Civitas Sibi Faciat Civem: Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen

Abstract

ARCHIVES in Italy are replete with municipal statutes enacted during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, which granted citizenship (civilitas, cittadinanza) to thousands of individuals, their families and their male descendants. Investigations on citizenship-legislation in Siena, Perugia and Florence have demonstrated how the legal definition of citizenship differed from city to city, how different forms of citizenship could exist side by side in a single city, and how these forms were undergoing a gradual amalgamation in the trecento.1 These complexities, combined with the fact that the state of research on this subject is still in its infancy, prevent us from reducing the historical development of citizenship in Italian cities to a few exact models.2 Nonetheless a general pattern of what one may call the making of a citizen has begun to emerge. For the most part, the origins of new citizens can be traced back to the contado, castellanies, and communities subject to the imperium of the city. Sometimes