The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy by Fabrizio Ricciardelli (review)

True to its title, the primary aim of Fabrizio Ricciardelli's monograph is to dispel the myth of republicanism in Renaissance Italy. The book examines the debates surrounding republican and signorial political systems in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Both systems reached their climax in Italy at the end of the fourteenth century. Throughout these two centuries, Italian cities were free and self-governing, and did not recognise any superior power. They were independent city–states that were governed through civic participation. However, this civic participation did not offer a guarantee of universal suffrage to all of the city's inhabitants.

Ricciardelli states that his book will 'substitute the old concept of an Italy divided into two by the opposition between comuni and signorie – and of a signoria born out of the crisis of the commune – with the image of the pluralistic Italy in constant political fermentation' (p. 4). He examines the different types of communes (podestra and popolo), the rise of the signoria, and the decline of the commune. Both political systems supported the forms of government through political rhetoric that appeared to distinguish their systems. In the republican form, the citizens were in theory central to government, however, only guild members were eligible to occupy such a position, and not all inhabitants of the city were entitled to be guild members. This situation of guild membership being a prerequisite for participation in government led to the constitutional base favouring the guild structure that influenced popular movements in protecting citizen concord.

Factions arose between families and clans, particularly between the pro-papal Guelphs and the pro-Imperial Ghibellines. It is claimed that the rise of the signorie was an attempt to respond to conflicts between the rival factions. Supporters of the republican government argued that the 'liberty' that is represented by an elective government is a paramount principle of government: 'The guiding principle of the Renaissance Republican system was based on the nonexistence of the signore and on the fact that only the citizenry was at the centre of interest of the leadership and its entire body politic' (p. 49).

In their rhetoric, they believed that they followed the precepts of Cicero's Res publica and De officiis. However, these precepts were adhered to only marginally. Supporters of the signorie claimed that peace, order, and unity took precedence over 'liberty'. Only through achieving social tranquillity, peace, and unity would a city grow and prosper. At a time when the republican government that dominated northern and central Italy was beginning to fall, the signorie promoted recent political treatises advocating the advantages that would be achieved through the policies of the unity and peace that only the signori could deliver. In the political arena and the race for power, rhetoric, both spoken and written, played an important role in the contest between the different political systems.

The reality of these two forms of government was that they were very similar and did not differ greatly. Republican governments promoted 'liberty', but completely ignored universal suffrage, while the signori were not as totalitarian as the rhetoric of the republicans inferred. In both political systems, power was always held by oligarchic groups but these groups promoted the common good of the citizens. The urban landscape of the city, the civitas, symbolically expressed the community's shared political, economic, and religious identity. The ideological value of the civitas was a principal reference for the ruling elites. The republican and signorial governments were not opposing forms of government. They 'consistently made the common good gravitate around that which they defined as regimen civitatis: the government ability of the city, at the centre of which there must constantly be the civis, which was a theme shared by both forms of communal and seigniorial governments' (p. 179). They were interchangeable political entities, which were chosen from necessity and circumstances.

The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy re-examines these two forms of...