event that situations came to such a head. They wrote back saying such a course was 'not consonant with the dignity of the Republic'.

It was in relating this story that Bembo chose to tell the physical attributes of this captain.
"Contarini had a very tall, vigorous and strongly built physique. His brute strength was immense and almost unparalleled, his mind not only intelligent but capable of any great enterprise, so that you could be confident that he would deliver what he pronised. Though the proveditors grasped this, and competed with each other to praise him to the skies for not hesitating to take on such an important task for the common good, they decided to keep the plan as a last resort...." [ii, 66]
When the siege was lifted and peace concluded, Novara itself reverted to control by the Duke of Milan. The proveditors turned to pay off the various armies and mercenaries and the Council could return their focus to other things. In these days, when the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul heard of what Bembo calls the success of Venice in forcing the King of France out of Italy, he sent them an 'extraordinarily fine horse' as congratulations. This the senators voted on and sent it to Bernardo Contarini as a gift. [iii, 17]

Contarini would continue to have many exploits against the French but still reach an untimely demise.
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from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007


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Henry Ryck: A Dutch Devotional Life from the Fifteenth Century

As an example of a slightly different life, away from the battlefields or the pulpits of famous churches, one in particular is highlighted here. His was a simpler life, that of the procurator of a certain sort of devotional school in Emmerich, and who was eulogized after his death in 1494. Emmerich (now in Germany), lying just north of the Rhine river (and before that great river splits on it's way through Dutch lands), was a thriving town in the late fifteenth century. There, a somewhat novel type of devotional clerical school was set up and run by one Henry Ryck. After he died of the plague in the early summer of 1494, a personalizing encomium was drafted for him, a praiseworthy bio to pass on as an example of a life well lived.

This life along with thirteen others was included in a tract written and then kept at this school, or house, what they themselves called a 'convict'. This school was not exactly a school, but it also was, and it was not exactly devotional, at least, according to traditional lines. But it was. It was not a member of any clerical sect nor did they make any special pleas for external authority when conducting themselves in religious or political matters. But these devotionals followed their own set of traditional practices in their own ways, just not at the direction of, or for, any established sect or set of orders. There were dozens of various kinds of these houses throughout the north and west of Europe in the 1400's and all stayed out of external trouble without following anyone else's rules. Or not exactly. They weren't all schools either.

In these excerpts from a life written around 1500, Henry Ryck is praised as industrious and kind, always joyful in work or winning adherents, yet remaining personally humble.
"In the year of our Lord 1494 Henry Ryck died, our beloved brother from Euskirchen, a town in the land of Julich. This brother was the first procurator of our house [called a 'convict'] for clerics and students.... He was a young man of a most lively nature, wonderfully agile and able in everything he chanced to take up and very intelligent and clear-headed for his years. He was received among us in all charity already in his early years, sent here by his brother, the venerable Nicholas Euskirchen, from the house of Lord Florens and the schools in Deventer." [p. 145]
The story of the origins of these houses, starting in Deventer by the late fourteenth century, and slowly spreading through the fifteenth century will come later. But this form of devotion came naturally to him, having been brought up that way. When the head of the bakery had to do errands in town, Henry was able to take up "... these responsibilities with alacrity and care."
"He set everything in order, adjusted his time to his work, and not only completed what was expected but did it all expeditiously and well. The tools, vessels, and places assigned to his offices were kept in order as well as clean and decorous. He was cheerful at work and kindly toward the brothers assigned to help him." 

Henry worked in the bakery and brewery and in "... turning over the grain laid out in the sun room." Wet with sweat he would "... simply wipe his face with his bare hand and stick to his work in all happiness and good cheer."

He was also studious. A regimen of prayer, sacred reading and "... other spiritual exercises", completely occupied him when he was away from external work and "... in his cell". He even compiled an 'exercise' that linked psalms 'sung to our Lady', to points all along the story of Christ's life, from birth to crucifixion.
"Though he had found none of these psalms so interpreted and used by the doctors of the church, it was not contrary to the faith and in my judgement it seemed well organized for simpler folk, good for avoiding wandering thoughts and loss of attention during prayer." [p.146]

In these houses a great deal of focus was placed on prayer and study. They also emphasized fearing God, the nature of good and evil, imitating the life of Jesus Christ, and prayer concerning the crucifixion of Christ. In time, in 1482, Henry was selected to run a new boy's school that the house had begun, near St Agnes, which was away from their current house in Emmerich. It was a great success by their standards.
"He took up such an amount of work and showed such diligence and care for the young men together with their needs and progress that without his most singular and extraordinary mixture of natures and complexions, he would surely have succumbed to the burden. In a short time clerics and youths from various lands, cities, and towns were streaming to him, and he alone was their procurator, their instructor, and their provider in all things." [p. 147]

There he also began certain clerical duties, like reading the hours and their supplements. But he was also a teacher with three different exercises daily, with examinations.  Later, Henry seemed intent on building projects, including walls and more houses. He had a way of recruiting youths to these houses, or even, when it seemed necessary, to take them away by boat when the plague came.

It was one of these times of plague that he didn't leave. He started showing symptoms of the plague in late May. But he kept working saying he didn't feel that bad. On the third day he began to show lesions on his skin and he retired to bed. It was on June 11, 1494 that he died.
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translated and edited by John Van Engen: Devotio Moderna, Basic Writings ; Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press New York, 1988
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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

news earlier May 2016

It's spring here and I'd like to mention something of good cheer.
The City of London elected a new mayor with, it's been said, the greatest number of votes ever tallied for a candidate.

There continues to be more analysis and release of the so-called Panama Papers leaking information about shell companies hiding tax avoidance schemes. The original leaker gave some reasons for his actions.
The President of the US and the Prime Minister of England gave some proposals on what to do.
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But disasters seem to keep happening, again.


A huge fire in Alberta causes evacuation of thousands.

The US does have troops fighting extremists in Yemen.
The US state of Kansas budget problems gets deeper,
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But, just the other day, a former presidential advisor spoke to the comedian Jon Stewart at the University of Chicago. Jon seemed to sum up the tensions in American politics in short order.

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Bembo On Venetian Captains In Italian Wars: Antonio Grimani

After the siege of Novara was dropped and Milan occupied it (late 1495), after the French King and his retinue, as well as their auxiliaries and hangers-on, all returned over the Alps early in the winter, there still remained many pockets of French troops and factions throughout the Italian peninsula. The King of Naples, now Ferrandino, after feeling a bit more secure, duly made the trek to Venice in order to thank them for their efforts.  Pietro Bembo also tells us, it was in order to ask them to increase their efforts as much work remained to be done.

Cities and towns all across Italy would ask for help in the new year of 1496, take matters into their own hands, supply troops, victuals, stradiots and cavalry, in various efforts toward reclaiming locales that were previously taken by the French. These efforts, in what seemed to be a constant trouble and tumble of turbulence, required a vast host of varied skills, (not least) in decisive leadership out in the field. In his serial fashion, with the story of the fight for Pisan independence as just one example, Bembo again and again points out the Venetian successes, their leaders, the captains, their prizes, rewards and for some, their demise.

Examples of such locales in Bembo's telling seem to be nearly falling over themselves in capitulation to Aragon and sometimes Venetian nominal rule. A miscellany of towns fall before the eyes with the names of certain captains reappearing again as well. When the French on duty in Naples heard that their King had quit Italy, those stationed to protect Castel Capuano in that city asked permission to leave. These subsequently left in sixteen boats from Naples and retreated to the island of Megaride and Castell dell'Ovo on the edge of the city in the gulf of Naples. King Ferrandino left his current fleet at anchor just off Baiae a few miles west. When Capua, Aversa and Nola heard about this, they sent word they would return to being ruled by the House of Aragon. [iii,4]

Meanwhile on the eastern edge of Italy, Antonio Grimani had arrived in Apulia where Brindisi gave themselves up to this Venetian captain. Bembo tells us the locals there were 'happy to surrender', and asked him to send the flag of the Venetian Republic up the pole. Sometimes it wasn't so easy and there was a fight. In Apulia, Grimani waited for the Senate to send and receive word from their allies and the soveriegns in Spain as they were 'preparing a fleet there'. [iii,5] Then, Grimani received word to take the French out of Monopoli twenty-five miles up the coast from Brindisi.

Twenty galleys, a merchant ship with cannon, stadiots and cavalry were under Grimani's command, and one Pietro Bembo was one of his captains. [iii,6] After a couple of days with much fierce fighting (including Bembo getting shot by an iron ball), the town was taken and the city plundered. But to show his goodwill, for those days, Grimani sold various properties that were seized back to their owners, when they could be found, 'giving them plenty of time to pay'. [iii,7]

Leaving a certain Niccolo Corner as governor in Monopoli, and sending Alessandro de Pesaro to govern Polignano, Grimani himself went to relieve Manfredonia from occupation by the French. The people there had already fought back against the French occupiers and had driven them into their strongholds. Grimani told the people they should surrender to Ferrandino but, as Bembo tells us, they said they would rather surrender to Grimani. The French agreed to submit to protection under Grimani and left, with Federico, Ferrandino's uncle, assuming control. The French in Trani, midway between Manfredonia and Bari did the same. [iii,8]

When the Senate in Venice heard that Ferrandino had retaken Naples, they sent word to Grimani to stop taking French held towns. But, on request from Pope Alexander, they asked Grimani to send ships to Naples to help reassert control there. Struck with a gastric disorder in Manfredonia, Grimani got the ships ready and putting the proveditor Girolamo Contarini in charge, ordered them to sail to Naples. He himself left to recuperate in Corfu. [iii,9]

Meanwhile, Faenza had been petitioning the Senate for protection since the heir there was under age. Faenza, just west of Ravenna and northwest of Forli, lay on the heavily trafficked eastern route and felt very insecure beset by that season's exiles. Quickly, Bernardo Contarini went and routed the insurgents and left Domenico Trevisan there to support and protect the young Manfredi heir. [iii,19]
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from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Jacob Fugger Establishes Himself: New bio by Greg Steinmetz

In this day and age, a title of almost anything boasting tales of 'The Richest Man Who Ever Lived' will catch a lot of eyes. I first noticed such a title of a book reviewed in an article in April 7, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books a couple weeks ago. I turned around and purchased the book through a vendor on amazon.com, and read the first fifty pages when I got it, hopeful I might get a sense for the tenor of this recent bio. Already I see it's in one of today's popular formats but still gives a reasonably clear sense of  the book's subtitle, 'The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger".  It's a larger, easy font, double-spaced in 250 pages. The notes are presented in a breezy, straightforward way, and there is an abundance of personalizing details of the times and places in which people lived and worked. I wish there was far more detail.

There is also a substantial and useful bibliography, as well as a captivating introduction that shows a finance titan at the top of his game emerging from a simpler, but not humble, set of morals. One was in sales and self-advancement. As the last of seven sons, the family that Jacob Fugger was born into was highly competitive. He would use that through his life. Still it surprises me some that a person of his stature in his times has had such little acknowledgement or research lately seeing how American Capitalism insists on taking the rest of the world on its ride. I wonder if this is because much of the source material is in German or that the concepts explored tend to be economic requiring 'specialised' knowledge of business. There is just this new recent title by Greg Steinmetz and one fifteen years ago by Jacob Strieder (here available on google play). But, before then, I see a lack of availability of new works on this person since the time before and between the World Wars. This is interesting in itself but distracts and will have to be looked at later.

Fugger, Steinmetz tells us,  was "headstrong, selfish, deceitful and sometimes cruel.... His boasts were good advertizing...". He could tell people how much he could provide as a loan or pay for a gem and thereby broadcast his abilities. [p. xv]
He grew up in Augsburg, born March 6, 1459 and lived on the corner where the old market met the Jewish community. [p.7] His family ran a thriving textile concern there and thru intermarriage were ensconced in the local merchant families. After an abortive trip for service at the Benedictine monastery in nearby Herrieden [p.2], Fugger was sent, still a teenager, as an apprentice to Venice. There he stayed at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Rialto [p.8]. There he learned of the things that could be bought and also the value of double-entry bookkeeping [pp.9-10].

In 1478, when Fugger was nineteen, he had to travel to Rome to help settle the affairs of his brother who had died of the plague that year. [p. 16] Rome was very turbulent then. But then, after some time in Rome apparently helping the family textile business, Jacob was sent to Austria to pursue a mining interest there. In 1485 Fugger loaned Archduke Sigmund 3000 florins. Sigmund controlled the silver mines south of Munich, near Innsbruck at Schwaz. Then again when a trade dispute in the Tyrol between the Archduke and neighboring Venice erupted in 1489, troops were sent to take some towns held by Venice. [p.19] Venice said they would not invade only if Sigmund returned Revereto and paid them 100,000 florins. But this time Sigmund's regular bankers wouldn't pay. Fugger stepped forward and said they could make a deal.

Fugger, Steinmetz says, wanted all of the output of the Schwaz mine until the principle was paid back. He insisted the mine operators cosigned the loan and that the archduke accept installments of the initial loan. But Fugger also amazingly and crucially insisted he control the state treasury. Sigmund seemingly had no choice and gave in. It was the single biggest deal of his career and drastically expanded the family business. Fugger was thirty years old. [p.21] Getting a sovereign, a duke who could change his mind if he wanted to pay back this huge loan would need some coercion. Fugger knew his man and made him coins from the silver mined which became a standard for fineness and precisionin currency that would be emulated elsewhere. [p.22] At the fair in Frankfurt that year, Fugger may have first met Maximillian, 'King of the Romans'. When Sigmund was again in debt, it was Maximillian that stepped forward and asked for the duke's other holdings to be given up in exchange for still another loan.

Fugger rarely had partners in his endeavors outside of family members. And those could be contentious. One exception was Johannes Thurzo, a metallurgist and mining engineer with water excavation techniques that greatly improved the overall process [p.29] Thurzo also had contacts in the east and was married to the Jagiello's of the new Hungarian King Ladislaus.

A rich vein of copper in the Carpathian mountains, stretching to the east, had been mined traditionally but inefficiently by Hungarian miners and interests. [p.28] Fugger saw that this needed to be properly collected and smelted and also saw that this process needed to happen somewhere where the works wouldn't just be seized by any foreign power. [p.29] He also wanted the mines which were owned by private operators. Thurzo could help make much of this happen if Fugger supplied the money which his mines in Schwaz could amply do. With Fugger's money, Thurzo 'snapped up leases' and sealed deals with the Hungarian King. [p.30]

Meanwhile a huge complex of works was constructed in Arnoldstein where Austria, Italy and Slovenia meet. From here, Fugger's eastern expansion, what he later would call the Common Hungarian Trade, began. [p.27] Maximillian took Vienna and then marched to Hungary, who could not fight both him and the Turks at the same time. Hungary signed a treaty opening the vast holdings to German traders and bankers like Fugger. The Common Hungarian Trade would be a huge money-maker for Fugger until his death thirty years later. In 1498 Fugger would use his vast copper resources to flood the market in Venice, bust up the metal cartel there and drive his co-members and competitors out of business [p.45].Fugger would also make himself the indispensable lender to Maximillian and later Charles V. But this gives away the rest of the book. Interest in the achievements and capabilities of such a character in those times should be met with a close look at his flaws, difficulties and the sometimes brutal methods he used at resolving them.

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Greg Steinmetz: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger Simon & Schuster, NY, 2015

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Sunday, April 24, 2016

Savonarola Pushes For Social Change in Florence: spring 1496

Friar Savonarola further advanced the efforts of the newly active faniculli, the brigades of youths who grew in the spring of 1496 sometimes into roaming bands of vice police. Donald Weinstein gives us a starker image of these youth who appeared dramatically at that year's Carnevale festival in Florence and beyond. The Friar also worked at curbing the excessive displays of women, exhorting them to organize and similarly police themselves. There was a great deal of negative response from all sides, Weinstein tells us, and Savonarola seemed to relent some.

Weinstein's description of the street in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, explodes the simplistic story of innocent youths beseeching alms from rich magnates and the culturally elite of Florence at the height of her glory years.
"Gangs of boys (faniculli) and young men harrassed passersby, especially women, and fought pitched battles in the streets. Gang rape was not uncommon. Policing was ineffectual-- poorly paid and barely professional. Fathers might deplore the rowdiness but used it when it served their purposes .... If grown men, sunk in their debaucheries, would respond only to harsh punishment, young people... might be rescued and enlisted ... as public police, for their parents." [p. 183]
Boys from the ages six to sixteen would be reigned in and intensively taught discipline by fra Domenico da Peschia in the city, who would then, as Savonarola told (in a sermon in December 19, 1495), form squadrons in the different quarters of the city to 'monitor personal behavior'. Quarrels would be mediated, profanity censored, silence in church enforced. The various shrines around would be maintained and kept up. Dress codes would be maintained, most of all with the squads, keeping things plain. The boys could learn to police themselves and solve their own disagreements, exact punishment, throw out incorrigibles.

Through the year and the next, Savonarola would continue to try to push for legislation to allow more freedoms and leniency to the funiculli, but the Signoria would allow the vote to go to the Great Council again and again where the proposal always would die. News of the funiculli upset everyone. Through the spring it was said that even the pope in Rome complained about this to his cardinals as a highly irresponsible teaching. But even with these wide-ranging critics, the groups of youth grew in size, and spread beyond the city.

A still more ambitious effort landed by Savonarola was in the display by these youth groups on March 27, Palm Sunday that year. They drew alms for a project that Savonarola had been given apart from the other fratres. This was the communal loan for the Monte di Pieta, an effort to make available funds for the poor. Here, Weinstein tells us this communal loan was used as economic relief from usurous loans extracted by, often, Jewish lenders. This was part of Savonarola's plan, too: to rid the city of Jewish wealth and 'corruption'. [p.73]

The women in Florence gained especial attention as well and a number of proposals were made by Savonarola and his adherents  to curb their manners. Again, Weinstein gives us a starker image of life in Florence. He quotes at length an anonymous letter addressed to Savonarola warning that summer was coming and young women would need to know how to dress.
"... [I]n warm weather it was the habit of well-dressed Florentine women to wear open-work hose and shirts that revealed "the outline of the parts that incite lust and ought to be hidden". Over these they wore a gown slit at both sides so that every slight breeze "revealed the whole person." Young women lounged about al fresco in garments like these and got up to all manners of sin." [p. 188]
Savonarola had proposed (in a sermon on March 18) the naming of good women that lived among the four quarters of the city who would select other women, who in turn could organize troops of women to patrol and censure bad behavior. But this project, as related by another letter that Weinstein delivers, devolved into ridicule and laughter in town and created more problems. The Friar returned again to the pulpit two days later, saying women could not be expected to organize themselves in this way and needed further guidance from men. Here, Weinstein suggests the lack of support of this issue in particular from the Rucellai and Bongianni families who may have convinced Savonarola to retreat. So the issue was put off. In the mean time,
"Brazen sexual display by Florentine women had long been on Savonarola's list of vices to be expunged. Women came to church to exhibit themselves to men, he complained. Like whores, their heads uncovered to display their beautiful hair, they crowded into the sanctuary so close to the priest they attracted his gaze -- instruments of the devil." [p. 188]
Some expressed the desire to set up curtains so that the priests did not have to see the laity and that the women could not gaze so intently on the clergy. This didn't come to pass either. At the end of March, the envoy at Rome, Ricciardo Becchi was reporting that the pope had set up a special counsel led by the Dominican general to look into the Friar's work. So Becchi asked the Ten and the Signoria for letters showing the high regard that the people still had for him.

The pope thought the French king might soon return to Italy. Florence, as the closest prospect of an ally to the French king was being solicited by its neighbors to therefore act as spokesperson as well. As a political calculation, if the pope wanted to form a new alliance with the King of France, then he might have to do that now through channels in Florence. In the short term it might benefit the papacy to not bring tooo much pressure on Florence or its Friar.
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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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Friday, April 22, 2016

news April 2016

The leak of some 11 million documents relating to hidden and untaxed bank accounts in Panama has highlighted and electrified the knowledge of such tax-avoidance schemes. People slowly become aware of a practice that's existed for decades.
NPR's Planet Money showed us how easy it was to set up a shell company that could avoid paying taxes some years ago.
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The impeachment of Brazilian President Rousseff has called into question the stability of their government, the state of law and order and the very nature of what corruption is. Christiane Amanpour talks to Glenn Greenwald  to give an international audience a view of what it means.

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War in Aleppo, Syria intensifies.
The Pope and the Orthodox Patriarch visited refugees in Lesbos, Greece. Pope Francis brought three families back to Italy with him.
US Senator Bernie Sanders went to Rome to deliver some remarks on the capture of Washington, DC by big money.


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Child miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo help mine and pick out cobalt meant to be sold for use in cellphone and laptop lithium-ion batteries.

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Today in New York was the signing ceremony at the UN of the climate pact called the Paris Agreement following the agreeement drawn up there late last year.

China is investing in overland trade routes across southern Asia again.

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A series of earthquakes have struck the Pacific Rim. Two in Japan and one in Ecuador and in Peru, as well as Tonga has the entire region on edge scrambling to rescue survivors and pick up the pieces.
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This church in Tulsa, Oklahoma summed up the mood of many after the world learned of the death of the creative whirlwind known as Prince at his home in Minneapolis.

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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Henry VII Tries Diplomacy First: Early Years

England during the reign of Henry VII had foreign affairs to address as well as the many internal matters at stake. There was the matter of asserting the authority of a monarch after being crowned, as well as the familial links that needed to be proven. Then he quickly could turn to the few necessary reciprocal relations the he had to ensure and enable with other monarchs. Here again, J.D. Mackie uses the fact of the monarchy as a model for explaining the priorities and activities of that monarch. The story develops from the center of power to the outlying subjects, just as he saw power devolved from the crown to the world, in rotating spirals of focus, all making for clarity in exposition and further deepening the larger world view of Henry.

Mackie sums up the foreign policy of Henry VII this way.
"Whatever were his ethics in the matter, his abundant common sense must have shown him that a king seated uneasily upon a newly acquired and uncertain throne would be wise to keep out of war, and his movements in then field of diplomacy prove that he tried to maintain good relations with all neighbors." [p. 81]
Quickly, in October 1485 (Bosworth was a scant two months before), a truce was set with France and then extended the following year. Friendly overtures were sent to Scotland, too, and a commercial treaty with Brittany was settled by July 1486. An understanding with Maximillian of the Habsburg line, as a rather distant 'ruler' of the Netherlands, was worked over until agreed on six months later.

As a guide here, as Mackie notes, Henry still had many internal enemies and could not let treasonous characters use foreign breeding grounds to conspire against him. He also had, in some degree, to portray  'the high pretensions of his predecesors', in order to exert power. But a balance had to be struck as well with promoting economic welfare. Henry wanted to be on the side of the merchants and bankers who could support him in these projects. [p.82]

In support of these hopes, titles, marriages, and even personality traits could entwine relations, but these almost always confused things rather than settled them. Henry's new bride Elizabeth was the daughter of the last King Edward IV and could not be replaced, so a new marriage for him was unthinkable, and they still had no children. Maximilian King of the Romans agreed (March 1486) to marry Anne of Brittany, and also agreed his son Phillip should marry Anne's sister when they came of age. But this diplomacy was disprupted as the regency of France advanced into Brittany by force of arms. Called la guerre folle, the Mad War cemented Brittany as a French controlled land but it also took a couple years of fighting before Breton forces gave out. [p. 86]

Brittany had traditionally been part of Britain, it lay just across the straits, extended across the length of southern England and guarded the all-important English Channel. Henry was loathe to lose this necessary guardian along his flank. But the French Captain La Trémoille kept pressing west through 1487-8 scoring wins time after time.

Some grew impatient. The brother of the new queen's mother (also the old queen's brother) Lord Scales, Edward Woodville was one who gathered as many men as he could and sailed for the coast. He landed at St Malo and supporteed the Bretons in May 1488. But then when forces were arranged and battle was joined at St Aubin du Cormier in July, the losses were heavy on both sides. But even with a multi-national force of mercenaries aiding them, and the capture of the Duke of Orleans, the French won the day in a big way. [p.87] On August 20 the poor duke of Brittany in the treaty of Sable agreed to be considered a vasssal of France and handed over four towns to his new sovereign, the dauphin, Charles VIII. But it was not technically an English loss since Henry had not sanctioned the efforts of Lord Scales.

Henry continued to send embassies, and to seek peace, as his men were in Paris negotiating even as Scales marched in Brittany. Henry even extended his peace treaty with France that same July for another year. But as he sought peace he also talked with King Ferdinand in Aragon. This was a relationship that both wanted but for different reasons. In early 1489, Henry made new treaties with Spain, Brittany and Maximilian. Each of these are worth looking at individually as they show what little Henry had to work with and what he could accomplish on this stage. A number of sieges and additional negotiations between the combatants increased the pressure for some other outcome throughout 1489. [pp. 97-101]

Henry in this time also came to agreements with Portugal, Denmark, Florence and Venice but as the years went on he still could not come to lasting, stable agreements with Max and France. By September 1490, he had made another truce with the 'inconstant' Maximilian and against France. Christmas came that year and Henry could celebrate an alliance with Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. Early the next year, Maximilian agreed to marry Anne of Brittany. [p. 103] But Maximilian was also at war with Ladislas Jagiello of Bohemia for the crown of Hungary and had been inconstant at best in all these wranglings. With little left to turn to or run on, late in the following year, Anne had had enough of war and negotiations, and she accepted to marry the dauphin Charles of France. [p.105]

But as civil war was breaking out in the Netherlands and Maximilian tied up with that and in the East, Henry decided it was time to force the issue of Brittany. Preparations were made all through this time and, much of 1492 in England was spent in preparing troops and stores and ships. [p. 108] Henry had to move forward. Speeches were made in England before Parliament, and thousands of soldiers with their supplies were then readied and ferried from Briton across the strait. The English troops were in France for nine days, there were some skirmishes but a large balttle was not struck. Instead, the Treaty of Etaples was signed. Henry and his English forces would leave, France would keep Brittany and Anne, but agree to also pay Henry 475,000 gold crowns, and pay that at the rate of 50,000 a year. [p. 109]

To many back home this was a mark of Henry's biggest failure. He sued for peace and took a payment before testing his mettle in battle on the fields of Brittany, losing that and much prestige back home. But Henry achieved what he wanted, Mackie tells us. He knew he could not long stand a long war. There was little but land in France or Brittany left to take in spoils. A lasting peace was the real answer. Despite his allies' stated support, there were many indications that he could not trust for them to show up when he needed them. Early on, Henry could see the benefits of trade without the constant disruptions of war. [p. 111] Henry would work on this peace in these lands for the rest of his days.
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quotes and pagination from J.D. Mackie: The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558 Oxford, UK 1957
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Thursday, April 7, 2016

Bembo Gives Bollani As Warning Against More Wars, early 1496

All through the winter, and well past spring, reports of battles and sieges and losses, and some victories, fell before the Signoria in Venice for them to read and discuss and decide on. These reports came from so many places. They told so often of so many captains, representing the interests of Venice with force of arms, or cavalry or ships or money.

With so many choices before Venice, moving forward in the interests of the city always took some consideration. The year before the city had joined in league with Milan and Naples and the Pope in order to stop the King of France and send his armies out of Italy, as they understood it, for the greater good. The city also knew, if they could show dominance in general, and effectively use their resources at the right time and place, she could pick up some very useful territory. Any of which could be bargained over later, if things went that way.

Pietro Bembo, in his History of Venice gives us a speech credited to a ducal counsellor, Marco Bollani regarding the possibilities of protecting Pisa. To sum up his argument, as Bembo told it, Bollani first weighs a counter argument for advancing to this prize, comparing the advance and capture of nearby Vicenza in 1404. This expedition had established the primacy of Venice over affairs in Vicenza not forty miles away. That city had sent emissaries to ask for protection when they were 'hard pressed' by neighboring Padua. And after negotiations, that time, Vicenza surrendered to Venice.
"In what way did that surrender resemble this one? Vicenza was in close proximity and practically bordering our lands, so that the way there and access to the town could not be blocked. It was itself a free city, and not one previously subject to the rulers of Padua. When therefore the anbassadors returned with Venetian forces to support them, it was easily defended and held. Nor did Venice make any new enemies on account of Vicenza, but those same forebears of ours started war again on a fiercer footing with the Republic's traditional enemy, and brought it to a successful conclusion." [iii,14]
Genoa was the traditional enemy of Venice. Pisa was in the neighborhood of Genoa, just down the coast. But Bollani explains the two cases weren't that similar. Vicenza was near while Pisa relatively far away. There were mostly friendly cities in between who neighbored Pisa, and who would see the advance of Venetian forces, through their territory, as potentially offensive. The expense alone was hard to imagine. So, to complete his argument, Bembo has his speaker Bollani use a series of negative conditionals in order to dissuade the audience.
"... if you do not see that to gain our ends we shall have to inflict a grave injury and misfortune on a friendly people and a republic which has never provoked us in any manner; if you do not see that we will confirm by this precedent, and in a way we could not afterwards deny, the view long settled in the minds of men that we above all others are preoccupied with a passion for dominance; ...".[iii,15]
The Council of Ten knew they were in a fragile, but necessary league with Milan and the Pope, and knew they would need them in order to flush the French out of all the keeps and towns that they had taken up and down the peninsula. Making moves against or ostensibly for Pisa at this time could put this League in danger of collapsing. Venice's reputation preceded any of her actions. They had to proceed cautiously. This then is what they did. But before long it became clear to all that her long term motivations would still be at play.
"... nor can we guess with any accuracy where all this will end, so we should really be considering not so much the start of a new war as concluding those already started and quenching the flames that have set the finest and most beautiful parts of Italy alight...". [iii,15]
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p. 183 from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
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The Tentative MilePost, spring 2016

This is as good a place as any to show a bit more of the method for this collection, again. Like glue still used in the production of actual physical books -- in order to bind covers with contents, for instance -- a newer running list of topics, subjects and titles is in order. Reviews or summaries, quotes and extracts still show up according to running chronologic topic, but less of the seams and immediate contexts, the bits of string that might hold them together. There just hasn't been the time.

A number of topics older for this blog have clearly been set aside rather than superseded. Wunderli's delightful book Peasant Fires was relatively easier to give a more comprehensive 'review' because of its relatively smaller size. But its scope is huge as it looks at beliefs and practices for the personal, the public, the economic, and within and without the universal church in southern German lands of the day. A number of other sources, however, simply tell longer stories that stretch across greater extents of time.

In certain ways, for instance, these sets of topic continue here, in following the high points of the Life of Friar Girolamo Savonarola, in Italy. After the readable and persuasive Lauro Martines (2006) in his Fire In The City , a shift in emphasis will follow predominantly from a different source. Martines is partly persuasive through the use of a kind of emotional appeal where serially displayed tides of multiple contexts are lain down, all tugging and twisting events by their interpretations, in a cascade of heightened dramatic tensions. They were tense times and Savonarola was in the middle of things. Donald Weinstein's recent (2011) updated biography on Savonarola also promises to be absorbing and supply a bit more detail.

Of course, Italy wasn't alone in rethinking priorities on how the Christian religion was implemented in Europe. The Devotio Moderna was a Dutch contribution that weighed heavily on the minds of Churches, churchmen and laity all over the north. A recent (1988) collection of that material will deepen those contexts and shed light on Reformations to come. The forcefulness of Spanish interpretations both in Spain and in Rome will continue to be sources for study.

As Columbus returned from his second voyage to the americas in the spring of 1496, another Italian Amerigo Vespucci, acting as executor to the estate of an Italian merchant named Giannotti Berardi who had died in Seville, fulfilled this man's contract with the Spanish crown for twelve more ships to be fitted out to explore the Indies. Despite such eventually accepted misnomers, knowledge of the routes east and south were already circulating in some circles, but elsewhere. Stories of other explorers had already been set down in Portugal and even Rome. Poggio Bracciolini returns here with a surprising bit of lively travelogue to the actual Far East, supplied by Nicolo de Conti, and placed gently in a dialogue On the Vicissitudes of Fortune (from 1447) that I feel fortunate to have found in translation.

The extended comparisons of eyewitnesses in that New World have also noticeably been left behind. The stories from the Aztecs, the Tlaxcala, the Letters of Hernan Cortes, the True History of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the life of La Malinche, as well as the Life of Columbus recede into the background as another story develops. Those are the stories of Imperial Spain and Portugal, as the expansion of delegated, but growing, governing bodies asserted themselves, and different narratives for them take shape. One of the central examples of these was being developed by the dual Crown of Castile and Aragon. Another was in Rome, with different popes asserting the rights and preferences for different sets of national interests through this same period.

Italy tried to recover from the ravages of war brought by France and the other partisans in the mid-1490's, but only had a couple years before the French would be at it again. Cardinal della Rovere's daughter Felice then would stay in Savona, near Genoa and be married, widowed and then housed in the Palazzo della Rovere there. Caterina Sforza would defiantly stay in Forli while brutally carrying out revenge or maintaining a hostile silence. Uncle Ludovico in Milan and Maximilian in Austria would try and fail to establish and maintain order in Italy, and fail similarly at home. Henry Tudor in England would try and succeed at keeping his distance from most of the rest of Europe's troubles, while chasing down and nullifying his chief rivals nearer to home.

All across Europe trouble never seemed to cease. When it did, there was healing to do and crops to be tended (too, and also disease and plague and poverty to suffer through as well). For Venice things never really did slow down as the seasons came and went. The wars to protect Pisa and Italy against the French turned into wars at sea and overseas which began again against the Turk. And then against, and then, with, the French again. Pietro Bembo would do his best to chronicle the list of captains and victories and losses and rewards as the century wound down.

To the East there remained some Byzantine holdouts as at Mt Athos or Methoni. Or at St Catherine's at Mt Sinai. Staying put as best they could. The huge lands united by King Corvinus in Hungary became wild and untempered under the distant nominal Habsburg rule of Maximilian. For awhile. A closer look at how persuasion could and even needed to affect even the mightiest of monarchs and benefactors, looms. As does the personalizing influence that new forms of study, preaching and communication gave rise to new interpretations and ways to view the self in this ever more widening world.
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Friday, March 25, 2016

big news March 2016

In what may be the biggest news this month, the EU came to a controversial agreement with Turkey over how to process or return huge numbers of people, hoping to curb the refugee crisis stemming from the war in Syria. The BBC and NPR report.

More stark details emerge from the Guardian.
This came in the midst of  a series of terrible bombings in the capital of Turkey, Ankara.

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And then there was the bombings in Brussels, Belgium 22March16 that stopped the airport and the metro on a normal busy Tueday morning. Some warn of larger dangers closer to home.
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In the US, the current House of Representatives wants to put additional curbs on letting refugees come here.
In further intransigence, the legislative branch of Congress won't see fit to 'advise and consent' the executive branch. President Obama's nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Atonin Scalia, after his surprise death last month, can't get a simple hearing, let alone an 'up or down' vote in Congress. A month later those who follow the news and the interpretation of the US Constitution are still scratching their heads.

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Some say there's an increasing pattern of renters and rentiers in the US.
Meanwhile, homes stay vacant.
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For the first time since 1928, a US  President has gone to Cuba. Here's President Obama's official speech. He said, "I have come to bury the last remnants of the cold war in the Americas."
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There was a fantastic total solar eclipse seen in the southern hemisphere of earth earlier this month.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

before a 'United' Imperial Spain: notes from JH Elliot

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Castile had 600% the population of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, the opposite of what it's been since the seventeenth century. This density in population was near 22/km² for Castile and 14/km² for the coast plus Aragon around 1600. p.25

Catalan and Aragon became known as a commercial empire for its expansion of wool and textile production thru the 13-1400's. They were ventures that continued to look outward to the seas, rivaling Genoa, Venice. p.27, 34
Castile later on would become the wool and textile power house as opportunities on the Catalonian coast declined.

the state as it was in Castile and Aragon were different from each other. A broad history of latter and its forms of gov. pp. 25-30

Developments to such forms from the Reconquista: p. 31-3

Differences summarized: Castile was denser in population but its nobility more disparate, disunited and less represented. Aragon and Catalonia had strong bodies of different forms of representation, but its royalty were relatively weak. Both these conditions caused continual problems within both areas. pp 34-5

Conditions of both economic and political life on the coast in the 1400's were a result of the economic depression in Catala-Aragon from 1350-1450. In the centuries before then the older commercial interests of Catalonia had reshaped economics and politics. After the plague and the following great purge of capital investment there, things dramatically slowed down. When things were generally stable but uncertain in Aragon, Catalonia suffered a series of disasters.
Catalan-Aragon was now becoming a western Mediterranean concern, with eventual footholds in Italy and its King moving to Naples after 1443.[p.36]
Populations of Catalonia dropped from a high in 1365 of 430,000 to a low in 1497 of 278,000. [p.37]

"... in essentially monarchical societies royal absenteeism created grave problems of adjustment. ... the glittering imperialism of Alfonso V, dynastic in inspiration and militaristic in character, differed sharply from the commercial imperialism of an earlier age, and, by encouraging lawlessness in the western Mediterranean, directly conflicted with the mercantile interests of the Barcelona oligarchy. The policies of dynasty and merchant no longer coincided, and this itself represented a tragic deviation from the traditions of the past." [p.36]

These policies were alligned thru the 13th and 14th centuries. But the end of the Catalan economic expansion caused 'political repercussions'. The cause of the depression was plague and famine that came in waves 1333, 1347-51, 1362-3, 1371, 1396-7, and so on. Huge losses of population resulted.
"Manpower was scarce, farmsteads were abandoned, and ... 1380, the pesantry began to clash violently with landlords who... were determined to exploit to the full their rights over their vassals at a time when fuedal dues were diminishing in value and the cost of labour was rising fast." [p.37]
Peasants tied to the land would gain the support of Alfonso and his son John II against the merchant and oligarch classes.

'Spectacular bank failures in  Barcelona' led to Italian financiers working capital, gving loans to nobles and royalty instead of Barcelona. Genoa would finance Valencia with their form of investment and spread from there to manage markets in Castile as the wool trade fantastically expanded there through the 1400's. [p.38-9]

From about 1350 the great Catalan investors, bankers & merchants began pulling capital out of trade and commercial enterprises and put it into annuities and land to become pensioners and rentiers. The agrarian populace began to rise up. Catalan merchants demanded to the king that their contracts with him be maintained. The King, far away in Naples began siding with the peasants or remença. The Biga (the merchants and rentiers) and Busca (the artisans and guilders) in Barcelona struggled for local power. In 1453 the Busca took over the city and made laws of protectionism and coin devaluation. [p.40] War between the oligarchy in Catalonia and Valencia and the King broke out in 1462 and lasted for ten years.
Louis XI would gain  Cerdagne and Roussillon in 1463 from this turmoil.
Wars began again until the negotiated surrender of Granada in 1492.
Wars began again between Christian nobles and the Royal Houses of Castile and Aragon after that.
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J.H. Elliott: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 : Penguin, NY, 2002
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Sunday, March 20, 2016

Rabelais: Pantagruel Out To Sea, Passes by the Island of Righteous Bigots

In the fourth book of Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, after a discursive introduction which itself followed a rather lengthy initial dedication, the said Pantagruel took leave of his father Gargantua. To sea he went with a crew in June fitted out with a wide-ranging smattering of esoteric characters. Panurge, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Jamet Brahier for pilot, Epistemon and Imported Goods, that 'great traveler down dangerous roads', all piled aboard and shove off in the flagship Thalemège with a fleet of their own. Of course it was a festive occasion, what other better reason could there be? After all, they went to sea in order to find the oracle of the Divine Bottle. Many absurd notions and practices, peoples, kings or shysters would be seen on the open water and other far off places. They all drank a lot of wine, Rabelais assures us, and made plenty of bad calls... "... seeking wise words from the Holy Bottle."
"An old lantern hung high from the stern of the second boat, painstakingly worked in alabaster and clear mica, indicating that they meant to sail by Lanternland.
The insignia of the third boat was a magnificent porcelian drinking mug.
The fourth boat bore a two-handled gold jug, shaped like an antique urn.
The fifth bore a remarkable pitcher, made of bright green emerald.
The sixth had a monk's drinking mug, fashioned of four metals.
The seventh had an ebony funnel, decorated all over in gold wire, interwoven with other metals.
The eighth was a fabulously precious ivy goblet, covered all over with hammered Damascene gold.
The ninth: a toasting glass of delicate pure gold.
The tenth: a cup of fragrant aloe wood (as we call it), with a fringe of Cyprus gold, worked in Damascene style.
The eleventh: a gold market basket, covered with mosaic trim.
The twelth was a small barrel of gold, in a dull finish, covered with an ornamental border of great fat Indian pearls, fashioned into animal shapes.
 And it was all done so that no one, no matter how depressed or angry, no matter how sullen, sour or sad he might be -- indeed, not even Heraclitus the Weeping Pessimist -- would not feel a surge of fresh happiness, whose good spleen would not fill and flood with laughter, seeing this noble fleet of ships and their insignia -- no one who would not say simply, that these were all good drinkers, good fellows, and who would not be absolutely convinced that their voyage, both sailing away and then sailing home again, would be conducted in high spirits and in perfect good health." [pp 393-4]
They were on a mission.

Pantagruel ended up, among many other things to 'buy some very nice things on the island of Nowhere', to get a good lesson on the usefulness of messenger pigeons, to meet Dingdong and quarrel with him, to find the Island of Peace, Proxyland, the Formless and Wordless Islands, and even to abandon ship during a terrific storm. Along the way it was Imported Goods that pointed out to Pantagruel, 'from a distance' the Island of Righteous Bigots where Lent-Observance was king.

Imported Goods discouraged stopping there due to their 'meager pleasures'. But Pantagruel wants to know about this king having heard of him before. Brother John as well wanted to know since he'd seen him mentioned "in his prayer book, right after movable feasts". Imported Goods goes on for quite some time listing his analysis of what he had found of the anatomy, both internal [p. 448] and external [p. 450], of their king, and also, what he looked like [p. 452].  You can tell, Imported Goods thought little of The Island of Righteous Bigots. This is how he describes them.
"All told," he said, "what you'll see there is a great guzzler of dried peas, a great imbiber of snails, a great monkish rat-catching dreamer, a great cheapskate, a hairless half-giant with a shaved head, born of Lanternish blood and empty-headed like all his relatives, a flag waving fish eater, a mustard tyrant, a child beater, an ash cooker, father and nurse of physicians, stuffed with pardons, indulgences and church tickets, but an honest man, a good Catholic, and terribly devout. He spends three-quarters of the day crying. He never goes to weddings. And he's the best roasting skewer and spit maker you'll see for forty kingdoms around.... He feeds on dry mail shirts and helmets (sometimes with plumes, sometimes well salted)".[p.447]
Lent always seemed terribly long and dry.
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from Gargantua and Pantagruel : Burton Raffel, W.W, Norton & Company, 1990, USA
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Bembo has Bollani Warn Against More War: spring 1496

There were several battles  in Italy through the winter and into the spring and summer of 1496. French troops had remained and were thrown out in several places as various locals and forces across Italy and beyond, rose up to assert themselves. The news, full of advances and setbacks as it came to Venice, including that of their own forces, of the delegates and captains in the field. This all incited much discussion throughout the city. One such matter, the war over Pisa, Pietro Bembo tells us, made it to the Council of Ten in the Doge's Palace in Venice.

Bembo used an ancient form of address, and in multiple ways here, to tell this part of his story. Both Herodotus and Thucydides used the form of the extended argument all throughout their famous histories. The form of the extended quotation that was based on what was 'probably said', is just as old. As a form, the extended address within a broader narrative of history was making a resurgence in the European Rennaissance. Guicciardini used it. Macchiavelli too. Perhaps tellingly, Pietro Bembo uses it, but does so very sparingly. He doesn't use it at all in the first book. Only once in this third book of his History of Venice is it used, and for this occasion. Only once again does he use the extended quote as a form of exposition in the second book. And that is only a paragraph or so long. Here the narrative, put in the mouth of Marco Bollani, is an argument for further discussion, and goes on for pages.

In this manner, Pietro Bembo has the Venetian ducal counsellor Marco Bollani explain the scene. War, he says, would be a natural consequence of Venice protecting Pisa (after their request for such protection and after the French left Italy). This act of protection, he thought, would become a renewal of war between Venice and Genoa. Previously these two had been at war for centuries. This their deepset and most personal antagonism, highlighted each of their respective histories as pivotal signposts all through the crusades and beyond.

Recently, with the promised help of the Duke of Milan, Genoa had supplied a naval force that destroyed the French fleet on the Ligurian coast. But with the French mostly gone, Pisa, this jewel of a trade hub for Venice, with its glorious harbour Livorno just down the road, had traditionally seemed a a passing fancy. Now Bembo, having Bollani tell it, this 'natural desire' would be dangerous if fulfilled, and augur darkly for Venice's future. Starting with an odd comparison found, he says, in nature, he expands the idea to compare Venice and Genoa with all the others in the region.
"All things naturally and instictively shun what most harms them and cleave to what has less power and ability to injure them. Sparrows do not flee from hens and geese, indeed they even nest with doves. But from hawks and other birds of prey, they always fly away or conceal themselves as far as they can."
Venice built on an island in a lagoon with sea stretching in all directions but one, naturally always attracted birds. The symbolic emblem of the city, the Lion of St Mark, where it was depicted, as on the flag, always had wings.
"We ought to think, then, that the Genoese likewise, if it were up to them, would under no circumstances permit us to become masters of Pisa: our histories bear witness to how hostile that people was to Venice in the past and all posterity at Genoa will remember what great defeats it suffered at our hands. They would share their armies, fleets and wealth with the Florentines to prevent us gaining control of Pisa. Though such are the temper of the times and so uncertain most people's loyalty that I fear even our allies, even those that profess that they owe their realms to us, will soon desert us when they learn that we mean to enlarge our borders as far as that; and not only desert us, but actually take up arms against us and make common cause with our enemies, in the belief that we can be routed and repelled by their collective military action and strategy." [ii, 13]
Bembo has Balloni fear for the desertion by allies, and war with all as they flocked together against the city. Bembo was writing some thirty years after, as it happened, the allies of Venice did band with its enemies, in order to limit the city's control in Italian affairs.

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from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007

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Tuesday, March 15, 2016

longer form news on econ and info, winter 2016

This winter Thomas Piketty talked about economics on the BBC.
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And a month ago there was this story where a local municipality was shown to be exercising greater surveillance of groups, presumably despite constitutional rights and 'freedom to assemble':
Of course the NSA is deeply interested. The Washington Post admits as much.


People have begun looking at the idea of how corporate surveillance impacts populations and whether those populations have any recourse.

Over the last month discussion has spread over the FBI asking Apple Co. to write code to hack into its own phone products. Apple has resisted publicly and the FBI and the Obama Administration have gamely taken to the airwaves praising the merits of their plea. But that's not all.

Still, if the comedian John Oliver is any indication, perhaps the tide in public opinion has tipped in favor of Apple's position, if no one else's.
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Henry Rollins was on the BBC World Service weekly show Hardtalk.
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Thursday, March 10, 2016

Pisa In the Cross-hairs, Under Attack: spring 1496

It was in the late winter or early spring when a band of Florentine partisans tried to take Pisa. Pietro Bembo, years later, tells the tale of Ludovico Sforza offering his help to the Senate in the matter, by being an ally to Venice, in order to help them to achieve this request for protection. The Senate pressed by activities all over and the entreaties of the duke of Milan, agreed to send funds to pay for soldiers, found in and near Genoa, to help defend Pisa. They also agreed, he says, to a pact with Milan and the pope to defend Pisa from the French. Bembo then segues to the attack from Florence of '6000 foot soldiers' and the following effects. But this is only one of a series of additional attacks and seizures on a number of cities and palaces across Italy that year which Venice was involved in.

Il Moro was determined to make some profit from the entire enterprise having worked for years to entice the French to come to Italy to begin with. This time, the crafty Duke of Milan got Venice to pay him so that he could raise an army in Genoa. He also failed to make much use of that army later on, further tarnishing his reputation, as if it could be worse. But Bembo gives Milan's opinion without quoting him, in this case.
"He said that he thought it quite right that Pisa should be protected, since the Florentines had formed an alliance with Charles - he himself had intercepted in his own territory the legate who negotiated the treaty as he returned in secret to the king. After lengthy discussions among the senators, and with Ludovico pressing them harder each day, a law was finally passed in the Senate with the approval of the ambassadors of all the allies that Pisa should be defended with the combined arms and resources of the pope, Venice and Ludovico. Appended to the law was a provision that 2,000 soldiers should be raised in Liguria at the Republic's expense and sentto Pisa. Ludovico had earlier undertaken to see to it that the Genoese would permit this to happen." [iii,23]
But Bembo says that when Florence learned of this, and before other forces could assemble, they quickly acted to take Pisa back by force. The artillery arrived at the gates but the Pisans surprised them. Opening the gates they charged at them and 'fighting manfully' siezed the artillery. But then they were met with deception.
"Shortly afterwards Paolo Vitelli, one of the Roman Orsini party and faction, and a brave man whom the Pisans had put in command of their forces, went over to the Florentines when he had fulfilled his contract with Pisa. Taking on the captaincy which the Florentines conferred on him, he put together an army of 10,000 infantry and made a fierce attack on Pisa. Vitelli rushed into the outskirts of the town, but was driven back and forced out by the Pisans, who had themselves gathered as many troops as they could. The Florentines later retook and held on to those outskirts, but they then abandoned Pisa and turned to defending themsleves for fear of Piero de' Medici, who was reportedly on the point of bursting into their territory at the head of the Orsini relatives." [iii, 24]
Again, Piero was the son of Clarice Orsini of the Orsini family who were helping him to win back Florence. The new government in Florence also wanted Pisa back. The old Medici leaders wanted to regain Florence. Everyone else were looking toward their own advantage. The Florentines, Bembo tells us were trying to buy the fortress in Pisa from King Charles of France. The Pisans then destroyed the fortress. Venice lost forty pounds of gold in attempting to help pay for this. [iii,25]
This war over Pisa would continue for years.

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Quotes from Bembo, Pietro: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
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Thursday, March 3, 2016

Savonarola Preaches Lenten Sermons: February 1496

The Friar in Florence was preaching again. In a strong act of defiance against Pope Alexander VI, on 11 February, the Signory of Florence sent word to command Friar Savonarola to provide the Lenten sermons that year. This was a great honor offered to him, one that he had performed before. The novelty was that he would deliver them while under a restriction from the pope to refrain from preaching or giving sermons.

Despite not preaching for some four months the 'little friar' had been busy that winter of 1495-6. He had continued writing. He oversaw, it seems, the development of various texts, translations, and letters for eventual publication in this time as well. Then there was the spectacular march of thousands of Florentine youths in the city meant to cap the recent Carnevale celebration before Lent that he had organized. When city leaders voted to grant him the position of delivering that year's Lenten sermons in the weeks running up to Easter, the friar took this approbation as confirmation and vindication of his success.

Savonarola bent to the task centering the frame of his sermons around the Old Testament prophet Amos. Soon he was expounding against tyrants in his familiar way. As Amos did, Savonarola railed against greed and bribery, corruption in the church and how the mighty took advantage of the weak. Savonarola, and Amos as well, had warned that there would be justice from God to punish iniquity and it would come in the form of an invading foreigner. By the second week of sermons (26 February) Savonarola had turned to the vices that plagued the powerful.

Even legitimate princes became illegitimate, Martines shows Savonarola saying, through their devotion to their vices. [p.109] A tyrant thinks of himself first, then his family, then his hangers-on. Driven by 'pride, sensuality and greed' the tyrant seizes on public monies and assets in order to enrich himself, his house, and his brash way of life. Expensive in habit, a tyrant spends money to keep him on top and others in check. Exile, levies, and protection orders are used, and quickly, to oppress any who may disagree. Suspicious of people and brutal in practice, he also becomes consumed with misleading distractions and even expensive medicines to alleviate personal afflictions. A tyrant buys soldiers to protect himself and he knocks down the houses of the poor in order to build lavish palaces. Critical of everything that he doesn't produce the tyrant throws out competing citizens, undercuts their business and sends hired spies to report on anything new. The consequence of so much single-minded control placed in the hands of a tyrant, is a population that is 'pusillanimous and servile'. [p. 110]

Martines sums up Savonarola's view of a tyrant here, as combining elements of Lorenzo de Medici, Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, the Baglioni of Perugia and 'a couple rulers of Ferrara' from the early fifteenth century. [p.109]
"In Savonarola's view of the public world, tyrants and lecherous money-loving churchmen represented all that was evil in the modern world, because, although charged with the gravest responsibilities, they were hopelessly turned away from Christ, from the meaning of the Cross, and dedicated to the physical world at its most vile levels." [p. 110]
Alexander VI would hear of Savonarola's return to the pulpit. It was reported that this pope would loudly complain to the Florentine ambassador Ricciardo Becchi who, at the behest of the Signory in Florence had been since November petitioning the Friar's return. [p. 134]
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notes and pagination from Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006

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