Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Amsterdam University Press
Published:5th Aug '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Medieval states are widely assumed to have lacked police forces. Yet in the Italian city-republics, soldiers patrolled the streets daily in search of lawbreakers. Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326 is the first book to examine the emergence of urban policing in medieval Italy and its impact on city life. Focusing on Bologna in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Gregory Roberts shows how police forces gave teeth to the communes' many statutes through a range of patrol activities. Whether seeking outlaws in the countryside or nighttime serenaders in the streets, urban police forces pursued lawbreakers energetically and effectively. They charged hundreds of individuals each year with arms-bearing, gambling, and curfew violations, convicting many of them in the process. Roberts draws on a trove of unpublished evidence from judicial archives, rich with witness testimony, to paint a vivid picture of policing in daily life and the capacity of urban governments to coerce. Breaking new ground in the study of violence, justice, and state formation in the Middle Ages, Police Power in the Italian Communes sheds fresh light on the question of how ostensibly modern institutions emerge from premodern social orders.
"Police Power in the Italian Communes surely deserves to be recognized as one of the foundational studies of police power in the late medieval Italian communes, especially Bologna. Roberts’s book is dense and complex but will repay significant dividends for readers interested in violence, justice, and related issues in the medieval Italian urban context and beyond. Indeed, the author deserves great credit for his interdisciplinary approach to the topic, his well-organized and persuasive arguments, and his skillful marshalling of rich veins of archival evidence. It is certainly, to borrow from Francis Bacon’s famous taxonomy, a book "to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention," but one well worth the time and effort."
- Peter Sposato, The Medieval Review, 22.02.04 (2022)
"Policing Power is an important piece of scholarship that is thoroughly researched and well-written. It is a pivotal work for historians interested in the pre-modern formation of law enforcement and adds a much-needed perspective on questions about the fluid role of the policing power and how society navigates them."
- Mohammed Allehbi, The New Rambler Review (2020)
ISBN: 9789463725309
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
332 pages