ABSTRACT
Building on important issues highlighted by the late Philip Jones, this volume explores key aspects of the city state in late-medieval and Renaissance Italy, particularly the nature and quality of different types of government. It focuses on the apparently antithetical but often similar governmental forms represented by the republics and despotisms of the period. Beginning with a reprint of Jones's original 1965 article, the volume then provides twenty new essays that re-examine the issues he raised in light of modern scholarship. Taking a broad chronological and geographic approach, the collection offers a timely re-evaluation of a question of perennial interest to urban and political historians, as well as those with an interest in medieval and Renaissance Italy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
Part I: Communes and Despots
part |2 pages
Part II: Power and Restraint
part |2 pages
Part III: Political Thought: Theory and Practice
part |2 pages
Part IV: Communes and Despots: Some Case Studies
part |2 pages
Part V: The Case of the Medici
part |2 pages
Part VI: Culture, Art, and Patronage
part |2 pages
Epilogue