Visconti and Sforza: the territory in the Milanese state

From signoria to duchy

The Visconti built the largest territorial state of northern Italy in the fourteenth century. Their lordship over Milan was transformed into a hereditary duchy when King Wenceslas granted Gian Galeazzo Visconti the ducal title by a diploma of 11 May 1395 in exchange for 100,000 florins. The solemn investiture followed in Sant'Ambrogio on 5 September 1395.¹ The duchy extended at its height from the Alps to Tuscany and threatened Florence and Venice. The Ticinese territories were a small but strategically important part of this state. They controlled the northern approaches to Milan and the routes that Milanese merchants used to reach Germany and the Rhine. They also supplied the capital with timber, charcoal, stone, cattle and dairy products.²

The death of Gian Galeazzo in 1402 threw the duchy into crisis. His sons were minors, the condottieri and the local lords seized what they could while the old factions of the cities revived. In the territory of the Ticino the Rusca returned to power at Como and Lugano, while the Confederates of central Switzerland exploited the Milanese weakness to establish themselves in the Leventina and, soon after, at Bellinzona (see the next section). Order was restored only by Filippo Maria Visconti, who became duke in 1412 and spent the following years reconquering his father's inheritance.³ His methods combined military force with negotiation. Local families that had seized towns were allowed to keep them as ducal fiefs in exchange for recognition of ducal sovereignty, which explains the complex feudal map of the territory in the fifteenth century.

Fiefs and feudatories

Under Filippo Maria and his Sforza successors much of the territory was granted in fief to noble families. The Rusca held Lugano and later Locarno as counts for long periods. The Sanseverino, a family of southern Italian origin in Milanese service, held Lugano and adjacent districts in the middle decades of the fifteenth century.⁴ Other districts were administered directly by ducal officials. The distinction mattered for the population, because a feudatory collected many of the revenues that would otherwise have gone to the duke, appointed the local judges and exercised civil and criminal jurisdiction in the first instance. Appeals, the most serious crimes and matters of state remained reserved to the duke and his councils in Milan. Filippo Maria went further in November 1441, when the decree De maiori magistratu cut back the powers of the feudal podestà in favour of the magistrates of the cities.⁵

The fiefs were not private property in the modern sense. The duke could revoke them for disloyalty and regularly reclaimed them when a line died out or when a feudatory sided with his enemies. They were nevertheless heritable and could be pledged. The feudal families treated them as assets whose value depended on the revenues they generated. A fief such as Lugano, with its market, its lake traffic and its tolls, was worth considerably more than an Alpine valley whose income consisted of small dues in kind. The feudal grants were therefore also financial transactions, and several of them were connected with loans that the feudatories had made to the ducal treasury.⁶

Notes

1. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, art. "Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duca di Milano", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gian-galeazzo-visconti-duca-di-milano_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ (diploma of 11 May 1395, coronation in Sant'Ambrogio on 5 September 1395, price of 100,000 florins). ↩
2. DSS, art. "Milano (ducato)", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/006632/, on the strategic role of the Ticinese territories and their supply of dairy products, timber, stone and livestock to Milan. ↩
3. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, art. "Filippo Maria Visconti, duca di Milano", https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/filippo-maria-visconti-duca-di-milano_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. ↩
4. DSS, art. "Rusca" (above), on the Locarno fief of 1439; DSS, art. "Sanseverino, Aloisio", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/015429/2009-11-30/, on the grants of 1434 and 1438 (Lugano and its valley, Mendrisio and the pieve of Balerna); DSS, art. "Lugano (comune)" (above). ↩
5. Gigliola Soldi Rondinini, "Filippo Maria Visconti, duca di Milano", in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/filippo-maria-visconti-duca-di-milano_(Dizionario-Biografico)/, on the system of feudal investitures and the decree De maiori magistratu of November 1441; Federica Cengarle, Feudi e feudatari del duca Filippo Maria Visconti. Repertorio (Milano: Unicopli, 2007). ↩
6. Cengarle (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.