Una lettura delle Lettere storiche di Alvise Da Porto

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct the figure of Alvise da Porto based on the Lettere storiche (unfortunately, the only source available). What emerges is that in addition to being a writer of great talent, he was also an ambitious young man with a keen ability to interpret political and military events. He was severe in his judgement of all those who entered combat and always seemed better informed and more knowledgeable, both politically and militarily. There are many passages that would indicate him to be a confirmed pacifist who hated any form of military intervention. Yet at the same time he greatly admired swordsmanship (the so-called arte delle armi), given its close ties to the knightly code present in epic poetry; indeed, for him it was in hand-to-hand combat that one acquired military honour. While he does not openly denounce firearms and artillery in his letters, he claims them to be deleterious even before hostilities arise, for when cities are fortified, works of art and farmland are destroyed or greatly damaged. He shows incredibly painstaking precision in his descriptions of the multiple sieges carried out by the troops of the League of Cambrai on cities like Vicenza, his family’s city, which was loyal to Venice.