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.  .  . 
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.  . 
Conspiracy Literature in
Early Renaissance Italy
Historiography and Princely Ideology
MARTA CELATI
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Marta Celati 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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In memory of my father Nedo

Acknowledgements
In delivering this book to the press I have several debts of gratitude. My first and
foremost thanks go to Martin McLaughlin, my supervisor and, most importantly,
my invaluable guide in all these years since the first stages of my DPhil at Oxford.
Without him this book would not have been possible and I will be always deeply
grateful to him for all his continuous advice, always given with a friendly smile
able to support me beyond the academic work. I would also especially like to thank
Nicola Gardini, who gave me the chance to share with him not only my research
(and in particular my love for Poliziano) but my thoughts on life and much more.
Every time I have had the opportunity to talk with him during my time in Oxford
it was a very enriching moment. I am also grateful to Brian Richardson, the
external examiner of my DPhil thesis, for his crucial suggestions that helped me
to improve the original draft of this book.
After my study at Oxford I continued my academic work thanks to fellowships
that allowed me to do research in renowned Institutions, in particular the
Warburg Institute and the University of Warwick, where I found invaluable
interlocutors. I owe profound gratitude to David Lines, my mentor for my
three-year research project at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at
Warwick funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. He is a priceless mentor, who has
encouraged me to expand my research outlook and follow my personal interests in
intellectual history, politics, and philosophy, always supporting me in both my
previous and new research.
From the beginning of my journey as a young scholar I have been very lucky to
have the irreplaceable guidance of Gabriella Albanese, my maestra since my
dissertation at the University of Pisa. Among many other things, she taught me
what love for philology is and what this art really means not only in scholarship
but in our fickle contemporary world. I would also particularly like to thank Paolo
Pontari, for his continuous encouragement since my first studies, and Jill Kraye,
for the interest she has always shown in my work and for the stimulating
conversations I have always had with her at the Warburg Institute. I am grateful
to all the generous interlocutors I had the chance to meet over these years and
from whom I received important advice of various kinds, in particular: Concetta
Bianca, Guido Cappelli, Ingrid De Smet, Bruno Figliuolo, Simon Gilson, James
Hankins, Stephen Harrison, Antonietta Iacono, Elena Lombardi, and Paola Tomè, a
dear friend who sadly left us too early.
I want to express my gratitude to the anonymous readers of this books for the
Oxford University Press and to Wes Williams, the Chair of the Modern Languages
Monographs Committee, for all their vital suggestions. I am also grateful to the
viii 
Oxford University Press and all people who collaborated on this publication in
various ways at all stages, in particular Eleanor Collins, the Senior Publishing
Editor in Literature, and Ella Capel-Smith, the Editorial Assistant of the Academic
Division.
The study published in this volume was made possible thanks to the Clarendon
Fund (University of Oxford), from which I received a Clarendon Scholarship that
funded my DPhil, and the Justin Gosling Award I was given from St Edmund Hall
(Oxford). This book also benefited from the new perspectives of study that I was
able to develop (and incorporate in this work) thanks to new research projects
I carried out funded by a Frances A. Yates Short-Term Fellowship at the Warburg
Institute and a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of
Warwick (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance).
Finally, my most profound thanks are addressed to my family, my mother
Margherita and my sister Alessandra, and to my husband Leonardo, for their love
and unending support every day. This book is dedicated to the memory of my
father Nedo, the brightest light in my life.
Table of Contents
List of Figures xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
I.1 Fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies: a thematic
and political genre 1
I.2 The prince in literature on plots: power and resistance in the
literary realm 10
I.3 The classical tradition and crossovers between humanist
historiography and political literature 16
I.4 Texts on political plots: a multifaceted corpus 21
1. Orazio Romano’s Porcaria: Humanist Epic as a Vehicle
for Papal-Princely Ideology 29
1.1 Orazio Romano and the composition of the poem 29
1.2 Stefano Porcari and the conspiracy against Nicholas V 37
1.3 Poetry as literary transposition of the topic of conspiracy 41
1.4 Classical legacy and Latin sources in the Porcaria 45
1.5 The ‘papal prince’ and the political perspective in the poem 60
1.6 The eclectic use of the classical legacy and a new political
symbolism 69
2. Leon Battista Alberti’s Porcaria coniuratio: The Epistle as
Unresolved Reflection on the Political Plot 72
2.1 Alberti and the Porcaria coniuratio 72
2.2 The epistle as historical writing: the conflation of literary genres 77
2.3 Classical theoretical models: Alberti’s view of history 81
2.4 Thematic and stylistic models: a Sallustian conspiracy 91
2.5 ‘Eclectic classicism’ in Alberti’s language 97
2.6 The rhetorical construction of an unsettled political dialogue 100
2.7 The disapproval of res novae and the ‘iciarchical’ image of power 105
3. Giovanni Pontano’s De bello Neapolitano: The Historia of the
Conspiracy in Political Theory 113
3.1 Pontano the historian, the royal secretary, and the theorist
of politics and historiography 113
3.2 Pontano’s models and the development of political historiography 119
3.3 Conspiracy, obedience, and kingship in Pontano’s political theory 130
3.4 The barons and the crime of disobedience 132
3.5 The loyal noblemen and the repentant traitors 139
3.6 The princeps and his people 143
x   
4. Angelo Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium:

The Conspiracy Narrative as ‘Official’ Historiography 157
4.1 Composition, publication, and circulation of the Coniurationis
commentarium 157
4.2 Classical models: varietas in the historical account 166
4.3 The stylistic revision of the text 175
4.4 The Commentarium in Medici cultural politics 177
4.5 The evolution of the political perspective: from the first to
the second version 184
5. The Conspiracy Against the Prince: Political Perspective and
Literary Patterns in Texts on Plots 190
5.1 The classical legacy: genres, models, symbolism, and
political tradition 190
5.2 The centrality of history and its literary forms 196
5.3 Political ideology and narrative strategies: the practical model
for an ideal state 198
5.4 Moving towards the sixteenth century 209
6. ‘Congiure contro a uno principe’: Machiavelli and
Humanist Literature 212
6.1 The ‘conspiracy’ in Machiavelli’s work 212
6.2 The phenomenon of plots, between political theorization
and historical narrative 218
6.3 Conspiracy, tyrannicide, and crimen laesae maiestatis 220
6.4 The princely dimension of Machiavelli’s thought on plots 224
6.5 The common people as decisive protagonist 230
6.6 Motives and outcomes of plots: the bitter acknowledgement
of the ‘certissimo danno’ 238
Conclusions 249
Index of Manuscripts and Archival Documents 253

Bibliography 255
Index 281
List of Figures
1.1. Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit in Utrecht, ms. 826 (5 M 22), f. 2r;

dedicatory epistle by Orazio Romano to Pietro Lunense. 32
1.2. Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit in Utrecht, ms. 826 (5 M 22), f. 5r;
incipit of Orazio Romano’s Porcaria. 36
3.1. Guglielmo Monaco, Bronze gate of Castel Nuovo, Naples (1475ca.).
Particular: the battle of Troia won by Ferdinando of Aragon. 150
3.2. Guglielmo Monaco, Bronze gate of Castel Nuovo, Naples (1475ca.).
Particular: the ambush in Teano against Ferdinando of Aragon. 151
3.3. Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Italien, 1711, f. 8r:
The ambush in Teano against Ferdinando of Aragon, illumination
by Nardo Rapicano (1493). 152
4.1. Angelus Politianus, Coniurationis commentarium, s. l. et a.
[Roma: Johannes Bulle, 1480]. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München,
Ink. P-665, f. 1r. 187
4.2. Bullae ‘Ad apostolicæ dignitatis auctoritatem’ et ‘Inter cetera quorum
nos cura sollicitat’ contra Laurentium de Medicis [Roma: Johannes Bulle,
post 22 June 1478]. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Sixtus IV,
Ink. S-437, f. 1r. 188
List of Abbreviations
DBI Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, dir. Alberto

M. Ghisalberti, Massimiliano Pavan, Fiorella Bartoccini,
Mario Caravale (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia
Italiana, 1960–)
Lehnerdt Horatii Romani Porcaria, seu De coniuratione Stephani
Porcarii carmen cum aliis eiusdem quae inveniri
potuerunt carminibus primum edidit ac praefatus est
Maximilianus Lehnerdt; accedit Petri de Godis
Vicentini De coniuratione Porcaria dialogus e codice
vaticano erutus (Lipsiae: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1907)
Alberti, Porcaria coniuratio Leon Battista Alberti, Porcaria coniuratio, edited by
Mariangela Regoliosi, in Leon Battista Alberti: Opere
latine, edited by Roberto Cardini (Roma: Istituto
poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2010), pp. 1265–1281
ISTC British Library, Incunabula Short Title Catalogue.
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/
Machiavelli, Florentine histories Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine histories, edited by
Laura F. Banfield, Harvey C. Mansfield (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988)
Machiavelli, Discorsi Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito
Livio, edited by Francesco Bausi, Edizione Nazionale
delle Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli (Roma: Salerno
Editrice, 2001)
Machiavelli, Discourses Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, translated with
an introduction and noted by Julia Conaway
Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997)
Machiavelli, Istorie Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, in Niccolò
Machiavelli, Opere storiche, edited by Alessandro
Montevecchi and Carlo Varotti, directed by Gian
Mario Anselmi, Edizione Nazionale delle opere di
Niccolò Machiavelli (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2010)
Machiavelli, Il principe Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, edited by Mario
Martelli, ‘Corredo filologico’ by Nicoletta Marcelli
(Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2006)
xiv   
Machiavelli, The prince Niccolò Machiavelli, The prince, trans. and ed. by Peter
Bondanella, with an introduction by Maurizio Viroli
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Poliziano, Coniurationis Angelo Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, con
commentarium introduzione, traduzione e commento edited by Marta
Celati (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2015)
Poliziano, The Pazzi conspiracy Angelo Poliziano, The Pazzi conspiracy, translated by
Elizabeth B. Welles, in The earthly republic: Italian
humanists on government and society, edited by
Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth
B. Welles (Manchester: Manchester University press,
1978), pp. 305‒322
Classical authors and titles of classical texts when abbreviated follow the abbreviations of
the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, editus auctoritate et consilio Academiarum quinque
Germanicarum, Berolinensis Gottingensis Lipsiensis Monacensis Vindoboniensis (Lipsiae
in aedibus B. G. Teubner, 1900‒).
‘Ex hac tanta rerum commutatione saepe ego

de humanae fortunae instabilitate sum admonitus . . . ’
[By this great upheaval and these changes
I was often reminded of the instability of human fortune]
Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium
Introduction
I.1 Fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies: a thematic

and political genre
Conspiracy has always been a recurring political practice and, more generally, a
frequent political phenomenon in history, relevant to any form of power since
antiquity. It has been brought to the foreground of the contemporary historical
and political context especially since the last century, acquiring new distinctive
shades, characteristic of the post-modern era, but one of the ages in which this
means of resistance against power had its major diffusion is the Renaissance—and
in particular the Italian Quattrocento, which can be deservedly regarded as an age
of plots. In this period, conspiracies became the most frequent political actions
aimed at overthrowing governments. One of the most remarkable aspects in the
early-modern Italian milieu is that the centrality of this political issue is not
limited to the historical dynamics, but it is much more all-encompassing as it
also embraces the literary dimension of Renaissance culture. This is proved by the
considerable production of texts specifically focused on contemporary conspir-
acies written in Italy in the second half of the Quattrocento: an output that reveals
the pivotal significance that this political matter also acquires as a literary theme. It
is in light of the literary prominence of this subject, which is closely interlaced with
the historical and cultural momentousness of plots in the same period, that this
study is dedicated to fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century Italian litera-
ture on this particular topic. The focus is placed on the most important humanist
texts that provide accounts of conspiracies and on the evolution of this political
issue in Machiavelli’s work in the early Cinquecento.
This output, which has not been previously identified and systematically
analysed, consists of texts belonging to different literary genres. It enjoyed con-
siderable diffusion in the second half of the fifteenth century, when the develop-
ment of this literary topic in a substantial group of works is closely connected with
both the emergence of a centralized political ideology in most Italian states and,
from a cultural point of view, the growing centrality of narrative of contemporary
history as the linchpin of political literature. One of the main threads that binds all
these works together is their literary nature, but this component is intertwined
with, and at the same time nurtures, the historiographical foundations of these
texts, inasmuch as they deal with, though in different forms, the historical
representation of contemporary plots. The fertile interplay between purely literary
Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideology. Marta Celati,
Oxford University Press (2021). © Marta Celati. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198863625.003.0001
2      
components and historiographical elements, emerging especially in the concrete

narrative strategies that frame these different texts, is what produces a polychrome
but consistent corpus informed by a prominent political character, which is able to
convey a coherent ideological message.
One of the defining aspects of this literary output is the pivotal role played by
the classical legacy in all these texts. The employment of both traditional rhetorical
genres and specific classical sources reveals a sophisticated and complex proced-
ure of reworking manifold literary elements. This affects multiple textual aspects
and involves classical symbols, narrative techniques, stylistic tools, and interpret-
ative categories of political phenomena. The multiform operation of recasting
classical auctoritates, typical of humanist culture, in this strand of literature
matches and, at the same time, underpins the political and ideological principles
that, either implicitly or more openly, underlie all the texts. Because of the
heterogenous literary character of this output, the interchange between political
and rhetorical ingredients takes different shapes according to the specific literary
forms used and, from a political point of view, turns out to reflect the historical
background and the ideological standpoint of each work. The main classical
model is predictably Sallust’s De coniuratione Catilinae, which had already circu-
lated widely and had been extensively used in the previous centuries especially as a
historical source.¹ Nevertheless, now the revival of the classical world in these
works is much more wide-ranging and multifaceted than the mere adoption of
one chief classical auctoritas as the exclusive prototype. This eclectic approach
appears in both the multifunctional reworking of Sallust’s work (on a structural,
thematic, stylistic, and conceptual level) and in the combination of this main
model with other multiple sources. Thanks to the process of reappropriation of
the classical world that was enhanced in the fifteenth century, new classical
authors, also of the Greek tradition, started to circulate again more widely and
to be translated, becoming now an integral part in the construction of humanist
political literature and joining the already more influential auctoritates (such as
Sallust himself ). However, even the more canonical models now are reworked
¹ On the reception of Sallust in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: La Penna, Antonio, ‘Brevi note sul
tema della congiura nella storiografia moderna’, in La Penna, Antonio, Sallustio e la ‘rivoluzione’
romana (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1968), pp. 432‒52; Skinner, Quentin, ‘The Vocabulary of Renaissance
Republicanism: A Cultural longue durée?’, in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, edited by
Alison Brown (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 87‒110; Osmond, Patricia J., ‘ “Princeps Historiae
Romanae”: Sallust in Renaissance Political Thought’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40
(1995), pp. 101‒43; Osmond, Patricia J., ‘Catiline in Fiesole and Florence: The After-Life of a Roman
Conspirator’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 7, 1 (2000), pp. 3‒38; Osmond, Patricia J.,
‘Catiline in Renaissance Conspiracy Histories: Hero or Villain? The case of Stefano Porcari’, in
Congiure e conflitti. L’affermazione della signoria pontificia su Roma nel Rinascimento: politica,
economia e cultura. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma, 3‒5 dicembre 2013, edited by Miriam
Chiabò, Maurizio Gargano, Anna Modigliani, and Patricia J. Osmond (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento,
2014), pp. 203‒15.
 3
through a more eclectic and original perspective of adaptation to the contempor-

ary cultural dimension. Additionally, the re-elaboration of the classical tradition is
not only crucial from a purely literary perspective, concerning mainly rhetorical,
thematic, and narrative aspects, but also from the point of view of the function of
exemplarity, on a more conceptual level that displays even more explicit political
implications. In consideration of the centrality of the classical legacy in these
works, in this volume specific attention is paid to the role of this defining
component in this literary output.
The remarkable expansion of this literature on plots after the middle of the
fifteenth century has to be contextualized in the historical scenario of this period,
when many conspiracies took place in the Italian states, so that this epoch can
be rightly defined as the ‘age of conspiracies’. This periodization was coined by
the eminent historian Riccardo Fubini to label the precise time span between the
1460s and 1470s and it is based on historical evidence.² Nonetheless, more
generally, the striking diffusion of conspiracies in the broader Renaissance age,
especially in Italy, has been noted by several scholars. It was already implicitly
pointed out by Jacob Burckhardt in the first part of his very famous and founda-
tional work The Civilization of the Renaissance, entitled The State as a Work of
Art, where many political plots that occurred in the Italian states in the fifteenth
and the sixteenth centuries are mentioned.³ Also, the contemporary historian
Lauro Martines underlined the large number of conspiracies in the Italian penin-
sula between the Trecento and Quattrocento.⁴ He brought backwards the expan-
sion of this specific practices to the fourteenth century and put it in relation to the
consolidation of the powers of the signori, which in the fifteenth century became
even more centralized and, consequently, led to the failure of most of the attacks
plotted in this later period, characterized by the lack of support by ‘strategic
sectors of the community’ (while some of the previous enterprises were still
successful). However, the historical categorization that pinpoints an ‘age of
conspiracies’ in the Renaissance, especially Fubini’s periodization which is more
specifically focused on the fifteenth century, can also be considered from a literary
perspective. Indeed, it is in the second half of the Quattrocento that a large
number of works on contemporary conspiracies were composed. Hence,
Fubini’s more restricted ‘historical periodization’, which encompasses the years
² Fubini, Riccardo, ‘L’Età delle congiure: i rapporti tra Firenze e Milano dal tempo di Piero a quello
di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1464‒1478)’, in Fubini, Riccardo, Italia quattrocentesca: politica e diplomazia
nell’età di Lorenzo de’ Medici (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994), pp. 220‒52.
³ Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by Samuel George
Chetwynd Middlemore (Kitchener: Batoche, 2001), pp. 5‒105.
⁴ Martines, Lauro, ‘Political Conflict in the Italian City States’, Government and Opposition 3, 1
(1968), pp. 69‒91. See also Fubini, Riccardo, ‘Congiure e stato nel secolo XV’, in I re nudi: congiure,
assassini, tracolli ed altri imprevisti nella storia del potere. Atti del convegno di studio della Fondazione
Ezio Franceschini (Certosa del Galluzzo, 19 novembre 1994), edited by Glauco Maria Cantarella and
Francesco Santi (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1996), pp. 143‒61.
4      
between 1464 and 1478, can be extended to the realm of literature and, in this case,
to the whole of the second half of the century, starting from the early 1450s, so as
to incorporate the parallel widespread production of several literary texts on this
issue. This broader ‘literary periodization’, in particular, accounts for the numer-
ous works that deal with Stefano Porcari’s plot against Pope Nicholas V in 1453,
an historical episode that attracted the interest of several intellectuals.
This study identifies the most significant works that can be regarded as mile-
stones in the development of this particular kind of literature during this crucial
period. The focus is placed on four Quattrocento texts which have been examined
as case studies (and which allow us to trace the evolution of the issue of political
plots across different literary forms, political centres and historical phases) and on
Machiavelli’s main works where the topic of conspiracy turns out to be particu-
larly important (Il principe, the Discorsi and the Istorie fiorentine), marking a
continuity, but also a fundamental turning point, with respect to the preceding
authors. The first two texts examined are Orazio Romano’s epic poem Porcaria
and Leon Battista Alberti’s epistle Porcaria coniuratio, both written in 1453 and
devoted to Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against Pope Nicholas V of the same
year. The third text is Giovanni Pontano’s De bello Neapolitano (1465‒1503),
the historiographical account on the so-called ‘first conspiracy of the barons’
(1459‒65) against the king of Naples Ferdinando of Aragon (now defined in
modern historiography as a ‘war of succession’): a lengthy work, which includes
the narrative of the military conflict that followed the barons’ rebellion and was
composed by the humanist through a long process of revision, from 1465 to his
death, in 1503. The progress of this fifteenth-century literature culminates with
Angelo Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium, the famous literary account of
the Pazzi conspiracy written immediately after the attack against Lorenzo and
Giuliano de’ Medici, in 1478: a refined narration that was the cornerstone of pro-
Medici propaganda and can be regarded as a climax in the trajectory of human-
istic literature on plots.⁵
These texts belong to different genres and subgenres (epic poetry, epistologra-
phy, historiography, etc.) and, although all of them retain a historical core, can be
ascribed to various literary domains, also revealing, in some cases, the hybrid
nature of most fifteenth-century literature in terms of the rhetorical canon. Some
of the main features that closely connect all these different works allow us to
classify them as a consistent literary category. These traits are their literary nature
(although all texts focus on historical facts) and their monographic character; the
key and multidimensional role played by the re-elaboration of classical literature;
the secular, political approach in dealing with historical matters and the parallel
ideological standpoint emerging in all these works; and, most of all, the strong
⁵ Extensive bibliography on these works is provided in the chapters devoted to them.

 5
thematic connection represented by the subject, that is, the narrative of a recent
conspiracy. For this reason, it is possible to coherently define this fifteenth-century
literary output as a ‘thematic’ genre: a ‘monographic’ literature on a specific
theme, which enjoyed remarkable fortune in a precise chronological period and
is informed by a marked political character in the narration of crucial attempts at
overthrowing systems of power. The identification of this new ‘thematic’ genre
establishes a precise literary category within Renaissance literature, in which the
complex interaction between historiographical, political, and literary factors
stands out as a distinguishing trait. In this corpus of works, in particular, the
narrative of history, in its different literary arrangements and entwined with the
purely literary constituents of texts, becomes the core around which a new
political ideology rotates, a view perfectly consistent with the burgeoning of the
new system of political powers.
The development of this output in the second half of the fifteenth century is
closely associated with the emergence of a new centralized political thought (or
better, a partially new political thought that will also influence the groundbreaking
theories of statecraft in the following century). These new political perspectives
reflect the simultaneous process of consolidation of autocratic governments
throughout Italy. Albeit in a few cases these accounts of plots cannot be directly
traced back to the mere intention of celebrating and upholding the current rulers
threatened by the conspiracy, in all these works a princely ideology emerges as the
bedrock of the humanists’ political standpoint. This politically driven narrative
retains and enhances the classical interpretation of the idea of ‘conspiracy’ and of
the word itself, which, starting from Cicero’s denunciation of Catiline onwards,
acquires the unavoidable negative connotation of seditio and insidia. This seman-
tic evolution of coniuratio shows an irrevocable shift from the neutral meaning of
‘an act of taking an oath’ (especially a soldier’s oath of allegiance) to the negative
significance of political crime, coinciding with subversion and treachery.⁶
Humanist literature intensifies this interpretation: the image of a political regime
jeopardized by the conspirators appears as a fair and just political power, the only
one able to keep the state in concord and prosperity. But the analysis of the texts
shows that this outlook assumes more complex undertones and results in different
outcomes in each work.
From a historical perspective, it is no coincidence that in the second half of the
Quattrocento there had been a substantial concentration of political power in
⁶ On this evolution in the meaning of the term ‘conspiracy’, see Pagan, Victoria Emma, Conspiracy
Narratives in Roman History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 7; for the semantic and
conceptual definition of the term, with specific focus on the commentary to the Decretum Gratiani by
Juan de Torquemada, a prominent figure in the intellectual, political, and juridical debate in the
Renaissance, see Quaglioni, Diego, ‘La congiura dei canonisti. Coniuratio e conspiratio nel commento
al Decretum di Juan de Torquemada (1457)’, in Congiure e conflitti, pp. 21‒38. For the definition of
‘conspiracy’, see also Sbriccoli, Mario, Crimen laesae maiestatis. Il problema del reato politico alle soglie
della scienza moderna (Milan: Giuffre, 1974), pp. 71‒2, 339‒42.
6      
the hands of newly established leaders. This phenomenon took place not only in
the kingdom of Naples with the Aragonese monarchy, but also in the signorie and
aristocratic governments throughout Italy, and even in Florence, where, although
the republican framework was officially maintained, the Medici gradually became
more and more powerful and were the actual rulers of the state. This general
historical transition brought about a kind of reduction in republican ideologies,
which had been predominant, at least in Florence, between the late 1300s and
early 1400s, although they were characterized by a prominent oligarchic essence
and had been adapted to the contemporary historical situation of a republican
state committed to military expansion.⁷ Also, in light of these traits of the
Florentine republic, as James Hankins has pointed out, the distinction between
republican and monarchic government in the humanist age does not have to be
interpreted as strictly as it was in previous years in relation to Baron’s theories on
‘civic humanism’.⁸ It is true that a contraposition between these two political
forms was perceived and often expressed by humanists, especially with regard to
the conflict between Florence and Milan in the early Quattrocento, which pro-
duced very well-known pieces of literature, such as the famous controversy
between Poggio Bracciolini and Guarino Veronese (1435) just to mention one
of these.⁹ Nevertheless the eulogy of the republic as the fairest form of government
⁷ Hankins, James, ‘Humanism and the Origins of Modern Political Thought’, in The Cambridge
Companion to Renaissance Humanism, edited by Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), pp. 118‒41, 129. For a reassessment of the oligarchic and imperialistic character of Florentine
politics in the early Quattrocento, see Hankins, James, ‘The “Baron Thesis” after Forty Years and Some
Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni’, Journal of the History of Ideas 56, 2 (1995), pp. 309‒38: 316‒23.
Florentine Republicanism has been also defined ‘imperial Republicanism’ in Pedullà, Gabriele,
Machiavelli in tumulto: conquista, cittadinanza e conflitto nei ‘Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito
Livio’ (Rome: Bulzoni, 2011), p. 400; moreover, for an illuminating criticism of the traditional concept
of Republicanism employed to label Florentine political thought in this age see the review of Pedullà’s
volume by Guido Cappelli, in Cuadernos de Filología Italiana 20 (2013), pp. 354‒61: 359‒60. See also
Cappelli, Guido, ‘Conceptos transversales: República y monarquía en el Humanismo político’, Res
publica 21 (2009), pp. 51‒69. On the evolution of the government in Florence under the Medici see the
classic volume by Rubinstein, Nicolai, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to1494)
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966; second ed. 1997); Jones, Philip J., ‘Communes and Despots: The City-
State in Late Medieval Italy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 15 (1965), pp. 71‒96; and now
Black, Robert and Law, John Easton, eds., The Medici Citizens and Masters (Florence: Villa I Tatti, the
Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2015).
⁸ See in particular Baron, Hans, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and
Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955),
and now the important studies by Hankins, James, ‘Rhetoric, History and Ideology: The Civic
Panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni’, in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited
by James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 143‒78 (see also the whole
collection of essays); Hankins, James, ‘Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic’,
Political Theory 38, 4 (2010), pp. 452‒82; Hankins, James, ‘Machiavelli, Civic Humanism and the
Humanist Politics of Virtue’, Italian Culture 32, 2 (2014), pp. 98‒109; Hankins, ‘The “Baron Thesis”;
Cappelli, ‘Conceptos transversales’, pp. 51‒69; and Grafton, Anthony, ‘Humanism and Political
Theory’, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450‒1700, edited by James Henderson
Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 7‒29.
⁹ On political ideologies in the humanist age: Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought,
1450‒1539’, in The Cambridge History, pp. 30‒65; Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern
Political Thought, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Pastore Stocchi, Manlio, ‘Il
 7
was not always grounded on an institutional basis, and consequently was

considered neither in rigid opposition to monarchic rule nor in relation to the
disapproval of it as illegitimate. Since republican governments were essentially
oligarchic and imperialistic, in this scenario the main dichotomy became that
between a rightful and a despotic rule (although the antithesis between a just
government and tyranny was also destined to evolve into a more intricate and
ambiguous contrast).¹⁰ As Quentin Skinner also underlined, humanists were not
much concerned about ‘constitutional arrangements’,¹¹ rather the central pillars
of their political thought became the human spheres, in particular human virtues,
which were regarded as the main attributes able to legitimize political power (even
papal power) and were seen in close connection with the ancient philosophical
tradition.¹²
This complex and gradual process led to the affirmation of a new idea of secular
and ‘individualized’ authority, which mainly coincided with the figure of the
prince, or more often with his equivalent and more pristine image of the pater
patriae. This highly verticalized system is rooted in a political ideology based on
the management of consensus and, most of all, on the virtuous nature of the
leader. This evolution was influenced by the more extensive recovery, circulation,
and study of classical sources that deal with monarchical theory and in general
monarchical rule, in particular Greek auctoritates such as Xenophon,¹³ Isocrates,
pensiero politico degli umanisti’, in Pastore Stocchi, Manlio, Pagine di storia dell’Umanesimo italiano
(Milan: Franco Angeli, 2014), pp. 26‒84; James Hankins, ‘Humanism’; and now Hankins, James, Virtue
Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, Mass./London: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2019). On the famous controversy between Poggio and Guarino on Scipio
and Caesar see in particular Canfora, Davide, La controversia di Poggio Bracciolini e Guarino Veronese
(Florence: Olschki, 2001).
¹⁰ On the issue of tyranny see Hankins, Virtue Politics, pp. 103‒52; Quaglioni, Diego, Politica e
diritto nel Trecento italiano. Il ‘De tyranno’ di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314–1357) (Florence: Olschki,
1983); and Schadee, Hester, ‘ “I Don’t Know Who You Call Tyrants”. Debating Evil Lords in
Quattrocento Humanism’, in Evil Lords: Theories and Representations of Tyranny from Antiquity to
the Renaissance, edited by Nikos Panou and Hester Schadee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018),
pp. 172‒90. Now see also Chapter 5, section 5.3 (in particular p. 203).
¹¹ Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, vol. 2, Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), p. 123; Hankins, Virtue Politics, pp. 36‒7.
¹² For a specific analysis of the system of virtues in humanist political though see Cappelli, Guido,
‘Introduzione’, in Giovanni Pontano, De principe, edited by Guido Cappelli (Rome: Salerno Editrice,
2003), pp. XI‒CXXI. For the concept of ‘moral legitimacy’ and the centrality of the notion of ‘virtue’ see
Hankins, Virtue Politics, pp. 36‒45.
¹³ The recovery of Xenophon was particularly fostered in the cultural environment of Neapolitan
humanism: the Latin translation of the Cyropaedia produced by Poggio Bracciolini in 1446 had been
championed by Antonio Panormita and was offered to Alfonso of Aragon. See Cappelli, ‘Introduzione’,
p. LII, and Kristeller, Paul Oscar, Cranz, Ferdinand Edward, and Brown, Virginia, eds., Catalogus
translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translation and Commentaries.
Annotated Lists and Giudes, vol. 7 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1960–),
pp. 116‒21. Also Lorenzo Valla translated for Alfonso the Magnanimous and the young Ferdinando
the first four chapters of the Cyropaedia in 1438, presenting Cyrus as a model of princely virtues: see
Marsh, David, ‘Lorenzo Valla In Naples: The Translation From Xenophon’s Cyropaedia’, Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance 46, 2 (1984), pp. 407‒20.
8      
and Plutarch,¹⁴ but also Latin sources that were revived and reworked with a new
life force, such as Seneca’s De clementia and other texts.¹⁵ It is also thanks to these
models that fifteenth-century political thought accommodated a pragmatic view
informed by a personalistic idea of power. Some of these sources enjoyed for the
first time a new revitalization, especially Greek models that were now translated,
such as Isocrates’s orations; on the other hand, other auctoritates that already
circulated in the previous centuries, such as Seneca’s work or even more recog-
nized poetic models (e.g. Lucan), were adopted and recast through a fresh
approach that made them functional to the formulation of a political theory
able to adhere to contemporary historical needs.¹⁶
These sources were therefore deconstructed and reconstructed in a process of
innovative re-elaboration, typical of the humanist attitude towards the classical
legacy.¹⁷ This approach was never passive and one-dimensional, but, conversely,
combined these models with the more traditional central pillars of the speculation
on political thought—Aristotle, Plato, and, among the Latin authors, Cicero—so
as to build an autonomous and original theory of power. Aristotle and Cicero, in
particular, stand out as predominantly influential in humanist political theoriza-
tion, also in political literature oriented towards princely viewpoints and, more
indirectly, in the ideological perspective in texts on plots. Both authors were
landmarks for political principles already in the previous centuries, but especially
Aristotle enjoyed a novel circulation and fresh interpretations in the Quattrocento
with the new Latin translations of the Ethics by Leonardo Bruni (1416) and by
¹⁴ On the re-discovery of Isocrates’s work by humanists, see Gualdo Rosa, Lucia, La fede nella
‘Paideia’: aspetti della fortuna europea di Isocrate nei secoli XV e XVI (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano
per il Medio Evo, 1984), and now Albanese, Gabriella, ‘L’esordio della trattatistica “de principe” alla
corte aragonese: l’inedito ‘Super Isocrate’ di Bartolomeo Facio’, in Principi prima del Principe, edited by
Lorenzo Geri [Studi (e Testi) Italiani 29 (2012)], pp. 59‒115. On Plutarch, see Resta, Gianvito, Le
epitomi di Plutarco nel Quattrocento (Padova: Antenore, 1962), and Pade, Marianne, The Reception of
Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ in Fifteenth-century Italy, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2007).
For the contribution made by Francesco Filelfo to the translation and reception of these Greek authors
within the gradual consolidation of monarchical political thought, see Resta, Gianvito, ‘Francesco
Filelfo tra Bisanzio e Roma’, in Francesco Filelfo nel quinto centenario della morte. Atti del XVII
Convegno di studi maceratesi (Tolentino, 27‒30 settembre 1981) (Padova: Antenore, 1986), pp. 1‒60:
24‒5.
¹⁵ For the source of Seneca, see Stacey, Peter, ‘Senecan Political Thought from the Middle Ages to
Early Modernity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, edited by Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro
Schiesaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 289‒302, and Stacey, Peter, Roman
Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
¹⁶ The fundamental studies on the tradition of classical texts are still the classic volumes Reynolds,
Leighton Durham, Marshall, Peter K., and Mynors, Roger Aubrey Baskerville, Texts and Transmission:
A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) (in particular, on Seneca’s De clementia,
pp. 363–5); and Reynolds, Leighton Durham and Wilson, Nigel Guy, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to
the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
¹⁷ For the originality of humanist political thought and its deconstructive and reconstructive
approach towards the classical tradition, see Cappelli, Rev. Pedullà, Machiavelli, p. 360. More generally,
on the recovery of the classical tradition and its role in the development of Humanism see the
important volume by Witt, Ronald G., ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Humanism
from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
 9
Johannes Argyropoulos (1464) and of the Politics again by Bruni (1438), which
had remarkable diffusion in the Renaissance, when new commentaries and
vernacular translations were also produced.¹⁸ Additionally, also canonical sources
conventionally employed principally in relation with republican ideologies, such
as Sallust, the pivotal model in this literature on plots,¹⁹ were now revisited in a
new amalgamation with other texts brought to new life and reinterpreted and
readapted in accordance with an evolving idea of a centralized state. This new
personalistic concept of authority that emerges in this developing theory appears,
for example, in the evolution in the distinction between monarch and tyrant. This
distinction is no longer founded on juridical criteria (or not just on them), but
on the exercise and display of personal virtues by the ruler,²⁰ in an ethical
perspective that, in some cases, ends up becoming essentially political, reflecting
the unspoken translation of political considerations into moral terms. In this view,
the idea of tyranny somehow lost its authentic significance and remained relevant
only in relation to denunciation of attacks against established rulers.
So, although early fifteenth-century republican ideologies were already marked
by an ambiguous character, it is around the middle of the Quattrocento that
centralized governments consolidated their authority still more and, conse-
quently, had to face new problems of legitimacy and needed to change their
cultural politics in order to maintain their power and stability. In the scenario of
political equilibrium (though always unstable) brought about by the peace of Lodi
in 1453,²¹ Italian states had to focus more on internal threats, rather than on
external conflicts, and, in doing so, they also aimed to spread their powerful image
to the outside. As in the first half of the century (but now with different purposes
and outcomes), the humanists’ literary activity contributed to creating and
strengthening a cultural ideology in support of political rulers, in accordance
with the new political situation and, consequently, paying more attention to the
issues related to maintaining power rather than conquering it. This fruitful
¹⁸ Lines, David, Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’ in the Italian Renaissance (ca. 1300–1650): The Universities and
the Problem of Moral Education (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Lines, David, ‘Aristotle’s Ethics in the
Renaissance’, in The Reception of Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’, edited by Jon Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), pp. 171–93; Kraye, Jill, ‘Renaissance Commentaries on the Nicomachean
Ethics’, in The Vocabulary of Teaching and Research between Middle Ages and Renaissance,
Proceedings of the Colloquium: London, Warburg Institute, 11–12 March 1994, edited by Olga
Weijers (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 96–117; Kraye, Jill, ‘The Printing History of Aristotle in the
Fifteenth Century: A Bibliographical Approach to Renaissance Philosophy’, Renaissance Studies 9
(1995), pp. 189–211. On Bruni’s translation of the Politics and its wide diffusion see in particular
Hankins, ‘Exclusivist Republicanism’; Hankins, James and Palmer, Ada, ‘The Recovery of Ancient
Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide’ (Florence: Olschki, 2008), p. 21. See also Lines, David
and Refini, Eugenio, eds., ‘Aristotele fatto volgare’. Tradizione aristotelica e cultura volgare nel
Rinascimento (Pisa: ETS, 2014 [but 2015]).
¹⁹ On the reception of Sallust, see n. 1. ²⁰ Hankins, ‘Humanism’, p. 128.
²¹ For the impact of the peace of Lodi as a turning point in the political scenario and a factor that led
to the development of a new political ideology, see in particular Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’,
p. 30; Cappelli, ‘Introduzione’, pp. XXXV‒XXXVII.
10      
interaction between literature and politics comes to light clearly in two particular
literary genres that developed considerably in this period: on the one hand, the
‘monographic’ works devoted to conspiracies, texts focused on events that had put
in danger the political solidity of the state and intended to support centralized
governments; on the other hand, the political treatises de principe, aimed at
defining the ideal features of the ‘perfect prince’ and establishing the fundamental
ethical and political values for social relationships. These two literary outputs are
informed by the same political perspective and are linked by significant connec-
tions. In particular, the need for legitimacy by new regimes stands out as an even
more crucial implication in literature on plots, since it originates from an actual
crisis in states and deals with a concrete threat addressed to a specific ruler.
Despite the less theoretical nature of this literary corpus, the political effort of
producing and conveying an ideal model of both state and statecraft is implicitly
embedded in all these works.
I.2 The prince in literature on plots: power and resistance

in the literary realm
The historical and cultural context that sees the growth of works on conspiracies
in the Quattrocento accounts for the particular political dimension that surrounds
and marks this thematic literature: this dimension can be identified in a princely
ideology, though expressed in different forms depending on the various authors,
texts, and their backgrounds. Fifteenth-century conspiracies prove to be always
aimed at overthrowing a government that is embodied and encapsulated in the
figure of the main target of the attack, the ruler, who is now depicted in all works
on plots as an actual princeps. In particular, in humanist texts each plot appears as
a ‘conspiracy against a prince’ and, most importantly, the ideological framework
of these sources is deeply rooted in a princely political standpoint: a standpoint
that, more generally, now informs both the political life of Italian states and the
political outlook of literature produced in this milieu, and, at the same time, is
strengthened and disseminated by these very same texts.
Now a princeps is not only a temporal monarch such as the king of Naples, but
also the pope, in particular Pope Nicholas V. He has been defined as the ‘first pope
of the Renaissance’ in light of his aim of turning papal rule into a princely
government: a papacy that overlaps with a signoria in terms of the political
dynamics of the state and of the papal image that is built and projected
outwards.²² And the inclusive figure of the princeps now can be associated also
with Lorenzo de’ Medici. His power in Florence, although always formally
²² See Prodi, Paolo, Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età
moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982), p. 43; and the extensive analysis in Chapter 1 in this volume.
 11
circumscribed within the official boundaries of the republican institutions,

gradually became more and more similar to that of an actual signore, especially
in the images of himself and his own authority that he was able to convey through
the well-articulated system of cultural politics erected with the collaboration of all
humanists, artists, and intellectuals of his circle. This is the portrayal of rulers—in
particular of the king of Naples, the pope, and the leader of Florence—that
emerges in all texts on conspiracies, which seem to be intended to contribute to
building this very image through their narratives.
As far as politico-theoretical literature is concerned, a princely theory had
already played a decisive part in the production of medieval specula principis,
but it is only in the later Quattrocento that this humanist literature de principe
reached a kind of peak, before developing with highly original results in
Machiavelli’s work. Some of the most prominent treatises produced in this period
are Giovanni Pontano’s De principe (1465); Bartolomeo Platina’s homonymous
work (1470), which was reworked later in the De optimo cive with a less explicit
princely perspective and was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici; Diomede Carafa’s
Memoriale sui doveri del principe (1476), Francesco Patrizi’s De regno et regis
institutione (1484); and Giuniano Maio’s De maiestate (1492).²³ The development
of the genre of mirrors for princes in the second half of the Quattrocento has been
traced back to the necessity for tenets on which new established rulers could found
their sovereignty.²⁴ Now, thanks to the identification of a substantial group of
literary texts on conspiracies and to the analysis of their recurrent features and
²³ Bibliography in this field is huge: see the classic studies by Gilbert, Felix, ‘The Humanist Concept
of the Prince and The Prince of Machiavelli’, in Gilbert, Felix, History: Choice and Commitment
(Cambridge, Mass./London: Belknap Press; Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 91‒114; and
Skinner, The Foundations, vol. 1, in particular the chapter ‘The Age of Princes’, pp. 113‒38; now see
also Baker, Patrick, Kaiser, Ronny, Priesterjahn, Maike, and Helmrath, Johannes, eds., Portraying the
Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical
Texts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016); Stacey, Roman Monarchy; Canfora, Davide, Prima di Machiavelli:
Politica e cultura in età umanistica (Milan: Laterza, 2005); Hankins, Virtue Politics (with a specific
section on Patrizi: pp. 386‒422); Albanese, ‘L’esordio’; and the volume on political humanism in Naples
by Cappelli, Guido, Maiestas: politica e pensiero politico nella Napoli aragonese (1443‒1503) (Rome:
Carocci Editore, 2016). Fundamental contributions on humanist literature de principe are published as
introductory essays to editions of texts: Ferraù, Giacomo, ‘Introduzione’, in Bartholomei Platinae De
principe, edited by Giacomo Ferraù (Messina: Il Vespro, 1979), pp. 5‒33; Cappelli, ‘Introduzione’,
pp. XI‒LX; and for the relationship between princely ideology and official historiography see Resta,
Gianvito, ‘Introduzione’, in Panhormitae, Antonii, Liber rerum gestarum Ferdinandi regis, edited by
Gianvito Resta (Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 1968), pp. 5‒58. Editions of
other important works are: Carafa, Diomede, Memoriali, edited by Franca Petrucci Nardelli, Antonio
Lupis, con un saggio introduttivo di Giuseppe Galasso (Rome: Bonacci editore, 1988); Maio, Giuniano,
De maiestate, edited by Franco Gaeta (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1956); Patrizi,
Francesco, De regno et regis institutione (Paris: Aegidius Gorbinus, 1567). On Platina’s two works, see
Rubinstein, Nicolai, ‘The De optimo cive and the De principe by Bartolomeo Platina’, in Rubinstein,
Nicolai, Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vol. 1, edited by Giovanni
Ciappelli (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), pp. 259‒72.
²⁴ Cf. Cappelli, ‘Introduzione’, pp. XXXV‒XXXVII; and Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought’,
pp. 30‒1; on these treatises, see also Sapegno, Maria Serena, ‘Il trattato politico e utopico’, in
Letteratura Italiana, edited by Asor Rosa, vol. 3, t. 2 (Torino: Einaudi, 1984), pp. 949‒1010, 985‒98.
12      
aims, it is possible to put these works into relation with the simultaneous diffusion
of political treatises on princely theory and, more precisely, with the political
perspectives and purposes that underlie them. The growth of this ‘thematic genre’
is indeed directly connected with the same crucial issues of the creation and
organization of political unity, the containment of opposition, and, most of all,
the legitimization of new types of authorities.
The implicit but close interchange between these different textual categories,
politico-theoretical treatises and historical-literary works on plots, can be per-
ceived especially in the ideological overtones that imbue these texts. This com-
posite ideological framework is built through the fruitful interaction between, on
the one hand, the ideal and speculative components and, on the other, the
historically based elements: an interplay that contributes to define the humanist
model of ideal state. From a more general perspective, the link between these
strands of works reflects the broader conceptual principle according to which the
millennial history of the theories of political power has always run parallel, and
have also continuously crossed, the history of the theories and forms of resistance
to power.²⁵ This is one of the inspiring tenets of this study. If more attention has
been paid by scholars to treatises on princely rule, this volume, by focusing on this
literature on conspiratorial episodes, neglected so far, aims to make a contribution
to the development of research in these two intertwined areas. With respect to this
dual history of political power and resistance to it, the centrality of the issue of
conspiracies in the Italian Quattrocento, also from a literary perspective, is
implicitly due to the fact that in this period the opposition to governments
found its main expression through the practice of plots. Conspiracies, indeed,
emerge as the most frequent actions of insubordination displaying particular
characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of rebellions (especially
for their more restricted character and the smaller number of people directly
involved).
The relationship between literature de principe, corresponding to the sphere of
theorization of political power, and texts on conspiracies, belonging to the area of
the history of resistance to this power, appears clearly if we consider the works by
important humanists active in Naples, Giovanni Pontano and Giuniano Maio.²⁶
In 1465 Pontano wrote the De principe and in the very same year started to
compose the De bello Neapolitano: texts that, if read in conjunction, reveal the
humanist’s intention to establish a coherent system of values for an ideal mon-
archy. In addition, his historiographical work proves to be also intertwined with
the theory that Pontano presented in his other most important political work, the
²⁵ A formulation of this principle can be found in Coleman, Janet, Against the State. Studies in
Sedition and Rebellion, introduced by Brian Redhead (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 1, 12. Morevoer, on
the interplay between political theorization and historiography in literature on plots see Chapter 5,
sections 5.2‒5.3.
²⁶ On these authors and their works, see Chapter 3.
 13
De obedientia, composed in 1470: the first treatise devoted to establishing the

relationships among the different components of the monarchical state.²⁷ Another
fundamental, though still almost completely overlooked, work that shows the
central role played by the problem of conspiracies, and more generally insubor-
dination, in the fifteenth-century debate on statecraft is Giuniano Maio’s De
maiestate (1492). Here the definition of the perfect ruler, who is embodied in
the king of Naples Ferdinando of Aragon, is extensively based on the illustration
of the events of the barons’ rebellions against Ferdinando: a thematic centrality
that is made evident not only by the literary vehicle, in the text, but also by the
artistic means, in the numerous illuminations in the precious manuscript of the
treatise put together for the Aragonese library between 1492 and 1493
(Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Italien 1711).²⁸
But the crucial implications that the problem of conspiracies had in the literary
debate on princely authority will re-emerge evidently also in the following century
in Machiavelli’s thought. In his view, the matter of political subversion is closely
linked to the building of political consensus and the management of power. In
particular, as is well known, he focused on this political subject in his long chapter
Delle congiure in the Discorsi sulla prima deca di Tito Livio (III, 6), which can be
considered a comprehensive treatise on plots. Significantly, this chapter also had
an independent diffusion in manuscripts and printed editions throughout Europe
in the sixteenth century, a circulation that proves the importance of this topic not
only in Machiavelli’s work, but also in Renaissance European political thought.²⁹
Moreover, specific attention to this issue is paid in chapter XIX of Il principe, and
in the Istorie fiorentine, where Machiavelli narrates many conspiracies that took
place in Italy. Although there has been more research on Machiavelli’s interest in
this matter,³⁰ now the analysis offered in this volume of the fifteenth-century
corpus of works on plots also lays the ground for a more in-depth exploration of
the relationship between Machiavelli’s work and humanist literature. In particu-
lar, if it is true that he mainly developed his reflections on the topic of conspiracy
as a substantial theorization of a political phenomenon (which was never pro-
duced in the humanist age), this is based on concrete historical exempla that were
²⁷ For the connections between these texts by Pontano, see Chapter 3.

²⁸ On the interplay between the text and the illuminations in conveying Maio’s political theory see
Barreto, Joana, La majesté en images: portraits du pouvoir dans la Naples des Aragon (Rome: École
française de Rome, 2013), pp. 230‒49; Celati, Marta, ‘Teoria politica e realtà storica nel De maiestate di
Giuniano Maio: tra letteratura e arte figurativa’, Medioevo e Rinascimento 29 (2018), pp. 203‒35; on this
treatise, see also Celati, Marta, ‘La virtù e la storia: il principe nel De maiestate di Giuniano Maio’,
Archivum Mentis 8 (2019), pp. 71‒102; Cappelli, Maiestas, pp. 188‒194; and Caracciolo Aricò, Angela
Maria, ‘Giuniano Maio’, DBI, 67 (2006), pp. 618‒21.
²⁹ See Chapter 6 on Machiavelli; and Fasano Guarini, Elena, ‘Congiure “contro alla patria” e
congiure “contro ad uno principe” nell’opera di Niccolò Machiavelli’, in Fasano Guarini, Elena,
Repubbliche e principi. Istituzioni e pratiche di potere nella Toscana granducale del ‘500–’600
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 155‒207, 158.
³⁰ See Chapter 6, n. 1.
14      
mainly provided by historical narratives of the previous centuries, along with

classical sources; and it is from fifteenth-century texts that he also drew informa-
tion in order to write the frequent accounts of contemporary political plots
included in his Istorie fiorentine. His investigation into conspiracies, which are
seen as a specific practice of political strife with decisive implications for the
dynamics of power in the political systems, proves to share significant perspectives
with Quattrocento works on plots. So these texts, in some respects, can be
regarded as a potential starting point for Machiavelli’s lucid interest in this
issue. Yet, at the same time, he also ends up radically departing from the humanist
tradition and, in doing so, he turns out to be, as in most of his work, half within
but already half outside the conceptual horizon of the previous century.³¹
In order to get a deeper and objective insight of the development of fifteenth-
century political thought and of the intricate relationship between Machiavelli and
this tradition, it is essential to adopt an approach that overcomes the conventional
classification of humanist political views as merely abstract and utopian. This label
would also prevent a genuine analysis of the connections and, most significantly,
the deviations that Machiavelli’s thought had from previous positions.
Quattrocento political beliefs have been too often cursorily looked at as the
expression of a naive and simply ethically based ideological system, only founded
on the pedagogical and unrealistic adoption of ancient exempla, too ‘immature’ in
comparison with the theorizations of the following century. Nevertheless, recently
this view has been partially reconsidered and humanist political thought has been
rightly identified as a multifaceted but consistent expression of an actual political
theory, distinctive of this period and of its cultural and historical characteristics,
and showing specific aims, contradictions, and innovations.³²
Despite the significant expansion of literature on conspiracies in the Italian
fifteenth century, there are no comprehensive and systematic studies on this
subject. The topic of resistance to power has been analysed either in more general
and chronologically wide-ranging investigations, devoted to trace its evolution,
from the antiquity to the contemporary world, as one of the unavoidable
nucleuses of political life; or in volumes that consider this topic in relation to
the modern age.³³ More attention has been paid to the classical tradition and to
³¹ For this general consideration, see Cappelli, Rev. Pedullà, Machiavelli, pp. 360, and more
generally Cappelli, Guido, ‘Machiavelli e l’umanesimo politico del Quattrocento’, Res publica 20, 1
(2017), pp. 81‒92.
³² In particular a new critical study on Italian political humanism with a specific focus on the
Neapolitan area is Cappelli, Maiestas; important observations of the necessity to adopt a new perspec-
tive in the assessment of fifteenth-century political theory are in Cappelli, Rev. Pedullà, Machiavelli,
pp. 359‒60; and for a reconsideration of humanist political ideology see also Pastore Stocchi,
‘Il pensiero politico’, pp. 26‒84; and now Hankins, Virtue Politics.
³³ See in particular Ford, Franklin Lewis, Political Murder. From Tyrannicide to Terrorism
(Cambridge, Mass/London: Harvard University Press, 1985): on Renaissance Italy, pp. 134‒45;
Turchetti, Mario, Tyrannie et tyrannicide de l’Antiquité à nos jours (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2006):
in particular, pp. 291‒318, 335‒65; and Coleman. On the modern age, see Bercé, Yves Marie and
 15
different forms of political strive in the ancient world; nonetheless, only one
volume by Victoria Emma Pagan, published in 2004, is dedicated to conspiracies
in the classical age, with an analysis that concentrates on historiographical sources
(more than literary), since this topic was not treated in more hybrid literary forms
in that age, as, instead, it will be in the humanist age.³⁴ As for the Italian
Renaissance, the diffusion of attempts at overthrowing power has been considered
mainly from a historical, and sometimes more generally cultural, point of view;³⁵
but, as far as the literary field is concerned, only few studies have addressed this
subject from the partial angle of the reception of the model of Sallust, without
looking at the significance and development of the theme of plots in literature.³⁶
Only texts related to Porcari’s conspiracy have been more carefully examined
from a historical perspective in a volume published in 2013.³⁷ On the basis of this
previous research that highlights the centrality of the issue of conspiracy in the
political history of the Quattrocento, this study now also explores the literary and
cultural aspects of works on plots. It provides a critical examination of the
ideological perspectives in the texts as interconnected with their rhetorical tools
and investigates all components that frame this complex output: historical, polit-
ical, literary, and stylistic elements, merged together by the solidifying and all-
embracing bond of the classical legacy. Thus the analysis of the classical sources
employed by these authors does not focus exclusively on specific areas of the
ancient tradition (such as the Roman republican tradition, mainly stressed by
Quentin Skinner),³⁸ but on a wide range of models, genres, and contexts.
Fasano Guarini, Elena, eds., Complots et conjurations dans l’Europe moderne. Actes du colloque
international organisé par l’École française de Rome, l’Institut de recherches sur les civilisations de
l’Occident de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne et le Dipartimento di storia moderna e contemporanea
dell’Università degli studi di Pisa, Rome, 30 septembre‒2 octobre 1993 (Rome: École française de Rome,
1996).
³⁴ Pagan, Conspiracy Narratives; Pagan, Victoria Emma, Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004). On the Greek tradition, see Roisman, Joseph, The Rhetoric
of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens (Berkeley/London: University of California Press, 2006).
³⁵ Besides the classic studies by Fubini and Martines mentioned at n. 2 and n. 3, see also the volume
with a broader scope Villard, Renaud, Du bien commun au mal nécessaire: tyrannies, assassinats
politiques et souveraineté en Italie, vers 1470-vers 1600 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2008); and
on tyrannicide, see Piccolomini, Manfredi, The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide during the
Renaissance (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991). See also D’Elia, Anthony F., A
Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2009), on the conspiracy of the ‘accademici’ in Rome (1468); on this event see section
I.4 in this chapter.
³⁶ Brief reflections on this matter were provided by La Penna, ‘Brevi note’; and more recently
Patricia Osmond focused on the role of Sallust in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with specific
attention to the figure of Catiline: Osmond, ‘ “Princeps” ’, and Osmond, ‘Catiline in Fiesole’.
³⁷ Modigliani, Anna, Congiurare all’antica. Stefano Porcari, Niccolò V, Roma 1453 (Rome: Roma nel
Rinascimento, 2013); in 2014, a collection of contributions on political conflicts in (or related to)
fifteenth-century Rome was published: Congiure e conflitti.
³⁸ Skinner, ‘The Vocabulary’; Skinner, The Foundations, vol. 1; Skinner, Visions.
16      
I.3 The classical tradition and crossovers between humanist

historiography and political literature
In both works on conspiracies and politico-theoretical treatises in the

Quattrocento, the role played by the classical legacy is fundamental, not only
from a literary perspective, but also from an ideological and political point of view.
In particular the genre of humanist mirrors for princes has been prominently
influenced by both classical and medieval sources.³⁹ However, the wide-ranging
recovery of the classical tradition was not only at the heart of the gradual
construction of humanist political thought but also at the basis of the foundation
of the fifteenth-century canon of historiography: a multilayered genre of writing
that acquired polychrome forms and enjoyed remarkable success in the
Renaissance age, becoming deeply intertwined with political overtones and
purposes.
The intense critical fifteenth-century debate about the ‘theory of historiog-
raphy’ and the classical models to be followed by humanists was carried out in a
number of different texts, from Guarino Veronese’s De historiae conscribendae
forma (1446) to Poliziano’s Praefatio in Suetoni expositionem (1482), to the
ultimate comprehensive treatise on the ars historica composed at the end of the
century by Giovanni Pontano, the Actius.⁴⁰ This lively discussion resulted in
the gradual advancement of this genre towards modern historiographical forms
in the following century. In the Quattrocento this theorization mainly focused on
the modes of reappropriation of classical models: among Latin auctoritates, Livy
and Sallust emerge as main sources (followed by Caesar, Tacitus, and by more
‘hybrid’ forms of historical writings, such as works by Suetonius and Valerius
Maximus); while, among Greek authors, gradually rediscovered and circulating
more extensively throughout the century, a crucial position is taken by Lucian of
Samosata, as a prescriptive model, and Thucydides, as the chief prototype of
political historiography.⁴¹
³⁹ For political treatises see the editions and studies mentioned in n. 23. One of the major classic
studies on Medieval political theory is still Kantorowicz, Ernst H., The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in
Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
⁴⁰ Guarino’s text is published in Regoliosi, Mariangela, ‘Riflessioni umanistiche sullo “scrivere
storia” ’, Rinascimento 31 (1991), pp. 3‒37; Poliziano’s Praefatio is published in Poliziano, Angelo,
Praelectiones, edited by Giorgia Zollino, vol. 2 (Florence: Olschki 2016): on the text see Chapter 4,
section 4.2. Pontano’s Actius is published in Giovanni Pontano, I dialoghi, edited by Carmelo Previtera
(Florence: Sansoni, 1943), pp. 121‒239; on this treatise, see Monti Sabia, Liliana, Pontano e la storia.
Dal ‘De bello Neapolitano’ all’‘Actius’ (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995).
⁴¹ On humanist historiography and its models, see in particular Black, Robert, ‘The New Laws of
History’, Renaissance Studies 1, 1 (1987), pp. 126‒56; Regoliosi, ‘Riflessioni’; Albanese, Gabriella, ‘A
redescoberta dos historiadores antigos no Humanismo e o nascimento da historiografia moderna:
Valla, Facio e Pontano na corte napolitana dos reis de Aragao’, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale
Antigos e Modernos: diálogos sobre a (escrita da) história (Universidade de Sao Paulo do Brazil, 2‒7
settembre 2007), edited by Francisco Murari Pires (São Paulo: Alameda Casa Editorial, 2009), pp. 277‒329.
On Livy, see Billanovich, Giuseppe, Tradizione e fortuna di Livio tra Medioevo e Umanesimo (Padova:
 17
In a rough classification, humanist historical writing can be divided into three

main genres, or categories. The most important is the historia, generally devoted
to the history of a city and mainly inspired by Livy (e.g. Leonardo Bruni’s
Historiae Florentini populi, whose composition started in 1415). This can be
divided into different subgenres, such as commentaries, or works that focus on
specific historical events and are mostly related to the model of Sallust, the
prototype of monographic history.⁴² Alongside historia we must place the general
rhetorical category of biographical history (and its specific subcategories), repre-
sented by works that recall and celebrate the gesta of famous figures: this kind of
writing had its main area of development in Neapolitan humanism and is best
represented by Lorenzo Valla’s Gesta Ferdinandi regis Aragonum (1444‒5),
Bartolomeo Facio’s Rerum gestarum Alphonsi regis libri (1456) and Antonio
Panormita’s Liber rerum gestarum Ferdinandi regis (1469).⁴³ Finally, the third
main literary genre, although not purely historiographical, is historical-epic poetry
that deals with contemporary events, such as Francesco Filelfo’s Sphortias:⁴⁴ a
genre whose diffusion was closely related to its clear political undertones and its
explicit propagandistic connotations.
Among the classical models, a prominent position in Medieval and Renaissance
literature is occupied by Sallust’s work, which was pivotal not only in the realm of
historical writing but also in the elaboration of political views, especially those
concerning the issue of ‘internal’ political conflict.⁴⁵ Needless to say, this
Antenore, 1981); on Caesar see Brown, Virginia, ‘Caesar, Gaius Julius’, in Catalogus Translationum,
vol. 3 (1976), pp. 87‒139. In general on Italian Renaissance historiography, see Cochrane, Eric,
Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago/London: University of Chicago
Press, 1981); and the broader study on the European area by Grafton, Anthony, What Was History?
The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). On the
role of historiography in fifteenth-century literature on plots see in particular Chapter 5, section 5.2
(and the analysis of the specific texts in the various chapters).
⁴² On humanist commentarii, see Ianziti, Gary, ‘Storiografia come propaganda: il caso dei
Commentarii rinascimentali’, Società e storia 22 (1983), pp. 909‒18; Ianziti, Gary, ‘I Commentarii:
appunti per la storia di un genere storiografico quattrocentesco’, Archivio Storico Italiano 150 (1992),
pp. 1029‒63.
⁴³ On these works, see Chapter 3. The editions of the texts are Valla, Lorenzo, Gesta Ferdinandi regis
Aragonum, edited by Ottavio Besomi (Padova: Antenore, 1973); Facio, Bartolomeo, Rerum gestarum
Alfonsi regis libri, edited by Daniela Pietragalla (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004); Panhormitae
Liber rerum gestarum Ferdinandi regis. See also Albino, Giovanni, De gestis regum Neapolitanorum ab
Aragonia qui extant libri quatuor (Naples: apud Iosephum Cacchium, 1589); Pontano, Giovanni
Gioviano, De bello Neapolitano, edited by Giuseppe Germano, Antonietta Iacono, Francesco
Senatore (Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2019). On Facio’s work: Albanese, Gabriella, Studi
su Bartolomeo Facio (Pisa: ETS, 2000).
⁴⁴ Filelfo’s poem is published in De Keyser, Jeroen, Francesco Filelfo and Francesco Sforza. Critical
Edition of Filelfo’s “Sphortias”, “De Genuensium deditione”, “Oratio parentalis” and His Polemical
Exchange with Galeotto Marzio (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2015); see also De Keyser, Jeroen,
‘Picturing the Perfect Patron? Francesco Filelfo’s Image of Francesco Sforza’, in Portraying the
Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical
Texts, edited by Baker et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 391‒414.
⁴⁵ On the reception of Sallust in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see n. 1.
18      
auctoritas had a considerable influence also on the expansion of fifteenth-century

literature on political plots. In order to better contextualize the development of
this output and analyse the particular use of the model of Sallust in it, it is also
necessary to consider briefly the reception of this prominent model in the early
Quattrocento, with a specific focus on Florentine humanism, which had a sub-
stantial impact on the growth of historical and political literature in the following
decades. Already in the first half of the fifteenth century, Sallust was one of the
foremost sources on which Florentine intellectuals grounded their cultural and
political operation aimed at underpinning Florence’s government and its foreign
policies. From this perspective, Florence was represented as the heir and guardian
of the ancient values of the Roman republic. Coluccio Salutati, in particular,
demonstrated that the foundation of Florence was carried out during the repub-
lican age, rejecting the medieval legend that claimed that it was due to Julius
Caesar. He based his statement on Sallust’s De coniuratione Catilinae (28), placing
a specific focus on proving this argument in his Invectiva in Antonium Luschum
(1403).⁴⁶ After him, Leonardo Bruni in his proemium to the Historiae Florentini
populi libri (begun in 1415) evoked Sallust’s thought to celebrate the libertas of
Florence as a continuation of the Roman republic, although the political perspec-
tive that underlies the text conformed to the oligarchic and expansionistic prin-
ciples at the basis of the Florentine state. The connection drawn by Bruni was
aimed at showing that all states flourish and prosper under republican govern-
ments (as in the age of the city-state), while they decay if oppressed by despotic
rulers (as during the imperial age of Rome).⁴⁷ This standpoint permeates still
⁴⁶ See Witt, Ronald G. , ‘Coluccio Salutati and the Origin of Florence’, Il pensiero politico 2 (1969),
pp. 161‒72; and Osmond, ‘Princeps’, p. 107. In the second half of the fifteenth century, Poliziano placed
the foundation of Florence in the time of Augustus, revealing the political implications that this new
theory had, this time, for the legitimacy of Medici government, far from the republican ideology that
had been predominant in early Quattrocento. He claimed this theory in the second letter of the first
book of his Libro delle epistole, addressed to Piero de’ Medici: Poliziano, Angelo, Letters, books I‒IV,
edited by Shane Butler, I Tatti Renaissance Library, 21, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2006), pp. 8‒17; see Rubinstein, Nicolai ‘Poliziano e la questione delle origini di Firenze’, in Il
Poliziano e il suo tempo. Atti del IV Convegno internazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, Firenze, Palazzo
Strozzi, 23‒26 settembre 1954 (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), pp. 101‒10.
⁴⁷ This thought is emblematically shown by the simile in the prohoemium of Bruni’s Historiae,
which represents the empire as a huge tree that ‘suffocates’ new plants and is inspired by Sall. Cat. 7:
‘Nam regibus boni quam mali suspectiores sunt semperque iis aliena virtus formidulosa est. Sed civitas
incredibile memoratu est adepta libertate quantum brevi creverit: tanta cupido gloriae incesserat’; ‘For
kings feel threatened more by good men than bad, and the merit of others always arouses fear in them.
As for the state, it is unbelievable to relate how quickly it increased in size, once liberty had been won;
such a craving for glory arrived on the scene’; translations of Sallust’s works are quoted from Sallust,
The War with Catiline. The War with Jugurtha, edited by John T. Ramsey, translated by John Carew
Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013). This passage is often quoted during the
humanist period as a symbol of anti-tyrannical thought. Bruni’s work is published in Bruni, Leonardo,
History of the Florentine People, edited and translated by James Hankins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass./
London: Harvard University Press, 2001‒7). See also Ianziti, Gary, Writing History in Renaissance Italy:
Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, Mass/London: Harvard University Press, 2012);
and Hankins, Virtue Politics, pp. 271‒88.
 19
more clearly Bruni’s Laudatio Florentinae urbis (1403‒4) and the Oratio in funere
Iohannis Strozzae (1428).⁴⁸
These political ideas (very briefly summarized here) represent part of the
fulcrum of political thought in early Florentine humanism and, in the following
years, were retrieved and elaborated by other humanists who used even more
extensively the model of Sallust, such as Poggio Bracciolini in his Historiae
Florentinae (1459), and in the famous controversy with Guarino on Caesar and
Scipio (1435).⁴⁹ Sallust was a prominent model also in Matteo Palmieri’s De
captivitate Pisarum liber (1448), the account of the conflict between Florence
and Pisa, in which the Latin historian is the source used to strengthen the
celebration of the concordia civium of the Florentine state against the attempts
at rebellion.⁵⁰ This principle was traditionally based on the very famous remark by
Sallust, which states that ‘concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae
dilabuntur’ (Sall. Iug. 10, 6, ‘harmony makes small states great, while the mightiest
are undone by discord’) and was adopted as a conceptual cornerstone throughout
the humanist age.⁵¹
Thus, in the first half of the Quattrocento, and already in the previous century
and more generally in the late Middle Ages, although a specific literature on
conspiracies had still to appear, many historical and political texts celebrated
the value of political unity and condemned conflicts and subversion,⁵² mostly
on the basis of Sallust’s work and the ideology put forth in it. Yet, it is only around
the middle of the fifteenth century that the reappropriation of the Latin historian
became complete and affected not only ideological aspects, but also the literary
dimension and, therefore, gave birth to a corpus of works specifically devoted to
political plots. This was also due to a broader gradual change in the historical and
cultural background, where political ideas deriving from the classical republican
tradition were evoked by the humanists mainly to denounce the threat coming
from seditions. Now these attempts at subverting the political status quo are often
represented in literature as provoked by the amorality of plotters, usually
described with the traits of Sallust’s Catiline. Consequently the legacy of the
⁴⁸ The Laudatio is published in Bruni, Leonardo, Laudatio Florentine urbis, edited by Stefano
U. Baldassarri (Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000); the Oratio is published in Bruni,
Leonardo, Opere letterarie e politiche, edited by Paolo Viti (Torino: UTET, 1996), pp. 720‒21. On the
influence of Sallust in Bruni’s works: La Penna, Sallustio, pp. 432‒39; Osmond, ‘Princeps’, pp. 108‒10.
See also Hankins, ‘The “Baron Thesis” ’; and ‘Rhetoric’.
⁴⁹ Bruni, Leonardo and Bracciolini, Poggio, Storie Fiorentine, introduction by Eugenio Garin
(Arezzo: Biblioteca della città, 1984); Canfora, La controversia.
⁵⁰ On Palmieri’s historical work see Osmond, ‘Princeps’, p. 110; the text is published in Matthei
Palmerii De captivitate Pisarum liber, edited by Gino Scaramella, in Rerum Italicarum scriptores (Città
di Castello: S. Lapi, 1904), vol. 19, part 2.
⁵¹ See in particular Pedullà, Machiavelli, pp. 11‒88.
⁵² A focus on these concepts in the analysis of Florentine works of the early Quattrocento is placed
by Najemy, John M., ‘ “Civic Humanism” and Florentine politics’, in Renaissance Civic Humanism,
edited by James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 75‒104.
20      
classical tradition relating to this topic resulted in a new, or more precisely

‘renewed’, ‘monographic’ genre of literary texts on contemporary conspiracies
(like the De coniuratione Catilinae itself). Nevertheless, alongside the predictable
source of Sallust, which takes specific forms and results in different outcomes in
each work, manifold classical models are employed and all texts display a complex
process of imitation.⁵³
Despite the conflation of multiple sources and the adoption of various literary
genres, the cornerstone of all these texts is history. This emerges in both the use of
classical historical auctoritates and the historiographical and political interpret-
ation of the episodes. The growth of humanist political historiography, as the
foremost component of fifteenth-century historical writing, has been pointed out
and extensively illustrated by scholars with regard to the cultural areas of Florence,
at least for the first half of the century, and, most importantly, of Milan and
Naples.⁵⁴ It is within the political systems of the princely governments of Naples
and Milan that a particular genre of official political historiography was brought
forth. This output is the expression of a well-articulated operation of cultural
politics involving the most distinguished intellectuals, who were appointed as
‘official’ historians and were committed to providing new rulers with an authori-
tative support.⁵⁵ Evidently this political historiography was closely associated with
eulogistic and propagandistic aims, but it was also grounded on well-thought-out
historiographical tenets that were discussed and gradually established through the
lively fifteenth-century debate on the theory and practice of historia.
The production of this political historiography within Neapolitan humanism is
interconnected with the significant development, in the very same area, of a
theoretical literature de principe (from the first ‘hybrid’ work by Bartolomeo
Facio, who wrote in 1444 the rhetorical triptych Super Isocrate, to more canonical
⁵³ On imitation in the Renaissance, see in particular McLaughlin, Martin, Literary Imitation in the
Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo
(Oxford: Clarendon press, 1995).
⁵⁴ On Florentine historiography and its development in the sixteenth century: Gilbert, Felix ‘The
Theory and Practice of History in the Fifteenth Century’, in Gilbert, Felix Machiavelli and Guicciardini.
Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965),
pp. 203‒36. See also, Ianziti, Writing History. On Milanese political historiography the fundamental
study is Ianziti, Gary, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas. Politics and Propaganda in 15th
Century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); while on Neapolitan historiography, see in particular
Ferraù, Giacomo, Il tessitore di Antequera. Storiografia umanistica meridionale (Rome: Istituto storico
italiano per il Medio Evo, 2001). On official historiography: Ferraù, Giacomo, ‘La storiografia come
ufficialità’, in Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, 1. Il Medioevo latino, edited by Guglielmo Cavallo,
Claudio Leonardi, and Enrico Menestò, vol. 3, La ricezione del testo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1995),
pp. 661‒93. On humanist historiography in general see also the studies mentioned in n. 41 and Miglio,
Massimo, Storiografia pontificia del Quattrocento (Bologna: Patron, 1975); Tateo, Francesco, I miti
della storiografia umanistica (Rome: Bulzoni, 1990); Fubini, Riccardo, L’Umanesimo italiano e i suoi
storici. Origini rinascimentali, critica moderna (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2001); Fubini, Riccardo,
Storiografia dell’Umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome: Edizioni di
Storia e Letteratura, 2003).
⁵⁵ On Neapolitan works, see Chapter 3, section 3.2.
 21
treatises).⁵⁶ Both these literary strands were intended to enhance monarchs’

authority and to define an ideal rule by looking at the concrete political issues of
the kingdom. Hence, the strong relationship between politics and historiography
emerges as one of the distinctive traits of fifteenth-century literature, not only in
the area of pure historical writing, but also in other literary texts (treatises, poems,
epistle, dialogues, etc.), and in particular in the multiform ‘thematic’ genre of
literature on conspiracies.
I.4 Texts on political plots: a multifaceted corpus
Besides the most important texts selected as case studies in this volume, many
works on the topic of conspiracy were composed in the same period throughout
Italy, disclosing the remarkable fortune enjoyed by this kind of literature (not to
mention the numerous narratives of these events included in more general
historiographical works).
In 1453, Stefano Porcari’s attempt at overthrowing papal government attracted
the interest of several intellectuals and can be regarded as the event that inaugur-
ated to this literary output. In addition to Alberti and Orazio Romano’s works, the
conspiracy was narrated in other literary texts (as well as in several historical
documents): the De coniuratione Porcaria (1453c.),⁵⁷ a dialogue by the jurist
Pietro Godi, mainly focused on the issue of the legitimacy of ecclesiastical
power; an epistle written some years after the plot, in 1459, by Alamanno
Rinuccini, the famous Florentine humanist who was an upholder of republican
tenets and therefore interpreted the events from this specific political outlook,
producing the only text in this corpus that sympathizes with the conspirator;⁵⁸
and the Conformatio Curie Romane (1453c.), a poem in hexameters composed by
the humanist Giuseppe Brivio and aimed at both condemning Stefano Porcari and
celebrating Pope Nicolas V.⁵⁹
If we consider Orazio Romano’s Porcaria and Brivio’s poem, it is noteworthy
that the poetic genre—and in particular its subcategories of epic and eulogistic
short poems—is used as the literary vehicle for dealing with the political issue of
conspiracies, and it will be employed by other authors in the following years. More
⁵⁶ Facio’s work consists of three orations: two eulogies of king Alfonso and his son Ferdinando,
and the translation into the vernacular of Isocrate’s Ad Nicoclem; the texts are preserved in the
manuscript of the University Library in Seville (ms. 443) and are published now in Albanese,
‘L’esordio’, pp. 59‒115.
⁵⁷ Lehnerdt, pp. 4‒34.
⁵⁸ Rinuccini, Alamanno, Epistole e orazioni, edited by Vito R. Giustiniani (Florence: Olschki, 1953),
pp. 39‒46.
⁵⁹ The text is published in Tommasini, Oreste, ‘Documenti relativi a Stefano Porcari’, Archivio della
Società romana di storia patria 3 (1880), pp. 63‒133, 111‒23; see Miglio, Massimo, ‘Giuseppe Brivio’,
DBI, 14 (1972), pp. 355‒8.
22      
generally, epic poetry was traditionally linked with propagandistic intentions, and
this political overtone was further enhanced in the fifteenth century, when
historical-epic poems were mostly focused on celebrating signori or princes.
Another significant example is the poem Tarentina (1464) written by Fosco
Paracleto Malvezzi, a little-known humanist bishop of Acerno.⁶⁰ This work
deals with the first conspiracy of the barons against Ferdinando of Aragon, the
same event to which Pontano’s De bello Neapolitano is devoted, but from a
completely different literary perspective. The purpose of the poem, which is
informed by several imaginary and fantastic motives distant from a realistic
historical narrative, is to exculpate the king of Naples from the allegation of
having murdered Giovanni Antonio Orsini, prince of Taranto, the leader of the
rebel barons. Significantly, some elements seem to connect this text with the
Porcaria, which was composed about ten years earlier and could have influenced
this late bizarre epic work: in particular, both have an infernal setting and rotate
around the figure of a negative hero, the conspirator, on whom the title of both
texts is similarly based.⁶¹
The connection between poetry and the historical topic of conspiracy does not
end with the Porcaria and the Tarentina. Even if this study does focus on the
Quattrocento, it is worth mentioning that in the sixteenth century Ludovico
Ariosto wrote an eclogue in the vernacular on the conspiracy hatched in
Ferrara, in 1506, by Giulio and Ferrante d’Este against their brothers, the Duke
of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, and Cardinal Ippolito.⁶² In Ariosto’s eclogue, com-
posed immediately after the conspiracy in 1506, the historical events are dealt with
in an imaginary and poetic perspective, by means of the creation of the bucolic
setting. The conspiracy is narrated through the dialogue of two shepherds,
Melibeo and Tirsi, who meet in a pastoral location, and all real characters are
called by fictional pastoral names, yet under these concealing pseudonyms it is still
possible to recognize the actual identities of the historical figures. Epic had been
the main poetic vehicle for the topic of conspiracy in the fifteenth century,
nonetheless bucolic poetry achieves the same stylistic results of placing the
contemporary historical episode in an imaginary and distant setting, which allows
the author to treat this thorny political issue. Although since the classical age the
bucolic background stands for a peaceful retreat from war and civic involvement,
politics frequently creeps into the Arcadian world. This intrusion is conventional
in the literary tradition and it is amplified in fifteenth-century pastoral poetry,
⁶⁰ Martucci, Giovanni, Un poema latino inedito del sec. XV sulla tentata restaurazione angioina
(Rome: Giovanni Balbi, 1899).
⁶¹ On these works and, more generally, the use of the poetic genre: Chapter 1, section 1.3.
⁶² The eclogue is published in Ariosto, Ludovico, Le opere minori, edited by Giuseppe Fatini
(Florence: Sansoni, 1961), pp. 313‒29. See also Bacchelli, Riccardo, La congiura di Don Giulio d’Este,
(Milan: Mondadori, 1983).
 23
especially in the eclogues composed in the cultural environment of Ferrara.⁶³

Ariosto seems to follow this model, since his work is fully imbued by a political
dimension, though veiled by the pastoral disguise. His ultimate aim is to celebrate
Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, and to condemn the conspirators, whose plans are
described as an attempt to put in danger the peaceful conditions that the current
government has secured. Thus the eclogue turns out to be to some extent
connected with humanist works on plots, in terms of eulogistic aim, literary
transfiguration of history, and political intents. From this perspective, Ariosto’s
poem and humanist texts should be regarded as works composed by committed
letterati, who were willing to support their patron’s cultural politics, but could also
maintain a space for intellectual freedom. This autonomy emerges either in the
personal way in which they decide to treat political issues, or, in some cases, in
the evolution of their personal political thinking in relation to a specific historical
event. For instance, some years after writing the eclogue, Ariosto would mention
the conspiracy in the Orlando furioso (III, 60‒2), presenting the episode in a more
conciliatory perspective and urging the duke to be merciful. More generally,
Ariosto’s eclogue, in light of several links with humanist literature on plots, can
be placed in the tradition of texts related to this political issue, and, along with
Machiavelli’s works (in the area of prose and historical writing) it represents the
sixteenth-century development of this political literature in the vernacular.
Going back to the Quattrocento, the papal state faced many conspiracies, or
supposed plans of conspiracy in this period. Only seven years after Stefano
Porcari’s plot, between 1459 and 1460, a revolt was carried out in Rome against
the city’s governing bodies and Pius II’s rule, and significantly it was led (mainly in
its second stage) by Stefano Porcari’s nephew, Triburzio di Angelo di Maso.⁶⁴ One
of the main sources for this rebellion is a group of letters by the humanist George
of Trebizond, which provide an account of the events and are mostly aimed at
exculpating his son, Iacopo, from the possible allegation of being part of this
uprising.⁶⁵ However, this episode cannot be considered exactly a conspiracy, but
rather it has been more rightly defined as an actual revolt, because of the wider
⁶³ Beside Ariosto’s work, another eclogue was composed on the same conspiracy in Ferrara: the
author is Antonio Valtellino, chancellor of Niccolò da Correggio, who was one of the main political
advisors of Alfonso d’Este. This eclogue is published in Dionisotti, Carlo ‘Documenti letterari d’una
congiura estense’, Civiltà moderna 9 (1937), pp. 327‒40. On this text and, more in general, on the
bucolic literature produced in the North of Italy: Bacchelli, pp. 6, 8.
⁶⁴ On this revolt see in particular Farenga, Paola, ‘La rivolta di Triburzio nel 1460’, in Congiure e
conflitti. L’affermazione della signoria pontificia su Roma nel Rinascimento: politica, economia e cultura.
Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma, 3‒5 dicembre 2013, edited by Chiabò et al. (Rome: Roma nel
Rinascimento, 2014), pp. 167‒86.
⁶⁵ These letters are published in Cessi, Roberto, Saggi romani (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1956), pp. 153‒185. On Trapezuntius, see Monfasani, John, George of Trebizond.
A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: Brill, 1976); Monfasani, John,
Collectanea trapezuntiana. Texts, Documents and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond
(Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance
Society of America, 1984).
24      
popular participation and its less secret character. In addition, it did not have a
proper treatment in specific literary works, but mainly in more general histories of
the city, or memoriali.⁶⁶ Eight years later, in 1468, a further conspiratorial event in
Rome was the so-called conspiracy of the ‘accademici’. A group of humanists who
were part of the Accademia romana were accused by Pope Paul II of plotting against
him and, for this reason, in February 1468 were captured and jailed, although they
always proclaimed their innocence.⁶⁷ Some of the intellectuals arrested were
Bartolomeo Platina, Lucio Fosforo, Antonio Maffei, and Pomponio Leto (at a
second stage); while others, such as Callimaco (Filippo Buonaccorsi), the allegedly
leader of the plot, managed to flee from Rome. The humanists in jail did not stop
their literary activity and wrote a sizable number of works: some of these texts
concern more directly their own experience of detention, others are more distant
from their situation.⁶⁸ Yet, despite these features, this corpus of works cannot
be included in the category of works on plots, because they do not contain
any account of seditious events (which actually never took place), nor deal with
this political topic, apart from the writings aimed at claiming the humanists’
innocence and providing their defence (such as the Defensio in carceribus by
Pomponio Leto).⁶⁹
However, among the numerous conspiracies of these decades, other events can
be regarded as contributing more directly to the literary definition of the ‘age of
conspiracies’. One of these episodes, this time concerning the history of Florence,
is the political plot planned in 1465‒6 by Dietisalvi Neroni, Agnolo Acciaiuoli, and
Niccolò Soderini, against Piero de’ Medici, Cosimo’s son, who succeeded his
father in 1464. This conspiracy was narrated by the Florentine humanist
Benedetto Colucci da Pistoia in the De discordiis Florentinorum in 1468:⁷⁰ the
historical account results in an accolade and tribute to the Medici regime and is
entirely focused on eulogizing Cosimo, his son Piero and his grandson Lorenzo.
One year later, in 1469, a further literary work devoted to another conspiracy was
composed in Ferrara: the Commemoratione del tradimento facto verso il clarissimo
⁶⁶ In particular see Infessura, Stefano, Diario della città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scribasenato,
edited by Oreste Tommasini (Rome: Forzani, 1890), pp. 64‒5.
⁶⁷ On this event, see Medioli Masotti, Paola, ’L’Accademia romana e la congiura del 1468’, Italia
medioevale e umanistica 25 (1982), pp. 189‒204; D’Elia, A Sudden Terror; and Vecchia, Damiana and
Bianca, Concetta, ‘Riflessioni sulla “congiura” degli Accademici’, in Congiure e conflitti. L’affermazione
della signoria pontificia su Roma nel Rinascimento: politica, economia e cultura. Atti del Convegno
internazionale, Roma, 3‒5 dicembre 2013, edited by Chiabò et al. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento,
2014), pp. 187‒202.
⁶⁸ All these works are listed in Medioli Masotti, pp. 191‒2.
⁶⁹ Carini, Isidoro, La difesa di Pomponio Leto (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1894).
⁷⁰ Colucci, Benedetto, De discordiis Florentinorum liber nunc primum ex ms. cod. in lucem erutus a
Laurentio Mehus Etruscae academiae Cortonensis socio (Florentiae: apud Ioannem Paullum
Giovannelli, 1747). Cf. Ristori, Renzo, ‘Benedetto Colucci da Pistoia’, DBI, 27 (1982), pp. 494‒8. On
this plot, see Martines, Lauro, La congiura dei Pazzi: intrighi politici, sangue e vendetta nella Firenze dei
Medici, translated by Nadia Cannata (Milan: Mondadori, 2005), pp. 47‒56.
 25
et excellentissimo principe duca Borso.⁷¹ The text, in the vernacular, was composed
by a little known humanist, Carlo di San Giorgio (called Polismagna), in order to
denounce the abortive attack plotted in 1469 against Borso d’Este, the Duke of
Ferrara and Modena, by Giovanni Ludovico Pio—son of Galasso, one of the rulers
of Carpi together with his brothers, Alberto e Giberto—with the support of
Galeazzo Maria Visconti, the Duke of Milan, and Piero de’ Medici. Carlo di San
Giorgio was the secretary of the Ferrarese court and the librarian of the ducal
library. As the prologue of his work states, the text had been previously written in
Latin, but since the dedicatee, the duke, was not familiar enough with the classical
language, it was translated and reworked in the vernacular (this is the only version
still extant today and is contained in the manuscript of the Estense Library in
Modena, α.G.6.12). This choice is also due to the purpose of reaching out to an
audience that was as wide as possible. The need for a pro-ruler account of the
events was urgent especially if we consider that the revenge against whoever was
believed to be a plotter was ruthless: not only was Giovanni Ludovico Pio
beheaded in the public square, but his sons were deprived of their properties
and his brothers, unaware of the plan, were detained in jail for many years.⁷² Yet
the narration, although wholly oriented to support the duke’s standpoint and to
present his rule as being under the auspices of God, seems not to have had a wide
circulation. This is probably attributable to the rather naive political approach that
underlies the text in some crucial passages. For example, the author openly
mentions the foreign political forces involved in the attack, in particular
Florence and its leader Piero de’ Medici, while reference to the ‘external’ instiga-
tors of the conspiracies is usually prudently avoided by humanists in their texts on
plots. Therefore these rather incautious observations might account for the work’s
restricted diffusion.
Another text in the vernacular in this corpus is the Lamento in morte di Giuliano,
a poem on the Pazzi conspiracy written by an anonymous author in 1478, which
reveals that, although most works on plots were composed in Latin, the vehicle of
the vernacular was also employed by writers, especially in the texts marked by a
more popular character. However, in the context of the Pazzi conspiracy, the all-
embracing system of pro-Medici propaganda was mainly built by humanist works.
In particular, besides Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium, the most explicitly
political documents were produced by both Bartolomeo Scala, the chancellor of
⁷¹ Carlo di San Giorgio, Commemoratione vel tractato del tradimento facto verso il clarissimo et
excellentissimo principe duca Borso per li sceleratissimi homini Ioan Ludovico Impio et Andrea da
Varegnana, in Cappelli, Antonio, ‘La congiura dei Pio signori di Carpi contro Borso d’Este signore di
Ferrara duca di Modena e Reggio’, Atti e Memorie delle Reali Deputazioni di Storia patria per le
provincie modenesi e parmensi 2 (1864), pp. 3‒52. See Mastronardi, Maria Aurelia, ‘Una congiura alla
corte di Borso d’Este’, in Confini dell’Umanesimo letterario. Studi in onore di Francesco Tateo, vol. 2,
edited by Mauro De Nichilo, Grazia Distaso, and Antonio Iurilli (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento,
2003), pp. 921‒35.
⁷² On the whole event, see Chiappini, Luciano, ‘Borso d’Este’, DBI, 13 (1971), pp. 134‒43.
26      
Florence, who wrote the Excusatio Florentinorum (1478), and Gentile Becchi, the
bishop of Arezzo, who composed the Florentina synodus (1478), both based on
juridical interpretations of the event and aimed at underpinning the Medici’s
defence against Pope Sixtus IV, one of the main instigators of the assault in
Florence. Thanks to the new revolutionary invention of the printing press, all
these texts devoted to the burning political issue of a conspiracy, for the first time
were immediately published in printed editions and circulated more widely. Also
the Lamento in the vernacular was printed at once, in order to let it have the same
far-reaching dissemination as the other texts oriented towards a more educated
public: it was published in autumn of 1478 and was edited by Bartolomeo Fonzio,
another humanist of Lorenzo’s entourage.⁷³
Only two years before the Pazzi conspiracy, one of the most famous fifteenth-
century plots took place in Milan: the attack against Galeazzo Maria Sforza, fatally
stabbed on 26 December 1476 in front of the Church of Santo Stefano. This
episode in some ways bears a resemblance to the murder of another duke of Milan,
Giovanni Maria Visconti, in 1412.⁷⁴ The assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza is
a rare example of a successful conspiracy, but the plotters were not able to achieve
their political purposes and were eventually condemned and executed. The leader
of the plot was Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, a Milanese noble who had also
involved in his plan Gerolamo Olgiati and Carlo Visconti, along with supporters
belonging to the town’s aristocracy.⁷⁵ Although this was a crucial historical
episode in the history of the Quattrocento, the texts related to it did not enjoy
much success. The most important was Gian Mario Filelfo’s Consolatoria dedicata
alla duchessa di Milano Bona di Savoia (by the son of the more famous Francesco
Filelfo), a work in the vernacular written in 1477 as a consolatory oration-treatise
that significantly includes as its third and last section a sort of theory of princely
government viewed from the perspective of a female ruler, in this case Bona of
Savoy, the regent after her husband’s murder.⁷⁶ Another work on the same
event is a poem in terzine, the Capitolo per lo illustrissimo duca Galeazzo de
Milano, composed by the humanist Antonio Cornazzano,⁷⁷ who, after living in
Milan for many years, had moved to Ferrara and had already written a poem on
⁷³ On all texts on this conspiracy, see Chapter 4.

⁷⁴ See Gamberini, Andrea, ‘Giovanni Maria Visconti’, DBI, 56 (2001), pp. 352‒57.
⁷⁵ On this conspiracy: Belotti, Bortolo, Storia di una congiura (Olgiati) (Milan: Dall’Oglio, 1965);
Riccardo Fubini, Italia quattrocentesca, pp. 107‒35, 220‒52, 327‒50; Vaglienti, Francesca M.,
‘Anatomia di una congiura. Sulle tracce dell’assassinio del duca Galeazzo Maria Sforza tra scienza e
storia’, Atti dell’Istituto lombardo. Accademia di scienze e lettere di Milano 136, 2 (2002), pp. 237‒73;
and Vaglienti, Francesca M., ‘Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani’, DBI, 63 (2004), pp. 272‒5.
⁷⁶ Filelfo, Gian Mario, Consolatoria: dedicata alla duchessa di Milano Bona di Savoia, per la morte
del duca Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1477), edited by Anne Schoysman Zambrini (Bologna: Commissione
per i Testi di Lingua, 1991).
⁷⁷ The text is published in the edition Opera Nova de Miser Antonio Cornazano in terza rima
(Venetia: Zorzi di Rusconi, ad instantia de Nicolo dicto Zopino et Vincentio compagni, 1517), which
was also reprinted the following year.
 27
the conspiracy plotted in this city by Niccolò d’Este against his uncle Ercole, a few
months earlier, the De Herculei filii ortu et de urbis Ferrariae periculo ac
liberatione:⁷⁸ both works are aimed at condemning the conspiratorial attacks.
Moreover, in Milan, Bonino Mombrizio, a humanist who was part of the entou-
rage of the Sforza’s court, commemorated the assassination of Duke Galeazzo
Maria Sforza in his Threnodia (1476), a poem in Latin.⁷⁹ But the most compre-
hensive narratives of the events can be found in more extensive and wide-ranging
historical texts, such as Bernardino Corio’s Historia Patria⁸⁰ (whose composition
started in 1485, but it was published in 1503) and the Diari of Cicco Simonetta
(1473‒9), the secretary of the dukes of Milan and the ruler in charge pro tempore
together with Bona of Savoy, though not officially, after Galeazzo’s death.⁸¹
This conspiracy has a substantial bearing on the general affirmation of the
fifteenth-century cultural and political viewpoint in the interpretation of plots.
The conspirators against Galeazzo hoped to gain legitimacy for their political
action by presenting themselves as followers of the anti-tyrannical classical trad-
ition and clearly intended to adopt the model of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
In the same years, this ideology rooted in the ancient culture had been celebrated
by the Bolognese humanist Nicola Capponi, called Cola Montano, professor of
Latin in Milan, whose lectures were attended by the conspirators themselves.⁸²
Montano did not only praise Roman virtus and anti-tyrannical thought, but in his
speeches he also associated the image of Duke Galeazzo with the negative figure of
Tarquinius Superbus, while the most famous conspirators of the classical trad-
ition, Brutus, Cassius, and Catiline, were celebrated as positive models to follow.
Significantly, the relationship between the classical republican tradition and
Montano’s anti-despotic ideals was underscored in Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine
(VII, 33), where the narration of this plot has a pivotal position. What is most
noteworthy is that the interpretation of this event that prevailed in the aftermath,
not only in the state of Milan but more broadly in Italy, was totally opposite to the
conspirators’ views and intentions. Although they tried to justify their actions in
the anti-tyrannical ideology deriving from the classical tradition, the standpoint
that generally ended up triumphing coincided with an autocratic view, and was
focused on bringing to the fore the principles of political unity. Conversely, the
stance that looked at this act of rebellion as driven by the disapproval of a despotic
⁷⁸ This work is published in Zancani, Diego, ‘Il De Herculei filii ortu et de urbis Ferrariae periculo ac
liberatione di Antonio Cornazzano’, Bollettino storico piacentino 74 (1979), pp. 66‒76. On this
conspiracy, see Trevor, Dean, ‘Ercole d’Este’, DBI, 43 (1993), pp. 97‒107.
⁷⁹ Mombrizio, Bonino, Threnodia, edited by Alessandro Minuziano (Milan, 1504).
⁸⁰ Corio, Bernardio, Storia di Milano, edited by Anna Morisi Guerra, vol. 2 (Torino: UTET, 1978),
pp. 1370‒413; see also Meschini, Stefano, Uno storico umanista alla corte sforzesca: biografia di
Bernardino Corio (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1995).
⁸¹ I diari di Cicco Simonetta, edited by Alfio Rosario Natale (Milano: Giuffrè, 1961). On Milanese
historiography: Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography.
⁸² On Cola Montano, see Orvieto, Paolo, ‘Nicola Capponi detto Cola Montano’, DBI, 19 (1976),
pp. 83‒6.
28      
regime was not fostered by the political and intellectual circuits and was in the end
suppressed and defeated.
Hence, more generally, the reading of these subversive events that prevailed was
focused on condemning the attacks presenting the plot as a dangerous threat
against a legitimate government. The major contribution to the predominance of
this pro-ruler political outlook was made by literature and, in particular, by the
narrative of the facts produced and disseminated in humanist works.
This study is carried out in six chapters, the first four of which are devoted to the
analysis of the most important humanist works on conspiracies that are examined
as case studies: Orazio Romano’s epic poem Porcaria (Chapter 1); Leon Battista
Alberti’s epistle Porcaria coniuratio (Chapter 2); Giovanni Pontano’s De bello
Neapolitano (Chapter 3); and Angelo Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium
(Chapter 4). These texts allow us to explore at length the growth of this literary
subject, across different literary genres and the most prominent political and
cultural centres, through an in-depth examination of each work conducted from
philological, historical, stylistic, and critical perspectives. This investigation, pay-
ing specific attention to the influence of the classical tradition and the process of
imitatio performed by the authors, also discloses the political perspectives that
match the specific rhetorical strategies adopted by the humanists to represent the
historical events.
Chapter 5 provides a comparative analysis and traces the overall evolution of
the issue of conspiracies in humanist literature and points out the recurring
literary patterns, classical sources, narrative approaches, and political angles that
characterize the literary transfiguration of this topic. Particular focus is placed on
the significant interaction between historiographical, political, and literary elem-
ents in these texts and on the links with literature de principe. The purpose is also
to define more precisely the complex facets of fifteenth-century political thought
and its connection with the cultural and literary dimension, with specific reference
to the treatment of the theme of conspiracy.
The final section of this volume (Chapter 6) considers the sixteenth century,
and in particular Machiavelli. This analysis investigates how the topic of conspir-
acy is addressed in Machiavelli’s works and concentrates on the relationship
between his reflections on this political practice and fifteenth-century literature
on plots. It looks at the perspectives that he has in common with this previous
corpus of works, but also, more significantly, at how he, at the same time, radically
departs from it in producing an overall lucid theorization of this political
phenomenon.
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“You are trying to make the worst mistake of your life, father,” she
said reasonably. “Now a mushy daughter would give in and let you
repent it later; but I think it’s a lot better to save you from it, and you’ll
live to thank me yet.”
“I’ll live to take you East and leave you there with your Aunt
Jennie, till you’ve got sense, if I hear any more of this.”
“Well, then, you won’t hear any more about it.” And she went out.
“The little cuss!” he muttered. Then he sat down and wrote a letter
beginning, “Dear Jennie,” and ending, “For heaven’s sake, wire that
you will take her, or she’ll be off with him—by the front door and in
broad daylight, understand. She’s a straight little cuss. What an
everlasting shame she wasn’t a boy!”
Even as he signed: “Your aff. Bro.,” the massive front door
banged; but he was too absorbed to notice it. Paula, calm and
serious, carrying a suit-case, took a car for the station where a
young man was nervously pacing the platform. He stood watching
her for a moment before she saw him. The clear red of her cheeks
was no deeper than usual, her blue eyes were unclouded, in all her
handsome, well-dressed person there was not one hurried
movement. She even paused to compare her watch with the station
clock. An irrepressible laugh brought the color back to his face. “Oh,
Paula, so you are here,” as he hurried to meet her. “You elope as
calmly as you would go shopping.”
“It’s a far more sensible proceeding! Have you the tickets?”
“Not yet, dear Paula, I want you enough to commit almost any
crime—you know that, and yet I can’t quite square it with myself—
this running away with a man’s daughter. And—such a rich man,
confound it! I’ve been awake all night thinking over one thing. You
swept me off my feet yesterday; but to-day—”
“But, Ralph, I gave father fair warning. And this happens to be a
case where he is wrong and I am right. I don’t think that just because
I’m—I’m fond of you, but I can see, you know, just what you have
got, and what the other men I know haven’t got, better than father
can. He will see it too, some day, and thank me—I told him so. I’m
not really eloping, since eighteen is the age for a girl in this state.
And the fact that you’re not of age yet doesn’t matter, for you haven’t
any parents or guardians to object. And father needn’t give us any
money—we can get along with yours and mine. Now the train is due
in three minutes and, of course, you needn’t marry me if you don’t
want to. But if you do, you’d better get the tickets.”
Three hours later the two emerged from a cab in front of an
imposing courthouse and followed endless lengths of unclean,
tessellated pavement until they reached a door bearing the
significant sign: “Marriage Licenses.” The clerk had the engraved
forms out before anything coherent had been said. He was a hurried,
dry little man, who appeared suffering to say, “Step lively, please!” at
every pause.
“Parents or guardian’s consent?”
“I have no parents or guardian.”
“Can’t issue license to you then.”
“What?—why—why not?”
“Law of the state.”
“But I am of age!”
“Oh, yes, you can get married all right, but he can’t.”
“But what can we do?”
“Wait two years, or get a guardian and obtain his consent.” And
Cupid turned firmly back to the papers on his desk.
They went out into the corridor and, finding a bench in a windowed
recess, dropped helplessly down on it while Ralph gave voice to his
personal opinion of the state law.
“Swearing isn’t going to help, Ralph,” said Paula decidedly. “Now
we’ve got to consider everything.”
“But the old fool—when I haven’t a soul who could raise the least
—”
“Yes, dear. Now suppose we take up each possibility in turn. It’s
half-past twelve, and there isn’t a train back till five-twenty, too late to
head off my letter to father.”
“Oh, it would be too flat!”
“And yet we don’t know a soul in this city, and we can’t stay here
unmarried.”
“I was a beast, an ass, to get you into such a mess. Perhaps some
sort of a minister could marry us without a license. I know they do in
some states.”
“Go ask him.” But he came back dejectedly.
“Can’t be done; I ought to be hanged!”
“Well, suppose we go and get lunch. I want a cup of coffee and a
ham sandwich.”
They found it near by, at a marble counter, and presently took up
their problem with renewed courage.
“Of course, we can’t stay here unmarried. If we don’t find a way
before five-twenty—we must go back—and father will probably take
me East by the next train.”
“And quite right. I wouldn’t let my daughter marry a blithering idiot
who could get her into a scrape like this.”
“I shouldn’t mind father’s rage, but I should hate his crowing. I
can’t bear to be beaten like this, but of course, if you don’t try to
think, we might as well go back to the station.”
“But what can thinking do against a set of darn fool state laws?” he
burst out. “If I had only had the sense to set up a guardian—” He
broke off at her gasp of excitement. Her eyes were fixed on space,
big with a growing idea, for a breathless moment; then she turned to
him radiant, both fists clenched on the counter.
“Ralph, I’ll adopt you! Anybody of age can adopt anybody who
isn’t. Then I will give my consent and there we are!”
He stared at her speechlessly; then he hid his face in his hands
and gave way to wild laughter.
“Have you anything against it?”
“No—no! Nothing!”
“Come on, then. We shall have to hurry.”
“The Court,” to whom they were referred for information, proved to
be a huge, middle-aged, kindly person. If marriage was difficult
under the state laws, adoption was comparatively easy.
“Now what is the very shortest time in which it could be done?”
“Oh, it need not take much time. A couple of weeks would be
ample.”
Two pairs of dismayed eyes consulted each other.
“Couldn’t you do it in less?”
“Why, I don’t know. If the circumstances were extraordinary—”
“Couldn’t you do it before five o’clock to-day?”
“To-day?”
“We came down here to be married, but were refused a license
because I am not of age, and hadn’t anybody to give consent. But if
this lady, who is of age, could legally adopt me before the marriage
bureau closed, then, you see, she could give the necessary
consent.”
The Court laughed until his whole bulk was a heaving frame of
merriment. But he was absorbed again in an instant, and after a
moment’s deliberation he took down their names and ages and
wrote briefly:
“And you say the child is willing?”
“He seems to be.”
Half an hour later, Paula Dennison had been formally appointed
guardian of her future lord and master, and had given her written
consent to his marriage. The Court himself conducted them to the
license bureau, explained matters to the dry little clerk, dryer and
more hurried than ever, witnessed the marriage, kissed the bride,
escorted them down-stairs, and put them into a cab.
The Court was still standing to smile after the departing carriage
when another came lurching up from the direction of the station.
Even before it could stop, a middle-aged man had burst out and was
striding up the steps with dark and concerted purpose on his flushed
face. The Court stared at him, at first absently, then with dawning
suspicion—chin, blue eyes, carriage—surely such a resemblance
could not be a mere coincidence! After a brief hesitation he
discreetly followed, and suspicion grew to conviction as the man
turned to the marriage license bureau. The Court, lurking in the
shadow of the open door, heard him demand whether a young
woman named Dennison had tried to get married there to-day.
“Married fifteen minutes ago.”
“But they couldn’t be—the boy wasn’t of age. ’Tain’t legal. You had
no right to issue a license. Why, I’ll have you—”
“The applicant had the written consent of his guardian.”
“But he hadn’t got a guardian—I found that out before I started. He
was fooling you. It’s a—”
Paula’s written consent was laid before his eyes.
“The lady took out papers of guardianship, and so her consent
was valid.”
“Adopted him? Adopted him and then married him! The little cuss!
Adopted him, by golly! Oh, why wasn’t she a boy? Oh, well, I guess
it’s all right. Adopted him! And I never thought of that!”
THE HONOR OF THE WOODS

Anonymous
The principal character of this story is John Norton, an aged
trapper and scout in the Adirondacks, who is adored by the people
for his bravery and courage. And although he has not rowed in a
race for over forty years, he has decided to enter a free for all
contest, to be pulled on the Saranac. He does this, because guides
have brought him word that “perfessionals” are to pull. And he thinks
it would be an “eternal shame if them city boasters beat the men
born in the woods and on their own waters too.” Another important
character in our story is a young boy, of whom John Norton always
speaks as “the Lad,” a good-hearted, simple-minded boy, whom the
trapper has befriended and who worships the old man. At the hotel
all is expectation. A great crowd has gathered in anticipation of the
morrow’s races, for the guides had brought word that “Old John
Norton was not only coming, but that he was going to enter the
race.” The thought that they were going to see this celebrated man
stirred the people with a feeling of intense curiosity.
In the crowd were several aged men who remembered the fame
the trapper had as an oarsman fifty years ago. And one of their
number closed a heated verbal debate about the merits of the
various contestants with, “I tell you, sir, there ain’t a man on God’s
green earth kin beat John Norton at the oars.” On the other hand the
professionals had their backers—college boys, English tourists,
lawyers, clergymen, and bankers. Thus stood the feeling when a
boat, with the Lad at the oar and the trapper at the paddle, came out
from behind an island into plain view of the hundreds that were
watching for it. As the boat came on talking ceased, and amid a
profound silence it drew up within fifty feet of the landing. Suddenly
an old man leaning on a stout stick flourished it in the air, and
exclaimed in a voice that shook with the intensity of his emotion,
“John Norton, he saved my life at the battle of Salt Lakes forty years
ago. Three cheers for John Norton!” Then such a cheer arose as to
burst the stillness into fragments and, thrice repeated, rolled its roar
across the lake and against the distant hills, until their hollow
caverns resounded again, while on the instant a hundred white
handkerchiefs, waved by whiter hands, sprang into sight and filled
the air with their snowy flutterings. For one instant the color came
and went in the face of the surprised trapper. He then arose and
stood at his utmost height. Meanwhile the eyes of the great multitude
had time to take in his splendid proportions, and the grave majesty of
his countenance. He then settled back and the boat moved toward
the landing. It was high noon on the Saranac, and a brighter day was
never seen. The lake had not stirred a ripple, and the air was that
cool, fragrant air so good to breathe in a race. The “free for all” was
to be pulled at one o’clock. The entries were closed the evening
before, and stood seven in all: the three professionals, the brother
guides, known as Fred and Charley, the old trapper and the Lad.
The boats were already in position. The course ran straight down
the lake to a line of seven buoys, so that each boat had its own buoy
to turn around and thence pull back again. The length of the course
was just four miles, a longer race by half than was ever before pulled
on those waters. The boats were by no means the same length and
width—the Lad’s was by far the heaviest.
The number of spectators was a wonder to all; where all the
people came from was a mystery. The long piazza of the hotel, the
wharf, even the roof of the boathouse swarmed with human beings.
The shore on either side was lined with spectators for the distance of
half a mile.
“Now, boys,” said the trapper, “ye must remember that a four-mile
race is a good deal of a pull, and the goin’ off ain’t half so decidin’ as
the comin’ in. I don’t conceit that we can afford to fool any time, for
them perfessionals have come here to row, and they look to me as if
they had a good deal of that sort of stuff in them; but it won’t do to
get flustrated at the start, and if ye see fit to follow I’ll set ye a
jegmatical sort of a stroke that will send us out to the buoys yonder
without any rawness in the windpipe or kinks in the legs. But still if ye
don’t think yer a-pullin’ fast enough take yer lick, fur in such a race
as this is likely to be, a man should follow his own notions and act
accordin’ to his gifts.”
“Do you think we will win, old trapper?” asked Fred. “I dunno, boy,
I sartinly dunno, but I don’t like yer oars, especially that left one.
There’s a kink in the shank of it that hadn’t orter be there.”
“Your oars are big enough to hold anyway and I hold you will win.”
“Thank ye, boys, thank ye; yis, I sartinly shall try, for it would be a
mortal shame to have that prize to go out of the woods, an’ if nothin’
gives way I’ll give ’em a touch of the stuff that’s in me, the last mile,
that’ll make ’em get down to work in earnest, but if anything happens
I have great hopes of the Lad there, for his gifts are wonderful at the
oars and—”
“Ready there,” came the clear voice of the starter; “ready there for
the word.”
“Aye, aye, ready it is,” replied the trapper. “Now, Lad, if anything
happens to me and you see I can’t win, John Norton will never
forgive you if you don’t pull like a sinner runnin’ from jedgment.”
“Ready there, all of you; One, two, three, GO.”
The oars of the professionals dropped on the water as if their
blades were controlled by one man, and their stroke was so tense
and quick that the light boats fairly jumped ahead. The trapper and
the Lad had been slower to get away and were a full length behind
before they got fairly into motion. The Lad was the last to get started
and so careless and ungainly was his appearance that the crowd,
who cheered at the passage of the others, laughed and groaned at
him. For forty rods the race continued without change in the relative
position of the boats.
The oars flashed, dropped and flashed again, as the professionals
swept their oars ahead. Some rods behind the trapper and Fred
were rowing side by side, stroke for stroke, long, steady and strong.
“Yis, yis, I understand; but don’t ye worry, four miles is four miles.
Still if yer a-gittin’ narvous we’ll lengthen out a little jest to show ’em
we ain’ more’n half asleep.” So saying the old man set his comrades
so long and sharply pulled a stroke that the two boats doubled their
rate of speed and came up even with the boats ahead. “There now, I
guess we’ll ease up a leetle, for the time to really pull ain’t come yet.
I tell you, boy, that rifle is a-goin’ to stay here in the woods. There’s
the Lad back there can beat us both, but he won’t try ’cause he
thinks it would tickle an old man like me to win the prize. Easy, boy,
easy, let ’em git ahead if they want to, the comin’ in is what decides
the race.” Thus the boats rushed on their way, while the multitude
watched with eager eyes the receding racers. The party of the
trapper was in the ascendant, for the spurt he had made revealed
the tremendous power of the man and showed that old age had not
weakened his enormous strength. At last a man who stood on the
edge of the boathouse called out: “They have turned the buoys; the
professionals are ahead.”
“How far behind is John Norton?”
“He and the guides are four rods astern at least.”
“Where is the Lad?”
“Oh, he’s out of the race; he’s fully ten rods behind the trapper and
Fred.” By this time the boats were plainly in view—the contestants
were barely a mile away.
“Now, boys,” said the trapper, “the time has come for us to show
the stuff that’s in us. Are ye ready for the stroke, boys?” A groan of
pain interrupted the trapper. The oars of Charley were trailing—his
strength had given out and his nose was bleeding profusely. “Never
mind,” whispered the trapper to Fred, “you must win this race if your
whole family dies—all right, long and quick now.” The young man
obeyed. He threw the full force of his strength on the oars. The
sudden vigor was too much for the wood; there was a crash and the
guide was thrown on his side. The trapper was now thoroughly
aroused. The boats were within a hundred yards of the home-line
and the Lad was fully fifteen astern. The roar of the crowd was
deafening, but through it a voice arose: “John Norton, now is your
time, pull.”
The old man gathered himself for a supreme effort, and then
occurred a catastrophe so overwhelming that it hushed the roar of
the crowd. He had torn the rowlocks from the gunnels. For a moment
there was silence; even the professionals intermitted a stroke; but
the Lad turned his face ahead. The old man arose and stood erect in
the boat. He shook the heavy oars in the air as if they had been
reeds and shouted in a voice that sounded awful in its intensity:
“Now, Lad, row for the sake of John Norton, and save his gray hairs
from shame. Pull with every ounce of strength the Almighty has
given you, or the honor of the woods is gone.”
It was worth a thousand miles of travel and a year of life to see
what happened. The Lad suddenly sat erect and his stroke
lengthened to the full reach of oar and arm. His boat seemed to
spring into the air, it flew on the top of the water, and, as it passed
the trapper, he shouted wildly, “Go it, Lad, go it, Lad, the honor of the
woods be on ye! Give it to ’em, give it to ’em, ye’ll beat ’em yit, sure
as judgment day.”
Except his voice, not a sound was heard. Men clutched their fists
till the nails cut the skin of their palms. One of the professionals
fainted unnoticed, another threw up his oars, crazed by the
excitement, while the third pulled in grim desperation; but he pulled
in vain, for the Lad’s boat caught him within fifty feet of the line and
shot across it half a length to the front. And then there arose such a
shout as had not been heard that day. “Three cheers for the Lad,
three cheers for the Lad,”—and the honor of the woods was saved.
TRAVERS’ FIRST HUNT

By Richard Harding Davis
Young Travers, who had been engaged to a girl down on Long
Island for the last three months, only met her father and brother a
few weeks before the day set for the wedding.
The brother was a master of hounds near South Hampton; the
father and son talked horse all day and until one o’clock in the
morning, for they owned fast thoroughbreds, and entered them at
Sheepshead Bay, and other race tracks.
Old Mr. Paddock, the father of the girl, had often said that when a
young man asked for his daughter’s hand, he would ask him in
return, not if he lived straight, but if he could ride straight; and that on
his answering in the affirmative, depended her parent’s consent.
Travers had met Miss Paddock and her mother in Europe. He was
invited to their place in the fall when the hunting season opened, and
had spent the evening most pleasantly and satisfactorily with his
fiancée in the corner of the drawing-room. But as soon as the
women had gone, young Paddock joined him and said: “You ride, of
course?”
Travers had never ridden, but had been prompted what to answer
by Miss Paddock, and so said there was nothing he liked better. As
he expressed it, he would rather ride than sleep.
“That’s good!” said Paddock. “I’ll give you a mount on Satan to-
morrow morning at the meet. He is a bit nasty at the start of the
season, and ever since he killed Wallis, the second groom, last year,
none of us care much to ride him; but you can manage him, no
doubt. He’ll just carry your weight.”
Mr. Travers dreamed that night of taking large, desperate leaps
into space on a wild horse that snorted forth flames, and that rose at
solid stone walls as though they were hay-racks. He was tempted to
say he was ill in the morning, which was, considering the state of his
mind, more or less true, but concluded as he would have to ride
sooner or later during his visit, and if he died breaking his neck, it
would be in a good cause, he determined to do his best.
He didn’t want to ride at all for two excellent reasons: First,
because he wanted to live for Miss Paddock’s sake, and second,
because he wanted to live for his own sake.
The next morning was a most forbidding and doleful looking
morning, and young Travers had great hopes that the meet would be
declared off, but just as he lay in doubts the servant knocked at his
door with his riding things and his hot water.
He came down-stairs looking very miserable indeed. Satan had
been taken to the place where they were to meet, and Travers
viewed him on his arrival there with a sickening sense of fear as he
saw him pulling three grooms off their feet.
Travers decided that he would stay with his feet on solid earth just
as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the
rest had started at a gallop, he waited, under pretense of adjusting
his gaiters, until they were well away. Then he clenched his teeth,
crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on the
saddle. His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next
moment he was off after the others, with an indistinct feeling that he
was on a locomotive that was jumping the ties.
Satan was in among and had passed the other horses in less than
five minutes, and was so near the hounds that the whippers-in gave
a cry of warning. But Travers could just as soon have pulled a boat
back that was going over the Niagara Falls as Satan, and it was only
that the hounds were well ahead that saved them from having Satan
run them down.
Travers had to hold to the saddle with his left hand to keep himself
from falling off, and sawed and sawed on the reins with his right. He
shut his eyes whenever Satan jumped, and never knew how he
happened to stick on; but he did stick on, and was so far ahead that
in the misty morning no one could see how badly he rode. As it was
for daring and speed he led the field, and not even young Paddock
was near him from the start.
There was a broad stream in front of him—and a hill just on the
other side. No one had ever tried to take this at a jump, it was
considered more of a swim than anything else, and the hunters
always crossed it by the bridge on the left. Travers saw the bridge
and tried to jerk Satan’s head in that direction, but Satan kept right
on as straight as an express train over the prairies. Fences and trees
and furrows passed by and under Travers like a panorama run by
electricity, and he only breathed by accident. They went on at the
stream and the hill beyond as though they were riding on a stretch of
turf, and though the whole field sent up a shout of warning and
dismay, Travers could only gasp and shut his eyes. He remembered
the fate of the second groom and shivered.
Then the horse rose like a rocket, lifting Travers so high in the air
that he thought Satan would never come down again, but he did
come down with his feet bunched on the opposite bank.
The next instant he was up and over the hill and stopped, panting,
in the center of the pack that was snarling and snapping around the
fox. And then Travers showed that he was a thorough-bred, even
though he could not ride, for he hastily fumbled for his cigar case,
and when the others came pounding up over the hill, they saw him
seated nonchalantly on his saddle, puffing critically at his cigar and
giving Satan patronizing pats on his head.
“My dear girl,” said old Mr. Paddock to his daughter as they rode
back, “if you love that young man and want to keep him, make him
promise to give up riding. A more reckless and more brilliant
horseman I have never seen; he took that double jump at the gate
and at the stream like a centaur, but he will break his neck sooner or
later, and he ought to be stopped.” Young Paddock was so delighted
with his future brother-in-law’s riding that that night in the smoking
room he made him a present of Satan before all the men.
“No,” said Travers gloomily, “I can’t take him; your sister has asked
me to give up what is dearer to me than anything next to herself, and
that is my riding; you see she is absurdly anxious for my safety, and
she has asked me never to ride again, and I have given my word.”
A chorus of sympathetic remonstrances rose from the men.
“Yes, I know,” said Travers, “but it just shows what sacrifices a
man will make for the woman he loves.”
MARY’S NIGHT RIDE

By George W. Cable
Mary Richling, the heroine of this story, was the wife of John
Richling, a resident of New Orleans. At the breaking out of the Civil
War she went to visit her parents in Milwaukee. About the time of the
bombardment of New Orleans, she received news of the dangerous
illness of her husband, and decided at once to reach his bedside, if
possible. Taking with her her baby daughter, a child of three years,
she proceeded southward, where, after several unsuccessful
attempts to secure a pass, she finally determined to break through
the lines.
About the middle of the night Mary Richling was sitting very still
and upright on a large, dark horse that stood champing his Mexican
bit in the black shadow of a great oak. Mary held by the bridle
another horse, whose naked saddle-tree was empty. A few steps in
front of her the light of the full moon shone almost straight down
upon a narrow road that just there emerged from the shadow of
woods on either side and divided into a main right fork and a much
smaller one that curved around to Mary’s left. Off in the direction of
the main fork the sky was all aglow with camp-fires. Only just here
on the left there was a cool and grateful darkness.
She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the
next moment a man came out of the bushes on the left and, without
a word, took the bridle of the led horse from her fingers and vaulted
into the saddle. The hand that rested for a moment on the cantle
grasped a navy-six. He was dressed in dull homespun, but he was
the same who had been dressed in blue. He turned his horse and
led the way down the lesser road.
“If we’d of gone three hundred yards further, we’d a run into the
pickets. I went nigh enough to see the videts settin’ on their horses in
the main road. This here ain’t no road; it just goes up to a nigger
quarters. I’ve got one of the niggers to show us the way.”
“Where is he?” whispered Mary, but, before her companion could
answer, a tattered form moved from behind a bush a little in advance
and started ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently
they turned into a clear, open forest and followed the long, rapid,
swinging strides of the negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on
the bank of a deep, narrow stream. The negro made a motion for
them to keep well to the right when they should enter the water. The
white man softly lifted Alice to his arms, and directed and assisted
Mary to kneel in her saddle with her skirts gathered carefully under
her; so they went down into the cold stream, the negro first with arms
outstretched above the flood, then Mary and then the white man, or
let us say plainly the spy, with the unawakened child on his breast.
And so they rose out of it on the farther side without a shoe or
garment wet, save the rags of their dark guide.
Again they followed him along a line of stake-and-rider fence, with
the woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of
young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of
housedogs, now the doleful call of the chuckwill’s widow, and once
Mary’s blood turned for an instant to ice at the unearthly shriek of a
hoot-owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a
dim, narrow road, and the negro stopped.
“Dess keep dis yer road fo’ ’bout half mile an’ yo’ strike ’pon de
broad main road. Tek de right, an’ you go whar yo’ fancy take you.
Good-by, Miss. Good-by, Boss; don’t yo’ fergit yo’ promise to tek me
throo to de Yankees when you come back. I feered yo’ gwine fergit it,
Boss.”
The spy said he would not, and they left him. The half mile was
soon passed, though it turned out to be a mile and a half, and at
length Mary’s companion looked back as they rode single file with
Mary in the rear, and said softly, “There’s the road.”
As they entered it and turned to the right, Mary, with Alice in her
arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent
horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly
bush. His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost
position when a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side
of the highway, snatched a carbine from the earth and cried, “Halt!”
The dark, recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen
enveloped in their blankets lying about a few red coals. Mary turned
a frightened look backward and met the eye of her companion.
“Move a little faster,” said he, in a low, clear voice. As he did so,
she heard him answer the challenge, as his horse trotted softly after
hers.
“Don’t stop us, my friend; we’re taking a sick child to the doctor.”
“Halt, you hound!” the cry rang out; and as Mary glanced back
three or four men were just leaping into the road. But she saw also
her companion, his face suffused with an earnestness that was
almost an agony, rise in his stirrups with the stoop of his shoulders
all gone, and wildly cry, “Go!” She smote her horse and flew. Alice
woke and screamed.
The report of a carbine rang out and went rolling away in a
thousand echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp
succession, and there went close by Mary’s ear the waspish whine
of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized—once, twice,
thrice—just at her back, where the hoofs of her companion’s horse
were clattering, the tart rejoinders of his navy six.
“Go! lay low! lay low! cover the child!” But his words were
needless. With head bowed forward and form crouched over the
crying, clinging child, with slackened rein and fluttering dress, and
sunbonnet and loosened hair blown back upon her shoulders, Mary
was riding for life and liberty and her husband’s bedside.
“Go on! go on! They’re saddling up! Go! Go! We’re going to make
it! Go-oo!” And they made it.
PEABODY’S LEAP
A LEGEND OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Many are the places, scattered over the face of our beautiful
country, whose wild and picturesque scenery is worthy of the
painter’s pencil or the poet’s pen. Some of them, which were once
celebrated for their rich stores of “legendary lore,” are now only
sought to view their natural scenery, while the traditions which
formerly gave them celebrity are buried in oblivion. Such is the scene
of the following adventure—a romantic glen, bounded on the north
side by a high and rocky hill which stretches itself some distance into
Lake Champlain, terminating in a precipice, some thirty feet in
height, and once known by the name of “Peabody’s Leap.”
At the time of this adventure, Timothy Peabody was the only white
man that lived within fifty miles of the place, and his was the daring
spirit that achieved it. In an attack on one of the frontier settlements
his family had all been massacred by the merciless savages, and he
had sworn that their death should be avenged. The better to
accomplish this dread purpose, he had removed to this solitary place
and constructed the rude shelter in which he dwelt, till the blasts of
winter drove him to the homes of his fellow-men, again to renew the
contest when spring had awakened nature into life and beauty. He
was a man who possessed much rude cunning, combined with a
thorough knowledge of Indian habits, by which he had always been
enabled to avoid the snares of his subtle enemies. Often when they
had come with a party to take him, he escaped their lures, and after
destroying his hut, on their return homeward some of their boldest
warriors were picked off by his unerring aim—or, on arriving at their
settlement, they learned that one of their swiftest hunters had been
ambushed by him, and fallen a victim of his deadly rifle. He had lived
in this way for several years, and had so often baffled them, that they
had at last become weary of the pursuit, and, for some time, had left
him unmolested.
About this time, a party of Indians made a descent on one of the
small settlements, and had taken three men prisoners, whom they
were carrying home to sacrifice for the same number of their men
that had been shot by Peabody. It was towards the close of day
when they passed his abode; most of the party in advance of the
prisoners, who, with their hands tied, and escorted by five or six
Indians, were almost wearied out by their long march, and but just
able to crawl along. He had observed this advance guard, and let
them pass unmolested, for he suspected there were prisoners in the
rear, and intended to try some “Yankee trick” to effect their rescue.
He accordingly followed on in the trail of the party, keeping among
the thick trees which on either side skirted the path. He had
proceeded but a short distance before he heard the sharp report of a
rifle apparently very near him, and which he knew must be one of the
Indians who had strolled from the main body to procure some game
for their evening meal. From his acquaintance with their habits and
language, he only needed a disguise to enable him to join with the
party if necessary and, aided by the darkness which was fast
approaching, with but little danger of detection. The resolution was
quickly formed, and as quickly put into operation, to kill this Indian
and procure his dress.
He had got but a few paces before he discovered his intended
victim, who had just finished loading his rifle. To stand forth and
boldly confront him would give the savage an equal chance, and if
Tim proved the best shot, the party on hearing the report of two rifles
at once would be alarmed and commence a pursuit. The chance
was, therefore, two to one against him, and he was obliged to
contrive a way to make the Indian fire first. Planting himself, then,
behind a large tree, he took off his fox-skin cap, and placing it on the
end of his rifle, began to move it to and fro. The Indian quickly
discovered it, and was not at a loss to recollect the owner by the cap.
Knowing how often the white warrior had eluded them, he
determined to despatch him at once, and without giving him notice of
his dangerous proximity, he instantly raised his rifle, and its contents
went whizzing through the air. The ball just touched the bark of the
tree, and pierced the cap, which rose suddenly like the death-spring
of the beaver, and then fell amid the bushes. The Indian, like a true
sportsman, thinking himself sure of his victim, did not go to pick up
his game till he had reloaded his piece, and dropping it to the
ground, was calmly proceeding in the operation, when Timothy as
calmly stepped from his hiding-place, exclaiming—“Now, you tarnal
kritter, say yer prayers as fast as ever you can.”
This was a short notice for the poor Indian. Before him, and
scarcely ten paces distant, stood the tall form of Peabody,
motionless as a statue—his rifle to his shoulder—his finger on the
trigger, and his deadly aim firmly fixed on him. He was about to run,
but he had not time to turn around, ere the swift-winged messenger
had taken his flight; the ball pierced his side—he sprang in the air,
and fell lifeless on the ground.
No time was now to be lost. Peabody immediately proceeded to
strip the dead body and to array himself in the accouterments,
consisting of a hunting shirt, a pair of moccasins, or leggins, and the
wampum belt and knife. A little of the blood besmeared on his
sunburnt countenance served for the red paint, and it would have
taken a keen eye in the gray twilight and thick gloom of the
surrounding forest to have detected the counterfeit Indian.
Shouldering his rifle, he again started in pursuit, and followed the
band till they arrived in the glen, where their canoes were secreted.
Here they stopped, and began to make preparations for their
expected supper, previous to their embarkation for the opposite
shore. The canoes were launched and their baggage deposited in
them. A fire was blazing brightly and the party were walking around,
impatiently waiting the return of the hunter.
The body of Timothy was safely deposited behind a fallen tree,
where he could see every motion, and hear every word spoken in
the circle. Here he had been about half an hour. Night had drawn her
sable curtain around the scene or, in other words, it was dark. The
moon shone fitfully through the clouds which almost covered the
horizon, only serving occasionally to render the darkness visible. The
Indians now began to evince manifest signs of impatience for the
return of their comrade. They feared that a party of the whites had
followed them and taken him prisoner, and at last resolved to go in
search of him. The plan, which was fortunately overheard by
Timothy, was to put the captives into one of the canoes, under the
care of five of their number, who were to secrete themselves in case
of an attack, massacre the prisoners, and then go to the assistance
of their brethren.
As soon as the main body had started, Peabody cautiously crept
from his hiding-place to the water and, sliding in feet foremost,
moved along on his back, his face just above the surface, to the
canoe which contained the rifles of the guard. The priming was
quickly removed from these, and their powder-horns emptied,
replaced, and the prisoners given notice of their intended rescue, at
the same time warning them not to show themselves above the
gunwale till they were in safety. He next, with his Indian knife,
separated the thong which held the canoe to the shore, intending to
swim off with it till he had got far enough to avoid observation, then
get in, and paddle for the nearest place where a landing could be
effected. All this was but the work of a moment, and he was slowly
moving off from the shore, as yet unobserved by the guard, who little
expected an attack from this side. But, unfortunately, his rifle had
been left behind, and he was resolved not to part with “Old Plumper,”
as he called it, without at least one effort to recover it. He
immediately gave the captives notice of his intention, and directed
them to paddle slowly and silently out, and in going past the
headland, to approach as near as possible, and there await his
coming.
The guard by this time had secreted themselves, and one of the
number had chosen the same place which Timothy himself had
previously occupied, near which he had left his old friend. He had
almost got to the spot, when the Indian discovered the rifle, grasped
it, and springing upon his feet, gave the alarm to his companions.
Quick as thought, Tim was upon him, seized the rifle, and wrenched
it from him with such violence as to throw him breathless to the
ground. The rest of the Indians were alarmed, and, sounding the
war-whoop, rushed upon him.
It was a standard maxim with Timothy, that “a good soldier never
runs till he is obliged to,” and he now found that he should be under
the necessity of suiting his practice to his theory. There was no time
for deliberation; he instantly knocked down the foremost with the butt
of his rifle, and bounded away through the thicket like a startled deer.
The three remaining Indians made for the canoe in which the rifles
were deposited, already rendered harmless by the precaution of
Timothy. This gave him a good advantage, which was not altogether
unnecessary, as he was much encumbered with his wet clothes, and
before he reached the goal he could hear them snapping the dry
twigs close behind him. The main body likewise got the alarm, and
were but a short distance from him when he reached the headland.
Those who were nearest he did not fear, unless they came to close
action, and he resolved to send one more of them to his long home
before he leaped from the precipice.
“It’s a burning shame to wet so much powder,” he exclaimed; “I’ll
have one more pop at the tarnal red-skins.” Tim’s position was
quickly arranged to put his threat in execution. His rifle was
presented, his eye glanced along its barrel, and the first one that
showed his head received its deadly contents. Another, and still
another Indian, were thus disposed of, and then, taking a deep
breath, Timothy made the leap. The water was deep and it seemed a
long time before he came to the surface, but in a moment he struck
out for the canoe. The whole party of Indians by this time had come
up, and commenced a brisk fire upon the fugitives. Tim stood erect in
the canoe, shouting in the voice of a stentor, “Ye’d better take care,
ye’ll spile the skiff. Old Plumper’s safe, and you’ll feel him yet, I tell
ye!”

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Conspiracy Literature in Early

Renaissance Italy: Historiography and

Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late

Representing Irish Religious Histories: Historiography,

Movement in Renaissance Literature: Exploring Kinesic

Conversion to Islam: Competing Themes in Early Islamic

Jews, Sovereignty, and International Law: Ideology and

Christians and Muslims in Early Medieval Italy: A

Bishop John Vitez and Early Renaissance Central Europe:

Spa Culture and Literature in England, 1500-1800 (Early

OXFORD MODERN LANGUAGES AND

In memory of my father Nedo

4. Angelo Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium:

Index of Manuscripts and Archival Documents 253

1.1. Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit in Utrecht, ms. 826 (5 M 22), f. 2r;

DBI Dizionario biograﬁco degli Italiani, dir. Alberto

xiv   

‘Ex hac tanta rerum commutatione saepe ego

I.1 Fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies: a thematic

2      

components and historiographical elements, emerging especially in the concrete

through a more eclectic and original perspective of adaptation to the contempor-

4      

⁵ Extensive bibliography on these works is provided in the chapters devoted to them.

6      

was not always grounded on an institutional basis, and consequently was

8      

10      

I.2 The prince in literature on plots: power and resistance

circumscribed within the ofﬁcial boundaries of the republican institutions,

12      

De obedientia, composed in 1470: the ﬁrst treatise devoted to establishing the

²⁷ For the connections between these texts by Pontano, see Chapter 3.

14      

mainly provided by historical narratives of the previous centuries, along with

16      

I.3 The classical tradition and crossovers between humanist

In both works on conspiracies and politico-theoretical treatises in the

In a rough classiﬁcation, humanist historical writing can be divided into three

18      

auctoritas had a considerable inﬂuence also on the expansion of ﬁfteenth-century

20      

classical tradition relating to this topic resulted in a new, or more precisely

treatises).⁵⁶ Both these literary strands were intended to enhance monarchs’

I.4 Texts on political plots: a multifaceted corpus

22      

especially in the eclogues composed in the cultural environment of Ferrara.⁶³

24      

26      

⁷³ On all texts on this conspiracy, see Chapter 4.

28      

THE HONOR OF THE WOODS

TRAVERS’ FIRST HUNT

MARY’S NIGHT RIDE

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