Urban Growth and wars of Expansion Town revival was a general feature of 10th and 11th-century Europe associated with an upsurge in population that is not completely understood In Italy however the urban imprint of Roman times had never been erased By the 11th century the towers of new towns and more commonly of old towns newly revived began to dot the spiny Italian landscape The burgeoning population was literally brimming with new energy due to improved diets As in Roman times the medieval Italian town lived in close relation to its surrounding rural area or contado Italian city folk seldom relinquished their ties to the land from which they and their families had sprung Most successful tradesmen or bankers would invest some of their profits in the family farm while rural nobles often spent part of the year in houses inside city walls In Italian towns knights merchants rentiers and skilled craftsmen lived and worked 12 chapTer one
urban GrowTh and wars of expansIon side by side fought in the same militia and married into each other’s families Though there was a social hierarchy it was a tangled system with no simple division between noble and commoner between landed and commercial wealth CiviC institutions The fact that landed nobles took part in civic affairs helps explain the early militancy of the townsfolk in resisting the local bishop who was usually the principal claimant to lordship in the community Political action against a common common enemy tended to infuse townspeople with a sense of community and civic loyalty By the end of the 11th century civic patriotism began to express itself in literature City chronicles combined fact and legend to stress a city’s Roman origins and in some cases its inheritance of Rome’s special mission to rule Such motifs reflect the cities achievement of autonomy from their respective episcopal or secular feudal feudal overlords and probably the growth of rivalries between neighbouring communities Rivalry between towns was part of the expansion into the neighbouring countryside with the smaller and weaker towns submitting to the domination of the larger and stronger stronger As the activity of the towns became more complex permanent civic institutions began to emerge Typically the first of these was an executive magistracy named the consulate consulate to stress the continuity with republican Rome In the late 11th and early 12th centuries this process consisted of the establishment of juridical autonomy the emergence of a permanent officialdom and the spread of power beyond the walls of the city to the contado and neighbouring towns 13
THE ITALIAN AND NORTHERN RENAISSANCE Siena the seal of which is seen here became an important banking centre in the 13th century but was unable to compete with its rival Florence About a dozen Italian centres had developed these institutions institutions while others were beginning the process The loose urban community was becoming a corporate entity or commune commune the city was becoming a city state
urban GrowTh and wars of expansIon The typical 13th-century city-state was a republic administering a territory of dependent towns whether it was a democracy is a question of definition The idea of popular sovereignty existed in political thought and was reflected in the practice of calling a parlamento or mass meeting of the populace in times of emergency However none of the republics allowed the people as a whole to have regular participation in government On the other hand the 13th century saw the establishment after considerable struggle of assemblies in which some portion of the male citizenry restricted by property and other qualifications took part in debate legislation and the selection of officials Most offices were filled by men serving on a rotating short-term basis Also most men were obligated to serve in the civic militia But the degree of participation in public life varied from one commune to another and tended to decline Most of the city republics were small enough so that public business was conducted by and for citizens who knew each other and civic issues were a matter of widespread and intense personal concern In 1300 Florence with perhaps 100,000 people was one of the largest republics most were about the size of Padua which had about 15,000 people CiviC strife and one-Man rule The darker side of this intense community life was conflict It became a cliché of contemporary observers that when townsmen were not fighting their neighbours they were fighting each other Machiavelli explained this as the result of the natural enmity between nobles and the people the former desiring to command the latter unwilling to obey 15
