Andrea Gamberini - The Clash of Legitimacies

The aim of this book is to examine one of Italys most studied regions, Lombardy, with the ambition of recounting a story that is actually still not very well known: the story of the clashcultural, as well as political and militarybetween the large, new territorial formations that arose in the late Middle Ages and the many social and class-defined bodies present within their borders.

Historiography has generally presented these conflicts as the result of a process of expansion and consolidation launched on the initiative of city communes and then of regional states, forces determined to subjugate (and, where possible, eliminate) competing jurisdictions, whether secular or ecclesiastical. This approachand it is worth stating this now, very clearlyis anything but baseless, given that it captures some of the salient aspects of the constitutional dynamics between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth century, beginning with the construction of relatively compact domains that responded to a new conception of territorial sovereignty common to other areas of Europe.

The chief criticism I intend to make with regard to this approachdominant in Italy until the early 2000s at leastis, however, precisely that it has thematized the crucial subject of state-building processes in a mainly political and institutional perspective. Even a quick glance through the enormous number of studies produced on the issue since World War II reveals that what has most interested historians has been the increase in regulatory capacity This focus, in turn, gave rise to a reading of the political struggle wholly centred on the question of the division of judicial powers between centre and periphery and on access to resources (primarily through taxation), according to a script that saw the city-state and then regional states seek to expand their power of intervention in the territory and territorial and social bodies attempting to resist and establish limits. In general, the theme of the political culture of the figures involved has tended to remain rather more in the background.