Italian Communes Research Articles

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 By Augustine Thompson

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 By Augustine Thompson

Book Review: Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325

Book Review: Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325

Cities of God: the Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 (review)

Reviewed by: Cities of God: the Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 Nick Gordon Thompson, Augustine , Cities of God: the Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, cloth; pp. xii, 502; 61 b/w illustrations; RRP US $65; ISBN 0271024771. In a world where many publishers question the value of lengthy monographs, Cities of God reminds us of their value. Augustine Thompson sets out to reorient the study of the early commune away from the political focus that continues to dominate the field. By doing so, his research is not only valuable for the period it covers but also yields insights and provides contexts for the study of religious beliefs and practices familiar to us from recent late medieval and Renaissance scholarship. Importantly, he does not make the mistake of framing his research in opposition to the 'secular' which allows him to penetrate the dynamic between secular institutions and the religious beliefs and practices of those who participated in them. This is indicative of his focus on the beliefs and practices of the laity, to which end he has divided his study into two parts. The first, 'Sacred Geography', is a detailed investigation of how religious buildings and holy places while usually owned by the church belonged to the communities who appropriated and used them. The second part, 'Religious Observance', analyses how people worshipped as a city, a neighbourhood, a family, and as an individual soul. Both sections demonstrate how the laity defined orthodoxy by common practices and the sacralization of common spaces. Throughout, Thompson navigates a network of pitfalls. He states that 'Bishops, Cathedrals, the clergy and parish organizations ... were the context for the religious world of the citizen' (p. 6) but he neither imposes a rigid separation [End Page 226] nor assumes an exact correlation between the institutions of the Church and lay practices. Rather, in the second third and fourth chapters, he analyses how lay people and secular institutions appropriated religious spaces, such as baptisteries and chapels, and felt them to be the property of the community. This was less about actual proprietorship than the way that the laity felt to have a tangible and day-to-day relationship with divinity, he argues persuasively. He complements his argument with numerous examples of the loyalty of and interaction between the clergy and the communities in which they were born and lived. In Chapter 6, an often 'too sharp a distinction between the "literate" piety of the clergy and the "popular" piety of the laity' (p. 339) comes under attack. Thompson argues that the high level of literacy in an Italian commune gave people access to a greater range of religious texts, which other scholars have assumed to be a bastion of a clerical few despite the proliferation of texts in Latin and vernacular. Cathedrals, texts, clergy and parish organizations were a context of which the laity was a part. Thompson has tried to avoid homogenising the religious experiences and beliefs of the laity by giving numerous examples to show local and regional variations. He is perhaps at his strongest when discussing the local variations of rituals such as Mass in Chapter 6 and holy persons and holy places in Chapter 5. However, the evidence he gives sometimes suggests that the picture he presents may not always be so clear. For instance, when discussing the centrality of the Cathedral to orthodox and communal piety, there is a long list of activities that were forbidden in the vicinity including profaning the Cathedral or its piazza, robbery, littering, climbing the facade unless carrying out repairs, rock fights, prostitution, and gambling (pp.19-20). While these may be an example of how in legal texts 'a society speaks to itself about shared ideals and values' (p. 6), the range of activities proscribed suggests that there were elements of the community whose actions do not fit comfortably with the orthodoxy he presents. Yet it would be an exaggeration to say that each of these crimes implied that their beliefs were unorthodox or that they did not engage in many orthodox practices. This example is indicative of a tendency to look at religious practices and...

Cities of God: the religion of the Italian communes, 1125-1325

This is a book about the religious life of ordinary laypeople in high medieval Italy. As such, it is an excursion into a mostly uncharted world, the lived experience of orthodox religion in the Italian cities. Some readers might find this characterization surprising, even shocking. Nothing could be better known than what it meant to be ‘‘Catholic’’ Christians in the Italy of Saint Francis and Dante. So historians of medieval religion have directed their gaze and research elsewhere. During my first venture into the world of thirteenth-century Italian religion, more than fifteen years ago, I was surprised to discover how little the day-to-day orthodox world had been studied. Older scholarship produced studies of papal politics and scholastic theology, but these treated only an ecclesiastical elite. In his classic study of medieval religious movements, Herbert Grundmann first suggested that high medieval heresy, the mendicants, and women’s mysticism all formed part of a single whole and deserved more attention. Subsequent scholarship focused, almost exclusively, on those three phenomena. A glance at the treatment of medieval religion in the Einaudi handbook of Italian history, itself the work of an eminent scholar, shows an odd religious landscape. Traditional scholarly divisions rule: a section on the Gregorian Reform is followed by sections dedicated to heresy and repression (pp. 609–733), the mendicant orders (pp.734–874), and the Church’s institutional crises of the 1300s (pp. 874–974). Heretics, popes, theologians, Franciscans, and saints. Where is everyone else? Among Grundmann’s areas of interest, heretics were the first to generate a scholarly industry, already vital in the 1960s. The bibliography on heresy in medieval Italy is vast and ever expanding. There is also a growing recognition that heresy cannot be understood apart from the religion it rejected. In spite of their prominence in modern scholarship, heretics represented only a tiny fraction of the medieval Italian population. Since 1980 Grundmann’s interest in thirteenth-century mysticism has been transformed, in great part by the work of Andre’ Vauchez, into a rich and expanded field of study, that of saints and holiness. But again, as in the case of heretics, saints represented only a tiny fraction, albeit an important one, of those living in the medieval Italian cities. New studies on ‘‘popular religion’’ and ‘‘lay piety’’ initially appeared to be very promising. But the religious

:Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325

:Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 (review)

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325. By Augustine Thompson, O.P. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 502.) Augustine Thompson might not dissent from the proposition that the most important thing about this book is its existence. As he remarks, studies of Italian medieval religion have often focused on heresy or on institutional structures, devoting little attention to everyday religious practices that were (mostly) orthodox because the performers hardly considered any other possibility. On the other hand, standard treatments of the Italian communes have often neglected religion. Perhaps scholars in the field have been looking at medieval and Renaissance Italians in the hope of finding the ancestors of their rational, humanistic selves; they may also have been subconsciously afraid of shrinking the all-important gap between medieval Italians and their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe. Certainly that might seem to be one of this book's effects. Not its least valuable aspect is that it is, in large part, a richly documented in-depth description of the Christian faith and practice of one medieval society. How precisely did this differ from urban Christianity elsewhere in Europe? Differences emerge, or are hinted at, from time to time. The northern or central Italian cathedral acquired a distinct identity as the baptismal 'mother church' of the whole diocese that was impossible for the cathedrals of the large dioceses common north of the Alps. At least within the city, baptism created not only the Christian but the citizen; these were Christian communities in their nature. Urban political autonomy in the period under review had its religious effects: the celebration of the civic patron was used as a public demonstration of submission to the authority of the commune. Much more often than not, the cathedral was the locus of this cult, even when (as with St. James at Pistoia or the Volto Santo at Lucca) it was not focussed on the cathedral's titular saint. Bologna's manufactured civic cult of San Petronio was an exception in being located elsewhere. Presumptive higher literacy rates and, perhaps, the especially intimate involvement of the friars in Italian urban life are other areas in which one might perhaps look for an Italian difference. By 1300 both the politics and the religion of the communes were being reshaped under a variety of pressures. The lady who, albeit a practising Cathar, paid for a new roof for Orvieto Cathedral was an anomaly no longer to be tolerated; the Christianity that qualified one for membership in urban society had to stand official scrutiny, and the loosely regulated forms of lay piety that had nurtured and been nurtured by the independent commune progressively underwent the directive influence of the friars as the thirteenth century wore on. …

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 by Augustine Thompson (review)

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 by Augustine Thompson (review)

Marsh at Cravairola: Boundary-Making in the Italo-Swiss Alps

Abstract George Perkins Marsh, United States minister to Italy, renowned as a linguist and a geographer, was a fitting choice to be named arbiter of a disputed Italo-Swiss boundary segment, the alpe of Cravairola, north of Domodossola and west of Locarno, in 1874. Although Cravairola was on the eastern (Swiss) side of the mountain chain, it was owned and used seasonally, for pasturage and timber, by villagers from two Italian communes. Logging and the flotation of timber were devastating the Swiss torrent of the Rovana and the Val Maggia below. This essay reproduces Marsh's authentic text, printed here for the first time from his own manuscript. It also recounts the boundary dispute's history, Marsh's inspection of the area with the two countries' agents, the issues at stake, and the reasons Marsh awarded the territory in question to Italy. Ancient and uncontested claims of jurisdiction over the area by Italian communes in Marsh's view had to take precedence over the best interests of both countries in terms of access, land management and watershed conservation. Subsequent critiques query Marsh's analysis but confirm its importance as a legal precedent in boundary arbitration.

Les relations internationales et la diffusion de la commune dans le Sud de la France du XIIe au XIIIe siècle

From the twelfth to the thirteenth century in Southern France several towns had an almost completely autonomous administration and own officials, just like the Italian Communes. At the same time economically active citizens established close ties with the Italian merchants. Which was the link between these phenomena? This essay tries to give an overview of the studies about the spread of the Commune in Southern France and to propose some perspectives in research.

The Italian communes. Recent work and current trends

The emergence of the commune has always been a central problem for Italian medievalists. Indeed it often has been seen as an interpretative key to the country's subsequent historical development in...

Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260-1350

Abstract: The later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Italy saw a marked new interest in the study of Ciceronian rhetorical theory, in both Latin and vernacular contexts. This reflects the increasing prominence within the civic culture of the Italian communes of practices of oral and adversarial rhetoric which the dominant instrument of rhetorical instruction in this period, the ars dictaminis, was ill-equipped to teach. While the utility of the strategies of argument taught by Roman rhetorical theory was widely recognised in this period, the ethical attitudes implicit in that theory represented a challenge to prevailing Christian constructions of the moral decorum of speech. Classical rhetorical theory may thus be seen to have constituted a destabilising presence within late medieval ethical discourse: a situation which presisted, to some extent, even after the political and cultural changes of the later Trecento had displaced rhetoric in Italy from a primary to a secondary, literary and educational, role.

The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register "Notule Communium" 15 (1348-1349) by Richard Francis Gyug

90BOOK REVIEWS tamina or model letter collections; (2) the ars epistolandi, the art of letterwriting of the Renaissance humanists (fourteenth to seventeentii century); and (3) the related art of ars arengandi or the art of secular oratory for judicial, political, academic, and social purposes, together widi model speech collections or arenge. Compared with the first two categories, the number of manuscripts in the third is relatively small, because this genre of rhetoric was largely limited to the central and northern Italian communes. I particularly wish to acknowledge Professor Polak's wisdom in including Renaissance material in his census of manuscripts. Scholars have come to see that there was no sharp break between medieval and Renaissance letter-writing as was formerly believed and that in the area of official correspondence medieval formulae appear to have persisted down to the end of die fifteendi century. Professor Polak's census will be of special importance in the study ofdie stylistic developments in this latter category ofletter in the early modern period. When completed, these volumes wiU be the indispensable guides to mat which in many areas ofWestern Europe provided the fundamental orientation for the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Even where Cicero's De inventione and the Pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium were taught as well, their lessons were used selectively according to the needs of the medieval arts. Professor Polak's census in its finished form will document almost twenty-five hundred manuscripts written from die twelfth to the seventeen century in an area running from England to the present-day Czech Republic. This volume and its two companions will be of lasting benefit to medieval and Renaissance scholarship. Ronald G. Witt Duke University The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register "Notule Communium" 15 (1348—1349). By Richard Francis Gyug. [Subsidia Mediaevalia , 22.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 1994. Pp. x, 526. $94.50.) Studies that bring medieval documents to the scholarly public are always welcome, and diis calendar of documents from the exceptionally rich Barcelona diocesan archives, second in the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies ' series of the episcopal communia or general registers, records the activities of the diocesan curia during the worst of the Black Death. Although many scholars of church history may not realize it, Barcelona's diocesan archives provide a truly amazing array of documents, many in series which continued uninterrupted for centuries. If diese could be made generally available for study, scholars, especiaUy social historians, could learn a great deal BOOK REVIEWS91 about diocesan life and administration, and diis knowledge would enhance our understanding of the medieval church in general. Unfortunately, very few documents have been published, and much of the secondary literature is not readily available in North America. The fact that eleven years have elapsed since die first volume of this series of registers appeared gives a clue about likelihood ofa flood of these archival records in print. Nonetheless, even tastes from this important archive provide welcome additions for study. The book is divided into three sections. The introduction contains a brief history of the Diocese of Barcelona, with special attention given to die functioning of the episcopal curia. Dr. Gyug explains die registration ofdocuments and their survival up to the present time. This particular set of registers primarily records the filling of benefices, and the curia was especially active in this area as a result of the Black Death, which hit Barcelona as it did much of die rest of Western Europe, causing die deadi of perhaps one-diird of its population. Clerics were certainly not immune to its force, and many of them died, leaving an increased workload for the diocesan staff, which may itself have been reduced for die same reason. Documents relating to benefices are not the only type of document to appear, and the otiier types are simUar to those published by Professor J. N. HiUgardi and GiuUo SUano in Communia 14. Many ofthese documents would normally have been registered in coUation registers, but diese two series were conflated during the plague and for several years following it. Part One contains the calendar of documents, where Dr. Gyug summarizes the contents of each entry. Most...

The Road from Athens

The Road from Athens Clifford Orwin (bio) Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 edited by John Dunn. Cambridge University Press, 1992. 290 pp. This collection of essays commemorates the 2500th anniversary of Kleisthenes' democratic reforms at Athens. The typical chapter surveys the career of democracy in this or that period or region. The authors write in the brisk style appropriate to those who must cover much ground in few words. Mindful of the needs of the general reader, they try to provide all essential facts as well as an interpretation of them. The challenge is to avoid foundering under the sheer weight of data. (The prize in this regard belongs to Charles S. Maier for his "Democracy Since the French Revolution," an elegant sweep through 20 tumultuous decades.) In addition to treatments of past epochs, the book offers compelling analyses by Neil Harding of "The Marxist-Leninist Detour," by Neal Ascherson of its East European aftermath, and by Sunil Khilnani of democracy in India. Each of the essays calls out to be treated on its own terms: sadly, no reviewer is likely to command either the space or the competence to do justice to all of them. Of three chapters on Greek democracy, the most challenging is that of Cynthia Farrar, "Ancient Greek Political Theory as a Response to Democracy." Tracing the whole course of "political theory" from the tragedians onward, she offers an implicit defense of democracy against its ancient critics, notably Plato and Aristotle. Her rich argument, which defies brief summary, powerfully conveys the uniquely engaging and exhilarating character of Greek democracy, and offers a lucid account of the distinctiveness of the political. Yet she never rebuts the insight [End Page 140] that while this democracy claimed to achieve the good of all, it in fact resembled all other regimes in entrenching the rule of some over others. She emphasizes that Athenian democracy purported to reconcile the good of the city as a whole with the whole good of each citizen, a proud and ambitious claim exposed to many difficulties. The question is whether Plato and Aristotle's critiques of democracy did not arise from more profound reflection on these difficulties than any offered by democracy's advocates. There is also the question of whether Plato and Aristotle, whatever their reservations about democracy, were as opposed to it in practice as Farrar takes them to have been. She follows most scholars in overlooking the conscious utopianism or irony of their alleged solutions to the political problem ("solutions" that she perceptively describes as demanding the abolition of politics). Because she ignores the philosophers' indications that this is neither possible nor desirable, she pays less attention than she might have to their analyses of actual political life (including actual democracy). She fails to convey their Churchillian acceptance of moderate democracy as the worst practical alternative save for all the others. She is almost silent about Aristotle's advocacy of "polity," a version of majority rule that he presents as the best generally practicable regime. Lastly, while she rightly stresses the skepticism of these philosophers concerning the claims of democracy to define the best regime, she fails to note that they recognized it to be the regime most tolerant of philosophy itself. If, however, there is much in Farrar's chapter that I find contestable, it deserves praise (and, even better, study) for its provocative treatments of a wide range of thinkers, its subtle defense of ancient democracy, and its sophisticated reflections on the gap which separates that regime from its modern counterpart. The early modern period is treated by Quentin Skinner ("The Italian City Republics") and David Wootton ("The Levellers"), who pave the way for Gordon Wood and Bianca Maria Fontana on the American and French revolutions, respectively. Skinner argues that the greatest contribution of the Italian communes was to the dissemination of a lofty notion of the ends of communal life. He fails to note that the semblance of a return to Roman models held a highly specific appeal for men emerging from the Middle Ages—that of the bracing this-worldliness of pagan Rome. By the same token, Skinner abstracts from what is most significant...

Town and country: economy and institutions in late medieval Italy

W Krrhile relations between town and country have been a central theme of W Italian historiography since the mid sixteenth century,2 their social and economic features have been studied in their own right only from the i89os. Since then, two main lines of interpretation have emerged.3 Initially, historians of the 'economico-juridical' school4 put forward the view that the expansion of the north-central Italian communes between the mid twelfth century and the thirteenth transformed town-country relations. Communes subordinated the rural hinterland (contado) to their economic and jurisdictional authority in the interests of the urban population and of the commercial bourgeoisie; the passage of powers from feudal to urban lordship meant for the peasantry a sharp loss of judicial and economic freedoms. While this view has since been considerably extended and refined,5 it is generally accepted that the city states of central and northern Italy did exploit the countryside through inequitable rates of taxation, regulations restricting most trade and industry to the ruling town, compulsory labour services, and (increasingly during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) judicial support for citizens' claims over their rural tenants.6 This view was challenged by Fiumi, who on the basis of thirteenthand early fourteenth-century Florentine evidence, argued that communal rule was of major benefit to the countryside.7 While Fiumi's defence of economic

Honneur de noble, renommée de puissant : la définition des magnats italiens (1280-1400)

The Honor of the Noble, the Fame of the Mighty. - The Definition of the Italian Magnates (1280-1400). In Northern Italy and especially in Florence, during the last decades of the XIIIth century, some families among the urban nobility were distinguished from the others. They constituted a particular juridical and politcal group, the « magnates ». In order to designate them and apply to them specific law procedures, Italian communes widely used the notion of « fama publica » ; an ambiguous notion, however, since in the case of the magnates it referred at the same time to their violent conduct and disturbance of the peace, as well as to their honour or other highly praised aristocratic values. Their subsequent reintegration into the political body during the late XlVth century could still be referred to their reputation — that of peaceful conduct and merchant hono- rability. Moreover, magnates reentering the class of the common people quite cleverly insinuated that their history during the past century had always been one of constant loyalty and knightly service to the Commune.

Genovesi d'Oriente (review)

172 Reviews volume will undoubtedly become the standard discussion of its subject if only because of mass of material carefully and accurately sifted and ananged from numerous charters, diplomas, cartularies, notarial and inquisitional registers, famtiy archives and other documents of the time. John O. Ward Department of History University of Sydney Pistarino, Geo, Genovesi d'Oriente (Civico Istituto Colombiano: Studi e testi, serie storica, No. 14), Genoa, Civico Istituto Colombiano, 1990; paper; pp. 526; 13 plates; R.R.P. ? This is the second in the series of reprints of Geo Pistarino's incredible number of papers on the history of medieval Genoa and the Mediterranean world. Recently retired as director of the Istituto di Medievistica della Universitd di Genova, Pistarino was persuaded by his many students to re-issue some of his more important papers in 'collected studies' form. This volume follows I Gin dell'Oltremare (reviewed in Parergon, n.s. 8 (1990), p. 184). As in the previous volume, Pistarino has taken the opportunity to not only reprint his work of many years but also to update it and to combine various pieces into new forms. This is not a lazy scholar's capitalization on a vast reputation but a genuine new addition to scholarship. Thus chapter one, 'Miraggio di Tenasanta' is fundamentally the article 'Genoa and the Near East in the era of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem' [in Italian] contributed to The Italian communes in the Crusader Kingdom ofJerusalem (Genoa, 1986) but it has been updated and redrafted. Chapter two, 'Dal declino nel Mare di Levantetiacristiani ed islamici alia conquista del Mar Nero' is a revised version of 'From Genoa to Outremer in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries' [in Italian], originally published in Studi in memoria di Mario Abrate (Turin, 1986), but again revised. Chapter three 'Da Genova alia Cina nel tempo del Gran Khan' embodies new work although it is based on the study 'From Genoa to China in the fourteenth century' [in Italian] in Studi Balcanici (Rome, 1989). But here an eleven-page article has become one of 99 pages. For scholars interested in European travels in Asia in the Middle Ages, this expanded study is invaluable. Chapter four, 'Duecentocinquanf anni dei Genovesi a Chio' is an amalgamation of four studies: 'In Genoese "Romania" between Greeks and Turks' [in Italian] originally published in Rivista Storica Italiana 73 (1961); 'Between Genoa and Chios in past and present' [in Italian] in Liguria 55, no. 12 (1984); 'Between land and sea in the Aegean: the island of Chios' [in Italian] in Columbus 92, V, n. 1 (34) (Genoa, 1989); and 'The Genoese in the island of the Venti' [in Italian] in Columbus 92, VI, n. 11 (51) (Genoa, 1990). Reviews 173 Chapterfive,'La caduta di Costantinopoli: da Pera genovese a Galata turca' is a re-defined study of 101 pages based on three earlier studies. Chapter six, 'I Gattilusio di Lesbo e d'Enos, signore neti'Egeo' is an expanded version of 'The Genoese in the Levant between the decline of Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire' [in Italian] published in Aspetti della vita economica medievale. Atti del Convegno di studi nel x anniversario della morte di Federigo Melis GTlorence 1985). Chapter seven, 'Maona e mercanti genovesi a Cipro' is a revised version of 'Genoese documentary sources for the medieval history of Cyprus' [in Italian] in the Second international congress of Cypriot studies, Nicosia, 20-25 April 1982 (Genoa, 1986). Thefinalchapter, 'La caduta di Caffa: diaspora in Oriente' is a new study prepared for the TV Symposium international, Nessebre, may 1988. This bare recitation of what is contained in this volume, which is all that space will allow, hardly does justice to it. Pistarino is a master of the extraordinarily voluminous Genoese archives. His expertise is unrivalled. The present volume constitutes a valuable new addition not only to the history of the Genoese abroad in the medieval Meditenanean but also to the broader spectrum of late medieval Meditenanean history. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Piatt, Colin, The architecture of medieval Britain: a social history, photographs by Anthony Kersting, N e w Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. x, 325; 375 colour and monochrome...

Reply to Paul Grendler

With regard to Paul Grendler's points about the curriculum, it may be replied that the impact of Ciceronianism in fifteenth-century Italian education was mainly felt at the post-grammatical level of Latin teaching, i.e., in the study of rhetoric and moral philosophy. There was of course a great difference between medieval dictamen and Ciceronian rhetoric, based on classical rhetorical treatises and modelled on Cicero's speeches and letters, but this new material was usually encountered after the completion of normal secondary education which ended with grammar. In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, rhetoric and moral philosophy were normally tertiary, i.e., post-school, subjects, and as such the usual place for their study was in universities, equivalent centers of higher education, or the advanced, post-grammatical classes of humanist teachers. Grendler's discussion of the broadening of the Renaissance Latin curriculum after the study of grammar (Schooling, 235-71) corresponds to the further teaching of Latin prose authors in the Middle Ages. A number of classical Latin prose authors had a powerful commentary tradition in the Middle Ages, and this can be related to post-grammatical teaching just as much then as in the Renaissance. With regard to Grendler's point about the predominance of free education in the Italian communes, it is true that Grendler's actual formulation of this trend is cautiously worded; but the evidence that he cites, together with the material in Manacorda, vol. I, 174-75, with the material in Peter Denley's Governments and Schools in Late Medieval (in City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Essays Presented to Philip Jones, ed. T. Dean and C. Wickham, London, 1990, 104-5), and with my own still unpublished archival research on Tuscan schools in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, suggests that free grammar education was becoming the norm in Italy by the end of the fifteenth century. In fact free education was established regularly in San Gimignano after 1435, in Colle di Val d'Elsa after 1445, in Arezzo after 1456, in Prato after 1464 and in Pistoia after 1466. The interesting point in all thisunderemphasized by Grendler-is that the free schooling introduced by the Counter Reformation had been largely anticipated by the communal schools of Italy by the turn of the sixteenth century. In reply to Grendler's doubts about the Italian diffusion of Doctrinale and Catholicon in the fifteenth century, manuscript survival and contemporary book inventories suggest a widespread use of these texts, especially Doctrinale. For Catholicon, see Manacorda, II, 237, 253; Bursill-Hall, Census, 55, 78, 136, 140 (3 copies), 142, 166, 208, 252 (2 copies), 255 (2 copies), 257 (3 copies), 264; A. Marigo, I codici manoscritti delle Derivationes di Uguccione Pisano: saggio

Regulation of the urban environment by the Italian Communes from the twelfth to the fourteenth century

Regulation of the urban environment by the Italian Communes from the twelfth to the fourteenth century

Local Autonomy, Accountability and a New Local Tax: the Italian debate

The purpose of this paper is to debate the main proposals for giving back to the Italian communes greater fiscal autonomy. First, the present system of local finance is briefly described. Then, the proposals to assign to the local governments a property tax and a communal services tax (TASCO) are discussed on the basis of the two principles (accountability and benefit principle) associated with the widening of local fiscal autonomy.

Justice, Authority and the Creation of theAncien Rgimein Italy

IN the fifteenth and particularly in the sixteenth century one obvious casualty of historical development was the corporate state, embodied in the city states and communes of medieval Italy. Whether conquered by powerful foreign powers, or succumbing to the attractions of a locally-basedsignore, with the notable, and frequently-lauded, exception of Venice, whose proudest boast remained that her affairs were governed with laws, all the Italian communes had collapsed by the beginning of the seventeenth century and the norm of political organisation had become the highly centralised, absolutist monarchy, typified by the Church State, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Duchy of Savoy.