Waiting for the Emperor
Italian Princes, the Pope and Charles V
by Elena Bonora
In the 1540s, Italian princes, lords and cardinals wrote to each other using a secret, highly imaginative language. They were waiting for Emperor Charles V to descend on Italy to cut the papacy and Papal States down to size once and for all. Their letters, which have never before been used by historians, were not literary fantasies; behind the fictitious names, metaphors and the ferocious satire against Pope Paul III, there were weapons, money and power. For years, against the background of the battle between the two giants – the pope and the emperor – the courts of Mantua, Florence, Milan and Ferrara pursued a grand plan of containing the pope’s power by allying with men of Charles V. This history of Italy differs greatly from the one we are usually taught. The epoch-making conflict between the ‘Italy of the Emperor’ and the ‘Italy of the Pope’ was not merely political: it was mixed with religious problems, it developed in the sphere of communication, and it left traces in Italian cultural life, on the frescoed walls of palaces and in the pages of books. But the daring project drawn up by the Italian princes in the shade of the imperial eagle failed, and failed forever, as the Counter-Reformation advanced and the sun began to set on the Europe of Charles V.
- By (author) Elena Bonora
Other Titles in this Series
The Cardinal and his Painters
Giacomo Stefaneschi, Giotto and Simone Martini between Rome and Avignon
Lordships of Southern Italy
Rural Societies, Aristocratic Powers and Monarchy in the 12th and 13th Centuries
Volume 5
Similar Books
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17
Tradition, Interpretation, and Change
Developments in the Liturgy of Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz e la nascita della papirologia
Il giurista tra filologia, storia antica e fascismo (1914-1956) - Tomo I
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Building the Presence of the Prince
The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 14
fatastici dei traslati di proprieta dei beni stabili
The land registers of Venetian Candia (1588-1605, 1621-1645)
Volume 11
