2026 Theses Doctoral

Accountability in the Medieval Italian Communes, c. 1200–1350

Quijano, Carolyn J.

This dissertation examines how several thirteenth and fourteenth-century Italian communes enshrined political accountability in their city statutes, using a complex and evolving system of legal structures to ensure the integrity of their officials. The communal governments in Italy formed from the citizens’ deep dissatisfaction with noble rule, plagued as it was by infighting and factional strife. A rule of councils, filled by regularly rotating non-noble citizens, brought in foreign officials from other Italian city-states to promote the impartiality of sensitive positions. Taking part in a common legal culture, which developed around the exchange of magistrates, Siena, Bolonga, Perugia, and Pisa produced a wealth of legislation, most often gathered together in law books (libri-statuti).

Even as the solidification of a new elite led cities like Siena further into oligarchical rule in the fourteenth century, communal councils continued to reinforce accountability structures such as foreign magistracies, term audits of officials (sindicati), term limits, and sequestration in the law. However, frequent exceptions and ad hoc exemptions threatened the integrity of the accountability structures, even as they provided the tractability that the governments needed to maintain the political status quo. By situating the evolving iterations of civic legislation within each city’s political-historical context, this dissertation explores how moments of crises exposed the flexibility of ostensibly immutable laws, further complicated by contemporaneous issuances of city statutes by different civic institutions making competing claims.