Breaking the Renaissance Myth

From The New Statesman:

The publishers of Catherine Fletcher’s book have described it as an “alternative history of the Italian Renaissance”, but it is in fact a finely-written, engaging and clear essay in rather straightforward narrative history. It is none the worse for that, but is it really the case that we have failed to notice the “stranger and darker” side of Italian politics in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, as they suggest?

Professor Fletcher’s introductory chapter quite rightly notes that we are familiar enough with the stereotype of violent and corrupt machinations in Italian courts of the period (thanks to historical soaps about the Borgias and the Tudors), and that we need to penetrate more fully those systemic aspects of the society that colluded with or promoted slavery, sexual exploitation and the like. This book succeeds admirably in highlighting some of the features and figures of the period that have indeed slipped below (or never been spotted on) the radar.

Fletcher is particularly good, for example, on the initially surprising fact that women were more likely to wield political influence in princely states than in republics (think of the formidable figures of Lucrezia Borgia or Isabella d’Este). Elections in republics reflected classical prototypes that gave no public role to women. Elective rule typically produced a whole cohort of male leaders, in contrast to the princely state where a ruler’s spouse was expected to pick up the reins when her husband was away at war. Princely and aristocratic wives who ran their husband’s domain in their absence or after their death constitute a formidable cohort of influential rulers. (Read more.)

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