Comparing Two Italies: Civic Tradition, Trade Networks, Family Relationships between the Italy of Communes and the Kingdom of Sicily

262 Pages·2020·1.506 MB·English

by  Patrizia Mainoni, Nicola Lorenzo Barile (eds.)

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Editorial Coordinator
Evelien Chayes
Editorial Board
Lorenzo Calvelli
Christopher Celenza
Evelien Chayes
Gilles Grivaud
Martin Hinterberger
Michalis Olympios
Christopher Schabel

Comparing Two Italies
Civic Tradition,
Trade Networks,
Family Relationships
between the Italy of Communes
and the Kingdom of Sicily
Edited by
Patrizia Mainoni
Nicola Lorenzo Barile
F
This book was published with the support of the
University of Padua, Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche,
Geografiche e dell’Antichità (DiSSGeA).
© 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
Cover image:
Lecce, Belloluogo Tower, St Magdalen banished from Judea, detail
(image published in Dal Giglio all’Orso. I principi d’Angiò e Orsini del Balzo
nel Salento, ed. by Antonio Cassiano and Benedetto Vetere, Lecce:
Congedo Editore 2006, p. 75).
All rights reserved.
No part of  this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission of  the publisher.
D/2020/0095/145
ISBN 978-2-503-56976-5
e-ISBN 978-2-503-56977-2
DOI 10.1484/M.MEDNEX-EB.5.111875
ISSN 2565-8549
e-ISSN 2565-9774
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper
TABLE OF  CONTENTS
Patrizia Mainoni
About the ‘Two Italies’ 7
Gianmarco De Angelis
Between Legal Tradition and Political Practice: Decisions by
Majority Vote in North-Central Italian Communes, and
a Few Thoughts for Comparison with the ‘Universitates’ of
Peninsular Southern Italy (Twelfth-Thirteenth Centuries) 27
Giovanni Araldi
Transformations sociales et institutionnelles dans une ville pon-
tificale du Mezzogiorno: les statuts de Bénévent de 1203 61
Maria Teresa Dolso
The Franciscan Order between Two Italies 89
Nicola Lorenzo Barile
Rethinking ‘The Two Italies’: Circulation of Goods and Merchants
between Venice and the ‘Regno’ in the Late Middle Ages 117
Eleni Sakellariou
Regional Trade and Economic Agents in the Kingdom of Naples
(Fifteenth Century) 139
Paola Guglielmotti
Women, Families and Wealth in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century
Liguria: Past Approaches and New Perspectives 167
Alessandra Bassani
Familia id est substantia? Women and Statutes in the Consilia
of Baldus de Ubaldis 189
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TABLE OF  CONTENTS
Isabelle Chabot
Deux, trois, cent Italies. Réflexions pour une géographie historique
des systèmes dotaux 211
Paolo Grillo
Conclusion: Many Centuries, Many Italies 233
INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES 243
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PATRIZIA MAINONI
ABOUT THE ‘TWO ITALIES’
The title of  this volume is a direct reference to one of  the most
important studies on the economy of  medieval Italy written
in the second half of  the twentieth century: David Abulafia’s
The Two Italies, 1977, translated into Italian in 1991 at the
initiative of  Giuseppe Galasso.1 In view of  its broad scope and
original arguments, the book – which in its English version had
been largely ignored in Italy – became quickly influential within
a historiographical landscape that had become dated (though
still rife with valid strands of  research, for example those address-
ing ‘commercial relations’, a favourite topic of  Positivist eco-
nomic historians in the early twentieth century).2 Drawing from
Translated from Italian by Denise Bezzina.
1 Translated into Italian as Le due Italie. Relazioni economiche fra il regno nor-
manno di Sicilia e i comuni settentrionali (Napoli: Liguori, 1991). Abulafia was
the first scholar to trace the origins of  the longstanding economic tie to the politi-
cal relationships established during the twelfth century between the maritime
powers overlooking the Tyrrhenian (Genoa in particular), and the new Norman
kingdom of  Sicily. This economic tie, according to the scholar, was hinged on the
exportation of  agricultural products (wheat, oil, cotton, silk and wool) and the
importation of  Flemish and north Italian textiles, some of  which were produced
using raw material exported from the south, for example silk textiles, which were
often woven with yarns from southern Italy.
2 Among the most important studies on the topic which focus specifically
on the Mediterranean and southern Italian commerce that were published in the
early twentieth century, we must mention the works by Schaube, Heyd, Schulte,
Yver and Carabellese: Adolf Schaube, Handelsgeschichte der romischen Völker des
Mittelmeergebiets bis zum Ende der Kreuzzüge (München-Berlin: R. Oldenbourg,
1906), Italian trans. by Piero Bonfante, Storia del commercio dei popoli latini del
Mediterraneo sino alla fine delle Crociate (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice
Torinese, 1915); Wilhelm von Heyd, Geschichte des Levanthandels im Mittelalter,
Comparing Two Italies. Civic Tradition, Trade Networks, Family Relationships between the Italy of Communes and the Kingdom of Sicily, ed. by Patrizia Mainoni
and Nicola Lorenzo Barile, Turnhout, 2020 (MEDNEX, 7), pp. 7-26 © FHG 10.1484/M.MEDNEX-EB.5.118660
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P. MAINONI
twelfth-century Genoese sources, Abulafia posited that it was the
Norman sovereigns’ interferences, in the form of  commercial
privileges granted first to Genoa and then Venice in the Mediter-
ranean commercial networks, that eventually led to the Italian
North-South ‘dualism’. Later, under the Hohenstaufens, a third
city, Pisa, would join these two commercial entrepôts.3 Although
the main object of  Abulafia’s study were the commercial rela-
tions between the northern and southern parts of  the peninsula
during the twelfth century, the work opened new fronts on the
‘southern question’.
To this day the ‘southern question’ remains the inescapable
premise to every historical analysis of  the Mezzogiorno.4 Scholars
continue to assert that the problem concerns post-unitarian Italy
(the ‘question’ could not exist when Italy was divided in more
than one state). Nonetheless, the ‘southern question’ is contin-
uously reiterated by historians, even in reference to the central
Middle Ages, and this due to the fact that the issue has not been
settled yet; because the economic disparity between North and
South persists to this day. The main aim here is not to chart the
2 vols (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1879, repr. New York: Olms, 1971), French trans.
by Félix Reynaud, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, 2 vols (Leipzig:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1885–1886); Aloys Schulte, Geschichte des mittelalterlichen
Handels und Verkhers zwischen Westdeutschland und Italien, mit Auschluss von
Venedig, 2 vols (Leipzig: Dunker und Humblot, 1900); Georges Yver, Les com-
merce et les marchands dans l’Italie méridionale au XIIIe et au XIVe siècle (Paris:
Albert Fontemoig, 1903; repr. 1968); Francesco Carabellese, La Puglia nei secoli
XIV–XV da fonti inedite, 2 vols (Bari: Vecchi & C, 1901–1907; repr. Bologna:
Arnaldo Forni Editore 1980).
3 See also David Abulafia, ‘Il contesto mediterraneo e il primo disegno delle
due Italie’, in Alle origini del dualismo italiano. Regno di Sicilia e Italia centro-
settentrionale dagli Altavilla agli Angiò (1100–1350). Atti del convegno interna-
zionale di studi, Ariano Irpino 12–14 settembre 2011, ed. by Giuseppe Galasso
(Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2014), pp. 11–28. On the subsequent relation-
ship with Pisa, David Abulafia, ‘Pisan Commercial Colonies and Consulates in
Twelfth-Century Sicily’, The English Historical Review, 93 (1978), pp. 68–81.
4 For a discussion on other issues and periods in relation to ‘the southern
question’ see Paul Oldfield, ‘Urban Communities and the Normans in Southern
Italy’, in Norman Expansion. Connections, Continuities and Contrasts, ed. by
Keith Stringer and Andrew Jotischky (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 187–205.
The author cites mainly Anglophone studies in his bibliographical references.
For a useful synthesis of  the debate in Italian scholarship see Francesco Senatore,
‘The Kingdom of  Naples’, in The Italian Renaissance State, ed. by Andrea Gam-
berini and Isabella Lazzarini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
pp. 30–49.
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