BOOK: Pier Candido Decembrio, "Lives of the Milanese Tyrants"

Pier Candido Decembrio: Lives of the Milanese Tyrants. Translated and with an introduction by Gary Ianziti; edited by Massimo Zaggia. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 88. Harvard University Press, 2019. 9780674987524. lii + 339 pp.

The book begins with an introduction by the translator, Gary Ianziti, which tells us more about Decembrio's life and the history of Milan during that period (approx. the first half of the 15th century). Until now I had known nothing about the subject except being vaguely aware of the names of the two the rulers whose biographies appear in this book, so I found this introduction very interesting. Decembrio spent much of his career as an official in the employ of Filippo Maria Visconti and thus much of his biography of this duke is based on first-hand experience and observation — a notable difference compared to Suetonius's biographies of the Roman emperors, which otherwise formed an example that Decembrio tried to follow in his biography of Visconti (p. xxiv). Suetonius, of course, lived 50–200 years after the emperors he wrote about, so his work was based on written sources rather than personal experience.

The Visconti line came to an end in 1447 when Filippo Maria died without an heir. He had apparently earlier made efforts to have a half-brother and a nephew declared heir (Life of Visconti, 40.3; n. 84 on p. 284; n. 150 on p. 295), but later changed his mind when they turned out to be reckless and ill-behaved. Upon the duke's death, the leading citizens of Milan set up a sort of oligarchical regime called the Ambrosian Republic (p. xvi). I remember having heard of this republic in the ITRL before, in the work of Francesco Filelfo, who was clearly not fond of it (see my post from a few years ago). [Filelfo would later emerge as one of the leading humanists under the Sforza regime, and even went so far as to write an epic poem, the Sphortiad, in praise of the new ruler; but it was apparently not very good: see nn. 6–7 on p. 296.]

Decembrio, by contrast, seemed to get along just fine with the republican government, and served it as a secretary (pp. xviii, xxxi). He gives a nice overview of the turbulent atmosphere in Milan at the time in his Sforza biography, 35.2: some people (mostly merchants) wanted a republic, some (mostly noblemen) a strong ruler, and the conflict intensified all the way to conspiracies, massacres, executions, exiles and the like (see also n. 99 on pp. 309–10). To make matters worse, a famine also developed; “according to Simonetta, the starving Milanese were eventually reduced to eating not only dogs and cats but even rats and other things ‘disgusting and repugnant to humankind.’ ” (translator's note 101 on p. 310).

Duke Visconti had been involved in frequent wars, especially against the Venetians, and these same wars also plagued the short-lived Ambrosian Republic. They engaged the services of Francesco Sforza, a condottiere who had already served under the late duke (and was in fact married to the duke's illegitimate daughter, Bianca Visconti; Life of Visconti, §27, 38.3). They soon found themselves depending so much on Sforza that it was hard to resist his claims that he should become the next duke, and the republic's fate was finally sealed when he betrayed them by switching over to the Venetian side. Sforza became the new duke in 1450.*

[*In fact it seems that his title was a matter of some dispute. The Visconti family had obtained the title from the Holy Roman Emperor in the time of Gian Galeazzo, Filippo Maria's father (Life, §4, and n. 11 on p. 273), and that title was supposed to have become extinct with their line; and Francesco Sforza never managed to obtain an equivalent title from the then emperor.]

Decembrio spent the first few years of the Sforza rule in Rome (pp. xxviii–xxix) and was never able to gain as much influence in Milan under Sforza as he had had under Visconti. His biography of Sforza was an effort to suck up to the new duke, but with very limited success (p. xli). Apparently it is also rather inaccurate, as Decembrio didn't have much first-hand knowledge of the new duke, and the Sforza government ignored his requests for more information that would have been of use to him in writing the book (p. xli).

Life of Filippo Maria Visconti

As mentioned above, Decembrio's biography follows the examples of Suetonius, though it is perhaps a bit longer than Suetonius' biographies of the emperors are on average. It is not arranged strictly chronologically, as biographies often are, but thematically, with sections about the duke's ancestors, his warfare and foreign policy, his domestic policies, his personality and pastimes (e.g. playing with tarot cards; §61.1 and n. 119 on p. 289), etc. There's a chapter about his favourite dishes, but none of them struck me as particularly appetizing (§52).

It is the earlier part of the duke's career that struck me as the most impressive; although the Visconti family had been rulers of Milan for several generations by then, they lost control over much of their territories during the reign of the duke's elder brother, and he spent much of his early career trying to recover these lost territories. He was keen on military matters, but later in life got so fat that he couldn't even ride a horse (§49.2) :))

Despite his long and close association with the duke, Decembrio is not afraid to say unflattering things about him, but he manages to do this in a matter-of-fact manner that comes across as objective and not overly judgemental. Perhaps he felt that many of the bad things the duke had done were simply things that a suitably Machiavellian ruler had to do in order to keep himself in power. Besides, as he says in his letter to Leonello d'Este, to whom he sent a manuscript of the biography, his aim was not “to cover my prince with opprobrium, but to spread his fame and glory”; but for this to work, the book had to be credible, and this meant also honestly describing his negative side (p. 253).

Visconti appears to have been a very unpleasant and paranoid character, treating his wives badly (§39), spying upon his citizens (§55.2), distrusting even his closest advisors (“Filippo Maria was a man so tormented by suspicion that he hardly trusted even himself” — The Deeds of Francesco Sforza, 30.2), constantly playing mind-games upon them, deliberately behaving in an unpredictable, threatening and confusing manner, and doing everything he could to make sure nobody could ever feel comfortable around him. He liked to surround himself with “well-endowed young men of great beauty” (§46.1), and when they grew too old for him, he made them his favourite confidants and spies (§46.2).

Sometimes there was method to his madness: “His technique was to appoint honest men of great learning and then give them vile and morally corrupt colleagues. He did this in order to prevent the former from gaining influence by exploiting their righteousness, and the latter from doing so by resorting to treachery.” (§34.1).

And sometimes there was just plain madness. He forbade people from entering the palace in dark-coloured clothing (§48.1, 51.1). He “disciplined horses that neighed too much (and at the wrong times) by having their tongues or their testicles cut off” (§59.3).

Overall his paranoid style of rulership reminded me of what one usually hears about mafia bosses — no matter how powerful the boss is, he doesn't have a moment's peace, but must constantly stay on the alert for possible threats, either from the law, from his rivals, or from his own minions who might be seeking to overthrow him at any moment. That Visconti, who in theory at least was the legitimate ruler of Milan, had to resort to the same degree of paranoia, suggests to me that there was in a certain sense something fundamentally illegitimate about his rule. But then I think this is true about any monarchy in which the ruler is not a mere figurehead, and Visconti seems to have been just another in a long line of examples demonstrating what a bad mode of government monarchy is.

The Deeds of Francesco Sforza

This biography is somewhat shorter than the previous one and, as the title suggests, it focuses more on Sforza's activities as a ruler and less on other aspects of his life and personality — a notable contrast with Decembrio's biography of Visconti (or Suetonius's biographies of the caesars, for that matter). I guess this is partly because Decembrio was not that well informed about the private side of Sforza's life, and partly his aim was to ingratiate himself with the Sforza regime by praising Sforza as a ruler, so that's what he focused on.

Whatever the reason, the result is that I found this biography a good deal less interesting to read than the Visconti biography. Sforza's career comes across as mostly a long series of wars and battles, which for me are one of the most boring things about the history of Renaissance Italy. Decembrio makes use of this opportunity to kiss Sforza's ass in truly outrageous fashion, comparing his abilities as a general to those of Alexander the Great (§2) and Julius Caesar (§20.2).

But I liked the early sections, which go into a fair amount of detail about Sforza's ancestry, especially the career of his father, Muzio Attendolo, who was a noted condottiere in his own right and whose efforts provided Francesco with a starting point without which he probably wouldn't have been able to become the ruler of Milan. It was with Muzio that the surname Sforza originated, as a nickname inspired by “his aggressive battle tactics” (n. 4 on p. 296).

Another interesting thing about reading this biography were the numerous notes by the translator pointing out Decembrio's errors, some of which are honest mistakes due to his being poorly informed, while some are deliberate distortions in an effort to show Sforza in the best possible light (see e.g. notes 40, 45, 48, 60, 86).

*

All in all, this was a fairly interesting book. When you read about the Renaissance in Italy, it seems to usually be about Florence, and then sometimes perhaps Rome or Venice, but not so often about Milan, so from that point of view it was nice to see something new here. Visconti and Sforza, who had been little more than names to me before I read this book, are now a tiny bit more than names, though I don't doubt I'll forget most of the details again very soon anyway.

ToRead: an interesting book is mentioned in the translator's notes (n. 109, p. 311): Anthony F. D'Elia, Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance (Harvard UP, 2016). Considering that most of my experience of Malatesta so far comes from Pius II badmouthing him regularly in every book of his autobiography, it might be interesting to read something more sober about him :)