Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century - Couverture rigide

Wickham, Chris

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691148287 ISBN 13 : 9780691148281

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 2015

Synopsis

A bold new history of the rise of the medieval Italian commune

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.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Chris Wickham is the Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford. His many books include The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, Framing the Early Middle Ages, and Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691148287
• ISBN 13: 9780691148281
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 320
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible