Abstract: Genevra played the role of a polite, diplomatic and innocuous pawn in negotiations leading to her marriage to Sante Bentivoglio (1454) and then to Giovanni II Bentivoglio (1464). Based on letters surviving in Milan exchanged between Bolognese leaders and Genevra's uncle, Duke Francesco Sforza, we learn a tremendous amount about Genevra's position with no dowry; the complex relationships among Milan, Bologna, Pesaro, Florence, and Rome; gender roles and patriarchy in fifteenth-century marriages; and that Genevra did not marry Giovanni II for love (as legends claim). Employing pre-Machiavellian schemes involving the manipulation of family members and city-states, Francesco Sforza arranged the alliances with Genevra for his own benefit—all while Genevra showed herself willing to serve.

Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, Renaissance marriage, marriage alliances, Bologna history, Duke Francesco Sforza, fifteenth-century Italy

Introduction

Early modern Italian ruling-class parents scrupulously organised marriages for their children as a way to create peaceful political alliances among families, cities and states. Such strategies were essential to powerful families in their quest to maintain dominant positions, status, influence and security. Available family members would be married into other carefully selected families (or within their own extended family) in search of similar advances while the individual wishes of the two involved in the arrangement did not much exist. Sexual activity for females was of course strictly tied to marriage whereas for men it was not—although it was necessary for men within marriage to guarantee the survival of their legitimate family line. The d’Este of Ferrara, the Sforza of Milan, the Gonzaga of Mantua and the Bentivoglio of Bologna were among the most powerful families of Renaissance Italy—and among the most successful at creating enormous extended families and extensive power bases thanks to practicing certain strategies.

This chapter focuses on the marriages organised for Genevra Sforza based on information from thousands of letters once exchanged between the Bolognese government and the Sforza, now housed within the Archivio Ducale Sforzesco in Milan. From the masses of surviving correspondence, analysed here for the first time with Genevra Sforza in mind, we learn about the pre-Machiavellian methods at work in Duke Francesco Sforza's mind regarding family planning.