Introduction

Sant’Angelo in Colle, Castello di Frontiera in the southern Sienese contado

Sant’Angelo in Colle, some 50 or so kilometres to the south of Siena, was often described in documents drawn up by Sienese officials during the medieval period as a castello (castle), and, more specifically, from 1265 (some 20 or so years before the creation of the Government of the Nine), as a castello di frontiera (frontier castle).1 Now, little remains of the fortified cassero, or military barracks, established by the Sienese at Sant’Angelo in Colle, and nothing apparently remains of the village’s early statutes. However, many surviving records chronicle the affairs of Sant’Angelo in Colle under the Sienese yoke.