Who ruled the lands of Italy in 1487 and what language was spoken?

Answer 1

As for most of its medieval and early modern history, Italy was fragmented into several city-states and kingdoms, often conflicting with each other.

The main players were:

the Republic of Venice, which had come to dominate much of the northeast plains and the coast of what is now Croatia, and was governed by an elaborate hierarchy of aristocratic assemblies and councils;

The Duchy of Milan, nestled in the Po valley between the Adige river and the foothills of Torino, was ruled as a fief of the Sforzas, and in this year by Gian Galeazzo.

An arc of territory from Rome to Ravenna was nominally governed as the Papal States, but many cities (like Urbino) had wrested actual power by force and become largely independent.

The Republic of the city-state Florence had dominated her neighbors and rivals Pisa and Siena in Tuscany, though by the 1450s the genuine control of the city's government had been usurped by the wealthy Medici banking family. Lorenzo de Medici ruled in 1487.

Across the southern half of Italy was the Kingdom of Naples. It was ruled by the illegitimate son of a King of Aragon, while the islands of Sicily and Sardinia were still under the control of that king. These were Ferdinand I and Ferdinand II (of Ferdinand-and-Isabella) respectively.

Aside from these, there were a panoply of independent city-states, some ruled by mercenary overlords, others by hereditary feudal signores, and still others by republican governments (which, however, were more often dominated by wealthy oligarchs than they were truly democratic).

As for language, most of the populace generally spoke their provincial dialects--all relatively similar to each other (moreso than to French), but not always intelligible. The literate classes had begun to turn to the Tuscan dialect of Dante, Petrarch, and the new humanist philosophers. Every truly literate person was conversant in Latin at this time, as well.

But except for the French-speakers in the mountainous Savoy, and some German communities, most Italians spoke the dialect of Italian-esque dialect of their little corner.