This book is the first to investigate the practice of summary justice in a late medieval Italian commune. In delineating the political and social context of that development in late medieval Bologna, it also is the first to study the phenomenon of oligarchy not only at the level of the executive body of a commune, but also in the broader councils of commune and popolo, as well as among the ranks of the enfranchised political class. The dominant popolo party constructed itself through multiple forms of exclusion that deeply affected the administration of justice and led to the rise of new...

Long neglected by scholars, medieval and Renaissance Bologna is now recognized as a center of economic, political-constitutional, legal, and intellectual innovation, as the city that served as the cultural crossroads of Italy. The city’s distinctive achievements and its transition from medieval commune to second largest city of the Renaissance Papal State is illuminated by essays that present the work of current historians, many made available in English for the first time, from the broadest possible perspective: from the material city with its porticoes, the conflicts that brought...