The Florentine magnates: lineage and faction in a medieval commune (review)

Reviews 219 Lansing, Carol, The Florentine magnates: lineage and faction in a medieval commune, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xvi, 265; 8figures,2 tables; R.R.P. US$45.00. There is a considerable literature, now some years old, on the Florentine aristocracy of the thirteenth century, ranging from Gaetano Salvemini's La dignitd cavalleresca nel commune di Firenze and Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295 (first published in 1896 and 1899 respectively) to Berthold Stahl's Adel und Volk im Florentiner Dugento (1965), Guido Pampaloni's article on the Florentine magnates in 1971 and the 1978 essays by Sergio Raveggi, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici and Patiizia Parenti on Guelf and Ghibelline elites in Florence in the period prior to 1300. Carol Lansing's monograph on this subject nevertheless breaks new ground in that it is the first substantial work in English in thisfieldand in that it adopts a more sociological approach than earlier studies. Traditionally, the Florentine magnates have interested historians because of the political role they played, particularly in the civic conflicts leading up to the promulgation of the Ordinances of Justice of 1293. Lansing, by contrast, concentrates more on the kinship links binding noble lineages to each other, on the position of women within them, and on the customs and cultural attributes of those considered by contemporaries to belong to the old aristocracy. Her conclusions reflect this emphasis by associating the prevalence of violence and factionalism in thirteenth-century Florence with adherence to patrilinear loyalties and the existence ofrivalriesbetween the great houses at the neighbourhood level, which came to be magnified, as a result of alliances between families, into struggles by two contending parties for dominance over the city. She sees the political developments of the 1290s not so much as a result of these conflicts as of theriseof power of other elements in Florentine society, the triumph of which had paradoxically the effect of uniting the previously divided magnates. In line with this, she also interprets the preoccupation with the idea of nobtiity evident in the literature of Florence in the late Dugento as a response to the need to redefine traditional notions of it as an attribute of birth in terms of natural or ethical quatities such as virtue. The implication of Lansing's analysis of the structure and culture of the Florentine aristocracy appears to be that the ethos it engendered arose from group loyalties bolstered by mtiitary force and lost its vitality as the patriarchal order these had created was undermined by social and economic change. Broadly speaking, her thesis can be accepted; although, the restriction of her study to the magnates raises the question whether her conclusions apply to the Florentine nobility as a whole or only to those within it who, by having thattitleapplied to them, were by definition subject to disabilities that made it difficult for them to exercise their former power. The issues debated by Salvemini and Ottokar as 220 Reviews to the true significance of the anit-magnate measures of the 1280s and 1290s have a bearing on the inferences to be drawn from Lansing's findings. Are we dealing here with what could meaningfuUy be described as a class or merely with more unruly elements in the ceto dirigente or governing group, the remainder of which continued to dominate Florentine politics? In view of the arbitrary and politically coloured nature of the designation "magnate", it might have been advisable to have broadened this study to take in all of what historians writing on later periods have called the city's patriciate. A n examination of the thirteenth-century equivalent of this would not only have provided a more balanced picture of the Florentine aristocracy but also have helped to clarify the question of the extent to which it can be said to have conesponded with those families included in the magnate lists of the 1290s. Despite this minor reservation, this work can be recommended as an able and revealing exploration of the character and mentality of the magnates as a social group. Given the tendancy of post-war English speaking historians to concern themselves with Florentine history mainly from 1343 onwards, it...