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Discourses of Vulnerability: Pietro Alcionio's Orations on the Sack of Rome*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kenneth Gouwens
Kenneth Gouwens*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

Early on the morning of 6 May 1527, under cover of dense fog, an Imperial army led by Charles of Bourbon began its attack upon the city of Rome. When the Vatican was besieged, Pope Clement VII and several retainers fled by the Alexandrine corridor to the papal fortress, the Castel Sant' Angelo. Bourbon would die in one of the first assaults; but by sunset the entire city, with the exception of a few palaces and the papal fortress, would be at the mercy of his troops, which would occupy Rome for much of the following year. Thus began the Sack of Rome, an event of obvious political significance for papal autonomy, but also one which many historians have identified as a turning point for Roman humanistic culture.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 38 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1997

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Albert Ascoli, Amittai Aviram, Jill Frank, Nina Levine, Thomas Mayer, John Najemy, and Ingrid Rowland for their comments on early drafts of this article. The two Renaissance Quarterly readers also offered many helpful suggestions. I am especially indebted to Diana Robin, Ronald Witt, and Price Zimmermann for their close readings and criticisms of the penultimate draft. In the notes I shall make use of the following abbreviations:

BAV - Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City

Cors. - Biblioteca Corsiniana, Rome

Hoff. - Pietro Alcionio, “Oratio habita in Senatu Romano praelectis literis a Carolo V. post Urbis direptionem scriptis” [i.e., “Declamatio in literas Caesaris”], in Christophus Godofredus Hoffmannus, Nova Scriptorum ac Monumentorum Partim Rarissimorum, Partim Ineditorum Collectio … (Leipzig, 1731), I: 550-88.

Isol. - Archivio Isolani, Bologna

Rice. - Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence

In quotations from manuscripts, editorial conjectures are supplied in pointed brackets, < >, and superfluous letters in square brackets, [ ]. I have standardized punctuation and capitalization. Unless otherwise noted, orthography follows the manuscripts exactly, with the exception of the usage of “u” and “v”, which I have modified.

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