Changing Perceptions of Gates and Doors: Popular Revolt in Fifteenth Century Italy
(2016) Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America — Location: Boston
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- Abstract
- In his recent book “The Logic of Political Conflict in Medieval Cities”, Patrick Lantschner has emphasised that the late medieval city was a polycentric environment, in which different organizational structures engaged in political action. The central government, guilds, factions, parties as well as ecclesiastical institutions all had certain authorities and jurisdictional powers. Peasant organizations, rural lords, and foreign kings further complicated the landscape of political interaction. Each of these official institutions, as well as private families, had institutional, financial as well as military means at their disposal in order to advance certain claims. All these people lived and worked within and without the city walls, and gave shape to the social and physical structure of the city and its hinterland. Within this polycentric environment, the political role of the city wall and its gates is rarely considered. Could one of the abovementioned political players appropriate and use the city wall and its gates to control inhabitants inside its perimeter? And if so, how? Or did citizens themselves realize the potential of the city wall and its gates in order to act politically? This paper will show that the city wall and its gates functioned as important architectural structures, which could be temporarily appropriated and used to pursue proper goals in the late medieval city. However, at the same time, the very social and political organization of the city more than once resisted any complete control of the city walls and its gates by one political player. I will develop this argument by focusing on three cities in fifteenth and early sixteenth century Italy: Florence, Rome, and Bologna. In the first case study, I will discuss legal mechanisms, which the Commune of Florence set up to capture criminals. These legal mechanisms allowed activating the city wall and its gates as strong physical boundaries when crimes had been committed within its perimeter. In the second case study, I will discuss the hostage of pope Eugenius IV in Rome in 1434 to show how the Commune of Rome used the walls, gates and these same legal mechanisms against a political rival. In both cases I will demonstrate that, since this activation of the city walls and its gates as physical boundaries depended on human interaction, the system was not watertight. Finally, I will illustrate how a temporary coalition of Bentivoglio supporters activated the political potential of the city walls, by occupying one of its gates in 1508.
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De Raedt, N. (2016). Changing Perceptions of Gates and Doors: Popular Revolt in Fifteenth Century Italy. Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Boston. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/103900