Throughout this book examples have been selected to illustrate Sienese actions and preoccupations from laws, council minutes and other sources for the period between 1250 and 1310. A topical approach, with no chronological organization, involves the implicit assumption that the period possessed a fundamental unity and that generalizations about attitudes and activities are valid for the whole of it. This telescoping of two generations, which must have some distorting effect, cannot stand without some justification being offered.

CHANGE

How would emphasis on continuity and denial of significant development or innovation have struck a contemporary?

A convenient vantage-point might be 9 June 1311, which was a great day in Siena's history. Duccio di Buoninsegna had completed his painting for the cathedral's high altar, the supreme masterpiece usually known (since the central scene portrayed the Virgin ‘in Majesty’) as the Maestà. The huge altarpiece, comprising some seventy panels, was borne to the cathedral from Duccio's workshop outside the Stalloreggi gate, con grandi divotioni e prodssioni. Shops were closed for the day as the bishop and clergy, officials of the commune, citizens, women and children and a band of musicians all accompanied the painting on its journey. Prayers were said and the city's Protectress and Advocate was begged to preserve it from all danger and evil and to keep and increase in peace and well-being Siena and its area of jurisdiction.

For the elderly at least, it must have been a day for reflection as well as rejoicing. Some would have recalled the city's dedication to the Virgin before Montaperti, fifty-one years earlier, and for a very few memories would have gone back as far as the lifetime of Frederick II