Communal Italy Research Articles

Families, alliances, clientage and urban space: the case of the late medieval Genoese alberghi (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries)

Within the multifarious context of communal Italy, the Genoese aristocratic alberghi, known thanks to the studies of Edoardo Grendi, Ennio Poleggi and Luciano Grossi Bianchi, and Jacques Heers, stand out as a peculiar example that enables to observe the relationship between aristocracy and urban space throughout the late Middle Ages. The Genoese case is peculiar not only because of its originality, already emphasised by past literature, but also in view of the presence of extremely rich documentary sources. In a city characterised by multiple and overlapping territorial divisions (compagne, conestagie, contrate), it is thus possible to follow the evolution of these aristocratic confederacies (involving around 200 families of different sizes) from the early communal period. Grendi had emphasised the ‘demotopographic’ character of the alberghi which express a principle of organisation of the urban space based on a common cognomen. The paper aims at reconsidering the relationship between the power of the late medieval aristocratic alberghi and urban territory by focusing not only on strategies for maintaining control of their residential buildings, but also aspects of social interaction.

The Matter of Personae in Medieval Italy

Abstract This article hunts for the medieval understanding of juridical persona in the courtrooms of communal Italy (c.1250–1450). While corporate personae have been the long-favored subject of inquiry for both medieval and modern scholars, the ontological predecessor of the corporate persona, the juridical persona, remains undertheorized. The gap is surprising given that (i) the concept is central to other formative legal notions of standing, status, and identity and (ii) medieval legal practice’s erstwhile penchant was to gloss and re-gloss every word of its central texts. By considering cases of gestural blasphemy brought before both civic and ecclesiastical courts, this article discovers the multiple and context-specific meanings for persona at law. These shifting definitions hover around a theological impossibility: a material quality to divine persons that could render them subject to injury and defendable in court. I contend that the legal utility of the term persona rested in its ability to bridge conceptual gaps like that created in the prosecution of blasphemy. Persona was left definitionally both one and many for good legal reason.

«Recta linea et ad cordam». Measurements Tracing and Urban Practice in the Cities of Communal Italy 812th-13th centuries)

The first decades of the 13th century mark a decisive turning point in the development of urban planning practices in the cities of central and northern Italy. The enhancement of municipal institutions enables the statement of technical and legal norms on which a substantial renewal of urban space is based. Soil measurement operations including its perimeter tracing are of paramount importance in this context. Used from the second half of the 12th century in order to control public places, these techniques derived from land surveying science and soon became customary also in the design of additions to city walls and new road structures as well as in the projects of extension and regularisation of public spaces. Systematic adoption of ropes stretched between pickets thus constitutes an incisive factor in the transformation of urban structure, under the sign of innovative rectilinear or polygonal geometries. Numerous historical documents from main towns in central and northern Italy make it possible to analyse this particular topic during the 12th and the 13th centuries. They reveal that the improvement of technical tools and operational procedures affected the affirmation of new ‘urban planning’ methods and aesthetic concepts during the more mature period of the Communal Age.

From “Street” to “Piazza”: Urban Politics, Public Ceremony, and the Redefinition ofplateain Communal Italy and Beyond

From “Street” to “Piazza”: Urban Politics, Public Ceremony, and the Redefinition of<i>platea</i>in Communal Italy and Beyond

“Well-Being” before “Welfare society”: Historical Realities and Language

Abstract The notions of “well-being”, on both a personal and social level, as well as that of a “welfare society” are the subject of important deliberation as part of the same economic theory. Even if their definition is tied to specific meanings in the context of more recent economic and social changes, their roots are not foreign to the historical situations that have left strong signs of identity. This paper is divided into two parts: the first, epistemological and the second, with case studies. In the context of an interdisciplinary approach, in fact, it is essential to explain the specificities of the historical and cultural research that is not limited to a mere cataloguing of past situations, but offers the possibility of inferring specific cognitive and pragmatic aspects. The case studies refer to aspects of the “common good” in communal Italy, to the origins of economic thought and the “charitable revolution” tied to late medieval charities. The latter were public enterprises that played a role as social and economic facilitators through the organization and management of large landed properties, the circulation of foodstuffs, the supply of services, the construction of a significant communication activity, with a catalytic role for the diverse forms of solidarity.

Political Portico: Exhibiting Self-Rule in Early Communal Italy

The city-states of the communal period in Italy (ca. 1080–1380) produced the first republican governing bodies in Europe since the fall of the Roman Republic; they also fashioned public squares studded with an unprecedented array of porticoed architecture. Pressured by external and internal forces critical of collective rule, urban nobles and elite citizens sought to legitimize their novel institutions and actualize their participatory ideology. An examination of texts, pictorial works, and architectural form reveals that communes deployed porticoes innovatively to promote radical civic values by showcasing performances of self-governance for public consumption.

English views on Lombard city communes and their conflicts with Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa

English sources of the second half of the twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries, particularly historical works and letter collections, offer interesting coverage of the conflict between Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities and show quite a remarkable knowledge of the political framework of northern Italy. This article examines that evidence, exploring possible pathways through which knowledge of Lombard affairs was acquired and investigating what prompted interest in them. Accordingly, along with the conflict between empire and papacy and the Becket affair, it also points to straightforward curiosity about the distinctive features of Communal Italy, and aslo to negotiations that were undertaken to transfer the kingdom of Italy to the English royal dynasty, which scholarship has largely overlooked. Our enquiry suggests that the successful Lombard defiance of Barbarossa came to be well known outside the borders of the empire, touching upon issues that were not lost on the English audience in the years leading up to Magna Carta.

Notes on Social Control in Communal Italy. Notes, Techniques and Instruments in Siena between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Notes on Social Control in Communal Italy. Notes, Techniques and Instruments in Siena between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Bernardo Tolomei (1272-1348) ou les paradoxes de la fondation de Monte Oliveto

Bernardo Tolomei, the founder of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto where the Olivetan Order took shape during of the 14th century, was not canonized until 2009. This article examines and analyzes the major documents that retrace his life and situate him in the monastic context and social framework of an aristocrat in communal Italy in the mid 14th century. The article also tries to explain why the abbey of Monte Oliveto, and then the Order took so long to construct and impose an image of Bernardo Tolomei as the saintly founder, preferring instead another model for memorializing its origins : lacking an efficient hagiographic strategy, it was Monte Oliveto itself that was the object of sanctification, indeed sacralisation.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The "Pietre di Paragone" and the Preeminence of Medieval Measurements in Communal Italy

In the squares of many Italian cities, unnoticed by most passersby, incisions carved in stone reproduce the dimensions of the measurements that were employed locally until 1861, when the nation endorsed the metric system. By gathering the evidence pertaining to these forms of display, this essay hopes to bring them back into historical consciousness. The story that follows is a rich one, for these carvings—here called piètre di paragone—performed many key functions in medieval society. Besides regularizing trade, they were at the center of a concordance of gazes and bodies, social rituals that contributed to the construction of collective identity, and the political establishment of the Italian communes. An investigation into the nexus between politics and measurements shows how the latter originated in the crumbling of imperial authority at the end of the tenth century. In addition, the political significance of the piètre is underscored by the tremendous attention that local authorities have paid to their preservation. These maneuvers lend weight to the cause of those scholars who challenge the idea of the Middle Ages as a dark, uncivilized era.