The study of elites has attracted considerable scholarship in Italy. Arguably Italy had a greater range of social and ruling elites, with more fluidity between them, than in most parts of Europe.1 They were based on power and prestige in the contado or in the city, or in both. As elsewhere they were affected by concepts of nobility, and increasingly so. Before differentiating between Italian elites it should help to consider the attitudes to nobility and status that complicated the groupings.
Concepts of honour, nobility and status were undoubtedly significant in the mentality of the early modern period, especially for the middling and upper ranks of society.2 Some concepts were very varied and changing in use and meaning in the period. Most historians would probably agree that from the early sixteenth century Italians of the elites were more conscious of the concept of nobility and were keener on preserving the exclusiveness of the ‘noble’.3
The supposed increasing concern with nobility and its associated virtues within Italy has been linked to various factors. Post-unification Italian nationalists blamed the influence of the Spanish in the peninsula from the early sixteenth century, mostly notably in the Kingdom of Naples, but with knock-on effects in other states. The alleged economic decline in terms of international trade and manufacturing reduced the merchant class or classes, and shifted investment to the land. This encouraged ‘refeudalisation’, whereby large portions of the contado were granted as feuds with jurisdictional rights to leading families, who had often been troublesome oligarchs in the larger cities. Adding an honorific title increased the prestige of such feuds. Regionalisation of the economy and the development of regional states (to the detriment of the small city states), led by a ruling elite and bureaucracy centred on a more absolutist court, encouraged the reward of courtiers with status symbols as their political functions were curtailed. For some commentators, past and present, the presupposition was that nobility dictated who should or should not be admitted into the ruling elite or class (ceto dirigente).
Before the sixteenth century some penalties were attached to being ‘noble’, especially in north-central Italy. Struggles between and within city communes had sometimes brought the expulsion of the rural-based aristocracies, dubbed Nobili or Magnati, and the confinement of executive and advisory councils to representatives of the Popolo. i.e. the middling classes of merchants, professionals and artisans. Subsequently some of the socially elite needed to emphasise the virtues of ‘nobles’, their right and duty to lead society and government, and to argue that those deemed ignoble by birth or occupation should be excluded from government.
Nobility could derive from birth or behaviour. Distinctions between noble and gentleman (gentilhuomo), and associated attributes, were debated. Gentilhuomo was not necessarily seen in the simple terms of Giovanni Botero in the early seventeenth century, as a man who had sufficient property to support himself from its revenue.4 Nobles were not necessarily titled, or with a landed power base. Italy had urban-based families, deriving wealth from business, banking and industry, who were classified as a noble elite, but titleless. While these may be designated ‘patrician’, as for the elites of Venice, Genoa, Florence or Milan, the members concerned and their literary propagandists were usually intent on stressing their noble virtues, status and exclusiveness.
‘Patrician’ (patrizio) was rarely used in the period, though in Venice patritio and nobele, patritia and nobiltà were used by and about the closed group of families eligible to provide members of the Grand Council.5 Pompeo Rocchi (Il Gentilhuomo, Lucca, 1568) used it as the Roman equivalent of his gentilhuomo, a man ‘who has had in his lineage many excellent men in desirable matters’. For him patrician could cover honourable men who were not senators, i.e. not part of the current magisterial class. The theologian Giovanni Antonio Delfino (1507–61), however, equated patrician with senator. The modern usage of patrician for those Venetians eligible (through the closed Golden Book of noble families) to sit on the Grand Council, from which derived most key offices and councils, is in line with this concept. Rocchi’s concept of patrician/gentleman/noble implied that virtue and wealth were part of the ‘desirable’. Where patrician wealth came from worried some. In 1593 the Milan College of Lawyers (Giureconsulti) excluded from the patrician category those directly involved in commerce, and by 1663 appeared to rule out intermediaries:
One must consider as patricians (patrizi) only those who derive their origin from an ancient (antica) family and one of ancient nobility; a family is considered ancient if it is over a hundred years (both of nobility and residence in Milan), and if furthermore it has abstained from trading (mercatura), from business (affari), and from sordid profits (lucri sordidi) of all kinds, whether exercised personally or through intermediaries; only to be admitted are those profits (guadagni) – according to Cicero’s definition in his second Book of De Officiis – by which a family patrimony is formed by activities immune from any immorality.6
This anti-commerce attitude was not however shared by all elites as will be indicated later.
The speakers in Girolamo Muzio’s well-known dialogue, Il gentilhuomo (first published in 1571), generally imply that wealth and virtue are necessary to maintain the noble or gentlemanly status. Muzio tried to distinguish two nobilities:
There are two kinds of nobility (nobiltà), the one natural and the other civil. The first is that which comes from the perfection of nature, which is virtue (virtù). And the civil, that of the families called noble, for which come the magistracies and honours, which are normally distributed by princes and cities. That nobility of virtue is universal; that the virtuous man (virtuoso) is noble in the view of all those men who in all areas have the intellect of men. And the civil nobility is particular; such as a Venetian gentleman (gentil-huomo), a Neapolitan, a Florentine, or one from another city.7
A southern writer in the early seventeenth century, F. Imperato (in his Discorso politico intorno al regimento delle piazze della città di Napoli, Naples, 1604), distinguished four kinds of nobility: (1) that derived from virtue or animo; (2) that from the blood line; (3) nobiltà politica o civile; civil or political nobility which is a quality conferred by a prince, and is recognised in military, equestrian and doctoral dignities; (4) mixed nobility, mixing blood and virtue. This was part of the campaign to buttress a civil, urban-based nobility- or ceto civile, civil class – against the old blood nobility of the feudal territories. Other writers, like Camillo Tutini, maintained more conservatively like Dante that nobility came from virtue, but this was shown in the distinction of the family line, and in the preservation of riches – so that the family would not have to descend to unworthy activities to besmirch the family honour.8
The interconnection of nobility through birth origins and through virtues was confusingly debated. The humanist scholar Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi, 1421–81) in his De vera nobilitate (On True Nobility) argued that
Only virtue confers nobility and gives the title of nobility to descendants. Nobility... allied to and companion of virtue conquered by our efforts and not others’, is absolutely incompatible with vice. We can pride ourselves in drawing from illustrious ancestors blood and guts not nobility; that depends solely on our own spirit (animo).9
In reality of course the closed political nobilities of Venice or Genoa, registering only certain families as eligible by nobility for high offices and councils, neither tested the next generation for virtuous behaviour (though they might exclude for criminal behaviour), nor readily admitted new families because they had shown themselves virtuous and noble – unless they had saved the Republic from major military defeat. However, in some parts of Italy individuals were seen as betraying their nobility, and so right to political and administrative high office, if they participated in lowly artisan, mechanical or manual activity, industry or merchandising.
Gentilhuomo might have more readily been associated with merchant than nobile. G. Politi’s study of Cremona found gentilhuomo e mercante as a frequent phrase in the documents. In Perugia gentilhuomo became increasingly attached from the early sixteenth century to those representatives on the main city councils who came from the top guilds (especially the merchant and banking guilds). While increasingly some such representatives were inactive in business and trade (and simply used the guild system to get into politics and administration), others – as from the Alfani family – were both at the heart of business and part of the socio-political elite.10
In practice in some cities and states nobles remained active merchants without derogation of noble status, or apparent loss of social prestige. Many Alessandria nobles lived off trade in the early seventeenth century. A Venetian ambassador and member of one of the top patrician families of Venice, Tomasso Contarini, commented in 1588 that ‘the wealth of the Florentines is dependent on crafts and mercantile activity: the mercantile activity of the nobili and the craft of the popolo. However, the nobili are not only superintendents but also with their own hands are involved in the crafts.’11
A mercantile republican elite could readily maintain its commercial and craft activity in a new climate of aristocratisation under a recognised princedom, but it might be harder to break into an old aristocratic system from a mercantile background. A leading merchant could reach the titled nobility; as most famously the early seventeenth century merchant Bartolomeo d’Aquino who came to dominate, as a tax farmer especially, the finances of the Kingdom of Naples. He became Prince of Caramanico. However when he wanted to marry the sister of the Count of Conversano, of ancient lineage, other old baronial families objected on the grounds of his ignoble origins. The Litta family of Milan made its fortunes in commerce and financial speculation, then in 1574 seemingly without any trouble – and with the approval of Philip II – became enrolled in the nobility as marchese di Gambolò and conte di Valle, with full access to government positions. The brothers continued to create many commercial companies and control numerous ports on the Po.12
Changing concepts of nobility, and the partial disparagement of commerce and industry, contributed to changing attitudes towards the land and agriculture. From the mid sixteenth century there was a proliferation of books about agriculture aimed at the noble and middle-class elites, encouraging them to invest in land and make it more productive. It was accompanied by a further idealisation of the countryside and villa life, following in particular the earlier practices and beliefs of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his true friends, and then humanist Cardinals and their friends who revived the villa life of ancient Rome. Many of the villas from the sixteenth century, particularly in the Veneto owned by noble families from Venice, Verona and Vicenza, were at the centre of active farming, (as well as being locations for high culture, entertainment and airy relaxation). So noble values could lead to entrepreneurial activity in the countryside. A noble disdain for active business and commercial activity could lead to economic progressivism elsewhere, and was not entirely negative.13
These varied Italian attitudes to nobility both derived from the diversity of political, social and economic elites, and enabled the social co-mingling of elites with different power bases.
The high urban density of northern and central Italy, and the past roles of the city-states, had formed urban elites of considerable power and influence, increasingly designated as noble, which had varying kinds or relationships (depending on city or territorial state) with rural or land-based elites. This section will now seek to elucidate the different kinds of elites, their power and their limitations.
It is usually too simplistic to see a straight split between landed nobility and middle class/bourgeoisie, or to view the period from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries as a transition from a vital economy based on a fluid set of elites, largely urban based, to a refeudalised, landed aristocracy and court nobility allowing the economy to stagnate and decline; though this is how the social developments of these centuries have often been explained.
In some states the Court might be seen as indicating a social elite, if not coinciding with the political elite. In his Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528) Baldesar Castiglione boosted the concept and role of the courtier and courtly values. He assumed the good courtier would be from a ‘noble’ family, but he saw that nobility deriving as much from virtues, military and cultural, as from birth. The book’s dialogue recommends that the courtier play an astute advisory role beside a prince, but much of the advocacy is cultural enhancement, with the female courtiers (gentildonne) providing a civilising ambience to counteract masculine military tendencies. This book had as much a role in enhancing civility in European society away from courts as in buttressing the court itself. Some governments paid more attention to courtly values than others. Courts around the rulers of Florence, Piedmont, the Viceroys of Naples and Sicily and the Pope in the Vatican contained the powerful social and political figures of the moment, but they could come from ancient landed aristocracies, families of merchant financiers or the liberal professions. The courts also contained writers, musicians and artists of much humbler origins. Women at court had varied social origins, from famous lineage to humbler courtesan skills, but might exercise political influence directly or through roles in the marriage game. ‘Courts’ existed outside the political centres under princes, cardinals or republican patrician families. They constituted sectors of the social and cultural elites. The lesser courts of Neapolitan, Genoese, Venetian or Milanese patrician noble families, or of Cardinal families like the Farnese, Del Monte, Barberini or Pamphili, became part of intense political and social competition. Any court would have members of social elites defined by other terms, but an active presence in court did not necessarily confer a lasting social status. Nor was dependence on, and involvement with, Italian courts necessarily as ruinous or debilitating for Italian nobles as Norbert Elias’ model, based on Louis XIV’s court at Versailles, would suggest – though some rulers did try to emasculate noble families by useless routine at court.14
Along with the growing stress on nobility discussed above came the increased award of titles. From the sixteenth century the Spaniards expanded the numbers of titled nobility, primarily in the Viceroyalty of Naples, Sicily and the Duchy of Milan- Lombardy; and laid down the hierarchy of titles: duchi, marchesi, conti, visconti and baroni (with female equivalents). The Spaniards also encouraged the recognition of untitled nobles who would have more or less exclusive access to key advisory or executive councils and magistracies. Urban elites, which had been closely linked to trade, banking, textile industries and even skilled craftwork up to the fifteenth century, tended to become aristocratised, narrower and divorced from direct commercial and industrial activity. Both officially recognised at the time, and under modern analysis, there were secondary elites, whether focused on commerce, bureaucracy or professions.
Mentalities of nobility, backed by chivalric literature, meant that many nobles or would-be nobles, pursued careers in the Italian and European-wide armies throughout our period. The courts, as in Turin, Naples, Parma, Piacenza and Florence under the Grand Dukes, fostered military virtues, created military orders and encouraged chivalric tournaments. From the sixteenth century the adventurous sons of feudal and patrician families, (including from Venice and Genoa), served well in organised armies – possibly reducing their nuisance value in the localities and cities. On return to civilian and court life they sought, and received, noble titles and sometimes feudal powers, which they would hopefully exercise with more maturity. An astute ruler inflated the titles to massage egos, but restricted the actual ‘feudal’ power. The danger was that with war experience, but still frustrated, noble soldiers could be a menace for central governments and local peasants.15
In Italy, unlike in France, duelling was not particularly a mark of the noble, soldier or civilian. Books on duelling techniques were popular in the later sixteenth century, with some stress on noble attributes, but soon it seems the skills and attitudes permeated through many levels of society, especially as many non-nobles were licensed to carry swords and guns. Many could match the noble soldier, and duelling skills and codes seem not to have marked out an elite. Serious military experience may have encouraged nobles to treat the small handgun, lavishly decorated, as the ‘noble’ weapon, practical and showy.16
Titled nobilities were helpful in designating an elite, governed by prestige and instant recognition by nomenclature. Such titles came from non-Italian royal powers of the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain and later the Austrian Habsburg rulers; or from the Popes within Italy itself. From the mid sixteenth century smaller Italian states were adding to their titled nobilities, as in Mantua, Parma and Modena. Some but not all titles were connected with landed territorial power, and with varying degrees of jurisdictional power over towns and villages. In 1645 Giuseppe Caracciolo fictitiously sold one of his fiefs (Sasso) to his close friend and neighbour in Naples, Achille Capece Minutolo, so that the latter could have a ducal title. No jurisdictional powers changed hands.17 Knightly Orders were fostered to designate certain people as part of a courtly elite, such as the Order of the Knights of Santo Stephano under the Grand Dukes Medici of Tuscany. Cities like Genoa and Venice had closed patrician elites, with record books of those families deemed eligible for the top government system and its councils. Though titleless from their own state, they could receive noble titles – with or without feudal territory and rights – from foreign powers, as with Genoese patricians dominating the finances of the Spanish Empire from the mid sixteenth century.
The major princely states witnessed a considerable inflation of titled families, and often untitled holders of feudal jurisdictions of some kind to dominate the countryside, most obviously publicised in the Kingdom of Naples. Under Philip II there were about 245 different surnamed feudal nobles – who had civil and criminal jurisdictional powers over their estates, towns and villages in the provinces (though they themselves might reside mainly in Naples itself). The noble titled families (extended, as opposed to individual households) increased to 446 by 1672. But untitled barons as feudal nobles with lesser estates brought the number of the feudal nobility to 937 families, meaning about 15,000 persons, or just less than 1 per cent of the population.18 Politically the noble patrician elite in Naples and the main provincial cities belonged to the five noble Seggi. Six Seggi, five noble and one non-noble, were the key divisions for the administration of the city. Membership was passed on in the direct line of the family only, and from 1553 it was closed to new families. From 1629 to 1703 between 126 and 132 families belonged to these Seggi, including most of the major titled feudal nobility. There was also a nobiltà fuori piazza, of local nobles not admitted to the Seggi, plus incoming nobles from abroad and some merchants and financiers who had been allowed to buy feudal fiefs. Donati calculates that in all there were about 2500 noble household-families of all kinds (though the membership of the ‘family’ might vary from one active male to 50); and that they controlled 70–80 per cent of the 2,850,000 population in the mid seventeenth century. An inner core of about seventeen old and new titled noble clans, home-developed or brought in from other parts of the Empire – regularly intermarrying and reintegrating – dominated both Naples and the provinces. They included famous old names like the Caracciolo, Carafa, Pignatelli and Sanseverino, and incomers like d’Avalos, de Lannoy, Gonzaga and Piccolomini.
Lombardy saw a similar emphasis on feudal title-holders. The Spanish Kings granted 276 titles of nobility (conti and marchesi) linked to fiefs between 1554 and 1706, to which the Austrian rulers added 124 more from 1707 to 1740. These, and untitled patricians of Milan or other cities, could also secure titles from rulers elsewhere. From 1769–70 there was a complicated revision of noble titles in Lombardy; from then to 1796 the official register recorded 284 lineages with 195 different names. In Piedmont under the House of Savoy there was a rising feudal nobility with titles (marchesi, conti, baroni), involving about 800 families in the early seventeenth century, and 1246 in 1724. A Camera dei Conti in Turin recorded and vetted the entitlements as granted by the sovereign. But other cities and areas in Piedmont recognised their own local nobles as a traditional elite.
As an emblematic example of both the inflation of titles and of the social mobility in the Piedmontese elite, with international connections we have the man sent by Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany as his plenipotentiary to Milan in 1709 to deal with the imperial representative and Prince Eugenio of Savoy (the military leader) over war taxation. He chose somebody who was dependent on the House of Savoy, but who might favour the Medici – the marchese Ercole Turinetti, of Priè, Pancalieri and Cimena. Ercole was also Count of Pertengo, Castiglione, Cordua and Ostero, baron of Bonavalle and Castereinero in Piedmont, Count and captain of Pisino in Istria, signore of Fridau and Rabenstein in Austria, Grandee first class in Spain, magnate in Hungary, marchese of the Holy Roman Empire, and Knight of the Supreme Order of the Nunziata from the Pope. His father Giorgio had been a Turin banker, and then general of finances (and so made a Count), and his grandfather a grammar teacher in Chieri. The rise to prominence was common in the Piedmontese elite, but something that the Medici would have rarely allowed within their own government. Giorgio Turinetti’s marriage to Maria Violante Valperga di Rivera linked him with one of the most prestigious of noble families, and a leading court lady.19
The major Republics had their own patrician elites, whose nobility, without formal titles, was increasingly stressed through the period. There were closed elites, whereby certain families only were recognised as constituting an aristocracy suitable for filling the leading republican offices and councils. Once these patrician families were recorded there were procedures to allow the legitimate offspring claiming entry to be vetted and registered; and with rare exceptions the elite did not admit new families. Venice had led the way by establishing between 1297 and 1323 a hereditary closed elite of families eligible to provide members of the Grand (or Great) Council (and hence most councils and offices derived from this), who would be deemed to be nobles; a Golden Book recorded such families from 1506. Although formally a closed elite some Venetian families were (contrary to some assertions) admitted to the Grand Council list (the Donà in 1430, the Savorgnan in the early sixteenth century), before the 1646 decision to ‘open’ the lists more publicly. Some foreign families were also admitted as honorary members and entered in the Golden Book, including papal families and even Henri III of France in 1574, but they played no active role in the city.20
The elite of the Republic of Genoa closed itself and its Golden Book in 1528 (when the elites were reorganised into 28 recognised confederated clans, or alberghi). Lucca moved towards a similar position, though only formally declaring a closure in 1628. Brescia (1488), Vicenza (1567) and Padua (1623) also had Golden Books recording patricians eligible for offices. Closure meant declining numbers of Republican ‘nobles’ in contrast to the rising number of feudal and court-based nobles in princely states. Families died out, or failed to produce legitimate male offspring in the direct line. Individuals or branches were excluded by marrying women too inferior socially or by entering ignoble occupations. The politically active pool was further diminished when members of eligible families emigrated or spent long periods abroad – especially from Genoa and Lucca. Lucca in 1628 registered 211 families, but only had 88 (with about 200 male nobles) in 1787. Genoa had 289 noble families in 1621 and about 2500 noblemen (with only about 1500 in the city) to draw on for political service; only 128 families in 1797. Venice itself had about 2500 male nobles eligible for the Grand Council in the mid sixteenth century; only 1660 after the plague of 1630–31. The Golden Book was opened in 1646 to replenish the stock, and 127 new families were added till the mid eighteenth century; but attrition by mortality still operated and there were only 1090 eligible patricians in 1797. The dependent cities on the Venetian mainland all had their own patricians and ‘nobles’ (though not eligible to serve on the Venetian Grand council). Donati suggests that the major cities (Belluno, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Feltre, Padua, Treviso, Udine, Verona, Vicenza) had about 9000 male nobles in 1766, when the mainland population was about 2,250,000; but lesser towns also had individuals recognised as noble and elite for social and/or political purposes.
To be noble, under whatever definition, was not necessarily to be part of a ruling class. As E. Stumpo argued: ‘One could not be patrician without having offices while one could be noble without any public role.’21 Nobles were not necessarily persons effectively running the state; and those in the leading administrative and technical offices were not necessarily accorded noble or patrician status.
The implications and privileges of being recognised officially as noble, or belonging to a professional elite, varied across Italy; but generally they were less than in other European states. Fiscal immunities were granted for some but not all feudal estates in the Kingdom of Naples, and for noble property in Naples – where notaries also gained some concessions in the eighteenth century. There were also tax exemptions for some noble estates in Piedmont, but not simply for noble status. Pied-montese lawyers, Vicenza lawyers, notaries and doctors attached to their respective Colleges also had privileged tax treatment, but nobles in Venice or Florence did not. The judicial privileges for nobles were limited in Italy – though in practice nobles might manipulate the courts in their favour. The jurisdictional powers granted to fief holders in Italy (notably in Tuscany) were generally less than in other countries, though the areas under seigniorial justice were extended in Naples and Sicily from the sixteenth century – even if in practice barons and their bravi exercised brutal rough justice. Noble status of some kinds might provide the passport for office-holding (or inversely the office confer noble status), but some nobles (e.g. Genoese and Lombard territorial nobles) might be excluded from offices.22
If one considers which elites exercised political, social and economic power, one finds a number of variations. Fairly clear distinctions existed between elites (titled and untitled) who dominated in and around central government (as for Naples, Rome or Venice), and a feudal elite entrenched in more remote provincial areas of the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal State and the Veneto. But in most cases power and influence was spread through various elites. As the power of certain patrician elites diminished, families were mollified by titles, and some semblance of power in feuds.
The political art of rulers was to balance elites, to boost the semblance of power, but create a small loyal power elite. The previously mentioned inflation of feudal titles in Piedmont enhanced the prestige of both the old aristocracy and rising bureaucrats and military officers, but did not mean much alienation of power from the House of Savoy. The amount of land and population under feudal control did not increase. Instead jurisdictions were subdivided between vassals, and the incomes for each title-holder remained limited. Real power and income (as opposed to impressive titles) continued with the elite members who remained close to the court, with the urban bureaucracies and military careerists. The old citizen patriciate in Turin had had to transform itself into a court nobility, with many noble and feudal titles. Deprived of serious power at the centre, it was given a little power in the localities. Emanuele Filiberto after returning to the Piedmontese part of his inheritance in 1560 established a new elite, focused on the Turin Senate, derived from legal expertise – a borghesia del diritto, or legal bourgeoisie. This then ran the financial-military complex that was at the heart of the new state. To supplement local talent he and his successors brought in foreigners, like the Genoese financier Negron di Negro and the urban planner Ascanio Vitozzi. While some key contributors came from the old nobility, like the Valperga, new bourgeois families like the Carrone, Claretti and Pasero headed the bureaucratic elite. While some moved up to the nobility by the eighteenth century, new middle range families came in from the bottom, providing a degree of social mobility not normally found in Tuscany, the provincial cities of the Papal State or Lombardy. However the House of Savoy controlled the Piedmontese provinces by appointing military commanders from the old noble families as Governors. The Piedmontese bureaucratic elite (unlike the Tuscan) had limited access to land and alternative incomes, so loyalty to the state was encouraged.23
Florence-Tuscany and the Papal State had their noble and patrician elites, which evolved differently. In the fifteenth century the Tuscan city states, and many cities in the Papal State were decidedly republican, and excluded (certainly for political purposes) feudal, land-based nobles or magnati. Of course in practice recognised elite patrician families (like the Medici, Strozzi and Rucellai of Florence, the Baglioni or Oddi of Perugia), dominated urban politics, and had land-based wealth, as well as banking or commercial sources. But even the Medici insisted on their ‘republican’ citizen status and credentials. However, through the sixteenth century and beyond nobility became more acceptable and more emphasised. Honorifics were added, then formal feudal titles and fiefs, or membership of chivalric Orders. The Medici encouraged this when they became Dukes after 1530 (especially with Cosimo I). Similarly the Papacy practised social ennoblement by feudal compensation with small towns and villages, while it eroded patrician political power in key cities like Bologna, Perugia, Orvieto or Viterbo. Tuscany had no formal nobility until 1750. Essentially the elites (informally recognised) emerged from securing regular service of family members on key committees and councils – and thereby securing renomi-nation, election, co-option, etc. In the fifteenth century Florence probably had an inner elite of 150 families providing the key committee and council memberships, but with a wider pool of 1000 families. By the later seventeenth century about 385 families were recognised as the political and social elite, worthy of being called noble, with or without titles. The surviving families among those were essentially the ones entered in the Golden Book of 1750, when they were officials and courtiers of the Grand Duke, feudal lords in Tuscany, or Knights of St Stephen. Each city of Tuscany from Siena to Borgo San Sepolcro, Pisa to Prato, Pistoia to Pescia, had its own locally recognised government-service based aristocracy or nobility, ready to keep out the unworthy and ignoble.
When the Medici after 1537 consolidated a dynasty as Dukes of Tuscany, and Cosimo I developed a territorial state that some have seen as close to ‘absolutism’, the nature of the ruling class changed. Cosimo initially developed a court nobility to run a new governmental system, and to counter-balance the power and influence of the old patrician families. The court nobility included many people who had been part of the patrician elites of other cities in Tuscany, which helped compensate for a loss of some local power. But the old Florentine patricians (like the Alberti or Guicciardini) soon adapted to the new court group, joined the Order of St Stephen, or ran the new bureaucracy. The old patricians provided a high profile bureaucracy, using it to defend their interests, to maintain their commercial and banking interests and survive the economic crises of the seventeenth century. Only with the Lorraine- Habsburg rulers of the eighteenth century was the bureaucracy handed over to new middling classes.
The Medici Ducal court set new standards and concepts of nobility, so the patricians and aspiring citizens adapted. From the 1560s families increasingly sought to have their clan recognised as noble, and they adopted the noble style. Gino Ginori might still stalwartly call himself cittadino fiorentino when he married in 1583; but his son was designated nobile fiorentino in his marriage document in 1618.24 The number of urban patricians who became feudal fiefholders rose considerably from the early seventeenth century; for example Lorenzo Guicciardini bought the marquisate of Montegiovi in 1639, Vincenzo Salviati that of Montieri, south of Siena, in 1621. But this feudalisation of Tuscany was on a much smaller scale than in Lombardy or Piedmont; the territories involved were often minor, and the administrative powers devolved to the holders by the Grand Dukes limited. The prime importance was for the urban patricians to look and sound noble-like and be attractive as courtiers; then they would secure the significantly powerful positions within the city and protect their overall financial interests.
The Papal State combined the urban-based patrician systems, evolving from ‘republican’ council service to untitled nobility as found in the Venetian Republic or Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with a feudal baronage like the Neapolitan. The former predominated in the large urban areas of Bologna, Perugia and Ancona, but also in lesser towns or cities of the Marches. From the mid or later sixteenth century many were effectively closed elites, recognising traditionally serving families, and rarely allowing new entrants. Bologna had a patrician elite of about 300 families from the later sixteenth century, Perugia about 50. In other parts of the Papal State, especially in Lazio, the feudal aristocracy ruled; the old medieval families like the Caetani, Colonna, Orsini or Savelli survived, though sometimes having to give way to feudal families established by papal relatives, notably the Farnese, Borghese, Barberini and Pamphili. Many of these families also had a social, political and cultural base in Rome, overlapping with, and competing with, other elites (drawn from all over Italy, and sometimes from the rest of Catholic Europe like the Borgias or Altemps) based on the Vatican.25
For Rome the composition and operation of the social and political elites was affected by the quick succession of Popes in comparison with secular princes, which meant a more rapid turnover of personnel at the centre. The palaces of the old and new families provided social, cultural and patronage leadership across Rome as small courts, linked to or rivalling the Vatican itself. Besides the famous named families above, many others provided legal, administrative and diplomatic officials for the Papacy, like the Spada and Santacroce in the seventeenth century. All these provided network systems that brought people from different levels of society and geographical areas to pursue careers in the church, secular administration or the arts and sciences. Then many pathways led to a more settled place in the Roman elites. While the key roles were played by male celibates, it is becoming clearer that elite women were very important in Roman society and politics. Leaving aside the odd concubine, the leading clerics brought in mothers, sisters, nieces and cousins who became part of marital policies and networking, as with other elites. These women also were valued in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century at least as power brokers, unofficial diplomats and arbitrators. The Roman elites had the most diverse and fluid clientele system dependent on them.26
The elites based in some way on noble status, whatever their derivations, were formally recognised in several ways, including through vetting committees or councils, followed by entry into registers and Golden Books. Very useful for recognition were the knightly Orders, all of which had procedures for investigating the background, birth and behaviour of candidates. This further encouraged a mania for compiling family genealogies, often imaginatively. The most notable Order was that of the Knights of Malta, with elaborate and supposedly thorough investigative procedures. Recognition by this international organisation was likely to ensure social acceptance internationally, and facilitate entry into court and top administrative circles in the home state. Second in prestige to this Order in Italy, though localised, was the Order of St Stephen, created by Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany in 1562, based in Pisa. It was designed to create a noble elite based on the court, to enhance the prestige and legitimacy of the Medici as rulers over Tuscany, and to control a fleet to defend Tuscany against the Moslem Turks. Petitioners for admission supposedly had to prove sixteen quarterings of noble lineage (with much room for definition there!). The Grand Duke could ennoble others by conferment; and others could secure entry by purchasing a Commenda, a benefice that would support the knights. Thus new blood entered the noble elite, and notably families from other Tuscan cities, and faithful bureaucrats and courtiers were integrated. The Order stipulated:
[A Knight ] himself, his father, mother, grandfathers and grandmothers on the paternal and maternal side should be descended from noble houses (casate)... should enjoy in the homeland (patria) those major dignities and grades that the most noble gentlemen are accustomed to have... be born of legitimate marriage, not have exercised any craft (arte), but lived as gentlemen...27
Italian concepts of nobility and elitism did not necessarily share the antipathy to commerce and industry found in some other parts of Europe. The Knights of Malta, representing landed aristocracy values across Europe, normally banned involvement in trade – except for nobles of Genoa, Florence, Lucca and Siena. While the Order of St Stephen ruled out personal involvement in a craft or trade, and required members to live like gentlemen, they clearly did not veto the management of banks and commercial operations, or earning money through investment in them.
The foundation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of many of the families who became central to the recognised nobilities of the sixteenth century and beyond had been based on combinations of commercial and industrial activity, investment in lands and service on communal councils. The entry to political and administrative bodies had often been through membership of the trade and artisan guilds. In the major commercial cities there was a reluctance to gainsay this commercial or industrial background entirely. But while some of the old patrician families might continue in central commercial and industrial enterprises, and new families who had made money in these areas were admitted to the recognised nobility with a view to political and administrative power, the tendency was away from this foundation of the elites. Replacements into the social and political elites were more likely to come from those with land-based wealth and power, those playing a crucial role for the princely governments as tax-farmers and financial backers, those serving at court, in the bureaucratic offices of state or those rising through the learned professions of doctors and lawyers or the learned academies and universities. Some of these might constitute secondary elites, as bureaucrats, lawyers or academicians, operating below and separate from the courtly nobility; and proud of remaining both separate and powerful.
The tendency of the commercial-based elites of the fifteenth to mid sixteenth century to shift their investment and interest to landed property, rents and government loans and bonds has been recognised, especially for Venice. The leading Venetian families withdrew from long-distance trade, especially the spice trade through the eastern Mediterranean, and reinvested in land on the mainland, and in some urban property. Many of them like the Barbaro, Barbarigo, Contarini and Michiel families proved entrepreneurial, and made major improvements in land management, to the benefit of family wealth and public welfare. Others were more ruthless exploiters of common land, or passive investors, obtaining adequate but safe returns on investment. However not all of the elite withdrew from trade and commercial enterprises. Members of the Bragadin, Dolfin, Priuli and Paruta families continued to trade with places like Istanbul, Alexandria and Syria. The Foscarini remained involved in the timber and oil businesses, even if mainly using non-noble agents.28
The famous Florentine patrician families happily continued with commercial enterprises, with rapid movements of capital from enterprise to enterprise, and some members of the clans became involved in crafts, but without losing social prestige, political and court recognition – as the Venetian ambassador in Florence, Tomasso Contarini, reported in 1588. Major investors locally and internationally in the 1570s– 1600s included members of the Capponi, Corsi, Gondi (with one branch trading from Lyon and also obtaining a French barony), Guicciardini (e.g. in Florentine goldworks) and Strozzi (especially merchandising in Sicily through Palermo). The Mercanzia records also show that at the same time a Capponi was a dyer, a Corsini a goldsmith, a Gondi a wool-shearer. Simone Corsi (1508–87) was a dominant merchant, recorded openly in 1560 as ‘cittadino et mercante fiorentino’; but in 1556 he had been admitted to the Senate – the heart of the patriciate. Succeeding Corsi bought a fief (Cajazzo) in the Kingdom of Naples in 1617, and were top investors in the Florentine silk business in 1650. Corsini were heavy investors in merchant companies in Naples, Palermo and Messina in the early seventeenth century, and secured the Tuscan marquisate of Laiatico in 1644. A later Corsini, Lorenzo, was to be the last Florentine Pope, Clement XII in 1730, and his relatives became Roman nobles.29
Such Florentine or Tuscan positions and attitudes are partly explained by an inclination of some writers close to, or from, the leading old families (like Benedetto Varchi, Alessandro Piccolomini and Vincenzo Borghini) to stress at the same time the mercantile origins of the current patrician families, the duty to serve the state in office as an aristocracy, focused on the prince (Cosimo I) who was producing peace and quiet, to create and protect a truly free city (città libera) and to avoid the factionalism of the past. The land-based magnates of old had betrayed Florence and not been public spirited; a new noble elite must be. Florence was noble (like Venice in the eyes of some of the Florentine writers) because served by men made noble though a combination of service through the pen, the sword and merchant activity.30
Many Tuscan elite families who had based their wealth on commerce and banking, and especially the wool industry, shifted to become dominant land owners and fief holders, not only in Tuscany but also in the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal State; notably the Albizzi, Capponi, Guicciardini, Ricasoli, Riccardi, Ridolfi and Salviati. However, some noble houses, such as the Riccardi, were ready to head commercial companies through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The old patrician families from Lucca (Arnolfini, Buonvisi and Burlamacchi), or Genoa (Pallavicini, Doria), were more intent on preserving the commercial, capitalist basis of their wealth and power through the darker economic days of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, though not ignoring the attractions of land investment and feudal estates (as notably with the Doria in the Kingdom of Naples). In the case of the Salviati from Florence some branches based in Tuscany remained fairly aggressively commercial until at least the early seventeenth century; others looked to the land in Tuscany; more important branches built ecclesiastical and courtly careers in Rome, and invested in land, benefices and bonds.31
The old Milanese commercial patricians – from families like the Arese, Crivelli, Litta or Melzi – faced with the economic crises of the seventeenth century rapidly shifted their investments into fiefs and landed property. Already in 1593 the College of Giureconsulti (which essentially created an untitled urban elite, separate from the titled nobility nominated by the Spaniards), excluded from this body families seriously involved in commerce, and in 1663 made clear that even the use of intermediaries was not allowed.32 However, the Austrian rulers reversed this attitude, and in 1713 declared that mercantile and mechanical activities should not impede noble dignity. Before then the noble Adda and Borromeo families had been successfully involved in mines; and Gian Pietro Carcano had accumulated a sizable patrimony from ‘vile’ merchant activities, and secured entry into the nobility.33
A final example of a mixture of urban elites, old and new, can come from Verona, one of the richest dependent cities of the Venetian Republic.34 The twenty-nine elite families (spread across 201 households in 1653) comprised medieval families of distinction, fairly recent immigrants and some old residents recently arisen to prestige. The old communal families associated with the Scaligeri and Visconti rulers maintained their political and administrative domination. From the mid sixteenth century this established elite was rigid, trying to exclude new rich and resisting their attempts to use central Venetian support to infiltrate the main councils. The old families stressed their genealogies and family histories, while ambitious new families attempted the same. But some distinctions remained between the old knightly noble class (classe), and the governing power elite (ceto). The Zenobio and Ottolini families who were respectively spezieri (spice dealers, apothecaries and/or grocers) and goldsmiths in the sixteenth century, rose to be titled counts and huge landowners by the eighteenth. But they did not enter the main Council. On the other hand Ottolino Ottolini was a dominant figure in Veronese cultural life in the eighteenth century, with European-wide correspondence, and a magnificent library.
The Veronese old elite, the nobles, might have been conservative and restrictive in terms of political power, but they were leading figures in entrepreneurial, capitalist agriculture in the Veronese plain, especially with rice production. A branch of one of the grandest and oldest noble families, the Bevilacqua Lazise, was at the forefront of this; as was the almost equally prestigious Spolverini, which provided in marchese Giambattista (1695–1763) not only a leading gentleman farmer, but a noted literary, sometimes poetic, advocate of rice production and active noble involvement.
Venice had a closed elite of families eligible to serve through the Grand Council, and another severely restricted citizen elite (cittadini originari). But there have been doubts whether the whole of the Golden Book families constitute the patrician ruling class. There were select groups with the real power within that body; they operated a clientele network involving less active and poorer councillors. Alex Cowan has argued there were important interconnections between the nobeli and cittadini.35
The ruling group was much narrower than the eligible men from the Grand Council, whether 2500 in the mid sixteenth century or 1500 in the seventeenth. The decline of this pool was worrying, and hence the opening to new families in 1646 and intermittently later. Talented men were less willing to serve in top positions (such as supervising the Terraferma, or serving as ambassadors), since they cost family money, rather than earned it. An increasing number of patricians had important ecclesiastical careers, which removed them from central politics and administration. Gaetano Cozzi suggests there were 80-odd patrician ecclesiasts through the early seventeenth century, 123 in 1706, 166 in 1760.36 The narrowing of the pool could of course be advantageous to the ambitious. About 300 men were seriously active in making decisions, administering, debating in the Senate (dealing with foreign policy and war matters) and lobbying. Within that group fifty to sixty might be the real power brokers. They would include key members of the Collegio – a committee of twenty-five headed by the Doge, and including five savi who had major responsibility for the Terraferma, and three judges as heads of the Quarantia – and the Council of Ten (Consiglio dei Dieci). Once an emergency committee, the Ten was the major power body, dealing with crime and security, but also the Mint, or the top rank of confraternities, the Scuole Grandi, which were central to religious, philanthropic and much cultural life in Venice. The innermost active elite included the leading ambassadors abroad, and those governing or supervising the dependent territories, notably the podestà and capitano of Padua (dealing respectively with civil and military affairs), the rettori of Vicenza or Verona and the provveditore generale of Palma (Friuli). Leading figures move back and forth between home conciliar service and service abroad as ambassadors or governors, or as military and naval commanders. The ruling elite’s dominant men were versatile. Somebody like Antonio Priuli commanded a galley, was capitano of Padua, ambassador to France, a member of the Ten. He ended as Doge (1618–23), as did similarly versatile figures such as Lionardo Donà (Doge 1606–12), or Francesco Erizzo (1631–46).
The concentration of power at any given moment in the hands of an inner group or groups of 50 or 300 (the grandi or vecchi (old)), left most nobeli seemingly out in the cold; but this can be misleading. Some were younger men who would later enter the inner groups; others were ‘poor’ nobles who never did. The latter were given a role, and an income (or access to less legal funds) through numerous council and office positions – sinecures or of limited activity where the cittadini bureaucrats did the serious work. Most councils, committees and offices changed personnel frequently, renewed every three, four, six or twelve months. Medieval Italian cities created highly complex electoral systems, sometimes with rounds of voting and balloting before a final team was formed. Venice continued to have one of the most complex – designed to prevent favouritism and corruption. But, despite the myth of an uncorrupt patrician class dedicated to public service, this was not the case; there was a considerable degree of manipulation, bribery and favouritism (though probably less than in most governmental systems), known as broglio.37 Arguably this produced a degree of harmony most of the time. Lesser nobles (and related cittadini) were given roles, influence and income while they kept the experienced grandi in power. The latter established networks of patronage and favour to maintain their position.
The inner and outer Venetian elites seriously clashed at times. In 1582 excluded elements, generally younger (the so-called Giovani), challenged the grandi or vecchi in the Ten, and reduced its power over the Mint and foreign policy. There was another clash when Giovanni (or Zuan) Corner was elected Doge (1625–9). He used his power and influence to secure key posts in church and state for his sons and other relatives, and looked like establishing a dynastic rule – in the eyes of opponents like Renier Zen. The exclusion of poor nobles from the Ten was again resented. Zen had limited success with his 1628 confrontation, and only minor changes followed, though the Corners and their allies may have become more cautious and emollient. Zen (who was not a ‘poor’ noble anyway) may have overplayed his hand by too radical speech (for a pretty conservative broad elite). The old guard may also have been rescued by the operation of a clientele network down through the ranks of the poor nobles (who did not have ambitions to serve on the Ten or Collegio, or the money to serve as ambassadors, bishops or governors) and secretariat (whom Zen also denounced as part of the conspiracy). So inner and outer patrician elites intermingled and colluded, even when they were in conflict.
The cittadini originari (citizens by birth), have received less analysis as a secondary elite.38 The eligible families were entered in a Silver Book, that was equally subject to scrutiny and attribution of status. This elite provided the secretariat that ran the bureaucracy behind the ever-changing noble councils. It culminated in the highly prestigious position of the Grand Chancellor. The origins, nature and development of this special kind of citizenship, and the number of persons involved, are all subject to debate and some confusion. It insisted on being native-born and was contrasted to citizenship granted to foreigners by ‘privilege’, or to others with mixed background. Recognition of being a cittadino originario meant full commercial rights, as for patricians – who might be called ‘noble citizens’. The class was not apparently restricted until the end of the fifteenth century, when a standard of education and quality seems to have been applied. By 1569 with a codifying law, this kind of full citizenship was for native-born Venetians, legitimate over three generations and not involved in mechanical arts. An illegitimate son of a noble might be recognised as a cittadino originario. A provisional study of about 3500 people who obtained recognition as cittadini originari from the vetting authority, the Avogaria di Comun, between 1569 and 1700, indicates that in up to 30 per cent of applications fathers had been in the public sector (i.e. largely the bureaucracy serving the noble councils), 20 per cent came from the liberal professions, 25 per cent from commerce or artisan activities, and up to 25 per cent lived off property incomes.39 About 20 per cent of those recognised as citizens up to 1640 were bastard nobles; then few appear.
The citizen class and its profile, whatever commercial privileges might be attached, in practice become linked to the bureaucratic elite. Andrea Zannini argues that there was a considerable turnover in this citizen class, people moving in and out, with the main objective being to secure recognition for public service posts: notably for the chancellery which had 80 to 100 officials, and for which (since 1478) the status of cittadino originario was essential. From at least 1517, and until 1636, this status was theoretically also required for another section of the bureaucracy, that controlled by the Quarantia Criminale, involving over 400 posts in the 1630s. In the case of the chancellery posts, citizen applicants were further subjected to tests of suitability, then to some balloting, and then training in the chancellery school. In final selection it helped to have noble support. Unlike in most office-holding systems, no substitutes were allowed. By the seventeenth century there was clearly a discrimination in favour of chancellery families as a kind of closed elite. The Quarantia-controlled offices had a different trend. In the sixteenth century they were more subject to concessions ‘by grace’ and political manipulation, to allow appointees to maintain the post when there was meant to be a new appointment, and to pass it on to son or nephew; or the noble councillors ignored the Quarantia’s supported control of the bureaucrats, and made their own direct nominations. Then in 1636, under the financial pressures of war, the Senate moved over to the general Italian and European practice of selling the intermediate bureaucratic offices. Though the Senate had a right of veto over the results of the auction, controls weakened, the use of substitutes became common, and the qualification of being a cittadino originario was often ignored. Applications for recognition as a cittadino diminished.
So the Venetian citizen class had a golden age in the sixteenth century, but shrank to a narrower closed elite of ducal chancellery families, working closely with the patrician families in the elite above. Some of the cittadini families were active in the privileged Levant trade; others bought property on the mainland, and rivalled the upper elite in villa building. Alvise Garzoni commissioned from Jacopo Sansovino a considerable one at Pontecasale; Giulio Maffetti built one at Ciuran in the 1630s. The Freschi family from the fifteenth century is a choice example of those with lavish lifestyles to rival the nobeli, as in some spectacular wedding celebrations. For her wedding in 1506 Giustina Freschi wore crimson velvet and elaborate jewels, her father provided several banquets with dancing in a house full of extravagant furnishings, and ensured the family coat of arms was prominent, like a nobleman.40
Across Italy the position of the professions in relation to the elites varied. In general, intellectual prowess was ennobling, so that leading university professors were expected to socialise with educated patricians in the academies, and the already well-born were favoured for professorships in universities like Perugia by the later sixteenth century. The attitude to practising lawyers, judges and notaries was more ambiguous. The political elite of some cities like Lucca, Treviso and Venice distrusted lawyers and distanced them from power, though Venetian patricians with limited legal knowledge might head powerful legal tribunals. In Florence and Vicenza in contrast jurists and notaries were much more incorporated into the elite. In Vicenza the Colleges of Jurists and of Notaries both became part of the local elite, playing important roles in the ennobling and enclosing of the patricians and building from the later fifteenth century their own barriers against entry into their professions from humbler backgrounds.41
The relationship between noble-based and bureaucratic elites takes on other interesting aspects when considering the Kingdom of Naples and urban power from the later seventeenth century. Three secular elites might be differentiated, marginally interlocking, but also competing – and causing a degree of political instability and economic stagnation. First came the ceto nobiliare, the old feudal nobility (with some newcomers who had come in through tax farming and financial manipulation of the Spanish government); this feudal elite dominated the land and most of the economy, and was probably the most active political element. Second, a bureaucratic class (classe burocratica), of functionaries, tax officials and tax farmers, rich borghesi, was wedded to, but subordinate politically to, the baronial elite. Third, a legal and intellectual elite, ceto civile, emerged from the mid seventeenth century, and articulated its ideas and an identity through the Accademia Palatina. This elite group became the centre of opposition to the papacy and clerical influence, promoting the concept of an independent secular Naples. It accepted other modern ideas like Cartesian rationalism. In the later seventeenth century there was insufficient overlap between this intellectual elite and the bureaucratic one to provide a dynamic new force in politics and the economy. However, arguably by the mid eighteenth century, interaction between the intellectuals, lawyers, administrators and some enlightened baronial nobles produced an elite leadership for reform and revival.42
Two important cities within the Kingdom of Naples involved in international trade, Bari and Salerno, had their own interesting elites. Salerno’s fair in the sixteenth century was a major commercial distribution centre for the Kingdom; Bari linked in with Puglia’s agricultural production, and with the export of olive oil, surviving the crises of the seventeenth century, and maintaining strong international links with Venetians, Florentines and Milanese. Until the mid sixteenth century these cities had been the centre of seigniorial courts (the Duke of Salerno, and Isabella and Bona Sforza). The Salerno elite was then split between a governing class, and a nobility without involvement in local power; but it proceeded to witness the influx of bureaucrats and leading lawyers, of lesser provincial nobles linked to the Sanseverino clan, and foreigners. In effect Salerno was ruled by a combination of nobles, businessmen and bureaucrats. In part they treated Salerno as a steppingstone to the ruling circles of the nearby capital of Naples. Bari, more remote from central government, witnessed a tightening of the urban, aristocratising elite, and in the seventeenth century crisis this buttressed itself by forming links with the feudal aristocracy of Puglia. It retreated from this dependence when its commercial position improved after the 1650s.43
The Italian social elites may have become more elitist in mentality, more aristocratic and noble through the early modern period, and made it harder for newcomers to rise into a particular elite (whether office-based, professional or landed), but they were not necessarily castes without links with the lower social orders. Many elite ‘families’ in practice had rich and poor branches, or individual members. One might move in court circles, another in the academies and universities, another be a travelling merchant, another a humbler craftsmen, another part of the church hierarchy; they would thus have different networks of contacts, different economic resources.
There were networks of dependence that stemmed from the elite families, with duties and obligations working up and down a hierarchy. Many elite families had large numbers of living-in servants, with their dependants. Leading princes of church and state had extensive palaces in which lived secretaries, librarians, chaplains, painters or musicians. Such palaces in Rome, Venice or Naples could have workshops and shops on the ground floor that inevitably produced close contact between high nobility and lowly craftsmen. Some of the elite structured their social and political domination on neighbourhood groupings within a city, or encouraged confraternities and guilds in which the elite met with social and economic inferiors.
Some nobles distanced themselves from ignoble money-making, but others not only invested in long-distance commerce, industry and mining, where their contacts might be remote, organised through a trusted agent of some status, but they also invested in the lowly city neighbours. When in Florence a Guicciardini invested in a man who operated a kiln, a Rucellai invested in a local haberdasher, or a Strozzi in a feed dealer just outside a city gate, one might deduce a more direct relationship and interest in the outcome of the work.44
This chapter has emphasised that through the period from the sixteenth century nobility and status was increasingly stressed, by the inflation of titles and honorifics, and allocations of feuds. Much of this was image-making more than a real transfer of power to a new nobility. The ennobling and refeudalisation policies were less detrimental to commercial and entrepreneurial activities than in many other European areas. Elites of old patrician families, rising new urban ones, or old and new rural landowners, interlocked and changed places. Astute political leaders took advantage of elitist competition, and the desires for status with or without power. Somewhat less prestigious elites of professionals, academics and bureaucrats worked in the shadows of the more aristocratic in some cities, but created their own identity and power. In the case of Naples this helped undermine early modern structures and attitudes in the Enlightenment.