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The first major study of the powerful Borromeo family of Milan in the seventeenth century, uncovering their growing entanglement with the Spanish monarchy, and the ways in which the Borromeo grappled with the ethical implications of this controversial relationship, repeatedly reinventing themselves to preserve their social privilege.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Borromeo's Hidden Spanish Connection
- Prologue: The Unravelling of an Ecclesiastical Dynasty
- Part I: Buccaneering
- 1: Olivaristas on the Make: The Borromeo and the Government of the Count-Duke of Olivares
- 2: Becoming Military Leaders: The Borromeo, the Union of Arms, and the Franco-Spanish War in Italy
- 3: The Pitfalls of Patronage: Giovanni Borromeo as Commissioner-General of the Army in Lombardy
- 4: The Decline and Fall of an Olivarista: Giovanni Borromeo's Failed Quest for Admission to the Spanish Governing Elite
- Part II: Blearing
- 5: "A Faithful Vassal of His Majesty": Federico Borromeo as Papal Nuncio and the Ideology of Disinterested Service
- 6: Moral Panics and the Restoration of Consensus: Federico Borromeo and the Jurisdictional Controversies in Spanish Italy
- 7: Dissimulation and Subterfuge: Federico Borromeo as Nuncio in Spain and Papal Secretary of State
- 8: Pining for Stability: Antonio Renato Borromeo and the Uses of Symbolic Power
- Epilogue: The Crisis of Favoritism and the Courtization of the Nobility
About the author
Samuel Weber studied at the Universities of Plymouth, Bern, and Durham, after which he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History at the University of Bern and a visiting researcher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is currently an advanced postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and a Swiss National Science Foundation-funded fellow at the École française de Rome.
Summary
The first major study of the powerful Borromeo family of Milan in the seventeenth century, uncovering their growing entanglement with the Spanish monarchy, and the ways in which the Borromeo grappled with the ethical implications of this controversial relationship, repeatedly reinventing themselves to preserve their social privilege.
