Sleepwalking into a New World : The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century / Chris Wickham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wickham, Chris, author.

Series:

Lawrence Stone lectures.

The Lawrence Stone Lectures ; 7

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communal living.

Communal living--Italy--History.

Italy.

Italy--History--12th century.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government-the commune-arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. Sleepwalking into a New World takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world.Chris Wickham provides richly textured portraits of three cities-Milan, Pisa, and Rome-and sets them against a vibrant backcloth of other towns. He argues that, in all but a few cases, the elites of these cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, unaware that they were creating something altogether new. Wickham makes clear that the Italian city commune was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, but that it was so novel that outsiders did not know what to make of it. He describes how, as the old order unraveled, the communes emerged, governed by consular elites "chosen by the people," and subject to neither emperor nor king. They regularly fought each other, yet they grew organized and confident enough to ally together to defeat Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor, at the Battle of Legnano in 1176.Sleepwalking into a New World reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Maps

Acknowledgements

A Note on Personal Names

1. COMMUNES

2. MILAN

3. PISA

4. ROME

5. ITALY

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-282) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780691181141

0691181144

9781400865826

1400865824

OCLC:

897466395