ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace of political history that in the later Middle Ages the city states of north and central Italy were the scene of a conflict in the theory and practice of government between two contrasted systems: republican and despotic (or in contemporary terminology, government ‘a comune’, ‘in libertà’, and so on, and government ‘a tiranno’, signoria or principato). The conflict began about the mid-thirteenth century, and in most places, sooner or later, was settled in favour of despotism. As early as 1300, in fact, in purely territorial terms, the contest was becoming uneven: much of Lombardy with Piedmont, Emilia and Venetia, and most of Romagna and the Marche, were under despotic rule; and already certain writers, like Albertino Mussato, were beginning to speak, with classical reminiscence, of a predetermined cycle in the development of states.2 There was much to encourage such beliefs, even though, in the congested political society of medieval Italy, the development of states was seldom wholly free. From an early stage, indeed, the decline of communal institutions was accompanied by a process of regional consolidation, in which, independently of forms and principles of government, the larger states swallowed up the small. In this way, by the fifteenth century, a number of territorial powers had emerged – Milan, Florence and Venice, Mantua and Ferrara – which shared, by uneasy balance of influence, the control of Upper Italy. But through all phases of territorial politics the advance of despotism was maintained.3 At the close of the Middle Ages there were few towns which
1 This paper first appeared in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 15 (Cambridge University Press, 1965): pp. 71-96. It is reprinted here with the permission of the editors and CUP. The more elliptical references in footnotes have been expanded.
