wealth and power in renaissance italy

• New ways of thinking in art in the Renaissance leaned on political and economic developments in the city-states of Northern Italy.
• Economic growth laid the material basis for the Italian Renaissance.
• Merchants gained political power to match their economic power.
• Merchants used their money and power to buy luxuries and higher talent in a system of patronage.
• By the middle of the 12th century, Venice, Genoa, and Milan grew very rich from overseas trade.
• Florentine Merchants loaned and invested money and acquired control of papal banking toward the end of the 13th century.
• Florence began to dominate European banking, setting up offices and major European and North African cities.
• Profits from loans, investments, & money exchanges were pumped into industries.
• Profits contributed to the city’s politics & culture.
• In 1344, King Edward III Of England repudiated his debts to Florentine bankers, forcing some to bankruptcy.
• In Florence and other driving Italian cities, people could live a more comfortable life.
• Northern Italian cities: communes.
• Communes were often politically unstable because of rivalries among powerful families in an oligarchy.
• Merchant guilds in communes built & maintained city walls, regulated trade, collected taxes, and kept civil order.
• Oligarchy: a small group that ruled the city and surrounding countryside.
• Italy couldn’t reach unification until 1870
• Merchant elites made citizenship dependent on a property qualification, years of residence within the city, and social connections.
• Popolo: disenfranchised Italian common people who were heavily taxed and bitterly resented their exclusion from power.
• Throughout most of the 13th century, the Popolo used armed force to take over city governments.
• Victories were temporary because they couldn’t establish civil order within their cities.
• A republican government was established in numerous Italian cities at times.
• Condottieri: military leaders who had their own mercenary armies and took over political power in many cities once they supplanted the existing government.
• Signori: one man ruled & handed down the right to rule to his son.
• 15th & 16th century: signori in many cities and most powerful merchant oligarchies in others transformed their households into courts.
• Whenever one Italian city-state seemed to gain a predominant position within the peninsula, other states combined against it to establish a balance of power.
• French King Charles VIII (r 1483-1498) invaded Italy in 1494.
• In 1569, Florence was no longer a republic, but the heredity Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with Medici as Grand Dukes until 1737.
• In the 15th century, 5 powers dominated the Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples.
• Milan was called a republic, but the condottiere turned signori of the Sforza family harshly ruled & dominated Milan and several smaller cities in the north from 1447 to 1535.
• Florentines interpreted the French invasion as the fulfillment of Savonarola's prophecy and expelled the Medici dynasty.
• Girolamo Savonarola became the political & religious leader of the new Florentine republic & promised Florentines greater glory in the future if they would change their ways.
• Italy became the focus of international ambitions & the battleground of foreign armies.
• He reorganized governments and convinced it to pass laws against same-sex relations, adultery, and drunkenness.
• Failure of city-states to consolidate or establish common foreign policy led to centuries of subjection by outside invaders.
• The Kingdom of Naples was under the control of the king of Aragon.
• Courtly culture presented the opportunity to display and assert signori & oligarchy's wealth and power.
• “Bonfires of the vanities”: huge bonfires on the main square of Florence in which fancy clothing, cosmetics, pagan books, musical instruments, paintings, and poetry that celebrated human beauty were gathered together and burned.
• He held religious processions & “bonfires of the vanities”.
• 1527: Frightful sack of Rome by imperial forces under Emperor Charles V.
• Renaissance Italians were politically loyal & felt centered on the city.