ABSTRACT
He might be thought to have good reason to go carefully, but in fact he displayed attitudes and engaged in acts that look unwise and provocative. It was common for signori to retain pre-existing communal institutions and rule alongside them, whatever the actual power relations might be. Throughout the decades when Lucca was ruled by outside powers, including the period of Pisan rule and also the regime of Castruccio Castracani, there had continued to be Anziani and councils. Under Paolo Guinigi there were no Anziani and councils for nearly 30 years. And he not only made these changes; he stressed them. In April 1401 he wrote ‘the dominion of the whole city of Lucca, its contado and fortia now resides in us and the power and authority of the General Council has ceased’.2 He spoke of ‘my city’, ‘my territory’, ‘my subjects’, ‘my
1 Le Croniche di Giovanni Sercambi Lucchese, ed. Salvatore Bongi (3 vols, Rome, 1892), vol. 3, pp. 9-10. For the earlier history of Lucca, see Louis Green, Castruccio Castracani: A Study on the Origins and Character of a Fourteenth-Century Italian Despotism (Oxford, 1986) and Lucca under Many Masters: A Fourteenth-Century Italian Commune in Crisis (1328-1342) (Florence, 1995); Christine Meek, Lucca under Pisan rule, 1342-1369 (Cambridge, MA, 1980) and Lucca 1369-1400. Politics and Society in an Early Renaissance
camera’, even ‘my Podestà’. Since there was no other source of authority than himself, since the financial resources of the city were his to do with what he liked, and since he himself chose the podestà and all other officials, even the most minor, this language did no more than reflect the realities of the situation. Paolo was very conscious of his position as signore, indeed as prince; he often referred to acts as particularly fitting for a prince, for example, when he wrote ‘the glory of a prince lies in the peace and riches of his subjects’, while making a quite minor administrative change.3
