«Per non privarci de nostre raxone, li siamo stati desobidienti». Patto, giustizia e resistenza nella cultura politica delle comunità alpine nello stato di Milano (XV secolo)
English summary
This paper examines the “contractualistic” political language used in the letters and petitions of rural communities in the mountain areas of Lombardy.
The configuration of power relations in the state of Milan certainly provided a favorable basis for the production of such documents. The communities there had early won recognition of their status as privileged bodies, recognition that in other territorial domains was only to be obtained after hard political battles. It was by virtue of this privileged status that the communities often defended their existing standing and put forward their various claims. Not by chance, the written documents featuring the most substantial political content were a product of the political initiative typical of the medium–sized centers of population in the Lombard valleys; while these small towns (burgi) could not be compared to the cities of the plain, they were significantly different to the smaller villages. These were communities that had drawn up statutes of their own while adhering to specific capitoli with the Duke; they enjoyed privileges and exemptions and in general had gained sufficient recognition of their status to legitimize their claims. In the course of the fifteenth century, the weight of the communities within the framework of power increased further and even the princes became gradually more inclined to define the relationship with their subjects in terms of a bilateral tie, although not to the extent of envisaging fully equivalent mutual obligations.
Nonetheless the corporate order governing the state and its internal power relations was not guaranteed a priori nor cast in stone. Through petitions to the prince calling on him to respect the conceded promises and privileges, the rural communities defended the existing written codes from attempted violations, prefigured the right to resist (at least passively) any power that unjustly trampled on their privileges and ignored their protests, and instituted – through the very act of laying claim to it – their own position within the corporate order of the day.
The letters sent by the communities showed their relationship with the prince to be regulated by privileges and pacts that formed the legal basis for the requests and claims put forward in their written applications. The pact consisted of a set of mutual commitments whereby the subjects guaranteed fidelity, obedience and devotion to the state while the prince on his part ensured privileges or tax exemptions as well as the exercise of the key functions of power in the sense of «ministerium». Fidelity in this context was not viewed as an obligation without compensation. In return for their loyalty the subjects were guaranteed: armed defense; the guardianship of justice, in terms of protection of the acquired rights and privileges of corporations and individuals; respect of the “conditions” on which the subjects had accepted the prince’s rule in the first place; and the Duke’s commitment not to alienate (by means of feudal investitures) his jurisdiction over them. The petitions explicitly identified the exercise of these functions as the duty of the just prince, that is to say, he who respected the agreements entered into and did not allow his subjects to suffer injustice.
In the logic of mutuality that was at the basis of their subjection to the prince, the territorial corporations were bound to obey their ruler only if he truly met his obligations as guarantor of justice. Some communities even went as far as to claim that, on the contrary, in the case of «iniuria» or «torto» (injury) obedience was no longer owed. The right to oppose injustice with disobedience could be availed of in the first instance against a magistrate guilty of abuse or misappropriation. However some petitions, albeit cautiously, extended the right of disobedience to the relationship with the Dukes of Milan themselves. Specifically some of these documents laid out most clearly the steps of reasoning leading from the identification of a breach of established privileges and conditions, ratified by the approved capitoli di dedizione (terms of submission), to interpretation of this act as failure on the prince’s part to fulfill his role as protector of justice and, in consequence, as the breaking–off of the bilateral commitment entered into with his subjects, who consequently threatened to disregard their obligations towards the state. Still other petitions claimed that lack of fulfillment of another of the sovereign’s duties, the defense of his subjects, effectively entitled them to claim back their libertas.
The petitions framed the position, privileges and functions of the Duke, as well as the nature of the justice to be provided by him, somewhat differently to the model reflected in the correspondence emanating from the centre of the state that contained the Viscontis’ and Sforzas’ representation of their own role. In contrast with the missives of the communities, the documents produced by the central authority never portrayed the tie between subjects and prince as fully reciprocal; while the petitions appealed to the prince as he who would not allow alterations of the statutes, that is who would guarantee their inviolability, the Dukes of Milan had always reserved the right to modify the norms adopted by the urban and rural centers; while the petitions referred to the “promise” entered into by the lord as unbreakable, the prince frequently claimed the power to derogate from it (and therefore to revoke concessions and overturn provisions). The political tensions between the centre and peripheral areas of the state were thus reflected in significant differences in the political language used; indeed it may be argued that to write a letter based on the culture of “pactism” was to take a clear stand in relation to the political debate of the day. That is to say, it was a means of expressing one’s position with regard to one of more general sources of conflict between the central authority and its agents in the peripheral areas on the one hand and the communities on the other: the polarity between the legalistic approach of the community oriented towards protecting its rights – as borne out by its stubborn and untiring defense of its privileges, capitoli and statutes – and the more decisionist and frequently arbitrary tendencies guiding the actions of the prince and his officials.
Thus, in a context of government practice whereby the duke, and especially his magistrates, were not always as conscientious as the communities would have liked in safeguarding the established norms and conditions, and central and peripheral officials at times deliberately pursued anti–juridical aims, initiatives by the subjects recalling the prince to his traditional role of preserver of the status quo and protector of justice, reminding him of the promises made and seeking application to the letter of the capitoli di dedizione and the statutes, clearly denoted a deliberate intention of engaging in political controversy.
It is not by chance, therefore, that complex, well–structured and substantial political discourse such as described here may only be found in a limited number of letters and petitions related to the issues causing greatest tension between communities and state. In contrast, the numerous documents requesting the appointment of a particular magistrate, exemption from a tax, permission to sell communal property, approval for the election of a parish rector and other such routine matters, were frequently very simple in nature. Thus, the texts chosen here for in–depth analysis are those in which the communities voiced particularly strong disapproval of the prince’s decisions or of the actions of his officials.
Highly significant, in this regard, is the conscious selection of different languages on the part of the community in line with the external circumstances in force at the time of writing. The arguments emphasizing the binding nature of the prince’s pact with his subjects were only put forward during periods of marked conflict. At such times, the meek and respectful tones previously adopted to plead for benevolence from the Sforzas were dropped to call on the dukes to respect the rights of their subjects if they were not to lose their princely honour and run the risk of having to release the homines from their obligations («obligatione») towards the state.
In sum, although these sources draw on models of developed political and juridic thinking, and adopted different types of political language as appropriate, it appears undeniable that the “contractualistic” political tradition was a fully assimilated dimension of the political initiative of the rural communities. This form of political enterprise, as well as manifesting itself in terms of concrete actions, also sought to outline an “imaginary constitution” which, when used as a weapon to assert the claims of its proponents, could shift the balance of power between the various political actors of the day in favor of the territorial bodies.
Translation: Clare O’Sullivan
