Conflict and Reconciliation in Italian Renaissance Conspiracies: Literary Sources and Political Perspectives

This contribution investigates the political tensions that characterize conspiracies in the Italian Renaissance, focusingon the uneasy relationship between the ideas of reconciliation and conflict as they emerge in a number of literary texts devoted to plots (Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against pope Nicholas V in 1453; the assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Milan in 1476; the plot against Alfonso and Ippolito d’Este in 1506). The sources examined reveal the key role played by the complementary concepts of concordia and discordia in Renaissance political thought. Most conspiracies were followed by the plotters’ harsh punishment and, at the same time, by subtle attempts at appeasement by rulers, who sought to maintain their power by re-creating social cohesion. The combination of these seemingly contrasting policies is reflected in the literary narratives of the events, where three main approaches towards reconciliation and reprisal can be identified. We have works that urge rulers to be merciful; sources where a conciliatory attitude appears only some years after the plots; and texts where the depiction of the revenge carried out against the culprits by the common people conveys a sense of regained unity in the state. This analysis shows the complex, and not linear, process of pacification after the plots and allows us to gain a better understanding of how the notion of political conflict was seen in the pre-Machiavellian age: whereas "concordia" was the conceptual cornerstone in political systems, the idea of opposition was not cancelled and erased from the political debate and historical memory (as some scholars claim); rather, it became the topic of several literary and historical works and, thanks partly to this narrativemeans, was exorcized and brought to reconciliation.