Dividersi per governarsi: fazioni, famiglie aristocratiche e comuni in Valtellina in età viscontea (1335–1447)
English summary
Factions have commonly been viewed, by commentators of the period, throughout the scholarly tradition and, until recent years, also by contemporary historians, as threatening social coexistence and disrupting the orderly functioning of civic life. If, however, we lay aside evaluations of these party organizations from external or "top–down" perspectives in order to examine documentary evidence providing a more direct record of their activity, a different picture emerges. The Valtellina, a large mountain valley in the episcopate of Como and from 1335 part of the Visconti dominion, is an example of a society that was effectively self–governing thanks to the role of the factions. The rival Guelph and Ghibelline groupings were predominantly local in nature (serving neither the power base of the city–states nor that of the Visconti family, but rather manipulating the intervention of external power groups to their own ends), with stable hierarchical structures that took charge of organizing valley society and regulating its internal conflicts. The factions’ sphere of intervention was extremely broad: loyalty to one or other side guided the dialogue with the Milanese government and with extra–regional authorities, in particular the Republic of Venice. At a local level, allegiance to Guelph or Ghibelline parties dictated the appointment of magistrates, the distribution and collection of taxes and the summoning of military levies to defend the borders of the dominion of Milan, as well as conditioning many minor aspects of everyday life.Allegiance to a faction effectively encompassed all other allegiances: even the organization of the rural communes was not alternative to the factions but included in them. This was because factions were not joined by single individuals or families but by entire communities, on the basis of formal agreements that typically lasted for decades. Thus the communes – whether Guelph or Ghibelline – channelled popular membership of the factions, which explains how the factions came to have a strong local base. A further peculiar feature of the factions in the greater part of Valtellina was the strongly territorial pattern of allegiance, with neighbouring rural communes tending to belong to the same factions. The Middle and Low areas of the Valtellina were thus divided into a «terratorium partis gibelline» and a «terratorium partis gelfe», the boundaries of which became increasingly well–defined during the rule of the Viscontis.
Finally, the existence of the factions helped to maintain a state of precarious equilibrium between the various political subjects in the valley: relations between the two rival groups were characterized by tensions which the factions themselves attempted to keep under control, through truces and agreements which were under constant renegotiation; the stabilizing influence of the parties was recognized and even legitimated by the prince himself, for example by requesting the local faction leaders to restrain political conflict.
Translation: Clare O’Sullivan
