Chapter 2 argues that syncretism, a form of eclectic union, is temporal as well as spatial. As a temporal form, syncretism consolidates historical events, daily individual experiences, and social practices onto a shared plane. This chapter analyzes syncretism in Risorgimento Florence, examining how the city adapts to serve modern Italy while maintaining its historical significance. I read Florence through the travel narratives of Susan Horner, two guidebooks (Walks in Florence, which Horner coauthored with her sister Joanna; and Mornings in Florence by John Ruskin), and a forgotten novel (Isolina, which I attribute to Susan Horner). Across these genres, syncretism emerges as a temporal form capable of defining liberty democratically so that Florence potentially serves as a model of egalitarianism internationally in response to nineteenth-century revolutions and wars.

Florence in the fifteenth century was in transition from the medieval to the modern world, and sexual attitudes and practices were very much in flux. The most distinctive feature of Florentine sexuality was the city’s international reputation as a hotbed of ‘sodomy’. Traditional structures of marriage and the family coexisted with a widespread culture of male homoeroticism. Female prostitution was sanctioned by the state, in the hope that it would reduce both male homoeroticism and adulterous relations. At the same time the new ideal of romantic love was spreading to all social classes, bringing changes to the ways people thought about marital and intimate relations. This chapter focuses both on the idealization of male homoeroticism in humanist culture and on the repression of male homosexual activity by the Office of the Night, the judicial branch that policed sodomy. It contrasts the celebration of physical beauty in Florentine visual arts with the preaching of the Dominican reformer Savonarola, who harshly condemned worldly luxuries. Savonarola’s public execution by burning in 1498 provides an ironic contrast to his own bonfires of the vanities, in which luxury goods were burned, but it also mirrors the public burning that was the traditional punishment for sodomy.

Following his return from Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and then his journey to Rome, Nogueira continued to experience displacement while always looking for an opportunity to settle down. Upon arrival in Rome, he encountered a global city within which knowledge functioned as a currency to access patronage. In this highly competitive environment, populated by many other mercenaries of knowledge, Nogueira sought support across the city while trying his luck in other places such as the English monarchy. Aware of the difficulty of making a living in Rome, Nogueira followed a new patron to Bologna. There, he familiarized himself with the politics of the papal states in northern Italy, learned from the intense intellectual life around the university, and became involved in political negotiations between papal authorities, the Republic of Venice, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In the midst of these negotiations, he put his historical expertise to work by getting involved in an episode of forged Etruscan archaeology connected to rivalries between the Medici and Barberini families. As a ghostwriter for one of the reports concerning this forgery, he made a case for himself as someone who could serve back in Rome in a multitude of capacities, including legal courts and libraries.

This chapter considers Puccini’s relationship with his native region, Tuscany. It begins with a discussion of how Florence is represented in the comic opera Gianni Schicchi, asking how realistic the depiction of the city is. The author provides a political and social history of the region, starting with the glorious reign of the Medicis and moving on through the Habsburg era to the politics of Puccini’s own time. The chapter discusses agricultural policies in the region, industrial expansion, the emergence of the modern labour movement, uprisings and unrest, and fascist suppression, showing that the Tuscany of Puccini’s time was not the rural idyll depicted in Gianni Schicchi. The chapter also considers the region’s rich artistic culture and the importance of Florence as an intellectual and literary centre.

Giovanni Villani, in his chronicle, reports that, in 1117, Pisa and Florence formed a military alliance. Pisa asked for protection against Lucca, while their troops were busy in Mallorca besieging a Saracen stronghold (Figure 4.1).1 The safeguard from Lucca meant a Florentine military presence right at the doorstep of their neighbors, the problematic nature of which did not escape the attention of the author. Villani explains at length the measures taken by the Florentine army to avoid any potential attack on women in Pisa while their men were away.

Presumably not long after his arrival in Rome, Raphael drew a figure of Lucretia (Figure 7.1).1 The drawing is a telling example of the transformation of her reception. After 1500, the Roman heroine of freedom and chastity became a pin-up model.2 Raphael skillfully anticipates the requirements of the genre. Her torn attire follows the curves of her body, and a dysfunctional fold underscores her genitalia. Her hair is tied but slightly disheveled. The theatrical gesture of the left arm conveniently reveals her bare breast. The dagger in her right-hand changes into an overt phallic reference from a mortal instrument. Lucretia has just been raped and her suicide is imminent, yet the painter opts for a voyeuristic presentation of her body. The narrative context and physical signs of violence are retained inasmuch as they support this sanitized scenario.

This chapter examines Machiavelli’s view of Girolamo Savonarola – an apocalyptic figure in fifteenth-century Florence – and apocalyptic thought more generally. Though the standard understanding of Machiavelli is that he dismisses Savonarola, a close reading of his writings reveals a respect for Savonarola and his apocalyptic message. Savonarola used his apocalyptic message to help found new orders – the highest human achievement according to Machiavelli. By drawing on the Christian idea of the new Jerusalem and Roman idea of the Eternal City, Savonarola instilled the republican government of Florence with deep religious meaning and political promise. Though Machiavelli sees Savonarola as a failed founder, his failure is not due to his apocalyptic message. Machiavelli recognizes the power of this message, but ultimately rejects apocalyptic hope because he cannot fathom achieving a lasting utopia in a world marked by decay and continual change.

A part of this book’s story shows how four poets sought to create an institution of poetry because other paths to recognition and power in the civic space were blocked to them. The defense of poetry and laurel crowning were modes of political empowerment. By the end of the fourteenth century, with the increasing bureaucratization of cities like Florence, the intellectuals who take up the cause of poetry no longer do so to defend their own role in society. The authority of the poet is reabsorbed by the authors of the works read by these functionaries, who shared a similar training in grammar, rhetoric, and law with these poets, but whose effective authority in the city required no defending. As a concluding example, the epilogue examines the first defense of poetry of Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), which takes place in a series of private letters written to Bolognese Chancellor Giuliano Zonarini in 1378–79. It suggests that the previous poets’ concern for situating themselves vis-à-vis political power is translated into a role for poetry itself.

The fourth chapter shows how Boccaccio manipulates the Petrarchan model of the poet for different ends. It is prefaced by a reassessment of the relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch, focusing on the political differences between the two poets. In an analysis of the initial years of their friendship, the chapter shows how Boccaccio moves from seeing Petrarch’s presence in Florence as the condition for the repatriation of Dante’s poem, to trying to separate the two poets from one another in his first redaction of the Vita di Dante. After establishing the fundamental political and cultural differences between the two poets, the chapter moves to an analysis of Boccaccio’s defense of poetry in Book 14 of the Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri, which has traditionally been understood as a reiteration of Petrarch’s ideas. It argues that Boccaccio undermines and at times reverses the terms of Petrarch’s notion of the poet’s relationship to the city, which also has implications for the value of vernacular poetry. Throughout, the chapter indicates how Boccaccio’s Decameron and vernacular poetry are often in the background of his defense. It concludes with the suggestion that Boccaccio obliquely claims for himself the role of the poet for the city.

Chapter 1 focuses on the transnational networks of the three English republican exiles. It follows Ludlow, Sidney and Neville on their journeys to the Continent and shows the extent to which the refugees relied on pre-existing networks formed during earlier periods of their lives through their families, their education, their religion and their political activity, and on new connections forged during their travels. Ludlow made his way to Geneva with the help of French Huguenot acquaintances and subsequently benefited from their wider religious networks in Switzerland. Sidney in contrast had to leave a diplomatic assignment in Copenhagen without much preparation and initially moved to Rome on a whim, recovering old and forging new connections among the religious establishment soon after his arrival. Neville was the last of the three to leave for the Continent after being arrested for his suspected involvement in a plot to restore the Commonwealth in England. As a prisoner in the Tower, he made arrangements with the Earl of Clarendon to retreat to Italy, where he was to benefit from the hospitality of the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinando II as well as from the anonymity enjoyed by foreigners in Rome.

Key to the training of the boys was their master, who was responsible for their upkeep as well as their musical training. Men in such positions had typically themselves been through choirboy training and were highly accomplished musicians. The most notable choirmaster in the book’s period of interest, Jean Thorion, a native of Saint-Omer, offers a particularly astonishing example of the international draw of northern maîtrise training. In his youth, Thorion had been employed far away from his homeland in Florence, where he worked as a singer and tutor at the priory of the SS Annunziata. Here he was patronised directly by the Medici family, and Lorenzo Il Magnifico in particular. Apparently the most significant role within the northern maîtrise of this period was that occupied by the tenorist, in which role no one was more glittering than the former tenorist of King Ferrante of Naples, Grigoire Bourgois, a central figure in St Omer for a quarter of a century. The chapter also addresses the copying of polyphonic music, and most importantly the role in this capacity of the celebrated composer Jean Mouton, a native of the region.