Cola Di Rienzo (Renaissance and Reformation)

Cola di Rienzo (b. c. 1313–d. 1354) was a notary, a friend of Francesco Petrarch, and a learned student of classical antiquity. On 20 May 1347 he established a new republican government in Rome, toppling without violence the regime of the factious barons. He soon took on the titles of “tribune” in revival of ancient Rome, and “miles Spiritus Sancti” (“soldier of the Holy Spirit”) to indicate the dawning of a new, apocalyptic age. His new buono stato had already gained the support of a wide range of social and economic groups within the city, while the neighboring republican city-states soon formed alliances with Rome. In Avignon Pope Clement VI first supported him and then—threatened by Rome’s new claims to legitimacy—actively worked with the barons to topple his buono stato. Exiled in late 1347, on 1 August 1350 Cola made his way to the court of Charles IV in Prague, to persuade the emperor to reestablish his seat in Rome along with the pope. Delivered to Avignon on 1 August 1352, Cola was imprisoned to stand trial for heresy, but he was exonerated and sent to Rome as a papal senator on 1 August 1354. On 8 October 1354 he was murdered atop the Capitoline in an uprising organized by the Colonna and most likely supported by Cardinal Gil Albornoz. Cola di Rienzo has been the object of great debate since his own lifetime, and his legacy reflects much of modern historiography on issues of popular spirituality, communal and oligarchic government, the religious and secular origins of the humanist movement, and the nature of governance in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. More recent theoretical frames have also been able to shed considerable light on the actions of Cola and his buono stato in terms of public ritual, crime and punishment, sacred and secular urban space, the reinterpretation of Trecento visual culture and propaganda, papal and secular legitimacy, and the formation of early Renaissance historiography. His period is also beginning to yield important results in the reexamination of archival collections, especially notarial registers, and their importance for the close examination and reevaluation of Roman social and economic networks and the survival of his republican reforms into the Quattrocento.

Essential Works

This section contains seven works that are essential to understanding Cola di Rienzo and his socioeconomic, cultural, and religious contexts. The more recent offer syntheses of research in a wide diversity of fields that have been brought to bear on the history of Rome in the Trecento. The serious scholarly work of the 20th century began with Burdach, et al. 1928, a massive philological study of all known sources. Brentano 1974 remains the touchstone of Anglophone work on both Rome before Avignon and “Rome during Avignon” and set the stage with sound archival work among Rone’s notarial registers. In more recent years, both philological and archival work have been supplemented by new methodologies, including art historical and iconographic (Schwartz 1994, Collins 2002, Musto 2003), and sociological and anthropological (Modigliani 2004 and Rehberg 2004). Debate now focuses on the symbolic meaning of medieval Rome and the base reality of kinship and other affinity groups in understanding Rome’s deeper contexts for its contemporaries and later historiography

Brentano, Robert. Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
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Remains the fundamental English-language work on later medieval Rome and its socioeconomic and cultural contexts. With its often idiosyncratic—and delightful—approach to narrative and sources, it remains a model of historical research and the starting place for any new detailed study of the city.
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Burdach, Konrad, Paul Piur, and Fritz Kühn, eds. Die Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo: Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bildung. Vol. 2, Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation. Berlin: Weidmann, 1928.
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Changes in the German language between the Trecento and Reformation reflected a deep transformation of the German soul that had its roots in the religious and reform thought of Dante, Petrarch and Rienzo. Cola’s letters brought that spirit of renewal with him to Germany through Charles IV’s imperial court.
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Collins, Amanda. Greater than Emperor: Cola di Rienzo (ca. 1313–54) and the World of Fourteenth-Century Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
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Collins’s political history “circumnavigates” biography and divides her study into chapters on political heritage and symbolism, including Cola’s perception of himself and Rome’s past, religious and apocalyptic influences, rhetorical and legal traditions, socioeconomic and prosopographical networks, historiographical considerations and social memory.
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Modigliani, Anna. L’Eredità di Cola di Rienzo: Gli statuti del commune di popolo e la riforma di Paolo II. Cola di Rienzo e il comune di Roma 2. Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2004.
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A legal history that skillfully compares archival, legal and narrative sources. Attempts to demythologize Rienzo from his damnatio memoriae and from claims that he was a unique exception to Rome’s constitutional history. Traces this constitution from the statutes of his buono stato to Paul II’s statutes of 1469.
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Musto, Ronald G. Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
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A cultural and religious history deploying biography and interwoven discussions of political and religious revival, Rome’s connections to Italy’s communal movement, social networks, notions of social justice, the mythic place of Rome in both contemporary political and religious thinking, and the apocalyptic thought and visual arts of the Trecento.
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Rehberg, Andreas. Cliente e fazioni nell’azione politica di Cola di Rienzo. Cola di Rienzo e il comune di Roma 2. Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2004.
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A sociological history that fits well with Rehberg’s prosopographical studies. Focuses primarily on clientage, and secondarily on faction. Rehberg insists that a study of clientage dissolves all other cultural and political distinctions amid the deep structural affinities of Rome’s great families and their dependents.
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Schwarz, Amy. “Images and Illusions of Power in Trecento Art: Cola di Rienzo and the Ancient Roman Republic.” PhD diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1994.
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This art historical and cultural history uses the Anonimo Romano’s descriptions of Rienzo’s political and religious paintings to analyze the common visual language of the Trecento. Schwarz provides analogous examples of Trecento political, apocalyptic, and infamante genres to demonstrate Cola’s use of metaphor as a basis for political power.
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Primary Sources

A window into Cola da Rienzo’s thought is provided by his letters, an unusually rich collection for the era, available in reliable modern editions and in part in English translation. His only other known work, a commentary on Dante’s Monarchia, is a clue to his political outlook. Further information about Cola da Rienzo is provided by the Vita by Anonimo Romano and by other contemporary chronicles and documents.

Rienzo’s Letters

In 1885 the Vatican Archives acquired a manuscript of Cola di Rienzo’s letters from a private collection in Prague that had been known to, and used by, only a few earlier scholars, such as Felix Papencordt. While in Prague, Cola had maintained a regular correspondence with the imperial chancellor Johann von Neumarkt. These letters, and then others that the tribune had probably brought with him as letter forms, were soon collected into the Liber diversas continens formulas to make the basis of a new collection of the letter-writing art—the ars dictaminis—for the imperial German chancellery. That collection contained nearly two-thirds of Cola’s extant letters. Sometime before 1500 they passed into the possession of Gaspare Schlick, then imperial chancellor and friend of the famous Italian humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II (1458–1464). The manuscript remained in the hands of Schlick’s heirs in Prague until 1885. In 1890 the discovery formed the basis of the first edition of Cola’s letters by Annibale Gabrielli (Cola di Rienzo 1890). This edition was used by Duncalf and Krey (Cola di Rienzo 1912) as well as by Mario Cosenza (Cola di Rienzo 1996) as the basis of for their English-language excerpts and contextualizations. The complete collection of Cola’s letters had to await the comprehensive critical edition, Burdach and Piur 1913–1929, and this formed the basis for McGinn 1979 and McGinn’s translation of selected excerpts of Cola’s apocalyptic thought.

Burdach, Konrad, Paul Piur, and Fritz Kühn, eds. Die Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1913–1929.
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The standard, most comprehensive and rigorous edition of the letters, with extensive apparatus, notes, and introductory materials. Supplemented by additional contemporary source materials. This is the starting point of any serious study of Rienzo, his political program and his thought.
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Cola di Rienzo. Epistolario di Cola di Rienzo. Edited by Annibale Gabrielli. Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 6. Rome: Forzani e Compagnia, 1890.
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This beautifully edited and printed edition remained the primary documentary source for Rienzo until the comprehensive edition by Burdach and Piur in Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation. It contains an introduction, apparatus with annotation and supporting quotation from the Anonimo Romano’s Vita, appendix of other documents, index and bibliography.
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Cola di Rienzo. “The Coronation of Cola di Rienzo.” In Parallel Source Problems in Medieval History. Edited and translated by Frederic Duncalf and August C. Krey, 177–237. New York: Harper and Row, 1912.
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Good English translations of letters, with commentary.
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Cola di Rienzo. “Letters 49 and 58.” In Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. Edited and translated by Bernard McGinn, 239–244. Records of Civilization 96. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
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McGinn’s English translations of letters from Burdach and Piur that focus on Rienzo’s apocalyptic thinking during his stay at the court of Emperor Charles IV and imprisonment in Bohemia.
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Cola di Rienzo. “Letters.” In The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo. 3d ed. Edited and translated by Mario Cosenza; revised by Ronald G. Musto. New York: Italica, 1996.
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Excellent English translations with extensive notation and commentary. Musto added new notes, commentary and bibliography in the 1986 and 1996 editions.
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Rienzo’s Other Works

Aside from his statutes and letters, Cola’s only other known work is this commentary on the De Monarchia of Dante (Cola di Rienzo 1965, edited by Ricci), whose Divina Commedia Cola also quoted in his letters.

Cola di Rienzo. “Il commento di Cola di Rienzo alla Monarchia di Dante.” Edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci. Studi Medievali, 3d ser., 6.2 (1965): 665–708.
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The unsigned commentary was composed between April 1343 and December 1352 and is the earliest surviving commentary on Dante’s treatise. Internal evidence, philological and stylistic analysis, its classical and patristic sources, and the author’s deep knowledge of Roman history, its Mirabilian tradition and topography make it very probably Rienzo’s.
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The Vita by the Anonimo Romano

Sometime between 1358 and July 1359, there was completed but never published a Vita of Cola di Rienzo within a larger Cronica that set out to record the events of Europe, focusing on Rome and its district between 1327 and 1357/1358. Cola’s story was only one—although the major—part (chapters 18 and 26–27) of this larger history. As such it has often been edited separately as the Vita and divided into four books. Though some attempt has been made to name its author, no firm identity has been generally accepted. This “Anonimo Romano” was probably born in Rome to an upper-middle-class family between 1318 and 1320, in the rione Regola, and was thus a close neighbor of Cola’s. He was living in Rome in 1334 and began his medical studies at the University of Bologna in 1338/1339. Internal evidence tells us that he returned to Rome in the mid-1340s and practiced medicine. Like Cola, he was no humanist but a trained professional with a good foundation in the Latin letters of his time. The Anonimo Romano was also a naturalist imbued with the available corpus of Latin classics and Greek sciences. Sometime in the 1350s he moved to Tivoli, where he died around October 1360. Fiortifiocca, et al. 1631 is the earliest known edition of the Vita. Muratori (Anonimo Romano 1740) provides both the original text and a Latin translation. Anonimo Romano 1828 is an Italian edition, Ghisalberti 1928 is a newer, authoritative edition, and Frugoni 1957 is a revised edition updated by a foremost scholar of the period. Porta 1979 is generally held as the now standard edition, while Wright 1975 is notable for its well-written translation and introduction. Cronica: Vita di Cola di Rienzo is an electronic version.

Anonimo Romano. “Vita Nicolai Laurentii (sive di Cola di Rienzo), tribuni Romanorum.” In Antiquitates Italiae Medii Aevi; Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 3. Edited by Ludovico Antonio Muratori; translated by Petrus Hercules Gherardius. Milan: Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 1740.
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Early editions retained the separation of the Vita from the Cronica, until their reunification by Muratori in a complete edition as the Fragmenta historiae romanae ab anno 1327 usque ad annum 1354. Muratori presented the original Romanesco text, along with a Latin translation for use by the international scholarly community.
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Anonimo Romano. La vita di Cola Rienzo tribuno del popolo romano scritta da incerto autore nel secolo decimo quarto. Edited by Zefirino Re. Forlì: Luigi Bordandini, 1828.
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Italian edition.
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Anonimo Romano. Cronica: Vita di Cola di Rienzo.
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The online version. Other electronic editions available at Liber Liber.
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Fiortifiocca, Tomao, Walter Sneyd, and Giuseppe Martini. Vita de lo valorose capitano Cola de Rienzi romano. Bracciano: Andrea Fei, 1624–1631.
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The earliest known manuscript of the Vita was attributed to Fiortifiocca, a notary and rival of Cola di Rienzo. It appeared in 1527, already mutilated (apparently in the Sack of Rome). The Fei editions of the Anonimo Romano remained available to the interested scholar into the 18th century.
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Frugoni, Arsenio, ed. Anonimo romano: Vita di Cola di Rienzo. Florence: Le Monnier, 1957.
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A revised edition by a leading expert on the period and its major religious and cultural trends.
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Ghisalberti, Alberto Maria, ed. Anonimo romano: La vita di Cola di Rienzo. Rome: L. S. Olschki, 1928.
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A new authoritative edition.
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Porta, Giuseppe, ed. Anonimo romano: Cronica. Milan: Adelphi, 1979.
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This quickly became the new standard edition with its introductory materials, critical apparatus and other notation. Porta also edited such important contemporary texts as the Villani chronicles.
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Wright, John, ed. and trans. The Life of Cola di Rienzo. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975.
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Wright’s elegant translation, based on Ghisalberti’s edition, and his solid introduction became the authoritative account for the Anglophone world for a generation. While reintroducing the importance of the religious and civic trends, Wright frames his edition without any apparent ideology.
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Other Narrative Sources

These include contemporary chronicles and treatises, many of which contain only brief references, often derived from other sources. Agnolo di Tura del Grasso 1936 offers an account of developments in Italy after Cola’s revolution. Barbato da Sulmona’s “Romana respublica urbi Romae” (Weiss 1950), originally published in 1347, is an allegory that considers the downfall of modern Rome in relation to the glory of ancient Rome. De Morano 1916 offers details of the buono stato, while di Neri 1908 covers events surrounding Cola and reads like a modern diplomatic dispatch. Villani 1979 explores Florentine relations with the buono stato.

Agnolo di Tura del Grasso. Cronaca senese ab anno MCCCLII ad annum MCCCLXXXI. Edited by Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 15.6. Bologna, Italy: Zanichelli for Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 1936.
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Good account of Italian developments in the wake of Cola’s revolution and the role of the Tuscan cities, through the events of the 1340s (pp. 577–579). Agnolo can, however, misreport events in Rome. He is one of the more important sources for the Black Death of 1348 and its impact on Tuscany.
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Bonifacio de Morano. Chronicon Mutinense. Edited by Tommaso Casini. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 15.4. Bologna, Italy: Zanichelli for Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 1916.
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Composed in Mantua some time before 1349 by de Morano with continuators. It offers some vivid details of the buono stato from the perspective of a foreign ambassador or other visitor with good coverage of Cola’s Roman synod of August 1347.
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Donato di Neri. Chronicon Estense. Edited by Giulio Bertoni and Emilio Paolo Vicini. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 15.3. Città di Castello, Italy: S. Lapi for Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 1908.
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The Chronicon’s observations often read like modern diplomatic dispatches and cover political and cultural events in Rome and Cola’s later sojourn in Prague with such a keen psychological edge that one suspects it relies on an eyewitness, perhaps someone in Cola’s retinue.
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Villani, Giovanni. Cronica, con le continuazioni di Matteo e Filippo. Edited by Giuseppe Porta. Turin, Italy: G. Einaudi, 1979.
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Covers Florentine relations with the buono stato, including the Roman synod of August 1347 and the political and military events surrounding the papal and baronial campaign against Cola. The Anonimo Romano and the Villani coincide so closely on repeated occasions that much historiography focuses on their relationship.
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Weiss, Roberto. “Barbato da Sulmona, il Petrarca e la rivoluzione di Cola di Rienzo.” Studi petrarcheschi 3 (1950): 13–22.
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Publishes Barbato da Sulmona’s “Romana respublica urbi Romae.” Barbato published it in the summer of 1347. In this epistolary allegory, ancient Rome laments that her modern descendent—without laws, beset by wars, fallen and abject—has not had faithful friends for centuries. Yet all is not lost: Petrarch and Cola di Rienzo are reviving Rome’s fortunes.
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Petrarch’s Poems and Letters

This section presents primary sources that relate to the relationship between Petrarch and Cola, including Petrarch’s “Shepherd’s Affection” allegory (Burdach, et al. 1913–1929) and Cola and Petrarch’s correspondence (Cosenza 1996, Petrarch 2005, Petrarch 1973).

Burdach, Konrad, Paul Piur, and Fritz Kühn, eds. Die Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo: Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bildung. Vol. 2, Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation. Berlin: Weidmann, 1913–1929.
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Contains “Eclogue 5, The Shepherd’s Affection” (August 22–31, 1347) (pp. 87–99), Petrarch’s allegory on Rienzo’s need to defend the new buono stato against the lawless barons.
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Cosenza, Mario, ed. and trans. The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo. 3d ed. Revised by Ronald G. Musto. New York: Italica, 1996.
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Presents Cola’s and Petrarch’s correspondence, with selections from Clement VI, Innocent VI, and other sources. Petrarch’s ideas of classical antiquity and Roman revival helped shape the buono stato. His friendship with Cola and his political support were instrumental throughout Cola’s career. Good annotation and bibliography supplement original edition. The Sine nomine letters (see Petrarch 1973) appear at pp. 69–87.
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Petrarch, Francesco. Petrarch’s Book without a Name: A Translation of the Liber Sine Nomine. Edited and translated by Norman P. Zacour. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973.
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Petrarch’s letters to Cola following the unprecedented attack on the Roman ambassadors to Avignon by papal agents in the wake of Cola’s coronation. The sine nomine letters underscore both Petrarch’s outspoken criticisms of the Avignon papacy—his famous “Babylonian Captivity”—and the dangers of expressing such views openly. The letters themselves appear at pp. 35–44.
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Petrarch, Francesco. Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri). 3 vols. Translated by Aldo S. Bernardo. New York: Italica, 2005.
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Excellent English translations of the entire corpus of the Familiares, including letters to Rienzo. Originally published, Vol. 1, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975; Vols. 2–3, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982–1985.
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Biographies

The number, scope, and range in quality of biographies of Cola di Rienzo are enormous. Included here are only the most significant in terms of their literary influence—for better or worse. Adams 1880 contends that Cola takes his place in history alongside Jonathan Swift and others who failed terribly. Brandi 1965 suggests that Cola typified the Italian Renaissance. D’Annunzio 19991, which was first published in 1913, considers Cola a demagogue and a failure, while Di Carpegna Falconieri 2002 takes a more sympathetic view of him. Dujardin 1743 traces the tribunate through history, and Duprè Theseider 1950 is a biography by one of the foremost students of the period. Maire-Vigueur 1982 offers a useful introduction, and Piur 1931 was for years considered the best scholarship on Cola di Rienzo.

Adams, W. H. D. Wrecked Lives: Or Men Who Have Failed. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1880.
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Cola di Rienzo takes his place in this Victorian miscellany of history as moral admonition. Other failures include Thomas Wolsey (parvenu and failed royal servant), Jonathan Swift (madness), Richard Savage (fraud), and Thomas Chatterton (forger).
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Brandi, Karl. Cola di Rienzo und sein Verhältnis zu Renaissance und Humanimus. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlichte Buchgesesellschaft, 1965.
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If the Renaissance was the artificial creation of will and self-creation conceived by Burckhardt, Cola di Rienzo was then certainly one of its earliest exemplars: a man whose persona and message typified the new man of the Italian Renaissance.
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D’Annunzio, Gabriele. Vite di uomini illustri et di uomini oscuri: La vita di Cola di Rienzo. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1999.
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Bridging Romanticism and the new order, Cola di Rienzo’s “face was turned to the future.” Yet he quickly overreached his lowly origins, and his reign turned into “buffoonery.” He proved a demagogue and coward unequal to the true nobility of the barons as men of action. Originally published in 1913.
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Di Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso. Cola di Rienzo. Rome: Salerno Editore, 2002.
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A sympathetic retelling in the light of more recent historical research. The first chapter concentrates on Trecento Rome and sets the context for Cola’s learning, political ideas, and religious-cultural vision. The book then goes on to discuss the evolving historiography and legend of Cola di Rienzo over the centuries.
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Dujardin, Bénigne. Histoire de Nicolas Rienzy: Chevalier, tribun et senateur de Rome. Paris: David Piget, Prault, 1743.
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Traces the tribunate through antiquity and into the Middle Ages. Looks forward to Gregorovius’s grand sweep of Roman history in the Middle Ages as the progress of the idea of constitutional government and the extension of freedom. His account follows the Anonimo Romano, offering extensive quotations translated into French.
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Duprè Theseider, Eugenio. Appunti di storia medioevale. Bologna, Italy: R. Pàtron, 1950.
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Cola di Rienzo is the particular focus of this book by one of the period’s most important students, whose coverage includes political, religious and social considerations of Rome as the symbol of the revival of antiquity.
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Maire-Vigueur, Jean-Claude. “Cola di Rienzo.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 26. 662–675. Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1982.
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A good introductory survey by an acknowledged master of the field.
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Piur, Paul. Cola di Rienzo. Vienna: L. W. Seidel, 1931.
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Despite the theoretical frame of Renaissance Zeitgeist that he shared with his teacher Konrad Burdach, Piur’s biography long remained the best and most informed of all past scholarship on Cola di Rienzo.
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Petrarch

Francesco Petrarch became the close friend and collaborator of Cola di Rienzo when Rienzo was part of the Roman delegation to the papal court at Avignon in 1343. He and Rienzo actively planned the revolution of 1347 and the revival of ancient Rome, which Petrarch later vigorously aided and defended. In later years, a more contemplative Petrarch would view his association with Rienzo and the vita activa with some distance. The items listed here directly address this association. Cosenza 1996 connects Petrarch’s ideals to Rienzo’s life. Melczer 1975 offers a view of Rienzo as a sort of political idealist who retained a sense of pragmatism, while Weiss 1950 analyzes an Italian humanist’s response to Rienzo’s revolution.

Cosenza, Mario, ed. and trans. The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo. 3d ed. Revised by Ronald G. Musto. New York: Italica, 1996.
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Traces the relationship between Petrarch’s high ideals of Italian culture and Italian yearning for a unified state, born in liberty and exemplified in the life of Rienzo. Petrarch was also “the first real Italian patriot,” and the story of his friendship with Rienzo tracks the relationship between idealism and action. Originally published as Francesco Petrarca and the Revolution of Cola di Rienzo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913).
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Melczer, William. “Cola di Rienzo and Petrarch’s Political Solitude.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 2 (1975): 1–13.
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Contrasts Petrarch’s “elegiac political ideal” for Rome’s revival and Cola’s own “dialectic grasp of the necessity for a dynamic correlation between political thought and political reality,” which “makes for [Rienzo’s] greatness and accounts for his modernity.”
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Weiss, Roberto. “Barbato da Sulmona, il Petrarca e la rivoluzione di Cola di Rienzo.” Studi petrarcheschi 3 (1950): 13–22.
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A useful analysis of the response of this early Italian humanist and friend of Petrarch to Cola’s revolution and the reestablishment of the ancient Republic.
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Cola Di Rienzo and the Idea of Rome

Cola’s buono stato combined three key elements: the reformed republican traditions of the Italian city-states, the imperial history of Rome, and the apocalyptic expectations for rebirth of Rome in a new age of peace and justice. This section provides important works focusing on Rome as the heir and continuator of the ancient Rome of history and popular mythology. Beneš 1999 examines Cola and his relationship to the Lex Regia. Collins 1998 looks at Cola’s attempt to interpret the tablets in a way that benefited him politically. Gregorovius 2004 provides a history of the Roman commune. Holstein 2006 looks at Rome in terms of its political-cultural significance, while Small 1981 looks at the District of Rome in the 14th century before Cola’s revolution. Sordi 1971 analyzes Cola’s interpretation of the tablets, and Toppani 1977 looks at the cultural rebirth surrounding Petrarch.

Beneš, Carrie E. “Cola di Rienzo and the Lex Regia.” Viator 30 (1999): 231–251.
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Examines Cola’s interpretation of the lex de imperio Vespasiani for its legal, sociocultural background, its epigraphical and paleographical elements, and for Cola’s own understanding of the political theory embodied in the tablets.
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Collins, Amanda. “Cola di Rienzo, the Lateran Basilica, and the Lex de imperio of Vespasian.” Mediaeval Studies 60 (1998): 159–183.
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Examines Cola’s “cynical and manipulative” attempt to interpret the original text of the tablets for his own political purposes. Collins contests Rienzo’s real knowledge of both tablets and examines his eventual “autocratic self-conception” of his own place within their legal and constitutional framework.
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Gregorovius, Ferdinand. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Age. Vol. 6. Translated by Annie Hamilton. New York: Italica, 2004.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511710209Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the great narrative accounts, based on thorough source knowledge. The history of the Roman commune became a metaphor for Gregorovius’ age: a long, uneven struggle, full of triumphs and defeats for freedom. Rienzo (pp. 202–376) emerges as a liberal hero of Italian unity, freedom and civil rights. Originally published in 1906 (London: George Bell).
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Holstein, Alizah. “Rome during Avignon: Myth, Memory, and Civic Identity in Fourteenth-Century Roman Politics.” PhD diss., Cornell University, 2006.
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An important study on Rome as symbolic political-cultural complex, it applies many fresh insights from the study of collective, social, and cultural memory. Holstein provides careful analysis of the sources, reevaluating the long-term impact of Trecento concepts of Rome as a mythical landscape of either revival or oblivion.
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Small, Carola M. “The District of Rome in the Early Fourteenth Century, 1300 to 1347.” Canadian Journal of History/Annales Canadiennes d’Histoire 16 (1981): 193–213.
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A good review of the extent and political meaning of the District in the context of Rome’s republican and imperial past, especially during the absence of the papacy in Avignon and in the face of Neapolitan power and the thrust for independence of the District’s city-states.
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Sordi, Marta. “Cola di Rienzo e le clausole mancanti della “lex de imperio Vespasiani”” In Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra. Vol. 2. Edited by Università degli Studi (Roma), Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, 303–311. Milan: A. Giuffre, 1971.
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An excellent reading and analysis of Cola’s interpretation of the tablets, with philological examination of medieval meanings of the pomerium, elements of the lex Valeria, the distinction between imperial and tribunal powers and evidence of the two tablets before the Trecento.
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Toppani, I. “Petrarca, Cola di Rienzo e il mito di Roma.” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 135 (1977): 155–173.
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On Petrarch and the cultural rebirth associated with him, especially concerning Rome and his collaboration with Cola around the political and cultural revival of the city.
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The Buona Stato and the Italian City-State

Cola’s buono stato combined three key elements: the reformed republican traditions of the Italian city-states, the imperial history of Rome, and the apocalyptic expectations for rebirth of Rome in a new age of peace and justice. The items cited here concentrate on the political elements of the buono stato. Kühn 1905 provides an overview of Cola’s conception of reviving Rome as an Italian city-state. Macek 1965 offers a Marxist analysis of Cola’s revolt. Miglio 1975 and Miglio 1988 both highlight political groups during Cola’s time, while Papencordt 1841 situates Cola in Rome’s republican history.

Kühn, Fritz. Die Entwicklung der Bündnispläne Cola di Rienzos im Jahre 1347. Berlin: Druck von Denter & Nicolas, 1905.
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Kühn’s brief but insightful dissertation highlights Cola’s threefold conception of the revival of Rome as Italian city-state, as imperial capital, and as the sacred center of the world, tracking them with the three periods of his political career: republican leader, imperial exile, and papal senator.
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Macek, Josef. Cola di Rienzo. Prague: Orbis, 1965.
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Until silenced for criticizing the Soviets’ 1968 Czechoslovakian invasion, Macek published works on Jan Hus and Thomas Müntzer. See also his “Pétrarch et Cola di Rienzo,” Historica 8 (1965): 5–51. “Les racines sociales de l’insurrection de Cola di Rienzo,” Historica 6 (1963): 45–107, analyzes Cola’s socioeconomic base.
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Miglio, Massimo. “Gruppi sociali e azione politica nella Roma di Cola di Rienzo.” Studi romani 23.4 (1975): 443–461.
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One of the most important and productive scholars of medieval Rome lays out the various interest groups and factions at work during Cola’s career. Cola’s failure to ensure his constituency and counterforces opposing him ended in his death and the subsequent collapse of the buono stato.
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Miglio, Massimo. “Il progetto politico di Cola di Rienzo ed i comuni dell’Italia centrale.” Bollettino dell’ Istituto Storico Artistico Orvietano 39 (1988): 55–64.
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Rienzo sought the political alliance of the neighboring communes of central Italy to bolster the buono stato but was also the intellectual creation of that communal culture. His new Roman state inherited the limits of government forged by the communal movement of the previous century.
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Papencordt, Felix. Cola di Rienzo und seine Zeit, besonders nach ungedruckten Quellen Dargestellt, mit einer Kupfertafel. Hamburg: Perthes, 1841.
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Places Rienzo firmly within the Mirabilian tradition and Rome’s republican history and traces Cola’s career, his influence, and Rome’s cultural and institutional memory. Uses the Anonimo Romano, other narrative sources, and almost two hundred pages from Cola’s letters, papal and diplomatic correspondence, and other archival materials. Italian translation, Cola di Rienzo e il suo tempo (Turin: G. Pomba, 1844).
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Apocalyptism and Religious Thought

Cola’s buono stato combined three key elements: the reformed republican traditions of the Italian city-states, the imperial history of Rome, and apocalyptic expectations. This section provides works that focus on Cola’s apocalyptic expectations for Rome as the New Jerusalem in a new age of peace, justice, and enlightenment. Gabrielli 1901a focuses on the Spiritual Franciscans and Fraticelli during Cola’s stay on Monte Maiella, while Gabrielli 1901b places Rienzo in the religious and cultural context of his era. Giangreco 2000 provides an overview of Cola’s Joachimism, and Giangreco 1997 overviews Cola’s political thought in a historical context. Maire-Vigueur 1990 offers a background of Cola’s and Roquetaillade’s imprisonment. Piur 1931 presents Cola and his ideals as a precursor to the German Reformation.

Gabrielli, Annibale. “Cola di Rienzo nel movimento francescano.” In Scritti letterari. By Annibale Gabrielli, 29–39. Città di Castello, Italy: Scipione Lape Editore, 1901a.
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Concentrates on the influence of the Spiritual Franciscans and Fraticelli during Cola’s stay on Monte Maiella. Sees Cola’s Joachimism as deriving largely from that period and emerging fully during Cola’s stay at the imperial court at Prague.
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Gabrielli, Annibale. “La monomanìa di Cola di Rienzo: Polemica.” In Scritti letterari. By Annibale Gabrielli, 41–56. Città di Castello, Italy: Scipione Lape Editore, 1901b.
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In response to Cesare Lombroso’s alienista theory of Rienzo as criminal madman, Gabrielli counters that one must place Rienzo firmly within the religious and cultural context of his own time, comparing him to Petrarch and other contemporaries. Includes correspondence from Lombroso on Rienzo. The debate remains an important one.
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Giangreco, Thomas C. “Reform, Renewal, and Renaissance: The Thought of Cola di Rienzo in Its Historical Context.” PhD diss., Fordham University, 1997.
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A conventional retelling that relies almost solely on Wright’s translation of the Anonimo Romano and borrows Gerhard Ladner’s interpretive framework of reform.
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Giangreco, Thomas C. “Miles Spiritus Sancti: The Apocalyptic Dimension of Cola di Renzo’s Reform Ideology.” In Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Louis Pascoe, S.J. Edited by Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto, 75–92. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000.
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Cola’s Joachimism predates his exile in December 1347, and it only became stronger during his stay with the Fraticelli in Maiella. While Giangreco uses both the Anonimo Romano and Cola’s correspondence, the framework for his interpretation relies on the new materials and conclusions in Musto’s 1986 edition of Cosenza, Petrarch.
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Maire-Vigueur, Jean-Claude. “Cola di Rienzo et Jean de Roquetaillade ou la rencontre de l’imaginaire.” In Les textes prophetiques et la prophétie en Occident (XIIe–XVIe siécles). Edited by André Vauchez, 381–389. Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Age 102.2. Rome: École française de Rome, 1990.
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Useful background for their imprisonment in Avignon during the same period and the possibility of communication and influence. Given the often lenient conditions of such imprisonment for high-profile figures, it is not impossible to posit such connections.
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Piur, Paul. Cola di Rienzo: Darstellung seines Lebens und seines Geistes. Vienna: L. W. Seidel & Sohn, 1931.
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Written upon the completion of the Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, this focuses on the man himself, rather than the documentation, and presents Rienzo as a force embodying the spiritual changes of the time leading to the German Reformation.
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Visual Arts and Display

Most past students of Rienzo have noted, with varying degrees of skepticism, his use of the visual in furthering the work of the buono stato. Recent research, aided by fresh insights from art and cultural history, has reevaluated the significance of Cola’s symbolic program in the context of the visual language of the Trecento. Included here are some of the more valuable works. Belting 1990 offers background to Cola’s political paintings. Crescenti 2003 examines the Anonimo Romano and its relationship to Cola’s ability to create a symbolic framework for his revolution. Franceschini 2002 looks at Cola’s utilization of Lex de imperio Vespasiani as it relates to Roman politics. Romano 1995 applies the concept of metaphorical typologies of sacred and secular histories to Cola’s utilization of the Lex de imperio Vespasiani. Sonnay 1982 examines Cola’s political imagery in his paintings.

Belting, Hans. “Langage et réalité dans la peinture monumentale publique en Italie au Trecento.” In Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age: Actes du Colloque international, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Université de Rennes II, Haute-Bretagne, 2–6 mai 1983. Vol. 3, Fabrication et consommation de l’oeuvre. Edited by Xavier Barral i Altet, 491–511. Paris: Picard, 1990.
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Essential background to the visual language and symbolism that informed Cola’s series of political paintings. Belting calls the visual language of the mid-Trecento a “public rhetoric of wall painting” that used a common language, readily understood by the urban public of the time.
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Crescenti, Carmela. Cola di Rienzo: Simboli e allegorie. Parma, Italy: All’insegna del Veltro, 2003.
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Uses the Anonimo Romano’s portrayal of Cola wandering through Rome’s ancient ruins and pondering the city’s lost glory. From these ruminations and his studies of ancient written sources, Rienzo was able to create a powerful set of political and cultural symbols that gave his revolution a cohesive and evocative appeal.
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Franceschini, Chiara. ““Rerum Gestarum Significacio”: L’uso di oggetti antichi nella comunicazione politica di Cola di Rienzo (1346–1347).” Annali della Scuola normale superiore di Pisa 4.14 (2002): 233–254.
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Examines Cola’s use of the ancient bronze tablets of the Lex de imperio Vespasiani and Constantine’s baptismal font in St. John Lateran as central elements of his symbolic and ritual-performative approach to Roman politics.
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Romano, Serena. ““Regio dissimilitudinis”: Immagini e parole nella Roma di Cola di Rienzo.” In Bilan et perspectives des études médiévales en Europe. Edited by Jacqueline Hamesse, 329–356. Louvain, Belgium: Federation Internationale des Institutes d’Etudes Medievales, 1995.
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Applies this Augustinian concept of the metaphorical typologies of sacred and secular history to Cola’s explication of the Lex de imperio Vespasiani and his juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary, imperial and republican, word and image, symbol and reality.
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Sonnay, Philippe. “La politique artistique de Cola di Rienzo (1313–1354).” Revue de l’art 55 (1982): 35–43.
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Studies the sources of Cola’s political imagery in his fresco series in preparation for the revolution, including the widow in the Panegyric to Robert of Anjou. Sonnay also examines the buono stato’s use of symbols, including Cola’s replacing the barons’ coats of arms on the Capitoline with the buono stato’s.
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Rienzo’s Legacy

Cola da Rienzo lives on in modern times in literary, musical, and dramatic works, as well as in modern political thought, as the prototype of the dictator and as a hero of liberty.

Literature and Drama

The story of Rienzo, vividly and masterfully constructed by the Anonimo Romano—and aided by Rienzo’s own gift for narrative creation—lent itself almost immediately to mythmaking and fiction. There are dozens of novels, poems, plays, and more than a few operas, in most of the western European languages, that reflect the fascination with Cola’s story, its archetypal dramatic arch and the political and social currents of his day. Battafarano 2006 examines cultural and political forces that ushered in an era of scholarly interest in Cola. Bulwer-Lytton 1842 was banned in the Papal States but inspired the great republican revolt of 1848–1849. Byron 1812 is the first Romantic appearance of Cola, and Engels and Knieriem 1974 is a work by Friedrich Engels that predates his later “scientific” works. Mitford 1828 views Rienzo as the perfect Romantic hero. Persichini and Cossa 1874 presents Rienzo’s influence on the new republic. Scalessa 2009 is a collection of essays by leading scholars that address Rienzo’s important place in modernity and the Italian national dialogue. Wagner 1842. was created by Richard Wagner and reduced Rienzo to a Romantic tableau as Rienzo struggled to unite Italy.

Battafarano, Italo M. Cola di Rienzo: Mito e rivoluzione nei drammi di Engels, Gaillard, Mosen e Wagner, 1837–1846. Trento, Italy: Università degli studi di Trento, Dipartimento di scienze filologiche e storiche, 2006.
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A critical examination of the coincidence of political and cultural forces that brought about this wave of literary interest. Also reprints Engels’s 1841 play.
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Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. Rienzi: The Last of the Roman Tribunes. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1842.
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Rienzi shares much with Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii: romantic, intricate, grand sweeps of historic events match the emotional life that swells up from his main characters. Though banned in the Papal States, Rienzi provided inspiration for the great republican revolt of 1848–1849.
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Byron, George Gordon. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Philadelphia: Moes Thomas, 1812.
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Rienzo made his first Romantic appearance here. Most of the fourth canto is a poetic meditation on the decline and desolate state of ancient Rome, itself now the perfect object of Romantic elegy. Amid this decay and darkness, however, Rienzo shines out, a beacon of hope and light.
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Engels, Friedrich, and Michael Knieriem. Cola di Rienzi: Ein unbekannter dramatischer Entwurf. Wuppertal, West Germany: P. Hammer, 1974.
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A youthful work, before more “scientific” methods claimed Engels’ energies. It is treated as a supplement to Volume 3 of the collected works of Marx and Engels.
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Mitford, Mary R. Rienzi: Tragedy, in Five Acts. London: John Cumberland, 1828.
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Italy is the land of the intrigues, dark vendettas, high emotion and noble idealism. Rienzo becomes the perfect Romantic hero: the man of noble, if violent, emotions, rising up against the church’s tyranny and the ignorant superstitions of his time to usher in a new age of freedom and enlightenment.
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Persichini, Venceslao, and Pietro Cossa. Cola di Rienzo: Tragedia lirica in cinque atti. Rome: Tipografia di Giov. Polizzi e C., 1874.
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Persichini, a distinguished voice teacher at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, collaborated with the dramatist Cossa, a staunch republican who fought for Garibaldi’s Republic of Rome in 1849. Their collaboration reflects the progressive ideals of the new republic and Rienzo’s place in its mythology. See also Pietro Cossa, Cola di Rienzo: Poema drammatico in cinque atti; Un prologo (Turin, Italy: F. Casanova, 1879).
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Scalessa, Gabriele. Cola di Rienzo: Dalla storia al mito. Rome: Il Cubo, 2009.
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A valuable collection of essays by leading Italian and Anglophone scholars that stresses Cola’s modernity and the creation of an Italian identity. Includes essays by Italo M. Battafarano, P. Gibellini, Anna Modigliani, Andreas Rehberg, and others.
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Wagner, Richard. Rienzi: Der letzte der Tribunen. Berlin: Meser, 1842.
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Wagner completed the libretto (using Mitford) in 1838 and the music in 1840, reducing Bulwer-Lytton’s novel and characters to an immense Romantic tableau of heroism, loyalty, treachery and fate. Rienzo remains a tragic superman devoted to his Kampf for Italy’s peace and unity. The opera premiered in Dresden, 20 October 1842. Hitler claimed it as an inspiration. Also published as Rienzi: Opéra en 5 actes (Paris: A. Durand, 1900); Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes (London: Schott, 1900); translation by Oliver Huckel (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1914).
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Modern Political Thought: The Dictator

Cola’s afterlife in myth and history has lent itself to a wide variety of political interpretations as well. Because he was, in turn, a republican revolutionary, a promoter of imperial revival, and a papal agent who consistently used the political methods and means of his time, the same man has been alternately appropriated as a republican leader or condemned as an egoistic tyrant, a deluded dreamer, or a crazed heretic. He was embraced in the 20th century as both a fascist and a communist hero. Here are included works that tend to be critical of the lowly upstart and eventual tyrant. Barzini 1986 provides an overview of Rienzo’s rise to power. Du Cerceau 1836 offers an unflattering portrait of Rienzo as a tyrant. Fleischer 1948 considers Rienzo a precursor to the 20th-century Fascist dictator. Lombroso 1883 contends that Cola’s pathology was similar to that of many other tyrants. Origo 1938 was cautious in his biography of Cola di Rienzo as Mussolini and Hitler were already in power when he wrote and released his work.

Barzini, Luigi. “Cola di Rienzo or the Obsession of Antiquity.” In The Italians. By Luigi Barzini, 117–132. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
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Rienzo was a poor Italian who used oratory and painting to reach the highest levels of power, but public-relations “chicanery” could not prevail against real power. Cola “spoke eloquently, wore handsome clothes, invented flags . . . the facade and the reality, for him too, were one and the same thing.”
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du Cerceau, Jean-Antoine. The Life and Times of Rienzi. Translated by Pierre Brumoy. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey & A. Hart, 1836.
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The French Jesuit painted an unattractive picture of Rienzo as the upstart meddler and eventual tyrant. His portrait served the monarchist and papal interests of the time. Ironically, among Napoleon’s possessions in his coach during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was a fifth edition of du Cerceau’s Rienzi. Originally published in Paris in 1733 as Conjuration de Nicholas Gabrini, dit de Rienzi, Tyran de Rome, en 1347.
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Fleischer, Victor. Rienzo: The Rise and Fall of a Dictator. London: Aigion, 1948.
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This self-deluded egotist and “cringing” plebeian defied, then sought, the nobility’s approbation. Fleischer saw Hitler’s ghost in Rienzo: in the end “in his evil, rolling eyes was hidden the cowardice of a man who considers himself hated by all . . . he had lied to his friends . . . betrayed everyone and everything.”
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Lombroso, Cesare. Due tribuni, studiata da un alienista. Rome: A. Sommaruga, 1883.
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Lombroso was one of the founders of anthropometric criminology: “alienists” discern criminal minds and natures through specific physical characteristics (such as cranium size and shape). People of artistic and cultural creativity also demonstrate predictable signs of insanity. Cola’s pathology was shared by other petty tyrants, such as Masaniello and Marat.
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Origo, Iris. Tribune of Rome: A Biography of Cola di Rienzo. London: Hogarth, 1938.
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With Mussolini and Hitler already firmly in power, Origo approached Rienzo with a great deal of caution, and comparison.
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Modern Political Thought: The Hero of Liberty

The works cited in this subsection examine Cola and his legacy from liberal, progressive, and leftist traditions. Beneš 2008 maps Cola’s posthumous global rise as a populist figure, and Mollat and Wolff 1973 considers him a sort of enigma, as both a traitor to the working class and an ineffectual bourgeois intellectual. Rodocanachi 1888 places Rienzo squarely within the history of republican freedom. Rusconi 1886 is a biography written by the minister of foreign affairs under the new Italian republic. Zeller 1874 provides a sympathetic view of Rienzo.

Beneš, Carrie E. “Mapping a Roman Legend: The House of Cola di Rienzo from Piranesi to Baedeker.” Italian Culture 26 (2008): 57–83.
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During the latter part of the Grand Tour, the Casa dei Crescenzi on via Petroselli gained a reputation as the “house of Cola di Rienzo,” the birthplace of this revolutionary. Traces Cola’s populist afterlife from the American Deep South to Rome and deconstructs the legend of this 11th-century building.
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Mollat, Michel, and Philippe Wolff. The Popular Revolutions of the Late Middle Ages. London: Allen and Unwin, 1973.
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“There was . . . in Rienzi . . . a mixture of sincerity with a spirit of intrigue, of violence and evasiveness, of idealism and pragmatism, of boorishness and culture.” Alternately, working-class traitor and ineffectual bourgeois intellectual, Rienzo “handled the weapon of social provocation with the consummate art of the actor and the demagogue.”
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Rodocanachi, Emmanuele. Cola di Rienzo: Histoire de Rome de 1342 à 1354. Paris: A. Lahure, 1888.
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A sympathetic biography framing Rienzo within the history of republican freedom. He was a defender of Italian peace, unity and prosperity, “épris d’un amour ardent pour sa patrie.”
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Rusconi, Carlo. Cola di Rienzo. Rome: E. Perino, 1886.
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Minister of foreign affairs under the new Italian republic, Rusconi also wrote history as a process of liberty and democracy. Rienzo was a forerunner of the short-lived Roman Republic of 1849 and a kindred spirit to Masaniello, Michele di Lando, and other tribunes of the people.
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Zeller, Jules Sylvain. Les tribuns et les révolutions en Italie. Paris: Didier, 1874.
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The tribunes, broadly interpreted as leaders of popular revolts, include John of Procida, Arnold of Brescia, Rienzo, Michele di Lando and Masaniello. Another sympathetic biography (pp. 147–263) of the revolutionary and republican leader, this time as the leader of a “mystical revolution.”