50 Ch. 2 • The RenaissanceRenaissance Political Life
The originality of the Italian city-states during the Renaissance lay not
only in their remarkable artistic accomplishments but also in their preco
ciously innovative forms of political structure. The organization of some of
the city-states into constitutional republics was closely linked to the cul
tural achievements of the Renaissance. Nonetheless, there was nothing
democratic about the city-states of Renaissance Italy, for the elites had
brutally crushed the popular uprisings of artisans and shopkeepers that
occurred in Siena and other towns during the fourteenth century.
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century republics were constitutional oli
garchies dominated by the most powerful families who filled the executive
bodies, legislative or advisory councils, and special commissions that gov
erned each city-state. The percentage of male citizens enjoying the right to
vote ranged from about 2 percent in fifteenth-century Venice to 12 percent
in fourteenth-century Bologna, the former percentage seeming most repre
sentative of the restricted nature of political rights in Renaissance Italy.
Venice, Siena, Lucca, and Florence (at least until the waning days of domi
nation by the powerful Medici family) were the most stable oligarchic
republics of Renaissance Italy; Genoa, Bologna, and Perugia went back and
forth between republican and despotic governments (see Map 2.2).
Some of the other city-states became outright hereditary despotisms (sig
nori) run by a single family. Milan, a despotism under the control of the Vis
conti family, had grown prosperous from metallurgy and textile
manufacturing. Francesco Sforza, a condottieri (mercenary of common ori
gins), who had married the illegitimate daughter of the last Visconti duke in
1447, helped overthrow the republic less than three years later. Sforza
imposed his family’s rule with the support of Milanese nobles. The Sforza
family thereafter skillfully played off rivalries between other powerful fami
lies, sometimes implementing their will with sheer force. The duke of Milan
tolerated a council of 900 men drawn from the city’s leading citizens, but he
appointed magistrates and officials—and in general ruled—as he pleased.
Likewise, princely families, such as the Este family of Ferrara and the Gon
zaga family of Mantua, ran the smaller city-states.
By contrast, Venice, an energetic, prosperous Adriatic port city of lagoons
and canals built on a number of small islands, remained in principle a
republic. Its constitution offered a balance of political interests: the doget an
official elected for life by the Senate, served as an executive authority whose
prerogatives were not that far from those of a monarch. The Great Council,
consisting of about 2,500 enfranchised patricians, elected the Senate,
which represented the nobility, an increasing number of whom were enno
bled merchants living in elegantly decorated houses facing the canals. No
one represented the poor, more than half the population of Venice.
Like the monarchies beyond the Alps, the Italian city-states developed
small, efficient state bureaucracies, as the despots or oligarchs (a few men