The Age of Chivalry (34 page)

Florence's democratic structures were based on the great guilds, and this fact alone meant that
popolani
could be a synonym for an oligarchy dominated by the
popolo grasso
. In 1378 the commercial élite were quarreling among themselves, and specialist wool workers known as the
ciompi
—who were not affiliated to any guild—seized their moment. Large numbers of the disenfranchised working groups, such as the tanners and dyers, joined the
ciompi
in petitioning the
signoria
for the right to establish guilds that would protect their interests. In late July these dissidents, backed by radical elements within the marginalized minor guilds (
arti minori
), such as those of the bakers and mill-workers, seized the government by force. But although new guilds were formed, including one for the
ciompi
, the insurrection leaders failed to maintain their solidarity. By the end of the summer an alliance of the greater and lesser guilds had crushed the
ciompi
leadership, whose guild was subsequently disbanded. In the following years the
popolo grasso
re-established its dominance.

A
BOVE
A marble portrait of Cosimo de' Medici from
c.
1464, believed to have been sculpted by Andrea del Verrocchio. This is the oldest surviving portrait of the Medici patriarch
.

The events of 1378 lived on in the memory of the Florentines and contributed to a mounting and general disillusion with both the theory and the practice of the city's republican constitution. Victories were still possible, however, and Florence's conquest of Pisa in 1406 made the republic a maritime power for the first time in its history. But workers in the
arti minori
continued to be alienated from the
popolo grasso
, and important elements within an élite haunted by the recollection of civil disorder concluded that they needed better protection. Different sectors of Florentine society therefore had their own, albeit mutually contradictory, reasons for allowing the local de' Medici family (who were also Europe's premier bankers) to effect an early 15th-century revolution in government by keeping the republican constitution while denuding it of significance. That Medicean transformation needed to be subtle, since Florentines were proud of their city's history and conscious of its grounding in republican values that had produced greatness as well as violence. Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1463) ran the bank established by his father Giovanni (1360–1429) and rarely held public office, but connections acquired through patronage and money meant that he could control Florence by exerting his personal influence. Just like his grandson, Lorenzo (1449–92), Cosimo was Florence's sole ruler, and the Medicis' sedulous avoidance of the title of “prince” allowed Florentines to maintain their communal self-esteem and to pretend that the link with the republican past was still in place.

Although Florence is the city that defines the
rinascimento,
its history also challenges the idea that “renaissance” and “medieval” are mutually exclusive categories
.

The career of Giotto di Bondone (
c
.1267–1337) is a case in point. He was born either in Florence or its surrounding rural hinterland, and tales of his preternatural skill form part of the Giotto tradition—as in the case of the fly he drew on a canvas being worked on by Cimabue (
c
.1240–
c
.1302) and which looked so lifelike that the painter tried to wave it away. The story was first related by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) in his
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters
(1550), a work written over two centuries after Giotto's death and which sought to demonstrate that Florentine artists were the best and earliest exemplars of renaissance originality. In Vasari's account of the matter Giotto's naturalistic style is contrasted with the stiffness of earlier Tuscan artists, who were still working in a tradition influenced by the icons of Byzantium—as in the case of Cimabue and Duccio (
c
.1255/60–
c
.1318). Their stylized and mosaic-like approach to painting can thus be labeled “medieval” and even “Gothic.”

But the psychological impact that is a hallmark of Giotto's figures is also present in the work of the preceding generation. The Virgin present in Cimabue's “Maestà” (1280s) is an approachable intercessor, and the animation of Duccio's own “Maestà” (1308–11) comes from the spiritual intensity of the 20 angels and 19 saints who crowd round the Madonna. Giotto certainly brought a new dramatic focus to his representations of the Passion, as in the celebrated “Lamentation” (
c
.1305) painted in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The artificially elongated figures and swirling drapery of the Byzantine tradition have now disappeared, and our involvement as engaged spectators is partly a result of Giotto's supremacy as a draftsman who can set the scene and control the perspective. But this is still an artist who is indebted to his masters; the gestures of those who surround the saint's dead body in the “Mourning of St. Francis,” painted for the Bardi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce, evoke the stylized grief of Byzantine mosaics and icons. Giotto's art, like that of his Florentine contemporary Dante, escapes facile categories, and to see him as just the pioneer who prepared the way for a later renaissance is to miss the point of genius.

“Lamentation” (c.
1305) by Giotto di Bondone is a fresco painted in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The Holy Family and the disciples mourn the dead Christ whose body has been taken down from the Cross
.

The re-conquest of the Iberian peninsular territories occupied by Muslim invaders was a process that lasted, on one interpretation, for some seven and a half centuries. Christian forces secured their first major victory as early as 722, just over a decade after the first invaders arrived in Spain from North Africa. The Battle of Covadonga was fought by members of the Visigothic aristocracy who had fled to the mountainous Asturias region in the far north, and their victory led to the establishment of a Christian kingdom that became a base for the re-conquest of Spain. The end of Islam's territorial power in Spain came in 1492, when the emirate of Granada fell to the united kingdoms of Aragon and Castile after a ten-year military campaign. Granada had, however, been an anomalous outpost since 1238 when it became Castile's vassal state, and by that stage the rest of Spain had already been re-conquered for Catholic Christianity
.

The
reconquista
, which gathered pace in the 11th century, was a product of the conviction that Iberian Christianity had only a precarious toehold on the southern European border with Islam. Hunger for land and the urge to populate empty territories played their part as the Christian leaders moved southwards, taking some of their subjects with them. Towns that were being repopulated were granted
fueros
or charters by Christian rulers, and the popularity of these written guarantees of liberties and immunities helped to ensure higher population levels from the mid-tenth century onward.
Fueros
created a direct relationship between rulers and townspeople, and they therefore offered an attractive escape route from lordship (or feudalism) and its local obligations. But Western Europe's first major crusading enterprise also stirred hearts and minds with an intensity whose effects would be lasting both in Spain and in Europe. The continent's Christian culture, still so experimental in the 11th and 12th centuries, learned from the
reconquista
the hard lesson of negativity: in order to exist and flourish it had to be an oppositional force, one defined by its enmity. The papacy's decision to launch a series of crusades in the Middle East owed much to the Iberian experience, and
subsequent Spanish rulers whose rationale of power included a Christian missionary element were similarly indebted. It was not for nothing that Francisco Franco chose Burgos, the Castilian city that was a major base for the re-conquest, as the symbolic location for his self-proclamation in October 1936 as generalissimo of the Spanish army and head of state.

A
BOVE
Loarre Castle was a major Christian fortification, built by Sancho III in Aragon in the early 11th century, on the frontier between the Christian and Muslim lands. The castle was much restored during the 20th century
.

Charlemagne's army returned to Spain in the late 790s following the earlier, and disastrous, expedition of 778, and his formation in 795 of a Frankish-controlled Spanish march had created a buffer zone along the border between Umayyad Spain and his empire's southern limits. The march extended from the Basque region in the west and along the Pyrenean frontier. Following a victory for the Franks in 801 it also
incorporated the county of Barcelona. This was one of Europe's most ethnically diverse regions consisting of Basques, Jews, Germanic Visigoths and native Iberians, as well as Hispano-Romans whose ancestors had populated Spain when it was a Roman imperial province. Frankish-appointed governors, called
walis
, administered each of the march's 17 counties.

THE RECONQUISTA

795
Charlemagne establishes the Spanish march, a buffer zone whose separate counties will evolve into the independent principalities of Navarre, Barcelona and Aragon.

791–842
Alfonso II rules the Christian kingdom of the Asturias in northwest Spain. His forces conquer Basques to the east and Galicia to the west.

924
The Asturias kingdom, following its southward expansion and incorporation of the county of Castile, becomes known as the kingdom of León.

939
León's southern boundaries extend toward the River Douro.

970
Death of Fernan Gonzalez, count of Castile, who has established his county's independence of León.

1002–31
The Córdoban caliphate disintegrates into petty principalities (taifas).

1004–35
Sancho III (“the Great”) rules Navarre: he annexes Castile, and León becomes his protectorate. He bestows (1029) Castile on his son Ferdinand (1017–65).

1037
Ferdinand, count of Castile, turns his county into a kingdom and, having defeated his brother-in-law militarily, becomes king of León. Ferdinand I's son, Alfonso VI, succeeds (1065) to the throne of León and (1072) becomes king of Castile when his elder brother, Sancho II, is assassinated.

1085
Toledo is taken by León-Castile.

1090–94
Almoravid forces invade from North Africa and conquer most
taifas
.

1118
Aragon's army retakes Zaragoza.

1137
Dynastic union between the county of Barcelona and the kingdom of Aragon.