Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany
Religious Identities and Local Loyalties
By (author) Cecilia Hewlett
At the conclusion of the fifteenth century and well into the first half of the sixteenth, Florence underwent radical political and social transformations. The republic, which had nurtured the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance, was finally overthrown and the Medici returned triumphant as outright rulers of the once-free commune. Throughout this period, the administration of the Florentine territory continued to be one of the single most important issues faced by successive Florentine governments, and yet very little is known about the people they governed. Accounting for over two-thirds of the total population, the inhabitants of small rural communities played a significant part in the shaping of this territory. This study explores the nature of these communities and the relationships they forged with the central authorities; it provides an overview of the extraordinary diversity of rural communes, and looks in detail at three areas of the Florentine territory. The communes of Gangalandi, Scarperia, and the communities located in the Pistoian mountains provide the vivid contexts in which the fluid natures of local religious, social, and political ties are examined. The character of each of these rural communities was unique, challenging not only the Florentine government’s mechanisms of control, but our own understanding of the ‘peasant’ as a social category. Hewlett demonstrates that these communes were not simplistic social organizations, but rather vibrant communities of individuals who pursued a vast range of different activities within a series of complex cultural networks. Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany also addresses the importance of religion to these communities; an exciting addition to a field that has been until now dominated by the study of urban religious practice.
- By (author) Cecilia Hewlett
Other Titles in this Series
Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s ‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’
Performing the Bride
Volume 15
Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers
Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan
Volume 18
Communities of Learning
Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500
Volume 9
Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages
The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c.1270-c.1530)
Volume 23
The Sacred and the Secular in Renaissance Florence
Vallombrosan Exorcisms and the Rise of Observant Mendicancy
Volume 31
Careers and Opportunities at the Roman Curia, 1300-1500
A Socio-Economic History of Papal Administration
Volume 29
Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse
Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' and the Development of Theology
Volume 8
Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge
The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217)
Volume 13
Mulieres Religiosae
Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Volume 12
Similar Books
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17
Tradition, Interpretation, and Change
Developments in the Liturgy of Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Building the Presence of the Prince
The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 14
From Europe to Overseas
Saints, Martyrs, Heroes, Models and Soft Power in an Early Modern Global Perspective
Jheronimus Bosch, Conservation and Restoration
From Former Glory to Changing Appearances (Volume 1: Text, Volume 2: Images)
