cover image THE DEVIL'S BROKER: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy

THE DEVIL'S BROKER: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy

Frances Stonor Saunders, . . Fourth Estate, $25.95 (396pp) ISBN 978-0-06-077729-6

The career of Sir John Hawkwood, "the most audacious" of mercenaries active in Italy in the mid to late 14th century, provides a framework for this study of the era's religion, politics and warfare. Saunders (The Cultural Cold War ) portrays a generation that swept aside tradition for several reasons: plague leveled the social playing field, threats of excommunication were often ignored and warfare moved south from the feudal-based northern Europe to the increasingly wealthy, money-based economy of Italy, where battle-hardened soldiers journeyed after a truce in the Hundred Years' War. Perhaps most fascinating are the mechanics of mercenary armies, such as the one led by Hawkwood, that roamed Italy: the nature of their contracts, their alliances and betrayals and their democratic decision making. Equally lively is Saunders's account of the great Schism of the Church, in which two (and later three) men contested the title of pope: from the vantage point of the hired armies, it is simply a vicious power struggle like all the others. Hawkwood, within this context, built for himself a fearful reputation, lost and won many fortunes and married himself into the illegitimate branch of the powerful Visconti clan. His is a dramatic life, set in a dramatic context. Illus. not seen by PW; maps. Agent, Felicity Rubinstein. (June 1)