Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
The rise of an administrative elite in medieval
Bologna: notaries and popular government,
1282–1292
B.R. Carniello ∗
Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410, USA
Abstract
The impact of popular movements on medieval Italian towns from c. 1200 to c. 1500
remains open for debate. Scholars taking a broad perspective on Italian city-states conclude
that progress occurred chiefly within the aristocratic sphere. Others have instead singled out
Florence as a model for Italian popular movements, and consider the popular regimes of 1293–
95, 1343–48 and 1378–82. Bologna’s guild-based popular government of the 1280s has been
largely overlooked. Rolandino Passaggeri, renowned Bolognese master of notarial arts, authored the Sacred Ordinances, launching the popular government, and reorganised the notaries’
guild as part of the reform initiative. He provided the guild with a strong leadership hierarchy,
advanced professionalism in notarial practice, and institutionalised checks on the loyalty of
the members of the notaries’ guild to the popular government. As a result of Rolandino’s
efforts in the 1280s, an administrative elite emerged within the popular coalition that had been
previously dominated by an elite of wealthy merchants and bankers.
 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
Keywords: Bologna; Popular government; Rolandino Passaggeri; Notaries; Guilds
From the beginning of the commune in the twelfth century to the end of the
Bentivoglio regime in the first decade of the sixteenth century, no government in
medieval Bologna was as revolutionary as the one initiated in 1282 following the
∗
Fax: +1-805-893-8795.
E-mail address: [email protected] (B.R. Carniello).
0304-4181/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
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B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
promulgation of anti-magnate legislation known as the Sacred Ordinances.1 Bologna’s guild-based government from 1282 to 1292 offers an important case for the
study of Italian popular reform movements.2 Leaders of this movement sought no
less than to redefine the nature of communal authority, traditionally dominated by
an aristocratic elite. Notaries were especially important in the Bolognese experience.
Rolandino Passaggeri, renowned Bolognese master of notarial arts, authored the
Sacred Ordinances, launching the popular government, and reorganised the notaries’
guild as part of the reform initiative. He provided the guild with a strong leadership
hierarchy, advanced professionalism in notarial practice, and institutionalised checks
on the loyalty of the members of the notaries’ guild to the popular government. As
a result of Rolandino’s efforts in the 1280s, an administrative elite emerged within
the popular coalition that had been previously dominated by an elite of wealthy
merchants and bankers. The notaries became the articulators and enforcers of
communal authority, now under popular government, and its reform programme.
The significance of such popular movements in northern and central Italian citystates remains open for debate. Some scholars, who have taken a broad perspective
on the Italian communes from the twelfth century to the rise of territorial states by
the fifteenth century, have concluded that change occurred chiefly within the spheres
of the aristocratic and economic elite.3 For Philip Jones, popular movements were
1
On Bologna from 1116 to 1280, see Alfred Hessel, Storia della città di Bologna, 1116–1280, translated by Gina Fasoli (Bologna: Alfa, 1975). On Bologna from the 1280s to the first lordship in 1327, see
Vito Vitale, Il dominio della parte guelfa in Bologna (1280–1327) (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1901,
reprint, Bologna: Arnoldo Forni Editore, 1978); Sarah Blanshei, ‘Crime and law enforcement in medieval
Bologna’, Journal of Social History, 16 (1982), 121–38, ‘Criminal law and politics in medieval Bologna’,
Criminal Justice History, 2 (1981), 121–38, and ‘Criminal justice in medieval Perugia and Bologna’, Law
and History Review 1 (1983). On Bologna under the rule of Bertrando de Poggetto in the fourteenth
century, see Lisetta Ciaccio, ‘Il cardinale legato Bertrando de Poggetto in Bologna (1327–1334)’, Atti e
memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Romagna (AMR), series 3, 23 (1904–5). On the government of Taddeo Pepoli (1337 to 1347), see Niccolo Rodolico, Dal comune alla signoria: saggio sul
governo di Taddeo Pepoli in Bologna (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1898, reprint, Arnaldo Forni Editore).
On Bologna under the rule of the Visconti and lords from Milan, see Albano Sorbelli, La signoria di
Giovanni Visconti a Bologna e le sue relazioni con la toscana (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1902, reprint,
Arnaldo Forni Editore) and Lino Sighinolfi, La signoria di Giovanni da Olegio in Bologna (1355–1360)
(Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1905). On the rule of the Church in Bologna, see Oreste Vancini, ‘Bologna
della Chiesa (1360–1376)’, AMR, series 3, 25 (1905–06), 239–320, 508–52 and 25 (1906–07), 16–108,
and ibid., La rivolta al governo dei vicari della Chiesa (1376–77) e l’origini dei tribuni della plebe
(Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1906). On the rule of the Bentivoglio to 1506, see Cecilia M. Ady, The
bentivoglio of Bologna: A study in despotism (London: Oxford University Press, 1937) and Francesca
Bocchi, ‘I bentivoglio da cittadini a signori’, AMR, n.s., 22 (1971), 43–64. See also William Montorsi,
‘Involuzione del capitaniato del popolo in Bologna. L’esecutore ed il conservatore di giustizia’, Bullettino
dell’istituto storico italiano per il medio evo e archivio muratoriano, 73 (1961), 165–217.
2
This government continued in a mitigated form from 1292 to 1300 and then in various factional
reformulations until 1327.
3
Marvin B. Becker, ‘Some common features of Italian urban experience, c.1200–1500’, Medievalia
et Humanistica, n.s., 1 (1970), 175–201, asserts that the centralisation and bureaucratisation of state fiscal
and juridical functions in northern and central Italy emerged as the result of a relationship between military
expenditures and the rise of public forms of deficit financing to pay for wars. While Becker does not
locate the causes of this change in conflicts between groups with different social and economic interests,
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
321
nothing more than a brief and insignificant anomaly, an effort by upstarts that only
antagonised their social superiors and, Jones asserts, led to the rise of despotism.4
The only constant, ‘despite all constitutional checks and balances, [was that] power
in the Italian communes clung obstinately to wealth and migrated with movements
of wealth’.5 In Jones’ view, Italy thus followed the progress of medieval European
political structures, which were always aristocratic or monarchical. Among Italian
scholars, Sergio Bertelli’s Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale (1978)
represents the view that aristocratic power was the only significant power in communal politics.6 Popular governments in Italy, Bertelli contends, were just another arena
for the negotiation of power between members of a small elite. The masses, he
argues, only entered that arena when invited to do so by one or another magnate
faction seeking support for its position. Yet Jones and Bertelli both posit a false
dichotomy between participatory democracy and aristocratic oligarchy, which allows
them to dismiss popular movements on the basis that Italian communes never achieved broad, Athenian-style, participatory democracy.7 Moreover, this approach fails
to consider particular experiences of individual communes and to evaluate the circumstances that led to different choices. Even if popular governments were only
sporadic and short-lived, why did they come into being? What were the struggles
that motivated any reformulation of political practice and discourse? Was wealth the
only source of power or change?
Florence has long been the model for investigations on the significance of popular
government in the communal period.8 In Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280
the overall effect of the rise of Renaissance statal structures was that the consular aristocrats of the twelfth
century were ultimately displaced politically in Genoa and Venice during the thirteenth century and in
Pisa and Florence during the fourteenth century by an aristocracy of wealthy citizen creditors, who formed
cohesive aristocracies and possessed ‘the surest passport to political influence’ in Renaissance states.
4
Philip J. Jones, Italian city-state from commune to signoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); ibid.,
‘Economia e società nell’Italia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia’ in Storia d’Italia Einaudi, Annali,
vol. 1: Dal feudalesimo al capitalismo, eds Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (Torino: G. Einaudi,
1978), 185–372, and republished as ‘Economia e società nell’Italia medievale: il mito della borghesia’,
in Jones, Economia e società nell’Italia medievale (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), 3–189; and ibid., ‘Communes
and despots: The City State in late-medieval Italy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 15
(1965), 71–96.
5
Jones, ‘Communes and despots’, 75.
6
Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978).
7
For a concise analysis of Bertelli’s premises, see John Najemy, ‘Dialogue of power in Florentine
politics’ in City state in classical antiquity and medieval Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1991), 271. Jones explicitly indicts the popular movements for being ‘un-Athenian’ in their form of
political participation in ‘Communes and despots’, 77.
8
Scholars have recently re-evaluated taking Florence as the model for the medieval and renaissance
Italian experience. This topic was raised at the 15th Conference of Studies of the Centro Italiano di studi
di storia e d’arte in Pistoia, 15–18 May 1995, entitled ‘Magnati e popolani nell’Italia comunale’, at the
conference in Georgetown University’s study centre in Fiesole, the Villa Le Balze, 19–20 June 1997,
entitled ‘The Anglo-Americans in Florence’, and at the conference in Santa Barbara, California, 10–11
November 2000, entitled ‘Florence reconsidered: A conference in honor of Marvin Becker’. See JeanClaude Maire-Vigueur, ‘Il problema storiografico: Firenze come modello (e mito) di regime popolare’,
in Magnati e popolani nell’Italia comunale, quindicesimo convegno di studi, Pistoia, 15–18 maggio 1995
(Pistoia: Centro italiano di studi di storia e d’arte, 1997), 1–16, and Marcello Fantoni, ‘Renaissance
322
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
al 1295 (1899), Gaetano Salvemini interpreted the rise of the popular government
as the product of class conflict between an elite of land-owning aristocrats and a
rising commercial class.9 Nicola Ottokar in Il comune di Firenze alla fine del dugento
(1926), responded to Salvemini’s thesis, arguing that the powerful in Florence in the
last two decades of the thirteenth century were not members of competing classes
with conflicting interests, but were instead members of a small elite, the ceto dirigente, with similar economic interests and ideology.10 Subsequent studies have considered the Florentine popular movement in terms of political ideologies or the socioeconomic interests that shaped political practice. Marvin Becker, writing between
1960 and 1965, argued that popular governments ruling Florence in 1293–95, 1343–
48, and 1378–82 strove to realise impartiality of government.11 The aristocratic oligarchies that ruled Florence between 1282 and 1382, particularly the greatest period
of patrician rule lasting from 1328 to 1342, on the other hand, continually regressed
into ineffective and divisive conflicts between aristocratic families, leaving one faction to use (or abuse) government offices to protect friends and attack enemies.12
Becker emphasised the popular government of 1343–48, which opened offices to
many novi cives of the arts guilds and reversed the policies of patricians by increasing
Florence’s control over its own region rather than pursuing imperialistic expansion
and by rooting out those who had previously abused government offices and funds
to advance private interests.13
John Najemy has also called our attention to the significance of popular political
ideology in medieval Florence.14 Responding to a rising emphasis on patronage and
elitist forms of informal political practice in studies on medieval Florence, Najemy
argues that the popular programme in Florence between 1250 and 1400—particularly
after January of 1293 when the first popular government advanced its most radical
programme—offered a significant political alternative against which the small elite
of potentate families constantly had to negotiate their power. The power of elite
families ‘was shaped by and even transformed by that regular and almost permanent
republics and principalities in Anglo-American historiography’, in Gli Anglo-Americani a Firenze: Idea
e costruzione del rinascimento, atti del convegno, Georgetown University, Villa ‘Le Balze’, Fiesole, 19–
20 giugno 1997, ed. Marcello Fantoni (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2000), 35–53.
9
Gaetano Salvemini, Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295, 2nd ed., ed. Ernesto Sestan
(Milan: Feltrinelli, 1960).
10
Nicola Ottokar, Il comune di Firenze alla fine del dugento, 2nd edition (Torino: Einaudi, 1962).
11
Becker, ‘Some aspects of oligarchical, dictatorial, and popular signorie in Florence 1282–1382’ Comparative Studies in History and Society, 2 (1960), 421–39.
12
Becker, ‘Some aspects of oligarchical, dictatorial, and popular signorie’, and ‘A study in political
failure: The Florentine magnates, 1280–1343’, Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 246–308.
13
Becker, ‘Florentine popular government (1343–48)’, Transactions of the American Historical Society,
106 (1962), 360–82. In another 1962 article, ‘An essay on the ‘Novi Cives’ and Florentine politics, 1343–
1382’, Mediaeval Studies, 24 (1962), 43, Becker referred to this regime as the most democratic of the
popular governments in communal history.
14
John M. Najemy, ‘Dialogue of power in Florentine politics’, 269–88, ibid., Corporatism and consensus in Florentine electoral politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill, University of Carolina Press, 1982), and
ibid., ‘Guild republicanism in trecento Florence: The successes and ultimate failure of corporate politics’,
American Historical Review (AHR), 84 (1979), 53–71.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
323
conflict’.15 Yet the popular programme at the end of the thirteenth century aimed at
more than shaping the political discourse among magnates. Najemy identified the
Florentine popular government of 1293–95, which was the first successful effort of
the Florentine corporate federation fully to associate communal authority with its
own, as implementing a distinctly guild-based form of republicanism and as the
forerunner of the popular governments in 1343–48 and 1378–82.16 The Ordinances
of Justice, advanced in January of 1293 by this popular government, Najemy maintains, ‘gave formal expression to the vision … of the Florentine commune as a
sovereign federation of equal and autonomous guilds’.17 Particularly revolutionary
in this first guild government, evident in its system for electing the highest government officials, was that ‘the guilds of the furriers, butchers, shoemakers, iron-workers, master-builders, and used-cloth dealers would participate on equal terms in these
elections with the guilds of bankers, woollen cloth manufacturers, and international
traders’.18 Yet Najemy’s evaluation of the political ideology advanced by the Florentine popular government in 1293 does not explain the origins of its revolutionary
principles or the motives for their advancement in Florence in the 1290s beyond the
self-evident rightness of voluntary association, egalitarianism within each corporation, and egalitarianism between the corporations united in a federation. Where did
the call for equality between wealthy mercantile guilds and more modest artisan
guilds come from? What were the circumstances in which such principles were
articulated and implemented?
The degree to which Bologna has been overlooked thus far in these discussions
defies explanation.19 More than a century ago, scholars considered the influence of
Rolandino Passaggeri’s Sacred Ordinances of the Bolognese popular government in
1282, on Giano della Bella’s Ordinances of Justice of the Florentine popular government in 1293.20 These analyses revealed that Florentines did not copy verbatim from
15
Najemy, ‘Dialogue of power’, 276–7 and 280–1. Najemy calls the populares a ‘tenacious competing
class’ and notes the efforts made by the elites of aristocratic families to diminish or even seek to destroy
the power of Popolo guilds, their political enemies, during the fourteenth century. By the end of the
fourteenth century, Najemy argues, the way the elite thought about and practiced politics was affected
by popular ideology, as the elite adopted the Popolo’s ‘respect for constitutional tradition’.
16
Najemy, ‘Guild republicanism in trecento Florence’, 53–71.
17
Ibid., 58.
18
Ibid.
19
Sarah Rubin Blanshei noted in 1981 that despite increasing scholarly recognition of the importance
of studying criminal law, scholars focused on Florence and Venice in the fourteenth century rather than
on Bologna in the thirteenth, where innovative legal theory was articulated and where, under popular
government in the 1280s, notaries were significant to the implementation of reforms in criminal justice.
See Blanshei, ‘Criminal law and politics in medieval Bologna’, Criminal Justice History, 2 (1981), 1–30.
20
Vito Vitale, Il dominio della parte Guelfa, 38–9. See Gina Fasoli, ‘Ricerche sulla legislazione antimagnatizia nei comuni dell’alta e media Italia’, Rivista di storia del diritto italiano, 12 (1939), 86–133,
for a general discussion on anti-magnate legislation (and/or anti-magnate reaction), that arose in various
medieval Italian communes from Liguria and the Veneto in the north to Lazio in central Italy and ranged
widely in degree and scope of reform. Fasoli downplays the importance of Bologna’s Sacred Ordinances
even though they uniquely articulated a comprehensive programme of reform that reached all levels of
communal authority and government activity.
324
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
the political rhetoric of the Bolognese guild-based reform movement. Yet the Bolognese were first to initiate and articulate, as a matter of dealing with immediate problems and acting out of practical necessity, principles of this style of guild-based
republicanism that were unique in the communal experience when the Sacred Ordinances were advanced in 1282. In this paper I will argue that guild-based communal
government, advanced in Florence in the 1290s in an idealistic effort to realise egalitarian principles, had already been worked out in Bologna in the 1280s as the product
of efforts to restore order after prolonged private conflicts between patrician factions
and their allies all but crippled the whole community. The disorder led not only to
the rise of guild-based republicanism in Bologna in 1282, but also to a concurrent
administrative revolution which, though fundamental to the legitimacy of this revolutionary popular government, has not been explored as a significant feature of Italian
popular governments.
1. Magnate violence and the popular movement to 1282
The origins and development of popular societies in Bologna were a less unique
phenomenon.21 As commercial activity increased in the Italian communes by the end
of the twelfth century, professionals and craftsmen began to form corporate associations. In addition to associations of relatively humble craftsmen and traders, members of aristocratic families in Bologna participated politically and economically in
the wealthier corporations, the guilds of the merchants and bankers. Individual corporations united in a popular coalition of arts guilds (led by the merchants and
bankers) and, between 1217 and 1220, gained representation in the general council
of the commune.22 During this three-year period, initiatives favourable to commerce
were enacted. In 1219, a registration of notaries was made in order to alleviate
confusion caused by a proliferation of documents produced by people who did not
have skills in notarial practice.23 An examination process soon emerged and Ranieri
da Perugia, master of notarial arts in Bologna, invented a new treatise form, the ars
21
For discussions on the origins and politics of guilds in Bologna, see Alfred Hessel, Storia di Bologna,
147–59, Giovanni De Vergottini, Arti e popolo nella prima metà del secolo XIII (Milan, 1943) 15–49,
and Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, ‘The organization of the fine wool industry of Bologna in the thirteenth
century’, unpub. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1966. See also Antonio Ivan Pini, ‘Magnati e popolani
a Bologna nella seconda metà del XIII secolo’ in Magnati e popolani nell’Italia comunale, quindicesimo
convegno di studi, Pistoia, 15–18 maggio 1995 (Pistoia: Centro italiano di studi di storia e d’arte, 1997),
371–96, especially 375–6 and 378–86.
22
Hessel, Storia di Bologna, 173–4, and Pini, ‘Magnati e popolani a Bologna’, 78–83.
23
iber sive matricula notariorum comunis Bononie (1219–1299), ed. Roberto Ferrara and Vittorio
Valentini (Rome: Consiglio nazionale del notariato, 1980), 1: ‘Questionibus emergentibus super instrumentis et actibus notariorum valde periculosis, cum multi exercerent offitium notarie de quibus fama non
erat quod essent notarii nec aliter aparebat, sapientes Bononie, volentes de medio tollere pericula et
decidere questiones, pro comuni constitutionem promulgarunt ut omnes notarii qui vellent exercere notarie
offitium scriberentur in uno libro, cuius formam sequenti liceret uti offitio notarie’. See Roberto Ferrara,
‘‘Licentia exercendi’ ed esame di notariato a Bologna nel secolo XIII’, in: Notariato medievale bolognese,
vol. 2 (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1977), 47–120, especially pp. 51–62.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
325
notarie, to elaborate the theoretical premises of notarial practice.24 A new Saturday
market was also secured in 1219 in the area occupied today by Piazza VIII Agosto,
establishing the town as a great commercial centre in the region.25 But in 1220, as
the imperial army threatened the Italian communes, the magnate families ejected the
corporations from the lower legislative body of communal government and prepared
to defend the town. Eight years later, when the merchant Giuseppe de’ Toschi led
a successful revolution, the popular coalition re-emerged in communal government,
this time in both the general and special councils, allowing popular leaders a voice
in creating policy and not just voting rights in the general council. In 1230–31, the
commune attempted to stimulate the production of fine wool and silk in Bologna by
offering financial incentives such as interest-free loans and free housing and workstations to foreign textile workers, particularly to those artisans from Verona and Lucca
where, respectively, fine wool and silk production were highly advanced.26 Still,
despite the commercial interests of some magnates who participated in the guilds,
most magnates in the first half of the thirteenth century placed family prestige and
private alliances above the good of the community or the authority of public officials.
They participated in the conflicts between magnate factions that disrupted order in
the town.
Conflicts between magnate families contributed to the development of popular
ideology and institutions that began to form in the first half of the thirteenth century
and developed more substantially in the second half of the century. According to
legend, magnate families, grouped into various consorterie, alternated between
friendship and enmity until 1219, when they divided into two groups as a result of
the rivalry between the two captains of the Bolognese armies, Baruffaldino dei Geremei and Bonifazio Lambertazzi, during the fifth crusade.27 Sometime before 1243,
when conflicts turned to violence in the streets of the town, magnate families had
already coalesced into two factions, the Guelf (called the pars Ieremiensium after
24
The ars notarie was further elaborated in the 1240s and 1250s by Salatiele and Rolandino Passaggeri,
rival masters of notarial arts in Bologna. See Giorgio Tamba, Una corporazione per il potere: Il notariato
a Bologna in età comunale (Bologna: Clueb, 1998), 30–7, and Gianfranco Orlandelli, ‘La scuola bolognese
di notariato’, in: Notariato medievale bolognese, vol. 2 (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1977),
27–46.
25
Antonio Ivan Pini, ‘Produzione artiginato e commercio a Bologna e in Romagna nel Medio Evo’,
in Storia dell’Emilia Romagna, ed. A. Berselli (Bologna, 1976), 535.
26
Maureen Fennel Mazzaoui, ‘The emigration of Veronese textile artisans to Bologna in the thirteenth
century’, Atti e memorie dell’accademia di agricoltura, scienze e lettere di Verona, 18–19 (1967–68),
276–9.
27
Giorgio Cencetti, ‘Rolandino Passaggeri dal mito alla storia’, in: Notariato medievale bolognese, I:
Scritti di Giorgio Cencetti (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1977), 209. The chronicler Dino
Compagni and other Florentine writers in the first half of the fourteenth century reported a similar legend
to explain the origins of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence. In 1215, after Buondelmonte de’
Buondelmonti agreed to marry the daughter of Oderigo Giantruffetti and then married the daughter of
Forteguerra Donati instead, Oderigo’s relatives, the Uberti, murdered Buondelmonte, triggering the townspeople to take one side or the other in the consequent (and self-perpetuating) fights, murders and civil
conflicts. See Dino Compagni, Dino Compagni’s chronicle of Florence, translated by Daniel E. Bornstein
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 6–7.
326
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
the Geremei) and the Ghibelline (called the pars Lambertaciorum after the
Lambertazzi). Each faction had fortified urban enclaves and the will to consistently
disregard the needs of the community in their frequent conflicts against each other.
The popular movement’s response to magnate violence was the establishment of its
own political structure, the populus, which was completed in 1255 with the establishment of the captaincy of the Popolo. The guild coalition now had its own institutions
(captaincy of the Popolo, council of the Popolo, and the college of the anziani and
consoli) that paralleled those of the commune. Thus, the commercial and craft corporations institutionalised a separation between elitist political practices (which
emphasised family, patronage and privilege) and popular political practices (which
emphasised guilds, commerce and production). They forbade members of the privileged aristocratic families to enter the popular societies unless they renounced their
privileges.28 Although the captain of the Popolo was required to approve all members
of the popular societies from the time that the office was established in 1255, Giuliano Milani notes that not one attempted to regulate the guilds’ memberships until
1272, when eruptions of magnate violence increased.29
In 1274, differences between magnate factions over the direction of Bologna’s
military activities abroad caused an escalation of violence between magnate factions
inside Bologna and rapidly ignited civil war. In April, the Lambertazzi wanted to
act against Modena for having expelled the Modenese Ghibellines, the Grasolfi, who
in turn offered to help the Lambertazzi overtake Bologna. The Geremei, on the other
hand, wanted to take action in the Romagna against Guido da Montefeltro and the
Ghibellines of Forlı̀, who were becoming increasingly threatening there. Bologna
divided as Guelfs sought their allies (Florence, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Cremona,
and Ferrara) and Ghibellines turned to theirs (Guido da Montefeltro, Forlı̀, and others
in the Romagna).30 Open warfare in the streets affected the economy. Foreign students, who lived in Bologna to attend the university and contributed to the consumption of local products, were forced to leave because of the violence.31 Attempts to
run markets or practice crafts were hampered by the belligerence of the factions.
Finally, on 2 June, forces from Ferrara arrived to support the Geremei and civil war
28
Pini, ‘Magnati e popolani a Bologna’, 376–8, where he asserts that some members of magnate families continued to be enrolled in popular societies (especially the arms societies) into the 1270s. On the
exclusion of magnates from the popular guilds, see Hessel, Storia di Bologna, 153 and 177–9.
29
Giuliano Milani, ‘Il governo delle liste nel comune di Bologna: premesse e genesi di un libro di
proscrizione duecentesco’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 108 (1996), 172.
30
For more detailed discussions on the events in 1274 that inflamed conflict between magnate factions,
see Vitale, Il dominio della parte Guefa, 20–30; Hessel, La storia di Bologna, 265–8; Cencetti, ‘Rolandino
Passaggeri dal mito alla storia’, 209; and Milani, ‘Il governo delle liste’, 174–5.
31
On the importance of these wealthy students for the local economy, see Pini, ‘Produzione artiginato
e commercio’, 533: ‘Pare che nel XIII secolo gli studenti [forestieri] in città fossero almeno duemila.
Bisognava alloggiarli, nutrirli, vestirli e calzarli, tenendo anche presente che gli studenti del tempo erano
perlopiù ricchi e si facevano accompagnare spesso da servitori. È una clientela esigente e molto dedita
ai consumi e questo contribuisce enormemente al dilatarsi del mercato interno a tutto vantaggio degli
artigiani bolognesi, oltre che degli osti e dei tavernieri’.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
327
ended with the expulsion of thousands of Ghibellines.32 Historians often report that
once the adherents to the popular movement allied themselves with the Geremei,
these magnates became victorious over the Lambertazzi and expelled them, leaving
the town to a new Guelf-Popolo alliance.33 In fact, expulsion did not end the conflict
between the two magnate factions. It only took it outside the walls of Bologna and
into the larger arena of the Romagna.34 The Lambertazzi fled to Faenza to join their
Ghibelline allies. The Geremei, far from enjoying the fruits of victory in Bologna,
followed their enemies, took their own crippling blow in battle against the combined
Ghibelline forces in 1275, and had to turn to Charles of Anjou in 1276 for military
assistance. Thus, an alliance between the popular regime and Guelf magnates is
overstated. The Geremei were not occupied with ruling Bologna, much less governing the town and working to free the streets from violence. As we shall see shortly,
the guildsmen of the popular movement in Bologna acted in the void left by the
magnates and responded to this disorder by taking arms.
Magnate violence returned briefly to Bologna in the second half of 1279. According to the narrative offered by Gina Fasoli and others, the transfer of sovereignty
over the towns of the Romagna (Bologna, Imola, Faenza, Forlı̀, and Rimini along
the Via Emilia and Ravenna on the Adriatic) from the Holy Roman Emperor to Pope
Nicholas III was formally completed in March of 1279. Already in July of 1278,
representatives from the parties of each of the towns met in Viterbo and swore their
32
Estimates range from 10,000 to 12,000 people expelled out of a population of approximately 50,000.
See Vitale, Il dominio della parte Guelfa, 29–30; Hessel, Storia di Bologna, 267–8; Antonio Ivan Pini,
‘La politica demografica ‘ad elastico’ di Bologna fra il XII e il XIV secolo’, in Città medievali e demografia stocia: Bologna, Romagna, Italia (secc.XIII-XV), (Bologna: Clueb, 1996), 129; and ibid., ‘Magnati
e popolani a Bologna’, 377.
33
Since Vito Vitale, Il dominio della parte Guelfa a Bologna (1901), many scholars have emphasised
an alliance between Guelfs and the popular movement that began with the civil conflict in 1274 and
became the basis of government that emerged in 1282. Alliances between magnate factions and adherents
of the popular movement were more complicated. In ‘Magnati e popolani a Bologna’, 390, Pini argues
that up to four arms societies sided with the Ghibellines. In ‘Il governo delle liste’, 189, Milani evaluates
the taxes imposed on the Ghibelline supporters who remained in Bologna, which ranged from two Bolognese solidos to twenty-two Bolognese pounds for those living in the quarter of Porta Procula, and also
concludes that Lambertazzi allies must have crossed all levels of Bolognese society. The arrival of forces
from Ferrara to support the Geremei most likely had the greatest effect on the expulsion of the Lambertazzi. See also the section entitled ‘Rolandino and the Sacred Ordinances’ below.
34
Gina Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279 tra i partiti bolognesi’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 2 (1933), 49–75,
especially page 51, and Pini ‘Magnati e popolani a Bologna’, 390. More than a quarter of a century later,
reflecting on the events spanning the thirteenth century, the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri referred to
the Romagna in Inferno XXVII.37–8 as a region continually fraught with wars and in Purgatorio XIV.88–
123 as a region that had become ‘ripieno di venenosi sterpi’ that choked out not only the lives of noble
families, but also sterilised them of those things (‘del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo’) that made them
noble. Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279’, 50, refers to the Romagna as ‘il più turbolento paese d’Italia’. On
Guelfism and Ghibellinism in the larger political arena, see Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics,
145–56.
328
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
allegiance to papal sovereignty.35 While other towns received the pope’s legate and
rector, the Bolognese resisted any loss of their autonomy. Finally, in June of 1279,
when the Bolognese acquiesced and Nicholas III’s nephew Bertoldo Orsini entered
the town as podestà, representatives of the Geremei and Lambertazzi took oaths in
the piazza of San Dominico to uphold the peace. The pope and his nephews, Cardinal
Latino and Cardinal Bertoldo, restored the authority of the aristocratic communal
institutions and granted the two factions equal power in those councils and offices.
The Society of the Cross, a coalition of popular arms societies which will be discussed shortly, was suspended and the popular arms societies, which according to
Fasoli were impossible to abolish however much the pope distrusted them, were
weakened.36 But why did the townspeople resist the pope’s initiatives? The pope’s
attempt to return political exiles in the Romagna to their respective homes and restore
power to the aristocratic elite was no reward to the townspeople of Bologna for
enduring years of violent upheaval. Nicholas III failed to appreciate the potentially
explosive consequences of reuniting the two factions in the town. And indeed, within
a year after the magnates returned, so did the violence. The Lambertazzi expulsion
had to be repeated. This time the expulsion was permanent.
The self-destructive behaviour of the magnate factions, climaxing in the 1270s,
created both distress and an opportunity for the members of the popular corporations.
Beginning with the civil war in 1274, Rolandino Passaggeri, who would later author
the Sacred Ordinances, led the movement.37 Well into his fifties, after a distinguished
career as a teacher and master of notarial arts, Rolandino set aside his stilus and
took charge of a new arms society, the Society of the Cross, a citizens’ militia of twothousand drawn from the several popular arms societies.38 Perhaps it was because he
had been tucked away in the Studio, and was therefore separate from the various
economic interests that linked wealthy guildsmen and aristocratic families, that Rolandino emerged as a viable leader as opposed to members of the commercial elite.
The leadership of the Society of the Cross included rectors, called primicerii, and a
council that deliberated on policies and brought proposals before the Council of the
35
Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279’, 52; Daniel Waley, The papal state in the thirteenth century, 191–201;
and Vitale, Il dominio della parte Guelfa, 23–5. Waley refers to the Romagna as chaotic and speculates
that Emperor Rudolf might have given the region to Pope Nicholas III believing that the pope could do
no better there than he had (193).
36
Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279’, 64. Also, an initial attempt by the popular movement to advance antimagnate legislation between 1271 and 1278 had to be aborted as a result of papal intervention. See Gina
Fasoli, ‘La legislazione antimagnatizia a Bologna fino al 1292’, Rivista di storia del diritto italiano, 6
(1933), 363.
37
Anontio Ivan Pini’s ‘Un principe dei notai in una ‘repubblica di notai’: Rolandino Passaggeri nella
Bologna del duecento’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 84 (2000), 51–72; Giorgio Cencetti, ‘Rolandino Passaggeri
dal mito alla storia’, 199–215; Arturo Palmieri, Rolandino Passaggeri (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933); and
Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279’, 63–6.
38
Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Comune, riformagioni del consiglio del popolo, I, 11r, 10 Oct.
1278: ‘Item cum hoc sit, quod Dominus Rolandinus Passagerius, perpetuus primicerius societatis Crucis
populi Bononie, occassione ufficii primicerii ad instantiam dicte societatis, dimisit et neglexit artem,
studium et scholares suos’. Quoted in Lorenzo Paolini, ‘Le origini della ‘Societas Crucis’, Rivista di
storia e letteratura religiosa, 15 (1979), 209, n. 107.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
329
Popolo. The membership of the Society of the Cross came from all four quarters of
the town, each group serving under its own banner.39 The efforts of Rolandino and
his followers in the Society of the Cross from 1274 to 1279 indicates the desire for
relief from magnate violence and the willingness to get it by force. But even at its
height, the Society of the Cross could act as little more than a reaction force against
eruptions of violence in the town. After the failed attempt by the papacy to reconcile
the magnate factions and bring peace to the town, economic decline caused by years
of civil conflicts continued. In 1281 it became necessary to resort to direct taxation
(the estimo) because the commune fell into fiscal collapse.40 Violence would no
longer be tolerated, as order had to return to the town if the economy were to be
restored. Rather than reinstitute the coalition of arms societies, Rolandino turned
his attention to redefining the popular movement, town government, and communal
authority itself.
2. Rolandino and the sacred ordinances
The Sacred Ordinances of 1282 were a revolutionary reformulation of the popular
programme. As the popular movement asserted its authority over communal government, it became the exclusive domain of the coalition of the mercantile, textile, and
craft guilds and the popular arms societies.41 These corporations went from being a
39
Fasoli, ‘La pace del 1279’, 63–8.
The commune was forced to impose the estimo direct tax in 1281–1282. See Antonio Ivan Pini, ‘Gli
estimi cittadini di Bologna dal 1296 al 1329’, Studi Medievali, series 3, 18 (1977), 111–59, for discussion
on the use of the estimo in medieval Bologna. Estimo taxation in Bologna typically coincided with fiscal
crises, sometimes caused by foreign wars or precipitating the rise of new governments. After 1281–1282,
estimo taxation was not imposed again until 1296, just after Bologna went to war with Ferrara. In 1281,
the commune imposed penalties—such as fines and denial of the right to make accusations in court—
against anyone who defrauded the commune by not filing an estimo report. Some evidence exists that
the 1281 legislation was utilised in an active accusation case. Between two folios in a 1288 register of
accusations from the court of the podestà there remains a copy of the legislation on a loose parchment.
See ASB, Comune, curia del Podestà, Giudici ad maleficia. Accusationes, busta 7/b, 1288, register 10,
between folios 8 and 9. On the estimo as a form of taxation greatly disliked by Florentine aristocratic
families during the trecento, see Marvin B. Becker, ‘Florentine popular government (1343–1348)’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106 (1962), 360–82, especially 362: ‘The Florentines
associated this type of taxation (the estimo) with the despised tyrannies of Charles of Calabria (1325–
1328) and Walter of Brienne (1342–1343); therefore the well-being of the state would have to be wholly
dependent upon the monies from indirect imposts’.
41
The Sacred Ordinances and the Most Sacred Ordinances of 1284 can be found in Statuti di Bologna
dell’anno 1288, 2 vols., ed. Gina Fasoli and Pietro Sella (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
1937), vol. 1, V.i–xxvii, 283–329, and V.lxxxv–xxxxviiii, 442–58. For further discussion on the Sacred
Ordinances of 1282 and the Most Sacred Ordinances of 1284, see Fasoli, ‘La legislazione antimagnatizia
a Bologna’, 351–92. For a description of the communal institutions under the popular regime, see Giorgio
Tamba, I documenti del governo del comune bolognese (1116–1512). Lineamenti della struttura istituzionale della città durante il medioevo (Bologna: Atesa Editrice, 1978), 110–4. According to Tamba, the
Council of the Popolo in 1274 had already become an independent legislative institution, ‘le sue delibere
cioè non necessitano più della successiva approvazione del consiglio del comune’ (p.32, n.31).
40
330
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
secondary source of political activity in which even members of the great families
participated in a popular coalition, the Popolo, which now excluded magnates and
appropriated the political sphere itself. The new government offered a new programme and style of political practice. The artisan and professional guilds of notaries,
workers of coarse wool and workers of fine wool, masters of carpentry and of
masonry, goldsmiths, iron-workers, butchers, fish-sellers, salt-sellers, shoemakers
and leatherworkers became constitutionally equal with wealthier members of the
merchants’ and bankers’ guilds.42 Ministers representing the members of the popular
societies were required to renew their oaths of solidarity and obedience to communal
officials—the podestà, the captain of the Popolo, and the anziani—and to swear to
uphold the Sacred Ordinances and all future legislation of the Council of the
Popolo.43 Because of concern that there were magnate supporters among the anziani,
the current anziani were removed from office so that new ones could be elected.44
In the Sacred Ordinances and the Most Sacred Ordinances of 1284,45 Rolandino
articulated for the government a uniquely comprehensive programme that encom-
42
Najemy’s analysis of the Florentine popular regime from 1293 to 1295, with its guild-republican
constitutional structure, and the Ordinances of Justice of 1293, the formal expression of the ideology of
this guild-based regime, indicates that a nearly identical reformulation of the popular movement occurred
in Florence one decade after it was worked out in Bologna, as indicated in this discussion. See footnotes
16–18 above.
43
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.i, 284: ‘Inprimis providerunt ordinaverunt, statuerunt et firmaverunt sapientes
predicti quod ministrales et consules societatum artium ed armorum, cambii et merchadandie populi
Bononie et homines dictatorum societatum teneantur et debeant de novo iurare manutenere et deffendere
bona fide, sine fraude, toto eorum posse dominos potestatem, capitaneum, ançianos et consules, qui nunc
sunt vel pro tempore fuerint in eorum regiminibus et offitiis, et deffendere et mautenere se ad invicem
et observare et observari facere omnia infrascripta statuta, ordinamenta et provisiones et reformationes
factas et faciendas in favorem et defensionem dicti populi, et terrarum et hominum comitatus et districtus Bononie’.
44
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.viii, 297–9: ‘Item cum in ellectione ancianorum odie periuria committantur,
et insufficientes anciani pro populo et comuni Bononie pro parte Ieremiensium et ecclesie civitatis Bononie
sepius eligantur tam precibus eorum qui cupiunt fieri ançiani quam etiam aliorum et quicumque (et
quicumque) magnatum, quod videtur in obprobrium partis et comunis Bononie redundare: providerunt,
ordinaverunt et firmaverunt predicti sapientes ad hoc [ut] predicta cessent et cessare debeant et meliores
et utiliores ançiani pro popullo Bononie et comuni Bononie et pro parte Ieremiensium eligantur’.
45
The popular government turned to Rolandino to produce the Most Sacred Ordinances with one hundred sapientes when the podestà failed in December of 1284 to uphold the Sacred Ordinances and released
from prison a disobedient magnate, Faldo di Bernardino de Berofaldis, who had been incarcerated by the
arms society of the Griffins and the arts society of the Master Carpenters, the pairing of arms and arts
societies whose turn it was to uphold the Sacred Ordinances of 1282. Although Rolandino must have
taken care to select sapientes broadly from among all the popular societies so as to achieve at least a
perception of equitable participation, forty of the one hundred sapientes were members of the notaries’
guild: eleven out of twenty-five sapientes from the Quarter of Porta Piera; eleven from the Quarter of
Porta Stiera; nine from the Quarter of Porta Ravennata; and nine from the Quarter of Porta Procula. The
ministers of the arms society of the Griffins and the arts society of the Master Carpenters also received
privileges for this purpose. Four of the eight ministers of the arms society of the Griffins—Dominicus
Alamontis, Merchatus domini Bonaventure Clerici, Albertus domini Nicholai Paini, and Petrus domini
Iacobi Indivine—were in fact members of the notaries’ guild. For the lists of participants in the production
of the Most Sacred Ordinances, see Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V, lxxiiii, 402–4.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
331
passed all aspects of communal authority, including initiatives to end magnate violence, to reverse the injustices and abuses that resulted from the disorder beginning
in 1274, and to reinforce communal authority over the Bolognese territory. Underlying these measures were implicit, though equally significant, ideological and administrative premises.
One explicit goal was to dissuade magnate families from disrupting order. Members of the popular societies, ‘volentes et intendentes quod lupi rapaces et agni mansueti ambulent pari gradu’, identified disobedience towards public officials and violence against members of the popular societies as being among those magnate
tendencies that had to be discouraged if ‘rapacious wolves and gentle lambs should
walk on an equal level’.46 Far from acting as allies of the Guelf magnates, the Sacred
Ordinances listed ninety-two leading members of more than forty magnate families
in the city and countryside of Bologna who were each required to pay deposits of
one thousand Bolognese pounds to ensure their obedience to government officials
and thus the termination of their disruptive private conflicts.47 The popular government would not tolerate magnate violence against members of the Popolo or disruptions to order in the town.48 To that end, the ordinances established a unique pairing
of one arts society with one arms society, ‘omnes et singule societates … coniungantur et copulentur simul ad invicem’, and required one pair each month to go with
the podestà to destroy the houses and properties of those who would attack members
of the popular societies or damage their property.49 Finally, the inhabitants of the
Bolognese countryside, whom Bologna’s commune freed from serfdom in 1256–
1257, were expressly forbidden, individually or collectively, to enter into contractual
arrangements with magnates for fear that such contracts might place them in servi-
46
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.xvi, 308–12. See also Massimo Giansante, ‘Uomini e angeli. Gerarchie
angeliche e modelli di potere nel Duecento’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 81 (1997), 349–72 and ibid., ‘I lupi
e gli agnelli. Ideologia e storia di una metafora’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 83 (1999), 215–24. Giansante’s
analyses of the language in the prologues of Bolognese ordinances reveal that such political rhetoric
reflects popular ideology. Giansante argues that rhetorical phrases in the prologues of the Sacred Ordinances of 1282, of election reforms in 1285, and of new statutes of the notaries’ guild in 1288 contain
cosmological allusions to the equality of human beings, while conceptualising communal government as
an institutional hierarchy of officials—the anziani, the captain of the Popolo, the podestà, and the preconsul of the notaries’ guild—who reflect the hierarchy of angels from patristic biblical exegesis and who
mediate between the principles of Roman Law and the activities of townspeople.
47
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.xvi, 308–12. Although the popular regime resisted the Church’s efforts to
extend its influence into communal affairs in 1279 and greatly reduced the power of magnates in the
town in 1282, the regime adopted the title ‘pars ecclesie et jeremensium’, which must have referred more
to Guelf ideology (i.e. opposition to imperial power and a strong advocacy of self autonomy) than to the
Guelf (i.e. Geremei) magnates.
48
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.i–iiii, 284–94. Harsh punishments were established for magnates and ecclesiastics who molested members of the Popolo, the goods of these members, widows, orphans, members
of religious orders, or rustics in the Bolognese contado.
49
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.i, 284–85. The ordinance calls for the pairing of the notaries’ guild and the
swords’ society to be first to take this responsibility.
332
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
tude to nobles.50 All contracts made between inhabitants of the rural communities
and magnates made since 1274 were nullified.
Another explicit goal of reform was to undo injustices and abuses that arose out
of the disorder since 1274. This disorder, created by magnate fighting and by the
failure of the magnates to govern, necessitated measures designed to right past
wrongs and ensure against abuses to public authority under the popular government.
The Sacred Ordinances called for restitutions in the amount of one hundred Bolognese pounds for members of the Popolo who were molested, whose property was
disturbed, or whose property was rendered unproductive and profitless as a result of
magnate conflicts beginning in 1274.51 These townsmen had to go to the court of
the podestà, produce a notarial instrument indicating their ownership of property that
was damaged or disrupted from productivity, and receive monetary restitution for
their losses. Thus, justice was found and the economy was stimulated as productive
members of the town could spend the money or invest it in their businesses.
Also since 1274, popular societies became a target for abuse in the confusion
created by magnate conflicts. The popular societies, having gained importance in the
political sphere since magnates fell into self-destructive conflicts, had to have their
memberships purged of those who would abuse the guilds to gain political influence.
Ministers of the arts societies were required to review the matriculation lists of their
respective arts guilds and remove the names of those who entered the guilds since
the time of the civil conflicts in 1274 but did not practice the trade with ‘suis propriis
manibus’. Multiple matriculations in the arts societies were permitted, but any guild
member matriculated in an arts society whose trade that member did not practice
‘should not hold for that society any office of the Popolo or commune of Bologna,
be for that society an anziano or consul of the Popolo or minister or member of the
Council of the Popolo, or go for that society to any meetings of the Popolo or
commune of Bologna’.52 Members of the popular movement were also not allowed
50
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.xii, 303–5.
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.iii, 290–3: ‘Cum multi homines et populo civitatis, comitatus et districtus
Bononie turbentur et cotidie sint turbati et inquietati in eorum possessionibus et fructibus possessionum
per magnates, providerunt, ordinaverunt, et firmaverunt, quod si aliquis popularis de populo civitatis
Bononie societatium artium et armorum, cambii et mercadandie … est vel fuerit hinc retro a tempore
primorum rumorum citra habitorum in civitate Bononie sub MCCLXXIIII, indictione secunda, de mense
aprelis, vel deinceps erit inquietatus vel molestatus seu turbatus in aliqua eius possessione vel fructibus
possessionis aliqua ratione vel causa vel occasione seu cocumque modo vel ingenio ab aliquo milite vel
magnate seu potente vel nobili vel de nobili progenio nato…ita quod dictam possessionem non possit
possidere vel usufructare vel facere laborari vel fructus percipere et habere; de qua possessione habeat
cartam vel instrumentum vel sententiam … [Et] dominus potestas, dominus capitaneus, ançiani et consules,
qui pro tempore fuerint, precise teneantur infra viii dies facta eisdem denuntiatione ab eo qui inquietatus
seu turbatus vel volestatus fuerit … condempnare dictum molestantem turbantem vel inquietantem in c
libris bononinorum’.
52
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.xviii, 313: ‘Item providerunt ordinaverunt et firmaverunt quod nullus homo
qui intraverit aliquam societatem artium a tempore primorum rumorum citra, habitorum in civitate Bononie
sub anno Domini MCCLXXIIII indictione secunda de mense aprelis, qui non operatus fuerit ipsam artem
suis propriis manibus ad menutum vel in grossum, non possit pro ipsa societate habere aliquod offitium
populi vel communis Bononie, nec esse ançianus nec consul populi vel ministralis vel de consilio populi
51
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
333
to be in more than one arms society, and violators faced a fine of twenty-five Bolognese pounds. The ministers of the arms societies were required to review their membership lists and cancel offenders.53 For representative government based on constitutionally equal popular guilds to be effective, legislation had to prohibit members
of the Popolo from entering arts guilds for political rather than professional reasons
and from entering multiple arms guilds in order to increase their representation in
communal councils.
A third explicit initiative of Bologna’s popular government was to strengthen its
authority over Bolognese territory, which included reversing the magnate push for
expansion and stabilising the commune’s fisc.54 In order to centralise Bologna’s fiscal
and judicial administration over the contado, each rural community was required to
elect a rector (or sindicus), who could not be native to the community, and appoint
a treasurer, an official that many rural communities did not have.55 These measures
also greatly facilitated lending practices between wealthy townspeople and contado
communities. Indeed, the commune’s Memoriali registers that followed the promulgation of the Sacred Ordinances contain numerous references to wealthy Bolognese
bankers like Romeo Pepoli who took advantage of the reorganisation of rural populations by loaning large sums of money to people of the communities collectively
through their sindics, treasurers and other representatives.56
pro ipsa societate, nec esse vel venire ad aliquam congregationem populi vel communis Bononie pro
ipsa societate’.
53
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.i, 285: ‘Et [ordinaverunt] quod nullus de supradicto populo possit nec debeat
esse de duobus societatibus armorum in pena et banno XXV libris bononinorum. Et ministrales teneantur
et debeant tales citari facere et facere eos venire coram se et scire in qua societate esse noluerint, et de
illa societate cancellentur per ministrales societatis infra mensem post confirmationem huius statuti sub
dicta pena’.
54
According to Marvin Becker, popular governments in Florence since 1293, particularly that of 1343–
48, typically reversed the policies of urban magnates, who wanted expansion into neighbouring foreign
territories and weak central government control over the contado, where these magnates had extensive
properties. See Becker, ‘Florentine Popular Government (1343–1348)’, 364 and 368–70.
55
Fasoli-Sella, vol. 1, V.v–vi, 294–7: ‘Item cum multe terre seu ville comitatus Bononie et districtus,
massarium et salptarium non habeant, ut tamen et propterea evitare videntur soluctiones collectarum
communis Bononie, et subire honera et publicas factiones, sicut debent, ex quo commune Bononie gravia
dampna consequitur, providerunt, ordinaverunt et firmaverunt, quod quelibet terra seu villa comitatus et
districtus Bononie teneatur et debeat facere et habere masssarium seu consulem [vel] saltarium hinc ad
xv dies pro anno presenti et quolibet alio anno per xv dies ante exitum massarii vel consulies, vel ante
exitum anni, si massarius non fuerit’. See Fasoli-Sella, vol. 2, XI.i, 179–85, for an indication of the
remarkable success of these measures. In the new statutes produced in 1288, a great number of rural
communities were reported to have sindics and treasurers, who were required to pay gabelle taxes to the
town government on behalf of their rural communities. The new statutes of 1288 were ordered to clear
up all the confusion of various and often contraditiory legislation scattered throughout the commune’s
offices. The statutes of 1288 were the only new statutes produced between 1267 and 1320s.
56
All contracts regarding wealth over twenty Bolognese pounds were required to be recorded at the
commune’s Memoriali office. For examples of Romeo Pepoli lending money to rural communities through
their sindics, treasurers and other represtatives, see ASB, Memoriali, reg. 52, 42r (11 September, 1283);
reg. 52, 140v (18 December, 1283); and reg. 57, 381v (2 September, 1284). In these three examples,
Romeo lent between 40 and 600 Bolognese pounds to the people of Castel San Paolo, San Giovanni in
Persiceto, and Butrio, respectively. For a different interpretation of Romeo Pepoli’s lending strategies,
334
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
An implicit feature of popular ideology in Bologna’s Sacred Ordinances was the
method with which the popular government expressed its programme and the vehicle
it used to achieve it. Constitutional and legislative mandates, notarial contracts, and
matriculation lists were all fundamental elements to the realisation of the new goals
of the popular government. According to Michael T. Clanchy, who studies the formation of bureaucratic government and Common Law in twelfth- and thirteenth-century
England, one form of state power is the externalisation of knowledge in documentation.57 Bologna’s popular government offers a significant case for the way
communal government could utilise this administrative power to counter forms of
power based on social status, physical force and violence. However, more than standardising language and ideology identified by Clanchy, Bologna’s popular government turned to writing in an effort to standardise practice in government operations
and to preempt conflicts between townspeople through contractual arrangements
based on Roman Law. The activities of every member of Bologna’s government and
society, whether they could be made to conform to legal categories or not, had to
be negotiated within the explicit and fixed expressions of behavioural norms. Activities were documented, fixed permanently and made public. Notaries recorded government operations in communal offices and contracted business and familial arrangements between townspeople. The key to the realisation of the new government’s
political revolution was an administrative revolution, implicit in Rolandino’s emphasis on law and documentation in the Sacred Ordinances. Thus, after the promulgation
of the Sacred Ordinances, Rolandino turned to notaries, the notaries’ guild, and
notarial practice.
3. Rolandino and the reorganisation of the notaries’ guild
An administrative revolution was inextricably linked to Rolandino’s mission to
enforce the Sacred Ordinances, which were designed to provide stability and minimise conflict and, of course, to cultivate legitimacy for the new popular government.
Since the 1240s, Bolognese masters of notarial art, including Rolandino, emphasised
theory over practice in an effort to enhance the prestige of the notarial profession.58
The havoc caused by magnate violence in the 1270s motivated Rolandino to turn
viewed as having been distinctly different between the periods 1270–1296 and 1297–1315, see Massimo
Giansante, Patrimonio familiare e potere nel periodo tardo-comunale. Il progetto signorile di Romeo
Pepoli, banchiere bolognese (1250–c.1322) (Bologna: La Fotocromo Emiliana, 1991), 26–33 and 95–104.
57
Michael T. Clanchy, ‘Literacy, law, and the power of the state’, in Culture et idéologie dans la
genèse de l’état moderne Actes de la table ronde organisée par le Centre national de la recherche
scientifique et l’École française de Rome, 15–17 octobre 1984 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1985),
25–34. See also ibid., From memory to written record: England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993).
58
See John F. McGovern, ‘The documentary language of medieval business, A.D. 1150–1250’, The
Classical Journal, 67 (1972), 238–9, n. 66. Gianfranco Orlandelli, introduction to his edition of Salatiele’s
Ars Notarie (Milan: Giuffre, 1961), xxiv: ‘La Ars Notarie di Salatiele rappresenta il trionfo della teorica
sulla practica’.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
335
from teaching notarial theory to leading an arms society. Now in the 1280s, Rolandino again turned his attention to the notarial profession. However, his interest was
not the notarial art as a theoretical science, as it had been before the civil conflicts
in the 1270s, but rather the potential for notarial practice to provide order to society
and legitimacy to popular government. Rolandino thus reconstructed the notaries’
guild so as to make it part of the infrastructure of communal government.59 The
prestige of the notarial profession would flow not from efforts of masters to articulate
the notarial art as a theoretical science, but from the notaries’ professional efforts
on behalf of the popular programme.
Scholars have identified the communal period in Italy as a time ripe for great
administrative advancement.60 Certainly economic changes resulting from the commercial boom of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in which the towns of northern
and central Italy had a pivotal role, precipitated dynamic social changes that led to
increasing conflicts and competition necessitating improvements in administrative
techniques. According to Giuliano Milani, anti-Ghibelline efforts that began in Bologna in the 1270s motivated some new administrative techniques and legitimated
popular institutions. Administrative innovation, uniquely political in character,
included the attempt to control a segment of the population—the Ghibelline magnates
expelled in 1274 and Ghibelline supporters who stayed in Bologna—through systematic classification and exclusion in proscription lists and the use of juridical processes
59
See Giorgio Tamba, La società dei notai di Bologna: saggio storico e inventario (Rome: Ministero
per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1988), 19–34, for discussion on the rapid development of the notaries’
guild from 1283 to 1288, where Tamba considers whether this represented the formation of a new guild
or whether the notaries’ guild was like the many pre-existing guilds that developed significantly during
the penultimate decade of the thirteenth century. He concludes that the restructuring of the guild in the
1280s was not unique and that it followed a continuity of institutional elaboration that began more than
five decades earlier, in 1228. On the political fortune of the notaries’ guild in the 1280s, Tamba suggests
that the guild was significant because of its large membership, because notaries worked as secretaries of
the other arts guilds, and because, when the popular government rose to power, its councils also needed
the technical skills of notaries.
60
See Attilio Bartoli Langelli, ‘La documentazione degli stati italiani nei secoli XIII–XV’, in Culture
et idéologie dans la genèse de l’état moderne. Actes de la table ronde organisée par le Centre national
de la recherche scientifique et l’École française de Rome, 15–17 octobre 1984 (Rome: École française
de Rome, 1985), 35–53. Langelli discusses developments in documentation and registration techniques
and broadly considers the decline of the Italian notariate in relation to the advancement of communal
bureaucratisation in northern and central Italy from the middle of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century.
On the advancements in royal administration in England and France, see M. T. Clanchy, From memory
to written record, and C. Warren Hollister and John W. Baldwin, ‘The rise of administrative kingship:
Henry I and Philip Augustus’, AHR, 83 (1978), 867–905. Hollister and Baldwin argue that while the
substantial innovations in administrative techniques and institutions of Henry I of England (r.1100–1135)
and Philip Augustus of France (r.1179–1223) were similar in many ways, they were not ‘sufficient in
themselves to meet the increased demands of government. Like ‘developing’ nations of the present, medieval regimes were hampered by a lack of loyal, properly trained personnel sufficient to operate the new
administrative machinery. Ultimately, the recruitment of qualified and trusted agents was the leading
problem confronting medieval governments’ (p. 868). As we shall see, Rolandino and the popular regime
in Bologna dealt with these exact problems in the 1280s by instituting checks on political loyalty and
professionalism among the notaries, beginning with the establishment of a new leadership hierarchy of
the notaries’ guild.
336
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
to reinforce this group’s inferior status and exclusion.61 Sarah Rubin Blanshei has
evaluated the administration of justice under popular government in the 1280s. She
found that popular ideology called for a more abstract notion of public justice than
had previously existed.62 Yet governing society requires more than exclusionary
practices, and order in a society with increasingly complicated interests in commerce
and production requires more than an effective judicial system. Communal authority
under the control of a relatively broad segment of townspeople required accountability among officeholders and efficient documentation techniques in order to avoid
abuse. Documentation in which townspeople arranged their familial relationships,
their patrimonies, and their business activities also had to be clear and effective in
order to avoid conflicts. Thus, in 1283, Rolandino set about reforming the guild,
providing a leadership hierarchy, advancing professionalism in notarial practice in
contracts for townspeople and in communal government, and ensuring political loyalty of the notaries to communal authority under popular government.
During the second semester of 1283, the guild was reorganised and a new matriculation of its members produced. The guild’s matriculation was composed according
to an administrative innovation worthy of the organisational skills required of notarial
practice. Instead of a long, cumbersome list of names, the notaries’ new matriculation
listed members of the guild according to their parish of residence, the parishes in
turn were listed according to their respective quarter in the town.63 This list included
61
Giuliano Milani, ‘Il governo delle liste’, 149–229 and ibid., ‘Dalla ritorsione al controllo. Elaborazione e applicazione del programmema antighibellino a Bologna alla fine del duecento’, Quaderni Storici,
94 (1997), 43–74. Milani sets proscriptive listing techniques against earlier inclusionary administrative
listing techniques regarding fiscal administration, military participation, and guild matriculation, and
expresses great confidence in the commune’s ability to utilise all these administrative techniques to their
fullest potential. The popular regime’s institutions for the administration of justice provided a juridical
forum for classifying political enemies, banning them through condemnations and fines, and ensuring
their political exclusion.
62
Sarah Rubin Blanshei, ‘Crime and law enforcement in medieval Bologna’, Journal of Social History,
16 (1982), 121–38 and ‘Criminal law and politics in medieval Bologna’, Criminal Justice History, 2
(1981), 1–30. See also Massimo Vallerani, ‘L’amministrazione della giustizia a Bologna in età podestarile’, AMR, 43 (1992), 291–316.
63
The guild’s 1283 matriculation is found in Liber sive matricula notariorum comunis Bononie (1219–
1299), edited by Roberto Ferrara and Vittorio Valentini (Consiglio nazionale del notariato: Rome, 1980),
appendix 2, 515–75. Antonio Ivan Pini, ‘La ripartizione topografica degli artigiani a Bologna nel 1294:
un esempio di demografia sociale’, in Artigiani e salariati: il mondo del lavoro nell’Italia dei secoli XIIXV, Atti del X convegno del centro italiano di studi di storia e d’arte, Pistoia, 9–13 Oct 1981 (Pistoia,
1984), 189–224), praises the notaries for their diligence and administrative innovation. According to Pini’s
calculations based on these 1294 matriculations, compared to other arts guilds in Bologna at the end of
the thirteenth century, the notaries’ guild had the second largest membership and its members were the
most diffused group throughout the town, residing in ninety of the town’s ninety-nine parishes. In 1274
and 1294, the captain of the Popolo ordered the production of matriculation lists of all the arts guilds and
used them to monitor the guilds’ memberships. In the 1294 matriculation lists, the parishes of residence for
nearly all guild members were recorded for the first time, most likely as a result of improvements in
administrative techniques during the 1280s.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
337
only those members of the guild known to be loyal to the popular movement.64
Rolandino established a leadership hierarchy that included the preconsul—thus he
came to be known as the first preconsul of a guild that had already existed for more
than sixty years—four consuls, a treasurer selected from among the consuls, the
legislative Council of Two Hundred, and the General Assembly in which all members
of the guild participated. According to new statutes of the society, the General
Assembly elected the guild’s leaders every six months. The leaders, in turn, selected
members for the Council of Two Hundred evenly from the town’s four administrative
quarters. The members of the Council of Two Hundred had to be over 30 years old
and faithful to the ideology of the popular party. The preconsul and the consuls
could form ad hoc councils of forty guild members to deal with any unexpected
problems.65 Completing the administration of the guild were the notary of the preconsul, the notary of the guild, and the nuncio of the guild.
4. Preconsul of the notaries and notarial professionalism
Efforts to advance professionalism in notarial practice reveal the strong relationship between communal authority and notarial production. Rolandino continued to
impress on popular leaders that accuracy and efficiency in notarial practice were
critical to the legitimacy of the popular government. Leaders in the popular government and in the notaries’ guild worked for the next decade to improve the production
of notarial documents. In such written instruments, officials and councils of communal government recorded their activities and townspeople made their financial and
familial arrangements.
For several decades, the authority of communal government had to be recognised
each time a notarial instrument was produced to record the transactions of townspeople. Beginning in 1265, contracts in which any property valued over twenty Bolognese pounds was transacted were not recognised by communal authorities if they
were not reported to the new office of the Memoriali.66 The purpose of this office,
where transactions between townspeople were essentially made public, was to stem
conflicts created by waves of forgeries. Originally, the responsibility to appear at
the office and register a contract fell on the contracting parties. The turbulence of
the 1270s, as we have seen, weakened the ability of notarial contracts to facilitate
orderly transactions of property. The popular government advanced the first revisions
to the procedure of registering contracts in the Memoriali office since it had been
established twenty years earlier. Beginning in 1285, the Council of the Popolo placed
64
Only in 1285, after their political orientation was more carefully scrutinised, were a handful of others
included in the matriculation at the end of the list for each quarter according to where they lived in
the town.
65
For more elaboration on the guild’s institutional structure, see Tamba, La società dei notai di Bologna,
38–41, republished in Una corporazione per il potere, 304–7.
66
Vittorio Franchini, ‘L’instituto dei “Memoriali” in Bologna nel secolo XIII’, L’Archiginnasio 9
(1914), 95–106, 158–340.
338
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
the responsibility of registering contracts on the notaries who issued them. Any
notary making a written record of a transaction had to appear at the Memoriali office
with the contracting parties within twenty-four hours of issuing the document in
order to confirm its authenticity.67 In turn, the popular government relied on the new
institutionalised hierarchy of guild leadership to monitor the performance of notaries
issuing these records.
The preconsul of the guild was exclusively responsible for the enforcement of
professionalism in notarial practice. The preconsul, therefore, was not only leader
of the notaries’ guild, but also a leader in the community and an official of the
government. In the first semester of 1284, the preconsul Ricobono de Plastellis
ordered cancellations of members of the guild for failure to practice professionally,
for not having completed competency exams for notarial practice, and for not conforming to the guild’s statutes. Jacobino di Zunta, having falsified documents, was
not only cancelled from the guild but was also shamed by having his image depicted
in the government building.68 Paschalino di Ugolino Paschalis was cancelled because
the preconsul discovered that he had not taken the requisite exams and was therefore
‘not a notary’.69 A third notary was cancelled because his father decided to enter
him into the clergy.70 In the second half of 1284, the preconsul Jacobino de Lobia
cancelled one notary for falsification. Two others were cancelled by the captain of
the Popolo.71 Six notaries were cancelled in 1285 for falsifications, three during the
preconsulship of Pace de Saliceto and three during the preconsulship of Jacobo de
Lastignano.72 As Rolandino intended, the popular government and the leadership of
67
Giorgio Tamba, ‘I Memoriali del comune di Bologna nel secolo XIII’, in: Una corporazione per il
potere, 244–5. Article originally published in Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato, 47 (1987), 235–90. The
first indications that the requirements of this legislation were put into practice are found in ASB, Memoriali, regg. 58 and 59, which are from the first semester of 1285. Typically, before this change in practice,
notaries in the Memoriali office would note at the end of an entry recording an instrument ‘sic dicti
contrahentes dixerunt et scribi fecerunt’. With the 1285 modification, notaries of the Memoriali office
began to write ‘et sic dicti contrahentes, una cum dicto notario, dixerunt et scribi fecerunt’.
68
Liber sive matricula notariorum comunis Bononie, 534: ‘mcclxxxiiij., indictione duodecima, die
ultimo iunij. Ego Lambertinus Guallandi, notarius domini Richoboni preconsulis, de mandato ipsius et
aliorum consulum et exequendo senentiam latam per ipsos, concelavi infrascriptum Iacobinum quia bannitus et depictus in pallacio pro falso instrumento et eciam secundum formam statutorum dicte societatis’.
69
Ibid., 547: ‘Millesimo ducentesimo octuagesimo quarto, indictione duodecima, die octavo februarii.
Ego Lambertinus Guallandi, notarius domini Richoboni preconsulis notariorum, cancellavi predictum
nomen de mandato dicti preconsulis et consulum eo quia constat eisdem dictum Pasqualinum non esse
notarium nec esse examinatum nec unquam fuisse’.
70
Ibid., 520–1: ‘mcclxxxiiij., indictione duodecima, die xxj aprelis. Cancellatus infrascriptus Fredericus
per me Lambertucium Guallandi notarium exequendo formam statutorum eo quod dominus Arardus eius
pater ostendit et produxit instrumentum qualiter dictus Fredericus est clericus’.
71
Ibid., 554, 572–3, and 557. One of the notaries cancelled by the Captain of the Popolo in 1284,
Vincentio di Giovanni Vincentii, was killed four years later by another notary, Pietro detto Petruzzio filio
di domino Bonbologno de Maxillis (ASB, Comune. Curia del Podestà. Giudici ad maleficia. Accusationes.
Busta 7/b, reg. 11, 1r–2v and reg 14, 10r and 11r–v). Petruzzio was placed in permanent ban for his crime.
72
Ibid., 534, 542, and 548 during the leadership of Pace and 536, 571, and 573 during the time of Jacobo.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
339
the notaries’ guild collaborated to hold document producers accountable for abuses
of public trust.
Preconsuls also improved standards for notarial practice. In 1290, Bertholo di
Belondino, during his term as preconsul of the notaries’ guild, proposed in the Council of the Popolo new standards for accuracy and clarity in documents produced by
notaries.73 The seven provisions Bertholo advanced before the council regarded technical matters in notarial documentation intended to reduce unclear scribal notations
that led to conflicts between contracting parties.74 The provisions called for the notary
to write out syllable for syllable, ‘et non per literas abreviatas’, the year (anno
domini), indiction, day, and values of things transacted down to twenty soldi. Notaries, who according to Bertholo were often ignorant of the things being transacted,
were required to examine the contracting parties carefully before producing notarial
contracts. Another provision required that all contracts involving anything valued
over five pounds had to be recorded in a notarial instrument in order to reduce
problems in civil cases. Finally, the preconsul reaffirmed the statutes of 1265 regarding the registration of documents at the Memoriali office. Procedural changes ratified
in 1285 in the registration of contracts in the Memoriali office placed responsibility
on the notary issuing documents. Now, in 1290, the guild leadership became enforcer
and guarantor of accuracy in notarial documentation. Cancellation from the guild
might be the reward for a notary who abused the publica fides granted to all notaries
by producing documents with unclear language, potentially creating conflicts and
disrupting order so avidly sought by the popular government.
5. Preconsul, notaries and communal government
Preconsuls of the notaries’ guild assigned notaries to government offices. As with
notarial production for townspeople, the preconsuls were responsible for the performance of the notaries they assigned to be record-keepers in communal offices and
strove to cultivate professionalism. The first register of acts of the guild of notaries
comes from Jacopo de Lastignano’s term as preconsul in the second semester of
73
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 130 (1289–90), ff.
340r–43v.
74
John F. McGovern, ‘The documentary language of mediaeval business, A.D. 1150–1250’, The Classical Journal, 67 (1992), 227–39, asserts (perhaps with too much optimism) that ‘clarity was the first goal
of notarial rhetoric in business documents’ (230). He argues, based on the work of a single notary,
Giovanni di Guiberto, who worked in Genoa between 1200 and 1211, that notaries insisted on clarity in
business contracts that they produced. This included redundant phrases regarding the terms of the agreement, the dates, and any descriptions of location in the case of real estate, as well as careful noting of
weights, measures, and local customary procedures. According to McGovern, notaries desired documents
that were self-contained in completeness and clarity.
340
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
1285.75 Upon taking office, Jacopo immediately assigned various positions in
communal offices, including the office of the podestà, the office of the captain of
the Popolo, the discum bannitorum, the discum Ursi, the office of Memoriali, and
the camera actorum comunis and the camera actorum Populi.76 At the time of
appointment, the preconsul’s notary recorded that each notary had to perform the
office well and legally or face fines and bans.77 In some cases, work hours were
stated. Records show that Jacopo sent out officials of the notaries’ guild within days
of making his appointments to verify that these appointees were present in the
government offices to do their jobs. For example, Thomas de Cantone, Pietro Bambaglioli and Alberto de Corvis were ordered to appear before the preconsul within days
of their appointments to the camera actorum Populi to explain why they were absent
from their post.78 Such regulation of the performance of notaries working in communal offices was a novel contribution of the popular government, one that bound the
administrative efficiency of the communal government to the notarial guild’s enforcement of professionalism among its members.
75
ASB, Società dei notai, Atti, reg. 25 (2 July–29 December 1285), 2r: Liber cytationum, relationum,
praeceptorum et aliarum diversarum scripturarum factus sub examine domini Iacobi de Lastignano preconsulis, Iacobini de Medicina, Uguitionis de Bambaglolis, Boniiacobi Turiçani, Martini Iohannis Caçacervi,
Iacobi quondam Benvenuti de Marano, Gerardi Ferarii et Iacobi Bonaçunte consulum societatis notariorum
sub anno domini millesimo ducentesimo otuagesimo quinto, indictione xiii, tempore domini Iohannis de
Pischarolo potestatis, Bonacursii de Donatis capitani et Ubaldi de Interminellis capitanei populi civitatis Bononie.
76
Ibid., 2v–7r. These appointments included Johanino de Saxony and Dominico di Bonfiglio Domenici
fabri to the office of the podestà, Benvenuto di maestro Martino to the discum bannitorum, Amico Bambaglioli and Matteo Scornitte to the discum Ursi, Dominico Mascaroni and Lombardo di Raniero Salaroli
to the office of Memoriali, Thomas de Cantone, Pietro Bambaglioli, Alberto de Corvis and Borghexano
di Cambio to the camera actorum comunis and Populi.
77
Eg. ibid., 2v–7r passim: ‘ad penam et bannum continentam in statutionibus societatis notariorum
debeant eorum officium bene et legaliter exercere’.
78
Ibid., passim: On 7 July 1285, Jacopo sent his notary (i.e. the notary of the preconsul), Giuliano de
Segatariis, to the camera actorum Populi after the ringing of terce to see if the notaries he appointed to
that office were at their post on time (7v). Giuliano returned and reported that the notaries were not there.
On 8 July, Jacopo sent the nuncius societatis notariorum, Coradino de Alexandris, on the same mission
(8r). Again the notaries were not there. On the next day, Coradino again found that these notaries were
absent from their post (9r). Finally, on 10 July, Jacopo sent the notary of the societas notariorum, Biagio
Auliverii, to the camera actorum Populi for the same purpose (11v). Biagio found no one there. The
register indicates that on 12 July 1285 Jacopo ordered these notaries to appear before him and explain
their absence (12r). One notary, Thomas de Cantone, claimed to have gone to the Council of the Popolo
‘ad brevia’. Two other notaries, Pietro de Bambaglolis and Alberto de Corvis, claimed that they went to
the office of the podestà in order to write a document. Jacopo had to call these notaries before him again
several times before the end of 1285 for failing to report to their posts. On 21 July, Alberto de Corvis
explained another absence by claiming that he had to get a doctor to help one of his neighbours, Alberto
de Ischariis, who was near death (17r). They also appeared before the preconsul of the guild on 19
September (35r) and 8 December (55r) to explain absences.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
341
6. Notaries and political loyalty
The potential of notarial work to facilitate public order and government functions
made notaries important to communal authority under the popular government. However, instituting and enforcing professionalism alone could not ensure that notaries
would be motivated to support the popular government and contribute to the legitimisation of its authority. The communal government and the guild leadership also
had to be sure of their political loyalty. The new matriculation list in 1283 provided
the guild leadership and communal officials (the captain of the Popolo and the
podestà) with a current list of those whose political loyalty was beyond question.
In 1285, a system was put in place to ensure the loyalty of new entrants to the
notaries’ guild. Fifty-seven new members of this arts society were presented to the
Council of the Popolo.79 All these guildsmen had already passed competency exams
for notarial practice and received admittance to the guild, most of them during the
course of that year. The purpose of this review, however, was not to determine their
professional qualifications but rather to subject new members to political scrutiny.
This scrutiny of existing members and of new members continued throughout the
decade and offenders were prosecuted. In September and December of 1288, for
example, the notary Spinello di Bencevenne was charged in the court of the podestà
with having gone to Caprara, a small commune in Bologna’s contado, in order to
marry Ugolina, daughter of Lazzaro di Rodolfo, an exiled ally of the Lambertazzi
party.80
The Council of the Popolo in turn made notaries responsible for scrutinising all
marriages contracted in Bologna’s jurisdiction when it sought to reduce potential
conflicts by legislating against marriages between Geremei supporters and Lambertazzi supporters. On 28 January 1289, the provisions ‘De parentelis’ and ‘De
matrimonio’ were advanced in the Council of the Popolo.81 At issue in these provisions was legislation passed during the capitaneria of Bertholino de Madiis (Oct
1287–Apr 1288) entitled ‘De parentelis cum Lambertatiis non faciendis’, which prohibited marriages between Lambertazzi supporters and Geremei supporters. Two
problems emerged as a result of ‘De parentelis cum Lambertatiis non faciendis’.
First, because the legislation forbade notaries from producing dowry contracts in
these circumstances and officials in the Memoriali office—also notaries—from registering them, many people went outside the jurisdiction of Bologna in order to contract
their marital arrangements.82 Second, many notaries refused to make dowry contracts
or register them for fear of the fines imposed for such errors, ‘saying that they do
not know the condition and quality of the persons who are making the contract of
79
Giorgio Tamba, La società dei notai di Bologna, 36–7.
ASB, Curia del Podestà. Guidici ‘ad maleficia’, accusationes, busta 7/b, reg. 10, f. 39r and reg. 14,
f. 85r. Professor Tamba refers to this case in La società dei notai di Bologna, 38, n. 2.
81
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 128 (1288–1289),
ff.152r–153r.
82
Ibid., 152v: ‘multi et multi vadunt extra comitatum Bononie et iverint causa faciendi fieri dicta
instrumenta dotium’.
80
342
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
the said marriage and who are establishing the said dowry’.83 On 28 January 1289,
the popular government rescinded the original legislation ‘De parentelis cum Lambertazzi non faciendis’ and allowed notaries to produce and register all dowry contracts as they had before it was passed.84 Notaries were not able to uphold this
political policy of the popular government. The work of notaries as record keepers
in communal offices and document producers for townspeople, however, remained
central to the realisation of the popular programme. At the same time, notaries
advanced the political policies of the popular government through their efforts that
extended beyond notarial practice.
7. Notaries as government officials
The administrative revolution—and the significance of the membership of the
notaries’ guild to that revolution—extended beyond notarial practice and the notaries’
guild. Indeed, in performing many key functions of government, an administrative
elite arose to parallel the commercial elite. The professionalism, training and loyalty
of the notaries made their service equal in importance to the popular government in
its efforts to restore order as the wealth of the commercial elite. Indeed, the arrangement of a complimentary pairing of commercial leadership and administrative leadership in practice, though not articulated explicitly and constitutionally, distinguishes
this new popular ideology. In contrast, the preceding political practices of the
patrician elite and the earlier structure of the popular movement under the merchants’
and bankers’ guilds were both dominated by wealth and status alone.
After petitions for payments for extraordinary services or for allocations of funds
were presented to the Council of the Popolo and were approved, the council ordered
the treasurers of the commune to pay designated sums of money (which were not
always equal to the amount in the petition) from the commune’s massa, or purse,
to the petitioners. Two treasury officials, the massarii comunis, were appointed by
the popular government in order to reduce potential abuses of these public funds.
One of these officials came from the wealthy merchants’ and bankers’ guilds and
the other from the notaries’ guild. In sensitive positions involving distributions of
public funds, notaries were recruited to keep careful records and review them in
order to uphold the integrity of communal law and public trust. The accountability
and professionalism brought by notaries to the functions of the treasury contributed
to the discourse of Popolo administrative practice, which helped cultivate public
83
Ibid.: ‘et tabelliones civitatis Bononie et comitatus qui … facere predicta instrumenta dotium recusent
ipsa instrumenta facere et officiales presidentes Memorialis recusent et recusaverint ipsa intrumenta ponere
in Memorialibus comunis Bononie timentes incidere penas apposit in ordinamentis Populi Bononie …
dicentes se ignorare condictionem et qualitatem personarum qui contraherunt dictum matrimonium et
constituerunt dictas dotes’.
84
Ibid.: ‘Item provissum est quod tabelliones civitatis Bononie et comitatus potuerint et possint impune
scribere instrumenta dotium cuiuscumque matrimonii facti et etiam faciendi et tabelliones … possint ipsa
instrumenta in Memorialibus comunis Bononie ponere ut moris erat ante dictum ordinamentum’.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
343
trust. In 1289, the notary Jacobo de Casano made an accounting at the end of his
term as treasurer with Milacio de Çovençonibus. He found that the massa inexplicably contained an excess of thirty-six pounds, ten soldi, and six denari. He reported
the discrepancy to the Council of the Popolo and formally requested that he be
allowed to give the money to the new treasurers for the coming term because he
‘wished to preserve completely the laws regarding the commune of Bologna and
each and every person individually’.85 This arrangement increased administrative
efficiency.
The popular government also sent notaries on important ambassadorial missions
and often paired them with members of the merchants’ and bankers’ guilds for this
purpose. The records of the proceedings of the Council of the Popolo intermittently
refer to ambassadors, typically when they performed extraordinary services that
required additional payments. During the first semester of 1289, for example, several
references are made to ambassadors. On 9 March, the notary Gerardo Dentaminis
was sent to Florence for one month in order to carry out negotiations with the Florentines.86 The notaries Gerardo Ferarii and Jacobo Amonetti served as ambassadors
for Bologna to Rome when the town was under interdict. They returned with letters
of absolution, but they had to spend twenty-three days longer than originally stipulated because Cardinal Pietro of Milan detained them in Rome. On April 27, Gerardo
and Jacobo therefore asked the Council of the Popolo that their original salaries be
supplemented.87 On April 30, four ambassadors—Alberto Assinellis and Bonvolta
de Mallavoltis of the merchants’ and bankers’ guilds and the notaries Bitino de
Platixiis and Matiolo de Ronchore—were sent to the duke of Ferrara to pay for the
release of Jacobo, son of Ramberto de Bazaleriis (Jacobus natus domini Ramberti
de Bazaleriis), who was held in the duke’s prison.88 On 22 June, the notary Mathiolo
85
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129: ‘Cum frater Jacobus
de Cazano quondam massarius et depossitarius comunis Bononie examinaverit et assumaverit pro se et
domino Milacio de Çovençonibus suo consocio racione sue depositarie et massarie tam introitum quam
expensarum, et invenerit superasse et remanisse pecuniis ipsis 30 et octo lib. et 10 sol. et 6 den. bon. a
racionibus ipsis predictis, et ignoret unde et quomodo ad ipse manum pecunie prevenerint supradicte; et
velit iura comunis Bon et singularium personarum integre conservare—quid placet consilio et masse
populi quod dictus frater Jacobus pro se et dicto domino Milacio suo socio possit, teneatur et debeat dare
et solvere et consignare dictas pecunias fratri Julliano de Gozadinis nunc massario comunis Bononie’.
86
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 128, 190v. Gerardo was
paid nine Bolognese pounds for this mission.
87
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129, ff. 216v–217r: ‘Item
quid placet consilio de infrascripta peticione cuius tenor talis est—vobis domino capitaneo populi civitatis
Bononie, anzianis et consulibus petit Gerardus Ferarii notarius, amb. et sindicus comunis Bononie quod
cum iverit ad Romanam curiam una cum Jacobo Amonetti notario pro comune et populo Bononie pro
inpetrandis et habendis litteras super absolutionem excomunicatione et interdicto civitatis Bononie; et …
stando et redeundo et stetit ultra dictum mensem vigintitribus diebus sollicitando et expectando dictas
litteras quod fuerunt inpedite et detente per venerabilem patrem dominum Petrum de Mediolano cardinale
pro pecunia quam recipere debebat a comune Bononie’.
88
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129, f. 218r: ‘In primis
quid placet consilio de infrascripta peticione cuius tenor talis est—vobis domino capitaneo, anzianis et
consulibus populi Bononie suplicant domini Albertus de Assinellis, Bonavolta de Mallavoltis, Bitinus de
Platixiis [notarius] et Matiolus de Roncore [notarius] amb. comunis Bononie quid vobis placet in consilio
344
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
de Ronchore was paid for six days in which he left his post as ambassador to Ferrara
in order to serve as ambassador to the Romagna.89 And on 25 June, the notaries
Pace de Saliceto and Angelello de Manzolino were paid three pounds and twelve
soldi each for serving as ambassadors to Modena for four days.90
Notaries were also called upon by the popular government to fill the position of
publicus bannitor. Unlike ambassadors who represented Bologna outside the town,
the publicus bannitor represented the popular government internally and was required
to remain within the jurisdiction of the town. Those performing this role had to
announce and carry out the orders of the government as well as publicly announce the
production of important familial contracts such as emancipations.91 These officials
regularly worked for the court of the judges of the podestà, calling on people who
did not appear before the court and announcing penalties against convicted criminals.
As trademarks of their office, these officials were required to maintain a horse, to
wear colourful clothes, and to carry a horn, which they would sound when making
announcements.92 Notaries such as Martino Bagnarola and Rolando Caxoti served
the popular government for more than two decades in this office.
The most dangerous position that notaries filled for the popular government—and
the one with the least compensation for those performing it—was that of custos
carceris, prison guards. Because of the link between criminal violence and political
affiliation and because the political allies of prisoners might try to break them out,
the loyalty of prison guards had to be beyond question. As early as 1284, a record
refers to the notary Damiano di Rofino as a prison guard for the town: ‘Dominus
Damianus Rofini notarius custos charzeleris comunis Bononie’.93 This work was so
dangerous that the town had trouble finding men willing to do it. On April 30, 1289,
‘because of the fear of the multitudes in the prisons and the small salary and therefore
populi proponere et reformari facere quod d. Milazolus de Zovenzonibus et frater Jacobus de Cazano
massariis et generalis depositariis comunis Bononie teneantur et debeant dare et solvere et soluti de omnie
pecunie que est vel erit penes eos quacumque de causa cuilibet predictorum quinque lib. et 8 sol. bon
pro sex diebus quibus steterunt in servicio comunis Bononie aput dominum marchionem estensem pro
recuperando de carcere dicti domini marchionis pro populo Bon Jacobum natum domini Ramberti de Bazaleriis’.
89
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129, 235v.
90
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129, 237r: ‘Paci de
Saliceto notario et domino Angelello de Manzolino…cuilibet ipsorum 3 lib. et 12 sol. bon. pro quattuor
diebus quibus ire et stare debent in dicto amb. ad rationem 18 sol. bon. pro quolibet ipsorum et quolibet
die de omnie pecunie comunis Bononie’.
91
On 21 December 1284, for example, Martino Bagnarola announced the emancipation of two of the
notary Arardo di Giovanni de Muxonibus’ sons in front of the Palazzo Vecchio of the commune. ASB,
Memoriali, reg. 52, f. 481v.
92
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 127, ff. 51r–v. In 1285,
the Council of the Popolo ordered that Martino Bagnarola and Rolando Caxoti, ‘ad honorem comunis et
populi Bononie habere teneatur et debeat quilibet ipsorum trumbam boni argenti cum quibus faciant dicta
officia in civitate Bononie … et semper tenere debeat bonum equum valoris et extimationis treginta lib.
bon. quilibet eorum et ab inde supra cum quibus equis servire debeant comuni Bononie in dictis officiis,
et habere et in dorsum tenere et portare vestimenta boni panni et coloris et precii viginti sol. bon’.
93
ASB, Memoriali, reg. 57, f. 288v, 19 November 1284.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
345
guard duty is often refused’, the Council of the Popolo agreed to raise the salary to
thirty Bolognese pounds.94 Later, on 1 July, two of the four guards who performed
this dangerous task—because no one else was willing to do it—were the notaries
Bartholomeo di Bolognitto and Giovanni di Bonfantino.95 The most revealing case
of the dangers of this position and the boldness of notaries to perform it came in
1300, when the notary Benvenuto di Gerardo was killed during a prison break.96 His
son received his salary from funds made available with the approval of the Council
of the Popolo. Service rose above aristocratic family status under popular government, and members of the notaries’ guild rose to importance as they placed the
interests of popular government even, at times, over their own.
8. Conclusion
The case of late thirteenth-century Bologna reveals that power did not always
follow wealth, but could also be cultivated by townspeople willing to expend great
effort to overcome the feudal privileges of a small elite of potentates. Aristocratic
structures of power in the thirteenth century were not necessarily constructive or
able to offer a stable environment for change. Aristocratic structures of power
included wealth, but they were primarily based on social status and privilege rather
than on any ability to set aside private interests for the good of the community. This
combination of wealth, status and power was antithetical to the principles of the
popular governments in Bologna and Florence at the end of the thirteenth century.
The adherents of these guild-based communal governments strove to realise popular
principles as expressed in Bologna’s Sacred Ordinances of 1282 and Florence’s Ordi-
94
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 129, f. 223v: ‘cum multe
electiones sint facte de custodibus turris carzeratorum de subdictum comune Bononie tempore presentis
potestatis et non reperiatur quod dictam custodiam velit modo aliquo exercere pro quarterio porte Steri
et porte Ravenati propter timorem multitudinis carceratorum qui sunt in dictis carceribus et propter parvum
sallarium et de dictis carceris dicta custodia sit recusata; et ad presentes sint electi ad dictam custodiam
Dominicus Albertucii Amigitti [notarius] et Bertolomeus Bolognitti quilibet pro suo quarterio’.
95
Ibid., f. 241r.
96
ASB, Riformagioni e provvigioni, consiglio del popolo e della massa, Reg. 153, f. 249r, 30 September
1300: ‘Cum in statutis comunis Bononie contineatur quod quatuor custodes ad carcerem et cameram
superiorem comunis Bononie elligantur quorum quillibet habeat et habere debeat a comuni Bononie viginti
lib. bon.; et ad dictum officium ellectus fuerunt Benvenutus Gerardini, Johannes Octobuoni, Johannes
Bonfantini, et Johannes Jacobini quorum et reformatum fuerit quod dictis custodibus per depositarios
comunis Bon satisfieri deberet de dicto eorum salario et post dictam reformationem dictus Benvenutus
obierit ita quod nullam solutionem recepit de dicto suo salario et fecudo; et massarii et depositarii comunis
Bononie recusaverint et recusaneant satisfactere et soluntur dictum sallarium filio et heredi dicti Benvenuti
quia in reformatione non continetur de herede’.
346
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
nances of Justice of 1293.97 The popular governments and the principles they sought
to realise only failed when wealth and privilege again became the basis of power.
Although aristocratic families in Italian communes such as Bologna were unable
to maintain order among their own ranks, much less govern others without exploiting
them or seriously disrupting their lives, the only surprise for some is that the progress
of aristocratic or monarchical power was interrupted at all in Italy. Jones has argued
that popular movements only antagonised their social superiors and are thus where
we should look if we are to find the origins of despotism. We should consider instead
that the origins of guild republicanism and the cause of their recurrence throughout
the fourteenth century can be found in the shortcomings of aristocrats, their inability
to work together, and the perennial unrest between them that affected the lives of
everyone in the community.
In the case of Bologna’s popular government, the efforts made by townspeople
to realise popular principles are as significant as the ideologies they expressed in the
Sacred Ordinances and in subsequent, formal anti-magnate legislation. Just as magnate conflicts forced Rolandino Passaggeri to turn from an emphasis on theory, which
he held as a teacher of notarial art and as composer of the summa, into an emphasis
on practice, so they also provided townspeople with an opportunity to work out a
new style of politics and government. The efforts and loyalty of members of the
notaries’ guild to the popular programme allowed them to rise in importance within
the popular movement alongside the commercial elite. In 1292, the Bolognese again
debated the principles of the Sacred Ordinances when measures they instituted had
reached their statute of limitations. By the end of the year, after debate, revision,
and some diminishment, they were reinstated. It may be coincidence that in the
same year, 1292, their counterparts in Florence re-evaluated the Florentine popular
programme and decided in November to equalise the popular guilds in elections for
important officials (such as the Priorate) and to advance their own anti-magnate
legislation in January of the following year. Yet insights gained from an analysis of
the rise of an administrative elite in Bologna under the popular government in the
1280s suggests the need for further investigations into the administrative efforts of
the Florentine popular regime in the 1290s and other popular regimes that arose in
the next century.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Carol Lansing, Edward English, Sharon Farmer, Hilary Bernstein,
Susan Taylor Snyder and Matthew Racine for reading earlier drafts of this paper
97
Dante, Purgatorio, VI.127–38: ‘Fiorenza mia, ben puoi esser contenta / di questa digression che non
ti tocca, / mercé del popol tuo che si argomenta. / Molti han giustizia in cuore, e tardi scocca, / per non
venir sanza consiglio a l’arco; / ma il popol tuo l’ha in sommo de la bocca. / Molti rifiutan lo comune
incarco; / ma ’l popol tuo solicito risponde / sanza chiamare, e grida: ‘I’ mi sobbarco!’ / Or ti fa lieta,
ché tu hai ben onde: / tu ricca, tu con pace, e tu con senno! / S’io dico’l ver, l’effetto nol nasconde’.
The exiled Dante, of course, was mocking Florentine sentiments of service and sacrifice among members
of the popular movement. But this mockery only proves that expressions of such sentiments were part
of political discourse in the 1290s, regardless of his opinion of them.
B.R. Carniello / Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002) 319–347
347
and the entire staff of the Archivio di Stato di Bologna for their professionalism and
kindness. I am indebted to Sarah Rubin Blanshei for sharing several important
archival references and for offering useful suggestions during early stages of research
for this paper.
Brian R. Carniello is currently a Fulbright Fellow working in the Archivio di Stato di Bologna on his dissertation entitled ‘Medieval notaries: family, profession and the popular movement in thirteenth-century Bologna’
to complete the requirements for a Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.