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  • Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy, and: Lettere 14871488
  • Alison Brown
Christine D. Shaw . Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy. The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 4001500 66. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006. xvi + 332 pp. index. gloss. bibl. $151. ISBN: 9004 15311X.
Lorenzo de' Medici . Lettere, 14871488. Vol. 11. Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Ed. Melissa M. Bullard. Florence: Giunti Gruppo Editoriale Spa, 2004. xvi + 684. illus. €100. ISBN: 8809025539.

These are two important books offering different perspectives on fifteenth-century politics and government in Italy. Christine Shaw adopts a broad comparative approach to discuss a theme relevant to many widely-differing city-states — the progression towards oligarchy — though basing herself on the city best known to her, Siena. As she points out, popular government and oligarchy were not necessarily antagonistic nor mutually exclusive, and although "the shift towards oligarchy" is undeniable, popular government nevertheless survived in [End Page 1296] many states long after the decline of the thirteenth-century guild communes. The problem lies in defining "popular," and in refusing to limit the word to guild-based representation, Shaw perhaps raises more questions than she can easily answer. Here Melissa Bullard's second edited volume of Lorenzo de' Medici's Letters offers an alternative perspective by illustrating a populist oligarch in action at a key moment of transition from citizen to princely ruler.

Shaw has organized her book into two parts, the first on Siena, the second using Siena as the model of a theme with variations common to other Italian cities in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Siena's oscillation between popular government and oligarchy depended on which combination of five groupings — or monti — was in power, the Gentiluomini, Nove, Dodici, Riformatori, or the Popolo (denoting the regime in which a citizen's ancestor first held office, newcomers being assigned to the Monte del Popolo). Despite excluding the two more aristocratic Monti, the coalition that ruled from 1403 to 1480 was "one of the most broadly-based governments in Italy" for sharing offices equally between the three remaining groups. This, we are told, should not be regarded as a coalition of factions but rather a reggimento popolare, since nobles were excluded not only from the chief executive committee, the Consistoro, but also from the council of the People. Yet whatever its merits, this tripartite system broke down in the second half of the fifteenth-century as rival Monti vied for power, bolstered by outside support (from Naples, from the papacy of the Sienese Pius II Piccolomini, and latterly from Lorenzo de' Medici), encouraging rule by balie and rise of the Petrucci as signori. The clear narrative describing these developments shows that the progression toward oligarchy and signorial government was cumulative but not unremitting, since some proposed changes (such as the creation of a single Monte in 1486) increased the influence of the popolo — though not the artisans, who, we are told, were generally excluded from government. Yet although the coalition of three contrasting interest groups appears to have offered Siena stability for half a century, the infighting between these groups in the long term created what Shaw calls elsewhere the "chronic instability" that has been seen "as a major factor in the fall of the republic" ("Politics and Institutional Innovation in Siena, 1480–98," Bulletino Senese di Storia Patria 103 [1996], 9).

Siena's singular system of Monti raises the question, discussed in part 2, of how far its reggimento popolare is comparable with other popular regimes in Italy — and, indeed, how popular it really was. Shaw is best at describing the interplay of different interests — especially in Genoa, as well as in Siena — that for her represents "popular" government; yet, as she admits, the concept of popular government is protean and the criteria she adopts in her attempt to define and analyze it (the exclusion of nobles, the role of the populo minuto, and the role and make-up of legislative and deliberative assemblies) makes a definitive conclusion difficult. If popolo is used to define status, then the fact that most states integrated nobles into the ruling class by the later fifteenth century suggests "popular government" had lost much...

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