How can we forget Ambroise ?

On February 26, 1450, the condottiere Francesco Sforza entered the city of Milan: the memory of Ambrose was to become temporarily infrequent, so compromised had it become with the republican regime. But can memory really be manipulated? The analysis focuses on Giovanni Simonetta's De rebus gestis Francisci Sfortiae commentarii , a full-length portrait of a virtuoso of political activity, an eulogy of calculation and dissimulation. The careful concealment of Ambrosian memory until 1466 left a few traces, in addition to iconographic latency: civic processions were diverted to the church of Sant'Ambrogio ad Nemus and captured in the palatial space; Ambrose circulated under borrowed names, as the knightly revival imposed the cult of St. George. But the princely reconquest of Ambrosian memory began in a more discreet manner, as seen in the great cycle in the Griffi chapel at San Pietro in Gessate. However, 1476 also saw the beginning of a bad season for political assassinations. The murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (December 26, 1476) ritually regenerated a broken political pact in the tyrant's blood. The anti-princess sequence continued, with Ambrose's name being used as political legitimacy: the breach had not been sealed. As for the princely rupture, it raises the general problem of the absolutization of power.

Contents

• Francesco Sforza, February 26, 1450: the condottiere's entrance
• The war entrepreneur's necessary betrayals: a tangled web of unpredictable but understandable intrigue
• A few rules of action: fortuna and virtus
• Military conquest, popular acclaim and dynastic continuity: the triple legitimacy of political equilibrium
• march 25, 1450, Francesco Sforza's second entry: but where is Ambrose?
• Unforgivable memory and the "grave question of the name": "Never treat as an accident the force of the name in what happens, is done or is said in the name of religion" (Jacques Derrida, Foi et savoir)
• Back to source: De rebus gestis Francisci Sfortiae commentarii by Giovanni Simonetta
• The Commentary genre and Caesar's memory
• Full-length portrait of a virtuoso of political activity
• In praise of calculation and concealment: the March 25 entry, or the art of being kept waiting
• Can memory really be manipulated? A machina memorialis without a machinist
• Nicole Loraux, La cité divisée. L'oubli dans la mémoire d'Athènes (1997): amnesty, amnesia and damnatio memoriae
• Cautious concealment of Ambrosian memory until 1466: an iconographic latency
• Civic processions diverted to the church of Sant'Ambrogio ad Nemus and captured in palatial space
• Paul Ricœur and the "oblivion of unavailability
• When Ambrose circulates under assumed names: knightly revival and the cult of St. George
• "True forgetting is perhaps not emptiness, but the fact of immediately putting something else in the place of a place once inhabited, an ancient monument, an ancient text, an ancient name" (Régine Robin, La mémoire saturée)
• The princely reconquest of Ambrosian memory: Bramante and the gentilice chapels of the Sant'Ambrogio basilica
• At San Pietro in Gessate: the great Ambrosian cycle in the Griffi chapel
• Ambrose's judgment and the power of life and death: an image of sovereignty
• After 1474, printing and the humanist invention of the Ambrosian past
• Ambrose becomes an ancient author: the separation between ancient and modern
• Another separation, of a political nature: the absolutization of a weak power
• 1476, the start of the bad season for political assassinations
• Ritual reading of Galeazzo Maria Sforza's murder (December 26, 1476): regenerating a broken political pact in the tyrant's blood
• The ambrosial oath of the conspirators
• Again in 1483, an assassination plot on Saint Ambrose's Day (December 7) and the cold vengeance of the State
• Torture in secret: the sovereign model ofErgastolon in Filarete's Trattato di architettura
• The continuation of an anti-princess sequence in the name of Ambrose: the breach is not sealed
• The princely rupture: what is the absolutization of power?
• Medieval memory and the forgotten Renaissance