Chapter Five. Naples and Florence in Charles V’s Italy:Family, court, and government in the Toledo-Medici alliance

Abstract

This chapter explains some of the political and ideological keys of the transformation, within the framework of broader research on the overall history of the Neapolitan viceroyalty, in which until the mid-sixteenth century, the French option for much of the kingdom’s nobility continued to constitute a real possibility in Italy’s complex political environment. It then focuses on the funding of new St. Peter’s. Taking as a starting point two contemporary interpretations of Genoese revolt furnished by two protagonists of those events, the chapter discusses some of the processes which were taking place in the political life of the city from the end of 1550s. It then approaches the terraferma as a state in its own right, one with many affinities to other territorial states in Italy in this period: the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Milan, and the Kingdom of Naples, itself part of a larger imperial system. Keywords: Duchy of Milan; Genoese revolt; Grand Duchy of Tuscany; Italian states; Kingdom of Naples; Neapolitan viceroyalty; political life; Spanish influence; St. Peter