Milan and Lombardy in the Era of the Visconti and the Sforza

chapter 1 Milan and Lombardy in the Era of the Visconti and the Sforza

Andrea Gamberini

Dwarves on the Shoulders of Giants

In 1402, at the apex of its expansion, the state of Milan extended over a large part of northern and central Italy and numbered over thirty cities with their territories: the banner of the Visconti viper was flown everywhere from the Alto Ticino to Emilia, from eastern Piedmont to the Bellunese Dolomites, from the Valtellina to Lake Trasimene. Even traditionally autonomous centres, such as Pisa, Siena and Perugia, had capitulated in the end, while Florence, the mov- ing spirit of all the principal alliances against the “Milanese tyrant”, had itself come under siege. It was not by chance that, in the face of this impressive pro- gess, many predicted that Gian Galeazzo would assume the title of king. Able and enterprising, the Visconti had known how to create, in the course of a century, one of the most powerful states of the peninsula, firmly posi- tioned on the international chessboard. Behind this extraordinary success, was not only the political ability of the dynasty: in fact, the Visconti enterprise appears difficult to understand if it is detached from the social and economic context of the Ambrosian metropolis. Partly owing to its geographical position in the heart of the Po valley, at the crossroads of the principal communication routes, Milan had enjoyed an abso- lute centrality for centuries, officially recognized when the city became one of the capitals of the Roman Empire (286–402). In the demographic and economic crisis of the High Middle Ages—common to all cities at that time—its importance declined. But even if the Lombards and then the Franks estab- lished their capital at Pavia, Milan maintained its role, thanks above all to the prestige and actions of its archbishops. These were not only metropolitans of an ecclesiastical province that included nearly all the dioceses of Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy, but in the post-Carolingian age succeeded in making themselves civic leaders of the city as well. In the shadow of its Church, Milan prospered, while the archbishop rapidly became the most powerful lord of the Kingdom of Italy, as the Emperor Henry III himself admitted in a diploma of

1046.1 Favouring the reinforcement of the prelate’s political role were not only the power and wealth of the Ambrosian Church, which possessed a huge num- ber of townships and villages in the broad territory between the city and the Alps: the archbishoop was also supported by the full weight of the economic and political strength of the Milanese. The same strength that from the end of the twelfth century had allowed the launch of the commune, which was soon capable of not only subjecting the contado—the largest in Italy, with an area of 4–5,000 square kilometres, against an average of 2,500 square kilometres2— but also of extending its own sphere of influence to neighbouring cities (Lodi was destroyed in 1111, and there were frequent border clashes with Como). Milanese leadership in the Lombard region was clearly defined during the conflicts with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, when the Ambrosian city assumed the direction of the Lombard league. The price paid for the rebellion against the Swabian sovereign was in reality very high, seeing that he had no hesitation in ordering the destruction of what was already the most populous city in Europe (1162). Dramatic as it was, the episode marked only a pause in the development of Milan, which was able to raise its head, force Barbarossa to surrender (Peace of Constance, 1183), and to become in little more than a century that metropolis teeming with merchants and artisans described with pleasure by the friar Bonvesin de la Riva in De Magnalibus Mediolani: it was 1288 and the Ambrosian city counted not less than 150,000 inhabitants.3 But the thirteenth century was for Milan not only the century of economic and demographic takeoff, it was also the epoch in which Milanese influence over the region was further strengthened: there were many cities which asked to have Milanese podestà and Captains of the People, recognising in this way Ambrosian leadership.4 Consequently, when the Visconti signoria developed at the end of the century, the political influence of Milan over Lombardy and its role as one of the principal commercial and financial centres in Europe were well advanced. The Visconti did have a determining role in creating the

1 Graziano Alfredo Vergani, “Omne regnum italicum ad suum disponebat nutum: Ariberto d’Intimiano, bishop, warrior and patron”, Il Crocifisso di Ariberto, catalogo della mostra (Milano 1997), pp. 47–56. 2 Giorgio Chittolini, Città, comunità e feudi dell’Italia centro-settentrionale (XIV–XVI secolo) (Milano 1996), pp. 1–17. 3 Bonvesin de la Riva, De Magnalibus Mediolani, ed. Paolo Chiesa (Milano 2009); Giuliana Albini, Guerra, fame, peste: crisi di mortalità e sistema sanitario nella Lombardia tardomedio- evale (Bologna 1984). 4 Elisa Occhipinti, “Podestà da Milano e a Milano fra XII e XIV secolo”, in J.-C. Maire Vigueur (ed.), I podestà dell’Italia comunale (Roma 2000), I, pp. 43–73.