At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession 1701-14 in the peace treaties at Utrecht in 1713 Spain gave up Belgium, Luxembourg, Milan, Sardinia, Naples, and Sardinia to the Austrian Empire, Sicily to Savoy, and Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain. After the death of Queen Maria Luisa, Parma’s consular agent Giulio Alberoni arranged for the Duke of Parma’s daughter Elisabetta Farnese to marry Spain’s King Felipe V by proxy on December 24, 1714 in Parma, and in Spain she was called Queen Isabel. Spain and Portugal finally agreed to peace on February 6, 1715. In 1715 the Spanish Royal Academy was founded to foster and improve the Spanish language. King Felipe V appointed the Council of Castile which met on Fridays. Many Catalans were fleeing across the border to France, and on January 16, 1716 Felipe’s Nueva Planta decree abolished the fueros of Catalonia and made Catalans citizens of Spain. On January 20 Isabel gave birth to Prince Carlos. This increased Alberoni’s influence with the Queen, and he supported the Papacy by sending warships to help the Venetians free Corfu from the Turks in August. In July the Inquisitor-General Francesco de Giudice had resigned and left Spain which would not have a functioning Inquisitor-General until 1720. Alberoni used his power to send the French ambassador Louisville back to France which angered Regent Orléans.
On April 2, 1717 King Felipe V established the three ministries of War and the Navy, State, and Justice and Finance directed by secretaries of the Despacho. In May the Inquisitor-General José Molinos was detained in Lombardy by the Austrian governor of Milan. Alberoni sent warships to Barcelona, and the Queen helped him get appointed a cardinal in July. That month Felipe declared war against Emperor Charles VI, and in August an armada of 350 ships with 30,000 men reconquered Sardinia from the Austrians. Also in 1717 six Catalan universities were suppressed and were replaced by the new University of Cervera. Queen Isabel cooperated with Felipe’s sexual demands, but he became depressed and quite ill by October.
In 1718 Cardinal Alberoni and José Patiño had 21 intendants appointed throughout Spain. Alberoni raised revenues by reducing expenditures, taxing the Church, increasing duties, imposing on the wealthy, and selling offices. Spanish forces invaded Sicily on July 1 at Cape Salento, captured Palermo on the 13th, and regained the island. Britain, France, the Austrian Empire, and Savoy allied against Spain in August, and on the 11th a British fleet of 29 ships led by Admiral George Byng defeated the Spaniards at Cape Passaro near Syracuse, capturing or destroying 24 Spanish ships and taking 3,600 prisoners. On October 15 the Spaniards in Sicily fought off an attack by imperial forces at Melazzo with equal casualties on each side.
On December 27 Britain declared war on Spain, and France did so on January 9, 1719. In February the Stuart pretender James III was proclaimed in Madrid; but a Spanish fleet was devastated by a storm, and only about a thousand Irish exiles landed in Scotland in April. On the 21st a French army with 20,000 men invaded northern Spain and captured Behovia, San Marcial, Santa Isabel, and the Pasaje port. Six days later Felipe V took command of his army and declared his allegiance to the French Regent Orléans. Fuenterrabia surrendered on June 18, and Felipe returned to Madrid. On June 20 at Francavilla in Sicily a Spanish army of 29,000 led by the Marquis of Lede defeated 21,000 Austrians. In August a combined force of British and French burned Spanish ships at Santoña, and an allied army led by the Duke of Berwick captured San Sebastian. On October 10 the British landed at Vigo in Galicia and took the town. Felipe V negotiated and agreed to expel Alberoni on December 19, and on January 26, 1720 Spain joined the Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Austria, and the Dutch Republic. Peace was made by April 2, and by August the Spanish armies had evacuated Sicily and Sardinia.
José de Grimaldo had been Secretary of State since 1714 and wanted to unite the Bourbon monarchies, and on March 27, 1721 he and the Marquis de Maulevrier-Langeron agreed to an alliance between Spain and France. On June 13 this became a triple alliance with Britain as King George I promised to return Gibraltar to Spain. Felipe V’s confessor Père Guillaume Daubenton arranged for the King’s son by his first marriage, Prince Luis de las Asturias, to wed Louise-Isabelle de Montpensier, daughter of the Regent Orléans, and Maria Ana Victoria was to go to France to be educated so that she could marry King Louis XV. On August 22 the French evacuated San Sebastian and Fuenterrabia, and ambassadors were exchanged.
In May 1721 at an auto da fe held in Madrid a man and a woman were burned to death, and sixteen others were given sentences. Between 1720 and 1725 persecutions of Jewish conversos mostly in Granada, Seville, Cordoba, and Toledo led to more than ninety executions, which was more than had occurred in such a period in Spain in the previous two centuries.
On January 20, 1722 Prince Luis married Louise-Isabelle at Lerma. Felipe V had been secretly thinking of abdicating for several years, and on January 10, 1724 he did so in favor of his 16-year-old son Luis de las Asturias. Felipe V and Isabel retired to San Ildefonso but continued to rule by Grimaldo and messengers. King Luis I died of smallpox on August 31, 1724. His will declared his father his heir, and on September 6 Felipe V became king again. On November 25 his son Fernando, the younger brother of Luis, was recognized as crown prince.
Queen Isabel was the constant companion of the King even when he hunted. She advised replacing the top ministers, and the Dutch Baron Jan Willem de Ripperda of Groningen became the leader. He had been educated in a Jesuit College in Cologne, fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, and became a Protestant to be a deputy in the Estates General of the Dutch Republic. His skill in commerce and economics was displayed at Utrecht, and he became the Dutch ambassador to Spain. He went back to being a Catholic, and Felipe V appointed him superintendent of factories in Guadalajara and superintendent of all factories in Spain after the fall of Alberoni. After the death of his adversary Père Daubenton, Ripperda persuaded Queen Isabel to send him to Vienna to further the future of her sons Carlos and Felipe. In March 1725 the proposed marriage between Maria Ana Victoria and Louis XV was cancelled, and Felipe V and Isabel reacted by sending back to France the princesses Philippa-Isabelle de Beaujolais, who had been engaged to Carlos, and Luis’s widow Luisa Isabel. On April 30 Spain formed a treaty of alliance with the Austrian Empire.
By June 7 Ripperda had negotiated three agreements with Austria. In the alliance Emperor Charles VI recognized King Felipe V of Spain, and they declared that Parma, Piacenza, and Tuscany were fiefs of the Austrian Empire. Spain promised to protect the commercial ships of the Imperial Ostend Company from British and Dutch privateers, and the Emperor said he would mediate the British restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca to Spain. When the French and British learned of the Vienna treaty, they dissolved the Congress of Cambrai. Ripperda became a duke and a grandee of Spain, and Orendain became the Marqués de la Paz. By September 3, 1725 France, Prussia, and Britain had formed a defensive alliance. On November 5 Ripperda forged a treaty between Austria and Spain and reported that the Emperor and Empress had approved the marriage of Carlos of Bourbon-Parma to the Austrian heiress Maria Theresa. Actually they were only considering it, but the Emperor did promise that two of his three daughters would wed Carlos and Felipe.
Ripperda returned to Madrid on December 11, and on the 27th he was put in charge of foreign affairs and then all the ministries, removing Orendain de la Paz and Grimaldo. Ripperda’s 20-year-old son Luis became the ambassador at Vienna. By 1725 the annual cost of the Spanish army had increased to 5,352,000 escudos, and Ripperda prepared the army and navy for war. He could not afford to send the promised subsidies to the Emperor, and in April 1726 he conspired with French agents to support Jacobites landing in England. British ambassador Stanhope complained to Felipe V. The Imperial ambassador Koenigseeg persuaded Ripperda to give up his financial administration and other offices, and the King accepted his resignation on May 14 and gave him a pension. Ten days later Ripperda was imprisoned; but a few months later he escaped and traveled to Portugal, England, and The Hague, where he reverted to Protestantism. Later he went to Morocco, became a Muslim, and led an attack by Moors on Spaniards at Ceuta. He was called Osman and founded an Islamic sect before his death at Tétouan in 1737.
On September 29, 1726 Queen Isabel persuaded Felipe V to dismiss Grimaldo and Friar Bermudez for favoring Britain and France respectively, replacing Grimaldo with Orendain de la Paz. José Patiño became secretary of the Indies and navy and of finance. He worked on fiscal policy in order to strengthen the navy. On December 12 Orendain gave British ambassador Stanhope a threatening note that triggered hostilities. About 12,000 Spaniards began a four-month siege of Gibraltar on February 11, 1727 but they were defeated and withdrew on June 12. Felipe V was suffering mental decline. Isabel took control on June 10, and her vigilance prevented him from abdicating again. On December 15 Patiño advised her that Spain was ready for war, and she ordered a 26% tax on foreign assets found on Spanish ships. On March 6, 1728 she approved the Convention of Pardo that ended the blockade of Gibraltar and freed foreign assets. That year Patiño changed the value of the coinage so that the royal revenue’s share of galleon’s treasure increased from a quarter to a third. In 1729 Prince Fernando married the Portuguese Infanta Barbara of Braganza. The treaty of Seville on November 9 restored British trading privileges in exchange for England and France.
Benito Jerónimo Feijóo published his encyclopedic Teatro critico universal in nine volumes from 1726 to 1739 followed by five volumes of the Cartas eruditas y curiosas (1742-60).
On January 23, 1731 Spain and the British made a secret agreement with the imperial court at Vienna, and that year Patiño took over the war department. He aimed to revive American trade by using naval power and national industries to expand exports. On June 6, 1731 the English agreed to the succession of Carlos. On July 22 Emperor Charles VI in the second treaty of Vienna allowed Spain to garrison Parma and Tuscany and recognized Carlos as the Duke of Parma and Piacenza. British and Spanish fleets left Barcelona in October and reached Livorno on December 27. About 12,000 Spaniards on 600 ships also reconquered Oran from the Moors in November 1732, and they repelled the Moroccan siege of Ceuta led by Ripperda. The British and Spanish tried to negotiate conflicts over fishing rights in Newfoundland and to timber in Campeche. Felipe V recovered and returned to Madrid in May 1733, and on October 26 he put his son Carlos in command of the forces at Siena.
The Bourbon’s first Family Compact between Spain and France was signed at the Escorial on November 7, 1733. The Spanish army got permission to pass through the Papal States, and Carlos entered Naples on May 10, 1734. In August he sent an army led by José Carrillo de Albornoz, conde de Montemar, to conquer Sicily, and on September 1 the Palermo Senate recognized Carlos. He went to Sicily in January 1735 and was crowned at Palermo in July. On January 30, 1736 Emperor Charles VI proclaimed peace with Spain, but that day they announced that Maria Theresa would wed François of Lorraine. Montemar’s army retreated to Bologna, and on April 11 Felipe V declared peace with the Emperor. After negotiations on January 5, 1737 the Emperor recognized Carlos as King of Naples and Sicily while Carlos ceded Parma and Piacenza to the Empire.
From December 8, 1735 to June 7, 1736 critical satire appeared in the pages of El Duende Politico. The secret author was discovered to be the Portuguese monk Manuel da Soao Joao, and on August 29 Artalejos was executed in Madrid for having forged Patiño’s signature. Patiño became ill and died in November. His protectionist policy helped cloth, tapestry, and glass industries to prosper; he had ended interior customs except in Andalucía; and he had increased the Spanish army to 80,000 men. In 1737 Pope Clement XII recognized the right of Spain’s monarch to appoint to benefices and vacancies and take their revenues that previously went to Rome. The Queen continued to hide Felipe’s mental problems, and in 1738 she had people imprisoned for spreading rumors he would abdicate. That year Spain’s Royal Academy of History was founded.
In April 1738 Spain claimed the right to board British ships in America. On January 14, 1739 Britain and Spain agreed to resolve their differences in the next eight months; but war broke out between Spain and the British in July and was declared in October. A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Edward Vernon captured Porto Bello in Panama on November 22, and in March 1740 British forces attacked Cartagena and destroyed the fortress of San Lorenzo. However, in the spring of 1741 Spaniards defeated the British at Cartagena, killing about 10,000 while suffering only 800 dead. The Spanish defeated the British again in smaller victories at La Guaira on March 2, 1743 and at Puerto Cabello on April 16. In 1744 the French went to war against the British who then stopped attacking the Spanish colonies.
Spain’s population went from 8.2 million in 1717 to 9.3 million in 1749, and government revenues increased. In 1737 the revenue was 21 million escudos, but expenditures were 34.5 million escudos with the war ministry spending more than 20 million. In 1739 Spain had to suspend payments, damaging credit. Felipe V had begun selling crown land in 1738, but this raised only a million ducats over ten years. In 1741 a ten percent tax on all incomes was implemented with a quota in each town.
José del Campillo rose to prominence as financial secretary in March 1741, and he also obtained the ministries of war, navy, and the Indies. On May 28 Spain allied with Bavaria, and Spanish forces led by Montemar invaded Italy in 1742. A Spanish army invaded Savoy and captured the castle of Apremont on December 18, and Carlo Emanuele evacuated Chambéry in southern France by January 6, 1743. Felipe V entered Turin, but in February and March the Spanish army retreated to Naples. Campillo antagonized Creoles by allowing Indians to take part in trade. He wrote privately about his theories of government before dying suddenly on April 11, but his reform ideas influenced Bourbon policies. He was followed by Zenón de Somodevilla, Marqués de la Ensenada, who tried to find the resources for the Spanish wars.
At Fontainebleau on October 25 Spain and France agreed to the Second Family Compact that recognized Felipe V in Milan, Parma, and Piacenza with Carlos king of the Two Sicilies. On February 22, 1744 the Franco-Spanish navy met the British off the French coast of Toulon, but the battle was indecisive. In October the French and Spanish allies retreated from Italy across the Alps. On March 1, 1745 Felipe V formed an alliance with Genoa against Carlo-Emanuele of Savoy-Sardinia who was defeated at Bassignano on September 27. Spanish troops led by Juan de Gages entered Milan on December 19. Spaniards after defeats in Italy withdrew from Parma in April 1746, and the Franco-Spanish allies suffered heavy losses against the Austrians at Piacenza on June 16. Felipe V died on July 9.
When Felipe V’s second son became King Fernando VI, he let his step-mother Isabel remain at court; but after she intrigued against him, he banished her court to Ildefonso. Like his father, Fernando had an abnormal sex life and bouts of depression and insanity. His wife Barbara of Braganza was the daughter of Portugal’s King Joao V and an Austrian duchess, and she was not popular with the Spaniards. She advised Fernando to use diplomatic neutrality to maintain peace, and their chief minister Zenón de Somodevilla, Marqués de la Ensenada, found ways to pay down the national debt, though he favored the French alliance. José de Carvajal became secretary of state in December 1746 and preferred the British but also supported neutrality. After the Genoese drove the Austrians out of their city, the Imperial army withdrew from France. Franco-Spanish armies made gains in 1747, but they quarreled over a defeat in Italy in July. Carvajal’s friend, the Jesuit Francisco de Ravago became the King’s confessor in 1747. Spain agreed to the peace treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on October 18, 1748 and objected to reviving the British Asiento which allowed them to sell slaves to Spanish colonies, but in the treaty signed at Madrid two years later the British gave that up for £100,000.
On October 10, 1749 the King abolished the alcabalas, cientos, and millones taxes and decreed an income tax based on a survey taken in 1750, and privatized tax farming was replaced by the administration of intendants and later by the corregidores. Spanish revenues reached 360 million reales. From 1746 to 1755 Spain received 178 million pesos in American treasure. In 1750 Spain began to take over colonial administration. Jorge Juan was sent to England to learn naval architecture. Shipbuilding for the Spanish navy in the 18th century consumed three million trees, mostly in northern Spain. The Spanish navy had 64 ships and built 35 more by 1756; the total number would reach 167 in 1787. A boundary treaty was signed with Portugal in January 1750, and seven of the thirty Guarani missions of the Jesuits were forced to move, affecting 30,000 Indians who got only one peso each. The Guarani revolted and were brutally suppressed in 1754 and 1756, killing 1,511 Guarani. Finally on February 12, 1761 the Pardo treaty restored the ruined missions.
Fernando VI discovered that 18,000 square leagues of good farming land were uncultivated while some two million people were near starvation. During a drought in Andalucía in the summer of 1750 he cancelled taxes there and sent money so that they could buy wheat and bread. Ensenada’s policies established public granaries and revived industries, especially silk.
On June 14, 1752 Spain agreed to the Treaty of Aranjuez with the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia that was criticized by King Carlos of Naples. Also in 1752 Spain created an Academy of Fine Arts. Fernando patronized the arts, notably the composer Domenico Scarlatti and the castrated singer Farinelli. On January 11, 1753 the concordat of Pope Benedict XIV conceded to the Spanish monarch universal patronage with some exceptions in exchange for 2.5 million pesos. Ravago arranged this deal that strengthened Spain.
José de Carvajal y Lancaster wrote his Testamento politico and Pensamientos, advising a balance of power in Europe through an alliance of Spain, Portugal, and Britain, but after Carvajal’s death on April 8, 1754 his followers turned against Ensenada. The pro-Anglo Duke of Huéscar, who had been ambassador to France, became secretary of state temporarily and was replaced by the part-Irish Ricardo Wall. In July they persuaded King Fernando to order the arrest of Ensenada, and his luxurious possessions exposed his corruption; he was detained until the end of Fernando’s reign, and his men were dismissed. Ravago resigned in September 1755. Spain’s neutral policy kept them out of the Seven Years War between France and Britain during his reign. Queen Barbara died on August 27, 1758 after having put away seven million reales that she willed to her brother Pedro III of Portugal. Fernando mourned in seclusion and became depressed and even insane. He died of a fever on August 10, 1759. His administration had raised revenues from 53 million ducats to 90 million ducats, and he left behind a reserve of 60 million ducats and a surplus in 1759 of 167 million reales.
After ruling Naples and Sicily for 25 years, at the age of 43 Carlos III became King of Spain. In October 1759 he sailed to Barcelona where he granted privileges to the Catalans that had been taken away by Felipe V after 1715. After visiting Zaragoza and Alcala he quietly joined his mother Isabel, who had been acting as regent in the Buen Retiro palace at Madrid. He accepted most of the ministers of his half-brother Fernando VI. Ricardo Wall was Minister of State; but Carlos liked to use his own judgment, and he reorganized finance and the armed forces. In August 1759 a treasure ship from Veracruz had brought 12 million pesos. Yet his royal bounties soon used up the reserves left by Fernando, and he pardoned the arrears of Castile, Valencia, and Majorca and paid off the debts of his father Felipe V. The Spanish Inquisition banned the French Encyclopédie in 1759. Carlos and his Queen Amalie celebrated their entrance into Madrid on July 13, 1760, but after having borne seven children who survived childhood, she died of an infection on September 27. Carlos mourned and never remarried. He liked to hunt twice a day between conducting public business, and much was spent hiring people to drive wild boar, deer, and hares toward the royal guns and to pay for damaged crops. Near the end of his life he claimed that his game-book recorded his killing 539 wolves and 5,323 foxes.
The Spanish ambassador Abreu complained to William Pitt that British privateers were capturing Spanish ships. King Carlos III sent Jerónimo Grimaldi as ambassador to Paris in February 1761, and in August they signed the Third Family Compact. The British suspected a secret treaty between France and Spain and demanded an answer from the ambassador Fuentes, who then left London. The French and Spaniards agreed to defend each other from attacks with their armies and navies. Spain gave the islands of Dominica, Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, and Tobago to France which ceded Minorca to Spain. Britain declared war against Spain and Naples on January 4, 1762. Spain and France boycotted British imports and ordered Portugal to close its ports to Britain, but on May 26 Portugal’s King José felt bound by friendship treaties with the British and refused.
Spanish armies with 40,000 men invaded Portugal in three places in August 1762 and captured Almeida which had a garrison of 4,000 commanded by British officers. However, a Spanish force was defeated at Lippe Velha on October 5. The British had 372 warships and Spain only 101, and the British captured Havana in Cuba on August 13 and Manila in the Philippines on September 22. Chief Justice Simon de Anda y Salazar led the fight against the British in the Philippines, but Spain was forced to pay the British four million pesos. Spaniards led by Pedro de Ceballos in November managed to occupy Colonia del Sacramento by the Rio de la Plata. By negotiation Carlos III did fairly well. France ceded Louisiana to Spain which recovered Havana and Manila in exchange for Florida with its forts at San Agustin and Pensacola which went to the British. France gave Minorca to the British, and Spain returned Sacramento to Portugal. On February 10, 1763 Grimaldi for Spain signed the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years War.
Taxes were raised to pay for the war and to build up defenses, and inflation and poor harvests increased food prices. The periodical El Pensador (1761-67) included social criticism. On January 18, 1762 Carlos III decreed that no papal documents could be published in Spain without royal permission. The Genoese Marqués de Grimaldi became Minister of State in 1764. The Italian Leopoldo de Gregorio was given the title of the Marchese de Squillacce or Esquilache in Castilian. He had been made Minister of Finance in December 1759 and in August 1763 also Minister of War. His reforms were unpopular, and he was resented as a foreigner. At the wedding of Prince Carlos to Maria Luisa on September 5, 1765 Esquilache ordered the Walloon Guard to attack the crowd, and ten spectators were killed.
On March 10, 1766 his prohibition against wide-brimmed hats and long capes provoked demonstrations that escalated into riots on March 15-18. On Palm Sunday, March 23, a mob broke into and sacked Esquilache’s house while he was away. The next day about 25,000 people gathered, and ten Walloons were killed. They demanded the banishment of Esquilache. On the 25th King Carlos left Madrid, and the next day his letter promising changes was read to the people. On the 27th Esquilache fled and returned to Italy. Similar disturbances occurred in Zaragoza, where eleven people were executed, in Barcelona, and in other cities.
On April 11, 1766 Carlos III appointed Valencia’s governor, Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, the Count of Aranda, to be President of the Castile Council. He was influenced by French Encyclopaedists and overcame the rising power of the Duke of Alba, who admired Rousseau and directed the Real Academia 1756-76. On May 5, 1766 in an auto Carlos III agreed with the Council and cancelled the concessions that had been made. New police measures were imposed, and they rounded up vagrants and beggars, sending the most needy to workhouses and others to the army and navy. Reformer Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes devised a decree that instituted the election of town councils. He headed an investigation, and on June 8 his report blamed the Jesuits and was confirmed by the Council of Castile. On July 6 the Walloon Guards returned to Madrid, and ten days later King Carlos retreated to San Ildefonso to mourn the recent death of his mother Isabel. On October 4 a decree gave soldiers a pay raise. After these experiences Carlos returned his court to Madrid in December and replaced the Italian ministers with Spaniards. People were allowed to elect two municipal officials to monitor food supplies and the free trade of grain; but the treasury supplied no funds, and the price reductions were thus annulled.
Spain had about 3,000 religious houses. In Castile the Church owned 15% of the land, took in 24% of agricultural income, collected 70% of revenues from mortgage loans, and possessed 44% of urban property and seigneurial revenue. The Jesuits specialized in secondary education and had more than a hundred schools. Spain had eight archbishops and 52 bishops, and several promoted reforms in infrastructure, industry, and education. Yet their dioceses had extreme inequalities in income and resources. Priests without a university education had little chance for promotion. The number of clergy in Spain declined from 226,187 in 1768 to 191,101 in 1787.
Campomanes favored free trade and economic progress, and he blamed Spain’s decline on the misuse of precious metals, too many clergy with unproductive lives, expelling Moriscos, and high taxes. He wanted to reduce fiestas and processions so that they could practice the primitive Christianity of the Gospels. Influence of the French enlightenment led to fighting ignorance and superstition with pure beliefs and reason. Campomanes persuaded the state to suppress eucharistic plays, liturgical dances, flagellation, and most pilgrimages. In 1763 Justinius Febronius, the Bishop of Trier, recommended using a General Council to limit papal power.
Carlos III was suspicious of the Jesuits for having defended regicide in the past. Portugal had expelled Jesuits in 1759, and France suppressed them in 1764. On December 31, 1766 Campomanes indicted the Jesuits for having manipulated the mobs in the revolt that year. Jesuits reacted by spreading scurrilous stories about Carlos III being illegitimate and having an affair with the Marquésa de Esquilache. On January 29, 1767 a commission that included the Duke of Alba, Grimaldi, and the King’s confessor Joaquin Eleta judged the Jesuits guilty of fomenting the riots, and on February 27 a royal decree expelled them from Spain. On March 21 troops were sent to six Jesuit houses in Madrid, and on April 2 secret orders were sent to all provincial viceroys and military commanders in Spain to arrest Jesuits and arrange their deportation, which took them eventually to the Papal States. Spain had 146 Jesuit houses with 2,641 priests, and 2,267 Jesuits were driven out of Spanish America. Naples expelled the Jesuits in November. On June 9, 1769 Carlos III abolished the imperial pragmatic sanction of 1713 and reopened the nuncio’s tribunal. That year Pope Clement XIV asked for the opinion of the Spanish bishops about the expulsion; 42 approved, and six were opposed. José Moñino went to Rome and helped Pope Clement to suppress the Society of Jesus on July 21, 1773. Carlos III rewarded Moñino by making him the Count of Floridablanca. The government of Spain abolished Jesuit university chairs and banned their works of theology, taking over literary censorship from the bishops.
On May 18, 1767 Spain made a treaty of friendship with Morocco, and on January 2, 1768 Carlos III signed a treaty giving the French equal trading rights as the British had in Spain. A decree in 1768 regulated censorship, and another in 1770 ordered the inquisitors to limit their jurisdiction to heresy and apostasy and to imprison only those proven guilty. In 1769 they began reforming universities by having them submit new academic plans and raise standards. In 1771 a royal decree qualified anyone with a university degree to hold a civil or ecclesiastical office. As the state gained power over the Church, the Inquisition declined. The Count of Aranda as President of the Council of Castile 1766-73 led a faction called the “Aragonese party” which included aristocrats, clerics, officials, and the military. In 1770 Secretary of State Grimaldi failed to resolve a conflict with the British over the Falkland Islands, and in January 1771 Carlos III had to disavow the enterprise. That year a decree required textbooks to contain the latest knowledge based on science. In January 1772 Aranda’s cousin, the Count of Ricla, was named minister of war, and Moñino was appointed ambassador to Rome in March. Debased coins were called in and were replaced by new money. Campomanes and Moñino, representing ministers like Grimaldi, complained to the King in May that Aranda was too despotic. Carlos III agreed, and in April 1773 he appointed Aranda ambassador to France. The Aragonese party turned to the crown prince Carlos of Asturia who resented his being treated like a child by his father. A royal decree expressed the view that hidalgos should no longer be ashamed of exercising a craft.
Carlos III and Grimaldi sent an expedition with 20,000 men led by Alejandro O’Reilly that attacked Algiers on July 8, 1775; but they had at least 500 killed and 2,088 wounded with 2,000 taken prisoners. This disaster made these two foreigners resented even more. O’Reilly was from Ireland and had studied Austrian, Prussian, and French military methods. The Spanish army included six battalions of Walloon Guards and eight foreign regiments with three Flemish, three Irish, and two Italian. Each year 6,000 troops were recruited, half of them conscripts of unmarried men. Conscription was especially resisted by the Basques and in Navarre and Catalonia. In the 1770s and 1780s Spain’s army had about 30,000 men. Only nobles could serve as officers.
Prince Carlos began speaking up in cabinet meetings. Grimaldi resigned on November 7, 1776 and was sent to Rome as ambassador, enabling Floridablanca (Moñino) to return and become secretary of state and chief minister in February 1777. José de Gálvez was Minister of the Indies (1776-87). Floridablanca overcame aristocrats on the Council by appointing ministers based on merit. The Basque provinces tended to be independent, though they lacked solidarity. On October 1, 1777 Floridablanca for Spain signed at San Ildefonso a preliminary treaty that ceded Colonia and navigation of the Rio Plata and other rivers to Portugal that was ratified by Carlos III ten days later. In 1778 ports outside of Castile were allowed to trade directly with the colonies. Carlos III had granted toleration of Protestants, and in 1779 this was extended to Muslims but not to Jews. The execution of an old woman for witchcraft at Seville in 1780 aroused so much criticism in Europe that it became one of the last by the Spanish Inquisition.
Pablo de Olivade (1725-1803) was from an influential Basque family and was educated at the San Marcos University of Lima in Peru and earned a doctorate in theology in 1740 and a law degree in 1742. Accused of embezzling, he was prosecuted in Spain. He married a rich widow in 1755 and met Voltaire and others in France. After the riots of 1766 he supported the reforms of Campomanes and Aranda as the Intendant of Seville and Andalucía. In 1775 he published a book on education. The Inquisition accused him of heresy, and he was imprisoned in 1776. For believing in the doctrines of the French Encyclopédie he was sentenced to eight years in a monastery, but the weakened Inquisition dropped the case. In 1780 he fled to Paris where he observed the Revolution and was imprisoned by it for four years. He defended Christianity and was welcomed back to Spain in 1798.
In February 1779 Gálvez sent the regiment of Navarre to Havana. On April 3 Spain declared war on the British, and nine days later Floridablanca signed a treaty with France. The British war raised Spanish expenditures for 1779 to more than 700 million reales. While 30,000 Spaniards besieged Gibraltar on land, a Franco-Spanish fleet blockaded the garrison from June 24, 1779 until February 7, 1783. On August 9, 1780 a fleet led by Luis de Córdova seized sixty British merchant ships by the Azores. Gálvez had besieged Mobile in January 1780 and led a force that captured Pensacola from the British on May 10, 1781. Spain took back the island of Minorca in February 1782. The Spanish made a treaty with Turkey on September 14, 1782. In the peace treaty at Versailles on September 3, 1783 Spain regained Florida and Minorca but restored the Bahamas and Providence Island to the British and let them cut mahogany wood in Honduras. Spain also gave Colonia del Sacramento back to Portugal.
To finance the war Spain had formed its first national bank in June 1782. In 1783 the corregidores were reorganized and graded by talent and income. Peace brought Spain several years of prosperity while the government continued to borrow money. To discourage privateering of Spanish ships they bombarded Algiers for four days in August 1783 and for nine days in July 1784, and negotiations led to a treaty signed on June 14, 1786. Poor crops and food shortages led to an epidemic 1785-87, and foreign grain was imported. On July 8, 1787 Floridablanca formalized his ministerial cabinet with weekly meetings. In 1788 landowners were allowed to enclose their lands and cultivate whatever they chose. Carlos III died of a fever on December 14, 1788.
King Joao V ruled Portugal from 1707 until his paralytic stroke in 1742 when the Queen, the Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, became regent until his death in 1750. She gave birth to his successor José on June 6, 1714. Portugal ratified the peace with Spain on March 9, 1715. Joao wanted to travel in Europe with 80 bodyguards and a household of 200 people, but ministers persuaded him he could not do so without the permission of the Cortes. In 1715 the Gazeta de Lisbon became the first regular newspaper. In 1716 Portugal’s annual revenue was more than nine million cruzados. The Portuguese were the major force in a Christian victory over the Turks in the battle near Cape Matapan on July 19, 1717. The King’s share of large shipments of gold from Brazil made Joao V an independent ruler, and he spent considerable sums building his monastic palace libraries of Mafra from 1717 to 1735. After Portuguese troops helped Joao’s brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI, defeat the Turks at Corfu in July 1716, Pope Clement XI agreed to raise the archbishop of Lisbon to a patriarch; Pope Clement XII made it a cardinalate in 1737. The Academy of Portugal was instituted in Rome to aid Portuguese artists, and the Royal Academy of History was founded in 1720. That year Minas Gerais became a territory, and gold production was about 3,200 pounds a year. By then the crown had received about 36 million cruzados.
Two marriages strengthened the bonds between Bourbon Spain and the Braganças of Portugal in 1728. That year diamonds were discovered in Brazil, and in the last 24 years of Joao’s reign the crown took in 71 million cruzados. Portugal broke diplomatic relations over protocol with France from 1724 to 1738, and Joao demanded equal status with Paris, Madrid, and Vienna for the papal nuncio in Lisbon. From 1729 to 1744 Manuel da Maia supervised the construction of the Aqueduct of Free Waters that supplied Lisbon. In 1735 King Joao provided seeds to peasants in need. A quarrel between Spain and Portugal led to conflict in 1735 to 1737 over colonies by the Rio de la Plata. In 1739 Portugal had 477 monasteries. During the King’s last three years of life four prominent ministers died. Joao V passed on July 31, 1750 and was succeeded by his 36-year-old son José I. Portugal’s population was increasing to about 2.5 million.
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, known better by his later title as the Marquis of Pombal, was born on May 13, 1699 and studied at the University of Coimbra. He served as the Portuguese ambassador in London 1738-44 and then in Vienna 1745-49. Within a week of becoming king, José appointed Carvalho his Minister of Foreign Affairs. He emphasized trade with Brazil and wrote a paper advocating colonial trade over foreign commerce. He reformed the Brazilian gold shipments. Joao V’s ministers had reduced the royal share from a fifth to a tenth. A capitation tax on miners had reduced the incentives for prospecting, and in 1748 and 1749 more than 15,000 Africans had left the mines. In 1750 Carvalho negotiated the treaty at Madrid that gave the colony of Sacramento at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Spain in exchange for the removal of 30,000 Indians from Jesuit communities near there and allow Portuguese settlers. In 1751 the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was restricted. Gold production was declining. Carvalho’s new head of the customs-house in 1752 had bullion owned by the Burrell firm seized as the export of gold was prohibited. Merchants complained, and smuggling resumed. Carvalho allowed Portuguese merchants to wear swords, raising their social status. The state aided capitalists by setting up the Company for Trade with Asia in 1753 and the Grão Pará Company in 1755 to monopolize trade with Brazil. In 1756 the minister replaced these with the Junta do Comércio to control with its own court and judge with priority. Carvalho blamed the Jesuits for Indian resistance and appointed his brother, Francisco Xavier de Mondonça as Governor of Pará and Maranháo to enforce the monopoly. After a Jesuit preached a sermon criticizing Carvalho, he accused them of treason and banished the preacher and three merchants to Africa. The most famous Jesuit in Brazil was Gabriel Malagrida, and during a sermon on August 14, 1754 he announced the death of the queen-mother who died at that time.
While many people were in church on the morning of All Saint’s Day, November 1, l755, two-thirds of Lisbon was devastated by a tremendous earthquake that also caused a tidal wave in the Tagus River which was also felt at Cadiz and in England. Burning candles sparked fires that destroyed churches, palaces, and many buildings. At least 10,000 people were killed. The Marquis of Alorna advised the King, “Bury the dead, care for the living and close the ports.” The patriarch allowed the dead to be buried without religious rituals, and soldiers had them sunk in the Tagus. Food was impounded; prices were fixed; and taxes were suspended. Hospitals were opened, and the center of the city had to be rebuilt. The royal family lived in tents for nine months before moving into a wooden palace. The British Parliament authorized £100,000 to send food, shoes, and money. A 4% tax on all merchandise was imposed to pay for rebuilding. Religious people believed that divine wrath was punishing them for their sins; some wondered why those in churches suffered while criminals escaped from prisons; and others considered it a natural phenomenon.
A few months later Prime Minister Pedro da Mota died, and Carvalho was appointed. By the spring of 1756 he had consolidated his power, and King José as usual signed what was put before him. José wanted Saint Francisco de Borja (1510-72), a Spanish Jesuit, made the protector of Portugal, and Carvalho sent the petition to Pope Benedict XIV who approved it in May. Carvalho had the Minister for Overseas Affairs Diogo de Mendonça arrested, banished, and replaced by Carvalho’s brother, Francisco Xavier de Mendonça. Martinho Velho Oldemburg accused Carvalho of using private information he gained while at the Academy of History and of receiving money from gunpowder concessions, a diamond contract, and the Grão Pará Company; but Carvalho arrested Oldemburg, Italian priests, and others, and they were sent to Angola. Mendonça died in prison at Peniche. The Duke of Lafoes was sent to Vienna for twenty years. Malagrida published his Judgment on the True Cause of the Earthquake, blaming it on sinful people, and he was banished to Setúbal. Carvalho freed the Indians in Brazil and removed civil authority from priests.
On February 23, 1757 people protested the rising price of wine to the Judge of the People. After five days of rioting some were arrested by troops, and 17 were hanged in October. In May 1757 Carvalho secularized civil power in Pará, closing missions, and proclaiming the Indians free. Jesuits were confined to being parish priests. Carvalho sent his cousin as a minister to Rome to urge Pope Benedict XIV to reform the Society of Jesus. In February 1758 Carvalho criticized the Jesuits in his Brief Account which was translated into French, German, Italian, and Latin, and then he wrote the long Chronological Deduction. Benedict in April authorized Cardinal de Saldanha to investigate the Jesuits. On May 15 he prohibited Jesuits from illegal commerce, and on June 7 they were forbidden to preach or hear confessions. Cardinal de Saldanha was made patriarch of Lisbon in July. The Jesuits had dominated the universities of Coimbra and Evora, emphasizing Latin and scholastic philosophy. Carvalho had closed the University of Evora in February 1758, and in June 1759 he instituted free grammar-schools and schools for Greek and Latin in every province. He founded the College of Nobles for a hundred boys. In the 1750s the Portuguese Inquisition sentenced 1,107 people, and 18 were burned.
On the night of September 3, 1758 two groups of men attacked the royal carriage, and bullets wounded King José in the arm, shoulder, and chest. The Duke of Aveiro and the Távora family were arrested along with Malagrida and twelve Jesuits. After torture and a trial nine people were executed on January 17, 1759. That month based on evidence of a conspiracy to kill King José, all Jesuit property in Portugal was sequestered, and on September 3 a royal edict outlawed and expelled the Jesuits from Portugal. In June 1760 the papal nuncio was expelled from Lisbon, and Portugal suspended diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In January 1761 the Holy Office found Malagrida guilty of heresy, blasphemy, and impiety, and he was executed on September 20, the last execution by the Inquisition in Portugal. The imprisoned Jesuits were not freed until King José died in 1777. Also in 1760 Carvalho reformed the police to make arrests easier and created the General Intendant of the Court and Kingdom Police. He banned the importation of slaves into Portuguese cities in 1761. That year Carvalho reorganized the treasury and ordered annual audits of municipalities.
During the Seven Years War the Bourbon powers (France and Spain) gave Portugal an ultimatum on April 1, 1762. After King José declared war on the Bourbons on May 18, the British sent 8,000 men, arms and supplies to Portugal. In the peace treaty of February 1763 Portugal received restitution and regained the Sacramento colony on the Rio de la Plata.
Annual royal revenues dropped from 125 arrobas in 1752 to 86 in 1787, and the slave trade declined after 1771. Annual imports had been about £1,200,000 in the 1750s but were down to £532,000 in the early 1770s. In 1763 new duties were put on sugar, cocoa, pepper, and dried cod. A central treasury was created in 1766.
The Royal Board of Censorship was set up in 1768 with authority to approve all books and periodicals, and in 1771 it began administering state schools. Authors banned included Locke, Hobbes, Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. The Royal Printing Press also began in 1768. In 1769 the “Law of Good Reason” decreed that every law and custom should be based on reason. Carvalho was made the Marquis of Pombal, and that year he transformed the Inquisition to a royal court of the government. His brother Paulo became a cardinal in 1770. In the early 1770s four new bishoprics were established. In 1772 the curriculum of the University of Coimbra was reformed to include faculties of mathematics and natural science with laboratories, a natural history museum, a botanic garden, and an observatory. On May 25, 1773 Pombal freed the children of slaves in Portugal, ordered all lists of new Christians destroyed, and abolished statutes based on “purity of blood.”
Portugal’s public revenues averaged 15 million cruzados per year from 1762 to 1776. For most of the 18th century gold from Brazil had stimulated the entire European economy especially in England. Portugal’s gold production went down from an average of 15,000 kilos per year in the 1740s and early 1750s to about 1,000 kilos annually in the 1770s and 1780s. Pombal’s economic policies increased Portugal’s exports while imports declined, and in 1770 trade was proclaimed a noble profession. His mercantilist policy granted monopolies to chartered companies, and in 1774 he decreed free trade within the country. During the depression from 1766 to 1779 the government helped set up small factories for sugar, metals, wool and cotton textiles, hats, pottery, clothes, paper, hardware, and glass. In 1776 the Royal Silk Factory had more than 3,500 employees.
During José’s reign 23 titles disappeared but as many new ones were created, changing the aristocracy. King José suffered a stroke on November 12, 1776, and his wife Mariana Victoria became regent on the 29th. José died on February 24, 1777 and was succeeded by his 42-year-old daughter Maria and her husband Pedro III. On March 5 she dismissed Pombal, and he was exiled to the village of Pombal where he died in 1782. After José’s funeral, about 800 political prisoners were released. Maria appointed the Marquis de Angeja prime minister but kept on several of Pombal’s men. Many salaries and pensions were in arrears and were not settled until 1786. In 1778 the Inquisition condemned Joao Anastasio da Cunha for having translated works by Alexander Pope and Voltaire. The Duke of Lafoes and Father Correia da Serra founded the royal Academy of Sciences in 1779 that included literature along with natural science and mathematics. In 1780 the Portuguese sold £41,012 more in goods to Britain than they bought, and deficits decreased in the 1780s. In 1787 the board of censorship was returned to the Church.
The reigns of José and Maria have been called “enlightened despotism” because they subjugated all social classes but also ended privileges based on heredity and tradition, and a national Church became independent of Rome. The government developed a bureaucracy and promoted monopolies and economic protection. Education was secularized and opened to science, and the state took over censorship.
In 1713 the peace treaty of Utrecht rewarded Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy for joining the British coalition by giving Sicily to him instead of the Austrians who also had Naples since 1707. He arrived with 6,000 soldiers at Palermo in October and in the cathedral was crowned King of Sicily, though Spain’s Felipe V retained about a tenth of the island for his personal estates. Victor Amadeus restored the Senate of Messina, introduced new industries, and reopened the University of Catania, but after one year he returned to Turin in Piedmont. Count Annibale Maffei was Viceroy at Palermo 1714-18 but had to take orders from a governing council at Turin. The Sicilians did not like the Piedmontese civil servants, and the land was difficult to govern because of feudal barons who dominated Parliament, family vendettas, widespread crime, and poor roads. In 1715 Pope Clement XI with a papal bull ended the long tradition that let the kings of Sicily act as papal legates, and he ordered the priests in Sicily to refuse to pay taxes. Those who obeyed the Pope were banished, imprisoned, or had their property confiscated. Many churches were closed, and bishoprics were left vacant. Christians were urged to defy the government, and monks near Agrigento used boiling oil against the King’s agents.
After Elisabetta Farnese of Parma married Felipe V in 1715, she persuaded him to regain Italian territories. A Spanish fleet took over Sardinia in November 1717, and on July 1, 1718 Spanish troops landed near Palermo and were welcomed by Sicilians who had become accustomed to Spanish rule over four centuries. However, Austrian Emperor Charles VI was allied with Britain and France, and the British Admiral George Byng took the initiative and destroyed or captured 24 Spanish warships and took 3,600 prisoners off Cape Passero on August 11. Spaniards fought Austrians in Sicily for a year. On June 20, 1719 at the battle of Francavilla the Austrians suffered 3,100 casualties and the Spaniards about 2,000. The British navy supplied the Austrians, and the Spaniards retreated, scorching the earth and then surrendered in February 1720. That month the treaty of The Hague recognized Sicily as part of the Austrian Empire and compensated Victor Amadeus by making him King of Sardinia.
The Austrians attempted to disarm Sicilians who resented the German language. After six years of not meeting, the Sicilian Parliament convened in 1720; 99 barons owned the 229 baronies, and they granted the Emperor a donative of 600,000 scudi. Joaquín Fernández de Portocarrero, Marquis of Almenara, was Viceroy of Naples and Sicily 1722-28 and worked with the barons by making them princes of the Empire. To promote trade Messina was declared a free port in 1728. That year Pope Benedict XIII repealed the bull of 1715 and revived the Apostolic Legateship. At an auto da fé in 1724 Brother Romualdo and Sister Gertrude had been burned, and Antonino Canzoneri was the last Sicilian to be burned at the stake in 1732. Cristoforo Fernandez de Cordoba, Count of Sastago, was viceroy 1728-34, and he complained that taxes voted were not collected and that bad faith ruined commerce and aided lawyers. Clergy used their immunity to import goods tax-free. He found that the chaos of national and local tolls limited revenue, trade, and reform.
After Elisabetta Farnese’s son Carlos became King of Naples in May 1734, he moved against Sicily, attacking the imperial garrisons at Messina, Syracuse, and Trapani which ran out of food after six months. Carlos was crowned in Palermo Cathedral on July 3, 1735. After four days of celebration he sailed back to Naples. That year the Baron of San Giaime e Pozzo published a manual on agriculture. Viceroy Bartolomeo Corsini, Prince of Sismano (r. 1737–47) read his speech to Parliament in 1738 in Spanish but used Italian in 1741. In 1743 about 30,000 people died in a typhus epidemic in Messina. In 1759 Marquis Tommaso Natale wrote a book on punishment and questioned the use of torture and the death penalty.
In 1759 Carlos III was crowned King of Spain, and his 8-year-old son became Ferdinando IV of Naples and Ferdinando III of Sicily. The Regency Council was led by Bernardo Tanucci (1698-1783). A census that began in 1747 was not completed until 1770 and counted 780,000 people in feudal territory and 395,000 outside, but the two groups had to pay the same amount of tax. A bad harvest in 1763 was alleviated by subsidized food in the cities, but about 30,000 people died of starvation and disease. The harvest in 1764 reduced prices, and a drought that summer prevented the mills from working. In 1769 a law threatened to punish those with books by Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and other philosophers. Sicily suffered from much smuggling, rustling, and other crimes. For the first time in almost a century a nobleman was executed for murder in 1771. After another failed harvest in 1773 a revolt broke out in Palermo against the policies of Giovanni Fogliani Sforza d'Aragona, Marquis of Pellegrino (r 1755–75). Cannons were deployed in the streets, and the rioters were disarmed. Exports had been limited in 1772 and were stopped in February 1774 and 1775. In 1777 Prince Biscari had a bridge built over the Simeto River, but four years later a storm destroyed it. Also in 1777 Viceroy Stigliano introduced free trade in cereals, and he offered export licenses to more merchants. When Naples needed flour, he commandeered the mills near Palermo and stopped irrigation, but the effort was sabotaged by filling flour sacks with grass seed.
After a career as a diplomat starting in 1752, Domenico Caracciolo, marquess of Villamaina was Viceroy of Sicily 1781-86. He was a Neapolitan with a Spanish mother and was born in Spain. In 1782 he suppressed the Holy Office of the Inquisition. In 1783 his limiting the 5-day festival of St. Rosalia to three days provoked death threats against him. Caracciolo also repudiated feudal privileges and tried to penalize anyone who refused to accept that Sicilian fiefs were not held by the King. To get rid of exemption he devised a new system of taxes based on capacity to pay. He imposed a tax on carriages to pay for paving streets in Palermo. Nobles who refused to pay had their best carriages seized by bailiffs and sold. The Sicilian parliament was still dominated by the barons, but Caracciolo got support from lawyers in the domanial House. Parliament met in 1783 to finance repair work after an earthquake damaged Messina. Caracciolo urged the villagers to stand up against the baronial landowners. In 1788 King Ferdinando III supported Caracciolo’s position that aristocrats had feudal obligations.
Naples was governed by the Austrian Empire from 1707-33. Count Wirich Philipp von Daun governed a second time from 1713 to 1718. After Elisabetta Farnese married Spain’s Felipe V in 1714, she gave birth to Carlos on January 20, 1716. He loved to hunt and was tutored to obey the doctrines of the Catholic Church. A French Jesuit taught him Latin, Italian, German, and French along with history and military tactics. The treaty at The Hague in 1720 recognized Carlos as heir of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and on November 9, 1729 the treaty of Seville permitted Carlos to occupy those territories and Tuscany. Carlos left Seville on October 20, 1731 and landed at Leghorn on December 27. His tutor Santo Stefano, the Count of San Esteban, proclaimed Carlos in Tuscany. The Spanish envoy Ascanio informed him that the Austrians had abandoned Parma and Piacenza. After surviving smallpox he entered Florence on March 9, 1732 and was welcomed by 300 musicians and three nights of fireworks. Given homage by the Tuscan Senate, Carlos called himself the Grand Prince of Tuscany. In October he was greeted by similar celebrations in Parma and Piacenza.
In 1732-33 Paolo Mattia Doria published his Defense of ancient metaphysics against John Locke. He also defended female intelligence and described the despotic power the barons had over their vassals. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding was put on the Index in 1734 as was his Reasonableness of Christianity in 1737.
The War of the Polish Succession broke out in 1733. On November 7 France and Spain formed an alliance that recognized the possessions of Carlos who also was promised Naples, Sicily, and Tuscan seaports while Charles Emmanuel of Savoy was granted Milan. Spain declared war on Austria in December as 40,000 French troops crossed the Alps to join Charles Emmanuel and conquer Lombardy. The Count of Montemar led 30,000 Spaniards who landed at Leghorn. Carlos was named commander-in-chief of the Spanish army in Italy, and on his 18th birthday he declared himself of age to rule. Montemar’s army joined him in Parma. On March 5 Carlos reviewed his troops in Perugia. Pope Clement XI permitted his army to pass through the Papal States. On March 13, 1734 Carlos sent a proclamation to the people of the Two Sicilies while Felipe V announced his intention to restore prosperity to Naples. Austrians led by Marshal Giovanni Carafa had only 7,000 troops, and Admiral Pallavicini had three frigates and four galleys to defend Naples against the Spanish navy. Count Traun’s force of 4,600 soldiers in the gorges of Mignano was avoided by 5,000 Spanish grenadiers. Austrian Viceroy Visconti sent his family to Rome and fled to Puglia with 2,400 Austrian soldiers. Carlos entered Maddaloni on April 9, and Montemar’s army pursued the retreating Austrians. Prince Carlos entered Naples on May 10 and was welcomed by the nobles. Five days later Felipe V ceded his claims to Naples and Sicily to his son Carlos. The Spanish army defeated the Austrians at Bitonto on May 25. Traun held out with 6,100 men at Capua but surrendered on November 30. Montemar’s army sailed for Palermo, and a force led by the Count of Marsaillac besieged Prince Lobkowitz at Messina for six months. On July 3, 1735 Carlos was crowned King Carlo VII at Palermo cathedral. When France and Austria ended the War of the Polish Succession in October, Austria got Parma and Piacenza, but they recognized Carlo in the Two Sicilies. Spain and the Two Sicilies accepted this in February 1736. In 1737 Felipe V ceded Tuscany to Franz of Lorraine.
Pietro Giannone had published his great History of the Kingdom of Naples in February 1723, describing the history of southern Italy since the reign of Emperor Augustus and attributing the decline of Naples to papal and priestly plotting. He challenged the popes’ claims of making divine laws. He favored the secular state with free thought and opposed the papal influence over Naples. Giannone fled to Vienna, and on April 28 the archbishop excommunicated him. The Inquisition put his History on the Index of Prohibited Books on July 1; but his excommunication was absolved in October when his printer Niccolo Naso was released from the church prison. Giannone gave up his pension in Vienna and moved to Venice, but he was denied a passport to Naples. Because of his views on maritime law he was expelled from Venice and went to Geneva. While visiting Sardinia he was arrested and imprisoned at Turin in 1736 until his death in 1748.
Santo Stefano acted as prime minister and had appointed Bernardo Tanucci to be Minister of Justice on April 29, 1734. Tanucci restricted the power of the barons to arbitrate. Like Carlo, he was a devout Catholic, and he banned the works of Voltaire. Carlo had the San Carlo opera house constructed in 1737. The King often slept through the musical performances, but he liked the long comedies by Baron de Liveri. In 1738 Carlo married Maria Amalia of Saxony, and in her honor he created the San Gennaro order of knights. He founded factories for tapestry in 1737, mosaics and cameos in 1738, and porcelain in 1739. Carlo made a treaty of peace and navigation with the Ottoman Porte in 1740. That year he encouraged Jews to settle in Naples; but priests and friars aroused the people against them, and the Jews were banned again in 1747. In the kingdom of Naples the royal courts could not overrule the baronial jurisdictions.
When Felipe V sent Spanish forces to regain central Italian duchies in 1740, he ordered his son Carlo to contribute 12,000 soldiers, which he did reluctantly because he wished to be neutral. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV permitted the taxation of some ecclesiastical property, limited clerical jurisdiction and immunities, and reduced the number of clerics in the kingdom. In 1743 Empress Maria Theresa sent an army led by the Prince of Lobkowitz to attack Naples. Carlo again wanted to be neutral while his younger brother Felipe, who had invaded Nice and taken Villafranca and Oneglia, urged him to fight the Austrians before they crossed the Neapolitan frontier. Their two armies routed the Austrians, though General Gages and the Duke of Modena were forced to retreat. On March 25, 1744 Carlos sent 20,000 troops to support the Abruzzo. On August 10 an Irish regiment fighting for Spain was badly mauled outside the gate of Naples. Gages mustered his forces and defeated the Austrians and again two days later outside the walls of Rome in the battle of Velletri. Carlo entered Rome triumphantly, and he urged Pope Benedict XIV to reduce the number of religious holidays that disrupted workers. In 1746 Cardinal Archbishop Spinelli tried to introduce the Inquisition by stealth, but King Carlo learned of it and in church swore as a knight there would be no Inquisition in Naples. After Felipe V’s death in 1746, Carlo’s Italian mother Elisabetta Farnese lost her influence. Carlo managed to pay off his debts from the wars by 1750 with 300,000 ducats to spare.
The Royal Academy of Design was begun in 1752 and the Academy of Architecture in 1762. King Carlo had architect Luigi Vanvitelli construct a magnificent palace north of Naples at Caserta from 1752 to 1773 that included 136 private apartments besides places for court retainers, offices, church, seminary, theatre, and an observatory. In 1751 work had begun for the Reale Albergo dei Poveri to house the unemployed, the ill, and orphans; but its work was often interrupted until 1829, though it housed 5,000 people. When Carlo learned that many families had been ruined by gambling, he decreed it prohibited on November 24, 1753. In the kingdom of Naples fifteen titled families owned three-quarters of all feudal lands, and the Pignatelli family had 72 fiefs.
The Academia Ercolanese was founded in 1755. That year Abbé Antonio Genovesi began the first lectures on political economy in a European university, and he did so in Italian. He believed that the highest duty of the state is to educate the people, and he advocated applying science to public welfare. He emphasized agricultural reforms and the redistribution of property. He noted that in the kingdom of Naples only one family in sixty owned land. Carlo let Genovesi keep his chair at the University of Naples for sixteen years, and Croce called him an “evangelist of reason.” Genovesi made the neglected ideas of Giovanni Battista Vico popular. He also lectured on the current philosophers such as Montesquieu and D’Alembert. He published his Lessons of Commerce in 1757, and he had many foreign books translated. A Genovesi party was formed in the 1760s, and in 1767 Genovesi published his Academic Letters on the Question Whether the Ignorant are more Happy than the Scientists.
Tanucci worked to keep Naples out of the Seven Years War. In 1759 Carlo left Naples to become King Carlos III of Spain, and his 8-year-old son Ferdinando became King of Naples and Sicily. Carlo appointed a council of eight regents, but Bernardo Tanucci headed the government. He reduced the royal expenses from 324,000 ducats a year to 169,685. A bad wheat harvest in 1764 caused a famine. When some Neapolitan bakers sold bad bread, disease spread. More than 26,000 people died in Naples. In 1766 Naples had 337,000 people, and this was less than one-tenth of the kingdom’s population.
William Hamilton arrived as the English envoy in November and stayed until 1798. Ferdinando came of age in January 1767, but Tanucci continued to run the government and expelled 388 Jesuits and 212 lay brothers on November 21. They were condemned without a trial. In 1768 Ferdinando appointed Tanucci the First Secretary, and he was generally called the “Tutor of the Two Sicilies.” The previous regents became the Council of State. In May 1768 Ferdinando married the Austrian archduchess Maria Carolina who read books and became an influential advisor. Her salon was attended by Gaetano Filangieri who published Scienza della Legislazione in 1780, Giuseppe Galanti, and other notable intellectuals. Her older brother, Emperor Joseph II, visited Naples in the spring of 1769. Tanucci favored the Spanish over the Austrians, and Joseph turned his sister against him. Tanucci worked to reduce the power of the baronial jurisdictions, and he argued that magistrates are judges of the law, not its authors.
After Maria Carolina produced a male heir in 1775, she was admitted into the Council in accord with her marriage contract. She supported the Freemasons; but the Patriarch ordered Tanucci to suppress them, and on September 12 King Ferdinando signed an edict declaring Freemasons enemies and rebels. On October 1 he told his father that his wife was protecting the Freemasons. She persuaded Ferdinando to complain to his father that Tanucci was in charge, and on October 26, 1776 King Ferdinando ordered Tanucci to retire as he had often said he wanted to do. The Sicilian Marchese della Sambuca became the minister of state. Ferdinando’s younger brother Felipe died of smallpox on September 19, 1777, and the royal couple summoned Dr. Angelo Gatti to inoculate their family. Hamilton noted that Captain John Acton arrived in August 1778 and enchanted the Queen. In January 1779 the King approved his plan to reorganize the navy, and he was promoted minister of war. Four naval colleges were founded. Sambuca was accused of taking large bribes, and he was always in debt. In 1780 King Ferdinando founded the Academy of Science and Literature. The earthquakes in 1783 that killed about 40,000 people stimulated reforms in the provinces. After governing Sicily as viceroy for five years, Domenico Caracciolo was summoned in 1786 to replace Sambuca as prime minister. He served until his death in 1789 and also wrote a book about the economy and the extraction of wheat from Sicily during a convocation in 1784 and 1785.
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) taught at the University of Naples and has been gradually been recognized for his Principles of a New Science concerning the Nature of the Nations which was published in three editions in 1725, 1730, and 1744. Written in Italian, this book influenced Goethe, Jules Michelet, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Benedetto Croce, and modern anthropology. Vico also published the autobiographical Raccolta d’opusculi scientifici e filologici in 1728.
Vico believed that to understand humanity one must understand human history and its stages which he found to be cyclical and evolutionary. His earliest stage is the “age of the gods” with its mystic theology; but he described it as “bestial” because the early humans were ruled by fear of the supernatural. Primitive language in this era was sacred and secret using signs and physical objects. In the “age of heroes” family leaders formed alliances to protect themselves against internal dissidents and external aggression. This divided society into patricians and plebeians and led to feudalism based on force. Language in this era was poetic using images, metaphors, comparisons, and natural descriptions. During the “age of men” the plebeians strove for equal rights, and language was vulgar but was used to establish laws binding nobles and plebs. Eventually they had to deal with corruption and reversion to barbarism. Yet human nature is intelligent, modest, benign, and reasonable when it recognizes as laws conscience, reason, and duty. Humane governments are based on the equality of the intelligent nature, and all are equal under the laws because they are born free. The governing consideration is the truth of the facts according to the dictates of conscience enabling the laws to give aid based on the equal utility of causes.
Barbarian histories begin with fables. Imagination is more active when the reasoning faculty is weak. Children have vigorous memories and use these to form vivid imaginations. Whatever children learn, they tend to imitate to amuse themselves. The physical senses incline the human mind to consider itself in the body, and with great difficulty it learns to understand itself by contemplation. Ideas tend to follow the order of institutions, and governments conform to the nature of the people governed. Native customs and especially natural liberty change gradually over long periods of time. Vico observed that honor is the noblest stimulus to military valor, and aristocrats struggle for power, not by laws but by the force of arms and use that power to add to their wealth. All people want to be free of subjection to attain equality.
Vico argued that imperfect religion maintained the unequal social classes, though moral piety was the strength of the family. He believed that Christianity was the best religion, but it too could be corrupted. He warned against an emerging age in which technology predominates, and people become cowards, unbelievers, and informers while they hide their selfish motives behind flattery and hypocrisy. Families huddled in cities find shelter in worse slavery when money is the dominating value. Vico warned against this materialist ideology in which those serving science ignore conscience. Vico noted that philosophy considers people as they should be and so serves very few. Yet humans have free choices and can turn their passions into virtues. Common sense comes from judgment shared by an entire class, nation, or the entire human race. Vulgar traditions are based on public truths preserved over a long time.
The intelligent apply impartial utility as the basis for law. Vico believed that humans discover principles within the mind. He sought a science that is a rational theology of divine providence. By contemplating infinite and eternal providence this science discovers divine proofs that can be confirmed and demonstrated. Divine omnipotence unfolds institutions as the natural customs of people using infinite wisdom as a counselor to institute order aimed at what is good and which is better than what humans propose themselves.
Vico’s science is the history of human ideas based on metaphysical truths. He believed that the institution of marriage moderated passions and that funerals reflect the immortality of the soul. He described wisdom as “the faculty which commands all the disciplines by which we acquire all the sciences and arts that make up humanity.”1 Later wisdom was understood as the knowledge of divine things, and metaphysics is considered the divine science which seeks to understand God as the source of all truth and the regulator of all good. Thus metaphysics works for the good of the human race which depends on a belief in divine providence. Through all the stages Vico believed in divine providence. At the end of New Science he suggested that the learned should seek to unite themselves to the infinite wisdom of God, and so he emphasized the need to study piety because those without it cannot be truly wise.
On January 1, 1715 Pope Clement XI learned that the Turks had declared war on Venice. He made sure that Malta was safe and then urged the Austrian Emperor Charles VI, King Augustus of Poland, and Portugal to fight the Christians’ enemy. He strengthened his fleet on the coast of the Papal States and reorganized the army. The Pope sent financial aid to Venice and the Knights of Malta to join their fleet. In June the Turkish fleet captured the rock-fortress on the island of Tinos, and during the summer they took over Corinth and the rest of Morea (Peloponnesus). Alberoni persuaded Felipe V of Spain to inform the Pope that they would respect the Emperor’s Italian possessions during the Turkish war. In January 1716 Clement XI granted the Venetians 100,000 gold florins, and on April 13 Venice formed a military alliance with the Emperor against the Turks. The Pope also granted a tenth on the ecclesiastical lands in Italy for six years, and he gave the Emperor a subsidy of 100,000 florins. Prince Eugene of Savoy was named supreme commander of the imperial army. He led 65,000 men, a third of whom were cavalry, but he estimated that the Turkish army had more than 200,000 men.
On August 5, 1716 Eugene’s imperial army defeated about 150,000 Turks at Petrovaradin (in Serbia), killing 30,000 while suffering 3,000 dead and 2,000 wounded. In Rome the Diario di Ungheria began reporting the war and became the papal weekly newspaper for more than a century. Spain sent ten warships and 8,000 men that joined with Papal, Genoese, and Tuscan ships at Civitavecchia near Rome. On August 20 a storm scattered the Christian fleet and also ravaged the Turks’ camp two days later. On October 13 the imperial army led by Eugene captured Temesvár in Hungary.
After giving 400,000 florins to the Emperor, Pope Clement allowed Venice to collect a tax of 100,000 gold scudi from the ecclesiastical property in their territory. In the next five years the clergy of Naples, Milan, and Mantua would be taxed 500,000 scudi, and 160,000 of it was sent to Eugene. The Venetians received another subsidy of 100,000 scudi in 1717. That year Spain was also permitted to raise money for the war from its clergy, and on June 17 Alberoni signed a concordat for Spain with the nuncio Pompeo Aldrovandi; King Felipe V could raise an annual subsidy of 150,000 ducats from the Spanish clergy for four years. On July 12 Alberoni was made a cardinal. The papal fleet had reached Corfu in May, but neither side won the naval battle between Lemnos and Jombros on June 12, 1717. Eugene’s army of 100,000 men began bombarding Belgrade on July 16, and the Christian attack defeated 30,000 Turks on August 17. However, during the siege 30,000 Christians had died of disease.
Pope Clement XI condemned the Spaniards for their conquest of Sardinia from August to November 1717, but Felipe V claimed revenge for the imperial arrest of his Grand Inquisitor Molina at Milan. Clement refused to recognize Alberoni as the archbishop of Seville, and in June 1718 the Pope suspended all the Indults for taxes in Spain. That month a Spanish fleet with 10,000 men sailed from Barcelona to reconquer Sicily at Palermo, Catania, and Messina. In response on August 2 Britain, France, and Austria formed an alliance later joined by the Dutch against Spain which was forced to give back Sicily to the Emperor and Sardinia to Duke Vittorio Amadeo II of Savoy; but Emperor Charles VI had to renounce his claim to Spain. The Papacy and Spain resolved their differences in a treaty on March 11, 1721. Eight days later Clement XI died. He had refused to allow Jesuit missionaries to participate in honoring Confucius or ancestors of the Chinese emperors. By the end of his 20-year reign 54 of the 68 cardinals had been appointed by Clement XI.
On the 75th ballot on May 8, 1721 Michelangelo del Conti gained the two-thirds vote then required and became Pope Innocent XIII. He had resigned from his diocese in 1719 because he was chronically ill. He also supported the Venetians and Malta against the Turks, and he favored the British pretender James Francis Edward Stuart. Innocent XIII died of illness on March 7, 1724.
A three-quarters majority was eventually attained for the 75-year-old Dominican friar Vincenzo Maria Orsini who was elected Pope on May 29 against his wishes and chose the name Benedict XIII. Often cardinals voted for elderly men so that they too might have a chance to become the next pope. Orsini was forced to become a cardinal in 1672 by his vow of obedience. Four years later he joined the zelanti cardinals who promised not to let worldly concerns influence the papal election. He served at Benevento for 38 years until his election as pope. He walked for two hours before sunset to maintain his health. He appointed Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci as secretary of state to handle foreign affairs while he concentrated himself on pastoral work and consecrations. By May 1726 he had consecrated 360 churches and 1,494 altars. He told hospitals to treat the sick as they would him. Benedict XIII was not interested in business and let the corrupt Cardinal Niccolò Coscia enrich himself handling transactions and selling offices. After Paolucci’s death in June 1726 Cardinal Niccolo Maria Lercari became secretary of state, but he served Coscia. Benedict XIII banned the lottery in Rome and forbade the clergy to wear wigs. He appointed 29 cardinals and consecrated 139 bishops, and he founded the University of Camerino in 1727 with faculties in theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and mathematics. In 1728 he ordered the Archbishop Noailles of Paris to accept the Unigenitus bull against the Jansenists, and Benedict quarreled with Portugal’s King Joao V who broke off relations with Rome. Benedict XIII died on February 21, 1730.
The 78-year-old Florentine lawyer Lorenzo Corsini became Pope Clement XII on July 12, 1730. He had been papal treasurer since 1696 and restored papal finances by making Coscia and other ministers pay restitution for their corruption. Coscia was tried in April 1733 and was imprisoned at Castel Sant’Angelo but was allowed to participate in the conclave of 1740. Clement XII revived the Roman lottery that brought in almost a half million scudi annually, and he invested in buildings and artwork. He also had streets and roads in and around Rome paved. He had the marshes of Chiana drained by building a canal to the Tiber River. In 1732 Ancona was allowed to be a free port and was the most active city in the Papal States. After his legate Cardinal Alberoni used papal forces to seize San Marino, Clement restored the republic’s independence. He condemned the writing of Locke in 1734 and the Freemasons in 1738. He canonized Vincent de Paul and opposed the Jansenists in France. Clement XII sent Franciscan missionaries to Ethiopia and worked for better relations with the Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church’s Patriarch, and the Armenian Patriarch. While blind he received audiences in bed and made decisions, and he died on February 6, 1740.
Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini was born on March 31, 1675 into a noble family in Bologna and studied at the Collegio Clementino in Rome, where he specialized in Thomas Aquinas and earned doctorates in theology and law in 1694. He worked as a consistorial advocate for Clement XI, a consultant to the Inquisition, a promoter of the faith, and became a bishop in 1725 and a cardinal in 1728. After six months of deliberation he was nominated as a compromise candidate and told the cardinals, “If you wish to elect a saint, choose Gotti; a statesman, Aldrovandi; an honest man, me.” On August 17, 1740 on the 255th ballot he was unanimously elected.
As Pope Benedict XIV he appointed Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga to be secretary of state. He restored the King of Portugal’s patronage over sees and abbeys in 1740, and he allowed Spain to keep church revenues. In 1741 he permitted the clergy’s incomes to be taxed. He successfully mediated a dispute between the Knights of Malta and the King of Naples, and on June 2 Valenti signed the concordat with Naples. In December 1741 Benedict’s Immensa Pastorum Principis bull condemned slavery in the Americas and other colonies. His decrees in 1742 on changing how Christian concepts were translated into native languages alienated many foreign converts in Indian and Chinese missions. During the War of the Austrian Succession he remained neutral. Maria Theresa confiscated all the ecclesiastical benefices on Austrian land. In 1743 both the Austrian and Spanish armies crossed Papal territory, and Benedict sent her a letter complaining. The Pope’s deficit rose to 200,000 scudi in 1743, and in 1744 he raised taxes on land, house-rent, feudal benefices, and pensions from prebends. In 1745 he blamed the Spaniards for his misfortune and the Austrians for living at his expense.
Benedict XIV tolerated Jansenists unless their opposition was public and notorious. He corresponded with Voltaire who dedicated his play Mahomet to Benedict; yet he would not allow the Italian translation to be printed or staged. He promoted improved methods in agriculture, freed trade, reduced taxes, severely cut military spending, restrained luxuries, and suppressed usury. He used humor and said, “The pope orders; the cardinals do not obey; and the people do as they please.” He made concessions on patronage and how bishops were appointed in Naples, Sardinia, Spain, Venice, and Austria. He reformed the education of priests and reduced the calendar of feasts.
His wisdom and scholarship through bulls and encyclicals helped clear up obscure issues in ecclesiastical law. In his Magnae nobis admirationis bull in June 1748 he allowed marriages between Catholics and Protestants if the children were raised in the Catholic faith. In Rome he established academies to study Roman and Christian antiquities, Church history, and canon law and liturgy. He founded a museum in the Vatican and purchased the 3,300 manuscripts of the Ottobonian library. He initiated chairs in chemistry and mathematics at the Sapienza University in Rome. Benedict XIV wrote extensively on Catholic doctrine and church law, and fourteen volumes of his works were published 1747-51. He revived the study of anatomy and founded a chair of surgery at the University of Bologna. On January 11, 1753 Rome agreed to a concordat with Spain, and he explained it with a bull on June 9. Benedict XIV suffered from gout and died on May 3, 1758.
Pope Clement XIII (1693-1769) was from a noble Venetian family and studied law at the universities of Bologna and Padua. He became a priest in 1731, a cardinal in 1737, Bishop of Padua in 1743, and Pope in July 1758. He lived frugally himself and gave generous alms but was criticized for appointing members of his Rezzonico family, and he put the French Encyclopédie on the Index. Portugal in September 1759 expelled the Jesuits and sent them to Civitavecchia as a gift to Rome, and in 1760 Portugal broke diplomatic relations with the Vatican. When the Parlement of Paris suppressed Jesuits in August 1762, Clement XIII complained and annulled the restrictions. King Louis XV responded by expelling the Jesuits from France in November 1764. The Pope defended the Society of Jesus with his bull in January 1765. Jesuits were also banished from the Two Sicilies and Parma, and Spain expelled them in April 1767. Clement XIII refused to accept so many Jesuits into his states, and they ended up in Corsica. After France purchased Corsica in May 1768, the Pope allowed them into his territory in September. The Bourbon kings took over Avignon, Benevento, and Pontecorvo and demanded that all Jesuits be suppressed in January 1769. Clement XIII called a consistory but died of a stroke on February 2.
Pope Clement XIV (1705-74) was educated by Jesuits in Rimini and by Piarists in Urbino, but he became a Franciscan friar in 1724 and earned his doctorate in theology in 1731. In 1758 he investigated the blood libels against Jews and found them to be false. He was the only Franciscan in the conclave that elected him to be pope in May 1769. Clement XIV negotiated with the Bourbon monarchs and gave concessions to Parma that led to the restoration of Avignon and Benevento in 1773. He refused to meet with Lorenzo Ricci, the Superior General of the Jesuits, and put restrictions on them. In September 1771 the Pope made a cardinal of Paulo António de Carvalho, the brother of Portugal’s prime minister Pombal, and Portugal was reconciled with the papacy. On July 21, 1773 he signed the degree suppressing the Society of Jesus to keep the Catholic nations loyal to the Roman Church, though Protestant countries ignored his decree. Clement XIV suffered from a long illness and died on September 22, 1774.
Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi (1717-99) worked as a diplomat to Naples, was appointed a papal secretary in 1755 and treasurer of the Roman Church in 1766. After being made a cardinal in early 1775 he was elected Pope Pius VI on February 15 as a moderate on the issue of the expelled Jesuits. He extended the jubilee year of 1775 to 1776. That year he refused to make the Naples archbishop Gaetano Filangieri a cardinal, and Tanucci retaliated by suspending the annual payment to Rome. Pius criticized Rome’s governor Potenziani for allowing corruption in the city, and he appointed a council of cardinals to reform finances and to bring relief from tariffs. He stopped Nicolò Bischi from spending money that was reserved for buying grain. He denied pensions to some prominent people and offered rewards to encourage agriculture. He had some marshes drained and deepened harbors at Porto d’Anzio and Terracina. He initiated chairs of obstetrics and surgery at the Roman University, and he approved reforms in higher education in 1788.
Pius VI made a friendly concordat with Portugal’s Queen Maria I in 1778. He visited Vienna in March and April 1782 but was unable to persuade Emperor Joseph II who was more influenced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and the Freemasons. Pius refused to accept bishops nominated by the King of Naples, and that kingdom had thirty vacant sees by 1784. Yet he permitted Emperor Joseph to nominate bishops in Milan and Mantua in January 1784. Bishops at the synod of Pistoia in September 1786 expressed their independence, and Pius did not respond until 1794. He allowed Friedrich II to keep Jesuit schools in Prussia, but after German archbishops met in a congress at Ems in August 1786, he managed to restrain their trend toward independence with his written response in 1789. In 1783 Pius allowed the Society of Jesus to continue in Russia. In April 1788 Pius VI approved the first bishop in the United States at Baltimore.
Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici governed Tuscany from 1670 until his death on October 31, 1723 as the population of Florence declined to about 50,000. His son Ferdinando died in 1713. In January 1717 Cosimo accidentally killed a man while hunting and gave up the chase. His daughter, the childless widow Anna Maria Luisa returned from Dusseldorf to Florence in October, and Cosimo appointed Ferdinando’s widow, Violante of Bavaria, to govern Siena. By 1718 Tuscany had an army of less than 3,000 men and a navy with only three galleys, and the French, British, Dutch, and Austrians decided Prince Carlos of Spain should be the heir of Tuscany. Absorbed with religion Tuscany had become one of Europe’s poorest nations. Anna tried to negotiate with the foreign powers.
In 1723 Cosimo’s other childless son, Gian Gastone, inherited a bankrupt state. Although an alcoholic he began by reducing taxes, lowering the price of wheat, ending the use of spies, releasing prisoners, stopping public executions, providing beggars with a better workhouse, reviving freedom for scholars and scientists, and repealing laws that discriminated against Jews. He appointed Violante to welcome people at court. Then he spent most of his time in bed except when he was frolicking with the Ruspanti boys from poor Florentine families. Their numbers increased to almost four hundred by 1731, and when not paid they created riots and raided shops and markets.
When Gastone was injured in 1730, Spain sent a fleet and an army to Tuscany while Austrians invaded Lombardy. Gastone agreed to make Carlos his heir, and the Spaniards conceded that Anna Maria would become Grand Duchess. Violante died in 1731. An Anglo-Spanish fleet seized Leghorn, and a Spanish army of 30,000 occupied Tuscany. Emperor Charles VI sent an army of 50,000 men. In 1734 Carlos used the Spanish army to take Naples, and Austrians were defeated in the Po Valley by the French and Sardinians in September. In October 1735 the Quadruple Alliance of Austria, France, Britain, and Holland gave the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the Emperor’s daughter, Maria Theresa, who was to marry Duke Francis of Lorraine in February 1736. In January 1737 Spanish forces withdrew from Tuscany and were replaced by 6,000 Austrian troops.
Gastone’s death on July 9, 1737 left 70-year-old Electress Palatine Anna Maria as the last Medici. She declined to be regent as Maria Theresa’s husband Franz, the new Grand Duke, was fighting the Turks in Hungary, returned to Vienna in October 1738 and traveled to Florence but stayed for only three months in early 1739. He appointed Prince Beauveu de Craon to govern, and Tuscans were not happy being under the Lorrainers he appointed. Anna Maria spent her wealth and time preserving the treasures in the Uffizi Gallery and completing the Medici mausoleum. The Medici line ended with her death on February 18, 1743.
Francis of Lorraine was the Austrian Emperor 1745-65, and upon his death his son Leopold became Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldino of Tuscany; but he did not get authorization from his mother Maria Theresa to rule himself until 1770. Reforms in Florence were led by Pompeo Neri who returned in 1758. His Report on the Present State of the Comprehensive Land Survey had been published at Milan in 1750. Leopold was aided by Angelo Tavanti and the superintendent of the silk guild, Francesco Maria Gianni, who was influenced by Leibniz and the French philosophers of the Enlightenment. Poor harvests from 1764 to 1767 led to freeing imports in 1771 and exports in 1775 after another famine 1772-74. The physiocrat Ferdinando Paoletti published his Thoughts on Agriculture in 1769 and Of the True Means to Render Societies Happy in 1772. The Florentine guilds were dissolved in 1779 to allow freedom to work. In 1780 Scipione de’ Ricci became bishop of Pistoia and Prato, and Leopold appointed him and other Jansenists to establish seminaries at Siena, Pistoia, and Leghorn. Religious reforms included banning penitential processions in 1773, limiting begging in 1778, suppressing the Inquisition in 1782, replacing confraternities with charity companies in each parish in 1785, and simplifying ceremonies in 1786. In March 1787 Leopold convened the Tuscan bishops and isolated the Jansenists and rejected their ideas. Gianni’s plan to sell land to peasants, first proposed in 1764 failed in 1784 as wealthy landowners bought them out. Beccaria’s ideas influenced the reform of the criminal code in 1786. That year the Deputation of Finances was created and implemented experimental reforms two years later.
The treaties made at Utrecht in 1713 and 1714 transferred the rule of Lombardy and its capital at Milan from Spain to the Austrian Empire which lasted until the duchies of Milan and Mantua were conquered by Napoleon’s French army in 1796. In the 1720s the 200,000 people who held 75% of the wealth paid only 6 million lire of the total 21 million in tax revenues. In 1742 Garfagnana peasants stopped the Franco-Spaniard Bourbons from building a road across their mountains, and in 1744 peasants in the Cuneese valleys harassed the Franco-Spanish army and killed the officers they captured. In 1747 half of Lombard’s six million lire in revenue was spent to pay the interest on past debts. In 1748 Parma was assigned to Elisabetta Farnese’s son Filippo. He hired Condillac to tutor his son. Guillaume du Tillot advised him how to remove the privileges of the clergy and promote manufacturing, and he also promoted French plays and operas at court. In Lombardy at this time the nobility owned about 45% of the land while the Church possessed about 22%. Empress Maria Theresa formed a commission aided by Neri and Gianni that implemented a land-register by 1757 which transferred the burden of taxes from persons and trade to land and property. Austrian Karl Joseph von Firmian was appointed minister plenipotentiary for Lombardy in 1758 and served until his death in 1782. Between 1768 and 1771 Empress Theresa married two daughters and a son to Italian aristocrats of Naples, Parma, and Modena. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este governed the Duchy of Milan from 1765 to 1796.
After the famine of 1764-66 measures gradually freed the internal and external trade of wheat by 1773. A higher council for the economy was created in 1765, and in 1771 a chamber of magistrates took over with a department of accounts. The reformer Pietro Verri wrote Elements of Trade in 1760 to encourage free trade and began publishing the Il Caffè magazine in 1764. In 1769 he published his Reflections on Restrictive Laws, and he worked to reduce the royalties received by tax farmers who were replaced by the Public Treasury in 1770. New reforms closed monastic schools, and the Treasury used their incomes to reorganize the public schools in 1771. That year a road for coaches was completed across the Alps through the Brenner pass to the Po plain, Modena, and the Apennine pass all the way to Florence. La Scala opera house opened in Milan in August 1778. The historian Pietro Custodi reported that a “torrent of innovations” hit Milan in 1786. In 1787 Lodovico Ricci published Reform of the Charitable Institutions of the City of Modena.
The republic of Genoa declined in the 18th century. A revolt on Corsica in 1730 was not put down until 1732. Concerned about being divided by their adversary Sardinia, the Genoese joined the Bourbon French and Spanish in the War of the Austrian Succession in 1745 and had to surrender to the Austrians on September 6, 1746. A popular revolt broke out in December and drove out the Austrians, but they came back to besiege Genoa from February to July 6, 1747. Corsicans rebelled against Genoese rule again and proclaimed a republic in 1755. The rebellion continued until Genoa ceded Corsica to France in 1768. The Genoese economy revived in the 1780s.
Vittorio Amedeo II was Duke of Savoy 1675-1730. In 1717 he reformed the government of Turin. The treaty of Utrecht made him King of Sicily in 1713, but the Quadruple Alliance forced him to give that up to become King of Sardinia in 1720. He abdicated in September 1730 in favor of his son Charles Emmanuel III who became Duke of Savoy and ruled the kingdom of Sardinia until his death in 1773, having abolished serfdom in 1771. He was succeeded by his conservative son Vittorio Amadeo III who reigned until he died in 1796.
Cesare Beccaria was born in Milan on March 15, 1738 the oldest son of a marquis. At the age of eight he went to a Jesuit school at Parma he later called “fanatical” because it stifled the development of human feelings. In September 1758 he earned a doctorate in law at the University of Pavia. He fell in love with 16-year-old Teresa Blasco in 1760 and married her the next year without his parents’ consent. At Milan he joined the literary society Accademia dei Trasformati and became friends with Count Pietro Verri and his brother Alessandro. Beccaria wrote “On Remedies for the Monetary Disorders of Milan in the Year 1762” in which he recommended gold be valued at 14.5 times that of silver. He also contributed articles for the Il Caffè magazine. Pietro urged him to make a study of criminal law, and in July 1764 Beccaria published anonymously his famous work, On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene). The monk Ferdinando Facchinei put out his Notes and Observations on the Book “On Crimes and Punishments” in January 1765, charging Beccaria with six instances of sedition and 23 counts of irreligion, and Beccaria used humor in his defense. In February 1766 On Crimes and Punishments was put on the Catholic Index of condemned books. That year Voltaire read it in Italian and wrote a commentary. Beccaria’s name soon became known, and his short book was translated into French in 1766, into English in 1767, and into German, Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Russian, and other languages. Beccaria’s treatise became very influential on criminal law reforms in Europe and America.
At the beginning of On Crimes and Punishments Beccaria advised his readers that the purpose of his work is to show that human opinion is more powerful than force because kindness and humanity can justify authority. He recognized that revelation and natural law are sources of moral principles, but he was concerned with the social conventions that are necessary and useful. Humans subjected to many errors in essential issues of life and liberty have grown tired of suffering misfortune and so are driven to remedy the ills that oppress them. Beccaria was one of the first to recommend the principle of “the greatest happiness shared among the greatest number.” A philosopher can sow seeds of useful truths among the multitudes. The commerce of such truths has been made more dynamic by the wide availability of the printing press bringing about a humane conflict among reasonable people. Yet even in his enlightened century few were fighting against cruel punishments and criminal irregularities. Wealthy indolence has tolerated atrocities such as torture and severe punishment in squalid prisons.
Beccaria noted that humans use laws to form a society to find relief from perpetual war and to enjoy liberty, some of which must be sacrificed for security and peace. Laws are made to protect people from despotic individuals, and punishments are devised to deter the law-breakers. Montesquieu argued that any punishment that is not necessary is tyrannical. The just punishment of usurpations enhances security and liberty. Fundamental principles can be found in the human heart. As societies formed governments, the war was transferred from individuals to nations. Beccaria described justice as binding particular interests together, and it influences everyone’s happiness infinitely. Only laws made by legislators can decree punishments for crimes, and a third party is required to judge the facts according to the laws. The magistrate reasons by the general law to the specific actions to determine acquittal or punishment of the crime. Yet the same crimes are often punished differently. As more people understand the laws, the crimes are fewer. Beccaria observed that the publication of laws reduced atrocities in Europe.
Punishments should be proportional to crimes. He noted that large empires increase the motives for crime, and then punishments become more severe. Crimes are measured by the amount of harm they do to people, their property, and their honor, and proportional punishments are devised to deter them. The process of justice shows that might does not make right. Disturbing the public peace can also be a crime. The purpose of punishment is not to torment or inflict pain nor to undo the crime but to prevent individuals from committing crimes. Secret accusations have been an abuse in many nations, and most countries have condoned torture. No one should be considered guilty before a judge has reached a verdict, and an innocent person should never be tortured. Torture can cause an innocent person to confess falsely to stop the pain. Torture does not aid the discovery of truth because it causes people to lie. To torture one person to implicate another is to punish an innocent person for the crime of the other. Oaths are useless because they do not make the guilty tell the truth. Detention before trial should be brief and not punitive.
Violent crimes against people should be punished more severely than those against property which can result in fines. Theft using violence is more serious. Beccaria did not exempt nobles from equal treatment before the laws. Injuring honor can be punished by public disgrace. Beccaria argued that confiscated property should not be given to the prince but to the guilty person’s heirs. Compared to the family the spirit of the republic is for the good of the greatest number. A state can prevent itself from becoming too vast by uniting federated republics. Cruel punishments harden human minds, and atrocities for lesser crimes fail to deter criminals from committing worse offenses.
Beccaria was perhaps the first person to ask seriously
whether the death penalty is really useful
and just in a well-organized state.
By what right can men presume to slaughter their fellows?2
He called the death penalty “the war of a nation against a citizen,” and he set out to show for the cause of humanity that capital punishment is neither useful nor necessary. Two rationales for executions are that a person endangers the security of the nation or to deter others from committing crimes. Under a government of laws an incarcerated person poses no threat to society, and he argued that the penal servitude of life imprisonment deters even the most determined mind. Why should a government that condemns homicide commit public murder? In olden times human sacrifices were common in many societies, but now no one would defend them.
The accused should have the time and the means to defend oneself but not unnecessary time in detention before one’s trial. Beccaria noted that commerce in luxuries is for the advantage of few people. Debtors need not be imprisoned because culpable bankruptcies can be prevented by the public and open registration of contracts. He criticized the use of bounties that encourage the violence of vigilantes. Witnesses should not be asked leading questions, and nothing is more leading than torture.
Preventing crimes is much better than punishing them, and this is the aim of good legislation. Enlightenment that comes from liberty is the best way to prevent crimes, for the enlightened person is the “guardian of the sacred laws.” Improving education may be the most difficult way to prevent crimes, but it is the most sure method. As the spirit of people softens in society, their sensibility grows, diminishing the severity of punishment. Beccaria concluded his famous treatise with this sentence:
In order that punishment should not be an act of violence
committed by one or many against a private citizen,
it is essential that it be public, prompt, necessary,
the minimum possible in the given circumstances,
proportionate to the crimes, and established by the law.3
In 1768 Beccaria was given the chair in public economy and commerce in the Palatine School in Milan, and his lectures in the next two years were published posthumously in 1804 as Elements of Public Economy. He prophesied this vision for a better future:
We come now to a useful thought, that a nation can prosper
at the expense of another only to a certain point;
beyond that point our prosperity, in order to be a real one,
must bring about the prosperity of others,
because it is impossible to be happy
or to be miserable in isolation:
a sign this, of a community of things, of a tacit brotherhood
that nature has decreed for the whole human species.
This thought of a universal brotherhood
should lead us to a virtuous path—
away from the narrow and petty views of selfish gain,
toward the serene areas of justice and goodwill.4
In 1771 Beccaria was appointed to the Supreme Economic Council of Milan and served as a public official for the rest of his life. In 1781 he suggested the useful innovation of a decimal system of weights and measures that would be adopted by the French Revolution. He prepared studies on trade between Lombardy and Switzerland, how to regulate Milan’s bakeries, improve iron mines, and conserve pastures and forests in Lombardy. In 1791 his report on the Austrian law code prepared the way for a new code in Lombardy. He died on November 28, 1794.
Between 1684 and 1699 the Republic of Venice had taken over many Greek areas of the Morea from the Ottoman empire, and Venice was neutral in the War of the Spanish Succession 1701-13. On December 9, 1714 the Ottoman Grand Vizier Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha at Istanbul informed the Venetian bailo Andrea Memmo that the Sultan Ahmed III was declaring war against Venice because of disturbances in Montenegro and for the interception of a Turkish ship in the Adriatic Sea. Yet the intention seemed to be to retake the losses in the Morea. Venice appealed to European Christians and got some aid from Pope Clement XI and the Knights of Malta. Grand Vizier Damat Ali gathered an army of about 70,000 men in Macedonia and marched south to Thebes by June 1715 while an Ottoman fleet of eighty warships regained ports in the Aegean and the islands of Tinos and Aegina. The Tinos commander Bernardo Balbi returned to Venice and was sentenced to life in prison for having surrendered. The Turkish army besieged Corinth for five days before capturing it. The Turks also took over Nauplia, Modone, Corone, Malvasia, and the island of Cythera. Turks on Crete defeated the Venetian outposts at Suda and Spinalunga.
On April 13, 1716 Emperor Charles VI revived his alliance with Venice, and the Sultan declared war on Austria. On July 8 an Ottoman army of 30,000 foot-soldiers and 3,000 cavalry invaded the island of Corfu while a naval battle was indecisive. After capturing four forts the Turks besieged the city of Corfu on the 19th. Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg commanded about 8,000 Venetians who withstood the assaults. On August 9 a storm devastated the besiegers, and their assault on the 18th failed. The next day another storm soaked the Turks’ camp, and they departed. Venice rewarded Schulenburg with a pension for life.
The great battle of the Ottoman-Venetian War was fought on August 5, 1716 when Prince Eugene of Savoy led the imperial army of Austria with about 75,000 men against the Ottoman army of 150,000 at Petrovaradin. Some 30,000 Turks were killed compared to 3,000 Austrians. The next winter the Venetians prepared a new fleet of 27 ships led by Admiral Ludovico Flangini who was mortally wounded in an indecisive battle near Imbros June 12-16, 1717 against 44 Turkish warships. On July 19 in the naval battle of Matapan the Venetians led by Andrea Pisani destroyed fourteen ships while losing only three. The Venetians also captured the fortresses of Preveza and Arta. Eugene’s imperial army of 100,000 men besieged the fortress of Belgrade for a month and captured it on August 17 as the Turks lost 20,000 men, artillery, and equipment. After that the Turks retreated. Diplomats met at Passarowitz in May 1718 and signed a treaty on July 21. The Ottoman empire lost territory to the Austrian empire, but Venice had to give up the Morea to the Turks except for Cythera, Butrinto, Preveza, Vonitsa, and some forts in Dalmatia. The borders of the Venetian republic would remain stable for eighty years of peace.
During the long peace Venice managed to get by with little military force and increased its value as a tourist attraction with its art, music, theater, gambling, and many courtesans. Only the Barbary pirates were a nuisance, and for a while Venetian merchants had to group their ships in convoys; but too many goods delivered at once lowered prices. So in 1736 the Doge Alvise Pisani allowed larger ships to travel alone, and more foreign merchants arrived. In 1737 the philosopher Francesco Algarotti published his Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of Ladies. Doge Pietro Grimani (1741-52) had been made a member of the Royal Society by Newton. Algarotti’s Essay on the Opera written in 1755 was also influential. The massive Murazzi was constructed from 1744 and completed in 1782 to protect Venice from sea erosion.
In 1758 the Venetian Carlo Rezzonico was elected Pope Clement XIII. In 1767 a commission reported that the Church was collecting 8.5 million ducats from the Venetian people, and on September 10 the government suppressed 127 monasteries and convents and sold their property for about three million ducats, reducing the monastic population from 5,798 to 3,270. Venice tolerated religious diversity including Greek Orthodox churches, Jewish synagogues, and a Muslim mosque, and Venice is the only Catholic state in Europe that never burned a heretic. The humanistic and cosmopolitan philosophy made the University of Padua the most prestigious in Europe, and these ideas helped bring about the Age of Reason in Europe.
In the 18th century an astonishing 66% of nobles remained unmarried. These families would have only one son, usually the youngest, marry so that their wealth would not be divided. This also caused a striking inequality of wealth among aristocrats. The republican government of Venice was dominated by only 42 families. The large number of bachelors is one of the reasons that Venice had so many courtesans, orphanages, and convents, and many marriages were easily annulled. Venice was famous for its Carnival which was celebrated for about half the year from October to Christmas, Twelfth Night to Lent, for two weeks after Ascensions Day and St. Mark’s Day, and whenever a Doge was elected. People wore masks to remain incognito as they enjoyed themselves.
Doge Francesco Loredan (1752-62) avoided reforms that allowed the Venetian economy to boom during the Seven Years’ War. Marco Foscarini was doge for only ten months but is known for his poem Il Corallo about the coral industry and his history of Venetian literature. Doge Alvise Giovanni Mocenigo (1763-78) made treaties with Tripoli in 1764, Morocco in 1765, and with Russia, but he refused to make one with the United States in 1778. Venice agreed to pay Morocco 60,000 ducats to stop piracy, but the promise was not kept. In 1768 Angelo Emo helped Venice revive its navy, and by 1784 they had enough ships to fight the Bey of Tunis until 1786 when they made a favorable treaty. Emperor Joseph II’s visit to Venice in July 1769 was criticized for the great expense it caused. On November 27, 1774 a reforming Council of Ten tried to restrain vice and corruption by closing gambling casinos, and the Great Council voted 720-21 to close the public ridotto and use it for government offices; but it only lasted for a few weeks.
Doge Paolo Renier (1779-89) was a classical scholar and had served as envoy in Vienna and Istanbul, but the rumor was that he had bought the dogeship by bribing 300 members of the Great Council. Andrea Tron led the reactionary opposition and was known as “the Boss.” Giorgio Pisani was elected Procurator of St. Mark and led the radicals. Tron got legislation passed against the Jews in 1777, and Pisani criticized the government. Pisani was arrested on May 31 and spent ten years in prison. Doge Renier begged for unity because they did not have military forces nor allies.
Antonio Vivaldi (1648-1741) composed delightful music with choral works, more than forty operas, and violin concertos. His brilliant Four Seasons and eight violin concerti were published in 1725 at Amsterdam. Tommaso Albinoni (1671-1751) was a wealthy paper merchant, but he also composed 99 sonatas, 59 concertos, and 9 symphonies. Italians continued to develop opera by prolific composers such as Carlo Francesco Pollarolo and Alessandro Scarlatti who founded the Neapolitan school. Later Niccolò Piccinni (1728-1800) made (comic) opera buffa popular.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) from Venice was a prolific painter. The paintings of Canaletto were purchased by the British consul Joseph Smith who sold them in 1762 to George III for £20,000. Smith also collected a library that the King bought for £10,000.
Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) was born in Venice in a theatrical family and is famous for his autobiography in twelve volumes describing his many amorous adventures and his travels in Italy, France, Germany, Vienna, England, Belgium, Poland, Russia, and Bohemia. Casanova’s name has come to stand for a promiscuous lover.
Carlo Goldoni was born on February 25, 1707 in Venice, the son of a physician. He read the comedies of Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence and wrote his first play at the age of eleven. He later learned French to read Molière. In 1718 his family moved to Perugia, and Carlo studied with Jesuits. In 1720 at Rimini he learned philosophy at a Dominican college. He studied law at the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia for two years but was expelled for writing a satire. After his father’s death in 1731 Goldoni earned a doctorate in law from Padua and returned to Venice. In 1734 he was hired to write plays for the Teatro San Samuele and wrote the tragedy Belisario about the historical Belisarius. In 1736 in Genoa he met and married Nicoletta Connio, and they were together until his death. Influenced by Molière, his first successful comedy was The Man of the World in 1738. He practiced law at Pisa 1744-48, but he loved the theater.
Goldoni wrote Servant of Two Masters (Il servitore di due padroni) in 1746 and revised it in 1753. He was the first Italian to develop the commedia dell’arte characters into a written script for actors to memorize. In Venice the merchant Pantalone has learned that Federigo Rasponi has died, and so he has his daughter Clarice betrothed to Dr. Lombardi’s son Silvio. Beatrice Rasponi of Turin pretends to be her brother Federigo, who was recently killed in a duel by her lover Florindo because he would not let her marry him. Clarice’s maid Smeraldina is hoping to get married. Truffaldino thinks he is serving Federigo who is actually Beatrice dressed as a man, and they stay at Brighella’s inn. Silvio is smitten by this Federigo; but (s)he tells him that he intends to marry Clarice. Florindo arrives and hires Truffaldino to be his servant, and the poor and hungry servant decides he could do better with two masters. Florindo tells Silvio that Federigo is dead. Truffaldino makes a mess by mixing up letters for his two masters. Pantalone wants Clarice to wed Federigo, but she refuses. Beatrice reveals herself and tells Clarice that she has no use for her. Thinking that Federigo is alive, Pantalone tells his Clarice to marry him. She tells Silvio she will marry him, but she promised not to share Beatrice’s secret. Smeraldina complains about the double standard for infidelity and says it is because the men make the laws. Florindo gives Truffaldino his purse, but Beatrice makes him turn it over to his other master (her). Truffaldino gets to eat while he is arranging dinners for both his masters in the same inn. He also tells Smeraldina that he loves her. Beatrice discovers two letters that she wrote to Florindo, and Truffaldino tells both his masters that the other’s servant is Pasquale. Pantalone learns that Federigo is actually his sister Beatrice. After Truffaldino tells his masters that the other master is dead, Beatrice and Florindo are about to kill themselves; but then they see each other. Finally Truffaldino tells Beatrice that he is also Pasquale. Silvio and Clarice forgive each other, and Beatrice asks for forgiveness of them and of their fathers. Smeraldina agrees to wed Truffaldino, and so three couples will marry. This more realistic comedy portrays the differences in social classes and how a woman can be a master if people think she is a man.
In 1747 Goldoni persuaded the actors to forgo wearing masks in The Venetian Twins based on the Menaechmi by Plautus, but he wrote the play so that the actor Cesare d’Arbes could play the part of both twins.
In 1748 Goldoni joined the Teatro Sant’ Angelo company of Medebac in Venice, and his comedy, The Artful Widow (La vedova scaltra), was even more successful. The next year his comedy, The Respectable Girl (La putta onorata), brought realism to commedia dell’arte. His adaptation of Richardson’s novel Pamela was performed in 1750. In the 1750-51 season Goldoni had sixteen new comedies produced including The Father of the Family, The Antiquarian’s Family, The Coffee House (La bottega del caffe), The Comic Theater, Women’s Gossip and The Liar.
Goldoni’s most popular play, The Mistress of the Inn (La Locandiera), was translated by Frederick Davies as Mirandola and was first performed in Venice in 1753. The Marquis of Forlipopoli is poor and in debt but tries to use his title and sophistication to woo the beautiful and charming Mirandola. The wealthy Count of Albafiorita gives her diamond earrings and other expensive gifts to win her. Yet she promised her father before he died that she will wed her fellow servant at the inn, Fabrizio. The Baron Ripafratta is also staying at the inn, but he is a confirmed bachelor who hates women and calls them “stupid, selfish, and dogmatic.” The Marquis likes Mirandola’s charm and modesty, and the Count says that she is “pretty, speaks well, dresses neatly, and has perfect taste.” The Baron asks her to have his linen changed. The Marquis gives her a silk handkerchief and says he wants to marry her. Mirandola decides to seduce the misogynist, but she wants to keep faithful Fabrizio hoping and tells him she only needs one man. The Baron loans the Marquis one zecchino to be rid of him. Mirandola flatters the Baron.
In the second act Mirandola goes to the Baron’s room and gives him a fine meal and drinks Burgundy wine with him. The Baron notes that she is making the Marquis jealous. The Marquis shares a little wine, is insulted, and goes out. The Baron realizes she is out to get him, but she fascinates him. The Marquis and the Count tell the Baron that he has fallen for her, and he throws a glass at them. Fabrizio is worried, but Mirandola likes amusing herself by making men do what she wants. The Baron sends her a little bottle made of gold, but by rejecting it she pleases Fabrizio. The Baron observes that she is in love with Fabrizio, but she denies she could love a servant. The Baron says he respects her, asks for pity, and admits he loves her but burns his hand on her iron. The Marquis takes the bottle, gives it to two foreign actresses, and then learns it is real gold. The Count agrees to pay the 13 zecchini that the Marquis owes. Mirandola decides to marry Fabrizio. The Count accuses the Baron of trying to steal Mirandola from him, but in the duel the Baron finds that the sword of the Marquis he draws is broken. Fabrizio and Mirandola come in and stop the fight. She admits she failed to make the Baron love her and gives her hand in marriage to Fabrizio. She confesses she hurt others in her game and says she will be different when married. Fabrizio is her only love, and she asks the others to leave the inn. The Marquis returns the gold bottle to her. Mirandola hopes the audience will learn from what they have seen.
From 1753 to 1761 Goldoni wrote for the Teatro San Luca. His comedy in Venetian dialect, The Boors (I Rusteghi) was produced in February 1760. The merchant Lunardo has a daughter Lucietta by his first wife and arranges for her to marry Maurizio’s son Filippetto but does not want them to meet until the wedding. Lunardo’s second wife Margarita tries to be a mother to her step-daughter, but they do not get along. Lunardo is gruff to his wife and daughter as is the merchant Simon to his wife Marina whose sister is married to Maurizio. These three men are the boors who show contempt for their wives and children. However, Canciano’s wife Felice is able to bring the young couple together at a dinner by disguising Filippetto with a mask so that they can meet and see each other before the wedding. She gives Canciano a lecture about how to treat her better and does the same for Lunardo and Simon, teaching them to behave like men and not tyrannical savages if they would be loved.
Goldoni’s middle-class comedy La Casa Nova was translated by Frederick Davies as The Superior Residence and opened in Venice on December 11, 1760. Anzoletto has been spending his inheritance, and his bride Cecilia has persuaded him to renovate an apartment; but he owes a year’s rent on his previous home, has not paid rent on his new place nor paid the workers. His sister Domenica has chosen not to live with their rich uncle Cristofolo, but she clashes with Anzoletto’s spoiled wife Cecilia who brought no dowry. Domenica and Lorenzino are in love and would like to marry. Visitor Fabrizio persuades Anzoletto to make the reception room the master bedroom because a bedroom on the north side is a bad idea, and Domenica does not like the view from her room. Anzoletto has fallen out with his uncle and does not want his sister to live with him. Cecilia arrives and makes the workers take their bed out of the reception room. Domenica’s maid Lucietta tries to mediate.
Upstairs live the sisters Rosina and Checca who are interested because Lorenzino is their nephew. Lucietta informs them how horrible Cecilia is. The sisters tell Cecilia that Lorenzino is a worthy gentleman. Checca’s husband knows Cristofolo, and she invites Cristofolo to call upon them. Anzoletto learns his furniture is sequestered, and he must pay rent on his new place that day. Lucietta has not been paid for seven months. Domenica and Cecilia quarrel and demand that one of them must leave the new house. Cristofolo arrives and tells the sisters he will help with their nephew but not with his nephew or niece nor with Cecilia who has ruined Anzoletto. Domenica comes in and begs her uncle to forgive her. Cristofolo learns that Domenica wants to marry Lorenzino. Anzoletto hands Cecelia a knife and tells her to kill him, but she only calls him a fool. She persuades him to go upstairs and talk to his uncle. Cristofolo offers to buy a position for Lorenzino so that he can marry Domenica. Cecilia makes a long speech about how she was brought up to be foolish, but now she is changing. Anzoletto promises to obey Cristofolo, give up his new apartment, and stay with his uncle for a while, and Cristofolo will pay his debts. Domenica and Lorenzino agree to marry, and Cecilia accepts the blame for wanting a “superior residence.” This realistic comedy portrays the challenges of the rising middle class.
In 1761 Goldoni wrote a trilogy of plays about the planning of a vacation, the adventures on one, and its consequences for the changing values of average people. He wrote his plays in Italian, but in April 1761 Goldoni moved to Paris and began writing in French as well. In 1765 he wrote The Fan (Il Ventaglio) in Italian and sent it to Venice. That year he began tutoring Louis XV’s daughter Adelaide at Versailles. In 1769 the French court gave him a small pension, and in 1771 Goldoni’s last successful play, The Beneficent Bear (Le bourru bienfaisant), was performed at the wedding of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In his life Goldoni wrote about 150 comedies, ten tragedies, and 83 libretti for melodramas. He has been called the founder of the modern bourgeois theater and the Italian Molière. In France he worked on his Memoirs for more than a decade before publishing them in three volumes in 1787. The next year his complete works were published in Venice. In 1792 the revolutionary legislature in France canceled all royal pensions, and Goldoni died in poverty on February 6, 1793 the day before his pension was reinstated; but his widow received an annuity of 1,500 livres.
Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806), younger brother of the critic and dramatist Gasparo Gozzi, was from an impoverished aristocratic family of Venice and served in the military in the Dalmatian province 1744-47 after which he broke with his family and sued for his inheritance. Carlo helped found the literary Accademia dei Granelleschi to support linguistic purity of Tuscan literature. In 1757 he criticized the innovations of plays by Goldoni and Pietro Chiari in The Tartan of Invisible Influences for the Leap Year 1756. The next year he satirized Goldoni’s theatrical reforms in a dialog, The Comic Theatre of the Pilgrim Inn. In 1761 in The Love of Three Oranges, the first of his ten Tales for the Theatre, he favored the traditional improvisation of the commedia dell’arte over the realistic comedies of Goldoni and Chiari. Carlo Gozzi is best known for his adaptations of fairy tales in combination with commedia dell’arte such as The Raven, The King Stag, Turandot, The Serpent Woman, and The Green Bird which satirized the French philosophers. Turandot especially influenced German romanticism and was the basis for operas by Puccini and others. Later Gozzi adapted plays by Miguel de Cervantes, Calderon de la Barca, and Tirso de Molina.
1. The New Science of Giambattista Vico tr. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, p. 70.
2. Of Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings by Cesare Beccaria tr. Aaron Thomas and Jeremy Parzen, p. 51.
3. Ibid., p. 86.
4. Quoted in Cesare Beccaria and the Origins of Penal Reform by Marcello Maestro, p. 91.