Florentine Tuscany
Structures and Practices of Power

A collection of the best recent research on the Republic of Florence in Tuscany during the Renaissance.

William J. Connell (Edited by), Andrea Zorzi (Edited by)

9780521548007, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 January 2004

372 pages, 6 maps 7 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

'… a major indeed pathbreaking contribution to our understanding of the Florentine territorial state in the century and a half before the Medici principate.' The American Historical Review

Florence has often been studied in the past for its distinctive urban culture and society, while insufficient attention has been paid to the important Tuscan territorial state that was created by Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Comprising a handful of formerly independent city-states and numerous smaller communities in the plains and mountains, the Florentine 'empire' in Tuscany supplied the markets and fiscal coffers of the Renaissance republic, while providing lessons in statecraft that nourished the political thought of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. This volume comprises seventeen original essays representing the new directions being taken by historians of the Florentine Renaissance. It offers new and exemplary approaches towards state-building, political vocabulary, political economy, civic humanism, local history and social patronage in what is one of the most interesting and well-documented of the states of late medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Preface William J. Connell
1. The 'material constitution' of the Florentine dominion Andrea Zorzi
2. The language of empire Alison Brown
3. Constitutional ambitions, legal realities and the Florentine state Jane Black
4. Fiscality, politics and dominion in Florentine Tuscany Giuseppe Petralia
5. Market structures Stephan R. Epstein
6. State-building, church reform and the politics of legitimacy David S. Peterson
7. The humanist citizen as provincial governor William J. Connell
8. Territorial offices and office holders Laura De Angelis
9. Demography and the politics of fiscality Samuel K. Cohn Jr
10. Florentines and the communities of the territorial state Patrizia Salvadori
11. Patronage and its role in government: the Florentine patriciate and Volterra Lorenzo Fabbri
12. San Miniato al Tedesco: the evolution of the political class Francesco Salvestrini
13. The social classes of Colle Val d'Elsa and the formation of the dominion Oretta Muzzi
14. Arezzo, the Medici and the Florentine regime Robert Black
15. Rubrics and requests: statutory division and supra-communal clientage in Pistoia Stephen J. Milner
16. A comment Giorgio Chittolini.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]