No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Papal Courts and Courtiers in the Renaissance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
The cultural influence of Rome and the papacy during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries has recently attracted much attention. At the same time, courts and courtiers have come under the scrutiny of a number of scholars anxious to define their function in the cultural sphere. This brief essay is an attempt to lean on such work collectively, so to speak, and it can make no claim to originality of source material or personal research. I should perhaps give the tone and indicate the level of my approach by explaining that the gist of what follows formed a lecture given in December 1986 to the Scottish branch of the Renaissance Society at a meeting in Glasgow. I should like to regard it as well as part of this tribute to James Cameron, also as an expression of my thanks to the late Judith Hook for her work for the Society; she herself wrote an important essay bearing on the topic, albeit at a later period, the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623-44), to which I shall refer later.
- Type
- Part I. The Church in Europe
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991
References
1 Anglo, Sydney, ‘The Courtier. The Renaissance and changing ideals’ in Dickens, A G., ed., The Courts of Europe(London, 1977), pp. 33–53. 328–9Google Scholar. Two other recent works touch on the Roman curia: O’Malley, J. W., Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham, Carolina, N., 1979)Google Scholar; D’Amico, John F., Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome (Baltimore and London, 1988)Google Scholar.
2 Santore, Cathy, ‘Julia Lombarda, Sumptuosa Meretrice. A portrait by Property’, Renaissance Quarterly, 41 (1988), pp. 44–83.Google Scholar
3 I have brooded more on this problem in my lecture to the Lincei, reprinted in Renaissance Essays (London 1983), pp. 249–63.
4 Most of the details of Castellesi’s rise and fall are to be found in the admirable article by Fragnito, Gigliola, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 21 (1978), pp. 565–71Google Scholar. His activities in the curia are displayed in many documents in the Vatican Registers: e.g. Obligationes et Solutions, 86; Formatori, 9, with his own ordination to minor orders, fol. 108v. Castellesi wrote a beauti ful cancelleria corsiva himself, unlike the hand of many of his brother curialists. His published work is elegant but insignificant.
5 Pius II, Commentaries, ed. and tr. Graggand, F. A.. Gabel, L. C. = Smith College Studies in History, 22, 25, 30, 35, 43 (Northampton, Mass., 1937—57), pp. 426–7Google Scholar.
6 Hay, D., The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977), p. 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 On the possessor see Hay, , Church in Italy (indexed under ‘papal display’), and for Leo X’s, Pastor, L., History of the Popes, ed. and tr. Antrobus, F. I. et al., 7 (London, 1908), pp. 36–42Google Scholar: ‘The most magnificent spectacle which Rome had witnessed since the days of the Emperors.’
8 Haskins, Tr. Susan, The Papal Prince (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.
9 Hoberg, H., Taxaepro communibusservitiis… 1295–1455 (Vatican City, 1949). On p. 374Google Scholar are listed the sees most heavily rated; this is admittedly a crude way of establishing the relative resources of various dioceses, but at least offers what papal officials in the later Middle Ages recognized as viable estimates.
10 O’Malley, Praise and Blame.
11 Hook, Judith, ‘Urban VIII. The paradox of a spiritual monarchy’, in Dickens, ed., The Courts of Europe, pp. 213–31Google Scholar.
12 McNair, Philip, Peter Martyr in Italy: an Anatomy of Apostacy (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar.
13 Rubinstein, Ruth, ‘Pius IPs Piazza S. Pietro and St. Andrew’s Head’ in Essays in the Hitory of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London, 1967), pp. 22–33Google Scholar.
14 These notes were completed before the appearance of Renaissance Studies, 2 (October 1988), which contains several contributions pertinent to the theme of this essay. The relevance of Alison Brown’s ‘Between curial Rome and convivial Florence’, pp. 208–21, and Macfarlane, Leslie J, ‘Precedence and protest at the Roman Curia’, pp. 222–30, is particularly to be noted. I wish I could have referred to the recent work of Peter Partner, The Pope’s Men (Oxford, 1900Google Scholar).