Spain in Italy Politics Society and Religion 1500 1700 the Medieval an.ebooKOID

SPAIN IN ITALY

THE MEDIEVALAND EARLY MODERN

IBERIAN WORLDEDITORS

Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University)Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen)

Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam)Donna M. Rogers (Dalhousie University)

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas)

VOLUME 32

SPAIN IN ITALYPolitics, Society, and Religion

1500-1700

EDITED BY

THOMAS JAMES DANDELET

JOHN A. MARINO

IN COOPERATION WITH

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME

LEIDEN BOSTON2007

Cover illustration: The flight of the camp-followers: a mercenary tries to lead the ladiesthrough a breach in the wall. Detail of a tapestry illustrating the Battle of Pavia in 1525,Barent (Bernard) van Orley (c.1492-1542). Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples,Italy; Photo Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

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ISSN 1569-1934ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15429-2ISBN-10: 90-04-15429-9

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CONTENTS

Maps and Illustrations .............................................................. ixContributors ................................................................................ xiAcknowledgements .................................................................... xiii

Introduction ................................................................................ 1Thomas James Dandelet and John A. Marino

PART ONE

STATES UNDER SPANISH RULE

Chapter One. Integration and Conict in Spanish Sicily .... 23Francesco Benigno

Chapter Two. The Kingdom of Sardinia: A Province in Balance between Catalonia, Castile, and Italy .................. 45Francesco Manconi

Chapter Three. The Kingdom of Naples in the Spanish Imperial System .................................................................... 73Aurelio Musi

Chapter Four. The State of Milan and the Spanish Monarchy .............................................................................. 99Antonio lvarez-Ossorio Alvario

PART TWO

SPANISH INFLUENCE IN THE ITALIAN STATES

Chapter Five. Naples and Florence in Charles Vs Italy: Family, Court, and Government in the Toledo-Medici Alliance .................................................................................. 135Carlos Jos Hernando Snchez

vi contents

Chapter Six. Paying for the New St. Peters: Contributions to the Construction of the New Basilica from Spanish Lands, 15061620 .................................................................. 181Thomas James Dandelet

Chapter Seven. Pignatte di vetro: Being a Republic in Philip IIs Empire .................................................................. 197Arturo Pacini

Chapter Eight. The Venetian Territorial State: Constructing Boundaries in the Shadow of Spain .................................... 227John Jeries Martin

PART THREE

SOCIETY, ADMINISTRATION, AND ECONOMY

Chapter Nine. Noble Presence and Stratication in the Territories of Spanish Italy .................................................. 251Giovanni Muto

Chapter Ten. The Profession of Arms and the Nobility in Spanish Italy: Some Considerations .................................... 299Claudio Donati

Chapter Eleven. Evolving the History of Women in Early Modern Italy: Subordination and Agency .......................... 325Elizabeth S. Cohen

Chapter Twelve. Government/Administration: The ItalianKingdoms within the Spanish Monarchy ............................ 355Mireille Peytavin

Chapter Thirteen. A Declining Economy: Central and Northern Italy in the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies .............................................................................. 383Paolo Malanima

contents vii

Chapter Fourteen. The Rural World in Italy under Spanish Rule .......................................................................... 405John A. Marino

PART FOUR

RELIGION AND THE CHURCH

Chapter Fifteen. Exchanges Between Italy and Spain: Culture and Religion ............................................................ 433James S. Amelang

Chapter Sixteen. Reform of the Church and Heresy in the Age of Charles V: Reections of Spain in Italy ................ 457Massimo Firpo

Chapter Seventeen. Male Religious Orders in Sixteenth-Century Italy .......................................................... 481Flavio Rurale

Chapter Eighteen. The Crown and the Church in Spanish Italy in the Reigns of Philip II and Philip III .................. 517Agostino Borromeo

Chapter Nineteen. The Politics of Counter-Reformation Iconography and a Quest for the Spanishness of Neapolitan Art ...................................................................... 555Sebastian Schtze

Index of Proper Names ............................................................ 569

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Introduction: Map of Italy in 1559 ........................................ 198.1 Venetian Stato da terra (Archivio di Stato, Venice) .... 2288.2 Territorio di Bergamo (University of Kansas Spencer

Collect ion) ...................................................................... 24013.1 Population in Italy Central North and Tuscany

13001750 .................................................................... 38813.2 Population and output per worker in agriculture,

Italy Central North 14001800 .................................. 39313.3 Price index in Central-Northern Italy (14501861)

(145060 = 1) .............................................................. 39413.4 Building wage rates in Florence and Genoa

(14501800) (152030 = 100) .................................... 39513.5 Rural wage rates in Italy Central North (14501800)

(152030 = 100) .......................................................... 39613.6 GDP in Italy Central North (14001800)

(Italian 186070 lire) .................................................... 39813.7 Per capita agricultural product and per capita GDP

in Italy Central North 14001800 (Italian 186070 lire) ................................................................ 399

(Illustrations 19.119.10 can be found between pages 562 and 563)19.1 Titian, Gloria, Museo del Prado, Madrid19.2 Peter Paul Rubens, St. Francis Seraphicus Atlas,

supporting the Immaculate Conception, engraved by Paulus Pontius

19.3 Pedro Villafranca, Mariana dAustria transferring the regency to Charles II, engraving

19.4 Bernardo Cavallino, Immaculate Conception, Brera, Milan19.5 Ges Nuovo, Naples19.6 Jusepe de Ribera, Immaculate Conception, Las Augustinas

de Monterrey, Salamanca19.7 Massimo Stanzione, Madonna of the Rosary, Cappella

Cacace, S. Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples19.8 Luca Giordano, St. Peter of Alcantara confessing St. Teresa

of Avila, S. Teresa a Chiaia, Naples

x maps and illustrations

19.9 Luca Giordano, Holy Family with symbols of the passion, S. Giuseppe delle Scalze a Pontecorvo, Naples (in deposit at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte)

19.10 Jusepe de Ribera, St. Mary Egyptiaca, Muse Fabre, Montpellier

CONTRIBUTORS

Antonio lvarez-Ossorio Alvario, Universidad Autnoma de MadridJames Amelang, Universidad Autnoma de MadridFrancesco Benigno, Universit di TeramoAgostino Borromeo, Universit di Roma La SapienzaElizabeth S. Cohen, York University, TorontoThomas James Dandelet, University of California, BerkeleyClaudio Donati, Universit degli studi di MilanoMassimo Firpo, Universit di TorinoCarlos Jos Hernando Snchez, Universidad de ValladolidPaolo Malanima, Istituto di Studi sulle Societ del Mediterraneo del

Consiglio Nazionale delle RicercheFrancesco Manconi, Universit di SassariJohn A. Marino, University of California, San DiegoJohn Jeries Martin, Trinity University, San Antonio, TexasAurelio Musi, Universit di SalernoGiovanni Muto, Universit di Napoli Federico IIArturo Pacini, Universit di PisaMireille Peytavin, Universit de Toulouse II Le MirailFlavio Rurale, Universit di UdineSebastian Schtze, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The American Academy in Rome sponsored a conference on Politicsand Society in Spanish Italy, December 1214, 2003, to com-memorate the Spanish victory 500 years earlier in December 1503that led to the establishment of a Spanish viceroyalty in Naples andSpanish dominance and cultural inuence among the states of earlymodern Italy for two centuries. Not unlike the Quincentennial of1492, our remembrance of the Spanish Conquest of Italy capturedboth positive and negative aspectswar and peace, collaborationand resistance, productivity and exploitationof what was part of acomplex exchange of people, goods, and ideas between Italy andIberia that inuenced both societies and cultures to their core. Sincethe last quarter of the twentieth century, the study of the Spanishin Italy between 1500 and 1700 has gained new attention and thiscollection of essays provides the rst comprehensive overview inEnglish of this ongoing research.

The Conference Organizing Committee (Thomas James Dandelet,John A. Marino, Giovanni Muto, Ingrid D. Rowland, and MariaAntonietta Visceglia) would like to thank the American Academy inRome and its Sta for their support and service, especially for thepleasure of enjoying the incomparable venue of the Villa Aurelia.Adele Chateld-Taylor, Lester K. Little, Ingrid D. Rowland, AnneCoulson, and Elizabeth Gray Kogen provided the logistics to makefor a memorable conference. Giorgio Valente provided graphic designfor the conference and recommended conference viewing of theErmanno Olmi lm, Il mestiere delle armi (2001).

Generous nancial support for the conference and preparation ofthe manuscript was provided by the American Academy in Rome;Dipartimento di Discipline Storiche Ettore Lepore, Universit deglistudi di Napoli Federico II; Department of History, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley; Department of History, University of California,San Diego; Grupo Santander; Sanpaolo IMI; Samuel H. KressFoundation; U.S. Department of Education; Hon. Richard N. Gardner;and Mrs. Meri Jaye.

In addition to the contributors of essays, thanks for comments,questions, and the lively discussion facilitated by the other participants,

xiv acknowledgements

who included Giuseppe Galasso, Richard Kagan, Renata Ago, AntonioCalabria, Ingrid D. Rowland, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia.Translation of essays into English was an important part of makingthe scholarly contributions of participants available to an English-speaking audience. Thanks to Lydia G. Cochrane for translation ofthe one French and eight Italian essays; Ann Katherine Isaacs fortranslation of Arturo Pacinis Italian essay; Karina Xavier for trans-lation of Antonio lvarez-Ossorio Alvarios Spanish essay; PatriciaRosas and Laura F. Temes for translation of the Carlos Jos HernandoSnchez essay from Spanish; Karina Xavier, Patricia Rosas, andMuriel Vasconcellos for translation of original quotations from Spanish;and Eliot Wirshbo for assistance with Latin translations. Thanks toSjahari Pullom for compiling the index.

INTRODUCTION

Thomas James Dandelet and John A. Marino

On December 2829, 1503, the Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernndezde Crdoba, scored a denitive military victory for Ferdinand theCatholic against the French in the battle for the Kingdom of Naplesat the Garigliano River. He had developed the strategic advantageof the Spanish tercioslight cavalry, infantry pikemen, and arquebus-armed infantry in a combined forcewith his victory at Cerignolain the Tavoliere di Puglia eight months earlier on April 28. Fromthere his Spanish forces marched to Naples, entered the city in tri-umph on May 16 to the jubilant reception of its noble citizenry,and departed again on June 18 for Gaeta and the nal assault againstthe French at Garigliano. In Naples news of that victory touchedo three days of continuous celebration, reworks, and religious cer-emonies of thanksgiving with Gonzalo de Crdoba returning quietlyon January 14, 1504, to become the rst Spanish viceroy of thenewly conquered Kingdom of Naples.1 With the Spanish conquestof southern Italy complete, together with the long-standing rule ofSicily from 1282 and Sardinia from 1297 through his Aragonesekingdom, Ferdinand the Catholic had taken a major step towardsthe eventual Spanish pacication and domination of much of Italy.

Five aspects of the Spanish domination of Italy that changed thepolitical landscape had been established before 1504. First, Italy had become an integral part of Aragonese ambitions for Catalanmercantile expansion and a Western Mediterranean empire. Sicily,Sardinia, and Naples were essential pieces of Aragons Europeanpuzzle, and partnering with Genoese nanciers was common prac-tice for all three of the Iberian powersAragon, Castile, and Por-tugalin their designs on North and West Africa, and beyond. Second,the 1442 conquest of Naples by Alfonso V of Aragon (14351458)

1 Guido DAgostino, Il governo Spagnolo nellItalia meridionale (Napoli dal1503 al 1580), in Storia di Napoli, vol. 5, pt. 1 (Naples: Societ Editrice Storia diNapoli, 19671978), p. 3.

2 thomas james dandelet and john a. marino

had made the Aragonese dynasty one of the major powers withinItaly. As a signatory of the Peace of Lodi in 1454, Aragonese Naplesbecame one of Italys ve great powers guaranteeing protection from foreign invasion, while giving lip service to the uneasy penin-sular peace. Alfonso and his son Ferrante I (14581494) used Naples as a springboard for further intervention in Italian aairs.Third, patronage promoted Iberian families such as the Borgia,rewarded them for service, and also fostered the development of apro-Aragonese party among the native elite in the Italian states asit provided outlets for military service and links to advancement.Alonso de Borja, a fellow Catalan, had entered Alfonsos service in1417, received promotions in Italy after 1432, and eventually becamepope as Calixtus III (14551458); while Rodrigo Borgia, CalixtusIIIs cardinal-nephew and head of the papal chancellery for thirty-ve years after 1457, was elected pope as Alexander VI (14921503).Fourth, intermarriage was the glue binding such Iberian and Italiannoble families together in their service to the crown. Just as theCatholic Kings and the Habsburgs employed marriage as state pol-icy, so too did the great noble families of Italy and Iberia seize uponthe advantages of family alliances with one another. Fifth, Aragoneseascendancy not only solidied a pro-Aragonese party, but also thatof a pro-Angevin (and later French) opposition. Ferrantes successionin Naples was convulsed by two baronial revolts (14581462 and14851486); and, when Rodrigo Borgia won the papacy over hislong-time rival, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who had been car-dinal-nephew of Sixtus IV (14711484) and the power behind thethrone of Innocent VIII (14711484), the future Pope Julius II(15031513) ed to the French court in 1494 and advised the Frenchking Charles VIII to invade Italy.

These were all themes that the grandson of the Catholic Kings,Charles V, expanded upon decisively in Italy a generation later witha series of major military and political victories: the defeat of theFrench at Pavia in 1525, the subjugation of the papacy after theSack of Rome in 1527, his coronation as emperor at Bologna in1530, the claiming of Milan after the devolution of Sforza rule in1535, and the marriage of Cosimo de Medici and Eleonora ofToledo (the daughter of the viceroy of Naples) in 1539. By 1540, inshort, Charles V had established the Spanish Habsburgs as the majorforce dominating Italian aairs for the next century and a half.

introduction 3

For historians of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy, these centuries have often been the forgotten centuries and a period ofdecadence. This mistaken view was shaped largely by a awedhistoriography that anachronistically stressed the weakness and thenegative or regressive impact of Spanish rule in Italy.2 The reasonsfor this are many and stretch back to the beginnings of Spanish rule.They start, perhaps, with Francesco Guiccardini, Paolo Giovio, andother sixteenth-century humanist historians whose rhetoric lamentedthe calamity of the Italian Wars and the loss of liberty. Later,anti-Spanish revolt and resistance during their two-century rule com-bined with anti-Spanish rejection and revulsion before and after theirdeparture in the early eighteenth century to produce an Italian ver-sion of the black legend even before the fervor of nationalism.Spain was blamed for most of Italys woes, a sentiment that was inlarge part embraced by the nationalist historians formed during thenineteenth-century Risorgimento. Finally, strong anti-fascist reactionin post-World War II Italy led to limited contacts with Spain andlimited interest in scholarship on the Spanish imperial period inItalian history until after Francos death in 1975.

Since the 1970s, extensive new archival research, increased con-tact between Spain and Italy, and the de-centering of the teleologyof the nation-state, have led to a rethinking of traditional interpre-tations of the relationship between the early modern Italian regionalstates and their political center in Spain.3 The political realities andcooperation of the European Union likewise have fostered a newemphasis on nding a common past in Europe by studying the cross-fertilization between the various European states in the early modernperiod. As one key example, Benedetto Croces dismissive assessmentof decadent baroque culture has been superceded by a more sophis-ticated and nuanced understanding of the reciprocal nature of Spanish-Italian relations and the rich cultural production that was the productof the far-reaching exchanges between the two peninsulas through-out the early modern period. It is this view and direction in thebroader historiography that guides the essays in this volume.

2 Aurelio Musi, ed., Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identit italiana (Milan:Angelo Gueri e Associati, 2003).

3 Aurelio Musi, ed. Nel sistema imperiale. LItalia Spagnola (Naples: Edizioni ScienticheItaliane, 1994), p. 5.


The Spanish were not in Italy by accident, but design. The keypolitical reality of Spanish imperial domination in Italyformal (Sicily,Sardinia, Naples, and Milan), informal (Rome, Genoa, Tuscany,Savoy, and the minor states), and more neutral or independent(Venice)introduces the investigation in this volume into the meth-ods and mechanisms of control and collaboration, cooperation andcooptation, assimilation and resistance. The current, dominant par-adigm, aggregation and conquest, is the subtitle of the collection ofpapers from a similar conference on the Spanish and Naples at theSpanish Academy in Rome in June 2003.4

The connections between topics and problems in cultural andsocial history in this volume follow from political theory and prac-tice. This approach draws our attention away from local and micro-historical themes to an international context and macrohistoricalperspective that do not assume the inevitable, predetermined tri-umphalism of nationalism, republicanism, or capitalism. It suggestsan alternative path to the modern state and the modern economythat takes into account the strong legacy of various forms of impe-rial inuence while also privileging the experiences and expectationsof individual participants. It also looks back to imperial Rome andrethinks models and debates about the best form of government, uni-versal citizenship, rights and responsibilities under the law, and therole of religion in politics and society. By restoring the contingencyof events and decision-making, as well as the distinct voices of indi-vidual Spaniards and Italians from a wide geographical and socialrange, we hope to see both Spain and Italy more clearly.

One such voice was that of Michele Suriano, the Venetian ambas-sador to Spain, who, in 1559, reported in his relazione to the VenetianSenate on the wider Spanish territories beyond Iberia. On the landswhich His Catholic Majesty has in ItalyMilan, Naples, Sicily,Sardinia, and part of Tuscany [the Tuscan garrisons]he limitshimself to military preparedness, the morale of subjects, and statenances.5 Surianos descriptions move beyond caricatures of ancient

4 Giuseppe Galasso and Carlos Jos Hernando Snchez, eds., El reino de Npolesy la monarqua Espaa. Entre agregacin y conquista (14851535) (Madrid: Real Academiade Espaa en Roma, 2004).

5 Eugenio Albri, ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 15 vols. (Florence:Societ editrice orentina, 183963), ser. 1, vol. 3, pp. 333378 partially translatedin James C. Davis, ed., Pursuit of Power. Venetian Ambassadors Reports on Turkey, France,and Spain in the Age of Philip II, 15601600 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970),pp. 3569, esp. pp. 4548.

introduction 5

ills within each state to the problem of foreign rule. He nds Milana state which is fatal not only to whoever controls her, but to any-one who seeks to control her, to Italy and to all Christendom. I saythis because she is the origin of so many wars, which consume thewealth of kingdoms, the blood of their subjects, and energies whichshould be spent on worthier eorts for the general welfare. OnNaples, Suriano advises that debilitating taxation and consequentpoverty have left the kingdom in desperate straits with three maindefects: the billeting of Spanish troops, favoritism to pro-Spanish sub-jects, and unequal justice not granting the nobility their rightfulhonor. I can only repeat what the Neapolitans themselves alwayssay: every government sickens them and every state displeases them.For Sicily, Suriano claims that the Sicilians are hopelessly dividedinto factions, especially between nobles and commoners. Despite thebest eorts of the Spanish viceroys, these divisions have not beenresolved; and only the fortress in Palermo is able to keep the peace.An ancient hatred is like a poisonous disease spread throughout thewhole body; if medicines or plasters soothe one aected part, thedisease breaks out in another where it was least expected. In 1559,the year of Surianos report, Philip II created the Council of Italy,which comprised these three Spanish states in Italy. They, togetherwith Sardinia (formally a part of the Kingdom of Aragon), were gov-erned under direct Spanish rule and are examined in Part One.

Four essays on each of the Spanish kingdoms in Italy summarizethe history of Spanish rule and the structure of Spanish adminis-tration within the particular jurisdictional tradition of each state. InFrancesco Benignos essay on Spanish Sicily, the reciprocal natureof integration (constants and limits) and conict (contrasts and tensions)denes the two-century trajectory of Spanish rule. He examines threeproblems: the specic character of Sicily within the Castilian monar-chy; the causes and modes of Sicilian integration under the SpanishHabsburgs; and the causes of its conict and rebellion in the revoltsof 164748 and 16748. Benigno rejects the traditional explanationof a pact or contract by the Sicilian elites, and instead proposesa process of erosion of the relationship between the Sicilian nobil-ity and the Spanish Habsburg monarchy as a result of changes withinSpanish and Sicilian society (urbanization, the growth of court soci-ety, increased bureaucracy) and changes in the political relationshipbetween the center and periphery. Francesco Manconi emphasizesthat Sardinia, in the words of his essay title, was a province in bal-ance between Catalonia, Castile, and Italy. He traces Sardinia in


three periods: Catalan commercial interests in the fourteenth andfteenth centuries; Sardinia in the Spanish Habsburg imperial sys-tem during the sixteenth century; and strong Castilian imprint in theseventeenth century. Manconi emphasizes the deep inuence ofSpanish culture on Sardinian society and culture. Aurelio Musi sit-uates the kingdom of Naples in the Spanish imperial system in termsof the changing parameters of political-institutional history and state-social stratication relations. Musi sees Naples, as well as all Italyunder Spanish rule or inuence, then, from varying perspectivesfrom relations between the various Italian states and the guidingregion of Castile, as a part of Spains larger political policies andobjectives, and only then in terms of the internal and external con-cerns of the Italian states themselves. Antonio lvarez-Ossorio Alvariotraces the ght for Lombardy and the conquest of Milan from thefailed policies of its last Sforza rulers, its devolution to Charles V,and its place within the Spanish Monarchy to the end of Spanishrule and the War of the Spanish Succession. He pays special atten-tion to the question of loyalty, the venality of oces, and the oscil-lating policy toward inclusion or exclusion of native Milanese withinthe duchys Spanish government. For Spanish Milan, lvarez-Ossoriopinpoints the debate over a Greater Lombardy as the central ques-tion confronting the relationship between center and periphery inthe state.

When Spanish power was at its peak in Italy and elsewhere inthe years 1579, 1580, and 1581, king Philip II of Spain wrote aseries of letters to his viceroy in Sicily, the Roman nobleman,Marcantonio Colonna, instructing him to send various forms ofnancial and food aid to Genoa and Savoy. In a letter from 1579he ordered Colonna to provide grain relief to Genoa during a yearof bad harvests; in a letter from 1580 he ordered the viceroy to pay5,000 escudos that he had promised to various monasteries in Genoafor poor relief; in another letter from 1580 Colonna was ordered topay the duke of Savoy 30,000 scudos to settle a debt the king owed;and in 1581 the viceroy was ordered to allow the duke of Savoy tobuy 2,000 salmas of grain from Sicily for the provisioning of fortressesin his duchy.6

6 Biblioteca Santa Scholastica, Archivio Colonna, Personnaggi Illustri, Busta AE,letter 812, 1579; Busta AH, letters 1472 and 1478, 1580; Busta AH, letter 214, 1581.

introduction 7

These short vignettes from the late sixteenth century serve to illus-trate a number of points that are central to the theme of Spain inItaly and the relationship between the various Italian states that isexplored in Part Two. First, the formal territories of the Spanishempire in ItalyNaples, Sicily and Milanwere closely linked tothe informal territories or client states of the empire, that is, withthe duchies of Savoy, Urbino, Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, Parma,Florence, the Papal State, and the Republic of Genoa. For all prac-tical purposes, the informal and formal territories formed a uniedand tightly integrated part of the Spanish imperial system. This wasa mentality partially reected by Charles V in his famous politicaltestament to his son Philip II, where he advised special attentionand care towards the Papal State which he viewed as being like acontinuous and unied part of his states of Milan and Naples. Second,the formal territories provided important sources of grain, nancialsupport, and employment for the informal territories as the cases ofSavoy and Genoa illustrate. The kings of Spain, in short, usedresources from their formal Italian states as sources of patronage towin over and hold the client states. Together with money and grain,they also gave military commissions and administrative positions inthe formal states to a wide range of people from the client states.Thirdly, the Spanish imperial system served to bring together fam-ilies and territories from dierent parts of Italy in a mutually benecialalliance that was more pervasive, peaceful, and long-lasting than anypolitical system in Italy since the time of the Roman Empire. Thepax hispanica in Italy was not only the result of military pacication,but also in large measure a product of this reciprocal exchange underSpanish imperial rule; and it was the willing participation in it bymany of Italys leading noble families, above all else, that made itpossible. At the same time, this peace was under constant pres-sure within Italy, as French power, Protestant threats, and excessiveinsistence on consensus or consent resuscitated earlier Italian pat-terns of shifting alliances, political instability, and social unrest. Allof these challenges kept the Spanish monarchs and their ambassadorsand ministers in Italy ever vigilant and concerned.7

The example of Marcantonio Colonna serves well to illustrate anumber of the positive aspects of these points. As the head of one

7 Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).


of the oldest and most important papal families of Rome, he alsoheld the title of Constable of Naples which brought with it bothlands and revenues in Naples. His seven years as viceroy of Sicilyadded Sicilian lands to his family holdings. As the son of GiovannaDAragona, a cousin of king Ferdinand of Spain, Marcantonio Colonnashared blood ties with the Spanish monarchs and was addressed ascousin by Philip II, a term also used by the king when addressingthe dukes of Savoy. One of Marcantonios daughters, Victoria, wasmarried to a Spanish nobleman, and his grandchildren intermarriedwith the Borromeo family of Milan and the Doria of Genoa. Thecase of Colonna could be repeated many times over using dierentfamilies from around Italy as examples. Under Philip II, for exam-ple, Giovanni Andrea Doria held the Neapolitan oce of Protonotaryand was prince of Mel, the largest feudal state in the kingdom.Both oce and title were rst conferred on his great-uncle AndreaDoria for service of the Genoese eet to Charles V and they wereheld by the Doria through the eighteenth century. By the middle ofthe seventeenth century, both the Colonna and Doria princes weregranted the highest possible noble rank in the Spanish empire, thatof grandee of Spain.

The very intentional strategy of forming strong political ties throughdynastic alliances was one of the most successful and long-lastingpolitical practices of the Spanish monarchs. Indeed, the kings kepta close watch on Italian noble marriages in both their formal andinformal states, and they expected to be consulted and given theright of nal approval for marriages involving nobles who servedthem in various capacities. They also encouraged marriages betweenItalian and Spanish noble families to strengthen personal ties betweenthe two peninsulas.

The marriage between Cosimo de Medici and Eleonora of Toledothat brought together the powerful Toledo family of Spain and Napleswith the ruling family of the duchy of Florence is a prime exampleof this practice. The richly illustrated essay in Part Two by CarlosJos Hernando Snchez on the marriage alliance between the Toledoand Medici families reveals the complicated interactions, negotia-tions, and considerations that marked Spanish-Italian dynastic unions.At the same time, his chapter also underlines how dynastic alliancesbound together the formal Spanish state of Naples and the clientstate of Florence in the Spanish system in Italy. This is an impor-tant and expansive theme that this volume only begins to address.

introduction 9

Benigno, Manconi, Musi, and lvarez-Ossorio, as already men-tioned, emphasize the patronage and participation of native Sicilians,Sardinians, Neapolitans, and Milanese in Spanish government intheir respective states; and in Part Three, Giovanni Muto for Naplesand Claudio Donati for Lombardy also explore some of these famil-ial connections. The Spanish state archives in Simancas in SecretarasProvinciales, Npoles, for example, provide extensive materials for sucha study on titles and oces in Naples.8 The Venetian ambassadorSuriano, as already noted, reported that the benets and honors ofthe kingdom were the second diculty or defect in the Spanishgovernment of Naples. Such patronage should be distributed amongthe native subjects, [but] are generally given to the Spaniards andto janissaries, as they call those of mixed blood, the children of thenative subjects and Spaniards. Therefore, the Neapolitans cannothope to hold any oces in their own country or at the court oftheir king, and yet such things count with these people more thanwith any other on earth.9 Like many themes here, patronage andfamily alliances are open to variant positive or negative interpreta-tions, and both deserve much further attention. Patronage ties, forexample, were clearly part of the Spanish policy of divide and con-quer, to establish vertical bonds of dependence directly to the monar-chy, and conversely, to short-circuit horizontal bonds of solidaritywithin and between social groups. On the other hand, Spanish mar-riage brokering among Italian nobles served to break down old ani-mosities and build alliances among previously bitter opponents suchas the Doria and Colonna.

Much fresh archival material exists for deeper study on these themes,especially where the minor, client states are concerned. Simancas,most especially, holds the detailed correspondence between the Spanishmonarchs, Spanish ambassadors, Italian dukes, princes, ecclesiastics,and a variety of Spanish and Italian agents. Much of this material,particularly for Modena, Mantua, Savoy, Urbino, Ferrara, and Parmahas yet to be incorporated into the broader theme of the Spanishin Italy. Yet, it promises to deepen our understanding of the thickties that bound Italy and Spain, and the methodical and largelysuccessful monarchical practice and local nobilitys advancement

8 Gaetana Intorcia, Magistrature del Regno di Napoli. Analisi prosopograca secoli XVIXVII(Naples: Jovene, 1987).

9 Albri, translated in Davis, ed., Pursuit of Power, p. 47.


strategy of building alliances between the Italian nobility and Spanishnobility at all levels, especially in the age of Philip II.

A few examples from relevant sources in Simancas for the minorSpanish states serve to illustrate this point. A letter of Philip II from1559, for example, demonstrates that from the earliest years of hisreign Philip II sought to play marriage broker for the duke of Mantua,who he proposed should marry a daughter of the Hapsburg emperor.In that same year, he proposed that the Farnese prince of Parmashould also marry a daughter of the emperor and not the sister ofthe duke of Ferrara. Shortly thereafter, in 1560, he proposed thatthe daughter of the duke of Urbino should marry Count FedericoBorromeo. In 1584, nally, the king arranged the marriage of oneof his own daughters, Catalina Micaela, to Carlo Manuel I, the dukeof Savoy.10

Just as marriage ties created bonds of kinship between familiesthat were part of the Spanish world, so too did the traditional ritualbonds of baptism. Spanish noblemen and noblewomen frequentlyacted as godparents to the children of Italian nobles and vice versa.In 1570, for example, the king himself, acted as godfather to thenew son of Vespasiano Gonzaga and Ana de Aragon, albeit throughhis representative and proxy, Francisco Ibarra. This was again thecase with the new son of the duke of Mantua in 1586.11

For the Gonzaga, like many other Italian noble families of thesixteenth century, deep connections to the Spanish Empire also meantthicker connections with other families in the Spanish imperial orbitand an increase in titles and lands. This was perhaps as much, ifnot more, the case for noblemen in the client states than for Italiansin the formal states. An apparent paradox at rst sight, Spanishpatronage to Italian nobles in the informal empire was a reality per-ceived by astute contemporary observers such as Tomaso Contarini,the Venetian ambassador to Spain in the early 1590s. According toContarini, the king especially obligated to himself the minor princesin Italy with fat stipends and honors because they were the mostsusceptible to bribes from other powers.12

10 Ricardo Magdaleno, Catalogo XXVII del Archivo de Simancas, Estados Pequeos deItalia (Valladolid, 1978), pp. 51, 53, 83.

11 Ibid., pp. 69 and 83.12 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV), Barb.Lat. 5370, . 99114. Sommario

delle cose dette dallEcc.mo Sig.r Tomaso Contarini ritornato dallAmb.re di Spagnanella sua relatione, 1593.

introduction 11

While there were certainly many similarities between the formaland informal Spanish states in Italy, a number of strong politicalrealities forced the Spanish monarchs to treat the client states dierently.In short, the client states did enjoy formal sovereignty, and they sub-sequently had no Spanish governors, viceroys, judges, inquisitors, orsoldiers directly shaping their internal aairs. This was no smalldierence, and Spanish royal favors were subsequently all the moreimportant in exerting political inuence. Thus, loyal Italian noblessuch as the dukes of Urbino were rewarded with membership in theOrder of the Golden Fleece and hundreds of other Italian nobleswere inducted into one of the Spanish military orders controlled bythe monarchy.

The habit of seeing Spain as a source of patronage and socialadvancement was especially pronounced in the Papal State. Romannoble families and churchmen, who resided so close to the Kingdomof Naples, were anxious to seek lands, titles, and ecclesiastical benecesin Naples from the Spanish king. The popes were also well awareof the nancial benets of a close alliance with the Spanish kings,and they too increasingly depended upon Spanish revenues and mil-itary forces to shore up their own weak economy and state in thesixteenth and seventeenth century. The growing dependence of thepapacy on Spanish nancial contributions, as illustrated in the caseof the building of new St. Peters described by Thomas Dandelet,is a prime example of this economic relationship. Philip II and hissuccessors saw themselves as heirs to the imperial tradition of ancientRome. The Spanish monarchs forged a special relationship with thepapacy that exchanged Spanish military and nancial support ofRome for local privileges and power in Spain over ecclesiastical insti-tutions. With this political and economic arrangement came a largeand eective colony of Spaniards of every social class to Rome.

At the same time, the model of integration and conict holds truefor the client states as much as for the formal Spanish territories inItaly. For Rome, an anti-Spanish pope such as Paul IV, the splin-tering of the Holy League after Lepanto, Clement VIIIs reconcili-ation of Henry IV of France to the Church, and the election ofUrban VIII by a pro-French faction of cardinals in 1623 all indi-cate the contested limits of the Spanish inuence in Rome.13

13 Thomas Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 15001700, (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress), 2001.


In the case of Genoa, likewise, extensive commercial and nancialrelations with Spain certainly had a large impact on that republic.As Arturo Pacinis essay here reveals, shipowners and the merchantclass of Genoa had forged strong bonds with the Spanish monarchyin the sixteenth century, and they had amassed large fortunes nancingthe Spanish kings. But that also made them the objects of internalcriticisms and resentment, and it also left them and Genoa vulner-able to Spanish royal bankruptcies, a factor that played into therevolt of 1575 and their expulsion from the city. Pacini highlightsthe problem of trying to remain an independent republic within theSpanish imperial orbit, a problem that bred a lively political dis-course in Genoa over its traditional status as a city republic in theface of local oligarchic and Spanish imperial pressures.

Thus, close ties to the Spanish Empire could bring with it ambiva-lent and threatening political consequences, a fact of early modernItalian life perhaps best understood by the Republic of Venice. Themost independent of the Italian states, Venice nonetheless also hadsubstantial commercial and military relations with the Spanish, andin the age of Philip II the two powers enjoyed a relationship char-acterized by general cooperation. Yet, political tensions certainlyexisted. The perceived threat of Spanish expansionist tendencies wasalways present, and it boiled up on the borderlands between Spanishpossessions in the north and the Veneto, as John Martins essay heredetails. And, of course, these tensions ared most dangerously dur-ing the Interdict crisis of the early seventeenth century that fed deepanti-Spanish sentiment in Venice. As supporters of the papacy in thatcrisis over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Spanish monarchy demon-strated that its inuence in the Italian states did not end with therealms of patronage and politics.

The long-term social and economic impact of the Spanish pres-ence throughout Italy extended far beyond individual projects orcases of patronage. Indeed, it has long been a topic associated withthe economic and demographic conjuncture of the recovery after theItalian Wars at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the so-calledIndian summer of the Italian economy, and its stall, crisis, andrelative decline from the early seventeenth century. At the same time,it has been established since the time of Benedetto Croce that theperiod of the Spanish domination left a lasting mark on the Italianlanguage. But just how the thousands of Spaniards living in Italyshaped the broader contours of Italian society is a topic that still

introduction 13

merits much further study. We still lack, for example, any compre-hensive study of Spanish communities or settlements in Italy. Again,the detailed correspondence of Spanish ambassadors, agents, church-men, pilgrims, merchants, and artists, among others, provides a solidarchival base upon which to build such a study together with thethousands of wills left in Italian archives by the Spaniards who livedand often died there.

In Part Three Giovanni Muto provides a nuanced introduction tosettlement patterns and society in the three formal Spanish stateswithin the Council of Italy. A detailed comparison of social struc-ture and stratication in Milan, Naples, and Sicily explores both thetheoretical rationale and the practical strategies forwarded andemployed by the local elites with regard to the problem of main-taining stability. Claudia Donati examines the relationship betweenthe profession of arms and nobility in Spanish Italy by focusing onthose nobles who owed their status to service, especially military ser-vice, to a prince. Donati traces the transformations and changingcharacter of nobility in Italy in the sixteenth century from the suc-cess and failure of Charles Vs imperial project through Philips con-solidation of power under the Spanish Habsburgs as political eliteslegitimated themselves through the closure (serrata) of membership,and in the seventeenth century with increasing numbers of noblesseeking military service as Spanish power in Italy entered a periodof crisis, defensiveness, and stagnation. Here Donati has opened upa long neglected line of inquiry on the nobility of the sword thatdeviates from the more studied topics of the togati (the lawyer classwhose non-noble members would become the nobility of the robe)and their role in administration, magistracies, and the law.

Elizabeth Cohen turns to the importance of gender and the roleof women in early modern Italy by exploring the category of womanin terms of the models of subordination and agency. She focuses onthe social role of women in the four areas of religion, labor, mar-riage, and maternity, as well as topics such as the body, intellectualand cultural life, and politics. Cohen argues that the examination ofthe particular contexts of social class, time, and space should breakup the limiting concept of universal woman and enhance ourunderstanding of change and causality in a more dynamic genderedhistory.

Mireille Peytavin explains the administrative structure of Spanishrule in Sicily, Naples, and Milan, a topic which emphasizes the


linkage between social elites and governmental practice, centraliza-tion from Spain and local compliance or resistance, bureaucraticmodernization and its uncertain eects. She emphasizes three cen-tral points: the continuity and permanence of long-standing localadministrative structures and practices, the attempt to introduce theSpanish institutions of an extra-territorial council (the Council ofItaly) and the general state visit to Italy, and the absence of a residentmonarch which increased the role of a small number of key minis-ters in each state. Peytavin demonstrates how Spanish rule in Italyworked through exchange circuits, a consolidation of connections upthe chain of command from local administrators, councils, and ocesin the regional capitals, viceroys and governors, the Council of Italy,the councils in Spain, and eventually the king himself.

The major indirect contribution to the economies of the Italianstates was almost certainly the military protection provided by theSpanish alliance that eectively constituted a military subsidy. AntonioCalabrias study of the nances of Spanish Naples shows, however,that this protection did not come without a heavy price and even-heavier long-term burden weighing down the public debt. Calabriademonstrates that more than three-quarters of Neapolitan state ex-penses went to military expensesone-half to direct military and for-tress defense with about one-third to debt service (primarily accruedfrom war nancing) in 1550, 1563, and 1574, but dramatically shiftedthereafter to about one-third to one-fourth for military expendituresand one-half to the public debt in 1583, 1600, 1605, 1616, and1626.14 Such calculations must be understood, moreover, in light ofthe ination of the second half of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-

14 Antonio Calabria, The Cost of Empire: The Finances of the Kingdom of Naples in theTime of Spanish Rule (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991),pp. 7889 gives expenditures as follows:

military fortresses public debt total

1550 45% 6% 31% 82%1563 37% 7% 38% 82%1574 44% 7% 34% 85%1583 29% 7% 42% 78%1600 28% 6% 45% 79%1605 21% 4% 50% 75%1616 21% 5% 53% 79%1626 23% 4% 56% 83%

MEAN 80.4%

introduction 15

tury with a more than tripling of state expenses in Naples from 1.35million ducats in 1550 to 4.72 million ducats in 1626, and risingalmost two-thirds again to 7.8 million ducats by 1638. Whatever theVenetian ambassador Suriano said about the scal squeeze in Naplesin 1559 only paled in comparison to the extreme and disastrousscal policies imposed on the Italian South in the seventeenth cen-tury to sustain Spanish imperial enterprise elsewhere. Examples fromthe client states such as Rome, however, reveal that these territoriesenjoyed a more concrete peace dividend from the pax hispanica after1559 since their human and nancial resources could not be directlytaxed by the Spanish monarchy. But peace in Italy did not meanpeace in the Spanish empire, with war against the Dutch rebels inFlanders, against the Turks at Lepanto or Vienna, or later againstFrance after the Spanish defeat at Casale Monferrat.

Similarly, scal policy and the exigencies of war and peace notwithstanding, Paolo Malanima paints a picture of general economicdecline in central and northern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, which he attributes more to deep structural problemsthe Italian trendthan to any specic Spanish policies or inuence.John Marinos essay on the rural world still nds the seventeenth-century crisis determinative for economic decline in southern Italyand for proto-industrial restructuring in Lombardy. The impact ofSpanish policies on the economic production in the agricultural, man-ufacturing, and commercial sectors appear to be linked to the largerconjuncture of the Mediterranean and relative decline vis--vis Italysprevious precocious development.

In the context of the relationship between political and social-eco-nomic realities, Antonio Calabrias provocative comment at the con-ference raised the counter-factual question of imagining a hypotheticalTurkish conquest of Italy. He emphasized that it is not whether aTurkish Italy would have been better or worse governed, but ratherthat it would have precipitated a long and expensive intervention,drawn-out wars with high costs in men and material, and destruc-tive struggles devastating cities and countryside as the Christian statesattempted to dislodge the Turks from Italy. The reality of the Spanishconquest of Italy not only defended Italy against the Ottoman advance,but directed its social and economic resources to the political/religiousquestions in northern Europe, to Flanders during the Dutch Revoltin the late sixteenth century, and to Germany during the ThirtyYears War in the seventeenth. The crucial point is that religion was


indivisible from politics, society, and economy in early modern Europe.Politics and patronage, as much as social structure and scal pol-

icy, then, extended into the realm of religious practices, belief, andinstitutions in Rome and beyond. This central issue emerges in theessays in Part Four. In James Amelangs overview of the subject ofculture and religion, it becomes clear that not only from well-knowngures such as Juan de Valdes and Ignatius Loyola but also frominnumerable contacts and conicts, Spanish religious gures loomedlarge in Italian Catholicism up and down the peninsula. Amelangidenties the theme of religion, like many others in this volume, asripe for more expansive attention and research by historians, andthat the potential yield is rich.15 Massimo Firpo provides more detailon these cultural and religious connections and suggests possible linesof further inquiry with regard to Church reform and heresy at thetime of Charles V. Firpo emphasizes the complex religious culturein Spain in the fty years before Trent with its strands of prophetic,reformist, and heretical activism and the resonances and resistanceit found and reinforced in Italy. Firpo concludes with a call forrethinking the Jesuit founding and success, which Flavio Rurale devel-ops in the wider context of the role of male religious orders in six-teenth-century Italy. Rurale argues that the traditional emphasis onthe role of male religious orders as papal servants does not take intoaccount their success in princely courts nor their long-term impor-tance in hard times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hisgoal is to show how closely connected were the pastoral/educationalrealm of the male religious orders and the political/patronage worldin which they moved with equal ease. The essay that follows byAgostino Borromeo details some of the central political issues anddebates that marked papal-Spanish relations during the reigns ofPhilip II and Philip III. Borromeo aims at explaining the ecclesias-tical policy of the Spanish Hapsburgs in their Italian domains, andhere too, as in the opening essays in Part One on the political char-acter of these domains, the dominant model of conict with col-laboration is the operative paradigm. Sebastian Schtzes essay onthe Immaculate Conception as a Spanish religious cause that had

15 See also James S. Amelang, Mourning Becomes Eclectic: Ritual Lament andthe Problem of Continuity, Past and Present 187 (May 2005): 331 for an histori-cal anthropological approach to popular religion across the Mediterranean.

introduction 17

wide-ranging artistic, architectural, and ritual implications for ItalianCatholicism proves the point of the widespread Spanish-Italianexchange. Although this essay is limited to the Neapolitan context,it points to a rich vein of material that certainly has parallels inchurches from Sicily to Milan and many points in between. Thepopularity of devotion to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conceptionin the Iberian and Italian worlds, along with the cult of the saintsand the impact of the foreign missions,16 still today reveals thelongevity of Spanish/Italian religious syncretism, an early modernphenomenon with enduring appeal within the Catholic Church.

An even more overt sign of Spanish religious devotion and tastesin Italy could be found in Spanish churches dedicated to their patronsaint, Santiago. From Palermo to Rome, and various other Italiancities as well, the Spaniards built national churches that served ascenters for their expatriate communities in Italy. These churches,and their aliated institutionsconfraternities, hospitals, and hos-picesall deserve further study and reinforce the linkage amongpolitics, society, and religion in the broader theme of the Spanishin Italy.

The essays in the volume that follow provide a new and welcomelevel of clarity and depth to the theme of the Spanish in Italy, butthey also open up new horizons and questions on themes new andold. What were the long-term political repercussions of the conictbetween republican government and that of universal monarchy andthe Spanish imperium? How can we better understand the disso-nance between the ideal or theory of good government and eectivebureaucracy and the realities of political practice? What was theimpact of Spanish royal patronage on Italian social relations bothas a source of divisiveness and unity between and within socialgroups? What precise role did Spanish policy play in both the mid-sixteenth-century economic recovery and seventeenth-century decline?How did Spanish religious personalities and preoccupations aectItalian religious institutions, and what role did Spanish inuence havein the realms of learning and intellectual inquiry, religious and sec-ular state censorship, and the denition of religious orthodoxy and

16 See, for example, Jean-Michel Sallmann, Naples et ses saints lge baroque(15401750) (Paris: PUF, 1994); and Adriano Prosperi, America e Apocalisse e altrisaggi (Pisa and Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligraci internazionali, 1999).


religious practice? Finally, how, more precisely, did the formal andinformal territories of the Spanish Habsburgs in Italy stand togetherand apart as parts of the Spanish imperial system. Hopefully, thesequestions, among others, will inspire a new generation of historiansto continue to ll in the remaining gaps in our knowledge and tointegrate the theme of the Spanish in Italy into a broader synthesisof late Renaissance and early modern Italy over the long term.

introduction 19

Map of Italy, 1559

Rome

Spanish Rule

Venetian Territory

Papal States

Boundary of the HolyRoman Empire

H O LYR O M A NE M P I R E

T Y R R H E N I A N S E A

PA PA LS TAT E S

A F R I C A

Italy, 1559

50

50 100 Miles

150 Kilometers100

K I N G D O M O F

S A R D I N I A

K I N G D O M O F

S I C I L Y

Palermo

Cagliari

Naples

Benevento(Papal States)

Pontecorvo(Papal States)

Siena

Florence

Venice

Trent

Milan

Turin

Genoa

Oneglia

Monaco

K I N G D O M O F

N A P L E S

REPUBLIC OFRAGUSA (DUBROVNIK)

REPUBLIC OFSAN MARINO

SWITZERLAND

O T T O M A NE M P I R E

R E P UB L I C

OF

VE N

I C E

REPU

BLIC

OFGENOA

A D R I A T I CS E A

DUCHY OFFERRARA

DUCHY OFFLORENCE

DUCHY OFPIOMBINO

STATO DEIPRESIDI(Tuscan

Garrisons)

DUCHY OFMODENA

REPUBLICOF LUCCA

PRINCIPATEOF MASSA

CORSICA

(Genoa)

DUCHYOF SAVOY

DUCHYOF MILAN

DUCHYOF

PARMA

MARQUISATE OFMONTFERRAT

MARQUISATEOF SALUZZO

DUCHY OFMANTUA

PART ONE

STATES UNDER SPANISH RULE

CHAPTER ONE

INTEGRATION AND CONFLICT IN SPANISH SICILY*

Francesco Benigno

In the pages that follow I shall reect on the two-hundred-year expe-rience of Spanish Sicily, focusing on integration and conict. It isperhaps useful to state at the outset that integration and conictshould not be conceived as radically opposed categories. It is truethat an entire tradition of historical scholarship has worked in aproto-nationalistic vein, stressing the opposition between center andperipherythat is, focusing on instances of resistance that led to so-called peripherical revolutions1but during the last fteen yearsin particular, historiography has instead insisted on consensus andon elements of permeability and exchange. To speak of integration,however, implies arming something more than consensus anddierent from it; it signies pinpointing the constants that deneSicilys participation in the construction of the new Castilian monar-chy of Charles V (15161556), Philip II (15561598), and their heirs.Moreover, it also (and to the contrary) involves noting what wasspecic to that participation and pointing out its limitations.

If the term integration requires denition, so does the termconict. Here conict is not intended to refer solely to open rebel-lion, but rather to the entire complex of contrasts and tensions withinSicilian society that, admittedly, went so far in some cases as to leadportions of that society to take the extreme option of insurrectionand, ultimately, of calling for help from the Most Christian King ofFrance, the only sovereign in the panorama of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries powerful enough to hope to undermine theCatholic monarchy of Spain.

Obviously, a theme this broad requires a somewhat schematicapproach; moreover, the long time span of two centuries makes it

* Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.1 For revision of this concept, see Jean-Frdric Schaub, La crise hispanique de

1640. Le modle des rvolutions priphriques en question (note critique), Annales:Histoire, Sciences Sociales 1 ( January-February 1994): 21939.

24 francesco benigno

impossible to take into account nuances inherent in each particularset of circumstances. Nevertheless, this parachutists viewif I maybe permitted the well-known imagehas its utility: it permits us tosee the woods as a whole, and to discern contours and forms thatmight escape the mushroom-hunter.

The rst objective of this essay is thus to dene the specic char-acteristics of the participation of the Kingdom of Sicily (Regnum Siciliae)in the Castilian monarchy. The second aim is to attempt to explainthe causes of Sicilys long season of consensus with the policies ofthe Spanish Habsburgs, a task that of course involves delineating theprincipal modes of integration. The third objective is to isolate thecauses of the upsurge of the widespread conict during the courseof the seventeenth century, and then to discern what induced Siciliansto rebel on two occasions, rst in 164748 coincident with the revoltof Naples (the famous revolt of Masaniello), then in the revolt ofMessina in 167478.

In pursuing these aims I shall seek to demonstrate that the con-ventional thesis of the so-called pact or contract subscribed toby the Sicilian elites (terms coined, however, to refer to the elites ofNaples) are overly schematic and, in substance, misleading.2 Thispoint of view makes metaphorical use of a contractual frameworkto insist on the aristocracys voluntary renunciation of an active polit-ical role and its supine acceptance of higher taxation in exchangefor social predominance and scal immunity. Without doubt, thisthesis relies on some veriable processesfor example, the feudalnobility did lose some autonomous capability to use forcebut itrenders them static and imprisons them within a rather mechanicalscheme. Seen from the Sicilian point of view, this thesis tends tosqueeze the governing class of the island into a homogeneous, polit-ically united role that it never had;3 above all, it tends to obscuresignicant variations in political orientation through time.

2 Rosario Villari, The Revolt of Naples, trans James Newell (Cambridge: Polity Press,1993), orig. ed., La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli: Le origini (15851647) (Rome andBari: Laterza, 1967); Giuseppe Galasso, Intervista sulla storia di Napoli, ed. Percy Allum(Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1978), 46; Galasso, Napoli spagnola dopo Masaniello: Politica,cultura, societ, 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 1:iii.

3 In this connection, see Francesco Benigno, Mito e realt del baronaggio:Lidentit politica dellaristocrazia siciliana in et spagnola, in Francesco Benignoe Claudio Torrisi, eds, Elites e potere in Sicilia: Dal Medioevo ad oggi (Catanzaro:Meridiana, 1995), 6378.

integration and conflict in spanish sicily 25

It seems more productive to pinpoint, within the evolution of thesystem of integration, the fundamental process that led to a notice-able change in political relations between the Sicilian aristocracy andthe Spanish Habsburg monarchy. This occurred after the introduc-tion, rst, of the valimiento, the system of placing the royal powerinto the hands of one chief minister, the valido or court favorite,then of what was called the war government or the extraordinarygovernment.4 Rather than considering these processes as resultingfrom an exchange or a pact, it seems to me more productive to tryto read them, on the one hand, as emerging out of long-term trans-formations involving both Spanish society and Sicilian society (urban-ization, the aristocrats shift to being courtiers, the growing bureaucracy),and, on the other hand, as direct eects of changes in the politicalsystem regarding the center and the peripheral territories.5

1. The Kingdom of Sicily in the Castilian Monarchy

This means that I shall give special consideration to the institutionalchannels, notably the restructuring of the political-administrative appa-ratus during the course of the sixteenth century, culminating in thereform of the courts in 1569,6 which embodied the mechanisms forthe integration of Sicily into the composite monarchy of the SpanishHabsburgs.7

4 Governo di guerra; governo straordinario. I am alluding here to RichardBonney, Political Change in France Under Richelieu and Mazarin, 16241661 (Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Bonney, The Limits of Absolutism in AncienRgime France (Aldershot, Hampshire, Brookeld VT: Variorum, 1995).

5 For shifts of perspective in the relations between the Kingdom of Sicily andthe Crown in Sicilian historiography, see Domenico Ligresti, Per uninterpretazionedel Seicento siciliano, in Gianvittorio Signorotto, ed, LItalia degli Austrias: Monarchiacattolica e domini italiani nei secoli XVI e XVII (Mantova: Centro Federico Odorici,1999), vols. 1718 of Cheiron, 81105. See also the summary in Pietro Corrao, LaSicilia provincia, in Francesco Benigno and Claudio Torrisi, eds, Rappresentazioni eimmagini della Sicilia tra storia e storiograa (Caltanissetta and Rome: Salvatore Sciascia,2003), 4158.

6 See Vittorio Sciuti Russi, Astrea in Sicilia: Il ministero togato nella societ siciliana deisecoli XVI e XVII (Naples: Jovene, 1983.)

7 I use the term Monarchy in the sense given to it by Gregorio Lpez Madera:The most powerful Kingdom with the most provinces and Kingdoms subjected toit is called Monarchy (Llamuase por excelencia Monarcha, el reyno ms poderosoy que ms reynos y provincias tuviese subjetas). Gregorio Lpez Madera, Excelenciasde la Monarqua y reino de Espaa (1625) (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Politicos y


A rapid examination of the role of the viceroy and the few otherSpanish functionaries present on the island, on the one hand, andof Sicilian functionaries in Madrid, on the other hand, illustrates theweakness of the ocial structures through which (in theory) politi-cal integration was accomplished. Ocially, the number of Spanishfunctionaries present on the Island was limited to the viceroy, hisconsultore (rst councilor of the kingdom, appointed directly by theking), and a variable but restricted number of other ministers.8 Theprivilege of naturalezathe right of native Sicilians to hold manypositionsof course hindered the proliferation of Castilian politicalpersonnel in the public administration. Several means were used toovercome this obstacle. The simplest of these was for a Spaniard tobe naturalized as a Sicilian, earning citizenship by residence in aSicilian city for a certain period or per ductionem uxoris, by taking aSicilian wife. This escamotage was much used, in Palermo in particu-lar, which was generally known as an open city, in a strategy thatit adopted to enhance its incomplete or challenged status as a cap-ital city. On other occasions various expedients were used to cir-cumvent the privilege that reserved posts to native Sicilians.9 FrancescoFortunato observed early on that for some time now, this has beenallowed to happen, and indeed not too long ago, the King appointeda Genoese to a judgeship on the High Court, a promotion thatcaused consternation for the Deputation of the Kingdom servingunder the Viceroy.10 It should be recalled, in this connection, thatit is in the nature of things that no nation in the world appointsforeigners to its ocesthat is, for reasons of governance nearly

Constitucionales, 1999), 26. See also, J. H. Elliott, A Europe of CompositeMonarchies, Past and Present 137 (1992): 4871.

8 On the post of consultore, see Adelaide Baviera Albanese, Lucio del Consultoredel vicer nel quadro delle riforme dellamministrazione giudiziaria del secolo XVIin Sicilia, Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato, XX (1960): 14995.

9 On the use of such maneuvers, see Francesco Benigno, Considerazioni sullastoriograa municipale in et spagnola, in Il libro e la piazza. Le storie locali dei Regnidi Napoli e Sicilia in et moderna, Atti del convegno, Maratea, 67 June 2003, ed. A. Lerra (Manduria, Bari, and Rome: Piero Lacaita, 2004), 5168.

10 De algun tiempo a esta parte se ha alargado la mano en esto, antes se havisto Juez de la Gran Corte genoves en encomienda y par provision de Rey, enesta ultima promoci de que se agravi la Diputacion del Reyno delante el Virrey.Below: Qualquier nacin del mundo tiene por naturaleza de no darse los ocios estrangeros; en seal de conana; vasallos conquistados. See Adelaide BavieraAlbanese, ed., Los avertimientos del doctor Fortunato sobre el govierno de Sicilia(1591), in Documenti per servire alla storia di Sicilia, ser. 4, vol. XV (1976): 5764.


all the kings in the world have granted this right, as a sign of trust,even to conquered vassals. For example, when Portugal became aSpanish dependency, Philip II promised the Portuguese that he wouldrespect all their fueros y privilegios [ laws and privileges], among these,the reservation of castles to the native-born. In Sicily, on the otherhand, as Fortunato notes, castles could be given to foreigners.

Another way to avoid the problem was to create posts for extra-ordinary councilors, a system that was used not only in the case ofthe Great Sicilian, Carlo dAragona y Tagliavia, the duke ofTerranova, but also for such Spaniards as the alcado mayor of Castile,don Pedro Gonzles de Mendoza, don Ottavio de Aragn, and donNofre Escriv. These were practices that invariably aroused the oppo-sition of the Deputation of the Kingdom, prompting such protestthat Philip II declared that the extraordinary councillors not takepart in adjudicating cases involving the property and income of theroyal patrimony or the Sacro Consiglio, comprised of the greaterand more important ocials of the kingdom.11

Given that they were subject to such limitations, institutional meansfor integration were inevitably modest in scope. The overall pictureis more complex than this, however, and it cannot be restricted tothe political and administrative infrastructure alone. Above all, weneed also to consider the military sector, although its weakness inSicily seems clear, especially after the end of the great war opera-tions in the Mediterranean against the Turks. Sicily, as is known,had played a relatively large role in military action in the 1530s and40s, the years of the capture of Tunis and Goletta. Later, beginningwith the vice-regency of Juan de Vega, came the erection of a defen-sive system of watch towers and fortresses, backed by the kingdomsgalleys. As late as the 1570s, Sicily was the logistic base for the oper-ations at Lepanto. Nonetheless, as early as the end of the century,and in spite of later attempts on the part of viceroy Osuna to buildup Sicilys military role, a progressive decline in the importance ofthe Mediterranean front and the consequent tendency to down-sizethe Castilian military presence on the islanda loss that was par-tially overcome, though with an exclusively defensive aim, by the

11 Pietro Celestre, Idea del govierno del reyno de Sicilia, in Vittorio SciutiRussi, ed., Il governo della Sicilia in due relazioni del primo Seicento (Naples: Jovene, 1990), 48.


constitution of citizen militiasbecame an undisputed fact.12 Oncethe fear of a Turkish military conquest had abated, the real prob-lem in the seventeenth century became the raids of Barbary pirates,who sacked coastal towns and threatened to reduce their unprotectedpopulations to slavery. One sign of this shift was the cutback in thegalley eet, which went from some twenty vessels in the time ofMarcantonio Colonnas vice-regency to nine in Osunas day, andlater, ultimately to a squadron of six vessels. Pietro Celestre per-ceptively comments: It seems they are going to shrink, not grow.13

The infantry troops stationed in Sicily were also reduced substantiallyto one Spanish tercio, that is, to between fteen and eighteen infantrycompanies, plus ve companies of lancers of sixty horses each.

Ecclesiastical structures, both secular and regular, require exami-nation as well. A characteristic of the Sicilian scene was the pres-ence of the important institution of the Regia Monarchia. This was thesovereigns enviable power, as papal legate, to have a free hand inlling vacant seats in the churches that lay in the royal patronage.This power enabled him to confer a conspicuous number of eccle-siastical posts to Castilian (or at least Spanish) personnel. Even if thetitular holders of such posts and beneces did not necessarily residein Sicily, this was yet another fundamental channel of integration.It was of course reinforced by the presence on the island of theSpanish Inquisition, another means for inserting Spanish personnelinto important nerve-points of Sicilian society.

Historians have often interpreted the privilege of the RegiaMonarchia (also known as the Legazia Apostolica)14 as an instrumentof monarchic absolutism, a weapon in the hands of the monarch tocounter papal claims to a right to interfere in religious life and inthe Church in Sicily. Often the Spanish Inquisition, of which theSicilian Inquisition was a dependency, has been seen in the sameway.15 However, the Sicilian experience was one of a continuous

12 Domenico Ligresti, Lorganizzazione militare del Regno di Sicilia (15751635),Rivista storica italiana, vol. 105, no. 3 (1993): 64779.

13 Parece que ayan de menguar que no crecer. Celestre, Idea del goviernodel reyno de Sicilia, 11.

14 Gaetano Catalano, Studi sulla Legazia Apostolica di Sicilia (Reggio Calabria: Parallelo38, 1973); Salvatore Fodale, LApostolica legazia e altri studi su Stato e Chiesa (Messina:Sicania, 1991).

15 Vittorio Sciuti Russi, Introduction to Henry Charles Lea, Linquisizione spagnolanel Regno di Sicilia (Naples: Edizioni Scientiche Italiane, 1995), Italian translation


jurisdictional friction between those two institutions in a series ofconicts in which both the regular and secular clergy were intenselyinvolved. Rather than reinforcing the absolute power of sovereignty,the presence of institutions directly controlled from Madrid, as werethe Regia Monarchy and the Inquisition, seems to have created otherchannels connecting the center and the periphery that consolidatedrelations based in politics, family, friendship, or kinship.

One aspect of these connections or channels that should be stressedis that they were not hierarchically disposed even though theydepended, in whole or in part, on the Crown. The system for thepolitical integration of Sicily into the Spanish Habsburg monarchythus seems to have been arranged, in the sixteenth century, by meansof distinct, more or less parallel, and occasionally conicting, channels.16

In conrmation of this, the frequent jurisdictional disputes amongthe various institutions were, for the most part, not resolved on thebasis of a pre-established hierarchy; they were settled by politicalconsiderationsthat is, in essence, by an institutions ability to bet-ter represent and guarantee the objectives of the monarchy. In otherwords, in any given context, the institution that prevailed (which wasnot necessarily the one with the greatest formal prominence) was theone that found a better way to interpret the Crowns requirementsfor loyalty and service. This occurred not because of any institu-tional virtue, but rather by the actions of the men (the groups, fac-tions, or clientele systems) who formed that institution at a givenmoment.

From this point of view, the oce of the viceroy, leaving asidesome viceroys talent for dominating the scene, was not thought ofas the undisputed channel for an executive chain of command, butrather as just one important charge in a jurisdictional universe thatincluded other, concurrent oces. Moreover, the stability of thatcharge (a three-year mandate, rotation within a cursus honorum) went

of Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies: Sicily-Naples-Sardinia-Milan-The Canaries-Mexico-Peru-New Granada (New York and London: Macmillan, 1908; Eugene, OR:Wipf and Stock, 2003, 1922); Francesco Renda, Linquisizione in Sicilia: I fatti, le per-sone (Palermo: Sellerio, 1997).

16 See H. G. Koenigsberger, The Government of Sicily Under Philip II of Spain: A Studyin the Practice of Empire (London and New York: Staples Press, 1951), in many waysa pioneering work. Available in an emended edition as The Practice of Empire (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1969).


in tandem with its limitations. It has often been noted that the posi-tion of consultore, the other muy preminente oce that was almost alwayslled by a Spaniard (So that [he] not be inuenced by kinship orsimilar things, it is ordered that he be a foreigner, that is, the oce-holder had to be someone predisposed to counsel the viceroys onall occasions.), was in reality an instrument of parallel control. Insubstance its function was not overly dierent from the control overthe governor in French pays dEtat provided by the intendent in theage of Louis XIII and Richelieu. This remains true even withoutconsideration of the system of ocial visits.17 Because the visitors-general were functionaries chosen by royal appointment, they had aparticular relationship with the viceroy. It is signicant that in theceremony in which he received his patent, a visitor-general was givenan elaborately decorated armchair identical to the viceroys.18 Moreover,even if his visit did not, by denition, directly concern the viceroysoperations, the viceroys entourage regarded it with understandabledidence. There is abundant evidence of visitors who complainedof the viceregal secretariats failure to cooperate with their inquiries.

In a certain sense, there is a curious parallel between the stabi-lization of the role of the viceroy, anked by the junta of the pres-idents and the consultore, and the stabilization of the role of Parliament(and of the Deputation of the Kingdom, its executive committee).This stabilization represented one aspect of the formal respect owedto the constitutions of the Kingdom of Sicily, but it was also a wayto seek an ecacious connection with Sicilian society, especially inthe aim of locating resources.

This opens a question much debated in Sicilian historiography:that of the historical signicance of the long duration of the SicilianParliament, a body that met with no consistent attempt, during theSpanish period, to suspend its sessions or abrogate its functions. Thislong continuance can be explained by the fact that, overall, the

17 Para que no pueda tener passion de parentesco o cosa semejante esta man-dado que sea estrangero; para aconsejar a los virreies en todas las occasiones:Celestre, Idea del governo, 43. For the ocial visits, see Mireille Peytavin, Visiteet gouvernement dans le Royaume de Naples XVIXVII e sicles (Madrid: Casa de Velzquez,2003). The rst part of this work presents a thorough analysis of the role of theseinvestigatory visits in the Spanish crown lands in Italy.

18 Ceremoniale dellillustrissimo senato palermitano, in Documenti per servire allastoria di Sicilia, ser, 4, Cronache e scritti Varii, vol. III, fasc. 1 (Palermo, 1895), p. 118.


Parliament functioned eciently as an instrument of integration.19

Although every session presented the governing forces with problems(rst among them, maneuvering among a constant ood of petitionsfor special favors), all in all Parliament responded positively to ever-increasing requests for donativi, its supposedly voluntary monetary aidsto the king.

2. The Causes of Integration

What really assured the long-term political integration of Sicily intothe Spanish Habsburg monarchy was the kinship connections betweenSicilian families (aristocratic families in particular) and the Aragoneseand Catalonian nobility and, with increasing frequency, the Castiliannobility. Such links provided a substantial continuity of family andcultural traditions. According to Pedro de Cisneros, the ill-fated sec-retary to viceroy Marcantonio Colonna imprisoned for fraud andextorsion, writing in his Relacin de las cosas del reyno de Sicilia,20 themost prominent gures in the Sicilian nobility should henceforth beconsidered as completely hispanized: these included the prince ofButera, the holder of the highest title in the kingdom and a memberof the house of Santa Pau, who boasted of his familys origins inCatalonia; the prince of Castelvetrano and duke of Terranova, whotraced his lineage in part from the famous Blasco de Alagon whoarrived in Sicily in 1282 with Pedro de Aragn, the king, and who was, according to Cisneros, related to the royal house of Aragn.Francesco Moncada, the prince of Paterno, lord of Aderno and Calta-nisetta and count of Golisano, is given as a great-grandson of Juande Vega on his mothers side; Juan de Ziga, the prince of Pietraperziawas Comendadador mayor de Castilla; Pietro de Luna (a family considered

19 It is interesting to note the obviously dierent situation of the Parliament inthe Kingdom of Naples. For useful particulars, see Carlos Jos Hernando Snchez,El parlamento del Reino de Napoles bajo Carlos V: Formas de representacin,facciones aristocraticas y poder virreinal, in Laura Casella, ed., Rappresentanze e ter-ritori: Parlamento friulano e istituzioni rappresentative territoriali nellEuropa moderna (Udine:Forum, 2003), 33087.

20 Pedro de Cisneros, Relacin de las cosas del reyno de Sicilia, ed. Vittorio SciutiRussi (Naples: Jovene, 1990), 410. On the traditions, actual and presumed, of theSicilian nobility, see E. Igor Mineo, Nobilt di stato: Famiglie e identit aristocratiche neltardo Medioevo: La Sicilia (Rome: Donzelli, 2001).


to have come from Aragon), the duke of Bivona, marquis of Giar-rantana, was descended on his mothers side from the duke ofMedinaceli; Fernando de Tllez de Silva, the marquis of Favara, aPortuguese family.

It would be mistaken to think of these connections, cemented bymarriage, as private ties. They were also political alliances thatinuenced choices and determined options regarding public life.Moreover, it was thanks to what we can call a long familiarity withthe political landscape of the Iberian peninsula that the great Sicilianfamilies had relatives, agents, friends, and allies at court.

Representation at court of the Kingdom of Sicily was thus farfrom being limited to the presence of a regent in the Council ofItaly and a secretary or a court chaplain or two. An examinationof private correspondence with persons sent to court shows us a com-plex universe of close but informal contacts that conveyed politicalrelations of notable importance.21

Then of course there are the cities. Big cities were endowed withpolitical traditions and invested with privileges. These cities attemptedto tailor an intermediary space for themselves. Here the presence ofa special case like that of Messina, one of the most privileged citiesof the monarchy, should be stressed, not only in its own right, butalso for the example it provides in contrast to other urban centers.One of the main characteristics of Messinas liberty, which all theother cities of Sicily tended, in dierent ways, to imitate, was thepresence and activities of its agents and representatives at court.22

Once again, the center responded positively. The open model ofintegration not only left room for rival models, but even tended toencourage them.

Palermo, the contested capital city, reacted to Messinas attack byfocusing on its role as a court city, hence a natural place of resi-dence of Sicilian noble families as well as the new noble familieswho were rising in society thanks to the wealth they had accumu-

21 See the correspondence of Vincenzo Patern di Raddusa, Lettere di Spagna edaltri luoghi, ed. Simona Giurato (Catania, 2001).

22 In this connection, see the highly instructive Giuliana di scritture dal sec. XV alXVIII dellArchivio Senatorio di Messina, compilata da D. Rainero Bellone, trascritta e contin-uata sino al 1893 da D. Salesio Mannamo, R. Mastro Notaro del Senato, per suo uso per-sonale, vol. 2 of Carmelo E. Tavilla, Per la storia delle istituzioni municipali a Messinatra Medioevo ed et moderna, 2 vols. (Messina: Societ Messinese di Storia Patria, 1983).


lated in commerce and the liberal professions.23 In Palermo suchindividuals used the court to establish contact with the centers ofpolitical decision in Sicily, which were also the summits of political,judicial, and ecclesiastical power. Palermo welcomed them and wel-comed the transformations they introduced (as was true in Naples)24

when they built their city houses or palaces there, but also whenthey founded monasteries and charitable institutions.25

The multifaceted world of connections and channels of integra-tion also includes a shared cultural koin. Common themes are every-where: in the baroque restructuring of the realm of the sacred; ina widespread fondness for Spanish reed spear tournament and bullghts( juegos de caas and toros), for preaching, and for the theater; in apassion for the new style of urban decoration borrowed from Rome,26

and, conversely, even for criticism of the court and an exaltation ofcountry living (alabanza de aldea). From that viewpoint the vice-regalcourt represented a fundamental pivot point: it was a center of trans-mission for the new cultural initiatives, the fashions, and the newdirections taken by a governing class thatfrom Madrid to Palermocoordinated, rened, and continually modied its tastes.

3. Integration and Division to 1620

These basic processes and this convergence made possible by a mech-anism of supple integration were subject to phases of accelerationdictated by politics. The rst of these arose out of the side eectsof the introduction of the system of valimiento.27 In a rst phase, val-imiento brought increased access to royal favor and protection (patron-age); the auctioning o of titles and oces that granted the holder

23 Valentina Vigiano, Lesercizio della politica: La citt di Palermo nel Cinquecento (Rome:Viella, 2004).

24 Grard Labrot, Baroni in citt: Residenze e comportamenti dellaristocrazia napoletana15301734, trans. Renato Ruotolo (Naples: Societ Editrice Napoletana, 1979).

25 Sara Cabibbo and Marilena Modica, La santa dei Tomasi: Storia di suor MariaCrocissa della Conzezione (165499) (Turin: Einaudi, 1989).

26 Grard Labrot, Roma caput mundi: Limmagine barocca della citt santa 15341677(Naples: Electa Napoli, 1997), Italian translation of Limage de Rome: Une arme pourla Contre-Rforme, 15341677 (Seyssel [Paris]: Champ Vallon; distribution, Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1987).

27 For further development of the theme of the valimiento, see Francesco Benigno,Lombra del Re: Ministri e lotta politica nella Spagna del Seicento (Venice: Marsillio, 1992).


noble status, a willingness to alienate portions of the royal patrimonyto the advantage of both the old and new nobility, and the creationof institutional protection for indebted feudal holdings. These processescontinued on into the age of Philip III (15981621), together witha notable increase in matrimonial ties between the Sicilian nobilityand the Castilian aristocracy.28 Taken as a whole, these develop-ments accelerated preexistent tendencies toward the forced promo-tion to nobility of the elites; they also redened the relationshipbetween city and country, leading to profound changes in territor-ial equilibrium.

It is with the duke of Osunas arrival in Sicily as viceroy (16111616)that we can begin to see clearly to how great an extent these optionstended to become divisive, hence to produce conict.29 Osunas attackon the privileged status of Messina set up opposing forces that wereto persist throughout the seventeenth century. This was no longer asimple clash between two privileged cities, Messina and Palermo, incompetition for the title of capital city; on a deeper level, it reectedtwo diering conceptions of the role of Sicilian participation in theMonarchy. One portion of Sicilian society resisted in the face of theviceroys rst attempt to break down certain privileged arrangements(guaranteeing others, and with them in essence reinforcing the strate-gic importance of the power block of grain interests concentrated inPalermo around the viceroy). It is interesting to note that this resis-tance, which was aimed at both the conservation of interests andthe defense of traditional ideas regarding the limits of viceregal actionand the nature of relations between the Crown and the Kingdom,met with an attentive hearing from some members of the Councilof Italy and the court.

This means that divisions existing at court and in Sicily began toconverge. Obviously, this was not the rst time that correlations ofthe sort had ever occurred. During the course of the sixteenth cen-tury there had been important alliances between factions at court

28 Francesco Benigno, Aristocrazia e Stato in Sicilia nellepoca di Filippo III,in Maria Antonietta Visceglia, ed., Signori, patrizi, cavalieri nellet moderna (Rome:Laterza, 1992), 7693.

29 See Vittorio Sciuti Russi, ed., Il parlamento del 1612: Atti e documenti, Quadernono. 14 (Catania: Universit di Catania, Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Antropo-logiche, Geographiche, 1985); Francesco Benigno, Messina e il duca di Osuna: Unconitto politico nella Sicilia del Seicento, in Domenico Ligresti, ed., Il governo dellacitt: Patriziati e politica nella Sicilia moderna (Catania: C. U. E. C. M., 1990), 173208.


and groups of Sicilian families. Often these alignments arose thanksto a viceroy: Garcia de Toledo (15651568), for example, relied onthe support of the largest Sicilian political block (the Aragona andTagliavia families);30

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