Oxford University’s Chichele Professor of Medieval History Christopher Wickham delivered the final lecture of a three-part series entitled “The Origin of Italian City Communes 1050–1150” to eager audiences at the Villa Aurelia last Wednesday. In three comparative lectures, given over the course of as many days, Wickham examined aspects of the political, social and economic conditions in Milan, Pisa and Rome, which led to the development of these city communes. Simultaneous Italian translation was made available and a reception on the terrace of the Villa Aurelia followed. This lecture formed part of the academy’s New Work in the Humanities Series and was organized by Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the School of Classical Studies Kimberly Bowes (2006 Fellow), in collaboration with the President of the American University of Rome, Richard Hodges.
After a brief welcome from Director Christopher S. Celenza (1994 Fellow), Bowes introduced the speaker as one of the foremost scholars of medieval European history whose work has revealed that the complexity of history must be discovered through both words and objects. Wickham, a fellow of All Souls College and the British Academy, has published multiple studies on the history of medieval Italy in both English and Italian. His groundbreaking research in Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400–1000 (1981) launched an important reevaluation of the medieval period. More recently his Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (2005), a virtuoso history combining documentary and archaeological evidence, was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, the Deutscher Memorial Prize, and the James Henry Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association.
In this third and final lecture, Wickham analyzed the specific, and as it happens, unique conditions to be found in Rome where elite families, like the Frangipane or Pierleoni, jostled for papal patronage while increasingly ignoring local responsibilities in favor of international interests. If Milan and Pisa’s newly formed city communes were populated with old aristocratic nobiles, here in Rome it was the popolo minuto who necessarily took charge. With serious enemies at the papal court and among the landed aristocracy, Rome’s new commune became uniquely open to the lower strata of society for it depended upon wide popular support. It also became uniquely self-conscious, dressing itself up in the language of the ancient republic. Unlike elsewhere, Rome’s city commune emerged in opposition to the noble landed families and was largely comprised of what Wickham described as a medium elite of local artisans, judges, merchants, etc., whose interests were firmly rooted in the effective running of the city.
Over the course of these lectures Wickham examined Milan, Pisa, and Rome as case studies to describe the emergence of city communes as occurring through a series of accidents without intentionality or via what he deemed a kind of “sleepwalk.” Medieval city communes developed informally everywhere and only solidified by necessity. In this respect Wickham’s historic reflections are palpably germane to the current political struggle of the American popolo minuto to bring government back to the business of getting things done.