“The Horseshoe Nail”: Structure and Contingency in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

Abstract

This essay considers the role of contingency in the history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy. Were there any events — a birth, marriage, or death; a battle; a natural catastrophe — that might have changed decisively the trajectory of Italian history? The Roman papacy is one institution whose history, replete with contingent events (1305, 1378, 1418, 1527) had a profound impact on Italian experience. The foreign invasions of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were the product of a cluster of historical accidents in France and Spain, which combined to create the most significant development in the early modern history of Italy.