Introduction

The history of developments in the relations between Rome and the Italian states between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries had much in common with that of many other European states: the papacy tended to assert its primacy in the government of the whole of Christendom, and the states tended in turn to strengthen their institutions and their authority – in matters of taxation and jurisdiction – over their ecclesiastical institutions. Characteristic of the Italian situation, as compared with that of other countries, was the particularly close relation between the papacy, states and society: on the one hand because of the strong authority that the pope was able to exercise over the peninsula, on the other hand because of the influence that the popes, the court of Rome and ecclesiastical institutions felt from their close connection with Italian society and states. This characteristic was very evident in the period of transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era, when the papacy, after the residence in Avignon, after the schism and the conflict with the conciliar movement, could exert greater authority towards the middle of the Quattrocento, while Italy, far from constituting a united state, remained bent on marked political fragmentation, not overcoming the particularism of little territorial formations centred largely on cities, above all in the centre and the north.

It is a crucial period, of whose significance – in religious life and in aspects of society – contemporaries were well aware, although they gave different interpretations of it. Machiavelli noted, for example: ‘We Italians are obliged to the church and to priests for this, first of all: for having become bad, without religion; but we have another, greater obligation to them, which is the second cause of our ruin: that the church has kept and continues to keep this province divided.’ To Guicciardini, that Italy lacked a great monarchy, which had always been obstructed by the papacy, seemed a positive thing, a condition of the development of so many prosperous cities, yet he agreed about the inauspicious influence of ‘priests’ on moral and civil life.