Filius et Servitor. Evolution of Dynastic Consciousness in the Titles and Subscriptions of the Sforza Princes' Familiar Letters

Abstract

This article examines the changes in the subscriptions of letters sent by the children of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, using a broad sample collected from various archives and libraries in Italy and France. The epistolary practices revealed here demonstrate a growing dynastic self-awareness of the Sforza family during its fifty-year-long rule over the Duchy of Milan in the second half of the fifteenth century. We can also see that such subscriptions helped establish the legitimacy of the dynasty as well as the hierarchy within it.

Notes

1 On the two entrances and the negotiations between Milanese factions and the new Duke: Alessandro Colombo, ‘L’ingresso di Francesco Sforza in Milano e l’inizio di un nuovo principato’, Archivio Storico Lombardo. Giornale della società storica lombarda [hereafter ASL], 32 (1905) vol. III, pp. 297-344; vol. IV, pp. 33-101; Franco Catalano, La nuova signoria: Francesco Sforza, in Storia di Milano VII – L’eta sforzesca dal 1450 al 1500 (Milan, 1956), pp. 3-224, especially pp. 10-14.

2 Federico Del Tredici, ‘Lombardy under the Visconti and the Sforza’, in Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini (eds), The Italian Renaissance State (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 156-76, quotation on p. 161. For a wider English argumentation see Jane Black, Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza 1329–1535 (Oxford, 2009); Andrea Gamberini (ed.), A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan. The Distinctive Features of an Italian State (Leiden and Boston, 2015).

3 On bastards inheriting or conquering ruling roles see Jane F. Bestor, ‘Bastardy and Legitimacy in the Formation of a Regional State in Italy: The Estense Succession’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38 (1996), pp. 549-85; Marco Folin, ‘Bastardi e principesse nelle corti del Rinascimento: spunti di ricerca’, Schifanoia, 28-29 (2007), pp. 246-59.

4 On the Sforza company see Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters (London, 1974).

5 Antonio Menniti Ippolito, ‘Francesco Sforza’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana [hereafter DBI], 50 (1998), pp. 1-15, quotation on p. 2. All translations from Italian sources into English are my own.

6 On his rule see Federica Cengarle and Maria Nadia Covini (eds), Il ducato di Filippo Maria Visconti, 1412–1447. Economia, politica, cultura (Florence, 2015).

7 Menniti Ippolito, ‘Francesco Sforza’, p. 3.

8 Fabio Cusin, ‘L’Impero e la successione degli Sforza ai Visconti’, ASL, 63 (1936), pp. 3-116, p. 59 (author's italics).

9 The expression is from Vincent Ilardi, ‘The Banker-Statesman and the Condottiere-Prince: Cosimo de’ Medici and Francesco Sforza (1450-1464)’, in Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein and Craig H. Smyth (eds), Florence and Milan: Comparisons and Relations: Acts of Two Conferences at Villa I Tatti in 1982–1984, 2 vols (Florence, 1989), vol. I, pp. 217-39.

10 Cusin, ‘L’Impero e la successione’, pp. 59-66.

11 Ibid., pp. 69-72.

12 Ibid., p. 73. On diplomacy see Isabella Lazzarini, Communication and Conflict. Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520 (Oxford, 2015).

13 See Cusin, ‘L’impero e la successione’, pp. 66-9.

14 See Jane Black, ‘Giangaleazzo Visconti and the Ducal Title’, in John E. Law and Bernadette Paton (eds), Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Farnham, 2010), pp. 119-30.

15 Cusin, ‘L'impero e la successione’, p. 67.

16 See Isabella Lazzarini (ed.), I confini della lettera. Pratiche epistolari e reti di comunicazione nell’Italia tardo medievale, special issue of the journal RM – Reti Medievali Rivista, 10 (2009), in particular Isabella Lazzarini's ’Introduzione’, pp. 113-21.

17 Lazzarini, ‘Introduzione’, p. 113.

18 Ibid., p. 114 .

19 This age range was chosen on the basis of Monica Ferrari, Isabella Lazzarini and Federico Piseri, Autografie dell’età minore. Lettere di tre dinastie italiane tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento (Rome, 2016), pp. 15-18. I would here like to thank Monica Ferrari and Isabella Lazzarini for the path we shared working together: this experience has played a large part in developing this article.

20 In addition to the above-mentioned research it is important to recall some of Monica Ferrari's works: “Per non manchare in tuto del debito mio”. L’educazione dei bambini Sforza nel Quattrocento (Milan, 2000); ‘Lettere sforzesche dal castello di Cremona’, La Scuola classica di Cremona (2003) pp. 141-52; ‘Stralci di corrispondenza familiare nella seconda metà del Quattrocento: il caso dei Gonzaga e degli Sforza,’ in M. Ferrari (ed.), I bambini di una volta. Problemi di metodo. Studi per Egle Becchi (Milan, 2006), pp. 14-40; ‘Lettere, libri e testi ad hoc per la formazione delle élites: uno studio di casi fra Quattrocento e Settecento’, in Maria Pia Paoli (ed.), Saperi a confronto nell’Europa dei secoli XIII-XIX (Pisa, 2009), pp. 27-55; and Lo specchio, la pagina, le cose. Congegni pedagogici tra ieri e oggi (Milan, 2011).

21 Francesco Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’. Forme e strutture della diplomazia sforzesca (Naples, 1998), p. 96.

22 See Isabella Lazzarini, Amicizia e potere. Reti politiche e sociali nell'Italia medievale (Milan, 2010).

23 Monica Ferrari and Federico Piseri, ‘Una formazione epistolare: l’educazione alla lettera e attraverso la lettera nelle corti italiane del Quattrocento', in Antonio Castillo Gómez and Veronica Sierra Blas (eds), Cartas-Lettres-Lettere. Discursos, prácticas y representaciones epistolares (siglos XIV–XX) (Alcalá de Henares, 2014), pp. 21-42.

24 About Cicco Simonetta and his family see Maria Nadia Covini, ‘La patente perfetta. I privilegi accordati ai Simonetta dagli Sforza’, in Beatrice del Bo (ed.), Cittadinanza e mestieri. Radicamento urbano e integrazione nelle città bassomedievali (secc. XIII–XVI) (Rome, 2014), pp. 181-208; about the first Simonetta serving Francesco Sforza, Angelo, see Federico Piseri, Pro necessitatibus nostris. Rapporti tra Stato sforzesco, operatori economici del dominio e prestatori esterni (1450-1468) (Pavia, 2016), passim.

25 Monica Ferrari and Federico Piseri, ‘Tra resoconto della quotidianità e progetto di futuro. La lettera come strumento pedagogico nella corte sforzesca della seconda metà del Quattrocento’, in Christian Høgel and Elisabetta Bartoli (eds), Medieval Letters between Fiction and Document (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 431-43, quotation p. 433.

26 See Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, pp. 355-427.

27 A superinscriptio for a letter to Francesco Sforza was ‘Illustrissimo principi et excellentissimo domino, domino meo singularissimo, domino Francisco Sfortie Vicecominti, dux Mediolani et Papie Anglerieque Comiti ac Cremone domino’; the inscriptio breve was ‘Illustrissime princeps et excellentissime domine, domine mi singularissime, debita recomendatione premissa’ (Archivio di Stato di Milano [hereafter ASMi], Archivio Visconteo Sforzesco [hereafter Sforzesco], 721, Antonio Trecchi to Francesco Sforza, Cremona, 8 March 1451).

28 For the Sforza age we have six registers, see Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, pp. 375-8.

29 The earliest probably dates from the very beginning of the Sforza period: Biblioteca dell’Università di Bologna, ms. 707, studied in Ludovico Frati, ‘Un formulario della cancelleria di Francesco Sforza duca di Milano’, ASL, 18 (1981), pp. 264-391. The second one, Archivio Storico Civico e Biblioteca Trivulziana di Milano [hereafter ASC-BTM], ms. 1229, is dated by Maria Franca Baroni to 1455: ‘Elementi storici e diplomatici in un formulario di indirizzi della cancelleria di Francesco Sforza conservato nella Biblioteca Trivulziana di Milano’, ASL, 96 (1969), pp. 298-304.

30 ASMi, Registri Ducali [hereafter RD], 214. This register was set up during the first years of the reign of the second Sforza duke, Galeazzo Maria, in the second half of the 1460s; see Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, pp. 376-7.

31 These letters, even if they were heavily mediated by adults (teachers, governors …) are still mirrors of the writer, at least for the relations expressed toward the addressee by the infrascriptio and the inscription (see Ferrari, Lettere di principi bambini, pp. 340-4). About the influence of the members of the children's court on their writing see Federico Piseri, ‘Ex Castroleone. Vita materiale ed educazione sociale nelle epistole delle “corti” sforzesche’, Annuario dell’Archivio di Stato di Milano, 2 (2012), pp. 46-83; Idem, ‘Governatori e “magistri a schola” nelle corti sforzesche: un primo approccio prosopografico’, Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche, 20 (2013), pp. 41-54; Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 23-33.

32 Christina Antenhofer, ‘Letters Across the Borders: Strategies of Communication in an Italian-German Renaissance Correspondence’, in Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb (eds), Women's Letters Across Europe 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 103-22, quotation on p. 103.

33 See Rudolf Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland (Basingstoke, 2000).

34 The letter, in fact, expressed the ‘respect owed to the parents’ and ‘the complex system of the social relationships structuring court society’, Monica Ferrari, ‘Lettere di principi bambini del Quattrocento lombardo’, Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, 109 (1997), pp. 339-54, p. 345.

35 See Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 13-14, 231-3; Monica Ferrari, ‘Carte da conservare: lettere e documenti di giovanissimi principi in fieri tra Quattro e Seicento’, Andrea Bobbio and Andrea Traversi (eds), Contributi per una pedagogia dell’infanzia. Teorie, modelli e ricerche (Pisa, 2016), pp. 17-34.

36 Letters without a clearly legible date are not included.

37 There is no trace of letters written by her in the chosen age range in the dedicated file in ASMi, Archivio Visconteo Sforzesco, Potenze Sovrane [hereafter PS], 1476.

38 ASMi, PS, 1462, doc. 3; doc. 6; Biblioteca Comunale ‘A. Saffi’ di Forlì [hereafter BCFo], Raccolte Piancastelli [hereafter P], Carte Romagna [hereafter CR], 445, doc. 26; ASMi, PS, 1479, 29 September 1455.

39 Galeazzo Maria also tried to legitimate his position later by the fact that he was a male successor to the Visconti, but unsuccessfully. Only Ludovico Maria obtained the imperial investiture and was formally recognised as a legitimate Visconti male heir.

40 About Galeazzo Maria Sforza's secretary, Gianluca Stampa, see Ferrari and Piseri, ‘Tra resoconto della quotidianità e progetto di futuro’.

41 This foreword is taken from ASC-BTM, ms. 1325, f. 1; a later register is reported by Frati (Frati, ‘Un formulario della cancelleria’, p. 367). The transcription is from Senatore, ‘Uno mundo de carta’, p. 376, n. 78: ‘This book contains all the suprascriptiones of the letters and the titles in full detail, so that everyone's rank and status can be gathered; and if, oh scribe, you consider these notes very carefully, there is no doubt that you shall avoid mistakes, for surely resorting to your work and to the prestige of your name will result in correctness in all things.’

42 ASC-BTM, ms. 1229, f. 18; Frati, ‘Un formulario della cancelleria’, p. 377.

43 For letters written by Sforza's natural children see Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 132-9, 191-7.

44 The Duke and the Duchess were the only ones permitted to be addressed as illustrissimi.

45 Francesca M. Vaglienti, ‘Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, in DBI, vol. 51 (1998), pp. 398-409, quotation on p. 398. Galeazzo II (1320–1378) co-ruled Milan with his brothers Matteo II and Bernabò. His son, Gian Galeazzo, Filippo Maria's father, unified the Visconti State and became the first duke of Milan in 1395. About the Visconti State see Andrea Gamberini, Lo Stato visconteo. Linguaggi politici e dinamiche costituzionali (Milan, 2005); Black, Absolutism in Renaissance Milan.

46 Due to the physical problems of the two Gonzaga children promised in marriage, the contract would be broken and Galeazzo Maria would later marry Bona of Savoy.

47 Cusin, ‘L’Impero e la successione’, p. 73.

48 The letters are preserved in ASMi, PS, 1461, 1462, 1465, 1468, 1469, 1477, 1479, 1481; ASMi, Fondo Autografi, 66; Archivio di Stato di Mantova [hereafter ASMn], Archivio Gonzaga [hereafter AG], 1607; Bibliothèque Nationale de France [hereafter BNF], ms. it. 1589.

49 ASMi, RD, 214.

50 Galeazzo Maria's brothers also appear in two lists of notables made for two anniversary celebrations of his rise to power, but in those cases the lists are not official addresses by the secret chancery and do not give the full titles.

51 ASMi, RD, 214, c. 31r. In italics the additions made after the draft of the list.

52 ASMi, RD, 214, c. 61r. Iohannes (Io. in its abbreviate form) was added when Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza succeeded his father Galeazzo Maria.

53 For Polidoro, see the brief biography in Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, p. 192.

54 ASMn, AG, 1607, doc. 14b.

55 See Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 115-23.

56 About her see Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’, in David Abulafia (ed.), The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95. Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 123-36; Veronica Mele, ‘La creazione di una figura politica: l’entrata in Napoli di Ippolita Maria Sforza Visconti d’Aragona, duchessa di Calabria’, Quaderni d’Italianistica, 33 (2012), pp. 23-72; Eadem, ‘Dietro la politica delle Potenze: la ventennale collaborazione tra Ippolita Sforza e Lorenzo de’ Medici’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 115 (2013), pp. 375-422.

57 See Piseri, ‘Ex Castroleone’.

58 ‘Except for women who gained governing roles, the others, belonging to the middle and upper classes of European society … put a strong emotional charge into their written correspondence’, Armando Petrucci, Scrivere lettere. Una storia plurimillenaria (Rome and Bari, 2008), p. 101. See also Lisa Kaborycha, A Corresponding Renaissance. Letters Written by Italian Women 1375–1650 (New York, 2016); Federico Piseri, ‘“Avanzandomi tempo ho imparato un poco de scrivere”. Caratterizzazione di genere nelle lettere dei figli degli Sforza durante gli anni della formazione’, soon to be published within the proceedings of the conference Lettres de femmes dans l’Europe médiévale (XIe-XVe s.) – Cartas de mujeres en la Europa medieval (s. XI-XV), Casa de Velázquez Madrid, 23-25 May 2016.

59 The addressee, however, can be mentioned in superinscriptio and inscriptio with full titles for courtesy, reverence or respect.

60 See Alessandro Giulini, ‘Filippo Maria Sforza’, ASL, s. 4, vol. 20, 40 (1913), pp. 376-88, especially pp. 377-80.

61 ASMi, PS, 1477, Filippo Maria Sforza to Agostino Rossi (ambassador of the Holy See), Melegnano, 15 October 1468. Filippo Maria's lack of ambition made him renounce this title in 1472.

62 It is rare, but we have evidences of subscriptions explicitly used to communicate love or hate for relatives bypassing the chancery uses. Eleonora Gonzaga, writing a letter to her brother Federico, with a tone that is ‘only partially playful’, singed it as ‘your enemy Eleonora Gonzaga with her own hand’ (‘la vostra inimica Lonora da Gonzaga de man propria’); Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, p. 94, see also subscriptions at pp. 100-1.

63 In 1482 he would marry Costanza Sforza, daughter of Bosio Attendoli Sforza, Francesco Sforza's stepbrother.

64 ASMi, PS, 1462, doc. 44; ASMi, PS, 1477, Filippo Maria Sforza to Francesco Sforza, Piacenza, 8 November 1465.

65 Her full subscription was Ippolita Maria de Aragona Vicecomes ducissa Calabrie. The same is true of Caterina, one of Galeazzo's legitimated daughters (born in 1463), who would marry Girolamo Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV, in 1477: see Ernst Breisach, Caterina Sforza. A Renaissance Virago (Chicago and London, 1967). Her subscriptions seem to be always with the Visconti and the husband's family name: Caterina Vicecomes de Riario Imole (letters in ASMi, PS, b. 1476 and BCFo, P, CR, b. 444).

66 See Marco Pellegrini, Ascanio Maria Sforza. La parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento (Rome, 2002), 2 vols; Timothy Salemme, Documenti pontifici del Tabularium dell’abbazia cistercense di Chiaravalle Milanese (da Innocenzo II a Clemente V) (Turnhout, 2014), p. 21, pp. 27-8.

67 The Duchy of Bari had been held by a rebel feudatory of King Ferrante of Naples, Giovanni Antonio Orsini, a supporter of the rival Angevin candidacy between 1459 and 1463.

68 This marriage contract would be cancelled in 1472.

69 These are the few letters with informal subscriptions written by secretaries: ASMi, PS, b. 1461, doc. 75, 76; b. 1465, doc. 26; b. 1477, Filippo Maria and Sforza Maria Sforza to Francesco Sforza, 8 November and 14 November 1465; ASMi, Autografi, b. 66, Ottaviano Maria Sforza to Bona of Savoy, 25 May 1477.

70 On these letters, see F. Piseri, Ex Castroleone; Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 116-8, 144-9.

71 Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 112-15.

72 ASMn, AG, b. 1607, doc. 315; see Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 150-1. For a comparison of these two letters and the different registers used by the Sforza princes see Federico Piseri, ‘L’éducation épistolaire à la cour des Sforza: modèles, langues et registres dans les lettres des princes pendant les années de leur formation’, to be published in the proceedings of the conference L’école et les langues dans les espaces en situation de partage linguistique à travers l’histoire, Quimper, 19-21 May 2016.

73 See Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 30-1, 114-15, 156-8.

74 See Vaglienti, ‘Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, p. 399.

75 Ippolita Maria was a very precise writer and her letters were drafted with great care for the mise en page and calligraphy.

76 Giorgio Valagussa was head teacher for the cadets; see Gianvito Resta, Giorgio Valagussa umanista del Quattrocento (Padova, 1964).

77 See Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 123-32.

78 Table 7a: Writers/Addressees clearly shows that Galeazzo Maria (duke from 1466 to 1476) was the recipient of an increasing number of letters from his brothers: their father Francesco died in 1466 when Filippo Maria was seventeen, Sforza Maria fifteen, Ludovico Maria fourteen, Ascanio Maria eleven and Ottaviano Maria only eight years old.

79 See Ferrari, Lo specchio, la pagina, le cose, pp. 82-4.

80 Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and London, 1995), on the castle pp. 169-202, on the court established there see pp. 203-38.

81 On Galeazzo Maria's rule, see Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court. Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994); in particular, for the change of location of the court, see pp. 33-7.

82 Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the Castello di Pavia, 1469’, The Art Bulletin, 71 (1989), pp. 352-75, quotation p. 353.

83 The reason for this change, in truth, was ‘the prodigious dowry of Bianca Maria Sforza, promised to the King of the Romans, Maximilian (from whom came, for a payment of a further 100,000 ducats, the longed-for ducal title)’; Andrea Gamberini, ‘Milan and Lombardy in the era of the Visconti and the Sforza', in Gamberini (ed.), A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan, pp. 19-45, p. 37.

84 See Gary Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas. Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Oxford, 1988), p. 138.

85 Quite a hazardous operation, because ‘Sforza est l’unique condottiere qui ait réussi à conquérir un Etat puissant et à y fonder une dynastie. Ce destin est unique’: G. Peyronnet, ‘François Sforza: de condottiere à duc de Milan’, in Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia e i loro rapporti con gli Stati italiani ed europei (1450-1535) (Milan, 1982), pp. 7-25, quotation on p. 7.

86 Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas, p. 234.

87 ‘The major characteristic of these and still other histories promoted by Ludovico is their attempt to reconcile in some way the Sforza saga with the broader patterns of city history’; Ibid., p. 237.

88 See Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci, The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (New York, 2006), pp.189-203.

89 ‘The Rhetorica [Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, commentaries dictated to Ludovico Maria in 1468] … would become, in my opinion, an exemplary text … for the next generation’: M. Ferrari, Lo specchio, la pagina, le cose, p. 157. Monica Ferrari directly links the Rhetorica to the Liber Iesus and Donato's Grammar. ASC-BTM, Grammatica del Donato, ms. 2167; Liber Iesus, ms. 2163. The manuscripts are digitally reproduced: http://graficheincomune.comune.milano.it/GraficheInComune/bibliotechedigitali/bibliotecatrivulziana .

90 On the two manuscripts, see Jonathan J.G. Alexander (ed.), Grammatica del Donato e Liber Iesus. Due libri per l’educazione di Massimiliano Sforza (Modena, 2016).

91 Ferrari, Lo specchio, la pagina, le cose, p. 159.

92 On secretaries’ influence on Ludovico Maria Sforza see Ferrari, Lazzarini and Piseri, Autografie, pp. 131-2.

93 Welch, Art and Authority, p. 267.

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Notes on contributors

Federico Piseri

Federico Piseri is cultore della materia (expert in the field) of General Pedagogy and History of Pedagogy at Pavia University. He wrote about letter-writing in Renaissance Italy in the monograph Autografie dell'età minore. Lettere di tre dinastie italiane tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento published with Monica Ferrari and Isabella Lazzarini. He is currently studying elite and non-elite education and working on a wider frame on epistolary culture in Italy during the late Middle Ages.