Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Note on translations and usage
- Map
- Introduction
- Part I The Italian states
- Part II Themes and perspectives
- 12 The collapse of city-states and the role of urban centres in the new political geography of Renaissance Italy
- 13 The rural communities
- 14 Lordships, fiefs and ‘small states’
- 15 Factions and parties: problems and perspectives
- 16 States, orders and social distinction
- 17 Women and the state
- 18 Offices and officials
- 19 Public written records
- 20 The language of politics and the process of state-building: approaches and interpretations
- 21 Renaissance diplomacy
- 22 Regional states and economic development
- 23 The papacy and the Italian states
- 24 Justice
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Lordships, fiefs and ‘small states’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Note on translations and usage
- Map
- Introduction
- Part I The Italian states
- Part II Themes and perspectives
- 12 The collapse of city-states and the role of urban centres in the new political geography of Renaissance Italy
- 13 The rural communities
- 14 Lordships, fiefs and ‘small states’
- 15 Factions and parties: problems and perspectives
- 16 States, orders and social distinction
- 17 Women and the state
- 18 Offices and officials
- 19 Public written records
- 20 The language of politics and the process of state-building: approaches and interpretations
- 21 Renaissance diplomacy
- 22 Regional states and economic development
- 23 The papacy and the Italian states
- 24 Justice
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the fourteenth century the Italian peninsula was fragmented into medium-sized, small and very small political entities.
Within this panorama kingdoms and principalities could be found (both lay and ecclesiastical) that historiography generally labels as ‘feudal’, that is to say, as elsewhere in Europe, in which the political role of cities was weak and relations between lords and vassals and the rural nobility represented the principal forms of aggregation within a dominion. Within Italy, many examples of this typology existed: the Angevin kingdom, following the death of king Robert, was devastated by battles for succession that, for over a century, provided ample room for the ambitions of the barons and that led to a continuous redefining of the balance of local politics; Aragonese Sicily was also a stage for continuous conflict; the princely bishopric of Trent was progressively worn away by the ambitions of the Habsburgs, the advocati of the Tridentine church; the patriarchate of Aquileia had a parliament, mainly composed of lords and feudatories, with wide-ranging decision-making powers; the county of Savoy was a hereditary dominion that the counts, due also to dynastic continuity, began to organise into more centralised forms, heavily involving the rural aristocracies.
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- The Italian Renaissance State , pp. 284 - 303Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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