The Palgrave Macmillan History ofInternational· Thought Series seeks to publish the best

work in this growing and increasingly important field ofacademicinquiry. Its scholarly mono-
graphs cover three ·types·ofwork: (0 exploration ofthe intellectual impact of individual think-
ers, from key disciplinary figures to neglected ones; (ii)examination of the origin, evolution,
and contemporary relevance of.specific schools or traditions of international thought; and (iii).
analysis of the evolution of particular ideas and concepts in the field. Both classical (pre 1919)
and modern (post 1919) thought are covered.' Its books are written to be accessible to audi-
ences in International Relations, International History, PollticalTheory, and Sociology.
From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Series Editor:
Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Politlcal Science Territory and Politics before
Advisory Board:
Jack Donnelly, University ofDenver
Westphalia
Fred Halliday, London School of Economics and Political Science
David Long, Carleton University
H'ideml Suganami, University of Keele

Also in the Series:

Jeremy.Larkins
Internationalism and Nationalism in Classical and Modern Thought on
European Political Thought International Relations: From Anarchy to
by Carsten Holbraad Cosmopolis
by Robert Jackson
The International Theory ofLeonard Woolf: A
St1>tdy in Twentieth-Century Idealism The Hidden History ofRealism: A Genealogy
by Peter Wilson ofPower Politics
by Sean Molloy
Tocqueuille, Lieber, and Bagehot: Liberalism
Confronts the World Hugo Grotius inInternational Thought
by David Clinton by Renee Jeffery
Harold Laski: Problems ofDemocracy, the The International Thought ofMartin Wight
Sovereign State, and International Society by Ian Hall
by Peter Lamb
Honor in Foreign Polity: A History and
. The War Over Perpetual Peace: An Discussion
Exploration into the History ofa by Michael Donelan
Foundationai International
Relations Text Realist Strategies ofRepublican Peace:
by Eric S. Easley Niebuhr, Morgen·thau,and the Politics of
Patriotic Dissent
Liberal Internationalism and the
by Vibeke Schou.Tjalve
Decline ofthe State: The Thought of
Richard Cobden, David Mitrany, arid From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and
Kenicbi Ohmae Politics before .Westphalia
by Per Harnrnarlund by Jeremy Larkins

palgrave
macmillan
 Contents

List ofIllustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia, and

International Relations 1
2 International Relations, Political Theory; and
the Territorial State 17
3 Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History 35
4 Hierarchy, Order, and Space in the Medieval World 53
5 Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse 73
6 The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy 101
7 Machiavelli, Territoriality, and La Stato 123
8 Picturing Renaissance. Territoriality 145
9 The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society 169
10 Conclusion: Territoriality, the Renaissance, and
International. Relations 195

Notes 201
Bibliography 245
Index 263
 III ustrations

5.1 The Skrzicziek Miniature, in Gratian of Bologna,

Decretum: Distinctionesv, Pars 1, c.1140. Archives of
the Prague Castle; Prague, Czech Republic. © Archives
of the Prague Castle. 75
5.2 The Emperor in Majesty,c. 975 (vellum) by German
school (tenth century). Aachen Cathedral, Aachen,
Germany. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/The Bridgeman
Art Library. German. Out of copyright. 86
8.1 View of an Ideal City, 1490-1500 (oil on panel)
by Italian School (fifteenth century). © Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library. 151
8.2 Portraits of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-82)
and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel)
by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415-92).
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman
Art Library. Italian, Out of copyright. 156
8.3 The Triumphs of Duke Federico da Montefeltro
(1422"-82) and Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on
panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415"-92). Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Italian. Out of copyright. 157
8.4 Arrival of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, greeted
by his father Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga III
(reigned 1444-78) and his brothers, from the
Camera degli Sposi or Camera Picta, 1465~74 (fresco)
by Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506).
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy/The Bridgeman Art
Library. Italian. Out of copyright. 161
x • IIIustrations

8.5 Map of the world, based on descriptions and

coordinates given in "Geographia," by Ptolemy
(Claudius Ptolemaeus ofAlexandria) (c.90--168 AD),
published in Ulrn, Germany, 1486 (color engraving)
by German.School (fifteenth century). British Library,
London, UKI© British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library.· German.
Acknowledgments
Out of copyright. 164
8.6 Carta della Catena, 1490 (Detail) by Italian School
(fifteenth century). Museo de Firenze Corn'era,
Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian.
Out of copyright. 165
9.1 Columbus at Hispaniola, from "The Narrative and

T
h is book has taken far too long to reach completion and in the pro-
Critical History of America," edited by Justin Winsor,
cess I have incurred a considerable number of debts. Some of the
London, 1886 (engraving) by Bry, Theodore de (1528-98)
. ideas presented here first saw the light of day during my graduate
(after). Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.
studies at the London School of Economics. During the enjoyable years
Flemish. Out of copyright. 179
9.2 I spent at the LSE many people contributed to my intellectual journey.
Credit: Copy of Monumenta Cartographia, 1502
My greatest debt is to my teacher and supervisor Mr. Michael Banks who
(color litho) by © Royal Geographical Society,
encouraged my forays into pastures new while reigning in some of my wil-
London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. 191 der impulses. Several other members of the department of International
Relations at the LSE also offered valuable. support and encouragement. In
particular I would like to mention Chris Coker, Mark Hoffman, Justin
Rosenberg, and Hayo Krombach. My examiners David Campbell and Chris
Brown provided many insightful comments and criticisms that have been
incorporated into the present work. The.graduate community at the LSEin
the mid-1990s was remarkable in many ways and Molly Cochrane, Joal de
Almeida, Eddie Keene, Bernice Lee, Mairi Johnson, Bice Maiguashca, and
Agostinho Zacarias were sources of inspiration and friendship.
In recent years colleagues in several institutions have made me feel welcome.
Despite our differences oyer the nature of research methods, Yossi Mekelberg at
Regents' College has been instrumental in my return to teaching. I also appre-
ciate the warmth shown to me by the members of Department of Politics at
Goldsmiths, in particular from Jasna Dragovic-Soso, Richard Greyson, Branwen
Gruffydd Jones, Gonzo Pozzo, and Sanjay Seth. My future research ambitions
have in no small way been inspired by the department's intellectual ethos.
Within the broader International Relations community, Mats Berdal, Stephen
Chan, James Der Derian, Mervyn Frost, Nick Renegger, Hidemi Suganami,
and Rob Walker have all contributed in various ways to the project. I would also
like to thank the members of the Warburg Institute of the University of London
for allowing me to use their wonderful library.
xii • Acknowledgments

At Palgrave Macmillan several people have played important roles in nur-

turing this project. I am particularly indebted to Peter Wilson the editor of the
"History of International Thought Series" for expressing an interest in my work
and encouraging me to submit a manuscript for consideration. This series is an
important outlet for those of us who think that the history of ideas matters.
Farideh Koohi-Kamali, Toby Wahl, and Asa Johnson have all provided a pub-
CHAPTER 1
lishing novice with invaluable support. and advice. I would also like to thank
Victoria Hogarth at Bridgeman Art Library and Marek Suchy ar the Archives of
the Prague Castle for their help with obtaining the images. The external review-
Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia,
er's comments were extremely insightful and I am very grateful for their close and International Relations
reading of my manuscript. I have incorporated many of the reviewer's valuable
suggestions and believe that the final text is considerably improved as a result.
Finally many thanks to Philip Davis for his diligent work compiling the index
and reading the proofs.
Emotional and psychological support· on what has sometimes been a diffi-
cult journey has come from many people. Professor Valerie Cowie provided not
only valuable professional assistance but also hours of stimulating conversation. International Relations and the Territorial State
I am grateful for the, often bemused, understanding and patience shown by
Zoe Rahman and Zaklina Manevska-Hamilton..One could not wish for better The sine qua non of modern International Relations theory has been the idea
friends than Spyros Economides and Katerina Dalacoura who have picked up of an international system comprised of independent political communities or
the pieces on more than one occasion. My parents Fay and Gordon, my sister states. Since this representation of the international system has no place for an
and brother, Frances and Matthew, and their families, have all been sources of overarching Leviathan or hegemon it is generally assumed that the relations
kindnesses beyond the call of family duty. between states are structured by anarchy. International theorists, perhaps mind-
I have dedicated this book to Dominique Jacquin-Berdal. Dominique's tragic ful of Kenneth Waltz's caution against reductionist explanations of interna-
death in early 2006 not only robbed the International Relations community in tional processes and outcomes, have tended to leave the task of theorizing the
Britain of one of its brightest prospects and Africa of one of its most passionate state to political theorists.' Nevertheless, even those theories of International
advocates but also many of us of a dear friend. Dominique was an unfailing Relations that explicitly eschew the business of state theory implicitly endorse
source ofwisdom, generosity, and kindness and I consider myself blessed to have certain assumptions about the nature and character of the states that make up
been able to count her among my dearest friends. the international system.
Mainstream theories of international relations have been particularly well
served by Max Weber's famous account of the state as a human community
that "claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given
rerritory,"? Violence, legitimacy, and territory define the Weherian state. In
International Relations the themes of violence and legitimacy have been sub-
ject to much debate and discussion. Most attention has focused on the idea
of legal domination, which for Weber distinguished modern from traditional
or charismatic forms of state domination. Legal domination in .inrernational
political theory is rewritten as the principle of sovereignty, which, it is claimed,
is the constitutive principle of the Westphalian international system. However,
the territorial aspect of the state, the fact of the state's physical presence in
space-s--which for Weber, writing in a culture dominated by geopolitics, seemed
 2 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 3

self-evident-has. not received equivalent critical consideration in International the later sixteenth century was a response to the emergence of the "new phenom-
Relations. enon of the territorial state. It referred in legal terms to the elemental political fact
Indeed, it would be fair to say that, for most international political thought ofthat age-----the appearance of a centralized power that exercised its lawmaking
the claim that the state has a territory or is in some sense territorial has assumed and law-enforcing authority within a certain territory."?
the status of a common-sensical, self-evident truth. All states, regardless of his-
torical and geographical variables, are assumed to. have some physical extension
in space, to occupy an identifiable place on the surface of the earth, to have The Westphalia Narrative
borders that clearly distinguish inside from outside and self from others. As Morgenthau's claim that the sovereign territorial state emerged out of the tur-
Stephen Krasner writes (( [tjhe assertion of final authority within a given terri- moil of the religious wars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
tory is the core element in any definition of sovereignty," the only alternatives is one account of the Westphalia 'myth', according to which the agreements
being "either a world in which there are no clear boundaries or a world in which reached at the Congresses of Munster (1644~48) and Osnabriick (1645-48)
there is no final authority within a given territory."3 This final authority is not and subsequently ratified by the Treaties of Westphalia (1648) gave birth to
just derived from the internal monopoly of violence but also comes from the the modern states-system. According to this narrative ever since Westphalia the
constitutive principle of the state system "that political life must be territorially international system has been a territorial order whose actors, sovereign states,
organized with one final authority within a given rerritory/" Following Kant I have been coterminous with bounded, compartmentalized, spaces.f Although
identify this essentialist .account of the relationship between the state and ter- the International Relations 'myth' ofWestphalia is often at odds with the histor-
ritory as the "territorial a priori." In Kant's Newtonian framework space and ical events and social and political conditions of the time, the aura ofWestphalia
time were universal a 'priori conditions for knowledge. However, the intellec- remains largely undiminished; not least because Westphalia has a significance
tual revolution associated with the early twentieth century sciences of relativity that goes beyond the immediate concerns of International Relations." For many
forced a. paradigm shift in understandings of space and time and showed that it connotes the moment when politics, having spent several centuries in the
the Newtonian-Kantiancategorieswere not universal but particular, the prod- darkened caves of medieval Christianity, emerged blinking into the daylight
ucts of historically specific knowledge. This book will make a similar claim with of modern rationality and reason. Westphalia symbolized a transformation
respect· to the territorial a priori. of International Relations. It will suggest that from a system of political rule based in the hierarchical structures of medieval
the idea of the territorial state is neither universal nor immutable but contingent Christianity to one. ordered in terms of independent sovereign territorial states:
and historical. It is a modern cultural representation, a discursive construct, a transition from hierarchy to anarchy.
with a complex history whose origins lie in the Renaissance transformation of For Leo Gross, the Homer of the Westphalia myth, this structural transfor-
man's understanding of his being-in-space. mation is precisely what made Westphalia so significant: it "marks the end of
Contemporary Neorealists are unlikely to be unduly disturbed by the asser- an epoch and the opening of another. It represents the majestic portal which
tion that the territorial state has a history. After all they deny that differences in leads from the old into the new world.I" Westphalia represented the victory of
the nature of the units that. make up any international system have any causal centrifugal forces, empowered by the rising . sense of individualism promoted
impact on the dynamics ofwar and the balance ofpower. However, their Classical by the Renaissance and Reformation, over the Papacy and Empire upon which
Realists predecessors, whose Realism was more imbued with history and polit- the hierarchies of the Christian medieval world had been centered. It "marked
ical theory, recognised that the modern state's territoriality was a fundamental man's abandonment of the idea of a hierarchical structure of society and his
factor in the emergence of the modern international system. Hans Morgenthau option for a new system .characterized by the co-existence of a multiplicity of
stated clearly that an international system composed ofsovereign territorial states states, each sovereign within its territory, equal to one another, and free from
only emerged in the period after the end of the Thirty Years War. Sovereignty any external earthly authority."? In the Westphalian international system, com-
or supreme power over a particular territory became the determinant political posed of independent sovereign territorial states, the structure of authority is
fact of early modern Europe only once it reflected the new social reality derived horizontal: there is no Leviathan or transcendental authority figure dictating
from the double victory of the territorial princes: externally over the Holy Roman how states should relate to each other.
Emperor and the Pope, and internally over local barons. For Morgenthau the This structural transformation in the nature of political authority from
legal doctrine of territorial sovereignty formulated by the jurists and lawyers of medieval hierarchy to. modern anarchy both enabled and required a profound
 4 • From .Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 5

alteration in man's conception of his political being-in-space or his territoriality. be addressed as an object or an idea that is produced by discourse. This book's
The transition from a vertical. to a horizontal political cosmology is, suggests insistence on the notion of the territorial imaginary seeks to posit an alterna-
Michael Shapiro, captured in Aldous Huxley's novel Grey Eminence in which tive to the territorial a priori in which territory is synonymous with extension
Cardinal Richelieu and his foreign emissary Father James embody, respectively, in physical space. The territorial imaginary reminds us that in any culture or
aspects of the modern and medieval spatial imaginaries. In Father James'smedi- society assumptions about man's political being-in-space are "constituted by the
eval cosmology the world appears as a vertical set of spaces organized into a ensemble of representations which extend beyond the limit imposed by the facts
mundane present and a transcendental eternity, whereas for Richelieu the hier- of experience and the deductive conclusions authorized by them."14
archies of the Christian order have given way to the modern geopolitical hori- As far as the historical purview of this work is concerned one can begin by
zontal of sovereign states. The novel can thus be read as reiterating Donald J. Puchala's statement that "[tjhere were, of course, interna-
tional relations before 1648."15 Commenting on the various dates put forward
a chronicle of the waning 'of the medieval and the waxing of the modern to signify the birth .of the modern states-system, Martin Wight has observed
spatialization of the world, aneffect so powerful that, ever since, people pur- that they tend to derive less from balanced assessments of historical data than
suing statecraft have been able to subjugate and direct ecclesiastical author- from scholars' personal value systems and ideological biases. Thus, if one's pri-..
ity on behalf of policy that unfolds within a horizontal, desacralized world. ority is to emphasize the legal recognition of independent sovereign states then
Indeed, much of the subsequent history ofworld politics involves the demise Westphalia is an appropriate. date. However, if one thinks that an operative
of the authorities connected to a vertical world and the ascension of those balance of power is a necessary requirement for an international system then
connected to a horizontal, geopolitical one.!" the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht might be more artractive.l'' Yet, notes Wight, even if
we identifyUtrechtas the coming-of-age of the modern states-system, we must
Shapiro's observations raise two fundamental. questions. First, under what cir- recognize that it was preceded bya long period of gestation, which began in the
cumstances, within what set of intellectual and cultural conditions could this fourteenth century.
transition from a hierarchical to an anarchical territorial order be conceived
and represented? .Second, when did this transformation occur? With respect The real break, prepared through the fourteenth century, becomes manifest
to the first question, one of the working premises of this book is that, contrary in the fifteenth. In the fifteenth century the old constitution ofthe Respublica
to the implicit claim of the territorial a priori, ideas of sovereign-territoriality Christiana finally breaks down. The attempt at its constitutional reform in
are not universal, fixed and objective, but particular, transitory and subjective; the Conciliar Movement is a failure. The papacy is transformed from an ecu-
they are embedded in a culture's collective imagination and become manifest in menical theocracy into an Italian great power. The assertion of sovereignty
its representations of its being-in-space. The transformation from hierarchy to by the secular powers, growing since the thirteenth century, becomes nor-
anarchy was, maintains Shapiro, primarily derived from changes in the way that mal. The first lamentations about international anarchy are heard. To miti-
the relationship between space and politics was imagined: "the separation of the gate the anarchy, the first attempts at collective security are made. To assist
world into kinds of space' is perhaps the most significant kind of practice for them, the new invention of reciprocal resident embassies becomes general. As
establishing the systems of intelligibility within which understandings of global collective. security proves itself unworkable, because demanding too much,
politics are forged."!' How we imagine our being-in-space has consequences for the simpler system of a balance of power grows up}?
politics and vice-versa. Concepts of space and political ideologies combine in
practices of representation, made manifest in texts and images, which do not Despite Wight's insistence that institutional developments in the fourteenth and
simply reproduce the truths of some pre-existing reality. They are discourses fifteenth centuries established the conditions ofpossibility for the emergence ofa
understood not as "groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents distinctly modern form of international relations it is notable that this period of
or representations)" but in Michel Foucault's sense as "practices that systemat- European history, the Renaissance, has received remarkably little scholarly atten-
ically form the objects of which they speak."12 Thus when we examine texts or tion within the discipline of International Relations. Of course, this is primarily
images that convey, implicitly or explicitly, particular, notions of territoriality a consequence ofthe Westphalian narrative that has drawn a deep, if arbitrary,
we must, as David Campbell warns, be mindful of the political consequences line across the historical record. Ironically, the discipline's foundational histor-
of "adopting one mode of representation over another."13 Thus territory must ical myth requires that earlier events and ideas are themselves mythologized;
 6 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 7

presented as curios that serve to illustrate the distance that the civilized mod- above the state. The Renaissance established the modern territorial imaginary
ern world, imbued with Enlightenment ideals, has taken from the passions and in which territorial sovereignty is parceled out over a horizontal plane and the
doxas of medieval Christendom. As Wight observes "[tjhe Westphalian inter- dominant spatial motif opposes inside and outside. This transformation from a
pretation of the history of the states-system fits in with the doctrine that the medieval to modern political cosmology, from a vertical and hierarchical order
Scientific Revolution marks a more important epoch. in the general history of of sovereign-territoriality to a horizontal and anarchic order, is the subject of
Europe than does the Renaissance."18 Of course history is rarely so neat. As this book.
Krasner points out both the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire remained sig-
nificant international actors after 1648, and several medieval political entities
(the independent city states of northern Italy, the realm of England and some International Relations and the Renaissance
German city states) were de facto if not de jure sovereign institutions with effec- The dichotomy between medieval and modern international systems is less
tive control over their territories from as early as 1300. 19 neat than the Westphalia narrative presumes. This has been acknowledged by
In many ways the Westphalian narrative dovetails with the ideal of moder- those few International Relations scholars who have incorporated aspects of
nity as Cosmopolis. As described by Steven Toulmin, Cosmopolis was the uto- the Renaissance-a period of European history that bridged "the medieval"
pia of seventeenth century rationalists, an order combining nature (cosmos) and and "the modern" while simultaneously bringing both into question--within
human society (polis) in which the perceived structure of nature reinforced a their histories of international relations. International Relations scholarship on
rational social order according to the dictates of reason.20The intellectual archi- the Renaissance tends to focus on three issue areas: the political philosophy of
tects of Cosmopolis, motivated by faith in science and the dictates of natural phi- Machiavelli and other humanists; the Renaissance contribution to modern diplo-
losophy, set out to distance their society from the values, principles, and ideals macy; and the social relations leading to the institutional rise of the sovereign
of an earlier Renaissance humanist tradition of modernity. Toulmin, however, state. The remainder of this introduction will briefly consider their work, both
makes too much of the Renaissance/Cosmopolis distinction. Not all Renaissance to situate the present study and to indicate how its arguments extend beyond
thought was as open-mirided and as 'sceptically tolerant' of plurality and ambi- existing discussions of the Renaissance in international political thought.
guity as his reading of Montaigne, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Erasmus implies. Scholars of political philosophy often remark that the efflorescence of polit-
Conversely, many Classical minds were opposed to the rationalist architectonic ical theory .associated with Renaissance humanism is not matched by equiv-
projects of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Indeed, with respect to space and alent advances in thinking about international politics. Torbjern L. Knutsen
territoriality the conditions of possibility for a Cosmopolitan imaginary in which argues that although Machiavelli's writings on self-interest and raison d'etat
space could be known rationally, ordered systematically and rendered the object anticipated some ofthe concerns of modern international political theory, The
of man's desires, was established during the European Renaissance of the fif- Prince is primarily concerned with domestic politics and is not a modern treatise
teenth and early sixteenth centuries. Renaissance texts and images reveal that since it continues to articulate power politics in terms of the classical categories
in terms of space and territoriality it was during this period and not during of virtu andfortuna. 2 1 Indeed, for Knutsen, the closest the Renaissance came
Cosmopolis that the rupture or break with the medieval territorial imaginary was to developing a theory of international relations is Guicciardlni's adaptation
initiated. It was during the Renaissance that the hierarchical arrangement of of T'hucydides' balance of power theory to describe Lorenzo de Medici's for-
medieval culture, structured by the prevalent spatial figure of above and below, eign policy. David Boucher, who unlike Knutsen does not limit himself to The
was undermined. The medieval mind conceived of sovereign-territoriality Prince, agrees that Machiavelli did not entertain the concept of a balance of
through a prism in which order was determined by rigid perpendicular chains power, but maintains that the Florentine did have a distinctive view of interna-
of being. The multiple overlapping jurisdictions and allegiances of the medi- tional relations: "Machiavelli's view of human nature and the subordination of
eval political world were structured vertically through hierarchies of political morality to politics postulates a dynamic view of the relations among nations,
authority that extended up far beyond the temporal authorities of Emperor and each of which has its own common good which it is prepared to enhance at
Papacy to culminate in the ethereal realm of the Civitas Dei. This whole edifice the expense ofothers."22 Since it is human nature to always desire more, in the
was destabilized by the Renaissance re-imagining and reconstituting of the rela- competitive environment of international relations, all states, even those that
tionship between man and his being-in-space. In terms of political territoriality seek only to maintain the status quo, will be threatened by others, a threat that
this resulted in the gradual delegitimization of any claims to sovereignty located will spur their own desire and need for conquest. Both Knutsen and Boucher,
8 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 9

highlighting a theme that will be discussed extensively throughout this work, international order" it serves to "reinforce if not reify ... a status quo diplomatic
acknowledge that even if Renaissance political thought articulated little by way system.'25 Second, it reinforces this tradition's evolutionist historical narrative
of explicit international relations theory, the humanist critique of medieval that records the gradual refinement and improvement of diplomatic practice.
scholasticism did pave the way for the subsequent development of modern sec- Nevertheless, Der Derian agrees that the establishment of permanent residences
ular political and international theory. Machiavelli and Guicciardini's descrip- during the Italian Renaissance was an important innovation, especially in the
tive realism, which described and explained politics in terms of human nature, context of the humanist revival of the classical doctrine of raison d' etat, Just as
the exercise of free will and rationality, isolated politics from the normative Meinecke's diplomat was "the discoverer of the interests ofstates" so Machiavelli
prescriptions of Christian theological discourse. Renaissance political theorists posited raison d'etat as the state's "intelligence," which allowed it to form an
were no longer compelled to frame their discussions of the state in terms of its objective awareness of its environmenr.t'' However, for Der Derian neither
relations to either celestial or temporal Christian authorities, but rather depicted Machiavellian. raison d'etat nor the institution of permanent residences qualify
it as a human creation that needed constant vigilance in order to be sustained. as instances of "diplomacy" understood as the "mediation of mutual estrange-
Boucher and Knutsen treat this theme, which Boucher neatly terms "the prior- raenisbeiioeen states."27 Renaissance practice "corresponded to an extreme state
ity of the secular," largely through an explication of Machiavellian statecraft and of anarchy and estrangement of the city statesfrom hegemonic empires' and
raison d' etat as adumbrated within the concepts of necessita, virtu,· and fortuna. is thus a manifestation of "proto-diplomacy" or a one sided mediation, whose
Important as these concepts are to understanding Renaissance political theory, genealogy can be traced back to St. Augustlne.r" Although for Der Derian the
neither study provides an extensive discussion of how the state was understood gaze of Renaissance is primarily directed to the past, occasionally it glimpses
during the Renaissance-.Thus in chapter 4 a close textual reading of Machiavelli the future. For, like Boucher and Knutsen, he credits Machiavelli with sweeping
will explore how humanist political thought conceived of lostato and how that away "the remnants of a mythical Christian unity to open the way for a system
conception played out in terms of a territorial imaginary. of diplomacy based on states' interests."29 Thiswork will share Der Derian's
Ifthe Renaissance lacked a general theory of internationalrelations, its con- suspicion of evolutionist narratives, but whereas for Der Derian the Renaissance
tribution to the theory and practice of diplomacy is well acknowledged. In his is .still predominantly an expression of medieval thought and practice, I shall
classic Renaissance Diplomacy, Garrett Mattingly argues that modern diplomacy contend that the modern territorial imaginary had its genesis during this trans-
began with the exchange of permanent resident embassies between the principal formational epoch in European cultural history.
courts of Renaissance Italy during the period of the Milanese wars (1444-54).23 Der Derian's refusal to enfold Renaissance diplomacy within an evolution-
Drawing on Jacob Burckhardt's characterization of political life in Renaissance ist historical narrative is echoed in Christian Reus-Srnit's comparative study
Italy as illegitimate and requiring permanent vigilance, Mattingly claims that of international societies in The Moral Purpose of the State. 30 For Reus-Smit
the resident ambassadors were simultaneously "the agents and the symbols of the primary institutions of international society are historically and culturally
continuous system of diplomatic pressures.Y" During the remainder of the fif- contingent. Their differences are derived from the fundamental set of core val-
teenth century the machinery of Renaissance diplomacy was gradually refined ues or constitutional structures that the states that comprise each international
and the rights and duties of diplomats were clarified. The heyday of Renaissance society look to when justifying their right to exist and act as sovereign entities.
diplomacy was brought to a close by the French invasion of 1494 and the ensu- International society is ordered by these "coherent ensembles of intersubjective
ing struggles between the Valois and Hapsburg dynasties for. hegemony over beliefs, principles, and norms" because they determine which actors are legiti-
the peninsula. However, because the northern powers adopted the Italian dip- mately recognized as states and the limits to their actions.i" Of these, the moral
lomatic model it became the European standard, even surviving the Counter- purpose of the state is the fundamental normative criterion: it determines the
Reformation wars of religion. Renaissance Diplomacy remains a valuable work if basis upon which sovereign rights are established, the organizing principle of
only for its insistence that the period between 1420 and 1530 was significant in sovereignty, the norm of procedural justice, and ultimately the nature of an
the history of international relations. Yet, Mattingly's claim that modern diplo- international society. Reus-Smit argues that the social structure of Renaissance
matic practice emerged during the Renaissance has been challenged. For James Italy was constituted by patronage, which had arisen as a response to the anx-
Der Derian Mattingly's text shares two of the characteristic flaws of the classi- ieties .generated by the erosion of guild-based corporate structures and the
cal tradition of diplomatic studies. First, by narrowly conceiving of diplomacy retreat of papal and imperial sources of authority. Relations of patronage bound
as "an exchange of accredited envoys by states, and asa valuable norm for the "patrons and clients in a webof mutual obligations, established and maintained
 10 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 11

through rhetorical speech and ritual gesture."32 All authority claims were separation of politics and economics premised upon a form of material repro-
grounded in '(appeals to honorific grandeur," which engendered a specific ratio- duction dominated by exchange relations, itself contingent upon a structural
nal for sovereignry-c--t'the pursuit of civic glory, or grandezza, was celebrated as location within feudal Europe which enabled the cornering of such. flows suf-
the city-state's primary raison d' etre."33 The realization of grandezza, required ficient to support them."38 The Communes' ability to isolate themselves from
the nurturing of concordia whereby individuals would place the common good private individual power so prevalent in feudal Europe and so reconstitute an
before their own self interest or factional advantage. Although the humanists autonomous public sphere of political life-characterized by the institutions
promoted concordia as substantive justice, rewarding virtue and rectifying vice, of the podesteria and capitaneria-was derived from their unique role in the
in practice the values of patronage prevailed in "the ritual enactment of virtue, feudal economy: their control of East-West trade, their production of manu-
through ceremonial rhetoric and gesture, determining patterns of social and factures such as textiles, and the presence of colonies of Italian merchants in
political interaction, individual worth and entitlement, and the distribution of various European cities. Rosenberg's argument is persuasive if one accepts his
social goods."34 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as city states moved to economic determinism, but from the perspective of discourse analysis it is too
seigniorial or oligarchic rule, these ritual norms and practices not only shaped restrictive. There are surely limitations to any discussion of the Renaissance,
relations between individuals but also came to determine those between rulers which ifit was anything was a cultural and intellectual movement that eschews
and subjects and were adopted by political elites "to establish the social identity, any consideration of ideas and art. This may be a consequence of Rosenberg's
legitimacy and status of their city states within the interstate system, and when idiosyncratic dating of the Renaissance to the emergence of the Communes in
courting cooperative relations with other states."35 Thus resident ambassadors the eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, few intellectual or cultural histo-
served as the conduits for "oratorical diplomacy" or the presentation and pro- rians would. accept that Renaissance culture in any meaningful sense existed
motion of civic grandeur as a key element of a .state's identity and an essential before the late thirteenth century when it erupted in Florence with the writ-
element in the balance of power. ings of Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch and the painting of Giotto di
Reus-Smit makes an important claim, one fully endorsed here, that the Bondone. Rosenberg'schronology merely serves to efface an important distinc-
political institutions of the Renaissance need to be understood within a broader tion between medieval and Renaissance cultures that in terms of their different
matrix of social relations and normative values. This contextual approach has territorial imaginaries is profound.
some affinity with historical sociological studies ofthe development of the mod- The Westphalian narrative of the modern states-system is also contested in
ern states-system, such as Justin Rosenberg's historical-materialist critique of Hendrik S pruyt's institutional historical sociology.'? The processes of evolu-
Realism's "transhistorical theory of states-systems sui generis" in The Empire tion and change underlying the transformation from a feudal system to one of
ofCivil Society.t" For Rosenberg because Realists isolate geopolitical structures sovereign territorial states are not, he suggests, satisfactorily explained by N eo-
from the social relations within which they are embedded, they reify what are Marxist, Neo-Durkheimian or Neo-Weberian "unilinear iexplanations" that
historically specific social forms of sovereignty and anarchy and reduce interna- highlight one explanatory variable-the economic contradiction in feudalism,
tional history to recurrent power struggles between sovereign states operating changes in dynamic density, or an instrumentally rational formal organization.
within anarchy. This impoverished historical imagination occludes the differ- These functionalist and teleological explanations cannot account for the even-
ences between different historical state systems and could be enriched byadopt- tual triumph of the sovereign state as the dominant political institution of Early
ing a historical-materialist method that recognises how the prevailing forms of Modern Europe for there was "nothing inevitable about the emergence of the
the relations of production constitute social and political institutions, includ- sovereign, territorial state."40 Spruyr's nonlinear view of institutional evolution,
ing those underpinning the international system. Since relations of production derived from Fernand Braudel and Stephen Jay Gould, argues that the political
change across time so do political structures and the nature of the relations landscape of Late Medieval Europe was profoundly altered by the expansion of
between them. Thus with respect to the Renaissance, Rosenberg takes issue with trade and the growth of towns. Neither the conflict-ridden feudal institutions
Mattingly's assertion that "Italy first found the system of organising interstate of lordship nor the universal Church or Holy Roman Empire were unable to
relationship[s] which Europe later adopted, because Italy, towards the end of take advantage of these developments. By contrast, the emergent institutions of
the Middle Ages, was already becoming what later all Europe would become."37 the sovereign territorial state, city-league, and city-state, embodied in Capetian
Mattingly fails to acknowledge that the autonomous political institutions of France, the Hanseatic League and Italian. city-states, were able to bolster and
the Italian city-state arose as particular responses to "a radical institutional legitimize their political authority by means of effective alliance formations
12 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introduction • 13

with the new urban configurations of social and economic power. Theulti- into the workings and provenance of the modern territorial imaginary. Building
mate victory of thesovereign state was not due to superior war-making as many on this discussion of post-structuralism, chapter 3, "Theorizing Territoriality:
historical sociologists have contended. For although the Hanseatic League and Discourse, Culture, History," establishes the theoretical or methodological
Italian city-states had effective command of money, warfare and security, it premises that underpin the subsequent inquiry into the cultural history of space
was the ability of the larger. territorial states to deploy their superior organiza- and territoriality. Drawing on a wide body of work that has addressed the intel-
tional capabilities to provide the higher degree of standardization and certitude lectual, social, cultural, and political nature of space, the chapter defines three
required for the expansion of commerce that secured their victory. As regards aspects of the "territorial imaginary" that serves as the primary heuristic concept
Italy, Spruyt shares Rosenberg's interest with the emergence of the two to three used throughout this work. First, the "territorial imaginary" recognizes that
hundred independent communes that dominated Italy around 1200. By 1450, the idea of state territoriality is a representation of space, a product of various
however, this political landscape had changed profoundly for the ascent of the discourses of knowledge. and power that order political space. Second, the con-
signoria, tougher market conditions and foreign interventions had reduced their cept of the "territorial imaginary" alert us to the fact that political discourses
number to a handful of territorial city states that in many ways "resembled the of sovereign territoriality are informed by a broad matrix of ideas and practices
sovereign, territorial state. Like the French monarchy, the city-state had devel- that together constitute a society's culture of space. This culture, comprising
oped notions of sovereignty and the public realm. Roman law figured predom- various discourses of space, .determines the epistemic field of possibility within
inantly. And like the sovereign state,the city state had territorial parameters.T'! which representations of territoriality come to have meaning and value. Third,
However, the Italian city-states cannot be considered as fully fledged sovereign the "territorial imaginary" refuses the claim that territoriality is a primordial or
territories because many of the previously independent towns within their ter- transcendent feature of all human social formations. Territorial imaginaries are
ritories retained considerable degrees of independence and factional struggles historically and culturally contingent. New configurations of spatial discourse
within the cities prevented the emergence of a sovereign authority analogous and practice produce new frameworks for understanding man's being-in-space.
to the French king. Spruyt is correct that Renaissance city-state territoriality With the theoretical framework in place, the next two chapters move to
was structured in terms of centers and peripheries. However, this did not pre- the historical account of the transformation of the European territorial imagi-
clude Renaissance political thinkers like Machiavelli from articulating an idea nary. The medieval culture of space was dominated by the episterne of hierar-
of sovereign territoriality that, while it may have been a more apt description of chy. Chapter 4 begins by outlining the writings of Dionysius the Areophagite
the northern states at the time, did nevertheless establish the conceptual and on the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, for they established the para-
ideological premises underlying the modern discourse of sovereign territoriality. digm of hierarchy within which the medieval understanding of man's political
SinceSpruyt, like Rosenberg, favors a methodology that tends to pass over pri- being-in-space was articulated. The Dionysian hierarchical order of space was
mary source material in favor of secondary interpretations, these expressions of made manifest in medieval society through the structures of feudalism, notably
the modern territorial imaginary in Renaissance discourse are overlooked. vassalage and fief-holding, in the codes of chivalry and, in particular, in feudal-
ism's legitimizing "mental representation" of the three orders. Dante's Divine
Comedy is read to demonstrate how the medieval culture of space interwove
Chapter Outlines
physical and political cosmology within a shared spatial episteme determined
The next chapter, "International Relations, Political Theory, and the Territorial by the figure of above and below. Scholastic theological discourse, which rein-
State," considers the place and role of the territorial a priori in International forced the hierarchical structure of being, also impacted on medieval geogra-
Relations theory. It argues that International Relations theory, from Realism phy. In the famous T-O maps, the earth's spaces were not, as in modern maps,
to Constructivism and. from Liberal Institutionalism to International Society, defined in terms of abstract mathematical coordinates, but were distributed in
implicitly endorses an ideal of the territorial a priori that is derived from an places that were allocated different values according to hierarchical principles.
"absolutist" tradition of political theory reaching from Hobbes to Hegel. Chapter 5, "Cbristanitas, Hierarchy, and Medieval Political Discourse,' builds
Since Max Weber's theory of the state established the paradigm of the mod- on this general account of the medieval culture of space to argue that its hierar-
ern territorial a priori and its attendant geopolitical sensitivity it is discussed in chical architectonics determined the possibilities for. thinking about territorial-
detail. Finally, the poststructuralist critics of the "sovereignty problematic" in ity within medieval political discourse. This claim is made with reference to the
International Relations is considered as a starting point for further investigation tripartite power struggle between Papacy, Empire, and Monarchy that defined
14 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Introd uction • 15

medieval international relations. At stake was not only the right torule over but an opposrtion to the barbarian other, expresses the modern desire to ground
the ability to determine the nature of European political society. However, the national identity on the territory of the state.
differences between the ideals. ofEcclesia or Christianitas promoted by the papal Chapter 8, "Picturing Renaissance Territoriality," moves to the representa-
doctrine of plenitudo potestatis, Dante's imperial ideal of humana ciuilitas, or tion of sovereign territoriality in Renaissance art. A particular concern is the
John of Paris's Capetian-sponsored advocacy of civitas were less significant than effect that the technique of perspective had in transforming man's relationship
their shared territorial imaginary. All were premised on the understanding that to space. The basic principles of perspective construction are introduced with
sovereign-territoriality was. not restricted to the horizontal plane of the earth's reference. to the rules laid out by Alberti and their use in painting by Piero della
surface but was structured hierarchically, .extending from the Civitas Terrena to Francesca. Perspective is also addressed as a discourse of power/knowledge that
the Civitas Dei, the divine font of sovereignty. The spaces of the medieval world, not only objectified space but also constituted man's subjectivity in space. The
including its territorial imaginary, were structured according to the episterne of chapter considers how Renaissance paintings of principalities (as represented by
hierarchy. Piero della Francesca's diptych of Federico da Montelfeltro and Battista Sforza)
Chapter 6, "The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy," begins the task of iden- and city states (as depicted in the ideal cityscapesof the Urbino, Baltimore, and
tifying in the Renaissance culture of space those ideas that would challenge the Berlin panels) endorsed the values of an emerging modern territorial order of
hierarchies of the medieval order. The meaning of the Renaissance is conten- sovereignty, politics and space. Perspective was also instrumental in promot-
tious and the chapter begins by acknowledging the difficulties in defining its ing .a cartographic sensibility that allowed the territorial boundaries between
contours and determining its relationship to medieval and modern cultures. Renaissance kingdoms to be drawn on topographical and regional maps.
An important challenge to the medieval episteme of hierarchy was mounted Moving from the internal projections of Renaissance territoriality, chapter 9,
in the Renaissance cosmologies of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola that devel- "The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society" looks outward
oped a recognizably modern notion of sovereign identity. Their promotion of to the territorialization of the "new world." The "invention of America" and
the "dignity of man" not only released man. from his lowly fixed position in the epistemological revolution derived from the voyages of discovery radically
the cosmos and thereby destroyed the pivotal foundation of the hierarchical altered man's perception of his being-in-the-world, not least in freeing him from
universe, but also asserted that man as self-fashioner was capable of shaping the confines of the medieval Christian geographical imaginary. The discovery
and .ordering nature and its spaces, rather than being shaped arid ordered by of the "new world" shattered the medieval view of the world as a cosmic jail
them. Machiavelli's realism also assisted in dismantling the hierarchies of the and freed man from the confines of the Orbis Terrarurn, These transforma-
medieval political cosmos. Machiavelli not only situated politics within a new tions went hand in hand with more explicitly political territorializations of the
conception of time, but also resited politics in the space of modern territorial new spaces ·of international society. The famous papal demarcation line of the
sovereignty. In maintaining that religion had no purpose other than to cement Inter caetera bulls and the division of the new world agreed to at the Treaty
solidarity within political society and by castigating Christianity as an espe- of Tordesillas reflected, at the level of high politics, strategies of territoriali-
cially ineffective form of state religion, Machiavelli brought down territorial zation on the ground. These processes, which reflected the complex interplay
sovereignty from the celestial spaces of the Civitas Dei to the mundane world between the drives to conquest and conversion, wereIegitimized through texts
of terrestrial politics. Machiavelli is also the main subject of the next chap- and images. Accounts of the naming and possession of territories in the jour-
ter, "Machiavelli, Territoriality, and Lo Stato", which explores the modernity of nals of Columbus and Vespucci and the cartographic representation of the "new
Machiavelli's territorial imaginary in terms ofhis promotion of the secular state. world" on maps like the Miller Atlas and the Cantino Planisphere were instru-
Starting with a consideration of the various meanings of 10 stato in Renaissance mental in the production. of territorialized spaces that constituted the new reach
political discourse, ·the chapter then identifies in Machiavelli's discussion of the of Renaissance International Society.
state in The Prince and The Discourses three elements. of the modern territo-
rialImaginary, First, Machiavelli's emphasis on the legal concept of dominion
embodies a distinct sense of sovereignty as the extension of political authority
over a defined territory. Second, Machiavelli's distinction between the internal
and external exercise of political violence legitimizes the spatial figure of inside/
outside. Finally, Machiavelli's evocation of italianita, articulated in terms of
 CHAPTER 2

International Relations, Political

Theory, and the Territorial State

art in Wight established a famous dichotomy between, on the one

M hand, the tradition of political theory. that since Plato: and. Aristotle
has sought to establish the conditions by which mankind might pro-
gress to some ideal of the "good life" within the state and, on the other hand,
international theory, which focusing on relations between states, that amounts
to little more than a depressing account of the eternal recurrence of war and the
balance of power.' Whereas students of domestic politics assume the presence
of some sort of governmental system in which law and institutions override the
naked struggle for power, students of international politics presume that gov-
ernment in any meaningful sense is absent and those laws and institutions that
do exist are always vulnerable to the machinations of power politics.r Although
Wight was personally attuned. to the tragic nature of international politics, this
dichotomy has served to legitimize International Relations as an academic dis-
cipline in so far as study of the anarchic relations between states has become
its sole preserve. Yet, as Justin Rosenberg observes, this disciplinary identity is
secure only as long as the idea of the sovereign state retains its legitimacy: "the
same absolute character of the sovereignty of the modern state that is the foun-
dation of order within national boundaries simultaneously dictates the persis-
tence of an external condition of anarchy among states.T' One important feature
of this dichotomy between sovereignty and anarchy is that it is inscribed in
space: "[tjhe borders and landscape of this environment are set and policed by
the twin concepts of sovereignty and anarchy.I" This chapter will explore how
the modern ideal of political space, as embodied in the idea of the territorial
state, has served to maintain these dichotomies.
18 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 19

The first section looks at state theory in International Relations and argues [s]pace is a necessary a priori representation, which underlies all outer intu-
that it tends to be underpinned by, what I term, the .territorial a priori. The itions. We can never represent to ourselves the absence of space, though we
second section will trace the emergence of the idea of the territorial state in an can quite well think it as empty of objects. It must therefore be regarded
absolutist tradition of political theory that, reaching from Hobbes to Hegel, as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a determina-
reaches its apotheosis in Weber's famous definition of the modern state as an tion dependent upon them. It is an a priori representation, which necessarily
institution laying legitimate claim to the means of violence within a defined underlies outer appearances. 8
territory. Section three frames this paradigm of state territoriality within the
Cosmopolitan tradition of modernity. Finally, I shall discuss how the poststruc- Third, because we can only represent one space to ourselves"space is essentially
turalist critique of the "sovereignty problematic" in International Relations one" rather than multiple. It is pure intuition rather than a general concept
unsettles the assumptions that underpin the idea of the territorial state. that requires thought to impose limitations on it. Finally, space is represented
as an "infinite given magnitude" containing an infinite number of representa-
tions within it," Space then in Kant's idealist framework is an a priori intuition
The Territorial a Priori of International Theory
located within the subject. It precedes objects and allows the concept of the
In the Critique ofPure Reason Kant asserts that space and time "are the pure object to be determined a priori. 10
forms of sensible intuition, and are so what make a priori synthetic propositions I shall return to Kant presently, but at this stage I want to advance the prop-
possible."? This statement refers back ·to some of the basic elements of Kant's osition that territory in international theory has a status analogous to space
critical project. Thought is in. immediate relation to objects through intuition. in Kant's transcendental aesthetic. Just as for Kant space is the condition of
Intuition requires that we receive representations of objects through the capac- possibility for sensible intuition of the world, so territory serves as an a priori
ity of sensibility: "Objects are given to lis by means of sensibility, and it alone condition underpinning state theory in International Relations. The territorial
yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding and from the a priori takes many different forms in International Relations theory ranging
understanding arise concepts.t'' The effect of an object upon the faculty ofrepre- from crude associations with some physical or material reality to more pro-
sentation Kant terms sensation. Sensation produces empirical intuitions whose found, but nonetheless still unsatisfactory, attempts to understand territory in
undetermined object is appearance. The appearance that corresponds to sen- terms of the institutional determinants of sovereignty.
sation is matter, but Kant is interested in that which "so determines the man- The most explicitly materialist statements of state territoriality tend to be
ifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered" or the form of appearance. made by Classical Realists who argue that the power of the state is dependent
While matter is given to usa posteriori only (as empirical knowledge possible on the material resources at its disposal.!' According to John Herz the modern
only through experience) form must "lie ready for the sensations" a priori in the nation-state has ·an underlying essence that is found "in its physical, corporeal
mind-c--a priori knowledge being absolutely independent of all experience. capacity: as an expanse of territory encircled for its identification and its defense
The critique's necessary first step is the constitution of the transcendental by a 'hard shell' of fortifications."12 Reflecting on the state of the state at the
aesthetic that identifies the pure forms of sensible intuition. These pure forms beginning of the Cold War, Herz forecast the "passing ofthe age ofterritoriality"
are space and time and they serve as the principles of a priori knowledge. In as the state's space became penetrated by economic forces and by psychological,
the eighteenth century there were. two competing conceptions of space. The air, and nuclear warfare. However, ten years later, he expressed renewed confi-
dominant paradigm was Newton's in which space was conceived of as absolute dence in the ability of the territorial state to survive. The "new or neo-territorial"
pure entity, the same throughoutandirnmovable, and which existed in and of state was now capable of resisting both nuclear attack and the forces of transna-
itself without any relation to anything external to. it. The secondary paradigm, tionalisrn.P Herz also maintained that the state's territorial impermeability was
associated with Leibniz, conceived of space like time as a relative quality, as "an the underlying foundation of the classical system of international relations and
order of co-existences as time is an order of successions."? Kant proposes four its institutions of international law, the balance of power, and war. Accordingly,
postulates about space that reveals his affinity with the Newtonians. First, space now that the state's territorial integrity was guaranteed he did not foresee any
is not an empirical concept derived from outerexperience, for any representa- imminent structural changes to the contemporary states-system.l'" Raymond
tion of an object as being outside of oneself: or as different from other objects, Aron also emphasized the material reality of the state's territory, claiming that
presupposes the representation of space. Second, a state's authority was dependent on its possession of "a fragment of the earth's
20 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 21

crust, with the men and objects thereon.l'P Because the space or milieu a state Wendt denies any fixed essential meaning to anarchy, he nevertheless privileges
occupies is an important source of its power-c-It provides the resources and the state as actor on the grounds that "states are ontologically prior to the states
manpower required for defense---.;.it is in the interests of states to increase their system."23 Despite its changing identities and interests "the essential state is an
space. Thus the history of the international system has been driven by conflict organizational actor embedded in an institutional-legal order that constitutes
over space, as states, seeking to increase their power, dispute the territories occu.. . it with sovereignty and a monopoly on the legitimate use of organized violence
pied by some and desired by others. The consequence of this Darwinian strug- over a society in a territory."24 Territory is one of the properties of the state and
gle for possession ofthe earth's physical space is that "[ejveryinternational order, quite possibly the most important: "No territory, no state." For Wendt the rela-
down to our own day, has been essentially territorial. It represents an agreement tionship between the state and its territory is evident from the Latin etymology
among sovereignties, the compartmentalization of space." 16 that combines "terra ('earth' or 'land') to torium ('belonging to' or 'surround-
In Kenneth Waltz's structural neorealism the territorial a priori is less explicit. ing,' presumably the state.}"25 It is precisely its exercise of authority over territory
For Waltz, who resists any reductionist explanations of the international system that distinguishes the state from other institutional actors such as the church
in terms of the nature of the units that make it up, the question of state terri- or firms. To be fair, Wendt does admit that the assumption of International
toriality takes a back seat.'? Because all international systems are structured by Relations states-system theory that territory is an exogenous given is problem-
anarchy the actors. are logically undifferentiated and functionally equivalent, atic. The historical record demonstrates, first, that territorial boundaries tend
meaning that the only significant variable ofconcern to international theory is to be flexible and shifting rather than rigid and fixed, and second, that national
the distribution of power. Analysis of international politics must "abstract from interests and identities are rarely coterminous with the boundaries of the state.
every attribute of states except their capabilities." Territory is simply a compo- Yet, if we are to successfully develop a social theory of the states system such
nent of a state's material power resource or capability. States can thus be ranked anomalies must be put aside. It is not the task of International Relations scholars
according to "how they score on all the following items.size of population and to write a "'biology' of the state" that seeks to "problematise territory 'all the
territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political way down'."26 Ideas all the way down then; at least until one collides with the
stability, and competence.T'" In contrast to Waltz, Robert Gilpin offers a more hard material shell of territory.
rigorous and historically sensitive neorealist account ofstate territoriality. Gilpin Wendt makes an analytical distinction between sovereignty and territory,
acknowledges that the state has taken on many different forms in practice and which he discusses as. two distinct and not necessarily related properties of
that only the modern state embodies complex class and social structures, asserts the state. By contrast, in Stephen Krasner's theory of sovereignty as an institu-
a claim to national identity, and exercises a distinctive means of controlling its tional structure that conditions, to varying degrees, the interests,· capabilities
territory.I" The modern state is the only state form characterized by "a strong and actions of states in foreign affairs, the relationship between sovereignty and
central authority that is differentiated from other social organizations" and is territory is rather more complex. Krasner identifies four possible meanings of
capable of exercising "control over a well-defined and contiguous territory.Y" sovereignty. Two of these,·"domestic sovereignty" that refers to the organization
For Gilpin a state's territoriality has a functional role similar to that of property and effectiveness of public authority within a state, and "interdependence sov-
rights in the domestic realm. Resources in international politics are distributed ereignty" that denotes the ability of public authorities to control trans-border
in terms of relative territorial extension and just as the redistribution and redef- movements, are only implicitly connected to territory. However, the other two
inition of property rights signals fundamental transformations in domestic pol- meanings of sovereignty are explicitly grounded in the principle of territoriality.
itics, so the redistribution of territory following major wars indicates significant "International legal sovereignty" attests to states' mutual recognition of each
transformation in the realm of international pol itics.r ' other as the only legitimate participants in international relations. Such recog-
Contemporary realism has adopted some of the theoretical premises of con- nition is only extended to "entities, states, with territoriality and formal juridical
structivism. Alexander Wendt rejects both theneorealist insistence that anarchy autonomy."27 Finally, "Westphalian sovereignty" is an institutional arrange-
forces states into self-interested behavior resulting in conflict, and the neoliberal ment for organizing political life based on the principles of territoriality and
hypothesis that states in anarchy can learn to cooperate with one another in independence from external intervention in the exercise of domestic authority.
the pursuit of absolute gains. For Wendt anarchy is a fluid concept determined Westphalian sovereignty is symbolized by the norm of non-intervention formal-
by the "inter-subjectively constituted structure of identities and interests in the ized by Wolff and Vattel at the end of the eighteenth century. However, endemic
system."22 Anarchy is the product of the practices of state interaction. Although violation ofthis norm by states means that the institution ofsovereignty amounts
22 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 23

to little more than a form of organized hypocrlsyr'" .Alrhough ·Krasner posits' entrapment within webs of legal constraints thus fail to offer an alternative to
territory as an a priori reality underpinning the various permutations of sover- the territorial a priori of the Classical realists. 34 Certainly' classical international
eignty, he avoids crude materialism and recognizes. that territorial-sovereignty law offers a standard account of the state's relation to its territory. As defined by
is constituted through a permanent exchange between knowledge and practice. Hans Kelson, territory is
Territory in not simply synonymous with physical space hut is embodied in' the
principle of territoriality. It is an institution or idea that is not anterior to but that space within which, in principle, one state, the state to which the ter-
produced in practice. . ritory belongs, is entitled to. carry out coercive acts, a space from which all
The English School or International Society approach also acknowledges a the other states are excluded. It is the space for which, according to general
mutually constitutive relationship between territory and sovereignty. Rejecting international law, only one definite national legalorder is authorized to pre-
the structural determinism of neorealism, English School scholars maintain that scribe coercive acts, the space within which only the coercive acts stipulated
states accept, or at least pay lip 'service to, the rules and institutions. of interna- by this order may be executed. It is the space within the so-called boundaries
tional society because theypromote their common interests and values. Mutual of the state. 35
recognition of each other's sovereignty is the ground rule of international society
and confirms membership of the society of states. However, in order to gain In sum we can endorse John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge's observation that
access to this club, prospective members must possess a territory. Hedley Bull international theory, or at least states-system theory, is floundering in a "terri..
defines states as "independent political communities" that "possess a govern- torial trap." They argue that Internarional Relations' geographical imaginary
ment and assert their sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth's divides the world up into mutually exclusive territorial states, thereby restricting
surface and a particular segment of the human population.V" Similarly Alan the discipline's potential field of enquiry. This territorial trap is set by three
James asserts that since each of the member states of international society exclu- related intellectual dispositions. First, the assumption that state territoriality
sively represents a distinct "physical sector of the land mass of the globe", so is always and everywhere coterminous with state sovereignty has the effect of
the landscape of international society is "divided into states by frontiers rather sanctifying the sovereign territorial state as a "sacred unit beyond historical
as a farm is into fields by fences and walls.."30 Now" that international society time.."36The second presumption, derived from the mercantilist subordination
has expanded globally "almost every square kilometer of the earth's land sur- of economics to politics, posits territorial states as the primary nodes of interna-
face" has been allocated to "orie sovereign state or another, with virtually all tional economic exchange. Finally, the social is subsumed within the political
frontiers being tidHy delineated or clearly demarcared.Y' English School think- in so far as' the only social groups (nations) viewed as being significant are 'those
ers also endorse the institutionalist assumption that the inside/outside spatial. coterminous with the boundaries of the territorialstate. Unable to see beyond
distinction between domestic and international politics is primarily articulated the walls and bars of the architecture of its incarceration, mainstream theory
in terms of sovereignty. Bull, for example, distinguishes the exercise of internal is, they argue, unable to account for the emergent phenomena of globalization
sovereignty (which gives a state supremacy over all other authorities within a such as population movements, capital mobility, environmental insecurities and
territory and over a population) from external sovereignty {which denotes inde- the chronopolitics of the modern military: "[sjocial, economic and political life
pendence from outside authorltlesl.V Again the underlying assumption here is cannot be ontologically contained within the territorial boundaries of states
that territory exists a priori 'and is something onto which' sovereignty is some- through the methodological assumption of 'timeless space'."37
how fixed. English School emphasis on the importance of international law has
lead 'many of its advocates to endorse the idea of the state as a Recbstaat, that is,
The Territorial Legacy: political Theory from Hobbes to Hegel
as the embodiment of the collective agency of social power through represen-
tative institutions, created bylaws, customs, and· practices. However, even the International theory is far from being the only body of thought to have stum-
Rechstaat resides upon the territorial a priori. As Cornelia Navari defines it, the bled into the territorial trap. Indeed International Relations theorists might,
Rechstaat is "a particular kind of political community, one that is territorially with some justification, claim that the theory of the state they draw on has a
located, with a more or less delimited set of persons distinguished from the venerable ancestry reachirigback to Hobbes, if not further. Navari points out
citizenry by the name of government, and that is conceived as law maker."33 that Hobbes' political philosophy reflects the discursive strategy, ',implicit in
English School theories of international relations that emphasize the state's much political discourse of his time, to establish the identity of the modern stater, . ;
24 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 25

by opposing it to the state of nature represented as its other. The architects of the number of people that inhabit it. Men "make up the State and the land feeds
new sovereign state presented it in its modernity. It was bounded, abstract, insti- the men."46 Rousseau's admiration for the ancient polis and the Renaissance
tutional, demythologized, and secular.P" At the same time "a number of princes city-state led him to conclude that social harmony is to be found in small com-
sitting in a field uttering the words, cuiusregio, eius religio" invented interna- munities and to doubt the benefits of expansionist policies. The larger a state
tional relations as a state of nature.f" Many of these princes represented the grows the more protracted the social bond becomes and the greater the chance
emerging absolutist states, the archetypal political projects of Cosmopolis. For of "deficient government" and the suppression of freedom.V Further, the social
Zygmunt Bauman the absolutist state, with its projection of an image of order contract is forged in a bond that unites individual private property with state
and security, offered a palliative to the pervasive sense of insecurity and fear that territory. In order to establisha political community each individual must give
swept though early modern. culture. as the theocratic hierarchies of the medie- himself: "his force and possession," to it. "Each 0/ us puts his person and all his
val world were swept away by the new spirit of rationalism. The Cosmopolitan power in common under the supreme direction ofthe general will; and in a body we
search for order manifested itself in spatial projects that sought to substitute the receive each.member as an indivisible part o/the whole."48 Under such an arrange-
chaotic and disorderly space of the medieval town for the linear purity and per- ment it is understandable
fect order embodied by Versailles.t" This new order was designed, created and
legitimized by a modern "space-managing state" that set about "landscaping the how the combined and contiguous lands of private individuals become pub-
wasteland ... subjecting all local features to one unifying homogenizing princi- lic territory, and how the right of sovereignty, extending from the subjects
ple of harrnony.T'! to the ground they occupy, comes to include both property and persons,
The Cosmopolitan opposition between the absolutist state and the state of which places those who possess land in a greater dependency and turns even
nature replicates the inside/outside dichotomy characteristic of modern political their force into a guarantee of their loyalty. This advantage does not appear
discourse. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan neatly sets up the opposition. between to have been well understood by ancient monarchs who, only calling them-
the state of nature and the sovereign state. 42 Rob Walker argues that Hobbes's selves Kings of the Persians, the Scythians, the Macedonians, seem to have
political theory is infused with a desire to overcome the temporal and contin- considered themselves leaders of men rather than masters of the country.
gent nature of politics by fixing it to a secure and permanent space. 43 Hobbes Today's kings more cleverly call themselves Kings of France, Spain, England,
believed that through the application of science and geometry to politics etc. By thus holding the land, they are quite sure to hold its Inhabitants.V
"man could construct a political order as timeless as a Euclidean theorern.T'"
Nevertheless, Leviathan does not contain an explicit statement of modern sover- With respect to colonial territories, Rousseau argues that the European powers
eign territoriality. The Common-wealth's territoriality is only addressed in the do not have the right to dispossess the indigenous inhabitants ofrheir lands
context of a discussion of the rights that the European Commonwealths have even if these people have no recognizable state institutions. The inhabitants
over their. colonies. Since God allocated raw materials to different parts of the of a land are protected by the right of first occupant secured through private
earth Commonwealths must by necessity trade with one another. These bodies property. However, certain conditions must be met for this right to be rec-
are partially distinguished by their dominion over different territories: "[tjhis ognized: the first inhabitants must only occupy previously uninhabited land,
Matter, commonly called Commodities, is partly Native, and partly Forraign: they may only take the amount of land required for subsistence, and possession
Native, that which is to be had within the Territory of the Common-wealth: must betaken by labor and cultivation rather than by "vain ceremony." From
Forraign, that which is imported from without.T'? Perhaps the most striking these premises Rousseau, with an eye to the exclusion of the French from the
representation of sovereign territoriality in the Leviathan is the famous image conquest of South America, criticizes the territorial claims of the European
adorning the frontispiece. Here the Leviathan, made upof the members of the colonial powers.
commonwealth and brandishing a scepter ofjustice and a sword, towers over the
city and its surrounding countryside that he both protects and controls. How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and deprive the whole
A more direct engagement with the spatial aspect of politics can be found human race of it except through punishable usurpation, since this act takes
in Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Following Aristotle, Rousseau in the Social Contract away from the remaining men the dwelling place and foods that nature gives
seeks to establish the optimum size for a state. A successful political community them in common? When Nunez Balboa, standing on the shore, took posses-
must maintain an appropriate balance between the size of its territory and the sion of the South Sea and all of South America in the name of the crown of
26 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 27

Castile, was this enough to dispossess all the inhabitants and exclude all the the master of space was the state. Space perfected the rational and the real-
Princes of the world?50 simultaneously.P" Certainly in his writings on international law, Hegel affirms
the individual subjectivity of independent territorial states. In order to be auton-
By the time Immanuel Kant published Perpetual Peace the idea of the terri- omous they can and should meet their needs within their own borders.V The
torial state was firmly established in European political thought. 51 Kant, like individual state, like the individual human being, is a subject to the extent that
Rousseau, accepted that the legitimate actors of international politics were inde- it is aware of its own existence "as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It
pendent sovereign territorial states. Yet he considered the Ancien Regime practice manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is
of acquiring states by "inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift" to be Illegltl- autonomous vis-it-vis the others.T"
mate because

Max Weber and the Modern Territorial State

a state, unlike the ground upon which it is based, is not a possession (patri-
monium). It is a society of men, which no-one other than itself can command If the territorial a priori was implicit rather than explicit in political philosophy
or dispose of. Like a tree, it has its own roots, and to graft it on to another from Hobbes to Hegel, Max Weber would bring it centre stage.
state as if it were a shoot is to. terminate its existence as a moral personality
and make it into a cornmodiry.V [A] state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly ofthe
legitimate use ofphysical force within a given territory. Note that "territory"
Anticipating the English School requirement that the members of interna- is one of the characteristics of the state.... The state is considered the sole
tional society must be territorial states, Kant declares that in order for the source of the "right" to useviolence.P'
republican states to combine successfully in a pacific federation they must first
have established control over their own territories. Once accepted as members Weber emphasizes the state's territoriality as a consequence of his realist politi-
of the federation they will retain their territorial integrity. Kant does not desire cal ontology that stresses domination and coercion rather than cooperation and
the borderless space of a universal state.. Indeed, international" justice requires negotiation.
the "separate existence of many independent adjoining states." Although such a
divided territorial order can never fully eradicate the threat of war, reason shows A "ruling or dominating (Herrschaftverband) organization" will be called
that it is to be preferred to "an amalgamation of the separate nations under a "political" insofar as its existence and order is continuously safeguarded
single power which has overruled the rest and created a universal monarchy."53 within a given territorial area by the threat and application of physical force
Kant also holds territorial differentiation to be a necessary condition for the cos- on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political organization
mopolitan right to universal hospitality, which requires that the "stranger not with icorrtinuous organizations (politischer Anstaltbetrieb) will be called a
to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else's territory."54 While "state" insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to
the stranger may be turned away, as long as he behaves in a peaceable manner he the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its
must not be treated with enmity.55 order. 62
In Hegel's philosophy of right the state is the arena in which subjectivity
and expressive unity, the necessary conditions of freedom in modernity, come The particular potency of the modern territorial state derives from its capac-
together. The state is the place where Spirit achieves its most elevated politi- ity to command the forces of rationalization, nationalism and geopolitics. In
cal being. 56 It is an absolute rational being where the ethical idea achieves its modernity the eclipse of value rationality by purposeful rationality, evident
highest mode of expression. Thus attributes such as power, wealth and spatial from the scientific mastery of nature to the bureaucratic control of society,
extension are contingent facts of external appearance, historical variables that make most human life, motivated only by instrumental goals,. drearily pre--
are not consequential for understanding its essential being. 57 However, asserts dictable.v' An important aspect of bureaucratic .rationalization was the use of
Henri Lefebvre, Hegel was instrumental in inscribing modern politics within discipline or "the consistently rationalized, methodically trained and exact exe-
space. With Hegel historical time gives birth to the space that the state occu- cution of the received order, in which all personal criticism is unconditionally
pies and rules over; "[f] or Hegel space brought historical time to an end and suspended and the actor is unswervingly and exclusively set for carrying out the
28 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, TerritorialState • 29

command," to regulate the body's location in space and movement in tirne.P" develops between state and nation. The state provides the protection necessary
The modern state is able to coerce its subject population not only because it for safeguarding Kulture, while national communities generate the feelings of
has access to the means of physical violence but, equally importantly, because solidarity that reinforce the state's legitimacy. However, while state and nation
it has a vast bureaucratic machinery at its disposal through which it disciplines are ideally coextensive, Weber recognized that this was not always so. "There
everyday activity. However, there is a price to pay, for the bureaucratic state is are three rational components of a political boundary, military security, eco-
in danger of becoming a "frozen spirit" or a "living machine" that "[rjogether nomic interest, community of national culture; the three do not just coincide
with the dead machine (in the factories) ... is in the process of erecting the like that ona map."72
scaffolding of that futuresubjection or enslavemenr/'F' In developing Weber's Weber's desire to fix national identities within bounded territories was a
concepts of rationalization and discipline, Anthony Giddens argues that the typical response to the sense of insecurity generated by transformations in the
modern state's administrative capability is defined by a potent form of surveil- European experience of space during the fin de siecle. The development of the
lance, which combines the collection and organization of information stored new technologies of railways, telegraphs and telephones had two important
by agencies used to monitor the activities of an administered population with consequences for Europeans. First, places that had previously been experienced
the direct supervision of the activities of subordinates by superiors in a partic- as distant appeared to become more proximate as exchanges between them
ular organization.P'' Together they form the basis of an administrative power increased in volume. Second, the idea that the European heartland constituted
that controls the timing and spacing of human activity. All states utilize sur- the centre of the world was undermined by an increased awareness of the exis-
veillance to some degree but only the modern nation state has the necessary tence of other places and cultures. The combination of collapsing distances and
technologies to effectively police the codes of criminal law and to control devi- the decentering of Europe led to what David Harvey has called the "insecuri-
ance across its entire territory.67 ties of a shifting relative space."73 This cultural unease precipitated measures to
Another aspect of state territoriality explored by Weber is the mapping of reaffirm personal and communal identities in place. Indigenous traditions were
national identity onto territory. State legitimacy per se depends on the justifica.. . reinvented and local cultural memory affirmed in museums, libraries, exhibi-
tion of the claim to the monopoly of violence within a defined territory. While tions, and ruins. The perception that the world's spaces were shrinking and
other states looked to tradition or charismatic leadership to ground this claim, combining revitalized the European desire "embedded in their historical con-
the modern state appeals to legal rational authority or the de facto legality of sciousness" to take command ofspace. 74
rules and the right of those who enact those rules to do so.68 However, ina dis.. . This desire to master space imbued much contemporary geopolitical writ-
enchanted world modern states faced a "legitimacy deficit" for the procedural ing that asserted that politics and history were ultimately determined by
criteria of legal and political legitimacy could not secure political commitment spatial factors such as states' size, location and the distance between them.
to the state. What was required was an appeal to nationalism or those "irra- Friedrich Ratzel, the discipline's founder and Weber's contemporary, drew on
tional political instincts in the masses towards the nation-state.Y'" For Weber Darwinian evolutionary theory to represent national struggles for survival as
nationalism was simultaneously subjective-a nation exists where a people conflicts over space. States were rooted, living organisms that, had to evolve
have a sense of belonging toa "community of sentiment"-and objective-c-irhe by increasing their territories. National cultures were grounded in the "spa-
subjective sense of solidarity is based in objective factors such as common race, tial unity of life" or the land (culture meaning literally the tillage of soil) and
language, religion, customs and political experience. To qualify as a nation cultural development was dependent on territorial expansion. The larger a
a group must meet three criteria: there must be an objective common factor state became the more civilized it could become and, conversely, "[a]ll people
between the people that differentiates them from others; this common factor who remain. at lower stages of cultural development are also spatially small
must be considered as a source of value able to produce "a feeling of solidarity (kleinraumig)."75 Ratzel, implicitly justifying imperialist expansion, argued
against outsiders"; and this feeling of solidarity must be expressed in autono- that the development of all states "stands under the law of progress from
mous political institutions coextensive with the commun iry. " A nation's iden- small to big spaces."76 This Darwinian geopolitical discourse, premised on
tity is secured through its Kulture or "those particular values which distinguish the assumption that the state. is an organic body that must necessarily evolve
a group or society from others ... and which are given self-conscious formation, to greatness, is also found in Weber's writings on geopolitics which, while
typically in the art or literature of the society.V! Where national Kulture cor- critical of the cult of Machtpolitik, betray grandiose aspirations for Germany.
responds with the boundaries of the. state a mutually reinforcing relationship All political organizations seek to reach their full potential and Germany was
30 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 31

no different. Its rightful destiny was to achieve the value-prestige or glory of Postmodernism Confronts the Territorial a Priori
power that accrued to great powers.Y To be fair, Weber was mindful of the The inability of Weberian state theory to offer an alternative to the territorial
obligations that the great powers had to their smaller neighbors. In a world of a priori should come as no surprise. Weber's analysis of the ~t~te is, sug~ests
Machstaaten the balance among the Great Powers must not threaten the inde-- Walker, characteristic of a tradition of Western thought that privileges the spa-
pendence of smaller nations and Germany had a duty to prevent the world tial delineation of an inside and an outside" and seeks to limit political life to
being carved up between the "regulations of Russian. officialdom" and the the former. Weber's emphasis on the territorial foundations of the state was
"convention of Anglo-Saxon society."78 an attempt to reinforce state autonomy in a world of "radical historicity" by
Weber's political writings are premised on a theory of the state conditioned
fixing "history on a spatial terrain."85 Walker's emphasis o~ t~e ro~e. of this sP:-
by the territorial a priori and so logically lend themselves to an interpretation tial figure of inside/outside in the constitution of modernity s political order IS
of international relations as geopolitics. As such we can. concur with Michael central to the so-called postmodern critique of international political theory.
J. Smith that in many ways Weber was the intellectual forefather of much With particular reference to the work of Walker and Richard Ashley, the final
Realist discourse.?" At the same time, it renders problematic Fred Halliday's section will. consider how postmodernism in International Relations highlights
proposition that International Relations theory should incorporate the institu- the discursive production of territoriality and offers a useful starting point for
tional state theory of neo-Weberian historical sociologists such as Michael Mann thinking about the relationship between politics and space in ter.t?s of the ter...
and Theda Skocpol. 80 For Halliday this school's sophisticated state theory is
ritorial imaginary.
a considerable advance on the vague notion of a "national-territorial totality" For Ashley and Walker international theory is conceived of under the "sign
commonplace in International Relations theory. By isolating the coercive and of sovereignty." N eorealism and neoliberalisrn represent the state as an auto~..
administrative institutions of the state from broader social, political and eco- omous unit capable of making rational decisions about its interests and mobi-
nomic structures, institutional state theory enables the analyst to identify the lizing the necessary resources to carry them out. This implies that the state is
state's relative autonomy vis-a-vis not only other states but also its own domestic "an entity having .absolute boundaries unambiguously demarcating a domes-
constituency. However, because neo-Weberian historical institutionalists work tic 'inside' and setting it off from an international 'outside'."86 For Ashley this
within the Weherian state paradigm a crude geopolitics tends to determine their demarcation privileges the state, imbuing it with sovereign presence and is typ-
understanding of international relations. For example Michael Mann claims
ical of modern "heroic practice" which
that the state has several defining characteristics: the exclusive ability to make
rules and back them up with a monopoly of violence; differentiated institutions turns on a simple hierarchical opposition: a dichotomy of sovereignty versus
and personnel; and "a central place and a unified territorial reach" in that the anarchy, where the former term is privileged as a higher reality, a regulative
resources and authority of state elites radiate out from a centre to territorial ideal, and the latter term is understood only in a derivative and negative
boundaries.f" Whether a state is despotic (able to carry out its activities without way, as a failure to live up to this ideal and as something that endangers this
routine institutionalized negotiation with civil society) or infrastructural (able ideal. On the one hand, the sign of "sovereignty" betokens a rational iden-
to control and infiltrate social life by means of an exchange with civil society), tity: a homogeneous and continuous presence that is hierarchically ordered,
its autonomous power is partially derived from its territoriality. Furthermore that has a unique center of decision presiding over a coherent "self," and
Mann acknowledges that there is a necessary correspondencebetween the ter- that is demarcated from, and in opposition to, an external domain of differ-
ritorial state and geopolitics. "The very definition' of the' State as a delimited ence and change that resists assimilation to its identical being. On the other
territory suggests a further set of political relations between this state and other hand, the sign of "anarchy"betokens this residual external domain: an alea-
states-that is, geopolitics."82 This logic deriving geopolitics from the ideal of the tory domain characterised by difference and discontinuity, contingency and
territorial state is acknowledged by Theda Skocpol who admits that the modern ambiguity that can only be known for its lack of coherent truth and meaning
state as conceptualized by Weber and Hintze is necessarily "part of a system of .
expresse d by a sovereIgn presence.
87
competing and mutually involved states."83 The modern state is "Janus faced,
with an intrinsically dual anchorage in class divided socioeconomic structures In political thought the principle of sovereign.identity underpins a hierarchi-
and an international system of states."84 Weberian-historical sociology offers no cal opposition between "domestic community as presence" and an "international
way out of the territorial trap. absence ofcommunity."88 The universal values of freedom, truth and obligation
 32 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy IR, Political Theory, Territorial State • 33

are restricted to communities within the boundaries of a sovereign state. Outside put in their place'.95 Likewise for Ashley, a "Cartesian practice of spatialization"
the state there is only the residual realm of the particular, the different and the reinforces the distinction between domestic and international politics by draw-
other.
ing an absolute boundary between inside and outside and privileging the former
Insides and outsides, selves and others are produced in state discourse and over the later.
practice.P? The domestic domain of sovereign men, securely enclosed within
the boundaries of the territorial state, is constituted and differentiated from the The inside is taken to be the space of identity and continuity-the privileged
foreign, dangerous and external by means of the knowledge-practices of state- space of the Self Here, it is assumed, is a sharply bounded identity-an iden-
craft.?" Statecraft produces and secures the identity of the domestic state-society tity that is hierarchically ordered" that has a unique centre of decision presid-
by marking off as dangerous and as requiring discipline and control, other ing over a coherent Self: and that is demarcated from and in opposition to an
forms of knowledge and ways of being such as the insane and the criminal. By external space of difference and change beyond its boundaries and eluding
inscribing specific problems and dangers as exterior to sovereign men statecraft its rational control. Here, too, according to Cartesian practice, resides the
isolates the space of the domestic population over which the state is dominant very possibility of rational political subjectivity, be it that of an individual
and able to secure its claims to legirirnacy.?! One realm of otherness marked or a political community. As for the outside, this is the space of difference
out by statecraft is "international politics" envisioned as the permanent threat and discontinuity-the residual space of the Other that escapes the rational
of war and anarchy. The representation of international relations as a constant truth residing within. 96
source of insecurity, danger and threat allows domestic society to cohere around
a sovereign centre offering security in exchange for subordination. Ashley does not specify which particular themes in Descartes' work lead him
to the notion of Cartesian practice of spatialization. Descartes' major contri-
"international politics" is a practice of the inscription of the dangerous, the bution to the mathematical understanding of space was to advocate the use
externalizarion and totalisation of dangers, and the mobilization of popula- of coordinates to determine the position of a point in a plane by its distance
tions to control these dangers-all in the name ofa social totality that is from two fixed lines. However, it is likely that Ashley is referring to the phi-
never really present, that always contains traces of the outside within, and losopher's famous dualism of mind and matter as the two mutually exclusive
that is never more than an effect of the practices by which total dangers are divisions of the universe. Walker also hints at a broader frame of reference by
inscribed. The sign of international politics is invoked in opposition to a suggesting that the combination of the political doctrine of state sovereignty
"domestic society" conceived as an identical social whole. 92 with certain "spatial constructs associated with Euclid and Newton" produced
a "sense of inviolable and sharply delimited space."97 By drawing Descartes
Ashley and Walker stress. that the .sign of sovereignty does not just condition and Newton into the frame of reference Ashley and Walker imply that the dis-
modern political and international relations theory and practice but regulates course of territorial sovereignty cannot be accounted for exclusively within the
the epistemological and ontological possibilities of modern Western thought terms of politics. Walker suggests that discourse of sovereignty fed off a spatial
93
per se. Representations. of the sovereign state mirror the desired ideal of consciousness that extended "from Descartes' philosophy to Mercator's car-
Western man as a rational, sovereign, self-identical presence. At the heart of tography, from Galilean mechanics to the magnificent constructions of Isaac
the paradigm of sovereignty is a set of preconceptions and assumptions about Newton and Immanuel Kant."98
space. Modern philosophical epistemology is predicated on an a priori spatial Following Ashley and Walker this work will seek to identify significant
separation between the autonomous knowing subject and the known object. correspondences and relays between overtly political conceptions of space,
Walker claims that modern philosophical categories are attempts to overcome such as state territoriality, and ideas and representations of space generated in
"a metaphysics of distance, a dialectics of here and there, the delineation of fields outside of the political sphere. However, it will reject Ashley's notion of
presence and absence in the stately measure .of eternal geometry.T'" Sovereign Cartesian practice with its implicit claim that the territorial a priori emerged
identity is secured through the establishment of difference; it is derived from with the Cosmopolitan modernity of Descartes. Rather, it will argue that the
the "claim to be able to fix a point of identity-e-auniversallty in space and time origins of the territorial a priori are to be found in the widespread revolution
against which all differences in space and time can be measured, judged and in the conceptualization and representation of space that occurred during the
34 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

Renaissance. Despite this particular historical oversight, International Relations

post-structuralism is instructive in that it questions the assumption of modern
political discourse that the territorial state is a universal political category. Post.. .
structuralism, which construes territoriality as discourse, denies to the territo-
rial state an ontological a priori status that transcends history. Only by adopting
the idea of territoriality as discourse can we account for the transition from a CHAPTER 3
hierarchical to an anarchical order of political space.

Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse,

Culture, History

T
h e discourse of International Relations, or at least that part of it con-
cerned with the nature and evolution of the states-system, constructs
theory on the grounds of the territorial a priori. Territory is conceived
of as a material object, a portion of the earth's surface, a universal sine qua non
of political community. In this chapter I want to propose an alternative under-
standing of territory that counters the claims inherent in the territorial a priori.
First, against the assertion that territory is an objective material resource, I want
to recast it as an idea, a component of the social imaginary that is produced in
discourse. Second, rather than conceiving of territory exclusively from within
the paradigm of political theory, I shall propose that discourses of territoriality,
which produce and naturalize the politics of space, need to be related to the
ideas and practices that permeate a society's culture of space. Third, I question
the assumption that territory is a universal feature of human society shared by
all political communities. Rather, I shall suggest that since the territorial imagi-
nary is a cultural product it changes as societies develop new representations and
understandings of their being-in-space.

Territorial Discourse
These three heuristic principles-territory as an idea rather than an objective
material reality, territory as related to cultural representations in non-political
spheres, and territory as historically contingent rather than universal-are implied
in Robert Sack's work on territoriality as the geographical manifestation of social
power. Territoriality, for Sack, is a geographical strategy that controls people and
36 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 37

things by controlling the area they are located within. Territoriality is "the means Sack's theory of territoriality then retains a place for the humanist ideal of a
by which space and society are interrelated. Territoriality's. changing functions fully constituted subject able to know and control its world. This humanist sub-
help us to understand the historical relationship between society, space and time."! ject is rejected in historical materialist geographies, like that of David Harvey,
The designation of an area asa territory involves more that simply circumscribing which class space and time as epiphenomena that express the dominant rela-
things in space or on a map. Territoriality is a social practice through which an tions of production. Harvey argues that material practices of capitalism repro-
individual or group aims to "affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and duce the structures of social life, including the categories of time and space.
relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area."? A terri- Every mode of production incorporates "a distinctive bundle of time and space
tory is a place that needs to he maintained through. constant vigilance and whose practices and concepts."? Furthermore, contemporary consumer capitalism is
boundaries must be permanently policed. Territoriality produces three effects: particularly adept at restructuring geographical space in order to both widen
classification by area; the communication of the limits of that area by physical or and deepen markets so as to fulfil its inherent logic of expansion. 8 Yet, not all
verbal boundary markers; and control over access to the area and things in it. As historical materialist geographers are as economically determinist as Harvey.
a social practice, territoriality has different historical meanings depending on the Indeed the pioneer of historical materialist geography, Henri Lefebvre, argues
extent to which societies maintain different degrees of access to people, things, against such determinism, claiming that the relays between space and social
and relationships. It is. a form of power that is not limited to the political sphere production are complex, with neither having ultimate priority over the other.
but is exercised in every arena in which humans interact in space: from a parent Relations of production both produce and are produced in space. While each
restricting a child's access to certain parts of the kitchen, to the layout of desks in mode of production has a distinctive space, it is not possible to assert that the
offices, or to the zoning strategies of city planning. Nevertheless, the most effec- forces of production necessarily give rise to particular configurations of space or
tive instrument of territorialization is the modern state which is able to control a time," The production of social spaces from the raw material of nature involves
society in which different classes pursue distinctive economic activities abstracted many layers of mediation from economics to technology and from politics to
from place. The state itself is an abstracted form of power and in order for it culture. Social space for Lefebvre
to appear "more accessible, visible or 'real'" it is "endowed with the most basic
attribute of objects-location and extension in space. In civilisation, the political is at once a precondition and a result of social superstructures. The state and
power of the state is areal or territoriaL The state is reified by placing it in space. each of its constituent institutions call for spaces-but spaces which they can
Whatever else a state may be or do, it isterrttorlal.":' then organize according to their specific requirements; so there is no sense in
Sack's theory of territory as a historically contingent product of social prac- which space can be treated solely as an a priori condition ofthese institutions and
tice is insightful. However, it retains elements of the territorial a priori. First, the state which presides over them. Is space a social relationship? Certainly-
Sack insists that in order to explain complex interactions a theory of territo- but one which is inherent to property relationships (especially the ownership
riality must disclose a set of propositions which are logically and empirically of the earth, of land) and also closely bound up with the forces of production
Ilriked." As such he remains committed to what David Campbell has termed (which impose a form on that earth or land); here we see the polyvalence of
an epistemic realism, which assumes that "the world comprises objects the exis- social space, its "reality" at once formal and material. Though a product to be
tence of which is independent of ideas or beliefs about them" and which locates used, to be consumed, it is also a means ofproduction; networks of exchange
the explanations of action and events in material causes.? Second, Sack's con- and flows of raw materials and energy fashion space and are determined by
tention that territoriality as a social construct is willed into being can be con- it. Thus this means of production, produced as such, cannot be separated
strued as remaining beholden to the discourse of sovereign presence, in so far either from. the productive forces, including technology and knowledge, or
as a territory is envisioned as the desired outcome of a process orchestrated by a from the social division of labour which shapes it, or from the state and the
fully constituted sovereign being (parent, chief: city-authority or state bureau- superstructures of sociery.'?
cracy) whose identity is secured prior to its deployment of territoriality-the
regulation of behavior within defined bouridaries.f Such a utilitarian notion of Indeed, Lefebvre insists that although space· is formed out of natural and his-
territoriality as a form of social control at the service of an already constituted torical elements it is also profoundly political: "it is a product literally filled
power does not allow for the possibility that the subjectivity or identity of the with ideologies."!' In order to expose these ideologies Lefebvre's methodology
body exercising territoriality is itself produced by such practices. differentiates three moments or modalities -of social space: the perceived, the
38 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 39

conceived, and the lived.. Perceived space is embodied in spatial practice or the "silently anterior to it," and that words are linked to things by relations such as
time-space routines and spatial structures through which social, political, and symbolization, reference, or truth.'" As it is not possible to decipher the truth
economic life is produced and reproduced. Spatial practice can be observed of the world through signs, any representation of the world does violence to
empirically. It is the material expression of social relations in space as manifest things. IS Discourse is not a "groups of signs (signifying elements referring to
in architecture, city-planning, classrooms, marketplaces, factories, and in every- contents orrepresentations)," but "practices that systematically form the objects
day life. 12 By contrast, lived or representational spaces are those appropriated by of which they speak.?'? Foucault's increasing awareness of the institutional con-
the imagination to give physical space meaning by way of historically embedded straints and controls exercised over the formation of discourses led him toward
signs and images.':' Representational space "is alive: it speaks, it has an affec- the genealogical concept of the dispositif or apparatus. As a heterogeneous
tive kernel or centre: Ego, bed, bedroom, dwelling, house; or square, church, matrix of discourse and institutional practices the dispositif arises at a given
graveyard. It embraces the loci of passion, of action, and of lived situations ..."14 historical moment in response to a particular need, it "has a strategic function
Further, it is often a place of resistance where cultural and artistic movements and manipulates specific relations of force."2o For example, the apparatus which
oppose the spatial practices of the dominant social order. identified and controlled madness and neurosis arose as a response to the mer-
For our purposes the most important of Lefebvre's three modalities is con- cantilist economy's need to assimilate the mobile population.r! In the dispositif
ceived space or representations of space. These are the conceptual abstractions, fluid relations of power and knowledge combine to reproduce ideas of truth
the frames ofknowledge (savoir) that configure spatial practices. Representations and subjectivity.v' Two important consequences derive from the concept of the
of space are the abstract, visual, and imaginary spaces of social engineers, urban dispositif First, the subject is unable to speak truth to power. There is no privi-
planners, architects, and cartographers who materially inscribe the dominant leged position outside of power from where its hidden effects can' be uncovered
social order's relations of production. They are the conduits through which by truth. Truth in all societies is the effect of an accepted truth regime in which
knowledge of space leads to the production. of space in practice. Representations certain discourses, reproduced by institutions and techniques, are validated as
of space intervene and modify spatial textures and have a substantial role in the being true. 23 Second, discourses of power/knowledge create subjectivity and
production of space. Their intervention occurs "by way of architecture, con- identity. They categorize and define the individual qua individual and produce
ceived of not as the building of a particular structure, palace or monument, but the individual's identity as a subject.j"
rather as a project embedded in a spatial context and a texture which calls for Although Foucault does not offer a systematic method for analyzing the rela-
'representations' that will not vanish into the symbolic or imaginary realms."15 tionship between space and discourse he is acutely aware of its importance.
Lefebvre's concept of representations of space has some similarity with "There is an administration of knowledge, a politics of knowledge, relations of
Michel Foucault's theory of discourse. To be sure, Lefebvre refused any such power which pass via knowledge and which, if one tries to transcribe them, lead
association and regarded Foucault as an intellectual sophist, purveying idealist one to consider forms of domination designated by such notions as field, region
conceptions of space premised on the mistaken ontological assumption that the and territory."25 In Discipline and punish Foucault shows how, in the Classical
mental realm envelops the social and physical worlds. For Lefebvre, Foucault's era, incarceration and surveillance were enabled by the discovery of the "docile
use of spatial meraphors-c--for example where Foucault .writes "knowledge body" as an object of power to be appropriated, taken apart, and reconstituted
[savoir] is also the space in which the subject may· take up a position and speak for speed and efficiencyr''' Disciplinary power constituted individuals in space
of the objects with which he deals in his discourse"-lacked intellectual rigor. by means of several strategies: enclosure within confined spaces such as col-
It failed to specify either the nature of the spaces being considered or how leges, schools, barracks, workshops, and factories; partitioning or the assignment
the gap between epistemology and the social use of space could be bridged.l" of individuals to separate places; the production of functional sites or "useful
Nevertheless, Foucault's investigation into the discursive production of space, spaces" coded for particular operations; and classification which allocates places
especially in the later genealogy with its concern with the political mapping of in a system of ranking. 27 Although. Foucault Was at pains to distinguish dis-
forms of power, has more affinity with the notion of representations of space ciplinary power from sovereign power, Michel de Certeau observes discipline
than Lefebvre seems to allow for. In the earlier archaeology, which sought to producing and organizing space at all levels of society. Disciplinary power per-
reveal how knowledge in diverse systems of thought was conditioned by com- vades science, politics, and military strategy. It can be deployed by any subject
mon figures and tropes, Foucault rejected the standard epistemological assump- power willing and able to designate a place as its ownfrom which relations with
tions that discourse denotes "the sign of something else" of "things" which are "an exteriority composed of targets or threats" can be managed and controlled.
40 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 41

The primary task of disciplinary power is to "delimit one's place in a world and mathematical theories of striation.P It segments space into homogeneous
bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other."28 Its secondary concern is to units of equal and translatable values. As with Foucault's disciplinary spaces
overcome and master the uncertainties of history and time by achieving own- and Lefebvre's representations of space, vision is at the heart of this process.
ership of and control Over an autonomous place. Sight is the primary modality "The central eye has as its correlate a space through which it moves, but it itself
enabling the exercise of disciplinary power. "The division of space makes pos- remains invariant in relation to its movements."36 The state's primary function
sible a panoptic practice proceeding from a place whence the eye can transform then is to striate the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a
foreign forms into objects.that can be observed and measured, and thus control means of communication in the service of striated space.
and 'include' them within its scopeofvlsion.V'' De Certeau's broader conceptual
framework implies that the state also has disciplinary powers at its disposal. It is It is the vital concern of every State not only to vanquish nomadism but to
therefore at odds with Foucault's insistence that disciplinary power is of another control migrations and, more generally, to establish a zone of rights over an
order to "juridico-discursive" or state power based in the discourse of right. The entire "exterior," .over all of the flows traversing the ecumenon.... There is
juridico-discursive power of sovereignty and law operates by. prohibition, neg- still a need for fixed paths in well-defined directions, which restrict speed,
ative interdiction, and repression. By contrast disciplinary power is productive, regulate circulation, relativize movement, and. measure in detail the relative
and in order to understand how it works we must "cut off the King's head," that movement of subjects and objects.V
is forget the person of the sovereign and his representation of power.30
If a territory is a geographical area controlled by a juridico-political power
Territoriality in Cultures of Space
and Foucualt's distinction between disciplinary and sovereign power is to be
respected it may be methodologically problematic to analyze state territoriality The second heuristic premise to be developed is that representations of politi-
deploying genealogical concepts such as ·pbwer/knowledge. 31 However, Gilles cal space, and. hence the production of territoriality, are informed by structural
Deleuze and Felix Guattari's depiction of the state as a body that striates space codes that determine how a particular cultures represent and use space. Stephen
offers a possible resolution.V Like Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari are inter- Kern's study of European culture between 1880 and 1914 shows how a culture's
ested in non-sovereign forms of power or "rnicropolitics." However, they situate dominant representations and conceptions of space impact on almost all dimen-
the relationship between micropolitics and state power within a broad concep- sions of life. Kern writes,
tual landscape characterised by a ubiquitous opposition between the forces of
nomadism and the dictates of State power. This all-pervasive struggle between All people, everywhere, in all ages, have a distinctive experience of time
the rhizomatic nomad and the arboreal State manifests itself in certain regis- and space and, however unconscious, some conception of it. It is possible to
ters as "territorialization." Deleuze and Guattari derive their notion of terri- interpret how class structures, modes of production, patterns of diplomacy,
torialization from Lacan's contention that a mother's nourishment and care is or means of waging war were manifested historically in terms of changing
imprinted on her child's libido; producing chargederogenous zones and objects experiences of time and space.r"
out of organs. However, territorialization is not just limited to this primal psy-
chological relationship but pervades all aspects of man's social relationships. In Fin de siecle Europe analogous conceptions of space emerged simultaneously
Territorialization denotes the incessant and all-pervasive regulation and coding in diverse realms of knowledge from philosophy to aesthetics, from architec-
of flows by social and political "machines." No human society is a milieu of ture to urban design, and from anthropology to studies of the natural world.
free-exchange and circulation, everyone is marked by "a socius of inscription" Developments in one sphere resonated in others and across the culture as a
whose primary function is to code flows. 33 The most effective agent of terri- whole there emerged an understanding of space which substituted universality
torialization is the state. This "apparatus of capture" draws into itself flows of and homogeneity with relativity and heterogeneity. Elements of this new spatial
people, commodities, and capital. As a "milieu of interiority" the state resists vocabulary can be identified in Einstein's theory of relativity, which replaced
and opposes. the nomads and the war-machine which inhabit the outside realm absolute space with an infinite number of spaces perpetually changing position
of exteriority.v" vis-a-vis oneanother, in Cubism which "abandoned the homogeneous space of
This realm of exteriority is the domain of smooth space, which the nomad linear perspective and painted objects in a multiplicity of spaces from multi-
seeks to expand and which the State seeks to counter. by deploying geom.etric ple perspectives," and in Durkheim's anthropology of religion which showed
42 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 43

that perceptions of space were not, as Kant had asserted, based on some innate relations of force; second, the "matrix of constraints and opportunities within
understanding shared by all men, but were culturally dererrn ined.f" These intel- which social actors interacted" as defined by the structure of property rights,
lectual reconceptualizations of space mirrored profound transformations in coalitions between social actors and differences between private and social rates
social relations. The Cubist leveling of the traditional aesthetic hierarchy, which of return; and, third, the mental equipment people use "in imagining and sym-
had prioritized the subject over its background, found its social equivalent in the bolizing forms of political community or collective existence."43
leveling of aristocratic society, the emergence of democracy, and the collapse of This last dimension, which Ruggie terms the "social episteme," reveals that
the distinction between sacred and profane spaces in religion. the emergence of principles of differentiation in political doctrines like cujus
Kern's work is important in that it promotes the idea of an overarching cul- regio ejus religio and Rex in regno suo est Imperator regni sui mirrored equivalent
ture of space in which common vocabularies of space are to be found across a transformations in social epistemology such as the replacement of Latin by ver-
wide range of knowledges. The implication for our study is that political the- nacular vocabularies, the standardization of the I-form of speech, the invention
ories of territoriality are likely to be conditioned by spatial categories that per- of single-point perspective in visual art, and new notions of individual subjec-
meate representations of space throughout the culture of modernity. However, tivity.44 A social epistemedenotes "the process whereby a society first comes to
Kern's vivid descriptions of changes in the way in which space was thought imagine itself, to conceive of appropriate orders of rule and exchange, to sym-
about are not complemented by a coherent explanatory methodology. How do bolize identities and to propagate norms and doctrines.T''' However, Ruggie does
changes in one sphere impact on another? Is there a deep underlying struc- not develop the idea of the social episteme other than to suggest that it combines
ture that determines the conditions of possibility for thinking about space that the thesis of German social theory that society comprises webs of meaning and
somehow straddles diverse branches of knowledge? In this respect, Lefebvre is signification and the French idea of mentalites collectives. Ruggie passes over any
perhaps bolder when he asserts that modernity has one dominant spatial code, methodological difficulties that might arise from combining Durkheim's science
one language of space, derived from classical perspective and Euclidean sp!l-ce positive with Weber's verstehen or Foucault's critique of subject-centered reason
that arose out of "a specific relationship between town, country and political with Haberrnas's project for communicative rationality. Ruggie's social episterne,
terr itory.T'" These codes produce a space of while suggestive of the relays between territoriality and cultural representations
of space, lacks methodological rigor and cannot he deployed uncritically.
common sense; of knowledge (savoir) , of social practice, of political power, a More useful is Foucault's concept of the episteme as worked out in the
space hitherto enshrined in everyday discourse, just as in abstract thought, as archaeology of knowledge. Although the archaeology does not set out a spe-
the environment of and channel for communications; the space, too, of clas- cific program for investigating spatial discourses as such, its ethos has a dis-
sical perspective and geometry, developed from the Renaissance onwards on tinctly spatial tincture. Foucault's language is full of spatial metaphors: he talks
the basis of the Greek tradition (Euclid, logic) and bodied forth in Western of the "space of knowledge," "epistemological space" and "sites of dispersion."
art and philosophy, as in the form of the city and town.v' However the utility of the episteme for. analyzing the territorial a priori can
be derived from more substantive material. In The Order of Things Foucault
John Ruggie is one of a few International Relations scholars who has sought describes an episterne as
to explain transformations in the international system with reference to how
changes in territoriality reflect broader developments in the cultural repre- a sort of" historical a priori" which in a given period, delimits in the totality
sentation of space. 42 For Ruggie the transformation from the medieval to the of experience a field of knowledge, defines the mode of being of the objects
modern international system was premised on a profound re-irnagining of that appear in the field, provides man's everyday perception with theoretical
territoriality, itself a response to an equally fundamental transformation in powers, and defines the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about
the principle of socio-political individuation. Ruggie, as a social constructiv- things that is recognised to be true. 46
ist, opposes the neorealist view that all international systems are functionally
similar. Rather, he sees the modern system of states as embodying a distinctive The episteme denotes an unconscious set of rules, a system of regularities, that
territorial order. Its social construction drew upon the raw material found in determines how a culture orders things. This system, which establishes relations
three irreducible dimensions of European collective experience: first, the mate- ofsimilarity and difference between things, provides objects with their identities.
rial environment constituted by eco-demographics, relations of production and In making reference to the Renaissance or Classical episteme Foucault does not
44 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 45

intend to invoke the sense of a Weltanschauung or spirit of an age. An episterne territoriality. However, Foucault made it clear that epistemes do not pervade
does not underpin all forms of knowledge within a culture.V The archaeolo- an entire culture, but unite specific discourses. ''Archaeology disarti~ulates the
gist's task is to expose the" discursive regularities" that identify and order the synchronicity of breaks.... [tjhe period is neither its basic unity, not its hori-
objects of knowledge in heterogeneous discourses. Thus, in the Classical age zon.... if it speaks of these things it is always in terms of particular discursive
(roughly 1650-1800), which is the main focus of The Order o/Things, Foucault practices.T'! Both Lefebvre and Kern agree that the modern spatial episteme
finds a pattern of discursive regularities, a "polymorphous cluster. of correla- extended from the Renaissance invention of perspective to Einstein's subversion
tions," in the relations within and between the empirical sciences of natural of the Euclidean paradigm, and it is within this epistemic timeframe that the
history, general grammar and the analysis of wealth. 48 Each of these branches territorial a priori was articulated and legitimized.
of knowledge was subject to the epistemic order of representation inwhich the Foucault's archaeology traverses established disciplinary boundaries in its
identities of things were established by marking out their differences from oth- search for the epistemic "conditions of possibility" underlying the articulation
ers. Its main structures were mathesis- (a universal science of measurement'- of statements in different discursive formations. This inter-disciplinary ethos is
and taxonomia-the principle of classification or ordered tabulation. From an taken a step further in Deleuze and Guattari's "schizoanalysis" which describes
archaeological perspective there is identity where we might expect difference: the multiple rhizomatic networks that criss-cross multiple domains of being
natural history, general.grammar, and the. analysis of wealth share codes .that and thought. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari also prioritize the ques-
produce similarities between statements produced in each branch of knowledge. tion of space and its relationship to thought. In particular, they highlight the
In accordance with this archaeological principle, the conditions of possibility relays and associations between, on the one hand, smooth space and nomadic or
for the articulation of the modern territorial a priori must be sought not only in rhizomatic thought, and on the other hand, striated space and state thought.V
the realm of political discourse but also in other. spatial discourses which share Deleuze and Guattari term the dominant tradition of Western thought, partic-
its underlying ordering principles. ularly as represented by linguistics and psychoanalysis, as arborescent or State
Foucault set his archaeology against progressive narratives of the evolution thought. It is organized by the principle of interiority that establishes a structure
of science in which the subject as historical consciousness achieves ever greater or axis (the soul, consciousness, or production) in terms of which objects and
objectivity and knowledge of the world. Rather, archaeology traces the ruptures, their relations to other objects are understood and explained. They contrast
breaks, and discontinuities between epistemes. The . Classical episteme did not arborescent thought with rhizomatic or nomadic thought which, driven by
evolve organically out of the Renaissance episterne, "the prose of the world," desire, seeks to forge multiple, ever changing and mutating connections or lines
in which words and things were united in a web of resemblance or similitude. between heterogeneous realms such as semiotic chains, organizations of power,
This form of knowledge is incommensurable with the Classical episteme which the arts and sciences, and social struggles. 53 The antagonism between arbo-
"replaced infinite resemblance with finite difference."49 Likewise, the ordered rescent and nomadic thought extends into all realms of intellectual endeavor.
regularities of the Classical episteme are incommensurable with the dynamic In the sciences, for example, nomadic thought is represented by Archimedean
historical categories of the modern episrerne, which emerged at the end of the and atomist sciences which fix on flux and flows and emphasize becoming and
eighteenth century. The modern episteme was the first to posit man in his fac- heterogeneity. However, they are marginalized by the keepers of royal or State
tual, contingent existence as a legitimate object of inquiry. Hence Foucault's sciences who promote Euclidean space and Newtonian gravity in order to pri-
controversial claim that "the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is oritize the stable, the eternal, and the identical. Similarly, modern philosophy,
an invention of recent date."5o Thus the archaeology also demonstrates there is as embodied in the Cartesian cogito and Kantian critique, takes the form of
difference where we might expect identity: in terms of their ordering principles State thought. In the modern rational state everything "revolves around the
these Classical empirical sciences of natural history, general grammar, and the legislator and the subject."54 State thought orders mental space in terms of
analysis of wealth have little in common with the modern discourses of philol- two universals: "the Whole as the final ground of being" and "the Subject
ogy, political economy, and biology that replaced them. It might be objected as the principle that converts being into being-for-us."55 Although dominant,
that if our task is to prove that the modern territorial a priori was established State thought has been challenged by. thinkers like Kierkegaard,Nietzsche,
during the Renaissance then Foucault's archaeology is an inappropriate method and Foucault whose nomadic ethos seeks to undermine the universal thinking
because it stresses discontinuity. According to its caesurallogic Renaissance ter- subject, resist any grounding in totality, and offers sites of resistance to State
ritoriality is most likely to. be incommensurable.with classical, let alone, modern rhought.r"
46 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 47

In terms of space, the arborescent/nomadic confrontation is manifest in the function to the sedentary roads imposed by state bodies which parcel out a closed
opposition between the smooth and the striated. Whereas in the abstract realm space to people, assigning each person a share and regulating communication.
striated and smooth spaces exist and are produced in opposition to one another, The nomad's trajectory" distributes people (or animals) in an open space, one that
in practice they combine in unstable configurations. Deleuze and Guattari dem- is indefinite and non-communicating.T" While sedentary space is striated by
onstrate the alrerity between smooth and striated space across several registers or "walls, enclosures, and roads between enclosures", nomadic space is smooth,
modalities: a technological model contrasts the parallels and perpendiculars of "marked only by 'traits' that are effaced and displaced with the trajectory.P"
woof and weave in cloth with the fibrous entanglement of felt; a musical model, Just as the state perpetually seeks to striate space so the nomad deploys the
drawing on Boulez, distinguishes the organization of horizontal melodic lines war machine "the constitutive element of smooth space" to continually expand
and vertical harmonies with the continuous variation of form that produces smooth space, to "increase the desert."61
properly rhythmic values; an environmental model opposes the open undefined
spaces of desert, sea or steppe with the closed delineated spaces of the city; and
Histories of Space and Territory
a mathematical model separates the fixing of points and line within coordi-
nates and axes in Euclidean physics from the open geometry of Archimedes or So far we have established two heuristic propositions. First, the object ofenquiry,
the multiplicities of Riemann space.V There are profound differences between the territorial a priori, is not an objective material resource but an idea, a compo-
smooth and striated spaces. First, the relations between points and lines differ: nent of the modern social imaginary produced in discourse. Second, we should
in striated space a line is something that goes between two points, as in geom- not examine territory exclusively from within the parameters of political theory.
etry, while in smooth space priority is given to the line, with the points acting Discourses of territoriality produce and naturalize the politics of space-and need
merely as relays between successive lines. Second, lines have different character- to be related to the ideas and practices that permeate a society's culture of space.
istics in the two spaces: in smooth space lines are locally directional with open The third proposition is that as cultures of space emerge, mutate, and disappear
intervals, while in striated space lines are subordinate to global dimensionality so do. discourses of territoriality. This principle is opposed to the prlrnordialist
and have closed intervals. Third, the surface of each space isdifferent: "[i]n stri- contention that territory is a universal pre-condition o{all social life. Advocates
ated space, one closes off a surface and 'allocates' it according to .determinate of primordialism trace it back to Aristotle's writings on the polis, and see its par-
intervals, assigned breaks; in the smooth, one'distributes' oneself in open space, adigmatic statement in Ferdinand Tennies' theory that by according symbolic
according to frequencies and in the course of one's crossing (logos and nomos)."58 or sacred value to soil Gemeinschaft societies are able to ensure that residence
In striated space, whose archetypes are Euclidean geometry and Renaissance thereon is the basic qualification for membership of the .community.62 To be
perspective, planes and. surfaces are homogeneous; it has no qualitative values sure, the primordialist theory of territory is more sophisticated than the territo-
but viewed from or concentrated on a central point is abstract and universally rial a priori in so far as territory is not simply synonymous with empty physical
replicable; in it points can he specified, counted, and mapped and trajectories space but is understood as the repository of symbolic value. Because territory
are determined by the points from which they leave and arrive. By contrast in is life sustaining the. collective consciousness becomes symbolically attached to
the heterogeneous "particularities" of smooth space, points are subordinate to it and its boundaries become defined by shared language, religion, or law. 63
the trajectory; the inside spaces of tents, .igloos or boats conform to and are Nevertheless, for prirnordialists, like Stephen Grosby, this symbolic attachment
determined by the outside-s--sreppe, ice or sea; smooth space is directional rather is "a fundamental feature of all human societies," as basic to human existence
than dimensional or. metric; lines are vectors which organize the points and as nourishment or shelter.P" It is universal and cannot be "segregated histori-
stops; in smooth space affects rather than properties dominate and perception is cally" for in all historical situations "man has believed that his (sic) own life is
haptic rather than optic-one travels by being receptive to the tactile and sono- dependent upon the continued existence of the territorial sovereignty of 'his
rous qualities of the intensities, particularly winds, that occupy it. country' for it gives and sustains life·."65 Putting aside the questionable herme-
At the political or social level, whereas the state is the institution of ter- neutic which gives Grosby knowledge of the meaning that territory has had for
ritorialization or striation par excellence, the nomad occupies smooth space. all men and the contestable humanist assumptions embodied in his notion of
Nomadic territoriality is exercised across smooth space by constituting points, man, can it really be the case that territoriality exists outside of history, unaf-
such as water holes and assembly points, as mere relays on a trajectory, subordi- fected by changes in economic modes of production, cultural codes or political
nate to and not determining of paths. Nomadic trails or routes have a different institutions?
48 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 49

Even within .International Relations primordialism has been challenged. form of property, embodying the right to exclude others from possession, with
Ruggie maintains that the configuration of political space and territory that a form of authority based on the total integration of all legal authority into
characterises the modern international system is, in some instances, being one public realm: "the modern system of rule consists of the institutionaliza-
replaced by a postmodern order based in alternative principles of spatial dif- tion of private property within rnutually exclusive jurisdictional domains."71 In
ferenriation.P'' Ruggie worries that International Relations, relying on Waltz's modernity the principle of homonomy structures political space into "territori-
neorealist understanding of change in the international system as being deter- ally disjoint, mutually exclusive, functionally similar, sovereign sta~es."72 These
mined by variations in the distribution of capabilities among constituent units, sovereign territories evolved hand in hand with the consolidation of parallel
lacks the appropriate conceptual vocabulary with which to account for this spatial distinctions between public and private and internal and external. The
transformation. He hopes that by exploring how changes in the principles of "modern system of rule has ... differentiated its subject collectivity into territo-
differentiation caused the previous structural transformation from the medie- rially defined, fixed, and mutually exclusive enclaves of legitimate dorninion.V''
val to modern international system, we might derive an appropriate conceptual Although the heteronorny-homonomy opposition does not prioritize the reori-
vocabulary with which to theorize the emergence of a postmodern international entation of territoriality from a world of vertically structured hierarchies to a
system. Again neorealism is found wanting here. Waltz is unable to explain horizontal order, it is implicit throughout. The presence of overlapping jurisdic-
the transformation from a medieval to modern international system because he tions implies a hierarchical stratification of authority, while independent terri-
understands differentiation as denoting the comparative differences between torial. states exist side by side on a horizontal spatial plane.
units rather than the underlying principles that separate them. 67 Ruggie's work highlights the historicity of practices of territoriality. The uni-
Drawing on Meinecke's portrayal of medieval actors as being restricted by versalist pretensions of the territorial a priori are also challenged by Deleuze
"heteronomous shackles on their authority," Ruggie claims that in medieval and Guattari's comprehensive history of territorialization in the Anti-Oedipus,
Europe the underlying principle of differentiation was that of heteronomy, mean- which traces, over an extensive temporal horizon, the lines of flight along which
ing that actors were subject to a variety of different laws or principles. Political vectors of de-territorialization pass and the efforts of striating institutions to re-
authority was exercised through personal relations that blurred the boundaries territorialize these flows. 74 The Anti-Oedipus proposes that primitive, despotic,
between public and private. The medieval political landscape was a complex and capitalist "social machines" are distinguished by three distinctive modali-
mosaic of "overlapping and incomplete rights of government" in which "differ- ties of territorialization.f" Of these only the primitive machine is literally terri-
ent juridical instances were geographically interwoven and stratified; and plu- torial for it inscribes bodies onto an indivisible earth. It controls the productive
ral allegiances, asymmetrical suzerainties and anomalous enclaves abounded.T'" forces by "tattooing, excising, carving, scarifying, mutilating, encircling and
Inside and outside did not exist as clearly demarcated realms. The first territo- initiating" bodies?6 In primitive society the enjoyment of rights and the assign-
rial markers established in the thirteenth century functioned more as permeable ment of duties are legitimized by symbolically marking bodies and consigning
frontier zones rather than as rigid boundaries. The conflation of public authority organs and their exercise to the collectivity. The first signs in human history are
with private estates and multiple chains of lord-vassal relations meant that the "territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies" and which attach and inscribe
medieval aristocracy claimed authority over non-contiguous spaces throughout the primitive's body onto "the undifferentiated, undivided earth."77
Europe. Further, the common bodies of law, religion, and custom that legiti- When these primitive rural communities are overcome by barbarian des-
mized the medieval system of rule byrecourse to inclusive natural rights did not potic states a new modality of territorialization comes into play. The earth is
threaten the integrity of the constituent units in the system because the units divided and segmented by a landed and residential administration. This is less
"viewed themselves as municipal embodiments of a universal community.P" a promotion of territoriality than the first moment of de-territorialization. "The
In sum, "the spatial extension of the medieval system of rule was structured by immanentunity of the earth as the immobile motor gives way to a transcendent
a nonexclusive form of territoriality, in which authority was both personalized unity of an altogether different nature-e--the unity of the State; the full body
and parcelized within and across territorial formations and for which inclusive is no longer that of the earth, it is the full body of the Despot ..."78 The des-
bases of legitimation prevailed."70 potic State machine overcodes the territorial codes and filiations of the primitive
The principle of differentiation which underpins the distribution of political machine and transfers them to the despot's body, which becomes the focus of
space in rnodemuv is the antonym of heteronomy: homonomy which denotes desire and production. Advanced forms of the despotic state take advantage of
'oe\.n.~ ~~'o\ec.t. t.() t.b.e. ~<\.m.e \<\."Ws. \he ID.()Q.etn. ~t.<\.t.e \~ <\. \~~\()t\. ()\ <\. \?<\.tt.\.c.u.\ar developments in the sciences of mathematics and geometry to promote rational
50 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Theorizing Territoriality • 51

models of territorialization. The Greek city-states embodied. a "homogeneous Both analogical and cosmological space are absolute and iconic. They do not
isotopic space" and the Roman Empire imposed a "geometrical or linear reason refer to or symbolize any reality outside of or beyond themselves. For its citizens
ofState on space", marking the boundaries of segmented spaces by means of the "the city constituted their representation of space as a whole, of the earth, of the
lines of camps and fortifications. world."83 Political and religious spaces, set apart from the mundane, are simul-
The third moment of territorialization, characterized by decoded flows, taneously imaginary and reaL "The 'mental' is 'realized' in a chain of 'social'
arises with the emergence of the capitalist social machine. Capitalism is a "gen- activities because, in the temple, in the city, in monuments and palaces, the
eral axiomatic of decoded flows" that evolves from the conjugation of decoded imaginary is transformed into the real."84 Everything in these societies was sit-
and de...territorialized flows of unqualified wealth and unqualified labor; it uated, perceived, and interpreted in terms of such places. Absolute space was
replaces intrinsic codes with an "axiomatic of abstract quantities in the form thus more than just a collection of signs or sites but "a space, at once and indis-
of money."79 Capitalism substitutes the codes and over-codes of the primitive tinguishably mental and social, which comprehends the entire existence of the
and despotic machines for an axiomatic of abstract quantities determined by group concerned.Y''
exchange. However, this decoding carries substantial risk for the subjectivity With the decline of the ancient civilizations and the emergence of the feudal
released as labor and desire resists reintegration into the capitalist axiomatic. mode of production in Western Europe absolute space was replaced by sym-
Hence the capitalist state must be the most effective apparatus of capture. It bolic space. Symbolic space literally de-crypted the subterranean spaces of death,
must re-territorialize and recode these schizophrenic flows, which, if left, will the catacombs and burial chambers that had embodied the cosmos in the early
form vectors ·of nomadism traveling liberally within: .the domains of smooth Christian imaginary. From the twelfth century onward space was turned on its
space.f" The modern state is not displaced by global' capitalism but serves as head and inverted. The darkness and descent of tombs and crypts give way to
the locus where capitalism is realized: it groups together and combines the var- the illumination and elevation of the monumental Gothic cathedrals. These
ious flows required by capitalist production. Capitalist territorialization there- buildings were the built archetypes for the hierarchical spatial iIiiaginary of
fore combines "trans-national capital as locus of high-speed deterritorialization medieval culture and we shall explore how they both expressed and legitimized
and ... various forms of State as loci of rererritorializatlon.T" religious and political hierarchies in chapter 5. Gothic cathedrals were vast sym-
Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on the relationship between the body and bolic spaces whose architectonics, structured according to the hierarchical allo-
space as an intrinsic element in the history of territorialization is mirrored in cation of horizontal layers, conveyed two important motifs. The first was, of
Lefebvre's history of Western culture as decorporeaiization. He identifies a tran- course, the dominion of heaven. On entering these cathedrals the observer's
sition from the "space of the body," in which spaces were ordered and conceived thought was inexorably drawn up from the mundane world of appearances to
of in terms of the body's organization, to the "body-in-space," where the body contemplate the wonders of the divine order. Second, these were also socio-
becomes fragmented' and decomposed into localized functions. The earliest political spaces suffused with signs of power. The vertical towers and emblem-
modes of production both produce and are reproduced in absolute space, which atic facades signified the prestige and authority of "Church, King and city to the
takes two forms. The space of primitive societies is analogical in that the phys- crowds flocking to the porch."86
ical form of dwellings and villages represents and reproduces a divine body- Lefebvre's fourth spatial order is that of abstract space, which is aligned to
itself a projection of the human body. The first ancient civilizations introduced the capitalist mode of production. Lefebvre, as we have already seen, considered
a cosmological space in which the built form of the political city, its elements the modern codes of space to be underpinned by the criteria of classical perspec-
and configurations, expresses the architecture of the cosmos. The city-state, tive and geometry. While the symbolic spaces of the feudal order were partially
constituted through a visual logic, which combined the abstract language of
establishes a fixed centre by coming to constitute a hub, a privileged focal geometry and logic with theocratic authority, the abstract spaces of capitalism
point, surrounded by peripheral areas which bear it stamp. From this moment are constituted by an all-encompassing logic of visualization, embedded in the
on, the vastness of pre-existing space appears to come under the thrall of a. regime of linear perspective.V By the end of the twentieth century the spread of
divine order. At the same time the town seems to gather in everything which late capitalism had ensured the global triumph of abstract space. These spaces of
surrounds it, including the natural and the divine, and the earth's evil and late capitalism are constituted by representations of space that are complicit with
good forces. As image of the universe (imago mundi), urbanspace is reflected the complementary processes of commodification and bureaucratization. The
in the rural space that it possesses and indeed in a sense contains. 82 commodification of space imposes a geometric grid of property relations and
52 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

property markets on the earth, while commodification (through space installs

economic grids of capital circulation through. which abstract space inscribes
abstract labor and the commodity form. This commodification process is com-
plemented by bureaucratization. The bureaucratization of space occurs where
an administrative system stakes out and marks it territory. Meanwhile bureau--
cratization through space installs juridico-political grids which allow the state
CHAPTER 4
to survey and regulate social life. 8 8 In the aesthetic register, abstract space. was
created through the spatial language of modernists such as Picasso, Klee, and
Kandinsky who privileged the optical as the basis of aesthetic practice. Picasso's
Hierarchy, Order, and Space in
art presents "an unreservedly visualized space, a dictatorship of the eye and of
the phallus.T'"
the Medieval World
Leaving aside the specific details of these histories of space, we can derive
some important conclusions from them for the purposes of the present study.
First, they all accept that spatial ideas and practices vary according to particu-
lar historical conditions, which they both reflect and help to constitute. Thus,
despite its self-proclaimed universal purchase, we must recognise that the terri-
torial a priori is embedded within the specific modernculture of space. Second, d eas of territorial-sovereignty are not universal and fixed but historical and
while these histories of space offer different periodizations of spatial orders, they
all acknowledge the distinctiveness of the modern regime of space. They all,
explicitly or implicitly, highlight a fundamental. rupture between medieval and
modern cultural representations of space. Ruggie identifies this. as the shift from
I fluid. They are the products of particular, arbitrary, and ever-changing dis-
cursive conjunctions of politics and space. Histories of territorial-sovereignty
must therefore avoid two temptations: either to write a progressive history in which
sovereign-territoriality achieves its telos in modernity, or to assume that absolute
heteronomy to homonomy; for Deleuze and Guattari it is the. shift from despotic discontinuities or ruptures exist between different modes of territorialization.
de-territorialization to the capitalist axiomatic of flows; and Lefebvre character- Both of these tendencies are present in the Westphalia narrative that represents
izes it as a transition from symbolic to abstract space. Our task is to delineate medieval international politics as other to the modern international system of
the precise contours of this transformation as it relates to the re-imagination of sovereign territorial states. This dichotomy between medieval and modern must
political territoriality, by comparing and contrasting the medieval spatial regime be set aside and attention paid to the complex and often contradictory processes
of hierarchy with the modern territorial order of anarchy. Finally, each of these of transition, some evolutionary, some caesural and some continuous between the
histories emphasizes an intimate relationship between the visual and space and, medieval spatial political order of hierarchy and the modern territorial order of
in particular, the role of linear perspective in the promotion of modern ratio- anarchy. Accordingly the Renaissance, an era that is at once both medieval and
nal and logical space. Linear perspective was, of course, a Renaissance inven- modern and neither of these, becomes a legitimate locus of enquiry. However, the
tion and was one of the primary elements in the reimagining of the Western immediate task at hand is to familiarize ourselves with the medieval landscape of
spatial imaginary that led to the consolidation of the modern territorial a priori. hierarchy and its manifestations in the medieval discourse of territoriality.
However, before addressing the Renaissance we must first describe Medieval
Europe's hierarchical imaginary of space and territoriality.
Dionysius and the Sacred Order of Hierarchy
Kenneth Waltz contends that domestic and international politics can be differ-
entiated in terms of the ordering principles of hierarchy and anarchy.

The parts ofdomestic political systems stand in relations ofsuper- and subordi-
nation. Some are entitled to command; others are required to obey. Domestic
 54 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 55

systems are centralized and hierarchic. The parts of international-political sys-

its manifestation ofdivine light to the stage below. The creations of the divine
tems stand in relations of coordination. Formally, each is the equal of all the
ray are finite mirror images (speculum) of God, a theophany or manifestation of
others. None is entitled to command; none is required to obey. International
the divine, whose position within the hierarchy are determined by their relative
systems are decentralized and anarchic.'
degree of perfection.P
Medieval scholastics reinforced the Dionysian hierarchy by combining it
For many International Relations theorists the hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy
with the doctrine ofanalogy, which denoted a proportional relationship between
serves as a universal model for distinguishing the realms of international and
God and his creations. The universe is ordered by analogy: all created things
domestic politics. In the Westphalia narrative this synchronic structural model
are images (aenigmata) or symbols of a divine reality, which they can indicate
is inserted into history and becomes employed diachronically to differentiate
but not have a pure sense of Even forms drawn from the lowliest matter can
the modern anarchical international system from the medieval hierarchical sys-
have correspondence with heavenly beings, for matter "owes its subsistence to
tem that preceded it.
absolute beauty and keeps, throughout its earthly ranks, some echo of intelligi-
However, in the medieval imaginary hierarchy had meanings and signi-
ble beauty. Using matter, one may be lifted up to the immaterial archetypes.I'''
fications that extended far beyond simple "relations of super- and subordina...
These archetypes or ideas (paradeigmata), which determine the order of the uni-
tion." The term hierarchy, in medieval Latin (h)ierarchia, is derived from the
verse, exist only in God in whose being they are united. The relationship of the
Greek bierarlehes composed of hieros sacred and -arkhes rule. The paradigm
divine to created effects is one of manifestation. Conversely effects are related
of the medieval understanding of hierarchy was established in. the writings of
to their cause by imitation (mimesis) or participation (methexis). The models
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an unknown Greek author of the fifth or
are .thus both causal principles and goals toward which created things strive.
sixth century. The De coelesti hierarchia .(On the Celestial Hierarchy) and De
Analogy denotes the possible degree of imitation any particular being can have
ecclesiastica bierarchia (On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy) were repeatedly translated
to the absolute, its place and role in the hierarchy of reality. Driven ~y love all
and commented upon in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to
things seek assimilation or union with the divine. Yet even after achieving such
Ernst Cassirer, Dionysius' oeuvre constituted. a unifying standard of medieval
union they retain their place in the hierarchical order, for the degree. of perfec-
thought, an assessment confirmed in Dante's Com media, in which Dionysius
tion they can achieve by becoming themselves is a relative state of perfection as
resides in Paradise, at a vantage point from where he can observe the hierarchy
established by the divine idea. Salvation does not result in a thing losing its iden-
of the angelic order.?
tity through assimilation with God, but is a perfect correspondence between a
thing and its archetype."
Dionysius gave himself to contemplation
For Dionysius hierarchy.is a trinity: it is "a sacred order, a state of understanding
of these same orders with such holy zeal
and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divinc/" Its goal
that he named and ranked them just as I have done."

is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with

Dionysian hierarchy is underwritten by the N eo-Platonist principle of emana-
him. A hierarchy has God as its leader of all understanding and action. It is
tion, associated with Plotinus; that all things proceed from, are derived from,
forever looking directly at. the comeliness of God. A hierarchy bears in itself
and are understood in terms of, the One, the Absolute, the first principle. Neo-
the mark of God. Hierarchy causes it members to be images of God in all
Platonists conceived of emanation as the diffusion of a light issuing from a pri-
respects, to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial
mal source of infinite intensity. Dionysius regarded the source of this light to
light and indeed of God himself. It ensures that when its members have
he God so "each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us,
received this full and divine splendour they can then pass on this light gener-
and, in its power to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the
ously and in accordance with God's will to beings further down the scale."
oneness and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in."4 As the light
ray descends so it creates things-angels, men, animals-until it reaches a place
There are, as Joseph Anthony Mazzeo observes, military connotations to this
where it can penetrate no further and there is only darkness and nothingness.
representation of hierarchy as a sacred order or ranking (taxis). Hierarchy is a
Lying about thefeet of God is a golden chain binding all that exists between the
"cosmological chain of command" which ensures that divine radiation is trans-
two infinities. Each rank in the chain strives to ascend the order and to transmit
mitted according to the precise order that God, who is master of all hierarchies,
 Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 57
56 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
heavenly powers have specific functions and, as movers of the spheres, rule over
establishes between the ranks. Order pertains to hierarchy in the senses of both
natural processes. However, for Dionysius their most important role is as media-
arrangement and commandment. The structure of the universe and the place
tors and transmitters of light as grace, knowledge, being and beauty. They are
of beings in it are fixed absolutely by divinely established laws. An order of
intermediary beings between god .and man, representing degrees of knowledge
being can only partake of divine illumination through. the mediation of the
and consciousness, which radiate truth and grace down to the place where the
order above, for each rank not only has its own illumination and powers but
celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies converge.
incorporates .the attributes of those lying. below: "[h]ierarchy is thus a 'scale of
In De ecclesiastica bierarchia, Dionysius reaffirms that "every hierarchy is
forms,' each higher form transcending but including the functions and powers
divided in three" but recasts the division in terms of sacraments, initiators and
of the forms below,"!"
initiated.V Divinity extends its sacred gifts into the human domain through the
The highest hierarchy, which most nearly attains to perfection, is the heav-
lowest order of hierarchy: that of the Law. In this hierarchy truths are contained
enly hierarchy of angels or intelligences. They have no need of mediation
in symbolism, enigmas, and imagery, for men's "weak eyes" would be harmed
through other forms and therefore surround GOd.I I The nine intelligences are
if they looked directly upon the truths contained in the divine light. The legal
grouped into three triads, positioned in ascending ordet according to their func-
hierarchy described by Dionysius is that of the Jewish rite which preceded the
tions of purification, illumination, and perfection. The first triad, which "circles
ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Christian rite. It comprises three elements: sacra-
in immediate proximity to God," comprises, starting with the most perfect,
ments or an "uplifting to worship in spirit; the initiators or those men whom
seraphim or perpetual warmth, cherubim or "the power to know and to see
Moses initiated into the holy tabernacle; and the initiated or those whom these
God," and God-bearing thrones. Seraphim, closest to God, is able to absorb
symbols of the law lift Up."13
divinity perfectly and can hold the divine light unveiled and undiminished;
Between the heavenly hierarchy and the hierarchy of the law stands the eccle-
it is aflame with love for God. Second, cherubim, able to contemplate divine
siastical hierarchy. It shares with the celestial hierarchy the "contemplation of
power in its primordial essence, is radiant with light derived from its knowl-
understanding" and with the hierarchy of the Law "the use ofvaried symbolism."
edge of God and his mysteries, with which it seeks to enlighten others. Finally,
While the pure intelligences of celestial hierarchy function according to spiri-
thrones, which are free of all earthly passion and material concern, can receive
tual principles, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is composed of incarnate intelligences
god's justice in its divine essence, glorify in it, and transmit it to rulers on earth.
that transmit spiritual truths and powers via sensible agencies such as the sacra-
The middle ranks of heavenly intelligences, which "indicate ways in which God
ments and teaching. The members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have special
is imitated and conformed to," include dominions, the virtues and the powers.
knowledge of the Scriptures and transmit this knowledge through language and
Dominions are unfettered by earthly tendencies toward the tyranny of dissim-
rites to men. As with the other two hierarchies, the powers are ordered accord-
ulation or slavery and send down power to assist temporal authorities to gov-
ing to functions of purification, illumination and perfection. Deacons oversee
ern prudently. The virtues, looking directly to the transcendent power, receive
purification by providing ethical instruction to those who do not carry "God's
divine enlightenment. with courage and determination. They are filled with a
likeness within them," i.e, catechumens, penitents, and the possessed.l'' Once
divine strength which allows them to perform great miracles. Third, the powers
purified, these souls are then lifted up to the "light-bearing order of priests"
or holy authorities receive God in a harmonious and uniform way and embody
which "guides the initiates to the divine vision of the sacraments." However,
the orderly nature of celestial and intellectual authority. They have power over
only the "divine order of hierarchs," the highest within the human hierarchy,
the devil and can help people resist the temptations offered to them by demons.
who are able to contemplate the intelligible. realm directly have the powers of
The final triad comprises the "godlike principalities, archangels and angels." It
consecration. The rites of bishops "are images of the power of the divinity, by
is closest to the world and is primarily concerned with revelation. The principal-
which the hierarchs perfect the holiest of symbols and all the sacred ranks.')
ities, imbued with princely powers, command the lower angels and direct them
All the hierarchs from pope to bishops have spiritual plenitudo potestatis, or the
to the fulfillment of divine orders. The archangels and angels "take care of our
power to sanctify, instruct and govern. The pope is the sole ruler of this monar-
own hierarchy." Archangels, the guardians of nations and individuals, oversee
chical structure. We shall return to a consideration of the role of the papacy in
prophecies, knowledge, and the understanding of God's will. At the bottom of
this hierarchical structure, and in particular to the question of th~ relationship
the heavenly hierarchy and closestto men are the angels. Angels are appointed
of the pontiff to the heavenly hierarchy, in the next chapter. However, for now
as men's guardians. They announce the lesser mysteries and intentions of God
it is enough to recognize that this vertically ordered Dionysian hierarchy served
and teach people how to live virtuously and righteously before God. Each of the
58 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 59

as the epistemic condition of possibility for the erection of a hierarchical spatial had to be reaffirmed whenever one of the original parties to the arrangement
architectonics that would support medieval theocracy for a millennium. died. Vassalage was a relationship of protection distinctive to a warrior class.
Originating in the personal ties of the barbarian war-bands, it flourished in the
Frankish kingdoms of the eighth century where the state was weak and neither
Feudalism and the Three Orders
family nor village could provide protection against external threats. Free men
Ernst Cassirer suggests that the distinction between the lower and higher worlds, entered into vassalage through the ritual of commendation and by taking an
which is fundamental in Dionysius's account of the hierarchies, operated as oath of fidelity. The homage or commendation paid by a vassal to the lord was
a structural principle that ordered the entire social and political imaginary of symbolized by placing joined hands between those of the lord, a kneeling proc...
medieval European culture. lamation of declaration and, finally, a kiss. These rituals signaled that the vassal
would enter into a relationship of dependence and protection with a king or
In religious life we find the ecclesiastical hierarchy that reaches from the lord for the rest of his life. In return for providing the lord with military assis-
Pope at the summit, to the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops down tance (auxilium) and counsel (consilium) he would receive protection and some
to the lower degrees of the clergy. In the state the highest power is con- form of maintenance. He might become a member of the lord's household or
centrated in the Emperor, who delegates this power to his inferiors, the receive wages in money or land. The homage ritual was subsequently reinforced
princes, the dukes, and all the other vassals. This feudal system is an exact by Christian rites of fealty, such as laying hands on gospels or relics. These
image and counterpart of the general hierarchical system; it is an expres- rites symbolized that the rights and duties of vassalage were based in mutual
sion and a symbol of that universal cosmic order that has been established fealty or fidelity. The Frankish Kings .Pepin III (747-68) and Charlemagne
by God and which, therefore, is eternal and imrnutable.P (768--814) promoted vassalage as a system of hierarchically arranged layers of
lords to extend their authority from their own vassi dominici to all their subjects.
Drawing on this observation, and in accordance with our working principle that Despite the king's position. at the apex of the pyramid of vassal relations he
territorial imaginaries are produced in heterogeneous discourses of space, this could not count on the support of all those at lower levels. The personal nature
section will discuss how the hierarchical spatial imaginary was manifested in of the links between lords and vassals meant that in .a situation where the king
feudalism and its ideology of the three orders. came into conflict with a lord it was likely that lord's vassals would fight on the
Feudalism was the dominant social order across much of Europe from the lord's behalf against the royal forces. As the thirteenth century French jurist
mid ninth to early thirteenth centuries. As in Marc Bloch's classic definition, John de Blanchot put it "the man of my man is not my man."19 Indeed, as the
feudalism denotes emergence of a plethora of private vassalages, following the break-down of the
Carolingian Empire in the middle of the ninth century, showed vassalage could
A subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e, the fief) exist independently of a centralized state authority. The forces that bound soci-
instead of a salary ... ; the supremacy of a class of specialized warriors; ties ety together were personal bonds rather than abstract ideas of respublica.
of obedience and protection which bind man to man and, within the war- In classical feudalism property relations of vassalage were embodied in
rior class, assume the distinctive form called vassalage; fragmentation of benefice or fiefs. Fiefs were units of property either created by a lord granting
authority .... 16 property, usually in . land, to someone to hold in fief to him, or through the
surrender of an alod or independent property to a lord which was then received
Feudalism incorporated two primary institutions: first, the personal relations back as a fief. A fief was distinguished from the servile holdings of peasants
of vassalage that bound alord to his freeman or noble follower; and second, and privately held alods-although the distinction became blurred following
the fief or the property relationship that vassalage implied. I? In feudal society the collapse of the Carolingian Empire when many fiefs became effectively
"the characteristic human bond was the subordinate's link with a nearby chief. alodized. With the revival of monarchical authority in the twelfth and thir-
From one level to another the ties thus formed...........like so many chains branching teenth centuries the alods were converted back to fiefs. Subsequently, practically
out indefinitely-joined the smallest to the greatest."18Compared· to serfdom, all social groups above the peasantry were bound together by vassalage relations.
which bound the peasant tenants to servile labor on lordly estates in perpetu- Each vassal owed duties both to his immediate lord above hi~ and to his own
ity, vassalage was more of a voluntary or reciprocal personal relationship which vassals below to whom he had granted a fief. As such "landholdings formed a
60 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 61

hierarchy-the 'hierarchy of tenure' or 'feudal pyramid'."20 Whereas Roman

human species has been divided into three: between the people of prayer (ora-
law concepts of dominion held that property rightswere absolute, the system of
toribus), the cultivators (agricultoribus) and the warriors (pugnatoribus); he pro-
fiefs was based in the convention that property was divisible. As Bloch points
vided the self-evident proof that each is the object of a part and at the same time
out in the feudal world the word "ownership" (propriete) as applied to landed
ofa reciprocal care."29 Duby maintains, following' Georges Dumezil, that the
pro~erty (un immeublei would have been almost meaniriglessr" Harold Berman bishops' scheme is derived from the prevalence in Indo-European civilizations
argues that according to feudal notions of property land "was not 'owned' by
ofa tripartite structure of sovereignty in which jurist, warrior and pri~~t consti-
anyone; it was 'held' by superiors in a ladder of 'tenures' leading to the king or
tUte its three different aspects of law, violence and religion. Other cultural his-
other supreme lord. (,Tenure,' derived from the Latin word tenere, 'to hold,' itself
torians, such as Jacques Le Goff, claim that the three orders imagery was derived
means 'a holding')."22 Further, property as fief was not clearly distinguished
from the Roman structure ofjupiter, Mars and Quirinus.P" The French bishops
from government, reflecting the absence of rigorous distinction between public
may also have drawn on Anglo-Saxon images in which the three orders serve as
and private realms. Fiefs carried jurisdictional rights and obligations that were
the pillars of monarchical authority. In Boethius' De' Consolations Pbilosopbiae,
settled in local courts.
authored or inspired by Alfred around 892, it is noted that for a king to sustain
The hierarchical structures of feudal society were symbolized in the rituals of
his power he must be able to call upon "sceal habban jebedmen & weorcmen"
chivalry. The rigid mores and .codes of chivalry, in Johan Huizinga's view "the
and in Wulfstan's letters to Aelfric he states that "every throne that rules effec-
crown of the whole social system," reinforced the conviction that the social, order
tively, bases its rule on three pillars: the men of prayer, the men of work and the
was divinely ordained.r" Value was determined by one's proximity in space to
warriors.T"
God: "if the degrees of the social edifice are conceived of as the lower steps of the
The three orders imaginary replaced the idea of a concentric order, pro-
throne of the Eternal, the value assigned to each order, will not depend on its util-
moted by the Carolingian authorities, in which the Empire was envisaged as
. proXimIty
ity, but on its sanctity-th at is to say, Its ' . . to t h e hi:Ig h est pace.
' I "24 Th e
the terrestrial reflection of the kingdom of God. Just as God ruled from the
social hierarchy of feudalism was also symbolized by depictions of God as a mag-
centre of the civitas Dei so the Emperor occupied the centre of his kingdom.
isterial figure in Carolingian art. Pictures showing God enthroned as an impe-
"In this sphere, one unique centre, the king; anointed by Christ, image of a
rial sovereign, the Pantocrator, his head encircled by thernandorla, affirmed that
single God, he presided over the destinies of all Christian people to whom he
"God had become a feudal lord or Dominus."25 A similar message is found in texts
had the responsibility to guide them towards their salvation."32 With the demise
like the Libri Carolini which reiterated St. Augustine's assertion that the "Creator
of the Carolingian empire this monarchical imagery became obsolete and was
is called creator with respect to his creatures just as the master is called master with
replaced by a plethora of diverse imaginaries promoting the legitimacy of the
respect to his servants," and St Anselm's Cur Deus Homo which portrayed God as
different groups-heretical orders, the Cluniacs etc.-which proliferated in a
a feudal lord owed vassal service by angels, monks, and peasants.r"
world of feudal structures based in lordship and church authority. Whereas the
Georges Duby has argued that rnost significant collective "mental representa-
concentric model had assigned the Church a privileged positi~nat the king's
tion" or imaginaire of feudal society was that of the three orders, first articulated
side, now it was just one, albeit the wealthiest, of several competing seignior-
by two eleventh century bishops in Northern France.V In the poem Carmen ad
ies. The new social status of the Church as an enriched part of the seigniory
Rodbertum regem, Adalberon bishop of Laon declared that
required the elaboration of a new mental representation: a modified Carolingian
model. Adalberon and Gerard did not totally abandon the idea of monarchy;
The celestial people then form more bodies, and the people of the earth are
it could not be dismissed entirely for just as there was only one sovereign in
arranged in its image .... The house of God, which i~.~ believed to be one, is
the civitas Dei so there should be only one supreme ruler on earth. However,
therefore divided into three: here below, some prey (orant), others fight (pug-
they transferred sovereign authority "into the realm of the unreal, no longer
nant) and others still work (laborant). These three parts co-exist and cannot h powers 0 f t h e supe~~atura1"33
. tne
conserved in the realm of appearance but In .
be separated; the services rendered by one provide the conditions by which
If the three orders model was only incidentally an instrument of monarchical
the others can operate.r"
ideology, it was very much a hierarchy. The priests resided at the top and the
peasants endured at the bottom. In the era of bastard feudalism, 'however, the
Likewise, the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium records a speech by Gerard
institution of monarchy could not function as a viable pivot, upon which this
bishop of Cambrai in which "he demonstrated that from the beginning" the
hierarchy could he supported and so its proponents turned toward the Christian
 Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 63
62 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

patriarchs in order to reproduce "sur terre l'ordre celeste.T? Although monarchy according to the socio-professional status of different estates, rather than the
was not an integral component of the three orders imaginary it could, however, will of God or divine law. The humanistic tendencies of this social imaginary
be readily absorbed into it. Thus with the resurgence of Capetian power at the prompted a counter response from the Church authorities who promoted the idea
end of the twelfth century, Andreas Capellanus in De amore and Guillaume Le of Christendom as divinely ordained hierarchy within one unified body, albeit
Breton in Philippidos libri XII remolded the three orders model to legitimise a a bicephalous one, in which the two heads are the pope and emperor.t? In the
monarchical structure of aurhority.P next chapter we shall consider in some detail how this idea of Christendom as a
Adalberon and Gerard constructed their theocratic edifice for the three divinely ordained hierarchy, and the particular notions of territoriality it implied,
orders using building blocs provided by three of the Christian Fathers: from established the conditions' of possibility for medieval political discourse.
St Augustine came the notion that order is both peace and the way to God;
Gregory the Great offered a prescription for ordering Christian society in rigid, Hierarchies of Space in Medieval Cosmology and Geography
almost military, structures of subordination; and Dionysius provided the con-
ceptual framework, the structural analogies, which connected the visible to the I suggestedin the last chapter that representations of territorial sovereignty are
invisible, celestial to temporal society and enabled the bishops to "rattacher enclosed within a culture's spatial imaginary. This section discusses the extent
l'ordre politique a celui des etoiles.T" Exegetes of the Fathers argued that when to which medieval understandings of space as represented in cosmology and
God became incarnate as Christ the hierarchical order became immanent in the geography were configured by hierarchy. Today geography and cosmology are
terrestrial world; the two hierarchies were united in Christ's body. The Church, considered to be different branches of knowledge but in medieval learning they
instituted by Christ as his successor, therefore "constituted the entire terrestrial combined in a set of general reflections on man and his place in the world.
However, as EdmundoO'Gor1llan has pointed out, the vocabularies of medie-
order: from the Church and through the Church divine law spread out over
humanity."37 The Dionysian model had particular appeal to the champions of val cosmology and geography did make significant distinctions between various
Episcopal authority for not only did it demote the monast~ries as rival sources of categories of being. The "universe" designated the totality of the celestial and
spiritual authority, it also made the bishops the direct recipients of celestial wis- sub-lunar spheres. The "terraqueous globe" referred to the entirety of the earth's
dom, including that pertaining to political action. It placed the bishops above sphere, both land and water. The Orbis Terrarum or Island ofthe Eartf;; denoted
human law at the apex of the pyramid. The Dionysian framework allowed "the the known interconnected continental landmass of Europe, Asia a'~d Africa.
ecclesiastical hierarchy to represent itself as an 'entre-deux'able to progressively Finally "the world" signified man's cosmic dwelling place and was generally
thought to be contained within the Orbis Terrarum-few could envisage that
emancipate humanity from its spatioternporal constraints, allowing it to emerge
in ways ever more total and pure into the strictly intelligible world, incorporeal men could be living in the far away antipodal lands separated by vast seas. 41
and in-temporal, that of the divine.T" Once the three orders framework was Christian theologians rejected the ideal of the ancients that the cosmos was
reimagined as a theocratic hierarchy, the bishops could abandon any pretence complete and harmonious; a realm of beauty, order and dignity. Rather, man's
that the three functions had equal status and mutual relations of exchange. world was seen to be tainted by sin and only the celestial world remained as a
Their relative orders of merit could be divined from those Dionysius established space of perfection. In this dualist vision "the concept of the 'cosmos' broke up
among the angels. Gilbert of Limerick's De statu ecclesiae 1110-39, for example, into two diametrically opposed concepts: civitas Dei and civitas terrena, with
described society as a pyramid with the clergy at the top. the latter closely' bordering on the concept of civitas diaboli."42 The opposition
between earth and heaven was not conceived of as one of terrestrial life in space
I mean to say that those who are at the apex of the pyramid are those who as opposed to heavenly life existing in some form of non-space, for life in heaven
pray; and since some among them are married, therefore we have nominated also unfolded in space. 43 Opposed to heavenly life, earthly life became a value
both men and women. The labourers, men and women, are to the left of the category with moral and religious significance. Christianity's spatial dualism was
pyramid. To the right are the warriors, again both men and wornen.i'" reinforced by the vertical structures ofDionysius' hierarchies. As A. J. Gurevich
notes, "[cjosrnic space, .social space and ideological space were all given hierar-
chic structure" and the beings within; them were distributed on various planes
Images and texts representing the three orders appeared up to the Renaissance.
according to their relative degrees of perfection.t'' The values of different spaces
However, its influence waned from the second half of the twelfth century as it
were determined according to the places that they were allocated on the vertical
was gradually replaced by a hierarchy in which the tanks were distinguished
64 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 65

axis of being. Above was associated with God, nobility, purity, and goodness and substance."52 Beatrice tells Dante that because the heavenly bodies are made up
below with Satan, baseness, evil, and coarseness.P The text which most explic- of ether they are neither heavy nor light. 53 In the heavens the rotating spheres
itly inscribes this spatial value system into the cosmological landscape is Dante's carry along the stars and planets which have no motion themselves. Above all
Divine Comedy. In Inferno the hierarchy of sins is symbolized by the correspond- is the Prime Mover, primum movens immobile, who is one and eternal and upon
ing position of the sinner. Men are already judged and ;"put in the place that is whom the whole of heaven and all of nature depends. According to Beatrice
theirs forever; the physical character of each station accords with the ethical worth the hierarchical structure reaches fromthe very top of the universe to its low-
of its inhabitants.T'" : est place. She tells Dante that although men's souls, the spheres and the angels
The medieval cosmological imagination combined elements of Aristotelian were created directly by God and are thus immortal, the elernentsjand their
physics, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Christian theology. From Aristotle came the compounds, as well as the souls of plants and animals, were created by the
assumption that "an unbridgeable gap separates the 'above' from the 'below,' the intermediate agencies of the heavenly bodies.P" The order of things is tightly
'higher'· heavenly world from the 'lower' sublunar world."47 The universe takes circumscribed:
the shape of a sphere, the perfect solid form, eternal and finite. However, as
Johannes de Sacroboscostates in De Sphaera (c.1230), the eternal and perfect are all things, whatever their mode,
placed over and above the mutable and imperfect. observe an inner order. It is this form
that makes the universe resemble God.
The machine of the universe is divided into two, the ethereal and the ele- ... all Being within this order, by the laws
mentary regions. The elementary region, existing subject to continual alter- of its own nature is impelled to find
ation, is divided into four. For there is earth, placed, as it were, as the centre its proper station round its Primal Cause.P
in the middle of all, about which is water, about water air, about air fire,
which is pure and not turbid there and reaches to the sphere of the moon, as In the Almagest Ptolemy had positioned the seven planets according to the rela-
Aristotle says in his book of Meteorology.48 tive time they took to rotate the Earth. The fixed stars were assigned to the out-
ermost sphere and Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, whose motions were most similar
In the sublunar world nature is corruptible and objects are impermanent. The to them, were placed furthest from the earth. The moon, whose motion was the
elements are ordered into concentric circles according to their relative degrees most dissimilar to that of the stars, was placed nearest the earth. The remain-
of baseness: the earth at the centre is surrounded by water, then air and, finally, ing three planets, Sun, Mercury and Venus all shared an annual orbit around
fire. Dante's depiction of the sublunar world follows this pattern precisely. At the earth. Their relative positions were assigned in accordance with astrolog-
the centre of the universe is the Earth, "the bedrock of the elemental core" ical tradition. The Sun Was allocated to the middle sphere, which left Venus
(although, as Arthur Lovejoy points out, strictly speaking Dante's universe is and Mercury beneath it. Christian theologians adapted the Ptolemaic system
diabolocentric in that its core is Lucifer's abode at the bottom of the upturned to make the cosmos comply with the description of the heavens in Genesis.
funnel extending into the interior of the northern hemispherej.t" Above Earth lie The biblical firmament was identified as the eighth sphere of the fixed stars.
the waters or oceans which cover three quarters of the world. Above the waters The waters above the firmament, which were understood to be hard and made
is the sphere of air, untainted by any cold vapors from the sea or Earth. Dante of crystal, became the crystalline heaven. The heaven created on the first day
and Virgil enter this sphere while climbing Mount Purgatory "that soars highest was allocated to the outermost sphere, the motionless Empyrean, the ultimate
to Heaven from the sea."50 On reaching the summit Dante enters the bounteous container of the universe and the dwelling place of God and the elect. Dante's
Garden of Eden and inhales "that free air open to heaven and earth."51 Then, cosmological landscape accurately represents this composite scheme, combing
accompanied by Beatrice, he ascends the sphere of fire!1i o the moon, the lowest ancient wisdom and Christian dogma.
sphere of the heavens.
In the heavens, by contrast, the celestial bodies are made of quinta essen- The moon is "la prima stella," Mercury ceil secondo regno," Venu~ ceil terzo
tia or imperishable substance and revolve for eternity through geometrically ciel," the spirits met in the sun are "la quarta famiglia," Mars is "questa
perfect cycles: "all is changeless, eternal, divine. Motion is in circles, space is quinta soglia," and "piuIevato" than the last heaven, Jupiter is the "stella
filled with ether, the heavenly bodies as well as their spheres are of an ethereal sesta," Saturn "il settimo splendore." The starry heaven is alluded to as "Ia
66 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 67

spera ottava." The PrimumMobile is "il cilevelocissimo," "il maggior corpo." by the south frigid zone: next, those ["Perioikoi"] who are separated from
T h empyrean,
E "·1 . 1 c h" e pura 1',,,
1 ere . ca 11e d "I' u 1·"
uce, IS trrnate spera, "...
56 their Antoeci, that is, the inhabitants of the underside of zone, by their torrid
zone; they are in turn separated from us by the north frigid zone. 61
In Canto XXVII of Paradiso Danteand Beatrice reach the Primum Mobile,
the sphere "that spins with it as it goes all of the' universe.T" The ultimate Medieval cosmologists generally accepted the idea of a spherical earth. However,
source of the motions of the planets and starry skies is God the Prime Mover. a minority of Christian theologians, citing the authority of the Christian
It was thought that the spheres moved due to one of two causes. Either each fathers, considered it to be heretical. In The Divine Institutions (Diuinarum
of Dionysius' nine orders of angels had responsibility for the movement of one lnstitutionum) c. 303-11 Lactantius had rejected it in favor of the flat earth
sphere which they imparted through fervor and adoration. Or, the ardent long- theory, arguing that" it is impossible that the sky is below the earth."62 Similarly
ing of "every particle of the crystalline heaven to be united with every particle St. Augustine had argued that it was only scientific conjecture rather than "his-
of the most divine tranquil heaven" causes an intense gyrating movement that is torical knowledge" (i.e., biblical knowledge) that the "earth is suspended within
passed on to the other spheres. 58lt is love or the striving for perfect union that the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as
sets the spheres in motion. All such movement proves the existence of a First on the other."63
Mover who is "loved, / desired by all creation, sole, eternal/who moves the Macrobius mentions that torrid and frigid zones separate the four continents.
turning Heavens, Hjmselfunmoved.T" As one progresses down through the Here he is drawing on Parmenides' theory of the five climatic zones, which also
ranks of the hierarchy so one encounters 'less movement. Finally, at the bottom had considerable influence on 'the medieval geographical imaginary. The two
there is the heavy immobile earth that is the domain of the geographers. peripheral zones lying between the Arctic and Antarctic circles and their cor-
w. G. L. Randles maintains that the discourse of medieval geography enter- responding poles were considered to be uninhabitable because they were glacial.
tained an uneasy synthesis between the Christian chorographical representa- Also considered uninhabitable and, for many, un-traversable was the equatorial
tion of the world as the flat oecumene and the classicala,stronomical theory of a area or Torrid Zone lying between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, whose
round earth.P" The notion of a spherical terraqueous globe was of ancient prov- intenseheat no man could hope to survive. This left two temperate zones where
enance. Aristotle had hypothesized that the earth was a sphere from the premise life Was theoretically possible: one located between the Arctic Circle" and the
that all objects fall to the earth's centre to find their natural location. Building Tropic of Cancer and the other between the Antarctic Circle and the lTropic of
on Aristotle, Crates de Mallos (c. 180-50BC) proposed the four island theory. Capricorn. In Cicero's words,
Crates had noted a contradiction between estimates of the circumference of
the earth's sphere by mathematicians, such as Eratosthenes, and the empiri- You can also make out certain belts, so to speak, which encircle the Earth;
cally known extent of the oecumene which, lying between the Ganges and the you, observe that the two which are furthest apart and lie under the poles of
Pillars of Hercules, could, at best, only account for a quarter of the sphere. In the heavens, are stiff with cold, whereas the belt in the middle, the greatest
order to counter this imbalance in the sphere, which offended the Greek sense one, is scorched by the heat of the sun. The two remaining belts are habit-
of symmetry, Crates drew a globe with three other "continents." Crates' scheme able: one, the southern, is inhabited by men who plant their feet in opposite
was subsequently outlined in Macrobius' fifth century Commentary on Cicero's direction to yours and have nothing to do with your people; the other, the
Dream ofScipio. northern" is inhabited by you Rornans.P"

Then referring to our quarter, indeed, and speaking about those who are Macrobius' assumption in this passage that the antipodes were inhabited was
separated from us and from each other, he [Cicero] says, Some nations stand not universally accepted in medieval geography. The four island theory cer-
obliquely, some transversely, and some even stand diametrically opposite us; tainly implied that it was likely that men lived in other continents than the
hence not only the barriers that separate us from another people but also the Orbis Terrarum. This conclusion was uncontroversial for the ancients but posed
barriers that separate all of them from each other are intended. They must be a dilemma for the Christian theologians who had to resolve it with the scrip-
divided as follows: those who are separated from us by the torrid zone, whom tural doctrine that all mankind was descended from Adam. Their solution was
theGreeks namedantoikoi, the Antoeci; next, those who live on the under- to confine humanity to the Orbis Terrarum and to declare the other continents
side of the southern hemisphere, the Antipodes, separated from the Antoikoi uninhabitable on the basis of their inaccessibility. Thus, a hierarchical division
68 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 69

of the earth's sphere emerged in which one of the four continents came to have centre of the Earth. The rest, besides the islands, is entirely covered by water
greater value than the others. Gradually the four islands combined into two; according to the common opinion of the philosophers.Y" However, a more pop-
forming a simple opposition: the oecumene in the temperate boreal zone and an ular explanation was provided by the creation narrative in Genesis.H'salm 103),
antipodal continent in the temperate austral zone. St. Augustine was happy to which recorded how, on the third day, God ordered the waters to assemblein one
dismiss "the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite location (congregatio aquae). Although Aristotle's Physics had not specified the
side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with proportional relations that existed between the elements, medieval philosophy
their feet opposite ours" as being "on no ground credible."65 It was absurd, he of the natural world established a ratio of 1:10 between the volume of one and
conjectured, to suggest "that some men might have taken ship and traversed the the next in decreasing order of density. According to this principle the surface
whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side ofthe world to the other, and thus area of earth .left uncovered by the water, which corresponded to the 1¢hristian
even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first oecumene; remained insignificant with respect to the immensity of the sphere of
man."66 Later St. Isidore of Seville, rather less adamantly, admitted there could water an d as suchh "pouvalt-e·
. . . 11e etre representee comme pate.
A. .. I I . . . 1 "69
be a body of land in the southern hemisphere but denied it could be inhabited. As medieval voyagers began to travel further, recording ever extending coast-
Dante seems to have adopted a similar position. Before he begins his ascent out lines, one solution to the problem of the antipodal lands was to maintain that
of the lower depths of hell by climbing up the cavern formed by Lucifer's fall, the Orbis Terrarum was considerably larger than had been previously thought.
Virgil explains to him that, The authority invoked to support this thesis was the Book of Esdras which
claimed, contrary to Aristotle, that the ratio of land to sea was 6:1. If this was
You are under the other hemisphere where you stand; the case it could be surmised that the Orbis Terrarum was an island ofsuch mag-
the sky above us is the half opposed nitude that some of its inhabitants could have reached the antipodes by land and
to that which canopies the great dry land. therefore justifiably claim descent from Adam. Columbus would cite Esdras
On this side he plunged down from heaven's height, as proof that a sea voyage was possible from the western (Iberian) to eastern
and the land that spread here once hid in the sea (Chinese) shores of the island earth. However this was a minority view and the
and fled North to our hemisphere for fright;67 standard view of the Orbis Terrarium, as expressed by Sacrobosco, held that it
was located "between the semicircle drawn from east to west along the equator
The implication being that apart from Mount Purgatory, which was pushed up and the semicircle carried from east to west through the Arctic pole." Not all of
by the force of Lucifer's fall, no dry land exists in this hemisphere. Randles notes it was inhabited, however, "since that zone which lies between the tropics is said
that the views of more modern thinkers like Roger Bacon in his Opus Majus to be uninhabitable because of the fervour of the sun ... those two zones which
(1264/67) and Albert Le Grand in De Natura Locorum (first printed 1514) that are described by the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle about the poles of the
the Torrid Zone could be crossed and that the austral hemisphere was not only world are uninhabitable because of too great cold."70 Pierre d'Ailly writes that
habitable but inhabited, were sidelined due to a .lack of supporting empirical
evidence. According to Pliny, Solin, Grose, Isidore and many other cosmographers or
In so far as the Scriptures made no mention of land in the southern hemi- describers of the World, in agreement with certain astrologers like Albaregni,
sphere, St. Augustine readily concluded that it was entirely covered by water. the Earthis divided into three parts, that isAsia, Africa and Europe ... the
This relates to another topic of contention in medieval geography concerning ancients did not divide these three parts of the Globe equally. Thus Asia
the relative proportions of land and water that covered the earth's sphere. Here extends eastward from the Midi until the Septentrion; Europe goes from the
medieval thinkers faced a paradox. An axiom of Aristotelian physics was that Septentrion to the west and Africa from the west to the Midi. From which it
lighter elements entirely enclose heavier ones. Therefore.logically all land should appears. that two of these divisions, Europe and Africa, occupy a half of the
be immersed under water. How then to explain the presence of those lands that World, while only Asia occupies the other half?l
rose out of the seas? In the Imago Mundi (1410) Pierre d'Ailly offers a possible
Aristotelian explanation: "the Water does not surround all the Earth, but leaves This landmass, Dante's "gran secca," consisted of the dry land God !ltad gath-
a part uncovered for the habitation of animals. There is a part of the Earth ered together, as recorded in Genesis I: 9. According to Ptolemy's calculations
which is less heavy than the Other; this is why it is higher and farther from the it extended about 180 degrees oflongitude and, apart from a small meridional
70 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Medieval Hierarchy, Order, and Space • 71

strip, was confined between the equator and arctic pole. Dante's oecumene had semi-fantastical travel narratives recalling the experiences of personal pilgrim-
an "extension less than one seventh ofthe entire terraqueous surface."72 ages following the route from Jerusalem to the Earthly Paradise.V Mandeville's
In cartography. the .land that made up the oecumene was traditionally rep- journal recalls the inscription near the St. Sepulchre "Hie Deus rex noster ante
resented by the T-O motif of the mappae-mundi. The boundaries of the Orbis saecula est salutem in medio terre."78 Spaces are accorded distinctive moral values
Terrarum were determined by the Ocean Sea-the 0 on the maps.73 For Dante in these narratives. As Yuri Lottman writes "[gjeography becomes a kind of
"the sea that girdles all the land" was the only limit to the' Empire's potential ethics."79 A journey through space symbolizes a passage to salvation or dam-
extension r'" Since man possessed a material body it was natural that his world nation. In the Commedia, Dante's journey unfolded in accordance with the
should be located on .the soil of the oecumene. However, this correspondence established tropes for representing the moral journey of a righteous person or
implied that the rest of the universe comprised foreign or alien spaces. The sin ner in space: from the parental home to a monastery or house of sin; from
Ocean was certainly regarded as a hostile environment. Although it formed part one's own country to holy or impure lands; and from earthly lands to paradise
of the terraqueousglobe, it also symbolizes the limits of man's world. In terms or hell. John G. Demaray reads the Commedia as a figural pilgrimage:' Dante's
of geography "the Ocean was nothingness or a void; it was not considered sus- fantastical ascent up Mount Purgatory in the southern hemisphere mirrors and
ceptible of juridical possession or of being an object on which the sovereignty of evokes the real journey of palm-bearing pilgrims up. Mt Sinai in the northern
princes could be exercised."75 Consequently; argues O'Gorman, the world was hernisphere.f"
not just man's home in the cosmos but also a jail with impregnable boundaries. Compared to Europe and Africa, Asia, occupying the entire upper semi-
Furthermore, it was only because God had ordered the congregatio aquae that circle, was represented as a vast landmass on the mappae-mundi. Europeans
the world existed at all. As such the world really belonged to God and man was imagined Asia as both the source of great wealth and marvels and the domain
little more than a tenant or serf on land over which he had neither absolute pro- of Prester John's theocratic utopia. The spaces of the oecumene, especially its
priety nor usage. Asian parts, tended to be defined in terms of their relative alterity to the culture
The crossbar or T of the mappae-mundiwas formed by the intersection of of Christendom. Although Europe and Christendom were not coterminous-
the Tanais and Nile rivers. It divided the upper semi-circle of Asia from the the Moorish settlements in Spain were a constant source of embarrassment
lower quarter-circles of Europe and Africa, which wereti\~hemselves separated to those who sought to locate the civitas terrarum within the boundaries of
by the Mediterranean, the T's down-stroke. This perpendicular arrangement the Roman Empire-c--t'the geographical horizon was a spiritual one, that of
evoked the form of the Christian cross. This Christian symbolism was further Christian Europe.Y" In both geographical and cultural terms the I?tzantine
reinforced by the location ofJerusalem at the heart of the mappae-mundi. In the Empire was the closest. The Byzantines occupied a liminal place in th~t~estern
ancient, or at least Roman, geographical imaginary, Rome, the Eternal City, Christian geographical imaginary fot as schismatic Christians they simulta-
was situated at the centre of the world. However, as the pagan religions of Rome neously belonged to and were independent of Christendom. The chronicles
were gradually replaced by Christianity the focal point moved east and by the of the first crusade record that the Western crusaders both respected and
time of the Crusades Jerusalem was the fulcrum of the world. The appropriate- were somewhat envious of the material riches and cultural sophistication of
ness of this was signaled by the fact that on midsummer's day at twelve noon the Constantinople. Islam, however, occupied a more clearly defined space) that
sun casts no shadow. Dante, for example, placed Jerusalem directly beneath "the of the infidel, the "enemy-elect" with whom, at least in Crusade propaganda,
high point of its [the sun's] meridian circle."76 We have seen how in Christian there could be no reconciliation. Christian views of Muslims ranged from
cosmology space is ordered hierarchically: different places within the hierar- polemical crusade narratives such as Jacques de Vitry's HistoriaOrientalis in
chy have different values. The same principle underpinned the arrangement of which Muslims were depicted as subhuman and Mahomet as an anti-Chrlst to
geographical space. Jerusalem was the sovereign centre of medieval space, the the more objective, if still patronizing, views of Aquinas. 82 In the chansons de
place to which all other spaces were orientated. On the extraordinary Ebstorf geste the representation of Muslims as beasts defiling the sanctity of the Holy
map which incorporates the entire oecumene into Christ's body, Christendom's Land conveniently overlooked the prosperous mercantile contacts that trading
orientation toward the Holy City is symbolized by an image of the resurrection cities like Venice maintained with Muslim traders and the diffusion of Arab
in which the omphalos of Christ's body and the site of the Holy Sepulchre share science into European cultures during the Renaissance of the twelfth century.
the same coordinates. The representation of the eastern landmass as the site of The third zone of alterity was occupied by other pagans, who, although they
spiritual journeys of enlightenment in the mappae-mundi was replicated in the worshipped idols, were, unlikethe Muslims, regarded as porenrialChrisrlans,
72 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

Such peoples on the northern and eastern reaches of Christendom, in Seleucia,

Pomerania, and Prussia to the north of Poland, were subjected to proselytizing
campaigns of forceful conversion to ensure that they did not succumb to the
false promises of the Byzantine and Muslim missionaries. Finally, at the eastern
extremities of the Orbis Terrarum were the Mongols. For the Christians of cen-
tral Europe who were the victims of their regular raids these men were the fear- CHAPTER 5
some, bloodthirsty, monstrous Tartars-.However others believed that they Were
the Christian peoples who had been converted by thelegendary Prester John.
Indeed, in the thirteenth century several missions were sent to the East with the Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval
intention of creating an anti-Muslim Christian alliance. The project was, how-
ever, abandoned following Marco Polo's descriptions of the Tarter's social and Political Discourse
political life, which Were deemed incompatible with basic Christian tenets.
Our review of the medieval culture of space has shown that the perception
and representation of man's-being-in-space was, in several different registers,
determined by the figure of hierarchy. The medieval culture of space was struc-
tured by the rigid hierarchies that Dionysius had identified as the divinely autho-
rized design of all celestial and terrestrial being. If the Kantian ideal of the space

W
of modernity is abstract, homogeneous, universal and empty, the heterogeneous e have established that the principle ofhierarchy conditioned medi-
spaces of the medieval imaginary are differentiated, full of particular signifi- eval ideas of place, space, and man's being in them. This chapter
cances, meanings and values. Such criteria were generally determined by their examines medieval political discourse in order to determine whether
relative positions in the hierarchy of things. Dionysius' hierarchies with their a similar spatial logic of higher and lower, inferior and superior, also under-
value laden spaces and places provided the basic structural principles under- scored medieval ideas of sovereign-territoriality. To be sure, the term medieval
pinning the social order of feudalism and its three orders, Dante's vision of the political discourse is problematic. This is especially so if one maintains that
cosmos, and the discourse of medieval geography. Medieval political discourse post-Westphalian political theory and practice is modern precisely because it
was also interwoven within the knowledge structures and cultural practices of emancipated itself from Christian theology. Certainly, the Christianization of
Christianity. Thus we might expect that the conditions of possibility for the classical political philosophy by medieval political theology produced an intri-
articulation of the medieval territorial imaginary were also determined by hier- cate weave, an interlacing of temporal and spiritual concerns, that makes it diffi-
archy. We shall pursue this hypothesis in the following chapter. cult to identify a discrete realm of political discourse as such. Such issues cannot
be resolved here and I shall not attempt to do so. Nevertheless, historians of
medieval political discourse have argued that the templates for many of the
concepts characteristic of modern. political. thought were established between
the ninth and fourteenth centuries when institutional rivalry and ideological
upheaval combined in the "crisis of church and state."
At the heart of this crisis was a tripartite struggle for supremacy between the
institutions of Papacy, Empire, and Monarchy. This contest, which constituted
the essence ofmedieval international politics, was both a physical armed conflict
and a war of ideology. At stake in the ideological struggle between sacerdotium,
imperium, and regnum was the nature and legitimacy of political sovereignty
within Christian European society. These three bodies promoted alternative
visions of Christian political society as Ecclesia or Christianitas, humana civilitas
or civitas, each of which entailed different settlements between ter~itory and
74 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

sovereignty;' In this respect they articulated variations of the medieval territo-

rial imaginary. However, these differences of ernphas is were subsumed within
a common understanding that space was structured hierarchically. In terms of
territoriality, this translated into the undisputed recognition that over and above
the civitas terrena lay the civitas Dei-the divine font of all sovereignty. Papal
universalists, imperial dualists, and monarchists each claimed that they and
they alone occupied the liminal space at the fulcrum of the political cosmos
between the celestial kingdom of the civitas Dei and the mundane world of
Christendom. From this privileged place they were able to gaze upon the civitas
Dei and know God's intentions for the best political arrangement of men on
earth. It is with these rival claims that this chapter is primarily occupied.

Secerdotium
The meaning that medieval actors gave to their political actions and sought to
convey in their political tracts can only be understood within the context of
the hegemony of Christianity, which permeated every aspect of medieval life.
Knowledge was produced in, communicated through, and controlled by eccle-
siastical institutions..Therefore it makes sense to .start our investigation into the
hierarchical conditions of possibility within which the medieval discourse of
territorial sovereignty could be articulated with the doctrines of papal univer-
salism which, while contested, largely determined the parameters of political
debate in the first centuries of the second millennium.
The doctrine ofpapal universalism, initially developedduring the pontificate
of Pope Gregory VII (1073---85) and promoted by Canonists well into the four-
teenth century, is a substantial and complex body of thought.r Nevertheless, its
essence is conveyed by the Skrziczick miniature, which appears in a fourteenth
century Czech edition of Gratianof Bologna's Decretum (c. 1140). Gratianhad
standardized medieval canon law and subsequent editions of the Decretum con-
tained further commentary by the Decretists on the basic principles he had set
out. In the opening DistinctionesGratian discusses the proper limits of ecclesi-
astical power and concludes from the fact that the Church was founded on the
rock of faith by Christ "who conferred simultaneously on the blessed key-bearer
of eternal life [Peter] the rights over a heavenly and an earthly empire" that the
Emperor's imperial power was ultimately derived from the pope.f Figure 5.1 The Skrzicziek Miniature, in Gratian of Bologna, Decretum:
The Skrziczick miniature (figure 5.1) is a representation of the Dionysian hier- Distinctiones 3> Pars 1) c. 1140. Archives of the Prague Castle, Prague, Czech
archical principle of emanation in the political register. Christ's celestial sover- Republic. © Archives of the Prague Castle.
eignty is transmitted first to the pope, as Peter's successor, and then on to the
lower ecclesiastical and temporal authorities on earth.f The miniature empha-
sizes a rigid spatial division between the upper· and lower realms. The upper
level shows the civitas Dei in heaven, signified by a background of stars. Christ,
76 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 77

enthroned and holding a papal tiara, is flanked by two kneeling angels bearing in De institutione regia (c. 830) "[ajll the faithful must know that the Universal
a scepter and a crown, symbols of temporal authority. Heaven and earth are Church is the Body of Christ, that the same Christ is its head and that there
separated by a neutral area of floral motifs that signify the atmosphere of the are in it mainly two exalted persons, the priestly and the kingly.'" The implica-
universe. The Petrine throne, placed near the apex of the Earth's hemispheric tion being that political authority was derived from and exercised within rather
curve, is occupied by the pope in his capacity as vicarius Christi. The exten- than over or besides the Church. In the twelfth century, as states began to refer
sion of the pope's halo into the heavenly sphere illustrates the direct passage of to themselves as bodies politic, the Roman Church reasserted its status as the
Christ's authority to the pope. Within his person, it becomes bifurcated and then supreme political corporation by deploying the formula corpus Christi mysticum,
passed on down to the ecclesiastical and temporal authorities. The pope hands with its connotations of spiritual foundation and divine' starus."
the book conveying the truths of the eternal scriptures t();, a cardinal and gives a During the period of the crisis of church and state, two traditions of hiero-
sword indicating the duty of material protection of the C'hurch to the emperor. cratic thought emerged: Ecclesia and Christianitas, each of which promoted a
By depicting the moment when the emperor accepts the gladius materialis from different understanding of the corporational nature of the Church.l" .Drawing
the pope at his investiture this image reinforces the message that the emperor is on the Carolingian view of the functional nature of government, the?~iiotion· of
an ecclesiastical ruler, a minister and servant of God who receives his authority Ecclesia, which persisted into the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, presented
from the pope rather than directly from Christ. The rest of the lower level shows regnum and sacerdotium as two dignitaries, two spiritual eyes, within one body,
the, structure of the hierocratic system on earth. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy unum corpus." Within Ecclesia the temporal and spiritual constituted two sides
authority passes down from the cardinal to two bishops and then on to a monk of the same body, two aspects of one power, potestas duplex. Lay power could
and priest in accordance with Dionysian principles. Beneath the emperor are two have no autonomy or independence from spiritual power: it is a subordinate
kings, one holding a royal staff indicating legislative power and the other wield- part of the whole that exists to bring into being the Augustinian pax terrena.
ing a sword symbolizing executive power. 'These, in turn, have as their subordi- Michael Wilks argues that until around 1300 societas Christiana tended to be
nates a knight and noble. The miniature presents the societas Christiana as being equated with Ecclesia so that all Christians, and potentially all men, formed
contained within the greater political organization of the civitatis rex Christus. one indivisible corporate entity, unum corpus, animated by Christian faith but
Christ resident in the celestial realm is the ultimate source of sovereignty and the existing as a universal body politic.P Ecclesia was equivalent to a Platonic ideal
emperor as an ecclesiastical ruler is subordinate to papal authority. whose universal essence in Christ was reflected by the organization of human
The spatial composition of this image conveys a clear hierarchy of powers: society on earth. It embraced all men and corporate institutions ina hierarchi-
the emperor in the lower position is the servant or vassal of the pope who occu- cal structure.
pies a more elevated place. This hierarchical imagetywascomplemented by the
canonist representation of Christendom as one body, with the pope as its head. The Ecclesia is both a single corporation itself and the greatest of a hierarchy
In his controversial bull Unam Sanctam (1302) Boniface VIII (1294-1303) of corporations stretching from the whole world down to the .lowesr political
asserted that there is only one holy Catholic Church outside of which there can unit, the village or manor, by way of the kingdom, the province and the city.
be no remission of sins. This church "quae unum corpus mysticum repraesentat, Each of the communities is at the same time as much a civil as an ecclesias-
cuius caput Christus, Christivero Deus" ("represents one mystical body whose tical corporation: the universal church is the universal empire; the kingdom
head is Christ, while the head of Christ is God.")? This body is a unity, the is equally an episcopal province, the city is a bishopric, and the village is a
parish.l'
seamless garment of the Lord which was not cut but fell by lot. Therefore
there is one body and one head of this one and only church, not two heads as As with other corporational metaphors, the constituent parts of Ecclesia have
though it were a monster, namely Christ and Christ's vicar, Peter and Peter's different functions. For the whole to work effectively each must be allocated
successors, for the Lord said to this Peter, 'Feed my sheep.'(John 21: 17).6 to its proper place by the head. Only the Pope at the summit of the clerical
hierarchy can have direct access to divine wisdom in matters of faith but also
Prior to Gregory VII's pontificate the Church was idenrified as corpus Christi, of law, government, and jurisdiction. He alone can understand the architec-
the Body of Christ, "besides which or in which the 'states' functioned as govern- tonic structure ofthe whole as planned by the divine architect. The pope's role
ments rather than as autonomous bodies."? As Bishop Jonas of Orleans insisted is to maintain God's established order on earth, to ensure that the co,:ngregatio
~:';Q.:
78 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 79

fidelium, forming the single polity of Christendom, will achieve its end by being embraced every conceivable aspect of human life."21 Ladner is more cautious
received into the civitas Dei. Without such hierarchy, writes the anonymous arguing that it implies "spiritual sovereignty with temporal consequences, plus
author of the Disquisitio theologico-iuridica, "ordine mundus stare non possit nee temporal sovereignty in the Papal States and temporal suzerainty over certain
homines vivere."14 states (Sicily, Aragon, etc.)."22 Contemporary scholarly differences reflect the
According to Walter Ullman, the Canonist argument that the political was different emphases that the canonists themselves placed on plenitudo potestatis.
intrinsically inferior to the spiritual was primarily derived from the ancient Innocent III (1198-1216), the pope who did most to promote the doctrine,
binary opposition, found in Aristotle's de Anima, in which anima, mind or voiced both extreme and moderate positions. Sometimes he seemed to advocate
spirit, the realm of the divine, was set over and above corpus or matter, the realm a universal extension of papal sovereignty:
of the mundane. For canonists there was an obvious analogy between the pope's
superiority over the emperor and the soul's priority over the body." Gerhardt ... To me is said in the person of the prophet, "I have set thee over nations and
Ladner argues that Ullman focuses too much on the more extreme canonists over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and
and consequently tends to oversimplify the relationship between temporal and to build andto plant" (Jeremias 1:10). To me also is said in the person of the
spiritual authority in hierocratic thought.i" In particular Ullman downplays the apostle, "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatso-
contributions of those who conceived of Christian society as Christianitas rather ever thou shalt bind upon\ earth it shall be bound in heaven, etc." (Matthew
than Ecclesia. Etienne Gilson points out that ·if "Christendom (Chretiente) 16:19) ... thus the others 'were called to a part of the care but Peter alone
appears initially as the society formed by all the Christians, spread out over the assumed the plenitude of power. You see then who is this servant set over
whole world, unified by the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope". and "[f]rom this the household, truly the vicar ofJesus Christ, successor of Peter, anointed of
aspect it is no different from the Church," there is one significant difference for the lord, a God of Pharaoh, set between God and man, lower than God, but
"the members of the Church, the Christians ... are living beings in space and higher than man, who judges all and is judged by no one. 23
time, [and so] form a temporal society and so a people."1? As Ladner points out,
the important issue for those who differentiated Christendom from Ecclesia and This passage, incorporating a hierarchical spatial metaphor characteristic of the
who were swayed by the idea of an Aristotelian natural political order was not medieval territorial imaginary, seems to imply that plenitudo potestatis could be
whether pope or emperor was supreme in the Church but "who was superior in extended beyond ecclesiastical affairs in special circumstances.e" Yet Innocent's
Christendom: the Church under the Pope or thekingdoms, including the Holy rhetoric failed to specify precisely how plenitudo potestatis could legitimize direct
Roman Empire."18 Indeed, to the extent that the relations between church and intervention in the affairs of temporal rulers. Some historians claim that he was
state at this time amounted to a conflict between two different institutions, wary of overstepping the limitations established by St. Bernard, for whom it only
Christendom had to exist as. a Christian society of peoples distinct from the designated the pope's responsibility for ecclesiastical government. 25Jnnocenes
church. Nevertheless, canoriists like Stephen of Tournay could still argue that diplomatic practice does not help to clarify the conceptual ambiguity. During
the" duae vitae, spiritualis et carnalis" constituted two distinct bodies within the the contested succession to the imperial crown between Otto of Brunswick
common-weal without implying that the clerical and lay orders had equal sta- and Rudolf of Swabia he issued the bull Venerabilem (1202) that confirmed the
tus. 19 In the final reckoning, the jus divinum regulating spiritual life determined right of the electors to choose the emperor and only reserved for the papacy, as
and contained the jus humanum. As the Hungarian canonist Damasus stated the body that has to "anoint, consecrate and crown" the approved candidate, a
"Ordo clericorum dignior est coetu laicorum."2o While the notion of Christianitas right of examination. Likewise in Novit (1204)-addressed to the French bish-
gave more legitimacy to temporal politics it continued. to guarantee the priority ops who had opposed Innocent's intervention in the disputes that arose when
of the spiritual in the hierarchical order of things. the French king Philip Augustus occupied King John of England's fiefdom in
Canonists seeking to justify the pope's right to intervene in temporal as Normandy-Innocent denied that he sought to "diminish or disturb the juris-
well as spiritual matters frequently cited the controversial doctrine of pleni- diction and power of the king" yet, as the final authority on earth concerning
tudo potestatis or papal fullness of power. Plenitudo potestatis is another elu- matters of sin (ratione peccati), he had the right to rebuke and coerce the king
sive concept with contested meaning. For Ullman the doctrine maintains that on the grounds that breaking a peace treaty agreed to under oath amounts to a
"the supreme pontiff was to possess complete and exclusive jurisdiction over sin. 26 Although Nouit acknowledged limits to the pope's right of intervention in
the spiritual and temporal affairs of the whole world. Papal plenitude of power feudal disputes, it should be remembered that the See of Rome had an extensive
80 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 81

fiefdom typical of the vertical layering of medieval territoriality. The kingdoms all forms of secular authority, especially the Empire. Although God had willed
of England and Ireland were theoretically added to this fiefdom when John two distinct authorities on earth, the temporal was subordinate to the spiritual
accepted Innocent's over-lordship in return for the pope's support. Innocent in every way, for '(just as the moon receives its light from the sun and not the sun
celebrated this event by noting that "provinces which formerly had the holy from the moon, so too the royal power receives authority from the priestly and not
Roman church as their proper teacher in spiritual matters now have her as their vice versa."33 From the theocratic principle that ecclesiastical authorities would be
special lord in temporal matrers.Y" England remained a de jure if not de facto demeaned if they physically carried out any punishments they handed down and
papal fief. until Parliament abolished the relationship in 1366. that accordingly such acts should be delegated to secular powers, Hostiensis con-
Another powerful weapon in the papal camp's discursive armory was the cluded that royal prerogative amounted to little more than the executive power
pope's status as uicarius Christi. Innocent III had officially referred to the pope to inflict punishment. Clearly then "pontifical power ought to have precedence
as vicarius Christi in his Decretales.. However, the first pope to use it as a weapon as being greater and more honorable like one that enlightens in the manner of a
of political rhetoric was Innocent IV (1243-54) in the!:,~}:ontext of his struggle shining lamp, while the royalpower ought to follow, as being lesser and cruder
with Frederick 11. 28 Relations between empire and papacy had been soured by like a club for striking and beating down infidels and rebels."34
Frederick's ambitions to unite the kingdom of Sicily with the imperial lands Regarding those lands located outside Europe, Innocent IV clCl;&fned that
and cities of Lombardy. If successful this strategy would have cloaked the entire as vicarius .: Christi papal plenitudo potestatis had .global territorial extension,
Italian peninsula in Imperial colors and have relegated the pope to the status of embracing peoples and places beyond the boundaries of Christendom. Since
a dependent bishopvAt the Council of Lyon (1245) Innocent issued a sentence Christ is lord of all men, including the infidels, they should all benefit from
of deposition against Frederick in which, after listing Frederick's various sins- his vicar's beneficent rule, at least de jure. 35 The pope's authority as iudex
which included abjuring God, breaking peace agreements, imprisoning church- ordinarius (highest competent judge) extended over all men: infidels as well
men and heresy-c-she proclaimed in his capacity as vicariusChristi that Frederick as Christians.V' "We do certainly believe that the pope, who is vicar of Jesus
had lost all honor and dignity in the eyes of God and so' forfeited his rights to the Christ, has power not only over Christians but also over all infidels, for Christ
Empire. Innocent absolved "for ever all who owe him allegiance in virtue of an had power over a11."37 The pope's de jure right to intervene in the affairs of
oath of fealty from any oath of this kind" and warned that anyone who contin- non-Christian societies embraced several prerogatives: to alter parts of the
ued to treat Frederick as their feudal overlord would themselves be excomrnuni- constitutions of countries which harmed Christians; to punish non-Christian
cated.r? In Eger Cui Levia (1246) Innocent confirmed that the Roman pontiff individuals in non-Christian countries who defied natural law; to guarantee
as the ultimate judge of all members of the Christian commonweal in matters missionaries and other papal representatives free-entry into and unrestricted
of sin, has the authority to excommunicate anybody and once excommunicated movement within non-Christian lands; and, the right to re-conquer formerly
that person is rightfully "deprived of the power of any temporal rulership that Christian lands which pagans had illegally expropriated-c--Including, of course,
he had."30 Michele Maccarrone suggests that Innocent was able to enhance the the Holy Lands. 38 However, Innocent acknowledged the pagans' right to prop-
political remit of vicarius .Christi by building on the image of Christ the King, erty ownership within and territorial rule over all lands that had never been
which Innocent III had also promoted. In the Apparatus to the Decretales (1245) occupied by Christians on the basis that they numbered among the rational
Innocent IV argued that since Noah's time the leaders of the Jews had been beings to whom God had originally extended these rights: "lordship, possession
kings. This regal. status was confirmed in the person of Jesus Christ "qui fuit and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly" and therefore" it is not licit for the
naturalis dominus et rex noster.' was later. conferred on St. Peter, and was subse- pope or thefaithful to take away from infidels their belongings or their lord-
quently transmitted on to his successors. 31 Innocent's appeal to historical prece- ships or jurisdictions."39 Hostiensis was less magnanimous and argued that with
dent, argues Maccarone, was .intended to demonstrate not only the necessity of Christ's corning every dominion, principality and jurisdictional power that had
extraordinary recourse to papal authority but also "to affirm a general principle previously been in possession of the .infidels had been automatically surrendered
of reliance on the pope in matters temporal of all the sovereigns •... this vvas not to the faithful. All men were therefore subjects of the vicarius Christi and any
derived from a particular right, as with the Emperor but came from the plenitudo who failed to acknowledge the Church's overriding dominion should be consid-
potestatis which the pope possessed in his capacity as vicar ofChrist."32 Innocent's ered unworthy of their possessions and deprived of their sovereign rights. 40
assertion of papal sovereignty as vicarius Christi was supported by the canonist From the images, metaphors, and analogies that suffused Christian culture
Hostiensis who insisted that the Pope's plenitudo potestatiJi~~ouldbe exercised over the canonists derived necessary truths about the divinely ordained hierarchical

I.,,• .
[
82 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 83

order of temporal and spiritual authorities in Christendom. One of the most God and those that are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1), they would not be
powerful images was the allegory of the two swords found in St. Luke's Gospel ordained unless one sword was under the other and, being inferior, was led by
(Book 22) where the evangelist describes the events of the Last Supper and the the other to the highest things. For, according to the blessed Dionysius, it is
Passion. Jesus has just told the apostles that Peter will deny knowing him and the law of divinity for the lowest to be led to the highest through intermediar-
that he will be arrested. The apostles' immediate instinct is to declare that they ies. In the order of the universe all things are not kept in order in the same
will defend Jesus with physical force: cc 'But they said: Lord, behold here are two fashion and immediately but the lowest are ordered by the intermediate and
swords' to which Jesus replied enigmatically' it is enough.' "41 Pope Gelasius I inferiors by superiors. But that the spiritual power excels any -earthly one in
(492-96) had interpreted this passage as scriptural confirmation that "'the dignity and nobility we ought the more openly to confess in proportion as
two powers by which this world is chiefly ruled' are the sacred authority (auc- spiritual things excel temporal ones. 46
toritas) of the Pope and the royal power (potestas)'."42 Gelasius, in seeking to
limit the Emperor's interference on matters of church doctrine, argued that
Imperium
spiritual power was of a higher order since it was in charge of all men's souls,
including those of rulers. Morrall points out that this _message was reinforced For the publicists the two swords allegory affirmed papal plenitudo potesta-
by Gelasius's deployment of the legal distinction between auctoritas which in tis and a hierarchical order in which the spiritual was placed over and above
Roman law denoted the ultimate sovereign source of government and potestas the temporal. However, it could also lend itself to -a defense of imperial sover-
which identified the power of a delegated executive agency to govern.v' For eignty. During the Investiture Contest Henry IV's ghost writer Gottschalk of
advocates of Ecclesia the Gelasian doctrine confirmed a hierarchical order in Aachen condemned Gregory VII's recent excommunication of the emperor as
which the pope held both swords directly from Christ and handed one of them Hildebrandica insania. Gottschalk argued that by undermining the emperor,
on down to the Emperor. In 1150 St. Bernard, -responding to a renewed threat the pope was guilty of holding in contempt the divine decree, clearly indicated
to the Christians in the Holy Land, urged Pope Eugenius III in his capacity as by the symbolism of the two swords, that there should be two powers of equal
Peter's successor to draw both swords to protect the Holy Land. status.Y For imperialists the spiritual sword was not held over the temporal,
for both authorities occupied an equivalent place in the spatial hierarchy. The
Both swords are Peter's: one is unsheathed at his sign, the other by his own temporal authority of the emperor was not exercised at the beck and call of the
hand ... Both swords, spiritual and material, then, belong to the church; the papacy but in a cooperative relationship of equal sovereignty. "The emperor had
one exercised on behalf of the church, the _other by the church: the one by the power of the sword and the imperial dignity through election by the princes
the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of thesoldier, but clearly at the and people" wrote Huguccio, and because Roman emperors existed long before
bidding of the priest (ad nuturn sacerdotist and the order of the ernperor.t" popes, the latter could depose an emperor only after the electors had convicted
him of wrong-doing.f" Imperial dualists therefore insisted that the tW;9 swords,
For the commentator Alanus ab Insulis (1128-1203) not only does the emperor symbolizing spiritual and temporal authority, were held directly froITl God by
hold his sword by the grace of the pope but the pope isthe ultimate arbitrator pope and emperor respectively.t" However, as long as imperialists accepted the
of all princely power. Alluding to the hierarchical structure of feudal society, notion of Ecclesia as a universal corpus mysticum within which imperium and
he writes, "[wjhat has been said of the emperor may be held true of any prince sacerdotium denoted two distinct functions-in temporal affairs the lay ruler
who has no superior lord. Each one has as much jurisdiction in his kingdom as is a real monarch ruling by divine right while the pope's authority is limited to
the emperor has in the empire, fot the division of kingdoms that has been intro- spiritual affairs in the sacrum romanum imperium-their argument was weak-
duced nowadays by the law of nations is approved byrhe pope ..."45 In Unam ened because it evoked -the monstrous image of one body with two heads.
Sanctam Boniface VIII combined the two swords imagery with Dionysian prin- Indeed, imperialists were on stronger grounds when they accepted the pre-
ciples to designate the proper places of spiritual and temporal powers in the mise that within Ecclesia the functions of rex and sacerdos should be combined in
spatial hierarchy of the medieval territorial imaginary. one person, but then concluded from it that this person should be-the emperor
rather than the pope. For Wilks the rhetoric of imperial dualism merely obfus-
One sword ought to be under the other and the temporal authority subject to cated the German emperor's real aspiration to reclaim the status of pontifex
the spiritual power. For, while the apostle says, "There is no power but from maximus accorded to their Roman predecessors. "King and priest, the emperor
84 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 85

is now to be seen as the true ruler of the world.T" However, for Francis Oakley a group of celestial intercessors. The king as theChristus Domini is linked
the idea of rex-sacerdos in European medieval political-theological discourse had to the group of angels and superangelic intercessors, the pope to that of the
less absolutist connotations than it had had in imperial Rome.P' Because Greek apostles, the army to the martyrs, the queen-if she is acclaimed-to the
and Roman cultures retained the archaic notion that kings were also priests choirs of virgins, and the bishops to. the confessors. Human society thus
and sometimes gods they also kept aspects of themonistic social imaginary of reflects, and is organised after, the model of the hierarchy above. 56
primitive societies. In such societies the divine is immanent in nature and the
function of kingship is to ensure aharrnonious bond with nature by oversee- 'Thisharmonious spatial hierarchy in which the emperor is the conduit between
ing rites and policing taboos. However, Judaism and Christianity substituted the world of heaven on high and the powers on earth was also nurtured in
a transcendental and exclusive sense of the divine for "the archaic sense of the Ottonian iconography which popularized Christ-centered kingship. The famous
divine, as a continuum running through the worlds of nature and man, Judeo- miniature of Otto II as kosmokrator in the Gospel book ofAachen (c. 973) shows
Christian beliefs undercut also (and therefore) the very metaphysical underpin- "the emperor elevated unto heaven (usque ad celum erectus), all earthly powers
nings for the archaic pattern ofsacralkingship."52 Patristic Christianity denied inferior to his, and he himself nearest to God."57
any sacred status to the political sphere. St. Augustine regarded the state as a In figure 5.2 the young emperor is depicted seated on a throne receiving
debased secular body, an aberration consequent on Adam's fall, and inferior to homage from two archbishops and two warriors. While his feet ar~:resting on
the other-worldly civitas Dei where man's true telos lay. Naturally the deeply the footstool carried by Tellus (earth) his head breaks through into the heav-
rooted archaic archetype of sacral kingship could not be easily displaced and ens where it shares space with the four evangelists, and is touched physically
vestiges survived in the Byzantine Empire, with the Carolingian and Ottonian by God's hand. The evangelists are carrying a white banderole, the veil of
emperors, in extremist doctrines. of papal plenitudo potestatis, and on into the the tabernacle, which divides the emperor's gigantic body and symbolizes the
early modern discourse of the divine right of kings. Such sites of resistance aside, sky separating earth from heaven. In this image of spatial hierarchy it ~s the
the attack by Gregorian reformers on the pontifical kingship of the German emperor rather than the pope who occupies the place at the centre of the polit-
emperors set in motion three centuries of struggle. between spiritual and tempo- ical cosmos. His body unifies the celestial and temporal orders and it is the
ral authorities that effectively denied that both powers could be held by either emperor who mediates between heaven and earth. The emperor's unique corpo-
institution. It was, writes Oakley, "between the hammer and the anvil of con- real being, simultaneously terrestrial and heavenly, underpins the claim of the
flicting authorities, religious and secular that Western political freedoms were Norman Anonymous (c.1l00) that the emperor's power comes directly from
forged."53 This view is confirmed by Brian Tierney who points out that although God in heaven.
the most common form of government in recorded human history has been one
where a single ruler aspires to supreme spiritual and temporal power, the middle Therefore the emperor, by the Lord Jesus Christ, is said to be elevated even
ages was remarkable not because some emperors and popeswere drawn to theo- unto heaven. Even unto heaven, I say,. not unto the corporeal sky which is
cratic rule but rather because such ambitions were never fully satisfied.P" seen, but unto the incorporeal heaven which is unseen; that is, unto the
This is not to say that Carolingian and Ottonian emperors desisted from invisible God. Truly, unto God he has been elevated, since so much is he con-
promoting themselves as Christendom's legitimate rex-sacerdos. Charlemagne joined to Him in power that no other power is more nigh unto God or more
was proclaimed rex et sacerdos by the Synod of Frankfurt (796--800), which also sublime than that of the emperor; yea, all other power is inferior to his. 58
approved a liturgy ofkingship that promoted the emperor as christomimetes-s-tiu:
imitator of Christ as both God and man. 55 Once anointed and crowned the As we saw, after the Investiture Contest canonists transferred the emperors'
emperor took on the attributes of God and Christ by grace. As described by Ernst titles of rex imago Christi and rex vicarius Christi to the pope. Imperial schol-
Kantorowicz, the liturgical chants of these ceremonies placed the emperor at the ars countered by denoting the emperor as rex imago Dei or rex vicarius Dei, and
fulcrum of the terrestrial and celestial hierarchies. These liturgies evoked, "[h] enceforth a papal Christus in terris was sided by an imperial deus in terris."59
The imperialist discourse of kingship claimed divine right as devolved through
the cosmic harmony of Heaven, Church and State, an interweaving and the Father rather than the Son. It was complemented by a legal theory of monar-
twining of the one world with the other and an alliance between the powers chical authority which Frederick II (1215-50) promoted in the Constitutions
on earth and the powers in heaven. Each terrestrial rank is associated with of Melfi, or the Liber Augustalis of 1231. 60 This legal code for the kingdom of
 Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 87

Sicily, declared by "we, whom he elevated beyond hope of man to the pinnacle
of the Roman Empire," stated that the prince as an instrument of God has a
duty to establish laws, promote justice, and chastise wrongdoers.P' Kantorowicz
refers to the Liber Augustalis as "the birth certificate of the modern adminis.. .
trative state," arguing that it signaled a transition from liturgical to legal king-
ship.62 In Policraticus (1159) John of Salisbury refers to the prince as rex imago
aequitatis, the image of justice or equity and argues that the prince's persona
publica is both above the law (legibus solutus) and subject to it (legibus alligatus). 63
In the LiberAugustalis the prince's persona rnixta is no longer that of Christ, God
and man, but pater et filius lustitiae (the Father and Son of justicel.P" This blend
of theological and legal discourse in "Frederick's imperial theology of rulership"
reflected a culture in which the administration of justice by judges and lawyers
had the same mysterious aura as the administration of the sacraments by priests.
The emperor's dual function as both "lord and minister of justice" harked back
to two precepts of the Justinian Code: lex regia-specifically the law by which
the Quirites conferred the imperium together with a limited right of creating
law and law exemption on the Roman princes-and lex digna-which asserted
that the Emperor is morally obliged to serve certain laws even though he was
not legally subject to them. Frederick did acknowledge that "although our impe-
rial majesty is free from all laws, it is nevertheless not altogether exalted above
the judgement of Reason, herself the Mother of all Law."65 The emperor's legal
standing, above Positive Law but subject to Reason, was strengthened by asso-
ciation with the classical hierarchy of the goddesses of law. The highest place in
the Templum lu~itiae is occupied by Ratio (Reason), identified with the Law of
Nature and closest to Divine Law. Aequitas (Equity), who oversees the positive
laws made by man for the government of the state, resides in the lowest position.
lustitia (Justice), being less a form of law than an ideal or extra-legal premise of
legal thought, partakes of both divine and positive law. Her abode is thus a place
between Reason and Equity. lustitia mediates between divine and human laws,
therefore the emperor as her terrestrial representative also assumed! this role.
"If Justice was the power 'intermediate between God and the world,' then the
Prince as the Iustitia animata necessarily obtained a similar position."66
The ideological war between sacerdotium, imperium, and regnum reached a
crescendo at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Whereas Boniface's Unam
Sanctam stood as a statement of papal plenitude potestatis and John of Paris' De
Figure 5.2 The Emperor in Majesty, c. 975 (vellum) by German school (tenth potestate regia et papali (1302-3)-which shall be considered presently-flew
century). Aachen Cathedral, Aachen, Germany. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/The the flag for regnum, it was Dante's Monarchia (c. 1313) that epitomized impe-
Bridgeman Art Library. German. Out of copyright. rial discourse.P" In Monarchia, Dante sought to prove the necessity of temporal
government, defined as "a single sovereign authority (unicus principatus) set over
all others in time (super omnes in tempore)" by refuting Thomas Aquinas' argu-
ment for papal sovereignty. 68 Aquinas. had argued that because man's true end
88 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 89

is eternal beatitude and only the Church can assist man to reach this state, then Now one declining sun puts out the other.
logically all princes, who are rnenvrnust be subject to the pope. 69 Dante accepted The sword and crook are one, and only evil
Aquinas' logical principle that "the whole basis of the means for attaining an can follow from them when they are together;??
end is derived from the end itself" but started from a different opening premise:
that man· has two (not one) ends. Here Dante subverts the canonist metaphor in which the sun's radiance symbol-
izing papal power is identified as the source of the light of the moon i.e, impe-
Ineffable providence has thus set before us two goals to aim at: i.e, happiness rial authority. Rather, emperor and pope co-exist as two equal sovereigns, two
in this life, which consists in .the exercise of our own powers and is figured suns illuminating respectively the complementary ways of the world and God's
in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the eternal life, which consists in divine ordtnancev"
the. enjoyment of the vision of God (to which our own powers cannot raise Dante's dualism managed to avoid the 'pitfalls of previous imperialist
us except with the help of God's light) and which is signified by the heavenly thought, which in positing the .existence of two authorities within Christian
paradise.I" society as Ecclesia, had conceded superiority to the Church hierarchy. Dante
demoted Ecclesia. Rather than embracing both spiritual and temporal institu-
By the "exercise of our own powers" Dante meantthe universal and free exer- tions, it becomes a separate corporate body in a space alongside but not above
cise of man's highest faculty; that is to "exist as a creature who apprehends by the terrestrial civitas. Dante, contends Gilson, initiated a radical break-with the
means of the potential intellect; this mode of existence belongs to no creature doctrinal premises of the dominant Christian ideology in which theIiniry ofa
(whether higher or lower) other than human beings.":" This cannot be achieved medieval Christianity ruled by popes was sustained by the submission of phi-
by individuals or groups in isolation but only by the "whole of human society losophy to theology. "The separation of Church and Empire necessarily presup-
(universalis ciuilitatis humani generis) in a universal condition of peace."?2 Only posed the separation of theology and philosophy, and this is why at the same
the emperor, who, alone among terrestrial rulers, is imbued with profound phil- time that he clove in two the unity of medieval Christianity, he also rent asunder
osophica1 wisdom and has the means to ensure universal peace, can direct man the unity of Christian wisdom, principle unifier and bond of Christianity." 79 In
toward this end; he is, therefore, the only legitimate ruler of mankind. order to prove that the Emperor was independent of papal jurisdiction Dante
Dante rejected the canonist's claim that the Church's authority was temporal had to establish a new space for politics, a territorial imaginary independent of
as well as spiritual. The Church, he argued, is not an effect of nature but a super- the pope, the Church, and even the Christian religion. To this end Dante pro-
natural entity created by God.73 Christ's renunciation of an earthly kingdom moted an ideal of bumana universitas as "a world sector actualized in the symbol
before Pilate-"My kingdom is not of this world (Regnum· meum non est de hoc of the 'terrestrial paradise'."8o
mundo)"...:.-shows that God intended the Church's powers to be purely spiritualr''' Dante's humana universitas implied a number of alterations to the territorial
The radical incommensurability of man's temporal and celestial destinies means imaginary of Ecclesia. First, as Kantorowitz suggests, Dante not only isolated
that he requires the service of not one but two independent guides: "the supreme humanitas from Ecclesia but even from Christianitas: his humana universitas
Pontiff: to lead mankind to eternal life in conformity with revealed truth, and embraced all men not just Catholics or Christians. "Whereas great portions of
the Emperor, to guide mankind to temporal happiness in conformity with the men-c--jews, Mohammedans, Pagans~did not belong to the mystical body of
teachings of philosophy."?5 Both are the absolute sovereigns of their respective Christ, or belonged to it only potentially,Dante's humana ciuilitas included all
realms and thepapalists' contention that the emperor holds his sword by order of men: the pagan (Greek and Roman) heroes and wise men, as well as the Muslim
the pope is whimsical speculation; "the authority of the temporal monarch flows Sultan Saladin and the Muslim philosophers Avicenna and Averroes.t"" Second,
down into him directly without any intermediary from the Fountainhead of uni- although Dante felt that a Christian philosopher-emperor would be the ideal
versal authority.V" In the Commedia Dante draws on the metaphor of the two guide to lead the humana universitas to its self-actualization as the terrestrial
suns to affirm the absolute separation oftemporal and spiritual authority paradise, his choice of the pagan Augustus, during whose rule Christ chose to
become man, as the best role model for emperor indicated that the emperor's
Rome use to shine in two suns when her rod religious beliefs were not the primary concern. Third, the idea of humana uni-
made the world good, and each showed her its way: versitas opposed the papalist claims that the pope as vicarius Christi had global
one to the ordered world, and one to God. sovereignty. In the words of the author of the Somnium uiridarii, "Papa non est
90 • From Hierarchy, to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 91

super paganos secundum. apostolicas sanctiones, sed solummodo super Christianos; model for government on earth and just as God is the sole ruler of ~h.e celes-
ergo non est dominus temporalis omnium."82 Finally humanauniversitas drew on tial kingdom so the emperor is the sole sovereign authority on earth. Only the
a secular Aristotelian philosophy of politics: the aim of political life for Dante emperor is charged with government of the bumana civilitas and his authority to
is the fulfillment of human needs, that is the improvement of civilization by- rule is not mediated by papal jurisdiction but comes directly through God.
rational means, and the polis as the virtuous self sufficient community is the
best political order for achieving these ends. For Dante the limit of contem-
Regnum
porary empire was Oceanus encircling the orbis terrarum, "[H]urnana civili-
tas is potentially a 'world-city,' indeed the World-City for the entire world is Alongside sacerdotium and imperium, regnum constituted the third corner of the
conceived of as a single political community ... Modelled largely after the his- base of the medieval pyramid of sovereignty. Although, as the Westphalia narra-
torical Roman imperium, Dante's ideal might he described as the Romanized tive records, regnum would ultimately triumph, this outcome was far"from guar-
cosmopolis." 83 anteed, even at the end of the twelfth century when Philip the Fair decisively
If humana ciuilitas extricated imperial authority from the overarching hier- outmaneuvered Boniface VIII. Regnum was, in terms of material resources and
archy of Ecclesia where it was subordinate to the pope, Dante was still far from ideological influence, the least powerful of the three institutions.
imagining a political order outside of the episteme of hierarchy. The celestial Nevertheless, in the ideological competition to dominate the medieval imag-
paradise is the model for governance on earth and the relations between celes- inary of territorial sovereignty, its proponents did have a particularly powerful
tial and terrestrial polities remain those of superiority and inferiority, higher and spectacular weapon to hand. If the Skziczick miniature captured the essence of
lower. In Paradiso XVIII Dante describes seeing an imperial eagle, created by papal universalism and the image of Otto II best conveyed the aspirations of the
the lights issuing from the souls of the just and temperate rulers, evolving out of emperor, then the Gothic cathedral constituted the symbolic representation of
final m of the phrase Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram (Love righteousness, regnum."The French cathedral," wroteViollet-le-Duc, "was born with monar-
you who are the judges of the earth) written across the sky of ]upiter. 84 The chical power."87 For Henri Lefebvre the Gothic cathedral epitomized the sym-
message is that the emperor is the channel through which divine justice flows to bolic space of the feudal mode of production: the spatial aesthetics of vertical
man on earth. The Emperor's position. ofeminence, high above other mortals, projection reproduced and legitimized the hierarchical structures of a world in
provides him with a clear panorama of the Civitas Dei and allows him to guide which "the social edifice itself resembled a cathedral."88 The Gothic aesthetic
people to it. that developed in the Ile-de-France reflected the social and cultural conditions
of French feudal relations during the revival of French royal authority under the
Men, therefore, need restraint by law, and need Capetians.Y Capetian power was primarily based in the wealth of Paris. Yet, as
a monarch over them who sees at least kings of France they had suzerainty over several great bishoprics on their borders.
the towers of The True City.85 Although these royal sees were officially subject to the crown, six of the bishops
were dukes and counts of the realm, great feudal lords whose combined pos-
Like the Ottonian christomirnetes, Dante's emperor straddles both terrestrial sessions exceeded the royal domains. These six bishops had permanent,; seats in
and celestial worlds; he occupies an interstitial place and mediates between the the royal college of twelve and exerted a considerable influence on ror~i policy.
transcendent realm of the civitatis Dei and the mundane world of the Empire; Aware that their power could not be exercised independently of the ecclesiastical
he is the conduit between them, Iustitia anirnata, the fulcrum of the hierarchy. hierarchy, the Capetian kings sought to represent themselves as rex and sacerdos:
Beatrice alludes to the fact that through the person of the emperor the terres- "the pyramidal structure of the state now culminated in the king who knew he
trial city is contained conceptually within the potential extension of the celestial was a priest and sat on his throne, surrounded by bishops."9o
city, when, after welcoming Dante to "nostra citra" in the Rose of Paradise, she The most important architect of the Capetian vision of sacral kingship was
points out a "great throne with the crown already set'l ro which shall come "the Abbot Sugar of Saint-Denis. Erwin Panofskyargues that Abbot Sugar was ani-
soul, already anointed, of Henry the Great / who will come to Italy to bring law mated by a grand politico-theological vision comprising three truths: first, that
and order."86 The symbolism of Henry's celestial enthronement allows Dante the king of France was a "Vicar of God," "bearing God's image in his person
to juxtapose, and reveal the connections between; these two realms. The heav- and bringing it to life"; second, that because the king held the sword spiritual
enly kingdom, God's perfect realm where the citizens enjoy eternal peace, is the "for defence of the Church and the poor" he had a sacred duty to subdue all
 92 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 93

internal strife and any challenges to his own authority; and third, that the central resistance to royal command. Philip's response was twofold: he banned the
authority and the unity of the nation were symbolised, even vested in, the Abbey export of precious goods from France thereby reducing the Holy See's reve-
of Saint-Denis, believed tohave been founded by the Frankish king Dagobert nue; and he threatened to support the pope's enemies in Italy. Boniface stood
and to contain the relics of the Apostle of all Gaul, "the special and, after God down and issued Etsi De Statu (July 1297) which exempted Philip from the
unique protector of the realm."?' Between 1134 and 1144 Sugar oversaw the prohibition in Clericis Laicos. The second dispute started when Philip arrested
rebuilding of the royal abbeyin a style which would become the archetype of and tried Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Palmiers on charges of blasphemy, heresy,
the Gothic. Central to his vision was his belief that Saint Denis, the patron saint and treason, thereby challenging the canon law principle that only the Pope
of France, was also Dionysius the Areopagite. Thus, just as Dionysius wrote could try bishops. Boniface refused to accept the legitimacy of Philip's actions,
that the hierarchical harmony of the universe was constituted by the emanation reasoning that if he endorsed Philip hewould implicitly be approving of the
of divine light, so Sugar pointed out that by virtue of the columns and central king's unlimited power over the French episcopate. He issued a series of bulls,
arches of the nave and side-aisles, "the whole [church] would shine with the won- calling for Saisset's release, reversing Philip's previous exemption and calling the
derful and uninterrupted light of most sacred windows, pervading the interior French bishops to a crisis council in Rome. In Ausculta Fili (December 1301) he
beauty."92 The architecture of Saint-Denis, seemingly transparent, allowed light accused Philip of undermining the French church by abusing clerical privileges
to unify all matter and space within the building and to.comrnunicate the sense and warned him not to be deluded into thinking that "you have no superior or
of the unity of the divine cosrnos.l" The Gothic "theology of light" embodied that you are not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hlerarchy.T" Although
the splendor of Heavenly Jerusalern.?" Furthermore, as the artistic incarnation Boniface's main concern was to reassert his control over the ecclesiastical hierar-
of Dionysian hierarchy, Saint-Denis also perpetuated an "idea of the French chy, Philip's minister Peter Flotte claimed at the Estates-General in Ap!il 1302
monarchy [that] gradually became inseparable from the vision expounded in the that Boniface was claiming feudal lordship over France. Philip's pressure on
Corpus areopagiticum: (i.e. that the king as head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the French bishops ensured that only thirty six out of seventy eight attended
was through his coronation transformed into a Christus Domini, so mirroring, the Roman council Boniface called in October 1302. Boniface's response was
according to Dionysian principles, Christ's position at the head of the celestial to issue Unam Sanctam (November 1302) directed toward any French bishops
hierarchy)."95 The over-awed medieval spectator gazing up at the vaults would whose patriotism might override their duty to the Church. The inflammatory
have inferred that a space built as the manifestation' of Dionysian principles rhetoric of Unam Sanctam put paid to any hope of compromise between the two
was also a symbol of the sacred nature of monarchy. "Precisely because it evoked camps. Philip's minister Guillaume de Nogaret condemned Boniface before a
the mystical archetype of the political order of the French monarchy, the style council of French bishops in March 1303, and then, assisted by Boniface's sworn
of St.-Denis was adopted for all the cathedrals of France and became the mon- enemy Sciarra Colonna, occupied the pope's home town of Anagni. Although
umental expression of the Capetian idea of kingship."96 Boniface escaped he was deeply shocked and died a few weeks later in Rome.
In the contest over who should exercise. sovereignty within the territories of Philip's victory was confirmed when he cajoled the French pope Clement V
Christendom, regnum came into its own during Philip IV's (1268-1313) strug- (1305-14) to renounce ClericisLaicos and to issue Meruit (1306) which declared
gle with Boniface VIII. This conflict was the first dispute between church and I that Unam Sanctam should not be interpreted as a papal claim for lordship over
state "which can properly be described as a dispute over national sovereignty."97. ~' France.
Hostilities erupted because the French and English crowns, who were at war, In this instance regnum'svictory was down to skilful diplomacy and dis-
sought to finance their campaigns by imposing taxes on their clergy. For plays of physical force. However regnum'» star was also burning brightly in the
Boniface this amounted to a negation of the principle that the pope was the ideological wars. Monarchical government was bolstered by the twelfth century
head of all ecclesiastical hierarchies wherever they were located. His response recovery of much of Aristotle's work, including the Nichomacbean Ethics (full
was the bull Clericis Laicos (February 1296), which asserted that as iudex ordi- Latin translation by Robert Grosseteste c. 124617) and the Politics (William
narius omnium, set over all kings, the pope had the right to settle international of Moerbeke 1265) as well as various commentaries by Moslem philosophers
disputes, and that by forbidding clergy to pay these taxes he could justly deprive such as Avicenna (980......1037) and Averroes (1126-98).99 Aristotle's metaphysics
the kings of their war chests. However, the monarchs interpreted Clericis Laicos challenged many tenets of established Christian doctrine. It depicted a ratio-
as an attack on their. sovereignty, for not only did. it challenge their control nally ordered cosmos in which matter and motion were eternally derived by
over mem'oers at the ecclesia and. their ~ood.s, 'out it also \e~itim.i'Led. clerical necessity from the potentiality of prime matter by a primum movens immobile,
94 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse •. 95

the uncaused self-activity of reason. It portrayed man asa composite of bodily conditions within which individuals can, by exercising their faculty of rational
matter and a rational soul. The Averroists in particular unsettled Christian judgment, establish the common good and identify the best ways to ac;fiieve it. _
doxa by distinguishing between philosophical and theological truths. Drawing Furthermore, as Ezekeil's proclamation that "[mjy servant David will he king
on Aristotle they promoted the idea of a world-soul embracing all individual all over, and there will be one shepherd over all of them" makes clear, kingship
souls, which challenged the Christian doctrines of personal immortality and is the best form of government to achieve such aims. l OS ' i

rewards in life after death. The Christian creation myth was undermined by the Aquinas' argument that government should be exercised by rational man
Aristotelian argument that the world was both eternal and necessary. Further, seems to evacuate the divine from the political realm and to present an alter-
the Aristotelian view of politics as an autonomous sphere of human activity with native to the papal and imperial versions of the territorial imaginary in which,
its own logic, values, and virtues challenged the premise of Christian political sovereignty issues from a higher space, passes down rigidly structured spatial
theology that the temporal was inherently inferior to the spiritual. According to hierarchies, and is exercised over terrestrial Christendom. While terrestrial
Aristotelian logic the potential invested in human nature was not to be fulfilled government may ultimately be sanctioned by the civitas Dei, those who com-
outside of quotidian time and space in the eternal realm of the celestial City of mand it do so free of the dictates of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This message
God, but in the political community as it existed in the here and now. A good is reinforced by Aquinas's assertion that since the civitas is the, unique subject
life, independent of personal reconciliation with God in the hereafter, could be of both types of human law-the law of nations, jus gentium and civil law-
achieved within thepolis. rulers can adapt it to suit their community's best interests. Yet, the autonomy
It would fall to Thomas Aquinas to reconcile the received doctrines of Aquinas granted to the practical application of human law is circumscribed, for
Christianity with the rediscovered Aristotelian corpus.l''? Aristotle's work, he placed human law at the bottom of the hierarchy of laws. In a scheme which
he maintained, could be brought to bear upon two current disputes among mirrors Frederick Irs plan for the Templum Justitiae, Aquinas differentiated the'
Christian theologians: first, whether "the world" was part of the divine plan different forms of law accordingly: the highest most perfect law is eternal law
of a beneficent God or the result of man's corruption and fall; and, second, or God's· plan for the universe; beneath eternal law comes natural law or "the
whether knowledge acquired by reason was compatible with revelations of rational creature's [man's] participation of the eternal law" by the use of reason,
faith. l o l Aquinas argued that reason or knowing things .through the senses and finally at the base is human law or the application of natural law to specific
was compatible with faith. "Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it."I02 socieries.l" So while Aquinas' state is somewhat autonomous, operating accord-
The purposes of man's temporal and spiritual lives could be reconciled within ing to its own laws and independent of ecclesiastical supervision, the 'Chrlstlan
an ethos, acceptable to both Aristotle and Christianity, of final causation, of Aquinas, for whom all lawful authority must be subject to God, ensures that
nature as being both rational and purposive: "nature does nothing in vain." the civitas remains integrated into the Christian hierarchical order. Aquinas
The world and man's place In it are determined by the telos to which all being did not, however, state his position on these matters clearly and his rare forays
and becoming are directed. Sin, for example, should not be regarded as an into discussions of church and state relations were characterized by consider-
aberration but ·as an integral aspect of God's divine plan for man to achieve able ambiguity. For example, having asserted in one passage that the secular
happiness. It was on similar grounds that Aquinas challenged St. Augustine's and spiritual powers must accept each other's sphere of authority, he adds, in a:
condemnation of civil government as a manifestation of the corruption of statement which would have done any canonist proud, "[ujnless, perhaps, the
human nature. Augustine had argued that "the citizens of the earthly city are secular power is joined to the spiritual, as in the pope, who holds the\.~pex of
produced by a nature which is vitiated by sin" and that temporal rulers-c--whose both authorities, the spiritual and the secular."I07
archetypes Cain and ·Romulus founded kingdoms by acts of fratricide-are A more overtly partisan supporter of regnum at least of the French Capetians,
J

inherently debased and only fit to serve as the executioners of spiritual author- was John of Paris.l'" In the Tractatus de po testate regia et papali John investigated
ities. I03 In De Regimine Principum Aquinas challenged Augustine's view of both the general relationship between spiritual and temporal powers and the'
the corrupted nature of politics by reiterating Aristotle's premises that "man specific correspondences between rulers and subjects within Ecclesia and civitas.
is by nature a political and social animal" who in association with others can The truth about the "power of ecclesiastical pontiffs" lay between two extreme
achieve life's necessities by means of the free exercise of his reason and the positions: the ascetic Waldensian assertion that "the prelates of God's church, the
application of his natural talents.i'" Just government will ensure that individu- successors of the apostles, ought not to have dominion over temporal wealth,"
als do not act purely according to their private interests, for it establishes the and the canonist contention that "the lord pope, in as much as he stands in the
96 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 97

place of Christ on earth, has dominion; cognizance, and Jurisdiction over the mankind toward the greater goal, but rejected the implication that princely tem-
temporal goods of princes and barons.. "109 John didriot object to prelates hav- poral authority was derived from spiritual power.
ing "dominion and jurisdiction over temporal things" as such but insisted that
they recognize that such privileges were not derived from their status as vicars For the latter secular power does not relate to the higher spiritual power
of Christ or as, successors to the apostles, but rather" that they (,have such pow- in such a way that it arises or derives from it. This is how the power of the
ers as a concession from or with the permission of princes."110 Central to John's proconsul relates to the power of the emperor; and the latter is greater in all
argument was a distinction between the power of kings and the power of priests. things because the proconsul's power is derived from ,the emperor. The rela-
John drew on Aristotle's account of man as a naturally political or civil animal tionship, rather, is like that between the power of the head of a family and
and theories of natural law and the law of nations to define kingship as "rule over that of a master of soldiers; one is not derived from the other, but both are
a community perfectly ordered to the common good by one person."Ill Man has derived from some superior power. Therefore, secular power is greater than
two ends: to live virtuously on earth and to achieve eternal life in heaven. Kings spiritual power insome things, namely, temporal things; and it is not subject
can only lead men to the former so another guide, namely Jesus Christ, whose to the spiritual power with reference to them in any way, because secular
authority is currently manifest in the priesthood, is required to direct man to the power does not arise from spirirual power. The two arise directly from one
divine. As Dionysius the Areophagite had established, within the ecclesia hierar- supreme power: the divine power ... Hence, the priest is superior principally
chy is the proper order and the pope is rightly supreme so-that he can settle mat- in spiritual matters; and, conversely, the prince is superior in temporal mat-
ters of doctrinal controversy or institutional conflict. Ho~~ver, John argued, in a ters, although the priest is superior absolutely insofar as the spiritual is supe-
passage directed as much against imperium as sacerdotium, that rior to the temporal. l 14

it is not the case that the faithful laity are by divine law subservient to Ultimately John ofParis was still beholden to the Christian Weltanschauung and
one supreme monarch in temporal matters. Rather, they live civilly and in its structures of hierarchy, yet there are intimations of a post-medieval territorial
community according to the prompting of a natural inclination which is imaginary in his work, especially where he exploited the contest between sacer-
from God. Accordingly, they choose different, types of rulers to oversee the dotium and imperium to further the interests of the Caperians. In their attacks
well-being of their communities to correspond with the diversity of these on the Emperor the canonists had unwittingly served as midwives to the monar-
cornrnunities.Uf ' chical discourse of territorial sovereignty. In the decretal Per Venerabilem (1202)
Innocent III proclaimed that the Emperor had no authority over other secular
The implications of the autonomy John granted cztntas from Ecclesia and rulers, "since the king himself [of the French] does not recognize a superior in
Christianitas were as radical as Dante's notion of humana ciuilitas. Although temporal matters (quum rex ipse [Francorum] superiorem in temporalibus minime
one supreme head was required to guarantee the unity of the Catholic faith and recognoscat)," This declaration was seized upon by advocates of monarchy, like
the common identity of the Christian peoples, "this purpose does not require John, who generated from it the more extensive sovereignty claim of a "rex qui
that the faithful beunited in any common state (politia communi). There can be superiorem non recognoscit:" In the fourteenth century French and Neapolitan
different ways of living and different kinds of state, (politie) conforming to dif- lawyers combined it with the formula rex in regno suo est irnperator regni sui to
ferences in climate, language and the condition of men, with what is suitable for propound a "thesis of royal territorial sovereignty."115 Second, John voiced an
one nation (una gente) not so foranorher/'J'" In his response to Hugh of Saint- embryonic French nationalism in rejecting the papalist thesis that the Donation
Victor's arguments in De sacramentis that the spiritual authority of the pope was of Constantine gave the pope de jure authority over the kingdom of France.
prior to kingship in both time and dignity,' John further restricted the remit of According to the Donation narrative, in return for baptism and a cure from
the pope's spiritual authority to intervene in the affairs of kings. Against Hugh's leprosy, Constantine had given Pope Sylvester I the Lateran palace, his imperial
argument that becausepriesthood was instituted by God it therefore antedated crown (actually refused by Sylvester) and the right to wear imperial insignia
any human temporal authority, John claimed that kings existed prior to Moses and garrnents.U" Donarists claimed that since Constantine had handed over not
and that the first true priest was Christ. Against Hugh's contention that the only the government of Rome and Italy but also that of some western imperial
spiritual is universally prior to and superior to the material, John accepted that territories, including contemporary France, the pope's patrimony and imperial
the dignity of the priesthood was greater than kingship in so far as it directs power still extended over these lands. John countered by arguing that that "royal
98 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Christendom, Hierarchy, Political Discourse • 99

power both existed and was exercised before the papa~~0 and there were kings political discourse. However, we are concerned with rupture rather than con-
in France before there were Christians. Therefore neither the royal power nor tinuity and the .following chapters will discuss the challenges mounted to the
its exercise is from the pope but from God and from the people who elect a medieval. territorial imaginary by the Renaissance revolution in thil1~ing about
king ... "117 Although the Romans had conquered the Gauls they did not over- space. With the Renaissance the episteme of hierarchy buckled and gave way to
come the noble Franks who, directly descended from the Trojans, had not only a modern culture of space that established the conditions of possibility for the
never succumbed to imperial power but had themselves subjugated the whole modern representation of the territorial politics of anarchy. !
of Germany and Gaul: "they settled in Gaul, and named it France; and they
were subject neither to the Romans nor to anyone else."II8 From these elevated
peoples sprang the "saintly kings" who ever. since St. Louis's canonization had
exercised authority over the kingdom of France. 119 Thus not only does France
have a venerable genealogy extending back to the Frankish empire, but her king
was also the personal embodiment of the country's sacred status..
The tone ofJohn's history of the Franks has lead Jean Riviere to describes the
Tractatus as an example of" le nationalisme Francais." 120 It certainly evoked the
religious patriotism of the thirteenth century which, maintains Kantorowicz,
was embodied in a revival of the Greek and Roman ideal of the heroic warrior
who lost his life pro patria, that is for the greater cause of the polis or respublica
Romana. 121 During the feudal era civic death pro patria had been replaced by
either the crusader's martyrdom in the cause of Christianitas or the vassalgiving
his life for the honor of his feudal lord. However, during the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries the classical values of patria were. recovered by the early state
builders and fatherland came "to refer to a national kingdom, or to the 'crown'
as the visible symbol of a national territorial community."122 In the chansons de
gesteFrance was depicted as a sacred land, the successor state of the Frankish
empire. Just as the crusaders had endured martyrdom on behalf of the patria
aeterna, the City of God, so Charlemagne's French crusaders who fought the
Saracens in Spain were seen as role models prepared to lay down their lives for
Francia Deo sacra. 123
Clearly it was regnum's version of the medieval territorial imaginary that
would eventually evolve into the modern secularized ideal of the sovereign
national territorial state. However, the other two medieval territorial imaginar-
ies and the spatial hierarchies .within which they were embedded would con-
tinue to resonate for centuries. The spirit of papal plenitudo potestatis was kept
alive in hierocratic writing such as Augustinus Triurnphus' Summa de potestate
ecclesiastica (1326) and Alvarus Pel agius' De planctu ecclesiae (1330-1332) well
into the fourteenth century. Likewise, although by 1300 imperium was a setting
star and Dante's Monarchia already rather anachronistic, the idea of humana
civilitas was an importantcontribution to modern secular politics. Indeed the
modern discourse of the divine right of kings, which prompted the religious or
sacred aura of regnum wellinto the era of Westphalia, contained within it ves-
tiges of the hierarchical arrangement of territoriality characteristic of medieval
 CHAPTER 6

The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy

n e of this book's tasks is to unsettle the Westphalia narrative of

O • International Relations that identifies the Peace of Westphalia as the

symbolic moment when medieval international relations gave way to
the modern international system of sovereign territorial states. This modern/
medieval dichotomy has heuristic value in that it isolates the modern states sys-
tem from. the limitless text of history. Nevertheless, it is ideological for it rein-
forces the Western myth of progress: it legitimizes the international system by
aligning it with the progressive values of modernity that signified man's escape
from the Middle Age mire ofreligion and superstition. However, serious study of
the Renaissance, during which thought seems to be reaching to modernity while
being constrained by the grammars. and vocabularies of medieval Christianity,
collapses this neat opposition between the Medieval and the Modern. In the
Renaissance modernity advances and retreats like the wash of an incoming tide
as reason and myth, science and superstition battle it out for suprem'lcy. Study
of the Renaissance shows that modern thought, culture, and polities did not
emerge suddenly phoenix-like out of medieval darkness and so undermines the
Westphalian chronological rupture between medieval and modern international
politics. My concern in this chapter is with the Renaissance critique of hierar-
chy. However, before addressing this aspect of Renaissance thought consider-
ation must be given to the meaning of the Renaissance per se. Although invisible
in most IR scholarship, the Renaissance is one of the most contested concepts
of intellectual and cultural history.' Much debate has focused on the question
of originality. Did the Renaissance revolutionize the way that man conceived of
himself and his being-in-the-world or did it merely reformulate established ideas
and belief systems? Was the Renaissance the dawning of modernity or the wan-
ing of the Middle Ages, or both simultaneously?
102 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 103

The Idea of the Renaissance his contemporaries proposed to call the 'modern era'."6 The impasse between
antiquity and the middle ages arose from the destruction of the pagan arti-
At the end of a survey of five centuries of Renaissance historiography, Wallace
facts of Roman civilization by barbarian pillagers and Christian iconoclasts.
Ferguson concluded that as an object of historical enquiry the Renaissance
This cultural vandalism had erased the artistic sensibility through which
reveals more about the values and aspirations of those who have studied it than
mankind's most honorable values had been expressed. The second rupture,
some essential truth about its meaning or significance. 2 Although the various
between the middle ages and the modern, came with the rediscovery of
connotations that the Renaissance has today emerged over many centuries, the
painting and the rejection of the "ugly form of Byzantine style" by the artis-
Italian humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were already con-
tic geniuses Cimabue-"perhaps the first cause of the restoration of the art
vinced that the return of the glories of classical culture they were witnessing
of painting"-and Giotto who, infused with divine inspiration, "revived the
signified the dawning. of a new era of civilization. Indeed, it was this histor-
modern and excellent art of painting."?
ical self-consciousness that first gave voice to the medieval/modern dichot-
Enlightenment thinkers built on Vasari's basic scheme to present the
omy, which today underscores the Westphalia narrative. Petrarch (1304-74),
Renaissance as the rebirth of Europe's culturevvalues, and civilization." For
driven by nostalgia for Rome, rejected the teleological.,narrative of Christian
Voltaire, men like Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cimabue, and Giotto pioneered
history-in which the divine oversaw mankind's progression from "heathen
a perfect aesthetic which managed to combine the wisdom of the past with the
darkness to the light that was Christ"-by identifying two distinct historical
promise of the future. On reading Petrarch, Voltaire experienced "t~e beauty
eras: historiae antiquae and historiae novae. 3 Whereas the Christian narrative
of antiquity, together with the freshness of modern times."? Late eighteenth
implied progress from antiquity to the present-the latter being more proximate
century Europeans, infused with Enlightenment promises of progress, began
to the moment of divine revelation-Petrach reversedit by portraying historiae
to see the Renaissance not just as the recovery of classical civilization but as
antiquae, the period of royal, republican, and imperial Rome, as the age of glory
a pivotal moment in the history of mankind's emergence into maturity. In
and light and contrasting it with the following centuries of darkness and decay
Hegel's account of the Renaissance three new sensitivities come together-the
caused by Rome's adoption of Christianity as the state religion. Inspired by
flourishing of Fine Arts, which turned man toward the sensual; the revival of
Petrarch, the Italian humanists saw themselves as the harbingers of new age of
learning or study of antiquity, which directed his attention away from heaven;
history. The revival of classical antiquity would usher in a historical conscious-
and the geographical discoveries, which turned. the spirit outward toward the
ness as different ·from the medieval past as early Christian Europe had been
earth---'-to establish the conditions within which the spirit or Godhead could
from Rome. For Erwin Panofsky the prevalence of" biblical antitheses between
achieve its highest stage of reflective self-awareness. The Renaissance was
darkness and light, slumber and awakening and blindness and seeing" indicates
comparable
that the Renaissance was not just an intellectual movement or new cultural sen-
sitivity but an almost religious experience.t with that blush ofdawn, which after long storms first betokens the return of a
Two centuries later, Vasari (1511-74) would declare that la rinascita, the bright and glorious day. This day is the day of Universality, which breaks upon
revival or rebirth of art inspired by the humanist recovery of ancient civili- the world after ·the long, eventful, and terrible night of the Middle Ages-a
zation, amounted to a caesural rupture with the past. Vasari identified con- day which is distinguished by science, art and inventive impulse-that is, by
temporary, recent and antique artistic styles. using terminology replete with the noblest and highest, and which Humanity, rendered free by Christianity
connotations of regression and progress. Thus by maniera vecchia (the old- and emancipated through the instrumentality of the Church, exhibits as the
fashioned style) he denoted two unsophisticated artistic styles of the recent eternal and veritable substance of its being.!"
past: greci vecchi e non antichi (Byzantine) and maniera tedesca (Gothic). By
contrast, rnaniera antica signified la buona maniera greca antica (the good, The apotheosis of the idea of the Renaissance as the historical emergence
antique-Greek style). Finally;moderno designated contemporary art, the of a new mode of civilization was Jacob Burckhardt's claim in Die Kultur der
Renaissance style, which Vasari contrasted to the base art forms of the middle Renaissance in Italien that the Renaissance discovered man and the world.I' In
ages.? His division of history into three distinct periods drew "the first major Burckhardt's view, Renaissance culture floutished in the prosperous economic
dividing line in the annals of Western Europe between antiquity and the and dynamic political condition of the Italian city-states. Economic indepen-
Middle Ages, and the second between the Middle Ages and what Vasari and dence and the art of governance promoted individuality and self-expresslon.P
104 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 105

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness-that which was with ancient texts, did not develop. Thorndike favors ·ditching the i~ba of the
turned within as that which was turned without-lay dreaming or half Renaissance entirely because "[i)t has kept men in general from recognizing that
awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and our life and thought is based more nearly and actually on the middle ages than
childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad on distant Greece and Rome, from whom our heritage is more indirect, book-
in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, ish and sentimental, less institutional, social, religious, even less economic and
people, party, family, or corporation-only through some general· category. experimental." 18
In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration Renaissance historians did not let this attack on the uniqueness of the
of the State and of all the things of this world became possible. The subjec- Renaissance by the scientific "deperiodizers" go unchallenged. They sought to
tive side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man reassert the distinctiveness of the Renaissance while acknowledging the vitality
became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such. 13 of medieval civilization. Hans Baron challenged the view that the Renaissance
was irrelevant to the emergence of modern science.l" Yes the humanists side-
Burckhardt's vision of the Renaissance as a moment of salvation, a release from lined natural science in favor of history, but their notions of man and the world
the barbarism of the preceding ages, was challenged by medieval historians directly inspired subsequent scientific breakthroughs. Galileo's confirmation of
who rejected its negative assessment of European culture between the sixth and Copernican cosmology drew on Nicholas of Cusa's vision of a decentralized and
fourteenth centuries asa monotonous religious uniformity. They identified dis- peripatetic cosmos. Similarly, the ethos of the artist-workshops of Renaissance
tinctive and innovative elements in medieval art-previously regarded as crude Italy-characterised by experimentation, observation and causal thinking-
and barbarous in the light ofVasari's classical schemes-and showed how post- influenced Galileo's decision to place observation and hypothetico-deductive
Roman medieval civilisation had absorbed much of Rome's legal, cultural, and reasoning at the heart of scientific method. Leonardo also insisted that for an
economic thought and practice. Scholars, like Walter Pater and Charles Haskins, enquiry to be scientific it should satisfy mathematical tests. For Baron the "sub-
maintained that the culture of twelfth century France, combining Romanesque tle interrelations between the 'realism' of the Renaissance and the subsequent
and Gothic styles, the blossoming of lyric and epic vernacular poetry, and new rise of the scientific spirit" justify the claim that the Renaissance was the proto-
learning and literature in Latin, showed an intellectual and spiritual sensitivity type of the modern world.j"
equal to, if not greater than, the Italian Renaissance of the quattro cento. "The Another staunch defender ofthe idea ofthe Renaissance was Federico Chabod,
Middle Ages [is] less dark and static, the Renaissance less bright and less sudden, who denied that it was either radically incommensurate with a preceding "epoch
than was once supposed.Y'" For Pater if the Renaissance is understood asa move- of barbarism and darkness" or. a superficial intellectual or stylistic movement
ment during which "the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling of little consequence to the overall passage of history. Chabod identified the
and sensation and thought, not opposed to but only beyond and independent of Renaissance as a "period" in the sense of "a movement of ideas, an artistic, lit-
the spiritual system" then the legendary figure ofAbelard was arguably the pro- erary and cultural period which is first of all and above all a spiritual reality."21
totype for Renaissance man.P Within the realm ofscience, Dana Durand argues As such, its particular significance was derived from its reception of classical
that if modernity emerged out of the scientific revolution then the quattrocento culture and its promotion of conceptual realism. Although ClassicaI~ntiqUity
did not achieve "a radicalbreak with the Middle Ages and institute the era of had permeated medieval life and was cherished and admired, it was ~t"an ideal
Modern Europe.f '" Compared to. medieval scholastics, .Renaissance humanists unrecoverable world. By contrast, the humanists felt it was possible to live the
made few breakthroughs in scientific. methodology, cosmology, mathematics, spirit of the classical age through imitatio. Whereas for the scholastics Roman
or physics. The Renaissance only produced three innovative scientific thinkers history was merely a passage on the greater journey to Revelation, the humanists
in Leonardo, Cusa, and Toscanelli, and it made no significant contributions viewed the pagan model of Rome as the Golden Age when man's highest aspira-
to scientific knowledge, even within established paradigms. Lynn Thorndike's tions were realized. Furthermore, although both medieval and Renaissance cul-
judgment is harsher still. He argues, against Burkhardt, that the modern indi- tures produced rich and vivid descriptions of the world, the humanists replaced
vidual, capable of appreciating nature and beauty, was the product of medieval providential causality with a "conceptual realism" that prioritized the actions of
civilization rather than the Renaissance.'? Furthermore, Middle Age art and great men as the motor of universal history.22 Historical events were no longer
architecture displayed both a sensitivity to nature and signs of an innovative explained in terms of divine retribution or reward for good conduct but as the
mode of scientific inquiry that the humanists, with their retrospective obsession consequences of human agency. Nevertheless, Chabod admits that in many
106 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 107

spheres of life attitudes remained far from modern. ,Economic life, in particu- constrained by an inescapable Malthusian dynamic. From the perspective of
lar, was still constrained by a Christian ethic which regarded the instrumental the longue duree there is no meaningful distinction between medieval and early
pursuit of money as sinful. There was no economic equivalent to Machiavelli's modern Europe and the significance of the Renaissance as a period of transition
"politics for politics' sake" or Alberti's "art for art's sake." Likewise, ethical dis- disappears. Nevertheless, claims Bouwsma, since Ladurie explains the ending of
course failed to escape the values of theological' reasoning. The facts of the exis- longue duree in terms of "elitist forces of revolution" motivated by impulses such
tence of man and the world could be explained rationally but their justification as individualism and practical empirical rationality, he effectively reinstated the
required recourse to a universal moral law established by God or Providence. Renaissance, which first promoted such values.r''
Furthermore, the idealization of classical .antiquity emulated the, Christian If there is one thing that emerges from these debates, it is that the Renaissance
belief in the' revelation of truth at a particular moment in history. Finally, the is not simply one thing or another. It was neither medieval nor modern, but
humanist anticipation ofa new humanitas rnirrored the eschatological expec- embraced aspects of both. Renaissance thought, as Eusebio Colomer describes
tation of the coming of the kingdom of God. Despite such caveats, Chabod's it, constitutes a threshold between "the ancient and medieval past and the mod-
Renaissance was not simply the final instance of another medieval culture, but ern future ... in Leibniz's phrase imbued with the past and pregnant with the
challenged its very essence. Similarly, for E. H. Gombrich, Renaissance intellec- future."27 The subsequent inquiry into the Renaissance "origins" of the modern
tual and artistic life, embodied in the recovery of an elegant Latin style and the territorial imaginary will, therefore, avoid depicting the Renaissance culture of
rebirth of art through perspective and nude drawing, was so distinctive that it space as a coherent, unified, and organized body ofspatial discourse that brought
forced a rupture with pre-existing European culture.f' about an absolute break with the hierarchical order of medieval Christianity,
In the post-war era the Renaissance' debate shifted to an evaluation of its ';'

importance within macro-historical processes. In narratives which staged

Individual and Cosmos
Western history as an unfolding drama of human progress and development,
reaching its final act in modernity, the Renaissance was cast as a principle actor. Richard Ashley and Rob Walker assert that the Cartesian spatial practices of
Taking a broad chronological perspective (1300-1600), Wallace Ferguson modernity, which have differentiated the inside spaces of territorial sovereignty
defined the Renaissance as a period of transition in Western civilization dur- from the outside spaces of anarchy, are symptomatic ofa broader structural prin-
ing which medieval social structures and ideologies grounded in feudalism and ciple of sovereign identity. Walker and Ashley imply that the principle of sover-
the Church were replaced with the institutions of modern civilization: com- eign identity, and obviously Cartesian practice, are products of the Cosmopolitan
merce and industry supplanted' agriculture; a money 'economy and capitalism culture of seventeenth century Europe. However, as I shall demonstrate in this
emerged; feudal particularism and Christian universalism were replaced by section, the principle of sovereign identity was already present in Renaissance
national centralized states; the hegemony of the Catholic church was challenged philosophical 'reflections on the nature of man and his place in the cosmos.
by Protestant sects; and, urban elites emerged as political leaders, cultural arbi- Intimations of the principle of sovereign identity can be identified in Marsilio
ters and sponsors of secular learning and knowledge.r" Scholars promoted the Ficino's depiction of man as an image of God and in Pico della Mirandola's
"age of the Renaissance" as a period of transition from the medieval to the mod- promotion of the dignity of man. 28 Ficino and Pi co gave man the means to
ern world, one that anticipated modernity as much as it honored the legacies escape from the confines of the base position to which he had been allocated
of medieval culture. However, William Bouwsma points out that the validity in the medieval spatial episteme. In so doing they removed the pivotal founda-
of the bridging thesis depends on the intelligibility of the two ages it connects. tion upon which the cosmology of hierarchy was constructed. Self-fashioning
"The Renaissance as 'transition' suggests something like an unsteady bridge Renaissance man was able to mark out his being-in-space and took a significant
between two granitic headlands, clearly identifiable as the Middle Ages and the step toward the modern territorial imaginary.
modern (or, at least, early modern) world."25 Accordinglyit rests upon two weak However" it would be incorrect to assume that either Ficino or Pico rejected
premises: that the modern world is an intelligible entity, and that modernity the basic hierarchical premises ofmedieval cosmology. Their ontological horizon
emerged out of a single linear process. Subsequent Structuralist histories have was still determined by the vocabularies and categories of Neo-Platonism and
sought to overcome this by substituting progressive history with an emphasis Christian scholasticism. It reflected the continued prevalence of the medieval
on discontinuity and rupture between durees. In Le Roy Ladurie's history of the spatial episteme in Renaissance culture.I? Peter Burke argues that few sixteenth
longue duree the centuries between 1000 and 1800 figure as a motionless unity century Italians would have challenged Dante's division of the cosmos into a
 The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 109
108 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

higher and a lower world; their mental universe was "like that of their medieval himself: In the middle world, that is, the celestial, the empyrean heaven
ancestors, animate rather than mechanical, moralized rather than neutral and likewise presides like the commander of an army over nine heave~~y spheres,
organized in .terrns of correspondences rather than causes."30 The continued each of which revolves with an unceasing motion; yet in imitati~n of God,
appeal of the hierarchical universe was derived from its provision of an intelligi- it is itself unmoving. There are also in the elemental world, after the prime
ble "ready-reference system for the allocation by category of every phenomenon matter which is its foundation, nine spheres of corruptible forms. 36
to its place in the scheme of things."31 Its hegemony ensured that new cosmolog-
Man belongs to the fourth world and it contains all those things found in the
ical theories were resisted by much of the educated elite and remainedunknown
others. Pice's universe is an emanative sympatheia for "whatever is in any of the
to the mass of the population. By and large, "[tjhe men of the fifteenth century
worlds is at the same time contained in each."37 The allegorical principle that
still lived in a walled universe as well as in walled towns."32
everything is in everything is the basis of all knowledge. For Pico, "[bjound by
Ficino's cosmos would certainly have been familiar to Dante. It was a closed
the chains of concord, all these worlds exchange nature as well as names with
system of hierarchically ordered spheres in which each being has its place and
mutualliberality."38
degree of perfection. God at the summit presided over a descending hierarchy
Although none of this. challenged the basic hierarchical structure of the
of orders: angels and souls; celestial and elementary spheres, then animal, plant
medieval cosmos, Ficino and Pico made one significant alteration by reas-
and mineral species and, at the bottom, shapeless prime matter. The realms
signing man's place within it. The order of things in the medieval cosmos had
of the four elements moved according to Aristotelian criteria of substance and
been established by the Plotinian model of six hypostases: One, Mind, Soul,
quality. Seven heavens moved according to their disposition and the eighth,
Sensation, Nature, and Body. However, in the Theologia Platonica, Ficino only
which moved both east-west and west-east, .had the qualities of brilliance and
recognized five grades of substances: God, Angel, Soul, Quality, and Body.
splendor. The seven heavens were in turn enclosed within the crystalline sphere,
Although the upper part of this hierarchy reproduced the Plotinian scheme,
which only moved east to west and had a single quality of brilliance. Then
by placing Soul at the centre of the symmetrical hierarchy of ontological order,
in accordance with the principles that position is. superior to motion and the
Ficino guaranteed its indissolubility and immortality; for, if the soul perished
source of light is superior to light itself: the summit of the universe is occupied
the whole hierarchy would dissolve. By giving "the privileged place in its centre
by the static and luminescent Empyrean, related to the stability and light of the
to the human soul ... [Ficino gives] ... a kind of metaphysical setting and sanc-
Trinity. In the Empyrean the nine orders of angels are disposed in a manner con-
tion to the doctrine of the dignity of man."39 As the absolute median connect-
sistent with Dionysius the Areopagite; three hierarchies of divine spirits, each of
ing the extremes of the world, Soul confirms the inner unity of Being. Situated
which contains three orders. 33 In Ficino's cosmos all being is ordered in relations
of hierarchy. For P. 0.· Kristeller, Ficino's "hierarchical order constitutes ... an between and having attributes of both higher and lower beings it is the mean
of all God's creations. Soul is in all things simultaneously, possessing images of
ontological space that embraces all corporeal and incorporeal elements alike and
'In'
in which all things have a definite relationship. of proximity to each other."34 the divine things on which it depends and concepts of the lower things which
it generates. "Therefore it may be rightly called the centre of nature, the middle
All entities are ranked according to their relative dignity or perfection and are
term of all things, the series of the world, the face of all, the bond and juncture
included in an ascending or descending sequence oEgrades: "divine sun" at the
of the universe.T'" For Charles Trinkaus, Ficino's conception of the soul was the
summit over "angelic mind," "rational soul" in the middle, then "active quality"
most radical statement ofhuman autonomy made in the Renaissances" Man as
giving form to matter and at the bottom, the "dull mass ofbodies."35
rational soul not only serves .as the conduit between eternal and te~poral and
Although Pico's philosophy was more eclectic than Ficino's and complemented
between divine and nature, but is the only entity able to movebetween the cor-
the Neo-Platonist core with Aristotelian, Averroist, and Hebraic Cabbalist ele-
poreal and divine realms. Man is unique because his soul "is not compelled by
ments, the universe in the Heptaplus remains essentially hierarchical. The cos-
the divine, from whose providence it is free from the start, nor is it coerced by
mos consists of three worlds: the elemental world of nature, the celestial world
anything natural over which it widely rules."42 Unlike other animate creatures
of-the planets, and the angelic world of the intelligences, arranged in ascending
whose actions are determined by nature, man, like God who created him in his
order according to their relative values in the hierarchy.
own likeness, is able to exercise free will through the application of his intellect.
In the first world, God, the ptimal unity, presides over the nine orders Man acts freely and 011 nature rather than according to nature and by implica-
tion is capable of controlling rather than being imprisoned in time and space.
of angels as if over many spheres and, without moving, moves all toward
110 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 111

Furthermore, intellect provides man with relative autonomy from the influence There can be few more emphatic declarations of the principle of sovereign iden-
of the heavens. The soul's direct relationship to God elevates man above the tity than Pice's Oration. Man's uniqueness derives from the fact that he is the
heavens for their form is "corporeal, singular, local and temporal" while the only being who has not been poured from a prefabricated mould and has the
form by which the "mind intellects is incorporeal; universal and absolute."43 power to enter into any form he wishes; only man can escape the rigid striations
This autonomy is the source of man's capacity to deploy the arts-s--Indusrrial, of the medieval world. Man, notes Cassirer, has the "almost unlimited power of
civil and liberal-and sciences for his own purposes. self-transformation at his disposal" and "unlike any other creature, he owes his
moral character to himself: He is what he makes of himself... 48 Not only is Man
For, as though a participant of providence on the model of divine governance able to fashion his own self but the entire universe, elements and beasts below
the soul rules itself the home, the city, the arts, and the animals ... the power and angels and celestial souls above, is at his service.
of man, therefore, is very similar to that of the divine nature, seeing that man
by himself that is through his own decision and art, rules himself without It is a truly divine possession of all these natures at the same time flowing
being in the least limited by his physical nature, and imitates individual into one, so that it pleases us to exclaim with Hermes, "A great miracle,
works of the higher nature.t" o Asclepius, is man." The human condition can especially be glorified for
this reason, through which it happens that no created substance disdains to
In the Oration on the Dignity ofMan Pico would further undermine the hier- serve him. To him the earth and the elements, to him the animals are ready
archical cosmological order.P He endorsed thg"humanist proposition that man for service, for him the heavens fight, for him the angelic minds procure
is the most wonderful and fortunate of creatures. However, he did not feel that safety and goodness.f"
any of the reasons put forward thus far-man is an intermediary between crea-
tures, he is the intimate of the gods, the king oflower beings, or the being with Man's capacity for self-fashioning raises him above all other animate beings
the most developed senses, intellect or use of reason-explained why man is so driven by instinct, and even above the angels and heavenly intelligences whose
worthy of admiration and occupies suchan enviable rank in the universal chain nature and perfection is impressed upon them at creation.
of being. For Pico, the dignity ofman arose asa consequence of God's creation In conclusion, we must acknowledge. that Fieino and Pico played only a
of the world, for once the supreme Architect had finished his work he desired a modest part in undermining the hierarchies of the medieval cosmos. Ficino's
being that could appreciate and contemplate it. 46 dynamic conception of the universe "transcends the limits of the traditional
notion of hierarchy" and with Pica
He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature, and assigning
him a place iri the. middle of the world, addressed him thus: "Neither a fixed man is no longer a definite element in the hierarchical series, not even its
abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have privileged centre: he is entirely detached from the hierarchy and can move
we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according upward and downward according to his free will. Thus the hierarchy is no
to thy judgement thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form, and longer allInclusive, while man, because of his possession of freedom, seems
what functions thou thyself shalt desire. The nature of all. other beings is lim- to be set entirely apart from the order of objective reality.l''
ited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. Thou, con-
strained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand However, their promotion of the doctrine of the dignity of man is important in so
We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. We have far as it anticipates the principle ofsovereign identity. Man is no longer directed by
set thee at the world's centre that thou mayest from thence more easily observe the heavens and, as a sovereign subject detached from the hierarchical structures
whatever is in the world. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, of the world, he is able to observe it as an objective reality that he can manipulate
neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honour, and control. He is no longer imprisoned within but able to know, order and con-
as though the maker and moulder of thyself: thou mayest fashion thyself in trol space. and time. With dignity man also acquires the agency of territorializa-
whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into tion and comes to embody the principle of sovereign identity driven by the desire
the lower forms oflife, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out ofthy to "fix a point ofidentity-a universality in space and time against which all dif-
soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.V ferences in space and time can be measured, judged and put in their pla~e."51
112 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy .- 113

Cusa, Copernicus, and Infinity

that everything created by God strives to achieve perfectibility, Cusa reasoned
If Pico and Ficino promoted the principle ofsovereign identity, it is also true that that because Man is distinguished. by his intellect his purpose is to seek per-
they left the essential structure of the medieval cosmos intact. As we saw ear- fect knowledge, that is knowledge of God. 55 Despite such aspirations, De docta
lier, in the medieval world political and social hierarchies mirrored and so drew ignorantia sought to show that man is unable to know anything beyond the
their legitimacy from the divinely ordained structure of the cosmos. We might Socratic doubt: "assuredly we desire to know that we do not know. If we can
therefore expect that any· non-hierarchical representation of the cosmos might fully attain unto this [knowledge ofour ignorance], we will attain unto learned
serve to weaken the appeal of a hierarchical political cosmology. Direct causal ignorance."56 The failure of the intellect to reach the truth is a consequence
links between the substitution of hierarchy for infinity within Renaissance cos- of understanding's reliance on comparison: "all those who make an investiga-
mology arid the replacement of hierarchy by anarchy in Renaissance political tion judge the uncertain proportionally, by means of a comparison with what
discourse remain somewhat elusive. Nevertheless, at the level of metaphor and is taken to be certain. Therefore, every inquiry is comparative and uses the
analogy there is a strong correspondence between new conceptions of political means of comparative relation (medio proportionis)." The common measure by
territoriality and the new cosmology. which comparative relation can be thought is number: "number encompasses
Alexander Koyre contextualizes the demise of the Christian cosmos an.d all things related' comparatively (proportionabilia)." However, because under-
the rise of modern cosmology within a widespread spiritual revolution which, standing through number traces definite relations or comparisons of greater and
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, embraced the "secularisatron of lesser, it can only comprehend the finite world while "the infinite,quainfinite,
consciousness," the discovery of man's "essential subjectivity," and the replace- is unknown, for it escapes all comparative relation."
ment of the vita contemplativa by the vita activita. In combination thes~ new This is especially significant when it comes to knowing Godar the Absolute
modes of thought precipitated a philosophical and scientific revolution that Maximum which "is not of the nature of those things which can be compara--
engineered tively greater and lesser, it is beyond all that We can concelve.l'V Rather, in God
there are. no such categories and all opposites, including maximum and mini-
the destruction of the Cosmos, that is, the disappearance, from philosoph- mum, coincide. Cusa drew on a well established metaphor to describe God as "an
ically and scientifically valid concepts, of the conception of the world as a infinite sphere, whose centre -is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere."58
finite, closed, and hierarchically ordered whole .... and its replacement by Further, he extended it to the cosmos to convey the sense .thatsince God is in
an indefinite and even infinite universe which is bound together by the all things, he must be equally close to every part of creation; the centre of the
identity of its fundamental components and laws, and in which all those universe, that is God, is present in all things everywhere.t" Everything has its
components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implies origin or measure in God so "every created thing is, as .it were, a finite infinity or
the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations, based on value- a created God."60 The universe is also a finite infinity: infinite like God but not
concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the a divine unity, rather a "multiplicity, a manifold spread out in space and time."61
utter devalorization of being, the.divorce of the world ofvalue and the world Cusa's universe hasno centre and no circumference and opposes the values of
of facts. 52 the medieval hierarchical cosmos,

For Koyre this revolution started with Copernicus's De revolutionibus otbi~tm

for if it had a centre and a circumference there would be 'some space and
coelestium (1543), was consolidated by Descartes' Principia philosophia.e (1644),
some thing beyond the world, suppositions which, are wholly lacking in
and concluded with Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia matbematica
truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the world should be enclosed
(1687). However, Renaissance scholars like Kristeller have predated this revo-
within a corporeal centre and a corporeal boundary, it is not within our
lution by a century, arguing that Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia (1440)
power to understand the world, whose centre and circumference are God.
was the first text to undermine the hierarchical conception of the cosmos and to
And though this world cannot be infinite, nevertheless it cannotbe con-
promote a new 'understanding. of man's place in it. 53
ceived as finite, since there are no limits within which it could be confined.
Cusa's purpose in De docta ignorantia was not, however, to establish a new
The earth, therefore, which cannot' be the centre, cannot be wholly without
cosmology but to develop a theory of knowledge.54 From two starting premises:
motion.... And just as the world has no centre, so neither the sphere of the
first Aristotle's .dictum that ''All men .by nature desire to know" and second
fixed stars nor any other is its circurnterence.Pe
114 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 115

Several important consequences derive from Cusa's representation of the a planet revolvingaroundrhe sun, the orderof the other planets can be estab-
universe as permanently in movement, acentric, and limitless. First, once the lished. Venus and Mercury, seen only at dawn and dusk, are within the earth's
earth is removed from the centre of the universe and placed among the stars, orbit, while the rest, seen all night, lie outside. With the sun at the centre, their
Aristotle's upper/lower distinction between a celestial sphere of superior being positions could be established according to the relative duration oftheir orbits:
and a mundane world of debased substances effectively breaks down. Second, "the sphere of the fixed stars, which is immovable, then Saturn. (with a circuit
once place and movement are no longer fixed and absolute, knowledge becomes of thirty years) foIlowed by Jupiter (twelve), Mars (two), the Earth (an annual
relative. Aristotle had argued that. the universe could be known objectively by orbit), Venus (nine months) and Mercury(eightydays)."69At the heart of this
taking measurements from fixed and immutable points prescribed by the nature universe is the sun at rest which illuminates everything: "called by some peo-
of things. For Cusavhowever, these points were hypothetical and ideal, posited ple the lantern of the universe, itsrnirid by others, and its ruler by still others.
by the free mind. Finally, and most disturbing, was the implication that ifboth The Thrice-Great Hermes labels it a 'visible god'; and Sophocles' Electra, 'that
the universe and God's creative power were infinite then life in other places which gazes upon all things.' Thus indeed, as if seated on a kingly throne, the
was a distinct possibility. The modernity of Cusa's cosmology becomes appar- sun governs the family of planets revolving around -it."70
ent when it is contrasted with Copernicus' model in De Revolutionibus Orbium How did the cosmological visions sketched out by Co-sa and Copernicus
Coelestium (1543).63 From the proposition that the earth moves around the sun, contribute to the Renaissance reirnagination of political cosmology and the pro-
Copernicus attempted to demonstrate that the planets make up a coherent inte- motion of a modern territorial imaginary? Mindful of Michel Foucault's claim
grated system. He substantiated this claim by showing how adequate planetary that analogous episternic shifts occur simultaneously in heterogeneous discur-
tables could be calculated from geometrical models that had the sun at their sive formations, ·we can cite ErnstCassirer'sobservation that during the fif-
centre. Despite Copernicus' popular reputation as a revolutionary thinker, teenth and sixteenth centuries in both astronomy and politics "one breach after
historians of science dispute his originality. For Bertrand Russell, Copernicus another" was made in the hierarchical system. 71Cassirer prefaces a discussion
was more Pythagorean than modern, and Lovejoy estimates that Copernicus of the leveling of political hierarchies, caused by the decline of the feudal order
merely altered the details of the orthodox Christian theological cosmos:" [f] and the rise of territorializing monarchs and princes, with Giordano Bruno's
or Copernicus the solar system and the universe remained identical; his world, summary of Cusa'sworld as an infinite whole, lacking any privileged ·points
though not geocentric, was still centered, still spherical in shape, still securely or any sense of above or below.72 The erasure of hierarchy in Renaissance cos-
walled in by the outermost sphere."64 Cusa's infinite and. acentric universe was mology and political discourse mirror one another, for in both "the difference
considerably more modern than Copernicus's heliocentric universe.i? between the 'lower' and the 'higher' world vanishes. The. same principles and
Certainly traditional premises underlay Copernicus' vision of a heliocentric natural Jaws hold for the 'world below' and the 'world above'. Things are on the
universe.F" Copernicus accepted the established view of the earth as a sphere but same level both in the physical and in the political ordet."73 JUSt as Copernicus
argued that it should have rotational motion appropriate to its form. Hence the and Cusa undermined the hierarchies of the cosrnos; so Machiavelli and others
apparent rising and setting of sun, moon, stars, and planets could be accounted undermined the hierarchies of Papacy and Empire. by. secularizing politics and
for by the earth's daily rotation. Second, from the Aristotelian premise that the grounding it on the territories of republics and princedoms.
movement of the eternal heavenly bodies in a symmetrical and harmonious uni-
verse mustbe circular and uniform, he surmised that because their movement,
Machiavelli: Anti-Hierarch
as viewed fromrhe earth, was non-uniform and irregular, the earth could not
be the centre of the universe. Because "the same planets are observed nearer The modern territorial imaginary presupposes that man's .political spaces are
to the earth and farther away [this] necessarily proves that the centre of the ordered along one horizontal plane, that there are no vestiges of the hierar-
earth is not the centre of their circles."67 If the earth is not the centre of the chies---ef--t-he--Gh-r-i-stia-n--Me-dievar-rheological-political .cosmos obstructing the
universe and itself moves' around a centre then the yearly cycle can be "trans- landscape.' The Renaissance thinker who did most to. undermine the legitimacy
formed from a solar to a terrestrial movement." Finally, "it will be realised that of the hierarchical political imaginary was Machiavelli, who dismantled the
the sun occupies the middle of the universe. All these facts are disclosed to us spaces of political hierarchy as he undermined the temporal politics of eternity.
by the principle governing the order in which the planets follow one another, J. G. A. Pocock has placed Machiavelli in a .current of Renaissance political
and by the harmony of the entire universe.T" Once the earth is recognized as thought concerned to replace the Christian temporal paradigm of eternity and
116 • From Hierarchy toAnarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 117

universality with one of change and contirigency.r" In the medieval time-frame being and to find his place in an eternal order."79 At the turn of the sixteenth
the random flow of events on earth were considered meaningless in and. of century, another turbulent period in Florence's history, Francesco Cuicciardinj,
themselves; they acquired. .mcaningonly when related to the .eternal and-uni- Dino Giannotti, and Niccolo Machiavelli again insisted that the potential of
versal. Events were interpreted within an eschatological framework as signs or civic life in an environment of uncertainty and danger could only be achieved
intimations ofmillennium and apocalypse; "though the signs are in theearchjy if all citizens actively pursued the uiuere civile. They aligned the vita activa with
city they esetiot.abota it, not about secular history, but only signals of the corn- the Aristotelian image of mart esxoonpolitileon, a political animal whose telos
ing ultimate event in sacred history, the Day of Judgement, that will mark the can only be realized in thepalis, that is the republic.. With an eye on Venice,
destruction of the earrh ly city and with it the destruction of time and the end whose mixed constitution was widely regarded as the guarantor of her longevity
of history."75 Both Church and Empire promoted the temporal qualities of eter- and relative stability, they endorsed Aristotle's maxim that the best form. of gov-
nity, stability, and universality and imbued them with positive values. Canonists ernment, that is the one most capable of instilling civic virtu in its citizens, was
and. Imperialists alike claimed that because the papacy and empire had been a mixed government of the One, the Few, and the Many.
established directly by divine will, they were, therefore, imbued with the divine Guicciardini and Giannotti held that the goal of a mixed government found
qualities of eternity and universality. Imperial political society was imagined in a republican constitution was to secure Florence's being as an Aristotelian
as "the existence among men of the hierarchical order existing in heaven and ideal of excellence .: and civic virtue. able to overcome the contingencies of his-
in nature; its legitimation and its organising categories were alike timeless, and tory. However, Machiavelli. drives history right through the heart of the polity,
change could exist in it only as degeneration of recovery. Affiliation with the making it the essence of political. being. The new prince who has occupied OJ
empire, then, like affiliation with monarchy generally, was affiliation with the illegally acquired a state is an innovator, a man who, having overturned the
timeless." 76 established order,now faces the task of holding onto his new possessions with-
The paradigm of the fixed and eternal was first challenged by the Florentine out the legitimacy derived from established dynastic rule. Machiavelli's prince
humanists Coluccio Salutati.and Leonardo Bruni during the "crisis" of the early has entered "the domain of contingency" where fortuna, the capricious god--
fourteenth century. Salutati and Bruni, worried that Florence was threatened. by dess of chance; rules supreme. However, "the time-realm he now In habit.sis not
the attempts by the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, to consolidate a wholly unpredictable or unmanageable" for bold action guided by uirti« can
monarchical state in northern and central Italy, hoped that by appealing to the turn her "slings and arrows" to his advanrage.i'" Likewise, Machiavelli proposed
city's special ethos they could rally the citizens to her defense. They promoted. a that the republic should also enter the stream ofhistorymanifest in power pol-
new foundational myth in which the patrimony ofJulius Caesar was substituted itics and triumph over it by destroying her enemies. Hence his admiration of
for that of republican Rome. From then on, writes Pocock, "the republic of bellicose Rome, the model republic; maintained by a well-disciplined and patri-
Florence, stated as a high ideal but existing in the present and in its past, otic body of soldiers drawn from the citizenry. Yet Machiavelli remained true to
was affiliated only with other republics and with those moments in past time the spirit of Polybius' theory of anacyclosis which dictated that all constitutions
at which republics had existed." 77 It was not represented as a universal Platonic pass through stages of change and decay: from Kingship to Tyranny, then Rule
ideal somehow outside of history, and the politics of citizenship and republi- of the Best to Domination of the Few, and down to popular government and
canism were explicitly divorced from the natural hierarchical order. Indeed, for anarchy. Thus even Rome's virtuous leaders were unable to guide that most gIo--
Pocock, because its organisation affirmed its "sovereignty and autonomy, and rious republic away from an inevitable. decline as. dictated by the requirements
therefore its individuality and particularity" it simultaneously asserted "that it of natural law. 81 Further, while Polybius argued. that the destiny of all political
existed in time, not eternity, and was therefore transitory and doomed to imper- bodies trapped within the unending cycle Was a· return to their natural state,
manence, for this was the condition of particular being."78 Machiavelli was less optimistic about the future, and doubEea-t-n-a-t-a-n-y-repttbli-c---
Salutati also reworked the traditional distinction between vita activa (engage- would be able to endure such traumatic changes arid still survive in. a hostile
ment in social activity) and vita contemplativa (the solitary pursuit of pure international environment.V For.while the republic is in a state of commotion,
knowledge) by aligning the former with the idea of vivere civile, the active pro- lacking counsel and strength, it is likely to be overcome by a "neighbouring state
motion of civic life and citizenship. This implicitly undermined the imperialist which is better ordered.T"
chronology, for the active citizen, busy dealing with the practical contingencies Machiavelli inserted politics into the .stream of history in .rhe context of
of everyday politics, had no time to "contemplate the unchanging hierarchies of Charles VIII's 1494' invasion of Italy..This expedition had come to symbolise
118 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy.'," 119

the inability of Italy's rulers to determine their own destinies, when external of scholarly debate, yet there is much in ·Giuseppe Prezzolirii's claim that
forces, deriving from power struggles taking place over the Alps, were seen to Machiavelli was "the most anti-Christian thinker of his time." 91 Machiavelli
be shaping the peninsula's political fortunes. In this context" it was natural mounted a critique of the political doctrines of Christianity and the historical
for Machiavelli to draw the conclusion that the dimension in which politics record of the Church as a political institution on several fronts. The most super-
worked was history and that every political action had to be fitted into the ficial was his polemical attack, which drew on a vibrant tradition of Florentine
conrextof h istorical change."84 No longer moored to the secure shores 'of the anti-clericalism extending back toDante, on the current adrninistration ofthe
civitas Dei, Machiavelli cast politics adrift into the mundane world of change, Roman Church for its divisive and pernicious influence on .Italian politics.
chance, and contingency ruled over by the capricious and unpredictable god- Machiavelli called into question the popular myth, as he saw it, that' the Italian
dess Fortuna. If political leaders are to overcome this wily foe they must cul... city-states were blessed due to their close association with the Chiesa Romana,
tivate a judicious combination of instinct, force, and virtu-"-the capacity to On the contrary" because the religious establishment was the arbiter of a peo-
anticipate and prepare for the unexpected and thereby turn it to one's own ple's sense of selfworth and virtu, the venal and salacious conduct of the Roman
advantage. In the principality, virtu was incarnate in the talents and character court had made the Italians irreligious, thereby causing them to loose any sense
of the prince; while in the republic it was generated by the active participation of communal identity. In its role asa temporal power (imperio temporale) the
of the citizens in the res publica. 85 Originally the Roman pagan goddess of Church had been divisive, the root cause of the Italians' failure to unite either
chance, medieval Christianity had recast Fortuna as an agency of divine will, around a virtuous prince or within a unified republic. The Church's influence
a "ministering angel entirely subservient to the Christian God.~'86 Machiavelli, was pernicious because
however, reclaimed her pagan identity, making her the ruler of man's politi-
cal fortunes: "Fortune governs supreme. Instead of being a ministra of God, neither its power nor its. virtue has been sufficiently great for it to be able to
she is the mistress of human destiny, and that destiny ... is subject to chance, subjugate Italian tyrants and to make itself their prince; nor yet, on the other
not to reason .... in the Machiavellian cosmos, there is no room for God's hand, has it been so weak that it could not, when afraid of losing its domin-
Providence."87 In chapter XV of II Principe Machiavelli makes it clear that ion over things temporal (il dominic delle sue cose temporali), call upon one of
Fortuna is not a servant of the civitas Dei but a sovereign in her own right, ! the powers (uno potente) to defend itself against an Italian state (quello) that
whose domain is the terrestrial world of politics.f" Machiavelli opened this had become too powerful.V
chapter by voicing his concerns about the defeatism and resignation that had
arisen throughout Italy because of the failure of the Italian polities to defend Machiavelli's contempt for the Church exudes from the sarcastic rhetoric he
themselves against foreign interventions. Although these defeats suggested used when refusing to discuss Ecclesiastical Princedoms in 11 Principe alithe
that even the most carefully cultivated prudence is impotent in a world "gov- grounds that they are "governed by superior causes, unto which the human
erned by fortune andGod," Machiavelli refused to give up on virtu "because mind cannot reach," and' "because being exalted and maintained by God, to
our free will is not extinct, I judge that it is likely that fortuna determines the discourse on them would be the task ofa presumptuous and rash man."93
outcome of half of our actions, she allows us sovereignty over the other."89 Underlying Machiavelli's attack on the temporal power of the Pope and the
Machiavelli's rhetoric inthis chapter, maintains Mikael Hornqvist, effected "a ecclesiastical hierarchy was his belief that Christianity's advocacy of th~ vita con...
descent from the exalted heights of Renaissance cosmology toward the polit- templativa over vivere civile had, ever since the end of the Roman Empire, had
ical here and now;" for the world of politics is no longer "governed by fortune a universally detrimental effect on European political life. Christianity's high
and God" but Fortuna alone dictates the extent to which men are able to valuation. of humility, its contempt for worldly goods, and its recommendation
exercise their free-wi llv'" She alone is the ruler of the civitas Terra and God no of withdrawn contemplation of the eternal, had had the effect of undermining
longer has a role to play. political life, for with their attention directed heavenward, men ignored.rheday
Machiavelli's rejection of Christian political cosmology and its hierarchies to day realities of terrestrial politics which required constant vigilance iF virtu
was not limited to his territorialization of Fortuna~His study of "the effective was to overcomefortuna. Further; the devaluation of civic or political honour in
reality ofthings" (verita ef{etuale della cosa) led him to conclude that Christianity Christian culture meant that men were less inclined to identify with andhence
and politics were essentially incompatible. Machiavelli's writings on religion fight on behalf of their polities. Machiavelli assessed religions according to their
are not always consistent and his personal religious beliefs remain the subject political efficacy, that is their ability to promote political virtu. According to
120 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy • 121

such standards Christianity was inferior to those ancient religions which valued Isaiah Berlin, the root cause of the centuries of hostility that Machiavelli's work
worldly honour, assigned the highest values to "greatness of spirit, strength of has provoked.looSecond, Machiavelli undermined the scholastic heggrnony. .He
body," and which glorified great generals and princes who had achieved honour rejected the premise of scholastic moral philosophy that all knowledge of man',
pursuing the vita activa. Christianity's beatification of "humble and contem- could be interpreted within Christian theological categories and concepts. For
plative men" had allowed wicked and corrupt men to take control of the world. Machiavelli, polities is an autonomous realm. of human action that warrants
These usurpers had little to fear from those "who aspiring to reach Paradise are its own self-contained branch of knowledge. Political realism brackets off the,
prepared to bear, rather than avenge, their injuries."94 traditional questions asked of religion concerning its truth, its meaning for the
Machiavelli cited the example of Classical Rome, specifically the policies of individual, or the influence of divine providence on .men's affairs. Its only con...
Numa Pompilius, to demonstrate how important religion is to maintaining a cern is to ascertain the importance of religiousfactors in dererrniningindividual
well-ordered state. Numa's genius was to realise that religion could be used in and social behaviour and in legitimising political power.
"controlling the armies, in inspiring the people, in keeping men good, in mak- Machiavelli's realism not only distinguished political and theological
ing the wicked ashamed.T" By promoting a religion which drew on people's spheres, but, at times, seems to invert the established hierarchy between them.
instinctual fear of the Gods, Numa was able to reinforce the social contract Consider his discussion of the ordering principles of pagan and Christian reli-
through the swearing of oaths, to promote civil obedience and, most impor- gions. Machiavelli claimed that every religion is founded in institutions (ordi71i)
tantly, to secure the loyalty of the military. The religion he introduced into which 'are particular to "a man's homeland" (dove l'uomo e nato). The implica-
Roman society was "one of the chief causes (cagioni) of that city's prosperity" tion being that all religions, including Christianity, are accidents of geography
for it "caused good laws (ordini), and good laws make good fortune, and from and history, rather than universal truth-bearing belief systems. Likewise, the
good fortune comes happy success in all enterprise."96 Therefore, the rulers of title of the chapter in I Discoursi, "In order for a religious institution or com-
republics and kingdoms have a duty to "preserve the founda~ions of the religion monwealth to endure for a long time it is necessary that it should be often
they hold. If they do this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their state returned to its founding principle," challenges the medieval association of the
religious, and consequently good and united."97 Church with immutability and permanence,. attributes of the higher worldc)f
Machiavelli's instrumental dismissal of Christianity as an effective state reli- the divine. Rather, the Church exists on the same plane, the mundane w-orld 'of
gion directly undermined the legitimacy of the Christian political order. His dis- change, as other secular authorities.l'"
cussion ofNumawas predicated on a functionalist methodological premise that Machiavelli had no interest in whether or not religious institutions commu--
all religions, including Christianity, can be evaluated in terms of their political nicated with a higher transcendental order, nor was he concerned with spiritual
efficacy.98 .It does not uphold Christianity as a truer or more profound r~ligion salvation. His instrumentalist evaluation assessed religion purely in terms of its
than that of pagan Rome, but 'simply concludes that for a political society to be role in providing a cultural identity that could facilitate the efficient conduct of
successful it must be founded not just in laws and military discipline but also in politics. Religion gives form to a society's culture and promotes its basic values;
a belief in divine sanction. "Those principalities or those republics which desire it constituted "at the highest level the cement of society."102 Bernard Guillemain
to maintain themselves uncorrupted must, above all, maintain their religious suggests thatreligion had similar status for Machiavelli as the conscience collective
ceremonies uncorrupted and always ensure that they are held in veneration; for did for Durkheim; both are collective and coercivefactsexpressedand reinforced
there can be no greater indication of the ruin of a state (provincia) than to see its through ceremony and ritual. Religion is, asCampanella noted, subordinate to
divine cult being neglected."99 Machiavelli's functionalism issued severalchal- politics and Machiavelli's maxim religio instrumentum regni issued a profound
lenges to the Christian body politic and its hierarchical order. First, it under- challenge to the hierarchical Christian order based on the opposite belief. lo3
mined the traditional Providential narrative in which Christianity transcended Likewise, for Cassirer, The Prince can be considered the first texLo£mnde~t:-I1-·~
the preceding pagan culture. For Machiavelli, Christianity and paganism were political philosophy precisely because it rejected scholasticism and refuted "the
simply two incompatible moral orders with irreconcilable ultimate values: the cornerstone of this tradirion-c--the hierarchic system."104 Machiavelli's political
redemption of the individual and the preservation of the polis. This moral rela- experience had taught him that power does not issue from God and that the'
tivism, which challenged the basic assumption ofWestern civilisation since Plato state is not of divine origiru there is nothing divine about the power wielded
that one overarching principle-Nature, God, The Chain of Being-regulates by princes and the notion of the divine origin of kings was little more than an
life and sets the standard by which means and ends can be evaluated, is, suggests ideological fantasy.
122 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

With Machiavelli we stand at the gateway of the modern world. The desired
end is attained; the state has won its full autonomy.... The sharp knife of
Machiavelli's thought has cut off all the threads by which in former genera-
tions the state was fastened. to the organic whole of human existence. The
political world has lost its connection not only with religion or metaphysics
but also with all the other forms of man's ethical and cultural life. It stands CHAPTER 7
alone-in an empty space.l'"

In the following chapter we shall investigate how Machiavelli filled that empty Machiavelli, Territoriality, and La Steto
space with attributes of sovereignty, violence, and identity, which would come
to define the modern territorial imaginary.

·R. enaissa~~e t~oug~t undermined the. spat. ial hie.rarch.ies of th.: medie-
val political Imaginary. The promotion of the ideal of sovereIgJ.1. man
challenged the belief that man was a prisoner in space, trapped in a
mundane world, which existed only as a dull reflection of the divine world of
the heavens. Further, Machiavelli's realism removed republic and princedom
from the political theology of Christianity, in which territoriality was conceived
of as ,an attribute of Christendom rather than as an exclusively political space,
the locus of Aristotle's ziion politikon. However, no sooner had the state been
de-territorialized, extricated from the vertical spatial order of the medieval cos-
mos, than State-thought sought to re-territorialize it, to striate its space with the
markers and symbols of sovereign territory. Concentrating on Machiavelli, this
chapter explores how Renaissance political discourse territorialized 10 stato by
fixing sovereignty, violence, and identity onto state space.

Lo Steto in Renaissance. Political Discourse

In Machiavelli's writings 10 stato has multiple meanings. One reason for this
is that although Machiavelli's prose is not particularly abstruse, he "uses the
same vocabulary for different concepts and expresses the same concepts with
different vocabularies."! Second, the lexicon of Renaissance political thought
was, like other contemporary vocabularies, "imbued with the past and pregnant
with the future."2 Accordingly, 10 stato had multiple connotations that varied
depending on the context in which it was used.:' The first meaning, common in
the Northern kingdoms such as England and France, was derived from status,
which, in Roman law, denoted. the standing a ruler enjoyed, that is the status
of majesty, or the status of the political community. This is the sense Giovanni
124 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, La Stata • 125

Campana deploys in De regendo rnagistratu where he argues that republics could choosing between different courses of action and of drawing on the citizen's loy-
only achieve optimus status respublicae if their leaders strove forjustice. According alty. As such, maintains Skinner, II Principe was not just a handbook of princely
to Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli implies this meaning of status when he advised conduct but a considered meditation on the abstract issues of "statecraft (dello
new princes on how to "tenere or mantenere 10 stato" or how to maintain their stato) and cose di stato or affairs of state."14 Yet, at times, Machiavelli combined
position as rulers over their new territories." Lo stato was also used to classify dif- the apparatus of government and its rulers into the one concept: "10 stato, as he
ferent forms of government. This meaning derived from the humanists' use of often puts it, remains equivalent to il suo stato, the prince's own state or condi-
status to translate Aristotle's types of government constitutions. Thus, Leonardo tions of rulership.Y'? J. H. Hexter has identified five different meanings of 10
Bruni translates Aristotle's distinction between democracy and aristocracy stato in II Principe: "[tjake (1) 'territory,' (2) 'the governed,' (3) 'ruling power,'
as status popularis and status optirnaturn, and in Filippo Beroaldo's Libellus de (4) 'status, position or rank,' (5) 'national-political territorial entity,' and try
optima statu the typology of legitimate regimes are status populare, status pau- substituting each ofthem wherever 10 stato appears in II Principe. It is rare indeed
corum, and status unius? During the fourteenth century Florentines described that two of the meanings will not fit. It is surprising how often three, four, or'
their own popular regime government as populare stato orpopularis status." occasionally even all five of the meanings will fit."I6 The one thing that unites,
However, notes Nicolai Rubinstein, the use of 10 stato to denote differ- them is that Machiavelli tends to deploy 10 stato with verbs of an exploitative
ent forms of government gave way to stato as an indication of effective power; tonality, such as acquistare, tenere, mantenere, togliere, and perdercitco acquire,
"[s]tatus, defined by 'what has the supreme power in the state,' comes close to hold, maintain, take away or lose). It is thus an "object of political exploitation,"
the meaning with which statowas widely used in fifteenth-century Florence."? an instrument for the manipulation of the people by a prince and, therefore,
For Skinner,· this use of 10 stato "to refer to the institutions of government and far removed from the modern ideal of the state as a sovereign subject. Hexter's
means ofcoercive control that serve to organize and preserve order within political claim that Machiavelli's definition of the state lacks conceptual rigor is rejected
communities" was a major linguistic innovation of the Renaissancc.Pzs.lthough by Giuseppe Prezzolini, who argues that Machiavelli consistently uses 10 stato
10 stato as the governmental and administrative apparatus was kept conceptually to denote an organization that unites individuals and institutions into a supe-
distinct from citta or republica---the political community or state as a whole---it rior state of being that transcends their particularity. I? Unlike Dante's Empire,
was not always clearly distinguished from those who had effective control of which, provided for by the divine, is eternal, Machiavelli's state is an organic
it. Sometimes the distinction is relatively clear, as when Vespasiano describes living being, a "corpo misto" obeying the natural laws of birth, life, change, cor-
how Alessandro Sforza conducted himself "in his government of 10 stato," and ruption, competition, and death that apply to every living being. As a political
when Guicciardini in his Ricordi asks how the Medici "lost control of 10 stato in adviser, the best Machiavelli can do is to suggest to rulers how they can prevent
1527."9 Again, in a letter to Lorenzo de Medici discussing the enhanced security the state dying before its time. Like all organic bodies its various parts have dif-
that Florence would gain from a treaty with Naples, the Florentine Chancellor ferent degrees of importance and the minor ones can be sacrificed in the cause of
highlighted the benefits that will accrue to "you and the regime which is joined the greatest good: the survival of the state itself: The communal good embodied
to you and for the state which is joined to the regime.Y'" However, by the time in the state is the greatest known to man and whatever action is required to con-
Lorenzo had overcome the Pazzi plot in 1477, the stato of Florence was to all stitute and save it can be excused.
effects and purposes designated by the Medici. Lo stato had come to refer not In the light of these disputes, F.Chiapelli's bold judgment that Machiavelli's
to state's power structure but to the dominant regime in control of it: 10 stato stato "bears the meaning of 'State' in its full maturity," that is as a national-
di Medici. 11 The final meaning of 10 stato, and the one which will be addressed political territorial entity may appear somewhat rash.l'' Of course, any evalu-
in the rest of this chapter, was indicated when "writers contemporaneous with ation of the modernity of Machiavelli's state requires some a priori criteria for
Machiavelli used stato to designate a geographical area." 12. Here 10 stato is "a way understanding what precisely makes the modern state modern. For Federico
of referring to the general area over which a ruler or chief magistrate needs to Chabod, the modern state is a sovereign unit, distinct from the ruler, limited to
exercise control.Y':' a defined territory, incorporating the nation or patria, and .represented institu-
Machiavelli's work reflects the general conceptual ambiguity surrounding tionally by a rationalized bureaucracy of appointed officials. As the Renaissance
10 stato at the time. Sometimes he distinguishes the institutions and structure state from Lorenzo di Medici to Richelieu was concentrated around two poles
of lo stato from those who control it. In such instances, 10 stato not only has its "the power of the sovereign and the hierarchy. of the 'officials'," it only ful-
own foundations, laws, customs, and institutions, but is a subject capable of filled the last of these criteria and failed to reach the standards of the modern
126 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, La Stata • -127

state.l" Likewise, for Skinner, Machiavelli's account of the state was not mod- any consequential resentment will be subsumed "nell' antichita econtinuazione
ern for it failed to distinguish it as a form of public power separate from both del dominio."22
the ruler and ruled and constituting the supreme political authority within a Machiavelli's slippery use of conceptual vocabulary is evident with respect to
certain defined territory-an idea first formulated by sixteenth-century legal dominic. Even in the brief passage above dominio seems to have several different
humanists such as Bude, Du Haillan, and Bodin in France and Starkey, Ponet, meanings: it is a body equivalent to but different from the state which has.impe-
and Humphrey in England.r'' On the other hand, Skinner acknowledges that rium over men; it is an entity which can either live under princely rule or be free;
by the end of the quattrocento works like Patrizis treatise on The _Kingdom and and, as in the last phrase, it seems to refer to an abstract notion of juristic legal-
Education ofthe King had begun to articulate an abstract idea of the state as an ity, which Allan Gilbert translates as sovereignty. We have seen that the ali'gn-
independent political apparatus which the ruler has a duty to maintain. A sim- ment of sovereignty and state territory is a mainstay of the modern territorial a
ilar sense can be found in II Principe when Machiavelli declares that in times of priori. Thus, if dominio is synonymous with territorial-sovereignty, then it can
adversity the state has need of its citizens (10 stato ha bisogne de' cittadini) and be claimed that the modern territorial imaginary was present in Renaissance
where he assures the prince that he can overawe his rivals by calling on "the discourses of politics and law.
majesty of the state"(lamaesta dello stato). It is unlikely that the issue of the According to Sebastian de Grazia, the opening sentence of II Principe offers
modernity of Machiavelli's state will ever be resolved. There are no universally the essential components of the Machiavellian state. Machiavelli
accepted criteria by which we might define the modern state and distinguish
it from other forms; hence no hard and fast standards exist in light of which locates the constituents of a state in three nouns. A state has all three-'--a
Machiavelli can be held to account. Nevertheless, Machiavelli's territorial imag- dominion, an imperium, and men. It is a special case of dominion (the
inary does embrace three elements-sovereignty, violence and identity-that definiens): one that is held by rightful (for which can be substituted just, law-
are often cited in definitions of the modern state. ful, or authoritative) command (which from its military antecedents contains
a strong sense of sanctions or force) over men (who are located in the territory
and obey the commands-laws, orders, rules, decrees-as rightful)~23
Machiavelli's Territorial Imaginary
The Renaissance use of dominium to signify a domain or territory and imperium
Sovereignty
to designate right or authority to command have their antecedents in the -legal,
Machiavelli's famous declaratory statement opening II Principe: "Tutti gli stati, political and military vernacular of the Roman and Holy Roman Empires. In
tutti i domini che hanno avuto ed hanno imperio sopra gli uomini, sono stati e Roman Law the Latin dominium denoted ownership or
sono 0 repubbliche 0 principati" translates as "[a]ll the states, all the dominions
that have had or now have authority over men have been and now are either full legal power over a. corporeal thing, the right of the owner to use it, to
republics or princedoms.V! Princedoms are either hereditary or new. Ifnew, they take proceeds therefrom, and to dispose of it freely. The owner's plena potes-
are either completely new, like Milan was when it was taken over by Francesco tas in re (full power over a thing) is manifested by his faculty to do with it
Sforza, or they can be joined to the hereditary state like new members (come what he pleases and to exclude anyone from the use thereof unless the latter
membri aggiunti allo Stato), as Naples was when acquired by the Kingdom of has acquired a specific right to it ... which he might obtain only with the
Spain. These dominions (questi domini) are. either used to living under princely owner's consent.r"
rule or they are free (they are republics). They can be acquired either by using
one's own forces or troops under the command of another leader (mercenaries) However, in Renaissance legal discourse the sense of dominion to denote pri-
and either by fortuna or virtu. In chapter two Machiavelli points out that in vate property or ownership had been supplemented by two public meanings.
hereditary states (negli. Stali ereditari) the new prince should have little diffi- First, was the "[tjhc power or right of governing and controlling" where domin-
culty in holding onto his position (nel suo Stato-here in the sense of status) if ion referred to the acts of exercising control, authority or sovereignty. Second,
he continues to rule according to the traditions and customs established by his dominion also referred to the space over which rule or sovereignty is exercised,
predecessors. As long as he does not develop any particularly unpleasant vices, "[t]he lands or domains of a feudal lord.... The territory owned by or subject to
his new subjects should be well disposed to him; innovationwill be tolerated as a king or ruler, or under a particular government or control."25 In so far as the
 128 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 129

public meaning of dominion denoted both a subject-the sovereign-and an legal territorial sovereignty can be traced back to the fourteenth century crisis of
object-c--the territory over which sovereignty is exercised-it heralds the modern church and state, discussed in chapter 4, when the regional monarchs first pro-
concept of sovereign-territoriality. claimed their independence from the Holy Roman Empire. The test-case was
However, most historians ofpolitical thought reject the claim that Renaissance Robert of Naples' challenge to the authority of the Emperor Henry VII in 1312.
political discourse articulated a modern concept of sovereignty, understood as Robert had been charged with crimen laesae majestatis for inciting and allying
the" idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political com- with imperial enemies in Lombardy and Tuscany and for occupying imperial
munity ... and no final andabsolute authority exists elsewhere."26 For F.H. Hinsley territory. He not only rejected the charge but responded by citing the arguments
although Renaissance political theorists challenged the secular authority claimed of French and Neapolitan lawyers that the Holy Roman Emperor's claim to be
by the Papacy and Emperor, the first explicit justification and recognition of the dominus mundi, or the lawful overlord and supreme monarch of Europe with
legitimate independence of political communities was Jean Bodin's Les six livres jurisdictional authority over all kings, was invalid. John of Paris and Andreas
de laRepublique (1576). Likewise, for Jens Bartleson, Renaissance political texts de Isernia championed the principle of rex est monarcha in regno suo and denied
express only a loosely developed notion of proto-sovereignty. The Renaissance that the Holy Roman Empire had any superior juristic or political status over
"general theory of the state" neither individuated the state as a sovereign entity the regional kings. 31 They maintained that the Emperor had the same status
nor prioritized it as the object of study.27 It also lacked a sense that something and powers as the other kings of Europe. His jurisdiction, like theirs, extended
existed outside of it, that is an international system-an integral component only over his own realm: "Whatever the Emperor can do in his lands, the king
of modern sovereignty.e" Nevertheless, Hinsley and Bartleson do acknowledge can do in his kingdom ... kings have as much freedom in their kingdoms as the
the presence in Renaissance political discourse of incipient features of modern Emperor has in theEmpire."32 Robert mobilized these arguments to declare that
sovereignty. With respect to Machiavelli, Bartleson writes that "[i]f 11Principe as a sovereign himself he did not recognize any higher sovereign authority and
was focused around the problem of security and written from the vantage Was not obliged to obey the demands of any other temporal rulers.
point of the sovereign subjectivity of a ruler, this perspective is reversed in the Robert's rejection of the Emperor's claim to wield jurisdictional power over
Discorsi. It is written from the vantage point of the sovereign subjectivity of a kings resident outside the bounds of the Empire was subsequently confirmed by
people."29 Similarly, Hinsley acknowledges that Renaissance political thinkers Pope Clement V in the decree Pastoralis Cura (1313). Clement, who regarded
were instrumental in de-legitimizing Christendom, an idea incompatiblewith Naples as a papal fief andhad been upset by Henry's claim to Naples, declared
modern. sovereignty. They hastened the erosion of the Christian political order that the Emperor had no authority to summon any king extra districtum imperii
by rejecting the. theocratically based claims of Papacy and Empire to univer- or to use force to bring a king to book extra imperium. For Walter Ullman, by
sal authority, by questioning. the idea that Christendom was a political society, the time Marsiglio of Padua wrote Defensor pacis (1324), the principle that the
and by denying that. regional rulers were beholden to laws superior to them. sovereignty of the humanist individual (legislator humanus) should be reflected
llli\ l : Hr~, ~ ; 4111I

Further, Hinsley accepts that Machiavelli made two important contributions to in the sovereignty of the universitas civium was a staple of legal discourse.Y
the modern understanding of sovereignty. First, Machiavelli, like Guicciardini,
tried to resolve the competing interests of princes and subjects by conceiving [sjubjectivized sovereignty must be supplemented by it objectivized compo-
of 10 stato as an instrument in the hands of the ruler that was to be used in the nent part, and that means that sovereignty, or what is the same, jurisdiction
interests of the ruled. Their shared interests would be served if the prince was must be territorially anchored, must have a territorial connection ... territo-
freed from custom and tradition and able to act on behalf of the body poli- rial boundaries had become boundaries of the law, jurisdiction and hence
tic. Machiavelli, however, stopped short of "knitting ruler and society closer of sovereignty. The territory had acquired juristic personality. Both govern-
together in a body politic which itself became endowed with sovereign power."30 mental practice and juristic doctrine had postulated that the personal kind of
Second, Machiavelli limited politics to the terrestrial world by dismissing the sovereignty must be complemented by its territorial counterpart.P"
Augustinian notion that temporal rulers should aim to realize a superior law or
purpose. The citizen's place in space had become an element of his legal status as both an
While historians of political thought .downplay the extent to which individual and a citizen. A person's domicile united the res or territory with the
Renaissance political discourse entertained a modern ideal of territorial sover- persona; it combined theanirnate person with inanimate soil. The implication
eignty, for legal historians the principle was well-established. The principle of of this territorialization of the universitas civium was that no government could
130 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Mach iavell i, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 131

claim jurisdiction over subjects resident in places outside its own territory and, a transitory stage in the development of the state, lying somewhere between "the
as 1312 proved, a citizen domiciled in one territory could not be summoned to state of justice, .born in the feudal type of territorial regime which corresponds
attend court in another.P to a society of laws" and "the administrative state; born in the territoriality of
While it may be the case that Renaissance political discourse did not have, national boundaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and corresponding
as Bartleson insists, a sense that the outside was constituted by an interna- to a society of regulation and discipline.T" For Foucault, Machiavelli's account
tional system, the legal principle of dominion did operate a distinction between of the relationship between territory and sovereignty in II Principe reflected the
inside and outside in that the territories of republics and principalities were juridical principle, characteristic of contemporary theories and philosophies of
distinguished from the myriad of other political spaces existing outside their public law, that "sovereignty is not exercised on things, but above all on a ter-
boundaries. The dominio of lo stato was a circumscribed space within which the ritory and consequently on the subjects who inhabit it." Variations in the attri-
state authorities could wield coercive power and enforce internal jurisdiction. butes of the territory-such as its fertility, the numbers of people occupying
Machiavelli experienced this coercive aspect of Renaissance territoriality first it, and their wealth or labor-are insignificant "by comparison with territory
hand in November 1512 when, following the fall of Soderini's government, he itself which is the very foundation of principality and soveteignty."42And yet,
was expelled from the Chancery and confined in territorio et dominio Florentino the prince's relationship to his territory is. fragile, synthetic, and permanently
per unum annum continuum. 36 Machiavelli's confinement within Florence's ter- threatened by external enemies and internal opponents. It needs constant atten-
ritorio et dominio was a major hardship and after six months he wrote to his tion if the prince is to achieve his raison d ~ etre, which is simply to hold onto what
friend Venturi in Rome declaring his intention to visit "if I could get out of this he has got. In this sense, irrespective of how he has acquired his principality,
hole of dominion."37 The legal principle of territorial sovereignty also came into whether by conquest or inheritance, the prince remained alienated from it. 43
play during the negotiation of diplomatic treaties. The treaty which formed the The objective of the prince's exercise of power is to strengthen and protect the
Italian League (1454) "was concluded 'ad tutelamet conservationem statuum et principality, understood not as "the objective ensemble of its subjects and the
dominiorum' of the signatories' and in it 10 stato referred to a combination of territory, but rather the prince's relation with what he owns, with the territory he
political power and territorial domi nion.v'' has inherited or acquired, and with his subjects.T'" Foucault draws our attention
Renaissance diplomatic documents often distinguished a ruler's stato from to a paradox. Although territory is a fundamental component of Machiavellian
his lands and subjects. This distinction implied that the sovereign subject and sovereignty, the sovereign prince is estranged from the territories which define
the territorial object were not coterminous. According to the terms of the treaty his sovereignty. In Renaissance sovereign-territoriality the hyphen between the
between Francesco Sforza and Federico Montefeltro (31 August 1450) Sforza two terms separates rather than unites; it differentiates the subjectivity of the
agreed to take into his protection "'el stato, citade, terre, castelle, homini, sovereign prince from the object of his power, his territory.
subditi ... of Federigo.' "39 Here stato and terre are distinct components of the
state. For Rubinstein, this distinction was especially pertinent with respect to
Violence
principalities and despotic states because the signore held both the internal
regime and the territory as components of his dominio.G-habod suggests that in In the first chapter we saw how the inside/outside spatial demarcation which
Machiavelli's stato the territory is, like the specific body of people who occupy it, underpins the territorial a priori is reinforced by Max Weber's assertion that
an object that is subjected to the juridical authority or political power of either the state exercises the legitimate monopoly of violence throughout its territory.
the prince or the dominant group in the republic. Stato, therefore, not only Machiavelli shared Weber's premise that violence is an integral element of pol it-
designates a subject, that is the body exercising command, "clearly separated icallife and his realism dispensed with the euphemisms which medieval writers
from the object of command, which remains outside of and subservient to it. had used to disguise this aspect of political life. It for St. Augustine, violence
But it also signifies territorial extension, 'dominio' in the objective sense (the was debased, an instrument appropriate to terrestrial authority commanded to
space-and population-within which and upon which a determined authority execute the coercive sanctions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, for Machiavelli,
is exercisedj.T'" violence replaced divine sanction as the warrant of secular power politics.
There is a complex relationship in Machiavelli's stato between the prince as Sheldon Wolin claims that Machiavelli saw the state as an "aggregate of
sovereign subject and the territory as an.objective component of his jurisdiction. power" whose "profile was that of violerice.T? Machiavelli stressed that a sue...
This has been commented on by Michel Foucault, who sees Machiavelli's stato as cessful state had to have good institutions or Jaws (buone istituzione) and strong
 132 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 133

armies (eserciti efficienti), but, when push comes to shove, armies are the most their own interests would be better protected. The militia has both an internal
important. "The main foundations of all states, whether new, old or mixed are coercive function and an external defensive function. If the militia is conducted
good laws and good armies.... It is not possible to have good laws without good properly, "it naturally suppresses all disturbances-rather than fomenting
armies and where there are good armies good laws follow ...."46Machiavelli was them-among its constituents" as well as being able "to protect them against
adamant that if the prince were to achieve his political ends, he must not shirk the fear of foreign enemies."53 The inherent resentment and hostility a popolo
from employing violence where appropriate, even at the risk of being considered exhibited toward their rulers could be contained if they were drafted to serve as
cruel. For a prince to acquire and maintain a principality he must cultivate mil- soldiers in a military structure in which the mechanisms of discipline and con-
itary virtu. All the most accomplished rulers in history have devoted themselves trol were well developed. Further, in the "tightly-packed condition of political
to the study of war, the greatest of the princely arts. Francesco Sforza's acqui- space" where the new prince had to carve out a new state while "hemmed in by
sition of the Duchy of Milan was a recent illustration of how a man who has vested interests and expectations, privileges and rights, ambitions and hopes"
mastered the art of war can rise from the mass of private citizens to become a the prince could not expect to hold onto power without creating enemies.r" In
successful prince. Conversely, rulers who neglect the study of war while pursu- a political environment where faction and intrigue are rife it is the militia that
ing the finer rewards of power will loose their states.V must be relied upon to quell any. rebellious factions or internal challenges to
Machiavelli was convinced that a state should exercise its monopoly of vio- the prince's authority. A loyal and well-disciplined army is especially important
lence through a standing army made up of soldiers drawn from the subject popu- for a regime which has just taken power, for it must liquidate anybody hostile
lation. The question of armies was very important to Machiavelli, who had been to the new order. "He who establishes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and
responsible for recruiting. a militia force for Florence, and discussions on how he who establishes a democratic regime and does not kill the sons of Brutus
to raise, maintain, and deploy armed forces appear in all his major works. 48 He will not last long."55 A militia was also required for external warfare. At a time
repeatedly insisted that the Italian rulers should establish their own forces rather when the marauding armies of the oltramontani were rampaging through Italy,
than deploy unreliable and dangerous mercenaries or auxiliaries/'" Mercenaries Machiavelli admonished those princes and republican leaders who lacked suffi-
are "disunited, ambitious, undisciplined and treacherous"; they have no fear of cient of their own soldiers to defend their own states or to join in a united effort
God, no loyalty to the prince who hires them, and will not risk their lives for to rid Italy of the foreigners. 56
their paltry wages. 50 Consequently, any prince who tries to hold "his state on Machiavelli's hopes that Florence would acquire a militia force capable of
the basis of mercenary forces will never be stable or securc.T" Living memory both internal peace-keeping and external war-fighting is symptomatic of the
could furnish an acute example of the limitations of using mercenary forces. modern. sovereign territorial imaginary in so. far as the modern territorial state
During the 1494 invasion of Italy by the French King Charles VIII, the mer- is defined by its ability to exercise violence, internally and externally, at will.
1 111 1 cenary forces employed by Italian rulers had dispersed in the face of superior However, in Renaissance Italy, few princes or. republican leaders had sufficient
foreign troops, thus allowing Charles to "conquer Italy with a piece of chalk."52 coercive resources at their disposal to exercise their sovereignty equally effec-
Equally dangerous was the policy of hiring another's man's troops as auxiliaries. tively over all the spaces that made up their dominions. Machiavelli, therefore,
These troops are loyal only to their own commander who, if the prince is in a advised a weak prince under attack from superior forces to "fortify and provi-
dire situation, can easily switch allegiance and turn his men against the prince, sion his city, and to make no account of the territory lying outside it."57 The
thereby destroying him. A strong prince will be able to defend himself against prince should "take. refuge behind walls and defend them" for he will be able
any attacker without calling for any external assistance. to withstand a siege and hold onto his state if he makes sure that the city is
Machiavelli advised both princes and the ruling elites of city-states to replace well fortified and that the people within it remain loyaL58 As long as the city
mercenaries with militia forces made up of loyal local men. The state's security holds fast, the countryside or contado is expendable; a space that the enemy can
cannot be guaranteed if the armies, the means of violence, come from out- occupy without threatening the existence of the state as a whole. However, this
side the boundaries of the dominio. Fortuna in the guise of internal rebellion image of state territoriality, structured around central and peripheral spaces,
or foreign incursion can only be overcome by virtu as embodied in an indig- fails to meet the standards of Weber's ideal type in which the state's monopoly
enous militia force. Armies must be autochthonous, made up of men whose of violence is exercised evenly across the entire territory. Florentine republican
livelihoods come from the lands which make up the state's dominio, and who writers, who used 10 stato in a geographical sense to denote the extent of the
recognize that by enlisting in the militia and making the state more secure city's dominion, automatically made a distinction between a center based on
134 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, TerritorlalitvLo Stata • 135

the city and a periphery of outlying areas. "Giovanni Villani divides the stato of men's forces-his armies were heavily reinforced.by mercenaries belonging to
Florence into city, contado and distretto" and Guicciardini "speaks circa 1508 of the Orsini and by soldiers on loan from the French king, Louis XII-but also
Pisa as belonging to '10 stato nostro.' "59 Elana Guarani claims that this center- with the assistance offOrtuna-he had been able to rely on the support of pope
periphery territorial order reflected the reality of Italian political communities Alexander VI, Roderigo Borgia, his father. Valentino recognized his position
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Renaissance states which had territo- was threatened by the dubious loyalties of the Orsini mercenaries, Louis' dis-
ries further out than the castles and villages located in the immediate contado approval of his plans for further expansion into Tuscany, and the resentment
did not exercise "a form of immediate sovereignty over a territory.T" Rather, of those living in Romagna who were sick of being ruled by weak, exploitative
the jurisdiction they exercised over the people living in these outlying spaces lords. Valentino eradicated the leaders of the Orsini and Colonna families and
was indirect and diffused, being filtered through local institutions and commu- broke his alliance with the French.P" In order to pacify Romagna, he put in
nal structures. The center-periphery structure of Renaissance state territoriality, charge "Messer Rernirro de Orco, a man cruel and ready" who" in a short time
therefore, still maintained the vestiges of a "hierarchical and polarized organi- tendered the province peaceful and united." Then, in order to avoid
sation of... space."61
While serving in the Florentine Chancery, Machiavelli travelled exten- incurring resentment at the violent means used to restore order, Cesare
sively, visiting potentially rebellious cities and recruiting soldiers for the mili- wanted to show that any cruelty which had gone on did not originate with
tia. During these trips he became sensitive to the potential weaknesses of these himself but with the harsh nature of his agent. So getting an opportunity
center-periphery systems and shared the general view that the inability of the for it, one morning at Cesena he had Messer Remirro laid in two pieces in
communes to unify and discipline the feudal aristocracies domiciled in their dis- the public square with a block of wood and a bloody sword near him. The
tretti had led to the crises of the fourteenth century. In this context, Pisa, which ferocity of this spectacle left those people at the same time gratified and
Florence had brought from Gabriele Maria Visconti in 1405 and lost in 1494 awestruck.I'"
following Charles VIII's invasion, had a special role in 11Principe for it demon-
strated the difficulties facing a prince trying to hold onto a recently acquired The Remirro case is an example of the use of spectacular violence in the
city-state that has a long established tradition of liberty. Earlier, in the Discorso consolidation of the territoriality ofa Renaissance state. This state shared many
dell 'ordinare 10 stato di Firenze alle armi (1506), Machiavelli had contrasted the characteristics with the states of Early Modern Europe, in which, as Foucault
restlessness in the Florentine distrettopopulated by rebellious cities to the peace- pointed out, control was maintained by both spectacular and disciplinary vio-
ful contado of the city's immediate vicinity.V He worried that Florence's survival lence. 67 However, the modern state rarely, if ever, engages in spectacular violence,
was threatened by "the fragility of its territorial system, badly guarded, exposed for it is able to ensure order by means of an extensive surveillance apparatus,
to external pressures, undermined internally by the presence of cities 'which which permits it to coordinate individuals' time-space routines across the entire
desire your death even more than their life'."63 For Florence to ensure peace and territory under its jurisdiction.. Nevertheless, Renaissance states did have some
security within her dominio she must develop both a military force capable of mechanisms of disciplinary power at their disposal. Pierangelo Schiera argues
defending the city and controlling the rebellious cities, and a coercive justice that if the modern state constitutes "a point of unity" in which the institu-
system capable of punishing seditious subjects. tional and legitimate organization of power is combined with the discipline that
One might surmise that Machiavelli might have encouraged the Florentine determines the collective behavior its subjects, then while these three elements
authorities concerned to quell dissension in the dominio to sanction more of the came together in the seventeenth century, they all developed, albeit separately,
spectacular violence that some Renaissance rulers were partial to. In the tract in Italian hurnanism.P'' The institutional dimension arose out of negotiations
"On the Method of Dealing With the Rebellious Peoples of the Valdichiana," between the signoria, the papal andirnperial vicariati, and the principate, and
Machiavelli warned the Florentine leaders that the Duke of Valentino, Cesare replaced an ancient civic legitimacy with a state based legitimacy. City-states
Borgia, who Was seeking to establish his authority in Romagna and to build a derived their legitimacy, as Marsiglia had noted, from their status as a commu-
powerful territorial state in central Italy, was trying to incite rebellion among the nity that protects individuals so that "the men belonging to it may live and live
discontented peoples of the Florentine state.P'' However, in 11Principe, Valentino we11."69 Discipline arose from the codes of the guilds, corporations, universities,
is praised for his attempts to hold onto his new principality in the most difficult and Church, which ensured the co-ordination of the citizens' behavior with the
of circumstances. Valentino had conquered Romagna not only by using other needs of the communal civic order. Machiavelli, despite his contempt for the
136 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 137

institutions of the Roman church, recognized, as we have seen, that religion had aware that the degree of power they exercised over the immediate environs of
a vital role in reinforcing social cohesion and identity. It is the duty of "the rulers Florence and her contado was attenuated in the outer Tuscan territories. Tuscany
of a republic or of a kingdom to preserve the foundations of the religion they was a pluralistic society in which cities, towns and rural communities main-
hold. If they do this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their state reli- tained their own councils and government bodies. They were responsible for
gious, and consequently good and united."70 Religion can also assist in securing tax collection and public expenditure as well as the maintenance of public order
the discipline of armies. Machiavelli praised rulers who "with very great cere- and defense?5 One city-state where relations between the city and its peripheral
monies ... had their soldiers swear to observe military discipline, in order that if spaces were especially strained was Venice which, notes Machiavelli, had taken
they acted against it, they would have to fear not merely the laws and men but "possession of a large part of Italy, for the rnost part not with war but with money
God; and they used every device to give them strong religious feeling."71 an d cra f t. "76 Th"'\T' .
e venetian state was a h eterogeneous
. mIX. 0 f t h e CIty,
. cca strange
Nevertheless, the territoriality of center and periphery remained the norm. centre placed at the borders of its state, a seafaring and mercantile city, foreign
It characterized not just relations between citta and distretto, but also those to the world ofcommon law," and the Terrafirma, "a multiform and polycentric
between citta and contado. Although city and countryside in Renaissance Italy periphery, organized around big urban poles and dotted with feudal lordships
were closer knit than they had been in feudal society, mutual distrust and and 'little princes'."77 Venice's policy of territorial acquisition was admired by
resentment was still endemic. The replacement of serfdom by more flexible ten- Machiavelli in so far as it showed that her leaders had absorbed the lesson of
ancies, based in commercial leases and contractual sharecropping or mezzadria, imperial Rome that territorial expansion could diffuse internal tensions and
drew the. cities and countryside together in relations of dependency: city dwell- struggles. Expansion could refocus the destructive energy. generated by inter-
ers relied on food, fuel, and labor drawn from rural areas, while investment and nal conflict and, by projecting it outward in a constructive manner, so increase
speculation by the mercantile and noble classes of the cities brought prosperity the state's power resources against rivals and bolster the citizens' sense of civic
to the countryside. Like Machiavelli, who owned a farm at Sant' Andrea in virtu. 78 Of course, expansionist policies risk increasing the sense of threat felt by
Percussina outside Florence, many city dwellers had farms near the city or were other states and setting the logic of the security dilemma into motion. Indeed,
absentee landlords in estates further out. Yet, economic ties of necessity between Venice's expansion did not just alarm other Italian powers but was seen as a
the urban upper classes and the agrarian workers did not necessarily engender threat by the Spanish, French, and German rulers. Under Pope Julius Irs lead-
mutual feelings of trust or affection. Franco Sacchetti's declaration that "[t]he ership these disparate interests were brought together in the League of Cambrai
city should produce good men, the villa good beasts" is indicative of the type which defeated the Venetians at the battle of Agnadello (May 14, 1509). For
of prejudice that many of urban landowners felt toward the peasantry.r? The Machiavelli, the Venetians had
animosity of urban dwellers toward rural society was a legacy of the medieval
conviction that law and order were restricted to the city, while the countryside attained such a reputation for power that not merely to the Italian princes
was a lawless space full of dangers and threats. This theme is evident, for exam- but to the kings beyond the Alps they gave cause for dread.. Hence when
ple, in Giotto's frescoes for the Arena Chapel which depict Injustice as a tyrant, these foreign rulers made a league against them, in one day the Venetians
sitting outside the city-gates, ruling over a wilderness in which brigands are were deprived of the territory which in the course of many years they had
robbing and murdering the unfortunate inhabitants.F' Many later Renaissance gained with boundless expense. 79
paintings, notably those by Mantegna and Leonardo, continued to promote the
ideal of urban life as the embodiment of civic virtue and economic wealth by
Identity
contrasting it to the lawlessness and anarchy shown outside in the countryside.
Indeed, for Lauro Martines, artists were so "[ijnfected by the arrogance of the Together with sovereignty and violence, the third interlocking component of
domineering city" that many picture of walled cities depicted the surrounding the modern territorial a priori is identity. In a reading of Rousseau's tract The
rural space as "a sort of no man's land fit for armies and desolation, not for civi- Government ofPoland, William Connolly demonstrates how identity, violence,
lized living (vivere civilmente)," thereby producing "fantasticated pictures of the and territory combine in the modern political imaginary. Rousseau argued that
established relationships of power." 74 if the Poles were to become a free people they needed to inscribe their iden-
Indeed, territoriality in Italy, would remain structured along a center-periphery tity into a defined territory. The people who inhabit the land must all use a
axis long into the sixteenth century. The Medici rulers of that century were well common language, and have shared values and mores. Connolly identifies in
138 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 139

Rousseau's argument a set of correspondences underwritten by violence: "to be which compromised any attempts to coalesce into an effective political force. 86
free you must belong to a people; to be a people you must have a common iden- Nevertheless, many Renaissance humanists felt that it was important to define
tity burned into you; to be a flourishing people you must exclusively inhabit the role and function of the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Dante,
a contiguous territory; to flourish freely as a territorialized people you must himself had insisted in De vulgari eloquentia that his new vernacular or curiale,
stringently limit contact with the foreign." Poland could only be endeared to the language of the courts spoken by courtiers, popes, dukes, and literary men
its citizens through violence: the violence "done to the internal other (those was not, as many Florentine humanists insisted, based in the Florentine dialect.
inhabiting the territory who do not belong), the interior other (the other within Machiavelli, as a good Florentine, wrote a counter tract refuting Dante's denial
the self which resists such. strong identification with the collectivity) and the of the Florentine patrimony of Italian and even accused the poet of defaming
external other (those who are foreign)."8o their common patriae 87
Machiavelli first touches upon issues of identity in II Principe in his discus- Machiavelli's criticism of Dante has a tincture of campanilismo, the fierce
sion of the problems faced by a prince who has recently acquired mixed prin- allegiance to and pride in one's city or region felt by many Renaissance Italians.
cipalities.f ' If the new territory has the same customs, mores, and language as Florentines, argues de Grazia, felt that the Palazzo della Signoria and the Duomo
those established in his antico stato and if the inhabitants of the new territory symbolized the city's grandeur and glory. "Brunelleschi's cupola high in the
are already accustomed to princely rule then assimilating the territory in tutto heavens is the cosmos centred in Florence and covering an empire of the peoples
un corpo will be relatively easy. The prince does not need to alter existing laws of Tuscany." 88 However campanilismo could easily slip into the type of small-
and taxes, but merely has to ensure that all members of the previous ruling fam- minded parochialism that Machiavelli mocked in Mandragola where one of the
ily are wiped Out. If he follows these rules "in a very short time they unite with characters is belittled by being told that "you're not used to losing the Cupola
his old princedom in a single body."82 1£ however, the inhabitants of the newly from sight."89 Indeed, although Machiavelli rose to Florence's defense when he
acquired territory speak a different language and have different laws and cus- felt that she had been unfairly maligned and famously declared that "I love my
toms, the prince will require good fortuna and need to cultivate virtu. He will country more than my soul," he was not a Florentine chauvinist.l'" He rarely
either have to move his court to the new lands or to establish colonies in it. He trumpeted his city's prodigious cultural achievements, which, in his eyes, could
must forge alliances with the minor nobility of the region, while being careful not compensate for the failure of this "[tjruly ... great and miserable city" to
not to increase the power of arty potential rivals. Some of the hardest territories achieve its promise of political greatness. He would have gladly exchanged her
to retain are those where the previous ruler shared power with several minor cultural riches for a political elite of equal military virtu and boldness of spirit to
lords. These lands will contain several alternative foci of allegiance around the senatorial class of ancient Rome. Only then could the petty factionalisms,
which those who oppose the new prince's rule could coalesce. However, the internecine rivalries, and class' conflicts that had bedeviled the city since the
hardest stati to retain are those republican cities with strong traditions of liberty eradication of the noble class be overcome. However, despite such disappoint-
and procedures of civil life based in time-honored indigenous laws. The prince ments, the spirit of Florence still burned in his soul.
cannot expect to eradicatememoties of liberty and freedom and if he wants to
hold onto such a republic he must destroy the city, set up his court within its Every time that I have been able to honour my patria, even at my own
walls, or establish a government that retains most of the old laws. 83 expense and risk of danger, I have done $0 voluntarily; because a man has no
Like Rousseau, Machiavelli maintained that identity is constituted through greater obligation in his life. On it depends his whole being and moreover
language. The language spoken by the inhabitants of the newly acquired provin- from it comes every good thing which fortuna and nature have conceded to
cia would determine whether or not they shared the same identity as the subjects us; these are notably so much greater in those who come from the most noble
of the prince's antico stato. 84 "[T]he territories [stati] a conqueror annexes and patria. 91
joins to his own well-established state are either in the same country (provincia)
with the same language or they are not."8S Although Machiavelli sometimes It is true that the territorialization of political identity in Renaissance Italy
uses provincia to designate Italy, here lingua does not refer to a national lan- was primarily local or regional, determined by residency in or cultivation of the
guage. Cramsci, four centuries later would still be ruing the fact that Italian lands that made up a prince's dominic or a republic's contado. However the piccola
remained the exclusive vernacular of the cultural and social elites and that patriawas not the only locus of identity. Humanist writings regularly display a
the vast majority of the population still spoke various incompatible dialects, tension between the immediate loyalty owed to the piccola patria, one's citta or
 140 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 141

stato, and la grande patria or some notion of Italy-embodying the cultural her- use of language means he could have been advocating a temporary military
itage derived from the Roman Empire-that extended over all the lands in the alliance, a permanent federal constitution, or a unified national state. Against
peninsula beneath the Alps.92 Appeals to Italian identity were most often made this divisionist view, unifiers, like Chabod, claim that II Principe has a natu-
in periods when the political situation in the peninsula was particularly dire-a ral narrative progression leading toward the telos of the final chapter.f" Either
condition usually marked by the presence offoreign armies. Machiavelli's most way it would be rash to assume that Machiavelli envisaged a national territorial
famous evocation of an Italic spirit in the final chapter of II Principe was itself based identity, equivalent to that aspired to by the state-builders of modernity.
prompted by the conflict and disorder precipitated by the expedition of the Prezzolini argues that the romantic and mystical discourse of nineteenth cen-
French king Charles VIII in 1494. 93 In "Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the tury nationalism, proclaiming the right of a population to form a separate state
Barbarians" Machiavelli suggests that the time is ripe for a new ruler to emerge when they have a common language and cultural traditions, would have been
in Italy, who will lead its people toward a better future. For just as the qualities alien to Machiavelli. His nationalism was utilitarian in that "conformity of lan-
of great leaders like Moses, Cyrus, and Theseus were born out of adversity, so guage, of customs [religion] and institutions [laws and military]" could provide
the true valor of the Italian spirit will rise out of the dire circumstances in which a realistic basis fora viable state, free of the religious allegiances of the medieval
Italy currently finds itself: "more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed territorial irnagiriary.r" Chabod concurs that Machiavelli had no sense of the
'I than the Persians, more dispersed than the Athenians; lacking either leadership sacredness attributed to the modern nation. He cut off religion from the polit-
"
il
if
,i
or order; beaten, despoiled, lacerated, devastated, and having been subject to ical but did not transfer the religious sentiments of sacrifice and martyrdom to
every sort of ruination.T'" Italy's hopes rest with the illustrious Medici family, the nation. His only interest was the unity of the state: "the nation exists for him
whom Machiavelli urges to take up the righteous cause of Italy's salvation. The to the extent that it is organised or can be organised into a political body, in a
Medici should deploy their "great military skill and valour" to lead an army of unified state, with an established government."99
Italian soldiers-who as individuals have unrivalled military skill and virtu, To be sure, Machiavelli only rarely uses the term nazione and applies it to
Ii
but because of a lack of leadership have not yet been combined into an effective both the large populations of foreign states and to the piccole patrie of Italy.loo
I'

1/ army-against the foreign armies. No one will resist the liberator, who will be However, even if Machiavelli's idea of the nation was not fully modern, we
received warmly by all those who are oppressed by foreign domination and are cannot deny that it does convey a sense of a communal identity grounded on
I:
II
thirsty for revenge. a space that exceeded the boundaries of the local patria. Even if Machiavelli
'I, remained hopeful that the Italian polities could survive if they continued to
I,

III
[T]his barbarian rule stinks to everyone. Your illustrious house must there- develop the traditions of civic humanism, upon which their liberties and great-
II:
:1 fore take on this challenge with the spirit and that hope that comes from tak- ness had depended upon in the past, his time as Florentine emissary to the
:11
ing up any just cause, so that under its standard this patria will be ennobled. court of France and the lessons of 1494 would have made him acutely aware
and under its auspices will be verified Petrarch's saying: 95 that the power of the northern kingdoms surpassed that of any of the Italian
city-states.l'" Hence, Machiavelli's appeal for a national militia assembled under
Then Virtue will seize arms a Medici leader, that could rival the armies of the French, Spanish, and Swiss.
'Gainst madness, and the battle will be brief Exactly which parts of the peninsula such troops should be recruited from is not
For ancient valour is clear. If only Italian speakers were to be enlisted then by Machiavelli's own cri-
Not dead, as yet, within Italian hcarts.i''' teria they wouldbe restricted to men from five provinces: Lombardy,Romagna,
Tuscany, the territory of Rome, and the kingdom ofNaples. lo2 As Vincent Ilardi
Machiavellian scholars continue to debate the intended meaning of this notes, "Venice, Piedmont, Liguria, and the islands (Sicily and Sardinia) were not
chapter. Nineteenth century followers of Ranke, who viewed Machiavelli as part of Italy for Machiavelli, linguistically speaking."I03
an Italian patriot and the prophet of the modern national state, claimed that Nevertheless, Italia did have meaning for Machiavelli. In citing Petrarch's
Machiavelli intended that all the advice he offered throughout II Principe should "Italia Mia" he purposely invoked the sentiment of italianita,--a sense of shared
assist the potential liberator to free Italy. However, Meinecke argued that II cultural identity characterized by common language, literature, customs, man-
Principe was not a unified composition, and that the final chapter was a rhe- ners and traditions-that had been nurtured by Italian humanists for genera-
torical addendum, designed to curry favor with the Medici. Machiavelli's loose tions. In "Italia Mia" Petrarch had. grounded this identity in spatial images.
 142 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Machiavelli, Territoriality, Lo Stato • 143

He praised the fecundity of Italy's soil-"this verdant earth"; the beauty of her Nature made good provision for our state,
landscape----"our lovely countryside"; and her territorial uniqueness-"that To set an Alpine shield
part of the world which is most fair."I04 Furthermore, by combining imagery Between us and the Germans' ravening. 110
of maternal nurturing with the nourishing capacity of the homeland, the poem
also alludes to the modern territorial theme of blood and belonging. He contrasted the "noble Latin blood" that runs in Italian veins with the "blood
of the barbarians."IlI By the fourteenth century, the word barbarian in Italian
Is this soil not the earth that I first touched? discourse had acquired several connotations: a non-Christian, a writer of bad
This not the nest where I Latin, and the ancient sense of someone outside of the cultural ambit of Rome. 112
Have been so sweetly nursed? From the fourteenth century on, humanists developed the latter meaning to
And is this not my homeland that I trust? distinguish Italy from the rabies barbarica north of the Alps. Salutatis offi-
A mother, pious, kind, cial correspondence of 1376 "identified Florence with Italy, Italy with Latinitas
Who shelters both my parents in her soil?105 and barbarism with the French and English mercenaries."113 With the sixteenth
century revival of italianita the barbarian theme came to the fore again. In the
Although italianita was not a mass sentiment, being largely limited to the intel- .History ofFlorence, Machiavelli uses barbarian to describe and to draw analogies
lectual elite, it nevertheless expressed themes that would echo in later nationalist between the Germanic tribes who attacked the Roman Empire between 377 and
rhetoric. First, it was a discourse whose appeal was strongest when the political 439 and contemporary foreign invaders. Recent wars had opened a new road "to
fortunes of the peninsula were lowest. Fazio degli Uberti's ''Ai Signori e Popoli the barbarians, and Italy putherselfback into slavery to them."114 However, notes
d' Italia" (c.1350) had described the parlous state of fourteenth century Italy Marcel Gagneux, it was Guicciardini rather than Machiavelli who did most to
during the "age of despots", when princes fought wars using marauding bands privilege "the couple 'Barbarians-Italians' as the fundamental element of identi-
1111111
of foreign mercenaries. lOG For Uberti, only an Italy united under a Ghibelline fication through opposition.t 'P In Storia d 'Italia, Guicciardini records a speech
illlill monarch could restore the fortunes of the peninsula and evict the foreign sol- by Marchionne Trivisano warning his fellow senators of the Venetian Consigli
!!ilill
:'"1 11
'111.111
diers. During the fifteenth century, when foreign interference was minimal and de' Pregato not to enter an alliance with the French against Lodovico Sforza, on
~II pi
Italian politics were relatively autonomous, humanists could praise the virtues the basis that all barbarians are "eternal enemies of the Italian" and there is an
:iiii::
",::1
,.IIIi' of their own piccola patria, while retaining a sense of belonging to and having a essential" difference between barbarian and Italian spirits."116 Guicciardini also
;:lih'
1!IIIiI responsibility to a greater community. Thus Coluccio Salutati praised Florence praised Pope Giulio II, the incarnation of the national struggle, as "liberatore di
1Ii1 111
::::'"
Il!ill l for" defendirig her own freedom" on the grounds that in doing do "she had 'saved Italia da' barbari."117 Guicciardini's discursive construction of italianita through
liberty in Italy.' "107 After the devastation of the French expedition of 1494, itali- opposition to the figure of the barbarian is aptly demonstrated in an analogy he
anita flourished once again. Second, just as the German Romanticists would drew between Hannibal and Charles VIII.
seek the origins of German culture in a mythical golden age of the Holy Roman
Empire, so the Italian humanists drew on the legacy of Rome. Projects such as [PJ assing into Italy through the mountain pass of Monginevra ... through
Flavio Biondo's archaeological descriptions of the ruins of Roman civilization which Hannibal of Carthage passed with great difficulty in antiquity, the
in Romae instauratae libri tres (1482) reinforced a sense of an inherited cultural king entered Italy on the ninth of September 1494 bringing with him the
superiority.l'" Third, the sheer physical presence of the Alps provided a natural seeds' of innumerable calamities, ghastly events, and changes in almost all
territorial marker or boundary for italianita. The coherence of Italian culture things. II8
seemed to be divinely ordained, in that "God-or Nature-had placed the Alps
as a protecting wall around Italy. People living beyond the Alps were foreigners Clearly, much of chapter XXVI of II Principe rehearses the standard themes
and it was unnatural for oltramontani to interfere in Italian affairs."109 of italianita: "[l]aments over the oppressed state of Italy, and over the divisions
These proto-nationalist themes: the forging of identity in adversity, the evo- among the Italian leaders; contempt for the foreigners as' 'barbarians,' yearn-
cation of cultural genealogies, and the delineation of natural territorial markers, ings for the great Roman past, appeals for a leader, the wish to be free of the
were often .expressed in rhetoric which differentiated Italia from the barbarian invaders ... "119 Machiavelli's depiction of a coherent Italian identity, differenti-
other. In "Italia Mia" Petrarch acknowledged that ated from the surrounding world and threatened by foreign forces, was not new.
144 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

However, Machiavelli's originality was to fuse these disparate elements into a

program of political action. He sought to revive Italian virtu by installing a spirit
of martial valour into the people, by forming an army of indigenous soldiers to
replace the mercenary troops, and by unifying the province under one prince.
Machiavelli's models for Italian unity were contemporary France and Spain:
"Italy was to become a "provincia unita" in order to withstand the assaults of
CHAPTER 8
other 'provincie unite'."I20 Yet this political program would remain an aspiration
rather than a reality. For Italy's regional princes, italianita was merely a conve-
nient tool of realpolitik which they appealed to when their own interests were
Picturing Renaissance Territoriality
threatened.V! Florentine and Papal negotiators seeking to encourage Venice to
drop her stance of neutrality after Charles VIII's invasion argued that" 'a good
Italian' with concern for the 'universal danger' and 'universal needs of Italy' "
would abandon such a policy.I22 But Italian interests rarely took precedence
over the immediate interest of the piccola patria. The Venetian Doge replied to
the Papal legate that Venice would not risk going to war with Milan and France
for the sake of a vague ideal. Furthermore, princes were prepared to put their · -. ica.:or y " t:er to L..0..renzo de M~dic.i prefacingIIPrincipe, Machiavelli
n.the ded
expressed hIS worries that Lorenzo might take offence that a mere citizen
contempt for the barbarians aside, if the military services they offered could be
I . should presume to offer counsel on the conduct of princely affairs. He jus-
used to overcome local rivals. The weakness of Italian interest when set against
tified his unsolicited advice by means of an analogy.
personal ambition became abundantly clear in 1494 when, motivated by his
desire for territorial gains at the expense ofVenice, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico
I hope it will not be thought presumptuous if a man of low and humble
Sforza, encouraged Charles VIII's invasion on the pretext of the Angevin claim
station dares to discuss and advise on the conduct of princes. For just as
to the Kingdom of Naples. Machiavelli was disgusted at Sforza and blamed his
those who draw up maps of countries place themselves in low lying valleys
deviousness for "the growth of those evil seeds that not long after, since no living
man could destroy them, devastated----and are still devastating-Italy."I23 to observe mountains and high places and to observe low lying areas situ-
ate themselves high up in the mountains so, likewise, to understand clearly
Italy would not achieve anything like the status of a national territorial state
the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to discern clearly that of
until well into the nineteenth century, and would experience many more "bar-
princes, he must be one of the populace.'
barian" incursions before then. Nevertheless Renaissance political discourse; by
aligning the state space with sovereignty, violence, and identity commenced a
Machiavelli's analogy evokes a passage in Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on
process of striation that would eventually coalesce into the modern territorial
Painting in which Leonardo declared that the artist who mastered perspective
imaginary.
would become

lord of all types of peoples and of all things. If he wants valleys, if he wants
from high mountain tops to unfold a great plain extending down to the sea's
horizon, he is lord to do so; and likewise if from low plains he wishes to see
high rnountains.r

Carlo Ginzberg argues that Machiavelli Was attracted to this image of the "sov-
ereign painter" with the world at his command because it posited an analytical
distance between the painter and the world he represenred.:' A similar principle
underpinned Machiavelli's desire to describe political life in terms of "la verita
 146 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 147

effectual delle cosa." Politics is a relationship between the prince and his people. territorialized politics: the ideal cityscape, the portrait of a prince in a landscape
So, Machiavelli, occupying the low plain, can provide the prince with an objec- and local topographical maps.
tive view on the conduct of politics which the prince, who occupies the heights,
is unable to .experience.
Perspective Theory and Practice
Machiavelli combined perspective and politics through metaphor. However,
according to the International Relations theorist John Ruggie, there is, in In essence, perspective is a technique of pictorial representation that allows art-
terms of the production of modern territoriality, a more immediate relation- ists to depict three-dimensional space and the positions of objects within it on a
ship between perspective and politics. In chapter three we discussed Ruggie's two-dimensional canvas. Erwin Panofsky describes perspective as the capacity
contention that the transformation from the heteronomous, territoriality of the to transform the material reality of a picture's surface into a transparent plane
medieval international order to the homonomous territoriality of modernity or a window, and so create the illusion that "we are looking through this win-
was partially produced by a reimagination of subjectivity within the European dow into a space."6 This "space comprises the entirety of the objects in apparent
social episteme. Ruggie contends that the essence of modern subjectivity and its recession into depth, and is not bounded by the edges of the picture, but rather
being-in-space is embodied by single-point perspective, which prioritized the only cut off."7 In Renaissance art history three foundational events constitute
iii
sovereignty of "a single point of view, the point of view of a single subjectivity, the "invention" or "rediscovery" of perspective: Filippo Brunelleschi's peepshow
II' from which all other subjectivities were differentiated," in relation to thevanish- experiments carried out in Florence's Piazza del Duomo and Piazza dei Signori
r
il ing point.4As in art, so in politics (1425), which demonstrated the principles of perspective; Masaccio's application
'I
"

I
of these principles in the Trinity fresco in Florence's Santa Maria Novella (1427);
'I
I
political space came to be defined as it appeared from a single fixed view- and the systematization of these principles in Alberti's De pictura (1435)-"the
point. T'he concept of sovereignty ... was ... the doctrinal counterpart of the 'Magna Carta' of the Renaissance.i" Depicturaset out the rules for perspective
application of single-point perspectival forms to the spatial organisation of construction with a geometrical rigor and established the parameters of the dis-
pol itics.P cipline of painting within the liberal arts." Alberti started with the most funda-
iii;
Hi, mental humanist premise.
Unfortunately, Ruggie does not develop this tantalizing observation much fur-
ther, leaving us to wonder how exactly single-point perspectival forms were The Stoics taught that man was by nature constituted the observer and man-
applied to the spatial organisation of politics. This chapter, building on Ruggie's agerof things. Chrysippus thought that everything on earth was born only
suggestive insight, addresses the question of how perspective, in essence a code to serve man .... Protagoras ... seems to some interpreters to have said essen-
or technique of pictorial representation, could have assisted in the promotion of tially the same thing, when he declared that man 'is the mean and measure
the modern territorial imaginary. In particular, it explores how following the col- of all things.l"
lapse of the vertical structures of medieval territoriality, perspective enabled the
territorialization of politics along a horizontal axis. Perspective will be addressed Man has a duty to study "the natural order of things in God's creation" and the
from two, as it were, perspectives. First as an epistemic structure whose assump- painter's particular task is to reveal Nature's concinnatus or harmony, which the
tions about the subject and its being-in-space are reproduced across various spa- divine has inscribed in the perfect proportional correspondences of number,
tial discourses. Second, as a representational technique which lent itself to the shape, and location in the world. I I Since perspective could show things in pro-
legitimization of the' modern idea of territorial sovereignty. The first section portion, it enabled the artist to represent the classically defined ideal of beauty
introduces the basic, principles of perspective with reference to Leon Battista as a harmony of parts.'?
Alberti's paradigmatic text On Painting and some of Piero della Francesca's Alberti began De pictura with a general description of geometrical con-
paintings. This is followed by a discussion of recent work on perspective by cepts such as point, line, and surfaceand discussed their material existence. He
cultural theorists and critical geographers who have theorized it as a representa- explained that the world is made manifest through rays, of light, which issue
tion of space or a matrix of power/knowledge. With the conceptual framework from the surface of an object and converge on the eye in the configuration of a
in place, we can analyze how the Renaissance regime of perspective served to cone or pyrarnid.l ' The visual pyramid is constituted by three points or surfaces:
striate the territorial imaginary, with reference to three pictorial expressions of the seen surface, which forms the base; extrinsic light rays, which constitute the
148 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 149

sides of the pyramid and "hold on like teeth to the whole of the outline, form stand directly in front of the painting's centre.r" The sense that the protagonists
an enclosure around the entire surface like a cage"; and the vertex in the eye, "appear to be inscribed in eternity" comes from Piero's adherence to Alberti's
where the angles of the quantities meet. Two other types of rays complement the recommendation that the spaces of paintings should not be crowded out by
extrinsic rays: median rays, which convey surface characteristics such as light highly animated figures, but should include empty spaces in which the principal
and color; and the centric, perpendicular or axial ray-"the leader and prince figures can move with grace and dignity.21
of rays"-which passes along our visual axis and whose position determines Neither Piero nor Alberti treated perspective as merely a set ofrules for achiev-
what appears on the surface. The concept of the visual pyramid in itself was not ing a realistic aesthetic representation of the world. Perspective was a symbolic
new-it had been a standard device of medieval optics or Perspectiva-however, system capable of reproducing the harmony of God's created universe. Piero
Alberti was the first to describe a painting as the intersection of the visual pyr- was not only a master technician of perspective on canvas but also a theorist
amid by a plane perpendicular to the centric ray and to imply that because the of perspective, interested in its wider symbolism. In the treatise De prospectiva
painting forms a proportional triangle within the broader triangle,. the objects pingendi (c. 1474) he insisted that if the artist wished to reproduce the harmony
recorded on it retain their relative sizes and positions.l'' Book Two set out the of Nature he had to be attentive to the correct geometrical representation of
rules of costruzione legittima or vanishing point construction. Alberti believed objects and figures. 22 In The Flagellation both the proportions and dimensions
that if the artist adhered to these rules he would be able to represent the vertical of the architecture and the numerical harmonies of the angular stones have sym-
and horizontal dimensions in and across the space of a picture in correct propor- bolic overtones which, in combination with the .light, were intended to reflect
tion. The fundamental principle underlying costruzione legittima is that man is the divine order. There is, for example, the regular occurrence of the number
"the scale and measure of all things," in relation to whom the sizes and distances eight, a numeral heavy with Christian symbolism (coming after the seven days
of objects can be represented in proportion.P Once the artist has learnt the rules of creation, the eighth day signified rebirth or Christ's resurrecrionj.F' In Piero's
he will be ready to produce a painting in the three stages which mirror our work, geometry and perspective are "symbolic elements for the representation
perception of things in Nature: circumscription---outliningthe position of the of the dimensions of the Absolute, which are themselves mirrored in perceivable
object in space; composition---reproducing various combinations of an object's reality." 24
surfaces; and, finally, the depiction ofsurface colors through sensitivity to "the In terms of perspective's broader cultural impact, Henri Lefebvre identi-
reception of light." 16 Finally, Alberti discussed artistic virtu. In order to choose fies it as the dominant Renaissance representation ofspace. Perspective gradu-
the most suitable istoria or subjects selected from scripture, history, or myth, the ally overlaid the traditional representational space "of religious origin, which
painter must he learned in the liberal arts. He must also be a student of nature, was now reduced to symbolic figures, to images of Heaven and Hell, of the
able to discern all of its qualities, especially that of beauty. I? Only then can Devil and the angels."25 Drawing on Lefebvre, Stuart Cosgrove has identified
he paint appropriate istoria with "a systematic and communicative naturalism the Renaissance as the birthplace of "landscape" or modernity's characteris-
within a framework of order and restrained delectation.t'" tic "way of seeing." Landscape, made possible by a fusion of linear perspec-
Piero della Francesca was one of many Renaissance artists influenced by tive and Euclidean geometry, enabled the appropriation of the external world
Alberti's rules of costru.zione legittima. For Henri Focillon, Alberti's principles "by a detached, individual spectator to whom an illusion of order and control
are particularly well demonstrated in Pieros use of space in the Flagellation of is offered through the composition of space according to the certainties of
Christ (1455---60). The composition of the image is severe and simple. The con- geometry."26 Landscape pervaded many levels of man's interaction with his
vergence of the floor and ceiling lines to an imaginary point reveal the presence environment: from landscape painting and garden design to the surveying of
of a structuring scheme that orders and divides the space, in which "[tjhe figures, estates and mapping of the new world. Whereas in the medieval imaginary
similar to pawns in a game of chess, are placed with implacable and rigorous man came to terms with the alterity of spaces, the threats and dangers they
precision in their halves." 19 Piero uses the architecture of the elegant classical contained, by crowding them with signs and symbols of the divine, the cosmo-
temple to organize the space of the Flagellation so that it complies with Alberti's politan spirit of modernity required spaces to be brought under man's control,
rules for measuring volume and space. The Flagellation is composed around to be made subject to his sovereignty. Thus through technologies of landscape
a single vanishing point that not only assigns a place to all the objects within man imposed order on space, stripping it of symbolic meaning and rendering
the pictorial space, but also determines the place of the observing viewer-in it an abstract object to be appropriated and used at will. Renaissance perspec-
order to make sense of the composition as a unified whole, the observer must tive or landscape introduced into European culture three modern aspects of
150 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 151

space. First, the eye became the sovereign ruler of modernity's ocular-centric The Ideal City
culture.V In Alberti's costrueione legittima the rays of the visual pyramid cen-
tre on the eye, it is the sovereign centre of the visual world. The eye, writes
Norman Bryson, has "absolute mastery over space. Visually space is rendered
the property of the individual detached observer, from whose divine location
it is a dependent, appropriated object."28 Second, the rise of the sovereignty of
the eye augmented the process of de-corporealization. Lefebvre describes how
the abstract ideal of the humanist subject came to replace the living body as the
standard by which space was measured and conceived and in terms of which
man understood his being-in-space.r" Alberti's Man now occupied "a central
position as observer of a pictorial world of which he himself is the measure."30
Giulio Argan claims that once man was no longer conceived of as a particu-
lar inscribed within a universal transcendent Nature, perspective became the
vehicle by which the newly constituted Ego, by means of the senses and rea- Figure 8.1 View of an Ideal City, 1490-1500 (oil on panel) by Italian School
son, was able to apprehend "nature as a reality conceived by man and as dis- (fifteenth century). ©Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA/The Bridgeman Art
tinct from him as the object from the subject.T" Third, the sovereignty of the Library.
eye and de-corporealization complemented a new understanding of space as
"geometrically isotropic, rectilinear, abstract and uniform."32 Panofsky argues Perspective was an urban-based .revolution which complemented the rise of the
that the emergence of perspective accompanied the transformation of psycho- town and the decline of the feudal landed order (figure 8.1). It was during the
physiological space into modern rational, systematic, and mathematical space. Renaissance that the medieval conception of the town as a metaphysical presence,
Perspective served the modern Weltanschauung which "demands and realizes as imago mundi, gradually dissipated. Now the town was able assume its own
a systematic space"---in modernity perception is "governed by a conception of identity as an urban space unified in terms of a political principle and represented
space expressed by strict linear perspective" which, in turn, is "comprehensible" graphically according to plans in perspective.l" According to Lewis Mumford,
only for a "specifically modern, sense of space, or ... sense of the world."33 Note the aspirations to grandiosity, uniformity, and regimentation characteristic of the
that for Panofsky modern systematic space is a prerequisite for rather than a Baroque city, and, we might add, the Baroque absolutist territorial state, had their
product of perspective. He identifies in early Renaissance paintings such as origins in the Renaissance ideal of a city reflected in the purity and harmony of
Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Annunciation (1344) an underlying coordinate system its architectural forms. 39 Indeed, the archetype for the Baroque city is captured
ordering the space long before it was postulated by the abstract mathematical in three Renaissance paintings of ideal cities, known as the Urbino, Baltimore,
thought of costruzione legittima. 34 Samuel Edgerton agrees that "a 'systematic' and Berlin panels. All three show images of grand architectural or theatrical
space, infinite, homogeneous, and isotropic" precipitated the rediscovery of scenes constructed with strict adherence to the principles of costruzione legittima.
linear perspective in the quattrocentoP? The practice of linear perspective was Ordinary housing is barely evident and the countryside can only just be glimpsed
based on the assumption that "visual space is ordered a priori by an abstract far outside of the city walls. There are no human figures present in either the
uniform system of linear coordinates" which allows painters to conceive of a Berlin or Urbino panels and the few that populate the Baltimore panel appear
subject in the realm of spatial homogeneiry.P" However, James Elkins warns "lost in the vastness of the spatial cornposition.T'" The layout of the squares and
that this argument falsely projects back onto the Renaissance a Kantian con- the styles of the buildings comply with the principles of architectural humanism
ception of space in which an a priori intuition of pure space makes possible the set out in Alberti's De re aedificatoria (1443-52).41 The buildings shown in the
appearance of the a posteriori world of objects. Perspective, for Elkins, did not paintings are examples of the standard types common to ideal urban layouts: a
arise from a general sense of rationalized space. While some painters did have templum or principal church, a basilica or law court, palaces for leaders serving
"an inchoate idea of rationalized space" it is going too far to "attribute an inter- both administrative and domicile functions, squares for commercial and political
est in the rationalization of all space to painters who looked at specific objects meetings, and symbolic antique monuments.V The details of the facades, porti-
with geometrical eyes."37 cos, loggia windows, and columns all conform to Alberti's requirements.
152 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 153

Art historians continue to debate the provenance and purpose of the panels. of an imagined observer standing there, half hidden by the closed panel door
One view is that the panels depict architectural or urban models. Fiske Kimball and directing a Cyclopean gaze towards us."50 This is the place occupied by the
suggests that the paintings were made by Luciano .Laurana, the architect who sovereign subject, toward which our sight is inexorably drawn and from which
43 the panoptic gaze, which for de Certeauand Foucault is the primary instrument
built Federicoda Montelfeltro's palace at Urbino between 1470 and 1480.
Laurana was a member of Federico's court at the same time as Bramante and of discipline in modernity, observes us.
Raphael and their influence seems to be evident in the architectural style rep- In modernity, as Lefebvre indicates, the symbolic places of the medieval imag-
resented in the paintings. Likewise, for Andre Chastel the panels are "urban inary are colonized by the abstract and rational spaces of capital and sovereign
views in perspective" similar to the images found on many marquetry panels territoriality. Archetypes of modern abstract spaces, the representations of space
and cassone fronrals .. The paintings are representations of the city designed to of urban planers and architects; are reproduced and legitimized in these paint-
valorize its spaces. Perspective was used "to define solemn places, ennobled by ings. For Lauro Martines these panels with their "vast organised spaces ... neatly
forceful architectural references, Colissea, triumphal arches, temples ...so as to boxed and absolutely controlled" are representative of Renaissance projects for
suggest singular crystalline spaces set apart in the interior of the city, ideal for ideal cities in which "power and imagination united and the ensuing vision of
processions ... One should think of them in the context of ritual entries, of cer- space was domineering, moved by faith in men's ability to control the spatial
emonial decoratioris.T'" Another school of thoughtclairns that the panels. are contiriuurn.f"
theatrical scenography. Alessandro Parronchi identifies them as sets designed by
the Ghirlandaio brothers for the comedies, including Machiavelli's Mandragola, The perfected forms of the. imaginary ideal city-c--grand, symmetrical, pro-
that were staged as part of the festivities celebrating the marriage of Lorenzo di portioned, in fixed optical recession-went forth from a wish for control
Medici and Madeleine di II Tour d'Auvergne in September 1518. The panels over the whole environment and from the implicit assumption that this was
later found their way to .Urbino when Pope Leo X made Lorenzo de Medici possible. The quest for the control of space in architecture, painting and
duke of the province in 1519.45 Richard Krautheimer argued (before retracting bas-relief sculpture was not analogous to a policy for more hegemony over
his statement) that the panels Were not specific stage sets but generic models the entire society; it belonged, rather, to the same movement of conscious-
of theatre architecture; figural representations of what Sebastiano Serlio would ness. Behind the two different enterprises was the same drive to comprehend
later term, drawing on Vitruvius, the tragic (Baltimore) and comic (Urbino) the environment: to convert the surroundings, urban and even rural to a
scenes.I'' "known" field. 52
All thesereadings, argues Hubert Damisch, are limited by their adherence to
a. "descriptive allusion," which seeks to establish the real world referents of the The rigorously planned, tightly controlled representations of space in these pan-
buildings. Thlsallusion is premised on the false assumption that both language els contrast with the organic lived-in spaces of medieval cityscapes. Cosgrove
and art are primarily concerned with representation: the notion that pictures draws out this contrast by comparing Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of Good
or linguistic statement have meaning to the extent that they describe or present and Bad Government to Pietro Perugino's Christ Giving to StPeter the Keys to
some external objective reality of facts, whether real or imaginary.V Damish the Kingdom ofHeaven. Lorenzetti's city is a vibrant, bustling world, the sights,
brackets such concerns and asks a different question: how do the paintings sounds, and smells of which are communicated to viewers as if they were pedes-
function as a series demonstrating the function of perspective as an "expressive trians walking in the streets. How different to Perugino's formal monumental
apparatus." Just as the sentence assigns "the subject a place within a previously space, in which the regimentations of the checkerboard piazza and the trees and
established network that gives it meaning" so perspective determines the posi- hills in the background attest to the rigid geometrical order striating the spaces
tion of objects on the pictorial plane. 48 As conduits of the modern principle of of the urban landscape.V Rather than random and spontaneous gatherings,
sovereign identity the sentence and perspective have similar spatial functions Perugino's human groups strike choreographed theatrical poses. Individuals do
of allocation, distribution, and differentiation. Perspective functions like a lan- not inhabit this impersonal space; they have no personal relationship to it, but
guage, for it "institutes and constitutes itself under the auspices of a point, a fac- exist in it as objects situated by an external plan or scheme. In the ideal. city
tor analogous to the 'subject' or 'person' in language, always posited in relation panels the logic of de-corporealization is taken yet further. These spaces are
to a 'here' or 'there'."49 In the Urbino panel the orthogonals come together at a almost. entirely devoid of human figures, as if their impure physical presence
vanishing point within the opening of the tempio door "at the height of an eye would contaminate the space's perfect proportions and refined lines. Although
 154 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 155

a few isolated figures. populate the Baltimore panel, these bodies, most notice- market traders; and that rabble, .as Terence's Gnatho calls them, of poulter-
ably the burdened figure leaning on a stick in the foreground, seem to be visibly ers, butchers, cooks, and so on, will he less of risk and less of a nuisance if
oppressed by the totalitarian monumental spaces that enclose them. These ideal they do not mix with the important cirizens.P"
cityscapes capture the spirit of the territorial imaginary of the cosmopolitan
absolutist state: the broad avenues and monumental order, symbolizing ecclesi- Dere aedificatoria Was, argues Francoise Choay, an "instaurational" text that
astical and secular power, are striated, coded, and free from all traces of nomadic founded the discourse of urbanism. It was the first to conceive of the built
existence; here there are no "vagabonds, vagrants or nornads.P" domain as a totality and the first to propose a rational method for conceptual-
In so far as these spaces evoked the moral values of purity and cleanliness, izing and realizing buildings. Moreover, it expressed a new Foucauldian episte-
they can be aligned with the dispositifthat, as documented by Richard Sennett, mological configuration, which, extending across the discourses of architecture,
legitimized the construction ofJewish ghettoes in Venice. In the early sixteenth painting and sculpture; "resulted in the imposition of a new ideal of control
century Venice's fortunes were in decline and the city was beset by cultural and over the world and a transformation of relations between European man and
rnoral unease.P It was also home to a number of Jewish immigrants who had his productlons.Y!
been exp~lled from Spain in 1494. These newcomers were easy scapegoats for Of course, few really existing Renaissance cities achieved the aspirations
the authorities who, seeking to apportion blame for an outbreak of syphilis, of striated territoriality evoked by the ideal cityscapes. Class boundaries were
encouraged a general "fear of touching". The Jewish body became associated rarely as neatly demarcated in space as Alberti and his tyrant might have liked.
with corrupting bodily vices, which had to be isolated to avoid infecting or Further, when it came to actual control of urban space, the elites sought to
contaminating the Christian community. However, the Venetian rulers were asset their territorial supremacy over each other. In Renaissance Florence, for
aware that the Jewish community had made a significant contribution to the example, patrician families, seeking to extend their territorial power within
city's economic fortunes, and "sought a spatial solution to deal with its impure the city, contested the ownership of private and public spaces. 62 The patron-
but necessary Jewish bodies."56 In 1515 Zacaria Dolfin drew up plans to use the age of churches and convents was particularly sought after and their walls were
foundry site of Ghetto Nuovo to segregate the Jews and advised the Venetians inscribed with family coats of arms and other patrimonial symbols as signs of
II territorial possession. K. J. P Lowe argues that in a Florence "obsessed with own-
:11 to "[s]end all of them to live in the Ghetto Nuovo which is like a castle, and
Ii
1/ to make drawbridges and close it with a wall; they should have only one gate, ership, display and boundaries," the Medici were the most effective practitioners
:1
which would enclose them there and they would stay there."57 In 1516 seven of territorial patronage and used such means throughout the quattrocento to
hundred Ashkenazi Jews were sent to the Ghetto Nuovo, and in 1541 the nearby extended their territorial control outside of their immediate neighborhood of
Ghetto Vecchio was also designated as a part of the city exclusively reserved for S. Lorenzo. 63 However, once they had fallen from power many of their symbols
Jewish habitation. of hereditary family rule were erased by Soderini and over-coded with symbols
The sanitized de-corporeal spaces of the panels were also examples of what of republican rule. In the convent of Le Murate a votive wax statue of Lorenzo
Martines terms "signorial space"-they revealed the elites' aspirations to con- the Magnificent was replaced by one of the Virgin Mary; and at the convent of
struct environments that would evoke the grandeur of classical antiquity.V San Gallo, founded by Lorenzo, Soderini dedicated a chapel to his own family.
Renaissance urban planners, commissioned by the wealthy and powerful, con-
structed real and imaginary cities comprising vast squares, wide streets and large
Painting the Prince
buildings in which "more space was allotted to the powerful and less to the
powerless ."59 Alberti's De re aedificatoria, for example, striated space according Perspective not only contributed to the Renaissance territorial imaginary
to class distinctions. Alberti advised the tyrant to build his city according to a by enabling the representation of ideal cosmopolitan cityscapes, it also gave
circular plan of two walled cities. princes an ideological tool with which to promote their claims to territorial
sovereignty. The most striking example of this is the diptych of Federico cia
This wall, I believe, should not run diametrically across the city but should Montefeltro the Duke of Urbina and his wife Battista Sforza by Piero della
form a kind of circle. For the wealthy citizens are happier in more spacious Francesca (figure 8.2 and 8.3).64 On the diptych's inner panels we see Federico
surroundings and would readily accept being excluded by an inner wall, and and Battista in profile. Battista's portrait has two notable features: first, her
would not unwillingly leave the stalls and the town-centre workshops to the face is very white like a funeral mask, alluding to her recent death in childbirth;
 156 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 157

II
II
Ii
Ii
I! Figure 8.2 Portraits of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422~82) and Battista
II' Figure 8.3 The Triumphs of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-82) and
II Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415~92). Galleria
Battista Sforza, c.1465 (tempera on panel) by Francesca, Piero della (c.1415-92).
degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out of
copyright.

second, her elaborate hairstyle and exquisite jewelry are rendered in consider-
able detail revealing Piero's mastery of miniature portraiture. Federico's por- carriage. Once again the backgrounds of both pictures are provided by exten-
trait is also very detailed, showing the various moles and blemishes on his olive sive landscapes of the Urbino territories: behind Federico is Lake Trasimeno
skin. Federico presents his left profile to the viewer and thereby hides from view and behind Battista is the fertile countryside ofValdichiana.
his blind right eye which, like his broken nose, was acquired in battle. Behind The message Federico sought to convey through these paintings is clearly
both Federico and Battista, receding into the far distance until it reaches the one of territorialized sovereignty. The Latin inscription underneath his tri-
horizon where it merges with the sky is an extensive countryside landscape, umph declares: "His eminence is carried in great triumph for his famed eternal
comprising cone-shaped hills, fields, and a lake. On the reverse panels, Battista virtue proclaims him worthy of bearing the sceptre as the equal of the most
and Federico are represented in triumphal procession. Federico's carriage is distinguished condotrieri.T? Federico, following in the Montefeltro family's tra-
being pulled by two white cavalry horses driven by Eros. Federico is sitting in a ditional "profession of arms," had made his fortune as a successful condottiero
gilded chair, dressed in a full suit of amour and holding a scepter and is in the and became the ruler of Urbino in 1444 (subsequently raised to a duchy by
process of being crowned by the angel of la Vittoria. Toward the front of the Sixtus IV in 1474).66 Although Federico seems to have embodied ntany of traits
carriage sit the four Virtues: Prudenza, Temperanza, Fortezza, and Giustizia. of princely virtu admired by Machiavelli and could even be regarded as an equal
Battista's carriage, also driven by Eros, is drawn by two unicorns the symbols of to Cesare Borgia in terms of ambition and ruthlessness, Machiavelli despised
chastity and purity. She has taken on a pious reading pose and is accompanied him not only because he was a condottiero or mercenary but also because of a
by Fedeand Carita, at the front, and Speranza and Modestia, at the back, of the personal history of treachery toward Florence.I'/ Machiavelli noted that during
158 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 159

the formation of two rival alliances between 1473 and 1474 which had pitted and Jewish texts-which testified to its patron's high culture and learn ing.r'"
Florence, Milan, and Venice against the Papacy and Naples, The architecture of the palace was designed to symbolize Federico's benevolent
and compassionate rulership. The public spaces of the cortile and garden were
Frederick, the ruler of Urbino, then considered the ablest general in Italy, accessible to all of his subjects, whom, we are told, he treated with such kind-
had for a long time carried on wars for the Florentine people. The Pope ness and humility that they considered themselves to be the favored children of
[Sixtus IV] and the King [Ferdinand of Naples], therefore, in order that a kindly parent?5
the hostile league might be without this leader, determined to get hold of Just as the palace architecture embodied Federico's good governance, so did
Frederick, so the Pope advised him to visit the King of Naples and Ferdinand the images that decorated its walls. It seems likely that the diptych would have
invited him. Frederick consented, to the wonder and displeasure of. the hung in one of the palace's public rooms, thereby informing any visitors that the
Florentines ... and Frederick returned from Naples and Rome with high hon- fruits of the prince's good government were evident throughout his domains. As
our and as general ofSixtus and Ferdinand's league. 68 such these paintings belong to the tradition of pictorial representations of good
and bad government established by Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of Allegories
Federico's shift of allegiance to Rome broke with the Montefeltro family's tra- ofGood and Bad Government in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico (1338-40). Lorenzetti
ditional allegiance with the Empire. Damisch suggests that this move prompted symbolized the abstract idea of good government by making its consequences
Federico to revoke "the Ghibelline mode of tyranny" and while "motivated manifest in the realistic visual landscape and the human activity taking place
by power politics as much as by reason" to endorse the idea that his authority therein. Elegantly attired city folk ride out to enjoy the reinvigorating effects of
should be founded on virtu and prudencc.P" the country, while peasants walk to town to sell their animals and crops. The
The iconography of the portraits indicates that Federico sought to project landscape is the scene of various pastoral practices-reaping in the fields, tilling
an image of himself not as "the leader ofa band of mercenaries" but as someone the soil, hunting in the country-all ofwhich testify to the fecundity of Sienna's
who strove to "comport himself like prince."70 Although in the triumphal pro- contado. Even the hillsides in the far distance have been extensively cultivated
cession he is wearing amour, the standard iconography of the warrior-prince is according to the rules of sound agricultural practice. This detail communicates
largely absent. His military virtu is presented alongside and complementary to the essential meaning of the fresco: the presentation of a well-governed land
other princely qualities of good governance and cultural patronage. As his biog- where human needs and pleasures are satisfied.I"
rapher Paltroni surmised, For Kenneth Clark, Renaissance landscape painting evolved out of a tra-
dition in medieval art which had developed an increased realism and natu-
the life of this excellent prince is to be compared and equated with the life of ralism to critique Christian symbolism and didactic imagery. The medieval
any of the more worthy and notable ancients in any of the great generations. "landscape of symbols," in which material objects were presented as symbols of
For the things he did so outstandingly in handling arms he merits the great- spiritual truth and arranged in an unified flat surface in a decorative yet· har-
est fame and eternal memory, as he does for his singular sapienza (wisdom) monious pattern, was replaced by a "landscape of fact" in which istoria could
in ruling and governing ... and for being learned in scienza (knowledge), elo- be presented in realistic settings that embodied "a new nexus of unity, enclosed
quence, liberality, benevolence, and clemency, and for the splendid court and space."7? Chronologically, the Lorenzetti frescoes predate both the rediscovery
for magnificent and splendid buildings.:" of perspective and the maturity of the genre of landscape art, yet intimations
of landscape emerged in art from the early fourteenth century.i'' The realistic
Castiglione also felt that Federico's military virtu was equal to that of the landscape of Duccio di Buoninsegna's Entry into Jerusalem (1308-11), argues
great generals of antiquity and insisted that it was Just one of his many qual- Richard Turner, removed this event from its traditional representation within
ities alongside "prudence, humanity, justice, generosity and an indomitable the symbolic narrative of the unfolding of divine will. Rather, Duccio commu-
spirit."72 His contemporary biographers were particularly impressed by the pal- nicates a sense of how the participants in and witnesses to the event might have
ace at Urbino designed by Laurana-Castiglione considered it the "most beau- experienced it. Further, the landscape itselfwas a source of meaning, rather than
tiful to be found anywhere in Italy."73 It was not only furnished and decorated just a nugatory backdrop for the istoria.t"
with luxurious trappings ofwealth and prestige, but also displayed a wealth of By the dawn of the quattrocento, Renaissance landscape was increasingly
objects-antique statues, pictures, musical instruments, and rare Latin, Greek, represented as a domesticated and humanized space, a place that served man's
160 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

physical needs and spiritual yearnings. "Its fields and groves are carefully
groomed and only rarely give way to wild ravines, spectacular vistas, or deserted
places."8o Renaissance landscape had come to symbolize man's capacity to exer-
cise sovereignty over his environment and was a forerunner of the cosmopolitan
desire to organize, manage and cultivate space, which as William Connolly's
reading of Tocqueville's justification for the .foundation of the American state
shows, is integral to the modern territorial imaginary. 81 Tocqueville.. while
aware that th~ foundation of this new state imposed an alien social form on
the preexisting Indian communities, nevertheless argued that since the Indians
were nomadic wandering tribes, lacking the knowledge of agricultural prac-
tice, they occupied but did not posses the land they lived on. Thus the conti-
nent of North America was effectively empty, waiting for the introduction of
"civilization" by newcomers who would territorialize the land through agricul-
ture, possession, and the exploitation of natural wealth. Similarly, the landscape
extending behind Federico and Batista has been coded by agriculture. It is a
space which, by means of agricultural processes, directed and overseen by the
sovereign authority that possesses it, has been civilized. For Eugenio Batisti,
the landscape has clearly been "modified by man" and there is a modernity to
the general system of agriculture. The countryside has been shaped by mod-
ern farming practices: irrigation schemes, artificially created pastures, farms
enclosed within rectangular hedgerows, and modern ploughing and tillage
systems. Further, the buildings have been constructed according to the latest
techniques, the little farmsteads a~e fecund, and a network of roads brings the
component parts together. 82
In this representation of territorial sovereignty Piero painted a relatively
unembellished landscape. By contrast, Andrea Mantegna's lncontro fresco
(1474), in the Camera degli Sposi of the palace at Mantua, represented the same
theme against an invented landscape. The lncontro shows an outdoor meeting
between the Marquis of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his son Francesco,
who had recently been elevated to the status of a cardinal. Both men are accom-
panied by their entourages. The image symbolized a union of temporal and
spiritual power within the persons of the Gonzaga family. Like Piero, 1J[antegna
expressed the transcendental sovereignty of his signori by according their
figures a rigid formality and monumentality. However, while Piero's sovereigns
are shown againsta landscape that was recognizably that ofUrbino's contado,
Mantegna's sovereigns are placed in an entirely fictitious landscape, com rising
a vast walled medieval city set on top of a hill, the slopes ofwhich are strew- .with
antique temples, pyramids, and statues. By placing the Gonzaga arms 0 two Figure 8.4 Arrival of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, greeted by his father Marchese
of the entrance gates, whose approaches are presided over by Hercules, th god Ludovico Gonzaga III (reigned 1444-78) and his brothers, froin the Carnera degli
of political and civic wisdom, Mantegna makes it clear that the family controls Sposi or Camera Picta, 1465-74 (fresco) by Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506). Palazzo
and effectively owns this city, the seat of their political power. However, Ma tua Ducale, Mantua, Italy/The Bridgenlan Art Library. Italian. Out of copyright.
is actually situated in a flat countryside and lacks any significant Roman r ins.
162 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 163

The city is, therefore, "a fantasy Mantova, a city of Lodovico's dreams," which The map is the perfect symbol of the state.. If your grand duchy or tribal area
with its allusions to imperial grandeur sought to present the Gonzaga as the seems tired, run down, and frayed at the edges, simply take a sheet of paper,
inheritors of the majesty of imperial Rorne.f" plot some cities, roads and physical features, draw a heavy, distinct bound-
Perspective serves to unite figures with the spaces that enclose them. In the ary around as much territory as you dare claim, colour it in, add a name-
Urbino Portraits this unifying quality of perspective lent itself to the visual rep- perhaps reinforced with the impressive prefix of "Republic of"-and presto:
resentation ofsovereign-territoriality by facilitating the inscription of the human you are now the leader of a new, sovereign, autonomous country. Should any-
figures of the sovereigns into the landscape of their territories (figure 8.4). One one doubt it, merely point to themap. Not only is your new state on paper,
notable compositional feature of the painting is Piero's successful unification of its on a map, so it must be real. 87
two distant perspective planes, the foreground figures and the landscape back-
ground, without resorting to the traditional ploy of placing an architectural Renaissance mapping and cartography combined tradition with innovation.
balustrade between the figures and the landscape. Pieroachieved "a remarkable The reception of ]acopo d'Angelo's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geographia
synthesis ... between the accurate description according to the rules of linear in 1406 nicely captures this Janus faced looking back and reaching forward.F''
perspective, as elaborated by Italian art, and "miriiaturistic" painting obtained Although the dissemination of the Geographia would have widespread reper~us­
thanks to the techniques of oil paints, developed ... by Netherlandish artists."84 sions, reaching beyond the obvious constituencies of geography and cosmology
Federico and Battista are inscribed into the landscape of their territorial domin- into many branches of Renaissance knowledge, its .publication did not imme-
ion by means of pictorial juxtapositions: the wealth and authority revealed by diately render obsolete the medieval cartographic imaginary, based in the coor-
the minutia of portrait detail in their faces and clothes are mirrored in the pre- dinates of divine symbolism.P? The rediscovery of the Geographia was initially
cise execution of the symbols of fertility and productivity in the landscape.' The filtered through a scholastic discourse which ensured that "the modernization
space of the painting is dominated by the imposing hieratic profiles of the sover- of Ptolemy was complex, tentative and obscure."90 For a start, the Geographia
eigns in the same way that "the power of the rulers portrayed dominates over the appealed to churchmen interested in the traditional discourse of perspectiva.
expanse of their territories.V''' The geometric lines of their profiles replicate and The 'optical theorem that only the aspect of an object on an axis with the eye's
unite with the horizontal and receding lines which carve out the extended ter- centre could be clearly observed, resonated in Ptolemy's instruction to map-
ritory behind them. Although both sovereigns are placed against a background makers to view the part of the world to be mapped as if it were connected at its
landscape of hills and mountains, there is an important difference conveying centre to the centre of the viewer's eye by an abstract visual axis or perpendicu-
a political message. In the duchess's portraits the landscape encloses the scene, lar line. 9 1 The Geographia, argues Edgerton, reinforced rather than overturned
while behind the duke it opens· onto a navigable body of water. Damisch reads the traditional belief of Euclidean-based perspectiva that the perfect harmonies
this "almost as if these were the two complementary wings of a single political and .symmetries of geometry revealed the plan of the universe as designed by
agenda, one of them affirming the dynasty's geographic roots, the other sig- God. 92 Renaissance Europe retained the belief that geometric patterns found in
naling the opening to the exterior reflected in the duke's enterprises."86 These orthogonal relationships symbolized the ordered perfection of God's universe.
images are visual representations of the modern territorial imaginary, which not Ptolemaic scientific cartography did not dispel these notions, but reinforced
only express the fact of the extension of the prince's authority over a territory but faith in the divine mission of Christianity. Indeed, the cartographic grid became
also serve to legitimate it by showing the order and prosperity that have arisen a talisman of Christian authority.F' However, the Geographia did inspire new
as a consequence. cartographic techniques. Ptolemy showed how to map places in terms of lon-
gitude and latitude and gave cartographers the ability to preserve the correct
proportion of small areas to the whole earth. His method unified within one
Mapping Territorial Boundaries
geometrical space, two mapping techniques: chorography which mapped small
Another form of image used by Renaissance state authorities to promote and areas using pictorial elements and geography which produced maps of the world
legitimise their territoriality was the map. Deleuze and Guattari point out that showing features by lines and dots.
the State-thought is constantly seeking to striate space. Now, in many ways, the The striating longitude and latitude grid system of the Geographia (figure 8.5)
map is the instrument of striation par excellence. As Mark Monmonier points which "depended on imagining the globe not as amorphous topography but as a
out, maps are useful instruments for asserting claims to territorial sovereignty. homogeneous surface ruled by a uniform geometric grid" would, as we shall see
164 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 165

Figure 8.6 Carta della Catena, 1490 (Detail) by Italian School (fifteenth century).
Museo de Firenze Corn'era, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Italian. Out
of copyright.
Figure 8.5 Map of the world, based on descriptions and coordinates given in
"Geographia," by Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria) (c.90-168 AD),
published in DIm, Germany, 1486 (color engraving) by German School (fif- cartographers sought inspiration from the more realistic ground-view images
teenth century). British Library, London, UK/© British Library Board. All Rights of towns in paintings like Lorenzetti's Siena in Good Government or Benedetto
Reserved/The Bridgeman Art Library. German. Out of copyright. Bonfigli's Perugia in the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori (1454). Cartographers
combined realism with perspective to construct birds-eye views of cities of
in the next chapter, eventually presage the end the T-O map.94 However, in Italy, striking accuracy. Such detailed realism characterized the engravings of Pisa,
which even during the middle ages had been "by far the most map-conscious Florence, Rome, and Constantinople made by Francesco Rosselli's workshop
part of Europe," Renaissance cartographers inspired by ·the. Geographia, pio- in Florence. One of the most famous of Rosselli's maps is the Map with Chain
neered topographical mapping as a technique for territorializing the local land- (1482), which depicts Florence as seen from the hills to the south-west. This
scape and marking-out territorial boundaries.l" Unlike small-scale maps, which map is an intriguing example of the representation of Renaissance territoriality
show a whole province or nation, the topographical map is a large-scale map of within the regime of perspective, since Rosselli purposely included the person
a small area or district, which shows the shapes and patterns of the landscape in of the artist-surveyor, the agent of territorialization, drawing up the plan in
terms of standardized formats and within a uniform scale. Representations of the bottom right hand cornet. Territoriality is being produced by knowledge.
territoriality were promoted in two types of Italian Renaissance topographical This simple self-referential motif embodies the ideological claim of the modern
map: bird's-eye views of towns and district or regional maps. perspective regime that man is master and owner of all that he surveys. Yet, in
Until the fifteenth century the picture maps of Italian towns tended to: be so far as the walls separating the city from the contado are the most prominent
rather basic, showing little more than the outlines of walls and the most nota- territorial boundaries, the image also reflects the characteristic center-periphery
ble buildings (figure 8.5). Some were made of Milan and Florence but the v~st ordering of Renaissance territoriality. Another feted practitioner of topography
majority, such as the maps in Paolino Veneto's Magna chronologia (1320-30) r was Jacopode' Barbari who, in 1500, produced a map of Venice that P. D. A.
in Flavio Biondo's Roma instaurata (1444-46), were of Rome. By the end of t e Harvey calls "a masterpiece of the vision and skill of the Italian Renaissance.":"
quattrocento the basic plan no longer satisfied the realism required of art, an To achieve the single perspective required by a bird's-eye view, Barbari
166 • FromH ierarchy to Anarchy Picturing Renaissance Territoriality • 167

combined a mosaic of individual sketches within the framework of an existing maps in the quattrocento Were almost exclusively restricted to north Italy, there
plan of Venice, which had been adjusted to achieve the uniform foreshortening. were some notable exceptions: a manuscript of the Geographia printed in 1448
Through his mastery of painterly techniques, Barbariwas also able to emphasize reproduced a map of Tuscany by Pietro de Massaio; and Giovanni Pantano in
the city's great size, its wealth and its power. Leonardo da Vinci also drew sev- the first decade of the sixteenth century produced a scale map based on a mea-
eral bird's-eye maps of towns. During the 1503 war between Florence and Pisa, sured survey of the northern boundary ofNaples for King Ferdinand. There was
Machiavelli, as Florence's Secretary of State for War, commissioned Leonardo a massive increase in the Venetian mapping projects in the sixteenth century.
as a military architect to draw up an embanking scheme to divert the course of Venetian land surveyors or periti mapped and charted 150,000 hectares of land
the Arno to cut Pisa off from the sea. This map was not only drawn to scale, in the terrafirma between 1560 and 1600. The periti, armed with compasses,
but also depicted the surrounding countryside as a flattened projection as seen cross-staff quadrants, and astrolabes mapped ·the land using methods which
from above. It is possible that Machiavelli commissioned Leonardo after seeing combined perspective and Euclidean geometry with naturalistic landscape
the latter's bird's-eye plan of Imola, which the artist had presented to Cesare imagery.1020 n e map commissioned by the Office of the Border Commissions
Borgia in 1502. In this map the plans of the buildings are drawn in proportion (1538) showed the land between Strasoldo, Cervignano, Aquileia, and the Aussa
and the monuments remain to scale. Eight compass lines radiate out from the River, has a "clear demarcation of proprietorship between Venice and Germany
centre of the city to the circumference of the map's frame to enable accurate (de Tedeschi)"103
plotting of distances. Leonardo's maps showed how, by drawing to scale and Renaissance cartography, where it clearly demarcated the borders between
supplanting pictorial imagery for outline plans, cartography could be used to political communities, manifested the principles of the modern discourse of
promote landscape as both an economic resource and as an arena for military territorial sovereignty. However, Renaissance cartography, underscored by the
strategy and tactics.i" regime of perspective, would also playa significant role in the political territori-
A second type of topographical map produced during the Renaissance was alization of spaces beyond European Christendom. The Renaissance expansion
the district or regional map of a small area. State authorities began commis- of European international society would lead Europeans into spaces of danger
sioning these as administrative tools in the quattrocento and they had become and alrerity, Cartography would be one of several discursive strategies called
widespread bythe end of the sixteenth century. Perhaps aware of Machiavelli's upon to territorialize these spaces and discipline their inhabitants. These pro-
insistence that "[tjhe prince who lacks expertise in topography lacks the first cesses, which are considered in the next chapter, would not only enfold them
quality needed by a general, because it teaches how to find the enemy, to choose within the framework of a European territorial imaginary, but also require and
encampments, to lead armies, to plan battles, and to besiege towns with advan- enable Europe's own transition from a medieval to modern political spatial
tage," many of these maps were used as aids to military strategic planning. 98 cosmos.
Several surviving fifteenth century maps provide "a graphic guide to the theatre
of war at the time of the first Venetian conquests of the terrrafirma."99 During
the war between Milan and Venice (1437-41) two maps were made of Lombardy
showing several items of military significance, such as walled towns and bridges
and the Fosse Bergamasca boundary ditch between Milan and Bergamo. In the
fifteenth century, district maps of Verona, Padua, Parma, and Brescia were also
commissioned. A substantial Venetian mapping project was initiated in 1460
when the Council of Ten requested that the governors of territories, cites, and
castles under Venetian rule should commission maps and surveys and then send
them to Venice. Several of these maps survive including those made of Padua
(1465), Brescia (1469-70), and Verona (1479-80).100 There is also a 1496-99
military map of the Venetian terrafirma that highlights its territorial fortifica-
tions. These maps were used to "define borders, to aid in water and lagoon
management, to illustrate and clarify ambassadorial dispatches, for defense and
fortress designs, and to resolve disputes in court cases."lOl Although district
 CHAPTER 9

The Renaissance Territorialization of

International Society

",,
M
artin Wight has wr,itten "[WJh,ether or not w,e agree with Adam Smith
that 'the discovery of the Americas and that of a passage to the East
Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most
important events recorded in the history of mankind,' those events largely gov-
erned the development of international society." 1 If the previous two chapters
discussed the internal dimension of Renaissance territorialization, this, chapter
looks outward, to its external projection through the discovery and conquest of
the New World and the beginning of the expansion of European International
Society. This process was, as William Connolly has observed, one in which the
inscriptions of identity and difference were pararnou nt.r Columbus did not dis-
cover America but a "world ofotherness." The encounter between Europeans and
Amerindian natives was not simply a meeting between two already-constituted
subjects and the subsequent mastery of one by the other. America was not a pre-
existing world which the Europeans happened upon but a text to be discovered
in the sense of an unfamiliar, unrecognizable set of empirical date which, in
order to be made intelligible and therefore conquerable, was created and imag-
ined in terms of the cultural predispositions and expectations of the Europeans,
which were themselves altered by the experience of the encounter. In terms of
space, the new was rendered intelligible and conquerable by processes of terri-
torialization, which drew on representational media, notably cartography and
traveler's narratives, to invent America as a space that could be understood,
assimilated, and possessed by Europeans.
Our concern, then, is with how the, expansion of international society was
achieved by strategies of territorialization. .Such strategies demarcated and
170 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 171

possessed space on behalfof political sovereignty, not only through direct phys.. . was unaware, or he was an agent of chance..' However, argues O'Gorman, for
ical occupation but also by means of representational media deploying spatial an act to have meaning it must have intention and it is logically nonsensical to
figures and vocabularies that determined how contemporaries understood and assert that Columbus could have discovered America without first showing that
represented their individual and collective being-in-space. Clearly these histor- he had the intention of doing so. In order to have discovered American he would
ical events have generated a wealth of literature and the focus of this chapter is have had to have been aware of the specific being of the land which he found,
restricted to the initial period of discovery, broadly speaking from Christopher that is a continent named America. Thus "when we are told that Columbus
Columbus' first voyage in 1492 to the publication of Martin Waldseemiiller's revealed the being of an object entirely different from the one with which he
Cosmographiae introductio in 1507. The "new" spaces of international society endowed it, we are actually being asked to believe that the object itself revealed
were territorialized by representational discourse operating at two interrelated its secret and hidden being at the moment when Columbus perceived it."4 This
levels of analysis. First, the machinations of various sovereign powers at the level argument not only discounts Columbus' own purposes and opinions, but also
of high politics, that is through the diplomatic negotiations which lead to the makes man the agent of intentions supposedly present in some inanimate object.
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and the division of the world into Portuguese and ForO'Gorman, the root of the problem lies in the assumption of Western meta-
Spanish spheres. However, the Renaissance territorialization of international physics that all things have an immutable Platonic essence, that the being of
society was not simply the result of popes and sovereigns arbitrarily dividing the things is fixed in nature and transcends time and space. This substantialist con-
world into spheres of influence. Equally significant, and providing the condi- ception of reality fails to recognize that the being (not existence) of a thing
tions for such grand gestures, was the discursive construction of the "discov- is merely the meaning or significance it is given within an overall framework
ered" territories by cartographic practices, which sought to make familiar the of reality accepted as truth at any particular historical moment, "the being of
nature and limits of these unfamiliar spaces, and the rituals of naming and pos- things is not something that they contain within themselves, but something
session, recorded in explorers .Iogs and official correspondence, which accorded that is assigned or granted to them."? The error of the discovery thesis, then, is
these lands and their inhabitants their identity within international society. to assume that the lump of cosmic matter that we now know as the American
continent has always been such, rather than only becoming America when this
meaning was given to it. America is not a thing in itself an a priori essence, but
The Invention of America and the European
an idea, the product of a historical process of invention.
Territorialization of the New World
The invention of America was part of a widespread re-assessment of man's
The thesis that America was invented rather than discovered, associated with place in the world, precipitated by the early voyages of discovery, which under-
the pioneering work of Edmundo O'Gorman, provides a useful heuristic model mined many of the assumptions of the medieval Christian geographical imag-
with which to address the Renaissance territorialization of international society. inary." W. G. L. Randles argues that the empirical evidence of the discoveries
The political territorialization of the new world was deeply implicated in the undermined a clever synthesis of the medieval geographical imaginary. This had
epistemological invention of America. This process profoundly changed man's managed to combine the Greek proposition of a spherical earth with the biblical
perception of his being-in-space, for it broke with the medieval conception of image of a flat earth, by positing a vast surface disproportion between the tiny
the orbis terrarum as a cosmic jail and promoted a new ideal of sovereign man as habitable oecumene and the infinitely vast surface of the sphere. This synthesis
an agent capable of fashioning his world. For O'Gorman, discovery and inven- began to come apart as the Portuguese voyaged along the African coast south of
tion are different acts. One discovers by finding something whose essence was the Equator. Sacrobosco's hypothesis of the existence of uninhabitable zones col-
already known, such as a new planet. Invention by contrast, denotes the act of lapsed and the distinct possibility emerged that humans ignorant of God's mes-
bringing into existence a new category of being, that is the planets themselves. sage lived in antipodal lands. The adventurer Duarte Pacheco Pereira reported
The weight of documentary evidence indicates not only that Columbus set sail that "under this equinoxialline there are many people, as we have seen in prac-
fully intending to reach the western shores of Asia but also that throughout his tice; and as experience is mother of everything, it is through it that we have come
voyages he never wavered from the conviction that he had achieved this goal. to know the whole truth."7 These travelers' accounts were integrated into official
Nevertheless, Columbus scholarship from Oviedo to Morison has portrayed cosmologies such as Enciso's Suma de geografia (1519). Between roughly 1480
Columbus as the discoverer of America by resorting to one of two hypotheses: and 1520 the surface of the oecumene almost quadrupled, all of its constituent
either Columbus was the instrument of a larger historical process of which he parts were proven to be accessible, and most appeared to be habitable. In 1515
 172 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 173

Vadianus wrote that "today there is no region of the earth which is not inhabited as the site of the Garden of Eden, which was spiritually, if not geographically,
by men and other animals.l" Second, the empirical experience of the naviga- regarded as being located within the world, that is the cosmic place assigned to
tors in the southern hemisphere refuted the Aristotelian-Biblical consensus that rnan.P The fourth voyage (1502-4), also undertaken with the aim of locating
a sphere of water encircled that of the .earth, and led to the modern idea of the the elusive sea-passage, navigated shores in the vicinity of the Panamanian-Costa
9
terraqueous globe. Encisco could declare that water and earth together form one Rican border. On the basis of native reports that a wealthy province replete with
body at the centre of the universe. Third, the discoveries led to a revival of Crates' gold, jewels, and spices lay only nine days away by overland travel, Columbus
four island theory as an epistemological model to locate the new lands. In his identified these coasts as part of an isthmus, an additional Asian peninsula, lying
Physices compendium (1520) Pedro Margalho asserted that the Spanish, traveling between him and the province of Ciguare in the Indian Ocean.l"
to the west beyond the Fortune Isles (Canaries), had encountered the lands of the It was, however, Amerigo Vespucci's voyage (1501-2) that for O'Gorman
perioleoi, while the Portuguese, having sailed beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, opened up the possibility of the invention of America. Vespucci set sail expect-
had reached the lands of the antoikoi.r" In sum, as biblical authority gave way ingto reach Cattegara, the southernmost point of Asia, where, it was generally
to empirical observation of the austral hemisphere, so the medieval image of the believed, the coastline turned to the west. From there he intended to cross the
flat earth gave way to the new notion of the terraqueous globe: "experience had Sinus Magnus to India and then return to Portugal having circumnavigated the
established in an incontestable fashion that the oecumene was spherical.'"! globe. I 7 However, after reaching the eastern coast of Brazil and following the
O'Gorman has laid out in painstaking detail the gradual process by which coast south, the expected turn to the west did not materialize and the caravel
American was invented. The crux of his thesis is that, despite plenty of evidence sailed as far as the Antarctic Circle before returning to Lisbon by way of the
to the contrary, Columbus throughout his four voyages refused to abandon his Atlantic. At first Vespucci did not conclude that the southern land mass was
a priori belief that the lands he had come across were the outer regions of the separate from Asia and the orbis terrarurn, although he did surmise that as it
eastern coast of the orbis terrarum, wherein lay the dominion of the Grand Khan extended at least fifty degrees south latitude it must be part of a continental
as described by Marco Polo. During the first voyage (1492-93) he informed his landmass. In the subsequent Mundus Novus, however, he identified the land
patrons Ferdinand ofAragon and Isabel of Castile that "I shall set out for another mass as a new world.
large island which, according to the indications given me by the Indians whom I
have aboard, must be Chipangu. They however call it CoIba (Cuba) and say that During these last few days I have written to you at length on the subject of
there are many large ships and sailors there.... I am still determined to go to the my return from these new regions which we have explored and discovered,
city of Quinsay (Hangchow-the capital ofGreat Khan as described by Marco thanks to the armed fleet paid for and commissioned by his serene high-
Polo) to deliver your Highnesses' letters to the Grand Khan ... "12 Much of the ness the King of Portugal. ... it truly seems that they are another world, and
second voyage (1493-96) was spent navigating what is today's southern coast of is not without justification that we have called them a new world [mondo
Cuba. However, despite being told by the indigenous people that they lived on nuovo] because the ancients had no knowledge of them and the things that
an island, "[tjhe Indian ... told the Admiral that Cuba was definitely an island," have recently been rediscovered [ritrovate] by us overrides their opinions.
Columbus maintained that he was navigating the southern coastline of the They maintained that beyond the equator towards the south there is noth-
Chinese province of Mangi. 13 He even had a public instrument drawn up to this ing apart from an extensive sea and a few barren islands; this sea they called
effect and had his crew declare on oath, under threat of fines and flogging, that the Atlantic, and if some among them have affirmed that there is a continent
because the coastline was so long it could not be insular and that the civilizations there they have understood it to be barren and uninhabited. But my last
of the Golden Chersonese could be found a few leagues to the south.l" The third voyage has clearly demonstrated that this last opinion is false and totally con-
voyage (1498-1500) was undertaken with the intention of locating the sea pas- trary to the truth, since beyond the Equator I found lands [paesi] more fertile
sage to the Indian Ocean, which Columbus believed lay south of the Golden and more densely populated by men and animals than our own Europe, or
Chersonese. Columbus, however, came across a substantial landmass-today's even Asia or Africa, and furthermore a more temperate and agreeable climate
north-eastern coast of South America. To salvage his belief in the presence of than is found in whatsoever region known to US. I 8
a sea passage to the Indian Ocean he was forced to admit that the land was an
inhabited southern orb or new world comparable to the orbis terrarum. The her- Once it was accepted that the new land was a continent, the next task was
esy implicit in this position was somewhat mitigated by identifying these lands to establish whether it was contiguous with Asia and therefore formed part of
 174 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Renaissance and International Society • 175

the oecumene (as for Columbus) or whether it was independent anti-oecumene.

All these ideas Were illustrated in the accompanying map. For O'Gorman
In Mundus Novus Vespucci favors the second option: "We recognised that this
Waldseemiiller's naming ofAmerica is less important than his conception of the
land was a continent and not an island because its coast extended for a consid-
new lands as an identifiable geographical being: "[tjhe independence of the new
erable distance without enclosing it and because it was filled with an infinite
lands is finally recognized; they are conceived of as a distinct entity, separate
number of Inhabitants."!" Vespucci, argues O'Gorman, was correct to iden-
from the Island of the Earth. Moreover, a specific being has been attributed to
tify the discovered lands as new because they were previously unknown and
that entity and a proper name has been given to it to distinguish it from other
their presence refuted the traditional belief that the southern hemisphere was
similar entities."24 The meaning of the new found land is "the meaning of being
entirely covered by sea. Not only did Vespucci conceive of the new lands as a
the "fourth pan" of the world."25 Yet, for O'Gorman, there is an apparent con-
different geographical entity to the three parts (Europe, Asia and Africa) of the
t:adiction in the Cosmographiae for the new lands are at once geographically dis-
orbis terrarium, but, having seen that they were inhabited, he identified them
riner from the orbis terrarum and comprise.irs fourth part. Now orbis terrarum
as a new world in the heretical sense of an orbis alterius, distinct from the orbis
not only signified the traditional tripartite landmass, but also denoted the tra-
terrarum assigned to man by God. Vespucci's view that he had sailed to the
ditionallandmass and the new lands which, although insular (being separated
fourth part of the world was, claims Randles, derived from Isidore de Seville's
from the other three pans by the Ocean), also belong to it. This new representa-
Etymologiarum, "Outside of these three parts of the world, there exists a fourth,
tion of the orbis terrarum implied that the traditional conception of the Ocean
beyond in the Ocean in a southerly direction, a region. which is unknown to
as an absolute boundary was no longer valid. The archaic notion of the world
us due to the fieriness of the sun, at the interior limits of which it is reported
as a bounded place within the universe collapsed as the Ocean is transversed
live the antipodes of the fable."20 Because Vespucci reverted to the traditional
and the world extends beyond its ancient insular boundaries to embrace the
concept of the orbis alterius to identify the new lands, America had not yet
entire. terraqueous globe. Further, this world is no longer providentially given
been invented. Nevertheless, his voyage was the "empirical determinant that
or assigned to man. Rather, from now on man can, potentially, make his world
opened up the. possibility of explaining .the new-found lands in a way that anywhere; it is a place which he makes, owns, and is responsible for.
contradicted the accepted picture of the world."21 Later in the Lettera, Vespucci
would affirm that the new lands neither belonged to Asia (and thus the orbis
When the author of the Cosmographiae Introductio asserted that the new
terrarum) nor were they an orbisalterius. Rather they constituted a previously lands, notwithstanding their isolation by the Ocean, were one of the parts
unknown geographical unity, "a barrier running north. and south through both
that for the moment made up the world, he Was really claiming for the first
hemispheres and lying across the Ocean between Europe and Asia, separate
time in history his sovereignty over the whole universe.... the world hav-
and distinct from the Island of the Earth."22
i~g ceased to be considered as a son of cosmic jail, man was able to picture
It was left to Waldseemiiller in the Cosmographiae to assign the being of
'Ii:i h imself as a free agent in the deep and radical sense of possessing unlimited
America to this unforeseen land barrier.· Summarizing the current state of cos-
possibilities in his own being, and as living in a world made by him in his
mographical knowledge, Waldseemiiller began by noting that the sphere of own image and to his own measure. 26
the earth is infinitesimally small compared to the size of the celestial globe.
However, whereas the ancients had knowledge of about one quarter of the
earth's sphere, the inhabited Island of the Earth, modern geographical knowl- tnterCeetem, Territoriettty, and Sovereignty
edge recognizes that
!he voyages ofdiscovery underpinned a new geographical imaginary that, echo-
Ing the conquest ofcosmological space heralded by Ficino and Pico, declared the
a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (...). Inasmuch as
both Europe and Asia received their names from women, I see no reason
n:
sovereignty. of an ov~r the world's spaces. However, the voyages of discovery
were ~o.t pnmanly m~t1vated by a desire to advance geographical knowledge but
why anyone should justly object to calling this part Amerige, Le., the land
by relIgIOUS, econorruc, and political interests. These interests would determine
of Arnerigo, or America; after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great abil-
how the naked ontological presence of these newly encountered lands would be
ity.... Thus the earth is now known to be divided into four parts. The first
integrated within the European territorial imaginary. The"discoveries" would
three parts are continents, while the fourth part is an island, inasmuch as it project the dynamics of territorialization onto spaces well beyond the boundar-
is found to be surrounded on all sides by the ocean. 23 ies of those European states nestled within the traditional orbis terrarum.
176 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 177

From the .beginning the race between Castile and Portugal to acquire col- Canary Islands ..."29 At the request of Alfonso V of Portugal, Alcacovas-Toledo
onies was adjudicated and legitimized by the Holy See. The legality of Rome's had been approved and confirmed by the "apostolic authority" of Pope Sixtus
claim to adjudicate on such matters was established in Nicholas V's bull IV in the bull Aeterni Regis (June 21 1481).30 Worried that joao intended to seek
Romanus Pontifex (1455), which granted the Portuguese crown sovereignty over another papal bull that would cede all Castilian claims derived from Columbus'
the recently discovered islands of Madeira, Cape Verde and the Azores, and voyage to Portugal, Ferdinand and Isabel published Columbus' First Letterfrom
over any further discoveries in the Atlantic. Nicholas claimed he was the right- America as a declaration of their legal entitlement to the Indies. They argued
ful arbiter of disputes in the Christian world, including those concerning rival that the Portuguese claim to any territories discovered beyond Guinea was too
claims to lands inhabited by unbelievers, on the basis that he was "the succes- vague to be legally binding and denied that this undetermined beyond could
sor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Christ." Romanus include the lands discovered by Columbus. However, to avoid open conflict
Pontifex also confirmed that the right of the Christian princes to possess the with Portugal they sought to have their position recognized in law and so turned
new lands was derived from their role in the ongoing crusade of Christianity to the Holy See in its capacity as Christendom's international court of appeal.
against Islam. The Portuguese deserve "suitable favours and special graces" for The new incumbent, Alexander VI,· Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was a Spanish ally
their role as "intrepid champions of the Christian faith," whose primary inten- and the Spanish sovereigns were confident that subsequent papal bulls would
tion was to "restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels" rule in their favor. They were not to be disappointed.
by "vanquish[ing] them and their kingdoms and habitations ... and subject [ing] The two bulls Inter Caetera and Eximiae Devotionis which Alexander issued
them to their own temporal domain." Portuguese colonial policies-such as the on May 3 1493 certainly favored Castile. Inter Caetera, while safeguarding pre-
campaign against the Saracens in Africa, the founding of Christian settlements vious Portuguese concessions, granted to Castile in perpetuity all "known and
on the Atlantic islands, and the conversion of pagan peoples along the African unknown, discovered and to be discovered mainlands and islands" including
coast-were commended for their contribution to the divine mission of spread- any "lordships, cities, castles, places, villages, rights, and jurisdictions" as long
ing the Christian imperium wherever possible. In order to make this mission as they were not already owned by other Christian princes. Eximiae Devotionis
more secure in future, Nicholas gave his approval to Alonso and his successors reinforced these privileges by specifying that the Castilian remit extended over
"to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans, the western part of the Ocean Sea and was of the same order as the rights the
whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed" and "to reduce Portuguese had over parts of Africa, Guinea, and the Gold Mine.I' A second
their persons to perpetual slavery" and to appropriate and use for their own ends Inter Caetera, issued on May 4, allocated these privileges to the Spanish over all
any "kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, islands and lands one hundred leagues west of the Azores.Y
and goods" from the "capes of Bojador and ofNao as far as through all Guinea Inter Caetera reveals much about the nature of territorialization in this early
and beyond."27 Clearly, a correspondence between the territorialization of inter- stage of the expansion of international society. First, it makes explicit the cor-
national society and the Christian mission was established at the very outset. relation between internal and exremalterrirorializanon. As Adam Watson has
On his return journey to Castile at the end of the first voyage in March 1993 noted, the initial impetus to expand outward from Europe arose from the fusion
a storm forced Columbus to land in Lisbon where he was received by joao II. of the turbulent culture of Latin Christendom----with its drives for crusading,
Having heard Columbus' descriptions of the lands he had happened upon, joao honor, and material gain-with the technologies and resources available to the
remarked "that it seemed to him, according to what had been agreed between centralizing territorial states. The overseas expansion served as an outlet for, a
them,. that the newly conquered lands should belong to him."28 The agreement displacement of, drives to expand and acquire which, had they been allowed
joao was alluding to was the Treaty of Alcacovas-Toledo (Sept 4 1479), under to fester within the confines of European space, would have precipitated disas-
the terms of which the Spanish sovereigns, Isabel and Ferdinand, had agreed trous conflicts between the fledgling dynastic powers. The displacement of con-
that for the sake of peace neither they nor their heirs would contest Portuguese flict to the new colonial territories allowed the European states to establish an
sovereignty over any of the "islands, coasts, or lands, discovered or to be discov- international society within Europe based on the principles of sovereignty and
ered ... from the Canary Islands down toward Guinea. For whatever has been juridical independence and then to .extend them globally in the .wake of their
found or shall be found, acquired by conquest, or discovered within the said imperial conquests.P Pope Alexander stated that the most important task of
limits, beyond what has already been found, occupied, or discovered, belongs to current times is that "the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted
the said King and Prince of Portugal and to their kingdoms, excepting only the and everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for, and
178 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 179

that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the true faith." Various
"illustrious deeds" of .the Spanish monarchs demonstrate that they both desire
and are working diligently toward this goal. Of all their endeavors the one which
most clearly expresses their commitment to the "glory to the Divine Name" is
their recovery of the Kingdom of. Granada from Saracen tyranny. Alexander
then acknowledges their intention to

seek out and discover certain islands and continents, remote, unknown, and
not hitherto discovered by others, so that you might bring their residents
and inhabitants to the worship of our Redeemer and the profession of the
Catholic faith. Having been up to the present time engaged in the siege and
recovery of the Kingdom .of Granada, you were. unable to accomplish this
holy and praiseworthy purpose. But finally, as was pleasing to the Lord, the
kingdom having at least been regained, you wish to fulfil your desire.f"

Inter Caetera simultaneously unified and legitimized within the discourse of

Christian mission the reconquista and the conquista (figure 9.1).
Columbus reasserted this formal conjuncture ofinternally and externally pro-
jected territorialization on several occasions. On his arrival in what he assumed
was the Indies he declared, "there I found very many islands filled with people
innumerable, and of them I have taken possession for their Highnesses by proc-
lamation made and with the royal standard unfurled."35 As Anthony Pagden
observes this ritual of possession alluded to the raising of the royal standard over
the Alhambra following the surrender of Granada. Columbus claimed that it
was the fact ofthis victory over their internal enemies, which he witnessed, that
enabled the sovereigns to authorize his voyage:

[I]n this present year of 1492, after Your Highnesses had brought to an end
the war with the Moors who reigned in Europe and had concluded the war
in the great city of Granada where ... on the second day of january I saw
Your Highnesses' royal banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the
Alhambra ... and I saw the Moorish Kingcome out to the city gates and kiss
Your Highnesses' royal hands ... Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians Figure 9.1 Columbus at Hispaniola, from "The Narrative and Critical History
and princes devoted to the Holy Christian faith and the furtherance of its of America," edited by Justin Winsor, London, 1886 (engraving) by Bry, Theodore
de (1528-98) (after). Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. Flemish. Out
cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and of all idolatry and heresy,
of copyright.
resolved to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India;36
Columbus also brings into the terms of reference the ongoing campaign against
The procedures enabling the internal territorialization of Castile, which required that other great Other of European culture: the Jews. In the same vein he, some-
Christianity to overcode the signs of the previous Islamic culture, were repli- what arbitrarily, continues "[s]o, then after having expelled all the Jews from all
cated during the external territorialization of the new world. Lest there be tny your kingdoms and dominions, in this same month ofJanuary, Your Highnesses
doubt as to the correspondence between internal and external territorializat\n, commanded me to take sufficient ships and sail to the said regions of India."37

\
180 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Renaissance and International Society • 181

Ferdinand and Isabel had formally institutionalized the Inquisition, the arche-
Inter Caetera can also be read as a document which symbolizes the transition
type of internal territorialization, on Spanish soil when they solicited Sixtus IV from hierarchy to anarchy. It embodied an important juncture in the state of
to bestow on Fray Tomas de Torquemada the office of Grand Inquisitor, a decree relations between the waning authority of the papacy and the waxing author-
eventually approved by Innocent VIII in 1487. 38 The Indian, the Jew, and the ity of the incipient nation-states. The language which Alexander deployed to
Moor must all be converted to the true faith and any who resist assimilation can authorize his conferring of apostolic favor on Castile's overseas enterprise harked
rightfully be shown the error of their ways by coercive means. "I hope in Our Lord back to the hierarchical discourse of papal plenitudo potestatis.
that Your Highnesses will determine with all speedto bring such great peoples to
the Church and convert them, just as you have destroyed those who refused to
[F]rom the plenitude of our apostolicpower, the authority ofAlmighty God
confess the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."39 As Tzvetan Todorov charac-
conferred on us in blessed Peter and the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which we
terizes it, 1492 symbolizes a double movement in the history of Spain, for, in the
hold on earth, by these decrees we give, grant, and assign forever to you,
same year "the country repudiates its interior Other by triumphing over the Moors your heirs and successors, the monarchs of Castile and Leon, all islands and
in the final battle of Granada and by forcing the Jews to leave its territory; and it continents [insulas et terras firm as] found and to be found, discovered and
discovers the exterior Other, that whole America which will become Latin.T'" to be discovered towards the west and south of a line to be drawn from
Second, Inter Caetera reaffirmed the tenet of Romanus Pontifex that it
the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole, namely the south,
was proper that those who were committed to spreading the faith should whether these continents and islands to be found are in the direction of India
receive appropriate economic rewards for doing so. Alexander thought that
or toward anywhere else, found by your envoys and captains, together with
hardships incurred pursuing the task of spiritual conversion could be com-
all their dominions, cities, forts, towns, and villages, and all rights, jurisdic-
pensated by material rewards, especially in the form of gold. In return for tions, and appurtenances. 4 4
their efforts in bringing "the residents and inhabitants" of "certain islands
and continents, remote and unknown, and not hitherto discovered by others"
By what right could Alexander make these concessions? Michael Donelan, for
to "the worship of our redeemer and the profession of the Catholic faith" it
whom the proselytizing aspect of the conquests indicates a fideistic impulse
is right that the Catholic sovereigns should have exclusive access to the" [gJ underpinning the initial expansion of international society, notes that the bulls
old, spices and a great many other precious things" found in these lands. did not seek to legitimize the Spanish enterprise in terms of just war: there was
Columbus also elides gold and conversion. "Your Highnesses must resolve to
no mention of the recovery of wrongly annexed lands, the right to defense from
make them Christians, for I believe that once you begin you will in a short attack in support of preaching, or the correction of a breach of natural law. 45
space succeed in converting to our faith a multitude of peoples while gaining This is perhaps surprising since the European monarchs were well aware that
great kingdoms and riches and all of their peoples for Spain. Because with- territorial aggrandizement could be veiled by the discourse of just war. A letter
out doubt there is in these lands a huge amount of gold ... "41 For Todorov
from Ferdinand to his ambassador in Rome, Jerome Vich, written whileprepar-
this association derives from Columbus' hopes that gold finds in the new ing for an expedition against Algiers in 1510, had acknowledged that
lands would finance a new crusade to liberate Jerusalem. The language used
by Columbus and Alexander was characteristic ·of what Stephen Greenblatt
for a better justification of the saidwar [against Algiers] it would be appro-
calls the" discursive economy of Christian imperialism," which assumed that
priate for His Holiness to declare war ... against all infidels, to give us 'the
all desires are convertible and amenable to excha nge.V For Columbus "[g]
right of conquest over all lands we would acquire from them, because it is
old constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it may do what he will in the said that it is not lawfully permissible for Christian princes to make war in
world, and may so attain as to bring sou Is to P.ara diise. "43 C ommo . d iti
itres are
any of the lands of the infidels, except in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, unless
converted into gold, which is used to finance the project of conversion and
these infidels start a war against Christians, or unless war is declared against
thus to save souls. Further, the discourse of Christian imperialism is able to them by the SupremePonriff"
conflate earthly gain and divine purpose by reasoning that by depriving the
Indians of their temporal possessions and enslaving them, the Spanish are Another hypothesis is that Alexander's division of the new-found lands between
thereby freeing them from their own bestiality and providing the conditions the crowns of Portugal and Spain was an act of feudal investiture. This infeu-
for the salvation of their souls. dation. thesis has, however, been rejected by Luis Weckmann-Munoz because
182 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 183

Alexander did not request vassalage from the kings of Castile in return for ced- Wight's assertion that Inter Caetera was "the most far-reaching exercise of papal
ing to them dominions in the New World. 47 Further, in 1493 no one had any world-sovereignty," there is truth to Donelan's argument that as an attempt to
notion that a new continent had been discovered. Neither Inter Caetera nor the keep peace between Spain and Portugal "it was well-grounded use of the papal
drawing of the so-called Alexandrine line entailed the enfoeffement of a conti- "plenitude of power" in the society of states."51 Either way, it is evident that the
nent for "how can AlexanderVI have" divided" a continent whose existence was territorialization of European international society did not begin with a caesura!
not even suspectedr T'" Rather, suggests Weckmann-Munoz, the pope's author- rupture with the hierarchies of the Christian-Medieval cosmos.
ity as fons iuris with the prerogative to grant new-found lands to Spain on condi- Although they were happy to utilize the rhetoric of Christian mission for
tion that the Spanish converted the natives to Christianity, was derived from the their own expansionist ends, the Iberian monarchs considered themselves to be
omni-insular doctrine established in Urban Irs Cum Universae Insulae (1091). independent sovereigns and would have extended their territorial reach to the
Citing the spurious Donation of Constantine (750-800)-which asserted that newly discovered lands with or without the approval of the pope. The terms of
Pope Sylvester had been bequeathed "all provinces, palaces and districts of agreement drawn up between Columbus and the Castilian crown indicate that
the city of Rome and Italy and the regions of the West" by the first Christian commercial motives far outweighed any religious concerns. In the memorandum
Emperor on his withdrawal to his Eastern capital of Constantinople-this bull of intent to form a business partnership, known as the Santa Fe Capitulations
had claimed that all islands in Western Europe, particularly those recovered (April 17, 1492), Ferdinand and Isabel granted Columbus five concessions.V
from the Muslims, were automatically assigned to the dominion of the Holy First, he was given a commission as admiral "on all those islands and mainland
See, which had the right to cede them to whomsoever it'wished. Initially the discovered or acquired by his command or expertise in the Ocean Seas." Second,
reach of the omni-insular doctrine was limited to the Mediterranean basin, but he was appointed viceroy and governor general in the same territories. Third,
following the Portuguese discoveries in the Atlantic its range was extended in he was given the right to "one-tenth of all and any merchandise, whether pearls,
bulls such as Romanus Pontifex. Yet, points out Miguel Battlori, the remit of an precious stones, gold, silver, spices," obtained or exchanged within the limits of
omni-insular doctrine would not have covered lands identified as terrafirma.t" his admiralty. Fourth, he was given jurisdiction. over lawsuits arising from any
Rather, Alexander relied on the medieval theocratic doctrine of papa vicarius matters pertaining to commerce within his admiralty. Fifth, he was given the
Christi, which had asserted the pope's sovereignty over both spiritual and tern.. . right to invest one eighth of the cost of fitting out any vessels for trade or busi-
poral spheres. As vicarius Christi the pope could. arbitrate in disputes where ness and take one eighth of any resulting profits. These terms were confirmed in
the princes directly petitioned the Holy See. Similarly, Donelan maintains that the Granada Capitulations (30 April 1492) in which the sovereigns re-affirmed
the only way the temporal powers of the papacy could have been legitimately that because Columbus was prepared to put his life in danger while seeking
stretched to give lordship over the Indies to the Castilian monarchs in return out new lands and islands on their behalf he should be rewarded appropriately.
for spreading the Faith was by conflating Innocent Ill's principle of plenitudo "You will be empowered from that time forward to call yourself Sir Christopher
potestatis, which allowed the pope to exercise temporal power for the well-being Columbus, and thus your sons and successors in this office and post may entitle
of Christendom, with Innocent IV's claim that as vicarius Christi the pope exer- themselves sir, admiral, viceroy, andgovernor of them."53
cised God's lordship over the world.i'" In contrast to the papal bulls, these agreements make no mention of any
Of course, Ferdinand and Isabel would have rejected the implications of duty to convert pagans and barbarians or to advance the universitas fidelium.
these outdated and barely credible remnants of medieval theocratic discourse The rationale for the discovery and possession of these lands was exclusively
as being antithetical to attempts by princes and kings, like themselves, to carve commercial, and these documents are to be interpreted in light of the struggle
out enclaves of territorial sovereignty free from papal interference. However, between Spain and Portugal for control of anticipated Atlantic trade routes to
Renaissance Europe was a society whose norms, values, and laws were still fil- Asia. The stakes of this rivalry had increased dramatically since the annexation
tered through the skein of Catholicism and the Spanish monarchs were aware of of Genoese trading stations by the Ottomans at the end of the fifteenth cen-
the requirement to at least seem to be operating within the discursive framework tury, which had severed an important access route to the Asian markets for
of Christian doctrines and institutions. Inter Caetera was evidence that, at least European traders. The Portuguese were seeking a sea route to Asia by circum-
in terms of ideology, the Renaissance expansion of European international soci- venting Africa. In light of the progress they were making down the Western
ety was not exclusively a secular project, but was imbued with the still pervasive, coast of Africa, Castile feared that it would be permanently eclipsed by its rival.
if essentially empty, temporal claims of the papacy. If we cannot fully endorse This fear grew considerably when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good
184 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 185

Hope in 1488.54 Castile's response was to sponsor Columbus's expedition to the part that you shall have discovered, you shall make before a notary public
west as a way to preempt its rival and negotiate a commercial monopoly with and the greatest number of possible witnesses, and the best known ones, an
the mainland Asians before the Portuguese arrived by the southern route. Henri act of possession in our name, .cutting trees and boughs, and digging and
Vignaud famously rejected the thesis that the Spanish intended to reach the making, if there be an opportunity, some small building [edificio], which
Asia mainland, insisting that their aims were limited to reaching certain islands should be in a part where there is some marked hill or a large tree, and you
in the Atlantic.P However, the presence of the term tierra firme in these docu- shall say how many leagues it is from the sea, a little more or less, and in
ments does suggest that the objective was to reach the fabled cities of the Asian which part, and what signs it has, and you shall make a gallows there, and
mainland. Ferdinand and Isabel wrote that they were commissioning Columbus have somebody bring a complaint before you, and as our captain and judge
to go "to the region of India, by way of the Ocean Sea."56 you shall pronounce upon and determine it, so that, in all, you shall take the
This raises another intriguing question. If tierra firme refers to the Asian said possession; which is to be for that part where you shall take it, and for
mainland, how could Ferdinand and Isabella have expected to acquire and pos- all its district [partido] and province or island, and you shall bring testimony
sess land that, presumably, already lay under the sovereignty of the Chinese rul- thereof signed by the said notary in a manner to make faith. 60
ers? Helen Nader suggests that the Spanish intended to establish fortified trading
posts on the Asian coasts in accordance with the model already established by In the following account, of Columbus taking possession of the Indian island
the Portuguese, who financed their Atlantic ventures as royal monopolies and of Guanahani, it appears that while he did not enact any of the established sym-
claimed sovereignty over their trading posts. The most important Portuguese bolic rituals that physically marked the land, such as placing stones, cutting
trading post, Sao Jorge da Mirra, was established in 1480 with the permission grass, raising mounds or pillars, or erecting crosses; he did perform the required
of local West African rulers. 57 The Capitulations clearly stated that Columbus, speech acts of proclamation and naming.
as "admiral, viceroy, and governor," was a royal agent, invested with the author-
ity to take possession of and to govern land and seas that he added to the royal Immediately some naked people appeared and the Admiral went ashore in
dominions on their behalf. Evidently the Castilian monarchs sought to extend the armed boat, as did Martin Alonzo Pinzon and Vincent Yanez his brother,
their sovereignty to the overseas islands and main-lands. However, in appoint- captain of the Nina. The Admiral raised the royal standard and the captains
ing Columbus, a foreigner, as a hereditary admiral, Ferdinand and Isabel came carried two banners with. the green cross which were flown by the Admiral
up against a constitutional barrier. Castilian law prohibited monarchs from per- on all his ships. On each side of the cross was a crown surmounting the let-
manently giving away or selling any part of the crown's military or juridical ters F and Y (for Ferdinand and Isabella). On landing they saw very green
functions as hereditary offices. Any such actions would have violated a funda- trees and much water and fruits ofvarious kinds. The Admiral called the two
mental tenet of monarchical government that had "developed in Europe on the captains and the others who had landed and Rodrigo de Escobedo, recorder
premise that the royal domain belonged to the royal family as a function of the of the whole fleet, and Rodrigo Sanchez de Segovia, and demanded that they
monarch's judicial and military responsibilities, carried out for the welfare of should bear faithful witness that he had taken possession of the island-
the entire realm.T" In order to circumvent this obstacle, the Castilian royal sec- which he did-for his sovereigns and masters the King and Queen. He fur-
retary Fernan Alvarez de Toledo drafted a preface to the agreements stating that ther made the required declarations, which are recorded at greater length in
the monarchs were acting of their own free will and added a postscript confirm- the evidence there set down in writing. 61
ing the royal intention to make these grants in perpetuity as hereditary private
possessions. He justified this permanent alienation of royal offices and income The display of the royal standard established the context within which these
with arguments from philosophy, Roman law, and scripture.P'' formal speech acts had meaning: they were performed on the sovereigns' behalf
The question of how to take legitimate possession of the newly discovered and were made official by being enacted in the presence of witnesses and
lands also exercised the discoverers themselves. The Crowns had issued highly recorded in writing. Stephen Greenblatt claims that there were two (absent)
formalized general instructions for its representatives taking possession of lands: audiences for these linguistic acts, whose efficacy lay in the phrase "y no me fue
contradichio," "and I was not contradicted." The real intended audiences were
The manner that you must have in the taking of possession of the lands the other European powers who had the language and discursive conventions
and parts which you shall have discovered is to be that, being in the land or to dispute the claims but were not in situ. The Indians constituted a second
186 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 187

intended audience despite that fact that the proclamations were issued in a lan- Tzvetan Todorov has remarked that, rather like Adam in Eden, in order to make
guage they could not be expected to understand. Columbus, argues Greenblatt, sense of and possess the virgin world that confronted him Columbus set about
was not concerned with the subjective consciousness of the Indians but with naming it. Occasionally this precipitated "a veritable naming frenzy."67
the correct enactment of the legal process by which, according to Roman law,
land could be transferred from one patrimony to another as long as the original He steered east to a cape which he called Belprado, a distance of four leagues,
owner consented. Columbus staged a legal ritual that depended upon the formal and from there to the southeast is the mountain which he called Monte de
possibility of a contradiction without actually permitting such a contradiction; Plata, and he says it is eight leagues. From cape Belprado east by south is the
"it enables him to empty out the existence of the natives, while as the same time cape he called delAngel.... From Cabo delAngel four leagues in the same
officially acknowledging that they exist."62 direction is a point which he called the Punta Seca, then six leagues farther is
However, if the Indians, as Columbus himself admitted, had identifiable, if the cape which he called Redondo . . .68
primitive, social, and economic conventions, then the legality of the possession
remained dubious.v' Francisco de Vitoria would later insist that although the Columbus' first gesture on contact with new lands was "an act of extended nom-
Indians might be pagan and living in mortal sin, in so far as they were rational ination, the declaration that the lands will henceforth be part of the Kingdom
beings with political, cultural, and social institutions and systems of exchange of Spain.P" This naming was intrinsic to the "principle of attachment" which,
requiring the use of reason, there was no legal basis for appropriating their ter- suggests Anthony Pagden, informed the Europeans' initial responses to the
ritory.64 In natural law, lands had to be either uninhabited, in which case they encounter with the Indians. Strange Indian customs, habits, and rituals were
became the property of the first occupant, or they had to belong to a recognized interpreted through European categories of reference. This allowed common-
enemy who had been defeated. Thus during the third voyage, by which time alities. and equivalences to be identified. between Indian and Christian rituals,
Inter Caetera and Tordesillas had formally designated the new lands as spaces even if they were really incommensurable. Although the "principle of attach-
under Portuguese or Spanish sovereignty, Columbus adopted a more deroga- ment" reduced the distance between self and other by rendering that marked
tory representation of the Indians as lawless, warlike nomads living beyond the by alterity as partially knowable, in making Indian otherness accountable, it
bounds of civilisation. The previous markers of civility, the "infinity of small also ran the risk of, if not eliminating the difference, assimilating the unknown
hamlets," disappeared to be replaced by "a large and warlike people, with cus- to the known.· For Pagden the discoverer entered into his discoveries through
toms and beliefs very different from ours. These people live in mountains and a sequence of epistemological strategies: attachment, recognition, and naming,
forests without settled townships.T? Once the Indians were depicted, in Deleuze which set up the conditions for the final act of possession. The first person to see
and Guattari's terms, as the nomadic war-machine, the other against which a new land could claim a right of possession, which was recorded and secured
European civilization has defined itself since Aristotle, they could legitimately by naming and the appropriation of titles. "The Europeans as they crossed and
be territorialized by whatever means necessary. re-crossed the oceans, became inveterate narners and possessors."70 Names, of
The second discursive ritual by which the new-found lands were possessed course, are transferable; they are symbolic units that could be transported across
was that of naming. the globe. "Just as maps could transform the un-possessable world into a series
of lines and figures which could then be carried home to Barcelona or Lisbon,
I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which our most names had the power to reduce what still remained to be explored, possessed
illustrious king and queen, our sovereigns, gave to me. And there I found and settled into a single transportable set of phonernes.V:'
very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them I have taken
possession for their Highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal
Tordesillas and the Cartographic Representation
standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island
of International Society
which I found, I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine
Majesty, who marvellously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." The relative importance of fideisric and commercial motivations for the
To the second, I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepcion; to the Renaissance expansion of international society will probably never be resolved.
third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana, and so to For Nader, because the papal decrees rested legal title to islands and continents
each one I gave a new narne.P'' on the imperative to convert the native people to Christianity, the Spanish appeal
188 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 189

to the papacy changed the nature of the Indies enterprise from its purely com- three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands." All islands
mercial origins to a mission infused with religious objecrives.Y Yet, Battlori is and main-lands, known or to be discovered, to the east of the line "shall belong
surely right that despite the personal religious beliefs of the sovereigns and their to, and remain in the possession of, and pertain forever to" the King of Portugal
interests in evangelizing and maintaining the true faith, "the Alexandrine bulls and his heirs while those to the west shall belong to Spain. 77 Both sides agreed
had only subsidiary value in claims to dominion over the new lands."73 Perhaps not to send ships into each other's sphere of influence with the specific purpose
it is best to assume that economic gain and spiritual salvation were complemen- of discovering land and accepted that any accidental discoveries must be passed
tary objectives as the economy of exchange between gold and souls suggests. to the rightful owner. Although lip service was paid to the traditions of religious
Whatever the underlying motivations and the respective interests of papacy and oaths-the parties swore not to violate it "before God and the Blessed Mary and
kings, they coalesced in Alexander VI's infamous drawing of a demarcation line upon the sign of the Cross, on which they placed their right hands and upon the
on a world map to mark out the respective spaces of Portuguese and Spanish world of the Holy Gospels," and it was agreed that pope would be asked to con-
sovereignty. This was not the only time that cartography would have a pivotal firm and approve it by issuing a bull-Tordesillas dispensed with the rhetoric
role in the territorialization of Renaissance international society. of proselytization and conversion that is so marked in Inter Caetera. The sole
In Inter Caetera Alexander had affirmed that the line should be "distant by stated purpose of the agreement was the "sake of peace and concord" between
one hundred leagues west and south from whatever of the islands that are called the two kingdoms.
in Spanish 'the Azores and Cape Verde' or any territory that was in the effective Tordesillas is an intriguing document of territorialization not least because
possession of any Christian king or prince before the Christmas just past, from it describes in some detail the process by which this line could be inscribed
which the present year one thousand four hundred and ninety-three begins."74 onto the physical surface of the globe. In order that the line should be both
Samuel Edgerton has drawn our attention to the distinctly cursory nature of straight and at a distance of three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape
this division: Verde Islands both crowns agreed to commission a joint expedition comprising
pilots, astrologers, and sailors who, having studied the sea, courses, winds, and
Pope Alexander VI ... sat down before his mappamundi and arbitrarily, in the degrees of latitude would be able to identify a mutually acceptable point
the blank space to the left of the oikoumene, drew in a new meridian that he through which the line should be drawn north to the Arctic pole and south
proclaimed to he "one hundred leagues west of the Azores." All the vast terra to the Antarctic pole. Once they had agreed on where this point should lie,
incognita to the west of this purely abstract" demarcation line" he awarded to delegates of both sides, conferred with their respective sovereign's authority and
the Spanish. Everything east must go to Porrugal.i" power, should "draw up a writing concerning it and affix thereto their signa-
tures," thereby confirming that it was a permanent mark or boundary that could
However, this was not to be the end of the matter. Later in the year Alexander, not be denied, erased or removed. If the line should cross any island or main-
responding to further pressure from Castile, issued Dudum Siquidem land, at
(September 26, 1493) which stated that ifany Spanish agents, when sailing west
or south, landed in eastern regions and "there discover islands and main-lands the first point of such intersection ... some kind of mark or tower shall be
that belong to India" they did not have to cede them to the Portuguese. The erected, and a succession of similar marks shall be erected in a straight
Spanish were granted the freedom and authority to "take corporal possession of line from such mark or tower, in a line identical with the above-mentioned
the said islands and countries and hold them forever, and to defend them against bound. These marks shall separate those portions of such land belonging to
whosoever may oppose."76 This blatant declaration of Spanish interest, which each one of the said parties; and the subjects of the said parties shall not dare,
effectively nullified Portuguese rights over any further discoveries, displeased on either side, to. enter the territory of the other, by crossing the said mark or
Joao who insisted that the line be extended further to the west. After a period bound in such island or mairiland.f''
of intense diplomatic maneuvering an agreement was reached between the two
crowns and confirmed by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Under its terms the Clearly it was intended that this line should designate an absolute limit in space
signatories agreed that "a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn rather than just a frontier, there being, as Daniel Nordman has noted, a signifi-
north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the cant difference in the meaning of these two terms at the time.7 9 A limit denoted
Antarctic pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight ... at a distance of a theoretically fixed or immutable barrier, whether marked physically into the
190 ' . From Hierarchy to Anarchy Renaissance and International Society • 191

terrain. or represented symbolically on a map, between two or more political

or administrative bodies: signories, dioceses, juridical, or administrative zones,
state boundaries. Their immutability was often reinforced by being established
along divinely designated natural physical demarcations, such as mountain
ranges or coastal littorals, and as they changed so geographical representations
changed. A frontier, by contrast, separated two societies or groups whose stance
toward one another was generally hostile; it was often marked by a visible mate-
rial military presence, a garrison, or fortress, which, because it could be captured
or destroyed, meant that the frontier advanced and retreated in space. "While
the limit is immobile the frontier is movable."80 The Tordesillas division of the
world;' which was anterior to most of the discoveries, effectively transformed a
frontier zone between Spain and Portugal into an absolute limit, establishing
their respective areas of present and future domination.
This process, this territorialization of the world, known and unknown, phys-
ical and representational, entailed a significant shift in man's relationship to the
sea. Recall that in the medieval geopolitical imaginary the Ocean was an empty
void that could neither be possessed nor made subject to the exercise of sover-
eignty. To some extent this attitude still prevailed at the end of the fifteenth
century. Frank Lestringant points out that because the ocean was an abstract
place devoid of shape, relief and color it was natural that the Tordesillas line
of demarcation "was in the beginning traced across the indefinite space of the
seas."81 The sea, Deleuze and Guattari's "espace lisse par excellence," the arche-
type of all smooth space, was a blank canvas on which the fantasies of the impe-
rial imagination could run free. Immersed in this space the Renaissance mind
reacted with a mixture of wonder and respect.V The Spanish cosmographer
Pedro Medina considered the crossing of an ocean to be a wondrous achieve-
Figure 9.2 Credit: Copy of Monumenta Cartographia, 1502 (color litho) by ©
ment because it traced a course across "a thing so vague and spacious ... where Royal Geographical Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.
there is neither path nor trace."83 However, as with all smooth spaces the sea was
soon to be exposed to the forces of striation. Medina taught seafarers the new art
of astronomical navigation and was a pioneer in the "politics of science" which but. also provided practical tools for its "conquest, appropriation, subdivision,
territorialized and striated the sea. Maritime space became enclosed within the commodification, and surveillance."85 Visible emblems of political and religious
striations of the cartographic grid, as technicians of space combined bearings ideology decorated the Renaissance maps of European expansion. Particularly
obtained by astronomical calculations and the plotting of locations within striking was the sweeping line of royal blue running from pole to pole on
meridians and parallels. The Capitulations, writes O'Gorman, show a "desir~ maps like the Cantino planisphere (1502). This cerulean swathe symbolized
on the part of the Crown to exercise an act of sovereignty on the Ocean ... the the Tordesillas demarcation and converted maps into "stridently geopolitical
contain an express declaration in favor of Spanish seigniory and lordship over documents," recording and symbolizing "the division of the world into differ-
the Ocean, which was ... something unusual if not unprecedented."84 The forces ent national spheres of influcnce.T" Yet, territorial claims were not just asserted
of striation were in the ascendant. through the drawing of boundary lines. Decoration, inscriptions recording dis-
The striation of the sea. was only one role that cartography would play in covery, commemorative portraits, and coats of arms all communicated owner-
the invention of the spaces of Renaissance international society (figure 9.2). ship and possession. Embedded in the new world lands of the Cantino map are
Renaissance cartography not only enabled the intellectual visualization of land images of the. national flags of Portugal and Spain that act as declarations of
192 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy
Renaissance and International Society • 193

ownership, which reaffirm the physical acts of possession enacted by explorers seventeenth century. Even Mercator's world map of 1569, for many an emblem
underneath the unfurled banners of their sovereigns. Just as these acts of territo-- of modern cartography constructed according to Strict mathematical principles,
rial possession were recorded and legitimized in legal documents, so maps were
still drew on non-scientific geographical sources. Mercator's representation of
covered in script confirming the symbolic messages of territorialization. Next to the Arctic, based on the legend of the four rivers recounted by the fourteenth
the image of the land that today denotes Brazil the author of the Cantino map century English monk Nicholas of Lynn, and his depiction of the Antarctic,
affirms that this territory was "found by Pedro Alvares Cabral, a nobleman of based on the contestable authority of Ptolemy and Marco Polo, are, suggests
the King of Portugal," while the islands of the West Indies are marked as the Peter Whitfield, examples of "pure medievalism."?' As William Boelhower has
"Antilles of the King of Castille" (Has antilhas Rey de castella), "discovered by demonstrated with respect to the mapping ofAmerica during the Renaissance, a
Columbus, who is Admiral of them."87 In the Cosmographiae, Waldseemiiller modern cartography based onrhe Ptolemaic system existed simultaneously with
explained that "[a]s farmers usually mark off and divide their farms by bound- two medieval cartographic models: the pictorial map and the portolan chart.F
ary lines, soit has been our endeavour to mark the chief countries of the world Thus icons, which on medieval pictorial maps conveyed the characteristics of
by the emblems of their rulers." Thus "the emblems of those sovereigns" were local place, were used by Renaissance mapmakers to convey the sense of won-
placed over "the fourth division of the earth, discovered by the kings of Castile der and strangeness that explorers felton first contact with the new continenr.P''
and Portugal."88 Symbols of political conquest were often accompanied by signs Images of mythical Indians and bounteous virgin lands served as representa-
symbolizing the religious mission. For example, on the Juan de la Cosa world tional substitutes that could be brought back to the Iberian courts in lieu of
map (c.1500) the compass rose situated on the Tropic of Cancer embraces. ~he the objects themselves. Further, the rhumb lines criss-crossing the seas of many
Holy Family, while thrust into the core of the dense, dark, heavy mass of the Renaissance world maps and the" dense toponymic chains along the outer edge
terra incognita is an image of Columbus as Christoferrens, bearing the Christ of the new land" which deployed a "mnemotechnic device of naming to indicate
child into the unknown world. possession and imminent settlement" harked back to the portolan maps used
These early maps of discovery did not just communicate the international to chart sailing routes in the Mediterranean and the distances between and
politics of modern territoriality through iconography. At a formal level they 94
along coastline places. The modern system of cartographic line and scale map,
expressed and contributed to the transformation of man's being-in-space enabled "uncontaminated by the imperfect body of the earth," freed of "the local per-
by perspective and its rationalization of space. Edgerton states that Alexander's spectivism of the image" and thus able to project a global universalism within
gesture of demarcation was made on a mappa-mundi but it is probable that the orthogonal grid, would only come into its own with the rational and juridi-
maps derived from Ptolemy's Geographia were also used during the formula- cal organization of new Northwest territories when the cartographic line would
tion of Inter caetera and the negotiations leading to Tordesillas. The Geographia mark out the boundaries of national spaces. Although cartography was an
presented a world ordered by geometrical coordinates; Ptolemy's organizing sys- important instrument in the Iberian expansion and territorialization of the new
tem "depended on imagining the globe not as amorphous topography but as world, the gridded map and the abstract spatiality it embodied were not uni-
a homogeneous surface ruled by a uniform geometric grid."89 By calling on versal. In Spain it was largely restricted to an elite group of cosmographers and
Ptolemy's mapping techniques, which made possible the plotting of coordinates geographers working for the Crown at .the Casa de la Contratacion. 95 Modern
on intersecting perpendicular axes, the cartographer was able to combine the derivatives of the Latin mappa did not enter general circulation until the mid-
local surveys of the new lands made by the European sailors and the spaces of dle of the sixteenth century and only within specialized technical discourses
the known world into a synthetic whole. The Geographia signaled the end of did derivatives of spatium denote a "geometric, abstract, isotropic expanse."96
'the Christian symbolism of the T-O map and the sanctified spatial hierarchies The geographical descriptions sent back to Spain by colonial administrators
which had structured the representation of the Christian oecumene.From the still tended to rely on a medieval epistemology, which situated places in respect
late-fifteenth-century cartography would fix the spaces and boundaries of inter- to the traveler's body passing through them rather than in terms of an objec-
national society within a new conception of abstract, geometric, and homoge- tive optical abstraction. A text like Martin Fernandez' Suma de geografia (1519),
neous geographic space.?" which combined the new spaces of geometrical abstraction with the traditional
However, as we have seen, Renaissance discourses of space tended to retain linear space of narrative itinerary, conveys the hybrid spatiality characteristic of
some imprints of the medieval spatial imaginary. Cartography was no different Renaissance Hispanic culture. The gridded map, suggests Ricardo Padron, was
and scholastic geographies were not entirely erased from maps until the early more a cartographic ideal rather than an achievable reality.
194 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

Nevertheless it as Walter Mignolo claims, an important aspect of colonial-

ism is the struggle between competing semiotic systems and cultural modes of
representation, then the gridded map served as an effective instrument of ter-
ritorialization, since it effectively silenced Amerindian cartographic traditions,
reducing them to barely legible imprints on the European maps.97 European
territorial representations filled out the spatial boundaries of the new world CHAPTER 10
with meaning, memory, and identity; they were discourses of power and truth
which silenced any alternative Amerindian representations of these spaces. In
the mapping of America "European territorial representations (maps, descrip- Conel usion: Territorial ity,
tions), helped by the printing press, silenced Amerindian ones, which were never
printed during the colonial period, producing the effect that the former were the Renaissance, and
more appropriate or truthful descriptions of space than the latter."98
However, these European maps did not only erase the spatial imaginary of
International Relations
the Amerindian. They were also representations of space which reinforced the
notion that territoriality in the modern world should and could be ordered in
terms of clearly demarcated and isolated parcels of sovereign space. They were,
like all the representations of space discussed in this book, instruments for the
inscription. of identity and difference in space that defined the cosmopolitan
or modern ideal of territoriality. They were part of a modern spatial imaginary

J
orge Luis Borges' enchanting fragment "On Exactitude in Science" captures
which, born out of the Renaissance challenge to the hierarchical Christian medi-
succinctly the claim that our ideas about territoriality, and in particular
eval spatial episteme of above and below, made possible the territorial regime of
the territorial state, are subject to the requirements of representation and
inside and outside upon which the international relations of anarchy have been
irnaginarion.! Purporting to be part of a travel record of one seventeenth century
grounded ever since.
Suarez Miranda, Borges' textual fragment exposes the hubris that accompanies
any attempt to provide a true, undistorted, and objective representation ofspace.
In a certain Empire, reports Miranda, the practice of cartography had achieved
such a degree of perfection that the map of a province occupied an entire city
and a map of the empire a whole province. Taking this process to its logical end
the "Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of
the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it." However, their suc-
cessors, who were less enamored with such ambitions and realized that "the vast
Map was Useless," abandoned the map to the vagaries of the seasons, and today
the only evidence of its existence are a few tattered remains scattered across the
desert region. Borges' parable denies the possibility that we can ever achieve
some true, objective, or disinterested representation of territory. And yet, most
International Relations theory is underpinned by the assumption, sometimes
explicit but more often implicit, that the territorial state is a-historical, primor-
dial, and universal. This conception of state territoriality, the territorial a priori,
assumes that all states are characterized by physical extension in space, that they
occupy a clearly defined place on the earth's surface, and that they have borders
that clearly differentiate inside frornoutside and self from others.
196 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Conclusion • 197

This book has advanced two interwoven critiques of the territorial a priori One of the implications of stressing the representational or imaginary nature
that, taken together, expose some of the deep-rooted epistemological and onto-- of territoriality has been to prioritize its cultural dimensions. In so far as terri-
logical assumptions about space and politics that inform much political and toriality is produced in various discourses of space, territorial imaginaries are
international political theory. The first critique is conceptual. Seeking to develop made manifest in a plethora of written and pictorial cultural texts. If we con-
a methodology appropriate for a cultural or intellectual history of space and ter- tinue to adhere to the positivist goal of constructing scientific theories that sat-
ritoriality, it has two parts. First, it has challenged the assumptions, integral to isfy Popper's criteria of verification or falsification, we will miss the constitutive
the territorial a priori, that present sovereign-territoriality as universal, fixed, and dimension of these cultural texts. Thus this work has looked to hermeneutic or
objective. Second, it has advocated replacing the territorial a priori with the more interpretative methodological tools prevalent in the humanities. For example,
fluid concept of the territorial imaginary, which emphasizes the historically con- the evolution of perspective in painting was identified as an integral component
tingent, transformative, and subjective nature of sovereign-territory. The territo- of the Renaissance territorial imaginary; for not only did it promote a general
rial imaginary does not situate ideas of sovereign-territoriality exclusively within sense of man as the master of space but it also gave various political authori-
the domain of political discourse. Rather, it frames the imagination and repre- ties, notably princes and city-states, the means with which to express and legiti-
sentation of the politics of space within the more extensive landscape of a soci- mize their aspirations to territorial sovereignty. The implication that Piero della
ety's culture of space. It alerts us to how how the particular configurations of Francesca's portrait of Federico da Montelfeltro is as significant as Machiavelli's
spatial discourses prevalent in any society construct ideas about space that limit Prince for understanding Renaissance international politics may not convince
the possibilities for conceiving of political existence within it. many dyed-in-the-wool social scientists. Nevertheless, it is in keeping with the
The book's historical. claim is that in dismantling the medieval culture of tenet of the "aesthetic turn" within International Relations that "the political"
space, ordered in terms of the hierarchical logic of above/below, the Renaissance is constituted, legitimised and resisted in the spaces of representation. 2 At least it
erected the scaffolding upon which the modern territorial imaginary could be is hoped that this research has justified taking an interdisciplinary approach to
built. In the medieval culture of space, embodied by the soaring edifices of the subject matter of international politics. Thinking about space requires that
gothic cathedrals, all being was constituted in perpendicular chains of hier- we explore areas of knowledge outside of International Relations' traditional
archy, reaching from the debased spaces of the terrestrial world to the lofty constituency of politics, sociology, economics, and law. The political resolu-
elevated heights of the celestial world. Constricted by this framework, the medi- tion of space in terms of sovereign-territoriality cannot be fully accounted for
eval mind conceived of sovereign-territoriality in terms of multiple, overlapping unless one explores coeval representations of space produced in discourses such
jurisdictions and allegiances structured vertically through hierarchies of polit- as cosmology, art theory, urbanism; cartography, and geography and expressed
ical authority, which extended far above the temporal authorities of Emperor in cultural commodities such as maps, paintings, and buildings.
and Papacy to culminate in the ethereal realm of the civitas Dei. During the There are important political implications of conceiving of territoriality, and
Renaissance, the hierarchical architectonics of this medieval culture of space specifically the territorial state, not as some primordial or universal material fact
were discarded and the territorial imaginary it had generated was replaced. The but rather as a historically and culturally constituted form of representation or
novel spatial vocabularies and categories of the Renaissance culture of space imaginary. The first is to acknowledge that the territorial state and the geopolit-
established the conditions of possibility for the modern territorial imaginary. ical distribution of space it authorizes-what Michael Shapiro calls the "inter-
Man's being-in-space was redefined during the Renaissance; no longer impris- national imaginary"---is not only historically contingent but is also achieved
onedwithin space, man became the master of space, which could henceforth through violence.:' All cultures have different experiences of places and spaces
be known rationally, ordered systematically, and rendered the object of man's and code onto them alternative ways of being. However, since the Renaissance
desires. In terms of political territoriality, this resulted in the gradual delegiti- the expansion of the European world system, and the universalization of its
mation of any claims to sovereignty above the state. The Renaissance established projects of capitalism, modernity and Enlightenment, has resulted in the over-
the modern territorial imaginary in which territorial sovereignty is parceled out coding and erasure of indigenous conceptions and experiences of space. As the
between clearly differentiated political authorities co-existing on a horizontal discussion of the Renaissance territorialization of international society demon-
plane of equivalence. The Renaissance made possible the modern conception of strated, the European appropriation and conversion of the "new world" was
a territorial imaginary, no longer governed by the spatial motif of above/below; orchestrated as much through the discursive production of a novel territorial
but authorized by the oppositional figure of inside/outside. consciousness, as through acts of physical violence against its inhabitants. The
198 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy Conclusion • 199

mapping of the new world, the cartographic division of the world, and journal the hyperglobalizers, Scholte stands back from claiming that globalization has
records of rites of possession all served to territorialize the "new world," domesti- completely erased the map of territorial geography and the economic, political,
cating unknown and foreign places and extending European power and control and identity formations that it engenders. Today's global landscape, he suggests,
over the new spaces of international society. Putting the Americas on the map is one in which global and territorial spaces coexist and interrelate in complex
was less about determining the shape and extent of the earth than about "con- fashions. "We do not live in a 'borderless world' where territory is obsolescent."!'
trolling territories, diminishing non-European conceptualization of space, and The research undertaken in this work supports such caution .. The discourse of
spreading European cartographic literacy; thus colonizing the imagination of globalization has a tendency to hyperbole, portraying the transformation from
people on both sides of the Atlantic: Amerindians and Europeans."? the modern Westphalian to the globalized postmodern world system in terms of
The second implication of territorialization it that, as Deleuze and Guattari a caesural rupture of extremely short duration. For example, Saskia Sassen iden-
remind us, state strategies of territorialization and striation are always and every- tifies the 1980s as a "tipping point," when the internationalism of the Bretton
where challenged and opposed by the nomadic forces of de-territorialization. Woods system gave way to today's global era. This transition so radically trans-
Again with reference to the European territorialization of the Americas, Walter formed the organizing logics of territory, authority, and rights that it moved
D. Mignolo suggests that residual expressions of Incan cosmology in contempo- "us from an era marked by the ascendance of the nation-state and its capture
rary Peru can be read as a form of resistance to the dominant territorial imagi- of all major components of social, economic, political and subjective life to one
nary ofWestern rnodernity.? For Shapiro this international territorial imaginary marked by a proliferation of orders."12 This is quite some claim. Especially in
needs to be challenged by alternative visions ofidentities and spaces that privilege view of the fact that the cultural and intellectual revolution of the Renaissance
the flows of people rather than the static boundaries of sovereign territorialities, lasted for most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that even at the end
constructed according to the logics of inclusion and exclusion." Of particular of this period few, if any, contemporaries had completely divested their think-
interest here is the critique of the dominant territorial model mounted by dias- ing of some of the legacies of the hierarchical territorial imaginary. Of course,
pora or border theory, with its celebration of cultural hybridity. "The nation- one of the claims made by globalisation is that we live in a world of acceleration
state," argues James Clifford, "as common territory and time, is traversedand, and speed. Nevertheless, is it likely that if the transformation from medieval to
to varying degrees subverted by diasporic attachments."? The hegemony of the modern territoriality took at least two centuries, that the transformation from
international territorial imaginary recedes in the face of Homi Bhabha's obser- the modern to the postmodern order is likely to have occurred in two decades?
vation that nations, nation-spaces are performative or narrative constructs that A second contribution that the research undertaken in the present book can
are always seeking to erase the memories of their hybridity. Imaginary nations, make to the current debates about globalisation is to suggest a broader rneth-
like territorial imaginaries, are produced in in-between spaces within which odological remit than scholars in International Relations have tended to allow
novel notions of selfhood and identity arise: "[i]t is in the emergence of the for. Both Scholte and Sassen are intellectually predisposed to see the territorial
inrerstlces-e-rhe overlap and displacement of domains of difference-that the transformation of globalization as an objective process, one that the methods
intersubjective and collective experience of nationness, community interest, or and epistemologies. of the social sciences can adequately analyze and explain.
cultural value are negotiared.I" Mirroring our critique of the territorial a priori, However, as we have seen, transformations in ideas about political territoriality
Bhabha's exposes the essentialist myth of the nation as an "originary and ini- are intimately related to prevailing cultures of space. Thus, we need to exam-
tial subjectivity", an "imagined community" secure within homogeneous empty ine how the transformations in the territorial imaginary of globalization are
time. 9 Rather, insists Bhabha, we must listen to to "counter narratives of the represented, and, indeed, produced in contemporary art, literature, and film. If
nation" that accentuate and highlight the "irredeemably plural modern space" my argument that the shift from the medieval territorial imaginary of hierar-
of the nation. chy to the modern imaginary of anarchy was primarily represented and imag-
The phenomenon of de-territorialization has become a staple of of the con- ined within the cultural sphere has validity, we should perhaps, as International
temporary discourse of globalization. Jan Aart Scholte has argued that if glob- Relations scholars pay attention to the aesthetic postmodern re-imagination of
alization means anything at all, it denotes a process of "respatialization with the space and place, so carefully documented by Frederic jameson.l'
spread of transplanetory social connections" or "the advent and spread of what Yet, one need not justify historical research purely on the grounds that it
are alternately called 'global,' 'transplanetary,' 'transworld' and in certain respects allows us to better understand or explain today's world. International Relations
also 'supraterritorial' social spaces."!" However, contrary to the enthusiasm of as a discipline is not noted for its historical rigor, and the discipline as a whole
200 • From Hierarchy to Anarchy

can only be enriched by meticulous and patient research into the historical con-
ditions of its existence. Thus, this work has tried to fill some of the gaps in
a major lacuna in the discipline's historiography. The Renaissance can justly
claim to have been as important a cultural and intellectual movement as the
Enlightenment, which, due to the contributions that Rousseau, Locke, and
Kant made to our understanding of the Westphalian international system, has Notes
been the subject of much research in international political theory. However,
with the exception of Garrett Mattingly's magisterial Renaissance Diplomacy, the
Renaissance is either absent or little more than a footnote in most International
Relations texts. Indeed, the characteristic attitude to the Renaissance of the
discipline is encompassed by Sasson's history of territoriality "from medieval to
global assemblages" that makes no mention of the Renaissance at all. In com-
mon with much International Relations history, by erasing the Renaissance, 1 Introduction: Territoriality, Westphalia, and
Sassen is able to present the medieval and the modern international systems International Relations
as two neat coherent historical formations. This neat binary implicitly holds
1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley,
out the promise of progress and modernity as the medieval is swept away by
1979).
the modern. Of course, the historical narrative is rarely so neat, and by pay-
2. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in From Max U7eber: Essays in Sociology,
ing attention to the Renaissance we become sensitive to the complex and often ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 77-128,
non-linear nature of historical transformations. It is hoped that work has made at p. 78.
a small contribution to restoring the Renaissance to its rightful place in the cul- 3. Stephen D. Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," in The Elusive
tural and intellectual history of international political theory. State: International and Comparative Perspectives, ed. James A. Caporoso
(Newbury Park: Sage, 1989), pp. 69-96, at p. 92.
4. Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," P: 92.
5. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace,
6th ed., rev. Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 327.
6. Of course, the surface of the globe has never been neatly divided into sharply
differentiated sovereign territorial units, but has included many fuzzy or
porous territories, such as UN Protectorates, Imperial spheres of interest, man-
dates, trusteeships, and neutral zones. See Friedrich Kratochwil, "Of Systems,
Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State
System," WOrld Politics, 39:1, 1986, pp. 27-52; and Daniel H. Deudney, "The
Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the
American States-Union, Circa 1787-1861," International Organization, 49:2,
1995, pp. 191-228.
7. See Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of
Modern International Relations (London: Verso, 2003); and Andreas Osiander,
"Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth," International
Organization, 55:2,2001, pp. 251--87.
8. Leo Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," The American Journal of
International Law> 42:1, 1948, pp. 20-41, at p. 28.
9. Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia," pp. 28--29.
10. Michael]. Shapiro, "Textualising Global Politics," in James Der Derian and
Michael ]. Shapiro (eds.), International/lntertextual Relations: Postmodern
202 • Notes
Notes • 203

Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 11-22, at 34. Reus-Smir, Moral Purpose ofthe State, p. 76.
pp.12-13. 35. Reus-Smit, MoralPurpose ofthe State, pp. 79-80.
11. Shapiro, "Textual ising Global Politics," pp. 12-13. 36. Justin Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society: A Critique ofthe Realist Theory of
12. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith International Relations (London: Verso, 1994).
(London: Routledge, 1972), p. 49. 37. Mattingly quoted in Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 75.
13. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of 38. Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 75.
Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 4. 39. Hendrik Spruyr, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis ofSystems
14. Evelyne Patlagean, "L'h istoire de l'imaginaire," in Jacques Le Goff: Roger Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Chartier, and Jacques Revel (eds.), La nouvelle histoire (Paris: CEPL, 1978), 40. Spruyt, The Sovereign State, p. 18.
pp. 249-69, at p. 249. My translation. 41. Spruyt, The Sovereign State, p. 150.
15. Donald J. Puchala, Theory and History in International Relations (New York and
London: Routledge, 2003), p. 7.
16. Martin Wight, Systems ofStates, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester University 2 International Relations, Political Theory, and
Press, 1977), p. 113. the Territorial State
17. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 151.
1. Martin Wight, "Why Is There No International Theory," in Herbert Butterfield
18. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 113.
and Martin Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations (London: Allen and Unwin,
19. Stephen D. Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," in Judith Goldstein and Robert 1966), pp. 17~34.
O. Keohane (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political
2. Martin Wight, Power Politics, ed. Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (Leicester:
Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 235-64. Subsequently Leicester University Press, 1978), pp. 101 and 102.
Krasner appears to have retracted this position. He writes that "the Peace of
3. Justin Rosenberg, The Empire ojCivil Society: A Critique of The Realist Theory of
Westphalia was a break point with the past" and that it marked a "transition International Relations (London: Verso, 1994), p. 142.
from Christendom to reason of state and balance of power as the basic cognitive 4. Rosenberg, The Empire ofCivil Society, p. 30.
conceptualization informing the actual behavior of European rulers." Stephen
5. Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (Basingstoke:
D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Macmillan Press, 1929), p. 80.
Press, 1999), p. 82. 6. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 65.
20. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: 7. S. Korner, Kant (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 33.
University of Chicago Press, 1990). 8. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 68.
21. Torbjorn L. Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, 2nd ed. 9. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, p. 69.
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), pp. 36-54. 10. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, pp. 70-71.
22. David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford
11. John H. Herz, "The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State," in Herz, The
University Press, 1998), p. 95.
Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics (New York: David McKay, 1976),
23. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover, 1988).
pp. 99-123; and Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International
24. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, p. 64.
Relations, tr. R. Howard and A. Baker Fox (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson,
25. James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy o/Western Estrangement (Oxford: 1966).
Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 2. 12. Herz, "The Rise and Demise," pp. 100-101.
26. Friedrich Meinecke, quoted in Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 103.
13. John Herz, "The Territorial State Revisited: Reflections on the Future of the
27. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 110. Nation-State," in Herz, The Nation-State, pp. 226-52, at p. 238.
28. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 106. 14. See Herz, "The Rise and Demise," pp. 108-14.
29. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, p. 102. 15. Aron, Peace and War, p. 181.
30. Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose 0/ the State: Culture, Social Identity, 16. Aron, Peace and War, p. 181.
and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton
17. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley,
University Press, 1999). 1979).
31. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose ofthe State, p. 30. 18. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 131.
32. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose a/the State, p. 70.
19. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
33. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose o/the State, p. 74. University Press, 1981), p. 15.
 204 • Notes Notes • 205

20. Gilpin, War and Change, p. 122. 45. Hobbes limits his discussion of territory to-chap. XXXIV of Leviathan. Thomas
21. Gilpin, War and Change,p. 37. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
22. Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social 1991), pp. 170-176, at p. 17l.
Construction of Power Politics," reprinted in James Der Derian (ed.), 46. J ean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract, or Principles ofPolitical Right,
International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), in Rousseau, Collected Writings Vol. 4, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher
pp. 129-77, at p. 138. Kelly, tr. Judith Bush, Masters and Kelly (Hanover: University Press of New
23. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge England, 1994), pp. 127-224, at p. 160.
University Press, 1999), p. 198. 47. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 168.
24. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 213. 48. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 139. Italics in original.
25. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 211. 49. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, P: 143.
26. Wendt, Social Theory ofInternational Politics, p. 211. 50. Rousseau, On The Social Contract, p. 143.
27. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton 51. Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch," in Kant, Political
University Press, 1999), p. 14. Writings, 2nd ed., ed. Hans Reiss, tr. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
28. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, p. 20. University Press, 1991), 93-130.
29. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study o/Order in World Politics (London: 52. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 94. Kant accepted the contemporary distribution
Macmillan, 1977), pp. 8-9. Italics added. of political territories, even though many were acquired by these illegitimate
30. Alan James, Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (London: means, on the grounds that "the prohibition relates only to the mode ofacquisi-
Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 13. tion, which is to be forbidden henceforth, but not to the present state ofpolitical
31. James, Sovereign Statehood, p. 3l. possessions ."
!; 32. Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 8-9. 53. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 115.
" ·.:,1.:, 1

33. See Cornelia Navari, "Introduction: The State as Contested Concept in 54. Kant, "Perpetual Peace," p. 105.
1
International Relations," in Navari (ed.), The Condition of States (Milton 55. The stranger may claim a "right of resort" as all men are entitled to present
Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 1-18. themselves in the society of others "by virtue of their right to communal posses-
34. Navari, "Introduction: The State as Contested Concept," all quotes from sion of the earth's surface." See Kant, "Perpetual Peace," pp. 105-8.
pp. 12-15. 56. William E. Connolly, Political Theory andModernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988),
35. Hans Kelsen, General Theory ofLaw and State, tr. Anders Wedberg (New York: p. 121.
Russell and Russell, 1945), pp. 210,-2l. 57. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University
36. John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and Press, 1952), p. 157.
International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 89. 58. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford:
37. Agnew and Corbridge, Mastering Space, p. 100. Blackwell, 1991), p. 279.
38. Cornelia Navari, "Knowledge, the State and the State of Nature," in Michael 59. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, p. 213.
Donelan (ed.), The Reason of States: A Study in International Political Theory 60. Hegel, Philosophy ofRight, p. 208.
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 102~21, at p. 108. 61. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in From Max Weber: Essays in
39. Navari, "Knowledge, the State and the State of Nature," p. 119. Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1970),
40. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations ofPostmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992). pp. 77-128, at p.78.
41. Bauman, Intimations ofPostmodernity, pp. 178-79. 62. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology,
42. On the inappropriate appropriations of Hobbes in International Relations, see Vol. 1, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press,
R. John Vincent, "The Hobbesian Tradition in Twentieth Century International 1968), p. 54.
Thought," Millennium, 10:2, 1981, pp. 91-10l. 63. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott
43. Rob Walker, "Realism, Change and 'International Political Theory'," Parsons (London: Routledge, 1992).
International Studies Quarterly, 31:1, 1987, pp. 65 ......86. 64. Max Weber, "The Meaning of Discipline," in From Max Weber, pp. 53-64,
44. Sheldon Wolin, "Hobbes: Political Society as a System of Rules," in Wolin, at p. 253.
Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought 65. Weber, quoted in Fred Dallmayr, "Max Weber and the Modern State," in Asher
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 239-85, at p. 243. Horowitz and Terry Maley (eds.), The Barbarism of Reason:' Max Weber and
206 • Notes Notes • 207

the Twilight of Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 86. Richard K. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the
pp. 49-67, at p. 59. Anarchy Problematique," Millennium, 17:2, 1988, pp. 227-62, at p. 248.
66. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two ofa Contemporary 87. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State," p.230.
Critique ofHistorical Materialism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), p. 47. 88. Richard K. Ashley, "The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Towards a Critical
67. Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, p. 49. Social Theory of International Politics," Alternatives, 17:4, 1987, pp. 403-34.
68. The typology of legal orders is in Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1~ 89. R. B.]. Walker, "International Relations and the Concept of the Political,"
pp. 212-30l. in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today
69. Bryan S. Turner, Max Weber: From History to Modernity (London: Routledge, (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), pp. 306-327, at p. 32l.
1992), p. 197. 90. Richard K. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War,"
70. On Weber's theory of the nation-state, see David Beetham, Max weber and the in ] ames Der Derianand Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual
Theory ofModern Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 119-47. Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books,
Quote at p. 122. 1989), pp. 259-321, at p. 301.
71. Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, quoted in Beetham, Max 91. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines," p. 302.
Weber and the Theory ofModern Politics, p. 125. 92. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines;" pp. 303-4.
72. Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, referred to in Beerharn, Max Weber 93. R. B. J. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the Horizons
and the Theory ofModern Politics, p. 129. of Contemporary Political Practice," in Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds.),
73. David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community (Boulder: Lynne
pp.258-83. Reinner, 1990), pp. 159-85.
74. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 94. R. B. J. Wa.lker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory
University Press, 1983), p. 236. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 128.
75. Ratzel, quoted in Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 224. 95. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community," p. 175.
76. Ratzel, quoted in Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 226. 96. Ashley, "Living on Borderlines," p. 290.
77. For Weber's views on great powers, see Economy and Society, Vol. 1, 97. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 129.
pp. 910---91l. 98. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community," p. 172.
78. See Weber's article "Zwischen zwei Gesetzen,," referenced in Beetharn, Max
Weber andthe Theory ofModern Politics, p. 137.
79. Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from ~ber to Kissinger (Baton 3 Theorizing Territoriality: Discourse, Culture, History
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 53.
80. Fred Halliday, "State and Society in International Relations: A Second 1. Robert David Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge:
Agenda," Millennium, 16:2, 1987, pp. 215-29, esp. pp. 218-19. Cambridge University Press, 1986), p~ 5.
81. Michael Mann, "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, 2. Sack, Human Territoriality, p. 19.
Mechanisms and Results," in John A. Hall (ed.) States in History (Oxford: Basil 3. Robert David Sack, Conceptions of Space in Social Thought: A Geographic
Blackwell, 1986») pp. 109-36, at pp. 112 and 123. Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 40-41.
82. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Potoer, Volume Two: The Rise of 4. Sack, Human Territoriality, pp. 28-29.
Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 5. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of
1993), p. 56. Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 4.
83. Theda Skocpol, "Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in 6. Richard K. Ashley, "Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the
Current Research," in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Ruescherneyer, and Theda Anarchy Problematique," Millennium, 17:2, 1988, pp. 227-62.
Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University 7. David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989),
Press, 1985), pp. 3-37, at p. 8. p.204.
84. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative A 11:alysis ofFrance; 8. David Harvey, "The Geopolitics of Capitalism," in Derek Gregory and John
Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 32. Urry (eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
85. R. B. J.Walker, "Violence, Modernity, Silence: From Max Weber to International 1986), 128-63.
Relations," in David Campbell and Mick Dillon (eds.), The Political Subject of 9. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford:
Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 137-58. Blackwell, 1991), at pp. 46 and 77.
208 • Notes Notes • 209

10. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 85. My emphasis. Two points are worth 30. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Vol 1, tr. Robert Hurley (London:
noting. First, although Lefebvre contends that social spaces mirror the dom- Penguin, 1984), p. 85; and Foucault, "Truth and Power," p. 121.
inant relations of production, he does not suggest that space is reducible to 31. Michel Foucault, "Questions on Geography," p. 68.
them. Each mode of production has a space, but the characteristics of space are 32. Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
not equivalent to the mode of production. Indeed, he regarded the tendency tr. RobertHurley (London: Athlone Press, 1984); and Gilles Deleuze and Felix
to reduce the aesthetic, social, and mental realms to the economic as a "disas- Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi
trous error." Lefebvre, quoted in Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (London: Athlone Press, 1988).
(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), p. 38. Second, Lefebvre regarded social spaces 33. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 142.
not as distinct and bounded, but as overlapping, interpenetrating, and superim- 34. Deleuze and Guattari, A. Thousand Plateaus, p. 360.
posed on one another. They cannot be explained in terms of isolated discourses 35. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 452.
(urban, geographic, architectural, or anthropological) which focus on particular 36. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 211.
aspects rather than the whole of social space. 37. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 385-86.
11. Henri Lefebvre, "Reflections on the Politics of Space," Antipode, 8:2, 38. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA:
1976, pp. 30--37, at p. 31. Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 4.
12. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, pp. 413-14. 39. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, p. 143.
13. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 39. 40. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, P: 17.
14. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 42. 41. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 25. Lefebvre suggests that modern
15. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, p. 42. space was fundamentally altered around 1910, when its codes and practices
16. Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, pp. 3-4. began to dissolve. However, this common-sense space of Euclid and perspective
17. For a discussion of Foucault's epistemology, see Richard Rorty, "Foucault did not disappear completely but left traces in consciousness, where it continues
and Epistemology," in David Couzens Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader to inform words, images, and metaphors.
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 41-49. 42. John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in
18. Michel Foucault, "The Order of Discourse," in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the International Relations," International Organization, 47:1, 1993, pp. 139-74.
Text: A Poststructuralist Reader (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 43. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 158.
48-78, at p. 67. 44. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 158.
19. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith 45. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 157.
(London: Routledge, 1972), p. 49. 46. Foucault, quoted in]. G. Merquior, Foucault (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 36.
20. Michel Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," in Foucault Power/Knowledge: 47. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human
Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: Sciences, tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 54 and x.
The Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 194-228, at p. 194. 48. Foucault, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, p. 191.
21. Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," p. 197. 49. Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 55-56.
22. Foucault, "Confessions of the Flesh," p. 196. 50. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 387.
23. Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge, pp. 109-33, 51. Foucault, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, p. ·176.
at p. 131. 52. Deleuze presents Foucault's archaeology as an engagement with statements that
24. Miel Foucault, "Afterward: The Subject and Power," in Herbert L. Dreyfus situates them in terms of three orders or realms of space: collateral, correla-
and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics tive, and complementary. See Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, tr. Sean Hand (London:
(London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982), pp. 208-26, at p. 212. Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 1-22.
25. Michel Foucault, "Questions on Geography," in Power/Knowledge, pp. 63-77, 53. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, esp. pp. 3-25.
at p. 69. 54. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 376.
26. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, tr. Alan Sheridan 55. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 379. In a similar manner, Gaston
(Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 136-38. Bachelard diagnoses modern philosophy as having contracted a "geometrical
27. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 143-46. cancerization of its linguistic tissue" in which, "[ojutside and inside form a dia-
28. Michel de Certeau, The Practice ofEveryday Life, tr. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: lectic of division, the obvious geometry of which blinds us as soon as we bring
University of California Press, 1984), pp. 35-36. it into play in metaphorical domains. It has the sharpness of the dialectics of yes
29. de Certeau, The Practice ofEveryday Life, p. 36. and no, which decides everything. Philosophers, when confronted with outside
210 • Notes Notes • 211

and inside, think in terms of being and non-being. Thus profound metaphysics theory of the social realm as a contrivance to preserve the differentiation of the
is rooted in an implicit geometry.... The dialectics of here and there has been units and facilitate orderly relations between them; and are legitimized in terms
promoted to the rank of an absolutism according to which. these unfortunate of the minimal social needs of the component units." (p. 146).
adverbs of place are endowed with unsupervised powers of ontological determi- 72. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 151.
nation." Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics 0/ Space, tr. M. jolas (Boston: Beacon 73. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 151.
Press, 1994), pp. 211-12. 74. For example, the English Enclosure Acts served the capitalist machine by
56. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 379. Nietzsche's aphoristic deterritorialising dispossessed peasants, thereby establishing the conditions for
method is typical of nomadic thought, a "force that destroys both the image and their reterritorialisation in the textile looms. See Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-
its copies, the model and its. reproductions, every possibility of subordinating Oedipus, pp. 139-271, for the "universal history" of the three "social machines."
thought to a model of the True, the Just, or the Right (Cartesian truth, Kantian Universal history is an abstraction and the social machines, rather than describ-
just, Hegelian right, etc.)." p. 377. ing particular societies, suggest a set of abstract figures in terms of which par-
57. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, esp. "1440: The Smooth and ticular societies may be understood. Universal history is also anti-historicist;
the Striated," pp. 474--500. the abstract machines are not stages of evolution with one machine resulting
58. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 481. from the effects of another. See Paul Patton, "Conceptual Politics and the War-
59. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 380. Machine in Mille Plateaux," SubStance, 13:3/4, 1984, pp. 62-80.
60. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 381. 75. The social machines are literally machines, which have "an immobile
61. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 382. motor and undertakes a variety of interventions: flows are set apart, elements
62. For a discussion of the Aristotelian territorial legacy, see Edward Shils, are detached from a chain, and portions of the tasks to be performed are dis-
Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago tributed. Coding the flows implies all these operations." Deleuze and Guattari,
Press, 1975). Anti-Oedipus, p. 141.
63. Stephen Grosby, "Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of 76. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 144.
Modern Societies," Nations and Nationalism, 1:2, 1995, pp. 143-62, at p. 150. 77. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 145.
64. Grosby, "Territoriality," p. 155. 78. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus,pp. 145--46.
65. Grosby, "Territoriality," p. 150. 79. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 453; and Anti-Oedipus, p. 139.
66. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," pp. 138-48. This resume of Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of capitalism is greatly sim-
67. All social organisations have some mode of differentiating human collec- plified. See Anti-Oedipus, pp. 222-71, for a fuller discussion.
tivities from each other in space. Ruggie identifies three ideal types other than 80. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti- Oedipus, p. 252. They view schizophrenia as other to
territorial states: non-territorial collectivities based on kinship; the fluid terri- capitalism," its difference, its divergence and its death.," Anti-Oedipus, p. 246.
torial constituencies of nomadic property rights; and systems of territorial rule 81. Eugene W. Holland, "Deterritorializing 'Deterritorialization': From the Anti-
in which rights are not necessarily mutually exclusive as in medieval Europe. Oedipus to A Thousand Plateaus," SubStance, 20:3, 1991, pp. 55-65, at p. 63.
Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 149. 82. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 235.
68. Ruggie's citations are from Joseph H. Strayer and Dana C. Munro, The Middle 83. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 244.
Ages (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1959), p. 115; and Perry Anderson, 84. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, p. 251.
Lineages o/theAbsolutistState (London: New Left Review, 1974), pp. 37-38. See 85. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 240.
Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," pp. 149-50. 86. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, p. 261.
69. John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: 87. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, P: 261.
Towards a Neorealist Synthesis," in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert 88. This summary of the colonization of lived by abstract space is taken from
O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press), 131-57, at 143. Gregory, Geographicallmaginations, p. 401.
70. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 150. 89. Lefebvre, Production o/Space, pp. 302 and 286.
71. Ruggie, "Continuity," p. 143. There are correlations between bourgeois the-
ories of private property, which represent civil society as a framework for the
4 Hierarchy, Order, and Space in the Medieval World
protection of natural individual property rights, and international theory that
managed to achieve a balance between the political rights of sovereign states 1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley,
and the idea of a community of states. Both" differentiate among units in terms 1979), p. 88.
of possession of self and exclusion of others; advance a possessive individualist 2. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 131.
212 • Notes Notes • 213

3. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, tr. John Ciardi (New York: W. W.Norton, 27. Georges Duby, Les trois ordres ou I)imaginaire du ftodalisme (Paris: Editions
1970), Paradiso, XXVIII, 130-132, p.569. Beatrice places the angels in Paradiso Gallimard, 1978).
according to the Dionysian order. 28. My translation of an Italian translation ofDuby's French translation of this pas-
4. Pseudo-Dionysius, "The Celestial Hierarchy," in The Complete Works, tr. Calm sage from the Latin, in Ottavia Niccoli, I sacerdoti, i guerrieri, i contadini: storia
Luibheid (London: SPCK, 1987), 143-91, at I:120B, p. 145. di un' immagine della societd (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1979), p. 18.
5. This discussion of Dionysius the Areophagite draws heavily on Joseph Anthony 29. My translation of Duby's French translation from the Latin in Les trois orders,
Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition in Dante's Comedy (New York: Greenwood p. 15.
Press, 1968), pp. 14~55. 30. Le Gof£ Medieval Civilization, p. 256.
6. Pseudo...Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," II: 144C, pp. 151-52. 31. My translation from Niccoli's translation into Italian, I sacerdoti, p. 13.
7. Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition, p. 19 32. Georges Duby, "Les societes rnedievales: Une approche d'ensemble," in Duby,
8. Pseudo-Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," III: 164D, p. 153. Hommes et structures du moyen age (Paris: Mouton Edireur, 1973), pp. 361-79,
9. Pseudo-Dionysius, "Celestial Hierarchy," III: 165A, p. 154. at p. 369. My translation.
10. Mazzeo, Medieval Cultural Tradition, p. 22. 33. Duby, "Les societes medievales.Lp. 368. My translation.
11. Dionysius's account of the heavenly powers is in "Celestial Hierarchy," VI~IX, 34. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 150.
pp. 160-73. 35. On this point and for a good general discussion of Duby and the three orders,
12. Pseudo-Dionysius, "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," in The Complete Works, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, "Georges Duby and the Three Orders," Viator:
pp. 193-259. Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 17, 1986, pp. 51-64.
13. For the description of the Hierarchy of Law, see "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," 36. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 141.
V: 301C, p.234. 37. Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 146. My translation.
14. All quotes are from "The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," V, 500c-509a, pp. 233--39. 38. R. Roques, L'uniucrs dionysien: Structure hierchiqi«: du monde selon le pseudo-
15. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), Denys (Paris: Aubier Editions Montaigne 1954), p. 174. My translation.
p.132. 39. Quoted in Niccoli, I sacerdoti, p. 25. My translation. In medieval culture the
16. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2nd ed., tr. L. A. Manyon (London: Routledge and left had multiple negative connotations. Therefore, by placing the agricul-
Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 446. For Bloch, the feudal system ensured the systematic tural workers on the left side of the pyramid the superiority of the knights was
economic subjection of the peasantry by the ecclesiastical and warrior oligar- confirmed.
chies. Feudal society was "an unequal society, rather than an hierarchical one--- 40. Le Gof£: Medieval Civilization, p. 264.
with chiefs rather than nobles; and with serfs, not slaves." p. 443. 41. For these distinctions, see Edmundo O'Gorman, The Invention of America
17. A useful summary ofthe literature on vassalage and fiefs is Susan Reynolds, Fiefs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), pp. 51-69.
and Vassels: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University 42. A. ]. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, tr. G. L. Campbell (London:
Press, 1994), pp. 17--74. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 58.
18. Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 444. 43. Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A. Semiotic Theory of Culture, tr. Ann
19. Quoted in Reynolds,Fip andVassels, p. 22. Shukman (London: 1. B. Tauris, 2001), pp~ 177-85.
20. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassels, pp. 50-51. 44. Gurevich, Categories ofMedieual Culture, p. 70. See pp. 42-91 for an overview of
21. Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 115. medieval perceptions and representations ofspace. See also Harald Kleinschmidt,
22. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Understanding the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydall Press, 2000), pp.
Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 312. 33-61. Kleinschmidt traces a shift from early medieval notions of space as the
23. ]ohan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman (London: sum of qualitatively different places occupied by objects to the high/late middle
Penguin Books, 1955), p. 55. Huizinga claims that despite the substitution of age notion that space encloses objects and has presence between them.
nobility and feudalism by monarchs and states, chivalry survived as a meaning- 45. Gurevich, Categories 0/Medieval Culture, p. 72.
ful form of social expression well into the fifteenth century. 46. Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World~ ed. T. Silverstein, tr.
24. Huiz.inga, The Waning ofthe Middle Ages, p. 55-56. R. Mannheim (University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 106. Auerbach discusses
25. Jacques Le Goff Medieval Civilization 400-1500, tr. Julia Barrow (Oxford: how Dante built his ethical system around the Nicomachean Ethics as elaborated
Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 156. by St. Thomas and interpreted by Brunetto Latini, pp. 105-21.
26. Quoted in Le Goff: Medieval Civilization 400-1500, p. 156.
 214 • Notes Notes • 215

47. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, tr. Mario 68. Pierre d'Ailly, Imago Mundi, tr. into French by Edmond Buron, in Texte latin
Domandi (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), p. 178. Aristotle replaced Plato's idea et traduction franraise de quatre traites cosmographiques de d 'Ailly et des notes
of chora or space as a vast sphere in which objects are not confined to specific marginales de Christophe Colomb, ed. Buron (Paris: Maisonneuve Freres, 1930),
places or regions, by place as a distinct top os. Aristotelian space contained all p. 187. My translations refer to the French edition.
particular places. Space encloses bodies; it is the geometrical line between bod- 69. Randles, De la terre plate, p. 11.
ies constituted by the boundaries of other adjacent bodies. There are no gaps 70. Sacrobosco, De Sphaera, p. 129.
between bodies and so all individual places are connected to space as a whole. In 71. Pierre d'Ailly, Imago Mundi, pp. 254---55.
this universe there is no empty space. Aristotelian place is like a vessel that sur- 72. Paolo Revelli, L 'Italia nella Divina Commedia (Milano: Fratelli Treves, Editori,
rounds and contains the body located within it. Place is unchanging, "the inner 1922), p. 33. My translation.
surface of the innermost unmoved container of a body," Aristotle from Physics, 73. On rnappae-rnundi, see Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early
quoted in Edward S. Casey, The Fate ofPlace: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), pp. 26---33; David Woodward,
University of California Press, 1997), p. 55. See on Aristotelian concepts of "Maps and the Rationalization of Geographic Space," in Jay A. Levenson (ed.),
space, Casey, Ope cit., pp. 50-71, Cassirer, Ope cit., pp. 174-85; and M. A. Orr, Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press
Dante and the Early Astronomers (London: Allan Wingate, 1956), pp. 75-83. [National Gallery ofArt, Washington, DC], 1991), pp. 83-7; and Brenda Deen
48. Johannes de Sacrobosco, De Sphaera, tr. Lynn Thorndike, in Thorndike, The Schildgen, Dante and the Orient (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002),
Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (Chicago: University of Chicago pp.66-91.
Press, 1949), pp. 118-42, at p. 119. 74. Dante Paradiso, IX, 83, p. 446; and Dante, Monarchia, tr. and ed. Prue Shaw
49. Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 51, p. 573. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), I:XI, 12-14, p. 27.
Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 102. 75. O'Gorman, Invention ofAmerica, p ..67.
50. Dante, Purgatorio, III, 15, p. 196. 76. Dante, Purgatorio 11,1-4, p.191. Jerusalem at the centre of the northern hemi-
51. Dante, Purgatorio, XXXI, 145, p. 375. sphere is directly opposite the Earthly Paradise, "the luxuriant holy forest ever-
52. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers, p ..82. green," in the southern hemisphere,Purgatorio, XXVIII, 2, p. 354.
53. Dante, Paradiso, XXII, 132, p. 531. 77. On Mandeville, see Randles, De la terre plate, pp. 17---20.
54. See Dante, Paradiso, VII, 124-41, p. 434. 78. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 17.
55. Dante, Paradiso, I, 102--5 and 109-111, pp. 379-80. 79. Lorman, Universe ofthe Mind, p. 172.
56. Orr, Dante and the Early Astronomers, pp. 296-97. 80. John G. Demaray, "Dante and the Book of the Cosmos," Transactions of the
57. Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 70, p. 567. American Philosophical Society, 77:5, 1987, pp. 14-15.
58. Dante, Conuiuio, 2:4, quoted in Karl Federn, Dante and his Time (New York: 81. Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, p. 138. The following scheme is derived from
Haskell House Publishers, 1970), p. 81. Le Goff.
Ji 59. Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 130---132, p. 544. 82. See Schildgen, Dante and the Orient, pp. 66-91.
60. W. G. L. Randles, De la terre plate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique
rapide (1480~1520) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980). Much of the fol- 5 Christendom, Hierarchy, and Medieval
lowing discussion is drawn from Randles. See also 0' Gorman, Invention of
Political Discourse
America, pp. 51-69.
61. Macrobius, Ambrosius .Theodisius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, tr. 1. The best introduction to these debates is Jean Riviere, Le probleme de l' eglise et
William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press [Records of de l'itat au temps de Philippe Le Bel (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Louvariiense,
Civilization, Sources and Studies, 48J, 1952), II: 5, 32-33, p. 206. 1926), esp. pp. 2-60. See also Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State
62. Quoted in Randles, De La terre plate, p. 13. 1050~1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [in association with the
63. Saint Augustine, Concerning the City ofGod against the Pagans, tr. H. Bettenson Medieval Academy of America]' 1988), pp. 33---95. Tierney provides an excel-
(London: Penguin Books, 1972), XVI: 9, pp. 664-..:65. lent selection of abridged primary source material.
64. Macrobius, Commentary, II: 5, 1---3, p. 200. 2. The classic study is Walter Ullman, Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of
65. Augustine, City ofGod, XVI: 9, pp. 664-65. the Medieval Canonists (London: Methuen, 1949).
66. Augustine, City ofGod, XVI: 9, pp. 664-65. 3. Gratian, D istin ctiones, 22:i (c. 1140), in Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State,
67. Dante, Inferno, XXXIV, 112-4 and 124-26, p. 180. p. 119.
216 • Notes Notes • 217

4. See on this image, and other rruruatures illustrating editions of Gratian's 17. Etienne Gilson, La philosophic au moyen age: des origines patristiques a la fin du
Decretum, Anthony Melnikas, The Corpus ofthe Miniatures in the Manuscripts XlVe siecle (Paris: Payot, 1944), p. 257.
of Decretum Graziani: Vol. I (Rome: StudiaGratiana XVI,. 1975), pp. 24-62. 18. Ladner, "The Concepts of'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," 492.
My discussion of the Skrziczick miniature draws heavily on Melnikas. 19. Quoted in Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 97.
5. Boniface VII, Unam Sanctarn (November 1302). Latin version in Corpus 20. Quoted in Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 97.
Iuris Canonici, II, ed.Aemilius Friedberg (Graz: Academische Druck-U. 21. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p.l07.
Verlagsanstalt, 1959), col. 1245-46. English translation in Tierney, The Crisis 22. Ladner, "'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," p. 508.
ofChu rch and State 1050-1300, pp. 188-89. 23. Innocent III, "Sermon on the Consecration of a Pope," in Tierney, The
6. Boniface VII, Unarn Sanctam, p. 188. Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 131-32.
7. Gerhart B. Ladner, "Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," 24. Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050-1250
reprinted in Ladner, Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies in (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 431.
History and Art, Vol. II (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983), 25. In the official documents of Innocent's predecessor, Alexander III (1159-1181),
pp. 435---55, at p. 447. Ladner observes that the Augustinian tradition between plenitude potestatis designated the delegation of power to a papal legate equiv-
the fifth and late eleventh century entertained a functional concept of the state: alent to the principle of plena potestas in civil and canon law. John B. Morrall,
"states are not communities or territories, but forms and functions of just gov- Political Thought in Medieval Times (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [In
ernment in the mixed condition in which the City of God finds itself on this association with the Medieval Academy of America], 1980), p. 66.
earth." p. 437. 26. On the other hand, Tierney notes that neither of these decretals con-
8. Quoted in Ladner, "Aspects .of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," tained any passages that were incompatible with claims to universal jurisdic-
p.439. tion. Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 127-28.
9. Ladner, "Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," p. 446. 27. Innocent III, letter to King John, accepting his feudal homage (April 1214), in
10. Gerhart B. Ladner, "The Concepts of 'Ecclesia' and 'Christlanlras' and their Tierney, The Crisis ofChurch and State, pp. 135-36.
relation to the idea of Papal 'Plenitudo Potestatis' from Gregory VII to Boniface 28. See on the genesis of vicarius Christi and Innocent Ill's deployment of it in
VIII," reprinted in Ladner, Images and Ideas, pp. 487-515. respect to potestas vicaria, that is the pope's authority within the ecclesiastical
11. The term Ecclesia is central to medieval theocratic thought, but the meaning hierarchy, Michele Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi: Storia del titolo papale (Rome:
is somewhat slippery. Ladner explains that with the increased emphasis on the Lateranurn, N.S., xviii, 1953).
doctrine of papal primacy from Gregory VII onwards, the universal church 29. See the "Sentence of deposition promulgated by Innocent IV in the General
(ecclesia uniuersalis) became increasingly identified with the Roman church Council of Lyon" (June 1245), in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State,
(Romana ecclesia). "The terms Ecclesia and Ecclesia Romana thus appear to coa- p.144.
lesce into one concept comprising the Church both as an institution, that is as 30. Innocent IV, encyclical letter Eger Cui Levia (c.1246), in Tierney, The Crisis of
an essentially clerical 'corporation', and as the community of all the faithful, Church and State, pp. 147-49. Eger Cui Levia also rejects the imperialist inter-
the Body of Christ. It was, perhaps, the formation of a 'corporational'-institu;... pretation of Constantine's donation of the empire to Pope Sylvester. For impe-
tional aspect of the concept of the Church which gave increasing importance to rialists all papal claims to temporal authority rested on this act, which could be
the concept of Christian 'temporal' society (Christianitas, populus Christian us, rescinded by the present emperor. Against this, Innocent argued that popes had
politia or respublica Christiana), not simply identical with the Church." Ladner, inherited both royal and priestly powers from Christ. Thus, in surrendering the
"Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State," pp. 444-45. empire to Sylvester, Constantine did not bestow temporal power for the first
12. Michael Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty in the Later Middle Ages: The Papal time on thepapacy, but merely acknowledged the de facto possession of what it
Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists (Cambridge: Cambridge already held de jure.
University Press, 1963). 31. Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p. 125.
13. Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty, p. 28. 32. Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, p. 126. My translation.
14. Quoted in Wilks, The Problem ofSovereignty, p. 58. 33. Hostiensis, On Decretales,4.17.13, in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State,
15. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, p. 8. pp. 156-57, at p. 156.
16. "Ullman's contention that the mediaeval belief in the superiority of anima over 34. Hostiensis, On Decretales, 1.33.6, in Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State,
corpus (the primacy of the spiritual) must lead to the doctrine of direct temporal p.157.
power of the Pope, is not borne out by the sources." Ladner, "The Concepts of 35. See Ullman; Medieval Papalism, pp. 114-37.
'Ecclesia' and 'Christianitas'," fn. 32 on p. 495. 36. See Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, pp. 84-85.
218 • Notes Notes • 219

37. Innocent IV, Comments on the decretale Quod Super, quoted in Maccarrone, 62. LiberAugustalis, p. 92. The following discussion draws heavily on Kantorowicz's
Vicarius Christi, p. 126. My translation from the Latin. consideration of the theological-juristic discourse of the emperor, The King's
38. See Ullman, Medieval Papalism. Two Bodies, pp. 87-143.
39. Innocent IV, Comments on Quod Super, in Maccarrone, Vicarius Christi, 63. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, pp. 94-97.
p.126. 64. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 99.
40. Ullman, Medieval Papalism, pp. 130-131. 65. Quoted in Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 106. See pp. 102-7 for
41. On the two swords, see ]. A. Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," in Kantorowicz's discussion of lex regia and lex digna.
]. H. Burns (ed.), Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450 66. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 137.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 367-423. Luke quote at 67. Dante Alighieri, Monarchia, tr. and ed. Prue Shaw (Cambridge:
p.370. Cambridge University Press, 1995).
42. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, p. 22. 68. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 5.
43. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, p. 22. 69. See on Aquinas' reasoning, Etienne Gilson, Dante et la philosophic (Paris:
44. Bernard, De consideratione iv, iii, 7, quoted in Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1939), pp. 191-92.
Powers," p. 373. 70. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 7, and III: xvi, p. 145.
45. Alanus, Commentary on Dist. 96 c. 6 (c.1202), in Tierney, Crisis 0/ 71. Dante, Monarchia, I:iii, p. 9.
Church and State, pp. 123-24. 72. Dante, Monarchia, I:ii, p. 7 and I:iv, p. 11.
46. Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, p. 189. 73. Dante, Monarchia, III:xiv, p. 141.
47. On the Investiture Contest, see Joseph Canning, A History ofMedieval Political 74. Dante, Monarchia, III:xv, p. 143.
Thought 300-1450 (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-110; and 1. S. Robinson, 75. Charles Till Davis, "Dante and the Empire," in Rachel Jacoff (ed.) , The
"Church and Papacy," in Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. Cambridge Companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
252-305, esp. pp. 246-48 and pp. 301-4. 1993), pp. 67-79, at p. 68.
48. Huguccio, quoted in Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," p. 376. See also 76. Dante, Monarchia, III:xvi, p. 149.
Huguccio, Commentary on Dist. 96 c. 6 (1189-"-91), in Tierney, Crisis ofChurch 77. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, tr. John Ciardi (New York:W. W.Norton,
and State, pp. 122-23. 1970), Purgatorio, XVI, 106-11, p. 280.
49. Watt, "Spiritual and Temporal Powers," p. 372. 78. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Dante's 'Two Suns'," in Kantorowicz, Selected Studies
50. Wilks, Problem ofSovereignty, p. 79. (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 325-38.
51. Francis Oakely, The Medieval Experience (Toronto: University of Toronto 79. Gilson, Dante et la philosophie, p. 210. My translation.
Press [in association with the Medieval Academy of America], 1988)~ esp. 80. Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p. 457.
pp. 105-35. 81. Kantorowicz, Kings Two Bodies, p. 465.
52. Oakely, The Medieval Experience, p. 111. 82. Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p.465, fn. 41.
53. Oakely, The Medieval Experience, p. 114. 83. Donna Mancusi-Ungaro, Dante and the Empire (New York: Peter Lang, 1987),
54. Brian Tierney, "Medieval Canon Law and Western Constitutionalism," The p.26.
Catholic Historical Review, 62:1, 1966, pp. 1-20 at pp. 7-8. 84. Dante, Paradiso, XVIII, 92-117, pp. 504-5. See PieroBoitani, "From Darkness
55. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and to Light: Governance and Government in Purgatorio XVI," in John Woodhouse
Medieval Ruler Worship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946). (ed.), Dante and Governance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 12-26.
56. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, p. 62. 85. Dante, Purgatorio, XVI, 94-96, pp. 280.
57. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political 86. Dante, Paradiso, XXX, 128-38, p. 581.
Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 63-64. See 87. Quoted in Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins ofGothic Architecture
pp. 61-78 for Kantorowicz's reading of this image. and the Medieval Concept of Order, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University
58. Quoted in Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 63. Press, 1988), p. 62.
59. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, p. 92. 88. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, tr.D Nicholson-Smith (Oxford:
60. Liber Augustalis, or Constitutions ofMelfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick Blackwell, 1991), p. 266.
Two fir the Kingdom o/Sicily in 1231, tr. James M. Powell (New York, Syracuse 89. Georges Duby, The Age o/the Cathedrals: ArtandSociety 980-1420, tr. E. Levieux
University Press, 1971). and B. Thompson (London: Croom Helm, 1981), p. 93.
61. Liber Augustalis, p. 4. 90. Duby, Age o/the Cathedrals, p. 95.
220 • Notes Notes • 221

91. Quotes from Sugar in Erwin Panofsky, "Introduction" to Abbot Sugar, On the 108. Original Latin version of Tractatus de Potestate Regia et Papali (1302-3) in
Abbey Church ofSt.-Denis and Its Art Treasures ed. and tr. Panofsky (Princeton: Dom Jean Leclercq,jeande Paris et i'ecciesiologiedu XlIle siecle (Paris: Librairie
Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 2. Philsophique, J. Vrin, 1942), pp. 171-260. English translation is John of Paris,
92. Abbot Sugar, On the Abbey Church ofSt.-Denis, p. 101. On Royal and Papal Power, tr. Arthur P. Monahan (New York: Columbia
93. The form of "the High Gothic cathedral sought to embody the whole of University Press, 1974). The best overview of the Tractatus is Riviere, Le
Christian knowledge, theological, moral, natural and historical, with every- probleme de ['eglise et de l 'etai, pp. 281-300.
thing in its place and that which no longer found its place suppressed." Erwin 109. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 1-2.
Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe, PA: Archabbey Press, 110. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 4.
1951), pp. 44-45. 111. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 7-8. John, like Aquinas, consid-
94. Duby, Age ofthe Cathedrals, p. 104. ered kingship, if possible mixed with aristocracy and democracy, to be the best
95. Duby, Age ofthe Cathedrals, p. 104. form of government.
96. von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, p. 141. Against the view that Suger under- 112. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, pp. 13-14.
stood kingship in sacral terms, some historians argue that his Life ofLouis VI 113. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 15 (Tractatus de Potestate, p. 181).
offers a more traditional theory ofkingship as royal suzerainty at the summit of 114. John of Paris, On Royaland Papal Power, p. 20.
a pyramid of feudal ties. See Andrew W. Lewis, "Suger's Views on Kingship," 115. See J. P. Canning, "Introduction: Politics, Institutions and Ideas, c. 1150-
in Paula Lieber Gerson (ed.), Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium (New c.1450," to Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 341-66, at
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986),pp. 9-54. p. 363~

97. Tierney, Crisis of Church and State, p. 172. The following account of the dis- 116. The Donation was a Carolingian forgery based on the Legenda sancti Silvestri
pute is drawn from pp. 172-92. (Legend of St Sylvester 480-90). See J. P. Kirsch, "Donation of Constantine,"
98. Boniface VIII, Ausculta Fili (December 1301), in Tierney, Crisis of Church and The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V (New York: Robert Appleton Company,
States, pp. 185-86. 1909).
99. For Aristotle's impact on medieval Christian thought, see Canning, fliitory of 117. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 43.
Medieval Political Thought, pp. 125-7; and Paul E. Sigmund "Introduction," 118. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 115.
to St. Thomas Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, tr. and ed, Sigmund (New 119. John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, p. 115.
York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. xvi-ix. 120. Riviere, Le probleme de l'eglise et de l'etat, pp. 272-307.
100. For Canning, Aquinas was not the main conduit ofAristotle's political ideas to 121. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought," in
the Middle Ages. More influential was Giles of Rome's (Aegidius Romanus) De Kantorowicz, Selected Studies,pp. 308-24.
regimine principum (1286), History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 133~34. 122. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori, p. 312.
101. See Sigmund, "Introduction," pp. xix-xx. 123. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori, pp. 314-15.
102. "Gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam," Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Ia, 8,2),
quoted in Canning, History ofMedieval Political Thought, p. 145. 6 The Renaissance Critique of Hierarchy
103. St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, tr. Henry
Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), XV:2, p. 598. 1. The exception is Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover,
104. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum [The Governance of Rulers or 1955).
On Kingship] (1265-67), tr, P. Sigmund, in Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, 2. Wallace K Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of
Chapter 1, p. 14. Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1948); also Ferguson,
105. Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, p. 15 and pp. 16-17. "The Reinterpretation of the Renaissance," (1956), reprinted in Wallace
106. See "The Treatise on Law (Qu. 90-97)", Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, K. Ferguson, Renaissance Studies (London, Ontario: University of Western
in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics, pp. 44-60. Divine law, the Ontario, 1963), pp. 17-30. See also Johan Huizinga, "The Problem of the
fourth law of the quadrate, is outside this order, for it pertains to God's com- Renaissance" (1920) in Huizinga, Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the
mands for guidance to supernatural destiny, as revealed to Christians through Renaissance, tr. J. S. Holmes and H. van Marle (New York: Meridian Books,
the Scriptures. 1959), pp. 243-87.
107. Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in IV Libros Sententiarum (125.3,,.,,,.55)/Jin 3. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm:
Tierney, Crisis ofChurch and State, p. 171. Almquist and Wiksell, 1960), p. 10.
4. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 36.
222 • Notes Notes • 223

5. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 35. 28. My discussion of Ficino and Pico is limited to their writings on space. Useful
6. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 35. general introductions can be found in Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles
7. "quasi prima cagione della rinovazione dell'arte," quoted in Huizinga, "Problem B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992);
of the Renaissance," p. 247; and "quella greca goffa maniera; et risuscito la and Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in
moderna, et buona arte della pittura," Vasari, Vita di Giotto, quoted in Federico Italian Humanist Thought, Vol. 11 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1970).
Chabod, "II Rinascimento," (1942) in Chabod, Scritti sui Rinascimento (Torino: 29. For Copenhaver and Schmitt, Ficino's Platonic Theology is "as much patristic
Giulio Einaudi, 1967), pp. 73-109, at p. 77. and scholastic as classical, depending not only on Plato, Plorinus and Proclus
8. On Enlightenment attitudes to the Renaissance, see Huizinga, "Problem of the but also on Augustine and Aquinas," Renaissance Philosophy, p. 149.
Renaissance," pp. 248-54. 30. Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Cambridge:
9. Voltaire, quoted in Huizinga, "Problem of the Renaissance," p. 250. Polity Press, 1986), p. 201. In Botticelli's Primavera the space between the earth
10. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New and moon is filled with nymphs, wood spirits, and demons.
York: Dover, 1956), pp. 410-411. 31. John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London: Harper
11. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon Collins, 1993), p. 562.
Press, 1995). 32. Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of the Idea
12. Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy, p. 61. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 101.
13. Burckhardt, The Civilization ofthe Renaissance in Italy, p. 87. 33. Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia 1:19, quoted in Pauline Moffitt Watts, "Pseudo-
14. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Dionysius the Areopagite and Three Renaissance Neoplatonists: Cusanus,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), P: vii. Ficino and Pico op. Mind and Cosmos" in James Hankins, John Monfasani and
15. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, ed, Donald L. Hill Frederick Purnell Jr. (eds.), Supplementum Festiuum: Studies in Honor of Paul
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 5. Oskar Kristeller (Binghampton: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance
16. Dana B. Durand, "Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy: Studies, 1987), pp. 279-98, at p. 294.
'II Prirnato dell' Italia' in the Field of Science," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 4, 34. Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficin 0, tr. V. Conant (N ew
1943, pp. 1-20. York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 74-75.
17. Ly~n Thorndike, "Renaissance or Prenaissance," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 35. On Flcino's hierarchy of being, see Kristeller, The Philosophy ofMarsilio Ficino,
4, 1943, pp. 63-74. pp. 104-9.
18. Thorndike, "Renaissance or Prenaissance," p. 74. 36. G. Pieo della Mirandola, Heptaplus, quoted in Watts, "Pseudo-Dionysius the
19. Hans Baron, "Towards a More' Positive Evaluation of the Fifteenth-Century Areopagite," p. 290.
Renaissance," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 4, 1943, pp. 21-49. 37. Pico, Heptaplus, quoted in Watts, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,"
20. Baron, "Towards a More Positive Evaluation," at pp. 32 and 45. 290-291.
21. Federico Chabod, "II Rlnascirnento," (1942) in Chabod, Scritti sui Rinascimento, 38. Pico, Heptaplus~78-79, quoted in R. Waddington, "The Sun at the Centre:
pp. 73-109, at p. 83. My translation. Structure as Meaning in Pico della Mirandola's Heptaplus," Journal ofMedieval
22. Chabod, "II Rinascimento," p. 92. and Renaissance Studies, 3, 1973, pp. 69-86, at p. 83.
23. E. H. Gombrich, "The Renaissance-Period or Movement?" in Background to the 39. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford;
English Renaissance: Introductory Lectures, ed. J. B. Trapp (London: Gra.y-Mills Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 43.
Publishing, 1974), pp. 9-30. 40. Ficino, quoted in Kristellet, Philosophy ofMarsilio Ficino, p. 120. Kristeller pro-
24. Wallace K. Ferguson, "The Interpretation of the Renaissance: Suggestions for a vides a comprehensive discussion of the soul, love, and the principle of affinity
Synthesis," (1948) in Ferguson, Renaissance Studies, pp. 125-35. in Ficino.
25. William J. Bouwsma, "The Renaissance and the Drama of Western History," 41. Charles Trinkaus, "Marsilio Ficino and the Idea of Human Autonomy," in
The American Historical Review, 84:1, 1979, pp. 1-15 at p. 5. G. Garfagnini (ed.) Marsilio .Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti
26. Bouwsma, "Drama of Western History," p. 8. (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1986), pp. 197---210.
27. EusebioColomer, "Individuo e Cosmo in Nicolo Cusano e Giovanni Pico," in 42. Ficino, Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum, quoted in Trinkaus, "Human
L'opera e ilpensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell' umanesimo Autonomy," p. 201.
(Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1965), pp~ 53-102, at 43. Ficino, Theologica Platonica II, quoted in Trinkaus, "Human Autonomy,"
p. 102. My translation. p.204.
224 • Notes Notes • 225

44. Trinkaus, "Human Autonomy," pp. 206 and 207. 66. Copernicus assumed that the structure of the universe was based on the sym-
45. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," in The metry of its parts. He placed the sun, the symbol of good in the Platonic tra-
Renaissance Philosophy ofMan: Selections in Translation, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul dition, in the middle of the universe. He assumed that the universe must be a
Oskar Kristeller, and J. H. Randall Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, sphere because "of all forms, the sphere is the most perfect." Furthermore, the
1948), pp. 223-54. "earth too is evidently enclosed between poles and is therefore spherical" and
46. Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," p. 224. "is perfectly round, as the philosophers taught." Copernicus, De revolutionibus,
47. Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man," pp. 224-25. at pp. 114 and 116.
48. Ernst Cassirer, "Giovanni Pica della Mirandola: A Study in the History of 67. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, p. 119.
Renaissance Ideas," in Paul Oskar Kristeller and Philip P. Wiener (eds.), 68. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, pp. 127-28.
Renaissance Essays From the Journal of the History ofIdeas (New York: Harper 69. Copernicus, De revolutionibus, p. 132.
and Row, 1968), pp. 11~60, at pp. 45 and 34. 70. Copernicus, De reuolutionibus, p. 133.
49. Pica, Heptaplus, quoted in Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, p. 519. 71. Ernst Cassirer, Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946),
50. Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Ficino and Pomponazzi on the Place of Man in the p. 132.
Universe," in Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts (Princeton: Princeton 72. Cassirer, Myth ofthe State, p. 133.
University Press, 1964), pp. 102-10, at pp. 109-10. 73. Cassirer, Myth o/the State, p. 136.
51. R. B. J. Walker, "Sovereignty, Identity, Community: Reflections on the 74. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
Horizons of Contemporary Political Practice," in R. B. J. Walker and Saul H. the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
Mendlovitz (eds.), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political CommtJr;..i.ty For Pocock, paradigms are language structures whose function is to define and
(Boulder: Lynne Rein ner, 1990), pp. 159-85, at p. 175. determine the commonly held view of politics in a society, thereby licensing
52. Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: The some forms of political belief and action and restricting others.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 2. 75. J. H. Hexter, "The Machiavellian Moment," History and Theory, 16:3, 1977,
53. Kristeller, "Ficino and Pornponazzi," p. 109. More recently, Karsten Harries, pp.306-37, at p. 316.
Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 76. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53.
54. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, tr. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: 77. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53.
Banning, 1981). Good introductions to Cusa's cosmology are Lovejoy, Great 78. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 53.
Chain of Being, pp. 108-16; Koyre, From the Closed World, pp. 5~2.3; and 79. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 56-57.
Harries, Infinity and Perspective, pp. 22~63. 80. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment,p. 165.
55. Quoted in Harries, Infinity and Perspective, p. ·50. 81. Gennaro Sasso, "Machiavelli e la teoria dell~nacyclosis,"Rivista Storica Italiana,
56. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 1:1, p. 50. All quotations in this paragraph are 70:1, 1958, pp. 333-73. See Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di
from this passage. Tito Levio, ed. Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese (Milano: Biblioteca Universale
57. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 1:2, p. 51. Rizzoli, 1984), I:ii. For a useful comparison of Polybius .and Machiavelli, see
58. Harries points out that Cusa took the metaphor from Meister Eckhardt who, in Leslie J. Walker, "Notes on Book I," in The Discourses of'Niccolo Machiavelli, ed.
turn, refers to the twelfth-century pseudo-Hermetic Liber J0YI1/ philosopborum, Walker (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), pp. 6-13.
Infinity and Perspective, p. 59. 82. Sasso, "Machiavelli e Anacyclosis," p. 340
59. Harries, Infinity and Perspective, p. 60. 83. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:ii, p. 67. This and all subsequent quotes are my
60. Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, 11:2, p. 93. translations.
61. See Harris, Infinity and Perspective, p. 60. 84. Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth
62. Cusa quoted in Lovejoy, Great Chain ofBeing, pp. 112-13. Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), p. 199.
63. Nicholas Copernicus, De revolutionibus erbium coelestium, reprinted in Michael 85. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 184.
J. Crowe, Theories ofthe Worldfrom Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (New 86. Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge,
York: Dover, 1990), pp. 102-34. MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 19.
64. Bertrand Russell, A History o/Western Philosophy (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 87. Anthony]. Parel, The Machiavellian Cosmos (New Haven: Yale University
1979), p. 513; and Lovejoy, Great Chain ofBeing, pp. 103-4. Press, 1992), p. 65. Cary J. Nederrnan, "Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and
65. Harries, Infinity and Perspective, pp. 33-34. Free Will in Machiavelli's Thought," Journal 0/the History ofIdeas, 60:4, 1999,
226 • Notes Notes • 227

pp. 617-38 argues against Parel that Christian providentialisrn still under- (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi suI Rinascimento, MCM LXV) ,
scores Machiavelli's concept ofJortuna. pp. 53---102, at p. 102. My translation.
87. Parel argues that Machiavelli's references tofortuna in his political writings shows 2. The secondary literature on the meaning of lo stato in Renaissance politi-
that he is still beholden to the beliefs of a premodern mindset, such as a belief that cal theory is extensive. I have found particularly useful, Nicolai Rubinstein,
the heavens determine man's destiny. A.]. Parel, "The Question of Machiavelli's "Notes on the Word Stato in Florence before Machiavelli," in J. G. Rowe and
Modernity," The Review ojPolitics, 53:2, 1991, pp. 320-29, at p. 321. w. H. Stockdale (eds.), Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K
88. Niccolo Machiavelli, II Principe, ed. Arthur L. Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Ferguson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), pp. 313-26; Quentin
Press, 1891), XVI, pp. 365-67 and p. 358. These and subsequent quotations Skinner, "The State," in Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell L. Hanson
are my translations. (eds.), Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge
89. Mikael Horriqvist, Machiavelli and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University University Press, 1989), pp. 90-131; Federico Chabod, "Esiste uno State del
Press, 2004), p. 236. Rinascimento?" in Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento (Torino: Giulio Einaudi,
90. Giuseppe Prezzoli ni, Machiavelli: Anticristo (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1954), 1967), pp. 593~623; and Chabod, "Alcune questioni di terminologia: Stato,
p. 30. My translation. Compare Strauss's view of II Principe as "immoral and nazione, patria nel linguaggio del Cinquecento," in Scritti sul Rinascimento,
irreligious" and Machiavelli as a "teacher of evil with Sebastian De Grazia's pp. 625~61.
claim that the many references to God "[s] cattered about his writings ... like 3. Skinner, "The State," p. 98.
poppies in a field of chick peas" indicates that scholastic categories of knowl- 4. These examples are from Rubinstein and Skinner respectively.
edge and Christian cultural norms pervade Machiavelli's writing to the extent 5. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 315.
that he "discourses about God always in the conventional reverent attitude." 6. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 317.
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 7. Skinner, "The State," p. 101.
1969), pp. 9-10 and p. 12; and Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (New 8. Vespasiano and Guicciardini are both quoted in Skinner, "The State," p. 101.
York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), pp. 58-59. 9. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 319. My translation.
91. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 96. 10. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 318. Rubinstein claims that by the
92. Machiavelli, II Principe, XI, p. 248. time Piero de Medici was ousted in 1494 "the theoretical concept of stato as
93. Machiavelli, Discorsi, II:ii, p. 299. constitution had lost most of its original meaning by the transformation of the
94. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xi, p. 92. power structure of Florence into the Medici regime." p. 319.
95. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xi, p. 93. 11. Felix Gilhert,Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth
96. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 95. Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965),p. 177.
97. J. Samuel Preus, "Machiavelli's Functional Analysis of Religion: Context and 12. Skinner, "The State," p. 100.
Object," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, XL:2, 1979, pp. 171-90. 13. Skinner, "The State," p. 102.
98. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:xii, p. 94. 14. Skinner, "The State," p. 103.
99. Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli," in Berlin, Against the Current: 15. ]. H. Hexter, The Vision ofPolitics on the Eve ofthe Reformation: More, Machiavelli
Essays in the History ofIdeas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: The Hogarth Press, and Seyssel (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 175.
1979), pp. 25-79. 16. Prezzolini, Machiavelli, pp. 14-17.
100. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III:i, p. 461. 17. F. Chiappelli, Studi suI linguaggio de/Machiavelli, quoted in Skinner, "The
101. Bernard Guillemain, Machiavel: L'anthropologie politique (Geneva: Librairie State," p. 102.
Droz S.A., 1977), p. 328. My translation. 18. Chabod, "Esiste uno State," p. 604. My translation.
102. Guillemain, Machiauel.L'anthropologie politique, p. 328. 19. Although this concept of the modern state was a product of the seventeenth-
103. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 135. century tradition of natural law absolutism, represented by Bodin, Suarez,
104. Cassirer, The Myth ofthe State, p. 140. Grotius, and Hobbes, the Renaissance republican idea that the res publica, the
community, was the ultimate source of authority, and that the rulers and mag-
istrates were merely elected officials was also influential. Skinner, "The State,"
7 Machiavelli, Territoriality and Lo Stato
p.l07.
1. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Machiavelli: Anticristo (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1954), p. 3. 20. Niccolo Machiavelli, Il Principe, ed. L. Arthur Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2. Eusebio Colomer, "Individuo e Cosmo in Nicolo Cusano e Giovanni Pico," in 1891), 1, pp. 173-74. All subsequent citations are from this text and are my
L'opera e ilpensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell'umanesirno translations, unless stated otherwise.
228 • Notes Notes • 229

21. Machiavelli, II Principe, p. 183. Allan Gilbert translates this as "[t]he 40. Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in Graham Burchill, Colin Gordon
remote origin and long continuance of such sovereignty," Niccolo Machiavelli, and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester
The Prince in Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others: Volume One, tr. Gilbert Wheatshea£ 1991), pp. 87-104, at p. 104. Foucault argues that the sixteenth-
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), p. 12. century territorial administrative state, analogous to the territorial a priori, of
22. Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (New York: Harvester Wheatshea£ International Relations was supplanted in the classical age by the "governmen-
1989), pp. 158-59. tal state," no longer defined by its surface area or territory but by a population
23. Adolf Berger, Encyclopaedic Dictionary ofRoman Law (Philadelphia: American which it controls through economic savoir.
Philosophical Society, 1953), p. 441. 41. Foucault, "Governmentality," p. 93.
24. Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. I~ 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 42. Foucault, "Governmentality," p. 90.
p.949. 43. Foucault, "Governmentality," p.90.
25. F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 44. Sheldon S. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy ofViolence," in Wolin, Politics
1986), p. 26. and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (London:
26. Jens Bartleson, A Genealogy ofSovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University George Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 195-238, at p. 221.
Press, 1995), pp. 88-136. 45. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, pp. 253-55.
27. Bartleson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty, p. 136. Bartleson rejects the 46. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 277.
"Renaissance hypothesis" that the 1494 French expedition into Italy symbolized 47. See, especially, Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art ofWar, tr. and ed. N. Wood (New
the moment when the state began to be imagined as distinct from an interna- York: Da Capo, 1965).
tional system existing outside of its borders. Because there was no rigid dif- 48. As first secretary of the Ten of Liberty and Peace and later as secretary to the
ferentiation between the inside and outside of particular states in Renaissance Nine of the Florentine Ordinance and Militia, Machiavelli had been personally
discourse, the notion of the international as a realm of the relations between involved in the recruitment and training of troops, conducting operations and
autonomous states "dependent on yet ontologically distinguishable from indi- negotiating treaties, and in proposing statutes governing the recruiting, equip-
vidual states" was not possible. ping, paying, and disciplining of native infantry.. See de Grazia, Machiavelli
28. Bartleson, A Genealogy ofSovereignty, p. 118. in Hell, pp. 93-97; and Machiavelli, "LaCagione dell'Ordinanza," in Niccolo
29. Hinsley, Sovereignty, p. 113. Machiavelli, L'Arte della Guerra, Scritti Politici Minori (Rome: Salerno Editrice,
30. See Walter Ullman, "The Development of the Medieval Idea of 2001), pp. 470-476.
Sovereignty," English Historical Review, 64, 1949, pp. 1-33. 49. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 255.
31. "Rexpoterit in regno suo, quod imperator in terra imperii . . . Liberi reges tantum 50. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 255.
habent in regnis suis quantum imperator in imperio," quoted in Ullman, "The 51. Machiavelli, II Principe, XII, p. 256.
Development of the Medieval Idea of Sovereignty," p. 24. 52. Machiavelli, The Art ofWar, I, p. 40.
32. Walter Ullman, "Personality and Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis': The 53. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy of Violence," p. 221.
Problem of Political Humanism," in Ullman, Law andJurisdiction in the Middle 54. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca diTito Levio, ed. Gennaro
Ages (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), pp. 397-410. For Ullman the devel- Sasso and Giorgio Inglese (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1984), III:iii,
opment of the principle of territorial sovereignty could be seen in the chang- p. 467. My translation. Machiavelli's reference is to Brutus who, according to
ing intitulations of kings from Rex Francorum to Rex Franciae and from Rex Livy, not only ordered the death but attended the execution of his sons, the
Anglorum to Rex Angliae. rebellious Tarquins.
33. Ullman, "Personality and Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis'," p. 401. 55. Machiavelli, Discorsi, Irxxi, p. 114.
34. Robert could not "potest trahi extra territoriurn," see Ullman, "Personality and 56. Machiavelli, II Principe, X, p. 244.
Territoriality in the 'Defensor Pacis'," p. 402. 57. Machiavelli, II Principe, X, p. 244.
35. DeGrazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 159. 58. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," pp. 320-321.
36. "se io potessi sbucare del dominio," Machiavelli, quoted in de Grazia, Machiavelli 59. Elana Fasano Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," The Journal ofModern History,
in Hell, p. 159. 67, 1995, 574-96, at 574.
37. Rubinstein, "Notes on the Word Stato," p. 320. In diplomatic documents des- 60. Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," S74-75.
potic states had the same status as republics. 61. Elena Fasano Guarani, "Machiavelli and the Crisis of the Italian Republics,"
38. Rubinstein, "Notes on theWord Stato," fn. 79, p. 326. in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (eds.), Machiavelli and
39. Chabod, "Alcune questioni," p. 631. My translation. Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 17-40.
230 • Notes Notes • 231

62. Machiavelli, quoted in Guarani, "Machiavelli and the Crisis of the Italian 82. The problems that Florence faced in keeping hold of cities with traditions of
Republics," p. 23. liberty also exercised Guicciardini, "it has been harder for the Florentines to
63. See the extracts in Machiavelli, The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, pp. 161-2. acquire their small dominion than for the Venetians to gain their large one. For
64. In 1502 and 1503 Machiavelli was sent on official missions to Valentino's courts the Florentines are in a province that used to be full of free republics, which
at Imolaand Cesana, and then to the Papal court in Rome. From these courts are very difficult to extinguish. It requires the greatest effort to conquer them
he sent detailed dispatches to the Ten of Liberty reporting on the status of the and, once conquered, it is no less difficult to keep them.... The cities captured
ongoing alliance negotiations between Florence and Borgia. In these legations by the Venetians have been used to being subjected and lack the determination
Machiavelli describes Cesare's rise and fall. See the extracts from Legation 11, to defend themselves or to rebel.' Ricordo 29, Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi,
"An Official Mission to Duke Valentino in Romagna" in Machiavelli, The Chief Diari, Memorie, ed. Mario Spinella (Rorna: Editori Riun iti, 1981), p. 150. My
Works, Vol. 1, pp. 121-42; and Legation 13, ''An Official Mission to the Court translation.
of Rome" in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 1, pp. 142-60. In the Roman 83. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
legation Machiavelli reports on the death of Pope Alexander in 1503 and the the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975),
succession ofJulius II; these events reappear in The Prince as the blow offortuna p.163.
which ultimately cost Cesare his princedom. On Cesare's elimination of the 84. Machiavelli, Il Principe, III, p. 186.
Vitelli and Orsini factions in January 1503, see Machiavelli, 'A Description of 85. Antonio Crarnsci, Quaderno 29 "Note per una introduzione allo studio
the Method Used by Duke Valentino in Killing Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto cia della grammarica," in Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere, Vol III (Giulio Einaudi,
Fermo, and Others' in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Vol. 1, pp. 163-9. 1975), pp. 2339-53.
65. Machiavelli, The Prince, r- 31. 86. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alIa nostra lingua," in Niccolo
66. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, tr, Alan Sheridan Machiavelli, Tutte Le Opere, ed. Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (Firenze:
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp.136-138. G. Barbera, 1929), pp. 770-78.
67. Pierangelo Schiera, "Legitimacy, Discipline and Institutions: Three Necessary 87. de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 146.
Conditions for the Birth of the Modern State," The Journal ofModern History, 88. Quoted in de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 148.
67: Supplement (December 1995), pp. SI1-33, at pp. S30 and S32 89. Machiavelli, "Letter to Francesco Vettori," April 16, 1527, quoted in de Grazia,
68. Marsiglio of Padua, quoted in Schiera, "Legitimacy, Discipline and Machiavelli in Hell, p. 420.
Institutions," p. S19. 90. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alIa nostra lingua," pp. 770-71.
69. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1:12, in The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, p. 227. My translation.
70. Machiavelli, Art ofWar, 6, in The ChiefWorks, Vol. 1, p. 69. 91. The terms piccola patria and la grande patria are from Chabod, ''Alcune
71. Sacchetti quoted in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Questione." In most Italian quattrocento texts patria refered to the city, although
Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 1979), p. 165. it occasionally denoted the wider collectivity.
72. Martin Warnke, Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature (London: 92. Machiavelli, Il Principe, XXIV, "Esortazione a Liberare L'Italia da' Barbari,"
Reaktion Books, 1994), p. 40. pp.365-71.
73. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 166. 93. Machiavelli, II Principe, XXIV, p. 367.
74. Guarani, "Center and Periphery," S81-82. 94. Machiavelli, II Principe, XVI, p. 371. Patria here denotes Florence, which will
75. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I:vi, p. 78. be ennobled if the Medici take on the role of liberating Italy.
76. S. Zamperetti, 1 piccoli principi: Signorie locali, feudi e comunita soggette nello 95. Translation from Petrarch, Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta,
Stato regionale veneto dall' espansione territoriale ai primi decenni del' 600, tr. James Wyatt Cook (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and
quoted in Guarani, "Centre and Periphery," S86. Studies, 1995, p. 185. "Italia Mia" is on pages pp. 182-87.
77. Wolin, "Machiavelli and the Economy of Violence," p. 219. 96. See on these debates: Felix Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism in
78. Niccolo Machiavelli, The History ofFlorence, in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Machiavelli's Prince," Studies in the Renaissance, 1, 1954, pp. 38-48; David
Vol. 3, I: xxix, p. 1069. Laven, "Machiavelli, italianita and the French invasion of 1494," in David
79. William E. Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory and Violence," Theory, Culture Abulafia (ed.), The French Descent into Renaissance Italy: Antecedents and Effects
and Society, 11:1, 1994, pp. 19-40, at p. 22. (Aldershot:Variorum, 1995), pp. 355-69; and Hans Baron, "The Principe and
80. Machiavelli, II Principe, III, pp. 183-200. the Puzzle. of the Date of Chapter 26," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
81. Machiavelli, Il Principe, III, p. 187. Studies, 21:1, 1991, pp. 83-102.
232 • Notes Notes • 233

97. Prezzolini, Machiavelli.· Anticristo, p. 73. 3. Carlo Ginzburg, "Distanza e prospettiva: Due metafore," in Ginzburg, Occhiacci
98. Federico Chabod, L'idea di nazione (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1962), p. 7. My di legno: Nove riflessioni sulla distanza (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998), pp. 171-93.
translation. 4. John Gerard Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in
99. See, for example, Machiavelli, Discorsi, III:xliii, p. 565. International Relations," International Organization, 47: 1, 1993, pp. 139-74,
100. Niccolo Machiavelli, "Ritratto di case di Francia," Machiavelli, Tutte Le Opere, at p. 159.
pp.731-39. 5. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond," p. 159.
101. Machiavelli, "Discorso 0 dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua," p. 771. 6. Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, tr. C. S. Wood (New York: Zone
102. Vincent Ilardi, "'Italianita' among Some Italian Intellectuals in the Early Books, 1991), p. 27.
Sixteenth Century," Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History> Thought 7. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, fn. 5, p. 77.
and Religion, 12, 1956, pp. 339-67, at p. 362. 8. "[L]a 'Grande Charte' de LaRenaissance', Henri Focillon, Piero della Francesca
103. Petrarch, "Italia Mia," lines 21, 30, and 56. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), p. 100. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting,
104. Petrarch, "Italia Mia," lines 80-86. tr. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin Books, 1991). The best introduction
105. Fazio degli Uberti, Rime, XVII "Ai Signori e Popoli d Ttalia, Serventese," at to Alberti and perspective is Alison Cole, Perspective (London: Darling
http://www.classicitaliani.it/trecento/fazio_uberti04.htm. KindersLey, 1992).
106. Salutati, quoted in Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 4l. 9. Martin Kemp, Behind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance
107. On Flavio Biondo see The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11 (Online 2003), http:// (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 95-96.
www.newadvent.org/cathen/02575a.htm. 10. Alberti, quoted in Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 90.
108. Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, p. 255. 11. Martin Kemp, "Introduction" to Alberti, On Painting, p. 2.
109. Petrarch, "Ital ia Mia," lines 33-35. 12. Giulio Carlo Argan, "The Architecture of Brunelleschi and the Origins
110. Petrarch, "ItaliaMia," lines 74 and21. of Perspective Theory in the Fifteenth Century," Journal 0/ the Warburg and
111. Denys Hay, "Italy and Barbarian Europe," in Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. Courtauld Institutes, 9, 1946, pp. 96-121.
E. F. Jacobs (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), pp. 48---68. 13. Alberti, On Painting, p. 37.
112. Hay, "Italy and Barbarian Europe," pp. 57-58. 14. Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 93.
113. Machiavelli, History ofFlorence, V:i, p. 1233. 15. Alberti, On Painting, p. 53.
114. Marcel Gagneux, "Iralianire, Patrie Florentine et service de L'Eglise dans 16. Alberti, On Painting,pp. 64-65.
l'oeuvre et dans la vie de Francois Guichardin," in Quetes d>une identite collec- 17. On Alberti's notion of the virtuous painter, see Kemp, Behind the Picture,
tive chez lesItaliens de la Renaissance (Paris: Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, pp.96-97.
1990), pp. 67-119, at p. 80. 18. Kemp, Behind the Picture, p. 96.
115. Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d Ttalia; ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi (Torino: 19. Focillon, Piero della Francesca, p. 104. My translation.
Giulio Einaud i, 1971), IV:vi, pp. 376 and 377. 20. Alessandro Angelini, Piero della Francesca (Florence: Scala, 1985), p. 17.
116. Guicciardini, quoted in Gagneux, "Italianite," fn. 44, p. 80. 21. Focillon, Piero della Francesca,p. 112. My translation.
117. Guicciardini, Storia d Ttaiia, I:ix, p. 78. My translation. 22. On De prospectiva pingendi see Kemp, Behind the Picture, pp. 97-101; Marco
118. Ilardi, "Italianita," p. 359. Bussagli, Piero della Francesca (Firenze:Giunti, 1992), pp. 5-13; and James
119. Ilardi, "Italianita," p. 359. Elkins, "Piero della Francesca and the Renaissance Proof of Linear Perspective,"
120. Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 44. The Art Bulletin, 69:2, 1987, pp. 220-30.
121. Quoted in Gilbert, "The Concept of Nationalism," p. 43. 23. Cole, Perspective, p. 18. The squares of the terra cotta pavement are eight wide
122. Machiavelli, History 0/Florence, VI:xxxvi, p. 1435. and deep, there are eight-pointed stars behind and in front of Christ, and an
octagonal arrangement of patterned floor tiles around the stars. The piazza, in
which the foreground figures are standing, is eight units deep into the shade of
8 Picturing Renaissance Territoriality
the middle distance, and then another eight units deep into light-flooded areas
1. 'Niccolo Machiavelli, 11Principe, ed. L. Arthur Burd (Oxford: Clarendon Press in front of the far wall.
1891), pp. 173-74. 24. Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, p. 15. My translation.
2. Leonardo, quoted in RogerD. Masters, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science 25. Henri Lefebvre, The Production ofSpace, tr, Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford:
0/Power (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p. 52. Blackwell, 1991), p. 79.
234 • Notes Notes • 235

26. Denis Cosgrove, "Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape until the second decade of the Cinquecento were the doors of the ducal apartment
Idea," Transactions of the Institute ofBritish Geographers: New Series, 10, 1985, in the palace ofUrbino(1474-82).
pp. 45-62, at p. 55. 44. Andre Chastel, "Vues urbaines, peintres et theatre," quoted in Hubert Damisch,
27. Martin Jay, "Scopic Regimes of Modernity," in Hal Foster (ed.), Vision and The Origin of Perspective, tr. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988), pp. 3--23. For Jay, Cartesian perspectival- 1994), p. 225.
ism, which combined philosophical ideas of subjective rationality with the artis- 45. Alessandro Parronchi, "Due note, 2. Urbino-Baltimora-Berlino," Rinascimento,
tic principles of perspective, was the dominant visual model or "scopic regime" 29, 1968,pp. 355-61.
of modernity. Although Cartesian-Perspectivalism was preeminent because it 46. Richard Krautheirner, "The Tragic and Comic scenes of the Renaissance: The
seemed to best express "the 'natural' experience of sight valorised by a scientific Baltimore and Urbino Panels," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 33, 1948, pp. 327-48.
world-view," it was challenged by two counter regimes: (1) an "art of describing," He retracted this reading in "The Panels in Urbina, Baltimore and Berlin
as in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, based in cartographic principles; and Reconsidered."
(2) a "madness of vision," as in Baroque art, which flaunted the opacity of the 47. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, pp. 238-39.
sublime subject and underscored the rhetorical conventionality of sight. 48. Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, p. 446. Damisch views the panels
28. Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (Basingstoke: as "representations of representation," a demonstration of perspective. He is
Macmillan Press, 1983), p. 94. interested in how costrueione legittima functions as a dispositif or model "what
29. Perspective erased "the living body itself: this is a space dominated by linguists call an 'expressive apparatus' (dispositifd'enonciation, sometimes trans-
the eye and the gaze." Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge: lated as 'sentence structure')." Costruzione legittima is "characterised by the
Blackwell Publishers, 1994), p. 392. conjunction, the bringing together at a given point designated the 'origin', of
30. John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (London: Faber and lines that measure the declension of figures, by establishing their relationship
Faber, 1957), p. 121. to a shared horizon line, while simultaneously determining their conj ugation
31. Argan, "Architecture of Brunelleschi," p. 96. on a plane.," p. xxi.
32. Jay, "Scopic Regimes," at pp. 4 and 6. 49. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 53.
33. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, pp. 42 and 34. 50. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 341.
34. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, p. 58. 51. Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy
35. Samuel Y. Edgerton, jr, The Renaissance Rediscovery ofLinear Perspective (New (New York: Alfred A Knopf: 1979)., p. 272.
York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 161. 52. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 275.
36. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery ofLinear Perspective, p. 7. 53. Denis Cosgrove, "Prospect, Perspective," p. 49.
37. James Elkins, The Poetics ofPerspectiue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 54. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992),
pp.28-29. p. xv.
38. Lefebvre, Production ofSpace, p. 78. 55. Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization
39. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), esp. pp. 212-51.
Prospects (London: Penguin Books, 1961). 56. Sennett, Flesh and Stone, p. 227.
40. Richard Krautheirner, "The Panels in Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin 57. Dolfin, quoted in Sennett, Flesh and Stone, pp. 234-35. Ghetto means foundry
Reconsidered," in Henry A. Millon (ed.), Italian Renaissance Architecture: From in Italian from the verb gettare, to pour.
Brunelleschi to Michelangelo (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 233--56, 58. Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 271-76.
at p. 238. 59. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 274.
41. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art ofBuilding in Ten Books, tr. Joseph Rykwerr, 60. Alberti, On the Art of Building, p. 118. Alberti's utopia was a product of its
Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988). time, "adapted to the realities of fifreenth-century Italy and thus envisioned
42. For an overview of the theme of the ideal city in the Renaissance, with particu- under different forms of government-a republic; a prince ruling in accord with
lar emphasis on Alberti's De re aedificatoria and Filarete's Trattato d'architettura, his subjects; or one imposing his will, a tyrannus." Krautheimer, "The Panels
see Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution in Europe, 3rd ed. Reconsidered," p. 255.
(London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 42-67. 61. Francoise Choay, The Rule and Method: On the Theory of Architecture and
43. Fiske Kimball, "Luciano Laurana and the 'High Renaissance'," Art Bulletin, 10, Urbanism (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 5. De re aedificatoria was
1927-8, pp. 124-51. The only other grand visionary urban settings produced presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and printed by Poliziano in 1485.
236 • Notes Notes • 237

62. 1(. J. P. Lowe, "Patronage and Territoriality in Early Sixteenth Century 74. da Bisticci notes that these objects were not just for show, but reflected the fact
Florence," Renaissance Studies, 7:3, 1993, pp. 258-7l. that Federico was himself a man of high culture: well-read in history, conver-
63. Lowe, "Patronage and Territoriality," p. 260. sant with philosophy, knowledgeable of architecture, and appreciative of music,
64. The best discussion of the Urbina Portraits is Eugenio Battisti, Piero della sculpture and painting. Vite, pp. 236-37.
Francesca (Milano: Instituto Editoriale Italiano, 1971), pp. 355-71. See also 75. Westfall, "Chivalric Declaration," pp. 28-31.
Angelini, Piero della Francesca, pp. 60-7; and Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, 76. A. Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton:
pp. 43-47. Originally the two portraits were separated by a hinge that allowed Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 11-12.
them to be opened and shut like a book. When closed, the cover showed the 77. Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (London: John Murray, 1949), p. 14.
two allegorical triumphs. The precise dates of the portraits remains u~known. 78. Scholars disagree when ·landscape painting emerged as a distinctive genre.
Battista's portraits were probably commissioned by Federico after her death in E. H. Gombrich, "The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of Landscape,"
July 1472. Bussagli claims Federico's portraits were painted before 1467. For in Gombrich, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art o/the Renaissance (London:
Battisti, Federico's allegorical triumph is a reference to his crowning in Rome Phaidon Press, 1966), pp. 107-21, argues that Giorgione's Tempesta (c.1512)
which means it must be dated after the summer of 1474. Focillon dates both was the first landscape painting. Clark dates the origins of the landscape of fact
portraits to Piero's residency in Urbino in 1456. Bussagli notes that it was not earlier to Gentile da Fabriano's Flight into Egypt 1423, which, although still
until 1834 that claims that they were portraits of either Francesco Petrarca and replete with symbolism, is the first painting where the details of a landscape are
Laura or of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and his consort Isotta degli Atti united by light rather than by decorative arrangements. Clark, Landscape into
were abandoned. Art, p. 15.
65. Bussagli, Piero della Francesca, p. 45. My translation of Bussagli's Italian 79. Turner, Vision ofLandscape, pp. 9-10.
translation from the Latin. 80. Turner, Vision ofLandscape, p. 3. ..
66. The Montefeltro had been mercenaries since the Middle Ages. The pro- 81. William E. Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory and Violence," Theory, Culture
fession had given them the resources to control their terre castellate in the moun- and Society, 11:1, 1994, pp. 19-40.
tainous frontier region between the Papal domains and Imperial territories. 82. Battisti, Piero, pp. 357-58. Federico's biographers attributed these innovations
67. According to Vespasiano da Bisticci, Federico's military virtu was partially directly to the prince. Castiglione reasoned that Federico's subjects enjoyed the
derived from his mastery of Latin, which allowed him to absorb the lessons fruits of fertile and abundant lands because of the wise and just rule of their
of the ancients. See the excerpts from Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite, in Eugenio ottimi Signori. Castiglione, II libra del Cortegiano, I:ii, pp. 33. For da Bisticci,
Garin, II Rinascimento Italiano (Bologna: Capelli, 1980), pp. 236--38. Federico took a personal interest in the cultivation of the land: he provided
68. Niccolo Machiavelli, The History of Florence, Chief Works and Others, Vol. III, housing and security for the agricultural laborers, and personally visited their
tr. Allan Gilbert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), VII:xxxi, p. 1376. workshops and farms to enquire into their well-being., da Bisticci, Vite, p. 238.
Machiavelli notes several subsequent shifts ofallegiance by Federico. From 1447-8 83. Andrew Martindale, "The Middle Ages of Andrea Mantegna," Journal of the
Federico served Florence as a general against King Alfonso of Naples. However in Royal Society ofArts, 127, 1979, pp. 627-42, at p. 631.
1452 he commanded 12,000 of Alfonso's troops against Florence. Between 1467 84. Angelini, Piero della Francesca, p. 66.
and 1474 Federico was once again in the pay of Florence, campaigning against 85. Angelini, Piero della Francesca, p.62.
Venice and quelling disturbances in Volterra. Then as a papal soldier, Federico 86. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 188.
again fought against Florence, leading an attack on the city of Radda in 1478. 87. Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
69. Darnisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 187. 1991), p. 88.
70. Damisch, The Origin ofPerspective, p. 188. 88. The Geographia was introduced into the Western tradition by Manuel
71. Pierantonio Paltrorii, Commentari della vita et gesti dell'illustrissimo Federico Chrysoloras and Jacopo d'Angelo. The first edition, without maps, was pub-
Duca d'Urbino, quoted in C. W. Westfall, "Chivalric Declaration: The Palazzo lished in Venice in 1475, the first with maps in Bologna 1477. Six editions were
Ducale in Urbino as aPolitical Statement," in Henry A. Millon and Linda published before 1500. The general ideas rather than the work as a whole are
Nochlin (eds.), Art and Architecture in the Service ofPolitics (Cambridge, MA: derived from Ptolemy himself. The Geographia was compiled by Byzantium
MIT Press, 1978), pp. 20-45. scholars in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the maps were drawn by a
72. Baldassarre Castiglione, II libro del Cortegiano, ed. Ettore Bonora (Milano: Greek monk Maximos Planudes around 1300. See, W. G. L. Randles, De la
Mursia, 1972), r.u, p. 33. My translation. terre plate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique rapide (1480-1520)
73. Castiglione, Illibro del Cortegiano, p. 33 (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980).
238 • Notes Notes • 239

89. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr, "From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian 3. Edmundo O'Gorman, The Invention of America (Bloomington: Indiana
Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance," in University Press, 1961). For a strident critique of O'Gorman see Wilcomb
David Woodward (ed.), Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: E. Washburn, "The Meaning of 'Discovery' in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 10'-50. Centuries," The American Historical Review, 68:1, 1962, pp. 1-21.
90. Dana B. Durand, "Tradition and Innovation in Fifteenth Century Italy: 'II 4. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 39.
Prirnato dell'Italia' in the Field of Science," Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, IV, 5. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 41.
1943, pp. 1-20, at p. 5. 6. W. G. L. Randles, De la terreplate au globe terrestre: une mutation epistemologique
91. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 14. rapide (1480-1520) (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1980).
92. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," pp. 12-15. 7. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeralda de Situ Orbis (Lisbon: 1508), quoted in
93. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 11. Randles, De la terre plate, p. 38. My translation.
94. Edgerton, "Mental Matrix to Mappamundi," p. 13. 8. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 39. My translation.
95. P. D. A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures and 9. Although the term terraqueous globe was first used in the seventeenth century,
Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), p. 58. The following dis- Randles believes all the essential elements were in place by the middle of the
cussion draws heavily on Harvey. John Marino accepts that in Europe only sixteenth.
Italy had a "map consciousness" but warns that it was premised in "an inte- 10. Pedro Margalho, Physices Compendium (Salamanca: 1520), quoted in Randles,
grated cosmography of spiritual and geographical knowledge," John Marino, De la terre plate, p. 65. My translation.
"Administrative Mapping in the Italian States," in David Buisseret (ed.), 11. Randles, De La terre plate, p. 90. My translation.
Monarchs, Ministers and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as ia Tool of 12. "Digest of Columbus's Log Book on his First Voyage made by Bartolome de las
Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Casas," in Christopher Columbus, The Four Voyages, ed. and tr. ]. M. Cohen
1992), pp. 5-25, at p. 5. (London: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 37-76, at pp. 71-72.
96. Harvey, History of Topographical Maps, p. 76. 13. Fernando Colon, The History of the Life and Deeds of the Admiral Don
97. Harvey, History of Topographical Maps, p. 155. Christopher Columbus, [Repertorium Columbianum Vo/XII] , tr. Geoffrey Symcox
98. Machiavelli, II Principe, XIV, pp. 279-80. and Blair Sullivan (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004), LVI, p. 124.
99. Harvey, History ofTopographical Maps, p. 59. 14. See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford: Oxford University
100. These fifteenth-century maps were not sophisticated. They had no consistent Press, 1991), p. 109.
scale, tended to overemphasize the main city, and rarely illustrated more than 15. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 101.
the fortifications of outlying towns. 16. Columbus, "Lettera Rarissima," 7/7/1503, in Columbus, The Four Voyages,
101. Marino, ''Administrative Mapping,"·p. 6. pp. 283-304, esp. pp. 287-89.
102. Denis Cosgrove, "The Geometry of Landscape: Practical and Speculative 17. Vespucci, "Letter to Lorenzo de Medici," 4/6/1501, cited in O'Gorman,
Arts in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Land Territories," in Denis Cosgrove and Invention ofAmerica.
Stephen Daniels (eds.), The Iconography ofLandscape (Cambridge: Cambridge 18. Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus Novus or "Sornmario di Amerigo Vespucci fioren-
University Press, 1988), pp. 254-76. tino, di due sue navigazioni, al magnifico M. Pietro Soderni ... ," in Giovanni
103. Marino, "Administrative Mapping," p. 7. Battista Ramusio, Navigazione e Viaggi; Vol. 1, ed.Marcia Milanesi (Torino:
Giulio Einaudi, 1978), pp. 670-81, at p. 670. My translation. The Ramusio
version is a translation from the Latin Mundus Novus, itself a translation from
9 The Renaissance Territorialization of International Society
the original (lost) Italian letter, which Vespucci originally addressed to Lorenzo
1. Martin Wight, Systems ofStates, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester University di Pier Francesco de Medici. Not all scholars accept that this document is
Press, 1977), pp. 114-15. genuine.
2. William E. Connolly, "Identity and Difference in World Politics," in James 19. Vespucci, Mundus Novus, p -.672.
Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), In ternational/Intertextual Relations: 20. Quoted in Randles, De la terre plate, p. 72.
Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), 21. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 117.
pp. 323---42. See also David Campbell, WritingSecurity: United States Foreign 22. O'Gorman, The Invention ofA merica, p. 122. See "The Four Voyages ofAmerigo
Policy and the Politics ofIdentity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, Vespucci," [translation of the Latin "Quatuor Americi Vespuccici Navigationes,"
1992). itself a translation of Vespucci's Italian letter to Pier Soderini (Sept 1504)] in
240 • Notes Notes • 241

Martin Waldseemiiller, The Cosmographiae Introductio, [1507 Academy St Die], 36. Christopher Columbus, journal of the First Voyage, ed. and tr. B. W. Ife
tr. Mario E. Cosenza,ed.Charles George Herbermann (Freeport: Books for (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990), p. 3.
Libraries Press, 1969), pp. 84-151, esp. pp. 133-44. 37. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, p. 3
23. Waldseemiiller, Cosmographiae Introductio, IX, p. 70. 38. A good general history is John Edwards, Inquisition (Gloucester: Tempus, 1999).
24. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, p. 124. 39. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, 6/11/1492, p. 75.
25. O'Gorman, The Invention of America, p. 124. Washburn disagrees with 40. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, tr.
O'Gorman that when Waldseemiiller uses inventa est to describe Vespucci's rela- Richard Howard (London: Harper Collins, 1985), p. 50.
tionship to America it can be translated as conceived of rather than discovered. 41. Columbus, journal ofthe First Voyage, 12/11/1492, p. 77.
Accordingly, the argument that Vespucci was the real discoverer in the sense 42. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World
of conceiver of America as the fourth part of the world is doubtful. Washburn, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
"The Meaning of 'Discovery'," pp. 12-15. Conversely, Anthony Pagden, 43. Columbus, quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 7l.
European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism 44. Inter Caetera, p. 96.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), quotes Waldseemiiller's "alia quarta 45. Michael Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," in Bull and Watson (eds.), The
pars pe~ Americum Vesputium ... inventa est" in support of O'Gorman's claim Expansion ofInternational Society, pp. 75-85.
that invenio can be translated as conceive rather than invent. Fn. 11, p. 189. 46. Quoted in Miguel Batllori. S. J., "The Papal Division of the World and Its
26. O'Gorman, The Invention ofAmerica, pp. 129-30. Consequences," in Fred Chiappelli (ed.), First Images ofAmerica: The Impact
27. The Bull Romanus Pontifex (Nicholas V, January 8 1455), tr. Frances of the New World on the Old (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),
Gardiner Davenport, in Davenport (ed.) , European Treaties Bearing on the pp. 211-21, at p. 213.
History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648 (Washington, DC: 47. Luis Weckmann-Munoz, "The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493: Pseudo-Asiatic
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), pp. 20---26. Documents," in Chiappelli, First Images ofAmerica, pp. 201-10, at p. 20l.
28. Colon, History ofthe Life, p. 98. 48. Weckmann-Munoz, "The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493," p. 203.
29. "Treaty between Spain and Portugal, concluded at Alcacovas, September 49. Batllori, "The Papal Division ofthe World," p. 215.
4 1479," tr. J. A. Robertson, in Davenport (ed.), European Treaties, pp. 43-48, 50. Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," p. 80. See my discussion of these ideas
at p. 44. in chapter five.
30. The Bull Aeterni Regis (Sixtus IV, June 21 1481), tr. Davenport, in 51. Wight, Systems ofStates, p. 119; and Donelan, "Spain and the Indies," p. 80.
Davenport (ed.), European Treaties, pp. 53-55. 52. "Santa Fe Capitulations," Santa Fe, 17 April 1492, The Book of Privileges,
31. The Bull Eximiae Devotionis (Alexander VI, May 3 1493), tr. Davenport, in pp.63-66.
Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 67-70. 53. "Granada Capitulations," Granada, 30 April 1492, The Book of Privileges,
32. Inter Caetera or "Papal Decree Granting Castile Sovereignty over the Indies," pp. 66-69, at p. 67.
Rome, June 1493, in The Book of Privileges issued to Christopher Columbus 54. On the Portuguese navigation of the Western coast of Africa and its conse-
by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, 1492-1503, ed. and tr. Helen Nader quences for the rivalry between Portugal and Spain, see Jerry Brotton, Trading
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 93-98, at P: 96. The sec- Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997),
ond Inter Caetera has been interpreted as a concession to the Portuguese, who esp. pp. 46-88.
were seemingly guaranteed exclusive rights to all navigational routes through- 55. Henry Vignaud, Toscanelli and Columbus (London: Sands, 1903).
out Africa, the eastern Atlantic and all territories to the East. Davenport argues 56. Ferdinand and Isabella Letter, quoted in Nader, "Introduction," Book of
that because the Portuguese are not mentioned directly this interpretation is Privileges, p. 2l.
too strong. 57. Nader, "Notes on the Translation," Book ofPrivileges, p. 197.
33. Adam Watson, "European International Society and its Expansion," in Hedley 58. Nader, "Introduction," Book ofPrivileges, p. 29.
Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion ofInternational Society (Oxford: 59. The lawyers in the Royal Chancellery phrased the capitulations as contin-
Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 13-32. gent grants. The concessions became operative only if Columbus discovered
34. Inter Caetera, pp. 93-95. and took possession of any islands or mainland in the name of the monarchs.
35. Christopher Columbus, "The Spanish Letter of Columbus to Luis de During the negotiations and preparations the purpose and destination of
Sant'Angel," 4/3/1492, in Columbus, The Four Voyages of Columbus: A History the voyage was kept secret. Documents described the voyage in the vaguest
in Eight Documents, ed. Cecil Jane (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), pp. terms to "certain parts of the Ocean Sea" so as to avoid spies reporting back to
2-19, at p. 2. Portugal. On Columbus' return to the court he asked the monarchs to elevate
242 • Notes Notes • 243

the Granada Capitulations from simple informal writ of grant cartasde merced 80. Nordman, "Frontiere et Decouverte," p. 26. My translation.
to a permanently binding charter of privilege cartas de privilegio emplomadas. 81. Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The GeographicalImagination
Both documents were rewritten and upgraded in March 1493. This did not in the Age ofDiscovery, tr. D. Fausett (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), p. 15.
satisfy Columbus who asked that they be confirmed before the start of each of 82. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Mille Plateaux (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit,
his voyages. 1980), p. 598.
60. Crown instructions to Juan Diaz de Solis, quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous 83. Medina, cited in Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World, p. 15.
Possessions, p. 56. 84. O'Gorman, Invention ofAmerica, P: 76.
61. "Digest of Columbus's Log Book," 11/10/1492, p. 53. 85.]. Brian Harley, "Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter,"
62. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 65. Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 82:3, 1992, pp. 522-42, at
63. Columbus describes the Indian communities not as savage confusion" p. 524. Good reproductions of many important early maps of discovery are in
but "admirable orderliness," quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 65. David Buisseret, The Mapmaker's Quest.; Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance
64. Franciscus de Victoria, "The First Relectio on the Indians Lately Discovered," Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
tr. John Pawley Bates, in de Victoria, De Indis e de lure Belli Relectiones, ed. 86. Harley, "Rereading the Maps," pp. 528-29.
Ernest Nys (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), 87. Harley, "Rereading the Maps," p. 528.
pp. 115-62. 88. Waldseemiiller, quoted in Harley, "Rereading the Maps," p. 529.
65. Columbus, "Letter to Dona Juana de Torres," 10/1500, in The Four 89. Edgerton, "From Mental Matrix," p. 13.
Voyag~,pp.265-76,atp.274. 90. Brotton, Trading Territories, p. 32.
66. Columbus, "Spanish Letter," p. 2. 91. See Peter Whitfield, The Image of the World: Twenty Centuries of World
67. Todorov, Conquest ofAmerica, p. 27. Maps (London: The British Library, 1994), esp. p. 38.
68. Columbus, Journal ofthe First Voyage, 11/1/1~92, p. 189. 92. William Boelhower, "Inventing America: A Model of Cartographic Semiosis,"
69. Todorov, ConquestofAmerica,p. 28. Word and Image, 4:2, 1988, pp. 475-'-97, at p. 477.
70. Pagden, European Encounters, p. 34. 93. Boelhower, "Inventing America," p. 488.
71. Pagden, European Encounters, p. 27. 94. Boelhower, "Inventing America," pp. 481-82.
72. See Nader, "Notes," Book ofPrivileges, p. 37. 95. Ricardo Padron, The Spacious World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
73. Batllori, "Papal Division," p.216. 2004).
74. Inter Caetera, p. 96. 96. Padron, The Spacious World, p. 12.
75. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr, "From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian 97. Walter D. Mignolo, "Colonial Situations, Geographical Discourses and
Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance," in David Territorial Representations: Towards a Diatopical Understanding of Colonial
Woodward (ed.), Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: University Semiosis," Dispositio: American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories, XIV,
of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 10-50, at p. 46. 1994, pp. 93-140. On Amerindian maps and the impact of the Spanish need
76. The Bull Dudum siquidem (Alexander VI, September 26 1493), tr. Davenport, for administrative maps of the colonies on the Indian tradition of pinturas, see
in Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 82-83. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy> Territoriality
77. Treaty between Spain and Portugal, concluded at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, tr. and Colonization, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003),
E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, in Davenport, European Treaties, pp. 93 .....100. pp. 296-309.
78. Treaty of Tordesillas, pp. 96-97, Ferdinand and Isabel initially thought 98. Mignolo, "Colonial Situations," p. 94.
Columbus might oversee the establishment of the line: "It seems to us that the
line, or border, that is to be made is an extremely difficult matter requiring
great wisdom and trust. If possible, therefore, we would like you to locate it 10 Conclusion: Territoriality, the Renaissance,
yourself and establish it with those who are to be involved on behalf of the king and International Relations
of Portugal." See "Letter from Fernando. and Isabella to Columbus, enclosing
a copy of Treaty of Tordesillas," Segovia, 16 August 1494, Book of Privileges, 1. Jorge Luis Borges, "On Exactitude in Science," Collected Fictions, tr. A. Hurley
pp. 99-100, at p. 100. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1998), p. 325.
79. Daniel Nordman, "Fronriere et Decouverte (XV-XVI siecles)," in Renzo Zorzi 2. See Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory,"
(ed.), L' Epopea delle Scoperte (Venezia: Olschki, 1994), pp. 17-35. Millennium, 30:3, 2001, pp. 509.....33.
244 • Notes

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 Index

Note: page numbers in italic denote references to illustrations.

Agnew, John 23 Jonas of Orleans 76-77
Alberti, Leon Battista 147-50, 151, Saisset, Bernard, Bishop of
154-55 Palmiers 93
De pictura 147-48 Bloch, Marc 58, 60
Americas, the 169jf., 182 Boucher, David 7, 8
anarchy 3, 9, 10, 17,20-21, 31, 117 Bouwsma, William 106, 107
hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy 54 Bull, Hedley 22
hierarchy-anarchy transition 181 bureaucracy 27-28
Aquinas, Thomas 71, 87-88,94-95
Aristotle 64,66,69, 78, 93-94, 114 Campbell, David 4
Aron, Raymond 19-20 canonists, the 78, 79, 80-81, 88,
art and artists 102-103, 104, 106, 95-96,97
136, 152, 153, 159 capitalism 37, 50, 51-52
Giotto di Bondone 103, 136 Cassirer, Ernst 54, 58, 111, 115, 121
landscape 149, 156, 157, 159-60, Castile, Kingdom of see Spain and the
166 Spanish
Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin panels, Chabod, Federico 105-106, 125,
the 151-55 130, 141
Vasari, Giorgio 102""'-103 Christ, as symbol or
see also Leonardo da Vinci; representation 70,74-76,77,
Mantegna, Andrea; Piero della 80, 81, 92
Francesca civitas. rex Christus 76
Ashley, Richard 31, 32, 33 Church, the 61,62,63,77, 78, 88
Augustine, St 60, 62, 67, 68, Christian mission, the 177, 178,
84, 94, 131 179, 180, 188
role of gold and "precious things"
balance of power 2, 5,7 in 180
Bauman, Zygmunt 24 "crisis of church and state," the 73,
Berman, Harold 60 77/f,129
bishops 57, 61, 62, 93 Ecclesia 77-78,82,83,89,90
264 • Index
Index • 265

Church, the-Continued Europe and Europeans 10, 167, 169, hegemony 1, 9 Francesco; Machiavelli,
Christianitas 77,78,89 176, 178, 182, 185 Christian hegemony 74 Niccolo; Mantegna, Andrea;
Machiavelli's contempt for 119, see also Italy; Portugal; Spain Herz, John 19 Pi co della Mirandola, Giovanni,
121 hierarchy and hierarchies 3, 24, 5 4f!, Count; Piero della Francesca
Christianity, see under medieval period, Federico de Montefeltro, Duke of 72, 74jj, 79, 90,
the; Renaissance, the Urbino 155-59 92, 95, 108, 109, 112, James, Alan 22
citizen, the 129-30 Ferguson, Wallace 102, 106 183, 196 John. of Paris 95-98, 129
Columbus, Christopher 69, 169, feudalism 58fj, 72 ecclesiastical hierarchy 57-58
170-71, 172-73, 175, 177-78, three orders, the 60-63, 72 heavenly hierarchy 56-57 Kant, Immanuel 2, 18-19, 26, 72
179-80, 185, 186, 192 Ficino, Marsilio 107-108, hierarchy-anarchy dichotomy 54 Critique ofPure Reason 18-19
his agreements with Ferdinand and 109,111 hierarchy-anarchy transition 181 Perpetual Peace 26
Isabel 183, 184, 190 fortuna/Fortuna 7,8,117,118,119 spatial hierarchy 74, 75, 85, 86, Kantorowicz, Ernst 84, 87, 89, 98
and "naming," 186-87 see also virtu 95, 134 Kelson, Hans 23
Copernicus, Nicolaus 114-15 Foucault, Michel 4, 38-41, 43-45, see also Holy Roman Empire, the; Kern, Stephen 41-42,45
Corbridge, Stuart 23 115, 130-31, 153 Monarchy; Papacy, the kings, role of, see Monarchy
Cosgrove, Stuart 149, 153 Discipline and Punish 39 Hobbes, Thomas 23, 24 Knutsen, Torbjorn L. 7, 8
Cosmopolis and the Cosmopolitan 6, Order of Things, The 43 Leviathan and territoriality 24 Krasner, Stephen 2, 6, 21-22
24,90 frontiers 22, 189-90 Holy Roman Empire, the 2,3,6,58,
Cusa, Nicholas of 104,112-14 61, 63, 73, 78, 79, 83!f, 129 Lacan,]acques 40
Giddens, Anthony 28 Charlemagne 59, 84 Ladner, Gerhardt 78, 79
Damisch, Hubert 152, 158, 162 Gilpin, Robert 20 Emperor, role and position of 74, law and legality 1,2-3,28,62, 87,
Dante Alighieri 54, 64-66, 68, 70, Gilson, Etienne 78, 89 76,82,129 95, 127, 129, 131-32, 186
71, 72, 88~89,90, 139 globalization 23, 198-99 Frederick II 80, 85, 87 Dionysius's legal hierarchy 57
Monarchia 87~91 God 54jj, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 69, Otto II 85, 86 international justice 26
da Vinci, Leonardo 104, 105, 145, 70, 110, 113 two swords allegory, the 82-83, 88 international law 23
166 civitas Dei 6, 61, 63, 74, 78, 84, humanists 7, 104-105, 106, 110, medieval canon law 74, 93
de Certeau, Michel 39-40, 153 90, 118 116-17, 126, 139, 142, 143 natural law 186
Deleuze, Gilles 40, 45, 49, 186, 190 incarnate as Christ 62 see also Guicciardini, Francesco; Roman law 184, 186
Der Derian, James 8-9 "good life," the 17, 94 Machiavelli, Niccolo Lefebvre, Henri 26, 37-38, 45,
Dionysius the Areopagite 54-58, 62, Gothic architecture and
50-52,91, 149, 150
63,66,72,74,92 aesthetic 91-92 identity 137ft legitimacy 1, 184-85
De coelesti hierarchia 54-57 government 77, 95, 124, 159 language, role of 138-39 linear perspective, see perspective
De ecclesiastica hierarchia 57-58 Greenblatt, Stephen 180, 185-86 imperium" see Holy Roman Lovejoy, Arthur 64, 114
diplomacy 8-10 Grosby, Stephen 47 Empire, the
proto-diplomacy 9 Gross, Leo 3 international society 22, 26, 169, 170, Machiavelli, Niccolo 7-8,9, 12,
discipline 27-28 Guartari, Felix 40,45,49, 178, 182, 187-88 115jf, 123ft, 145-46, 157-58,
Divine Comedy; The, see Dante 186, 190 international theory 17!f 23, 31 166
Alighieri Guicciardini, Francesco 7, 8, 117, Italy and the Italians 10, 103, 117-18, and Florence 139, 166
Donelan, Michael 181, 182, 183 128, 143 119, 133, 140, 141-44, 164 his contempt for the Church 119,
Durkheim, David Emile 41-42, see also Alberti, Leon Battista; 121
121 Halliday, Fred 30 Columbus, Christopher; 10 stato 123-26, 130-31
Harvey, David 29,37 Dante Alighieri; Federico de on armed forces 132-34
emperors, role of, see Holy Roman Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Montefeltro, Duke ofUrbino; Prince, The 7, 118, 121, 125, 126,
Empire, the . Friedrich 26-27, 103 Ficino, Marsilio; Culcciardinl, 128, 131, 134, 140-41, 143
 Index • 267
266 • Index

Panofsky, Erwin 102, 147, 150 medieval politics 73If its culture of space 107
man 104,109-,-11,112,123,147,148,
Papacy, the 2, 3, 6, 57, 63, power politics 17, 131, 158 its representation of space 149
149, 150, 176
73, 7~, 83,88, 89, Renaissance politics 117f{ politics in 112,123-26,128
Mantegna, Andrea 160-62
181, 182-83 popes, role o£ see Papacy, the Renaissance cosmology 112
maps and mapping 69-71, 162-67,
Alexander VI 178-79, 180, Portugal and the Portuguese 172, Renaissance humanism, see
170, 188, 190-94, 195, 198
181, 188 176-77, 183-84, 188-89 humanists
mappae-mundi, the 70-71
Inter Caetera 178!f, 186, 188, 189, joao II 177, 188 republic, concept of 117, 120
Martines,Lauro 153, 154
192 see also, Tordesillas, Treaty of Reus-Smit, Christian 9-10
Mattingly, Garrett 8, 10
Boniface VIII 76,82-83, 87, 91, power 3, 20, 28, 36, 39-40, Rosenberg, Justin 10, 11, 17
medieval period, the 3,48,51, 52/f,
92-'-93 77,97 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 24-26,
104-105, 107, 111,
Clement V 93, 129 two powers, the 82 137-38
112, 116
Gelasius I 82 see also Machiavelli, Niccolo Social Contract, The 24-26
canon law 74, 93
Gregory VII 74 Prezzolini, Giuseppe 119, 125, 141 Ruggie, John 42-43, 48, 146
Christianity in 3, 51· see also
Innocent III 79-80,97 primitive communities or
Augustine, St; bishops;
Innocent IV 80, 81 societies 49, 50, 186 sacerdotiurn, see Papacy, the
canonists;Church, the; God;
Nicholas V 176-77 princes and princedoms 126-27, 128, Sack, Robert 35-37
Papacy, the
Romanus Pontifex 176-77, 180 130, 131, 132, 138, 144, 146, Sacrobosco, Johannes de 64,69, 171
Europein 48,71,72
papal fullness of power 78-79, 159, 177, 182 sea, the 70, 190
politics in 73jf, 84
80-81,83,84,98,182,183 territorial princes 2, 115 Sforza, Battista 155-56
understanding of space in 63jf,
papal universalism 74, 75 see also Federico de Montefeltro, Shapiro, Michael 4
196
pope as vicarius Christi 80-81, 89, Duke ofUrbino Skinner, Quentin 124, 125, 126
modernity 104,105,106,122,149,
182 Prince, The, see under Machiavelli, Smith, Michael J. 30
150, 153
two swords allegory,the 82-83, 88 Niccolo social space, see space and society
monarchs, role of, see Monarchy
see also Church, the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, see soul, the 109-10
Monarchy 73, 79-80, 84, 91/f
Peace of Westphalia, the 3, 5, 101 Dionysius the Areopagite sovereign identity 107, 109-11,
Capetians, the 91, 92
medieval/modern dichotomy, Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolernaeus of 152,153
Isabel and Ferdinand 177-80, 181,
the 101, 102 Alexandria) 65, 69, 163, 192 sovereignty 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 17, 19,
182, 183, 184
Westphalia myth 3 Geographia 163-64, 167, 192 21-22,31-32,73,92-93,95,
Joao II 177, 188
Westphalia narrative, the 53,54, Puchala, Donald J. 5 126-31, 146, 160
Philip the Fair 91, 92-93
91, 101 national sovereignty 92
morality 7, 9
Westphalian international system, Randles, W. G. L. 66, 68, 171 sovereign state, the 7, 17, 32
Morgenthau, Hans 2-3
the 1,3 rationalism 24 territorial sovereignty 2-3, 6, 22,
Westphalian sovereignty 21 Ratzel, Friedrich 29 63, 128-29, 130, 157, 160,
nationalism 28-29, 141
perspective 51, 52, 106, 145, 146, Realism and Realists 2, 10,20 162-63, 196
nation-states, the 181, 198
147/f, 162, 165, 192, 197 Classical Realists 19, 23 Westphalian sovereignty 21
nature 94, 109, 150
as a symbolic system 149 regnum, see Monarchy see also Holy Roman Empire, the;
Navari, Cornelia 22, 23
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Renaissance, the 2, 3, 5, 6f{, 44, 53, Monarchy; Papacy, the
Neorealism 2, 31, 48
Count 107,108-109,110-11 101ff, 199,200 space 2,3,4,6, 18-19,20,24, 26-2Z
"new world," concept of 173, 174
Piero della Francesca 148-49, Christianity in, see under Church, 29, 31, 33-34, 37!f, 47f!,
New World, the, see Americas, the
155-59, 160, 162, 197 the; God; Papacy, the 149-50, 169,
Pocock, J. G. A. 115, 116 economic life in 106 176, 192
Ocean Sea, the, see sea
politics 3-4,7, 8, 17, 24,31, human autonomy, concept of 109 absolute space 50, 51
O'Gorman, Edmundo 63, 70,
53-54, 90, 94, ideal city, the 151, 153 abstract space 51-52
170, 171, 172, 174,
116-17, 146 ghettos in 154 conceived space 38
175-76,190
268 • Index Index • 269

space- Continued Rechstaat, the 22 Waldseemiiller, Martin 174-76, 192 Milanese wars 8
cosmological space 63ff, 107.!f, Renaissance state, the 125, 128, 135 Walker, Rob 24, 31, 32 Weber, Max 1, 27-30, 131
171-72, 173, 174, 176 state domination Waltz, !(enneth 1, 20, 48, 53-54 Wendt, Alexander 20-21
inside/outside 31, 32, 33,49, 130, state theory 18-23, 30 war 2, 3, 20, 132 Westphalia see Peace of
195 Weberian state, the 1, 27-30 armies 132-33, 136 Westphalia, the
landscape, see under art and artists see also sovereignty; space; territory just war 181 Wight, Martin 5, 6, 17
lived space 38 surveillance 28, 135
man's being-in-space 2,4,5,
6, 35, 72, 107, 146, 170, territory 1, 2, 3, 19, 20, 21, 22, 35ff,
192, 196 115, 131, 133
medieval understanding of 63.!f, center-periphery systems 134,
196 136-37, 165
perceived space 37-38 colonial territories 25-26, 194
public/private 49 10 stato, see under Machivelli, Niccolo
smooth space 40-41,45,46-47, 190 territorial a priori 2, 4, 5, 18--'-23,
and society 36, 37-38 30, 35, 36, 43, 44, 47, 131, 137,
striated space 40-41,45,46-47, 195-96
123,144,153,154,155,163,190 territorial boundaries 21, 162-67
symbolic space 51 territoriality 4, 20, 35ff, 40,
systematic space 150 41ff,47, 146, 160, 165, 194,
"timeless" space 23 195-200
upper/lower 74-'-76, 114, 115, 196 territorialization 40, 49-50, 169,
see also perspective 178, 179, 190-92, 198
Spain and the Spanish 172, 178, 179, territorial sovereignty 2--3, 6, 22,
183-84, 188-8~ 193 63, 128-29, 130, 157, 160,
see also Columbus, Christopher; 162-63, 196
Isabel and Ferdinand under territorial state 2,3, 11, 17,26,
Monarchy; Tordesillas, 27-30,34,195,197
Treaty of territorial trap, the 23, 30
Spruyt, Hendrik 11,12 see also Tordesillas, Treaty of
state, the lff, 8, 9,11-12,17, time 2, 18, 26, 37
19,20-21, 22, 26-27, 30, 31, Todorov, Tzvetan 180, 187
32, 36, 40, 45, 77, 95, 98, TonniesvFerdinand 47
122, 125-26 Tordesillas, Treaty of 188-90, 191
absolutist state 24 Toulmin, Steven 6
city-state, the 10, 11, 12, 25, 50,
119, 135, 137 Ullman, Walter 78, 129
"crisis of church and state," the 73,
77ff,129 Vespucci, Amerigo 173--74
despotic state, the 49-50 violence 1, 2, 21, 28, 131-37
importance of religion in 120 virtu 7,8,117,118,119
10 stato, see under Machivelli, artistic virtu 148
Niccolo military virtu 132, 140,
modern state, the 48--49, 125, 126, 144, 158
133, 135 see also fortuna