The Lewkenor Circle · Soldiers and Venetian command
Battista del Monte: The Commander Lewkenor Served
Always they do entertain in honourable sort, with great provision a Captain general, who always is a stranger born: he that now enjoyeth that place is one John Baptista de Monte a Florentine born, a notable soldier, and a very honourable Gentleman, one under whom I have served in the wars, and am in all thankfulness to acknowledge many favours that I received both from him and his brother Camillo de Monte.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), p. 166; spelling modernised.
A personal military connection inside Lewkenor’s account of Venetian government.
Giovanni Battista del Monte was the professional commander whom Lewes Lewkenor named when explaining Venice’s employment of a foreign Captain General. The passage is also autobiographical: Lewkenor had served under him and acknowledged favours received from both Battista and his brother Camillo.
The brothers in The Estate of English Fugitives
Four years earlier, Lewkenor named both brothers while discussing the failure of Spanish service to reward experienced soldiers:
The sight of this hard and beggarly usage, but especially the feeling of that which they themselves received, have made many great and worthy soldiers to abandon him with mighty discontentments, as amongst the rest John Baptista de Monte, and Camillo de Monte, two notable captains, both now retained under two mighty states, the one being general to the Duke of Florence, the other bearing like charge under the Venetians, who both lie in wait to cry quittance with him.
Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
The 1595 passage identifies the brothers together and contrasts their earlier treatment with their subsequent employment by Italian rulers. The 1599 passage names Battista in the Venetian command.
Favours, service and gratitude
“Many favours” is a compact expression of the obligations formed through military service. Lewkenor’s gratitude extends to Camillo as well as to the commander under whom he served. The sentence records assistance and a remembered personal debt without specifying the individual favours.
That acknowledgement differs in tone from his attacks on the treatment of English fugitives. His writing can distinguish between the policies of the Spanish administration and the conduct of particular officers to whom he remains grateful.
Venice’s foreign commander
For readers of Othello, the phrase “a stranger born” is particularly suggestive. Shakespeare’s general is a foreign professional soldier whose authority rests on his service and the confidence placed in him by Venice. He answers the threat of Brabantio’s complaint by invoking what he has done for the state:
My services which I have done the signiory
Shall out-tongue his complaints.
Othello, Othello, I.ii.
The comparison concerns the structure of command: Venice relies on an experienced foreign soldier. Battista’s biography and Othello’s dramatic story are different. The documented point is that Lewkenor’s description of that institution includes a commander he knew through service.
Sources
Lewes Lewkenor, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), p. 166; The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), passage on the del Monte brothers. Prose quotations use modernised spelling.
Hessen Kassel Heritage, Graphische Sammlung, portrait of Giovanni Battista del Monte Santa Maria, engraving by Dominicus Custos.
William Shakespeare, Othello, I.ii.