Italian City Republics

• Bartolus de Saxoferrato


  Italian law professor and one of the most prominent continental jurists of Medieval Roman Law, belonged to the school known as the commentators or postglossators, 1313-1357
• Frederick I excommunicated by Alexander III


  1160
• "at one time great discord arose between the Roman church and Frederick I": 'BS'
• Ambrogio Lorenzetti or Ambruogio Laurati


  Italian painter of the Sienese school, active from approximately 1317 to 1348, painted The Allegory of Good and Bad Government in the Sala dei Nove in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico
• Dictamen


  Rule, pronouncement
• Lombard Cities


  1167, the Lombard League initially consisted of 16 cities, later expanded to 20, including Milan, Venice, Mantua, Padua, Brescia, and Lodi, backed from its beginning by Pope Alexander III against Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa
• Peace of Constance 1183


  Ended the conflict between Frederick I and the Lombard League, later acted as a foundational document for the communes
• Communes


  Oligarchic republics governed by a Council composed by members of the richest and most important families of the city (nobles and bourgeois) and representatives of the guilds
• Legislative assemblies of the communes


  Heads of households "popolo minuto" and of the guilds' members "popolo grasso"
• General area of communes

  • North of Italy, from Alps to Naples (bcs in Naples there was a monarchy that prevented the growth of independent municipalities)
• 200-300 City states at end of 12th cent. thus it is silly to try and generalise the experiences found within them
• Venice as an outlier due to 'a maritime empire'
• Benjamin of Tudela describes the communes: ''They possess neither king nor prince to govern them, but only the judges appointed by themselves''
• 3 long-term trends in Italian political structure that led to the emergence of communes


  • Emperors who were rarely present and unable to provide support to real needs like defence, food supplies and markets
  • Role of the Bishops as both 'imperial functionaries and community leaders', ended up being censured by the reform movement
  • Immigration and economic development generated social groups which had no links to bishops and barely any with elites
• Communes provided connections between political power and local elites
• Actions of Frederick I (trying to reassert political authority) seemed to be from the outside and without sufficient motivation, Italians could not remember the Italian kingdom he wanted to recreated and thus could not sympathise with him or extend their loyalty to him
• Establishment of Norman rule in Sicily inhibited the evolution of city-republics in the South of Italy, making it a more Northern phenomenon
• Most recent scholarship argues against a single origin of the commune's supreme legal system
• Executive power in communes

  Generally entrusted to a group of officials called Priors or Consuls, whose mandate lasted a few months, to prevent a person from taking too much power and establishing a dictatorship, inspired by the ancient Roman republic
• It was not a "democratic" system by modern standards, but in a populous city like Florence, Milan or Venice it allowed hundreds or thousands of citizens to participate in political activity
• Consuls


  Two citizens in office for one years, following the example of the Roman Republic
• 3 Essential Elements of the commune system

  • The role of 'law-worthy' men (boni homines) had to change by setting up a permanent body as an executive for citizens
  • Gradual replacement of episcopal authority
  • When the consulate becomes a permanent institution then the commune is present
• Pisa had no consuls in 1081 when Henry IV's privilege provided that any future nomination of a marquis of Tuscany would require the assent of 12 Pisans to be elected in the assembly, by 1085 it had consuls (earliest recorded from Italian city)
• The change to a consulship in Siena can be dated as it was represented in an ecclesiastical dispute in 1124, then had consuls in 1125
• Milan 1097, experimented with it in the early days having 23 consuls in 1130 but only 4 in 1138
• Vercelli 1141
• Appointment of judicial consuls who had a distinct role (found in Milan in 1153, and Pavia in 1145)
• Elections to councils and other offices were complicated and also were experimented with
• 3 Main principles of commune elections

  • Indirect election (2 distinct phases of election, determines who will make the final choice) → designed to hinder the dominantion of cliques in elections
  • Election by outgoing councillors or officials at their end of term
  • Election by lot/Sortition
• Papal States


  Under direct sovereign rule of the Pope
• Papal fiefs


  Included not only individual landed estates, however vast, but also duchies, principalities, and even kingdoms, where the prince did homage to the Pope as liege lord and acknowledged vassalage by an annual tribute
• Maritime republics


  Very similar to the communes, with an oligarchich constitution headed by a Signore, that in case of Venice and Genoa was called "doge" from the latin "dux", leader/general, focused on foreign commerce and navigation, owned trading posts in the Levant that became actual colonies
• Princely states


  A term used to define the Indian states of the nineteenth century, not used for Italian States, the Italian word that perhaps comes close is "Principato": a state governed by a person who exercises sovereign powers
• Guelf


  A member of a papal and popular political party in medieval Italy that opposed the authority of the German emperors in Italy
• "Guelfs' are interpreted as those who trust in prayer and divine worship, as did Emperor Justinian in Cod. 1. 17. 1": 'BS'
• "if 'Guelf' and 'Ghibelline' are understood exactly as when first coined, an individual cannot be a Guelf in one place and a Ghibelline in another": 'BS'
• Ghibelline


  A member of one of the two great political factions in Italian medieval politics, traditionally supporting the Holy Roman emperor against the Pope and his supporters, the Guelphs
• "Now in Germany those related to this Frederick on his father's side were known as the lords of Gebello": 'BS'
• "For we see that many who are called Guelfs are rebels against the church, and many others who are called Ghibellines are rebels against the empire. But, as happens in provinces and cities in which there are divisions and factions (partialitates†), it is necessary that the said parties be called by some name": 'BS'
• In the time of writing the terms Guelf and Ghibelline were bastardised and lost the association with church vs empire, only associated w/ factions in cities or provinces