Firearms as Accessories in Renaissance Italy

European Renaissance

Sometimes I read something so fascinating, that I immediately want to write a blog about it and share my new interest with the digital world. But me being myself, I often run into practical considerations that are likely to delay such a project. For instance, I have to look into the broader scholarly literature to be certain that I present you with a proper overview of the learned consensus on a topic. And with new interests, this is hindered by the fact that even I cannot be an expert in all humanities – however hard I may try. So this week, in the middle of summer, we are going to talk about a subject that first grabbed me last Christmas: firearms as accessories in Renaissance Italy.

The piece of writing that managed to first spark my fascination with this topic, was the intriguing chapter “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, that Robert Davis wrote for the edited volume The Renaissance World.1 And while writing this blog, I also discovered an excellent PhD-thesis by Victoria Bartels and an impressive article by Catherine Fletcher, which discuss adjacent topics.2 So if your appetite is in any way whetted by what follows, any of these three would be indispensable reading material. Almost as indispensable as firearms were for some groups of people in Renaissance Italy – if they wanted to be fashionable or make the right impression, that is!

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Boom, Like That

The role of gunpowder in the tale of humanity as it is often perceived by everyday people – including, up until shockingly recently, myself – is in most cases certainly exaggerated. But the historical importance of this invention and its many applications to wound, maim, and kill human beings is undeniable.3 Previously, weapons had primarily relied on human energy – our muscle power. Be it the muscle power of the arm that wielded the sword or that had wound the torsion energy stored in a catapult.4 Gunpowder added chemical energy to humankind’s ways of dispatching with each other.

The substance, as you have probably heard, was invented in China – the first written formula dates to freakin’ year of 1040! – and its many uses for weaponry had already been experimented there.5 Gunpowder and weapons employing this explosive material appeared to have reached Europe in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.6 Firearms would not primarily cause the violence in the Italian Renaissance perse – that honor goes to humans themselves and their social structures – but they would both contribute to the death toll and be blamed as one of the main reasons nonetheless.7

Violence in the Renaissance

Many of us will have a number of personal associations with the European Renaissance – often pertaining to the arts, the statecraft, and an interest in ancient Greece and Rome – but these probably seldom include violence.8 Violence was part of this period, though, specifically in Italy. The violence that is most relevant to our subject, was conducted by men who made a living – so to speak – by illegal means while roaming the countryside and who were known under various monikers, including banditi or bandits.9 These banditi had mainly ended up where they were, because they were exiles from settlements, fled persecution for crimes and vendettas, or escaped the burdens of unimaginable hard labor, like manning the oars of the large fleets that were created at this time.10 Furthermore, there were those groups of men which were ostensibly employed by states or other public entities, but who committed organized violence on behalf of the private interests of a person or persons who wielded power therein.11 And these private armies will return later in our story.

The governments of the various Italian polities were not quick to examine their own role in populating the countryside with desperate men or instigating violence themselves. Instead they looked for various other factors – and these included, as you might have guessed, firearms.12

The Fashion of Firearms

Specifically one type of firearm, which was invented in the early sixteenth century, served as the primary scapegoat for the sometimes endemic violence in Renaissance Italy: those with a wheel-lock, such as the arquebus.13 To simplify things, these firearms worked with a trigger that released a spring-wound steel wheel, which would then spin and so generate the sparks that made the firing of the bullet happen.14 This gave you a firearm that could be loaded long before a confrontation and was all but immune to bad weather. These were delicate systems, though, that needed to be made very precisely – and thus were expensive! – as well as requiring a lot of maintenance. And even then, they would often jam and misfire. As such, this kind of firearm did not find much use in regular armies, but they became a status symbol for another group that habitually engaged in violence: the banditi we met above.15

Many of the wheel-lock firearms were genuine pieces of art. Combinations of exotic woods and rare metals made by skilled clock makers – one of the few professions with the technical know-how to pull of such a weapon design. And so, having a beautifully made firearm and preferably many of them became a prized accessory to ill-willed people, including the renegade men of the countryside of Renaissance Italy.16 This had a practical side, naturally. Wielding a weapon that regularly misfires or jams, made it pertinent to have one or more backup options! Moreover, many of the available models could be worn concealed one’s under clothing and such. But often these firearms were shown proudly, for example by persons who acted as highwaymen. Those men would carry multiple wheel-lock firearms in colorful sashes or prominent belts, in addition to perhaps a longer rifle over their shoulder. Proper banditi were, as one observer put it, “benissimo armato d’archibugi” – well-armed with arquebuses, plural!17 And these armaments were more than just practical, as their aforementioned luxurious fashioning illustrates. They were very much status objects. And this went beyond the banditi. Others also began to carry this kind of firearm and we can read contemporary rhetoric in which such firearms are connected to maintaining one’s liberty and honor in a more general sense.18

And the popularity of wheel-lock firearms with those that would make the life of a traveler even more dangerous than it already was, created something of a quite literal arms race. Because, if you wanted to get from a to b in Renaissance Italy, it was often necessary to carry a firearm yourself.19 Ultimately even the Italian polities, who tried long to ban this specific brand of firearms, had to relent. For instance, in 1580, the city of Perugia allowed peasants in the fields to acquire permits for carrying a wheel-lock firearm to defend themselves.20 But even then, the authorities themselves often had to retreat when they encountered superior firepower. The banditi, after all, put their accessories to ruthless use.21

Conclusion: Dangerous Trends

From early on, authorities in Renaissance Italy acknowledged the dangers brought on by the hype surrounding wheel-lock firearms. And those caught in possession of them were often punished severely. But the aforementioned system of permits allowed a large gray area for carrying these deadly accessories.22 Another avenue to address the problem was therefore to take the measure of the artisans who were able to construct and/or maintain such weapons – very few who comprised the scores of banditi or took part in a private army were clock makers, after all.23 But, alas! Bands of banditi as well as powerful men carving out small fiefdoms through the use of armed gangs, were to be a mainstay of the Italian countryside for centuries to come. And this was in part thanks to the influence of those very men who commanded such private armies.24 This dangerous phenomenon also seeped into cultural expressions. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, idealized versions of the banditi even became the subject of songs, folklore and – I swear, I am not making this up – tourism.25

It may be a morbidly ironic ending to this blog. Not only did firearms become something of an accessory to violent men roaming the countryside, but these men themselves became fashionable in a way. One could hear about them in ballads or excitedly, but certainly also a bit frightened, gawk at them during a trip to Italy. Firearms may seem to us as an odd choice for a status symbol. Contrary to things like sports cars, who cause their own share of death and destruction, their only use is violence. But these deadly trends are also part of our shared past. And if we want to understand the people and their living conditions back then, we cannot look away from the unsavory.

Renaissance Fashion

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References

  1. Robert C. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 398-411.
  2. Victoria R. Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Cambridge: Dissertation University of Cambridge, 2019); Catherine Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Gun Proliferation and Gun Control”, Past & Present 2023, 260 (1), p. 3-37.
  3. Wayne E. Lee, Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 215.
  4. Spencer Tucker, Instruments of War: Weapons and Technologies that Have Changed History (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2015), p. 9-10, 24-25.
  5. Lee, Waging War, p. 218, 276-277.
  6. For the burgeoning role of gunpowder in the European Renaissance, see: John R. Hale, “Gunpowder and the Renaissance”, in: Charles H. Carter (ed.) From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honour or Garrett Mattingly (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 409-410. For the arrival of gunpowder on the European continent, see: Lee, Waging War, p. 220.
  7. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 400, 404-408.
  8. John J. Martin, “The Renaissance: A World In Motion”, in: John J. Martin (ed.), The Renaissance World (Abbingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 6-8; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 398.
  9. Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 68, 194, 215; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 399. But also women are known to have carried and used the guns that are discussed below, see: Catherine Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, p. 12, 22-23.
  10. Peter Laven, “Banditry and Lawlessness on the Venetian Terraferma in the Later Cinquecento”, in: Trevor Dean & Kate J.P. Lowe (eds.), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 223. On these fleets, see: Norman Davies, Europe: A History (London: The Bodley Head, 2014), p. 519. And many of those men would take any opportunity to re-enter civil society, see: Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 79.
  11. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 400; Giancarlo Baronti, La Morte in Piazza. Opacità della Giustizia, Ambiguità del Boia e Trasparenza del Patibolo in età Moderna (Lecco: Argo Editrice, 2000), p. 47-82.
  12. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 400. On violence and public culture in Renaissance Italy, see: Mark Jurdjevic, “Political cultures”, in: Michael Wyatt, The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 313.
  13. Lee, Waging War, p. 236; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 400-401. The term ‘arquebus’ can also be used for other firearms than those that we discuss today, see note 14 below.
  14. Tucker, Instruments of War, p. 42-43.
  15. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 401; Geoffrey Parker, Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 17-21.
  16. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 401; Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 193.
  17. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 410, note 17; Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 216.
  18. Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, p. 14; Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 214. And this, of course, also pertained to the restrictive administrative measures in the city of Florence, which we discussed two weeks ago, see: Ibidem.
  19. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 402; Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 68.
  20. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 403; Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 39-40. On the efficacy of these efforts to ban or at least regulate firearms, including wheel-lock pistols, see: Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, p. 3-37.
  21. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 404.
  22. Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, p. 20-26; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 404.
  23. Bartels, Masculinity, Arms and Armour, and the Culture of Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Florence, p. 213; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 406.
  24. Fletcher, “Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, p. 7, 36-37; Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 408. On the role of these armies in the power struggles of the European Renaissance, see in general: Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1974), p. 25-106, 207-230.
  25. Davis, “The Renaissance Goes up in Smoke”, p. 408.