The Rise of Visconti Power

This chapter focuses on the affirmation of a strong lordly government in the early decades of the fourteenth century. The arrival of Henry VII and the conferring of the imperial vicariate signified a watershed in the Visconti world, which saw the lord detached, not without some initial hesitation, from bottom-up forms of legitimacy to adhere to a royal conception of authority, one that was not always coherent to itself. Its definition, from time to time, involved substantial investment in terms of munificence, the adoption of a true regimen regale, expensive marriage arrangements with the ruling houses of the time, the recovery of the tradition of the Lombard kings of Pavia and even the employment of a lexicon relating to divine providence, which made it possible to suggest links with an even higher level of majesty.