Medieval times were diverse, perhaps beyond modern comprehension; a polyglot of local and regional customs, laws, allegiances, obligations, justice, historical privileges and tax regimes. Not only man-made but physical laws as well were thought by many to vary from place to place, and a great many locales offered cures for diverse illnesses, either by the virtues of a particular place itself, or more recently the intervention of a virtuous Saint, whose remains were displayed sometimes piecemeal in the great Cathedrals of Europe.
The highways of Europe were clogged, in those days, with bands of travelers; groups of men following the obligation of Christians of the day to Holy Pilgrimage along the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela, to Rome, and Jerusalem. And lesser places, with their own histories, Saints, Holy Relics, hospitals and monasteries. Pilgrimage itself was one obligation amongst many acquired by men of action in Medieval times. Italian Archeologist Giovanni Cassieli identified the route described by Sigeric, Tenth Century Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury, as he walked the 1200 kilometers of the Via Francigena, an ancient Pilgrim Way, from the centre of European Catholicism to its Northern edge.
I laughed out loud the other day when someone on TV announced "the poor are always with us". This is such a medieval idea (but perhaps a more enlightened one than the more modern idea that poverty can be "cured"). Medieval peasants would not work without obligation to work, so the logic went, otherwise they would work only enough to feed themselves and their families and laze around the rest of the time. The lazy peasant argument was revived, in recent times, in the junk science of environmental determinism. But it was an argument against the modern politics of Absolutism, in the day, for the lazy peasant would not respect power if it were far away, like most Kings of the time were. Far better for the Local Lord to have an obligation to provide land for local lazy peasants to grow food on, and the lazy peasant family to have an obligation to work, from time to time, on any nation-building a local lord might be obliged to do in discharge of their own obligations to higher powers. As people had done since unremembered times.
Absolutism was a political philosophy popular amongst European royal houses I guess because it offered a good chance of their dynastic longevity, or a least-worst one. The continuance of a dynasty was the best hope for political stability and peaceful prosperity amongst the competing noble houses of Europe, a least-worst opportunity to transfer power and avoid a bloodbath. So the faceless bureaucrats of an increasingly influential European merchant class must have believed, just looking at the vast amounts of private money spent to prosecute absolutist causes.
Medieval society had for centuries depended upon diversities of obligation, lengthy chains of social causation that stretched from the lowliest beggar to the highest in the land, and beyond life itself to Heaven, or Hell, if fate so conspired. Now, the winds of change began to blow, the power of Rome to anoint monarchs was threatened, and the natural order symbolized by the bands of pilgrims traveling the Via Francigena shook at the sudden chill.
Absolutism was to Medieval times what Just In Time Inventory Management is to modern capitalism - both a revelation and a sure bet on vastly increased profits. The assumption of absolute power by a king rendered a great deal of Medieval infrastructure redundant, and many seats of local power were razed, looted, and plundered. The wealth of regions flowed instead to absolute monarchs, and the merchant class who backed their success from the major port-cities of the day. Importantly, Absolutism promoted the idea that God could and did speak to mortal men, unmediated by the priest class that had formerly announced the legitimacy of kings.
It is impossible, perhaps, to imagine the religious devotion of the vast majority of medieval peoples. One measure is perhaps the rate at which the scythe of reform cut them down. Tens of thousands died during the Reformation in England, for instance. The average person was on a pilgrim's progress to heaven, or hell, staking their immortal soul on good guidance, knowing that everything could be lost upon a single slip. And they fought like the Devil to protect the religious institutions that, mostly, were obliged to take an interest in their welfare.
The Fourteen-Nineties were the best of times and the worst of times for the City-State of Florence. The European Renaissance of ancient ideas about art and science flowered under the patronage of influential Florentines. Skillful diplomacy with the regional superpowers kept the governance of Florence for the most in the hands of Florentines, and the city had vassals, notably Pisa, amongst the lesser surrounding regional centres.
Florentine achievements came under pressure from all quarters. Success depended upon the capacity of its institutions to navigate the complex hierarchies of obligation which characterize Medieval politics, inside and outside the city walls. One slip might, and sometimes did, bring about the destruction of not only aspirations but entire cities and their inhabitants.
Florence's Monastery San Marco is, like so many of the great Florentine institutions, a symbol of the intellectual and moral influence the Nation-Sate enjoyed in Medieval Europe. The Monastery's Dominican Friars were custodians not only of the building but also Florentine achievements and the intellectual heritage of Medieval Europe itself, symbolized in part by the Scholastic achievements of Thomas Aquinas, and the fresco paintings of Fra Angelico.
King Charles VIII of France, called Affable by his acquaintances after his friendly demeanor, marched into Italy with an army of mercenaries at the invitation of Pope Innocent VIII, and confronted a Florentine army before the walls of Pisa, a Florentine vassal state. Piero Medici, son of the legendary Lorenzo, capitulated, accepted humiliating terms, and forfeited Pisa, which declared itself a republic independent of Florence.
The oligarchy ruling Florence fell, Piero himself fleeing to Rome, where the new Borgia Pope and his allies took alarm at France's intervention in the Italian peninsula. The people of Florence turned to the past and future simultaneously, declaring a Christian Republic with Jesus at its head, a nod to both Florence's glorious Roman Republican past, and the new politics of Absolutism. Earthly power, in the new order, rotated between different factions of the laity, clerics, and what noble houses and merchants that had not fled.
Again, it is impossible to imagine what terror the ordinary Florentine felt as they gave up every vanity they had to be burned on the Shrove Tuesday bonfire in the Piazza della Signorina, a century's worth of independent thought, along with the recently rediscovered ancient texts that inspired them. Strict rules of attire were adopted, to clearly signify the ranking of bodies according to their nature. Regional trade and local commerce were severely curtailed, as the burghers of Florence considered their own position in the order of things and played it safe.
Inquiry, what we would call knowledge, was discredited completely, and people looked to prophecy, signs, and revelation for clues. Rumours swept the Via Francigena and other pilgrim ways: the Antichrist was in Rome, the Moon rose red with blood, and the dead stalked the living and knocked on their doors, crying for justice. It is often said that the light of civilization rose in the East and travelled Westward. But civilization's progress, quickened during the Quattrocento Renaissance in Florence, was abandoned, condemned as corrupt, self-serving and vain. The endeavors of men could not prevent invasion from France, neither could they prevent the destruction of the whole natural order by Absolutism, except in alliance with the forces of Heaven. Huddled within its city walls, Florentines gathered instead in the Piazza San Marco, before the Monastery San Marco, waiting to be saved, not only from northern Absolutism but also from themselves.
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