{"title":"Italy","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the development of other Italian communes in order to elucidate what city leaders thought they were doing when they moved into the new communal world. Emphasis is given to a range of urban experiences in fifteen or so other cities, grouped regionally—Piemonte; Lombardy and Emilia; Romagna and the Veneto; and Tuscany. The chapter first considers Genoa and Asti, two cities that showed active early consuls, before turning to the communes of Lombardy and Emilia, Romagna and the Veneto, and Tuscany. It shows that the chronological pacing of communal development in Italy follows some recognizable geographical lines, that the degree to which communes were contested varied, and that the earliest documented communes had assemblies before they developed a consular leadership in any organized way. The chapter also explores the roles of families as communal leaders and how the rule of consuls became more institutionalized.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121424956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communes","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This book examines the rise of Italian city communes in the twelfth century. Focusing on the cities of Milan, Pisa, and Rome, it explores real social and political differences in the experiences of the early city communes. It also highlights the role played by the elite of these cities and towns in the development of one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, not realizing that they were creating something altogether new. The communes of twelfth-century Italy were characterized by institutional creativity and were founded on bottom-up collaboration. These were novelties, and their very contradictions make them interesting as well as difficult to explain. The book analyzes such contradictions. This chapter explains why the emergence of communes has such importance for Italian historiography and discusses the historiographical frame for how to study communes in more detail as it has emerged in the last generation.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122657996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sleepwalking into a New World","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691181141.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691181141.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government—the commune—arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. This book takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world. The book provides richly textured portraits of three cities—Milan, Pisa, and Rome—and sets them against a vibrant backcloth of other towns. It argues that, in all but a few cases, the élite of these cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, unaware that they were creating something altogether new. The book makes clear that the Italian city commune was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, but that it was so novel that outsiders did not know what to make of it. It describes how, as the old order unraveled, the communes emerged, governed by consular elites “chosen by the people,” and subject to neither emperor nor king. They regularly fought each other, yet they grew organized and confident enough to ally together to defeat Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor, at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. This book reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123675999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Milan","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the emergence of Milan as one of the communes in Italy. Milan had always been the largest city of the Kingdom of Italy. Because of its large size and growing wealth, the city was the focus for a particularly active and complex urban aristocracy between 1050 and 1150. The chapter first describes the overall development of Milan and its government, first archiepiscopal, then communal, in 1050–1150 before focusing on who its consuls were and how their social composition changed. It also considers some of the families which provided consuls in order to see the sort of people Milan had to deal with in the years after 1138. The chapter shows that Milan was initially dominated by aristocrats, but after the 1130s the consuls who took center stage for the rest of the century were members of the third level of the urban elite.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133527603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pisa","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the development of the city commune in Pisa. Pisa had one of the earliest established communes in all of Italy, with the years around 1110 as the most likely period for its crystallization. Commerce was important in the city by the twelfth century. The chapter first considers the Pisans' civic pride before discussing the political history of the city in the period between around 1060 and 1130, showing that Pisa was run by a collective assembly known as a colloquium. It then discusses the first appearance of Pisa's consuls as real city representatives in 1109, along with the growing centrality of the communal polity. It also describes Pisa's military experiences, the stability of its ruling elite, and some families that played important roles in the affairs of the commune.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"338 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116261007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rome","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691181141.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the development of the city commune in Rome during the period 1050–1150. Rome does not occupy a central place in accounts of early Italian city communes. The city has seemed too “papal,” and the grand narratives of its history in the years 1050–1150 have concentrated on the story-line of papal “reform.” The urban elite that were most prominent in Rome in this century were not at all hostile to this reform. The chapter first provides an overview of the Tuscolano papacy between 1012 and 1044, a period of stable government in Rome, before discussing the city's particularities. In particular, it considers the roles played by families from the aristocracy and from the “medium elite” in city politics. It also explores the differences between aristocrats and other elite in Milan, Pisa, and Rome.","PeriodicalId":231753,"journal":{"name":"Princeton University Press","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123852585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}