Neighbourhood strife and enmity in late medieval and early modern Tuscany: a platform for new research

Cohn, S. K. (2022) Neighbourhood strife and enmity in late medieval and early modern Tuscany: a platform for new research. In: Kane, B. C. and Sandall, S. (eds.) The Experience of Neighbourhood in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Series: Studies in medieval history and culture. Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY, pp. 78-87. ISBN 9781472444707 (doi: 10.4324/9781315558349-8)

Abstract

From the existing scholarship on village and urban communities in late medieval and Renaissance Tuscany, two opposing images of neighbourhood have emerged. One has been framed by the ruling classes and remains preserved in its state archives. The other image of neighbourhood prevalent in works on Renaissance Tuscan society is more difficult to discern from surviving records but was no less a historical reality. Within Tuscany it is difficult to find collective organisation and strife that pitched one village against another, and could demonstrate neighbourhood organisation, pride and alliance. While judicial records abound in acts of village violence from individual enmities to conflicts involving families and groups of bandits, injuring one another for profit, sexual honour or just plain fun, these disputes were seldom organised around the village or neighbourhood within small towns. For fourteenth-century commoners in Tuscany, this chapter argues that, as far as peasants and workers were concerned, neighbourhood identity and allegiance was a fiction of the archives.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Cohn, Professor Samuel
• Authors: Cohn, S. K.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > History
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9781472444707
• Published Online: 18 February 2022