sides. The winners of those bitter wars were not the papacy, not the Angevins, not
even the Aragonese, and certainly not the emperors. The winners were the Italian
city-states. Republics in the sense that a high percentage of their adult male
population participated in their government, they were also highly controlling. For
example, to feed themselves, the communes prohibited the export of grain while
commanding the peasants in the contado to bring a certain amount of grain to the
cities by a certain date each year. City governments told the peasants which crops to
grow and how many times per year they should plow the land. The state controlled
commerce as well. At Venice, exceptional in lacking a contado but controlling a vast
maritime empire instead, merchant enterprises were state run, using state ships.
When Venetians went off to buy cotton in the Levant, they all had to offer the same
price, determined by their government back home.
Italian city-state governments outdid England, Sicily, and France in their
bureaucracy and efficiency. While other governments were still taxing by “hearths,”
the communes devised taxes based on a census (catasto) of property. Already at Pisa
in 1162 taxes were being raised in this way; by the middle of the thirteenth century,
almost all the communes had such a system in place. But even efficient methods of
taxation did not bring in enough money to support the two main needs of the
commune: paying their officials and, above all, waging war. To meet their high
military expenses, the communes created state loans, some voluntary, others forced.
They were the first in Europe to do so.
Culture and Institutions in Town and Countryside
Organization and accounting were the concerns of lords outside Italy as well. But no
one adopted the persona of the business tycoon; the prevailing ideal was the
chivalrous knight. Courts were aristocratic centers, organized not only to enhance but
also to highlight the power of lord and lady. Meanwhile, in the cities, guilds
constituted a different kind of enclave, shutting out some laborers and women but
giving high status to masters. Universities, too, were a sort of guild. Artistic creativity,
urban pride, and episcopal power were together embodied in Gothic cathedrals.
INVENTORYING THE COUNTRYSIDE
Not only kings and communes but also great lords everywhere hired literate agents to
administer their estates, calculate their profits, draw up accounts, and make
marketing decisions. Money financed luxuries, to be sure, but even more importantly
