Italian Communes Research Articles

Od domus civium do pałacu komunalnego. Średniowieczne początki siedziby władz miejskich

From domus civium to a communal palace. The medieval beginnings of the seat of municipal authorities(Summary) The article discusses the development of the permanent seat of municipal authorities in western Medieval towns – the most impressive secular public building, the symbol and ‘logo’ of a medieval town (known as a commune). The main subject of analysis is the terminology used to describe various communities of citizens, places for their gatherings and the seat of the municipal authorities, used in source materials, from the oldest mention of communes until the 13th century. The birth of the communes, and development of the language to describe them, are presented against the backdrop of the great social and political processes taking place at the turn of the first and second millennium, in “post-Carolingian Europe”, although initially they were only perceptible in Latin. The common basis for educating Medieval clerks (notaries and town writers) – also in terms of language and law – resulted in a barely differentiable and quickly stabilized Latin terminology for describing the seat of the commune (domus civium, domus civitatis, praetorium). The differentiation is more noticeable in the vernacular languages, especially with reference to words describing the place where citizens held gatherings and the place of work of the first municipal authorities, which enables a fuller perception of the relationship between the place where power was exercised and the political evolution of the commune – the degree of its independence, the system of authority, aspirations to political sovereignty and, lastly, the ideology and communal identity. This terminology reflects the processes and circumstances in which the communes were born and developed, the role, on the one hand, of the bishop, his seat and the cathedral, and on the other, the stormy development of the economy, in particular trade and the establishment of guilds (merchants’ chambers). What is particularly noticeable is the term used by the Italian communes transforming into city-states in the 12th/13th century – palatium (palazzo) – which in Roman law was reserved for the seat of the Emperor, and in the early Medieval period was also used by royalty, and then, in the period in which Italian bishops were losing their powers in Italian towns, appropriated by them to describe the residences which were being extended. The general term for the place where municipal powers were being exercised, consolidated in the 13th/14th century in vernacular languages, has remained little changed down to this day in most regions of the researched area. The article concludes with deliberations on the function of the late Medieval seat of the municipal authorities, provided with a strong tower and which housed the constantly increasing archives, as a place of credibility (locus credibilis), memories and space for social communication.

Francis of Assisi: A New Biography by Augustine Thompson, O.P. (review)

Reviewed by: Francis of Assisi: A New Biography by Augustine Thompson, O.P. Michael Robson Francis of Assisi: A New Biography. By Augustine Thompson, O.P. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2012. Pp. x, 299. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-8014-5070-9.) In the last quarter of a century friars have been very conspicuous in the literature regarding their canonized founder and the movement that he has inspired. In an earlier age the study of the saint and the Order were illuminated by the erudition of a group of eminent Catholic scholars and others drawn from diverse Christian communities. This biography is the work of an accomplished medievalist and a Dominican: Augustine Thompson, O.P., the [End Page 122] author of Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park, PA, 2005). Thompson brings to his examination of the Franciscan sources, medieval and modern, a welcome freshness that encourages him to challenge some of the hagiographical assumptions about the saint of Assisi. The deaths of Cardinal John of St. Paul and Pope Innocent III left St. Francis virtually bereft of friendship and influence in the corridors of the papal court at a critical juncture in the development of the fraternity (p. 50); this situation undoubtedly lay behind the insistence of Cardinal Ugolino di Conti (later Pope Gregory IX) that Francis should not continue his journey to France; instead, Francis was advised to leave Florence for Umbria, where he would be better placed to answer critics of the growing fraternity. Thompson is undoubtedly correct in dismissing some biographical material that has been taken too literally by some scholars, and so, for instance, doubt is cast on whether Francis embarrassed Ugolino by bringing alms to his table (pp. 77, 240–41). The Franciscans’ sensitivity to questions concerning the institutionalization of the Order is dubbed as a sequel to original sin (p. 236). Similarly, Francis’s prophecy about the attack of Damietta in 1219 is given a balanced interpretation rather than being regarded as pacifism (p. 232). The first part of this volume covers no more than 143 pages, and the second is devoted to sources and debates. It has no footnotes. Its endnotes are frequently extensive with an account of the various positions in question; they provide the reader with a useful guide to the sources, despite the author’s frequent recourse to the personal pronoun I. Some of this material might profitably been transferred to the first part of the book where there was sufficient space for a fuller account. The suggestion that Francis may have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder on his release from prison would have embellished the treatment of this question in the first chapter (e.g., p. 177). Thompson states that, had Raoul Manselli lived for a further decade, this book would probably not have been written (p. 160). The decision to make use of extended endnotes creates some difficulties, because such a format can give rise to claims that call for qualification. For instance, Thompson associates himself with the view of Manselli that “academic study among the Franciscans became common only in the 1230s, after the conversion of Alexander of Hales” (p. 263). While there were undoubtedly many more theologians in the Order after 1236, the establishment of the network of Franciscan schools goes back to the 1220s with the minister general and provincial playing a leading role. The friars’ seriousness about the theological foundation for their ministry is glimpsed in the engagement of Master Robert Grosseteste to teach the friars at Oxford from 1229/30. This volume identifies areas in which some Franciscan scholars have displayed discomfort, such as the institutionalization of the Order. Its endnotes on Franciscan sources, medieval and modern, will be of assistance to students of the saint and his followers. Despite the author’s voluminous research, his account of why this is a New Biography, as his subtitle indicates (p. vii), is not persuasive. [End Page 123] Michael Robson St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Il comune di popolo e le sue istituzioni tra Due e Trecento. Alcune riflessioni a partire dalla storiografia dell’ultimo quindicennio

In recent years, the period between ca. 1280 and 1330 has attracted a growing interest among scholars who study Italian communes. As regards in particular the greatest popular communes, a specific attention to institutional dynamics has allowed to develop a complex model to explain the transformations of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. However, there remain some difficulties in understanding fully the nature of the political conflicts that marked that phase. Popolani and magnati, guelphs and ghibellines, popolo grasso and popolo minuto, bianchi and neri: urban communities were traversed by multiple and overlapping lines of fracture, in a process of decomposition and recomposition of political identities in which horizontal “class” solidarities, family solidarities, conflicts of interest, clientelist logics and ideological claims acted simultaneously. The article puts forward the idea that a better understanding of these conflicts, of their protagonists – groups, families, individuals – and their political and discursive strategies would improve our ability to read the institutional evolution of the popular communes between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries.

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (review)

Reviewed by: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean Sam Zeno Conedera David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (New York: Oxford University Press 2011) xxxi + 813 pp., ill. David Abulafia’s latest book has earned every one of the laudatory quotes on the dust jacket. The Great Sea is narrative history on steroids, a magnum opus that is sure to influence the way that scholars think about Mediterranean history for many years to come. The Great Sea is, as its subtitle indicates, a human history of the Mediterranean, meaning that it covers the entire period of human inhabitation. The book is meant to be a history of the sea rather than of the lands around it, of the people who crossed the sea and lived close by its shores in ports and on islands (xvii). Even with this limitation, Abulafia has a vast chronological and geographical span to cover. He breaks it down into five distinctive periods: First Mediterranean, 22000 bc–1000 bc; Second Mediterranean, 1000 bc–ad 600; Third Mediterranean, 600–1350; Fourth Mediterranean, 1350–1830; Fifth Mediterranean, 1830–2010. The first begins with the earliest human settlements and ends with the great migrations and cataclysms of 1200–1000 bc. The second witnesses the unification of the Great Sea under successive maritime empires and ends with the fragmentation of Roman power and the arrival of Islam. The third begins with Muslim and Jewish domination of the southern shores, witnesses the rise of the Italian communes, and ends with the Black Death. The fourth experiences the emergence of new Christian powers, like the Catalans, who are ultimately eclipsed by the Ottoman juggernaut. The overall fortunes of the Mediterranean change in this period, as the Atlantic assumes a more important role in the world, and the Great Sea becomes dominated for the first time by powers of Northern Europe. The distinct features of the fifth Mediterranean, which is still in progress, include the historical discovery of the earliest Mediterranean worlds, a hardening of previously more fluid ethnic and cultural differences, and the threat of environmental disaster. What characteristics define these distinct Mediterraneans? Abulafia sees long and slow processes of integration at work in each period, which eventually fall apart. Thus there is a broadly cyclical rise and fall, if not of empires, then at least of large-scale Mediterranean systems. Scholars will surely challenge the effort to encompass all of Mediterranean history into a conceptual and chronological schema, along with some of Abulafia’s other claims and priorities. One of his major targets is Braudel’s view that all change is slow and that man is imprisoned in a destiny in which he has little hand. The Great Sea, by contrast, emphasizes change over time and human agency (xxvi). Abulafia does not shy away from historical controversy. Regarding the cataclysms around 1200 bc and the mysterious Sea Peoples, for example, he says that the eastern Mediterranean was being plagued by fluid and unstable alliances of pirates and mercenaries, who were able occasionally to form large enough navies and armies to pillage population centers, including Troy (52). Yet Abulafia remains within the bounds of the evidence and does not pretend to have clear answers when the matter is truly murky. He also has ideological targets. With respect to “orientalism” in the nineteenth century, Abulafia says that it was not the expression of Western cultural imperialism. The masters of the eastern Mediterranean actively sought contact with the West, and saw themselves as members of a community of monarchs that embraced both the Mediterranean and Europe (545). Both Abulafia’s methodology [End Page 151] as well as his particular claims will be the subject of debate in the coming years. One of the great challenges of writing such a book is choosing what to include and what to leave out. The Great Sea offers good balance. Each period receives roughly proportionate treatment; Abulafia does not, for example, reduce the second Mediterranean to the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. His erudition is on display throughout in his command of archaeological evidence, narrative sources, and secondary work in many languages. He is also blessed with the gift of storytelling, such...

«Omnes simul aut quot plures habere potero». Rappresentazioni delle collettività e decisioni a maggioranza nei comuni italiani del XII secolo

Since the very first evidences of the consular colleges and the restricted consilia , the political life of Italian communes represents an interesting laboratory of experimentations of deliberative practices. The essay investigates forms and protagonists of decision-making processes, focused on the majority principle affirmation and on its ambits and reasons of practical application up to the coming of the potestas government. The works – old but still fundamental – made about this theme by Edoardo Ruffini are a necessary point of departure: in the first part of this paper the author shows their most important contents, especially the historical relativity of the majority principle, that «doesn't have in itself its reason of being; it can get or not, only depending on where and how it is applied». The examples given by 12th century documents and narrative sources confirm, indeed clarify the practical value of this «legal formula», fathoming the political culture and the institutional mechanism of communal bodies during consular period.

Urban Religious Life in the Italian Communes: The State of the Field

The independent citizen-governed civic communes of medieval Italy have long been a popular focus of scholarship. However, that scholarship has tended to focus either upon the political or the religious history of the cities. A new wave of work has insisted that historians consider the birth and development of these cities from the late eleventh through the fourteenth centuries as both a political and religious phenomenon. These works have encouraged historians to see the institutional history of religion and everyday religious observance as integral aspects of the ongoing articulation of communal identity. Moreover, recent work focusing on lay religious life in the communes has identified promising new paths for historians interested in the connection and dependence of political and religious issues in the communes.

Notstandsgewalten und politische Repression im Florenz der Renaissance

Governmental practice in late medieval and early modern cities has often been described by historians as “consensus politics”, i.e. as a system based on a broad consensus created by real or alleged possibilities of political participation offered to citizens. This essay proposes a different view by inquiring into the administration of criminal justice and the maintenance of public order in Renaissance Florence. Based on sources from the Archivio di Stato of Florence, it contends that, rather than on consent, rule in the pre-modern city was based on an extensive use of emergency powers which were conferred to the judiciary in order to suppress political dissent. For this purpose important measures for the protection of the rule of law which already existed in medieval common and statutory law were waived. Emergency powers had been used in the Italian communes since their origins in times of political unrest, but they were generally revoked once public order had been restored. When, from the 1380s onwards, an unprecedented centralization of political power took place in the Republic of Florence and the exercise of government became the prerogative of oligarchic elites, a permanent state of emergency was implemented to control the citizenry. Arguing that emergency powers, as we know them today, originated in the late Middle Ages and that they played an essential role in the constitution of the modern state, this article also suggests important links to the current discussion on the state of emergency since the terror attacks of September 2001.

As fontes do espaço político: técnicas eleitorais e práticas deliberativas nas cidades Italianas (séculos XII - XIV)

Para quem pesquisa, nas práticas usuais da Idade Média, os vestígios de um espaço de mediação política, o mundo das comunas italianas dos séculos XII-XIV oferece um laboratório privilegiado de observação. O desenvolvimento de instituições representativas (conselhos "legislativos" e colégios "executivos") se caracterizou pela utilização de técnicas de seleção de pessoal dirigente destinadas a evitar o monopólio de algumas famílias e a garantir a rotatividade das atribuições no seio das classes dirigentes. O presente artigo examina as fontes, notadamente estatutárias, que definem as modalidades de representação dos cidadãos chamados a governar ou a tomar decisões. Ele retoma a cronologia de instauração do princípio de representação que se impõe sobre o de unanimidade. Examinando igualmente os processos eleitorais, ele busca precisar o que os contemporâneos desejavam valorizar por meio da seleção eleitoral dos governantes. Uma atenção particular é dada às questões materiais dos votos e dos escrutínios (segredo das eleições, instalação de graus eleitorais, etc.).

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes by Carol Lansing (review)

REVIEWS 267 name. Chapter 6, one of Hyde’s strongest, showcases her skills as an art historian. Having already milked Sauli’s account books for all they are worth in the preceding chapters, she now turns her analysis to portraits of the cardinal which she reads as forms of propaganda which can say much about the sitter’s selfimage , or rather the image he wished to convey. She examines the two surviving free-standing portraits of Cardinal Sauli, Sebastiano del Piombo’s Cardinal Bendinello Sauli and three companions (1516) and Raphael’s Portrait of a Cardinal (1511) in order to gain insight into Sauli’s public persona at the beginning and at the peak of his cardinalate. She concludes that the unique nature of the Washington painting, as group portrait of Sauli with members of his household, demonstrates Sauli’s sense of prestige and pride in his position as well as his taste for innovation. Part III is by far the most interesting section of the book and deals directly with the plot to kill Leo X. Hyde’s thorough analysis incorporates all known documentation about and around the conspiracy. She also considers other commentators’ arguments both for and against the existence of the plot and tries to be as conclusive and objective as possible despite the rather limited and contradictory testimonies. She provides the most thorough, most unbiased account of the conspiracy that exists to this day; however, the specificity of the argument and the vagueness, which is exacerbated by the lack of surviving documentation, may limit this book’s appeal to a broader audience. Although Hyde posits her work as essential reading for students and scholars of the High Renaissance, the greater part of the book, such as the minute examination of the administration of Sauli’s finances, would be of little interest to anyone who was not directly concerned with the cardinal himself. As Hyde herself points out, it is impossible to say whether Sauli was a typical renaissance cardinal, and thus his lifestyle cannot necessarily be considered a prototype which gives us much information regarding renaissance cardinals in general . Hyde’s book does provide readers, on the other hand, with a better understanding of political interworkings of the cardinalate. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the insight it provides regarding the power dynamic between popes and cardinals: “Although cardinals were men revered within Rome for their patronal largesse and influence, they were, essentially, pawns on the papal chessboard and utterly dependent on papal goodwill” (175). Hyde’s examination of the life and career of Sauli and his family offers new perspectives on this controversial cardinal as well as engaging reflections on the patronal links which bound pope, cardinals and their courtiers so closely together. HEATHER SOTTONG, Italian, UCLA Carol Lansing, Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2008) xi + 244 pp., ill. Carol Lansing’s Passion and Order uses Italian laws regarding grieving and lamentation as an entry point for understanding the relationship among gender, emotion, and state formation in thirteenth-century Italy. Lansing supports her analysis using theological, philosophical, visual, and literary sources from antiquity , early Church Fathers, and contemporary thirteenth-century Italian society . She shows that, during this period in Italy, authorities constructed laws REVIEWS 268 banning histrionic and exuberant displays of grief. Although authorities clearly associated loud and emotional grieving with females, Lansing shows the bans exclusively fined males for breaking the accepted code of behavior. These laws and their greater cultural significance offer a way to explore ideas of emotionality and gender in civil society. In order to make this multi-faceted central argument, Lansing structures Passion and Order unconventionally. Lansing traces a shift in public grieving between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the twelfth century, public funerals were loud and emotional. Men, especially elites and members of the military, expected their male peers to make excessive displays of emotion to show loyalty and respect at funerals for family members. This changed drastically during the thirteenth century, when it became unacceptable for men to show emotion at funerals. Funerals became a more ornate show of wealth and men showed...

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.

La citoyenneté en Italie au Moyen Âge

The issue of citizenship regains all its intensity with the formation of the Italian Communes at the end of the 11th Century and the beginning of the 12th Century. This does not mean that the term civis was unknown in Italian towns in the South of the Peninsula, but they were never able to liberate themselves from the hold of the Norman, Suevian or Angevin – and later Aragonian – royal power. In those towns that claimed the status of City States after the Peace of Constance, the citizen was someone who had lived in the town for some time (5 to 10 years) as an owner or tenant, paid tax there and performed military service, on horseback or on foot, depending on his wealth. Recognized as a citizen after swearing an oath, he could participate in the popular assembly, which was responsible for the election of magistrates and for major political decisions. As of the 14th Century, with the creation of principalities, proceedings changed and lawyers were then careful to define the social status of those who resided within the walls as the subjects of the Prince.

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes

:Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes.(Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past.)

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Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (review)

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (review)

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes. (Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past). Carol Lansing

<i>Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes. (Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past)</i>. Carol Lansing

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

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

Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005

Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325, by Augustine Thompson, O.P.

<i>Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325</i>, by Augustine Thompson, O.P.

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. Augustine Thompson

<i>Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325</i>. Augustine Thompson