Thesis
Defining Ethnicity
To be sure, neither Burckhardt nor Kristeller wrote much about the process of inclusion and exclusion of various peoples into different social or political groups. A few, however, have paid attention to this issue and two in particular, Edward Muir and Peter Burke, have looked at it in more depth. Muir wrote that it is necessary to understand “community as a social interaction in an institutional guise, community as a certain kind of space, and community as a process of social exclusion”. In Renaissance Italy, according to Muir, one could be a member of the majority community by how one played one’s role to the specifications of this community, by inhabiting the space, and by participating in the naming of oneself as a member of the community in contrast to others who were excluded from it. It was possible to literally inhabit the geographic space of the community, for example as a resident within the geographical limits of the city, or to occupy it figuratively, by knowing of and interacting with the mythical territory that encompassed places of particular social or symbolic import. Ideally one would do both, living, as an example, in Florence and being aware of the different important locations connected to its territory and the local history and mythology that accompanied them. Joan-Pau Rubiés, too, commented on “the role of cities as centres of geographical analysis, religion as a cultural marker, and the clarification of the idea of a hierarchy of civilization”. Geographic location and religion both played into the formation of identity and community, and different communities were not seen as equal. The Other belonging to an outside community was not always qualitatively the same as the Self and there was often, therefore, resistance when one tried to move between communities. It “should be seen, like other forms of labeling, as a process of interaction or ‘negotiation’ between centre and periphery”, wrote Burke, continuing along the same lines as Muir, but emphasizing more strongly in his writings the ways in which various aspects of life could be seen to be parts of this process of negotiation. Burke explained that societies, whether in Renaissance Italy or today, tend to be ethnocentric, seeing themselves as above all others, even if they theoretically allow for the integration of outsiders. Or, as Muir put it, “[t]here was nothing ‘universal’ about Italian communities. The ‘public’ was a private club” -there were a number of hoops to jump through and criteria to satisfy to be considered a part of a community. It was not enough, as I shall discuss, for Rodrigo or his children to claim to be Italian. The family needed to negotiate between their personal needs and desires and those of the Italian majority community in order to gain acceptance.
Although the Borgias lived during a time when a sense of nationalism was still developing, and many modern nations either did not yet exist or were still in the process of consolidating power, an idea of what I am terming “ethnic identity” was very real. This ethnicity was one of the many groups people could claim membership in, and, if this claim was recognized as legitimate (and Muir pointed out it as not always easy to obtain such acceptance), would be able to reap whatever benefits came with that membership. For some of the minority groups, these benefits may have been more psychological than material-a sense of group solidarity against the majority culture. This idea of solidarity was important for members of the majority as well, especially when their society was seen to be under threat. It was possible (especially in times of crisis or social or political unrest) to speak of a distinctly different “them” and “us”. In Orientalism, Edward Said writes about
the culturally sanctioned habit of deploying large generalizations by while reality is divided into various collectives: languages, races, types, colors, mentalities, each category being not so much a neutral designation as an evaluative interpretation. Underlying these categories is the rigidly binomial opposition of “ours” and “theirs” […]. (Said 227)
Although not talking about the Italian Renaissance, Said’s ideas can be related to it, especially as he goes on to point out that this “binomial opposition” was not solely a product of modern Darwinism, but “was reinforced […] by anthropology, linguistics, and history” , subjects that were studied during the Renaissance, if not in the exact forms as today. Regardless, distinctions could be drawn between people of different ethnic groups, as was done in Italy during the reign of Alexander VI as pontiff. “‘People of [the Spanish] race,’ wrote Paolo Cortesi, who knew the Borgias well, ‘are ambitious, suave, curious, greedy, argumentative, stubborn, profligate, suspicious, clever, and they are usually said to be the most like Italians of all the barbarians.’” With this claim, Cortesi singled out the ways in which the Spanish were unlike the Italians and, by so doing, posited a sense of group identity beyond simply that of one of the individual city-states of the Italian peninsula. He wrote of “Italians” as a cohesive unit, with their own traits distinct of those of the other (to use his term, or the translation of it) races. Italians belonged to Italy and were different from (and in opposition to) other peoples, such as the Spanish, who lived and worked in the peninsula.
But who was a member of the Spanish race in Cortesi’s mind? Italy was not yet a single nation, and Spain could only just claim that title. The Reconquista, which brought the peninsula under the control of what would become modern day Spain and Portugal, did not end until 1492, the same year that Rodrigo Borgia became pontiff. Spain held more than simply the majority culture of Castile-Leon and Aragon. What of the Muslims and Jews (converted or not) who had spent centuries in the Iberian Peninsula? Did they count as Spanish even though they were set apart by their religion? Or, assuming that he was only talking of the now-dominant Christian population, what of the Galicians or Catalonians, both considered distinctly different from the Castilian population in Spain at the time as well as today? They were Christian, they were from the peninsula, and for Cortesi and many others in Italy that seems to have made them sufficiently similar to the new majority culture of Spain to consider them members of the “Spanish race”. For many people at the time, it seems as though one could be considered a member of a particular “ethnic group” if one was a member of the dominant group of a specific geographic region, even if that group was not the initial inhabitants of that region. Whoever was in power, politically and culturally, was seen to embody the geographic territory, even if they might not have originated from the area. When seeking Spanish ethnicity, for example, one would want to orient oneself with the Castillians, the dominant people group in Spain. There were other groups that had lived in Spain before the Reconquista, however, but even if they still existed in the Iberian peninsula they did so as minority groups and did not hold the same degree of power. These minority groups could be pushed under the umbrella of the majority for the convenience of labeling, especially by outsiders who did not necessarily have such a nuanced understanding of the place’s history and makeup, or they could be held out as examples of what not to be like, especially by those with a more detailed knowledge of the cultural or historical differences between the groups.
Cortesi’s example of Italian opinions on the Spanish reinforces Rubiés’ claim of “the role of cities as centres of geographical analysis [and of] religion as a cultural marker”. After the Reconquista, Spain laid out the terms for admittance into its majority very clearly. One needed to be Christian and the longstanding Muslim and Jewish populations were forced to either convert and be looked at with suspicion as New Christians, conversos without the authenticity of a lengthy heritage of participation in the majority community, or to leave as many did. People like Cortesi would have been unable to ignore this loud rejection of those members by the majority community (much of the Jewish population was welcomed into Rome by Rodrigo) and the conclusion would have been easily drawn: to be Spanish is to be Christian.
In his statement above, Cortesi lumps together members of the different Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula that were joined through politics and war to their Most Catholic Majesties or their predecessors. Assuming that his statement was meant to encompass the very politically visible Borgias with their ties to Catalonia, it is clear that for Cortesi at least, Christian minority as well as majority groups in Spain alike comprised the Spanish race. Within Spain itself, however, distinctions were made. Catalonians were separate from Castilians. Castilian Spanish was the language of the royal court and it was advocated and encouraged in part in order to assimilate the non-Castilian members of the peninsula and bring them more firmly under the control of the centralized government. The Borgias understood this distinction clearly. In 1491, before being made Cardinal of Valencía, Cesare held the titles of Canon of the Cathedral of Valencía, Canon of the Cathedral of Lerida, Deacon of the Cathedral of Xátiva, Deacon of the Cathedral of Tarragona, Priest of Gandía, Bishop of Pamplona, Treasurer of the Cathedral of Catagena, and Apostolic Prothonotary. Apart from the roles of Apostolic Prothonotary and Bishop of Pamplona, these were all positions that fell within the old kingdom of Catalonia, home of the Catalans, as this map shows:
These holdings, marked in green, were either inherited directly from Rodrigo (who for his part had gotten much of his holdings from his uncle Alfonso, who was from Borjas itself, also in Catalonia) or were obtained through his influence. Not only was this the part of Spain that the family was from, but Xátiva was where Rodrigo lived before moving to Rome. There was clearly a choice made to have Borgia estates in Catalonia as opposed to other parts of Spain-or in another country altogether. In this way if in no other, the family’s identity was tied to a specific geographic region but could be expanded by others to include a connection to Spain as a whole.
Similarly, although Cortesi talks about a pan-Italian identity, numerous others from his time stressed the differences between citizens of the various city-states. Loyalty was felt not just to the larger group, but to the smaller as well in both Spain and in Italy. “‘I love my native city more than my own soul,’ said Machiavelli near the end of his life,” although he also put much thought into the formation of a unified Italy. Grouping was not universally agreed upon and was often more generalized the further away from oneself one reached.
In this manner, concentric circles of identity for someone living in Italy during the Renaissance can be drawn starting from the smallest and most personal groups and expanding outward to broader and more encompassing organizations, here demonstrated with Christendom (1) as the largest circle and the Medici Family (4) as the smallest.
Different loyalties could be called upon for different reasons and at different times of need, but generally speaking the more intimate groups claimed a higher degree of identification and loyalty on a day-to-day basis. One would be a member of multiple groups, or circles, but the ones that were often the most pressing were the smallest and most immediate ones. At the same time, however, one typically needed membership in the larger circles first in order to move inward-one could not be a proper member of the community of Florence without also being part of Christendom. These different circles played upon each other and could be in competition with one another for dominance in various situations. When Ludovico Sforza was accused of inviting the French to invade Italy (an action that the Sforza family stood to benefit from) in 1494 he supposedly countered with “You speak to me of Italy, but I have never seen its face” . Although it is not clear if he really said these words or if they were the embellishment of political enemies, its believability demonstrates that loyalty to an abstract entity like Italy was often not as strong as loyalty to one’s own family and that, for the purposes of the story, Ludovico felt a stronger connection to the smaller circle than to the larger. At the same time, however, it also demonstrates that not everyone felt this way, at least not all of the time. Ludovico’s stance was spread because of the disapproval it garnered, showing at the very least a realization by others that his supposed apathy towards Italy was not universal. If it were, this statement would not have been spread to malign his name-it would have carried little political or moral weight. As it was, this statement was used to demonstrate Ludovido’s flaws to others who saw themselves as ethically Italian and as such it can be seen as evidence of a belief in an Italian ethnicity.
It can be agreed that ethnic identity had to do in large part with where one hailed from and how long one’s family had been there. The longer one’s family belonged to a majority community the more deeply entrenched one was in that particular identity. Communities, even if they have superficial similarities, differ across geographical distance as time and space contribute to the heightening and broadening of the minutest differences. Members of the majority communities in England and in Italy had less in common than did members of the majority communities of Florence and Rome. While tensions might occasionally run high between the two cities, most of their citizens were able to cling tenaciously to their status as Italian, as members of this undefined (or perhaps under-defined) Italy. It is this particular circle, Italian Peninsula (2), in the chart above that I am calling ethnic identity, although the term is a racially loaded one today. Robert Bartlett asserts that ethnic identity in Medieval Europe was based largely on customs, language, and law. Customs included various cultural practices including religion, and were tied to specific people groups much as were language and law. These things were only biological in the very roughest sense, as they could be inherited, but they were passed down through one’s caretaker, not one’s biological parents and they could potentially be changed in later life while one’s descent group could not be.
The tensions over this somewhat contradictory idea of ethnicity were reflected in the European unease with converted Jews. Ideas about the validity of conversion to Christianity from Judaism changed throughout the centuries, generally heading towards the belief that Judaism was a racial trait, not a cultural one, therefore feeding into the fear of “crypto-Jews” in the community who masqueraded as Christians but were not true believers. This fear was intensified with the belief that members of this ethnic group shared certain unsavory characteristics, furthering the notion that ethnicity was inherited instead of created. Fear of “crypto-Jews” reflected the uncertainty of what counted as an inheritable trait. Some stories about the Jewish community, such as those in the Spanish king Alfonso X el Sabio’s Cantigas de Santa Maria, contained voluntary conversions, showing that the negative traits associated with practitioners of Judaism were in fact tied to religion and culture and were not an inherent part of the people. Some Jewish characters were portrayed as genuinely good people who simply happened to have the “misfortune” of being born into a certain population. Later stories tended to focus on “crypto-Jews” who, even after (false) conversion, retained the undesirable characteristics associated with Judaism. Although the reasoning was that they had not truly converted to Christianity at all, it pointed to the idea that it was impossible for members of the minority community to become members of the majority community.
The markers of ethnicity, according to Bartlett, were sufficiently similar to speak of a pan-Italian ethnicity even while allowing for internal differences and rivalries among the various city-states. Studies on the Italian Renaissance often break up their look at the peninsula by city-state as opposed to by year, allowing for the different local histories to be heard. There is ample evidence to suggest that people in this period would agree both to an Italian ethnicity that encompassed the different city-states and to distinct differences between them and their people. When writing about the murder of Juan Borgia in 1497, Matarazzo of Perugia stated that, “the thing was known far and wide, and because my informants were not Romans merely, but were the Italian people, therefore have I mentioned it”. Romans were not the only people who laid claim to being Italian and there was more to belonging to a particular denomination of Italian than simply currently living in a particular place-ethnic identity did not change that quickly. Matarazzo was called “of Perugia” although he was working in Rome, Leonardo was designated “da Vinci” after he spent years living in other places both within and outside of the peninsula. People were often marked by their place of birth (again, Leonardo da Vinci provides a famous example), and in this way might carry the designators of their particular natal home with them throughout their lives just as firmly as if it were indeed an immutable biological signifier.
Expanding this idea outwards, one’s ethnicity in this period had much to do with one’s birth, just as it does today, but it had more to do with cultural and geographical descent lines rather than racial ones, although they are often entangled. Rodrigo’s surname, “Borgia” or “de Borja”, marked the town his maternal line was from in Spain. He was therefore Spanish. The question of ethnicity becomes more complicated for his children, who were born in Rome to an Italian mother but bore his surname and legacy. Were they Spanish? Italian? Both or neither? This is a question that will be explored in more detail below, but it seems clear that Rodrigo Borgia was ethnically Spanish as defined by his time. Regardless of how much weight was placed upon the different elements that might tie him to Spain, he was repeatedly identified as Spanish, as was his uncle before him.
Rodrigo’s Position in Italy
The choice to refuse Italian ethnicity to Rodrigo and Alfonso had to do with both their own actions, as will be looked at in more detail later, as well as with the political climate of their time. The Italian peninsula was under pressure from external forces, which the Borgias were connected to both through the choices they made and through the fact of their lineage. In response to the election of Alfonso Borgia as Callixtus III in 1455, Leonardo Vernacci wrote to Piero di Cosimo de Medici, “See where the hesitancy of the Italians has brought us! The Catalans have the power, and God alone knows how well-suited they are by nature to rule”. Alfonso was not simply a Catalan or a Spaniard-he was representative of the entire group. The threat was not only that Alfonso himself was elected pope, but that he as a Spaniard threatened the Italian hegemony and political order and had the potential to upset the delicate balance between the different powerful Italian families, of which the Medicis were one. St. Antonio explained the political nature of the fear surrounding this event in a document from the same year,
The election of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III at first gave little satisfaction to the Italians. Inprimis, he was Valencian or Catalan; and they feared lest He should transfer the Papal Court to another country. Also, they feared lest He should entrust to Catalans the fortresses of the Holy Church, which, only after many difficulties, could be recovered. (Corvo 19)
The uncertainties behind this election can be understood as a fear of removal of the seat of authority from Italy and the infiltration of this seat by foreigners. The fear was therefore not of Alfonso himself but of the group he was a part of and seen to represent. This tying of political aptitude to ethnic identity is also seen in Vernacci’s quote, “God alone knows how well-suited they are by nature to rule”. The skills that could make one a good or poor ruler were not simply learned, they were inborn. They were not spread equally or randomly among all peoples but were believed to be influenced by one’s ethnicity. A Spaniard would rule differently than an Italian not only because of his upbringing or because he held different ties and connections, but because of his very nature as well. While favoritism to the country he was from was certainly concerning (St. Antonio argued that “It is not to be believed or said that [Calixtus III] is attached to one nation more than another” ), all the more concerning was the belief that even if Alfonso proved to be politically neutral he might still be a poor choice of leader because of his inborn characteristics as a Spaniard.
Was it possible to change one’s ethnicity? According to Bartlett’s thesis, which holds that ethnicity was (and was understood as) a culture artifact instead of a biological given, it was. There is evidence that Rodrigo’s contemporaries believed this as well. His detractors certainly seized upon his being culturally Spanish instead of biologically Spanish often enough. Their comments or complaints often read not that he was incapable of change but that he refused to assimilate. He decorated the Borgia Apartments in a decidedly mozarabic style (unique to Spain and its mixing of Muslim and European aesthetic values) and was known to speak and write in Spanish not only to ambassadors or royalty from Spain or Naples, but to his children. Contemporary descriptions of him often highlighted his cultural background, as did Duke Ercole d’Este when he wrote that Rodrigo was “arrayed in a black doublet bordered with gold brocade, with a beautiful belt in the Spanish fashion, and with sword and dagger. He wore Spanish boots and a velvet biretta, all very gallant”. It was clearly Rodrigo’s choice to dress in a manner that reiterated his heritage and background, just as it was his choice to reinforce it in his decorating of the apartments and in his chosen methods of communication. And yet how much good would it have done him to act in all ways as a man born and raised in Italy? The fact of the matter was that he was not Italian and his ethnicity, although not biological in the way that we understand it today, was still for the large part unchangeable. Although not completely tied to blood, the climate of the time as well as his own personality made it very difficult for him to smoothly negotiate any transition from Spanish to Italian ethnicity.
Ercole also had ambassadors research Rodrigo’s family when he was pressured in 1501 to submit to a proposed marriage between his son and Lucrezia. The letter read in part:
We have spared no efforts to learn everything possible regarding the illustrious house of Borgia, as your Excellency commanded. […] Although we finally succeeded in ascertaining that the house is one of the noblest and most ancient in Spain, we did not discover that its founders did anything very remarkable, perhaps because life in that country is quiet and uneventful-your Excellency knows that such is the case in Spain, especially in Valencia. (Gregorovius 203)
Ercole, at least, had an interest in learning about Rodrigo’s lineage. Although this is not quite the same as biological traits as we might understand them today because of the different understanding of bloodline (as contrasted with genealogy), it does demonstrate the belief that unchangeable background was important and could influence perceptions, even if the person involved had no control over any of it. Their claim in 1501 that “life in that country is quiet and uneventful” was also interesting as it implied that this was an immutable fact and one that had greatly shaped its people-even though the Reconquista itself had ended less than a decade prior and Spain had hardly been free of any sort of trouble or excitement since then. It reads rather disdainfully and it should be remembered that during this time of revival of Classical learning and art, many in Italy saw themselves as superior to Spain as it was the heart of the great Roman Empire, while Spain was merely an outpost. Spain was as it had always been-uneventful-and this fact was inherited by its people as was shown by the writers speaking of both in the same breath. Rodrigo also acknowledged that ethnicity was inherited. When offering advice to Juan upon his leaving to be married in Spain, Rodrigo spoke of Spain as “our country”, showing that whether for cultural or biological reasons, Spain was the country of his offspring as well, even though Juan had at that point never set foot on its territory. Juan had inherited Spanish ethnicity through his father’s connections to the country.
This inherited ethnicity had more obviously negative effects during this time as well, as with the paranoia about the true state of the converted Jews. Spain’s Jewish population was compelled to convert and then suspected of not truly being Christian, not truly part of Spain’s majority population, not truly Spanish. Bartlett’s assertion of a mutable ethnicity is too straightforward, at least for this time period. The transition from one culture and religion and ethnicity to another was a slow and painful process and depended not only on the willingness of the individual but also of the community as a whole. The conversos were required not only to change their religious practices, but also their cultural ones and even so were barred from participation in municipal offices in Spain with the passing of the blood edicts during this time period that expanded upon the old restriction that barred Jews and those who were found to be crypto-Jews from holding office.
The community was more willing to absorb newcomers into its fold if they were seen to be already similar to its perceived norm as well as useful. This is something that has been acknowledged by various historians of this time period, although rarely looked at in much depth-Bartlett at least implies that the process of inclusion was as simple as changing one’s address and surface mannerisms. The differences between the newcomers and the members of the majority community could be internal (customs, religion) or external (physical appearance). Rodrigo was seen by some to be useful because of his position and abilities, but by others to be dangerous for the same reasons. He was certainly more similar to others in Italy than were people from other ethnic groups, such as the Ottomans, but still encountered resistance. “Italy was no stranger to rejecting certain persons because of skin pigmentation or ethnicity from membership in the majority community” , wrote Muir, although he did not elaborate on what he meant by “ethnicity”-presumably he was using it by its modern definition, nor did he go on to explain the reasoning behind the rejection he speaks of, something that would have made his analysis of the situation more helpful.
Looking back at figure 1 as a reference, one had to be a member of the larger circles in order to be properly assimilated into the smaller ones. Or, rather, the larger circles marked out criteria for easy acceptance into the smaller, more intimate circles. While it was possible to live in Florence and not be a part of Christendom, it would certainly be difficult to gain acceptance to Florence’s majority community and one’s status as a Florentine would very likely be questioned or at least looked at askance-not a Florentine, but a Florentine*, with the connotation that even if you lived all of your life in the city you would never gain the same sort of intimate absorption as a Christian. As Gregory Kaplan points out in his work on converso literature, members of minority groups do not have a single experience of discrimination. Some rebel against the majority and self-consciously mark themselves out as different, while others seek full integration. What is shared, however, is the communal knowledge that they are not part of the majority, however they may individually work with that fact. Members of other minority groups in Italy, even ones coming from positions of more political and cultural power, were aware of their contested position as partial members of their society. They might interact with the majority culture, they might claim for themselves a role in this majority culture, they might even on occasion be lucky enough to be granted acceptance into the majority culture, but theirs was a socially precarious position since “Renaissance communities became communities by including some, ostracizing others”. The Borgias found themselves both included and ostracized as their goals and the climate of the times changed.
Although Rodrigo Borgia was in a position of considerable economic, political, and cultural power, he was still not a member of the majority culture in Rome or in Italy. It would be unfair to think of him or of members of his family as being discriminated against in the same way as was, for example, the Jewish population in Spain, but neither were they completely integrated into Italy. Rodrigo himself both asserted his Spanish heritage and laid claim to membership in Italian majority community, writing near the end of his life that, “Though we are Spanish by birth and show ourselves French by policy, we are still Italians; our seat is in Italy; here we have to live as also our duke”. It appears that Rodrigo claimed that his lineage and place of birth were irrelevant to his ethnic identity; to him, this identity was something that one could change and claim for oneself. In this way it was more similar to a modern sense of nationality, which has no connection to blood and does not need to be the same one that you are born with. It is possible to be, in modern terms, ethnically or racially Chinese, be born in and spend most of your life in Shanghai before moving to New York and obtaining American nationality. This nationality has to do with what community one lives in and holds loyalty to, not with unchangeable biological facts.