Concluding Note

This chapter summarizes all the main points and issues addressed in previous chapters (both in Part I and in Part II), with the aim of highlighting the common thread that runs through the entire work. The result is a new reading of the state-building process at the end of the Middle Ages. The limitations of attempts by governors to present the political principles that inspired their acts as shared and universally recognized are revealed by a historical analysis firmly intent on investigating the existence, in particular territorial or social ambits, of other political cultures which based obedience to authority on different, and frequently original, ideals.