Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325

Chapter Three

The Holy City



The Italian communes, like the Mother Church and the pious associations of

the faithful, created their own sacred geography. Scholars have occasionally

highlighted the Italian republics’ profoundly religious nature, but as religious

organisms in themselves, they remain largely unexplored.^1 Scholars prefer to

study them, almost exclusively, as the earliest examples of nonimperially

governed lay ‘‘states’’ in Italy.^2 Those governments underwent great change

over time, and that affected their religious texture as well. Every commune’s

history was unique, but all shared similar stages of political development.

When cities ended imperial rule, republican but oligarchic regimes arose.

This happened in the early 1100 s; at Bologna, for example, government by

imperial counts ceased in 1113 – 14. The republican political structures that

replaced the imperial government were discontinuous with it, new creations

in themselves.^3 Commonly, two or more consuls presided over a city admin-

istration in which a small group of wealthy merchants and judges dominated

the political life through a number of assemblies or councils. The German

monarchs did not formally acknowledge the cities’ de facto independence or

legitimacy until the Peace of Costanza in 1183 , and even then only grudg-

1. For study on the communes, see Edward Coleman, ‘‘Recent Work and Current Trends,’’Journal
   of Medieval Studies 25 ( 1999 ): 378 – 97 , esp. 393 – 95 , and ‘‘Un bilancio storiografico,’’Forme di potere e struttura
   sociale in Italia nel Medioevo,ed. G. Rossetti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977 ), 153 – 73. But cf. Maria Consiglia De
   Matteis, ‘‘Societas Christiana e funzionalitaideologica della citta in Italia: Linee di uno sviluppo,’’La
   citta`in Italia e in Germania nel Medioevo: Cultura, istituzioni, vita religiosa,ed. Reinhard Elze and Gina Fasoli
   (Bologna: Mulino, 1981 ), 13 – 49 , and Steven A. Epstein,Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe(Chapel
   Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991 ), 155 – 57 , 164 – 65. On the religious influence, see Meersse-
   man,Ordo, 1 : 205 – 8.


2. As, for Bologna, does E. Gualandi, ‘‘Podesta, consoli, legati pontifici, governatori e vice legati che hanno governato la cittadi Bologna ( 1141 – 1755 ),’’L’Archiginnasio 55 – 56 ( 1960 – 61 ): 191 – 236 ; on the com-
   munes generally, see Hyde,Society and Politics;on the signori, see Pini,Citta`, comuni e corporazioni, 108 – 11.


3. Pini,Citta`, comuni e corporazioni, 221 – 43.