Ecclesiastical dispute and lay community : Figline Valdarno in the twelfth century

Abstract

Chris Wickham, Ecclesiastical dispute and lay community : Figline Valdarno in the twelfth century, p. 7-93. Figline, halfway between Florence and Arezzo, is the focus for one of the best-documented conflicts in twelfth-century Italy, a set of disputes over property and ecclesiastical rights, including mills, heard in fourteen documented hearings between 1175 and 1195. This article analyses the conflict by putting it in its socio-political setting in the developing rural commune of Figline (the settlement and its leaders, and its aristocratie patrons, are themselves well-documented); it goes on to discuss the signifia cance of ecclesiastical ritual for the determination of rights and duties in the late twelfth century and the ways in which disputing was conducted (including modes of proof and strategies of the presentation of cases) in the period, on the basis of the Figline dispute and parallel cases. An at- (p.t.o.) tempt is made to show how the example of Figline contributes to under-standing the sociology of disputing as a whole.