1556- Pope Paul IV Carafa, wanting to drive the Spaniards out of his native Naples, initiates a war against the new king, Philip II. The Spanish won and this began a long period of Spanish dominion over much of Italy. While later historians looked at the flaws of Spanish rule, contemporary Italian writers at the time didn’t seem to see it that way. On the contrary, the Spanish rule in Italy showed flexibility, resilience, and effective statecraft that witnessed a variety of positive internal and external political developments for Italy.
The threat of the Ottomans shaped Italian politics during the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was this common threat to the various Italian states that joined them together in the Holy League of 1571. During this time, the ideas of papal absolutism, and Spanish absolutism, ecclesiastical and secular power, grew more interdependent. This alliance revealed an increasingly mature diplomatic corps in the peninsula. There was a regular mail service between the various Italian states and Spain- the most regular in early modern Europe. They also demonstrated new levels of military organizational capability, logistical sophistication, and strength.
This level of function required a host of bureaucrats, and these positions were filled through what would become one of the predominant features of the Italian state- patronage politics. The princes used these appointments to build their political factions and support. The Spanish monarchs were themselves skilled in this game, and at all levels of government, these positions were highly sought after as social position and sources of income. But it came at the price of an increasing debt.
In 1595, the French king Henry of Navarre, converted to Catholicism which patched up relations with the Pope and brought French influence back into Italy. The French had built up a respectable faction within the cardinals at Rome, but the Venetian attempts to play the French and the Spanish off each other through the Interdict controversy of 1606-07 resulted in Spain triumphing and French influence waning.
The interdict controversy elaborated a sophisticated exchange of competing theories of state.
Political theory did not drive political practice in the late 1500s. The three major political theories were Machiavellian realism and ‘reason of state’; republicanism; and neo-Thomism at the service of absolutism. But it was the expanding power of the states- particularly the Papacy and Spain, that drove the elaboration and dissemination of the theories of absolutism and the application of reason of state arguments.
For Venice, it was the Papacy and Spanish threats that drove their primary theorist, Paolo Sarpi, to use the theory of the free republic and principles drawn from the reason of state to explain and justify the Venetian government’s claims. According to Sarpi, state sovereignty was ‘a power absolute by nature from which nothing can be exempted or excepted’. From there, it followed that Venice could not accept Papal intrusion into its affairs. Sarpi argued that God intended two forms of government: one spiritual, and the other temporal, to exist side by side, but independent of one another. The Pope had no right to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state, whose power was given by God; and further, state power extended to jurisdiction over clerics and church property within the state’s jurisdiction.
The Papal / Spanish position was found in the writings of Robert Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit, and the Spanish Jesuit, Francisco Suaréz. The were the primary exponents of a natural-law theory of the state. Under this theory, the Pope had the ultimate authority, since only he had been given his power directly from God. Earthly governments were given their power by the people. Once that power was given, they acknowledged it was absolute, but it was temporal and could be taken back if abused. Such was not the case with the pope.
On the ground, the Spanish monarchy was steadily gaining control over the Church in its territories throughout Italy. Venice on the other hand was feeling increasingly threatened by a resurgent Rome. And while the theoretical disputes were ostensibly over divine intervention, the interpretation of scripture, and the philosophical fine points of power, with Christ, Plato, and Aristotle occupying center stage, Machiavelli and raw power were always in the backgrounds concerned more with raw power and political necessities. Indeed, the core purpose of each of these players was the preservation and expansion of their government power.
Italian politics was married to Spanish imperial politics until 1700, with the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II.
Napoleon invaded northern Italy in 1796 and had effective control over the peninsula from that point, which is where the book ends.