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The Social Background of Political Liberty in the Early Italian Renaissance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Hans Baron
Hans Baron
Affiliation:
The Newberry LibraryChicago
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Extract

An attempt at a synopsis of Mr. Becker's and Mr. Hicks' findings requires an enlargement of focus. They have much in common in their approaches: both are sympathetic to reactions in Italian scholarship against a school which had conceived the history of the Italian city-states chiefly in terms of social clashes caused by antagonistic economic class interests. About 1900 that had been the perspective shared by most students. During the late 13th century (it was then argued), the half-chivalric magnati, owners of landed property, were replaced by the capitalistic merchants and industrialists of the arti maggiori; these, in turn, by the middle of the 14th century were followed by the artisans of the arti minori who, for a short revolutionary period in 1378, opened the door for the laborers of the great textile industries, the Ciompi. After class struggle had thus sapped the public spirit, Florence and other cities were ripe for the heavy, but pacifying hand of despotism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , July 1960 , pp. 440 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

1 For a summary of this reappraisal of the Ordinamenti and their period, cf. Ottokar, N., Studi Comunali e Fiorentini (Florence, 1948), pp. 85 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 Discorsi, I, 55.Google Scholar

3 For balanced critical appraisals of various aspects of the alleged kinship of Renaissance despotism to “the modern state”, cf. Chabod, F., Machiavelli and the Renaissance (London, 1958), p. 45 ff.Google Scholar, and Masi, G., “Verso gli albori del Principato,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano, IX (1936), 86 ff.Google Scholar

4 Villani, Giovanni, Cronica, XII, 72.Google Scholar

5 Villani, Giovanni, Cronica, XI, 118; XII, 22.Google Scholar

6 Villani, Matteo, Cronica, IX, 26.Google Scholar

7 Scaramella, G., Firenze allo scoppio del tumulto dei Ciompi (Pisa, 1914), pp. 51, 75Google Scholar. An excellent discussion of the role of the “divieti” for the prevention of power concentration in a few hands is found in Sestan, E.'s paper, “II Comune nel Trecento,” in Libera Cattedra di Storia delta Civiltà Fiorentina: II Trecento (Florence, 1953), pp. 19–38, esp. 34 f.Google Scholar

8 In the 14th century, to be precise, the Seta was still a part of the Arte di Por San Maria, which also included among its “membra maiora” the members of the goldsmith guild.

9 Before the American Historical Association. Mr. Becker has kindly allowed me to read in manuscript and quote the final version which will be published in Speculum, XXXV (1960), 39 ff.Google Scholar

10 I take the following data from an unpublished paper I have prepared on oligarchy and liberty in early Renaissance Florence. The phrase “ … cum magni cives stent subiecti legibus” comes from the debates published in Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi per il Comune di Firenze, vol. III (Florence, 1873), p. 165Google Scholar, where the preamble of the appointment of the Conservatores legum et ordinamentorum Communis Florentie in 1429 is also reproduced: “ … ne vel ambitione quisquam seu privato commodo vel temeraria presumptione facere contra [leges Communis] audeat, vel inobservata relinquere …” (p. 164).

11 Discussed in greater detail in my papers, “The Historical Background of the Florentine Renaissance”, History, N. Ser. XXII (1938), 315 ff.Google Scholar, and A Sociological Interpretation of the Early Renaissance in Florence”, South Atlantic Quarterly, XXXVIII (1939), 427 ff.Google Scholar

12 Braudel, F., La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a l’époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949), esp. pp. 339 ff., 717 f.Google Scholar; Luzzatto, G., “La Decadenza di Venezia dopo le scoperte geographiche nella tradizione e nella realtà,” Archivio Veneto, Ser. V, vol. LIV–LV (1955), 162 ff.Google Scholar; cf. also Baron, H. in Am. Hist. Rev., LXI (1956), 1088 f.Google Scholar, and “Dekadenz im Italien des Quattrocento? …,” Bibliothèque d’Human. et Renaiss., XVII (1955), 421 ff.Google Scholar

13 Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. I, vol. IV, parte 2 (1853), 277 f.Google Scholar