The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State

Abstract

A detailed history, from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, of an Italian state, Rimini, and its ruling family, the Malatesta. The Malatesta are best known, through the works of Jacob Burckhardt, John Addington Symonds and others, for their colourful contribution to the court life and culture of renaissance Italy. There are other sides to their history of at least comparable importance. By their representative status, as princes of middle rank, and by their unusually long tenure of power, the Malatesta are among the families most typical in all its stages of Italy's Age of Despots: in their acquisition and exercise of authority, their political career and personality, in the circumstances of their fall. At the same time, by their position as papal subjects, in Romagna and the March of Ancona, their progress is inseparable from the parallel history of government in the Papal State, first effectively founded in the same century as Maltesta rule and consolidated, two hundred years later, by the destruction of the Malatesta and other tyrants of central Italy. It is the purpose of this book to investigate in detail the origin, development and character of Maltesta government and the causes of its overthrow, against the background of changing relations between popes and despots, dynastic and papal signoria.

Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender

“…27. [41][42]. Benvenuto da Imola, who writes with particular authority about his home province, considers the eagle a symbol of the Polenta family's beneficent rule and a compliment to Guido Novello da Polenta (Dante's host during his final years), and it is true that the eagle's wings are less ferocious-if no less restrictive-than the "green claws" of the Ordelaffi of Forli or the "young lion" who represents the lord of Faenza.…”

“…In their quarrel with the Malatesta the Parcitadi appealed for help to the great Ghibelline warlord and leader in Romagna, Guido da Montefeltro, who "had longstanding differences, personal and public," with the Malatesta. 42 According to the anonymous fourteenth-century Cronaca malatestiana, the followers of both factions were barricaded in the streets of Rimini, while the Parcitadi awaited the arrival of Guido. Taking advantage of a disturbance caused by the attempt of two asses to mate, Malatesta made a false peace with his opponents, so that "miser Parcitado wrote to the Conte Guido thanking him and explaining that peace had been made so that for the present he need not come" ("miser Parcitado rescrisse al conte Guido rengraziandolo e dicendo como aveva facto paxe, si che al presente la sua venuta non era de bisogno").…”