Italian City-States at the Time of Dante
Dr. Fabrizio Ricciardelli
Most of Europe around 1300 was governed by kings assisted by a restricted ruling class of ecclesiastics and nobles. These were the men who controlled cities and towns, rather than the traders and artisans who lived and did business in them. Italy and southern France were different. In particular Italian cities, especially in Lombardy and Tuscany, created a political system in which the majority of population had its political responsibility. The city offered protection and guaranteed the rights of its citizens. In every Italian city were considered citizens those who were part on the one hand of the wealthy families (the ruling class), on the other hand those who were part of the middle-class (bourgeois).
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LECTURE 1 "The Commune of the Popolo"
The contrast between the class of the aristocrats or knights distinguished by a military lifestyle and wealth based in land, and the class of the rich craftsmen and merchants, produced a chronic instability in the city institutions. The nobility, derived from feudal aristocracy, lost its authorit...
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LECTURE 2 "Magnates and Popolani"
Many popular communes adopted prescriptive or proscriptive measures that targeted those they designated as ‘magnates’, families officially identified by the presence of members with titles of knighthood or by their reputation for lawlessness and violence. These criteria, especially the latter, w...
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LECTURE 3 "The Good and Bad Government"
In the meeting chamber of the Nove, the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Pubblico, in Siena, is one of the great documents of the political ideology of a medieval city-state, part inscription and part painting, known as the cycle of Good and Bad Government. The frescoes were painted between 1338-4...
