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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
A major trend in the recent historiography of medieval and renaissance Italy has been towards the reassertion of the fundamental importance of the countryside and of agriculture. This is not so much to deny the unique position occupied by the cities in Italian life as to remind us of some essential features of those cities and of the men who ruled them. Towns were more typically market centres for their localities than entrepôts of long-distance commerce; while many members of both the higher and the lower urban social strata carried with them throughout life a status ultimately derived from the status they or their forebears occupied or had occupied in rural life. Conversely, the members of, say, the Florentine urban patriciate around the year 1400 were almost to a man landlords in the surrounding countryside. They were also of course the men who made the laws, levied taxation and generally controlled the government of the countryside as of the town. At every level of life we have to postulate an intimacy of relations between town and country which the conditions of modern urban life can make it an effort even to imagine.
1 For a brief survey, see the preface to Waley, D., The Italian City Republics (2 ed London 1978), also pp 55–69 Google Scholar. A major study is Jones, [P.], [‘From Manor to Mezzadria’], Florentine Studies, ed Rubinstein, N. (London 1968) pp 193–241 Google Scholar.
2 Brucker, G., The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton 1977) pp 31-4Google Scholar.
3 Tognetti, [G.], [‘Sul moto dei bianchi del 1399]’, BISIMEAM, 78, (1967) pp 205–343 Google Scholar; Delaruelle, E., ‘Les grandes processions de pénitents de 1349 et 1399’, Il movimento dei disciplinati nel settimo centenario dal suo inizio, (Perugia 1260) (Perugia 1962) pp 109-45Google Scholar; Frugoni, A., ‘La devozione dei bianchi del 1399’, Convegni del Centro di Studi sulla spiritualità medievale, 3 (Todi 1962) pp 232-48Google Scholar.
4 [Ser Luca], Dominici, [Cronaca della Venuta dei Bianchi e della Moria, 1390-1400, ed Giglioni, G.C], R[erum] P[istoriensium] S[criptores], 1 (Pistoia 1933) pp 51-4Google Scholar.
5 [Giovanni], Sercambi, [Croniche, ed Bongi, S.], 3 vols, F[onti per la S[toria d’]I[talia], 19-21 (Rome 1892) 2, pp 302-3Google Scholar.
6 [Giorgio], Stella, [Annales Genuenses], Muratori, 17 pt iii, pp 238-40Google Scholar.
7 Chronicon Bergomense Guelpho-Ghibellinum, Muratori, 16 pt 2, pp 94-8.
8 Dominici pp 53-4; Sercambi pp 320-1.
9 Tognetti p 227.
10 Jones pp 232-4.
11 Sercambi pp 320-1.
12 Dominici pp 60, 88.
13 Sercambi pp 317, 363.
14 [Cronica volgare di] anonimo fiorentino [già attribuita a Piero di Giovanni Minerbetti], Muratori, 27 pt 2, pp 240-1. Later, some believed that the original vision had been received by an Irish anchoress, Dominici pp 168-70.
15 Sercambi p 291.
16 Stella p 236.
17 Dominici pp 182-4.
18 Ibid pp 201-2.
19 Ibid pp 125-7; Stella p 241.
20 Dominici p 55.
21 Stella p 242.
22 Dominici p 73.
23 Herlihy, [D.], [Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia] (New Haven 1967) p 210 Google Scholar; [Ser Luca], Dominici, Cronaca Seconda, [ed Santoli, Q.], RPS 3 (Pistoia 1937)Google Scholar.
24 ‘Vie inédite de S. Bernardin de Sienne par un frère mineur, son contemporain’, An Bol, 25 (1906) pp 316, 318.
25 Dominici p 101 : ‘E voglio che tu sappi che tutto il nostro contado similmente faceva processione: quelli eran rimasi come noi vestiti di bianco con loro preti e con la loro croce; ogni comune per se e due comuni o cappelle insieme ordinatamente, di villa in villa cantando tutti la laude usata . . . tutti osservando come noi.’
26 Ibid p 112.
27 Sercambi pp 350-2.
28 Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, ed Novati, F., 4 vols, FSI 15-18 (Rome 1891-1911) 3, p 356 Google Scholar.
29 Dominici pp 73, 82; Herlihy pp 57, 65; Herlihy, ‘Plague, Population and Social Change in Rural Pistoia’, EcHR, 2 ser, 18 (1965) p 230 n 1 Google Scholar.
30 Dominici, Cronaca seconda, p 63.
31 Ibid p 160. For Serravalle’s population, see Herlihy p 279.
32 Sercambi p 363.
33 Anonimo fiorentino p 242 : ‘e di niuna cosa pareva che si ricordassono che a fare avessono.’
34 Dominici pp 139-40.
35 Tognetti pp 304-5.
36 Ibid pp 282-91.
37 Webb, D., ‘Andrea Biglia at Bologna : a humanist friar and the troubles of the church’, BIHR, 39 (1976) pp 53-8Google Scholar, where Biglia’s Ammonitio ad fratrem Manfredum Vercellensem is cited from Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS H. 117, fols 57v-73v. The work has been printed, with further discussion, by Rusconi, [R.], [‘Fonti e Documenti su Manfredi da Vercelli O.P. ed il suo movimento penitenziale’], AFP, 47 (1977) pp 51-107Google Scholar.
38 Rusconi, p 82: ‘. . . itaque nichil aliud iam curari oportere quam ut, relictis patriis sedibus, Christus quereretur, domi esse periculum, futuros in agris et in montibus securos.’
39 Ibid p 78: ‘Ego quidem non tanto opere admirar turbas et incultum et indoctum hominem secutas: facile enim intelligimus in huiuscemodi turbis ac vulgo rarissimum quemque inveniri, qui ingenio aut prudentia preditus sit, maximeque inter agrestes, quorum ad te concursus erat maior, ac ferme in illis terris quibus non magna inest harum rerum diligentia. Id enim sepe fieri vidimus etiam ad hos, qui passim per villas declamitant, incredibilem turbarum numerum convenire.’
40 Ibid p 81 : ‘Siquidem in turba multi erant agricole, quos plurimum videmus dominorum suorum debitis oppressos, rem iniustissimam esse, ut illis suis creditis fraudarentur.’
41 Jones p 225.
42 Ad fratrem Ludovicum de ordinis nostri forma et propagatione, ed Arbesmann, R., Analecta Augustiniana, 28 (Rome 1695) pp 186–218 Google Scholar.
43 Ibid pp 217-18.
44 For Vegio’s life and works see basically Raffaele, L., Maffeo Vegio: elenco delle opere, scritti inediti (Bologna 1909)Google Scholar.
45 Carmina illustrium poetarum italorum, ed Bottari, G.G, 11 vols (Florence 1719-26) 10, pp 318-20Google Scholar; also quoted by Raffaele pp 9-11.
