Following the modern state?

Isabella Lazzarini, now an ordinary professor at the University of Turin, published in 2003 at Laterza Italia degli stati territoriali. She proposed both the synthesis of a dense historiography on the Italian peninsula of the end of the Middle Ages and a prospective vision of what it was possible to understand for the coming research. The translation which seems today makes available to a non-Italophone public this counterpoint to the historiographical Doxa on the birth of the modern state. Far from the idea that the current state would draw its roots from the Middle Ages, Isabella Lazzarini starts from sources and wonders about the very existence of an entity that could be described as “ State In medieval times.

A peninsula made of nested organizations

The Italian peninsula is in the Middle Ages fragmented in hundreds of territories more or less linked to each other. From XIV^e century, this number decreases and certain entities took precedence over the others (mainly Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples and the pontifical states). In this context, the Italians then seek a form of organization guaranteeing the autonomy of each territory and the maintenance of its own form of political organization, while based on circulation – of people and practices – between them, creating, in fact, a complex system of interconnections. Isabella Lazzarini shows that the increase in “ tidy From the peninsula does not go through a simple absorption in a growing administration, but through the development of a new form of organization.

To XIV^e And XV^e centuries, Italy would thus be the crucible of a socio-political organization made of concentric interlocks (p. 83-84). From the XI^e century, concordats are signed between the Norman nobles which hold part of southern Italy and the Holy Roman Emperor ; These agreements led in 1130 to the constitution of the Kingdom of Sicily (p. 112). Over time, the scales of these agreements are multiplying. It is in this perspective that a series of Tuscan or Lombard rural lordships (the Malaspina, the Guidi or the Ubaldini) integrate the Republic of Florence or the Duchy of Milan, because their local organization allows the latter to maintain a stable territorial organization. We find similar logics in the Venetian contado, while the Republic of Venice establishes its authority over the whole of the northeast quarter of the peninsula. These seigneuries may have an interest in using the conflicts between the powers, which can threaten them as much as defend them. Relations internal to these spheres of influence can thus play system contradictions.

Government -unit factions

At the head of the peninsular system is the Holy Roman Emperor. However, unlike the previous period, during which emperors often intervened in the peninsula and faced pontifical power – the conflict between “ guelfes ” And “ gibelins – -, they no longer exercise XIV^e a century than a legitimization framework and not an effective government (p. 87). In a context of annexions of each other, these factions manage to organize around a central, coherent structure, which manages cohabitation between the components. Out of this harmonization, everyone constantly redefines their relationship with others through wars and peace treaties. This is what makes the geopolitical flexibility of medieval Italy. This demonstration, which makes it possible to see the integration of organizations into other larger ones, also explains that the author has been interested in the question of external relations: it is they which allow Italy to the end of the Middle Ages to operate as a system.

Isabella Lazzarini’s strength is also to show that the absorption of each other never really creates the conditions for a unit. This is only a representation, inherited from the chronicles of the end of the Middle Ages, built in social circles favorable to increasingly inaccessible political independence. On the side of political theory, the end of the conflict between Guelfes and Gibelins leaves the field to new reflections on autonomy and sovereignty. The ideal for these political structures is to ensure the conditions for the greatest possible autonomy, within a coherent general regime. This conception of political life comes from the history of the Italian peninsula at XIII^e century.

Mediation and social mobility

From the 14th century, the important conflicts between factions in the cities tend to absorb. I. Lazzarini shows that this pacification stems from a new capacity of political power to serve as mediation between the members of the elites. These also experience a deep mutation due to the mixture of these different elite bodies to form a new aristocratic culture, which tries to overcome the conflict at best. The central administration manages the distribution of offices and privileges, taking care to maintain a form of balance between the elites.

Apart from Venice – where the aristocracy freezes on a limited number of families holding the monopoly of political life, even if it is not to follow the reality of economic powers – these elites are also permeable, welcoming new members according to the recompositions of (economic) power relations. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Italian elites recompose around their cultural, political and economic capital. It is never a pure and simple replacement but an integration, including in the south.

However, this renewal only works because the monarchical power decreases in favor of this aristocracy, which therefore has enough to share. The circulation between territories, chancelleries and courses also make it possible to export government practices, explaining that documentary forms appear more or less simultaneously on the scale of the peninsula, such as Chancellery registers or even diplomatic letters. The constitution of this new elite – which thus has a common reference language, which was not the case in the central Middle Ages – is perceived by I. Lazzarini as one of the bases on which the state of the Renaissance is built (p. 158).

War, diplomacy and birth of a common political space

The interdependence of powers is also at the origin of an innovative diplomatic system, not to be a vision “ international »Diplomatic relations. On the geopolitical level, Italy in the middle of the 15th century was formed around a precarious system, which implies preserving multifaceted links between powers. The actors are aware of the fragility of peace ; The withdrawal of ultramontaine powers is not perceived as something lasting and their return is seen as a risk, especially at the time of peace of Lodi (1454). For the author, the Italian peninsula has become at XV^e century a “ common political space ” – which rebuilds the cards of part of the research in history of XVI^e century around the search for a “italianityNew, made up of defense in the face of ultramontaine powers. The most recent historiography returns to these questions by avoiding seeking what could foreshadow Italian unity.

These questions are all the more important for the medieval as powers do not have an armed force of citizens (which Machiavelli later calls “clean weapons) And that they depend on members of the Italian elites, condottieri, who sell to the most offering and can suddenly tip the balance of power between Italian states (or, theoretically, to put themselves at the service of ultramontan states), and this again at the time of the Italian wars. Indeed, the Italian elites of the end of the Middle Ages are built in networks and locations which go beyond intra-state borders. They learn to build economic and political ties throughout the peninsula and make them their strength, creating lasting family powers, as in the 16th century, the great Tuscan families, the Strozzi or the Salviati. These elites are merchant but also administrative, which contributes to the circulation of political knowledge, administrative culture and common political language already mentioned. These elements make it better to understand what makes Italianity of the 15th century, of which the peninsula of Italian wars is fully heir.

It is in this same perspective that a new form of maintenance of international relations is born in Italy, around the figure, now discussed, of the resident ambassador. The author, who devoted the rest of her work to the question of international relations, has since worked to break the teleological conceptions on the birth of a diplomatic system “modern». With others, she has shown how, on the contrary, the right used in the context of these relationships arose from the culture of interlocking and arrangement, as well as from distinctions, operating for actors of the time, between what is public law and private law.

Modern state: the one whose name should no longer be pronounced

Finally, Isabella Lazzarini took in 2003 a precursor around the very definition of what the medieval state could be, which led him to assert, in a unprecedented afterword, that she would no longer use this term today. For her, it is necessary to depart from a contemporary definition of the State as sovereign and autonomous power, a definition which does not work for the societies of the old regime. In this context, research on the state “modern“It would only be the continuation of a”intellectual myth»Forged in the 19th century (p. 185). As early as 2003, she said her opposition to the application of a modern state conception to the medieval world. This opposition was asserted while others were looking in the last centuries of the Middle Ages the conditions of emergence of a “Modern state». The French translation of this book could, as such, participate in redefining the terms of a debate rather than further complicating their research.

The hypotheses of i. Lazzarini have since been demonstrated by a series of work on the Middle Ages and the political conflictualities of the end of municipal Italy. The demonstration is also strong when it does not oppose public and private but shows the interweaving of the two: since then, we see these spheres in a more flexible way, as intertwined and inseparable. This is how the private interests of the courtiers are used in the Padanes lordships to serve the interests of the community as a whole or that private law is used for bypassing the limits of public law within the framework of international relations, still in the 16th century. The French publication of Isabella Lazzarini’s book thus integrates, and again, current debates.

A manual not quite like the others

Italy of the territorial states has enabled its author to model a complex system which allowed it to issue hypotheses, to show the trial and error of a historiography under construction. I. Lazzarini allowed the reader to enter his workshop and participate in the emergence of new historiography. This same approach animates the translation work of Michelle Grévin, who delivers all the challenges of the translation of such a language and the transposition of the Italian academic tradition. The work of Isabella Lazzarini has since constantly shown its ability to model complex systems from sources rather than a forged design with our contemporary eyes. In that Italy of the territorial states There remains a major lesson, which has drew up the research thread that has been continuing for two decades.