Power in the Republics

Within the fifteenth-century world of largely monarchical power were three important exceptions: Switzerland, Venice, and Florence. Republics, they prided themselves on traditions of self-rule. At the same time, however, they were in every case dominated by elites—or, in the case of Florence, even by one family.

Of the three, the Swiss Confederation was the most egalitarian. The region’s cities had long had alliances with one another. In the fourteenth century, their union became more binding, and they joined with equally well-organized communities in rural and forested areas in the region. Their original purpose was to keep the peace, but soon they also pledged to aid one another against the Holy Roman Emperor. By the end of the fourteenth century, they had become an entity: the Swiss Confederation. While not united by a comprehensive constitution, they were nevertheless an effective political force.

Wealthy merchants and tradesmen dominated the cities of the Swiss Confederation, and in the fifteenth century they managed to supplant the landed nobility. At the same time, the power of the rural communes gave some ordinary folk political importance. No king, duke, or count ever became head of the confederation. In its fiercely independent stance against the Holy Roman Empire, it became a symbol of republican freedom. On the other hand, poor Swiss foot soldiers made their living by hiring themselves out as mercenaries, fueling the wars of kings in the rest of Europe.

Far less open to the lower classes, Venice, a city built on a lagoon, ruled an extensive empire by the fifteenth century. Its merchant ships plied the waters stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and out to the Atlantic Ocean. Now, for the first time in its career, it turned to conquer land in northern Italy. In the early fifteenth century, Venice took over many surrounding cities, eventually coming up against the equally powerful city-state of Milan to its west. Between 1450 and 1454, two coalitions, one led by Milan, the other by Venice, fought for territorial control of the eastern half of northern Italy. Financial exhaustion and fear of an invasion by France or the Ottoman Turks led to the Peace of Lodi in 1454. Italy was a collection no longer of small cities, each with its own contado (surrounding countryside), but of large territorial city-states.

It is no accident that the Peace of Lodi was signed one year after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople: Venice wanted to direct its might against the Turks. But the Venetians also knew that peace was good for business; they traded with the Ottomans, and the two powers influenced each other’s art and culture: Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Mehmed (see the chapter-opening illustration) is a good example of the importance of the Renaissance at the Ottoman court.

Venice was ruled not by a signore (“lord”) but by the Great Council, which was dominated by the most important families. Far from being a hereditary monarch, the doge—the leading magistrate at Venice—was elected by the Great Council. A major question is why the lower classes at Venice did not rebel and demand their own political power, as happened in so many other Italian cities. The answer may be that Venice’s foundation on water demanded so much central planning, so much effort to maintain buildings and services, and such a large amount of public funds to provide the population with necessities that it fostered a greater sense of community than could be found elsewhere.

While Venice was not itself a center of humanism, its conquest of Padua in 1405 transformed its culture. After studying rhetoric at the University of Padua, young Venetian nobles returned home convinced of the values of a humanistic education for administering their empire. Lauro Quirini was one such man; his time at Padua was followed by a long period on Crete, which was under Venetian control.

Like humanism, Renaissance art also became part of the fabric of the city. Because of its trading links with Byzantium, Venice had long been influenced by Byzantine artistic styles. As it acquired a land-based empire in northern Italy, however, its artists adopted the Gothic styles prevalent elsewhere. In the fifteenth century, Renaissance art forms began to make inroads as well. Venice achieved its own unique style, characterized by strong colors, intense lighting, and sensuous use of paint—adapting the work of classical antiquity for its own purposes. Most Venetian artists worked on commission from churches, but lay confraternities—lay religious organizations devoted to charity—also sponsored paintings.

Florence, like Venice, was also a republic. But unlike Venice, its society and political life were turbulent, as social classes and political factions competed for power. The most important of these civil uprisings was the so-called Ciompi Revolt of 1378. Named after the wool workers (ciompi), laborers so lowly that they had not been allowed to form a guild, the revolt led to the creation of a guild for them, along with a new distribution of power in the city. But by 1382, the upper classes were once again monopolizing the government, and now with even less sympathy for the commoners.

By 1434, the Medici family had become the dominant power in this unruly city. The patriarch of the family, Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), founded his political power on the wealth of the Medici bank, which handled papal finances and had numerous branch offices in Italian and northern European cities. Backed by his money, Cosimo took over Florentine politics. He determined who could take public office, and he established new committees made up of men loyal to him to govern the city. He kept the old forms of the Florentine constitution intact, governing behind the scenes not by force but through a broad consensus among the ruling elite.

Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo “the Magnificent” (1449–1492), who assumed power in 1467, bolstered the regime’s legitimacy with his patronage of the humanities and the arts. He himself was a poet and an avid collector of antiquities. Serving on various Florentine committees in charge of building, renovating, and adorning the churches of the city, Lorenzo employed important artists and architects to work on his own palaces. He probably encouraged the young Michelangelo Buonarroti; he certainly patronized the poet Angelo Poliziano, whose verses inspired Botticelli’s Venus. No wonder humanists and poets sang his praises.

But the Medici family also had enemies. In 1478, Lorenzo narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, and his successor was driven out of Florence in 1494. The Medici returned to power in 1512, only to be driven out again in 1527. In 1530, the republic fell for good as the Medici once again took power, this time declaring themselves dukes of Florence.