Abstract
The three monographs here under review (the Botero translation is an outlier) share a common premise: that the urban history of early modern Italy merits far more attention that it has traditionally received, especially in the Anglo-Saxon community. That is entirely valid. English-language historiography has always privileged the autonomous capital of the city-state or territorial state (preferably republican), and has quickly lost interest the moment that autonomy was lost, under the assumption that the loss of freedom led to decadence or at best stagnation. Thus, Ferdinand Schevill’s Siena (1909) ends with the arrival of Spanish troops in 1555; his History of Florence (1936) effectively ends in 1530. G. F. Young’s The Medici (1930) spends two-thirds of its text on somewhat less than a century of Medici presence in a free republic, and one-third of its attention on the more than two centuries of the Medici-led but often foreign-dominated principate. This association of urban history with self-government has persisted into modern times: David Herlihy’s fine studies of Pisa and Pistoia both conclude when those cities were annexed by Florence, and Benjamin Kohl’s excellent monograph on Padua concludes with the city’s annexation by Venice.
The generalization should not, of course, be overstated. English-speaking authors have always paid some attention to postindependent cities, if only, as with Schevill’s History of Florence, to examine the “disintegration” of culture under outside rulers. Learned amateurs—Harold Acton for Naples, Cecilia Ady for Milan—have long produced wonderfully readable tomes. But professionals have not joined them. Only slowly has the Anglo-Saxon disinclination to devote serious attention to unfree cities been overcome. Pioneers here were Eric Cochrane’s examination of Florence in the Forgotten Centuries (1973) and Domenico Sella’s monograph on the economy of Spanish Lombardy (1979); their leads were strengthened by the fact that both men trained many doctoral students and were highly active in conferences and journals. The tide turned slowly, but turn it did. To give but one regional example, we now enjoy monographs in English on Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, and Bergamo for the time periods after those cities had been subsumed into the Venetian state. It is to be hoped that these four books represent a surge to come.
All urban historians—and not just those of early modern Europe—should own a copy of Botero’s On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities. He opens with a stirring manifesto for the discipline: among the outward works of man there is none greater than the city; for man being by nature sociable and desirous to share his goods, it is in cities that conversation and the mutual exchange of all the things that concern life attain their highest form. (p. 3)
Botero was not only an enthusiast, and one of the first to look seriously at cities, but remains one of the most prescient, possessed of keen insight and a broad vision. Unusual for an age moving rapidly toward specialization of scholarly genres, he was also a polymath: here is to be found what we might term economics, human geography, agronomy, demographics, and political sociology. He looks beyond the structural requisites of a successful city to what we might term social psychology, to explore the “things that induce people . . . to move, and for goods to be transported to one place rather than another” (p. 31). His vision is organic and dynamic: thus, Book III explores why great cities stop growing or regress, and why some cities grow disproportionately to others of similar situation. Also unusual in an age moving toward the regional state (and long accustomed to patriotic panegyrics of individual cities), Botero is concerned with as much of the globe as he could read about: classical antiquity, as we would expect, but also contemporary cities in Mughal India, China, Central and South America, the Near East and Central Asia, Thailand, Vietnam. Most unusual in an age of rising European triumphalism, he is entirely willing to concede (Book II, chap. 12) that Italian cities were by no means superior to non-European counterparts. Correlating demographic limits with resources, he fully anticipates Thomas Malthus by more than two centuries (p. 75). As a good social scientist—one of the first—he moves gracefully from the specific to the general, deducing broad patterns that are as applicable to our time as to his own. And all this in around eighty pages! Geoffrey Symcox’s introduction is concise but thorough; his translation is a model of lucidity.
Of the three monographs, Stefano D’Amico’s study of Milan is the most straightforward. He is probably right that Milan is the “least studied” of Italy’s major cities, especially in English (p. 1), and he offers prodigious research and a multifaceted approach to fill the gap—here are to be found demographics, economics, politics, sociology, religious reform, architecture, popular piety, and many other topics. The book has been heavily researched, and will be the starting point for many future explorations. But reading it is far from straightforward; perhaps I might here spare readers the frustration that I experienced. For most of the book, the title appears to mislead: there are few Spanish, and there is no Spanish Empire. Furthermore, the text is replete with examinations of political bodies and governing structures that have not been defined. But the final chapter, the fifth, suddenly provides the missing Spanish context and the introduction to magistracies. If the book is read out of order, the experience will be far more profitable and enjoyable.
D’Amico opens with a discussion of the “black legend” of Spanish domination, and its twin theme of Milan’s decay over the long centuries of Spanish rule. This seems to hint on an intent to revise traditional historiography, which would be a bold undertaking and would provide a refreshing twist on a familiar tale. One thinks, for example, of the sparkling At the Centre of the Old World, edited by Paola Lanaro, which takes on all the hoary assumptions of economic decadence or stagnation and casts them brusquely aside. But at the end of the day, D’Amico is not inclined toward revisionism. If Milan remained populous and wealthy throughout the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century (chap. 2) that fact seems to have been the product of preexisting momentum rather than Spanish policies; it is difficult to see Spanish fingerprints on any successful initiatives, and indeed D’Amico notes the “absence of a clear [Spanish] economic policy” (p. 78). He notes growing concentration and polarization of wealth, surely not a sign of economic vitality. After 1660 there are only signs of “stagnation and decay” (p. 87). Only in the area of religious institutions does there appear much reform and energy (chap. 4), largely much due to Carlo Borromeo; here the Spanish governors appear only as obstacles to positive change.
Robin Thomas begins his study of mid-eighteenth century Neapolitan architecture with an efficient recounting of the creation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its governing bodies. We tend to think of Naples as a capital, and of course it had been at times, but Charles of Bourbon was a newly established monarch and faced a formidable task of establishing his authority and providing a distinct identity to the new kingdom. He needed legitimacy, and acceptance by foreign powers, local nobles and the populace alike. That he was able to accomplish this in large part through building speaks to his own good judgment, some very able ministers (with help from Spain), and some skilled engineers and architects—this is hardly the sleepy, slightly stupid, parasitic Bourbon dynasty much decried in Risorgimento historiography and beyond.
Take, for example, the opera house of San Carlo, subject of Thomas’ first chapter and the first of Charles’ great commissions. Built in only eight months, it was the largest such building in Europe, and long served as one of Europe’s finest venues. Thomas is careful to tie its architectonic and performance features into Charles’ ruling ambitions. So, for example, Charles practically required nobles to frequent San Carlo, where they fell under constant royal scrutiny. Operas were crafted with ideologies of “the virtues of royal rule and civic harmony” (p. 15); the libretti relentlessly imparted values of public virtue and loyalty to the king (pp. 38-39). Box-holders were permitted to decorate their boxes as they wished, but not with crests; the only coat of arms displayed in San Carlo was that of the king. Boxes were carefully assigned according to the social hierarchy, with nobles competing for boxes on the best levels, and closest to that of the king (p. 36). And so San Carlo could function as “a principal representational space of the monarch” (p. 23)—not a bad accomplishment considering that the king did not care for opera itself.
Thomas is careful to keep his focus on Naples, but in the end the book is largely directed to pan-European considerations of Baroque political architecture. There is much discussion, for example, of the impact of San Carlo on theater design throughout Europe. (I had not expected to enjoy a discussion of the relative merits of horseshoe vs. elliptical designs, but Thomas has a gift for rendering highly technical issues entirely lucid.) The Reale Albergo dei Poveri, designed to alleviate a great influx of the poor, is viewed in light of hospital design throughout Europe and the New World. A chapter on the cavalry barracks at the Ponte della Maddalena amounts to a wide-ranging treatment of the eighteenth century military generally. Throughout, photos and (especially) contemporary prints bring this relatively unknown architecture, and the statecraft that drove it, to life.
And finally to John Marino’s Becoming Neapolitan. This is no easy book to review, since it is less a traditional monograph than a torrent of mini-essays. Marino is not much concerned to knit these together into a grand synthesis or sweeping conclusion, but instead presents distinct case studies, each of which illustrates a facet of Neapolitan culture. Reading it is like spending several hours close to a large and dense pointillist painting; only afterward is it possible to stand back and attempt to discern the big picture. The book’s conclusion is helpful, but by that point the reader has been bombarded with so much and so varied discussion that certainty is difficult. I am not sure I have figured it out yet.
If there is a recurring theme to Becoming Neapolitan, it is identity and its components—legitimation, aspiration, dissent, contesting, or promoting ideology—as represented in myth and ritual. So, for example, the first chapter is concerned with Neapolitans’ foundation myths and their expression in texts and map. The dazzling erudition of the entire book is much in evidence here, as Marino displays a sure command of such myths throughout the peninsula in the service of a novel and persuasive discussion of Italian culture generally. The use of maps is illustrative of his program of defining ritual very broadly; so too the second chapter, on ritual time and ritual space, examines the agricultural season and the harvests of various foodstuffs. Marino is surely right to include much that was not strictly speaking ritual, in keeping with the Baroque fondness for surrounding nearly every human act and human product with extravagant, stylized forms: when life is theatrical, all of its manifestations take on the air of ritual.
But that breadth of vision in turn allows just about anything to serve as a marker of identity, and Marino is not inclined to leave out anything that might speak to Neapolitan identity. In the third chapter, for example, his intent is to explore patronage, but not in any synthetic or linear way. Instead, there are distinct sections on saints’ lives, on Naples as New Jerusalem (from one specific sacristy), on the obsequies at the death of Philip II, and on the long story of a feigned saint. For entertainments and games (fourth chapter), we are presented with tales read at banquets, with an anthropology of folk tales (European-wide, high culture and low culture), masques, festivals at royal births, and in general “games as a form of communication” (p. 197) and negotiation for status and power. In each chunk, Marino moves easily into generalization, supporting his arguments with a thorough (but never cloying) command of theory. Becoming Neapolitan is a grand, though somewhat exhausting, book.
Three monographs and a translation do not a trend make, of course; and none of these books have much in common in content and methodology. Still, it is welcome to see publishers supporting work on postrepublican cities, and to move beyond the familiar confines of Florence, Venice, and Rome. It might be desirable to see more work on the second tier of cities—Stephen Dowd’s study of Brescia is a model here—but given the trends of recent historiography that too seems likely.