Propaganda for the reevaluation of Skanderbeg as a prince of the Renaissance

The young Albanian Alexander, as military commander-in-chief of the church, had to start the conquest of the East occupied by the Ottomans. The propaganda of Skanderbeg as the young Alexander symbolized not only the short-lived claim to the royal crown in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and Pyrrhus, but also clearly expressed the claim of the few Catholic elites surrounding Skanderbeg, for the establishment of the rule of the Kastriots in central Albania. in a rank equal to that of the states of Italy

From the fall of 1461 to the end of the winter of 1462, Skanderbeg himself went with his military troops to the aid of King Ferranto of Naples in the war against the French pretender to the throne, Johann von Anjou, and during this time he had daily contact with members of The Neapolitan Royal Family, with the high aristocracy of southern Italy and with Alessandro Sforza von Pesaros, with whom they fought in the field. And between the years 1460 and 1467 there were a series of visits to Italy by his political adviser, Paul Angel. It was Engjëlli, who was mentioned to have drawn up the political program of the Albanians for the crusade of Pope Pius II. Skanderbeg's coronation as king would have to be argued in contemporary political language and emphasized by easily understandable symbols.

In search of the parables of antiquity

Like the princes of Italy, Skanderbeg had to be portrayed as an ancient hero. In search of images of antiquity, for the Albanian space they referred to the tradition of the Kingdom of Epirus, and as the heroic precursor of Skanderbeg, a figure no less than Alexander the Great was chosen. Indeed, Alexander's motive quickly eclipsed the reference to King Pyrrhus and his empire, which is encountered in a separate personal letter of Skanderbeg.

It is very likely that Pal Engjëlli inspired the hero for this letter, because Barleti informs us that the archbishop had told the leader of Albania about the accounts of ancient historians. However, reliance on Epirota heritage was a weak argument for the new kingdom compared to the cult of sanctity that surrounded Alexander the Great throughout the ages. And it was not the Ottomans who had given Gjergj Kastriot the name Iskenderbe, i.e. Lord Alexander, when he, as a brave Muslim, was still fighting in their ranks.

Hadn't Gjergj Kastrioti been known for a long time, both in the East and in the West, with this name?

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It was only necessary to combine the Ottoman-Balkan tradition of the cult of Alexander with the admiration of the age of Humanism for the king of the Macedonians, and thus the claim for an Albanian kingdom would have been placed on a stable ideological basis. This was well understood by the fact that Alexander was an Epirote on his mother's side. In the same way, the Albanian cult of Alexander is not only reflected in the so-called privileged document of Alexander the Great or in the work of Barleti, who under the influence of the Angel, during the description of the dream of Skanderbeg's mother about the birth of the hero, borrows an element from Plutarch's "Life of Alexander", thus preparing the educated reader from the very beginning on the parallelisms between the two Alexanders - or in the two aforementioned documents considered as precursors of the Shkodra statutes.

The cult of Alexander in the helmet

Michele Canense, the biographer of Pope Paul II, also presents him (Skenderbeu) as Alexander, although it is difficult to say for sure whether this is a style oriented by the symbolism of antiquity or whether the author really refers to the new portrayal of Skanderbeg as a hero of antiquity.

But the cult of Alexander also found visible expression in a well-known art object, which today is kept in the "Rüst - und Waffenkammer" of the Historical Museum in Vienna: the helmet of Skanderbeg. It is the historian of ancient history from Munich, Peter Robert Franke, who has broken down the symbolic meaning of this ceremonial helmet. Franke was able to prove that this helmet, with two pompous goat horns, was from the early 1460s and came from a workshop in northern Italy, and that it is nothing more than a faithful imitation of the royal crown of ancient Macedonia. This crown was worn by Alexander the Great, but also by Pyrrhus of Epirus, who was not the only ruler in his homeland, but was also king of Macedonia for a while. At this stage, many elements presented so far are combined, which, being supplemented with other fragments, give us a coherent picture as follows: the reevaluation of the figure of Skanderbeg from a Balkan Athleta Christi to a Renaissance prince, who required a ranking equal to the heads of the Italian states and who also used their anciently oriented figurative language. He could raise this claim only in the framework of the papal crusade project, because taking into account the political situation in the last years of his life, such dreams were forbidden. But it was already mentioned above that in June 1464 Paul the Archangel visited the Milanese Royal Court and it should be added that on this occasion Francesco Sforza had presented the archbishop with ceremonial weapons for Skanderbeg - "le quale sonno le più belle che ora se siano trovate. "Actually, the helmet is not explicitly mentioned, but all the circumstances say that Paul the Archangel brought this symbolism to Albania in the summer of 1464. Skanderbeg received a military gift - a ceremonial sword - in Rome in December 1466. But the situation Skanderbeg's depressing situation at the turn of 1466/67 - Albania was desolated by Mehmet II, Kruja was in the hands of the Venetians and Neapolitans - it seems that it did not offer the conditions to go after the plans for an Albanian kingdom. Also, Pope Paul II was very reserved towards Skanderbeg. So, it says a lot that in 1464 Pal Engjëlli handed over the Macedonian royal helmet to the "God of Albania".

Skanderbeg not only as a warrior of religion

The appearance of Skanderbeg as the young Alexander gave a new quality to the defensive struggle of the Albanians: Skanderbeg should no longer be presented simply as a religious warrior in the crusade tradition fueled by the medieval worldview, but as a princely figure in the Adriatic, who with the antiquity-oriented political vocabulary of the Renaissance, he appealed to his Italian counterparts to use symbols of antiquity to support his political claims. The young Albanian Alexander, as military commander-in-chief of the church, had to start the conquest of the East occupied by the Ottomans. The propaganda of Skanderbeg as the young Alexander symbolized not only the short-lived claim to the royal crown in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and Pyrrhus, but also clearly expressed the claim of the few Catholic elites surrounding Skanderbeg, for the establishment of the rule of the Kastriots in central Albania. in a rank equal to that of the states of Italy. As for the political and economic weakness of this rule, such a claim was doomed to failure.

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It is to be noted that based on the metaphorical linguistic format of antiquity, it was raised on a pedestal - and this fact proves that despite the structural backwardness of the Albanian space and the turmoil of the Ottoman wars, the ideas of the era of Italian Humanism had reached through the Adriatic to Albanian coastal cities and there a small but active group of clerics created a policy.

This study was published in F. Fuchs (Hrsg.): "Osmanische Expansion und europäischer Humanismus" (Pirckheimer Jahrbuch Bd. 20). Wiesbaden, 2005, p. 123-144. Footnotes have been removed by the editors and crosswords have been added. Translated from German: Sylë Ukshini