Culture - of - Violence in Italy

Villa Le Balze Studies
Villa Le Balze Studies

Editorial Board
Fabrizio Ricciardelli (Georgetown University), Chairman
Stefano U. Baldassarri (The International Studies Institute at Palazzo Rucellai)
Alison Brown (University of London, Royal Holloway)
Humfrey C. Butters (University of Warwick)
Christopher S. Celenza (American Academy in Rome)
Samuel K. Cohn Jr. (University of Glasgow)
Matteo Duni (Syracuse University)
Marcello Fantoni (Kent State University)
Franco Franceschi (Universit di Siena)
Stefano Lorenzetti (Conservatorio di Musica di Vicenza)
David Marsh (Rutgers University)
Giuseppe Mazzotta (Yale University)
Massimo Miglio (Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo)
Luca Mol (European University Institute)
Josiah Osgood (Georgetown University)
Giuseppe Palmero (Universit de Aix-en-Provence)
Alessandro Polcri (Fordham University)
David Rundle (University of Oxford)
Enrico Spagnesi (Universit di Pisa)
Daniel Smail (Harvard University)
Ilaria Taddei (Universit de Grenoble II)
Andrea Zorzi (Universit di Firenze)
THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

IN RENAISSANCE ITALY
Proceedings of the International Conference
Georgetown University at Villa Le Balze, 3-4 May, 2010
Georgetown University
edited by
SAMUEL KLINE COHN JR. and FABRIZIO RICCIARDELLI
Le Lettere
In copertina: G. Sercambi, Come si fenno alquanti chavalieri e corsensi

paili e batteosi moneta, et per pi vituperio sapicoron acini, in
Le croniche, vol. I, CLVI, Salvatore Bongi (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti,
1892), p. 122. A.S.L. bibl. Mss. 107 c. 61 r.
Fotografia di Lucio Ghilardi.
Il convegno stato patrocinato da:
Copyright 2012 by Casa Editrice Le Lettere Firenze

ISBN 978 88 6087 569 3
www.lelettere.it
CONTENTS
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p.
Preface by Josiah Osgood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
Introduction by Samuel Kline Cohn Jr. and Fabrizio

Ricciardelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
PART ONE: VIOLENCE AS A FORM OF POLITICAL RESOLUTION

Andrea Zorzi, Legitimation and Legal Sanction of
Vendetta in Italian Cities from the Twelfth to the
Fourteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
Fabrizio Ricciardelli, Violence and Repression in

Late Medieval Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
Ilaria Taddei, Recalling the Affront: Rituals of War in

Italy in the Age of the Communes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., Repression of Popular Revolt in

Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy . . . . . . . . .
99
PART TWO: VIOLENCE AND REVOLTS

Francesco Benigno, Reconsidering Popular Violence:
Changes of Perspective in the Analysis of Early
Modern Revolts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
123
CONTENTS
Fabrizio Titone, Presentation and Practice of Violence

in Late Medieval Sicily in Piazza, Polizzi and
Randazzo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 145
Patrick Lantschner, The Nourisher of Seditions:

Insurgent Coalitions and the Political Volatility of
Late Medieval Bologna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
167
Christopher Carlsmith, Cacci fuori un bastone bianco:

Conflicts Between the Ancarano College and the
Episcopal Seminary in Bologna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
PART THREE: VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Paolo Grillo, The Long Life of the Popolo of Milan.
Revolts against the Visconti in the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
221
Alizah Holstein, Nourished on the Milk of Eloquence:

Knowledge as Social Contest in Mid-Trecento Rome .
237
Christine Shaw, Popular Resistance to Military

Occupation During the Italian Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
257
John Easton Law, Signorial Citadels in Late Medieval

and Renaissance Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
273
Index of names and places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
291
To Bruno P. Wanrooij (1954-2009),

dear friend and generous maestro
CONTRIBUTORS
Samuel K. Cohn Jr. (University of Glasgow)

He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and has been a
professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow since 1995. In
2008, he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley. He has published twelve books on
topics in labor history, popular insurrection, women, religious piety and
medicine and disease during the Middle Ages and early modern period;
most recently, Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Popular Protest
in Late Medieval English Towns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012). He has published articles in Past and Present, Economic History
Review, English Historical Review, American Historical Review, Les Annales, and Studi Storici. During the past decade he has concentrated on
two themes: the history of popular insurrection and plague. Presently, he
is researching a new project funded by the Wellcome Trust, Pandemics:
Waves of Disease, Waves of Hate from the Plague of Athens to AIDS.
Andrea Zorzi (Universit di Firenze)
Professor of medieval history at the University of Florence, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992, he was a fellow at the Deutsches Historisches
Institut in Rome in 1993, at the Warburg Institute in London in 1994,
and at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in
1996-1997. He also taught digital humanities at the University of Padua,
Siena and Venice. In 1998 he founded the e-journal Reti medievali and
continues to serve as editor-in-chief. Since 2006 he is a member of the
scholarly committee of the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo. His
research focuses on Italian political history of the late Middle Ages. His
main publications are: Lamministrazione della giustizia penale nella Repubblica fiorentina. Aspetti e problemi (Florence: Olschki: 1988); Florentine Tuscany. Structures and Practices of Power, co-edited with William J.
Connell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Pratiques so-
10
CONTRIBUTORS
ciales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes de lOccident la fin du Moyen

Age, co-edited with Jacques Chiffoleau and Claude Gauvard (Rome:
cole franaise de Rome, 2007); Le signorie cittadine in Italia. Secoli XIIIXV (Milan: Mondadori, 2010); Les historiens et linformatique. Un mtier rinventer, co-edited with Jean Philippe Genet (Rome: cole franaise
de Rome, 2011).
Fabrizio Ricciardelli (Georgetown University)
Professor of Italian history at Georgetown University at Villa Le Balze,
he received his first university degree in history at the University of Florence and his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick. His research focuses
on Italian city-states when they were strikingly unusual features of the social landscape of late medieval Europe, distinguished by the sophistication of their economic activities, the forms of government they adopted,
their rich cultural life and their unusual social structure. He has published
several articles on late medieval and Renaissance history in journals such
as Argomenti storici, Archivio Storico Italiano, Annali Aretini, Reti Medievali, and others. He is the author of The Politics of Exclusion in Early
Renaissance Florence (Brepols: Turnhout, 2007) and has edited I luoghi
del sacro. Il sacro e la citt tra Medioevo ed Et moderna (Florence: Mauro Pagliai Editore, 2008). He is chairman of the editorial board of Le Letteres new series Villa Le Balze Studies. His latest field of study is the
relationship between emotions and passions as forms of political persuasion in communal Italy.
Ilaria Taddei (Universit de Grenoble II)
She received her Ph.D. in history and civilization from the European
University Institute and has taught medieval history at the University of
Grenoble II since 1999. Between 1997 and 1998 she was a member of
the cole franaise de Rome. Her research focuses on Italian social, cultural and political history during the late Middle Ages. She is the author
of Fte, jeunesse et pouvoirs. LAbbaye des Nobles Enfants de Lausanne
(Lausanne: Universit de Lausanne, 1991); Fanciulli e giovani. Crescere a
Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Olschki, 2001); Le citt italiane nel
Medioevo, XII-XIV secolo (ed. with Franco Franceschi) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012); and co-editor of Les lieux de sociabilit religieuse la fin du
Moyen ge (Grenoble: Universit de Grenoble, 2006); Le destin des rituels. Faire corps dans lespace urbain, Italie-France-Allemagne (Rome:
cole franaise de Rome, 2008); Entre France et Italie. Vitalit et rayonnement dune rencontre, Mlanges offerts Pierrette Paravy (Grenoble:
Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2009). She has published several es-
CONTRIBUTORS
11
says on youth confraternities, games, rituals, sumptuary laws, the notion

of age, cultural education and, most recently, articles on the electoral system of the Signoria in Florence and on ambassadorial correspondence.
Francesco Benigno (Universit di Teramo)
Since 1993 a full professor of modern history at the Universit di Teramo
where has been for eight years Dean of the Faculty, he is director of IMES
(Southern Institute of History and Social Sciences). He is a member of
the editorial boards of the academic journals Storica and Meridiana. Rivista di storia e scienze sociali. He has published more than one hundred
articles and essays in major Italian and international journals and a number of books on Mediterranean economic and social history and on European political history during the early modern period. His most recent
book is Favoriti e ribelli. Stili della politica barocca, published by Bulzoni.
Among his books, Lombra del re. Ministri e lotta politica nella Spagna del
Seicento has been translated into Spanish; and Specchi della Rivoluzione:
ministri e lotta politica nella Spagna del Seicento, into both English and
Spanish. He has also published textbooks of early modern European history.
Paolo Grillo (Universit di Milano)
Professor of medieval history at the Universit di Milano, he received his
first university degree in history at the Universit degli Studi di Milano
and his doctorate from the Universit di Firenze. His main publications
are Le strutture di un borgo medievale. Torno, centro manifatturiero nella
Lombardia viscontea (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1995), Milano in et comunale (1183-1276), Istituzioni, societ, economia (Spoleto: CISAM,
2001), and Cavalieri e popoli in armi. Le istituzioni militari nellItalia medievale (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2008).
Alizah Holstein (Cornell University)
She received her Ph.D. in medieval history from Cornell University, and
taught at Boston College as Visiting Assistant Professor from 2006 to
2008. Her research interests include the social, political, and cultural history of medieval Rome and its place in the wider Italian and Mediterranean worlds. She has written several articles on related topics for The
Encyclopedia of World History and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle
Ages. Her most recent publication is an article co-authored with
Prof. Jolle Rollo Koster about emotion and urban topography in late
fourteenth-century Rome published in the collection Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, 400-1500 (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010).
12
CONTRIBUTORS
Fabrizio Titone (University of Pas Vasco)

He is Ramon y Cajal Researcher at the Universidad del Pas Vasco in Vitoria, Spain. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cagliari and
his post-doctoral license in medieval studies from the Pontifical Institute
of Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. Since 2009 he has been a fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, where he has collaborated, under the supervision of
Nicholas Terpstra, on a project on Constructions of Care in Florence. In
2011 he was a fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His publications
concern urban history in the Crown of Aragon. He has published numerous articles and two monographs: I magistrati cittadini. Gli ufficiali
scrutinati in Sicilia da Martino I ad Alfonso V (Palermo: Sciascia, 2008)
and Governments of the Universitates: Urban Communities of Sicily in the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). The focus
of his current research is the analysis of local societies through the history of emotion and social memory, with the aim of comparing Mediterranean countries (Catalonia, Sicily) and non-Mediterranean countries
(Castile) in the high and late Middle Ages. In addition, he has started a
new project involving a number of scholars on exchange in the medieval
period.
Patrick Lantschner (Merton College, University of Oxford)
He is a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and received
his DPhil from the University of Oxford. He works on the political systems of late medieval cities in Italy and the Southern Low Countries, and
is especially interested in the place of political conflict in urban political
orders. He is preparing a monograph on this subject, and is currently also investigating the foundations of politics in Middle Eastern cities in a
comparative context. He is also interested in methodological issues of
comparative and transnational history, and has co-edited a volume of articles on this subject in a later medieval context: Contact and Exchange
in Later Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Malcolm Vale (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012).
Christopher Carlsmith (University of Massachusetts-Lowell)
He has been teaching early modern European history and Western Civilization at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell since 2001. Prior to
that, he earned an A.B. from Stanford University (1986) and a Ph.D.
from the University of Virginia (1999), and taught high school in New
England and in Switzerland for six years. He has received research grants
from the Renaissance Society of America, the Gladys Kriebel Delmas
CONTRIBUTORS
13
Foundation, and a Fulbright Dissertation Award. In 2009-2010 he was

the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. His first book, A Renaissance Education: Schooling in Bergamo and the Venetian Republic, 1500-1650, was
published with the University of Toronto Press in 2010. He has published articles in History of Universities, Annali di storia delle universit
italiane, History of Education Quarterly, Archivum Historicum Societatis
Iesu, and Bergomum, as well as contributions to a variety of anthologies
and essay collections. His current project is a book-length study of the
history of student colleges in early modern Bologna.
Christine Shaw (Swansea University)
She has held a series of research posts at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick and most recently at the University of Cambridge (2005-2008); in 2009 she was a Visiting Professor at
the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Her books
include Julius II: The Warrior Pope (1993), The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy (2000), (as editor) Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500-1530 (2006), and (with Michael Mallett), The Italian
Wars, 1494-1559 (2012).
John E. Law (Swansea University)
He is a graduate of the universities of St. Andrews and Oxford. He became a lecturer at Swansea in 1971. He was made a senior lecturer in
1989, and a Reader in 2002. For more than twenty years he has been a
member of the Council of the Society for Renaissance Studies, and was
a founding member of its Welsh branch; he edited Renaissance Studies
between 1997 and 2006. Dr Law became a corresponding member of the
Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria in 1981 and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1985. He is a member of MEMO, Swanseas Centre for
Medieval and Early Modern Research. He continues to pursue his longstanding research interests in the history of late-medieval and early Renaissance Italy. Among his principal publications: The Lords of Renaissance Italy, third edition (Oxford: Davenant Press, 2002), Venice and the
Veneto in the Early Renaissance (Aldershot: Variorum, 2000), (ed. with
L. stermark - Johansen), Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), (ed. with R. A. Griffiths),
Rawdon Brown and the Anglo-Venetian Relationship (Stroud: Nonsuch
Publishing, 2005), and (ed. with C. Davies), The Renaissance and the
Celtic Countries (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
PREFACE
Josiah Osgood
(Professor of Classics, Georgetown University and Chair,

Villa Le Balze Academic Steering Committee)
With this volume we re-launch the publication series sponsored by

Villa Le Balze in Fiesole, Italy since the mid-1990s, now renamed
Villa Le Balze Studies. It is a fitting moment to do so, for in 2013
Villa Le Balze itself is celebrating its first centenary, and Georgetown University is using that occasion to evaluate and strengthen
all the programs it administers there. Le Balze, built for American
philosopher and psychologist Charles Augustus Strong by the distinguished English architects Cecil Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott, is
a beautiful neo-Renaissance house, set amid a series of walled gardens, designed to inspire contemplation. Strong wrote several
books there and hosted fellow scholars, including the philosopher
George Santayana. Since the bequest of the Villa to Georgetown
in 1979 by Strongs daughter, the Marquesa de Larrain, thousands
of students, along with Georgetown faculty, have come to embark
on an extraordinary intellectual adventure inspired not only by
Florence and Fiesole, but also the Villa itself. Yearly conferences
bring scholars together, and here too the Villa works its magic, as
new and exciting ideas take shape. The papers in this volume were
first presented at just such a conference in May, 2010, organized
by Professor Samuel Cohn Jr. along with Professor Fabrizio Ricciardelli, our Georgetown colleague who has made enormous contributions to academic programming at Le Balze over the last few
years.
When I learned that Professors Cohn and Ricciardelli wished to
dedicate this volume to the memory of Bruno P. Wanrooij, who ca-
16
PREFACE
pably served as Director of Villa Le Balze in the last few years of

his life, I was delighted, and I believe that Bruno would be pleased
too. Dutch by birth, a longtime resident and lover of Italy, and a
true cosmopolitan in outlook who enjoyed many transatlantic
friendships, Bruno was trained as a historian but in his numerous
publications drew heavily on the insights of sociology and an acute
grasp of politics, fields in which he also regularly taught. Wanrooij
did path-breaking work on the history of sexuality, the family, and
women in modern Italy, areas of research where his wide interests
brilliantly came together. The scholarly world mourned Brunos
early death, and he is keenly missed at Villa Le Balze and in the
wider academic community of Florence, where he made innumerable contributions, as a skillful administrator, an engaging professor, and a devoted mentor to younger colleagues. In conversation with him one never failed to learn something, nor to laugh either. Brunos formidable, and somewhat severe, intellect was offset by a mischievous sense of humor and a true passion for music.
With the culture of violence in Renaissance Italy one confronts
a historical problem where sociology and political science again offer valuable perspectives even as historical research in one period can help illuminate another period, including the present day.
Social scientific perspectives can, for example, inspire historians to
think more quantitatively. In my own field of Roman history, for
example, the sources are filled with accounts of interpersonal violence but are these reported for being atypical, or are they rather
the tip of an iceberg? American sociologist Randall Collins has recently argued in a landmark study (Violence: a Micro-Sociological
Theory, 2008), that human beings in their dealings with one another may threaten violence but in fact prefer to avoid it a claim
historians may wish to test in their research. Another question in
Roman history relevant to this volume too is the relationship between state-sponsored violence and violence within day-to-day life.
Did the spectacular displays of violence in the Roman arena, for
example, encourage, or discourage, violence? With modern social
scientists themselves divided on that general question, history itself may have light to shed. There are other questions that transhistorical investigations can raise: why, for example, was there so
PREFACE
17
robust a culture of feuding in early modern Italy when it was nearly absent from the ruling class of ancient Rome? In years to come,
it is to be hoped that scholars can use investigations such as those
in this volume to understand better, from a variety of perspectives,
the important, if all too disturbing, problem of violence.
INTRODUCTION
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr. and Fabrizio Ricciardelli
Jacob Burckhardts The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

(1860) and particularly its first section, The State as a Work of
Art, continues to inform our notions of the Renaissance in Italy.
Strides in archival research over the past century or more, however, have highlighted differences between the impressions cast by
his dazzling panorama of examples, especially of leaders brutality, murders in cathedrals and the like, and the new political and
social realities that arose over the long duration of Burckhardts
Renaissance, c. 1250 to 1600. Not only did levels of violence certainly change over this long term; the papers delivered at a twoday international conference held at the Fiesole campus of
Georgetown University (Villa Le Balze) showed how the character of that violence was transformed with symbolic and psychological manifestations and subtleties Burckhardt never imagined.
These papers investigate a wide range of violent action and convention over the three centuries of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance and their ramifications for altering and settling differences in private disputes as well as with collective action, whether
between social classes or with factional competition for power
and representation. As several of the papers explored, languages
of power became more dominant across the Italian peninsula and
across social classes from the late fourteenth century on. States developed the use and threat of violence into finer tools of political
control and oppression and could employ it with especial horrific effect in moments of crises.
The first part of the volume is dedicated to Violence as a Form
20
INTRODUCTION
of Political Resolution. Violence can be expressed through many

forms, through revenge and conflict, laws and sentences, words and
images. Between the second half of the thirteenth and the first half
of the fifteenth century, central and northern Italian city-states frequently suffered moments of disruptions to social peace through
factional battles. As Andrea Zorzi argues in Legitimation and Legal Sanction of Vendetta in Italian Cities from the Twelfth to the
Fourteenth Centuries, vendetta was integral to these factional disputes, even to the commune itself. Violence was the language of
political resolution, repression its natural consequence in negotiation of amicizia (friendship) and inimicizia (enmity) among individuals and social groups. Vendettas legitimization was the outcome of a complex cultural elaboration of values, norms, and conceptual boundaries, whereby individuals and groups strove to satisfy quests for honor and to foster an equilibrium between parties
in conflict. Vendetta was a powerful tool for that social and political integration. Next, Fabrizio Ricciardellis Violence and Repression in Late Medieval Italy explores the cultural vocabulary
of communal society with its connections to pride and avarice. Between the second half of the thirteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, central and northern Italian city-states frequently
suffered moments of disruptions to social peace through factional battles. In late medieval Italy the good and peaceful state of the
community was reached through the political use of ban (a monetary fine), confinement (a political sentence), ammonizione, and
public executions. Ilaria Taddei, in Recalling the Affront: Rituals
of War in Italy in the Age of the Communes, analyzes violence
inflicted by means of precise rituals of insult performed outside the
walls of besieged cities to hammer home an enemys defeat. These
rituals of derision could possess recondite and highly sophisticated meanings, juxtaposed to the mundane and disgusting: minting
coins of insult, vesting fake knights, ceremonially executing animals, running ignominious races with whores, or heaving donkeys
over city walls. These ritual games aimed to deride the enemy
ad aeternam memoriam. Samuel Kline Cohn Jr.s Repression of
Popular Revolt in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy explores the punishment and repression of popular rebels, principally
in Florence from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. He
INTRODUCTION
21
argues that the brutality of city-states towards rebels increased

swiftly shortly after the defeat of the Tumulto dei Ciompi and the
fall of the Government of the Minor Guilds (1382). It occurred first
and foremost beyond Florences city walls, in the countryside and
within the districts of its newly acquired towns. Similar trajectories in the attitudes towards and brutality against ones own subjects can be seen across central and northern Italy at the end of the
fourteenth century and into the sixteenth. The massacre of innocents at Cesena (1377) was an unacceptable exception that proves
the rule. By the early sixteenth century, such massacres to crush
rebellion and leave indelible lessons had however become more or
less the norm, as in Brescia (1511), Prato (1528), and Genoa (1532).
The second part of the volume concerns Violence and Revolts.
Francesco Benignos Reconsidering Popular Violence: Changes of
Perspective in the Analysis of Early Modern Revolts underlines the
centrality of violence in recent historical writing and argues that
popular violence cannot be detached from the violence exerted by
states and their institutions. He returns to the question of the revolutionary crowd, its ambiguity, manipulation or control by outside
forces, and its codes of conduct. Fabrizio Titone, in Presentation
and Practice of Violence in Late Medieval Sicily in Piazza, Polizzi
and Randazzo, looks at Sicily to explore administrative and economic reasons, as with the management of gabelle (indirect taxes),
and imbalances in political representation, which led to several violent revolts. The lower orders (populus) were always implicated.
While in some instances violence was deemed just and even desirable, in others it was considered a threat to the common good. Yet,
either way, it was never accepted as the natural order of things.
Patrick Lantschners The Nourisher of Seditions: Insurgent Coalitions and the Political Volatility of Late Medieval Bologna analyses coalitions and their negotiations in a series of revolts in late medieval Bologna. Historians have often suggested that late medieval
revolts were the consequence of the rise of the modern state.
Lantschner instead argues that political conflict and high volatility should be seen in the context of the pluralistic order of politics that characterized late medieval cities, especially Bologna,
where a rich institutional structure of guilds, parties, and the uni-
22
INTRODUCTION
versity within the city walls and organizations outside it contado

powers, the Church, and Milan readily conditioned the formation
of numerous coalitions that led to frequent and violent revolts overturning the citys government. Christopher Carlsmiths Cacci fuori
un bastone bianco: Conflicts between the Ancarano College and the
Episcopal Seminary in Bologna examines academic violence in
early modern Bologna, concentrating on long-running conflicts between students of the Collegio Ancarano and those of the episcopal seminary (Seminario Vescovile). Their scuffles and verbal insults
illuminate the social histories of these religious institutions, while
shedding new light on Bolognese civic customs, masculinity, and
codes of honor in early modern northern Italian youth culture.
Part III focuses on Violence and Social Movements. Paolo Grillos The Long Life of the Popolo of Milan: Revolts against the Visconti in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries challenges prevailing historiography, showing that resistance from below against
Milans rulers, the Visconti, during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries was more frequent and effective than heretofore
assumed. By focusing on these revolts and particularly that of 14021403, following Giangaleazzo Viscontis death, Grillo shows the
long life of Milans popolo in maintaining some semblance of a balance of power within the territorial city and in shaping the structures of this signorial regime. The popolos organization and memory extended into the mid-fifteenth century, creating the crucible
of the Repubblica Ambrosiana. Alizah Holsteins Nourished on
the Milk of Eloquence: Knowledge as Social Contest in Mid-Trecento Rome provides a new view of the political strategy of the
Roman popular leader Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354). She neither
dismisses him as an eccentric demagogue nor portrays him as an
academically-minded early humanist; instead, she argues that pragmatism underlay his politics and use of texts, inscriptions, histories of ancient Rome, domestic architecture, artistic commissions,
and more. Christine Shaws Popular Resistance to Military Occupation during the Italian Wars, challenges accepted images of
the Italian Wars, such as accounts of the sack of Rome that highlight the helplessness of civilians confronted with the brutality of
soldiers, especially the Spanish, French and German infantry. In
INTRODUCTION
23
its place, she supplies a new, unexplored picture of these violent

confrontations: in numerous instances resident populations effectively fought back. Peasants often sought revenge against defeated soldiers, stripped of their weapons and armor. Along with other commoners, they could also mount organized resistance to soldiers in transit or to those billeted in Italian towns and villages, despite the risk of troops returning to wreak revenge. Often local authorities condoned, rather than denounced, the violent retaliation
of communities against the brutality of foreign soldiers. Even the
commanders of the soldiers targeted by these assaults could sympathize with the civilians. John Law, in Signorial Citadels in Late
Medieval and Renaissance Italy, explores the dependence of signori on violence, especially at certain moments such as the establishment of a new regime or dynastic succession. Their reputations
for violence and brutality was aided by the fact that many served
as condottieri, and their enemies, especially republican ones, labeled them as tyrants disrespectful of law and the common good.
In investigating the building and use of city citadels by signori,
Law tempers the gothic image of these dark fortresses, associated with violence and a princes ghoulish suppression of his own
people. Instead, as domestic residences of rulers and places of cultivation, these buildings can be given a positive rather than a sinister interpretation.
To be sure, neither the levels nor character of violence were all of
one piece across the Italian peninsula or across Burckhardts broad
three centuries of the Italian Renaissance. No doubt, violence became more instrumental, brutal, frequent and effective with the rise
of new weapons, state structures and princely authority, especially from the late fourteenth to the seventeenth century. This book
undercovers and emphasizes the fact that this phenomenon was not
an inexorable, top-down, one-way process towards greater violence, repression, discipline, and control, inevitably and passively
accepted by oppressed subaltern classes. Instead, groups from
peasants in Piedmont to the popolo in towns of southern Italy retaliated; they too could make counter-use of violence to resist elites
and the state and thereby preserve, to some extent, their earlier dignity and rights.
24
INTRODUCTION
The editors wish to dedicate this book to Professor Bruno P. Wanrooij (1954-2009), who at the outset was supportive in planning the
conference at the Villa Le Balze and would have contributed to the
book. Before his untimely death, he long served as our best critic
and supporter.
We are indebted to Susan Scott and Ori Soltes for reading the manuscript and offering valuable suggestions.
PART ONE
VIOLENCE AS A FORM OF
POLITICAL RESOLUTION
Andrea Zorzi
(Universit degli Studi di Firenze)
LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION

OF VENDETTA IN ITALIAN CITIES FROM THE
TWELFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES*
Introduction
Italian communes in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries present a
meaningful example of the control of vendetta; as in other societies
of the past, vendetta was a common practice in Italian urban society.1 Its legitimation was the outcome of a complex cultural elaboration of values, norms and conceptual boundaries which allowed it both to satisfy the honor of individuals and to foster a balance between the parties in conflict: in essence, vendetta was a powerful factor of social integration. At the same time, the legitimation
of vendetta was also a means for limiting its spread.2 As we know,
recent international scholarship has focused on conflict as a major
theme of inquiry.3 Until recently, the study of conflict in Italy dur* An earlier draft of this text was discussed in a seminar held at Christ Church
College of the University of Oxford, 12 June 2007 (I would like to thank the coordinators, Teresa Bernheimer, Guy Geltner and Petra Sijpesteijn, for their gracious invitation). I also thank Samuel Cohn, Patrick Lantschner, Fabrizio Ricciardelli and Letizia
Vezzosi for reviewing the translation and for their comments.
1 Conflitti, paci e vendette nellItalia comunale, ed. by Andrea Zorzi (Florence:
Firenze University Press, 2009).
2 See Andrea Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in et comunale, in Le storie e la memoria. In onore di Arnold Esch, ed. by Roberto Delle
Donne and Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Olschki, 2002), pp. 135-170.
3 See for instance Le rglement des conflits au moyen ge (Paris: Publications de
28
ANDREA ZORZI
ing the age of the communes has been seen as an exception: historians have been reluctant to accept just how widespread the phenomenon was in society or the central role that conflict played in
politics. This is mainly because for some time a public-based view
of communal culture and politics has predominated, particularly
among Italian scholars, and some experts are even starting once
again to stress its republican and democratic aspects.4
This is why the grand narrative of vendetta in communal
Italy has suffered until fairly recently from a somewhat negative and
residual perception of the phenomenon. The accepted view sees
violence as revealing an endemic state of chaos, a long-lasting structural given, fuelled by the conduct and life-style of a restive aristocracy that went hand in hand with communal political life, fostering turbulence and undermining stability from the early days to
the era of urban signorie. As a reaction, the popular social groups
also had soon to start banding together in troops and to practice
armed violence in order to ensure their members defense. This
view suggests that violence in communal society was due mainly
to the difficulty involved in disciplining the life models and value
systems of the aristocratic families (the milites, potentes and later
the magnates).5
la Sorbonne, 2001); Conflict in Medieval Europe. Changing Perspectives on Society and

Culture, ed. by Warren C. Brown and Piotr Gorecki (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003); La
vengeance. 400-1200, ed. by Dominique Barthlemy, Franois Bougard, and Regine
Le Jan (Rome: cole franaise de Rome, 2006); Feud in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe, ed. by Jeppe Bchert Netterstrm and Bjrn Poulsen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2007); Feud, Violence and Practice. Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor
of Stephen D. White, ed. by Belle Tuten, Tracey Billado (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
4 See Anthony J. Black, Communal Democracy and its History, Political Studies, 45 (1997), pp. 5-20; Ronald W. Carstens, Communes and Communities: the Democratic Elements of Medieval Life, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching,
n.s., 6 (1998), pp. 7-16; Il governo delle citt nellItalia comunale: una prima forma
di democrazia?, Bollettino roncioniano, VI (2006), pp. 9-49.
5 See for instance Marvin B. Becker, A Study in Political Failure: the Florentine
Magnates (1280-1343), Medieval Studies, XXVII (1965), pp. 248ff.; Carol Lansing,
The Florentine Magnates. Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 164ff, 184ff; Stefano Gasparri, I milites cittadini. Studi sulla cavalleria in Italia (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo,
1992), pp. 88, 121, 130-131; Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens. Guerre,
LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA
29
This view frames vendetta as the very symbol of violence among

leading families, the specific trait shaping the defense of honor
and the achievement of social superiority. In other words, vendetta was strictly a prerogative of the aristocracy, a way of life rooted
in the ethos of chivalry. Thus, the advent of the commune brought
with it the demand to discipline violence, promoted above all by
those social groups linked to manufacturing and trade, the ones
presumed to have been the bearers of value systems tied to order,
security and civic tranquility. The strength of the communes institutions, which some scholars, following Weber, see enshrined in
its claim to hold a public monopoly on violence, is therefore alleged
to have produced a series of measures and injunctions designed to
outlaw vendetta and, consequently, factional conduct as well.6 The
primacy of a public judicial system based on ex officio investigation, trial and punishment is alleged to have gradually prevailed
over private justice driven in turn by spiraling retaliation.7 The
persistence of these violent attitudes, which more than one historian traces back to the barbaric practice of the blood feud, well into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is for the most part framed
within the paradigm of the decline of vendetta: a persistence of
anachronistic practices, tolerated until it could be inexorably uprooted by the State.8
Yet we notice some contradiction in this narrative: on the one
hand it suggests that the primacy of the public commune gradually sidelined the practice of vendetta; but at the same time, fol-
conflits et socit dans lItalie communale, XIIe-XIIIe sicles (Paris: Editions de ditions de lcole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, 2003), pp. 321-335; Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Retour la cit. Les magnats de Florence, 1340-1440 (Paris: ditions de lcole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, 2006), pp. 109-142.
6 See now Jonas Grutzpalk, Blood Feud and Modernity: Max Webers and mile
Durkheims Theories, Journal of classical sociology, 2 (2002), pp. 115-134.
7 See for instance Roberto Celli, Studi sui sistemi normativi delle democrazie comunali. Secoli XII-XV. I: Pisa, Siena (Florence: Sansoni, 1976), pp. 104ff.
8 See for instance Jacques Heers, Il clan familiare nel Medioevo. Studi sulle strutture politiche e sociali degli ambienti urbani (Naples: Liguori, 1976), p. 172; Randolph
Starn, Contrary Commonwealth. The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 98ff; Lansing, The Florentine
Magnates, pp. 206-207.
30
ANDREA ZORZI
lowing contemporary chroniclers representations, such practices

are interpreted as being the root cause of the crisis in the commune
and the subsequent assumption of power by the urban signori.
More recently, while studies have begun to acknowledge that
the vendetta occupied a different place in society and in politics,
nonetheless these scholars are often reluctant to accept certain interpretations resulting from research into other societies:9 firstly,
the limitation of violence that appears to be proper to the logic of
the vendetta, to its nature as an efficacious factor of social integration; this happens because there is a tendency to superimpose
the various levels of violence and to confuse them with those of
the vendetta. More especially, these scholars find it difficult to accept the notion that the vendetta was a widespread practice affecting every social group, that it could be therefore the object of
a process of cultural, social and legal legitimation, and that it could
be a far from secondary factor in the sphere of values that went to
make up the education of the citizenry.
We may also note that a number of scholars who have recently begun to acknowledge the dissemination of the practice and the
culture of vendetta in communal society still prefer to reiterate a
negative view of it, highlighting the regulation to which it was subjected, underscoring the predominance of the ideal of peace in the
communes public discourse, or hailing the primacy of public justice in the settlement of conflicts.10 If we look closely, we can see
that this approach is little more than an updated version of the public and teleological pre-comprehension that has long conditioned
the interpretation of the role of vendetta in communal culture. But
9 Such as those of Jacob Black-Michaud, Cohesive Force. Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975); Christopher Boehm, Blood Revenge. The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies
(Lawrence: Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984); Stephen Wilson, Feuding,
Conflict and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Artun Unsal, Tuer pour survivre. La vendetta (Paris: LHarmattan,
1990); Patrizia Resta, Pensare il sangue. La vendetta nella cultura albanese (Rome:
Meltemi Editore, 2002).
10 See for instance Trevor Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univrsity Press, 2007), pp. 123-132; Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et
citoyens, pp. 329-332.
31
if we adopt that approach, we are in danger of failing to nuance

and to enrich, and thus (perhaps) to understand better, the analysis of the methods of politics in Italian communal society. Unfortunately, this tends to impoverish our interpretation of the plural
diverse dimensions of the political struggle.
It is only thanks to research undertaken very recently that the
issue of conflict and vendetta in Italian communal cities has been
analyzed in a new perspective. I am referring first and foremost to
research conducted by Chris Wickham into the settlement of disputes in twelfth-century Tuscany. This research has shown the interclass nature of such conflicts, highlighting the close interaction
between solutions brokered by arbiters and the action of the early communal institutions (colleges of consuls) and the flexible variety of legal tools.11 In his turn, Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur has
devoted some substantial paragraphs in his monograph on urban
militia to the culture of hatred and to the forms of conflict, identifying violent clashes among families as being one of the most typical traits of the urban nobilitys way of life and system of values,
thus redefining these practices as a prerogative of the chivalric
class and mapping their chronological and social limits.12 Finally,
I began to discuss the issue of conflict in communal society in a
series of essays published from the mid-1990s, seeking to link it to
a broader historiography across other past societies and to highlight the ordinary nature of conflict-based social relations, the many
ways of conducting and resolving conflicts (peacefully, violently or
through punishment), the wide social diffusion of vendetta, and the
legitimation and central role of the culture of vendetta in communal political society.13
11 Chris Wickham, Legge, pratiche e conflitti. La risoluzione delle dispute nella
Toscana del XII secolo (Rome: Viella, 2000).
12 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, pp. 307-335.
13 See Andrea Zorzi, Ius erat in armis. Faide e conflitti tra pratiche sociali e
pratiche di governo, in Origini dello Stato. Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra
medioevo ed et moderna, ed. by Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo
Schiera (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), pp. 609-629; Zorzi, Conflits et pratiques infrajudiciaires dans les formations politiques italiennes du XIIIe au XVe sicle, in Linfrajudiciaire du Moyen ge lpoque contemporaine, ed. by Benot Garnot (Dijon:
(Publications de lUniversit de Bourgogne, 1996), pp. 19-36; Zorzi, La cultura del-
32
ANDREA ZORZI
The results of these recent studies begin to define certain facets

of the development and differentiation of the practices of conflict
between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. This revised view
is already present in the most up-to-date surveys devoted to Italian cities in the age of the communes. I am thinking in particular
of the work of Elisabeth Crouzet Pavan, Franois Menant, Patrick
Boucheron and Patrick Gilli.14 I shall attempt here to illustrate the
salient results of this new historiography, which is beginning to
shape a more appropriate place for conflict and vendetta in communal society. In particular, I plan to focus on the following issues:
the social diffusion of the practices of vendetta, the cultural and
political legitimation of those practices, the normative regulation
of the vendetta, the interaction between conflict and civic coexistence, in other words, the constitutional nature of conflict.
The social diffusion of the practices of vendetta
Most sources dating to the Italian communal age show that the
practices of conflict were widespread among the various social
groups. A survey of sources clearly suggests that a vocabulary of
social (and political) relations built around the dichotomy
friend/enemy, friendship/enmity spread. This observation will
not astonish those familiar with the political categories to which
the school of so-called political realism has been devoting its enla vendetta; Zorzi, Diritto e giustizia nelle citt dellItalia comunale (secoli XIIIXIV), in Stadt und Recht im Mittelalter/ La ville et le droit au Moyen ge, ed. by Pierre
Monnet and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp.
197-214; Zorzi, Fracta est civitas magna in tres partes. Conflitto e costituzione nellItalia comunale, Scienza e politica. Per una storia delle dottrine politiche, 39 (2008),
pp. 61-87.
14 lisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Enfers et paradis. LItalie de Dante et de Giotto (Paris:
Albin Michel, 2001), pp. 121-162; Franois Menant, Les villes italiennes, XIIe-XIVe
sicle. Enjeux historiographiques, mthodologie, bibliographie commente (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004), pp. 49-52, 63-65; Crouzet-Pavan, LItalie des communes (11001350) (Paris: Belin, 2005), pp. 89-94, 103-107; Patrick Boucheron, Les villes dItalie
(vers 1150-vers 1340) (Paris: Belin, 2004), pp. 27-31, 61-62, 144-149; Patrick Gilli,
Villes et socits urbaines en Italie. Milieu XIIe - milieu XIVe sicle (Paris: Sedes, 2005),
pp. 113-128.
33
ergies for a long time; I am referring in particular to the work of

Julien Freund and Gianfranco Miglio on the conceptual roots of
private and political conflicts, on the category of amicus/inimicus (hostis). It is well known that this school of thought, which
goes back to Carl Schmitts study of political categories, probes
some of the key concepts in politics both ancient and modern
strength, freedom, decision, responsibility, security, the common
good, etc. presupposing that the essence, the means and the tools
of politics belong to a world in which conflict inevitably plays a
crucial role.15
So I would like to draw attention first to an extraordinary document now in the State Archives of Florence: a register comprising 293 sheets containing a copy of all the acts of pacification between individuals and family groups that Walter of Brienne, the
overlord of Florence in 1342 and 1343, obliged people to sign in
public. In the space of six months, over four hundred families
from all walks of life (knights, merchants, small artisans) swore to
live in peace with one another. The number of these individuals
runs into the thousands, all of whom were present at the drafting
of 274 acts of pacification. It is difficult to ascertain the exact numbers present because the lists of those taking the oath are either
incomplete or were abbreviated by the notaries drafting them.16
This document is extraordinary because it has survived to our day,
but it is not exceptional. Similar peacemaking practices are known
to us, for instance, also in Rome, where in 1347 Cola di Rienzo,
the popular leader, fostered the establishment of a house of justice and peace, in which he boasted that he had fully reconciled
1,800 cases of enmity between citizens.17
15 See Carl Schmitt, Le categorie del politico. Saggi di teoria politica, ed. by Gianfranco Miglio and Pierangelo Schiera (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972); Julien Freund, Il terzo, il nemico, il conflitto. Materiali per una teoria del politico, ed. by Alessandro Campi
(Milan: Giuffr, 1995); Amicus (inimicus) hostis. Le radici concettuali della conflittualit privata e della conflittualit politica, ed. by Gianfranco Miglio (Milan: Giuffr, 1992).
16 Archivio di Stato di Firenze [henceforth ASFi], Bale, 1. A first analysis, limited to magnates, is in Klapisch-Zuber, Retour la cite, pp. 113-116.
17 See Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, p. 319.
34
ANDREA ZORZI
Sources and practices of this kind tell us at least three important things in connection with the object of our study. First, that
relations of enmity in Italys cities were still very widespread in the
middle of the fourteenth century; in other words, they were an ordinary kind of social relationship. Second, clashes resulting from
these hostile relations traversed the whole body of society, from eminent lineages to people from the humblest backgrounds: in other
words, vendetta was not the prerogative of a single social group.
And last, that government authorities were still active in adopting
measures designed to contain and settle clashes; in short, they recognized the existence of conflicts and tried to resolve them without repression or punishment.
Indeed, when we search notaries records, we find that it is absolutely common to find acts of pacification drawn up between individuals from the most varied social backgrounds from the thirteenth century onwards.18 The parties appearing before a notary
were either those who decided to forgo revenge or any legal steps
(almost always obtaining financial compensation in return), or
those who agreed to settle their differences after a vendetta had
(seemingly) balanced the initial injury, or, lastly, those who were
separated from one another because of a mortal enmity in which
acts of violence and periods of peace alternated.19
Managing a feud or resorting to vendetta was not within the
reach of every individual or every family. Since these involved risk,
18 See Collectio chartarum pacis privatae Medii Aevi ad regionem Tusciae perti-
nentium, ed. by Gino Masi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1943).

19 See Antonio Padoa Schioppa, Delitto e pace privata nel pensiero dei legisti
bolognesi. Brevi note, Studia Gratiana, XX (1976), pp. 269-287; Padoa Schioppa,
Delitto e pace privata nel diritto lombardo: prime note, in Diritto comune e diritti
locali nella storia dellEuropa (Milan: Giuffr, 1980), pp. 555-578; Massimo Vallerani,
Pace e processo nel sistema giudiziario del comune di Perugia, Quaderni storici, 101
(1999), pp. 315-354; Emanuela Porta Casucci, La pacificazione dei conflitti a Firenze a met Trecento nella pratica del notariato fiorentino, in Conflitti, paci e vendette
nellItalia comunale, pp. 193-217; Porta Casucci, Le paci fra privati nelle parrocchie
fiorentine di San Felice in Piazza e San Frediano: un regesto per gli anni 1335-1365,
Annali di Storia di Firenze, V (2009), pp. 195-241; Andrea Zorzi, Pace e conflitti nelle
citt comunali italiane, in Idees de pau a ledat mitjana (Lleida: Pags editors, 2010),
pp. 265-301.
35
they could have drastic economic or political repercussions, and

they could lead to social isolation, among other things. Vendetta
was thus the result of a decision-making process on the part of the
groups involved; it was a matter for consilium et auxilium. The decision to avenge a wrong suffered and, above all, to engage in a lasting conflict, were options that individuals and family groups pondered according to their means. These were planned strategies, or,
in other words the opposite of impulsive acts,20 and they explain
why the more powerful families in terms of their demographic
structure, social relations, political clout and economic and symbolic resources were more likely to resort to vendetta. But it does
not mean that vendetta and feuding were the exclusive recourse
of a given social group, especially of the knightly class (the milites).
Vendetta and feuding were practices within the reach of anyone
who could afford them, regardless of social origin, as seen from evidence from the second half of the twelfth century to the first half
of the fourteenth century.
It is beyond question that the urban militia a militia, significantly, open to anyone who could afford a horse, not to the chivalric knightly class alone (as Maire Vigueur has shown, they comprised cavaliers, not chevaliers) was a player in feuding in the last
few decades of the twelfth century and the first few decades of the
thirteenth century. On the other hand, it is debatable to my mind
to view the vendetta merely as part of the lifestyle of the urban
nobility, a cultural model later imitated by other emerging social
groups, as for example Maire Vigueur does when he identifies the
culture of conflict as the peculiar characteristic of the knightly
mentality, which was then adopted during the thirteenth century
also by the more well-to-do among the lower classes.21
First of all, we may wonder to what extent the sources them-
20 See Andrea Zorzi, Consigliare alla vendetta, consigliare alla giustizia. Note
su pratiche e culture politiche nellItalia comunale, Archivio storico italiano, CLXX

(2012), forthcoming.
21 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, p. 285 and p. 315; Idem, Progetti di
trasformazione della societ nei regimi di Popolo, in La ricerca del benessere individuale e sociale. Ingredienti materiali e immateriali (citt italiane, XII-XV secolo)
(Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 313-315.
36
ANDREA ZORZI
selves may have influenced this interpretation: Maire Vigueurs

analysis, for instance, necessarily had to resort to thirteenth-century chronicles to shed light on the reality of the previous century.22 But, as Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out, there is a risk in taking as general practice what in reality may have been mere accounts provided by the sources. In that connection, we may attach
special significance to the analysis of city chronicles mostly the
work of notaries, merchants and clerics for the partisan representation of social reality that they offer: the milites, and later the
magnates are described in negative terms as leading a violent
lifestyle and as being responsible for political divisions, while
vendettas perpetrated by families from the popular classes are
almost always passed over in silence.23 In other words, rather than
being merely a lifestyle, vendetta is portrayed as a factor in ones
social reputation.
I shall dwell on one particular example from the very early
years of the thirteenth century in Mantua. A series of conflicts between the Poltroni family and other families was depicted by subsequent chroniclers as a war (werra) between the Poltroni and the
Calorosi family, which triggered the birth of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in the city.24 The two families, the Poltroni and the
Calorosi, were houses of secondary importance in local political
life; they did not belong to the consular lite; they simply held administrative posts in the commune in the decades between the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Above all, they were not known
to have had any social qualifications of a chivalric nature. These
were lineages that did not belong to the militia, but owned property, houses and fortified structures in the city. They were con-
22 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, p. 307.

23 Andrea Zorzi, Politica e giustizia a Firenze al tempo degli Ordinamenti an-
timagnatizi, in Ordinamenti di giustizia fiorentini. Studi in occasione del VII centenario,

ed. by Vanna Arrighi (Florence: Edifir, 1995), p. 29; Enrico Faini, Il convito del
1216. La vendetta allorigine del fazionalismo fiorentino, Annali di Storia di Firenze,
I (2006), in particular pp. 28-29.
24 For what follows, see Giuseppe Gardoni, Conflitti, vendette e aggregazioni
familiari a Mantova allinizio del secolo XIII, in Conflitti, paci e vendette nellItalia
comunale, pp. 43-104.
37
nected with the main ecclesiastical bodies in one way or another

and were active as money lenders.
In a broader perspective, we might suggest that these families
could be likened to the urban militia. But in the sources (whether
contemporary chronicles or judicial acts) they seem to lack precisely
some of the attributes that Maire Vigueur considers to be peculiar
to the urban nobility. Not only is there no explicit mention of their
belonging to the chivalric class, but even the vocabulary used to describe their conflict fails to include the term hodium (hatred), a term
that Maire Vigueur considers to be peculiar to the noble culture.
Even the military use of towers is not necessarily an indication of
nobility: towers for urban warfare were built in Florence, for instance, even by neighborhood communities during the clashes over
consular posts in the late 1170s.25 In other words, the Poltroni and
Calorosi families built towers because they could afford to do so,
not because they felt that they belonged to the militia.26
In short, communal documents paint a more varied and complex picture of the practices of conflict, showing them to be widespread among the various social groups. Vendetta was exacted by
those who could afford its material and symbolic costs as well as
its social and political consequences.
As for myself, I have conducted a survey of reports on feuds
and vendettas in Florence roughly from 1260 to 1340. Out of approximately one hundred conflicts that I have discovered, almost
half the instances (47 out of 98) seem to have involved popular
families (i.e., families without milites), and in fully one-quarter of
the cases (25 out of 98) the feud was solely between non-noble families. These figures are confirmed by reports from other cities.27 I
shall confine my remarks to the case of Parma, where leading actors in the vendetta culture in the decades of the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries were socially well-defined groups such
as those from the ranks of the popolo. A notary named Giacomo
25 See Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica (VI, 9), ed. by Giuseppe Porta (Parma:
Guanda, 1990), vol. I, p. 239.
26 See also Giuseppe Gardoni, Fra torri e magnae domus. Famiglie e spazi urbani a Mantova (secoli XII-XIII) (Verona: Libreria Editrice Universitaria, 2008).
27 Zorzi, Conflits et pratiques infrajudiciaires, p. 23.
38
ANDREA ZORZI
Canonica was killed by the locals in the countryside village of Olmo in 1294. The response was handled directly by his guild of notaries.28 The guild conducted an inquest on the site, handed those
responsible for the murder over to the podest of the commune of
Parma, and pillaged the guilty parties assets, wrecking their homes
and their property. The anonymous author of Chronicon parmense,
surely a notary, summarizes the episode using explicit vendetta terminology, also adding certain symbolic details such as the fact that
the palace of the Commune, where the notaries conducted their
daily activities, was closed donec dicta vindicta facta fuit [until said vendetta was accomplished].29
The practice of vendetta had no class-linked connotation in sociological terms; it was a widely used resource in social action (regardless of status), a cultural domain involving numerous players,
and a legitimate practice of political action.
The cultural and political legitimation of vendetta
Public discourse about the vendetta was complex and ambivalent.
Despite the fact that the vendetta was often portrayed in a socially negative light, the underlying cultural model was in favor of its
legitimation. We can see this at work on a number of levels. On
the political level, for instance, members of the communes own
governing bodies habitually exacted vendettas; indeed, education
as a citizen meant learning about vendetta. As for the de facto legitimation of the vendetta, I shall confine myself to providing two
examples, separated in time and space. These two examples show
the widespread custom among urban ruling groups of resolving
disputes with their enemies through vendetta: Genoa in the second half of the twelfth century and Florence in the last decade of
the thirteenth century.
28 For what follows, see Gabriele Guarisco, Come uno sciame dapi. Il popolo e le pratiche della vendetta a Parma tra tardo Duecento e primo Trecento, in Conflitti, paci e vendette nellItalia comunale, pp. 131-153.
29 Chronicon Parmense ab anno 1038 usque ad annum 1479, in Rerurm Italicarum
Scriptores, IX, 9, ed. by Giuliano Bonazzi (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1902), p. 66.
39
In Genoa the Annales Ianuenses drawn up by chancellor notaries for the commune describe constant conflict sparking rifts
within the Genoese consuls regime from the middle of the twelfth
century. This was not a two-party division between political groupings; rather, it reflected divisions among individuals, families, alliance networks that often included friends, neighbors and clients.
Many of the actors were members of the urban militia, the citys
most powerful families in social and economic terms. Competition
for public posts in the commune and for control over public resources lay behind most of the conflicts. These clashes ranged from
simple vendetta to more structured, ongoing violence, which contemporary sources describe as bellum and werra.30
If we look at Florence in the late thirteenth century, much appears to have changed, naturally, apart from the ruling groups
habit of exacting vendetta in the first person. The political context
was completely different: the city was now governed by a plurality of families, no longer only those from the milites class but also
merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs and many members of the
guilds. So-called popular regimes had now replaced the more
narrow-based governments of earlier years. In fact, it was certain
members of the priorate government (priori delle arti), hailing
from the popular family of the Velluti, that enacted a spectacular
vendetta on Easter Day 1295 right in the center of the city; their
victim was a Mannelli, a member of this family of milites. Also in
this case, contemporary chronicles fail to mention the episode. But
we can reconstruct the Vellutis strategy of vengeance from judiciary records and from their family memoirs, and we will see that
it passed unscathed through the clutches of the judicial authorities, turning out to be deemed fully legitimate.31
Thus in the longer run, the habit of ruling groups of viewing
vendetta as a usual practice in civic relations was the legacy of every
generation. The social actors might change, but the culture was a
30 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, pp. 310ff.

31 Zorzi, Politica e giustizia a Firenze, pp. 110-113; source: Donato Velluti, La
cronica domestica, ed. by Isidoro Del Lungo and Guglielmo Volpi (Florence: Sansoni,
1914), pp. 10-11.
40
ANDREA ZORZI
constant. This is proven by an analysis of pedagogical literature used

for educating the communes citizenry. That literature adopts an approving approach to the issue of conflict in more than one instance.
Among the various texts on the art of citizenship, there is
even a treatise devoted entirely to the culture of conflict, the wellknown Liber consolationis et consilii by Albertanus of Brescia, a
causidicus (judge) in the entourage of itinerant podests in the second quarter of the thirteenth century.32 The Liber is part of a trilogy of moral treatises designed to provide citizens with the tools
for behaving appropriately in various social situations: family relations and the choice of friends (De amore et dilectione Dei et
proximi et aliarum rerum et de forma vitae, written in 1238), the
social use of words, that is the necessary equivalence between
rhetoric and good behavior (Ars loquendi et tacendi, written in
1245) and, as mentioned, the management of conflict (Liber consolationis et consilii, written in 1246).33
The Liber consolationis was considered until recently to justify public justice over the feud, or in any case a clear and unimpeachable condemnation of vendetta, according to the public
pre-comprehension prevailing among historians of the commune.34 In fact, Albertanus has put together a more complex and
subtle discourse on conflict and on the ways of conducting and resolving disputes. Consilium plays a crucial role, as even the title
makes clear: the most appropriate strategy for dealing with anyone
who has injured us must be devised only after systematically pondering advice from relatives and friends.
32 Albertani Brixiensis Liber consolationis et consilii ex quo hausta est fabula gallica de Melibeo et Prudentia, ed. by Thor Sundby (Havniae: F. Hst, 1873).
33 See Enrico Artifoni, Prudenza del consigliare. Leducazione del cittadino nel
Liber consolationis et consilii di Albertano di Brescia (1246), in Consilium. Teorie e
pratiche del consigliare nella cultura medievale, ed. by Carla Casagrande, Chiara
Crisciani, and Silvana Vecchio (Florence: Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo 2004), pp.
195-216.
34 See Aldo Checchini, Un giudice nel secolo decimoterzo: Albertano di Brescia, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, LXXI (1911-12), pp. 185235; James M. Powell, Albertanus of Brescia. The Pursuit of Happiness in the Early Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 74-89;
Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, pp. 316-319.
41
This text deserves further comment, and I have commented on

it elsewhere.35 I shall merely point out that Albertanuss Liber consolationis is an extraordinary mixture of moral judgments and practical advice. Conflict is understood as an ordinary type of social relationship, which, while deplorable from a moral and religious
viewpoint, should be pondered well. It is not a practice that he rejects or condemns a priori; indeed, Albertanus devotes a chapter
to analyzing the many instances when it is recommended. The best
solution for conflicts appears to be peace and forgiveness. The last
few chapters of the Liber present the ritual use of public vows of
reconciliation as one of the salient features of feuds which were often also decisive in resolving them. The book ends on a note of reconciliation and peace: Meum est consilium, ut per reconciliationem et concordiam vincas discordiam et guerram.36 So the
Liber consolationis does not advocate the prevalence of public justice and punishment meted out by a judge; rather, it proposes the
resolution of conflicts outside the law court. This is all the more
striking when we note that its author is a judge in a court of law,
and the treatise begins, is developed and resolved totally within the
framework of the culture and logic of conflict.
If we move on to the next generation and examine the handbooks for teaching public speaking, the spoken word appears to
be one of the main tools for managing relationships of friendship
or enmity, one of the factors in the communal paideia.37 I am referring in particular to some texts in the vernacular (and for this
reason designed for wide distribution) containing collections of
speeches penned by notaries: the Arringhe, composed by Matteo
de Libri in or around 1275, the Flore de parlare, o somma darengare (in other words a summa of harangues) by Giovanni da Vignano dated 1290, and the Dicerie da imparare a dire a huomini gio-
35 Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta, pp. 144-158.

36 Albertani Brixiensis Liber consolationis et consilii, pp. 106-107.
37 For a first overview, see Enrico Artifoni, Lloquence politique dans les cits
communales (XIIIe sicle), in Cultures italiennes (XIIe-XVe sicles), ed. by Isabelle

Heullant-Donat (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000), pp. 269-296; Paolo Cammarosano, Lloquence laque dans lItalie communale (fin du XII-XIV sicle), Bibliothque de lEcole des Chartes, 158 (2000), pp. 431-442.
42
ANDREA ZORZI
vani et rozzi gathered by Filippo Ceffi from Florence in about

1330.38
These are practical texts without any direct moral purpose.
Their function is to help the citizen use appropriate language on
public occasions in social and political life. Once again, I do not
have the space to go into the texts in greater detail, having done
so on other occasions.39 I shall simply point out that in each one
of these collections there is no lack of examples on how to seek or
offer advice in the event of a vendetta. But then, one has but to
read the titles of the speeches How to seek counsel and help
from friends to exact revenge, How to urge and counsel friends
to exact revenge, What to tell relations when their friends have
been injured, How to console friends in certain sudden occurrences, How to thank friends, and so forth40 to realize that
the practice of vendetta helped to define the individuals identity
and the familys prestige in a political society regulated by relationships of friendship and enmity.
The education of a citizen of the commune included teaching
him how to conduct a vendetta. However, when revenge was exacted, it placed both the life and the emotions of the individuals
and families involved in jeopardy and disturbed the peace of the
city. Therefore, we can easily understand why the moral attitude
toward this practice was ambivalent, a practice to be legitimated
but also to be disciplined; and why the cultural context of values,
rules and tracts that accompanied it over the years lends itself perfectly to being interpreted in terms of conceptual boundaries
rather than in terms of the dichotomous categories of ideals and
reality, theory and practice, and so forth.
38 Matteo dei Libri, Arringhe, ed. by Eleonora Vincenti (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1974); see also Giovanni Fiorentino da Vignano, Flore de parlar, in the same volume, pp. 231-325; Giuliana Giannardi, Le Dicerie di Filippo Ceffi, Studi di filologia italiana, VI (1942), pp. 27-63.
39 Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta, pp. 158-161; Idem, Consigliare alla vendetta, consigliare alla giustizia, forthcoming.
40 Come si dee adomandare consiglio e aiuto agli amici per fare sua vendetta;
Come si dee dire e confortare gli amici a fare vendetta; Come si dee dire a consorti per lamico offeso; Come si debbono confortare gli amici in alcuno subito
avvenimento; Come si debbono ringraziare gli amici, and so forth.
43
Not a single author from the communal period who takes a

positive view of vendetta fails to highlight its negative aspects or
to prefer peace and forgiveness. Numerous examples can be recalled, but I shall mention only one by the modest Florentine merchant, Paolo da Certaldo, whose Libro di buoni costumi still lists
vendetta as one of mans greatest pleasures as late as the middle of
the fourteenth century: The first happiness is getting revenge;
pain is being injured by your own enemy. Yet, he warns of potential consequences: Revenge wilts a mans soul, his body and his
possessions, and In vengeance you obtain the contrary: that is,
sin towards God, blame from men (from wise men, that is), and
more hatred from your enemy.41
A mans social reputation also took debts of vengeance into account and considered it as a dishonor to shirk the obligation of retaliation. This is confirmed, on one hand, by the traditional grassroots wisdom enshrined in proverbs and words of wisdom (ammaestramenti) which never failed to target those who had failed to
avenge injured relatives, such as: It is an insult in itself for those
who are injured not to seek vengeance, Those who fear to seek
vengeance will do much wrong, and so on;42 and on the other, by
the practice of publicly insulting anyone who failed to exact revenge. The best sources are judicial acts, which record testimony
bearing witness to injury, such as those found in Lucca and Pistoia
in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Strong expressions
such as Go, go! Are you not ashamed? Go and avenge the death
of your son who was slain; You know that your father was slain.
Avenge him, because otherwise you must be ashamed to show your
face in public; Foul whore that you are, go avenge your nephews
41 La prima allegrezza si fare sua vendetta: il dolore si essere offeso da uno
suo nimico; per che le vendette disertano lanima, l corpo e lavere; ne le
vendette acquisti il contrario: cio, verso Iddio peccato, dagli uomini biasimo (cio
da savi) e dal nimico tuo pi odio: Paolo da Certaldo, Libro di buoni costumi, in
Mercanti scrittori. Ricordi nella Firenze tra medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. by Vittore
Branca (Milan: Rusconi, 1986), pp. 54, 24, and 75.
42 Ingiuria fa quegli che ingiuria non vendica; chi di vendicarsi teme molti ne
far malvagi: Ammaestramenti degli antichi latini e toscani raccolti e volgarizzati per
fra Bartolommeo da San Concordio, ed. by Vincenzo Nannucci (Florence: Ricordi,
1840), p. 11, and p. 323, passim.
44
ANDREA ZORZI
who were slain and cast down at your doorstep43 hint at the fabric of bitter feeling, rancor and passionate emotion that pitted people against each other even amid the lower classes. They also show
to what degree renouncing vengeance or being unable to exact revenge was dishonorable conduct, an insult to the relatives who
had been victims in the first place; it amounted, as it were, to shirking ones social duty.
The norms regulating the vendetta
Social and political legitimation was echoed by the legality of the
vendetta. If we consider the corpus of Italian communal statutes,
they share one thing: not a single text banned vendetta. Contrary
to what continues to be a widely held view among scholars, namely that vendetta was allowed in situations where it was felt to be
too difficult to stop it and pending its total prohibition,44 civic
laws neither prohibited nor prosecuted it. In fact, vendetta constituted an integral part of the judicial system of the commune and
was built into it. In most cities the statutes make no mention of any
constraints. There are only about ten cities in which the vendetta
43 Vai, vai! Non hai vergogna? Vai a vendicare la morte del tuo figliolo che fu
ucciso; Tu sai che tuo padre fu ucciso. Fanne la vendetta, perch altrimenti ti devi
vergognare ad apparire tra la gente; Troia merdosa che tu sei, vai a fare la vendetta
de nipoti tuoi che ti furon uccisi e gettati sulla soglia di casa: Salvatore Bongi, Ingiurie improperi contumelie ecc. Saggio di lingua parlata del Trecento cavato dai libri criminali di Lucca [1890], ed. by Daniela Marcheschi (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1983); see also Alberto M. Onori, Va fa le vendette tue! Qualche esempio della documentazione sulla pace privata e la regolamentazione della vendetta nella Valdinievole del
Trecento, in Conflitti, paci e vendette nellItalia comunale, pp. 219-235.
44 See for instance Anna Maria Enriques, La vendetta nella vita e nella legislazione fiorentina, Archivio storico italiano, XCI (1933), pp. 187ff. (also for quotations); Nicolai Rubinstein, La lotta contro i magnati a Firenze. II. Le origini della legge
sul sodamento (Florence: Olschki, 1939), p. 43, and p. 51 (lo Stato doveva, nel
processo di consolidamento..., cercare di abolire le istituzioni che si fondavano su di
una concezione del diritto particolaristico e astatale); Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur,
Osservazioni sugli statuti pistoiesi del sec. XII, Bullettino storico pistoiese, XCIX
(1997), pp. 11-12 (mi pare di capire che, a lungo andare, il legislatore abbia cercato
di far prevalere una concezione abbastanza estensiva della violenza pubblica e restrittiva di quella private).
45
is regulated. Here the authorities defined its congruity according

to the people who could adopt it or suffer it; these regulations defined its magnitude and the venues where it might take place, and
so forth. In late twelfth-century statutes such as those of Pistoia in
1180,45 mid-thirteenth century statutes such as those of Bologna
of 125246 or of Parma of 1255,47 and mid-fourteenth century ones
like those of Perugia (1342) or of Spoleto (1347), there is a trend
to consider the practice of retaliation as legitimate. The aim in certain cities was to afford explicit legitimacy to the practice of the
vendetta in order to contain its effects.48
I shall give just one example, the Florentine podests statute
of 1325, which was completed by an additional measure dated
1331. The very title of rubric CXXVI in book III, De puniendo qui
fecerit vindictam nisi in principalem personam, sanctions the right
to vengeance provided it is exacted within circumstances specified
by the statute.49 The injured partys right to revenge was recognized
and, in the event of his death, that right passed to his family; in all
cases it was forbidden to involve non-family members in the act of
retaliation to the point where a persona non coniuncta was to
be considered an assessinus, et ut assessinus puniatur.50 Revenge
could be wreaked on the offending party, of course, or only on his
male descendants, while it was forbidden to exact vengeance from
anyone who had been granted peace by his adversary or who had
caused the injury while defending himself against attack. The goal
of preventing retaliation from spiraling out of control was boost45 See Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta, pp. 166-167.
46 See Ivi, p. 167.
47 See Gabriele Guarisco, Il conflitto attraverso le norme. Gestione e risoluzione
delle dispute a Parma nel XIII secolo (Bologna: Clueb, 2005), pp. 136-140.
48 On the legal regulation of vendetta see Antonio Pertile, Storia del diritto penale, in Idem, Storia del diritto italiano (Turin: Utet, 1892), vol. V, pp. 7-29; Josef
Kohler, Das Strafrecht der italienischen Statuten vom 12.-16. Jahrhundert (Mannheim:
Bensheimer, 1897), p. 18-55.
49 Statuti della repubblica fiorentina. Statuto del podest dellanno 1325, ed. by Romolo Caggese [1910-1921], new edition by Giuliano Pinto, Franceco Salvestrini, and
Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Olschki, 1999), book III, paragraph CXXVI, pp. 251-252;
the law of 2 August 1331 was published by Umberto Dorini in La vendetta privata
ai tempi di Dante, Il giornale dantesco, XXIX (1926), pp. 64-65.
50 Ibid.
46
ANDREA ZORZI
ed by a ban on the relatives of any potential vendetta targets providing them with ausilium consilium et favorem, and by a measure ordering those potential targets physical isolation and banning them from living in neighborhood where their relatives
resided (in sexto, populo vel contrata in qua habitarent coniucti
seu consortes sui) until they had made peace with their adversary.51 There were tough penalties for anyone qui fecerit vindictam... in personam alterius et non illius qui dictam offensionem
manifestam et publicam fecerit, dum ipse principalis offensor
viveret.52 Furthermore, a vendetta was allowed only in retaliation
for injury, mutilation and murder; less serious injuries, on the other hand, could not provide a pretext for seeking a vendetta, being
directly prosecuted by the judges in the same way as threats and
injuries, unless previously settled through a peace accord.
In other words, the vengeance could not exceed the initial offense; it had to be proportionate to it, a death for a death, a serious injury or mutilation for a serious injury or mutilation.53 In acknowledging that it was legitimate to discharge the debt of
vengeance, the laws principle purpose was to avoid any further opportunity for conflict. Peace between the parties was the political
aim of public intervention: an act of concord, promoted by the
podest, always had to follow the exercise of a legitimate vendetta.54 Anyone breaking the peace enforced by the communal judges
was likely to incur tough penalties; it was the job of the podest to
make sure that the vendetta was both legitimate and proportionate to the offense, just as it was his job to mete out punishment and
to promote peace between the parties.55 If the offending party was
sentenced to death or mutilation and the sentence was carried out,
the injured party could not exact revenge since the punishment was
51 See Ivi, pp. 66-67 (further additional measure dated 1334); ASFi, Statuti del
comune di Firenze, 16 (Podests statute of 1355), busta III, par. LXXXVI, fols. 150v153r.
52 Statuto del podest dellanno 1325, busta III, par. CXXVI, p. 251.
53 See the law of 2 August 1331 published in Dorini, La vendetta privata, p.
65; but also Statuto del podest dellanno 1325, busta III, par. XLV, pp. 189-191.
54 Law of 2 August 1331: Dorini, La vendetta privata, p. 65.
55 Ivi, pp. 64-65.
47
considered to be the equivalent of a condecens vindicta;56 but

the podest was forbidden to prosecute anyone who had legitimately exercised his right to vendetta;57 he was not even allowed
to promote a truce in the event of a murder or serious injury, before vengeance had been exacted.58
One might then claim that the communes legislation still was
designed to contain the practice of vendetta. But, if approached
from this angle, the question appears mal-pose. The rationale of
the vendetta is based on retaliating for the offense, hence it can be
configured as a practice of social self-regulation which balances out
mutual offenses and attacks.59 To be sure, the law scrupulously
upheld this aspect. What it tried to prevent, however, were indirect retaliations and acts that exceeded the vendetta, because such
acts could turn a clash between parties into much larger feuds fuelled by spiraling retaliation.
We need to turn the issue on its head. The law of the commune did not prohibit vendetta practices. On the contrary, the legal system incorporated vendetta as an ordinary system of conflict
resolution, recognizing its positive value in limiting the violence
that underlies the system of retaliation, in that it puts in place a
temporary balance in the exchange of injury. Normative regulations also endorsed the intervention and mediation to which the
communes institutions could resort, implementing a refined strategy for interfering in the mechanisms of conflict so as to isolate
and encourage those moments truces, bails, arbitrations, concords that might halt it and direct it towards a peaceful solution, in other words towards a consensual balance between the
parties.60 Precisely this regulation allowed legal thought which
56 See ASFi, Statuti del comune di Firenze, 16, busta III, par. LXXXVI, fol. 151r.
57 See Statuto del podest dellanno 1325, busta III, par. XLV, pp. 190-191.
58 See Statuti della repubblica fiorentina. Statuto del capitano del popolo degli an-
ni 1322-25, ed. by Romolo Caggese (quoted at note 50), book V, par. LXXVI, p. 245.
59 See Raymond Verdier, Le systme vindicatoire, in La vengeance. tudes
dethnologie, dhistoire et de philosophie, ed. by Raymond Verdier, Jean-Pierre Poly,
and Grard Courtois (Paris: Cujas, 1984), vol. I, pp. 11-42.
60 See also Andrea Zorzi, Pluralismo giudiziario e documentazione: il caso di
Firenze in et comunale, in Pratiques sociales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes
de lOccident la fin du Moyen Age, ed. by Jacques Chiffoleau, Claude Gauvard, and
48
ANDREA ZORZI
had long found it difficult to justify with a doctrine a social practice which was not discussed in the tradition of Roman law61 to
recognize its legal validity as a custom regulated by local statutes.
Thus the communal legislation safeguarded the right to vendetta.
The constitutional nature of the conflict
Now that we have noted the proliferation of vendetta, its political
legitimation and legal regulation, we need to understand the rationale underlying this homogeneous process of practices, cultures,
and languages. Above all, we need to investigate the relationship
between conflict and civil coexistence in Italian communal society.
The recognition of social and political relations based on friendship and enmity was the cornerstone of social integration and of
the constitutional solidity of the political order. Educating citizens about vendetta and to an assessment of opportunities for retaliation, as well as encouraging opportunities for settlement and
pacification, gave the parties involved the impetus to promote social balance and political integration. In other words, the culture
of vendetta did not threaten the persistence of the communes institutions. Relationships based on friendship and enmity, properly tempered by the balancing mechanism of vendetta, were accepted as normal factors for social and political integration. The
real threat to the communes institutions was asymmetrical violence and conflict, which failed to satisfy the parties involved and
to generate consensus, leaving one party supreme over another.
Hence the obsession existing inside political discourse concerning
opposite coalitions (colligationes, partes, and so on) aiming to
Andrea Zorzi, Rome: cole franaise de Rome, 2007, pp. 154-167; Zorzi, Pace e
conflitti nelle citt comunali italiane, pp. 276-286.
61 Unless I am very much mistaken, the topic has not yet been investigated by
historians of the law. It probably deserves greater attention, starting for instance with
the opinions voiced by such commentators as Piacentino and Azzone, who sought to
find in the Codex those rubrics (with C.3.27 heading the list: Quando liceat sine iudice unicuique se vindicare) that might impart legitimacy to impunity for killing an outlaw and, by extension, to the practice of exacting vengeance that appeared to them
to be an everyday part of urban social relations.
49
achieve supremacy, and thus, imbalance; and concerning also those

factions that challenged each other for predominance, using the
tool of banishment or magnatizzazione (magnetization) to debar their political enemies.62 The main factor behind the breakdown of civic concord was the mechanism of excluding from office and from citizenship, with its dramatic corollary of having the
enemys houses and property demolished.63
Two examples of violent political struggle in Florence may help
clarify the issue. In the last decade of the thirteenth century a major conflict took place between the Donati, a family of ancient noble lineage, and the Cerchi, a family from the wealthy merchant
class. This enmity turned into a feud with mutual vendettas, all of
which were legitimately carried out.64 But when two broader factions, the Blacks and the Whites, arose from this hostility, mixing
hatred and rancor with factional interests, the conflict began to spiral out of control. Through violence, plunder and political sentences of banishment and exile, the intervention of Pope Boniface
VIII and of Charles of Valois finally allowed the Blacks to gain supremacy over the Whites between 1301 and 1302.65 The logic of
vendetta held out as long as it was able to guarantee a balance, however precarious that balance may have been. But when that balance
was breached, the political game changed, paving the way for one
faction to gain supremacy over the other and to acquire total control over resources.
The contemporary testimony of one of the most influential personalities in Florence at the time, Remigio de Girolami, confirms
this. Remigio was a member of one of the ruling non-noble fami62 On magnatization see Zorzi, Diritto e giustizia nelle citt dellItalia comunale,
pp. 201-202; Klapisch-Zuber, Retour la cite, pp. 275-312.
63 See Giuliano Milani, Lesclusione dal Comune. Conflitti e bandi politici a
Bologna e in altre citt italiane tra XII e XIV secolo (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per
il medio evo, 2003). See also Fabrizio Ricciardelli. The Politics of Exclusion in Early
Renaissance Florence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
64 Andrea Zorzi, La faida Cerchi-Donati, in Zorzi, La trasformazione di un
quadro politico. Ricerche su politica e giustizia a Firenze dal comune allo Stato territoriale (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2008, 2nd edition), pp. 99-124.
65 Isidoro Del Lungo, I Bianchi e i Neri. Pagine di storia fiorentina da Bonifazio
VIII ad Arrigo VII (Milan: Hoepli, 1921, 2nd edition).
50
ANDREA ZORZI
lies in the peoples regime. He was also a reader (lettore) at the

Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and an influential member of the order on the international level.66 He frequently intervened in Florentine public life, both as a public speaker before the city authorities and addressing visiting guests. He
penned monographic treatises commenting on the main developments in the citys political life: the revision of the Ordinances of
Justice (Ordinamenti di giustizia) of 1295, with the incomplete De
iustitia; the Black partys violent acquisition of supremacy in 1301,
with a treatise entitled De bono communi; and the attempt to broker peace between the parties promoted by Pope Benedict XI in
1304, with the De bono pacis of the same year.67
His approach to civic values was pragmatic, taking part in
events personally rather than merely recording them.68 In one of
his public speeches at the end of the thirteenth century, just as the
feud between the Cerchi and the Donati was beginning to take center-stage, Remigio offers an assessment of the quarrels undermining civic concord in Florence. In his view, it is the partes that undermine the communes order in political, social and religious
terms.69 Remigio makes no mention, on the other hand, of the en66 See Sonia Gentili, Girolami, Remigio de, in Dizionario biografico degli ita-
liani (Rome: Istituto dellEnciclopedia Italiana, 2001), vol. LVI, pp. 531-541; Emilio
Panella, Per lo studio di fra Remigio dei Girolami (1319), Memorie domenicane,
n.s., X (1979), pp. 7-313.
67 See Ovidio Capitani, Lincompiuto tractatus de iustitia di fra Remigio de
Girolami (1319), Bullettino dellIstituto storico italiano per il Medio evo e Archivio
Muratoriano, 72 (1960), pp. 91-134; Maria Consiglia De Matteis, La teologia politica
comunale di Remigio de Girolami (Bologna: Ptron, 1977); Emilio Panella, Dal bene
comune al bene del comune. I trattati politici di Remigio dei Girolami, Memorie
domenicane, n.s., XVI (1985), pp. 1-198.
68 Charles T. Davis, Un teorico fiorentino della politica: fra Remigio dei Girolami [1960], in Davis, LItalia di Dante (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), pp. 201 and 228.
69 Fracta est civitas magna in tres partes. Una fractio est quia Guelfi dicunt male
de Ghibellinis quod non cedunt, et Ghibellini de Guelfis quod expellere eos volunt.
Alia fractio est quia artifices dicunt male de magnis quod devorantur ab eis, quod
proditiones commictunt, quod bona inimicorum defendunt, et huiusmodi, et a contrario magni de artificibus quod dominari volunt et nesciunt quod terram vituperant
et huiusmodi. Tertia fractio est inter clericos et religiosos et laycos, quia de laycis dicunt quod sunt proditores, quod usurarii, quod periuri, quod adulteri, quod raptores,
et verum est de multis. Et a contrario layci dicunt quod clerici sunt fornicarii, glutones,
51
mity and vendettas between families; in particular, he omits to

mention those between the Cerchi and the Donati. Why is this?
The question can only be interpreted on the base of what we
have been discussing so far. In a nutshell, vendetta and feud are
symmetrical and promote equity, while factional conflict, banishment and exclusion are asymmetrical and promote imbalance. This
is because vendetta is a consensual conflict. Mario Sbriccoli, a leading historian of criminal law, several years ago urged the inclusion
among the aspects of local community justice, aimed at resolving conflicts between neighbors, all the practices such as vendettas and retaliation, negotiation and accords, transactions and settlements, private mediations and peacemaking, pacts, agreements,
renouncement, forgiveness, and remission.70 In his view, in Italian communes vendetta and peacemaking were the principal forms
of justice, while punishment and ex officio trial seemed not to reflect the concept of justice developed and embraced by the community, other than under special circumstances. Sbriccoli urged
historians to take on board the fact that, when reflecting on
those cultures and on that mentality, we should perhaps call the
former justice, and the latter repression.71
Vendetta belonged to the sphere of shared and negotiated justice, banishment did not. The normative regulations of vendetta
and the provision of opportunities for mediating in a conflict were
designed so as not to disrupt the balance between the parties. They
established prior balanced rules for the political game. That is
why conflict between friends and enemies was part and parcel of
the communes constitution, including its written statutes; it was
part of the dimension of politics that some political scientists call
otiosi, quod religiosi raptores, vanagloriosi, et de aliquibus verum est: Sermon on the
second Sunday of Lent III, Omne regnum in se ipsum divisum desolabitur, quoted in
Davis, Un teorico fiorentino della politica, p. 207; Panella, Dal bene comune al bene
del comune, pp. 116-117.
70 Mario Sbriccoli, Giustizia negoziata, giustizia egemonica. Riflessioni su una
nuova fase degli studi di storia della giustizia criminale, in Criminalit e giustizia in
Germania e in Italia. Pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo ed et
moderna, ed. by Marco Bellabarba, Gerd Schwerhoff, and Andrea Zorzi (BolognaBerlin: il Mulino-Duncker & Humblot, 2001), p. 355.
71 Ivi, pp. 349-350.
52
ANDREA ZORZI
policy, in other words the sphere of hard politics and political

practices.
The legitimation of vendetta prompts us to reconsider the historiographical model that even recently has continued to insist on
describing the Italian commune as a laboratory of Western political republicanism.72 It may well have been so, but alongside the
universe of civic virtues there was plenty of room also for the informal side of politics, for the spread of a policy built on relationships based on friendship and enmity for the honor of individuals and lineages. From this point of view, we may also assign
a different meaning to the development of political discourse, of
a form of politics the public, ideological, spoken face of politics
that focused on the values of the common good, concord,
peace, justice, and so forth. If we analyze this vocabulary carefully, we will see that it does not express absolute and shared civic
values, but rather makes partisan ideological claims.73
It was above all the new popular governments that turned
the politics of pacification into the symbol of a renewed ideology
of governance which began to identify the social group of the
milites as being responsible for urban violence. If we glance
through the statutes of communes in the popular period, we
find numerous references to the duty to pacify conflicts. The special laws of the popolo of Perugia, the Ordinamenta populi of 1260,
for instance, obliged judges to act as peacemakers and to maintain
the good and peaceful state of the city;74 the statutes of Verona of
72 See for instance Mario Ascheri, Le citt-Stato. Le radici del municipalismo e del
repubblicanesimo italiani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006); but also the criticisms in Zorzi,
Fracta est civitas magna in tres partes, pp. 64-73.
73 Andrea Zorzi, Bien commun et conflits politiques dans lItalie communale,
in De Bono Communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.), ed. by Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 267-290.
74 Se intromittere de concordiis et pacibus fieri faciendis, so that quod dicte
paces et concordie fiant et penitus compleantur et, remotis seditionibus et discordiis
extirpatis, pax perpetuo vigeat et civitas sine fine perseveret in statu pacificu et tranquillo: see Massimo Vallerani, Mouvements de paix dans une commune du Popolo: les Flagellanti Perouse en 1260, in Prcher la paix et discipliner la socit. Italie,
France, Angleterre (XIIIe-XVe s.), ed. by Rosa Maria Dess (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005),
pp. 342-343, and 349 (also for following quotation).
53
1276 regulated the activities of a committee of boni homines to

end discordias et malivoles quos sciverint. The Pisan legislation
of 1287 obliged the captain of the popolo to weed out conflicts and
enforce concord among the members of the party of the common
people.
Remigio de Girolami, always guided by the Aristotelian belief
that mans every action should be subordinate to the bonum commune of peace,75 was prompted to pen his De bono pacis after the
Black faction rose to supremacy in Florence. He did not write it
in a serene moment of theoretical speculation but in the midst of
a political storm. Remigio stresses the positive value of pacifying
disputing lineages and factions: omnis discordia potest concordari
et omnis inimicitia pacificari, quamcunque sit ex parte unius excellens potentia vel gravis offensa vel diuturna inimicizia.76 Peace
must consist in ordered concord among citizens pro bono communi and thus coincide with action designed to promote pro
bono communis.77 But the shift in meaning that Remigio proposes, so extraordinary in linguistic terms, prompts us to wonder what
commune he is referring to. Or rather, to what political regime he
is referring.
The same applies to the famous fresco cycle that Ambrogio
Lorenzetti painted between 1337 and 1339 in a room in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena a room which, by no mere coincidence, was
known as the Room of Peace.78 The political discourse of its
iconography, in fact, establishes the communes claim to the value
of the common good, to the point of identifying the commune
with it, and in opposition to the attributes of tyranny. Tyranny, of
75 Matthew S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 293-338.
76 Remigio de Girolami, Sermoni sulla pace, in De Matteis, La teologia politica
comunale, p. 77.
77 Ivi, p. 55. On this shift in meaning, see Nicolai Rubinstein, Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of his Time, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed.
by John Rigby Hale, John Roger Loxdale Highfield, and Beryl Smalley (London:
Faber and Faber, 1965), pp. 54-57.
78 See now Patrick Boucheron, Tournez les yeux pour admirer, vous qui exercez le pouvoir, celle qui est peinte ici. Le fresque du Bon Gouvernement dAmbrogio
Lorenzetti, Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales, 60 (2005), pp. 1137-1200.
54
ANDREA ZORZI
course, has to be understood not as an institutional system headed by a signore, but as an abstract form of government, as discussed by Thomas Aquinas. The fresco cycle was commissioned
by the merchant government of the Nine as an ideological manifesto to set against the constant, looming threat of subversion by
powerful social groups, against the never-fully-dispelled threat of
degeneration of a government of the many.79
In conclusion, the notions of collective interest peace, concord, the common good and so on were constantly being reworked by political actors, were frequently shaped to cater to shortterm goals and were invoked to legitimize changes in power structures. In other words, they were not absolute values shared by
everyone; rather, they were ideological tools used to forge a consensus and to undermine an adversarys legitimacy.80 Political culture in Italian communes was thus more complex than a mere laboratory for the incubation of Western political republicanism.
Alongside the politics of values, there was policy shaped by
conflict strategies, and the culture and languages of the vendetta
headed the list.
79 See Nicolai Rubinstein, Le allegorie di Ambrogio Lorenzetti nella Sala della

Pace e il pensiero politico del suo tempo [1997], in Rubinstein, Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Giovanni Ciappelli (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2004), pp. 357-364; Maria Monica Donato, Ancora sulle
fonti del Buon Governo di Ambrogio Lorenzetti: dubbi, precisazioni, anticipazioni,
in Politica e cultura nelle Repubbliche italiane dal Medioevo allEt moderna. Firenze
- Genova - Lucca - Siena Venezia, ed. by Simonetta Adorni Braccesi and Mario Ascheri (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per lEt moderna e contemporanea, 2001),
pp. 72-73.
80 Zorzi, Bien commun, pp. 268-269 and p. 290.
Fabrizio Ricciardelli
(Georgetown University)
VIOLENCE AND REPRESSION IN LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY
In every historical period, as in any society, violence can take many

forms. It can be expressed in revenge and conflict, laws and sentences, words and images. Between the second half of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth, central and northern Italian city-states frequently suffered moments of disruption of
the social peace because of factional battles. Violence became the
language of political resolution, and repression its natural consequence. The good and peaceful state of the community was
achieved through the political use of banishment (a monetary fine),
forced confinement (a political sentence), ammonizione (a warning), or public executions. All those who, due to every sort of
earthly corruption, had contaminated the good government and
the peaceful state had their voices repressed. All over the Italian
peninsula the old consular nobility was divided, and the podest,
a stronger, more impartial executive magistrate, was emerging as
the preeminent figure. Violent attacks began to be organized by
factional leaders who were motivated by a thirst for revenge and
the desire to erase all trace of their opponents power. These violent conflicts represented a political act and, at the same time, an
episode in the bloody struggle between the two opposing parties,
the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The end of the fighting and the
subsequent attacks and massacres announced the triumph of one
faction over the other. Final victory could only be achieved by
those able to conquer the citys strongholds. Wars and insurrections, provoked by an important family or a political party, inevitably produced a monopoly of power maintained by the strength
56
FABRIZIO RICCIARDELLI
of the winner. In this paper I shall examine psychological and social factors that contributed to the rise in violence and repression
in late medieval Italian city-states.1
In a political climate like this, full of violence and hate, communal legislation could not prohibit the practice of vendetta. Political struggles were deeply embedded in the collective mentality
and ingrained habits of the citizenry along with the progressive division of the consular commune. This mentality was the product
of a specific culture based on the practice of blood feuds; the conflicts were the expression of a particular environment that made
and used them as the most efficient instrument for the resolution
of political conflict (fig. 1). In 1939 Gina Fasoli (1905-1992) theorized that in every Italian city-state there are two political parties always scuffling and always ready to turn the whole city upside down.2 She was referring to the case of the Geremei and
Lambertazzi in Bologna, the Ardinghelli and Salvucci in San
Gimignano, the Oddi and Baglioni in Perugia, the Visconti and
Gherardesca in Pisa, the Aigoni and Graisolfi in Modena, the Orsini and Colonna in Rome, the Fieschi and Spinola in Genoa. But
although the Guelphs had won out over the Ghibellines in 1266,
Dante writes that at the end of the 1290s the Guelphs split into
1 David Herlihy, Some Psychological and Social Roots of Violence in the Tus-
can Cities, in Violence and Civil Disorder, pp. 129-154; Daniel Waley, A Blood-Feud
with a Happy Ending: Siena, 1285-1304, in City and Countryside in Late Medieval
and Renaissance Italy: Essays Presented to Philip Jones, ed. by Trevor Dean and Chris
Wickham (London: Hambledon, 1990), pp. 45-53. On the practice of the blood feud,
see Andrea Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in et comunale,
in Le storie e la memoria: In onore di Arnold Esch, ed. by Roberto Delle Donne and
Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2002), pp. 135-170. On city-states
as independent political entities made up of a city and its surrounding contado (subject territory), see Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 3rd edition (London and
New York: Longman, 1988), and Philip Jones, The Italian City-State. From Commune
to Signoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). All these human expressions are bound
to passions, always connected to cultural rules, personal tendencies, and beliefs of societies. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Worrying about Emotions in History, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), p. 842.
2 Gina Fasoli, Ricerche sulla legislazione antimagnatizia nei comuni dellalta e
media Italia, Rivista di storia del diritto italiano, XII (1939), I, pp. 86-133, and II,
pp. 240-309; II, p. 263.
VIOLENCE AND REPRESSION
57
two coalitions: After prolonged discord, theyll come to blood; the

rustic party [the Whites] will chase the other [the Blacks] out with
great offence. But then, within three years, they too must fall and
the other party prevail, using the power of one who tacks his sails3
(fig. 2). This culture of opposing factions given visual form in
paintings by Giotto (1277-1337) (fig. 3) permeates the legislation
of central and northern Italian city-states.4
Late medieval writers make recurrent reference to violence as
a part of a citizens education. From sources, it is evident that
politicians shared, diffused, and accepted the practice of violence
to pacify the political arena. In the set of beliefs of communal citizens, the practice of aggressiveness played a pre-eminent part;5
3 Dopo lunga tencione / verranno al sangue, e la parte selvaggia / caccer laltra con molta offensione. / Poi appresso convien che questa caggia / infra tre soli, e
che laltra sormonti / con la forza di tal che test piaggia: Dante Alighieri, La Divina
Commedia, ed. by Fredi Chiappelli (Milan: Mursia, 1965), Inferno, VI, 6469; all citations of this text are from this edition, cited by canto and line number.
4 Per loro superbia e per loro malizia e per gara dufici, nno cos nobile citt
[Florence] disfatta: Dino Compagni, La cronica delle cose occorrenti ne tempi suoi
(Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1912), book I, chap. 2, p. 8. See also Dante, Inferno, VI, 6075.
5 The history of hate, fear, cruelty and love which easily turn into passion and
lust became one of the keys for reading the cultural settings of societies starting
in 1941, when Lucien Febvre wrote an article in which he theorized that emotional
life [is] always ready to overflow the intellectual life. According to Febvre the associations created by emotions contribute to the building of the languages and the institutions of societies: Lucien Febvre, La sensibilit et lhistoire: Comment reconstituer la vie affective dautrefois?, Annales dhistoire sociale, 3 (1941), pp. 5-20. In
more recent times this approach to the study of history has had renewed success. In
1985 the modernists Peter Stearns and Carol Stearns published in The American Historical Review an article in which the theory of emotionology that is, the fusion of
sociology to psychology as privileged points of observation for the study of history
was developed. On this theme see Peter N. Stearns and Carol Zisowitz Stearns, Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards, American
Historical Review, 90 (1985), pp. 813-836, and Peter N. Stearns and Carol Zisowitz
Stearns, Anger. The Struggle for Emotional Control in Americas History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986). In 2002 Barbara H. Rosenwein wrote an article,
again published in The American Historical Review, maintaining that every culture has
its forms of expressivity, and emotions depend on language, cultural practices, expectations, and moral beliefs: Rosenwein, Worrying about Emotions, pp. 821-845.
In 2008 Carol Lansing theorized that communal societies had their politics conditioned
58
sometime between 1261 and 1291 the judge Bono Giamboni wrote
in his moral treatise Il libro de vizi e delle virt that revenge is the
virtue by which everyone is allowed to vanquish his enemy.6 In
his Tesoretto, Brunetto Latini (c. 1220-1294) commented that all
those who have given offense have to be vigilant and go about the
city with an armed guard.7 And again, underlining the political
abilities of the podest, Brunetto writes in his Tresor, there is no
doubt, as the world says, that he [the podest] knows and wants
to balance judgment, to give justice back its proper political weight,
and to punish all malefactors with the sword of justice.8 The
chronicler Giovanni Villani (1276-1348) obsessively writes of intrigues and discords between opposing families within Florence
(intrigue and discord... among the Adimari and the Tosinghi and
other households)9 (fig. 4).
The Florentine merchant Paolo da Certaldo considers in his Libro di buoni costumi that the prime happiness for a human being
is the practice of revenge.10 Ser Filippo Ceffi, a Florentine notary
of the first half of the fourteenth century, in his Dicerie invites the
rectors of the commune to create peace and concord among citizens by repressing every act of dissent; justice cannot be separatby passions, and that the promulgation and enforcement of the laws in restraint of grief
led medieval communes to a well-ordered state: Carol Lansing, Passion and Order. Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Communes (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 2008).
6 Bono Giamboni, Il libro de vizi e delle virtudi e il trattato di virt e di vizi, ed.
by Cesare Segre (Turin: Einaudi, 1968), XXXVI, i.e., the chapter on Delle schiere della Iustitia e de suoi capitani.
7 Chi ha offeso deve sempre stare allerta e girare per la citt con una guardia
armata: Brunetto Latini, Il tesoretto, ed. by Giovanni Pozzi and Gianfranco Contini, in Poeti del Duecento, ed. by Gianfranco Contini (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi,
1960), vol. II, pp. 168-284.
8 Que vos savez et volez metre jugement en pois, justise a la mesure, et ferir lespee dou droit a la vengence des maufaitors: Brunetto Latini, Tresor, ed. by Pietro
G. Beltrami, Paolo Squillacioti, Plinio Torri, and Sergio Vatteroni (Turin: Einaudi,
2007), III, 77, p. 803.
9 Brighe e discordie [...] tra gli Adimari e Tosinghi e tra altre casate: Giovanni
Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. by Giuseppe Porta (Parma: Guanda, 1990-1991), IX/1, vol.
II, pp. 11-12.
10 La prima allegrezza si fare sua vendetta: Paolo da Certaldo, Libro di
buoni costumi, in Mercanti scrittori, ed. by Vittore Branca (Milan: Rizzoli, 1986), p. 54.
59
ed from revenge, because every citizen is authorized to act violently

(to ask help and advice from your friends on how to carry out your
revenge).11 Edward Muir has shown that feuding persisted until
the early modern age, becoming the principal framework for all social relationships in many parts of the Mediterranean (especially
in mountainous areas as well as regions distant from the political
center of the country or along borders between states).12 Toward
the end of the sixteenth century, Giovanni Botero (1544-1617)
writes in his Della ragion di Stato (1589) that the rich were especially difficult to govern; their luxurious habits and permissive upbringing did not accustom them to self-discipline, and their pride
made them contemptuous of authority. But the poor too he continues did not find it easy to live under the law; their hardships
prepared them for any and all dangers, so that they had almost
nothing to lose by armed revolt.13
The Bible castigated numerous vices, but it singled out pride
and avarice above all others. Christian tradition gave pride and
avarice a pivotal position as driving forces of the worldly city. Augustine insisted on the unbroken relationship between the two,
explaining that the devil had been made to fall by avarice, and that
everyone knows that avarice consisted not only of the love of money, but even more the love of power. This means that for late medieval society pride and avarice were combined, connected, and indivisible (figs. 5 and 6). Among the seven deadly sins, pride in
Greek hubris and in Latin superbia is considered the ultimate
source from which the others arise. In the Divine Comedy Dante
11 E per, messere podestade, il quale siete signore, e a cui sappartiene di fare

giustizia e vendetta, commovete il vostro valore e siate danimo forte: Le dicerie di
ser Filippo Ceffi notaio fiorentino, ed. by Luigi Biondi (Turin: Chirio e Mina, 1825),
p. 60; come si dee adomandare consiglio e aiuto agli amici per fare sua vendetta:
Ivi, p. 27. On Filippo Ceffi and feud as a social practice, see Ivi, pp. 20, 22, 27, 59,
60, 61, 73, 74, 84, and 86.
12 Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 104-114; according to him, famous epicenters were Iceland,
the Scottish Highlands, Gvaudan in France, the island of Corsica, Liguria and Friuli
in Italy, Albania and Montenegro in the Balkans (see pp. 105-106).
13 Del modo di ovviare a romori e a sollevamenti, in Giovanni Botero, Della ragion di stato, ed. by Chiara Continisio (Rome: Donzelli, 1997), book IV, p. 93ff.
60
refers to pride as the love of self perverted to hatred and contempt

for ones neighbor. Everyone in the deeply Christian communal society was well aware of Lucifer and his struggle against God. Everyone was aware that this desire caused his fall and his transformation into Satan. Everyone sensed the story of Lucifer as the quintessential example of pride. To induce feelings of humility, Dante
imagined the penance for those guilty of the sin of pride as being
forced to walk with stone slabs on their backs (figs. 7 and 8). Cupidity avaritia in Latin is a consequence of the rapacious desire for wealth, status, and power. Saint Thomas Aquinas writes
that greed was a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as
much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal
things; in Dantes Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid
face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on
earthly thoughts. Cupidity defines other examples of greedy behavior: disloyalty, deliberate betrayal or treason (especially for personal gain). Furthermore, greed inspired scavenging and the hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means
of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority. Such misdeeds
included simony, by which one profits from the church. The abuse
of power was the worst vice for all those holding public offices.14
14 According to the bibliography, pride diminishes in the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries and vanishes in the fourteenth century (on this, see Lester K. Little, Pride
Goes Before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom, The American Historical Review, 76 [1971], pp. 20-21). The sources show that pride and avarice
are both quoted as the main causes of social disorder. On the seven deadly sins i.e.,
wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony see Morton W. Bloomfield, The
Seven Deadly Sins. An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special
Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State College
Press, 1952); John Bossy, Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,
in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 214-234; and Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I sette vizi
capitali. Storia dei peccati nel Medioevo (Turin: Einaudi, 2000). Samuel Kline Cohn Jr.
has recently posited that humanist works of the fifteenth century had not anticipated Calvinist ideals of seventeenth-century English preachers and other thinkers in
praise of the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. In the work of these fifteenthcentury thinkers, like their less famous contemporary testators, the utility of wealth
and the splendor of objects and possessions not exchange value was extolled:
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., Renaissance Attachment to Things: Material Culture in Last
61
In the collective imagination of late medieval authors, avarice

and pride were considered the main causes of civic conflict. They
could be elaborated in various ways according to the situation and
erudition of the writer, but they were universally perceived as the
main threat for proper management of the bonum commune (i.e.,
good government). The Ghibelline notary and chronicler Giovanni
da Cermenate (Milan c. 1280-c. 1344) writes in his Historia de situ
Ambrosianae urbis et cultoribus ipsius (covering the period from the
origins of Milan to 1314) that pride and avarice brought about the
schism of the Della Torre family of Milan.15 A reflection on pride
and avarice, certainly influenced by Sallusts analysis of Roman
corruption, influenced the writings of Albertino Mussato (12611329) in identifying avaritia as the prime corrosive force in Paduan society.16 At the end of the thirteenth century, the anonymous
chronicler of the Storie pistoresi attributes the disastrous division
in Padua of the Guelph party to the pride (ambition) and avarice
of two different branches of the Cancellieri family: and in the city
or the countryside there was no one else as great as they whom they
[the Cancellieri family] did not subjugate.17
Similarly, Dino Compagni (c. 1255-1324) showed the division
of the Florentine Guelphs into the Blacks and the Whites to be
caused by the pride of the Donati and the wealth of the Cerchi.
Giovanni Villani inveighed against the two wealthy families among
the ranks of evil citizens who have corrupted and depraved the
whole world with false customs and false gain. Compagni defines
the Donati as noblemen and warriors, but not of outstanding
Wills and Testaments, under review by the Economic History Review. I would like
to thank Sam Cohn for letting me read the article before publication.
15 Giovanni da Cermenate, Historia Iohannis de Cermenate, notarii Mediolanensis, de situ Ambrosianae urbis et cultoribus ipsius et circumstantium locorum ab initio
et per tempora successive et gestis imp. Henrici VII, ed. by Luigi Alberto Ferrai (Rome:
Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 1889), p. 26.
16 Albertino Mussato, De Traditione Patavii ad Canem Grandem, Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores, X (Milan, 1727), col. 715.
17 E per loro grandigia e ricchezza montano in tanta superbia che no era nessuno s grande n in citt n in contado che non tenessero al disotto: Storie pistoresi, ed. by Silvio Adrasto Barbi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Vol. XI, part 5 (Citt di
Castello: Lapi, 1925), p. 3.
62
wealth,18 and the Cerchi as great businessmen and very rich merchants but soft and unsuspecting, boorish and ungrateful, people who in a short time had come into great wealth and power.19
At a public dance celebrating May Day, Dino Compagni reported
that gangs of young men of two factions traded insults and blows
(fig. 9). Pride and wealth were again turning rivalry into open war.
The blow, he reports, caused the destruction of our city, because it increased the great hatred among the citizens.20 When
Dante asks in the third circle of the Inferno what were the reasons
for Florentine discord, the answer Three sparks that set on fire
every heart / are envy, pride, and avarice21 (fig. 10).
Between 1404 and 1405 the Florentine Dominican friar later cardinal Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) viewed social disorder as rooted in the dishonesty, greed, and ambition of individual
citizens. These vices have for Dominici both psychological and social dimensions: There is no justice, but deceit, force, money and
factional and family ties; all the books of law can be burned.22 At
the end of the fifteenth century Francesco Patrizi of Siena analyzed
civic vices, describing the citizens behavior, and considered pas18 Gentili uomini e guerrieri e di non soperchia ricchezza: Giovanni Villani,
Nuova cronica, IX/39, vol. II, p. 63.
19 Di grande affare, ricchissimi mercatanti che la loro compagnia era de le maggiori del mondo; uomini erano morbidi e innocenti, salvatichi e ingrati, siccome genti venuti di piccolo tempo in grande stato e podere: Villani, Nuova cronica, IX/39,
vol. II, p. 63. La gente nova e i subiti guadagni /orgoglio e dismisura han generata,
/ Fiorenza, in te, s che tu gi ten piagni (New people, and sudden profits / Have
produced pride and excess, / Florence, in you, so that already you are weeping over
it): Dante, Inferno, XVI, 73-75.
20 Il quale colpo fu la distruzione della nostra citt, perch crebbe molto odio
tra i cittadini: Dino Compagni, Cronica, ed. by Isidoro del Lungo (Citt di Castello:
Lapi, 1916), book I, chap. 22, p. 69.
21 Superbia, invidia e avarizia sono / le tre faville channo i cuori accesi: Dante,
Inferno, VI, 74-75.
22 La quale [iustizia] oggi sbandita per simili difetti delluniverso mondo; e
non altro iustizia che inganni, forza, danari e amicizia, o parentado; tutti gli altri libri di ciascuna legge si possono abbruciare: Giovanni Dominici, Regola del governo
di cura familiare, ed. by Donato Salvi (Florence: Garinei, 1860), p. 178. On Dominici see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular
Preachers. Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).
63
sions as elements making up the human temperament. These unsettling perturbations included many emotions anger, irascibility, volatility, hate, discord, desire and vices such as lust, pride,
and avarice. According to Patrizi, violence is the consequence of
these civic vices. It is caused by arrogance and social stratification;
both affect the temperament of the citizen and threaten the reign
of reason in the human soul.23
Numerous were the ways to send messages to legitimize political choices in the name of the common good and the peaceful
state of the community. The Guelph regimes discredited the Ghibellines (as a consequence of the defeat of Benevento in 1266) as
being guilty of having committed crimes against humanity, the
Church, and the Christian community; the popolo demonized the
magnates (as a consequence of the writing of the Ordinances of Justice of 1293) as ferocious and rapacious beasts able to corrupt
with their social behavior the sacred space of city life. The Florence State Archive records many sentences of heresy against Ghibellines, who were treated as heretics and public enemies of the
Holy Church of Rome, so that they could be punished as oppo23 Hac animi perturbatione quicumque civis laborat, inutilis est reipublicae, et
in hominum coetu importunus habetur. Dissidet sequidem ab aliis, nemini cedit, omnemque humanam societatem dirimit, principum aulas perturbat, seditionibus ac
partibus omnia inficit. Hinc conspirationes coniurationesque oriuntur, hinc caedes,
direptiones, veneficia, et pestes illae teterrimae, quae status omnes publicos privatosque labefactare soleant (Whatever citizen labors under this perturbation of the
soul [the vice of discord] is useless to the commonwealth and is recognized as disruptive in human assemblies. He disagrees with others; he gives in to one; he destroys
all human society; he creates disorders in the halls of princes; and he corrupts all
things with quarrels and divisions. From this arise plots and conspiracies, murders,
destruction, poisonings and those black plagues, which are wont to undermine all
public and private establishments): Francisci Patricii senensis de regno et regis institutione libri IX (Paris: Aegidium Gorbinum, 1567), p. 123. This theory was influenced
by Brunetto Latini, who wrote that like the world itself, the human personality is composed of four elements that is, hot, cold, dry, and moist and that the various combinations of these elements produce the four classical psychological types: phlegmatic,
sanguine, choleric, and melancholic (Autresi en sont complexions le cors des homes
et des bestes et de touz autres animaus, car en eaus a .iiii. humors: colera, qui est
chaude et seche; fleume, qui est froide et moiste; sanc, qui est chaut et moiste; melancolie, qui est froide et seche: Brunetto Latini, Tresor, ed. by Beltrami et. al., book
1, chap. 99, p. 126.
64
nents of the state.24 Heresy charges justified the winners appropriation of ecclesiastical offices and substantial property. The
charge of heresy in some cases could trigger the judicial procedure
of banishment, proclaimed by the secular authority on the recommendation of the bishop of the city. When this happened, the
heretic, if he had not already fled, was arrested within eight days
of recognition of his guilt, prevented from having a defense lawyer,
and deprived of the right to produce witnesses during the trial. In
the 1330s the Florentine Republic created a magistracy composed
of twelve citizens whose task was to guarantee the arrest of the
heretics or the execution of their death sentence. In Milan heresy
was assimilated to necromancy and to witchcraft, making it punishable by death by fire, as is evident in the recorded acts of the
podest relative to the years between 1385 and 1429. Heresy
charges had little foundation in religious differences, and were instead trumped up by the men in power to punish political oppo24 The origin of the word heresy is from Latin haeresis, meaning doctrine or
philosophical school. However, during the Middle Ages the meaning of this word
became derogatory and was connected to a small religious group distinct from a larger one, united by a particular set of beliefs and practices, the secta. This term meant
treason to God, the worst offense against Christian society. Heretics were those who,
while keeping the outward appearance of Christian religion, pursued false opinions
from a desire for human approval, earthly reward, or worldly pleasures. This contamination, this infection from which true believers had to protect themselves, threatened the very foundation of the Church, papal authority, and Guelph and popular
communes. The idea of contamination and infection comes from the early Middle
Ages: see, for instance, Gregory the Great (pope from 590 to 604), in his Moralia,
the great commentary on the book of Job, where the fallen angel is considered the
alienus, the alien or stranger par excellence (Moralia, XII, 36, 41). The fallen angel is
the first among those who were alienated from God and from the divine order; and
the outsider, Gregory stresses, always displays malignity (Quis vero alienus nisi apostata angelus vocatur?: Job, XV, 19). Following the Scriptures, Gregory teaches in the
same treatise that Christians are only wayfarers on this earth (viator, peregrinus), on
their way to their true that is, heavenly homeland (Moralia, XXXIV, 3, 6). According to Gregory the Greats mystical interpretation, Babylon is the city of confusion which generates the sterile mind of those who are not disposed to the order
of the right life (et quia Bablyon confusion interpretatur: Moralia, VI, 16, 24).
Alienation is essentially a failure to love God and a refusal to adhere to the order
which he has given; it is something very evil and to be avoided at all costs, as evidenced in Gerhart B. Ladner, Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order, Speculum,
42 (1967), pp. 233-259.
65
nents, being used as political weapons. Heresy in the society of the

communes was not a simple matter of religious belief, but became
a part of the power struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.25 It is not difficult to imagine that anyone facing such a
charge would have tried to escape, thus admitting his guilt. In case
of imprisonment, this would have automatically led to the death
sentence and the destruction of his goods.26
Even when at the end of the thirteenth century the popolo took
control of the government in many cities of central and northern
Italy, politics continued to be led by the criteria of opposing factions. Public life demanded extended political rights to the popolo, and the communal leadership continued to develop the culture of opposites, marginalizing the old aristocratic nobility from
public offices. Popular forces now conflicted with the nobility, targeting the wealth and social behavior of the traditional urban and
rural aristocracy. The popolo was authorized to discredit the magnates; it used the metaphor of the wolf and the lamb, identifying
wolves as aggressive, ferocious and rapacious animals that corrupted the sacred space of the city-state. Because of their social behavior and inability to respect the good and peaceful state of the
city, magnates could be banished from public offices. Through this
campaign of discrediting, the new regime of the rich merchants developed a political ideology of justice based on social contrast, discriminating against all those who had controlled the state from the
beginning of its communal political life. This campaign against the
magnates legitimized for the popolo this form of social abuse.27 It
25 In 1283, i.e., nineteen years after his death, Farinata degli Uberti, the most famous character of his lineage, was condemned for heresy along with his wife, Adaleta;
his body was exhumed and burned, his ashes scattered, and his properties confiscated
and destroyed: Nicola Ottokar, La condanna postuma di Farinata degli Uberti, in
Idem, Studi comunali e fiorentini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1948), pp. 115-123.
26 The anthropological view of heresy has been studied by Carol Lansing, Medieval Heresy: An Anthropological View, Social History, vol. 11, no. 3 (1986), pp. 345362.
27 Fabrizio Ricciardelli, Lupi e agnelli nel discorso politico dellItalia comunale, in The Languages of Political Society. Western Europe, 14th-17th Centuries, ed.
by Andrea Gamberini, Jean-Philippe Genet, and Andrea Zorzi (Rome: Viella, 2011),
pp. 269-285.
66
is curious to note that Remigio dei Girolami (1247-1319) likened

the Ghibelline to the lion, the symbol of Florentine power, and the
Guelph to the calf, because in Dantes time they were the winners
in the political arena, and the calf is a sacrificial animal; the artisans were likened to sheep, innocent and useful because without
any political weight28 (fig. 11).
Every form of repression implies the mutual acceptance, by
members of a community, of the legitimization of the office which
is doing the repressing.29 Repression is connected to perception of
the city as a sacred space, and the idea of sacred is bound to the
citizens perception of inside as the town center (inviolable) and
outside as the periphery (where the demons were). The city was
always understood to be a community circumscribed within its
own physical and institutional space. The natural condition was to
live where one was born, where the tombs of ones ancestors were
housed and protected by the walls, dwelling within the context of
a community of neighbors united by ties of kinship and proximity. Like pilgrims, those who were forced outside their homeland
were pushed and pulled across a world as changeable as their own
condition. Those who suffered political exclusion were the result
of individual or group negation of the dominant order, the accepted norms of coexistence with the laws in force. People forced
into exile lived far from their own soil or their own land, beyond
the confines of their homeland. The widespread practice of pushing rivals and enemies to the edges of society was meant to force
them outside their consciousness and sacred life30 (fig. 12).
A city was a defined physical space, usually marked out by city
walls, which in its aggregation of structures contrasted with the surrounding countryside devoted to farming. It was also a legal space,
a place where certain statutes applied, certain legal privileges pertained, and certain jurisdictional rights were exercised. It was fur28 Charles T. Davis, An Early Florentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio dei
Girolami, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 104 (1960), p. 667.
29 This concept is bound to the idea of justice people had in this period; see
Samuel Youngs Edgerton, Jr., Icons of Justice, Past and Present, 89 (1980), p. 25.
30 Fabrizio Ricciardelli, Introduzione, in I luoghi del sacro. Il sacro e la citt fra
Medioevo ed Et moderna (Florence: Mauro Pagliai Editore, 2008), pp. 11-18.
67
thermore a social space, a locus for persistent and frequent interactions that created a sensibility about who was a member of the
community and who was an outsider. In addition, it was an idea,
a place identified by a name and symbols that elicited a sensibility manifested as civic virtue. The city was a mystic body, a place
that made possible a politicized community of people, who shared
the same values respecting its sacred laws. The idea of civitas was
a spiritual dimension, and citizens of the commune perceived it as
divine. They searched through Scriptures and the patristic commentaries to find evidence of the City of God and to absorb the
idea of the New Jerusalem. Cities became places where they should
but did not test their moral attitude or learn to subordinate selfishness and pride to the so-called Common Good (bonum commune).31
Cities were perceived to be communities that were like vicars
of God, with the same authority reserved to the emperor. The experiment of the communal city-states bound forever the idea of the
urban space to the idea of Pythagorean harmony, to the earthly
form of the music of the spheres. Being an enemy of this harmony, promoted and developed by communal values, was understood
to be a clear violation of natural as well as civic law, so that city
governments were authorized to prevent and punish wrongdoers
by means of criminal justice. The sacredness of the city space was
counterbalanced by the constantly recurring phenomenon of the
31 All those who were considered enemies of the bonum commune could be persecuted by the community itself. All those who committed crimes associated with the
holding of public office, with intrigues and sedition against the commune and with
debt legitimized the community to persecute them. Every citizen belonged to a state
which could prosecute its political enemies, with the aim of compensation, securing
reparation of an economic sort (fine) or of a physical nature (death sentence). Those
who were considered enemies of the community could be likened to those sentenced
for crimes. The denial of civic status sanctioned by statutory regulations was so farreaching in such cases that if someone who was subject to a ban for political offences
was murdered while in prison by one of his fellow prisoners, the crime was allowed
to go unpunished. Many sentences provide further evidence of the harsh treatment
reserved for traitors to the state: monetary fines and death sentences carried out in
the normal way were not the worst punishments captured refugees had to fear; some
had to undergo particularly humiliating sorts of execution, such as being dragged behind a mule until dead: Ricciardelli, The Politics of Exclusion, pp. 30-31.
68
division of urban oligarchies. New political landscapes were always the expression of oligarchic divisions which caused civil battles and violence. Marginalization of political opponents became
a constant form of repression in city-states. During the thirteenth
century, and for extended periods of time in the two centuries that
followed, violence and repression were a part of everyday life and
public psychology.
69
1.
Fig. 1. This miniature reveals the social tension caused by the denial of power
between socioeconomic groups in 1177 Florence. A few years later (Easter 1215),
chroniclers explain the birth of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Miniature from the Cronica of Giovanni Villani, mid-fourteenth century. Vatican
Library, Chigi Manuscript, fol. 64r (I. VI, 9).
70
2.
Fig. 2. The incident when Ricoverino dei Cerchis nose was severed on the day of
Calendimaggio (May Day) in 1300.
Library, Chigi Manuscript, fol. 164r (I. IX, 39).
71
3.
Fig. 3. Giotto di Bondone (b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Florence)
The Expulsion of the Demons from Arezzo
Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi (before 1300).
This is the tenth of the twenty-eight scenes of Legend of Saint Francis. During the
civil war in Arezzo, St. Francis saw demons over the city. He called upon a brother
of his order, Sylvester, to drive them out. The picture area is dominated by the
architecture of the city, which is divided from the rest of the world by a crack in
the earth, and by the towering church building. Giotto portrays the saint deep in
prayer in front of the latter. His strength seems to pass to Brother Sylvester, who
raises his hand commandingly in the direction of the city of towers. Thereupon
the demons flee, and the citizens can return to their business in peace they can
already be seen at the city gates.
72
4.
Fig. 4. Aristotles Book II on vices and virtues, translated by Brunetto Latini.

Miniature.
Master and pupils. Master seated at desk with a book. Pupils, some tonsured,
seated before him.
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Shelfmark: MS. Douce 319.
73
5.
Fig. 5. Sassetta (b. 1394, Siena, d. 1450, Siena).
The Ecstasy of St Francis (1437-44)
Tempera on wood, 190 x 122 cm
Villa I Tatti, Settignano.
Sassetta represents Saint Francis gazing upward on the three mendicant Virtues
of Chastity (a white-clad winged personification holding a lily), Obedience
(bearing a yoke), and Poverty (wearing a patched gown). Sassetta represents saint
Francis trampling the three medieval Vices of Lust, Pride, and Avarice.
74
6.
Fig. 6. Sassetta (b. 1394, Siena, d. 1450, Siena).
The Ecstasy of St Francis (1437-44) (detail).
Tempera on wood, 190 x 122 cm Villa I Tatti, Settignano (detail).
Saint Francis is trampling the three medieval Vices of Lust, Pride, and Avarice.
7.
Fig. 7. Orcagna (b. ca. 1308, Florence, d. ca. 1368, Florence).
Hell
Fresco (14th century) Santa Maria Novella (Florence, Italy).
8.
Fig. 8. Orcagna (b. ca. 1308, Florence, d. ca. 1368, Florence)

Hell (detail on Avars and Spendthrifts).
Fresco (14th century) Santa Maria Novella (Florence, Italy).
75
76
9.
Fig. 9. The Podest Cante dei Gabrielli of Gubbio in the act of passing a sentence
of death by decapitation on some members of the White Guelfs.
Library, Chigi Manuscript, fol. 174r (I. IX, 59).
10.
Fig. 10. Giotto di Bondone (b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Florence).

Last Judgment (detail) 1306.
Fresco Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua.
77
78
11.
Fig. 11. Florence, 18 January 1293.
First folio of the Ordinamenta Iustitiae (Ordinances of Justice).
The Ordinances of Justice were promoted by Giano della Bella ad
fortificationem, augumentum et conservationem felicium Ordinamentorum
iustitie actenus editorum. The Ordinances of Justice are an official work by means
of which the political power of the mercantile and entrepreneurial middle class
was consolidated and the reins of power passed into the hands of the seven major
guilds.
79
12.
Fig. 12. Domenico di Michelino (b. 1417, Florence, d. 1491, Florence)

Dante and the Three Kingdoms (1465).
Oil on canvas
Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Florence.
In 1465 Domenico di Michelino represents the three kingdoms as follows:
Purgatory in the centre background; Hell at left; the heavenly City at right.
Ilaria Taddei
(Universit de Grenoble II)
RECALLING THE AFFRONT: RITUALS OF WAR IN ITALY

IN THE AGE OF THE COMMUNES
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the principal cities of

northern and central Italy, and Tuscany in particular, in their continuing attempts to expand their territory experienced a spiral of
violence and war that was often resolved by force of arms. As is
well-known, Federico IIs appearance on the scene intensified the
already acute conflict among the cities, due both to concrete economic interests and reasons of prestige as well as to a choice of
sides that transcended the local dimension. The cities faced off
against each other in a string of more or less long and bloody military clashes marked by a pronounced desire for revenge in which,
among other things, the citys identity was constantly reaffirmed.
For my part, however, I do not intend here to examine scenarios of destruction, plunder, raids, killing, and dismembered
bodies; these are not the aspects I want to emphasize. Rather, I
would like to call attention to the violence inflicted by means of
precise rituals of insult that, carried out in front of the walls of the
subjugated city, unequivocally displayed and confirmed the enemys defeat. These are a wide range of rituals of derision having
more or less recondite and highly sophisticated meanings, such as
the striking of coins out of spite, the vesting of fake knights, the
execution of animals, and the running of ignominious races, ritual games aimed overall at inflicting on the defeated enemy a humiliation manifested ad aeternam memoriam, that did not necessarily entail the use of destructive force. We could say that this was
a sublimated form of violence, unquestionably less direct but
82
ILARIA TADDEI
nonetheless not innocuous, much less lacking in communicative

charge or effectiveness.1
However, by identifying these ceremonies of insult bearing an
eminently symbolic value, we do not want to offer a dichotomous interpretation of violence, opposing its ritual form to the
more directly physical type. This perspective, besides being unconvincing from the anthropological standpoint, would be profoundly anachronistic in terms of conflicts in general, and even
more so for the wars of the Italian communes, in which the two
dimensions appeared more or less indivisible.2 Aldo Settia has
1 Ren Girards interpretation counterpoising the generalized violence of the

Middle Ages to the ritualized violence of the early modern age has been superseded
by now. However, his observations on the dimension of ritual violence are still valid:
Le rite est violent, certes, mais il est toujours violence moindre qui fait rempart contre une violence pire. Ren Girard, La violence et le sacr (Paris: Grasset, 1972), especially p. 155. On the still-lively debate on the nature and function of the rituals that,
since the 1960s, Max Gluckman and Victor W. Turner considered to be constitutive
elements of the social order, see Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1965); Victor W. Turner, The Ritual
Process. Structure and Anti-Structure (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969);
Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual. Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Idem, Rituels et institutions, Commentaire, in Les tendances actuelles de lhistoire du Moyen ge en France
et en Allemagne, ed. by Jean-Claude Schmitt, Jacques Revel and Otto Gerhard Oexle
(Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003), pp. 265-266; Gerd Althoff, Les rituels,
in Les tendances actuelles, pp. 231-242; Gert Melville, Linstitutionnalit mdivale
dans sa pluridimensionnalit, in Les tendances actuelles, pp. 243-264; Claude Gauvard, Le rituel, objet dhistoire, in Les tendances actuelles, pp. 269-81. For a synthetic approach to this question, see also Ilaria Taddei, Le rituel et ses approches,
in Le destin des rituels. Faire corps dans lespace urbain, Italie-France-Allemagne. Il destino dei rituali. Faire corps nello spazio urbano, Italia-Francia-Germania, ed. by Gilles
Bertrand and Ilaria Taddei (Rome: cole franaise de Rome, 2008), pp. 1-11.
2 Among the many recent studies on violence, conflicts and various strategies of
pacification, see at least: Claude Gauvard, Violence et ordre public au Moyen ge,
(Paris: Picard, 2005); Joseph Morsel, Violence, in Dictionnaire du Moyen ge, ed.
by Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera and Michel Zink (Paris: PUF, 2002), pp. 14571459; Nicolas Offenstadt, Faire la paix au Moyen ge. Discours et gestes de paix pendant la guerre de Cent Ans (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007); David Nirnberg, Violence et minorits au Moyen ge (Paris: PUF, 2001); Le reglment des conflits au Moyen ge,
XXXIe Congrs de la S.H.M.E.S, Anger, June 2000 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001); Prcher la paix et discipliner la socit. Italie, France, Angleterre (XIIIeXVe sicle), ed. by Rosa Maria Dess (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Jean-Claude Maire
RECALLING THE AFFRONT. RITUALS OF WAR IN ITALY
83
brought out how in the sieges of enemy cities the degree of material destruction, often emphasized in the reports of chroniclers, did
not always correspond with the facts, and in this sense he has underlined the importance of psychological pressure, which could,
to a certain extent, substitute for destructive force.3 This aspect has
been confirmed also by the work of Anna Benvenuti on the remembrance and rituality of war in thirteenth-century Tuscany, in
which the violence of the insult appears as an integral part of medieval combat.4
Richard Trexler, as early as 1984, in a highly innovative contribution in terms of its approach to the topic of ignominious races
run by the prostitutes and rogues who followed the armies of the
communes, has pointed out the pertinence of the interpretative dichotomy of honor and dishonor, observing that the humiliation inflicted on the adversary by means of these contests was a source
Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens. Guerre, conflits et socit dans lItalie communale, XIIe-XIIIe sicles (Paris: ditions de lE.H.E.S.S., 2003); lisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Enfers et paradis. LItalie de Dante et de Giotto (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), especially pp.
85-162; Conflitti, paci e vendette nellItalia comunale, ed. by Andrea Zorzi (Florence:
Firenze University Press, 2009), Reti Medievali E-Book, 14; Andrea Zorzi, Conflits
et pratiques infrajudiciaires dans les formations politiques italiennes du XIIIe au XVe
sicle, in Linfrajudiciaire du Moyen ge lpoque contemporaine, Actes du colloque
de Dijon 5-6 Octobre 1995 (Dijon: ditions Universit de Dijon, 1996), pp. 19-36;
Idem, Rituali di violenza, cerimoniali penali, rappresentazioni della giustizia nelle citt italiane centro-settentrionali (secoli XII-XV), in Le forme della propaganda politica nel Due e nel Trecento, ed. by Paolo Cammarosano (Rome: cole franaise de Rome,
1994), pp. 395-425.
3 Aldo A. Settia, Rapine, assedi, battaglie. La guerra nel medioevo (Rome and
Bari: Laterza, 2002), pp. 133-138. On this aspect, see Gian Maria Varanini, I riti dellassedio. Alcune schede dalle cronache tardomedievali italiane, Reti Medievali Rivista, 8 (2007), p. 2.
4 Anna Benvenuti, Allora fu battaglia aspra e dura. Memoria e ritualit della
guerra nella Toscana del Dugento, in Guerra e guerrieri nella Toscana medievale, ed.
by Marco Tangheroni and Franco Cardini (Florence: EDIFIR 1990), pp. 199-221; Eadem, Il sovramondo di Campaldino, in Il sabato di San Barnaba, 11 giugno 12891989, ed. by Ugo Barlozzetti (Milan: Electa, 1989), pp. 73-79, especially p. 74: Con
una sconfitta si perdono castelli e territori strategici, uomini e beni, ma si perde anche la faccia, il decoro, la credibilit, il prestigio; e questo ultimo aspetto quello pi
difficile a tollerare, perch si esprime in una sorta di liturgia dellinsulto che il vincitore non trascura di esercitare pesantemente, fastidiosamente, ai danni dello sconfitto.
84
ILARIA TADDEI
of pride for the winner: thus also the prostitutes and ribalds, protagonists in their own way of these anti-races, contributed to creating the civic dignity of the Commune.5 For her part, Paola Ventrone, taking a different slant, has included the ignominious races
and other ritual practices connected with the subjection of besieged cities in the broader perspective of festive ceremonies and
ludic manifestations aimed at the construction of a civic identity.6
More recently, Gian Maria Varanini has extended the analysis of
siege rituals to the context of central and northern Italian towns
and a broader chronological span, underscoring the significance of
the siege rituals as meaningful evidence of the persistence, in the
course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of elements making up the municipal tradition.7
I do not intend to dwell too long on the description of the various rituals that the cities of Tuscany, and more generally Italy,
staged starting in the early decades of the thirteenth century I
have already done this elsewhere8 but I would like to go more
deeply into the reasons for the emergence of these ceremonies in
the complex dynamic of the conflicts between communes and to
delineate the characteristic traits that have a strong value in terms
of identity. To be sure, from this standpoint as well, we cannot ignore the writings and sensibilities of the chroniclers who, in harmony with the choices made by the winners, establish the code of
insult and ensure that the event will be remembered, taking an active part in the construction of the ritual. As we shall see, however, this choice is above all the expression of the particular substratum of conflict which, in the polycentric fabric of the world of
the communes, constitutes an intrinsic element of civic patriotism
5 Richard C. Trexler, Correre la terra. Collective Insults in the Late Middle Age,
Mlanges de lcole franaise de Rome. Moyen ge. Temps modernes, 96 (1984), p. 869.
6 Paola Ventrone, Le forme dello spettacolo toscano nel Trecento, in La Toscana
nel secolo XIV. Caratteri di una civilt regionale, ed. by S. Gensini (Pisa: Pacini Editore 1988), pp. 497-517.
7 Varanini, I riti dellassedio.
8 Ilaria Taddei, Les rituels de drision entre les villes toscanes (XIIIe- XIVe sicles), in La drision au Moyen ge. De la pratique sociale au rituel politique, ed. by
lisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Jacques Verger (Paris: PUPS, 2007), pp. 175-189.
85
and would reach its most complete form with the advent of the governments of the people.
The first evidence of these rituals appears in Tuscan chronicles
starting in the first decades of the thirteenth century, in keeping
with the rise of the polarization of the two parties of the Guelphs
and Ghibellines in Florentine sources of the late 1230s.9 Giovanni Villani (together with other Florentine and Sienese chroniclers)
reports that in 1233 the Florentine army, after laying siege to the
city of Siena, threw over the city gates numerous stones, and for
more spite and shame heaved donkeys and other filth.10 Starting
from this moment, the launching of animals, especially donkeys,
over the walls of besieged cities became a part of the ritual insults
that spread above all in the context of conflicts between Tuscan
cities.11 After the victory at Campaldino, for example, the Florentine Guelphs threw five donkeys into the walled city of Arezzo,
placing mitres on their heads for the occasion out of spite and reproach towards their bishop.12 This animal was involved in many
gestures of insult and defiance of the enemy: not only were donkeys hurled onto the field of the adversaries but also as we shall
see they were condemned to the scaffold on the walls of the enemy city; they were made to run in ignominious races and utilized
as backwards mounts, a sort of charivari to which the enemy was
subjected.13 This was the fate to which the Florentine ambassadors
9 Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, Religione e politica nella propaganda pontificia
(Italia comunale, prima met del XIII secolo), in Le forme della propaganda, pp. 6383, especially pp. 67-69.
10 Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. by Giuseppe Porta (Parma: Guanda,
1990), I, VII, X, pp. 284-285. See also Cronica di Paolino Pieri fiorentino delle cose
dItalia dallanno 1080 fino allanno 1305 (Rome: Multigrafica, 1975), p. 20; Paolo di
Tommaso Montauri, Cronaca senese conosciuta sotto il nome di Paolo di Tommaso
Montauri (1381-1431), in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV/VI, Cronache senesi, ed.
by Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1931-1939), p. 290.
11 According to Settia, these acts of insult were, among other things, a demonstration of the victors technical abilities, as they were able to hurl heavy animals: Settia, Rapine, assedi, battaglie, p. 135.
12 Villani, Nuova cronica, I, VIII, CXXXII, 604; Marchionne di Coppo Stefani,
Cronaca fiorentina, ed. by Niccol Rodolico, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXX/I
(Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1903), CLXXXI, 65-66.
13 On the symbolism of the ass and its ubiquity in rituals of insult, see Lanimal
86
ILARIA TADDEI
were subjected in 1260 when they came to negotiate terms with

Siena after their defeat at Montaperti: they were forced to mount
on the backs of donkeys and as a greater insult with their face towards the donkeys tail.14 The Cronaca Senese attributed to Paolo di Tommaso Montauri furnishes further details on the scorn
heaped on one of the two Florentine officials:15 not only was his
face turned towards the donkeys rear end, but his hands were tied
to the animals tail, together with the flags and standard of the
Commune of Florence. Accompanying all this was the mockery by
boys, whose aggressiveness soon passed from verbal insults to physical violence. But the boys as the chronicle makes clear were
sent away and the threat thus defused.
This scenario was at the least plausible16 and offered an image
that was easy to read, capable of displaying to everyone the conexemplaire au Moyen ge, Ve-XVe sicles, ed. by Jacques Berlioz and Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1999); Martine Boiteux, Le
feste: cultura del riso e della derisione, in Roma medievale, ed. by Andr Vauchez
(Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2001), pp. 291-315, especially pp. 305 and 311; Taddei,
Les rituels de drision, especially pp. 176-181; Renaud Villard, La queue de lne:
drision du politique et violence en Italie dans la seconde moiti du XVe sicle, in
Ivi, pp. 205-224. Particularly, on charivari, see Claude Gauvard and Altan Gokalp,
Les conduites de bruit et leur signification la fin du Moyen ge: le charivari, Annales E.S.C, XXIX (1974), pp. 639-704; Le charivari, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and JeanClaude Schmitt (Paris: cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, 1981), especially
Carlo Ginzburg, Charivari, associations juvniles, chasse sauvage, pp. 131-140.
14 Perch fusero conosciuti, furo messi a chavallo in su gli asini e quagli havevano rechato la vettovaglia in champo, e stavano per pi vilipendio loro colla faza inverso la coda de lasino: Cronaca senese dei fatti riguardanti la citt e il suo territorio di autore anonimo del secolo XIV, in Cronache senesi, p. 59.
15 Questo era a cavalcioni in sur uno asino col volto verso la coda, co le mani
legate dreto, e le bandiere di Fiorenza e lo stendardo grande del comune di Fiorenza
erano atacate a la coda, co le mani atacate a la coda di detto asino e strascinavansi
per terra, e li fanciulli dicevano al detto anbasciadore: Or vieni a fare el casaro in Camporegi e a metare le signorie in ogni terzo di Siena; e cos landavano dilegiando, e si
no che li omini garivano e scaciavano e fanciulli averebono morto cos el detto anbasciadore: Paolo di Tommaso Montauri, Cronaca senese, p. 216.
16 On violence by children, see Ottavia Niccoli, Compagnie di bambini nellItalia del Rinascimento, Rivista storica italiana, CI (1989), pp. 346-374; Eadem, Il
seme della violenza. Putti, fanciulli e mammoli nellItalia tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome
and Bari: Laterza, 1995), pp. 21-88; Andrea Zorzi, Rituali di violenza giovanile nelle
societ urbane del tardo Medioevo, in Infanzie, ed. by Ottavia Niccoli (Florence:
Ponte alle Grazie, 1993), pp. 185-209.
87
tempt heaped on the poor ambassadors, a ritual that explicitly recalled the criminal proceedings aimed at confirming the infamous
nature of the crime and, in the context of sieges, the significance
of the celebrated gesture of the burghers of Calais. These six townsmen who, at the end of the long siege of 1347, went barefoot in
their shirts with ropes around their necks to meet the victorious
king of England in order to hand over to him the keys of the city
as Jean-Marie Moeglin has demonstrated were not protagonists
of the heroic act of collective sacrifice represented in the monument by Rodin, but performers of a codified gesture of humiliation and penitence (comparable to that of the amende honorable)
testified from as early as the eleventh century: thus a ritual of reparation of wounded honor by publicly offending the enemy.17 Analogous considerations can be made for the punishment inflicted on
the two Florentine ambassadors. Certainly, like the burghers of
Calais, they were pardoned, but the price to pay in any case was
the loss of the honor and dignity of their office, a sort of symbolic death that struck a blow to the heart of their system of identity
values, delegitimizing also the authority of the Commune.
Nonetheless, compared to the humiliation of the rope around the
neck, this ritual, like the others created within the sphere of the
conflicts between Italian cities, presented rather different elements;
in this context, it was the victorious enemy who imposed on the
losers an ignominious practice, the implementation of which did
not in any way interrupt the cycle of revenge. On the contrary, the
sequence of reciprocal insults was fed by perennial remembrance
of the dishonor undergone.
17 As Moeglin notes, Giovanni Villani himself (Nuova cronica, III, XIII, XCVI,
503-508), describing the episode of the burghers of Calais, underscores the humiliating sense of the ritual of the rope around the neck; Villani thus distances himself from
the chronicle by Jean Froissart in which the ritual was presented as a heroic gesture.
Jean-Marie Moeglin, Les bourgeois de Calais. Essai sur un mythe historique (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), especially pp. 70-72; Moeglin, Le Christ la corde au cou, in La
drision, pp. 275-289. On the amende honorable, see also Claude Gauvard, De Grace
especial. Crime, tat et socit en France la fin du Moyen ge (Paris: Publications
de la Sorbonne, 1991); Gauvard, Violence et ordre public; and Mary C. Mansfield, The
Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, New
York: Cornell University Press, 1995).
88
ILARIA TADDEI
This aspect emerges clearly also from the practice of striking

coins for spite during enemy sieges, a ritual of offense that, according to Philip Grierson, spread in the second half of the thirteenth century, starting right in Tuscany.18 The first known instance
of spite-coining dates to 1256: this was a coin minted by the
Florentines on the occasion of their victory over Pisa.19 It is certainly no coincidence that just a few years earlier, in 1252, in the
climate of euphoria aroused by the death of Federico II (who, it
bears repeating, had created his own gold coin, the augustale), the
Florence of the so-called Primo Popolo had minted the famous
gold florin, the pride of the city, which bore on one side the image of John the Baptist and on the other a vermilion lily on a silver field (in 1250, as we know, the Florentine Guelphs, after regaining political power, had inverted the heraldic colors of the
Commune). The spite coin minted in 1256, as Villani reports,
was meant to recall the pine tree, a symbol of male domination,20
that had been cut down on the banks of the Serchio river and then
used to strike the florins.21 The florin coined to humiliate the towns
bitter enemies appeared as a metaphor of future Florentine domination of Pisan territory: with the image of the great pine tree reduced to a clover, the new gold coin would quash the might of the
ancient seafaring republic and affirm Florentine pre-eminence over
all of Tuscany. We have no reason to doubt the doubly humiliating effect of the spite florin that sealed, with a dose of perfidy,
Pisas military defeat and at the same time its loss of pre-eminence
from the monetary standpoint, by now definitively supplanted by
the introduction of the Florentine gold coin.
18 Philip Grierson, Coniazioni per dispetto nellItalia medievale, in Grierson,
Scritti storici e numismatici (Spoleto: CISAM, 2001), pp. 303-316, especially p. 315.
19 Ivi, pp. 304-307.
20 Charles de Mrindol, De lemblmatique et de la symbolique de larbre la
fin du Moyen ge, in Larbre. Histoire naturelle et symbolique de larbre, du bois et
du fruit au Moyen ge, ed. by M. Pastoureau (Paris: Le Lopard dOr, 1993), pp. 10525, especially p. 114.
21 Per ricordanza, quegli che in quello luogo furono coniati, ebbono per contrasegna tra piedi di santo Giovanni quasi come uno trefoglio, a guisa duno piccolo
albero, e de nostri d ne vedemmo noi assai di quelli fiorini: Villani, Nuova cronica,
I, VII, LXII, 355-356.
89
After Florence, other Tuscan cities had recourse to the practice of minting coins out of spite. The Pisans renewed the humiliation inflicted on the people of Lucca in the fall of 1264 when, after sacking the Lucchese countryside, they arrived in front of the
gates and walls of the city; a Pisan chronicle recounts that there,
to perennial memory, in public recognition of our endeavors and
eternal dishonor of our enemies [] we had our two-soldo coins
minted with the emblem of our victorious crowned Eagle.22
Then it was Luccas turn; taking revenge on the Pisans for their
offense, during the siege of the village of Asciano (1268-1269)
they placed on the tower of the castle some mirrors out of spite,23
and in front of the walls of Pisa, they minted their coin for remembrance and shame of the defeated enemies.24 But for the
Pisans, this was not their last, nor their most terrible, humiliation.
Just three years after the bloody battle of Meloria, in 1287, an expedition from Genoa led to a new success at Porto Pisano, and on
that occasion the victorious Genoese minted coins deriding their
rival.25 This was undoubtedly no small insult for the Pisans, who
had already seen a significant reduction in their mercantile activities after this defeat. Not even Genoa the Proud, the city that in
1252, a few months earlier than Florence, had minted its genovino, was exempt from the ritual of ridicule: in 1299, at the end of
the long genoese war with the Republic of Venice, the Venetians
22 Other rituals of mockery ensued: E inoltre facemmo cavalieri molti soldati,
e lanciammo dentro la citt molti quadrelli dalle balestre e molte verghe sardesche,
che uccisero molti di coloro che presidiavano le mura o stavano nella citt, e ci mettemmo a giocare a massascudo e danzammo danze gioiose: Chronicon pisanum,
in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, VI, II (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1930-1936), pp. 112-113,
cited by Grierson, Coniazioni per dispetto, p. 307.
23 Nel detto anno, del mese dagosto, i Lucchesi con giudice di Gallura e cogli
usciti guelfi di Pisa (e di Firenze vandarono XII cavalieri di corredo con CC cavalieri
soldati) andarono ad oste in sul contado di Pisa, e puosonsi al castello dAsciano presso di Pisa a tre miglia, e ebbollo a patti, salve le persone, e tornarono in Lucca sani e
salvi sanza nullo contrasto de Pisani. E per loro dispetto i Lucchesi, preso il castello,
nella maggiore torre feciono mettere pi specchi, perch i Pisani vi si specchiassono:
Villani, Nuova cronica, I, VIII, CXXII, 589. On the meaning of this gesture of derision, see Taddei, Les rituels de drision, especially p. 179.
24 Villani, Nuova cronica, I, VIII, XXXIII, 166.
25 Grierson, Coniazioni per dispetto, pp. 309-310.
90
ILARIA TADDEI
docked in Genoa and there, having raised the flag of Saint Mark,
they minted Venetian coins, and Venetian ducats.26 Later, the Perugians also adopted ritual violence in their victorious campaign
of 1343 against Arezzo, imposing on this city a race run by prostitutes, the flag of Perugia flying from the top of the bell tower and,
inside the cathedral itself, the celebration of a Mass and the minting of Perugian coins.27
Returning to the very lively terrain of the clashes between the
cities of Tuscany, the exchange of ritual insults reached its height
in one of the episodes that pitted Florence against Pisa in a military conflict which broke out in 1362 over issues of tariffs and
trade. In this fight, which ended two years later with the defeat of
the Pisans at Cascina,28 the two traditional enemies exchanged a
long string of acrid ritual insults. After the Florentine victory, that
government in memory of the event had silver coins minted there
bearing an overturned fox underneath Saint John the symbol of
the defeated Pisans.29 The Pisans, when the outcome of the conflict seemed to be turning in their favor, vindicated the affront they
had suffered by minting a coin which had on one side the Virgin
Mary holding the Child, and on the other an eagle with a lion underfoot.30 The lion, which in the heraldic bestiary was always op-
26 Descenderunt super molum Januae, et ibi cuderunt seu percusserunt monetam venetam, et ducatos venetos relictoque ibi fixo vexillo Beati Marci: Lorenzo de
Monacis, Chronicon de rebus Venetis ab U.C. ad annum 1354, ed. by Flaminius Cornelius, XI, 204, cited by Grierson, Coniazioni per dispetto, p. 310.
27 Cronaca della citt di Perugia dal 1309 al 1491, nota col nome di Diario del
Graziani, ed. by Ariodante Fabretti, Francesco Bonaini and Filippo-Luigi Polidori,
Archivio storico italiano, 16 (1850), p. 113.
28 On this war, see Michele Luzzati, Firenze e la Toscana nel Medioevo. Seicento
anni per la costruzione di uno Stato, (Turin: UTET, 1986), pp. 99-100.
29 Paolo Tronci, Annali Pisani di Paolo Tronci rifusi, arricchiti di molti fatti e seguitati fino allanno 1839 da E. Valtancoli Montazio ed altri, 2 vol., (Pisa: Angelo Valenti, 1870), II, 114; see also Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, Cronaca senese attribuita ad
Agnolo di Tura del Grasso detta la cronaca maggiore, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores,
XV/VI, Cronache senesi, pp. 427-428.
30 Tronci, Annali pisani, II, 115-116; see also Donato di Neri, Cronaca senese,
in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV/VI, Cronache senesi, 176-177; Raffaello Roncioni,
Delle istorie pisane, libri XV, Archivio storico italiano, VI (1844), XV, 869; Cronica di Filippo Villani, in Matteo Villani and Filippo Villani, Cronica di Matteo Vil-
91
posed to the eagle, of course represented the defeated Florentine

Guelphs,31 and according to the Pisan chronicler Paolo Tronci
the people met the Florentine prisoners arriving in Pisa with
these mocking words: This is what upside-down foxes are capable of doing.32 As the height of mockery, the Pisans hanged donkeys bearing the names of some of the most illustrious Florentine
magistrates, derided with various synonyms for the animal.33
Here too, this was a case of a codified practice of derision, frequent during Carnival periods, which consisted first and foremost
of debasing the enemy to the status of an ass and placing him on
the same level as the vilest form of bestiality. Moreover, the picture of the animals hanging on the scaffold at the gates of the defeated city could both have a purifying value (as happened during
the public ceremonies attending capital executions) for the purpose
of exorcising the enemys malefic influence, and constitute a clear
death threat.34
In the ensuing days, however, Florence took definitive revenge,
inflicting a harsh defeat on the Pisans which was followed by an
even crueler humiliation, recounted by the chronicler with a sim-
lani a miglior lezione ridotta collaiuto de testi a penna, 5 vols. (Rome: Multigrafica,
1980), V, XI, XCVII, 760; Donato Velluti, Cronica domestica, ed. by Isidoro del Lungo and Giuseppe Volpi (Florence: Sansoni, 1914), pp. 232-233.
31 On the lions role in heraldry, see Michel Pastoureau, Une histoire symbolique
du Moyen ge occidental (Paris: Seuil, 2004), pp. 49-64.
32 Tronci, Annali pisani, II, 116.
33 Ivi, pp. 115-116. On this aspect, see also Roncioni, Delle istorie pisane, pp.
867-869; Cronica di Filippo Villani, p. 286; Donato di Neri, Cronaca senese, pp.
176-177; and especially Donato Velluti, Cronica domestica, pp. 232-233: messer
Brunello degli Strozzi, messer Asino de Ricci, messer Somaio degli Albizzi e messer
[...] de Medici.
34 On the ceremonies of capital executions and their meaning, see Andrea Zorzi,
Le esecuzioni delle condanne a morte a Firenze nel tardo Medioevo tra repressione
penale e cerimoniale pubblico, in Simbolo e realt della vita urbana nel tardo Medioevo, Atti del V Convegno Storico Italo-Canadese, Viterbo 11-15 May 1988, ed. by
Giuseppe Lombardi and Massimo Miglio (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 1993), pp. 1-60 ; Zorzi,
Rituali di violenza, cerimoniali penali, pp. 395-425; Luigi Lazzerini, Le radici folkloriche dellanatomia, Quaderni storici, 85 (1994), pp. 192-233; Filippo Fineschi,
Cristo e Giuda: rituali di giustizia a Firenze in et moderna (Florence: Alberto Bruschi,
1995), especially pp. 244-261. On the purification value of this ritual, see also Taddei,
Les rituels de drision, especially pp. 176-179.
92
ILARIA TADDEI
ilar image. The Florentines, after having carried out all the abuse
that it was possible to do up to the gates of Pisa, and having minted the coin and removing their chains, knighted them and ran a
race of ribalds and prostitutes,35 made their way back to their
own city Antonio Pucci reports dragging behind them the
Pisan prisoners crowded onto carts like melons and with an eagle
tied to their necks.36
On the battlefield, the minting of coins out of spite, the investiture of knights and the execution of animals were openly displayed signs of domination that clearly underlined the adversarys
loss of political privileges and the act of taking possession of the
enemy territory. The affront consisted first of all of the very act of
minting a coin, a specific attribute of sovereignty that reflected imperial dignity as well as being a means par excellence for transmitting a memory. Thus the spite coin immortalized the subjugation of the enemy city and ensured the spreading of the news. As
the years passed, the derision of adversaries was reinforced by images of heraldic animals, and the act of domination as well was colored with the hues of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
In conformity with the emergence of the two parties in the life
of Florence, and later of Tuscany, and the spread of imperial, papal and later especially Angevin propaganda, both the Guelph and
the Ghibelline cities utilized the syntax of heraldic bestiary and an
increasingly sophisticated constellation of rituals of public denigration of their adversaries. Eagles, lions, and foxes connoted the
language of insult, like many other characteristic aspects of local
identity. Within the span of a century the Tuscan communes that
identified themselves as Guelphs or Ghibellines took possession
of their symbolic apparatus and inserted it into a language of
ridicule that was ever richer and more refined. The message, heavily codified and as the example described by Tronci37 brings out
35 Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, Ricordi, in Mercanti scrittori, Ricordi nella Firenze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. by Vittore Branca (Milan: Rusconi, 1986), p. 217.
36 Antonio Pucci, Guerre tra Fiorentini e Pisani dal MCCCLXII al MCCCLXV, in Delizie degli eruditi toscani, ed. by Ildefonso di San Luigi (Florence: G.
Cambiagi, 1775), VI, pp. 254-255.
37 Tronci, Annali pisani, II, 116.
93
characterized by frequent recourse to satirical witticisms, thus

took the form of insults to the enemy cities that were mirrored from
one chronicle to another.
It was undoubtedly in the overall framework of the intense rivalries among the principal communes of Tuscany that the rituals
of siege, first and foremost that of minting coins for spite, were early formalized and assiduously practiced, taking on over the years
increasingly theatrical and ironic forms. Grierson has noted that
the only non-Tuscan cases that have been reported refer to Perugia, Genoa, and Venice, but in the first two instances the victims
were Tuscan cities, Arezzo and Pisa, and the Venetians could easily have followed the example of Genoa.38
This observation can easily be adapted also to other rites of
siege, the most widespread of which was without question the race,
which all the towns of Tuscany, without exception, adopted for
mocking their adversaries. The races, run before the gates of the
besieged city or on the battlefield, constituted a sort of symbolic
reversal of the traditional equestrian games that, starting in the
thirteenth century, were organized to celebrate important events,
both religious and civic, in the history of the communes.39
In essence, the code of derision overturned the typical elements of the race in a sort of anti-race that some towns would include from time to time in their Carnival activities and civic festivals.40 Foot or donkey races thus took the place of horse races; in
this case the prize, the customary prestigious banner awarded to
the winner, was a rag of rough cloth or of goat leather, with which
it was not a victory that was glorified, but the defeat of the enemy,
and the very protagonists of the race were not young noblemen but
low-ranking characters like rogues and whores.
38 Grierson, Coniazioni per dispetto, p. 315.
39 For a first approach to the topic, also in terms of bibliography, see Duccio
Balestracci, La festa in armi. Giostre, tornei e giochi nel Medioevo (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2001).
40 On the use of mocking races in Carnival festivities, see Martine Boiteux, Les
juifs dans le carnaval de la Rome moderne (XVe-XVIIIe sicles), Mlanges de lcole
franaise de Rome. Moyen Age. Temps modernes, LXXXVIII (1976), pp. 745-787; Eadem, Carnaval annex: Essai de lecture dune fte romaine, Annales E.S.C., XXXII
(1977), pp. 356-380.
94
ILARIA TADDEI
One of the earliest reports of these races organized on the battleground concerns the episode mentioned above of the clash between Pisa and Lucca. Lucca, defeated in 1264 by the Pisan army,
was ridiculed not only by the minting of coins and the chivalrous
ceremony of the dubbing of numerous knights, but also by the
running of a race and a mock battle called mazzascudo.41 An even
more famous example is the battle of Campaldino: the day after
their victory, the Florentine Guelphs celebrated the feast day of
Saint John the Baptist on the enemy field: according to Villani and
Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, they ran a race in honor of their patron saint in front of the walls of Arezzo.42 The ritual language of
mockery thus sealed the enemys defeat and at the same time honored the citys protector, invoked to perpetuate the memory of Florentine sovereignty. The choice of this ritual was probably not perceived as desecrating, but in the context of the fights between communes ensured a direct relation between the citys victory and the
sacredness of the feast of the patron saint, between a civic and a
religious event.
Starting in the second half of the thirteenth century, defamatory races aimed against the people under siege became a frequent
practice in the military campaigns of the Tuscan armies and multiplied especially in the course of the fourteenth century, spreading also outside Tuscany. Above and beyond the context of the
fights among the communes of Tuscany, Villani recalls the three
races that were run in 1325 by the lord of Mantua and Modena,
Rainaldo Bonacolsi, known as Passerino, and his allies near
Bologna.43 Richard Trexler recalls the race that Azzone Visconti
organized in that same year near Florence, but as Villani points
out this was clearly a case of revenge against the Florentines,
who two years earlier had staged a race outside the city gates of
41 E per segno di vittoria, in quel medesimo luogo, con gran festa di tutti i
riguardanti, tra di loro giocarono i Pisani al giuoco di massascudo antichissimo e rarissimo, e degno di qualsivoglia gran principe: Roncioni, Delle istorie pisane, X, 555.
42 Villani, Nuova cronica, I, VIII, CXXXII, 604; Marchionne di Coppo Stefani,
Cronaca fiorentina, ed. by Niccol Rodolico, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXX/I
(Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1903), CLXXXI, 65-66.
43 Villani, Nuova cronica, I, CCCXXVII, 408-409.
95
Milan.44 More recently, Gian Maria Varanini has mentioned new

episodes regarding other cities in northern and central Italy in
which, during sieges, mocking races were staged, like the one which
in 1338 the league of Venetians and Florentines against the della
Scala family orchestrated right by the city walls of Verona.45
Even though these anti-races, like other acts of contempt such
as throwing donkeys over the walls of the besieged city, are documented in the fourteenth century also outside Tuscany, it has to be
said that this region appears to be a true homeland for insults, not
only in the context of military campaigns but also in the various
spheres of city life.46 This emerges clearly from the chronicles written by Tuscans, which are permeated with irony and sarcasm. If
the taste and sensibility of the chroniclers surely had an influence
on the wide resonance of these gestures of scorn in the context of
the Tuscan communes, other motives also have to be taken into
consideration. In order to understand their proliferation, we must
keep in mind the particularly intense conflictive nature of this region, where a large number of important towns tried to construct
a solid territorial base and affirm the supremacy of their city. Besides, as Giovanni Cherubini has efficaciously demonstrated,47
these conflictual traits went beyond merely economic and political interests, involving also elements of prestige. The chroniclers
44 Trexler, Correre la terra, p. 862. For this race and the one run by the Florentines in 1323 during the siege of Milan, see Villani, Nuova cronica, I, X, CCCXIX,
405; CCXI, 368.
45 Varanini, I riti dellassedio.
46 In this regard, see the observations by Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur on the playful and satiric poetry that found its spiritual home right in Tuscany in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Maire Vigueur, Drision et lutte politique. Le cas de lItalie communale, in La drision au Moyen ge, pp. 191-204. More in general, for an
orientation, also bibliographical, on the dimension of conflict in the society of the communes, see at least: Idem, Cavaliers et citoyens; Crouzet-Pavan, Enfers et paradis, especially pp. 85-162; Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in et comunale, in La storia e la memoria. In onore di Arnold Esch, ed. by Roberto Delle
Donne and Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2002), pp. 135-170;
Zorzi, I conflitti nellItalia comunale. Riflessioni sullo stato degli studi e sulle prospettive di ricerca, in Conflitti, paci e vendette, pp. 7-41.
47 Giovanni Cherubini, Le citt italiane dellet di Dante (Pisa: Pacini Editore,
1991), pp. 106-109.
96
ILARIA TADDEI
themselves, like the poets and artists, were champions and exponents of this highly conflictual humus, an ideal political and cultural climate for the elaboration and diffusion of practices aimed
by the victors at shaming the defeated side48.
Before concluding I would like to dwell for a minute on the shared
value which, above and beyond the different possible interpretations and recondite meanings of the symbolic language of these ceremonial practices, characterizes these representations in general,
that is to say the open desire to give the battle a memorable dimension, capable of extrapolating the event from the ordinary context of war and making it exceptional. In effect, in the dynamic of
the incessant fights among the cities of Tuscany, these gestures of
clear humiliation served to put the finishing touches not only on
major battles like Montaperti, Meloria or Campaldino, but also
much more limited military skirmishes such as the siege of the little town of Asciano by the Lucchese. The aim of these rites, as the
chronicles reiterate, is precisely that of ensuring perennial remembrance of the enemys defeat (this phrase is found over and
over again in the sources), and as such of being transformed into
an epic by the citys chroniclers. Thus a sort of liturgy of fate, to
use Georges Dubys happy phrase,49 that expresses in a ritual game
the resolution of the military siege through a form of codified violence that coincides with the humiliation of the enemy. If the ritual thus manages to circumscribe the violence within forms of
spectacle which are less dangerous than the use of destructive
force, expressing its deeper and more complex meaning, it
nonetheless can portend future acts of ritual revenge that will be
carried out symmetrically by whoever is the winner the next time.
This peculiar form of violence ingrained in the culture of hate,50
which was typical of the world of the communes also represented
a way of coexisting with the other without losing ones own identity, that identity that, proudly manifested by heraldic attributes
48 Maire Vigueur, Drision et lutte politique, pp. 191-204.

49 Georges Duby, Le dimanche de Bouvines (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 148.
50 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, pp. 307-321.
97
and signs of sovereignty, was built on the memory of events transmitted via the pen of the chroniclers.
Thus it was impossible to forget the offense that had been received. Humiliation is done first and foremost to be seen, then immediately understood, and finally remembered as an event worthy
of remembrance. The battlefield becomes a theater where the presence of an audience is indispensable. And in fact, the dimension
of spectacle, an aspect that could not have escaped contemporary
observers, pervades more or less markedly all these rituals of derision.51 Indeed, it is no coincidence that these rites of scorn spread
at the same time as the elaboration of defamatory painting, with a
perfect harmony between these performative languages. Starting
in the mid-thirteenth century, with the rise of popular regimes, we
observe what Gherardo Ortalli calls the explosion of the political image,52 destined to materialize in a multitude of forms. Parallel to this, in the evolution of the clashes between communes, the
need became increasingly impelling to transmit a political message
capable of publicizing the image of the commune and its strength.
In this sense, these rites of siege, with their strong symbolic content complementing the actual fighting, appeared as crucial elements for the resolution of the military conflict, as manifestations
of the sovereignty of the popular regimes, capable of annihilating
the enemy by the mere use of a ritual game. Thus the final outcome
of the military siege was resolved in mimesis and the symbolic humiliation of the adversary, a theatrical gesture destined to evoke and
hand down to posterity the memory of the rival citys debacle and
at the same time the enemys humiliation.
51 On this theatrical dimension, see Trexler, Correre la terra; Benvenuti, Allora fu battaglia aspra e dura; Eadem, Il sovramondo di Campaldino; Taddei, Les
rituels de derision.
52 Gherardo Ortalli, La rappresentazione politica e i nuovi confini dellimmagine nel secolo XIII, in Limage: fonctions et usages des images dans lOccident
mdival, ed. by Jrme Baschet and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Le Lopard dOr,
1996), p. 188.
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.

(University of Glasgow)
REPRESSION OF POPULAR REVOLT

IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE ITALY
To amplify the horrors of outrageous barbarism and genocide inflicted against ones own people such as the brutality of Rwandas
mass killing of 800,000 in 1994 or the murder, rape, and burning of
villages of the weak and impoverished in Sudan today, journalists
often tar these acts and regimes of cruelty with the labels medieval
or medieval forms of violence. Even prominent medievalists have
jumped on this bandwagon, characterizing the Middle Ages, as par
excellence le temps de la violence.1 To be sure, the medieval period had its violence. If we concentrate only on the high and late
Middle Ages, choice candidates rush to mind; for instance, the first
Crusades, where violence within Europe against ones own people
erupted with widespread murder of Jews down the Rhineland in
1198 before troops bothered to reach the Holy Land; pogroms
against Jews in England that intensified at the same time; the Albigensian crusades and the massacre at Montsgur in 1244; and more.
In sheer numbers of communities annihilated, the worst were the
1 Claude Gauvard, Violence, in Dictionnaire raisonn de lOccident mdival,

ed. by Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 12011209. She begins, Le Moyen Age serait, par excellence, le temps de la violence (p.
1201), suggesting that she might debunk this clich in popular thought about the
Middle Ages, but she does not; nor does she drawn any temporal divides over the long
course of the Middle Ages, suggesting that some centuries or periods may have been
more violent than others. See also her Violence et ordre public au Moyen ge (Paris:
Editions A & J Picard, 2005).
100
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
Black Death burning of Jews down the Rhineland into France and
Spain and eastward into Austria. In German-speaking lands alone,
over one-thousand Jewish communities were eradicated.2 Except for
this horrific spate of mass violence, soon regretted even by the most
hardened of anti-Semites, such as its principal prime-mover, the
Holy Roman emperor, Charles IV of Bohemia, I would argue that
the violence of the Middle Ages against indigenous populations cannot compare with what would develop a century or so later: the mass
violence and cruelty of absolutist monarchies but also of republican city-states of the early Renaissance with their new forms of punishment and treatment of those who broke the norms or opposed
these growing states and oligarchies.
This paper will not consider all forms of mass violence but instead will concentrate on persecution and punishment of popular
rebels from the late Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, principally
in Italy. It will argue that examples of mass massacre and special and
cruel forms of punishment meted out to rebels were rare, before ca.
1390, especially in Italy, and were usually limited to the leaders alone.
With the development of early Renaissance territorial states in the
late fourteenth century and more so with early modern states north
of the Alps in the sixteenth century, cruelty of state repression with
new rituals of brutality spread from the punishment of a handful of
leaders to the mass execution of fifty or more, and to the wholesale
destruction of subject population by the mid-fifteenth century and
into the early modern period the massacre of innocents in sacks of
cities in northern France and the Low Countries. This trend in state
brutality cuts against the grain of the current historiography, still attached to Norbert Eliass civilizing process: with the states disciplining of subject populations in early modern Europe, that violent
behavior declined and attitudes towards it became less tolerated with
the rise of the early modern state.3
On first glance, a trend towards increased repression of rebels
2 For this calculation, see Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., The Black Death and the
Burning of the Jews, Past and Present, 196 (August, 2007), pp. 3-45.
3 Norbert Elias, ber den Prozess der Zivilisation: Sociogenetische und Psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 2 vols. (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1939-1969).
REPRESSING OF POPULAR REVOLT IN LATE MEDIEVAL
101
after 1400 may appear to run against the best-known examples of

late medieval rebellion. With the brutal repression of the Jacquerie
in northern France in June 1358, chronicles such as Jean le Bel and
Jean Froissart reveled in their re-telling of the butchering of townsmen and peasants by chivalrous knights as their victims took flight
through fields and woods:
These men-at-arms then charged and killed them like swine, one on
top of the other. With so many to kill and the streets [of Meaux] so
narrow it was difficult for the troops to advanceWhen the soldiers
had killed all those they could find, they pulled back and then set the
town on fire, burning it as far as the March, and they took everything they could find.4
The brutal retaliation of the nobles was not, however, that of the
king, the dauphin, or the crown. Immediately after the quelling of
the Jacques and the merchants of Paris under Etienne Marcel, the
dauphin Charles issued record numbers of letters of pardon, many
of these, to knights who had taken the law into their own hands
and had killed peasants in their villages. Because of their excesses, these noblemen now faced penalties imposed on them by the
crown.5 It was not akin to the crowns treatment two centuries later of the Duke of Albas mercenaries, who were given free reign,
even encouragement, to plunder, rape, and murder city populations
that had proved disloyal to the Spanish king.
Turning to Italy, other late medieval exceptions are striking.
The execution of Fra Dolcino and possibly the mass destruction
of his followers in the mountains above Biella (Novara) in 1307
make grisly reading: his girlfriend Marguerite was sliced up, piece
by piece, before his eyes before the same was done to him, their
pieces then burnt together. But this was first and foremost a hereti4 Chronique de Jean le Bel, trans. and ed. by Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., in Idem,
Popular Protest in Late Medieval Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2004), p. 154.
5 On these rarely studied remissions to noblemen in the aftermath of the Jacquerie
(as opposed to ones issued to peasant and artisan rebels), see Douglas Aiton, Shame
on Him Who Allows Them to Live: The Jacquerie of 1358 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2007).
102
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
cal movement with social and political overtones.6 Two other possible exceptions, at least as seen in the current historiography, were
among Italys most famous revolts, and for late medieval towns, two
of the best-known revolts in Western Europe. The first is the Florentine Tumulto dei Ciompi, whose radical wing and third revolutionary guild, the popolo di Dio, was defeated in early September 1378, followed a year and a half later by the rest of the workers-artisans government, that of the Arti Minori, in January 1382.
Niccol Rodolico, Victor Rutenburg, and, more recently, Ernesto
Screpanti have claimed that the new government in September
1378 brutally repressed the rebels with executions, mass exile, and
force migration,7 but they supply scant evidence of it.8 In Sep6 Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval
Europe, 1200-1425 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), p.

101 and p. 149.
7 Victor Rutenburg, Popolo e movimenti popolari nellItalia del 300 e 400 [1958]
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1971), pp. 315-316 and 335-336. Niccol Rodolico, I Ciompi: Una
pagina di storia del proletariato operaio [1945] (Florence: Sansoni, 1980), p. 209, asserts that the Florentine tribunals had condemned eight thousand rebels, for the most
part, to death, but he supplies no source; certainly, this figure does not come from any
quantitative reckoning of the judicial records, which survive intact.
8 I know only one source that claims that sentences of mass exile (cited by
Rodolico) were imposed with the fall of the Ciompi, and this was a foreign one. According to Cronaca senese di Donato di Neri, p. 673, over a thousand carders and
combers were chased from town and exiled [cacciaro e sbandiro] in September 1378.
No Florentine chronicle or judicial record confirms this claim. The only allusion to
mass migration after the Ciompis defeat on 1 September is Diario del Monaldi, in
Istorie Pistolesi dallanno MCCC. al MCCCXLVIII e Diario del Monaldi (Prato: Guasti,
1835), p. 521: A great number of the popolo minuto left, mainly for the contado, and
several to Pisa and other dispersed places, cited by Ernesto Screpanti in Langelo della liberazione nel tumulto dei Ciompi: Firenze, giugno-agosto 1378 (Siena: Il Ponte Editore, 2008), p. 34: Dopo la grande ripressione un grandissimo numero di questo
popolo minuto se n[era] andato. Monaldi, however, lists only fourteen men who
were banished by the Florentine government on 2 September. Furthermore, population statistics taken from the Estimo of 1379 suggest that the grandissimo numero
who left on 2 September either were not so grand or very soon slipped back into
the city: the Florentine urban population rose sharply from the famine and plague of
1374 to 1379, a level of population that would not in fact be surpassed until well into the period of the Grand Dukes; for these statistics, see David Herlihy and Christiane Klapish-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles: Une tude du Catasto de 1427 (Paris:
Editions de lEcole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1978), pp. 173-177; and
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Renais-
103
tember 1378, only forty-four Ciompi were sentenced to exile, and

sixteen days after their defeat, the government invited back all
members of the popolo minuto who had not been condemned as
rebels to live and work in the city.9
Curiously, these historians do not mention the repression of
workers and artisans after the definitive fall of their government
in January 1382, when the reprisals against the defeated were slightly more severe: now three were beheaded and eighty-five fined or
sent into exile. But while some were sentenced for life, others were
exiled for only a year.10 Indeed, less than a month after the restoration of the old oligarchy ante-June 1378, the government reissued
crossbows to those Ciompi who had been chased from Florence
in September 1378.11 On 7 February, seventeen days after the fall
of the government of the Minor Guilds and the suppression of the
two remaining revolutionary guilds, the Sienese diplomat, Giacomo Manni, observed: Very little harm has resulted from so much
turmoil and revolution: only fifteen people have been killed, of
whom three were executed [by the government] and twelve killed
in private vendettas.12
Italys second best-known popular uprising involving disenfranchised textile workers, that of Sienas Compagnia del Bruco,
has also been described as ending in bloody repression (sanguinosa repressione).13 There were actually two revolts of the Bruco, not one as is usually assumed. For both, unfortunately, our onsance Europe (London and New York: Arnold and Oxford University Press, 2002), p.
200; see also Idem, Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Violence in Renaissance
Italy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 22.
9 Diario danonimo fiorentino, p. 384; Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, pp. 336-337 lists only thirty-seven.
10 Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, pp. 399-401.
11 Ivi, p. 403.
12 Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 61.
13 Andrea Zorzi, Politiche giudiziarie e ordine pubblico, in Rivolte contadine
nellEuropa del Trecento: Un confronto, ed. by Monique Bourin, Giovanni Cherubini,
and Giuliano Pinto (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2008), p. 393. For some reason, Zorzi cites the eighteenth-century Muratori edition of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores instead of the more critical twentieth-century one edited by Lisini and Iacometti; see below.
104
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
ly source is the description of a single chronicler, the Sienese ligrittiere, or vendor of cloth, Neri di Donato. No governmental or judicial records survive for it. The first erupted on 26 August 1370
within their contrada of Ovile, one of the poorest districts of the
city, where a high proportion of Sienas textile workers resided. According to Neri, three hundred or more workers led by the ligrittiere Domenico di Lassi, demanded peace and riches. As urban
Robin Hoods, the rebels took grain from those who had it and
distributed it to those without.14 Significantly for our purposes,
the chronicle mentions no repression or any other penal consequences of this, the Brucos first uprising. Their second, betterknown revolt, almost a year later in July 1371, was rare among the
revolts of late medieval Europe in that it arose not only over rights
but specially over wages: laborers and skinners in the wool industry (Li lavorenti e scardazieri dellArte di Lana) demanded that
they be given the same rights as masters and paid according to laws
set by the commune of Siena and not those determined by their
employers. Three of the Brucos leaders were seized and questioned by the citys senator. The following day the Bruco armed and
marched to the Palace of the Senator, threatening to burn it down
if the three were not released. With their allies, the Bruco stormed
the palace, killed several officers, freed their three comrades,
hurled insults against the ruling parties (Monti) of the Dodici and
the Nove, and attacked the Palace of the Salimbeni. What then
emerges in Siena is a complex civil and factional war that cut across
the geographic alliances of the citys thirds (terzieri) and Sienas various parties or Monti. In this struggle, the Monte of the Dodici
along with others with lances and crossbows invaded the neighborhood of the Bruco Ovile torched eight houses, chased
women with their children in their arms screaming, and stole or
broke to pieces the looms of workers.
But the battle did not end here. The Bruco appealed to the
14 Cronaca senese di Donato di Neri e di suo figlio Neri [aa. 1352-1381], ed. by
Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 15/6 (Bologna:
Zanichelli, 1936), p. 634. A grain shortage had afflicted Siena in the previous year; see
Ivi, p. 633.
105
Nove and the faction of li Gentilihuomini, and by early August

this alliance of factions, including the e Signori Riformatori,
overturned the government, the gonfaloniere of the city being the
first to lose his head. The former ruling party of the Dodici, not
the Bruco, were the big losers: the new government legislated immediately that neither the members of this party nor their descendants could hold any governmental offices for five years. And
on 12 August it adjudged its condemnations: 131 from the Dodici, 85 of the bigwigs (populo maggiore), who were friends of the
Dodici and the Salimbeni, and 12 of the Nove were to be executed; moreover, several other followers of the Dodici were saddled
with the colossal fine of 20,000 gold florins. The chronicler continued with a long list of lesser fines descending from 50 to 25 lire,
of whom not a single person was identified from Ovile, or of the
Bruco; nor was any wool worker mentioned.15
Nonetheless, even if the popular classes were not the victims
here, such a list of executions (how many were carried out is impossible to know) was extraordinary. Instead, city-state governments of the fourteenth century usually limited executions to a
few leaders and without horrific forms of torture and punishment
to accompany theaters of executions followed by the humiliation
of bodily parts. In the earliest surviving criminal records in Florence in the 1340s, rebels were, as a rule, treated less harshly than
common thieves (publicos et famosos latrones). Inevitably, the
latter were sentenced to be hanged. By contrast, the earliest records
of the tribunals of the Podest and Capitano del Popolo in Florence sentenced artisan rebels and those working in textiles with
fines, and, if condemned to death, they were either hanged or beheaded, not burnt as with heretics and without dragging or other
forms of torture en route to the place of execution. In the sentences
of the Podest for the semester, 14 December 1344 to 31 May
1345, the largest single filza of criminal sentences found in the Florentine archives, comprising 710 cases with 1155 persons brought
to trial in the four quarters of Florence for the city and countryside (contado), not a single case describes ceremonial torture,
15 Ivi, pp. 639-644.
106
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
whipping along the way, forms of mutilation or drawing by asses, donkeys or horses. And no quartering of bodies before or after execution with ritualistic placement and humiliation of bodily parts in selected symbolic places followed.16 Nor do I find
from the chronicles many examples of such treatment elsewhere
in Italy before 1390. In an uprising of the popolo at Bologna in
1328 three butchers (mazelarii) were tied to the tails of horses
and dragged to the square of Bologna where they were decapitated. In 1375 a revolt in Ferrara led by professionals a medical
doctor and two notaries but including wool workers and appealing to the poor, who had been burdened by the Marcheses
direct taxes and gabelles, ended with some of the rebels (Aliqui
vero proditorum) dragged by the tails of asses to the place of execution and then hanged.17 No doubt, other cases of dragging
might be found in the narrative sources, but it would be safe to
say for late medieval Italian city-states before about 1400 that
such practices remain unusual, and until the 1380s in Italy I have
yet to find state executions that ordered the bodies of popular
rebels to be quartered.18
16 Archivio di Stato, Florence (hereafter ASF), Podest, no. 116. In addition, this
volume contains twenty-two cases from the Offices of the Gabelle, in which several
hundred more were sentenced to small fines or absolved.
17 Chronicon estense gesta Marchionum estensium, ed. by Lodovico Antonio Muratori, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV (Milan: Typographia Societatis Palatinae,
1729), col. 511.
18 Cronaca Gestorum ac factorum memorabilium civitatis Bononie a Fratre Hyeronimo de Bursellis [ab urbe condita ad a. 1497], ed. by Albano Sorbelli, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 23/2 (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1911-1929), p. 324. In 1288 a popular
uprising in Ferrara seized the Marchese Azzo and through their rough justice dragged
him tied to the tail of horse through the city to the place of execution (Chronicon estense cum additamentis usque ad annum 1478, ed. by Giulio Bertoni and Emilio Paolo Vicini, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 15/3 [Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1908-1929], p.
48). In the Sienese chronicle of Neri di Donato, Andrea Zorzi (Politiche giudiziarie,
in Rivolte contadine nellEuropa del Trecento, p. 408) finds a case which he says was
at the end of the 1370s actually, it took place in 1388; see Annali Sanesi, ed. by Ludovico Antonio Muratori, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XIX (Milan: Typographia
Societatis Palatinae, 1731), col. 389 when prompted by the Florentines, the gate of
San Marco in Siena was burnt down. Two men were apprehended, one from Scorgiano near the problematic and shifting border between Florence and Siena and the
other from Staggia, which had been within the Florentine contado since 1361. The one
107
Instead, only the leader or leaders of popular revolts were executed, as was the case with Ciuto Brandini after his success in organizing an association of wool workers to go on strike with their
own community chest and collection of strike funds in Florence.
Ciuto alone was sentenced to hang and with no accompanying special rituals of brutality.19 Nor did mass executions follow when a
second uprising of wool workers demanded Ciutos release.20 Perhaps even more surprising is the fate of the Augustinian friar Jacopo Bussolari, who led four successful revolts in Pavia from 1356
to 1360 against the Milanese state and the most powerful ruling
family of Pavia, the Beccaria, and afterwards had his men dismantle
their palace brick by brick. Yet when the Milanese state finally
suppressed the popular government led by Bussolari after four
years of rebel rule and reintegrated the city into Milanese control,
we learn of no executions, mass exiles, or massacres of the innocent. Not even its leader was tortured or executed. Instead he was
sentenced to be kept at another Augustinian convent, this one at
Vercelli, where he presumably died of natural causes in 1373.21
This absence of torture as a prelude to execution and special
and horrific forms of execution for rebels principally drawing and
quartering distinguishes Italy from places north of the Alps during the Middle Ages. While still not the rule in France or Flanders,
it can be seen as the fate of condemned rebels such as the leaders
of wool workers revolts in Tournai in 1281 and 1307.22 Such executions, mutilation, and torture, however, are more readily found
from Scorgiano was tortured by pinchers, taken to the gate where his hands were
burned and then quartered with his four bits placed on four of the citys gates. From
the chronicle, however, it is not clear whether this man was a popular rebel or in the
employ of the Florentines. According to Trevor Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 63, the earliest case of
quartering in Bologna was of conspirators in 1429 and in Siena in 1434; the earliest
for Italy cited by Dean was for Milan in 1388 (p. 64).
19 Zorzi, Politiche giudiziarie, in Rivolte contadine nellEuropa del Trecento, p.
408; and Niccol Rodolico, Il Popolo Minuto: Note di storia fiorentina (1343-1378)
(Florence: Olschki, 1968), pp. 37-38 and doc. no. 14.
20 Rodolico, Il Popolo Minuto, p. 39.
21 Cohn, Lust for Liberty, pp. 114-116.
22 Ivi, p. 151.
108
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
in the British Isles, especially England. To cite but a few examples:

the leader of a London tax revolt in 1196, William FitzOsbert
called Longbeard, was tied to a horses tail and dragged through
the streets of London, his skin ripped apart by the cobblestones
along the way (demolitis carnibus ad silices obiter positos). Tied in
chains, he was hanged with eight of his associates.23 King Alexander of Scotland responded to the three hundred who had risen
against tithes imposed by their bishop in Caithness in 1222 by having them mangled in limb, and racked with many a torture.24 Following the suppression of the Norwich burgesses revolt against the
privileges of their cathedral and canons in 1272, Edward I executed
thirty-four citizens, some by dragging, others by hanging, others
by burning and some by all three forms of execution, the kings
hand having been tempered by the supplication of the Norwich
citizens and others who pleaded for leniency.25 In 1283, David,
the brother of Llewelyn Prince of Wales and a leader of a Welsh
uprising against the English crown, was captured and taken to
Shrewsbury, where he was drawn through the town to the gallows,
then hanged, then beheaded, his bowels burnt, and ate the laste
his body quartered, the four parts sent to and hanged in various
towns of England; his head stuck on the Tower of London.26
Dragging of rebels, both leaders and the rank-and-file, of the
Peasants Revolt of 1381 preceded their executions by beheading
or hanging, and in the case of prominent leaders, their bodily parts
were then placed in highly visible symbolic places. The head of Jack
Straw, beheaded sometime after Wat Tylers execution, came to join
his colleague on London Bridge.27 In 1384 the cordwainer John
23 Among several chronicles, see Memoriale fratris Walteri de Coventria: the Historical Collections of Walter Coventry, ed. by William Stubbs, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1872-1873), pp. 97-98.
24 John of Forduns Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, trans. by Felix J. H. Skene,
ed. by William F. Skene (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872), pp. 284-285.
25 Again, many chroniclers report this revolt and the condemnations that followed: see for instance Bartholomew de Cotton, Historia anglicana (A.D. 449-1298),
Rolls series 16, pp. 146-149.
26 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London: Printed by George W. Jones, 1938), p. 19.
27 Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. by Henry T. Riley, Rolls series
109
Comberton (also called John Constantyn) was drawn and beheaded for instigating a revolt against the mayor of London,
Nicholas Brembre. The chronicler remarked that the spectacle of
his execution had the effect of quieting the crowds.28 Executions
of rebels became more extensive and grisly with the conspiracies
against Richard II in his last year of rule and with the takeover of
the crown by his cousin. For conspiracy and the murder of the
Duke of Gloucester in 1399, the rebel Hall (who appears from his
testimony before Parliament as someone who happened to be at
the wrong place at the wrong time) was charged by Parliament with
falsehood and treason and in the same day drawn a distance of two
English leagues by horses that left his body ripped open. After
this he spoke, and they gave him some drink. They then drew out
his bowels, which were burnt in his sight; and afterwards cut off
his head and quartered his body, his head sent to Calais the
scene of his supposed crime.29 With Oldcastles revolt in 1413,
twenty-six rebels were drawn and hanged (according to Thomas
Walsingham, the chronicler of St. Albans, now the usual punishment for rebels30), but many others were not only sentenced to
be drawn and hanged on the gallows, but after this unhappy end
were also cremated.31 In 1427 Jack Sharpes rebellion in Gloucester and Abingdon ended with the capture and death sentences of
a number of his men, with Sharpes head taken back to London,
where it was placed on London Bridge.32 In a Lollard revolt of
1431, at least ten men were drawn and hanged.33 And in 1450 Jack
Cade was drawn to Newgate, where his body was quartered and
decapitated, his four sides sent to various towns in Kent and his
28 (London: Longman, 1864), II, p. 10; for other executions of leaders, see p. 14.
28 The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376-1422, trans. by David Preest
(Woodbridge, Suffolk, England; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2005), p. 214.
29 Chronique de la trason et mort de Richart deux roy dengleterre, ed. by Benjamin Williams (London: English Historical Society Publications, 1846), p. 224.
30 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, II, p. 299.
31 The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, pp. 394-395.
32 The Chronicles of London, pp. 96-97.
33 Annales Monasterii S. Albani, a Johanne Amundesham, monacho, ut videtur,
conscripti (A. D. 1421-1440), 2 vols., Rolls Series, 1 (London: Longman, 1870-1871),
I, p. 63.
110
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
head placed on London bridge.34 In addition, as the examples

above suggest, the English had the tradition of executing more
than one or two rebel leaders and anticipate early modern executions and, on a smaller scale, massacres of the innocent, as when
King John in 1212 took twenty-eight boys hostage during a Welsh
Revolt and then hanged them all.35
In Italy (or at least within the territorial state of Florence), the
treatment and execution of rebels began to change dramatically,
but not with the revolt of Ciompi or in its immediate aftermath
with the ripple of urban revolts of artisans and sottoposti within
the cloth industry, who desperately tried to resurrect the twentyfour guilds.36 The change instead came with internal threats to Florences expanding territorial state in the 1390s and more so in the
early decades of the fifteenth century. These rebels were not of the
city but from villages and towns such as Gaenna in the Val di Chiana and Anghiari (both previously in the contado of Arezzo), San
Miniato, Montecatini, and the outlying mountainous zones of the
Casentino and the Alpi fiorentine. These were areas not only beyond Florences city walls but outside its traditional hinterland or
contado. Suddenly, Florentine judges created new and crueler rituals of humiliation, torture, and execution for rebels, both commoners and those from the old feudal elites.
This change around 1390 goes against current generalizations
about judicial punishment and the state during the late Middle
Ages into the early modern period that the number of executions
declined steadily, that the forms of execution became almost exclusively hanging or decapitation, that mutilation as a form of punishment disappeared, and other ritualistic forms of torture and
punishment declined to be replaced by more humane fines even
34 A number of accounts report Cades execution in detail; see for instance An
English Chronicle, 1377-1461, edited from Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS

21068 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, ed. by William Marx (Woodbridge,
Suffolk, England; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 67-70.
35 Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, sive, ut vulgo dicitur, Historia Minor, ed.
by Frederic Madden, Roll Series 44 (London: Longman, 1866), 3 vols., II, pp. 127-28
36 On these revolts, see Cohn, Lust for Liberty, pp. 127, 173, and 240.
111
for serious crimes and rebellion.37 From my initial sampling of judicial records in the archives, the trend instead ran in the opposite direction, at least from the earliest surviving judicial records
of the 1340s to the rise of the Medici (1434). In the sentences for
the semester from December 1344 to the end of May 1345, the
Podest absolved or sentenced 1154 individuals within the city
and contado of Florence. Of these, sixty-three were condemned to
death thirty-three by beheading, twenty-eight by hanging and two
by cremation. These records describe no special ceremonies or rituals that tortured or humiliated the condemned as they were
marched to the scaffolds: no instances of flogging, dragging, humiliating rides on donkeys faced backwards, no wearing of mitres
or other special garments, no tortures with chains or pincers, and
no punishment by mutilation, except as an alternative in six instances, if the sentenced should fail to pay their fines on time; in
these cases, four hands, a foot, and a tongue would be amputated.
The much shorter Capitano del Popolo records for this semester
condemned more to death: although only five cases between 15
February and 28 July 1345 passed death sentences, 103 men were
so condemned. Two of these cases constituted eighty-six of the
death sentences, one against forty-six magnates of the feudal Ubaldini clan, who in pitched battle killed many, many men,38 and
the other against forty men of Fuccechio in the district of Pistoia,
who in warlike fashion, with banners raised, rebelled in an attempt to liberate the terra from Florence.39 Finally, the citys
37 For Florence and northern Italy, see Andrea Zorzi, Le esecuzioni delle con-
danne a morte a Firenze nel tardo Medioevo tra repressione penale e cerimoniale pubblico, in Simbolo e realt della vita urbana nel tardo Medioevo, ed. by Massimo Miglio
and Giuseppe Lombardi (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 1993), pp. 150-153 and 173-174; Idem,
Rituali di violenza, cerimoniali penali, rappresentazioni della giustizia nelle citt italiane centro-settentrionali (secoli XIII-XV), in Le forme della propaganda politica nel
Due e nel Trecento, ed. by Paolo Cammarosano (Rome: cole franaise de Rome,
1994), pp. 412-414; Idem, The Judicial System, pp. 54-57; and Dean, Criminal Justice, in Crime, Society and the Law. See also Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships:
Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 53-55.
38 ASF, Capitano del Popolo, no. 19, 1r, 1345.ii.15.
39 Ivi, 37r.
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SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
third tribunal, the Esecutore degli ordinamenti di giustizia, condemned only one to the scaffolds.40 Thus for the first half of 1345
the criminal tribunals condemned 164 to death.
These statistics contrast sharply with those found in the judicial sentences of the Podest in 1390, the first year I have spotted
when new forms of judicial punishment were invented for rebels.
This filza contains sentences for only three months instead of a semester (as with the earlier records before the Black Death) and pertain to only two of Florences quarters Santo Spirito and Santa
Croce.41 The number of condemnations for execution, instead of
sliding downwards, increases vertiginously: seventeen beheadings,
ninety-nine hangings, and two deaths by fire, 118 executions for
half of the Florentine city and contado, for a half-semester. To these
can be added twenty-nine condemnations found in the Capitano
del Popolo of the first three months of 1390, again for half the jurisdictions of the citys four quarters. If the seasonal rates and the
other half of the Florentine quarters were comparable, this would
mean 588 condemnations of execution, or over three-and-a-half
times as many as 1345. The actual rates of executions were without doubt higher still. First, as Umberto Dorini argued in the early twentieth century, the rates of those condemned who were actually executed climbed steadily upwards from the earliest records
of the mid-1340s to the 1380s, and Andrea Zorzi has argued that
this upward trend continued to climb into the early modern period.42 Secondly, the jurisdiction of the tribunal of the Otto di
Guardia, after its foundation in 1378, cut more and more into cases adjudicated by the Podest and Capitano, especially serious
ones dealing with treason, conspiracy, and rebellion. Yet, only a
fragment of these records survive from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and where they do, the summary character
of these records often obscures the particular nature of the crimes
40 ASF, Esecutore degli ordinamenti, no. 27: 1344.xi.29 to 1345.iv.9.
41 ASF, Podest, no. 3351. The records extend from early February (1389 Flo-
rentine style) to April.

42 Umberto Dorini, Il diritto penale e la delinquenza in Firenze nel sec. XIV (Lucca: Domenico Corsi Editore, 1923), p. 257; and Zorzi, Le esecuzioni, in Simbolo e
realt, pp. 169-171.
113
and sentences. Finally, the population of Florence and its contado

in the 1390s was about half that of its pre-plague population. Instead of decline, per capita executions from 1345 to the late fourteenth century in Florence would have then increased seven- to
eight-fold. To be sure, the 1390 tribunals record several revolts, in
which numbers of rebels were condemned to death; however, these
three months were not exceptional in the history of popular revolt
in the territory or city of Florence. As I have shown in Creating the
Florentine State, Florences war with Milan in the last years of the
century and more so in the opening years of the fifteenth century
set off a sharp rise in peasant revolts and ones of small market
towns across the mountainous periphery of the Florentine state
in the Valdinievole, the Pistoiese, the Alpi fiorentine, the Casentino and Chianti.43
As regards punishment of rebels, not only did executions become more frequent than fines; for the first time in 139044 special
forms of torture and humiliation were inflicted on them in processions that led through the streets and the quarters of Florence
as well as within the outpost towns of the territory. In February, a
rebel of San Miniato was led on a plank (supra quandam asside
seu tabula lingnea) tied to the tail of an ass to the place of his execution.45 In March another rebel of that town was transported to
the city of Florence and was paraded down the citys streets,
gripped with iron pincers that ripped away the flesh from his
body as he proceeded to the place of justice to be hanged by a
chain at the gallows.46 By the last month of these sentences, either dragging by the tail of an ass through the streets of market
towns or transported to Florence to be tortured by iron pincers became the normal ritual of cruel punishment for rebels. For the
43 See Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1348-1434 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Idem, Women in the
Streets, chap. 6; and Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence.
44 In my research on peasant revolts for the two works above, the records of the
Podest in 1390 were the earliest in which I found special new forms of torture meted out to rebels before their execution.
45 ASF, Podest, no. 3351, 4r, 1389.ii.12.
46 Ivi, 6r.
114
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
most part these tortures and humiliations pertained to rebels in the

countryside and from Florences newly incorporated subject cities,
as with fourteen who tried to overthrow Florentine republican
control at the castle town of Castro Carchiano, and fifty-six men
condemned to death at Gaenna: en route to execution all were condemned to have their flesh ripped apart by iron claws or pincers
as they processed to the place of justice. However, while the new
punishments and processions pertained mostly to those residing
beyond Florences city walls, indeed beyond Florences traditional contado, the same tortures were inflicted upon several artisans
from the parishes of San Lorenzo, San Felice in Piazza, San Simone
and the street of the dyers, who attempted in 1390 to revive the
government of the twenty-four guilds,47 and in one case was the
prelude to the execution of a member of the old feudal clan of the
Ubaldini, also a citizen of Florence, condemned to death that year
for a conspiracy against the Florentine state.48 Yet, whether from
the city, contado, or district, these new processional tortures of
chains and pincers pertained almost exclusively to rebels. In the
three-month period for the quarters of Santo Spirito and Santa
Croce alone, eighty-two rebels in eleven separate cases were sentenced to these forms of torture. Only in two cases were they extended to those condemned for other crimes, in both cases homicide.49 Moreover, for cases of homicide, these two were the exceptions: no others were accompanied by these processions with
iron pincers and dragging to their place of execution.50 Nonetheless, in 1390 other ritual punishments and processions began to accompany other crimes; these, however, were different from the
ones inflicted on rebels: in two cases famous thieves both from
the Florentine countryside were brought to the city and whipped
through the streets to the place of justice, where their sentence was
executed; for both the penalty was amputation of their right ears.51
47 Ivi, 20v, 23r, and 24r. Four others in an attempted artisan coup later that year
met the same fate; ASF, Podest, no pagination.
48 Ivi, 16r.
49 Ivi, no pagination.
50 See for instance, ASF, Podest, 9r-10v, and 40r.
51 Ivi, no pagination for either case.
115
Immediately, with the earliest records of the Florentine vicariate courts in 1398 those that pertained to the cities, towns and
villages of Florences newly incorporated territorial cities and their
contadi along with mountainous border regions such as the Alpi
fiorentine the ritual character and cruelty of Florentine condemnations had extended to still other crimes. The penalties included amputations of tongues, ears, noses, hands, feet, the branding with the insignia of the Florentine state on foreheads, all with
processions of public floggings and donned with clothing and symbols to engender public humiliation. In one of the earliest of these
cases, a man from Pescia, guilty of giving false testimony, was led
as an example through the streets of the town wearing a turban
(ducatur cum mitria in capite) to the place of justice, where his
tongue was then cut out.52 Several months later, three thieves from
Anghiari, previously a part of the contado of Arezzo, were sentenced for theft; two were hanged, while the third was to be paraded through the streets of this market town and whipped along
the way to the place of justice, where his forehead was to be branded with a red-hot iron for all to see imperpetuum.53
Special rituals of punishment increasingly were used for those
guilty of sexual deviance.54 In 1399, a man from Castro Montevettoloni, convicted of adultery, was to be led through the streets of
Pescia whipped with branches and twigs and hit in every way.
Some were paraded in the nude; other stripped to their kidneys;
and some were forced to wear turbans or other distinctive articles
of clothing.55 In 1413 a Florentine vicariate court convicted a peasant from the mountain village of Rassina, previously in the contado
of Arezzo, of raping his eleven-year-old grandniece. Led to Anghiari,
he was paraded through the streets, stripped to his kidneys, and
52 ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, no. 97, fol. 16r. He was also fined 100 lire.
Also, see ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, 30r, fol. 88r and fol. 90v (where the sentenced was to be led through the streets in the nude) and in the last case wearing only a belt, which reported that he was a pilgrim.
53 ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, no. 97, fol. 18r.
54 See Cohn, Women in the Streets, pp. 98-136.
55 ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, no. 97, fol. 91r. Also, see, for instance, ASF,
Giudice degli appelli e nullit, no. 102 (second filza within this busta), fol. 11r.
116
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
whipped with branches and switches. At the place of justice and assembled before crowds, his penis was to be sliced in four, each slice
then burnt with a red-hot iron.56 Two years later, the Florentine
judge in a case of consensual incest between a young brother and
sister in the village of San Gueninello near San Miniato al Tedesco
sentenced the boy to be led to San Miniatos place of justice clothed
in feathers (indutus pellibus) to denote the irrationality and bestiality of his beastly act and crime. Then with gallows and other
necessary instruments, his testicles were cut off.57 Among the most
elaborate of the new forms of execution was that inflicted on women
convicted of infanticide. The territorial court records describe huts
built in town centers for the execution of these women (never the
men) as in a sentence of 1433, when a woman from Castel Bonizi
in the podesteria of San Casciano was burnt alive in a hut in which
artisans previously had been commissioned to paint ugly pictures
(picturas turpes) to intensify her pain and guilt.58
The vicariate courts continued to punish rebels with their own
distinctive rituals of cruelty and humiliation. The practice of wrapping rebels in pincers or iron claws on tortured processions to the
gallows continued, but now the vicariate courts of the early fifteenth
century added new features: these iron bits and pincers (ferris seu
tengalis) were to be red hot, so as to burn through as well as tear
apart the flesh of the convicted rebels. In addition, in the sentences
of these courts rebels alone were the ones drawn to their places of
executions tied to the tails of asses or mules (atrascinando ad caudam unius muli sive asini usque ad locum justitie or strafinari),
but unlike rebels in the earlier sentences of the podest, these rebels
did not benefit from planks placed under their bodies.59
The Florentine judges of these vicariate tribunals became still
56 Ivi, no. 99, fols. 105r-6v, 1413.vi.28; also see Cohn, Women in the Streets, pp.
103-104.
57 Ivi, third filza in busta, fols. 48v-49r.
58 ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, 102, second filza, fols. 201v-202r, 1433.vii.9;
also see Cohn, Women in the Streets, pp. 101-102.
59 See for instance ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, n. 97, fols. 80v-81v,
1399.xii.20; 101, second filza, fols. 36r-7v; n. 76, fols. 286r-288r (three rebels condemned to dragging), 1426.ii.27; Ivi, 574v-6v, 1427.i.19 (five rebels); 102, fols. 370v1v, 1430.viii.25.
117
more creative in their ghoulish deterrents to those desiring to

threaten the security of the Florentine state. As early as 1399, a new
mode of execution awaited rebels of Florences outlying districts
and towns of its recently incorporated territorial state and by the
1420s had became common judicial practice, mos proditorum.60
In 1399 the new form of execution awaited three rebels, one from
the previous ruling family of San Miniato, the Mangiadori, along
with two sons of a baker, who had held secret meetings and conspired to free their former city-state from Florentine rule. Once
caught, they were taken to the Florentine fortress at San Miniato
(in fortiam nostrum), then dragged on planks from the tails of
asses to the place of justice, where fresh ditches had been dug. By
their feet they were lowered into the ditches upside down and
buried alive (sub terra subplantentur et subplanatri debeant ita et
talier quod vivi sepellinatur).61 Later, the practice was elaborated
into a double execution while alive and once dead. In 1417 four
rebels armed with swords and other weapons attacked officers of
the Florentine Guelph party at Montecatini. For their execution a
round ditch two braccia deep (about five feet) was to be dug at the
place of justice in Montecatini. As at San Miniato in 1399, the
rebels were to be lowered head first into the ditches and then
buried alive. Once dead, however, they were pulled out and hanged
from gallows in the usual fashion, except they were not to be cut
down but left in the hangmans noose in perpetuo, leaving their
rotting bodily parts to fall wherever they might (dimictantur donce
per se cadant), never to receive a Christian burial.62
Andrea Zorzi, Trevor Dean, and others have argued that states
in the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early modern periods
increasingly exercised greater leniency in punishment with the
numbers of executions declining steadily over the long term and
60 ASF, Giudice degli appelli e nullit, no. 101, second filza, fols. 36r-7v, 1422.vi.27.
61 Ivi, no. 97, fol. 51v, 1399.vii.2. Four rebels from the ex-contado of Pisa, who
had held secret meetings and conspired to overthrow Florentine rule in Pisa, were condemned to be dragged to the place of justice in Pisa, where they were to be buried
alive in ditches specially dug for their execution.
62 Ivi, no. 100, first filza, fols. 241r-3v, 1416.ii.17. Also, see Ivi, no. 99, fols. 191r2v, 1413.xi.23.
118
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
with mutilations, public whippings, and other forms of cruel and

unusual punishment disappearing in Italian cities.63 But even if
these trends can be trusted, given the problems of new tribunals
coming into being, such as Florences Otto di Guardia, summary
justice, and the fragmentary survival of these documents, such
trends tell at best only part of the story. Certainly the Florentine
records show no such trend from the earliest surviving judicial
records of the mid-1340s to the rise of the Medici in 1434, after
which the records of the vicariate tribunals in the Florentine territory no longer survive. The records of Florence, both of the
Podest and of the new vicariate courts for the distant countryside
and outlying towns and districts of the Florentine state, suggest a
pattern that runs in the opposite direction. Perhaps the trend is
analogous to that of post-Enlightenment European states of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries: following principles of justice
and punishment first elaborated by Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794),
63 Trevor Dean, Criminal Justice in Mid Fifteenth-Century Bologna, in Crime,
Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Trevor Dean and Kate J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 27; Andrea Zorzi, The Judicial System in Florence in the 14th and 15th Century, in Crime, Society and the Law, p. 54
(neither article supports its claims with any statistical evidence). In Le esecuzioni,
in Simbolo e realt, pp. 173-174; and repeated in Rituali di violenza, in Le forme
della propaganda politica, pp. 395-425: p. 412, Andrea Zorzi gives statistics for the decline in annual averages of executions from the late Middle Ages to the period of the
Grand Duchy of Florence, but he neither gives the source for these data nor discusses the difficulties of compiling such statistics over periods in which the competences,
appearances, and disappearances of tribunals change so dramatically as in Florence,
along with the great gaps in the survival of these records. In other places, Zorzi cites
the records of the Libro dei giustiziati of the Florentine confraternity of Santa Maria
della Croce al Tempio (although to secondary materials and not to the original in the
Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence). He neither analyzes these records, nor seems to realize, as Samuel Y. Edgerton insists in Pictures and Punishment during the Florentine
Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 231, that they are
fragmentary and include only those executions served by the brotherhood. Instead,
Zorzi assumes that this is the full set of executions. Not only do these lists of executions not include all that took place in the city of Florence, to what extent did this
city brotherhood travel to the far-flung vicariates of the Florentine district, places
such as Anghiari, San Miniato, or Pisa, where, as we have seen, a disproportionate
number of executions took place? Dean follows Zorzis conclusions in Crime in Medieval Europe 1200-1550 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), pp. 124-125, without raising any
questions.
119
the judicial policies condemned torture, and to varying extents

death penalties and cruel and unusual punishment at home declined. At the same time, however, these states developed new
forms of torture, cruelty, punishment, and repressive measures
such as concentration camps to control the indigenous peoples of
their outlaying and distant colonies. For Florence, these colonies
were not so distant; instead they were found in the lands of their
newly acquired city-states and hinterlands that formed the citys
new imperium of little more than a days ride from the capital.
Such new rituals of punishment and cruelty as seen in Florence and its new territorial state were, however, only a prelude of
worse to come with the development of larger territorial states and
empires of the early modern period, particularly north of the Alps.
As early as the mid-fifteenth century, the new monarchs sacked
cities that rose up against them. Instead of trials with due process
that rarely executed more than a handful of rebel leaders, the controlling armies invaded urban populations and went beyond execution of leaders as examples to engorge themselves in massacres of the innocent. These began in the north the sack of Arras and Bruges in 1440, Ghent in 1453, Dinant in 1468, Lige in
1478 but spread to Italy by the early sixteenth century: Brescia
in 1511, Prato and Pavia in 1528, and Genoa in 1532. Again, anticipations of this trend come earlier from republican Florence and
its control over new territories, and again the early 1390s appear
as the critical moment. In 1391 the peasants of Raggiolo in the
Montagna, newly-incorporated into the Florentine state, conducted secret meetings with their former feudal lords of Pietramala, beseeching them to revolt against the harsh new taxes and control of
the republican city-state. After the rebels had captured the Florentine castle on the towns outskirts, the Florentine Signoria sent
troops and smashed the revolt. Their repression, however, did not
end with rounding up and trying a handful of rebel leaders. Instead, the Florentines treated the villagers, women and children included, as a foreign enemy and worse: the soldiers ran through the
village stealing all they could lay their hands on. The women and
children took sanctuary in their parish church, but without compunction the Florentines burnt the church to the ground, killing
and devouring them all. Then they torched the village, leaving its
120
SAMUEL K. COHN, JR.
streets littered with charred bodies. The Florentine aristocrat

chronicler ended his description of the carnage:
the place now remains uninhabited and broken. As a good example
to the surrounding villages, the Florentines were more evil than they
needed to be to show that they would do the same to others.64
A similar slaughter of a city-states own peasantry is seen four years

later in Ferrara, after they attempted a tax revolt by siding with one
branch of the Este family against another. The victorious branch
massacred six hundred or more of their peasantry, not counting
those who had drowned, and captured two thousand. Yet this was
not sufficient retribution for the Marchese of Ferrara. He granted
his troops and the Florentines license to rob the countryside for
all they could take.65
In conclusion, the growth of early Renaissance territorial states
in the fifteenth century and even more so the early modern monarchies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not about
good taste and manners alone. Their control and disciplining of
larger populations and territories assumed new and more brutal
forms of repression, violence, and punishment than medieval states,
at least of the later Middle Ages, could muster, tolerate, or perhaps
even imagine. To evoke the sense of horrific brutality and decry
state actions against their own people today, journalists, if they
need historical analogies, would be better off (or at least more historically accurate) branding acts such as the Rwandan massacres
of innocents as Renaissance or early modern rather than medieval acts of violence. Yet given the ideological overtones of medieval and Renaissance and their corresponding connections
with barbarism and High Culture, such a substitution of terms in
popular parlance will probably never come about. Nonetheless,
historians ought to get the record straight.
64 Cronica volgare di Anonimo Fiorentino dallanno 1385 al 1409 gi attribuita a
Piero di Giovanni Minerbetti, ed. by Elina Bellondi (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1915-18),
in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 27, part 2, pp. 127-128; also see Cohn, Creating the
Florentine State, pp. 125-126.
65 Ivi, p. 194.
PART TWO
VIOLENCE AND REVOLTS
Francesco Benigno
(Universit degli Studi di Teramo)
RECONSIDERING POPULAR VIOLENCE:

CHANGES OF PERSPECTIVE IN THE ANALYSIS
OF EARLY MODERN REVOLTS
The attitude of historians towards violence during the last twenty

years has taken on the kind of importance that was previously associated with revolution. The cultural climate which preceded and
accompanied the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French
revolution already seemed to indicate a change of emphasis, particularly in the writings of English-speaking historians such as
William Doyle and Simone Schama. What was emerging was a
shift of focus from the analysis of the causes of the revolutionary
breakdown, however close at hand or remote they may seem, to
its more tragic connotations and the traumatic impact it had on
peoples lives. Recently however, from 11 September 2001 onwards, the change has become even more readily perceivable. If
for a long time violence had been considered an unfortunate but
unavoidable side effect of political and social transformation, an
ingrained element, so to speak, and therefore in some ways deemed
as natural (just as labor pains accompany labor, as Marx had so famously put it) so violence, having now freed itself of its ancillary
role with respect to politics,1 has become a subject of study in its
own right, as is proven by the publication of a number of studies,2
1 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (London: Allen Lane, 1970).
2 The literature is impressive, but see at least Robert Muchembled, Histoire de
la violence. De la fin du Moyen ge nos jours (Paris: Ed. de Seuil, 2008); Katherine
D. Watson, Assaulting the Past. Violence and Civilization in Historical Context (New-
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
readers3 and even handbooks4 on the issue.

To view this shift of perspective purely as a consequence of a
change in the political and cultural climate, that is to say as a result of the current supremacy of a revisionist (and politically conservative) historiographic assessment which reverses the sign (from
positive to negative) of the consolidated opinion on revolutions,
would be missing the point. It is not just a question of whether
these incidents should no longer be seen as steps in the glorious
progressive march undertaken by western civilization but rather as
senseless tragedies or at least tragic mistakes, the results of misunderstandings, ideological fanaticism and factional infighting.5 It
is instead a sign of something more and different, the manifestation of an intellectual transformation that has taken place in the
meantime: the consequence, that is to say, of a deep cultural readjustment which, given that it cannot be discussed at length in this
context, can here only be evoked through fleeting reference to the
various issues it addresses; the recent focus on the cultural and symbolic value of conflict compared to its social and economic aspects; the prevailing interest in communicative processes concerning the construction of identity compared to the deconstruction of the main ascriptive macro-categories (class, country). All
this has led to a far-reaching review of the historical opinion on the
twentieth century, the peak of western civilization but also the pinnacle of mass state violence.6 But what is more important is that
violence has taken on a central and constituent role in the new
castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007); Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: the
Illusion of Destiny (Issues of our Time) (New York, Norton, 2006); Power, Violence and
Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times, ed. by Joseph Canning, Hartmut
Lehmann, and Jay Winters (Adelrshot: Ashgate, 2004); Charles Tilly, The Politics of
Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
3 Violence: a Reader (Main Trends of the Modern World), ed. by Catherine Besteman (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).
4 See for instance, among many others, Lisa A. Rapp-Paglicci, Albert R. Roberts,
John S. Wodarski, Handbook of Violence (New York: Wiley, 2002).
5 Francesco Benigno, Mirrors of Revolution. Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).
6 Mark Mazower, Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), pp. 1158-1178.
RECONSIDERING POPULAR VIOLENCE
125
hegemonic scheme of historical memory, rightly renamed by

Gabrielle Spiegel liturgical memory,7 meaning a necessary ingredient of the sacral dimension that accompanies the symbolic and mystical identity-forming reuse of the past as seen through the figure
of the martyr and his/her executioner. In the astrological language
that is typical of our early modern historical figures, we could say
that the violence has flowed out of the marginal role it held in the
Hegel-inspired rationalist-historical constellation (revolution
progress social change) the matrix of which was the Grande Rvolution,8 and has taken its place as a major player in the Nietzscheinspired emotional and memory-based one (executioner witness
victim), the script for which is provided by the Holocaust.
There is therefore some merit to be found today, in light of the
recent centrality of violence in the historiographic discourse, in reconsidering the ways in which the historiography of the early modern age has addressed the issue of popular violence over the last
three decades. This is what will be attempted in the pages that follow, which aim to turn the spotlight onto one of the most obvious
limitations that can be encountered in the many historiographic approaches, the tendency to project violence onto a rather ambiguous subject, the crowd in arms;9 it is a fairly opaque subject at best,
which brings back once again the age-old question of the manipulation or control exerted over popular action and the subsequent
feverish attempts to decipher the independent, and truly popular,
codes that can be set apart from those pertaining to the more general culture. This leads to a general overestimation of all the elements used to describe a popular subject imbued with traditional
and often ancestral values that are consequently revealed by the
so-called rites of violence, and the similar underestimation of the
interpenetration between the politics of the elites and those of subordinate subjects. The violence is thus inscribed in the register of
7 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Memory and History: Liturgical Time and Historical
Time, History and Theory, 41 (2002), pp. 149-162.
8 Jean-Clment Martin, Violence et Rvolution. Essai sur la naissance dun mythe
National (Paris: Seuil, 2006).
9 Robert J. Holton, The Crowd in History: Some Problems of Theory and
Method, Social History, 3 (1978), pp. 219-234.
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
a normalization/repression process; a popular violence, described

as rooted in tradition, natural and insubordinate, as opposed to
state violence, which is viewed as innovative, rationalizing and ordering, in a process which sees Lent overcome Carnival, the civilization of good manners prevail over sauvagerie, discipline curtail
the festival-revolt.
Secondarily, this tendency to ascribe the violence to a predetermined and insubordinate subject highlights the inclination towards concentrating violence in someone other than us, in a subject who does the dirty work for us, and thus literally displays
the repugnant, disgusting and terrifying side of humanity, conceived as possessing an atavistic animal quality that enables it to
perform barbarous feats: ritual mutilations, physical and symbolic violence, the shedding of blood and flesh, right through to decapitation and anthropophagy. Forgetting how any discourse on violence should instead take its cue from institutional and conventional practices, from the violent yet routine imposition of the social norm.
Rites of violence?
One of the most characteristic ways in which historiography of the
early modern age has treated violence is the frequent recourse to
the category of the rite of violence. The time has come, however,
for a careful assessment of this concept which seen from todays
perspective appears to be problematic in its usage and which nevertheless, in the absence of a serious review, is still being used, as
if from force of habit. There seems to be little point in recalling
the meaning it used to have and the intellectual context out of
which it took shape: this was the in many ways thrilling season
of the discovery of history from the bottom up, which provided the
opportunity to reinstate the voice of popular masses which they
had almost never been granted, thus endowing with meaning certain actions that had previously seemed a rash expression of primordial needs, mere empty-stomach uprisings. At the beginning
of the 1960s, and particularly after Edward P. Thompson had developed the concept of moral economy, questions were being asked
127
of the structuralist and quantitative economic and social patterns

(which now appear very rough-hewn and mechanical) that curried
so much favor with historians in the 1950s and 1960s. In this vision the populace was imagined as a passive subject which could
almost be manipulated by impersonal and systemic forces, excellent chemical reagents so to speak, of explanatory patterns dominated by cyclical actions, of the A and B phases suggested by
Franois Simiand, the alternating play of the Hausse and the Baisse.
Yet already during the 1960s and more decidedly during the 1970s
these patterns were being gradually replaced by a more thoughtful interpretation which had greater respect for independent forms
of expression and, in a nutshell, for so-called lower-class culture.
In very rough and succinct terms, one could say that the ritual vision of popular violence was born out of this climate, at the
meeting point among three concepts which, however much they
have come to the historians assistance, today, for different reasons, all appear somewhat problematic. The first of these is obviously enough the concept of popular culture, that is to say the
belief in a consistent cultural universe, of nebulous origin, dialectically interacting with another questionable concept which goes
by the name of elite culture, the one and the other believed to
be internally consistent to the point that it was even possible to single out their general characteristics, at least on a European level,
which were not supposed to be dependent on local differentiation,
not to mention the possibility of couching the popular culture
within even more complex and vague Eurasian foundations.10
The second concept is the crowd in arms seen as an independent subject, possessing what one may term a general subjectivity,
a subject therefore which through its actions would appear to be
expressing the wishes, interests and aspirations of the entire popular universe:11 a universe of gesture and symbol to be deciphered,
and ultimately what Edward Muir referred to as the mysterious
10 I have developed this argument in Il popolo che abbiamo perduto. Note sul
concetto di cultura popolare tra storia e antropologia, in Giornale di storia costituzionale, 18 (2009), pp. 151-178.
11 John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the
Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
alchemy of crowd behavior.12 This pantextualist tendency which

established itself during the same period contained the idea that
the actions of the crowd could be interpreted like a rcit, a representation, and more or less metaphorically a text.
The third element which contributed to the formation of the
rite-of-violence concept is naturally the concept of rite itself, which
permeated the historiographic culture, as is well known, through
the anthropological works of Max Gluckmann on the Zulus during the middle of the twentieth century,13 and particularly through
the developments and formulations of his famed pupil Victor Turner, who developed the concept of social drama,14 which took as its
starting point his in-depth observation of the Ndembu tribe rituals in Zambia. Yet in the interpretation that historians have provided of the anthropology of ritual, in their way of approaching the
issue, there is a significant shift of emphasis: the accent is no longer
placed on the crucial problem of conflict reintegration, of the reconstruction of order (which was the problem Gluckmann and
Turner were tackling) but on the possibility particularly through
the indications provided by the works of Michail Bakhtin of using conflict as a gateway to a universe of signs and ideas which
would otherwise have been denied and inaccessible.
In the celebrated essay by Natalie Zemon Davis15 on rites of
violence, the American historian referred to the research tradition
(inherited from Georges Rud to Eric J. Hobsbawn, Edward
Thompson, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Charles Tilly) which
has enabled us to interpret the people outside the classical stereotypes of sixteenth-century literature such as the Hydra, la beste a
12 Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring. Vendetta and Factions in Friuli during the
Renaissance (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p.
XIX.
13 See especially Max Gluckmann, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (The
Frazer Lecture, 1952) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954); Order and
Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London: Routledge, 1963).
14 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963); Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure
(Chicago: Aldine, 1969).
15 Natalie Zemon Davis, The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth Century France, Past and Present 59 (1973), pp. 53-91.
129
plusieurs testes, etc., permitting us to glimpse the political and

moral traditions that have justified or allowed the expression of violence. Zemon Davis writes that these historians have taught us to
view the ancien regime crowds not just as unstable, wretched, rootless masses but also as members, however poor and outcast, of
communities, equipped with traditions and values. More specifically, We may see their violence, however cruel, not as random
and limitless, but as aimed at defined targets and selected from a
repertory of traditional punishments and forms of destruction.16
The people therefore possess an arsenal of means of punishment
and purification: even in the most extreme cases of religious violence, the crowds know what they are doing; they have the feeling
that they are performing a legitimate act.
In the same years Yves-Marie Berc suggested, in a series of
studies but particularly in his volume on fte-rvolte, an interpretative perspective on violence as an expression of a universe of
customs and feelings that was particular to the subordinate classes. The reasons for discontent and protest, according to Berc,
find the opportunity to express themselves in ritual festive celebrations, such as Carnival time, using the traditional arsenal of
playful jests and role reversals, inverting the laws of obedience and
legitimacy as a vehicle for the expression of the will to redress the
violated order. The link between Carnival and revolt has since then
become a primary object of attention for historians: we only need
consider, by way of example, the famous investigations by Le Roy
Ladurie on the Carnival of the Romans17 or Edward Muirs on the
cruel zobia grassa of 1511 in Udine,18 or even the various lesserknown studies on the Dijon revolt of 1630, the so-called Lanturelu uprising, which also took place during Carnival.
Seen from todays perspective, this insistence on the link between Carnival and revolt, and the highlighting of the primordial,
16 Zemon Davis, Rites of Violence, p. 52.
17 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Le Carnaval de Romans: de la Chandeleur au mer-
credi des Cendres, 1589-1590 (Paris: Gallimard, 1979).

18 Muir, Mad Blood Stirring, but also Furio Bianco, La cruel zobia grassa. Rivolte contadine e faide nobiliari in Friuli tra 400 e 500 (Pordenone: Biblioteca dellimmagine, 1995).
130
FRANCESCO BENIGNO
animal and materialistic elements that go hand in hand with a

Bakhtinian interpretation of Carnival as a typical expression of another, distinct culture which resists the states attempts at modernization, arouses fairly substantial misgivings. The famous books
by Muir and Le Roy Ladurie, reread a few years down the road,
can only partially be included in a fte-rvolte scheme of things
which calls for a liberating and playful eruption of popular rage:
what they are really describing would appear to be the history of
the connection between the eruption of violence and the undercurrent of fierce, strongly-rooted factional conflicts. In the case of
the cruel zobia grassa in Udine in 1511, the bloody confrontation
takes place, as is well known, between two important family units,
headed by the Savorgnan and the Della Torre, both equipped with
considerable albeit varying material and symbolic resources.19
But also in the case of the celebrated Carnival of the Romans in
1580, the violent clash, rather than pitching popular culture against
the culture of the elites, would seem to belong to the same context, which we might term folkloric: as Le Roy Ladurie himself remarks, with the festival of the Candelora on 2 February and San
Biagio on 3 February, the notables organize in the same folkloric
context and set up reynages (symbolic representations) which vie
with the group of the grouse, promoted by craft guilds. We are
therefore in the presence of factional divisions that exploit a shared
culture for their own symbolic and identity-shaping construct: thus
Gurin and Paumer, the leaders of the two opposing formations,
do not appear to be harbingers of alternative values, but instead,
to use the words of Le Roy Ladurie, are more akin to cultural
brothers who move about in the same imaginary zoological universe like fish in the water.20
The question at this point is how a common, shared folkloristic culture can be typically popular (in the sense that it referred to
the subordinate classes), as the generally accepted interpretation
19 Muir, Mad Blood Stirring; see also the discussion Le Periferie del Rinasci-
mento, in Quaderni Storici, 88 (1995), by Osvaldo Raggio, Politica, cultura e archetipi. Il gioved grasso di Udine (1519), pp. 221-230, and Sandro Lombardini,
Dalle fonti della vendetta alla nemesi delle fonti, pp. 231-247.
20 Le Roy Ladurie, Le Carnaval, p. 374.
131
of Le Roy Ladurie at the time authorized us to believe; one also

needs to ask if an analysis of these widespread, shared political symbols should not involve the heraldic tradition and even a much less
popular and basically esoteric discipline such as the study of emblems. There are pages in Muirs book on the symbolic role of
hunting, an eminently aristocratic pursuit, which seem quite stimulating in this regard.
Another less celebrated example of the kind of misunderstandings that can be caused by focusing too closely on the Carnival as the growth medium believed to be intimately opposed to
the official and dominant one is the case of the aforementioned Dijon revolt of 1630, which also took place during a Carnival period. On 27 February of that year fifty winemakers of the parish of
St. Philibert led by Antoine Changenet walked the streets with
their women and children and, singing the song Lanturelu, attacked the houses of the treasurer general and of one of the judges
of the Court of Auditors by throwing stones at them. The next day,
at the sound of the bells, the treasurers house was destroyed. The
revolt has been described until recently as a classic tax revolt, and
while on the one hand Boris Porschnev and Charles Tilly saw it as
an anti-state and class revolt, on the other Berc considered it a
classic example of Carnival-type inversion and fte-rvolte.21
Now the point is that on that same day, 28 February 1630, the
edict by Louis XIII which abolished the provincial tats and introduced the lus in Burgundy was supposed to be registered. Recent studies have shown how approximately one-third of those
taking part in the insurrection had close links with members of the
professions or privileged bodies, for example their godfather might
have been a lawyer or some kind of authority. Many of them, it also transpires, rented vineyards from land owners and were members of confraternities. Of course, the sources only mention the vignerons (and here one would have go on at length about how the
documentary sources always try to saddle the burden of revolts on
fringe social elements), while it has been established that the pro-
21 Mack P. Holt, Popular and Elite Politics in Seventeenth Century Dijon, Historical Reflections - Rflexions Historiques, 27 (2001), pp. 325-345.
132
FRANCESCO BENIGNO
testers belonged to various trades. The sources, in other words,

seem to accentuate the connection with Carnival because, as has
been rightly pointed out, this connection already presupposes an
explanation.
In actual fact a considerable part of the local elites were firmly opposed to the introduction of the lus. In the days of the insurrection, the legend of Henry IV was repeatedly called into play.
Furthermore, the speech by Minister of Justice Marillac who had
come to Dijon to quell the uprising and organize the repression
offers clear indications that the authorities were convinced that
the local elites and the insurgents were conniving. Marillac actually accuses the Dijon notables of having got the people to believe
that the king intended to place aides on wine. As a consequence
of all this, when Louis XIII finally reached Dijon he limited the
citizens privileges and refused to swear on them. The repression
only stretched as far as meting out exemplary punishment to a few
rebels but especially in the humiliation of the local authorities,
which would come full circle with the registration in the spring of
the lus edict.22
The absolutist triumph, however, was to be short-lived. In November of the same year, following the famous Journes des dupes
that saw Richelieu rise to power at the expense of Marillac and the
defeat of Maria de Medici, even the Dijon dossier was reopened.
Richelieu decided to placate the dissent fuelled by the introduction of the elections, by inviting the delegates of the provincial
states of Burgundy to court to negotiate an agreement. The result
was to be the restoration of the provincial states in exchange for
an offer of 1.6 million livres. As a consequence of this agreement,
at the time of the revolt by Gaston dOrlean Dijon would shut its
gates to his troops: and this act of loyalty would be made good with
the restoration of its privileges.
To bring back to center stage politics and how this was lived
and practiced also means broadening the scope of the questions.
22 Michael P. Breen, Patronage and Municipal Authority in Seventeenth-Century France: the Aftermath of the Lanturelu Revolt in Dijon, French History, 20
(2006), pp. 138-160.
133
A case in point is the concept of saccheggi rituali (ritual plundering), introduced by Carlo Ginzburg in his famous essay (1987),23
used to explain the rioting that took place in Rome at the death of
Pope Paul IV Carafa in 1559: on a turbulent day, 18 August, the
crowd proceeded to sack the papal palace while the popes statue,
clad in a yellow beret, was thrown into the Tiber river. Ginzburg
chooses to attribute the facts that took place that day to some form
of rite of pillage of the dead pope which can be traced as far back
as the Council of Chalcedon of 451, after which a few rare examples crop up in medieval times.24 Following a line of reasoning
similar to that of Zemon Davis, Ginzburg considers the rite of pillage not as a pre-established score but as an open-ended plot outline, something akin to a sketch for a play. He points out that this
rite should be considered as customary and yet also transient. He
might have done better to describe it as karstic, because the problem the essay addresses (but in the end does not solve) is this: Not
all the palaces of dead popes and even less those of Cardinals who
ascend to the Papal throne (also subject to raiding on occasion)
were plundered: why not? What kind of rite is performed on certain occasions but not on others? How can one account for the rites
of passage studied by Arnold Van Gennep? And what does plundering have to do with throwing the statue of a dead pope into the
Tiber, a gesture that would seem to fit better with codes of the rites
of violence than those of the rites of pillage? And the strained relations with the Jews, testified by the yellow beret placed on the
statues head but also by the commotion in front of the Jewish
banks in the lands of the Gonzaga at the news (untrue as it turned
out) that Ercole Gonzaga, son of Isabella dEste, had been elected pope in the conclave which actually elected pope Pius V Medici
what does this have to do with these same rites of pillage?
Ginzburgs essay is also representative of a tendency to interpret popular violence, unlike the violence wrought by nobility or
the elites, as pertaining to deeply rooted, essentially trans-cultural
23 Carlo Ginzburg, Saccheggi rituali. Premesse a una ricerca in corso, Quaderni
storici, 65 (1987), pp. 615-636.

24 Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Il corpo del papa (Turin: Einaudi, 1994).
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
patterns (which, in Ginzburgs discussion of the matter, connect a

dramatic day in sixteenth-century Rome to the customs of the Fiji Islands) and therefore viewable in a comparative context, which
tends to lead to the underestimation of the contingent and contextual elements that explain the political significance of public
protests. Despite the fact that the cultural season which wishfully
hoped to pin a specific conservative-resistant political nature on
the people is now long past, the rites-of-violence pattern still seems
to hold sway with certain research.25 A case in point is the recent
work by Giovanni Ricci on the young and the dead,26 where
young people and youthful violence seem to have taken the place
that was once occupied by the people on the ritual scene; according to Ricci the young were entitled to represent ethical and
political needs that were denied to others, needs that were generally egalitarian and communitarian in spirit, vented through instances of ritual violence. Ricci realizes that the juxtaposition of the
young, seen as champions of immemorial traditions, while adults
are described as projected towards innovation, is to say the least
particular (he refers to it as a strange conflict, contrary to the ordered progression of individual time27), yet he applies it to the incident of the entrance of the Grandi in Ferrara and the custom
whereby crowds of youths used to shred the canopy of the feted
personality. The young, in Riccis scheme of things, are a ritual
group who play the role of traditional culture threatened by the
modernist temptations displayed by the authorities. What is interesting here is the juxtaposition mechanism which is set up as follows: On the one hand we have the humanistic reinterpretation of
the triumphs and cavalcade of possession, the revival of Plato, the
glowing effervescence of classical mythological and biblical motifs,
the Renaissance and with it, in other words, of all we are used to
considering as part of the processes used to reinvent tradition; on
the other, we have instead the description of public forms of be25 See for instance, Ottavia Niccoli, Il seme della violenza. Putti, fanciulli e mammoli nellItalia tra Cinque e Seicento (Bari: Laterza, 1995).
26 Giovanni Ricci, I giovani e i morti. Sfide al Rinascimento (Bologna: Il Mulino,
2007).
27 Ricci, I giovani e i morti, p. 17.
135
havior, of collective actions that are not inscribed in a cultural register but in one which could almost be termed as natural.28 An instance of this is the arrival in Ferrara of Eleonora of Aragon, wife
of Ercole I dEste in 1473: after her triumphant entrance we witness the traditional assault on the festive canopy, which is torn to
shreds and pillaged by teams of youths. Now while the canopy
created by the famous Ferrara painter Cosm Tura is seen, very
much in the manner of the frescoes in palazzo Schifanoia by the
same artist, as a synthesis of classical motifs for political and propaganda purposes, the gesture of mettere a saccomanno pillaging is considered part of an anthropological framework designed to express a popular legal code (personified by the youths)
which is independent of the official one. Despite the fact that this
action is rightly associated, via Starobinski,29 with the classical Roman tradition of the sparsio and largitio, this does not lead one to
underline the renewed presence of processes of reinvention of tradition (and clearly of tradition itself) but instead presupposes an
obscure popular and very ancient, deeply subterranean tradition
that had been passed on down from Neros Rome to the Este in
Ferrara.
Other than us
But let us move on to the second point I would like to underline,
which is the tendency to read into crowd violence something more
than just an ancestral, atavistic and primitive trait and, what is
more, opposed to the rational order imposed by the established authorities. For William Beik, for example, the behavior of ancien
rgime crowds would seem to depend on the existence of a culture
of retribution of a distinctly popular nature, a kind of moral economy of violence. What this boils down to is a transposition onto a
collective level of the reaction common to the individual level trig-
28 See, in this perspective, Carlo Ginzburg, Charivari, associazioni giovanili, caccia selvaggia, Quaderni storici, 17 (1982), pp. 164-177.
29 Jean Starobinski, Largesse (Paris: ditions des Muses Nationaux, 1994).
136
FRANCESCO BENIGNO
gered by acts that are considered offensive, that is to say damaging to a persons honor and his capacity to defend the goods and
lives of the members of his own family.30 A perspective of this kind
tends once again to belittle and underplay the vertical, factional
and patronage-based social connections and the subterranean political tensions that connect different groups and layers. Let us take
the classic example tackled by Beik in a recent article.31 Paris, 24
April 1617: The Marechal dAncre Concino Concini, a favorite of
Maria de Medici, was killed by gunshots in a state conspiracy
which to some extent involved the young king Louis XIII. A few
days after the event, all of a sudden, a rioting crowd violated his
grave and brutally devastated his corpse. They cut off his ears,
nose and genitals, and the rest of his body was thrown into the
Seine. Orest Ranum noted the similarity of these gestures to the
treatment received by the corpse of Gaspar de Coligny at the
height of the religious wars forty-five years earlier. However, the
division in this case was not religious but exclusively political.
Concini was not accused by public opinion of being a heretic but
of taking advantage of his influence to coerce the royal will, amassing a vast fortune, having the popular Cond arrested and plotting to take the throne. For this array of crimes, mere execution
was not sufficient; he needed to receive more severe punishment.
The humiliation of Concinis corpse was preceded and celebrated by a series of pamphlets and prints of a propagandistic and
satirical nature.
Beik, in referring to this episode, suggests a contrast between
what he calls factional movements, which aimed to develop charisma and expel enemies, and the so-called genuinely popular
movements which tended to punish certain abuses perpetrated by
30 William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). See also
Idem, La partecipation politique du menu peuple dans la France Moderne, in Contestations et comportements dans lEurope moderne. Mlanges en lhonneur du professeur Yves-Marie Berc, ed. by Bernard Barbiche, Jean-Pierre Poussou, and Alain Tallon (Paris: Presses Universitaires Paris Sorbonne, 2005), pp. 43-59.
31 William Beik, The Violence of the French Crowd from Charivari to Revolution, Past and Present, 197 (2007), pp. 75-110.
137
single individuals out of anger.32 These latter subjects should be

considered only partially political, in that their intent was to limit
the authorities and attempt to influence decision-makers. Beik
notes how the distribution of pamphlets would seem to indicate
an official participation in throwing discredit on Concini and his
supporters, but he goes on to conclude that its difficult to imagine officiers organizing an event which appears the expression of
popular justice. It should be noted that, according to Beik, these
factional movements with their parades, slogans and banners and
other membership symbols and thus the festive rituals, unlike what
traditional historiography maintains, were clear signs of lobbying.
Here Beik correctly points out an important feature (slogans, flags
and symbols point to the existence of identity-shaping processes
of a factional nature) but he tends to pigeonhole it into a vision
which would seem to overplay the role of popular independence,
in a way that seems to superimpose the categories and concerns of
historians over those of historical subjects.
The problems this kind of approach can engender stand out in
a famous incident, the killing and mauling of the corpse of Storace,
the eletto del popolo (representative of the people), in Naples in
1585 (in Naples the word Storaciare would remain synonymous
with cutting to bits for over half a century).33 Storace was lynched
because he was accused of authorizing the weight of bread to be
lowered; it should be pointed out that the eletto del popolo, who
represented the requirements of the vast majority of the population in the main municipal authority, the seggi, in Naples at that
time, was appointed by the viceroy and therefore whoever was selected was bound to collaborate with the Spanish authorities. The
event has been studied by both Rosario Villari, who underlined
the socially subversive nature of what was a classist event as expressed through an inversion ritual (Storace was made to ride backwards on a donkey with no cap on) and therefore of ordinary legitimacy; and Peter Burke, who highlighted the aspects of ritual vi32 Beik, The Violence, pp. 91-93.
33 See the anonymous chronicle of the events: La morte di Giovan Vincenzo
Storace eletto del popolo di Napoli nel maggio 1585, Archivio Storico per le province
Napoletane, 1 ( 1876), pp. 131-138.
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
olence:34 They dismembered him by cutting off his nose and his
genitals, ripping his heart and entrails out, cutting off an arm and
leg. All these things they then stuck on the points of their swords
and sticks like trophies; and in their hands they held parts of his
brain and pieces of his gut, telling those nearby how they intended to eat them, either roasted or stewed.35 Even the intellectuals
of the time insisted on the popular savagery: Summonte speaks of
a base populace with a savage and violent disposition never completely tamed by Christian civilization, while the Venetian Mutinelli
writes of the unreasonableness and bestiality of the rabble.
But is this truly the case? Are we in the presence of a resurgence of animal instinct, of a flash of atavism? This would seem
not to be so, judging from two features: the first is the fierce repression enforced by the viceroy Osuna, who apparently cried over
Storaces body and in all likelihood believed it to be a plot directed at him. This hypothesis is borne out by his reaction, out of all
proportion if it had been merely meant as retribution against the
crowd: 350 arrests in July alone, along with plenty of torture and
eight instances of capital executions; an even heavier wave of repression followed in September. Those charged include shopkeepers, Sommaria functionaries and civil scribes, vicariate moneylenders, plus a few tradesmen (a knife-maker, a vermicellaro [pasta maker], and a horse trader) and especially a few noblemen, including a DAvalos and a few Berlingieri. According to Costo, an
observer at the time, the uprising had been secretly organized by
the neighborhood captains. To this one should add the interpretation provided by traditional historiography (from Domenico Antonio Parrino to Giuseppe Coniglio) of relations between the
viceroys and the Neapolitan elites, which paint Osuna as arrogant,
bitter and ill-mannered [...] hated to the utmost by the nobility [...]
but also by the populace, as Placido Troyli writes.36 Gino Doria
34 Rosario Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli: le origini (1585-1647) (Bari:
Laterza, 1967); Peter Burke, The Virgin of Carmine and Masaniello, Past and Present, 99 (1983), pp. 3-21.
35 Guido Panico, Il carnefice e la piazza. Crudelt di stato e violenza popolare a
Napoli in et moderna (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1985), p. 112.
36 Placido Troyli, Historia generale del reame di Napoli, Napoli 1753, t. V, pt II,
p. 288.
139
sums up these multifaceted judgments by describing Osuna as nobilitys bte noir, quoting as proof of the viceroys anti-noble attitude such episodes as having representatives sit on bare benches
instead of ceremonial chairs, or requiring them to stand with their
heads bare in his presence at the wedding of the daughter of the
Duke of Andria to the Duke of Bovino.37
But what is more, and this is the second observation I feel
needs making, from what distinctly popular context does this culture of retribution stem? The Beik of today sees it arising out of
anger, thus apparently embracing the recent emotional trend we
shall touch on shortly. But one needs to ask oneself whether a popular culture of retribution can exist that is set apart from a more
general culture of retribution, unconnected with a socially established and institutionally justified idea of what an offense and rightful punishment are, and particularly as distinct from the retributive dimension of ordinary justice? Gio Leonardo Pisano, apothecary, is considered the main person responsible for the action
against Storace. He becomes a wanted person. When they cannot
find him, they raze his house to the ground and, as custom would
have it, pour two bushels of salt over the flattened foundations. In
the place where the house stood, a monument in memory of the
event was built, with the heads and hands of those executed for it
embedded inside it: the first hand was cut off near the convent of
Saint Augustine, where the popular authority used to meet, the second in front of Castel Capuano, the seat of the oldest magistracy
of the realm. Examples like these show how the culture of retribution, rather than being a distinctly popular trait, is the same culture of retribution that imbues official justice, the shared culture
of punishment. It is in fact perfectly possible to liken the theatrical quality of the so-called ritual popular violence to the theater of
cruelty described in images by Ian Luyken38 in the late seventeenth
century or, more recently, to the theater of horror of the executions
37 For these judgments see Michelangelo Mendella, Il moto napoletano del 1585
e il delitto Storace (Naples: Giannini, 1967), pp. 30-31.
38 Ian Luyken, Il teatro della crudelt praticata nelli pi severi tormenti del mondo (Venice: Girolamo Albrizi, 1696).
140
FRANCESCO BENIGNO
as described by Richard Van Dlmen for early modern Germany,39

or even to the splendore dei supplizi as studied by Lionello Puppi.40 In other words, there is a circulation of retributive actions that
feeds on different cues and themes, and rather than age-old traditions we are perhaps faced with reinterpretations (beginning with
the very well known one in Book XXII of the Iliad with Hector
begging Achilles not to feed his body to the dogs and the son of
Peleus dragging Hectors body behind his horse) or even recurrent
rediscoveries; but more importantly it borrows, reiterates and
feeds off the procedures of official justice.
If the bodies of rebels, for example Masaniello, are decapitated and given to the dogs, this act, whether it is performed officially or surreptitiously entrusted to the violence of the crowd,
is in any case a part of the concept of retributive punishment
wrought on a rebel guilty of lse majest.41 The entire matter of the
Neapolitan mob-leader, it should also be mentioned, is full of imitations of official justice on behalf of popular justice: during
Masaniellos dictatorship, as a famous painting by Micco Spadaro shows, bandits were not only punished but were paraded around
with cheap metal crowns on their heads for mockerys sake, while
the heads of those executed were, traditionally, displayed in cages.
These are not just exemplary punishments wrought on the culprits
of serious political crimes; they are part of a shared retributive culture which was applied even to petty crimes, in the infinite variety
of stakings practiced throughout Europe. Half a century after
the Neapolitan revolt, in 1697, the eletto del popolo inflicted, for
example, official retributive punishments in his role as magistrate
in charge of certain kinds of crime: he would have two dishonest
fishmongers dragged naked through the streets of town, with fish
strapped onto canes tied across their backs, while a butcher was
39 Richard van Dlmen, Theatre of Horror. Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); originally published as Theater des
Schreckens (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1985).
40 Lionello Puppi, Lo splendore dei supplizi. Liturgia delle esecuzioni capitali e
iconografia del martirio nellarte europea dal XII al XIX secolo (Milan: Berenice, 1990).
41 Mario Sbriccoli, Crimen lesae maiestatis: il problema del reato politico alle soglie
della scienza penalistica moderna (Milan: Giuffr, 1974).
141
made to walk the streets with a necklace of meat around his neck
because he was selling cow meat and passing it off for young beef.42
Once again we find circularity, overlapping procedures, a mixture
of official retributive justice and informal retributive justice (or
one could call it popular), of what we call pillory and what in certain parts of Europe is known as charivari or rough music.
Conclusions
Grafted onto this set of concepts, we have recently come across the
tendency to interpret violent crowd actions as resulting from emotional urges. This is one of those instances of what is referred to
as the historiography of emotions. Muir, when faced with the challenge of finding a triggering factor for the actors of the Savorgnan
conflicts, under the influence of Renato Rosaldos anthropology43
wrote of anger, rage. The problem is that it is difficult to consider
the rage to be induced by an offence suffered, in the absence of
preconceptions about justice and a reasonably good idea of what
is legitimate and what is not. There are violent acts which we commit on ourselves and on others that are not considered offensive
but a form of reintegration, of making amends. These are not designed to create disorder but rather to restore an order that has
been infringed. In other cases the attribution of violent acts to sudden impulses or to uncontrollable emotional urges is somewhat
problematic. It is difficult, for example, to attribute to simple rage
a feeling that has festered for generations in a family bent on revenge, the long-held-back memory of wrongs, the necessary narration that is at the root of all feuds. Now, in matters of feud, one
often encounters people who commit the most horrific acts not out
of hatred for the persons involved, whom they often hardly know,
but out of a sort of ethical imperative that the family community
imposes on them, an obligation to comply with a moral duty to
42 Panico, Il carnefice e la piazza, p. 43.

43 Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: the Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1989).
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FRANCESCO BENIGNO
which they feel strongly bound.44 Much of this has to do with the
sense of honor, with that feeling on which Mediterranean anthropology has lingered at length, turning it almost into an ethical attribute, one of the essential connotations of a presumed Mediterrean identity, but which in its double meaning of honor as precedence and honor as virtue has become a fundamental cultural
code. A code which, however, is not peculiar to marginal groups
connected to folk traditions but rather to the backbone of the
western elites and not just in the Middle Ages or in the early modern age: the duel by pistol, which replaced the crossing of swords,
is still encountered in certain elevated social elites, in the military
but also among politicians, as late as the middle of the twentieth
century.
But most of all we have to be clear abut what we mean when
we speak of violence. In a recent collection of essays on the culture of violence, Stuart Carroll has suggested a definition of violence as an exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury or damage to person or property.45 Carroll is here attempting to avoid
the issue of the legitimacy of the action by construing a rather
problematic definition as he himself does not fail to point out
which labels as violent a number of sports activities while it rules
out of the catalogue of violent acts a gesture like that of throwing
the Quran into the toilet, an act which apparently was the stock
and trade at Guantanamo. It is not difficult to note how a definition of this type is not only too generic (encompassing such different actions as bullying and genocide),46 but what is more it is
essentially incomprehensible: violence is not a thing, it is an act of
judgment.47 It is the stigmatization, the guilty verdict that we as44 Max Gluckman, The Peace in the Feud, Past and Present, 8 (1955), pp. 1-
14; Jenny Wormald, Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland, Past and Present, 87 (1980), pp. 54-97; Osvaldo Raggio, Faide e parentele. Lo
stato genovese visto dalla Fontanabuona (Turin: Einaudi, 1990).
45 Cultures of Violence. Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective, ed. by Stuart Carroll (Houndmills, Basingstocke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007),
p. 8.
46 John Carter Wood, Conceptualizing Cultures of Violence and Social
Changes, in Cultures of Violence, pp. 79-96, and p. 83.
47 See the debatable concept of violent crime and the attempt to construct a
143
sign to acts we consider illegitimate or unjust. Stephen White has

recently indicated how violence can at times be reified or mystified to create political enemies and to earn the status of victim, underlining the protest element of violence, the fact that the conflict
is based on different narrations of reality.48 We are not dealing here
with a game of subsequent interpretations, in which historians often engage, but of the narrative steered by witnesses, of the descriptions provided by sources as for example in the case of
White, the ecclesiastic sources, which around AD 1000 stigmatize
the violence of the nobility, despite essentially sharing their culture
of war. After all, if this were not the case, if violence were not what
in a specific cultural context is considered or perceived as violent,
meaning overwhelming and unacceptable, how could we explain
the disorientation of historical figures when faced by acts of the
same kind that are acceptable in a certain context and then, once
the context changes, are suddenly tagged as violent and therefore
to be rejected? How, for example, can one explain the disorientation of the Catholic Church when faced with the violent connotations that are today assigned to pedophilia, which only a few
decades ago it did not possess because that act was not categorized
in the same way? In this case it is the shift in moral judgment which
makes us now see certain acts as violent when before they were simply viewed as sins, of which one could investigate the complex
compatibility and the intricate responsibility. Now instead they are
to be stigmatized, tightly clasped in an unprecedented conceptual dichotomy, the torturer-victim alternative, that heightens the
perception of them as violent: thus encompassing them, through
the concept of trauma, into the constellation of memory, the new
Pole Star of our historical culture during this first decade of the
twenty-first century.
historical series of it: Manuel Eisner, Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime,
Crime and Justice. A Review of Research, 30 (2003), pp. 83-142.
48 Stephen D. White, Repenser la violence: de 2000 mil, Mdievales. Langue,
texte, histoire, 37 (1999), pp. 99-114.
Fabrizio Titone
(Universidad del Pas Vasco)
PRESENTATION AND PRACTICE OF VIOLENCE

IN LATE MEDIEVAL SICILY IN PIAZZA,
POLIZZI AND RANDAZZO
Introduction
The phenomenon of violence in late medieval Sicily presents itself
in significantly diverse ways. This article examines cases of citizen
conflict that can be connected to the broad bounds of local autonomy. The communities (universitates) that will be studied are
Piazza, Polizzi and Randazzo in the mid-fifteenth century during
a time of rapid demographic growth.1 My intent is a focused analysis of several events recorded during the mid-1400s, which although
1 I wish to thank Sharon Moren for her assistance in editing this article.
At this time, the mid-fifteenth century, the various estimates do not differ much
from one another and place the populations of Randazzo, Piazza and Polizzi at an average of 6,000 each. See Henri Bresc, Un monde mditerranen. conomie et socit
en Sicilie 1300-1450, 2 vols. (Rome-Palermo: cole franaise de Rome, 1986), pp. 5977 and Stephan R. Epstein, Potere e mercati in Sicilia. Secoli XIII-XVI, trans. by Alfredo Guaraldo (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), pp. 35-69. With regard to the population figures for Sicily between the late 1200s and mid-1300s, there have been various interpretations. At this time, I will limit myself to recalling that the fluctuating nature of
the populations was clearly shown by Illuminato Peri, who in this regard demonstrated the fluctuations in the number of households; Illuminato Peri, Uomini, citt e
campagne dallXI al XIII secolo (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1978), pp. 246-247; Peri, La
Sicilia dopo il Vespro. Uomini, citt e campagne. 1282/1376 (Rome and Bari: Laterza,
1990), p. 242; Peri, Restaurazione e pacifico stato in Sicilia 1377-1501 (Rome and Bari:
Laterza, 1988), p. 79. An approach that is similar in many ways emerges in the analysis by David Herlihy, Demography, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. by Joseph
146
FABRIZIO TITONE
not entirely comparable to one another, can be seen to have several aspects in common. Administrative and economic reasons (such
as the overall management of the gabelle, or indirect taxes), control of the magistracies and an imbalance of representation in the
government appear to have contributed to their causes. The populus was constantly implicated and its composition is shown to
change based on the context and the perspective that of the royal court or the members of the community.2 A further common feature of these events is the fact that they follow the 1450 uprising
of the populus in Palermo, which is referred to on more than one
occasion. However, establishing the degree of communication that
existed between the communities remains difficult, as does the issue of whether concern over this chain of events caused the royal
court to exaggerate the attempt at emulation.3
Consideration of how violence was perceived and described in
society at the time should move in tandem with an analysis of the
causes and descriptions of these events. In some cases violence
was deemed just and even greatly desired; in others, it was perceived as a threat to the common good. However, it was never accepted as a natural order of things.4 An emotional factor, which
R. Strayer, vol. IV (New York: Scribner, 1984), pp. 138, 141, and 146.
2 Epstein, Potere, pp. 357-63, maintains that the populares were wage-earners
without property or owners of quite modest pieces of land in suburban areas. An analysis of the uprising in the city of Palermo in my article Il tumulto popularis del 1450.
Conflitto politico e societ urbana a Palermo in Archivio Storico Italiano, 163 (2005),
pp. 43-86, demonstrates a polysemic value of the term populus as well as the groups
ability to organize.
3 Bresc, Un monde, p. 741, was the first to indicate cases of reference to the
Palermo uprising in protests in other cities.
4 A hypothesis supported, but not backed, by Antonino Giuffrida, Giustizia e
societ, in Storia della Sicilia, ed. by Rosario Romeo (Palermo: Societ Editrice Storia di Napoli e della Sicilia, 1979), vol. III, pp. 552-555, quotation on p. 552. With regard to the type of crimes and their incidence, see Alan Ryder, The Incidence of Crime
in Sicily in the Mid-Fifteenth Century: the Evidence from Composition Records, in
Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Trevor Dean and Kate J. P.
Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 58-73. The collection of
data proposed by the author is a description that is probably not representative of the
incidence of crime in Sicily of the time. The documentation considered inevitably emphasizes the actual incidence of crime, information that it seems to be taken into consideration by Ryder in the citation of Brescs research (p. 70) but it appears to con-
PRESENTATION OF PRACTICE OF VIOLENCE
147
is not shown to cause arbitrary actions but indeed to be part of legitimate political demands, marks both the perception of violence
and the way in which it is implemented. Reason and organization
exceed any possible role played by the emotions and remain central.5 On the other hand, in accordance with a general strategy to
stigmatize these episodes immediately, the royal courts interpretation of events is shown to stress the emotional factor.
Concerning the documentation of the episodes being examined, it must be said that remarkable information is provided on
the composition of society and the competition for power at that
time. The accounts of the conflicts, whether by the royal court or
tradict to the conclusions proposed by the author (pp. 72-74). For another reality, see
the considerations of Claude Gauvard, De grace especial: Crime, tat et socit en
France a fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991), pp. 1-9, on
the discontinuity of the sources available and the use of sources in the history of crime.
5 For a comparison of the representation and nature of the emotions, see Angers
Past: the Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. by Barbara H. Rosenwein
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). In addition, see Daniel Smail, The Consumption of Justice. Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 89-132, with regard to the
role of the emotions in the choice of procedures by the judiciary. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University press, 2006), investigates the various forms of perception and expressions
of emotions of the various social groups in the early medieval period. Carol Lansing,
Passion and Order. Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2008), with particular reference to Orvieto, investigates the ties between expressions of grief, gender and social discipline. In addition,
see Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring. Vendetta and Factions in Friuli During the Renaissance (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993), with
reference to the procedures for vendettas. On the theme of conflict, with reference to
the reality of the communes described by Zorzi as per eccellenza, la societ del conflitto, I limit myself to referring to Conflitti, pace e vendette nellItalia comunale, ed.
by Andrea Zorzi (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009; available online at
http://www.fupress.com/scheda.asp?idv=1961; this quotation appears on p. 17), and
the essays in it by Giovanni Ciccaglioni and Giuseppe Gardoni. In addition, with regard to revealing the rational aspect of the phenomenon of violence, see A great effusion of blood? Interpreting Medieval Violence, ed. by Mark D. Meyerson, Danilet
Thiery, and Oren Falk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); La vengeance,
400/1200, ed. by Dominique Barthlemy, Franois Bougard, and Rgine Le Jan (Rome:
cole de franaise de Rome, 2006); and Vengeance in the Middle Ages. Emotion, Religion and Feud, ed. by Susanna A. Throop and Paul R. Hyams (Farnham-Burlington:
Ashgate, 2010).
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FABRIZIO TITONE
by those involved in them, are notable for their descriptions of the

individuals or groups that carried out or were subjected to violence.
City officials and the taxation system
The degree, nature and distribution of the phenomenon of violence
underwent changes between the 1300s and 1400s. In the 1340s to
1360s, royal control and coordination went through a phase of serious weakness that parallels the growing conflicts within feudal
nobility6; there are notarial documents that paint a very clear picture of the situation in Sicily in just a few strokes, and from this
perspective, notarial documents provide enlightenment and some
contain conditions pertaining to the hypothetical occurrence of
war of the kings enemies and violence carried out by powerful individuals in the countryside and in the streets.7
This disorder is first halted with the rise to power of four major aristocratic families from 1377 to 1392, a period known as the
age of vicars, following which came the restoration of the royal
court starting in 1392 by Martin I, king of Sicily. The declaration
by Martin I in 1402 that rule of law had been implemented during
the age of vicars is significant. The various courts that were active between 1377 and 1392 had maintained control of the territories under their jurisdiction.8 From 1392 onward the role of the royal court gradually stabilized, and at the same time citizen autonomy grew, along with local demographic and economic growth. This
process brought with it a rise in violence in the urban setting.9
Conflicts generally see both the elected and the royal courts
officials implicated, as well as the gabelloti (tax farmers) whom I
shall discuss at greater length below. With reference to government structure, from the time of Federico IIIs reign (1296-1337)
6 Peri, La Sicilia, pp. 143-146.
7 Ivi, p. 144.
8 Capitula regni Siciliae, ed. by Francesco M. Testa (Panormi: Felicella, 1741), vol.
I, p. 177.
9 In the mid-fifteenth century crime was... overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon: Ryder, The Incidence, p. 65.
149
local administration was already the job of elected officials, with

the exception of criminal jurisdiction and tax collection, which
were the jurisdiction of the royal courts officials such as the captain, assisted by a captains judge, and the secretus or vicesecretus.
During the reign of Alfonso V, an important evolution occurred
due to the significant number of local individuals appointed as
captains and secreti, and, in addition, the practice of selling captaincies to primarily local individuals became the rule rather than
the exception. This expanded the options for urban control and/or
intensified the interests converging on these magistracies, giving
rise to forms of clientelism in the management of positions.
With regard to the tax system, the main revenues came from
gabelle (indirect taxes). The gabelle were managed in two ways: indirectly, through the gabelloti who obtained them at auction, and
directly, through the credencierii. By examining the bidding
process, it is possible to indicate some of the tax farmers opportunities to make money, as well as limitations thereto. In the early
1300s in Palermo, for example, if anyone made a higher bid within a given period of time after a previous bid has been made, he
would be awarded a sum equal to one fifth of the difference between the two bidding prices.10
The procedures were not the same everywhere: in Catania in
the early 1400s, once the auction price was determined, the individual wishing to make a higher bid had to meet a certain minimum
such as one-third or one-half. If there were no further offers, the
last bidder won the tax.11 The point to clarify is this: when a new
10 Luigi Genuardi, Il Comune nel medio evo in Sicilia. Contributo alla storia del
diritto amministrativo (Palermo: Fiorenza, 1921), p. 254.
11 Auctions for the years 1418-1419 (in this case the minimum of one-half or onethird is not specified but proven by the bids) and 1421-1422; Matteo Gaudioso, Atti
dei Giurati di Catania. Archivio Storico di Catania, vol. 1, 6, [p. 166] and vol. 1, 14,
p. 516. For a comparison (in general for western medieval communities) of the auction system, see Denis Menjot and Manuel Snchez Martnez, Prsentation, in La
fiscalit des villes au Moyen ge (Occident mditerranen), La gestion de limpt (mthodes, moyens, rsultats), ed. by Denis Menjot and Manuel Snchez Martnez, vol. IV
(Privat: Toulouse, 2004), pp. 5-8; the authors believe that the auction was appropriate because it guaranteed the community a known amount of resources and was offered to those having the available capital.
150
FABRIZIO TITONE
bid was made, what was the award based on? The most plausible
answer is that the award was based on the value of the tax, which
was raised based on the award. In Palermo, this was one-fifth of
the difference between the two bidding prices. It is likely that the
same procedure was used for new bids in Catania. These procedures were created as an incentive for offers during auctions.12
Thus, the bidder paid for the period involved, on the basis of
the final value at the end of the bidding and the possible risks in
cases of early sales of gabelle entailing a loss on their value.13
Gabelle would be sold early at a discounted rate when there was
an urgent need to generate revenue. This loss was termed interesse
and increased in proportion to the distance in the future of the due
date of the gabella. The value of the gabelle in these cases is the result of an average calculated on the possible profit, based on the
regular value of the tax, and the potential loss between the time of
assessment and the actual time the revenue is received. These aspects notwithstanding, there were ample opportunities for the bidder to make a profit.
Violence as compensation
Polizzi was a community in the interior of Sicily with an economy
based primarily on vineyards and woolen fabric.14 The territory was
already organized in the late 1200s by sub-division into contrade
and capitanee, which were named after the churches of Santa Maria
Maggiore, San Giorgio, San Blasio, San Pancrazio, Santa Maria
Maddalena and San Nicol.15
12 Fabrizio Titone, Governments of the universitates. Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 131-148.
13 For a comparison with Turin, see Alessandro Barbero, Unoligarchia urbana.
Politica ed economia a Torino fra Tre e Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 1995), pp. 222-224.
14 See Epstein, Potere, pp. 179, and pp. 189-190.
15 See Illuminato Peri, Rinaldo di Giovanni Lombardo habitator terre Policii, in Idem, Villani e cavalieri nella Sicilia Medievale (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993) pp.
156, 159, 161, 176, 184. It should be pointed out that the first edition of Peris essay,
Rinaldo, dates from 1956.
151
In June 1451, Viceroy Lope Ximen de Urrea gave the legum

doctor (law expert), Giovanni Aprea full power to investigate a series of episodes that harmed the Denti family.16 The seriousness of
the events that caused the viceroy to initiate the investigation can
be summarized in the following points: a risky involvement of the
populus, the danger that the revolt in Palermo would be duplicated, the gabelle auction system thrown into crisis, and the captains
distorted interpretation of the rules. The accusations put forward
by Andrea Denti and his father Francesco pertained to the presbiter, Gandolfo de Aurifice; a juror (i.e., iuratus, one of the highest elected officials), Berengario Aiuto, in the position at that time
and as far back as 1444-1445; the captain, Giovanni Amato; as
well as other residents (habitatores).17 They apparently stirred up
the populus (monapolio et comocione populi), declared that they
wanted an uprising such as occurred in Palermo (dixerunt velle
facere alu modu ki fichi Palermu tempore tumultus), and incited the
plebem to kill the Denti family and take possession of their property, specifically the gabelle in their possession. In addition, they
allegedly tried to exhume and burn the remains of Francescos father, levied new gabelle without a license to do so, made counterfeit money, and published a text claiming false rights for themselves
(famoso libello usurpacione). Finally, other unspecified crimes committed by them and the captain were denounced.18 These violent
acts do not seem to have been spontaneous but instead to have
been carefully organized; this is, in fact, indirectly confirmed.
Apreas task was to proceed with drastic measures against the
accused, even being able to have their property destroyed should
16 On the law experts, legum doctores, see Andrea Romano, Legum doctores e
cultura giuridica nella Sicilia aragonese. Tendenze, opere, ruoli (Milan: Giuffr, 1984).
17 On the elections of Berengario Aiuto, see my book, I magistrati cittadini. Gli
ufficiali scrutinati in Sicilia da Martino V ad Alfonso V (Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia,
2008), pp. 270-271. During the 1450-1451 administrative year for city officials (annum
indictionis), which ran from September 1 to August 31, Nicola Bologna il Panormita
had received from the king the captaincy of Polizzi, but on September 5, 1450, he
turned down the position in favor of Giovanni Amato; Archivio di Stato di Palermo,
Real Cancelleria (hereafter Real Cancelleria), vol. 84, fol. 39rv.
18 Real Cancelleria, vol. 84, fol. 325rv.
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FABRIZIO TITONE
they fail to appear when summoned. The documentation does not

contain any passages from the investigation, which nonetheless
must have been meticulous given that the royal court gradually
obtained information that was contrary to the first complaint.
The rupture between the Denti family and numerous segments
of the community is the result of tensions arising from the familys
significant control of Polizzis resources. These tensions worsened
following the granting of several gabelle to the Denti family through
intervention by the Magna Regia Curia (the highest court in the
kingdom). Two court orders established compensation for the expenses sustained by Francesco and Andrea Denti as members of
Polizzis diplomatic corps in October 1442, during the time when
the city was reacquiring its right to be part of the royal demesne
rather than continue to be in the possession of Raimondo Cabrera,19 who had acquired the city from the king, Alfonso V. This redemption was especially burdensome on the community, which
had difficulty coming up with the necessary amount and would still
be insolvent in 1445.20 The Denti familys involvement consisted
of collecting privileges (confectione privilegiorum et provisionum),
plausibly to confirm Polizzis entitlement to reacquire their right
to be part of the royal demesne as well as the trips the Denti family members had made.
The Magna Regia Curia specifically set out that the universitas
was to pay the money through a surtax (maldenaru) on some unspecified gabelle. The Denti were to receive 45 onze per year until they were completely repaid.21 Recourse to surtaxes was undertaken with great caution, and the Magna Regia Curias intervention reveals that it was a strain to persuade the universitas to
19 Archivo de la Corona de Aragn of Barcellona, Cancillera, Registros (hereafter Cancillera), vol. 2822, fol. 21r, 1442. See also Real Cancelleria, vol. 80, fols. 273v275v, on the size of the payment as well as Cabreras reluctance to give up possession
of the city.
20 To deal with the situation, Polizzi decided to sell some gabelle and magistracies to Federico Ventimiglia. The king agreed to the sales on April 21, 1445, Cancillera,
vol. 2848, fols. 153r-164r.
21 Cancillera, vol. 2875, fols. 89v-90r. The date of the Magna Curia's decisions
is not indicated.
153
pay out what was owed. Normal practice would have been for the
city council, i.e., the governing body responsible for economic policy and special actions, to determine the method of payment. The
final decision would not be handed down until November 1448,
and this reveals both the difficulty in establishing how much the
community owed the Denti family and the difficulty in ensuring
that they were paid.22 By March 1451, they still had not received
the money they were owed.23
This period was one of hardship for the Polizzi community,
particularly due to wheat shortages. In January 1449, the highest
citizen officials persuaded the viceroy to require anyone with wheat
not to export it and to sell it at an agreed-upon price to prevent
speculation. These measures were taken to prevent the poviri et
miserabili from starving.24
The seriousness of the break between the Denti family and the
rest of the community emerged in March 1451 when they once
again requested not only their due but also compensation for an unspecified amount of wheat that the community had seized from
them.25 Moreover, their high standing since the late 1300s, through
a fortunate understanding with the royal court, had gradually
heightened the conflicts with those who saw their own roles diminished. Already in 1393, the Duke of Montblanch, Martin Is father and strategist of the restoration of the crown, had intervened
to settle a conflict between deputy captain Andrea Denti and authorities of the Polizzi community. The duke urged them to recon-
22 In November 1448 the king requested implementation of measures in favor

of the Denti family: Francesco Denti was to receive onze 179 tar 8 and grani 17, while
Andrea Denti was to receive onze 126 tar 28 and grani 10; Archivio di Stato di Palermo, Protonotaro del Regno (hereafter Protonotaro), vol. 40, fols. 221v-230v. This
was the outcome of a long process, indication of which can be seen, for example, in
the intervention by the royal officials in March 1448 to implement a royal order in favor of payment to the Denti; Protonotaro, vol. 40, fol. 49rv. The particularly high
amounts owed to the Denti are obviously explained by the sensitive nature and importance of the mission they had carried out. The Magna Regia Curia issued two orders in favor of the Denti as reported in Cancillera, vol. 2875, fols. 89v-90r.
23 Protonotaro, vol. 43, fol. 199rv.
24 Protonotaro, vol. 41, fol. 22r.
25 Real Cancelleria, 84, fols. 244v, 245v.
154
FABRIZIO TITONE
cile as good friends do.26 Over time, the Denti-royal court relationship appears to have become firmly entrenched, but the Denti
familys relationship with the community as a whole remained tense.
In 1443 king Alfonso V appointed Andrea Denti, who was
Polizzis ambassador at that time and already a citizen (civis) of
Palermo, algozirius for life, a royal duty primarily for territorial
control.27 The most relevant information is the royal appointment
from 1443-1444 onward of Andrea Denti as acatapanus with the
ability to choose his successor, as compensation for his services rendered as Polizzis ambassador. In 1447 it was agreed that he and
his brother Giovanni would carry out this duty, alternating years
between them.28 The office of acatapanus, of which there were two
in Polizzi, was generally an elected position and had the privilege
of controlling weights and measures in the markets. This magistracy had direct contact with the populations immediate needs.
In all likelihood, this concentration of privileges made royal intervention less acceptable for the rest of the community, which
saw further favor granted to the Denti family in the form of a local tax increase. On the other hand, the Denti familys position of
favor would seem to have led them to act improperly, with little
fear of potential consequences. As a likely effect of the Aprea investigation, the king intervened in October 1454 against the two
Denti brothers guilty of having collected more than the allocated
amount on the taxes granted to them. The gabelle had produced
more than the 45 onze they were to have received per year, and they
had appropriated the surplus from the first year. Alfonso V therefore sentenced them to return their ill-gotten gains.29 This information now makes it possible to re-examine the actions against the
Denti family from a different perspective.
Members of Polizzis elite, which included, as previously mentioned, a cleric, a juror and the captain, orchestrated the violent
attack. These are not the only protagonists. It is, in fact, specified
26 Real Cancelleria, vol. 22, fol. 62v.
27 Alfonsos privilege goes back to October 1443 but the viceroys executorship
dates to September 1444, Real Cancelleria, vol. 82, fols. 97v-99r.

28 Protonotaro, vol. 38, fols. 145r-146r.
29 Cancillera, vol. 2875, fols. 89v-90r,
155
that they and other residents involved the populus. The expression
comocione populi would seem to indicate that the populus had been
influenced as a whole and, that as a general rule, this was not difficult. It is likely that the community immediately noticed the
fraud committed by the Denti family. The royal court was then
informed that the Denti family had been appropriating more than
the established amount of taxes since the first year. Information
brought to light appears to confirm that Polizzi was in the same
situation as other cities, namely that the populares were a taxable
group, which gave rise to their rejection of fraud in the form of
overtaxing. The populus was a composite; it must be understood
that the term populares did not necessarily include the pauperes,30
although the populus in some communities could also include
pauperes; however the lowest social stratum in Polizzi was referred to as the poviri and miserabili and was not identified as populares. Based on the accusations, the populus was urged to repeat
the events that took place in Palermo, which according to the report would seem to be referred to by those responsible for the
attack as the example to follow.31 In other instances, the high degree of communication between the communities in Sicily, and
the impact of such dialogue at an institutional level, is highlighted.32 Dialogue and/or comparison could also pertain to the surges
of protest. The origins of the protest in Polizzi were different
from those in Palermo, which included competition for access to
the government, violation of the system of privileges and customs, and a series of opportunistic activities related to the supply of wheat. Although the populares were not the only actors in
Palermo, this action was theirs and in many ways it was autonomous. In Polizzis case, members of the elite appear to have
manipulated the populus, and gotten them involved by playing on
aspects that directly affected their interests: over-taxation and
forms of opportunism by the affluent and beneficiaries of the
30 Titone, Governments, pp. 181-183.
31 Examples of interregional communications of revolts are found in Samuel
Kline Cohn Jr., Lust for Liberty. The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 12001425 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 161-169.
32 Titone, Governments, p. 48, and pp. 113-126.
156
FABRIZIO TITONE
royal court who were well aware of the populations mood because they were acatapani.
In Polizzi, a convergence of interests is recorded between the
populares, who were affected economically, and members of the
elite who were anxious to bring down the Denti power system. The
populares acted together with members of the citizen oligarchy
against certain members of the oligarchy.33 According to the accusations made by the Denti family, it was the plebs and not the
populus as a whole who appropriated their property and attempted to kill them.34 The defining mutation of the group shows an internal distinction among the populares: a portion of them was capable of carrying out bloody deeds. In other words, the populus is
more appropriately thought of as a set of distinct strata rather than
as united and homogeneous.
Even the brutality of the attempted desecration of the Denti
family, which according to the report seemed promoted by those
mainly advocating acts of violence, reveals a clear strategy and a
significant degree of rationality.35 By profaning the remains of the
person who probably laid the foundations of the familys political
fate in the 1400s, the intention was to harm the familys memory
and therefore assert the loss of power on the part of the Denti in
order to create a power system that no longer included them. In
33 For a different, now outdated, reading that maintains that the nature of popular revolts in the late medieval period was negative, characterized by hatred for the
upper classes, I refer to Rodney H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant
Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 130-132.
34 The different meanings of populus, depending on context, like the variety of
recurring terms like plebs or popolo minuto, etc., has been extensively examined for
other situations. See, for example, Claude Gauvard, Le petit peuple au Moyen ge,
in Le petit peuple dans lOccident mdival: terminologies, perceptions, ralits, ed. by
Pierre Boglioni, Robert Delort, and Claude Gauvard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002) pp. 707-722 and Cohn, Lust, pp. 9-13.
35 The progressive and ritualistic nature of the acts of violence has been highlighted. For a comparison, see Trevor Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), pp. 168-181. With reference to the
vendetta, Paul Hyams, in his brilliant essay entitled Was There Really Such a Thing
as Feud in the High Middle Ages?, maintained that the vendetta and violence were
integral parts of society in the high Middle Ages in Vengeance in the Middle Ages, pp.
151-175, in particular pp. 170-175.
157
general, the punitive action against the Denti family seems to indicate the search for compensation, particularly on the basis of the
following aspects: the gabelle that were the source of their ill-gotten gains were expropriated; the system of entitlements they had
enjoyed was replaced with a new system that excluded them (libello usurpacione); and their memory was degraded as a warning.36
The anger characterizing these actions is not, however, in any way
irrational or arbitrary but expresses a legitimate political demand.37
These actions appear to have been given legitimacy a posteriori by
the kings intervention against the Denti family.
Regarding the accusations against the captain, there do not appear to be any royal interventions against Giovanni Amato; moreover, a subsequent action by the royal court should be cited. In
1457, there was tension between the captain, who was another
member of the Amato family, Orlando, and Andrea Denti. Orlando had previously filled the position in 1451-1452, succeeding Giovanni Amato.38 In 1457, a royal syndicator and legum doctor, Pietro
Pisano, suspended the captain following a series of unspecified
complaints put forward by Andrea Denti. This is clearly a different episode from the one recorded in 1451, but was most likely part
of a series of ongoing personal clashes and vendettas.39 The intervention by the President of the Kingdom, Antonio Russo Spatafora, in March 1457 was peremptory: he gave Andrea Denti four
days in which to prove his claims, otherwise his complaints against
36 On vendetta as compensation, see Jacob Black Michaud, Cohesive Force: Feud
in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (New York: St. Martins Press, 1975), pp.
12-16, and Muir, Mad, pp. 67-76. See also Dean, Crime, pp. 123-132 on the distinctions between punishment and vendetta and the connections with compensation. Regarding the connections between emotions and political ends, see Stephen D. White,
The Politics of Anger, in Angers Past, pp. 127-152.
37 With reference to the culture of aristocratic conflict, White, The Politics of
Anger, in Angers Past, pp. 127-52, demonstrates how anger is a non-arbitrary component and in most cases is the result of the assessment of the episodes that justify it.
38 In the year 1451-1452, Orlando Amato succeeded Giovanni; Real Cancelleria,
fols 258v-259r; Protonotaro, fols 201v-202r.
39 For a comparison with another situation, see the considerations on the characteristics of feuding proposed by William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking.
Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 179-189.
158
FABRIZIO TITONE
Amato would no longer be accepted.40 There did not appear to be

any appointments of new captains during that year. Dentis discredit of Orlando Amato was presumably to have him excluded
from the government; however, the familys past actions made the
royal court much more cautious in accepting other complaints by
Andrea Denti. During those years, the captain appears to have created an equilibrium, contributing to government stability in Polizzi.
Violence as political exclusion
According to royal documentation, the expression comocione populi indicates the influenceability of the populus. It is possible to ascertain further both the degree of influenceability and the forms
of communication of the uprisings that occurred in the mid-1400s.
Repression at the expense of the supporters of the uprising in
Palermo took place between late May and July 1450, but it was already well-known in November of the same year in Piazza, a town
quite far from Palermo. In November, the royal court sent its own
royal commissioner to Piazza legum doctor Melchiori La Ripa
to investigate and try several individuals who had committed a
string of crimes.
The governments stability seemed at risk during those years,
and in this regard it is necessary to consider what had been reported a short time before. In 1448, a time of serious institutional instability caused by captains Ruggero Crapanzano and Bartolomeo Amore had come to an end. The officers had been given
the magistracy appointments per viam emptionis, and with parenti et amici et affini (relatives and friends and supporters) they headed a system based on clientelism that was detrimental to good government. Moreover, they restricted the normal operation of the
government institutions, not allowing the various political representatives to participate in the administration. After a long period
of tension, and thanks to the joint action of various citizens, the
40 Protonotaro, vol. 47, fol. 451rv, in which the suspension determined by Pietro
Pisano is quoted but the date is not reported.
159
king dismissed them.41 In fact, that crisis led to another, and in

1451 there was confirmation that the tax farmers had tampered
with the official scale (statia) used for verifying the weight of products and the related tax. At the same time, several residents had
tried to provoke the populus (provocari lu populu) and cause an uprising just days after the uprising in Palermo; others elected themselves Sindaci, autonomously made some of them officers and imposed gabelle without a license.42 This string of crimes led the royal court to send its own officer.
The chronological proximity to the events in Palermo (the primary documents state that these events were apparently reported
shortly after the uprising in Palermo) shows how quickly news
spread among the various towns in the region. No more information has been discovered about these deeds; however, it can be stated that the failed attempt to involve the populus revealed both the
disparity between the instigators and the populus interests and
how this group and its reactions were taken into careful consideration by the royal court. It can be inferred that the populus must
have had significant numbers and therefore was, in all likelihood,
socially diverse. The large numbers also explain the care with which
the royal court assessed the attempt to involve the populus. Moreover, the documentary reference makes it possible to ascertain the
ineffectiveness of the attempt to stir up the populus, which reveals
the populus ability to understand whether or not it was in their interest. The tax system was an especially sensitive area and in the
case of Piazza, whoever tried to abuse it would be hard-pressed indeed to have the support of anyone who felt the impact.
Finally, in Piazza the populares seem to have had a role in government policy, specifically on the city council, even if not under
normal conditions. It is worth returning to the complaints made
against the captains in 1448. The universitas put forward a series
of petitions for the purpose of removing the current captains from
41 Fabrizio Titone, Le Consuetudines terre Platee: un esempio di cultura dello scritto, in Scrittura e potere. Pratiche documentarie e forme di governo nellItalia
tardomedievale, ed. by Isabella Lazzarini, Reti Medievali-Rivista, IX, 1 (2008), available online at http://www.storia.unifi.it/_RM/rivista/saggi/Titone_08_1.htm.
42 Real Cancelleria, vol. 84, fol. 106rv.
160
FABRIZIO TITONE
their positions and, at the same time, establishing a number of

guarantees for greater institutional stability. A particular request
was that in matters pertaining to the common good, members of
various socio-professional groups, gentili homini, curiali, ministrali, borgesi et altre persone, would be able to demand that the
city council be convened. The intention was to guarantee the ability to convene the council even if the officials were opposed.43 The
city council was in effect, the level of government guaranteeing expanded decision-making power and the source of stability for the
government representatives (elected officials and royal appointments). The indication of the various groups in the petition is evidence of the transversal nature of what they were lobbying for.
The 1448 petitions referred specifically to the increased number of groups entitled to request that the city council be convened,
and it follows that they were entitled to political representation for
their groups. Wealthy landowners and/or merchants (gentili homini) were listed, as were small merchants and landowners (borgesi), artisans (magistri), and curiales. While not being legum doctores, the curiales were knowledgeable about the law and often
held positions where such knowledge was necessary; it appears in
particular that they were familiar with the royal court environment, often being appointed to the royal position of the captains
judge.44 At the same time, the petitions quoted in the city text,
which constitutes a genuine common memoir of the universitas,45
also included other individuals described only as altre persone (other persons). A few years later, under circumstances similar to those
of 1448, it became clear who these individuals might be. In 14531454, the captains who had been dismissed managed to be reappointed, giving rise to protest in the community. The group opposed to the captains, made up of ghintilomini curiali ministrali
et populari, requested permission from the royal court to call a
meeting of the council to formalize the appointment of a new cap-
43 Consuetudines terre Platee. Piazza Armerina public library, fols. 46r-47r.

44 On the meaning of these names and the possible differences depending on the
various local contexts, see Titone, Governments, pp. 184-214.

45 Consuetudines terre Platee.
161
tain.46 The violence took on the form of explicit obstructionism,

and the captains, supported by the jurors (iurati) with the support
of their followers, did not allow the council to meet. This notwithstanding, those proposing the new magistrate, namely, Tommaso
Renda di Patti, succeeded in having Ruggero Crapanzano and Bartolomeo Amore removed by the king.47
The change described in the councils make-up in 1454 compared to 1448 is not clear, and there is no information making it
possible to support the notion that there was socio-economic coincidence between the borgesi and populares. Moreover, it seems
unlikely that members of the populus would be associated with a
specific professional group. For example, based on the references
for the populares during the 1450 protest in Palermo, it emerges
that these were wage-earners, small property owners, and workers
in the artisan sector, even if at a lower level compared to the guilds.
At any rate, it is documented that in 1454 the populus was represented among the members of a strategically large council. Piazza
was experiencing emergency political conditions; however in other places, the populares were also entitled to political representation under regular conditions. On this point, important information comes from the text of petitions written by the representatives
of the artisans and the populares (referred to as consuli et populi
respectively) of Catania in 1450. This was an especially positive political time for the artisans, who in open opposition to the gentilomini were able to achieve greater representation on the council.
The 1450 text reveals an agreement between the artisans and the
populares in negotiations with the royal court. The key points of
the petitions were complaints about the forms of fraud in both the
tax system and sales of wheat.48
At this point in the story, the meaning of further information
46 Protonotaro, vol. 45, fols. 303v-304r, July 8, 1454.

47 Consuetudines terre Platee, fols. 58r-61v. See also Protonotaro vol. 45, fols.
303v-304r. For a comparison see Conflitti, from which it emerges that the study of
conflicts helps in the understanding of the competition for power in the Communes.
48 Salvatore Giambruno and Luigi Genuardi, Capitoli inediti delle citt demaniali
di Sicilia (Palermo: Societ Siciliana di Storia Patria, 1918), pp. 200-206.
162
FABRIZIO TITONE
regarding the aspects of the phenomenon of violence, the possible

uses of the term populus, and clientelism as a source of serious
government imbalances should be clarified. Extending the range
of observation to another city in this case, Randazzo in eastern
Sicily brings up more points for consideration. As a town, Randazzo emerged economically and institutionally because of its significant control over a large districtus. Accordingly, Randazzo was
able to redistribute resources from the countryside to the community, and expand its economic chain through the taxes it levied
on the territory under its jurisdiction.49
In June 1458, following the complaint by the nobilis Iaymo de
Rigiu, alias De Pace, the viceroy, Lope Ximen de Urrea, requested that a member of the Magna Regia Curia (the magister notarius
Alfonso de Carioso) go to Randazzo to try Fra Pietro Russo.50 This
was the result of numerous criminal acts caused by the Russo family, previous royal interventions to end them and a final detailed
accusation regarding the familys relentlessly exercised power in
Randazzo. Iaymo de Rigiu, an elderly member of the citys elite,
stated that while on his way through a piazza in Randazzo, he was
attacked by an armed Pietro Russo who physically and verbally assaulted him. This assault was clearly for the purpose of making an
impression not only on the victim but also on those who witnessed
it or would hear about it. Russo did not stop at striking him in the
head but also grossly insulted him. On the other hand, the attacker
and the victim were bound by a pact of verbal and physical nonaggression, which extended to third parties as well; this type of pact
was called a fidehomagio, and a written copy of it was kept at the
Magna Regia Curia. This was one of the various means to which
the royal court resorted for gaining control of conflicts and was a
procedure that was decided upon for dealing with the Russo fam-
49 Domenico Ventura, Randazzo e il suo territorio tra medioevo e prima et moderna (Caltanissetta-Rome: Sciascia, 1991); Fabrizio Titone, Identit cittadina e dominio territoriale. Il caso delluniversitas di Randazzo nel tardo Medioevo, Mlanges
de lcole Franaise de Rome, 120/1 (2008), pp. 173-188.
50 For a comparison of the possible forms of reaction by the offended parties,
who at times turned to the authorities and at others took matters into their own hands,
see Smails considerations and reference bibliography, The Consumption, pp. 5-10.
163
ilys control (gran dominicioni).51 At first reading, the viceroys intervention appears misleading; it would seem that the crimes could
be traced back to a single individual. In reality, not only was the
entire Russo family involved but also a large network of their extended family cousins, and various other relations as well as
their followers and friends.52 This is what led Lope Ximen de Urrea to intervene. The viceroys action against Pietro Russo alone
leads to the belief that the state authorities preferred not to clash
with the entire powerful group to which Pietro belonged.
Iaymo de Rigiu denounced the Russo familys broad network
that guaranteed them the control of positions and enabled them
to do anything they pleased (far tutto loro). For example, Pietros
brother Muni, in his capacity as vicesecretus seriously damaged
Rigiu, depriving him of his income. Continuity in the control of positions was the key to their power.53 This can certainly be identified as the affirmation of a system based on clientelism, relationships in which protection and reciprocity are components in keeping and strengthening these relationships.54 As was noted, the convergence of patronage relationships and control of economic resources is a characteristic that factions have in common.55
Whether in Piazza or Randazzo, this system was perceived by
those subject to it as a source of violence and was irreconcilable
with a system of government guaranteeing the common good. Rigiu
accused the Russo family of many crimes: cronyism in particular
51 Protonotaro, vol. 50, fols. 371r-372r. In 1450 Simone Russo and other mem-
bers of the family interrupted a religious performance and attacked the monks of the
convent of San Francesco; Ryder, The Incidence, pp. 69-70.
52 With reference to the vendetta in the high Middle Ages, Paul Hyams has
shown that this is not merely a function of kinship. Hyams, Was There Really Such
a Thing as Feud in the High Middle Ages?, p. 156.
53 Titone, I magistrati, pp. 275-290, and Titone, Governments, pp. 299-302.
54 See the entry Clientlisme in Dictionnaire du vote, ed. by Pascal Perrineau
and Dominique Reyni (Paris: PUF, 2001), pp. 197-200; also Vittorio E. Parsi, La
clientela. Per una tipologia dei legami personali in politica, Filosofia Politica, 2 (1988),
pp. 411-434. On support and backing as components characterizing family groups,
which may also include those with fictive kinship (no blood relationship), comparison is made with Miller, Bloodtaking, pp. 139-178.
55 See Muir, Mad, pp. 77-107.
164
FABRIZIO TITONE
and intimidation of adversaries in general, such as rushing to provide armed support to their friends when they were involved in
criminal activity. Appealing to the captain was useless. While it
does not seem that he was accused of favoritism, it appears that he
was unable to control an established situation that seems to have
existed from the time when the kingdom was controlled by the Anjou (da lu tempu de li Franchiscii). Plausibly, the complaint stresses the improper exercise of their power; for example, they appear
until at least the 1430s effectively opposed by the Basilico familys
group.56
The accusations are characterized by the obvious attempt to
communicate the seriousness of the situation to the royal court as
clearly as possible. The first records offer the subjugation of the
popoli of Randazzo as proof of the evil effect of the actions of the
Russo family and their followers. Subsequent references also speak
of popoli and are more detailed; however, there is obvious recourse
to emotional language, which more effectively conveys the social
divisions and violence suffered:
the aforesaid popoli in general and in particular, due to failed justice,
the insults suffered, and having had their wives and family members
forcefully taken from them, have no other choice remaining but to
suffer the oppression and insults [of the Russo family] whether by
their ongoing control of magistracies, or due to their significant number which entails their favoritism toward one another, and when they
commit particularly serious actions, everyone runs to them with
weapons, as has happened in the past, and no one dares to speak out
or defend himself with the result that everyone is subjugated, and
more specifically, each member of the popoli is afraid to make a mistake.57
With regard to the populus, this frightening report is not comparable to the previously analyzed episodes. In this case, the term
56 Real Cancelleria, vol. 71, fols. 91v-92r, 1436.

57 Protonotaro vol. 50, fol. 371v. On the use of emotional language but with ref-
erence to judicial proceedings in Marseilles to categorize the social relationships, see

Smail, The Consumption, pp. 90-91.
165
popoli means, in general, society outside the network that is being

accused: popoli as populations in a broad sense, whether noteworthy or modest, in a description in which there is the unequivocal desire to make clear how one groups violence indiscriminately
and transversally strikes anyone that opposes it. What ensues is violence as a tool that is useful for defining the group, strengthens
ties and is a source of backing for the positions acquired.
Conclusion
At first reading, there would seem to be a tendency on the part of
the royal court to link the episodes of violence to the populares. In
reality, this connection does not exist, nor did the populares act arbitrarily. Instead, the royal court feared the involvement of the
populares. This fear would have been linked to the great number
of populares and thus the danger of the communitys involvement
en masse. The royal courts emphasis on the emotional involvement of the populus has strategic significance: it was decided to
stress the degree of awareness of the episodes for the purpose of
preventing them from possibly degenerating. The main recipients
of the royal message were members of the communities oligarchy
who were working to involve the populus. The concise references
to the populares do not allow exhaustive reconstruction of their socio-professional origins, but it is possible to maintain that they
cannot be identified as the poor. Nor can they be identified as a
homogeneous group; it is more appropriate to speak of strata of
populares among which there were overlapping and differentiating
features. Their role in the government cannot be neglected, even
if in special conditions, or in ordinary conditions along with other groups with a greater socio-economic role. In Catania, during a
time that was not an emergency, the populares entered into negotiations with the royal court alongside the artisans. Overall, the
episodes examined indicate fraud in the tax system and clientelism
in governing as the main causes of violence. Clientelism in particular fostered a reduction in the political representation of the various groups, with governing inevitably becoming advantageous to
the few and not to the universitas. The various presentations of the
166
FABRIZIO TITONE
phenomenon of violence are characterized as well by its various descriptions and perceptions, and yet in these manifestations there
exists a degree of emotionalism that was used and controlled for
the political purposes of those involved. While in Polizzi, violence
was a means for regulating the distribution of economic and political resources, in Piazza and Randazzo, the purpose was the control of resources for the benefit of one faction. In Polizzi violence
appeared necessary in order to put an end to an improper wielding of power; in Piazza and Randazzo it was perceived with fear
and anguish. Through a convergence of interests among individuals of diverse origins, a marked social transversality emerges among
those who participated in the implementation of violence. By the
same token, this transversality also applies to those subjected to violence. Finally, the episodes of aggression were often public shows,
having the purpose of inflicting punishment that would be known
to the greatest number of people and be compensation for the
rights that were denied, or that would intimidate adversaries and
at the same time, strengthen the groups bonds. Making violence
a form of spectacle confirms that while it was a phenomenon that
characterized the lives of the townspeople, it was never accepted
as normal.
Patrick Lantschner
(University of Oxford)
THE NOURISHER OF SEDITIONS:

INSURGENT COALITIONS AND THE POLITICAL
VOLATILITY OF LATE MEDIEVAL BOLOGNA1
On the night of 14 March 1401, Giovanni Bentivoglio occupied

the central square of Bologna, imprisoned his fiercest political opponents, rewarded his followers with knighthoods, and three days
later was appointed gonfaloniere perpetuo by the citys councils.
Amidst a threatening external situation, characterized by the advances of Visconti Milan and the ongoing fragility of papal rule, to
which Bologna was at least nominally subject, Giovannis actions
* I would like to thank the participants of the conference held at Georgetown
University at Villa Le Balze and the audience of a different version of this paper presented at the European Urban History Association conference at Ghent in September 2010 for their helpful feedback. I would particularly like to thank Samuel Kline
Cohn Jr., Fabrizio Ricciardelli, Giorgio Marcon, Oren Margolis, Giorgio Tamba and
Andrea Zorzi for the stimulating discussions on this subject.
1 Abbreviations used: Archivio di Stato Bologna, Comune-Governo, VII, Signorie
viscontea ecclesiastica e bentivolesca, Provvigioni in capreto [hereafter Provv. capr.];
Archivio di Stato Bologna, Curia del Podest, Accusationes ad Maleficia, Sententiae
[hereafter Sententiae]; Archivio di Stato Bologna, Curia del Podest, Libri Inquisitionum et Testium [hereafter Inquisitiones]; Cronaca Rampona, Cronaca Varignana,
Cronaca Bolognetti, in Corpus Chronicorum Bononiensium, ed. by Albano Sorbelli,
Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 18/I (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1905), III [hereafter Rampona, Varignana, Bolognetti]; Matteo de Griffoni, Memoriale Historicum de Rebus
Bononiensium, ed. by Lodovico Frati and Albano Sorbelli, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 18/II (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1902) [hereafter Griffoni]; Cronaca bolognese di
Pietro di Mattiolo, ed. by Corrado Ricci (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1885) [hereafter Pietro];
Geronimo Borselli, Cronica Gestorum, ed. by Albano Sorbelli, in Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores, 23/ii (Citt di Castello: Lapi, 1912) [hereafter Borselli].
168
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
amounted to a rebellion against the Pope and the Papal State.2

Historians have often seen Giovanni Bentivoglios Signoria as an
important caesura in the citys history, marking the end of its tradition of communal government and representing a harbinger of
the oligarchic and princely governments of future decades and
centuries.3 Bentivoglios actions were, however, only the culmination of his familys involvement in the volatile politics of late medieval Bologna. Between 1376 and 1420 members of the Bentivoglio family were involved in veritable military battles between
opposing urban coalitions at least eight times and, apart from one
occasion, all of these were followed by major changes of regime in
Bologna. Such confrontations involved arson attacks, the erection
of barricades and the use of missiles, as well as the killing and
wounding in battle of several political opponents.4
As will be suggested in this article, Bentivoglios takeover of
power should be seen within the citys long tradition of frequent
revolts and political negotiation which arguably made Bologna one
of Italys most politically volatile cities. Neither the violence which
ushered in the new regime nor the rearrangement of political coalitions in new constitutional configurations marked a fundamental
departure from the regimes that preceded, or succeeded, that of
Giovanni Bentivoglio. The entire fourteenth century of Bolognese
politics had been characterized by a violent succession of regimes
of communal self-government, experimentations with quasi-signorial rule under the Pepoli family or the Visconti of Milan, as well
as forms of communal government in conjunction with a variety
2 Rampona, pp. 461-463; Varignana, pp. 472-473; Bolognetti, p. 472; Griffoni,

p. 90; Pietro, pp. 77-82.
3 Filippo Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, Signore di Bologna (1401-1402), Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie di Romagna, 4th ser.,
5 (1914-1915), pp. 199-307. Giorgio Tamba, Il Regime del Popolo e delle Arti verso il
tramonto: Innovazioni e modifiche istituzionali del comune bolognese nellultimo decennio del secolo XIV (Bologna: Forni, 2009), pp. 170-172. On the later history of the
Bentivoglio, see Cecilia M. Ady, The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937).
4 Varignana/Bolognetti, pp. 311-312, 468, 472-473, 476-477, 481, 551-552, 562564; Rampona, pp. 451-457, 465, 470-471, 482-483, 551-552, 561-562; Griffoni, pp.
85-86, 88-90, 105; Pietro, pp. 59-62, 77-78, 110-112; Borselli, p. 67.
THE NOURISHER OF SEDITIONS
169
of papal vicars. In March 1376, a revolt of the popolo brought together a large coalition of Bolognese citizens and (temporarily)
ended papal rule in the city to erect the Signoria del popolo e delle
arti and reestablish full communal government. This regime was,
however, also extraordinarily unstable, and violent challenges followed twice in 1376, 1386, 1389 and several times in 1399. Successful alterations in the ruling coalition and subsequent regime
changes happened following revolts in 1377, 1393, 1398, twice in
1399 and eventually in 1401, when Giovanni Bentivoglio erected
his signoria independently from the Papal State. Bentivoglios
regime was not spared the volatility that preceding governments
faced. Threatened by at least seven plots in the sixteen months of
its existence, the regime was eventually defeated by a coalition under Giangaleazzo Visconti, who had allied with numerous regional powers as well as important sectors of Bolognese society to conquer the city in June 1402. After a year of Milanese government,
Bologna was again recaptured by Cardinal Cossa under the auspices of the Church in 1403. Church rule, now more firmly in the
hands of Cossa, was again to be challenged by a revolt in 1411, and
a number of plots in 1406 and 1411-1415 until a successful revolt
in 1416 reestablished the commune but not for longer than until 1420.5
The use of violence and the occurrence of revolt was, as the
contributions in this volume also suggest, a frequent feature of
many late medieval Italian (and indeed other European) cities, but
the type of politics witnessed in Bologna does appear to have
5 For recent overviews on Bolognese political history in the fourteenth century,

see Sara R. Blanshei, Politics and Justice in Late Medieval Bologna (Leiden: Brill, 2010);
Giuliano Milani, Lesclusione dal comune: Conflitti e bandi politici a Bologna e in altre
citt italiane tra XII e XIV secolo (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo,
2003); Augusto Vasina, Dal Comune verso la Signoria (1274-1334), Anna Laura
Trombetti-Budriesi, Bologna 1334-1376, and Angela De Benedictis, Lo stato popolare di libert: Pratica di governo e cultura di governo (1376-1506), in Bologna nel
Medioevo, ed. by Ovidio Capitani (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2007), pp. 581651, 761-866, 899-950; R. Dondarini, Bologna medievale nella storia delle citt
(Bologna: Ptron, 2000), pp. 255-318. For the later fortune of revolts in Bologna, see
Angela De Benedictis, Una guerra dItalia, una resistenza di popolo: Bologna 1506
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004).
170
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
reached particularly high levels of volatility and instability. It is not

surprising, then, that in the mid-fifteenth century Pope Pius II
wrote in a telling characterization that Bologna should not only
be called the mother of studies, but also the nourisher of seditions... which is only constant in its inconstancy.6 This instability
and the concomitant violence in the city were, in fact, the expression of particularly fragile patterns of political association in
Bologna. Indeed, Bentivoglios rise to power in 1401 marked one
of the important rearrangements of power in the city, since Giovanni Bentivoglio had been able to win over substantial sections
of the previously hostile Maltraversi party for his cause. One of his
new supporters was the notary Matteo Griffoni, whom Bentivoglio
allowed to return from exile and who was promptly appointed to
serve on an important embassy to Florence. The particularly fragile environment of Bolognese politics allowed or even forced men
like Griffoni to switch sides frequently. It is no surprise that Griffoni changed sides again by 1402, when he came to support the
Milanese coalition that conquered Bologna, and then switched,
once more, one year later when he supported the papal forces that
took Bologna from Milan.7 In a poem Griffoni had, in fact, clearly warned Bentivoglio of the temporary nature of his support for
the latters coalition:
Griffoni at the time when Giovanni Bentivoglio
was made lord of Bologna, 1401
In order to end the sects and preserve everyone
In peace with justice and love
He was made lord of my fatherland.
It was in the year of the good Creator
6 Bononia quae non tam studiorum mater quam seditionum altrix appellari
potest... solius inconstantiae constans. Pius II, De Europa, ed. by Adrianus van Heck
(Citt del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2001), rub. 199.
7 Varignana, p. 473. Griffoni, pp. 91-93; Rampona, pp. 481, 501. See Giorgio
Marcon et al., Matteo Griffoni nello scenario politico-cittadino della citt (secoli XIVXV) (Bologna: Deputazione di Storia Patria, 2004).
171
Fourteen-hundred and One between Monday and Tuesday,

On the fourteenth day of March.
But I dont esteem you or love you [BEN TE VOGLIO] more,
If I accept you who comes from a sect other than my own.8
This article explores the reasons for the extraordinary volatility lying at the heart of political processes in Bologna. The study of political conflict, both in medieval history and the social sciences
more generally, has made enormous progress over the last decades
and has pointed at the importance of the associations factions,
parties, clientage networks and other forms of horizontal and vertical groupings underlying political interactions as a key through
which to study this subject.9 Rarely, however, has the question been
posed of why negotiations were more intense in some cities than
in others. How could Bentivoglio form a coalition that could overturn the balance of power in Bologna? Why did insurgent coalitions like Bentivoglios form in a city such as Bologna, but hardly
ever in a city such as, say, Verona? One of the principal problems
8 Griffonibus quando Iohannes de Bentevoglis / Fuit factus dominus Bononie
.1401./ Per tr le septe e conservar ascuno/ in pace con iustitia et in amore,/ de la

mia patria fu facto signore./ Correndo gli anni del bon Criatore/ Milli quatrocentun
tra lune e marti,/ Era de maro quatordeci parti./ Per pi non te zoa n BEN TE
VOGLIO,/se daltra septa che la mia ti coglio: Giorgio Marcon, Matteo Griffoni
poeta: Percorsi etico-politici e cortesi, in Marcon et al., p. 129.
9 Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1965), pp. 5-52; Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1979), pp. 243-266. For a recent overview, see Ruud Koopmans, Social Movements,
in The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, ed. by Russell J. Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 693-707. For a selection of works on factions and parties in the late Middle Ages, see Jacques Heers, Parties and Political Life in the Medieval West (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing,
1977); Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978); Guelfi e ghibellini nellItalia del Rinascimento, ed. by Marco
Gentile (Rome: Viella, 2005); J. Marsilje et al., Bloedwraak, partijstrijd en pacificatie in
laat-middeleeuws (Hilversum: Nederlandse Vereniging tot beoefening van de Sociale
Geschiedenis, 1990); Jonas Braekevelt, Frederik Buylaert, Jan Dumolyn, and Jelle
Haemer, The Politics of Factional Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders, Historical Research, 25 (2012), pp. 13-31.
172
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
of the negotiation-centered approach has, in fact, been the intrinsic difficulty of making generalizations about the dynamics and
outcomes of negotiation. In the social sciences, analysts have increasingly argued that, for generalizations to be made, negotiations have to be understood in the wider context of opportunity
structures which allowed, facilitated or impeded the kinds of interactions that were necessary for the formation of alliances and
coalitions. In what follows it will be argued that the extraordinary
volatility of politics in Bologna and the particularly unstable type
of political associations which I shall call coalitions found in
this city were bound up with the particular configurations of its
pre-existing political structures.10
By political structures I shall not only mean states and governments, but the wider framework of institutions, collective bodies and universitates of a late medieval city, all of which had some
share in urban public organization and the governance of a particular sector of urban public life. In the context of Bologna, this
pluralistic order of politics was constituted by a whole host of bodies with some form of legal, political or jurisdictional authority:
guilds, parish structures, parties, ecclesiastical institutions, and the
university, as well as contado jurisdictions, the Church as the citys
overlord for most of this period, and other contending outside
powers, such as Milan.11 To an extent this framework qualifies in10 On opportunity structures, see Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution
(London, Addison-Wesley: 1978), pp. 189-222; Herbert Kitschelt, Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest, British Journal of Political Science, 16 (1986),
pp. 57-86. Related to this issue is the debate on networks and organizations summarized in Mario Diani and Donatella Della Porta, Social Movements: An Introduction,
2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 114-162.
11 For an overview of Bolognas political structures, see Filippo Bosdari, Il comune di Bologna alla fine del secolo XIV, Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie di Romagna, 4th ser., 4 (1913-1914), pp. 123-188. On the
notion of jurisdictional pluralism in the late Middle Ages, see Otto von Gierke, Das
deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, 4 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1868-1913), vol. III; Anthony Black, Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth
Century to the Present (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 12-31. On the plurality of political actors in late medieval polities as a whole, see now John Watts, The Making of
Polities: Europe, 1300-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 2336.
173
terpretations of late medieval revolts which have tended to consider

the state as the prime political structure or which have regarded
the growth of states as key stimuli of revolt. In this view, increasing encroachments of governments on local communities or particular social classes prompted these to rebel against the state and
disrupt the political order. This was certainly true for many revolts
(though in some cases rebels could also ask for more rather than
less government), but the crucial structural context in which revolts, like other forms of political action in this period, should be
understood is that of the pluralistic order of politics. Medieval politics were not a confrontation between state and society, and revolt was one form of political action embedded in the context of
numerous power-wielding institutions, of which the state was but
one and which were themselves locked in continuous competition
and ongoing confrontations.12
The following two sections of this article will deal with the
ways in which Bolognas pluralistic order conditioned its politics.
Firstly, historical actors could negotiate coalitions around the resources and infrastructure provided by the many institutions of
Bolognas order of politics. Secondly, the Bolognese political framework was not only a force that political actors had to reckon with,
but in itself constituted a structural mechanism that introduced
high levels of negotiation and volatility into the political process.
The particularly unsettled and varied nature of Bolognas internal
and external political structures meant that political actors were almost compelled to reorganize their political coalitions constantly,
which gave rise to a political system dominated by high levels of
violence and revolt. In fact, it will be suggested that diverse configurations of a citys pre-existing institutional framework encouraged different forms of political association and conflict.
12 For this see Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff, The Popular Revolutions of the
Late Middle Ages (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), esp. pp. 271-318; W. Blockmans,
Princes conqurants et bourgeois calculateurs: Les poids des rseaux urbains dans
la formation de ltat, in La ville, la bourgeoisie et la gense de ltat moderne: XIIeXVIIIe sicles, ed. by Neithard Bulst and Jean-Philippe Genet (Paris, 1987), pp. 167181; Samuel K. Cohn Jr., Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200-1425 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 228-242.
174
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
Negotiating Coalitions in the Pluralistic Order of Politics

In March 1376, a broad coalition of guilds, the two principal parties of the Maltraversi and Scacchesi, and a variety of other bodies of Bolognese society revolted against the papal legate Nollet.
A meeting of the Universitas comunis et populi civitatis Bononie
conferred the Signoria del popolo e delle arti on a newly-formed
government which in itself reflected the pluralistic order of the city,
since it was composed of the three councils of the anziani, gonfalonieri (representatives of neighborhood institutions) and the
massari of the guilds.13 Much of the subsequent history of Bolognese politics was related to the instability ingrained in this newlyformed system. Perhaps a good example of this development is to
look at the particularly turbulent years preceding Giovanni Bentivoglios rise to power. This illustrates the interplay principally between two institutions, the Maltraversi and Scacchesi parties, although it will be seen that these bodies did not always act homogeneously and to a degree depended on other bodies, such as the
guilds and the Studios Collegio dei dottori. These institutions were,
of course, partly overlapping in their membership, but their existence was crucial in shaping the formation and transformation of
coalitions in Bologna. Not surprisingly for such levels of negotiation, this was accompanied by relatively high levels of violence, although it will be seen that the record of deaths in these urban battles was actually relatively low (see figure).
A five-year period of relative cooperation between Bolognas
two main parties came to an end on 6 May 1398 when an insurgent coalition under the leadership of Carlo Zambeccari occupied
the piazza apparently without wounding or killing anyone burnt
the records of the previous government and instituted a reform
commission called the Sedici Riformatori.14 Zambeccaris coalition
13 Oreste Vancini, La rivolta dei Bolognesi al governo dei vicari della Chiesa (1376-
1377): Lorigine dei tribuni della plebe (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1906), pp. 71-76. De Benedictis, Lo stato popolare, pp. 899-906.
14 Rampona, pp. 461-463; Griffoni, pp. 87-88; Borselli, p. 65; Tamba, pp. 113154. For the records left by the Zambeccari regime see especially Provv. capr., fols.
22r-67v. Archivio di Stato Bologna, Comune-Governo, VII, Signorie viscontea eccle-
175
had a strong popular following, although we do not know around

which precise bases the broader population was mobilized. Their
aims were clearly expressed when the insurgents turned to burning tax records and electoral lists. Many of them were presumably
Maltraversi followers, since one of the aims of the revolt appears
to have been the recall of exiles from this party, which had last participated in a coup in 1388-1389. By June, as many as 341 individuals appear to have been recalled.15 Zambeccari, however, also
managed to broaden his coalition and garner the support of important members of the opposing Scacchesi party, most notably the
Gozzadini, who, under the mediation of Matteo Griffoni, were
married to representatives of Zambeccaris coalition on the day of
the revolt.16 This was, in many ways, crucial, since parties were not
just private networks, but had truly public and political functions. Important offices seem for certain periods to have been distributed on a party basis, and each party had its own external contacts and internal political networks, which a coalition like Zambeccaris needed. Zambeccari himself, as one of the heads of the
Maltraversi party, was very well-connected to the papacy: since
1393 he had received a rent from papal coffers, his relative Pellegrino was secretary to the Pope, and Zambeccari himself controlled
an extensive network of benefices.17
Beyond the crucial party structures, Zambeccari also cultivated the support of other institutions. Most prominent among them
feature the lecturers of the university, who, by August 1398, were
to benefit from a reform of the Studio. Indeed, in terms of officeholding or benefits from this new regime, as many as eleven dot-
siastica e bentivolesca, Provisiones, fols. 1r-73v.

15 Provv. Capr., VI, fols. 36r-40r. Already on 6 May more than ninety individuals had their exile sentences cancelled by the new regime: Ivi, fol. 23r. See Tamba, p.
123. On 1388-1389, see Arturo Palmieri, La congiura per sottomettere Bologna al
Conte di Virt, Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie
di Romagna, 4th ser., 6 (1915-6), pp. 169-218.
16 Biblioteca Comunale dellArchiginnasio Bologna, Archivio Gozzadini, Libro di
Ricordi, busta 1, no. 1 (Ricordi di Gozzadino Gozzadini), fol. 3r.
17 Arnold Esch, Bonifaz IX. und der Kirchenstaat (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1969),
p. 101; Epistolario di Pellegrino Zambeccari, ed. by Lodovico Frati (Rome: Istituto
Storico Italiano, 1929), pp. 70 and 191.
176
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
tori and lecturers, including most prominently Carlo Zambeccari

himself, were active supporters of the regime. Some of them were
probably Maltraversi, who in the past had always been traditionally linked to the university, yet this can only be said with certainty about half of them. The university lecturers support was crucial: on occasions such as the 1376 revolt, dottori like Giacomo da
Preunti had defended the insurgents against charges of illegitimate
actions, and the new regime had soon found itself on the wrong
foot when Bolognas most prominent jurist, Giovanni da Legnano,
opposed it as illegitimate.18 Finally, another important leg of Zambeccaris coalition was members from the bankers guild, at least
eight of whose most prominent families were soon rewarded with
offices. This number is more than it had been under previous
regimes, although it is important to underline that the bankers had
been quite prominent in Bolognese politics throughout the 1390s.
In any case, bankers certainly must have played an important role
in the Zambeccari coalition, since, in June 1398, the coalition
passed measures to ensure that interest payments of the communally funded debt, the monte, would continue much to the liking of the bankers.19
18 Nicol Aldovrandi, Giovanni Bentivoglio, Antonio Castello, Giacomo Isolani,
Bartolomeo Saliceto, Giacomo Salieto, Ugolino Scappi, Carlo Zambeccari, Nicol

Zappolino, Osteggiano Osteggiani, Giovanni Poeti (only the latter two were not also
members of the Collegio dei Dottori). I double-checked the appointments made under the Zambeccari regime against the surviving university records: I Rotuli dei lettori
legisti e artisti dello Studio bolognese dal 1384 al 1799, ed. by Umberto Dallari, 4 vols.
(Bologna: Merlani, 1888-1924); Il Liber secretus iuris caesarei dellUniversit di
Bologna, ed. by Albano Sorbelli, 2 vols. (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia dell Universit di Bologna, 1938). On Giacomo da Preunti, see Vancini, Rivolta dei Bolognesi,
pp. 79-83. On Giovanni da Legnano, see Alexandra F. Gooden, Papal Authority and
Canon Law in the Fourteenth Century: The Writings of John of Legnano (c. 13201383), (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 2005), pp. 205-207.
19 These families were Albergati, Bianchi, Foscarari, Gozzadini, Guidotti, Papazoni, Poeti, and Felicini. I double-checked the appointment of the Zambeccari regime
against the 1410 inventory of the Cambio guild edited in G. Albertani, Traffico di
denaro nelle grandi citt. Il prestito cristiano a Bologna tra Due e Trecento (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bologna, 2008), pp. 101-114. Bankers support was
especially important in the revolt against the guild regime in August 1412: Ramponi/Varignana/Bolognetti, pp. 540-554 Griffoni, p. 100; Pietro, pp. 242-244; Oreste
Vancini, Una rivoluzione dei Ciompi a Bologna (1411-1412), in Studi di storia e
177
This coalition soon fragmented. At several points in spring

1399, various sub-groups related to the Scacchesi party, including
at one point the Gozzadini and the Bentivoglio, sought to challenge
Zambeccaris coalition in a variety of riots. Furthermore, the Maltraversi party itself divided, and a group headed by Ugolino Scappi challenged the Bentivoglio coalition by occupying the city square
and engaging in a three-day battle with the regime in April 1399.20
Half a year later, in October 1399, Scappi eventually managed to
bring down the Zambeccari regime by negotiating a new coalition
with important political players, occupying the citys most strategic points and storming the houses of some of the previous coalitions trusted supporters. It is in this context that one of the altogether rare deaths in these turbulent years occurred, when some
of the insurgents sought to hang Antonio da Bruscolo, formerly a
prominent landowner in the citys contado who had occupied the
house of Bolognese exiles. Antonio refused to be hanged because
of his social status which would have foreseen a sentence of decapitation; the insurgents chose to kill him instead with their
lances.21
Scappi achieved this turnover of power by striking an alliance
with the Scacchesi party which, with a majority of 492 against 19
votes in a newly formed General Council, rehabilitated some thirty-three individuals who had been exiled under the Zambeccari
regime. Equally important appears to have been the alliance this
critica dedicati a Pio Carlo Falletti (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1915), pp. 561-576. Also see
the important role of prominent families from the bankers guild in several revolts of
the early fifteenth century; see note 26 for the Gozzadini familys role in several insurgent coalitions of the early fifteenth century; also see the role of the Guidotti in
plots in 1413: Ramponi/Varignana, pp. 545-546; Griffoni, p. 101; Pietro, pp. 251-254,
265-266; Sententiae, 35, Condemnationes (1413-5), fols 34r-38v, 75r-78r, 145r-146v,
149r-150v; Archivio di Stato Bologna, Capitano del Popolo, 856, fols. 110r-11r, 143r144v; Inquisitiones, 301, 1, fols. 32r-34r, 35r-37v, 147r-149v.
20 For these challenges see Rampona, pp. 463 and 465-466; Varignana, p. 468;
Griffoni, p. 88; Pietro, pp. 36-39: Sententiae, 30, Condemnationes (1397-1399), fols.
182r-183r, 200r-202v, 214r-215v; Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, pp. 160-162.
21 Rampona, pp. 469-470; Varignana, pp. 466-467; Bolognetti, pp. 469-471; Griffoni, p. 89; Pietro, pp. 55-58. On Antonio da Bruscolo, who occupied the house of
the Ramponi family who were major Scacchesi exponents, see Arturo Palmieri, La montagna bolognese del Medio Evo (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1929), pp. 208-209.
178
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
new coalition struck with the guilds of the butchers, second-hand

cloth dealers, joiners and blacksmiths. Indeed, guild support was
crucial, since this was one of the ways in which the broader artisanate could be included in the coalition; according to one chronicler, at least some of the rioters of October 1399 participated because they wanted to act against the grossi of the previous regime.
The guilds acted with precise objectives: for instance, it was presumably their leverage in the coalition that enabled them to obtain
an exemption for the statutes of the wool guild from a general reform of statutes in November 1399. This sense of negotiated agreement is perhaps best exemplified by the demand made to the government by the butcher Floriano di Benvenuto on 14 December
1399: Floriano petitioned the commune for support, since various
claims had been made against him for participating in the revolt
of October and Floriano evidently now expected the coalitions
support in return.22 Several guilds soon became disgruntled and,
near the end of December, entered an alliance with some supporters of the earlier Zambeccari regime, including Carlos son
Bernardino. Their challenge, however, failed after an unsuccessful
occupation of the citys main square: in one of the most violent battles of late medieval Bologna six were reported killed and several
individuals were wounded.23
This brings us back to Giovanni Bentivoglio. He soon put himself at the head of the regime emerging from this latest rearrangement and, in the early months of 1401, managed to broaden its base
by reaching out to the Maltraversi and in particular the supporters of Zambeccaris coalition, several of whom, like Matteo Griffoni, came to join his new alliance. At the same time, Bentivoglio
rearranged the internal power balance of the Scacchesi party by
ousting the important Gozzadini family.24 This would soon turn out
22 Pietro, p. 56; Provv. Capr., VI, fol. 67r-69v; Tamba, pp. 155-157.
23 Rampona, pp. 470-471; Griffoni, pp. 89-90; Pietro, pp. 58-62; Borselli, p. 67;
Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, pp. 169-170; Tamba, pp. 157-170. Apart from
Bernardino Zambeccari, the other Maltraversi involved in this plot were Nanne Tacconi and Ghillino da Argele: Inquisitiones, 277, 1, fols. 32r-37v, 70r-74v; 2, fols. 28r30v; 4, fols. 10r-14r, 24r-25r, 30r-37v; 5, fols. 61r-62r, 63r-66v, 82r-86v, 106r-110r.
24 Major figures of the May 1398 alliance who supported the Bentivoglio coali-
179
to be a mistake: the Gozzadini were to become crucial allies of the

duke of Milan, who conquered Bologna in June 1402 and swept
away Giovanni Bentivoglio.25 The Gozzadini, in fact, controlled a
veritable state within the state, and were to show the extent of
their control of the Bolognese political framework in a number of
subsequent plots: they appropriated several parishes from their
quartiere of Porta Ravennate as mobilizing structures; used their
fiefs of Cento, Pieve and Torre di Canuli in the Bolognese contado
as bases from which to launch a series of challenges; and nurtured
close links with Ferrara, the Church and Milan. It is not surprising,
then, that the Gozzadini can be found leading plots against a variety of other regimes on at least eight occasions between 1402 and
1414. In July 1403, they were able to command the allegiance of
some eighty individuals, nearly a quarter of whom could be seen
supporting the Gozzadini at later points in time.26
tion were Andrea Bentivoglio, Alberto de Bianchi, Petruccio de Bianchi, Enrico Felicini, Lippo Ghislieri, Matteo Griffoni, Alberto Guidotti, Musotto Malvezzi, Giovanni
Oretti, Giovanni Poeti, and Ugolino Scappi.
25 Rampona, pp. 482-485; Varignana, p. 481; Griffoni, p. 91; Pietro, pp. 112-116.
Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, pp. 265-267.
26 Giovanni Gozzadini, Nanne Gozzadini e Baldassarre Cossa poi Giovanni XXIII
(Bologna: Romagnoli, 1880). For their external contacts, see Rampona, pp. 484-485,
487-488; Varignana, p. 481; Griffoni, pp. 81 and 91-92; Bolognetti, pp. 471 and 484485; Gozzadini, pp. 23, 233-238, 253-255, 267-269, 435-442, 460-469, 552-554. Biblioteca Civica dellArchiginnasio, Bologna, Archivio Gozzadini, busta 1, no. 4 (Ricordo
di Castellano Gozzadini), fols. 1r-2v; busta 111 (Instrumenti), no. 7; Arnold Esch,
Bankiers der Kirche im grossen Schisma, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen
Archiven und Bibliotheken, 46 (1966), pp. 277-398 (at pp. 350-355). For their fiefs:
Gozzadini, pp. 443-458, 469-487. For their attempted plots, frequently involving the
parishes of San Biagio, San Tommaso della Braina and San Giuliano: January 1402,
July and October 1403, February 1404, August 1406, March 1412, January 1413, and
February 1414; Sententiae, 31, Sentenze (1403-1404), fols. 8r-9v, 19r-21r, 32r-34v, 79r82v, 114r-119r; Sententiae, 32, Bandi (1407-1408), fols. 8r-8v; Sententiae, 34, Condemnationes (1412-1413), fols. 49r-49v, 69r-70r; Ivi, Condemnationes (1412), fols.
67r-68r, 79r-81v; Ivi, Banna (1412), fols. 33r-35v; Ivi, Condemnationes e Banna (14121413), fols. 60r-62v; Inquisitiones, 283, 4, fols. 32r-33v; Inquisitiones, 288, 1, fols.
118r-120r, 130r-131v; Ivi, 4, fols. 85r-86r, 93r-96r; Inquisitiones, 301, 1, fols. 213r-217r;
Archivio di Stato Bologna, Capitano del Popolo, 855, fols. 39r-45v, 74r-75v, 102r102v; Rampona, pp. 476, 502-511, 518-520, 539-540, 544; Varignana, pp. 476-477, 493,
507, 515-516, 539, 544; Griffoni, pp. 90, 93-94, 99, 101; Pietro, pp. 100, 134-138, 143159; Gozzadini, pp. 460-469, 488-499, 509-521, 499-509, 564-568.
180
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
The Pluralistic Order and the Volatile Politics of Bologna

In light of this agitated interplay between political institutions and
the formation of coalitions, it is not surprising that Bentivoglios
rise to power was but one of several rearrangements of power in
late medieval Bologna. Indeed, deep-seated transformations of
coalitions, accompanied by changeovers in government and often
also urban warfare, occurred at least seventeen times in the relatively short period of 1376-1416, which I investigated in some detail. Such profound transformations of coalitions coincided with
the major moments of revolt referred to earlier and happened three
times in 1376, 1377, 1386, 1389, twice in 1393, 1398, and at least
twice in 1399, 1401, 1402, 1403, 1406, 1411, 1412 and 1416. The
instability of the Bolognese political system was intrinsically related to its political structures. A pluralistic order of politics was, of
course, also characteristic of other Italian cities, but there were
possibly three structural reasons why it produced this particular
political volatility in the case of Bologna.
Guild and party structures. Bologna possessed relatively powerful and long-standing guild and party structures which could be and
were used as mobilizing bases for insurgent coalitions. This tendency may have been exacerbated by the fact that, in Bologna, these
institutions did not have a clearly defined role in the political
process, which made them and their members more likely to expect gains from negotiating and joining new political coalitions. In
Bologna, guilds had enjoyed special prominence in communal politics in the late thirteenth century and were also given an institutional role in the newly-created council of the massari after the revolt of the popolo in 1376. The guild system in Bologna had, however, been severely disrupted through a variety of constitutional experiments in the fourteenth century, and, unlike in Florence, communal office-holding in the city was also not apparently distributed
on the basis of guild quotas. It is, in fact, telling that the precise role
of the council of massari was already the subject of a heated debate
in Bolognas Council of Five Hundred half a year after its creation.27
27 On guilds in Bologna, see Gina Fasoli, Le compagnie delle arti in Bologna
181
This uncertainty arguably made Bolognas guilds, possibly more

than those of a city like Florence, willing to engage in the formation of new political coalitions. There is, in fact, evidence for guild
involvement in insurgent coalitions not only on two occasions in
1399, but also in 1377, 1403 and 1411. In the revolt of October
1399, the guilds struck their alliance with Ugolino Scappi precisely because they were concerned about the volatility of the political order: according to Matteo Griffonis chronicle they feared that
the status was no longer firm and could easily fracture.28
The parties of the Maltraversi and Scacchesi found themselves
in a similarly uncertain constitutional position. Unlike the so-called
squadre of Guelph and Ghibelline parties in Parma or, to a lesser
degree, in Reggio, parties played no institutionalized role in Bolognese politics: the Maltraversi and Scacchesi were not officially incorporated into the urban government, nor, as we have seen, did
either party possess stable memberships. The two Bolognese parties had formed in the early fourteenth century in a political conflict between the Pepoli and the Gozzadini over the question of
political control of the city, but in the later fourteenth century they
only vaguely reflected their original composition and aims.29 As
fino al principio del sec. XV, LArchiginnasio, 30 (1935), pp. 237-280, and 31 (1936),
pp. 56-79; Antonio Ivan Pini, Citt, comuni e corporazioni nel medioevo italiano
(Bologna: Clueb, 1986), pp. 219-258; Artigiani a Bologna: Identit, regole, lavoro (secc.
XIII-XIV), ed. by Antonella Campanini and Rossella Rinaldi (Bologna: Clueb, 2008).
On the council of massari, see Provv. Capr., I, fols. 1r-3r; Vancini, Rivolta dei Bolognesi, pp. 45-46. On guilds in Florence, see John M. Najemy, Guild Republicanism in
Trecento Florence, The American Historical Review, 84 (1979), pp. 53-71. It is true
that, as Najemy argues, Florentine guilds lost some of their influence particularly after 1382, but apart from some of the events in 1378 and 1382, this did not lead to the
type of political volatility guilds engaged in Bologna.
28 Quod status non erat plus firmus et quod faciliter rumperetur. Griffoni, p.
89. On 1377, Varignana, pp. 332-333; Rampona, pp. 336-338; Vancini, Rivolta dei
Bolognesi, pp. 56-57, 83-84. On 1403, Rampona, pp. 502-504, 509-510; Griffoni, p.
93; Pietro, pp. 177-179; Bolognetti, p. 508. On 1411, see Vancini, Rivoluzione.
29 Arturo Palmieri, I Maltraversi e la fine del della nobilt feudale della montagna
bolognese, ed. by Giovanni Maioli (Bologna: Palmaverde, 1959). The partisan divisions
of the thirteenth century were again different, but were withering away in the early
fourteenth century; see Milani, esp. pp. 377-399; Dondarini, pp. 231-237. On Parma
and Reggio, see Marco Gentile, Terra e Poteri: Parma e il Parmense nel ducato visconteo all inizio dell Quattrocento (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), esp. pp. 33-54; Andrea Gam-
182
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
with Bolognas guilds, their insufficient institutionalization in the political system meant that parties were willing or even forced to sustain insurgent coalitions to a much higher degree than in cities with
more stable party structures. The frequent turnover of coalitions in
1398-1401, analyzed above, indicates how often parties were the
backbones of insurgent coalitions, while at the same time this political climate also led to the frequent splits within parties which, of
course, rendered Bolognese politics even more volatile. Given these
high levels of fragmentation, the sources refer to the parties more
and more rarely in the fifteenth century, when the coalitions of men
like Bentivoglio became altogether more important, if arguably even
more unstable, bases of political action.30
The uncertainty in the system for both parties and guilds can
best be exemplified by turning to a concrete case in September
1393. In this month, a number of guilds, and certainly the wool
guild, appear to have supported an alliance with the Scacchesi party, whose aim it was to purge at least ten exponents of the opposing Maltraversi party from communal office. A revision of communal political procedures by this coalition in the following month
revealed the deal behind this alliance: while (nearly) all other regulations were subject to scrutiny, the statutes of the wool guild
were to be exempt from the reform, and the obligation of the
guilds massari to practice their trade for at least five years was
reaffirmed. The guilds had clearly been concerned about their uncertain stake in the political process and used this opportunity to
strengthen their institutional role. The coalition, however, was soon
reordered, since by January 1394 the guilds saw themselves ousted by a renewed coalition between Scacchesi and Maltraversi. Now
the guilds political role was again curtailed: a part of the council
of the massari was abolished, and the statutes of the wool guild
were subjected to reform.31
berini, La citt assediata: Poteri e identit politiche a Reggio in et viscontea (Rome:

Viella, 2003), pp. 60-76.
30 For occasional references to the Maltraversi in the early fifteenth century, see
Rampona, pp. 492-494 and 499; Varignana, p. 481; Griffoni, pp. 92 and 100.
31 Provv. Capr., IV, fols. 156v-157v, 159v, 198v-199r, 220r-228v; Rampona, pp.
449-457; Griffoni, pp. 85-86; Tamba, pp. 20-36, 58-62.
183
University. A second peculiarity of the Bolognese order of politics was its extraordinary richness in other institutions which could
further participate in the highly volatile politics of the city. These
included a multiplicity of municipal institutions in Bologna, but the
most crucial and possibly unique certainly appears to have been
the university. This did not so much concern the students themselves who, as strangers to the city, appear mostly not to have gotten involved in urban conflicts, unless these were, as in the thirteenth century, closely related to the universitys fortunes.32 The
same cannot be said for the university lecturers or members of the
Collegio dei dottori, the body of the nineteen top civil law lecturers who were in charge of doctoral examinations. These men were
not only in receipt of salaries from the commune, but for the most
part they were also members of Bolognas most powerful families.
The Collegios decisions on fee increases or its frequent jurisdictional disputes with the papal representative the archdeacon
had major repercussions on urban politics. This even concerned
popes, since in 1392 Boniface IX addressed the scholars of the
Studio and forbade them to suspend lessons at the university, since
this would create agitation in the whole community.33
University lecturers were greatly involved in successful insurgent coalitions in 1376, 1377, 1389, 1393, 1398, 1401, 1403, 1411
and 1416. The Collegio did not act as a united body on all of these
occasions, but in certain instances this appears to have been the
case. A particularly important period in this regard was the first
32 A rare exception is the hanging of the student Guiduccio da Monzuno in June
1387; see Griffoni, p. 81; Roberto Greci, Lassociazionismo degli studenti dalle origini alla fine del XIV secolo, and Angela De Benedictis, La fine dellautonomia studentesca tra autorit e disciplinamento, in Studenti e universit degli studenti dal XII
al XIX secolo, ed. by Gian Paolo Brizzi and Antonio Ivan Pini (Bologna: Istituto per
la Storia dellUniversit, 1988), pp. 15-43, 195-222.
33 Tota communitas in agitatione versatur, Epistolario di Pellegrino Zambeccari, pp. 136-37. On conflicts with the archdeacon, see Il Liber secretus iuris caesarei
dellUniversit di Bologna, i, pp. 87-88, 148, 151, 155, 197-199. Antonio Ivan Pini, I
maestri dello Studio nellattivit amministrativa e politica del Comune bolognese, and
Lorenzo Paolini, La figura dellArcidiacono nei rapporti tra lo Studio e la Citt, in
Cultura universitaria e pubblici poteri a Bologna dal XII al XV secolo, ed. by Ovidio
Capitani (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1990), pp. 151-178, and pp. 3172.
184
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
decade of the fifteenth century, when the Collegio appears to have

suffered under the rule of the Cardinal legate Baldassare Cossa, the
future (anti-) Pope John XXIII. In fact, at his deposition at the
Council of Constance, it was also alleged, probably not without input from the the Collegio, that Cossa had appropriated stipends
of the universitys dottori and misappropriated funds of the Collegio Gregoriano.34 Thus, the guild revolt against the papacy in May
1411 seems to have been supported by the Collegio: its prior Giacomo Marescalchi noted in his entry in the records of the Collegio
that, thanks to the revolt, the Studio will gain and our sacred college flourish.35 Members of the Collegio were well-placed enough
to mobilize other individuals associated with the Studio. In December 1413, the dottore Gregorio di Massimo di ser Guoro,
whose father was a notary and had been involved in a guild revolt
two years earlier, contacted Giovanni Guasconi, a member of the
Collegio, to organize another plot against papal rule in collaboration with the Malatesta lords of Rimini and the Manfredi of Faenza. Presumably with Guasconis connections, they were soon able
to extend the circle to include their fellow dottori Angelo Poeti, a
salaried lecturer in civil law, and Graziolo da Tosignano, the son
of another member of the Collegio. Quite ironically for someone
in such an illustrious social circle, Poeti was to write a banner with
the inscription Long live the People and the Guilds, though it
never came to be used because the academics were discovered.36
34 Il Liber secretus iuris caesarei dellUniversit di Bologna, i, pp. 180, 187; Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Giovan Domenico Mansi, 31
vols. (Venice, 1758-1798), xxvii, fol. 669; Berardo Pio, Lo Studium e il Papato tra
XIV e XV secolo, in Politica e Studium: Nuove prospettive e ricerche (Bologna: Istituto per la Storia dellUniversit, 2005), pp. 157-182.
35 Augmentabitur Studium et sic nostrum sacrum florebit collegium. Il Liber
secretus iuris caesarei dellUniversit di Bologna, I, p. 195. The poorly surviving sources
for this revolt do not allow us to research the Collegios role further; see Vancini, Rivoluzione.
36 Viva el Popolo et li Arti; Sententiae, 35, Condemnationes (1413-15), fols 22r24v; Inquisitiones, 301, 4, fols. 26r-28r, 82r-85v; Rampona, p. 548; Varignana, p. 547;
Griffoni, p. 102; Pietro, pp. 257-258; Il Liber secretus iuris caesarei dellUniversit
di Bologna, i, pp. cxvi-cxxxi; Rotuli, ed. Dallari, i, pp. 31, 33-34, 37, 39, 41-42. For
the involvement of Gregorios father Massimo, see Rampona, p. 546. Also involved
were Giovanni Liazzari and Lodovico Mariscotti.
185
Volatile external politics. The third reason for Bolognas particularly fragile politics was the uncertainties in its external political framework. For most of this period, Bologna was a subject city
of the Papal State, and this meant that destabilization outside the
city walls could easily affect politics inside Bologna. Revolts or attempted revolts happened in Bologna following the support lent
to coalitions within the city by Milan (as happened in 1388 and
1402) or by neighboring cities like Ferrara (as in 1404 and 1413).37
Moreover, the presence of significant jurisdictional enclaves in the
Bolognese contado, held by prominent families like the Pepoli or
Gozzadini, provided crucial infrastructural bases for the formation
of insurgent coalitions in 1377, 1386, 1389 and 1403-1404.38
Bologna, in fact, mirrored the fortunes of other cities in the Papal
State or cities in other disintegrating polities, such as Lombardy
after Giangaleazzo Viscontis death, although it can be argued that
Bolognas complex internal structure possibly made such situations even more volatile.39 How external divisions fed into internal processes of coalition formation can be demonstrated by looking at the external dimensions of the political conflicts involving
Giovanni Bentivoglio which were analyzed earlier. These conflicts
happened at a time of strong Milanese expansion, and it is not surprising that opposing coalitions in Bologna were cultivated by ex-
37 On 1388, see Palmieri, La congiura. On Ferrara, see Rampona, pp. 510-511;

Griffoni, p. 94; Pietro, pp. 156-159; Sententiae, 31, Sentenze (1403-1404), fols. 79r82v; Gozzadini, pp. 521-527, 552-554. On Milan in 1402, see note 25.
38 On 1377, see Vancini, La rivolta, pp. 58-67, 87-99; Sententiae, 22, fols. 77r87r, 92r-93v, 96r-101r, 106r-107r, 108r-110r, 112r-113r, 118r-119r, 124r-127v. On 1386,
see Archivio di Stato Bologna, Capitano del Popolo, no. 823, fols. 2r-34r. On 1389,
see Palmieri, La congiura, passim. On 1403-1404, see Gozzadini, pp. 214-330, 469551 and note 26 above; Rampona, pp. 378-381; Varignana/Bolognetti, pp. 377-379;
Griffoni, pp. 80-81. On the contado, see Palmieri, Montagna bolognese, esp. pp. 135229. Cf. Antonio Ivan Pini, Campagne bolognesi: Le radici agrarie di una metropoli medievale (Florence: Le Lettere, 1993).
39 For instability in the Papal State see especially Peter Partner, The Lands of St
Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (London: Methuen,
1972); Alessandro Gherardi, La guerra dei fiorentini con papa Gregorio XI, Archivio Storico Italiano, third ser., V-VIII (1867-1868). For the fragmentation of Lombardy,
see Francesco Cognasso, Il ducato visconteo da Gian Galeazzo a Filippo Maria, Storia di Milano, 17 vols. (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, 1955), VI, pp. 3-107.
186
PATRICK LANTSCHNER
ternal powers. Florence was quite happy to overlook Bentivoglios

own tyrannical pretensions when congratulating him in a number of formal embassies: it generously dispatched two hundred
lances for Bolognas security and interceded with the papacy to ask
for Bentivoglio to be given a papal vicariate.40 As for Milan, although it started out by possibly supporting Bentivoglio, it soon
turned instead to his opponents who found refuge at the Visconti court. Allegedly Milan even offered the signoria of Bologna to
the Gozzadini, Bentivoglios archenemies. It is more likely, however, that they supported the Gozzadini coalition with money and
materiel: a month after the Milanese conquest of Bologna, the Milanese governor was ordered by Giangaleazzo Visconti to reimburse Nanne Gozzadini for his expenses.41
In this light, the particular structural configuration of the
Bolognese political framework generated a political system in
which urban warfare, the ongoing formation and transformation
of coalitions, and a particularly high level of volatility went hand
in hand. As a way of concluding my thoughts, I would like to speculate whether different configurations of a citys political framework may have generated other patterns of conflict.42 For instance,
in a city such as Verona, under the rule of the Republic of Venice
from 1405, there was a conspicuous absence of successful revolts,
because coalitions appear to have lacked party bases and autonomous guild structures around which to rally. Political conflict
40 Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, pp. 228-233, 275; Gene A. Brucker, The
Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1977), pp. 176-181. Bentivoglio was also supported by the Manfredi of Faenza: Rampona, p. 473; Griffoni, p. 91. Venice was more reticent in its support: Daniel Meredith Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan (1351-1402) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1941), pp. 272-280.
41 Rampona, pp. 484-485; Varignana, p. 481; Bolognetti, p. 478; Griffoni, p. 91;
Bosdari, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, pp. 231, 235, 253, 259; Gozzadini, pp. 160-161 and
pp. 439-442.
42 I have explored these issues, as well as the case of Bologna, in my DPhil thesis which I am currently preparing for publication: Patrick Lantschner, The Logic of
Political Conflict in the Late Middle Ages: A Comparative Study of Urban Political
Conflicts in Italy and the Southern Low Countries, c. 1370-1440 (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2011).
187
was, of course, not absent from Verona, but it was expressed by

guilds and other bodies predominantly through less direct channels, for instance the patronage of particular saints and churches.
Alternatively, it was channelled through an elaborate judicial framework provided both by the commune of Verona and the Venetian
state, which also contributed to breaking up corporate organizations that were so vital for any protest coalition to form.43 A city
such as Florence, with more consolidated internal institutions, witnessed higher levels of conflict than Verona, since the citys guilds
and party organizations were locked in a variety of forms of conflict, such as the intense conflicts between commune and Parte
Guelfa over the Partes proscription (ammonizione) policy aimed
at suspected Ghibellines in the 1350s to 1370s. It appears, however, that because of the higher degree of institutionalization and
consolidation of these institutions, these tended to be less volatile
and, therefore, engage less quickly in urban warfare than the constantly reorganized coalitions of Bologna. Nevertheless, under particular conditions, Florentine politics could, of course, also descend into warfare: for instance, as is known, the changes in the
citys external political framework caused by Florences war against
the papacy in the 1370s prompted the formation of extraordinary
coalitions within the city. This, arguably, included the coalition of
the Ciompi in July 1378, which brought together a number of institutions, like woolworkers organized on a parish basis, guilds and
some of the most prominent families of Florentine politics.44
43 On the absence of revolts in Verona, see John E. Law, Venice, Verona and
the Della Scala after 1405, Atti e memorie dellAccademia di agricoltura, scienze e lettere di Verona, 6th ser., 29 (1977-1978), pp. 157-185. On guild and party structures,
see Gian Maria Varanini, Elites cittadine e governo delleconomia tra comune, signoria e stato regionale: Lesempio di Verona, in Strutture del potere ed elites economiche nelle citt europee dei secoli XII-XVI, ed. by Giovanna Petti Balbi (Naples:
Liguori, 1996), pp. 135-168; Gian Maria Varanini, Nelle citt della Marca Trevigiana:
Dalle fazioni al patriziato (secoli XIII-XV), in Guelfi e Ghibellini, pp. 563-602. On
the forms of conflict at Verona, Lantschner, Logic of Political Conflict, pp. 199-230.
44 For guild conflicts in Florence, see Najemy, Guild Republicanism. For the
instrument of ammonizioni used by the Parte Guelfa and the impact of the War of the
Eight Saints on the Ciompi revolt, see Gene A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 159-172, 202-221,
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PATRICK LANTSCHNER
In this sense, different institutional configurations may have favored different political systems, as well as the various forms of political association which sustained these systems. The particularities of Bolognas institutional framework meant that its politics
were very different from those experienced in Verona or Florence,
and made Bologna particularly susceptible to fragile coalitions
which would engage in violent political conflict. Yet, however more
violent and volatile Bolognese politics was vis--vis other Italian
cities, this article has also suggested that even the turbulent political climate of Bologna was not tantamount to anarchy. There was
a general logic to political processes, and this logic was itself an expression of the existing pluralistic order of politics in the city. Men
like Matteo Griffoni and Giovanni Bentivoglio found themselves
inside a system that strongly encouraged the frequent formation
and transformation of coalitions. This environment did encourage
a greater recourse to urban warfare and revolt, but it also did not
amount to indiscriminate killing and slaughter. A record of seven
reported deaths in the urban wars immediately preceding Giovanni Bentivoglios rise to power was not necessarily a high number considering the circumstances of Bolognese history, which saw
such a constant renegotiation of the bases of political support in
battles and the occupations of squares. In this sense, Bologna, perhaps more than most other cities, certainly had a culture of violence, but there was a clear order that governed the disorder that
was ingrained in Bolognese politics.
244-265, 297-335; Vieri Mazzoni, Accusare e proscrivere il nemico politico. Legislazione

antighibellina e persecuzione giudiziaria a Firenze (1347-1378) (Pisa, Pacini, 2010), pp.
143-246. On the Ciompi coalitions, see Alessandro Stella, La rvolte des Ciompi: Les
hommes, les lieux, le travail (Paris: ditions de lcole des hautes tudes en sciences
sociales, 1993); Ernesto Screpanti, Langelo della liberazione nel tumulto dei Ciompi:
Firenze, giugno-agosto 1378 (Siena: Protagon, 2008). Politicized judicial conflicts, while
common anywhere in late medieval cities, may have had a particular importance in Florence; see Andrea Zorzi, Politica e giustizia a Firenze al tempo degli ordinamenti antimagnatizi, in Ordinamenti di Giustizia Fiorentini: Studi in occasione del VII centenario, ed. by Vanna Arrighi (Florence: Edifir, 1995), pp. 105-147; Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Politics of Exclusion in Early Renaissance Florence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007);
Lantschner, Logic of Political Conflict, pp. 161-198.
189
Christopher Carlsmith
(University of Massachusetts, Lowell)
CACCI FUORI UN BASTONE BIANCO:

CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE ANCARANO COLLEGE
AND THE EPISCOPAL SEMINARY IN BOLOGNA*
Introduction
The ivory tower has never been exempt from urban violence; indeed, student mayhem and town-gown riots have often been at the
heart of turmoil in university towns. From the 1355 battle of St.
Scholastica Day in Oxford to the 1968 unrest in Paris, and even
to more recent scuffles about funding cuts and tuition hikes, students have regularly participated in bloodshed and bedlam. Italian universities have suffered their share of student-inspired mayhem in Bologna, Padua, Siena, and elsewhere as students (and occasionally professors) sought to preserve liberties traditionally offered to scholars. The results could often be of fundamental importance in shaping the intellectual, political, economic, and social aspects of both university and civic life. Indeed, the historian
Hastings Rashdall famously opined that perhaps half of the uni-
* I would like to thank Fabrizio Ricciardelli and the other participants in the May
2010 conference at Georgetowns Villa Le Balze for the opportunity to contribute to
this volume; I also wish to thank Harvard Universitys Villa I Tatti for providing such
an idyllic place to read, write, and learn in 2009-10. I am particularly grateful to my
I Tatti colleagues Carlo Taviani, Elaine Roux, Elisabetta Cunsolo, and Laura Moretti
for their assistance with my archival transcriptions. Unless indicated otherwise, all
translations are my own.
192
CHRISTOPHER CARLSMITH
versity foundations in medieval Europe were the result of migrations inspired by violence.1
Physical and verbal conflict were not uncommon in Bologna,
as the voluminous records of the citys criminal court attest.2 Historians have disagreed about whether rates of violence increased
or decreased from the Middle Ages to the early modern period,
but there is no doubt that such violence was part of the fabric of
everyday life.3 Given Bolognas extensive student population, it is
no surprise that university students were regularly involved in dustups both large and small.
This essay examines one specific aspect of academic violence
in early modern Bologna: namely, conflicts between students of the
Ancarano College (Collegio Ancarano) and those of the episcopal
seminary (Seminario Vescovile). At least two such conflicts between these two groups are recorded in Italian archives: one in the
late 1650s, and another in 1702-1703. Both were inspired by the
perennial debate concerning precedenza (precedence): that is,
which institution had the right-of-way when student groups met
on the street, in a piazza, or in other public space? More specifi1 Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. by Frederick Maurice Powicke and Alfred Brotherston Emden (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1936), 3 vols.; III, p. 86: Half the universities in Europe owed their origin to such migrations Oxford itself probably among the number. A similar migration from Oxford in 1209 led to the establishment of a permanent university at Cambridge. In the
case of Italy, the most relevant example is that of Padua, founded in 1222 by Bolognese dissidents.
2 Giancarlo Angelozzi, La giustizia criminale in una citt di antico regime: Il tribunale del Torrone di Bologna, secc. XVI-XVII (Bologna: Clueb, 2008) as well as Angelozzis many other publications; see also Ottavia Niccoli, Storie di ogni giorno in una
citt del Seicento (Rome: Laterza, 2000), an excerpt of which is translated as Rituals
of Youth: Love, Play and Violence in Tridentine Bologna in The Premodern Teenager, ed. by Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: CRRS, 2002), 75-94; also in English, see
Trevor Dean, Gender and Insult in an Italian City: Bologna in the Later Middle
Ages, Social History 29 (2004), pp. 217-231; for a broader perspective including five
Italian towns, see Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); also useful, if by now dated, is Sarah R. Blanshei,
Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna, Journal of Social History 16
(1982), pp. 121-138.
3 Jonathan Davies, Culture and Power: Tuscany and its Universities, 1537-1609
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 160-161.
CACCI FUORI UN BASTONE BIANCO
193
cally, which group had the right to remain next to the wall, thus
forcing the opponent to walk closer to or perhaps even in the street
itself? The question is unusually complex in this particular case because of the ecclesiastical privileges claimed by the seminarians,
and the resultant political issues that might arise between church
and state if the patrons of the seminary or the college were to become involved. Documentary sources provide only a partial
glimpse of these two events, but enough intriguing detail emerges
to give us some sense of both theory and practice with regard to
violence in early modern Italy. The historiography about precedenza and students is surprisingly limited, especially in light of the
many vivid accounts of such conflicts.4 Of course, debates over
precedenza were never limited to students; in Bologna and elsewhere we find similar squabbles among courtiers, prelates, knights,
and merchants.
Nevertheless, examining the conflicts over precedenza through
the lens of the student colleges offers several advantages. First, it
makes the project a manageable size; to date I have found about a
dozen major cases of precedenza between student colleges in the
seventeenth century, but there would likely be hundreds if we included all university students. Second, the distinct identity of the
4 Ennio Cortese, Luniversit di Bologna e il collegio di Spagna nel Cinquecen-
to: uno scontro tra i rettori Cesare Riva e Diego Gasque, in Studi in memoria di Giuliana DAmelio (Milan: Giuffr, 1978), pp. 219-272; Christopher Carlsmith, Student
Conflict in the Brevis Relatio of the Hungarian-Illyrian College, 1675, in Renaissance
Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. by Louis Waldman and Machtelt Israels (Florence: Olschki, forthcoming 2012); for a more detailed explication of this topic that
includes additional source material, see Carlsmith, Siam Ungari: Nationalism, Students, and Misbehavior at the University of Bologna in the Late Seventeenth Century, History of Universities, 26/2 (forthcoming Sept. 2012); Peter Denley, Trasgressioni e disordini studenteschi, in Le universit dellEuropa: Gli uomini e i luoghi, secc.
XII-XVIII, ed. by Gian Paolo Brizzi and Jacques Verger (Milan: Silvana Editoriale,
1993), pp. 83-103; Gian Paolo Brizzi, Modi e forme della presenza studentesca a
Bologna in et moderna, in Luniversit a Bologna: Maestri, studenti e luoghi dal XVI
al XX secolo (Bologna: Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna, 1988), pp. 59-74. See also Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (hereafter BUB), Ms. 125, no. 25, Notizie sopra la
controversia di precedenza insorta fra i Presidenti dellUniversit degli scolari a
Bologna ed i Consiglieri della nazione Alemanna e convenzioni dellaccordo seguito
fra essi (1746).
194
individual colleges makes it easier to see how issues of nationalism,

cultural formation, and language can be relevant factors in these
disputes. For example, the 1673 fight between the Montalto college students and the Spanish college students hinged on distinctly national conceptions of honor, and much of the acrimonious
debate after the fact centered around the exact terminology chosen by the Spanish Rector in his insults of the Montalto students.5
Third, the collegiate archives often preserve multiple accounts of
these conflicts, and the juxtaposition of one partisan source against
another can reveal more about narrative strategies and institutional
identity. In a squabble between the Montalto college and the Hungarian-Illyrian college in 1675, for example, a combination of petitions, letters, eyewitness testimony, and ambassadorial reports result in a rich mosaic of archival sources.6
Overview of the Ancarano College and the Seminary
Prior to examination of the two conflicts between the Ancarano
college and the seminary, it will be useful to sketch out briefly their
respective identities. Among the sixteen extant colleges in seventeenth-century Bologna, the Ancarano college was viewed by many
as second only to the Spanish college in terms of prestige and influence. Founded in the mid-fourteenth century by the distinguished jurist Pietro DAncarano, it specialized always in the study
of jurisprudence. According to the terms of DAncaranos testament, the college was to be supervised by the rector of the law students; in his absence, the bishop and a member of the Bolognese
city council were to take charge. In reality, control of the college
became a contested matter, with a vigorous fight in the late fifteenth
century between the Marescotti and the Malvezzi families over appointment of the rector. Around 1510 the college passed to the Farnese family, and it remained under the control of that powerful clan
5 Biblioteca dellArchivio Reale del Collegio di Spagna (hereafter BARCS), De
Rebus Gestis, I, pp. 117-124 (year 1673); I am currently preparing an article for publication about this conflict.
6 Carlsmith, Student Conflict in the Brevis Relatio, (forthcoming).
195
for more than two hundred years, training boys from Parma and
Piacenza for later service to the Duke. In the 1530s the students
included Gabriele and Camillo Paleotti, Alessandro Farnese, and
Guido Ascanio Sforza, each of whom went on to a distinguished
career in ecclesiastical and political life as well as becoming influential patrons. With the extinction of the Farnese family, in the
1730s the Ancarano became a royal college under the patronage of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, later King of Naples and Sicily, and its students were drawn from Naples until its suppression
in 1781.7 The archive of the Ancarano college remains split between Naples and Parma, and despite the preservation of significant primary sources, virtually nothing has been written about its
history to date.8 The college was originally located in DAncaranos own house in the modern via Val DAposa, but later moved
to more spacious quarters in via dei Belli Arti. In the absence of a
detailed history of the college it is difficult to generalize about its
successes and failures. As Gian Paolo Brizzi has noted, however,
the Ancarano college graduated 149 students in law between 1600
and 1796, a total second only to the much larger and better-financed Montalto College.9 The Ancarano seems to have been involved in its fair share of fights during the seventeenth century, as
indicated by both civic criminal records and by its own archival
sources.10
7 Gian Paolo Brizzi, Statuti di collegio: gli statuti del Collegio Ancarano di
Bologna, in Gli statuti universitari: tradizione dei testi e valenze politiche: atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Messina-Milazzo, 13-18 Apr. 2004, ed. by Andrea Romano (Bologna: Clueb, 2007), 825-863, which includes relevant bibliography; and
Giovanni Fantuzzi, Notizie degli scrittori Bolognesi, 6 vols. (Bologna: S. Tommaso
dAquino, 1783) vol. I, pp. 236-237, especially p. 237, note 20 which ranges over several pages.
8 Gian Paolo Brizzi, I collegi per borsisti e lo Studio bolognese. Caratteri ed
evoluzione di unistituzione educativo-assistenziale fra XIII e XVIII secolo, in Studi
e Memorie per la storia dellUniversit di Bologna, n.s., IV (1984), pp. 11-186, especially pp. 59-68, which lists the relevant archival sources in the Archivio di Stato di
Parma (ASPr) and Archivio di Stato di Napoli (ASNa).
9 Gian Paolo Brizzi, Lo studio di Bologna fra orbis academicus e mondo cittadino, in Storia di Bologna: Bologna nellet moderna 3/2, ed. by Adriano Prosperi
(Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008), pp. 5-113, here at 36.
10 Niccoli, Storie di ogni giorno, pp. 107-108; on the Ancaranos frequent conflict with the Montalto, for example, see Archivio di Stato di Napoli (ASNa), Archi-
196
The episcopal seminary offered a formidable counterpart to

the Ancarano College. Founded by Bishop Gabriele Paleotti in
1567 under the auspices of Session XXIII of the Council of Trent,
the seminary sought to create a rigorous, orthodox environment
where new priests could be inculcated with Tridentine reform.11
The seminarians were often referred to as the the poor of Christ
(i poveri di Christo) in order to emphasize their modesty, piety, and
frugality. Clad in full-length black robes and constrained to march
two-by-two behind a priest whenever they left their house, these
boys were taught a curriculum of Latin grammar, rhetoric, theology, and music by the Jesuit fathers. As in other Italian diocesan
seminaries, the young men were expected to converse primarily
in Latin and to spend a substantial portion of each day engaged
in prayer, meditation, and the recitation of church offices.12 At the
beginning of the seventeenth century the Jesuit teachers were replaced by secular priests. The seminary moved frequently during
its opening decades, due to continuing expansion, but by 1630 it
had finally settled into a series of houses (today the Grand Hotel
Baglioni) across from the cathedral of San Petronio. Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who had orchestrated the move to a new residence in 1630, also issued new rules to guide the behavior and
study of the seminarians, which were confirmed by Cardinal Girolamo Colonna in his synod of 1634. The seminary remained in this
location until the 1730s.
vio Farnesiano, busta 263, no. 6, Corrispondenza anno 1650 primo semestre, fols.
560-574 for the Ancaranos perspective; and Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASBo),
Archivio Demaniale, Collegio Montalto, 59/7280 (year 1650); 13/7234 (years 16621682) for the Montalto experience.
11 The best history of the Bolognese early modern seminary is Carlo Fortini, Vicende storiche del Seminario di Bologna, 1567-1924, in In Spem Ecclesiae: Il Seminario Arcivesocvile di Villa Revedin, 1932-1998, ed. by Alessandro Albertazzi and Gino Strazzari (Bologna: Pontecchio Marconi, 1998), pp. 90-113. For transcriptions of
key documents, see pp. 69-80; for a brief chronology, see pp. 49-55. My brief history
of the seminary is adapted from Fortini, but note that he completely skips the period
from 1634 to 1727, with which this article is concerned.
12 Kathleen Comerford, Reforming Priests and Parishes: Tuscan Dioceses in the
First Century of Seminary Education (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
197
The 1650s conflict

By the middle of the seventeenth century, then, the Ancarano college and the seminary were both firmly established in the city. The
students of the Ancarano college were involved in a series of infamous incidents in this period which gave them a deserved reputation for violence. In June 1630 six masked members of the college,
carrying shrouded lanterns and unsheathed swords, broke into a
series of houses across the city in order to cause trouble, and they
battered down the doors and broke mirrors and forced the women
of the house to flee and worst of all they did this in the name of
the court.13 In April 1650 the Ancarano students carried harquebuses to their university lessons on the pretext of self-defense;
not surprisingly, this provocative act caused a major fight with the
members of the Montalto college, resulting in wounds and expulsions on both sides as well as an extended legal battle of more than
twenty years.14 While the former was simply a case of criminal misbehavior, the latter case hinged primarily upon the familiar issues
of precedenza and privileges. Additional cases demonstrated that
the Ancarani were unrepentant. For example, on 9 May 1651 the
rector of the Ancarano college, Flaminio della Torre, was wounded by unknown assailants while returning home in the afternoon,
perhaps in retaliation for an earlier brawl.15 Less than a week later, the Ancarano students were accused of abusing an elderly pilgrim who had come to ask for alms at their door; the students allegedly beat him and stripped him naked before tossing him back
into the street to the universal displeasure of the entire city of
Bologna.16 As if that were not enough, the students then hauled
13 Quoted in Niccoli, Storie di ogni giorno, p. 107.
14 ASBo, Arch. Demaniale, 17/7234; see in particular fasc. 1, fol. 3, which is the
8 Apr. 1662 letter from Cardinal Palotto to the papal legate Cardinal Farnese, launching a tirade of accusations against the Ancarani as disobedient, aggressive, and imperious.
15 ASNa, Arch. Farn., busta 263, no. 7: Corrispondenza, anni 1651-52, fols. 640,
647, 660-661.
16 ASNa, Arch. Farn., busta 263, no. 7: Corrispondenza, anni 1651-52, fol. 646:
Si da parte a V[ostra] A[ltezza] S[erenissi]ma con dispiacere universale della Citt
di Bologna come tre d sono pass un povero Pellegrino danni 70, e dalli scolari del
198
forbidden weapons back to their sleeping quarters. In sum, the Ancarano students seem to have had a penchant for violence. The apparent lack of archival materials for the seminary makes it difficult
to reconstruct their specific background or behavior, but corresponding sources (e.g., city chronicles) make little mention of misbehavior by seminarians.17
It is within this context, then, that a conflict erupted between
the Ancarano college and the seminary during the late 1650s. To
date we have only one account of the event, an anonymous (albeit
partisan) narrative preserved in two eighteenth-century manuscripts in Bologna.18 In five pages, the narrator describes a series
Coleggio Ancarano fu in principio burlato e di poi schernito in varij modi con levarli gli arnesi dal dosso, datoli pugni e buttato via in una fenestra di una cantina delli
Padri Gesuiti di Santo Ignatio, tutti li suoi panni et strappazzato in modo che tutta la
contrata si stup [...] La sera poi usano mille forfanterie alle case portando seco Armi
prohibite. See Ivi, fol. 640 for the colleges refutation.
17 The archivist of the Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna, Dott. Mario Fanti, informed me in May 2010 that there are very few relevant documents for the history of
the Seminary in the Archepiscopal archive beyond those already published in In Spem
Ecclesiae. The Rector of the current Bolognese Seminary at Villa Revedin, Don Roberto Mancinatelli, graciously informed me in June 2010 that there are no documents for
the seventeenth century in the archive of the current seminary. To date I have been
unable to find additional documents about this period of seminary history in the ASBo or other local archives.
18 Two identical copies are extant: Biblioteca Comunale dellArchiginnasio
(BCAg), Ms. B3629, no. 18, Informazione del succeduto fra li signori scolari del Collegio Ancarano e li Seminaristi, fols. 128-32; and BUB, Ms. 116, no. 27, with the same
title. The latter is a rough copy with various additions and deletions, while the former
is a finished copy written in a clear and consistent hand with generous margins on
lined and numbered pages. Neither copy identifies the original provenance nor the
author. BUB Ms. 116 is part of a miscellany organized by Ubaldo Zanetti (1698-1769),
a maniacal bibliophile and spice merchant in Bologna. On Zanetti and his manuscript
collection, see Rita De Tata, Allinsegna della fenice: vita di Ubaldo Zanetti speziale e
antiquario bolognese (Bologna: Comune di Bologna, 2007). BCAg B3629 is part of the
Libreria Spada of 122 volumes and codices that includes Bolognese chronicles, diaries, and miscellaneous documents, donated to the Archiginnasio by the Florentine
antiquities dealer Tommaso de Marinis in 1925 (see Pierangelo Bellettini, Biblioteca
comunale dellArchiginnasio di Bologna (Florence: Nardini, 2001), pp. 110-111. No.
18 of ms. B3629 is nearly identical in format and calligraphy to all other documents
in this volume. An inscription after the index of ms. B3629 reads compito il 24 maggio venerd 1743, but as discussed below this document clearly describes an event
nearly a century earlier. Zanetti and Spada were close friends; I suspect that one pro-
199
of escalating conflicts in the streets of Bologna, culminating in a

street brawl and the intervention of the local police to restore order. The catalyst for this event, as for the successive conflict of
1702 between the same parties, was the question of precedenza:
which group of students could remain next to the wall, thus displaying their superiority and forcing their opponents to walk into
the middle of the street?
The identity of the narrator, as well as the precise date and location of the event, remain uncertain. The narrator was probably
the Governor of the Ancarano college, Camillo Paleotti (d. 1678),
who assumed direction of the college in 1653 and apparently remained in that position for more than twenty years.19 In this document he observes that the initial conflict took place on a Tuesday
in via Santo Stefano, while the principal conflict took place two
days later directly outside the windows of his house, perhaps Palazzo Paleotti at the corner of via San Donato (today via Zamboni) and
via del Guasto.20 The narrator cites eight people by name in his acvided the other with a copy of the manuscript because they were both intrigued by
Bolognese history. The full text of this account is to be found in Appendix.
19 Not to be confused with his eponymous illustrious ancestor Camillo Paleotti
(1520-1594), who was the elder brother and biographer of Cardinal Bishop Gabrielle
Paleotti. On the earlier Camillo Paleotti, who coincidentally composed for the Ancarano College the Ordini e ricordi dellIll.mo Signor Camillo Paleotti, 26 Ott. 1590
(ASNa, Arch. Farn. busta 263, faldone 9), see Paolo Prodi, Il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1959), 47-50, and Paolo Prodi, Storia
della chiesa di Bologna (Bergamo: Bolis, 1997), 2 vols. The probable narrator is the
Marquis Camillo di Galeazzo, who married Lelia Malaspina in 1621, was apppointed
senator of Bologna in 1628, and served as Bolognas ambassador to Rome from 1668
to 1675, prior to his death on 30 March 1678 (Giuseppe Guidicini, Cose Notabili della Citt di Bologna, II, p. 25, note 1). This Camillo Paleotti was identified as Archdeacon of Bologna in 1651 (ASNa, Arch. Farn. busta 263, faldone 7, fol. 690 [21 Dec.
1652]), assumed the job of Governor of the Ancarano College in March 1653 (ASNa,
Arch. Farn., busta 263, fol. 698), and corresponded vigorously with the Duke in subsequent years. This Camillo Paleotti does not appear to have taken a degree at the university. Pompeo Scipione Dolfi, Cronologia delle Famiglie Bolognesi (Bologna: GB
Ferroni, 1670; anastatic repr., 1990), 569-577, offers a chronology of the family, but
says no more about Camillo di Galeazzo than does Guidicini above.
20 Palazzo Paleotti is at via Zamboni 25-26, close to Piazza Verdi; today it is a
university building. The original building was constructed by Salaroli toward the end
of the fifteenth century; it still possesses an elegant internal courtyard with sixteenthcentury frescoes, while the piano nobile has an early seventeenth-century frieze by
200
count: three students and a professor from the Ancarano college;

the rector of the seminary and two of its senior officials; and the
police officer who intervened to separate the brawling students.21
The identity of these persons suggests that the event happened between 1655 and 1659.22 The Bolognese chronicler A.F. Ghiselli
does not mention this event, while the archives of the Ancarano college which include correspondence, budget records, decrees,
maps, matriculation lists, and so forth for much of the seventeenth
and eighteenth century are frustratingly silent about the period
from 1654-1663.23 As stated earlier, the archival records of the Sem-
Domenico degli Ambrogi and Girolamo Curti (known as il Dentone). See Francisco
Giordano, Il Palazzo Paleotti a Bologna: Vicende storiche e costruttive, Il Carrobbio 16 (1990), pp. 223-233; Giordano notes (225) that the Marquis Giuseppe Maria
q. Camillo Paleotti was the last member of this family to inhabit the palazzo prior to
his death in 1690 and that he had no children.
21 The students are il Sig. Marioni, il Sig. Passionei, e il Sig. Morandi; the professor is il Sig. Dottor Griffoni, assistente della Cattedra del suo Collegio. The rector of the seminary is D. Severo Masetti Modonese, while the administrators of the
seminary are il Sig. Conte Alessandro Ghislieri, et il Sig. Matteo Sagaci, et il medesimo Sig. Griffoni. The policeman is Domenico Caporale of the Marches. See the following notes for more precise identification of each individual.
22 Matteo Sagacis death in 1663 provides the terminus ad quem. Innocenzo Passioniei of Fossombrone and Giovanni Carlo Morandi of Piacenza, whom I suspect
were students of the Ancarano college, both took degrees in law in March 1659. A
letter of 19 Oct. 1654 from Camillo Paleotti to the Duke of Parma confirms the Dukes
desire that a student identified as Sig. Marioni should be admitted to the Ancarano college as soon as a place was available, essendo questo suddito e servitore attuale
della sua Serinissima casa (ASNa, Arch. Farn., no. 8, Corrispondenza anni 1653-1654,
fol. 779 [19 Oct. 1654]). Assuming that Marioni enrolled in 1654-1655, he would have
been present in the late 1650s, although there is no record of him taking a degree from
Bologna. A student named Rizzardo Marinoni took a degree in law in January 1659,
but his provenance from Brescia makes it unlikely that he was a member of the Ancarano college. Matteo Griffoni (see note 26 below) was sent by Archbishop Giacomo Boncompagni to Parma in 1654 and again in 1660 to resolve an unidentified problemperhaps to smooth over the strained relations between the Duke of Parma and
the Bolognese church as a result of this incident between the seminarians and the
Dukes own students?
23 BUB, Ms. 770, Memorie Storiche, the exhaustive 92-volume chronicle of Bolognese history by A.F. Ghiselli, has no mention of this event between 1654 and 1663.
ASNa, Arch. Farn., busta 263, includes correspondence between the Dukes of Parma and the Governors of the Ancarano college from 1600-1654 and from 1734-1779,
as well as budget records for many years but not the 1650s or 1660s. ASNa, Arch.
201
inary have not been available for examination. Thus although some
question marks remain, the richly-textured narrative still tells a
captivating story about seventeenth-century student violence.
The story begins on a Tuesday afternoon when three students
of the Ancarano college (identified as Marioni, Passionei, and
Morandi24) were walking after lunch in the street of Santo Stefano
in order to watch a horse race or procession described as la corsa
del Palio. Encountering the seminarians, the Ancarano students
stepped into the street and allowed the seminarians to remain along
the wall, even though (according to the narrator) the Ancarano students legitimately had the right to keep it [the wall], not only because the[ir] college is older but also because of their position, having the wall on their right.25 Realizing that his college had been
slighted, Marioni exclaimed to his companions that this had been
unfair. When the seminarians returned a few minutes later and
again claimed the right to stay along the wall, Morandi stepped forward, seeing that those others [i.e., seminarians] obstinately maintained a false pretension, and grabbing them by the hand together with his companions he pulled them into the street, and thus
succeeded in [both] preserving the rights of the college and not
allowing themselves to be discredited.
The Ancarano students immediately returned to their college
to relay these events to their rector. While waiting to discuss the
matter with the colleges governor at his home, the college rector
saw the distinguished jurist and professor Matteo Griffoni walk-
Farn., 8bis, Registro delle patenti del Collegio Ancarano, fols. 827r-831v, lists students admitted from 1591 to 1640, including their name, date of admission, sponsor,
and location of origin. A similar list of admitted students exists for the period from
Jan. 1646 to Sept. 1652 (ASNa, Arch. Farn., 8, Corrispondenza anni 1653-1654, fol.
705r).
24 Based on Maria Teresa Guerrini, Qui voluerit in iure promoveri: I dottori in
diritto nello studio di Bologna (1501-1796) (Bologna: Clueb, 2005), the students are
probably Innocentius Passioneus (no. 7265) of Fossombrone, graduated 29 Mar. 1659
utroque iure; and Iohannes Carolus Morandus (no. 7259) of Piacenza, graduated 15
Mar. 1659 utroque iure. As explained in note 23 above, the identity of the student Marioni is problematic; Guerrini lists eight students with variants of the surname but none
seem likely to be our student.
25 See Appendix 1 for the full text of this account.
202
ing by. Griffoni (1614-1677) had been appointed to teach within the
Ancarano college in December 1652 by the Duke of Parma, concurrently with his position as Lettore Eminente (Distinguished
Reader) at the University of Turin.26 Presumably seeking a sympathetic ear, the rector explained the situation to Griffoni and asked
for an opinion about whether the Ancarani had been justified or
not in defending their place next to the wall. Griffoni, after listening intently, declared his intention to take the matter up with the
directors of the Seminary in order to determine how the situation
might be resolved. On the following day (Wednesday), Griffoni
met with two senior members of the seminarys administration,
Count Alessandro Ghislieri and Matteo Sagaci.27 According to our
26 On Matteo Griffoni, Jr., see Indice Biografico Italiano (Munich: K.G. Saur,
2002), 3rd ed., 5:1814, which describes him as conte, sacerdote, filosofo, professore
di istituzioni legali, with more details in Serafino Mazzetti, Repertorio di tutti i professori antichi e moderni [...]di Bologna (Bologna: Tip. S. Tommaso dAquino, 1847),
165 (no. 1671); in Archivio Biografico Italiano (ABI) I:512, 367-368; and in Salvatore
Muzzi, Annali della citt di Bologna dalla sua origine al 1796 (Bologna: Tip. S. Tommaso dAquino, 1846), 8:237. For Griffonis autograph letter to the Duke of Parma
on 21 Dec. 1652 confirming his appointment di leggere alli Signori Alunni dellinsigne suo Collegio Ancarano, see ASNa, Arch. Farn., busta 263, no. 7, fol. 690. Fantuzzi, Notizie, vol. IV, pp. 301-304 offers a succinct biography and publications list of
this important jurist, who graduated from Bologna in canon and civil law in 1634 and
received an exemption from the Bolognese Senate in Sept. 1635 so that he could teach
at the University despite his youth. (He may also have received degrees in Philosophy
and Theology the sources disagree about when and whether he did so.) Griffoni also worked in the Sacred Rota of Rome and for various cardinals from 1635-1641. He
had a contentious relationship with his patria, which in 1641 denied his petition for a
promotion but in 1647, 1650, and 1652 increased his stipend and ultimately appointed
him as Avvocato della Camera on 14 Oct. 1652 and allowed him to keep his cattedra
(chair) at the university until 1675. Furthermore, in 1652 he was praised by the Bolognese Senate for 27 years of service and for teaching hundreds of Bolognese students.
Griffoni also served as a priest and canon of the cathedral of San Petronio beginning
in 1653, and became the archpriest of San Petronio in 1666. As noted previously (note
23), he also worked as a troubleshooter for the Archbishop of Bologna in the 1650s,
precisely the time when he was teaching for the Ancarano college. His well-known
ancestor Matteo Griffoni senior composed the Memoriale historicum de rebus bononiensum that described the citys history from 4448 BC to 1472 AD.
27 Ghislieri graduated from Bologna utroque iure on 12 May 1639; he is identified by Guerrini (no. 6302) as frater illustrissimi et reverendissimi comitis Francisci
Ghislerii Rote Romane auditoris, reverendus... comes... Metropolitane ecclesie canonicus, concivis, patritius, nobilis. Matteo Sagaci (d. 1663) was a wealthy canon (1622)
203
narrator, a request was made to the archbishops vicar to initiate a

trial and to excommunicate the Ancarano students, which suggests
that Griffoni was either unsuccessful or that he betrayed the Ancarano college by siding with the seminarians. It was (always according to our Ancarano narrator) these secret negotiations that
may have led to the bloodshed of the following morning.
On Thursday morning the Ancarano students were again in the
street to watch a procession. The narrator claims that he had
warned them to be very circumspect and to avoid any possible encounters, and furthermore that he had stationed the students directly outside his own house so that he could watch them from the
upstairs window. Suddenly the seminarians arrived, and insisted
that the Ancarano students move aside. Courteous discussion ensued, and this time it was the seminarians who eventually conceded the wall, doffing their hats as they walked past two-by-two following the priest. The narrator noted that it was odd for the seminarians to have both a priest leading the group and another following behind, as usually just one priest accompanied the young
men on their outings. His intuition that something was amiss seems
to have been correct, for
the last priest, who was the Rector of the Seminarians, and whose
name was Severo Masetti of Modena, as soon as he was near our
boys, pulled out a white club, which I saw, and holding it in his hand
he whacked Sig. Marioni.
The Ancarano student Marioni wasted no time in responding to

this assault:
and later provost of the basilica of San Petronio (1629), as well as the author with Giovanni Andrea Rota of Vita di Suor Pudentiana Zagnoni (1650); Sagaci donated money in favor of the Scuole Pie and boys education, as well as giving a painting of The
Virgin and Sleeping Child by Guido Reni to the church of San Bartolomeo di Porta
Ravenna. On Sagacis contribution to the Scuole Pie, see Fantuzzi, Notizie, vol. VI, p.
290; on Sagacis donation of the Reni painting, see Claudio Santini, La Madonna che
vuole restare con noi, Portici 4/6 (Dec. 2000), pp. 10-11; and Le chiese parrocchiali
della diocesi di Bologna (Bologna: Tip. S. Tommaso dAquino, 1814), n.d., n.p. [but
p. 6], sub voce S. Bartolomeo di Porta Ravenna.
204
Finding himself unexpectedly under attack, [Marioni] attempted to

defend himself as best he could, using a small dagger that was quickly tossed to him by his companion, as he later testified to me in person. Now that Sig. Marioni was better able to protect himself, he attacked the priest and lightly wounded him in the left shoulder.
At this point the police arrived, to find that the second Ancarano
student had joined the fray and had hurled the seminary rector to
the ground in order to wrest the club from his hands. The police
captured Morandi and transferred him to prison. Despite his frequent entreaties to shed his collegiate robes presumably to disguise his identity as a member of the college and to protect the institutions reputation he was not allowed to do so. Indeed, the narrator emphasizes that the policeman, Domenico Caporale, seems to
have deliberately refused the students request in order to humiliate him, and that the policeman then added verbal insults too.
The narrator by this time had descended to the front door of
the house, but not in time to have Morandi transferred in a carriage, as would have been more befitting for a student of his stature.
Instead the narrator busied himself transferring Marioni and Passionei to the colleges residence, both to provide medical treatment to the boy who had been injured by a blow from the club
and to see them both safely home. With the immediate crisis resolved, the narrator accompanied the colleges rector to visit the
Cardinal Legate,28 from whom he extracted a promise that the
prisoner Morandi would soon be freed, once the investigation into the event had been concluded.
Sadly we do not know the outcome of this case. Morandi and
Passionei graduated in March 1659; it is possible, though unlikely,
that the wound sustained by Marioni might have led to his failure
to receive his degree. Nor do we know whether the archbishops vicar or the cardinal legate took further action against any of the students. Forty years later, a similar conflict erupted between the same
two parties, but there are no explicit references to the earlier fra-
28 Either Girolamo Lomellini (Aug. 1652 to Jun. 1658) or Girolamo Farnese
(Jun. 1658 to Jan. 1662).
205
cas, only vague implications about previous hostilities. Given that

the Ancarano regularly recorded such precedents resulting from
fights with other colleges, it seems odd that this fracas in the late
1650s should have escaped its collective memory two generations
later. Perhaps the outcome was viewed by the Ancarano college as
shameful, and thus they wished to bury any remembrance of it.
The 1702-1703 conflict
In early February 1703 a heated argument broke out in the street
between five members of the Ancarano College and nearly thirty
seminarians. An eyewitness account from these Ancarano students
provides vivid (albeit one-sided) details of that encounter, which
once again focused on the question of precedenza.29 Unlike the
fight in the 1650s, this later argument never descended into
fisticuffs but instead remained at the level of verbal sparring. Other extant documents make clear that conflict had been brewing for
some time between the two sides; those other sources (explained
below) provide rich detail about the political, judicial, and philosophical aspects of this conflict over precedenza.
According to the eyewitness account penned by the Ancarano
students, they were returning toward their college on via dei Malcontenti on Friday morning, 9 February 1703, when they unexpectedly encountered a large group from the Seminary, just across
from the church of SantAndrea dei Penitenzieri. Both sides
pressed themselves against the wall, and each invited the other
with exaggerated courtesy to step into the street. When a standoff
ensued, with each side unwilling to give way,
ten or twelve of the biggest seminarians immediately stepped forward, their faces feverish and threatening, as if preparing to assault
29 ASPr, Fondo Istruzione Pubblica Farnesiana (1451-1787) (hereafter Arch.

Farn.) busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano, n.p. (9 Feb. 1703), La sincera e pura notizia del accidente occorso fra noi Ancarani et i Seminaristi. The five students who
signed this narrative were Pietro Grisolago Lazari, Tomaso Scuozi, Bartolomeo Bonzetti,
Saverio Nicola Paiselli, and Giovanni Battista Grainelli, capitano del Collegio.
206
us; they were hiding weapons under their cloaks, as was obvious from
the fact that each of them kept their hands moving under their cloaks,
which clearly indicated their premeditated intention to do us harm.30
Claiming that they were both outnumbered and taken by surprise,

the Ancarano students were planning to retreat, while still reserving the right to defend our proper rights at a more opportune
time and place.31 At that moment there appeared the Barnabite
Paolo Carminati, the confessor of Archbishop Boncompagni, and
a man described as uomo degnissimo (most worthy man) by his fellow cleric Angelo Porto.32 Carminati instructed the seminarians to
cede passage to the Ancarano students, which they did, but not before one of the seminarians yelled out We shall give way out of
respect for this priest, but not out of respect for you!33 In a manner reminiscent of juvenile playground quarrels, the Ancarano students responded that the disdain felt by the seminarians toward the
Ancarano students could not begin to compare with that felt by
the Ancarano students toward the seminarians. Furthermore,
threatened the Ancarano students, the seminarians would learn a
bitter lesson the next time that the groups met, for the college
would not always have so few members present. After several more
verbal exchanges and threats of future retaliation, both sides withdrew to their respective houses, presumably by alternate routes,
without further altercation.
30 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (9 Feb. 1703): vedendo detti Seminaristi che noi altri non cedevamo punto, sbalzarano avanti subito li pi
grandi, al numero ben di dieci o dodici con faccie alterati e minaccianti, come per farci violenza, tenendo farsi avanti sotto la veste qualche Arma, che chiaramente pot
comprendersi dal vedere prontamente ciascuno cacciar le mani sotto la veste, e far certi atti, che non indicavano che pensieri insolenti [violenti? intenti?] a qualche attione
ben prima premeditata.
31 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (9 Feb. 1703): sorpresi noi da prepotenza et avantaggio, per non metterci in compromessa di qualche stravaganza, gi pensavamo tornar a dietro, riservandosi a miglior tempo e pi opportuno
il diffendere le nostre raggioni.
32 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (13 Feb. 1703), letter from
Angelo Porto to Duke of Parma.
33 ASPr, Arch. Farn, busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (9 Feb. 1703): Cediamo
la mano rispetto di questo Prete, non al riguardo vostro!
207
As noted previously, bad blood had existed between these two

institutions for some time. The conflict of the late 1650s had engendered suspicion and enmity between the two groups. Then on
5 September 1662 Count Suzi of Parma ordered an assassination
attempt upon the Bolognese Marquis Andrea Paleotti and his family, an event which stirred up further hostility between the residents
of Bologna and the students from Parma.34
In December 1702, Archbishop Giacomo Boncompagni had
written to an agent of the Duke of Parma, Count Francesco Felini, in order to warn the Duke quite explicitly that these students
of the Ancarano College have for some time been pestering the
clerics of my seminary about the precedence which they claim [to
possess], and they [the Ancarani] refuse to stop shoving these clerics or to allow them to pass freely.35 The Archbishop noted that
he had the authority to intervene, but he preferred the Duke to do
so with his own charges:
Although the laws permit me to order these boys to desist, nevertheless in light of the fact that they are under the protection of your
most Serene Highness of Parma, and desiring that you be advised in
a friendly way to take the appropriate steps before I proceed to any
further action, I resolved to notify your Excellency in the expectation that your great zeal and notable piety will be sufficient to turn
your mind to take those steps necessary so that these boys cease their
pretensions.36
34 See Rosaria Greco Grassilli, Una dama bolognese del XVII secolo: Cristina
Dudley di Northumberland Paleotti, Il Carrobbio, 19-20 (1993-94), pp. 185-186.
35 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (20 Dec. 1702): Questi
collegiali del Collegio Ancarano un tempo che vanno perturbando ai chierici collegiali di questo mio seminario quella precedenza, che loro compette, non desistendo
quando gli incontrano per le strade di dargli tal volta degli urtoni e di togliergli arditamente la mano. Felini represented the Duke of Parma as charg daffaires in Rome
at this time.
36 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (20 Dec. 1702): Bench
io con i dettami delle facolt proprie potessi ordinare a medesimi, che dovessero desistere; nondimeno sul riguardo che stanno sotto la protezione del Serenissimo di Parma, desiderando io di amichevolmente vi si dia lopportuno rimedio, prima di procedere ad alcun atto, ho risoluto significarlo a V[ostra] S[ignoria] affinch Ella mi usi
lamorevolezza di renderne riverentemente partecipe di I[llustre] S[ignore], confi-
208
The Archbishops expression of concern was prescient, for within

six weeks (i.e., early February 1703) the sides were once again at
loggerheads. In order to clarify his position further, the Archbishop included a list of reasons why the seminary should enjoy precedence over the Ancarano college. The essential points included
the following:
(1) A college operating under ecclesiastical authority (i.e., founded by the bishop) should always precede a college founded by
a lay person or private entity (i.e., Pietro DAncarano);
(2) the objectives of the seminary were more noble and worthy
(pi nobile e degno) because the seminarians would go on to
serve God and to take care of souls in a way that had both temporal and spiritual benefits, whereas the lay college graduates
would contribute little of significance;
(3) the seminary should enjoy priority because it had been founded first, in 1567, whereas the Ancarano only became a regular
college in 1592 when it adopted the insignia of the Duke;
(4) as an integral part of the body of Bolognese clergy, the seminary should enjoy all the privileges associated with that clerical status;
(5) the seminary had always enjoyed precedence over the Ancarano college.37
In broad strokes, these arguments resemble those proffered by
other colleges in order to establish superiority over rival institutions. The claim of seniority (anzianit) was the most powerful, and
typically the easiest to establish through reference to a testament
or other attestation of the colleges founding.38 The eminence of
dando che il sommo zelo, e la singulare piet della medesima sar per piegare lanimo a fare quei passi che convengono, perche essi desistano una volta dalla loro [f. 1v]
pretenzione.
37 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (20 Dec. 1702).
38 As the Ancarano college put it in their response authored by Bartolomeo Manzoli, entitled Informazione delle ragioni che assistono al Collegio Ancarano per la
precedenza sopra il Semminario (ASPr, Arch. Farn. busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano [hereafter Informazione], fol. 2r): lanzianit sola quella che suol attendersi in
materia di precedenza.
209
the founder was another important factor, particularly if he were

a pope or powerful cardinal. The possession of certain privileges,
such as exemption from taxes or from civil jurisdiction, was another way to determine the prestige of individual colleges. The
age-old question of whether lay or ecclesiastical status was superior is also evident in this debate as the two sides quarreled about
the purpose(s) of their respective institutions. Legal precedent was
important too; if one could cite a court case or a legal opinion in
support of ones position, that often carried substantial weight.
Additional factors such as distinguished alumni, an impressive
building, large estates, stiff admission requirements might also
come into play when attempting to establish priority and precedenza. Perhaps the most nebulous characteristic, which we shall encounter shortly, was the issue of a colleges quality. Such an aspect was open to definition and interpretation in a variety of different ways.
In this case of 1703, the Ancarano college did not take long to
respond to the gauntlet thrown down by the Bolognese Archbishop. On 8 February 1703 ironically the day before the conflict occurred the Ancarano college compiled its own list of reasons to
rebut the arguments of the seminary. In eight double-sided pages,
Bartolomeo Manzoli laid out for the Duke of Parma various rationales that supported the Ancaranos claim to superiority.39 Although not as extensive as the list of seventy-seven razones (reasons) prepared by the Spanish College (Collegio di Spagna) in its
dispute with the Montalto college in 1672,40 Manzolis brief is still
impressive. His cover letter of the same date notes that he had
drawn from the scritture antiche (old documents) preserved in the
Colleges own archive in order to assemble his justifications.41
Manzolis Informazione opens with two paragraphs devoted to the founding of the college in the fifteenth century by Pietro
DAncarano, and to its protection, care, and governance by the
39 See previous note.
40 BARCS, Privilegia, busta 18, fols. 67r-82r (1673-1674), Razones que assisten
al Colegiopara la Precidentia que tienen al Colegio de los Montaltos.

41 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano (8 Feb. 1703), letter from
Manzoli to Duke Francesco Farnese of Parma.
210
gloriossima (most famous) Farnese dynasty in Parma. Thus Manzoli sought to establish from the outset that the Ancarano college
clearly enjoyed both seniority and greater eminence in its founders.
He went on to explain at considerable length the other reasons for
which the Ancarano should exercise precedence, including several pointed remarks about the inferior quality of the seminary. Manzoli cited a number of external examples to buttress his case too,
including other collegiate conflicts over precedence and parallel examples from the Roman Rota. Clearly he had a copy of the Archbishops letter of 20 December in front of him, for he repeatedly
made reference to the Archbishops prior assertions even as he dismissed them.
The strongest argument in the Ancaranos favor was, in Manzolis words, the great prerogative of seniority enjoyed by the Ancarano college for more than a century over the seminary. Archbishop Boncompagni had disingenuously claimed that until 1592
the Ancarano was only a boarding house rather than a full college,
basing his allegation on the fact that only in 1592 did the Ancarano students begin to wear a collegiate robe with the symbol of the
Duke of Parma. Manzoli admitted that the Duke had added his
crest to the students robe in order to lend it greater prestige, but
argued that the Ancarano had always been a full college: It is
well-known that the Ancarano college has, at significant expense,
always claimed and justly maintained to hold precedence not only over the seminary but also with regard to all other colleges in
Bologna.42 The Archbishops assertions were unfounded (insussistente) and fallacious (un fallace supposto), said Manzoli, for
everyone recognized that the Ancarano college had existed far
longer than the Seminary. Indeed, he continued, on the strength
of this claim alone and in the absence of any other reason at all,
the Ancarano College could still claim superiority over the Seminary.43 Other examples were included to show that the principle
42 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, Informazione, fol. 2v: si sa pubblica e notoria-
mente che il Collegio Ancarano ancor col mezo di liti dispendiose, ha preteso et ha
giustamente sostenuto di precedere non solo al Seminario, ma a gli altri Collegi ancora di Bologna.
43 Ivi, fol. 2r: anzi, in virt di questo possesso potrebbe il Collegio Ancarano
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of seniority was valid not just in this particular case, but across the
board. For example, Manzoli observed that even within the Sacred
Rota of Rome, the bishops sit according to the seniority of their
bishopric and not according to their individual dignity.44 Manzoli
was quite right that the Ancarano college pre-dated the seminary
by nearly two centuries.
The Archbishop had commenced his argument by pointing
out that episcopal or ecclesiastical authority should always trump
that of a private or lay entity. Manzoli dismissed this argument in
several ways. He noted that the Ancarano college had been approved by two popes (Julius II, Paul III) immediately prior to the
Council of Trent, and thereafter the Ancarano college enjoyed status equivalent to any pontifical college.45 Secondly, although it was
true that the Council of Trent had granted certain privileges to
bishops who wished to found a seminary, there was nothing in that
decree that suggested the seminaries would be superior to pre-existing colleges.46 Furthermore, noted Manzoli, when Cardinal
Gabriele Paleotti had created the seminary in Bologna he had expressly referred to the seminarians as the Poor of Christ (Poveri
di Christo), and ordered them to remain humble, modest, and obedient. Manzoli concluded that the intent of the Church had never
been to garnish seminarians with special privileges or powers because these were antithetical to their avowed purpose in life. He
used the same logic to reject the Archbishops contention that seminarians should enjoy any and all privileges associated with the
clergy; Manzoli pointed out that such privileges were only to be
quando li mancasse ogni altra ragione pretendere la precedenza sopra il Seminario.

44 Ivi, fol. 4v: et in Roma stessa nella Rota li vescovi sedono nel suo luogo secondo lanzianit del Vescovato e non secondo la loro dignit.
45 Ivi, fol. 2v.
46 Ivi, fols. 2r-2v: Per havere poi dato il Sacro Concilio di Trento la facolt ai
Vescovi derrigere un Seminario in servizio della Chiesa, non ha per loro data alcuna facolt e privileggio di pregiudicare nella precedenza a gli altri Collegi prima fondati. Anzi, essendo stato di sua mente, che tali Seminarij servino ad educare un certo
numero di fanciulli [f. 2v] poveri, per instradarli nel vero culto di Dio, et nellessercizio delle Virt Christiane, ha voluto precisamente tenerli lontani da ogni desiderio
dhonor secolare e mondano; et appunto, quando il Sig. Cardinale Palleoti fond il
Seminario di Bologna, i giovani che ventrarono furono chiamati Poveri di Christo.
212
respected when they are wearing their robes and actually engaged
in Church services, or when they are together with the entire body
of the clergy.47
The avowed purpose of the college and of the seminary was also a point of contention. The Archbishop had claimed that the objectives of the seminary were more worthy than the insignificant
goals of the Ancarano college. Manzoli cleverly cited a passage
from Proverbs 8:15 per me reges regnant et leges conditores iusta decernunt to demonstrate that the purpose of the Ancarano
College is to nourish these modest and untitled young men in such
a way that they learn the law and thus are able to implement and
ensure that justice which is so necessary for the temporal and spiritual well-being of a Christian Republic.48
Manzoli turned next to the issue that he defined as the quality of the respective institutions. He claimed that the Seminary did
little more than offer room and board to its students, and that students had to pay fees even for those services; thus, he concluded,
it is lacking those qualities that constitute the essence of being a
college, and therefore cannot call itself anything more than a dormitory even if the Council of Trent had defined it as a college.49
47 Ivi, fol. 2v: Il volere considerare i Seminaristi per parte del corpo e gremio
del Clero, non d loro maggior ragione o prerogativa in disputa di precedenza fissi
della Chiesa con i Collegiali Secolari, essendo solo da rispetarsi in loro tal qualit
quando sono con la Cotta nellattual essercito e funzione della Chiesa, o quando sono
con il resto del Corpo del Clero.
48 Ivi, fol. 4v: Se il fine dellerrezione dei Seminarij stato di giovare alla Cristiana Repubblica col far instruire nei medesimi poveri fanciulli perche imparino lopere
pie, e labilitino alla retta amministrazione delle chiese; il fine del Collegio Ancarano
s dalimentare in esso giovani di condizione assai civile e sino titolati, perche imparino
le leggi e sabilitino alla retta amministrazione della giustizia tanto necessaria al sostentamento temporale e spirituale della Cristiana Repubblica, come si legge nei Proverbi per me reges regnant et leges conditores iusta decernunt [By me kings rule and
rulers make laws that are just] Onde non si pu inferire che il fine dellinstituzione
del Collegio Ancarano sii inferiore a quello del Seminario.
49 Ivi, fols. 3r-3v: Onde passando allesame dellaltra conditione, cio della qualit, e non trovandosi nel Seminario che quella dalimentar molti giovani, anzi di ricevere dal maggior parte dei medesimi la dozena [dozzina], egli privo di quelle qualit che constituiscono lessere di Collegio, e perci non pu nominarsi al pi che convittoria bench dal Sacro Consilio sii stato denominato Collegio.
213
In contrast, he said, the Ancarano college possessed all the signs

of an established and significant college: namely, it did not charge
fees to its students; it had a rector and officials appropriate for the
number of collegiali (student members) enrolled; and it required
proof of citizenship from applicants families as a condition of admission. It becomes clear from Manzolis narrative here that he was
describing, at least in part, a sense of exclusivity and social prominence that set the Ancarano students apart. Elsewhere in his treatise, for example, he points out that the rector of the Ancarano college was permitted to graduate without defending a set of puncti
(theses) as a sign of the esteem in which he was held, and that
most of the Ancarani also finished their degrees; on the other hand,
this is not something that the seminarians can do, [because] many
of them when they leave the seminary they go to work as clerks in
the stores of the city.50 Manzoli further denigrated the quality of
the clerics by observing that many of them left the seminary without ever progressing to take orders; and even more were not tonsured or claimed to be clerics in name only.51
External examples of precedenza were an important component
of Manzolis arsenal too. In defending the primacy of the secular
Ancarano college against the seminary, he pointed out the principle that lay dignitaries generally preceded their ecclesiastical counterparts. Thus, he argued, a lay judge precedes an ecclesiastical judge just as within the Studio of Bologna it was an established and respected tradition that inside the College of Doctors
and inside the University the lay professors precede the priestly
professors and canons by virtue of the seniority of their doctoral
50 Ivi, fol. 5v: quando il Rettore del Collegio Ancarano saddottora (come saddotorano la maggior parte de suoi collegiali, il che non fanno i Seminaristi, alcuni dei
quali si vedono uscire di Seminario et andar per fattori nelle botteghe della Citt) non
gli vien replicato a gli argomenti dei dottori ma gli fanno subito la scarpazata.
51 Ivi, fol. 3v: Da ci ancora si vede che non deve farsi caso della qualit clericale dei Seminaristi, molti dei quali si vedono per uscire dal Seminario senza progredire neglordini ecclesiastici; e tanto meno se ne deve far caso, quanto che non sono
neanche tonsurati, e quando anche lo fossero non hanno gi lesercitio nella Chiesa
per ragione dellordine, ma per semplice servit, nella guisa appunto che si vedono
tanti servire alle Chiese et ad altri usi della chiesa che non sono veramente chierici, e
tutta via saddimandano latamente chierici.
214
degrees.52 Manzoli also cited it as the common opinion of learned

men that if the bishops themselves were students then they could
not claim the precedence that comes with the dignity [of their office] so long as they remain students.53
Perhaps the most devastating argument that Manzoli included in his treatise, however, pertained to the proceedings of a gathering of church cardinals in 1673. In the spring of 1672, following a particularly contentious debate between the Montalto college and the Spanish college over precedenza, this group of eminent men was convened by Pope Clement X to hash out a solution that would apply to all colleges. Manzoli initially points out
that the specific solution in this case favored the Spanish college,
and thus served as yet another example of a lay institution being
recognized ahead of an equivalent ecclesiastical institution.54 Toward the end of his discourse, Manzoli returns to the actions of
the congregation of cardinals. He notes that in 1674, by order of
the Cardinal Legate of Bologna, Bonacccorso Buonaccorsi (16161678), all the colleges of the city were required to appear before
the aforementioned Congregation in order to explain their respective claims and justifications for having precedence [over the
others], and even if some were absent [the Congregation] would
move ahead with its decision.55 Manzoli gleefully points out that
while the Ancarano, Montalto, and Hungarian-Illyrian colleges
showed up to defend their respective privileges, the Seminary
52 Ivi, fol. 4r: Il giudice laico anteriore di tempo precede al Giudice Ecclesiastico, che sii posteriore. Loc. cit.: E pi di tutti corrobora ci la consuetudine particolare et inveterata di Bologna, ove nel Collegio dei Dottori e nello Studio Pubblico i Dottori laici precedono ai Dottori sacerdoti e canonici per ragione dellanzianit
del dottorato.
53 Ivi, fol. 4r: Anzi i Dottori dicono che se glistessi Vescovi fossero scolari non
potrebbero pretendere la precedenza dovuta alla loro dignit, se si trovassero nello
Studio come scolari.
54 Ivi, fol. 4v.
55 Ivi, fol. 6v: Dellanno per tanto 1674 per ordine del Sig. Cardinale Bonaccorsi Legato di Bologna attesane la commissione havutane da S. Santit, furono citati
tutti li Collegi di questa citt a comparire accanto la sudetta Congregazione, et a dedure e rapresentare alla medesma le loro ragioni e pretensioni per la precedenza
perche altrimenti non ostante la loro contumacia si sarebbe proceduto alla decision
delle differenze.
215
could not even muster the necessary courage or arguments to

show up.
Manzolis detailed and effective narrative would surely have
carried weight with any reader. Unfortunately we have no extant
record to attest to the outcome of this debate. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence suggests that the Ancarano college prevailed.
Although arguments about precedenza continued into the eighteenth century, the seminary was not often involved. One could argue that the seminarians withdrew from such arguments in order
to focus upon their own education and prayer, or even to defend
themselves against the increasingly secular and anti-clerical society
that surrounded them, but it is equally plausible that such a stinging defeat caused them to renounce any further attempts to bait
other colleges or to assert their primacy. The only subsequent document of which I am aware is a letter dated 13 February 1703,
from Angelo Porto to the Duke of Parma. Writing just several days
after the conflict described above, Porto summarized the story
briefly for the Duke and emphasized how the seminarians had had
to back down per the command of Paolo Carminati. Porto goes on
to say that he had just drafted a preliminary agreement to avoid repetition of such unpleasant events, and that he had already obtained
tentative agreement from Paolo Carminati and another cardinal on
behalf of the Bolognese seminary. Portos draft largely echoes the
decision of the Congregation of Cardinals three decades earlier, in
commanding that each side must stay close to the wall on their
right-hand side. As an agent of the Duke, Porto is far from an objective source, and his declaration that the seminarians actions
were a presumptuous affront (premurosa insinuazione) that must
be rebuffed immediately was simply a reformulation of the colleges own perspective.56 On the other hand, Portos letter implies
that the Ancarano college had emerged as a victor in this conflict.
56 ASPr, Arch. Farn., busta 7, fasc. Collegio Ancarano, fol. 1 (13 Feb. 1703).
216
Conclusion
This pair of case studies of collegiate conflict in seventeenth- and
early eighteenth-century Bologna demonstrates that violence both
verbal and physical was a relatively common phenomenon among
university students. Given the potent combination of international students, male testosterone, and fierce pride that existed in
Bologna and in other university towns, and the concomitant failure of civic and university institutions to regulate such disagreements, a tendency toward violence is not particularly surprising.
Nevertheless, this close examination of the scuffles between the
Ancarano college and the episcopal seminary can illuminate the social and institutional histories of each group as well as help to shed
light on the civic and ecclesiastical realities of the city. More specifically, it aids our understanding of both the theoretical and practical aspects of conflict over precedenza, and of the important role
that honor and masculinity played in early modern Italian culture.
217
APPENDIX
N.B. BCAg, Ms. 3629, Miscellanea storica bolognese, no. 18 (= pp.
128-132), Informazione del succeduto fra li signori scolari del Collegio Ancarano e li Seminaristi. No date, no author. 29 cm. h x 20
cm w. Per note 18 in the text above, two virtually identical versions
of this text exist; when discrepancies have arisen, I have followed
BCAg Ms. 3629.
Essendo andati marted doppo pranzo li Sig. Scolari del Collegio Ancarano, cio il Sig. Marioni, il Sig. Pastionei, e il Sig. Morandi per
vedere la corsa del Palio, che in quel giorno si faceva nella strada chiamata di S. Stefano, incontrarono il Seminario, quale lev il muro a
questi che legittimamente il possedevano, non solo per ragione di
anzianit di Collegio, ma ancora di sua natura, havendo la man destra. Il Sig. Marioni, che doppo il fatto se ne avidde fece instanza all
duoi suoi compagni, che questo era in pregiudizio proprio del Collegio. Hor[a] mentre stavano discorrendo il negozio, ecco li Seminaristi dallaltra parte dove pure erano passati li nostri per vedere il
rimanente del corso, ritirarsi al muro, e pur di nuovo pretenderlo,
mentre la mano era per anco delli nostri [f. 129]. Il Sig. Morandi fecesi avanti, e vedendo che quelli ostinatamente stavano su una falsa
pretensione, pigliandoli per la mano con i compagni gli ritir nella
strada, di dove poi li riusc lintento di conservare il Ius al Collegio,
et di non lasciarsi far torto. Doppo questo fatto si ritirarono a casa,
la dove trovato il Rettore le diedero parte del seguito. Questo, mentre stava aspettando, che si accostasse lhora opportuna di trovarmi
in casa per darmene parte, ecco che vidde passare il Sig. Dottor Griffoni assistente della Cattedra del suo Collegio. A questo espose il fatto s per farlo partecipe di quanto era successo a scolari, come anche
per dimandarli parere, se a torto, o a ragione havessero glAncarani
preteso il muro da Seminaristi. Il Sig. Griffoni doppo havere inteso
il tutto, si dichiar esser de superiori del detto Seminario, e che per
haverebbe veduto quello che sopra ci havesse potuto risolvere. A
questo effetto fu fatta la Congregazione il giorno seguente, che fu il
mercoled, dove fu trattato questo negozio gravemente, con far instanza a Monsig. Vicario che ne facesse fare il Processo, et ne scommunicasse li scolari, e questo non so se a suggestione [f. 130] dei superiori del Seminario, che sono il Sig. Conte Alessandro Ghislieri, et
il Sig. Matteo Sagaci, et il medesimo Sig. Griffoni, o pure dei medi-
218
simi Seminaristi. In questa maniera passarono gli trattati segreti, da

quali poi deriv leffettivo accidente il gioved mattina. Stavano li
scolari dAncarano sotto le mie finestre osservando la Processione,
quale come ho detto passava avanti la mia casa, perche le havevo ordinato che andassero circonspetti, e vedessero di sfuggire ogni incontro, onde loro si erano ritirati sotto le sudette mie finestre, dalle
quali stavo io osservando la medesima processione; quando ecco li
Seminaristi arrivar dimproviso, e pretendere che questi si ritirassero
dal muro per farle lucco [luogo] da passare. Furono fatte diverse
repliche, quali legittimamente posso chiamar cortesi, dopo le quali
cederono il luogo li Seminaristi, e passarono a duoi a duoi, cavandosi
tutti il Cappello.
Devo per anteporre, che era avanti un Prete [ed] unaltro doppo,
et in mezzo il Seminario, cosa insolita a farsi, essendo ordinario, che
un solo Prete accompagni quelli giovini [sic]. Si[c]che pass il primo Prete et il Seminario cortesemente, ma lultimo prete [f. 131], che
il Rettore di quelle, che si chiama D. Severo Masetti Modonese,
subito che fu vicino a nostri cacci fuori un bastone bianco, quale io
viddi, che teneva legato alla mano, et arriv una bastonata al Sig.
Marioni. Allora questo vedutosi dimproviso assalito procur di diffendersi alla meglio che pot, quando che prestamente le fu somministrato uno stile da un suo amico, che cos a me ha testificato
[testified] di propria bocca. Vedendosi il Sig. Marioni in maggior
possa di diffendersi assal il Prete, e le diade leggermente una ferita
nella spalla sinistra. A questo rumore accorsero li sbirri, quali vedendo il Sig. Morandi, che in quel [momento] mentre haveva gettato a terra il prete, e si affaticava per levargli il bastone, lo presero, e
lo condussero [in] Prigione, e per quanta instanza pos egli fare di
cavarsi la veste collegiale, ci non le fu conceduto da Domenico Caporale Marcheggiano, quale (da quello si pu comprendere) us
questo termine per fare ingiuria, anzi lingiuri con parole. Vedendo
il fatto andai abbasso, ma non potei arrivare a tempo, perche erano
gi partiti li sbirri, sicche non potei mandare il Sig. Morandi in carozza, come havevo determinato, onde mapplicai per allora a condurre
a casa li Sig. Marione e Pastionei, s per far medicar quello che era
percosso sopra un braccio duna bastonata, come per condurli ambidoi [ambedue] salvi in Collegio. Tanto feci, doppo che andai con
il Rettore dal Cardinal Legato, al quale esposi il fatto, in tal maniera,
che promise di darmi fra breve tempo libero il Prigione, subito che
sar formato il Processo, e liquidata la causa.
PART THREE
VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Paolo Grillo
(Universit degli Studi di Milano)
THE LONG LIFE OF THE POPOLO OF MILAN.

REVOLTS AGAINST THE VISCONTI IN THE
FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
In a 2002 monographic issue of Ricerche storiche, on the topic of

Being a People: Prerogatives and Rituals of Belonging in Italian
Cities of the Old Regime, Giorgio Chittolini and Mario Ascheri,
in two contributions unfortunately underrated in later studies, drew
attention to what Ascheri defined as un popolo di lunga durata,
in other words, the late survival of popular and communal heritage
both in those communes which remained republican for a long period in central Italy and, though less visibly, in those cities in the
north of the peninsula that had been ruled by a Signore since an
early stage.1 The aim of this article is to highlight how, through the
lens of revolts, it is possible to detect the longue dure of Milanese
communal life that managed to preserve its own memory and a relevant ability to act effectively even after decades of Visconti domination. Probably the most famous phase was in 1447: the short but
highly relevant experience of the restoration of the independent
commune, usually known as the Repubblica Ambrosiana.2 In my
1 Giorgio Chittolini, Uno sguardo a ritroso, in Essere popolo. Prerogative e rituali di appartenenza nelle citt di antico regime, ed. by Grard Delille and Aurora
Savelli, Ricerche storiche, 32 (2002), pp. 163-172; Mario Ascheri, Un popolo di lunga durata,in Ivi, pp. 173-185.
2 Unfortunately there are no recent studies on the Repubblica Ambrosiana. For
path-breaking perspectives see Beatrice Del Bo, Banca e politica a Milano a met Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 63-94 and the bibliography cited there.
222
PAOLO GRILLO
view this experience was not at all an anachronistic, unrealistic attempt to restore an archeological buried past as many recent
and less recent historians3 have judged it to be but the climax
of a long-lasting claim on the part of the Milanese commune to
autonomy. In fact, the proclamation of the Duchy, in 1395, led to
the breach of the pact of legitimacy thanks to which the Visconti had previously always governed according to the authority
which their subjugated cities first of all Milan had recognized
as theirs.4
From this perspective, I would like to dwell in particular on
the first half of the fifteenth century, mainly focusing on one of the
episodes in Milans history that has been most neglected by historians: the peculiar institutional structure resulting from the great
popular revolts of 1402-1403 that followed Giangaleazzo Viscontis death.
Popular revolts in Milan in the fourteenth century
Milanese popular revolts have not received much attention in the
literature. In particular, Francesco Cognasso surely also because
of his conservative political positions always looked down on
popular initiatives, judging them to be usually irrational explosions, later exploited or maneuvered by one of the factions of the
political lite, which used to manipulate the city and were active
at the Visconti court. The majority of later scholars aligned themselves with this position, which Cognasso presented in his impressive contributions to the prestigious Storia di Milano published
by the Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri.5 In reality, as I would like
3 See Francesco Cognasso, La Repubblica di S. Ambrogio, in Storia di Milano,

vol. VI, Il ducato visconteo e la Repubblica Ambrosiana (1392-1450) (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri per la Storia di Milano, 1955), pp. 387-448.
4 Francesco Somaini, Processi costitutivi, dinamiche politiche e strutture istituzionali dello Stato visconteo-sforzesco, in Comuni e signorie nellItalia settentrionale:
la Lombardia (Turin: Utet, 1998), pp. 681-786 and p. 720.
5 Francesco Cognasso, Lunificazione della Lombardia sotto Milano, in Storia di
Milano, vol. V, La signoria dei Visconti (1310-1392) (Milan: Fondazione Treccani degli
THE LONG LIFE OF THE POPOLO OF MILAN
223
to illustrate here, the great revolts that shook the city in this period (there were of course also a number of minor uprisings and
small riots, related to incidental events)6 were rooted in the opposition to acts perceived as extremely subversive of the rights of the
Milanese commune by those families deeply bound to the communal tradition and, above all, by the people of Milan. The popolo, through territorial organizations such as the vicinie, or gate districts, managed to preserve room for action and political self-organization, even during the signorial regime.7
In one of my previous articles I studied, from this perspective,
the 1302 revolt that, thanks to the across-the-board involvement
of the popolo, culminated in the overthrow of Matteo Visconti,
who had attempted to make the office of Capitano del Popolo
hereditary by sharing it with his son Galeazzo.8 The communal
restoration of 1302, soon placed under the cumbersome stewardship of Guido della Torre, came to an end, as is well known, with
the arrival of Henry VII in Italy, who in 1310 entered Milan and
set himself up as a peacemaker in the dispute between the Torriani and Visconti followers.9 When it was clear that the emperor,
instead of preserving the communal structure by fostering a real
reconciliation between the opponents, aimed to suffocate civic autonomy by imposing appointed vicars, a new revolt burst out, in
1311. It had been definitely spurred on by the della Torre family,
but it surely also involved the popolo organization, since many
Alfieri per la Storia di Milano, 1955), pp. 3-567; Idem, Il ducato visconteo da Gian
Galeazzo a Filippo Maria, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, pp. 3-385; Idem, Istituzioni comunali e signorili di Milano sotto i Visconti, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, pp. 451-544.
6 For example, see Cristina Belloni, Donec habuero lignam ego vollo procurare pro offitio Sancti Ambrosii. Una sommossa popolare in difesa del rito ambrosiano
a met del XV secolo, in Let dei Visconti. Il dominio di Milano fra XIII e XV secolo, ed. by Luisa Chiappa Mauri, Laura De Angelis Cappabianca, and Patrizia Maionini (Milan: La storia editore, 1993), pp. 443-464.
7 See below, notes 43-45 and corresponding paragraphs.
8 Paolo Grillo, Rivolte antiviscontee a Milano e nelle campagne fra XIII e XIV
secolo, in Rivolte urbane e rivolte contadine nellEuropa del Trecento. Un confronto,
ed. by Monique Bourin, Giovanni Cherubini, and Giuliano Pinto (Florence: Firenze
University Press, 2008), pp. 197-216.
9 Cognasso, Lunificazione della Lombardia, in Storia di Milano, vol. V, pp. 3248.
224
PAOLO GRILLO
vicinie took up arms in the attempt to get rid of the imperial army.
The story is well known: Matteo Visconti, who had joined the revolt, betrayed his fellow citizens and placed his followers at the service of Henry VII. The uprising was then put down by the sword,
even though our main source, the chronicler Giovanni da Cermenate, appears oddly reticent in his narration of the effects of the
outbreak, limiting himself merely to referring to the sad fate of the
insurgents, suggesting that the price they paid was extremely high.
The number of the people banished was striking, people who had
to flee from the city following Guido della Torre in his escape,
while Matteo Visconti was rewarded with the title of imperial vicar and given real power over Milan.10
Here it is not possible to undertake a careful investigation of
the later events. In short, it is worth pointing out that the power
Matteo and his son Galeazzo had over Milan remained extremely
precarious, due to papal hostility, imperial incumbency, divisions
inside the family and the ineradicable armed opposition of the fuorusciti. The widespread discontent burst out into a number of revolts of the great boroughs in the district, with the city in the end
losing control of the northern part of the contado.11 It was Azzo Visconti, between 1330 and 1335, who created the conditions for the
final consolidation of Visconti power over Milan and its extension
to the majority of the nearby cities, building up a vast regional
domination.12 From this date on, for almost seventy years, Milan
was ruled by the Visconti without relevant acts of opposition occurring inside the city walls, not even on the occasion of conspiracies that from time to time shook the vertices of signorial power.13
An explanation of the long, peaceful domination by Azzo,
Luchino, Giovanni, Bernab and Galeazzo Visconti over Milan
would definitely merit thorough investigation. In general, we can
10 Iohannis de Cermenate, Historia, ed. by Luigi Alberto Ferrai (Rome: Forzani,

1889), pp. 50-53.
11 Grillo, Rivolte antiviscontee, in Rivolte urbane, pp. 208-211.
12 See now Federica Cengarle, La signoria di Azzone Visconti tra prassi, retorica e iconografia (1329-1339), in Tecniche di potere nel tardo Medioevo. Regimi comunali i signorie in Italia, ed. by Massimo Vallerani (Rome: Viella, 2010), pp. 89-116.
13 Somaini, Processi costitutivi, in Comuni e signorie, pp. 701-703.
225
suppose that a satisfying balance between the authority of the cities

and that of the signori was reached. They never failed to have their
power recognized by the city council, so that, formally, the authority of the commune never faded out completely.14 Azzo was the
first to sign a proper treaty with the Milanese commune, in 1330,
where signorial prerogatives were defined according to the tradition of the golden age of the commune, in a way that made the
arrangement bearable for the citizens.15 The citys administration
was in the hands of the college of the Dodici di Provvisione, under
the tight control of the signore, which had to answer dialectically
to the communal council, now restored to its classic size of nine
hundred members. On this board, the different social and territorial elements that made up the city could still find representation
and give voice to their needs. The council was independent from
the signori and was appointed by the Vicari di Provvisione, subject
to prior consultation with the elders of each parish often of popular origin who maintained an important role in the institutional framework of the city.16 According to Cognasso, the Visconti
made the communal organization of Milan a mere administrative
tool of the Signoria, but actually the degree of interdependence between the city and its signori deserves more in-depth studies.17
It is important to consider that the drastic, but not unbearable,
decrease in room for autonomy was largely compensated by the advantages Milan gained in its new role as capital of a fairly vast
political formation. In a famous passage in his chronicle, Pietro
Azario from Novara complained about what he called an authentic invasion of Milanese people in all the offices of the dominion.18
Recent prosopographic research has confirmed the validity of the
complaint: many aristocratic and merchant families from Milan
14 Somaini, Processi costitutivi, in Comuni e signorie, pp. 710-722, stresses

these aspects.
15 Cengarle, La signoria di Azzone, in Tecniche di potere nel tardo Medioevo,
pp. 96-99.
16 Cognasso, Istituzioni comunali e signorili, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 457.
17 Ivi, p. 467.
18 Petri Azarii, Liber gestorum in Lombardia, ed. by Francesco Cognasso, Rerum
Italicarum Scriptores, XVI (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1929), p. 70.
226
PAOLO GRILLO
produced dozens of podest, treasurers, and castellans (in the cities

or in the district) who held a monopoly on almost every public office, usually very well paid.19 Dishonest officials may well have taken advantage of their power to increase their income and Milanese
financiers lent money at high interest to subject communes, often
in trouble because of the heavy burden of the Viscontis taxation.20
In this way an enormous amount of money was drawn toward Milan, fostering the economy of the city, which in fact appears to have
been particularly lively throughout the whole fourteenth century.
The rise to power of Giangaleazzo Visconti in 1378 ruptured
this balance. He conceived his rule as radically different from that
of his father and other family members. After ridding himself of
his uncle Barnab in a violent manner, from the 1380s he tried to
separate the fate of the dynasty from that of the city of Milan. The
granting of the title of duke by the imperial authority, in 1395, represented the climax of a whole process of redefinition and re-legitimation of signorial power. It was no longer considered an emanation of Milanese predominance, but it appeared as virtually
monarchic within a homogeneous territory, in a jurisdictional
entity within which it is best to reduce external and internal interference to a minimum.21
His assumption of the title of duke undermined the relationship between the commune of Milan and its Signore by distancing
his power from the sphere of the civic institutions which, at least
formally, had since then delegated it to the different members of
the Visconti dynasty.22 Furthermore, those civic institutions underwent a dramatic change, since Giangaleazzo put the Council of
19 Paolo Grillo, Istituzioni e personale politico sotto la dominazione viscontea
(1335-1402), in Vercelli nel secolo XIV, ed. by Alessandro Barbero and Rinaldo Comba (Vercelli: Saviolo Edizioni, 2011), pp. 79-115; see also Paolo Grillo, La selezione
del personale politico: podest e vicari nelle signorie sovracittadine a cavallo fra Due
e Trecento, in Tecniche di potere, pp. 25-51.
20 Patrizia Mainoni, Le radici della discordia. Ricerche sulla fiscalit a Bergamo fra
XIII e XV secolo (Milan: Unicopli, 1997), pp. 123-125.
21 Federica Cengarle, Le arenghe dei decreti viscontei (1330ca-1447): alcune
considerazioni, in Linguaggi politici nellItalia del Rinascimento, ed. by Andrea Gamberini and Giuseppe Petralia (Rome: Viella, 2007), pp. 55-88, and p. 75.
22 Somaini, Processi costitutivi, in Comuni e signorie, p. 723.
227
the commune under his direct control, taking upon himself the appointment of the councilors in 1396. In this way, the highest urban authority became an organ appointed by the duke, whose
power derived now from the imperial title.23 In the eyes of the
people of Milan, this meant the total cancellation of the communal past: the city became subject and its central role in the dominion was also lost. Giangaleazzo marginalized the Milanese leading group in the assigning of government roles, preferring to draw
his staff from the wider spectrum of all the cities of the duchy and
other allied towns.24 He openly showed his preference for Pavia as
his residence and diverted onto the ancient royal capital a huge
volume of resources intended to finance, for example, the expansion and embellishment of the castle or the building of the new
Certosa, which was to become a true dynastic temple for the Visconti family.25
During Giangaleazzos life the Milanese opposition confined itself to symbolic actions, although not lacking in political and economic weight, such as the building of the new cathedral. This not
only underlined the supremacy of the metropolis over the other
cities but also created, with the birth of the Fabbrica del Duomo,
a new space for action and interface for the civic elites. The council of the Fabbrica was the cradle where the leading urban groups
of the first, tormented decades of the Quattrocento developed.26
Long live the Popolo: the revolt of 1403
When Giangaleazzo died in 1402, leaving as his heir Giovanni
Maria under the guardianship of his mother Caterina, a new political phase began, and the citizens of Milan could make their

24 Grillo, Istituzioni e personale politico, in Vercelli nel secolo XIV.
25 Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 49-116.

26 Gigliola Soldi Rondinini, La fabbrica del Duomo come espressione dello
spirito religioso e civile della societ milanese (fine sec. XIV-sec. XV), in Saggi di storia e storiografia visconteo-sforzesche (Bologna: Clueb, 1984), pp. 49-64.
228
PAOLO GRILLO
voice heard once again. After a first period of uncertainty, characterized by economic difficulties and military defeats, the situation
came to a head in June 1403, when a deep rift in the circle of the
court led to a number of clashes between the followers of the powerful Francesco Barbavara, protected by the duchess, and other
members of the Visconti family.27 At this point, a great popular revolt burst out. It started by being aimed at Barbavara (one of the
few victims of the uprising was actually the Abbot of SantAmbrogio, one of Barbavaras supporters), but it actually had political consequences of great importance, although neglected by historians.28
It is rather striking, for example, that Cognasso merely noted
the event and did not feel the urge to comment on the reinstitution immediately after the outbreaks of the Capitano del Popolo, a public official who in Milan had disappeared almost a century earlier.29 Concerning the very same uprising, Cognasso commented disparagingly: People did not wonder about the motives
and justification of such a fiscal system, nor were they interested
in wars and conquests. They simply needed someone to point the
finger at a victim on whom they could then take revenge.30 As we
shall see, this reading of the events proves to be extremely constrictive.
In fact, going back to the contemporary sources, the popular
roots of the revolt show through clearly. The other aspect that
comes to the surface is that the rebels had quite a precise plan for
institutional reform and that, for a period, they managed to influence significantly the public life of the city and the struggle for
power at the top of the duchy. According to concordant evidence
from the sources, the uprising broke out on 23 June because of the
conflict between Antonio and Francesco Visconti and Francesco
27 See most recently Andrea Gamberini, Giovanni Maria Visconti, in Dizionario

biografico degli Italiani, 56 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001), pp. 352357.
28 For a detailed narration of the events, see Bernardino Corio, Storia di Milano,
ed. by Anna Morisi Guerra, vol. II (Turin: Utet, 1978), pp. 984-985.
29 Cognasso, Il ducato visconteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 86.
30 Ivi, p. 85.
229
Barbavara, but soon the people of Milan took on a leading role. In

the streets people were chanting long live the duke and death
to Barbavara, as Corio reports, but also the much more subversive chant long live the popolo.31 A source from Tuscany reports
that while they were chanting long live the popolo, if they had
found the duke they would have killed him (nel gridare viva il
popolo, se gli avesseno giunto il duca, larebbono morto).32 On 24
June the rulers tried to disarm the people, but the next day they
were forced to give in and to allow anyone who so desired to carry arms.33 One of the first tangible outcomes of the revolt was the
immediate reduction of fiscal pressure, since on 27 June the duty
on wine-selling was abolished.34 On 5 August all the taxes still to
be paid were remitted and all the people in jail for the rebellion
were freed.35 Governors still tried to calm the rebels down by lightening the weight of taxation, but the popolo was by then aiming at
much more significant goals.
Antonio Porro, count of Pollenzo and leader of the Ghibelline
faction, was particularly shrewd in assuming the leadership of the
populares, taking on the title of capitano del popolo, a figure rich
in political value. In July, the Orleanais governor in Asti worried
about Porros actions and blamed him for being the cause of the
tumultuous popular uproars (tumultuossos populares rumores)
against the duchess and Barbavara.36 But for a long time Antonio
had been a thorn in the side of the Orleanais domination, so it is
possible that such an approach was not completely impartial. The
31 Corio, Storia di Milano, p. 893.

32 The text is published by Gino Franceschini, Dopo la morte di Gian Galeaz-
zo Visconti, Archivio storico lombardo, 69 (1946), p. 52. It supports Corios narration, according to which Antonio Porro had people from the city and the suburbs taking up arms (lev il popolo de la cit e li borghi a larme): Corio, Storia di Milano,
p. 984.
33 Franceschini, Dopo la morte di Gian Galeazzo Visconti, p. 56.
34 I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione e dellUfficio dei Sindaci sotto la dominazione viscontea, ed. by Caterina Santoro (Milan: Tipografia U. Allegretti, 1929), p.
157, doc. 221.
35 I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione, p. 160, doc. 234.
36 Nino Valeri, Caterina Visconti e la sua segreta corrispondenza col governatore di Asti, Bollettino storico-bibliografico subalpino, 38 (1936), p. 349.
230
PAOLO GRILLO
attention to the popular element in the uprising shows how striking it must have been for the public opinion of the time. Porro definitely managed to use the people as an instrument of political
pressure, since every time someone stood up to him or his ally, Peter the archbishop of Milan, they incited the people to rise up in
arms (la plebe levavano a larme).37
In any event, even after the return of Barbavara and the death
of Count Porro, treacherously murdered on 6 January 1404, the populares were still keeping the political leaders of the duchy in check.38
In the same year, in May, the people in arms effected the destruction of the Visconti fortress at Porta Vercellina, a symbol of oppression over the city, built by Giangaleazzo in 1392.39 And in 1407,
Ottobuono Terzi, leader of the Guelph faction, could threaten his
rival Iacopo dal Verme to stir the people up against him.40
The Duke and the people: the attempt at institutional renewal
The revolt led to a brief but profound reorganization of the government of the city of Milan. Unfortunately, historians from that
period focused on maneuvers in the corridors of powers rather
than on the institutional framework. First of all, ten representatives
of the citizens joined the aristocrats of the court in the ducal council, which since July 1403 had joined the duchess in making major
State decisions.41 New offices were created such as the above mentioned Capitano del popolo, established at an unknown date but
37 Franceschini, Dopo la morte di Gian Galeazzo Visconti, p. 52.

38 Gamberini, Giovanni Maria Visconti, p. 353.
39 I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione, p. 170, doc. 17; Corio, Storia di Milano, p.
1006. On the citadel, see Nadia Covini, Cittadelle, recinti fortificati, piazze munite.
La fortificazione nelle citt del dominio visconteo (sec. XIV), in Castelli e fortezze
nelle citt e nei centri minori italiani (secc. XIII-XV), ed. by Francesco Panero and Giuliano Pinto (Cherasco: Centro Internazionale di Ricerca sui Beni Culturali, 2009),
p. 57.
40 Corio, Storia di Milano, p. 1012
41 Cognasso, Il ducato visconteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 90, who correctly points out that Caterina Visconti did not undertake these actions spontaneously, but that they were imposed by the people.
231
first attested in May 1404. He had jurisdiction mainly over public

order, sometimes interacting with territorial organizations. This institution actually survived the period of the popular government
in the first years of the Quattrocento and, renamed Capitano di
giustizia, operated until the middle years of the century.42
In fact, the territorial districts, where the Milanese popular organization had its roots, were particularly important in the new political order.43 As early as July 1403, on the basis of these districts,
six captains were created: one for each gate (porta). They had broad
powers to punish any kind of criminal behavior and could also call
the people to arms to guard the city.44 The same month, a board
of twenty people for each gate joined the Ufficiali di Provvisione
in the effort to find the 100,000 florins necessary for military expenses.45 The following March, two men from each urban district
were elected to force citizens to subscribe to the peace between factions.46 After the clashes between Guelphs and Ghibellines in May
1404, on 14 June Giovanni Maria appointed a board of thirty-six
citizens, six for each gate, to support the action of the capitano del
popolo Bertolino de Zamboni.47 A new board of four citizens for
each gate was established by Carlo Malatesta on 22 September
1406 with the same purpose.48
The tasks and limits of these offices are not at all clear and, in
a time of great political confusion, their development was probably not linear. In some cases, it seems that popular officials may
have been severely influenced by the factional divisions in the aristocracy and that it was in such a capacity that they took part in
then-current conflicts. For example, the captain of Porta Nuova
42 Marina Spinelli, Il capitano di giustizia durante la prima met del Quattrocento, in Let dei Visconti, pp. 27-34.
43 Grillo, Milano in et comunale (1183-1276) (Spoleto: Cisam, 2001), pp. 48593.
47 I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione, p. 171, doc. 23; Cognasso, Il ducato visconteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 106.
232
PAOLO GRILLO
appears to have been bound to the Guelph family of the Casati, in

defense of which the captain took action even against Duke Giovanni Maria in May 1404. Two days later, the captain of Porta Vercellina tried to prevent the populares from taking up arms on behalf of the duke and the Ghibellines who were fighting against a
group of Guelph rebels.49 It is not clear if this was a sign of the
partiality of the captain, as asserted by Corio, or if instead the factional strife concerned the populares, traditionally supporters of
peace, who preferred not to get involved.
In later years, communal pressure on the ducal government led
to even more radical changes. In 1405 Duke Giovanni Maria was
forced to agree with the commune on a series of capitula regulating the taxation level (the community would provide 16,000 florins
per month). The budget was to be spent according to a strict list
of cost components, under the rigid control of officials appointed
directly by the commune. The latter also kept for itself the monopoly on the collection of revenues from tax, salt and duty, including from the territories of Monza and Angera, up to that time
assigned to the Visconti household.
The duke was not allowed to grant immunities to anyone, to
give away such revenue or to ask for compulsory loans. All the
novitates introduced since the time of Bernab Visconti would undergo thorough inspection by the vicario and the Dodici di provvisione, and could be cancelled if necessary. The agreement contained an extremely important reform, regarding the appointment of the Dodici di provvisione. From then on they would be
designated in a ratio of two per gate by a board of thirty-six members appointed by the outgoing councilors. The office was thus
removed from ducal control and regained its central role in the
political representation of the citizens.50 In this framework ducal
government was constricted, as Cognasso correctly argued: The
communal element of Milan aimed to preserve both the duke and
50 The act is published in Giorgio Giulini, Memorie spettanti alla storia, al go-
verno ed alla descrizione della citt e campagna di Milano ne secoli bassi, VII, Documenti illustrativi (Milan: Gastaldi, 1857), pp. 274-277. A first draft is in I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione, pp. 180-181, doc. 86.
233
the duchy, but only as an achievement of civic life.51

In 1406 a dossier drawn up by a group of citizens to suggest
tax reform to the duke seems to outline a prominently popular political project. The core idea was to replace completely the levy on
salt and the duty on wheat, wine and hay with a land tax and the
appraisal of goods. The aim was to cut taxation on commerce and
basic products for a large population, while hitting large landowners.52 On 16 August, the duke actually ordered a new appraisal to
be drawn up, involving the anziani delle parrocchie (parish elders),
who, with the help of two clerks as notaries, were in charge of the
whole operation.53 On 15 March 1407, in a moment of particular
tension caused by conflicts between the condottieri supposedly
serving the duke, milling and baking taxes were abolished.54 Finally, an attempt was made to create a Monte, which was a form
of funded public debt following similar examples in the republics
of Florence, Venice and Genoa.55
Repression and memory. The roots of the Repubblica Ambrosiana
It is not clear when this interesting attempt to create a communal
and popular regime in Milan, existing side by side with the duke,
came to an end. The various ducal condottieri who de facto ruled
the city behaved in an ambiguous manner, trying on the one hand
to gain the support of the popolo while on the other wanting to limit its power. For example, in January 1408 Carlo Malatesta broke
up the council of the nine hundred, replacing it with a board of
seventy-two citizens. Even though Cognasso spoke of the imbavagliamento del comune (a gag being placed on the commune),

52 Carlo Morbio, Codice visconteo-sforzesco. Ossia raccolta di leggi, decreti e let-
tere famigliari dei duchi di Milano (Milan, 1846), pp. 36-40; Cognasso, Il ducato visconteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, pp. 124-125.
55 Morbio, Codice visconteo-sforzesco, pp. 66-68, doc. 23; Cognasso, Il ducato
visconteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 130.
234
PAOLO GRILLO
the new organism, based once again on gate districts (twelve councilors per gate), gave voice to popular entreaties, being composed
mainly of people from the trading bourgeoisie rather than the
usual elements of nobility.56 The duke actually appointed councilors, but selected them from a list provided by the Dodici di
provvisione.57 The military occupation of the city by Facino Cane,
in November 1409, was a heavy blow for popular institutions. On
1 December he broke up the communal militia by disarming the
citizens, and put its members under his direct orders, even though
he tried to compensate the people with a large fiscal amnesty.58
The situation must have still been fluid when, after the death
of Giovanni Maria and Facino Cane, Filippo Maria Visconti took
over Milan in June 1412. He immediately restored the council of
the nine hundred as it had been before Giangaleazzos reforms, and
returned full authority over the contado to the civic podest.59 But
he soon began to operate to reaffirm his power, to the great detriment of civic officials.60 The turning point came in 1427-1428 when
an attempt was made to re-establish communal power, while the
Visconti army was defeated a number of times on the battlefield
and the duchy was losing Vercelli, Bergamo and Brescia, one after
the other. In 1427, in exchange for a subsidy to continue the war,
the city council tried to obtain control of the civic revenue, as imposed on Giovanni Maria in 1405, but Filippo opposed the idea,
which died out.61 The following year, a change in the formation of
the council, which opened the way to the representation of the
Guelph and Ghibelline parties, was first granted and then withdrawn, reaffirming the dukes superiority over urban government
institutions.62 This attitude was in line with Filippo Marias auto56 I registri dellUfficio di Provvisione, p. 214, doc. 14; Cognasso, Il ducato vis-
conteo, in Storia di Milano, vol. VI, p. 131.

59 Documenti diplomatici tratti dagli archivi milanesi, ed. by Luigi Osio (Milan:
Tipografia di Giuseppe Bernardoni di Giovanni, 1869), p. 6, doc. 4.
62 Somaini, Il binomio imperfetto, pp. 152-153. See also Documenti diplomatici, II, p. 399, doc. 268.
235
cratic ambitions: it was no coincidence that he referred to the citizens of Milan as his subjects.63
The innovations brought about by the revolt of 1403 were suffocated but not forgotten, and they made a comeback on the political scene in 1447, when the last Visconti died without an heir.
The reaction to the attempt to erase residual communal autonomy by Giangaleazzo allowed the survival and formation of a leading group composed of people of urban origin. Once Filippo Maria
died, they managed to declare the ducal investiture irrelevant, since
it had been conceded without the approval of the citizens of Milan, and to restore the independent commune with the widespread
consent of the population, as the people agreed to deny lordship
to a single prince as it was a terrible plague (fu mirabil concordia
in tutto il populo de non altrimente ricusare la signoria de un sol
principe che una pessima pestilentia).64 Corio, focused more on the
events related to Francesco Sforza than on the city, briefly mentions the popular revolts: Such a sudden and unexpected death
upset the whole city and on every side the cries could be heard and
people were in doubt as to which side to take (s improvisa e non
aspectata morte turb tuta la citade e per ogni parte se sentivano le
cride e sera in dubio che partito prendere), but the operation was
very well orchestrated. The virtually bloodless transfer of power
should not obscure the fact that the city was packed with the troops
Alfonso of Aragon sent to take over the ducal succession. It was a
wise mix of political pressures, military threats and donations of
funds which led the garrisons of the castles, who were Alfonsos
supporters, to abandon the fortresses, and so the people knocked
down the castle and the stronghold (il populo subito fece gittare
a terra il castel tutto e la roccha).65
This is not the correct context in which to study the so-called
Republic of SantAmbrogio whose official name was, meaningfully, state of freedom of the noble and excellent community of
63 Federica Cengarle, Immagini di potere e prassi di governo. La politica feudale
di Filippo Maria Visconti (Rome: Viella, 2006), pp. 9-11.

65 Ivi, p. 1198.
236
PAOLO GRILLO
Milan (libertas illustris et excelse communitatis Mediolani) which

was established on that occasion, nor to analyze how much of the
communal memory was still alive in it and what the weight of the
popular element was. It is important, though, to reassert that the
republic was rooted in shared memory that had been tenaciously
fostered and protected in the previous decades, and which still
was widespread and well-established among the population. That
is why the fact that its first leaders had previously cooperated with
the duke does not invalidate the republican nature of the new institution. Its violent end, after the extremely long siege of the city
by Francesco Sforza, was not caused by the supposed anachronistic nature of the experience, but was due to a number of unfavorable occurrences on the international scene and to the military
weakness of the Republic.
* * *
Using popular revolts to explain and understand some of the crucial points of the public life of Milan during the Visconti domination allows the longue dure of the communal memory of the city,
even after several decades of Visconti rule, to be highlighted. At
least until the mid-fifteenth century the great popular revolts were
not an instrument easily manipulated by the factions related to the
court. In reality they always aimed to defend or reaffirm the political role of civic and popular institutions. The relation those institutions had with the Signoria appears to be more complex, dialectical and bilateral than historians are usually ready to admit.
Alizah Holstein
(Cornell University)
NOURISHED ON THE MILK OF ELOQUENCE:

KNOWLEDGE AS SOCIAL CONTEST
IN MID-TRECENTO ROME
In the Roman basilica of St. John Lateran, a group of Roman

barons, judges, and notaries assembled before an ancient bronze
tablet. The year was 1340, and it had been more than three decades
since the papacy had left the city for Avignon. The tablet was inscribed with a majescule script that none among them could decipher, and surrounding it was a painting communicating the meaning of the tablets inscription. Ascending the podium before this
group of prominent men was the young notary and government official who had orchestrated the spectacle. Despite his humble origins, Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354) was already a renowned orator,
an expert Latinist, a confidant of Petrarch, and on his way to becoming one of Romes most famous popular leaders. Bringing his
audience to a hushed silence, Cola began his speech, decrying what
he saw as his citys lamentable condition. Rome, he said, had fallen, and could not see where she lay, since her eyes had been
plucked from her head. The eyes in his analogy were the pope and
the emperor, exiled, as it were, to Avignon and Prague. Rome, he
said, owed their loss to nothing other than the vices of her citizens.1
Cola then turned to the tablet and, before his eminent and largely learned crowd, deciphered it.2 It was Vespasians Lex de impe1 Anonimo Romano, Cronica, ed. by Giuseppe Porta, 2nd edition (Milan: Adelphi, 1991) (henceforth, AR), Chapter 18, p. 108.
2 Master Gregory, the thirteenth-century author of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae,
238
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
rio, describing the political authority that the Roman plebs had
conceded to that emperor in the first century C.E.. The idea of the
people of ancient Rome conferring political authority and by extension, possessing the power to revoke it could only have compared starkly with the situation Cola and the Roman elites knew,
in which the emperor, residing in a faraway land, maintained ties
to Rome that were largely symbolic and more often than not ambiguous. Cola encouraged the Roman elites gathered before him
to assume the mantle of leadership that their forebears had abandoned and guide Rome to a brighter political future, to make peace
among themselves, to better the conditions for trade, and to assure
the Christian world that Rome was a safe place for the pilgrims participating in the 1350 Jubilee.
The chronicle recounting this episode is the Anonimo Romanos Vita di Cola di Rienzo. I begin with the episode because,
despite the complexities of the Anonimos chronicle, the spectacle
in St. John Lateran illuminates the way in which Cola communicated with the Roman nobility and the strategy he deployed to do
so. And this, in turn, yields insights into the still-obscure social and
political worlds of fourteenth-century Rome. There is no large
body of historical research to rely on here, as Cola has received
scant even-handed attention from historians who have tended both
to diminish his relevance and to exaggerate his eccentricities. The
result is that Cola is still popularly viewed as a quirky demagogue,
the term strategy seldom applied to his political persona. In recent years, however, a few historians have begun the work of reappraising Cola, of contextualizing him within the framework of
claims to have had trouble deciphering the tablet: In front of [the Lateran portico]
there is a bronze tablet, called the tablet prohibiting sin, on which are written the
principal statutes of the law. On this tablet I read much, but understood little, for they
were aphorisms, and the reader has to supply most of the words. Another attempt
was made by the Bolognese jurist Odofredus, who concluded that he was looking at
the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables; Ronald G. Musto, Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di
Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003),
p. 52. Robert Benson has noted that there is some doubt about which tablet he was
looking at: Robert Benson, Political Renovatio: Two Models from Roman Antiquity, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and
Giles Constable (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 356, note 82.
NOURISHED ON THE MILK OF ELOQUENCE
239
late medieval Roman society.3 In this paper, I seek to lay another

brick in this new foundation, showing in particular why Colas erudition as evidenced, for example, by his display of the Lex de imperio before the Roman nobility was so effective in his political
world, why knowing Latin and being able to decipher inscriptions
was not just an incidental detail or oddball characteristic of a
charismatic leader, but rather a sophisticated strategy for challenging Roman elites and effecting the kind of political change described in his sermon.
To begin, Colas passion for the distant past was unusual for a
Roman of his time. Born around 1313, Cola knew a Rome that was
a shadow of its former self. The papacy, traditionally the institutional backbone of the city, had almost ten years earlier departed
for Avignon. Those seeking power or wealth tended to leave the
city for more lucrative posts in the communes and courts of northern Italy and France. Cola would have had only a few models,
most of them in the Veneto and Tuscany, on which to base his
ideas, which were largely in line with early humanist ones, about
how ancient texts, artifacts, and inscriptions could be used to better contemporary society.4 Rome in the early fourteenth century offered him few interlocutors, and generally speaking, few rewards
for the intellectually minded.
Colas personal background also made him an unlikely candidate for an erudite public career. Born to a tavern-keeper and
washerwoman living on the dilapidated banks of the Tiber River,
Cola was a member of the lower tier of Romes popolo. Perhaps
craving a more impressive pedigree, he claimed at one point to be
the product of a secret liaison between his mother and the Holy
Roman Emperor Henry VII, whom Cola purported to have lodged
in his familys tavern on his 1312 visit to Rome. Men of this station
did not often rise to prominence in Rome, where the political are3 For example, the following two recent studies: Amanda Collins, Greater Than
Emperor: Cola di Rienzo (ca. 1313-54) and the World of Fourteenth-Century Rome
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); Musto, Apocalypse in Rome.
4 For Cola as an early humanist, see Briefwechsel des Cola di Rienzo, im auftrage
der Knigl. Preussischen akademie der wissenschaften, Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation,
ed. by Konrad Burdach and Paul Piur, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912-1929).
240
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
na tended to be dominated by noble families with connections to

the papal curia. Through an uncle in Anagni, however, Cola received a solid education, studying Latin writers, historians, orators
and poets, and went on to become a notary.
This education Cola put to use at all stages of his political career, which went roughly as follows. The Roman communal government in 1343 sent the young Cola as representative to the papal curia at Avignon, where his mellifluous rhetoric left Pope
Clement VI spellbound. In the following years, Cola developed a
political program, based on his study of Latin texts, of restoring
to Rome the grandeur and power it had once possessed. Staging a
major coup with papal support in May 1347, Cola made use of a
cache of symbols of and references to ancient Rome. Calling himself tribune, Cola spearheaded a strike on the citys noblemen,
whom he accused of lawlessness and violence. The following
months witnessed Cola pursuing, at times ruthlessly, his platform
of social justice. Some observers, such as Petrarch, who in Avignon had become his close confidante, hailed him as a savior of
Rome. Colas next step was to try to reinstate Rome as the head of
Italy, as it had been under the Empire. To this effect, he invited
representatives from Italian cities, some of whom showed up, to
an assembly planned for 1 August 1347 in which Rome would become capital of an Italian federation. On 15 August he staged an
elaborate ritual in which he was dubbed knight in St. John Lateran Basilica.
Things turned for the worse in September, when he began to
threaten, in a mercurial manner, members of Romes noble families, particularly the Colonna. Colas unpredictable behavior and
inflammatory rhetoric decrying the depredations of elites and of
the church soon lost him the papal support he had initially enjoyed.
Tensions escalated until on 20 November Colas forces met and defeated the noble faction, killing in the process the venerable Stefano Colonna. Although the details provided by the Anonimo Romano are hazy, it appears that from this point forward Cola became
increasingly ineffective, unpredictable, and repressive, earning himself enemies among the popolo and nobility alike.
In December Cola fled Rome for the mountains of Abruzzi,
where he took up for over two years with a group of hermits
241
thought to be associated with the Spiritual Franciscans. Emerging

in July 1350, he traveled to the Prague court of Emperor Charles
IV, where he disparaged the pope and implored Charles to use his
imperial authority to redeem Rome and reunite Italy. The emperor responded unsympathetically by clapping Cola in prison for
over a year, and then handing him over to Pope Clement VI in Avignon, who in August 1352 condemned Cola to death. By a stroke
of fortune Clement died first, leaving the Roman dissident in the
hands of the much more sympathetic Pope Innocent VI. Clements
successor shared Colas aspiration of reining in the Roman barons,
and further, hoped to reinstate papal authority and pave the way
for the papacy to return to its traditional home. Appointing Cola
senator of Rome, Innocent dispatched him alongside Cardinal Gil
Albornoz to the city in August 1354. Although the Roman popolo
greeted Cola warmly and with great fanfare, his tendency to act arbitrarily and occasionally harshly quickly lost him their support.
Within several weeks, he was again fearing for his life, and in early October, he was assassinated by a Roman mob in front of the
senate house on the Capitoline hill.
The impressive arc of Colas political career shows beyond
doubt that he was able to harness, at least initially, the political support of the Roman popolo. How to explain it? Though Cola was
himself a member of the popolo, he was also a member, by virtue
of his education, of the cultural elite he was skilled in Latin and
worked as a notary. He was also learned in the classics, and excelled
far beyond his peers at deciphering inscriptions. It seems striking
in retrospect that Cola won a popular following by distancing himself from his base, by playing on his cultivation, on his extraordinary erudition. The fact that ancient learning was such an effective mantle for a young popular leader to don lays bare some of
the internal nexuses of culture and power in fourteenth-century
Rome.
Rhetoric linking medieval Rome with its more powerful ancient self had long been an effective tool for gaining popular support, and by the fourteenth century was nothing new. After centuries of cultivating their relationship to a unique past, Colas contemporaries were already thoroughly accustomed to seeing it woven into facades of authority. Each time a German king made his
242
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
way toward Rome, for example, Romans were reminded of their

political inheritance and of its continued influence on their present.
The countless shards of spolia, or architectural spoils, cemented into the sides of houses, staircases, and even the city walls, declared
much the same message. For this reason, it is not surprising that
Cola also employed this rhetorical tool to enhance his political
stature, to create imaginative associations between his political persona and the grand past to which many medieval Romans still aspired.
But there is more to be said. Colas reason for incorporating
early humanist concerns texts, inscriptions, knowledge of ancient history into his public life is connected to the deep fibers
of the social and cultural milieus of fourteenth-century Rome. For
in addition to gaining Cola popular political support, his appeal
to ancient learning was the symbolic sword in his long battle with
Roman elites, and with the Colonna family in particular. By the
mid-fourteenth century, elites had come to dominate the cultural
realms of ancient history and language. Many of them tried to create when necessary, and preserve when possible, links between
their families and the ancient empire. This was reflected in their
institutional affiliations, the art and architecture that they sponsored, and in the quasi-mythical lineages and symbols that they
adopted. The medieval Roman senate, itself a throwback to the ancient institution, was by the fourteenth century an overt symbol of
elite power. The association between Roman elite families and the
senate remained so strong throughout the period that the upper
tier of Roman nobility is in some scholarship called the senatorial aristocracy.5 Of all the senators between 1306 and 1347, 82 percent (78 out of 95) came from only five ultra-elite Roman families.6
No wonder, then, that the Roman chronicler known as Anonimo
Romano who narrated Colas career, and even Cola himself, often used the terms barone and senatore interchangeably. Elites pro-
5 Sandro Carocci, Una nobilt bipartita: Rappresentazioni sociali e linaggi preminenti a Roma nel Duecento, Archivio Muratoriano, 95 (1989), pp. 71-122.
6 The five families were the Colonna, Orsini, Annibaldi, Savelli, and Conti. Carocci, Una nobilt bipartita, p. 98, note 62.
243
moted this association on their tombs, as they were often depicted donning not war attire, as had their earlier medieval ancestors,
but senatorial robes.7
Families such as the Colonna also sought to augment the family image by acquiring ancient artifacts and linking them to their
family history. While in the East in the 1220s, Cardinal Giovanni
Colonna acquired a relic that came to symbolize Colonna power.
Enshrined in the church of Santa Prassede, this greatest of Colonna relics was the lower fragment of a marble column, supposedly where Christ had been scourged.8 Through its ownership the
Colonna gained prestigious connection, even if invented, to earliest Christianity and the Paleo-Christian heritage.9
While Romans engaged in frenzied tower-building as often as
their counterparts in other Italian cities, they also had at their disposal a vast array of ancient monuments by which they augmented both their military power and its symbolic meanings. Besides
offering prestige, ancient monuments were also frequently transformed into formidable fortifications from which Roman elites
waged their battles. The Theater of Marcellus, for example, became
a Pierleoni fortress, and was later similarly used by the Savelli.10
The Orsini owned the Theater of Pompey, though the jewel in
their crown was Castel SantAngelo, a fact that forced numerous
7 Paolo Delogu, Castelli e palazzi. La nobilt duecentesca nel territorio laziale,

in Roma anno 1300: Atti della IV settimana di studi di storia dellarte medievale dellUniversit di Roma La Sapienza, ed. by Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome: Erma di
Bretschneider, 1983). The differing depictions of nobles and cavallerotti (usually donning military garb) can be seen in plates 29-32 in Roma medievale, ed. by Andr
Vauchez (Rome: Laterza, 2001). A fascinating study is Die Mitteralterlichen Grabmler in Rom und Latium von 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jrg Garms, Juffinger and Bryan Ward-Perkins, 2 vols. (Rome and Vienna: Verlag sterreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981).
8 Robert Brentano, Rome Before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 180. Jerusalems Church
of the Holy Sepulcher also claims a column of the scourging.
9 The complex genealogy of the elite Roman families has been mapped by Sandro Carocci. For the Colonna, see Sandro Carocci, Baroni di Roma: Dominazione signorili e lignaggi aristocratici nel Duecento e nel primo Trecento (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1993), pp. 353-380.
10 Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, p. 15.
244
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
popes, fearing armed assaults on the Vatican, to rely on them for

protection. Across the river, the Colonna owned the Mausoleum
of Augustus, like Castel SantAngelo an easily fortified circular
structure used to dominate surrounding neighborhoods. These
monuments, the tombs and civic structures of the ancient city, became in the Middle Ages the nuclei from which prominent Roman
families projected their military force.11
Such were the fates of the great, and enduring, Roman monuments. But there existed in Rome as well incalculable rubble from
which were plumbed countless columns, inscriptions, marble slabs,
decorative tiles in short, spolia that went to adorn not only defensive structures but domestic housing. The Crescenzi, for example, an older elite family, built a home in the mid-eleventh century using a hoard of spolia essentially as bricks in the framework.12
It was not that the owner, Nicolaus, was too parsimonious to buy
new materials spolia after all, were cheap, costing only the price
of transport but he recognized the prestige that using ancient artifacts proffered him. Above the main entrance, Nicolaus inscribed
a proclamation that in building such a home, he chased not vainglory, but desired, rather, to restore the ancient elegance of Rome.13
The cultural dominance of elite families in fourteenth-century
Rome was not limited to the material world, but was also enacted
through ritual and display. A potent example is the highly symbolic
ceremony in which Petrarch was crowned poet laureate in the Senatorial Palace on Easter Day 1341. Petrarch initiated the ceremony with an address on the nature of poetry, then formally request-
11 For summaries of the property holdings of particular Roman families, see in
particular Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, pp. 171-210; and Richard Krautheimer,
Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
12 Umberto Gnoli, La casa di Nicola di Crescente o casa di Pilato, LUrbe, 5
(1940), pp. 2-10. The Crescenzi house originally had a defensive tower above it. This
tower, called the Tor Monzone in some sources (because Nicolas inscription referred
to the building as a mansione), was destroyed in 1312 during Henry VIIs provocative visit.
13 Non fuit ignarus cuius domus hec Nicolaus... quod fecit hanc non tam vana
coegit gloria quam Romae veterem renovare decorum. Serena Romano, Arte del
medioevo romano: la continuit e il cambiamento, in Roma medievale, ed. by Andr
Vauchez (Rome: Laterza, 2001), p. 268.
245
ed the laurel crown.14 In response, two Roman nobles Orso degli

Anguillara, and Giordano Orsini delivered a lengthy oration, in
Latin, enumerating the honors accompanying the poets new status.15 Following the publics affirmation, Giordano Orsini handed
Petrarch his long-awaited diploma, while Stefano Colonna il Vecchio delivered a concluding eulogy.16 Finally, in a procession reversing the path traditionally followed by newly installed popes, Petrarch and a cohort of nobles and popolo traced their way from the
Capitoline Hill to St. Peters Basilica, where Petrarch offered his
laurel crown on the high altar.17
Petrarchs coronation was very much an academic celebration,
full of university terminology and much of it in Latin. As such, the
ceremony put the cultural dominance of participating Roman elites
on display. The three Roman barons, according to Petrarch, de-
14 Petrarchs speech has been translated in Ernest Hatch Wilkins, Studies in the
Life and Works of Petrarch (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1955), pp. 300-313. A transcription of the Latin text can be found in Attilio Hortis, Scritti inediti di Francesco Petrarca (Trieste: Tipografia del Lloyd austro-ungarico,
1874).
15 Joseph B. Trapp, The Poet Laureate: Rome, Renovatio, and Translatio Imperii, in Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. by Paul A. Ramsey (Binghamton, New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp.
103-104. Wilkins listed eight specific honors: Petrarch was declared magnum poetam et historicum; his title magister; the laurel crown; accreditation as a professor
of the poetic art and of history; the right to confer the crown on other poets; approval
of his writings; the rights and privileges of professors of liberal arts; and Roman citizenship. Ernest Hatch Wilkins, Life of Petrarch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1961), p. 28.
16 Already seventy-six years old at the time of the coronation, Stefano Colonna
il Vecchio had lived a colorful and impressive life. He served as papal rector of Romagna (1289), the vicar of the King of Naples (1332) and several times as senator of
Rome (1328, 1339, 1342). He was one of the principal aggressors against the Caetani
family at the turn of the century, and had almost singlehandedly ignited the rage of
Pope Boniface VIII, resulting in the exile of many Colonna and the expropriation of
their property. Later, he would become one of the most hostile adversaries of Cola di
Rienzo, and, despite his age, organized large military campaigns against the popular
regime. Petrarch lauded him as summum militie decus, noting his vis animi and
his corporis robur. The Anonimo Romano wrote of him as a venerable and fierce
baron. Daniel Philip Waley, Stefano il Vecchio Colonna, in Dizionario biografico degli
italiani, 27 (1960), pp. 433-436.
17 Musto, Apocalypse in Rome, p. 55.
246
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
livered their speeches in Latin.18 In front of that impressive assembly, the three barons flaunted their connections to the Angevin
king, the pope, and to the international culture of Latin learning.
Among the triumvirate of elite families represented beside Petrarch, the Colonna had attained particular eminence. Some of this derived from their personal relationship with the fted poet. For during Petrarchs extended stay in Avignon, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, son of Stefano il Vecchio, had taken the poet under the Colonna wing, offering him the benefits and securities of elite patronage. By participating in the coronation ceremony of 1341, Roman
elites emphasized their cultural dominance over the city, and publicly highlighted their far-reaching political connections with influential artists and patrons.
The intellectual achievements of the Colonna family were by
this time far from few. Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, for example,
possessed numerous claims to intellectual prestige and influence
within the cultural sphere of early Trecento Rome. He was well educated, probably having studied law at Bologna, and thereafter
serving as a judge in Rome.19 He was named papal notary in 1327,
and soon after was elevated to the cardinalate by John XXII.20 Still
later that same year, Giovanni was named cardinal-deacon of the
Church of SantAngelo in Pescheria, the very neighborhood where
Cola would cut his political teeth. Over the course of his twentyplus-year cardinalate, Giovanni also obtained prebends and ecclesiastical benefices in numerous dioceses in the East, in addition
18 Perhaps illuminating the short reach of the education of many of the Roman
elite, Petrarch is thought to have helped compose the senators speeches. There are
few extant sources for the event other than what Petrarch has written about it.
Francesco Petrarca, Collatio laureationis, in Opere latine di Francesco Petrarca, ed.
by Antonietta Bufano (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1975), vol. 2, pp.
1255-1283.
19 Bologna was the university of choice for many Colonna. So often did Colonna youths go to Bologna to study that the family maintained houses there for them:
Sandro Carocci, La nobilt duecentesca: aspetti della ricerca recente, in Roma medievale. Aggiornamenti, ed. by Paolo Delogu (Florence: Allinsegna del Giglio, 1998),
p. 163.
20 He likely replaced his recently deceased uncle Pietro Colonna: Musto, Apocalypse in Rome, pp. 68-69.
247
to holding offices in churches throughout Italy and France.21 During his many years in Avignon, Giovanni Colonna became one of
Petrarchs most powerful protectors, and it was he who convinced
the poet to choose Rome over Paris for his coronation site.
There was, however, another Giovanni Colonna who was also
an important personage in Trecento Rome.22 About twenty years
younger, he was a Dominican friar who had studied in Paris and
spent the late 1320s as chaplain to the archbishop of Cyprus. An
adventurous type, he was thought to have traveled in these years
to Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. Though a scholar of no specially extraordinary achievements,23 Fra Giovanni played his part in correlating the Colonna name with cultural achievement.
Fra Giovanni was sent in 1332 to Avignon, where he became
a close friend, and later a correspondent, of Petrarch.24 Petrarch
readily disdained the cultural and intellectual life of contemporary
Rome, and he blamed Romans for their ignorance and lack of curiosity about the Roman past. Yet Giovanni he singled out as one
of exceptional learning and intellectual curiosity.25
That the Colonna maintained their positions in the Avignon
Curia better than most Roman elite families provided them with
unmatched access to a vibrant cultural world. This was manifested not only in people through, say, Colonna patronage of learned
21 He was, for example, archdeacon at Viviers (1327) and Chlons-sur-Marne

(1342), canon at St. Martin of Tours (1331) and at the Roman churches of
SantEustachio (1327) and Santa Maria Rotonda (1328), and archpriest at Santa Maria
Maggiore (1336). For other offices, see Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, Giovanni di Stefano Colonna, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 27 (1960-), p. 333.
22 For the convincing argument that they were not the same person, see Francesco
Surdich, Giovanni di Bartolomeo Colonna, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 27
(1960-), p. 337.
23 Baxton Ross, Giovanni Colonna, Historian at Avignon, Speculum, 45, no. 4
(1970), p. 538.
24 Petrarchs Epistolae rerum familiarum contains eight surviving letters to Fra
Giovanni. They are 2.5-8; 3.13; and 6.2-4.
25 Baxton Ross, The Tradition of Livy in the Mare Historiarum of Fra Giovanni Colonna, Studi Petrarcheschi, n.s. 6 (1989), p. 85. The manuscript remains unpublished. The chapter titles of the seventh book are published in Giovanni Colonna, Mare Historiarum, in Monumenta Germanica Historiae, Scriptores, ed. by Georg
Waitz, vol. 24 (Leipzig, 1879), pp. 337-338.
248
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
men like Petrarch but also in access to materials unavailable at

Rome. Giuseppe Billanovich stated long ago that Rome in this period offered little opportunity for buying books. The few books
that were for sale often came from France, and in particular
through Chartres.26 More recently, Massimo Miglio has lamented
that no study of the Roman book trade has yet been conducted.
In the absence of a detailed study, however, we do know that families with substantial libraries tended to circulate books among
themselves and their friends, reinforcing the point that, to fulfill
literary ambitions, one had better know the right people.27 The noble families hereditary control over information restricted and
controlled the flow of cultural capital in Roman society.
In contrast to Rome, France, and particularly Avignon, was
quickly becoming a promised land, attracting scholars in search
of libraries and a cosmopolitan scholarly community.28 Boccaccios
description of the city as the womb of Muses reveals the widespread success Avignon had achieved in just a few decades as a cultural center of major importance.29 The papal library there is
thought to have been among the best in Europe, containing over
two thousand volumes of law and theology, as well as biblical commentaries, history, sermons, philosophy, political treatises, and a
sizeable collection of Roman texts.30 In addition, with constant
traffic of scholars and diplomats, Avignon became a nucleus for the
north-south transmission of manuscripts.31
26 Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), p. 156.
27 Miglio has noted the Orsinis circulation of collections within the family: Massimo Miglio, Cortesia romana, in Alle origini della nuova Roma. Martino V (14171431): atti del convegno 2-5 marzo 1992, ed. by Maria Chiab, Giusi dAlessandro, Paola Piacentini, Concetta Ranieri (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo,
1992), p. 321, note 42.
28 The phrase is in Vincenzo De Caprio, Roma e Italia centrale nel Duecento e
Trecento, in Letterature italiana: Storia e geografia. Vol. 1. Let medievale (Turin:
Einaudi, 1987), p. 497.
29 Avinioni musarum alv[us]: Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere latine minori, ed. by
Aldo Francesco Massra (Bari: Laterza, 1928), p. 112.
30 Ross, Giovanni Colonna, p. 534. See also Maurice Faucon, La libraire des
papes dAvignon, 2 vols. (Paris: Ernest Thorin, Editeur, 1886-1887).
31 Ross marshals as examples the compilation of Livy, the revival of Senecas
249
As a result of their Avignon connections, the Colonna established some of the largest private book collections of their age. A
case in point was the impressive collection of the Avignon cardinal Pietro Colonna (d. 1326), whose holdings outnumbered all but
three other contemporary private libraries.32
The Colonna also maintained a regular, almost inherited, succession to benefices in France, Flanders, and England.33 Because
of the rich libraries and cultural activities of these regions, these
benefices opened to them valuable channels of learning. A prime
example is Landolfo Colonna, uncle to Fra Giovanni, who was, for
more than thirty years, canon at Chartres.34 Landolfo was a curious and energetic researcher, and his stores of books reflect his
wide-ranging interests.35 He never built a private library to rival
Tragedies, and the transmission of texts such as the younger Plinys letters, geographical studies such as those by Pomponius Mela, and the works of Propertius (Ross,
Giovanni Colonna, pp. 535-536). The centrality of Avignon as a nucleus of document exchange was propounded by Walter Ullmann, Some Aspects of the Origin of
Italian Humanism, Philological Quarterly, 20 (1941), pp. 29-33.
32 Not including, of course, the popes libraries. His possessions numbered many
clerical books: a gradual, two antiphonaries, a pontifical, a liber officiorum, more than
seventeen whole or partial Bibles, four volumes of saints lives, twenty-seven volumes
of sermons, seventeen volumes of patristic texts, including Saint Augustine and Saint
Anselm, and numerous Biblical commentaries. This collection was supplemented by
twenty-seven juristic works of both ancient and contemporary authors, Scholastic
texts by Aquinas and Bonaventure, ten volumes of ancient and ecclesiastical history,
and one medical text. Such a library illustrates the unparalleled access to books that
a Colonna could enjoy: Hermine Khn-Steinhausen, Il cardinale Pietro Colonna e la
sua biblioteca, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 5 (1951), p. 351.
33 Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, p. 153.
34 Like his nephew, Landolfo engaged in writing history. His Breviarium historiarum is a ponderous history spanning creation to the modern day. He also wrote
the Tractatus de statu et mutatione imperii, a pro-Guelph treatise later studied by Marsilius of Padua and incorporated, though with significant changes, into his De translatione imperii. Although Landolfo wrote in the tradition of Christian history, a nearly outdated model soon to be replaced by the newly discovered ancient historical tradition, like many Colonna, Landolfo had studied law in Bologna. He recorded his experiences in his Tractatus brevis de pontificali officio: Massimo Miglio, Landolfo
Colonna, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 27 (1960-), p. 349.
35 Massimo Miglio, Et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma, in Scritture, scrittori,
e storia. Vol. 1., Per la storia del Trecento a Roma, ed. by Massimo Miglio (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 1991), p. 44.
250
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
Pietros; rather, he frequently used the cathedral library, which

kept registers of his loans. These registers, studied by Giuseppe Billanovich, illustrate the great variety of works to which Landolfo
Colonna had access.36
Shortly before his death, Landolfo in 1329 returned to Rome.
As Billanovich wrote, Landolfo deserved to be greeted with a
public festival; since, like the swallow which heralds a new spring,
he brought back to Rome a far more complete Livy text than had
been seen between the Colosseum and the Pantheon for many centuries.37 He brought back many other books too, which were dispersed after his death. His copy of Lactantius, for example, went
to his nephew Fra Giovanni, while Petrarch, when he came to
Rome in 1337, bought several miscellaneous compilations of sacred
authors.38 Landolfos copy of Livy passed to his brother, cardinal
Giovanni Colonna, and soon thereafter to Petrarch.39
Not everyone, however, bought books. Some books circulated amongst readers, perhaps while between owners. Landolfos
copy of Livys Ab Urbe condita (Paris Lat. 5690), for example,
and the Liber Pontificalis (Vat. Lat. 3762) both circulated in the
1330s around Rome to Colonna friends and family.40 Elites such
as Bartolomeo Carbone de Papazurri, for example, consulted
Landolfos copy of Livy. Though poor, Giovanni Cavallini was
able to buy the Liber Pontificalis, which he used in composing his
36 The details are fascinating, indicating the range of Landolfos interests: in
1299, and again in 1301, he borrowed Boethius De consolatione; in late 1303, he returned John of Salisburys Policraticus, a volume of Livy, Boethius De consolatione,
and Ciceros In Catilinam and the Philippics. In 1308, he took out Orosius Histories,
which also contained some writings of Bishop Fulbert; later that year, he took Justinus Epitome of the Philippic Histories of Pompeus Trogus, Peter of Blois Contra Judaeos, and again the Livy. In 1318, he borrowed a glossed psalter: Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, pp. 154-155.
37 Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, p. 166.
38 Namely, Paris Lat. 1618 and 2540. Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, p. 158. See also Miglio, Landolfo Colonna, p. 351.
39 There is some question as to how and when this occurred. See Billanovich,
Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, p. 158, note 3.
40 Billanovich, Gli umanisti e le cronache medioevali. Il Liber Pontificalis, le
Decadi di Tito Livio e il primo umanesimo a Roma, in Italia medioevale e umanistica (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1958), p. 115.
251
Polistoria,41 and he also owned a codex of Lactantius.42 In addition to buying or borrowing from elites, a humble cleric like Giovanni would likely have enjoyed access to the library of a Dominican house. One did not necessarily need to buy books to have
access to them. One did, however, need the right connections.43
The above discussion, based in large part on Billanovichs research, clearly illustrates the crucial role played by France and Avignon in maintaining a connection to ancient culture and learning
in Trecento Rome. We can infer from his results some relevant
conclusions, particularly concerning the period from about 1320
to 1340. Immediately apparent is the central position occupied by
the noble families in maintaining and controlling the influx of cultural capital into Rome. This was true especially of the Colonna,
who appear to have dominated Roman cultural life. Their patronage of high-profile men of letters such as Petrarch offered them a
degree of visibility in the cultural world at large, and especially at
the papal curia. It was, as was noted, at Cardinal Giovanni Colonnas behest that Petrarch chose Rome for his coronation. Furthermore, the Colonnas almost dynastic possession of benefices in
southern France opened for them a rich world of learning, including libraries, archives and scholarly communities, that in bits
and pieces filtered back to their native city.
Culture, then, was one avenue to power in this period. Men like
Petrarch, whose international prestige offered Roman elites cultural privilege by association, often found themselves the recipients of generous donations of books, personal financing, or public support. Men like Cola, however, Romans of obscure social origin and with a disquieting tendency to speak out about what they
viewed as the injustices of contemporary society, found little access
41 Iohannes Caballinus, Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum, ed. by

Marc Laureys (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1995), p. x. Like Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, Giovanni Cavallini was also a canon of Santa Maria Rotunda.
42 This codex still survives: Ross, The Tradition of Livy, p. 85.
43 A good example is Petrarch, the designated heir of several Colonna collections. Agapito the Elder, for example, bequeathed a collection to the poet, which Petrarch later returned to the Colonna. Billanovich, Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy, p. 158 note 3.
252
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
through elite channels to the stores of cultural capital. It is for this

reason, then, that Colas appropriation of ancient history and the
culture associated with it was such a powerful and effective social
reversal.
The Anonimo Romanos chronicle supports the notion that
there is a strong connection between Colas impressive learning, his
ideas about social justice, and his ability to ruffle the Roman nobility. In the opening chapter on Cola, the Anonimo immediately
emphasized three aspects of Colas character and political life: his
humble social origin, his impressive erudition regarding Roman history and the Latin language, and his conflict with Roman elites,
particularly the Colonna. The very first sentence of the chronicle
segment often termed The Life of Cola was Cola de Rienzi was of
low birth (Cola de Rienzi fu de vasso lenaio). By framing the subsequent discussion of Colas impressive erudition in light of his
humble social status, the chronicler emphasized the exceptionality of his achievement. Thus, the well-known passage:
From his youth he was nourished on the milk of eloquence, was a good
Latinist, a better orator, a good scholar. Lord, what a fast reader he
was! He often read Livy, Seneca, Cicero, and Valerius Maximus. He
loved to recite the wondrous deeds of Julius Caesar. All day he would
contemplate the marble inscriptions that lie about Rome. No one knew
better than he did how to read those ancient engravings. He translated all the ancient writings. He correctly interpreted these marble figures. Lord, how often he said: Where are those good Romans? Where
is their high justice? If only I could live in their times!44
In this passage, the Anonimo expressed both admiration and sur-
44 Fu da soa ioventutine nutricato de latte de eloquenzia, buono gramatico,

megliore rettorico, autorista buono. Deh, como e quanto era veloce leitore! Moito usava Tito Livio, Seneca e Tulio e Valerio Massimo. Moito li delettava le magnificenzie
de Iulio Cesari raccontare. Tutta de se speculava nelli intagli de marmo li quali iaccio intorno a Roma. Non era aitri che esso, che sapessi leiere li antiqui pataffii. Tutte
scritture antiche vulgarizzava. Queste figure de marmo iustamente interpretava. Deh,
como spesso diceva: Dove sono questi buoni Romani? Dove ne loro summa iustizia?
Pterame trovare in tiempo che questi fussino!: AR, Chapter 18, pp. 104-105. All
translations from this text are the authors.
253
prise about Colas mastery of Latin and history. This element of

surprise reflects social tensions surrounding learning and education.
Though the details of Colas education are unfortunately obscure,
it is certain that few people in Trecento Rome could read the ancient inscriptions, and so for Cola to do so really was exceptional.45
The Anonimos description reveals his astonishment that someone
of Colas low social status could have become so accomplished.
In the passage cited above, furthermore, the Anonimo wove together the issues of knowledge and social conflict. That is, by reading about the glories of ancient Rome, and by deciphering inscriptions on monuments, Cola began to see in critical relief the
yawning gap between the ideals and accomplishments of his contemporary city and those of its ancient predecessor. In particular,
his studies revealed to him the lack of justice in contemporary
Rome, a complaint that Cola directed specifically at the Roman
elites. The chronicler quickly explained Colas grievances against
Romes powerful families: Cola spoke to [Clement VI] at length,
saying that the barons of Rome were highway robbers; they permitted murders, robberies, adulteries, and every sort of crime; they
wanted their city to remain ravaged.46 Cola, of course, voiced his
criticism of the Roman elites in Avignon, where he was sent in
1343 as a representative of the communal government. But Avignon, as we have seen, was temporary home to many Roman elites,
and thus Colas incendiary speeches immediately brought him into conflict with several families.
The chronicler then claimed that Pope Clement VI, swayed by
Colas mellifluous phrases, took issue with the barons for their behavior. Retaliation against the upstart Cola came swiftly at the
hands of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna:47
45 Musto provides a detailed description of the educational world of late medieval
Rome, as well as an imaginative hypothesis of the probable course of Colas educational program: Musto, Apocalypse in Rome, pp. 34-37.
46 Allora se destenne Cola e dice calli baroni di Roma so derobatori de strade:
essi consiento li omicidii, le robbarie, li adulterii, onne male; essi voco che la loro citate iaccia desolata: AR, chap. 18, p. 105.
47 This Cardinal Giovanni Colonna was one of Petrarchs primary protectors. In
a letter, Petrarch addressed him as illustrious father (pater inclite). Rerum Familiarum, 2.12, cited from Francesco Petrarca, Opere di Francesco Petrarca, ed. by Emilio
254
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
But then at the petition of messer cardinal Janni della Colonna, Cola fell into such disgrace, such poverty, such illness that it made little difference to go to the hospital. With his little coat on his back he
stood in the sun like a snake. But he who laid him low raised him up:
Messer Janni della Colonna brought him back before the Pope. He
was pardoned and made Notary of the Chamber of Rome, with plenty of rewards and benefits. He returned to Rome very exuberantly,
muttering threats between his teeth.48
In this way, the Anonimo established at the very start of his Life of
Cola the intricate connection between Colas classical learning and

his criticism of Roman elites. It is particularly striking, furthermore, that the only named individuals to appear in the first chapter are Cola, Pope Clement VI, and Cardinal Giovanni Colonna.
And, among the noble families, only the Colonna does the chronicler mention by name.
If we return our attention to the episode of the Lex de imperio
with which this paper began, we see that also in narrating this
event the Anonimo carefully illustrated the conflict between Cola
and the Colonna. Here as well, the issue of knowledge who
owns it, who can control it assumes a central position. Present,
as mentioned, were many Roman nobles, judges, lawyers, and
many powerful men of Rome (molti potienti di Roma).49 Again,
the Anonimo revealed the identities of only two attendees: Stefano della Colonna and his son, Janni Colonna,50 demonstrating the
centrality of that family to Colas struggle. The very form of com-
Bigi, 2nd edition (Milan: Ugo Mursia, 1964), p. 722.

48 Puoi, a petizione de missore Ianni della Colonna cardinale, venne in tanta
desgrazia, in tanta povertate, in tanta infirmitate, che poca defferenzia era de ire allo
spidale. Con sio iuppariello aduosso stava allo sole como biscia. Chi lo puse in basso,
quello lo aizao: missore Ianni della Colonna lo remise denanti allo papa. Tornao in
grazia, fu fatto notaro della Cammora de Roma, abbe grazia e beneficia assai. A Roma tornao moito alegro; fra li dienti menacciava: AR, chap. 18, p. 105. Cola was made
Notary of the Capitoline Chamber on 13 April 1344.
49 AR, chap. 18, p. 108.
50 This Giovanni was nephew to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, and son of Stefano
il Giovane, called Stefanuccio Colonna. Paravicini-Bagliani, Giovanni di Stefano
Colonna, pp. 333-334. The Anonimo refers to him as one of the most clever and magnificent men of Rome (delli pi scaitriti e mannifichi de Roma): AR, chap. 18, p. 108.
255
munication using a plaque to convey political objectives was

propaganda allantica.51 In this case, Cola very clearly, and it
seems very consciously, utilized his knowledge to gain an edge over
his adversaries. By gathering them together around the plaque,
and by standing on a raised platform, Cola lectured the Roman
elites about their past, freely translating the Latin, and emphasizing that the Roman senate had in the first century willingly granted authority to Vespasian. According to the Roman chronicler, Cola declared, you see how great was the magnificence of the senate, which gave authority to the empire.52 Cola then listed all the
privileges that the Roman plebs had granted to the Roman emperors, but ended by lamenting the loss of that great society. To
the barons, Colas invocation of the plebs would certainly have
connoted the contemporary Roman popolo the large, amorphous
group possessing citizenship but lacking titles, elite ancestry, and
most importantly, an established avenue to political power. The
ears of a Stefano Colonna would certainly have picked up the accusation in Colas words.
Colas claim to be able to decipher the Lex de imperio was all
the more impressive since the contents of the bronze plaque had
remained an unsolved mystery for centuries. Although it is certain
that Cola relished the spotlight, his dramatic display in front of the
Roman nobles was not merely pedantic showing off. Rather, he was
demonstrating his position as a vital medium. His message was
that the barons should perceive the historical power of the Roman
popolo. Further, he was saying, the barons needed Cola to unveil
for them the secrets and lost meaning of Romes past. Colas statement was powerful, and it carried implications for his plans for impending social transformation. He might even have been trying to
get some of the less hostile barons on his side. All of Rome, both
elite and popolo, needed him to interpret the past and to confer on
the whole city the historical relevance which the barons so jealously
51 Chiara Franceschini, Rerum gestarum significacio: Luso di oggetti antichi
nella comunicazione politica di Cola di Rienzo, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Quaderni, 14, no. 4 (2002), p. 236.
52 Vedete quanta era la mannificenzia dello senato, ca la autoritate dava allo imperio: AR, chap. 18, p. 108.
256
ALIZAH HOLSTEIN
sought by displaying their possession of spolia and laying claim to

the wealth of ancient learning.
In conclusion, the papacys departure in the early fourteenth
century left many Roman noble families vulnerable, with fewer
economic and political conduits for their power. Those families
able to maintain connections in Avignon, such as the Orsini and
Colonna, however, were assured of political power and granted unhindered access to the rich cultural atmosphere of southern France.
In Rome, the Colonna in particular became a nucleus of cultural
production, as members of the family collected libraries, wrote
histories, and established relationships of patronage and friendship
with prominent intellectuals. Exerting some control over the cultural life of the city offered families such as the Colonna prestige
and power in a period when, economically, they were increasingly challenged by a growing merchant elite. This new elite, since it
could not break into the old venues of elite power, such as the senate or the papal hierarchy, engaged with the nobility through the
medium of ancient learning. Knowledge, in this way, became a locus of social contest. For this reason, aspiring individuals and families, exemplified by Giovanni Cavallini, the Anonimo Romano,
and Cola di Rienzo, placed critical value on classical education. Ancient historians, for example, became the dominant prototype for
chroniclers, as they largely eschewed the contemporary Christian
histories. Acquiring knowledge of Romes ancient past, of Livy and
Sallust and Valerius Maximus, of inscriptions and the history of
monuments, became for them a way to bypass elite control of
Romes cultural capital. In this light, Colas penchant for spectacle
must necessarily be reevaluated. His craving for public displays of
his erudition and his passionate dedication to ancient learning and
ideals should not be viewed as evidence of psychological weakness
or detachment from the realities of his world, but rather, as a coherent response to the social and political tensions that in the midfourteenth century defined his city.
Christine Shaw
(Swansea University)
POPULAR RESISTANCE TO MILITARY OCCUPATION

DURING THE ITALIAN WARS
Great emphasis and rightly so has been placed on the sufferings of civilians at the hands of soldiers during the Italian Wars, as
in other wars. Some of the most notorious episodes of the Italian
Wars were the sacks of cities such as Brescia in 1512, and, most
famous of all, Rome in 1527, where thousands of men, women and
children were slaughtered, or raped, or tortured, and many left destitute. Many more suffered such treatment in their towns and villages and homesteads, in the fields, on the roads, anywhere where
they might be unfortunate enough to encounter troops looking for
plunder. It is also known that (as in other wars) there were instances of civilians killing soldiers, sometimes in considerable numbers. Some of the atrocities against civilians were reprisals for such
attacks on troops.
While preparing a book on the Italian Wars,1 I have been
struck by some aspects of this reciprocal violence between civilians and soldiers, which point to civilian resistance being more effective, more feared by the soldiers and at times more organized
than it is generally given credit for. This resistance could be even
more evident in periods of truce and the intervals between campaigns, when troops would be dispersed in billets. Equally striking were the attitudes of the authorities, military and civilian, to
1 Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 1494-1559. War, State
and Society in Early Modern Europe (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2012).
258
CHRISTINE SHAW
conflict between soldiers and civilians. They could show understanding and sympathy for the civilians, even when their actions
were causing problems to them, recognizing that people could be
pushed beyond endurance by the behavior of the troops.
It was the difficulties faced by the imperial army in Lombardy
in 1525-1526, in the interval between the Battle of Pavia and the
outbreak of the war of the League of Cognac, that first focused my
attention on these matters. Much correspondence between Spanish officials, commanders and ambassadors, among themselves and
with Charles V, survives, in which the problem of what to do with
the imperial troops how to feed them, where to billet them, how
to find the money to pay for them figures largely. The impact of
the soldiers on the civilians who were their unwilling hosts was one
frequent theme of their letters.2 Much of this essay will be concentrated on this period and this army, although I shall also draw
on examples from other arenas and other stages of the Italian Wars,
especially for instances of organized, and effective, civilian resistance to soldiers.
There can be no question, and there was little question at the
time, that if civilians were violent towards soldiers, they had much
provocation. Even when they were not caught up in active fighting, during punitive raids in rural areas, or sieges or sacks of towns
and cities, they had much to endure routinely at the hands of the
military. Provisioning arrangements for armies were generally ineffective. Even if attempts were made to organize merchants or others to bring supplies to them, sooner or later the problem would
arise of the soldiers not being paid, and having no money to buy
victuals, clothing, firewood, fodder for their horses and other necessities. When they could not buy what they wanted they would
2 This correspondence is readily accessible in full English summaries in the Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers, Relating to Negotiations between England and Spain, Preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere [Calendar of State
Papers, Spanish], III, part 1, ed. by Pascual de Gayangos (London: Longman, 1873).
For the early 1520s, the one published volume of the correspondence of the Abbot of
Njera, a Spanish official with the army in Lombardy, is also illuminating: La Politica
Espaola en Italia. Correspondencia de Don Fernando Marn, Abad de Njera, con Carlos I, ed. by Enrique Pacheco y de Leyva (Madrid: Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y
Museos, 1919), I.
259
take it, perhaps theoretically on credit, or they would simply steal

it. In any case, the arrival of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands
of troops and horses and camp followers would strain the resources
of the most prosperous city or region that had to find provisions
for them. If they were encamped at one place for any time, as during a siege, foraging parties would be sent out until the countryside for miles around had been stripped bare.
Soldiers passing through, on the march or on the loose, especially if they were in hostile territory, often just took what they
could find from those unfortunate enough to be in or near their
path. Threats, violence, torture, even murder might be used, if
they thought that goods were being concealed from them. As you
know, hungry men know no fear, Cardinal Matthus Schiner reminded the Marquis of Mantua in 1512, as he asked him to see to
providing supplies for 25,000 Swiss who had arrived in Italy, so
they will not have cause, for lack of victuals, to go looking for them
where there arent any.3 Troops in the territory of the state in
whose service they were, or of that of an ally, could be just as violent, especially if they were unpaid, as those of the enemy. Behaving as though they were enemy troops, or worse than enemy
troops were stock phrases to describe the behavior of soldiers
who were supposed to be defending the state and its population.
Soldiers in quarters could be almost as great a burden on the
resources of the local people in the long term as the destructive
raids of armies on the march. This was the problem with the imperial army in northern Italy in 1525-1526. Under the Sforza dukes
of Milan in the fifteenth century, troops were usually not billeted
in towns and cities in any numbers; the main burden had fallen on
the rural areas. Consequently, townspeople resented being forced
to provide accommodation for soldiers during the Italian Wars, especially if they were French or Spanish or German. The commanders of the army tried to keep Spanish troops out of the city
3 Non habiano causa per defecto de victuallie andar ad cercarle dove non
siano. Perche, come quella sa, nescit plebs jejuna timere: Korrespondenzen und Akten zur Geschichte des Kardinals Matth. Schiner, ed. by Albert Bchi, 2 vols. (Basel:
R. Geering, 1920-1925), I, pp. 152-153: Schiner to Marquis of Mantua, 23 May 1512,
Vicenza.
260
CHRISTINE SHAW
of Milan, because they knew how much the people hated them.4
The bulk of the troops, however, still generally had to be billeted
in the countryside; it was difficult to provide adequately for large
cavalry units in cities. Tens of thousands of civilians, in town and
country, would have to give up their rooms, their beds, their household goods and their food stores to these unwelcome guests; they
might even be evicted out of their own homes. Often soldiers had
no means to pay their reluctant hosts; and they would not necessarily pay even if they did have cash. Generally, they did not treat
their hosts households or possessions with respect, and could spoil
or destroy much that they did not use up.
After their resounding victory at Pavia in February 1525, a
large imperial army remained in northern Italy, ostensibly to support Francesco Sforza as duke of Milan. But where could these
troops be put, how could they be fed, where was the money to
come from to pay them? Charles V expected a grateful duke and
a rich duchy of Milan to provide for his army. Much of Lombardy
had suffered greatly during the wars, however, and would need
time to recover before it was in any condition to provide supplies
for all those extra mouths. The duke was supposed to pay 700,000
ducats for imperial investiture with the duchy, 100,000 of that as
soon as possible, to be paid over to the troops. But even the imperial officials and commanders recognized that the duchy was in
no condition to pay the taxes needed to raise that sum, in addition
to supporting the troops: the dual burden would be intolerable.
Many were sent to be quartered in the lands of Charless allies, or
of those considered subordinate to the Empire, as holders of imperial fiefs: to the lands of the duke of Savoy, of the marquises of
Saluzzo, Monferrato and Ceva, and of the Malaspina in the Lunigiana. But a large part of these regions were mountainous districts,
poor and sterile. At best, warned one of the officials wrestling with
the problem, the Abbot of Njera, these places could furnish subsistence for infantry, but only if it was regularly paid.5 Some units
4 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, III, part 1, p. 430: Lope de Soria to Charles,
4 Nov. 1525, Genoa.
5 Ivi, pp. 320-321: Njera to Charles, 9 Sept. 1525.
261
were sent to be quartered in the Papal States, despite the protests

of the pope. Consideration was given to whether some might not
be sent to the Veneto, but it was decided that this would not be
prudent. After the discovery of the plot in which Gerolamo Morone and Francesco Sforza tried to suborn one of the imperial
commanders, Ferrante Francesco dAvalos, the Marquis of Pescara,
in October 1525, Morone was arrested, and with the duke besieged in the Castello of Milan, the bulk of the army was brought
back to the duchy.
Although some of his agents in Italy assured Charles V that the
people of the duchy of Milan wanted him to take the state for himself, imperial troops were not considered as friendly by the Milanese, but as occupiers, or enemies. Nor did the people of Piedmont, Monferrato and the other places where the troops were
quartered regard them as friendly. In fact, the commanders of
the army were apprehensive about the safety of their men when
they were dispersed in billets, either in the Milanese or in neighboring states. Antonio de Leyva, the veteran Spanish commander,
warned the emperor in May 1525 that, as the imperial forces could
not be kept together owing to shortages of food and of money and
had perforce to be quartered wherever they could find food, he
feared that sooner or later they would be attacked and have the
worst of it in some areas.6 A few months later, Lope Hurtado de
Mendoza, a tough-minded imperial envoy, warned Charles that
the army was endangered by lack of discipline and bad management in quartering the troops.7 Another equally tough-minded imperial envoy, Lope de Soria, informed him in July 1526 that such
was the ill-will of the people in some rural areas, that he thought
the troops could be seriously molested.8 These informants of the
emperor, it should be emphasized, were not timid men inclined to
see peril lurking where there was none.
Besides, it was common knowledge that soldiers, in certain circumstances, had real reason to fear popular hostility. Defeated
6 Ivi, p. 163: Antonio de Leyva to Charles, 23 May 1525, Voghera.

7 Ivi, pp. 347-348: Lope Hurtado to Charles, 27 Sept. 1525, Novara.
8 Ivi, pp. 785-786: Lope de Soria to Charles, 8 July 1526, Genoa.
262
CHRISTINE SHAW
troops, fleeing from a battle, or having been stripped of their

weapons and armor by the victors and then sent on their way after they been captured or following the surrender of a garrison, or
men who had been paid off and were making their way home after the end of a campaign, were not infrequently killed by peasants as they tried to find safety. Obviously, they were particularly
vulnerable if they were travelling alone or in small groups. Hundreds of men in total could simply vanish. Opportunistic murders
of men caught in the act of stealing, say, could account for large
numbers, but bands of peasants could come together to hunt down
fugitives, apparently for revenge for past sufferings at the hands of
other soldiers as much as for any chance of plunder.
Even undefeated men, travelling armed and in sizeable groups,
could be attacked. One example of this was when German soldiers
paid off by Louis XII after he took Genoa in 1507 were set upon
by a large group of peasants as they were making their way up the
Val Polcevera. Five were killed, the others regrouped and pushed
the peasants back with their pikes. The peasants escaped in the
mountains, and the German troops, seeing, as the French chronicler Jean dAuton put it, that they could not do them any other
harm, burned what houses and villages in the neighborhood had
not been burned already a comment that reveals a likely motive
for the assault.9 This was peasants taking on a group of pike infantry, not stabbing lone marauders. Admittedly, the men of Polcevera were seasoned in faction-fighting and used to handling
weapons, but they were not unique in that, and contadini in other
areas could show the same spirit. By the mid-1520s, French, German, Spanish, and Swiss troops had all suffered at the hands of
vengeful Italian peasants.
Even when troops were in billets and were being picked off one
by one, the total losses could mount up. In the summer of 1516,
six hundred French lances were sent to lodge in the Mantuan countryside, serving the double purpose of relieving the pressure on the
duchy of Milan and admonishing Francesco Gonzaga for his vac9 Jean dAuton, Chronique de Louis XII, ed. by Ren de Maulde La Clavire, 4
vols. (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1889-95), IV, pp. 243-244.
263
illating loyalties. Not only did the troops not want to pay for supplies, they beat, wounded and killed the people, and all because
they said that the Marquis sided with the emperor.10 Despite
promises the troops would leave, many remained, and complaints
from Mantua about the destruction they caused continued to reach
the French court. Their commander Lautrec maintained that his
men could not have behaved better if they had been in France,11
but then changed tack, saying that if they had caused some damage, the people of the Mantua area were to blame, as they had
murdered sixty men, archers and foragers, even men-at-arms.12
People in towns and cities may well have had to be more cautious in making such revenge attacks. Certainly, there could be violent resistance from exasperated householders against soldiers
making free with their property or dishonoring their women. More
common, perhaps, were murders of individual soldiers in alleys and
taverns and brothels. Cumulatively, it could become clear that this
was more than the everyday level of violence that soldiers were
being targeted. It was less likely that sizeable groups of townsmen
would set out to confront or hunt down soldiers, as the peasants
did: that would have been a dangerous game. Other soldiers could
be close by, ready with their weapons to aid their comrades. Largescale confrontation with soldiers in towns would be liable to be
treated as an uprising against the authorities.
There were two such episodes in the city of Milan in April and
June of 1526. The disturbances in late April began with protests
and resistance to a forced loan imposed to pay the imperial troops.
When some citizens refused to pay the sums allotted to them, the
army provost sent a few troops to each of their houses to stay there
and to levy the fine. One civic official barred his doors and would
not admit the soldiers. Neighbors came to help him, and the soldiers were forced to take refuge in the quarters of the German infantry who were besieging the Castello, where Francesco Sforza
10 Raffaele Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla Corte di Francesco I di Francia, nel
carteggio privato con Mantova (1515-1517) (Paris: H. Champion, 1994), p. 250: Federico Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga, 11 June 1516, Le Pont de Beauvoisin.
11 Ivi, p. 343: Federico to Francesco Gonzaga, 10 November 1516, Amboise.
12 Ivi, p. 360: Federico to Francesco Gonzaga, 27 Nov. 1516, Amboise.
264
CHRISTINE SHAW
was. Large numbers of Germans were on their way with their

weapons to take up the fight when Antonio de Leyva and Alfonso dAvalos, Marchese del Vasto, arrived in time to stop them
putting the area to sack. The commanders intervention also prevented several German soldiers who were buying provisions in the
marketplace from being killed by the rioters. They described the
incident as one of those accidents that happened so frequently
when soldiers were quartered among the citizens.13
On the next night, when some of the garrison in the Castello
sallied out, as they often did, to assault the outposts of the besiegers, a crowd of Milanese gathered, with banners and drums (indicating this was not a spontaneous assembly), and went to attack
the siege lines. They occupied some of the streets and alleys leading to the German soldiers quarters before they were driven back.
A deputation of leading citizens went to the commanders to offer
their excuses. Satisfied that no gentlemen had been involved in the
fighting, del Vasto and de Leyva were content to take no reprisals.
This episode was interpreted as a popular riot, not as a matter of
political significance or an expression of support for the Sforza
duke besieged in the Castello.14
The episode in June 1526 was treated as more serious, and
does indeed appear to have been more organized. More than five
hundred supporters of Francesco Sforza left the city to go to join
Giangiacomo de Medici, castellan of the fortress of Musso, which
he was holding for the duke. Thinking Milan would be quieter
without them, the imperial commanders let them go, but the
Sforzeschi began robbing and killing all the Imperiali they came
across on the road. Other killings took place in the suburbs and
streets of Milan: a hundred and fifty Spanish and German soldiers
and merchants and other foreigners were said to have been killed
in two days. The generals agreed that a guard of citizens should be
posted to keep the peace. But when an arrest was made of a
Sforzesco supporter who called for help crying, by one account
13 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, III, part 1, p. 661: Marchese del Vasto, Antonio de Leyva and Abbot of Njera to Lope de Soria, 26 April 1526, Milan.
14 Ivi, pp. 670-674: Abbot of Njera to Charles, 28 April 1526, Milan.
265
Citizens, to arms and by another account Italia a riot began,

and the posts of the imperial troops were attacked. This riot was
turning into an uprising; the insurgents took over the cathedral and
the court. Seventy imperial soldiers were killed, taken off guard
alone in the streets. Order was restored only with some difficulty.
Spanish troops coming from the suburbs were held back, and the
Landsknechts prevented from taking revenge for the deaths of
their comrades.
A deputation of the principal citizens attributed the violence
to exasperation at heavy taxation and the bad behavior of some soldiers. A Neapolitan in the service of Charles, the protonotary Marino Ascanio Caracciolo, who had also interceded for the Milanese
with the angry generals, warned the emperor that while his troops
were brave, they were very ill-disciplined, on bad terms with the
people of city, insulting them and making excessive demands on
them for provisions. Only the prudence of the generals in continually riding through the streets had warded off further clashes between the Milanese and the soldiers, he wrote. Hundreds of people were leaving the city Charles would find himself in possession not of a rich and flourishing state, but of deserted and ruined
houses, and fields without laborers.15
Much as the people of the duchy of Milan might resent the
presence of the imperial army, there was some reasonable explanation, at least initially, for its presence, as it was supporting
Francesco Sforza, their duke. The people of the neighboring states
where imperial troops were sent to be quartered did not see any
reason why they should accept them, other than force majeure. It
was clear to them that their own rulers did not want the troops
there either so resistance to these troops could not really be construed as rebellion against their own governments. Whatever
weight that consideration might or might not have had, the people made their opposition to providing quarters for the troops that
were foisted on them plain and their rulers do not seem to have
15 Ivi, pp. 756-757: Simon de Tassis to Lope de Soria, 18 June 1526, Milan; pp.
757-778: Marchese del Vasto and Antonio de Leyva to Lope de Soria, 18 June 1526,
Milan; pp. 761-763: Protonotary Caracciolo to Charles, 22 June 1526, Milan.
266
CHRISTINE SHAW
regarded this opposition as disobedience to themselves.

In September 1525 the Marchese di Pescara wanted to send
two thousand infantry to be quartered in or around Genoa. Lope
de Soria, the imperial ambassador in Genoa, thought this was a
good idea. The doge, Antoniotto Adorno, did not, saying that the
soldiers would be sure to despoil the area and commit depredations wherever they went.16 When there was concern in June 1526
that Andrea Doria, who was then in the service of Francis I, might
be coming with his fleet to attack Genoa, the doge did agree with
Soria to ask for two companies of Italian infantry which were quartered on Genoese territory to be sent to the city to help to defend
it. But as the troops approached, rumors spread that they were
plundering as they came. Soria went to investigate, and was satisfied that they had not been stealing. The men were only looking
for food, he reported naturally enough, in his opinion, as the men
had no provisions or money with them (although how they were
to pay for the food they found if they had no money, and how if
they took it without paying for it, that would not amount to theft,
he did not say). While he was out of the city, the people of Genoa
took their own precautions, however, shutting up their shops and
houses. Some citizens went to confront the troops and recover
anything that had been stolen, and the people in the countryside
also took up arms. Soria quickly gathered the troops together and
put them apparently for their own safety in two monasteries
(close together so each group would have been able to support the
other), and went to appease the Genoese. Anything the troops had
taken, apart from food, would be handed over at once, he
promised. Calm was restored, but the government insisted
nonetheless that the troops must return to their quarters on the
frontier with Lombardy, and the men had to leave.17
Many imperial troops were sent to quarters in Piedmont, despite the vehement protests of Charles III, duke of Savoy, and his
duchess, Beatrice of Portugal, who was the Emperors sister-inlaw. The soldiers met notable resistance from the people of Pied-
16 Ivi, p. 341: Lope de Soria to Charles V, 21 Sept. 1525, Sestri.

17 Ivi, p. 734: Lope de Soria to Charles, 8 June 1526, Genoa.
267
mont. Many were murdered in their billets no wonder, wrote

Lope Hurtado to the emperor, considering the country people had
been driven to despair. The land had been completely wasted, its
inhabitants impoverished and ruined.18 The duke demanded that
the troops be withdrawn, and their depredations be investigated.
Pescara, under no illusions about the behavior of his men, thought
Hurtado must agree to this and assist the duke.19 Hurtado was ordered by the emperor to make inquiries, but foresaw difficulties
in arriving at a satisfactory resolution. He admitted the troops had
ravaged the country and caused incalculable damage, but an inquiry would only serve, he thought, to give the duke a claim against
the emperor, perhaps for as much as half a million ducats. The
troops could not be punished, because they might mutiny, or be
asked to make recompense for what they had taken, as they were
still not being paid.20 Faced with the evidence in the formal statements drawn up by the communities of Piedmont and Savoy, Hurtado recognized there was hard evidence of many murders and
much destruction of property by imperial troops. Were there to be
an inquiry into assaults on the troops, and how many of them had
been murdered in Turin and elsewhere in Piedmont, he suggested, these could amount to a considerable list and could be set
against the excesses perpetrated by the soldiers.21
There were some instances in Piedmont of coordinated resistance to imperial troops, not just isolated murders. When threehundred lances were sent to be quartered at Biella, they found the
district deserted. The people had withdrawn to a mountain nearby, taking with them all their valuables. A week after the arrival
of the lances, two thousand men descended on Biella from the
mountains, destroyed the bridge and the mills, and cut off the water supply. The men-at-arms sent a trumpeter to parley with them,
but they killed him. At length, the troops attacked and drove them
off. Pescaras reaction was to try to prevent further trouble by
sending two companies of Spanish infantry to back up the men18
19
20
21
Ivi, p. 317: Lope Hurtado to Charles, 9 Sept. 1525, Vercelli.

Ibid.
Ivi, pp. 506-507: Lope Hurtado to Charles, 1 December 1525, Milan.
Ivi, pp. 631, 655-656: Lope Hurtado to Charles, 11, 22 April 1526, Turin.
268
CHRISTINE SHAW
at-arms, while he attempted to extract four thousand crowns from

Biella, with which the men could sustain themselves in new quarters.22
While the imperial lances were withdrawn from Piedmont, the
Marchese del Vasto sent some Italian infantry and light cavalry
there the following year, despite his fears that they would cause
trouble. The people in the countryside refused to receive them, and
ill-treated them whenever they found them dispersed, he wrote, but
he did not know where else they could be billeted.23 His fears were
realized. Soon there was a full-scale uprising, as the people of Piedmont took up arms against the soldiers, stripping at least one company of light horse, perhaps more, of their arms and horses, and
killing many of them. The remainder of the light horse mustered
on the border near Asti, and turned on the pursuing Piedmontese
infantry (who were perhaps bands of militia). The Piedmontese
bands suffered considerable losses, and one of their banners was
captured, but the cavalry after ravaging the country to take their
revenge did leave for new quarters near Asti.24
Such instances of organized popular resistance to occupying or
invading troops during the Italian Wars may have been exceptional, but they did occur in other regions, at other stages of the
wars. Organized resistance by the people does not seem to have
been directed against the troops of their own state, however unwelcome the soldiers were to those forced to quarter them, however badly they might behave, but only against the troops of other powers.
During the war of the League of Cambrai, for example, after
the French occupied the area around Brescia, there was an uprising at Roveto. The inhabitants of Roveto, exasperated by the behavior of some Gascon infantry (who had a justifiably bad reputation for mistreating the civilians they lived amongst) were gath22 Ivi, pp. 320-321: Abbot of Njera to Charles, 9 Sept. 1525, Vercelli.
23 Ivi, p. 700: Marchese del Vasto to Captain Juan Baptista Gastaldo y Gutier-
rez, 18 May 1526.

24 Ivi, p. 704: Abbot of Njera to Charles, 24 May 1526, Genoa; p. 706: Lope de
Soria to Charles, 24 May 1526, Genoa; pp. 723-724: Lope Hurtado to Charles, 2 June
1526, Milan.
269
ered together by the ringing of bells. Some soldiers were killed, and
the rest left, but only temporarily. They soon returned, and the
principal leaders of the revolt were arrested; one was taken to be
executed in Brescia.25
In the Veronese countryside, peasants who banded together to
harass soldiers anticipated the danger of reprisals. According to a
local chronicle (as noted by Gian Maria Varanini) they would always act when they had numerical superiority. They would gather
three to four hundred strong in the house of a gentleman, and
would fortify themselves there. Small groups of soldiers who came
on foraging expeditions would be attacked, and the peasants would
then abandon their base before other soldiers arrived in force. It
does not seem to be implied that the peasants were being organized
or led by gentlemen, who in any case could well have been unwilling to expose their property to the danger of reprisals.26
In the area around Vicenza, a local chronicler described how
the German troops did not dare to lodge where there was no
fortress, but stayed either in Vicenza or in camp, sending men out
to the rural communities to threaten they would be laid waste if
they did not pay their share of the contributions levied for the
maintenance of the soldiers. Thiene tried to resist when the men
first came, putting up wooden barricades, but the following day
the troops arrived in force, four thousand infantry and horse.
When the people tried to defend themselves, some were killed, others taken prisoner. Barricades erected by the community of Breganze were more effective because, the chronicler explained, this
was a remote mountain village, with many men, the most capable
of any community of the Vicentino in bearing arms. The women
of the village with all the moveable property were sent to safety
higher up the mountains. Any Germans who turned up were repelled; those bold enough to try to pass the barricades were killed.
25 Storia di Brescia, II, La dominazione veneta (1426-1575) (Brescia: Morcelliana,
1963), p. 248.
26 Gian Maria Varanini, La Terraferma al tempo della Crisi della Lega di Cambrai. Proposte per una rilettura del Caso veronese (1509-1517), in Gian Maria
Varanini, Comuni cittadini e Stato regionale. Ricerche sulla Terraferma veneta nell Quattrocento (Verona: Libreria editrice universitaria, 1992), pp. 424-425.
270
CHRISTINE SHAW
Throughout the imperial occupation of the Vicentino, this village

was never taken.27
Whether another such enterprise this one in Tuscany ended as successfully does not appear from the correspondence of the
Dieci di Balia of Florence, who noted it in 1530, during the siege
of Florence by imperial troops. Peasants from the plain of Pistoia
(quelli villani del Piano) gathered together, and killed 150 Spanish troops. Fearing that the enemy would come in strength to take
revenge, in early April they were reported to be mustering more
men, erecting barricades across the roads and fortifying themselves
in every way they could. If the enemy did come to take their revenge, the Dieci predicted, they would find the peasants so well
prepared that they would not be able to harm them.28
It would not really be appropriate to draw any firm conclusions
from this rapid survey of a few incidents noted during research into the campaigns of the Italian Wars, but some points are worth
reiteration. Firstly, these episodes highlight the vulnerability of
troops, even when they were in substantial units, to civilian
reprisals. The commanders of the imperial army and the imperial
envoys in Lombardy in 1525-1526 clearly did fear for the safety of
their men. There may have been an element of exaggeration in
their accounts of the destitution of the army, of the oppression visited on the people of the districts where they were quartered, of
the danger of mutiny by the troops or rebellion by the people.
They were, after all, trying to impress upon the emperor and his
ministers the pressing need for money to be sent to pay his troops
and the fact that they could not rely on all the funds that were needed being raised in Italy. But that would not be a reason to pretend
the soldiers were in danger from civilians if they were not and if
it was not at least a plausible assertion, the commanders anxieties
would not have reflected very well on themselves, let alone their
troops.
27 Una cronaca vicentina del Cinquecento, ed. by Jeannine Guerin-Dalle Mese (Accademia Olimpica: Vicenza, 1983), p. 193.
28 Archivio di Stato, Florence, Dieci di Balia, Missive, 107, fol. 1v: Dieci to commissioners at Pisa, 1 April 1530.
271
Secondly, it is striking that the accounts of resistance against

troops were often more sympathetic to the people than to the soldiers, even when those accounts were given by their own commanders. The depredations of troops were so notorious that attacks on them were more likely to be regarded as understandable,
even excusable, if regrettable, than as outrageous breaches of social order, whether the perpetrators were peasants or townspeople.
The Marchese del Vasto did dismiss some captains and even executed others to punish their excesses, but said that if he were to execute all the guilty men, he would have to have the entire army beheaded.29
Thirdly, the instances of civilian violence against soldiers were
generally presented as retaliation for misbehavior by the troops. Anti-Spanish or anti-French or anti-German sentiment might well have
given an edge to the violence and bad feeling between soldiers and
civilians, but Italian troops could behave badly and provoke resistance too, as they did in Piedmont and at Genoa. Personal revenge
and defense of families and homes and property, not the patriotic
defense of their state or their prince, or of Italy, against an invader
seem at least in the instances noted here to have been seen as
the primary motives for popular resistance to occupying armies.
Had it been seen as politically motivated resistance, the attitude of
the authorities could well have been much less sympathetic.
29 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, III, part 1, pp. 699-700: Marchese del Vasto to Juan Baptista Gastaldo y Gutierrez, 18 May 1526.
John Easton Law

(Swansea University)
SIGNORIAL CITADELS IN LATE MEDIEVAL

AND RENAISSANCE ITALY
In Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, first published in 1860,

Jacob Burckhardt relates how the emperor-elect Sigismund and the
anti-pope John XXIII met in Cremona in 1414 to discuss the summons of a Church council at Constance. Their host, Cabrino Fondolo, lord of Cremona, invited the secular and religious rulers of
Christendom to survey the Lombard plain from the citys Torrazzo. There, according to Burckhardt, the lord of Cremona was
tempted to throw both men to their deaths. A few years later, the
story was retold by John Addington Symonds in his The Age of the
Despots (1875).1 Almost certainly the story was a fabrication,
though one based on how Cabrino Fondolo had disposed of members of a rival family in Cremona, the Cavalcab. But for both historians the incident was used to demonstrate the alleged cynicism,
disrespect for legitimacy, cruelty and violence of the Italian renaissance despot. This view has profoundly informed views of
the Italian signori of the late medieval and Renaissance periods, and
1 John E. Law, Il Principe del Rinascimento, in LUomo del Rinascimento, ed.
by Eugenio Garin (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1988), pp. 15-17. On Symonds and the
despots, see John E. Law, John Addington Symonds and the Despots of Renaissance Italy, in Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, ed. by
John E. Law and Lene stermark-Johansen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 145-63;
Benjamin G. Kohl, The Myth of the Renaissance Despot, in Communes and Despots
in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. by John E. Law and Bernadette Paton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 61-74.
274
JOHN EASTON LAW
in many ways understandably. The arrival of many regimes to power was accompanied by acts of violence, as when the Bonacolsi
were driven out of Mantua by the Gonzaga in 1328.2 Acts of violence could also follow the process of succession in signorial families, as when, in 1385, Giangaleazzo Visconti seized his uncle,
Bernabo, to secure the entire Visconti inheritance based on Milan,3
or when in 1476 the lordship of Duke Ercole dEste in Ferrara was
unsuccessfully challenged by Niccol, son of Ercoles eldest brother, Leonello.4 There are many other examples. Moreover, signori
could support themselves in power by military means, as mercenary captains, condottieri; the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Montefeltro of Urbino, the Sforza in the Marches (and later in Milan), the
Malatesta of Rimini and the Da Varano of Camerino are conspicuous examples.5 Finally, the description given to such regimes by
their enemies, as tyrannies, with the signori as tiranni, brings
signorial rule and violence closer together. After all, the very concept of tyranny conveys the sense of usurpation and violence.
There is no doubting the fact that violence could characterize
the government of such regimes. Notorious in these terms is Ezzelino III da Romano (1194-1259) who established a Ghibelline lordship in the March of Treviso,6 but there are other examples of sig2 Giuseppe Coniglio, I Gonzaga (Varese: dallOglio, 1981), pp. 14-16. In 1494,
Marquis Francesco Gonzaga commissioned the Veronese painter Domenico Morone
to celebrate the Gonzaga putsch the Cacciata dei Bonacolsi, now in the Museo del
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua; see Law and Paton, Communes and Despots, XIX-XX. For
an attempt at an overview, see John E. Law, The Lords of Renaissance Italy (London:
The Historical Association, 1981); subsequent editions were published by Headstart
History, Witney. For an excellent recent treatment, Andrea Zorzi, Le Signorie Cittadine in Italia (secoli XIII-XIV) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2010).
3 Daniel Meredith Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941), pp. 31-32.
4 Edmund G. Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara (London: Constable, 1904),
pp. 143-149.
5 The most effective general survey remains that of Michael E. Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters (London: Bodley Head, 1974). Of these condottiere dynasties,
the least familiar may be the Da Varano, on whom see John E. Law, The Da Varano
Lords of Camerino as Condottiere Princes, in Mercenaries and Paid Men, ed. by John
France (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 89-104.
6 Giorgio Cracco, Nato sul Mezzogiorno. La Storia di Ezzelino (Vicenza: Neri
Pozza, 1994).
275
nori who used violence to crush and intimidate their opponents.

For example, after the castellan of Nocera murdered two members
of the Trinci rulers of that town and the neighboring city of Foligno in 1421, Corrado Trinci took the castle and killed not only the
guilty party but also his family and a large number of his real or
perceived adherents.7 However, such incidents, and the violence
associated with rulers like Bernab Visconti (1312-1385)8 or Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447)9 in Milan, raise problems for the
historian: how typical were such actions; how reliable is the evidence; to what extent is such evidence the creation of hostile or
impressionable commentators, contemporary or later?10
Of course, one could be tempted into an exercise of old-fashioned quantitative analysis of regimes and acts of violence as attempted by some historians of Italy in the nineteenth century, but
that would be unlikely to produce useful results.11 For that reason,
this essay will not focus on such dramatic events as those contemplated at Cremona possibly in 1414 or carried out in Nocera
and Foligno in 1421, but look for more measurable evidence in the
use of force, or the threat of force, in signorial regimes. One ob7 Silvestro Nessi, I Trinci Signori di Foligno (Foligno: Orfini Numeister, 2006),
pp. 133-140.
8 John E. Law, The Italian North, in The New Cambridge Medieval History,
vol. VI, ed. by Michael Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 451452.
9 Law, Il Principe, p. 19, and below, note 10.
10 For much of the above, see John Addington Symonds, The Age of the Despots
(London: Smith Elder and Co, 1908), chap. III; Law, Il Principe, pp. 17-20.
11 For example, Giuseppe Ferrari, Carta Figurativa e Indice delle Guerre Municipali dItalia secondo la Storia delle Rivoluzioni Guelfe e Ghibilline (Milan: Opuscoli
scelti sulle scienze e sulle arti, 1860). Earlier, Ferrari had published a four-volume Histoire des Revolutions dItalie ou Guelfes et Gibelins (Paris, Didier, 1858). Volumes 3
and 4 cover the late medieval/early Renaissance period, and the work concludes with
a Tableau des Guerres Municipales arranged alphabetically and chronologically; the
work was published in a three-volume Italian edition riveduta et aumentata dallautore in Milan (1870-1872). An earlier and very influential attempt at this exercise was
undertaken by Carlo Denina, Storia delle Rivoluzioni dItalia. This was first published
in Turin (I Fratelli Reycends, 1769-1770). I have consulted the 1820 edition, con
Giunti e Correzioni inedite dellAutore (Florence: Piatti). Books 13-19 cover the late
medieval/early Renaissance period. For both authors, see the Dizionario biografico
degli italiani.
276
JOHN EASTON LAW
vious subject to explore would be that of the condottiere prince, a

ruler who depended on the presence of a force of soldiers to insure him employability, but here again the evidence is uncertain.
Federigo da Montefeltro is commonly regarded as one of the most
canny and successful condottiere princes of his day, yet there is no
sense in any of the contemporary or near contemporary or later literature that he governed by force. The palace he had built in
Urbino was unfortified, and its household ordinances imply open
access.12A similar situation is suggested by their lesser-known
neighbors in the Marches, the Da Varano family of Camerino.
Their palace was put together from unfortified houses in the
center of the city, and the accessibility of the lord and his wife was
stressed in a report written to the Borgia who ruled the city from
1502 to 1503.13 The Borgia built a Rocca in Camerino, which
suggests a possibly more measurable way of assessing the role
of violence, or the threat of violence, in signorial government. This
contribution will focus on the role of the citadel as a means of expressing and enforcing signorial rule in Italian city-states in the late
medieval and early Renaissance period, and will try to discuss how
much such structures meant in terms of violence.14
Here a citadel is understood as a fortification constructed at
least in part to dominate, overawe or control a citys population,
to provide a curb a freno, as contemporaries called it; the Sta
12 Ordine et Officij de Casa de lo Illustrissimo Signor Duca de Urbino, ed. by
Sabine Eiche (Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 1999).

13 John E. Law, City, Court and Contado in Camerino c. 1500, in City and
Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. by Trevor Dean and Chris
Wickham (London: Hambledon, 1990), pp. 171-182.
14 This is a subject that has been discussed before; see for example John R. Hale,
The End of Florentine Liberty: the Fortezza da Basso, and To fortify or not to Fortify? Machiavellis Contribution to a Renaissance Debate, both in John R. Hale, Renaissance War Studies (London: Hambledon, 1983); Simon Pepper, The Meaning of
the Renaissance Fortress, Architectural Association Quarterly, V (1983), pp. 22-27;
Joanna Woods-Marsden, Images of Castles in the Renaissance: Symbols of Signoria/Symbols of Tyranny, Art Journal, vol. 48 (1995), 130-137; Evelyn S. Welch, Art
and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1995), chap. 7. For a later period and in a wider context, see La Citta e le Mura, ed.
by Cesare De Seta and Jacques Le Goff (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1989); Zorzi, Le signorie, pp. 129-131.
277
in Pace was the name given to the fortress the Visconti built in
Parma.15 To fulfill this function, such fortifications were often built
up against, or across, a citys walls to allow for the protected, or
even hidden, movement of troops into the city, though sometimes
this was achieved by the construction of an enclosed passageway,
as in the case of the castello constructed by the Carrara in Padua
in the fourteenth century.16 To construct a fortress entirely isolated within a city would compromise its effectiveness, exposing it to
siege. In terms of size such fortifications varied in extent, but their
purpose often meant that they enclosed a considerable area to allow for the stationing of a large number of troops. And it was possibly for that reason that from the fourteenth century many of these
15 John E. Law, The Significance of Citadels, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late
Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven-Apeldoorn: Garant,
2000), p. 169. For the etymology of cittadella see N. Tommaseo and B. Bellini
Dizionario della Lingua Italiana (Turin: Unione Tipografica-Editrice 1865-1879); Enciclopedia Italiana, vol. X (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1949); UTET,
Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana , ed. Salvatore Battaglia, vol. III (Turin: UTET,
1964). In English and Italian citadel can refer to a reinforced strong point, and control position, on a ship, especially a warship; recently it can refer to a place of refuge
for crew and passengers when a ship is attacked by pirates, as noted in the Italian press
in October 2011. I am grateful for the help of Bernadette Paton and Peter Richards
on these usages.
16 Cesira Gasparatto, La reggia dei Da Carrara, Accademia Patavina di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, 79 (1966-1967), pp. 71-116; Benjamin G. Kohl, Padua under the
Carrara (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 167-168. Marino
Sanudo was impressed by the Carrara castle, and the facility to meter quante giente
si vol sopra la piaza senza niuno sapia, Itinerario per la Terraferma Veneziana nellAnno
MCCCCLXXXIII, ed. Rawdon Brown (Padua: Tipografia del Seminario, 1847,
though in fact 1848), p. 25. A century earlier, Ezzelino da Romano had built a fortress
at one of the gates of Padua; see Trevor Dean, The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle
Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 18, citing the chronicle of
Giovanni da Nono. There are other examples of fortified corridors of the kind built
by the Carrara. In 1509, Giovanni Maria da Varano built one to connect the family
palace to the Borgia Rocca see Camillo Lilii, Istoria della Citta di Camerino (Camerino: Sarti, 1835), pp. 274-275 and the device was incorporated into the defenses of
Verona; see below note 25. Among the more famous are the Passetto between the Vatican Palace and the Castel SantAngelo or the Corridoio designed by Vasari for Cosimo de Medici (1564), linking the Palazzo Vecchio to the Pitti Palace. See Georgina
Masson, The Companion Guide to Rome (London: Collins, 1965), pp. 498-499; Touring Club Italiano, Firenze e Dintorni (Milan: Touring Club Italiano, 1974), pp. 304305. For Prato, see below note 36.
278
JOHN EASTON LAW
structures were called cittadelle, or little cities, in the sense of city

within a city, providing the origin of the English term citadel,
which frequently refers to a fortified area dominating a city and designed to control as well as defend the urban population while accommodating a large garrison.17
However, it would be a mistake to be too rigid in matters of vocabulary. Cittadella could also describe a small fortified town, like
Cittadella built by the Paduans in 1220 to defend their frontier
against Treviso.18 Cittadella could also refer to a castle, and in regard to the type of fortification other terms could be used, most obviously fortezza or rocca or castello. In central Italy, cassero or cassaro could often be used as at Spoleto, Prato and Foligno. Some
authorities claim that this word is Spanish in origin, deriving from
alcazar, and they associate it with the campaigns of the Spanish cardinal Albornoz in the Papal States in the mid-fourteenth century
However, the word can be found earlier in the works of Compagni
and Villani for example and whatever its etymology, the fact that
it could also refer to the high point on the poop of a ship ties in
with the idea of fortress built to dominate and control a city.19
What kind of fortifications were built? Some were elaborate and
substantial, involving the construction of formidable castles: like the
Castello Estense the Castel Vecchio built by the Este in Ferrara
after a popular revolt in 1385;20 or the citadel begun by Giangaleazzo Visconti at the Porta Giovia of Milan in 1392;21 or the
17 Tommaseo and Bellini, Dizionario della Lingua Italiana; Enciclopedia Italiana,
X (1949), pp. 495-496; Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana.. For generous advice
on terms, usage and examples, I am very grateful to the Accademia della Crusca.
18 Enciclopedia Italiana, X, p. 496; Touring Club Italiano, Veneto (Milan: Touring Club Italiano, 1969), pp. 341-342.
19 Law, The Significance, p. 171. See above note 15. Ernesto Sestan considered that the phenomenon of the cassero deserved further study; see Ernesto Sestan, Scritti Vari, 5 vols. (Florence: Le Lettere, 1988-2011), II, Italia comunale e signorile (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989), pp. 181-203; see above note 15.
20 John E. Law, Popular Unrest in Ferrara in 1385, in The Renaissance in Ferrara, ed. by J. Salmons and W. Moretti (Cardiff and Ravenna: University of Wales and
Girasoli, 1984), pp. 51-53. For an evocative account of the Castello Estense, see
William D. Howells, Italian Journeys (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1883), pp. 39-42,
recently re-issued by The Echo Library (Teddington, 2006), pp. 15-17.
21 Welch, Art and Authority, p. 175.
279
Castelletto built on earlier foundations by the French marshal

Boucicaut in Genoa around 1400.22 In other cases the defenses
were relatively light and improvised, sometimes built out from existing fortifications. The contrast is well illustrated in an article by
Louis Green discussing the construction of the Augusta fortress in
Lucca by Castruccio Castracane in 1322.23 If the account of Giovanni Villani is followed, the lord of Lucca walled off a fifth of the
city to buttress his regime. The result was a marvelous castle involving a massive wall, twenty-nine huge towers and the expulsion
of the inhabitants from Castruccios exclusion zone. Greens study
of the evidence reveals a more modest defense work, involving
much less disruption in the city. A similar point can be made from
the case of Verona. Following a failed rebellion against his signoria,
Cangrande II della Scala began work on what was later called the
Castelvecchio. This occupied a fairly central site within the city walls,
but it was linked to open country by a fortified bridge across the
Adige to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies.24
The Castelvecchio was a formidable fortress with high walls,
towers and a moat; it contrasted with the Cittadella of Verona, begun in 1389 following Giangaleazzo Viscontis capture of the city.25
This enclosed a large, but not densely populated, area between
22 For the role and significance of the Castelletto of Genoa, see Enciclopedia Italiana, voce Boucicaut; Achille Neri, Poesie Storiche Genovesi, Atti della Societ Ligure di Storia Patria, XIII (1884), p. 80; Carolyn James, Letters from Renaissance
Bologna. An Edition of the Letters of Giovanni Sabadino (Ph.D. thesis, University of
Melbourne, 2000), p. 119, letter of 28 October 1488; Ennio Poleggi and Isabella
Croce, Ritratto di Genova nel 400 (Genoa: Sagep, 2008), p. 124. I am grateful to Christine Shaw for the last reference.
23 Louis Green, Il problema dellAugusta, Actum Luce, XIII-XIV (1984-1985),
pp. 353-377, and Castruccio Castracane: a Study on the Origins and Character of a Fourteenth-Century Italian Despotism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 105122; more generally, see Nicolai Rubinstein, Fortified Enclosures in Italian Cities under Signori, in War, Culture and Society in Renaissance Venice, ed. by David S. Chambers, Cecil H. Clough, and Michael E. Mallett (London: Hambledon, 1993), pp. 1-8.
24 Egidio Rossini, Verona e il suo Territorio, vol. I, tome 1 (Verona, Istituto per
gli Studi Storici Veronesi, 1975), pp. 683-700; Gianni Perbellini, Castelli Scaligeri (Milan: Rusconi, 1982), pp. 40-58.
25 Law, The Cittadella of Verona, in War, Culture and Society, pp. 9-28, also in
Venice and the Veneto in the Early Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), chap. xv.
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JOHN EASTON LAW
the two circuits of Veronas walls. Its defenses were completed by

the river Adige to the east and a light defensive wall to the west.
Moreover, the modifications to the northern walls of the Cittadella were also light, leaving the square towers of that sector of the
citys wall facing outwards and hence into the Cittadella while
a moat provided by the Adigetto still ran in its old course. In other words, the Cittadella of Verona may have been rather like the
Augusta of Lucca, a relatively lightly defended zone, set aside for
the garrisoning of troops and allowing for the protected movement of troops and supplies through Veronas circuits of walls.
In fact, it is unlikely that the defenses of the Cittadella of
Verona were either completed or very well maintained. This introduces the point that the aspect and function of citadels could
change. Castles once intended to subdue the local population could
be modified into courtly residences, and their active military role
downgraded. A good case here is provided by the castle of Pavia.26
That city surrendered to the Visconti in 1359 after three years of
heroic resistance led by the Augustinian canon Jacopo Bussolari.
One of the first acts of Galeazzo II was to build a citadel on the
north side of the city (1360-1365). But in time, the castle was converted into the setting for a magnificent court, even though its military function was not ended, and the north side of the palace was
destroyed by French artillery in 1525.27 A similar point can be
made from other examples where the ruler and his court were resident. The Carrara castello in Padua became a splendid reggia with
rooms decorated in fresco by Guarienti.28 The residential quarters
in the Castelvecchio of Verona also became palatial.
In chapter 24 of The Prince, written in 1513, Machiavelli accepted that it was the practice of princes to defend themselves
26 Antonello Vincenti, Castelli Viscontei e Sforzeschi (Milan: Rusconi, 1981), pp.
54-66; Law, The Significance, p. 173.

27 Evelyn Welch, Galeazzo Maria Visconti and the Castello di Pavia, Art Bulletin, vol. 71 (1989), pp. 352-375; Edith W. Kirsch, Five Illuminated Manuscripts of
Giangaleazzo Visconti (University Park and London: Penn State University Press,
1991), p. 6. Construction began on 17 March 1350.
28 Diana Norman, Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 14-15, pp. 159-164.
281
against their own subjects.29 Earlier in his career, he had reported

that because the emperor-elect Maximilian controlled the fortresses of Verona it was unlikely that the city would rebel; however in
The Prince recent events appear to have persuaded him that the
efficacy of fortresses depended very much on the specific circumstances.30 In particular, he argued that the castle built by Francesco
Sforza, duke of Milan (1450-66), proved to be the greatest cause
for internal unrest facing his descendants.31 Machiavelli went on
to argue that it was more important for the prince to be able to
count on the love of his subjects than on the strength of his fortresses, as the former would afford him greater protection against external as well as internal threats.
Machiavelli returned to the theme in the twenty-fourth chapter
of the second book of the Discorsi written between 1516 and 1519.32
Here the argument shifted more strongly against the effectiveness
of fortresses when confronted by an internal enemy, but again the
point was expressed largely in political and psychological, rather
than military, terms. Fortresses, whether constructed by princely or
by republican regimes, are a product of fear, and their existence
arouses the hatred of the subject population. Moreover, for Machiavelli, the possession of fortresses could lull their owners into a
false sense of security and make them unresponsive to the needs of
their subjects. Lastly, for Machiavelli fortresses could not provide
a secure defense, especially when bombarded by gunpowder artillery. Once again, Machiavelli drew on contemporary examples to
29 Niccol Machiavelli, Il Principe, ed. by Arthur Burd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 326-337. The issues raised here were identified as important
by John Hale in The End of Florentine Liberty: the Fortezza da Basso, in Florentine Studies, ed. by Nicolai Rubinstein (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), pp. 501-532,
and To Fortify or not to Fortify? Machiavellis Contribution to a Renaissance Debate,
in Essays in Honour of J.H. Whitfield, ed. by H. C. Davies et al. (London: St Georges
Press, 1975), pp. 99-119. These two key essays appear in Hales Renaissance War Studies, (London: Hambledon, 1983). Also relevant is Woods-Marsden, Images of Castles, pp. 130-177, and Nicolai Rubinstein, Fortified Enclosures in Italian Cities under Signori, in War, Culture and Society, pp. 1-8.
30 Law, The Significance, pp. 173-174.
31 Lodovico Maria Sforza did not agree; see below
32 Allan Gilbert, Machiavelli. The Chief Works and Others, I (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1965), pp. 392-398.
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JOHN EASTON LAW
support his arguments, and returned to what he claimed was the

ill-advised and shortsighted decision of Francesco Sforza to build
a castle in Milan. Machiavelli argued that the possession of effective armies and the support of the population would provide an effective defense. He reluctantly conceded that in some limited circumstances fortresses could have their uses, but concluded by stating that fortresses are expensive in peace and useless in war.
From the examples he discussed, it is clear that Machiavellis
particular target in both The Prince and the Discorsi was not so
much fortification in the sense of town walls or castles along frontiers, but rather urban fortifications, or citadels. This is the sense
that emerges in a letter to Francesco Giucciardini written on 2
June 1526,in which Machiavelli expressed concern at plans to enclose with defense-works the hill of San Miniato, overlooking Florence and within the citys walls.33 Here Machiavelli appears to
have disregarded his own earlier opinions possibly formulated
in more detached circumstances, and not within a Florentine context that such urban fortifications would be of little effect. Perhaps the changing balance of power in Florence and elsewhere
and developments in fortification and artillery dissuaded Machiavelli from making more of the fact, in his History of Florence
(1525), that the efforts of Walter de Brienne to turn the Palazzo
Vecchio into a fortress to bolster his signorial regime in the city
(1342-1343) failed.34
Whatever, the forebodings in the letter of 1526 were justified.
The defense-works at San Miniato which had, ironically, an important role in the defense of the last republican regime in Florence
(1527-1530) were eventually used by the Medici to affirm their
control of the city. In 1576 a Venetian ambassador reported that
San Miniato and other Medici fortresses were principally built to
keep the people in check. Indeed, in the 1530s the Medici had
built the Fortezza da Basso on the design of Antonio da Sangallo
the Younger. This was constructed across the city walls, so adding
33 Gilbert, Machiavelli, I, pp. 392-398; II, pp. 998-999.

34 History of Florence (London and New York: Harper, 1960), book 2, chap. VI-
II.
283
to the arguments of anti-Mediceans who saw the Fortezza as a

prison and slaughter house for the distressed citizens.35
The Medici, of course, were merely following the example of
other Italian and foreign governments in the peninsula; the Florentine Republic, for example, built, maintained and developed citadels
in such subject cities as Prato, Pisa and Volterra. Florences acquisition of Prato in 1351 was followed by the construction of a fortified passageway to allow troops to reinforce, from outside the town
walls, the Castello dellImperatore built by Frederick II closer to
the center of the city.36 The Republics acquisition of Pisa in 1406
led to the building of unpopular cittadelle, which were enhanced in
the sixteenth century.37 In 1439 when Florence was anxious about
the defense and loyalty of its frontiers, much attention was directed at the state of readiness of its cassero or cittadella in Arezzo.38 After Volterras rebellion in 1472, Florence greatly enlarged
the earlier, fourteenth-century Rocca Vecchia garrisoned in 1342
by Walter de Brienne to dominate as well as defend the city.39 Indeed the construction of such urban fortifications or the modification of older structures to take account of gunpowder artillery might
35 Hale, Fortezza, p. 503. The Welshman, William Thomas, in his Historie of
Italie first published in London in 1549, described the Fortezza as a Cittadella, more
than a mile and half in compass, built by the last Duke Alexander as a bridle to the
Florentines because he had newly taken their liberties from them: Angelo Deidda,
Maria Grazia Dongu; Laura Sanna, Lezioni ai Potenti. William Thomas e lItalia
(CUEC Editrice: Cagliari, 2002), p. 270.
36 Giulio Giani, Prato e la sua Fortezza (Bologna: Forni, 1976), pp. 100-109.
37 Michele Luzzati, Una Guerra di Popolo (Pisa, Universita di Pisa, 1973), pp.
129, 561-562, 580; Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 204ff; Carlo Perogalli, Rocche e Forti Medicei (Milan: Rusconi, 1980), pp. 90-91; Renato Della Torre, Pisa (Pisa: Pacini,
1986), pp. 176 and 185; see also several of the contributions to Ennio Concina, ed.,
Arsenali e Citta nellOccidente Europeo (Rome: la Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1987). For
Prato and Pisa, see Law, The Significance, p. 175.
38 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Dieci di Balia, Responsive Originali, reg. 10; Pier
Lodovico Rupi, La Fortezza Medicea di Arezzo (Arezzo: Banca Popolare dellEtruria,
1998), pp. 15-16. For the Florentine republics concern for its rule in Arezzo, see
Arthur Field. Leonardo Bruni, Florentine Traitor? Bruni, the Medici and an Aretine
Conspiracy of 1437, Renaissance Quarterly, LI/4 (1998), pp. 1109-1150.
39 Gabriele Cateni and Alessandro Furiesi, La Citta di Pietra. Mura Etrusche e
Mediervali di Volterra (Pisa: Pacini, 2005), pp. 148-157.
284
JOHN EASTON LAW
have contributed to Machiavellis interest in the subject.

However, if actual military developments encouraged the discussion of the efficacy of fortresses, another factor as Gilbert,
Hale and others have recognized was literary and classical. The
military and political worth of fortifications was a subject for discussion among classical writers, and it is tempting to see the reflections of Machiavelli and others on the subject as typically Renaissance, combining an alert awareness of contemporary developments with a knowledgeable appreciation of the interested classical authorities. However, to give too much emphasis to the issue
in literary terms risks undervaluing the very real concerns of Machiavelli and his contemporaries.
Moreover, the debate on the efficacy of fortifications had a
longer medieval and Renaissance tradition than some commentators have recognized. As Gilbert points out, Machiavellis statement
that the best fortress is not to be hated by the people was anticipated by the Neapolitan political and military thinker Diomede
Carafa, who wrote in his Doveri del Principe of the 1470s, Neither castles nor walls will be more nearly impregnable than the defense which consists in having the spirits of your people well disposed towards you.40 Much earlier, in 1369, Petrarch had written
to Francesco da Carrara il Vecchio, citing Cicero to the effect that
fear is a poor safeguard for the prince.41
The theme emerges again among the petitions presented by
Verona on its surrender to Venice in 1405, and in the Republics skilful response. The Veronese asked that the Cittadella should never
be rebuilt or turned into a fortress.42 The Republic refused the request, but added that it hoped that the hearts of the Veronese would
be at one with Venice, and that their good will would become the
citadel and source of security. The same issue emerged when the citizens of Foligno surrendered to Cardinal Vitelleschi in 1439; they
40 Allan Gilbert, Machiavellis Prince and its Forerunners (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1938), p. 159.
41 The Earthly Republic, ed. by Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), p. 46.
42 Law, The Significance, p. 177.
285
asked that the cassaro built within the city walls by their previous
lords, the Trinci now perceived as tyrants be demolished.43
In 1444 or 1445, Borso dEste addressed a memorandum to Alfonso I which included the reminder that the fortress of a state
consists principally of the love of the subjects.44 Borsos claim
that this advice was a reminder has a considerable irony to it, as
his ancestors built the formidable Castello Estense in Ferrara following the rebellion against the regime in 1385. However taken
together with other, unrelated, observations on the same theme
it suggests that it was a commonplace of medieval and Renaissance
political thought. In 1495, Borsos niece, Isabella, expressed a similar idea, again in the context of Naples: Every ruler should set
greater value on the hearts of his subjects than on fortresses, money or men at arms, for the discontent of citizens is a more serious
cause of war than the enemy at the gate.45 And such observations
had a European dimension. In his edition of Il Principe, A.L. Burd
cites an anonymous fifteenth-century French poem which expresses sentiments close to those of Carafa.46
Finally, at times deeds could speak more loudly than words.
One of the reasons for the fall of Walter de Brienne, duke of
Athens, in Florence in 1343 was his attempt to turn the seat of communal government, the Palazzo della Signoria, into a fortress to
strengthen his authority. Of course the Palazzo is in the center of
the city, far from its walls and gates. But Vasari claimed in his life
of Andrea Pisano that the duke had plans to build a fortress at the
gate of San Giorgio, where the Medici were to construct a citadel
in the 1590s.47 The Lucchese chronicler Sercambi describes the ferocity with which the Lucchesi destroyed a fortress in the city, pos43 John E. Law, Profile of a Renaissance Cardinal, in I Vitelleschi. Fonti, Realta e Mito, ed. by Giovanna Mencarelli (Tarquinia: Comune di Tarquinia, 1998), pp.
70-71, and The Significance, p. 178.
44 Gilbert, Machiavellis Prince, p. 159.
45 David S. Chambers, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, Liberator
of Italy, in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, ed. by David Abulafia (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), p. 222.
46 Machiavelli, Il Principe, p. 335.
47 Giorgio Vasari, Lives, I (London 1912), pp. 128-129; Nicolai Rubinstein, The
Palazzo Vecchio (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 15-16.
286
JOHN EASTON LAW
sibly associated with Pisan rule.48 Writing in 1977, Judith Hook

vividly described the sequence of events which followed the Spanish surrender of the citadel in Siena in 1552.49
But words, and actions, could fail. When Francesco Sforza secured the duchy of Milan in 1450, he was urged not to rebuild the
Visconti castle at the Porta Giovia, a citadel dismantled by the
Ambrosian Republic following the death of Filippo Maria Visconti
in 1447. The lawyer Giorgio Piatti, who addressed Milans new
ruler, did not criticize Francesco Sforza explicitly, but he tried to
suggest that in the wrong hands such a fortress could become a seat
of tyranny. The plea or advice was ignored, and what became
known as the Castello Sforzesco was built.50
In his treatise on architecture, Leon Batista Alberti stated that
a tyrant should live in a fortress rather than a palace and that
this should have the appearance of a prison more than of a residence of a great prince. This essay has tried to suggest that such
observations had political and military reality as well as literary
tradition behind them. But Albertis words also point to something
that has so far been ignored. Not all Renaissance lords felt the
need to live in fortresses, at least not all the time. For example, as
has been mentioned, the Este built the formidable Castello Estense which dominated the city center of Ferrara,51 but they also
favored and lived in unfortified suburban and rural residences like
Palazzo Schifanoia. Citadels in Verona, Pavia and Milan could take
on an air of courtly magnificence behind their fortifications.52
48 Woods-Marsden, Images of Castles, p. 130.

49 Judith Hook, Fortifications and the End of the Sienese State, History, LXII
(1977), pp. 376-378.

50 Bernardino Corio, LHistoria di Milano (Padua: Frambotto, 1646), pp. 790791; Carlo de Rosmini, DellIstoria di Milano, II (Milan: Tipografia Manini-Rivolta,
1820), pp. 460-462; F. Catalano, in Storia di Milano, VII (Milan: Fondazione Treccani, 1956), pp. 13-14; Welch, Art and Authority, pp. 175-176, although Milans
spokesman was Giorgio, not Giovanni, Piatti. This episode in the history of Milan invites further scrutiny.
51 Originally dedicated, like the Castel SantAngelo in Rome, to Saint Michael,
the scourge of rebellion against divine order.
52 Gian Maria Varanini, Castelvecchio come residenza nella tarda eta scaligera,
Verona Illustrata, II (1989), pp. 11-18; Evelyn Welch, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the
287
Moreover, the worth and value of fortifications could be defended and even celebrated by their owners and builders, if resented and criticized by their subjects and enemies. Castruccio Castracane proudly called his citadel Augusta. The Da Carrara displayed their emblem, the carro (cart) on the Reggia of Padua.53
Sigismondo Malatesta named his citadel in Rimini, begun in 1437,
after himself, and had it celebrated in a fresco by Piero della
Francesca and a medal by Matteo de Pasti. Emulating the Castel
Sismondo in Rimini, on 3 June 1474 Costanzo Sforza laid the foundation stone to the Rocca Costanza in Pesaro.54 Despite his own experience, Lodovico Maria Sforza observed in 1500, The solidarity and preservation of states consists of two things, soldiers and respect for fortifications.55 A report to Alessandro VI on the political climate in Camerino in 1503 urged that the inhabitants should
be won over to the Borgia regime, but also that the citys defenses
should be strengthened and a rocca built within the walls.56 Julius
II, posing as a liberator when he entered Bologna in 1506, ordered
the construction of a citadel at the Porta Galliera a citadel which
was, apparently, to be destroyed five times in its history.57
Citadels, therefore, in the view of their builders, and their supporters, could be given a positive rather than a sinister interpretation as an appropriate residence for the prince who was the controlling mind of the body politic. In his Treatise elaborated towards
the end of the fifteenth century, Francesco di Giorgio Martini
Castello di Pavia, Art Bulletin, 71 (1990), pp. 352-375, The Image of a FifteenthCentury Court, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LIII (1990), pp. 164165; Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995).
53 Paul Kaplan, The Storm of War. The Paduan Key to Giorgiones Tempesta,
Art History, IV (1986), p. 406.
54 Fabio Mariano, Architettura nelle Marche (Fiesole: Nardini, 1995), pp. 276277. A report of May 1474 gives a clear indication of the importance of the ciptadella
to Costanzo Sforza, the speed with which he wanted the building to proceed and the
amount of money 150.00 ducats he was prepared to spend on it; Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Ducato di Urbino, Cl. I, Div. A, Filza III/2 , fol. 672, no. 66.
55 Woods-Marsden, Images of Castles, pp. 13 and 133.
56 Law, City, Court and Contado, p. 176.
57 Richard J. Tuttle, Against Fortifications. The Defense of Renaissance
Bologna, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, LXI (1982), pp. 189-201.
288
JOHN EASTON LAW
adopted a traditional medieval concept of the body politic when

expressing the relationship of the fortress to the rest of the city, with
a fortress associated with the princes head.58 This reworking of an
old idea, and Albertis observations on the ruler and his residence,
point to the issues that later concerned Machiavelli.
Francesco di Giorgio was a leading military architect and engineer, and this introduces a final point: the debate over citadels in
Renaissance Italy was not confined to political ideas, propaganda
or high politics the struggle between liberty and tyranny. The political, administrative, financial and physical impact of such constructions on the lives of a community could be both immediate
and long-lasting. Citadels, as in Verona, were expensive to construct and maintain. Their building could involve the imposition
of labor services and material requisitioning. They took up space,
often requiring the destruction, seizure, forced purchase or exchange of property. Religious communities as well as the laity could
suffer. The disciplining of their garrisons could cause problems.
And, of course, they provided no secure defense against attack or
revolt.
Machiavelli and others discussed the last issue. The realities of
the others occupy the generally less eloquent and less well-known
holdings of archives across Italy. But the main point of this essay
has been to argue that while the signori certainly did build fortresses and citadels to impress and overawe their subjects, they were
not the only forms of government to do so, and in the case of signorial regimes in residence these structures could acquire a
more courtly, accessible and celebratory role.
Symonds was making an informed point when he observed,
The life of the Despot was usually one of prolonged terror. Immured in strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy
fortresses like the Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person
with foreign troops, protected his bedchamber with a picked
guard, and watched his meat and drink lest they should be poi-
58 Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattato di Architettura, ed. by Pietro Marani
(Florence: Giunti, 1979), I, p. 4.
289
soned.59 The sinister, negative, gothic impression Symonds gives

is certainly one that appears in a good deal of the literature on medieval and Renaissance Italy.60 Much more recently, in his Power
and Imagination, Lauro Martines restated the case, The most brutal and obvious manifestation of the princes power was his residence in the city: a fortress designed to withstand riot, revolution
or war.61 The signorial citadel could certainly be associated with
violence experienced, ongoing or anticipated but this was not
the whole picture.62
59 Symonds, The Age, p. 92.

60 For Ferrara, see Augustus Hare, Cities of Northern Italy, II (London: George
Allen, n.d.), pp. 193-194. For Rome and Perugia, see Law, The Significance, p. 169.
61 Power and Imagination; City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf,
1979), p. 306. Martines was thinking of Milan and Ferrara in particular. For Ferrara,
see above, note 20 and 60.
62 As suggested above, note 14, the issue of the fortress/citadel had much more
than an Italian dimension; see for example Kirsten Deiter, The Tower of London in
English Renaissance Drama. Icon of Opposition (London: Routledge, 2008); John Marriott, Beyond the Tower: a History of East London (London: Yale University Press,
2011).
INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES
Abruzzi, 240
Achilles, 140
Adige, 280
Adimari, family, 58
Adorno, Antoniotto, 266
Aigoni, family, 56
Aiuto, Berengario, 151
Albertanus of Brescia, 40, 41
Alberti, Leon Battista, 286, 288
Albornoz, Gil, Cardinal, 241, 278
Alessandro VI, Pope, 287
Alexander of Scotland, 108
Alfonso dAvalos, 264
Alfonso of Aragon, 235
Alfonso I, 285
Alfonso V, 149, 152, 154
Alighieri, Dante, 56, 59, 60, 66
Alps (Alpi fiorentine), 100, 110, 113,
115
Amato, family, 157
Giovanni, 151, 157
Orlando, 157, 158
Amore, Bartolomeo, 158, 161
Anagni, 240
Anguillara, Orso degli, 245
Ancarano College, 192, 194, 195,
196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201,
202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208,
209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215
Marioni, student, 201, 203, 204
Morandi, student, 201, 204
Passionei, student, 201, 204
Andrea Pisano, 285
Angera, 232
Anghiari, 110, 115
Anjou, 164
Anonimo Romano, 238, 242, 252,
253, 254, 256
Antonio da Bruscolo, 177
Antonio da Sangallo, 282
Antonio de Leyva, 261, 264
Aprea, Giovanni, 151, 154
Aquinas, Thomas, 54, 60
Arabia, 247
Aragon, Eleonora of, 135
Arras, 118
Ardinghelli, family, 56
Arezzo, 85, 90, 93, 94, 110
Ascheri, Mario, 221
Asciano, 89, 96
Asti, 229, 268
Augustine, Saint, 59, 139
Aurifice, Gandolfo de, 151
Avignon, 237, 239, 240, 247, 248,
251, 253
Azario, Pietro, 225
Baglioni, family, 56
Bakhtin, Michail, 128
Barbavara, Francesco, 228, 229, 230
Bartolomeo Carbone de Papazurri,
250
Basilico, family, 164
Beatrice of Portugal, 266
Beccaria, family, 107
Cesare, 117
Beik, William, 135, 136, 137, 139
Benedict XI, Pope, 50
Benevento, 63
Bentivoglio, family, 170, 171, 177,
292
180, 182, 186

Giovanni, 168, 169, 170, 174, 178,
179, 185, 188
Benvenuti, Anna, 83
Berc, Yves-Marie, 129
Bergamo, 234
Bertolino de Zamboni, 231
Biella, 267
Billanovich, Giuseppe, 248, 250, 251
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 248
Bologna, 21, 22, 45, 56, 94, 106, 167,
168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173,
174, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183,
185, 187, 188, 191, 192, 193,
194, 197, 198, 199, 210, 211,
213, 216, 246, 287
Palazzo Paleotti, 199
Porta Galliera, 287
Porta Ravennate, 179
San Petronio, 196
SantAndrea dei Penitenzieri, 205
via dei Malcontenti, 205
via del Guasto, 199
via San Donato, 199
via Santo Stefano, 199
via Val DAposa, 195
via Zamboni, 199
Bonacolsi, family, 274
Rainaldo, known as Passerino, 94
Boncompagni, Giacomo, Archbishop, 206, 207
Boniface VIII, Pope, 49
Boniface IX, 183
Borgia, family, 276, 287
Botero, Giovanni, 59
Boucheron, Patrick, 32
Boucicaut, French marshal, 279
Bourdieu, Pierre, 36
Brandini, Ciuto, 107
Brembre, Nicholas, 109
Brescia, 21, 119, 234, 257, 269
Brizzi, Gian Paolo, 195
Bruges, 119
Buonaccorsi, Bonaccorso, 214
Burckhardt, Jacob, 19, 23, 273
Burgundy, 131
Burke, Peter, 137
Bussolari, Jacopo, 107
Cabrera, Raimondo, 152
Cade, Jack, 109
Caithness, 108
Calais, 87, 109
Calorosi, family, 36, 37
Camerino, 274, 275, 276, 287
Campaldino, 85, 94, 96
Cancellieri, family, 61
Cane, Facino, 234
Caninoca, Giacomo, 38
Caporale, Domenico, 204
Carafa, Diomede, 284
Caracciolo, Mariano Ascanio, 265
Carioso, Alfonso de, 162
Carlsmith, Christopher, 22
Carminati, Paolo, 206, 215
Carroll, Stuart, 142
Casati, family, 232
Cascina, 90
Casentino, 110, 113
Castel Bonizi, 116
Castel Capuano, 139
Castracane, Castruccio, 279, 287
Castro Carchiano, 114
Castro Montevettoloni, 115
Catania, 149, 150, 161, 165
Cavalcab, family, 273
Cavallini, Giovanni, 250, 251, 256
Ceffi, Filippo, 42, 58
Cerchi, family, 49, 50, 51, 61, 62
Cesena, 21
Ceva, 260
Changenet, Antoine, 131
Charles I, 195
Charles III, duke of Savoy, 266
Charles IV of Bohemia, 100, 241
Charles V, 258, 260
Chartres, 249
Cherubini, Giovanni, 95
Chianti, 113
Chittolini, Giorgio, 221
Cicero, 252, 284

Ciompi, 21, 103, 110, 187
Clement VI, Pope, 240, 241, 253,
254
Clement X, Pope, 214
Cognasso, Francesco, 222, 225, 232,
233
Cohn, Samuel K. Jr., 15, 20
Cola di Rienzo, 22, 33, 237, 238, 239,
240, 241, 242, 251, 252, 253,
254, 255, 256
Collins, Randall, 16
Colonna, family, 56, 242, 243, 244,
246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251,
252, 256
Giovanni, Cardinal, 242, 246, 247,
249, 251, 253, 254
Girolamo, 196
Landolfo, 249
Pietro, 249
Stefano (il Vecchio), 240, 245, 246,
255
Comberton, John, 109
Compagni, Dino, 61, 62, 278
Concini, Concino, 136, 137
Coniglio, Giuseppe, 138
Corio, Bernardino, 229
Council of Chalcedon, 133
Council of Constance, 184, 273
Council of Trent, 196, 212
Cossa, Baldassarre, Cardinal, 169,
184
Crapanzano, Ruggero, 158, 161
Cremona, 273, 275
Crescenzi, Nicolaus, 244
Crouzet Pavan, Elizabeth, 32
Cyprus, 247
Da Carrara, family, 277, 287
Francesco, 284
Da Varano, family, 274, 275
Dean, Trevor, 117
Della Scala, family, 95
Cangrande II, 279
Della Torre, family, 61, 130, 223
293
Guido, 223, 224

Denti, family, 150, 151, 152, 153,
154, 155, 156, 157
Andrea, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154,
157, 158
Francesco, 150, 151, 152
Giovanni, 154
Dinant, 119
Dijon, 129, 132
Dolcino, Friar, 101
Domenico di Lassi, 104
Dominici, Giovanni, 62
Donati, family, 49, 50, 51, 61
Doria, Andrea, 266
Doria, Gino, 138
Dorini, Umberto, 112
Doyle, William, 123
Duby, Georges, 96
Edward I, 108
Egypt, 247
Elias, Norbert, 100
England, 108, 249
Este, family, 135, 278
Borso, 285
Ercole I, 135, 274
Leonello, 274
Niccol, 274
Europe, 100, 140, 141, 192, 248
Ezzelino da Romano, 274
Faenza, 184
Farnese, family, 194, 195, 210
Alessandro, 195
Fasoli, Gina, 56
Federico II, 81, 88
Federico III, 148
Felini, Francesco, 207
Ferrara, 106, 120, 134, 135, 179, 185,
274, 286
Castello Estense, 278, 279, 286
Palazzo Schifanoia, 286
Fieschi, family, 56
Fiesole, 15
Fiji Islands, 134
294
Fitz Osbert, William, 108

Flaminio della Torre, 197
Flanders, 107, 249
Florence, 15, 16, 33, 37, 38, 39, 42,
49, 53, 64, 86, 89, 90, 91, 103,
105, 107, 110, 111, 113, 187,
188, 233, 270, 282, 283
Palazzo Vecchio, 282
San Felice in Piazza, 114
San Lorenzo, 114
San Miniato, 282
San Simone, 114
Santa Croce, 112, 114
Santa Maria Novella, 50
Santo Spirito, 112, 114
Floriano di Benvenuto, 178
Foligno, 275, 278
Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri,
222
Fondolo, Cabrino, 273
France, 100, 101, 107, 239, 247, 248,
249, 251
Franciscans, 241
Freund, Julien, 33
Froissart, Jean, 101
Fucecchio, 111
Gaenna, 114
Gascon, infantry, 268
Gaspar de Coligny, 136
Gaston dOrlean, 132
Genoa, 21, 38, 39, 56, 89, 90, 93,
119, 233, 262, 266, 271, 279
Castelletto, 279
Geremei, family, 56
Germany, 140
Ghent, 119
Gherardesca, family, 56
Ghibelline; Ghibellines, 36, 55, 56,
63, 65, 85, 92, 181, 187, 229,
231, 234, 274
Ghiselli, Antonio Francesco, 200
Ghislieri, Alessandro, 202
Giacomo da Preunti, 176
Giamboni, Bono, 58
Gilbert, Allan, 284

Gilli, Patrick, 32
Giotto, 57
Giovanni da Cermenate, 224
Giovanni da Legnano, 176
Ginzburg, Carlo, 133, 134
Giovanni da Cermenate, 61
Giovanni da Vignano, 41
Gloucester, 109
Gluckmann. Max, 128
Gonzaga, family, 133, 274
Ercole, 133
Francesco, 262
Graisolfi, family, 56
Green, Louis, 279
Gregorio di Massimo di ser Guoro,
184
Grierson, Philip, 88, 93
Griffoni, Matteo, 175, 178, 181, 188,
201, 202, 203
Gozzadini, family, 175, 177, 178,
179, 181, 185, 186
Nanne, 186
Graziolo da Tosignano, 184
Guantanamo, 142
Guasconi, family, 184
Guelph; Guelphs, 36, 55, 56, 65, 85,
88, 91, 92, 94, 117, 181, 230,
231, 232, 234
Black Guelphs; the Blacks, 49, 50,
53, 57, 61
Parte Guelfa, 187
White Guelphs; the Whites, 49, 57,
61
Guicciardini, Francesco, 282
Grillo, Paolo, 22
Hector, 140
Henry IV, 132
Henry VII, 223, 224, 239
Hobsbawn, Eric J, 128
Holy Church of Rome, 63
Holstein, Alizah, 22
Hook, Judith, 286
Hungarian-Illyrian College, 194, 214
Iacopo dal Verme, 230

Italy, 23, 34, 95, 106, 241, 247, 289
Jean dAuton, 262
Jean le Bel, 101
Jerusalem, 67
Jews, 99, 100
John the Baptist, 88, 94
John XXII, Pope, 246
John XXIII, (anti-) Pope, 184, 273
Julius, II, Pope, 211, 287
Julius Cesar, 252
Kent, 109
La Ripa, Melchiori, 158
Lactantius, 250, 251
Lambertazzi, family, 56
Lantschner, Patrick, 21
Latini, Brunetto, 58
Lautrec, 263
Law, John, 23
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 128,
129, 130, 131
League of Cambrai, 268
League of Cognac, 258
Livy, 250, 252, 256
Llewellyn, David, 108
Lombardy, 185, 258
London, 108, 109, 110
Lope de Soria, 261, 266
Lope Hurtado de Mendoza, 261,
267
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 53
Louis XII, 262
Louis XIII, 131, 132, 136
Lucca, 43, 89, 94, 279, 280
Lunigiana, 260
Luyken, Ian, 139
Machiavelli, Niccol, 281, 282, 284,
288
Magna Regia Curia, 152, 162
Maire Vigueur, Jean-Claude, 31, 35,
36, 37
295
Malaspina, 260
Malatesta, family, 184, 274
Carlo, 231, 233
Sigismondo, 287
Maltraversi, family, 170, 174, 175,
176, 177, 178, 181, 182
Malvezzi, family, 194
Manfredi, family, 184
Mangiadori, family, 117
Mannelli, family, 39
Manni, Giacomo, 103
Mantua, 36, 94, 259, 263, 274
Manzoli, Bartolomeo, 209, 210, 211,
212, 213, 214, 215
Marches, 274, 275
Marchese del Vasto, 264, 271
Marchese di Pescara, 266
Marcel, Etienne, 101
Marescalchi, Giacomo, 184
Marescotti, family, 194
Martin I, 148
Martin, Duke of Montblanch, 153
Martines, Lauro, 289
Martini, Francesco di Giorgio, 287,
288
Marx, Karl, 123
Masaniello, 140
Masetti, Severo, 203
Matteo de Libri, 41
Matteo de Pasti, 287
Medici, family, 111, 117, 282, 283,
285
Giangiacomo, 264
Maria de, 132, 136
Meloria, 89, 96
Menant, Franois, 32
Miglio, Gianfranco, 33
Miglio, Massimo, 248
Milan, 22, 61, 64, 95, 113, 167, 168,
170, 172, 179, 185, 186, 222,
223, 224, 227, 230, 232, 233,
235, 236, 259, 260, 261, 263,
264, 265, 274, 275, 282, 286
Fabbrica del Duomo, 227
Porta Giovia, 278, 286
296
Modena, 56, 94, 203

Moeglin, Jean-Marie, 87
Monferrato, 260, 261
Montalto College, 194, 195, 209, 214
Montaperti, 86, 96
Montecatini, 110, 117
Montefeltro, family, 274
Federigo, 276
Montauri, Paolo di Tommaso, 86
Monza, 232
Morone, Gerolamo, 261
Muir, Edward, 59, 127, 129, 130,
131, 141
Mussato, Albertino, 61
Naples, 137, 195, 285
Neri di Donato, 104
Nero, 135
Newgate, 109
Nocera, 275
Nollet, papal legate, 174
Norwich, 108
Novara, 225
Oddi, family, 56
Olmo, village, 38
Orsini, family, 56, 256
Giordano, 245
Ortalli, Gherardo, 97
Oxford, 191
Padua, 61, 191, 277
Carrara, castello, 280
Reggia of, 287
Paleotti, Gabriele, Cardinal, 196,
211
Palermo, 146, 149, 150, 151, 154,
155, 158, 159, 161
Paoletti, Camillo, 195, 199
Paoletti, Gabriele, 195
Paolo da Certaldo, 43, 58
Papal State, 185, 261, 278
Paris, 101, 136, 247
Parma, 37, 45, 181, 195, 207, 210,
277
Parrino, Domenico Antonio, 138

Patrizi, Francesco, 62, 63
Patti, 161
Paul III, Pope, 211
Paul IV, Pope, 133
Pavia, 107, 119, 258, 260, 280, 286
Peleus, 140
Pepoli, family, 168, 181, 185
Persia, 247
Perugia, 43, 52, 56, 90
Pescara, 267
Pescia, 115
Petrarch, 237, 240, 244, 245, 246,
247, 250, 251, 284
Piatti, Giorgio, 286
Piazza, 145, 158, 159, 161, 163, 166
Piedmont, 23, 261, 266, 267, 268,
271
Pierleoni, family, 243
Piero della Francesca, 287
Pietramala, 119
Pietro DAncarano, 194, 209
Pinsent, Cecil, 15
Pisa, 56, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 283
Pisano, Gio Leonardo, 139
Pistoia, 43, 45, 111, 270
Pius II, Pope, 170
Pius V, Pope, 133
Poeti, Angelo, 184
Polizzi, 146, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155,
156, 166
San Blasio, 150
San Giorgio, 150
Santa Maria Maggiore, 150
Santa Maria Maddalena, 150
San Nicol, 150
San Pancrazio, 150
Poltroni, family, 36, 37
Porschnev, Boris, 131
Porro, Antonio, count of Pollenzo,
229, 230
Porto, Angelo, 206, 215
Prague, 237, 241
Prato, 21, 119, 278, 283
Pucci, Antonio, 92
Puppi, Lionello, 140

Quran, 142
Randazzo, 146, 162, 163, 164, 166
Ranum, Orest, 136
Raggiolo, 119
Rashdall, Hastings, 191
Remigio de Girolami, 49, 50, 53, 66
Renda, Tommaso di, 161
Repubblica Ambrosiana (Republic
of SantAmbrogio), 22, 221, 235,
286
Rhineland, 99, 100
Ricci, Giovanni, 134
Ricciardelli, Fabrizio, 15, 20
Richard II, 109
Rigiu, laymo de, alias De Pace, 162,
163
Rimini, 184, 274
Castel Sismondo, 287
Rodolico, Niccol, 102
Rome, 17, 22, 33, 56, 135, 238, 239,
240, 241, 242, 246, 247, 248,
251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257
Capitoline Hill, 245
Castel SantAngelo, 243
Colosseum, 250
Mausoleum of Augustus, 244
Pantheon, 250
St. Angelo in Peschiera, 246
St. John Lateran, 237, 238
St. Peter Basilica, 245
Theater of Marcello, 243
Tiber River, 239
Vatican, 244
Rosaldo, Renato, 141
Roveto, 268
Russo, family, 163, 164
Muni, 163
Pietro, 162, 163
Spatafora, Antonio, President, 157
Rutenburg, Victor, 102
Rwanda, 99
297
Sagaci, Matteo, 202

Salimbeni, family, 105
Sallust, 61, 256
Saluzzo, 260
Salvucci, family, 56
San Casciano, 116
San Gimignano, 56
San Gueninello, 116
San Miniato, 110, 113, 116, 117
Santayana, George, 15
Savorgnan, family, 130
Sbriccoli, Mario, 51
Scacchesi, family, 174, 175, 177, 178,
181, 182
Scappi, family, 177
Ugolino, 181
Schiner, Matthus, Cardinal, 259
Schmitt, Carl, 33
Schama, Simone, 123
Scott, Geoffrey, 15
Scott, Marquisa de Larrain, 15
Scott, Susan, 24
Screpanti, Ernesto, 102
Seminario Vescovile, 192
Seneca, 252
Sercambi, Giovanni, 285
Serchio, river, 88
Settia, Aldo, 82
Sforza, family, 259, 274, 286
Francesco, 235, 236, 260, 261, 263,
265, 281, 282, 286
Guido Ascanio, 195
Lodovico Maria, 287
Sharpe, Jack, 109
Shaw, Christine, 22
Sicily, 146, 148, 150, 155
Siena, 62, 85, 104, 191, 286
Compagnia del Bruco, 103, 104
Palazzo Pubblico, 53
Simiand, Franois, 127
Soltes, Ori, 24
Spadaro, Micco, 140
Spanish College, 194, 209, 214
Spiegel, Gabrielle, 124
Spinola, family, 56
298
Spoleto, 45, 278

Stefani, Marchionne di Coppo, 94
Straw, Jack, 108
Strong, Charles Augustus, 15
Symonds, John Addington, 273, 288,
289
Taddei, Ilaria, 20
Terzi, Ottobuono, 230
Thompson, Edward P., 126, 128
Tilly, Charles, 128, 131
Titone, Fabrizio, 21
Torrazzo, 273
Tosinghi, family, 58
Tournai, 107
Treviso, 274, 278
Trexler, Richard, 83, 94
Trinci, family, 275, 285
Corrado, 275
Tronci, Paolo, 91, 92
Troyli, Placido, 138
Tura, Cosm, 135
Turner, Voctor, 128
Tuscany, 84, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96,
229, 239, 270
Tyler, Wat, 108
Ubaldini, family, 111, 114
Udine, 129
University of Turin, 202
Urbino, 274, 276
Urrea, Ximenes Lope de, Viceroy,
151, 162, 163
Val di Chiana, 110
Val Polcevera, 262
Valdinievole, 113
Valerius Maximus, 252, 256
Valois, Charles of, 49
Van Dlmen, Richard, 140
Van Gennep, Arnold, 133
Varanini, Gian Maria, 84, 95, 269
Vasari, Giorgio, 285
Velluti, family, 39
Veneto, 239, 261
Venice, 89, 93, 186, 233, 284

Ventrone, Paola, 84
Vercelli, 234
Verona, 52, 95, 171, 186, 187, 188,
279, 280, 281, 286, 288
Castelvecchio, 279
Vespasian, 237, 255
Vicenza, 269
Villani, Giovanni, 58, 61, 85, 88, 94,
278, 279
Villari, Rosario, 137
Visconti family, 22, 56, 167, 168, 186,
221, 223, 224, 225, 227, 228,
230, 234, 235, 236, 277, 280
Antonio, 228
Azzone (Azzo), 94, 224, 225
Bernab (Barnab), 224, 226, 232,
275
Filippo Maria, 234, 235, 275, 286
Francesco, 228
Galeazzo, 223, 224
Galeazzo II, 280
Giangaleazzo, 22, 169, 185, 186,
222, 226, 227, 234, 235, 274,
278, 279
Giovanni Maria, 224, 227, 231,
232, 234
Matteo, 223, 224
Vitelleschi, Cardinal, 284
Volterra, 283
Walsingham, Thomas, 109
Walter of (de) Brienne, 33, 282, 283,
285
Wanrooij, Bruno P., 15, 16, 24
Weber, Max, 29
White, Stephen, 143
Wickham, Chris, 31
Zambeccari, Carlo, 174, 175, 176,
177, 178
Zambia, 128
Zemon Davis, Natalie, 128, 129
Zorzi, Andrea, 20, 112, 117

Culture - of - Violence in Italy

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Villa Le Balze Studies

Villa Le Balze Studies

THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

In copertina: G. Sercambi, Come si fenno alquanti chavalieri e corsensi

Il convegno stato patrocinato da:

Copyright 2012 by Casa Editrice Le Lettere Firenze

Preface by Josiah Osgood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Introduction by Samuel Kline Cohn Jr. and Fabrizio

PART ONE: VIOLENCE AS A FORM OF POLITICAL RESOLUTION

Fabrizio Ricciardelli, Violence and Repression in

Ilaria Taddei, Recalling the Affront: Rituals of War in

Samuel Kline Cohn Jr., Repression of Popular Revolt in

PART TWO: VIOLENCE AND REVOLTS

Fabrizio Titone, Presentation and Practice of Violence

Patrick Lantschner, The Nourisher of Seditions:

Christopher Carlsmith, Cacci fuori un bastone bianco:

Alizah Holstein, Nourished on the Milk of Eloquence:

Christine Shaw, Popular Resistance to Military

John Easton Law, Signorial Citadels in Late Medieval

Index of names and places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To Bruno P. Wanrooij (1954-2009),

Samuel K. Cohn Jr. (University of Glasgow)

ciales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes de lOccident la fin du Moyen

says on youth confraternities, games, rituals, sumptuary laws, the notion

Fabrizio Titone (University of Pas Vasco)

Foundation, and a Fulbright Dissertation Award. In 2009-2010 he was

(Professor of Classics, Georgetown University and Chair,

With this volume we re-launch the publication series sponsored by

pably served as Director of Villa Le Balze in the last few years of

Jacob Burckhardts The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

of Political Resolution. Violence can be expressed through many

argues that the brutality of city-states towards rebels increased

versity within the city walls and organizations outside it contado

its place, she supplies a new, unexplored picture of these violent

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION

la Sorbonne, 2001); Conflict in Medieval Europe. Changing Perspectives on Society and

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

This view frames vendetta as the very symbol of violence among

lowing contemporary chroniclers representations, such practices

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

if we adopt that approach, we are in danger of failing to nuance

The results of these recent studies begin to define certain facets

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

ergies for a long time; I am referring in particular to the work of

nentium, ed. by Gino Masi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1943).

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

they could have drastic economic or political repercussions, and

su pratiche e culture politiche nellItalia comunale, Archivio storico italiano, CLXX

selves may have influenced this interpretation: Maire Vigueurs

22 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, p. 307.

timagnatizi, in Ordinamenti di giustizia fiorentini. Studi in occasione del VII centenario,

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

nected with the main ecclesiastical bodies in one way or another

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

30 Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens, pp. 310ff.

constant. This is proven by an analysis of pedagogical literature used

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

This text deserves further comment, and I have commented on

35 Zorzi, La cultura della vendetta, pp. 144-158.

communales (XIIIe sicle), in Cultures italiennes (XIIe-XVe sicles), ed. by Isabelle

vani et rozzi gathered by Filippo Ceffi from Florence in about

LEGITIMATION AND LEGAL SANCTION OF VENDETTA

Not a single author from the communal period who takes a