The Challenge of Barletta stands as a classic case of a minor event transformed into a lasting myth. During the Italian Wars, the Treaty of Granada (1500) divided the Kingdom of Naples between the French and Spanish, leaving the southern half of the kingdom to the Spanish and the northern to France. However, fighting soon resumed. In early 1503, Spanish cavaliers, including a large contingent of Italians, met with captains of the enemy French in Barletta. During the meeting, a Frenchman accused the Italians of being “traitors like the Spanish,” which led the Italians to challenge the French to combat. The most direct source about what happened comes from an eyewitness account reported in a letter written on the day of the combat (13 February 1503). Thirteen Italians met thirteen French cavaliers in a field near Andria. After jousting on horseback, the cavaliers dismounted and took up the fight on foot, which culminated in a resounding Italian victory. The surviving French were taken prisoner and transported to Barletta. The letter recounted that the Italians had fought virilmente. Using these bare facts, the mythmakers took over, echoing the heroic legends of champions dating back to Homer.

This collection leads readers through the shifting fogs of the myth. Fifteen prominent scholars explore the immediate historical context of the Challenge, literary mythmaking from the sixteenth-century humanists to Massimo d'Azeglio's novel Ettore Fieramosca o la disfida di Barletta (1833, English translation 1845), and the nationalist and fascist appropriations of the myth in post-Risorgimento politics, art, and film. Most of this cultural production was only vaguely related to the events of 1503. In fact, the Barlettani of the sixteenth century, more preoccupied with the siege of their city in 1528, did not leave any contemporary record of the event, even if now they celebrate it as a prized symbol of local identity.

Readers of this journal will find interest in the first nine essays, which touch upon Renaissance culture. The humanists, including Antonio Galateo, a follower of Pontano, embellished the Challenge to herald a return to the heroic virtues of the ancient Latin peoples, bonding Italians and Spaniards in a common culture, which was hardly a move toward Italian nationalism. Galateo isolated one of the cavaliers, Ettore Fieramosca, as the reembodied Trojan Hector, and henceforth Fieramosca became the hero of the myth. The Latin poem Gonsalvia, by Giovanni Battista Valentini (known as Cantalicio), followed the epic tradition of the Illiad and the Aeneid by listing a catalogue of heroes to provide consolation to Italians who felt blown by the caprices of Fortune. It was not the humanists, however, but the vernacular historian Francesco Guicciardini who made a telling case for the significance of the Challenge. In Jean-Louis Fournel's powerful analysis, Guicciardini saw the French defeat at Barletta as a metonymy for the structural weaknesses of the French army, which eventually led to their abandonment of Naples and defeat in Italy. For other sixteenth-century writers, the Challenge itself became a challenge of classification: was it a joust, a form of judicial combat, or a duel of honor? In a 1547 tract, it became the archetype of the honorable duel, a subject of widespread interest between 1550 and 1570.

The problem created by this Renaissance myth for the Risorgimento writers was how to reconcile their nationalist aspirations with the history of ferocious hatred among fellow Italians. Massimo d'Azeglio's answer was to follow the model of Sir Walter Scott and his use of the historical novel to appeal to emotions. D'Azeglio turned the thirteen combatants into a regional cross-section of Italians and managed to use the words Italy or Italians on average every 1.3 pages. There is a delicious final irony, however, to the nationalist appropriation of the Challenge. In 1931 a struggle broke out about proposed locations for a monument to the Challenge. Partisans of Trani and Bari agitated for it, but the Barlettani would not be deprived of their glorious heritage. Despite the rigid policing of the fascist regime, riots broke out in Barletta, Carabinieri opened fire, and two demonstrators died. In united Italy campanilissimo still won out.