Culture and Politics in Renaissance Rome: Marco Antonio Altieri's Roman Weddings

Abstract

What induced Marco Antonio Altieri, a Roman noble, to write a treatise on wedding ceremonies, at the beginning of the sixteenth century? It is the purpose of this article to suggest some possible answers to this question, and in so doing, to focus on the problems facing the Roman nobility in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Those problems have received little attention from historians. The present contribution can only hope to shed some light on the ideological concerns of one “committed” Roman noble. It does not aspire to an overall study of the Roman nobility. When necessary, however, it will refer to more general trends in the city of Rome during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Altieri'sLi nuptialiis worthy of study if for no other reason than that it represents an important, perhaps unique, departure from the kind of writing associated with Renaissance Rome.