Policing and Public Power in the Italian Communes.

摘要

In the thirteenth century, the city-republics of northern Italy began employing foreign mercenaries to patrol their streets and arrest lawbreakers. Before this, law enforcement was entirely the responsibility of citizens, and they had no full-time police forces. I ask why this new mode of policing emerged, how it operated, and what impact it had on life in the commune (as these self-governing cities were called). The argument is based on a close study of court records from the archives of Bologna, Siena, Perugia, and Orvieto. Bologna features most prominently as it boasts the richest and most concentrated record of police cases for the period of study (c. 1230-1330), but comparisons show its example to be representative. These records reveal that the new policing had a major impact on city life, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The police enjoyed broad powers of arrest and accusation and through these made hundreds of citizens stand trial each year for curfew, weapons, and gambling offenses alone. In effect, the new policing meant fewer liberties for citizens: a policeman could coerce anyone into court with an accusing word, and that word itself constituted legal proof, making police charges difficult to beat. I argue that citizen-lawmakers brought this legal harassment upon themselves as part of their project to overcome factional violence and forge a more peaceful, virtuous city through the force of law. This project was largely a failure in the medieval period but did effect an important shift in the private-public divide, one that laid an important foundation for centralized government in later centuries.