DURING the thirteenth century, political life in the city-states of northern Italy began to be dominated by a new breed of political and military leaders, often described as tyrants or despots. In an acclerating development, as Frederick II’s efforts to reimpose imperial authority failed, monarchical power was recreated at the local level, in the persons first of Frederick’s former political and military lieutenants, then of local faction chiefs (Azzo d’Este in Ferrara, Martino della Torre in Milan, Mastino della Scala in Verona). Though their power often remained informal, for they were masters, not lords of their cities, they passed that power to their heirs, who sometimes formalised their position through popular ‘elections’ and technical transfers of arbitrary power (Ferrara, 1264; Mantua, 1299, etc.). In the course of time some of these lordships developed into the principalities and regional states of Renaissance Italy (the Visconti, Este, Gonzaga, Montefeltro). By 1300 most cities of northern Italy were under signorial rule; nearly all of those that were not (Padua, Parma, Vicenza) soon followed.

How should these important changes be described and explained? Let us start with the word ‘despot’. How is it that this word has become attached to late medieval Italy? Its usage seems to be an English peculiarity. Other languages use other terms (signori, seigneurs, Tirannen). With its one-time connotations of ferocity and caprice, of indiscriminate butchery, of eastern domination over slaves, the word is really displaced. The concept of the signori as tyrannical despots seems to have become current among English historians during the nineteenth century when the historian Hallam, writing of the Italian signori, commented: ‘I know not of any English word that characterises them, except tyrant in its primitive sense.’