ABSTRACT
Yet, if Italians had been prone to violence in the centuries before Machiavelli codified their behavior in The Prince, things got a lot worse later on in the 1500s: wars raged across the peninsula, public order collapsed, and large swathes of territory saw the return of a private, retributive justice on a scale not seen since the precommunal era. Though endemic throughout Italy, violent disorder may have reached its peak (or nadir) between 1550 and 1600 in the Papal States, where society at times appeared on the edge of a complete breakdown. Frequent poor harvests, constant baronial unrest, fragile borders, and an often erratic judicial system conditioned by the relatively short tenure of many popes in this period, all conspired to reduce this state lying at Italy’s heart to near anarchy. Attempts by Rome to extend its control into the hinterlands through administrative and military means ran into sporadic, but often violent, reactions from feudal lords.2 For pursuing their resistance to Rome’s encroachments, these rural potentates had plenty of ex-soldiers available, especially after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis ended 60 years of Habsburg-Valois conflict in
1559. Known as masnadieri, these rogues on the loose had no other training than that of arms and no allegiance to any particular state or person; the cultural values they had developed from three generations of warfare made violence for them a form of eloquent expression and even casual thuggery seem like a noble calling.
