The turning point of 1547 in the interpretation of Italian historians of the time

Abstract

The year 1547 opened, in Italy, with Gianluigi Fieschi's conspiracy against Andrea Doria's power in Genoa, quickly consummated with failure on the night of January 2 to 3. Ten days later, the council fathers meeting in Trent condemned the Lutheran doctrine of justification, and a few months later, on April 24, 1547, Charles V confronted and defeated in battle, at Mühlberg, the German Lutheran princes united in the League of Smalcalda. In July Naples rebelled against an attempt to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into the kingdom, and on September 10 Pier Luigi Farnese, the natural son of Pope Paul III and duke of Parma and Piacenza, fell victim to a conspiracy by the Piacenza nobility supported by Milan governor Ferrante Gonzaga.Many sixteenth-century historical works end with the year 1547, while others start from that same year considering it a periodizing year in the history of the peninsula.This essay will focus in particular on the unfinished Istoria d'Italia by the Neapolitan historian Camillo Porzio and on Ex universa historia rerum Europae suorum temporum (1571) by the Genoese Oberto Foglietta, with the aim of highlighting what is the meaning and interpretation provided by those historians of the events of 1547 in relation to the framework of the power relations between the Italian states and the monarchy of Spain.