Bossi's Lega Nord - history and myth

Author: Edward Coleman

 

Much has been written about the rise to power of Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord, but surprisingly little in the way of research has been done to examine the connection hinted at by the Lega with its medieval counterparts. Dr. Edward Coleman of University College Dublin however has examined the connections, from a Medievalist's perspective. He spoke to ThreeMonkeys about the connections and contradictions inherent in the Lega's use of medieval symbology.

To what extent do the Lega associate themselves with the medieval Lombard League?

In two main ways. Firstly much of the symbolism of the modern League is consciously drawn from the medieval League, beginning with its name. Lega Nord is in fact a composite organisation made up of a number of smaller groups sharing common aims with regard to de-centralisation of government and federalism. The largest of these is the Lombard League which was founded by Umberto Bossi in 1984. Bossi's Lombard League took as its party symbol an image of a medieval knight holding a sword aloft. This design is based on a statue erected in 1876 at Legnano to commemorate the famous victory won by the medieval Lombard League over the army of the German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-90) at that location in 1176. The statue itself represents Alberto da Giussano, a mythical figure associated with the League from the Later Middle Ages onwards. On the flags and badges of the modern League the image of Alberto da Giussano is superimposed on a St George's Cross (a red cross on a white background). The St George's cross was adopted as the flag of Milan and other Lombard cities in the Middle Ages. It appears, for example, on illustrations of the Milanese carroccio or war-chariot. The Italian press dubbed the Bossi’s league il carroccio on account of this association and the nickname has endured. Another connection is the holding of political rallies at places of significance for the medieval league, notably at Pontida near Bergamo, traditionally the site of an important oath-swearing ceremony in 1167.

Apart from this superficial borrowing the modern League has sought inspiration from the story of its medieval 'precursor'. The medieval Lombard league was an alliance of city communes situated in the Po valley. It thus can be claimed that it stood for north Italian interests. Moreover, it opposed a centralised monolithic state - the German empire of Frederick I Barbarossa - just as the modern league opposes the centralised monolithic Italian state created in 1860. The principal issue of contention in twelfth century just as in the late twentieth century was taxation. Furthermore the medieval league - at least in popular perception - was supported by ordinary citizens: tradesmen and artisans, lawyers and notaries, merchants and shopkeepers. It can therefore be seen as both populist and non-partisan, a claim often made on behalf of the modern league.

The pseudo-medievalism of its symbols and the focus on the struggle of the medieval Lombard League as an inspirational historical episode are characteristic of the early development of the modern League in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, since the mid 1990s other non-medieval symbols have come to the fore, notably the ‘Sun of the Alps’ symbol, a six-petalled green flower within a circle. At the same time Lega propaganda has started to emphasise and celebrate the Celtic past of northern Italy which it claims it shares with parts of transalpine Europe, principally on linguistic grounds. Similarly the proclamation of an independent north Italian republic named Padania in 1996 had little medieval resonance.

Why as a medievalist are you drawn to write about the modern day Lega?

My primary interest was in the medieval Lombard League obviously. However, the rise of Bossi and the creation of modern league naturally aroused my curiosity - it’s not often, after all, that a medievalist can claim that his field of study has a direct connection with contemporary politics and society! So I set out to examine the links between the medieval and modern leagues from the standpoint of a medievalist. What I discovered, unsurprisingly, was that the modern League made use of the most accessible and powerful symbols of the medieval league – the carroccio, Alberto da Giussano, Pontida and Legnano- but that this appropriation was relatively superficial and uncritical from a historian’s point of view. In fact it was in large part based on romanticised notions of the League, which go back no further than the nineteenth century. The ‘real’ story of the Lombard League, as contained in twelfth century sources, includes many elements, which sit uneasily with the modern League’s evocation of it as a historical ‘model’, and implicitly as a justification for its political programme. It seemed to me that this needed to be pointed out.

What do the contemporary sources for the league tell us about it?

There is abundance of contemporary sources for the medieval league. Its activities are described in many chronicles, both favourable and unfavourable to its position. The league itself produced numerous documents, in particular relating to the terms of membership of the various cities that adhered to it. The great peace treaty agreed between Frederick I Barbarossa and the league at Constance in 1183 survives in several versions.

These sources show us that the league was a fairly loose federation of cities. It had common funds and a common army; each city elected representatives who consulted with the other members at regular meetings. Beginning in 1167 with five founder members - Milan, Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia and Mantua - by 1183 its adherents numbered seventeen. But it was always a shifting and fluid alliance. Cities were constantly joining and leaving; some cities never joined at all. Similarly it would be an over-simplification to characterise it as simply ‘anti-imperial’. In fact, the terms and conditions of most of the pacts associating cities with the League envisage them giving aid against mutual enemies who, when identified, are not the emperor but other cities. The conflict of c.1158-76 was thus as much about local politics and war in northern Italy as about Frederick’s attempts to impose imperial rule there. The Peace of Constance was certainly a victory for the league, but its terms too show clearly that the communes were not campaigning to set up a separate Lombard state. On the contrary they sought, and ultimately obtained through the Treaty of Constance, recognition of what they called their ‘liberties’- by which they meant local privileges and customs - within the pre-existing constitutional framework of the Italian kingdom, ruled by the German emperors.

Why is the myth of the league so powerful? How much of the myth is based on fact ?

Virtually all of the symbols used by the modern league are of doubtful historical veracity. For example, there is no contemporary proof of the existence of Alberto da Giussano, the figure on the party badge. He is first mentioned by the Milanese chronicler Galvano Fiamma (1283-1344) who wrote well over a century after the time of the Lombard League. Fiamma is also the first to associate Alberto’s with the famed ‘Company of Death’. The swearing of oaths and the so-called Congress of Pontida in 1167, which later historiography saw as a crucial moment in the formation of the League, is similarly difficult to authenticate: though it is not an implausible event, the earliest unequivocal reference to it is contained in a work written even later than Fiamma’s chronicle - a history of Milan by Bernadino Corio (1459-1513/19). The carroccio, on the other hand, is frequently attested in sources written during the period of the wars between the League and Frederick I Barbarossa. However, it was essentially a civic symbol: each city possessed its own carroccio. There is no evidence that it was ever elevated to the status of a symbol of north Italian particularism or independence in the Middle Ages in the way it is presented today by the League. Indeed as the army of Lombard league consisted of contingents from many cities, it is unlikely that it had a single carroccio at Legnano, despite the fact that nineteenth century paintings and prints of the battle often depict one centre-stage.

How plausible then are the links between the Lega Nord and the Lombard League?

The downplaying of such links in recent times by the League itself, and the search for other reference points, may be taken as an admission of their lack of plausibility. In the first place, as was said, the original Lombard League, unlike the modern League, did not seek independence for northern Italy. There is wide agreement amongst medievalists that the concerns of its member cities were first and foremost local rights and privileges. That is to say they had little or no concept of a Lombard ‘nation’ in the political sense, even if ‘Lombard’ was used as a cultural label for inhabitants of the north of Italy both in the Italian peninsula and in northern Europe. Forged under the pressure of war, the League did not hold together in peacetime: in fact it disintegrated shortly after a settlement was reached with Frederick Barbarossa at Constance in 1183. The cities then returned to fighting each other which was a much more normal state of affairs throughout the Middle Ages.

Furthermore there is no doubt that the greatest enemy of the modern league is Rome, capital of the Italian state and seat of the government. This too is rather inconvenient for the historical parallel as Rome, in the form of the Papacy, was the staunchest ally of the medieval league. The bond between the two was so strong that when the League founded a strategic fortress-town to guard the route across the Appennines between Milan and Genoa it was named Alessandria, after Frederick Barbarossa’s implacable enemy Pope Alexander III (1159-81).

We can say therefore that the position of the modern League with regard to the nature of the medieval League contains misconceptions, and is seriously out of step with the interpretations of modern professional historians.

How have historians/politicians used the Lombard League through Italian history?

The modern League is not original in seeking to use the exploits of the medieval League in support of its cause: precisely the same process occurred during the early stages of the Risorgimento. The Italian patriots who attempted to throw off Austrian rule in the 1830s and 1840s saw in the struggles of the Lombard League in the Middle Ages an earlier attempt to rid Italy of foreign dominion. During these years Italian historians, playwrights, poets and artists evoked medieval imagery in support of the cause of national self-determination. A recent study has counted no fewer than thirty major paintings from this period that depict aspects of the Lombard League, including six of the Pontida Oaths and ten of the Battle of Legnano. Many Italian patriots saw themselves as the modern equivalents of the Company of Death, and the Cinque Giornate at Milan (18-22 March, 1848) as a re-run of the Battle of Legnano. Verdi’s opera La Battaglia di Legnano, which was first performed in 1849 shortly after northern Italy had risen against the Austrians, was assumed to have a thinly veiled political message both by the Italian audiences who received it rapturously and the Austrian authorities who banned it. All of this is richly ironic when one considers that the programme of Bossi and his followers is diametrically opposed to the aims of the Mazzini, Cavour and the other architects of the Risorgimento: the former seek to destroy the unified Italy that the latter brought into being. Despite this both groups have been drawn to the same historical touchstones and utilised the same bank of images: Pontida, Alberto da Giussano, Legnano and the Carroccio.

The Lega's image as anti-establishment inheritors of the Lombard League's mantle is surely too tarnished to work at this stage, historical accuracy apart, as members of Berlusconi's government. Where do they go from here?

This is really a question for a political scientist rather than a medieval historian. Certainly the league has shown itself willing to work with ‘the enemy’ – Rome-based government – on two occasions. Although the first collaboration ended acrimoniously in 1995, the second (since 2001) has been more harmonious, perhaps because the League’s position is relatively weaker. The party line is that it is working within the system to achieve its goals and this is reflected in the government post currently held by Umberto Bossi (minister for Reform). However, there are grounds for believing that the League has gradually re-aligned itself. It has moved away from the extreme stance adopted at the height of its electoral success with the declaration of an independent Padania in 1996, and towards a more moderate position, which advocates devolution and federalismwithin the Italian state, and a ‘Europe of the regions’ at the level of the EU.

The Lega have often been branded xenophobic - are there historical analogies with the Lombard League in this respect?

Our modern concepts of xenophobia and racism are not really applicable to the very different world of the Middle Ages. However, it could be argued the modern League’s identification with the medieval Lombard League may have helped to make it look less intolerant and more mainstream. The reasons for this are complex. But it is certainly relevant that the story of the medieval league is familiar to Italians from school textbooks. It is also important to remember that since the nineteenth century parts of this story of have been dramatised, romanticised and to a large extent mythologised in art and literature, as was mentioned. Consequently, a positive image of the medieval league has lodged in the popular imagination. Within this paradigm the medieval league had a legitimate grievance, was justified in its defiance of the empire, and by standing by its principles it prevailed against an apparently stronger adversary. At one level then it may be said that the modern league’s attempt to associate itself with the medieval league is simply about a fledgling party’s search for respectability and historical legitimation. More cynically it may be argued that the romance of the medieval connection also helped divert attention from the boorishness of Bossi and the xenophobic and racist tendencies which many commentators have identified in elements of the party. Either way it is a very interesting example of how the story of the medieval Lombard League, remote though it is from us in time, continues to find a place in the political debates of modern Italy.

Edward Coleman's essay, 'The Lombard League. History and Myth' is published in European Encounters. Essays in Memory of Albert Lovett, edited by H.B.Clarke and Judith Devlin (Dublin, UCD Press, 2003).

(Editor's note - this article was commissioned prior to Umberto Bossi's recent hospitalisation with cardiac problems)