Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-06T12:19:58.040Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Renaissance States of Mind

from Part II - Foundings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2018

John L. Brooke
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Julia C. Strauss
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Greg Anderson
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter revisits the debate on the foundations of the Renaissance Italian state as a problem akin to the origins of the Renaissance self. While an earlier body of scholarship dating back to Jacob Burckhardt claimed that the state in the Renaissance emerged fully formed as an autonomous actor, more recent research has come to doubt if Renaissance Italians possessed any notion of state selfhood. By examining one of the foundational moments of the Renaissance state – the acquisition of territory in the late fourteenth century – this chapter argues that the state in the Renaissance was neither autonomous nor fictitious, but relational and multiple, what it calls the Divisible State. From the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, north-central Italian elites founded states possessing many overlapping identities: as a physical space, a governing body of citizens, a tangle of socially-correct behaviors, and bonds of subservience/superiority. Specifically, a close examination of the Florentine acquisition of Arezzo in 1384 exposes how contemporaries came to constitute such multiple identities through the revival of Roman law. The chapter’s conclusion encourages us to examine the multiple, relational selfhoods of the Renaissance state in the broader context of the early modern world.
Type
Chapter
Information
State Formations
Global Histories and Cultures of Statehood
, pp. 108 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×