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The Self-Representation of Florentine Patricians in the Late Renaissance

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The Self-Representation of Florentine Patricians in the Late Renaissance PRINCES AND PATRIOTISM: THE SELF-REPRESENTATION OF FLORENTINE PATRICIANS IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE Henk van Veen After the mid sixteenth century, the various urban elites in Italy underwent a process of ‘aristocratisation’.1 In recent decades, there has been much de- bate among historians as to how this process actually happened in Florence. Generally speaking, the following picture has emerged.2 After the aristocra- tisation of the Florentine civil elite had once been set in motion, it was further accelerated by the new grand-ducal Medici dynasty founded by Cosimo I. The Medici were keen to merge the patriciate with the feudal no- bility with which they had surrounded themselves and which originated from Tuscany and further afield. Thus they hoped to create a homogeneous aristocracy centred on court and dynasty, that would further the consolida- tion of the grand duchy as a territorial state. In studies of the aristocratisation process in Florence much attention has rightly been devoted to the figure and ideology of Scipione Ammirato, a panegyrist, historian, and political thinker who – at the invitation of Grand Duke Cosimo I – moved to Florence in 1570 from the South Italian prov- ince of Apulia and subsequently assumed a prominent position in the town’s cultural life.3 Accustomed as he was to the courtly atmosphere of southern Italy, Ammirato emerged as a prime champion of grand-ducal dominion as a God-given institution. To add lustre to the grand duke’s loftiness or, as Samuel Berners once put it, ‘to lift him from the piazza’, a court nobility was, in Ammirato’s opinion, indispensable: good and just sovereigns must, since they are reflections and shadows of God, strive to surround themselves with great and excellent men … in 1 See Donati, L’idea di nobiltà. 2 Berner, ‘Florentine Political Thought’; idem, ‘Florentine Society’; Cochrane, Florence; Diaz, ‘L’idea di una nuova elite’; Weissmann, Ritual Brotherhood; Litch- field, Emergence of a Bureaucracy; Donati, L’idea di nobiltà, pp. 214-227; Aguzzi Barbagli, ‘La difesa’; Williams, ‘The Sala Grande’. 3 For him see especially Cochrane,Florence, and the literature cited there. 64 HENK VAN VEEN much the same way that throngs and orders of angels with all their privileges surround God.4 In his writings, Ammirato articulated as no other the endeavours being made to convert Florentine patricians into courtiers suited to the task of serving the Grand Duke as his entourage. This ‘courtification’ of the patriciate encouraged by the Medici was in no way counteracted by the tough urban and mercantile tradition that had al- ways characterised the city-state of Florence. The various analyses of the aristocratisation process in Florence reveal that beneath its noble-aristo- cratic veneer, the Florentine patriciate was ultimately capable of preserving much of its original urban identity and many of its original positions of power in the city.5 Campanilism as an historic problem No matter how well existing historical analyses have illuminated the dif- ferent forces and counter-forces affecting the aristocratisation process in Florence, there is still one important question that remains unanswered. If there was anything that characterised the Florentine elite, particularly during the last decades of the sixteenth century, then it was a virulent love of and pride in its own city – in a word, the elite’s ‘campanilismo’.6 Though such a sentiment is also discernible in other cities of the day, such as Genoa and Venice, nowhere did it seem to be as strong as it was in Florence. How is it possible that aristocratisation, which precisely implied rising above urban matters and focusing on the sovereign and the court, was accompanied by such passionate expressions of love for one’s city? The fact that during the aristocratisation process the civil elite managed to retain its urban identity provides insufficient explanation. The type of campanilism referred to here really involved a new phenomenon, that was unprecedented in this form. It has been suggested that the sudden orientation towards the home city was, paradoxically, one result of the aristocratisation process.7 As a class, 4 … buoni e giusti principi essendo in terra un’immagine e ombra di Dio, hanno a studiarsi d’haver appresso di loro huomini grandi e di diversi gradi e qualità … sì come appresso di Dio diverse d’honori e di prerogative sono le schiere e le gerarchie degli angioli’ (Ammirato quoted by Diaz, ‘L’idea di una nuova elite’, p. 582). 5 See Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy. 6 Berner, ‘Florentine Political Thought’; idem, ‘Florentine Society’, pp. 230, 232. 7 Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, pp. 32-33. Litchfield pays little atten- tion to campanilism and does not regard it as an historical problem. Cf. also Diaz, ‘L’idea di una nuova elite’, pp. 583-84, who refers to Ammirato’s Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine, which was published in 1615 but written in the 1590s..
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