The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Burckhardt describes the Italian despot as a ruler with no legitimate claim, isolated and in constant danger, who rises by talent and calculation, and whose rule mixes good and evil.

A Throne Without Legitimacy

After the fall of Frederick and Ezzelino, Burckhardt writes, a crowd of tyrants appeared. They usually came forward as Ghibelline leaders, yet under such varied conditions that he sees in it a law of supreme and universal necessity.

For Burckhardt, the illegitimacy of the tyrant's rule isolated him and surrounded him with constant danger. The most honourable alliance he could form was with intellectual merit, without regard to its origin.

The Prince and the Poet

The northern princes of the thirteenth century gave their liberality only to knights, the nobility that served and sang. The Italian despot, driven by thirst of fame and a passion for monumental works, needed talent, not birth.

Talent Is the Only Ladder

In the fifteenth century, Burckhardt argues, the despotisms changed character. Some lesser tyrants and some greater ones, like the Scala and the Carrara, had vanished. The survivors, enlarged by conquest, each developed their own system. The Condottieri, the hired soldier-captains, tried to found dynasties of their own.

• Facts and actual relations of things count, apart from traditional estimates.
• Talent and audacity win the great prizes.
• Petty despots enter the service of larger states and become Condottieri themselves, paid in money and impunity.
• Every ruler must act with more caution and calculation, and refrain from wholesale barbarities.
• Public opinion allows only as much wrong as the end requires.

No half-religious loyalty like that behind the legitimate princes of the West is visible here. Personal popularity is the nearest thing to it. Burckhardt adds that Charles the Bold, wearing himself out on impracticable ends, was a riddle to the Italians.

The Despot as Administrator

He adds that these states, depending for existence on themselves alone and scientifically organised to that end, present a higher interest than mere narrative.

Burckhardt reports the court's costs: body-guard, mercenary troops, public buildings, buffoons and men of talent, all met from the ruler's income. He also describes a theorist's ideal prince, which he calls a purely modern fiction of the omnipotence of the state.

• Independent of his courtiers, yet governing with simplicity and modesty.
• Maintaining churches and public buildings, the municipal police, the draining of marshes, the supply of wine and corn.
• Exercising strict justice and taxing so that people see the necessity.
• Supporting the sick and the helpless, and protecting distinguished scholars on whom his fame will depend.

Bastards on the Throne

Closely tied to political illegitimacy, Burckhardt holds, was public indifference to legitimate birth, which struck foreigners such as Comines. In Italy, he writes, there no longer existed a princely house where, even in the direct line, bastards were not patiently tolerated.

Individual fitness, worth and capacity, he writes, outweighed all the laws and usages elsewhere in the West.

The Condottiere as Highest Illegitimacy

For Burckhardt, the most admired form of illegitimacy was the Condottiere who raised himself to independent rule. He compares the Norman occupation of Lower Italy in the eleventh century. Such attempts kept the peninsula in constant ferment.

After Piccinino's death, such new states became an intolerable scandal. Naples, Milan, the Papacy and Venice formed an equilibrium that refused disturbance. In the States of the Church, the Popes' nephews, from Sixtus IV. on, monopolised such undertakings.

Smallest States, Greatest Crimes

Burckhardt holds that the greatest crimes are most frequent in the smallest states. Bernardo Varano of Camerino put two of his brothers to death in 1434, wishing to divide their property among his sons.