Today it’s Game of Thrones episode, or you could say a Berserk episode – if you get the reference. We’re going to talk about a real bastard, a Count that killed his own step-brother, a warchief of a mercenary company, who was also a cultured man that has had an unbelievable amount of importance in the history of art and sciences.
But first, we tell you about something that I believe can happen only in Italy.
We were visiting a city, knowing next to nothing about its history. We enter a beautiful church and find a celebration there. Totally by chance. There was a little army of dames, knights and pages, in traditional renaissance costumes, plus a few locale and tourists. The atmosphere is that of a party, barely tempered by the latin Ave Maria sung in the background. Turns out it’s the sixth hundredth birthday of Federico, the Signore of Urbino, builder of the city, protector of the arts (let’s just mention Raphael and Piero della Francesca), brave warrior.
There were a beautiful acappella choir singing in latin. The mayor of the city, recognizable by its three-coloured sash, was in the first row. We were totally flabbergasted, but we decide let’s stay for a while, it seems fun.
Enter the priests. And the bishop. He looks like the only one who’s not having fun. Actually he looked quite upset. During the preaches he stands up and begins to verbally whip the audience.
Three things he says:
- Nobody here has lost a loved one, yet this is a suffrage mass for an immortal soul. It is a serious thing. It does not matter if the Count died six centuries ago. Here we do not think in the human time, or with human values. Our brother, the Count, died yesterday. We are praying for his soul. We are doing it ONLY because we have signs that he repented from his life of sin: remember the painting by Piero della Francesca, where he had himself drawn in full armor, in all his might, but on his knees in front of the miracle of the Incarnation.
Then the bishop says:
- Our brother the Count was a mercenary. He killed many people and caused great destruction. He fought for the Church but also against the Church. Angry voice. Of course, he was a man of culture and he made this town great. He brought the money, he brought the arts. Art is surely a sign of the Holy Spirit but still, this soul is in dire need of God’s mercy. Let’s pray.
- One last thing. His mortal remains were brought back here, and my people (looks around at the mayor, the other priests, the people in funny Renaissance costumes…) wanted him to be celebrated in a church. We don’t celebrate here. The only thing we could do was to say a Mass in his suffrage. But let’s not forget who he was and how horrible war is.
Now I don’t know if this seems weird only to me, but.
This guy was seriously upset about something that happened six centuries before. And not mad like, senselessly. There was no question about revenge, or about reparation, or about anything else. No, this particular bastard did something wrong, something precisely individuated, and six hundred years are nothing. So with no anger but with a precise reasoning this guy was brought to a church because yea, the Holy Spirit has certainly given him the light to work for beauty and truth. But still, things have to be explained and this is the job of the catholic church. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. This is the ideology that has permeated Italian culture more than any other. We felt it was an extremely Italian situation. That’s exactly the kind of thing we are searching for in this podcast. What do you think? Isn’t it puzzling?
Then of course we started digging to understand more about this guy.
But today it’s a Game of Thrones episode.
This crazy ass bastard is Federico da Montefeltro, and you’ll find that really, the only thing missing from this history in order to make it a story by RR Martins is dragons and zombies. Well, there are huge fire-spitting things hard to control that change the history of battles, but that’s just siege artillery, beginning to dominate the fields.
We are in 1422, exactly two centuries ago, and we have a tiny little independent duchy, called Urbino, placed in a strategic position at the center-north of Italy.
It’s a bit north of Rome, but it’s on the other side of the Appennini, a mountainous chain that divides Italy in two longitudinally. It’s like our backbone, it’s quite difficult to cross and separates the two fertile coastlines of the Adriatic sea (to the east) and Thyrrenian sea (to the west).
But we will have an episode dedicated to the geography and geopolitics of Italy. Suffice to say that at this moment in time this position is more crucial than ever.
- Italy is fragmented in many tiny Signorie on the north, the Papacy controls a vast area at the center, while the south is unified and dominated by a powerful kingdom, the Kindom of Napoli, a beacon of culture and splendor in these times, with strong dinastic ties to Spain. There is a long series of small wars between these states.
- The economy is flourishing, but it relies on commerce. But moving goods around is difficult. Every mountain, every hill and every little rock has a castle on top that controls the area. Without artillery that it’s both powerful and mobile, taking control of it it’s impossible. What about commerce through the seas? In these times it’s particularly complex, because the Ottomans have conquered almost all the ancient Byzantine territories and are ready for the final push to Constantinople. Pirates are everywhere, the Adriatic sea is not anymore a “Venetian” sea.
- Thus, a proportionally bigger flow of commerce goes from the south of Italy to the north by land, avoiding the Ottoman controlled sea routes. If you go by land you need to pass through the seaside plains. And Urbino controls it.
It is a poor place, built on hills and without many fertile lands, but has a very, very defensible position, ready to control the routes. Its people, in order to earn a living, have started a very profitable business: war. They have become mercenaries, skilled soldiers extremely requested because war, war never changes. Ok maybe, it never changes but it’s always different. Indeed Renaissance is near and there’s no point in having steel clad knights and peasants with bow and arrow. What’s new? Pike techniques are getting more and more efficient against cavalry – but you need to be organised. There are crossbows, very efficient against cuirasses but complex to produce and maintain. There is gunpowder, made by Satan himself as a Renaissance poet, Ariosto, has said.
O maladetto, o abominoso ordigno,
che fabricato nel tartareo fondo
fosti per man di Belzebù maligno
che ruinar per te disegnò il mondo,
all’inferno, onde uscisti, ti rasigno.
Of course it’s still not useful for hand-held weapons. But it’s changing the art of the sieges. Laying a siege is one of the most difficult things in war and it needs professional abilities, the capacity to control the unpredictable cannons of the time, an iron will and control over your troops.
You see why this is becoming a thing for pros. And the people from Urbino are pros: they provide manpower, trained and organised, artisans and architects skilled in the art of fortifications – building and destroying – and the most difficult thing: the condottieri.
The dynasty of Urbino, the Montefeltros, is made by pureblood condottieri. Meaning, people who take the condotta, a mercenary contract in a nutshell. You are at my service for one year with X lance (spears – meaning a functional team of a horse rider + spare horses and two people for support) and N foot soldiers, i pay you X thousand gold coins in peace and much more in war, and you take care of everything.
Food, weapons, paying the men, tactics, strategy. And you can keep ransoms and sacking fees.
A very profitable enterprise but a difficult and risky one.
Federico da Montefeltro, our guy, was the heir of Count Guidantonio, but an illegitimate one. Just until, when Federico was 12, the Count had a legitimate son, a true heir: Oddantonio.
Luckily, Federico was a tough kid.
What he did was unbelievable by modern standards. The small army of mercenaries of Urbino was in disarray because the Count was not there and he was delegating to unskilled relatives. Finally, in 1438 when our little bastard was just 16, SIXTEEN years old, he was given the command of the mercenary army. 800 horsemen, plus an untold number of foot soldiers and support troops. Tough warriors, with a solid internal hierarchy built on respect, valor, blood ties, led by a 16 years old to the service of one of the strongest Signore in Italy, the duke Filippo VISCONTI of Milan. We are talking about some real Berserk situation here, he was like Griffith, the main antagonist, but well a bit ugly.
What could go wrong? For Federico, incredibly, not much: he had some very good results in the countless small wars, all by being both a warrior and a normal adolescent of the first Renaissance, who wrote (or had his friends write) odes to the boobs of some nice lady of Urbino.
For his step brother Oddantonio, the situation was dire. After the death of their father, Oddantonio started to make debts. To levy taxes. To have too much fun with women. Most of all, he started to be a little too friendly with the Malatesta, Signore of Rimini, a small independent Signoria all too near to the borders of Urbino and sworn rival of their people.
All this we know from sources paid by Federico later in his life, so we cannot trust this too much.
What we do know, is that one day, in 1444, while Federico is conveniently out of town, a small troop of seditionaries enters the palace of Urbino at night and without encountering any resistance slains Oddantonio. What do you know, in a few days Federico is the new ruler of Urbino, he negotiates a few advantages to the ancient democratic institutions of the Comune (relics of ancient traditions, but still important to represent the population) and he is solidly in power.
He can then proceed to become one of the most recognized and well paid condottiero of the period, bringing a steady flow of gold in his mountainous hillbilly country, that will be invested in majestic architecture, fortifications, but most of all in creating art, and culture, thus making Urbino one of the centers of the Italian Renaissance.
The Renaissance man
Mathematics and architecture were the most important sciences for Federico, because of their importance in war: think about ballistics for example. But not only this: in his letters we find mention of how he praised the “mathematical arts” (that was before Galileo “invented” the scientific method) because they are the most truthful. And the architects he employed, such as Luciano da Laurana, the mind behind his majestic palace – notable for its beauty, its imposing proportions and… it’s flawless toilets complete with a recycling system for fertilising the plains – or Francesco di Giorgio, military architect who was commissioned more than a hundred buildings and fortifications – they were genuinely impressed by his command of their art.
But right after that, Federico was a true humanist: he commissioned famous paintings to Piero della Francesca, who first applied mathematics to the study of perspective, and… most of all, the real Divo of the painters of the times: Raphael Santi, in Italian Raffaello Sanzio, born in Urbino and grown up in the palace of Federico, before going all over Italy to make his most precious works. We will for sure dedicate a whole episode to this angelic artist.
I’d like to show you the face of Federico, made immortal by Piero della Francesca in two paintings: one is preserved in Milan, and the one that was quoted by the bishop during the commemoration Mass. The other one is in Florence, it’s considered iconic in Italy.
Now Federico was quite ugly I’d say.
But probably not as ugly as it’s painted, always by the left side of his face. That’s because… well he was in one of those jousts you see in movies like that “A Knight’s tale”, and something happened that was quite recurrent.
A wooden spear, of course not pointy but with the full force and weight of a horse running, hit him in the face. It slid on his helmet, but instead of sliding safely to the side it somehow went inside his right eye socket, thrusting inside his head, devastating the eye and putting him at death’s door for weeks.
Yet he survived, if disfigured. Now hear this: since beauty was not his forte anymore, he had his nose bridge cut, in order to be able to peek on his right side with his remaining eye. And he became known in his dominions as the one-eyed Lord who saw everything.
That’s because he had a penchant for meddling with his people. He invested everywhere, financed any promising enterprise, took steps to ensure that no family went hungry and no girl was forced to go into prostituion for lack of dowry… all the things associated with favolistic kings, but in this case the people from Urbino have a tradition of believing it all true. And seeing what this mountainous city is today, it’s hard to deny.
Who knows?
What’s obvious is that all this costs lots of money. And Federico had a very steady income as a mercenary warchief. But this activity as a condottiero permitted him also to be in the middle of one of the most peaceful periods in the renaissance, and weirdly enough, to act as a political force for stability.
Peace through war
That of course was because there was an external threat that was impossible to ignore. The Turks. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, when Federico was just 31, all the major powers in Italy came to an agreement, the Peace of Lodi. It was signed just a year later in 1454 between the Signorie of Milano and Firenze, the Marine republics of Venezia and Genova, and the Kingdom of Naples with the intent to cooperate for stability and territorial integrity. Against the Ottoman Empire, but also against France, an ever looming threat to the security of the Italian peninsula, who was often – sadly – used by Italians against other Italians.
So this League was a nice idea from the Medici Family, with the benediction of the Pope (who was not only a moral authority but controlled a huge state at the center of Italy – by the way, he was also the Lord of Federico who was his Vassal – if only in name), but ideas need an armed branch: that was the Italian League, and its Chief General was of course the best condottiero in the area: again, Federico.
It’s important to understand that this Lega Italica was not an Alliance, or a confederation. It was an insurance against of course the external threats from the north and from the sea, but most of all it was an insurance against any temptation from the stronger Italian states to become dominant.
Meaning that little wars were permitted. Some states exited or entered again in the league. But the important thing was that no state was supposed to enlarge to much: even the Papal state had to be kept at bay.
One story is both very human and very machiavellian. Federico had a sworn enemy: of course, as it often happens, that was his neighbour, colleague and relative by marriage Sigismondo Malatesti, Signore of Rimini, now a sunny seaside city on the Adriatic near our home, that by those times was an independent Signoria, vassal of the Pope in name only.
This Sigismondo guy was a rival of Federico in everything. He was a condottiero as well, who regularly was employed by the rivals of Federico’s employer of the moment. They brought their rivalry all around Italy, and of course often inside their own territories. Fighting like mad. Federico usually had the upper hand, especially thanks to his superior political abilities which always gave him the appearance of the defender of the peace, while his rival was the untrustworthy guy: a slander that’s deadly, if you are a mercenary.
After decades of this Federico had found ways to crush his rival into the ground, and he had honors, money and respect. The Pope Paolo II, very weird character (they say he was strangled by the demons he was trying to evocate in his chamber – maybe one day we’ll talk about him) asked Federico to finally destroy the Malatesti… and give him Rimini.
Federico instead defended his sworn enemy, who could keep his city. Why? Because of course he preferred to keep as a neighbour a manageable enemy, than a huge and powerful but untrustworthy friend.
What remains
So what’s left of this guy, this powerful and recognized Signore and Condottiero of one of the most significant periods in Italian history, the time when Renaissance was unleashed before spreading throughout all Europe?
After six centuries, we still have a small casket of bones, moved around and hailed by the population of Urbino, or used as a cautionary tale by the bishop, representative of the Church that Federico protected but at times defied.
We have a lovely small city, outside of the touristic routes that converge on Florence, Venice, Rome or Naples, Urbino, a city on a hill made beautiful, fortified and rich by this striking personality that many people still see as a direct forefather.
And with good cause. When walking around the city you can see many noses like his, penetrant eyes and decisive strolls that remind you of his blood. For sure he had many relationships in his youth, and after he remained a widower, unconsolable but after all too romagnolo to bury himself.
So we have a beautiful casket with a few remains, drops of blood generously shared in the local population, some capolavori by Piero della Francesca that made his face immortal, and the whole city of Urbino. Everything that time could not take away, at least for now.
I almost forgot: something remained also from the spite that he received in life. Of course from the Church. He had the most beautiful palace in a little city on the hills, where he had his summer residence in peace time. He transformed the little city, 20 km from Urbino, into a little perfect gem, a borrough. Well, after his death a new Pope called Urbano, decided to take it for himself. And rename it in his own honor: Urbania. “Sounds a little like Urbino – he probably thought – and of course, sounds a little like a Vaffanculo”.