Carthage or Jerusalem? Princely Violence and the Spatial Transformation of the Medieval into the Early Modern City

Abstract

This essay explores princely violence against cities and the transformation of the late medieval commune into the early modern city. Its consideration is European wide, with nascent Mexico City also studied, but its frame is the Burgundian-Habsburg urban world. Urban historians have long insisted that the transformation of the medieval commune into the Baroque city was a pivotal event in the history of modernity, the city a privileged site of and midwife to modernity. But the momentous change in civic life came not only because of the city’s commercial wealth, dense populations, and roaring economic might. Claims to political power, whether civic or princely, were enacted in the early modern city’s public places, with assertions of rulership performed at city gates, upon market spaces and other public squares, and through corporative and sacred symbols. In the early modern period, these civic spaces became marked as contested grounds, especially for those cities whose political boundaries were under the strain of dynastic rulers intent on better managing their subjects. My essay argues that princely violence against cities in the critical centuries from the late medieval to the early modern period sought to transform urban public space to better manage control over it.

Street politics

“…Subversive anonymous graffiti appeared on walls, making fun of his entry by portraying the emperor 'riding into Rome seated on a shrimp'. 29 These elaborate political ceremonies reached not just local crowds, but also larger, international audiences through descriptions in printed festival books, pamphlets, prints and by word of mouth. The same imperial claims as those of Charles V were part of the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent's (1494-1566) ceremonial presence.…”