Sleepwalking into a New World by Chris Wickham

Author:Chris Wickham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1. COMMUNES

1. Landulphi Iunioris Historia Mediolanensis [henceforth HM], c. 44. Theatra elsewhere means ‘thrones’ in Landolfo’s Latin, but since Milan still had a Roman theatre to act as a point of reference (it was a popular assembly place), and since the occasion was a major one, we can assume quite large wooden stages or banks of seats.

2. Gli atti del Comune, n. 1. See Giulini, Memorie, vol. 5, 75–91; Manaresi’s institutional analysis in the introduction to Gli atti del Comune, xxviii–xxxii; Bosisio, Origini del comune, 173–83; Barni, ‘Milano verso l’egemonia’, 319–21. Landolfo makes clear, HM, c. 44, that the meeting on the Broletto and the arengo or concio of the people, in which pleas were heard (he mentions at least two sessions), were, if not identical, closely following on from each other. In 1117 the archbishop of Cologne wrote to the consules, capitanei, omnis militia, and universus populus of Milan too: Monumenta Bambergensia, 513–14.

3. Cattaneo, ‘La città: considerata come principio ideale delle istorie italiane’. Cf. e.g. Bordone, La società cittadina, 7, one of many histories which simply start by citing Cattaneo; compare also Tabacco, The Struggle for Power, 19–36 (who emphasises German historiography); Wickham, Community and Clientele, 1–4, 185–89 (for the parallel rural communal debate). Note that this book does not discuss southern Italy; here, the essential starting-point is now Oldfield, City and Community.

4. Lane, ‘At the Roots of Republicanism’, 403. See Muir, ‘The Italian Renaissance’ (who quotes Lane at 1106); Molho, ‘The Italian Renaissance, Made in the USA’.

5. Putnam et al., Making Democracy Work, 180 (and more generally 121–37); Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 3–22.

6. Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici, 2.13; see for recent comment Zabbia, ‘Tra modelli letterari e autopsia’. Cf. Romualdi Salernitani Chronicon, 276–77, on the rhetoric of one of the major Milanese consuls, Girardo Cagapisto (see pp. 45–52 in this volume), when negotiating the Peace of Venice in 1177: this is an external view of the radicalism of the communes, not a local statement (see also Zabbia, ibid., 129–34, who is more accepting of the authenticity of Girardo’s words than I would be). It is worth adding that the principle of election of rulers did not, of course, in itself mark out Italian communes; of sovereign rulers, both the emperor and the pope were elected in our period, and so were bishops. But their electorates were very specialised and high-status, with only occasional hints of participation by a wider populus; the choice of consuls, which, however orchestrated, was always presented as being by that populus directly, was rather different.

7. Both of them also worked on later periods in their extensive writings, but wrote little on the early commune (though for Tabacco see his appendix to The Struggle for Power, 321–44, and ‘Le istituzioni’, which go up to 1100).

8. There is a list of monographic works for individual cities in the historiographical survey in Coleman, ‘The Italian Communes’ (a sequel will appear in History Compass shortly); see further, more recently, Rippe, Padoue, 323–79; De Angelis, Poteri cittadini (Bergamo); Vercelli nel secolo XII; Faini, Firenze.

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