entry Aug. 2003
Austrian Naples
Naples Under the Double
Eagle
The great Spanish Empire
founded shortly after the discovery of the New World
came to an end in the year 1700 when Charles II of Spain
died without an heir. He was a Hapsburg, but willed his
throne to the grandson of the French King, Louis XIV, of
the House of Bourbon. This potential fusion of Spain and
France into a single dynasty so threatened the balance
of European power that virtually all of Europe took up
arms in the War of the
Spanish Succession, a term so dry that it
rather sounds like a description of gentleman barristers
dickering over the Rule of Perpetuities. It was,
however, as wars go, the real deal, the first widespread
European conflict among modern rival nation states, true
kin to the Napoleonic Wars of a century later and the
aptly named World Wars of our own times.
Naples, as a
Spanish possession, was affected by the War of the
Spanish Succession. While the war raged from 1700-1713
in northern Europe, Naples fell under the domination of
the Austrians when that state successfully moved to take
over Spanish territory in Italy. Naples, meaning all of
southern Italy, thus became an Austrian dominion, ruled
by the Hapsburgs of distant Vienna through a succession
of Austrian viceroys stationed in Naples. That state of
affairs lasted until the Austrians, as part of the
treaty ending the War of the Polish Succession, ceded
Naples to Charles III of Spain in 1734, at which time
Naples became a sovereign kingdom of its own.
The period
from 1700-1734 is somewhat neglected in the history of
Naples. (There is, however, a statue in Piazza
Monteoliveto (photo, left) of the above-mentioned
Charles II, the last Hapsburg king of the Spanish
Empire. He was known as the "Reuccio,"
meaning the "Little King," so dubbed because he ascended
the throne at the age of four.) Compared to the great
Spanish period before and the equally great Bourbon period afterwards, the
few years under Austria are, perhaps, less important,
yet not insignificant; they produced interesting social
changes and were a time of great art, music and
philosophy in Naples.
Naples in the year
1700 was almost dead in the water. Spanish rule,
innovative and dynamic in the 1500s and early 1600s, had
become harsh and corrupt in its last decades, and the
city of Naples, itself, had just been through the mother
of all wringers —the plague. The ferocious pestilences
of 1656 and 1691 had reduced the population of the city
from 450,000 to 140,000, and by the first decade of the
1700s Naples still had only about 200,000 inhabitants.
It was a loss that crippled the working and merchant
classes; sketches of the layout of the city in the early
1700s look the same as half–a–century earlier —no new
buildings, no new streets. There had been no
growth.
This, then, was the
Naples that the Austrians inherited when they entered
the city in 1707. The plight was aggravated by two
factors that had traditionally been another sort of
plague in Naples. One was baronial power, a feudal
system of local lords wielding virtually independent
power throughout the kingdom, paying but lip service to
the central authority of the king. The second problem
was land grabbing by the Church within the city. Some
estimates set the number of clergy in the city as high
as 16,000 in the early 1700s, which would make one out
of every 15 persons a cleric! That many clergy needed a
lot of land and even a brief trip through the Naples of
today sheds light on the problem of three centuries ago:
a faithful church-goer in Naples can change houses of
worship once a week and run out of Sundays before Naples
runs out of churches. Early Austrian critics of the
church/state relationship in Naples spoke of a
"church–state within a state," made worse by the
centuries-old tradition of sanctuary —the premises of a
church and even the surrounding area becoming ‘safe
houses’ and havens for outlaws. Entire quarters of
Naples were, thus, off–limits to the authorities.
In their brief time in Naples, the Austrian viceroys at least held their own against baronial privilege, a dying societal structure anyway, but one that would not crumble until Napoleon dismantled feudalism a century later. The Austrian stance against the Vatican is worthy of note, however. It was the first time in the history of Naples that the state openly challenged the Church’s presumptive right to large untaxed land-holdings. The Hapsburg emperor in Vienna rather enjoyed antagonizing the Pope in this manner, since the Vatican had been openly on the side of the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. Austrian rule made it much more difficult for the Church to wheel and deal in Naples as it had done over the centuries.
Additionally, Austrian revision of tax laws encouraged planned rebuilding in Naples after the stagnant period at the turn of the century. The Austrians also instituted reform in the University, and, importantly, encouraged the iureconsultus, a body of experts in matters of the law, experts —lawyers— to advise the state and the people when necessary. Even those who love lawyer jokes will see how revolutionary that was in an age of absolute monarchy. As for the physical plant of the city, the Austrians built coastal roads from the city out to the slopes of Vesuvius, roads that eventually led to the modern expansion of Naples in that direction.
Artistically, Naples thrived under
the Austrians. It was home to great painters of the
Baroque, such as Luca Giordano
and Francesco Solimena
(self-portrait, left). The latter's works adorn churches
in Naples, Rome and Vienna and are on display in museums
in Britain and the United States. His studio in Naples
became a workshop for numbers of northern European
painters who made the trip south just to study with him.
They coincidentally got in on the beginning of the great
age of the Grand Tour: northerners coming to Italy to
study antiquity; for it was under the Austrians that
Naples began the rediscovery of its own Greek and Roman
past.
Music in the early 1700s
in Europe was greatly shaped by the powerful influences
of Neapolitan composers, primarily Alessandro Scarlatti, one of
the innovators in early classical music, as important as
his contemporary, J.S. Bach, and as important as Mozart
a century later. Also, the prodigious Pergolesi changed the face of
opera by composing La
serva padrona, the first internationally
successful piece of Neapolitan Comic Opera, music that
greatly influenced Mozart and subsequent operatic and
symphonic music. [For an item on Mozart and the
Neapolitan Comic Opera, click here]
Statue
of Vico in the
Villa Comunale
Intellectual life in Naples in
the early 1700s was active. Naples was the home of the
misunderstood and obscure philosopher, Giovambattista Vico, whose
cyclical view of history was quaint even when he
formulated it. It was overshadowed by the powerful
thoughts of Hegel and Marx in the next century —their
idea holding that history evolves through conflict to
ever new and higher states in the human condition. It
may well be that Vico’s quaint idea of a returning age,
say, of great mythic heroes will never come to pass;
yet, on the other hand, it doesn't take whatever passes
for a rocket scientist among historians to notice that
Karl Marx has been having his problems recently, too. So
maybe the jury is still out.
That, then, was
Austrian Naples: a brief and interesting period, with
one foot in the future, a time that set the stage for
the Bourbon take-over in 1734 when Naples would finally
become a modern European nation.
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