Some Uses of Literacy in Venice and Florence in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Italy is reputedly the most regional of European nations, yet it is a regionalism of an unusual kind. In most countries, the regions are territories, often with well-marked natural boundaries, containing a variable number of major towns and cities. Behind them there is usually a long history of social and political identity, often leading back to a feudal kingdom or principality; quite often the region is thought of as the home of a particular tribe or people, and regional culture has deep roots in folklore and popular tradition. Typical regions of this kind are Aragon and Catalonia, Anjou and Brittany, Saxony and Bavaria; in Italy only the islands and the South, and the frontier area of Friuli conform to this pattern. Elsewhere, the modern regions or provinces have little historic reality behind them; the social unit was much smaller, and the strongest focus of loyalty was the union of the city and its territory on which both the classical civitas and the medieval commune were founded. Strongly ‘human’ rather than natural in character, the Italian city-regions were upheld by the in-tense particularism of the dominant classes rather than the populace. The more or less autonomous city-state was the natural political expression of this feeling, which nevertheless survived the establishment of the renaissance territorial state with little modification. The multi-centred regional culture for which Italy is famous depended on the sense of separate identity found in the dominant classes of the city region, whether it was politically independent or not; it was a matter of learned men and wealthy patrons rather than popular traditions.