Lecture notes: Treaty of Lodi, 1454

Italian city-states

The increasing freedom of Italian city-states in between the territories of the Empire and the Pope

  • starts in the 13th century already
  • playing one against the other

Guelphs and Ghibellines

  • cf. Romeo and Juliet

Power is moving back and forth

  • every city is divided

But increasingly independent of both

Sovereign city-states

  • a city that is a state
  • with a bit of a hinterland

Many of them are republics — at least initially

  • revival of political theory of the ancients
  • above all from the Roman Republic

The Italian Renaissance

  • the classics are being reborn
  • they are like us — but they were pre-Christian

The idea of “the middle ages”

Brunelleschi

  • managed to built the cupola of the dome at St Maria Novella in Florence
  • no longer had to live in the ruins of a long-gone civilization

Political philosophy in general

  • return of the political philosophy of the Roman Republic
  • Cicero, Titius Livy and others
  • very interesting in why the republic had perished

This is Machiavelli too

  • “I love my hometown more than I love my own life”
  • he was a diplomat
  • he worked on city walls and other fortifications

Machavelli’s advice for the prince

  • uomini nuovi-– “new men” — condottierer ets
  • the Medici were doctors
  • how to mantenere lo stato

Find a way to associate maiesta with your name

  • street parties and all kinds of performances
  • gradually come to move indoors

A new kind of power politics

  • as a statesman you have to do what you have to do
  • raggione di stato and all that

The Italian state-system

They started making war on each other

  • a lot of potential enemies — and potential friends

The first examples of alliance politics

  • balances of power

A new kind of international politics — there is a system of states

  • the first European case of anarchy
  • no one to call — no one above

In IR we associate this with The Westphalian Treaty, 1648

  • but it started in northern Italy and gradually spread elsewhere

The Treaty of Lodi, 1454

  • peace between Venice and Milano
  • with Florence siding with Milan
  • this was the beginning of the system

Diplomatic relations

  • crucial to all these negotiations
  • you need to talk in order to reach a settlement

The beginnings of regular diplomatic relations

  • but before we address this directly, we need to talk about one more thing …

Court society

Medieval society as feudal

  • the lords live out on their estates
  • some have sort of courts, but others are pretty rustic
  • not all of them are very large
  • spread out — some very provincial

State sovereignty

  • power is centralized in the hand of the king

The local lords lose their power

  • they are forced to move to the capital at least for part of the year
  • they show up at the king’s court — they are turned into courtiers

And here too there are uomini nuovi

  • a lot of social and economic change in this period
  • more division of labor — new fortunes were made

Show up a court hoping to make a name for themselves

  • the court were like courts — judging who you were and what you were like

The place to be for everyone

  • focus on fashion — on ways of talking — food, everything
  • this is how French spread around Europe
  • all kinds of other fads

You had to show up at court if you wanted to be someone to be reckoned with

  • but lots of people had no idea how to behave

Self-help manuals

Teaching everyone how to behave the need to learn the arts …

  • conversation
  • arts and sciences
  • history
  • games
  • sports
  • dancing

 

Baldassare Castiglione

The court at Urbino

  • conversation between courtiers on how to carry oneself at court
  • etiquette was very precise — lot’s of complicated and pretty stupid roles

The Book of the Courtier

Moliere, Bourgeois Gentilhomme

M. Jourdain applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers.

  • his daughter and wife decide to make fun of him
  • his daughter in love with a middle-class guy

He dresses up as the son of the Sultan of Turkey

  • M. Jourdain is very happy to hear that he too will be ennobled in the process

Mattingly, The First Resident Embassies

In the Middle Ages always special ambassadors

  • sent to fulfill a particular mission and report only on their return

There were legati sent to Rome

  • they stayed there, but this was more like the presence in an empire

Permanent ambassador

  • stays in a foreign capital permanently
  • not connected to a particular negotiation or treaty

And that they all were representatives in each other courts

  • you recreated an international society in every capital
  • you could see the international system
  • at parties etc they were all there
  • an image of Europe

They were the personal representatives of the ruler

  • they were the avatars of the state
  • this is why it was so important how they were treated
  • we’ll talk more about this next week

Why socializing was so important

  • we will talk more about this later
  • the principle of reciprocity
  • a society of European states

Spread information and rumors

  • pick up gossip

Privileges

Particular rights that belong only to the permanent resident

  • extra judiciality
  • right to worship
  • right to travel freely — diplomatic passports
  • diplomatic mail/ pouches

Questions of membership — recognition/ non-recognition

Papacy

  • remained outside of the system since the popes never sent any resident ambassadors elsewhere
  • the pope was supposed to be at peace with everyone — obviously not the case
  • cf. the great empires of the East

Turkey does join but much later

  • very different understanding of what a diplomat was
  • Russia they same thing — talk more about that

Other countries — Sweden

  • the problems Gustav II Adolf had with his delegates at peace conferences

Expands beyond Italy

Italian states make alliances with non-Italian this spreads the logic of the system when the French invade in 1494, the various states are looking for alliances abroad —

England, etc. even the pope sends permanent representatives to Germany and France in the year 1500

  • “the anxious faces of Italian negotiators were a common sight at every major European court”

Spain sends ambassadors — and non-Italians start sending them to each other

  • “As other powers followed this example, resident embassies sprang up in all the great western capitals. The middle ages in diplomacy were over.”

Venetian diplomacy

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_SpQLAAAAYAAJ/page/299/mode/2up

Holbein, The Embassadors

Zoomable version

Jean de Dinteville

took it back to France send to London five times altogether there is correspondence from him, but doesn’t mention Holbein it a painted in Bridewell Palace which was leased to the French as an embassy suffering from something like malaria important year, Henry VIII had broken with Rome — Francis I, in France, was concerned about married Anne Boleyn, pregnant with Elizabeth I he was stationed in London permanently — had to spent a lot of money, holding banquets, attending the coronation amazing clothes well rendered by Holbein, picking out individual hairs 28 years old, according to the dagger badge of a skull

Georges de Selve

only 25, but already made a bishop also very expensive clothes what was he doing in London? only stayed a few months he was probably bringing a message from Francis to Henry very preoccupied with the breakup of Christianity Holbein made drawings of his portraits, but none survive taking some shortcuts — with the carpet for example — the green curtain too

The objects

On the top shelf — on the heavenly bodies

Bottom shelf —

  • objects of the earth speculations regarding hidden meanings time as “out of joint” — certainly true of Europe earthly globe —
  • shows his own palace in France, “that’s where I live” not “Paris” but “Baris”
  • a Lutheran hymnbook — in German — reference to the attempt to bring the religions together
  • the lute — foreshortened — one of the strings is broken — not in perfect harmony — perhaps also has a meaning a flute —
  • but arithmetic, measuring the earth, page from a German arithmetic books, all about division — the divisions of Christendom

The crucifix to the right

  • the hope of salvation

The skull

  • a distorted representation of a human skull
  • memento mori

Activities

Machiavelli’s letter to Francesco Vettori, December 10, 1513

Anamorphic perspectives