Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza, 1329–1535, by Jane Black

Abstract

The cover of Jane Black’s book is illustrated with a historiated initial (D: Psalm 53, Dixit insipiens) from the famous Visconti Hours of 1388: depicted in the initial are King David—representative of just rulership and, here, of the Milanese signore Giangaleazzo Visconti—tempted by a personified Insipiens, the fool, who from his knees petitions the monarch to overturn the law. The image captures the essential tension that this book explores: how was the Milanese regime of the Visconti and their Sforza successors to justify its need to act above the law of the many communes it ruled and even to overrule fundamental rights without undermining its claims to non-tyrannical power and the fair administration of justice? Drawing on the acts and concessions of the Visconti and Sforza as well as on the substantial body of commentaries and consilia produced for them, Black shows how absolute, or plenitude of, power was claimed by the signori and then by the dukes of Milan at various times and in various ways with the help of many of the age’s greatest legal minds. The result is an impressively researched history of ideas, which furthermore contributes to long-lasting but still lively debates about the nature of liberty and tyranny in early Renaissance states.