In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Politics of Exclusion in Early Renaissance Florence
  • Thomas Kuehn
Fabrizio Ricciardelli. The Politics of Exclusion in Early Renaissance Florence. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies 12. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2007. xiv + 294 pp. index. gloss. bibl. €60. ISBN: 978-2-503-52389-7.

Ricciardelli’s intent is to investigate the “dark side” of the Florentine republic: “exclusion of opponents was one of the principal measures used by regimes to consolidate their power over the city and its territory” (2). Expulsion of defeated groups — Ghibellines, Guelfs, Whites (most famously Dante), magnates, gente nuova, powerful families — was a regular occurrence. If nothing else, one comes away from Ricciardelli’s exhaustive narrative with a fresh appreciation of the degree to which Florentine history always involved the dynamic tension between the ruling faction and a community of exiles working against it. Especially in the years following the Ciompi uprising of 1378, different magistracies were devised to monitor exiles and cope with the problems they presented. Exiles were thus part of the dynamic of the Renaissance state.

The author notably eschews the term exile, in contrast to Randolph Starn (Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy [End Page 511] [1982]) and Christine Shaw (The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy [2000]). As many Florentines slipped off rather than submit to a new regime, “to speak of exile . . . is, therefore, somewhat strained, since it would be more appropriate to talk of varying forms of exclusion that led to ‘self-exile ’” (23).

Ricciardelli’s narrative focuses on some notable changes in the use of political exclusion. In the Guelf-Ghibelline conflicts, political ban was linked to the right to blood feud. Exclusion was the only viable way to resolve vicious conflicts by getting one of the parties out of the city. Intrusion of the Popolo into the equation resulted in large collective condemnations. By the end of the century the coalescence of the Popolo with the Guelfs led to another defining political exclusion, that of the magnates. This time there was not mass exclusion from the city, but there was disenfranchisement from the major magistracies of republican government. Punitive mass exclusion resurfaced in the early fourteenth century when 600 White Guelfs were sent packing. These condemnations, Ricciardelli finds, were more cruel and specific than the earlier ones, encompassing innocent kin with the guilty on a principle of collective responsibility.

Instability and factional strife continued to mark Florence after 1302, not least because the activities of the fuorusciti were always threatening. The signoria of Robert of Anjou (1322–23) was devised to resolve problems internally. The later signoria of Walter of Brienne (1342–43) signally failed to reintegrate the magnates.

There followed a shift in which collective sentences were replaced with precautionary measures against supposed enemies through a decree of ammonizione issued by the Guelf Party. The depredations of exiles on the fringes of Florentine territory — acts barely distinguishable from banditry — kept the illusion of Ghibelline threat alive. The Ciompi episode allowed some fuorusciti to affect their return to Florence, while banishing more pretentious citizens like Lapo da Castiglionchio. The popular regime that ruled until January 1382 attempted to maintain sanctions against both old enemies and new.

The subsequent half century, marked by factional bipolarity and the definitive territorial expansion of Florentine power, worked some final changes in the role of political exclusion in Florence, as “it was clear that the policy of expelling opponents could not be a solution” (204). Conflicts came to center on the electoral purses. Attempted coups were still a threat, but the only one that succeeded, momentarily, was that of 1433, when Rinaldo degli Albizzi gained the expulsion of the Medici. The reversal of fortunes a year later simply resulted in a similar process — political, not judicial — confinement to be enforced by the Otto di Guardia. Florence’s consequent “republican stability and longevity was due to its ability to repress dissent and to its success in gaining popular support” (248).

Ricciardelli’s narrative is dense. The texture remains very close to the many strands of the story, rarely stepping back to see the whole pattern. The narrative is also very unselfconscious. There are no critical stances...

pdf

Share