Cotignola in the Opinion of Leonardo and Luca Pacioli

Home , Alberico da Barbiano, Bagnacavallo, Condottiero, Cotignola, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, Senio

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Ludovico Il Moro And The Dynastic Homeland As The “ideal City” 355

Chapter 15 Ludovico il Moro and the Dynastic Homeland as the “Ideal City”: Cotignola in the Opinion of Leonardo and Luca Pacioli

Raffaella Zama

The influential House of Sforza originates from Romagna in the province of Ravenna, along a strip of land at the Senio river which, in olden times, was so favorable to the growth of quince trees (mele cotogne in Italian) that the small rural settlement was named Cotignola.1 At the time the Descriptio Romandiole was written by cardinal Anglic de Grimoard of Grizac (1371) for the Papal Household of Avignon, Cotignola was registered as a “villa,” which was the gen- eral word for a scattered population classified as an ‘almost village,’ a tiny ad- ministrative settlement with no curtain wall. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Cotignola was strictly limited to the “villa” because the Descriptio assigns a re- markable number of ‘hearths’ to it, all of 144 focularia2 i.e. tax-paying family units, a considerable number for a late fourteenth century rural location in Romagna.3 In fact, in those days this ‘almost village’ must already have had a defensive wall build by the inhabitants of Faenza and Forlì in 1276, most prob- ably not a wall with a moat but a strong enclosure made of wood, or an em- bankment.4 The castrum may have been degraded to ‘villa’ because of the dire condition it was in when Anglic’s official visited, which is quite easy to imagine in consideration of the fact that the nearby Senio river must have frequently subjected the settlement to the perils of destructive floods. In 1382, when Giacomo Attendolo called Giacomuzzo—from which the name he became famous by, i.e. Muzio, derives—at just thirteen years of age was getting ready to enrol in the ranks of Scorruccio da Spoleto, after which he joined the company of the valiant Alberico da Barbiano who nicknamed him

1 Rosaceae family, genus Cydonia oblonga; mela cotogna = from Latin cotōneum or cotōnium. 2 Leardo Mascanzoni, La ‘Descriptio Romandiole’ del Card. Anglic. Introduzione e testo (Bologna: La Fotocromo Emiliana, n.d. [c.1985]), 100–101, 143. 3 Leardo Mascanzoni, “John Hawkwood, Bagnacavallo e Cotignola (anni settanta del ‘300–1381),” Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per le province di Romagna 63 (2013): 266. 4 Girolamo Bonoli, Della Storia di Cottignola terra nella Romagna inferiore partita in due libri opera del padre maestro fra Girolamo Bonoli da Lugo (Ravenna: per Anton Maria Landi, 1734), 1–8.

‘Sforza,’ Cotignola had just been given new defences by the British mercenary military leader John Hawkwood, who spent the last thirty years of his life in Italy where, around 1376, Pope Gregory XI gave him Cotignola as a reward for his services. He ruled there until August 1381 where he built a watchtower and a large mansion, defining the structure of the castle with a moat and a stock- ade similar to a fortress.5 Antonio Minuti relates this in his “Gesta di Sforza,” written between 1451 and 1458 while he held the position of officer at the court of Francesco Sforza in Milan.6

1 With the Quince in His Heart

Muzio’s mercenary calling became gradually defined in the military context that the Cotignola castle acquired thanks to John Hawkwood, before it was handed down to the House of Este. His brothers Bartolo, Bosio and Francesco were also involved, together with his cousins Lorenzo and Micheletto Attendo lo, as well as other relatives benefiting from various degrees of kinship, all of whom stuck by his side. Antonio Minuti remembers how Muzio Attendolo had always admired Hawkwood and Alberico da Barbiano, ever since they started to visit Muzio’s father’s house where they directed him towards a military car- rier.7 The condottiero’s success didn’t come all at once;8 it reached its peak after having served some of the most prominent rulers in Italy at that time. Muzio appears triumphantly in an equestrian portrait illuminated on the page pre- ceding the frontispiece of a codex commissioned by his grandson, Ludovico di Moro, in 1491 to record the feats of the founder of the House of Sforza. We are talking about Antonio Minuti’s biography, Compendio di gesti del magnanimo

5 Gaetano Solieri, Le origini e la dominazione degli Sforza a Cotignola (Bologna: Stab. Tip. Successori Monti, 1897), 35–36; the author refers to a parchment now located in a private collection in Faenza, a copy of which is preserved in Ravenna, Archivio di Stato, Cotignola, vol. 264. 6 Antonio Minuti, Vita di Muzio Attendolo Sforza. Vol. 7. ed. G. Porro Lambertenghi (Turin: Stamperia Reale, Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria), 1869, 113. Antonio Minuti was acknowl- edged by Francesco Sforza as guardian of his father’s memories because he had lived by his side and had been a direct witness of his life. Moreover, he had collected news from relatives, followers, friends and even from the condottiero’s mother. To read about Antonio Minuti see Maria Nadia Covini, "La fortuna e i fatti dei condottieri 'con veritate, ordine e bono inchiostro narrati': Antonio Minuti e Giovanni Simonetta," in Medioevo dei poteri. Studi di Storia per Giorgio Chittolini, ed. Maria Nadia Covini, et al. (Roma: Viella, 2012), 215–244. 7 Minuti, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, 114. 8 Leardo Mascanzoni, “Muzio Attendolo da Cotignola, capostipite degli Sforza,” Nuova Rivista Storica 89–91 (2005): 55–82.