Catherine Fletcher (1) (1975–)

That I gave this book a chance was mostly on the strength of the Fletcher's performance with her life and times of Alessandro de Medici. However, while this book is not lacking in virtue, I do have some issues with it, starting with the title. If truth in advertising was in effect, it would be called "Early Modern Italy: Cultural Efflorescence and Political Decline," as this is basically just a history of the so-called "Italian Wars," as the Italian peninsula became a cockpit for the Valois-Hapsburg dynastic conflict, and the Italian city-states became marginalized by the initial rise of the nation-state.

This is a reasonably good study so far as it goes, but whether Fletcher really achieves her goal of putting the players in the Italy of the time in proper relation to each other for the general reader is another question; I can see this work being too indigestible for that. Though it would probably make a good college undergrad textbook. I will say that what Fletcher does well is to incorporate the conflicts of religious practice and authority of the time into her general study; Martin Luther and various Catholic popes are as important in this narrative as any artist or king.… (meer)

In this examination of the first Medici Duke of Florence the author is rather less concerned with the ethnicity of Alessandro than one might think (though it's just possible that he was the real-life inspiration for "Othello"). The real story here is one of intramural conflict between the various branches of the Medici clan and how, at the end of the day, Alessandro may well have been a competent prince of Florence and its possessions, but it was convenient to allow him, in the wake of his murder, to take the fall for doing the hard work of formally imposing a Medici dynasty on the city as its ruling house. That his wife Margaret of Austria appeared to think well of the man long after his death is suggestive.… (meer)