A Spider's Web. Agreements, Pacts and Alliances before, around and after the Peace of Lodi (Norther Italy, 1454-1455)

The peace of Lodi was a highly symbolic treaty, stipulated among the duchy of Milan and the republic of Venice in April 1454. In the summer of 1454, a first league between Milan, Venice and Florence was signed in Venice. Over the autumn and with the participation of Pope Niccolò V and of Alfonso V, king of Aragon, Valencia, Naples and Sicily, the league became «universal». The Italian League has famously been seen as «the» treaty at the origin of the western grand narrative of the balance of power and the birth of permanent resident embassies. Actually, it was a coalescing moment in a continuous and complementary stream of negotiations on many geographical and political levels. The peace and the leagues were prepared and paralleled by clusters of very local pacts, and was continuously adapted to the ever-changing political circumstances. The chapter aims at analysing this phenomenon by focusing on the case-study represented by the duchy of Milan. In this perspective, the «treaty» becomes a binding moment in a broader and almost uninterrupted process of peacemaking, and peacemaking itself can be read as a grammar for mediating, negotiating and solving conflicts among powers, polities, and agencies of different nature and status.