ABSTRACT
Over the last three decades, several scholars worked on the relationship between women and warfare in the Middle Ages (among them we can find M. McLaughlin, H. Nicholson, V. Eads, P. Skinner). This research has explored a wide range of women’s experiences of war, from victims to warriors, to peacemakers, and camp-followers performing a range of logistical and social roles. Research on this topic has often focused on powerful women, such as queens or other noblewomen, themselves often wives of the men who fought more frequently. Particular attention has been paid to the Crusades and to the representations of women warriors in chronicles or literary sources. Communal Italy has largely been overlooked in this scholarship, despite a number of well-known instances of women prominently taking part in war. For example, the major supporting role of women underlined by Boncompagno da Signa during the imperial siege of Ancona in 1173; the female street vendor (treccola) of Siena who took a lot of prisoners at the end of the battle of Montaperti (1260); and the conflict between Assisi and Spello that was prevented by the local women in 1296. This paper will examine these three episodes, with particular attention on the middle-class women, and propose a new framework for better situating women into the history of war in Communal Italy.
