First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing.
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 original 1965 article, the volume then provides eighteen 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.
Author(s): John E. Law, Bernadette Paton (eds.)
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: XX+354
List of Illustrations ix
List of Maps xiii
Introduction xv
Note on Cover xix
Part I: Communes and Despots
1. Communes and Despots: The City State in Late-Medieval Italy / P. J. Jones 3
Part II: Power and Restraint
2. The Use of Sortition in Appointments in the Italian Communes / Daniel Waley 27
3. Magnate Violence Revisited / Carol Lansing 35
Part III: Political Thought: Theory and Practice
4. Communes and Despots: Some Italian and Transalpine Political Thinkers / Robert Black 49
5. The Myth of the Renaissance Despot / Benjamin G. Kohl 61
6. Conflicting Attitudes towards Machiavelli’s Works in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Rome and Florence / Humfrey C. Butters 75
Part IV: Communes and Despots: Some Case Studies
7. From Commune to Regional State: Political Experiments in Fourteenth Century Cremona / Marco Gentile 91
8. The Gonzaga Signoria, Communal Institutions and 'the Honour of the City': Mixed Ideas in Quattrocento Mantua / David S. Chambers 105
9. Giangaleazzo Visconti and the Ducal Title / Jane Black 119
10. 'Whatever’s Best Administered is Best': Paolo Guinigi 'signore' of Lucca, 1400–1430 / Christine Meek 131
11. The Mouse and the Elephant: Relations between the Kings of Naples and the Lordship of Piombino in the Fifteenth Century / David Abulafia 145
12. Communes and Despots: The Nature of 'Diarchy' / John E. Law 161
13. Concepts of 'Libertà' in Renaissance Genoa / Christine Shaw 177
Part V: The Case of the Medici
14. Prato and Lorenzo de’ Medici / F. W. Kent 193
15. The Early Years of Piero di Lorenzo, 1472–1492: Between Florentine Citizen and Medici Prince / Alison Brown 209
16. Muddying the Waters: Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici and the Lake of Fucecchio / Catherine Kovesi 223
17. The Medici Dukes, 'Comandati' and Pratolino: Forced Labour in Renaissance Florence / Suzanne B. Butters 249
Part VI: Culture, Art, and Patronage
18. Giovanni Bellini and the Background to Venetian Painting / George Holmes 281
19. Communes, Despots and Universities: Structures and Trends of Italian Studi to 1500 / Peter Denley 295
20. 'Aedificia iam in regales surgunt altitudines': The Mendicant Great Church in the Trecento / Julian Gardner 307
Epilogue
21. 'Communes and Despots': The Opening Paragraph / Trevor Dean 331
Index 343
